Why all the hate for SS?

[Raven]

Fuck this shit, I'm soloing HHM with Wil.

Haters gonna hate.

[Geriba]

It's quite clear IS does not try to make their games perfectly balanced. Look at FERD especially for this, where units who start higher leveled and with higher availability than some other units also have better growths and stats than those later-joining units.

They have, however, made it balanced in the fact that while some units may be gods, you CAN get through the game using anyone you want, with a couple of exceptions. Compare this to some of the earlier entries in the series, where many units were so bad to be unusable even with excessive babying.

So yeah, Seth may be god. But that isn't to say that other units like Franz/Vanessa/Lute/etc are unusable, and thus there is no balance. There's some balance, but it's not completely balanced. If the game were completely balanced, what would be the point of picking certain units over others? What would be the point of trying units out and seeing how they turn out? IS doesn't really expect most players to have access to growth rates/average stats of all the characters. IS doesn't expect most players to be like us and ramble inanely over unit merit for over four years.

So having complete balance is bad, but so is having complete lack of balance, so that you're basically forced to use the same team of ten units every game.

I think FE7, FESS, PoR, and Thracia did this well, while the other games in the series did not.

Thanks for clarifying a bit; I can definitely see where you're coming from. Still, if we're going to define "balance" as "most/all units are usable," then FE8 could easily be charged of going about this the wrong way. Again, compare FE7 to FE8: 7 has fantastic unit balance by your definition, as most all of them have some usefulness in just about any playthrough, but the game remains a serious challenge on Hard Modes and ranked runs. FE8 has "balance," but every unit you have ends up a superhero. Is that really such a good trade-off?

[General Banzai]

I'd venture to say that every unit in FE7, with the exception of some prepromotes, also winds up as superheroes by the end of the game. Enemy stats in both FE7 and FESS are just too low to put up a serious challenge to your guys by the end of the game.

Most FEs have this problem, with the end result being an inverted difficulty curve, where the hardest chapters are typically early in the game when your units aren't able to one-round anything that gets in their way. Neither FESS nor FE7 are exempt from this.

The only game that does do things right, of the ones I've played, is Thracia, and mostly due to its "20 is the cap for every stat" policy. You may have a team of units who have capped every stat, but enemies are still doing 20 damage per attack, have passable hit rates (especially thanks to one RNG), and are accompanied by leagues of status staves and siege tomes.

[Geriba]

Fire Emblem 7 units who do not end up superheroes:

Dorcas

Bartre

Rebecca

Wil

Wallace

Louise

Renault

Karla

Fire Emblem 8 units who do not end up superheroes:

Knoll?

[i would say Neimi, but she has access to the Ranger class]

I get what you're saying, and neither FE7 nor 8 is the best in the series at limiting player-unit dominance, but there's still a disparity between the two.

It's also very important to remember that these are at end-game stats (20/10 or so) versus weak enemy units. In general, FE8 units have much better bases and growths, making them more immediately usable.

[General Banzai]

Fire Emblem 7 units who do not end up superheroes:

Dorcas

Bartre

Rebecca

Wil

Wallace

Louise

Renault

Karla

Fire Emblem 8 units who do not end up superheroes:

Knoll?

[i would say Neimi, but she has access to the Ranger class]

I get what you're saying, and neither FE7 nor 8 is the best in the series at limiting player-unit dominance, but there's still a disparity between the two.

It's also very important to remember that these are at end-game stats (20/10 or so) versus weak enemy units. In general, FE8 units have much better bases and growths, making them more immediately usable.

Bartre definitely ends up a superhero if you bother to use him. One-rounding anything that comes at him and 60 HP with decent defenses? Rebecca also has great average stats, and Wil's aren't too much worse.

Also, FESS has Syrene, Marisa, Dozla, Rennac, and Garcia (Garcia and Dorcas have eerily similar averages).

[Lord Raven]

Dorcas does too, he may have low speed but damn does he have high str/decent skl/massive HP/hand axes.

Louise at least has A Pent on her side. Wallace ends up an inferior Oswin if you train him; if Oswin's a superhero by endgame then Wallace may as well be.

Edited August 14, 2011 by Mercenary Raven

[Florete]

Dorcas doesn't even reach Marcus' base Spd until 20/9, and 11 AS that late doubles almost nothing, I'm pretty sure. Lots of Str, yeah, but I don't think he's OHKOing much more than maybe Mages. He's definitely not becoming a superhero without Spd blessing. Wil, Rebecca, and Louise, despite any good stats they may have, are also cursed as Archers in a game with very high enemy density. A game like RD with fewer but stronger enemies is much better on Archers. Bartre is the only one on Doomguy's list that should be taken off since he does turn out pretty good. You may also be able to add Legault and Matthew due to low Str, Sword lock, and late promotion.

Assuming Tower and Ruins can be used, just about any character in SS has the potential to become good, even possibly Knoll if you keep him to player phase or magic enemies. Rennac is probably the only one who will just never be a passable fighter. Even those with bad bases like Dozla and Syrene have good enough growths to get them somewhere. I don't know why Marisa was mentioned as she can turn out quite good and while Garcia is very similar to Dorcas he wins overall, plus he has a fast Ross support.

I actually think this is more a point in SS's favor, though. It's easier to use whoever you want to use and have them be reasonably good, while in FE7 even if you want to use Karla she'll just never end up good at all.

[Lord Raven]

He can still leave a pretty serious dent on things and he can double some unpromoted units (and take out random magic users cause they have less than 7 AS).

[Geriba]

Building off of what Fox said, let's distinguish between late-game quality and the work needed to get there. As I touched on before, SS units have much better bases and growths. Bartre, for example, turns out pretty good, but has atrocious bases; can't really say that about many SS characters.

[frat_tastic]

Ross, Neimi. The number of poor bases/high potential units is pretty similar actually between the two games.

[Radiant Dragon]

Actually, I'd argue that characters in FE7 as a whole have better bases than those in FE8. There are a lot of characters that join late in FE8 with really low levels and bases (Marisa, Amelia, Ewan, Knoll, L'Arachel, etc.), while FE7 really only has Heath, Rath and Nino, despite having the larger cast.

[General Banzai]

Seriously the Pupils have their own negative class because they are so underleveled. And Ewan joins over halfway through the game. @_@ Not to mention FESS doesn't have very many prepromotes at all, and at endgame I don't think Seth is as monstrous as Pent or even Harken.

And you can only really get to 10/-- in the tower before you start to level up at a snail's pace. I mean, sure, you could just abuse forever, but you can also abuse the arena in FE7 (and it's really easy to do so with the Ninis's Grace rescue trick).

[Geriba]

Yeah, there's no denying that the trainees are just awful (especially Ewan, who I really wanted to like). If only FE8 had rankings, then maybe the three of them would be useful.

Edited August 15, 2011 by Doomguy

[Anouleth]

Building off of what Fox said, let's distinguish between late-game quality and the work needed to get there. As I touched on before, SS units have much better bases and growths. Bartre, for example, turns out pretty good, but has atrocious bases; can't really say that about many SS characters.

That's not really true. Lucius is better than Artur, Sain is better than Kyle, Hawkeye is better than Dozla. Geitz is better than Garcia (even if Garcia is better than Dorcas and Bartre), Pent is better than Saleh, Priscilla is better than L'Arachel. Harken and Raven are most certainly better than Gerik.

And there are also many cases where characters are roughly equal. Neimi and Rebecca are practically clones of each other statistically, as are Cormag and HHM Heath. So are Kent and Forde, and Serra and Natasha. If any of these characters are better than each other it's by a narrow margin, or as the result of having access to a better promotion path. I would only say that Sacred Stones characters are much better statistically in the cases of Ephraim vs Hector, Franz vs Lowen, and Seth vs Marcus.

[dondon151]

I would like to add that FE8 is, at least in my opinion, much more difficult to 0% than FE7, which indicates that FE8 units tend to have lower bases in general.

There are a lot of erroneous statements and misinformed opinions being thrown around in this thread.

[Geriba]

I would like to add that FE8 is, at least in my opinion, much more difficult to 0% than FE7, which indicates that FE8 units tend to have lower bases in general.

There are a lot of erroneous statements and misinformed opinions being thrown around in this thread.

Or maybe you're just taking this casual conversation a bit too seriously.

[Florete]

I would like to add that FE8 is, at least in my opinion, much more difficult to 0% than FE7, which indicates that FE8 units tend to have lower bases in general.

Out of curiosity, what order did you do your 0% growths runs in?

[FionordeQuester]

First, he did the old FE7 run, then he did the FE6 run, then he did the FE11 run, then he did the FE8 run, then the FE10 run, and now finally, we're doing a redone FE7 run.

So he was fairly experienced by the time he did the FE8 run.

Edited August 15, 2011 by FionordeQuester

[arvilino]

Seriously the Pupils have their own negative class because they are so underleveled. And Ewan joins over halfway through the game. @_@ Not to mention FESS doesn't have very many prepromotes at all, and at endgame I don't think Seth is as monstrous as Pent or even Harken.

And you can only really get to 10/-- in the tower before you start to level up at a snail's pace. I mean, sure, you could just abuse forever, but you can also abuse the arena in FE7 (and it's really easy to do so with the Ninis's Grace rescue trick).

The tower goes a bit quicker than you're saying, it only really slows around 15/--. For example I've put Gilliam through the first floor alone and he went from level 5 to 12, it would be 11 but a non-boss entombed spawned. The one character solo of the first floor only took around 3-4 minutes with animations off, for 6-7 levels. The revenants give a disproportionate amount of EXP for their challenge and time taken compared to the arena(plus animations are forced for the arena).

Edited August 15, 2011 by arvilino

[dondon151]

Or maybe you're just taking this casual conversation a bit too seriously.

I don't know how you possibly could have come to this conclusion when you yourself are writing essays in this thread.

[Life]

Just correcting some misinformed opinions.

Bartre definitely ends up a superhero if you bother to use him. One-rounding anything that comes at him and 60 HP with decent defenses? Rebecca also has great average stats, and Wil's aren't too much worse.

Really? Bartre's one-rounding anything? With what? His speed that can't even double 7 AS enemies at promotion? Sure, godlike.

In addition, FE is not about just about stats. Pretty sure FE5 proved that. Rebecca's "great average stats" don't mean much when you fight one enemy every player phase and one every enemy.

First, he did the old FE7 run, then he did the FE6 run, then he did the FE11 run, then he did the FE8 run, then the FE10 run, and now finally, we're doing a redone FE7 run.

So he was fairly experienced by the time he did the FE8 run.

dondon also did FE5 and he's now finished his second FE6 run.

[dondon151]

The FE5 and FE6 tidbits aren't something that one would know unless they paid special attention.

Other things that are incorrect and haven't already been corrected:

The only game that does do things right, of the ones I've played, is Thracia, and mostly due to its "20 is the cap for every stat" policy. You may have a team of units who have capped every stat, but enemies are still doing 20 damage per attack, have passable hit rates (especially thanks to one RNG), and are accompanied by leagues of status staves and siege tomes.

Status staves and siege tomes (especially Blizzard), yes. Everything else, not really. Enemy stats in FE5 are so poor that even units with only 20s in their stats will have an easy time with mostly everything. Taking the case of siege magic in particular, the users of those tomes in FE6-8 had much higher mag than the bishops in FE5 - 15+, even 20+ mag compared to lategame FE5 bishops, who can have mag as low as 5. Bolting and Shadowshot in the GBA FEs are also more powerful than Bolting and Meteor in FE5.

FE6 enemies also tend to be pretty difficult on HM, particularly if you've been playing the game quickly up to that point. Things like 40 atk Silver Lance wyvern lords and 44 atk Fenrir druids lategame, with those same druids having essentially similar status staff capabilities to enemy staff users in FE5 (what with 19 staff range and around 220 base staff accuracy).

Fire Emblem 8 units who do not end up superheroes:

Knoll?

Not a superhero for sure at 20/20, but Knoll is a particularly useful unit in efficiency playthroughs because of his potential in manipulating enemy AI.

[General Banzai]

Just correcting some misinformed opinions.

Really? Bartre's one-rounding anything? With what? His speed that can't even double 7 AS enemies at promotion? Sure, godlike.

In addition, FE is not about just about stats. Pretty sure FE5 proved that. Rebecca's "great average stats" don't mean much when you fight one enemy every player phase and one every enemy.

Derp herp his speed is good enough to double nearly everything by endgame, which is what we're talking about. Of course before then his speed is balls, but the point was that if you bother to train him, he does, actually, wind up good.

Pretty sure when you're awesome and murdering Berserkers with 80 HP, 13 Move, 20 everything else Miranda, yes, FE5 is about stats :V

And don't take that last sentence too seriously, please >.>

[Nitro]

Huh? How can anyone dislike FE8? D:

I love the post-game (creature campaign) and the two-way promotions.

The difficulty is perhaps a bit low, but other things make up for it, like the link arena <3 The only downside is that you can't use the special characters there >_>

[Lord Raven]

Pretty sure when you're awesome and murdering Berserkers with 80 HP, 13 Move, 20 everything else Miranda, yes, FE5 is about stats :V

Yeah those zany FE5 Berserkers v_v