I think the “I must retreat” trope would be better if the unit retreated at _low_ HP rather than zero. It would really give the impression that they’re “licking their wounds”. Not sure how XP would work with that, but it would make for a much better retreat scenario. Plus, it could possibly allow for some minor story branching if you managed to kill the boss instead of drastically weaken them.
Give maybe 50 xp to every unit in the army? And give an option to let them retreat or not? If you allow them to retreat they could be stronger in a later map, like Shadow of Mordor kinda.
In FE4 units that retreat don't have the lethal kill shot sound effect and also don't vanish when reaching 0HP, so it wasn't like the later ones where they literally vanish after being defeated, it would of been cool if their HP drain stopped at 1 though.
@@camusthedarkknight9323 or in three houses when they do the kneeling animation instead of the dramatic death one. People seem to forget about that it seems. While in the 3ds games the animations play out the same way a.k.a dramatically falling at the ground and only occasionally is the music an indicative as to if they really died before their quote shows up.
One thing I don't think Mekkah quite gets because he hasn't finished Revelations is WHY it's such an open-ended "sandbox" experience. When the game's over, you have infinite resources. Infinite grinding, which leads to infinite money and thus infinite reclassing, forging, etc. I have a friend who has spent hundreds of hours on single save files building a team of monstrosities including a max-level Berserker Sakura. The game isn't open-ended because it's easy, it's open-ended because it has infinite grinding.
51:53 Throughout fiction there's been many characters that have specialised in a single type of magic purely out of preference or or an affinty in some kinda magic, not everyone has been some sort of omni sage
My favorite example of class being an aspect of a character's personality is Joshua from Sacred Stones. A gambler who tries to conceal his real identity is a perfect fit for an evasive, crit-dependent dodgetanky class like Myrmidon. As is standard for a myrm, he comes with a killing edge, which communicates his "gambling" as a combat strategy. His class' promotions both fit him because they both maintain a "gambling" playstyle. Swordmaster is a mere continuation of Myrmidon and, as his initial appearance is as an assassin tasked with killing Natasha, Assassin fits Joshua's role in the story. Swordmaster has a nonplussed-looking dodge which fits Joshua's laid back personality.
@@TheFierburn And you're dumb if you honestly think that was an intentional move on the developers part and not just pure coincidence with a bunch of reasoning loosely strapped together. Joshua is literally just the Navarre of FE8. All his argument falls apart when you realise he's literally just another FE typecast-the early myrmidon with a killing edge. Some characters definitely have classes that suits them, but that's because they were designed with that class in mind. Personal skills do a much better job of showing off character traits. Myrmidon suits Joshua, just like it suits Rutger, Guy, Lon'qu, Navarre etc because the character was designed to be a myrmidon at base, and that's about as far as the devs thought.
kao123456654 you say that like it matters which way it was done, if they said “oh we need a myrmidon” and created Joshua around that the role would still fit him and it would still be intentional
GGL Juno I actually ended up using Brom in both of my FE9 and FE10 maniac playthrough just because I really like his personality. He’s not terrible there, at least worth 2.5 star in my opinion. However in RD he is just worse in every possible way compared to Gatrie where they almost have exactly the same utility.
Yeah, I really feel like people outright deciding not to die is not only anticlimactic, but also annoying and actually makes you think the opposite: when they finally die, your reaction is either “Finally!” or “Oh wait, this time it’s for real?”. It certainly was my reaction when the prominent gaiden chapter villains in FE12 actually died when you defeated them, as they would’ve fit the description of “I’ve been defeated, but I can’t fall here” to a tee, and that was the moment I realized how much the permadeath concept as a whole was sort of pushed aside in later entries (though it obviously also wasn’t introduced in it, FE4 is a fairly big offender as you pointed out).
It also annoys me in ironman runs because you get someone killed and feel the immediate sadness of it but then Kaze is just like "oof i guess it's time to go sleep" and makes it awkward.
@@yousquiddingme Adding to this, I believe the Legion you fight in 6x you do kill, since Legion is not one individual but many people pretending to be the same person. Klein is around for 3x but leaves early so you can't kill her. Katarina makes sense because Kris and Co don't want to kill her anyway in the Prologue. I think FE12 actually checks out fine here.
How I feel is if a character is important I’m ok with them living sometimes you need to do something for the story instead of for the gameplay is I feel like a ballence is better though that’s just my opinion
I had that feeling in Awakening with Walhart pretty badly. Not even with the postgame-thing, but rather the mainstory. The battle infront of the castle is framed as the end and then the guy is just there in the castle and tells everyone "Trouble's here, get ready to fight!". Like, bruh, why?
Here's an opinion, awakening has the elements of a compelling story but IS dropped the ball. Awakening's story would have been much better if part 2 of the game used the future past setting of the dlc instead of going to valm and collecting child paralogues. Part 2 would focus on the children with lucina as the lord. I found that the future timeline was more interesting than most of what awakening's plot had to offer. Also that way the children can join as competent fighters instead of drastically under leveled growth units. Part 2 could end with the children going back in time to join the parents to defeat the grimleal in the past after exhausting all means to fight grima in their time. Part 3 could end similarly to the third future past dlc where the entire cast travel back to the original future to defeat a full powered grima after which the two generations part ways.
Awakening would have been better if it wasn't copying the plot structure (and many of the themes/plot points) from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, except with time travel thrown in to remove the threat of their apocalypse.
@@megaignitor5231 That would have been seriously cool. Albeit fighting your own (op) MC kinda feels nasty. I love it :D They could throw in the parents (or some of them at least) as Risen as well.
So the reason I'm fine with certain allies retreating instead of dying at 0 hp is we saw the alternative in fe6, which is a game where nobody is relevant anymore after joining Roy, so the game just ends up being the Roy, Merlinus, and Gwenivere show
It’s also like super out of character for certain people to not be more involved in the stories. For example you’d think Finn in fe5 would be more involved in the story, with him having protected and raised Leif basically all his life, but after the manster escape he just shuts up the whole rest of the game. It’s weird.
I wish they would just try, just once, to do a fire emblem where every character have shit to say and do. And if they do, well too bad, you miss out on a lot of stuff to do and know, but that's fine, one reason for a second run. Actually, having a shorter but very intense game where deaths impact which maps and ending you get would be sick just as a proof of concept.
Path of Radiance did this pretty well: it gave a bunch of characters extra dialogue during story scenes and base conversations... if they're alive. If they're dead, it just skips the lines or plays alternate lines. I'd recommend looking up the scripts for the scenes with Elincia's retainers. The game has variants covering every possible combination combination of alive/dead for Geoffrey, Lucia and Bastian. Seriously, read PoR's scripts on SF. There's a huge amount of variant dialogue in chapters, some of it pretty obscure. (e.g if Ike fights the Black Knight in Chapter 11 and somehow survives, Mist gets some extra dialogue at the end where she yells at him for being an idiot)
You know, i actually agree with the "Revelations is a good sandbox" guy. One of the most fun that i had with the game was building up My Castle to become both functional and nice looking, while also beefing up my units and marrying them to god knows who.
@@dededeletethis9940 Oof, i married her to Silas. I guess it worked, since Shigure got a thicc bonus to skill and speed. Still, if i ever play revelations again im totally going for what you did. It sounds amazing Also, off topic, but i also just threw so many shit into Laslow that he simply became sword god. Like, Ryoma levels of sword god
@@funninoriginal6054 one other thing i did was pair camilla and keaton. Originally, i did it because velouria is so much like camilla it hurts and their supports gave me diabetes, but as it turns out, camillas genes are one hell of a drug. No joke, that little wolf girl was actually nuts. Silas and azura may be a good pairing, i wouldn't know. But what i do know is that the supports between non-sibling shigure and sophie are incredible. I like them almost as much as laslow and peris supports, which by the way made for a soleil that just felt right in every way
7:30 The laws of Physic change all the time in FE. Some games its infinite range, some games have limited range, some games have a range based on your magic and the formula for that in of itself is incosistant. The laws of Physic never stay the same! Yes this is a dumb pun. Dislike at your leisure.
My opinion of the whole "I need to retreat" thing is that it also forces non-essential characters to not really be able to interact with the story at all or else their absence in the story just sort of forces the story to take a more circulous route to get the end. So either some of the more plot-important but not vital character retreat or the story is basically Lord and NPC allies do all the real work while the non-plot critical characters don't really matter in the story. Also, I'm actually with "Emmeryn's amnesia strengthened her death's point". Emmeryn's gone, she isn't gonna come back. All that's left of her is a shell that wears her face, and her continued presence hammers in the point that she isn't going to just be able to walk off her sacrifice. Everyone can try to bring her back, but the tragedy lies in the fact that she will only get a few scraps at best.
Lyn definitely didn’t need to be a lord for the main game. Honestly, I think it would have been cool if she got sort of an Elincia style glow-up when she returns. Actually, now that I think about it, having Lyn treated like Elincia would have been pretty perfect. They’re the main characters for their own story, but take a side roll later on. On Lucina, I’ve said this before, but I always found her character pretty compelling. The fact that she doesn’t do much during the Valm arc I find kind of irrelevant to her character. She doesn’t really have any personality gimmick like the other kids, which may be why people see her as boring.
Well I see Lucina as kinda boring because her whole story arc is something I've seen before. She doesn't do anything special. She's not bad at all mind you, but I just don't get why people praise her as some super deep and compelling character.
@@korinoriz She's not even attractive enough to be waifu bait so she's kinda just boring overall. She's not bad by any means but comparing her to the other children like Owain and Gerome? No contest
I once heard rumored (around the time Blazing Sword came out) that Lyn was specifically created to justify the extended prologue. If that was even remotely true, it would explain why she did not feel like a "lord" character. However, claiming she is "uninteresting" might be a bit of an exaggeration.
@@korinoriz Lucina's popularity stems from the kind of character she is--- namely a "Sisyphean hero", a.k.a. an endlessly enduring hero (not to be confused with a hero that always wins--- that's a Mary Sue). These kind of characters (Sisyphean heroes) tend to be well-regarded because they (among other things) invoke the idea that any problem, regardless of how seemingly impossible the issue, has a solution. This concept is, not coincidentally, at the heart of the plot to Awakening. On a side note: the reason why her story arc is something you've seen before is because it literally is a variant of the plot to Terminator.
I mean, despite I disagree with the guy sayin "Kaga leaving was the best thing", they don't need to know the whole Kaga drama with IS to have an elaborated opinion. Kaga's design philosophy is very different from what has been done later, so I think he was just referring to that, not criticizing him personally.
Cherche is an odd case, where her alternate classes (Cleric and Troubadour) do make sense with her backstory, but really clash with her as she's written in her supports.
@@RadiancePath936 at least you can handwave it with "Warrior as in a badass on the battlefield as opposed to the class". FE12 reclassing really screws with character identity when you can just make the armor knight who talks about being the people's shield a myrmidon, or make the lumberjacking axe dudes dark mages.
Maybe having every single unit actually die can add some more impact, but it either limits the narrative or the gameplay to do so. Either you have a story where a ton of the characters you get can't have a meaningful impact on the narrative after their joining chapter (like pretty much every single one of the older games), or you have more characters that when they die it becomes a game over, which I would argue also lessens the impact in a way.
Yeah the zero hp = death means that other side of the fight doesn't really get to do much. And there are situations that absolutely need people to be on the map. Like take for an example a situation where the main characters first figure out oh hey this guy is an enemy. If zero hp = deaths it pretty much means that a generic mook has to come in as they can't risk the main person.
Or they could change the story depending on who is alive or dead at that point. It could be as simple as writing it so other characters can fulfill a role in a a scene that was supposed to go to a dead unit or they could have many branching paths in the narrative depending on who is or isn't alive.
@@ahumanbeingfromtheearth1502 very late response here, but FE7 did that. matthew is relevant in a few scenes, but dies when defeated. as a result, the cutscenes he stars in change if he is dead by that time. maybe if they made that more commonplace
@@Underworlder5 The "I will bury you beside Matthew" broke me when Hector discovered Leila's body. I didn't know scenes changed like that. Pretty good surprise, albeit a depressing one.
It's interesting, my experience with the"maturity" of the FE subreddit and serenes forest is pretty much the opposite. Especially since 3H came out, the subreddit is almost 100% fanart and zero discussion about games other than 3H. At least in the sub-forums for the older games, there seems to be more legitimate discussion on Serenes IMO.
First comment: Uh... Sleep is the easiest way to prevent Douglas from suiciding into your army and ensuring you get the Paralogue. Mist is useless in RD primarily because the devs were idiots and didn't make the swords that were supposed to do magic damage actually do Magic damage. If Fleurete and the Wind Sword actually did what they were supposed to do, she would have been a solid unit who could heal while still being able to counter if needed. Faye is hella cute, the main problem is they just made her entire existence revolve around her Yandereness towards Alm. Like, a lot of her mannerisms and personality are super cute, but they ruin the whole thing by making her completely fixated on Alm.
Faye is remarkably easy to fix: Literally just have a conditional that if she gets the A-supports with Alm and Silque, her normal ending is replaced with one where she cares about her family instead of just vanishing randomly. I just mean, the part that made it rediculous wasn't that the normal ending exists, but rather that no characterdevelopment happens, even if the player puts effort into it. Actually, the issue with there not being enough things the player can influence is a major one in the game. Like how the sidequest to save Est and promote Celica is required because why not. And how Celica always gets revived, because they didn't want to bother with writing a bad end/good end-split to correspond with their remake-plotchanges.
Heres a non-exclusive to fire emblem opinion that I have that might be unpopular. Lack of deaths doesn't mean a bad story and having deaths doesn't make a good story. So many people give crap to stories for having too little deaths but death doesn't make a good story. Death can be as much as harm to a narrative as it can be a help. And when it goes wrong it goes way more wrong then a lack of deaths.
@@BigKlingy I think I had the best laugh in months when a particular death happened and after returning to the player castle, you could still give them offerings and that dead character was represented by a stereotypical "soul orb". It just seemed so mean, comically tragic, and hilarious at once.
"Tharja and Camilla 2 of the most hated characters to this date" Idk about that one chief, controversial sure but they are by no means hated. Despite what Twitter and Reddit may lead you to believe they are really popular and IS milks them for a reason.
Yep, because they got tits for days, are sultry as heck and are both obsessed with the Mc to a sickly degree. Apparently men LOVE this type. That's why they're milked. And then there's always the obligatory loli-dragon-girl that 1000+ (so it's legal, ofc) which get milked heavily as well.
Agreed, the freedom to do what you want with your army is way more apparent. It's really hard in Rev to use the units you like when the vast majority of them join while being one-rounded by enemies on the map.
Plus there are Einherjar and there's just a certain charm to the map that makes the grind more relaxing than those weird auxiliary battles they have in Fates and 3H.
@@TheRedScizor for all it's flaws it's the little touches they went out of the way for because they thought it was gonna be the last game that give it that feel.
The great fe4, the only game that thought max speed, earth sword, leg ring, pursuit, continue, awareness, and critical on a flier wasn't enough, needed to add a triangle attack on top of that.
At least the first two times it doesn't have the "killing blow" sound effect, and she doesn't vanish after hitting zero HP, so that's something I suppose (as opposed to most other games where there is a killing blow sound effect, they give their death quote, vanish, then appear next chapter). But yeah Ishtar is underwhelming by the time you kill her legit.
Would it be unpopular to say that mekkah is the most in dev and research heavy fe youtuber? I watch every other fe UA-camr to have fun or because I like their channel but I watch mekkah to learn about things I didn't know and to avoid pitfalls. He's pretty funny and his content is really good.
I believe you mean in depth, and yeah, out of the youtubers there are who focus on LTC and efficient play, he is definitely one of the most entertaining and best at explaining things comprehensively, supporting his opinions and findings with empirical data (stat averages and such)
Mr. Raven I wouldn’t say that’s accurate. Ghast may be entertaining, but he rarely talks about units and gameplay comparisons in the detailed way that Mekkah can. Despite that, I like Ghast’s character analysis, and that’s where I think he’s the best-researched FEtuber.
For my money, someone like Pavise Productions takes the research cake, although there are also people like shadowofchaos who've do a lot of translation work too. Generally, I'd say it depends on the video, something like Plinkett emblem had a lot more time put into it than a video like this or the tierlist videos he's been making which are mainly supported by onhand knowledge.
The problem with the gimmicks in fates is that they replace map design. The gimmicks aren’t designed around the maps, the maps are designed around the gimmicks.
Fates, especially conquest is the opposite of fe4 in my mind. Instead of a interconnected world with long term resource management and many secrets, in fates maps feel like obstacle courses more than actual places. There are very few secret items, and combined with the lack of durability, and keys disappearing if you don't use them on the chapter you get them, the game feels like an arcade/arena game
Gimmicks that are designed around the map is why I love FE3 Book 2 so much. Game either has brand new chapters with interesting objectives (Chapter where you recruit Merric and the other guy, where if you don’t kill any of the clerics, you get the chance to get a members card, the bridge chapter where you’re being chased by Hardin), or maps that are brought back from FE1, but play very differently (Gra chapter is one of my favourites, desert chapter is anti-turtleneck since you’re being chased by Mercurius Astram), and it’s fun in general to get past these challenges. Fuck chapter 19 though.
I like a couple characters not being able to die in your army. It lets more characters than just your main character show up in cutscenes and be relevant throughout the story. Fe6’s Roy and Merlinus show gets boring. Even if fe5, while I like Leif, Augustus, and Dorias more than Roy and Merlinus, I still think it’s bizarre that Finn just shuts up and never talks to Leif for most the game. Obviously I think Awakening and fates took this too far with like half the characters never dying, but like fe9 has a good balance of this with Titania, Soren, and Mist not dying. Just like 3 or 4 characters not dying.
In Awakening it was to avoid creating time travel issues And there were still a lot of characters with plot armor in FE10 In general I feel like if the story needs this character to live, make their death a game over or make them a noncombatant
@@emberhermin52 the awakening plot armor came from the mothers being relevant in the child unit paralogues. potential fathers still die when defeated, so i doubt the deaths would cause time travel complications. the kids would just not be born in that timeline. IMO, the mothers should also die when defeated (except lissa for obvious reasons), and recruiting the child units will have alternate lines to account for that
The only 2 awakening xenolouges I acknowledge are Priam and Yen'fey. Priam because he's just a new character and Yen'fey because he's actually future Yen'fey who went back in time to tell present Yen'fey to betray his sister so that she would live instead of die which imo makes him probably one of the coolest Camus archetypes in the franchise.
I kinda like walhart a bit. I kinda like the concept of how his resolve is so strong, it can keep him alive despite being beaten twice. It's been a pop culture trope for a while. And, in real life, massive adrenaline has let people survive stuff that should've killed them.
@@rhysofsneezingdragon1758 His is kinda neat and I like the idea of Walhart taking on Grima but I also don't see how the people of Valm reconcile with him or why he would stop his conquest. He's a really neat character but it kinda felt like there was a good reason to put him in the ground.
@@catelyntully9494 I just don't mind Priam. His being there has no negative impact on the story besides it being sorta weird to go all the way out there to recruit him (which can be said for some of the child units too tbh). I don't love him as a character but I do appreciate his inclusion as fan service given that this was potentially the last FE game.
@@matthewcoyle4131 I understand what you mean, as a potential last game this was like a last thing for Tellius fans and I am glad they remembered us, but for me the fact that is a bad character kinda ruins it, hard, I rather just get Ragnell than him tbh. But I see your point don't worry it's more than valid.
There actually is a way to see what the Fire Emblem franchise would have been like if Kaga hadn't left: playing Tearring Saga. That game plays so similarly to a Fire Emblem game that it's no wonder Kaga got sued, almost anything about the first 5 games series that you can think of (promoting at level 10, the 5 magic types, etc) is in TRS.
I enjoy Faye's character. She approaches the yandere trope in a grounded way; her obsession falls into this uncanny valley of fantasy anime trope but with realistic consequences. I had a blast reading Tharja/Camilla fans' take on a character who fit their fantasy while suffering its consequences. However, I admit that Faye isn't appropriate in the context of what I would call an "ideal" FE. Anyways, the immortal Nosferatu killager will always hold a special spot in my heart.
22:50 I know you're not much of a LP watcher yourself, Mekkah, but Deltre's Conquest LP is quite excellent if you want to see character skills being actually used (and quite excellent in general. Deltre is very good at the video game). Although to be fair, if I remember correctly (it's been a couple months if not a year since I've watched it) the most used skills are Camilla and Elise's auras.
I see more and more how Mekkah and other fans limit themselves to only a single way to do something, they simplify game design to right and wrong, and analyse the games by how right each aspect is. With the characters retreating, for example. It's definitely wacky. Mekkah instantly says he wishes permadeath would be always integrated into the story. It's cool that he offers a "solution", but shared on the internet, that turns into an expectation, a collective view of the "right way" to do it. And fandoms being the way they are, soon enough everyone will be (as they are already in this case) echoing it. And why is this even a worthy issue, for starters? Is it truly something that has bothered that many people, or did it just got fame due to some meme ("I can't fall now, I must retreat!")? What makes this an issue, and not all the other inconsistencies? Truth is, what is and isn't an issue for the community is completely arbitrary. They're often not issues for people outside of the community. Often people don't even notice them. The echo chamber is fun, but it's distorting. I personally couldn't care less whether some units retreat or die. It's not like the story changes with deaths, anyway. Imagine the work to implement that. I'd rather the resources went into making a fun gameplay, which is the most important aspect. FE should be less bound by story, not more.
she splits into 5 lyns, attacks with an extremely oversized slash effect from the points of a pentagon and then appears out of nowhere from the top left of the screen. 100% realistic physics
While reclassing CAN hurt a character’s...character, I kinda feel like heart seals from (fates, weirdly enough) isn’t a bad idea. Just in cases where a character could believably be another class,though. (Odin being able to go back to his myrmydon roots, for example). Edit:Unpopular... you know what I have no idea what people (or Mekkah) think about Kliff (Mage). I think he’s pretty good but not the best what do you guys think of Kliff
I feel like there are more reclasses that make sense for the character than not, in one way or another. Take Kellam, for instance. His character gimmick is his inability to "stand out". So why not have give him the option to be a stealthy thief? Or Shura being the only Fates character with natural access to both Hoshidan and Nohrian classes, as a man of both kingdoms. That being said, there are also some that exist purely for gameplay and make NO sense whatsoever from a character perspective. I mean, is there any reason why Tharja gets Armor Knight other than getting the Pavise skill to bolster her tanky-ness?
Kliff was apparently one of the best units in Gaiden, but in Echoes they changed his growths and stats a bit. Most players I see played casually, so it's hard to gauge other than "Kliff is so cute and OP as [whatever class they made him]".
Mage Kliff on release was pretty hyped by a lot of people with little experience in the game, but in practice he's not your best mage option. You really only need one of the villagers to be a mage so that you can hit enemies on terrain before forging and weapon arts pick up the slack, but you don't want more than one because their low move compared to the large number of mounted units in Alm's chapters make them fall off after a certain point. The big upsides of mage Kliff is high speed growth and that he gets excalibur, with the downsides being that he has low base speed, low base strength and defense with unimpressive growths, and his promoted spell list isn't too impressive. Tobin ends up being the better mage choice due to higher base speed that with a couple of fountain uses can double more consistently than Kliff in the early portions, he gets excalibur a little bit earlier than Kliff, and when promoted he gets physic allowing him to be useful throughout the entire game. Mage Kliff is still better than Mage Grey, but I feel you can get much more out of Kliff by making him a cavalier or archer which will allow Kliff to remain relevant for longer, grow into his good speed, and use class bases to bolster his attack and defense.
@@SSBBPOKEFAN that's not true about Shura. As far as I can recall, Odin, Selena, and Laslow can be a Myrmidon, Sky Knight, and Ninja respectively. There might be others too but I haven't researched. To be fair, if it's only those three you could argue that that's another hint at their non-Nohrian roots.
Unpopular opinion: Tharja was a perfectly fine character in Awakening, but later appearances in other games stripped her of any nuance she had... along with her shame. And, in some cases, clothes.
Also apparently in the future timeline she killed her husband and tortured her daughter. How did she even kill Virion since he's immune to curses, also why would someone like Frederick ever tolerate Tharja's experiments? Anyway if you ignore her daughter supports and her other appearances she's fine in Awakening
@@vanjagalovic3621 I was always under the impression that she went a little nuts on account of Grima and all, plus getting a lot less emotional support with everyone being dead. I could very well be misremembering though.
@@wyveriusblackfire3834 Yes she did, her daughter says how they got into a fight and Tharja killed her husband by blasting him with magic, though it's implied to be unintentional
For the fire/wind/thunder mage argument - To me it makes perfect sense that some mages would only be able to use one type or prefer one type. Its the same argument as “why can’t sword users use lances or axes etc.” its because of preference and training. I like that certain mages can only use some magic types because its makes sense based off of their training and lineage. I.e. tiltyu. I also like the magic triangle, simply because it adds an element of gameplay and even story about why the magic houses may not like eachother or why one is superior to the other. For example house freege being below velthomer (I think thats the house name?)
I don't mind the "not dying when hp hits zero" when it's not overboard. Like the Hubert style shit is annoying but sometimes you just can't have the narrative without a character. Also I wanted to point out that hp reaching zero isn't a hard and fast rule even in early fe games, mainly fe4 because Deirdre and Julia will be captured and reappear at the next castle (iirc) if they hit zero hp. Also capturing in fe5 is definitely something to note. Also to be perfectly frank sometimes the bosses who get killed the moment you fight them early game or mid game are very undeveloped, but there's still more of an opportunity to be developed if they live, say, once and then get fought again later. Also I like it when you have super strong enemies you aren't meant to beat that just teleport away. Stuff like the black knight being literally invincible is understandable but also it is so much fun to have a casual playthrough and find a way to strategize around beating a unit like desaix or Xander in that one birthright chapter.
My unpopular opinion: Ignatz is underrated and is not one of the worst units in the game. At worst, he will always have valuable utility with Rally Speed and high-ranking authority battalions. Typically, he'll has high speed, dexterity, and luck, and his personal skill, so he will have very reliable accuracy (especially earlygame) and high crit rates. People constantly complain about how he has among the worst strength in the game, but his base strength is only 1 below Leonie's and his growth is only 5% below Leonie's. Also, I don't think people even bothered trying to work around his mediocre strength - he can use stronger weapons effectively because his high speed and especially accuracy offset their higher weight and lower accuracy. His authority boon lets him quickly use high-power battalions earlier than many other units. He's easily at his best as a sniper, because Hunter's Volley again compensate for his mediocre strength, and his high accuracy and crits complement Hunter's Volley (like Shamir). But I will agree that he's one-note in that he's, at best, average in any class that isn't a Sniper. I will also agree that he's a lot less useful when recruited outside of his house because he defaults to having E or E+ Authority.
Most players don't use support oriented characters and he's not conventionally attractive as say Felix or Dorothea, or as cute as Ashe or Lysithea. His personal skill is definitely really helpful, but his strength is what probably turns people off to him. He definitely has a fanbase and is loved as a character, but as a unit I also see very little love for him. You could always make him a Wyvern Rider, but to be fair he does have a weakness in Flying, but even then that class is broken and fixes everyone's strength.
Unpopular opinion: Always thought Faye was sort of a self-parody/callout to dumb characters in modern FE games. Her name is literally pronounced "F E" in Japanese and is still FayE in English. She even gets cucked hard by the most canon pairing in the whole franchise, so you KNOW she was never having it her way. Nobody will ever believe me regarding this. Say it's too smart from them. But remember these games are made by multiple individuals so who knows.
It's been a while since I've played, but doesn't one conversation kind of acknowledges her being somewhat nuts? I like the idea, personally, in a "They know that no character worth anything should behave like her" way.
Even when Alm gets married to someone else, Faye worries her family by "sneaking out" to spy on Alm. Faye's always creeped me out, especially since she never originally existed.
I find both the "I must retreat" and reclassing thing are a case by case type deal. I get 0HP means the character is dead, but the limits on what you can do for a story seem like an uneven trade off. For the playable cast, I'd rather not have multiple plot important characters cause a game over when they die in battle, or they only become playable after they stop being important, or the devs take the Eyval route and put a flag on the character preventing their death for a portion of the game, or their role is so minor they can be easily written out if they die. On the other hand, yes the Death Knight did it way too much. I think one "I must retreat" is fine, two at most. When it comes to reclassing, I'm a fan of the Awakening/Fates approach. As far as I'm concerned with the SD/NM/3H version, if you choose to reclass someone to something that doesn't fit, why? Not to say you can't, but choosing to put an armor knight in a class that doesn't fit and complaining is like using the devil axe and complaining about the backfire happening. To put it another way, the game giving you a stupid option is a fair criticism, but if it doesn't put you to take it and you still do, that's on you. TLDR shit's complicated.
2:30 i found that silence and freeze were almost completely required to beat conquest lunatic. The stone monsters in the staircase are kind of crazy with immobilize, 5 range, and basically 2 shot every unit. The maids in the final chapter with staff sevant and inevitable end are a nightmare to deal with and are positioned to overlap with the different maid groups.
They're useless until you need them. I can sort of see his point though. Freeze is basically a way you cheat a turn which is cheesy and silence scenarios are very very rare. Special staffs as a whole are just a little too niche. Most of the time you can pick out the exact moments in each game where the staff would get used and that's it.
Freeze is great in general. They can easily neutralize threats for a turn, and it is invaluable. Got that paired up Falcon Knight headed towards you but you can't reach? Freeze. Do you want to prevent that Wakizashi Swordmaster from lunging? Freeze. Do you want to stop Inevitable End, Seal Def, Spy's Yumi Automatons? Freeze. Also yeah Staff Savant is painful to deal with without Silence. I am eternally grateful that it was provided the chapter before because it's ridiculous to fight against.
Actual unpopular opinion: I never thought of any of the paralogues as canon, especially the downloadable ones. The child ones, the Anna ones, and Donnel do not actively detract from the story, while the DLC ones do. Without the paralogues, the story of awakening is much tighter and more engaging. Also the paralogues are just shit maps. Priam's map is OK as a test of brokenness, but the others are just terrible and unfun generally.
Totally agree. I feel like they just wanted every character in fe history to be playable in some way in Awakening. Treating the dlc paralogues as canon feels like treating the fact that I have a Roy and a Celica in my army as canon, for me.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think death -> retreat is ever done in Path of Radiance, unless you count characters like Soren and Titania who stick around in the story but never take the field again. Shinon does hit 0 HP before his recruitment, but it's still not quite the same thing. Separately, it would be cool if they took the 3H monster concept of multiple HP bars and used that to address this issue. So an enemy might retreat after losing 1/2 (or even 1/3-4) HP bars, and this would be a visible indication that they have a lot more fight left, and they'll be tougher the next time.
Like half the cast in RD has multiple retreat quotes--some of them because you can't kill them when you're fighting them but a lot of them just have regular ol' plot armor.
Actually I think Tellius is the worst offender since it has characters like Oliver and the Black Knight who were killed and then came back a game later with retcon explanations
@@emberhermin52 I said Path of Radiance, but okay. I think the trade-off is mostly worth it in Radiant Dawn, in terms of letting you fight against the other army without having to worry about killing your own characters.
re: 2nd one I cannot disagree with this one more. Emmeryn "living" is a copout they did only really to have all those of characters playable for the sake of being playable, regardless of the narrative consequences. (FE12 does this too). How does Emmeryn's body go from the Plegian battlefield to some random village? AND amnesia, oh my god, let that trope die already. Regardless what you may think of her personally, I still really like the whole exchange of Chrom running to desperately try to save his sister, the whole scene with him reaching his hand out....
Fe12 only does this with Michalis, and I guess the Wolfguard, but you’re really not supposed to kill the Wolfguard anyways. Either way, neither death was really all that impactful.
I too thought amnesia was an overdone cliché. Then someone I know got amnesia after an accident. It was so heartbreaking to see I kinda understand why it's used so often.
Emmeryn's survival makes no sense in regards to Gangrel's (or whatever his name was) character. He is put forth as a sort of sadistic insanity case, by all accounts he would ordinarily take Emmeryn's body and parade it around like a morbid trophy. By the time she would have to wake up in order to not die of dehydration she would still be in the hands of the enemy who would outright kill her the moment she awakened.
I'm not experienced enough with the old Kaga era to comment on his games, but from what I have played he definitely seems like a man who is dedicated to building a sincere creative vision, and the kind to challenge himself to reinvent a franchise to create something with real depth to it. Actually, Shu Takumi is pretty similar with the Phoenix Wright series, where you can clearly see his voice in his games compared to the titles he didn't work on. While the modern games that don't have him may have more mainstream appeal, the Shu Takumi games tend to be less tropey and more experimental, and have more shades of grey to their writing, especially in the latter Takumi titles (to their benefit in my opinion too).
I think the Radiant Dawn triangle is the best where it's a magic triangle inside a magic triangle. You still have the gba triangle but you get the elemental triangle as an added bonus triangle
But it's all irrelevant when so many mages have sky-high resistance. It's not like with the regular weapon triangle where an axe user could potentially one-shot a myrmidon by beating the odds. Regardless of magic, whoever has the highest stats will win a spell flinging contest.
My issue with Kaga was that he was too fond of really obscure and bizarre mechanics and things you need a guide to find on your own, such as the FE4 secret spots. Also, his games were huge sausage fests...
I like the secret spot in fe4. Even more with the fact that they are completly optionnal and not primordial. Also his Jugdral Story was completly amazing.
Random thought about the con/weight thing: have weight penalties be mitigated if a unit's weapon level is higher than needed. For example: If a unit has a lance level of C and they use a lance that requires a weapon level of D, the speed penalty is halved. Mabye have weight penalties removed completely at A or S.
I have thought about weapon ranks decreasing Wt as well. I thought about something different: Wt reduction would be universal depending on the rank, in better words, once you reach C rank, you reduce the Wt by one, and when you reach A, the Wt is reduced by 2. I didn't think about the Wt reductions and the ranks at which you get them, only the concept.
Nah, not a fan of that idea. The reason I like Con over every other weight system in Fire Emblem is that it is always a constant presence and always impacts your decisions in the same way throughout the whole game. It adds a consistent layer of depth to what weapon you chose to fight with rather than something that goes away or gets lessened the further you progress through the game, like the strength con system. Also, getting better at using swords might help you make faster movements with a sword that weighs you down, since you can argue that the better you get at wielding weapons the better you'd get at shifting the weight, but that would only take, like, one point of reduced speed away, at max. It wouldn't cut how much it weighs you down by *half,* or even make it not weigh anything at ALL.
@@gorade1901 I agree that halving the penalty is too much, a small bonus Wt reduction would be enough, the same way it happens to Hit and Mt in FE11 and 12. I think that the Str reduction to Wt is really cool too. I would say that, in order to put both the Str and the weapon rank Wt reduction, the Wt of weapons should be increased.
@@willbow1304 The problem with that is that in POR and RD in some cases gettin a str level up is like getting a speed level up since it reduces the amount which the weapon wheighs you down. It becomes very silly after a while. Raising weight also wouldn't help since you'd need to make lategame silver weapons very heavy to make them still affect speed. The main problem with weapon weight is that it's only really important during the earlygame and becomes irrelevant during the lategame since your units either become fast enough to double regardless or have enough strenght to no get affected by weight (besides FE6). If I had to choose the best system I guess I'd choose Con from the GBA gamed, but that sistem had it's problems as well. Maybe the weapon weight affect should be something like weight - strenght/4 or something
Vanja Galović That last thing you talked about is actually something almost exactly done in Three Houses. In that game a character’s “con” was their strength divided by five (instead of dividing it by four like you suggested). I honestly find that to be one of the better, if not, the best to balance out weapon weight since it doesn’t forever screw someone over like the GBA con if they have too little con that they struggle to use even slightly heavier weapons, but it also avoids making weapon weight irrelevant later into the game like the Tellius games do. If they make some minor improvements to it, I would like to see that system to continue being used in later installments.
The way I see gimmicks is that they are special and sometimes experimental map features and themes that shift the gameplay focus away from the norm in an attempt to surprise the player and break up the monotony. Gimmicks are not inherently a bad thing. A map being gimmicky does not mean it is bad, that just means it is different. Saying gimmicks are bad by definition would imply the person wants a very pure and core mechanics-focused game through and through (I suppose Shadow Dragon would be prime example of this). Fates has a lot of maps centered around very specific and unusual ideas, for better or worse. Birthright maps the least so, most of them are relatively straightforward, and even dragonveins are largely applied in fairly basic and non-crucial ways. They're there, they might let you alter the terrain or deal damage to enemies easily, but are typically not very important to how you play the game a lot of it is optional. Conquest and Revelation differ here, in the sense that whenever map gimmicks are present, they tend to permeate the entirety of the chapter, becoming a focus of gameplay. Conquest more often uses these with a specific challenge in mind to the player. Whether it's racing enemy soldiers to the villages in chapter 8 to prevent large numbers of reinforcements and get a reward, or having to account for the wind blowing around units on the map each turn in Fuga's wild ride. As for how successfully it does so overall, you be the judge. Revelation, meanwhile, tends to get very experimental. A lot of its unique gimmicks don't necessarily challenge you with a specific purpose in mind, but are rather there to provide something different. In this, Revelation also has a heavy emphasis on interactable or moving objects, like warp tiles, the snow village, movable debris, elevators... and personally, I think the reason people don't like this is because most of these gimmicks really slow down the game. Like yeah, Conquest does this too to some extent like you mentioned, but I feel it's nowhere near as blatant as Revelation. Like taking the wind tunnels I mentioned before in conquest, sure, they are difficult to play around and so you'll probably feel compelled to go about things more slowly. But at least it isn't random and all the necessary information is provided to you, and you aren't forced to slow down either, if you think you can manage going faster. You can't really do that with the snow village. Unless you have prior information or a guide, you can't really break the ice safely, because you have no way of knowing when you'll encounter enemies and overextending runs you the risk of having your frail units caught defenseless. So you are pretty much forced to go slow. Then the elevators you see later *actually* force you to waste time waiting for it to come around to ferry your units across. Revelation's gimmicks too often are more tedious than they are interesting.
I think the main difference between Conquest vs. Revelations is that most of the gimmicks in Conquest are designed to have some kind of tradeoff to them, where it's not immediately obvious if you should, say, melt the lake in chapter 8, or use the dragon veins to control the wind in the Hinoka chapter. Either that or you really have to use the gimmick to play in an unusual, uncomfortable way, such as the endless staircase. Revelations doesn't feel as thoughtful, assuming it's not outright recycling. And when it does, it almost feels like they're trying to build atmosphere more than a meaningful mechanic.
Just finished the video, and I love these types of videos. It would be nice if you brought someone along to discuss these opinions, but the current style of just you by yourself is still really good. I also really like these videos because they spark a lot of discussion in the comments, it's nice to see people be able to talk to one another about something they love.
I think the guy who called Revelations a good sandbox was talking about the online connectivity, I imagine he or she really enjoyed the player vs player interaction and battles inherent in the game. By comparison, FE7 and 8 had the link arena which was mostly garbage, FE11 had some online versus which was interesting enough, but fights were very often imbalanced because matchmaking was random, and TearRing Saga had a versus mode that I never tried. Three Houses doesn't have multiplayer and has very little player connectivity. Echoes has only a renown system, (Though I quite liked the achievement board, they should bring that back!) Awakening had Streetpass battles which were cool, and almost there, but Fates had the best 2 player FE hands down. And if you had Revelations your base was better, I guess, so it's the best version to play for the full online experience. If you're willing to grind your team to frightening levels and give them skillsets that make sense and work, you can really provide a challenge to someone who wants to battle you, so it's like Mario Maker or something in a way.
How I see why gimmicks are bad is imagine that instead of the stat pots were placed sparingly in all of Conquest’s maps instead of being vomited into a single concentrated map. The devs could have less severe effects early on and have them be placed in such a way that they only really benefit the player. Later on the more severe effects like the hex affect could be added to the mix, and also have certain pots designed to benefit the enemies. Now we’ve just created an interesting system that is present throughout the entire game and progresses in way that will make players understand when and when not to break certain pots. As they are now most people just use the dragon vein in the one map to get rid of the pots because there’s many of them that it’s impossible to keep track of which effects are when and it slows the map down to halt. It’s an overload of information that will be never used again, so what’s the point of learning it? That’s how I see it anyways. If you got rid of Conquest’s map gimmicks and integrated a couple into the core gameplay I think Conquest would be even more interesting to play. On the subject of the aptirnity of magic, I do agree with the person that the Anima/Light/Dark triangle is better than the fire/thunder/wind one. I can never remember the anima triangle because I don’t really see any justification for why Fire beats thunder and the like. Dark beating anima makes sense, as it is a forbidden but powerful magic compared to the basic anima spells. Light beats dark because of course it does, and anima beats light because light is designed to banish the darkness and not primarily a combat spell.
I definitely interpreted the paralogues in Awakening as being non canon. Just a way to make other characters playable. They feel extremely fanfic so that’s how I like to think of them at least.
Three houses personals being better than fates personals is probably an unpopular opinion in itself. Management of auras especially is a game changer on CQ lunatic, and I think you could argue the very first CQ chapter is designed around Lilly's poise. Capture is also a difference maker, and implemented in a unique way from the only other game that implemented it. Ironically in 3H I find the only useful ones are directly ripped from fates. Ferdinand has Subaki's, Hilda's is Camilla, Dorothea is Azura, Bernadetta is Rinkah, etc.
Only if they also bring back Spirits from Fates. All tomes beat all spirits, spirits beat all physical weapons, and physical weapons beat tomes. Naturally, Calamity Gate reverses this.
14bj337 Wait, that would be a weapon triangle in a weapon triangle. You’d have tomes have the FE10 dynamic, but beat the spirit scrolls from Fates, and be weak to physical weapons... That just sounds like a mess, and that’s coming from someone who doesn’t think the FE10 trinity of magic was particularly confusing. Edit: I actually do like the spirit magic from Fates, but if I had to choose between having them and that game’s version of daggers, I’d pick the daggers without much hesitation.
I personally wanted Warriors to have an entirely original cast and story based on the archetypes of the series. In the game we got much of the story is "Look! It's [character]! You know them!" and recreations of scenes from the games, while the original segments of the plot are rather generic and bare bones. I think going fully original would have lead to a more interesting game. Maybe the fact that I don't care for most of the characters in in the actual game, and few of my favorite characters had any chance to make the cut even if their games were included anyway adds to that as well, but even if they could make it I think i'd prefer an original cast regardless. I've seen many people who don't consider robin and Byleth as lords, and that makes no sense to me. (Before it's inevitably mentioned like it always is when I talk about this, when I say "lord", I do not mean the title of nobility. I'm talking about the common term in the fan base to refer to protagonists. Being actual nobility/royalty does not affect this status, as shown by Ike. Still, even if it did, both robin and Byleth make the cut in some way.) -Both are on an equal or even greater level of importance as all other lords in the series: robin is the second most important character of awakening after chrom, and is arguably more important than he is, at least in certain parts of it, and Byleth is the PROTAGONIST of his game. -They both cause game overs when they they like most lords. -Sure, they don't have classes with "lord" in the name, but why does that matter? Neither do Alm, Celica, Micaiah, RD!Ike, and Corrin, yet that isn't a problem for them. Both still have unique classes. (and before anyone says Byleth doesn't start with his none of the other 3H lords do either) -I've seen people say it's because they're avatars, yet Corrin gets a free pass. I wonder, if Azura was made a lord would Corrin suddenly lose his status? Why exactly should being an avatar matter for non-Corrins? I have no idea why they wouldn't be lords, especially when less significant characters like Elincia and lucina are often counted. Both robin and Byleth are as much of a lord as Marth, Alm, Celicia, Sigurd, Seliph, Leif, Roy, Eliwood, Hector, Lyn, Ike, Micaiah, chrom, Corrin, Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude or anyone else you may count is.
Unpopular opinion, Three House is a good game but a bad Fire Emblem game. Can't wait for people trying to argue that a Fire Emblem game not meant to be played in ironman is a good one... Map design is garbage Promoting doesn't feel good The game doesn't give you units in part 2 if you want to ironman The difficulty was design alongside the turnwheel, lots of bullshit.
My comment will probably not be seen because of the 200+ other comments. I disagree with how retreating detracts from the actual story because if a boss for example, died in their joining chapter but that boss was supposed to be significant in the story. You won't get a lot of impact or development from that boss because they died. Ishtar getting saved by Julius makes sense because Julius, even though he's pretty much possessed by Loptyr, still finds a use for Ishtar so he saves her. Maybe they could do it like leaving the boss at 1 hp so they won't die
I find that the problem with retreating enemies is the effect of diminishing returns. It's like "I've already beaten you before and I've gotten stronger. What makes you think you can beat me this time". This is kind of the problem with the "rival" in Pokemon. A work around would be to find a way to defeat the boss without directly defeating them in combat.
gameboyn64 In Pokémon’s case, the rival functions more as a level check, to see whether you’re ready for the next part of the game or not, like the infamous sleeping table in Persona 3, or Matador in SMT3. I do find retreating annoying, playing FE4 rn, and I hate the mage sisters and their Bulma heads. If they wanted a character to show up again, they should honestly do something like Gharnef’s Imhullu Tome, where their weapon prevents them from dying. Maybe in the mage sisters case, make it act like modern miracle skill, possibly mixed with FE4 miracle if they want the enemy to follow you.
I just realized that the retreat in fe4 could've made sense if Julius ended up turning Ishtar and Arion into Deadlords. This would make their return seem plausible and make Julius even more of a dick because he turned his own fiancee into a Deadlord. Also giving a bit more depth into Altena and Arion's relationship because Altena has to fight her husk of a stepbrother. The mage sisters could've also been reanimated but they're way too minor for Julius to even give a shit about them.
I agree. Sleep staffs are indeed very useful in FE6, a major use that always comes to mind is Douglas. You need to keep him alive the entire chapter to get the sacred weapon from the side chapter after. And a sleep staff is a great way of keeping him busy. Since your only other real option is kiting him, which is possible due to his general class movement. But it can lead to some annoying situations trying to ignore him.
"I'm pretty sure the laws of physics in Fire Emblem are the same as the laws of physics in real life." Oh dear, you haven't played with animations on in a loooong time, huh?
What do you mean? I was chopping fire wood yesterday and I swung my axe so hard it lodged into a stump and left me floating in the air. FE animations are perfectly realistic, idk what you're on about
animations have been unrealistic since jugdral. most are fine, but then you get the swordmaster jumping over four times their own height. we should also not forget lyn and GBA swordmasters moving so fast they create afterimages
14 views in, and someone already disliked. Do those people set notifications or just happen upon a video less than a minute old and are already butthurt?
I think I made an account on Serenes Forest like a decade or longer ago but it's also been about that long since I've been on their forums. I'm surprised to hear the userbase is younger-- considering how old the site is, I would've assumed its forums would only be populated by old people hanging around. I didn't think people really used forums at all anymore and all online socialization basically took place on big social media sites.
Three Houses had such disappointing personal skills, not going to lie most of the game I played having forgotten they even existed. Atleast in Fates it was much easier, it felt natural to go like "oh yeah I should put Sakura 2 spaces away from Corrin to give -2 damage taken", but since in 3H you have to go all the way into the menus to see the personal skill, it feels like they just don't even exists. Atleast they did cover for that somewhat with crests, which were still unreliable and vague, but it's better than the personals.
Honestly, they're not that much better in Fates. In Fates, you can classify skills in three groups: Good, Bad and Gimmicky. An example of Gimmicky could be Izana's Peace Bringer, - 1 dealt to any unit within 3 spaces, whilst an example of good could be Lily's Poise or Rose's Thorns. Still, there's a ton of bad/useless skills in the game. Three Houses skills are either good or bad: Bernadetta, Felix, Ferdinand, Byleth, the lords, Lysithea... these are great personal skills. Others like Marianne, Raphael, Lindhart are pretty trash, because the recovery is not enough. Still, most of the personals in game are alright, unlike Fates. I could also make a third group, the uninspired skills. Annette (Rally Strength), Caspar (Worse Heartseeker) and Mercedes (Live to Serve) are some examples, but Rally Strength and Heartseeker (on a physical unit) are much better than Live to Serve, so yeah. I would argue that Fates' skills are as good as Three Houses.
I believe is the battle at the fortress in Adrestia after the Gronder War mission in 3H part 2. I can’t remember what the fortress is called, but you’ll usually fight Caspar, Lindhart, and Jeritza there. It’s the one that gets blasted by the Agarthans after the battle. Frankly, that’s where Jeritza should’ve died. He shouldn’t have escaped that, there was no reason for him to suddenly leave and go to Enbarr. Not to mention, him getting blasted by the Agarthan weapon would’ve been a great way to further establish the threat the Agarthan’s pose, or in the case of Azure Moon, his death at the fortress would be a morale boost to the Kingdom soldiers and the students.
"Kaga leaving was the best thing for the franchise" I think this opinion is one held by people who don't understand what Kaga wants to do, and his creative intentions. They evaluate his games by standards set by following games.
Having a guest to discuss with is something I'm down for. I typically don't care how long these get because I listen to these while cooking, cleaning or something of the sort.
Kjelle's got a gimmick where she's terrible with horses and her mom yells at her for it, which was pretty awkward in my run since I had her as a Paladin when I got that support. Turns out soldiers in a game about war are heavily defined by the way they fight.
unpopular opinion: Kaga's best game is Berwick Saga which completely shits on all of the other Fire Emblem games. Yes, even Tellius and Genealogy alongside Thracia 776. I am not going to spoil the story but I am just going to let you know that it is really good and shows the moral grey between both sides way better than any other Fire Emblem games. Heck, I would say the story overall is better than Genealogy/Thracia and Tellius, both of which had two games to fully develop its world and cast. Reese is a really good lord in both areas. As a character and as a unit. I am not going to spoil him as a character but I am just going to say that he might look boring but you will be wrong...very wrong. As a unit, he starts off mounted but even so his combat is kind of meh but the reason he still good is his command skill which increases nearby allies hit rates. Normally this would be very unimportant but in Berwick Saga, hit rates are everything in this game. The Range system is amazing and I love it. Skills are very important instead of just base stats/growth rates A unit having a horse does not automatically make them top tier heck some of the best units in this game are foot locked units. The map design overall is amazing and the soundtrack is just...the final touch on everything. So overall...play it! Please for the long of Naga play it!
Is the game hard to run? I can run TRS mostly fine on my computer, and when i finish that game after finishing the bs map 32 with no warper and only 1 flier, i want to get into berwick
Ok so I have to say, I’m a bit mad at how the community seems to hold Kaga on this pedestal of gameplay style and innovation as if he was the only one working on those games. Mekkah often says “Kaga did it first” and seems not to praise any of the other people who worked on the games. Entire teams make games at Nintendo not just one person. Even if you try to say that somehow all of what he envisions is put into the game and he is the best director of FE, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t many persons who had to tweak and fix his preliminary designs and concepts. Kaga didn’t do it first, you could honestly more accurately state that Kaga’s team/Nintendo did it first. Mekkah kinda fumbles around with his wording in the video but he really does praise Kaga too much (If you watch his play throughs with Mangs or just on his own you know what I mean likely) and doesn’t give any credit to the other people on the first 5 FE game’s staff. I mean, if Kaga was so gosh darn good at making FE, then why is he stuck designing what are basically SRPG maker games now? Nintendo let him go for a reason, last time I checked, it’s not a good idea to release a game on a console that was 3 years into the lifetime of its successor whilst also making the game so difficult to get into that you had to watch an instructional VHS to get a grip on what was happening. I’m not trying to “side” with Nintendo here, but he basically took a ton more time than he was supposed to in order to make a game that so few would likely play. Not even to mention that the game came out as what was basically a kiosk download title and not a full release at launch. FE4 is a great game and FE5 is much less universally praised for a reason. I’m not trying to be mean, I’m just trying to say that I disagree with Mekkah in quite a few ways and that Kaga wouldn’t be nearly as good without the team he had with him.
I mean, the whole "overly praising just one guy for the team's achievements" is not exclusive to the FE fandom. Look at Smash Brothers. People constantly praise Sakurai as this god-like being who is apparently the only developer of the games and also think that every single choice for Smash came out of him (he's the director of course but he's not the only guy responsible for the development of the games). Now don't get me wrong, I love the guy and he's the face of Smash for many, many good reasons, but I feel people oftentimes forget that it's an entire team that made the games and always give credit to Sakurai, however deserved it is. As for Kaga, well he did create the franchise that we all know and (seemingly) love, and he does have many good qualities that Mekkah pointed out (even if FE4 isn't my favorite, haven't played Thracia yet). I also don't think it's bad at all to have admiration for someone you clearly admire, like Mekkah's definite admiration for Kaga. It's really a matter of perspective and whether or not you think FE "should've died after Kaga left" or "new games good old games bad". TLDR, I agree lol.
ChosenDin You could potentially say the same thing about other gaming franchises as well such as Metal Gear with Hideo Kojima and modern Castlevania with Koji Igarashi. I think that the gaming community as a whole wants to feel as important as the movie industry where singular directors are lauded for a movie’s creation when so many others are integral to the movie.
Popular opinion time: You should really, really play Kaga's other games if FE5 is your favorite game in the franchise you're bound to love all the Saga games.
Bad RNG. The reason why players don't judge on personal experience is because of statistical anomalies. Since growths work on percentages, there's always the chance growths don't go as expected. This player happened to get extremely unlucky and got slow Nolan a lot. He's still wrong statistically because his data set is so tiny.
I sort of agree with the Kaga leaving thing, because the franchise became more "casual" and therefore better for the mass market. I think that Fire Emblem probably couldn't have succeded in europe and america with him in charge. Don't hate me please.
It looks like I'm a counterexample to your argument about the Kaga games. I liked every Kaga game at first, the stories are pretty good and they have great music, but I always get to a point where the gameplay starts annoying me so much that I stop playing for a while. I have yet to finish FE4 and FE5, I just can't bring myself to play through some of the more annoying maps. I still think FE5 has a lot of positives, but FE4 will most likely remain my least favorite Fire Emblem game ever.
Agreed to some extent. Although FE4 iirc wasn't initially intended to be a Fire Emblem game regardless, so the gameplay is very different due to how those with Macro-level of strategy are moreso rewarded than those that do not. So it can be forgiven that FE4 can be disliked in that regard, but usually in conjunction to the others in the franchise.
Classes confer way more personality than skills. Imagine if i introduced myself by saying "yknow im doublejointed" vs if i said "yknow im an artist." One definitely gives you more information about my life.
I do miss dark magic specifically, but that's because I started playing with fe7 and well canas is quite a waifu, it feels good to use the animations and sound effects are fresh, and you could get that beefer mage architype, not fast but can take a hit and cast back.
I think the reason I like GBA dark magic the most is the amount of lore behind it. That, and it had unique effects from negating resistance to HP draining to cutting a foe's HP by half.
I always thought this. Not in a Fire Emblem sense but in general this attention to detail does make games better. It's something I've been thinking about with Tales of Vesperia's human enemies for a long while. Something spoilery happens that would impact more if all the human enemies had a "defeat" animation instead of just dying. FE would work the same way if they just stayed at 1HP and left the battlefield instead of vanishing.
@@adamhurd1560 Is it really that hard to have characters die when they reach 0 HP in FE games? FE6 has done this already (besides Merlinus) and while it's story does somewhat suffer because of this at least you don't have to fight Narcian 5 times before he finally dies
@@vanjagalovic3621 well no, I just mean that if they REALLY wanted a character to live, reducing them to 1HP and having them leave would be a better way of doing it. Of course, actually killing your characters is also fine but it comes down to the writer/director at the end of the day.
@@adamhurd1560 Well, FE5 had Eyvel dodge were she about to die in the first couple of chapters. In 3H if an enemy retreats, the death animation doesn't play (ex. a cavalier isn't knocked off his horse), although I agree that a solution that would involve preventing their HP from dropping to 0 would be better.
RE: reclassing affects how solid a personality is... i think awakening is the only game that did that right? both 3h and 11/12 basically let your characters be anything, and in 3h esp the combat animations end up looking out of character for some characters. for example, with the addition of cindered shadows, we get animations for war monk, but putting some one like caspar in war monk felt really weird to watch him fight! especially now that we have these great 3d animations, you can put a lot of personality into how a character moves. look at claude in his unique classes. however, since awakening was the only one with so many reclassing options that had strict limits on what a person could become (every one had 2 classes aside from their base class available), each unit (at lest in gen 1) had a unique set that i think added something to their character, or the world building? example: henry and tharja start as dark mages, but both of their reclass options aren't magic classes at all, implying dark magic is distinct from regular magic, and those two might not be very magical. miriel's other classes are dark mage and cleric, so she's really ONLY interested/good at magic. one of libra's other classes is dark mage, either referencing or reinforcing the "darkness" tharja finds in him in their supports. ricken's other options aren't magic-based, referencing how much he struggles with magic in some of his dialogue. chrom gets cavalier and archer, and most of the original shepherds are cavaliers or close to it, also it exemplifies his knightly way of doing things. etc etc. yeah, cherche losing her mount gets pretty silly, but it isn't like her other classes were tacked on her without care.
Yeah Cherche had Cleric and troubadour because she was a maid and Ricken's reclass options were same as Chrom's because he looked up to him. I would have preferred if they had only one reclass option, since some of them were still out of place. Fates characters had only one reclass option but they could get a second one depending on who they married which I didn't like at all.
No comment on the Three Houses weight system? It seems like a massive improvement to the Tellius system to me. You retain weapon weight tradeoffs for basically the entire game, you just change which weapons you're trading off (e.g. eventually training weapons get phased out and fully replaced by Iron, but Silver is still weighing you down some). I don't necessarily think it's better than the GBA system, but I think it works pretty well, and has the advantage of being simpler (arguably). If they do ever bring back the GBA system, I hope they consider adding more frequent opportunities to increase Con. Being able to "graduate" from Slim Lances would be nice.
I agree, I get the appeal of the GBA games' con being always present but I always thought it'd be nice to have some way to somehow reduce its impact besides the occasional Body Ring, and promotion stat gain (with weapon ranks for instance). And if GBA remakes happen, I wish they make Dark Magic lighter; the more advanced Dark Magic tomes are so heavy that Flux is always the way to go. Also I really liked Three Houses' weight system regarding weapons, too, however I really wish they didn't use Strength to calculate magic users' Attack Speed penalty. I didn't like it in the Tellius games already but at least in those, mages actually carry tomes so I can get behind it. I think in 3h, the same formula that's used for weapons should be used to calculate magic users' AS penalty, only using Magic instead of Strength. It would make more sense to me that the more skilled at magic a unit is, the faster they can conjure it
Sharur Actually, the 3H weight system is just a modified version of the Tellius one. Iirc, instead of Speed-(Weight-Strength) like in FE 9 and 10, it’s Speed-(Weight-Strength/5). Much more forgiving to mages, and the spells that weigh you down are purposely made heavier for balance reasons.
((small edit to precise that I'm dumb and thought you were replying to me lol)) @@AceDefective3 Yea I'm aware of this, you're right the 2 are very similar. But unless I'm missing something, the Tellius one is actually the one more forgiving to mages, as 1 point in Str equals to 1 "saved" point of speed as opposed to 3H where you need 5 str in order to reduce the weapon's weight by 1. (Unless that's what you meant already?) And yea I agree that stronger magic should be heavier for balancing purposes; to be clearer my issue is regarding dark magic in the GBA games in which I think the tomes are too heavy. Maybe they could make it so that some stronger tomes are a bit lighter so you're not slowed down to death, but that you can still only hit once with them (since that's the purpose of slowing you down), say, the incantation takes time so you can cast it only once or something(it would fit the long animation of dark magic, too). Or keep the same heavy weight but make some of them 1-3 range to avoid double counterattacks from the enemy. (It would make FE7&8's pitiful enemies a bit scarier, too) But being so weighted down by a TOME that your unit is actually the one getting doubled and so the basic tome is the more efficient is awful imo lol. For comparison, most of the time I can get away with sometimes using Ellfire or other tomes with anima mages. And, in 3H even though I dislike the way AS is calculated for magic, it's not so much of an issue in the end because you have hit&run mounted mages, 1-3 magic, staves (and sometimes skills) that make you attack from further, and even things like Reposition or Gambits to avoid counterattacks/enemy phase damage; whereas the GBA games are very enemy-phase oriented. (Idk about fe6 because I'm not familiar with it) It's a shame because Dark Magic is the one out of the 3 that gets some cool ideas as side/special effects, but it's weirdly balanced and in the end you just end up using Flux most of the time. It gets the job done but it's a bit boring imo:(
I like/tolerate weight/con from a 100% gameplay standpoint, but it does even further the widespread misconception that medieval weapons were enormously heavy and unwieldy. Back to the entirety gameplay side, though, I think Tellius did it best, because it only affects the characters when they’re weak and inexperienced, and eventually disappears as the grow more skilled.
My main problem with weapon weight is that it overblows how heavy real weapons actually were. Weapons in real life were made to be as light as possible while still being effective at what they were made to do as well as be durable enough to last for the duration of a war. It seems like the games are based around the idea that medieval weapons were heavy and you needed to be a complete beef cake in order to use them at all when in reality most longswords only weighed between 2 and 3 pounds, but apparently the steel sword HAS to have 11 weight (at least in some of the later games that had weight) and the Sol Katti is a whopping 16 weight. The only way those numbers can be even REMOTELY accurate is if 1 pound is equal to 3 weight.
Weight works fine for gameplay but yeah, it is a bit annoying that it contributes to the stereotype that historical weapons were these massive, cumbersome chunks of metal that you just awkwardly flailed around hoping to bludgeon someone to death with before you pulled a muscle.
@7:32 Also in regards to Emmeryn's paralogue, wouldn't that mean that Chrom and Lissa forgot to pick up her body and bury her? Like after beating all the enemies, shouldn't they have gone to collect their dead? In the Paralogue, they were all, "How did she get here?!" While I like Awakening, the story is a mess. If the plot were more like Echoes, it'd have a solid story, but no, they got to make Emmeryn the Aerith of this game.
IIRC they never had time. Emmeryn took her dive, and right after Basilio made the call to retreat so they all had to run. By the time they would have made it back to Plegia her body would have been long gone regardless.
I think your assessment at the beginning about many of these opinions coming from people who are just immature is apt. I think a lot of them would change their minds if they had more experience not just with Fire Emblem but with more video games and other types of media. For example, I've never had a problem with weight being a factor in Fire Emblem (even though I also don't really understand how it works) because it's been a thing in a lot of the games I play. If you play a lot of JRPGs, you might not have experienced it much, because it generally isn't a thing in those, at least from my experience. It is very much a thing in a lot of Western console and PC RPGs, though, and it's been a thing ever since pen and paper RPGs were first around, which I also have a bit of experience with. Same thing with the comment on specialized mages being a thing. They are a thing outside of Fire Emblem as well, in other video games as well as TV, movies, and books. Sure, there are lots of mages and wizards who do all kinds of stuff, but specialized wizards exist all over the place. I mean, I think it's fine to like it or don't, but it's not a good argument that it's bad because it doesn't exist elsewhere, when it does.
This is kind of a hot take of its own, but for as long as I can remember, Fire Emblem fans generally treat Fire Emblem like it exists in its own separate bubble from every other game in existence. Basically, FE games are only ever compared to other FE games by FE fans (with the exception of the Saga games), whereas with most other series with at least a small following, they're usually compared to other series. I don't understand why this is.
47:10 >lyn is one of the best lords in the series >ike is among the middle of the pack for lords lol 51:54 i think having specific elements makes characters more unique, i'm personally not a fan of having anyone with a magic skill just be able to use any type or element of magic, it hurts
I think also for class Gonzales is a great example of this. Everyone has a stereotype for brigands (also established in FE) about being dumb layman who do the grunt work. It allows the developers to introduce more character into Gonzales to reinforce he is dumb, he does grunt work, and people hate him. its takes more then writing to make a good character. FE really has a hard time showing characters doing stuff. This is one of the ways that it can so they don't need an exposition dump to get particular traits across. I think its also why they gave Gonzales low skill.
My unpopular opinion has been debunked, but I can't fall here. I must retreat.
Heh, go ahead and retreat. But the next time we meet, I will strike *your opinion* down!
Damn, even Parker was driven back? Where are our reinforcements!?
@@StrawberryDreemurr my jeigen paladin one-rounded them with a javelin
oops
Its kinda sad that most of the (mini) bosses FE3H had were the students. Any other boss was a soldier with a generic face.
Kaga may be the father of Fire Emblem, but Sakurai is its sugar daddy.
I think the “I must retreat” trope would be better if the unit retreated at _low_ HP rather than zero. It would really give the impression that they’re “licking their wounds”. Not sure how XP would work with that, but it would make for a much better retreat scenario. Plus, it could possibly allow for some minor story branching if you managed to kill the boss instead of drastically weaken them.
Give maybe 50 xp to every unit in the army? And give an option to let them retreat or not? If you allow them to retreat they could be stronger in a later map, like Shadow of Mordor kinda.
Yeah like Kempf in FE5. It's impossible for him to die when you first fight him.
In FE4 units that retreat don't have the lethal kill shot sound effect and also don't vanish when reaching 0HP, so it wasn't like the later ones where they literally vanish after being defeated, it would of been cool if their HP drain stopped at 1 though.
@@camusthedarkknight9323 or in three houses when they do the kneeling animation instead of the dramatic death one. People seem to forget about that it seems. While in the 3ds games the animations play out the same way a.k.a dramatically falling at the ground and only occasionally is the music an indicative as to if they really died before their quote shows up.
*cough* Kempf *cough*
One thing I don't think Mekkah quite gets because he hasn't finished Revelations is WHY it's such an open-ended "sandbox" experience. When the game's over, you have infinite resources. Infinite grinding, which leads to infinite money and thus infinite reclassing, forging, etc. I have a friend who has spent hundreds of hours on single save files building a team of monstrosities including a max-level Berserker Sakura. The game isn't open-ended because it's easy, it's open-ended because it has infinite grinding.
51:53 Throughout fiction there's been many characters that have specialised in a single type of magic purely out of preference or or an affinty in some kinda magic, not everyone has been some sort of omni sage
22:25 there's actually a 4koma comic about that where Cherche reclasses to a griffon rider but it's Minerva in a griffon costume, it's pretty cute!
My favorite example of class being an aspect of a character's personality is Joshua from Sacred Stones. A gambler who tries to conceal his real identity is a perfect fit for an evasive, crit-dependent dodgetanky class like Myrmidon. As is standard for a myrm, he comes with a killing edge, which communicates his "gambling" as a combat strategy. His class' promotions both fit him because they both maintain a "gambling" playstyle. Swordmaster is a mere continuation of Myrmidon and, as his initial appearance is as an assassin tasked with killing Natasha, Assassin fits Joshua's role in the story. Swordmaster has a nonplussed-looking dodge which fits Joshua's laid back personality.
You could slap Kim Jong Un with that reach.
@@kao123456654 stfu, it's a good take. Hes spot on about Joshua.
@@TheFierburn And you're dumb if you honestly think that was an intentional move on the developers part and not just pure coincidence with a bunch of reasoning loosely strapped together. Joshua is literally just the Navarre of FE8. All his argument falls apart when you realise he's literally just another FE typecast-the early myrmidon with a killing edge. Some characters definitely have classes that suits them, but that's because they were designed with that class in mind. Personal skills do a much better job of showing off character traits. Myrmidon suits Joshua, just like it suits Rutger, Guy, Lon'qu, Navarre etc because the character was designed to be a myrmidon at base, and that's about as far as the devs thought.
kao123456654 you say that like it matters which way it was done, if they said “oh we need a myrmidon” and created Joshua around that the role would still fit him and it would still be intentional
@@kao123456654 stfu
"Brom is the best armored unit in the Tellius games"
-The Black Knight would like to know your location
GGL Juno I actually ended up using Brom in both of my FE9 and FE10 maniac playthrough just because I really like his personality. He’s not terrible there, at least worth 2.5 star in my opinion. However in RD he is just worse in every possible way compared to Gatrie where they almost have exactly the same utility.
unpopular opinion, Sigurd is such a bad unit and hard to keep alive that he dies mid game
What? No he’s not he-
Oh.
Oooooooohhhh....
*Oh.*
I tried. Kept resetting every time, but it never worked out, so I eventually gave up.
haha sigurd bbq funny XD XD
Yeah i once saw an enemy land a hit on him during the prologue, completely worthless unit.
This took me way too long to get lmao
Yeah, I really feel like people outright deciding not to die is not only anticlimactic, but also annoying and actually makes you think the opposite: when they finally die, your reaction is either “Finally!” or “Oh wait, this time it’s for real?”. It certainly was my reaction when the prominent gaiden chapter villains in FE12 actually died when you defeated them, as they would’ve fit the description of “I’ve been defeated, but I can’t fall here” to a tee, and that was the moment I realized how much the permadeath concept as a whole was sort of pushed aside in later entries (though it obviously also wasn’t introduced in it, FE4 is a fairly big offender as you pointed out).
It also annoys me in ironman runs because you get someone killed and feel the immediate sadness of it but then Kaze is just like "oof i guess it's time to go sleep" and makes it awkward.
Are you trying to imply that "people die when they are killed and that's the way it should be" ?
@@yousquiddingme Adding to this, I believe the Legion you fight in 6x you do kill, since Legion is not one individual but many people pretending to be the same person.
Klein is around for 3x but leaves early so you can't kill her.
Katarina makes sense because Kris and Co don't want to kill her anyway in the Prologue. I think FE12 actually checks out fine here.
How I feel is if a character is important I’m ok with them living sometimes you need to do something for the story instead of for the gameplay is I feel like a ballence is better though that’s just my opinion
I had that feeling in Awakening with Walhart pretty badly. Not even with the postgame-thing, but rather the mainstory. The battle infront of the castle is framed as the end and then the guy is just there in the castle and tells everyone "Trouble's here, get ready to fight!". Like, bruh, why?
Here's an opinion, awakening has the elements of a compelling story but IS dropped the ball. Awakening's story would have been much better if part 2 of the game used the future past setting of the dlc instead of going to valm and collecting child paralogues. Part 2 would focus on the children with lucina as the lord. I found that the future timeline was more interesting than most of what awakening's plot had to offer. Also that way the children can join as competent fighters instead of drastically under leveled growth units. Part 2 could end with the children going back in time to join the parents to defeat the grimleal in the past after exhausting all means to fight grima in their time. Part 3 could end similarly to the third future past dlc where the entire cast travel back to the original future to defeat a full powered grima after which the two generations part ways.
Awakening would have been better if it wasn't copying the plot structure (and many of the themes/plot points) from Advance Wars: Days of Ruin, except with time travel thrown in to remove the threat of their apocalypse.
So, FE: Genealogy remake? I agree.
@@dragonknightleader1 I honestly think awakening would have been better if it was just Genealogy 2.0 with no time travel at all.
@@megaignitor5231 Hard to argue against that.
@@megaignitor5231 That would have been seriously cool. Albeit fighting your own (op) MC kinda feels nasty. I love it :D
They could throw in the parents (or some of them at least) as Risen as well.
So the reason I'm fine with certain allies retreating instead of dying at 0 hp is we saw the alternative in fe6, which is a game where nobody is relevant anymore after joining Roy, so the game just ends up being the Roy, Merlinus, and Gwenivere show
It’s also like super out of character for certain people to not be more involved in the stories. For example you’d think Finn in fe5 would be more involved in the story, with him having protected and raised Leif basically all his life, but after the manster escape he just shuts up the whole rest of the game. It’s weird.
I wish they would just try, just once, to do a fire emblem where every character have shit to say and do. And if they do, well too bad, you miss out on a lot of stuff to do and know, but that's fine, one reason for a second run.
Actually, having a shorter but very intense game where deaths impact which maps and ending you get would be sick just as a proof of concept.
Path of Radiance did this pretty well: it gave a bunch of characters extra dialogue during story scenes and base conversations... if they're alive. If they're dead, it just skips the lines or plays alternate lines. I'd recommend looking up the scripts for the scenes with Elincia's retainers. The game has variants covering every possible combination combination of alive/dead for Geoffrey, Lucia and Bastian.
Seriously, read PoR's scripts on SF. There's a huge amount of variant dialogue in chapters, some of it pretty obscure. (e.g if Ike fights the Black Knight in Chapter 11 and somehow survives, Mist gets some extra dialogue at the end where she yells at him for being an idiot)
Claire that first part is basically FE10. So many characters get involved there.
You know, i actually agree with the "Revelations is a good sandbox" guy. One of the most fun that i had with the game was building up My Castle to become both functional and nice looking, while also beefing up my units and marrying them to god knows who.
I married my azura to benny. That pairing was nuts. Shigure was tanking archers and ignatius reached 36 speed as a general. 9/10 would recommend
@@dededeletethis9940
Oof, i married her to Silas. I guess it worked, since Shigure got a thicc bonus to skill and speed.
Still, if i ever play revelations again im totally going for what you did. It sounds amazing
Also, off topic, but i also just threw so many shit into Laslow that he simply became sword god. Like, Ryoma levels of sword god
@@funninoriginal6054 one other thing i did was pair camilla and keaton. Originally, i did it because velouria is so much like camilla it hurts and their supports gave me diabetes, but as it turns out, camillas genes are one hell of a drug. No joke, that little wolf girl was actually nuts.
Silas and azura may be a good pairing, i wouldn't know. But what i do know is that the supports between non-sibling shigure and sophie are incredible. I like them almost as much as laslow and peris supports, which by the way made for a soleil that just felt right in every way
7:30
The laws of Physic change all the time in FE. Some games its infinite range, some games have limited range, some games have a range based on your magic and the formula for that in of itself is incosistant. The laws of Physic never stay the same!
Yes this is a dumb pun. Dislike at your leisure.
And in some games it hurts to cast physic!
@@Felixr2 it hurts their brains to figure out the Physic in FE2/FE15
@@OmegaCKL all the Valentia healers are idiots because they were too stupid to get a degree in Physics. I will stand by this claim
My opinion of the whole "I need to retreat" thing is that it also forces non-essential characters to not really be able to interact with the story at all or else their absence in the story just sort of forces the story to take a more circulous route to get the end. So either some of the more plot-important but not vital character retreat or the story is basically Lord and NPC allies do all the real work while the non-plot critical characters don't really matter in the story.
Also, I'm actually with "Emmeryn's amnesia strengthened her death's point". Emmeryn's gone, she isn't gonna come back. All that's left of her is a shell that wears her face, and her continued presence hammers in the point that she isn't going to just be able to walk off her sacrifice. Everyone can try to bring her back, but the tragedy lies in the fact that she will only get a few scraps at best.
Lyn definitely didn’t need to be a lord for the main game. Honestly, I think it would have been cool if she got sort of an Elincia style glow-up when she returns. Actually, now that I think about it, having Lyn treated like Elincia would have been pretty perfect. They’re the main characters for their own story, but take a side roll later on.
On Lucina, I’ve said this before, but I always found her character pretty compelling. The fact that she doesn’t do much during the Valm arc I find kind of irrelevant to her character. She doesn’t really have any personality gimmick like the other kids, which may be why people see her as boring.
Well I see Lucina as kinda boring because her whole story arc is something I've seen before. She doesn't do anything special. She's not bad at all mind you, but I just don't get why people praise her as some super deep and compelling character.
If we ever get a remake of fe7 I hope they actually expand the game and have more campaigns I think it would be interesting
@@korinoriz She's not even attractive enough to be waifu bait so she's kinda just boring overall. She's not bad by any means but comparing her to the other children like Owain and Gerome? No contest
I once heard rumored (around the time Blazing Sword came out) that Lyn was specifically created to justify the extended prologue. If that was even remotely true, it would explain why she did not feel like a "lord" character. However, claiming she is "uninteresting" might be a bit of an exaggeration.
@@korinoriz Lucina's popularity stems from the kind of character she is--- namely a "Sisyphean hero", a.k.a. an endlessly enduring hero (not to be confused with a hero that always wins--- that's a Mary Sue). These kind of characters (Sisyphean heroes) tend to be well-regarded because they (among other things) invoke the idea that any problem, regardless of how seemingly impossible the issue, has a solution. This concept is, not coincidentally, at the heart of the plot to Awakening.
On a side note: the reason why her story arc is something you've seen before is because it literally is a variant of the plot to Terminator.
I mean, despite I disagree with the guy sayin "Kaga leaving was the best thing", they don't need to know the whole Kaga drama with IS to have an elaborated opinion. Kaga's design philosophy is very different from what has been done later, so I think he was just referring to that, not criticizing him personally.
Cherche is an odd case, where her alternate classes (Cleric and Troubadour) do make sense with her backstory, but really clash with her as she's written in her supports.
That isn't unique to Awakening.
Make Vanessa or Tana a Wyvern Knight, and they'll still bring up their Pegasi in their supports.
@@Ridgwaycer In the same game there's Ross, who's eager to be a warrior but you can promote him to berserker or hero.
@@RadiancePath936 at least you can handwave it with "Warrior as in a badass on the battlefield as opposed to the class". FE12 reclassing really screws with character identity when you can just make the armor knight who talks about being the people's shield a myrmidon, or make the lumberjacking axe dudes dark mages.
Maybe having every single unit actually die can add some more impact, but it either limits the narrative or the gameplay to do so. Either you have a story where a ton of the characters you get can't have a meaningful impact on the narrative after their joining chapter (like pretty much every single one of the older games), or you have more characters that when they die it becomes a game over, which I would argue also lessens the impact in a way.
Yeah the zero hp = death means that other side of the fight doesn't really get to do much. And there are situations that absolutely need people to be on the map. Like take for an example a situation where the main characters first figure out oh hey this guy is an enemy. If zero hp = deaths it pretty much means that a generic mook has to come in as they can't risk the main person.
Or they could change the story depending on who is alive or dead at that point. It could be as simple as writing it so other characters can fulfill a role in a a scene that was supposed to go to a dead unit or they could have many branching paths in the narrative depending on who is or isn't alive.
@@ahumanbeingfromtheearth1502 very late response here, but FE7 did that. matthew is relevant in a few scenes, but dies when defeated. as a result, the cutscenes he stars in change if he is dead by that time. maybe if they made that more commonplace
@@Underworlder5 The "I will bury you beside Matthew" broke me when Hector discovered Leila's body. I didn't know scenes changed like that. Pretty good surprise, albeit a depressing one.
It's interesting, my experience with the"maturity" of the FE subreddit and serenes forest is pretty much the opposite. Especially since 3H came out, the subreddit is almost 100% fanart and zero discussion about games other than 3H. At least in the sub-forums for the older games, there seems to be more legitimate discussion on Serenes IMO.
First comment: Uh... Sleep is the easiest way to prevent Douglas from suiciding into your army and ensuring you get the Paralogue.
Mist is useless in RD primarily because the devs were idiots and didn't make the swords that were supposed to do magic damage actually do Magic damage. If Fleurete and the Wind Sword actually did what they were supposed to do, she would have been a solid unit who could heal while still being able to counter if needed.
Faye is hella cute, the main problem is they just made her entire existence revolve around her Yandereness towards Alm. Like, a lot of her mannerisms and personality are super cute, but they ruin the whole thing by making her completely fixated on Alm.
I feel like Faye would be a better character if her ending had her meet someone else and her feelings for Alm went away entirely.
Faye is remarkably easy to fix: Literally just have a conditional that if she gets the A-supports with Alm and Silque, her normal ending is replaced with one where she cares about her family instead of just vanishing randomly.
I just mean, the part that made it rediculous wasn't that the normal ending exists, but rather that no characterdevelopment happens, even if the player puts effort into it. Actually, the issue with there not being enough things the player can influence is a major one in the game.
Like how the sidequest to save Est and promote Celica is required because why not. And how Celica always gets revived, because they didn't want to bother with writing a bad end/good end-split to correspond with their remake-plotchanges.
I can’t die here, I must retreat
"I'm pretty sure the laws of physics in Fire Emblem are the same as they are in real life..."
*looks at Swordmasters and Generals*
Don't forget the calvary units
Vanitas Ike, doing Aether: 👁👄👁
Looks at FE 16 Archers suspended in midair
looks at canas dying to a snowstorm with weapon disadvantage
Looks at GBA Heroes
Heres a non-exclusive to fire emblem opinion that I have that might be unpopular. Lack of deaths doesn't mean a bad story and having deaths doesn't make a good story. So many people give crap to stories for having too little deaths but death doesn't make a good story. Death can be as much as harm to a narrative as it can be a help. And when it goes wrong it goes way more wrong then a lack of deaths.
Meanwhile Fates has a ton of out-of-nowhere deaths that only exist to add cheap "feels".
@@BigKlingy I think I had the best laugh in months when a particular death happened and after returning to the player castle, you could still give them offerings and that dead character was represented by a stereotypical "soul orb". It just seemed so mean, comically tragic, and hilarious at once.
I think this opinion is overrated these days. Let someone day now and then, seriously.
"Tharja and Camilla 2 of the most hated characters to this date" Idk about that one chief, controversial sure but they are by no means hated. Despite what Twitter and Reddit may lead you to believe they are really popular and IS milks them for a reason.
Yep, because they got tits for days, are sultry as heck and are both obsessed with the Mc to a sickly degree. Apparently men LOVE this type. That's why they're milked.
And then there's always the obligatory loli-dragon-girl that 1000+ (so it's legal, ofc) which get milked heavily as well.
Monika I hate it man. I wish units were popular for being cool or well written, not having giant tits :’(
Them being popular does not cancel out them being hated
@@emberhermin52 it's called the vocal minority
Awakening is a WAY better sandbox than Rev in my opinion.
Agreed, the freedom to do what you want with your army is way more apparent. It's really hard in Rev to use the units you like when the vast majority of them join while being one-rounded by enemies on the map.
I think being able to reclass your mage into an armor knight and still get a good unit out of it says everything
Plus there are Einherjar and there's just a certain charm to the map that makes the grind more relaxing than those weird auxiliary battles they have in Fates and 3H.
@@matthewcoyle4131 exactly, Awakening just feels like a more complete experience.
@@TheRedScizor for all it's flaws it's the little touches they went out of the way for because they thought it was gonna be the last game that give it that feel.
5:00 ishtar is like the worst offender of retreating in fe4. You fight her 3 times.
To make the matters worse, the time where you kill her she is no longer the biggest threat, the pegasus sisters are much dangerous than her
The great fe4, the only game that thought max speed, earth sword, leg ring, pursuit, continue, awareness, and critical on a flier wasn't enough, needed to add a triangle attack on top of that.
@@gameboyn64 I think that the IA is never prioritizing positioning the sisters to pull off the triangle attack but yeah they are very scary
In Three Houses Golden Deer you can fight the Death Knight up to 7 different times
At least the first two times it doesn't have the "killing blow" sound effect, and she doesn't vanish after hitting zero HP, so that's something I suppose (as opposed to most other games where there is a killing blow sound effect, they give their death quote, vanish, then appear next chapter). But yeah Ishtar is underwhelming by the time you kill her legit.
Would it be unpopular to say that mekkah is the most in dev and research heavy fe youtuber?
I watch every other fe UA-camr to have fun or because I like their channel but I watch mekkah to learn about things I didn't know and to avoid pitfalls.
He's pretty funny and his content is really good.
I believe you mean in depth, and yeah, out of the youtubers there are who focus on LTC and efficient play, he is definitely one of the most entertaining and best at explaining things comprehensively, supporting his opinions and findings with empirical data (stat averages and such)
Mr. Raven I wouldn’t say that’s accurate. Ghast may be entertaining, but he rarely talks about units and gameplay comparisons in the detailed way that Mekkah can. Despite that, I like Ghast’s character analysis, and that’s where I think he’s the best-researched FEtuber.
For my money, someone like Pavise Productions takes the research cake, although there are also people like shadowofchaos who've do a lot of translation work too. Generally, I'd say it depends on the video, something like Plinkett emblem had a lot more time put into it than a video like this or the tierlist videos he's been making which are mainly supported by onhand knowledge.
The problem with the gimmicks in fates is that they replace map design. The gimmicks aren’t designed around the maps, the maps are designed around the gimmicks.
Fates, especially conquest is the opposite of fe4 in my mind. Instead of a interconnected world with long term resource management and many secrets, in fates maps feel like obstacle courses more than actual places. There are very few secret items, and combined with the lack of durability, and keys disappearing if you don't use them on the chapter you get them, the game feels like an arcade/arena game
@@hirotrum6810 Imma be real, secret shops and events were stupid anyways
Gimmicks that are designed around the map is why I love FE3 Book 2 so much. Game either has brand new chapters with interesting objectives (Chapter where you recruit Merric and the other guy, where if you don’t kill any of the clerics, you get the chance to get a members card, the bridge chapter where you’re being chased by Hardin), or maps that are brought back from FE1, but play very differently (Gra chapter is one of my favourites, desert chapter is anti-turtleneck since you’re being chased by Mercurius Astram), and it’s fun in general to get past these challenges. Fuck chapter 19 though.
I like a couple characters not being able to die in your army. It lets more characters than just your main character show up in cutscenes and be relevant throughout the story. Fe6’s Roy and Merlinus show gets boring. Even if fe5, while I like Leif, Augustus, and Dorias more than Roy and Merlinus, I still think it’s bizarre that Finn just shuts up and never talks to Leif for most the game. Obviously I think Awakening and fates took this too far with like half the characters never dying, but like fe9 has a good balance of this with Titania, Soren, and Mist not dying. Just like 3 or 4 characters not dying.
In Awakening it was to avoid creating time travel issues
And there were still a lot of characters with plot armor in FE10
In general I feel like if the story needs this character to live, make their death a game over or make them a noncombatant
@@emberhermin52 the awakening plot armor came from the mothers being relevant in the child unit paralogues. potential fathers still die when defeated, so i doubt the deaths would cause time travel complications. the kids would just not be born in that timeline. IMO, the mothers should also die when defeated (except lissa for obvious reasons), and recruiting the child units will have alternate lines to account for that
The only 2 awakening xenolouges I acknowledge are Priam and Yen'fey.
Priam because he's just a new character and Yen'fey because he's actually future Yen'fey who went back in time to tell present Yen'fey to betray his sister so that she would live instead of die which imo makes him probably one of the coolest Camus archetypes in the franchise.
I kinda like walhart a bit.
I kinda like the concept of how his resolve is so strong, it can keep him alive despite being beaten twice.
It's been a pop culture trope for a while. And, in real life, massive adrenaline has let people survive stuff that should've killed them.
@@rhysofsneezingdragon1758 His is kinda neat and I like the idea of Walhart taking on Grima but I also don't see how the people of Valm reconcile with him or why he would stop his conquest.
He's a really neat character but it kinda felt like there was a good reason to put him in the ground.
Tbh I hate Priam character and I think he is super meh, but yea Yen'Fey is pretty darn interesting.
@@catelyntully9494 I just don't mind Priam. His being there has no negative impact on the story besides it being sorta weird to go all the way out there to recruit him (which can be said for some of the child units too tbh).
I don't love him as a character but I do appreciate his inclusion as fan service given that this was potentially the last FE game.
@@matthewcoyle4131 I understand what you mean, as a potential last game this was like a last thing for Tellius fans and I am glad they remembered us, but for me the fact that is a bad character kinda ruins it, hard, I rather just get Ragnell than him tbh. But I see your point don't worry it's more than valid.
There actually is a way to see what the Fire Emblem franchise would have been like if Kaga hadn't left: playing Tearring Saga. That game plays so similarly to a Fire Emblem game that it's no wonder Kaga got sued, almost anything about the first 5 games series that you can think of (promoting at level 10, the 5 magic types, etc) is in TRS.
I enjoy Faye's character. She approaches the yandere trope in a grounded way; her obsession falls into this uncanny valley of fantasy anime trope but with realistic consequences. I had a blast reading Tharja/Camilla fans' take on a character who fit their fantasy while suffering its consequences. However, I admit that Faye isn't appropriate in the context of what I would call an "ideal" FE.
Anyways, the immortal Nosferatu killager will always hold a special spot in my heart.
22:50 I know you're not much of a LP watcher yourself, Mekkah, but Deltre's Conquest LP is quite excellent if you want to see character skills being actually used (and quite excellent in general. Deltre is very good at the video game). Although to be fair, if I remember correctly (it's been a couple months if not a year since I've watched it) the most used skills are Camilla and Elise's auras.
I see more and more how Mekkah and other fans limit themselves to only a single way to do something, they simplify game design to right and wrong, and analyse the games by how right each aspect is. With the characters retreating, for example. It's definitely wacky. Mekkah instantly says he wishes permadeath would be always integrated into the story. It's cool that he offers a "solution", but shared on the internet, that turns into an expectation, a collective view of the "right way" to do it. And fandoms being the way they are, soon enough everyone will be (as they are already in this case) echoing it.
And why is this even a worthy issue, for starters? Is it truly something that has bothered that many people, or did it just got fame due to some meme ("I can't fall now, I must retreat!")? What makes this an issue, and not all the other inconsistencies?
Truth is, what is and isn't an issue for the community is completely arbitrary. They're often not issues for people outside of the community. Often people don't even notice them. The echo chamber is fun, but it's distorting.
I personally couldn't care less whether some units retreat or die. It's not like the story changes with deaths, anyway. Imagine the work to implement that. I'd rather the resources went into making a fun gameplay, which is the most important aspect. FE should be less bound by story, not more.
7:29 since when does fe have realistic physics. Remember in fe7 where lyn splits into like 4 lyns before she crits someone?
Edit: grammar
she splits into 5 lyns, attacks with an extremely oversized slash effect from the points of a pentagon and then appears out of nowhere from the top left of the screen. 100% realistic physics
@@Ayre223 How Do Berserkers suspend their axe in the air?
While reclassing CAN hurt a character’s...character, I kinda feel like heart seals from (fates, weirdly enough) isn’t a bad idea. Just in cases where a character could believably be another class,though. (Odin being able to go back to his myrmydon roots, for example).
Edit:Unpopular... you know what I have no idea what people (or Mekkah) think about Kliff (Mage). I think he’s pretty good but not the best what do you guys think of Kliff
I feel like there are more reclasses that make sense for the character than not, in one way or another. Take Kellam, for instance. His character gimmick is his inability to "stand out". So why not have give him the option to be a stealthy thief? Or Shura being the only Fates character with natural access to both Hoshidan and Nohrian classes, as a man of both kingdoms.
That being said, there are also some that exist purely for gameplay and make NO sense whatsoever from a character perspective. I mean, is there any reason why Tharja gets Armor Knight other than getting the Pavise skill to bolster her tanky-ness?
Kliff was apparently one of the best units in Gaiden, but in Echoes they changed his growths and stats a bit. Most players I see played casually, so it's hard to gauge other than "Kliff is so cute and OP as [whatever class they made him]".
Mage Kliff on release was pretty hyped by a lot of people with little experience in the game, but in practice he's not your best mage option. You really only need one of the villagers to be a mage so that you can hit enemies on terrain before forging and weapon arts pick up the slack, but you don't want more than one because their low move compared to the large number of mounted units in Alm's chapters make them fall off after a certain point. The big upsides of mage Kliff is high speed growth and that he gets excalibur, with the downsides being that he has low base speed, low base strength and defense with unimpressive growths, and his promoted spell list isn't too impressive.
Tobin ends up being the better mage choice due to higher base speed that with a couple of fountain uses can double more consistently than Kliff in the early portions, he gets excalibur a little bit earlier than Kliff, and when promoted he gets physic allowing him to be useful throughout the entire game.
Mage Kliff is still better than Mage Grey, but I feel you can get much more out of Kliff by making him a cavalier or archer which will allow Kliff to remain relevant for longer, grow into his good speed, and use class bases to bolster his attack and defense.
Gaiden Kliff was really good, echoes he was pretty meh
@@SSBBPOKEFAN that's not true about Shura. As far as I can recall, Odin, Selena, and Laslow can be a Myrmidon, Sky Knight, and Ninja respectively. There might be others too but I haven't researched.
To be fair, if it's only those three you could argue that that's another hint at their non-Nohrian roots.
Unpopular opinion: Tharja was a perfectly fine character in Awakening, but later appearances in other games stripped her of any nuance she had... along with her shame. And, in some cases, clothes.
Also apparently in the future timeline she killed her husband and tortured her daughter. How did she even kill Virion since he's immune to curses, also why would someone like Frederick ever tolerate Tharja's experiments? Anyway if you ignore her daughter supports and her other appearances she's fine in Awakening
@@vanjagalovic3621 I was always under the impression that she went a little nuts on account of Grima and all, plus getting a lot less emotional support with everyone being dead. I could very well be misremembering though.
She was a good character who went through character assassination and now only exists as waifu bait.
Henry's better anyway
@@vanjagalovic3621 She didn't kill her husband, though?
@@wyveriusblackfire3834 Yes she did, her daughter says how they got into a fight and Tharja killed her husband by blasting him with magic, though it's implied to be unintentional
For the fire/wind/thunder mage argument -
To me it makes perfect sense that some mages would only be able to use one type or prefer one type. Its the same argument as “why can’t sword users use lances or axes etc.” its because of preference and training. I like that certain mages can only use some magic types because its makes sense based off of their training and lineage. I.e. tiltyu. I also like the magic triangle, simply because it adds an element of gameplay and even story about why the magic houses may not like eachother or why one is superior to the other. For example house freege being below velthomer (I think thats the house name?)
I don't mind the "not dying when hp hits zero" when it's not overboard. Like the Hubert style shit is annoying but sometimes you just can't have the narrative without a character. Also I wanted to point out that hp reaching zero isn't a hard and fast rule even in early fe games, mainly fe4 because Deirdre and Julia will be captured and reappear at the next castle (iirc) if they hit zero hp. Also capturing in fe5 is definitely something to note. Also to be perfectly frank sometimes the bosses who get killed the moment you fight them early game or mid game are very undeveloped, but there's still more of an opportunity to be developed if they live, say, once and then get fought again later. Also I like it when you have super strong enemies you aren't meant to beat that just teleport away. Stuff like the black knight being literally invincible is understandable but also it is so much fun to have a casual playthrough and find a way to strategize around beating a unit like desaix or Xander in that one birthright chapter.
My unpopular opinion:
Ignatz is underrated and is not one of the worst units in the game. At worst, he will always have valuable utility with Rally Speed and high-ranking authority battalions. Typically, he'll has high speed, dexterity, and luck, and his personal skill, so he will have very reliable accuracy (especially earlygame) and high crit rates. People constantly complain about how he has among the worst strength in the game, but his base strength is only 1 below Leonie's and his growth is only 5% below Leonie's. Also, I don't think people even bothered trying to work around his mediocre strength - he can use stronger weapons effectively because his high speed and especially accuracy offset their higher weight and lower accuracy. His authority boon lets him quickly use high-power battalions earlier than many other units.
He's easily at his best as a sniper, because Hunter's Volley again compensate for his mediocre strength, and his high accuracy and crits complement Hunter's Volley (like Shamir). But I will agree that he's one-note in that he's, at best, average in any class that isn't a Sniper. I will also agree that he's a lot less useful when recruited outside of his house because he defaults to having E or E+ Authority.
Most players don't use support oriented characters and he's not conventionally attractive as say Felix or Dorothea, or as cute as Ashe or Lysithea. His personal skill is definitely really helpful, but his strength is what probably turns people off to him. He definitely has a fanbase and is loved as a character, but as a unit I also see very little love for him. You could always make him a Wyvern Rider, but to be fair he does have a weakness in Flying, but even then that class is broken and fixes everyone's strength.
I prefer Ashe as an archer, buy Ignaz it's great
I love being this early to a Mekkah video so my opinion isnt tainted by the commenter's unpopular opinions.
_insert unpopular opinion_
*you fool.*
You have to retreat before the rest of the comments show up
Unpopular opinion: Always thought Faye was sort of a self-parody/callout to dumb characters in modern FE games. Her name is literally pronounced "F E" in Japanese and is still FayE in English. She even gets cucked hard by the most canon pairing in the whole franchise, so you KNOW she was never having it her way. Nobody will ever believe me regarding this. Say it's too smart from them. But remember these games are made by multiple individuals so who knows.
I honestly think that's worse
Xanderp but robin CAN romance tharja so does that even count?
It's been a while since I've played, but doesn't one conversation kind of acknowledges her being somewhat nuts?
I like the idea, personally, in a "They know that no character worth anything should behave like her" way.
Even when Alm gets married to someone else, Faye worries her family by "sneaking out" to spy on Alm. Faye's always creeped me out, especially since she never originally existed.
@@haroohusky it was never stated that her disappearing had anything to do with Alm
I find both the "I must retreat" and reclassing thing are a case by case type deal.
I get 0HP means the character is dead, but the limits on what you can do for a story seem like an uneven trade off. For the playable cast, I'd rather not have multiple plot important characters cause a game over when they die in battle, or they only become playable after they stop being important, or the devs take the Eyval route and put a flag on the character preventing their death for a portion of the game, or their role is so minor they can be easily written out if they die. On the other hand, yes the Death Knight did it way too much. I think one "I must retreat" is fine, two at most.
When it comes to reclassing, I'm a fan of the Awakening/Fates approach. As far as I'm concerned with the SD/NM/3H version, if you choose to reclass someone to something that doesn't fit, why? Not to say you can't, but choosing to put an armor knight in a class that doesn't fit and complaining is like using the devil axe and complaining about the backfire happening. To put it another way, the game giving you a stupid option is a fair criticism, but if it doesn't put you to take it and you still do, that's on you.
TLDR shit's complicated.
2:30 i found that silence and freeze were almost completely required to beat conquest lunatic. The stone monsters in the staircase are kind of crazy with immobilize, 5 range, and basically 2 shot every unit. The maids in the final chapter with staff sevant and inevitable end are a nightmare to deal with and are positioned to overlap with the different maid groups.
They're useless until you need them. I can sort of see his point though. Freeze is basically a way you cheat a turn which is cheesy and silence scenarios are very very rare. Special staffs as a whole are just a little too niche. Most of the time you can pick out the exact moments in each game where the staff would get used and that's it.
Freeze is great in general. They can easily neutralize threats for a turn, and it is invaluable. Got that paired up Falcon Knight headed towards you but you can't reach? Freeze. Do you want to prevent that Wakizashi Swordmaster from lunging? Freeze. Do you want to stop Inevitable End, Seal Def, Spy's Yumi Automatons? Freeze.
Also yeah Staff Savant is painful to deal with without Silence. I am eternally grateful that it was provided the chapter before because it's ridiculous to fight against.
Actual unpopular opinion: I never thought of any of the paralogues as canon, especially the downloadable ones. The child ones, the Anna ones, and Donnel do not actively detract from the story, while the DLC ones do. Without the paralogues, the story of awakening is much tighter and more engaging.
Also the paralogues are just shit maps. Priam's map is OK as a test of brokenness, but the others are just terrible and unfun generally.
Totally agree. I feel like they just wanted every character in fe history to be playable in some way in Awakening. Treating the dlc paralogues as canon feels like treating the fact that I have a Roy and a Celica in my army as canon, for me.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think death -> retreat is ever done in Path of Radiance, unless you count characters like Soren and Titania who stick around in the story but never take the field again. Shinon does hit 0 HP before his recruitment, but it's still not quite the same thing.
Separately, it would be cool if they took the 3H monster concept of multiple HP bars and used that to address this issue. So an enemy might retreat after losing 1/2 (or even 1/3-4) HP bars, and this would be a visible indication that they have a lot more fight left, and they'll be tougher the next time.
Like half the cast in RD has multiple retreat quotes--some of them because you can't kill them when you're fighting them but a lot of them just have regular ol' plot armor.
Actually I think Tellius is the worst offender since it has characters like Oliver and the Black Knight who were killed and then came back a game later with retcon explanations
@@emberhermin52 I said Path of Radiance, but okay. I think the trade-off is mostly worth it in Radiant Dawn, in terms of letting you fight against the other army without having to worry about killing your own characters.
re: 2nd one
I cannot disagree with this one more. Emmeryn "living" is a copout they did only really to have all those of characters playable for the sake of being playable, regardless of the narrative consequences. (FE12 does this too). How does Emmeryn's body go from the Plegian battlefield to some random village? AND amnesia, oh my god, let that trope die already.
Regardless what you may think of her personally, I still really like the whole exchange of Chrom running to desperately try to save his sister, the whole scene with him reaching his hand out....
The fact she cany support with Chrom and Lissia makes me foam at the mouth
Fe12 only does this with Michalis, and I guess the Wolfguard, but you’re really not supposed to kill the Wolfguard anyways. Either way, neither death was really all that impactful.
I always just wrote it off as noncanon
I too thought amnesia was an overdone cliché.
Then someone I know got amnesia after an accident. It was so heartbreaking to see I kinda understand why it's used so often.
doctor5141999 I always assumed it was some outrealms stuff and it wasn’t really their sister
Emmeryn's survival makes no sense in regards to Gangrel's (or whatever his name was) character. He is put forth as a sort of sadistic insanity case, by all accounts he would ordinarily take Emmeryn's body and parade it around like a morbid trophy. By the time she would have to wake up in order to not die of dehydration she would still be in the hands of the enemy who would outright kill her the moment she awakened.
*pronounces Rhys correctly.
That was an interesting pronunciation of Rhys...
I'm not experienced enough with the old Kaga era to comment on his games, but from what I have played he definitely seems like a man who is dedicated to building a sincere creative vision, and the kind to challenge himself to reinvent a franchise to create something with real depth to it.
Actually, Shu Takumi is pretty similar with the Phoenix Wright series, where you can clearly see his voice in his games compared to the titles he didn't work on. While the modern games that don't have him may have more mainstream appeal, the Shu Takumi games tend to be less tropey and more experimental, and have more shades of grey to their writing, especially in the latter Takumi titles (to their benefit in my opinion too).
Takumi's Ghost Trick is kinda like Kaga's Tear Ring Saga.
I think the Radiant Dawn triangle is the best where it's a magic triangle inside a magic triangle. You still have the gba triangle but you get the elemental triangle as an added bonus
triangle
But it's all irrelevant when so many mages have sky-high resistance. It's not like with the regular weapon triangle where an axe user could potentially one-shot a myrmidon by beating the odds. Regardless of magic, whoever has the highest stats will win a spell flinging contest.
My issue with Kaga was that he was too fond of really obscure and bizarre mechanics and things you need a guide to find on your own, such as the FE4 secret spots.
Also, his games were huge sausage fests...
well, those werent intended to be used with every single playthrough. it rewards you for finding it. theyre called secret spots for a reason
I like the secret spot in fe4.
Even more with the fact that they are completly optionnal and not primordial.
Also his Jugdral Story was completly amazing.
The games were sausage fests because they were games about war lol
@@chikin8895 what does that have to do with anything
@@MetalGearRaxis lol do you know historically what real wars are like?
Faye is a waste of a good character design.
Random thought about the con/weight thing: have weight penalties be mitigated if a unit's weapon level is higher than needed.
For example: If a unit has a lance level of C and they use a lance that requires a weapon level of D, the speed penalty is halved. Mabye have weight penalties removed completely at A or S.
I have thought about weapon ranks decreasing Wt as well. I thought about something different: Wt reduction would be universal depending on the rank, in better words, once you reach C rank, you reduce the Wt by one, and when you reach A, the Wt is reduced by 2. I didn't think about the Wt reductions and the ranks at which you get them, only the concept.
Nah, not a fan of that idea. The reason I like Con over every other weight system in Fire Emblem is that it is always a constant presence and always impacts your decisions in the same way throughout the whole game. It adds a consistent layer of depth to what weapon you chose to fight with rather than something that goes away or gets lessened the further you progress through the game, like the strength con system.
Also, getting better at using swords might help you make faster movements with a sword that weighs you down, since you can argue that the better you get at wielding weapons the better you'd get at shifting the weight, but that would only take, like, one point of reduced speed away, at max. It wouldn't cut how much it weighs you down by *half,* or even make it not weigh anything at ALL.
@@gorade1901 I agree that halving the penalty is too much, a small bonus Wt reduction would be enough, the same way it happens to Hit and Mt in FE11 and 12. I think that the Str reduction to Wt is really cool too. I would say that, in order to put both the Str and the weapon rank Wt reduction, the Wt of weapons should be increased.
@@willbow1304 The problem with that is that in POR and RD in some cases gettin a str level up is like getting a speed level up since it reduces the amount which the weapon wheighs you down. It becomes very silly after a while. Raising weight also wouldn't help since you'd need to make lategame silver weapons very heavy to make them still affect speed. The main problem with weapon weight is that it's only really important during the earlygame and becomes irrelevant during the lategame since your units either become fast enough to double regardless or have enough strenght to no get affected by weight (besides FE6). If I had to choose the best system I guess I'd choose Con from the GBA gamed, but that sistem had it's problems as well. Maybe the weapon weight affect should be something like weight - strenght/4 or something
Vanja Galović That last thing you talked about is actually something almost exactly done in Three Houses. In that game a character’s “con” was their strength divided by five (instead of dividing it by four like you suggested). I honestly find that to be one of the better, if not, the best to balance out weapon weight since it doesn’t forever screw someone over like the GBA con if they have too little con that they struggle to use even slightly heavier weapons, but it also avoids making weapon weight irrelevant later into the game like the Tellius games do. If they make some minor improvements to it, I would like to see that system to continue being used in later installments.
The way I see gimmicks is that they are special and sometimes experimental map features and themes that shift the gameplay focus away from the norm in an attempt to surprise the player and break up the monotony. Gimmicks are not inherently a bad thing. A map being gimmicky does not mean it is bad, that just means it is different. Saying gimmicks are bad by definition would imply the person wants a very pure and core mechanics-focused game through and through (I suppose Shadow Dragon would be prime example of this).
Fates has a lot of maps centered around very specific and unusual ideas, for better or worse. Birthright maps the least so, most of them are relatively straightforward, and even dragonveins are largely applied in fairly basic and non-crucial ways. They're there, they might let you alter the terrain or deal damage to enemies easily, but are typically not very important to how you play the game a lot of it is optional.
Conquest and Revelation differ here, in the sense that whenever map gimmicks are present, they tend to permeate the entirety of the chapter, becoming a focus of gameplay. Conquest more often uses these with a specific challenge in mind to the player. Whether it's racing enemy soldiers to the villages in chapter 8 to prevent large numbers of reinforcements and get a reward, or having to account for the wind blowing around units on the map each turn in Fuga's wild ride. As for how successfully it does so overall, you be the judge.
Revelation, meanwhile, tends to get very experimental. A lot of its unique gimmicks don't necessarily challenge you with a specific purpose in mind, but are rather there to provide something different. In this, Revelation also has a heavy emphasis on interactable or moving objects, like warp tiles, the snow village, movable debris, elevators... and personally, I think the reason people don't like this is because most of these gimmicks really slow down the game.
Like yeah, Conquest does this too to some extent like you mentioned, but I feel it's nowhere near as blatant as Revelation. Like taking the wind tunnels I mentioned before in conquest, sure, they are difficult to play around and so you'll probably feel compelled to go about things more slowly. But at least it isn't random and all the necessary information is provided to you, and you aren't forced to slow down either, if you think you can manage going faster. You can't really do that with the snow village. Unless you have prior information or a guide, you can't really break the ice safely, because you have no way of knowing when you'll encounter enemies and overextending runs you the risk of having your frail units caught defenseless. So you are pretty much forced to go slow. Then the elevators you see later *actually* force you to waste time waiting for it to come around to ferry your units across. Revelation's gimmicks too often are more tedious than they are interesting.
I think the main difference between Conquest vs. Revelations is that most of the gimmicks in Conquest are designed to have some kind of tradeoff to them, where it's not immediately obvious if you should, say, melt the lake in chapter 8, or use the dragon veins to control the wind in the Hinoka chapter. Either that or you really have to use the gimmick to play in an unusual, uncomfortable way, such as the endless staircase. Revelations doesn't feel as thoughtful, assuming it's not outright recycling. And when it does, it almost feels like they're trying to build atmosphere more than a meaningful mechanic.
Just finished the video, and I love these types of videos. It would be nice if you brought someone along to discuss these opinions, but the current style of just you by yourself is still really good. I also really like these videos because they spark a lot of discussion in the comments, it's nice to see people be able to talk to one another about something they love.
I think the guy who called Revelations a good sandbox was talking about the online connectivity, I imagine he or she really enjoyed the player vs player interaction and battles inherent in the game. By comparison, FE7 and 8 had the link arena which was mostly garbage, FE11 had some online versus which was interesting enough, but fights were very often imbalanced because matchmaking was random, and TearRing Saga had a versus mode that I never tried. Three Houses doesn't have multiplayer and has very little player connectivity. Echoes has only a renown system, (Though I quite liked the achievement board, they should bring that back!) Awakening had Streetpass battles which were cool, and almost there, but Fates had the best 2 player FE hands down. And if you had Revelations your base was better, I guess, so it's the best version to play for the full online experience. If you're willing to grind your team to frightening levels and give them skillsets that make sense and work, you can really provide a challenge to someone who wants to battle you, so it's like Mario Maker or something in a way.
How I see why gimmicks are bad is imagine that instead of the stat pots were placed sparingly in all of Conquest’s maps instead of being vomited into a single concentrated map. The devs could have less severe effects early on and have them be placed in such a way that they only really benefit the player. Later on the more severe effects like the hex affect could be added to the mix, and also have certain pots designed to benefit the enemies.
Now we’ve just created an interesting system that is present throughout the entire game and progresses in way that will make players understand when and when not to break certain pots. As they are now most people just use the dragon vein in the one map to get rid of the pots because there’s many of them that it’s impossible to keep track of which effects are when and it slows the map down to halt. It’s an overload of information that will be never used again, so what’s the point of learning it?
That’s how I see it anyways. If you got rid of Conquest’s map gimmicks and integrated a couple into the core gameplay I think Conquest would be even more interesting to play.
On the subject of the aptirnity of magic, I do agree with the person that the Anima/Light/Dark triangle is better than the fire/thunder/wind one. I can never remember the anima triangle because I don’t really see any justification for why Fire beats thunder and the like. Dark beating anima makes sense, as it is a forbidden but powerful magic compared to the basic anima spells. Light beats dark because of course it does, and anima beats light because light is designed to banish the darkness and not primarily a combat spell.
Emmeryn and co: I LIVE
Mastro nice profile pic
Very late, but I was always under the impression that those were non-canon or canon-parallel. Like they're "downloaded" for a reason.
I definitely interpreted the paralogues in Awakening as being non canon. Just a way to make other characters playable. They feel extremely fanfic so that’s how I like to think of them at least.
Three houses personals being better than fates personals is probably an unpopular opinion in itself. Management of auras especially is a game changer on CQ lunatic, and I think you could argue the very first CQ chapter is designed around Lilly's poise. Capture is also a difference maker, and implemented in a unique way from the only other game that implemented it.
Ironically in 3H I find the only useful ones are directly ripped from fates. Ferdinand has Subaki's, Hilda's is Camilla, Dorothea is Azura, Bernadetta is Rinkah, etc.
54:45 they should bring back the fe10 magic double triangle.
If they do, they should actually put Dark Mage enemies. There was like, 4 Dark Magic enemies in RD.
Only if they also bring back Spirits from Fates. All tomes beat all spirits, spirits beat all physical weapons, and physical weapons beat tomes. Naturally, Calamity Gate reverses this.
14bj337 Wait, that would be a weapon triangle in a weapon triangle. You’d have tomes have the FE10 dynamic, but beat the spirit scrolls from Fates, and be weak to physical weapons... That just sounds like a mess, and that’s coming from someone who doesn’t think the FE10 trinity of magic was particularly confusing.
Edit: I actually do like the spirit magic from Fates, but if I had to choose between having them and that game’s version of daggers, I’d pick the daggers without much hesitation.
I personally wanted Warriors to have an entirely original cast and story based on the archetypes of the series. In the game we got much of the story is "Look! It's [character]! You know them!" and recreations of scenes from the games, while the original segments of the plot are rather generic and bare bones. I think going fully original would have lead to a more interesting game. Maybe the fact that I don't care for most of the characters in in the actual game, and few of my favorite characters had any chance to make the cut even if their games were included anyway adds to that as well, but even if they could make it I think i'd prefer an original cast regardless.
I've seen many people who don't consider robin and Byleth as lords, and that makes no sense to me.
(Before it's inevitably mentioned like it always is when I talk about this, when I say "lord", I do not mean the title of nobility. I'm talking about the common term in the fan base to refer to protagonists. Being actual nobility/royalty does not affect this status, as shown by Ike. Still, even if it did, both robin and Byleth make the cut in some way.)
-Both are on an equal or even greater level of importance as all other lords in the series: robin is the second most important character of awakening after chrom, and is arguably more important than he is, at least in certain parts of it, and Byleth is the PROTAGONIST of his game.
-They both cause game overs when they they like most lords.
-Sure, they don't have classes with "lord" in the name, but why does that matter? Neither do Alm, Celica, Micaiah, RD!Ike, and Corrin, yet that isn't a problem for them. Both still have unique classes. (and before anyone says Byleth doesn't start with his none of the other 3H lords do either)
-I've seen people say it's because they're avatars, yet Corrin gets a free pass. I wonder, if Azura was made a lord would Corrin suddenly lose his status? Why exactly should being an avatar matter for non-Corrins?
I have no idea why they wouldn't be lords, especially when less significant characters like Elincia and lucina are often counted. Both robin and Byleth are as much of a lord as Marth, Alm, Celicia, Sigurd, Seliph, Leif, Roy, Eliwood, Hector, Lyn, Ike, Micaiah, chrom, Corrin, Edelgard, Dimitri, Claude or anyone else you may count is.
the only thing Lucina has of “lord” is the class
Unpopular opinion, Three House is a good game but a bad Fire Emblem game.
Can't wait for people trying to argue that a Fire Emblem game not meant to be played in ironman is a good one...
Map design is garbage
Promoting doesn't feel good
The game doesn't give you units in part 2 if you want to ironman
The difficulty was design alongside the turnwheel, lots of bullshit.
My comment will probably not be seen because of the 200+ other comments. I disagree with how retreating detracts from the actual story because if a boss for example, died in their joining chapter but that boss was supposed to be significant in the story. You won't get a lot of impact or development from that boss because they died. Ishtar getting saved by Julius makes sense because Julius, even though he's pretty much possessed by Loptyr, still finds a use for Ishtar so he saves her. Maybe they could do it like leaving the boss at 1 hp so they won't die
I find that the problem with retreating enemies is the effect of diminishing returns. It's like "I've already beaten you before and I've gotten stronger. What makes you think you can beat me this time". This is kind of the problem with the "rival" in Pokemon. A work around would be to find a way to defeat the boss without directly defeating them in combat.
gameboyn64 In Pokémon’s case, the rival functions more as a level check, to see whether you’re ready for the next part of the game or not, like the infamous sleeping table in Persona 3, or Matador in SMT3. I do find retreating annoying, playing FE4 rn, and I hate the mage sisters and their Bulma heads. If they wanted a character to show up again, they should honestly do something like Gharnef’s Imhullu Tome, where their weapon prevents them from dying. Maybe in the mage sisters case, make it act like modern miracle skill, possibly mixed with FE4 miracle if they want the enemy to follow you.
I just realized that the retreat in fe4 could've made sense if Julius ended up turning Ishtar and Arion into Deadlords. This would make their return seem plausible and make Julius even more of a dick because he turned his own fiancee into a Deadlord. Also giving a bit more depth into Altena and Arion's relationship because Altena has to fight her husk of a stepbrother. The mage sisters could've also been reanimated but they're way too minor for Julius to even give a shit about them.
I agree. Sleep staffs are indeed very useful in FE6, a major use that always comes to mind is Douglas. You need to keep him alive the entire chapter to get the sacred weapon from the side chapter after. And a sleep staff is a great way of keeping him busy. Since your only other real option is kiting him, which is possible due to his general class movement. But it can lead to some annoying situations trying to ignore him.
"I'm pretty sure the laws of physics in Fire Emblem are the same as the laws of physics in real life."
Oh dear, you haven't played with animations on in a loooong time, huh?
What do you mean? I was chopping fire wood yesterday and I swung my axe so hard it lodged into a stump and left me floating in the air. FE animations are perfectly realistic, idk what you're on about
animations have been unrealistic since jugdral. most are fine, but then you get the swordmaster jumping over four times their own height. we should also not forget lyn and GBA swordmasters moving so fast they create afterimages
Are we not gonna talk about the hand axe boomerang animation that was in every game before Awakening?
14 views in, and someone already disliked. Do those people set notifications or just happen upon a video less than a minute old and are already butthurt?
Yes
The Omega Records it’s probably bots.
I think I made an account on Serenes Forest like a decade or longer ago but it's also been about that long since I've been on their forums. I'm surprised to hear the userbase is younger-- considering how old the site is, I would've assumed its forums would only be populated by old people hanging around. I didn't think people really used forums at all anymore and all online socialization basically took place on big social media sites.
Three Houses had such disappointing personal skills, not going to lie most of the game I played having forgotten they even existed. Atleast in Fates it was much easier, it felt natural to go like "oh yeah I should put Sakura 2 spaces away from Corrin to give -2 damage taken", but since in 3H you have to go all the way into the menus to see the personal skill, it feels like they just don't even exists.
Atleast they did cover for that somewhat with crests, which were still unreliable and vague, but it's better than the personals.
Honestly, they're not that much better in Fates. In Fates, you can classify skills in three groups: Good, Bad and Gimmicky. An example of Gimmicky could be Izana's Peace Bringer, - 1 dealt to any unit within 3 spaces, whilst an example of good could be Lily's Poise or Rose's Thorns. Still, there's a ton of bad/useless skills in the game.
Three Houses skills are either good or bad: Bernadetta, Felix, Ferdinand, Byleth, the lords, Lysithea... these are great personal skills. Others like Marianne, Raphael, Lindhart are pretty trash, because the recovery is not enough. Still, most of the personals in game are alright, unlike Fates.
I could also make a third group, the uninspired skills. Annette (Rally Strength), Caspar (Worse Heartseeker) and Mercedes (Live to Serve) are some examples, but Rally Strength and Heartseeker (on a physical unit) are much better than Live to Serve, so yeah.
I would argue that Fates' skills are as good as Three Houses.
@@iloveminicactialot6895 and then there's Sylvain's personal.
I believe is the battle at the fortress in Adrestia after the Gronder War mission in 3H part 2. I can’t remember what the fortress is called, but you’ll usually fight Caspar, Lindhart, and Jeritza there. It’s the one that gets blasted by the Agarthans after the battle. Frankly, that’s where Jeritza should’ve died. He shouldn’t have escaped that, there was no reason for him to suddenly leave and go to Enbarr. Not to mention, him getting blasted by the Agarthan weapon would’ve been a great way to further establish the threat the Agarthan’s pose, or in the case of Azure Moon, his death at the fortress would be a morale boost to the Kingdom soldiers and the students.
"Kaga leaving was the best thing for the franchise" I think this opinion is one held by people who don't understand what Kaga wants to do, and his creative intentions. They evaluate his games by standards set by following games.
Having a guest to discuss with is something I'm down for. I typically don't care how long these get because I listen to these while cooking, cleaning or something of the sort.
Unpopular opinion:
Crimson Flower is perfectly paced and it's shorter length makes sense from a story perspective.
Kjelle's got a gimmick where she's terrible with horses and her mom yells at her for it, which was pretty awkward in my run since I had her as a Paladin when I got that support. Turns out soldiers in a game about war are heavily defined by the way they fight.
unpopular opinion: Kaga's best game is Berwick Saga which completely shits on all of the other Fire Emblem games. Yes, even Tellius and Genealogy alongside Thracia 776.
I am not going to spoil the story but I am just going to let you know that it is really good and shows the moral grey between both sides way better than any other Fire Emblem games. Heck, I would say the story overall is better than Genealogy/Thracia and Tellius, both of which had two games to fully develop its world and cast.
Reese is a really good lord in both areas. As a character and as a unit. I am not going to spoil him as a character but I am just going to say that he might look boring but you will be wrong...very wrong. As a unit, he starts off mounted but even so his combat is kind of meh but the reason he still good is his command skill which increases nearby allies hit rates. Normally this would be very unimportant but in Berwick Saga, hit rates are everything in this game.
The Range system is amazing and I love it.
Skills are very important instead of just base stats/growth rates
A unit having a horse does not automatically make them top tier heck some of the best units in this game are foot locked units.
The map design overall is amazing and the soundtrack is just...the final touch on everything.
So overall...play it! Please for the long of Naga play it!
Being able to shit on Tellius isn't a great achievement tho
I hope its better then tear ring, that was just decent for me
@@zant41 For Tellius, I believe he meant plot wise. To which those games probably had the best plot overall minus the Jugdral series.
@@thetaintedbear4557 Plot wise ok I may agree, the world building is great in those games.
Is the game hard to run? I can run TRS mostly fine on my computer, and when i finish that game after finishing the bs map 32 with no warper and only 1 flier, i want to get into berwick
Ok so I have to say, I’m a bit mad at how the community seems to hold Kaga on this pedestal of gameplay style and innovation as if he was the only one working on those games. Mekkah often says “Kaga did it first” and seems not to praise any of the other people who worked on the games. Entire teams make games at Nintendo not just one person. Even if you try to say that somehow all of what he envisions is put into the game and he is the best director of FE, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t many persons who had to tweak and fix his preliminary designs and concepts. Kaga didn’t do it first, you could honestly more accurately state that Kaga’s team/Nintendo did it first. Mekkah kinda fumbles around with his wording in the video but he really does praise Kaga too much (If you watch his play throughs with Mangs or just on his own you know what I mean likely) and doesn’t give any credit to the other people on the first 5 FE game’s staff. I mean, if Kaga was so gosh darn good at making FE, then why is he stuck designing what are basically SRPG maker games now? Nintendo let him go for a reason, last time I checked, it’s not a good idea to release a game on a console that was 3 years into the lifetime of its successor whilst also making the game so difficult to get into that you had to watch an instructional VHS to get a grip on what was happening. I’m not trying to “side” with Nintendo here, but he basically took a ton more time than he was supposed to in order to make a game that so few would likely play. Not even to mention that the game came out as what was basically a kiosk download title and not a full release at launch. FE4 is a great game and FE5 is much less universally praised for a reason. I’m not trying to be mean, I’m just trying to say that I disagree with Mekkah in quite a few ways and that Kaga wouldn’t be nearly as good without the team he had with him.
I mean, the whole "overly praising just one guy for the team's achievements" is not exclusive to the FE fandom. Look at Smash Brothers. People constantly praise Sakurai as this god-like being who is apparently the only developer of the games and also think that every single choice for Smash came out of him (he's the director of course but he's not the only guy responsible for the development of the games). Now don't get me wrong, I love the guy and he's the face of Smash for many, many good reasons, but I feel people oftentimes forget that it's an entire team that made the games and always give credit to Sakurai, however deserved it is.
As for Kaga, well he did create the franchise that we all know and (seemingly) love, and he does have many good qualities that Mekkah pointed out (even if FE4 isn't my favorite, haven't played Thracia yet). I also don't think it's bad at all to have admiration for someone you clearly admire, like Mekkah's definite admiration for Kaga. It's really a matter of perspective and whether or not you think FE "should've died after Kaga left" or "new games good old games bad".
TLDR, I agree lol.
ChosenDin You could potentially say the same thing about other gaming franchises as well such as Metal Gear with Hideo Kojima and modern Castlevania with Koji Igarashi. I think that the gaming community as a whole wants to feel as important as the movie industry where singular directors are lauded for a movie’s creation when so many others are integral to the movie.
Popular opinion time: You should really, really play Kaga's other games if FE5 is your favorite game in the franchise you're bound to love all the Saga games.
How the hell does Nolan get less speed than Micaiah with a better base and growth. HOW?
That's why we don't make statements like that based purely on personal experience.
Bad RNG. The reason why players don't judge on personal experience is because of statistical anomalies. Since growths work on percentages, there's always the chance growths don't go as expected. This player happened to get extremely unlucky and got slow Nolan a lot. He's still wrong statistically because his data set is so tiny.
He could simply have been feeding Micaiah more than Nolan lul.
@@saykoya2260: but they said at the same level
so kinda i guess
I sort of agree with the Kaga leaving thing, because the franchise became more "casual" and therefore better for the mass market. I think that Fire Emblem probably couldn't have succeded in europe and america with him in charge. Don't hate me please.
It looks like I'm a counterexample to your argument about the Kaga games. I liked every Kaga game at first, the stories are pretty good and they have great music, but I always get to a point where the gameplay starts annoying me so much that I stop playing for a while. I have yet to finish FE4 and FE5, I just can't bring myself to play through some of the more annoying maps. I still think FE5 has a lot of positives, but FE4 will most likely remain my least favorite Fire Emblem game ever.
Agreed to some extent.
Although FE4 iirc wasn't initially intended to be a Fire Emblem game regardless, so the gameplay is very different due to how those with Macro-level of strategy are moreso rewarded than those that do not.
So it can be forgiven that FE4 can be disliked in that regard, but usually in conjunction to the others in the franchise.
Classes confer way more personality than skills. Imagine if i introduced myself by saying "yknow im doublejointed" vs if i said "yknow im an artist." One definitely gives you more information about my life.
Emmeryn survived the fall because she has miracle
Hey, thanks for the shout-out! I'm glad you and so many others have enjoyed my FE5 content. :)
Emmeryn should've joined with Cleric skills instead of Mage skills
bc then she would've had Miracle and all would have been well
I do miss dark magic specifically, but that's because I started playing with fe7 and well canas is quite a waifu, it feels good to use the animations and sound effects are fresh, and you could get that beefer mage architype, not fast but can take a hit and cast back.
ngl, i love the long dark magic animations. they feel way more epic, than a random fireball
I think the reason I like GBA dark magic the most is the amount of lore behind it. That, and it had unique effects from negating resistance to HP draining to cutting a foe's HP by half.
If characters like the death knight had an skill than leaves them at 1hp if you attempt to kill them, would it be better?
I always thought this. Not in a Fire Emblem sense but in general this attention to detail does make games better.
It's something I've been thinking about with Tales of Vesperia's human enemies for a long while. Something spoilery happens that would impact more if all the human enemies had a "defeat" animation instead of just dying.
FE would work the same way if they just stayed at 1HP and left the battlefield instead of vanishing.
@@adamhurd1560 Is it really that hard to have characters die when they reach 0 HP in FE games? FE6 has done this already (besides Merlinus) and while it's story does somewhat suffer because of this at least you don't have to fight Narcian 5 times before he finally dies
@@vanjagalovic3621 well no, I just mean that if they REALLY wanted a character to live, reducing them to 1HP and having them leave would be a better way of doing it. Of course, actually killing your characters is also fine but it comes down to the writer/director at the end of the day.
@@adamhurd1560 Well, FE5 had Eyvel dodge were she about to die in the first couple of chapters. In 3H if an enemy retreats, the death animation doesn't play (ex. a cavalier isn't knocked off his horse), although I agree that a solution that would involve preventing their HP from dropping to 0 would be better.
not an unpopular opinion but i think its messed up that nintendo doesn't even recognize Kaga and what he's done.
RE: reclassing affects how solid a personality is... i think awakening is the only game that did that right? both 3h and 11/12 basically let your characters be anything, and in 3h esp the combat animations end up looking out of character for some characters. for example, with the addition of cindered shadows, we get animations for war monk, but putting some one like caspar in war monk felt really weird to watch him fight! especially now that we have these great 3d animations, you can put a lot of personality into how a character moves. look at claude in his unique classes.
however, since awakening was the only one with so many reclassing options that had strict limits on what a person could become (every one had 2 classes aside from their base class available), each unit (at lest in gen 1) had a unique set that i think added something to their character, or the world building? example: henry and tharja start as dark mages, but both of their reclass options aren't magic classes at all, implying dark magic is distinct from regular magic, and those two might not be very magical. miriel's other classes are dark mage and cleric, so she's really ONLY interested/good at magic. one of libra's other classes is dark mage, either referencing or reinforcing the "darkness" tharja finds in him in their supports. ricken's other options aren't magic-based, referencing how much he struggles with magic in some of his dialogue. chrom gets cavalier and archer, and most of the original shepherds are cavaliers or close to it, also it exemplifies his knightly way of doing things. etc etc. yeah, cherche losing her mount gets pretty silly, but it isn't like her other classes were tacked on her without care.
Yeah Cherche had Cleric and troubadour because she was a maid and Ricken's reclass options were same as Chrom's because he looked up to him. I would have preferred if they had only one reclass option, since some of them were still out of place.
Fates characters had only one reclass option but they could get a second one depending on who they married which I didn't like at all.
How ya doing Mekkah? Doing good?
im booty
In that department, I’m your guy
No comment on the Three Houses weight system? It seems like a massive improvement to the Tellius system to me. You retain weapon weight tradeoffs for basically the entire game, you just change which weapons you're trading off (e.g. eventually training weapons get phased out and fully replaced by Iron, but Silver is still weighing you down some).
I don't necessarily think it's better than the GBA system, but I think it works pretty well, and has the advantage of being simpler (arguably).
If they do ever bring back the GBA system, I hope they consider adding more frequent opportunities to increase Con. Being able to "graduate" from Slim Lances would be nice.
I agree, I get the appeal of the GBA games' con being always present but I always thought it'd be nice to have some way to somehow reduce its impact besides the occasional Body Ring, and promotion stat gain (with weapon ranks for instance). And if GBA remakes happen, I wish they make Dark Magic lighter; the more advanced Dark Magic tomes are so heavy that Flux is always the way to go.
Also I really liked Three Houses' weight system regarding weapons, too, however I really wish they didn't use Strength to calculate magic users' Attack Speed penalty. I didn't like it in the Tellius games already but at least in those, mages actually carry tomes so I can get behind it. I think in 3h, the same formula that's used for weapons should be used to calculate magic users' AS penalty, only using Magic instead of Strength. It would make more sense to me that the more skilled at magic a unit is, the faster they can conjure it
Sharur Actually, the 3H weight system is just a modified version of the Tellius one. Iirc, instead of Speed-(Weight-Strength) like in FE 9 and 10, it’s Speed-(Weight-Strength/5). Much more forgiving to mages, and the spells that weigh you down are purposely made heavier for balance reasons.
((small edit to precise that I'm dumb and thought you were replying to me lol))
@@AceDefective3 Yea I'm aware of this, you're right the 2 are very similar. But unless I'm missing something, the Tellius one is actually the one more forgiving to mages, as 1 point in Str equals to 1 "saved" point of speed as opposed to 3H where you need 5 str in order to reduce the weapon's weight by 1. (Unless that's what you meant already?)
And yea I agree that stronger magic should be heavier for balancing purposes; to be clearer my issue is regarding dark magic in the GBA games in which I think the tomes are too heavy. Maybe they could make it so that some stronger tomes are a bit lighter so you're not slowed down to death, but that you can still only hit once with them (since that's the purpose of slowing you down), say, the incantation takes time so you can cast it only once or something(it would fit the long animation of dark magic, too). Or keep the same heavy weight but make some of them 1-3 range to avoid double counterattacks from the enemy. (It would make FE7&8's pitiful enemies a bit scarier, too) But being so weighted down by a TOME that your unit is actually the one getting doubled and so the basic tome is the more efficient is awful imo lol.
For comparison, most of the time I can get away with sometimes using Ellfire or other tomes with anima mages. And, in 3H even though I dislike the way AS is calculated for magic, it's not so much of an issue in the end because you have hit&run mounted mages, 1-3 magic, staves (and sometimes skills) that make you attack from further, and even things like Reposition or Gambits to avoid counterattacks/enemy phase damage; whereas the GBA games are very enemy-phase oriented. (Idk about fe6 because I'm not familiar with it)
It's a shame because Dark Magic is the one out of the 3 that gets some cool ideas as side/special effects, but it's weirdly balanced and in the end you just end up using Flux most of the time. It gets the job done but it's a bit boring imo:(
I am baffled by the idea that I needed this clarification....
@@shirounshiroun7555 Interesting idea re: Magic as weight mitigation in 3H. I do think that would make more sense.
I like/tolerate weight/con from a 100% gameplay standpoint, but it does even further the widespread misconception that medieval weapons were enormously heavy and unwieldy. Back to the entirety gameplay side, though, I think Tellius did it best, because it only affects the characters when they’re weak and inexperienced, and eventually disappears as the grow more skilled.
Mekkah, can you make unpopular opinions. BuT IN DuTCh?
So useless content to the majority of his audience? Sounds great to me.
dat bepaal ik zelf wel
@@Mekkkah UNLIMITED POWER
@@gorade1901
r/whooooosh
@@chrisf.9595 It's not a woosh. I got the joke, I just think that would be a bad idea if he did do it, and would rather not get a notif of that video.
My main problem with weapon weight is that it overblows how heavy real weapons actually were. Weapons in real life were made to be as light as possible while still being effective at what they were made to do as well as be durable enough to last for the duration of a war. It seems like the games are based around the idea that medieval weapons were heavy and you needed to be a complete beef cake in order to use them at all when in reality most longswords only weighed between 2 and 3 pounds, but apparently the steel sword HAS to have 11 weight (at least in some of the later games that had weight) and the Sol Katti is a whopping 16 weight. The only way those numbers can be even REMOTELY accurate is if 1 pound is equal to 3 weight.
Weight works fine for gameplay but yeah, it is a bit annoying that it contributes to the stereotype that historical weapons were these massive, cumbersome chunks of metal that you just awkwardly flailed around hoping to bludgeon someone to death with before you pulled a muscle.
@7:32 Also in regards to Emmeryn's paralogue, wouldn't that mean that Chrom and Lissa forgot to pick up her body and bury her? Like after beating all the enemies, shouldn't they have gone to collect their dead? In the Paralogue, they were all, "How did she get here?!"
While I like Awakening, the story is a mess. If the plot were more like Echoes, it'd have a solid story, but no, they got to make Emmeryn the Aerith of this game.
IIRC they never had time. Emmeryn took her dive, and right after Basilio made the call to retreat so they all had to run. By the time they would have made it back to Plegia her body would have been long gone regardless.
werent they on the run by that point?
if I remember correctly they had to retreat immediately and were not able to retrieve her body
Mekkah mentioned Awkward Zombie. My life is complete.
I think your assessment at the beginning about many of these opinions coming from people who are just immature is apt. I think a lot of them would change their minds if they had more experience not just with Fire Emblem but with more video games and other types of media. For example, I've never had a problem with weight being a factor in Fire Emblem (even though I also don't really understand how it works) because it's been a thing in a lot of the games I play. If you play a lot of JRPGs, you might not have experienced it much, because it generally isn't a thing in those, at least from my experience. It is very much a thing in a lot of Western console and PC RPGs, though, and it's been a thing ever since pen and paper RPGs were first around, which I also have a bit of experience with.
Same thing with the comment on specialized mages being a thing. They are a thing outside of Fire Emblem as well, in other video games as well as TV, movies, and books. Sure, there are lots of mages and wizards who do all kinds of stuff, but specialized wizards exist all over the place. I mean, I think it's fine to like it or don't, but it's not a good argument that it's bad because it doesn't exist elsewhere, when it does.
This is kind of a hot take of its own, but for as long as I can remember, Fire Emblem fans generally treat Fire Emblem like it exists in its own separate bubble from every other game in existence. Basically, FE games are only ever compared to other FE games by FE fans (with the exception of the Saga games), whereas with most other series with at least a small following, they're usually compared to other series. I don't understand why this is.
@@icarusmarioFAN not a lot of games feel or play like fe. Not a good reason, but yknow
@@leaffinite2001 I mean, you're right, but still
47:10
>lyn is one of the best lords in the series
>ike is among the middle of the pack for lords
lol
51:54
i think having specific elements makes characters more unique, i'm personally not a fan of having anyone with a magic skill just be able to use any type or element of magic, it hurts
I think also for class Gonzales is a great example of this. Everyone has a stereotype for brigands (also established in FE) about being dumb layman who do the grunt work. It allows the developers to introduce more character into Gonzales to reinforce he is dumb, he does grunt work, and people hate him. its takes more then writing to make a good character. FE really has a hard time showing characters doing stuff. This is one of the ways that it can so they don't need an exposition dump to get particular traits across. I think its also why they gave Gonzales low skill.