Cymbalina's Revenge

FE12 isn't my favorite but boy, that was an accurate description for me. Laughed out loud over FEBS, too.

Doesn't Draug's FE3/12 character ending make a point of how much weight he gained after the war? ETA: Can't find the reference, though, so maybe it was some other character. I could've sworn some amor-class's ending poked fun at his weight.

I'd play a spinoff based around Calleach and his minion Aias but that's a thread for another day...

Compare her to Sonia, though. Sonia's detestable and if she's pretty it's "pretty like a house on fire." FE doesn't stick to the rule "pretty = sympathetic" 100% but it's at least good for 90%. Sure, Tellius has Jarod and Petrine but compare all the revolting Begnion nobles with buff prettyboy Zelgius and doe-eyed Levail. Again, not subtle. Oliver deserves some kind of medal for bucking the trend.

Also you're supposed to feel bad about Ursula and Selena and you can "redeem" Aversa via spotpass. Just look at the Grado generals in FE8. Glen is handsome-- arguably moreso than Cormag. Selena is a nice-looking woman. Duessel is a fine-looking older man. Riev looks disgusting. Valter looks deranged and half-dead. Calleach isn't that bad but he has a hard face and he's sure not pretty. Right there you have two decent people you're supposed to feel sorry over, the guy you recruit, two out-and-out despicable villains, one bad dude who's an antihero in his own mind. And you can pretty much figure where they fall on the moral spectrum from a mug shot. It's not subtle.

Yeah, I guess agreeing on what the numbers mean is an issue too. I figured 5-6 was the tipping point between mediocre and decent.

All this thoughtful consideration of Blume warms my heart. Not that I like the guy, exactly, but he's a pretty interesting character that doesn't often come up in Jugdral discussion. (Though technically he did lose Leonster to Leif's crew and then successfully penned them up until Seliph arrived.) This is an interesting set of questions but this really is a cumbersome way to do a survey, and even on characters where we have something to go on, it's kind of arbitrary. I'll use Finn as an example because I like him a lot and have thought about him way too much. Spoilers because this whole thread is full of spoilers for old games and art books. I am not taking the manga into account. Yeah, I don't know if this is more or less difficult when we're rating a character with a lot of screen time as opposed to, like, Scorpio (5/0/0/0 because FE4 didn't care about him enough to give us anything but a re-used portrait).

The Gen1 stuff has some real badass poses (Sigurd and Quan for sure) and I guess it's nice to have full-body artwork of some of the major antagonists like Reptor but man, those squashy faces and derpy hair. But then the Gen2 art is so off the wall and just so different from all the other FE4 OA. Half the boys look like 80s male models. Janne looks like a silent movie star. I didn't even recognize Gen2!Finn the first time I saw him because there's a LOT of OA featuring Finn and this one's just... different.

Some of the Treasure designs are just plain weird, though. Like Lester's head. Super Tactics has an, uh, interesting take on the Jugdral gang, though.

Capture. Beating enemies senseless and stealing their gear is just so much fun.

In Fire Emblem it's more like 30%. Alm and Celica, Leif and Nanna, Altena and Arion... and two of these are fixed in canon. Not to mention the whole weird thing with Micaiah and Sothe...

IIRC Gotoh basically founded the formal study of magic as we know it on Archanea. And he's a divine dragon. Pretty sure Athos and Sephiran are his only competition. Ced's just a teenager with a nuclear weapon. No comparison. Now, Julius is stated to be so powerful that he can do high-level magic merely by thinking about it, and then when Julia unlocks the Naga tome she's even more powerful than Julius. Those two have Ced beat. Still voting for Gotoh because the J-twins are still kids who get superpowers thrust upon them and Gotoh actually knows what he's doing.

Mm. Almost went for FE8 because the OA and the character designs are so perfect but had to go with FE5 in the end. Love the OA, the faces are really quite nice (especially compared with FE4), the sprites are good, and the palette just really suits the tone of the game.

Well, it may be relevant to remember that Japanese commoners didn't start using last names until the late 19th century, after the shogun era ended. I realize the FE games mostly appear to be set in fantasy Europe, but if you consider that FE generally shows royals/nobles with last names (with the glaring exception of the Reeds in FE7) and everyone else without, it's reminiscent of pre-modern Japan.

Celice Baldos Chalphy and Leif Faris Claus. Which means Sigurd's full name is also Sigurd [Hypothetical Middle Name] Chalpy. That makes Marth the only lord in games 1-5 without a last name unless 'Lowell' actually counts. As for the name = country thing, that really does seem to be a title or a regnal name rather than a ruler's actual personal name. Leif's grandfather gets referred to as King Leonster even though his first name is Calf and his last name is presumably Claus.

Yeah. It's such a gear-shift from the overall imperial intrigue-- the stakes are different and the morality far less gray. And it's really about Lewyn with Sigurd being true shiny hero. Nice story. One of my least favorite FE4 maps, up there with Ch2 and Ch7. Anri's Way really was more frustrating than fun. I get that it's supposed to be an awful ordeal but ehh... at least the storyline part interests me. Storywise Valm arc is the hands-down least enjoyable. Game-play wise it's a tossup. I guess I like FE8's mid-game the best because the "padding" is scattered through the game in the form of monster battles and the chapters that advance the plot are all really enjoyable.

Yeah, but 'stronger case than others' still doesn't mean canon. I can mount a case for Stahl/Sully based on their unique paired ending and it still doesn't invalidate Chrom/Sully or Kellam/Sully or Virion/Sully or any other pairing for Sully in the way that Ced's presence as Prince of Silesse in FE5 invalidates all the other pairings for Ced's parents in FE4.

The Fujimori Nuts manga ends right after the Silesse arc, before everyone gets wasted. The Oosawa manga only got a fan-translation through the Silesse arc but it continues through Gen 2. Then there's another manga that only covers Gen2 cut but wraps up right before the battle with Travant for some reason.

Yeah, a player-customized protagonist that breaks the fourth wall is a big big big departure from how the games were conceived in the NES/SNES era, where the player and the game hero were explicitly NOT supposed to be the same. Whether you view Kris and Robin as good, bad, or neutral, they are most definitely a shake-up. And if they could be customized to have freak hair and pirate eyepatches, they sure as heck could've customized to have a less pasty skin tone-- especially Robin, given the non-white major characters in FE13. Even if the game-playing world is too racist to buy an FE game with a dark-skinned hero, it could've been an option for the player the same as it was in, say, DragonQuest IX.

That's sure what I was thinking when I read that synopsis. Yo, IS! Make that and I'll buy 200+ copies.

I'm not offended, but I am taking this to PM because I am uncomfortable with being cited like that and I would like you to understand why. Back on-topic, Gaius is actually a nicely-written character underneath the gimmick.

Yeah, but plenty of other competent/brilliant teenaged generals can be found in history. Case in point: Edward of York and his much-younger brother Richard of Gloucester, successful generals in the Wars of the Roses, aka Kings Edward IV and Richard III (yes, THAT one). Both of them were winning decisive victories aged 18-19, though in the company of older, experienced men (see: Warwick the Kingmaker). There's your Lord-and-Jagen dynamic right there, in just one chapter of one kingdom's history. Roy's continent-spanning success at age 15 may be stretching it, but the Chroms and Ephraims and Seliphs of Fire Emblem aren't that far off-base. And Roy comes across as pretty darned mature and intelligent, as Lords go.

Y'know, if you're going to name-drop me or my friends (I'm guessing this particular friend would be Amielleon of the "FE According to Japan" blog) in random places I'd appreciate it not being distorted in some weirdo game of Internet telephone. I, personally, do not have anything to do with anyone's assessment of Vaike as a "gangster."

Well, FE basically did give us an example of that scenario in Leif... Thracia 776 remake plz?

Eh, back when I first became aware of the term Mary Sue, it didn't mean a character was objectively perfect, it meant the author/narrator was pulling whatever kind of stunts they had to so that the character was never presented as wrong or at fault. The "flaws" that were supposed to be flaws were creampuff things with no impact and the things Mary Sue and Gary Stu did that were awful were somehow always justified. I like that criteria a hell of a lot better than whatever conception of the Mary Sue is floating around today. In FE terms, I'd say FE3 Marth has some classic Sue traits, not because he's a chosen savior but because whenever he starts taking himself to task for the mess of a war he's in, Jagen or someone else steps in and goes "No no no, you're wonderful and everyone else is to blame." THAT sort of thing.