So Genealogy of Holy War to me are weird.

[JaketheGr3at]

Maybe because I'm used to the Gameboy games but not a fan at all. I don't like the doubling not taking affect except for Citizen skills. I don't get the whole love thing. And is it me or are stats bad on this game. I generally just don't like it at all.

Oops messed up the title.

Edited April 13, 2011 by JaketheGr3at

[Tables]

It grows on you. The love thing isn't that bad, just stick people you think the game hints should be together, together, and you'll be fine.

Stats don't seem bad at all to me in Gen 1, although mounted units tend to have pretty poor stats relatively. They're certainly not worse than the GBA FE games. And Gen 2 stats get pretty crazy. Remember Alvis in the prologue with his crazy stats? ...That's most of your team by the end of the game (well, not quite, but still).

[General Spoon]

Wait until he figures out how inventories and money are handled.

Edited April 13, 2011 by General Spoon

[Integrity]

The game does get better, do try to stick with it. I was once adamantly against FE4, but.

That said, the game may just not be for you - but it does get better at least.

[Guy Starwind]

FE4 is way different then any FE game but IMO it's the best. Just give it more time.

[Shin]

It's very different in feel to the other titles in the series but has its own charm. Although some characters are amongst the worst in the series (Arden). Even in a game with 20 caps, he would be terrible.

[Icon of Sin]

If you really wish to play a SNES FE while still having a feeling closer to the GBA games, you'd probably find FE3 and FE5 more enjoyable. FE3 is extremely simple while FE5 has a bunch of mechanics of its own, while it also introduced some that would become classics in the series, like the Build/Constitution stat, rescue and night combat/fog of war.

If you don't want to get lost too fast, I'd strongly suggest to read infos and FAQs about FE4. Pairings, inheritance et al. can be too much for a beginner for the game.

[Renall]

It's very different in feel to the other titles in the series but has its own charm. Although some characters are amongst the worst in the series (Arden). Even in a game with 20 caps, he would be terrible.

Ardan isn't so bad in a game where movement is not as precious as it is in FE4 (easily the most important stat in the game and the most importance the stat has had in the whole series). He's just your very typical armor knight, really, with high HP/STR/DEF but poor SPD. With the Pursuit Ring on, he gets kills, which is more than some of the worst characters in the series can say.

[Florete]

Coming from someone who is similarly a fan of the GBA titles, I will add that it does get better. I felt a lot like you do now when I started, and, to be honest, pretty much felt that way throughout the entire game, but it got to the point where I learned to work with it and it didn't bother me as much. It's a fun game on its own, just don't go expecting too much. Let it grow on you a bit.

[JaketheGr3at]

Okay, so I'll stick with it. But any pointers would be amazing

[Icon of Sin]

What would you need help with first? Pairings? Equipment suggestions? Who rocks/sucks?

[JaketheGr3at]

What would you need help with first? Pairings? Equipment suggestions? Who rocks/sucks?

How to effing trade? How to make people love each other. What happens when they do. Making kids growths? Holy Blood line bonuses?

Who to use who not to use who to pair up

[Scarlet]

How to effing trade?

In this game it isn't possible to transfer items directly from one character to another. You can, however, have the character with the item you want sell it to the pawn shop in any castle, and then have the character you want to get the item buy it. This process obviously wastes money, but there's no way around that. As long as you keep visiting the villages, keep clearing the arena with each character and have your thief around, you should usually have enough money to transfer any items you may want to transfer.

How to make people love each other.

This works a lot like the support system known from the later games in the series. When you put a male and a female character directly next to each other, they start to accumulate love points, and there are some special conversations that give a lot of points at once. Once a pair reaches a certain amount of love points, the game officially declares them lovers.

There's also a jealousy system that makes this a little more complicated, meaning that if you put multiple females next to each other, one of them might "steal" love points from the others. If you want to ensure that you get the pairings you want, try to keep the females away from each other when there are males next to them.

What happens when they do.

At first glance: nothing.

At second glance, you'll find that they can now give their gold to each other. If a character attacks an enemy while standing next to their lover, there's also a chance that your character will activiate a lover critical, even if they don't actually have the critical skill. If they already have the critical skill, the lover simply boosts their chance to score a critical hit.

A subtle change is also that when a character enters a castle in which their lover is waiting, their lover will greet them with a small line. However, most of those don't seem to be translated in the English patch, which is a shame.

The most significant effect, however, is their effect on the second generation characters. I'll let someone else go into detail on that one, though.

[Integrity]

You can't trade directly - you have to sell an item to the Pawn Shop and then buy it with somebody else.

People fall in love naturally over time and by spending time adjacent. Being lovers gives them a special crit when they're adjacent (occasionally) and flags the man as the father of the woman's children. Children, incidentally, are determined by the women.

Don't worry about your kids. Just ...don't. You have to actively TRY to fuck Gen 2 up, like killing people off deliberately. Just keep Fury and Ayra alive and make sure they fall in love and you'll be at least passing.

Don't worry about Holy Blood. It just gives growth bonuses and lets children use Holy Weapons. If you get everybody married you still get three guaranteed Holy Weapons and a very likely fourth, so just don't fret about it.

Use whoever you feel like, make people get married, and just roll with the punches. You'll get a lot of people after me rattling off pairing lists - listen to them or don't, it really doesn't matter.

Try to drill that last point into your head really hard.

[Tables]

My tips would be:

Use the Arena. In the FE4 Arena, you can't die (and having a few people reduced to 1 HP makes for good heal targets so even losing can be a good thing!) and the amount of battles you can do is limited anyway, so you might as well take advantage of it.

Use everyone. Or at least, send everyone out and in the vague direction of the enemy. This is one I messed up at first, trying to pick a small team like you normally want in later games: Turns out that's generally a really bad idea in FE4, since there's plenty of EXP to go around.

Use the best items you have available: This is another one that's different from later FEs. Because you can repair items easily, and there's lots of money floating around, it's easy to use the best weapon for every single battle. And in fact, the game will eventually reward you for it (you know how if you check an item it shows a star with a number by it? That's the weapons kill count - get to 50, and the weapon gains the critical skill!). The only exception I'd make are holy weapons, since they are actually expensive. But you won't see them until at least chapter 3.

'Trade' weapons freely: As said above, there's lots of money in this game (it's not unusual for most of your army's money to cap if you're even moderately frugal) so don't worry about the loss of 1-4K from selling a weapon for someone else to buy. In particular, if say someone has an Iron weapon and someone else has a Steel and a Silver weapon, sell that Steel weapon - he won't need it anymore!

Again regarding lovers: Don't worry too much about them, but in general if two characters of different genders seem to have plot conversations and/or other hints at friendship, chances are they'd make a good pairing. If you really don't know and want some advice check my list below (I think it includes all the pairings I see at least somewhat frequently recommended, roughly in my preference order)

Aideen x Midir/Azel/Claude

Aira x Lex/Holyn/Noish

Lachesis x Beowulf/Fin

Sylvia x Claude/Nobody/Lex

Fury x Levin/Claude/Noish

Tiltyu x Levin/Azel

Briggid x Holyn/Dew/Lex

Most of those have relative strengths and weaknesses, but if you chose from ones on that list you'd have a perfectly good team Generation 2.

Edited April 13, 2011 by Cylon

[Silvercrow]

Aideen x Midir/Azel/Claude

Aira x Lex/Holyn

Lachesis x Beowulf/Fin

Sylvia x Claude/Nobody/Lex

Fury x Levin/Noish (I'm not actually sure on this one...)

Tiltyu x Levin/Azel

Briggid x Holyn/Dew/Lex

A few viable possibilities you missed:

Ayra x Noish

Fury x Claude

Tiltyu x Lex

I wouldn't recommend doing some of these on your first time through, though.

Edited April 14, 2011 by Silvercrow

[Tables]

I was going to put the first two in but forgot :-/. The third I generally only ever see mentioned as a 'this sounds good but is actually terrible' example, so... :P

Also I put them in spoiler tags for a reason...

[Celice]

You want the best advice for starting a new game you feel uncomfortable with? Start it, and go with it, for a chapter or two. Then toss everything out and start over. You'll hopefully by then have the basics down, which will help you enjoy the game more. It's better than trudging through, forcing yourself to adapt. It takes most of the fun away.

That said, out of all the Fire Emblems, I find FE4 the most fun.

[CT075]

I was going to put the first two in but forgot :-/. The third I generally only ever see mentioned as a 'this sounds good but is actually terrible' example, so... :P

Also I put them in spoiler tags for a reason...

It's not actually all that bad in practice, but definitely inferior to AzelTiltyu or LevinTiltyu.

[Silvercrow]

Check my draft playthrough for why Tiltyu x Lex is better than Tiltyu x Azel.

Can't compete with Levin obviously, but 80 attack hitting res as early as chapter 8 before an enemy even gets to attack you is much better than a flimsy caster. It is definitely not a gimmick pairing unless you're severely RNG screwed.

Edited April 14, 2011 by Silvercrow

[Maji]

I must admit, it took me a couple of playthroughs, but it is now one of my favourites now. If you're into music, FE4 has the biggest, most impressive (IMO) collection in the series.

[Tables]

Check my draft playthrough for why Tiltyu x Lex is better than Tiltyu x Azel.

Can't compete with Levin obviously, but 80 attack hitting res as early as chapter 8 before an enemy even gets to attack you is much better than a flimsy caster. It is definitely not a gimmick pairing unless you're severely RNG screwed.

I wrote up a pretty long rebuttal to this before thinking and going 'Fuuuu Elite' which is kinda . But I'm just going to address the fact that, you're really not seeing that 80 attack that early, without favouritism it's probably more like chapter 10 she's promoting (I don't know about you, but until she's reliably OHKOing I don't want to leave her in wrath range, and she's not OHKOing until promotion - which means she's going to be stuck doing decent chip with 5 move for a pretty long time) and even then, it'll only be on Tiltyu, who gets stuck with 6 move.

Azel!Arthur and Azel!Tinny are flimsy, yes, but they also kill pretty much every round, even without wrath, thanks to Azel's great magic, speed and pursuit. I mean, Arthur is dealing 25*2 damage against axefighters from the moment he joins, and that improves rapidly. And if he needs speed, he can drop down to a Wind tome he conveniently joins with and deal 19*2, certainly more than just chip. He's never OHKOed except against very powerful opponents, so if he does take a hit first, well, his counter(s) will easily finish the job. Flimsy? Yes. Powerful? Heck yes. Better than Lex!children before promotion? Quite comfortably. Better after promotion? No. But they're still great units, easily able to ORKO most enemies.

Overall I guess actually they might very well compare... I'm not sure.

[Silvercrow]

I wrote up a pretty long rebuttal to this before thinking and going 'Fuuuu Elite' which is kinda . But I'm just going to address the fact that, you're really not seeing that 80 attack that early, without favouritism it's probably more like chapter 10 she's promoting (I don't know about you, but until she's reliably OHKOing I don't want to leave her in wrath range, and she's not OHKOing until promotion - which means she's going to be stuck doing decent chip with 5 move for a pretty long time) and even then, it'll only be on Tiltyu, who gets stuck with 6 move.

Tinny is useless, but Tinny is always useless. You don't do Lex x Tiltyu for Tinny. You do it for Arthur, who can easily promote in chapter 8 considering:

- he can go south and kill/boss abuse Dannan in C6 (I don't consider it favoritism in the usual way boss abuse is since Celice has to catch up anyway)

- he can take on the Melgan army pretty easy in C7 without waiting for Shanan (needs a bit of luck, but not a lot)

- Elite

In chapter 8, after promoting (between 2 arenas and all the other Elite-boosted EXP it should be no trouble) he can then equip Tron and charge ahead and kill pretty much literally everything with the possible exception of Ishtar.

Azel!Arthur and Azel!Tinny are flimsy, yes, but they also kill pretty much every round, even without wrath, thanks to Azel's great magic, speed and pursuit. I mean, Arthur is dealing 25*2 damage against axefighters from the moment he joins, and that improves rapidly. And if he needs speed, he can drop down to a Wind tome he conveniently joins with and deal 19*2, certainly more than just chip. He's never OHKOed except against very powerful opponents, so if he does take a hit first, well, his counter(s) will easily finish the job. Flimsy? Yes. Powerful? Heck yes. Better than Lex!children before promotion? Quite comfortably. Better after promotion? No. But they're still great units, easily able to ORKO most enemies.

Lex and Azel's magekids suffer from the same overarching problem before promotion regardless, which is their horrible move. Lex!Arthur digs himself out of that hole considerably faster. Lex!Arthur will be comfortably OHKOing enemies until maybe C10 or even into the final.

The difference is that while Azel!Arthur can take a hit, Lex!Arthur doesn't even get hit at all because he kills everything first. He does, however, need a Magic Ring, but I don't think that's necessarily a lot to ask. Pursuit Ring is also helpful but not required after a certain point (he makes best use of it before promotion imo).

Edited April 14, 2011 by Silvercrow

[CT075]

Check mine too while you're at it.

Edited April 14, 2011 by Camtech075

[Tables]

I think asking for the Magic and Pursuit Ring is quite an ask, personally. Magic, sure, he can get his hands on one and yeah, that'd definitely help. Pursuit is probably not going to happen.

As another point though, Lex!Arthur at 30 reaches 15 magic on average. With Tron that's still only giving 70 attack... I guess 80 with a Magic ring, but that implies being level 30 in chapter 8. Which isn't happening. But that's only a side point.

As for training him up: Attacking Dannan, sure, good training, he's getting about 32 exp per hit (average considering his hit rate (well, hit rate subtract big shield) is about 66%) for about 15 turns, so about 5 levels, taking him up to 7. Arena will take him up to about 11.

He won't be seeing any more combat until Melgen. If you want him to fight there, he needs to first get the enemy out of range of the ballistas (he's still getting him by them after all) and he's sporting about, what, 30 mt with a MAG ring and Elth...wait, no El tomes yet, so... 22 MT with a Wind tome? Yeah... good luck with him doing much there. He's probably getting a kill or two, but not much more than others. He could be fed more if you wanted I guess, so let's suppose he reaches level 15 between these and some of Tinny's army (which assumes a fair bit of feeding kills to him). If you don't favour him, that's more like level 12.

Arena in 8 takes him up to about 18. Then he still needs to go out and do some fighting if he wants his promotion. So, I guess he can promote in chapter 8 with abuse.

If he isn't favoured, arena will probably get him to about 16. That's a decent amount of fighting to do, and you're probably going to move quickly through this chapter. He can probably just about make it to 20, mostly off of Zombie Shagall's squad near the castle, but without favouritism, again... he's not likely to quite reach 20 and if he does, it's too late to promote him.

TL;DR: Yeah, he can reach 20 in chapter 8, with a fair bit of favouritism.

Moving back to Azel's kids, firstly, both are pretty usable is an advantage (Tinny with Elthunder is doing good damage twice against slow enemies, with a Wind tome she's doing pretty good chip even against faster enemies, and she'll level up moderately quickly if/when she sees fighting), and Azel!Arthur is doing better when he joins is an advantage... they don't promote nearly as early, which is a big drawback, but between Pursuit, Wrath and great magic they do clear arenas which is a big plus for their training.