Finally Played Tear Ring Saga (and now I want you to tell me how right I am about the story)

[Jotari]

So I've finally played Tear Ring Saga, and if there's one thing I've learned from it, it's that character limit concerns was Kaga's biggest ally when writing Fire Emblem. Because man oh man is this game...something. It's hard to describe. It's so great, but just so bad at the same time. You're bombarded with so many names and places and history all at once. It feels like you can barely take any action without some kind of conversation being triggered most of them along the lines of "as you know, we are secretly ninth cousins twice removed but I was kidnapped as a child by scorpions when I was six and you were four, also I'm engaged to that guy we saw once four chapters back but actually want to marry a playable character you probably haven't recruited."

So, basically, I am hugely at a loss as to what this game is about. Well, not entirely, I think I understood the broad strokes, it's most of the minor character details I was inundated in. As I understand it, it's like a mix of Mystery of the Emblem, Genealogy, Blazing Blade and Radiant Dawn. From Mystery of the Emblem we have the villains wanting to sacrifice four Maidens to bring back a dark dragon, and it's better pulled off here where the maidens all get to be characters in the plot. Well, two of them get to be. The other two you see like once each.

From Genealogy we have an entire Seliph style plot line going on in the background where the grandson of the evil Emperor is trying to overthrow the empire by himself in the background and it feels like he had a whole third campaign that they had to axe because the game was already 40 chapters long. It's kind of cool and I like it, as one of my big complaints about Fire Emblem is that very little happens offscreen in the war compared to your protagonist. Having other heroes doing their own thing makes the conflict feel bigger and not just about one guy storming across the land with his roving army. We also get the integrated genealogies and, a little bit, of holy blood stuff.

Blazing Blade is probably the most interesting parallels given it came out before Blazing Blade and thus draws lot's of interesting questions about whether it's coincidence there are similar plots or if Kaga left design notes they later used. Basically we have a 1:1 parallel of Brendan Reed, only he's an emperor instead of a crime boss. Still, vampy seductress gets between his legs and steadily takes control of his entire operation steadily giving full control over to big bad sorcerer (and they even manage to make her sympathetic, even if it's done in a last minute exposition dump). She even kills him like in Binding Blade with no (living) boss fight against him. Said evil sorcerer dude also has many similarities to Nergal, in that he's looking for young women who are secretly dragon and uses them to attack his enemies (though Nergal did that by accident in Blazing Blade) and seeks the power of the dragons for himself (though Guenchaos is less purely self motivated and has some shades of Lehran, not that you'd know that before his final exposition dump).

And from Radiant Dawn we have the cycle of oppression between different ethnic groups. And it's done better here as we really get to see both groups inflicting suffering on each other and the actual power struggle for one group to overthrow the other. Whereas one of the biggest complaints about Tellius is that the Beorc are just on top consistently with no real laguz villains(asterisk Lehran, Pain/Agony). This scenario is basically European colonization of the New World, only the Native Americans/Aborigines had a dark god to fall back on (only it wasn't originally a dark god and some worship the more pure version of it, which is confusing because it's also an actual being) and then establish an evil empire and start oppressing the foreign settlers who then Anri hero style fight back and over throw the evil emperor but then go Jugdral Crusaders on the natives oppressing them in turn. I like it, it's good stuff. Painfully hamfistedly delivered 80% of the way through the game in a series of Xane style monologues (from a guy who is pulling a Foresti, only has way less presence than Lewyn so I have no clue what the significance of him being a possessed corpse is meant to be, and no clue who is possessing him).

Imagine a less racist Shinon was the protagonist and you have Holmes. A dick who's abrasive to everyone yet inexplicably gathers his own harem and loyal campaigns even though he's intentionally ignoring his duties as an exiled noble and is just wandering around the place looking for treasure and occasionally helping with the war when it just stumbles into his lap. It's really refreshing for a Fire Emblem character. There's a moment where both characters react Marth's balcony scene from Shadow Dragon, Runan goes full Marth on it while Holmes gives basically the worst speech ever.

I prefer Holmes a lot more to Runan, and I expect I'm in the majority here as Runan's story feels like nothing happens in it. It's just an endless series of battles with the empire with the only actual changes to his status quo being his relationship with his love interest towards the end. Otherwise it's just Shadow Dragon Marth, only without individual countries to liberate. Just an endless march of seizing forts that blend together.

The thing I think the story is missing the most is the intro world map to explain each region at the start of the chapter. I think maybe there was at the very start of the game, but it needs to be reiterated. There seems to be only five countries, four holy nations and Welt, which is basically Talys, but I have no idea where most of the characters are from and even the name of the empire is lost on me half the time. It doesn't help that there seems to be a bunch of smaller duchies making up the kingdoms. For example,  there are these important Earth, Fire, Wind and Water shrines, that frame the content like it's Elyos from Engage, yet I have no clue which ones are where, which is important as the main villain, Guenchaos, is specifically not from the oppressed tribes and is from the Earth Shrine. I don't know where they are, despite this game having a world map which you physically walk to them in.

I say there are only five countries, but I could be wrong. Maybe there's only three and there was a war in the backstory about 40 years ago where, I think, one of the nations was destroyed by a raging dragon Ninian style (yes despite that dragon still wandering around, the villain still finds a maiden from that blood line to sacrifice who isn't that dragon because that dragon is his daughter, I think). The biggest issue of the story is that there is way too much happening in the back story and basically nothing happening during the story. We constantly hear about a cavalcade of wars, assassinations, kidnappings and betrayals that happened X number of years before the story begins, but in the main story it's just straight forward fighting until near the end. I've already complained about that for Runan, but Holmes is basically designed to be filler, as he's actively avoiding responsibilities and involving himself in the war. But it still feels like his story has some movement as he's slowly drawn into it, but only compared to Runan. The Seliph style background non protagonist Sennet seems to derive the most actual story beats as his background actions slowly bring about the collapse of the evil empire, mostly detailed by his uncles who have only been half heartedly into the war in the first place (and yet the most sympathetic of them still ends up fighting you for...reasons, and is probably the most annoying boss in the game with his 1-2 range Nosferatu lance).

So, yeah, lot's of mixed feelings on this one. I'm not afraid of complex stories, in fact I'd say I rather like them a lot, but I don't feel like the complexity of the world was presented in a strong enough way to make it easily digestible. I'd probably enjoy the story a lot better if I played it a second time, as I'd have a better idea of who is related to who and where the different people are from. But I probably won't ever play it again, because the game is just so slow to play and EPSXE doesn't have a turbo feature. I've heard people say Vestria Saga is insane in the level of complexity the politics in it gets, so I have to ask, does Kaga and his team at least get better at making the complexity of his world approachable in the later games? Or will I need to have a tab open for family trees and a timeline open if I ever attempt to play the other Saga games?

Edited June 3 by Jotari

[Saint Rubenio]

Runan's story does have one thing going for it: Eugen is there. Eugen is the best character in games. Eugen beats Holmes. Literally!

For what it's worth, I'd say you made a mistake playing this game on ePSXe, or really using ePSXe in general. ePSXe is, bluntly, an absolute garbage emulator. I used that one in my first TRS run, and never finished as a result until I tried again on a better emulator - that was years ago and even back then it was outdated and outclassed. Nowadays? Duckstation exists. Duckstation is awesome and I recommend you get it and ditch ePSXe forever. It has a turbo feature!

As for whether the complexity gets better in later Kaga games, I'd say, uh... Berwick Saga goes for a different vibe, though it's still quite hefty, but Vestaria's structure is very similar to TRS's. Both Vestarias have one scene that has you reading for like 90 minutes straight. Both of them have a million people doing things outside of your protagonist's sphere of influence. It helps make the worlds feel alive rather than just set dressing for the hero to do things, but at the same time, it's easy to lose track of stuff.

Edited June 3 by Saint Rubenio

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Runan's story does have one thing going for it: Eugen is there. Eugen is the best character in games. Eugen beats Holmes. Literally!

For what it's worth, I'd say you made a mistake playing this game on ePSXe, or really using ePSXe in general. ePSXe is, bluntly, an absolute garbage emulator. I used that one in my first TRS run, and never finished as a result until I tried again on a better emulator - that was years ago and even back then it was outdated and outclassed. Nowadays? Duckstation exists. Duckstation is awesome and I recommend you get it and dtich ePSXe forever. It has a turbo feature!

This actually is my second attempt at it XD I dropped a run of it about 20 chapters in back in 2020, that's back during COVID days when free time was in abundance! It did steel my resolve to finish it this time, however.

Does Duckstation run PS2 games? Since Berwick would be next (after I get through a few physical games and finish writing a thesis) and that is PS2, I believe.

2 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

As for whether the complexity gets better in later Kaga games, I'd say, uh... Berwick Saga goes for a different vibe, though it's still quite hefty, but Vestaria's structure is very similar to TRS's. Both Vestarias have one scene that has you reading for like 90 minutes straight. Both of them have a million people doing things outside of your protagonist's sphere of influence. It helps make the worlds feel alive rather than just set dressing for the hero to do things, but at the same time, it's easy to lose track of stuff.

Does it have such esoteric recruitment conditions? Because that was something else I was intending to mini rant about. Not only is there another conversation as soon as you do anything, but if you don't roll a dice and dance like a monkey or some such thing in between those conversations then you lose access to a bunch of playable characters. I exagerate a bit, but a lot of this game depends on having the correct army composition to get the right events. Even with a recruitment guide, I managed to miss the second batch of four selectable units because Holmes' army didn't have anyone from Welt, so they treated me like pirates. I also missed Plum's dancer promotion because I sent her to Holmes army thinking another healer might be handy (though I'm pretty sure I got her milk event the on that referenced failed attempt). And I managed to get Leeta, followed every step that would be impossible to do without knowing otherwise, and then she and Kreiss ditched my army five seconds later. I knew that could happen, but I thought I'd have time to kill Kreiss first.

On the plus side, THIS GAME LETS YOU USE A WITCH! Why didn't anyone tell me that years ago. Infinite rewarp+attack just like enemy witches can do and it's a ridiculous amount of fun. Especially since you can get Narcess to dress up as her and inexplicably also gain the warp skill.

[BrightBow]

14 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Especially since you can get Narcess to dress up as her and inexplicably also gain the warp skill.

Or any other Witch for that matter. Narcus can transform into enemies too. Including uber classes like Dragon Lord. Only thing he cannot transform into are monsters.

The way this works for him is that it's a temporary reclass. He keeps his personal bases and skills instead of using the ones from the target. But Warp is a class skill for Witches, so he gets that one.

[Saint Rubenio]

24 minutes ago, Jotari said:

 

Does Duckstation run PS2 games? Since Berwick would be next (after I get through a few physical games and finish writing a thesis) and that is PS2, I believe.

ePSXe and PCSX2, despite the similar-sounding names, are not the same emulator or even made by the same people iirc. ePSXe is awful, whereas PCSX2 is... basically the only PS2 emulator, but fortunately it's solid - in fact, in recent versions they got help from the Duckstation creator, which is why the UI for both emulators is now just about identical.

24 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Does it have such esoteric recruitment conditions? Because that was something else I was intending to mini rant about. Not only is there another conversation as soon as you do anything, but if you don't roll a dice and dance like a monkey or some such thing in between those conversations then you lose access to a bunch of playable characters. I exagerate a bit, but a lot of this game depends on having the correct army composition to get the right events. Even with a recruitment guide, I managed to miss the second batch of four selectable units because Holmes' army didn't have anyone from Welt, so they treated me like pirates. I also missed Plum's dancer promotion because I sent her to Holmes army thinking another healer might be handy (though I'm pretty sure I got her milk event the on that referenced failed attempt). And I managed to get Leeta, followed every step that would be impossible to do without knowing otherwise, and then she and Kreiss ditched my army five seconds later. I knew that could happen, but I thought I'd have time to kill Kreiss first.

Oh, this is true. Leteena is a fun easter egg but there's a whole bunch of recruitments that really needed to be less convoluted.

This is one aspect in which he greatly improved, though. While Berwick and Vestaria are still rife with interesting events and convoluted secrets, the recruitments in those games are far more lenient than in TRS.

24 minutes ago, Jotari said:

On the plus side, THIS GAME LETS YOU USE A WITCH! Why didn't anyone tell me that years ago. Infinite rewarp+attack just like enemy witches can do and it's a ridiculous amount of fun. Especially since you can get Narcess to dress up as her and inexplicably also gain the warp skill.

Sierra is one of the highlights of the game. Finally, a proper witch that doesn't chicken out and become a mage upon joining. She's so cool.

Edited June 3 by Saint Rubenio

[Jotari]

36 minutes ago, BrightBow said:

Or any other Witch for that matter. Narcus can transform into enemies too. Including uber classes like Dragon Lord. Only thing he cannot transform into are monsters.

The way this works for him is that it's a temporary reclass. He keeps his personal bases and skills instead of using the ones from the target. But Warp is a class skill for Witches, so he gets that one.

Yeah, I noticed he could copy enemies too, which is really cool, but I mostly just had him copy Sierra and provide support. Since his own bases are pretty low and hamper most of his combat abilities. His Mastery rank in particular hurts him a lot as it holds him back from using a lot of good weapons. He'd be a good candidate for the Mastery stat booster which otherwise doesn't have any really good candidates (I think I wasted them on one of the clerics trying to get a high enough rank to use a summoning staff before realizing you need a skill for summoning).

30 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

ePSXe and PCSX2, despite the similar-sounding names, are not the same emulator or even made by the same people iirc. ePSXe is awful, whereas PCSX2 is... basically the only PS2 emulator, but fortunately it's solid - in fact, in recent versions they got help from the Duckstation creator, which is why the UI for both emulators is now just about identical.

Oh, this is true. Leteena is a fun easter egg but there's a whole bunch of recruitments that really needed to be less convoluted.

This is one aspect in which he greatly improved, though. While Berwick and Vestaria are still rife with interesting events and convoluted secrets, the recruitments in those games are far more lenient than in TRS.

Sierra is one of the highlights of the game. Finally, a proper witch that doesn't chicken out and become a mage upon joining. She's so cool.

The convoluted stuff can be nice, the worst is just losing your chance period because you mess something up. Sierra is an example of them doing that right. Kill her brother to recruit her is a pretty crazy condition (especially when he's functionally immortal), but if you don't do that, then she'd still be recruitable, just later in the game when you don't have as much time to use her. My inability to get the second selection of units because I didn't have any of the Welt characters in Holmes' army? That's actually a bit cool. They see me as pirates, because I kind of am and none of my people have any connection to there. But, then, after the second reunion I specifically put Sasha in Holmes' army so I can go back to Welt and get that character selection, and the map just arbitrarily never lets me go back there again. Missing my chance to have a dancer also kind of stung. When the second milk event happened later I thought that I'd get a replacement dancer specifically for missing Dancer Plumm, but the second milk event just...exists for the sake of underage sex slavery itself.

Anyway, convoluted recruitments, not an issue. Missable convoluted requirements with no safety nets are bad.

Edited June 3 by Jotari

[Interdimensional Observer]

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

The thing I think the story is missing the most is the intro world map to explain each region at the start of the chapter. I think maybe there was at the very start of the game, but it needs to be reiterated. There seems to be only five countries, four holy nations and Welt, which is basically Talys, but I have no idea where most of the characters are from and even the name of the empire is lost on me half the time. It doesn't help that there seems to be a bunch of smaller duchies making up the kingdoms. For example,  there are these important Earth, Fire, Wind and Water shrines, that frame the content like it's Elyos from Engage, yet I have no clue which ones are where, which is important as the main villain, Guenchaos, is specifically not from the oppressed tribes and is from the Earth Shrine. I don't know where they are, despite this game having a world map which you physically walk to them in.

Earth = Leda. Water = Reeve. Fire = Salia. Wind = Canaan. -We never get to visit wind nor earth.

The precise borders for Salia seem to be the rivers -minus the Fire Temple, that mountainous area between the two rivers is ambiguous. A desert separates Granada from Reeve (or, Granada is nominally part of Reeve, but very autonomous methinks?). The unvisited Canaan leaves the border between it and Reeve very undefined. Nolzeria might be a border-town IIRC? The former kingdom of Leda is the northwest, I forget about Marl though, probably former Ledan territory?

As for some of the lineages of TRS, I'll made this topic a few years ago that summarizes some of it.:

 

2 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

whereas PCSX2 is... basically the only PS2 emulator, but fortunately it's solid

It needs easier cheat codes insertion. I could finish BS via hacked bs.

Edited June 3 by Interdimensional Observer

[Jotari]

20 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Earth = Leda. Water = Reeve. Fire = Salia. Wind = Canaan. -We never get to visit wind nor earth.

The precise borders for Salia seem to be the rivers -minus the Fire Temple. A desert separates Granada from Reeve. The unvisited Canaan leaves the border between it and Reeve very undefined.

I'm surprised the water and fire temple are so far from each other. And that water in particular is so far from the other three. The way the final map is laid suggests there's an important mid point between the four of them. But the most likely result of the geography is that there's only underground passages between water and fire and the mountain in the centre is where the final battle takes place. Which, considering Runan references X number of days or weeks traveling underground, we could actually get something of an estimation for how big Liberia is overall (though I doubt there's much precedent for underground mass medieval army migration to get a solid time to distance estimation, but we could get a maximum distance assuming the underground walk is an easy straight march from point A to point B and then say it must be smaller than that).

Are we meant to assume much of Canann is off screen to the east of the map, I wonder. Or is it just meant to have a lot of locations that are simple unlabelled on the map because we don't have the cause to go there. It is interesting there's a few western cities that have icons and roads that we never end up visiting.

20 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

As for some of the lineages of TRS, I'll made this topic a few years ago that summarizes some of it.:

Has anyone made a portrait version of it like the Genealogy...genealogy that's floating around? Because, as I said, the names of a lot of them are lost on me, portraits in combo with names are more likely to strike a cord.

Huh, had no idea Plumm was Lionheart's daughter. I know they set up a missing father with her recruitment,but I guess missing out on milk meant missing out on her side story entirely, even though she was with Holmes for all the Lionheart stuff.

Edited June 3 by Jotari

[BrightBow]

Gotta be where Istoria is. The fabled kingdom that Sennet and Tia spend most of the time fighting, and where my favorite character, the inexplicitly existing Prince Ronald hails from.

And Juni, I suppose.

[Jotari]

4 minutes ago, BrightBow said:

Gotta be where Istoria is. The fabled kingdom that Sennet and Tia spend most of the time fighting, and where my favorite character, the inexplicitly existing Prince Ronald hails from.

And Juni, I suppose.

I don't remember him at all, but looking up on the wiki, I see that his father is King Guinness. I don't how that one slipped past me XD What a choice for a name.

[BrightBow]

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I don't remember him at all, but looking up on the wiki, I see that his father is King Guinness. I don't how that one slipped past me XD What a choice for a name.

He shows up for one scene as Runan is crossing the sea from Wellt to the mainland in order to shittalk Tia, then is never seen again.

Edited June 3 by BrightBow

[Interdimensional Observer]

21 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Are we meant to assume much of Canann is off screen to the east of the map, I wonder. Or is it just meant to have a lot of locations that are simple unlabelled on the map because we don't have the cause to go there. It is interesting there's a few western cities that have icons and roads that we never end up visiting.

I presume Canaan is the vast northeast corner, and where the "Old Zoan Lands" are located, and the wyvern valley and the "Kingdom of Sofia" where Sennet's aunt became a wyvern-riding princess. Considering where the Wind and Earth Temples are, that river between them probably forms the Canaan-Leda border.

The western markers that go unvisited are probably there because they're places that we're told early on that Sennet & Tia visited/traveled to during their journey.

If only we had a Sennet & Tia campaign.🤨

21 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I'm surprised the water and fire temple are so far from each other. And that water in particular is so far from the other three. The way the final map is laid suggests there's an important mid point between the four of them.

That does seem rather strange actually. With Water being so distant, what should've been a "+" shape, ends up becoming a "t" shape. Although it's not like "t"s have lacked for IRL symbolism.✝️ -Or, one could interpret it as a big sword.⚔️

...Maybe it's be faster to go from Water to the center if we had an underground river, maybe? (Underworlds are not infrequently riverine places in mythologies. It'd be befitting.)

21 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Huh, had no idea Plumm was Lionheart's daughter. I know they set up a missing father with her recruitment,but I guess missing out on milk meant missing out on her side story entirely, even though she was with Holmes for all the Lionheart stuff.

Think positive! Dancer Plum means Barts ends up having to put some distance between himself and adopted sister in the ending, because seeing her dancing has triggered feelings in him that he isn't exactly comfortable with.😛

Edited June 3 by Interdimensional Observer

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

If only we had a Sennet & Tia campaign.🤨

I understand the feeling, but 40 chapters was more than enough for me X[

A Thracia style gaiden game would be cool though (and by gaiden game I don't mean Gaiden, because Gaiden isn't really a gaiden, Thracia is really the game that should have been called Gaiden).

2 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

That does seem rather strange actually. With Water being so distant, what should've been a "+" shape, ends up becoming a "t" shape. Although it's not like "t"s have lacked for IRL symbolism.✝️ -Or, one could interpret it as a big sword.⚔️

...Maybe it's be faster to go from Water to the center if we had an underground river, maybe?

It would also make more sense mechanically for water to be closer to the others. Since, as far as I can remember (as I said the Runan chapters to heavily blend into each other), Holmes has to travel all the way up to the fire temple and then back down to wherever the meeting point is, fighting along the way, where as Runan only has to deal with the Nolzeria peace treaty in that time. And above land route most of the way to the temple would probably sync up the timeline between him and Holmes a bit better. Holmes is meant to get his sword first, but Runan is way closer to his (and when does Sennet get his sword? Did he already have it before, or is he traveling all the way up to the wind(?) temple at the same time as Runan and Holmes?).

[Interdimensional Observer]

6 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I understand the feeling, but 40 chapters was more than enough for me X[

Super Robot Wars fan here. I can easily handle sixty.😛 Although, TBF, Fire Emblem maps have more thought put into them, which necessitates more thought from the player.

7 minutes ago, Jotari said:

(and when does Sennet get his sword? Did he already have it before, or is he traveling all the way up to the wind(?) temple at the same time as Runan and Holmes?)

IIRC -it's been a few years since I played TRS- it's not until the end of Nolzeria that Sennet takes the Canaan ring/bracelet from his sister. Since Nolzeria is Neyfa-Rakis vs. Enteh-Muse in a dragon stalemate while the player chops down a whole bunch of grunts in a ruined city, unable to do anything to speed up the turns of dragons dealing 0 damage to each other (the chapter would've worked better as a Godzilla movie). No Ring of Canaan, no drawing the Holy Sword of Canaan. And Sennet had no reason to draw the sword earlier in his campaign.

[Shaky Jones]

Honestly, even though I literally did my first fun this year, I cannot tell you about what happens in the plot other than Holmes and Eugen being the most based lunatics in "Fire Emblem".

 

40 chapters, and practically all of them have multiple cutscenes that play out in between them. I'm pretty sure 2/3rds of my playtime was literally just cutscenes. Well maybe 1/3 on cutscenes, and the other 1/3 spent looking at a guide and carefully constructing who goes on what rout each time because it's totally on me for not bringing Plum to Ronan's rout followed by having Bartz in the other rout, as well as having both Roger and Mel sent to Holmes's rout despite Ronan's rout being said to be harder and likely needing more use of a prepromote and making sure I have specific items held in Holmes rout to repeatedly walk back to a town every chapter to make sure I don't miss Kaga's greatest troll recruitment of all time. 

 

I know it's cheap and generic to just wait until you're at a big nation and then have people monologue its basic lore while you're there like in Engage and Kaga's clearly tryna make the world bigger than just the lord/player's view of it, but damn if I at least prefer something I can comprehend quick over showing different continents having their own subplots take place referencing people I don't know while I'm still trying to learn about where I'm at and then getting these dozens of nations mixed together after what feels like 30 minutes of dialogue in between chapters, and then Eugen says something bloody hilarious and I forget half of what the cutscene is even about. I don't want to assume I'm just stupid, but holy distressed damsel, write a book Kaga!

I suppose that makes me a hypocrite in a way for complaining about how 3 Houses tries to have this grand scale worldbuilding and lore about all it's minor kingdoms and such within the big 3 nations as well as areas outside of Fodlan, but then does a terrible job integrating said information through the main story ("Almyrouttamycountry", "Brigidontgiveadamn", "What the twisted joke is Morfis?"), but when Kaga does integrate his complex setting and its lore into the main plot, I go "mucho texto".

I mean I think Thracia had a good balance between that, though that's likely due to the game itself being a gaiden of a previously established title, this having more focus while needing to explain less.

 

None of that matters though, because I'd forgive all of it if the game had good gameplay and/or maps.

It did not have good maps.

It had Tom and Zacharia. That's what I liked about it. And Eugen. We love Eugen. 

[AnonymousSpeed]

9 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

I suppose that makes me a hypocrite in a way for complaining about how 3 Houses tries to have this grand scale worldbuilding and lore about all it's minor kingdoms and such within the big 3 nations as well as areas outside of Fodlan, but then does a terrible job integrating said information through the main story ("Almyrouttamycountry", "Brigidontgiveadamn", "What the twisted joke is Morfis?"), but when Kaga does integrate his complex setting and its lore into the main plot, I go "mucho texto".

The synthesis here would be to write things that are relevant and interesting in as few words as possible. You know, like a good writer would do.

10 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

It did not have good maps.

Do any Kaga games (with the debated exception of Thracia) have good maps?

[Jotari]

32 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

Honestly, even though I literally did my first fun this year, I cannot tell you about what happens in the plot other than Holmes and Eugen being the most based lunatics in "Fire Emblem".

 

40 chapters, and practically all of them have multiple cutscenes that play out in between them. I'm pretty sure 2/3rds of my playtime was literally just cutscenes. Well maybe 1/3 on cutscenes, and the other 1/3 spent looking at a guide and carefully constructing who goes on what rout each time because it's totally on me for not bringing Plum to Ronan's rout followed by having Bartz in the other rout, as well as having both Roger and Mel sent to Holmes's rout despite Ronan's rout being said to be harder and likely needing more use of a prepromote and making sure I have specific items held in Holmes rout to repeatedly walk back to a town every chapter to make sure I don't miss Kaga's greatest troll recruitment of all time. 

 

I know it's cheap and generic to just wait until you're at a big nation and then have people monologue its basic lore while you're there like in Engage and Kaga's clearly tryna make the world bigger than just the lord/player's view of it, but damn if I at least prefer something I can comprehend quick over showing different continents having their own subplots take place referencing people I don't know while I'm still trying to learn about where I'm at and then getting these dozens of nations mixed together after what feels like 30 minutes of dialogue in between chapters, and then Eugen says something bloody hilarious and I forget half of what the cutscene is even about. I don't want to assume I'm just stupid, but holy distressed damsel, write a book Kaga!

I suppose that makes me a hypocrite in a way for complaining about how 3 Houses tries to have this grand scale worldbuilding and lore about all it's minor kingdoms and such within the big 3 nations as well as areas outside of Fodlan, but then does a terrible job integrating said information through the main story ("Almyrouttamycountry", "Brigidontgiveadamn", "What the twisted joke is Morfis?"), but when Kaga does integrate his complex setting and its lore into the main plot, I go "mucho texto".

I mean I think Thracia had a good balance between that, though that's likely due to the game itself being a gaiden of a previously established title, this having more focus while needing to explain less.

 

None of that matters though, because I'd forgive all of it if the game had good gameplay and/or maps.

It did not have good maps.

It had Tom and Zacharia. That's what I liked about it. And Eugen. We love Eugen. 

I think it's fair to criticize Three Houses and Tear Ring Saga for opposite reasons. X is bad doesn't mean Y is good. Writing is a bit more complex than that. Dichotomies are stupid. As far as my opinion goes, I certainly think Three Houses does a much better job of painting its world than Tear Ring Saga does. I don't mind the foreign nations just existing unrelated to the conflict, in fact I rather like that aspect. My issues with Three Houses comes a lot more from how its story is structured overall, and the fact that it's world building sort of seems to go more for quality than quantity. Three Houses has a lot of minor houses doing things that just feel like they don't matter at all. Ultimately world building should exist to facilitate a story. At the end of the day your work should still be trying to say something. Tolkien should probably get the blame for the idea that a story needs to have this big fantastic complex world that is more important than the actual core plot. But even Tolkien had the good sense to not publish all his half formed and unfinished extended universe notes and just focused on writing an actual book in his lifetime.

7 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

The synthesis here would be to write things that are relevant and interesting in as few words as possible. You know, like a good writer would do.

Absolutely. You can make a complex story. It's been done before. You just need to pace it well. Byleth being ignorant of Fodlan is a tired old cliche that doesn't make sense in that particular context (since Jearlt's whole story is that he intentionally moved around), but it's a tired old cliche for a reason. Because having a protagonist who is ignorant of the world at large is a very useful way of naturally explaining things to the player.

I think George R.R Martin managed to pull of a fairly complex and expansive world with a lot of characters fairly well. He pulled it off in his first book by having a lot of the protagonists be children. So them espousing their knowledge of the world feels natural (because kids are really proud of knowing stuff). He also begins the story with pretty small focus of just one family (and an overseas B plot) that start together and then go their separate ways opening up their own stories in each direction they move (unfortunately he didn't know when to stop and just kept unfolding and unfolding and now we've only had 1 book in the past 19 years). Tear Ring Saga kind of tries to have this focused story at the start, with the civil war in Welt (a nice isolated island), and that's pretty straightforward, the problem is the protagonist is already concerned with larger events, talking about them with no context, and as soon as he wraps up the opening conflict, he is immediately thrust into the larger war with all these kingdoms being mentioned that we have no context of where they are or who is from them.

8 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Do any Kaga games (with the debated exception of Thracia) have good maps?

Honestly, the maps of the first game are not that bad.  There's usually a village with a thief putting you under pressure to move forward, and while it might be annoying that the reinforcements are ambush spawns, they do still manage to do their job of ensuring you need to exert the correct level of control throughout the map. There are some stinkers here and there, Gharnef and Xemcel back to back are a particularly great way to kill your enthusiasm and make you warp skip endgame (even though endgame is a decent map, provided you have some door keys), but, by and large, most Shadow Dragon maps are well designed. At least in my arrogant opinion which should be respected because I was the one who said it.

[Saint Rubenio]

6 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Do any Kaga games (with the debated exception of Thracia) have good maps?

Berwick Saga.

This is your Berwick Saga shill of the day. Play Berwick Saga.

[BrightBow]

Btw, in Versus Mode, Tia can transform into Kranion.
Which I suppose makes Rakis the only Guardian Dragon to not be playable at all.
In Versus Mode, Guardian Dragons do not have their dragon scales. So they are far from invincible there.

Versus Mode is honestly really quite elaborate. It has all kinds of features and settings. For example it has the weapon triangle as an optional rule you can enable.

[Jotari]

On 6/3/2024 at 11:09 PM, Interdimensional Observer said:

Earth = Leda. Water = Reeve. Fire = Salia. Wind = Canaan. -We never get to visit wind nor earth.

The precise borders for Salia seem to be the rivers -minus the Fire Temple, that mountainous area between the two rivers is ambiguous. A desert separates Granada from Reeve (or, Granada is nominally part of Reeve, but very autonomous methinks?). The unvisited Canaan leaves the border between it and Reeve very undefined. Nolzeria might be a border-town IIRC? The former kingdom of Leda is the northwest, I forget about Marl though, probably former Ledan territory?

As for some of the lineages of TRS, I'll made this topic a few years ago that summarizes some of it.:

 

It needs easier cheat codes insertion. I could finish BS via hacked bs.

Alright, since it didn't exist, I went ahead and made it, the visualized Genealogy of Liberia. I know you probably don't have enclapedic knowledge of Tear Ring as you made that thread as you were playing the game a few years ago, but, if you notice any mistakes or things I missed, please say. The thing I'm most surrpised about is that Entei's mother doesn't seem to have a name, at least from what I could find on the wiki. Runan's family tree is also shockingly isolated for what you would expect. Even his mentioned mother that is a direct descendant of Carulon doesn't have a name. In fact, we have three separate characters related to the Reeve royal family specifically through an unseen unnamed parent (and maybe Runan isn't related to Carulon via the Reeve line, as otherwise Tatus wouldn't claim he's the only member of the royal family left? So is Runan related to the Cannan royal family? Or Carulon's relationship with another women and a fifth child?).

Edited June 5 by Jotari

[rdrouyn]

I wish I had the same enthusiasm as you for TRS. I found the game to be a giant bore. Boring maps, respawing sperm enemies, slow walking swamp maps, annoying recruit conditions, etc... Despite all that annoyance, about 2 or 3 of the maps presented an actual challenge since 60% of the characters you get are absolutely broken. It felt like Kaga didn't have a lot of time to balance this one. The story could've been interesting, but as you mentioned it feels like  "greatest hits story compilation" of previous and future Fire Emblem titles. The saving grace for the game was Holmes being such a unique lord, but even then his rudeness gets out of hand at times. Just randomly being a dick to Katri for no reason. And yeah, it is hard to ignore that his storyline is the equivalent of filler episodes in an anime. Runan is a bland as rice merging of Leif and Marth and his story is a by the numbers regain my lost throne narrative, although Eugen is pretty charming at times. On top of that, you get all the Kaga weirdness, borderline distatesful story arcs involving young women being trafficked and their horny, incestuous brothers, and it all combines into a rather lackluster game. To think that he risked getting sued for this game, it is confounding to me. Beautiful art, though.

Edited June 14 by rdrouyn

[Jotari]

9 hours ago, rdrouyn said:

I wish I had the same enthusiasm as you for TRS. I found the game to be a giant bore. Boring maps, respawing sperm enemies, slow walking swamp maps, annoying recruit conditions, etc... Despite all that annoyance, about 2 or 3 of the maps presented an actual challenge since 60% of the characters you get are absolutely broken. It felt like Kaga didn't have a lot of time to balance this one. 

Oh there certainly were a lot of boring chapters. Even though I didn't get full recruitment, I will probably never play it again. Which is not something I can say for any mainline Fire Emblem game. As far as the balance goes, I think he was intentionally trying to make it easy, because he had talked about difficulty in previous interviews and said he'd like to make an easier game some day (just before actually making Thracia).

But hey, the ability to steal almost any weapon right from the enemy's hands is a tonne of fun.