What One Change Would You Make to Your LEAST favorite FE Game?

[Shaky Jones]

This is practically just a copy of @Kantoor's topic recently about changes to your favorite FE, but the opposite.

If you were allowed to make 1 single change to whatever you think the worst FE game is, what change would that be, and more importantly, by how much would that improvement change the game for you? Would it bump the game from an E tier to C, or maybe you only really dislike 1 aspect and with just one change it skyrockets to an A tier. Maybe the game was a lost cause and you'll spend the rest of the post calling it unplayable garbage. That is fine. Vehement hatred is welcome.

There is 1 rule to this, and it's that you can't be too broad with the change. Anyone can say "I'd fix the story of Fates" or "I'd change the gameplay of SoV". A change related to narrative elements need to be limited to something like changing a single major character, the writing of an arc of the game, changing or adding to the support convos of a game, etc. More broad but reasonable examples would be restructuring the pacing or adding scenes that you feel would clarify unexplained elements or add to characters who weren't fleshed out enough in your eyes (i.e: give Arvis more screentime, make the Valm arc of Awakening more linked to the overall narrative, make Oliver the true final boss of Radiant Dawn, etc).

For gameplay, being too board would be to simply say you'd make Sacred Stones harder. Specify which 1 category you'd change that would best increase the strategic difficulty in your eyes. Map layout, enemy positioning, simple stat buffs (growth rates and bases are included together, but you can state if you'd only change 1 of the 2), weapon changes, kill Seth, etc. I wouldn't worry too much. I'm not going to berate you like a discord mod over this. Just don't say you'd make a bad game good by making it better.

 

I'll give my own examples that's broad enough while still being specific. I have a burning hatred for Genealogy. I could write a 10 page essay on why every single aspect of that game does not function as an srpg, but if there's anything Engage taught me, it's that I could forgive almost all of it, if the enemy layout wasn't so damn boring! The entire game is just Mario Maker tier 20 goombas smushed in a boring field and you solo them because why would you try doing the math to see how mage kid would do when you know Quan will do fine. Engage just takes from an FE4 map, but changes the enemy layout to be more than just a squad hurdled up whispering spooky stories, and the map was incredibly fun for me. Obviously, there's far more to this than the layout, but it played a major role in "fixing" the map. Even if I still gotta deal with long maps and OP holy weapons, having enemies reasonably split throughout the long and diverse map and incentivizing splitting my group and at least looking like there was strategic effort put into creating a challenging map would go a long way in making the game feel...competent.

Would I like the game? Absolutely not. But I could see it going from super F to a high C. That's a pretty big leap in my eyes. If my least favorite game was Tear Ring, I probably could make it go from a D to a whopping A, as my only real concern with the game that bothers me to no end are the awful maps. There are far too many maps that are simply empty fields or unnecessarily large swamp zones that turn maps into a complete slog. If the map layout was more like FE3 or even some FE5 maps, I might love the game. Okay, I'd prefer no cantor spam and the need of a guide to get most items in the game is stupid, but there is so much good in this game I simply can't appreciate because the maps straight up give me brain rot. It's depressing. Have you seen chapter 32?

Anyways, can't wait to hear your rants and deep dive analysis on what could've been. Mainly the former.

[Etrurian emperor]

Shadow Dragon: Make its cast and writing less of a direct port of a decades old, wildly outdated NES game. The biggest problem of Shadow Dragon is that its world, story and characters refuse to be anything more then they were in the NES era. Gharnef is still a bare bones NES villain, Marth still mostly just talks to the boring advisor and the plot princess, Hardin' still doesn't have a role setting him up for villainy, some characters still only have a death quote as dialogue and the story is still bland as toast. 

Doing that would fix a lot because the gameplay sure isn't a flaw in Shadow Dragon. Its the traditional FE experience, but just with an allergy to any sort of bells and whistles. So if we add the bells and whistle we'd have a solid game. 

If Echoes can take a bunch of non entities and make them a very engaging cast then so could Shadow Dragon. 

Binding Blade: Make it more of a sequel to Blazing Sword. 

Is it fair to resent the game for not being a good sequel to a game that doesn't exist yet? No not really, but its still pretty jarring to compare the two. In tone and story the game is different and in many cases more bland than Blazing Sword, and it lacks the reverence for side characters that were never intended to be main characters at that point. Binding Elibe and Blazing Elibe just don't feel the same. Part of this can be excused by scale. Blazing is a leisurely trip across just a few countries in relative peace while Binding is a full scale war. But there are also more fundamental difference like the nature of dragons.

Fire Emblem Warriors: Make it a celebration of the series as a whole rather then just focus on one era and say fans of any other game aren't welcome at the party. Its just even such a drastic change. Just cut some of the Fates bloat and add some token representation of the other games. 

[Dayni]

48 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

Have you seen chapter 32?

Yes. How can I unsee it?

Hmm, I know my least favourite is no question SDatBoL, but my main issues are effectively resolved by not being on the NES so that's fixed twice over.

There's enough of straightforward answers for most of the games. Binding Blade however is the game I've been playing most recently and playing through it made me affirm one thing I'd seen in some videos.

The idea of weapon types being tied to factions (Axes for the bandits, Lances as the arms of the Empire, Swords as a type mainly associated with the heroes and monstrous powers as the final fights) may be easy shorthand, but I don't like it defining things and I hate what it does to games with the weapon triangle. Binding Blade is the game I think suffers for it, though Shadow Dragon is also a case where this applies I want to focus on BinB. It ensures that unit balance condemns certain units and makes many others too much of a crapshoot to be bothering with in more top level play. I know bases also affirm it for many of those I'm arguing this applies to, but when you're in late game and seeing a unit with WTA below 65% hit rate that is going to make you ask what was it worth training them? And the funny part is? That feel for balance just gets thrown to the bin with it's most powerful units, yet I know I could still be asking myself with units like HM Melady or Perceval what they're doing with their lance's hit rates if the rng rolls awwkardly enough. As for the other weapon types, Bows are I feel missing a bit of hit rate for early game use, magic is mostly Anima because of the unit types being used and Anima hit rate sure but Light's main problem is access and Dark's is units. Give a higher base rank for Light on promotion, better bases on the shamans and Staves increases in wexp per use and we're probably somewhere already. But back to the physical triangle.

Here's where I know I'm about to come a cropper. Because for all that I feel I know my problem, the solution feels less certain. As in, you have to account for the changes throughout the game. You'd have to rebalance all the bandits so they're not going to 1-shot with increased hit rates. To see if your waves of wyverns are going to be more of a problem or not. To check that those nomads would be any more of a threat in Sacae. To check if Henning would be even more of a barrier in 8x, alongside the late-endgame heroes. And then it comes to the other problem. Do we even want dodge tanking gone? I feel like that's the compromise needed with this adjustment, but that's also still a possible point to consider for the player's experience of the game.

So what's the point of my bother? To keep weapon balance a bit less like a crapshoot or to make the player's experience feel less like one? Because I'm pretty sure answering one will not answer the other.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Ahh, changing one thing to a game, leaving all other things the same? Or being transported in that development process so that the experience can coalesce around this new idea. I'm gonna go with the former because I like the specificity of trying to answer such a tough question.

My least favorite FE is 12. But I never finished 12. Hey, my second least favorite is FE11 though. I'm going to suggest one change to both games. And no it's not Put them together into one game. That wouldn't fix either of them, it'd just make a bad game twice as long. And one of the strengths of Archanea is how short and non-bloated it is with between-map activities (you can probably guess what my hangups with 12 are).

Instead I propose bringing back Dismount from FE3. It's almost the only gameplay innovation of FE3 and its removal from the DS era is baffling to me. The other Subtractions can at least be explained by "this is how modern fire emblem handles this". Dismount is not some outdated mechanic like Weapon Level was. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if it was planned to be in FE1 but they couldn't work out the technical details in time. Dismount prompts you to deploy and maybe even raise more units than your Cavalier and Flier standbys, because the Indoors Chapters just turn them into a heavily stats nerfed 6 Mov swordie. Of course you may be thinking What about Reclass? That's what I'm saying! Look at the map you're going to be dealing with, and weigh if you need to change your army accordingly. You can't stop FE Players from deploying their favorites. How often do you reclass in FE11? Most of the great units are in the best classes already. The only Reclasses everyone can agree on are making Jagen a Dracoknight, and Wolf/Sedgar into whatever helps them level up into a monster. From there they'd be a Paladin or Dracoknight if they could.

I think the addition of Dismount, at least to FE11, would have been extremely novel. The first Western FE to attempt that mechanic, a full decade before Three Houses. I guarantee we'd have people on these forums saying Bring back Dismount the way they say Bring back Ledges from FE10. Because it's interesting! And factually done better than it was in Three Houses in a game balance sense. Plus it would enhance FE11's brand new idea: Reclass by prompting the player to actually use it. 

Edit: Oh, and FE11 also has this new Cliff tile terrain type, that only footies can traverse. I only remember it appearing in two maps (the Maria map and the Michalis map), but that would also prompt more dismounting than just entering a building

Edited August 16 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Sidereal Wraith]

With Engage completely rewriting the story so that it doesn't have enough plot holes to easily be mistake for Swiss cheese and relying on the characters being dumb as dirt for most of its events to actually happen.

Edited August 16 by Sidereal Wraith

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

For Engage, the thing that made me stop playing was... that damned Engagement Ring paralogue. The game tells me it's a "kill boss" map. I look at it, and start to get cheeky. Realize "hey, I can set up a first-turn boss kill!". I set up my army accordingly, giving them just the tools they'll need to satisfy the stated objective. It's tight, but I manage to eat through all the boss' "revival stones" (don't get me started) and clear the map on turn 1.

Except... I haven't beaten the map. The victory condition just changed, right under my feet. They just "Foreign Land and Sky"ed me. My units, who were set up merely for the bosskill, left ill-equipped for the remainder of the map. That was when I turned off the game, took out the cartridge, and haven't returned since.

Suffice it to say, my one change would be, Be honest about victory conditions. No, it's not just an Engage thing. But I was already burned out by the game that tried to redeem Zephia, for whatever goddess-forsaken reason. They give me a chance to get in, get out with a quick little puzzle, and they pull the football out right before contact. It's hard to see myself going back to this game that doesn't have any sense of decency.

...I do miss Sommie, though. Best character from the worst game.

[samthedigital]

Better hardware would help Three Houses quite a bit for me, and it does not seem like an unrealistic change depending on what Nintendo does for their next console. That being said it's not really a change to the game itself; I just wanted to bring it up because it would move the needle somewhat. If I were to change anything about the actual game it would probably be something related to the Monastery. I would enjoy the game a lot more if I could spend my activity points through a menu and not walk around the Monastery. I find that the unit customization is interesting, but I do not like the gameplay tied to it. I just don't think that this sort of thing would be very popular for the average player.

To be fair to Three Houses I dislike Genealogy and SoV more. It's just that I would want several changes to make Genealogy palatable, and SoV isn't a game that I would want to fix even if I don't enjoy the game very much.

[Jotari]

My least favourite game is Old Mystery. And I guess I would change basically the entire plot. Not sure what I'd replace it with (no, that's not true, I would totally replace the entirety of Book 2 with a Pyrathi centric story, but no one but me would want to play it). Maybe a longer time skip and we could check back in on Marth when he has kids and is a proper adult, either focusing on one of his kids as a protagonist or even just ten years or so to let another threat rise up more organically (a longer time skip would also help make more sense of the utter nonsense that is Camus's timeline).

Also I'd put a Gaiden character in there as a playable cameo.

8 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

Anyone can say "I'd fix the story of Fates" or "I'd change the gameplay of SoV". A change related to narrative elements need to be limited to something like changing a single major character, the writing of an arc of the game, changing or adding to the support convos of a game, etc.

Oh...guess I should read the criteria before commenting. Okay, specifically the timeline thing then. Old Mystery has a longer time skip and all the Shadow Dragon villains stay dead.

7 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Shadow Dragon: Make its cast and writing less of a direct port of a decades old, wildly outdated NES game. The biggest problem of Shadow Dragon is that its world, story and characters refuse to be anything more then they were in the NES era. Gharnef is still a bare bones NES villain, Marth still mostly just talks to the boring advisor and the plot princess, Hardin' still doesn't have a role setting him up for villainy, some characters still only have a death quote as dialogue and the story is still bland as toast. 

Doing that would fix a lot because the gameplay sure isn't a flaw in Shadow Dragon. Its the traditional FE experience, but just with an allergy to any sort of bells and whistles. So if we add the bells and whistle we'd have a solid game. 

If Echoes can take a bunch of non entities and make them a very engaging cast then so could Shadow Dragon. 

Binding Blade: Make it more of a sequel to Blazing Sword. 

Is it fair to resent the game for not being a good sequel to a game that doesn't exist yet? No not really, but its still pretty jarring to compare the two. In tone and story the game is different and in many cases more bland than Blazing Sword, and it lacks the reverence for side characters that were never intended to be main characters at that point. Binding Elibe and Blazing Elibe just don't feel the same. Part of this can be excused by scale. Blazing is a leisurely trip across just a few countries in relative peace while Binding is a full scale war. But there are also more fundamental difference like the nature of dragons.

Fire Emblem Warriors: Make it a celebration of the series as a whole rather then just focus on one era and say fans of any other game aren't welcome at the party. Its just even such a drastic change. Just cut some of the Fates bloat and add some token representation of the other games. 

You never posted on it so you might get some enjoyment reading this thread 

 

2 hours ago, samthedigital said:

Better hardware would help Three Houses quite a bit for me, and it does not seem like an unrealistic change depending on what Nintendo does for their next console. That being said it's not really a change to the game itself; I just wanted to bring it up because it would move the needle somewhat. If I were to change anything about the actual game it would probably be something related to the Monastery. I would enjoy the game a lot more if I could spend my activity points through a menu and not walk around the Monastery. I find that the unit customization is interesting, but I do not like the gameplay tied to it. I just don't think that this sort of thing would be very popular for the average player.

To be fair to Three Houses I dislike Genealogy and SoV more. It's just that I would want several changes to make Genealogy palatable, and SoV isn't a game that I would want to fix even if I don't enjoy the game very much.

I don't think the hardware is the problem with any of Three Houses issues. It's just poor coding. If the Wii U can handle Breath of the Wild then the Switch should have no excuses for doing anything a Fire Emblem game requires.

Edited August 16 by Jotari

[samthedigital]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

I don't think the hardware is the problem with any of Three Houses issues. It's just poor coding.

I was just alluding to the fact that better hardware would help with load times and framerate. The game could be better optimized though, sure.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

I was just alluding to the fact that better hardware would help with load times and framerate. The game could be better optimized though, sure.

Better hardware and they'll just make the same unrefined decisions. Engage and Three Houses could probably run on the Wii with only the barest reduction in visual quality if they were made properly.

[Shaky Jones]

8 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Shadow Dragon: Make its cast and writing less of a direct port of a decades old, wildly outdated NES game. The biggest problem of Shadow Dragon is that its world, story and characters refuse to be anything more then they were in the NES era.

Etrurian Emperor: "This script is too dated. We need to update this to modern standards.

IntSys Employees: "Modernize the writing. Got it."

 

"Milord, Dolhr has rizzed Macedohio into negative aura status, and Grust is flamin our gyatts"

"Jagen, are we cooked?"

9 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

If Echoes can take a bunch of non entities and make them a very engaging cast then so could Shadow Dragon

Clearly, you've never done a Roger boss kill run. All the character I need.

9 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Binding Blade: Make it more of a sequel to Blazing Sword.

Blazing Blade: Make it more related to Binding Blade

9 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Fire Emblem Warriors: Make it a celebration of the series as a whole rather then just focus on one era and say fans of any other game aren't welcome at the party. Its just even such a drastic change. Just cut some of the Fates bloat and add some token representation of the other games. 

8 hours ago, Dayni said:

Hmm, I know my least favourite is no question SDatBoL, but my main issues are effectively resolved by not being on the NES so that's fixed twice over.

Yeah I kind of assume people will get the message that NES games don't really count. It's a cheap answer to a least favorite FE anyways. 

8 hours ago, Dayni said:

The idea of weapon types being tied to factions (Axes for the bandits, Lances as the arms of the Empire, Swords as a type mainly associated with the heroes and monstrous powers as the final fights) may be easy shorthand, but I don't like it defining things and I hate what it does to games with the weapon triangle. Binding Blade is the game I think suffers for it, though Shadow Dragon is also a case where this applies I want to focus on BinB. It ensures that unit balance condemns certain units and makes many others too much of a crapshoot to be bothering with in more top level play. I know bases also affirm it for many of those I'm arguing this applies to, but when you're in late game and seeing a unit with WTA below 65% hit rate that is going to make you ask what was it worth training them? And the funny part is? That feel for balance just gets thrown to the bin with it's most powerful units, yet I know I could still be asking myself with units like HM Melady or Perceval what they're doing with their lance's hit rates if the rng rolls awwkardly enough. As for the other weapon types, Bows are I feel missing a bit of hit rate for early game use, magic is mostly Anima because of the unit types being used and Anima hit rate sure but Light's main problem is access and Dark's is units. Give a higher base rank for Light on promotion, better bases on the shamans and Staves increases in wexp per use and we're probably somewhere already. But back to the physical triangle.

I'm going to assume I'm misreading this, because this sounds a lot more of a "FE6 hit rates bad" more than "weapon factions bad", which would be par for the course.

6 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Ahh, changing one thing to a game, leaving all other things the same? Or being transported in that development process so that the experience can coalesce around this new idea. I'm gonna go with the former because I like the specificity of trying to answer such a tough question.

Mainly the former but the ladder is fine if you're not lame about it.

6 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

My least favorite FE is 12. But I never finished 12. Hey, my second least favorite is FE11 though.

6 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

And no it's not Put them together into one game. That wouldn't fix either of them, it'd just make a bad game twice as long.

FE fans saying to split FE4 maps into a regular size FE campaign (you just turned it into Gaiden)

6 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Instead I propose bringing back Dismount from FE3. It's almost the only gameplay innovation of FE3 and its removal from the DS era is baffling to me.

Honestly, if I had to make 1 change from FE3, it'd be to add Wrys back.

Give me a 2ND choice though, and I'd have to change something about the dismount mechanic. It's a decent concept in theory, but man do indoor maps suffer hard. It's never fun in a Kaga game when I'm forced to have zero mounts indoors and deal with 75% of my army being mercs. Doesn't help that for FE1, you know these maps were not initially designed with forced dismount in mind. And outdoors, it's not really that useful. I'll rarely dismount unless Kaga decided to place a million trees to basically force me out. It's cool when there's the occasional horseslayer incentive, but they're mainly meant to exist to prevent you from using a team of mounts to begin with. 

I think it was probably a good thing we didn't get it in the remakes. Not really worth the hassle imo, and it'd be a pointless use of time given you'd then just feel obligated to reclass out and back in every few chapters, which could get annoying.

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

that damned Engagement Ring paralogue.

I hear people talk about that being a nightmare. I'm amazed I did it without too much issue on my first and only maddening run. Haven't replayed Engage since, but zerker Lindon goes a long way.

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

Suffice it to say, my one change would be, Be honest about victory conditions. No, it's not just an Engage thing. But I was already burned out by the game that tried to redeem Zephia, for whatever goddess-forsaken reason. They give me a chance to get in, get out with a quick little puzzle, and they pull the football out right before contact. It's hard to see myself going back to this game that doesn't have any sense of decency.

Totally fair complaint and change. 

That said....I find the idea of trolling LTC wannabes to be bloody hysterical. Unlucky.

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

..I do miss Sommie, though. Best character from the worst game.

My change to Engage is to remove Sommie. 

6 hours ago, Sidereal Wraith said:

With Engage completely rewriting the story so that it doesn't have enough plot holes to easily be mistake for Swiss cheese and relying on the characters being dumb as dirt for most of its events to actually happen.

I gave you one job.

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

Oh...guess I should read the criteria before commenting. Okay, specifically the timeline thing then. Old Mystery has a longer time skip and all the Shadow Dragon villains stay dead.

At least you got it.

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

My least favourite game is Old Mystery

You're really lucky I replied late to this.

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

Also I'd put a Gaiden character in there as a playable cameo.

Something something Merric Luthier reference.

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

You never posted on it so you might get some enjoyment reading this thread

You can always count on Jotari to shill past works.

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

I don't think the hardware is the problem with any of Three Houses issues. It's just poor coding. If the Wii U can handle Breath of the Wild then the Switch should have no excuses for doing anything a Fire Emblem game requires.

Yeah 3H did not know what it was doing.

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

I was just alluding to the fact that better hardware would help with load times and framerate. The game could be better optimized though, sure.

3H using all its given power to visualize a png of oranges in a stand (it uses 1% of the Switch's hardware).

[Dayni]

47 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

Yeah I kind of assume people will get the message that NES games don't really count. It's a cheap answer to a least favorite FE anyways. 

A point that may be worth calling out on my reasoning, but for me many of the limitations on SDatBoL are things that also mark it as very ambitious for the NES to make the game on it to begin with. There's a reason why Gaiden handles inventory so differently after all for instance.

47 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

I'm going to assume I'm misreading this, because this sounds a lot more of a "FE6 hit rates bad" more than "weapon factions bad", which would be par for the course.

It's a fair point against it, considering it's BinB I'm arguing about instead of SD which I also raised as a candidate and one whom likely would be more about redesigning all the enemies and what's being carried because it's based off of games with no weapon triangle. For BinB's case, bad hit rates are the effect that is being raised, but it's partly a consequence of weapon factions.

And it's also a point that my potential solution has limits more because of my thoughts on the matter than because of the inherent idea of weapon factions or hit rate balance, hell I'm calling myself out on it in the post.

55 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

My change to Engage is to remove Sommie. 

Miss me with that.

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

You can always count on Jotari to shill past works.

I am nothing if not shameless.

[lenticular]

Depends on whether we're just talking mainline games or if we're including spin-offs too. For mainline games, I don't really have a clear least favourite, but for today I'm going to say that it's either Blazing Blade or Sacred Stones. Which, conveniently, have exactly the same single fix: make it less of a tedious grindfest to actually gain supports. I don't think I really need to elaborate on that at all. As a runner up for for Blazing Blade only, I'd also like to remove the avatar, because it creeps me the hell out every time that Lyn turns to face directly into the camera and talk to me.

If we're allowed spin-offs, I do have a clear least favourite, which is Heroes where my one change would be to remove all gacha elements. Which might be too broad, but I can't think of any way to be more specific with this.

4 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

My change to Engage is to remove Sommie. 

I mean, it's a good change, but if I only get one change to Engage then I'm getting rid of Emblems. (I ought to make a separate thread about this at some point.)

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

3 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

3H using all its given power to visualize a png of oranges in a stand (it uses 1% of the Switch's hardware).

Standing here

I realize

These support backgrounds

Really hurt my eyes!

3 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

My change to Engage is to remove Sommie. 

Series' greatest monsters:

5. Izuka

4. Valter

3. Lifis

2. @Shaky Jones

1. Garon

4 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

That said....I find the idea of trolling LTC wannabes to be bloody hysterical. Unlucky.

It wasn't even the "LTCery". It was "I'm going on vacation soon and want to finish these chapters relatively quickly". Apparently, that wasn't an option.

4 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

"Milord, Dolhr has rizzed Macedohio into negative aura status, and Grust is flamin our gyatts"

"Jagen, are we cooked?"

"Prince Marth, is this course of action wise? Pyrathi will not take kindly to our violation of its neutrality."

"Jagen, I'm literally neurodivergent and a minor."

7 hours ago, Jotari said:

Oh...guess I should read the criteria before commenting. Okay, specifically the timeline thing then. Old Mystery has a longer time skip and all the Shadow Dragon villains stay dead.

This would be great, because bringing everybody back undermines Mystery's story. If "somehow Gharnef returned" once, what's stopping him from doing it again? Why do any of these wars matters, if they have no permanent effects?

6 minutes ago, lenticular said:

I mean, it's a good change, but if I only get one change to Engage then I'm getting rid of Emblems. (I ought to make a separate thread about this at some point.)

Ah yes, Fire: Engage.

[Saint Rubenio]

15 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

kill Seth

Heh...

Well, simply raising stats is never a magic fix but I do feel a decent increase of like, 4-5 to all offensive (strictly offensive) stats for all enemies in PoR would be a good start. Make them more threatening without the JP maniac issue of the game just taking a thousand hours to complete because the enemies are too tanky. Though, being honest, that game's difficulty problem needs a lot more than any one change. This probably wouldn't stop the game from breaking on Tanith's gimmick or any BEXP-boosted unit or Titania.

Edited August 16 by Saint Rubenio

[samthedigital]

4 hours ago, Jotari said:

Better hardware and they'll just make the same unrefined decisions. Engage and Three Houses could probably run on the Wii with only the barest reduction in visual quality if they were made properly.

They can make the same unrefined decisions and the game would still run better on more modern hardware unless they chose to emulate the switch instead of drawing from better hardware. That would be funny, but unlikely if a hypothetical Switch 2 released with backwards compatibility.

[Sidereal Wraith]

5 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

I gave you one job.

I didn’t write the script, for if I had I probably would have made Alear more like Rafal only less stupid and actually made the whole being a god to the people of Elyos thing actually mean something in the story.

Edited August 16 by Sidereal Wraith

[Jotari]

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

This would be great, because bringing everybody back undermines Mystery's story. If "somehow Gharnef returned" once, what's stopping him from doing it again? Why do any of these wars matters, if they have no permanent effects?

Medeus gleefully says he's going to keep coming back again and again and again. Honestly, if it wasn't for Kaga wanting to switch gears entirely with Jugdral there's a good chance Fire Emblem would have been the never ending Zelda style never ending battle against Medeus and Gharnef. Thankfully it didn't, but now Medeus' comment comes across as a bit funny because he doesn't end up coming back again (unless you want to count TMS) and by leaning into that whole thing it kind of did a disservice to the actual interesting backstory that New Mystery gave him by just making him generically evil.

[The Roger The Paladin]

Okay, for the sake of this let's go with Fates. It's the one I most want a change in.
Specifically, if I were in charge, there would be one game, on one cart, as the standard. All three routes built in. You can say it isn't gameplay, but when the in game route selection just tries to sell you the other routes as DLC, it comes close enough for me.
 

Spoiler

I stand by this even though I wouldn't benefit at all from the change because I bought a copy of the special edition pre-owned for what translates to $26.50 (US) back in 2017.
I just remember almost dropping the franchise when they announced they were splitting it like that, and I'm still sore over it.

Alternatively, Three Houses.
I'd condense the monastery into either something more like My Castle from Fates, or the base stuff from Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn.
Maybe just drop fishing and gardening entirely. It takes too long, and makes the game feel more like a standard RPG than a SRPG.
It's not the kind of gameplay I buy these for.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

They can make the same unrefined decisions and the game would still run better on more modern hardware unless they chose to emulate the switch instead of drawing from better hardware. That would be funny, but unlikely if a hypothetical Switch 2 released with backwards compatibility.

Okay, I'll rephrase that, worse decisions. The problems with Switch Fire Emblem are problems programmers managed to figure ways around back in the Nintendo 64 days. Give them more power and they're going to use more power intensive methods of rendering higher and higher quality images that still don't actually look any better than the stuff we were getting in other games fifteen years ago. The hardware is not the problem here, the problem is that they simply aren't prioritizing this aspect of game design. It's the same reason every single cutscene has characters just stand statically there staring at each other. They simply don't think load times or a lack of cinematography is something that needs to be fixed. To stay on brand and shamelessly shill and old thread of mine FIRE EMBLEM NEEDS MORE TABLES

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

6 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Medeus gleefully says he's going to keep coming back again and again and again. Honestly, if it wasn't for Kaga wanting to switch gears entirely with Jugdral there's a good chance Fire Emblem would have been the never ending Zelda style never ending battle against Medeus and Gharnef. Thankfully it didn't, but now Medeus' comment comes across as a bit funny because he doesn't end up coming back again (unless you want to count TMS) and by leaning into that whole thing it kind of did a disservice to the actual interesting backstory that New Mystery gave him by just making him generically evil.

Broke: "Medeus is a representation of the darkness that festers in the hearts of men. So long as this evil persists, he will persist and return."

Woke: "Medeus is one of the last of his kind, a survivor of a tragedy that befell his people. He simply wants the opportunity to live out his days without fear of extermination."

Bespoke: "Medeus is angy dragon. But Falchion and Divinestone go brrr haha."

[X-Naut]

6 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

Give me a 2ND choice though, and I'd have to change something about the dismount mechanic. It's a decent concept in theory, but man do indoor maps suffer hard. It's never fun in a Kaga game when I'm forced to have zero mounts indoors and deal with 75% of my army being mercs. Doesn't help that for FE1, you know these maps were not initially designed with forced dismount in mind. And outdoors, it's not really that useful. I'll rarely dismount unless Kaga decided to place a million trees to basically force me out. It's cool when there's the occasional horseslayer incentive, but they're mainly meant to exist to prevent you from using a team of mounts to begin with. 

I think it was probably a good thing we didn't get it in the remakes. Not really worth the hassle imo, and it'd be a pointless use of time given you'd then just feel obligated to reclass out and back in every few chapters, which could get annoying.

I posted in a topic about dismounting on another forum yesterday and you hit one of my big critiques (the other is being too reversible outdoors), so I'll repost my thoughts here: it would be more productive to nerf mounts indoors by making indoor terrain less favorable to them. 3H stairs gimping cavalry was a start that can easily be taken further. Make pillars infantry-only so they have a unique cover option. Make one-tile doorways their own tile type that blocks mounts to create infantry-only zones. Heck, make indoors the desert equivalent for fliers! You can add dismounting anyway to give them an out if reclassing isn't there to make it pointless!

Alongside making indoor maps slightly smaller/more navigable, you could also give dedicated infantry classes extra movement on indoor terrain.

[Jotari]

49 minutes ago, X-Naut said:

I posted in a topic about dismounting on another forum yesterday and you hit one of my big critiques (the other is being too reversible outdoors), so I'll repost my thoughts here: it would be more productive to nerf mounts indoors by making indoor terrain less favorable to them. 3H stairs gimping cavalry was a start that can easily be taken further. Make pillars infantry-only so they have a unique cover option. Make one-tile doorways their own tile type that blocks mounts to create infantry-only zones. Heck, make indoors the desert equivalent for fliers! You can add dismounting anyway to give them an out if reclassing isn't there to make it pointless!

Alongside making indoor maps slightly smaller/more navigable, you could also give dedicated infantry classes extra movement on indoor terrain.

Radiant Dawn actually does that if I remember correctly. In door maps have -1 move and an avoid penalty for mounted units. Though unlike Archanea, Radiant Dawn actually doesn't have a whole lot of indoor maps (I don't think the tower counts as indoor), so the only noticeable effect this actually has is to screw Fiona over even more for 1-E.

[samthedigital]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Okay, I'll rephrase that, worse decisions. The problems with Switch Fire Emblem are problems programmers managed to figure ways around back in the Nintendo 64 days. Give them more power and they're going to use more power intensive methods of rendering higher and higher quality images that still don't actually look any better than the stuff we were getting in other games fifteen years ago. The hardware is not the problem here, the problem is that they simply aren't prioritizing this aspect of game design. It's the same reason every single cutscene has characters just stand statically there staring at each other. They simply don't think load times or a lack of cinematography is something that needs to be fixed. To stay on brand and shamelessly shill and old thread of mine FIRE EMBLEM NEEDS MORE TABLES

If I'm being honest I don't know if you're disagreeing with me or just going on a tangent about how Three Houses could have been better in those aspects if they had prioritized that for the Switch. If it's the latter then I agree with you.