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fire emblem: waifu roulette

2 (16.7%)

fire emblem: fates except with even more weird gimmicks

5 (41.7%)

fire emblem: who even knows

5 (41.7%)

Total Members Voted: 12

[Twinwolf]

Hold up, the new one's out?

...fugging Gamestop didn't call me despite my pre-order.

I mean
Gamestop is notorious for being crap about pre-orders.

[JoshuaFH]

Holy crap is there just so much more effort placed into the level design in Conquest's Lunatic Mode than Birthright's. There's chapters in BR that are not even noticeably changed, except maybe for slightly tougher enemies; whereas in Conquest there's both more and better enemies with skills that completely change the nature of encounters. They mix in units that are counters to your counters so strats that worked on Hard are just so much more difficult, the AI is just better in subtle ways and makes better decisions which actually trips me up because I'm so often expecting the AI to brainlessly attack but it actually uses strategies. I mean, the AI still does some incomprehensible shit that just makes me go "B... But why?..." but it's definitely better. I'm disappointed that they didn't program more advanced techniques for the AI, like pairing or unpairing units as the need arises, or trading items or transferring paired units, but if they did and the AI suddenly whipped out a sick transfer strat to surprise me with a heavy hit from downtown, well I'd probably shit my pants.

I just got going again on Conquest after finally grinding love points to get Effie married and change her into a Spear Fighter. That let me sidestep a guy with a hammer who'd have otherwise wrecked my shit. Man is EFfie just the best, her speed stat just skyrocketed after class changing, and she stomped the penultimate room of chapter 11 by dodge-tanking the heavy hitters in that room. I was prepared to burn a rescue staff usage and everything but nope Effie's like "I got dis." The humiliation curbstomp on Hinoka's butt buddies was just icing on the cake.

Then Macarath, which is one of the few gimmick maps I actually kinda like. This is a great example of the designers changing the level to make it more difficult. There's more and differently arranged pots, and they moved the dragon vein so now it's in a REALLY compromising position. First try I wasted so much time trying to figure out how to tackle Ryoma's pillow fort that I lost by time out. Second try I knew how so I was hauling ass across the map, but then it was a matter of trying to both beat Ryoma and get the chests, which led to one of those rare, awesome FE moments that will stick with me forever: I had Ryoma cornered, Effie was just solo beating the shit out of him, but I was getting cornered myself by the backup archers and I needed to grab the chests and end the stage. Everything was really awkwardly arranged however, in that there was a new poison pot blocking the room that the chest was in. Now, all the pots' effects are set, so they can be memorized, but I naturally never destroyed this one before so I don't know what was in it. There was a hurried shuffling of my units to get them all arranged so I could grab the chests and then immediately kill Ryoma, so I had nearly all my units gathered around it thinking "Ehhhh how bad could it be?" and it turns out: really bad. The pot froze Felicia, who as holding Kaze, who I needed to open the chest, and not the room was open and ninjas would be pouring out to fuck my shit up on the next turn so I needed to end it that turn. I had to stop and just stare at the screen for like 10 minutes to see if there was a way to somehow salvage my plan, and the best I could come up with was to unpair kaze, dance him, get him over to get the chest (containing an armorslayer), and then leave the killing of Ryoma to Odin, now a samurai, to throw an umbrella at him to finish off his last 3 hp. I was extremely apprehensively about it, since vantage would activate and Ryoma could one shot Odin, so it all bowled down to Odin's evasion. Lo and behold, Odin dodges the fateful dodge, throws a cross-court three pointer, and wins the game. I'm so apt to cut Odin from the team when I need to, but you know what Odin? You're on the team buddy.

I complain about the game alot, but this is definitely the love part of the love-hate relationship.

[Tawa]

If anyone here plays Crusader Kings, you might be interested in knowing that someone is making a Fire Emblem 7 mod for CKII.

[Aklyon]

If anyone here plays Crusader Kings, you might be interested in knowing that someone is making a Fire Emblem 7 mod for CKII.

Neat!

[Nighthawk]

All right, I just got into Act 4 of Shadows of Valentia and I'm back to leave some commentary. There's a decent amount of text, but it gets harder to read when spoilered, so I'm just gonna leave it unless somebody is opposed.

Within the following comments are maybe some really minor support conversation and map spoilers that don't matter much. Read at your own (extremely low) risk.


----
Act 3 was a mixed bag. There were some really awesome maps, one in particular with a time-limit aspect that forced me to be really aggressive. It got super intense near the end, and the close victory I earned was definitely one of the sweetest I've experienced in any Fire Emblem game.

Like I mentioned though, mixed. Some of the maps in Act 3 were painful, I'm not gonna lie. Mainly because sand. When most of your units move on foot and the ones that don't are relatively vulnerable, sand is just AWFUL. It led to some really slow, really annoying maps that I would rather not play again.

It's not all bad, though. Most of the maps without sand operate just fine, though none are particularly memorable. Act 3 also has its fair share of new characters, and every single one that joins you is a treat. Again, voice acting REALLY makes the difference in this game. Without it, I might have been vaguely interested in the story, but thanks to continuously stellar voice work, I've found I'm still totally invested.

Which brings me to support conversations. With very few exceptions, they're all excellent. Shorter, but fully voiced, and just... good. You know how in a lot of previous Fire Emblem games, most notably the trope-overloaded Awakening and Fates, characters felt pretty flat and support conversations were basically just two characters throwing their stereotypes at each other? Yeah, no more of that. The characters in SoV actually feel like people, and the support conversations actually feel like they're developing real relationships. I especially love the tension between Gray and Tobin as they both pine after Clair, who has her own great conversations with Gray as he (for the most part unsuccessfully) pursues her.

Also, this game has voiced post-battle mourning quotes if characters with strong relationships die. And they're heartbreaking. Just gonna throw that out there.
Yes, I listened to them all, and yes, I am in great amounts of emotional pain.

To close, I'd like to discuss Mila's Turnwheel (also known as the rewinding mechanic) and how I cannot overstate how wonderful it is. Instead of having to restart a whole battle because I screwed up at some point in the middle or end, I can now rewind time a turn or two to rethink my strategy. A lot of hardcore fans out there might disagree with its inclusion, but as someone who really hates the insane amount of time that can be wasted on a single fatal mistake in Fire Emblem, the turnwheel is an absolute godsend. Literally. Like, Mila is a goddess and it's her turnwheel. Haha. Me funny.
----

tl;dr - Despite some annoyances, I'm having a good time.

I'll probably leave another comment when I finish the game to address the things I didn't cover here, like weapon forging and combat arts.

Or maybe I'll forget to talk about those things and just come back to fanboy about my favorite characters.

[Sirus]

Use Mila's Turnwheel at your own risk, however. I have noticed that it seems to re-seed the RNG when you roll back, which can lead to actions you take working out radically differently than they did the first time around. I've had attacks that previously hit miss, or attacks that crit suddenly not crit (and thus leave an extra enemy alive for me to deal with).

Luckily for the player, if you use up your rewinds and still find yourself in a dire situation, you usually have the option to retreat mid-battle (except in a dungeon). Retreating allows your characters to keep the experience they gained up to that point, and when you come back to try again most (all?) of the enemies you killed previously will still be gone. Reinforcements on the world map are a thing that happens, however, so you probably don't want to rely on that too much.

A note to anyone who hasn't started yet: play on Hard. Aside from the occasional tactical retreat, I really haven't had that much trouble with the story battles at all.
Except for Arcanists. Those guys can go jump off a cliff. But for the most part Hard mode is quite doable even for those who aren't super-great at tactics in general or Fire Emblem in particular.

[JoshuaFH]

Finally got through chapter 20 and 21 in conquest lunatic. 20 was a BITCH. I didn't count but I was probably over two dozen attempts when I finally beat it. The gimmick makes planning ahead so hard it's nuts. I did pretty much every paralogue I could just to avoid the chapter as long as possible.

An interesting thing is I paired swordmaster Odin with azure and got Ophelia and Shigure with astra. They're both monsters I love'em.

[Nighthawk]

I'm back, having finally gotten around to finishing Shadows of Valentia. This post will mainly be overall thoughts on the game and its unique(ish) mechanics rather than a focus on the last act.

---

Dunno how much anyone cares about a second opinion from some random guy on forums (considering we have how many review sources nowadays?) but for what it's worth, the game was overall very enjoyable. Again (and it feels like I've said it about a hundred times at this point) the fantastic voice acting really hammers it home. If this game was just text with voice clips thrown in like the last two games (I consider Fates one game) I would probably think it was just an okay experience.

The story WAS predictable, not to mention very straightforward. But eh. It still felt pretty epic to me; it was more like a brief part of the history of a continent that you get to play through than a story that you read to be surprised by the twists and turns. The fun characters made it worth the while... except Celica. Dunno. Maybe others will like her, but I sure as heck felt like she was boring. Alm is similarly straightforward and possesses all the heroic archetypes you'd expect of a main character, but he has this whole ex-farmboy thing combined with a headstrong attitude that makes him a bit more interesting than Celica and her "save Mila, save the world, sacrifice myself for the greater good" shtick.

I've heard some people complain about Weapon Arts being useless except for particular ones like Double Lion (an Alm-only art that allows him to double attack automatically with the brave effect). Granted, Double Lion is a very powerful art that I used a lot, but I used the other ones often, too. Most arts have a low enough HP cost that it's worth using them for the extra damage and accuracy to finish off enemies with a single strike.

Forging is... okay. It's really cool to upgrade your favorite weapons, and the system is well-implemented, but you'll never be able to forge everything you want to by the time the game's main campaign is over unless you're prepared to grind for ages. Grinding gold marks, while it is possible, takes too damn long without the game's DLC, which bothers me immensely. The silver lining is you won't really need to max forge things to be able to beat the game, given you're decent at strategy, so the DLC feels more like, "Hey, if you really want to make everything and everybody crazy overpowered, this is for you. Otherwise, just play like a normal person and you'll be fine."

The maps in this game were definitely lackluster compared to a lot of the maps in more recent titles. Sand is awful. Mass-spawning enemies are pretty annoying. Swamps are annoying. But I do feel like the game generally gives you the tools you need to get through these maps (pegasus knights, archers, warp), so it's not like you're expected to do the impossible.

Also, I love warp. What a wonderful movement option and another great way for clerics to support the party. Dropping a glass cannon directly on top of a zombie-summoning boss to oneshot him and disintegrate all his zombies is awesome. I hope this spell makes a return in future games.

---

AND NOW FOR THE REAL SHOW: SHIPPING WARS

Spoiler: Spoilered for rampant opinions and... spoilers, I guess. (click to show/hide)

Hot damn, I don't like the game's canon pairings very much. Except Mae and Boey. They're really cute. But Celica's boring and barely interacts with Alm throughout their journeys, and the whole "fated to be together" thing does not do it for me. I would much prefer to envision Alm with Clair, as their support conversations are super fun and they clearly hit it off. But nooo, they pair Clair with Gray. GRAY. I love Gray, he's a funny guy, but... ugh.

Also... Clive and Mathilda. They're amusing, and honestly I like their interactions, but considering how absolutely AWFUL Clive is as a unit (I'm talking a VERY below average horse unit) and how AMAZING Mathilda is by comparison, I cannot take seriously the kind of enemy-obliterating battlefield passion kind of relationship they have.

And then there's the eternal mystery: WHO DOES GENNY MARRY?


... I've gotten a tad too invested in this game's characters. I admit it.

[Tawa]

Just finished Act One of Shadows of Valentia. Liking it so far.

Spoiler: Unsolicited Opinions (click to show/hide)

First off I love the aesthetic of the game. The new art direction is great. I especially like the character designs for this one, especially the clothes; it's an excellent return to form after the utter nonsense that was Fates' armor. I'd missed the days when the biggest extravagances were oversized pauldrons, bare limbs, and isolated leather shoulder guards. I particularly like the fact that people actually wear breastplates in this one instead of wearing a weird heart/lung protector over a gambeson, like the trend was in the olden days. The removal of OG Alm's dongplate was also a good decision. In terms of gameplay-related graphics, the map sprites strike a nice balance between the Fates/Awakening aesthetic and clear influences from the original game, and the maps themselves look absolutely gorgeous. The more fluid appearance that battles have, with characters running or riding toward each other and the much more active way that dodges and attacks look, is a huge improvement IMO.

I really like the new exploration mechanics (i.e. poking around locations and dungeons.) The examination dialogue and picking up items is a great touch; it kind of reminds me of investigating in Ace Attorney, and Alm's apparent kleptomanic tendencies are both funny and helpful. Exploring dungeons is a lot of fun; I like the Zelda-esque pot/crate smashing and finding hidden doors, and trying to sneak up on enemies to get a first strike on the map fondly reminds me of Earthbound.

In terms of gameplay, I think that their decision to keep Pair-Up out of the equation was a good move. Honestly, I never really liked Pair-Up all that much. Fire Emblem is already primarily about making your units work as a group to eliminate enemies, so Pair-Up was overkill; it's way more satisfying to set up a chain of attacks on an enemy than having a ton of attacks fire off at once. The maps aren't exactly brilliant (the one with ~8 cavaliers and a suspiciously straight one-tile river, for example, was definitely not the epitome of game design,) but I appreciate the faithfulness to the original, and the original's standout maps (like Zofia Castle) still hold up. It's about as hard so far as I think Fire Emblem should be; it's not the insanity of Conquest (I still have nightmares about Mr. Fuga's Wild Ride) but you actually have to think about it, unlike Awakening and Ryoma Emblem.

In terms of story, well, I already know generally how it ends (although my memory is fuzzy about most of the specifics,) and admittedly the writers had to work with the plot of Gaiden (whose story was a novel compared to its contemporaries but a picture book compared to modern games,) but the immense amount of characterization and detail added is wonderful, and I'm excited to see what other embellishments they add along the way. Additionally, I goddamn love what they did with Desaix. He's the flattest, most generic villain I've seen in my entire life but instead of trying to make him seem legitimately menacing like they did with Garon, the voice actor just goes to town with it and hams it the hell up, making any scene with him in a thousand times better than it would be otherwise.

Additionally, I love the translation this time. One of the biggest things that bothered me about Fates was that practically everybody but Ryoma, Xander, and maybe Garon and Azura often spoke in uncannily casual modern English, but this time the nobles speak formally and slightly archaically and the commoners sound casual without (usually) sounding particularly contemporary. Also, it might just be me, but I swear they got ideas on terminology from A Song of Ice and Fire. "Destrier" and "man grown", anyone?

[Sirus]

"Destrier" has nothing to do with SoIaF 
It's an old term for a particular style of warhorse, the kind that armored knights would ride in battle in the Middle Ages.

Can't speak as to "man grown", that's a new one for me.

[Tawa]

On Act III now. Scratch my entire last paragraph

"Destrier" has nothing to do with SoIaF 
It's an old term for a particular style of warhorse, the kind that armored knights would ride in battle in the Middle Ages.

Can't speak as to "man grown", that's a new one for me.

I know what "destrier" means, of course; rather, the diction and choice of words here and there, particularly among the noble characters, just reminds me of GoT. Might just be the constant references to "the Mother" that made me think of it in the first place

[Tawa]

In other news, Fates!Anna killed Inigo's father. Prepare to die.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In other words, she has six fingers on her right hand

[SOLDIER First]

the entire top half of her pointer finger is nail and this is what you point out

[Tawa]

If any of you guys are interested, Kyle McCarley and Erica Lindbeck, the voices of Alm and Celica respectively, are streaming Echoes at 10 PM EST tonight.

[Tawa]

Bumping the topic to wonder if anyone else picked up Fire Emblem Warriors. I got it about a week ago, finished it the other day, and am now working on History Mode in bursts.

Spoiler: Review of sorts (click to show/hide)

(I've never played a Warriors game before, so take everything I say with a grain of salt:)

It's an interesting experience. The gameplay is pretty solid; it's about what I understand one expects from a Warriors game, mainly mowing down hordes upon hordes of enemies with bosses to fight and forts to capture. There's a definite Fire Emblem twist to it, because the Weapon Triangle, Pair-Up, and commanding units are a part of the game, so you have some relatively basic strategy in terms of "where do I send who and which objectives will I have to take care of myself?" Since the player is generally much better at the game than the AI, you personally should take care of disadvantageous fights and tough bosses.

The plot is somewhere between Birthright and Conquest in terms of quality (there are a good three four levels based around Fates characters thinking you kidnapped their siblings,) but I don't mind that much, as I'm told Warriors games traditionally have rather hackneyed plots, and frankly, I didn't buy a beat-em-up crossover game because I expected a genius original story.

The presentation is pretty good; lots of cinematics, fully voice-acted, great music (mainly Awakening and Fates remixes, but with a couple of tracks from elsewhere, including a god-tier Twilight of the Gods remix for the Echoes history map.) The voice actors for Hinoka and Camilla are different; it's jarring, but not unpleasant.

The main game is on the easy side--a lot of the levels can be pretty much blitzed, to be honest--but History Mode has kicked it up a notch as far as I've played, with many of the harder levels requiring you to juggle multiple objectives of critical importance where the main game would have thrown pointless side missions at you.

The roster is... meh. Fates is wildly over-represented, featuring every royal sibling on both sides along with Corrin. Awakening gets Chrom, Robin, Cordelia, Lissa, Frederick, and Lucina, and Shadow Dragon gets Marth, Caeda, and Tiki. There's the two OCs, and then you can unlock Lyn and Celica via History Mode missions (I must admit I was rather disappointed to learn that three of the five MacGuffins are received from Fates characters, rather than one MacGuffin per game and Lyn and Celica being tied into the plot.) My current favorites are Marth and Ryoma, the former for having unique mechanics tied to his strong attack, and the latter for playing like Birthright Simulator and mowing down everything you put in front of him, although I should note that I still haven't unlocked Lyn or Celica and might pick up one of those two for more regular use later.

Also worth note is that the roster is terribly balanced. There are three axe characters and two of them come from Awakening, both bow users come from Fates, and every lance user is a pegasus knight, which means I haven't used lances much because I hate the way pegasus knights play. The only magic character during the main story is Robin. Everyone else (except for the DLC, which has yet to come out, and maybe Celica? IDK, I haven't gotten her yet,) is a sword user. That's 9 sword users, nearly half the roster.

The roster is my main complaint with the game; they made a great big crossover game, and then 90% of the characters come from a whopping three games and half the bloody roster is sword users? They had the time to put every single Fates royal in the game and couldn't toss in Ephraim or Hector? That's just absurd. It's not quite Fates-level pandering, not nearly Phoenix Mode or Deeprealms levels of bad, but it's a fruit from the same tree.

Everything else is pretty alright, though. I'd give it a 3.5/5 or thereabouts. I feel like 3 is too low, but the bad roster balance and Fates bloat stop it from being a 4. Not the best game ever, but reasonably fun.

Miscellany:
- There is a support where Matthew Mercer talks to himself for two minutes. This is a good thing.
- Camilla's... assets... don't get quite as played up as in Fates. They're more kind of just there.
- A bunch of characters, including Owain, Niles, Navarre, and Oboro get played up during the story and cinematics, but are exclusive to as-of-yet unreleased DLC, which bothers me.
- Validar, Iago, and Gharnef show up as poorly-explained level bosses. They're not playable, and I feel like Validar was just a bit too generic in this appearance for my tastes, but Gharnef comes across as pretty menacing and Iago's existence is instantaneously improved by him making multiple theatre metaphors in his dialogue.
- Supports work differently. Levels C through A are Radiant Dawn level garbage, but A+ level supports unlock special fully voiced support conversations. The ones I've gotten so far aren't bad, and the Corrin/Ryoma one was written better than anything in Fates itself.
- As far as I've seen, there is not one reference to Tellius at all. Personally, I noticed its absence but wasn't deeply troubled by it, but I still feel that I should note this.