Topaz Light

I think Dach and Gach is the way to go for those two, since "mach" is rendered in Japanese as マッハ, and "Bach" as バッハ, so it doesn't at all seem like a leap to me to assume that that's probably what Intelligent Systems was going for with their names. Whatever you do, though, I feel pretty strongly that the names should mimic the Japanese ones in being exactly the same save for the beginning consonant, although I'm also always bothered whenever naming schemes—even insignificant, meaningless ones—are dropped in translation, so that's absolutely 100% a personal issue that I have and not really so much an objective piece of advice.

Probably some weird hybrid of Wil's upbeat positivity and Takumi's crippling inadequacy issues and distrust of Corrin. I also feel like I might be able to relate to Roshea a bit, but I haven't actually seen his Mystery of the Emblem dialogue (at least, not in English), so I can't really say for sure yet.

In light of Rance, I think that you should call the red guy Allen instead of Alen. Anyway, in all seriousness this looks pretty cool! It's evident that creative liberties are being taken, which I don't think is a bad thing, since it'll give people who've already playing Binding Blade a reason to check out this version, too! Also, I, for one, love Dorothy's new portrait.

Unpopular opinions, huh? Alrighty, here we go: I think Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light's retroactive peculiarities compared to the rest of the series are not annoying in the slightest (well, for the most part; I'm looking at you, lack of visible movement ranges and proper Trading) and have actually become its cool distinguishing gameplay features that make it worth checking out. As well, I think that some ideas it had—like giving Knights two weapon types—were actually fairly interesting, even if it was really wonky in a lot of ways. Also I wish Kaga didn't have that bizarre vendetta against Axes because Barst is a beast As an addendum to this, I actually enjoy Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light more than its DS remake, because, after playing the NES original, I feel like Shadow Dragon's updating the mechanics to match modern Fire Emblem games ultimately just made it feel like just about the most generic Fire Emblem game imaginable. Blade of Light's eccentricities, I feel, make it a delightfully-fresh experience by comparison. Gaiden's world map, battle, and general game progression/exploration setup was actually really neat and I'd love to see it refined and its potential explored more, as opposed to the modified/watered-down versions of it present in Sacred Stones and Awakening. (Although Awakening absolutely had the right idea with how it handled moving from map point to map point) I don't think it's necessary to discount the NES Fire Emblem games in order to state that the 3DS Fire Emblem games have some of the absolute worst armor designs in the entire series, but maybe I'm still just bitter that the Great Knight's armor design went from being pretty cool looking in Sacred Stones to being just an absolute abomination against the tenets of good character design in Awakening and Fates. Except Frederick and Gunter's suits of armor. Why couldn't all 3DS Great Knights dress like them? Also, inner thigh windows on female riders. Don't do that. However, a good number of the non-armored outfit designs from the 3DS Fire Emblem games are actually pretty decent. While I think Awakening's and Fates' soundtracks are both pretty good in terms of individual songs, as cohesive wholes that mesh with the rest of the game, I find them kind of lacking, especially Fates'. Leitmotif isn't used nearly as effectively as it could be (although admittedly Awakening does it a bit better); the game's main theme is just sorta spammed all over the place, and there aren't really any leitmotifs for specific characters, factions, or plot points. I am actually really not a fan of how Awakening and Fates do Skills. I strongly prefer how they worked in the Jugdral and Tellius games, where they were rarer and used to differentiate characters and classes, rather than being something every single character has in abundance. I think that Class Skills were a really good idea and opened up a great avenue for further means of differentiating and balancing classes. I think that Weapon Weight is fundamentally a good idea, and one I'm disappointed that Intelligent Systems more or less gave up on before really finding a good setup for it. I think that Fire Emblem's relative simplicity compared to other SRPGs was one of its biggest strengths as a series, and I don't think that it would be a good idea for the series to try to become more like those games in terms of complexity level. I'm not trying to say that Fire Emblem should be a "dumbed-down" SRPG; it's more that I think that it should be very wary to avoid becoming more complex simply for the sake of being more complex. I actually like random growth rates, and I think that, at most, Intelligent Systems should make Random/Fixed selectable at the start of a file (like the Classic/Casual dichotomy) rather than just making a full shift over to Fixed growths only. I think that Intelligent Systems should go back to just letting characters who fall in battle be dead instead of having them just "retreat" even in Classic mode, because writing alternate versions of scenes they'd appear in to accommodate for the characters being dead is just out of the question apparently. I really don't like the trend in the 3DS Fire Emblem games for the majority of characters you recruit to already be on your side—in service to the main character's nation, even!—and to simply take until Chapter Whatever to actually join the Lord's particular traveling group. It's worlds less interesting than encountering characters from all over the continent and earning their allegiance as you go. Maybe I only feel this way because I adored the sort of "ragtag company of warriors" feel to the parties you assembled in a lot of earlier Fire Emblem games, but I still feel like having the vast majority of your party members already be part of the same faction as you are before they join you isn't really very interesting. This also goes hand in hand with how almost every character in the 3DS games (do note the "almost") is super easy to recruit. I've mentioned this before, but it still bothers me. It just doesn't feel as cool to have a character in your team who doesn't require you to go out of your way to recruit! Even while acknowledging the objective merits of Jagens, I still never use them simply because it's more fun for me to go it without them. I think a Fire Emblem game set in a different setting and/or time period would actually be very interesting to see assuming they took the proper care in adapting the classes and concepts to the new backdrop. I really do not care for how the 3DS Fire Emblem games allow units to bypass the 20/20 level cap; I think it renders growth rates ultimately meaningless and that it encourages lowmanning since it's easy to raise characters up to a point where they're simply mechanically-invincible against anything and everything the game is going to throw at you for the next several chapters (or the rest of the game, depending on the difficulty level you're playing). Admittedly, Fates did do a fairly decent job of reducing this, but I'm still not fond of Eternal Seals, conceptually. I feel that FEDS-style Reclassing with FE3DS-style class sets would, at the very least, be a concept worth testing. I dislike how Radiant Dawn, Awakening, and Fates inflated the scope of unit stats. I feel like keeping the scale of stats lower, like it was in previous games, lends a lot more weight to individual stat points, and therefore to both level-up gains and stat boosters. I think this is one way in which Fire Emblem is kinda making itself more complex where it doesn't need to be and where it doesn't actually service the game structure to do so. I think that the GBA games actually hit on a pretty good sense of scale for character stats, with a stat that was around the high teens/low twenties being "pretty good", and a value of 30 being absolutely godlike. I'd honestly take Archanea and its story and cast being promoted over Awakening or Fates any day. I genuinely feel that the presentation, control, and user interface elements are the best aspects of the 3DS Fire Emblem games. Awakening's naming scheme for its cutscene tracks is just about the worst thing ever. Big Yellow Taxi plays in my head every time I play Awakening or Fates and there's no between-chapters map narration.

Honestly, Hector's probably my favorite overall, for breaking the traditional Fire Emblem Lord mold in terms of both class function and personality (if not heritage or hair color). He's always just been a really vibrant and interesting character to me. While Ephraim does also use a different weapon type and have a different personality from the usual, I feel he's less divergent from the norm overall, and I also just plain like Hector's personality more.

Probably Neimi, since I don't think I could really choose just one based on personality, and Neimi always turns out really good for me whenever I use her. Doesn't hurt that she's the only one of these characters who can pick up Swords and a horse upon promotion, either.

Mimikyu is a good thing in this world something worth living for

Blatant favoritism incoming (you did ask our personal favorites rather than our objective assessments)!: Blazing Sword/FE7 New Mystery of the Emblem (played in Japanese, so this is purely based on gameplay) Genealogy of the Holy War Path of Radiance Sacred Stones Binding Blade Gaiden* Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light* Awakening Shadow Dragon Fates (Like, all of it. The entire thing) Not ranked due to insufficient experience with the games: Mystery of the Emblem - Book 1 Mystery of the Emblem - Book 2 Thracia 776 Radiant Dawn *I like weird NES games, so bite me. Also, I find that Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light's early-installment weirdness actually makes it a lot more fun and unique (for me) to play than its DS remake.

Is it possible? Yes. I mean, if it happened once, it—or something similar to it—can absolutely happen again. Should it happen again? Probably not.

I have to give the storytelling in Archanea (at least in the games besides FE12) props because, while it is simple and a bit bare bones, what's there is consistently good and doesn't really ever contradict itself or fail to make sense. I'm also seconding that it has this distinct sort of epic fantasy "it" factor to it that the other games haven't really been able to capture.

Pretty much every "trainee"-type unit (Ross, Amelia, Ewan, Donnel, Mozu), for starters. I like using Roger and Radd in Shadow Dragon even though I'm fully aware that they're not good. I also did a Shadow Dragon run where I ended up with a generic replacement character (Quatro) who I poured probably way more effort and favoritism into than warranted. I've never seriously played through Radiant Dawn at all, due mainly to the fact that my disc doesn't work anymore (it locks up every time it loads a battle scene or anything in that display mode, which means there's no way to get past Part 1 due to Micaiah's scripted promotion), but if I did, I feel like I'd go out of my way to use Meg and Fiona because I love their designs. does blasting through DLC maps and other people's StreetPass teams/My Castles with overpowered StreetPass/SpotPass units count In Path of Radiance, I always make an effort to train up Rolf despite him generally only making it to being roughly on-par with Shinon at the same level for way more effort. I don't know how good Mist and Rhys are considered to be, but I also use both of them. I've tried training Wendy mainly because she's the only Knight in the game whose design I actually like, despite the fact that she's so mediocre. Also Sophia, because she's the only female Dark magic user until Tharja and I like her battle and map sprites. Not sure if he counts, but Cord usually ends up with a place on my team in Shadow Dragon; I tend to make him a Dark Mage a lot of the time, though. I've used Roshea a few times, in different classes. His growths are so weird; I have no idea what sort of role he's supposed to fill. (He's like, HP/Strength/Skill-oriented or something? I kind of feel like he wants to be a Knight)

I'm guessing the term Beorc was used for the same reason certain Final Fantasy games have called humans "Humes" or "Hyur" instead of just "human". It's a little silly, and there's not really much of an objective reason for it to be there; it's just to make the world and its cultures seem more flavorful.

Local Twelve-Year-Old Treks Unsupervised Across the American Countryside to Collect Music: What Happens Next Will Warm Your Heart

I read about this! I'm looking forward to it, since I've been trying to check out some of the newer Final Fantasy games (haven't played that much of anything after VII since I started playing with remakes of the Nintendo entries) and I love the Job System. From what I've read, the Zodiac Job System seems like a really unique take on it, so I'm sure it'd be interesting to experience!

You can buy Einherjar from other people's Castle shops, but just like using any other shopping facility, you can only purchase one per visit to each Castle, since it boots you out immediately afterwards. If you're talking specifically about using the generic Einherjar characters, there are only 16 (8 for Hoshido and 8 for Nohr; Valla gets both) in the entire game, and they're all preset in terms of class, name, and base stats. I can't remember them all off the top of my head, but I do know that even though they'd all come at level 1, you would end up with a pretty diverse array of classes since there's no overlap between them.

Whoa, that's pretty cool! I've never understood how people are able to draw such finely-detailed drawings on the touchscreens of the 3DS or the Wii U Game Pad, but I'd imagine it's a lot easier if you're already versed in digital art. Still, though, this is rad!

That happens sometimes in this game and Awakening. Especially when damage-boosting Skills and Critical Hits stack, you can do a lot of damage; even more, if the enemy is a class with kinda low Defense like Ninjas and Master Ninjas.

It's no problem! And, you can have Bond Units with as many different Avatars as you want to create them with. You'll have to build up affinity for each one independently, though.

I also think Nyx's voice is kinda ehhhhhh, come to think of it. My problem with it personally is that... I understand why she would have a high-pitched voice, but first of all, her attack "grunts" are terrible and don't sound like she's exerting herself physically at all, they just sound like... generic cutesy noises. Also, while some of her lines do do this, more of her voice clips need to have her speaking with the cadence of an adult even though her voice is high-pitched. It's not really terrible I wouldn't say, but it could definitely be a lot better.

Hi! Yes! Well, sort of. The Bond Unit's starting stats and skills are calculated as though they were a child character of the two units who have bonded, but they don't actually count as a child of either character. And, I couldn't tell you if Japanese, North American, and European versions of Fire Emblem Fates are StreetPass-compatible with one another. I'm kinda doubtful, though, considering that different region versions of Fire Emblem Awakening were not StreetPass-compatible with one another. What I can tell you on this topic is that Japanese My Castles do not show up when searching the My Castle database with a North American version of the game, which likely means that the different region versions are not compatible with each other. I'm... not actually sure. I'd imagine you can have at least one with every other Avatar character you StreetPass or visit via SpotPass, but I don't know whether or not you can have more than one with the same character. If someone else knows the answer to this particular question, please chime in! Nope! It doesn't affect supports at all, in fact! There's no way to obtain Supports between two Avatar characters, or that in any way involve a character that's considered a "bonus" character by the game... That is, other players' characters recruited onto your own team, captured enemy units from the main story, Bond Units, and amiibo units (Marth, Ike, Robin, and Lucina) all count as "bonus characters", and cannot support with any character, not even one another. Any character considered a bonus character by the game will have a light green shield over the bottom left-hand corner of their map sprite at all times. (Your English is just fine; don't worry about it!)

I'm gonna be completely honest, I have no idea what the actual problem people are seeing with Felicia's dub voice acting is? I hear her dub voice complained about a lot and I've played the game for quite a while and heard it quite a bit and there's really nothing wrong with it from what I can tell. I think her voice is completely appropriate and realistic for an awkward 18~25-year-old woman, and some of her lines sounding kinda silly doesn't seem like that much of a flaw to me because in some ways she is a kind of silly character, so it fits. On the whole, I thought the dub voice acting was actually pretty good. There were a few instances where I felt the performances for returning characters didn't quite match how they sounded in Awakening despite being the same VAs, but on the whole I really don't see any problems with it. Of course, I haven't gotten every character yet so there could be a few bad dub jobs, but what I've heard, I've liked.

1. It's your call, but Conquest Normal is a good deal harder than Awakening Normal. I'd recommend starting with Normal, personally, and upgrading to Hard if it's too easy for you. Alternatively, you can start with Hard mode, and lower it down to Normal mid-playthrough if it gets too tough. 2. There are a number of mechanics that have changed... First is the Pair Up mechanic, which is now a "stance" system of sorts. You can still merge two units with each other on the same tile like in Awakening, but this puts them in Defend Stance. When in Defend Stance, the unit in front receives stat boosts from the unit in back, and as the two fight together, a "gauge" of sorts made of little shield icons will fill up. Once it's all the way full, the shields will turn blue, and the unit in back will block the next attack directed at the unit in front with 100% success rate. However, if the two units are simply next to each other, this is Attack Stance. The supporting unit will jump in to aid the primary unit with one single attack with 100% frequency. The attack always comes in immediately after the primary unit's first attack in the battle, and the supporting unit attacks with reduced power. The supporting unit cannot activate offensive skills when aiding another unit via Attack Stance; however, if the supporting unit is wielding a Knife or Shuriken, or another weapon that has a debuffing effect, the debuffing effect will still be applied.* However, a Defend Stance partner will always block an Attack Stance partner's attack, no matter what the current state of the shield gauge is (and it won't deplete the shield gauge when they do). *Incidentally, debuffs are applied even if the attack does no damage, so long as it hits; debuffs are not applied if the attack misses. Reclassing is also changed a bit. Compared to Awakening, a character's level is no longer reset to 1 when reclassing. Additionally, it is impossible to revert back down to tier 1 classes after promoting into a tier 2 class; for example, a Paladin could not turn back into a Cavalier. There are also a number of Seals now, with various effects: Master Seals return, with the exact same function as in Awakening. Heart Seals are basically the same as Second Seals from Awakening. Friendship Seals allow a character to change into the primary class set of a character they have A+ support with. Not A or S; A+. It's its own support rank now. Partner Seals allow a character to change into the primary class set of the character they have S support with. Eternal Seals increase the level cap for the character they're used on by +5. The absolute maximum level is 99. 4. Yes, absolutely. You need to have purchased at least one out of Conquest or Birthright to buy Revelation, but that's only because Revelation is only for sale via a shop menu accessed in-game... I believe the menu option is "Explore Fates". You can play any of the routes you've bought as soon as they're finished downloading, regardless of which routes you have or haven't cleared. There's a lot more to cover, I'm sure, but there are other people with more in-depth knowledge of the game than I have who can also help you.

My brother and I have agreed that Iago is an oil spill gijinka; does that count?

Hmm... [spoiler="Long] Corrin: 16~24 Azura: 16~24 Sakura: 16 Elise: 15 Takumi: 19 feels about right for some reason Leo: 19 Hinoka: 21 Camilla: 26 or so; a little younger than Xander Ryoma: 26 or so Xander: 26 or so Gunter: 50s~60s Felicia: 19~23 Jakob: 21~27 Kaze: 20~25 Silas: 18~22 Shura: 40s~50s Izana: 27, just about Mozu: 15 Rinkah: 20~24 Hana: 16~22 Subaki: 16~22 Saizo: 22~27 Orochi: 20~25 Azama: 20~25 Setsuna: 16~20 Hayato: 14~18 Oboro: 18~22 Hinata: 18~22 Kagero: 20~25 Reina: late 30s~early 50s Kaden: He's a Kitsune so who knows? I'm sure the game gives you a ballpark somewhere. Scarlet: 21~25 Yukimura: 40s~50s Arthur: 20~28 Effie: 18~26 Odin (Owain): 19~24 Niles: 22~28 Nyx: Around 100 chronologically, 10~14 physiologically Selena (Severa): 19~24 Beruka: 18~22 Laslow (Inigo): 19~24 Peri: 16~21 Benny: 19~25 Charlotte: 19~25 (I'd imagine she might actually be the older out of her and Benny) Keaton: Again, I can't really judge from appearance since he's a nonhuman. Probably older than he looks, though. Flora: 19~23 Fuga: mid-40s~early-60s Anna: 20~25 Kana: 10~14 Shigure: 16~20 Dwyer: 16~20 Sophie: 16~20 Midori: 12~16 Shiro: 18~24 Kiragi: 13~17 Asugi: 16~20 Selkie: 16~20 Hisame: 16~20 Mitama: 15~19 Caeldori: 17~21 Rhajat: 18~21 Siegbert: 15~20 Forrest: 15~19 Ignatius: 16~20 Velouria: 18~22 Percy: 14~18 Ophelia: 16~20 Soleil: 16~20 Nina: 16~20 Mikoto: Early 40s~early 50s Garon: 50s~70s Daniela: Mid-20s~early 30s Haitaka: Mid-20s~early 30s. Kumagera: 50s Lloyd Not-Reed: Around 30 Llewelyn: Around 30 Nichol: Mid-20s~mid-40s Candace: Mid-20s Tarba: Late 20s~late 40s Funke: 50s~60s Daichi: 30s~50s (his face paint makes it a bit tough to tell but this is my best estimate) Gazak: Late 20s~late 30s Senno: 20s~early 30s Zhara: Late 40s~early 60s I realize a some of these sorta contradict stuff that's stated in game but these are my assessments based on character designs.

While I feel my better judgment warning me not to post my thoughts here... I'm going to, anyway. Aaaaaand my better judgment won out so I'm just gonna shorten this drastically to "Fates wins in gameplay, Awakening wins in story".