Byleth Eisner and the Emblem of Fire (Fire Emblem General Thread)

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It doesn’t count as an armorknight if it’s just an uber-unit reclassed into armorknight for the lolz.

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Greener223224 wrote:
Mon Jul 20, 2020 4:41 pm
It doesn’t count as an armorknight if it’s just an uber-unit reclassed into armorknight for the lolz.
He was a true armorknight from the start. He went from Villager 10 - 15 just for Underdog, and just second sealed into armor knight from there. The Patience skill there was inherited from Donny, because I didn't need to pass down Aptitude given that Morgan already started with it by inheriting the Villager base class. If I remember right, he hit 20 General and I just reclassed him back into General for a total of 53 gained levels. I needed a wall, and no other class was going to give me that.

He earned those stats. Aptitude is just that broken when you've got two high growth characters to start with. Robin's Veteran being passed down is what let me capitalize on that the most- arguably the one thing that saved that entire run.

Lucy, on the other hand, was reclassed back into Great Lord because the Myrm line was more useful in the end. I just checked, and she didn't even cap a stat, despite being the final MVP.

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The Flying Twybil wrote:
Tue Jul 21, 2020 4:40 am
He earned those stats.
The Flying Twybil wrote:
Tue Jul 21, 2020 4:40 am
Aptitude is just that broken
I think there might be an issue here.

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Greener223224 wrote:
Tue Jul 21, 2020 6:02 am
I think there might be an issue here.
His parent was Donny, what did you want me to do, just disable Aptitude?

I mean, his growths by default would have been pretty good, I just had to guarantee myself a useful unit given the circumstances. If didn't have to guarantee that so hard, I just would've passed down Astra from Robin and made him into a handaxe bot. Someone had to be around to block the storm of forged silver weapons and tomes, and even then he could only tank so much by the endgame. He wasn't even god-unit material at the end, he was just above average. That, and he had the Boots for that run, which fixed the one thing holding armors back so badly.

--

If we're actually being serious here, I'd say the actual best armor knight is just Hector, who's basically an armor with axes instead of lances, shows up at the right time, and keeps himself active with good growths and a useful axe. Sure, his promotion's level locked, but I'll take that over being useful for just a few chapters. (Second place still does go to Valbar, though.) I just wish they'd do something to make Armors better movement wise. Give me a charge of some kind, or free movement through basic terrain, or just anything! I love the idea of them, but there's just not enough early chokepoints or defend maps for them to be useful in the long term. I just hope to get beefy mercs, cavs, and occasionally fighters to tide me over to the end.

They're effectively an enemy unit you rarely get to have on your side, but given the uneven circumstances of the gameplay, they remain incredibly situational.

(The whole deal with Morgan there is that it was a class whose growth additions paired well with his, would get me good Def and HP, and above all would keep his damn proficiencies. It was either that or Cav, and I figured Pavise would serve me better in the long run. The micromanaging was really the only fun part, at least when actually got me above the difficulty curve. Otherwise it was just more on top of the sunk-cost fallacy.)

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I think Armor Units should simply get the same movement as other infantry units. In real life, full plate armor doesn't turn it's wearer into the kind of lumbering giant that FE Knights are depicted as. Allowing Knights to naturally keep up with the rest of your army would already do a lot for them, since now you don't have to slow yourself down in order to put your tankiest unit at the front to lure out a group of enemies.

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Or just make an FE with a loooot more 'defend' maps. Let 'em shine in their role as chokepoint walls.

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Weeble wrote:
Tue Jul 21, 2020 5:58 pm
Or just make an FE with a loooot more 'defend' maps. Let 'em shine in their role as chokepoint walls.
If we have to, then no more maps in FE14's style, please. I want to have fun playing this game, and that necessitates giving me overpowered game-soloing units like Haar and Elincia while metering out enemy quality to be a wider spectrum than just "12 level 10 axefighters all with the same stats, more stats than any of my units, and using cheat skills that require me to reset over and over again for a lucky RNG break". Give me stuff like FE5 Chapter 20 instead, where the focus is more on managable setpieces empowering weaker enemies rather than OP enemy floods and dick moves.

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So after pounding my head against Sacred War for about a week and officially declaring it a draw today, I've still got the urge for some GBA Fire Emblem. What are some good ROMhacks that I could check out for those games? Sacred War and The Last Promise are the ones I already played.

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TheMcD wrote:
Wed Jul 22, 2020 8:34 pm
So after pounding my head against Sacred War for about a week and officially declaring it a draw today, I've still got the urge for some GBA Fire Emblem. What are some good ROMhacks that I could check out for those games? Sacred War and The Last Promise are the ones I already played.
FE7 and 8 reversion hacks that turn the games back into the Japanese experience? I've got no idea what romhacks there are that haven't been shown on the romhack general that played TLP and FEDDOP, or on Vilkacis's romhack thread that played Road to Ruin. Maybe Devourer of Worlds, but that's more a joke hack than a real one.

Anyways, which FEs have you played? I've played and beaten everything from 3 to 16. Well, depending on what you count as "beating", since I am not touching 11 to 14's higher difficulties with a ten foot pole.

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I recommend playing a lot of MAFC to get the taste of Sacred War out of your mouth, then attempt FE7x.

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As far as hacks go, Void's Blitzarre Adventure is... interesting but a little janky, given that it's a full-length original hack made in just a week. Never finished it, but I've been meaning to get back to it.

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TheMcD wrote:
Wed Jul 22, 2020 8:34 pm
So after pounding my head against Sacred War for about a week and officially declaring it a draw today, I've still got the urge for some GBA Fire Emblem. What are some good ROMhacks that I could check out for those games? Sacred War and The Last Promise are the ones I already played.
Order of the Crimson Arm is probably my favourite of the ones i've played (although, fair warning, it is a bit unpolished - it's missing support conversations and some houses just have vanilla FE7 dialogue).

Road to Ruin is uneven, especially story wise, but gameplay wise it's largely enjoyable.

B3L-H411-A is worth checking out for the "You did what in FE?" factor (though also very short).

I remember thinking Vision Quest looked pretty good, but i haven't actually played it.

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I still want to know what happened to Onmi.

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Thanks for the suggestions.

I can't believe I haven't checked out Order of the Crimson Arm yet - I terribly LPed a very early version of it, so I've still got some weird nostalgia for it.

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Was this in the old FE Romhacks thread that the archived playthroughs of FEDDOP and TLP got played in?

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Greener223224 wrote:
Fri Jul 24, 2020 6:15 pm
I still want to know what happened to Onmi.
Still working. He posted an update like yesterday.

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vilk wrote:
Sat Jul 25, 2020 5:47 am
Greener223224 wrote:
Fri Jul 24, 2020 6:15 pm
I still want to know what happened to Onmi.
Still working. He posted an update like yesterday.
On the FE megathread on SA, or on FEUniverse? Or did he make another site besides his FE10 complaint blog?

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He has a project thread on feu.

And that blog is eight years old. That's some weird ass grudge to hold.

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As someone who kind-of lurked Serenes back in the day I'd say we should keep the importation of other FE forum drama to a minimum. :P We have plenty of time to inadvertently create our own.

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I just noticed something odd in a new game of 3H that I'm poking at. I'm using NG+, and when looking at buying support levels I seem to have s-ranks unlocked for buying with renown that I've never done before - if it matters, this poking is as mByleth with the Blue Lions, and the renown supports are showing Annette, Ingrid, Bernie, Marianne, Leonie, Flayn, Manuela, and Shamir as having s-ranks available for purchase even though I've never done them. Meanwhile, Mercedes' s-rank is available to buy despite me only having s-ranked her as fByleth, while Dorothea and Rhea's s-ranks are locked while I've done them as fByleth.

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vilk wrote:
Sat Jul 25, 2020 8:21 am
He has a project thread on feu.

And that blog is eight years old. That's some weird ass grudge to hold.
Darn it, wasn’t trying to show a grudge, was trying to prove that I knew who Onmi was to the voices in my head without just saying “Hey Vilkacis, I’m incredibly lazy, so can you please give me a URL to Onmi’s romhack thread so I don’t have to look for it myself because of my aformentioned laziness?”
Cythereal wrote:
Sat Jul 25, 2020 2:53 pm
I just noticed something odd in a new game of 3H that I'm poking at. I'm using NG+, and when looking at buying support levels I seem to have s-ranks unlocked for buying with renown that I've never done before - if it matters, this poking is as mByleth with the Blue Lions, and the renown supports are showing Annette, Ingrid, Bernie, Marianne, Leonie, Flayn, Manuela, and Shamir as having s-ranks available for purchase even though I've never done them. Meanwhile, Mercedes' s-rank is available to buy despite me only having s-ranked her as fByleth, while Dorothea and Rhea's s-ranks are locked while I've done them as fByleth.
Yeah, NG+ lets you S-rank units that you achieved max support points with in previous runs. Save a copy file, boost the support to S-rank with renoun, save on the copy, and delete it, and the Support Log will let you see their S-rank scene. I’ve never used it on a proper file because I’m afraid it’ll interfere with my pairing preferences.

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Greener223224 wrote:
Sat Jul 25, 2020 3:34 pm
Yeah, NG+ lets you S-rank units that you achieved max support points with in previous runs. Save a copy file, boost the support to S-rank with renoun, save on the copy, and delete it, and the Support Log will let you see their S-rank scene. I’ve never used it on a proper file because I’m afraid it’ll interfere with my pairing preferences.
I know. And I've never done that trick but renown is letting me buy s-ranks I've never done.

Across my various playthroughs I've s-ranked, in order IIRC:

Mercedes
Lysithea
Rhea
Edelgard
Dorothea
Marianne
Dedue


But the renown menu is letting me buy s-ranks including Annette, Flayn, and Shamir, who I haven't s-ranked before.

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Cythereal wrote:
Sat Jul 25, 2020 3:46 pm
Greener223224 wrote:
Sat Jul 25, 2020 3:34 pm
Yeah, NG+ lets you S-rank units that you achieved max support points with in previous runs. Save a copy file, boost the support to S-rank with renoun, save on the copy, and delete it, and the Support Log will let you see their S-rank scene. I’ve never used it on a proper file because I’m afraid it’ll interfere with my pairing preferences.
I know. And I've never done that trick but renown is letting me buy s-ranks I've never done.

Across my various playthroughs I've s-ranked, in order IIRC:

Mercedes
Lysithea
Rhea
Edelgard
Dorothea
Marianne
Dedue


But the renown menu is letting me buy s-ranks including Annette, Flayn, and Shamir, who I haven't s-ranked before.
Sorry, rephrase. It's not just units you've gotten S-supports with before. It's also units that MU achieved max support points with in previous runs. As in, they got up to A-rank with that unit, and then still got like about 500 support points with that unit afterwords to hit their support point cap.

Yes, there's a cap for support points. It's on a character-to-character basis, and it causes stuff like being unable to pair Marianne with Linhardt because his support cap with her is lower than one or both's support point cap with Lysithea or Hanneman. FE16 is really weird. I'm really glad that the DLC added a means to guarantee preferred pairings, though I hate that it costs 20000 renoun per pairing.

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Oh hey, Endorph's rationalizing why people don't like FE14 Conquest.

Honestly, what the heck does "consistent standard of quality that's so high it often dwarfs the greatest highs of previous entries" even mean?

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As a big fan of Conquest, "consistent standard of quality that's so high it often dwarfs the greatest highs of previous entries" sounds utterly ridiculous to me. It has it's fair share of bad maps, like kitsune hell where you can do nothing but put your army into a huge clump so the enemies can't take advantage of pass because all tiles are occupied, or chapter 25, which has a death trap so cheap that the preferred tactic is to simply have an op Corrin who can solo the boss. And there are other maps that are merely decent or even a bit boring, rather than being as great as that post claims all the maps are.

The reason I think Conquest is a good game is because it rewards good positioning in order to take maximum advantage of buffs and dual attacks to defeat enemies efficiently and keep up the momentum, and because it liberally grants all kinds of interesting skill sets to enemies, giving them much more variety than what mere differences in stat spreeds can accomplish.

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Aren’t all those skill sets locked to Lunatic, where the enemies are just overly numerous and stat-jacked to high hell so there’s no fun allowed and winning requires constant good RNG rolls in dodges and levelups?

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No, just the hideously overpowered skills, like debuffs never wearing off/stacking until your units are easily murdered babies.

I'm pretty sure the lower difficulties will still throw Lunging Ninja chains at you, but it's been a while since I played any of Fates's paths.

Still not as bullshit as Awakening's Lunatic+ nonsense.

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I feel like I'm being guilt-tripped into playing a game I absolutely hate, and that I'm being gaslit into thinking it's my fault that I hate the game, and not the game itself.

Night Zap wrote:
Sat Jul 25, 2020 8:35 pm
As a big fan of Conquest, "consistent standard of quality that's so high it often dwarfs the greatest highs of previous entries" sounds utterly ridiculous to me. It has it's fair share of bad maps, like kitsune hell where you can do nothing but put your army into a huge clump so the enemies can't take advantage of pass because all tiles are occupied, or chapter 25, which has a death trap so cheap that the preferred tactic is to simply have an op Corrin who can solo the boss. And there are other maps that are merely decent or even a bit boring, rather than being as great as that post claims all the maps are.

The reason I think Conquest is a good game is because it rewards good positioning in order to take maximum advantage of buffs and dual attacks to defeat enemies efficiently and keep up the momentum, and because it liberally grants all kinds of interesting skill sets to enemies, giving them much more variety than what mere differences in stat spreeds can accomplish.
Yeah this is pretty much my take on Conquest as well, as fun as I found it overall there's no really getting around that it has a bunch of maps that aren't really all that distinguishable from the average FE map as well as a couple that probably wouldn't be that out of the place in a ragefest hack or something.

Although as far as the lows go I'd still take Kitsune Hell or the Lunge Ninja corridor of death over any desert map, most fog maps, and probably a few others besides.

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Greener223224 wrote:
Sun Jul 26, 2020 1:55 am
I feel like I'm being guilt-tripped into playing a game I absolutely hate, and that I'm being gaslit into thinking it's my fault that I hate the game, and not the game itself.
Not everybody likes Conquest- I don't for instance. I've never played it personally, but I've seen enough gameplay of the other Fates plots to know I'd never want to play it. Given the mechanical discussion of just the maps, I'd say it's only somewhat worse than Awakening on that front, but it's got many other mechanical issues for me, personally. This isn't even mentioning the overall plot which fails to do anything for me on multiple levels.

This really isn't my argument to make though. I don't really like inclusion of skills or pair-up abilities, or most of the newer mechanics, honestly. I was into the series for "RPG Chess", in a similar sense to the earlier games in the series. I'm not really the intended audience for it anymore it seems.

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Even setting aside how Conquest's plot is terrible enough to mash the skip button, fuck those ninja maps.

(On the subject of the plot, what a terrible waste of getting to play as the Camus for once. 3H did it better.)

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Skills can be good, but how they've been handled recently just feels, bad? There's a reason that the introduction and reintroduction of skills to the series had pretty thinly spread skill distribution on both sides of the table. And 3H's weapon arts makes them feel even worse since it offloads all the neat combat ideas to that and leaves skills with a lot of "raw number" skills that are useful but boring (or are often more useful for the AI than for you, fucking pass).

Pair-up is just busted. Even the basic idea of "rescue that gives you stats" is absolutely absurd and in practice reduces characters to stat backpacks. I'd say I hope it never comes back but even rescue seems to be gone for good now, so... :confuoot:

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ClyncyeRudje wrote:
Sun Jul 26, 2020 11:05 pm
Skills can be good, but how they've been handled recently just feels, bad? There's a reason that the introduction and reintroduction of skills to the series had pretty thinly spread skill distribution on both sides of the table. And 3H's weapon arts makes them feel even worse since it offloads all the neat combat ideas to that and leaves skills with a lot of "raw number" skills that are useful but boring (or are often more useful for the AI than for you, fucking pass).

Pair-up is just busted. Even the basic idea of "rescue that gives you stats" is absolutely absurd and in practice reduces characters to stat backpacks. I'd say I hope it never comes back but even rescue seems to be gone for good now, so... :confuoot:
Skills have the potential to be interesting, but I find that in general that their inclusion over-complicates strategy when they're more than just stat buffs. It's just too much stuff for me to keep track of while I've already got so many other things to worry about and plan for mechanically.

Base late-game Awakening was annoying as hell with this, and Lunatic exacerbated it by doing things like hiding Counter or Pass jerks inside groups of reinforcements or just on the map in general. Typically, my eyes are focused on the placement of units, and checking every damn one for skills is tedious given the enemy units all look the same. PoR was agitating on this front as well, given that you had to go deep in menus to see if someone just so happened to have Wrath. I'd like to get to the fun part instead of spending time minesweeping for whatever BS the game has up its sleeve.

The personal idea I've been playing around with in my head is to only give a single, personalized skill to your units only, and maybe only a few story bosses (in which the presence of said skill is alerted to the player by story conversations). Make them not as strong as things like Astra and Aether, but give them enough power to make them notable considerations when deciding to use a unit or not.

Pair-up's really just straight broken though. In most cases, it practically halves your deployment size since the boosted stats gets you closer to self-sufficient and/or god-units, accelerates support bonuses to ridiculous levels, and oftentimes serves as the only method of staying alive on anything but the minimum difficulty. That picture of my Lunatic Morgan's stats is with the bonuses from being paired with a decently high level Swordmaster Robin. There's really no excuse for letting me give a General enough speed to double enemy Swordmasters with capped stats. It's hilarious, sure, but it changes the balance more to being about highly-evasive rocket tag instead of actually having to plan based on character strengths and weaknesses.

I kinda liked having Rescue around, it was a nice convenience for escaping bad situations with a notable cost, even if the Con numbers really needed a rework. It's better mechanically than designating units as stat-paste at least.

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I admit maybe my opinion of skills in Fates is colored by the game being on 3DS, which makes it very easy to look up which skills enemies had. If it had been released on a different system and I had to open a menu every time I wanted to double check what horrible things an enemy could do to me. I think the best solution is to simply give each enemy type one consistent skill that you can rely on them having, so you know when a certain class shows up on the map, you immediately know what they can do besides deal damage. More complicated setups are reserved solely for bosses and minibosses.

Pair Up is brainless in Awakening, but I think it was handled much better in Fates. The extra damage from dual strikes is often useful to avoid counter attacks, and the game's overall focus on player phase also makes it more important to actually have units available to act on their own, rather than having half of your army be talking stat boosters all the time. It's a nice gimmick mechanic, but I don't need to see it return.

All in all, I simply prefer having strong, dangerous enemies who require me to efficiently take them out on player phase so they can't slaughter me on their turn, and Conquest scratches that itch. Watching hordes of weak foes throw themselves into the meatgrinder on enemy phase is less interesting to me.

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Personally, my eyes were typically glued to the upper screen anyhow, even when playing Awakening which has the exact same layout for the most part. I'd complain about the effort required to look at the lower screen, (effectively none,) but that's not a very strong argument. The only point I can make for that situation is that location is the top concern at all times, and to have some quick alert icon for dangerous skills on the top screen when hovering over a unit would've been nice.

The limitations of the visuals is what hurts that, really. Every damn Warrior unit looks the same as is, but to affix the enemy skills to be completely consistent based on class would be nice. The GBA games did that, even if the overall skills weren't as complex as the newer ones (Move After Acting, Lethality, Berserker +Crit). Hell, I don't even care how many skills you give them, just having them be consistent between units would go a good way into making it less mechanically bloated.

I can't personally vouch for Fates as I've only seen gameplay of it, but the use and necessity of the Pair-Up doesn't seem any different than Awakening's from what I've seen. Awakening is supposed to be more player phase based as well, but that kind of goes down the trashcan when the difficulty is tuned just even a little higher. In my opinion, the Dual-attack and Dual-guard system just enables the meatgrinder.

Having to properly assess threats and eliminate them on your terms, and have the chaff take their own fall is just kinda basic Fire Emblem though. Still, I would just rather be fighting against a more evenly matched opponent, and playing by taking the unit's class's strengths into account to make the right call. The older games had that, at least for a while. The GBA era, maybe not as much, but it hit a nice balance to where the class could still matter when making a decision. (Well, until you hit god-unit range as usual, but every game suffers from that.) I want to see the player/enemy dynamic be more symmetrical, or at least see some more defense maps.

At the end of the day, this is just personal opinion and taste though. There's no wrong answer here. Personally, the newer games are just a bit more RPG than tactical and I miss the tactical side more.

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The Flying Twybil wrote:
Mon Jul 27, 2020 6:59 am
I kinda liked having Rescue around, it was a nice convenience for escaping bad situations with a notable cost, even if the Con numbers really needed a rework. It's better mechanically than designating units as stat-paste at least.
yeah, to be clear I really like Rescue! It adds more options in a way that feels good, even with the absurdity of GBA Female Character Con/Mounted Aid. It's just that if they're removing even that I don't think they'll be going back to the pair-up well anytime soon.

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Pair-up fails to return, but alas

Image

We lose rescue shenanigans

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SPOING

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Image

I don't know what's dumber: the design of Briggid's bow, or the fact that it's not Ichival. Or maybe it's just that the giant cleavage of her outfit is somehow dumber than her old one-breast breastplate. And even that design got better over time.

Man, Fate GO is stupid.
Last edited by Greener223224 on Sun Aug 02, 2020 7:46 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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They uh... really wanted to double down on the whole "pirate" thing, I guess.

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