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

[Samz707]

7 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hard, hard agree. I'm struggling to even put into words all the nonsense wrong with 3H's route split. In the game's defense though, my biggest complaint, the fact that it makes you pick a side before you even understand what the sides are about, is technically also the case with Fates due to its business model. Which I think gets needless flak, acting like it's a scummy business practice. If it weren't for the fact that Rev is trash, you would literally be getting three full Fire Emblem games for the price of two, which is an insane bargain.

Yeah the having to pay first thing is equally if not arguably more kinda worse.

That said,, Three Houses Route split, I know we don't know that much about the game's development but it almost feels like they actually didn't have an prologue for the longest time, then quickly threw one together as soon as possible once they realized this, it feels so rushed like they actually quickly made it.

If it turned out that they actually hadn't had a finished prologue til' late in development it wouldn't surprise me.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Samz707

[Jotari]

10 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Hard, hard agree. I'm struggling to even put into words all the nonsense wrong with 3H's route split. In the game's defense though, my biggest complaint, the fact that it makes you pick a side before you even understand what the sides are about, is technically also the case with Fates due to its business model. Which I think gets needless flak, acting like it's a scummy business practice. If it weren't for the fact that Rev is trash, you would literally be getting three full Fire Emblem games for the price of two, which is an insane bargain.

Well even taking the money factor into consideration, Fates did advertise the basic concept of what each side represented in its marketing (again, ignoring that the premise of the Birthright choice is actually complete BS). Both in terms of plot and gameplay (and for those ardent enthusiasts like myself it was moot as Id bought both the games up front, and would have bought Rev at the time too ha it been released). Maybe I just didn:t follow prerelease info as much as I was expected to for Three Houses, but I had literally no idea what the resulting choice would lead to in Three Houses. It:s basiclaly which character design you like the best.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Jotari

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

Yeah the having to pay first thing is equally if not arguably more kinda worse.

Personally if I were marketing Fates I'd give out the pre-split chapters for free as a demo. Let people know what the choice is about before buying or downloading the full game.

[Samz707]

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

Well even taking the money factor into consideration, Fates did advertise the basic concept of what each side represented in its marketing (again, ignoring that the premise of the Birthright choice is actually complete BS). Both in terms of plot and gameplay (and for those ardent enthusiasts like myself it was moot as Id bought both the games up front, and would have bought Rev at the time too ha it been released). Maybe I just didn:t follow prerelease info as much as I was expected to for Three Houses, but I had literally no idea what the resulting choice would lead to in Three Houses. It:s basiclaly which character design you like the best.

Pretty much, I had some minor spoilers going in but I made an effort to avoid them so my choices boiled down to:

Claude, who seemingly ran off leaving the others to die, so no.

Dimitri, who has a "Inner Darkness", I guess Byleth read the script considering literally nothing happened to demonstrate that.

or Edelgard, who has none of this, so she just sorta got picked by default.

There was no real "oh I agree with this character more!"  it was just "uhhh..well this one seems the least like an asshat so I go with her?"

Again, I seriously doubt this was intended as the opening, this feels rushed.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Samz707

[Jotari]

 

11 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

Yeah the having to pay first thing is equally if not arguably more kinda worse.

That said,, Three Houses Route split, I know we don't know that much about the game's development but it almost feels like they actually didn't have an prologue for the longest time, then quickly threw one together as soon as possible once they realized this, it feels so rushed like they actually quickly made it.

If it turned out that they actually hadn't had a finished prologue til' late in development it wouldn't surprise me.

Half the bloody game is a prologue. Its not like anything of significance happens for the first eight chapters or something of Three Houses. They just didn:t do the obvious thing and make the route swap part way into White Clouds instead of at the very beginning.

4 minutes ago, Samz707 said:

Pretty much, I had some minor spoilers going in but I made an effort to avoid them so my choices boiled down to:

Claude, who seemingly ran off leaving the others to die, so no.

Dimitri, who has a "Inner Darkness", I guess Byleth read the script considering literally nothing happened to demonstrate that.

or Edelgard, who has none of this, so she just sorta got picked by default.

I did like the line about how Claude:s smile doesn:t seem to touch his eyes. It looks way more uncanny than it probably should due to the graphics, but I liked the truth of the statement that is backed up by the visuals and is likely something a player would notice quickly without realizing they noticed.

Though I guess there:ll be plenty of time to rant about Three Houses in the future. We should probably stick to Fates for now.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Jotari

[Interdimensional Observer]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

You do you, and I hope you do in fact enjoy the gameplay commentary! Though I will concede that this decision has only made me more curious about what you actually think about the story if you're this intent on staying neutral.

I can't have thoughts on a story I've never seen, only read general details of secondhand, your runs I expect will nitpick out the little details, and hence I'm skipping pass them. I was told that Fates had a really bad plot, and for some reason that made me decide to skip it entirely, weird. The considerable heat generated by Fates discussions on SF for a while then made me decide "I don't want to get stuck in this" and one way to feel no attachment to a debate, is to be unattached either way to its topic.

This said, when Fates released, I did take the general details I knew and assembled my own, radically different and detailed versions of all three routes. Said revisions involved pulling Valla out of... the sky? Another dimension? I don't know where it is. But I shoved it in the mountains in the north on the world map and did a bunch with it. Azura was no longer an ally at the start of BR or CQ (insert a new refresher character to compensate) too. She allies with whom you do not, either Aunt Mikoto or Daddy Garon. Well, Azura doesn't officially betray Hoshido until Mikoto laughingly mocks Garon for seeing his daughter and hostage-child both side against him, then Azura takes her naginata and rewards her aunt's years of lies and separation from her father -who went mad when her Mom his favorite consort died in a botched rescue attempt from the Ice Tribe- with a nice, long, deep gash on her back. Don't worry, Azura joins in time for the final battle with a very Nohrian skillset, and Mikoto joins for the last fight as well, repenting her inculcation of hate into her children over the years. But the utterly insane Garon traps everyone in a room, and having used the all-powerful Dusk Vein the Nohrian capital is built directly over to become a Dusk Dragon Incarnate, emits an endless stream of poisonous gas as he dies. For the sake of saving everyone else from the gas, Mikoto uses her mastery of her Major Silent Dragon blood to become a living air filter, and Azura (Major Silent, Minor Dusk) stabs the bloated beast and funnels its dark energies into herself, and so both die. 

Even when I ignored the story, somehow, I got in the mood to "immerse" myself in "Fates". 😆

 

57 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Half the bloody game is a prologue. Its not like anything of significance happens for the first eight chapters or something of Three Houses. They just didn:t do the obvious thing and make the route swap part way into White Clouds instead of at the very beginning.

Is aping Fates to blame? Is it Koei's Dynasty Warriors, which has always has three, now four, different storylines to choose from the very beginning, that is the culprit? Is the fiend named advertising? Because, if the route split takes a long time to get to, you can't exactly advertise it. I'm not sure if SMT has ever advertised its alignments on the surface, or if thats always something Atlus assumes repeat players will pick up on. And SMT's route splits are always in the 11th hour, with only little alignment choices (that can automatically define which route you end up on) along the way.

I wonder, what is the cause? 

Edited January 12, 2021 by Interdimensional Observer

[Alastor15243]

6 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I can't have thoughts on a story I've never seen, only read general details of secondhand, your runs I expect will nitpick out the little details, and hence I'm skipping pass them. I was told that Fates had a really bad plot, and for some reason that made me decide to skip it entirely, weird. The considerable heat generated by Fates discussions on SF for a while then made me decide "I don't want to get stuck in this" and one way to feel no attachment to a debate, is to be unattached either way to its topic.

Oh, huh, for some reason your comment made me assume you had seen the story. So then you haven't played the games? Man, you're missing out. I hope you play them someday! ...Not this one though. BR and CQ.

And yeah, for obvious reasons, like I mentioned, I can sympathize with aggressively coming up with your own fan lore about Fates. Seems to be a natural consequence of the fact that it's a great concept full of potential that was turned into a garbage fire. But at least the garbage is making the fire burn pretty colors.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Alastor15243

[Interdimensional Observer]

8 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh, huh, for some reason your comment made me assume you had seen the story. So then you haven't played the games? Man, you're missing out. I hope you play then some day!

I meant I skipped the story, not the games themselves.

I've an unfinished CQ Lunatic Classic run stopped at Hinoka's battle, which is my fourth run and only Lunatic run of CQ, the first being Hard Classic, followed by a Normal Classic females-only (I wasn't sure how hard it'd be females alone), and a men-only Hard Classic. I've done three or four runs of BR (Hard, Lunaticx3) and I think three or four of Revelation (Hard, Lunaticx3), the last Rev run being a Corrin solo.

So yes, I played them, plenty. But every time a story scene was going to play, I mashed Start and went directly past, each, and, every, one. It was a very rare occasion if I even saw the scenery in which the story took place. The same for supports- skip, skippy, skiperee! Because you can neither protect nor demonize Cammy if you've never heard a word from or at her.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Interdimensional Observer

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I meant I skipped the story, not the games themselves.

I've an unfinished CQ Lunatic Classic run stopped at Hinoka's battle, which is my fourth run and only Lunatic run of CQ, the first being Hard Classic, followed by a Normal Classic females-only (I wasn't sure how hard it'd be females alone), and a men-only Hard Classic. I've done three or four runs of BR (Hard, Lunaticx3) and I think three or four of Revelation (Hard, Lunaticx3), the last Rev run being a Corrin solo.

So yes, I played them, plenty. But every time a story scene was going to play, I mashed Start and went directly past, each, and, every, one. It was a very rare occasion if I even saw the scenery in which the story took place. The same for supports- skip, skippy, skiperee! Because you can neither protect nor demonize Cammy if you've never heard a word from or at her.

I cannot even fathom doing something like that. Wow. Any chance you will see it one day?

[Shadow Mir]

On 1/8/2021 at 8:58 PM, Axie said:

ooh, glad to hear this! binding blade is my everything (and that's probably why i grew to be frustrated with BlaBla's writing lol). i like the characters a lot, the gameplay can be either mindful fun (normal) or a big challenge (hard), and the story keeps it simple but it's more than the archanea copy people give it credit for. elibe is a setting with so much untapped potential. i really hope it's the next remake, genealogy be damned.

Personally, I find it nigh impossible to enjoy, because of everything wrong with it. Between Roy sucking to the extent he does, the ambush spawns, the maps, balancing that's so awful, it makes goddamn AWAKENING look balanced in comparison (yeah, I just went there).... to keep things short, there's so much wrong with it, I'd rather play a different, better Fire Emblem game. I think IS has their work cut out for them if they want to make a remake of Binding Blade playable.

 

Edited January 12, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Eltosian Kadath]

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...But moving on... we get to the big battle sequence between Xander and Ryoma, and here's one thing I really, really, really appreciate about this game, something this game has been more successful at than any other game in the entire series: giving different countries' armies visibly different aesthetics.

They accomplish this by splitting the entire class list of the franchise in two (and adding new original ones) and making half of them from one of the two big countries and half of them from the other. That means that the two armies have visibly distinct visual styles that you can clearly tell apart. Sure, other games have at least individualized each nation's army by mixing up what units each one specializes in, but there's always a bunch of classes used by multiple different nations, and the cavalry of one nation still looks identical to the cavalry of the next. Here though... every class is culturally unique to one of the two nations of...

I am going to disagree with this idea for one simple reason; there are more than two nations in Fates. Fate's world building is so terrible that it can be hard to tell at times, but those other nations do not get the same treatment. The army of Mokushu, or the wind tribe use the same classes as Hoshido, the rebels of Cheve or the Ice Tribe use Nohrian classes, etc. . Looking at some outliers as well, the one unit of Izumo, and the Fire tribe we see are both of Hoshidan classes, not to mention the guardians of the Rainbow Sage being of classes that cross regions...

 

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

And now we get this really corny scene of Dakota's Nohrian and Hoshidan families fighting over him, and... yeah, weirdly, I was somehow still emotionally invested in Fates at this point, if my posts on Dakota's War Journal are any indication, and me saying that I had “almost forgotten what a gripping Fire Emblem story felt like”.

To give Fate's story some credit, the big choice, and build up to it work fairly well. That choice really works...before you play through the rest of the game's pegasus dung (or had that choice taken form you by not having the special edition, or DLC yet...).

 

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...If this weren't an ironman I'd almost be tempted to find out what the fuck Xander says if you ignore him giving you a heal tile and just suicide onto him while wounded. If anyone knows what the line is, by all means, tell me!

That is easy enough to do

Quote

Corrin

Brother...how are you...

so strong...?

Xander

Is that all it takes to defeat you?

 

What a shame. I guess you don't wish to

leave this fortress after all...

 

 

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Will I be able to tackle the hardest pre-route chapter in the entire game?

Yeah, for those of you who have never played Fates Lunatic...

...while this chapter isn't nearly as bad as anything in Awakening, in fact it's pretty great...

...it does not fuck around.

I never found this chapter that bad. Even if you use the DV, as long as you let Gunter get kills its not that hard (now if you want to avoid Gunter kills like the plague it can be tricky, and you NEED to avoid that DV). Now trying to do chapter 5 on Lunatic after losing a unit in chapter 4 is incredibly hard...(if that happens I will give tactical advice in a spoiler tag...)

 

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Almost everything about how the story of Fates is told is absolutely terrible... in a way that's absolutely hilarious.

Saint Rubenio's comments on his first playthrough of Conquest (coincidentally happening now in the Tee Hee thread) matches this feel entirely (and is helped even more by the terrible visual bugs from his emulator...)

 

3 hours ago, Axie said:

 

in writing. of course they also made her the absolute best one in gameplay so all the horndogs would have all the ease in the world using her and the rest of us would just have to put up with it. she's just irreplaceable in both conquest and revelation.

As someone that has never used Camilla outside her join chapter on Lunatic Conquest, I disagree with the idea that Camilla is irreplaceable in the gameplay.

 

Spoiler

1 hour ago, Samz707 said:

but isn't Azura also related to Corrin? yet the game pushes for that pairing. (Despite her actually dying in one route but Corrin's paired ending doesn't change.

 

Azura is Corrin's first cousin in the gameplay, but outside material made after the fact would try to retcon this by claiming they meant Mikoto was "like" a sister to Arete...

 

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

11 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I cannot even fathom doing something like that. Wow. Any chance you will see it one day?

I considered breaking down at one point, with a child paralogue or two, I took a baby step in the form of very fast hopping through the text when I did that, I didn't read every word, but I got the gist of what was said. However, that was a flicker that was soon extinguished by the prior repetition. Now that the heat is well past with Fates, maybe I could.

But, I'm attached to some of my rewrites, and I don't necessarily want to see them fade into nonexistence when the reality reaches my eyes. I like having Iago be the chief minister of a radical tyrannical bureaucracy scheming to puppet the king and later seize the throne whence he dies. And I must have Leo leading the faction in charge of the traditional Nohrian bureaucracy peacefully but resolutely opposed to Iago at court, competing for the unstable Garon's favor (Xander as the Crown Prince being a neutral mediating party between the two factions). Should I give up my own creations?

BTW, doing this whole entire story & character skip thing for Fates was a baaaaad idea, it got me into a habit, which proceeded to carry over in SoV. I had no idea where Berkut's volcano goddess came from. My distaste for the excessive number of green haired-Manaketes (any other color puh-lease IS! and no more lolis!), an unrelated distaste for high school hijinks, and a disinterest in modern Persona social-sim elements, meant that 3H experienced The Skipping as well. Except this time I went yet further by in the form of auto-ing all lectures and doing nothing except skirmishes on weekends (I didn't want to waste the time entirely); I never did whatever gets you a Dancer, never sent a birthday gift, I oddly never even made a support, much less skip one's text. And I turned the music off from the very start, a step beyond Fates barring LiTAA and SoV barring IoA which were tuned out.

I'm hoping I'll kick this terrible behavior with the next game. A remake of a game I'm sure to have played sounds like a good place to do it, since I'll already know everything that happens, I can't feign not knowing why this Pegasus Knight is with some Fighters and they join me, or why there are horses being stabbed by wyverns in a desert. I love FE gameplay, no matters its mutation, it is unique among SRPGs, that is what has kept me going with the franchise. But limiting oneself to just the gameplay, it can feel cold, empty. Or at least it has with 3H, not as sure about Fates or SoV, maybe they were incomplete, but bearable, and 3H is naught by the accumulation of emptiness over three whole games? I can't quite say.

[Jotari]

32 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I am going to disagree with this idea for one simple reason; there are more than two nations in Fates. Fate's world building is so terrible that it can be hard to tell at times, but those other nations do not get the same treatment. The army of Mokushu, or the wind tribe use the same classes as Hoshido, the rebels of Cheve or the Ice Tribe use Nohrian classes, etc. . Looking at some outliers as well, the one unit of Izumo, and the Fire tribe we see are both of Hoshidan classes, not to mention the guardians of the Rainbow Sage being of classes that cross regions...

 

To give Fate's story some credit, the big choice, and build up to it work fairly well. That choice really works...before you play through the rest of the game's pegasus dung (or had that choice taken form you by not having the special edition, or DLC yet...).

 

That is easy enough to do

 

I never found this chapter that bad. Even if you use the DV, as long as you let Gunter get kills its not that hard (now if you want to avoid Gunter kills like the plague it can be tricky, and you NEED to avoid that DV). Now trying to do chapter 5 on Lunatic after losing a unit in chapter 4 is incredibly hard...(if that happens I will give tactical advice in a spoiler tag...)

 

Saint Rubenio's comments on his first playthrough of Conquest (coincidentally happening now in the Tee Hee thread) matches this feel entirely (and is helped even more by the terrible visual bugs from his emulator...)

 

As someone that has never used Camilla outside her join chapter on Lunatic Conquest, I disagree with the idea that Camilla is irreplaceable in the gameplay.

 

  Hide contents

 

Azura is Corrin's first cousin in the gameplay, but outside material made after the fact would try to retcon this by claiming they meant Mikoto was "like" a sister to Arete...

 

 

I:ve used Camilla on several runs, but she has never been this mythic indispensible unit I see other people treat her as. I:m not sure if I:m doing something wrong like trying to focus on her magic too much or something, or if I:ve just been consistently stat screwed, but she:s never been all that amazing for me. The most indispensible unit on my Conquest runs has always been Effie.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Jotari

[Shadow Mir]

15 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I:ve used Camilla on several runs, but she has never been this mythic indispensible unit I see other people treat her as. I:m not sure if I:m doing something wrong like trying to focus on her magic too much or something, or if I:ve just been consistently stat screwed, but she:s never been all that amazing for me. The most indispensible unit on my Conquest runs has always been Effie.

Get her out of her shitty initial class asap. It doesn't do her a lick of good.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

42 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I am going to disagree with this idea for one simple reason; there are more than two nations in Fates. Fate's world building is so terrible that it can be hard to tell at times, but those other nations do not get the same treatment. The army of Mokushu, or the wind tribe use the same classes as Hoshido, the rebels of Cheve or the Ice Tribe use Nohrian classes, etc. . Looking at some outliers as well, the one unit of Izumo, and the Fire tribe we see are both of Hoshidan classes, not to mention the guardians of the Rainbow Sage being of classes that cross regions...

Eh... each of the minor countries sits within the cultural sphere of a bigger one, though. Izumo, Mokushu, and the Fire and Wind Tribes are tied to Hoshido; whereas, Cheve and the Ice Tribe (and possibly Nestra) are linked to Nohr. The other countries are undercooked, no question, but I don't see sharing classes and weapon types with a dominant regional power as a worldbuilding flaw in itself. And I'm pretty sure cases of cross-nation classes (like the Rainbow Sage, or in Valla) represent how those parties exist outside the greater Nohr-Hoshido dynamic, instead drawing from both of them.

 

6 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

Get her out of her shitty initial class asap. It doesn't do her a lick of good.

Savage Blow and Trample are both really good skills, though. You don't even have to use tomes to get a lot of performance out of Malig Knight.

[Shadow Mir]

25 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Savage Blow and Trample are both really good skills, though. You don't even have to use tomes to get a lot of performance out of Malig Knight.

I hard disagree on Savage Blow - more often than not, it doesn't change anything because it doesn't hit enough enemies to actually make a difference. Trample is good, but level 15 skill, comes really late, etc etc. And by that point, I can't be bothered to pick it up anyway because Malig Knight is just another in the proud tradition of shitty hybrid classes IS doesn't look like they're willing to ditch any time soon.

Edited January 12, 2021 by Shadow Mir

[Jotari]

45 minutes ago, Shadow Mir said:

I hard disagree on Savage Blow - more often than not, it doesn't change anything because it doesn't hit enough enemies to actually make a difference. Trample is good, but level 15 skill, comes really late, etc etc. And by that point, I can't be bothered to pick it up anyway because Malig Knight is just another in the proud tradition of shitty hybrid classes IS doesn't look like they're willing to ditch any time soon.

Isn:t gettina single level at Level 15 (or two if you didn:t get the level 5 skill) all you need to get a skill in this game? Since reclassing doesn:t lower your level. You can just jump in and out of the class for a single chapter (or less if you want to carry heart seals in your inventory into battle).

[Eltosian Kadath]

4 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Eh... each of the minor countries sits within the cultural sphere of a bigger one, though. Izumo, Mokushu, and the Fire and Wind Tribes are tied to Hoshido; whereas, Cheve and the Ice Tribe (and possibly Nestra) are linked to Nohr. The other countries are undercooked, no question, but I don't see sharing classes and weapon types with a dominant regional power as a worldbuilding flaw in itself. And I'm pretty sure cases of cross-nation classes (like the Rainbow Sage, or in Valla) represent how those parties exist outside the greater Nohr-Hoshido dynamic, instead drawing from both of them.

Fates world building is so poor that I could not even tell you if any of those nations are supposed to be minor or major countries. For all we know the Wind tribe and Fire tribe could be the Britain and France to Hosido's WWI era Serbia. Alternatively to use a Fire Emblem example, we don't know if Hoshido is like the Lycian alliance in FE6, a minor nation fighting for its life against a larger one, with the tribes being akin to Etruria, as the world building is so poor that we do not even know how large, or important ANY of these nations are. Plus I wasn't claiming it was a world building flaw to have them share classes, only that Fates didn't distinguish its nation via class, as the nations that are in the geographic vicinity share those class lines.

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Fates world building is so poor that I could not even tell you if any of those nations are supposed to be minor or major countries. For all we know the Wind tribe and Fire tribe could be the Britain and France to Hosido's WWI era Serbia. Alternatively to use a Fire Emblem example, we don't know if Hoshido is like the Lycian alliance in FE6, a minor nation fighting for its life against a larger one, with the tribes being akin to Etruria, as the world building is so poor that we do not even know how large, or important ANY of these nations are. Plus I wasn't claiming it was a world building flaw to have them share classes, only that Fates didn't distinguish its nation via class, as the nations that are in the geographic vicinity share those class lines.

I:m not sure thats true. Its more that theres two different sides to the conflict, and within each side they do a more traditional class division amongst the defined sides. Like the wind tribe obviously uses the mage class witht the name I don:t want to attempt spelling, and even though we see basically none of them except Rinkah, its pretty flear the Fire Tribe make up the whole Oni Savage and Black Smith classes. And then of course Kotaro:s ninja land is obviously full of ninja. None of that stops these classes showing up in other countries of the divide, but they are still associated with the nations in question. And I think having the divide does help the aestetic. Like what:s the alternative? To only let every minor nation use one or two singular classes? That:d be boring gameplay wise unless every chapter involves you fighting a coalition. Now of course they could have visually made Kotaro:s ninja land ninjas look different to the rank and file ninja of Hoshido, but thats a complaint you can levi at almost every game in the series. Though ditching the minor nations entirely would be an option too. On retrospect in does sort of suck that Gaiden didn:t try to have classes distinquish its two countries at all beyond cantors and witches being a Rigel thing.

[Eltosian Kadath]

8 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...But moving on... we get to the big battle sequence between Xander and Ryoma, and here's one thing I really, really, really appreciate about this game, something this game has been more successful at than any other game in the entire series: giving different countries' armies visibly different aesthetics.

They accomplish this by splitting the entire class list of the franchise in two (and adding new original ones) and making half of them from one of the two big countries and half of them from the other. That means that the two armies have visibly distinct visual styles that you can clearly tell apart. Sure, other games have at least individualized each nation's army by mixing up what units each one specializes in, but there's always a bunch of classes used by multiple different nations, and the cavalry of one nation still looks identical to the cavalry of the next. Here though... every class is culturally unique to one of the two nations of...

For context @Jotari  I was originally commenting on, and trying to refute this statement by Alastor about how the two class pools was used to distinguish different nations, and how it was different from a similar thing that the previous game did by having different nations specialize in different classes. That nuance got a bit lost when responding to the statements made by @Shanty Pete's 1st Mate. Although I will add

23 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I:m not sure thats true. Its more that theres two different sides to the conflict, and within each side they do a more traditional class division amongst the defined sides.

that it isn't about which side of the conflict they are on, as multiple of these nations at times side with the faction that uses the other class set (for instance Mokushu uses Hoshidan classes, and flip-flops in this conflict, and Cheve with its Nohrian classes joins forces with the Hoshidans...)

[ping]

I did not hit her, it's not true! It's bullshit, I did not hit her! I. Did. Naht. Oh hi Dakota!

[lenticular]

7 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Ironmanning the Fates games blind is an outright magical experience that I feel every Fire Emblem fan should experience.

You know what? Sure. I've never actually played Fates. I skipped it first time around, partly because I don't get on well with the 3DS as a system and partly because of all of the terrible things I've heard about it's story, but I've been thinking about picking it up for a little while now, and this sentence was what pushed me over the edge to pick it up on eshop (which is a usability nightmare these days, apparently). So. Um. Yay. Have fun with your play through, which I probably won't be reading since I apparently have a game to play instead. (Not that you'll notice the difference given how rarely I comment.)

[Alastor15243]

3 hours ago, lenticular said:

You know what? Sure. I've never actually played Fates. I skipped it first time around, partly because I don't get on well with the 3DS as a system and partly because of all of the terrible things I've heard about it's story, but I've been thinking about picking it up for a little while now, and this sentence was what pushed me over the edge to pick it up on eshop (which is a usability nightmare these days, apparently). So. Um. Yay. Have fun with your play through, which I probably won't be reading since I apparently have a game to play instead. (Not that you'll notice the difference given how rarely I comment.)

Best of luck! I hope you enjoy! I'd start with Birthright before doing Conquest.

[Etrurian emperor]

14 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

But she does not suit the tone. Absolutely nothing about this character suits the tone that the writers were presumably going for, given that this is presumably a story of war and death that's supposed to make me cry.

Actually Camilla probably fits the tone that the writers were presumably going for extremely well. The writers were shooting for a story where fanservice trumps story every single time. Having a hot older sister who wants to get into her little brother's pants and it being your hot older sister is exactly the fanservicy the writers considers oh so important. 

I'd say its a serious stiff like Ryoma who doesn't fit the wacky tone, especially the part where he unironically lectures Corrin about the importance of ''real family'' as if the writers hadn't already changed their mind about Hoshido being Corrin's blood family. 

Edited January 12, 2021 by Etrurian emperor

[ping]

1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Actually Camilla probably fits the tone that the writers were presumably going for extremely well. The writers were shooting for a story where fanservice trumps story every single time.

This is a good way to look at it, I think.

My perception is that the writers constantly started their thought process with the tropes and clichés that they wanted to include, and then shoved justifications for them into an already planned out story with reckless abandon. If they even bothered with one, that is. There is organic story progression in Fates; for example the general structure of Birthright, which in my memory is pretty bog standard FE plot with the added twist of Corrin's ties to Noir, but there's also the Babyrealms (nothing in Fates' plot suggests that there should be playable child characters. But the writers wanted them, so they needed some justification why those kids should be old enough to be playable), the bangable Hoshidan royals, Arthur (whom I find hilarious, but you really have wonder what he's doing during massacre of Cheve) - concepts and characters that really make the story bend and creak, if not outright break its own rules.

The most basic bitch take possible, I know. But it's not like Fates is particularly subtle or clever about its fanservice.

I guess there's not really an objective "default mode" for Fates, which is why we look at the same thing from different angles.

Edited January 12, 2021 by ping