Let's Discuss The TearRing Saga.

[VincentASM]

Dragon Scale is for transformed dragons. It basically makes them invincible.

The Dragon Mail is enemy-only AFAIK, although it replaces the Dragon Scale in Versus Mode.

[Don Draper]

I like the look of some the lances too:

Canaan Lance: 15 Pow, 100 Hit, 1~2 Rng, 6 Wt, 20 uses

Recover HP equal to damage done to enemy

Salia Lance: 18 Pow, 100 Hit, 15 Crit, 1~2 Rng, 4 Wt, 74 uses

Brave effect

BTW: How do Shields work in this game?

Edited July 30, 2009 by IOS

[VincentASM]

It's been a long time since I last played, but I think they work just as you might expect.

They're always in effect and each time the shield user gets hit, the shield's uses drop by 1 point. I seem to recall making characters hold onto multiple shields because they don't last long (4 or so uses).

[Scarlet]

Black rain: Enemy only, KOes all enemies (WTF)

lol nice. If there seriously is an enemy who has that magic, the only way to "survive" that would probably be to give elixirs to your whole party.

This one is also nice:

☆Rukuud: 15 Mt, 65 Hit, 80 Crt, 7 Wt, 15 WLv. Effective against monsters, receive 7 less damage from magic attacks

80 Crt? lol whut

This game looks horribly unbalanced.

Edited July 30, 2009 by Raymond

[VincentASM]

The Rukuud is obtained from a pretty obscure event. I wouldn't have thought of fighting Renshien (some loser noble's son) with Vega or Julia.

As for Black Rain...

Its used by the final boss only. I believe they use it after too many turns have passed, so you're forced to rush the final chapter somewhat (or get a Game Over). When used it kills all of your characters except for one, who the final boss, I assume, takes for his fancy.

I can't remember if Elixirs work against it though.

Edited July 30, 2009 by VincentASM

[Scarlet]

Oh, ok. Still, even if it is hard to get, I don't think a weapon should be strong enough to essentially break the game. I have the same complaint about FE4, and am starting to have that very same complaint about FE5 as well (though you pretty much need a completely overpowered weapon in FE5 to get rid of a few particular bosses).

Black Rain:

Okay, if the enemies don't outright use it, it's a different matter, I suppose. I guess it's actually cool then since it creates some tension. Still sounds a bit unfair though.

However, if the final boss has a weapon that is capable of outright destroying the whole army, why doesn't he just outright use it at some earlier point in the game to wipe out the player party before they get annoying (unless the player never actually meets the final boss before fighting him)? I have never played the game, but I guess I'll never understand video game villains.

[VincentASM]

Black Rain:

I wasn't paying attention much, but I'm assuming he was charging up the attack. Villains always like to do that in RPGs : P

Besides, the final boss just resurrected at that point and they weren't at their full strength either (since the resurrection ceremony was disturbed right before it ended).

[Emperor Hardin]

Looking at the class page I noticed that Raffin can use lances dismounted even when promoted to dragon knight. Awesome!

[Don Draper]

A lot of characters are catching my eye. Alicia looks pretty cool with her Daim Thunder clone. Estelle seems to learn both Life or Death and Gale (Vantage and Wrath) naturally. Samson's stats just look ridiculous. Lionel can use swords, lances and axes all indoors on promotion and has great stats. And of course, the aforementioned broken characters like Narron and Vega.

[Mage Knight 404]

TRS is a great game. I've played it a few times, never had a proper chance to beat it, though. There's lots to like about this game, and I would Let's Play it if there were a full translation available. Hell, I had some influence of this game when making my weapon icons in my FEGBA ROM hacks.

IOS: Magic users are pretty standard, with units having pretty low Mafgic all around(half of it is Resistance) though characters like Meriah and Rishel own faces with their personal spells.(Meriah is practically FE3Bk 1/FESD Linde with an all hitting AOE spell, Rishel has a 70 use 1-3 Monster effective spell, Alicia has a Dime Thunder-esque spell, etc.)

[VincentASM]

I quite liked Alicia, although I'm not sure if it's because of my bias... Brenthunder does tend to kill a lot of things. She can also use Sylpheed before promotion (there's also Maruju), which can be quite helpful (since it prevents the enemy from countering - I can't think of many other ways to defeat Julius without Sylpheed).

Estelle is fairly average until she reaches around Level 14-20, when she gets decent skills. She's pretty good after that, although towards the end there's probably better units and she can't use those broken lances indoors. At least she appears early.

I never really use axe units (except in FE5) so I don't have anything to say about Samson. I've heard good things about him and Ezekiel from others though. I had a good experience with Lionel though; he seems pretty solid all around and lances indoors is great (with those two broken lances that you get).

[Don Draper]

Thanks for all the clarification Vincent!

Another thing that I found interesting was that the summon staves aren't enemy exclusive. You're free to summon NPC monsters using the staves, similar to Tanith's reinforcement skill from FE9.

I also think I read that its possible to revive fallen characters? How does this work?

[Vykan12]

From what I've seen some characters get auto-revived after dying.

[Don Draper]

I think there's also a tower on the world map that lets you revive a character, but I don't know the specifics. YayMarsha just mentioned it briefly in one of his for fun Tear Ring Saga videos.

[Vykan12]

If that's true, then this game doesn't have any semblance of difficulty at all for a seasoned FE player.

[Don Draper]

Ah ok, you need a specific item to revive dead characters and it has 3 uses. You only get the one, so its not that different from the Valkyrie Staff from FE4, etc.

[Rei Rei]

So I'm on chapter 3. I dunno, I really need a tier guide.

Obvious Top Tier material are Narron so far, and the others are scattered between high and upper mid. And there's Garo.

[VincentASM]

Ah ok, you need a specific item to revive dead characters and it has 3 uses. You only get the one, so its not that different from the Valkyrie Staff from FE4, etc.

IIRC, you can only revive characters in Holmes's route. I think some people purposely get characters killed in Runan's route and then resurrect them so they can abuse the repeatable maps in Holme's route. There are a few points after the resurrecting tower where you can then swap characters between groups (although I suppose the trick is pretty limited since you can only do it three times at most).

You also need to climb to the tower's top to actually use the resurrecting function.

Edited July 31, 2009 by VincentASM

[Don Draper]

Thanks for clarifying Vincent!

A tier list would be hard, as not too many people have played this game yet. Narron, Raffin, Roger, Shigen and Lionel look like staples for an efficient play through based on YayMarsha's mock run (And Zeek, but I wouldn't train him too much). Then you should obviously train the two Lords (Runan and Holmes), and Vega, Xeno, Alicia, Samson and Maruju look good too. YayMarsha trains Lofaru later as well. Those characters should get you started I suppose. I'm not sure if Sun is good or not (Comes midgame underlevelled, but gets Elite quickly), but she might be someone to try out as well.

[YayMarsha]

Hello everybody (first post, whee!). I've been following this topic for a while, so this post is probably going to be pretty big (lots to catch up on). :)

Rebecca, Narcus, Samson, Roger and Thomas for top tier Mirite?

I'm assuming this is a joke, but I'll take the bait and note that Rebecca and Narcus are stupidly useless. Keep in mind that Narcus even steals half of Runan's money at one point (making him even worse).

Why not creating a TearRing Saga forum?

And a Berwick Saga forum too, please. Playing through that game twice without a good source of English information was way harder than it should've been. >_<

-Earlygame, Garo makes Ogma look like a useless douchebag.

You're kidding, right? Garo is horrifically bad, because he has trouble hitting anything that isn't nailed down. He also can't promote, and doesn't learn really good skills until around level 30. To make things even worse, you'd have to drop a Super Proof on him to even gain any levels past 30.

After watching YayMarsha's speed playthrough, Narron, Zeek and Roger all definately look like top tier material. I'll definitely have to give this a try.

EDIT: You can upgrade weapons? That's kind of cool.

Tier lists are stupid, but it's worth noting that Roger isn't nearly as useful as he might seem on paper. Perhaps I just did it wrong the two or so times I tried using him, but he suffers from awful defense and speed. (I'm a strong believer in personal experience, so take this with a grain of salt.)

Ironically enough, Chapter 16's playthrough shows him using many more characters then in the other chapters. Perhaps there's a difficulty spike around there?

The reason for so many characters was because you need to split into so many directions in that map. Those freaking eyeballs clone like crazy, and you need to open all 5 chests to win. :(

The first real difficulty spike hits at Map 18, because of Barbarossa.

I think I've found this game's Ronan and Est mixed into one huge package of fail: Rina

Also note that her recruitment condition in Map 26B is ridiculous, so it makes her even more pointless. Amusingly enough, the lady that did the low turn run used her quite a bit.

...while Marj is basically a Marich clone with his high critical tome.

Personal experience (x2 or 3) says that Marich would be insulted by that comparison. :P

Zeek does leave permanently, although I forget when. He even appears as a boss towards the very end.

The last map you can use him is Map 19.

Not to mention it gets +50 critical after 100 kills with it (save up those repair hammers).

I have no idea where you got that information from, so I'm curious to where you found out about that. As far as I know, the only weapons that can be powered up are the cursed Iron Sword and cursed Iron Lance.

Repair staves can be made by combining a Repair Hammer and Heal Staff in the Craftsmen, and both items are purchasable.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I was under the assumption that you can only forge one of each item.

...I can't think of many other ways to defeat Julius without Sylpheed).

I've heard good things about him and Ezekiel from others though.

Heh, you're going to love Map 25 then. You might already know the plan, because I stole it from ChinaFE. :)

(Also, about Ezekiel, you've been had. His only purpose is to recruit Leteena, who is quite obviously not worth the effort.)

If that's true, then this game doesn't have any semblance of difficulty at all for a seasoned FE player.

Outside of a few bosses, the game would probably be fairly easy even for a newbie. Sad, but true. :(

So I'm on chapter 3. I dunno, I really need a tier guide.

Obvious Top Tier material are Narron so far, and the others are scattered between high and upper mid. And there's Garo.

You need a tier guide so that you know who to spend time training? There isn't much to worry about, really. Zeek is there to bail you out if you ever get in a rough spot (he should be used anyway, to be honest), and you can use Team Holmes to train any units you want for later.

A tier list would be hard, as not too many people have played this game yet. Narron, Raffin, Roger, Shigen and Lionel look like staples for an efficient play through based on YayMarsha's mock run (And Zeek, but I wouldn't train him too much). Then you should obviously train the two Lords (Runan and Holmes), and Vega, Xeno, Alicia, Samson and Maruju look good too. YayMarsha trains Lofaru later as well. Those characters should get you started I suppose. I'm not sure if Sun is good or not (Comes midgame underlevelled, but gets Elite quickly), but she might be someone to try out as well.

Possibly worth noting that training Shigen was a mistake on my part. My previous mock run (version 1, by the way) used him to fight off the enemies on the right side of Map 21, so I figured it would be the same here. That was a dumb idea though, because that's Narron's job.

Not training Zeek seems kind of silly, because not only is he awesome, but he also gains a huge amount of experience from doing minor things. So really, there isn't much penalty to using him. Heck, he's probably going to be gaining MORE experience per kill than a lot of your permanent units at any given point. (Remember that pre-promotes are not evil in this game, just like Seisen.)

Also note that training Loffaru is far less effective if you don't abuse the Krisheenu glitch. He has the potential to make Narron look like a chump though, I suppose. Speaking of Krisheenu though, if someone wanted to do a tier list, she would probably be at the very top. The item duplication glitch makes her extremely useful, if you don't mind abusing it.

Sun is also quite good, by the way. She is super fast, and gets the Charge skill as a Black Knight (I think).

Whew, that was a long post. Hopefully it made sense. :P

[Don Draper]

As for the +50 crit, LethalRedArmy mentions in his FAQ on gamefaqs that after 50 kills, a weapon will have +1 crit. Every kill after that increases the weapon's critical by 1 up to a max of 50 after 100 kills. No idea if that's accurate or not (I haven't played the game after all :D)

[Vykan12]

(Remember that pre-promotes are not evil in this game, just like Seisen.)

Almost every FE game has a batch of great pre-promos.

FE4: Oifaye, gen 2 Fin, Shanan, Sety/Hawkeye

FE5: Dagda, Olwen, Eyrios, Dean, Sety, Galzus

FE6: Percival, Echidna

FE7: Marcus, Geitz, Pent, Harken

FE8: Seth, Duessel, Saleh

FE9: Titania, Muarim, Tanith, Geoffrey

FE10: Complicated with the 3 tier system. Generally though, the higher the base level, the better (eg/ Shinon > Leo, Skrimir > Mordy, Zihark > Edward, Haar > Jill, etc).

[_____]

Almost every FE game has a batch of great pre-promos.

FE4: Oifaye, gen 2 Fin, Shanan, Sety/Hawkeye

And Sigurd and Cuan.

[Vykan12]

Oh right. I was just going by memory there.

[YayMarsha]

Almost every FE game has a batch of great pre-promos.

I'm well aware of that, obviously. My point was that Seisen pre-promotes only lose promotion gains, instead of that + extra levels.

[Edit]: Also, I was sort of referring to the old "all pre-promotes are evil" mindset that used to plague people.

Edited August 1, 2009 by YayMarsha