Jotari Posted October 30, 2023 Share Posted October 30, 2023 (edited) I have to say, I like Rudolf's Gaiden artwork a lot more than his SoV redesign (which only exists to retcon a connection to Awakening since Awakening did such a poor job of that on its own). He looks too old to be Alm's father. Sure it's far from biologically impossible, but it feels off. And I have no bias against old dudes. I think Nemesis rocks the look, but SoV Rudolf looks tok grandfatherly and just not like a villain. Meanwhile in Gaiden he have a guy with black pits for eyes and a rocking mustache. Rudolf having coward AI is hilarious. He's just thinking "Okay I was feeling pretty comitted, but now that the cards are on the table, what was I thinking! I don't want to die! This plan is stupid! Someone get me more oranges!" Rudolf not just killing Doma himself actually is given justification in Shadows if Valentia via Mila sealing Falchion stopping anyone from using it...it's just a shame the game didn't realize that was fixing the plot hole as elsewhere they really go full on the prophecy and Rudolf putting full faith (and everyone's lives) into magic birthmarks. In Gaiden, or at least the fan translation, Rudolf doesn't even need Alm specifically, he just hoped for a hero of some sort to emerge and unite the continent. As I said before, I like Gaiden's final dungeon better than SoV's. I once made a thread celebrating the fact that there was a boss called Badass and the mods renamed the thread to Bahdess >.> Huh, I entirely forgot about Judah's hex removing Alm's player phase. What a weird gimmick. Those Alm solo battles are such a formality (so thankful emulators have turbo buttons). Edited October 30, 2023 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted October 30, 2023 Share Posted October 30, 2023 4 hours ago, gnip said: This map is largely focused on its lower half. There is, of course, a path to loop around and onto the walls, but it seems to works out better to use your own 1-5 range to fire up the walls, warp in some folks, and use the choke point to fend up enemies that may loop around the other way and down the walls. Shadows of Valentia on Normal replicates this arrangement. On Hard however, it oddly completely changes up the enemy formation. Instead of this weird "Oh darned I haven't prepared for my son's invasion yet! Almost everyone is still partying on the East Wall!" look, the enemies are prepared in a symmetrical arrangement along the whole ring, with Rudolf right in the center. I don't recall any other map wherein Gaiden's non-map design got fixed. How odd. 4 hours ago, gnip said: I'll give the plan a 7.76 on a scale between 1 and Corrin. It does have the same nature of plunging the continent into war, presumably killing thousands of people, while relying on many things going exactly right that aren't under your control at all. I also don't quite understand why Rudolf couldn't have attempted to kill Doma himself, so... yeah, I'm not quite on board with this reveal. On March 14th, 1992, Intelligent Systems released Fire Emblem Gaiden. On December 29th, 1991, Super Robot Wars 2 was released. Its villain was this guy.: Bian Zoldark. Seen here in his Original Generations portrayal. Bian reminds me of Rudolf, and came into existence just a few months prior in an SRPG on the same console. Yet Bian's plot is much better thought through. That being... Bian realizes aliens threatening the Earth are coming, he warns the Earth government. Government doesn't believe Bian -until the aliens come covertly knocking. Then the corrupt selfish bureaucrats decide they will surrender humanity's freedom without a fight, and without everyone else on Earth knowing this. Bian is disgusted, refuses to let Earth be conquered without a fight. He spectacularly sabotages the confidential "peace talks", and announces the existence of aliens to all of humanity. In the same breath, Bian declares the formation of the Divine Crusaders. He welcomes all who would fight for Earth's independence from the alien menace to join him. Together, they shall overthrow the Earth government and establish a global military regime. For only united can humanity defeat the aliens. Bian knows there will be a few bad apples who don't truly believe in his ideals and only seek personal power will join him. For the time being, he bears with them. While swift and aggressive in his maneuvers, Bian did include a caveat in his plans. If there emerged those with power possibly greater than his own, he would have the Divine Crusaders pull a few punches to see if the opposition could actually defeat him. If it came to it that they fought and he lost, Bian would entrust the protection of the Earth to those who slew him. (Mind I'm familiar with the OGverse version of events, but they're fundamentally the same as in the SRW Classicverse.) As for Rudolf, amending his plans to be the same as Bian's doesn't sound terrible. Rudolf wants to end the rule of the gods, and vanquish the Duma Cult. He feels the need to unify Valentia to do so. Rudolf sends his son away to keep him away from a man willing to become an outward villain for the sake of the greater good. When a force just so happening to be led by his son (it could've been anyone) contests him and his Dozer proxy, Rudolf holds back a bit and lets the Sofians compete with him for the role of godslayers. Does it sound like a terrible revision?😅 4 hours ago, gnip said: However, there is actually a gimmick to this map: Every turn, the swamp advances one row of tiles. Neat! Overall, the Duma dungeon seems very similar, perhaps better in Gaiden than SoV. -Or so is my impression. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaky Jones Posted October 31, 2023 Share Posted October 31, 2023 5 hours ago, gnip said: Rudolf himself has a nasty combination of high physical Def and high magical Avoid, thanks to the Angel Ring he's carrying. Rather fast, too, doubling most characters on Alm's side, with the only exceptions being Claire and Jesse. I always have at least 2 broken units that can obliterate him by the time I get here, both here and in SoV. Oh well. 5 hours ago, gnip said: Alm is the second unit to get warped in. Interestingly, Rudolf will pick him as an attacking target (which makes sense given that the other option is Cliff), but then mysteriously not stab him. I would've expected that he wouldn't engage Alm to begin with. Rudolf really wants to be killed by his kid. Surely a part of his 5 billion IQ plan. 5 hours ago, gnip said: What is very much worth talking about is Force getting a +2 Spd level. Heck yeah! 5 hours ago, gnip said: Third time's the charm, though. I should've know you'd have done this. I really should've. Ruben has it too good. 5 hours ago, gnip said: : "Ah, Gramps-- what the hell is going on!? How could such an evil man as King Rudolf be my father?!" : "Alm. Your shok is understandable... But now you are the only remaining heir of Rigel's royal family." "Apart from some nephew or something. Wonder what the boy is up to these days." : "But why... Why couldn't I avoid fighting my own father?" : "Don't cry, Alm... Let me clarify your father's actions. Valencia became divided because of the gods. They have involved themselves too deeply with mankind's affairs. As a result, the people have lost balance and head for ruin. After some consideration, Rudolf posed as a destroyer to instigate the advent of true heroes in Valencia. I was told this when he placed his newborn child into my hands: "This child will consign himself to hell's fire! I couldn't refuse him. And so, I left all to fate. Alm. You mustn't let Rudolf's sacrifice be in vain. Go underground and slay the evil god Doma!" Mycen, I love you, but what the FUCK are you talking about? No no, it's Santa's fault. Mycen's just the guy who sends you to the next act screen. 5 hours ago, gnip said: I'll give the plan a 7.76 on a scale between 1 and Corrin. It does have the same nature of plunging the continent into war, presumably killing thousands of people, while relying on many things going exactly right that aren't under your control at all. I also don't quite understand why Rudolf couldn't have attempted to kill Doma himself, so... yeah, I'm not quite on board with this reveal. A scale where Corrin is the best. This doesn't seem like the most ideal rating system. Imagine IGN rating a game from 1 to Genealogy, or what they probably wanted to do for Engage, 1 to 3 Houses. The plan is super shit, so the main crime SoV does is being a remake, therefore making this reveal last way longer, giving the player more time to realize how stupid this all is. Maybe the dev wanted to be faithful to what they thought was a crazy reveal and plot twist. If we all thought like that, then FE12 wouldn't have had Wrys. 5 hours ago, gnip said: Occasionally (and randomly, I think), after entering a new screen, this pop-up turns up, in which a few characters on Celica's team lose a few hit points - 4 HP for Kamui and 3 HP for Dean this time, to give you an idea of the magnitude. I wonder if this can actually kill characters, or if Celica will just be accompanied by a bunch of characters with 1 HP if you keep losing your way. I didn't see Celica lose any HP, so it seems that it isn't possible to get a game over by dawdling. I never took long enough to see the result, but I'll admit that just seeing this made me real giddy. Like, that's just a cool concept. You did something good Kaga. This retroactively means something really stupid is coming to balance that out. 5 hours ago, gnip said: __ ...this time leading to Mycen's personal weapon. Of course. 5 hours ago, gnip said: ...which will just send you back to seemingly the same room. Going the wrong way will send you to some dead end elsewhere, adding more screen transitions during which Celica's group can take damage. I love save states. 5 hours ago, gnip said: This map looks incredibly dull, but it does have one interesting mechanic: After Cliff takes a shot at the Big Ol' Eye, one of the Dreadfighters gets teleported out of that cell. It's collected to the "weird healing tile" and it'll happen a few more times, but I'm not sure what precisely triggers it. Maybe if Kaga applied this creativity in an actual FE game, we'd get something cool. This is the part where you bring up either the best or worst maps in Tear Ring, because if I mention Thracia, Ruben will just whine about the lategame again. 5 hours ago, gnip said: Next hole jumping, next fight, in what appears to be an entirely featureless map. Or Kaga could just make Genealogy. 5 hours ago, gnip said: After this, Alm finds a door that looks important enough. Also blue, as opposed to all the green and brown maps, so you know it's something special. ____ Ah..... Alm's Trials......yeah. ........ I fucking forgot to do Alm's Trials. I dunno! I just found the endgame room before this! Or maybe I just walked past it? I just don't recall ever seeing this door, soooo.... Nosferatu gaming it was. 5 hours ago, gnip said: I like this explanation for Celica being a bit unreasonable when she and Alm met earlier. But the part where she only left because of Alm, not in order to, like, save the world? Ehhh..... something something Alm is her world 5 hours ago, gnip said: And finally some scrub who apparently doesn't even have a portrait. Can't be very important. Rather pretentious-sounding class name, though. What a loser. There's something cute about hearing the endgame theme in the silly 8 bit crunch, but nothing stops the fact that no matter how much people wanna shill the OST in SoV, this map is a fucking U with 500+ cantor summons. What a way to end the game. And of course, "only the protagonist can deal the final blow" To heck with that garbage. I actually wanted to kill you with Silque. Yeah, that's it! Gottem. Can I rant about PoR again now? 5 hours ago, gnip said: I decided to distribute the three epic Cavs over the three Mars games, if you recall, so that's why Biraku is obligatory in Book 1. And I think Dayni specifically requested him in that incarnation, too. I'm already getting confuzzled. Who's getting used in which book? 5 hours ago, gnip said: I appreciate that I'm going to be "forced" to used a good unit. Old FE is the only time you can actually use Hardin's iconic silver sword properly. Stupid ass FE11. That still makes no sense! Just give him B swords, D lances! 5 hours ago, gnip said: He wasn't hard to use, he just didn't have Darros's excellence and fell slowly behind as a result. He's lucky that Darros has found a ship to sail for Book 1 You didn't have the kind of Maji Ruben did. You failed. Good for Darros though. Maybe this time will be different. My FE3 Maji was something else, at least for the amount of chapters I currently have in it. Ya know, just with one teeny downside. 5 hours ago, gnip said: I'll see how Arran can do - I can't make any endgame promises because Bantu has first dibs on the starshards, though. That is true, although I never saw starshards as "dibs" as you know I tried my damned hardest to make sure every level was shard abused, for as unnecessary as it was, it felt damn good. So yeah, Maji for b1, Arran for b2, although I'm really hoping Arran can also be used for b1 as an FE3 adventure kinda thing. I love Arran. Hopefully Marth doesn't steal the Meddy kill with a crit... 5 hours ago, gnip said: Canon is a bourgeois concept, anyway. But rage is a fulfilling addiction. 2 hours ago, Jotari said: Rudolf not just killing Doma himself actually is given justification in Shadows if Valentia via Mila sealing Falchion stopping anyone from using it...it's just a shame the game didn't realize that was fixing the plot hole as elsewhere they really go full on the prophecy and Rudolf putting full faith (and everyone's lives) into magic birthmarks. In Gaiden, or at least the fan translation, Rudolf doesn't even need Alm specifically, he just hoped for a hero of some sort to emerge and unite the continent. Well that's just comical. It doesn't even know how to fix the game when the answer is right in front of them. 2 hours ago, Jotari said: As I said before, I like Gaiden's final dungeon better than SoV's. From a 2/10 to a 3.3! Wow! 2 hours ago, Jotari said: I once made a thread celebrating the fact that there was a boss called Badass and the mods renamed the thread to Bahdess >.> Literally 1984. 2 hours ago, Jotari said: Huh, I entirely forgot about Judah's hex removing Alm's player phase. What a weird gimmick. Those Alm solo battles are such a formality (so thankful emulators have turbo buttons). Glad I learned something today. I learned that Gaiden has an Alm's Trials. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shanty Pete's 1st Mate Posted October 31, 2023 Share Posted October 31, 2023 8 hours ago, gnip said: This map is largely focused on its lower half. There is, of course, a path to loop around and onto the walls, but it seems to works out better to use your own 1-5 range to fire up the walls, warp in some folks, and use the choke point to fend up enemies that may loop around the other way and down the walls. I'd be disappointed getting to this map, and not hearing this. 8 hours ago, gnip said: Alm is the second unit to get warped in. Interestingly, Rudolf will pick him as an attacking target (which makes sense given that the other option is Cliff), but then mysteriously not stab him. I would've expected that he wouldn't engage Alm to begin with. So, Kaga made it possible for a unit to initiate combat, but then fail to attack? I think the only other time I've seen that is in SoV, due to Jedah's power. Kind of impressive that sort of thing was programmed in, actually. 8 hours ago, gnip said: Don't cry, Alm... Let me clarify your father's actions. It just occurred to me that Kaga probably made Mycen non-playable, until the very end, so that he could show up to explain the plot. If he existed as a typical "Jagen", then he could die in the very first map. Which, in pre-FE7 design philosophy, meant that he couldn't stick around to do any exposition. 8 hours ago, gnip said: Prince Albyne. I am General Massena, the captain of the king's guards. We have heard our late King's final words and assembled here." This guy existed in the original? And he had hair?!? 8 hours ago, gnip said: After this, Alm finds a door that looks important enough. Also blue, as opposed to all the green and brown maps, so you know it's something special. For some reason, I had assumed that "Alm's Trial" was added in the remakes. No idea why. I should give the original an honest go at some point. 8 hours ago, gnip said: Anyway, it isn't fighty time yet, but here's the HP levels on Celica's party. Nobody critically injured, but noticable damage overall. Again - really cool and impressive, to see that programmed into an NES game! Curious that Celica, Genny, and - of all people - Atlas, are immune. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted October 31, 2023 Share Posted October 31, 2023 3 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: So, Kaga made it possible for a unit to initiate combat, but then fail to attack? I think the only other time I've seen that is in SoV, due to Jedah's power. Kind of impressive that sort of thing was programmed in, actually. Enemies will attack Marth in FE1 only for their attacks to be sealed by Falchion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ping Posted October 31, 2023 Author Share Posted October 31, 2023 (edited) Note: The text after the big ol' spoiler tag seems to have a slight indent in the editor. I expect similar layout fuckery as I had in a previous post, and would like to apologise in advance. edit: Oh god, double spoiler tag fuckery. I swear I only clicked the eye symbol a single time while making the post. FE2 Chapter 5: Reunion, yet... Endgame Spoiler __ So here's the two screenshots I forgot yesterday. Nothing too special about the two Golds, but I completely missed that Ganeph has the Medusa spell (i.e. "reduce HP to 1"), which may or may not have caused a game over in a first attempt after warping in Alm a bit prematurely. Sticking to Gaiden's principles, this map is far less complicated than FE1's, with most of the incoming enemies coming from the same direction. Only Commander Badass and his two lackeys function as a bit of a flank, so Force goes over there and deals with those. They all deal only 1 dmg to him and he heals 5 HP/turn, nevermind Teeta's Fortify support, so he'll come out on top, eventually. __ Whoever can do so tries to get a stab at the nearest Bigles, but these are an obnoxious enemy type with their high Spd and therefore avoid. __ Silk warps ahead a unit per turn, at first just to counteract some classes' poor Move stat. Teeta just spams Fortify every turn, with Jenny, and then later some nearby Sages, making sure that her own HP remains high enough. Despite my hope, which was fueled by neither Jedah nor Doma having the Messiah spell listed in their stat page, they both summon additional Bigles constantly. Ugh. __ More dead Bigles, etc. You may notice that there's three characters just six tiles away from Judah. I didn't check if he attacks people that step into his range instead of summoning, but he definitely doesn't move. If he uses the general Canter AI, chances are that he'll only summon, but I didn't want, nor need, to risk it. __ Well, it does mean that, with Atlas missing his Fire spell, the Gold Bow Knight next to Judah will have to be kept alive for a turn. ...can you tell what turn it is? That's right! It's Summon More Bigles turn! The surviving Gold goes for Teeta, who does have enough HP to survive - barely, 31 HP / 5 Def vs. 2x20 Atk - but dodges the follow-up anyway, gaining a level that is rather useless at this point in the process. ____ Well then, this looks like a perfect set-up... ...for an Atlas kill. Not quite the crit-one-shot-through-the-dragonshield from Ruben's Echoes run, but us poor Sagittae-less folks have to get by somehow. : "You fools... You will regret this..." Since Kaga is an occasionally merciful god, killing Judah despawns all Bigles from the field, including those summoned by Doma. Who will start summoning new ones, but this is still a nice way of giving the player the option to reset the count by killing an enemy that's somewhat tough to kill. And to make sure that Alm won't not be able to win against him again, Cliff discreetly removes Ganeph from the picture right after this. So then, hopefully this will work better this time. Step one: Kill one of the Witches. Alm deals enough damage to make sure that she can't cast Aura to counterattack, so that's neat. Interestingly, Doma moves to attack - but attacks from melee range, even though he has a ranged option. The main site even cites 1-8 range, but that never comes up in this particular fight. Also, Doma looks pretty lovecraftian, I have to say. Hard to tell what's what in his battle sprite, honestly. Anyway, Doma hits Alm for 19 Dmg, while Alm retaliates for 2x12. Next warp-in: a +crit support for Alm. __ But first, Est and Cliff do a bit of chip damage - 2x7 dmg from Est, which means that Cliff dealt 2x8, but I didn't catch that on a screenshot. As you can see, Doma "equips" his EyeBeam when attacked from range - which only has 1-2 range, as opposed to his Tentacles' overkill range, so Cliff comes out of this unscathed. Not quite enough! I don't think Celica's chip would've helped, either. She didn't get to Ragnarök, so her strongest spell would've been Seraphim, with which she would've dealt 2x4 damage. __ On the plus side, this gave Force the time he needed to make clear who's the real badass here. He took a bit longer than he needed because Gharnef used Fortify... twice, I believe, and of course his hit rates weren't amazing against the Dreadfighters. Well then, nothing to do but end turn and hope that the Witches won't suddenly do smart things. Doma himself doesn't, summoning a bunch of Bigles instead. And the Witches don't do anything, it seems, even though Sonia's sister summoned them the previous turn. That's a lot of HP regeneration. Too much for me to be bothered to try and set up a Nosferatu kill. Plus, I wouldn't mind if the main character crit-killing the final boss would become a theme in this thing. Mars, you know what to do. Time for the ending dialogue! : "Carry both Doma's power and Mila's love... You must never repeat these events... Never again disturb our slumber..." Narrator: "Thus, the war ended. Many have died, but now Valentia sees peace." Because Rudolf was a man with a genius plan? Oh. "There is but one thing said: If mankind again grows too arrogant... The flames of war shall rekindle. All will be lost... A most dire end. That, perhaps, will remain in our hearts." I'm honestly a bit stumped looking at the ending and aesop. I was under the impression that Rudolf's Grand Plan was to rid humankind from the gods, so that they can become more than just the playthings of a higher power. But then Doma's death quote doesn't suggest any retreat as such - more that he has been asleep this whole time, given that their slumber should never again be disturbed... And then the aesop basically calls the entire conflict pointless ("Why did this war occur? No one knows."), or a product of human arrogance. So what, Rudolf did rise up against the gods but was an arrogant fool for doing so? Maybe it's a "it makes perfect sense in the original language" situation, but to me, the entire ending seems like it was attached to the wrong game. After that, and before the credit roll, we get a list of the cast - ten of them with a portrait... ...and then the rest just in a big ol' list. The characters seemingly important enough to warrant a picture are Alm, Celica, Mycen, Cliff, Force, Jesse, Claire, Est, Silk, and Kamui, unless I missed somebody and it's actually more than that. Which I suspect I did, since there's five of Alm's companions listed and only three of Celica's, unless the game still registers Jesse as being on Celica's team. __ And finally, character endings. I won't show all of them - they're on the main site anyways, and a bunch of them are just... ...this, word for word. A few details: On the main site, Claire's ending also mentions that she is pulling a Catria, holding a torch for the main character, but this is absent from this translation patch. In general, the endings on the main site tend to be a bit more elaborate, so this might've been a space issue. *sigh* That's a lame moniker. "So he's a mercenary from the desert. What should we call him...?" __ B-but the pickings! The pickings were easy! Dyute "sealing her magic" kinda makes sense, since it got her kaga'ed in this story, even though she didn't seem particularly traumatised by it. Kinda selfish, innit? __ It might be petty, but I'm glad that it's not the "In marrying Alm, she became queen" line from Echoes. That one always annoyed me a lot. ...so was stabbing Doma essential, after all? I am confuse. And shall remain thus forevermore. Fin. So what do I make of Gaiden... Spoiler To get the elephant out of the room: Gaiden mostly fails in what's probably the most important aspect of a Fire Emblem game, which is basic map design. To a degree, I think I understand the basic premise - outdoor maps in FE1 (and in most other FE games) tend to give the impression that you're moving single characters across an area that spans kilometres of terrain. The very first map of the series shows an entire island kingdom, including a castle, a mountain range, and some villages, which I assume are more than a sand castle between a few little beach huts, and the struggle between seven defenders fending off fourteen invaders is taking place on this entire little kingdom. That is a bit silly, if you take it seriously, so I can understand the direction of making the maps look like they're just, like, the plains outside a village or a single graveyard, to take a look at Alm and Celica's respective first maps. I understand the change to more fights on smaller maps on a gameplay level, too. Permadeath is a hotly contested gameplay mechanic to this day, and I can imagine that not every player was on board with Kaga's ironmanly vision of replacing fallen characters with a lesser, or maybe just underleveled, alternative. Gaiden's shorter fights take a lot of the sting out of this, even if we ignore the expansion from one lategame Aum staff to multiple Revival fountains for now, since you can't lose your favourite waifu to a crit on turn 19 when fights tend to be over in 10 turns, if not less. However, this unfortunately fails on two levels. Firstly, Gaiden's maps are, I'm sorry to say, really ugly. I'm personally completely devoid of any visual artistic talents, so I don't presume this to be an informed opinion, but I think this is at least in part because the NES graphics work better for the zoomed out perspective of FE1 - it allows the map designer to plonk down three hills and a mountain somewhere and make the map immediately less monotone with that, while Gaiden can't just say that actually, there's a really tiny mountain just outside Ram. That said, there are a few maps that look better. Ruben pointed out the waterfall on the map following the Necrodragon ambush, for example; the boat maps didn't really bother me, either; and while the final map has a rather dreary palette, it at least has some structure in it. So maybe it was a time/budget issue, too? Or not enough space on the cartridge to paint pretty pictures? Whatever it is, FE1 has Gaiden easily beat in the visual department. And, of course, also in the gameplay subdepartment of map design. I've voiced a fair share of criticism on FE1, too - some specific maps that didn't flow well at all, and more generally an abundance of pointless walking around, which Gaiden sometimes shares, sometimes avoids, and occasionally worsens to an infuriating degree - but I think it's not too controversial to call Gaiden the worst map design of the series. Well, it's possible that Genealogy will change that opinion with consistently oversized maps, or Thracia with actively hostile design choices, but Gaiden's definitely at the bottom of the barrel out of the games I've played (...past the first map) thus far. Chapter 1 gives us pretty much map non-design; chapter 2 is... actually not too bad; but then Celica's half of chapter 3 comes with a vengance and gifts us the worst desert map imaginable. It becomes better (in a "less bad" sense of the word) after that, although that development is greatly helped by the game being more lenient with ways to ignore the maps - Warp on Alm's side and the Whitewings on Celica's. That was quite the rant on just one subject, but as I opened with - I think it's the most important one, and it harshly overshadows the improvements that Gaiden did make over OG Fire Emblem. With the exception of the most egregiously bad maps (and, really, I'm mostly talking about the Archer fort in the desert here), Gaiden is more easily played than FE1. Inventory management? Well, maybe the complete removal of weapon durability and reducing a character's inventory to a single item is "dumbing down" the system. I personally don't mind, even compared to games where swapping items around isn't a huge pain, and I definitely think it's an improvement over FE1's complete mess of moving any item to where you want to be. Stat clarity? Well, we're still not quite there. You still have to visit serenesforest.net in order to check the stats on magic spells (or figure them out yourself, which would be quite the pain for weight), and I don't think it's possible to figure out the base hit rate of *any* weapon in the game, unless you're really good at reading the in-battle stat bars. However, since the strength and weight of a weapon is directly applied to a character's Str and Spd, you can at least figure out the outcome of a fight between physical fighters with very basic math. Cool Shit? Yeah, more of that than FE1, too. As people have mentioned, walking across the final map as Celica to reach Judah is a cool little feature. Celica struggling for survival while Alm is screwing around in the underground ruins? That's amazing and I should've mentioned it before, especially after my complains that Celica was just passively letting things happen to her previously, and my suggestion that she's probably just waiting for Alm to rescue her. The Lion Heads are better versions of the usual stat boosters, since they incentivise the player to use them right now instead of hoarding, and it's neat that they can be split between characters, and that you have to pick between two different stats. The Angel Ring? Yeah, give me those amazing +2 Lck level-ups. FE1 had the funny OP stat boosters, but Gaiden just has a bunch of, well, cool shit. And even though I didn't lose nearly as much words over these, they still manage to at the very least lessen the distance to FE1. However, I do have to bring up another annoyance that wasn't quite there in FE1: Accuracy. Honestly, Gaiden felt like people say BinBla feels, with very inconsistent hit rates all the time and very few options to make up for it, at least for a good while. One big issue: Stone floor tiles giving +20 avoid. Seriously, remove that and a lot of the indoor (or "siege") maps become a lot less annoying. However, even without that, there's a lot of variance at every step, with Steel weapons only having 80 base hit, or bows even bringing it down to 70. With Skl only increasing hit at a 1:1 ratio, this makes the Archer class in particular really annoying to use, at least until you get the Holy Bow or the Silver Bow. Well, and unless your Cliff decides to grow Def like mad, so it doesn't matter too much if he takes a bit longer to duel any enemy. And this also extends to magic spells, to a greater extend than in FE1, where the only stat influencing a spell's accuracy was the target's Lck stat, which was zero for all enemies. In Gaiden, magic avoid was increased to Spd+Lck, with some enemies being pretty darn evasive as a result. The Bigles are fresh on the mind, but spell accuracy against the basic Mercenaries early on Celica's route is already a bit annoying: Where Wendell or Marich would've had 80% accuracy, Celica, Boey, and Mae only have 69% even against a Lv.1 Merc. The chance that two consecutive Fire spells hit goes down from 64% to only 48%; nevermind if you need to use Thunder to get a second attack in. Magic goes from this highly accurate tool to one that's actually more flimsy than a basic sword half of the time (the other half, the enemy is standing on terrain), which is a bit of a shame. With all that negativity... does Gaiden go into the D tier? To be transparent, this is absolutely what I anticipated going into it, absolutely supported by the fact that my first playthough of the game fizzled out after Celica's chapter 3, i.e. the absolute worst that Gaiden gets. And that part of the game absolutely is D tier, no doubt about it. But the rest... Yeah, I think it's "flawed but still fun" and not the "I don't want to play this" that I consider D tier to be. Compared to FE1, which occasionally made me believe I was playing a B tier game, Gaiden didn't really have those highs and overall trends more towards D than B as a result, but I'm still comfortable putting Gaiden into C tier, if below FE1 within that. Maybe a generous rating, but I don't want to label this game as just "bad". Before we go into the Old Mystery of the Emblem, I'll take quick stock of the unit requests so that you can shout at me if yours has been overloocked: For Book 1 we have... Biraku/Vyland (requested by Dayni) Bantu (recommended as temporary unit) (Zapp Branniglenn) Hardin (Jotari) Macellan (Ruben) Maji (Shaky) Arran (Shaky) And for Book 2... Warren (Dayni) Bantu (suggested as temporary by Zapp Branniglenn; requested as a starshard target by the Observer and Ruben) Tiki (Interdimensional Observer, and I think Ruben didn't mind the Double Dragon request) Mathis (Ruben, approved by Shaky) Yumina, and NOT Malliensa (Ruben) Arran (Shaky) For Jugdral, only Dayni has made requests thus far, way back on the first page: Pairing Aideen and Midir in Genealogy, and partying with Marty in Thracia. For what it's worth, I also looked up Genealogy pairings when I played through the prologue... two years ago, according to the age of the save file. I assume that the majority of these are the most basic picks, so feel free to suggest alternatives, although I'd appreciate ones that don't go into self-sabotaging territory. (and no, I don't want to do an all-substitutes run as my first Genealogy experience) Seliph: have him inherit Paragon Ring and Leg Ring and a good sword (Silver?) Leaf: Pursuit Band, has to be on Ethlin Aideen/Midir: Lester, Lana Pursuit on Lester, can inherit a good bow, while Lana isn't very stat-dependent. Ayra/Holyn: Ulster, Larcei Overkill Skl, as well als Luna, for all the procs; inheritable swords for Ulster. Lachesis/Beowulf: Dermott, Nanna Pursuit, Accost, easy to pass swords to Dermott Sylvia/---: Leyla, Sharlow Substitutes don't seem worse than the kids Claude/Erynies: Fee, Ced Magic-based - works great for Ced, while Fee gets by with magic swords and the Brave Lance Bridget/Lex: Faval, Patty Paragon+Vantage; makes Patty decent if you can get her to promote Tiltyu/Lewin: Arthur, Tinny Forseti on Arthur, who joins very early. Magic dad seems good for both kids. 17 hours ago, Jotari said: Rudolf not just killing Doma himself actually is given justification in Shadows if Valentia via Mila sealing Falchion stopping anyone from using it...it's just a shame the game didn't realize that was fixing the plot hole as elsewhere they really go full on the prophecy and Rudolf putting full faith (and everyone's lives) into magic birthmarks. In Gaiden, or at least the fan translation, Rudolf doesn't even need Alm specifically, he just hoped for a hero of some sort to emerge and unite the continent. Interesting points. I was reading into Rudolf's lines that he was intending for Alm to be the hero who will defeat him, but that might just be an assumption on my part brought by my exposure to Echoes. Rudolf becoming a villain so that *somebody* may become a hero by defeating him does mean that things don't just have to happen in a very specific fashion on their own, although from how @Interdimensional Observer describes it, it seems that Super Robot Wars had created a still more plausible version of that story. From your (the Observer's) summary, a big reason why Bian's plot works better seems to be that he has a very direct reason to do his questionable things - I assume they're questionable, since he's the villain and a "global military regime" doesn't exactly sound like a heroic thing to establish. But I can see the logic - *he* does morally dark grey stuff, so when he's overthrown, the new guys will have both the power necessary to fight the aliens (since they're evidently stronger than he) and clean slate in a moral sense. 16 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said: As for Rudolf, amending his plans to be the same as Bian's doesn't sound terrible. Rudolf wants to end the rule of the gods, and vanquish the Duma Cult. Hm. Also a small detail that I don't think works well with the whole "evil god Doma" angle. 17 hours ago, Jotari said: I once made a thread celebrating the fact that there was a boss called Badass and the mods renamed the thread to Bahdess >.> Yeah, thread titles are watched more strictly than posts. I had "shitposting" sanitised into "s***posting" before while both it and "fucking dead" were still cool in the OP. And I don't know if the thread "I *redacted* hate tellius tomes" always had *redacted* in its title. 15 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: I should've know you'd have done this. I really should've. Ruben has it too good. Don't complain, I didn't even use either "easy" or "pickings" to describe that. Plus, Ryuto genuinely has better expected damage vs. Rudolf than most (if not all) other units on the field. 39% accuracy is bad, sure, but Rudolf takes really little damage from physical attacks, and the Horseslayer has bad accuracy, too. And while Dyute can hit even harder with Aura, she also has a whopping 19% accuracy with it, so she'd have to use Seraphim, instead... at 29% hit. 15 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: A scale where Corrin is the best. This doesn't seem like the most ideal rating system. Imagine IGN rating a game from 1 to Genealogy, or what they probably wanted to do for Engage, 1 to 3 Houses. I didn't say I rated quality. I was rating insanity. 15 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: Nosferatu gaming it was. ...what's Doma's Res stat, again? I mean, how high-level were your Saints to even deal meaningful damage to him? Or did you figure out how to bring him from, like, 53 HP to 3 to make it work? 15 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: something something Alm is her world I didn't take you for the hapless romantic type. 15 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: I'm already getting confuzzled. Who's getting used in which book? Roshe was used in FE1 Biraku/Vyland will be used in Book 1 Matthis will be used in Book 2 15 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: You didn't have the kind of Maji Ruben did. You failed. Nono. I sailed. (thank you for setting up that incredibly stupid joke) 13 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: It just occurred to me that Kaga probably made Mycen non-playable, until the very end, so that he could show up to explain the plot. If he existed as a typical "Jagen", then he could die in the very first map. Which, in pre-FE7 design philosophy, meant that he couldn't stick around to do any exposition. That seems like a likely explaination, actually. Although... 13 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: This guy existed in the original? And he had hair?!? ...this guy would've been right there to do the expositioning instead, maybe with a little "if Meißen dead" clause. 13 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: Again - really cool and impressive, to see that programmed into an NES game! Curious that Celica, Genny, and - of all people - Atlas, are immune. Yeah, a pretty cool gameplay/story integration, especially for its time. It is probably just random chance that Jenny and Atlas (and Celica, for that matter) didn't get injured. But I like to imagine that Jenny was standing in the back like a good Physic-knowing healer, while Atlas was raining down fire and brimstone from afar because he was wearing the Magic Ring. Edited October 31, 2023 by gnip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saint Rubenio Posted October 31, 2023 Share Posted October 31, 2023 I fell behind for the endgame, then I forgot to close a duplicate tab and Serenes ate half my reply. Fuck my life. 22 hours ago, gnip said: I've gotta agree with Jotari, younger Rudolf is better. There wasn't any need to make him look older than Meißen in SoV, either. They could've done a similar design while keeping the brown hair and the stache. But I guess then he wouldn't have looked as overtly like Walmart, so... Worth the reference, I suppose? 22 hours ago, gnip said: After that, Rudolf goes into coward AI, which I also wouldn't have expected, considering he's currently committing suicide by offspring. Feels like one of those narrative details that Kaga would include. Kaga has the weirdest oversights sometimes, which often leads to the funniest exploits. 22 hours ago, gnip said: What is very much worth talking about is Force getting a +2 Spd level. Look at that titanic speed stat. He's not getting doubled no more! Let's see Rutger pull this off! 22 hours ago, gnip said: Third time's the charm, though. : "Alm... You've grown up well... Was it no mistake entrusting you to Sir Mycen after all? You figured it out by now, right? Your full name is Albyne Alm Rudolf. My...only son... Guh... I have a last request... Use 'Falcion', the holy sword that sealed Mila... Defeat...the evil god...Doma..." Gehahahahahahaa! To pick, it is not easy. But for one like Ryuto? Easy pickings. 22 hours ago, gnip said: Meißen got! Now you gotta use him. For all four fights he exists. 22 hours ago, gnip said: "Prince Albyne. I am General Massena, the captain of the king's guards. We have heard our late King's final words and assembled here." I seem to recall him saying a lot more in SoV. He seems remarkably purposeless here. 22 hours ago, gnip said: Occasionally (and randomly, I think), after entering a new screen, this pop-up turns up, in which a few characters on Celica's team lose a few hit points - 4 HP for Kamui and 3 HP for Dean this time, to give you an idea of the magnitude. I wonder if this can actually kill characters, or if Celica will just be accompanied by a bunch of characters with 1 HP if you keep losing your way. I didn't see Celica lose any HP, so it seems that it isn't possible to get a game over by dawdling. __ A bit later, you can actually see Celica struggling. Technically in the wrong part of the map, but I can forgive that. If you approach the bars, Celica will notice you and come over: No joke, these are all cool details. 22 hours ago, gnip said: Hah! Map design! 22 hours ago, gnip said: Doma is flanked by two Bow Knights named Gold, as well as... Gharnef? Well, show's over, we can't win against him. Seems I forgot to pull those two pictures onto the USB stick. Imagine two generic enemies, although Gharnef does have a portrait. Nuibaba's, I believe. And a slightly different name, although I don't know how that is in Japanese. No, no. You can't win against Garnef. Gharnef is a pussy. 22 hours ago, gnip said: I decided to distribute the three epic Cavs over the three Mars games, if you recall, so that's why Biraku is obligatory in Book 1. And I think Dayni specifically requested him in that incarnation, too. Fair enough! I believe I had accepted Matthis on book 2 back then anyway. 22 hours ago, gnip said: He wasn't hard to use, he just didn't have Darros's excellence and fell slowly behind as a result. He's lucky that Darros has found a ship to sail for Book 1. I'll see how Arran can do - I can't make any endgame promises because Bantu has first dibs on the starshards, though. Dragons being what they are in FE3, I imagine he'll be the last character to have problems keeping up. 1 hour ago, gnip said: Despite my hope, which was fueled by neither Jedah nor Doma having the Messiah spell listed in their stat page, they both summon additional Bigles constantly. Ugh. The final map consists of moving one tile at a time until Celica gets one-rounded by a spermatozoid and the game refuses to let you turnwheel. ...Or at least I imagine it does. 1 hour ago, gnip said: Since Kaga is an occasionally merciful god, killing Judah despawns all Bigles from the field, including those summoned by Doma. Who will start summoning new ones, but this is still a nice way of giving the player the option to reset the count by killing an enemy that's somewhat tough to kill. If I had to hazard a guess, they're probably all flagged as "summoned" and get murdered when a summoner dies. Come to think of it, is there another map in the game with multiple summoners? If there are, it'd be weird that it only works like this in this specific map. 1 hour ago, gnip said: Plus, I wouldn't mind if the main character crit-killing the final boss would become a theme in this thing. Mars, you know what to do. I would, main character kills are really boring. 1 hour ago, gnip said: I like this. It's a fun screenshot. 1 hour ago, gnip said: And then the aesop basically calls the entire conflict pointless ("Why did this war occur? No one knows."), or a product of human arrogance. So what, Rudolf did rise up against the gods but was an arrogant fool for doing so? Maybe it's a "it makes perfect sense in the original language" situation, but to me, the entire ending seems like it was attached to the wrong game. Rudolf may have just been wrong about everything. 1 hour ago, gnip said: __ One more time, folks. Meißen 1 hour ago, gnip said: I recall there's a manga where he was established to have traveled to Archanea, found his way to Khadein and become friends with Merric during his studies. Then again, that manga may've established that happened before Gaiden, so its authenticity is questionable. 1 hour ago, gnip said: It might be petty, but I'm glad that it's not the "In marrying Alm, she became queen" line from Echoes. That one always annoyed me a lot. Cancel Maeda 1 hour ago, gnip said: So what do I make of Gaiden... This part is super buggy and I can't read it. 1 hour ago, gnip said: And for Book 2... Warren (Dayni) Bantu (suggested as temporary by Zapp Branniglenn; requested as a starshard target by the Observer and Ruben) Tiki (Interdimensional Observer, and I think Ruben didn't mind the Double Dragon request) Mathis (Ruben, approved by Shaky) Yumina, and NOT Malliensa (Ruben) Arran (Shaky) Use Yubello for coolest kids duo, if you have the room. Wouldn't want to hog the entire team. 1 hour ago, gnip said: For Jugdral, only Dayni has made requests thus far, way back on the first page: Pairing Aideen and Midir in Genealogy, and partying with Marty in Thracia. Genealogy is, like Gaiden, a game with very little flexibility. Less, in fact, since there's no such thing as villagers. Literally the only variance in FE4 is how hard you break the game with the gen 2 kids. Aside from telling you to massacre the entirety of gen 1 so you can get subs instead of broken children, I wouldn't know what to say. For the record, unlike the "all soldiers" thing, that's an unironic suggestion. The substitute kids are fine, usable, and unlike their proper counterparts, they don't completely break the game, leading to... marginally more fun. Marginally, you still have a few unavoidable broken kids and you might end up relying on them anyway. Heck, in one particular pairing's case, the subs are straight up better than the actual kids! Not by much, certainly not enough to break the game on the level of folks like Ced, but they're a little better in certain ways. So uh, if you aren't entirely opposed to carnage suggestions seriously, considering murderizing (avoiding marriages is too difficult but if you want to try, it's an option) Sylvia at the end of gen 1 to get her substitutes. And Erinys, Erinys's subs are also very cool. Oh, and don't let Finn marry, having him pass down his brave lance would simply be deplorable. Hey, I ended up coming with stuff in the end when I thought hard enough! Truly a mage Atlas moment. Take this into consideration. We'll get to Thracia. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted October 31, 2023 Share Posted October 31, 2023 1 hour ago, gnip said: And shall remain thus forevermore. 👏 Glad it's over?😃 1 hour ago, gnip said: For what it's worth, I also looked up Genealogy pairings when I played through the prologue... two years ago, according to the age of the save file. I assume that the majority of these are the most basic picks, so feel free to suggest alternatives, although I'd appreciate ones that don't go into self-sabotaging territory. (and no, I don't want to do an all-substitutes run as my first Genealogy experience) Seliph: have him inherit Paragon Ring and Leg Ring and a good sword (Silver?) Leaf: Pursuit Band, has to be on Ethlin Aideen/Midir: Lester, Lana Pursuit on Lester, can inherit a good bow, while Lana isn't very stat-dependent. Ayra/Holyn: Ulster, Larcei Overkill Skl, as well als Luna, for all the procs; inheritable swords for Ulster. Lachesis/Beowulf: Dermott, Nanna Pursuit, Accost, easy to pass swords to Dermott Sylvia/---: Leyla, Sharlow Substitutes don't seem worse than the kids Claude/Erynies: Fee, Ced Magic-based - works great for Ced, while Fee gets by with magic swords and the Brave Lance Bridget/Lex: Faval, Patty Paragon+Vantage; makes Patty decent if you can get her to promote Tiltyu/Lewin: Arthur, Tinny Forseti on Arthur, who joins very early. Magic dad seems good for both kids. Holyn/Chulainn is another good alternative for Brigid. Thief is C Sword, the Minor Odr would bump it to B, enough for Patty to inherit a Brave. Bows are a little inaccurate in FE4 too -70 Hit on Yewfelle- which Minor Odr helps fix (we're talking a 35% vs. 95% growth comparing the two dads). Chulainn also results in a funny 175% HP growth for Febail. Ayra in that case can get Lex. Or Naoise who has nice skills. You can't mess up her kids, you can only make them good or gooder. If you don't want to use any substitutes, then ErinysxAzelle and SylviaxCluad is fine. -But Eriaud and Unpaired Sylvia would probably be more ideal, even if Gen 2 is FE4's easier half. And yeah for Seliph, the SSS (Sigurd's Silver Sword) and those two rings are all he needs. He might like a magic sword too, but that's optional. You can sell the rings later ofc. 1 hour ago, gnip said: From your (the Observer's) summary, a big reason why Bian's plot works better seems to be that he has a very direct reason to do his questionable things - I assume they're questionable, since he's the villain and a "global military regime" doesn't exactly sound like a heroic thing to establish. But I can see the logic - *he* does morally dark grey stuff, so when he's overthrown, the new guys will have both the power necessary to fight the aliens (since they're evidently stronger than he) and clean slate in a moral sense. First, half-sorry that I went on that tangent, I simply find the temporal-genre-console-villain coincidence unforgettable.😆 But yeah, while Bian's goal was considered noble (the aliens did eventually attack after all), he did become a villain. When after his death his daughter shows up, she spends three minutes feigning wanting revenge, but she then joins the heroes. She admits her father had been consumed by the amount of power he had amassed, she's fine that he had to die. ...I wrote more, but I'll cut it off here, b/c it is kinda off topic.😅 4 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said: Oh, and don't let Finn marry, having him pass down his brave lance would simply be deplorable. Hey, I ended up coming with stuff in the end when I thought hard enough! Truly a mage Atlas moment. Take this into consideration. Get Finn to promotion in Gen 1, give him a Silver, pass the Brave to Erinys for Fee. That works just fine. 37 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said: I've gotta agree with Jotari, younger Rudolf is better. There wasn't any need to make him look older than Meißen in SoV, either. They could've done a similar design while keeping the brown hair and the stache. But I guess then he wouldn't have looked as overtly like Walmart, so... Worth the reference, I suppose? I dunno, the fierce expression seems enough in line with Wally if you ask me. No need to make him appear older and more gentle. 46 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said: Dragons being what they are in FE3, I imagine he'll be the last character to have problems keeping up. Arran could easily take Libra at least. Spd is utterly useless for FE3 Manaketes. 49 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said: Marginally, you still have a few unavoidable broken kids and you might end up relying on them anyway. Annnnnnnnd Seliph, Leif, Shannan, Ares and Nos!Julia. Oifaye and Finn aren't bad either. The fixed units are in themselves plenty good crutches. Two 30 Mt sword users in the second Gen 2 chapter is still a little breaky-breaky. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saint Rubenio Posted October 31, 2023 Share Posted October 31, 2023 19 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Get Finn to promotion in Gen 1, give him a Silver, pass the Brave to Erinys for Fee. That works just fine. The brave lance belongs to Finn. Fee can't exist because I literally just said to kill Erinys for subs can have the silver if she likes. 20 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Arran could easily take Libra at least. Spd is utterly useless for FE3 Manaketes. Yeah that's fair enough. 20 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Annnnnnnnd Seliph, Leif, Shannan, Ares and Nos!Julia. Oifaye and Finn aren't bad either. The fixed units are in themselves plenty good crutches. Two 30 Mt sword users in the second Gen 2 chapter is still a little breaky-breaky. Substitute runs do help Oifey shine. If all the kids are properly bred, dude's just extremely redundant, because the game plays itself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaky Jones Posted October 31, 2023 Share Posted October 31, 2023 15 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: Again - really cool and impressive, to see that programmed into an NES game! Curious that Celica, Genny, and - of all people - Atlas, are immune. Virgin "Genealogy had such great story gameplay integration" vs Chad "temple damage timer? Splendid" enjoyer. 2 hours ago, gnip said: Note: The text after the big ol' spoiler tag seems to have a slight indent in the editor. I expect similar layout fuckery as I had in a previous post, and would like to apologise in advance. edit: Oh god, double spoiler tag fuckery. I swear I only clicked the eye symbol a single time while making the post. FE2 Chapter 5: Reunion, yet... Endgame Reveal hidden contents __ So here's the two screenshots I forgot yesterday. Nothing too special about the two Golds, but I completely missed that Ganeph has the Medusa spell (i.e. "reduce HP to 1"), which may or may not have caused a game over in a first attempt after warping in Alm a bit prematurely. Sticking to Gaiden's principles, this map is far less complicated than FE1's, with most of the incoming enemies coming from the same direction. Only Commander Badass and his two lackeys function as a bit of a flank, so Force goes over there and deals with those. They all deal only 1 dmg to him and he heals 5 HP/turn, nevermind Teeta's Fortify support, so he'll come out on top, eventually. __ Whoever can do so tries to get a stab at the nearest Bigles, but these are an obnoxious enemy type with their high Spd and therefore avoid. __ Silk warps ahead a unit per turn, at first just to counteract some classes' poor Move stat. Teeta just spams Fortify every turn, with Jenny, and then later some nearby Sages, making sure that her own HP remains high enough. Despite my hope, which was fueled by neither Jedah nor Doma having the Messiah spell listed in their stat page, they both summon additional Bigles constantly. Ugh. __ More dead Bigles, etc. You may notice that there's three characters just six tiles away from Judah. I didn't check if he attacks people that step into his range instead of summoning, but he definitely doesn't move. If he uses the general Canter AI, chances are that he'll only summon, but I didn't want, nor need, to risk it. __ Well, it does mean that, with Atlas missing his Fire spell, the Gold Bow Knight next to Judah will have to be kept alive for a turn. ...can you tell what turn it is? That's right! It's Summon More Bigles turn! The surviving Gold goes for Teeta, who does have enough HP to survive - barely, 31 HP / 5 Def vs. 2x20 Atk - but dodges the follow-up anyway, gaining a level that is rather useless at this point in the process. ____ Well then, this looks like a perfect set-up... ...for an Atlas kill. Not quite the crit-one-shot-through-the-dragonshield from Ruben's Echoes run, but us poor Sagittae-less folks have to get by somehow. : "You fools... You will regret this..." Since Kaga is an occasionally merciful god, killing Judah despawns all Bigles from the field, including those summoned by Doma. Who will start summoning new ones, but this is still a nice way of giving the player the option to reset the count by killing an enemy that's somewhat tough to kill. And to make sure that Alm won't not be able to win against him again, Cliff discreetly removes Ganeph from the picture right after this. So then, hopefully this will work better this time. Step one: Kill one of the Witches. Alm deals enough damage to make sure that she can't cast Aura to counterattack, so that's neat. Interestingly, Doma moves to attack - but attacks from melee range, even though he has a ranged option. The main site even cites 1-8 range, but that never comes up in this particular fight. Also, Doma looks pretty lovecraftian, I have to say. Hard to tell what's what in his battle sprite, honestly. Anyway, Doma hits Alm for 19 Dmg, while Alm retaliates for 2x12. Next warp-in: a +crit support for Alm. __ But first, Est and Cliff do a bit of chip damage - 2x7 dmg from Est, which means that Cliff dealt 2x8, but I didn't catch that on a screenshot. As you can see, Doma "equips" his EyeBeam when attacked from range - which only has 1-2 range, as opposed to his Tentacles' overkill range, so Cliff comes out of this unscathed. Not quite enough! I don't think Celica's chip would've helped, either. She didn't get to Ragnarök, so her strongest spell would've been Seraphim, with which she would've dealt 2x4 damage. __ On the plus side, this gave Force the time he needed to make clear who's the real badass here. He took a bit longer than he needed because Gharnef used Fortify... twice, I believe, and of course his hit rates weren't amazing against the Dreadfighters. Well then, nothing to do but end turn and hope that the Witches won't suddenly do smart things. Doma himself doesn't, summoning a bunch of Bigles instead. And the Witches don't do anything, it seems, even though Sonia's sister summoned them the previous turn. That's a lot of HP regeneration. Too much for me to be bothered to try and set up a Nosferatu kill. Plus, I wouldn't mind if the main character crit-killing the final boss would become a theme in this thing. Mars, you know what to do. Time for the ending dialogue! : "Carry both Doma's power and Mila's love... You must never repeat these events... Never again disturb our slumber..." Narrator: "Thus, the war ended. Many have died, but now Valentia sees peace." Because Rudolf was a man with a genius plan? Oh. "There is but one thing said: If mankind again grows too arrogant... The flames of war shall rekindle. All will be lost... A most dire end. That, perhaps, will remain in our hearts." I'm honestly a bit stumped looking at the ending and aesop. I was under the impression that Rudolf's Grand Plan was to rid humankind from the gods, so that they can become more than just the playthings of a higher power. But then Doma's death quote doesn't suggest any retreat as such - more that he has been asleep this whole time, given that their slumber should never again be disturbed... And then the aesop basically calls the entire conflict pointless ("Why did this war occur? No one knows."), or a product of human arrogance. So what, Rudolf did rise up against the gods but was an arrogant fool for doing so? Maybe it's a "it makes perfect sense in the original language" situation, but to me, the entire ending seems like it was attached to the wrong game. After that, and before the credit roll, we get a list of the cast - ten of them with a portrait... ...and then the rest just in a big ol' list. The characters seemingly important enough to warrant a picture are Alm, Celica, Mycen, Cliff, Force, Jesse, Claire, Est, Silk, and Kamui, unless I missed somebody and it's actually more than that. Which I suspect I did, since there's five of Alm's companions listed and only three of Celica's, unless the game still registers Jesse as being on Celica's team. __ And finally, character endings. I won't show all of them - they're on the main site anyways, and a bunch of them are just... ...this, word for word. A few details: On the main site, Claire's ending also mentions that she is pulling a Catria, holding a torch for the main character, but this is absent from this translation patch. In general, the endings on the main site tend to be a bit more elaborate, so this might've been a space issue. *sigh* That's a lame moniker. "So he's a mercenary from the desert. What should we call him...?" __ B-but the pickings! The pickings were easy! Dyute "sealing her magic" kinda makes sense, since it got her kaga'ed in this story, even though she didn't seem particularly traumatised by it. Kinda selfish, innit? __ It might be petty, but I'm glad that it's not the "In marrying Alm, she became queen" line from Echoes. That one always annoyed me a lot. ...so was stabbing Doma essential, after all? I am confuse. And shall remain thus forevermore. Fin. Reveal hidden contents So what do I make of Gaiden... Reveal hidden contents Reveal hidden contents To get the elephant out of the room: Gaiden mostly fails in what's probably the most important aspect of a Fire Emblem game, which is basic map design. To a degree, I think I understand the basic premise - outdoor maps in FE1 (and in most other FE games) tend to give the impression that you're moving single characters across an area that spans kilometres of terrain. The very first map of the series shows an entire island kingdom, including a castle, a mountain range, and some villages, which I assume are more than a sand castle between a few little beach huts, and the struggle between seven defenders fending off fourteen invaders is taking place on this entire little kingdom. That is a bit silly, if you take it seriously, so I can understand the direction of making the maps look like they're just, like, the plains outside a village or a single graveyard, to take a look at Alm and Celica's respective first maps. I understand the change to more fights on smaller maps on a gameplay level, too. Permadeath is a hotly contested gameplay mechanic to this day, and I can imagine that not every player was on board with Kaga's ironmanly vision of replacing fallen characters with a lesser, or maybe just underleveled, alternative. Gaiden's shorter fights take a lot of the sting out of this, even if we ignore the expansion from one lategame Aum staff to multiple Revival fountains for now, since you can't lose your favourite waifu to a crit on turn 19 when fights tend to be over in 10 turns, if not less. However, this unfortunately fails on two levels. Firstly, Gaiden's maps are, I'm sorry to say, really ugly. I'm personally completely devoid of any visual artistic talents, so I don't presume this to be an informed opinion, but I think this is at least in part because the NES graphics work better for the zoomed out perspective of FE1 - it allows the map designer to plonk down three hills and a mountain somewhere and make the map immediately less monotone with that, while Gaiden can't just say that actually, there's a really tiny mountain just outside Ram. That said, there are a few maps that look better. Ruben pointed out the waterfall on the map following the Necrodragon ambush, for example; the boat maps didn't really bother me, either; and while the final map has a rather dreary palette, it at least has some structure in it. So maybe it was a time/budget issue, too? Or not enough space on the cartridge to paint pretty pictures? Whatever it is, FE1 has Gaiden easily beat in the visual department. And, of course, also in the gameplay subdepartment of map design. I've voiced a fair share of criticism on FE1, too - some specific maps that didn't flow well at all, and more generally an abundance of pointless walking around, which Gaiden sometimes shares, sometimes avoids, and occasionally worsens to an infuriating degree - but I think it's not too controversial to call Gaiden the worst map design of the series. Well, it's possible that Genealogy will change that opinion with consistently oversized maps, or Thracia with actively hostile design choices, but Gaiden's definitely at the bottom of the barrel out of the games I've played (...past the first map) thus far. Chapter 1 gives us pretty much map non-design; chapter 2 is... actually not too bad; but then Celica's half of chapter 3 comes with a vengance and gifts us the worst desert map imaginable. It becomes better (in a "less bad" sense of the word) after that, although that development is greatly helped by the game being more lenient with ways to ignore the maps - Warp on Alm's side and the Whitewings on Celica's. That was quite the rant on just one subject, but as I opened with - I think it's the most important one, and it harshly overshadows the improvements that Gaiden did make over OG Fire Emblem. With the exception of the most egregiously bad maps (and, really, I'm mostly talking about the Archer fort in the desert here), Gaiden is more easily played than FE1. Inventory management? Well, maybe the complete removal of weapon durability and reducing a character's inventory to a single item is "dumbing down" the system. I personally don't mind, even compared to games where swapping items around isn't a huge pain, and I definitely think it's an improvement over FE1's complete mess of moving any item to where you want to be. Stat clarity? Well, we're still not quite there. You still have to visit serenesforest.net in order to check the stats on magic spells (or figure them out yourself, which would be quite the pain for weight), and I don't think it's possible to figure out the base hit rate of *any* weapon in the game, unless you're really good at reading the in-battle stat bars. However, since the strength and weight of a weapon is directly applied to a character's Str and Spd, you can at least figure out the outcome of a fight between physical fighters with very basic math. Cool Shit? Yeah, more of that than FE1, too. As people have mentioned, walking across the final map as Celica to reach Judah is a cool little feature. Celica struggling for survival while Alm is screwing around in the underground ruins? That's amazing and I should've mentioned it before, especially after my complains that Celica was just passively letting things happen to her previously, and my suggestion that she's probably just waiting for Alm to rescue her. The Lion Heads are better versions of the usual stat boosters, since they incentivise the player to use them right now instead of hoarding, and it's neat that they can be split between characters, and that you have to pick between two different stats. The Angel Ring? Yeah, give me those amazing +2 Lck level-ups. FE1 had the funny OP stat boosters, but Gaiden just has a bunch of, well, cool shit. And even though I didn't lose nearly as much words over these, they still manage to at the very least lessen the distance to FE1. However, I do have to bring up another annoyance that wasn't quite there in FE1: Accuracy. Honestly, Gaiden felt like people say BinBla feels, with very inconsistent hit rates all the time and very few options to make up for it, at least for a good while. One big issue: Stone floor tiles giving +20 avoid. Seriously, remove that and a lot of the indoor (or "siege") maps become a lot less annoying. However, even without that, there's a lot of variance at every step, with Steel weapons only having 80 base hit, or bows even bringing it down to 70. With Skl only increasing hit at a 1:1 ratio, this makes the Archer class in particular really annoying to use, at least until you get the Holy Bow or the Silver Bow. Well, and unless your Cliff decides to grow Def like mad, so it doesn't matter too much if he takes a bit longer to duel any enemy. And this also extends to magic spells, to a greater extend than in FE1, where the only stat influencing a spell's accuracy was the target's Lck stat, which was zero for all enemies. In Gaiden, magic avoid was increased to Spd+Lck, with some enemies being pretty darn evasive as a result. The Bigles are fresh on the mind, but spell accuracy against the basic Mercenaries early on Celica's route is already a bit annoying: Where Wendell or Marich would've had 80% accuracy, Celica, Boey, and Mae only have 69% even against a Lv.1 Merc. The chance that two consecutive Fire spells hit goes down from 64% to only 48%; nevermind if you need to use Thunder to get a second attack in. Magic goes from this highly accurate tool to one that's actually more flimsy than a basic sword half of the time (the other half, the enemy is standing on terrain), which is a bit of a shame. With all that negativity... does Gaiden go into the D tier? To be transparent, this is absolutely what I anticipated going into it, absolutely supported by the fact that my first playthough of the game fizzled out after Celica's chapter 3, i.e. the absolute worst that Gaiden gets. And that part of the game absolutely is D tier, no doubt about it. But the rest... Yeah, I think it's "flawed but still fun" and not the "I don't want to play this" that I consider D tier to be. Compared to FE1, which occasionally made me believe I was playing a B tier game, Gaiden didn't really have those highs and overall trends more towards D than B as a result, but I'm still comfortable putting Gaiden into C tier, if below FE1 within that. Maybe a generous rating, but I don't want to label this game as just "bad". Before we go into the Old Mystery of the Emblem, I'll take quick stock of the unit requests so that you can shout at me if yours has been overloocked: For Book 1 we have... Biraku/Vyland (requested by Dayni) Bantu (recommended as temporary unit) (Zapp Branniglenn) Hardin (Jotari) Macellan (Ruben) Maji (Shaky) Arran (Shaky) And for Book 2... Warren (Dayni) Bantu (suggested as temporary by Zapp Branniglenn; requested as a starshard target by the Observer and Ruben) Tiki (Interdimensional Observer, and I think Ruben didn't mind the Double Dragon request) Mathis (Ruben, approved by Shaky) Yumina, and NOT Malliensa (Ruben) Arran (Shaky) For Jugdral, only Dayni has made requests thus far, way back on the first page: Pairing Aideen and Midir in Genealogy, and partying with Marty in Thracia. For what it's worth, I also looked up Genealogy pairings when I played through the prologue... two years ago, according to the age of the save file. I assume that the majority of these are the most basic picks, so feel free to suggest alternatives, although I'd appreciate ones that don't go into self-sabotaging territory. (and no, I don't want to do an all-substitutes run as my first Genealogy experience) Seliph: have him inherit Paragon Ring and Leg Ring and a good sword (Silver?) Leaf: Pursuit Band, has to be on Ethlin Aideen/Midir: Lester, Lana Pursuit on Lester, can inherit a good bow, while Lana isn't very stat-dependent. Ayra/Holyn: Ulster, Larcei Overkill Skl, as well als Luna, for all the procs; inheritable swords for Ulster. Lachesis/Beowulf: Dermott, Nanna Pursuit, Accost, easy to pass swords to Dermott Sylvia/---: Leyla, Sharlow Substitutes don't seem worse than the kids Claude/Erynies: Fee, Ced Magic-based - works great for Ced, while Fee gets by with magic swords and the Brave Lance Bridget/Lex: Faval, Patty Paragon+Vantage; makes Patty decent if you can get her to promote Tiltyu/Lewin: Arthur, Tinny Forseti on Arthur, who joins very early. Magic dad seems good for both kids. 20 hours ago, Jotari said: Rudolf not just killing Doma himself actually is given justification in Shadows if Valentia via Mila sealing Falchion stopping anyone from using it...it's just a shame the game didn't realize that was fixing the plot hole as elsewhere they really go full on the prophecy and Rudolf putting full faith (and everyone's lives) into magic birthmarks. In Gaiden, or at least the fan translation, Rudolf doesn't even need Alm specifically, he just hoped for a hero of some sort to emerge and unite the continent. Interesting points. I was reading into Rudolf's lines that he was intending for Alm to be the hero who will defeat him, but that might just be an assumption on my part brought by my exposure to Echoes. Rudolf becoming a villain so that *somebody* may become a hero by defeating him does mean that things don't just have to happen in a very specific fashion on their own, although from how @Interdimensional Observer describes it, it seems that Super Robot Wars had created a still more plausible version of that story. From your (the Observer's) summary, a big reason why Bian's plot works better seems to be that he has a very direct reason to do his questionable things - I assume they're questionable, since he's the villain and a "global military regime" doesn't exactly sound like a heroic thing to establish. But I can see the logic - *he* does morally dark grey stuff, so when he's overthrown, the new guys will have both the power necessary to fight the aliens (since they're evidently stronger than he) and clean slate in a moral sense. 19 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said: As for Rudolf, amending his plans to be the same as Bian's doesn't sound terrible. Rudolf wants to end the rule of the gods, and vanquish the Duma Cult. Hm. Also a small detail that I don't think works well with the whole "evil god Doma" angle. 20 hours ago, Jotari said: I once made a thread celebrating the fact that there was a boss called Badass and the mods renamed the thread to Bahdess >.> Yeah, thread titles are watched more strictly than posts. I had "shitposting" sanitised into "s***posting" before while both it and "fucking dead" were still cool in the OP. And I don't know if the thread "I *redacted* hate tellius tomes" always had *redacted* in its title. 18 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: I should've know you'd have done this. I really should've. Ruben has it too good. Don't complain, I didn't even use either "easy" or "pickings" to describe that. Plus, Ryuto genuinely has better expected damage vs. Rudolf than most (if not all) other units on the field. 39% accuracy is bad, sure, but Rudolf takes really little damage from physical attacks, and the Horseslayer has bad accuracy, too. And while Dyute can hit even harder with Aura, she also has a whopping 19% accuracy with it, so she'd have to use Seraphim, instead... at 29% hit. 18 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: A scale where Corrin is the best. This doesn't seem like the most ideal rating system. Imagine IGN rating a game from 1 to Genealogy, or what they probably wanted to do for Engage, 1 to 3 Houses. I didn't say I rated quality. I was rating insanity. 18 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: Nosferatu gaming it was. ...what's Doma's Res stat, again? I mean, how high-level were your Saints to even deal meaningful damage to him? Or did you figure out how to bring him from, like, 53 HP to 3 to make it work? 18 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: something something Alm is her world I didn't take you for the hapless romantic type. 18 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: I'm already getting confuzzled. Who's getting used in which book? Roshe was used in FE1 Biraku/Vyland will be used in Book 1 Matthis will be used in Book 2 18 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: You didn't have the kind of Maji Ruben did. You failed. Nono. I sailed. (thank you for setting up that incredibly stupid joke) 15 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: It just occurred to me that Kaga probably made Mycen non-playable, until the very end, so that he could show up to explain the plot. If he existed as a typical "Jagen", then he could die in the very first map. Which, in pre-FE7 design philosophy, meant that he couldn't stick around to do any exposition. That seems like a likely explaination, actually. Although... 15 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: This guy existed in the original? And he had hair?!? ...this guy would've been right there to do the expositioning instead, maybe with a little "if Meißen dead" clause. 15 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: Again - really cool and impressive, to see that programmed into an NES game! Curious that Celica, Genny, and - of all people - Atlas, are immune. Yeah, a pretty cool gameplay/story integration, especially for its time. It is probably just random chance that Jenny and Atlas (and Celica, for that matter) didn't get injured. But I like to imagine that Jenny was standing in the back like a good Physic-knowing healer, while Atlas was raining down fire and brimstone from afar because he was wearing the Magic Ring. Edited 2 hours ago by gnip Holy shit, what happened to this post? 2 hours ago, gnip said: Sticking to Gaiden's principles, this map is far less complicated than FE1's, with most of the incoming enemies coming from the same direction. Only Commander Badass and his two lackeys function as a bit of a flank, so Force goes over there and deals with those. They all deal only 1 dmg to him and he heals 5 HP/turn, nevermind Teeta's Fortify support, so he'll come out on top, eventually. It was awful then and it's even more awful now. 2 hours ago, gnip said: ...for an Atlas kill. Not quite the crit-one-shot-through-the-dragonshield from Ruben's Echoes run, but us poor Sagittae-less folks have to get by somehow. No 40 magic? Where did it all go wrong. 2 hours ago, gnip said: Interestingly, Doma moves to attack - but attacks from melee range, even though he has a ranged option. The main site even cites 1-8 range, but that never comes up in this particular fight. Also, Doma looks pretty lovecraftian, I have to say. Hard to tell what's what in his battle sprite, honestly. I love lovecraftian shit. I was even gonna name my cat after what he named his, but my family frowned at the idea. What a shame. 2 hours ago, gnip said: Plus, I wouldn't mind if the main character crit-killing the final boss would become a theme in this thing. Mars, you know what to do. One of my least favorite petty things in FE. I implore you to not go for a Mars kill in FE3. I nearly vomited playing FE9 just recently as is. It's not fucking fair! Shinon deserved the Ashnard kill! Tauroneo deserved it! 2 hours ago, gnip said: Time for the ending dialogue! : "Carry both Doma's power and Mila's love... You must never repeat these events... Never again disturb our slumber..." Narrator: "Thus, the war ended. Many have died, but now Valentia sees peace." Don't act all high and mighty you monster man. 2 hours ago, gnip said: Because Rudolf was a man with a genius plan? Oh. "There is but one thing said: If mankind again grows too arrogant... The flames of war shall rekindle. All will be lost... A most dire end. That, perhaps, will remain in our hearts." What the author wants the player to believe what the game is actually about (kill all purple people) 2 hours ago, gnip said: I'm honestly a bit stumped looking at the ending and aesop. I was under the impression that Rudolf's Grand Plan was to rid humankind from the gods, so that they can become more than just the playthings of a higher power. But then Doma's death quote doesn't suggest any retreat as such - more that he has been asleep this whole time, given that their slumber should never again be disturbed... And then the aesop basically calls the entire conflict pointless ("Why did this war occur? No one knows."), or a product of human arrogance. So what, Rudolf did rise up against the gods but was an arrogant fool for doing so? Maybe it's a "it makes perfect sense in the original language" situation, but to me, the entire ending seems like it was attached to the wrong game. The plot sucked back then and it's 20 times worse in the remake. Never trust anyone who says they love SoV for the story. 2 hours ago, gnip said: *sigh* Wait, what's wrong? Did Cleive die? 2 hours ago, gnip said: ...so was stabbing Doma essential, after all? I am confuse. Cult bad. Don't overthink it. 2 hours ago, gnip said: To get the elephant out of the room: Gaiden mostly fails in what's probably the most important aspect of a Fire Emblem game, which is basic map design. To a degree, I think I understand the basic premise - outdoor maps in FE1 (and in most other FE games) tend to give the impression that you're moving single characters across an area that spans kilometres of terrain. The very first map of the series shows an entire island kingdom, including a castle, a mountain range, and some villages, which I assume are more than a sand castle between a few little beach huts, and the struggle between seven defenders fending off fourteen invaders is taking place on this entire little kingdom. That is a bit silly, if you take it seriously, so I can understand the direction of making the maps look like they're just, like, the plains outside a village or a single graveyard, to take a look at Alm and Celica's respective first maps. Just you wait for Genealogy maps. HOO BOY... Yeah, nothing will change that both the OG and remake are low tiers for me primarily from map design. Even if I were to end up agreeing about the story somehow being good or that nothing in life but voice acting matters, I'd still rank SoV very low because a strategy has to have competent stages. That's like, the 2nd priority. That said, I probably like SoV a tiny bit more than Gaiden purely from me not needing the 400% speed key pressed and held at all times, but given how the story in SoV is just mind rotting to me, combined with the nerf of rings, one of the only things I found fun in Gaiden, makes it somehow worse than this outdated crap in several areas (Celica's army taking damage is leagues above "Celica is brainwashed? Oh noes!"). 2 hours ago, gnip said: And even though I didn't lose nearly as much words over these, they still manage to at the very least lessen the distance to FE1. However, I do have to bring up another annoyance that wasn't quite there in FE1: Accuracy. Honestly, Gaiden felt like people say BinBla feels, with very inconsistent hit rates all the time and very few options to make up for it, at least for a good while. I mostly mentioned hit rate hell in the early posts (I think), but this game is easily the worst when it came to hit rates for me. You wouldn't beleive how often I missed. I'm almost certain I missed more attacks than I landed. Technically, it didn't feel nearly as bad as FE6 because the game is easier than FE6, so 3 misses in a row isn't a game over, but still annoying as hell. Granted, I miss like crazy in all the Kaga games, and it frustrates me to no end, but Gaiden was its own beast. I believe one of the reasons I actually liked Celica's rout more than Alm's was because magic was mostly fixed in hit rate so I didn't have to deal with steel weapon hit decreases or the 5 billion forest or stone tile accuracy debuffs as much, even though a team of mages basically guarantees you'll never have hit rates above 80. 2 hours ago, gnip said: And this also extends to magic spells, to a greater extend than in FE1, where the only stat influencing a spell's accuracy was the target's Lck stat, which was zero for all enemies. In Gaiden, magic avoid was increased to Spd+Lck, with some enemies being pretty darn evasive as a result. The Bigles are fresh on the mind, but spell accuracy against the basic Mercenaries early on Celica's route is already a bit annoying: Wait, I already don't remember this. 2 hours ago, gnip said: With all that negativity... does Gaiden go into the D tier? To be transparent, this is absolutely what I anticipated going into it, absolutely supported by the fact that my first playthough of the game fizzled out after Celica's chapter 3, i.e. the absolute worst that Gaiden gets. And that part of the game absolutely is D tier, no doubt about it. But the rest... Yeah, I think it's "flawed but still fun" and not the "I don't want to play this" that I consider D tier to be. Compared to FE1, which occasionally made me believe I was playing a B tier game, Gaiden didn't really have those highs and overall trends more towards D than B as a result, but I'm still comfortable putting Gaiden into C tier, if below FE1 within that. Maybe a generous rating, but I don't want to label this game as just "bad". C tier. You are very forgiving... My sig says I like this game more than FE1, despite FE1 being a much better game regarding balance and having actual maps, and my tier lists are constantly struggling to place the NES games in anything consistent. It's hard to rank them. They're dated as hell, but it does feel a bit wrong to completely put them at the bottom. My last tier last had them in their own NES tier which is basically a cop out of not comparing them to other games until I decide whether they're D or not. I did like FE2 more than FE1, much to my own surprise, but I'm 99% certain that was purely the rings. Seeing units reach 40 in such an old game felt way too exciting for me, even though it shouldn't have. At least I can say there are a few cool things about FE2 over SoV. FE1, even if I respect manaketes more, is mostly just completely inferior to FE11. I don't have a reason to go back to FE1. I don't have a reason to go back to either monster game, but there is something worth going back to in FE2, even if accompanied by a thousand shitty side elements. It's still a unique game at the end of the day, and while FE1 deserves respect for being the first game in the series with suprisingly good design every now and then, it's frustrating to play because it's an archaic version of something you've experienced multiple times, but better. "I could be playing Binding Blade" or anything that's normal FE. I'd definitely put this game at least in D, possibly worse given my distaste for the maps and everything regarding SoV, but then I'd have to reconsider my placement of SoV and PoR, then I'd have to consider FE1, because I do believe FE1 is better than PoR, but putting FE1 on D and everything else at E would also contradict me liking FE2 more than FE1. Shit, this is why I hate tryna rank the NES games. It throws a wrench in how I ranked everything else. It was so easy to make a tier list, but these games make me question what I like and don't like. Urgh, at this rate, I might actually have to replay FE1. Who knows? Maybe I'll put FE1 at C, SoV and Gaiden at D, and all the other bad ones at E. You already know what's my F. FE2 is definitely bad in my eyes, but I slightly respect FE1 even though I also think it's bad for no convoy/no battle stat window/no respect for Riff. I technically didn't HATE hate PoR last time I played, but I sure as hell was bored the whole time, and I legit do have more respect for Gaiden even if PoR was sort of a better time overall. Damn it, why is NESFE so complicated for my brain to wrap its head around? I usually have no problem shilling old games. Td;dr: I say Gaiden and SoV are D tier, but you've made me reconsider where I should be ranking FE1, and how NESFE should be categorized in my personal tier lists. I'll give anything to say it's better than 3H, but I need to know if I really mean that. Damn you. 3 hours ago, gnip said: For Book 1 we have... Biraku/Vyland (requested by Dayni) Bantu (recommended as temporary unit) (Zapp Branniglenn) Hardin (Jotari) Macellan (Ruben) Maji (Shaky) Arran (Shaky) And for Book 2... Warren (Dayni) Bantu (suggested as temporary by Zapp Branniglenn; requested as a starshard target by the Observer and Ruben) Tiki (Interdimensional Observer, and I think Ruben didn't mind the Double Dragon request) Mathis (Ruben, approved by Shaky) Yumina, and NOT Malliensa (Ruben) Arran (Shaky) Macellan with no Dolph? Poor fella's gonna be lonely. At least you won't feel stupid wasting time to recruit Matthis for nothing. 3 hours ago, gnip said: For Jugdral, only Dayni has made requests thus far, way back on the first page: Pairing Aideen and Midir in Genealogy, and partying with Marty in Thracia. For what it's worth, I also looked up Genealogy pairings when I played through the prologue... two years ago, according to the age of the save file. I assume that the majority of these are the most basic picks, so feel free to suggest alternatives, although I'd appreciate ones that don't go into self-sabotaging territory. (and no, I don't want to do an all-substitutes run as my first Genealogy experience) My request is that you don't give FE4 any mercy when ranking it. We're playing games here. We ain't ranking books, so don't give me that "It's at least a B for the impressive story it tells for it's time". Man runs around country and has heat stroke. Wow. How grand. Now tell me how much you enjoyed walking around 100 desert tiles followed by another 100 desert tiles 2 maps later. 3 hours ago, gnip said: Don't complain, I didn't even use either "easy" or "pickings" to describe that. Welp. Headache. There it is. You just had to say it one last time. 3 hours ago, gnip said: I didn't say I rated quality. I was rating insanity. Insanity? Then use 3H fans as the scale. 3 hours ago, gnip said: ...what's Doma's Res stat, again? I mean, how high-level were your Saints to even deal meaningful damage to him? Or did you figure out how to bring him from, like, 53 HP to 3 to make it work? If by figure out you mean wailing on him until he reached 3 HP, then yes. I am a genius. 3 hours ago, gnip said: Nono. I sailed. (thank you for setting up that incredibly stupid joke) 3 hours ago, gnip said: I didn't take you for the hapless romantic type. Skeletons have 4 moods: Saucy Edgy El romántico Suicidal ideation Don't worry about this being a cry for help. I'm already dead. No don't worry, this isn't a self harm joke. I'm an American. Did you actually think I made it through high school unscathed? 3 hours ago, gnip said: Yeah, a pretty cool gameplay/story integration, especially for its time. It's crazy that moments that this and some events in FE5 made moments special for me, but everyone just focuses on invisible barriers as peak integration. I genuinely don't get it. 2 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said: I fell behind for the endgame, then I forgot to close a duplicate tab and Serenes ate half my reply. Fuck my life. And how would I go about doing that? 2 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said: I've gotta agree with Jotari, younger Rudolf is better. There wasn't any need to make him look older than Meißen in SoV, either. They could've done a similar design while keeping the brown hair and the stache. But I guess then he wouldn't have looked as overtly like Walmart, so... Worth the reference, I suppose? For what it's worth, I do really like Walhart, and I thought the references to Gaiden in Awakening were cool, although I don't think the Santa hair was necessary. 2 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said: Kaga has the weirdest oversights sometimes, which often leads to the funniest exploits. "It's not a bug. It's a feature." 2 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said: I seem to recall him saying a lot more in SoV. He seems remarkably purposeless here. The more you talk, the more you think about how stupid this is. It's best to stay quiet. I am sorry you were such a shit game you beautiful old bastard. 2 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said: Hah! Map design! Seriously Ruben. Tell me this isn't a literal Genealogy formation. 2 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said: I recall there's a manga where he was established to have traveled to Archanea, found his way to Khadein and become friends with Merric during his studies. Then again, that manga may've established that happened before Gaiden, so its authenticity is questionable. Yes, I remember hearing of that. He's way better off with Merric than his annoying ass sister. Get outta heeeeere (and then he and Merric lived happliy ever after, as platonic best friends of course) 2 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said: So uh, if you aren't entirely opposed to carnage suggestions seriously, considering murderizing (avoiding marriages is too difficult but if you want to try, it's an option) Sylvia at the end of gen 1 to get her substitutes. And Erinys, Erinys's subs are also very cool. Oh, and don't let Finn marry, having him pass down his brave lance would simply be deplorable. Hey, I ended up coming with stuff in the end when I thought hard enough! Truly a mage Atlas moment. Take this into consideration. Aw, but I like seeing Finn talk with his kid in gen 2. It's sweet to think that he's the one dad who can and actually is willing to be there for his kid. 1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Ayra in that case can get Lex. Or Naoise who has nice skills. You can't mess up her kids, you can only make them good or gooder but they're not on a horse so they're bad 1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Arran could easily take Libra at least. Spd is utterly useless for FE3 Manaketes. I like to think Gnip can just use trade stats to get most characters to get the stats they want. That was the most fun part for me. Killing 99% of Astram's hero squad while using trade strats for optimal gains. Everyone wins, except Astram. 51 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said: Substitute runs do help Oifey shine. If all the kids are properly bred, dude's just extremely redundant, because the game plays itself. I'll never get Oifey being his own archetype. He's still a Jeigan. You're clearly supposed to mainly have non substitutes, so his growths are bad in comparison. The game simply knew that gen 2 isn't designed around FE1 jeigan growths and designed him around that while still keeping him not completely busted. Seth and Titania are nothing like that. Holy heck, this was a long post. Not how I thought I'd spend the early bulk of my spooky day. Speaking of: Happy Free Abduction Day everybody. Watch out for spooky skeletons. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted October 31, 2023 Share Posted October 31, 2023 Gaiden has perfect map design. You're all just scrubs. Embrace the Kaga! For Genealogy I suggest an authentic no shipping run. Which is not a substitutes run. It's the authentic blind experience of making no effort to pair at all. Let these digital sluts reproduce with whomever they feel inclined to without that guiding hand of the player. I am certain you will still get some pairings happening naturally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaky Jones Posted October 31, 2023 Share Posted October 31, 2023 7 minutes ago, Jotari said: Gaiden has perfect map design. You're all just scrubs. Embrace the Kaga! Spoken like a true victim of Kaga's hypnosis treatment. 9 minutes ago, Jotari said: For Genealogy I suggest an authentic no shipping run. Which is not a substitutes run. It's the authentic blind experience of making no effort to pair at all. Let these digital sluts reproduce with whomever they feel inclined to without that guiding hand of the player. I am certain you will still get some pairings happening naturally. This is one of the only times Gnip will get to use his brain in Genealogy. Dont ruin that for him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shanty Pete's 1st Mate Posted November 1, 2023 Share Posted November 1, 2023 21 hours ago, Jotari said: Enemies will attack Marth in FE1 only for their attacks to be sealed by Falchion. Huh, I did not know that. I would've assumed that Marth would just not take any damage from those attacks. 8 hours ago, gnip said: For what it's worth, I also looked up Genealogy pairings when I played through the prologue... two years ago, according to the age of the save file. I assume that the majority of these are the most basic picks, so feel free to suggest alternatives, although I'd appreciate ones that don't go into self-sabotaging territory. (and no, I don't want to do an all-substitutes run as my first Genealogy experience) I actually hosted a thread on this topic last year. All your proposed pairings are pretty much chalk - either the best possible pairing, or one of them. The "weirdest" would probably be Lex x Briggid, but Lex is a good dad for any kids, because Paragon is a great skill. Laylea and Sharlow aren't necessarily better than the kids they're replacing, but they do net you exclusive items (the Barrier Blade and the Berserk Staff, respectively), so that's pretty cool. Among the listed pairings, Erinys x Claud is a personal favorite of mine, as the Res boost helps both kids in the last couple chapters. 5 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said: The brave lance belongs to Finn. Fee can't exist because I literally just said to kill Erinys for subs can have the silver if she likes. 5 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Fee can't directly inherit the Silver Lance, since it's A-rank. In fact, Finn can only acquire it once he promotes to Duke Knight. Otherwise, the only possible recipient is Altenna. Anyway, people are out here giving up their chapter 4/5 Brave Lance and wondering why their Erinys and/or Naoise sucks so much. 8 hours ago, gnip said: ...this guy would've been right there to do the expositioning instead, maybe with a little "if Meißen dead" clause. 21 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: True, but didn't Mycen also explain stuff to Alm at the end of Act I? In which case, he couldn't be playable until that happened. Also, Alm would've probably been more inclined to believe his "grandfather" than "Enemy General McGee". Oh, and congratulations on surviving Gaiden! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Punished Dayni Posted November 1, 2023 Share Posted November 1, 2023 So, I disappear for a few days and Gaiden is finished. Oh well, guess I make a reply big enough I'll put it in spoilers and just presume things have been calm in comments while I was out. Spoiler On 10/28/2023 at 11:34 AM, gnip said: So, back to Alm. The next three fights are... something, to a large part because it counts as the Necrodragons attacking Alm, not the other way around. Yeah, I feel like this could have been avoided, but we're here now and might as well get dragged over. On 10/28/2023 at 11:34 AM, gnip said: And then Teeta is dead. Like, turn 1, no counterplay available, she just happens to be in range of a Necrodragon who one-rounds her. Thank you S. Kaga, very cool. That looks about right. Thanks preset deployment, very cool and fuck you. On 10/28/2023 at 11:34 AM, gnip said: So then, back to the real protagonist. (I'm talking about Ryuto, obviously) Well obviously. On 10/28/2023 at 11:34 AM, gnip said: It does help to, again, use FEWoD to split your troops correctly. Specifically, send all the high-Move characters to the northeast, that is to say, Claire, the horsies (including Cliff), and of course Mr Speed, Force. They will engage the group of enemies north of the broken bridge. No idea if you can "open" this bridge similar to FE1, by moving somebody to the northern part of it, but I assume it's just an obstacle to encourage you to actually use both your groups, and that can at least be crossed very slowly by foot units. You would assume rightly, On 10/29/2023 at 7:00 PM, gnip said: The next map definitely is one of the maps of all time. Not quite sure what adjective to pick. It looks very silly, once again, but I'll give it that it appears more purposeful than other silly maps: If you try to just push upwards, you'll be at a terrain disadvantage, as well as in range of four Bow Knights and two Wizards. ....Did this map seriously just be so stupid large for no reason that SoV cut out 25% of it when the remake came around? On 10/29/2023 at 7:00 PM, gnip said: And even though it's technically not the best option to give the rightmost enemies a target that they can shoot without eating a counter, overwhelming Force obviously has to be deployed. Force applied, enemy died. Simple. On 10/29/2023 at 7:00 PM, gnip said: After the fight, another Necrodragon group appears - 13 of them this time. Certainly one way to discourage grinding at the Hidden Shrine, assuming they do move from the crater. I'd suspect no, seeing as I've never seen any indicator of the reinforcements moving backwards, but I could be very wrong there: I got to see it in SoV with some brigands chasing back after me going back to Greith's map. On 10/30/2023 at 6:20 AM, Shaky Jones said: Biraku fans weep. Hardin will die before Book I ends, calling it now. On 10/30/2023 at 7:22 PM, gnip said: After that, Rudolf goes into coward AI, which I also wouldn't have expected, considering he's currently committing suicide by offspring. Feels like one of those narrative details that Kaga would include. I mean, it's the NES and they're still getting used to coding anything in this series, On 10/30/2023 at 7:22 PM, gnip said: "Apart from some nephew or something. Wonder what the boy is up to these days." Probably listened to Rinea and is currently living cottagecore conservative fantasies as we speak. On 10/30/2023 at 7:22 PM, gnip said: I'll give the plan a 7.76 on a scale between 1 and Corrin. It does have the same nature of plunging the continent into war, presumably killing thousands of people, while relying on many things going exactly right that aren't under your control at all. I also don't quite understand why Rudolf couldn't have attempted to kill Doma himself, so... yeah, I'm not quite on board with this reveal. Maybe he suspected that he'd be immediately stabbed in the back by the Duma Faithful if he moved even slightly to do that. Now, of course none of this would be explained here and I'm pretty sure it isn't in SoV beyond "Mila kept it in her skull because she didn't want her brother to die" On 10/30/2023 at 7:22 PM, gnip said: I decided to distribute the three epic Cavs over the three Mars games, if you recall, so that's why Biraku is obligatory in Book 1. And I think Dayni specifically requested him in that incarnation, too. Yes. Yes I did. On 10/30/2023 at 7:22 PM, gnip said: Canon is a bourgeois concept, anyway. The proletariat must embrace death of the author and free interpretation of the work On 10/30/2023 at 7:22 PM, gnip said: Occasionally (and randomly, I think), after entering a new screen, this pop-up turns up, in which a few characters on Celica's team lose a few hit points - 4 HP for Kamui and 3 HP for Dean this time, to give you an idea of the magnitude. I wonder if this can actually kill characters, or if Celica will just be accompanied by a bunch of characters with 1 HP if you keep losing your way. I didn't see Celica lose any HP, so it seems that it isn't possible to get a game over by dawdling. I'm pretty sure Celica can show up, I feel like I saw her get hit. But yeah, take too long and they'll all be gone. And guess who's closer to the bigles? On 10/30/2023 at 7:22 PM, gnip said: ____ Commander Badass and his two underlings. How nice. Manly Guys doing Manly Things was a fun webcomic, although I lost track of it at some point and never got back into it. I still name my Magikarps Mr Fish, though. From what I know it's dead at this stage. Also, SoV changing things meant you don't get to face these three before the final map, such a shame. On 10/30/2023 at 7:22 PM, gnip said: Some of us about IS 😛 9 hours ago, gnip said: Despite my hope, which was fueled by neither Jedah nor Doma having the Messiah spell listed in their stat page, they both summon additional Bigles constantly. Ugh. Yep, go fuck yourself they said, because a loving god wouldn't summon big eyeballs all the time or give us Hexing Rod, ANANKOS 9 hours ago, gnip said: Interestingly, Doma moves to attack - but attacks from melee range, even though he has a ranged option. The main site even cites 1-8 range, but that never comes up in this particular fight. Also, Doma looks pretty lovecraftian, I have to say. Hard to tell what's what in his battle sprite, honestly. Man, I remember in the pre-SoV days when people insisted that there was no way Duma was a dragon and was truly a god, tentacle monster of the deep and all. I mean, I can see the draconic elements here, but it feels less contiguous than SoV. More of a slimy mess kept up well past the point it should have been. 9 hours ago, gnip said: Because Rudolf was a man with a genius plan? Oh. 9 hours ago, gnip said: But then Doma's death quote doesn't suggest any retreat as such - more that he has been asleep this whole time, given that their slumber should never again be disturbed... I feel like they say slumber too in SoV, and there it feels more like they died. But this could be part of that presumption of them being more like gods originally and tied directly to the land at that. And yes, they do put themselves into Valentia in SoV, but it could have felt more like that, especially Duma. 9 hours ago, gnip said: We are past NES FE. This nightmare of a thousand years is at it's end /s 9 hours ago, gnip said: Maybe a generous rating, but I don't want to label this game as just "bad". I would not have blamed you, I personally would not want to go back to it after playing, but for some reason despite it's issues I've played SoV 5 (4?) times, which is kinda high for me with the games I have physically (and yes, we count route splits separately for this). 9 hours ago, gnip said: For Jugdral, only Dayni has made requests thus far, way back on the first page: Pairing Aideen and Midir in Genealogy, and partying with Marty in Thracia. I will ask what we currently have picked for Genealogy, just to make sure I stick with my earlier call or change my mind. 7 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said: I dunno, the fierce expression seems enough in line with Wally if you ask me. No need to make him appear older and more gentle. Plus it's the NES, that's a basic ass design that could have easily been expanded upon but retaining the personality in the expression while incorporating Walhart in the armour design and accents. 7 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said: Genealogy is, like Gaiden, a game with very little flexibility. Less, in fact, since there's no such thing as villagers. But there are villagers! Sure, they're NPCs, but they're in the game. 5 hours ago, Shaky Jones said: Damn it, why is NESFE so complicated for my brain to wrap its head around? I usually have no problem shilling old games. Because it sucks on a basic technical level that wouldn't be resolved until MotE. 3 hours ago, Jotari said: For Genealogy I suggest an authentic no shipping run. Which is not a substitutes run. It's the authentic blind experience of making no effort to pair at all. Let these digital sluts reproduce with whomever they feel inclined to without that guiding hand of the player. I am certain you will still get some pairings happening naturally. AKA: leave them to their own devices and somehow get Ayra/Claude 1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: Laylea and Sharlow aren't necessarily better than the kids they're replacing, but they do net you exclusive items (the Barrier Blade and the Berserk Staff, respectively), so that's pretty cool. That's just it, they're the only ones with exclusive items and I don't get why. Did Kaga expect to kill the girl who he said was taking after fashion trends of the time? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted November 1, 2023 Share Posted November 1, 2023 (edited) Made an amateur attempt to give SoV Rudolf the the NES Rudolf design. Unfortunately, the longer you stare at him the more it looks like I gave him a double chin. Edited November 1, 2023 by Jotari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saint Rubenio Posted November 1, 2023 Share Posted November 1, 2023 1 minute ago, Jotari said: Unfortunately, the longer you stare at him the more it looks like I gave him a double chin. Honestly that's fine, he just needs to have a neck lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jotari Posted November 1, 2023 Share Posted November 1, 2023 13 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said: Honestly that's fine, he just needs to have a neck lol Still not perfect, but I managed to give him a bit more of a defined chin. Curse you Santa Beard! I've just realized Rudolf doesn't look remotely younger in the Alm baby memory prism even though that's almost, like, 20 years ago. He's, like, the spiritual twin of Murdock where neither of them age, but Murdock stole all the youth genes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ping Posted November 2, 2023 Author Share Posted November 2, 2023 On 10/31/2023 at 7:11 PM, Saint Rubenio said: This part is super buggy and I can't read it. So that you can properly disagree with my conclusions - and in case it's unreadable for anybody else: Spoiler To get the elephant out of the room: Gaiden mostly fails in what's probably the most important aspect of a Fire Emblem game, which is basic map design. To a degree, I think I understand the basic premise - outdoor maps in FE1 (and in most other FE games) tend to give the impression that you're moving single characters across an area that spans kilometres of terrain. The very first map of the series shows an entire island kingdom, including a castle, a mountain range, and some villages, which I assume are more than a sand castle between a few little beach huts, and the struggle between seven defenders fending off fourteen invaders is taking place on this entire little kingdom. That is a bit silly, if you take it seriously, so I can understand the direction of making the maps look like they're just, like, the plains outside a village or a single graveyard, to take a look at Alm and Celica's respective first maps. I understand the change to more fights on smaller maps on a gameplay level, too. Permadeath is a hotly contested gameplay mechanic to this day, and I can imagine that not every player was on board with Kaga's ironmanly vision of replacing fallen characters with a lesser, or maybe just underleveled, alternative. Gaiden's shorter fights take a lot of the sting out of this, even if we ignore the expansion from one lategame Aum staff to multiple Revival fountains for now, since you can't lose your favourite waifu to a crit on turn 19 when fights tend to be over in 10 turns, if not less. However, this unfortunately fails on two levels. Firstly, Gaiden's maps are, I'm sorry to say, really ugly. I'm personally completely devoid of any visual artistic talents, so I don't presume this to be an informed opinion, but I think this is at least in part because the NES graphics work better for the zoomed out perspective of FE1 - it allows the map designer to plonk down three hills and a mountain somewhere and make the map immediately less monotone with that, while Gaiden can't just say that actually, there's a really tiny mountain just outside Ram. That said, there are a few maps that look better. Ruben pointed out the waterfall on the map following the Necrodragon ambush, for example; the boat maps didn't really bother me, either; and while the final map has a rather dreary palette, it at least has some structure in it. So maybe it was a time/budget issue, too? Or not enough space on the cartridge to paint pretty pictures? Whatever it is, FE1 has Gaiden easily beat in the visual department. And, of course, also in the gameplay subdepartment of map design. I've voiced a fair share of criticism on FE1, too - some specific maps that didn't flow well at all, and more generally an abundance of pointless walking around, which Gaiden sometimes shares, sometimes avoids, and occasionally worsens to an infuriating degree - but I think it's not too controversial to call Gaiden the worst map design of the series. Well, it's possible that Genealogy will change that opinion with consistently oversized maps, or Thracia with actively hostile design choices, but Gaiden's definitely at the bottom of the barrel out of the games I've played (...past the first map) thus far. Chapter 1 gives us pretty much map non-design; chapter 2 is... actually not too bad; but then Celica's half of chapter 3 comes with a vengance and gifts us the worst desert map imaginable. It becomes better (in a "less bad" sense of the word) after that, although that development is greatly helped by the game being more lenient with ways to ignore the maps - Warp on Alm's side and the Whitewings on Celica's. That was quite the rant on just one subject, but as I opened with - I think it's the most important one, and it harshly overshadows the improvements that Gaiden did make over OG Fire Emblem. With the exception of the most egregiously bad maps (and, really, I'm mostly talking about the Archer fort in the desert here), Gaiden is more easily played than FE1. Inventory management? Well, maybe the complete removal of weapon durability and reducing a character's inventory to a single item is "dumbing down" the system. I personally don't mind, even compared to games where swapping items around isn't a huge pain, and I definitely think it's an improvement over FE1's complete mess of moving any item to where you want to be. Stat clarity? Well, we're still not quite there. You still have to visit serenesforest.net in order to check the stats on magic spells (or figure them out yourself, which would be quite the pain for weight), and I don't think it's possible to figure out the base hit rate of *any* weapon in the game, unless you're really good at reading the in-battle stat bars. However, since the strength and weight of a weapon is directly applied to a character's Str and Spd, you can at least figure out the outcome of a fight between physical fighters with very basic math. Cool Shit? Yeah, more of that than FE1, too. As people have mentioned, walking across the final map as Celica to reach Judah is a cool little feature. Celica struggling for survival while Alm is screwing around in the underground ruins? That's amazing and I should've mentioned it before, especially after my complains that Celica was just passively letting things happen to her previously, and my suggestion that she's probably just waiting for Alm to rescue her. The Lion Heads are better versions of the usual stat boosters, since they incentivise the player to use them right now instead of hoarding, and it's neat that they can be split between characters, and that you have to pick between two different stats. The Angel Ring? Yeah, give me those amazing +2 Lck level-ups. FE1 had the funny OP stat boosters, but Gaiden just has a bunch of, well, cool shit. And even though I didn't lose nearly as much words over these, they still manage to at the very least lessen the distance to FE1. However, I do have to bring up another annoyance that wasn't quite there in FE1: Accuracy. Honestly, Gaiden felt like people say BinBla feels, with very inconsistent hit rates all the time and very few options to make up for it, at least for a good while. One big issue: Stone floor tiles giving +20 avoid. Seriously, remove that and a lot of the indoor (or "siege") maps become a lot less annoying. However, even without that, there's a lot of variance at every step, with Steel weapons only having 80 base hit, or bows even bringing it down to 70. With Skl only increasing hit at a 1:1 ratio, this makes the Archer class in particular really annoying to use, at least until you get the Holy Bow or the Silver Bow. Well, and unless your Cliff decides to grow Def like mad, so it doesn't matter too much if he takes a bit longer to duel any enemy. And this also extends to magic spells, to a greater extend than in FE1, where the only stat influencing a spell's accuracy was the target's Lck stat, which was zero for all enemies. In Gaiden, magic avoid was increased to Spd+Lck, with some enemies being pretty darn evasive as a result. The Bigles are fresh on the mind, but spell accuracy against the basic Mercenaries early on Celica's route is already a bit annoying: Where Wendell or Marich would've had 80% accuracy, Celica, Boey, and Mae only have 69% even against a Lv.1 Merc. The chance that two consecutive Fire spells hit goes down from 64% to only 48%; nevermind if you need to use Thunder to get a second attack in. Magic goes from this highly accurate tool to one that's actually more flimsy than a basic sword half of the time (the other half, the enemy is standing on terrain), which is a bit of a shame. With all that negativity... does Gaiden go into the D tier? To be transparent, this is absolutely what I anticipated going into it, absolutely supported by the fact that my first playthough of the game fizzled out after Celica's chapter 3, i.e. the absolute worst that Gaiden gets. And that part of the game absolutely is D tier, no doubt about it. But the rest... Yeah, I think it's "flawed but still fun" and not the "I don't want to play this" that I consider D tier to be. Compared to FE1, which occasionally made me believe I was playing a B tier game, Gaiden didn't really have those highs and overall trends more towards D than B as a result, but I'm still comfortable putting Gaiden into C tier, if below FE1 within that. Maybe a generous rating, but I don't want to label this game as just "bad". I think that kind of spoiler tag buggery justifies double-posting in the future, to separate update from answers. Or even triple-posting as will be the case soon right here, unless somebody manages to sneak in between. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ping Posted November 2, 2023 Author Share Posted November 2, 2023 FE3 Book 1 Chapter 1: Marth's Journey Spoiler Into Mystery of the Emblem we go. I think I started playing this game twice, both times Book 1, and both times not getting very far into the game, as you can see. I think it's safe to assume that I was very distraught by the lack of Sheeda's #1 simp, so I couldn't stomach playing past this map. FE3 has these swooshing world map animations between chapters, which very much remind me of Final Fantasy VI (even though I only played the GBA version of that). I don't know what translation patch I'm using - a cursory glance at some of the SF threads suggests that it's a really old one, since it calls Marth "Mar" on his stat screen, an error/bug that apparently has been fixed for a while already. I probably got a pre-patched ROM that hadn't been updated in forever. I don't really want to fix this, though - my internet access is still wonky and I don't want to browse for ROMs on somebody else's computer. The translated script seems fine, if with the occasional mistake. For Genealogy and Thracia, I do have clean ROMs, so I'll be able to pick the newest and hottest translation patches once we get there. Anyway... *narrator voice activate* In the distant past, the continent of Akaneia was invaded by the Durhua Empire, led by the Mamkute King, Mediuth. The people lived in fear and despair. The Holy Kingdom of Akaneia, which had always guarded the world, was also destroyed by the horrific power of the Dark Dragon. The world was facing ruin. However... A miracle occured. Anri was a youth from the town of Aritia. He went on a perilous journey to obtain the divine sword of light, Falchion. (as I said, with the occasional mistake) With Mediuth's fall, the Durhua Empire was vanquished. The Kingdom of Akaneia was resotred, and the world entered an age of peace. Taking lead from the Kingdom of Aritia, many other countries also began to rebuild themselves. (and without a fitting font for numbers, which always look a bit out of place) After many years had passed, Mediuth resurrected at Durhua. He allied with the neighbouring kingdoms of Grunia and Macedonia, and restored the Durhua Empire. Also he joined forces with Khadein's Archbishop Garnef, who shared the same ambitions of ruling the world as him, and launched an attack on the Kingdom of Akaneia. Akaneia fought to the death, but under Grunia's General Camus and Mediuth's might they suffered terrible losses. Aside from Princess Nina, the royal family was wiped out. Aritia's King Cornelius, who possessed the bloodline of Anri, left to defeat Mediuth. He took the Falchion, the divine sword of legends, to battle, but was betrayed by Aritia's ally, Gra, and died in battle. Following him, the Kingdom of Aritia also fell. Prince Marth, just 14 years of age, managed to escape with the help of his elder sister, Princess Ellis. And he fled to the distant island country of Talis... Another world map swoosh and we go right into more exposition. He was protected by the Aritian knights, led by the veteran knight, Jeigan. And he escaped, after much struggle, to the eastern island kingdom of Talis. The kingdom of Talis was a small country, without even its own knights, located at the frontier. The King of Talis lent his eastern fortress to Marth, and offered him assistance. After the death of both his parents, and his beloved sister's capture, by the empire, Marth felt anxious. "Prince Marth... I understand the concern for your sister. However you're only 14. You're too young to fight with the empire. Please wait for now. Here you can train, until you become strong enough..." Under the caring protection of the Talis citizens, Marth had passed 2 years at this country. Right now, it is fast approaching the day that he becomes 16 years of age... And we swoosh into the first chapter's map. Finally! More words, but this time spoken by actual characters, instead of the narration! : "Prince Marth, Sheeda has come from Talis castle." : "What? Sheeda, what's happened to the castle?" : "Marth, am I glad to see you! The Garda pirates suddenly attacked us. They took over the castle, and killed lots of people! Please, you've got to rescue my father!" : "Don't worry, Sheeda. The bravest Aritian knights are here in this fort. We won't lose to those pirates. Come, let's go to Talis castle together." (I may have flipped Jeigan and Sheeda's portraits so that they all face to the right) And we are back, playing this map for the fourth time during this little project. There's actually some very small differences to FE1's version - both blue and red units have been slightly repositioned, the northern shoreline is a bit more zig-zaggy, and there's a house added south of Marth's starting location. But I don't think any of those changes really have an impact on how the map plays out, unless maybe some units are more well-positioned for some optimised speedrun or LTC run, which is certainly not what we are doing. So, let's take a look at our heroes: [HP 90% | Str 50% | Skl 40% | Spd 50% | Lck 70% | WLv 40% | Def 20%] Marth has received a slight boost since FE1, gaining +3 Skl and +1 WLv in comparison. Since Skl now increases accuracy at a 2:1 ratio (and crit 1:1), the former is a nice little bonus to his consistency, while the latter puts him closer to stuff like the Killing Edge (7 WLv), Wyrmslayer (7 WLv), or Silver Sword (9 WLv) - also nice, since Marth's WLv growth is a bit shaky despite a +10% increase. Other than that, his growths are still the same. Wait, no, I tell a lie, everybody has a 3% Res growth these days. Overall, I wouldn't expect Marth to be as good as in FE1, simply because he lost his Provoke ability. No more healers in the open, with Mars absorbing any incoming enemy attack. So even though his growths are obviously still really good and the Rapier is a great effective weapon to have, the lack of promotion is probably going to hold him back, with less unique mechanics making up for it than in FE1. I'd be surprised if he came close to FE11!Marth's general terribleness, though. [HP 10% | Str 10% | Skl 10% | Spd 10% | Lck 0% | WLv 0% | Def 0% ] Jeigan technically got buffed, too: 6 Res, as opposed to the uniform 0 Res situation in FE1. This comes from his class, and he actually loses it if he dismounts - alongside -2 Str, -3 Skl, -3 Spd, and -2 Def. This means that Jeigan himself is actually weaker than Marth or the Xmas cavs and it's his horse, not Jeigan, who is the Jeigan of this game. Jokes aside, he seems to have a similar position as before, which is to say that he'll be overtaken by your growths units pretty quickly, without the distinguishing feature of amazing weapon ranks that he has in FE11. [HP 60% | Str 30% | Skl 60% | Spd 60% | Lck 50% | WLv 90% | Def 20%] Kain also shouldn't be too different from before, even though his HP and WLv growths have been swapped. Overall technically a nerf, since even with a 60% growth, he should be able to reach the 12 WLv necessary to wield Gradivüü pretty reliably if you use him, but I guess now that is all but guaranteed to happen. I considered the Xmas cavs to be the best combat units in FE1, so "little change" is a pretty good look for Kain, overall. I should also mention that dismounting is actually a valid choice to make on outdoor maps for Kain and Abel. Unlike for a Paladin, a Social Horse only provides is rider with +3 movement, no stat increases. And dismounting changes Kain's (and Abel's) weapon type from Lances to Swords, which is a good thing at this stage of the game: With the lighter Iron Sword, Kain's Attack Speed increases from 0 to 4, allowing him to double stuff to increase his damage output, despite the -2 damage reduction. [HP 70% | Str 40% | Skl 50% | Spd 50% | Lck 40% | WLv 70% | Def 20%] I assume that Abel also swapped his HP and WLv growth and that we just can't tell because they're the same to begin with. I think what I said about Kain pretty much covers Abel, as well. Probably one of the best units in the game. If you want to be pedantic, you can point out that Abel is now the more bulky between the two, but the only difference in that regard is literally just a +10% HP growth. I'd expect that the comparison between the two is similar to Lance and Allen in BinBla, where it's entirely up to the RNG who comes out on top - maybe even moreso, since BinBla's Xmas cavs have a more pronounced distinction between "the strong one" and "the speedy one". One specific advantage that Abel (and Jeigan, actually) lost is the ability to double with Iron Lances. Not through their own fault - the doubling threshold has been increased to 3, while negative AS still doesn't seem to be a thing, so Abel unfortunately doesn't have some unique "can double from horseback" quality over Kain anymore. [HP 50% | Str 20% | Skl 70% | Spd 90% | Lck 70% | WLv 80% | Def 20%] Sheeda got buffed - +2 Str! But also nerfed, since promoting no longer brings her Str/Def to a fixed value. But also buffed again, because you already get your first Dragon Whip in chapter 15. Still not exactly early, but 4 maps is 4 maps. That said, the Dracoknight promotion still provides her with a nice +3 Str / +4 Def, so I think she's overall better than in FE1, just because she doesn't have that awkward 3-Str midgame. She can still grab Jeigan's Silver Lance and have the same AS with it as Abel with an Iron Sword, so that's still a pretty good niche to have. Unlike Kain and Abel, Sheeda does lose stats from dismounting: -3 Skl, -3 Spd, and of course her 6 Res, so she has little incentive to do so when she isn't forced to. [HP 60% | Str 20% | Skl 40% | Spd 40% | Lck 20% | WLv 20% | Def 10%] DOGA can promote now! That said, he still seems comically outclassed by the Cavs, with whom he also has to share the promotion item. I guess we can blame Kaga for that same issue in GBAFE. His bases and growths are unchanged, unless I missed something, and they are still bad. He does at least have a passable Spd growth, but there's just a bunch of issues, with the obvious starting point being his low movement. He also lost access to swords, and while he'd be unable to double with an Iron Sword anyway, thanks to the increased doubling threshold, but this makes it all the less likely that he'll be able to grow out of his awful Spd base in a timely fashion. His terrible Lck is also relevant now - FE3 finally gifts us with crit mitigation, so DOGA is more susceptible to crits than most. With the addition of dismounting, Armours do have the unique ability to use the Gradivüü indoors, but DOGA does not seem to be the map for that job, either. Even with the General's class base of 10 WLv, his WLv growth is so low that it's far from guaranteed that he'll get to the required 12 WLv on his own merit. Overall, he just seems like your typical FE Knight, with all the knighty flaws a Knight would have. [HP 40% | Str 30% | Skl 30% | Spd 30% | Lck 40% | WLv 50% | Def 10%] And finally, Gaggles. He also got improved base stats: +4 Skl in his case, but that really just highlights just how awful his base stats were in FE1. Because they, frankly, still are. You can really see the BinBla parallels here - DOGA and Bors, of course, and Wolt really is the Gordon to Roy's Marth: an Archer with strictly worse stats. Gordin has the same base Str and higher WLv growth, but Marth is better in literally every other metric. Oddly enough, I don't think Gordon is too bothered by the transition away from class bases for promotion. He still gets excellent promotion bonuses (+5 to Skl/Spd being the big ones), so even though I suspect that his, what, Lv.15/1 stats will be a bit worse than FE1's Sniper bases, he should still be pretty decent when he promotes. This also makes Tomas less interesting as a low-investment Sniper, since pre-promotion stats do matter now, and I don't think Gordon needs to shy the comparison. So overall, I think he might be better than I first thought, although that is not not to say that I now think he's amazing. But OK. Isn't this gorgeous, by the way? Derived stats? An Accuracy stat?! I know that Old Mystery is only halfway there, not offering an actual battle forecast, but this is already so much more convenient than the complete lack of information in FE1. And following the "halfway there" trend: Movement ranges! ...but only for your own characters, the game still doesn't tell you how far an enemy can reach. And, even more halfway-ness, you can now go to a character's stat screen with a single button press, which is really a much bigger increase in convenience than it sounds. However, you can not scroll through your characters (or the enemies) with the arrow keys... I mean D-pad, which makes it harder to quickly scan the enemies for effective weapons and the suchlike. But how about we play a game of Fire Emblem? And what better way to start than to immediately go to the village for more words, words, words? : "Prince Marth, please wait. This is what the villagers gathered up. All together there's 5000 Gold. Please use it to make preparations, and then rescue this country from the Garda pirates." ...10/10 portrait. This could be a Darkest Dungeon character, the eyes are always hidden in that game's art style, too. Holy hell, how could I forget to mention this? We can trade items now! Trade items! Back and forth! __ Battle animations look rather nice, too. So did the animations of the NESFE games, of course, but Mystery adds really quite detailed background, even including moving clouds, and the stabbing itself has a decent coreography in it, too. Not of the fun over-the-top-ness from the GBAFE games, but decent nonetheless. A cool detail is that characters don't move back to their default positions after their attack. It's walk-stab-counterstab(-follow-up stab), which speeds up the fights somewhat, at least when DOGA doesn't have to walk up to the enemy. __ Speaking of the man - the Xmas cavs are pretty much out of the running for a spot on the team, with Hardin and Biraku being guaranteed theirs, and Macellon wanting a Knight Crest, as well. Instead, I was feeding kills to Gordon and DOGA, although the latter disqualified himself by opening with a +Skl only level-up for his debut. And he'd be a fourth Knight Crest user, of course. Gordon, meanwhile, opened with a +Spd level, clearly showing that the stars are favouring him. He then got a second, worse level near the end of the fight, but I'm still going to try and commit to good ol' Gaggles. Also Sheeda. I like Sheeda in her DS characterisation, with the implied cunning. I don't care for her New Mystery support convos, but... I mean, how many New Mystery support convos do I care for? The map on a whole is, of course pretty easy, as long as you don't walk Sheeda into the Hunter's range. Everybody moves westwards, stabbing enemies as they come. Sheeda takes care of / farms the pirates water-walking along the northern coastline, using the fort to regain HP. Marth is about to witness a tragedy. : "Oh, you're the prince of Aritia! It#s like a dream to be able to see you... This... this Vulnerary is a small gift from me. Please accept it." Ruben wept. I would make a "This Vulnerary can't fight" joke, but that might be inappropriate. The most entertaining thing about the map might be a silly mistake on my part. After visiting the shop (in which you can send stuff directly to the convoy! A stunning innovation, compared to FE1), Abel sent one Iron Sword to the convoy, for Marth to pick it up from there. And then he traded his initial Iron Sword directly to Marth, because I apparently am a goldfish. Long story short, when he dismounts in front of Gazzak in order to do some chip damage, he does so unarmed Very disappointed that he didn't walk up to Gazzak and slap him. That's why you're benched, Abel. : "What, the Aritian army!? If we let you guys walk all over us, it would ruin the name of us pirats! ...Die!" __ It doesn't end up costing me, though, unless an extra turn is considered expensive. Gordon misses the kill with his Steel Bow, then Marth misses both of his attempts (and the close call on Marth's part was calculated - that is much easier now, after all)... __ ...but DOGA then manages to set up an Iron Bow kill for Gordon. There, the worse level-up. : "Urgh... How..." Victory! : "Oh, Prince Marth. I am glad to see you're sfe. We are all very grateful for your actions. Is that so...? You're finally heading out to Orleans? In that case, I will send some soldiers to aid you. These men, led by Captain Oguma, are all brave warriors. I'm certain they will help you in battle. "Before you go, I have some important advice for your highness. From now on, during your highness's travels, you will surely find many people who despise the Durhua Empire. Some of them are hiding in villages, while others have been captured by enemies. There may even be some that have been forced to work for Durhua. Finding these people and fighting together with them is crucial. Do you understand me, Prince Marth...? "Well, the time has come! You must be determined during your journey. Good luck!" And there you have it. I'm sure Shaky is already giddy waiting for the arrival of Maji, but that will have to wait for another day. The Team: Lv. HP Str Skl Spd Lck WLv Def Res +XP Marth 1.96 18 5 6 7 7 6 7 0 +96 (base) Jeigan 1.30 22 7 10 8 1 10 9 6 +30 (base) Kain 1.38 20 7 5 6 3 5 7 0 +38 (base) Abel 1.10 20 6 7 7 2 6 7 0 +10 (base) Sheeda 2.38 17 5 7 13 10 8 7 6 +138 DOGA 2.44 20 7 4 3 1 4 11 0 +144 Gordon 3.00 20 5 5 5 5 5 6 0 +200 FIVE FIVE POINTS! 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ping Posted November 2, 2023 Author Share Posted November 2, 2023 Spoiler On 10/31/2023 at 7:11 PM, Saint Rubenio said: No, no. You can't win against Garnef. Gharnef is a pussy. Darn, and this Mystery version uses the h-less spelling. We are doomed. On 10/31/2023 at 7:11 PM, Saint Rubenio said: Fair enough! I believe I had accepted Matthis on book 2 back then anyway. Well, I forced you to pick between Matthis and Roshe, cruel as I am. On 10/31/2023 at 7:11 PM, Saint Rubenio said: If I had to hazard a guess, they're probably all flagged as "summoned" and get murdered when a summoner dies. Come to think of it, is there another map in the game with multiple summoners? If there are, it'd be weird that it only works like this in this specific map. Celica's first swampy map has three Canters actually. I don't remember if anything in this playthough confirmed or disproved your theory, though. It does sound realistic, and would also explain why Witches don't disappear if you kill the Queen Witch - the class wouldn't have a "summoned" tag. In any case, it does work very well for the final map specifically. On 10/31/2023 at 7:11 PM, Saint Rubenio said: Rudolf may have just been wrong about everything. My working theory is that Camüü might actually have been meant to be written as an idiot, not a tragic hero, what with Sheeda and Lorenz figuring out why blind loyalty is bad, actually - on the very same map. Nobody was more surprised by everybody loving the dumbass than Kaga himself. So I wouldn't completely rule out Rudolf being intentially written as a complete fool, either. On 10/31/2023 at 7:11 PM, Saint Rubenio said: One more time, folks. Meißen M E I ẞ E N On 10/31/2023 at 7:11 PM, Saint Rubenio said: Use Yubello for coolest kids duo, if you have the room. Wouldn't want to hog the entire team. I was already considering him, actually - I used Marrich in FE1, so I might use Linde in Book 1 and Yubello in Book 2. The alternative is whatever Marrich's rival is called in this patch, but I might just use Yubello and see how he levels up, and swap to That Guy if the answer is "poorly". On 10/31/2023 at 8:10 PM, Interdimensional Observer said: 👏 Glad it's over?😃 Glad that I can now enjoy some of the QoL improvements from the SNES era that we, in our decadence, take for granted, nay, dismiss as obsolete. On 10/31/2023 at 8:10 PM, Interdimensional Observer said: Arran could easily take Libra at least. Spd is utterly useless for FE3 Manaketes. Do they inherently not double, like Corrin, or are their attacks just so heavy (or their Spd bases so low) that doubling is a foolish dream? Either way, good information to have. On 10/31/2023 at 9:25 PM, Shaky Jones said: One of my least favorite petty things in FE. I implore you to not go for a Mars kill in FE3. I nearly vomited playing FE9 just recently as is. It's not fucking fair! Shinon deserved the Ashnard kill! Tauroneo deserved it! I mean, Marth killing Medeus at least makes narrative sense, much more sense than FE11!Marth being awful at fighting the dragonman. Ike and Ashy don't really have any personal conflict. Hell, half of Ike's companions have more of a bone to pick with him, as demonstrated by Ashnard having dozens of boss convos that you only see if you fuck up, voluntarily or not. On 10/31/2023 at 9:25 PM, Shaky Jones said: Wait, what's wrong? Did Cleive die? "Badass warrior lady becomes domesticated" trope annoys me. On 10/31/2023 at 9:25 PM, Shaky Jones said: C tier. You are very forgiving... I said this about FE1, too: Fire Emblem's core gameplay is good. FE1 got points docked because it's needlessly annoying to actually move your pieces on the board; Gaiden gets points docked because the board ranks between "bland" and "a pile of poo" the majority of the time. But in both cases, the basic "move your characters into a working formation", "level-up procs make monkey brain happy", and eventually "your growth project starts stomping the enemy" concepts still apply, and keep the game from going into the shit tiers. A game with FE1's UI and without Fire Emblem's good basis would certainly not cling to C, or even D tier. On 11/1/2023 at 2:08 AM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: True, but didn't Mycen also explain stuff to Alm at the end of Act I? In which case, he couldn't be playable until that happened. Also, Alm would've probably been more inclined to believe his "grandfather" than "Enemy General McGee". That is true, but Mycen appearing at the end of chapter 1 also makes it a bit frustrating that he doesn't join at that point (although considering that he isn't a hot girl with not enough clothing, most players probably didn't care too much). That wouldn't make him a proper Jeigan-y character, of course, but a crutch for chapter 3 wouldn't be a bad thing for Alm's team, either. With somewhat reduced stats, presumably, or maybe even as a mid-level Paladin that is close to promotion, even closer than Matilda. And I would've suggested Enemy General McGee as a back-up in case Mycen didn't make it through chapters 3 and 4, not the intended exposition bot. Getting a less satisfying set-up seems an appropriate punishment for letting Alm's gramps die! On 11/1/2023 at 2:08 AM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said: Oh, and congratulations on surviving Gaiden! Thanks! On 11/1/2023 at 3:38 AM, Punished Dayni said: I mean, it's the NES and they're still getting used to coding anything in this series, Yeah, I can definitely accept "technical limitations" as an excuse, if that's it. It would fit my experience with the game if AI was tied to classes, not individual characters, which would explain why Rudolf the Gold Knight has the same AI as Generic#149 the Gold Knight. And we talked earlier how class data seems to be pretty compressed, what with many unpromoted classes sharing their bases with monsters or enemy-only classes, so "just add an Emperor class, lmao" probably wouldn't have been a valid option. On 11/1/2023 at 3:38 AM, Punished Dayni said: Probably listened to Rinea and is currently living cottagecore conservative fantasies as we speak. ...that is disturbingly fitting for the two. On 11/1/2023 at 3:38 AM, Punished Dayni said: Maybe he suspected that he'd be immediately stabbed in the back by the Duma Faithful if he moved even slightly to do that. Now, of course none of this would be explained here and I'm pretty sure it isn't in SoV beyond "Mila kept it in her skull because she didn't want her brother to die" That would've been a good explanation, yeah. And while the whole of it is a big ol' mess, I do like the idea that Mila instinctively tries to protect her family in isolation. On 11/1/2023 at 3:38 AM, Punished Dayni said: From what I know it's dead at this stage. Wouldn't surprise me, it would be more than a decade old at this point. I know there's a few webcomics that have survived that long, but it seems very natural that someone would want to move on from a project at some point. On 11/1/2023 at 12:59 PM, Jotari said: Looks good! And I will totally consider this the first piece of fanart related to a project of mine, even though it stems from a discussion I didn't really add anything to --- To bundle and condense the comments on Genealogy: Ruben: Substitutes instead of Sylvia and Erinys's kids No Finn marriage, let him keep Brave Lance Observer: Bridget/Holyn - sword rank for Patty, big Skl growth for Faval/Febail Ayra/Lex or Ayra/Naoise Eriys/Azelle and Sylvia/Claude as an option, although Erinys/Claude and Sylvia/--- is good, too Shaky: Do marry Finn because he has sweet dialogue with his kid(s) Jotari: No shipping - let pairings happen as the come. 1st Mate: Erinys/Claude There is still plenty time to decide who I'm going to disappoint, of course. But to be honest, considering that I never played Awakening or Fates, I'm inclined to go full Crusader Kings here. Well, maybe not full CK. Dew not being part of my initial plans isn't just based on optimisation. And I vaguely remember that it's implied that Claude and Sylvia are more closely related than would be comfortable for a romantic relationship, so I'd rather... not. So basically, I do want to plan pairings, for either mechanic or narrative pay-off. Erinys/Claude is one that I want to do because "magic-based Pegasus Knight" sounds cool, and I can certainly be talked into a Finn pairing if there's a nice follow-up to that in Gen 2. For now, I'll just keep the suggestions (and my initial plans) in my FE.txt document, add any further opinion offered, and play Mystery before thinking too hard on it. That is not to say that I don't welcome discussion on the topic, I just might not give my own 2ct on it. Answers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Saint Rubenio Posted November 2, 2023 Share Posted November 2, 2023 21 minutes ago, gnip said: So that you can properly disagree with my conclusions - and in case it's unreadable for anybody else: Nothing particularly disagreeable, from my perspective. 5 minutes ago, gnip said: I don't know what translation patch I'm using - a cursory glance at some of the SF threads suggests that it's a really old one, since it calls Marth "Mar" on his stat screen, an error/bug that apparently has been fixed for a while already. I probably got a pre-patched ROM that hadn't been updated in forever. I don't really want to fix this, though - my internet access is still wonky and I don't want to browse for ROMs on somebody else's computer. The translated script seems fine, if with the occasional mistake. For Genealogy and Thracia, I do have clean ROMs, so I'll be able to pick the newest and hottest translation patches once we get there. That's fine, it'll add to the "first game in the series that ever had a UI" aesthetic. 7 minutes ago, gnip said: I hate Abel's portrait in this game, for one very specific reason: Why are his shoulder pads two different colors? If it's shading, it's really poor shading, because his jacket under the pauldron is not similarly obscured. Not to mention it's an entirely different shade of green. It just looks off. 8 minutes ago, gnip said: By contrast, Gordon's shades of green are a lot more subdued, so the contrast isn't as stark. Nitpick, I know, but hey. We're playing FE1 again. I've gotta find something to talk about before we get to the interesting stuff. 9 minutes ago, gnip said: Isn't this gorgeous, by the way? No, it's hideous. But well, first game with a UI. 10 minutes ago, gnip said: : "Oh, you're the prince of Aritia! It#s like a dream to be able to see you... This... this Vulnerary is a small gift from me. Please accept it." Ruben wept. Of all the games that will be played in this playlog, this is the second worst. 11 minutes ago, gnip said: : "Urgh... How..." I seem to recall mentioning this earlier in the thread, but I'll mention it again: In this game, the sad death music plays for bosses as well as playables. This is really funny when you kill Extremely Evil Man #4 and the game wants you to mourn him. 1 minute ago, gnip said: Well, I forced you to pick between Matthis and Roshe, cruel as I am. Roshe had a good run. Gotta keep things spicy. 1 minute ago, gnip said: My working theory is that Camüü might actually have been meant to be written as an idiot, not a tragic hero, what with Sheeda and Lorenz figuring out why blind loyalty is bad, actually - on the very same map. Nobody was more surprised by everybody loving the dumbass than Kaga himself. So I wouldn't completely rule out Rudolf being intentially written as a complete fool, either. There's evidence of Kaga not being particularly supportive of this mindset in a few places of his games. Most notably in Thracia (not going into detail), the character who is (pretty much) always right argues against praise being given towards the Camus and calls him out for still being in service of a country conducting childhunts, even if he's not entirely chipper about it. 3 minutes ago, gnip said: M E I ẞ E N Man, I'm gonna miss saying Meißen. 3 minutes ago, gnip said: I was already considering him, actually - I used Marrich in FE1, so I might use Linde in Book 1 and Yubello in Book 2. The alternative is whatever Marrich's rival is called in this patch, but I might just use Yubello and see how he levels up, and swap to That Guy if the answer is "poorly". Yubello benefits from this game's systems, he did not like the transition to FE12. Here he's actually got pretty sweet growths, and 1 meme magic base is less horrid because caps are 20. Elrean is also pretty cool, but I'll leave it to your discretion which to use. I like both. Though the little twin power duo is always a fun time. They're FE children that I don't hate - that should be indicative of how cool they are. 7 minutes ago, gnip said: Erinys/Claude is one that I want to do because "magic-based Pegasus Knight" sounds cool Aww. No Hawk, then. Too bad. Get Brigid's substitutes in that case, that was the other one I entertained requesting Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ping Posted November 2, 2023 Author Share Posted November 2, 2023 17 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said: No, it's hideous. But well, first game with a UI. It shows that you didn't just play NESFE for two months. I was crying tears of joy when I realised I was allowed to buy more than two weapons with Abel. 19 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said: Of all the games that will be played in this playlog, this is the second worst. Did you change your mind about something? Because you have only listed PoR below this in your signature. ...oh wait, I don't see Gaiden there. I assume it's missing because it was too bad for you to finish it. 20 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said: There's evidence of Kaga not being particularly supportive of this mindset in a few places of his games. Most notably in Thracia (not going into detail), the character who is (pretty much) always right argues against praise being given towards the Camus and calls him out for still being in service of a country conducting childhunts, even if he's not entirely chipper about it. I'm kinda happy that I can't even think of who Thracia's Camüü is right now. That means that I forgot a lot about Jugdral's plot(s), so reading through it is going to be interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Interdimensional Observer Posted November 2, 2023 Share Posted November 2, 2023 On 10/31/2023 at 10:38 PM, Punished Dayni said: But there are villagers! Sure, they're NPCs, but they're in the game. Genealogy has the strongest villagers. In other games, bandits disintegrate villages in a blink, the defiant and enduring wills of Jugdrali citizens allow them to hold out for a whole nine turns. 11 minutes ago, gnip said: FE3 has these swooshing world map animations between chapters, which very much remind me of Final Fantasy VI (even though I only played the GBA version of that). Good old Mode 7 pseudo-3D. 11 minutes ago, gnip said: I don't know what translation patch I'm using - a cursory glance at some of the SF threads suggests that it's a really old one, since it calls Marth "Mar" on his stat screen, an error/bug that apparently has been fixed for a while already. I probably got a pre-patched ROM that hadn't been updated in forever. I don't really want to fix this, though - my internet access is still wonky and I don't want to browse for ROMs on somebody else's computer. Old Mystery could arguably use a retranslation patch, something more refined visually and perhaps script-wise. 11 minutes ago, gnip said: he should be able to reach the 12 WLv necessary to wield Gradivüü Poking fun at its original user, I see.😛 25 minutes ago, gnip said: And finally, Gaggles. He also got improved base stats: +4 Skl in his case, but that really just highlights just how awful his base stats were in FE1. Because they, frankly, still are. You can really see the BinBla parallels here - DOGA and Bors, of course, and Wolt really is the Gordon to Roy's Marth: an Archer with strictly worse stats. Gordin has the same base Str and higher WLv growth, but Marth is better in literally every other metric. Then we have Wil and Rebecca, and Neimi, and Rolf, and why the heck did Leonardo's best growths have to be Skl/Lck/Res? Virion is rather awful too in one of the most anti-archer games in the franchise. Just what drove IS to think archers had to begin with crappier stats than everyone else?🤔 17 minutes ago, gnip said: So many stat ups -but none of them are Str/Def. The Caeda conundrum.😄 30 minutes ago, gnip said: Isn't this gorgeous, by the way? Derived stats? An Accuracy stat?! I know that Old Mystery is only halfway there, not offering an actual battle forecast, but this is already so much more convenient than the complete lack of information in FE1. Incremental improvement feels so appreciated when you're incrementally progressing through the games of yesteryesteryear. I've been there before.😃 32 minutes ago, gnip said: I would make a "This Vulnerary can't fight" joke, but that might be inappropriate. Hmm... it is alcohol-based medicine or water? If the former, you could turn it into a Molotov cocktail I suppose. 1 minute ago, gnip said: Do they inherently not double, like Corrin, or are their attacks just so heavy (or their Spd bases so low) that doubling is a foolish dream? Either way, good information to have. You'll see for yourself soon enough. -But I consider an act of (coincidental?) balancing that doubling is off the table for FE3 Manaketes, otherwise they'd be positively busted. If you wanted to see something similar-ish to what a dragon could do with doubling, you could try using the power of the stars to buff up a mage in Book 2. 21 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said: There's evidence of Kaga not being particularly supportive of this mindset in a few places of his games. Kaga was also pretty dismissive of Sigurd (and in praise of Seliph, weird b/c a seeming majority of fans think Gen 2 is weaker narratively than Gen 1, protagonist included) in an interview. Which, given certain circumstances of Siggy's, perhaps aligns. 17 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said: Yubello benefits from this game's systems, he did not like the transition to FE12. Here he's actually got pretty sweet growths, and 1 meme magic base is less horrid because caps are 20. -Minus the part where he can't use Excalibur b/c Merric-locked. Although, Thoron is the same thing -20 Crit, a couple uses, and the flier effectiveness. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ping Posted November 2, 2023 Author Share Posted November 2, 2023 3 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: So many stat ups -but none of them are Str/Def. The Caeda conundrum.😄 The pegasusest Pegasus to ever pegasus. It's a miracle that Ruben doesn't hate her. 4 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Incremental improvement feels so appreciated when you're incrementally progressing through the games of yesteryesteryear. I've been there before.😃 We should both have a swing at Civ1. A couple months ago, there was some Europa Universalis IV publicity stunt where a couple youtubers/streamers played the oldest available version of that game in multiplayer to celebrate its 10th anniversary. I'm just thinking of that because there was a lot of "what do you mean, I can't do this basic thing" moments in the one video I watched of it. (the slightly infuriating part is that some of those "basic things" are still unavailable in the base game. EU4 had the really annoying habit of putting QoL stuff into DLC, or introduce a new mechanic in the free patch but put some additional actions related to it into the accompanying DLC) 8 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said: Kaga was also pretty dismissive of Sigurd (and in praise of Seliph, weird b/c a seeming majority of fans think Gen 2 is weaker narratively than Gen 1, protagonist included) in an interview. Which, given certain circumstances of Siggy's, perhaps aligns. A more competent protagonist can certainly make for a more boring story sometimes. Definitely an interesting angle to look from - I was half-joking when I said Kaga probably was surprised by Camüü's popularity, but it might not be entirely off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaky Jones Posted November 2, 2023 Share Posted November 2, 2023 On 11/1/2023 at 4:59 AM, Jotari said: Unfortunately, the longer you stare at him the more it looks like I gave him a double chin. I respect it. 34 minutes ago, gnip said: Into Mystery of the Emblem we go. I think I started playing this game twice, both times Book 1, and both times not getting very far into the game, as you can see. I think it's safe to assume that I was very distraught by the lack of Sheeda's #1 simp, so I couldn't stomach playing past this map. Hey, that's where I stopped too! I fucking love this opening though. The classic music I'm used to hearing in SD, the opening of the game with the Emblem and the scrolls. I can hear the calming and mystical music emanating from this screenshot. God, I love the startup menu for this game. Possibly my favorite in the series. Something about feels genuinely magical to me. I also love how the map zooms in and out as you play the game which is even shown here and it zooms accordingly to the chapter of the book you're playing instead of just transitioning to a black screen, and I just love the SNES Archanea music so much. Too bad book 1 will actually show the worst of that through having the same problem of map themes being the fucking same for 97% of the game. 42 minutes ago, gnip said: FE3 has these swooshing world map animations between chapters, which very much remind me of Final Fantasy VI (even though I only played the GBA version of that). Shit, I brought it up before thinking about when or whether you'd mention it. Man, it's just so cool... I'm already gushing. Fuck, I really do love this game, but I have so many problems with it. 43 minutes ago, gnip said: I don't know what translation patch I'm using - a cursory glance at some of the SF threads suggests that it's a really old one, since it calls Marth "Mar" on his stat screen, an error/bug that apparently has been fixed for a while already. I probably got a pre-patched ROM that hadn't been updated in forever. I don't really want to fix this, though - my internet access is still wonky and I don't want to browse for ROMs on somebody else's computer. The translated script seems fine, if with the occasional mistake. For Genealogy and Thracia, I do have clean ROMs, so I'll be able to pick the newest and hottest translation patches once we get there. Where's the fun in playing old games if you're just going to use modern translations that make the script basicaly the same to the remake. Embrace Akeneia and Nabarl. 44 minutes ago, gnip said: And we are back, playing this map for the fourth time during this little project. There is something unimaginably charming to seeing the map I've played at least 15 times by now in SNES coloring. 45 minutes ago, gnip said: [HP 90% | Str 50% | Skl 40% | Spd 50% | Lck 70% | WLv 40% | Def 20%] Marth has received a slight boost since FE1, gaining +3 Skl and +1 WLv in comparison. Since Skl now increases accuracy at a 2:1 ratio (and crit 1:1), the former is a nice little bonus to his consistency, while the latter puts him closer to stuff like the Killing Edge (7 WLv), Wyrmslayer (7 WLv), or Silver Sword (9 WLv) - also nice, since Marth's WLv growth is a bit shaky despite a +10% increase. Other than that, his growths are still the same. Wait, no, I tell a lie, everybody has a 3% Res growth these days. Overall, I wouldn't expect Marth to be as good as in FE1, simply because he lost his Provoke ability. No more healers in the open, with Mars absorbing any incoming enemy attack. So even though his growths are obviously still really good and the Rapier is a great effective weapon to have, the lack of promotion is probably going to hold him back, with less unique mechanics making up for it than in FE1. I'd be surprised if he came close to FE11!Marth's general terribleness, though. A lot worse. Unlucky. Sword units are always good on account of having little to weigh them down, but most of what made him great in FE1 is now gone. Le sad. 46 minutes ago, gnip said: [HP 10% | Str 10% | Skl 10% | Spd 10% | Lck 0% | WLv 0% | Def 0% ] Jeigan technically got buffed, too: 6 Res, as opposed to the uniform 0 Res situation in FE1. This comes from his class, and he actually loses it if he dismounts - alongside -2 Str, -3 Skl, -3 Spd, and -2 Def. This means that Jeigan himself is actually weaker than Marth or the Xmas cavs and it's his horse, not Jeigan, who is the Jeigan of this game. Jokes aside, he seems to have a similar position as before, which is to say that he'll be overtaken by your growths units pretty quickly, without the distinguishing feature of amazing weapon ranks that he has in FE11. My Jeigan was sure going wild. He looks amazing, and at the end of the day, isn't that all that FE fans ever care about? 47 minutes ago, gnip said: [HP 50% | Str 20% | Skl 70% | Spd 90% | Lck 70% | WLv 80% | Def 20%] Sheeda got buffed - +2 Str! But also nerfed, since promoting no longer brings her Str/Def to a fixed value. But also buffed again, because you already get your first Dragon Whip in chapter 15. Still not exactly early, but 4 maps is 4 maps. That said, the Dracoknight promotion still provides her with a nice +3 Str / +4 Def, so I think she's overall better than in FE1, just because she doesn't have that awkward 3-Str midgame. She can still grab Jeigan's Silver Lance and have the same AS with it as Abel with an Iron Sword, so that's still a pretty good niche to have. Unlike Kain and Abel, Sheeda does lose stats from dismounting: -3 Skl, -3 Spd, and of course her 6 Res, so she has little incentive to do so when she isn't forced to. She's still an unfaithful bi- 48 minutes ago, gnip said: [HP 60% | Str 20% | Skl 40% | Spd 40% | Lck 20% | WLv 20% | Def 10%] DOGA can promote now! That said, he still seems comically outclassed by the Cavs, with whom he also has to share the promotion item. I guess we can blame Kaga for that same issue in GBAFE. His bases and growths are unchanged, unless I missed something, and they are still bad. He does at least have a passable Spd growth, but there's just a bunch of issues, with the obvious starting point being his low movement. He also lost access to swords, and while he'd be unable to double with an Iron Sword anyway, thanks to the increased doubling threshold, but this makes it all the less likely that he'll be able to grow out of his awful Spd base in a timely fashion. His terrible Lck is also relevant now - FE3 finally gifts us with crit mitigation, so DOGA is more susceptible to crits than most. With the addition of dismounting, Armours do have the unique ability to use the Gradivüü indoors, but DOGA does not seem to be the map for that job, either. Even with the General's class base of 10 WLv, his WLv growth is so low that it's far from guaranteed that he'll get to the required 12 WLv on his own merit. Overall, he just seems like your typical FE Knight, with all the knighty flaws a Knight would have. He mostly shines in the early game dependent on how the player paves his way to the seize point, as this game's biggest crime will soon prevent you from abusing healing. 50 minutes ago, gnip said: Holy hell, how could I forget to mention this? We can trade items now! Trade items! Back and forth! Automatically 20 times better than FE1. This cannot be debated to the only person in the world that wants to say otherwise. 50 minutes ago, gnip said: Also Sheeda. I like Sheeda in her DS characterisation, with the implied cunning. I don't care for her New Mystery support convos, but... I mean, how many New Mystery support convos do I care for? Just give me like 3 more runs and I'll have all of them to talk about. I still fucking hate Ceada 51 minutes ago, gnip said: Isn't this gorgeous, by the way? Derived stats? An Accuracy stat?! I know that Old Mystery is only halfway there, not offering an actual battle forecast, but this is already so much more convenient than the complete lack of information in FE1. On one hand, you could be grateful that FE4 begins telling you a lot more about stats, but it's FE4. Nobody looks at the stats. You just threw Sigurd and your other holy weapon users to the front lines. No one's doing the math for 12 different enemies attacking you. You'll probably be fine. 53 minutes ago, gnip said: : "Urgh... How..." Victory! : "Oh, Prince Marth. I am glad to see you're sfe. We are all very grateful for your actions. Is that so...? You're finally heading out to Orleans? In that case, I will send some soldiers to aid you. These men, led by Captain Oguma, are all brave warriors. I'm certain they will help you in battle. "Before you go, I have some important advice for your highness. From now on, during your highness's travels, you will surely find many people who despise the Durhua Empire. Some of them are hiding in villages, while others have been captured by enemies. There may even be some that have been forced to work for Durhua. Finding these people and fighting together with them is crucial. Do you understand me, Prince Marth...? "Well, the time has come! You must be determined during your journey. Good luck!" This will be the part of the thread where Nerdy Jones shows his loser side the most, as I simply must point out how much I love these portraits. They're not even stellar, but they feel so classic. Most of FE1's portraits are either laughably shit or just alright (although the sprites in battle were great), but I can't help but really like these. Like I mentioned before, I actually really love FE3 artwork, and I'm pretty sure Ruben doesn't while I also recently got into an argument over FE4 artwork being good vs bad (it's bad). Somehow, it even feels nostalgic and like something you would see in an early 90's CRPG or something and I like the shading introduced here, while FE4 is just the same people with equally large foreheads and the exact same faces. 46 minutes ago, gnip said: I mean, Marth killing Medeus at least makes narrative sense, much more sense than FE11!Marth being awful at fighting the dragonman. Ike and Ashy don't really have any personal conflict. Hell, half of Ike's companions have more of a bone to pick with him, as demonstrated by Ashnard having dozens of boss convos that you only see if you fuck up, voluntarily or not. Narrative sense, schmaritive scents. It's boring. Lords are rarely the highlight of the game. There's too many other units I love that I want to see be in the spotlight through my actions. Don't hold my hand and tell me to follow the narrative path. Arran killing him is 500 times more meaningful in my eyes, and I'm glad this game at least lets me do that. 48 minutes ago, gnip said: Ruben: Substitutes instead of Sylvia and Erinys's kids No Finn marriage, let him keep Brave Lance Observer: Bridget/Holyn - sword rank for Patty, big Skl growth for Faval/Febail Ayra/Lex or Ayra/Naoise Eriys/Azelle and Sylvia/Claude as an option, although Erinys/Claude and Sylvia/--- is good, too Shaky: Do marry Finn because he has sweet dialogue with his kid(s) Jotari: No shipping - let pairings happen as the come. Even when it comes to people that seemingly aren't depraved, shipping discussion becomes a divided topic. 41 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said: I hate Abel's portrait in this game, for one very specific reason: Why are his shoulder pads two different colors? If it's shading, it's really poor shading, because his jacket under the pauldron is not similarly obscured. Not to mention it's an entirely different shade of green. It just looks off. Sometimes I worry that I'm unwanted for complaining too much, but then I remember that Ruben is the pettiest person on the planet. That's mostly a joke, but come on my guy! It looks fine! I know you draw from time to time, but this feels like an artist saying something is horribly off while the crowd doesn't notice the .05% coloring mis-match in one spot. I like that the shading is there. He's slightly leaning and the shading is supposed to show that. Maybe it shouldn't've be so dark, but I'd certainly prefer it there than it not being there at all. I won't pretend I fully know what I'm talking about, but this is easily his coolest portrait. The FE11 one is generic and the FE1 one...I don't have to say anything. It's cool man! It's cool! These portraits are awesome! I love all of these so far. Except Caeda. Her presence disgusts me. Okay, reading back, I sound like I'm taking this super seriously. My bad. I just got shocked seeing something that made me instinctively react with "Bro is TRYING to be as nitpicky as possible". It isn't THAT bad, is it? 50 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said: I seem to recall mentioning this earlier in the thread, but I'll mention it again: In this game, the sad death music plays for bosses as well as playables. This is really funny when you kill Extremely Evil Man #4 and the game wants you to mourn him. This is a nitpick I can complain about at least. I don't like getting a rise in my anxiety every time I kill a boss. I just can't get used to it. For a split second, my heart skips a beat and I immediately think "ohmygoddidimiscalculatedidhehavecounterohfuckohshit". Why Kaga why? 30 minutes ago, gnip said: It shows that you didn't just play NESFE for two months. I was crying tears of joy when I realised I was allowed to buy more than two weapons with Abel. It is quite a feeling. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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