Topaz Light

I don't really know a whole lot about their personalities beyond what's immediately evident so I guess going mostly based on designs and general vibes... Takumi -> Hinoka -> Sakura -> Elise -> Xander, Ryoma and Camilla -> Leo I haven't heard a lot about Takumi but he seems like a kind of character I would enjoy based on what I do know. Hinoka and Sakura just have nice designs mainly. Leo would be tied with the others there but he's kinda held back by his design being basically Marth turned into a Dark Knight and then recolored. I don't actually hate or dislike any of the siblings or anything, I'm just more or less interested in various ones.

Honestly I'm just gonna get all three routes, because I mean, why choose? Three games' worth of content for one of my favorite series is totally worth $80.00 for me. In real life, I... would probably stay with Nohr, but I'd definitely handle the situation differently from what I hear Corrin does. Namely, I'd probably immediately start taking the initiative (well, "immediately" as in "as soon as an opportunity to do it covertly presents itself") to reform Nohr and find a peaceful solution to the resource problem. I don't think I could abandon people I'd known my whole life for people I'd only just met, regardless of the relation they claimed to have to me. I know for a fact I wouldn't just passively go along with the plans to invade Hoshido without trying to push for a better solution, at the very least.

I can't really confirm it, but I'd imagine they're most likely using the actual models. There are probably a good few non-dynamic, "canned" animations in My Room, so I doubt it'd be that much harder to have it be animated in-engine. If they already have the framework for it, I don't see why they'd make it video files instead of just doing it in the engine.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but aren't those same models used for the confession sequences as well?

I did make a point to say it was the only instance of it that I personally was aware of. And I guess I meant more specifically that your standard healing spells being able to miss bugs me. Rosa's Pray command is a fair enough point, but she also has the Cure spell line, which cannot miss the intended target short of casting it on a target with Reflect status, in which case either they weren't actually the intended target for the spell or it's really on you for being inattentive.

It almost certainly will still be on the ROM; as far as I'm aware, it's pretty rare for game developers to fully remove things during localization. More often, what they do is just disable the player's access to it, while the coding for the dummied features remains on the ROM, more or less fully-functional. I'm not sure how the game would behave if you reenabled it via hacking and then tried to play it with English audio (assuming the game has dual audio), but it should work just fine, barring any issues resulting from that. I'd be surprised if it was well and truly removed from the program itself, honestly.I don't really think it's likely, but I do hope that it's being replaced with something else. I would rather have something else in there than nothing, but honestly, try as I might, I just can't bring myself to be upset about the feature being removed. It may sound childish, but even just having a feature like that in the game made me a bit uncomfortable. I personally will enjoy the game more without the feature present than with it, and I'm not particularly inclined to boycott the game or wish commercial failure upon it because of this. I understand the worries about censorship, but I strongly doubt that the reason it was removed was that they thought Americans "couldn't handle it" or "didn't deserve the right to see it". They probably felt that the feature would be offputting to many and would be met with controversy and criticism much more than praise, and therefore elected to remove it to avoid that. At least, that's my assessment of the situation. I would be more perturbed if it was something significant to the story or gameplay that was being removed, but since it's just a dumb minigame, I can't bring myself to be all that upset. The level of consequence of this removal to the overall game experience isn't a whole lot different from minor bits of side content that get inadvertently dummied out when the promotional events, other games, or DLC that allow access to them never make it outside of the country of origin. I guess in this case the removal was a deliberate decision rather than something incidental due to doing things in a low-effort way, but I still don't see it as that big a deal, personally. I see where people are coming from, I suppose, and their points are fair ones, but I can't honestly say that I feel the same way, or that I'm going to boycott the game because of it.

The art style may be more or less the same, but the art direction is notably different, and I'd say pretty strong. I definitely like it, at least. As for what I personally am looking forward to... Three games' worth of new Fire Emblem content Trying out all the cool new classes they've introduced, especially the modified Ballistician and the newly-playable Witch Still on the note of classes, I'm also looking forward to the removal of the gender locks on Fighter, Pegasus Knight (Sky Knight), and Troubadour (Rod Knight).(Fun bit of trivia; "Troubadour" is actually the masculine form of that word. The feminine form is "Trobairitz") Using Capture to recruit a Lancer legitimately instead of save editing myself a Soldier like I did with Awakening Having a hopefully more-balanced Avatar-type character Bending over backwards to spare every recruitable character from the opposite route who you fight but aren't actually forced to kill in order to proceed Trying out new mechanics like Area of Effect attacks My Castle. Just, in general. Especially Bond Units. I hope the Western version fixes the glitch that prevents them from returning to their base class if it wasn't in either of their "parents'" class sets Internet functionality for multiplayer features

I do indeed realize that, but it seems as though you mean to insinuate that how a game or mechanic is received overseas is meaningless to the progression of a series, which is false in an increasingly-global society. Also, ad hominem attacks don't help your case. You're saying that it's "childish" of me not to want such salacious content in a series I've loved since childhood; I would argue that it was juvenile of Intelligent Systems to include it in the first place. I'm not even really sure what you're trying to argue here. That just because "There's nothing I can do about it" means I should just shut up about it and take it? There have been many people here talking about "voting with their wallets", so to speak, against the removal of skinshipping. Sad as some may find it, in situations like this, money talks, and therefore the consumers do, in fact, have a say in what creators end up putting out, or at least what they're able to have get professionally-published. Forgive me, but I'm not going to waste my own "vote" promoting somebody else's principles. I personally abhor the idea of Fire Emblem becoming a hentai series, so I'm going to use my "vote"- however little it means by itself- to push the series away from becoming that. "I don't like it, so nobody else should have it either!" What's so much worse about that than, "I want it, so everybody else should have to put up with their favorite series gradually becoming porn!"? Either way, it's one part of the fanbase getting what they want at another part's expense. And, as you yourself said, it's still in the Japanese version, so if being able to rub people's faces is something you really want that badly, you can always just buy and play the Japanese version of the game. Or look up R18 interactive Flash games. Those'll let you rub more than just faces. In regards to being happy about the removal of a feature, think of it this way. Sometimes, trees will grow in ways that start to make them dangerous for nearby structures, such as becoming very lopsided and more likely to fall over, or simply having hanging branches getting in the way of things. In instances like these, the troublesome branches are trimmed off to prevent the tree from causing trouble further down the line. You may be against cutting branches off of trees "on principle", but that doesn't mean that cutting those branches off isn't almost entirely upside; the risk of the tree falling on people is gone, and the once-lopsided tree now gets to continue growing in that spot rather than falling down- likely snapping itself apart in the process- and being chopped up and removed entirely. As for censorship being a slippery slope, I would argue that what they're doing with making the games lewder is a slippery slope, as well. If it's a choice between two slippery slopes, then what's wrong with picking the one I personally prefer? Also, I'd like to remind you that subtracting a negative number actually increases the base number's value. Finally, you... are aware that you neither have nor deserve a say in other people's feelings, right? Disapprove of them all you want, but they're just as entitled to their own feelings as you are to yours. And, if I've told people how they should feel about this recent development myself, then please tell me where so I can go back and amend it, since that was never my intention. I'm simply expressing my own feelings and the reason I feel the way I do. EDIT: Oops I forgot a thing. Since when is it "cowardice" to decide that something you did was in fact a bad idea and then try to fix the mistake? Pressing forward without being conscious of your mistakes or doing your best to repair the damage is carelessness and idiocy, not courage.

Favorite Mechanic: This might be a weird answer, but my absolute favorite mechanic is probably the rigidity of the series' damage calculations. You know that every time you damage an enemy, you will either do the forecast amount of damage, or three times that much. Even when attack-modifying Skills proc, they way they modify the damage dealt (if they do) is fixed and rigid as well. It gets rid of the inconvenience of attacking an enemy who the game forecasts that you'll just be able to kill if you hit them, but oops looks like you hit in the lower end of your damage range guess that's a bust. Honorable Mention: Jugdral- and Tellius-style Skills. They're a great way to differentiate characters of the same class from one another, and making Skills more of a sort of special thing rather than something that every single character has in abundance makes it a lot cooler to get Skill Scrolls, or to get a new character with an awesome skill. Least Favorite Mechanic: Healing staves being able to miss. I haven't even played Thracia 776 and just the concept of that is absolutely abominable to me. FE5 is literally the only RPG of any type that I am aware of wherein your healing spells can miss.

First of all, this is a good, informative post. Second of all, I realize my first post in this thread was mostly shallow vitriol, so I'd like to explain in detail why I'm opposed to having it in the game, and therefore why I'm glad that it's been axed from the Western version. It's been said before, but the mechanic, especially considering how lewd some of the associated voice clips get, is uncomfortably close to something from a porn game. Yes, it's optional, but even just having it in the game establishes a precedent for such salacious content being in future games, as well. Given that My Room could be interpreted as being a step further than some things that were in Awakening (like the Confession CGs- which I personally found to be relatively innocuous and even rather cute a lot of the time- or the fanservice DLC), what I really don't want to have happen is for the series to go "just a step further" again and again, until it's a series of full-blown, M-rated porn games. I understand that I may be jumping the gun a bit by assuming that that's as likely as I'm making it out to be, but judging from just Awakening, I'd say it would've been jumping the gun to say that the next game would have things like face-petting and stripping units down to their underwear, and yet those are all things that are in Fire Emblem Fates. The reason I'm glad it's getting removed isn't because I'm happy that we're getting a "censored" version of the game; it's because the removal of the feature should tell the development team that that sort of content isn't going to fly in a series like Fire Emblem, which hopefully should discourage them from putting that sort of content in future installments. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for having more ways to interact with the characters, and more ways to express their personalities and learn about them! But there are tons of better ways to do that as opposed to something like Skinshipping, and I'm hoping that IS will take the hint from this and start exploring those other venues instead in future games. They could bring back Base Conversations, so that you could hear what various party members had to say about recent story events, and maybe score some neat items while you're at it! You could give the Avatar dialogue options in both the main story and their Supports, and use the dialogue trees in Supports to add replay value and allow the player to learn more about the characters through expanded interactions. Bring back things like in Fire Emblem 7, where in certain chapters, bringing specific characters would have them give a little bit of dialogue about their feelings regarding the area you were in or what was going on. There are lots of ways to explore characters' personalities, emotions, and histories without resorting to such uncomfortably-ribald content as what was included in Fates. Again, I'm not happy about the fact that we're losing content in itself; what I'm happy about is the message it's sending to Intelligent Systems.

Ugh. Honestly, I sincerely hope that it's out, and I wouldn't mind if the "stripping" effect of Brigand weapons was cut, either. Because elements like that are like something straight out of a porn game, as opposed to things like skills, multiplayer, etc. which are all sensible and fun offshoots from the main gameplay. Skinship and stripping units do not add to the gameplay in any meaningful way and in fact pull the game towards having a weird, smutty atmosphere that really does not belong in Fire Emblem at all. I'm all for more ways to interact with the characters! But not like that. I wouldn't throw a fit or boycott the game or anything if it was still in, but I would be rather disappointed. Honestly, I hope Intelligent Systems just doesn't make features like that in the future, or if they do, punt it off into a separate game series and stop tainting Fire Emblem with it. ... Whoops, maybe I got a bit too fired up there. Still, I have only negative feelings about skinshipping and find it hard to be upset at the prospect of it being gone.

Probably my first run of each route will be Normal/Classic. Subsequent playthroughs may be bumped up to Hard/Classic if I found Normal too easy the first time around. Much like in New Mystery and Awakening, I doubt I'm going to touch Casual mode. Or Phoenix mode, for that matter.

This is probably a really nitpicky distinction, but I did say "two of the most" and not "the two most"... at least, I've always interpreted those as meaning subtly different things. I guess my point isn't that making gay/bisexual characters who are morally questionable is bad, it's that it seems awfully convenient to me (and to other people, it seems) that they chose two particularly ethically-dubious people and no one else to be the same sex marriage options, even when they had another (much less sketchy, to my knowledge) character who was set up perfectly for it (Soleil) and from the sound of it several other characters who would've been great options, as well. Again, I'm not objecting to Niles or Rhajat being bi; it's a good start that they have same-gender romance options who aren't just there as jokes. It's just, the problem is really that the only same-gender romance options in the game are conveniently both with people who are very morally-questionable; that fact really makes it seem like IS is associating non-heterosexual orientations with moral deficiency or ambivalence, which is a harmful mentality. That, I believe, is what people are taking issue with.

In all honesty, I think it's fair to take issue with IS conveniently deciding to line the two gay/bi options up with two of the most... morally questionable... recruitable characters in the game. I suppose it's theoretically possible that it's just a coincidence, but considering that they have a female character who is explicitly attracted to women (Soleil), but who for some inexplicable reason can romance neither F!Corrin (whose preferences presumably match the player's), nor Rhajat (who is bi), nor any other female characters for that matter, then one's gotta wonder. For anyone who's gonna argue the "schoolgirl lesbians" trope for Soleil... it may well be true that that's what they were aiming for, but seeing as it's just another form of the "being [not straight] is just a phase" mentality, it hardly makes things better.

There are always reactions to any change along these lines that are so cartoonishly melodramatic and over the top; it's hilarious. As for the support being changed... Good. In regards to Rhajat, I'm actually kind of impressed that they managed to find an actual real name that's an anagram of Tharja, even if it's a masculine name. Suiga seems to me to be the obvious route to go with Grey, but Cordelia is a good deal tougher to come up with good, non-silly-sounding anagrams for. Rhajat beats all the "actual Japanese name -> thirteen-year-old's Naruto OC" changes, at least. (Although to their credit-ish at least Hana is still a real Japanese name. For all I know the others might be, too, but they still sound silly to me in light of the original names)

I save edited myself up a Soldier in Awakening does he count Anyways, yeah, it'd be really fun to see recruitable Soldiers come back. With Halberdiers, of course. And while I know Barbarians/Brigands were technically recruitable as recently as Awakening, it would still be nice to have another character who is a Barbarian at base. I'd also like to see the Anima/Light/Dark split brought back, as well as the return of Monks (or another first-tier Light-using class) that that would likely entail.

What really gets me is that I cannot see any reason why he couldn't have been recruited with the exact same speech Caeda gives Lorenz. Alas, no dice. I think my favorite Fire Emblem Moment™ would have to be the very first real confrontation with the Black Knight before Chapter 8 in Path of Radiance. It was a fantastic way to establish him as a powerful and mysterious nemesis character, and it really set the tone for his role throughout the game. Shame they had to tarnish him with such a lackluster identity reveal, but prior to that, he was a remarkably effective antagonist.

Nice! Thanks for answering! I've always had a weird affinity for the Soldier class (which Lancer seems to be a renaming of), so I'm glad to know that they're technically recruitable and can be made at least somewhat usable.

Ahh, excellent. Thanks for answering! But really? Not even a randomly-selected one? That's a little bit disappointing. By the way, are capture-recruited enemies able to use the other class-changing items? That is, the ones that you use to access the various "extra" classes, like Dread Fighter or Dark Falcon, the DLC classes, the amiibo characters' personal classes, etc.? Also, on a different note, how many blocks do all three routes put together take up? I'm looking to go digital + digital + digital and I want to know if I'll have enough room on my SD card.

Weirdly-specific question, but... hmm, how do I word this... Is there any point, in any of the three routes, during which... Lancers (not Spear Fighters; Lancers) are still appearing as enemies, and... You have either Orochi and/or Niles in your party, and therefore access to Capture I ask because if possible I want to capture a Lancer and recruit them into my party. I'm fully aware that Lancers are probably basically "Spear Fighters But Worse" in every way, but still, it's something I'd like to do. Also, how are secondary classes for Captured generics (and bosses, for that matter) determined?

Jagen, always, because you honestly do not need him on Normal mode. Plus I rarely use Jagens in Fire Emblem games in general; it's more fun for me to play the games without using them

It's absolutely possible to finish the game without losing anyone. It might be tough if you're playing a higher difficulty, though. As for me, I always reset, because as a general rule I can't bear to allow preventable character deaths to occur in video games. The only exception is Shadow Dragon when I decide I want to do a Sidequest run, in which case I deliberately get large swaths of my team massacred. I still feel bad about doing so, though. Ironman sounds pretty interesting, though; I might try it sometime I feel like challenging myself.

True enough, I suppose. I guess I was just looking for something to compare it to, because the basic theme of "continuation of the same story but with little to none of your original party members" has been done before, and that was the closest example I could think it. I admit it wasn't really a good one.

This thread contains links to all sorts of things, from sprites themselves to tutorials. I'd strongly advise giving it a thorough read, and checking out all the links there. Also, while I am happy to help, it's important to be able to seek out the information you want on your own, too.

To be fair, "Magic" referring to a subset of weapon types rather than a singular weapon type in itself wasn't really introduced in the form we know today until Genealogy of the Holy War. It would be very possible for them to just bring back the either of the Fire/Thunder/Wind or Anima/Light/Dark splits in a later game. I do agree that more variety in the range of Magic would be kinda neat to see, though. I think the weapon triangle is definitely fairly important, unless you have the enemies you're fighting significantly outgunned. The value of a given weapon type to your team is also sort of tied into the kinds of enemies you're facing. A lot of Fire Emblem games end up pitting you against a lot of Lance-wielding opponents, which makes Axes a very useful weapon type, since not only do they get WTA against these enemies, but they and their wielders also have the punch necessary to break through the sturdy defenses that Lance-wielding classes often have. The fact that Hammers are often one of the most accessible Slayer-type weapons also contributes to this, since Armored enemies are usually fairly common. This, I'm guessing, is at least part of why Wyvern Riders switching over to Axes was "a straight buff with no associated downsides"; the loss in accuracy isn't really significant since the WTA makes up for it against the ample Lance-users. They also lose their weapon triangle disadvantage against other Axe-wielding classes, and while they gain a disadvantage against Sword-wielders, the low Might of Swords combined with the generally-low Strength of the classes that wield them means that they probably still won't pose that much of a threat even if Wyvern Riders no longer threaten them as much, either. They aren't, actually. At least, not in most games. They may have high accuracy and low weight (in the games that have the weight mechanic), but their low Might- in conjunction with often being given to classes that have low Strength to begin with- hurts them, as does the fact that the 1~2 range Swords are few and far between and often force the wielder to attack using a stat that, for them, is generally pitifully-low (Magic). Then there's also the matter of the fact that you're often fighting a lot of Lance-users, which generally tend to be fairly sturdy. Pit weapon triangle disadvantage and low attack power against sturdy units wielding weapons of an advantaged type, and Sword-wielders are in for a bad time. They're certainly not terrible; they definitely have situations in which they're extremely helpful, and there are sword-wielding characters and classes that can be absolutely beastly, but as a weapon type in general they're not quite as good as the other two melee types once the enemies start to shift over to Lances and your own characters start to get going stat-wise.