Alastor plays and ranks the whole series! Mission Complete! ...For now.

[Eltosian Kadath]

16 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Only much later did I learn this could inspired by the historical Battle of Red Cliffs. If you're not familiar with it...

Fire ships have been used a fair bit in history, for instance sir Francis Drake used them to scatter the Spanish Armada in the late 1500s. Here is a wikipedia article about historical uses of fireships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ship

[Venger_06]

On 12/28/2020 at 11:55 AM, Jotari said:

What we do know though is that both were mega hits overall.

Yeah, my goal was to highlight the importance of Old Mystery for the Japanese fanbase. I was not trying to diminish the other games.

Edited March 14, 2021 by Maof06

[ping]

9 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Purely artwork? Just character portraits? Kinda hard to gauge right off the bat, but in terms of ones I like, I enjoy the GBA ones, the Tellius ones, and the 3DS ones. I think the Thracia ones are okay, the Genealogy ones look weird, the Shadow Dragon and New Mystery ones look somee variety of lifeless, the NES ones are just pure cheese, and the Three Houses ones... those just look creepy to me, especially the fucking eyes.

[dorothea.jpg]

Look closely. Three Houses characters have two-layered irises. It looks like they have eyeballs inside of their eyeballs.

Oh god, yes. I didn't even fully register the double-irises, but the tiny pupils always made the 3H portraits look slightly unsettling to me, even though I don't hate the artstyle otherwise. Well, I don't like either Byleth design too much, I guess, but other than that...

I think I'd rate the other game's / era's artstyles similarly, too.

[Jotari]

10 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Only much later did I learn this could inspired by the historical Battle of Red Cliffs. If you're not familiar with it...

  Hide contents

During the short-lived Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history, the Kingdom of Wei was led by the great warlord Cao Cao, was fresh off conquering northern China, where at the time the majority of the country's population lay. Wei was invincible, and now Cao Cao turned south, he had the momentum, he had the numbers, the supplies, the strategic brilliance if his good fortune continued, he'd be able to conquer southern China and reunited the country in no time. There was just one obstacle in his way- the Yangtze River. 

Some other warlords, namely the Sun family who ruled southeastern China in the Kingdom of Wu, supported by the King-of-the-yet-to-be-founded-third-kingdom-of-Shu Liu Bei, didn't like the idea of someone other than themselves restoring unity to China. As the Yangtze is a wide and important river, Wei had to muster a great fleet to cross it, and Wu assembled a great fleet of their own to stop Cao Cao. 

Wu's genius strategist Zhou Yu, had a general named Huang Gai feign a defection to Wei during the battle. As the "defectors" sailed towards their "allies", they jumped ship for smaller boats and set the big ones they were attached to on fire. The winds then pushed their flaming boats into the Wei ships, which had been intentionally chained together, possibly to minimize seasickness. The Wei navy and all the troops therein went up in smoke and underwater.

Thus, though greatly outnumbered, Wu and the future Shu stopped the almighty Wei. Change Wei & Cao Cao to Valm & Walhart and Zhou Yu to Robin, and you've got an alright comparison.

However, although it's irrelevant to this one particular battle, Wei was far from done for. Momentum broken, but it still maintained the great logistical upper hand in China's civil war. Wu's survival lay almost entirely in holding the great rivers, land attacks on Wei never resulted in sustainable territorial gains. And many decades later, Wei did at last conquer Shu and then Wu.

The Dynasty Warriors franchise, from which I learned about this, treats the fire attack as a tragedy if you're playing as Wei, and if you're Wu or Shu, it's an epic victory. No questioning of the morality of the act, a hack n' slash game really can't when hundreds of KOs per battle is what you usually end up doing.

I've just finished reading an abridged version Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and while the Red Cliff is quite hazy in my recent memory despite it's larger importance, I do remember keenly that Kong Ming pulls this a second time when he's fighting a bunch of Mann tribesman who are oiled up muscle men with invincible armour. He lures them into a valley and sets them on fire. This is treated in the text as a very much regrettable, but necessary action for the war effort.

[Etrurian emperor]

11 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

The Dynasty Warriors franchise, from which I learned about this, treats the fire attack as a tragedy if you're playing as Wei, and if you're Wu or Shu, it's an epic victory. No questioning of the morality of the act, a hack n' slash game really can't when hundreds of KOs per battle is what you usually end up doing.

And even aside Chibi setting things on fire is pretty much the Wu solution to every problem. Your crazy brother in law coming at you with a huge army? Set it on fire! Cao Pi coming to invade? Set it on fire! The Sima clan coming to unite China? Set it on fire! 

[Alastor15243]

Hey, question: What order would you guys want me to do Fates in? Rev-Birthright-Conquest, or Birthright-Conquest-Rev? Or some other order? I'm leaning towards doing Conquest last to see how much of my hatred for Rev was just playing it after Conquest and Birthright, but I wanna know what you guys would find the most interesting.

[ping]

21 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hey, question: What order would you guys want me to do Fates in? Rev-Birthright-Conquest, or Birthright-Conquest-Rev? Or some other order? I'm leaning towards doing Conquest last to see how much of my hatred for Rev was just playing it after Conquest and Birthright, but I wanna know what you guys would find the most interesting.

Rev-BR-CQ. I'd say don't play the most frustrating version when you're potentially already burnt out from Fates gameplay.

[Axie]

i also vote revelation-birthright-conquest because gameplay matters the most and it might be best to follow awakening with a game that is also badly designed but for entirely different reasons instead of the perpetually slighted birthright

also you will have such fates storyline burnout by the time you hit conquest that it will be funny lol

[Benice]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hey, question: What order would you guys want me to do Fates in? Rev-Birthright-Conquest, or Birthright-Conquest-Rev? Or some other order? I'm leaning towards doing Conquest last to see how much of my hatred for Rev was just playing it after Conquest and Birthright, but I wanna know what you guys would find the most interesting.

I think it was intended to go as BR-CQ-REV, so I'll cast my vote as that.

[Alastor15243]

Awakening Day 12: Chapter 15

Alright, time for a serious breather. Small map, no reinforcements, and backwards-flying seagulls. Let's do this!

It's kinda hilarious that we managed to reach the harbor and dock with so little resistance that they can stand around having a conversation on the beach. A conversation about how well-fortified Valm Harbor apparently is.

But in fairness, it seems Chrom and company got super, super lucky and docked at the same time the entire army was chasing down the resistance leader Say'ri. And with that, we're sent straight to the prep menu.

...It is disgusting how heavily this game rewards low-manning. Aside from staff use in the rare instances where that's handy, there is just no reason to bring anyone not related to the avatar anymore. Miriel comes the closest, but thanks to this not being Lunatic+, there's no need to bring her even then. Still, I'm gonna try.

And yeah, looking at the enemy spacing here... hahahaha, there is absolutely no care for making player-phase combat rewarding. Every enemy's covered by like 5 other enemies at any given time, all of them ridiculously high-damage. This isn't even a potentially-engaging difficulty that was ruined by unforeseen cheese, it's just fundamentally poorly thought out from start to finish, intended to be “experienced” rather than played. Honestly, at this point I'm wishing I did Lunatic+ non-ironman. It probably would have made the beginning much more painful, and I probably wouldn't be as far as I am now, but it probably would've made the playlog more interesting, hearing about strategies for a mode that almost nobody plays and most people only hear spoken of in hushed whispers.

Honestly, in theory, I absolutely love the concept of Lunatic+. A game mode where the enemies get randomized, powerful skills, so that you constantly have to adapt your strategy to the unforeseeable conditions of your individual run? YES PLEASE! ...The problem is that it was put in a game that is otherwise fundamentally broken in nearly every aspect of its design philosophy. If somebody made a mod to add Lunatic+ skills to Birthright's Lunatic, I would figure out how to mod that shit and play it in a heartbeat. Conquest might be an issue due to how deliberate enemy skill placement is in that game, but Birthright would be really fun with its aggressive enemies and tight player-phase-facilitating gameplay.

But that's not until next game. Let's do this quickly so I can get closer to that.

I won't even discuss strategy. It doesn't matter. I'm galeforcing and player-phasing shit. I've no doubt anyone with my army could handle this map no matter how bad they are at Fire Emblem.

...Okay, I'll talk a little, since I'm not just gonna flat-out skip to the end. Miriel's handling the sand tile beach (which as a cool touch has sea tiles that are actually just the spaces where waves crash upon the shore) while Alexandria, Lucina and Morgan are taking out everything else. I'm gonna have Lucina end the pair's turn by using a master seal after using her first attack to level up to level 20, so she can end the turn as a grandmaster. Then turn two we'll rescue Say'ri, who can hold on for one turn at least.

Say'ri: Prince Chrom of the Ylissean League! You have my gratitude!

Chrom: You know of our cause?

Say'ri: Of course!

...How? How much time has passed since Chapter 12, exactly, that she knows about our plans to stop Valm?

...But yeah, this is totally mindless. Barely worth commentary.

Oh right, there are houses up north to visit. Let's do that before we forget.

...Christ, Walhart razed a village for sport? This guy just flat-out isn't interesting! I remembered him having some semblance of a sympathetic motive (though I couldn't remember what it was), but this... the fuck?

...Anyway, we're done. Christ that was quick. Now then, time to finish up the dialogue and... get to the main event of today. The one I know you've been waiting for.

Say'ri mentions that some dynasts “thrive under the conqueror's heel” and thus don't join the resistance, but like... from what we've seen that seems almost impossible.

...Apparently news that we destroyed a thousand of their ships has somehow reached Valm before we did... and we still didn't meet any resistance docking our 400-odd warships at port.

Like, how big is our army, even? From here on out it's going to play like we're a tiny guerrilla force, but like... this is the combined armed forces of an entire continent at our back. How can Walhart have a massively larger army than us when he's been killing people and crushing dissent wherever he goes, starting initially with a tiny, unremarkable country? These continents are roughly the same size, aren't they?

Then Say'ri asks Chrom for help stopping Walhart, and Chrom talks like this is some difficult decision, despite the fact that, like, what the fuck are we even here for if that wasn't already our plan? Why is he acting like they just came here on an unrelated mission!? Chrom, stopping Walhart is why we're here!

...Christ, this game is dumb. Let's move on.

 

Day 12 Bonus: Chapter 16

Ah yes, and now Say'ri just says that many of the people of Valentia have worshipped Naga “since ancient times”, and fuck you with a flaming poker, game, no they have not.

Say'ri: More precisely, we worship the Divine Dragon's oracle, Lady Tiki.

What is Tiki doing in Valentia? Why did she apparently embark on some kind of religious mission to Valentia 1000+ years ago to spread the word of a divine dragon who actively does not wish to be viewed as a goddess? And what the fuck kind of holy war bloodbath takeover ensued that the FUCKING MILA TREE IS BEING USED AS A HOLY TEMPLE FOR A PROPHET OF NAGA!?

...Let's just do the fucking supports.

Alright, we've gotten Miriel and Gregor's S support. Oh man. This is pretty adorable. Miriel's blushing and clearly flustered, but she's talking about the ring she just got from Gregor in purely scientific terms, almost like it's a way to stop herself from just freezing up from nerves. I understand why people might find her massive and excessive vocabulary kinda cringey, but honestly I just find her a really endearing character.

Ooh! And back to back! Another wedding! Vaike and Cordelia!

Ah yes, this is one of those things where if you get to the S support, they retcon the motivations behind the entire conversation so that it was about romantic feelings all along. This has... mixed results most of the time. Here, it's cute that Vaike's main goal with constantly dueling Chrom was to try and impress Cordelia and show her there were other guys just as good as him, but like... his rivalry with Chrom is a pretty important part of his character, and I don't like how they make it vague how much that was his motivation for that rivalry.

Oh, but here's the adorable line:

Vaike: Truly? You'll marry me!? Gods blow me down if this ain't the best day of the Vaike's whole life!

Cordelia: Well, the Cordelia feels the exact same way, hee hee...

And now for the Morgan and Lucina B support.

I like this support set, honestly, but the fact that it depends on Morgan suddenly having vivid memories of his time in the past with Lucina is really annoying, because it contradicts everything else we're told about his memories. That said, personality-wise, this totally fits Morgan, just as well as it fits Cynthia.

...Take note: by using the Falchion to chop apples, Morgan must already know that the blade is sharp in his hands, and thus he can wield it. How can neither of them have noticed this? Because, see, the punchline of the support is that it turns out that Lucina's sibling can wield Falchion just like Lucina, but they never find out due to a weird chain of coincidences and misunderstandings. The blade's supposed to be dull and useless in the hands of anyone without the proper genetics, and yet here Morgan is, chopping apples with it and managing perfectly fine. Despite this, Lucina insists later that they test it by chopping a log.

And also apparently Lucina's sibling just never knew that it took a special person to use it, and just... assumed Lucina used it because it was hers or something?

...And here Morgan says something about possibly not coming from the same future as Lucina, and... whaaaaa? That's still the case even when they're siblings? Then... then something must've happened to the original Morgan in Lucina's timeline, right? Why hasn't she mentioned anything about this? Did he die, or did he turn traitor and side with “Mother” just like in Future Past?

Morgan: Huh. Well, I've never fought with it before – at least as far as I can remember. I suppose that means in the future I came from, I wasn't deemed worthy.

Lucina: That's not necessarily true, Morgan. I never did give you a chance to try it before I traveled back here.

...She says that like nothing bad at all happened with Morgan, she just went back in time with the other children... and left Morgan behind in the future.

The fuck?

Like, as I read this, the dialogue's clearly different enough from the other versions of this conversation that they were trying to account for Morgan's differences in background compared to other potential siblings, but... but it's still got so much weirdness here!

Also, the ending line of this conversation is total, terrible mood whiplash. The conversation derails into a pretty depressing argument over the idea of Morgan needing to take up Falchion if Lucina dies and how he refuses to “practice for [her] death”, and he runs off going “And if you make me try, I'll only use it to chop up more apples, so there!”

And then Lucina goes “Morgan...”

...and then the sad music stops and she goes “He sure is stuck on this whole apple business...”

...And unlocking Severa's paralogue unlocks Cynthia's paralogue too. I don't even have to clear Severa's, I can just walk straight through it. But neither Sumia nor Cordelia has galeforce yet.

...Fuck it, I'll do some more DLC before tackling the Mila Tree.

[Alastor15243]

Day 12 Bonus New Plan: Champions of Yore 3

Funny how we first did the map in the daytime, then at sunset, and now at night.

The enemies are actually pretty scary... for Sumia and Cordelia. Their attack power isn't quite as good as the enemies I've been fighting so far, and the royal family could take them out with ease. But this isn't training for them, it's training for the units who actually need training.

I'll have my galeforcers on standby to help out if anything goes horribly wrong, but the goal is to kill as many of these guys as possible with my galeforcers-in-training. In service of this, I gave a few stat boosters to Cordelia, namely the Naga's Tear and the speedwings. No reason to give it to anyone who can enemy-phase, they gain levels so quickly a few points barely matter. I'll probably be giving her the All Stats +2 as well, since she's not going to get nearly enough good skills for it to be tempting to drop that, and she's the one who most desperately needs extra stats.

...Aaaaand I didn't notice how low Morgan is in the deployment priority, and I forgot to deploy him entirely. Oh well, training him wasn't a priority here anyway. I just hope this doesn't cause anyone to get overwhelmed, since we're being attacked from both sides of the island.

Ah yes, and now we have the obligatory scene where an einherjar questions if they're fighting on the right side. This happens at least once in every DLC set, and sometimes it'll happen when you're teaming up with the literal villains. Honestly I think it's kind of dumb.

But yeah, now all the boys and girls are fighting together and reference each other in their battle conversations. And I notice they seem to be referencing how much fans hate Eliwood compared to Hector and Lyn, because he seems to have basically no confidence in his ability to fight.

I use Miriel's dark mage auras to guarantee a hit with Cordelia's beast killer. Good thing too, because if she missed, Caeda would have ripped Cordelia to shreds with her own forged beast killer and her doubling speed.

...Well that was an utter shitshow. Nobody died, but I totally failed to kill these guys fast enough with my weaker units in order to keep them away from my healers. I had to kill quite a few of them with Alexandria and Lucina. Thankfully, I managed to at least feed nearly the entire east side to Cordelia by sending her flying back and forth across the ocean to kite them.

...The villagers called this Talys.

...Is this actually supposed to be literal Talys, or are these villagers supposed to be Einherjar too?

...They should've had the villagers visibly be cards with artwork of the original retro villagers. That would've been fun.

Anyway, we got another Ephraim's Lance, which should be nice for Cordelia what with that speed boost.

And an event tile got us another catharsis, which is awesome.

Other village got me a nosferatu. So basically, pretty nice randomized haul this time.

Ah yes, Cordelia just referenced “Make Him Fall for You in a Fortnight” at the event tile. I think there's a brick joke there where Severa references it too in one of her event tile things?

...Well, I managed to get Sumia and Cordelia to level 5 each, at least. Two levels for Sumia and 4 for Cordelia.

...Hahahahaha, this totally isn't going to work.

...It occurs to me that I should probably stop saying that I know these einherjar characters. I'm just skipping dialogue where they explain themselves. It's entirely possible the writers' botched their histories and I missed the opportunity to notice.

Micaiah asked me if I'd resort to something underhanded or dirty to save my friends, and...

...Okay, Alexandria did just burn 8,000 people alive (bare minimum), so I mean the answer to that question is objectively yes. The fact that they even give us a choice here, as if the avatar has the right to canonically say they wouldn't do that, says volumes about how the writers view that scene in Chapter 14.

And Micaiah proceeds to talk about the abuse she's had to suffer for the actions she performed to save Daein, and... like... um... no? Not once on-screen at least. If that was happening, literally at all, I'd have liked to see that. Would've been interesting character drama.

But with that I get Micaiah and All Stats +2, and Micaiah is... oh my god she's just terrible at this point. Pretty much the only thing she has going for her is shadowgift, the ability to use dark magic outside of dark mage or sorcerer. But without thorough grinding her stats are irredeemable.

I give AS+2 to Cordelia and move on.

Hmmm... Laurent's paralogue... let's see how tough it is. I remember it being easy enough that Morgan could get away with reclassing to mercenary in it on my first run of Lunatic+. It takes place in... a desert... that used to be Pyrathi.

...Nope, not easy enough. I've no doubt I'd win, but I'd probably get someone outside of the royal family killed due to all the ambush spawns I know are here.

...Fuck it. Let's just do Chapter 16.

 

Day 12 Bonus Bonus: Chapter 16

Somebody's probably gonna die, but fuck it, I don't need the weaklings, and I wanna see what happens to paralogues when a mother gets KO'd. I don't think I've ever seen that before because I've never had someone die without resetting before.

Okay, so there's a staircase in the trunk to the temple of Naga. So either Tiki worshippers desecrated the Mila tree to carve a staircase into the tree trunk in order to build their temple up there... or it used to be a temple for Mila and was stolen by Tiki worshippers. That or I guess the staircase was just built into the tree from the beginning somehow.

...Anyway, I got lucky and only one of these warriors has counter. For those of you unfamiliar with the game, counter is probably the most terrifying skill an enemy can possibly have. Any attack dealt to an enemy with counter in melee, player phase or enemy phase, will result in you taking exactly as much damage as you deal unless the attack kills. This can quickly obliterate even your best units, especially if multiple attack you on enemy phase and you don't get a lucky crit to one-shot them. It's the biggest factor that makes Lunatic+ so tricky, and no matter how you tackle that mode, you need a response to that or you're dead.

But outside of Lunatic+, the only way to run into an enemy with counter is if a warrior randomly gets it in their skill list, because enemies always get at least one skill from their class's skill pool at random. This means we'll need to keep an eye out for the enemies in back when the ambush reinforcements come. I need to clear a path yesterday and get all my squishy units to safety, and somehow make a lucky guess at the sweet spot between the rear reinforcements and the simultaneous pincer-formation flier reinforcements to the east and west.

Yeah, people hate this map for a reason, folks.

Let's do this. I'll tonic everyone up, and then set my galeforce users up to take out the thieves immediately.

...I notice I have one spare slot that I don't have anyone useful to deploy on. I guess I'll deploy Say'ri just to have more boots on the ground if things go really, really bad. I can have her shield Anna or Lissa maybe.

...Alright, begin.

Ah yes. Cervantes shows up. He's mildly amusing, but not very compelling as a villain.

Upon killing the speedwing thief, Alexandria levels up. She's capped dark flier, meaning I have to decide whether to reclass her into something else for more skills, or keep her like this. I'm leaning towards keeping her in dark flier and just second sealing back into it.

There are bow users, but Alexandria just flat-out isn't scared of them anymore, thanks to bowbreaker and her ludicrous defense of 40, and that's without the Book of Naga she's holding.

...I could probably easily end this map early to save my more fragile units, but I really wanna see what this ambush spawn is like. I remember it being awful.

Morgan finally joins his sister in getting ignis, the signature move of the grandmaster. It exploits their status as a mageknight by adding half of the user's magic to physical damage and half of the user's strength to magical damage. With that, that's three abilities in Morgan's arsenal that rightful king helps the activation rate of.

...Right, after counting squares, I remembered why the ambush spawn is so awful with that pincer attack. Unless you know how high it is, there's no way to position your units to guarantee they won't be hit by it. because the map's narrow enough that enemies spawning on the far east and west sides can, between each other... hit any x coordinate on the map. If they spawn at the same y-coordinate as any of your units... they're gonna get attacked. End of story.

So my plan is to put Say'ri in front of Anna and Libra in front of Lissa as human shields, have them walk down the direct absolute middle of the map, and have Sumia and Alexandria block the path directly to them on either side to take the brunt of the punishment while Morgan and Lucina clear the way forward ahead of them.

...I just got to the boss and pretty much routed the map. I could get out of here this turn and never have to see the ambush spawn...

...Or I could see it and see what this map decides to pull on people who don't know how to break the game in half.

...Well, I managed to get my vulnerables out of there just in time to not be in range of any of them. But yeah, it's just as nasty as I remembered. Except that the rear root ambush spawns happen a turn before the falcon knight ambush spawns, not simultaneously. Still, this is an absolute nightmare if you're playing the game blind and don't even know they're there.

Sumia takes out the boss after Morgan and Lucina take out most of the southern reinforcements, and we're done here.

So let's see this conversation with Tiki.

Yeah, Lucina says “the Voice truly lives all the way up here?” and I'm like, yeah, really, this doesn't sound like Tiki at all. Why is she isolating herself from all of civilization up on a lonely temple when literally her most clear defining character trait in the real Archanea games was her crushing loneliness and desire to be with people?

Tiki: But [Marth] is gone now. Lost during my endless sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tiki...

...went back the fuck to sleep...

...while Marth was still alive...

...and slept through his death!?

WHILE THE FIRE EMBLEM WAS STILL INTACT AND SHE ABSOLUTELY, CANONICALLY, DEFINITIVELY NEITHER HAD TO NOR WANTED TO!?

 

...Lest we forget. I'd just like to remind you all that by the time this came out in Japan, New Mystery of the Emblem was not even two fucking years old.

…

…

Game.

Game, please don't do this to me. If you keep pissing on the lore this much I will never get the stench out of the floorboards.

Tiki expresses relief that the Fire Emblem hasn't been lost...

...but then says “but where are the Gemstones? I see only Argent”.

...She apparently knows the new names these things have inexplicably been given at least. But... this seems to imply that the fact that the Binding Shield isn't intact is news to her.

She starts giving exposition about the Fire Emblem's new powers without any mention of the powers it once had, powers that are exceedingly relevant to her existence.

Tiki: With the Fire Emblem's power, the exalt was able to defeat Grima. But such power was too much for men, and so the Gemstones were scattered.

...So she does know about the scattering of the Gemstones. She in fact kept one, implying she had something to do with their separation. Which she would never, ever, ever conceivably in her right mind consider to be a good idea.

...That does it.

This isn't canon anymore.

This is fan fiction written by some 13-year-old kid who only played Smash Brothers and read Wikipedia.

I refuse to believe anyone responsible for writing this ever even played FE3 or FE12. They have this... this Disneyland concept of how the Archanean saga works. They just have characters doing things “because that's what they do”. Manaketes transform with stones “because that's what they do”, unwittingly contradicting the actual reason in basically all the worldbuilding they do with the Manaketes they include. Tiki sleeps a lot “because that's what she does”, not even bothering to read enough to learn that she hates it. It's a literal living nightmare of crushing isolation and horrible dreams, a living hell that part of the objective of last game was to save her from forever. Yeah, she'd totally pick that over being with one of her best friends who she still can't help but call her childish pet name of Mar-mar! “Oh, the Fire Emblem had gemstones? Let's have the heroes collect them again! Too much power to be trusted to any one individual, but now they need them so it's time to collect them! That makes sense, right? What did those things do again? ...Eh, they were probably just like the Dragonballs or something.”

I have never seen a “sequel” made with such flagrant disregard and disrespect for its own canon, especially not a sequel to something re-released less than two years before. The very laws of physics of this land have been upended, torn asunder and built anew, and not one person in the entire game so much as acknowledges it.

And keep in mind... I didn't even think the story of the Archanean games was all that good! But it deserved better respect than... than... than this.

...Ugh. Well, I think that's enough madness for today.

...Stay safe, everyone.

[Ottservia]

Personally, I think Walhart is the most interesting villain in this game simply because of how he foils Emmeryn and the contradictions present within his character. The thing about Walhart is that he’s ambitious to a fault and controls people through strength and fear alone. He hates tradition and bending to the will of the gods. He feels humans have the strength to think and stand for themselves. The problem though is that he contradicts himself. He says humans should think for themselves but at no point do any of his subordinates think for themselves. All of his soldiers follow him blindly some even calling him a god among men. Whenever Chrom asks why they follow him in any boss conversation the reason basically amounts to “because he’s strong and a soldier does not question those he serves”. It’s a contradiction in his ideals which is why he loses in the end. Strength and ambition without strong consistent ideals to fight for ultimately amounts to nothing. It’s when his strength is shown not to amount to much that’s when his subordinates turn on him. Loyalty through fear will only last so long. It’s when that fear is found to be negligible that people turn on him and rally behind their own ideals that they believe in.  

[Venger_06]

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hey, question: What order would you guys want me to do Fates in? Rev-Birthright-Conquest, or Birthright-Conquest-Rev? Or some other order? I'm leaning towards doing Conquest last to see how much of my hatred for Rev was just playing it after Conquest and Birthright, but I wanna know what you guys would find the most interesting.

Rev-BR-CQ for the reasons others explained above.

[Samz707]

Well you've caught up to me, I probably need to play more Awakening soon.

Holy hell on that Tiki bit, I wasn't aware that was that out of character for her, that's honestly dreadful and I'm kind angry that they got away with character assassination of that magnitude, if I'd played Mystery before hand, I'd probably want to bin the game even more than Mila tree killed my original second run through. (Because Ambush spawns)

Yeah those Ambush spawns in Mila tree were terrible, nothing like a terrible ambush spawn to make me throw the game down a garbage compacter.

Even better, I ended up doing a random battle in the Mila tree today....and for some reason enemy bow knights with 29 speed and Silver bows that was much, much  harder than the actual mooks in Mila tree spawned, I know stats/weapons are influenced by where on the map the random encounters spawn (which is a dumb idea.) but grinding on a map shouldn't be incredibly difficult compared to the "Regular" version of it. (I seriously actually appreciate how Echoes handles Grinding alot more now due to actually having thought put into it seemingly.)

Yeah I recall actually swearing a bit at my 3Ds when they tried to push the "Valentia worshipped Naga" stuff. (and wasn't the Mila tree literally completely made up for Awakening and Echoes had to damage-control that?)

Honestly I feel kinda sorry for the Echoes team, at least a solid chunk of Echoes writing is literally trying to cover up for Awakening not giving a shit for continuity.

I also like how we aren't allowed to use Flavia and Basilo this entire time so far, even though they talk in conversations, heaven forbid they have to slightly re-write dialogue for if one/both of them die.

Edited December 29, 2020 by Samz707

[Etrurian emperor]

4 hours ago, Ottservia said:

Personally, I think Walhart is the most interesting villain in this game simply because of how he foils Emmeryn and the contradictions present within his character. The thing about Walhart is that he’s ambitious to a fault and controls people through strength and fear alone. He hates tradition and bending to the will of the gods. He feels humans have the strength to think and stand for themselves. The problem though is that he contradicts himself. He says humans should think for themselves but at no point do any of his subordinates think for themselves. All of his soldiers follow him blindly some even calling him a god among men. Whenever Chrom asks why they follow him in any boss conversation the reason basically amounts to “because he’s strong and a soldier does not question those he serves”. It’s a contradiction in his ideals which is why he loses in the end. Strength and ambition without strong consistent ideals to fight for ultimately amounts to nothing. It’s when his strength is shown not to amount to much that’s when his subordinates turn on him. Loyalty through fear will only last so long. It’s when that fear is found to be negligible that people turn on him and rally behind their own ideals that they believe in.  

For the most part yeah. Walhart trying to establish a new world order, doing away with the reliance on gods and his contrast to Chrom makes Walhart a lot more interesting then jester king Gangrel or Cthulhu dragon Grima could ever hope to be. Combine that with him being a staunch vegetarian and incredibly bombastic and you got a neat, multi facited character.   

Walhart has two problems that keep him down. One is that Walhart needed an entire game or at least a long arc to actually make use of the interesting concept and fun personality behind him. Instead Walhart gets about five chapters with him only really being present in three of them. Walhart and Chrom have a very interesting clash of ideals in their battle conversation but its the only clash their ideals have. Walhart's invasion of Ylisse lasts a single chapter and Chrom easily dismantles Walhart's entire empire in a few chapters. I suspect he was always intended to get a full game to himself as the main villain but then Awakening turned out to be the last Fire Emblem ever. 

The other problem is the incredibly lacking worldbuilding of Ylisse and Valm. There is nothing to suggest that any of the things Walhart wants to overthrow are actual problems. We don't even know if those things he seeks to overthrow actually exist. Ylisse may be a theocracy but the Naga religion doesn't seem influential at all. Are the people reliant on the gods? I've never seen it. And Ylisse also isn't established as a society like Begnion where birth trumps strength every time. In fact the Shepherds seem a very meritocratic organisation. Meanwhile the Dynasts turning on Walhart at the first opportunity is fitting for a conqueror who only ruled by strength but this becomes less meaningful since the Dynasts are complete non entities. 

With his imposing design, accomplishments, ideology and the failings of that ideology Walhart could easily have been among the great Fire Emblem villains. There just wasn't the time to actually get him to that point. 

Edited December 30, 2020 by Etrurian emperor

[Samz707]

43 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

 

The other problem is the incredibly lacking worldbuilding of Ylisse and Valm. There is nothing to suggest that any of the things Walhart wants to overthrow are actual problems. We don't even know if those things he seeks to overthrow actually exist. Ylisse may be a theocracy but the Naga religion doesn't seem influential at all. Are the people reliant on the gods? I've never seen it. And Ylisse also isn't established as a society like Begnion where birth trumps strength every time. In fact the Shepherds seem a very meritocratic organisation. Meanwhile the Dynasts turning on Walhart at the first opportunity is fitting for a conqueror who only ruled by strength but this becomes less meaningful since the Dynasts are complete non entities. 

Not to mention last time we say Valentia, everyone prayed to Mila and Duma, not Naga but I guess suddenly Duma and Mila were forgotten, despite Mila Tree being a retconned thing. (A decision I will never understand beyond the writers truly never having played Gaiden and just knowing that "Mila" was a thing, somewhere in it and thinking it referred to a location.)

Not to mention Gaiden/Echoes ends with Valentia essentially unable to get any more "handouts" from the gods (Since you kinda killed them) so how would people get reliant on the gods again when they dead? (I'd say I'd wait to see that scene in context but that'd require me to have any faith at all in Awakening's writing, which I don't.)

Edited December 30, 2020 by Samz707

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Samz707 said:

Not to mention last time we say Valentia, everyone prayed to Mila and Duma, not Naga but I guess suddenly Duma and Mila were forgotten, despite Mila Tree being a retconned thing. (A decision I will never understand beyond the writers truly never having played Gaiden and just knowing that "Mila" was a thing, somewhere in it.

Not to mention Gaiden/Echoes ends with Valentia essentially unable to get any more "handouts" from the gods (Since you kinda killed them) so how would people get reliant on the gods again when they ded? (I'd say I'd wait to see that scene in context but that'd require me to have any faith at all in Awakening's writing, which I don't.)

Yeah that's the other thing: Naga's just as dead as Mila and Duma are. So it's not like Naga's any better. Now, the story of Alm and Celica's secular kingdom crumbling and the people fleeing back to religion would be an interesting story, but... they don't do these things to tell a story. They do these things because they don't care.

[Acacia Sgt]

Honestly, it should come as no surprise that's most likely the reason they chose the 2000 year gap. Because with that large enough time, you can get away with most things by just saying "It's been two-thousand years". Or more like, they can give enough plausible deniability that stuff happens.

Maybe part that, part "it's likely the last game, so eh". But then that might would be saying quite something about the thought process of making what would be the last hurrah.

[Sunwoo]

I just sort of pretend that Awakening doesn't take place 2000 years after the end of Marth's games. I like to imagine that the "Marth" and "Tiki" of this world are different entities than the ones we know and love from their own games.

Also, I don't want to think about the essential lack of progress in technology throughout the 2000 years between this game and Marth's. Like, even if you wanna use the argument that having magic makes people complacent and not want to invent things like cars and computers, it breaks my suspension of disbelief.

[Samz707]

7 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

I just sort of pretend that Awakening doesn't take place 2000 years after the end of Marth's games. I like to imagine that the "Marth" and "Tiki" of this world are different entities than the ones we know and love from their own games.

Also, I don't want to think about the essential lack of progress in technology throughout the 2000 years between this game and Marth's. Like, even if you wanna use the argument that having magic makes people complacent and not want to invent things like cars and computers, it breaks my suspension of disbelief.

At least still have Crossbows and Ballista.

I actually recall thinking to myself "Wait if it's so many years after Marth's games, why no Crossbows/Siege weapons?" then I found out those were actually a thing in this series and I disliked Awakening even more.

(Yes I did fall in love with FE7 the instance it introduced the ballista, I'm a sucker for good turrets in video games, FE sadly does mounted weaponry better than your average FPS where they're an actually useful tool rather than a gimmick, could you just imagine an FE game with maps where you only had 3-4 units and they were all stuck to a Ballista the entire time like a turret section?)

 

Edited December 30, 2020 by Samz707

[Acacia Sgt]

Actually, that doesn't really seem too weird to me. More so considering the original Greco-Roman aesthetic Archanea had. It's like going from the BC era to the Enlightenment. That's also roughly a possible 2000 year gap.

Technically speaking, Archanea had cars, with the ballista having engines that needed that fruit oil for fuel. But the fruit went extinct. Maybe once they discover fossil fuels...

Or as I've seen some people joke before, maybe Jugdral is already Advance Warring against each other.

[Sunwoo]

2 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Actually, that doesn't really seem too weird to me. More so considering the original Greco-Roman aesthetic Archanea had. It's like going from the BC era to the Enlightenment. That's also roughly a possible 2000 year gap.

But there are considerable technological advancements in stuff even if you look from the BC era to the Enlightenment. For example, the printing press was apparently invented in 1440. Google gives the date range of the Enlightenment as 1715-1789. Not to mention that the earliest instance of gunpowder is given as 9th century AD in China.

Even if we assume that Archanea was sometime in the BC era, there are a LOT of technological advancements and quality of life improvers that could be feasible without getting into electricity. Heck, even a throwaway line about tomes being easier to mass produce because of printing technology or something like would give an idea that time has passed. Awakening's definition of "2000 years has gone by" is aging up Tiki and fucking up their own lore.

[Ottservia]

1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

For the most part yeah. Walhart trying to establish a new world order, doing away with the reliance on gods and his contrast to Chrom makes Walhart a lot more interesting then jester king Gangrel or Cthulhu dragon Grima could ever hope to be. Combine that with him being a staunch vegetarian and incredibly bombastic and you got a neat, multi facited character.   

Walhart has two problems that keep him down. One is that Walhart needed an entire game or at least a long arc to actually make use of the interesting concept and fun personality behind him. Instead Walhart gets about five chapters with him only really being present in three of them. Walhart and Chrom have a very interesting clash of ideals in their battle conversation but its the only clash their ideals have. Walhart's invasion of Ylisse lasts a single chapter and Chrom easily dismantles Walhart's entire empire in a few chapters. I suspect he was always intended to get a full game to himself as the main villain but then Awakening turned out to be the last Fire Emblem ever. 

The other problem is the incredibly lacking worldbuilding of Ylisse and Valm. There is nothing to suggest that any of the things Walhart wants to overthrow are actual problems. We don't even know if those things he seeks to overthrow actually exist. Ylisse may be a theocracy but the Naga religion doesn't seem influential at all. Are the people reliant on the gods? I've never seen it. And Ylisse also isn't established as a society like Begnion where birth trumps strength every time. In fact the Shepherds seem a very meritocratic organisation. Meanwhile the Dynasts turning on Walhart at the first opportunity is fitting for a conqueror who only ruled by strength but this becomes less meaningful since the Dynasts are complete non entities. 

With his imposing design, accomplishments, ideology and the failings of that ideology Walhart could easily have been among the great Fire Emblem villains. There just wasn't the time to actually get him to that point. 

Awakening’s world building is definitely more on the soft side. The story dispenses only as much as is necessary to understand the story which I mean there’s nothing wrong with that. A story doesn’t need hard world building to be functional. Sometimes you only need the necessary information and that’s exactly what awakening does. Would more world building be nice? Sure but the lack of it doesn’t really effect the quality of the story or anything so it’s mostly irrelevant. 

 

26 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah that's the other thing: Naga's just as dead as Mila and Duma are. So it's not like Naga's any better. Now, the story of Alm and Celica's secular kingdom crumbling and the people fleeing back to religion would be an interesting story, but... they don't do these things to tell a story. They do these things because they don't care.

I’d say it more has to do with that it didn’t have any relevancey to the story they were trying to tell. I wouldn’t say they didn’t care more so as it is that it didn’t matter much to awakening’s story. Like I said awakening is very soft on its world building. That’s not inherently a bad thing because not every medieval fantasy story needs to be lord of the rings. Hell Mila is even name dropped by a couple characters and even has a mapped named after her(Duma has one too but only in the Japanese version) so it’s clear they acknowledged the existence of the lore. The only reason they don’t go into detail is because it’s irrelevant to awakening’s story. Now if we got a prequel to awakening that explores all this stuff then it’d be important.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Ottservia said:

I’d say it more has to do with that it didn’t have any relevancey to the story they were trying to tell. I wouldn’t say they didn’t care more so as it is that it didn’t matter much to awakening’s story. Like I said awakening is very soft on its world building. That’s not inherently a bad thing because not every medieval fantasy story needs to be lord of the rings. Hell Mila is even name dropped by a couple characters and even has a mapped named after her(Duma has one too but only in the Japanese version) so it’s clear they acknowledged the existence of the lore. The only reason they don’t go into detail is because it’s irrelevant to awakening’s story. Now if we got a prequel to awakening that explores all this stuff then it’d be important.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that you don't get to completely rewrite canon just because canon is getting in the way of the story you want to tell, unless that's actually the point of the story entirely (IE Elseworlds). How many self-respecting authors can you think of who feel they can just completely change established canon in sequels because they can't think of a way to tell their story while staying faithful to the stories that are supposed to be canon to it?

[Samz707]

22 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

But there are considerable technological advancements in stuff even if you look from the BC era to the Enlightenment. For example, the printing press was apparently invented in 1440. Google gives the date range of the Enlightenment as 1715-1789. Not to mention that the earliest instance of gunpowder is given as 9th century AD in China.

Even if we assume that Archanea was sometime in the BC era, there are a LOT of technological advancements and quality of life improvers that could be feasible without getting into electricity. Heck, even a throwaway line about tomes being easier to mass produce because of printing technology or something like would give an idea that time has passed. Awakening's definition of "2000 years has gone by" is aging up Tiki and fucking up their own lore.

Awakening basically misses any good opportunities for a future set FE game,

As I told a friend, Imagine if Alm's Falchion wasn't forgotten about and while you were in Valm, you could actually go out of your way in a side-chapter to get his Falchion, as my friend suggested "His tomb is the Deliverance hideout from early on in echoes, he rests in an undecorated coffin lain alongside those of the commoners of his empire, a testament to his ideals" (no idea if that tomb area had the whole "commoners' graves lie next to those of nobles and even Zofian royalty.” bit in the original Gaiden admittingly.)

Or maybe even see a memorial statue dedicated to him and and Celica while you do your tomb raiding to find the Falchion.

Alm's Falchion (since it isn't restricted to a bloodline I think? at least not mentioned in-game) could be basically the Falchion but useable by any sword-user instead of locked to Chrom and Lucina, it'd probably be slightly OP but I doubt as much as Nosferatu currently is.

 

Edited December 30, 2020 by Samz707