BrightBow

It's essentially the same as Charge. It's just that Charge stops once the HP of the initiator goes below that of the opponent. And I would guess that this was probably only done to prevent the skill from backfiring due to being entirely automatic. I mean, everyone who played FE5 knows the pain of Dagdar getting double-attacked by ballista and by the time Kaga made Tear Ring Saga, Charge was a player-activated skill and coincidently did no longer have this restriction.

Let's put it this way, I had to turn the voices silent early on because I simply couldn't stomach the battle scenes otherwise. It's not even the kind of trashtalk of games like the Tales series or something. It's pur supposed heroes litterally indulging the killing of their opponents. And they don't sound like soldiers in a live and death battle but of a bunch of kids playing Counter Strike. So characters come across as sadistic psychopaths. And even if the tone wasn't different from Tales, it still wouldn't work because Tales leaves the fate of defeated enemies ambigious. In Tales people don't die in combat. They are only dead if a cutscene confirms it. And defeated allies are merely unconscious. But in Fire Emblem, there is the clear implication that people whose HP reaches 0 are really dead. So it's the entire opposite of the Tales series: People are dead until a cutscene confirms the opposite. It puts every battle in a different context. Not to mention that it comes across as even worse when you combine it with the massacre in chapter 14 and the neglegation of the Valm and Plegian people. At that point, the battle quotes can no longer be shrugged off as simply an unfortunate design decision and instead appear as another symptom of the game's overall messed up attitute. A small part of a consistent theme. It's the main reason I consider this game nothing short of a betrayal and mockery of everything that Fire Emblem stands for. Fire Emblem has during it's entire existance challenged the idea that enemy soldiers should be seen like a bunch of Goombas waiting to be stomped. The series was never anti-war but it advocated awareness. To be aware of the price that comes with a war. To think wisely about what you want to archieve with it because you are inevitable going to kill good and innocennt people. To take war seriously. In that regard it was always very mature. Also preachy, but you have to keep in mind that it is usually preachy about the subject of thoughtfulness and not about the subject off what we actually should think. Like, FE4 chapter 10 presents Arvis, the guy who is responsible for the death of the entire first generation, as a broken old shell of a man whose ambitions were crushed and corrupted and who spends his existance in regret and desperatly tries to undue some of the damage that were set in motion by his actions. But the game never tells us that we should feel sorry for him. It merely presents things as they are and challenges our initial assumptions about the guy and our desire to get back on him for what he did in ch.5. Maybe it makes us think differently about him and we wish that we didn't have to kill him... Or maybe we enjoy his well-deseved misery and look forward to finish him off for good. The game doesn't pass judgement on either, it just asks us to think about it. Not just about Arvis but also about the purpose of the entire war. Is this war about revenge or to create a better tomorrow? But all that Awakening does is to present war and killing as a fun social event.

It's not just the extra hurdle but more the fact that trading around items costs money and money is limited. (Well, technically it's "even less infinite then in other Fire Emblem games" but since you can't visit the arena indefinitly, you have to go very far out of the way for this.) So consequently items cannot be traded around infinitly either. As a result the player will quickly start making decisions on who should actually hold on to an item. And of course it is important that weapons can be repraired so that you can actually keep using it as long as you can affort to maintain the weapon. Trading limitations, weapon repairs and seperate money stashes are all connected. If one of them were missing, it would drag the rest of those mechanics down.

Hey, get it right. I'm not whining about the representation back then in Brawl, I am whining about the representation right now in the new one when there is less justification for the series getting the short end of the stick like that again.

Ho boy, the representation of Fire Emblem really sucked in Brawl. I mean, it's not just the Trophies. They even struggled to find a way to represent the rest of the series in the sticker collection. I don't think they contained anything from Jugdral at all. This was annoying back then and I hope this will not repeat itself. Heck, I am not even sure if the Trophies we did get in Brawl weren't simply the same models as in Radiant Dawn and PoR. If that was the case, it would mean they went the extra mile this time in order to ensure that one single setting dominates the entire franchise.

Oh yeah, I forgot that toggling the animation speed might be an issue. FE4 is the first game in the series with a crapton of configuration options that should be checked out. Needless to say, increasing the movement speed works wonders.

It's even worse then that actually. Geneology was released on May 14, 1996 in Japan. The N64 was released in June 23, 1996 in Japan. The releases of FE4 and Super Mario 64 are literally only a single month apart. Really, it's not just ridiculous that Thracia was released 3 years after the N64, it's even more absurd that they even started developing another Super Famicom game under these circumstances. I would really to learn more about the development history of Thracia. I mean, it's really unbelievable that they would do that under these circumstances. And to think that Nintendo, according to Wikipedia quoting a programmer of the game, canceled Star Fox 2 a year and a half before the release of the N64. And that game was already finished at that point..

I would bet that if nothing else it is fun to see Bantu kick tons of ass with his +12 Defense Dragonstone with infinite durability.

Well, Dark Pit is literally just a palette swap from Pit, an palette swap that even originated from Smash in the first place. So obviously Pit would keep this palette but it would be annoying if Pit looked exactly like Pitto without having his voice and personality as well. Especially since it would be so little work. I mean, it's not like they have to hire another voice actor in this case. Mind you, personally I most certainly would prefer if neither he or Lucina would get their own slots but would exist as alternate versions in a sub-menu or something. But the latter shows that this privilege clearly extends past Sakurai's own creations.

It's not too difficult. First of all, the person to obtain the Return staff is Ethlyn. Unlike Adean, she can fight in the arena. Not as effectively then others but if that is not enough she also can obtain money from Cuan and Dew. And needless to say, Cuan wrecks the arena. So she never has money roubles and Return isn't even that expensive in the first place. It can even be a good idea to use the staff even when you don't necessary need to in order to gain EXP quicker. The Warp staff is more complicated because as stated above, Adean can't fight. So she gets no money from the arena before she can promote. And because of her movement she is pretty much the last person to reach a village. Nevertheless, she can still obtain money from Dew. Heck, bandits always give a whooping 5000 gold. And later there is the option to leave Warp duties to Levin or MK Lachesis. And needless to say, the situation only gets easier in the second generation. The massive power of Nanna and Sety makes it even easier for them to maintain their funds compared to their predecessors. Leaf can also join the fun if he got the necessary inheritance in order to reach Master Knight quickly. Though, poor Lana still struggles unless she inherits the Bargain ring.

(FE6) Cecilia's Average Stats page currently displays HM Percival's stats instead of her own. Edit: Btw, has Mahnya always been missing from the FE4 page?

Yes, she isn't from a game he made. That's my point. He did not mind giving a niche franchise as FE a whooping four characters the same amount of characters as the ever-popular Zelda. All because of the simply conviction that Lucina worked better as a separate character. This shows that he might not care that much about balancing the game around franchise poplarity, so it would just be consequent for him to dump a large trophies of Uprising into this game simply because it can be done easily and don't hurt anyone by their inclusion. It just so happened that this time a franchise that Sakurai himself worked on benefited from this approach. Of course my explanation falls flat on it's face if it turns out the trophies are significantly different from the ones in Uprising. Still, as you pointed out just now, Kid Icarus has more trophies then even Kirby. And Kirby is way more connected to Sakurai then Kid Icarus. I would say that this hints that there might be another reason for Uprising's overinclusion other then Sakurai being biased.

Nah, you don't need a lot of free time. You can save anytime at the beginning of the turn. It's more of a traditional save system. Just make sure to make a seperate save at the beginning of the chapter since there is no Chapter Restart function.

Well, Uprising did have a Trophy system as well. Maybe he simply copied the models and poses straight from that game, so he could affort to add a lot. I mean, he is the same guy who didn't mind making Lucina her own character rather then simply an alternate costume.

It is technically possible to have mutiple SS ranks but it is the exception of the rule. I think the only regular class which can do it are Saints. Otherwhise only Ike's and Micaiah's class can get there. Neither are very likely to get there, though. Rangel and Alondite can not damage Mantle by default (which actually makes sense since their blessing is from Ashera, not Yune). Of course, Yune will bless Ragnel wheter you want it or not.

I guess I'll go with Leaf. If a Lord is too powerful like Sigurd or Ike, playthroughs have the tendency to turn out very similar due to them simply steamrolling everything by themselves. Which consequently gets very boring and repetetive. But of course you don't want them to be a dead weight either. And in that regard, I would say Leaf is by far the best designed Lord in the series. Thanks to his magic sword, lack of fatique and decent PCC, he makes for a very flexible unit that can fit into just about every team without ever overshadowing the rest of the cast.

The game was a medium disappointment to me when it was released but I warmed up to it over time. Like, Part 3 was fundamentally stupid and contrived even at the first time I played it. But over time I realized that Part 4 was simply really, really good and was what the game really was about. Especially after reading the extended script and learning about certain changes made by the localization (like completely rewriting the final conversation between Ike and Yune. Seriously, our version has nothing to do with the original version), I realized that the script was a lot better then I thought. These days, Part 3's clumsiness feels to me as the result of the writers simply needed to repeat the exploration of the races and the Begnion social structures (since not everyone played PoR) and because a situation was needed were the Awakening of the goddess could be reasonably justified. Of course I don't know if it's true or not but it helps to coop with it and to focus on the good stuff instead. Plus, Part 2 might be disconnected from the rest of the game... but it is a really good character focused story for Elincia. You just need to look at it isolated from the rest of the game, including the reappearance of the Greil Mercenaries since they unfortunately overshadowed Elincia's story. Also, while the balance of the Laguz is hilariously out of whack, foot units and horsies are actually nicely balanced for a change thanks to all the terrain differences. And Armored Knights are actually difficult to kill this time around because they actually get decent speed... it's just too bad that magic is so weak and that effective weapons are extremely rare this time around. This makes them too difficult to counter. But that's not really the fault of the Knights themselves but the weakness of other gameplay elements. All things considered, the game has tons of stuff that makes it worth appreciating. Both in terms of story and gameplay. Especially after Awakening ignored just about everything this game did, so Terrain was lost and Armored Knights are back to having the worst durability from any class because a few points of Def don't matter when you get double attacked by everything. Like Conker once said, "You don't know what you have until it's gone". Thank Yune that the game still exists, so I can now value it more for the things that it did pretty damn right.

But in FE4 you can repair both of these staffs.

Nonsense, the mechanics all work well together. The game simply needed a bit more polishing. Of course it is a lot of stuff to comprehend at once but different does not equal bad. You've got a point with the Holy weapons though. But only because you gain two of them which give a massive speed boast. All the weapons have crazy offense but that only helps so much when tons of enemies charge at you. It's the fact that those two weapons make the user nearly impossible to hit that is the problem. I think this little design flaw happened because the devs simply failed to fully consider the changes in the Avoid calculation. If the game was still following the Akaneia rules, then Holsety would only grant +20 avoid instead of 40. Doesn't make it any less broken of course but at least more understandable.

That's not it at all. What you have to understand is that FE2 and 4 are not FE 1 with a few quirks. FE2 is most notable for it's traversable worldmap and FE4 for it's multiple generations system. But both of these games are fundamentally differently designed in order to do justice to those new ideas, something that neither Sacred Stones or Awakening bothered to do. For example, Gaiden does not have weapon durability. This means that you can freely travel the world and fight enemies without having to constantly maintain your weapons. And this also means, that every item or weapon you find is something that you can truly enjoy, something that has real significance on your performance because stuff doesn't break after like 20 hits or something. That's not the only change about weapons, though. Every character has one and only one equipment slot. This can be a weapon... but it can also be a shield or a ring or something else you find. Essentially weapons in this game are power-ups. You don't need them to attack in the first place but in order to attack even harder. Also spells are learned depending on the level of the mage. And every mage learns different spells (and on different levels). Magic in general is a lot more versatile. There is stuff like summoning, 3 range and all kinds of effective spells, among other thing. But most importantly, magic ignores terrain bonuses. Which makes a massive difference in this game, btw. You don't need to bother about promotion items either. You can promote at any time at a shrine. ...unfortunately this always goes hand-in-hand with a not-so-random encounter, which sucks. The game also features visitable towns that you can roam around in and talk to locals like in a traditional JRPG. A lot of people would probably say that it is a small thing but I think it makes a world of difference in order to make the game feel more like...well, an actual world. ...as opposed to a game mechanic that exists to waste my time as I have to visit 20 different shops in order to find the one that sells HP tonics. Another thing that makes the game feel more like a world is that you can actually see all the enemy troops on the world map. Not just their leader but also their numbers and their powerlevel. However, what makes this really interesting is that more reinforcements can show up at the map. They will then start hunting you down. And if you attack an enemy army while they are on the same tile as an existing army, you have to fight both at the same time. And it's not always smart to simply wait until they separate again. For my part, I rather fight two armies at once then fighting one army led by a Bow Knight in a forest. Also, you have two different armies that you lead at the same time. On lead by Alm and one lead by Cecilia. If you neglect one of them, reinforcements could make it harder for the other team. The two armies can transfer items with each other by using traders that you can find in some towns. Btw, both of your armies are comparatively small but some shrines offer an limited amount of Resurrections to make up for that. The general flow of battles if a lot slower then usual since attacks generally deal less damage and casters use HP for spell as well... but healing is also slower. You can go several rounds without having anyone dying and still technically loosing simply because you can't keep up with the healing. This also means that health restoration points and even minor self-healing abilities make a world of difference in this game. Gaiden's battles are actually a lot like the ones in Battle for Wesnoth. If you haven't played it yet, you should. There is no reason not to since it's freeware and I am sure every Fire Emblem player can appreciate it. Similar, FE4 is fundamentally different as well. I would like to take a break here for now ...but I want to at least address a few things that Levant Caprice said. Each characters having their own stash of money and that you can't easily trade items between units means that you have to think who should get each item. It is essentially an important part of the character customization. Just like in Gaiden, you simply have to look at weapons in a different fashion. Also, you can also repair every weapon. In fact, while the game has weapon durability and shops, each weapon and item is unique. Even the humble Iron Sword only exists in limited quantities. So every weapon and item you obtain matters. (And btw, if a weapon breaks you can still repair it. So don't worry about loosing them by accident.) This gains even more importance further down the line as the kids inherit the items and weapons of their parents. And fixed weapon ranks are far from "stupid" as it makes classes more unique. (yes, weapon rank depends on the class) I mean, it's not like B-rank Lances are necessarily the same as C-rank laces but better in every way. Classes with higher weapon rank simply have more options to choose from. And again, you have to take into account that weapons are limited. An B-rank sword might be more powerful then an A-rank sword but more people can use the former then the latter. You have to take that into account in order to equip the team effectively. Also, this once again gains even more importance once the second generation comes into play because they can have a higher weapon level if their parents have certain bloodlines. (Holy blood is the only thing that can affect the weapon levels of a class.)

It's easy to forget this when you don't get instantly killed from it. Such situations probably occur more on hard. I never forgot about this mechanic in FE6 but I did forget that FE5 had them, and I played that game a lot more often. Not to mention that I played FE6 a few years before Thracia. Anyway, the reinforcements mechanics in FE5/6 are only the same as the ones in FE12/13 on a pure technical level. Situations were they can actually take advantage of their initiative are extremly rare. Fundamentally it's bad design but in the end it's just a minor nuisance.

No. Seriously, those two games are barely connected with each other beyond a few cameos. FE7 was about as random as a sequel/prequel can get.

Well, according to PETA dogs and other animals should be subject to euthanasia. Not sure if they use punches and kicks for that purpose.

Ah, dang it. I was hoping I was missing something. Oh well, just it's Leaf then. At least he can also double as Aile from Mega Man ZX or Runan from TRS while he is at it.

Unlike in that game, I don't remember them every spawning in attack range, though. (Except for chapter 18B but like in the classic "Trap of Lefcandy" map, you can see that trap a mile away.) So when it comes down to it, the difference between instantly moving or not ends up being mostly a matter of aesthetics.