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

[Emperor Hardin]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Mystery of the Emblem Day 13: Book 1, Chapter 13

WOW GAME, GREAT CHANGE TO MAKE TO THE FORMULA COMPLETELY UNEXPLAINED. Turns out that Xane’s HP doesn’t change when he transforms, current or max. Which means he’s stuck at 18 no matter who he transforms into. This… is a significant damper on his usefulness, to the point where I wonder if there’s even going to be a point to using him. Thankfully this information isn’t enough to get him killed by the hero I left him in range of.

FE3 Xane is best to transform into Mages/Bishops.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Emperor Hardin said:

FE3 Xane is best to transform into Mages/Bishops.

I've been considering Castor, given how absurdly good he turned out to be in terms of player phase power.

[Emperor Hardin]

Just now, Alastor15243 said:

I've been considering Castor, given how absurdly good he turned out to be in terms of player phase power.

That works too.

I forget if Xane gains HP if he levels as another unit, I don't think he does though?

By the way, did the soldier class info interest you? If it does, I can tell you more on the other unplayable classes and the game engine?

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Emperor Hardin said:

That works too.

I forget if Xane gains HP if he levels as another unit, I don't think he does though?

By the way, did the soldier class info interest you? If it does, I can tell you more on the other unplayable classes and the game engine?

Yeah, sorry I didn't mention that, that was interesting! It might explain why they were put in place of what had previously been Heimler the paladin and his cavalry in what in FE1 was chapter 12.

[Emperor Hardin]

9 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Yeah, sorry I didn't mention that, that was interesting! It might explain why they were put in place of what had previously been Heimler the paladin and his cavalry in what in FE1 was chapter 12.

I wonder what role, Soldiers would've had if they were playable?

I still speculate they would've been a dismounted form for certain characters. In FE3, a character's ID determines what they dismount into; male mounted units dismount to the male infantry class with dismounted paladins getting a unique map sprite and female mounted units dismount to a female infantry class. It could be possible for a unit or class to have a special ID that makes it so they dismount to a soldier?

Oh and related subject, the enemy Pegasus Knights have male IDs and thus would dismount to male infantry if enemy dismounting was allowed.

Finally dismounted Castor will face easier arena opponents for a -2 loss to skill and defense.

Edited October 9, 2019 by Emperor Hardin

[Alastor15243]

21 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

I wonder what role, Soldiers would've had if they were playable?

I still speculate they would've been a dismounted form for certain characters. In FE3, a character's ID determines what they dismount into; male mounted units dismount to the male infantry class with dismounted paladins getting a unique map sprite and female mounted units dismount to a female infantry class. It could be possible for a unit or class to have a special ID that makes it so they dismount to a soldier?

Oh and related subject, the enemy Pegasus Knights have male IDs and thus would dismount to male infantry if enemy dismounting was allowed.

Finally dismounted Castor will face easier arena opponents for a -2 loss to skill and defense.

Speaking of the dismounting penalty, do you know what happens if you cap a stat, take dismounting penalties, level up in that stat, mount, and dismount again? If Castor has 20 skill, dismounts, levels from 18 skill to 19, mounts, and then dismounts again, would he still have 21 skill, just reduced to 20 for the cap, or when he dismounted would he be right back to 18 skill again?

Edited October 9, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Emperor Hardin]

13 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Speaking of the dismounting penalty, do you know what happens if you cap a stat, take dismounting penalties, level up in that stat, mount, and dismount again? If Castor has 20 skill, dismounts, levels from 18 skill to 19, mounts, and then dismounts again, would he still have 21 skill, just reduced to 20 for the cap, or when he dismounted would he be right back to 18 skill again?

Stats can’t go over 20.

its been a while but horseman Castor getting 20 skill when dismounted, would still be 20 skill when he mounts and him reaching 20 at dismounted state would be remembered the next time he dismounts. Dismounted stats are only permanently lowered upon promotion.

Like 20 str dismount Cavalier Hardin becomes 18 ste dismount paladin, but once he reaches 20 steps as a dismounted paladin the stat is there to stay.

[Jotari]

6 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Mystery of the Emblem Day 13: Book 1, Chapter 13

SWEET MERCIFUL JESUS THANK YOU, THEY FIXED THE BLOCKY-ASS ISLANDS.

This is the map that had that perfectly rectangular island full of forts last time, and was chock full of similarly ridiculous hard and unnatural lines that looked absolutely hideous. Thankfully, this map got a serious makeover. It looks better all-around… except, once again, the market town was made hideous. This time instead of replacing the cobblestone roads with nothing, they replaced them with… wooden… planks? that are just randomly strewn around? The place looks like a boardwalk shopping center that got hit by a hurricane.

I’ve gotta push some units out to make room for the new recruits, and for today I’m pushing out Barst and Linde. I don’t think Linde is going to contribute much, given how hard it’s been to secure kills for her using literally anything but Aura.

HAHAHAHA! Looks like even with nowhere to go, Xane moves in his cell to try go get as close to Marth as possible, which is pretty hilarious considering that this means he’s just getting right up in the face of his fucking prison guards, likely pestering them, which is so hilariously in-character for Xane.

It seems there’s a hard limit of 99 on how much damage an attack can do, which makes sense for an old game like this.

Now… should I go for sheer variety and pick Samson this time, despite it hardly being useful? Or stick with canon since I know Arran comes back in book 2?

Let’s go with Arran. I have no use for physical foot units at this point in the game.

And this game actually closes the other village gate rather than leaving it permanently open with the message that it’s closed! Awesome!

HAHAHAHAHAHA! And now Xane just casually walked over to the other side of the guard, like he’s dancing back and forth around him going “IS THIS BOTHERING YOU I’M NOT TOUCHING YOU IS THIS BOTHERING YOU I’M NOT TOUCHING YOU!”

Enemy cavalry still have 0 AS. Paladins have 2, but Jesus Christ are these guys weighed down.

AND HARDIN GOT ANOTHER POINT OF DEFENSE. HIS DEFENSE IS TWELVE.

And unfortunately my image of Xane’s goofy antics are crushed by this shockingly boring recruitment line. I remembered him being much more goofy even in the FE1 translation, not just Shadow Dragon, but the translation here just has him calmly explaining his situation to Marth. Not even a single exclamation point!

WOW GAME, GREAT CHANGE TO MAKE TO THE FORMULA COMPLETELY UNEXPLAINED. Turns out that Xane’s HP doesn’t change when he transforms, current or max. Which means he’s stuck at 18 no matter who he transforms into. This… is a significant damper on his usefulness, to the point where I wonder if there’s even going to be a point to using him. Thankfully this information isn’t enough to get him killed by the hero I left him in range of.

Right, shopping time. Gotta remember this is my last chance to buy javelins, and they’ve been at least reasonably useful, so I wanna make sure I at least have enough for player phase tactics for the rest of the game. I’ll buy a few more.

Fuck that, I already have plenty for what they’re good for in this game. I’m just gonna buy the shit out of killer lances. It’s not the critical hit so much as, like with killer swords in FE1, the absurdly good combination of hit, power and low weight.

So, the game just arbitrarily decides to change the kinds of reinforcements it throws at me, huh? Thankfully the cavalier’s javelin didn’t kill Lena from behind Merric.

And Hardin faces off the formerly-rectangular island reinforcements, reaches level 20 with a whopping 13 defense, and gets to promote!

The result: 16 strength, 18 skill, 20 speed, 7 luck, 19 weapon level, 15 defense, and 7 resistance. This guy is an absolute menace, and given the events of book 2, his sheer dominance in my army is… surprisingly fitting.

Anyway, Merric uses the last two uses of his trusty thunder tome to get two consecutive criticals, one-rounding the boss. Time to finish up here.

…Oh shit. This is gonna be an indoor map tomorrow, isn’t it?

FUCK. Just when I got Hardin promoted too…

If I remember, Xane also, rather weirdly, copies the exp and level of the person in question too. So if he copies a LV 20 unit he can't get any exp to try and fix that Hp base (though he does get and keep 10 for transforming).

[Alastor15243]

Mystery of the Emblem Day 14: Book 1, Chapter 14

DEAR FUCKING GOD THIS MAP AGAIN.

While yes, most of the agony this map caused me was thanks to the absurdity of the inventory system, I’m still not looking forward to finding out what the infinite reinforcements are like now that they aren’t cavalry.

Once again we have a map that’s been changed to sloppily turn all of the outdoors into indoors, but at least in this case it’s kind of okay. They basically made the outside into a sort of moat surrounding the castle, rather than that weird “castle in a castle” thing which even though it’s super weird when merely implied, would be fascinating if outright admitted.

That said, there’s no shop now, so if your thieves died, the only way to get that door open to beat the level without having bought a door key in advance is to kill one of the fleeing thieves. Which of course I’m gonna have to do anyway since I want all the treasure they spawn literally right next to. Christ I’m glad I gave Marth those boots.

There’s also no set of houses, so there’s nothing to clue the player in to the existence of the member card or secret shop. But then... you can see the member card in the sage's inventory now. Also, given the very-conspicuously-moved solitary door, placing it in yet another location where it isn’t blocking anything but a single tile… I’m assuming it’s still there.

Strangely, I can’t deploy a full team of 16, so I’m wondering what character will be joining us.

If anyone’s joining us, I still don’t know who. I checked the whole map.

Anyway, I decided to give Marth the defensive stat boosters at least, since this time he hasn’t gained a single point of defense in like 10 levels. But it turns out both the dracoshield AND the talisman now only boost by 3, which was an uncomfortable shocker for the talisman when I was making my defensive plans. Had it not been for a lucky dodge, Marth would have died.

On the plus side, it looks like the boss is a demon dragon, which according to the class list, does NOT negate magic. Only dark dragons do.

…But he does have 20 resistance, meaning only Linde could touch him, and just barely. Never mind. I still have my MVP for DPS, Castor. FUCKING CASTOR. HOW DID THAT HAPPEN!?

And now we get the first instance of siege tomes. I could have sworn I checked the bishops for-

…I did. But not the one next to the boss. FUCK. I HATE NOT HAVING ATTACK RANGE HIGHLIGHTING. Thankfully Castor, in addition to having nutso strength and good speed, has 31 HP.

Ambush reinforcements nearly killed Castor. If they had decided to give one of those knights a javelin like the ones in the throne room, he’d have died.

The sprite for the demon dragon is odd. It seems like the tail is burrowing itself below the background floor surface in a way that allllmost makes sense with the pool in the foreground, but… I’m still not quite sure what I’m supposed to be seeing here. I’ll have to wait to see if they use it on a normal surface.

I didn’t even have to fight through the reinforcements to get the member card this time. The bishops were hugging the lower wall and waited patiently to be one-rounded one after the other by Castor from outside the throne room. Also, the reinforcements just... gave up eventually. No plugging needed. Huh.

This secret shop unfortunately doesn’t have Thoron, but it does have rapiers and physic staves, and I’ll be getting a couple of the former and as much as I can of the latter. Super expensive though, over 1k each even with the silver card.

But with that, the map is over. Waaaaaaay less of a hassle than I was expecting, though there were some scares here and there. Fixing the fucking shops helped soooooo much here.

Anyway, my goal for tomorrow is to get Cain to level 20 and promote him! And I think I’m gonna keep Marth out of battle now until I get the starsphere so he can enjoy boosted growth rates, because I don’t think there’s enough stat boosters to get him to 20 defense at this rate.

[Shadow Mir]

Any reason why you're waiting until 20 to promote? Because I'd find promoting early to be advised in this game due to 20 caps, among other reasons.

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Shadow Mir said:

Any reason why you're waiting until 20 to promote? Because I'd find promoting early to be advised in this game due to 20 caps, among other reasons.

Force of habit of it being the best strategy in basically every game in the series since 4, combined with wanting to get as many chances for defense growths as I can, and also the fact that most of the good promotion items show up late enough that it's barely a wait at all.

[Emperor Hardin]

Anyone notice there are far less reinforcements in the SNES And DS versions of this map. For a reminder; the NES version had cavalier, Knight and Horseman reinforcements from turn 9-50,  whilst the SNES and DS version just have reinforcements for 10 turns as opposed to 41 and no horseman.

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

And now we get the first instance of siege tomes. I could have sworn I checked the bishops for-

…I did. But not the one next to the boss. FUCK. I HATE NOT HAVING ATTACK RANGE HIGHLIGHTING. Thankfully Castor, in addition to having nutso strength and good speed, has 31 HP.

So the craziest thing about siege tomes and Ballistas in this game is they only work for enemy units; if a player unit uses a siege tome or ballista they only get a measly one range! It must be something with the game engine!

[Jotari]

If you want boosted growth rates on Marth, give him the Mercurous now. The Stat Sphere really won't be hanging around long, assuming you want Falchion.

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

If you want boosted growth rates on Marth, give him the Mercurous now. The Stat Sphere really won't be hanging around long, assuming you want Falchion.

I don't have the Mercurius yet, do I? And according to all resources I can find, it just doubles exp, it doesn't improve growth rates.

Edited October 11, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

I don't have the Mercurius yet, do I? And according to all resources I can find, it just doubles exp, it doesn't improve growth rates.

D'oh. Your right on both counts. In fact you don't even get it until after the Star Sphere. FE1 is where it boosts growth rates, even though Marth is very likely maxed levelled by the time you get it.

Edited October 11, 2019 by Jotari

[Emperor Hardin]

4 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

I don't have the Mercurius yet, do I? And according to all resources I can find, it just doubles exp, it doesn't improve growth rates.

It just doubles EXP here, though on the plus side everyone can use it now giving sword exclusive units more use.

[De Geso]

18 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Force of habit of it being the best strategy in basically every game in the series since 4, combined with wanting to get as many chances for defense growths as I can, and also the fact that most of the good promotion items show up late enough that it's barely a wait at all.

"Best strategy in basically every game in the series since 4" lolwut

[Alastor15243]

8 minutes ago, De Geso said:

"Best strategy in basically every game in the series since 4" lolwut

Alright, I guess I'll address this now. I'm well aware that promoting late is viewed as a "pitfall", but several of the arguments I've heard, namely the ones Mekkah uses, I feel are fundamentally flawed.

The fundamental assumption Mekkah makes in his pitfall video is that promoting early only bites you in the ass if you make it to x/20, which in a more efficient run almost never happens.

He is wrong to assume this, and here’s why:

Let’s assume Kent and Sain, from Blazing Sword, have identical growths and gain identical level ups. Now let’s assume Sain promotes at level 10, while Kent waits until level 20.

Now, the exp formula of FE7 is... quite complicated, but for the most part, the moment this decision happens, Sain, being a level 1 promoted unit, is treated by the game’s experience formulas as a level 21, while Kent is still treated as a level 10. So naturally Kent is going to gain levels faster. So let’s say it’s twice as fast, and that, assuming they get an equal number of kills, by the time Sain has reached level 6 promoted, Kent has reached level 20 unpromoted and has promoted himself. Ask yourself: How long will it take before Kent is better than Sain?

Trick question. He already is.

Kent is leagues ahead of Sain on the power-to-level curve. Kent has the stats of 19 levels plus promotion and gains experience like a level 1 promoted. Sain has the stats of 14 levels plus promotion and gains experience like a level 6 promoted. Sain is 5 levels worse despite leveling 5 levels slower, for a total of being ten levels behind Kent in terms of how powerful they are for how much exp they get. And that’s how their dynamic is going to be. For the rest of the game.

You don’t get to wait until level 10/20 before you have to pay the piper for your early promotion. You start paying the price immediately, and when you hit that 10/20 wall it only gets worse.

Edited October 11, 2019 by Alastor15243

[De Geso]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Alright, I guess I'll address this now. I'm well aware that promoting late is viewed as a "pitfall", but several of the arguments I've heard, namely the ones Mekkah uses, I feel are fundamentally flawed.

The fundamental assumption Mekkah makes in his pitfall video is that promoting early only bites you in the ass if you make it to x/20, which in a more efficient run almost never happens.

He is wrong to assume this, and here’s why:

Let’s assume Kent and Sain, from Blazing Sword, have identical growths and gain identical level ups. Now let’s assume Sain promotes at level 10, while Kent waits until level 20.

Now, the exp formula of FE7 is... quite complicated, but for the most part, the moment this decision happens, Sain, being a level 1 promoted unit, is treated by the game’s experience formulas as a level 21, while Kent is still treated as a level 10. So naturally Kent is going to gain levels faster. So let’s say it’s twice as fast, and that, assuming they get an equal number of kills, by the time Sain has reached level 6 promoted, Kent has reached level 20 unpromoted and has promoted himself. Ask yourself: How long will it take before Kent is better than Sain?

Trick question. He already is.

Kent is leagues ahead of Sain on the power-to-level curve. Kent has the stats of 19 levels plus promotion and gains experience like a level 1 promoted. Sain has the stats of 14 levels plus promotion and gains experience like a level 6 promoted. Sain is 5 levels worse despite leveling 5 levels slower, for a total of being ten levels behind Kent in terms of how powerful they are for how much exp they get. And that’s how their dynamic is going to be. For the rest of the game. 

You don’t get to wait until level 10/20 before you have to pay the piper for your early promotion. You start paying the price immediately, and when you hit that 10/20 wall it only gets worse.

You are ignoring a number of external factors more important than raw stats.

First, the amount of time that Sain is better than Kent because the former is promoted while the latter is not. Assuming promotion gains account for around 3 levels, Sain gets a huge jump in utility over Kent (not to mention the ubiquitous movement increase that comes from promoting regardless of class) right away. Furthermore, even if he levels up half as quickly, he still maintains his lead until Kent hits level 15 and isn't at a disadvantage until Kent hits 17. I'm assuming that Kent remains at level 10 and Sain immediately hits "13+" (10/1 being basically as strong as a level 13 Kent in this scenario, with the "+" signifying the point of movement that Kent will never gain via leveling).

Second, the limited amount of time Kent spends being better than Sain. Even if we assume that Kent is indeed stronger than Sain after he waits until level 20 to promote (which outside of this abstract scenario he realistically would not be), he is only stronger for a relatively brief period of the game, and, and this is important, it isn't as if Sain stops contributing the moment Kent promotes at 20. Kent's overall contribution only outweighs Sain's if, at the end of the game, Kent contributed more than Sain did overall. This is almost certainly not the case given their disparity in usefulness for 10 of Kent's levels and how much smaller that disparity is (though it would admittedly be in Kent's favor) by the time Kent has promoted. If Kent is only better than Sain for 5 chapters, and marginally so, but Sain was significantly better than Kent for 5 chapters while the latter waited to promote, obviously Sain is better overall than Kent - in large part because he promoted earlier.

Regardless of all that, though, you're ignoring one important thing: a unit who is not gaining experience is not suddenly garbage and unusable. If Sain hits 10/20, yes, his stats will be lower than Kent's at 20/20...but they'll still be high enough to contribute to completing the game, and in an easy game like FE7, he won't have any trouble at all. Even if we look at a difficult game like FE6, a unit promoted at 10 and hitting level 20 is more than capable of contributing through the fight with Jahn. In the meantime, they contributed more than their counterparts who waited to promote because for a non-trivial portion of the more difficult parts of the game their stats and movement were higher.

Edited October 11, 2019 by De Geso

[Alastor15243]

@De Geso I would be interested in continuing this discussion, but not in this thread. I have a feeling this could take a while and I'd like to keep this thread focused on my retrospective marathon. Any suggestions?

[De Geso]

You can PM me about it if you want, or make a separate thread. Didn't mean to derail this. I do think this is a cool idea and something I'd like to do myself when I have the opportunity/am out of games to play.

Edited October 11, 2019 by De Geso

[Emperor Hardin]

So back on the topic of FE3.

Whilst the Siege weapons in FE4 are likewise unusable by the player, they work perfectly fine when hacked in unlike the FE3 siege weapons. I wonder if the siege weapons not working for the player was a reason Jake was cut or if the siege weapons were decided as enemy only before then?

I still wonder why the reinforcements in Morzas's chapter were nerfed, were they worried it made the chapter too hard if there were non stop reinforcements for over 40 turns?

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Emperor Hardin said:

So back on the topic of FE3.

Whilst the Siege weapons in FE4 are likewise unusable by the player, they work perfectly fine when hacked in unlike the FE3 siege weapons. I wonder if the siege weapons not working for the player was a reason Jake was cut or if the siege weapons were decided as enemy only before then?

I still wonder why the reinforcements in Morzas's chapter were nerfed, were they worried it made the chapter too hard if there were non stop reinforcements for over 40 turns?

Not sure. But I think the reason why they got rid of Jake was because they made his class have 0 move, because they weren't comfortable making a siege class portable I suppose.

Anyway...

 

Mystery of the Emblem Day 15: Book 1, Chapter 15

Ooh! New map narration music! It’s pretty okay, for the most part.

Now, just skipping over a battle by narrating how we kicked their ass… I mean, on one hand, fuck that hideous monstrosity of map design, but on the other hand, just narrating it seems kinda weak. But also, that means we get the Starsphere immediately!

And OH MY FUCKING GOD TIKI’S MAP SPRITE IS ADORABLE. SHE HAS WINGS. SHE’S A TINY LITTLE GIRL USING HER WINGS TO REACH HEAD HEIGHT WHY THE FUCK WAS THIS RETCONNED OUT INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS!?

Anyway, this map looks shockingly straightforward, only issue being that we can’t see into the locked treasure rooms, so we’ll have to be on our guard and ready with strong fighters to protect Julian. And Rickard, I’m bringing Rickard to speed things along. There are a lot of locked doors.

Well, thank you for that amazingly expository evil boast, Gharnef. If I didn’t already know I needed Bantu to recruit Tiki, that would have been super helpful.

Speaking of recruiting… I never did learn why I could only bring 15 people to last map, did I?

Anyway, looks like some of these rooms just flat out don’t have treasures in them at all, just guards. Yes, I remember that. Making these chambers invisible is annoying, but also strangely it makes that decision make more sense, like it was what they originally planned and just had to scrap it last-minute.

…Okay, so a shitton of thieves are advancing to take the treasure, but… they didn’t unlock the door they stopped right by. Is that a clue that those rooms don’t have treasure… or is the thief AI for this map map still completely bugged, just in a different way?

…Nope! Come enemy phase 2, one of the thieves unlocks that door. It seems like each thief is pre-programmed with a specific set of chests they’re supposed to go after, and won’t even bother unlocking the doors to any others.

And bizarrely, the door with the ambushing sniper opened simultaneously when the thief opened the treasure room. How queer.

Equally bizarre, though not entirely unexpected: When faced with a blocked path after I warped Merric in the way of the first thief and the one most likely to get away with treasure, the thief won’t even open the OTHER DOOR TO THE EXACT SAME TREASURE ROOM, EVEN THOUGH HE’S IN RANGE OF IT RIGHT NOW.

Anyway, looks like my effort to wait to promote Merric in the hopes of getting some more defense levels paid off! Last one did indeed boost defense! Not that I really needed to wait. He didn’t get his hands on the traded-over guiding ring from the chest until after capping out.

Wow, I was wondering why Merric had his own custom sage promotion stats. It isn't just stats, he has his own custom sage promotion sprite! Okay, this is awesome. I love it. He looks almost like a GBA sage, just with a staff and a shorter (and less badass) cape.

And I’ve got the Lightsphere, but more importantly, the Starsphere! Now Marth can finally get some mileage out of his last 8 levels, with 30% boosted growths! Let’s see how much he needs those stat boosters NOW!

Ooh! Looks like that 30% boost includes resistance, because he just leveled that up too!

Honestly this thing is so broken I intend to milk the shit out of it. As much as I can, for as long as I have this thing, I’m gonna try and solo maps with whoever I give it to, unless that’s a massive pain.

Oh my god they made Tiki's giant dragon form jump up and flap her wings to show she’s happy. I LOVE HER, SHE’S ON MY TEAM IMMEDIATELY AND FOREVER.

Oh no. They make it sound like they cut most of the chapters between getting and losing the Starsphere and Lightsphere. Please no. I wanna milk the shit out of this!

[Emperor Hardin]

9 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Not sure. But I think the reason why they got rid of Jake was because they made his class have 0 move, because they weren't comfortable making a siege class portable I suppose.

Thats true, even the TearRing Saga Ballistician gets zero movement when it uses a siege weapon. For reference, Ballisticians in the game are normally bow using tanks, but morph into immobile ballistas or catapults when using the special siege weapons.

9 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

And OH MY FUCKING GOD TIKI’S MAP SPRITE IS ADORABLE. SHE HAS WINGS. SHE’S A TINY LITTLE GIRL USING HER WINGS TO REACH HEAD HEIGHT WHY THE FUCK WAS THIS RETCONNED OUT INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS!?

I love Manakete wings too.

9 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Wow, I was wondering why Merric had his own custom sage promotion stats. It isn't just stats, he has his own custom sage promotion sprite! Okay, this is awesome. I love it. He looks almost like a GBA sage, just with a staff and a shorter (and less badass) cape.

   

Merric's Bishop variant in addition to having higher stats, a unique map sprite and its own class slot, is called Sage in the Debug menu unlike the final game where its a second bishop. The sprites of FE3 Merric Bishop are compared above to FE2 Sage, as well as the FE1 Bishop and regular FE3 Bishop.

For a comparison, Julian's thief custom appearance is simply related to his character ID rather then having a separate class slot unlike Merric's Bishop.

9 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Oh no. They make it sound like they cut most of the chapters between getting and losing the Starsphere and Lightsphere. Please no. I wanna milk the shit out of this!

If you are that worried, you get the Starsphere boosted growths when you level in the arena.

[Alastor15243]

18 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

   

 

 

Merric's Bishop variant in addition to having higher stats, a unique map sprite and its own class slot, is called Sage in the Debug menu unlike the final game where its a second bishop. The sprites of FE3 Merric Bishop are compared above to FE2 Sage, as well as the FE1 Bishop and regular FE3 Bishop.

If you are that worried, you get the Starsphere boosted growths when you level in the arena.

1: Is it possible that it's because he's the only male mage who promotes? Wendell gives the impression he used to be a healer. Maybe they're supposed to be different classes from what Wendell is?

2: I am really, really torn between showing off the arena and giving my thoughts for completion's sake and avoiding it given how much it usually breaks the game.