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

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Axie said:

 

is future past at all feasible gameplay wise for you? because that sounds interesting for the playlog

I'll take a look, but probably not.

[Venger_06]

3 hours ago, ping said:

But the pieces that it comes from have been around, and the revelation "makes sense" in that context.

  Reveal hidden contents

Terra is half esper. The party is on its way to destroy the creators, and sources of power, of the esper. The risk of Terra disappearing results from that.

Terra is half human, but she has never been able to feel "human" emotion - until her love to her adopted children lets her embrace that part of her identity. Terra can remain in the world as an ordinary human, because her human aspect has been strengthened.

I would agree that Terra's character arc shouldn't have been skippable in the WoR, though.

With that, I'll shut up about non-FE stuff, though. Just one thing: If you disagree with me and still find that this part of FF6 has been an asspull, that doesn't reflect on Awakening's story. Something doesn't become "less wrong" because it has been done wrong elsewhere, as well.

But I'm not arguing that this is an asspull. Like I said before, FFVI has one of greatest stories told in videogames, and this part fits nicely with what it was trying to convey. What I'm arguing is that people are being unnecessarily nitpicky with this plot point in Awakening.

But let's agree to disagree then. Also, you're right, we should stop talking about non-FE stuff, especially since I would like someone who yet to play FFVI to be surprised.

[Lightcosmo]

32 minutes ago, Maof06 said:

FFVI has one of greatest stories told in videogames,

This is something I personally disagree with, sorry. 

On topic: if the DLC doesnt look enjoyable enough, dont do it. Nothing wrong with choosing not to.

[Venger_06]

15 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

This is something I personally disagree with, sorry. 

Why, though? While I don't think it's the best in the series (VII, IX and X have better stories imo), it stands well above most games that preceded it and those that followed it. If possible, send me a pm, so we don't the thread off rails.

[Interdimensional Observer]

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

(while we're at it, am I the only one who feels the ending would have been better left to who finishes off Grima in terms of gameplay instead of having a choice interjected right after you land the final hit of the chapter?).

After RD's Ike "must deal the final gameplay blow", I'd say I prefer Awakening's approach inestimably. Divorce gameplay from story against what should be the strongest enemy in the entire game, because unlike a more typical RPG there is no guarantee you trained up someone enough and they might have gotten RNG screwed anyhow. As for the final gameplay hit, think of it as shattering the outer armor that exposes the squishy heart.

[Alastor15243]

Awakening Day 19: Challenge: The Longfort

So since I basically got no requests for shit to do today, I'm gonna start off the day by doing something I promised I'd do at some point, and that's get an opportunity to listen to one of the best songs in this entire damned game of amazing songs.

That's right, we're doing a skirmish and listening to Conquest.

...Man, this is just such an incredible tune. It's a shame that I don't get to hear it much when playing without grinding. It's just some wonderful music to listen to, especially given the presumable purpose of the battles it plays in. This song really takes me back. I played DLC so much that I remember all the times it glitched and failed to load the DLC music properly, so it just defaulted to playing Conquest. At least I think that's what was going on. But yeah, I'm almost getting nostalgic, even though I can't imagine ever doing that DLC grinding nonsense again.

So even now the enemies don't have globally capped stats. Either it gets worse in Lunatic+ or I was just completely mistaken about that being a thing.

...Right, that takes care of that. Glad I took the time to do that. Let's move on.

 

Day 19 Bonus: Future Past 1

...Uh... so Naga just says that she can't save this bad timeline we're going to, “only those with the power to cross time and space can reach it in their hour of need... Only warriors such as yourselves”.

Um... what? The only time travel that went on was a method you came up with. What's this about? Why do we have the power to travel through time and she doesn't?

“Four children obtain Gules and Azure but are annihilated ere they can bear it home.”

...I think you meant “bear them home”. It's not one thing they're “bearing home”, it's multiple.

No explanation for why we can only intervene in the literal moments before all hope is lost. We can intervene in three separate times and places, and all of them are a hair's breadth away from being too late.

…Yeah holy shit this is waaaaaaaaay too dangerous. Way too many enemies near my starting location and way too few units at my disposal to take them out with. And also, I don't have high enough magic on my rescue staff users to rescue all four of the girls in one turn, and if they aren't rescued on turn one...

...well they're supposed to be okay for a few turns, being attacked by weaker enemies while they have elixirs, but...

...but the game was kind of ridiculous and put them on the outer walls instead of the inner ones, meaning that they can just be attacked by any jackass with a bow.

...But only two of them actually have such units in range of them... and I can definitely reach those two...

Hmmmm......

...Okay. Why not. I'll do it.

Okay, so, Gules and Vert are the stones in Valm, are they not? So why are the girls in Plegia trying to get them back to Ylisse? Why not land in Ferox? Or hell, why not Ylisse directly? Yeah, there are no ports there, but Lucina said there aren't any ports anywhere. So why would landing in Ylisse be harder than elsewhere?

And these eight unpromoted risen just completely overwhelm them, separate them, and take their weapons, and...

...Yeah this is dumb. There's no way they'd disarm them before killing them. If they're in a position to disarm them, they're in a position to kill them. They should've said their weapons broke or something.

And Cynthia and Nah are talking about this like a bully just stole their lunch money, and... wow this feels dumb.

Also, just an observation, I can't help but notice that it's the all-female group of children that get disarmed and rendered helpless.

...The “dramatic irony” of Nah chiding Cynthia for thinking somebody's gonna swoop in and save them at the last minute just feels... dumb. Isn't this supposed to be a dramatic scene?

...Yeah, and they're giving everyone soooooo much fucking time to monologue before they start killing them. Wow. I can't believe I took this scene seriously when I first played it.

...Oh, and look, without any warning, the game just doesn't let you use rescue staves on this map. Meaning my entire plan is pointless. I can't even rescue my own units to do extra player-phase attacks!

It's impossible. There's no way for me to kill all of the units capable of attacking these girls on turn one. Not without a horrible slaughter happening afterwards. Holy shit.

Yeah, sorry, I can't do this. I can't do these maps here. I hate how this technically makes it a “tainted run”, but fuck it, it's DLC, I'm turning the power off and reloading. I haven't made a move apart from setting up my pairs, so it's not really save-scumming, it's just backing out in light of information I should have had before I prepared.

This is meant to be done with a fully grinded-up, fully trained-up army. An army obtained through liberal use of DLC.

…

...Fuck it, let's just do something more up Awakening's alley in terms of writing.

 

Day 19 Bonus New Plan: The Golden Gaffe

Ahaha, yes, this is more like it. Comedy.

And here we have Vincent and Victor with British accents. They're so stereotypical that it's just ridiculous, and there's this line at the end after the battle that just made me burst out laughing uncontrollably the first time I saw it.

And then we get to the absolute absurdity of Risen stealing everyone in camp's personal savings, and the notion that Lissa, despite being a fucking princess, takes coins from the gutter whenever she finds them.

Basically this map is just a bunch of absurdly weak risen carrying frankly psychotic amounts of money, all running for their lives down a long and wide hallway. We're supposed to intercept them and kill as many as we can before they get away.

Everyone's got a funny line for when they start fighting enemies, though I can't remember a lot of them.

Oh shit.

Yeah I'm totally bringing Walhart for this. He's gotta kill at least one. Hell, actually, I'll bring all five spotpass characters for this.

Alright, let's go.

Robin's is kinda lame and generic, just thinking “maybe I've been managing our finances a bit too tightly if this is how Lissa and Frederick are acting”.

There are, however, some serious highlights:

Chrom: ...Why in the seven hells am I fighting for someone else's nest egg? I don't think I've had a less inspiring cause in my whole life.

Morgan: How could you steal from me? I was going to buy more books, and... and... And knock Mother's socks off when she saw how much I'd learned! How dare you interfere with my ploys to get attention!

Walhart: Only a wretch would grasp at the gold clinking in the pockets of others. You want to steal from a conqueror? Best pray that coin doesn't melt in hell.

Also, Lyn Mode music is playing, and I love it.

Yeah, so we're at the end, and here's the big punchline, after we got tens of thousands of gold from the Risen, Lissa comes to reclaim her “nest egg”:

Lissa: Three gold, please!

Chrom: ...Come again?

Lissa: Three gold. One, two, three. That's how much I'm missing.

Frederick: 17 gold here, please.

Chrom: Se...ven...teen...?

Lissa: Wow, Frederick, double digits? Look at you, Sir Moneybags!

Frederick: Well, you tend to come across decent coin searching roads and hunting for firewood...

Ah yes, and then the great line:

Vincent: It's like me dear ol' mum used to say, “What if at first you don't succeed... Retry the level and don't louse it up this time, ya daft arse!”

…

…

Well that's that done.

Fuck it.

It's not like the final map of this game is some big event anyone's looking forward to. It's gonna be a mindless two-turn of cinematics and awesome music.

Might as well end things a day early. Give myself a three day weekend, considering I playlogged through the holidays.

 

Day 19 Bonus Bonus: Endgame

...Okay, seeing all-caps red text accompanied by Alexandria's neutral face is just dumb as hell. Why don't they have a portrait for Grima?

...Okay, make that one turn. I can easily one-turn this. Only hiccup is that, yet again, Alexandria can't double without Balmung. Meaning this'll mostly be up to Morgan and Lucina, and four Parallel Falchion dual strikes facilitated by Celica's Gale.

The final map looks cool, but it's just a mindlessly boring flat plain full of infinite reinforcements. Absolutely no strategy to be found here.

Let's just get this over with. Begin story scene.

Grima uses a powerful dark spike attack to instantly reduce everyone to 1 HP, and...

...Yeah, it's really dumb that they didn't give the avatar even a single evil expression here. Seeing the avatar's face contorted in malice would be really cool, but she's just... using the same normal expressions as always and it looks super dumb.

And then after another pointless choice, Grima banishes Alexandria into the shadow realm.

...But then the one major saving grace of this chapter shows up.

The song so amazing that when I first played this map it moved me to tears, something precious few other songs have succeeded in doing in this series. I think the others are “Lyn's Desire”, “In Search Of Victory ~ Leif”, and “Seliph's Theme”.

Here is comes.

Everyone I deployed pierces through the black void to call out to Alexandria and beg her to come back.

And ignoring the stupidity of Lucina saying “You have earned my trust and my love, milady” like that's anything any daughter would ever say to their mother... this is pretty damned hype.

Gangrel: One nip from a dragon and you're down? Get up, you craven schoolgirl!

I fucking love that line for some reason.

Walhart: Rise, Alexandria! Show this god that man is made of sterner stuff!

That too.

Yen'fay hesitates to say anything at all, but eventually just cries out the avatar's name. That's... kinda funny.

OH SHIT.

HERE IT IS.

ID ~ PURPOSE!

Alright, here it is. I've rescued my main pairs ahead, and Morgan's about to attack Grima. It all comes down to dual strike luck what I do next.

THREE IGNIS PROCS!

GRIMA WENT DOWN IN ONE ROUND!

Then I have Alexandria deal the final blow... presumably Naga teleports them off Grima's back before he collapses in midair and they'd all fall into the ocean, though they don't actually tell you how they escape...

and then...

...I mean there's “avatar cockstroking session” awkward, and then... there's “attending your own funeral” awkward.

Thankfully though that doesn't last long before Chrom vows to find Alexandria if it takes him to the ends of the earth, or, as Lissa so wonderfully puts it, in what's unironically one of my favorite lines in the whole game:

Lissa: You're right! She has to be out there somewhere... And we'll find a way to bring her home. Even if we have to search every open field in this whole stupid world!

Now then... on to the results. Hopefully this won't be a pain to do. Thankfully I can close my 3DS to pause this if necessary...

 

Premonition: 2 turns.

Prologue: 44 turns.

Chapter 1: 7 turns.

Chapter 2: 13 turns.

Chapter 3: 43 turns.

Chapter 4: 9 turns.

Paralogue 1: 31 turns.

Chapter 5: 13 turns.

Chapter 6: 9 turns.

Paralogue 2: 10 turns.

Chapter 7: 4 turns.

Chapter 8: 20 turns.

Paralogue 3: 9 turns.

Chapter 9: 9 turns.

Paralogue 4: 16 turns.

Chapter 10: 15 turns.

Chapter 11: 15 turns.

Chapter 12: 8 turns.

Chapter 13: 18 turns.

Paralogue 12: 26 turns.

Chapter 14: 16 turns.

Chapter 15: 10 turns.

Chapter 16: 10 turns.

Chapter 17: 28 turns.

Chapter 18: 7 turns.

Chapter 19: 14 turns.

Chapter 20: 17 turns.

Paralogue 9: 4 turns.

Chapter 21: 5 turns.

Chapter 22: 8 turns.

Chapter 23: 6 turns.

Chapter 24: 7 turns.

Chapter 25: 3 turns.

Paralogue 18: 11 turns.

Paralogue 19: 8 turns.

Paralogue 20: 3 turns.

Paralogue 22: 5 turns.

Paralogue 21: 9 turns.

Endgame: 1 turn.

 

...Hope you don't mind I didn't write down the heroes. It barely matters, it was nearly always either Alexandria and Frederick, Alexandria and Chrom, or Morgan and Lucina.

...Fine, I'll go over the battle stats of the units who matter. I'm not writing all of this shit down, but I can at least go over the ones I used.

...God damn this is some satisfying ending music. I fucking love it. I think this might be the first really good ending theme.

Lissa: 0B 0W. While I couldn't bring her everywhere, I can't deny that having someone who could use fortify and other powerful staves throughout the game was a huge benefit a lot of the time. I'm glad I managed to keep her alive.

Frederick: 8B 5W. “Retired: Plegia Castle.” Wow, this game was so close to saying it like how an actual historian would have. “Died in battle in Plegia Castle” would've been much better. But yeah, he was instrumental for so much of the early game, first powering up Alexandria and then later Sumia. Also, no way I would've survived those first few turns of the prologue without him doing frontline combat. After that... well... it's just not possible to keep up damagewise in the endgame just from experience from dual strikes. Even Chrom, who got dual strike exp from someone who got somewhere around half the exp gained over the course of the whole game, still couldn't do jack shit by the end without powerful forged weapons, and even then it was a crapshoot. You can imagine how much worse off Frederick wound up being.

Cordelia: 109B 66W. Yeah... uh... I think I overextended trying to train more than one. Big time. Sumia might've actually seen endgame use if I had just focused on training her, instead of going with three non-veteran units, but by training all three... yeah. Honestly, I would've appreciated another galeforce user by the endgame. Might've even been able to tackle Tiki's ridiculous paralogue.

Sumia: 122B 99W. Poor Sumia. Luck couldn't save her from arrows twice. Everything I said about Cordelia applies to her. But she was undoubtedly the better unit. Especially with Frederick as her pair-up partner. I now seriously regret trying so hard and wasting so much energy training up Cordelia.

Maribelle: 0B 0W. She was useful for a couple of chapters as a staff bot, but of course was swiftly replaced by the likes of Anna and Libra.

Gaius: 0B 0W. I mean I used him a couple of times for locktouch and his movement bonus. Glad to have him around I guess, even though it wasn't until the late game that I had space for him.

Miriel: 148B 102W. Oh wow, that's adorable. While they only add one sentence that varies depending on who a guy ends up with (the bulk of the paired ending dialogue is focused on the husband), that one sentence basically says that Miriel became the Soren to Gregor's Ike when he went back to mercenary work. Anyway, Miriel... just wasn't as useful as she was in my original Lunatic+ run. What a shame. Like I said before, I over-extended. I should've focused on just making one of them good. And unfortunately I spread my resources too thin until none of them could keep up.

Libra: 2B 0W. Oh wow, when a character actually, literally dies, the text is in red. Well, he was a handy staff bot, but probably my worst after I dropped Maribelle. Stats too low, no movement bonus, no locktouch, and no time to get a maxed staff rank like Lissa got.

Olivia: 0B 0W. Contrary to what I said at the time, there were in fact times where I would've found her useful after she died, so... shame about that.

Basilio's ending mentions Basilio thinking that if his champions failed to get the throne back, he could always wait until Lucina grew up and lend her a mask. One, Lucina lost last time he used her, and two, why would she still need a mask?

Anna: 5B 3W. Excellent support unit, second only to Lissa in terms of overall, whole-game contributions.

Lucina: 218B 203W. Not as good as Morgan, but holy shit does that barely matter. The second she and Morgan joined the team, they began a swift rise to become my best overall units.

Cynthia: 1B 0W. RIP.

Morgan: 354B 329W. Yeah, easily the MVP by the endgame. Armsthrift + ignis + galeforce + veteran + rightful king + Book of Naga + Leif's Blade + powerful dual strike partner = pwnage incarnate.

Gangrel: 3B 3W. Surprisingly useful for the handful of maps I had him. Staff use and high movement is a great way to make yourself useful without any training. But as to his ending... how can there be debate as to whether or not he became a king of another country!?

Walhart: 2B 1W. I wish I got more use out of him. He was soooooo close to being endgame viable, but he came up short in just the wrong ways to make him never a good idea for any situation. He did manage to get some clutch chip damage in during the first turn of Yen'fay's paralogue though.

Emmeryn: 1B 1W. Yeah, I used her once in the Golden Gaffe in the hopes that she had an entertaining battle quote. She did not. But yeah, having a second, better Lissa was pretty awesome, honestly. Glad I had her for those few chapters. ...Apparently she left to live in Ferox though? What?

Yen'fay: 2B 2W. Yeah he did a thing in his joining chapter, turn one, with Walhart. And I used him once for Golden Gaffe. Nothing more to say.

Aversa: 8B 7W. Useful for Yen'fay's paralogue, and probably would've been useful for more if I had more time to use her. But alas, almost everything left to do was already done by the time I got her.

Ah yes. And then the extended ending scene. Where Chrom and Lissa find Alexandria again, and the cutscene repeats, this time without the Grima brand. And with an added final line:

Chrom: Welcome back. It's over now.

Alexandria: 705B 519W.

...Uh... Yeah. I think that speaks for itself.

Also, Chrom's title is “Newly Exalted”. Alright, so apparently Chrom did become Exalt eventually. The delay was literally just to make sure they never had to change his title in paralogues and DLC.

...Well.

...Well that's that then.

...So...

...What did I think?

[Alastor15243]

My Ranking

 

 

Difficulty: I was tempted to just not put anything here and just skip straight to the list, not even dignifying this with comment. But no, I have to make notes, if only to give myself an easy summary to reference later if my memory slips a bit. Fuck this game's game design. I can scarcely point to a single damned moment where this game is difficult or challenging in a remotely interesting way. The pair-up system, the exp curve, the absurdly enemy-phase-focused gameplay, the map design devoid of any nuance or care, almost everything about this game has fried my capacity for caution or rational thought, and I can only pray that Fates whips me back into shape. Nothing in this game's difficulty is well-designed, and what comes closest to resembling it was entirely by accident and requires some serious squinting. I keep reminding myself that a lot of this is entwined almost inexorably into the game's balance problems (and ooooooooooh boy will we get into those), and yet still I find that there's no way to deny that in this game, stats trump strategy basically every time. The sheer dearth of strategy commentary I think should really speak for itself. I haven't played a game this mindless... ever. Not a single game in the series allowed me to stop thinking this much about what would happen on enemy-phase. I don't remember ever getting to this point, especially not while I was fucking ironmanning.

No contest. We somehow, someway, have managed to find a new loser.

1: Shadow Dragon (1)

2: Binding Blade (2)

3: New Mystery (3)

4: Thracia 776 (4)

5: Radiant Dawn (5)

6: Blazing Blade (6)

7: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 (7)

8: Genealogy of the Holy War (8)

9: Gaiden (9)

10: Sacred Stones (10)

11: Path of Radiance (11)

12: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 (12)

13: Dark Dragon (13)

14: Awakening (14)

 

Ironmannability: This one's an issue, because while I know it's bad, it's hard to determine specifically how bad. It's not worse than Thracia. Thracia is astronomically more blind-unfriendly. Ambush spawns are really the most egregious mistake it makes, so it's hard to justify putting it lower than games that don't even let you control where you deploy your units or have inescapable crit rates on every single enemy. True, the fact that I knew where most of the reinforcements would spawn, if not when, might have been a factor for this impression, but...

...yeah, I can't justify saying this is worse to ironman than New Mystery. I just can't. Especially considering the fact that, up to a certain point, the more units die, the easier this game becomes to break in half. New Mystery filled me with a profound sense of paranoia that terrified me almost constantly, and nothing I can remember from this game came close to that.

...That said, there is a crazy amount of luck towards the beginning of the game if you're playing on Lunatic, so... yeah, I'd say it's worse than Radiant Dawn. After all, Lunatic Awakening has an even worse problem when it comes to late-game units. Unless you have a window to get some child units off the ground, you're sunk when it comes to replacing your old army with anything but a handful of staff bots.

1: Shadow Dragon (2)

2: Genealogy of the Holy War (10)

3: Path of Radiance (14)

4: Sacred Stones (14)

5: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 (12)

6: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 (18)

7: Radiant Dawn (12)

8: Awakening (22)

9: New Mystery (12)

10: Binding Blade (12)

11: Blazing Blade (17)

12: Dark Dragon (25)

13: Gaiden (22)

14: Thracia 776 (18)

 

Usability: Awakening wins. Honestly, while this game was really mindless, I will concede that part of this was a side-effect of having the best interface and stat screen in the marathon so far, by far. Checking stats took so little time that it often barely even registered as conscious thought. That said, it could stand to have some improvements. One major issue is the fact that you can't check pair-up bonuses until you're paired, which you can't do on the prep screen to experiment. Thankfully Fates will fix that, and also have gameplay actually worthy of this stellar interface system.

1: Awakening (23)

2: New Mystery (14)

3: Shadow Dragon (5)

4: Genealogy of the Holy War (14)

5: Path of Radiance (19)

6: Blazing Blade (23)

7: Sacred Stones (21)

8: Binding Blade (20)

9: Radiant Dawn (21)

10: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 (28) and Book 2 (22)

11: Thracia 776 (29)

12: Gaiden (34)

13: Dark Dragon (38)

 

Depth: I hesitate to award points for this, but... I feel I must. I mean, there's just no denying it. The child customization, the shitload of skills you learn by navigating through various classes... this is some good shit. The experience is marred by the general lack of interesting things to do with half of it, but I'm already taking points off on difficulty and balance, so it doesn't make much sense to do it twice. And Fates is going to pretty soundly demonstrate that Awakening had some awesome, awesome ideas here that were fucked up by poor... everything else. I mean, Genealogy is topping this list right now, so I don't see why I should take depth points off for gameplay or balance flaws in this case all of a sudden. No matter how weird it feels. New winner.

1: Awakening (24)

2: Genealogy of the Holy War 16)

3: Thracia 776 (32)

4: Radiant Dawn (25)

5: Path of Radiance (24)

6: Gaiden (40)

7: Sacred Stones (28)

8: Binding Blade (28)

9: Blazing Blade (32)

10: New Mystery (24)

11: Shadow Dragon (16)

12: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 (40) and Book 2 (34)

13: Dark Dragon (51)

 

Balance: ...Yep. One way or another, I'm bringing this back. I have to, because I cannot possibly give an accurate score to this game if I don't include it. Because this game's imbalance transcends imbalance. This game introduces numerous features, any one of which could have trivialized this game's difficulty, but when combined... holy shit. There is no debate. I will not insult the other games further by even pretending to debate where on the list this goes.

The only question is where everything else goes. Because I need to take another look at this and switch some shit around. I'll go through the games in reverse order and apply them to the list again.

...Okay, first off, I think I was a bit over-eager to see Shadow Dragon in the top spot when I ranked it first. It's got some serious issues. Enemy encounter design ridiculously rewarding slayer weapons and ill suiting the weapon triangle that was unceremoniously slapped on top of it, classes with laughably and objectively inferior stats to others, two units that, however much I may adore them, are still ridiculously broken and probably shouldn't exist in the form they do... and also shit like warp staves being absurdly plentiful and easy to abuse... comparing it in any way to Awakening would be an outright insult, but I think it goes without question that New Mystery is objectively better-balanced. There are just more usable classes, and while the near-total end of any useful units after the Sable Trio show up is a massive tragedy... based on my subjective experience of doing Shadow Dragon three times on H3-5 and New Mystery once on hard... I genuinely feel like units in New Mystery... are just better at making themselves useful in different-yet-meaningful ways. I do have the complaint about making male units objectively better after beating the game, but... that's not enough to change this.

Okay, that's the first three, so let's go back to Radiant Dawn. Honestly, I was completely out of line when I said it was worse than Genealogy. Yes, the unit balance is bad, but there's bad unit balance in tons of games, and I'd say all three games already on this list have it worse in that regard. Plus, while the weapon stats make absolutely no sense and it sucks that there's still a significant degree of favoritism towards axes and lances compared to swords... the fact that you can even buy 1-2 range swords in this game is pretty dang notable. Still... okay, I think New Mystery did better.

Path of Radiance? Again, this might just be the comparatively-lower difficulty talking, but compared to the games that came after it, it feels like this game had the most well-rounded cast. Laguz still have their issues, but at least in this game a lot of them have value when you first get them. I remember high enemy HP meaning I even sometimes had a use for Zihark despite his inability to attack at 1-2 range. I think it beats New Mystery.

Sacred Stones... first off I have to decide how many points I take off for grinding access. I think I'm gonna say I won't take off any, especially since it's wholly unnecessary to play this game. This isn't like Awakening where the fact that higher difficulties are beatable without grinding is an accident caused by their gross incompetence at balancing everything else.

That said...

...Christ, this is what I hate about this category. By far, no exceptions, this is the hardest category to remember the subtle details of, and each game has its own difficulty issues that it's really difficult to compare to something else. Not remotely helping matters is the fact that there isn't a single game on this list whose balance I'd actually give a genuine, unconditional thumbs-up. So it's like I've got a third of the tiers to sort things into, because they're all bottom-to-low.

Really I just wanna put half the games into a big monotonous blob and only think about the ones that really stood out, good or bad. But even that is something I wouldn't know where to start with! Every second I think about this, I can feel my brain roasting inside my skull.

I'm sorry, but I can't. I can't bring this back right now. Not today. Probably not even this week, either. Not without help. I can't completely re-construct this list when it's been more than a year since I've played some of these games. I just... look, maybe if I can re-organize this into a point-based tier list using Tiermaker, this could be less of a nightmare. But I seriously don't have clue one what to do with this list.

 

Pacing: Yet another place where I was over-eager to see Shadow Dragon on top. And while I still like it, playing through it on H4 and then H5 in quick succession has definitely... robbed me of some of my zeal to see that game on the top. This game has some hiccups, no denying that. I think I'm gonna have to put it directly below the GBA games rather than directly above them. As for Awakening...

...Ugh. So, here's the thing: Ignoring the early-game stuff in Lunatic, this is probably technically the fastest-paced game in the series... but it achieves that by basically throwing strategy out the window. I breezed through this game because I was barely thinking about it. While ironmanning. On Lunatic. I can't in good conscience award it the points it gains from that, so I have to basically assume this is a game I have to think about when ranking the pacing.

...And unfortunately that still means it's the new winner. While New Mystery and Shadow Dragon have map-design-induced pacing issues that squandered the advantage its faster general pace and gameplay speed bought it, Awakening... for all of its many, many faults... does not.

1: Awakening (25)

2: Blazing Blade (34)

3: Binding Blade (31)

4: Sacred Stones (32)

5: Shadow Dragon (21)

6: New Mystery (30)

7: Radiant Dawn (32)

8: Path of Radiance (32)

9: Thracia 776 (41)

10: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 (50)

11: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 (45)

12: Gaiden (52)

13: Dark Dragon (64)

14: Genealogy of the Holy War (30)

 

Writing: I am dignifying this section with comment under protest.

I have technically seen worse-written Fire Emblem games, but only in the sense that I have seen Fire Emblem games that were barely written at all. Having a lovable and funny cast can only get you so far when the story they're tied to is just so... so...

Where the fuck do I even begin!?

I have never seen a Fire Emblem story so devoid of depth or dignity. This story falls apart at the tiniest scrutiny, couldn't decide what it's trying to say to save its life, and pisses on the lore of its predecessors like a goddamned fire hose. Fuck this story. Fuck this story right up the ass from whence it pulled its lore.

1: Path of Radiance (33)

2: Genealogy of the Holy War (32)

3: Blazing Blade (37)

4: Radiant Dawn (36)

5: Thracia 776 (46)

6: Binding Blade (37)

7: Sacred Stones (39)

8: Shadow Dragon (29)

9: New Mystery (39)

10: Awakening (35)

11: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 (56)

12: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 (62)

13: Dark Dragon (77)

14: Gaiden (66)

 

Music: Do I even need to justify myself here? The soundtrack here is goddamned gorgeous, and the way it fixes that ever-present issue of interrupting battle music is nothing short of inspired. I absolutely adore this game's soundtrack. After more than a year, Genealogy has finally, at long last, been unseated.

1: Awakening (36)

2: Genealogy of the Holy War (34)

3: Thracia 776 (49)

4: Path of Radiance (37)

5: New Mystery (44)

6: Blazing Blade (43)

7: Sacred Stones (46)

8: Radiant Dawn (44)

9: Shadow Dragon (38)

10: Gaiden (76)

11: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 (67)

12: Binding Blade (49)

13: Dark Dragon (90)

14: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 (76)

 

Presentation: I trust the answer should be obvious. The graphical advancements made for the 3DS games speak for themselves. The cutscenes are beyond gorgeous. The cut-ins, the voice acting... I shat on the 3DS era of visuals a few years ago, and playing through the whole series again has made me realize how unwarranted it is. All in all, adding everything up, this is probably the best that Fire Emblem has ever looked in the marathon so far.

1: Awakening (37)

2: Radiant Dawn (46)

3: Path of Radiance (40)

4: Blazing Blade (47)

5: Sacred Stones (51)

6: Binding Blade (55)

7: New Mystery (51)

8: Shadow Dragon (46)

9: Thracia 776 (58)

10: Genealogy of the Holy War (44)

11: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 (87) and Book 2 (78)

12: Gaiden (88)

13: Dark Dragon (103)

 

Replayability: It pains me to admit it, but this game really succeeds here, and I think past me's obsessive repeated replays of this game with different pairings attests to this. It may no longer bring me much joy at all, but this game just has so much to offer in terms of stuff you can do differently between playthroughs. If this is the sort of gameplay you enjoy, there is soooooooo much fun you can have trying out different builds. My only real point of issue is that the actual pairing stuff doesn't have quite as much of an impact on gameplay as it does in Genealogy, because you're not using that many child units most likely, and they aren't nearly as radically different between playthroughs in Awakening as they are in Genealogy. But considering the multiple difficulty settings (assuming you actually like them all) and the wider variety of stuff you can do with an individual unit... yeah, I'm gonna have to go with Awakening here.

1: Awakening (38)

2: Genealogy of the Holy War (46)

3: Sacred Stones (54)

4: Shadow Dragon (50)

5: Blazing Blade (52)

6: Binding Blade (61)

7: New Mystery (58)

8: Thracia 776 (66)

9: Gaiden (97)

10: Path of Radiance (50)

11: Radiant Dawn (57)

12: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 (99)

13: Dark Dragon (116)

14: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 (92)

 

Putting us at...

 

OVERALL:

1: Awakening (38)

2: Genealogy of the Holy War (46)

3/4: Shadow Dragon (50)

3/4: Path of Radiance (50)

5: Blazing Blade (52)

6: Sacred Stones (54)

7: Radiant Dawn (57)

8: New Mystery (58)

9: Binding Blade (61)

10: Thracia 776 (66)

11: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 (92)

12: Gaiden (97)

13: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 (99)

14: Dark Dragon (116)

 

...Well there you have it! Awakening is the new best game in the series! Perfect, sublime, ironclad, unassailable proof that either my ranking system is broken, or there is no god.

I was planning on enjoying a three day weekend after playing this game through the holidays. Nope! I'm buckling down, setting shit up with Tiermaker, and trying a new system, because this is frankly utterly unacceptable. I'm not even updating the damned front page with this trash. This is wholly unworthy of human eyes, and I feel like I need to do community service for having subjected you to it.

Tune in tomorrow when I publish the results of my efforts, because I will gargle molten lead before I even provisionally crown Awakening as the greatest Fire Emblem game of all time.

...And after that gets sorted out, tune in on Monday when we start playing Revelation!

Stay safe, everyone!

[Shadow Mir]

Welp, whatcha gonna do in Fates for boon, bane, and gender?

EDIT: What difficulty will you be playing on?

Edited January 8, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Venger_06]

22 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

And ignoring the stupidity of Lucina saying “You have earned my trust and my love, milady” like that's anything any daughter would ever say to their mother... this is pretty damned hype.

Since she always says this line regardless, it's one more reason why Lucina is better off as Robin's lover.

30 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Well there you have it! Awakening is the new best game in the series! Perfect, sublime, ironclad, unassailable proof that either my ranking system is broken, or there is no god.

Well, that was... unexpected, to say at least. I wonder if we'll get a ranking where Revelation of all games is the greatest of all time just because it shares it's highs with Awakening while not being as broken.

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Welp, whatcha gonna do in Fates for boon, bane, and gender?

I generally go +spd -lck and female, but I'm not sure this time.

 

2 minutes ago, Maof06 said:

Well, that was... unexpected, to say at least. I wonder if we'll get a ranking where Revelation of all games is the greatest of all time just because it shares it's highs with Awakening while not being as broken.

Over my butchered, rotting corpse 🙂

Edited January 8, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Shadow Mir]

11 minutes ago, Maof06 said:

Well, that was... unexpected, to say at least. I wonder if we'll get a ranking where Revelation of all games is the greatest of all time just because it shares it's highs with Awakening while not being as broken.

I dunno about that - Revelation is the same game where you get a level 10 unpromoted unit and a level 10 promoted unit... in the same chapter. Sadly, though, that isn't the most egregious thing this series has pulled...

Quote

I generally go +spd -lck and female, but I'm not sure this time.

What about difficulty?

Edit: If you're up for an alternate build, might I suggest +HP/-Skill?

Edited January 8, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Venger_06]

4 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I generally go +spd -lck and female, but I'm not sure this time.

Set up a poll so that readers can decide. Now comes the important question: what character are you planning to pet on the face? We're in Waifu Emblem after all.

4 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Over my butchered, rotting corpse 🙂

Remember, there is no god.

2 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I dunno about that - Revelation is the same game where you get a level 10 unpromoted unit and a level 10 promoted unit... in the same chapter. Sadly, though, that isn't the most egregious thing this series has pulled...

Yeah, but there's some moments where you actually have to think before taking action.

[Etrurian emperor]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I have never seen a Fire Emblem story so devoid of depth or dignity. This story falls apart at the tiniest scrutiny, couldn't decide what it's trying to say to save its life, and pisses on the lore of its predecessors like a goddamned fire hose. Fuck this story. Fuck this story right up the ass from whence it pulled its lore.

Ehehe, you just wait until the next game! 

[Samz707]

I'll somewhat keep up with Fates but I won't be able to comment much as I've never played it.

I'll probably start being around more when you get to Echoes.

[Benice]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Well there you have it! Awakening is the new best game in the series! Perfect, sublime, ironclad, unassailable proof that either my ranking system is broken, or there is no god.

My advice is simply to scale different ranks-I.E, Gameplay is worth 50%, story is worth 20, Balance 10, etc.

Either way, looking forwards to Berwick Saga and Fates!

[Shadow Mir]

2 hours ago, Maof06 said:

Yeah, but there's some moments where you actually have to think before taking action.

That's not the only thing I think of when it comes to balance. Revelation is one of the games I often see touted as the most unbalanced; I don't agree with this myself (Genealogy and Binding Blade come to mind as worse balanced), but I can see where they're coming from, seeing as the game pretty much encourages you to use all the royals. Nohrian characters in general getting shafted doesn't help.

Edited January 8, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Jotari]

13 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

After RD's Ike "must deal the final gameplay blow", I'd say I prefer Awakening's approach inestimably. Divorce gameplay from story against what should be the strongest enemy in the entire game, because unlike a more typical RPG there is no guarantee you trained up someone enough and they might have gotten RNG screwed anyhow. As for the final gameplay hit, think of it as shattering the outer armor that exposes the squishy heart.

For some games in the series, maybe, but let's face it, Awakening's final map is a one/two turn job and you're going to have Robin, and probably Chrom, trained up unless it's some kind of no Robin run.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Tune in tomorrow when I publish the results of my efforts, because I will gargle molten lead before I even provisionally crown Awakening as the greatest Fire Emblem game of all time.

 

All time includes all future time as well as all past time. So Awakening can't be crowned, even provisionally, the greatest Fire Emblem game of all time until you have experienced the extent of all temporal existence. All time is a ridiculously grandiose exaggeration that most people have no inkling they're actually making and it bothers me far, far more than it should.

3 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

I dunno about that - Revelation is the same game where you get a level 10 unpromoted unit and a level 10 promoted unit... in the same chapter. Sadly, though, that isn't the most egregious thing this series has pulled...

What about difficulty?

Edit: If you're up for an alternate build, might I suggest +HP/-Skill?

Bear in mind that Awakening's score is taken almost exclusively from how good its presentation is (and I don't mean that singular category, but things like pacing and graphics that are related to it). Which Fates has in equal and greater measure.  So under this system, yeah, Revelations might be able to beat it. It'd probably come down to how it fairs in the replayability score which is pretty much the only high score for Awakening that related to its gameplay somewhat.

Edited January 8, 2021 by Jotari

[Interdimensional Observer]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

..I mean there's “avatar cockstroking session” awkward, and then... there's “attending your own funeral” awkward.

Actually, I have heard of anecdotes where people in the contemporary world hold a funeral whilst they're still alive and healthy. Not sure why, you don't really need to practice for it unless you're beloved died before you and you're getting ready to throw yourself as obligated to into their funeral pyre. Guess it's to accept your inevitable end and maybe get others to accept it too.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

The pair-up system, the exp curve, the absurdly enemy-phase-focused gameplay, the map design devoid of any nuance or care, almost everything about this game has fried my capacity for caution or rational thought, and I can only pray that Fates whips me back into shape.

Reminds me of when I first played Fates. I went into it with the Awakening mentality and tossed like most of my EXP into Corrin to start getting the snowball rolling, took until a trip to the harbor to realize the snow wasn't sticking. Thankfully I didn't need to restart or turn down the difficulty.

This said, you'll wish the EXP restrain wasn't in place for the first couple Rev chapters. Because yowzas I loathe the lowmanning the first three (four with Mozu Get ASAP) chapters force.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I'm sorry, but I can't. I can't bring this back right now. Not today. Probably not even this week, either. Not without help. I can't completely re-construct this list when it's been more than a year since I've played some of these games. I just... look, maybe if I can re-organize this into a point-based tier list using Tiermaker, this could be less of a nightmare. But I seriously don't have clue one what to do with this list.

Balance might not be ratable in the form of a numerical list. Maybe you need a... spectrum? with four corners, each labeled after a particular kind of balance issue you see recurring again and again in FE? But, can you name four big balance issues? And does leaving out the smaller ones by doing this harm the results? You couldn't possibly factor this into an overall rating list either, so my idea is junk.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Pacing: Yet another place where I was over-eager to see Shadow Dragon on top. And while I still like it, playing through it on H4 and then H5 in quick succession has definitely... robbed me of some of my zeal to see that game on the top.

Were you euphoric when you finished SD the first time? Your entries here certainly read like that.

I had my own euphoric moment right after I finished a game not that long ago, part of it stemmed from not being the atrocity I feared it would be. But then, in the days after I finished it, I realized that, while I had already noticed some cracks and issues in it, that things were actually a good deal sloppier than I had initially conceded.😐

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I have technically seen worse-written Fire Emblem games, but only in the sense that I have seen Fire Emblem games that were barely written at all.

Would you want to draw a line indicating "factually barely written at all" below Awakening to clarify that? Although that'd be a little tricky maybe? Because I like Mystery Book 2 and Shadow Dragon is actually sorta more a case of "factually barely written at all" to me (Marth visibly emotes in Book 2! now thats better writing). It's not as "factual" as I would like to think.

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

If this is the sort of gameplay you enjoy, there is soooooooo much fun you can have trying out different builds. My only real point of issue is that the actual pairing stuff doesn't have quite as much of an impact on gameplay as it does in Genealogy, because you're not using that many child units most likely, and they aren't nearly as radically different between playthroughs in Awakening as they are in Genealogy.

I'd add there is not a lot to do with the stuff. By the time you're done collecting 5 great skills for your characters, they've probably capped every important stat or close to it due to all the leveling, thats kinda gamebreaking in itself barring Lunatic enemies maybe or a few of the DLC.

And although I like the flavor of personal stat cap modifiers, if you hit the promoted cap in a stat that isn't particularly low for that class, you probably have enough in that stat to do well, regardless of what that cap is. If I hit the Spd or Def cap as a Hero, does the modifier really matter?

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Tune in tomorrow when I publish the results of my efforts, because I will gargle molten lead before I even provisionally crown Awakening as the greatest Fire Emblem game of all time.

Treat yourself to better than this. Was it the Mongols who punished some defiant local ruler by pouring molten gold down their throat? Or did the Romans do this once? Or was the metal silver? I simply can't remember anything beyond having heard the quite possibly fictive fanciful anecdote. Either way, you're worth a precious metal instead of the stuff from which they are transmuted. 

 

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I generally go +spd -lck and female, but I'm not sure this time.

If you're doing ironman, is that Lck bane really gonna fly? Why not Res or Skl? Those are the two stats that I'd probably pick for a bane not Lck. Although I confess I too do Lck banes almost always.

 

23 minutes ago, Jotari said:

All time includes all future time as well as all past time. So Awakening can't be crowned, even provisionally, the greatest Fire Emblem game of all time until you have experienced the extent of all temporal existence. 

I can teleport you to the Cosmic Archives, from whence outside of time you may see the stream's full course. Dare you wish to know what humans I have long assumed cannot comprehend? 

 

27 minutes ago, Jotari said:

All time is a ridiculously grandiose exaggeration that most people have no inkling they're actually making and it bothers me far, far more than it should.

Not to mention the bad acronym. I'd actually be fine with labeling Awakening the GOAT.

[ping]

19 hours ago, Maof06 said:

But I'm not arguing that this is an asspull. Like I said before, FFVI has one of greatest stories told in videogames, and this part fits nicely with what it was trying to convey. What I'm arguing is that people are being unnecessarily nitpicky with this plot point in Awakening.

But let's agree to disagree then. Also, you're right, we should stop talking about non-FE stuff, especially since I would like someone who yet to play FFVI to be surprised.

Whoops, that's my bad. I misread you there, sorry!

3 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Not to mention the bad acronym. I'd actually be fine with labeling Awakening the GOAT.

Fun fact: Before it was repurposed as "Greatest Of All Time", goat was used to label athletes who utterly, royally fucked up.

--

re:Balance:
One of my Broken Record Rants is that more balance isn't automatically better. Fire Emblem is an imbalanced game by nature, since the human player and the AI play completely different games. Both in goals ("kill a single unit" is treated as a victory condition for the AI) and in what they're allowed to do, or rather "think". The AI doesn't make an attempt to plan ahead, it doesn't gang up on player units, its sense of unit preservation is miniscule at best. And nothing of that is "bad gameplay" - imbalances that translate into that would be overpowered mechanics that lead to degenerate gameplay. Like when an overpowered unit (FE7!Marcus, Seth, Robin) can just invalidate strategy by just having Big Numbers, as you already said. Or when warpskips are too readily available, which in my opinion is a strike against Shadow Dragon (and the old games before the invention of max warp range).

Playable characters not all being equally viable isn't automatically a bad thing, either. Chess isn't imbalanced because the queen "outclasses" the rook. The ability to give yourself a challenge by, I dunno, killing Jahn with Sophia, or not using Titania in PoR (don't do that, btw. It only makes the game even slower) is a positive.

I have the "unpopular opinion" that PoR has worse balance than BinBla for these reasons, btw - Titania and BEXP means that you have the Big Numbers to just go with the strategy of CHARRRRRGGGGEEE! most of the time, and it means that unit comparison mostly boils down to Horse y/n, Axes or Lances y/n, and availabilty.

Not sure what I would do about it, though. Split it up in "breakability" and "unit variability", maybe? But even then, the latter isn't really an automatic case of more = better.

[Axie]

advice for the ranking to be more accurate:

- give weights to those categories. do you actually think usability and presentation are as important as balance or difficulty? those categories that are basically bound to reward the newer games every time, and while i do think it's important to talk about them, gameplay matters so much more.

- speaking of balance: i reiterate my advice to change it to something like "cheeseability". games aren't ever balanced, so if you keep yourself restrained by that word you will never get that category off the ground, and you need it because awakening is clearly the worst one.

- maybe don't assign points relative to their placement in the ranking and start assigning grades. this definitely solves the balance category problem, even if it becomes a bit of extra work.

on a personal note: i'd put awakening's writing under the the first three games lmao. zero is a higher number than a negative.

Edited January 8, 2021 by Axie

[Eltosian Kadath]

I was planning on responding to this earlier, but I got too distracted by world events...

 

On 1/6/2021 at 3:36 AM, Jotari said:

I really don't see that as a down side. Let's face it, getting supports is so easy in Awakening it'd be something of a secret ending to finish the game without an S support and leave Robin dead. If they were willing to kill of Kaze mid game in a super random manner for not having an A support with Corrin, they could kill off Robin at the very end of the game for not having any supports with anyone. Anyone who'd be emotionally upset with that decision would probably have gotten the necessary supports to save them.

That is the kinda story beat that can easily come across as an asspull, but when a game/story makes it feel earned, it turns into something special. I was trying to be vague on how many supports should be necessary, as that is the kind of thing that should be fine tuned with testing, although the idea of it being A or S support with everyone deployed in the final chapter was one of the benchmarks I was thinking of. Plus what would be wrong with a secret Robin dies ending you have to earn by forgoing supports with him?

 

On 1/6/2021 at 2:51 PM, Alastor15243 said:

 

...They describe her as having the mental capacity of a child.

And you can still romance her.

...ugh...that is down right sickening...sorry I forgot Awakening was this disgusting when I suggested it...

 

On 1/6/2021 at 2:51 PM, Alastor15243 said:

 

Alright, let's do this. I know you can really, really easily cheese this by having units second seal back to tier 1, get to level 10, and then promote right after the start of the battle, but... I don't have time to do that, so let's do this normally. Or at least my version of “normally”.

I seem to remember strategically removing skills was a key part to the time I beat this chapter, but that was a while ago, and I never knew of this cheese method.

 

On 1/6/2021 at 2:51 PM, Alastor15243 said:

 

...And Say'ri can't even support with Yen'fay.

This was such a dumb oversight. Those two should have a support (even if the game just gave them an A support at base that could have worked...)

 

On 1/6/2021 at 3:33 PM, Alastor15243 said:

when the god the religion is based around is inherently evil is kind of a waste of time, because any decent person would stop being a member of the religion upon gaining any awareness of how fucked up it is.

I think it depends on how its treated. If worship is about keeping the evil god from bestowing its wrath on the worshiper, you could have good people worshiping an evil god in a way that isn't a waste of their time. This was more of a thing in ancient times, where gods were people's way of explaining natural phenomena, and if you lived in an area with common destructive activities (like frequent flooding, or hurricanes, etc.) having an evil god you had to appease, or face its awful wrath was fairly common. Now good people trying to revive said evil god would be ridiculous, and that tends to be how evil gods are used in most Fire Emblem games...

 

On 1/6/2021 at 7:04 PM, Jotari said:

And then around the 2010s Nintendo themselves thought they had to form some kind of continuity and started making games like Spirit Tracks, Skyward Sword and A Link Between Worlds that were intended distant sequels or prequels. Thankfully it seems they've started to buck that trend with Breath of the Wild's refusal to be placed anywhere.

Games with connection to each-other were fairly common throughout the history of Zelda games. The second game was literally a direct sequel to first game; Link Awakening is ~

 

On 1/6/2021 at 7:04 PM, Jotari said:

Well...maybe. I think he does make a reference again to his heart not beating in one of the DLC maps. I think it might be the Regalia chapter where he says he's like the Deadlords.

Its a shame Awakening didn't try something that interesting with its actual Deadlords...

 

On 1/6/2021 at 11:56 PM, Jotari said:

(while we're at it, am I the only one who feels the ending would have been better left to who finishes off Grima in terms of gameplay instead of having a choice interjected right after you land the final hit of the chapter?).

It would have been more interesting, although they would have to figure out what happens if someone random finishes off Grima.

 

10 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Oh, and look, without any warning, the game just doesn't let you use rescue staves on this map. Meaning my entire plan is pointless. I can't even rescue my own units to do extra player-phase attacks!

Wow, that is just plain obnoxious. I guess marking the game's ironmanability ranking for the DLC cheating you would be petty, but if anything even close to that happened in the actual game...

 

10 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Okay, seeing all-caps red text accompanied by Alexandria's neutral face is just dumb as hell. Why don't they have a portrait for Grima?

10 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Yeah, it's really dumb that they didn't give the avatar even a single evil expression here. Seeing the avatar's face contorted in malice would be really cool, but she's just... using the same normal expressions as always and it looks super dumb.

Anytime a Fire Emblem game skimps on reacting faces like this after FE7, it always feels really egregious to me...

 

11 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Well there you have it! Awakening is the new best game in the series! Perfect, sublime, ironclad, unassailable proof that either my ranking system is broken, or there is no god.

I was planning on enjoying a three day weekend after playing this game through the holidays. Nope! I'm buckling down, setting shit up with Tiermaker, and trying a new system, because this is frankly utterly unacceptable. I'm not even updating the damned front page with this trash. This is wholly unworthy of human eyes, and I feel like I need to do community service for having subjected you to it.

Tune in tomorrow when I publish the results of my efforts, because I will gargle molten lead before I even provisionally crown Awakening as the greatest Fire Emblem game of all time.

...And after that gets sorted out, tune in on Monday when we start playing Revelation!

Stay safe, everyone!

Yikes...I think the worst thing about this is that even if you add the balance section back in, if you give it the bottom slot, Awakening would get 3rd at absolute worst, and I don't think the other games would get a balance level high enough to drop it out of first... (Genealogy needs at least 5+ on balance to beat Awakening, and Shadow Dragon or Path of Radiance would need the top slot to do so...)

 

10 hours ago, Shadow Mir said:

Edit: If you're up for an alternate build, might I suggest +HP/-Skill?

I would not recommend a -Skill build for Revelation in particular thanks to the Anankos fight. I used in my Lunatic PMU, and it made that final fight more obnoxious than it had to be...

 

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

 

Games with connection to each-other were fairly common throughout the history of Zelda games. The second game was literally a direct sequel to first game; Link Awakening is ~

 

 

 

I don't want to get all off topic with Zelda stuff, but I did specifically mention direct sequels being a thing in the comment you quoted. My point was that there wasn't connections between the continuities up until Spirit Tracks. It was stuff like the backstory of The Wind Waker or A Link to the Past, which might have been talking about Ocarina of Time.

[Alastor15243]

Alright, let's get down to business.

Here's the deal: it's become apparent that the equal scoring weight of each of these categories is just not gonna work, because I just flat-out don't agree with this combined golf score list ever. It's become a shitshow and a farce, and it's also a pain in the ass to add all this shit up again after every game because the scores keep changing by the very nature of the list system.

So if you'll indulge me, I'd like to experiment with a new system. Inspired by tier lists, for each category I'm going to sort the games into 7 tiers, with the 4^th one being neutral, 1-3 increasing your score, and 5-7 decreasing it. And I'm going to award points based on how much of a credit or detriment I feel having that score is to the experience. It's not gonna be a flat multiplier for more important categories, by the way. You're going to notice that point bonuses or penalties might spike drastically if they reach a point that really improves the experience, or goes beneath my minimum tolerance for bullshit.

Also, I won't name these tiers so much as give a one-sentence summary of what it represents.

So let's get started.

 

DIFFICULTY

+12: Pushes difficulty to the limit without being a reset-fest, with fun, engaging challenges galore.

???

+8: Very tough in ways that are fun and engaging, even if not every difficulty mode is perfect.

Shadow Dragon.

+4: Has at least one difficulty that's hard enough to keep you consistently alert and engaged.

Binding Blade, New Mystery.

+0: Mediocre. Has its moments both tough and boring, or is middle-of-the-road throughout.

Thracia 776, Radiant Dawn, Blazing Blade, Mystery of the Emblem Book 2.

-4: Mostly dull with excessive enemy-phase combat, and/or what difficulty it has is kinda BS.

Genealogy of the Holy War, Gaiden, Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance.

-8: Trivial slog and/or unfair nonsense, consistently, throughout.

Mystery of the Emblem Book 1, Dark Dragon.

-12: Wouldn't know what strategy is if it forked, pinned and skewered them.

Awakening.

 

IRONMANNABILITY

+9: Near perfection. You can ironman blind, confident that the game won't fuck you. No ambush spawns, no fog of war, and plentiful means to recover from your mistakes.

???

+6: The game slips up, but it doesn't slip up much, or it gives you many opportunities to recover.

Shadow Dragon, Genealogy of the Holy War.

+3: It may have FOW or ambush spawns, but not both, and it's mostly good about replacements.

Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance.

+0: It's probably gonna be painful first-go, but the nasty tricks are sparse enough to memorize.

Mystery of the Emblem Book 2, Mystery of the Emblem Book 1.

-3: The surprises can be harsh, or it isn't the best about giving you good replacement units.

Radiant Dawn, Awakening.

-6: Nasty tricks, luck-based missions, and/or major replacement drought. Paranoia reigns.

New Mystery, Binding Blade, Blazing Blade, Dark Dragon, Gaiden.

-9: Expects you to reset as naturally as you breathe, and has profound contempt for the blind.

Thracia 776.

 

USABILITY

+9: Near perfection. No clunkiness, and no tedious busywork between you and your strategies.

Awakening.

+7: It has room for improvement, but not much. Convenient menus, easy information access.

New Mystery, Shadow Dragon.

+3: Mostly-convenient menus, good information access. QOL features might need ironing out.

Genealogy of the Holy War, Path of Radiance.

+0: Doing some calculations might be more annoying than necessary, but a passable interface.

Blazing Blade, Sacred Stones, Binding Blade.

-5: Missing modern features, either a lot of them, or features whose absence is sorely felt.

Radiant Dawn, Mystery of the Emblem Book 1, Mystery of the Emblem Book 2, Thracia 776.

-8: Extremely outdated and clunky.

Gaiden.

-12: A nigh-unplayable dinosaur that will make you profoundly grateful for the most basic of features. If your healthcare plan covers mental health, playing this game will void your policy.

Dark Dragon.

 

DEPTH

+7: Tons of interesting mechanics and unit customization for allies and enemies alike.

???

+4: Lots of interesting mechanics, plenty of ways beyond stats to set allies apart.

Awakening, Genealogy of the Holy War, Thracia 776.

+2: Has a skill system or other mechanics that are reasonably fleshed out and interesting.

Radiant Dawn, Path of Radiance.

+0: Has stuff like skills or reclassing or other stuff to set it apart, but it's been done better.

Gaiden, Sacred Stones.

-2: It has some fun stuff that you couldn't do in Dark Dragon, but no skills or reclassing.

Binding Blade, Blazing Blade, New Mystery, Shadow Dragon.

-4: Just a bit of skin on the skeleton. Only one or two features beyond the core.

Mystery of the Emblem Book 1, Mystery of the Emblem Book 2.

-5: Barebones. Almost nothing is in this game that isn't a basic feature in every other one.

Dark Dragon.

 

BALANCE

+9: Almost everything and everyone feels like there's a point to it, and nothing breaks the game.

???

+6: Some things are clearly better than others, but not too much, and nothing breaks the game.

???

+3: There's at least a wide variety of good units and roles, and nothing breaks the game too hard.

Binding Blade.

+0: Clear bests and worsts abound, but the game's fairly sturdy.

New Mystery, Blazing Blade, Gaiden, Mystery of the Emblem Book 1.

-3: Questionable balance decisions are everywhere, and/or the game is open to abuse.

Shadow Dragon, Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn, Sacred Stones, Thracia 776, Mystery of the Emblem Book 2.

-6: You start wondering what drugs the developers were on when they designed this shit.

Genealogy of the Holy War, Dark Dragon.

-9: More cheesy and breakable than a bag of fucking Cheetos.

Awakening.

 

PACING

+5: Doesn't waste your time making anything more tedious than it needs to be.

???

+3: May make you wait, but doesn't make you do any pointless stuff to proceed.

Blazing Blade, Binding Blade, Sacred Stones.

+1: Generally respects your time, slow animations or weird maps notwithstanding.

Shadow Dragon, New Mystery, Radiant Dawn.

+0: Has some moments of frustration or slow pace, but mostly inoffensive.

Path of Radiance, Thracia 776, Awakening.

-4: Baffling map design that often wastes your time with pointless tasks.

Mystery of the Emblem Book 1, Mystery of the Emblem Book 2, Gaiden.

-8: Makes you do a lot of stuff on or between maps that really takes you out of the experience.

Dark Dragon, Genealogy of the Holy War.

-12: “This game really makes you FEEL like you're waiting a month for shit to happen!”

???

 

WRITING

+10: This would be winning awards if anyone who awards them had any respect for games as art.

???

+6: Succeeds in making me care enough about what's going on in the story to tolerate the flaws.

Path of Radiance, Genealogy of the Holy War, Blazing Blade.

+3: A fun story, even if the flaws are obvious.

Radiant Dawn.

+0: An Inoffensive but not all that interesting tale. Does its job of giving context and little more.

Thracia 776, Binding Blade.

-2: Writing is some combination of boring, dumb and barely there.

Sacred Stones, Shadow Dragon, New Mystery.

-4: Technically a story, but distractingly impossible to take seriously due to copious writing flaws.

Awakening, Mystery of the Emblem Book 2, Mystery of the Emblem Book 1.

-5: Even calling this “technically” a story is stretching it.

Dark Dragon, Gaiden.

 

MUSIC

+6: Consistently gorgeous music that flows throughout.

Awakening.

+4: Consistently great music marred by poor instruments or poor flow.

Genealogy of the Holy War, Thracia 776.

+2: Bit of a mixed bag but with some truly memorable songs.

Path of Radiance, New Mystery.

+0: Has some good songs but has issues that keep it from being consistently great listening.

Blazing Blade, Sacred Stones, Radiant Dawn, Shadow Dragon, Gaiden.

-2: Has some good songs but the overall composition is dated.

Mystery of the Emblem Book 2, Binding Blade.

-4: Has at least one good song but serious issues with sound quality.

Dark Dragon.

-6: Nothing in this soundtrack brings any joy whatsoever.

Mystery of the Emblem Book 1.

 

PRESENTATION

+6: TBA Tier.

???

+4: 3DS Tier.

Awakening.

+2: GC/Wii Tier.

Radiant Dawn, Path of Radiance.

+0: GBA Tier.

Blazing Blade, Sacred Stones, Binding Blade.

-1: DS Tier.

New Mystery, Shadow Dragon.

-2: SNES Tier.

Thracia 776, Genealogy of the Holy War, Mystery of the Emblem Book 2, Mystery of the Emblem Book 1.

-5: NES Tier.

Gaiden, Dark Dragon.

 

FINAL SCORE

1: Shadow Dragon (14)

2: Path of Radiance (11)

3/4: Genealogy of the Holy War / New Mystery (3)

5: Blazing Blade (1)

6: Binding Blade (0)

7/8: Sacred Stones / Radiant Dawn (-3)

9: Awakening (-4)

10: Thracia 776 (-11)

11: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 (-24)

12: Gaiden (-32)

13: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 (-33)

14: Dark Dragon (-59)

 

 

...Better! I'm thinking there are probably some tweaks to the formula I'll have to work out, and I'm more than a little alarmed that under this system, of the 14/19 games ranked so far, only five of them got a positive score. But I am far more happy with the order now than I ever was under the “slap it all together and score it like it's golf” system of yore. This will definitely see some changes by the time you next see it used. Maybe a modification to how many tiers give negative points, since I kinda stuck pretty hard to making it 3 above and 3 below, and honestly, especially with presentation, that doesn't feel right.

...But fuck it, I worked all day on this. Awakening is no longer anywhere near remotely the best game on my own personal rankings. It's not even in the upper half anymore. I am satisfied that the bugbear has been slain.

Some other miscellaneous notes:

1: While things within tiers are roughly in order thanks to the pre-existing ranking list, balance is an exception due to the fact that it was basically totally revamped. Just because a name comes first in a balance tier doesn't mean it's better than everything else in the tier that comes after. I do not care to split hairs there anymore.

2: I brought Awakening to the +0 tier in pacing because I decided whatever goodwill it gained by having all the modern bells and whistles, it lost it through the only technically optional grinding that permeates the whole experience. My playthrough of Lunatic made it obvious that the mode was never, ever, ever intended to be played without copious amounts of grinding, and it's only due to the game's copious other flaws that it wound up being beatable without it anyway. And that's to say nothing of the DLC. I think that qualifies for wasting the player's time.

3: The presentation names will be changed as soon as I can think of sentences to actually describe what they accomplish. It was just too easy and tempting for the time being to just sort them by era like they clearly were.

4: Even attempting to come up with categories for replayability turned out to be an even more daunting task than with balance. It's probably my least favorite category anyway and I've decided I'd rather come up with something else later. I'm entirely open to ideas if you have any!

Have a great weekend, everyone. On Monday, our journey through Fates begins.

Edited January 9, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Sunwoo]

Maybe it's like golf where a low score is good 😛

In all seriousness, I do think that if the tiering system makes you happy, then it works and I wouldn't worry about the negatives too much. I mean, I suppose it means that your overall perception wasn't super positive.

[Axie]

i love this new ranking system enough to overlook that +6 to BlaBla's writing that single-handedly put it above my sun and stars BinBla. no, i will literally never stop being annoying about it lol. concise yet thorough, and you shouldn't feel bad that most games are in the negatives. four of them are the first games anyway, massively bogged down by hardware and writing categories. the others are near 0, except T776. it's fine and what i would personally expect from such a format.

Edited January 9, 2021 by Axie