Can we talk about how Binding Blade is kinda a huge mess?

[Whisky]

16 hours ago, samthedigital said:

The point is that it's advantageous to use both Wyvern Riders. It really doesn't matter if Zeiss is the worst of the bunch because he's still more useful than most of the other units when he joins. It's a little different for Fir because she needs the time to get levels to promote (and the utility that wyverns have is better than combat utility), but it's not as if there is no merit to having a second slightly worse Rutger.

I see. Yeah, I agree with all of that. I think Zeiss would compare better to Tate rather than Miledy.

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Dieck is honestly not even close to being as good as Rutger. If we compare them directly for our first promotion choice Dieck has problems with some of the tougher bosses, and his speed is low enough that he won't double faster enemies. He's also relying on his speed growth a lot more. If we're comparing a trained Fir to Deick then she compares rather well to him. She doubles just about everything, and she will one round more enemies that both normally miss because of her crit. She isn't quite as bulky, and she can't fight some lance users as effectively, but she holds up better for the whole game because of her speed.

I don’t know if I’ve just gotten lucky in every one of playthroughs, but Dieck has never fallen off for me. He’s always remained one of my strongest units throughout the whole game. His bases are good so I don’t know how much luck has to do with that. I’m not saying that he’s as good as Rutger, but he does have certain advantages over Rutger that it wouldn’t be fair to ignore. He doesn’t double all enemies, but he does double quite a few. He is able to survive more hits than Rutger, especially against Lances. He has access to Axes including Hand Axes. And he is stronger. Rutger might get a lot of Crits, but if he doesn’t Crit, he’s less likely to kill. He also has more Luc making him less likely to face low % Crits.

Dieck doesn’t have problems with bosses, he just takes longer to kill them than Rutger, but he gets the job done. He can beat Henning and Scott just fine. In fact, he’s less likely to face Crit chance against Henning and is more likely to survive a Crit from either of these bosses. The chance of Rutger dying to these bosses might be very small, but the chance of Dieck dying can be 0. Like I said he just takes longer to kill them, but he doesn’t have problems.

Regardless of how much better Rutger is than Dieck, he’s still the next best thing. It seems weird to say that the second strongest unit for a portion of the game isn’t very good. He’s the only other character that can use the Durandal for quite a while too.

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Scrolls and other items that remove the enemy's ability to crit are fairly cool in my opinion. I don't exactly dislike the crit system, but I just don't see the fun in having to deal with low% crits. It's not as if I am unable to deal with them most of the time; it's just tedious as I mentioned previously.

I don’t know what scrolls are. I’ve always hated Crit systems in most RPGs. I would rather a game be more about strategy than luck. I always liked it more in FE because you can see exactly how much Crit each enemy has and have multiple options for what do to about it. In a lot of RPGs Crits are just completely random with nothing you can do about it and that’s just dumb.

-

2 hours ago, henrymidfields said:

I think the world-building is definitely better than in some other FE games - with the obvious exceptions being Tellius and Jugdral. The nations and the localities all have descriptive backstories, and the characters on a broader spectrum of moral good vs evil overall. Especially Etruria which featured obviously evil traitors such as Aracard, Douglas and Perceval who unwillingly joined the traitors, and Klein, Saul, and Cecilia who stayed loyalist. Compare that to, say, Plegia or Valm vs Ylisse and Ferox in Awakening, or Mokushu vs Hoshido in Fates, where the group of people between two nations has a one-sided contrast of morality. (Nohr is a possible exception in Fates, but that has a mess of its own in the form of Garon, Iago, and Hans vs Corrin's faithfuls.) Also, kudos to Zephyr for relying on his own charisma and his nation's industrial-military (economic-military?) complex, as opposed to just some supernatural magic. 

 

1 hour ago, Koops said:

You just made me realize that during FE4, every single nation is an enemy at some point. There's the war against Isaach in the opening narration (even though you never really fight them yourself), the two Verdane chapters, and then the two Agustria ones, and then Silesian factions, Grannvale itself, and in Gen 2, there's the Yied army, Manster District, Thracia, and Miletos. There's enemies who come from everywhere.

FE6 sorta has the same thing, where you travel through the entire continent. It kinda sucks that not all of it was used in FE7, tbh. Would've liked a battle on the Western Isles other than the Armads chapter.

Good points. I do like the world building in FE6. Going to war with every nation reminds me of Shadow Dragon. I found Shadow Dragon confusing though. I could never keep track of which nation I was fighting at the time or who each nation was.

-

47 minutes ago, Harvey said:

Utilize? How can you utilize every unit here when literally 90% of them start of at low level? Sure, Bartre's alright but his skill needs to be fixed otherwise he won't hit well. 

Like really, there's no reason for nearly all these units that the game throws at you to even show up since you're better off using most of your earlier units. I'll give you the benefit that there are SOME that can be utilized but not all especially Sophia who is a waste to train when you can just wait for a better druid.

Atleast FE5 had a lot of units that were manageble to use given the less of the cast that it had. Fe6 takes it to another level.

It’s not 90% at all. That’s a huge exaggeration. Sophia and Wendy are both terrible, but most units are not nearly that bad. We’ve just been talking about Fir who isn’t too bad despite joining quite under leveled. Very few units join as under leveled as her. 

Edited April 24, 2020 by Whisky

[Harvey]

2 minutes ago, Whisky said:

It’s not 90% at all. That’s a huge exaggeration. Sophia and Wendy are both terrible, but most units are not nearly that bad. We’ve just been talking about Fir who isn’t too bad despite joining quite under leveled. Very few units join as under leveled as her. 

Well to me it is considering

1. The axe users

2. The horsies that are worse than Allan+Lance..except maybe Noah and of course Perceval.

3. Mages except Lugh and Lilina and Niime.

 

[Whisky]

30 minutes ago, Harvey said:

Well to me it is considering

1. The axe users

2. The horsies that are worse than Allan+Lance..except maybe Noah and of course Perceval.

3. Mages except Lugh and Lilina and Niime.

 

Every game can only have so many units that are considered the best, and if only the best are worth using then a lot of good units could be considered worthless. As long as units are good enough then they’re fine. Not everyone can be the best.

1. Gonzalez and Geese aren’t too bad. They do have accuracy issues and of course the the limited Hero Crests are their biggest problem, but they’re are far from unusable. They’re better than some units in other FE games. Bartre has been mentioned. Garret isn’t too bad either. Not as much Str but he does have a 30% Crit bonus. For a unit that requires no investment and has no opportunity cost, you really can’t complain. Lott isn’t too bad either. Dorcas and Bartre In FE7 aren’t worth using past the first few chapters either. Fighters are often a bad class. This isn’t the only game where that’s true, and I think the Axe users here may be better than Dorcas and Bartre (not Dart or Hawkeye though).

2. Noah is fine. Zealot is one of the best units through the mid-game. He doesn’t need to be great for the whole game. Obviously Marcus is nearly required if not actually required for the early game. A perfect jeigan unit, unlike the overpowered FE7 Marcus and Seth. Even Treck isn’t bad considering that he’s in such a great class. He can’t really be called a bad unit.

3. Rei and Hugh aren’t bad. I think they’re actually better than Lilina. Cecilia is an amazing support unit. Yodel is good just for his Staff rank. I assume you are excluding the Staff users?

[Harvey]

1 hour ago, Whisky said:

Every game can only have so many units that are considered the best, and if only the best are worth using then a lot of good units could be considered worthless. As long as units are good enough then they’re fine. Not everyone can be the best.

1. Gonzalez and Geese aren’t too bad. They do have accuracy issues and of course the the limited Hero Crests are their biggest problem, but they’re are far from unusable. They’re better than some units in other FE games. Bartre has been mentioned. Garret isn’t too bad either. Not as much Str but he does have a 30% Crit bonus. For a unit that requires no investment and has no opportunity cost, you really can’t complain. Lott isn’t too bad either. Dorcas and Bartre In FE7 aren’t worth using past the first few chapters either. Fighters are often a bad class. This isn’t the only game where that’s true, and I think the Axe users here may be better than Dorcas and Bartre (not Dart or Hawkeye though).

2. Noah is fine. Zealot is one of the best units through the mid-game. He doesn’t need to be great for the whole game. Obviously Marcus is nearly required if not actually required for the early game. A perfect jeigan unit, unlike the overpowered FE7 Marcus and Seth. Even Treck isn’t bad considering that he’s in such a great class. He can’t really be called a bad unit.

3. Rei and Hugh aren’t bad. I think they’re actually better than Lilina. Cecilia is an amazing support unit. Yodel is good just for his Staff rank. I assume you are excluding the Staff users?

 

There is a difference between having units having utility and those that don't and FE6 has a lot of units that just lack in either because like I said, you're earlier units are worth using compared to the replacements that you get. Every unit in FE5 are good compared to the amount that FE6 has due to FE5 having less of a cast than FE6 simply because unlike FE6, FE5 has scrolls that can make nearly any unit better. It still is a preference on whether its worth training them or not but compared to FE6, its a much better experience to me because nearly all the units are reliable.

1. Gonzales and Geese are not worth using because the former needs skill to hit anything and the latter just doesn't have much to grow on. Bartre outclasses them both simply because of being a unit free of promotion and having decent bases but that's provided you're willing to to to Ephirim's route. Garret is terrible. He's slow so he'll be doubled and when none of the generals are worth using, why should you bother with a slower one? You're exaggerating if you think that axe users are better than in FE7. Because the hit rates in FE6 for axes are terribly lower than they are in FE7 which improved the hit rates while still making it that not every axe user can hit often.

2. Zealot and Treck are not worth using if your Alance are well trained at this point. Noah is alright I guess. That being said, for the majority of the units you get are those that are replaceble units and like again I've said before, there is no reason to use the other horsies unless you lose Alance and by the time Alance get promoted, you end up with Perceval who is a better replacement.

3. Reigh and Hugh are bad because of the effort required to get them and whether its worth the price. Reigh comes at a time that Lugh or Lillina get better and Hugh needs 10K to be recruited and doesn't even have hard mode bonuses. The only units that I can somewhat agree with here are Cecilla despite her coming at a wrong map and Yodel but only because he comes with the saint staff. Speaking of staffs, well they're staves so anyone with them is good as long as they can heal well and Clarine and Cecilla aren't exactly good healers compared to Niime and Lilina.

 

Edited April 24, 2020 by Harvey

[Shadow Mir]

21 hours ago, Whisky said:

I guess I would rather Manaketes just be stronger rather than having a Crit chance. As is, you need to be very careful with who you have fight them. You need to use units with high enough Luc or use ranged attacks. It’s not like they aren’t manageable so I’m not sure how much of a problem them is, but I wouldn’t mind if their Crit rate was reduced. But yeah, in most cases, there are ways to avoid low % Crit deaths. Roy has high enough Luc to fight Thunder Mages or early game Mercenaries without facing a Crit chance. As do Thany and Marcus. I don’t know. In general I’m not a fan of Crits and don’t know if the game wouldn’t be better if they were just removed completely and maybe replaced with something else. Something more consistent. I just don’t like people blaming the game when there actually was something they could have done better to prevent it instead of risking the low % Crit.

Bringing this up reminds me, I strongly believe that crits need to be toned down - triple damage is just too much imo.

@Whisky I'll give you an A for effort with your writeup, but I just can't agree with you on most of your points. RE: ambush spawns; this game is notorious for them and rightly so, given that even on the easiest difficulty they're a thing. That's not so for most other games that came after it, or at least not the case for the whole game (e.g. Three Houses). RE: mission objectives, seize is boring enough as is, but with Roy being weak, incompetent, and generally unable to fight his way out of a paper bag, it feels more like an escort mission (and those of us who are well-versed in video games know how unfun those are). A giant escort mission, at that, because seize is the only objective. The fact that this game loves long and winding maps does naught but make things worse. Seize only became acceptable in Fates due to it making it such that anyone can take the objective and win the game. And this isn't even getting into the side chapters, some of which have some really awful gimmicks. Or Arcadia, which combines desert with fog (which, by the way, none of Three Houses's fog maps have anything on in terms of being absolutely dickish). RE: unit/class balance, I do agree with you that this game was awful for armored units. However, even with the fact that this game was kinder to archers than most, Wolt still manages to be a steaming pile of crap, as he does piddle damage to anything that either isn't a loldier (AKA, GBA soldier) or something with wings, and even winged units aren't that scared of him. And then there's axe infantry, who have it even worse, given that they're pretty much restricted to Iron and Killer if you want them to be able to hit the broad side of a barn because almost every other axe is just too inaccurate to be worth using (which also brings up the point that accuracy problems limit the usable weapon pool in Binding Blade). Also, I have two words for you: Horse Emblem. That's this game in a nutshell. The giant maps favour mounted units up the wazoo; even if there are some standout foot units, that doesn't change this. RE: the plot, it's a half-assed rip-off of Archanea's plot, which kills its chance of being decent (not that I have anything against the Archanea games' stories; I just think Binding Blade pretty much ripping off their plot is a grave sin). Even Sacred Stones has a better plot imo, and given that I find that game's plot to be laughably bad, that's saying something.

2 hours ago, Whisky said:

I don’t know what scrolls are.

Scrolls, or rather, Crusader Scrolls, are items in Thracia 776. They alter a unit's growth rates when in their inventory. 

Edited April 24, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[samthedigital]

Quote

I don’t know what scrolls are. I’ve always hated Crit systems in most RPGs.

Scrolls are FE5 exclusive, and they allow units to ignore crits and improve growth rates. The growth rate improvements are kind of neat, but inventory management to ignore crits is obviously the best part (to me anyway). It's basically like an Iron Rune on steroids.

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He doesn’t double all enemies, but he does double quite a few. He is able to survive more hits than Rutger, especially against Lances. He has access to Axes including Hand Axes. And he is stronger. Rutger might get a lot of Crits, but if he doesn’t Crit, he’s less likely to kill.

Rutger has like 1 less str and def than Dieck on promotion in hard mode. The speed difference matters a lot too; Dieck can't double Henning, and there are several enemies that Dieck won't double besides that. There aren't many, a few mercenaries and such, but that's assuming that Dieck hits his averages. If he falls a point or two short he's going to be much worse off, and Rutger doesn't have these problems no matter how bad his levels are.

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I don’t know if I’ve just gotten lucky in every one of playthroughs, but Dieck has never fallen off for me.

He has 19 speed at 10/20 which is not a very realistic level to reach. Even Rutger starts having problems one rounding enemies without hitting criticals, and he doubles everything, so my guess is that you're either lucky or expect less than I do out of a combat unit.

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Regardless of how much better Rutger is than Dieck, he’s still the next best thing. It seems weird to say that the second strongest unit for a portion of the game isn’t very good. He’s the only other character that can use the Durandal for quite a while too.

It's a bit of a catch-22. If he promotes he's probably going to be the best combat unit at the cost of having one that would have been better, and if he promotes later there are other units that are too similar to him to call him second best. I didn't say that Dieck was not good though. I'm just saying that I don't think that the argument that Fir is worthless because Dieck exists is a fair one.

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Zealot and Treck are not worth using if your Alance are well trained at this point.

Unless you're grinding exp then it's hard for Zealot to be worse than Alance until the route split, and even then only one of them is going to promote for a while anyway. In any case, I've said it before, but why are we confined to Alan and Lance? If you limit yourself to just the two of them for chapter 8 as an example you're just losing a lot of time because of the lack of rescue bots, and Zealot and Marcus are still good at combat at this point in the game. It takes a while for their utility to lose all value, and I'd argue that this is better than having a unit that is always really good from the start of the game.

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The only units that I can somewhat agree with here are Cecilla despite her coming at a wrong map and Yodel but only because he comes with the saint staff. Speaking of staffs, well they're staves so anyone with them is good as long as they can heal well and Clarine and Cecilla aren't exactly good healers compared to Niime and Lilina.

Clarine and Cecilia are mounted, and the Mend staff exists. Yodel is able to Warp and has 19 magic and S staves for other staff utility.

Edited April 24, 2020 by samthedigital

[ping]

Let's ignore for a second that most of Harvey's unit assessments are very, very wrong (Lilina a better staffer than Cecilia, lol) and ask a rhetorical question:

If we modded a new character into any Fire Emblem game, Lv.1 unpromoted with the same base stats as your Ch.1 units, no unusual growths, no personal weapons or crazy good weapon ranks, never force-deployed - just a random Lv.1 unit - and that unit would join right before the last big map (like Brunya's map, Victory or Death, or Darkling Woods): How would that affect gameplay?

And the answer to that: Not. At. All.
...unless the player makes a conscious decision to let it. If they want the bragging rights for beating the final boss of the game with that random unit, cool. But they don't have to. I can say for a fact that Ulki's existance in PoR doesn't affect my enjoyment of that game. I never use him, so he sits on the bench. End of story. Same with Kyza in RD, or Robert in NMotE.

The more interesting questions are if there's any units that snap the game like a twig (there aren't) and if there's enough viable unit at every point of the game to fill up your team (there are, FE6 is very generous with its filler units).

[Koops]

Bad units are never a problem in FE unless they're the only units. That's it. Wanna use a bad unit then cool, you like imposing that challenge upon yourself. You don't like them? Well, bench them and use the better units instead, and you'll win for sure, so all the power to you! FE6 has about enough good units to warrant some bad units sprinkled here and there.

FE6 without any bad units and just great units would honestly just be boring. Every single playthrough I start I decide on a bad unit who I want to be the star. I once used Wendy, and then Dorothy. Next playthrough I'll go another extra mile and try my hand at making Sophia good. You don't need to do this, tho. People like me just appreciate these filler units and having them doesn't hurt the people who don't like them. So yeah.

Edited April 24, 2020 by Koops
Correcting a typo

[PyroPlazma]

11 minutes ago, Koops said:

Bad units are never a problem in FE unless they're the only units. That's it. Wanna use a bad unit then cool, you like imposing that challenge upon yourself. You don't like them? Well, bench them and use the better units instead, and you'll win for sure, so all the power to you! FE6 has about enough good units to warrant some bad units sprinkled here and there.

FE6 without any bad units and just great units would honestly just be boring. Every single playthrough I start I decide on a bad unit who I want to be the star. I once used Wendy, and then Dorothy. Next playthrough I'll go another extra mile and try my hand at making Sophia good. You don't need to do this, tho. People like me just appreciate these filler units and having them doesn't hurt the people who don't like them. So yeah.

 

TBF the issue with Wendy isn't so much Wendy as it's her join time (right before several chapters full of axes wielders). Plus the fact that FE6 like far to many other entries heavily favors mounted units. 

[Koops]

Even if she joined earlier, well Bors is kinda still better than her and he isn't that great either... yeah. That's obviously ignoring the fact that she's an armor knight.

Edited April 24, 2020 by Koops

[PyroPlazma]

29 minutes ago, Koops said:

Even if she joined earlier, well Bors is kinda still better than her and he isn't that great either... yeah. That's obviously ignoring the fact that she's an armor knight.

#makearmorknightsgreat

[Whisky]

1 hour ago, samthedigital said:

Scrolls are FE5 exclusive, and they allow units to ignore crits and improve growth rates. The growth rate improvements are kind of neat, but inventory management to ignore crits is obviously the best part (to me anyway). It's basically like an Iron Rune on steroids.

I see. Sounds pretty neat.

Dieck’s leads in HP, Str, and Def are actually smaller than I thought. Rutger is pretty amazing. Dieck is still great too though. It seems like he often gets lost in Rutgers shadow when people talk about how good he is.

-

2 hours ago, Harvey said:

Gonzales and Geese are not worth using because the former needs skill to hit anything and the latter just doesn't have much to grow on. Bartre outclasses them both simply because of being a unit free of promotion and having decent bases but that's provided you're willing to to to Ephirim's route. Garret is terrible. He's slow so he'll be doubled and when none of the generals are worth using, why should you bother with a slower one? You're exaggerating if you think that axe users are better than in FE7. Because the hit rates in FE6 for axes are terribly lower than they are in FE7 which improved the hit rates while still making it that not every axe user can hit often.

Like @ping said; against Lance enemies, Axes are just as accurate as Swords while being a lot stronger and better defensively.  I’m not saying that these guys are good, but they are far from being “unusable”, and are better than a lot of units from other games. Relative to the other units in their game, FE7 Bartre and Dorcas are terrible. They are some of the only units too slow to double consistently in that game. And Garret actually has pretty decent stats on Hard mode. He’s kind of slow but he will only get doubled by fast enemies. He isn’t slower than Generals. At least not Douglas. And the main bad thing about Generals is the low Move.

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2. Zealot and Treck are not worth using if your Alance are well trained at this point. Noah is alright I guess. That being said, for the majority of the units you get are those that are replaceble units and like again I've said before, there is no reason to use the other horsies unless you lose Alance and by the time Alance get promoted, you end up with Perceval who is a better replacement.

Zealot is not worth using? Zealot is one of the best units throughout the mid-game. Noah is good. Why do these units need to be considered replacement units anyway? You can use all of them. Alance, Marcus, Zealot, and Noah. Maybe throw Treck too. Why not? Cavaliers are good. You can’t have too many. Most people save all their money for Boots at the end of the game but if you mind having a little less for Boots, you will have plenty of money to buy promotion items on Chapter 16.

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3. Reigh and Hugh are bad because of the effort required to get them and whether its worth the price. Reigh comes at a time that Lugh or Lillina get better and Hugh needs 10K to be recruited and doesn't even have hard mode bonuses. The only units that I can somewhat agree with here are Cecilla despite her coming at a wrong map and Yodel but only because he comes with the saint staff. Speaking of staffs, well they're staves so anyone with them is good as long as they can heal well and Clarine and Cecilla aren't exactly good healers compared to Niime and Lilina.

Rei doesn’t take effort to recruit and takes less investment than Lilina because she joins under leveled. You can promote Rei as soon as you get him and he won’t be too bad. High is also not bad if you choose to use him and immediately promote him. Yodel is good for being able to use other Staves, not just the Saint Staff. Cecilia can be used past her joining map. Clarine and Cecilia are Staff users on a horse. They’re the ultimate support units.

-

@Shadow Mir

Ambush Spawns

I agree that in some cases they can be a problem, but in many cases in this game, you are given a warning about them or they spawn where they aren’t an immediate danger. For multiple playthroughs, they aren’t as bad once you already know about them.

SD has them on every difficulty. And 3H ambush spawns are designed much worse than most of Binding Blades. There’s a reason they aren’t there on easier difficulties. I guess it’s just Maddening mode that is bad then.

Mission Objectives

There is nothing inherently bad about Seize. I can say that Rout is boring. Adding more mission objectives doesn’t make the game better. It depends on how they are implemented.

In Binding Blade, you almost always have multiple ways to approach any given map which is what matters. The long winding maps are not nearly as bad as you think they are. Or it’s just subjective, in which case, you have a problem with it, it’s not the game problem. You have resources to use for these maps such as fliers to carry people over mountains and the Warp Staff.

If anyone could Seize then you would still play the maps the same way, you just wouldn’t use Roy. It’s not like it’s hard to keep him out of danger. Calling it an escort mission is an exaggeration.

I very much disagree with 3H not having worse FOW maps than this game. You can barely see in FOW in that game, only being able to see 2 spaces in front of you. Torches don’t do as much as they do in this game and Thieves can’t help with that. You can be safe on one spot, take one step forward and immediately get attacked by multiple enemies and die. Enemy Archers can also attack your vulnerable units even when they are 2 spaces behind your stronger units. The Arcadia Chapter is pretty straight forward, and you have resources to use such as Thieves and Torches. It’s really not that bad.

Unit / Class Balance

Wolt and Dorothy are really bad, but so are Wil and Rebecca. A lot of the problems you have with this game apply to most games in the series. Snipers are actually better here than in most.

Axe infantry too. Dorcas and Bartre in FE7 are not good either. Axe infantry in this game aren’t good but they aren’t as bad as they’re made out to be.

Horse Emblem

And other FE games aren’t? Again, your problem applies to almost every game in the series here, not just Binding Blade. If anything, I think horse units are actually more balanced in this game. A Swordmaster is a better unit than two Cavaliers. Can’t say that about FE7 or 8 or 9. There are plenty of good infantry units in this game. And most people consider Treck and possibly even Noah to be some of the “unusable” units, and those are on horses.

Plot

I’ve played SD and I can see some similarities, but I wouldn’t call it a rip off. There are a lot of differences. What’s the difference between ripping off and being inspired by? You really seem kind of biased against this game.

Don’t most people consider Sacred Stones one of the better plots of the series? 

-

Wendy

Besides the low Move from being an Armour Knight, she also has some of the worst bases of all time. I think her join time is the least of her worries. Even if she joined in Chapter 1, she would still be one of the worst units.

[JimmyBeans]

On the topic of ambush spawns I softened my hatred towards them recently. This is because, even though in some cases they are really cheesy, Making them not ambush spawns DO NOT automatically make them good reinforcements. FE7 comes to mind, it's reinforcements are pretty worthless. There is nothing fun about killing weak as balls enemies the turn they spawn, it just extends the level without adding any tension.

If I start a level and the boss says something about Cavalry coming behind me soon and if I know it is a game with ambush spawns I am going to MOVE. Moments of tension is what keeps me playing FE, even after all these years. This is why I almost always iron man the older games when I go back to them.

It can be done both ways though, conquest doesn't have any ambush spawns but the reinforcements scare me a lot, But I think both ways have merit and people complain a bit to much about ambush spawns. I personally think the mid-late game of Awakening has much worse ambush spawns than FE6. 

Every game has it's BS moments, I dare any to argue that there is a single game in this series that doesn't some really BS moments, but it's your favorite game despite that. I hope you can see why some of us look past ambush spawns in FE6.

[anikom15]

I too have no issue with ambush spawns. They've been in the series since the beginning and it doesn't look like they're ever going to stop.

[Whisky]

It really depends on how they are implemented. Ambush spawns or regular reinforcements can both be implemented well or poorly. And there are examples in Binding Blade of ambush spawns being implemented both well and unfairly.

[eclipse]

11 hours ago, Harvey said:

Utilize? How can you utilize every unit here when literally 90% of them start of at low level? Sure, Bartre's alright but his skill needs to be fixed otherwise he won't hit well. 

Like really, there's no reason for nearly all these units that the game throws at you to even show up since you're better off using most of your earlier units. I'll give you the benefit that there are SOME that can be utilized but not all especially Sophia who is a waste to train when you can just wait for a better druid.

Atleast FE5 had a lot of units that were manageble to use given the less of the cast that it had. Fe6 takes it to another level.

It's like I just gave an example in the post your quoted, and it flew over your head.

Plus, you don't use everyone in every situation, and it's perfectly fine to drop units in order to move on to bigger and better bases.

[Harvey]

8 hours ago, Whisky said:

Like @ping said; against Lance enemies, Axes are just as accurate as Swords while being a lot stronger and better defensively.  I’m not saying that these guys are good, but they are far from being “unusable”, and are better than a lot of units from other games. Relative to the other units in their game, FE7 Bartre and Dorcas are terrible. They are some of the only units too slow to double consistently in that game. And Garret actually has pretty decent stats on Hard mode. He’s kind of slow but he will only get doubled by fast enemies. He isn’t slower than Generals. At least not Douglas. And the main bad thing about Generals is the low Move.

Ok. How many of these lance users are there? Not a good idea to use these axe users against wyverns as they tend to come in groups. And its not a good idea to rely on them that often as much as sword users. And that does not justify Garret's utility either. He'll struggle to hit things and hitting accurately is the most important thing in this game incase you've forgotten that part. 

The main bad thing about generals is not just their low movement but their bases and growth rates being in the way as well.

9 hours ago, Whisky said:

Zealot is not worth using? Zealot is one of the best units throughout the mid-game. Noah is good. Why do these units need to be considered replacement units anyway? You can use all of them. Alance, Marcus, Zealot, and Noah. Maybe throw Treck too. Why not? Cavaliers are good. You can’t have too many. Most people save all their money for Boots at the end of the game but if you mind having a little less for Boots, you will have plenty of money to buy promotion items on Chapter 16.

I said Zealot is not worth using if YOU trained Alance well enough. And No one is going to buy more promotion items over boots because the game gives you enough so its not like you'd need them whatsoever.

You only need two hero crests since only three units are worth using throughout. You only need two guilding rings since only two mages are worth using of the three you get and you only need two knight crests since only two of them are worth using which is your Alance. 

Because of this, there is no reason to NOT save money on Promotion items and just get boots as they help poor Roy to get to the throne faster.

9 hours ago, Whisky said:

Rei doesn’t take effort to recruit and takes less investment than Lilina because she joins under leveled. You can promote Rei as soon as you get him and he won’t be too bad. High is also not bad if you choose to use him and immediately promote him. Yodel is good for being able to use other Staves, not just the Saint Staff. Cecilia can be used past her joining map. Clarine and Cecilia are Staff users on a horse. They’re the ultimate support units.

If you take the effort to train Lilina, she ends up far better than Reigh. Hugh is bad because of the required cost to get him and it does to my knowledge affect the funds rank. And like I said before, anyone with a staff is worth using because of them being healers. It all comes down to who can heal the most and apart from Niime, Lilina can heal fully using just a basic staff. Cecilla can still be decent but again, not as decent as Lilina(who I will admit won't work out for many).

9 hours ago, Whisky said:

I agree that in some cases they can be a problem, but in many cases in this game, you are given a warning about them or they spawn where they aren’t an immediate danger. For multiple playthroughs, they aren’t as bad once you already know about them.

SD has them on every difficulty. And 3H ambush spawns are designed much worse than most of Binding Blades. There’s a reason they aren’t there on easier difficulties. I guess it’s just Maddening mode that is bad then.

That still doesn't make Fe6 spawns more forgiving than they should be. In those two games you've mentioned, atleast they had it so that the lower difficulties won't make them attack you as soon as they spawn. By the way, where does the game hint you that enemies will come? Because they are so vague that it hardly matters.

9 hours ago, Whisky said:

Wolt and Dorothy are really bad, but so are Wil and Rebecca. A lot of the problems you have with this game apply to most games in the series. Snipers are actually better here than in most.

Axe infantry too. Dorcas and Bartre in FE7 are not good either. Axe infantry in this game aren’t good but they aren’t as bad as they’re made out to be.

Training Dorcas and Bartre is doable. And since Bartre is required to get Karla, it is much doable to train Bartre in FE7. Axes have improved hit rates in FE7 and its because of that that they are more tolerable than they were in FE6.

Look man. People don't like FE6 especially me. I don't like the way its done and the characters are the most bland of all FE games out there which is a shame because the music in this game is better than FE7 even though FE7 has a bunch of good songs. As exaggerated as some of the points are, defending the game to those who don't like it won't change their minds on why they hate it. Just accept that and end the convo.

3 hours ago, eclipse said:

Plus, you don't use everyone in every situation, and it's perfectly fine to drop units in order to move on to bigger and better bases.

To me, that description only fits to Jeigans because of their purpose and this game has a good Jeigen. I don't like the fact that I have to use a unit I don't like and have to force myself to use them till I get better one when I can use units whom I want to rely on throughout the game. I don't like to use timed units that only have one purpose when I can rely on units that can be used throughout and every FE game before FE6 has allowed me to like use any unit I want to use without being forced to use specific units except the Jeigans.

[ping]

Garret's hit rate issues are indeed very, very pronounced. His inherent hit rate is 39 (2*16 + 0.5*14) at base level, which is infinitely worse than for example Perceval with his 39.5 (2*16 + 0.5*15). Especially given the way FE6 rounds things. Oh the humanity.

Safety notice since people tend to overinterprete that kind of statement: No, I do not mean to imply that Garret plays in the same league as Perceval in the great scheme of things, like, at all.

[Harvey]

43 minutes ago, ping said:

Garret's hit rate issues are indeed very, very pronounced. His inherent hit rate is 39 (2*16 + 0.5*14) at base level, which is infinitely worse than for example Perceval with his 39.5 (2*16 + 0.5*15). Especially given the way FE6 rounds things. Oh the humanity.

Are you seriously implying that Garret is on par with Perceval? And you're comparing axes so of course in FE6 unless you face lances, that's the expected hit rate.

As for the joke for Lilina being better than Cecilla, I was referring to her magic which the higher it is, the more it can heal and her magic also affects warp as well. But if you want more use, then sure, Cecilla would be better because she has a horse.

 

[ping]

Someone didn't read the small print.

>Lilina
>Warp
Yeah sure. Cool.

[Harvey]

1 minute ago, ping said:

Someone didn't read the small print.

>Lilina
>Warp
Yeah sure. Cool.

Did I say something wrong here? Unless you meant the time to take for her to use the staff then sure, its not worth. But the reward though means that she can use warp much more than any other mage. What's wrong with that.

 

[ping]

Go read the small print.

Lilina needs 200 staff uses to get to A staves. I don't know in what universe that should be taken into consideration when talking about her as a unit, but in that universe, both Raigh and Sofiya dwarf Lilina's puny warp range. Not that it matters, because that universe is silly.

[samthedigital]

Quote

I said Zealot is not worth using if YOU trained Alance well enough. And No one is going to buy more promotion items over boots because the game gives you enough so its not like you'd need them whatsoever.

This is a bit of a contradiction. If it's so important to buy boots then why are we promoting Alance? That costs money too. In reality it takes meticulous planning to make use out of every single pair of boots. Can you name the exact benefit from buying the 30 pairs of boots compared to buying 29? Even if you could find the difference between the two they only really matter for strict LTC purposes.

 

Edited April 25, 2020 by samthedigital

[Shadow Mir]

19 hours ago, Whisky said:

Horse Emblem

And other FE games aren’t? Again, your problem applies to almost every game in the series here, not just Binding Blade. If anything, I think horse units are actually more balanced in this game. A Swordmaster is a better unit than two Cavaliers. Can’t say that about FE7 or 8 or 9. There are plenty of good infantry units in this game. And most people consider Treck and possibly even Noah to be some of the “unusable” units, and those are on horses.

I'll grant, being a mounted unit has always been an advantage in FE, but thanks to giant maps, this game is one of the few that amplifies this up to 11 (the only other games where I can say mounts really dominate are Path of Radiance and Genealogy of the Holy War, the former of which gave cavaliers the ability to pick their second weapon upon promotion to paladins, and the latter of which also had giant maps). Contrast Radiant Dawn, where paladins aren't nearly as good as in other games due to taking movement penalties on indoors maps, as well as ledges and other terrain that stop them dead in their tracks; Titania is the best of the paladins, but even she just isn't as good as she was in Path of Radiance. Or Three Houses, where most cavalry classes are underwhelming.

19 hours ago, Whisky said:

Mission Objectives

There is nothing inherently bad about Seize. I can say that Rout is boring. Adding more mission objectives doesn’t make the game better. It depends on how they are implemented.

In Binding Blade, you almost always have multiple ways to approach any given map which is what matters. The long winding maps are not nearly as bad as you think they are. Or it’s just subjective, in which case, you have a problem with it, it’s not the game problem. You have resources to use for these maps such as fliers to carry people over mountains and the Warp Staff.

If anyone could Seize then you would still play the maps the same way, you just wouldn’t use Roy. It’s not like it’s hard to keep him out of danger. Calling it an escort mission is an exaggeration.

I very much disagree with 3H not having worse FOW maps than this game. You can barely see in FOW in that game, only being able to see 2 spaces in front of you. Torches don’t do as much as they do in this game and Thieves can’t help with that. You can be safe on one spot, take one step forward and immediately get attacked by multiple enemies and die. Enemy Archers can also attack your vulnerable units even when they are 2 spaces behind your stronger units. The Arcadia Chapter is pretty straight forward, and you have resources to use such as Thieves and Torches. It’s really not that bad.

That's just you. Seize only gets old fast. Especially when it's combined with long maps. Both in the same game is a perfect recipe for a borefest, as I see it.

Out of the four fog maps in 3H, all but one are optional, and the one mandatory chapter with fog of war has the fog go away. Also, none of Three Houses' fog maps forces me to field a deadweight unit, whereas I have Sophia and Cecilia as forced burdens in Arcadia.

19 hours ago, Whisky said:

Ambush Spawns

I agree that in some cases they can be a problem, but in many cases in this game, you are given a warning about them or they spawn where they aren’t an immediate danger. For multiple playthroughs, they aren’t as bad once you already know about them.

SD has them on every difficulty. And 3H ambush spawns are designed much worse than most of Binding Blades. There’s a reason they aren’t there on easier difficulties. I guess it’s just Maddening mode that is bad then.

No, SD doesn't have them on every difficulty. Maddening aside, Three Houses is inconsistent on the matter of ambush spawns; sometimes I see units pop up after player phase is over, but they're grayed out immediately.

19 hours ago, Whisky said:

Unit / Class Balance

Wolt and Dorothy are really bad, but so are Wil and Rebecca. A lot of the problems you have with this game apply to most games in the series. Snipers are actually better here than in most.

Axe infantry too. Dorcas and Bartre in FE7 are not good either. Axe infantry in this game aren’t good but they aren’t as bad as they’re made out to be.

Archers tend to be pretty bleh in most games, yes. About the only games that bucked this trend were the Archanea remakes, where evade just isn't as reliable as it was in prior games, as well as Fates and Three Houses, where hand axes and javelins were nerfed to hell (in the former, throwing weapons can't follow up and make it easier for enemies to get follow up attacks, and in addition, the stronger variants of throwing weapons are 2-range only; in Three Houses, weight is a thing again, and javelins and hand axes just can't hold a candle to bows; unlike in the last games that used weight, you can't offset equipment weight so easily in 3H); also, Fates in particular has lackluster mages for most of its roster. While Dorcas and Bartre suck, I'd rather use them than any of Binding Blade's axe users because Blazing Blade is much more forgiving; axes aren't so inaccurate in Blazing Blade that I have to constantly pray when an axe user sees combat. They also have less competition for Hero Crests, for what it's worth. In Binding Blade, I might as well be shooting myself in the foot every time Wade or one of the other foot axes sees combat because they have terrible accuracy to the point they'd bewilder Stormtroopers with how much they miss.

19 hours ago, Whisky said:

Plot

I’ve played SD and I can see some similarities, but I wouldn’t call it a rip off. There are a lot of differences. What’s the difference between ripping off and being inspired by? You really seem kind of biased against this game.

Don’t most people consider Sacred Stones one of the better plots of the series? 

Given that it takes a lot of aspects of the Archanea games' story, including the fact that the Big Bad was only a fake final boss, like happened in Mystery of the Emblem, I'd say ripping off Archanea sounds accurate.

Not that I've seen; I've seen others who have issues with some aspects of Sacred Stones's plot.

Incidentally, I'll admit, I'm indeed not a fan of Binding Blade. Too many aspects of the game bother me. Like the fact that there are no item drops, for example. Or Roy's mega-late promotion. These combined with a lot of the other crap I've mentioned, along with the lack of polish, combine to make Binding Blade a game that I'd have to force myself to finish, and one that I wouldn't even give the time of day UNLESS it gets a really good remake.

21 hours ago, PyroPlazma said:

TBF the issue with Wendy isn't so much Wendy as it's her join time (right before several chapters full of axes wielders). Plus the fact that FE6 like far to many other entries heavily favors mounted units. 

It sure doesn't help; the thing is, even if she joined in chapter 1, she'd still be godawful due to being an armored unit in one of the worst games for armored units. It doesn't help that about the only way to train her that doesn't involve pulling your hair out in frustration requires fielding Bors and Barthe, both of whom are also crappy armor knights; why in the seven hells would I waste three of my unit slots on armored knights in a game that just isn't kind to armored knights in general? Not to mention the part about promotion items; I'd pretty much have to restrain myself to consider promoting an armored unit.

Edited April 25, 2020 by Shadow Mir

[eclipse]

13 hours ago, Harvey said:

To me, that description only fits to Jeigans because of their purpose and this game has a good Jeigen. I don't like the fact that I have to use a unit I don't like and have to force myself to use them till I get better one when I can use units whom I want to rely on throughout the game. I don't like to use timed units that only have one purpose when I can rely on units that can be used throughout and every FE game before FE6 has allowed me to like use any unit I want to use without being forced to use specific units except the Jeigans.

Start reading.

And take this time to grow, both as a person and as a FE player.  Right now, you're limiting yourself based on your preferences, and arguing against something because of it.  It's a bad habit, and one that isn't going to benefit you in the long run.  Take the time to try something completely out of your comfort zone - in this case, evaluate FE6 units strictly on what they can do for you, and be prepared to swap units out if someone better comes along.  At the very least, you'll learn how to better evaluate a situation before jumping in.