How bad were you when you just started fire emblem?

[CT075]

My entire strategy relied on Marcus destroying half the map, then everyone else picking off the scraps.

mfw this is still my strategy

i basically just solved everything in my first run of FE10 by throwing haar or titania at it, or by crying when the DB was shitty as fuck (i vaguely remember giving taur pass and battle save abusing until he luna'd ike in 3-13). and then royals happened in endgame and i still somehow managed to get half my team killed

[riariadne]

My first was FE8 and it was pretty dubious. Neimi was my best unit, somehow. At least I managed to actually finish the run, so that's worth something?

[Elwind]

My first was the Awakening demo. I didn't know about the weapon triangle, what the stats even meant, that weapons could break (I thouth the number of uses had something to do with how strong the weapon was), how to calculate damage and was too stingy to use any vulneraries. Somehow I managed to get through the demo on Lunatic without anyone dying.

But my first full game was The Sacred Stones. I didn't do many mistakes I regret too badly, except for killing all the rectuitable enemies. The only recruited character who died was Saleh in the final chapter.

[Topaz Light]

I don't think this was actually my first playthrough, but make what you will of the fact that I once ended up at Chapter 9 of FE7 with only Lyn, Wallace and two (maybe three) other units alive.

So yeah, I was pretty bad.

[deleted35362]

in fe7 i relied on marcus and ended up getting stuck on valorous roland because i couldn't beat georg. when i started over things went okay, though. i trained people better, and i noticed that anima magic is broken so i started using erk for everything and never looked back.

My first foray into FE7: Have Rath and Jaffar stomp everything

they don't even exist for most of the game lol

Edited October 24, 2014 by xXHoshiHeartsXx

[Soledai]

Let me see... FE4, Lex and Sigurd were the only members of my team I recall using, either no one could keep up or they died, I was so meh at the game I didn't even know there was a Gen 2 until my... third or fourth attempt at the game.

This was also before I was aware of the fact that Sigurd could solo Gen 1.

When I managed to get to Gen 2, I somehow had everyone alive.

Edited October 24, 2014 by Soledai

[BrightBow]

Well, I had to restart the entire tutorial of FE7 because just about everyone got killed by the time of chapter 8. How does this rate on a scale from 1 to 10?

I do blame how the game phrases things though. I only realized they were gone for good after 7x because Erk died there and his death cutscene has him leaving the group completely rather them him only being injured like the others were. And Dorcas died way back in his first appearance, which causes him to stay with his wife. I thought that was normal because Dorcas had absolutely no reason to stay with the group.

Edited October 24, 2014 by BrightBow

[Kirie]

FE7 was my first game, so I had the nice forced tutorial to teach me the basics. As soon as I started Eliwood's mode and saw Marcus get like 2 EXP for a kill I went "hell no" and benched him, not really understanding the principles behind it but just feeling instinctively that that was a Bad Thing because numbers. I did a lot of restarting to keep people alive, only losing Erk in the last chapter because I was sick of restarting and wanted to finish the damn game. I've obviously improved a lot since then, but I don't think I did too badly.

[Topazd]

FE7 Marcus solo. Only he and the (untrained) lords were alive.

[bookofholsety]

my first fe7 playthrough back in 2004 was the stuff of legend. the only people to survive to the endgame were marcus, isadora, nils, pent, louise, renault and a completely untrained nino, and i'm not sure how many of them made it through to the end. to this day i still have no idea how i even managed to clear the game. needless to say, the memory of that playthrough alone is why i've never been able to not reset when someone dies

funny story: i somehow misinterpreted bartre's death quote as meaning permadeath didn't apply to him. i was dense as fuck back then

Edited October 24, 2014 by bookofholsety

[Jotari]

I started with Radiant Dawn meaning I had a lot of trouble with the Dawn Brigade chapters. I missed recruiting some characters and let a few others die by accident (because I thought the retreat quotes would mean I would get them back for some reason) but I don't think I made any hugely major mistakes. I remember finding Part 1 Endgame super difficult which means I didn't over abuse the Black Knight's uber stats. I know I didn't train Micaiah up at all because she kept dying which kind of bit me in the ass later on when she couldn't even use purge. At one point though (I think right after getting Ragnell) I got into the habit of Battle Saving every turn and playing the game on a turn by turn basis.

[Knight]

There's a large burial tomb somewhere in a Daein cemetary labeled "Dawn Brigade."

[Etria]

I knew about perma death, which is why I was careful about my units. End result was that Eliwood/Marcus/Lyn were super weak (Eliwood wasn't even level 8 by chapter 17 or something, lol). That meant that my units were too weak to kill anything and I had to restart all the time. Eventually I had enough and put FE7 aside for about a year. I was better then and actually beat it.

[Kon]

FE8 was my first, and I was... pretty bad orz

I remember thinking it was a great idea to go through Ephraim's route my first time through 'cause I thought I could handle it, but that didn't work out too well. I got really stuck on the Pirate Ship chapter and I think I ended up resetting to try to train my units better (I never went to the Tower to grind DX)

Eventually on my second playthrough I managed to beat it, although I lost two units. The first was Dozla going down to Valter, I think he got critted/Pierced, and I had been trying to beat that chapter for so long that I just gave up and let him die. The second was Vanessa, stupidly. I just had Myrrh kill Morza and thought she was in serious danger (she was on low health, but she would've been fine), so I rescued her with Vanessa, who quickly died because I was an idiot.

[shadowofchaos]

I thought it was like Front Mission, when your mechs would respawn after each map.

Sorry Lugh and Lot.

[Xator Nova]

I first played FE7, and I was awful. My entire strategy relied on Marcus destroying half the map, then everyone else picking off the scraps.

isn´t that the standard strategy?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I started with Binding Blade. Japanese text (which is more or less the reason why I never cared for FE storylines).

A friend of mine showed me the game, and told me not to use "the purple knight whose name is Marcus". Instead, she advised me to use "the green-haired archer". Obvious anti-prepromote bias.

I shouldn´t have listened her. Especially not when I tried Hard Mode afterwards.

(tbh, to this day, I haven´t finished FE6 Hard Mode without Marcus, though I know it´s possible and easy in paper... I´m just too lazy for that.)

[Dragoncat]

Oh man I sucked. First one was Sacred Stones...got to the level where you get Amelia and I had like 4 units left. Then I started a new game and started actually resetting when someone died. I'm honestly surprised I got that far.

I don't remember anything specific about how much I sucked at FE. But if I may...my first Pokemon game was Yellow. During the battle with Brock, I beat him with my pikachu...with struggle. Then, like an idiot, I actually WENT ONTO THE NEXT ROUTE WITHOUT GOING TO THE POKEMON CENTER FIRST. Epic fail.

Edited October 24, 2014 by Dragoncat

[Anacybele]

I was bad too. xP The tutorials in PoR made me understand the game pretty well and stuff, I was just so new to this kind of gameplay that I was just really bad at strategizing and I didn't think to reset when I lost someone. I lost all of Ike's troops except for Titania and Lethe. lol I WAS smart enough not to overuse Titania though. I tried to level up everyone.

Edited October 24, 2014 by Anacybele

[Knight]

To go into more detail, my first run through of Radiant Dawn (1st FE I owned, 2nd I've played, Easy mode) was a train wreck soaked in blood and anime hair dye. Edward and Leonardo became Mage fodder the first chapter they were allowed to die, poor Vika met her fate by an arrow, Laura, Meg, Zihark and Aran became sacrifices, I tried to keep Jill alive but I gave up on her. Then I restarted cause I couldn't get past the chapter where I had to defend Micaiah with the BK.

[Ϲharlie]

I wasn't that great, but I was at least better than the only other guy I knew who played Fire Emblem.

I don't think my skills have improved a whole lot over the years.

[DreadFighter]

So terrible I died in Lyn normal mode. And Normal Classic Awakening.

[Ownagepuffs]

mfw I'm still pretty bad. I'm getting better thanks to this site.

My first playthrough of Awakening wasn't too terrible... because I spammed DLC. My avatar paired up with Freddy and carried me to the end.

My first playthrough of FE4 was great. The solution was always to throw Sigurd at it. Then when Lewyn got Lolsety, the solution was to throw both Sigurd and Lewyn at it.

In Gen 2, I gave Shannan the leg and bargain ring and regretted not a damn thing.

I don't think I'll ever be as good as I can be cause I have too much unit bias.

[Zerker]

I was bad enough to not know what weight was in the game when I first started.

And I kept increasing it becaused it saved me gold when I forged weapons.

Then I wondered why I was no longer hitting people twice.

...And I kept Lord units in a circle of units with a radius of two units.

I still don't remember why I did that.

[momogeek2141]

Pre-Promotes (especially Marcus of all units) and units promoted at level 10 (or before level 20 in general) are not bad. Any LTC thread on this site can prove why this is true.

I know they aren't bad, I assumed that when I was still bad. And it's not the level 10 promotion that screwed me. The fact that most of my units were 10/6 or 10/4 and the like (Priscilla was unpromoted) was what screwed me. And yes, my play through basically showed Marcus is one of the best units in the game, but he REALLY loses steam during Light (though he's still good).

Now I learned my lesson, I did an ltc, played FE6HM. Hard to do without pre promotes.

Still having a hard time believing that some of the best players on this site were bad at first.

As for the destroy half the map with Marcus thing, everyone else gets 2-3 kills max per level. So more like 3/4 of the map.

Edited October 24, 2014 by momogeek2141

[Oshimos]

My first game was 7, and I didn't realize that perma-death was a thing even while I was losing characters due to it being Lyn mode. Since they don't actually die, I never clued in to the fact that Florina wasn't supposed to break her arm immediately upon meeting her or that Dorcas was supposed to stay with you instead of escorting Natalie home. I finally clued in when you could buy axes a few chapters later and I had no axe person. Flash forward to CoD and I ended up giving up because Marcus was my only competent unit and I couldn't handle it.

Also, the first time I made it to the Dragon my level 7 unpromoted Hector got 1-shotted by a Bolting Sage on the first enemy phase. I was so pissed.