BrightBow

Probably Lady Knights. (TRS) Sword and Bow in a first tier class. They are kinda like Elf Warriors in Battle for Wesnoth. If you usually get Bows after promotion, their weapon rank never catches up. Tear Ring Saga has WLV. So there is no need to worry about neglecting one of the two weapon types. A class that is just fun to use. The Y-legs look painful, though. Honorable mentions: Female Magefighter (FE4) Swordfighting, Magic and Healing in one package. Yet another class where Weapon Rank doesn't get in the way of versatility, though for different reasons. Also, Y-legs. Wood Shooter (TRS) I initially figured that they would end as benchwarmers. I really grew fond of them over time. They proved themselves to be particular handy in dealing with harpies and gargoyles, since neither monster can break it's chassis. And if harpies attack them, it's the last thing they do. Period. For added fun, they can also use ballista. Besides: It's a tank. That's awesome. Fire Dragon (TRS) Something like 30+ defense negating damage to anything over a range 3x3 fields. Dragon's in this game are awesome. When I fought a dragon for the first time, using the ever reliable strategy of charging blindly and screaming "Leeroy Jenkins", I lost several units through a single attack. And they are effectively invincible too.

Argh, rats... Maybe the enemy level could depend on the highest leveled player unit and then lower it by 2-3 levels.

So you are saying that Yen'Fay had no power? The guy is supposedly so badass that he is the sole reason that the dynasties didn't turn on Wallhart immediately. Edit: Where did you get that background info anyway? Say'ri only introduced herself as Say'ri and said that her brother fights for Wallhart. Then later we only learn that he leads an army rivaling the strength of Wallhart's.

They could just to the same thing they did with replacement characters in the DS games and simply autolevel enemies depending on the average level of your deployed party. That way, it'd always harder to have fewer PCs on the map, no matter how strong they are.

Which means that he deliberately sacrificed the lives of all the people of his own frigging army, the Ylissean army and really everyone in Valm (including his sister) just for the mere chance that she would end up killing him and having to live the rest of her live with the guilt of killing her own brother. What a paragon.

It's hardly heroic that Yen'Fey was going to kill Say'ri himself instead of letting Excullus kill her.

The problem is that that skill isn't useful. A new melee weapon tree gives you an extremely slim amount of utility for an absurd amount of work. Combine that with Awakening's map design consisting almost entirely of Zerg Rushs and instantly moving reinforcements coming from your starting position after a few turns and you have to decimate the enemies numbers quickly. There simply is no time for a unit to deal single digit damage for training. And what do you get from it? A unit who can use a silver weapon with 15 damage and 65 hit instead of 11 dmg and 85 hit? Now worth it at all.

Yeah, TRS. Character specific and you have to gain levels. Of course, the skills themselves weren't to fancy but the system is awesome. However, TRS doesn't have reclassing. But it does have classes that automatically have skills. So for a game with reclassing, you could keep your individual skills but loose your class skills. Such class skills would also making classes more unique. Like how Sorcerer's will only have access to dark magic as long as they stick to their class. Such things should have been done more often.

Well, I definitely do prefer that weapon proficiency can be raised and contribute to characters being more individual. I mean, the FE4 system was kinda nice. But only because it was FE4. Holy blood could still allow individual units to gain higher weapon ranks then their mere class base. So I guess, I would prefer the return of the WLV stat. It's individual to a character and can be raised. It sucked in the Akaneia games but I think the mechanic worked really well in TRS. Besides, it actually allows you to make use of a new weapon type. I mean, what's the point about getting access to a new weapon type on promotion if you have to whack enemies like 50 times with a bronze weapon before gaining access to weapons that can actually hurt enemies? Let alone comes even close to compare to the Silver weapons that you can already access? Melee weapons aren't different enough to be worth that trouble.

I put my vote on: "Stat reduction through fatigue". But personally I would also advocate to change the mechanics so that high avoid or defense doesn't just turn you completely invincible. Like, take the Dungeons & Dragons rules. (I hope I don't mess this up now.) Even a high level fighter will still have a chance to get hit. And when he gets hit, he will take damage. Because his levels got him tons of HP and he is harder to hit but doesn't actually receive less damage from attacks. So he is absurdly more powerful and durable then his level 1 self. But get enough of such level 1 scrubs together, and they will can still take him down. Not sure how to go on with that. But at least I would definitely stop the inflation of the defense stat and give durable units more HP instead. That's very similar how it was in the early games anyway. I am not sure what was supposed to be wrong with that system.

This is a difficult topic. On one hand, I disagree with the topic title. I think that some vital original ideas are poorly executed (Blood Pact) and that it only works because it's a sequel and delivers on all the foreshadowing and open questions in PoR. But it's a different thing with the opening post. I do agree that the old cast took way to much attention and made the new characters feel odd out of place. And Ike is this big hero now, so he is kinda boring. But I don't think that the first point leads necessary into the second. Just because the established cast still exist, doesn't mean they have to steal the show. Telius is a big place after all. For example, imagine Ike and Skrimir switched places in part 3. The story could focus on Skrimir while Ike is the one to act as an allied NPC. Skrimir has actually character development to go through, so focusing on him would be more interesting anyway. With his attitude, he could learn a lot from the mercs. And during encounters between several armies, you might as well play another side. You could play Daein in 3-6 and Micaiah would defeat the mercs in 3-6 (they are an actual army after all) just to find out that they were only stalled and are about to be crushed. You could play as the Crimean army in 3-10. Heck, they put in every single Crimean PC as allies on that map anyway. So in short, I think the game would only be worse off by not being a sequel.

Even the text fits nicely. I'm all for IkexSoren. Even if just for the reason that it's hard to imagine Soren ever trusting someone else to such extend.

My guess was that the caps exist in order to allow maxed Paladins to survive four hits of a forged Brave Bow. They probably figured that trying to balance Generals for mutliplayer was a lost cause anyway.

No, I meant that I would assume that Mario would loose to Luigi. Since Luigi is the imperfect, more relateable underdog compared to Mario's flawless heroism.

I would have guessed that Mario would loose in a direct confrontation since he is so boringly perfect and stuff.

Yes. But unfortunately I didn't get to play it until years later. Not because of lack of interest, though. I just so happened to use the one card of the Geforce 2 series that didn't run the game at all. It was odd to find out that the one game that I once wanted to desperately play, ended up bombing so badly. Hmmm, I wonder how Luigi would do against Mario.

I guess I say no, since a player avatar would draw attention away from actual characters.

Man, I know she is up against Mario and Final Fantasy but seeing Jade getting clobbered like that is still kinda painful. Everyone can save kidnapped orphans from aliens. But it takes a rare breed of badass to also provide them with food, shelter and a sense of family. Oh well, truth be told, I am already surprised that she even made it into the contest.

I don't know about the 360 since I don't have one. As for the Wii, DotNW should be the only Wii title that actually got localized.

Well, personally I think that most of the remixes aren't particular well done. Or it could just be that "The time to Act" plays way to long, only to have "To Liberty" play for like two chapters before switching to "A Hero's Destiny" until the very end. But most of the new themes are just awesome. Oh and another vote for "A Hero's Destiny". No doubt my favorite track in the series. I would say that it's the perfect Fire Emblem map theme. It symbolizes the pain of those who suffered and the sacrifice of all those who died. But it's nevertheless triumphal because mankind will prevail despite all of that. FE11's "Preparations" also deserves a vote. It gets you pumped for even the dullest maps. And FE12's version of Medeus theme sounds absolutely great.

Well, the monsters work pretty much like PCs. They gain spells and skills as they level. On occasion, they will be able to evolve, retaining all their skills and spells but get reset to level 1. Since the classic Symphonia cast doesn't gain levels (they auto level as the story progresses but it always seems to be set pretty low to me), the monsters usually outperform them. But as I said, they cannot be manually controlled like the PCs and the 2nd Grade PCs. And I think that playing through that game with more then two players is a horrible idea. I do remember quite a few stretches lacking a third PC. Though, definitely less so later in the game.

I am not sure that playing DotNW with 3 players is a good idea at all. In case you don't know already, DotNW's has only two regular PCs. The whole Symphonia main cast is playable as well. But they are second class PCs, who among many other things don't level and are only around during certain points in the story. But most of the time, there should be at least one of them around. Still, with 3 players it's bound to be annoying on quite a few occasions. The game has some monster catching system instead. But those monsters cannot be manually controlled at all.

I guess that I want Marth to loose his Japanese voice as badly as I want Captain Falcon to be more faithful towards his actual F-Zero incarnation. What I am saying is, after all these years, it just wouldn't be the same without it... well, that and his quotes kinda suck if you can actually understand them.

*sigh* Companies always seem to have a few guys around, who feel the need to shut down anything they can, as long as they don't directly benefit from it. Oh well, as long as a public backslash causes them to activate a few brain cells, I guess it's not that bad.

Well, after all this talk about music, I might as well give my take on the music. This one always seemed to me the thing that was universally praised. In my case, I find the soundtrack to be bland and barely noticeable. A honorable mention has to go to the incredible dull battle preparations theme, which perfectly reflects my mood when I see yet another wide open map with randomly placed enemies scattered all over the place. Come to think of it, the FE12 screen has also been incredible dull. I really hope they don't maintain that pattern. In contrast, FE11 maps definitely bland. But it's soundtrack managed to make it come across as the most intese shit ever. The transition between battle and map theme always comes across as rather clumsy to me. The technique is interesting to be sure, but the battle versions usually lack the power and energy that would justify a switch. And after a battle, it switches to early to the map theme. It should switch right when the screen transitions to the map, to go along with the rather rough switch between 3D models and 2D sprites. And not right when the enemy dies. You know, I really loved the base screen in the Telius games. It was cool to talk with the PCs about... the stuff that's actually happening right know. As opposed to stuff like Awakening's supports, that were designed to fit anywhere. It made the characters feel so much more like a part of your army and the universe at large. And this along with the changing backgrounds gave you the feel that you were really traveling. To see this replaced with a screen that only exists to watch randomly generated lines and receive random items is an hell of a waste. I actually like the lack of feet. It makes the models quite a bit bearable to me. Because the last thing I wanna see, are the absurdly long high heels that every class seems to have. Oh, and the cast is godawful. It's like an entire army of Jar-Jars. Except Jar-Jar was never this predictable. They are like robots who are only programmed to do one thing. You read two lines of text from these guys and you are already bored. Or at least two, if getting off on killing and belittling enemy soldiers like a freaking psycho would qualify as a character trait. But not an endearing one, to be sure. No wonder Grima couldn't understand Robin's devotion.