What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Being locked to a single weapon isn't automatically a bad thing, and often really isn't a bad thing.

[henrymidfields]

Never understood why Ryoma is often considered to be superior to Rutger.

• For one, I don't really understand how I can compare stats from two different games. This is considering different max stats, different skills (and different roles they play), and different calc equations.
• Secondly, isn't Fates!Birthright kind of Awakening 2.0 in terms of general difficulty? Do you even need Ryoma when any other unit can bulldoze the map without too much trouble? Sure, he may make a difference in LTCs or turn efficiencies, but outside of that, for the average player who doesn't care for the turn counts, is he really essential? At least Rutger (and any other Swordmasters in FE6) makes life hugely easier with more consistent crits and esp hit rates (which is an actual problem in FE6) and gets more consistent advantages against otherwise difficult to near impossible bosses like Henning. and also safely kill otherwise risky units like the Berserkers, and does this in a game that in some respects is more difficult than Conquest. (At least Conquest gives you opportunities to buff your units, nerf enemy units, and lack the same kind of hit rate inconsistency headaches that FE6 has...)

[Jotari]

6 minutes ago, henrymidfields said:

Never understood why Ryoma is often considered to be superior to Rutger.

• For one, I don't really understand how I can compare stats from two different games. This is considering different max stats, different skills (and different roles they play), and different calc equations.
• Secondly, isn't Fates!Birthright kind of Awakening 2.0 in terms of general difficulty? Do you even need Ryoma when any other unit can bulldoze the map without too much trouble? Sure, he may make a difference in LTCs or turn efficiencies, but outside of that, for the average player who doesn't care for the turn counts, is he really essential? At least Rutger (and any other Swordmasters in FE6) makes life hugely easier with more consistent crits and esp hit rates (which is an actual problem in FE6) and gets more consistent advantages against otherwise difficult to near impossible bosses like Henning. and also safely kill otherwise risky units like the Berserkers, and does this in a game that in some respects is more difficult than Conquest. (At least Conquest gives you opportunities to buff your units, nerf enemy units, and lack the same kind of hit rate inconsistency headaches that FE6 has...)

I'm not sure exactly who is forcing you to compare Rutger and Ryoma of all units across the series. But I will say that I reckon Ryoma's reputation comes far more from the average crowd and not inspite of it. Because he takes no special investment to be a map stomper. He just needs Ranjito and a pair up partner and he's good to go.

Edited February 16 by Jotari

[henrymidfields]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

I'm not sure exactly who is forcing you to compare Rutger and Ryoma of all units across the series. But I will say that I reckon Ryoma's reputation comes far more from the casual crowd and not inspire of it. Because he takes no special investment to be a map stomper. He just needs Ranjito and a pair up partner and he's good to go.

Oh this was based on a debate that some of us had regarding units several years ago... I forgot exactly where that thread was, but I do remember it was between those two units.

Edited February 16 by henrymidfields

[Florete]

2 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

Never understood why Ryoma is often considered to be superior to Rutger.

• For one, I don't really understand how I can compare stats from two different games. This is considering different max stats, different skills (and different roles they play), and different calc equations.
• Secondly, isn't Fates!Birthright kind of Awakening 2.0 in terms of general difficulty? Do you even need Ryoma when any other unit can bulldoze the map without too much trouble? Sure, he may make a difference in LTCs or turn efficiencies, but outside of that, for the average player who doesn't care for the turn counts, is he really essential? At least Rutger (and any other Swordmasters in FE6) makes life hugely easier with more consistent crits and esp hit rates (which is an actual problem in FE6) and gets more consistent advantages against otherwise difficult to near impossible bosses like Henning. and also safely kill otherwise risky units like the Berserkers, and does this in a game that in some respects is more difficult than Conquest. (At least Conquest gives you opportunities to buff your units, nerf enemy units, and lack the same kind of hit rate inconsistency headaches that FE6 has...)

Like Jotari, I've never encountered this debate before, but immediate things that stand out to me are that Ryoma has infinite 1-2 range and better relative bulk. Also, Birthright's ease comes in large part because of Ryoma. Rutger is not essential, either.

[henrymidfields]

4 minutes ago, Florete said:

Like Jotari, I've never encountered this debate before, but immediate things that stand out to me are that Ryoma has infinite 1-2 range and better relative bulk. Also, Birthright's ease comes in large part because of Ryoma. Rutger is not essential, either.

Counterpoint: Rutger (or swordmasters in general) can avoid tank easily in FE6.
Question: How does Ryoma play a role in making BR easier? Are we talking about Lunatic-Classic mode, or does this apply in any difficulties?

Also, here's the thread, which has been going back and forth between different posters.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I hope something I say about a FE6 unit sticks with somebody else eight years later. But what would I want that nugget of wisdom to be...?

Probably that Berserkers are "the Rutger" of late game. Being able to stand on a peak makes them untouchable against wyverns - none of whom ever seem to have a sword to switch to.  And you don't need to raise up Gonzales or Geese. Base level Garret will work. Have him go east, alone, from the start of Chapter 21, and then one space down onto a Peak tile. He should cleave through those first two waves of Wyverns (maybe even the ones sitting in the middle of the map as well, but they tend to favor squishier targets in my main group) allowing you to push the rest of your army, trying your best to beat the turn limit, avoid reinforcement zones and secure the secret shop. This one No Investment unit does so much on one of the hardest maps. And he can have similarly good performance in Sacae and chapter 23.

Anyway, I don't know much about Ryoma, but I think the question of whether "Rutger is replaceable" really comes down to your thoughts on Fir. But there's no question swordmasters are good against those goddamn Western Isles berserkers, and for speeding up Boss Kills. If my promoted Rutger got crit killed in chapter 9 in an iron man, I'd be upset. But if it happened a few chapters later, I'd say "better him than my speed blessed Lance, geez". It's easier to play without him as the game goes on and you're beginning to be fed competent units.

[samthedigital]

How are we defining better/superior exactly?

edit:

My guess is that to the casual player what matters is whether a unit can easily carry their game. There are several units that can do that in Birthright, but Ryoma probably takes the least effort to get going. Binding Blade just isn't that kind of game, so Rutger is going to look a lot worse than he should in that kind of context.

Edited February 17 by samthedigital

[henrymidfields]

7 hours ago, samthedigital said:

My guess is that to the casual player what matters is whether a unit can easily carry their game. There are several units that can do that in Birthright, but Ryoma probably takes the least effort to get going. Binding Blade just isn't that kind of game, so Rutger is going to look a lot worse than he should in that kind of context.

I was more thinking in the lines of how much difference they can make long-term in their respective games, or whether they're redundant due to the (lack of) difficulty of the game. In that sense, Rutger does make certain chapters or bosses from very difficult (or near-impossible like Henning) to more reasonable...

 

9 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Probably that Berserkers are "the Rutger" of late game. Being able to stand on a peak makes them untouchable against wyverns - none of whom ever seem to have a sword to switch to.  And you don't need to raise up Gonzales or Geese. Base level Garret will work. Have him go east, alone, from the start of Chapter 21, and then one space down onto a Peak tile. He should cleave through those first two waves of Wyverns (maybe even the ones sitting in the middle of the map as well, but they tend to favor squishier targets in my main group) allowing you to push the rest of your army, trying your best to beat the turn limit, avoid reinforcement zones and secure the secret shop. This one No Investment unit does so much on one of the hardest maps. And he can have similarly good performance in Sacae and chapter 23.

Never thought of that in my playthrough, but if I had the opportunity to replay FE6, I'd like to try that out. As for Fir, I'd actually be happy to use both her and Rutger to clear the Western Isles and then use them as crit machines.

[samthedigital]

40 minutes ago, henrymidfields said:

I was more thinking in the lines of how much difference they can make long-term in their respective games, or whether they're redundant due to the (lack of) difficulty of the game. In that sense, Rutger does make certain chapters or bosses from very difficult (or near-impossible like Henning) to more reasonable...

I'm just not sure that the average player is comparing units across games like this is all. People often consider Seth to be one of the best units across the series despite the fact that Sacred Stones is one of the easier games in the series even without him for example. It's really just a semantics thing though.

[Florete]

12 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

Counterpoint: Rutger (or swordmasters in general) can avoid tank easily in FE6.

So can Ryoma, but Ryoma can also take some hits.

How does Rutger fare when his enemies aren't wielding axes?

12 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

Question: How does Ryoma play a role in making BR easier? Are we talking about Lunatic-Classic mode, or does this apply in any difficulties?

By killing virtually everything he comes across with one of the few acquirable 1-2 range weapons that can double enemies (normal 1-2 range swords, lances, and axes in Fates cannot make follow-up attacks). This applies to any difficulty.

12 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

Also, here's the thread, which has been going back and forth between different posters.

I'm not combing through arguments from 8 years ago.

[henrymidfields]

10 minutes ago, Florete said:

So can Ryoma, but Ryoma can also take some hits.

How does Rutger fare when his enemies aren't wielding axes?

In my playthrough, not all that worse, to be honest - though that does come with a couple of caveats. I thought Fates was more iffy with avoidtanking, actually.

But oh whatever. Anyway, a possible plot point I'd like to see in a future game is the role of the industry-military complex in a war. Say, the purported Empire turned out to be not quite the bad guy. The weapon suppliers, merchants, mercenaries, and nobles are the bad guys tagging together as the warmongering faction because they like the profit from weapon sales, contracts, and war prizes.

Edited February 17 by henrymidfields

[Dark Holy Elf]

11 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

In my playthrough, not all that worse, to be honest - though that does come with a couple of caveats. I thought Fates was more iffy with avoidtanking, actually.

I do agree that Rutger grows into an excellent dodgetank and Fates "pure" dodgetanks can never be as good (due to using single RN and having fewer ways to stack evade, but Ryoma is still secretly pretty much the most durable unit once he joins in Birthright on top of having the best offence. Since he doubles at 1-2 range he can fill up the dual guard gauge every two combats, and on top of that he has -2 damage received in this state from his personal (assuming his partner's level doesn't exceed his, but given his high starting level and exp gain this is basically a guarantee).

Beyond that, my opinion is that they're both excellent and measuring which of two units is more valuable in completely different games is rarely going to be easy. On the whole I'd lean toward Ryoma, but a lot depends on how much you dock him for missing Chapters 7-13.

12 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

But oh whatever. Anyway, a possible plot point I'd like to see in a future game is the role of the industry-military complex in a war. Say, the purported Empire turned out to be not quite the bad guy. The weapon suppliers, merchants, mercenaries, and nobles are the bad guys tagging together as the warmongering faction because they like the profit from weapon sales, contracts, and war prizes.

I definitely agree with this.

[samthedigital]

7 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Beyond that, my opinion is that they're both excellent and measuring which of two units is more valuable in completely different games is rarely going to be easy. On the whole I'd lean toward Ryoma, but a lot depends on how much you dock him for missing Chapters 7-13.

When you say that you find Ryoma to be more valuable than Rutger does that mean that you would rather play FE6 without Rutger than Birthright without Ryoma? That's how I would personally determine which is more valuable, but it doesn't necessarily correlate to which unit I think is better either; that kind of question is complicated.

[SnowFire]

21 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

But oh whatever. Anyway, a possible plot point I'd like to see in a future game is the role of the industry-military complex in a war. Say, the purported Empire turned out to be not quite the bad guy. The weapon suppliers, merchants, mercenaries, and nobles are the bad guys tagging together as the warmongering faction because they like the profit from weapon sales, contracts, and war prizes.

I know that this is a popular plotline to do, but I don't think it fits all that great for the time periods your average Fire Emblem is set in.  War profiteers have existed forever, but when medieval merchants got power, it wasn't via shadowy behind the scenes stuff, but rather just...  openly taking it and buying a title of nobility, or being appointed to the government of your Renaissance Italy town, or whatever.  So it's not like there was a separation between the war merchants and the government; if they had power, they also joined a government.  Which is not to say that we don't have plenty of, like, conspiracy theories about how secret (insert despised minority here) are really controlling the government from the medieval era via bribes, but they're, well, conspiracy theories.  The kings & their court very much did have the power.  Meanwhile the Borgias or the Venetian merchant-asshole types were just very obviously also the government.  If we go later into the modern era, the Merlinuses of the world have some power, but...  it's still complicated.  The East India Company is the world's first megacorporation and it's founded in 1600, but again it's not like them being assholes would have been remotely a plot twist to the people on the receiving end.  They were just operating as a pseudo-government quite openly.  (And also not really making money, requiring bailouts from their patron government.  Whoops!)

I'd argue it's not really until the 20th century where you really see this kind of thing with the United Fruit Company doing shady shit in Central America and the like, but that's usually much later than Fire Emblem's mileiu.  (And even then...  that's not "continent spanning war" type stuff Fire Emblem likes.)

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Yeah to justify a Military Industrial Complex in a low tech setting like Fire Emblem with no notions of globalization, mass production, or mass transit networks would be a strange pitch. You'd have to lean hard into magical macguffins to justify their power structure. Even the East India Company didn't get rich distributing swords and shields, they got rich on lightweight luxuries like spice, silk, and eventually people. The last one is probably your best angle, but Slaves were rarely used to fight - a dead slave isn't worth anything, while any Useless Third Son can be trained to swing a sword and wouldn't get any notions of Revolting. If I were assigned this prompt, the best I would come up with is a magical artifact (let's call it The Fire Emblem) that conjures armies of lifeless soldiers. Zombie soldiers that you could control and sell control of to enterprising warmongers and bandit leaders. Then maybe a third act twist where nations turn on the Dark Dragon Cult only to discover that the Fire Emblem grants them the ability to override control. Only humans with a beating heart and loads of Supports can save the world.

[Acacia Sgt]

Now I'm picturing Yahn as the arms dealer selling Idunn's War Dragons to both Etruria and Bern.

Edited February 18 by Acacia Sgt

[Etrurian emperor]

8 hours ago, SnowFire said:

The East India Company is the world's first megacorporation and it's founded in 1600, but again it's not like them being assholes would have been remotely a plot twist to the people on the receiving end.  They were just operating as a pseudo-government quite openly.  (And also not really making money, requiring bailouts from their patron government.  Whoops!)

The Etrurian colonization of the western islands is probably the closest Fire Emblem has got to such colonialism but that was just done by Etruria rather than by merchants. I'm very interested in getting such a faction though perhaps its better suited for Triangle Strategy with its more mundane stakes. I could see the ''West Centralia trading company'' be quite a good successor to Hyzante. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

11 hours ago, samthedigital said:

When you say that you find Ryoma to be more valuable than Rutger does that mean that you would rather play FE6 without Rutger than Birthright without Ryoma? That's how I would personally determine which is more valuable, but it doesn't necessarily correlate to which unit I think is better either; that kind of question is complicated.

For what it's worth I wasn't thinking of value as "which one would I rather play the game without". The latter conversation, while sometimes interesting, leads to some odd results: for instance, if we adopted that definition, then Brom (RD) is definitively more valuable than Seth, because Sacred Stones can be reasonably cleared without using Seth while Radiant Dawn 2-1 without Brom is a nightmare (I'd buy that it's possible, but I wasn't able to do it when I tried).

Admittedly I'm not sure exactly how I would define value. If I had to put it into words in the context of Ryoma: I am impressed by how well Ryoma does what he does without needing much investment, and find that when I try to replicate him with someone else, they either do significantly worse or need a lot more resources to get there.

[samthedigital]

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

For what it's worth I wasn't thinking of value as "which one would I rather play the game without".

I suspected as much.

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Admittedly I'm not sure exactly how I would define value. If I had to put it into words in the context of Ryoma: I am impressed by how well Ryoma does what he does without needing much investment, and find that when I try to replicate him with someone else, they either do significantly worse or need a lot more resources to get there.

Also, to be clear I agree with you for the most part. I'm not sure exactly how much it takes for another unit to replicate Ryoma's performance, but I don't know BR well enough to comment on that.

[ping]

1 hour ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

For what it's worth I wasn't thinking of value as "which one would I rather play the game without". The latter conversation, while sometimes interesting, leads to some odd results: for instance, if we adopted that definition, then Brom (RD) is definitively more valuable than Seth, because Sacred Stones can be reasonably cleared without using Seth while Radiant Dawn 2-1 without Brom is a nightmare (I'd buy that it's possible, but I wasn't able to do it when I tried).

To a degree, you can get around the issue by adding together the "value" for every map a unit can participate on.

• Brom is irreplacable to the point where the map might even be unbeatable without him, but that is only really the case for that one map. After that, if I recall, he has another good map (the cave) and one passable map (2-E, assuming you don't skip it) before he becomes rather underwhelming.
• FE6!Marcus is irreplacable in Ch.1 (I know it's possible to beat the map without him, but it's a right pain), and remains your best unit until Jerrot joins, although Deke and Rutger mean that he isn't as irreplacable earlier than that). You can say that his peak is lower than Brom's, but because he keeps adding value consistently for a larger portion of the game, Marcus is still better than Brom.
• Seth is technically never necessary to beat a chapter, but unlike Marcus, who becomes not really worth deploying around the halfway point of the game, Seth is your best unit for the majority of the game, even as other characters get closer to him as the game progresses. So, Seth > Marcus, even though one could maybe argue that Sethless SacSto isn't any more difficult than Marcusless BinBla.

Not to imply that "which one would I rather play the game without" is a conclusive answer to the question of unit value, of course. It arguably works in one direction (if a unit is irreplacable on a map, that should be valued), but not the other way around: A unit can still be good even when they're never quite necessary to use. The first example that I can think of is the "Early Cav". I would consider all of Allen, Lance, Lowen, Franz, and Oscar to be good units, but every single one of them gets overshadowed by the respective Jeigan in the earlygame, while other characters (sometimes the very same Jeigan) can more or less replicate what they do at later stages of the game. So basically this...

22 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

[...] measuring which of two units is more valuable in completely different games is rarely going to be easy.

...is my opinion, too. Cross-game comparisons are always subject to personal preference even more than unit comparison already are to begin with.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

Ryoma > Rutger, because Ryoma isn´t gonna critkill one of your goons at the end of the map (in Birthright).

[AnonymousSpeed]

17 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Now I'm picturing Yahn as the arms dealer selling Idunn's War Dragons to both Etruria and Bern.

This might conceivably be in-character if Jahn was convinced that this would somehow lead the humans to exterminate each other and make room for the dragons.

[Whisky]

On 2/18/2024 at 4:58 PM, AnonymousSpeed said:

This might conceivably be in-character if Jahn was convinced that this would somehow lead the humans to exterminate each other and make room for the dragons.

More dragons good.

Less humans good.

Yeah I think Jahn would like that, but I don’t know if he’d want dragons fighting each other.

[Acacia Sgt]

Doesn't he also see the War Dragons with some kinda contempt since they're not true dragons? Either way, he probably might not even care.