I still don't get the praise of this game...

[arvilino]

this is the kind of bullying that one resorts to when he becomes aware that his argument has no substance.

in the time of the SNES, there were many games that explained far more important mechanics with far less detail. this is a restatement of my original argument, which you have neglected to address. ranger jack walker makes a great point above: even if you completely fucked up your pairings, you are guaranteed to have serlis and leif in addition to a number of fixed characters, plus there are substitutes, and chances are you made at least one pairing successfully even with limited information.

My original statement was that it wasn't a very good system. Yes there were plenty of SNES and NES games which explain mechanics with less detail(there's two WiiU games I know which explain most mechanics without text like Toki Tori 2 and Super Mario 3D World), but Genealogy is not one of them and it deserves highlighting as it's often glossed over due to information available on websites outside the game itself. If I didn't bring it up I doubt it would have been acknowledged.

Lucina joins in chapter 13. Is it impossible to pair anyone other than Chrom before that? If it is possible, you can "screw up" your pairings in this game as well. (read: get a sub-optimal pairing! NOOOOOOOOOO) Enough information is hidden that it's practically impossible to have optimised pairings on your first playthrough, which seems to be what you want from a generation system.

The advantage FE13 gives is that Lucina gives a good example of what to expect when it comes to the rest. Can you sort of screw her up with a pairing? Kind of(but that's like missing gale force or whatever) but the other children are available afterwards and gives you plenty of opportunities to experiment you'll find that Lucina shares Chrom's and her mother's classes, inherits a skill of her mothers. Every time you enter a child's chapter their stats/skills will refresh to match the parents current skills/statistics so with experimenting and returning you can determine what factors are taken into account and special cases like the skills Chrom children receive.

FE4 is an all at once deal. Once you're beyond the chapter 6 threshold there's no going back, all the children including ones you've yet to recruit from 6-9 are set in stone unless you want to restart the game. You have some fixed characters to help you, but that kind of exposes the weakness of system.

it's not at all pointless, and i won't permit you to simply handwave it away. FE13 has, what, veteran, pair up, galeforce, rescue, nosferatu, kill boss, and forging among its mechanics that make the game super easy? and then it also has gamble, avoid +10, and the entirely of lunatic+ to add more frustration. this is not merely nitpicking; even FE11 does not have this level of lazy design.

FE11 huh? I like it but to say it doesn't have some oversights on the level of most Fire Emblem games is untrue, like every Fire Emblem(Except Awakening on Lunatic and Lunatic+) it has boss abuse for EXP. Generals defense stat can grow past the enemies physical attack stat, forging allows most bosses(Armours, Cavaliers) to be OHKO'd. The multiple warp staves renders most map design arbitrary and allows you to turn most chapters into essentially a FE13 "kill boss" chapter where the chapter is over after you kill the boss since you warp Marth to the throne or gate on the same turn.

Edited June 5, 2014 by arvilino

[RJWalker]

FE11 huh? I like it but to say it doesn't have some oversights on the level of most Fire Emblem games is untrue, like every Fire Emblem(Except Awakening on Lunatic and Lunatic+) it has boss abuse for EXP. Generals defense stat can grow past the enemies physical attack stat, forging allows most bosses(Armours, Cavaliers) to be OHKO'd. The multiple warp staves renders most map design arbitrary and allows you to turn most chapters into essentially a FE13 "kill boss" chapter where the chapter is over after you kill the boss since you warp Marth to the throne or gate on the same turn.

He's saying Awakening is worse than FE11 when it comes to game design. He's not praising FE11.

[Baldrick]

The advantage FE13 gives is that Lucina gives a good example of what to expect when it comes to the rest. Can you sort of screw her up with a pairing? Kind of(but that's like missing gale force or whatever) but the other children are available afterwards and gives you plenty of opportunities to experiment you'll find that Lucina shares Chrom's and her mother's classes, inherits a skill of her mothers. Every time you enter a child's chapter their stats/skills will refresh to match the parents current skills/statistics so with experimenting and returning you can determine what factors are taken into account and special cases like the skills Chrom children receive.

That's not unique to Awakening. You can do the same in Genealogy by reloading a save from chapter 5. You won't be able to change the pairings unless you redo the last couple of chapters but the same holds true for Awakening once you've unlocked the children paralogues.

FE4 is an all at once deal. Once you're beyond the chapter 6 threshold there's no going back, all the children including ones you've yet to recruit from 6-9 are set in stone unless you want to restart the game.

I don't understand the problem. You will smart with a small army, and find new recruits over the chapters. Some are guaranteed to be good from the start, others may grow to be good, others will take a lot of effort and not pay off. The base stats of the units will be a surprise until you see them on the field, and you're not told how they will grow. The only difference from a standard FE game is most of the units have dynamic parameters that you can control, and you were not explicitly told how to control them, but can figure them out through experimentation (or a guide).

You have some fixed characters to help you, but that kind of exposes the weakness of system.

What weakness? It's not like you'll be forced to rely on them, even the substitute children are serviceable, albeit mostly mediocre.

Can somebody tell me what in-game explanation for the generation system there is before chapter 13 (or chapter 11, when Chrom's wife is set)? I'm afraid I'm in the dark there.

[arvilino]

That's not unique to Awakening. You can do the same in Genealogy by reloading a save from chapter 5. You won't be able to change the pairings unless you redo the last couple of chapters but the same holds true for Awakening once you've unlocked the children paralogues.

In Awakening you can build up supports to A-rank with multiple characters and choose to hold out on S-rank until whenever you want on the world map, it's not the same.

[Interceptor]

the award for good map design goes to FE12. you cannot possibly defend these two aspects of FE13 when literally every other entry in the series does them better (well, almost every other entry).

The map design for Awakening is actually pretty good, with some objective reasons for that. If you care to look at the layout, enemy types, reinforcements, available units etc, the missions turn into mini-puzzles. There are usually one or several moves that a player can make, in order to increase their success on a particular map. A really easy and oft-cited example: the chapter where you recruit Cordelia. You have mountains to stand on, the place is full of axes, and you've just been given Lon'qu. It's a sword-user smorgasbord. Awakening is full of things like this, and they are available for people of all skill levels.

have you considered why it is that no one cares about map design in FE13? map design is inconsequential when there exist mechanics that trivialize its importance.

Have you considered that your opinion on this only represents a fraction of a percent of the people who care about this game? And that I'm possibly too high on that estimate by an order of magnitude? This isn't even a question of Awakening having a dumbed-down average audience; your position is so extreme that it's basically intolerant of anything else.

[...] but the ease with which FE13 was optimized really shows that there was zero concern about balancing the mechanics.

Do you have any awareness of how much these nonsense proclamations undermine whatever points you're trying to make? You just took something fuzzy (the "ease" at which Awakening was optimized), read the minds of the designers, and came to the conclusion that it was mathematically impossible for them to care any less about [your extremely specific definition of] balance of game mechanics.

you cannot seriously blame a game (an old one, at that) for not providing adequate information about every single mechanic.

Sure you can; great games teach you about themselves. Not everything, but the important things surely.

i would suggest you not bring to your defense a game mode that bears all of the characteristics of an afterthought. that lunatic+ has a reputation of being "luck"-based (and rightly so) purely because a certain subset of randomly generated enemy skills can make a map unbeatable is not a testament to FE13 having good gameplay. quite the opposite.

Have you even played Lunatic+?

It has a reputation for being "luck-based" amongst people who have busted strategies. The mode demolishes most of the classic Fire Emblem maneuvers, forces you to adjust your tactics on the fly, and exposes people who cannot think on their feet. You can't plan a map out in advance, or keep trying the same configuration until you brute-force your way through it; you have to have a flexible strategy and an ability to do unconventional things. A lot of skill configurations called "unbeatable" would be more accurately labeled "really hard, and beyond the capacity of the player to overcome". People with strong fundamentals don't often run into literally impossible chapters, especially once you get beyond the very early game.

Lunatic+ is one of the best challenges that the series has to offer to experts. It has flaws, like anything else, but generally speaking they accomplished a lot with relatively little. I just roll my eyes whenever someone calls it "dumb". Lunatic+ is secretly pretty clever; just look at the logical impact of the specific skills that they chose.

while earlier entries have some potentially trivializing heuristics, in practice they're not a walk in the park. marcus, sain, and florina trivialize FE7, but we haven't really LTC'd that game to its full potential. same thing with FE8, FE9, or FE10 (though horace and chiki are getting pretty close).

"Ease of LTC" as a measure of a game's balance, has a lot of fun words associated with it, such as: poor, weak, myopic, niche, limited, ambiguous, irrelevant... I can't settle on one.

Edited June 5, 2014 by Interceptor

[XeKr]

essentially ninja’d by Interceptor, but eh

You might be right that those strategies don't work as well on Luna+; I've never gotten very far on it myself. Resetting chapters until you get a workable set of enemy skills isn't enjoyable to me. Even if broken Lunatic strats aren't broken anymore in Luna+ (and I doubt that lowmanning with a few support pairs isn't still the best way to go), it isn't worth what it does to the overall playability.

Also: community consensus isn't a great metric. People can believe whatever they want, but that doesn't make it true. Even the idea that earlygame Paladins are great isn't actually common outside of SF.

People have figured out fairly reliable ways to deal with essentially every chapter in L+ except C2 (which you could sacrifice units for, if you wanted). And you can surprisingly get a very solid working chance there too, more than you might expect, with clever positioning.

With the correct strategy (which is not always that easy to find for a given skill distribution), it’s really not so bad compared to the standard of luck we’ve occasionally seen in other games (off the top of my head, C7 in FE6, Jaffar in BBD, some FE10 chapters with biorhythm shenanigans, etc)

Plus, yeah I’m going to bring this up again, lowmanning with a few support units is a dominant strategy in pretty much every FE game (except 12, and you’re still pretty much forced/strongly encouraged toward the few good units). And like in other games, you can train a larger team in FE13 if that’s your preference, and it might consequently be challenging and rewarding. Another thing you could say is most other games more frequently hand you very strong units that you don’t need to train as much, throughout the game, though I don’t know if that’s strictly a good thing or not (only Tiki really qualifies here, and she’s in a difficult to clear Paralogue). Or that in other games the enemy stat curve isn’t as steep or that the Jeigan doesn’t fall off as fast. Etcetc.

But fair enough on “community consensus” point, though I was more interested in the reasons people hold certain opinions rather than which populations have what opinion.

@Czar_Yoshi: I’d be interested, but I don’t have my 3DS to tinker around with so it harder to comment on that sort of thing. But I’d certainly read it.

@RFoF: Like I said, I hyped buyable Rescue for a while, even before I had the game. I just don’t consider it trivially easy to understand how to abuse, and think relatively few people are perceptive enough to recognize how broken it is (not just tooting our own horns here as it’s mainly an issue of awareness, but this is supported by how little I saw it was mentioned, both in pre/post-release discussion about optimization). And even if some people recognize the potential for extremely quick clears, it’s also not trivial to realize just how many bosskill maps there are in a row, figure out the appropriate positioning given starting formation and Mag stat, various types of Rescue chains for the best reliability (Rescue other staff users in series or Olivia in parallel, etc), plus how to optimize your team and exp allocation accordingly to deal with the extremely steep stat curve, particularly around C17 and C23, and have the stats/Rallies to reliably clear Endgame. And this is just in Lunatic.

and? these guys are not necessarily strategy game experts. their job is to play a wide variety of games from different genres and scratch the surface deep enough to write a palatable review. if the game has enough bells and whistles to cover up all of the mechanical flaws, then of course it's going to get good reviews, because hardly anyone is going to notice that a supposed strategy game doesn't require a whole lot of strategy to beat. raising, customizing, and pairing characters is addicting (hello, pokemon). pure strategy is not.

Let me know how your Twilight/Transformers analogy holds up if so called professionals in the field give universal acclaim. Suppose I made an analogy re: some highly acclaimed film where some subset of a niche fangroup did not enjoy the cinematography/cinematic value. HP7-2 or Avengers or Inception or something?

(btw I also already invited you to dazzle us with your superior strategic game knowledge and authority.)

Incidentally, the most infamous review of Awakening comes from someone (who I suspect to be) not that great at strategy, but that’s a long (long) story… >_>

i would suggest you not bring to your defense a game mode that bears all of the characteristics of an afterthought. that lunatic+ has a reputation of being "luck"-based (and rightly so) purely because a certain subset of randomly generated enemy skills can make a map unbeatable is not a testament to FE13 having good gameplay. quite the opposite.

Just a notation thing, but I specifically noted Lunatic(+) in that way, because I was also referring to Lunatic as well, which is often claimed to have the same characteristics yet it is certainly not “luck” based (or even that hard vanilla, but it maintains the reputation). Also, note my earlier response re: Lunatic+.

this thread, made less than 2 months after the game's release in the states, indicates that we already knew about the potential for veteran, galeforce, and nosferatu to trivialize the game: http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=40325&hl=veteran&page=1

and if this thread is anything to go by, it took less than a month for people to start complaining about how easy lunatic is (and how bullshit lunatic+ is): http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=37802

while earlier entries have some potentially trivializing heuristics, in practice they're not a walk in the park. marcus, sain, and florina trivialize FE7, but we haven't really LTC'd that game to its full potential. same thing with FE8, FE9, or FE10 (though horace and chiki are getting pretty close).

The game had been out in Japan for 10 months. We had people who imported/bought it (certainly some that seem to be experienced players, including but not limited to arvilino, Lord Raven, cheetah7071, Othin) telling us about the game. I suppose everyone just ignored the (objectively) terrible, terrible gameplay/design and hyped it anyways?

And I (like to think) I was part of the movement that tried to draw attention to so called really broken mechanics, especially Veteran, in the weeks/months immediately after release, so I’d consider community opinion moving in that direction a win.

Plus FE13 is not LTC’d to its full potential, either, at the higher difficulties. I’m not sure what your point is here and why we’re even considering pure LTC in this discussion. Are you implying it’s the best (or most important or only) metric for game design or difficulty? For design, I’m puzzled; for the latter, I can’t imagine that to be a commonly understood interpretation of difficulty. Do you propose to judge other games by the difficulty of their optimized speedrun (nearly always quite hard)?

it's not at all pointless, and i won't permit you to simply handwave it away. FE13 has, what, veteran, pair up, galeforce, rescue, nosferatu, kill boss, and forging among its mechanics that make the game super easy? and then it also has gamble, avoid +10, and the entirely of lunatic+ to add more frustration. this is not merely nitpicking; even FE11 does not have this level of lazy design.

I really don’t see how you’re not nitpickying. My natural response would be to list all the various mechanics that make other games really easy and their relative egregiousness (plus note how you gloss over Lunatic+ and harder DLCs). To which I’m sure you’d snarkily respond no u how I’m horribly wrong and we could then argue ad nauseam about the philosophy of game design (i.e. does objective morality game design and quality exist? why is/n’t a consumer-targeted design philosophy “good”, when it’s generally standard in all industries? etc) and especially how big and long our respective lists are.

If that sounds fun to you…

(have fun)

EDIT: re: generations. To add, I think it’s notable you can’t really screw up the FE13 kids (all the kids are Ulster/Larcei-esque, except not missable. edgecasewithcynthiaetc). There’s also a difference between just entering/exiting a chapter to tweak inheritance rather than replaying whole chapters (some people might autosave the same file too, I think it’s pretty natural). Plus there’s a turn limit to earn points so you might have to replay more than that, you can miss legendaries that significantly impact gameplay, etc.

Edited June 5, 2014 by XeKr

[Czar_Yoshi]

In Awakening you can build up supports to A-rank with multiple characters and choose to hold out on S-rank until whenever you want on the world map, it's not the same.

If you're going to bring that up, the game never tells new players that there's any reason to not view a support they just unlocked, especially now that supports are unlimited. For that matter, they also never mention that S means marriage.

Additionally, it's counter-intuitive for a player to spread out high levels of supports between several units instead of keeping your units in dedicated pairs, because they won't do anything and take away time you could be paired up with your strongest supporter.

So yes, it's very much the same. In Genealogy you can accidentally get bad pairings by deploying units randomly (no pairings still give you units, so I just lump them in with bad ones), in Awakening you can too by pairing them randomly. I'd say Awakening is actually more guilty of this because it has a handful of pairings that perform very well for the parents ingame, but then come back to haunt you later (Chrom x Sully, Frederick x Sumia, Avatar x any 1st gen).

[Jotari]

If you're going to bring that up, the game never tells new players that there's any reason to not view a support they just unlocked, especially now that supports are unlimited. For that matter, they also never mention that S means marriage.

Additionally, it's counter-intuitive for a player to spread out high levels of supports between several units instead of keeping your units in dedicated pairs, because they won't do anything and take away time you could be paired up with your strongest supporter.

So yes, it's very much the same. In Genealogy you can accidentally get bad pairings by deploying units randomly (no pairings still give you units, so I just lump them in with bad ones), in Awakening you can too by pairing them randomly. I'd say Awakening is actually more guilty of this because it has a handful of pairings that perform very well for the parents ingame, but then come back to haunt you later (Chrom x Sully, Frederick x Sumia, Avatar x any 1st gen).

Heh. In my first playthrough of Awakening I wanted to marry Tiki and didn't know you could have infinite A level supports so I kept my avatar with a B level support with Chrom and an available but not viewed C level support with half the rest of the cast. In this one instant pre existent knowledge of the series worked against me quite a bit (also funny considering the fact that Tiki was in it was literally the only thing I knew about the game's plot going into it. If I hadn't known that I have no idea who my avatar would have initially ended up with).

[BrightBow]

Edit: Unfortunately most of my post got messed up during an update and I have to write like half of it new. Sorry about that.

Also, for whatever reason, I also can't delete that quote balloon below as usual. It won't stay selected if I click on it and if I try to reach it with the cursor buttons, it instead selects the beginning of the post. Can somebody please just delete this post entirely because I don't think I can find a way to get rid of this thing myself.

Edited June 5, 2014 by BrightBow

[Chiki]

Plus FE13 is not LTC’d to its full potential, either, at the higher difficulties.

So what? That's not meaningful. Every map in FE13, regardless of the difficulty is going to be similar: Galeforce and Rescue.

[Florete]

Lunatic+ is one of the best challenges that the series has to offer to experts. It has flaws, like anything else, but generally speaking they accomplished a lot with relatively little. I just roll my eyes whenever someone calls it "dumb". Lunatic+ is secretly pretty clever; just look at the logical impact of the specific skills that they chose.

Please explain how Ch 2 Lunatic+, a map with 9 strong enemies who have randomly-generated super skills charging at you immediately, is not dumb. No, seriously, tell me. I want to actually beat the mode one day.

I know one map isn't the whole game but Ch 1 isn't much better. The Prologue also relied on a bit of luck with what skills were generated. It's hard to appreciate the mode when I can't get past the 3rd map, and I can just imagine what some other maps are going to feel like if I don't grind.

I do see some merit in it (for example, all Luna+ skills are primarily offensive instead of defensive, supposedly being a good thing), but taking the already jacked up stats and illegal forges of Lunatic enemies and throwing a random number of a specific set of OP skills on them just looks like an artificial way to add another game mode to me.

[Interceptor]

Yes, the GBA system was really bad. But then that crappy system was wonderfully revamped in the console games. Awakening reverted back to the glue method of the GBA games, which is a downgrade even if it added some fresh paint to hide the rust.

Again: Awakening's support system is superior to the GBA system, for reasons already laid out. It's less convenient than the Tellius system, but it's also more organic. It's important for you to understand that the GBA system and the Awakening system are completely different from each other, even if they seem superficially similar to someone who isn't paying attention.

Pair up is absolutely fundamental to the entire support and generation system. Not to mention those massive stat boasts that you miss out. It's role in the game is absolutely massive. It's "optional" in pretty much the same way that promotions are optional.

Pair Up can be completely ignored in Awakening, and in fact people have done playthroughs without it. The support system depends on Support Units, which is completely different from the Pair Up system. Go look into the mechanics.

This has absolutely nothing to do with what I wrote. Please read that part again:

The game's logic is perfectly consistent. Supports units in a Pair operate under different rules than primary units: you can't directly interact with them, and they aren't bound by range restrictions. Everything else is A-OK. This is a new system, and they implemented parameters for it. It's nonsense to complain that Support Units are treated differently than primaries: of COURSE they are.

If you don't want to explain those reasons, then why did you reply to something trivial like my comparison with Baldur's Gate's mechanics in the first place?

Because those reasons don't necessarily apply to Fire Emblem, and I'm not going down a DnD rabbit hole. I just told you where the mechanic ACTUALLY came from, and now you can go do some research if you care to.

I do of course agree that you need to learn how to get good at new stuff but why would that make you forget the old stuff? As in, preventing you from changing back into your old class.

Because that was the decision that was made, and frankly it's a good one, since it makes the classes more distinct and also forces you to pay a cost for re-training. It's a game, FFS. Certain allowances have to be made for balance reasons.

With an activation rate of at the very best like 40% you can never rely on them when you are using them so they are just a luck factor. You can not compare them to stuff like hitrates since there are tons of ways to make them almost completely reliable.

This argument is rejected; 40% skill activations are no different than critical hits. Fire Emblem has always been about the RNG, whether you're willing to accept it or not. The skills in this game are generally pretty useful, even the luck-based ones.

Why do we need a breakpoint here at all?

Forces use of consumables for advancement.

Mounts were superior because of their higher movement.

And then they went waaaay past that line into "WTF" territory by additionally having Canto. The downsides did not outweigh the advantage, here. All of your complaints are neutered by the existence of Canto, which was far too good.

However, I still see things a bit different. I wouldn't go so far as to say that balance makes things boring. Just that perfect balance is near impossible to achieve. But the more, the better.

This is a fallacy. Fire Emblem is not a competitive game, so why on earth would you aspire to "more is better" for balance? Imperfect balance is advantageous for a single-player series like Fire Emblem -- as long as it doesn't get ridiculous -- because it gives you different experiences/strategies within the same difficulty settings. I can make Lunatic mode even harder by using shit units and sub-optimal skills/classes. I can enjoy raising an Est-like unit into a powerhouse.

Balance by making everything the same is just ignoring the problem.

No, it's a way to illustrate that "balance" isn't something that you'd necessarily want.

Oh, come on. "It's different; it's not necessarily worse." is literally the last thing you wrote before that line.

Generations adds a mechanic without really taking something else away: customizable late-game recruits. It's cool, and something that the other titles do not have.

If you think I am wrong, then explain how instead of leaving it to me to make your arguments.

What argument? The child system is extraordinarily popular, that's just a fact.

And it's not clear to me why you think I was thinking I had any "permission" to give. Maybe it's a side effect of my crappy English but I merely wanted encourage you to give your views on the mechanics of the game after I told you which way I saw them.

I'll give my opinion if I feel like it, regardless or whether or not someone tells me that I can do so.

A comment made by somebody who tackled me because of a comment about an long outdated DnD edition...

It's old, not outdated. People still play 2nd ed., since they don't like the newer editions, just like people still play Tetris. Not everything that's old is necessarily outdated, if it's still suiting your needs. The older FE games are OK-ish, but they quickly get more tedious/frustrating the further back that you go. The game experience has not aged well at all.

Anyway, I am not sure who this last part is addressing because for my part I definitely don't take these things for granted. Their lack limited my fun in those old games and even prevented me from finishing both of the NES ones at all. Many good things were added since then that made Fire Emblem games a lot more pleasant to play. The importance of these elements cannot be stressed enough.

And If these things are already enough for you to consider a game by default superior then all the ones preceding ... well I'm sure nobody wants to take that conviction from.

But neither does this invalidate comparisons and discussions about how all the other aspects were handled.... nor does it necessarily mean that the lack of these new features is enough to diminish the fun people get from all the things that those older games were doing pretty damn right.

I don't care how good your garden is. If I keep getting smashed in the face by a rake every time I walk through it, that's detracting from the experience. The two things can't be separated. That's why I bring up "nostalgia" as an explanation for whatever warm feelings people still have for the old crap, because it's surely not balance (all of them are unbalanced) or the actual playing experience (all of them are increasingly bad the further back you go).

Listen, if I drop a popsicle in a pile of poop, I can wash it off, but it's just easier to get a new popsicle.

Edited June 5, 2014 by Interceptor

[BrightBow]

...

Do you maybe still have the page with my post open in a tab and could maybe send it to me as a whole? Maybe, those quotes from are all that is needed but in your last post they were pretty brief and the longer I wait to ask, the more likely hypothetical tabs are already closed.

I know I let you wait for a response in the first place, so I am really sorry for the further inconvenience.

Edit:

I guess not. Dang it, I can not just rewrite it if small parts of it are already posted. Without all of the original text, that would end as an Orweilan revision, no matter how I approach it.

Edit:

But I aproach this one at least because it really bugged me:

What argument? The child system is extraordinarily popular, that's just a fact.

That's what I was wondering too. I have no idea what I am even supposed to be wrong about because I didn't even contest the popularity. Argh, this is getting all kinds of messy because I still remember parts of my post that you didn't put in your quote and you probably can't read again.

This is what we both wrote back then:

The Generations system in Awakening compared to FE4, well: In FE4, the entire game was designed around that system. The game was themed around legacy and inheritance, so it was actually about the kids. But in this game they are just glorified Est units who walked in circles for two years while the fate of their world was decided.

The concept was promising to be sure. The Future Past DLC is prove of that. But in the main game, they are just painfully tagged on to give the player a designer child to go along with the Waifu. Rather then contributing to the story and setting, the script needs to handwave their existence and gameplaywise they are as redundant as Est units usually are.

The Generations System in Awakening as compared to every single mother-effing Fire Emblem that's not FE4: easily beats their "nothing" entry. The re-imagining of the children system is extremely popular, so perhaps consider the possibility that you are wrong about it.

I did in no way say that Awakening's Generation system is not popular. So I'm kinda lost what you meant with that. Their popularity can not be compared anyway since FE4 never even left Japan to begin with.

Edited June 5, 2014 by BrightBow

[Interceptor]

Please explain how Ch 2 Lunatic+, a map with 9 strong enemies who have randomly-generated super skills charging at you immediately, is not dumb. No, seriously, tell me. I want to actually beat the mode one day.

Chapter 2 is really hard, sometimes even moreso than Chapter 3. It's one of the things that I would tweak if I was king for a day (by introducing Aegis+ and Pavise+ one chapter earlier). But if someone literally can't get past Ch. 2 Lunatic+, it's because of at least one of the following things:

1) Doesn't possess necessary tactical skills to deal with the in-game challenges.

2) Lacks a suitable strategy to prepare for Chapter 2 in the first place.

3) Is held back by some rule or another that the game doesn't actually inflict on you.

You're already a skilled player, so I'd say you need to tighten up your strategy and maybe let some people die. Force-feed a +DEF Avatar using the Water trick in Prologue, Fort-tank in Ch. 1, and consider sacrificing Sully or Stahl (or both) in Ch. 2 so that Avatar/Fred can get to a Fort and everyone else can get to safety. Or just use a standard clear where you do a lot of damage on Player Phase 1, and just button up the LHS, using the scrubs to gang-up kill on strays. Some clever Pair/Switch/drop shenanigans help there.

I know one map isn't the whole game but Ch 1 isn't much better. The Prologue also relied on a bit of luck with what skills were generated. It's hard to appreciate the mode when I can't get past the 3rd map, and I can just imagine what some other maps are going to feel like if I don't grind.

It does get better once you get past Ch. 3. As long as you have some sort of overall strategy for dealing with the Lunatic+ skills, more time to execute said strategy just makes things easier on you.

I do see some merit in it (for example, all Luna+ skills are primarily offensive instead of defensive, supposedly being a good thing), but taking the already jacked up stats and illegal forges of Lunatic enemies and throwing a random number of a specific set of OP skills on them just looks like an artificial way to add another game mode to me.

All of the skills shut down a particular strategy, which is what makes it clever.

- Pass: counters simple walling

- Counter: counters over-leveled super-units, who will kill themselves

- Aegis+/Pavise+: counters armies with mono weapon types

- Hawkeye: counters evade-tanking

- Luna+: counters DEF-tanking

- Vantage+: makes it more difficult to weaken/finish units (training is harder, damage taken is higher)

They could have given enemies big stat sticks, like All Stats +2, but they didn't, they chose these ones. I prefer it, since it fundamentally changes the way that you approach the game, rather than just giving you a steeper hill to climb.

Do you maybe still have the page with my post open in a tab and could maybe send it to me as a whole? Maybe, those quotes from are all that is needed but in your last post they were pretty brief and the longer I wait to ask, the more likely hypothetical tabs are already closed.

Sorry, dog ate it; not available on other tabs. I just sliced things out as I went, to keep the post length from getting even more out of hand.

[BrightBow]

Sorry, dog ate it; not available on other tabs. I just sliced things out as I went, to keep the post length from getting even more out of hand.

I see. Thanks for checking. And again I am really sorry for how this went down, seeing how you already went through the trouble of writing a response and now I can't give it proper credit because what is left in my head most certainly won't match up with what was on your screen back then.

Edited June 5, 2014 by BrightBow

[RJWalker]

I don't care how good your garden is. If I keep getting smashed in the face by a rake every time I walk through it, that's detracting from the experience. The two things can't be separated. That's why I bring up "nostalgia" as an explanation for whatever warm feelings people still have for the old crap, because it's surely not balance (all of them are unbalanced) or the actual playing experience (all of them are increasingly bad the further back you go).

Listen, if I drop a popsicle in a pile of poop, I can wash it off, but it's just easier to get a new popsicle.

What is this rake you speak of? I've never encountered anyone who tries the older games after Awakening and found them as unplayable as claim they are, at least not as far back as the GBA series. Beyond that, there is a lack of modern conveniences but now you're exaggerating. As far as the GBA, DS and Tellius games go, I've yet to see anyone make a ridiculous analogy like that.

[Interceptor]

I did in no way say that Awakening's Generation system is not popular. So I'm kinda lost what you meant with that. Their popularity can not be compared anyway since FE4 never even left Japan to begin with.

You're trashing the implementation of the generations system in Awakening, but the fact of the matter is that people really love it. So I'd say to consider the possibility that you're wrong about how bad it is; at worst, most people really don't seem to mind the bolted-on feel, because it adds a fun customization element to the game.

I see. Thanks for checking. And again I am really sorry for how this went down, seeing how you already went through the trouble of writing a response and now I can't give it proper credit because what is left in my head most certainly won't match up with what was on your screen back then.

Oh well, no helping it.

What is this rake you speak of? I've never encountered anyone who tries the older games after Awakening and found them as unplayable as claim they are, at least not as far back as the GBA series. Beyond that, there is a lack of modern conveniences but now you're exaggerating. As far as the GBA, DS and Tellius games go, I've yet to see anyone make a ridiculous analogy like that.

They are not unplayable; they are tedious, and each more than the last, the further back you go. One is reminded of it constantly when playing, especially after having been exposed to modern standards. You really start to feel it with Blazing Sword, but even RD is good at wasting your time with unskippable nonsense.

[PKL]

Funny that you say previous FEs are tedious and then defend Tedious+ mode.

[arvilino]

Funny that you say previous FEs are tedious and then defend Tedious+ mode.

He probably means enemy phase wise. If you compare doing Lunatic+ to something that may need some resets such as 5* ranked HHM in FE7 the latter is more tedious when you're going through the motions to get to a run where an important attack doesn't miss or something, especially during the turns when you know you're almost certain to succeed during the enemy phase but still have to watch it all.

Doubly after the release of FE11-13 with the knowledge if it was a later released game you wouldn't have to watch all the animations.

In short you know you've done it right, you don't really need to watch it play out, but you have to which makes it pretty tedious.

Edited June 5, 2014 by arvilino

[RJWalker]

He probably means enemy phase wise. If you compare doing Lunatic+ to something that may need some resets such as 5* ranked HHM in FE7 the latter is more tedious when you're going through the motions to get to a run where an important attack doesn't miss or something, especially during the turns when you know you're almost certain to succeed during the enemy phase but still have to watch it all.

Doubly after the release of FE11-13 with the knowledge if it was a later released game you wouldn't have to watch all the animations.

In short you know you've done it right, you don't really need to watch it play out, but you have to which makes it pretty tedious.

You are talking about the same game mode that apparently requires grinding in fucking prologue, right? I'm not sure how necessary this Water Trick is but yeah.

[LunaSaint]

Hmm, late response, since the topic has gone somewhat off the rails. Nonetheless, here's my opinion.

Awakening is a really good sandbox for veteran players, and full of shiny toys for new players. That's really all it comes down to. I can complain about how shallow a lot of the mechanics are, but I still accumulated 300 play hours in about 4-5 months. (No real surprise I can barely touch the game, now)

I think its campaign length is pretty nice, too. It's not too long and has as many side-quests as you want. ...mind you, the late game maps were really dull.

Best gameplay... honestly, while the game has it's flaws, I would still give that to Radiant Dawn, the hight dis/advantage, the two magic triangels, 3rd tier promotions etc. I just think that game made things a lot better and more complex.

Can I ask how any of these things make FE10 have the best gameplay? Complexity usually DETRACTS from the game's quality; it is depth we look for. Third tiers add very depth, since they pretty much turn every character into unstoppable death machines. The only real exception is hitting speed tiers for the finale.

The magic triangle was barely relevant, since playable mages were generally going to dominate enemy mages regardless of what was equipped - the effectiveness against certain kinds of units was a little more interesting, but otherwise it felt no different from awakening's spell tomes. Worse, in fact, since mages were pretty mediocre in Tellius.

Height was actually cool.

Like, I think 10 does have some of the best gameplay in FE, but for similar reasons to awakening - it's a good sandbox, with skill juggling and a large, variable roster.

[arvilino]

You are talking about the same game mode that apparently requires grinding in fucking prologue, right? I'm not sure how necessary this Water Trick is but yeah.

It's not necessary, I beat the prologue on Lunatic+ before I even knew you could enter the water. Besides like I said you can skip the enemy phase you could blast through multiple failed attempts in a very short time span(though the prologue and chapter 1 on Lunatic+ are never going to be sticking points outside of exceptional circumstances, it's chapter 2 where people will encounter difficulties unless they did grind in the prologue).

But really go back and play the earlier games. The slowness gets really annoying when you know you're going to win yet have to watch it all, it'll be a bit of a pain if they release FE7 for GBA VC on WiiU and you have to do Lyn's mode and Eliwood Normal Mode.

[The Geek]

In my experience with the idea of the "outdated" FEs, I think FE4 is as far back as I'll go. I tried to play FE3, but good god, the interface is horrendous.

[RJWalker]

But really go back and play the earlier games. The slowness gets really annoying when you know you're going to win yet have to watch it all, it'll be a bit of a pain if they release FE7 for GBA VC on WiiU and you have to do Lyn's mode and Eliwood Normal Mode.

Except being forced to play through Lyn mode is something that is universely criticized and was never considered good. No one is saying it was ever good so the nostalgia arguement fallacy doesn't apply.

[Blademaster!]

I don't see how people can't see how great a game Awakening is. It has more customizability and things to do than any other game in the franchise by far. Marriage was pretty much always the reason fans used to think FE4 was the best game in the series. The dual support system is arguably one of the best mechanics introduced in the franchise and pair up has tons of depth to it as well, not to mention things like spotpass add on even more fun. The interface is more efficient and faster than ever before. There are just so many ways to play the game that the only thing the player is really limited by is their own creativity. Yeah, it can be easily broken, but being able to break the game is just one method of play, and there are always tons of challenge runs you can do just like in Pokemon with nuzlock runs. If a ranked mode system like FE6's or FE7's were in the game, cheesing the game with the avatar wouldn't even be mentioned since you'd fail to get a good rank right away anyway. Frankly the only real flaws I see with the game are that you gain exp too fast, certain items should be more expensive, that there really needed to be a difficulty between hard and lunatic, and the Sorcerer class is too overpowered(Manakete too, but that's more due to exp problems), but too think IS doesn't already recognize these problems after they were smart enough to remove the warp staff from FE12's higher difficulties and looking at the balance changes between FE9 and FE10 is just silly. Frankly, Awakening really set the bar way too high for the next game, since other than tweaking mechanics/adding in more old ones, I really don't know what else IS could add to make the games more fun and innovative.

Edited June 6, 2014 by Blademaster!