@theghostcreator776 Yes. Objectively. This game hates cavs, and Fiona just does not have the numbers. People have grinded her to max level off of petrified preists, and she STILL sucked.
I had forgotten how clown it was that Part 1 gives you a paragon scroll and like a dozen units who can't use it to get out of the low level hell they start in. Peak game design.
I find it's great that I get it early, I'm usually promoting Aran and Nolan around then and slap it on so they don't slow down. Unless you meant that it had too high capacity, which I can see it being 10 capacity being balanced, and a further way of nerfing mounted units. Even if you can't use it yet just slap it on miccy for 20xp sacrifices
There are two children of Daein's riders in the Tellius games. One is Ike, a veritable one man army who winds up killing a deity, the other is Fiona, who if you are lucky, won't accidentally get killed by the first generic enemy she fights.
The things it does differently from other FEs are what make it so good in the first place. It has pretty awful replayability, gives you tons of characters that are just a bit above mediocre even with investment, swaps around your entire playable party multiple times and gives you characters at the endgame that completely powercreep your entire army. RD is peak but if you expect the generic FE experience you'll probably just straight up hate it
@jaskaranbajwa8443 honestly I think the replayability is pretty great. With so many characters, you have a lot of options if you're willing to get silly and play suboptimally. Sure, grinding Meg up to tier 3 isn't GOOD, but it's very rewarding.
@@ikefromsmashbros9237 I find it's just that the maps aren't designed for having done them twice. I could go through it again but it wouldn't be same as the puzzle the game is the first time around. Other FEs don't really have this issue because the maps have a different design philosophy.
@jaskaranbajwa8443 that's very true, it feels like replaying the game is more of an effort to bend its jank to your will, as opposed to other FEs where you just adopt different strategies with different units.
@@jaskaranbajwa8443It also doesn't help that there are no gaiden chapters and no "technical" route splits, even though there could've been. Similar to Engage, you tend to get a bunch of units who can't carry the most weight early on and then get a bunch of heavyweight characters later. Granted, this doesn't make me dislike Radiant Dawn, it's my favorite game in the series, but saying it has a lack of replayability is definitely an understatement. Especially when most of the add-on content in later playthroughs sometimes requires a Normal playthrough of Path of Radiance.
To put into perspective for anyone unfamiliar why Fiona is so terrible, she is deployable on 5 maps before Part 4: 1-7: Indoor map where she gets reduced movement 1-E: Indoor map where she gets reduced movement 3-6: Swamp map where she literally cannot move beyond the starting island 3-12: A map where the objective is to kill 40 enemies, which Fiona cannot do as she has not gained any experience at this point 3-13: Fiona’s best map, as she can body block a ledge for free and not take any damage for the entire map while preventing an entire set of reinforcements from doing anything. Because of this contribution, I still believe her and Meg to not be the worst units in the game
You don't even need Fiona on 3-13. I remember the game providing me a super generic for that mission and dodged every reinforcement that came from the west, essentially blocking that route. I think it was a Sniper? Fiona had already died by that point and I yoinked Zihark with Ilyana because Mia was turning out bad.
@@izaakaz6863 You definitely don’t *need* her, but she definitely makes it easier. And I may be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure 3-13 Archer AI can sometimes take a different action than the one that makes him incredible, so that isn’t 100% reliable as far as I know
Honestly, every time I play 3-13, one of either Meg or Fiona always dies while body blocking the top left ledge. Her only use case is to die making the map slightly easier before I charge the entire yellow unit squad that direction to replace her. Yet some they are both still better than Lyre because at least they have that going for them
3-13 Fiona is also notable for being able to rescue yellow units, and dropping them off atop ledges, while having canto. Like that, she can block off multiple ledges at once.
And in one of those maps Fiona suffers a movement penalty for being mounted indoors so her only advantage of high movement is nullified! I love Radiant Dawn lmao
I once saw one video that showed how to train Fiona to make her useful. The trick is that you just have to abuse Jarod who is the boss at the end of part 1 to train Fiona there by attacking him many times while Jarod continues to heal himself, the turn count in the video even reaches 999 turns and the person in the video succeeds in promoting Fiona to tier 2 class
@@BunnyOnASnuman Dang, alternative facts are everywhere in this playthrough. Fiona has the best caps of any cavs because only she can reach the magic number of 34 Speed (which allows her to double significant targets with White pool at the end of the game including Ashera's aura). ... of course that comes with the caveat of training Fiona through two promotions, even though she's just, y'know, one of the worst units in the series, surrounded by characters that tend not to be much better. No biggie.
@@ultimapower69501:Endgame is where you can generally get your degenerate grinding done. That said petrifiable priest are available in the green unit swamp map that also gets you Nailah (but Fiona isn't available for that map lmao).
It's easy to say that most Dawn Brigade units want to be something other than what they are. What Fiona wants is to be in another game entirely, because RD hates horses in general and her in particular due to how strong Cavs were in PoR. It's not like she has nothing to work with, either; both her personal skills are at least decent, even if Imbue is much better on others, and being a Silver Knight means that she can possibly reach the magic 34 Speed number to be useful in Endgame. But her Part 1 availability gives her only two maps, both indoor ones that penalize her movement, and her awful bases and shaky growths mean that she has to be babied all the way through Part 3 (which has much stronger enemies) if she wants even a chance of actually contributing.
so fiona probably has one cool thing going for her, earth affinity plus savior. You can support her with volug and pick him up to make her pretty hard to hit. but I also read somewhere that fiona was 'bugged' so to speak and her stats are lower than intended as well.
Getting a unit that you can't use on their joining chapter because of terrible stats/weapon rank/availability/all of the above is a core gameplay mechanic of Fire Emblem
Between Meg having myrm growths as an arnor knight, Aran having armor knight growths as a soldier, and Fiona being quite possibly the most dead weight unit ever i have to wonder whay the fuck was going on when they designed this game Still love it though
Like, Meg and Aran at least have some amount of justification as "units that attempt to break the generic stereotype of their class". They fail at it, but at least they're trying something. Fiona is in the running for worst unit in the series.
I tried giving Fiona a chance in my girl only run, and she really bad. Add the movement penalty in the tower, that makes her even worse. Her only good usage is rescue without any penalty thanks to her personal skill.
Weaker then a green unit, and only available on maps that actively screw over cavalry for a majority of the game. They really went out of their way to make Fiona a joke
The more I watch Excelblem's playthroughs of Fire Emblem (not his play style, specifically just how the game design is done), the more it starts to make sense why FE was on the brink of collapse before Awakening.
For the record, FE5 and Radiant Dawn are both extremely fun games, but where FE5 has completely intentional obscene jank that makes every map extremely bombastic and stupid fun Radiant Dawn is just extremely long and impossible to play in the traditional fire emblem way LMAO Radiant Dawn is still a good time but oh my god. Oh my god You'd think the trainee units in a game with 2 promotions would get good. Wouldn't you. Wouldn't you
@@DJFracus I'm not saying it isn't better but seeing this slow series of often paradoxical decisions and increasingly isolating difficulty options (both clear and unclear to players) led to Fire Emblem being way too niche to make a profit worth making more games.
You know a recuitable unit is objectively terrible when they have lower stats than every other enemy/green unit on their joining map
She could be a Est archetype character... 🤷🏻♂️
"objectively" 🤡🤡🤡
@theghostcreator776 Yes. Objectively. This game hates cavs, and Fiona just does not have the numbers. People have grinded her to max level off of petrified preists, and she STILL sucked.
I mean, tjat is literally everyone in SD hard 5 lmao
Not to mention that her stats are inferior to Nolan's, who joins you 6 maps earlier.
Dont worry guys shes the best cav unit the dawn brigade gets
😍
- Is that the Dawn Brigade?
*a literal pile of trash slowly walks in*
- Yes.
She is the ONLY cav unit the Dawn Brigade gets.....
Oh, OHHHHHHHHHH!!
Right. 😂
I had forgotten how clown it was that Part 1 gives you a paragon scroll and like a dozen units who can't use it to get out of the low level hell they start in. Peak game design.
Makes zihark snowball even harder
Jill as well to a lesser extent
I find it's great that I get it early, I'm usually promoting Aran and Nolan around then and slap it on so they don't slow down. Unless you meant that it had too high capacity, which I can see it being 10 capacity being balanced, and a further way of nerfing mounted units. Even if you can't use it yet just slap it on miccy for 20xp sacrifices
There are two children of Daein's riders in the Tellius games. One is Ike, a veritable one man army who winds up killing a deity, the other is Fiona, who if you are lucky, won't accidentally get killed by the first generic enemy she fights.
We were robbed of the Ike and Fiona interaction.
TIL
Fiona is the child of a Daein Rider
@@goggles8691her father is the only original rider that we don't meet in PoR.
Part 1 is like a convoluted puzzle game that actively hates you, and that's why Radiant Dawn is my favorite game ever.
The things it does differently from other FEs are what make it so good in the first place. It has pretty awful replayability, gives you tons of characters that are just a bit above mediocre even with investment, swaps around your entire playable party multiple times and gives you characters at the endgame that completely powercreep your entire army. RD is peak but if you expect the generic FE experience you'll probably just straight up hate it
@jaskaranbajwa8443 honestly I think the replayability is pretty great. With so many characters, you have a lot of options if you're willing to get silly and play suboptimally. Sure, grinding Meg up to tier 3 isn't GOOD, but it's very rewarding.
@@ikefromsmashbros9237 I find it's just that the maps aren't designed for having done them twice. I could go through it again but it wouldn't be same as the puzzle the game is the first time around. Other FEs don't really have this issue because the maps have a different design philosophy.
@jaskaranbajwa8443 that's very true, it feels like replaying the game is more of an effort to bend its jank to your will, as opposed to other FEs where you just adopt different strategies with different units.
@@jaskaranbajwa8443It also doesn't help that there are no gaiden chapters and no "technical" route splits, even though there could've been.
Similar to Engage, you tend to get a bunch of units who can't carry the most weight early on and then get a bunch of heavyweight characters later.
Granted, this doesn't make me dislike Radiant Dawn, it's my favorite game in the series, but saying it has a lack of replayability is definitely an understatement. Especially when most of the add-on content in later playthroughs sometimes requires a Normal playthrough of Path of Radiance.
To put into perspective for anyone unfamiliar why Fiona is so terrible, she is deployable on 5 maps before Part 4:
1-7: Indoor map where she gets reduced movement
1-E: Indoor map where she gets reduced movement
3-6: Swamp map where she literally cannot move beyond the starting island
3-12: A map where the objective is to kill 40 enemies, which Fiona cannot do as she has not gained any experience at this point
3-13: Fiona’s best map, as she can body block a ledge for free and not take any damage for the entire map while preventing an entire set of reinforcements from doing anything. Because of this contribution, I still believe her and Meg to not be the worst units in the game
You don't even need Fiona on 3-13. I remember the game providing me a super generic for that mission and dodged every reinforcement that came from the west, essentially blocking that route. I think it was a Sniper? Fiona had already died by that point and I yoinked Zihark with Ilyana because Mia was turning out bad.
@@izaakaz6863 You definitely don’t *need* her, but she definitely makes it easier. And I may be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure 3-13 Archer AI can sometimes take a different action than the one that makes him incredible, so that isn’t 100% reliable as far as I know
Honestly, every time I play 3-13, one of either Meg or Fiona always dies while body blocking the top left ledge. Her only use case is to die making the map slightly easier before I charge the entire yellow unit squad that direction to replace her. Yet some they are both still better than Lyre because at least they have that going for them
3-13 Fiona is also notable for being able to rescue yellow units, and dropping them off atop ledges, while having canto. Like that, she can block off multiple ledges at once.
And in one of those maps Fiona suffers a movement penalty for being mounted indoors so her only advantage of high movement is nullified! I love Radiant Dawn lmao
Even better, both maps are indoors ! And then right after that in part 3 it's swamps, making her the only unit who cannot leave the starting area.
@@CyclonSilver me: surely if I promote her she can leave the starting area
Radiant Dawn: lol, lmfao even
@@CappnRob the poor girl, she in paper is not so bad, but because of the maps, her level and enemy type, of my god, she was doom
Excelblem: meat shield is a meat shield
LMAO you don't even get enough deployment slots to make using Fiona as a meat shield worth it
Imagine being so bad that even among the rest of the garbage you're low tier at being an expendable unit
@@Excelblem saddest fate in all of fire emblem. When the lords can't even use your body as a shield. 10/10 would read again
Imagine surviving an excelblem playthrough because there weren't enough deployment slots to sacrifice you for minimum gain.
@@Excelblem Leave Rebecca out of this conversation.
I once saw one video that showed how to train Fiona to make her useful. The trick is that you just have to abuse Jarod who is the boss at the end of part 1 to train Fiona there by attacking him many times while Jarod continues to heal himself, the turn count in the video even reaches 999 turns and the person in the video succeeds in promoting Fiona to tier 2 class
And even if you get her to tier 3, the stat caps make her mediocre at best for the tower lmao
Hey I should do that in my 2nd playthrough of Rd (I also trained her and brought her to the tower on my 1st playthrough)
@@BunnyOnASnuman Dang, alternative facts are everywhere in this playthrough. Fiona has the best caps of any cavs because only she can reach the magic number of 34 Speed (which allows her to double significant targets with White pool at the end of the game including Ashera's aura).
... of course that comes with the caveat of training Fiona through two promotions, even though she's just, y'know, one of the worst units in the series, surrounded by characters that tend not to be much better. No biggie.
@@CyclonSilver I swear to the goddess I once saw a playthrough where they capped her and brought her to the tower and she was still kinda bad
Do all that and maybe she can contribute a bit in 3-12. Woo.
a level 9 cav with 8 strength in a game where enemies get over 40 defense, let's goooooooooooo!
Fiona would had benefited so much from gaining some form of hard mode bonuses (akin to FE6), since she technically spawns as a red unit first.
ohh here it comes, here it comes the fiona grind (inb4 it doesn't come)
If there's one thing Fiona is good at it's having a unique design.
I didnt notice Nolan's death but I guess he dies too often on the repeated attempts to draw attention to this
Oh boy Imbue has joined the Dawn Brigade.
Imagine being so bad you make meg seem kinda usable
Fiona is the most unit of all time
Fiona is so funny 😭 actually insane how awful they made her
Calling it now, he exp grind exploits Fiona to silver knight in part 1
That just sounds like something he'd do
But where can he get 100 glare turns?
@@ultimapower69501:Endgame is where you can generally get your degenerate grinding done. That said petrifiable priest are available in the green unit swamp map that also gets you Nailah (but Fiona isn't available for that map lmao).
It's easy to say that most Dawn Brigade units want to be something other than what they are. What Fiona wants is to be in another game entirely, because RD hates horses in general and her in particular due to how strong Cavs were in PoR.
It's not like she has nothing to work with, either; both her personal skills are at least decent, even if Imbue is much better on others, and being a Silver Knight means that she can possibly reach the magic 34 Speed number to be useful in Endgame. But her Part 1 availability gives her only two maps, both indoor ones that penalize her movement, and her awful bases and shaky growths mean that she has to be babied all the way through Part 3 (which has much stronger enemies) if she wants even a chance of actually contributing.
Impressive he managed to save Fiona, who has one durability.
so fiona probably has one cool thing going for her, earth affinity plus savior. You can support her with volug and pick him up to make her pretty hard to hit.
but I also read somewhere that fiona was 'bugged' so to speak and her stats are lower than intended as well.
When playing normally. I'm concerned.
Fiona done dirty by the devs.
Getting a unit that you can't use on their joining chapter because of terrible stats/weapon rank/availability/all of the above is a core gameplay mechanic of Fire Emblem
You can 2-turn this map. There's no way for Fiona to die by turn 2.
Fiona is similar to Mathis, except you can't kill her
if only the other tier 1 units could use Paragon
Between Meg having myrm growths as an arnor knight, Aran having armor knight growths as a soldier, and Fiona being quite possibly the most dead weight unit ever i have to wonder whay the fuck was going on when they designed this game
Still love it though
Like, Meg and Aran at least have some amount of justification as "units that attempt to break the generic stereotype of their class". They fail at it, but at least they're trying something.
Fiona is in the running for worst unit in the series.
@@webbowser8834 I’d give Wendy that dubious honor of the being the worst but Fiona is not that far behind.
@@webbowser8834Hey Fiona is a warm body on one ledge in 3:13, which is still a better contribution than anything Lyra does...
Guys I think Excelblem dislikes this game
I tried giving Fiona a chance in my girl only run, and she really bad. Add the movement penalty in the tower, that makes her even worse. Her only good usage is rescue without any penalty thanks to her personal skill.
Imagine being weaker than a green unit LMAO
Weaker then a green unit, and only available on maps that actively screw over cavalry for a majority of the game.
They really went out of their way to make Fiona a joke
Fiona’s good in COTBK if that’s any consolation
The more I watch Excelblem's playthroughs of Fire Emblem (not his play style, specifically just how the game design is done), the more it starts to make sense why FE was on the brink of collapse before Awakening.
For the record, FE5 and Radiant Dawn are both extremely fun games, but where FE5 has completely intentional obscene jank that makes every map extremely bombastic and stupid fun Radiant Dawn is just extremely long and impossible to play in the traditional fire emblem way LMAO
Radiant Dawn is still a good time but oh my god. Oh my god
You'd think the trainee units in a game with 2 promotions would get good. Wouldn't you. Wouldn't you
this game is better than any of the games Awakening onwards
@@DJFracus I'm not saying it isn't better but seeing this slow series of often paradoxical decisions and increasingly isolating difficulty options (both clear and unclear to players) led to Fire Emblem being way too niche to make a profit worth making more games.
Bro wtf happened to Nolan?
He was captured so Excelblem will have to play the hidden prison chapter to get him back so he can act as a sacrifice later on.