Voting Gauntlet: Battle of the Mages!

[Hawk King]

24 minutes ago, unique said:

idk what defines "Gary Stu" but the characters do kinda say "Wow Robin! You are such a genius" every few minutes and there's not really any moments of "robin you shouldn't have done that thing"

i'd say he kinda is 

but I guess that's getting off topic

Robin is the biggest Gary Stu in the entire franchise. It's one of the things I hate most about Awakening.

2 minutes ago, omegaxis1 said:

Why would they? Remember that in Micaiah's case, she was threatened to attack the GOOD guys. Robin was helping the good guys stop the BAD guys. There's a huge difference here because of the perspective in Radiant Dawn was shown for both sides, whereas the perspective for Awakening wasn't shown. How would you see the other perspective here when you don't switch story sides like in Radiant Dawn?

There is a huge difference between blowing up ships, and pouring oil on people and setting them on fire.

Explosions are mostly quick and painless. Slowly burning to death fucking sucks.

 

 

Sorry to break it everyone who seems to still be clinging to the hope of a Leo or Julia victory, but there is a 0% chance of Tharja or Robin losing.

[Allergic_to_Farming]

Honestly, even if Ephraim is a gary stu, he at least has a personality. Robin is bland, and the only real "mistake" he made wasn't even his fault (if i understand correctly).

 

How exactly was Robin supposed to predict Gangrel would be able to conveniently summon Risen archers in almost no time?

[Frenzify]

1 minute ago, Hawk King said:

Robin is the biggest Gary Stu in the entire franchise. It's one of the things I hate most about Awakening.

And yet Corrin exists.

[Magical Glace]

13 minutes ago, omegaxis1 said:

And exactly HOW was Ephraim stopped? Please remind me. Was it not with the magical stone? A powerful plot device? Indeed, a plot device that was used for the sole purpose of STOPPING Ephraim. And that only happened because Eirika gave Lyon the stone. Ephraim wouldn't have been stopped otherwise. 

And like I mentioned above, Robin has had his failures and issues, like how he failed to save Emmeryn. Plus we see more times of Robin being insecure than Ephraim. Hell, most of the time, Ephraim is just praised for being this perfect warrior that never loses a fight. 

"I don't pick fights I can't win." Another way of saying, "Bitch, I'll win cause I'm Ephraim." 

Ephraim was stopped because he was underestimating the freaking Demon King in the heat of the moment.  Eirika will only hand over the stone in her route, in Ephraim's, Ephraim will charge Lyon headlong, get stopped by the Demon King's magic, and the stone gets crushed as a result of this.

What's more, it's noted how one track minded Ephraim was about fighting.  Ephraim never gave any thought about being king prior to the story, and it's noted the state Renais wound up in is in part due to how he went on a glory seeking rampage instead of trying to defend his homeland.

I can't see Robin not saving Emm as a legitimate failure by the character, since it was Emm's choice to jump and she never gave them the opportunity to actually do something.  As far as Ephraim and insecurity goes, Ephraim is actually fully aware that he was irresponsible and didn't take his duties as future king as seriously as he should have, and that he is absolute rubbish at diplomacy because he always left that to Eirika.  He does decide to shape up about this during the story, though.  On the other hand, I can't think of much insecurity on Robin's end, but that might be because their personality bores me to tears.

Edited May 14, 2017 by Glaceon Mage

[Rezzy]

7 minutes ago, omegaxis1 said:

Let's look at another way.

Path of Radiance: Micaiah was stopping the obvious GOOD guys by doing this because they had no choice on the matter.

Awakening: Robin was stopping the obvious BAD guys from invading their homeland.

Get the difference?

Micaiah being gang-pressed into service would exculpate more than inculpate her.  In RD there weren't any real obvious bad guys, more so than most FE games.

Although the leaders of the Valmese empire are mostly evil, the rank and file sailors probably all aren't evil.

Just now, Tybrosion said:

I'm pretty sure it was mostly the Apostle's Army who took issue with Micaiah's little stunt and not so much Daein. I think Sothe and/or Tauroneo said something to the effect of "you used to hate plans like this above all else" to Micaiah before it happened but I don't remember anyone on Daein's side actually calling Micaiah out for her plan. Though yeah, no one in Awakening called Robin out for what happened at the end of Chapter 14.

Sothe and Tauroneo are of Daein, though.

[Ice Dragon]

17 minutes ago, Glaceon Mage said:

Tbh Mark gets a lot of the worshipping too, since a good chunk of the lines addressing him seem to be for that purpose after the first few chapters of Lyn mode.

Perhaps my memory is fuzzy from FE7 being literally a decade ago, but all I remember was the occasional "good work!" and "well shit what now?" once you get out of Lyn mode. Care to jog my memory a bit?

[Magical Glace]

Just now, Ice Dragon said:

Perhaps my memory is fuzzy from FE7 being literally a decade ago, but all I remember was the occasional "good work!" and "well shit what now?" once you get out of Lyn mode. Care to jog my memory a bit?

It's basically if you have a certain character deployed on a certain map, they'll just say a brief thing like "I know you can do this" and characters occasionally saying what a good job you did, though if you rank poorly the character you Afa dropped will insult you (Canas is probably the most blunt about it: "You seem to lack even basic skills").  Tbh it felt to me like the only real purpose for it was to praise the player for playing the game.

Though the high rank ending is "Bern and Etruria go to war over you" even though we all know the war between Bern and Etruria happened for a completely different reason.

[maybe]

1 minute ago, Frenzify said:

And yet Corrin exists.

corrin's pretty damn bad and the plot revolves around him to a stupid degree but robin's the one who gets the most blind praise

the difference is that robin's defining characteristic is that he's a Big Genius

like, there are so many moments of "Wow, Robin, that was a very smart thing you did! I am glad you are here, because you are very smart."

honestly I think all 3 avatars are bad in their own ways

kris steals the spotlight from marth several times and ruins all the development he got in shadow dragon, robin's constantly praised by everyone and has no real flaws and makes no real mistakes, and corrin's story bends backwards to be about him every chance it gets

Just now, Ice Dragon said:

Perhaps my memory is fuzzy from FE7 being literally a decade ago, but all I remember was the occasional "good work!" and "well shit what now?" once you get out of Lyn mode. Care to jog my memory a bit?

honestly I remember being vaguely annoyed about it, but looking through the scripts really the only one kinda like that is at the end of lyn mode where lyn says

“Mark… you’re leaving, aren’t you? No, I’m not asking you to stay. It’s just… I’ll miss you. When I found you unconscious on the plains… I had no idea we would be together for so long. You’ve helped us so much, and I’m sure you’ve learned all you can from us. You’ll do just fine on your own. I have the utmost faith that you’ll be a master tactician, Mark. That’s from someone who’s seen you at work!”

but I don't feel that's really unwarranted since it's thanks to mark that lyn manages to meet her grandpa again 

aside from that all I can find is eliwood calling you a "fantastic military advisor"

so honestly as pointless as it is I can't really say there's much really wrong with mark. he serves his purpose well enough I guess

[omegaxis1]

7 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

Robin is the biggest Gary Stu in the entire franchise. It's one of the things I hate most about Awakening.

I hold that title to Ephraim. Yes, I hold it for him even more than Corrin.

7 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

There is a huge difference between blowing up ships, and pouring oil on people and setting them on fire.

Explosions are mostly quick and painless. Slowly burning to death fucking sucks.

I said nothing against that. However, what we see is that Valm is the evil because they are invading and expecting an unconditional surrender. And they killed someone just for saying something back. Whereas we know that Micaiah is good and is being forced to commit atrocities for the sake of winning. 

6 minutes ago, Allergic_to_Farming said:

Honestly, even if Ephraim is a gary stu, he at least has a personality. Robin is bland, and the only real "mistake" he made wasn't even his fault (if i understand correctly).

How exactly was Robin supposed to predict Gangrel would be able to conveniently summon Risen archers in almost no time?

No, not really. The case here is that Robin does have personality and we do see it. However, being an Avatar, they made the choices work towards his character more, but in the case of his Supports, we do see he does have character beyond. Ephraim also has character in his support, but htat's just it. He's a character already. He's not an Avatar. 

6 minutes ago, Glaceon Mage said:

Ephraim was stopped because he was underestimating the freaking Demon King in the heat of the moment.  Eirika will only hand over the stone in her route, in Ephraim's, Ephraim will charge Lyon headlong, get stopped by the Demon King's magic, and the stone gets crushed as a result of this.

What's more, it's noted how one track minded Ephraim was about fighting.  Ephraim never gave any thought about being king prior to the story, and it's noted the state Renais wound up in is in part due to how he went on a glory seeking rampage instead of trying to defend his homeland.

I can't see Robin not saving Emm as a legitimate failure by the character, since it was Emm's choice to jump and she never gave them the opportunity to actually do something.  As far as Ephraim and insecurity goes, Ephraim is actually fully aware that he was somewhat irresponsible and didn't take his duties as future king as seriously as he should have, and that he is absolute rubbish at diplomacy because he always left that to Eirika.  He does decide to shape up about this during the story, though.  On the other hand, I can't think of much insecurity on Robin's end, but that might be because their personality bores me to tears.

He only got the stone of Reneis because Eirika gave it to him. In fact, that's precisely why Eirika gets bashed on because she played the part of stopping Ephraim. But that was the one and only time Ephraim was ever stopped or even seemingly beaten. But when he's surrounded by an army and he's fought hard to conquer a castle? He just manages to escape. The fact is that Ephraim has never actually lost in the story in fights, no matter who it was. And even if this was the work of the Demon King's magic, that just further proves my point. It takes a demonic being of godly power to stop Ephraim. 

Robin had to know that despite his planning, he failed to save Emmeryn. Even if it was Emmeryn's choice, the choice would never have to be made had Robin been able to succeed in his plan. 

I honestly found Ephraim's personality more bland. So this is more of a matter of our personal opinions. 

However, the issue I have here is how Robin's case is how some of his characteristics are determined by the player, where he can be self-sacrificing or logical. But that's because he's still an Avatar character. But on the case of Ephraim, he's a main character, supposed to already be complete. But the game and story does EVERYTHING it can to build Ephraim as this invincible warrior, give little matter to his emotional cases, very few times ever give him real weakness that isn't somehow shrugged off later on.

In this regard, Ephraim is like Xander, differing in his supports at times with his story. His support gives him a better view as a character, like always, but the game does way too much at making Ephraim be a guy that's just perfect and hardly anyone hates. Or rather, everyone loves him or envies him because he's so perfect. And its worse when the fanbase end up agreeing.

[wizzard of soz]

8 minutes ago, Hawk King said:

Robin is the biggest Gary Stu in the entire franchise. It's one of the things I hate most about Awakening.

i thought Corrin's Gary-Stu-dom was much worse. maybe that's cause i haven't played Awakening in a while so it's not as fresh in my mind.

[Tybrosion]

18 minutes ago, Rezzy said:

Sothe and Tauroneo are of Daein, though.

Yes obviously but neither of them actually tell Micaiah off for resorting to setting the Apostle's Army on fire. Tauroneo says the "you used to hate plans like this" line to Micaiah before they went through with it, but as far as I'm concerned that comes nowhere close to him calling her out. That was more like him saying to her "you must really hate that we have to resort to this" instead of an objection. That's all I'll say on this here.

Edited May 14, 2017 by Tybrosion

[Hawk King]

2 minutes ago, Frenzify said:

And yet Corrin exists.

Corrin is constantly unsure of her/himself and struggles greatly with the guilt of betraying either side.

 

4 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Perhaps my memory is fuzzy from FE7 being literally a decade ago, but all I remember was the occasional "good work!" and "well shit what now?" once you get out of Lyn mode. Care to jog my memory a bit?

Your memory seems to be pretty spot on. At least that's exactly how I remember it.

 

Just now, omegaxis1 said:

I hold that title to Ephraim. Yes, I hold it for him even more than Corrin.

???  You're crazy.

[omegaxis1]

Just now, Hawk King said:

???  You're crazy.

Nope. I'm one of the few people in the entire fanbase that absolutely loathes Ephraim. I could not stand him when I was playing FE8. I honestly felt there never should have BEEN an Ephraim route. The story should have been about Eirika, the character that needed development, not Ephraim, who was virtually at the peak of his development already and gets way too much praise in and out of the universe.

[maybe]

4 minutes ago, omegaxis1 said:

I said nothing against that. However, what we see is that Valm is the evil because they are invading and expecting an unconditional surrender. And they killed someone just for saying something back. Whereas we know that Micaiah is good and is being forced to commit atrocities for the sake of winning. 

just because they're "evil" doesn't mean it's okay to straight up kill so many of their soldiers

not everyone siding with the "evil" people is necessarily a bad person. but there's no acknowledgement of this whatsoever. I feel it's important to at least have some kind of mention of the fact that "hey we had to kill a ton of people to do this, that kinda sucks"

like even shadow dragon has that one scene where marth is like "i wanted revenge for so long that I never considered that maybe not all of them are bad people"

which is shown to be true when you meet camus

Edited May 14, 2017 by unique

[Alkaid]

6 minutes ago, Frenzify said:

And yet Corrin exists.

This. I can't think of anything really bad about Robin. I'm pretty indifferent to him since he's just kinda meh. Yeah he has plot armor and Gary Stu going on, but it's not like it offensively stands out over other main characters. Meanwhile, Corrin himself greatly contributes to what makes Fates' story so infuriatingly bad.

[omegaxis1]

Just now, unique said:

just because they're "evil" doesn't mean it's okay to straight up kill so many of their soldiers

not everyone siding with the "evil" people is necessarily a bad person. but there's no acknowledgement of this whatsoever. I feel it's important to at least have some kind of mention of the fact that "hey we had to kill a ton of people to do this, that kinda sucks"

Had Awakening not been so rushed, perhaps we would have had to do that. This isn't like the Tellius series where they could go so all out that they can have all the perspectives be better understood. 

[Tybrosion]

Anyways, as an attempt to get back to the gauntlet:

Robin: 3,747,913,126, Same

Leo: 3,632,096,206, Same

 

[Ice Dragon]

6 minutes ago, Glaceon Mage said:

It's basically if you have a certain character deployed on a certain map, they'll just say a brief thing like "I know you can do this" and characters occasionally saying what a good job you did, though if you rank poorly the character you Afa dropped will insult you (Canas is probably the most blunt about it: "You seem to lack even basic skills").  Tbh it felt to me like the only real purpose for it was to praise the player for playing the game.

I thought most of those occurred typically for units that were newly recruited, and I feel it's more to give them a bit more face time than anything else. After all, you're kind of screwed if your army doesn't have much faith in its tactician, so I feel that much is at least warranted.

[Anacybele]

19 hours ago, Arthur97 said:

Well, to a degree maybe, but none of them really compare to Ike as the Tellius series in general was not received very well at the time (I don't know why since I was significantly younger and uninterested in the series).

Sorry for this being late, I've been out all day, but not true. Tellius didn't SELL well. It DID get good reviews overall and it is mostly well-liked by those who played it. Ike DOES have popularity from Smash, but he's also loved among people who played and liked his games. The only people that don't like Ike seem to not like the Tellius games much themselves. One of the most common reasons that people in Japan voted for Ike in that Famitsu poll is because he stands out and stuff. Nothing to do with Smash.

And the reason Tellius didn't sell well is mainly poor marketing and poor timing of their releases. PoR came at the end of the GC's life cycle and RD came around the time Brawl and Super Mario Galaxy did. Most people were going to pick the latter two over RD if they couldn't afford two or all of them.

I see a lot of people these days express interest in playing Tellius but being unable to because of how in accessible they are now.

Going on topic, glad to see Robin is winning! :)

Edited May 14, 2017 by Anacybele

[Frenzify]

17 minutes ago, unique said:

corrin's pretty damn bad and the plot revolves around him to a stupid degree but robin's the one who gets the most blind praise

the difference is that robin's defining characteristic is that he's a Big Genius

like, there are so many moments of "Wow, Robin, that was a very smart thing you did! I am glad you are here, because you are very smart."

Here's the thing, though. Although the trust thrust upon Robin is sudden and out of nowhere, I would say he at least earns it someplace down the line, and they don't trust him to absolute insane levels.

I don't think I'll ever be convinced that Robin is more of a Gary Stu than a literal prophesied character who manages to convince his friends and family, who were previously against him, to jump into a presumably bottomless canyon. In every route he's essentially the chosen one.

He's much less deserving of the trust and responsibilities thrust upon him than Robin, and he has even more than Robin.

Edit: And I'm pretty sure that they tried to brush off his ridiculous trustworthy behaviour as making him who he is. Flashbacks to Anthony. The other characters don't hold him accountable for his stupidity, and instead defend it as an essential trait of his. I'd say that's blind trust at its worst, moreso than Robin, who at least produces results.

Edited May 14, 2017 by Frenzify

[omegaxis1]

Leo honestly cannot win even if all the flags are used on him. His best chance would have been had he managed to maintain his position as lead or just above Robin's throughout the time. Leo's army is about out of flags and Robin's army still has some in store that's gonna be saved for later.

[a bear]

Julia: 8,019,561,043

Tharja: 7,989,199,109

 

edit: the 3x bonus is a hoot, at least. If the rounds were shorter or the conditions for triples were different, Julia would actually have a pretty great chance here

Edited May 14, 2017 by a bear

[omegaxis1]

Just now, a bear said:

Julia: 8,019,561,043

Tharja: 7,989,199,109

O_O Wait, what? 

[Sunwoo]

1 minute ago, a bear said:

Julia: 8,019,561,043

Tharja: 7,989,199,109

This is amazing.

[omegaxis1]

JULIA! Maintain the lead for another 28 hours!