I love watching peoples first reaction to the chapter 2's jump-scaring the player with the boss rushing vander with the ridersbane. It's so funny to watch.
I didn't get jump-scared by that because I already knew what Gallop does from watching the trailers and I saw that she'd end up with 11 Mov and was like "nah I can't listen to the game's lying threat range". But I also spent the entire chapter being terrified of Override and avoiding bunching my units together so I wouldn't be hit with it.
To be fair to Chapter 5, while 1-tile chokepoints are relatively rare, one of the items in the chests is an Obstruct staff that you can use to turn a 2-tile opening into a 1-tile one.
Ch11 teaches you how to be *afraid* And also that enemy staff users can be a giant nuisance. I definitely started looking at each enemy healer later on to see if they had an disruptive staff because of that chapter, although I'm not sure if that's the first chapter the concept is introduced to the player. It was just the most significant for me and made me take note.
It also made me strategize a whole lot more around it when I replayed on maddening, and I only put covert units in the back so they could hide in forests for a better chance of avoiding the freeze, while everyone else got out of range.
@@Stringblazer I sat a promoted general louis with silver great lance in the back to tank the freeze, he was able to kill everyone chasing my team, made the map a whole lot easier.
Bro I just lost my beloved Chloe and Etie because of that map. I didn’t have the time stone and I vouched that I would never reset during my entire play through. Fucking lost Chloe due to the freeze staff and an enemy running in with a 37% chance to hit her and still landing a killing blow… and etie died cuz of those fucking horsemen charging in faster than she could run. Why would they remove the time ring like that and then give it back to me when it’s too late 😭😭😭 felt like a personal punishment lmao oh well Rest In Peace. Chloe was so strong I’ll miss her.
@@jontylerlud yeah taking away the time crystal really adds some tension, it makes you realize just how much you were using it before then. Although it would definitely add a lot of pressure for a no reset run lol
@@ElijahLotusShield That's so interesting seeing how people handled this map in different ways. I usually park Framme solo to bait out the freeze and then rewarp to get her to safety.
An interesting thing about chapter 4 and the Celica utility is that it also delivers a lesson that Maddening mode denies in Chapter 3. The Chapter 3 boss takes no effective damage from Marth's Rapier on Maddening, but Chapter 4 is full of Corrupted enemies who take effective damage from Celica's Seraphim. This helps the player learn about effective Emblem weapons from the giving end rather than the receiving one, as this provides Céline with the blanket effectiveness that the Sigurd user will lack.
Chapter 4 is also great at teaching the value of personal skills, particularly on maddening - once you've warped with Céline, Louis and Chloé will probably have taken a bit of damage, so you can boost the effectiveness of their vulneraries with Céline's skill, then having two female allies near Louis reduces the damage he takes, while having a male and a female ally near Chloé boosts the damage she deals - love how the game teaches synergy!
Great analysis! Lumera's jumpscare with Sigurd and the Ridersbane is one of my favorite FE gameplay moments now. I think Fire Emblem is uniquely suited to making interesting gameplay-based surprises that are also kinda funny and feel like practical jokes on the player and that's a really memorable earlygame example.
In Chapter 1 Clanne body blocks for Framme which is a very useful tip but is missable if you don't look up at them. also in the first part of chapter 2 it teaches that a boss that doesn't move at first can decide to move which is used a good amount. chapter 6 and the emblem paralogues being the main examples
Another example is Chapter 10, with Hortensia getting aggro when you approach her squadron which is near her. But until then she'll just hold her position.
@@astralguardian5930 I'd group that under just having overlapping ranges. I think the only 'unique' thing that she does is only move when you are in melee range (but she can still attack with Elfire) which is taught back in chapter 7 with Lucina's engage attack.
@krisd.4851 Well thing is unlike Chapter 7 she has no move shown before she aggros, so you don't even really know you aggro her until you make a misstep and suddenly her and her squad start moving.
hm, I remember her showing that she moves before she does. maybe it's after a staff use? I'll have to check. I'm fairly close to it on my current maddening run
@krisd.4851 Yeah, I think it is when you enter her stave range, she then does Freeze and then the squad moves, either that or when you get into what would be melee range and she uses Luin on ya.
Chapter 5 is great for teaching players about side objectives that are off the main path and time sensitive with bandits stealing the treasure. It makes you split up your forces to send some units to take care of the chests while in previous chapters you can mostly ball your units and creep forwards. It also gives a good opportunity to show off the power of the Sigurd and Celica rings’ mobility. I would say all this… but they added a door before the boss giving you all the time in the world to get the chest 😂
Chapter 15 (iirc it's 15, anyway) taught me Timerra is amazing because she solo'd one of the wings of the map to get to the chest, while the other required a coordinated push by Yunaka and a few others.
It’s not as elaborate as this multi-chapter setup but one of my favorite tutorial maps in the series is Sacred Stones Chapter 2, which in one very contained package teaches the player about flier ultility, the rescue/drop command, the weakness to bows, green units, recruiting via the Talk command, villages, and having to beat Brigands to said villages to get the reward all in the space of a chapter that most players will probably be able to complete in just a few turns and without a ton of overbearing explanation
Sacred Stones tutorial is done really well in general, even through it does suffer from the "tutorial disguised as dialogue" issue a lot of FE games have from GBA era onwards.
One map I really like that teaches the player a lot is sacred stones ch2, the one where Ross and Garcia show up, in this map you learn how important rescue dropping is and flier utility, as well as how to take advantage of terrain and that you have to wait for enemies to approach you while you have the advantage while also needing to advance through in a fast pace to get side objectives, the First 5 chapters of Sacred Stones as a whole work really well as a tutorial not just for that game but for all the GBA games and the series as a whole
Chapter 4 is still a joy to play as it gives you space to test different units in an urgent situation where the player gets to know their strong points. It could be a stretch but I took the obstruct staff after the choke point as an invitation to build similar situations.
Chapter 6 also has a well placed longbow soldier that can shoot over the 2 tile high building without being seen unless a unit is sent to that corridor, usually wont kill unless maybe an already injured chloé. This teaches the player about 3 range weapons which enemies do make good use of in later maps as well as gifting the player said longbow so that they can start experimenting with it on etie and finding out how good having that extra range is.
I was actually surprised by how many fliers showed up on ch3, then Etie showed up and i was like ooohhh ok You are right about Boucheron needing the handaxe in Ch3. Back up was difficult for me to grasp and i ended up learning by being hit by enemy backup triggers. Good thing they put a lot of back up unuts in that map
7:18 Well this chapter also does show you the benefit of support/offense staves. As in the chests there's an Obstruct Stave and I feel like they set up that Stave and the 2x2 area from the broken wall to help you realize a bit how good some of those staves can be. As I know I used Louis and the Obstruct Stave to funnel the enemies and effectively choke the massive amount of enemies in the room.
Jean's paralogue does a great job of teaching about bonus objectives for saving the civilians before it comes up again in Chapter 12, along with bringing up your "weak but very high growths" character.
I love the approach you took! I never thought about how Engage taught the player, it must've been the hours I''ve spent on FE, but it didn't register for me, even if it's brilliant in the early game
I'm a little late to the party, but... Chapter 17 was the one that offered the biggest teaching moment for me personally. Up to that point I had mostly just slapped emblems on my characters, didn't really take note of emblem effects, and I didn't bother engaging because I didn't need to. The last bit of that map just looked impossible until I took the time to actually learn what everything did to just barely manage.
5:30 ish - Chapter 4 teaching about the utility of warp. Its interesting to me how theres a difference in scale when it comes to map design. This is a large map for such an early chapter. Like compare this to either chapter 4 and 5 in FE8; the two where you get Artur/Lute and Natasha/Joshua. The size difference is noticeble.
8:24 - I’m on my second playthrough, but I didn’t know breaking the front door is easier for Chapter 5. lol On my second time around (Hard Classic), I broke the door with Louis-Sigurd - chipping/KOing some of the ranged enemies with a Javelin as Louis aggro’d most of the enemies into that narrow path. Then, I went for Override… it was amazing, incredibly satisfying to watch.
A retro FE game I think that has a great starting chapter is the prologue chapter to FE4. It does a good job if just showing and allowing the player to learn the skill system, the canto and mobility of horseback units. Also the objectives of castle taking in the game being like mini chapters of a whole chapter. Also allowing the player to save freely allows for save rewinding to make up mistakes and be flexible.
You can make an argument that Framme and Clanne's escape before the inevitable Marth Engage shows off bodyblocking as a decent tool when no other options are available. The "in Maddening" extra comments are a funny thing to include since this video might reach more Normal/Hard players than Maddening players, and a lot of people who will pick Maddening will have some familiarity as to not need tutorials, but it's still organic retelling that a lot of people (me included) appreciate to get back into the game, so consider it a funny nitpick! Chapter 2's Lumera Engage jumpscare is probably one of the best tutorials in game history solely because it shows you immense power without straight up dunking you, and then when the ring is given to you, it's an unspoken "Here, now try it!". Chapter 4 and 5 are big to encourage your chosen Sigurd wielder to rush around to Louis and Chloé in Ch4 or the chest off on the side in Ch5. Etie is not all that bad on Normal or Hard, but she definetly feels the burn of her poor growth rates and Maddening scaling in that difficulty. Forges can keep her on par with Alcryst though, alongside the game's surprising implementation of fliers in almost every map. Boucheron not coming with a Handaxe feels a bit stunted, but it's good that he doesn't to differentiate Etie and show off indirect combat and bow combat more clearly before tossing Javelins and Handaxes at the player (you also already have Clanne who is pretty flexible with magic, don't want to give the feeling that they're the same thing!). Chapter 4 is a wonderful chapter for similar reasons to Chapter 2, but I specially appreciate Warp Ragnarok's introduction to the series being a hoard-friendly Warp resource for players that are scared of running out of Warp uses and thus never use Warp staves! Chapter 5 is a really good chapter to let people practice what they learned with the previous three chapters and specially flex both Sigurd and Celica to absolutely cheesily reach the chest, either by sheer movement and Override or Warp Ragnarok-ing the Thief, and when Obstruct is introduced (and Corrin, oh boy Corrin...), you can easily make your own chokepoints to practice Sigurd shenanigans later in the game as 2-3 tile gaps are obviously more common than 1 tile chokes. Besides that, on Normal/Hard breaking the walls on the back isn't that bad, it's solely that the Maddening throne room is obviously far more powerful. If I have to nominate chapters/maps that teach you a lot, Genealogy's Prologue is an amazing demonstration of how the game plays out and many of it's key mechanics without a single tutorial prompt! It's very masterful in that sense, and Thracia, despite being hard because of how little it tells you, does also have a very nice earlygame that teaches you all about capturing, rescuing NPCs/villages, the hellish Fog of War in that game, and managing resources without a single prompt and with a lot of story attached to it!
In my experience, breaking the wall makes the throne room in Chapter 5 easier to deal with on Normal. You can use an Obstruct staff or just put two units together to create a far better chokepoint than the 4 tile wide gap from breaking the door, and you avoid a horrible cluster of a wide variety of weapon types and mixed magic and physical offence with overlapping threat ranges.
Huh, I actually was thinking breaking the wall on the left in Chapter 5 made it way harder than it needed to be since you aggro'd way more guys on the left than from the bottom. But I still ended up just meatgrinding my way through it eventually.
If you want a shout-out on good tutorialization chapters, then you really can’t go wrong with the Lycia arc of The Binding Blade. Chapter 1 displays the power of mounted units compared to foot units, as well as terrain thanks to the conveniently place shrubbery. Chapter 2 showcases the power of fliers thanks to the big mountain that divides the map, and also gets you accustomed to the pros and cons of each weapon type thanks to the fighters shakier but still powerful combat abilities. Chapter 3 is Thieves, chapter 4 is ambush spawns (for better or for worse) etc. By the time of the Western Isles you’ll have a good grasp of FE6’s mechanics and quirks, and this is only accentuated on hard mode.
I actually didn't know about Yunaka's tile ability until much later in the game. Enemies kept rushing Alear, so they couldn't get out of the choke point until the map was basically cleared.
I will die on the hill that Etie is not only a good unit but one of the best investment units the game has to offer. Lyn's ring is in high demand but imagine for a moment, a unit with 2-3 rng warrior that after a couple kill to get speedtaker, can one round literally any enemy in the game and go on to chain attack at a massive range. I can't imagine going through maddening without the incredible versatility that her and Olwen-nuke Ivy can afford me.
@@SatvikBeri Cause Lyn can patch her speed but no one can give Alcryst Etie's strength. Ivy can build to speedtaker but no one can use Astra Storm as potently as Etie can. Panette could use Lyn really well but I put Ike on her.
@Sewn Mind alcryst can give himself Luna, which effectively patches his strength, just by leveling up. Also, as long as you give him lucinas ring, he can still function as a backup unit, so you avoid needing to run warrior Etie, who can't equip the best bows and is never going to be using axes. Alcryst also has crazy high dex and speed growths, so his Luna winds up becoming essentially guaranteed, and he can function as an effective critfisher too. If you really want to invest in Etie, I'm sure she'll turn out pretty good, but Alcryst requires way less effort to be good. You can kinda set and forget him, and he'll be fine, and if you invest in him as much as would be required to make etie a beast, he'll always turn out a better unit in the end.
I will say I didn't actually know ANY unit could open chests in this game until chapter 15 when I just decided to give it a try. I just assumed it was like other fe games where that was a thief action or you needed a key but I also was on maddening so most tutorials where turned off by default. Also Ike is the best key in the series.
I'd say that one of the best tutorials/teaching the player how to play the game comes from the first four chapters of Tharcia 776. That is, up til the point Leif is captured. Firstly, Tharcia does its tutorials either completely organically or almost organically, as in via the gameplay rather than text. Apart from a few dialogue lines here and there the game lacks almost completely the handholdy tutorial disguised as dialogue that plagues a lot of games in the series (Engage included). Instead, the game almost exclusively teaches its mechanics through the moment to moment gameplay, as the first few maps of the game are designed so you get the hang on how the game functions. Rather than explictly telling you "heres this tool, heres how you use it", Tharcias tutorials want the players themselves to notice the tools they have been given, and playing with the tools at your disposal. Like, the game never explictly teaches you about the capture mechanic, instead letting it be something the player discovers by themselves by noticing how the stronger units can capture foes. Secondly, the maps are designed in a way that it slowly ramps things up. The first map is pretty small, with only being a small village. The next few chapters increase in size, and get a bit more intricate in each map. Each of the later maps also introduce different concepts whether that be villages, fog of war or that some bosses are recruitable if you capture them. And again, these things are teached organically by having them placed in the map in ways that introduces a concept and then later uses the same concept in another way. And lastly, I think Tharica does well with how it introduces you to different units. It gives you a decently sized squad from the beginning, each with a different purpose. In addition, by giving strong units like Dagdar or Eyvel, the game essentially has training wheels, as these two can help carry a good part of the early maps while you try to protect your weaker units. Of course you should train your weaker units but still. The main issue I have with Tharcia is that I don't think the game is really beginner friendly. The game is noted to be one of the harder games in the entire series and while I dont think its as hard as people say it is, I do think it shouldn't be a persons first FE game. I do think having at least the GBA games at your belt helps a lot, as it helps in having basic understanding of FE gameplay. Though even if you have a few games at belt, the games tutorials still help an experienced FE player understand the games own kinks and tricks that will help getting started with the game.
In my experience the breakable wall in Chapter 5 actually works fine? You aggro more enemies at once but they can't all reach you this turn, and the enemy position to the south has a lot of units positioned with overlapping threat ranges from a wide variety of weapon types (including mixed physical and magic offence), leading to easy Breaks and a lot of free damage on your units. The breakable wall sets you up nicely to make a rapid and immediate offensive on the boss, ending the chapter without having to worry about the tightly-packed enemy group to the south. Like, I looked at the door and considered breaking it and saw all these insane overlapping threat ranges and ridiculous weapon variety and I was like "what the heck how do I deal with any of this".
On maddening, breaking the wall triggers reinforcements and just about every enemy in the room including the boss rushes you, you could funnel the enemies into the one tile chokepoint over on the left side of the map but imo going through the door was much easier.
@@skyeazura3593 Okay that honestly just sounds like bad design. …Then again, I also don't think the game expects you to play Maddening on first playthrough (despite making it available) so that's probably just a cruel gotcha from the devs.
First you talk about the power of a one lane wide chokepoint, then immediately contradict yourself by saying breaking the wall near it makes it *harder* to deal with the enemies coming out. Even on Maddening Louis is holding that lane easily even with the boss coming in.
So far the skill it seems to be the worst at teaching is how to compose your party. Everyone keeps talking about how this character or class has X% growth in strength or Y% growth in dexterity but I don't even know how they found that out. It's like EVs, IVs, and natures in Pokemon. I question if these mechanics ought not to be overhauled altogether since rather than making me enjoy how unique my Pokemon is, in reality I'm just stuck with some jumbled stat modifiers that I have to spend ours of my time doing repetitive uninteresting tasks in order to optimize.
I don’t play a lot of FE, only 3h but only on hard difficulty. I think the tutorials are not that great for a new player, I did not know how doubling works till i finished my first hard playthrough and looked at guides to see what people did with their team 😂 , i did not know that covert units get double avoid in thickets, i changed yunaka to a wolf knight and kept scratching my head why she keeps getting hit more often afterwards even while hiding in bushes. I was using wyrm slayer on corrupted worms and they deal no damage 😂 cuz they are apparently a fell dragon type . I didnt know chain attacks are only for backup classes and i put dual assist on cavalry and flyers 😂 i didn’t even know backup classes was a class archetype so the description on dual assist made no sense to me. Eirika ring is so confusing since the description of the skills dont explain what lunar and solar does, it just says changes lunar to solar and vice verse then you have to go to a separate menu to see what they do. I couldn’t figure out engravings very well since the game doesnt give you a list of engravings currently on a weapon so when i upgrade items i get a warning that i already used that engraving on a different item 😂 i didnt even know that some mobs have unique skills, i had a mob explode and i was like what just happened 😂. As you can tell you can figure out everything i have complained about if you read every single stats on the menu but it is overwhelming for a new player and i had to figure stuff out after beating sombron to a pulp on my initia hard run with my op units cause i didnt know that the levels don’t scale with your units and made my first run super boring with how op my units were cause i kept grinding the skirmishes cause i thought they felt more challenging than the story missions. I appreciate all the gameplay now on my 2nd maddening run and will probably try the dlc stuff on my 3rd run to see the difference 😂
I love watching peoples first reaction to the chapter 2's jump-scaring the player with the boss rushing vander with the ridersbane. It's so funny to watch.
For me it was her rushing Alear instead since he was low, but a pretty great moment nonethless.
I didn't get jump-scared by that because I already knew what Gallop does from watching the trailers and I saw that she'd end up with 11 Mov and was like "nah I can't listen to the game's lying threat range". But I also spent the entire chapter being terrified of Override and avoiding bunching my units together so I wouldn't be hit with it.
To be fair to Chapter 5, while 1-tile chokepoints are relatively rare, one of the items in the chests is an Obstruct staff that you can use to turn a 2-tile opening into a 1-tile one.
Ch11 teaches you how to be *afraid*
And also that enemy staff users can be a giant nuisance. I definitely started looking at each enemy healer later on to see if they had an disruptive staff because of that chapter, although I'm not sure if that's the first chapter the concept is introduced to the player. It was just the most significant for me and made me take note.
It also made me strategize a whole lot more around it when I replayed on maddening, and I only put covert units in the back so they could hide in forests for a better chance of avoiding the freeze, while everyone else got out of range.
@@Stringblazer I sat a promoted general louis with silver great lance in the back to tank the freeze, he was able to kill everyone chasing my team, made the map a whole lot easier.
Bro I just lost my beloved Chloe and Etie because of that map. I didn’t have the time stone and I vouched that I would never reset during my entire play through. Fucking lost Chloe due to the freeze staff and an enemy running in with a 37% chance to hit her and still landing a killing blow… and etie died cuz of those fucking horsemen charging in faster than she could run. Why would they remove the time ring like that and then give it back to me when it’s too late 😭😭😭 felt like a personal punishment lmao oh well Rest In Peace. Chloe was so strong I’ll miss her.
@@jontylerlud yeah taking away the time crystal really adds some tension, it makes you realize just how much you were using it before then. Although it would definitely add a lot of pressure for a no reset run lol
@@ElijahLotusShield That's so interesting seeing how people handled this map in different ways. I usually park Framme solo to bait out the freeze and then rewarp to get her to safety.
An interesting thing about chapter 4 and the Celica utility is that it also delivers a lesson that Maddening mode denies in Chapter 3. The Chapter 3 boss takes no effective damage from Marth's Rapier on Maddening, but Chapter 4 is full of Corrupted enemies who take effective damage from Celica's Seraphim. This helps the player learn about effective Emblem weapons from the giving end rather than the receiving one, as this provides Céline with the blanket effectiveness that the Sigurd user will lack.
Chapter 4 is also great at teaching the value of personal skills, particularly on maddening - once you've warped with Céline, Louis and Chloé will probably have taken a bit of damage, so you can boost the effectiveness of their vulneraries with Céline's skill, then having two female allies near Louis reduces the damage he takes, while having a male and a female ally near Chloé boosts the damage she deals - love how the game teaches synergy!
Holy, i didnt even realise this
Great analysis! Lumera's jumpscare with Sigurd and the Ridersbane is one of my favorite FE gameplay moments now. I think Fire Emblem is uniquely suited to making interesting gameplay-based surprises that are also kinda funny and feel like practical jokes on the player and that's a really memorable earlygame example.
In Chapter 1 Clanne body blocks for Framme which is a very useful tip but is missable if you don't look up at them. also in the first part of chapter 2 it teaches that a boss that doesn't move at first can decide to move which is used a good amount. chapter 6 and the emblem paralogues being the main examples
Another example is Chapter 10, with Hortensia getting aggro when you approach her squadron which is near her. But until then she'll just hold her position.
@@astralguardian5930 I'd group that under just having overlapping ranges. I think the only 'unique' thing that she does is only move when you are in melee range (but she can still attack with Elfire) which is taught back in chapter 7 with Lucina's engage attack.
@krisd.4851 Well thing is unlike Chapter 7 she has no move shown before she aggros, so you don't even really know you aggro her until you make a misstep and suddenly her and her squad start moving.
hm, I remember her showing that she moves before she does. maybe it's after a staff use? I'll have to check. I'm fairly close to it on my current maddening run
@krisd.4851 Yeah, I think it is when you enter her stave range, she then does Freeze and then the squad moves, either that or when you get into what would be melee range and she uses Luin on ya.
Chapter 5 is great for teaching players about side objectives that are off the main path and time sensitive with bandits stealing the treasure. It makes you split up your forces to send some units to take care of the chests while in previous chapters you can mostly ball your units and creep forwards. It also gives a good opportunity to show off the power of the Sigurd and Celica rings’ mobility. I would say all this… but they added a door before the boss giving you all the time in the world to get the chest 😂
Chapter 15 (iirc it's 15, anyway) taught me Timerra is amazing because she solo'd one of the wings of the map to get to the chest, while the other required a coordinated push by Yunaka and a few others.
It’s not as elaborate as this multi-chapter setup but one of my favorite tutorial maps in the series is Sacred Stones Chapter 2, which in one very contained package teaches the player about flier ultility, the rescue/drop command, the weakness to bows, green units, recruiting via the Talk command, villages, and having to beat Brigands to said villages to get the reward all in the space of a chapter that most players will probably be able to complete in just a few turns and without a ton of overbearing explanation
That's a good shout! Good opportunity to practice terrain for new players too
Also good in the sense that it's done within the story, not system text. Makes it more immersive and that's what I aim for in my own romhack.
Sacred Stones tutorial is done really well in general, even through it does suffer from the "tutorial disguised as dialogue" issue a lot of FE games have from GBA era onwards.
One map I really like that teaches the player a lot is sacred stones ch2, the one where Ross and Garcia show up, in this map you learn how important rescue dropping is and flier utility, as well as how to take advantage of terrain and that you have to wait for enemies to approach you while you have the advantage while also needing to advance through in a fast pace to get side objectives, the First 5 chapters of Sacred Stones as a whole work really well as a tutorial not just for that game but for all the GBA games and the series as a whole
Chapter 4 is still a joy to play as it gives you space to test different units in an urgent situation where the player gets to know their strong points.
It could be a stretch but I took the obstruct staff after the choke point as an invitation to build similar situations.
Chapter 6 also has a well placed longbow soldier that can shoot over the 2 tile high building without being seen unless a unit is sent to that corridor, usually wont kill unless maybe an already injured chloé. This teaches the player about 3 range weapons which enemies do make good use of in later maps as well as gifting the player said longbow so that they can start experimenting with it on etie and finding out how good having that extra range is.
I was actually surprised by how many fliers showed up on ch3, then Etie showed up and i was like ooohhh ok
You are right about Boucheron needing the handaxe in Ch3. Back up was difficult for me to grasp and i ended up learning by being hit by enemy backup triggers. Good thing they put a lot of back up unuts in that map
7:18 Well this chapter also does show you the benefit of support/offense staves. As in the chests there's an Obstruct Stave and I feel like they set up that Stave and the 2x2 area from the broken wall to help you realize a bit how good some of those staves can be. As I know I used Louis and the Obstruct Stave to funnel the enemies and effectively choke the massive amount of enemies in the room.
Jean's paralogue does a great job of teaching about bonus objectives for saving the civilians before it comes up again in Chapter 12, along with bringing up your "weak but very high growths" character.
I love the approach you took! I never thought about how Engage taught the player, it must've been the hours I''ve spent on FE, but it didn't register for me, even if it's brilliant in the early game
I'm a little late to the party, but... Chapter 17 was the one that offered the biggest teaching moment for me personally. Up to that point I had mostly just slapped emblems on my characters, didn't really take note of emblem effects, and I didn't bother engaging because I didn't need to. The last bit of that map just looked impossible until I took the time to actually learn what everything did to just barely manage.
5:30 ish - Chapter 4 teaching about the utility of warp.
Its interesting to me how theres a difference in scale when it comes to map design. This is a large map for such an early chapter.
Like compare this to either chapter 4 and 5 in FE8; the two where you get Artur/Lute and Natasha/Joshua. The size difference is noticeble.
8:24 - I’m on my second playthrough, but I didn’t know breaking the front door is easier for Chapter 5. lol
On my second time around (Hard Classic), I broke the door with Louis-Sigurd - chipping/KOing some of the ranged enemies with a Javelin as Louis aggro’d most of the enemies into that narrow path.
Then, I went for Override… it was amazing, incredibly satisfying to watch.
A retro FE game I think that has a great starting chapter is the prologue chapter to FE4. It does a good job if just showing and allowing the player to learn the skill system, the canto and mobility of horseback units. Also the objectives of castle taking in the game being like mini chapters of a whole chapter. Also allowing the player to save freely allows for save rewinding to make up mistakes and be flexible.
Cracking video. Great insights
You can make an argument that Framme and Clanne's escape before the inevitable Marth Engage shows off bodyblocking as a decent tool when no other options are available.
The "in Maddening" extra comments are a funny thing to include since this video might reach more Normal/Hard players than Maddening players, and a lot of people who will pick Maddening will have some familiarity as to not need tutorials, but it's still organic retelling that a lot of people (me included) appreciate to get back into the game, so consider it a funny nitpick!
Chapter 2's Lumera Engage jumpscare is probably one of the best tutorials in game history solely because it shows you immense power without straight up dunking you, and then when the ring is given to you, it's an unspoken "Here, now try it!". Chapter 4 and 5 are big to encourage your chosen Sigurd wielder to rush around to Louis and Chloé in Ch4 or the chest off on the side in Ch5.
Etie is not all that bad on Normal or Hard, but she definetly feels the burn of her poor growth rates and Maddening scaling in that difficulty. Forges can keep her on par with Alcryst though, alongside the game's surprising implementation of fliers in almost every map.
Boucheron not coming with a Handaxe feels a bit stunted, but it's good that he doesn't to differentiate Etie and show off indirect combat and bow combat more clearly before tossing Javelins and Handaxes at the player (you also already have Clanne who is pretty flexible with magic, don't want to give the feeling that they're the same thing!).
Chapter 4 is a wonderful chapter for similar reasons to Chapter 2, but I specially appreciate Warp Ragnarok's introduction to the series being a hoard-friendly Warp resource for players that are scared of running out of Warp uses and thus never use Warp staves!
Chapter 5 is a really good chapter to let people practice what they learned with the previous three chapters and specially flex both Sigurd and Celica to absolutely cheesily reach the chest, either by sheer movement and Override or Warp Ragnarok-ing the Thief, and when Obstruct is introduced (and Corrin, oh boy Corrin...), you can easily make your own chokepoints to practice Sigurd shenanigans later in the game as 2-3 tile gaps are obviously more common than 1 tile chokes. Besides that, on Normal/Hard breaking the walls on the back isn't that bad, it's solely that the Maddening throne room is obviously far more powerful.
If I have to nominate chapters/maps that teach you a lot, Genealogy's Prologue is an amazing demonstration of how the game plays out and many of it's key mechanics without a single tutorial prompt! It's very masterful in that sense, and Thracia, despite being hard because of how little it tells you, does also have a very nice earlygame that teaches you all about capturing, rescuing NPCs/villages, the hellish Fog of War in that game, and managing resources without a single prompt and with a lot of story attached to it!
In my experience, breaking the wall makes the throne room in Chapter 5 easier to deal with on Normal. You can use an Obstruct staff or just put two units together to create a far better chokepoint than the 4 tile wide gap from breaking the door, and you avoid a horrible cluster of a wide variety of weapon types and mixed magic and physical offence with overlapping threat ranges.
The lizard playing with they Joy cons looks cute lol
fire emblem is interesting for the games theyve made up to this point and how they do it now
Huh, I actually was thinking breaking the wall on the left in Chapter 5 made it way harder than it needed to be since you aggro'd way more guys on the left than from the bottom. But I still ended up just meatgrinding my way through it eventually.
If you want a shout-out on good tutorialization chapters, then you really can’t go wrong with the Lycia arc of The Binding Blade. Chapter 1 displays the power of mounted units compared to foot units, as well as terrain thanks to the conveniently place shrubbery. Chapter 2 showcases the power of fliers thanks to the big mountain that divides the map, and also gets you accustomed to the pros and cons of each weapon type thanks to the fighters shakier but still powerful combat abilities. Chapter 3 is Thieves, chapter 4 is ambush spawns (for better or for worse) etc. By the time of the Western Isles you’ll have a good grasp of FE6’s mechanics and quirks, and this is only accentuated on hard mode.
I actually didn't know about Yunaka's tile ability until much later in the game. Enemies kept rushing Alear, so they couldn't get out of the choke point until the map was basically cleared.
After I took about an hour to beat chapter 5 I decided that hard classic probably wasn't for me and lowered the difficulty to normal
I will die on the hill that Etie is not only a good unit but one of the best investment units the game has to offer. Lyn's ring is in high demand but imagine for a moment, a unit with 2-3 rng warrior that after a couple kill to get speedtaker, can one round literally any enemy in the game and go on to chain attack at a massive range. I can't imagine going through maddening without the incredible versatility that her and Olwen-nuke Ivy can afford me.
I usually just let her die
You should try it without Olwen sometime for a difference in strategies needed
@Sewn Mind why Etie instead of Alcryst?
@@SatvikBeri Cause Lyn can patch her speed but no one can give Alcryst Etie's strength. Ivy can build to speedtaker but no one can use Astra Storm as potently as Etie can. Panette could use Lyn really well but I put Ike on her.
@Sewn Mind alcryst can give himself Luna, which effectively patches his strength, just by leveling up. Also, as long as you give him lucinas ring, he can still function as a backup unit, so you avoid needing to run warrior Etie, who can't equip the best bows and is never going to be using axes. Alcryst also has crazy high dex and speed growths, so his Luna winds up becoming essentially guaranteed, and he can function as an effective critfisher too. If you really want to invest in Etie, I'm sure she'll turn out pretty good, but Alcryst requires way less effort to be good. You can kinda set and forget him, and he'll be fine, and if you invest in him as much as would be required to make etie a beast, he'll always turn out a better unit in the end.
I will say I didn't actually know ANY unit could open chests in this game until chapter 15 when I just decided to give it a try. I just assumed it was like other fe games where that was a thief action or you needed a key but I also was on maddening so most tutorials where turned off by default.
Also Ike is the best key in the series.
I think it's fine ch. 5 to be basic because it's the first map with a boss with multiple health bars
I'd say that one of the best tutorials/teaching the player how to play the game comes from the first four chapters of Tharcia 776. That is, up til the point Leif is captured.
Firstly, Tharcia does its tutorials either completely organically or almost organically, as in via the gameplay rather than text. Apart from a few dialogue lines here and there the game lacks almost completely the handholdy tutorial disguised as dialogue that plagues a lot of games in the series (Engage included). Instead, the game almost exclusively teaches its mechanics through the moment to moment gameplay, as the first few maps of the game are designed so you get the hang on how the game functions. Rather than explictly telling you "heres this tool, heres how you use it", Tharcias tutorials want the players themselves to notice the tools they have been given, and playing with the tools at your disposal. Like, the game never explictly teaches you about the capture mechanic, instead letting it be something the player discovers by themselves by noticing how the stronger units can capture foes.
Secondly, the maps are designed in a way that it slowly ramps things up. The first map is pretty small, with only being a small village. The next few chapters increase in size, and get a bit more intricate in each map. Each of the later maps also introduce different concepts whether that be villages, fog of war or that some bosses are recruitable if you capture them. And again, these things are teached organically by having them placed in the map in ways that introduces a concept and then later uses the same concept in another way.
And lastly, I think Tharica does well with how it introduces you to different units. It gives you a decently sized squad from the beginning, each with a different purpose. In addition, by giving strong units like Dagdar or Eyvel, the game essentially has training wheels, as these two can help carry a good part of the early maps while you try to protect your weaker units. Of course you should train your weaker units but still.
The main issue I have with Tharcia is that I don't think the game is really beginner friendly. The game is noted to be one of the harder games in the entire series and while I dont think its as hard as people say it is, I do think it shouldn't be a persons first FE game. I do think having at least the GBA games at your belt helps a lot, as it helps in having basic understanding of FE gameplay. Though even if you have a few games at belt, the games tutorials still help an experienced FE player understand the games own kinks and tricks that will help getting started with the game.
I find it funny how a chapter with a turn limit showed up so late into the game
11:16
"They're ENGAGING on the first playthrough"
In my experience the breakable wall in Chapter 5 actually works fine? You aggro more enemies at once but they can't all reach you this turn, and the enemy position to the south has a lot of units positioned with overlapping threat ranges from a wide variety of weapon types (including mixed physical and magic offence), leading to easy Breaks and a lot of free damage on your units. The breakable wall sets you up nicely to make a rapid and immediate offensive on the boss, ending the chapter without having to worry about the tightly-packed enemy group to the south.
Like, I looked at the door and considered breaking it and saw all these insane overlapping threat ranges and ridiculous weapon variety and I was like "what the heck how do I deal with any of this".
On maddening, breaking the wall triggers reinforcements and just about every enemy in the room including the boss rushes you, you could funnel the enemies into the one tile chokepoint over on the left side of the map but imo going through the door was much easier.
@@skyeazura3593 Okay that honestly just sounds like bad design. …Then again, I also don't think the game expects you to play Maddening on first playthrough (despite making it available) so that's probably just a cruel gotcha from the devs.
First you talk about the power of a one lane wide chokepoint, then immediately contradict yourself by saying breaking the wall near it makes it *harder* to deal with the enemies coming out. Even on Maddening Louis is holding that lane easily even with the boss coming in.
what i still don't understand is why they made "Avoid" and "Dodge" 2 different things when they mean essentially the SAME THING.
So far the skill it seems to be the worst at teaching is how to compose your party. Everyone keeps talking about how this character or class has X% growth in strength or Y% growth in dexterity but I don't even know how they found that out. It's like EVs, IVs, and natures in Pokemon.
I question if these mechanics ought not to be overhauled altogether since rather than making me enjoy how unique my Pokemon is, in reality I'm just stuck with some jumbled stat modifiers that I have to spend ours of my time doing repetitive uninteresting tasks in order to optimize.
Oh, great. One of the few characters I kind of like, basically not being a good long term investment... Well then...
She's totally good enough to be used if you like her! I'm using her in my maddening run. I just think there are better options available.
I don’t play a lot of FE, only 3h but only on hard difficulty. I think the tutorials are not that great for a new player, I did not know how doubling works till i finished my first hard playthrough and looked at guides to see what people did with their team 😂 , i did not know that covert units get double avoid in thickets, i changed yunaka to a wolf knight and kept scratching my head why she keeps getting hit more often afterwards even while hiding in bushes. I was using wyrm slayer on corrupted worms and they deal no damage 😂 cuz they are apparently a fell dragon type . I didnt know chain attacks are only for backup classes and i put dual assist on cavalry and flyers 😂 i didn’t even know backup classes was a class archetype so the description on dual assist made no sense to me. Eirika ring is so confusing since the description of the skills dont explain what lunar and solar does, it just says changes lunar to solar and vice verse then you have to go to a separate menu to see what they do. I couldn’t figure out engravings very well since the game doesnt give you a list of engravings currently on a weapon so when i upgrade items i get a warning that i already used that engraving on a different item 😂 i didnt even know that some mobs have unique skills, i had a mob explode and i was like what just happened 😂. As you can tell you can figure out everything i have complained about if you read every single stats on the menu but it is overwhelming for a new player and i had to figure stuff out after beating sombron to a pulp on my initia hard run with my op units cause i didnt know that the levels don’t scale with your units and made my first run super boring with how op my units were cause i kept grinding the skirmishes cause i thought they felt more challenging than the story missions. I appreciate all the gameplay now on my 2nd maddening run and will probably try the dlc stuff on my 3rd run to see the difference 😂