What change(s) would you make to your favorite Fire Emblem game?

[Kantoor]

One thing that immediately comes to mind for me is removing all of the completely unthreatening and annoying 2-range enemies that are ubiquitous in Path of Radiance. They pose no challenge whatsoever and the solution to them is the same every time (move your juggernaut with a Hand Axe in range and no one else). One of the first things you notice when you go to play another game like Three Houses after completing a run of FE9 is that this type of enemy is completely absent from the map design and the FE9 developers were just obsessed with it. These pests are basically the sole reason you will never feel compelled to use swordlocked units in FE9 and it's not because it's actually harder or more strategically complex to clear chapters with them but merely because they are incapable of mindlessly nuking all of them on enemy phase so you'll have to wait through more combat animations before they die. This is also why people don't like Maniac mode since the biggest thing it does is increase the numerical quantity of these enemies. I would actually play it if someone made a patch to remove/rebalance these types of enemies.

[The Roger The Paladin]

Altered paralogue requirements. I'd also either remove the weapon triangle or modify the enemy variety on maps, because in spite of it generally adding to gameplay, adding it into a remake of a game which was not designed with it in mind only serves to nerf characters unintentionally. Next, I'd give back armors and Pegasus knights their sword access, and add back in the bow gun in some form. If you're remaking FE1, some of the notable quirks deserve to be there. Finally, I'd rebalance the Wooden Cavalry as a level. In FE1, Ballisticians were functionally tankier, slower moving archers. They had two range attacks. FE11 changing the Ballista's functionality to match later games might have been fine in any other level, but in the Wooden Cavalry, it creates what, especially on higher difficulties, is essentially a meatgrinder. I only ever got to see what a problem this was after I played FE1 incidentally.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Hmm...buff the pre-promotes we get in the back half of the game. Raise Marisa's stats and level. Give me a reason not to quit out of every overworld monster encounter. Put a second dragon stone in the second to last map. Write some sort of story for the Creature Campaign, maybe related to the apocalyptic earthquake Grado is facing in the Epilogue? Fire Emblem didn't do post-game back then, but this was a chance to really nail the idea. 

A lot of folks have talked about doing a proper army split in FE8 Chapter 9 so that you can play both Eirika and Ephraim's campaigns simultaneously with units of your choosing. The obvious drawback is how much harder you make the game. You'd have just 17 units between your two armies, counting the Lord. Only one is a Thief, and what if you end up throwing Colm in whichever route Rennac shows up? 'Just use Chest Keys'? Those are 300G per use in this game! The roster of FE8 is just too small for its GBA-era enemy density. And such a change would demand a lot of other adjustments and additions to the game. Great idea for a ROM hack, incredibly punishing for the base game.

[Etrurian emperor]

FE7:

Change the final boss. A generic Fire Dragon isn't really a fitting finale. I also think Lyn should get her own mode like Hector. 

Three Houses: Personalized White Clouds for each houses to make replays less of a shore. Also just flat out swap the story of Verdant Wind with that of Golden Wildfire. 

RD: Don't have Tormod and Muarim get kidnapped by aliens. Just have them join alongside Brom and Nephenee. They certainly have better reasons than any of those to join.

[Codename Shrimp]

• Remove forging or nerf it to max +2
• Debuffs clear after one turn
• Make Capture a learnable skill
• Add a save spot between Penultimate and Endgame
• Maybe a couple more non-kid recruits later in the game
• And most importantly: Nuke Ninja and fox hells out of existence

Edited August 8 by Codename Shrimp

[Shaky Jones]

New Mystery Bolt Axe. Let me benefit from Berserker Wrys. Or Warrior Wendel. 

 

Find the person who decided to give the final boss 40 defense on lunatic and have them eaten by said boss. I can't stand getting to the end of my favorite FE game just to resort to Falchion crit rigging and accepting that a lunatic ironman is borderline impossible without incredible luck or having half of your army be capped sages ready to kamikaze themselves for the greater goal of being featured in an Excelblem video. 

While we're on endgame, change the ambush spawns on those things. Make them spawn a few turns later and have the spots they appear in actually be block able. If you don't want it to be too easy to stall Medeus, just add more reinforcements from the south after like 6 or 7 turns or something. Wyverns have 12 move anyways, they'll catch up.

 

And while I'm still on about lunatic, where my stones at? How my boy Bantu gonna flame some Archaneans with 2 firestones that expire in 3 chapters if you're actually using the old man? I know the game doesn't want you having access to warp on lunatic, but if you're gonna do that, maybe change the chapter 14 secret shop to not screw you over there, or maybe throw in one of each stone throughout the main game to incentivize using manaketes more since they're pretty mid in DSFE compared to their retro counterpart. 

Heck, you can even just have 1 warp use the player can use on an emergency and funny people can just waste it for the funny shop. Give me SOMETHING to work with!

 

Justice for Horace. Mans got done dirty.

 

Justice for Roger. Mans need a baddie.

[vanguard333]

Path of Radiance:

1. Make it that removing a skill from a unit does not erase that skill.

2. Enable saving just before the Black Knight fight.

3. Remove the giant yellow triangle that floats above the currently selected tile. It's unnecessary as the tile is already highlighted, and it gets in the way.

 

Outside of that, I would change very little, as every change runs the risk of accidentally worsening the game instead of improving it.

[Samz707]

Three Houses:
 

Let Edelgard storm Agartha as an "Epilogue" after CF.

Replace usable broken weapons with every character having permanent access to unarmed combat as long as they aren't mounted.

Give Bernadetta a brawling boon.

 

[Metal Flash]

Awakening:

Make the Valm arc maps smaller with more terrain and have less high move enemies

Tie the Valmese invasion of Ylisse more into the overarching plot

Give Walhardt the Valentian Falchion

Lower growth rates and stat caps all around

Make Grima harder without just ballooning their stats to absurd degrees

Flesh out the holy war on Plegia more, give us Ylisseans who are eager to hunt the enemy and Plegians who fear them

[samthedigital]

I would change the Klein/Thea AI so that they don't have a chance to not move. It's always been my biggest pet peeve in FE6. If I were to expand to games I don't like as much my primary tweaks would be related to qol and game speed.

Edited August 9 by samthedigital

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Treating my favorite as Radiant Dawn, I will say:

- Enemy ranges can be viewed and "turned on" in Hard Mode. Moreover, there is now the option to view a "global danger zone" on all difficulties.

- Effective damage is now "Attack × 2", rather than "Might × 3". This means that Crossbows will do much less damage, while Tomes will do much more, when dealing effective damage.

- Wyverns are now weak to Bows, including Crossbows. Their weaknesses to Thunder Magic and Wyrmslayers remain. They are not weak to Wind Magic.

- The player receives a "BEXP Dump" whenever Part I units become playable later on. So in III-6, you get 1000 BEXP for every surviving unit who returns. Likewise when Ilyana and Tormod's crew show up again.

- BEXP received is no longer cut in half on Hard Mode. However, the "BEXP is less potent" on Hard Mode remains.

- The "Any Ally Dies" defeat condition no longer applies to chapters I-2 and I-3. Laura is still a defeat condition in I-2, while Aimee and Kurth are still defeat conditions in I-3. Sothe and Micaiah are defeat conditions regardless.

- The following Bond supports now exist: Edward/Leonardo (+10), Aran/Laura (+10), Volug/Nailah (+5), Kyza/Ranulf (+5), and Kurthnaga/Gareth (+5).

[Fire Emblem Fan]

My favorite is Blazing Blade, and the change I'd make is definitely the Support system. Specifically, the process of how you get supports. It is a SLOG. It takes forever to get even a C Support for just about every character! It needs to be quicker, and maybe not limited to only five total Supports.

[The Roger The Paladin]

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

 

- Wyverns are now weak to Bows, including Crossbows. Their weaknesses to Thunder Magic and Wyrmslayers remain. They are not weak to Wind Magic.

Having just replayed the game, wouldn't that make the desert map (4-3) an even bigger slog? Like don't get me wrong. Haar is broken, Jill can be extremely good and archers need the buff. But that map takes forever as is, and there's like three crossbow using warriors right next to each other in the middle of the map. Because of how crossbow might works, that'd mean your ability to remove them would be severely compromised even with the nerf from 3x effective damage to 2x effective damage, forcing you to drag your more durable infantry all the way across the map to deal with them. You could bring back the full-guard to negate that, but doing so would make Haar even more broken than he already was, so I'd say the compromise would be adjusting that map accordingly.

[Kantoor]

9 hours ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

Having just replayed the game, wouldn't that make the desert map (4-3) an even bigger slog? Like don't get me wrong. Haar is broken, Jill can be extremely good and archers need the buff. But that map takes forever as is, and there's like three crossbow using warriors right next to each other in the middle of the map. Because of how crossbow might works, that'd mean your ability to remove them would be severely compromised even with the nerf from 3x effective damage to 2x effective damage, forcing you to drag your more durable infantry all the way across the map to deal with them. You could bring back the full-guard to negate that, but doing so would make Haar even more broken than he already was, so I'd say the compromise would be adjusting that map accordingly.

Nuking a chapter with your flying juggernaut isn't a particularly interesting experience that you would want to preserve, even if it does save you the trouble of actually playing a map where you spawn in the center of the desert against enemies with Sleep staves and have few if any useful mages to contribute. I think the proposed changes are sensible and any issue indeed lies with the map itself.

[The Roger The Paladin]

4 hours ago, Kantoor said:

Nuking a chapter with your flying juggernaut isn't a particularly interesting experience that you would want to preserve, even if it does save you the trouble of actually playing a map where you spawn in the center of the desert against enemies with Sleep staves and have few if any useful mages to contribute. I think the proposed changes are sensible and any issue indeed lies with the map itself.

Hence why I said the compromise would be adjusting the map accordingly. Because it clearly could use some rebalancing anyway.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

I haven't played that map in a little while, but uh

14 hours ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

forcing you to drag your more durable infantry all the way across the map to deal with them

Can't you just have your Fliers Rescue/Carry them around? That way, each of your team members is able to contribute. Rather than your Wyverns just juggernauting.

15 hours ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

My favorite is Blazing Blade, and the change I'd make is definitely the Support system. Specifically, the process of how you get supports. It is a SLOG. It takes forever to get even a C Support for just about every character! It needs to be quicker, and maybe not limited to only five total Supports.

Obviously, they should build quicker. But re: the limit, how about this - after you reach 5 supports, you can still gain new ones. But, doing so cancels out existing supports. So, let's say Eliwood is at A with Hector and B with Ninian, but you want Eliwood's paired ending with Ninian. You can now do the A-support with Ninian... but his support with Hector goes down to B-rank. Likewise, if you want him to C-rank Lyn, he can do so - but his rank with Hector will fall down to C. This would make it possible to get multiple full support chains in a given playthrough, without giving the player's units an absurd amount of simultaneous support boosts.

[Codename Shrimp]

Better Solution: Nuke RD part 4 map from existence

[SnowFire]

There's already a "Three Houses, Five Years" thread in the 3H forum, and some of this advice is basic as all hell and has been endlessly whined on since the game's release ("Silver Snow & Verdant Wind are too close to one another!")...  but sure, what the hell.

• Ship a low-Monastery version of the game, available only after you've beaten the game once on that specific route.  (Absolutely not going to happen, but we can dream.)  Maybe even a Randomizer version if we want to get real fancy (which shouldn't be that much more of a lift once the monastery is coded out).  You can still set Skill goals, but that's about it.  Then assume the player does Some Amount of morale restoration & friendly events to auto-level team relationships & skill ranks.  If it's a full rando, there we go for recruitment, but otherwise just flat-out have a "recruit this character for X monastery-bucks" button.  Eventually hand out some auto-gardening stuff too, perhaps.  It would make replays of a route much more tolerable for people who feel compelled to maximize their many Monastery trips, and rando could lead to some fun stuff (let people deploy Sothis / Rhea / Judith /etc. !).
• There's obviously a ton of plot modifications & thoughts people have, and I know Three Hopes explored some of this.  And this can obviously verge into fanfic.  But if we had to make just one change, it'd be to rework TWSitD to at least attempt to have them make sense.  We know they hate and fear Fell Star Byleth, but why?  Are they just that afraid of Sothis's power - the power they already beat once?  What was the point of all their shenanigans in White Clouds - the most effective stuff they pulled already happened off-screen with them simply replacing various important people, but what's the reasoning behind the new stuff?  There's way too much "mwahaha because we're evil."  My suggestion would be to just ripoff FE Echoes postgame.  They're trying to make a pet super demonic time beast but all their attempts fail.  They try with Flayn's blood, they try to use some stabilizer generated from experiments on Remire villagers that had the unfortunate side effect of driving them insane and blowing their cover (which they try to HIDE rather than being proud of - not because they're ethically embarrassed, but because this was a huge failure of operational secrecy), but eventually realize they need Sothis's blood.  Since the game forces you to submit to Hanneman's probe, "Monica" discovers this file after she attends the academy.  Rather than just intending to kill Jeralt because (????), they try to kidnap Byleth, and Jeralt somehow gets killed in the struggle.  Later on, the Slitherers give up and assume you're dead and decide to focus their efforts via influencing Adrestria through Lord Arundel, but after they find out Byleth is still alive, resume their feud and attempt to create the Ultimate Monster a la Grima.  (And again refashion some attempts to kill Byleth to "kill Byleth in a way that still lets us suck their blood.")
• Nerf the boring stat-only skills, something Engage clearly paid attention to.  The fact that something like HP+5, Strength +2, Death Blow, (Weapon Proficiency) is an extremely valid use of 4/5 of your available skill slots for some sort of frontliner for nearly the entire game is lame.  Maybe those become class-linked skills you only keep while in that class to keep things fresh.
• Hand out more Divine Pulses early.  Engage also has the right idea here in just giving you the max from the start, but in general, 3H has a difficulty curve where the better you understand the game, the easier things get.  Ergo players need DPs the most early, and the least late, yet the curve is exactly the reverse!  I get that players would revolt if you took away their goodies they had gotten used to, but idk, move some of the Statue +1 DP's to the starting set, and maybe Sothis's Paralogue only offers +2 DPs and you have another +2 DPs at base.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

6 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Obviously, they should build quicker. But re: the limit, how about this - after you reach 5 supports, you can still gain new ones. But, doing so cancels out existing supports. So, let's say Eliwood is at A with Hector and B with Ninian, but you want Eliwood's paired ending with Ninian. You can now do the A-support with Ninian... but his support with Hector goes down to B-rank. Likewise, if you want him to C-rank Lyn, he can do so - but his rank with Hector will fall down to C. This would make it possible to get multiple full support chains in a given playthrough, without giving the player's units an absurd amount of simultaneous support boosts.

That would really only work if you could choose which support went down, and I'm not sure how that kind of system could be implemented. It'd probably be simpler to just say "Whoever got the A first is who the ending is with."

[The Roger The Paladin]

8 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Can't you just have your Fliers Rescue/Carry them around? That way, each of your team members is able to contribute. Rather than your Wyverns just juggernauting.

That'd probably work, as long as you have non-flier units strong enough to tank some hits on the team. Which realistically, one should in any situation where fliers aren't broken. No, I guess the changes are sound.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

1 hour ago, The Roger The Paladin said:

That'd probably work, as long as you have non-flier units strong enough to tank some hits on the team. Which realistically, one should in any situation where fliers aren't broken. No, I guess the changes are sound.

Depends on who you bring to Micaiah's route. There a lot of good infantry units with 1-2 range (Nolan, Nephenee, Danved, Shinon, Gatrie) to take on Crossbow enemies. But if you go in with a "Mages and Fliers only!" paradigm, due to the desert, it might become trickier.

3 hours ago, Fire Emblem Fan said:

That would really only work if you could choose which support went down, and I'm not sure how that kind of system could be implemented. It'd probably be simpler to just say "Whoever got the A first is who the ending is with."

Maybe so, but then you run into the issue of units having too many support boosts at once. Like, if PoR Ike is benefiting from 3 A-supports at once, he'll basically be untouchable, thanks to his Earth affinity. So maybe this would work, but only if one support is active at a given time? First based on level (A > B > C), followed by proximity (1 > 2 > 3), followed by timeline (earlier > later). So a unit can have plenty of supports, but not all in effect simultaneously.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

21 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Maybe so, but then you run into the issue of units having too many support boosts at once. Like, if PoR Ike is benefiting from 3 A-supports at once, he'll basically be untouchable, thanks to his Earth affinity. So maybe this would work, but only if one support is active at a given time? First based on level (A > B > C), followed by proximity (1 > 2 > 3), followed by timeline (earlier > later). So a unit can have plenty of supports, but not all in effect simultaneously.

That sounds good to me, I think that could work. It might seem complicated, but I think it'd be a good way to make it work.

[Jotari]

Today I feel like saying Genealogy of the Holy War is my favourite game in the series. And by far the change I would like the most there is giving the substitute units more of an identity by having their own backstories. For exact specifics, see here

(and since it's still on the first page commenting is not a necro post)

In addition to that

*Show Ishtore and Ishtar having a relationship (no, not that kind) and Ishtar being genuinely upset at the rebel army for killing her brother.

*The conflict in Chapter 9 is specifically derived from the protagonists being unable to trust Travant who genuinely wants to have a truce. Arione literally cannot understand this aspect of Travant and actively wonders about his final words.

*Ares only gets Mysteltainn if you don't get Earth Sword and kill Eldigan instead.

*Areone only appears in the final chapter if you don't kill him in Chapter  9. No Julius warping him away.

*Aida appears in Chapter 10. Or if we want to adhere to Thracia canon, at least mention her somewhere in Gen 2.

*In Chapter 3, Deirdre never leaves the castle. Instead, she gets captured when Langbolt and Reptor show up at the end. She is responsible for making sure Shannan and Seliph escape.

*Yulia regains her memories throughout Chapter 10 and willingly goes to Chalphy after conquering Miletos in order to talk to Alvis. It`s only then that she is captured. This change services many issues, A)it makes Manfroy less magically capable B)It gives Yulia more agency (even if she does it to do something slightly foolish, at least her heart is in the right place) C)It let`s us use Yuliya as a unit for gameplay for most of Chapter 10.

*Seliph needs an arc of some sort. IDK what, but something. Have him get into conflict with Lewyn more.

*Gen 2's Holy Weapons come at specific points instead of magically being put in inventories because of inheritance.

**Squads of enemies not in range of any units move all at once.

*A calendar system like I posted about before (this is mainly to allow limited trading)

*An Armsthrift skill ring

*Give Prince either staves or lances

*One alternate class change for every character (children inherited the class of their non inherited parent)

*Children inherit all items from parents, not only items they can use (because now they have a class change option that can probably use said items)

*Eve, Ava and Alva all take to the field against Sigurd in Chapter 3 if they survived Chapter 2.

*In certain chapters, after 50 turns have past, enemies start spawning on the edge of the map and try to seize your home castle. There is no end to these enemies and they get progressively stronger as time goes on. They also come with the Void Curse skill (or some other name) which means they provide 0exp and, more importantly, don't contribute to kills on weapons. The reason for this is to add pressure and a hurry up aspect to the chapters as well as just making the castle defense aspect of the game more of a thing.

*Spell Leinster correctly

*An in-game dynamic family tree complete with he names of all the spouses (give Sigurd's mother  name!). It updates as children are born and shows which characters are deceased.

Edited August 12 by Jotari

[Dark Holy Elf]

On 8/9/2024 at 6:24 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Treating my favorite as Radiant Dawn, I will say:

 

I really like all of these. I'm an especially big fan of "weakness is 2x attack" — it's easy to understand and calculate, and doesn't require extra trips to the status screen and/or weapon tooltips — but no game would benefit from it more than RD and its too-swingy crossbows.

On 8/9/2024 at 8:10 PM, The Roger The Paladin said:

Having just replayed the game, wouldn't that make the desert map (4-3) an even bigger slog?

I think it would improve 4-3 considerably from a design standpoint:

• Haar would not be able to dominate the map as much as he currently does (unless you give him Nullify), which is good because a majority of first-time players will not even have Haar there, making the map less swingy based on that.
• Sigrun and Naesala, who are forced there, are now better since crossbows are now 33% weaker in terms of effective Atk than they are in the original game. (As well as Tanith and Nealuchi who iirc default to that route, and Marcia/Janaff/Ulki as well)

Obviously you could make other changes to improve the map further and I'd be for those, but I think this change alone is a already positive one.

 

Anyway my favourite is Three Houses so...

-My big one is change the interface so that any time you learn a sixth ability or fourth combat art, you immediately get a prompt to choose which five/three to currently set, similar to how Awakening/Fates handled your sixth learned skill.

-I generally agree that the monastery could be streamlined in some way, though exactly how is a tough call. I haven't thought this through too much, but something like "you can explore whenever you want, but you only get a fresh set of monastery activity points once per month; motivation lasts for the entire month; you get weekends which can be used for either instruct or battle or rest, instruct would involve a single prompt per character instead of 4-5" would be a start.

-If the slitherers are gonna remain in the story I'd like them to be both more clever and more sympathetic, even if they're ultimately always an antagonistic force – goodness knows the potential is there! See @SnowFire basically.

[Etrurian emperor]

Oh yeah. Another thing on Three Houses. Have Byleth disappear due to being exiled to the shadow Realm by Solon. That makes MUCH more sense then Byleth falling into a random hole and pulling herself out after five years. It would also give the Slitherers one time where they don't completely fail.