Topaz Light

Fire Emblem 7 was my first... I think I actually got it around 2003 or early 2004, since I clearly remember seeing promotional materials for the then-upcoming Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance after having already been into Fire Emblem for a while. I really loved FE7, though; the story and characters enchanted me, and the gameplay was totally unique compared to anything I'd played before. Like many people, I was introduced to the characters through Marth and Roy in Super Smash Bros., except that, while I did think Eliwood was Roy at first, I actually thought the tactician was Marth; I guess I thought "Mark" was a mistranslation of "Marth"... somehow. Since then, I've played almost every Fire Emblem game in the series (although not all of them to completion), and I've loved almost all of them!

As many have said previously, if you can do the programming to mod it into the engine, you can do anything you want with it. I don't know if the base engine will support it, however. That is a rather interesting idea, though. Looking to make a Tellah-like character?

The short and direct answer is no, any character with the green shield next to their map sprite cannot learn skills from other My Castles. You can certainly gain skills with a main story character and then add them to your logbook after clearing a playthrough of the game, but you can't buy them new skills after that.

Yessss Also... Polka, my first and favorite FE12 MU Celica Jenny Bridget/Eyvel Eirika Miledy Ena Nephenee Fiona Titania Athena Oboro Ophelia Lilith Priscilla gets a spot of honor I guess for being one of the first fictional characters I actually had a crush on (I don't anymore)

I guess in no particular order... The generic Hoshidan Archer Xane Radd Roger Rickard Takumi Leonardo Lyon Seliph Luka Python by extension from Luka Gaiden!Leo also by extension from Luka and Python Gaiden!Robin Pantsless Marth FE1 Abel

I don't really know how unpopular some of these are, but... I actually like how Reclassing in FE11 and FE12 worked more as a mechanic, since the way it was set up encouraged experimentation rather than discouraging players from playing around with it by requiring a commitment to the decision. I actually don't really like the new skill system Awakening and Fates use all that much, because I feel like it takes away a lot of the uniqueness of each character. Skills being more limited in the Jugdral and Tellius games allowed them to be a really interesting way of differentiating characters from one another and adding uniqueness, whereas in Awakening and Fates, the role skills play seems to be almost more akin to equipment in other RPGs, or maybe the moves a Pokémon can learn, so there ends up being almost nothing unique about a given character. It also prevents skills from being used for balancing purposes, in contexts like giving good fixed skills to units and/or classes that have disadvantages that would make them hard to use otherwise. I guess I just feel like there's a lot of interesting things that can be done with skills as a fixed facet of characters and classes, with the player maybe getting a few rare opportunities to teach characters new skills, as opposed to something every single character has in abundance and that ends up delegating certain classes to only being worth using at all for the skills you can learn from them since everything they can do, another class can do better. Not really an opinion, per se, but while I acknowledge that Jagens and other prepromotes are (or at least can often be) good, I still refrain from using them out of habit, partly because I see them as a sort of "easy way out" that I have more fun not using. It's also more rewarding for me to see characters who start out weaker end up really strong. Meg is actually adorable and is one of my favorite Knights, design-wise. Archanea is actually one of the most interesting and well-developed worlds in the series and I really wish there was more than one game set in it (during Marth's era) that had actual proper support conversations. This may not be so much unpopular as something I don't see a whole lot of people pointing out, but I really don't like the series' increasing divorce between gameplay permadeath and in-story death. This is noticeable in Awakening and Fates which I'm pretty sure have the highest percentage in the entire series of party members who just retreat upon "death" even in Classic mode, and especially when Fates started having party members die in the main story. I get that it was sorta to give the incidental party members a feeling of being more plot-relevant, but I felt like there would've been tons of better ways to do that, and permadeath as a gameplay element already represents the "anyone can die" aspect of the war, so Intelligent Systems didn't really need to double up on that. If we're upgrading Anna to playable status, bring back Jake. Even if IntSys doesn't want to have any preset couples for fanservice purposes, they could always have Jake just be a romance option for Anna (and just a romance option in general), or make him her kid of something... although that could get really weird considering their relationship in the games they've appeared in together previously. Anna's cartoonish, all-consuming obsession with money and profits is really annoying and her characterization in earlier games was a lot better, especially in Path of Radiance. I really don't like that in-map facilities (i.e. shops, armories, arenas, etc.) have basically stopped being a thing at this point, because I felt that they were a really interesting way to add a little additional splash of character and memorability to each individual map. Granted, I do approve of IntSys getting bolder and more creative with map premises; I'd just like to see in-map facilities make a return. I don't mind having a world map, but I really think that Sacred Stones had the right idea by having certain chapters pull you straight into the next chapter without a chance to return to the world map in between when the plot demanded it. I'm sorry, but I just can't forgive Awakening seemingly actively encouraging you to take a break between Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 by opening up Anna's paralogue then, when by both in-story and emotional impact maximization logic you shouldn't even have the option. I don't know how many people even have much familiarity with Fire Emblem's original implementation of sidequests since as far as I know only four games (two of which are pretty obscure) in the now-fourteen-installment-strong series used it, but I vastly prefer plot-relevant, earned sidequests to the utterly pointless and uninteresting (from a plot perspective, at least) excuse-for-reward chapters we're given in Awakening and Fates. I actually love the various "archetypes" as a sort of through-line in the series, and while I do agree that they get stale after a while without any variation, I think playing around with them in neat little ways like Fates having Christmas Ninjas instead of Christmas Cavaliers is a way better solution than just axing them altogether. I think that excessive "balancing" of features and weapons and etc. and tying all sorts of tradeoffs and drawbacks to everything powerful kinda takes some of the fun away after a while. Maybe have a difficulty level or some sort of optional mode where those counterbalances are in place for people who prefer things that way, but I think that it is possible to overbalance the game and kill some of, I guess, the organicness of the experience. I know a lot of people will feel like this is just objectively wrong, but I feel like there's a certain sense of fun and freedom present in not having everything be as close to exactly as good as everything else as the developers can make it. A little bit of unbalance is actually fun to me sometimes, and can add an intriguing splash of chaos that spices up a game design that would otherwise be very orderly. I actually have no problem with Yusuke Kozaki's art style by itself, but I don't like character outfits being standardized by class, and frankly I think whoever has designed the outfits for Awakening and Fates should be, if not fired, reassigned to a different job. I really don't feel all that strongly either which way about the decision between the two families in Fates. It's an interesting idea, but in practice, I just don't really care at all since Revelation basically means both choices are wrong/invalid in the grand scheme of the game and even beyond that, I don't have any sort of strong attachment to any of Fates' cast at all, either. I just... don't care about the choice, from a story perspective. It has a good setup for a really potent story moment, but the harmony with other elements needed to make it truly poignant just isn't there, in my opinion. I don't know what the general census on this is at all since I have yet to hear quite literally anybody besides my brother and myself even mention it, but I absolutely noticed the lack of any sound or voice effects during Fates' support conversations, and it honestly irks me and makes them feel flat. I didn't even realize how much I appreciated having that in Awakening until Fates axed it. Probably not all that unpopular an opinion but after three games, Intelligent Systems is out of excuses for not having a skin tone slider for the Avatar; even in Japan, there are a good amount of people who have darker skin colors, and I don't buy for a second that having skin tone selection would be one bit harder than having hair color selection, which they already have. I would actually seriously not be against having a Fire Emblem game with a more futuristic setting compared to what we've been given so far. Maybe Final Fantasy isn't the best example, since it's always had some hints of higher technology in its worlds since the Flying Fortress the very first game being a space station in the NES/Famicom version, but I feel it's evidence enough to show that branching out into new sorts of settings can be done gracefully, and in an interesting way. And, just like with the Final Fantasy example I'm using, there's no reason Fire Emblem couldn't dip back into medieval settings, too; I'm not suggesting a complete shift in the entire tone and direction of the series for the remainder of its existence, just that it might be neat to experiment around with settings more than they've done. Fire Emblem on Mars might be a little iffy, but for me that's mostly because of the shift to the story presumably taking place in the real world; I'd totally be down for a far-future Fire Emblem game set on an alien planet a la Xenoblade Chronicles X's setting, for example. And gimme some cute and cool alien races while you're at it. Make the nonhuman races plot-relevant again. Make Manaketes actually exist as a race in the story again and give them back that sense of power and scarcity and mystique that made them so cool back in Archanea. And lastly, I really don't like how Intelligent Systems has been basically just giving nine characters out of ten, if not more, to the player with basically no effort required on the player's part to actually get them. Having a chapter where the entire point is to recruit a certain character (Donnel, Anna, Mozu, and the kids' and Awakening SpotPass characters' paralogues) isn't any better, because recruiting that character is clearly the real point of the chapter and almost nobody is going to accept clearing the chapter without recruiting them; heck, in Fates, there are some chapters, like Percy's, where it's not even possible to clear the chapter and not get the character! To make it clear, I understand why they made this shift. They decided they wanted to emphasize having a lovable and charming cast as a writing priority, and, however well you may think they succeeded at that (or not) aside, that's almost certainly the reason they made so many characters really easy to recruit or even literally unmissable; they didn't want anybody to miss encountering the characters they were trying to sell the game with. Nonetheless, I want more characters who the game doesn't just hand to you or make so easy to recruit that it might has well have. I want there to be characters who you actually have to make some sort of conscious effort to recruit within their own joining chapter, so it actually feels cool to have them on your team instead of having them being nothing more than an indicator of the latest story chapter you've reached in your current playthrough.

Ahh, nice! Some of these are pretty ambitious, so props for carrying through with a tough idea! The full custom bits look kinda wonky, though. I'd try to get really comfortable with splicing, and maybe looking up a few full-custom tutorials if you want to get better. I don't know if you're also do traditional or digital art, but it might also help to do some sketches, scan them (if they're traditionally-drawn), and sorta... sprite over them, I guess? Shrink them down to FE portrait size and convert them from regular drawing to pixel art. I've seen that technique applied for full-custom Pokémon sprites, so I'd imagine it could work in this context, too. As for specific comments... Jayden's... sideburn, I guess? If that's the term? looks like it's defying gravity a bit; it should fall straight down to his shoulder and kinda rest in between his pauldron and his neck. Strangely, the minimug doesn't really have this problem. Vargas' shoulders look really weird... like, the position of the light source doesn't match the rest of the portrait; it looks like it's coming from next to and kinda underneath him. I'd take a look at how bare shoulders are generally shaded in FE portraits and try to use that as a point of reference. Also, the shades you used for his hair are a little too close to each other; try broadening the gap between the main shade and the next shade down. Selina's custom(?) hair bit is kinda neat, but it doesn't really match the texture of the rest of her hair very well, and the face that it's layered over the rest of her bangs makes it look really weird, like the bang line is just kinda overtaken by something else partway through. Also, there's a stray dark pixel on her left (our right) hair strand. I don't know if you meant for it there, but I don't think it should be. Verke's pretty good! The custom shading in his hair is a bit wonky, but there's not really a whole lot else that sticks out as all that wrong with him. I particularly like the color choices for him. Darke's also fairly competently-spliced. The hair on the right side of his face (our left) doesn't look like the flow of it quite matches the cloak it's supposed to be draped over, if that makes sense. Also, the blue for his cloak is a little bit too harsh and bold; maybe mellow it out just a bit? Try borrowing similar shades from existing FE portraits and try them out on him; Eliwood and Roy's portraits might be good ones to reference for that. Varne... just looks like a straight recolor of Innes to me, honestly, plus some custom coloring for the black streak in his hair. Using only two shades for each color for the hair causes it to look really strange, actually; generally, you should stick to three shades for the hair, and keep that in place for each color you want to use for the hair. Hair of one color with another colored streak in it is usually fine as long as the colors go well enough together, but three or more is getting to "badly-designed DeviantART OC" levels, so watch out for that. Also, the yellow and purple shades of his clothes seem to clash, just a little bit. Props for using a complementary pair of colors, though. Robin and Chrom... are admirable efforts, but I think it would be prudent for you to practice splicing more and check out some tutorials for making full-custom sprites, since it's clear you still have a long way to go in that regard. Robin's robes actually look pretty nice, but they look incomplete, like... they don't have any texture to them yet. There doesn't seem to be hardly any antialiasing going on at all to smooth out the outlines, and there seem to be just two shades for each color; neutral and darkened. If you look at Fire Emblem sprites, in most cases, there are three shades per color used, occasionally just two, and on very rare occasions—and only for colors that are very minor in the sprite design!—one shade. Gold trim uses the same shade set as the character's skin, provided the character is light-skinned (almost all Fire Emblem characters seem to be). If you want these to be hack-insertable, you can only use 15 colors, counting the outline color. Technically, the graphics have 16 colors, but you need to leave one color "slot" open for the "background" transparency color. My advice, if you want to use lots of colors in a single sprite, but insertion compatibility is a priority for you, would be to practice with color combinations a lot, and learn to be thrifty with shades; pick shades of colors so some of them can pull double-duty, so to speak. Make it so that, say, one color's darkest shade could also work as another color's middle shade. Oh, since you asked about it, you know when sprites put pixels of the "shaded" tone around outline curves to make the lines look smoother? That's what antialiasing is; without it, your lines will look very rigid and give the sprite a sort of "low-tech" vibe to it, which is fine if that's what you're going for stylistically, but if you want something like the much smoother-looking pixel art that Fire Emblem tends to use, you'll want to learn to use antialiasing effectively.

Right now, the Witch's Mark is the better choice, since you can get as many Sighting Lenses as you want from Ballistician Blitz. As soon as the Witch's Trial DLC comes out on the 21st, though, it'll stop mattering at all which one you pick, at which point my advice would be to go with the one that corresponds to the DLC map you like less to spare yourself a playthrough of it. Did you buy them via the bundle pack? If so, you'll need to go into "Purchase DLC" from the Dragon's Gate to download the updates necessary to actually play the DLC once it comes out. It doesn't update automatically, frustratingly.

Bronze/Brass [weapon] +1 = Protect [weapon]**Brass Naginata is changed to "Protect Glaive" to fit into the space limit. Iron [weapon] +1 = Refined [weapon] Iron [weapon] +2 = Deluxe [weapon] Iron [weapon] +3 = Premium [weapon] Steel [weapon] +1 = Alloy [weapon] Raider [weapon] +1 = Shredding [weapon]**Raider Knife is changed to "Shredding Dirk" to fit into the space limit. Disrobing Gale +1 = Undignified Air Bottle +1 = Dangerous Vial Javelin +1 = Double Javelin Stick +1 = Better Stick (named after a weapon from Mother 3) Peri's Lance +1 = Bloodied Spear Hand Axe +1 = Boomer-Axe Frying Pan +1 = Iron Skillet (named after Ana's best weapon in EarthBound Beginnings) Arthur's Axe +1 = Valorous Axe (it was going to be "Courageous Axe", but that didn't fit) Fruit Knife +1 = Fiji Dirk Votive Candle +1 = Guardian Torch Rubber Bow +1 = Franklin Bow (named for the Franklin Badge in the Mother games, since rubber doesn't conduct electricity) Cupid Bow +1 = Eros' Bow Cupid Bow +2 = Heart-Piercer Thunder +2 = Zibelthiurdos (named for a Thracian thunder deity; name chosen for compatibility with Owain's personal skill) Fimbulvetr +1 = Blizzard (I might change this since it actually changed the name to be less interesting, but I couldn't think of anything) Moonlight +1 = Celestial Light (name chosen for compatibility with Owain's personal skill) The Bronze/Brass weapons become "Protect" weapons due to their critical evasion bonuses, while the Iron weapon tiers are meant to sort of give the impression of "Good Sword, Better Sword, Even Better Sword" without being quite that boring.

Yeah, you can't buy skills that are associated with any of the "extra" or DLC classes, or apparently any skills that are just DLC on their own, either. Most likely it's to keep people from just buying them with in-game currency and skipping getting the DLC they're supposed to get to actually gain access to the classes and skills, but I think it might also have the effect of making certain skills from the amiibo and DLC classes locked to the gender the class is associated with, since I don't know if there are manuals for every single DLC/amiibo skill.

Call the police and report them for theft

You can access the Options menu by pressing the A button in My Castle when not within examining proximity of any facility or character, and then pressing the R button. From there, scroll down to "Music Volume", and pull the gauge all the way down. There ya go!

To clarify, I meant... Say you changed your MU into a Dark Falcon, then changed them back into a Nohr Prince/ss or Nohr/Hoshido Noble. Then somebody defeated your team in a My Castle battle and chose to recruit your MU from your team. Would the version of your MU in their file be able to change back into a Dark Falcon using a Heart Seal, or would they have to use up another Ebon Wing for it?

Binding Blade, I've reached Chapter 17 playing in Japanese on a cartridge. New Mystery, I've actually finished twice; once on Normal mode, and once on Hard, again, in Japanese, on a game card.

I think it'd be interesting for the next Fire Emblem game to be somewhat self-aware (at least in regards to the series it's part of) in its writing, and deliberately play with fan expectations by presenting characters as well-established archetypes, only to pull the rug out from under that as they turn out to fill a totally different role in the story. Some ideas I'd had were having an Emmeryn/Mikoto-type character who either turns into or turns out to have always been a villain, have the main villain be the standard "Lord" character (complete with the Lord/Great Lord class; bonus points if they're masquerading as the game's Avatar) gone horribly wrong, etc. Then have the real main character turn out to be one of those really lame units you get early on and probably don't think much of, who steels their resolve and takes the reigns of (realistically, "what's left of") the main party when the faux main Lord goes off the deep end. (In order to avoid having their true importance revealed too early through an inexplicable Game Over or retreat death quote, the true main character could covertly be protected from death by rigging the RNG to forbid it from rolling up any battles that would result in reducing their HP to zero, a la Eyvel in the early chapters of Thracia 776. Obviously, this protection would be removed once they take the helm.)

If you expand a character's Reclass set by using a Partner Seal, a Friendship Seal, or one of the extra class change items, (Ebon Wing, Exalt's Brand, Sighting Lens, etc.,) and then that character is recruited into another player's army via a My Castle battle, will they retain the additions to their Reclass set as a guest character, or will they revert to only being able to access classes from their normal set?

He's alright, I guess. Honestly can't say I feel that strongly about him one way or the other.

I don't know how to edit actual weapon availability, but I do know that the male Mercenary/Hero sword attack motion data is what the game defaults to when a character is force-equipped with a weapon type they're not supposed to be able to use in their current class. Even if that weapon is a Bow or a Tome.

You didn't specify which metric they would be "the worst" by but Garon because even just six chapters into Conquest I can already tell that he is the single dumbest major villain that I've encountered yet in the series. Like, in terms of intelligence level. He seems to be caught in a loops of "I hate Corrin I wish they'd just die so I'll send them off on a mission and hope they die during it, oh dammit they survived, well, I guess I'll forgive them, god I hate them so much I'm gonna talk about killing that little brat clearly within earshot of one or more of their siblings hey I know I'll send them off on a mission and hope they die during it"

Honestly the only thing I'm really annoyed about is that a lot of the name changes seem egregious and unnecessary, especially the Hoshidan characters', and the name overlap with earlier games (Selena, Arthur, Lloyd, Leo). And I guess, as funny as what they replaced it with is, the essential removal of Saizo and Beruka's C support is a bit annoying. Beyond that, though, I have a really hard time caring, and an even harder time being upset. The only thing well and truly cut was something I honestly prefer to not have in the game, and everything else is just... not a big deal. For me, at least. And, as much as I hate to provide "Censorship Apologist Bingo" fodder, it really is true that what boycotting does in practice is tell the company "People don't want this product at all." It's a good thing these Torrential Downpourers seem to love their "true to the original" fan translations, since all their movement could really accomplish is taking everyone back to a point where they're once again forced to rely on fan translations for Fire Emblem.

Ahhh, yeah. The fixed storyline promotions in all three GBA games probably mean that there is a built-in way to trigger a class change during an event rather than with an item, but I'd need to see how feasible it'd be have it "promote" the character into a different class that wasn't part of their base class line. I'm sure you could do it by just having the game modify the variable that stores the character's class, but that would look kinda bare-bones in terms of presentation (they would just suddenly "snap" to being the new class, instead of having a promotion animation for it.) Thanks!

Thanks! I actually considered doing that, but there are a number of features I definitely want to include that would be varying degrees of not-really-feasible using a GBAFE base without heavy ASM modifications. Which is why my plan was to use FEXNA, which, while not totally user-friendly to certain engine modifications, is ultimately- from what I hear- a lot more conducive to them being made. And, that's... sort of how it works? The idea is that there are "Masters" of certain classes- say, a really experience Halberdier- who you can send someone to visit, and they can "teach" the character their class. Using the Halberdier example... let's say, a Mercenary, would become a Soldier, while a Hero would become a Halberdier. The class change itself is mechanically very similar to reclassing in DSFE or Fates; the character retains their level, promotion tier, and any shared weapon ranks with their new class, but their stats are adjusted based on the difference between the bases of their original class and the bases of their new class. Reclassing this way might have the character retain the ability to change between their old class and the one they just learned, DSFE-style, but I'm still up in the air about how exactly Reclassing is going to work. And, thanks for the encouragement! EDIT: Oh oops you meant "how it would work" as in "how it would be programmed," didn't you? My bad.

Bought both Conquest and Birthright digitally, using Conquest as the "base" version. I voted that I have Revelation as well because I'm gonna get it ASAP once it's out. Honestly, the whole "Pick your side!!" mentality is something that I never really got into, although maybe I can say that since I don't have a whole lot besides video games to spend my money on. At any rate, I don't really consider the three routes to be fully-separate games, so I wouldn't consider myself to be getting the full Fire Emblem Fates Experience™ if I didn't play all three routes. Although, what it really boils down to is that I love Fire Emblem as a series, and Fates is basically three Fire Emblem games' worth of content for the price of two. ...And of course, I bought the complete DLC pack on day one, too.

Basically how it works is that, if you own either out of Conquest and Birthright, you can purchase the remaining two routes digitally for $19.99 apiece via the "Explore Fates" option in the main menu. This can be done whether the initial route is physical or digital. If the store you purchased the games from offers full refunds, it would be wise to return one of the cartridges and then buy back the path digitally for half the price. You can get all three routes for the price of two cartridges this way. As a bonus, it's also more convenient, since you can simply choose any path you've purchased in-game come Chapter 6, rather than having to swap in the cartridge of the route you want to play if it's not already the one in your 3DS. And, of course, Revelation can only be purchased via the in-game "Explore Fates" option; there's no way to get just Revelation on its own, probably because it was created with the intention of it being played after completing at least one of the other two routes.

Gosh, I don't even know... I mean, realistically I'd probably be a wimpy level 1 Villager with a Bronze weapon, if that, but since we're talking about what I would want to be... If we're discounting "flimsy Villager" as a possibility, I'd probably be an Archer or even an Armored Bow or something, since Bows are the only Fire Emblem weapon type I have any sort of experience using... Well, I think I did do some fencing, but I'm hardly cut out to be a quick swordfighter like a Mercenary or Myrmidon. I guess I could also be an Armored Sword or an FE1-style Knight or something. Basically some sort of not-fast infantry class that uses Bows and/or Swords. Archanea is probably my favorite Fire Emblem continent, honestly, but I don't really have a specific enough idea of how I'd be involved in a Fire Emblem game for specifying a continent to be necessary. I'd honestly just be the shitty early-game Archer a pretty plain recruitable character who you'd get early in the game from a village or from talking to me as a green unit or maybe I'd just sorta join at the start of a chapter or something. My job in-universe would probably just be as a pretty regular citizen or guardsman or maybe a traveler or something, and my plot role would be "Incidental Early-Game Party Member". My weapon of choice would be... Bows or swords in general, I guess? I'm definitely not worthy of any sort of unique weapon, so I'd probably just come with a Bronze or Iron (maybe Steel) variant of whatever weapon type I had. Maybe throw in a Short or Longbow on the side in the (likely) case of me being a Bow-user, but by and large nothing special. Certainly nothing like Takumi's Fujin Yumi or second-generation Genealogy characters inheriting legendary weapons or anything. I'd probably be one of those characters who's decent enough; like, you can use me for whatever class or party role I fill but there are better people out there and there's probably a mid-game prepromote who does the same stuff I do but better and in exchange for less effort.