Can someone give a Banzai-level dissection of FE10?

[Logience]

4chan's starting to vilify anyone who likes FE10 the same way it's vilifying Bioshock Infinite. I'd like a reason why I should even give them the time of day.

And no, ">listening to 4chan" is not an answer.

[Tryhard]

How about you just try it and form your own opinion based on that?

I mean, I assume you haven't considering you're asking, but no-one's gonna write an 11,000 word essay to convince you.

Edited July 22, 2014 by Tryhard

[Logience]

How about you just try it and form your own opinion based on that?

I mean, I assume you haven't considering you're asking, but no-one's gonna write an 11,000 word essay to convince you.

Because I have played it, just finished my 4th/5th run yesterday, and I can't find any faults. That's why I came to you people. Internet forums can find plotholes in anything. Edited July 22, 2014 by Logience

[Tryhard]

Generally people have a problem with the story, especially part 4.

I think (most) people find the gameplay to be decent or good. There are gripes, of course.

I prefer FE9, but what are people complaining about, anyway?

I think Banzai actually did write about FE10, as well.

Edited July 22, 2014 by Tryhard

[Chocolate Kitty]

most of the story issues are related to part 2(it could have been removed entirely from most people's perspective), part 3(griel mercenaries don't really need to be doing all of this or something, I don't remember the argument now), and part 4.

and there's sothe, the lackluster forced unit that gets the only mastery skill that will never kill an opponent

but hey, I enjoy the game tons

[Xander]

So...you can't form your own opinion of a game you've played through 5 times? This is an intelligent topic.

[-Cynthia-]

Micaiah Mary Sue, Sothe belly shirt, Part 4 is bad, Ranulf spoils the BK's identity.

That's most of the common complaints, though not the length you wanted.

[Jedi]

most of the story issues are related to part 2(it could have been removed entirely from most people's perspective), part 3(griel mercenaries don't really need to be doing all of this or something, I don't remember the argument now), and part 4.

and there's sothe, the lackluster forced unit that gets the only mastery skill that will never kill an opponent

but hey, I enjoy the game tons

I honestly have always felt Part 2 was a nicely written book ends to PoR's events with Elincias struggles to rule and such.

[Konnor97]

I believe people don't like the generic support conversations. Or that you can only have support pairs, and if you wanted one character to start supporting a different character than their current support partner, you had to break their (the initial pair's) link.

Edited July 22, 2014 by Konnor97

[Psych]

the story sucks, the gameplay's good and hard mode adds fake difficulty

i think that covers everything

[-Cynthia-]

Oh I forgot complaints over lack of supports/ people not having the paired endings they preferred (but why doesn't Ike end up with woman xyz!?) etc.

[Logience]

Oh yeah, and just because people keep stating the obvious: I know about the weaknesses in "LOL scizio recruitment" and "LOL no support conversations". Please don't state them.

[CrimeanRoyalKnight]

Plus "TEH GAME IS GAY!!! IT'S A GAME FOR FUJOSHI!!1 WAAH WAAH IKE'S NOT GAY".

Aside from that, I think 4chan is just having a hivemind opinion.

I too tried to understand how RD could be bad and I tend to be like "But wath if muh opiniun is wrong?!?", but in the end, it's useless, not enough negative reviews or exaggerate opinions can change my mind. Don't worry too much about it.

[CT075]

yes sir i will write a 11,000 words about a video game on behest of logience-chan-sama-san-kun-ojou-sama-san-nii-chan to agree with 4chan

Edited July 25, 2014 by CT075

[Siuloir]

If you care about a single thing said by 4chan, then they've already won. So answer - stop giving 4chan the time of day.

[bookofholsety]

it only covers up to part 1 chapter 8, but there's this: a playthrough which takes a pretty thorough and harsh look at the story and its flaws as they unfold. i don't necessarily agree with all of its opinions and findings, and not just because i'm pro-fe10 in general, but it's a starting point if you're looking for a bit of (incomplete) critical dissection

that said, i wouldn't exactly be going out of my way to understand the hivemind-type opinions of any part of 4chan if i were you. odds are they'll forget about the current trend of fe10 vilification after a while and move on to hiveminding against some other game

[Florete]

I'd like a reason why I should even give them the time of day.

Why?

I think I would just be happy to see FE10 getting such attention.

[Irysa]

I've been trying to ignore this topic but I guess I can throw my two cents in. Bear in mind I haven't played RD for a few years and obv none of my criticism is going to be really in depth as you might want. Also, I'm not even going to start on how RD's individual moment to moment sentences and bits of dialogue just don't read very well at all. I think most people acknowledge that the writing in this game is somewhat janky and of lower quality than the other games (for the most part anyway).

Part 1

Honestly, whilst the pacing in this section is pretty terrible and the logistics behind the way the story jumps around is ridiculous, it is at least thematically consistent. You can mostly just stay immersed in what's going on because there's generally a motivation for each chapter that isn't ridiculously far fetched. However, the way the plot decides to just simply state "oh btw you conquered the rest of the country" in a chapter intro is pretty absurd though, it basically puts the scale of a whole FE game into a sentence or two. This only serves to make the Begnion army appear even more comically incompetant than they already are, and speaking of them, practically every enemy from Begnion functions as a caricature in this game. FE has never been known for particularly strong development on villains besides the odd sympathetic character, but PoR did a surprisingly decent job of reasoning out why the Daein army believes that they're justified in what they're doing (that being said, Ashnard was always displayed as a psycho, but he wasn't quite as exaggerated). However, RD sort of goes half way, it gives the enemies about as much dialogue as they got in PoR, but they also decide to just emphasise how much these guys are stupid, evil-for-no-reason, and incompetant they are constantly. Not to mention most of what goes on seriously puts Sanaki's character into question because letting crap like this go on for years seems pretty absurd for her. That would be the start of a long list on why Sanaki just becomes super incompetant and unreliable in this game so w/e I'm not getting into that.

I mean sure, you have Miccy's whole deal of being literally messianic but I think criticising that is in poor taste given it is obviously mega intentional and she's meant to be the real apostle and all. Although the way everyone treats her because she can heal people is kinda retarded when any Cleric can do it with a staff and the whole "I see the future but I can't control it" is complete bullshit, and a plot convenience (RD is full of these).

tl;dr, it's actually not that bad, but the pacing and the way it compares to PoR is pretty poor to say the least. It works, that's all that it really has to do.

Part 2

Holy exposition dump batman!

Actually I quite like this part, if only because it maintains a great sense of tension and mystery throughout because you're always like WHERE THE HELL ARE IKE AND CREW and then they finally show up at the end and kick everyone's ass. I still don't understand why Leanne comes to Crimea when she can't speak a fucking word of the Beorc language, why didn't they just send Naeluchi by himself or anyone else? (They wanted you to have a dancer in every part but it's still bizzare). Also Haar sort of ruins most of the dramatic tension in 2-E by killing the boss in 2 turns by himself pathetically easily. Oops. But that's again a mechanical quirk and not really a fault of the plot. I think the whole way the "conspiracy" is investigated is more than a little contrived in how it plays out, but hey w/e, Fire Emblem typically grossly simplifies politics so anything beyond "and that guy killed that guy" is a step up so I'll applaud that. Elincia's plight feels more than a little exxagerated given how cosy everyone seemed about her in PoR but again, you can overlook it, and it's been a while since the first game.

I remember hating something about something some of the random civvies say in a few chapters but I haven't played the game in a while so I don't remember exactly what.

tl;dr, it's pretty good actually, but it's a bit short and can feel a little out of place.

Part 3

Aka where the game actually starts to go full retard,

The Laguz Alliance decision to go on the offensive is pretty much the exact opposite to how they operated in PoR for years. How does it being Begnion instead of Ashnard burning Serene's change how they act so drastically? In PoR they believed it was Ashnard IIRC, but they didn't want to go to war with Daein at any point. Their previous battles with Begnion were over Laguz slavery, which Sanaki and Ike were working to get rid of in the prior game, and it's already been banned for ages too. Like, would they have gone to war if they'd sent a messenger to Ashnard and he didn't come back? Seriously? This is just so stupid. Instead of trying to get a middleman to Sanaki to sort this out, they decide, nah, we're going against our status quo and invading a country and fucking over everyone innocent who lives in the way of us and the capital.

I'm not trying to say they have no reason for war, but it's ridiculously irresponsible. What's dumber is how all of the Laguz were the ones more concerned about the Medallion in 9, yet in 10 they're all fine to start a war with god knows how many more people dying and risking the medallion cause "don't worry, we've got it sealed up with our plot convenience", and that's basically supposed to be that, nobody else brings it up again until its convenient. Oh yeah, I also detest how Ike and crew go from being suppposedly uneasy about what they're doing to complete apathy towards it "We're mercenaries, so we don't care who we fight" or something to that extent. What about everything you went through in PoR guys? What about all that effort Ike put into trying to get Laguz and Beorc to stop being dickheads to each other? They get their asses kicked and have to run back home and we're still supposed to be cheering these guys after what they've done and their current attitude towards it?

Oh and the Senate gets even more forefront here being comically evil and doing stupid things on purpose to sabotage the army. I was cheering when Sanaki finally flew in to try to sort stuff out but it turns out she's just as useless and incompetant as she was the rest of the game where she was absent, and after kind of solving 1 problem (more like telling Zelgius to solve it) she goes back into her shell. Then the whole blood contract stuff shows up and what a surprise, it's yet another silly plot convenience. The only reasoning for this I've got is that they wanted to keep Miccy infalliable to the end for her actions (obviously they care a lot more about trying to maintain her in a positive light even for stupid reasons than they do about the Laguz or Ike).

tl;dr most of this Part doesn't fit into the established characters, roles, and lore. It's thematically weak, and I was sitting around asking why the hell we were doing what we were doing a lot of the time.

Part 4

I'd like to say this part came out of nowhere but it didn't. They just sort of forgot how the Medallion was a big fucking deal until right about near the end, so it ends up feeling stupid to a lot of people. But it's not, the presentation just poorly emphasised it. I would agree with Brightbow that all of RD seems to just lead up to getting the plot to the point PoR already had reached before, except it handled everything a lot worse on the way. RD seemed to think it was a game about actual politics and (stupid) people up to this point because the Medallion was so firmly sitting in the back of everybody's minds beacuse plot convenience can handle it, wheras in PoR it was more of a danger since Ashnard had it. Gameplay wise I hate this part SO much but that's not relevant to criticism of the script. I don't paricularly find anything in Part 4 to stand out as a great moment or a particular failure (more Sanaki being pathetic aside) but since my brain was half off because of how bored I was playing through the game at this point I probably simply didn't register as much anyway. Actually I guess that thing Brightbow pointed out in some other thread about how the script with Ike's dialogue with Yune is literally changed entirely from the Japanese version to the point where it thematically goes against most of the themes presented in the narrative is pretty damning (it basically changed it from being about family to glorifying gods) but 3-E and P-4 in general ruined my capability to even think about the plot. I'm still not sure what the criteria is to be a "chosen one", considering a bunch of people who weren't even in the vicinity like Elincia's uncle, Bastian and Volke didn't get turned to stone but I really don't care.

tl;dr this part is actually narrative wise mostly not broken, but the way it fits into the story in RD is incredibly wonky.

MASSIVE TL;DR

Part 1 has problems but at its absoloute core it's fine. Kind of. The execution lets it down.

Part 2 has minor problems but on the whole it's great, just mostly odd because of how it just sits in the middle of the story.

Part 3 has HUGE problems and is beyond contrived. Fuck this part.

Part 4 is doesn't fit into how RD presented most of it's plot and feels horribly out of place despite being the natural conclusion to the story. If you can manage to make your finale feel unfitting you know you've fucked up somewhere in your narrative.

EDIT: Also, /feg/ is like the worst.

Edited July 26, 2014 by Irysa

[Just call me AL]

General Shock's not actually the best person to look for when looking for someone to dissect FE10's story. Other than that, Irysa pretty much hit the nail on the head.

Edited July 25, 2014 by Just call me Al

[virtu333]

Having just finished this, the lack of support conversations is pretty bad. Especially because it actually has the "what does this character do now" like the previous GBA ones.

Overall, story is a bit on the meh side at times. At the same time, being able to have your Greil Mercs wreck some of your shitty Dawn Brigade characters is a ton of fun. Definitely a pretty cool aspect.

Edited July 28, 2014 by virtu333