BrightBow

Best: Frederick Worst: Wendy Well, Frederick actually got a horse. Not bad being a tank and the unit with the highest move. Wendy is just a waste of space.

I am a bit confused by that. Gonzales is very childlike, angsting and vulnerable. A.k.a. "moe". Where is the blackmail material in that statement?

The poor Charmander apparently doesn't have Metal Claw. Ahh ...the memories. I hope for a cameo of Bubble Beam.

Let's see... FE1: Main Theme The first one doesn't have to many memorable tracks but the main theme is already present in all it's glory. FE2: Battle 1 It just never gets old. Bonus points for having am more dramatic version for the finale. FE3: Legend of the Divine Dragon The debut of Tiki's leitmotif. And it's glorious. FE4: Silesia Army Beautifully tragic sounding. Doesn't just fit the ice environment but also the current point in the story, since the themes had always been very upbeat until now. Naturally, particular effective during the NPC battle, where you can't do anything to prevent the defeat of the Sileasian knights. FE5: Leaf In a game where the map theme is often quite dramatic, this triumphal theme stands out even more. FE6: For the Commanders Not much to say. It's just cool. FE7: Black Fang I guess one could consider it over the top, though. FE8: Truth, Despair, and Hope The title sums up the song better then I could. A great conclusive theme. FE9: To my Love A beautifully tragic piece. Of course, the song would probably have been more effective, if the NoA script would have gotten the point across that Rajajon was actually dying. FE10: Queen Elincia An arrangement of Elincia's original theme, that beautifully shows how the princess has grown... for all the good and bad that entails. FE11: A Hero's Destiny My favorite track. The entire War of Darkness with all it's baggage in one song. Bonus point for arranging the original NES map theme. Just perfect for a remake of this classic. FE12: Endless Battle TRS: Knights of Razelia When I heard this track for the first time, I had tears in my eyes. The song is just so... ...Fire Emblem. *sob* it's so beautiful... Anyway, since pretty much all TRS tracks, I consider the version in the game superior to the one in the official soundtrack.

Wow, thanks a lot. Personally I thought Cliff was supposed to be Clive. Would have made the decision easier. I guess it's Grima then. As bad as the ending was, it did show me that riding on a giant dragon is pretty boss. Not to mention that Grima strives for the destruction of the world of Awakening. Take me along on that ride. I just need to find a good record to play during the flight. "Ride of the Valkyres" should probably work. Even if it's clichéd. Or maybe "Night on Bald Mountain". Or the fresh Prince of Bel-Air opening theme. Or "Hell March" from the original C&C: Red Alert. The nostalgia would kill me. Besides, Morgan can probably inherit Dragon Skin that way.

I guess I changed my mind. FE12 Marth's face is really is pretty empty looking. His clothes are definitely better and the collar is a huge improvement. He makes FE11 Marth look like Yogi Bear. But that's all I grant him.

Well, in order to make a decision, the first step has to be this: Who are these people?

The game should definitely involve a wide variety of ages. War always involves everyone, so we always should get a wide variety of perspectives on it. For the same reason, I would say that kids are also necessary. It's just a matter of how it's played. Characters like Ricken and Fa are extremely disturbing. Fa, because she doesn't even know about death and Ricken because he doesn't care. I prefer characters like Rolf, who understand the implications of their actions and can provide a reason for why they fight anyway. Besides, age is also a good excuse to have units with a wide array of levels. It makes no sense for some redshirt to joins as a Paladin. And I love varying levels, because it makes them feel like they actually represent a characters skills instead of just being mere numbers. Anyway, I guess having the majority to be younger then 20 isn't to bad. Older people would probably be more difficult to write because they would carry more baggage with them. I mean, look at Zihark. Since he is still young it works well enough that the person he is today, is mostly shaped by his experiences in regards to his relationship with a Laguz. But they definitely shouldn't just be missing completely.

Personally I would bet that Dragonite got cuter in order to contrast Charizard getting more badass. The two of them were very similar looking in Red/Green.

Erm... Gonzo is extremely "moe". So what about his looks? In his case it's just a case of behavior and personality.

Honestly, I don't see it. I mean, I would say the new Monshu on is better because it is more in line with the other portraits. Not because it is bad, yet alone bad enough that I would refuse to play the game again because of that. Well, I actually do find the Monshu expression a bit off, to be honest. Though, maybe it's just because Marth is the only one to have a significantly changed portrait, so he feels like he doesn't belong with them.

Well, I definitely have issues with the recent stat inflations. With the insane growths these days, units get so powerful in just few levels, that they can't be touched anymore. I find that highly problematic because it means that the stat threshold where strategy matters becomes narrower and instead revolves around stat munchkining. The old games got that pretty right. Defense growth was always low. So units didn't just suddenly become immune to all damage. Though, personally I would prefer to leave the Defense stats at base and instead inflate the HP stat. Except for specific classes whose whole point is that they are hard to damage, like armored knights. It's fine if a unit manages to take like 10 times more damage then at base level. It's skin just shouldn't turn so hard that pointy sticks and sharp metal can't even scratch it. As long something can be hurt, it still allows a strategy to kill it.

Honestly, I prefer Tenebie. The thing with Jade's trolling is that he always prevails. And that makes him kinda boring. Tenebie's antics will occasionally not only result to have things blow up in his own face but he will also be the butt of a joke on plenty of occasions. Besides, Tenebie is in DotnW. I found him to be the only relateable character in the cast because he gave me the feeling that I wasn't the only person being driven nuts by the boring and painfully cliché antics of the main cast. When he fails to troll, I felt even closer to him. And when he succeeds to get back on these clowns, I was all the more happy for it. Unfortunately, unlike Jade, he will often get away with the most obvious lies. And I don't find that very amusing. Just dumb.

I wish I would get a penny every time someone complains about the lack of the magic triangle in Awakening. Seriously, when did the Triangle ever matter? All offensive magic has the same utility of attacking enemies with low Res. And any kind of special effects are few and far between. So how could you possible miss that feature? Even in Gaiden, White Magic was just Staffs+Nosferatu while all the other spells that made people fall down were just Black Magic.

It depends on how you look at it, I guess. It isn't one of the Fire Emblem games where you can munchkin one unit to an absurd degree of power and have it finish the whole game by itself. In Thracia, units with high stats are just tools. Useful tools to be sure but a tool that is only irreplaceable when dealing with something powerful like bosses. They don't work against anything. 24x is of course the ultimate example of that. Even though individual enemies are weak, it is near impossible to beat with brute force. But Ballista are a more common example. They are one of the few tools in the enemies arsenal that combine power and accuracy and can wear down even powerful PCs, while extremely limiting the movement of the immensely frail staff users and mages. Actually, even warpskipping isn't that easy. You get yourself in the final chapters and you might find out that you lack the resources needed to defeat the bosses and disable the staffers. Sure, it's possible but you need to plan ahead in advance and that requires full knowledge of the game. Everyone else is better off not to miss out on any maps. Of course, once you find a working strategy there is not much challenge to be had without an objective that goes beyond "clearing the chapter" even if it's just "clear chapter more smoothly" or "try something different". That's a strong contrast to something like... lets say, Awakening with it's entirely random skill distribution on Lunatic+, which changes the entire situation with any retry and where even the best possible strategy might face an overwhelming chance of failure. But I don't think that the game should be considered easy just because of this. Heck, I don't see people claiming that Advance Wars is easy just because turn-by-turn guides will always work with 100% accuracy. Finding working strategies is what this game is about. And without relying on an absurd amount of luck, that is occosiaonally pretty difficult,

Shadow Dragon is fine. But a lot of things just confuse me. The gaiden requirements are the most obvious example. Like, what's the point? Even if the point was merely that they exist to find replacement units, then why make them even harder to recruit then normal units? And why introduce the weapon triangle in a game where every enemy uses a lance? But New Monshu isn't just a lazy copy-paste from the original with tons of mechanics that it wasn't designed for. The designers had such awesome ideas like actually giving Dragon Knights axes, now that they can actually use them. The game still makes me shake my head a few times, though. Like, what they did to poor Cecil. And why keep Yubello the same when every other mage got amazing buffs? And the BS Fire Emblem chapters were a particular awesome additon. It really shows the difference between classes, when you play a map that was specifically designed for your particular team. Like how even the low level knights can take way more hits then the Paladin Midia. While Midia herself relies on her high movement and offensive power. I think everyone at IS should play these maps. Too bad the online locked chapters didn't match that quality. Yeah, playing with a bunch of Roros and hoping they hit something with their 50% displayed hit is so much fun... Still, for both games, I really wish unit sprites would have gotten more differences then just hair color. Especially when it means that every Paladin looks like Marcus of all people. And they should have kept the support system from Monshu. Having to build supports without support conversations is the worst of both worlds.

Escape from Monkey Island. Everything about Monkey Kombat. You! Are! NOT! Prepared! This part has to be the worst game-anything. Technically it's not a sidequest, though. So in case it has to be optional, I guess every sidequest in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin should count. Yes, all of them. Well, most of them. Maybe the quest system itself should count. Most of them consist of finding one or several items. The kicker is that there is not the slightest bit of direction on where to get them. Most of the time, it's a random drop from an enemy. But this is a game where a zombie can drop ice cream. There is no way to narrow it down and there are tons of different enemies. And just to screw you over in case you really were crazy enough to kill every single enemy in the bestiary thousands of times over, the item might be in some secret room. So you would have to hit every single wall, roof and floor too. And even if you were given directions, it would still come down to enter and leave the same room over and over just to kill the same enemy. And to think that fans of these games complain that Mirror of Fate was too short. At least that game doesn't make you run around in circles for hours like a fucking idiot. That's no fun and no challenge. But the absolute pinnacle of bullshit is that the system only displays 5 quests at once. Before it allows you to "solve" new quests on the list, you have to finish one of the ones displayed. So it can easily happen, that you finally managed to "solve" one of the 5 "collect random crap" quests just for the game to suddenly drop tons of rewards at you, because the next few quests are all stuff whose requirements you filled ages ago or simple require you to press a series of buttons. And storyline wise it makes no sense either. You are supposedly being tested by a former hero. Yeah, genius. If I prove I can survive in the castle without his toys, I get his toys. But more importantly, what do I proof by killing the same critter over and over and hitting every single wall in the castle? Gullibility? "Castlevania: PoR is such a awesome game, I spent 100 hours on it." Yeah. And 95 of them wasted.

Considering that Virion has a negative speed base, I can't help but think that IS makes lv.1 archers shitty on purpose these days. Still, even with good stats, I think EXP gain is a concern. There is of course the fact they not only do they not get enemy phase exp. But even without that, since the utility of archers are ranged attacks that can't be countered, they would logically the units used to weaken the enemy so that a melee fighter can finish them off safely. Naturally they won't get any exp that way. So I would argue, they should also get increased EXP to make up for their lack of player phase. And EXP should be shared among all units participating in taking down an opponent, like in Baldurs Gate or Pokemon. And add some staff that makes Archers more handy to have around. Like the Zombie Dragons in Tear Ring Saga for example. And to bows more useful by comparision, Javelins and Hand Axes should be unable to double attack.

I find it a bit difficult to imagine that one could identify with an Avatar and NPCs enough to be an issue. Granted, I never had a married PC outside of Awakening. Marrying your former kids was definitely awkward, though. I did intend to marry Anomen from Baldur's Gate 2 once, but I couldn't bring myself to readjust my team at that point for a various of reasons. That, and he was a cleric/prick multiclass with less then 17 wisdom.

Jenna from Golden Sun That's about it, I think.

Erm... Wallhart was described by the locals as a guy who razes villages for fun and sports. Him being a cruel tyrant seems pretty much to be the consent. It's just that the script paints him as a cartoonish bad guy. And when it decides he has totally good intention, it simply says that he is misguided and ignores all the past stuff that isn't consistent with that interpretation. I mean, how does destroying villages help his "quest"? Exp grinding?

You do realize that Titania has an absurd state lead over Astrid'? And that Titania can use Hand Axes, who are going to deal way more damage then Astrid's bow? And that Titania can actually counterattack in melee? And that she can canto just as well as Astrid? And that she can promote extremely fast? And that she has way more availability?

My favorite his Gangrel. He is just as much of a joke as a villain as the others. But he is way more entertaining. He is so hamtastic and always seems to enjoy himself so much, that it's just such a pleasure to watch him. The least is Aversa because... well, because the paralouge completely destroyed her character. Not that here was much to destroy but it's a matter of principal. Turns out she never was in control of her life and nothing she ever did or say mattered because she was always just enchanted and brainwashed... *sigh*

Re-classing back into level 1 is complete and utter nonsense. If IS wants to have infinite leveling... then they should simply raise the level cap. And they shouldn't raise stat caps to absurd degrees just so they can have an excuse to artificially increase game length by sending the player through the leveling hamster wheel again and again.

No character developement? The remake did give Marth quite a bit more character and growth then the extremely straightforward NES/SNES scripts. It's still simple but not bad in any way. Unlike Chrom, who stays entirely static. The addition of a pre-timeskip prologue helped too. The only issue I have with this game, is that they pretty much copy-pasted all the enemy and PC data from the original game... and then added a ton of modern mechanics that the original game wasn't designed for. The most obvious is the addition of the weapon triangle. In the original game, they didn't exist. So it was no issue that most enemies were using lances. (The enemies prefer to use the more military looking units.) But now that the mechanic exist, swordfighters effectively have a permanent disadvantage. NMofE might use the same engine but it is just sooo much better designed. Still, the game is by no means bad. I actually like it quite a lot, because it doesn't have the inflating defense and avoid values from the later games. So while the game isn't hard, at least you can actually die if enough enemies gang up on a single unit. And the game also has no less then 5 flavors of hard mode.