To be quite honest.. I was kind of disappointed in this game...

[Lanko]

Only Marth being able to visit villages totally sucks. If at least he could be rescued by a mounted unit...

And the supports have a negative one too...they all having conversations with MU is pretty amazing, but what conversation between the other units ? They are just too few.

Elrean/Merric/Wendell don't have convos between them. Caeda knows a lot of people from the past war but never talks to them after recruiting convo. Nagi and Tiki don't support either. Despite caring for a lot of people Marth himself only supports Caeda and Malicia i think.

[BrightBow]

Only Marth being able to visit villages totally sucks. If at least he could be rescued by a mounted unit...

I don't see how this is much of a problem. Marth is ridiculously fast in this game. He moves as fast as a GBA Cavalier to be exact.

[eclipse]

I don't see how this is much of a problem. Marth is ridiculously fast in this game. He moves as fast as a GBA Cavalier to be exact.

And regular Cavaliers move even more, and that's before promotion. Perhaps it would be better to look at it as the size of the map versus how much your units move.

As for support convos, use the two units together often enough, and it pops up. There's quite a few surprising ones, and I won't spoil them here~!

[Sasori]

Downloaded it a few days ago and i'm having lots of fun with it. I do have two little problems.

The 5 move archers from shadow dragon make a return. Gordin and Ryan already barely double and this doesn't really make them easier to use.

My second problem is more a luxery problem since I want to use too much units to see their events.

As for my unit. I don't really have an opinion of him. He's kinda bland so far.

[Scarlet]

The 5 move archers from shadow dragon make a return. Gordin and Ryan already barely double and this doesn't really make them easier to use.

True, but archers are still useful on the harder difficulties because you really, really don't want to take counters.

Also, you can just switch any archers you want to use to hunters after beating Hard mode.

[PKL]

True, but archers are still useful on the harder difficulties because you really, really don't want to take counters.

Also, you can just switch any archers you want to use to myrmidons/pirates after beating Hard mode.

Fixed :P

[Scarlet]

Fixed :P

While you could of course also switch them to something completely different, having an E-Rank in the new weapon type actually is a fairly big drawback in this game. :V

[PKL]

Well, all earlygame Pirates start at E anyway (except Fighter My Unit)

Edited December 4, 2012 by HORSEBIRD

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

ya know the read the comments about "man its shoehorning that ____ is recruitable" which is very true, but i hope you don't go out of your way to recruit these people if it bugs you then. its why i don't get the dragon knight dude.

[Constable Reggie]

But what about the free silver weapons?

[RJWalker]

The only thing I don't like is the female class set. But that's unchanged from SD. Only this time it's more frustrating since the Male sets can be combined but the female set remains the same.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

But what about the free silver weapons?

get them for the weapons then charge them into the stage boss? i don't know

[Tamanoir]

As someone who had not play Shadow Dragon, my biggest surprise was the Avoid in this game...

After the GBA Games, that sure change a lot...

MU and Casual are nice adds, for a... well, casual player liks me... I'd like to be more able to influence MU comportment.

Xanadu the Sly being all nice just doesn't feel right you know... (Closed eyes, short dark blue hair)

Marth having to do the recruit is kinda annoying, I missed Castor and Bantu, because of this...

Support option is a good idea. Malisia being the new Serra is cool.

All in all, a good game for now.

[Agro]

The only thing I don't like is the female class set. But that's unchanged from SD. Only this time it's more frustrating since the Male sets can be combined but the female set remains the same.

Females have cavalier now :/

[BrightBow]

Females have cavalier now :/

With the exact same sprites. The same with the Generals.

It's just all kinds of irritating: Just why did they only use classes that females in the original game had, when they end up using the exact same sprites as the males anyway?

If female Generals are in this game with the same sprites, then female Knights could have been too. But there were no female Knights in the original game and this is somehow a problem?

Edited December 6, 2012 by BrightBow

[Agro]

man I've been trying to read your post like 50 times but I just cannot understand what you are trying to saw

[dondon151]

I'm up to chapter 12, and it's a shame they didn't majorly fix what I think was Fe3's biggest problem, pretty lame map design.

old post but FE12 has some of the best map design in the series. either it is by pure coincidence (unlikely) or IS tried really hard to fuck around with the player.

[PKL]

I agree with Dondon. FE12 has some pretty cool map design. It's like, they thought of everything. I noticed this mostly when I played Lunatic.

[Constable Reggie]

Really? The least they could have done is at least somewhat change up the straight copy-paste maps they used again. Could you give me an example or two what you think are great maps and why?

Edited December 6, 2012 by Constable Reggie

[dondon151]

most of these apply to maps on H3 and not NM. it's hard to appreciate a map when you can just steamroll through it with the critical thinking power of a vegetable.

chapter 5: positions of jeorge's snipers make it nearly impossible to head north, rickard cannot be recruited without a use of rescue, there is a sniper near the boss such that you can't just fly in with a draco and annihilate him, and the bridge by the gate in addition to the spacing of the 2 ballisticians on the map make it tricky to navigate but perfectly possible with the proper classes and weaponry. H3 has a fourth dracoknight over the untraversable area that makes it tricky for the player to just use a flier to pick off the master seal thief and is in general kind of a pain in the butt, because if you pull him south, your grounded units can't reach him.

chapter 7: the thieves are positioned such that navarre and feena can always survive turn 1 but require flier support afterwards, and the 3 hunters prohibit fliers from easily killing the seraph robe and master seal thieves. astram's group and the akaneia reinforcements strongly encourage rushing through the forest.

chapter 9: mages and dracos pull in such a fashion that requires the player to be able to deal with them in multiples at a time.

chapter 11: favorite desert map in the entire series. 12 mov 1-2 range wyverns are super cheap, but the AI makes this map easy to figure out while still posing a challenge. certain groups of wyverns will pull others and they always move in a certain order.

chapter 14: if you take a look at the starting enemy placement changes on higher difficulties, you realize that you 1) can't KO the dark mages behind the walls on turn 1 PP and 2) are encouraged to position units on turn 1 so that they get attacked by those dark mages since the ice dragons have moved down 1 tile.

chapter 15: you want to swoop in and kill the ballisticians and bishops, but you also have to deal with a sniper. an assload of enemies coming from the right deter you from going that way, though it's not so hard to end up killing all of them.

chapter 16: the throne room is a huge trap but you can go from opening the door to seizing the throne in 1 turn with strategy. IS also decided to make it so that you can't just take items from the chests using the thief staff without triggering a cutscene that opens the throne room door and they also moved the geosphere thief such that a 10 move unit cannot attack him on turn 1 without feena's help.

pretty sure there's better examples in the later maps but i warpskipped them on H2.

Edited December 6, 2012 by HORSEBlRD

[Constable Reggie]

Those are great examples for H3 (I personally am playing on H1 right now, not NM), but that's more from the positioning of enemies (which they did change from original) and less of map design. Assuming recruiting everyone, why do we have to traverse around the vast amount of nothing in chapter 3, fight barely any enemies in chapter 6, have Marth tread allll the way around to Minerva in 9, and again play through a bunch of Fe1/11 maps in pretty much the same way? I will admit I really enjoyed chapter 8, since it had an interesting take on an old map.

[Dark Sage]

Those are great examples for H3 (I personally am playing on H1 right now, not NM), but that's more from the positioning of enemies (which they did change from original) and less of map design.

I don't understand this sentence. Are you trying to say that enemy positioning is independent from map design? Enemy positioning plays a key role in a lot of the brilliance of the map design; you really can't have good map design if the enemies aren't placed in specific and strategic purposes.

I want to stress the AI by the way because its really what makes the map design strong. Oftentimes (usually on the H2 and H3 difficulties), there are certain enemies or groups of enemies that, when pulled, trigger a separate group of enemies to move. Pulling the enemies at the wrong time can royally fuck you over like in P-8 if you draw the Barbarian near the save point too early. Sometimes unit positioning and movement on the player side can influence how enemies move, like Cord in Chapter 2 and Palla in Chapter 3. It can kind of tricky to figure out but once you do, you'll go like "ah I see what they did there."

With the exact same sprites. The same with the Generals.

Female cavs have slightly longer hair on their battle sprite and have pink hair on their map one, its just hard to notice. Female generals are also always pink while males are always blue. Not that it really matters since you'll usually skip or turn off the battle animations.

The only thing I don't like is the female class set. But that's unchanged from SD. Only this time it's more frustrating since the Male sets can be combined but the female set remains the same.

It doesn't really matter because most of the Class B options are shit. The only ones the females remotely care about are Horseman and Berserker, and only Minerva really loses out from the latter.

Edited December 6, 2012 by Tyrant Sage

[RJWalker]

Not everything has to be gameplay related. I wanted more female reclass options for reasons that are completely unrelated to gameplay usefulness.

Edited December 6, 2012 by Ranger Jack Walker

[Constable Reggie]

I don't understand this sentence. Are you trying to say that enemy positioning is independent from map design? Enemy positioning plays a key role in a lot of the brilliance of the map design; you really can't have good map design if the enemies aren't placed in specific and strategic purposes.

I want to stress the AI by the way because its really what makes the map design strong. Oftentimes (usually on the H2 and H3 difficulties), there are certain enemies or groups of enemies that, when pulled, trigger a separate group of enemies to move. Pulling the enemies at the wrong time can royally fuck you over like in P-8 if you draw the Barbarian near the save point too early. Sometimes unit positioning and movement on the player side can influence how enemies move, like Cord in Chapter 2 and Palla in Chapter 3. It can kind of tricky to figure out but once you do, you'll go like "ah I see what they did there."

Not necessarily independent but I consider them together to be level design. Enemy positioning and AI is different from the map itself, which is what I was primarily complaining about. George's sniper placement can restrict you tactically from traversing one way, but that doesn't make having the hammerne village all the way across the entire map, or wasting time walking around the entire ch3 map doing almost nothing any less bullshit. I still don't know if straight copy-pasting maps that play pretty similarly again (at least ch8 played differently, which I enjoyed) is excused by better placement/AI, either (they managed to improve some of the Fe3 maps in the remake, why not change up the Fe1/11 maps a bit too?).

Looking at the H3 maps to the rest, there's more enemies on H3. Having them on at least H1/H2 would have been nice, but I digress.

Edited December 7, 2012 by Constable Reggie

[Tormod]

Aside from the occasional cheap shot reset caused by the growing number of Maniac enemies carrying killing edges/etc or dragons being spawned as reinforcements right next to squishy mages, I'm overall really satisfied with this game.

I was highly disappointed with Shadow Dragon - with the lack of base convos, simplistic start-and-end-chapter events, and overall minimal approach to story and character, it felt just... empty. I've heard comparisons of playing the earlier FE games to be "more like chess" and it was certainly applicable, but the personal aspect is what kept me an FE fan. Even Radiant Dawn's new characters had random bits of chatter between them.

But so far, this being my first playthrough and on Maniac, I'm quite impressed. Enemies are being simultaneously terrifying and yet manageable; and I'm really having to think about things. Having the extra conversations, especially the part where MU supporting with everyone means you will see at least some for everyone, is making the cast a lot more recognisable. It's been expressed before, but while Shadow Dragon definitely felt more like a port with minimal changes (outside of adding reclassing), New Mystery Of The Heroes Of The Emblem And Many Subtitles actually feels more like a reimagining or a completely new game - a modern FE instead of a retro one. And I'm completely fine with that.

...On the map design note - I do agree it's been generally great. My only real complaint so far is indeed Chapter 3, which took an unnecessarily long amount of turns unless you wanted to kill off one of the recruits...

Edited December 7, 2012 by Garlyle