To Become an Elitist [Playlogs FE1-5] [currently playing: Thracia 776]

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

Haven't been around much for this thread, but congrats on beating FE1! I was never able to get over the dated interface. I hope FE2 isn't too much of a hassle.

[Shaky Jones]

13 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

More inaccurate Triforce Attacks? Seems a like a recurring issue on this run.

Ironic. That's usually the main appeal of it.

13 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

38 HP 15 Def 7 Res, maximum Spd and near-max crit with 13x2 Atk that nobody can resist isn't good enough for you?

Athos simply has a map where he can do stuff (lots of little rooms with elite foes), and capping stats isn't quite so easy, and Luna.

Yeah, FE1 Gotoh is actually competent. Of course, the fact that Medeus is immune to magic is funny, but honestly that should've been in FE7 so people don't just luna crit it, every damn time.

13 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

🙋‍♂️

Do you feel any more or less interested in trying it out now?

7 hours ago, gnip said:

You're right, I should've had him fight Mediuth. Or the Mage Dragon guarding him. That would've gone really well.

Well that's why Ruben, the Saint that he is, used Maji. Riff can only do so much against them 2. 

They knew that you would've just Wendel Emblem'd otherwise.

7 hours ago, Punished Dayni said:

Ah, good old NES and making sections of sprites disappear as the boss falls. That or Marth is about to get cut to bits by Medeus learning from the Yellow Devil

You have to admit this is leagues above modern kills.

7 hours ago, gnip said:

Being able to even just tickle the two most important enemies on the map would've been nice. As is, his skill set isn't super to begin with, and Mars's spawning location doesn't exactly get swarmed by enemies, either. Spamming Fortify genuinely seems like the most useful thing for him to do.

A free fortify is already good, but having capped speed and great crit potential just seems wrong to dismiss as okay because he can't damage a specific few number of enemies on endgame. Magic in FE1 always felt really helpful to me given how accurate thoron is, and some enemies are rather tanky here. We can talk shit about Gotoh as a person all day, but I do think he deserves credit gameplay wise in FE1 for at least being a bit like Athos. I mean, what were they supposed to do? Cap his HP? Give him a "this tome damages mage dragons" book? Sounds a bit greedy, and that's a sin. No no no.

7 hours ago, Punished Dayni said:

Maps telling you to skip them, ah classic FE.

I shall not succumb.

Unless it's 3 Houses. Just skipped 2 of them the other day.

7 hours ago, Punished Dayni said:

That's why Gladius is in Gaiden! Dammit Kaga.

Yeah, interesting to note that Falchion was intended as the recurring weapon. I wonder what that alternate timeline where Tyrfing is Falchion, alongside whatever other titles would have happened under Kaga would have been like.

Ah, the classic "The Tyrfing is the falchion" theory. Kaga really loved Archanea. It makes me want to believe he was forced into making FE4, so I can forgive his biggest mistake in life. Of course, FE2 will still exist as the "every NES sequel needs to be pointlessly different". Unless you're the lost levels.

7 hours ago, Punished Dayni said:

Then again, I'd benched Marcia and Jill wasn't exactly impressing either

Marcia helps you until Makalov sells her for pocket money, and Jill gets benched the minute she stops being racist.

2 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Haven't been around much for this thread, but congrats on beating FE1! I was never able to get over the dated interface. I hope FE2 isn't too much of a hassle.

You owe him. Reply to every single one of his chapter updates. Otherwise, we shall send soldier Gray and Sage Atlus after you.

[ping]

To cap off Shadow Dragon and the Sword of Light - where does it go in my infallible tier list of Fire Emblem quality?

Spoiler

Map design is overall decent, I find. Not the greatest in the series, but also not the worst. It starts pretty strong for the first six maps, but then becomes weaker for a while: Banunu's joining map putting his village in a dead end, Roger's map coming down to effectively one one-tile chokepoint, Minerva and Maria's map being trivialisable by another one-tile chokepoint.

A recurring issue (that, as I have been assured multiple times, will be exacerbated in Gaiden) with this game's maps is a lot of idle running, even on maps that are generally good, or at least start strong. An example of this is chapter 17, the one before the big bridge, where Mars finally retakes Aritia for good. You have a pretty short path to the throne - but then there's the treasure room way off that path, you have to move away from both throne and treasure to get to the convoy, and to top things off, you have to march all the way around the throne to get the Member Card (and then march all the way back to the throne in order to use it. Mars donning the Boots does alleviate a lot of this, but given FE1's clunky-feeling UI, having all these empty turns of just moving about still brings down the experience a lot.

And yes, I obviously have to mention the UI. It did not age well. The most obvious one is, of course, the lack of concrete "battle number" - you get a character/enemy's base stats, but in order to actually figure out how a battle will go, you don't just have to do the math, you have to look up weapon stats, then do the math, hopefully not forget to think of attack speed. Item management is a pain, too, starting with the obvious annoyance that you can't trade items, only give them to somebody - the result being that two characters with full inventories can't swap items without a third character acting as an intermediary. You can't send somebody to go buy five Silver Lances, because you can't send them directly to the convoy. And using the convoy feels clunky, too, because instead of saying, "I'd like to retrieve items: X, Y, and Z", it goes...

• What do you want? - Retrieve item. - Pick X.
• What do you want? - Retrieve item. - Pick Y.
• What do you want? - Retrieve item. - Pick Z.

...with the convoy guy making you go through a few lines of dialogue every step of the way.

[/rant]

Then there's unit balance. This one is a beautiful mess and I love it. Kaga didn't have to roll out three amazing Cavaliers and three terrible Cavaliers, but he did. He didn't have make one good Fighter, one okay Fighter, and one terrible Fighter (two if we count Darros), but he did. You can have a good time making the terrible characters somehow work out, while using the powerful ones to make sure that the whole process doesn't become a tedious crawl. It's one of my more unpopular opinions (although I expect it to be shared by some in this thread) that a too balanced cast of characters is boring. ...Silver Axes would've been nice, though.

Part of that discussion is that FE1 isn't a very difficult game, which makes using those scrubs much less punishing than, like, Wendy and Sophia in FE6HM. While enemies do start to hit really hard in the last third of the game or so, especially if you try sending slower characters against them - restarts are more likely to come from a stray crit (because every enemy will have a low% crit chance on every character), or maybe from an ambush spawn if you didn't check FEWoD, than from actually being overwhelmed by the enemy.

In the end, I think I'll stick with what was my expectation going into this: C tier for Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light. Early on, I entertained the thought of putting it at the bottom of B, as a game that's objectively worse than its DS remake, but that has a lot of "clunky old game charm", which is something that I personally enjoy a lot. But then there were stretches of the game that made me eye the D tier, when item management became more of a necessity, or when I spent a bit too much time just moving 16 characters around. But I think C is overall fair for a game with a lot of good ideas and aspects, held back mostly by how frustrating it can be to make it allow you do what you want it to do. Honestly, a re-release that just added Atk/hit/avoid to character screens, a battle forecast, and smoother item management would absolutely go into B, no questions asked.

And with that, on to the princely swineherd!

FE2 Chapter 1: To Sofia!

Ram Village --> Thief Shrine

Spoiler

@Shaky Jones asked earlier what my plan with Gaiden's different map/chapter structure would be. The answer is obvious: Do I look like an Ekans with a plan?

Basically, I'll decide case by case where to end updates - when it makes sense narratively, when there's a decision to be had, or when I just feel like I've played enough. This first update will consist of three fights, and end when we recruit Silk, promote the Ram squad, and stand questioningly in front of the Lion Head Fountain. Fountains, technically, but I think there isn't much question which one to use in this case.

__
Mycen: "Bandits have been about."

I'm... not entirely sure what translation patch I used. It's been a while. Mycen being called Mycen suggests this patch...

...but "Sofia" instead of "Zofia" says otherwise.

Robin: "Yo, Alm! Listen to this guy!"
Gray: "Yo, Alm! Listen to this guy!"

Unless there's some new, underused patch, I think I'll stick with this one, though. If I recall, character names should be recognisable for Echoes players, and I don't think Gaiden has the most riveting dialogue to begin with.

"Sofia's castle was captured and the king has been killed. We formed a liberation force to fight againsst Dozer, but it's not good enough. So, I came to ask General Mycen to help."

And so on. Mycen doesn't want to join the Deliverance because war is bad, Luka thinks he's become cowardly, Alm offers to go in his stead, Luka says everybody likes it. Like Echoes, but with less flowers. Gameplay, please!

The first map is, honestly a bit of a sign of what's to come. If we look back to the previous game's opening map..:

Gaiden's is so, so much more simple. Mars Embarks isn't exactly the pinnacle of complexity (obviously, it's the opening map), but it has more going on than four forest tiles in the middle and a healing tile in the top left that enemies will run towards. And honestly, it also looks about 10 times as good, too. I guess Gaiden tries to be more "zoomed in", with the edge of Ram Village being visible for scale, but it just doesn't work.

Alm and Luka completely demolish the enemies on the map, all of which are Lv. 1 "Thieves", which I'll probably just call "Fighters" or "Brigands" or "Pirates" depending on context, because we generally don't associate "Thief" with slow axe users with high HP.

If Alm and Luka were close to the villages in their power level, this might have been a more interesting fight. Gray (hitting for 2x7 damage) and Robin (2x5) still measure up nicely against them, but they both take at least some damage in return. Cliff doesn't even double them, which I suppose "makes sense" with him being the "high potential" villager between the three.

__

If you want to train Cliff (and I do), the numbers do work out a bit more interestingly. Alm and Luka can set up kills for Gray and Robin - but not for Cliff. They deal 2x8 damage vs. their 26 HP, Cliff deals 5 damage - you see the problem. Once Alm or Luka hit an enemy twice, everybody except Cliff will kill them, excluding misses, so you have to do stuff like use Gray and Robin (24 damage in total) to chip an enemy down, or have Cliff enemy-phase a healthy Brigand so that Alm or Luka can bring him down to 4 HP on player phase.

__

However, an enemy below half HP will run for the healing tile instead of attack, which makes it still viable to feed Cliff a few kills.

He ends up with three, helped by Alm accidentally setting up a kill by missing an attack on enemy phase. Looking back on this, I think prioritising Robin so much probably wasn't the most efficient choice - he'll reach Lv.3 easily before reaching the first Mila shrine, and it's not like he gains a lot of stats from leveling up.

The second map is a bit more interesting than the first, since it's a bit more difficult to keep enemies off of forest tiles. However, only one enemy is not the same Lv.1 brigand we saw last map, which means that it's still very trivialisable by Alm and Luka.

If anybody reading along is unfamiliar with Gaiden or Echoes: Unlike the 2-range-locked Archers in almost every game of the series, Valentian Archers have 1-3 range by default, which means that they outrange most magic spells, but can also attack (and counter) at melee range. This is balanced out by a lower hit rate (-20 compared to a basic sword or lance), which you will find is very relevant in this game.

Luka can reach the Archer on turn 1, though, so he can knock him into coward AI immediately and then kill him on turn 2, removing any potential headache from the map.

...wait, I tell a lie. Enemies running towards healing tiles is rather headache-inducing.

Cliff's first level is a very significant one: Like in Gaiden (and I believe Echoes keeps this one, too), you only have to outspeed your opponent by a single point, so this is enough to basically let Cliff catch up to Robin with his combat prowess. Well, until we meet enemies with 3 Spd.

...4 Spd.

These two Spd procs are especially valuable because Cliff is to become an Archer by the end of this update, and the only stat that he'll get from that promotion is going to be Str (and maybe HP); every other base stat of that class is comically bad.

__

Without the Archer, there really isn't much to be said about this map, either. As you can see, Robin also reached Lv. 3 during it, which means that every villager is already able to get his promotion. I believe Robin only got +1 Lck from his level, because Robin sucks.

__

Unfortunately, if you're familiar with Echoes' dungeon exploration, the original implementation will be rather disappointing. It's basically this screen, then a scripted fight as you reach the top of the screen, and then basically the same screen a second time, but without a fight. ...at least the world map looks pretty neat, I'll give Gaiden that.

__

The scripted fight... exists, I guess. Five Lv.1 Brigands, literally the same enemy squad as the initial fight, on a map with even less terrain features.

You'll have to excuse me for being a Negative Nancy, I'm afraid, but I think that Kaga deemed the wrong aspect of FE1 to be not that important: Map design. I think Gaiden did some neat changes to FE1 - the split promotions for villagers, and given how awful item management was in FE1, I can't dislike the "one item per character" rule and the lack of durability mechanics, either - but the tactical combat is kinda the thing that Fire Emblem does, and Gaiden flubs that aspect really badly.

I haven't played Echoes, only watched a LP, so take this with a grain of salt - but I think the worst decision the crew made wasn't adding Conrad (Ruben forgive me for this opinion), it was not adding actual design to the maps.

So, enemies die, XP is gained, and Cliff and Robin both gain another level. Unfortunately, unlike FE1, where a promoting character keeps their progress to the next level-up, our three villagers  will lose their 34, 19, and 57 XP to Mila's shrine.

But first: New unit. Hello Silk!

And then we cycle through promotions, because I guess Kaga didn't figure out how to make a menu with more than two options? FE UI really has come a long way since the olden days.

____

But finally, we manage to get to Archr!Cliff, Mage!Robin, and Mercn!Gray. Huzzah!

Funny how Mage (28 HP | 5 Def) has the best defensive stats out of the three classes.

Now, decision time: We can give away a total of 3 points of Spd. ...so maybe we should finally look at our team to figure this out:

[HP 50% | Str 35% | Skl 40% | Spd 30% | Lck 20% | Def 30%] (Res growths are 0% for everybody)

As I said, Alm starts really strong, and his growths are actually fantastic by this game's standards. I didn't get to it in my abandoned playthrough, but I know that he will eventually promote into a class with really high bases. That makes it less enticing to actively feed him XP, although I strongly suspect that it's still the "optimal" play to lean heavily on him throught the game. There's a lot of ground to cover until he finally does promote - at the end of chapter 3, I believe?

[HP 40% | Str 15% | Skl 35% | Spd 15% | Lck 20% | Def 30%]

Apart from his lower Movement (ugh, I didn't mention it, but reducing everybody's movement to 4-5 really stinks), Luka is functionally the same as Alm in these early maps. However, he'll double less consistently once enemies start having Spd stats, and just in general, his stats are strictly worse than Alm's - both bases and growths.

However, once he reaches Lv.7, Luka can promote into Armour Knight, which will significantly increase his HP and Def stat. I expect that this can keep him relevant for a good while, but once people swap into advanced classes, Luka is also stuck in one of the few classes that don't gain any Movement upon promotion. So, I'd guess that he's still more of an earlygame crutch.

[HP 40% | Str 30% | Skl 20% | Spd 10% | Lck 10% | Def 20%]
[Fire (Lv.1) | Saggitae (Lv.9) | Thunder (Lv.10) | Recover (Sage)]

Innately, Gray's only passable stat is his Strength (and maybe Defense), both in base and growth. It makes Mercenary a very obvious promotion path for him, since every promotion will patch up his Skl and Spd. Mage might be a not-terrible option, too, just for the decently powerful chip. His spell list isn't exceptional, but it has the essentials - cheap fire, powerful Saggitae, and 3-range Thunder. As a physical class other than Merc, I don't think Gray is very good at all.

[HP 30% | Str 10% | Skl 40% | Spd 15% | Lck 30% | Def 10%]
[Fire (Lv.1) | Excalibur (Lv.6) | Recover (Sage)]

Robin sucks.

Well, OK, I suppose his stats are supposed to make him a decent Archer? He has high Skl to counteract the lower hit on bows. But seriously, his Str and Spd are both so awful. As a Mage, getting Excalibur early is actually pretty neat, though. It's very light and the only spell other than Ragnarök with 100% hit.

[HP 50% | Str 20% | Skl 40% | Spd 50% | Lck 20% | Def 40%]
[Fire (Lv.1) | Thunder (Lv.4) | Excalibur (Lv.7) | Saggitae (Lv.11) | Aura (Lv.20) | Recover (Sage)]

Cliff is the only of the three villages with good overall growths, even though his Str is pretty questionable. But every physical class seems to have an at least decent Str base, even Mercenary at 8, so I suspect that he's still the best option for any of them, depending on how overkill his Merc Spd might be.

Still, it seems that the game pushes him towards the Mage class, considering how much more extensive his spell list is compared to his pals. Heck, Robin's early Excalibur looks a lot less impressive when Cliff learns it only one level later and already had Thunder unlocked at that point.

Finally, I have to mention is much higher Res compared to everybody else (but Silk, we'll get to her in a second). It might be pretty useful in the Archer class in particular, since he'll also be able to counter them on enemy phase.

[HP 20% | Str 30% | Skl 30% | Spd 30% | Lck 30% | Def 10%]
[Recover (Lv.1) | Nosferatu (Lv.1) | Warp (Lv.7) | Expel (Lv.14) | Invoke (Lv.18) | Seraphim (Saint)]

Nosferatu has 50% hit. This makes training Silk really annoying if RNGesus isn't on your side. I'm still going to try, since getting Warp would be nice, but I'm not looking forward to all the coin flips.

Otherwise - well, healer/10. Which is good value in this game, since there's no vulneraries, casting spells costs HP, and equippable items that restore your health are limited.

But back to this question. Who needs more Speed? I think the best options are Cliff, since he's the villager I actually plan to invest into, and Silk, who is weighed down by the Nosferatu spell by two points. It would make it much easier to train her if she could double some enemies, and fewer enemies would double her. I'm looking forward to suggestions that don't involve self-sabotage.

(I apologise for that boring attitude, but I don't want to increase the tedium of the game for the sake of being dumb, unless the dumb is dumb fun)

  

8 hours ago, Punished Dayni said:

I'm sorry what?

*Checks the chest

I know right?

You have to get the Aum staff from the chest in the DS remake, but in FE1, Elice just comes with it in her inventory.

8 hours ago, Punished Dayni said:

Kinda weird to know she would naturally have 8 Spd without the stat booster, that's kinda unfortunate.

Minerva's bases are a moderate upgrade over Roger's (+2 Str, +1 Spd, +1 Def, basically), to put into perspective how much of a difference having twice the movement will make. Being a tank is cool and all, but it doesn't compare to being a tank that can actually get to the point she is supposed to choke. Her growths are better than Roger or DOGA's, too, of course, but she's already much more useful the moment she joins.

3 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Haven't been around much for this thread, but congrats on beating FE1! I was never able to get over the dated interface. I hope FE2 isn't too much of a hassle.

Thanks! I can absolutely understand putting down FE1 and it's certainly not a game that I would recommend to a newcomer to the series, not with the DS remake being right there.

I also hope that FE2 won't be too much of a hassle.

58 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

A free fortify is already good, but having capped speed and great crit potential just seems wrong to dismiss as okay because he can't damage a specific few number of enemies on endgame. Magic in FE1 always felt really helpful to me given how accurate thoron is, and some enemies are rather tanky here. We can talk shit about Gotoh as a person all day, but I do think he deserves credit gameplay wise in FE1 for at least being a bit like Athos. I mean, what were they supposed to do? Cap his HP? Give him a "this tome damages mage dragons" book? Sounds a bit greedy, and that's a sin. No no no.

Put him into a spot where his combat is in more demand. I think the split up party oddly works with FE1 not allowing you to choose which character goes where, since you have to be careful about not getting anybody killed even when you use Warp to get to Mediuth quickly - but I think it's not the best choice to put Mars and Gatoh behind a locked door. Personally, I probably would swap Mars's group with the one in the bottom left - that's closer to Mediuth, sure, but it's also the one that's under the most immediate pressure. Maybe make the one-tile choke point two-tiles instead, but I think the map (and maps in general) work better when Mars starts a bit closer to the action.

 

[Punished Dayni]

44 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

You have to admit this is leagues above modern kills.

I'm not boomer enough for me to agree.

Not that I'm saying Grima death peak or anything, but leagues was your first mistake. Your second was not saying this for Duma's death.

45 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

Ah, the classic "The Tyrfing is the falchion" theory. Kaga really loved Archanea. It makes me want to believe he was forced into making FE4, so I can forgive his biggest mistake in life. Of course, FE2 will still exist as the "every NES sequel needs to be pointlessly different". Unless you're the lost levels.

Gaiden has to exist by that very rule.

The lost levels counts because it caused Nintendo to make international SMB2 off of Doki Doki Panic, the real odd duck for Mario

45 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

Marcia helps you until Makalov sells her for pocket money, and Jill gets benched the minute she stops being racist.

Marcia just kept being bad when I used her, then I performed full sunk cost fallacy with Jill because I had no fliers for ages otherwise.

PoR was a slow game that wanted me to bench fliers.

26 minutes ago, gnip said:

You have to get the Aum staff from the chest in the DS remake, but in FE1, Elice just comes with it in her inventory.

Which is hilarious. Why would you not hide that shit if you'd had it, Gharnef?

26 minutes ago, gnip said:

Minerva's bases are a moderate upgrade over Roger's (+2 Str, +1 Spd, +1 Def, basically), to put into perspective how much of a difference having twice the movement will make. Being a tank is cool and all, but it doesn't compare to being a tank that can actually get to the point she is supposed to choke. Her growths are better than Roger or DOGA's, too, of course, but she's already much more useful the moment she joins.

I get that, but Minerva having so low Spd is strange to me.

28 minutes ago, gnip said:

Gaiden's is so, so much more simple. Mars Embarks isn't exactly the pinnacle of complexity (obviously, it's the opening map), but it has more going on than four forest tiles in the middle and a healing tile in the top left that enemies will run towards. And honestly, it also looks about 10 times as good, too. I guess Gaiden tries to be more "zoomed in", with the edge of Ram Village being visible for scale, but it just doesn't work.

I'd say the scale looks fine in SoV, but you're right on it being a bit bland looking as it is. And of course map design is going to be one of this game's weak points.

28 minutes ago, gnip said:

If anybody reading along is unfamiliar with Gaiden or Echoes: Unlike the 2-range-locked Archers in almost every game of the series, Valentian Archers have 1-3 range by default, which means that they outrange most magic spells, but can also attack (and counter) at melee range. This is balanced out by a lower hit rate (-20 compared to a basic sword or lance), which you will find is very relevant in this game.

Also base bow not having flier effectiveness.

29 minutes ago, gnip said:

it was not adding actual design to the maps.

I mean, from a gameplay perspective yes.

There is a fair amount to throw at SoV, but unless you get into the party comp stuff that the extra RPG elements provide, Gaiden/SoV is going to slog for many.

31 minutes ago, gnip said:

Unfortunately, unlike FE1, where a promoting character keeps their progress to the next level-up

I'm more surprised that's a thing in SDatBoL.

32 minutes ago, gnip said:

We can give away a total of 3 points of Spd. ...so maybe we should finally look at our team to figure this out:

SILQUE

Considering promotions bring units up to the new class bases, Cliff is your safest bet. But if his growths keep hitting, Robin could make the case since he's so close to Sage Cap and Excaliber would be fast and reliable.....

[Saint Rubenio]

18 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

...I see, a chair?🪑

I have this franchise in my brain and on my ears at the time I'm writing this, and my posts further from the forest are also laden with it.

You know whose artwork I want dragged up and photoshopped with Medeus's (1 or 3 or 11, I don't care) mug on it.😛

18 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

He still exploded, there was a great famine and he turned himself into a rain of fish to feed his people.🌧️🐟 After which he returned to Valhalla b/c anyone with half a brain knows old man with an eyepatch = Odin in disguise. Hail the king of the gods!

Ehh I dunno if Odin is cool enough to be Auguste.

12 hours ago, gnip said:

ftfy

One of... four bosses with a unique portrait? Camus, Misheil, Gharnef, Mediuth. Five if you count Chiki.

True, but even among them, he stands out because he has a chair. None of them have a chair. Camus doesn't even have the back half of his head!

12 hours ago, gnip said:

You're right, I should've had him fight Mediuth. Or the Mage Dragon guarding him. That would've gone really well.

I completely forgot he's immune to magic. No wonder I had Maji do it instead. Kaga knew he had to protect Medeus from Riff.

And, y'know, Wendel.

12 hours ago, Punished Dayni said:

Lorenz having the plot info in his eyepatch and then proceeding to fake his death to return to his place in Asgard would be more fitting for Archanea than any other FE.

He was going to be the Gotoh of FE4 gen 3. Alas...

18 minutes ago, gnip said:

C tier for Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light

Honestly, that might be higher than I rank it. I don't know, actually. I don't have a lettered tier list.

18 minutes ago, gnip said:

__

There he is.

The man, the myth, the legend.

Meißen

19 minutes ago, gnip said:

Unless there's some new, underused patch, I think I'll stick with this one, though. If I recall, character names should be recognisable for Echoes players, and I don't think Gaiden has the most riveting dialogue to begin with.

Sadly, the Spanish fanslation for this game is also not available in English. Not even the manual, this time. Shame.

19 minutes ago, gnip said:

And so on. Mycen doesn't want to join the Deliverance because war is bad, Luka thinks he's become cowardly, Alm offers to go in his stead, Luka says everybody likes it. Like Echoes, but with less flowers. Gameplay, please!

Flowers are fine, I just wish they didn't add turds.

...But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

22 minutes ago, gnip said:

The first map is, honestly a bit of a sign of what's to come. If we look back to the previous game's opening map..:

Gaiden's is so, so much more simple. Mars Embarks isn't exactly the pinnacle of complexity (obviously, it's the opening map), but it has more going on than four forest tiles in the middle and a healing tile in the top left that enemies will run towards. And honestly, it also looks about 10 times as good, too. I guess Gaiden tries to be more "zoomed in", with the edge of Ram Village being visible for scale, but it just doesn't work.

Pictured: Why FE1 was better than FE2.

24 minutes ago, gnip said:

Unfortunately, if you're familiar with Echoes' dungeon exploration, the original implementation will be rather disappointing. It's basically this screen, then a scripted fight as you reach the top of the screen, and then basically the same screen a second time, but without a fight. ...at least the world map looks pretty neat, I'll give Gaiden that.

Honestly, I like it better. Echoes's dungeon exploration quickly got annoying as I tried to use Alm and Celica's crampy legs to slooooowly turn away from enemies. Otherwise I have to waste time getting out of a skirmish. Better to just get it over with.

24 minutes ago, gnip said:

You'll have to excuse me for being a Negative Nancy, I'm afraid, but I think that Kaga deemed the wrong aspect of FE1 to be not that important: Map design. I think Gaiden did some neat changes to FE1 - the split promotions for villagers, and given how awful item management was in FE1, I can't dislike the "one item per character" rule and the lack of durability mechanics, either - but the tactical combat is kinda the thing that Fire Emblem does, and Gaiden flubs that aspect really badly.

I'll forgive you for being a Negative Nancy, because I agree. Map design is vital to these games, probably its single most vital factor. You don't need Conquest chapter 10s every time, but it doesn't matter how good every other aspect is if the map design isn't at least decent.

26 minutes ago, gnip said:

I haven't played Echoes, only watched a LP, so take this with a grain of salt - but I think the worst decision the crew made wasn't adding Conrad (Ruben forgive me for this opinion), it was not adding actual design to the maps.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I hate Conrad with a passion, but yeah, I agree. If they made actual maps, the game would've been far better off. Exhibit 1: Kaga's own attempt at remaking Gaiden, as per his own statement, TearRing Saga. A game not without its flaws, but it's so much better, and that's primarily because it has maps. Exhibit 2: Sacred Echoes, the fanmade remake of the remake, which is also so much better because it has maps.

...Honestly, TRS is more of a soft remake, but if you want Fire Emblem Gaiden, Sacred Echoes is probably the best version of this just based on the maps existing. And that's just really sad.

27 minutes ago, gnip said:

____

But finally, we manage to get to Archr!Cliff, Mage!Robin, and Mercn!Gray. Huzzah!

Funny how Mage (28 HP | 5 Def) has the best defensive stats out of the three classes.

I still say you should've at least had one soldier. Didn't you hear about the hidden knight triangle attack? That's right, Kaga did it first.

29 minutes ago, gnip said:

But back to this question. Who needs more Speed? I think the best options are Cliff, since he's the villager I actually plan to invest into, and Silk, who is weighed down by the Nosferatu spell by two points. It would make it much easier to train her if she could double some enemies, and fewer enemies would double her. I'm looking forward to suggestions that don't involve self-sabotage.

(I apologise for that boring attitude, but I don't want to increase the tedium of the game for the sake of being dumb, unless the dumb is dumb fun)

Ehhh.

Silk getting doubled was a massive problem in my runs, so I guess her?

2 minutes ago, Punished Dayni said:

I mean, from a gameplay perspective yes.

There is a fair amount to throw at SoV

Oh don't get me wrong, I may agree maps are the bigger issue, but that won't stop me from ranting about Conrad when the time comes

[Shaky Jones]

8 minutes ago, gnip said:

Map design is overall decent, I find. Not the greatest in the series, but also not the worst. It starts pretty strong for the first six maps, but then becomes weaker for a while: Banunu's joining map putting his village in a dead end, Roger's map coming down to effectively one one-tile chokepoint, Minerva and Maria's map being trivializable by another one-tile chokepoint

A recurring issue (that, as I have been assured multiple times, will be exacerbated in Gaiden) with this game's maps is a lot of idle running, even on maps that are generally good, or at least start strong.

It's one of those things you brush off as simple and boring, then you learn to appreciate as oddly strategic and well made for a first game, only to go back into not liking it much because it's fucking FE1.

Moral is, play FE11. 

15 minutes ago, gnip said:

And yes, I obviously have to mention the UI. It did not age well. The most obvious one is, of course, the lack of concrete "battle number" - you get a character/enemy's base stats, but in order to actually figure out how a battle will go, you don't just have to do the math, you have to look up weapon stats, then do the math, hopefully not forget to think of attack speed

And yet this is worse that FE3, because doing all of the math on your own is better than remembering your defense stat.

Look, I know I'm beating a living horse, but that horse needs to realize that I simply can't stop pointing this out until he accepts that he's in no right to go this hard against FE3 for the actual most contradictory reason given the FE1 fanboy that are, and then they replay FE3 with a normally functioning UI tolerating mindset.

23 minutes ago, gnip said:

Item management is a pain, too, starting with the obvious annoyance that you can't trade items, only give them to somebody - the result being that two characters with full inventories can't swap items without a third character acting as an intermediary. You can't send somebody to go buy five Silver Lances, because you can't send them directly to the convoy. And using the convoy feels clunky, too, because instead of saying, "I'd like to retrieve items: X, Y, and Z", it goes...

• What do you want? - Retrieve item. - Pick X.
• What do you want? - Retrieve item. - Pick Y.
• What do you want? - Retrieve item. - Pick Z.

...with the convoy guy making you go through a few lines of dialogue every step of the way.

This is easily the worst thing about FE1. I've ranted enough about it. You said it better than I could.

Moral is, play FE11.

24 minutes ago, gnip said:

Then there's unit balance. This one is a beautiful mess and I love it. Kaga didn't have to roll out three amazing Cavaliers and three terrible Cavaliers, but he did. He didn't have make one good Fighter, one okay Fighter, and one terrible Fighter (two if we count Darros), but he did. You can have a good time making the terrible characters somehow work out, while using the powerful ones to make sure that the whole process doesn't become a tedious crawl. It's one of my more unpopular opinions (although I expect it to be shared by some in this thread) that a too balanced cast of characters is boring. ...Silver Axes would've been nice, though.

Spoken like a true FE6 fan.

Funny given how this feels like one of the more balanced FE games imo. At least it's more balanced than FE11, and most FE games post Kaga. Yeah, some units are blatantly better than others, like you pointing out Maji being the one good fighter, but it's a very interesting take on "balancing" classes as opposed to 3H simply making the existence of being a wyvern/sniper it's own "make any unit good" button, or several FE games having no interesting method to balancing dragons or armors. It's all very unique and makes units stand out imo, and I like that element. I remember anon making a post about how boring Fates armors are because a skill patching up their biggest flaw being a boring way to fix a type. While I still like Fates armors, I have much more respect for using FE1 armors, even if it is stupid how they can't promote in a game with their class. I dunno. I think the way the growths, bases, and limited number of promotable classes in a game that doesn't push you to get stat blessed really works well, until you cry about how late said promo items come in, and half of the combat is ruined by criticals you can't avoid.

But yes, unbalanced units are good. FE1 does a good enough job at making units feel unbalanced enough for my meme-y ass while being balanced enough to work around the game they're in.

31 minutes ago, gnip said:

In the end, I think I'll stick with what was my expectation going into this: C tier for Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light.

A very fair tier. I recall making a separate tier exclusively for NES games, as I simply can't rate their clunky-ness to anything, even if I respect way more about FE1 than SoV or 3 Houses. Yes I'm bringing up 3 Houses a lot in this thread, but I'm replaying it right now and I'm fucking hating it. Once I do my Gustav run, I'm benching the hell out of this game. I might put FE1 in C as well just to say it's above 3H and SoV. I might have to actually replay FE1 after seeing your LP to remember just how much I can tolerate Ruben's favorite UI.

35 minutes ago, gnip said:

@Shaky Jones asked earlier what my plan with Gaiden's different map/chapter structure would be. The answer is obvious: Do I look like an Ekans with a plan?

37 minutes ago, gnip said:

__

Ruben, it's your time.

38 minutes ago, gnip said:

The first map is, honestly a bit of a sign of what's to come. If we look back to the previous game's opening map..:

Fates players moving onto the next title:

40 minutes ago, gnip said:

...4 Spd.

These two Spd procs are especially valuable because Cliff is to become an Archer by the end of this update, and the only stat that he'll get from that promotion is going to be Str (and maybe HP); every other base stat of that class is comically bad.

Damn. Cliff gaming. That sucks. We need Python gaming.

Good luck hitting with either of them.

41 minutes ago, gnip said:

And then we cycle through promotions, because I guess Kaga didn't figure out how to make a menu with more than two options? FE UI really has come a long way since the olden days.

This took me 10 minutes.

43 minutes ago, gnip said:

Put him into a spot where his combat is in more demand. I think the split up party oddly works with FE1 not allowing you to choose which character goes where, since you have to be careful about not getting anybody killed even when you use Warp to get to Mediuth quickly - but I think it's not the best choice to put Mars and Gatoh behind a locked door. Personally, I probably would swap Mars's group with the one in the bottom left - that's closer to Mediuth, sure, but it's also the one that's under the most immediate pressure. Maybe make the one-tile choke point two-tiles instead, but I think the map (and maps in general) work better when Mars starts a bit closer to the action.

A fair assessment, although I can understand that they're obligated to place him next to Mars, and the bottom is just a natural spot for him. I usually had a key on him anyways. I still think Gotoh deserves more praise, but I understand the complaint.

Just kidding, I'm Shaky Jones. You're wrong, and use the speed shrine on Luthier when you get him.

7 minutes ago, Punished Dayni said:

Not that I'm saying Grima death peak or anything, but leagues was your first mistake. Your second was not saying this for Duma's death.

It's fuckin chibis. It's not that cool.

5 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Thank you.

6 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

I completely forgot he's immune to magic. No wonder I had Maji do it instead. Kaga knew he had to protect Medeus from Riff.

And, y'know, Wendel

6 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Meißen

There it is. Damn, I really tried, but everyone always gets their responses in before mine.

7 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Honestly, I like it better. Echoes's dungeon exploration quickly got annoying as I tried to use Alm and Celica's crampy legs to slooooowly turn away from enemies. Otherwise I have to waste time getting out of a skirmish. Better to just get it over with.

Of fucking course you'd say this. How the Thracia did I not see this coming?

8 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

I'll forgive you for being a Negative Nancy, because I agree. Map design is vital to these games, probably its single most vital factor. You don't need Conquest chapter 10s every time, but it doesn't matter how good every other aspect is if the map design isn't at least decent.

+5

8 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Oh don't get me wrong, I may agree maps are the bigger issue, but that won't stop me from ranting about Conrad when the time comes

[Interdimensional Observer]

14 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

No I who I meant was O- you outsmarted me.😆 How'd I forget Von Bolt was a thing?

 

5 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

Do you feel any more or less interested in trying it out now?

For now, I'll keep my FE archaeology at FE3.😄 Maybe eventually perhaps the I'll try the Famicom era.

 

1 hour ago, gnip said:

Unfortunately, if you're familiar with Echoes' dungeon exploration, the original implementation will be rather disappointing. It's basically this screen, then a scripted fight as you reach the top of the screen, and then basically the same screen a second time, but without a fight. ...at least the world map looks pretty neat, I'll give Gaiden that.

__

How lovely it is to behold these archaisms ...from afar.😏

No, seriously, thankies.🍿

 

35 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Exhibit 1: Kaga's own attempt at remaking Gaiden, as per his own statement, TearRing Saga. A game not without its flaws, but it's so much better, and that's primarily because it has maps.

50~66% of the time.🤨

[ping]

19 minutes ago, Punished Dayni said:

I'm more surprised that's a thing in SDatBoL.

Recruitable enemies keep their "XP stat", as well, so in a way, they gain their own kill XP upon joining. Paola joins only 160-ish XP away from promotion instead of 200, for example.

22 minutes ago, Punished Dayni said:

I'd say the scale looks fine in SoV, but you're right on it being a bit bland looking as it is.

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that the zooming in was the problem. If anything, it makes sense that maps represent a smaller area than the entire island kingdom of Talys, considering that you generally have less than, what, 40 combattants in total. inb4 someone makes a Geneology comment about this

22 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Honestly, that might be higher than I rank it. I don't know, actually. I don't have a lettered tier list.

It's still a Fire Emblem game, which is to say that the basic gameplay is pretty good. The "only" problem is that FE1 makes what should be a simple action more tedious than it needs to be. It's a bit like playing chess, but you have to move the pieces with your mouth. It's still chess, a good game at its core, but you'd rather play it in an easier fashion.

25 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Meißen

I appreciate that you take the time to use the weird German ß every time you type his name.

26 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Honestly, I like it better. Echoes's dungeon exploration quickly got annoying as I tried to use Alm and Celica's crampy legs to slooooowly turn away from enemies. Otherwise I have to waste time getting out of a skirmish. Better to just get it over with.

I can't really comment on Echoes's dungeons, of course. But in Gaiden, they feel like they only exist so that they could write "DUNGEON EXPLORATION" on the box with the least required effort. If your dungeon is just two screens of a featureless cave a single scripted fight in the middle, why not go to the fight directly from the world map and save everybody's time?

26 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

Fates players moving onto the next title:

I will say that Valentia maps look far less like Baby's First RPGMaker in the remake, but of course they're still the same in gameplay.

29 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

Damn. Cliff gaming. That sucks. We need Python gaming.

Good luck hitting with either of them.

I forgot how low Cliff's base Skl is, actually, so... thanks, I'll need it.

It also feels odd how Archers have a Skl base of literally One, considering that Skl tends to be their strong suit in most other FE games, but it does make sense that a 1-3 / 1-5 range class gets hit with the nerf hammer somewhere.

5 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

How lovely it is to behold these archaisms ...from afar.😏

No, seriously, thankies.🍿

No problem I also appreciate the Advance Wars dumps in the thread formally known as Teehee, since it's a franchise that interest me, but that I'm really bad at playing compared to Fire Emblem, for some reason.

[Punished Dayni]

17 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Honestly, I like it better. Echoes's dungeon exploration quickly got annoying as I tried to use Alm and Celica's crampy legs to slooooowly turn away from enemies. Otherwise I have to waste time getting out of a skirmish. Better to just get it over with.

I mean, I don't think I ever felt like I suffered from this (probably did trip over it in the past but I'd argue more of that was due to enemy placement), but I've only ever played SoV on a 3DS that had a left nub that was at least more sizable than the PSP's.

17 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

I still say you should've at least had one soldier. Didn't you hear about the hidden knight triangle attack? That's right, Kaga did it first.

9 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

This took me 10 minutes.

Fuck me that's bad, little impressive how slow that is.

11 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

It's fuckin chibis. It's not that cool.

I didn't even say if I said it was better. Maybe I'll say it now to be contrary.

(Also, calling those chibi is underestimating the proportions of chibi imo)

11 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

How lovely it is to behold these archaisms ...from afar.😏

I'd have said "popcorn?", but I actually finished Gaiden.

So I'll be remembering the experience.

Just now, gnip said:

Recruitable enemies keep their "XP stat", as well, so in a way, they gain their own kill XP upon joining. Paola joins only 160-ish XP away from promotion instead of 200, for example.

Thanks S. Kaga.

No sarcasm.

1 minute ago, gnip said:

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that the zooming in was the problem. If anything, it makes sense that maps represent a smaller area than the entire island kingdom of Talys, considering that you generally have less than, what, 40 combattants in total. inb4 someone makes a Geneology comment about this

You'd fit 5 of these in the opening bit of Chapter 2 /s

2 minutes ago, gnip said:

No problem I also appreciate the Advance Wars dumps in the thread formally known as Teehee, since it's a franchise that interest me, but that I'm really bad at playing compared to Fire Emblem, for some reason.

Never really clicked with AW either myself, so there's that.

[Shaky Jones]

19 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

For now, I'll keep my FE archaeology at FE3.😄 Maybe eventually perhaps the I'll try the Famicom era.

That's been my take for a while. We have Gnip for talking NES FE. Thanks talking pokemon.

20 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

50~66% of the time.🤨

Should I ask?

13 minutes ago, gnip said:

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that the zooming in was the problem. If anything, it makes sense that maps represent a smaller area than the entire island kingdom of Talys, considering that you generally have less than, what, 40 combattants in total. inb4 someone makes a Geneology comment about this

I'm getting too annoyed with slowrenes to bother writing another fe4 bad rant.

14 minutes ago, gnip said:

will say that Valentia maps look far less like Baby's First RPGMaker in the remake, but of course they're still the same in gameplay.

To me, they look the same. Hell, SoV looks worse BECAUSE it's modern. You've come to expect better by now. Why be faithful to this? We just had Conquest!

12 minutes ago, Punished Dayni said:

Fuck me that's bad, little impressive how slow that is.

It got hilarious at the 3 minute mark, but I would've lost my mind without youtube 5 minutes in. 

No I don't wanna be a soldier, Gaiden! THS IS THE 4TH TIME YOU ASKED!!

Did Ruben hack my game!?

13 minutes ago, Punished Dayni said:

didn't even say if I said it was better. Maybe I'll say it now to be contrary.

We love being contrarians around here.

I just dont like 3ds animations, or any animations 3D really, for FE. Expect RD. I'm oddly hyped seeing that. Most of that IS carried by the music though.

16 minutes ago, Punished Dayni said:

Also, calling those chibi is underestimating the proportions of chibi imo)

Oh my mistake. I sure don't wanna upset the chibi community. 

They're small enough to look like kickable children. I can't take it seriously.

[Interdimensional Observer]

13 minutes ago, gnip said:

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that the zooming in was the problem. If anything, it makes sense that maps represent a smaller area than the entire island kingdom of Talys, considering that you generally have less than, what, 40 combattants in total. inb4 someone makes a Geneology comment about this

And there's the old hypothesis that prior to Awakening, Valentia was an island, not a continent. (And no, let's not call it "Australia". New Guinea or Borneo-sized seems feasible to me.)

15 minutes ago, gnip said:

I appreciate that you take the time to use the weird German ß every time you type his name.

You're Deutsch but you're calling it weird. -Good willingness to accept thy own mother tongue has peculiarities.😉

16 minutes ago, gnip said:

I can't really comment on Echoes's dungeons, of course. But in Gaiden, they feel like they only exist so that they could write "DUNGEON EXPLORATION" on the box

Simon's Quest, Adventure of Link, Gaiden happens to fall into the NES mini-trend of black-sheep sequels. Mario was alluded to before both did and didn't fall into the problem. Other things like Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden avoided the quirky issue altogether.

18 minutes ago, gnip said:

I forgot how low Cliff's base Skl is, actually, so... thanks, I'll need it.

If he doubles that's double the chances of hitting, think on the bright side of his good Spd!

19 minutes ago, gnip said:

I also appreciate the Advance Wars dumps in the thread formally known as Teehee, since it's a franchise that interest me, but that I'm really bad at playing compared to Fire Emblem, for some reason.

You're welcome! I spend like an hour uploading the images (I can't copy all the images from my Switch all at once, each is a separate series of clicks) each time, but I do enjoy it. Particularly knowing someone is taking a quiet delight in it.😄

 

16 minutes ago, Punished Dayni said:

Never really clicked with AW either myself, so there's that.

I seem to be the oddball here on SF who enjoys both. (Except maybe for the person using the Andy Clone 😱 face avi?)

 

Just now, Shaky Jones said:

Should I ask?

Why ask when you can try?😏

Okay, maybe the percentage of maps in the game is actually 75%. -All I am saying is that it isn't 100%, not sure if I should do a chapter-by-chapter analysis.

[Punished Dayni]

8 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I seem to be the oddball here on SF who enjoys both. (Except maybe for the person using the Andy Clone 😱 face avi?)

Now is not the time for me to tread towards trying it again, I should give it another chance.

Just linking some memes for the hell of it.

57 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

And there's the old hypothesis that prior to Awakening, Valentia was an island, not a continent. (And no, let's not call it "Australia". New Guinea or Borneo-sized seems feasible to me.)

Or Valentia Island relative to Ireland. Calling Archanea Kerry is an odd one, with how much of it is inclines and coasts and is the North of the county supposed to be a wasteland?

Valencia as a pronunciation was probably better come to think of it.

10 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

If he doubles that's double the chances of hitting, think on the bright side of his good Spd!

Be a while with his base Spd and bow weight.

[ping]

FE2 Chapter 1: To Sofia!

Thief Shrine --> Southern Fort

Spoiler

To decide who to speed up, I consultated this exhaustive and neartly arranged enemy review by @FionordeQuester. My conclusion: 4 Spd is enough to double every enemy type except for Cavaliers, who would still double (5 Spd), and the one Shaman (4 Spd) in the very last battle of the chapter. So, this is what Silk goes for, which requires two fountain uses, putting her at 6 Spd, minus 2 from the Nosferatu spell. The third charge goes to Cliff, who, as I said, is the most "long-term" character of the bunch outside of Alm. He goes to 5 Spd from this, which will be reduced to 4 by the Steel Bow that we're about to pick up, putting him in the same "get doubled by cavs, double everything else" speed tier as Silk.

The next map is very brown.

__

It's also the only map in the entire first chapter with enemies above Lv.1, which is a funny little quirk.

Although, of course, other enemy types are stronger than a Lv.3 Thief. The fabled Leather Shield Mercenary is more threatening - unless you give your own Mercenary a Spd boost, he will double every single character. 9 Atk isn't a ton, though, and he shouldn't come close to one-rounding anybody.

The Merc will cross the mountain to get towards you starting location. Maybe it's possible to make him go east if you get a Cavalier? But I think this makes the fight easier, anyway, since you can just swing east, beat up some scrubs, and then 6v1 the Merc at your leasure.

Having a Mage for this map is really useful, not just because you'd struggle to wear down the Mercenary without one, but also because they're really good at setting up kills for your other units. With Silk's +2 Spd from the fountain, she has a 75% chance of finishing off enemies from 8 HP and below, so this is pretty perfect for her.

One of the Brigands gets into coward AI and manages to escape to the healing tile, so everybody just heads back west to face the Mercenary a bit prematurely. The Brigand will start attacking again soon enough.

__

Unfortunately, Silk doesn't get lucky in this case, despite getting two tries for the kill. So instead, it goes to Robin, who then also gets that last Brigand kill. He was very close to leveling up, and with Gaiden's "group XP" mechanic, it always feels bad to finish a fight at 99 XP.

And he gains Spd! Oh my.

Silk also manages a level-up from chipping the last Brigand, although I believe hers was much less inspiring.

__

Victory! And off to the next battle.

__

It's another very simple (and, I'm sorry, not very pretty) map, but at least it has a new enemy type. We've graduated from Brigands and now fight Soldiers, who are a pretty straightforward upgrade to the former: +3 Atk, +1 Spd, and +3 Def.

__

Also important: The Archer uses a Steel Bow, which makes him hit harder (9 -> 12 Atk), but even more importantly increases his range to 1-5. Alm is standing right at the edge of his range there...

...allowing Robin to set up a kill for Cliff, which also immediately puts the dropped Steel Bow into the correct character's inventory. Neat!

__

Cliff then proceeds to gain a third Spd proc in his fourth level-up. Even more neat, since how he won't be doubled by Cavaliers anymore!

Three of the Soldiers only become aggressive when you step into their range. it means that you're forced to deal with the obnoxious +20 Avoid from floor tiles (only stone floor, not grass), but it also makes them easily defeated one-by-one. The one in the left room can even just be fried through the wall by Robin and Silk.

In the newly liberated fort, you find this game's Jeigan, as well as a prisoner.

__

The prisoner is this game's early Pegasus Knight, who I'm sure has a lot of fans in this thread.

This game's Jeigan is the Levin/Thunder/Bolt Sword. It's a magical weapon which, unlike Mage spells, doesn't factor in the user's Strength. It deals 15 damage, targetting enemy resistance, which means that it'll easily two-shot most generic enemies we'll fight in chapter one.

It does weigh its wielder down by three points, though, which does matter a fair bit for Alm, while Gray would still run around with 7 Spd, one-rounding enemies left and right. So, the question is: Keep the Bolt Sword on Alm, to allow him to chip enemies more easily, or give it to Gray? I'm pretty sure the latter is the smart option here, but I'm not opposed to be dumb for the sake of possibly a few more XP here.

The Team:

	Lv.	   HP  Pow Def Skl Spd Lck Res Item
Alm	2.72	   28   10*  6   7   6*  8   4  Bolt (15 Atk, -3 Spd)
Luka	3.80	   22   10   6   4   4   3   2
Cliff	4/2.54	   24    9*  4   3   6* 11   8  Steel (+3 Atk, -1 Spd)
Robin	4/2.69	   28    8   5*  4   7   5   4  Leather (+3 Def) | Fire (+3 Atk, -3 Spd)

Gray	5/1.46	   24	 9   4   8  10   2   2
Silk	3.50	   18	 9   1   4   6   4  11
Claire  1.00	   20	 8   4   4   7  11   8

[HP 20% | Str 30% | Skl 50% | Spd 40% | Lck 50% | Def 10%]

Claire seems... decent, but with very pronounced flaws. Her Spd, despite looking pretty unimpressive isn't one of them - she still doubles every generic enemy, including Cavaliers, and can grab the Steel Lance from her brother and keep doubling with it. However, she's quite the glass cannon, with worse defensive stats than anybody on our team not named Silk. She seems very much like a training project, since Falcoknight will fix her defenses real good (12 Def, 40! HP) and deals effective damage against monsters. But until then, she'll always be a very frail, if offensively capable, character.

 

[Saint Rubenio]

I wasn't ready to post Serenes, what the heck.

Edited September 21, 2023 by Saint Rubenio

[Shaky Jones]

13 minutes ago, gnip said:

To decide who to speed up, I consultated this exhaustive and neartly arranged enemy review by @FionordeQuester. My conclusion: 4 Spd is enough to double every enemy type except for Cavaliers, who would still double (5 Spd), and the one Shaman (4 Spd) in the very last battle of the chapter. So, this is what Silk goes for, which requires two fountain uses, putting her at 6 Spd, minus 2 from the Nosferatu spell. The third charge goes to Cliff, who, as I said, is the most "long-term" character of the bunch outside of Alm. He goes to 5 Spd from this, which will be reduced to 4 by the Steel Bow that we're about to pick up, putting him in the same "get doubled by cavs, double everything else" speed tier as Silk.

You're putting more effort into planning than any sane person who's bothering to play this game. I don't know whether to respect that or make a joke about Ghast whose channel I haven't seen anything from in several years.

14 minutes ago, gnip said:

One of the Brigands gets into coward AI and manages to escape to the healing tile, so everybody just heads back west to face the Mercenary a bit prematurely. The Brigand will start attacking again soon enough.

This is one of the worst features of FE combat. I know coward AI is present in most of Kaga FE, but does it show its horrid colors the most in this game.

15 minutes ago, gnip said:

And he gains Spd! Oh my.

Silk also manages a level-up from chipping the last Brigand, although I believe hers was much less inspiring.

You're getting a lot of speed growths this early in the game. Maybe Gaiden likes you.

16 minutes ago, gnip said:

The prisoner is this game's early Pegasus Knight, who I'm sure has a lot of fans in this thread

18 minutes ago, gnip said:

This game's Jeigan is the Levin/Thunder/Bolt Sword

I weep.

1 minute ago, Saint Rubenio said:

I wasn't ready to post Serenes, what the heck.

20 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Why ask when you can try?😏

Okay, maybe the percentage of maps in the game is actually 75%. -All I am saying is that it isn't 100%, not sure if I should do a chapter-by-chapter analysis.

Ruben, every map that is bad will be your fault when I one day get to it.

[Saint Rubenio]

21 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

Ruben, it's your time.

ß

21 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

Thank you.

That's him in Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem Book 3: Nerring's Revenge.

Alas, they couldn't fit the game into the cartdrige, so it became lost media. Trust me, my uncle at Nintendo told me.

21 hours ago, Shaky Jones said:

Of fucking course you'd say this. How the Thracia did I not see this coming?

I appreciate convenience, and the two wonderboys turn soooo slowly.

21 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

No I who I meant was O- you outsmarted me.😆 How'd I forget Von Bolt was a thing?

...Oh, fuck, Olaf! Olaf and his AW1 chair! How did my mind not jump to that first?

21 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

50~66% of the time.🤨

Yes, let's not forget the infamous Garo Swamp.

21 hours ago, gnip said:

t's still a Fire Emblem game, which is to say that the basic gameplay is pretty good. The "only" problem is that FE1 makes what should be a simple action more tedious than it needs to be. It's a bit like playing chess, but you have to move the pieces with your mouth. It's still chess, a good game at its core, but you'd rather play it in an easier fashion.

Yeah, you hit it right on the nail. FE1's biggest flaws are derived of its time. Update that, and it's good. Hence why FE11 is awesome.

21 hours ago, gnip said:

I appreciate that you take the time to use the weird German ß every time you type his name.

It's the only way to do it justice.

21 hours ago, gnip said:

I can't really comment on Echoes's dungeons, of course. But in Gaiden, they feel like they only exist so that they could write "DUNGEON EXPLORATION" on the box with the least required effort. If your dungeon is just two screens of a featureless cave a single scripted fight in the middle, why not go to the fight directly from the world map and save everybody's time?

Yeaaah Zelda this ain't, I'm afraid.

21 hours ago, Punished Dayni said:

How dare you oppose me.

3 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

 

3 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

Ruben, every map that is bad will be your fault when I one day get to it.

Why me?

19 minutes ago, gnip said:

The next map is very brown.

 Man, this was my favorite Mario Kart 64 racetrack.

18 minutes ago, gnip said:

__

It's another very simple (and, I'm sorry, not very pretty) map

Yeah that's really interesting, isn't it. FE1 made the most of its immense limitations and came up with some none too shabby looking maps. This one feels like "baby's first Fire Emblem Maker game."

18 minutes ago, gnip said:

It does weigh its wielder down by three points, though, which does matter a fair bit for Alm, while Gray would still run around with 7 Spd, one-rounding enemies left and right. So, the question is: Keep the Bolt Sword on Alm, to allow him to chip enemies more easily, or give it to Gray? I'm pretty sure the latter is the smart option here, but I'm not opposed to be dumb for the sake of possibly a few more XP here.

Meh.

Give it to Gray, I say.

18 minutes ago, gnip said:

[HP 20% | Str 30% | Skl 50% | Spd 40% | Lck 50% | Def 10%]

Claire seems... decent, but with very pronounced flaws. Her Spd, despite looking pretty unimpressive isn't one of them - she still doubles every generic enemy, including Cavaliers, and can grab the Steel Lance from her brother and keep doubling with it. However, she's quite the glass cannon, with worse defensive stats than anybody on our team not named Silk. She seems very much like a training project, since Falcoknight will fix her defenses real good (12 Def, 40! HP) and deals effective damage against monsters. But until then, she'll always be a very frail, if offensively capable, character.

Claire suffers compared to the Whitewings because her route isn't nearly as flier-friendly. By which I mean, other people can actually walk without sinking into the terrain. I'm told she's good, but... eh. I mean, who cares, you have to use her anyway.

[ping]

16 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

This is one of the worst features of FE combat. I know coward AI is present in most of Kaga FE, but does it show its horrid colors the most in this game.

Not just Kaga emblem, either. You have the Pegasi on Eric's map in Hector Mode (bonus points for you not having any flyers yourself to follow them) (more bonus points because it's a Rout map) (even more bonus points because the map is already obnoxious to begin with because of BlaBla's bloody Rain mechanic), and it's something you see very often in PoR, too.

21 minutes ago, Shaky Jones said:

sane person who's bothering to play this game

See, that's your mistake right there.

18 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Claire suffers compared to the Whitewings because her route isn't nearly as flier-friendly. By which I mean, other people can actually walk without sinking into the terrain. I'm told she's good, but... eh. I mean, who cares, you have to use her anyway.

I remember that some people think she's really good and others think she's really bad, but I honestly don't remember the exact reasoning. I think there's more monsters on Celica's route than on Alm's, right? So that would make Claire's promotion less valuable than the Whitewings'.

[Shaky Jones]

50 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

I appreciate convenience, and the two wonderboys turn soooo slowly.

Stop running for half a second. Turn. Then run again. 

Good job Ruben!

58 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Yeah, you hit it right on the nail. FE1's biggest flaws are derived of its time. Update that, and it's good. Hence why FE11 is awesome

So based. Give me a hug.

1 hour ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Give it to Gray, I say.

The sword is half his character. That's like his main thing in his cipher cards.

40 minutes ago, gnip said:

See, that's your mistake right there.

Just dont go praising fe4 when you get there and there'll be hope yet.

43 minutes ago, gnip said:

remember that some people think she's really good and others think she's really bad, but I honestly don't remember the exact reasoning. I think there's more monsters on Celica's route than on Alm's, right? So that would make Claire's promotion less valuable than the Whitewings'.

She's known as an investment unit. This already adds a controversial factor with a lot of FE fans, at least around here. She's definitely not necessary for Alm's rout, so many would find the trouble of training her to not be worth it, whereas others appreciate the highly valuable falcon knight bases that make the forest hell of act 4 less tedious. It's not quite as helpful as celica acts, where it practically feels designed around fliers later on, but not quite unimportant enough to completely shrug it off as a pointless waste of an investment.

[Punished Dayni]

2 hours ago, gnip said:

__

It's also the only map in the entire first chapter with enemies above Lv.1, which is a funny little quirk.

This game I swear.....

2 hours ago, gnip said:

And he gains Spd! Oh my.

Oh, that's actually neat.

Give him all the Spd next time

2 hours ago, gnip said:

This game's Jeigan is the Levin/Thunder/Bolt Sword. It's a magical weapon which, unlike Mage spells, doesn't factor in the user's Strength. It deals 15 damage, targetting enemy resistance, which means that it'll easily two-shot most generic enemies we'll fight in chapter one.

The Fates Dragonstone learned from it's prowess.

2 hours ago, gnip said:

It does weigh its wielder down by three points, though, which does matter a fair bit for Alm, while Gray would still run around with 7 Spd, one-rounding enemies left and right. So, the question is: Keep the Bolt Sword on Alm, to allow him to chip enemies more easily, or give it to Gray? I'm pretty sure the latter is the smart option here, but I'm not opposed to be dumb for the sake of possibly a few more XP here.

Gray has the lower Str at the minute, I feel like whoever has lower Str in the moment is the right pick.

2 hours ago, gnip said:

[HP 20% | Str 30% | Skl 50% | Spd 40% | Lck 50% | Def 10%]

Claire seems... decent, but with very pronounced flaws. Her Spd, despite looking pretty unimpressive isn't one of them - she still doubles every generic enemy, including Cavaliers, and can grab the Steel Lance from her brother and keep doubling with it. However, she's quite the glass cannon, with worse defensive stats than anybody on our team not named Silk. She seems very much like a training project, since Falcoknight will fix her defenses real good (12 Def, 40! HP) and deals effective damage against monsters. But until then, she'll always be a very frail, if offensively capable, character.

11 levels to being good.

Clair is funny in that the one run where I feel she came out well in main game was my last one and I am betting she was Def blessed. Her Spd makes heavier weapons an option sure but I always feel like her Str isn't quite enough with the weapons at base to be helpful (SoV has forging to compensate), 8 Str never felt like it was all that good on her for me. Least Banish is better here and well help cement her niche as monsterslayer, especially for those Gargoyles.

[Interdimensional Observer]

9 hours ago, gnip said:

In the newly liberated fort, you find this game's Jeigan, as well as a prisoner.

Claire? No, it's Shliire.

...Blame the hair for forcing the "joke". No wonder they had to change her and Alm's later.

Shame we lost Magenta(?) Tobin and Limey Gray in the Echoing Hair Reform though.

9 hours ago, gnip said:

The third charge goes to Cliff, who, as I said, is the most "long-term" character of the bunch outside of Alm.

How is Gray not long-term? A Dread Fighter would seem pretty necessary, and unless you murder-resurrect "transfer" one from Celica, Alm won't be getting any others.

8 hours ago, gnip said:

I remember that some people think she's really good and others think she's really bad, but I honestly don't remember the exact reasoning. I think there's more monsters on Celica's route than on Alm's, right? So that would make Claire's promotion less valuable than the Whitewings'.

Correct. Alm fights the imperial army outside of dungeons, mostly. Celica doesn't deal with the forces of Emperor-san, she takes on bandits and more importantly Cult-kun's goons, many of which either are or summon monsters.

And as was said above, Celica gets sand and swamp for the middle of her journey. Alm usually has nice rolling plains fit for imperials and decisive battles like everyone with a big invincible army aspires to have.

The terrain part of this is also likely why Celica has no cavalry -which nobody is sad about- and Alm gets three. And why Celica has three pegs to Alm's one. And probably why she gets three-four mercs to his zero and he has two armors to her one. All about which unit types are more useful on a given route based on terrain, perhaps.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Interdimensional Observer

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Not sure if this is a hot take since so few have played all five games (and neither have I, having only watched playthroughs of Thracia), but I do genuinely think FE1 is Kaga's strongest level design. Or rather, strongest level design of the Kaga era FE games. Kaga was not dubbed Director of the series until FE2, so it's hard to speculate if he was doing as much as drawing the maps back then.

I finished Gaiden for the first time last month. Your villager and shrine choices are solid. I do encourage sticking with Silque despite all the barriers keeping her from reaching Warp and her promotion. She's worth it. Whether or not you should raise Clair is...a tough one. The Falcoknights stats are outrageous in this version, so even the lack of monsters feels like a moot point when she's suddenly on par with Tier 3 units. She's a tough project to manage. Due to her generally losing any 1v1 with such low strength and defense, and you already want to prioritize kill exp for Silque. I was legit in the game's final chapter before I felt Clair was starting to pay back all that effort. Meanwhile, the Whitewings are good when they arrive and absurd once promoted, even Est. Overall I'd advise against raising Clair since experience is at such a premium in Alm route with no great grinding spots like Celica has (look out for Mummies, or entombed, whatever your translation calls them. Identical stats to Zombies, but bugged to grant max exp on death).

Merc!Gray is great with investment. In this version of the game, Tier 2 and 3 swordies take no movement penalty from forests, and there's a lot of that in Alm route and Celica act 4. Plus FE2 is always feeding you more swords than you have units to use. Never feel ashamed for using this class. You've also spotted another thing that makes FE2 unique. Archer range isn't tied to what tier of archer class you are. Simply carrying a bow, even the lowly Steel Bow, gets you from 1-3 to 1-5 range as early as chapter 1. Very cool, just wish they could hit a damn thing consistently.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Zapp Branniglenn

[ping]

FE2 Chapter 1: To Sofia!

Thief Shrine --> Liberation HQ

Spoiler

Here's the item distribution for now: the thread's vote has been to give the Bolt Sword to Gray and also to use him long-term - I can't believe people are telling me to use the good unit. Well, good class.

Alm gets the Leather Shield because it allows him to pretty much hard-counter enemy cavaliers, doubling them for 2x5 damage and only taking a single point in return.

The next map is very green.

I do appreciate that Gaiden uses this map to introduce the new Cavalier enemy type, since they're actually a fair bit more threatening than what we've been up against thus far. Since maps tend to be so open, they're much more threatening to your squishies, and because they're a little faster (5 Spd) than all the other enemies sans the one Mercenary, they're actually very threatening to Silk, who barely survives a round of combat against them.

I didn't remember to screenshot the stats, but they are [24 HP | 9 Str | 3 Skl | 5 Spd | 5 Def | 2 Res] - very similar to the Soldiers, but those very significant two points faster.

The plan here, of course, is to charge ahead and kill as many of the Soldiers before the Cavalier even has a chance to arrive.

And a Bolt!Mercenary is very helpful in that endeavour, since he'll one-round literally every enemy on the map. Cavaliers have a little bit of Res, but the Lv.1 ones that you fight in chapter 1 still don't have enough HP to survive.

I think I'm going to try and feed Claire XP, and see how it'll go. Overall, I think I'm prioritising XP roughly Silk>Cliff>Clair>Robin=Alm=Gray>Luka, although I'm not going to lose my mind if Luka gets a crit, or has to step in because somebody else missed their attack.

____

The battle ends with two characters wasting group XP. The humanity!

Although, to be honest, I have no idea how that mechanic works exactly. For all I know, the group XP might just get distributed among the other characters, although that seems like an extra step that NESFE would be unlikely to make.

____

The next map is honestly a little dumb. You're pitched against six Cavaliers, four of them across a river with a one-tile bridge above it, and two on the same bank as Alm's group.

The Cavs across the river are completely, utterly declawed by the choke point. They can't cross river tiles, so you can just plonk Alm on the bridge and completely negate their mobility.

__

The two othe Cavs still have to be dealt with the old-fashioned way, though. The first kill goes to Robin, because Silk misses her Nosferatu (although she gets a very useful, though not immediately, Spd proc from the level).

The second one isn't as much of a threat on his own, so I take a bit of time to feed him to Silk. I also might have learned a bit about coward AI: After getting knocked below half HP, the Cav first skipped a turn because the bridge was blocked, but then attacked Silk on the following turn. My guess is that the AI "realises" that it can't go heal when the path to any healing tile is blocked for two turns, although I'll have to see if I can reproduce that.

As you can see, instead of plonking Alm on the river, Claire chokes the point so that she fights one cav while Alm faces three. Not interested in slowing this down to a crawl, especially because there are three healing tiles on the north bank.

Unfortuntely, the operation "feed Claire the kill" is a failure, and Alm has to take the kill so that Luka can shield Claire from getting killed.

But once you have the bridge secured and the two Cavs on your side of the river killed, the map is effectively beaten, and everything that follows is just clearing up. One of the Cavs managed to run off to heal himself, but it wasn't too much of a delay.

__
Python: "Eh? You're new recruits? In that case, go on inside, but be careful! Demons may be around..."

Demons indeed...

__

Similar to Sacred Stones, Zombies/Revenants are incredibly weak, with pitiful stats everywhere except for their high HP. The only character that takes more than 1 damage from them is Silk, and even she isn't really threatened unless you completely expose her and she's really unlucky and misses four Nosferatus in a row. They have a funny attack animation though, where they seem to goop into the ground, then reform in front of their opponent and smack them.

The Bonewalkers are more powerful, although they're more tanky than offensively threatening. 10 Atk is the same as the Soldiers we've been fighting, and they're not going to double anything with their 2 HP. 8 Def is as high as the legendary Leather Shield Mercenary's, though.

Completely open terrain with a lot of enemies might seem a bit tricky, but since only two of them are Bonewalkers, this fight is pretty trivial. Unfortunately, Kaga agrees, so the Zombies only give a handful of XP.

The Liberation HQ itself is another Mila shrine, including two Lion Head Fountains we'll have to make a decision on, and it's populated by a whole two people:

Cleive: "Well, I've got a favor to ask of you. Starting today, will you lead our forces? That's why we sought Sir Mycen, Sofia's hero, but for some reason, he's refused us. Therefore, I'd like you to command our units in his place. So, Alm. I'm counting on you to save Sofia."

Force: "If Rigel complies, we won't stand a chance!"
Alm: "But the 'Gods' Pact' upheld by Sofia and Rigel...It means we won't war, right? Our guardian, Lady Mila, would never allow it."
Force: "Yeah, well... There's a rumor that Lady Mila has disappeared. Hey, hey! Don't look so surprised! After all, it's been strange lately, hasn't it? Crops failing, odd demons emerging... Only Mila's Temple knows what's going on, I guess."

I have to credit Echoes for making the best out of a weird plot point here. Cleive going, "Hey Mr Swineherd who I only just met, please be our new commander, yes?" is really silly; Echoes makes it so that Clive still is the head organiser and, I believe, implies that Alm is supposed to be more of a figurehead to make use of his connection to Mycen, as well as show the common soldiers how the nobles are totally treating them as equals. Or maybe I remember the whone thing being more cynical than it really was, because that's how I would prefer it to be.

Anyway, with Cleive and Force in tow, you can also recruit Python at the entrance to the, ahem, "dungeon".

Python: "I'm coming too! Be wary of Slayder, the guards' captain. He's a pretty strong fighter."

Taking a look at the new recruits before talking about stat boosters..:

[HP 40% | Str 20% | Skl 20% | Spd 20% | Lck 20% | Def 20%]

Interestingly, Cleive's growth total of 140% isn't as bad - by Gaiden standards, of course - as you'd think. Most characters actually fall into the range of 130-150%, with only Claire (200%), Alm (205%), and Cliff (220%) falling outside of it.

As a result, he honestly seems pretty decent. He's only one level away from Paladin promotion, although he won't actually get that much out of it - +1 Spd and +1 Def, and no Str at all. But that's more indicative of his good base stats, with good Spd and higher Str than anybody else on the team.

[HP 40% | Str 40% | Skl 15% | Spd 20% | Lck 10% | Def 15%]

As I mentioned before, I used Python in my previous attempt, and didn't like him very much. He's Str-focused in a class that's also Str-focused, so promoting won't help much with his flaws, and he's a low-Skl character in a class with an inaccurate weapon type. I assume he's better in Echoes, where you can get +hit from supports, and eventually Hunter's Volley to ignore both his Skl and Spd, but he just doesn't seem like a particularly good (or fun) unit in Gaiden.

[HP 30% | Str 40% | Skl 10% | Spd 20% | Lck 20% | Def 10%]

I was a bit surprised to see after talking trash about Luka's growths, that Force's growths total is even lower: 130% vs. 145%. In fact, he ties Gray for the lowest growth total on Alm's entire route, with the exception of old folks. He also shares Python's problem that his promotions won't help his bad Skl or Spd, although at least he's using a more accurate weapon type.

I kinda assumed that Force ends up better than Luka because he at least hits hard, but looking at the class bases for Knight and Baron, in particular their excellent Strength, I'm not so sure anymore. Force does have an extra point of Spd and a decently high Res stat, though.

But with that, I shall savestate back to the Liberation HQ with the age-old question: Offence or Defence? We have a total of three points of Strength and Defence to distribute.

The Team:

	Lv.	   HP  Pow Def Skl Spd Lck Res  +XP   Item
Alm	3.96	   29   10   6*  8   7   8   4  +124  Leather (+3 Def)
Luka	4.80	   23   10   6   4   4   3   2  +100
Cliff	3.59	   25    9*  5   4   6* 11   8  +105  Steel (+3 Atk, -1 Spd)
Robin	3.61	   28    9   5   4   7   5   4  + 92  Fire (+3 Atk, -3 Spd)

Gray	3.27	   26    9*  4   8  10*  2   2  +181  Bolt (15 Atk, -3 Spd)
Silk	5.16	   18    9   1   5   8   4  11  +166  Nosferatu (-2 Spd)
Claire  2.50	   21    9   4   5   7  11   8  +150
Cleive  6.00	   26   12*  7   7   7*  6   1	      Steel (+4 Atk, -1 Spd, -10 hit)

Force	4.00	   28   11   7   4   5   3   5
Python  3.00	   24   10   5   3   4   2   4

For my own curiosity, I want to try to keep track of how much XP individual characters gained during an update.

• It's interesting to see that Gray gained the most in this one, even though I don't really prioritise him, but of course he's by far the biggest offensive powerhouse with the Bolt Sword right now. Unfortunately, all he gained in his two levels was +2 HP.
• Silk, on the other hand, got +2 Spd, so she now doubles everything in chapter 1 that isn't named Slayder.

But, er, right, stat boosts! I'm honestly incredibly undecided, since I think most of them would "disappear" once a character promotes. Basically everybody is below their promotions' base Str and Def at this point. I'm sure the optimal play would be to throw them at Alm, or at least do something with them right away, but I'm genuinely tempted to save them up for later. Who knows, maybe Luthier would apreciate if pickings were even easier for him.

 

21 hours ago, Punished Dayni said:

This game I swear.....

To play Kaga's advocate a bit - it makes sense, in a way, to categorise the weakest enemies of a certain type as "Lv. 1 enemies". The Cavs we've fought thus far are as weak as Cavs go, so they're "Lv. 1 Cavaliers", even though they're stronger than Lv.3 Thieves/Brigands. And chapter 1 only has 9 fights, so there's still fairly constant enemy scaling (ignore the Zombies in Liberation HQ).

12 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Not sure if this is a hot take since so few have played all five games (and neither have I, having only watched playthroughs of Thracia), but I do genuinely think FE1 is Kaga's strongest level design. Or rather, strongest level design of the Kaga era FE games. Kaga was not dubbed Director of the series until FE2, so it's hard to speculate if he was doing as much as drawing the maps back then.

Honestly, it might not even be that hot a take. I've barely started playing FE2 and people have (well, Shaky has) been meming on FE4's maps already, and I know that it's divisive whether Thracia is cool and fun or stupid and bullshit, so I wouldn't be surprised if more people would rank FE1 more highly. I personally like New Mystery quite a bit (even though I think I'm better at GBAFE), so I'm curious to see how its maps will play in Old Mystery. Although I do have to say that I don't particularly look forward to ch.3 or the desert map.

[Saint Rubenio]

On 9/21/2023 at 8:30 PM, gnip said:

I remember that some people think she's really good and others think she's really bad, but I honestly don't remember the exact reasoning. I think there's more monsters on Celica's route than on Alm's, right? So that would make Claire's promotion less valuable than the Whitewings'.

Yeah, between the terrain and the monsters, you really want falcoknights on Celica's side. Alm has no such great need for them.

On 9/21/2023 at 9:26 PM, Shaky Jones said:

So based. Give me a hug.

Hold on, now.

On 9/21/2023 at 9:26 PM, Shaky Jones said:

The sword is half his character. That's like his main thing in his cipher cards.

He's Randy

15 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Not sure if this is a hot take since so few have played all five games (and neither have I, having only watched playthroughs of Thracia), but I do genuinely think FE1 is Kaga's strongest level design. Or rather, strongest level design of the Kaga era FE games. Kaga was not dubbed Director of the series until FE2, so it's hard to speculate if he was doing as much as drawing the maps back then.

Honestly, not that hot a take. Gaiden has no map design, Genealogy has a lot of walking and fighting blocks and Thracia's strengths don't lay on its map design, which is a bit too walk-heavy at times (chapter 5 comes to mind), a bit too warpskip-heavy at other times (looking at you, chapter 21) and downright terrible in a few instances (12x...).

Mystery book 2 is probably the one that gets closest, but even then, you got shitters like chapter 3 and poor map reuse, like both Archanea maps. Though at least the bridge got turned from a borefest into the best map in the game, so that was neat.

Thank God he learned to design maps for Berwick Saga. Or got someone else to do it.

2 hours ago, gnip said:

I can't believe people are telling me to use the good unit. Well, good class.

Hey, you asked. You also called me spiteful, and I proceeded to prove you wrong and ugly by spiting you back and giving you boring suggestions and mage Atlas. And don't imagine for a moment I've forgotten. We'll see who's spiteful.

2 hours ago, gnip said:

The next map is very green.

You have described the entire game.

2 hours ago, gnip said:

I have to credit Echoes for making the best out of a weird plot point here. Cleive going, "Hey Mr Swineherd who I only just met, please be our new commander, yes?" is really silly; Echoes makes it so that Clive still is the head organiser and, I believe, implies that Alm is supposed to be more of a figurehead to make use of his connection to Mycen, as well as show the common soldiers how the nobles are totally treating them as equals. Or maybe I remember the whone thing being more cynical than it really was, because that's how I would prefer it to be.

It does improve this bit somewhat. Though it's a bit muddled by Fernand showing up to grab Clive by the collar and yell at him, at which point the game gets distracted telling the player that they're supposed to feel... something, even though they've known Fernand for two cutscenes and he's been a horrible asshole in both.

2 hours ago, gnip said:

[HP 30% | Str 40% | Skl 10% | Spd 20% | Lck 20% | Def 10%]

I was a bit surprised to see after talking trash about Luka's growths, that Force's growths total is even lower: 130% vs. 145%. In fact, he ties Gray for the lowest growth total on Alm's entire route, with the exception of old folks. He also shares Python's problem that his promotions won't help his bad Skl or Spd, although at least he's using a more accurate weapon type.

I kinda assumed that Force ends up better than Luka because he at least hits hard, but looking at the class bases for Knight and Baron, in particular their excellent Strength, I'm not so sure anymore. Force does have an extra point of Spd and a decently high Res stat, though.

Oh no, Pholus is just the worst unit in the game, no questions asked.

2 hours ago, gnip said:

But with that, I shall savestate back to the Liberation HQ with the age-old question: Offence or Defence? We have a total of three points of Strength and Defence to distribute.

Claire might want the strength, if you want to seriously consider giving her the time of day. Otherwise... guess you can't go wrong with Arum?

2 hours ago, gnip said:

Who knows, maybe Luthier would apreciate if pickings were even easier for him.

Or that. Yes. Good. I support saving all the statboosters for Luthier. Easy pickings.

...You know, it's funny, Echoes is the FE with voice lines on unit select I've played the least, and yet it's the only one with lines that I can remember off the top of my head.

2 hours ago, gnip said:

Honestly, it might not even be that hot a take. I've barely started playing FE2 and people have (well, Shaky has) been meming on FE4's maps already, and I know that it's divisive whether Thracia is cool and fun or stupid and bullshit, so I wouldn't be surprised if more people would rank FE1 more highly. I personally like New Mystery quite a bit (even though I think I'm better at GBAFE), so I'm curious to see how its maps will play in Old Mystery. Although I do have to say that I don't particularly look forward to ch.3 or the desert map.

I'd say FE1 does have the most consistently fine map design. Book 2 has a few massive shitters, FE5 is inconsistent and 4 and 2 are... well...

[ping]

Unfortunately, Serenes doesn't allow me to correct the title from the last update. It should be Southern Fort instead of Thief Shrine in the title. Oh well.

18 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

You have described the entire game.

I wish. Next map has a lot of grey and you know what that means.

18 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Claire might want the strength, if you want to seriously consider giving her the time of day. Otherwise... guess you can't go wrong with Arum?

Claire I'm going to give the Steel Lance, I think, and 13 Atk doubling eveything except Slayde seems passable. Also, I have an irrational aversion against giving Str boosts to a character whose promoted class has 15 base Strength. Or 16, as is the case with Alm.

18 minutes ago, Saint Rubenio said:

...You know, it's funny, Echoes is the FE with voice lines on unit select I've played the least, and yet it's the only one with lines that I can remember off the top of my head.

I'd love to say that it's because Echoes generally has good voice acting, but then again, I can hear Elise's TEEHEEHEEYAY in my head, so maybe there isn't much of a correlation.

--

edit (which will hopefully work...):

Since the last fight of Chapter 1 is coming up and Celica has some Lion Heads before even the first fight, I should at least mention my plans for those:

• +2 Spd for Boey (1 AS with Fire -> 3 AS). Since I want to use him, this feels almost obligatory, allowing him to double at least the lowest Spd tiers.
• Not entirely sure about the third charge. Just dump it on Boey, too? His Spd growth is only 10%, after all. Give it to Genny because Ruben wants her to do combat? She joins with 3 AS and also not much of a growth rate (15%).

Edited September 22, 2023 by gnip

[Saint Rubenio]

7 minutes ago, gnip said:

I'd love to say that it's because Echoes generally has good voice acting, but then again, I can hear Elise's TEEHEEHEEYAY in my head, so maybe there isn't much of a correlation.

Oh God, the heeheeyay.

Honestly, it's more just chance. They happened to get a couple lines in Echoes that struck me. Other people were all over Annette going "I'm your girl" - I, meanwhile, laughed my ass off the first time Genny went "I'm ready to roll" in that hilarious tone that makes her sound like a six year old. And of course, Lu sounds so incredibly smarmy with his iconic line, I couldn't help but love it.