Anouleth

The question is not which is most satisfying. The question is, whether the game is difficult.

History's great scam. These weapons are designed to break down after exactly 45 uses, just so they can sell you more! And of course, the warranties all go up to 40 uses. Typical!

I think you exaggerate. The good pairings in FE4 are usually the easiest and most obvious to form, such as Jamka or Midayle with Aideen, Beowolf with Lachesis, Levin with Fury, or Azel with Tiltyu. Some children are very impossible to screw up: like Ira or Sety, who, unless you go out of your way to give them the worst possible pairings, are very usable. Most of the best 2nd Gen characters are handed to you for free anyway. And the flipside is that if you want to experiment with bad pairings or sub children, you can. I understand such things are quite popular...

While I can see why they changed it (leaving Vantage with 100% activation rate would have made the game very broken with masteries, Adept, Cancel, Wrath, and Resolve all being things too), Vantage in FE10 ended up being a bit too niche. But Vantage in FE9 is very useful. But Masteries do work properly! I don't know about badly designed. I don't try to guess about the quality of the design process that IntSys use. All that matters for me is what the game is like, not the way in which it was designed.

Most skills are only useful if you plan to beat the chapter, though. How is Smite any different? Vantage was a really good skill. Sure, it might not be always useful, but isn't that true of every skill? Are you saying that Ambush wasn't useful, because it was even more situational than Vantage? I don't get why you say Masteries are broken. Was PCC broken, when it was much more powerful than masteries (with it being quite easy to get a 100% chance to crit even against enemies with high luck)? I might wish that IntSys had put more thought into Masteries and created a varied set of skills that produced clear roles among your units, but not because they're broken as they stand. As you said, all they do is give a ridiculously high number for your damage. In practice, they're no different from the high critical chances in FE5, or the sword skills in FE4 (in fact, Astra is exactly the same in both games. But that doesn't make Swordmasters broken!) Doesn't it make more sense, though, that the leader would hold back instead of charging in? I mean, if I had ten authority stars, I wouldn't go anywhere near the front lines.

Sena male best is speed worst is strength thief->trickster->swordmaster->paladin paired with Anna shota with spiky brown hair

FE9 and FE10 skills were actually very useful. Celerity, Paragon, Savior, Smite, Nullify, Nihil, Blood Tide, White Pool, Adept, and various Masteries are all useful. I mean, imagine trying to beat Part 3 without Paragon, Beastfoe, or Resolve! I think they're definitely more useful than skills in FE4/5 (aside from Pursuit, Elite and Dance, obviously). In FE5 it's generally easy enough to kill enemies that you don't need skills. I mean, it just goes to show how useless skills are in FE4, that the best character in the game doesn't have any! You could do that in FE10 too? It would be nice if other units could add their authority stars. It might actually give a good reason to use characters like Geoffrey, Lucia, or Renning.

I don't know. Even the best of us make mistakes. Well, I just mean that in the sense that it's a reliable move that doesn't have any special effect. Because FE13 is a modern FE, in which hit rates are generally quite high, the loss of 5 hit when you have 90 hit is very small in real terms. And certainly this is a move away from earlier FEs where Steel weapons were unusably heavy and inaccurate, to the point where you would have to enjoy a 10 point speed lead in order to effectively use a Steel weapon. Having less uses is pretty much in line with Pokemon, where stronger moves have less PP. And of course they're more expensive. My whole point is that more expensive, rarer, higher rank weapons should be better than cheaper, more common, lower rank weapons. Otherwise, what is the point of money, if "expensive" weapons have to be balanced with "cheap" weapons? What is the point in advancing in the game if the weapons you get are not more powerful than your E Ranks? What is the point in increasing your weapon ranks when a lot of the time, you want to use Iron weapons anyway? Cost is a bit different anyway. Sure, more expensive weapons cost more. But usually, the game gives you more money anyway towards the end of the game. So in real terms they're often not more expensive. So why make them more expensive at all? To make the player feel richer. So this is really an RPG thing. In FE4, weapons could get extremely expensive! Nope, not strategy. A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim. A general, undetailed plan of action, encompassing a long period of time, to achieve a complicated goal. These things you mentioned are tactics, and without good tactics to underpin it, a strategy cannot succeed, and certainly these things might be part of a broader strategy with the goal of beating the game or the level, but they are not strategies. The enemy has 15 HP. So you see, in this situation the Iron weapon is always better. No, it isn't. You're not achieving a major or overall aim. It's not a general, undetailed plan. It doesn't encompass a long period of time. You're not achieving a complicated goal. No, the Iron Sword is the absolute best one. I'm not saying it's the case all of the time: merely most of the time. Fire Emblem is a niche title. It is not wrong for it to try and appeal to the mainstream, even if it gets up the hackles of message board commentators who think that being inaccessible and overly numbers-based is a good thing. Is it innovation for Fire Emblem to continue to do the same thing over and over again? Why am I the one who hates innovation, when it's you who wants to turn back the clock to FE5/6/7 when the game was apparently balanced and full of strategy? I want to see Fire Emblem get out of it's rut, it's comfort zone. FE13 is a good first step. It is making Fire Emblem more like other RPGs. You have a world map you can explore. You upgrade your weapons. You learn skills as you level up. But it also preserves the core mechanics of Fire Emblem: like the grid system and the wide cast of characters. And I for one, would very much like to see Fire Emblem continue down this path. Fame and fortune await! Except that Steel weapons having shitty hit is not a core mechanic. Unless you're saying that FE4 isn't a real Fire Emblem.

And so what? Why should we care about what IntSys intended us to do? Even if IntSys intended Chapter 22 to be very hard, that doesn't make it so. The best of intentions mean nothing. And since Warpskipping Chapter 22 is necessary to SSS rank the game, I would say that yes, IS did know about the loophole, and they probably did expect players to use it, and they probably expected some players to refuse to use it because they wanted the challenge! Which I suppose, is one of the nice things about FE, that you can play it in the way you like, and not on the rails set by the game developer.

Hah, why is it that when I point out design problems in Fire Emblem, everyone suddenly gets all defensive? I think questions like this are absolutely relevant. Fire Emblem has struggled to break into the mainstream: and I think it's interesting to look at what mainstream RPGs do differently from Fire Emblem and to consider how Fire Emblem could be improved. In any case, I don't need to win you people over. Clearly someone at IntSys agrees with me: which is why, in the most recent Fire Emblem, Silver weapons are clearly strong than Steel weapons, which are clearly stronger than Iron weapons, which are clearly stronger than Bronze weapons. And I would hope that such a change is here to stay for good, along with many of the other changes in FE13! So, even if you think that I am a "troll", and that I am "beneath you", and that I am contradicting myself, I have already won this argument! Haahaa haahaa! I am just responding because I never get tired of being right, hahaha.

While S Drinks are indeed valuable, they are only buyable in Chapter 14... I consider it very likely that the player will have found 2200 amount of crap in the interceding eight chapters, given that capturing practically any enemy in the game gives you 1000 gold worth of stuff and often quite a big more. I think it's ridiculous to suggest that Reinhardt is "hard" because defeating him involves *gasp* buying a weapon. Yes, even if you hate using the capture system. Hell, looking at my draft playthrough (stalled in Chapter 16 due to boredom), I have 5500 just lying around, and countless piles of junk I'm never going to use in my convoy. Plus, if you can't beat Reinhardt, then clearly the money is better spent on Wind. Hit and avoid are stats. If they don't count, does that mean that I can say that FE6 is easy? It would be easy if those gosh darn wyverns didn't hide on top of those mountains! Except that the game doesn't expect you to have Warp sit in your inventory and rot. In fact, it's physically impossible to perfectly rank the game without using Warp. In fact, the game even allows you multiple ways to easily get Cyas off the map, if you'd just stop trying to do it the single hardest way. No Warp, no Rewarp, and apparently no capturing if you don't even have enough money to buy a fucking Wind tome. Yeah, the game is hard if you intentionally limit yourself from doing anything even vaguely intelligent.

If IntSys think that uniform stats is such a bad idea, why do we see it again in FE13? Perhaps they've realised it was a mistake to change? The irony is that while you make fun of Pokemon for having a supposedly very easy choice, the choice of what move to learn in pokemon can often be quite tight. For example, Jellicent has four choices for a Water-type STAB move: Hydro Pump, Surf, Scald, and Water Spout. Water Spout is by far the strongest, but Jellicent needs to be at full HP to make full use of it. Hydro Pump is second strongest: but has reduced accuracy. Surf is reliable, but boring. Scald is weakest, but can burn opponents, helping Jellicent deal with it's lower physical bulk. Or alternatively, you could use Will O'Wisp to burn opponents: but then you have to choose between Taunt, Shadow Ball, and Recover for your third and fourth moves. Or you could use Hex instead of Shadow Ball to hit burned opponents harder; or you could use Toxic if you plan to stall the opponent out; or you could use one of Jellicent's many other coverage moves such as Psychic, Energy Ball (Giga Drain if you have the shards), or Ice Beam. In fact, the decision of whether to use Surf in Pokemon is probably more interesting than any point where you have to choose a weapon in Fire Emblem. And really, why shouldn't Surf be better than Water Gun? A Silver Sword is obviously always superior to a Steel Sword (as is a Killing Edge). Why shouldn't lategame moves be far stronger than earlygame moves? Isn't part of the fun of an RPG the feeling of growth, of becoming more powerful? Isn't that fun dependent on getting stronger weapons and higher stats? Why does your power at the end of the game need to be balanced against your power at the start of the game? Imagine if when you got the Master Sword in Legend of Zelda, it was weaker (or just as powerful) as the wooden sword, because they wanted to give you a reason to use both? Why should there be a reason to continue to use the same weapon, when upgrading your equipment is fun? FE requires no strategy on that front. Strategy is not determining which of two numbers is bigger. Again, that is just busywork. Strategy requires, by definition, long-term decisions. Since deciding what weapon to use every turn is not a long-term decision, it is not strategy. A strategy would be something like "always use Steel weapons" or "always use Iron weapons". In fact, I would go so far as to say that the current system is anti-strategy, because people do not make long-term decisions about what weapons they use. As you said, you always want to be changing weapons. If you couldn't change weapons, then it would be more strategic since you'd have to make long-term decisions (as you do in pokemon where you have to make long-term decisions about what moves you learn). I think it's interesting to consider that in Fire Emblem forums, the same subjects always arise (because people find them interesting). So people talk about what units they train (a long term decision) or what supports they built (a long term decision) or what weapons they had blessed (a long term decision) or what children they made (a long term decision). Endless debates on FE8 boards go on about which promotions (a long term decision) to choose. Nobody talks about that time when they used an Iron weapon instead of a Killer weapon to save money (how boring). Meanwhile, choosing whether to use Iron or Steel is not interesting because there is always an obviously correct answer. And it's not just because I'm used to it. You don't have to be an FE expert to tell that 10x2 is better than 13. Tell me, what reason is there not to use the stronger weapon in this instance? There isn't: you will always pick the Iron Sword. It's a choice as obvious and boring as picking Caineghis over Renning. But imagine if, like in FE4, you could only have either the Iron Sword or the Steel Sword in your inventory! Suddenly, the choice is much more interesting. And it saves you from having to figure out which one is better for each individual turn of the chapter.

Seren does awful damage to him anyway (and I think she has a chance of dying if she attacks him anyway). Juan's damage is better, but he's still inaccurate.

Do you know that Wind tomes are buyable in Chapter 21? So why is Reinhardt being difficult a good thing, though? You're saying that Reinhardt is really difficult, and then saying in the next paragraph that the enemies in FE5 are really easy. How is it that FE5 can simultaneously be held up as creating difficulty without resorting to really strong enemies, and then Chapter 22 be held up as being the most difficult chapter when it's difficult because all the enemies get huge authority star boosts?

It was far easier to go north than west for me, and quite aside from that, the boss takes a long time to kill. I beat the chapter in, if I remember correctly, eight less turns by going that way. Certainly not worth it just to change Driscoll's weapon. My Renair was actually screwed in Strength, so the chances of killing him in a reasonable amount of time were nil. Doesn't the boss also carry an Axereaver?

In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance at least, the vast majority of units have three or four movement with only a tiny minority having more. I couldn't speak for Final Fantasy Tactics. Also, there is good mathematical evidence suggesting that subitism is only done for numbers lower than five. It's less onerous in FFTA since there are only six enemies in a chapter, and Reflexes isn't that powerful anyway since you can hit through it with abilities. Also, you only have to check one enemy to see if upgrades have been researched in SCII. Or if you know they don't have a Forge, you don't have to check at all! But even there, it's busywork. This is the thing: the nice thing about Fire Emblem is that deciding which units to use isn't just a matter of adding up numbers. In a situation like this, the decisions that the player makes are not just based on calculations of which unit is the best, but they are based on the how the player wants to approach the rest of the game... in other words, deciding what units you plan to use is a strategy. You might choose a strategy that revolves around lots of mages, or lots of flying units, or whatever. What I am complaining about is stuff like "oh look, my Steel Sword does 15 damage and my Iron Sword does 12 damage". That is not a strategy. That is just picking the bigger number. And a choice like this isn't strategic. I think that tasks like this do detract from the game and are symptomatic of bad and unintuitive game design. And the argument, isn't whether they detract from the game. The original point was that being able to make those calculations was a good thing. I disagree. I think that being able to calculate in advance how much damage you'll do is a solution without a problem, because people don't want to calculate it, and if the game forces you to do so, it's bad game design. No, but I wasn't talking about that. I was talking about the perfect uniformity of enemy stats. This is an element that you also see in FE1, 2, and 3.

I'm not saying this is difficult, though! Rote checking isn't difficult, at all. Right, and I'm happy for the difficulty in Fire Emblem to come from unit placement and positioning. That's a good thing. Oh, well, I only need to read through forty statsheets per chapter. That's like, barely any! No I don't. I don't count movement in Advance Wars, because I can just put my cursor over a given unit and see it's range. I don't count movement in Fire Emblem 11 or 12 because I can easily see their range. I don't count movement in FFTA or Civilisation or Pokemon Conquest because movement is generally low enough that I can eyeball it. So when I'm forced to in FE10 HM, it's annoying. Like Starcraft II? Because I don't need to make sure that all my Zerglings have the right claws equipped, or check that group of Immortals are carrying normal Immortal weapons and not, say, a random anti-air weapon, or make sure that the unit that appears to be an anti-air unit is not actually carrying a weapon that's effective against tanks. And it's not that I refuse to. I just don't want to. And it's bad design, that I have to. The problem is that a lot of these "decisions" are just no-brainers. 90% of situations, there is one weapon that is strictly better than all the others. How is it "strategy" to calculate how much damage you do and pick the bigger number? It's true that sometimes, you are forced with a genuine tradeoff. But too often, making decisions in Fire Emblem is just a matter of addition and subtraction: then picking the bigger number. While not all decisions in Fire Emblem are like that, many are. I like how it's apparently now a matter of debate whether simple maths is fun. I don't really know if it was their intention to make the game easier and more predictable, but they did it, and this was the effect, and I think that effect was beneficial. By doing this, Fire Emblem comes in line with other RPGs, where enemies of the same "type" or "species" will always have the same stats and predictable attacks, patterns, and formation, or at least, within a certain degree of variation, while in Fire Emblem, two Cavaliers or two Soldiers can have completely different stats and gear. Or perhaps, they were just maintaining the system of all the previous titles?

I haven't played FE5 all the way through, or FE12 Lunatic, but from what I played, FE12 Lunatic was significantly harder.

They're not flawed because you have to plan beforehand, though. They're flawed because in order to make plans, you have to go through a tedious process of calculation, checking statsheets, and counting squares. Some Fire Emblems avoid this better than others. FE4 makes it much easier to calculate attack speed than FE5, and enemy stats don't vary, so you only have to check one enemy to know how strong they all are. In FE9 and FE10, you can see what weapon an enemy is carrying without checking with the R button. So you don't need to check and make sure that none of the enemies have a Bow. And indeed, the stated goal of the weapon triangle is to make the relationships between various units more clear, so for example, you can know that your axe user will beat that soldier, or that your shaman will kill that mage. Simple stuff like this takes out a lot of busywork. It's a shame, indeed, that the games don't do stuff like this more. And my problem with stuff like this is that it's not strategy. Calculating which one of my weapons does the most damage, and then using that weapon is not strategy. Calculating how many enemies I can expose Jill to, and then exposing Jill to those units is not strategy. It's just busywork.

I think it is needed: but that's because Fire Emblem, as a game, is fundamentally flawed. Which is itself a flaw. Imagine if, in Final Fantasy, enemies would arbitrarily carry spells that could OHKO certain allies. And every time you enter combat, you have to scan every single enemy to make sure that one of your allies wouldn't instantly die. And when an ally died, it was enough of a setback to make a reset inevitable. That is what Fire Emblem is now. Let me ask: would Fire Emblem be playable without the battle preview or the R button? Perhaps. It might depend on the player. I think that of all the Fire Emblems, Fire Emblem 4 is the one most suited to that kind of play. And that might be part of the reason why it is so popular. Which just goes to show that permadeath is a broken mechanic, because it forces the player to constantly check how strong every enemy is. You do not have to do this in any other game. Even in aggressively difficult RPGs such as Persona, do you have to know in advance how much STR/SPD/MAG/CRIT every enemy has?

Why do you need to know how much better one sword is than another? Surely all you need to know is that one sword is better than the other, and then use that one. For example, I might know that the Mythril Sword is stronger than the Steel Sword. Since I want to know which one to equip, I only need to know to equip the Mythril Sword. And when I kill those Crystal Dragons in three hits instead of four, I'll feel stronger and more badass. I don't need to be able to calculate in advance that I'll 3HKO the Crystal Dragons. And I don't need to be able to calculate exactly how much extra damage I do in order to make the correct decision.

And yet, these games are far easier and more intuitive to play than Fire Emblem. Or you know, you could figure out how much damage it is by (get this) attacking an enemy and seeing how much damage it does! Or, you can probably guess that the sword that increases your strength does more damage. Or that the more expensive, rarer sword is better.

I have no idea what you're talking about when you say "sense of agency" or "feel of your actions doing something". Or when you say that the system feels more abstract? How, exactly, do you determine how abstract a system feels? Why is 20 damage less abstract than 200 damage (as you might see in pokemon) or 2000 damage (as you might see in Final Fantasy) or 2 million damage (as you might see in World of Warcraft)? When you swing a sword, the damage you deal isn't measured as a number. But video games have to make things simpler, like in a scientific model, by representing things in terms of numbers. And like in a scientific model, the specific numbers you choose don't matter, as long as relative to each other they have the same relationships. Fire Emblem chooses to keep the numbers small. That's fine, I guess. But it's ridiculous to scrape around for some flimsy, vague justification as to why it's superior.

you saying that you can't block a giant sea of lava with a shield?

I'm being sarcastic. If games like Final Fantasy and Pokemon can be incredibly successful and popular even with large numbers that nobody understands, why can't Fire Emblem do the same? You say that having the numbers going up too high is a bad thing, well, clearly the majority of RPG players disagree with you, or they wouldn't play Final Fantasy where the stat caps are usually at 255 or Pokemon where stats can climb over 1000.