BrightBow

Well, sort off. I definitely always try to do everything 100% right. Heck, I often spend hours on posts I make and afterwards I edit them like a dozen times (I wish there was a counter for that). But all of this seems to be more the result of my ridiculous insecurities then anything else. Pretty much everything I do makes me feel like I screwed up. And on this forum every post I make feels like a mistake before I send it off, making it impossible to tell whether it's actually bad or not. It's like I am afraid I get struck down by lightning if what I do is not objectively perfect.

Bringing up that the dragons used evil magic sounds like justification to me. And the humans motives aren't elaborated anywhere. It just says that they attacked. I'm pretty sure about that since I'm also pretty sure that it was never mentioned outside of the openings at all. I made a topic a few months ago about finding out if it was mentioned anywhere else, since that bothered me since I played through FE7 for the first time. But more importantly, this has gone really of the rails and I apologize for this. I just wanted to find out about how Anri and the humans dealt with the dragons back then in comparison to Elibe since I only played SD. I wondered if I could find out where the writers went of track when copying the plot of Monshu. But I couldn't keep what bothers my about the Elibe setting in check so I can't really claim that my post did not provoke this. Still, I hope you can understand my confusion on Elibe: Whatever there reasons are, the Divine Generals committed a horrible crime. With a setup like this, one would except that humans have to face their crimes of the past, like it happened in Path of Radiance. Humans had to show awareness, regret and most importantly humility in regards to their past crimes in order to earn forgiveness. But in Elibe the humans are allowed to stay ignorant during both of these games, while singing their praises about their bloodthirsty ancestors. To the point where it's not mentioned anywhere outside of the opening who the aggressors were. Just what writing style is this? Imagine the Serenes massacre only being mentioned in PoR's opening. I just don't get what the writers were trying to do. In fact, the game actually tries to paint the Fire Dragons as the bad guys just because the way they treated Idoun in an desperate act to survive. And then the whole empathizing of "Hartmund had pity on her." Humans = Good, Dragons = Bad. That seems like the impression the writers were going for in the last chapter, completely ignoring what was written in the opening. It's like they either mixed up two different stories or it's just really disturbing. I should probably make a separate topic about this to elaborate. And apart from the whole off-topicness I can barely keep my eyes up at this point, anyway. Again, sorry for the whole mess.

Because they were desperate since they were being killed and all. As Jahn put it: "We desperately needed the power of the Divine Dragon. Our entire species was at stake." And btw, while the humans were the ones at the loosing side, they created weapons that turned the laws of nature upside down. Just for comparison. Of course, you can argue a lot which desperate situations allow which actions but that doesn't retroactively justify starting a war. Edit: And the Divine Dragons can hardly be considered neutral. There whole species was declared war upon after all. They simply run away, leaving the other dragons to their fate.

The humans were the ones attacking. They started the war that ended "a peace forged in wisdom that lasted many generations." It's not like I know what there reasons were either, but don't you at least see any problems with the fact that the game never gave any insight on their motivations? They committed genocide and we are just to assume that they probably just fought because the stakes grew so high that the alternative was that the dragons would wipe them out? Without this being addressed anywhere in the games? Even when we meet 2 of them in person in the sequel? And at least three other people who were alive at the time?

Well, it's not "apparently". It is stated in both openings that it were the humans who attacked. For convenience, the FE7 Intro narration: For some reason, in both games, it's only mentioned in their respective openings. But the games never claim the opposite so there is not actually any reason to doubt that. Afterwards, the games only says that mankind vanquished the dragons. And whatever the divine generals reasons were for their actions: The implication is that they lead the humans in a war that wiped out all the dragons who couldn't hide themselves from the face of the world. They committed genocide. Plain and simple. It's not like that I can't imagine reasons why somebody would participate in such a war, even when they think it is wrong... ...but if a story has someone commit such a horrifying act and they are not supposed to be villains, wouldn't you expect some sort of explanation or reasoning to explain their actions? Yet, even though the heroes are portrayed sympathetically, the game never provides any explanation whatsoever. Their heroic image is maintained during both games and never scratched. The worship they receive is never questioned. Even in FE7, Athos never speaks about his past actions in the war or shows any regrets. The closest thing I could find to draw information about his motivation is in "Sands of Time", he says this: I love how Hector cannot believe in a peaceful coexistence between humans and dragons, even though they are friends with Ninian and Nils so I took the freedom to include it. FE7s quality writing at work. However, the important part is of course Athos. He says, he couldn't believe that humans and dragons can peaceful coexist. Think about the implications: This was after the war. So if Athos thought that coexistence between the races was impossible and he fought in the war with that attitude then the conclusion I draw is that he killed dragons... simply because they were dragons. Because he thought that there was no place on the continent for both humans and dragons. And that would be very villainous in my eyes. Edit: So they are the good guys because they spared one single life. That makes up for the whole genocide thing? The game pushes in that direction but it's ridiculous. You can't slaughter thousands and be redeemed just because you don't kill someone for a change of pace. And even if they would had a change of heart about the whole war they wouldn't have humiliated their victims further by allowing that the war they fought got immortalized as the "Scouring". Speaking of Idoun, she probably works as Tiki's counterpart. She was put to sleep to prevent her from loosing her mind and unleashing hell on humanity while Idoun was put to sleep "out of pity". Ninian and Nils get along with him as well even though they were already alive during the war and lost their mother during it. Considering that wanted to go through the gate their mother was clearly not a combatant. And Nergals also became friends with him. But since he already forgot about what he lost in the war he became friends with him. Athos is surrounded by people who could understandably demand his head on a plate, so it's kinda funny that he never even has to answer any unpleasant questions. The people in Arcadia simply just fit in with that pattern: The writers simply didn't want the "heroes" questioned. That doesn't redeem Athos.

But Marth's ancestor Anri wasn't a bad guys like the "heroes" of Elibe, wasn't he? Or was there something in FE3 I'm missing? I so hate how nobody in Elibe has any problems with what those guys did. I would like to think Akaneia wasn't such a horrible setting like Elibe.

Staffs are still awesome and one can never have enough guys using them. However, unlike Saphy, Salem and the others he doesn't bring anything beyond that to the table. No special staffs, No offensive magic, no extraordinary high Hp... nothing. so he does looks somewhat bad next to them. Still, he starts with A-Rank and so he does his job perfectly fine from the moment he joins. Sadly, a promotion doesn't help him much anyway since Light tomes are just that rare. 8/10

The story of the game was fine. It's simple and serviceable. FE7 instead, had plotholes so huge that even I noticed them the first part around. For example, they had this huge mystery about the disappearance of Lord Elbert. What happened to him? Why did he leave? What did he do? Those questions are what drives the first half of the game. But after the Dragons Gate those questions are just ignored. That is, unless we decide that what Leila said was actually correct. That he really was a traitor scheming against Ositia. But if that was the case, it made no sense that the game decided to only speak favorable of him for the rest of the game when he was actually a dirty traitor. As I said, this mystery is what drove the first half of the plot. And the way I feel, this also means that the first half of the plot is just plain bad. I prefer a simple story like the one from the original Fire Emblem any day to this. Anyway, as far as I am concerned Shadow Dragon really wasn't so hot. The graphics are fine but they essentially introduced lots of new features from the modern games that weren't in the original and left everything else unchanged. The biggest one is probably to introduce the weapon triangle in a game were essentially all the enemies use lances. In the original game that didn't matter because the triangle didn't exist. But now that it does, it puts sword users on a constant disadvantage. And to make matters worse, they handed out boni for high weapon levels... that are negated when you are on the wrong end of the triangle...which sword users essentially always are. And to screw them over even more, they changed the weapon weight mechanic. In the original game, the whole weight value was subtracted from your speed. Swords were a lot lighter then lances, so sword users had a speed advantage. Since you can now use your strength value to negate that malus, this advantage Sword users had gets thrown out of the window. But it doesn't end there: The weight that weapons have is so low, that the malus is almost always negated. Lances are barely heavier then swords now and sword users generally have much lower strength then lance users. So if anyone is going to get slowed down at all, it's probably a sword user. And despite those massive changes, most units were left with the exact same bases and growths from the original game. IS would have needed to made way huger changes for the game to work with the new mechanics. Except for Wolf and Sedgar for some reason. I don't get it. They are prepromotes with rather poor bases just like all the other ones in the game. What makes them so special? Anyway, while it's not a bad game by any means, I would definitely say that it is a rather poor remake. The GBA games definitely worked a lot better.

Best: FE1 Wendell Worst: FE12 Yubello Wendell was even more awesome in the original. He had an even higher speed stat and since magic growths essentially don't exist in that game, he never gets outperformed by Merric. And staff users don't get exp so having such a high leveled staff user so early was pretty awesome. FE12 Yubello is... well.. I'm not sure what they were thinking with him. In the original Yubello was the only mage with a notable magic growth and as I said all magic magic users rather pathetic magic. So his base magic was not that much different then those of the others, but he had a massive growth advantage. Now in the remake Linde for example, went from Mag = 2 to Mag = 4 and the growth changed from 20% to 40%. And the other mages received similar buffs. So all mages now have a decent magic stat and good growths. Yubello however, went from Mag = 1 to Mag = 1 and the growth changed from 50% to 50%... Why was he of all mages left unchanged? I would blame it on lazyness like when they included the weapon triangle in FE11 and ignored that the game was dominated by lance users, putting sword users on a constant disadvantage... but in this case all mages were changed to take the stat difference of mages in the two games into account... except for him. He still has the same nonexistent magic bases except that his originally outstanding magic growth is now nothing special anymore.

I don't mind it on regular chapters, but in the Sacred Stones postgame it was incredible annoying since just a small slip-up could get one of your more vulnerable units killed. Add in the fact that most of the time you barely got any loot out of it and grinding in the post game turned into an unpleasant chore on top of the usual repetitiveness. I'm glad to hear that they changed that.

I'm sorry. However, it will still take half a year until 2013 arrives and even then it could be anywhere during the first half of it, not to mention that even with the vague date there is still a chance for it to be delayed even further. I just would like to get that stuff out of my system during that time. Anyway, thank you for the elaborate answer.

Thank you all for the replies. I should have really posted in the question thread that Popo opened but in an even by my standards impressive display of obliviousness I managed to overlooked that one. I am sorry for the trouble. Still, can you buy Hammere staffs?

Well, there were quite a few things that bugged me about the Sacred Stones post-game that in my opinion made it unnecessary tedious, so I wondered if things have changed for this one. -Do you actually get a decent amount of loot out of an random encounter to make up for your invested resources? -Any stuff with limited uses that you can't restock somehow? I never liked using limited resources against an unlimited flow of generic enemies. -Do most random encounters still have fog of war activated?

Ralph is so unremarkable that not even Leaf supports him. And he normally supports anyone who doesn't have a support otherwise. Anyway, he comes with good stats across the board, and is just a few swings away from an B-Rank in axes. (Btw, there are no A-rank Axes). But he got no skills, personal weapons or PCC. Hmm, maybe he immigrated from Elibe. Still, he does well. He takes hits like a pro and kills things with little difficulty. And despite that his bases are already good, he still has plenty of levels to get even better. And being able to use Axes indoors is aways neat. 6.5/10

Sword Saint in the japanese version? Are you sure? It doesn't say so on this site. I always wondered why the German version called them Sword Saints. Maybe the Bronze weapons in PoR were no coincidence either. ...Well anyway, there is not much reason to assume it's a reference to Karel since Fire Emblem definitely didn't made that term up. For example, I remember Baldurs Gate II using Sword Saint in it's description of the Kensai class-kit.

FE1: Wendell He is Bishop with 14 base speed and joins on the fifth map. In a game where healers can only get exp by being attacked. Yeah, he is pretty cool. Too bad his speed got nerved in the remakes. FE2: Cellica Mage fighter are cool. ...Well, it's a Famicom game. What else can I give as a reason? FE3: Palla 16 Speed unit on the fourth map. Take that, Wendell. FE4: Fin He manages to be awesome in two generations. FE5: Leaf A protagonist who actually has some personality and character development. A nice change of pace. And as Roy shows, that's not something to be taken for granted. FE6: Echidna I like her design. That's about it since we don't really learn anything about her in any of her supports. She just makes other people talk about themselves. FE7: Glass Just because he is level 3 doesn't mean he can't challenge the gods. FE8: Valter I have to say, I'm not to comfortable with this guy seeing how he is a sadistic rapist in a game that was rated "A" by CERO. At least I think it was. Ratings aside, he is a very chilling antagonist, being a bloodthirsty beast without any moral restraints while still being high intelligent and manipulative. He is pretty much the opposite of Narshen. FE9: Jill Thanks to her we get some insight into the perspective of the average Daein. As a result they appear a lot more human. Plus, she is very admirable, given the sacrifices she has to make in order to follow her coincidence. And it helps that this game doesn't just ignore the implications of deserters fighting their own countrymen and family, so that does help as well. Plus, Dragonknight with dark red armor. Sadly, they never adressed much about how Jill contrasts Ike in regards how she accepts the reasons why Ike killed her father while Ike himself doesn't care at all why his fathers killed what he did. Though at least Ike himself seems to realize the similarities, given that he heavyhearted admits to Jill that she has the right to demand revenge. FE10: Micaiah Despite her prominence on the games cover, she is really only playing the role of an antagonist and rival to the true hero Ike. Heck, IS even added additional scenes for the opening featuring him once you reach part 3. Given that IS has a history of putting girls with mysterious pasts and pasts in their games (Tiki, Yuria, Sophia, Ninian, even in Advance Wars they had one... gee.) it's quite interesting to see on of them in a position of authority. Micaiah wonderfully demonstrates why these characters usually aren't heroes themselves. She is a huge screw-up. Her over-reliance on her powers get people killed and her self-sacrificing attitude makes her ignore her own fragility. As a result she passes out in the worst moments and turns into a complete pathetic wreck when Sothe's life is threatened. And her devotion makes her blind towards the negative attributes of the people she fights for and instead adapts their hatred towards Ike. FE11: Ichi (aka: Eins, Zas, Unil) When Marth's army suffered heavy losses, this brave redshirt rose to aid the hero in his hour of need. FE12: Katarina Seriously? They gave the player character a cute best fri... Hey! Stop killing my Lord! Still, I can't help but think I would take Roro over her if I would have played the game far enough.

Staffs are awesome and vital. After all, trying to...let's say, take down Reinhardt the hard way with someone like Trude or Mareeta probably isn't such a hot idea. Linoan starts with a C-rank in staffs and she has yet to get her promotion. So she will have little trouble getting her rank up in time. With her access to Rezire and her 5 PCC she beats Salem's offensive capabilities easily. She completely wrecks enemies handily but fatigues a lot faster because of her low HP. She will take longer to get access to warp, but by the time it gets really important, she will have access to it so it's not too bad. Plus, she gets supported by Leaf and Dean. She also supports Dean back for a massive 20% boast, though Dean probably won't be around very much. Nevertheless, having access to Rezire goes a long way to help her durability. Besides, given how many Dark Mages there are near the end of the game, she will actually take most hits rather well anyway. 9/10 - Staffs are awesome

True, men can be raped. But they are entirely ignorant towards that risk. Even at this very forum people use the word "rape" all the time as a substitute for "defeating somebody" or as a general expression of superiority towards someone in particular or just superiority in general. As long as men don't acknowledge the risk and it never actually happens to them... they essentially do live a "no-chance of being sexually violated" life until they wake up in reality. But most of them never do. Ignorance is a bliss here and as a result the genders are far from equal when rape is concerned. I hope this post wasn't too stupid, derailing or whatever. I'm really not sure and I am not trying to intentionally cause any harm.

Why so many votes for Gheb? He is just a regular scumbag in the game. There is no comedy in that chapter. But then again, my favorite probably wasn't intended to be funny either. Anyway... Best: Lundgren Worst: Oliver Lundgren is just absolutely hilarious how he jumps up and down while shouting: "Then hurry up and die, you miserable old dotard!" He always puts a smile on my face. Oliver... well. I'm still not sure why they decided to play this guy for comedy in Radiant Dawn. I would argue that he was even worse then the rest of the senators in PoR. I mean, they considered themselves to be above everyone, particular above the Laguz, and therefore had no trouble keeping them as slaves or whatever else they feel like. That is incredible disgusting, no doubt. But Oliver still managed to beat them. He doesn't just consider himself above Laguz, he takes it one step beyond. Oliver completely dehumanizes Laguz, considers them objects to be treated with the same care one would give to a new car or computer. And this guy is suddenly a complete goofball in the sequel... He even has tons of people warming up to him or flatout falling in love with him in his unique supports. I have no words for that. Dishonorable mention goes to: Narshen - His rape attempt of Clarine is treated in an awkwardly comedic light. It doesn't help that Clarine appears to be even younger then Roy by a significant amount. Maggie and Rose - Apparently those two were so funny that they had to show up again in the sequel. I can't see the joke, though. Septimus - He is traumatized through past war experiences. Yeah, very funny...

You rate Eda 8.0? Are you sure about that? You gave Karin only a 4.0. Karin's combat might be bad but it's still miles ahead of Eda by chapter 14. Heck, she beats Eda's agility by 4 points at base level. By the time Eda joins, she will have her Speed maxed. And the Wrath manual makes everyone kill stuff. Edit: And the game gets more heavier on dark magic users who don't care much about Eda's defense stat.

Eda... "sigh". Poor Eda. She really didn't get anything. No kickass skills. No PCC. No personal weapon. No awesome growths. Not even a single movement star. Homer, who joins in the same chapter got all of these things. Except for the personal weapon bit. But he is the only one besides Linoan who can reasonably claim the Rezire tome. But Eda? Nothing. She looks entirely ordinary except that she joins way too late to be anything but underleveled garbage. She could have joined as early as Manster instead of Karin and nobody would think there was anything odd about her. She even has trouble doubling. With an ordinary Iron Lance, she gets weighted down by four points, so she has essentially a 5 Spd base. Even in this game, this isn't very hot. The only enemies slow enough to get doubled by these are the ones that an Iron Lance can't even scratch to begin with. Her weapon ranks are good enough to use Killer Lances who are only slightly heavier on top of doing a lot more damage. But she has no PCC, so sending her against an enemy and expecting her to kill him would still be foolish. Unlike Marita, she actually has a support partner and a good one at that. But without a PCC, she doesn't get that much out of it. And her growths are standard. Not bad, but there is nothing special about them. Except that she also suffers from "Females have no build growth syndrome". At least she supports Dean back and there are only so many units that can fly. But combat is probably the last thing she is good for. No rating since I haven't used her much besides a bit of rescuing and helping Karin in 14x to finish of stubborn fliers. But I can't see how one could get much use of her beyond that.

FE8 villains are shallow and Nergal has deep? So how exactly is Nergal being corrupted by his feeling of powerlessness any better then Lyon being corrupted by his feeling of powerlessness? At least we actually see it in the latter's case because the information is not hidden in a secret chapter with requirements that are impossible to figure out. And almost impossible to archive through mere coincidence as well. That might be something to note: A story needs to be actually told. It's not sufficient if the important stuff is only somewhere in the writers notes but not anywhere in the end product. Edit: And Valter, Caellach and Orson have their own motivations. I do grant you Riev, though. I doubt even General Banzai could justify this guy. But then again, he gave Marty a 10/10 rating, so I guess he would at least try. Anyway, Caellach doesn't want to get stuck doing unrewarding mercenary work and tries to move up in his world. Seems fairly understandable to me. Valter is a sick bastard who gets of on fighting, raping and killing. Remember how Ephrahim admitted he had an "unstillable lust for battle"? I think the idea behind Valter might be to show how Ephrahim or just men in general might be if they would lack certain restraints. And Orson is in for the chance of being together with his wife. The former two just lack empathy so they are capable of doing anything to further their goals, no matter how twisted. Which is sadly not really rare in the real world. Edit2: Nevermind, sorry. I really need to stop posting so late. That just makes me write stuff that even I think is stupid.

Salem starts with a C-Rank in staffs. With that he can use the sleep stuff right of the bat and depending on how one handles things, some of it's targets might actually be enemies. And he has jet to get his promotion gains which of course include an increase in staff rank. The fact that unlike Saphy he can actually kill stuff is just a bonus. He can use all kind of magic except light and he is also the only unit who can use dark magic. That utility is not too hot, though. Yotsmungand is powerful but makes doubling essential impossible. Fenrir is absurdly more powerful then the other ranged spells. But actually getting it, is another story. Ultimately it's all about the staffs, though. Saphy has access to them for longer but they won't really be needed all that much until the end and Salem will be able to use them all way before then. And he has a lot more HP then all the other candidates, so he has a lot less trouble with fatigue. 9.5/10 - Warpskip or not (btw, "not"), staffs are just that valuable. He is better then most staff users but his offensive options and massive HP advantage ultimately don't beat the utility of the Repair staff.

Good and useful 6/10 Edit: I guess ignoring the rules just because others did, might not be the most mature way to protest against it. And I did write an explanation for this one already, so whatever: Marita is in quite a few ways a Est done right and yet still wrong. On the one hand she can contribute from from he moment she joins, having an absolutely frightening offensive potential. On the other hand, she doesn't really end better then her classmates. A dead enemy is a dead enemy. You don't get bonus points for being theoretical capable of killing them 100 times over. So her offensive output is for the most part hot air and she has her insane growths in those stats that the competition caps anyway while said competition is better in the defense department. And Marita is a special unit... in the sense that every other darn units who doesn't have a support partner gets supported by Leaf. But he doesn't feel the need to support the girl he considers his sister. What a jerk. Still, she does decently enough. She kills stuff and dodges most attacks. Sounds pretty average at least and that would be around 5. However she is one of the units with a PCC 5 so she is one of the few units who will always be able to score a critical on the second hit without needing any further raise and I prefer dull efficiency over exiting uncertainty every day of the week. Besides, it isn't a problem getting her there, since she has her personal Brave Sword to kill things until her crazy offensive growths can carry her. Plus, with said offense she makes a good candidate for the Ambush scroll and she is better at killing bosses then most units. Well, and I guess with her low level and killing potential, you could slap the Elite sword and a few scrolls on her and get some good results with relative ease out of it. That is, if you are into that sort of thing. Besides, there is at least something that makes her a bit more unique. Thanks to her personal sword she has access to Awareness. Most enemies don't have skills, sure. But when they do, it's handy. A few bosses have, as do Amalda's Troubadours. Some of them also have Wraith, as do any Berserker but that's relatively easy to deal with. Prayer is were it's at. It allows them to dodge anything you throw at them, screwing over your whole strategy with just a bit dumb luck. And Awareness is a rare utility. Trewd and Cyas have them and the latter probably isn't going to kill any bosses. Nevermind that Trewd shares most of Mareeta's shortcoming on top of lacking her PCC and personal weapon. There is a manual but it only appears on one route and you have to wait ages for Comodore. She still can't take down Reinhardt reliably with it, though at least she makes brute force an option. But when Elf's threatens to dodge with prayer and counter with Wrath, you don't have to take the chance and can let Marita handle it. 7/10 +0.5 bias because chapter 5 was so wonderfully dramatic.

So I just updated Opera to 12.00 and now it displays all the character portraits just like in Firefox now. I just saw chef Krom passing and the armory guy showing up by so I guess everything works as intended. However, for some reason the circle it loads is not the same. Opera uses the "from above view" version of the circle thats left from the one displayed in Firefox on the sheet.