Irysa

Nooo Jill is losing :(

Go go Jill!

Whyvern.

Jill, Eirika and Sheeda.

FE9 is definitely trivialisable (sp?) but that has a lot more to do with the horribly imbalanced BEXP system than anything else. The actual overall layout and variety in the maps is commendable for anyone approaching the game from a non minmax standpoint. I mean to be quite frank, there are very few RPGs that are not breakable to some degree once you know how. Scratch RPGs, most games period...only games that have steep execution demands tend to actually remain "objectively" challenging, where your sheer knowledge of HOW to do something is not going to really help much in actually consistently doing it. It gets easier but not trivialisable. As a strategy game, FE as a series falls flat on it's face in that regard. Once you know how you're generally set. That's why people who enjoy the games have fun putting limiters on themselves and exploring new avenues of play, whether that be solo/duo runs, exclusive units only, LTCs, 0% growths, whatever, because you're exploring new ways to play the game and you can start learning and strategising all over again. I think overall, these games to a great degree have self imposed difficulty more than what the developers themselves can do, because they're interesting boxes to experiment and interact with. As a result, I don't think it's really fair to pick on ANY title in the series just because of ways in which you can make the game a breeze. When someone says "playing as intended" it sounds "scrubby" but consider the fact that the reason the games have longveity to both "hardcore" and "casual" players, is because they are flexible enough to allow for a variety of different playstyles and still be rewarding to many people. This is not an excuse for why some of the games are badly balanced, but the point is you can be mechanically enriched by a game without neccessarily playing the game optimally.

Well i'm telling you in my game right now, the cavalier option isn't available for Shiida... The wiki also says female reclassing to cav is only available in 12.

She can't be a cav in 11, only 12. So you're saying it's not like some neccessary thing to get res points for my physical units by making them level up as curates if possible or w/e? If I can get by mostly without it with the exception of like, Dragon Knights and Heroes then I'm okay with that.

I have spent a really long time staring at the reclassing screen on chapter 4. I feel really overwhelmed by it right now. I've generally felt rather annoyed at the concept because I felt it diminishes the individuality of each unit... I'm scared to NOT use it though since this is H5 and I'm going in blind. I half folded and ended up looking at the way reclassing affects growths for a bunch of characters ( so much for blind, sorry OCD ;_; ), so I may as well ask for some advice regarding it - is it a really big deal if I don't really use it that much?

Sheeda hands down.

FE6 growths aren't really too high or too low for the most part imo. The real problem is how absurd the bases of some of the recruitables/prepromos are, especially in HM. compared to your regular units. That's another nice thing about SD so far, recruitable stats haven't been pumped to match the difficulty.

Yeah lol, that's what I meant. The lack of healer until the last part of the map really emphasises it too. Jagen on the fort just seemed like an obvious thing to do on turn 1, but when the pirates started swarming I realised how important it really was to thin their numbers out quickly, and how important the Fort Healing would be. I really like these little "puzzles" in the maps in this game, I'm sort of shocked that they hold up despite the game's age when the overall map layout is "relatively" similar to what I know of the originals. I guess it's sort of brought out more in H5 because they almost become neccessary to succeed, instead of just ways to make the game easier if you're observant. It's a real breath of fresh air after RD's sloppy lategame maps (which is a shame since I really quite liked a few of the Dawn Brigade chapters)

Oh I see. I had a look at your efficiency run for ch3 now, that does seem legit. I'm thinking way too conservatively lol, that has to be my weakest aspect as a player. I'm scared to extend myself when the enemy stats are so high and I don't know how the enemies move/reinforcement spawn times. I think the only reason my chapter 1 was remotely efficient was because I didn't have some kind of chokepoint to fall back on at the start, so I HAD to man up a bit.

The boss doubled all my axe users. In hindsight that's probably a lot better than effectively doing 1 damage per turn with Ogma though, assuming I rig dodges...maybe I should have had Shiida trade away Navarre's Killing Edge to give it Ogma faster and just rigged a crit. Oh well. If you just mean in general as a weapon, I guess I hadn't really considered battle saving for using it. My axe users have atrocious luck though. :( Holy cow, I've had a look at some of the effects of reclassing today too. Wrys as a Cavalier looks hilarious, and Draug gets an insane amount of speed for changing class. This seems a bit crazy. Lena would make a nice Pegasus Knight as well.

Aaaahhhhh...this is hard. Titania and Jill are both beautiful long haired redheads, but I think Titania slightly edges it out. Titania has the worse ingame portraits compared to Jill though ahhhh... Neph is also lovely, and so is Mia. I ended up voting all 4. Honorable mention to Radiant Dawn Marcia, her new haircut in the official artwork is great. Ingame portrait not so good though.

I wasn't really being completely serious. Mani Katti is vaguely comparable to Guy's Killing Edge, but it's Prf locked to Lyn anyway so... It's something I tend to do in my casual runs though, since Lyn is forced anyway, and she has a cooler sprite (hate GBA FE Myrmidon sprites...). Too bad she doesn't get a crit bonus on promotion though. :\

Pretend Lyn is Guy since you skipped him, and use her. :V

This is a dumb question, it really depends on the person you're reccomending the game to. Any game past 7 is reccomendable, but their strengths vary depending on the type of games the person you're reccomending likes. I have a friend who's really into SRPGs for character customisation, so something like Awakening or a Tellius game would probably be ideal. Maybe Sacred Stones.

I'll go with Eirika for FE8 but to be honest I don't think any of the girls in FE8 are particularly beautiful.

Nolan. He has a beard. He's in his prime. He likes reading. End of story. Holy fuck, he'd be perfect with glasses too. Incredibly sexy. (bastian only has a shitty goatee, so that doesn't count)

Part 2

Too many images so I split this into two posts and parts. This is part 1.

Other - Echidna. Igrene is cool too I guess. Most of the other girls in GBA are just "pretty" or "cute", not really "beautiful" to me.

I am still a little split between 9 and 10. Can I just say Tellius overall? <_< People don't appreciate 9's music enough compared to 10 honestly. They're both amazing.

Its reasonably difficult when considering the fact that outside of one or two titles, you don't have readily available facilities to gather resources indefinitely. Key mistakes in losing some units or not distributing EXP properly, not finding/buying all the important items cannot really be undone once you've moved past them, so the game has to have some leverage considering that not EVERYONE plays FE with efficiency, no deaths, and all recruitments. If you become proficient at the games and understand how to optimise, then this leverage becomes generally rather abusable. Advance Wars is harder because individual units aren't really getting stronger or weaker, and your available resources on any given map are already planned out. Every map can be designed on what's available, not on what you can hope to expect the player has available. This is why also I personally tend to enjoy the early chapters of an FE game the most because they have to basically guesstimate a lot less based on what a player has available, making early maps feel a lot more "puzzle like" than endgame sprawly stuff. Shadow Dragon's system of Gaidens is sort of an attempt to alleviate this problem, because you do not get access to extra resources of Exp and extra characters/items if you have not lost enough units to probably require some help. Everyone hates it though. I think FE is sort of held back by it's own pioneering. The randomness of the game promotes replayability and unique experiences, choices on who to use and the like too. But these inconsistencies mean it's hard for a developer to say something like "you should definitely have a trained dark mage for this map" without it giving you an acceptable candidate (prepromo or bases or a quick reclass etc) or making it more flexible. Yggdra Union (probably my fav SRPG), as a character growth style game without grinding, pulls this off pretty well. Characters have set level ups, but the MVP system and Items allow for a degree of flexability and randomness for each playthrough. There's also far less units, but greater distinction between all of them (although honestly that's a defining trait of most of the game period, they cut down on LOADS of flack to focus on the puzzle/strategy elements and optimisation). The game is challenging enough because of your limitations in card use/turns, but it's very hard to totally screw yourself over since cards are only a limited resource on a map, not between them all, and their base power and abilities mean you should never be completely screwed. To be honest I could write for ages about all the neat things in YU, and I almost did before I realised this post was getting REALLY WORDY so I stopped.

I didn't mean mechanics wise, I think the overall association to the plot and their eventual "outsider" involvement in political stuff allows for a more interesting angle than the usual "I'm the Prince and I lead the army in a war". They're more interesting than MU/Avatar units anyway. I would like to have seen something a bit more like RD's part 1 expanded where there are more internal problems regarding the relatability between a capable "commoner" and the army/country compared to the actual nobles and royals. Rising up through the ranks as a Private or something could be neat.