And that’s why fe6 is the outlier compared to fe7 and fe8 because Marcus is actually a well designed unit in fe6 and is a good jagen instead of being the overpowered unit he is in fe7 and since there is no Seth, it makes the game so much more fun because you can train your units to make them strong. Also, I know Percival exists but you get him in chapter 15 so he doesn’t have as much availability as Marcus and Seth who join on chapter 1.
Yep, I feel some just label a unit bad because they can solo on their own (and then you get misinformed and suddenly Ryoma who's suppose to be GODLY is getting killed ever so often because you're forced to remember a HARSH lesson. RNG is a raging bitch....and it hates you!) It's why I like units like Lapis, yeah you got Diamant and Kagetsu, but I've always gravitated towards Growth units like Lapis as her plus is her speed, which works her well in different classes beyond Swordmaster which the game seems to be aiming you towards. (And seriously, people whine about STR and forget Forging and "Energy Drops" are a thing if you get STR RNG screwed! I LOVE when people whine about something and I point out a function THEY THEMSELVES could also use, it's like they were HOPING no one would point this) Boucheron vs Panette is also similar! While he beats her with HP and BLD, he was meant to be a straight forward Axe Fighter, while Panette like Charlotte was meant to END a battle BEFORE the enemy gets a chance to hit her or if they have, finish them off (Boucheron ironically with his PLUS fits the Berserker better then Panette, specifically in UTILIZING it's Smash+ class skill as he has the HP to survive utilizing Smash weapons compared to Panette who has to SURVIVE the enemy attacking first. BLD is pointless if his SPD isn't being kept up) I don't hate Promoted recruits, some playthroughs I like to use them! I just have characters I love (Such as Bernadetta will ALWAYS be a recruit in my house when I play Three House and DON'T pick Black Eagles since I like her character, same with Ferdie and Dorothea, and with the other Houses, I'm a fan of Ingrid and Leonie, and of course Little Lysithea, Balthus, Hilda and Yuri, especially Yuri and Constance. Really I have no hated unit in Three Houses and Engage! Maybe in the past FE before the Switch Era, but not in the Switch Era, and even then I only had like 1-3 at MOST I hated from the main cast, like a certain gambling pink haired Cavalier/Paladin from Ike/Micaiah Duology) it's lame to just focus on the "OP" characters and win, (And while Fixed can be fun, I prefer RNG Random Growths because the series got me with how no playthrough is the same. Blazing Sword which I started the series with WAY back in the GBA era. I played ten times, and in my first run, Lyn was able to do like 15 damage endgame to the Fire Dragon, and in the second she BARELY DID ANYTHING where every other enemy she did decent damage to having a good critical chance against) I wouldn't have an issue with the Hate to "bad units" if it didn't feel like people were "judging you" with your preferences (like I loved Arthur from Fates, people were acting quite DICKISH with me saying he was DECENT like somehow you can say nothing but "he's a bad unit" and nothing else! Say he's playable if you adjust and they get PROVOKED and I'm like, why give a fuck how others play! Feels like they feel their opinions are attacked somehow if you show a unit they declared bad can be good, Some people just can't control their egos I suppose) Play how you like, fuck what others think is how I go with, I will have what I love and what I hate (For one I view Xander as better then Ryoma, but then I feel that's because Ryoma is OP in an EASY game that is Birthright next to Takumi, where is Xander and Leo are perfect for a game that PUNISHES you if you act too aggressive like in Birthright. Camilla truth be told is the first Pre-promote since Titania from Path of Radiance I took from their recruitment chapter to endgame and WHY I love the Oifey archetype and wish they'd use this more then "Jagan" it's still possible to use them to endgame, but it's HARD as hell, especially with Vandar from Engage LOL)
@@voltron77You can't win just with FE7! Marcus though. I learned that the hard way. Honestly, I never knew Rebecca was supposed to be bad, but the one time I chose to use Marcus, I was forced to reset because he wasn't pulling enough weight all by himself.
I think whats important to highlight in this whole discussion is that fire emblem is a series where you can win with any assortment of units deployed in any map. How optimal your deployed units are only determines how strategic you'll need to be that chapter. A lot of people talk about this game in terms of raw numbers and luck when the main factor in every map is the player's own strategy. I suppose in a way fire emblem gives the player a choice, make the strategy outside of the game i.e. metagame as much as you can and optimize absolutely everything to make the actual maps as easy and quick as possible, or play unoptimally, forcing you to make more strategies in the moments of gameplay itself, and every player will engage with both forms of strategy to different degrees. For instance i never try and form an optimal party in fe games and always end up having to spend hours on single turns trying to get past some harder parts of maps due to my units being very unoptimized. My favorite part of fire emblem is when you have to use your own strategies to defeat opponents that are stronger and better positioned than you, so obviously my playstyle would favor the moment to moment strategy of each map rather than the grand strategy overall of running the most optimized army out there. Which is where bad units come in, i think. I also gravitate a lot towards bad units, and its not even because i like to train them up to be super strong, although obviously that is fun from time to time. Its just that when you can't rely on good stats, skills, and classes to win the chapter you're forced to come up with strong strategies. And while im a freak that loves meg and dorothy and rosche, i think that basic idea will resonate with a lot of other people who dont share my opinions. Because one of the most fun parts of fire emblem always has been when you've been put into a disadvantageous position due to poor planning or low stats or bad luck and then concocting a strategy to turn the tide in your favor, which bad units inherently will make happen more often.
The most fun part of FE for me is the initial blind run. No looking up unit growths, at most finding a recruitment guide for old games, and just using whomever I feel like. Once the discussion sets in and optimization starts I find it interesting for a little bit, then quickly lose interest. Which is interesting in itself because that's a fairly recent thing - I used to be able to talk about units and that sort of thing all the time. I wonder what changed.
I much prefer making an army with the characters I like the most, which will be determined by design first, character arc second and gameplay last (which is why Meg and Fiona are terrible for me, I don't like their designs, already got attached to other members before obtaining them and they are too weak and uninteresting gameplaywise). I ALWAYS take Ilyana with me to defeat Ashnard and to the Tower of Salvation, even if her stats are not as appealing as other mages, but do I have fun using her. And that's the thing about FE - it's a game, it's about you having fun! I don't care if Titania can solo all of the maps she's in, I want to make use of my favorite units, so I'm going to invest in Mia and Mist to make THEM the map soloers!
@TwilightWolf032 I mean, kaga has talked about this before, about how the point of fire emblem is for the players to tell their own unique story. Imo the more unique and personalized the story you're telling with the games, the better you are playing fire emblem. Kaga went to great lengths to stress the point that fire emblem is ultimately not about strategy but about storytelling. That strategy is just a means to an end. That's what I like about fire emblem. I like telling stories where the underdog wins through sheer strategic capability, and as such, i have many stories to tell from playing the games where crazy things happened because of my playstyle. I do also favor units I like the character design and writing of, which is also something kaga said he explicitly wanted players to do, since that helps them tell their own unique story, so if there is a right way to play fire emblem that is most likely it. I think that being a strategy game, fire emblem attracts strategy game players on occasion, and most strategy games are strictly about optimization and only using the best available options for yourself, so that's probably where the people who only care about stats and optimized gameplay are coming from. They come from a genre of games that are just primarily about winning, not about telling a story, and they apply that to fire emblem as well even though they shouldn't and imo they are getting a lesser experience out of doing so.
I do agree that bad units are a great way of highlighting the good ones. The problem comes, when those characters they are trying to highlight and hype up as a huge deal, are mediocre FE6 Cecilia is a perfect example. She is hyped up as the new mage general. And looking at how insanely strong the last one was with Pent, it gets you excited about finally getting her. Only for her to drop the ball and be middling at best, highlighted even further by her joining on a chapter that actively wrecks her usefulness
I always like to have a few "pet projects" in every few game I play like Lilina in fe6 or Ross in fe8. Usually just to break up the monotony of always using the best units Sidenote: that lords only playthrough looks like hell lol
Growth units often surpass the out of the box pre-promotes too, sure they take bit more effort but depending on the unit it's well worth Growth units are are useable if the final result is good, Ross for example arrives at a fine time to raise with no problems
A problem the FE fanbase has is that the optimization crowd dominates it. Kinda like how the Kaizo crowd took over the Mario fanbase, too many people are focused on "perfecting" or "optimization" that the other fans are crushed under them. It's stifling.
Good comparison. There's always going to be a vocal minority that starts steering the general voice and tone of the community. As such it's important imo to voice contrary opinions (so long as you aren't doing so only to devil's advocate) so that the community doesn't feel so monolithic and unapproachable to people who aren't already embedded in that mindset.
@@MythrilZenith Unfortunately, its that same monolith that has the power to change it, but they're so set in their ways that they couldn't even if they wanted too.
I always figured "weak" units were for players who wanted a harder challenge. And then I learned that all the characters I was holding on to because I liked their story/design were considered "weak" and realized why I always struggled with FE games (it's cause I'm bad)
The fun of FE games is raising the units you like. Sure, I could take Tibarn, Caineghis and Nailah to the Tower of Salvation, but where's the fun in that? We know they can solo those maps, so why bother? It's when you give yourself the challenge of taking "bad" units to the top that the game is fun!
An example of what happens when everybody's good is Awakening; literally anybody is viable to use because growth rates are so good on average, with the only difference being just whether or not they get any levels. Because of this, Frederick does not stand out despite literally having higher growth rates than Seth.
It's kind of funny, I always thought Frederick had really low growth rates just because everyone else is so stacked and his exp gain is slower as a promoted unit in early game, but yeah looking it up he's just as stacked as everyone else.
So my thoughts on this topic is all units should be usable at join time. Eirika route Amelia is terrible because everything one rounds her on her join map and if you want to use her at all you have to ferry her a low hit weapon. Ephraim route Amelia on the other hand is fine because you can have her wail on a staff user or easily trap an archer. Another example is rd meg vs rd Fiona. Meg barely survives a combat in her join map and does a very small amount of damage but you have ways to be able to use the unit. Fiona however is completely useless outside of stealing her skills and benching her. Tldr a unit should be able to contribute SOMETHING when they join otherwise they shouldn't exist
No way. Some units are special because they're very hard to level up but pay you off for doing it. Consider how much the community loves Nino partly because she's so challenging to level up and get to usable. It'd be nice if there were a few more chapters to really use her after levelling her up in that initial challenge, but I like that I'm making a statement by working hard to get her to shine.
To be fair, both of these are special cases where the devs balanced with extra experience in mind. A unit joining underdeveloped wouldn't be a problem to them since you can hit the tower in Sacred Stones or use BEXP in RD.
I don't mind a bad unit that grows into a strong unit. That feels rewarding and fun. The thing I DO mind is when the unit is just completely worthless compared to all your other options. Where you're not even rewarded for investing in them. Unless you're doing an iron man run they just feel like a wasted character slot.
Honestly, as long as a unit can become usable in 3 chapters or less, I’ll use them. Exceptions can be made for characters I really like. Went through a lot of trouble making conquest mozu good :p
Conquest mozu is arguably one of the best units in the game, even though she needs a few kills. Kinshi Night Mozu and a friendship sealed effie are scary
Context is king. If there's a reason why a unit is bad, like villagers with no combat experience then I'm perfectly fine with that. Even Dawn Brigade I'm fine with, because they are essentially bunch of scrubs going against much stronger foe. Shanam is one of my favourite bad unit, because narrative constantly points out he's shit at fighting and gameplay wise that's doubly true - his bases and growths are laughably bad. Which in turn makes training him and turning him into a powerhouse against all odds very fun and if he turns out bad that's even more hilarious. Bad unit that adds so much to the game. But then we get to units that are bad for no particular reason like Rinkah or Forde who's bases are bad and their growths are just low enough to let you down if you try to raise them. And there's no context why that is, Rinkah is built like a brick shithouse and yet she has one of the lowest str and hp growths in Fates, which creates huge disconnect between character design and gameplay. Bad unit that doesn't benefit the game in any way. Though by far the worst offender is Cecilia - her supports, backstory and station reinforce that she is powerful, but gameplay doesn't reflect that in the least. Bad unit that is detrimental for the game. And while it's true that bad units in FE6 make Perceval, Rutger and Melady stand out, them being powerhouses is mostly a happy accident and the result of how enemy hard mode bonuses work in FE6. On my first playthrough i was not impressed at all by any of them, because i played on normal where they don't get massive stat boosts.
I played my first Ironman run ever recently. Getting to use all of the units in Birthright was so much fun. If all of the units were on the same level then losing Ryoma to a 26% hit wouldn’t have been a dramatic loss since I could have replaced him. Having to get by with the loser squad and limp to the finish was so much fun and I developed a real fondness for some of them. Getting Setsuna to the end after all of my pre-promotes died was hilarious, trying everything I possibly could to make Rinkah contribute was memorable, and realizing Sakura is actually a really good unit was the shock of the playthrough.
It's amazing what fun gameplay stories come out of "inefficient" runs, be they ironmans, challenge runs, joke runs or just feeling your way blindly through a game. Sounds like you had a good time with Birthright, which apparently isn't something a lot of people say.
tbh I feel like early- or mid-joining bad units is awesome and it's really fun to have a zero-to-hero arc, but I'm less sure about late-joining bad units. It's not bad game design or anything, but I'm thinking of stuff like the Wolfguard in FE12, who all take a huge amount of effort to recruit at a point in the game where it's basically impossible for them to contribute much beyond stripping their inventories for parts, because absolutely everything is going to kill them and there are 5 maps left in the game.
That's understandable. Getting someone who's super mid-at-best in the late game, like Renault in FE7 or Lorenz in FE1/3/11 makes it really hard to care about them, and really easy to forget they exist.
@@MythrilZenith Obviously, no shame for the people who do end up using them. I just kinda wish they were better lol. The Wolfguard is at least a really tense, fun, and memorable recruitment puzzle/challenge (well besides the jumpscare reinforcements near the boss, that's kind of uncool), and they specifically suffer for not being tuned for FE12's higher difficulties, which isn't really the fault of the units themselves.
Renault is actually really good, he does ok damage but his main stay is his high staff rank and great bases in everything but magic which can be supplemented by a spirit dust if you want to. He's just meant to be a good tanky staff bot instead of a combat unit and he serves that role well@@MythrilZenith
i used wrys in both DS shadow dragon and in heroes and it is FUN trying to make batshit insane builds and try to use a character that could easily be outclassed. thank god for recent games for also giving bad units *some* level of personality and supports
I have a weakness for the GBA female archers, namely Rebecca and Neimi. Yes, they aren't very good, but there's nothing better than having Sniper Rebecca or Ranger Neimi who have been with you since the very beginning becoming some of your hardest hitting characters. It's characters like Marisa, who I would rather use over Joshua, that join so much later at such a low level that's a problem for me. Or utility characters like Matthew who do join at the beginning and even if you use them on every map, just not match up to Legault, who joins midgame and does the exact same job better because their base stats wind up better and just negate their existence. Serra and Priscilla same deal.
See, I think most of the time, the issue with bad units is that they so often don't get better. I also think most FE6 rebalance patches miss the point of Sophia, for example, but I would still like to rebalance her. My method, though, would be to make her bases _even lower,_ and then give her growths somewhere between FE6 Karel and FE8 Myrrh. Make her hell on wheels to train, moreso than she already is, but make the payoff for actually doing it anyway a druid with all capped stats, rather than a worse version of base Niime or trained Raigh. If anything, she'd be even worse from an efficiency standpoint, but I think she'd also be much more fun to actually use as well. That's what this really gets at, I think. The problem isn't that some units tend to be very weak initially. The problem is that they so often are not allowed to match or exceed the units that come already strong. Ross, Ewan, and Amelia have the same issue. They have a lot of extra levels to grow, so the devs decided that this meant they needed lower growths so they couldn't snowball too hard, even though that's the entire point of using otherwise really bad growth units. Donnel in Awakening has Aptitude... so his other growths are nerfed, hard, to make up the difference. Nino starts out bad, and never exceeds Pent even if you train her all the way up from nothing. Using units like this makes it feel like IntSys wants there to be a ceiling for how good units can get, and set it at or around where the already-strong units naturally end up. That, more than anything else, is what I'd say is awful design. You do so much to raise them from zero to hero, but they never actually end up reaching hero, because someone thought it was a good idea to kneecap their potential for some reason. Not only is it an enormous amount of effort, but there's _also_ no payoff. Being bad mathematically is fine. Being bad in terms of unit feel is infuriating.
Really enjoy this less scripted kind of video from you, it was super chill :) Also totally agree with the value of weaker units; those times when a destined benchwarmer beats the odds and becomes an MVP are some of the most satisfying moments in the series.
Glad you enjoyed the talking-from-notes style of video. I tend to script when I have something very specific I want to say in as brief a way as reasonably possible, because I tend to ramble a bit when I'm not sticking to my written words, but it's just fun and relaxing to talk about an idea, and I always end up in places that I never would have found had I stuck to a hard script.
i think theres a type of unit who feel bad to use because they are both statistically inferior and have no individual niche. I think this is obviously an outdated concept, but this might be what people mean when they don't like "bad units". I agree with liking the zero to hero gameplay, but they don't always necessarily have to be "bad units". How it was handled in 3h like you mentioned can deliver on that gameplay satisfaction without compromising the units
I think the joy of unit building is part of what turns me off FE10. That game is full of units that feel like they should be training projects - not just the Dawn Brigade, but a lot of the Greil Mercenaries and even Crimean Royal Knights - and yet training them is such a slot, meanwhile the game gives you really strong units on a silver platter. Feels like a lot of work for very little pay off to train someone like Edward or Astrid.
I've had a similar problem with engage, especially on maddening. With a few exceptions, most of your training projects aren't able to really get going until you get lyn and lucina at chapter 11. There's just one small problem, the next 4 chapters the game hands out busted ass units like candy, with insane bases and growths which are as strong. Even worse, the game also guts most of your deployment slots for the next couple chapters, forcing you to bench the scrubs you want to improve, making it even harder for them to catch up. It also doesn't help that units are all so malleable in engage that very few of them have anything unique to offer, but that's a separate discussion
I feel like FE9 kind of does the later units being better or worse quite well. Look at Calill, by the time she shows up, it's reasonable that you could have a mage at the same level as her, my most recent playthrough my Ilyana was the exact same level. Now Calill showed up with slightly worse stats than Ilyana, but not bad stats by any means (my Ilyana was kinda blessed) and she shows up with B rank in every type of magic, meaning she can use all siege tomes right away and comes with a Meteor tome. My Ilyana on the other hand has a D in any magic rank that isn't Thunder and only has a B in that herself. But Calill also is forced to use Knives instead of Staves which she doesn't even remotely have the strength for (plus knives icky in PoR) while my Ilyana who I promoted myself uses staves. So while one has higher stats and access to staves. The other has higher magic ranks and slightly lower stats. The units that start showing up later on in FE9 don't feel directly inferior to your earlier units or directly superior, many of them feel different enough where it's more in the players hands of "Do I value staves or higher magic ranks?" When it comes to replacing the units, not "This unit is objectively better/worse than the unit I have now" there are some exceptions yeah, Shinon is an oddity but not unusable and one of only two archers in PoR. But it does feel like the units you start getting after awhile aren't built just to automatically replace earlier units but to potentially replace them, they give convincing arguments sure but it's not a definitively better choice and I like that. (Also yay my comment got featured!)
Bad units are so much fun. Probably my favorite playthrough I ever did of FE7 ended with me soloing the final chapter with Bartre & Karla. I’ve beaten FE7 dozens of times and I will never forget that playthrough
There are 3 things that makes me like training weak units. 1 unique thing (quality, event, etc) 2 game system 3 availability Let me show some example. FE6 Sophia (Like): The whole idea of escorting a unit to get a rare guiding ring makes me interested. Then we have ch 14x. A boring chapter. I could warp skip, but isn't reliable, so what I can do is training Sophia with fast Fae support. Then bench Sophia in ch15, and deploy in ch16 to promote with guiding ring from the secret shop. We have 1: ch14 rewards. 2 support 3 ch14x training arc and 16 guiding ring Engage Alfred (Dislike): Alfred has an interesting system to work (Marth's Mercurius and Sigurd) and good availability, but I don't feel worth training when his stats is between Chloe and Louis, feels mid even after good level ups, and his personal class is bad FE5 Marty and Dalsin (Like): Marty has 1: his high con stat. 2: scrolls access in c8 onwards. 3:good chapters to train (1 to 3) Dalsin has 1: brave axe access indoors in Manster, 2: ced scroll to use in ch5. 3: available in most of the game FE8 Amelia (Dislike), Ross and Ewan (Like): Amelia lacks interesting gameplay quality and is too easy to train, so she doesn't give me a challenge. Ross can be a berserker, but my favorite way to train him is supporting with Garcia (the fast support in FE8 +4 points per turn) Ewan has summon. Engage Anna (like): I dislike the idea of reclassing her to a magic class, because she loses her charm of having good magic growth in a physical class with radiant bow access. FE11 Roshea and Matthis (Like): D rank lances, opportunity to grind it to C using Javelin against 1 range boss, and forged ridersbase FE7 Nino (Dislike): FE7 hard mode deploy slots. Not going to bench one unit I was using to train Nino. 3H Mercedes Caspar (whatever): they have those 3 things that makes me want to use a unit, but I use everyone in house, it doesn't make much difference if they are weak or not. TRS most units (Like): Probably the reason I use most units in TRS is I have the opportunity to use them due to split group like Radiant Dawn Part 4.
I made a post in a Discord server somewhere that I was hoping to reference, but I can't find it, so... going off of memory here. Something that bothers me about rebalance patches in older FEs is that the devs, for all their hard work in making the patches, don't really understand what makes a unit either so good or so bad from an optimization standpoint that isn't just pure combat. Marty in Thracia, for instance, has awful stats for a combat unit. 0 base skill and speed? How are you supposed to do anything with this guy?? Well, his saving grace is his massive 15 constitution. Thracia has a Capture mechanic, where if you have higher con than the enemy, if you bring them down to 0HP, you capture them and can take their weapons, staves, items, what have you. Items are expensive in Thracia, so it's the best way to quickly amass a lot of weapons and very useful staves. Marty's 15 con means that he can capture a lot of different units, and thus help keep your supplies topped up. That doesn't mean Marty is a great combat unit (far from it), but that he is still a very useful one to deploy from time to time. It's similar to thieves, where they tend to have weak combat, but can open doors and chests and nick items off of enemies. Karin is good to use if there's a faraway shop or village that she can reach quicker than your other units. Every unit has a role to fill. Some are killing machines, others are healers, some are good tanks, and others are utility focused. It's your job as the player to figure out what you have at your disposal, and what you need to clear the map. All the units I mentioned have really poor combat, but they still contribute to the player in meaningful ways. And that's where I think rebalance patches fail, because they are ONLY balancing for combat. Which is one (important, true) of many different aspects to a Fire Emblem game's roster. Great video!
15:15 While I understand that not knowing what will happen creates tension and is definitely an important part of the fire emblem experience (hell, so many experiences are enjoyed more with a lack of knowledge), FE is not a casino. FE is a strategic series. Strategy requires you to think your moves carefully, both in the short and long term. To figure out and execute the best plan possible to accomplish any given objective. Puzzles don't require rng. The fun comes in wrapping your mind around the subject and finding a solution. This too is important in FE, since maps come with a limited number of units, weapons, movement ranges, etc. The randomness of the game comes in the shape of how units hit each other, for how much damage (crits), and how strong yours get in comparison to the enemy. This makes it so games are replayable, since your units will be different each time and face different odds. The randomness is not only there to change every experience, but to create a new system the player needs to engage with. They have to deal with the probability of death. This is, to reduce it as much as possible, ideally to zero. Perhaps my point may be clearer now. The games are constantly asking the player to reduce the probabilities of losing as close as possible to zero. The game introduces risk so that you attempt to outsmart it, to overcome it through your deliberate action. FE doesn't want you to gamble, it wants you to strategise. Otherwise you'd bang your head against the rng wall until the best outcome happened. Risk is there to be reduced. The randomness exists so you attempt to eliminate it. This is the only way to interact with these games. Gambling is passive.
I made a similar comment on the Roshea video but I can't state enough how much I love bad units existing as an additional challenge and lore stuff, it's just one of the many things modern fire emblem has thrown away in an attempt to appeal "a wider audience" that clearly isn't there judging from Engage's sales. But as others said I believe it's not good if a Unit is suppose to be good in the lore or design, but is actively shit because it's deceptive. Rinkah is the number one example I can think of where her stats and growths don't match her design. With that said I'm perfectly okay with a character that looks and acts like a Doofus being good like Makalov if that is the entire point of the character, in these aspects I enjoy when you can't judge a book by it's cover.
Yeah, for awhile I used to think it was better for the cast to be more "balanced" and for every unit to be usable, but now I'm craving for more dynamism and texture in the cast. Give me a few overpowered brutes and a load of average Joes next time, IS!
I agree to some extent for sure - not everything has to be super strong in exactly the same ways. The only way to make a 'perfectly balanced' game is to have every unit be totally identical, but that doesn't make for a very fun game. I do however think its important to distinguish 'weak/strong' versus 'good/bad design'. There are some weak units which are well designed and deserve to exist in their state, but some weak units are so badly designed it does actually diminish from the gameplay experience.
I think people overplay how bad some units are as well. Theres very few units that ive used and thought to myself "wow this dude is absolutly worthless"
The only units I've ever absolutely refused to even try to train were Sophia in FE6 and Bantu in FE12. All the rest I either have trained once before or I didn't train but did so because I just didn't want to, not because I thought they were too difficult or annoying to train.
I think a more accurate description is: bad units that can be good is good for Fire Emblem. Cause the existence of bad units that can't be good is just annoying.
Not necessarily. Bad units that are USABLE are good for Fire Emblem. They don't have to become good, they just have to have at least one opportunity to serve a useful purpose. That could be in being a valuable trainee that gets good, but it could also be in being a bad unit at a time where you have very few units so even the worst units have a chance to do SOMETHING. The worst fate a unit can have is being sent straight to your roster without ever touching the map, and a LOT of units suffer from this.
@@MythrilZenith I see your point, bad units that are usable but never good generally add something to the game, but they themselves tend not to be liked by the player base. I personally usually get pissed off when I try to use these units long term, more often than not.
Truly bad units create some of the funniest moments in any fire emblem playthrough. I’ll never understand the whole “I hate this game because so many units are bad” mentality. The worse the unit is the funnier the experience of training them becomes and the more rewarding it feels when they actually become capable. Give me broken units and give me useless units. Having a game where all units are viable/roughly equally good in a general sense is a death sentence for strategy as well as unit feel. If you only play a game one time this may not be a big deal, but any repeat playthrough where the units aren’t drastically different is extremely samey and boring
FE6 in a nutshell, and to a different extent FE12. Most of those units are easy to call "filler garbage" but it's the weird mix of filler you fall in love with or struggle through with that ends up feeling far more special than "Every unit is basically just as good as everyone else" like Engage.
Except that in FE is trivially easy to train bad units, every map have boxable archers, most maps have abusable bosses and so on. And in most games with forges you cna just craft a monstruosity that don't care for the player stats. The problem with units like Amelia is not just that she is bad, but that she play exactly like Franz after you did a tedius activity for half an hour. And Franz himself just play like Seth after a few maps anyway. I suppose Amelia at least has general i guess, but how different that is compared to any infranty unit with good 1-2 range? Now compare with, say, Arthur from Shining Force 1. He is the only cavalier in that game that can cast magic at all, even if it come late and is gimmicky as hell, but at least is something i just cannot do with Pelle or Mae or whatever. To me this is a bad unit worth using, someone that actually play differently than the good unit in significant ways. FE do that on occasion(say, Marty or Timerra) but nowhere near enought. FE in general do a bad job at making units different from each other. Benchmarks are generally low enought that in most games every combat unit double, every combat unit ORKO generics, every combat unit survive about 3 or 4 rounds of combat and so on. I have never seen a strategy RPG where units blend together as much as GBA FE. And when everyone blend together the added tedium of using a bad unit just does not add much. FE is just good at hiding it with dopamine for a while.
growth units are always fun to me i mean sure its great to get a really good unit ready to go right away but ever since i first played this series like 10 or so years ago i always enjoyed bad or ok units that become great having zero to hero units will always be one of my favorite parts of these games
I will say, Conquest has some pretty bad units that can fill this role. Building units like Nyx and Benny for long term and being able to patch up their weaknesses is nothing short of an art form lol. Example: Sniper Nyx (A+ Mozu) with Lucky 7, Vantage/LnD (S Odin), and Air Superiority being supported by Corrin with Supportive to reach 100% Hit rates while sweeping Chapter 24 with Shining Bow. And, Benny with the Azura S-support to reclass to Falcon Knight (or Kinshi Knight lol) and being able to patch up his Spd and get him to... actually double every Conquest enemy including Ryoma in Chapter 25. These builds take a ton of conscious effort just to make these units good, it's very much like training projects from other FE games. And there's lots of other bad units in the game (some much more arguable than others) like Flora or Gunter that can also be potential projects.
When playing fire emblem games, I tend to look at tier lists, who's considered good and bad. I'll often try to make a bad unit or two good. And it's funny investing a lot of time in them for them to still be mid at best, and have to think "Should I keep going?"
There are so many things to say and comments all already have a lot of good stuff in them, I'm just gonna put some random thoughts. Great point about 3 houses and it's whole system being based on unit growth. Even now when I know I can use my jagens and don't little timmy them out they barely do anything for the whole game. They get benched pretty quick and are just litteraly an emmergency button. In general I have a huge issue with prepromotes (looking at you engage midgame cast). I also remember when I introduced a friend to fire emblem via FE8 and they went from loving seth to almost benching him because he made the game boring. I never found interest in the hyper optimization side of Fire Emblem, I get the fun people can get out of it but it's not my cup of tea, I want to unga bunga with units I made able to unga bunga. This is what I loved when I played FE8 back then I could start a playthrough and decide to use anyone and they would be fun (yes, even forde.) I replayed awakening (in hard though lmao) recently and allowed myself to grind slightly and it was a lot of fun because I just wanted my robin to be a berserker and when you distribute exp towards more people than you can deploy you'll have a lot of stuff to experiment and play arround with. It only got to the "boring awakening part when one unit is too good and deals with everything" towards like 95% completion so I very much had the time to have fun with the game. In the end fire emblem good, lots of depth in its simplicity, many ways to enjoy it
Amelia was my favourite unit in Sacred Stones. I particularly like the affinity system in Fire Emblem, so watching her relationship develop with Franz at the same time the two of them developed into my frontline heavy hitters was very satisfying. I ended up liking the two of them so much that I read my wsy through a 185k word story about the two of them, and it was a very good read. No Longer Alone by Pureauthor if people are interested.
My take on this is rather twofold, first often use the most efficient method is actualy the easiest method of play and is boring. To see this just play early sacred stones where you throw seth at everything and one where you dont deploy seth and which one is activly engaging it certainly isnt the seth one. The big issue i have with bad units is marissa, in the same game she has a title is known throughout the world and she is worst at base than josh, has worse growths and despite all this a cool character, and can activly mach them in suppurts. Like what. Its these mid game to late game units who are supposedly very good in universe but are tashtier that get me mad.
Yeah I clicked into this video fully expecting it to talk about how units like arden and wendy were necessary, but it is only talking about growth units with low base. I never considered them to be bad units in the first place.
FE should always have weak units so the players can protecc them. Sophia 💜 Question: the scouring made elibe inhabitable by dragons right? Is it canon that Sophia is weak because shes living in a world thats toxic to her kind?
Actually, I think the reason elibe was toxic to Ninian and Nils is because they spent most of their lives beyond the dragons gate, whereas the Arcadian dragons and Sophia lived on elibe, so while Ninian and Nils are thrust into a different environment, Sophia has always lived in it. Doesn't explain how Ninian suddenly has a shortened lifespan at the end of the game if she has an A support with Eliwood though. It was never brought up beforehand.
That's why I'm hoping for a FE7 remake, so that they can rewrite some of the details to make it more consistent with FE6. Sadly though, even if we DO get an FE7 remake, I don't think that would happen.
The issue with FE6 is not that is has bad units, many games do benefit from having bad option, but the bad option must be bad for an in-universe reason too. I am perfectly fine with Alfred being worse than Kagetsu, the former is dying of the Engage version of cancer and lives in Firene, a pacifist country (Flowerland as Nelucce says), while the latter fought multiple battles and is part of the Ivy trio, the top fighters in Elusia, a country used to fighting. I love how Tobin while not bad is gonna be outclassed by the other villagers and not a very good choice for Thabes, he is meant to be the loser. The problem rises when people who are competent in canon get shafted gameplay wise. Why does Wendy, a knight who trained a lot, have Amelia-tier stats? Why is Eliwood, who won as many sparring matches as Hector did, so mediocre in every important stat? Why is (Rev) Odin, a guy who survived two wars and possibly beat Sumeragi (who clapped Ryoma mind you), so trash? The awesome feeling of unlocking the winner character can also be created without making everything else so comically worthless. The early gang in Conquest is really competent and yet it doesn't undermine the feeling of getting Camilla and Xander. The Black Eagles are all good-to-alright units yet the magic of getting my hands on Jeritza is still there. Long story short, it's good to have weak units as long as there is a valid reason for how weak they are. No one really rages on Yubello for having non existant stats, but I don't blame people for being annoyed at the "strong and buff" Rinkah for being, well, not strong at all. My favorite example are the prinnies from Disgaea. These guys are the bottom of the barrel, pathetic penguins who canonically get punished by returning at level 1 because of a single mistake. Of course these suckers are bad, they are the laughing stock of the series.
That's fair. Bad units can be bad, good units can be good, but when the gap between them is SO high, ESPECIALLY when it makes no sense to be that high, it does bring into question a lot of overall decisions. While I feel there needs to be SOME levels of suspension of disbelief when it comes to unit stats (it would be very bad for Odin, Severa and Owain to join with late-game Awakening quality stats and skills, for instance), there definitely is a level of dissonance felt with some of these units, to the point where people ask "Okay how the HECK are YOU that important?"
Unfortunately, the awesome might of the heaven-sent savior, Odin Dark, must be sealed, lest it tear spacetime asunder, so that one's actually lore accurate
@@Yarharsuperpirate Would have been cool if she had awesome growths to fix her poor bases to communicate the fact that she needs to recover from the Zephiel crit
@@YarharsuperpirateDude Cecelia is a great unit. 8 move staff user that requires no investment? Yes please. She’s pretty bad at combat though, but there’s more to being Mage General than combat in universe.
I agree with all your points! as ive only played sacred stones I love the content! 1 dollar might not be much but i don't mind supporting! take my dollar forever :P
I think this: Generally speaking. I use what units i like story/character/looks wise. i typically ignored FE8 trainer units or Fates kid units. And just used who i liked. Reguardless of good or bad unless there stats fell off so hard they became useless.
Donnel is still one of my favorites across the series, such a tryhard that actually sees his effort payoff in a visceral way. Also his S support with Olivia was top tier 👏
I love how he's talking about how he doesn't like rng manips and stuff like that, but he does an arrow wiggle to advance the rn (Not hating, thought it was funny)
Ive been arguing for years that having incredibly shit units is important to the game and that 3h and engage having everyone be at worst decent is not good design. They bring discussion on just how much they suck, what it takes to use them well, or another context they might kot be so bad in. Its boring if we just have 30-40 haars
I've once heard it said that a game of all boss fights is just as much of a monorail as a game that's all grind. If unit quality is a type of texture for Fire Emblem, then we lose out when all units are "balanced."
Honestly she's not even that bad I just had her picture already downloaded and wanted another cute mage girl in the thumbnail. She's more there to represent all Tellius mages having their fair share of issues as a whole.
Amelia is one of my favorite characters and I always ship her with Franz. I don't really see those types of trainees as bad units. I see characters that are mediocre always as the bad units. They don't have good bases or growths and are just kind of there as fodder replacements in case you let the better version of them die. I never use those characters and I don't really see anybody else using them either. Mostly older FE games have these. I think FE5 has the most.
Yes i always train Arden to level 30 and marry him to one of the fair ladies of jugdral. Yes i make sure to train Marty to his true potential as a Warrior who can maul down anyone with armour. Yes i love using Rebecca and think she's a good unit. Yes i think that Amelia is good in general. Yes i love using Norton and Billford on Tearring saga. How did you knew?
Hard disagree, Fire Emblem is just bad at making interesting bad units due to how simple the combat system is in most games. To me a good bad unit is something like Kiwi in Shining Force 2 or Osto from Der Langrisser(maybe not "bad" but certainly the overall worst commander) wich have a number of actually unique features nobody else really has and lead to them being played in unique ways. Most Fire Emblem bad units are just bland. Occassionally you have a marty but 99% of the bad units are just "good units but with worse stats that play exactly like good unit once enought favoritism has been given". Hell even marty is kinda that once you glue the speed scrolls to him. And much more, i hate how formulaic the game is about it. Can we a game where wyvern lords are utterly unusable trash and swordmaster is the best class for a change? Can we have a game where the gordin and the est are the best units in the game and the jeigan is worthless? Most games when they notice balance problem try to correct them between games and i feel FE barely try. Hell, if i am ever making a romhack i am 100% going to make so the unit viability is upside down.
Personally, I believe that having "gem" units dampens replay value. It's the same principle in Pokemon where everyone ends up using Lucario, Garchomp, Staraptor and Luxray on their team. If you make scrub units less bad and a bit more workable, the incentive to use good units would still be there, but it would make the worse units a bit more worth using.
That's not comparable at all. Luxray and Staraptor are used because they are quite literally the first Pokemon you encounter. Both of them are also the most convenient of those types you can get ahold of. You don't have a lot of options. Lucario and Garchomp are not staples. You could argue Garchomp as its pre-evolution can be found somewhat early (though most people are likely to miss it if they repel through caves). You don't get access to Lucario until halfway through the game... as a level 1 Riolu egg. Anyone using Lucario is using him because they _want_ to, not because he's super good.
this is a perfect explanation of why i dont like the modern fire emblems as much. they basically have made the games to where anyone you want can become excellent because there are 1 billion grind options and gimmicks that it if you really love x they will carry and that is annoying because it wrecks the narrative. you need narrative in a story driven game. and these modern official fe titles do this and just say "screw story' and i hate that so much.
oh yeah completely like after you've felt out the game to figure out who you like and once you've got some solutions to overall optimization so you know what all tools are available to apply, that's when you can really get to the meat of it: who do you want to optimize around? cause optimal optimization is something you dont even really need to play the game to do and runs out of interest quickly. like everyone knows probably the 'best' answer to 8 is just let seth take care of it. if that's all you care about you're done playing the game without loading it. scuse me if id rather shuffle more numbers around than that, lol.
The only thing I feel necessary to disagree with is the claim that optimization takes out the fun. I have the most fun putting together spreadsheets before even making a save file. Other people find that boring. Different people enjoy different styles. While the elitist optimizers are wrong in saying it's the best way to play, so are the people who think optimization takes the fun out of it. Play the game how you want to play it. It's a game.
I think bad units are bad when they seem pointless. Like, if you have a bad unit early that is then replaced it feels better than if you have a good unit first and then you get a unit that is the same but worse. If the unit is bad then it should have an unique niche, a unique mechanic, or even just have an interesting personality or story. The unit should be "fun" to use which can be many things. But I do think I should want to use the unit, and if they aren't strong, then they need something else. Ultiamtely that was my issue with FE6. There are just way too many units that just felt pointless to me. Many (most?) of them were weak, but that was not even what I noticed the most. I noticed how their character design was boring and uninspired or how they had a nothing personality with support conversations that make Awakening S supports feel inspired. If the character is boring and weak why are they even in the game? Just to be filler for if better units die? I don't find this a compelling enough justification.
Honestly I've never cared much for replay value in most games, so random growths have never appealed to me. The whole point of Fire Emblem is caring about the units you're using in an SRPG, and random growths feel counterproductive to that sometimes, because if I get attached to a unit by their story or design or general personality, and then they have poor growths, it's de-incentivizing me from using them over "good units". If this happens multiple times, it can spoil the game quite a bit. I think at the end of the day it comes down to preference, but for me, I think you can implement fixed growths in a fire emblem game so that you can use the units you like, while still making some units have better bases / higher growths to reflect which units are supposed to be good and also carving out a unique niche for so called "bad units" that the "good units" can't do as well, which opens up strategic value in using them (example, making a unit really good at fighting mages and not much else, making them "bad" in terms of versatility but good in that specific instance) Edit: It's also a bit disingenuous to say "ruin the fun for yourself" because "fun" is different for everyone, and tbh I find more fun in finding and using optimal strategies than leaving everything to luck. This is a tactical RPG at the end of the day after all
The problem I have is, "What is a bad unit?" Without clarifying what makes a unit bad, it is pointless to discuss why they are important. Considering how you are talking about units, you are likely talking about units being bad in speedrunning and LTCs... which means units that need investment. The more investment, the worst they are considered. I ask this because I don't think this is a very good argument. Speedruns and LTCs aren't normal play. Units being bad in those playstyles doesn't tell anyone how good they are in normal play as they play completely different (feeding, ignoring bonus objectives, skipping through as much of the map as possible). Most units aren't going to be good in this environment. They weren't designed for it. Why do we need bad units? Show me a unit that is bad in normal play. At worst, units outclass each other.
@@lunamaster123 You must be new around here. I use the generally accepted nomenclature of the community to discuss these things, but I am in NO WAY a proponent of the idea that LTC or "efficiency" is the only way to play. I merely used this concept because this is how units are traditionally rated, and I wanted to tackle the concept head-on. I talk about this concept in more detail in another video, but there's an idea of a "usability threshold" that a unit needs to exceed and stay above in order to participate. The vast, VAST majority of units are at or above that threshold at base, and only fall below if you do not touch them for a significant amount of time. Even units that traditionally are difficult or frustrating to use and see little long term payoff are largely capable of living above that usability bar. The rare exception is someone like FE12 Bantu, who is bad with little payoff in lower difficulties because of the changes in dragon mechanics without personal stat buffs to compensate from fe3 to fe12, but in higher difficulties becomes literally impossible to use outside of specifically cornering an archer, and even then he will never grow to not be 1-rounded by almost any enemy. This is a fault in the game's approach to difficulty, yes, but it creates a situation where the unit is effectively unusable, one of very, VERY few in the series.
Fe6 has a lot of 'rebalance' hacks/patches because the game is unfun in really obvious, dumb ways, only some of which relate to the units being bad. The part where you can just steal ideas from FE7/FE8 makes it easy to accomplish at least marginal improvements, too.
I like training FE12 Matthis if only because he's so pathetic in-story. Like, Makalov-level pathetic, and he doesn't even get the girl (his sister, which he has clearly incestuous overtones towards) in the end.
What FE6 is, is bad. It is one the worst FE games imo. They did not know what to do after Kaga left and just made a bad game. I like some of the characters and designs though. I hope in 20 years when they finally remake it they can turn it into a really good game.
Outside of the bad units growing stronger, it's plain boring to play GBA Fire Emblem by soloing every map with a paladin.
And that’s why fe6 is the outlier compared to fe7 and fe8 because Marcus is actually a well designed unit in fe6 and is a good jagen instead of being the overpowered unit he is in fe7 and since there is no Seth, it makes the game so much more fun because you can train your units to make them strong. Also, I know Percival exists but you get him in chapter 15 so he doesn’t have as much availability as Marcus and Seth who join on chapter 1.
Yep, I feel some just label a unit bad because they can solo on their own (and then you get misinformed and suddenly Ryoma who's suppose to be GODLY is getting killed ever so often because you're forced to remember a HARSH lesson. RNG is a raging bitch....and it hates you!)
It's why I like units like Lapis, yeah you got Diamant and Kagetsu, but I've always gravitated towards Growth units like Lapis as her plus is her speed, which works her well in different classes beyond Swordmaster which the game seems to be aiming you towards. (And seriously, people whine about STR and forget Forging and "Energy Drops" are a thing if you get STR RNG screwed! I LOVE when people whine about something and I point out a function THEY THEMSELVES could also use, it's like they were HOPING no one would point this)
Boucheron vs Panette is also similar! While he beats her with HP and BLD, he was meant to be a straight forward Axe Fighter, while Panette like Charlotte was meant to END a battle BEFORE the enemy gets a chance to hit her or if they have, finish them off (Boucheron ironically with his PLUS fits the Berserker better then Panette, specifically in UTILIZING it's Smash+ class skill as he has the HP to survive utilizing Smash weapons compared to Panette who has to SURVIVE the enemy attacking first. BLD is pointless if his SPD isn't being kept up)
I don't hate Promoted recruits, some playthroughs I like to use them! I just have characters I love (Such as Bernadetta will ALWAYS be a recruit in my house when I play Three House and DON'T pick Black Eagles since I like her character, same with Ferdie and Dorothea, and with the other Houses, I'm a fan of Ingrid and Leonie, and of course Little Lysithea, Balthus, Hilda and Yuri, especially Yuri and Constance. Really I have no hated unit in Three Houses and Engage! Maybe in the past FE before the Switch Era, but not in the Switch Era, and even then I only had like 1-3 at MOST I hated from the main cast, like a certain gambling pink haired Cavalier/Paladin from Ike/Micaiah Duology) it's lame to just focus on the "OP" characters and win, (And while Fixed can be fun, I prefer RNG Random Growths because the series got me with how no playthrough is the same. Blazing Sword which I started the series with WAY back in the GBA era. I played ten times, and in my first run, Lyn was able to do like 15 damage endgame to the Fire Dragon, and in the second she BARELY DID ANYTHING where every other enemy she did decent damage to having a good critical chance against)
I wouldn't have an issue with the Hate to "bad units" if it didn't feel like people were "judging you" with your preferences (like I loved Arthur from Fates, people were acting quite DICKISH with me saying he was DECENT like somehow you can say nothing but "he's a bad unit" and nothing else! Say he's playable if you adjust and they get PROVOKED and I'm like, why give a fuck how others play! Feels like they feel their opinions are attacked somehow if you show a unit they declared bad can be good, Some people just can't control their egos I suppose)
Play how you like, fuck what others think is how I go with, I will have what I love and what I hate (For one I view Xander as better then Ryoma, but then I feel that's because Ryoma is OP in an EASY game that is Birthright next to Takumi, where is Xander and Leo are perfect for a game that PUNISHES you if you act too aggressive like in Birthright. Camilla truth be told is the first Pre-promote since Titania from Path of Radiance I took from their recruitment chapter to endgame and WHY I love the Oifey archetype and wish they'd use this more then "Jagan" it's still possible to use them to endgame, but it's HARD as hell, especially with Vandar from Engage LOL)
@@voltron77You can't win just with FE7! Marcus though. I learned that the hard way.
Honestly, I never knew Rebecca was supposed to be bad, but the one time I chose to use Marcus, I was forced to reset because he wasn't pulling enough weight all by himself.
I think whats important to highlight in this whole discussion is that fire emblem is a series where you can win with any assortment of units deployed in any map. How optimal your deployed units are only determines how strategic you'll need to be that chapter. A lot of people talk about this game in terms of raw numbers and luck when the main factor in every map is the player's own strategy.
I suppose in a way fire emblem gives the player a choice, make the strategy outside of the game i.e. metagame as much as you can and optimize absolutely everything to make the actual maps as easy and quick as possible, or play unoptimally, forcing you to make more strategies in the moments of gameplay itself, and every player will engage with both forms of strategy to different degrees. For instance i never try and form an optimal party in fe games and always end up having to spend hours on single turns trying to get past some harder parts of maps due to my units being very unoptimized. My favorite part of fire emblem is when you have to use your own strategies to defeat opponents that are stronger and better positioned than you, so obviously my playstyle would favor the moment to moment strategy of each map rather than the grand strategy overall of running the most optimized army out there.
Which is where bad units come in, i think. I also gravitate a lot towards bad units, and its not even because i like to train them up to be super strong, although obviously that is fun from time to time. Its just that when you can't rely on good stats, skills, and classes to win the chapter you're forced to come up with strong strategies. And while im a freak that loves meg and dorothy and rosche, i think that basic idea will resonate with a lot of other people who dont share my opinions. Because one of the most fun parts of fire emblem always has been when you've been put into a disadvantageous position due to poor planning or low stats or bad luck and then concocting a strategy to turn the tide in your favor, which bad units inherently will make happen more often.
The most fun part of FE for me is the initial blind run. No looking up unit growths, at most finding a recruitment guide for old games, and just using whomever I feel like. Once the discussion sets in and optimization starts I find it interesting for a little bit, then quickly lose interest. Which is interesting in itself because that's a fairly recent thing - I used to be able to talk about units and that sort of thing all the time. I wonder what changed.
I much prefer making an army with the characters I like the most, which will be determined by design first, character arc second and gameplay last (which is why Meg and Fiona are terrible for me, I don't like their designs, already got attached to other members before obtaining them and they are too weak and uninteresting gameplaywise).
I ALWAYS take Ilyana with me to defeat Ashnard and to the Tower of Salvation, even if her stats are not as appealing as other mages, but do I have fun using her.
And that's the thing about FE - it's a game, it's about you having fun! I don't care if Titania can solo all of the maps she's in, I want to make use of my favorite units, so I'm going to invest in Mia and Mist to make THEM the map soloers!
@TwilightWolf032 I mean, kaga has talked about this before, about how the point of fire emblem is for the players to tell their own unique story. Imo the more unique and personalized the story you're telling with the games, the better you are playing fire emblem. Kaga went to great lengths to stress the point that fire emblem is ultimately not about strategy but about storytelling. That strategy is just a means to an end. That's what I like about fire emblem. I like telling stories where the underdog wins through sheer strategic capability, and as such, i have many stories to tell from playing the games where crazy things happened because of my playstyle. I do also favor units I like the character design and writing of, which is also something kaga said he explicitly wanted players to do, since that helps them tell their own unique story, so if there is a right way to play fire emblem that is most likely it. I think that being a strategy game, fire emblem attracts strategy game players on occasion, and most strategy games are strictly about optimization and only using the best available options for yourself, so that's probably where the people who only care about stats and optimized gameplay are coming from. They come from a genre of games that are just primarily about winning, not about telling a story, and they apply that to fire emblem as well even though they shouldn't and imo they are getting a lesser experience out of doing so.
@@ninjabunny9526 Amen
I do agree that bad units are a great way of highlighting the good ones. The problem comes, when those characters they are trying to highlight and hype up as a huge deal, are mediocre
FE6 Cecilia is a perfect example. She is hyped up as the new mage general. And looking at how insanely strong the last one was with Pent, it gets you excited about finally getting her. Only for her to drop the ball and be middling at best, highlighted even further by her joining on a chapter that actively wrecks her usefulness
To be fair she just got stabbed through the chest
@@quinnlee-miller9792 Yet she lived and could marry our boy Roy! (if you want to ship them that is)
To be fair, Cecilia came before Pent. Then again, non Japanese players most likely played 7 before 6.
@@crono276 dude are you high? Cecilia came AFTER pent
Clarine and Klein are Pents friggin kids
@@quinnlee-miller9792 fe6 came before 7
Watching Eliwood cling on to 1 HP for most a map is giving me anxiety.
Imagine being the one playing it lol
(sure I did some RNG abuse but knowing that I HAD to kind of sucked)
@@MythrilZenith move over finn, we got a new horse unit with miracle
I always like to have a few "pet projects" in every few game I play like Lilina in fe6 or Ross in fe8. Usually just to break up the monotony of always using the best units
Sidenote: that lords only playthrough looks like hell lol
Texture and shorter term goals, man. Look at almost every good strategy game or rpg and you'll see it.
YO! Advance Wars music!@@MythrilZenith
Lilina isn’t bad in fe6 though. Like same for Ross, they are good units. You should play like Sophia and Amelia as your pet projects instead.
i swear i see you everywhere @@voltron77
@@nessdbest8708 And so do I. Like, you’re in excelblem’s stream, in pavise’s streams, in speedwinghere’s videos. You’re everywhere!
Growth units often surpass the out of the box pre-promotes too, sure they take bit more effort but depending on the unit it's well worth
Growth units are are useable if the final result is good, Ross for example arrives at a fine time to raise with no problems
This and Garcia is so proud of his son. Imran look at that A support!
A problem the FE fanbase has is that the optimization crowd dominates it. Kinda like how the Kaizo crowd took over the Mario fanbase, too many people are focused on "perfecting" or "optimization" that the other fans are crushed under them. It's stifling.
Good comparison. There's always going to be a vocal minority that starts steering the general voice and tone of the community. As such it's important imo to voice contrary opinions (so long as you aren't doing so only to devil's advocate) so that the community doesn't feel so monolithic and unapproachable to people who aren't already embedded in that mindset.
@@MythrilZenith Unfortunately, its that same monolith that has the power to change it, but they're so set in their ways that they couldn't even if they wanted too.
I always figured "weak" units were for players who wanted a harder challenge.
And then I learned that all the characters I was holding on to because I liked their story/design were considered "weak" and realized why I always struggled with FE games (it's cause I'm bad)
Is you strategy is like mine ( doing shit and sending prayers and thoughts?😂😂)
The fun of FE games is raising the units you like.
Sure, I could take Tibarn, Caineghis and Nailah to the Tower of Salvation, but where's the fun in that?
We know they can solo those maps, so why bother? It's when you give yourself the challenge of taking "bad" units to the top that the game is fun!
So true.
An example of what happens when everybody's good is Awakening; literally anybody is viable to use because growth rates are so good on average, with the only difference being just whether or not they get any levels. Because of this, Frederick does not stand out despite literally having higher growth rates than Seth.
It's kind of funny, I always thought Frederick had really low growth rates just because everyone else is so stacked and his exp gain is slower as a promoted unit in early game, but yeah looking it up he's just as stacked as everyone else.
So my thoughts on this topic is all units should be usable at join time. Eirika route Amelia is terrible because everything one rounds her on her join map and if you want to use her at all you have to ferry her a low hit weapon. Ephraim route Amelia on the other hand is fine because you can have her wail on a staff user or easily trap an archer. Another example is rd meg vs rd Fiona. Meg barely survives a combat in her join map and does a very small amount of damage but you have ways to be able to use the unit. Fiona however is completely useless outside of stealing her skills and benching her. Tldr a unit should be able to contribute SOMETHING when they join otherwise they shouldn't exist
No way. Some units are special because they're very hard to level up but pay you off for doing it. Consider how much the community loves Nino partly because she's so challenging to level up and get to usable. It'd be nice if there were a few more chapters to really use her after levelling her up in that initial challenge, but I like that I'm making a statement by working hard to get her to shine.
nino proves my point though. she has natural 1-2 range and does some damage in her join chapter. that makes her possible to train. @@danfelder8062
To be fair, both of these are special cases where the devs balanced with extra experience in mind. A unit joining underdeveloped wouldn't be a problem to them since you can hit the tower in Sacred Stones or use BEXP in RD.
I don't mind a bad unit that grows into a strong unit. That feels rewarding and fun. The thing I DO mind is when the unit is just completely worthless compared to all your other options. Where you're not even rewarded for investing in them. Unless you're doing an iron man run they just feel like a wasted character slot.
Honestly, as long as a unit can become usable in 3 chapters or less, I’ll use them. Exceptions can be made for characters I really like. Went through a lot of trouble making conquest mozu good :p
Conquest mozu is arguably one of the best units in the game, even though she needs a few kills. Kinshi Night Mozu and a friendship sealed effie are scary
Context is king. If there's a reason why a unit is bad, like villagers with no combat experience then I'm perfectly fine with that. Even Dawn Brigade I'm fine with, because they are essentially bunch of scrubs going against much stronger foe. Shanam is one of my favourite bad unit, because narrative constantly points out he's shit at fighting and gameplay wise that's doubly true - his bases and growths are laughably bad. Which in turn makes training him and turning him into a powerhouse against all odds very fun and if he turns out bad that's even more hilarious. Bad unit that adds so much to the game.
But then we get to units that are bad for no particular reason like Rinkah or Forde who's bases are bad and their growths are just low enough to let you down if you try to raise them. And there's no context why that is, Rinkah is built like a brick shithouse and yet she has one of the lowest str and hp growths in Fates, which creates huge disconnect between character design and gameplay. Bad unit that doesn't benefit the game in any way.
Though by far the worst offender is Cecilia - her supports, backstory and station reinforce that she is powerful, but gameplay doesn't reflect that in the least. Bad unit that is detrimental for the game.
And while it's true that bad units in FE6 make Perceval, Rutger and Melady stand out, them being powerhouses is mostly a happy accident and the result of how enemy hard mode bonuses work in FE6. On my first playthrough i was not impressed at all by any of them, because i played on normal where they don't get massive stat boosts.
I played my first Ironman run ever recently. Getting to use all of the units in Birthright was so much fun. If all of the units were on the same level then losing Ryoma to a 26% hit wouldn’t have been a dramatic loss since I could have replaced him. Having to get by with the loser squad and limp to the finish was so much fun and I developed a real fondness for some of them. Getting Setsuna to the end after all of my pre-promotes died was hilarious, trying everything I possibly could to make Rinkah contribute was memorable, and realizing Sakura is actually a really good unit was the shock of the playthrough.
It's amazing what fun gameplay stories come out of "inefficient" runs, be they ironmans, challenge runs, joke runs or just feeling your way blindly through a game. Sounds like you had a good time with Birthright, which apparently isn't something a lot of people say.
tbh I feel like early- or mid-joining bad units is awesome and it's really fun to have a zero-to-hero arc, but I'm less sure about late-joining bad units. It's not bad game design or anything, but I'm thinking of stuff like the Wolfguard in FE12, who all take a huge amount of effort to recruit at a point in the game where it's basically impossible for them to contribute much beyond stripping their inventories for parts, because absolutely everything is going to kill them and there are 5 maps left in the game.
Counterpoint: Those guys are epic and cool and I love them
@@ebicbartonvery reasonable stance they’re pretty cool characters
That's understandable. Getting someone who's super mid-at-best in the late game, like Renault in FE7 or Lorenz in FE1/3/11 makes it really hard to care about them, and really easy to forget they exist.
@@MythrilZenith Obviously, no shame for the people who do end up using them. I just kinda wish they were better lol. The Wolfguard is at least a really tense, fun, and memorable recruitment puzzle/challenge (well besides the jumpscare reinforcements near the boss, that's kind of uncool), and they specifically suffer for not being tuned for FE12's higher difficulties, which isn't really the fault of the units themselves.
Renault is actually really good, he does ok damage but his main stay is his high staff rank and great bases in everything but magic which can be supplemented by a spirit dust if you want to. He's just meant to be a good tanky staff bot instead of a combat unit and he serves that role well@@MythrilZenith
i used wrys in both DS shadow dragon and in heroes and it is FUN trying to make batshit insane builds and try to use a character that could easily be outclassed. thank god for recent games for also giving bad units *some* level of personality and supports
The art, design, sound, etc. Are the flavor. The inconveniences (weak units, fog of war, desert maps, etc.) provide the texture.
I have a weakness for the GBA female archers, namely Rebecca and Neimi. Yes, they aren't very good, but there's nothing better than having Sniper Rebecca or Ranger Neimi who have been with you since the very beginning becoming some of your hardest hitting characters. It's characters like Marisa, who I would rather use over Joshua, that join so much later at such a low level that's a problem for me. Or utility characters like Matthew who do join at the beginning and even if you use them on every map, just not match up to Legault, who joins midgame and does the exact same job better because their base stats wind up better and just negate their existence. Serra and Priscilla same deal.
See, I think most of the time, the issue with bad units is that they so often don't get better. I also think most FE6 rebalance patches miss the point of Sophia, for example, but I would still like to rebalance her. My method, though, would be to make her bases _even lower,_ and then give her growths somewhere between FE6 Karel and FE8 Myrrh. Make her hell on wheels to train, moreso than she already is, but make the payoff for actually doing it anyway a druid with all capped stats, rather than a worse version of base Niime or trained Raigh. If anything, she'd be even worse from an efficiency standpoint, but I think she'd also be much more fun to actually use as well.
That's what this really gets at, I think. The problem isn't that some units tend to be very weak initially. The problem is that they so often are not allowed to match or exceed the units that come already strong. Ross, Ewan, and Amelia have the same issue. They have a lot of extra levels to grow, so the devs decided that this meant they needed lower growths so they couldn't snowball too hard, even though that's the entire point of using otherwise really bad growth units. Donnel in Awakening has Aptitude... so his other growths are nerfed, hard, to make up the difference. Nino starts out bad, and never exceeds Pent even if you train her all the way up from nothing. Using units like this makes it feel like IntSys wants there to be a ceiling for how good units can get, and set it at or around where the already-strong units naturally end up. That, more than anything else, is what I'd say is awful design. You do so much to raise them from zero to hero, but they never actually end up reaching hero, because someone thought it was a good idea to kneecap their potential for some reason. Not only is it an enormous amount of effort, but there's _also_ no payoff. Being bad mathematically is fine. Being bad in terms of unit feel is infuriating.
Really enjoy this less scripted kind of video from you, it was super chill :) Also totally agree with the value of weaker units; those times when a destined benchwarmer beats the odds and becomes an MVP are some of the most satisfying moments in the series.
Glad you enjoyed the talking-from-notes style of video. I tend to script when I have something very specific I want to say in as brief a way as reasonably possible, because I tend to ramble a bit when I'm not sticking to my written words, but it's just fun and relaxing to talk about an idea, and I always end up in places that I never would have found had I stuck to a hard script.
i think theres a type of unit who feel bad to use because they are both statistically inferior and have no individual niche. I think this is obviously an outdated concept, but this might be what people mean when they don't like "bad units". I agree with liking the zero to hero gameplay, but they don't always necessarily have to be "bad units". How it was handled in 3h like you mentioned can deliver on that gameplay satisfaction without compromising the units
I think the joy of unit building is part of what turns me off FE10. That game is full of units that feel like they should be training projects - not just the Dawn Brigade, but a lot of the Greil Mercenaries and even Crimean Royal Knights - and yet training them is such a slot, meanwhile the game gives you really strong units on a silver platter. Feels like a lot of work for very little pay off to train someone like Edward or Astrid.
I've had a similar problem with engage, especially on maddening. With a few exceptions, most of your training projects aren't able to really get going until you get lyn and lucina at chapter 11. There's just one small problem, the next 4 chapters the game hands out busted ass units like candy, with insane bases and growths which are as strong. Even worse, the game also guts most of your deployment slots for the next couple chapters, forcing you to bench the scrubs you want to improve, making it even harder for them to catch up.
It also doesn't help that units are all so malleable in engage that very few of them have anything unique to offer, but that's a separate discussion
I feel like FE9 kind of does the later units being better or worse quite well.
Look at Calill, by the time she shows up, it's reasonable that you could have a mage at the same level as her, my most recent playthrough my Ilyana was the exact same level. Now Calill showed up with slightly worse stats than Ilyana, but not bad stats by any means (my Ilyana was kinda blessed) and she shows up with B rank in every type of magic, meaning she can use all siege tomes right away and comes with a Meteor tome. My Ilyana on the other hand has a D in any magic rank that isn't Thunder and only has a B in that herself. But Calill also is forced to use Knives instead of Staves which she doesn't even remotely have the strength for (plus knives icky in PoR) while my Ilyana who I promoted myself uses staves.
So while one has higher stats and access to staves. The other has higher magic ranks and slightly lower stats.
The units that start showing up later on in FE9 don't feel directly inferior to your earlier units or directly superior, many of them feel different enough where it's more in the players hands of "Do I value staves or higher magic ranks?" When it comes to replacing the units, not "This unit is objectively better/worse than the unit I have now" there are some exceptions yeah, Shinon is an oddity but not unusable and one of only two archers in PoR. But it does feel like the units you start getting after awhile aren't built just to automatically replace earlier units but to potentially replace them, they give convincing arguments sure but it's not a definitively better choice and I like that.
(Also yay my comment got featured!)
Bad units are so much fun. Probably my favorite playthrough I ever did of FE7 ended with me soloing the final chapter with Bartre & Karla. I’ve beaten FE7 dozens of times and I will never forget that playthrough
There are 3 things that makes me like training weak units.
1 unique thing (quality, event, etc)
2 game system
3 availability
Let me show some example.
FE6 Sophia (Like):
The whole idea of escorting a unit to get a rare guiding ring makes me interested.
Then we have ch 14x. A boring chapter. I could warp skip, but isn't reliable, so what I can do is training Sophia with fast Fae support. Then bench Sophia in ch15, and deploy in ch16 to promote with guiding ring from the secret shop.
We have 1: ch14 rewards. 2 support 3 ch14x training arc and 16 guiding ring
Engage Alfred (Dislike):
Alfred has an interesting system to work (Marth's Mercurius and Sigurd) and good availability, but I don't feel worth training when his stats is between Chloe and Louis, feels mid even after good level ups, and his personal class is bad
FE5 Marty and Dalsin (Like):
Marty has 1: his high con stat. 2: scrolls access in c8 onwards. 3:good chapters to train (1 to 3)
Dalsin has 1: brave axe access indoors in Manster, 2: ced scroll to use in ch5. 3: available in most of the game
FE8 Amelia (Dislike), Ross and Ewan (Like):
Amelia lacks interesting gameplay quality and is too easy to train, so she doesn't give me a challenge.
Ross can be a berserker, but my favorite way to train him is supporting with Garcia (the fast support in FE8 +4 points per turn)
Ewan has summon.
Engage Anna (like):
I dislike the idea of reclassing her to a magic class, because she loses her charm of having good magic growth in a physical class with radiant bow access.
FE11 Roshea and Matthis (Like):
D rank lances, opportunity to grind it to C using Javelin against 1 range boss, and forged ridersbase
FE7 Nino (Dislike):
FE7 hard mode deploy slots. Not going to bench one unit I was using to train Nino.
3H Mercedes Caspar (whatever):
they have those 3 things that makes me want to use a unit, but I use everyone in house, it doesn't make much difference if they are weak or not.
TRS most units (Like):
Probably the reason I use most units in TRS is I have the opportunity to use them due to split group like Radiant Dawn Part 4.
How is Mercedes a bad unit?
@@thiago292Mercedes sucks
I made a post in a Discord server somewhere that I was hoping to reference, but I can't find it, so... going off of memory here.
Something that bothers me about rebalance patches in older FEs is that the devs, for all their hard work in making the patches, don't really understand what makes a unit either so good or so bad from an optimization standpoint that isn't just pure combat. Marty in Thracia, for instance, has awful stats for a combat unit. 0 base skill and speed? How are you supposed to do anything with this guy?? Well, his saving grace is his massive 15 constitution. Thracia has a Capture mechanic, where if you have higher con than the enemy, if you bring them down to 0HP, you capture them and can take their weapons, staves, items, what have you. Items are expensive in Thracia, so it's the best way to quickly amass a lot of weapons and very useful staves. Marty's 15 con means that he can capture a lot of different units, and thus help keep your supplies topped up. That doesn't mean Marty is a great combat unit (far from it), but that he is still a very useful one to deploy from time to time. It's similar to thieves, where they tend to have weak combat, but can open doors and chests and nick items off of enemies. Karin is good to use if there's a faraway shop or village that she can reach quicker than your other units. Every unit has a role to fill. Some are killing machines, others are healers, some are good tanks, and others are utility focused. It's your job as the player to figure out what you have at your disposal, and what you need to clear the map. All the units I mentioned have really poor combat, but they still contribute to the player in meaningful ways. And that's where I think rebalance patches fail, because they are ONLY balancing for combat. Which is one (important, true) of many different aspects to a Fire Emblem game's roster.
Great video!
15:15 While I understand that not knowing what will happen creates tension and is definitely an important part of the fire emblem experience (hell, so many experiences are enjoyed more with a lack of knowledge), FE is not a casino.
FE is a strategic series. Strategy requires you to think your moves carefully, both in the short and long term. To figure out and execute the best plan possible to accomplish any given objective.
Puzzles don't require rng. The fun comes in wrapping your mind around the subject and finding a solution. This too is important in FE, since maps come with a limited number of units, weapons, movement ranges, etc.
The randomness of the game comes in the shape of how units hit each other, for how much damage (crits), and how strong yours get in comparison to the enemy. This makes it so games are replayable, since your units will be different each time and face different odds.
The randomness is not only there to change every experience, but to create a new system the player needs to engage with. They have to deal with the probability of death. This is, to reduce it as much as possible, ideally to zero.
Perhaps my point may be clearer now. The games are constantly asking the player to reduce the probabilities of losing as close as possible to zero. The game introduces risk so that you attempt to outsmart it, to overcome it through your deliberate action.
FE doesn't want you to gamble, it wants you to strategise. Otherwise you'd bang your head against the rng wall until the best outcome happened.
Risk is there to be reduced. The randomness exists so you attempt to eliminate it. This is the only way to interact with these games. Gambling is passive.
I made a similar comment on the Roshea video but I can't state enough how much I love bad units existing as an additional challenge and lore stuff, it's just one of the many things modern fire emblem has thrown away in an attempt to appeal "a wider audience" that clearly isn't there judging from Engage's sales. But as others said I believe it's not good if a Unit is suppose to be good in the lore or design, but is actively shit because it's deceptive. Rinkah is the number one example I can think of where her stats and growths don't match her design. With that said I'm perfectly okay with a character that looks and acts like a Doofus being good like Makalov if that is the entire point of the character, in these aspects I enjoy when you can't judge a book by it's cover.
Yeah, for awhile I used to think it was better for the cast to be more "balanced" and for every unit to be usable, but now I'm craving for more dynamism and texture in the cast. Give me a few overpowered brutes and a load of average Joes next time, IS!
I agree to some extent for sure - not everything has to be super strong in exactly the same ways. The only way to make a 'perfectly balanced' game is to have every unit be totally identical, but that doesn't make for a very fun game. I do however think its important to distinguish 'weak/strong' versus 'good/bad design'. There are some weak units which are well designed and deserve to exist in their state, but some weak units are so badly designed it does actually diminish from the gameplay experience.
I think people overplay how bad some units are as well. Theres very few units that ive used and thought to myself "wow this dude is absolutly worthless"
The only units I've ever absolutely refused to even try to train were Sophia in FE6 and Bantu in FE12. All the rest I either have trained once before or I didn't train but did so because I just didn't want to, not because I thought they were too difficult or annoying to train.
I think a more accurate description is: bad units that can be good is good for Fire Emblem.
Cause the existence of bad units that can't be good is just annoying.
Not necessarily. Bad units that are USABLE are good for Fire Emblem. They don't have to become good, they just have to have at least one opportunity to serve a useful purpose. That could be in being a valuable trainee that gets good, but it could also be in being a bad unit at a time where you have very few units so even the worst units have a chance to do SOMETHING.
The worst fate a unit can have is being sent straight to your roster without ever touching the map, and a LOT of units suffer from this.
@@MythrilZenithbasically characters just need to be usable and have a reason to exist even if that reason is just to be a filler or sub.
@@MythrilZenith I see your point, bad units that are usable but never good generally add something to the game, but they themselves tend not to be liked by the player base.
I personally usually get pissed off when I try to use these units long term, more often than not.
Truly bad units create some of the funniest moments in any fire emblem playthrough. I’ll never understand the whole “I hate this game because so many units are bad” mentality. The worse the unit is the funnier the experience of training them becomes and the more rewarding it feels when they actually become capable.
Give me broken units and give me useless units. Having a game where all units are viable/roughly equally good in a general sense is a death sentence for strategy as well as unit feel.
If you only play a game one time this may not be a big deal, but any repeat playthrough where the units aren’t drastically different is extremely samey and boring
FE6 in a nutshell, and to a different extent FE12. Most of those units are easy to call "filler garbage" but it's the weird mix of filler you fall in love with or struggle through with that ends up feeling far more special than "Every unit is basically just as good as everyone else" like Engage.
Except that in FE is trivially easy to train bad units, every map have boxable archers, most maps have abusable bosses and so on. And in most games with forges you cna just craft a monstruosity that don't care for the player stats.
The problem with units like Amelia is not just that she is bad, but that she play exactly like Franz after you did a tedius activity for half an hour. And Franz himself just play like Seth after a few maps anyway. I suppose Amelia at least has general i guess, but how different that is compared to any infranty unit with good 1-2 range?
Now compare with, say, Arthur from Shining Force 1. He is the only cavalier in that game that can cast magic at all, even if it come late and is gimmicky as hell, but at least is something i just cannot do with Pelle or Mae or whatever. To me this is a bad unit worth using, someone that actually play differently than the good unit in significant ways. FE do that on occasion(say, Marty or Timerra) but nowhere near enought.
FE in general do a bad job at making units different from each other. Benchmarks are generally low enought that in most games every combat unit double, every combat unit ORKO generics, every combat unit survive about 3 or 4 rounds of combat and so on. I have never seen a strategy RPG where units blend together as much as GBA FE. And when everyone blend together the added tedium of using a bad unit just does not add much. FE is just good at hiding it with dopamine for a while.
growth units are always fun to me i mean sure its great to get a really good unit ready to go right away but ever since i first played this series like 10 or so years ago i always enjoyed bad or ok units that become great having zero to hero units will always be one of my favorite parts of these games
*Advance Wars* music? In a Fire Emblem video? It's more likely than you think.
I will say, Conquest has some pretty bad units that can fill this role. Building units like Nyx and Benny for long term and being able to patch up their weaknesses is nothing short of an art form lol.
Example: Sniper Nyx (A+ Mozu) with Lucky 7, Vantage/LnD (S Odin), and Air Superiority being supported by Corrin with Supportive to reach 100% Hit rates while sweeping Chapter 24 with Shining Bow.
And, Benny with the Azura S-support to reclass to Falcon Knight (or Kinshi Knight lol) and being able to patch up his Spd and get him to... actually double every Conquest enemy including Ryoma in Chapter 25.
These builds take a ton of conscious effort just to make these units good, it's very much like training projects from other FE games. And there's lots of other bad units in the game (some much more arguable than others) like Flora or Gunter that can also be potential projects.
Shoutout to the Days of Ruin OST in the background. Banger music.
When playing fire emblem games, I tend to look at tier lists, who's considered good and bad. I'll often try to make a bad unit or two good. And it's funny investing a lot of time in them for them to still be mid at best, and have to think "Should I keep going?"
There are so many things to say and comments all already have a lot of good stuff in them, I'm just gonna put some random thoughts. Great point about 3 houses and it's whole system being based on unit growth. Even now when I know I can use my jagens and don't little timmy them out they barely do anything for the whole game. They get benched pretty quick and are just litteraly an emmergency button. In general I have a huge issue with prepromotes (looking at you engage midgame cast). I also remember when I introduced a friend to fire emblem via FE8 and they went from loving seth to almost benching him because he made the game boring.
I never found interest in the hyper optimization side of Fire Emblem, I get the fun people can get out of it but it's not my cup of tea, I want to unga bunga with units I made able to unga bunga. This is what I loved when I played FE8 back then I could start a playthrough and decide to use anyone and they would be fun (yes, even forde.) I replayed awakening (in hard though lmao) recently and allowed myself to grind slightly and it was a lot of fun because I just wanted my robin to be a berserker and when you distribute exp towards more people than you can deploy you'll have a lot of stuff to experiment and play arround with. It only got to the "boring awakening part when one unit is too good and deals with everything" towards like 95% completion so I very much had the time to have fun with the game.
In the end fire emblem good, lots of depth in its simplicity, many ways to enjoy it
Everytime Finn's theme from Dark Conflict comes on, you know you're going to have a good time.
Amelia was my favourite unit in Sacred Stones. I particularly like the affinity system in Fire Emblem, so watching her relationship develop with Franz at the same time the two of them developed into my frontline heavy hitters was very satisfying.
I ended up liking the two of them so much that I read my wsy through a 185k word story about the two of them, and it was a very good read. No Longer Alone by Pureauthor if people are interested.
My take on this is rather twofold, first often use the most efficient method is actualy the easiest method of play and is boring. To see this just play early sacred stones where you throw seth at everything and one where you dont deploy seth and which one is activly engaging it certainly isnt the seth one.
The big issue i have with bad units is marissa, in the same game she has a title is known throughout the world and she is worst at base than josh, has worse growths and despite all this a cool character, and can activly mach them in suppurts. Like what. Its these mid game to late game units who are supposedly very good in universe but are tashtier that get me mad.
Yeah I clicked into this video fully expecting it to talk about how units like arden and wendy were necessary, but it is only talking about growth units with low base. I never considered them to be bad units in the first place.
Absolutely fantastic video
FE should always have weak units so the players can protecc them.
Sophia 💜
Question: the scouring made elibe inhabitable by dragons right? Is it canon that Sophia is weak because shes living in a world thats toxic to her kind?
I don't actually know enough about Elibe canon to answer that. It's possible though?
Actually, I think the reason elibe was toxic to Ninian and Nils is because they spent most of their lives beyond the dragons gate, whereas the Arcadian dragons and Sophia lived on elibe, so while Ninian and Nils are thrust into a different environment, Sophia has always lived in it.
Doesn't explain how Ninian suddenly has a shortened lifespan at the end of the game if she has an A support with Eliwood though. It was never brought up beforehand.
@@sauce4279she had rapid-onset terminal parentitis (unrelated to being a dragon)
No, that’s some FE7 retcon bs. Though Sophia is a very inexperienced fighter in lore, I think her support with Igrene touches on this.
That's why I'm hoping for a FE7 remake, so that they can rewrite some of the details to make it more consistent with FE6. Sadly though, even if we DO get an FE7 remake, I don't think that would happen.
I find the bad units endearing ❤ like when I think of past FE games the bad units are somehow some of the most memorable characters.
Starting a fire emblem video, with a theme from the last "advance wars" game (outside of reboot camp) feels really weird
All recruit were my first option to be honest and Ross was my berserker Amelia my paladin and Ewan my summoner tryed with him haha
This is part of why I find games like Three Houses less interesting. I don't feel like I'm picking units anymore, just classes.
The issue with FE6 is not that is has bad units, many games do benefit from having bad option, but the bad option must be bad for an in-universe reason too. I am perfectly fine with Alfred being worse than Kagetsu, the former is dying of the Engage version of cancer and lives in Firene, a pacifist country (Flowerland as Nelucce says), while the latter fought multiple battles and is part of the Ivy trio, the top fighters in Elusia, a country used to fighting. I love how Tobin while not bad is gonna be outclassed by the other villagers and not a very good choice for Thabes, he is meant to be the loser.
The problem rises when people who are competent in canon get shafted gameplay wise. Why does Wendy, a knight who trained a lot, have Amelia-tier stats? Why is Eliwood, who won as many sparring matches as Hector did, so mediocre in every important stat? Why is (Rev) Odin, a guy who survived two wars and possibly beat Sumeragi (who clapped Ryoma mind you), so trash?
The awesome feeling of unlocking the winner character can also be created without making everything else so comically worthless. The early gang in Conquest is really competent and yet it doesn't undermine the feeling of getting Camilla and Xander. The Black Eagles are all good-to-alright units yet the magic of getting my hands on Jeritza is still there.
Long story short, it's good to have weak units as long as there is a valid reason for how weak they are. No one really rages on Yubello for having non existant stats, but I don't blame people for being annoyed at the "strong and buff" Rinkah for being, well, not strong at all. My favorite example are the prinnies from Disgaea. These guys are the bottom of the barrel, pathetic penguins who canonically get punished by returning at level 1 because of a single mistake. Of course these suckers are bad, they are the laughing stock of the series.
That's fair. Bad units can be bad, good units can be good, but when the gap between them is SO high, ESPECIALLY when it makes no sense to be that high, it does bring into question a lot of overall decisions.
While I feel there needs to be SOME levels of suspension of disbelief when it comes to unit stats (it would be very bad for Odin, Severa and Owain to join with late-game Awakening quality stats and skills, for instance), there definitely is a level of dissonance felt with some of these units, to the point where people ask "Okay how the HECK are YOU that important?"
FE 6 Cecilia is another prime example of a character who, in universe is a really big deal. But is incredibly mediocre when you get her.
Unfortunately, the awesome might of the heaven-sent savior, Odin Dark, must be sealed, lest it tear spacetime asunder, so that one's actually lore accurate
@@Yarharsuperpirate
Would have been cool if she had awesome growths to fix her poor bases to communicate the fact that she needs to recover from the Zephiel crit
@@YarharsuperpirateDude Cecelia is a great unit. 8 move staff user that requires no investment? Yes please. She’s pretty bad at combat though, but there’s more to being Mage General than combat in universe.
I agree with all your points! as ive only played sacred stones I love the content! 1 dollar might not be much but i don't mind supporting! take my dollar forever :P
/engage/three houses recently
Much appreciated! Thank you so much
I think this:
Generally speaking. I use what units i like story/character/looks wise. i typically ignored FE8 trainer units or Fates kid units. And just used who i liked. Reguardless of good or bad unless there stats fell off so hard they became useless.
Donnel is still one of my favorites across the series, such a tryhard that actually sees his effort payoff in a visceral way. Also his S support with Olivia was top tier 👏
I love how he's talking about how he doesn't like rng manips and stuff like that, but he does an arrow wiggle to advance the rn (Not hating, thought it was funny)
FE7 lords only BBD sounds insane
Good job
17:57 I know this is just background footage, but did Nino seriously just get doubled with BOLTING?!
@@MercuryA2000 base nino vs base Ursula on HHM, that's what happens.
@@MythrilZenith That... Is horrifying. The one shot I had no problems with but bolting should never strike twice.
Ive been arguing for years that having incredibly shit units is important to the game and that 3h and engage having everyone be at worst decent is not good design. They bring discussion on just how much they suck, what it takes to use them well, or another context they might kot be so bad in. Its boring if we just have 30-40 haars
I've once heard it said that a game of all boss fights is just as much of a monorail as a game that's all grind. If unit quality is a type of texture for Fire Emblem, then we lose out when all units are "balanced."
Honestly I’ve gotten to the point where I ban pre promotes in fe 7 because of how broken they are and they tend to be boring to use.
engage anna is just blatantly not a bad unit though?
How dare you ilyana slander
Honestly she's not even that bad I just had her picture already downloaded and wanted another cute mage girl in the thumbnail. She's more there to represent all Tellius mages having their fair share of issues as a whole.
Amelia is one of my favorite characters and I always ship her with Franz. I don't really see those types of trainees as bad units. I see characters that are mediocre always as the bad units. They don't have good bases or growths and are just kind of there as fodder replacements in case you let the better version of them die. I never use those characters and I don't really see anybody else using them either. Mostly older FE games have these. I think FE5 has the most.
Yes i always train Arden to level 30 and marry him to one of the fair ladies of jugdral.
Yes i make sure to train Marty to his true potential as a Warrior who can maul down anyone with armour.
Yes i love using Rebecca and think she's a good unit.
Yes i think that Amelia is good in general.
Yes i love using Norton and Billford on Tearring saga.
How did you knew?
You didnt train Sophia, you are not our friend...
Hard disagree, Fire Emblem is just bad at making interesting bad units due to how simple the combat system is in most games.
To me a good bad unit is something like Kiwi in Shining Force 2 or Osto from Der Langrisser(maybe not "bad" but certainly the overall worst commander) wich have a number of actually unique features nobody else really has and lead to them being played in unique ways. Most Fire Emblem bad units are just bland. Occassionally you have a marty but 99% of the bad units are just "good units but with worse stats that play exactly like good unit once enought favoritism has been given". Hell even marty is kinda that once you glue the speed scrolls to him.
And much more, i hate how formulaic the game is about it. Can we a game where wyvern lords are utterly unusable trash and swordmaster is the best class for a change? Can we have a game where the gordin and the est are the best units in the game and the jeigan is worthless? Most games when they notice balance problem try to correct them between games and i feel FE barely try. Hell, if i am ever making a romhack i am 100% going to make so the unit viability is upside down.
Personally, I believe that having "gem" units dampens replay value. It's the same principle in Pokemon where everyone ends up using Lucario, Garchomp, Staraptor and Luxray on their team. If you make scrub units less bad and a bit more workable, the incentive to use good units would still be there, but it would make the worse units a bit more worth using.
That's not comparable at all. Luxray and Staraptor are used because they are quite literally the first Pokemon you encounter. Both of them are also the most convenient of those types you can get ahold of. You don't have a lot of options.
Lucario and Garchomp are not staples. You could argue Garchomp as its pre-evolution can be found somewhat early (though most people are likely to miss it if they repel through caves). You don't get access to Lucario until halfway through the game... as a level 1 Riolu egg. Anyone using Lucario is using him because they _want_ to, not because he's super good.
this is a perfect explanation of why i dont like the modern fire emblems as much. they basically have made the games to where anyone you want can become excellent because there are 1 billion grind options and gimmicks that it if you really love x they will carry and that is annoying because it wrecks the narrative. you need narrative in a story driven game. and these modern official fe titles do this and just say "screw story' and i hate that so much.
Yeah. IMO all units should pass the usability threshold, but being able to make any unit into a hard carry is pushing it.
"FE6 has a lot of units that are not very good in general"
Percival: Thank god I was in paladin then
Always having Dimitri wreck shop. And Ashe is just okay for the whole game.
I generally have had good luck with trainees. By the end of FE8 Ross and Ewan are gods. Amelia I dont find a good niche for
oh yeah completely
like after you've felt out the game to figure out who you like and once you've got some solutions to overall optimization so you know what all tools are available to apply, that's when you can really get to the meat of it: who do you want to optimize around? cause optimal optimization is something you dont even really need to play the game to do and runs out of interest quickly. like everyone knows probably the 'best' answer to 8 is just let seth take care of it. if that's all you care about you're done playing the game without loading it. scuse me if id rather shuffle more numbers around than that, lol.
Nice Advance Wars: Days of Ruin music.
Number goes up
The only thing I feel necessary to disagree with is the claim that optimization takes out the fun. I have the most fun putting together spreadsheets before even making a save file. Other people find that boring. Different people enjoy different styles. While the elitist optimizers are wrong in saying it's the best way to play, so are the people who think optimization takes the fun out of it.
Play the game how you want to play it. It's a game.
I think bad units are bad when they seem pointless. Like, if you have a bad unit early that is then replaced it feels better than if you have a good unit first and then you get a unit that is the same but worse. If the unit is bad then it should have an unique niche, a unique mechanic, or even just have an interesting personality or story. The unit should be "fun" to use which can be many things. But I do think I should want to use the unit, and if they aren't strong, then they need something else.
Ultiamtely that was my issue with FE6. There are just way too many units that just felt pointless to me. Many (most?) of them were weak, but that was not even what I noticed the most. I noticed how their character design was boring and uninspired or how they had a nothing personality with support conversations that make Awakening S supports feel inspired. If the character is boring and weak why are they even in the game? Just to be filler for if better units die? I don't find this a compelling enough justification.
Honestly I've never cared much for replay value in most games, so random growths have never appealed to me. The whole point of Fire Emblem is caring about the units you're using in an SRPG, and random growths feel counterproductive to that sometimes, because if I get attached to a unit by their story or design or general personality, and then they have poor growths, it's de-incentivizing me from using them over "good units". If this happens multiple times, it can spoil the game quite a bit. I think at the end of the day it comes down to preference, but for me, I think you can implement fixed growths in a fire emblem game so that you can use the units you like, while still making some units have better bases / higher growths to reflect which units are supposed to be good and also carving out a unique niche for so called "bad units" that the "good units" can't do as well, which opens up strategic value in using them (example, making a unit really good at fighting mages and not much else, making them "bad" in terms of versatility but good in that specific instance)
Edit: It's also a bit disingenuous to say "ruin the fun for yourself" because "fun" is different for everyone, and tbh I find more fun in finding and using optimal strategies than leaving everything to luck. This is a tactical RPG at the end of the day after all
Hector absolutely wouldn't be amazing without weaker units
The problem I have is, "What is a bad unit?" Without clarifying what makes a unit bad, it is pointless to discuss why they are important. Considering how you are talking about units, you are likely talking about units being bad in speedrunning and LTCs... which means units that need investment. The more investment, the worst they are considered. I ask this because I don't think this is a very good argument. Speedruns and LTCs aren't normal play. Units being bad in those playstyles doesn't tell anyone how good they are in normal play as they play completely different (feeding, ignoring bonus objectives, skipping through as much of the map as possible). Most units aren't going to be good in this environment. They weren't designed for it.
Why do we need bad units? Show me a unit that is bad in normal play. At worst, units outclass each other.
@@lunamaster123 You must be new around here. I use the generally accepted nomenclature of the community to discuss these things, but I am in NO WAY a proponent of the idea that LTC or "efficiency" is the only way to play. I merely used this concept because this is how units are traditionally rated, and I wanted to tackle the concept head-on.
I talk about this concept in more detail in another video, but there's an idea of a "usability threshold" that a unit needs to exceed and stay above in order to participate. The vast, VAST majority of units are at or above that threshold at base, and only fall below if you do not touch them for a significant amount of time. Even units that traditionally are difficult or frustrating to use and see little long term payoff are largely capable of living above that usability bar.
The rare exception is someone like FE12 Bantu, who is bad with little payoff in lower difficulties because of the changes in dragon mechanics without personal stat buffs to compensate from fe3 to fe12, but in higher difficulties becomes literally impossible to use outside of specifically cornering an archer, and even then he will never grow to not be 1-rounded by almost any enemy. This is a fault in the game's approach to difficulty, yes, but it creates a situation where the unit is effectively unusable, one of very, VERY few in the series.
Fe6 has a lot of 'rebalance' hacks/patches because the game is unfun in really obvious, dumb ways, only some of which relate to the units being bad. The part where you can just steal ideas from FE7/FE8 makes it easy to accomplish at least marginal improvements, too.
They are MY bad units
Cumulation of events?
I like training FE12 Matthis if only because he's so pathetic in-story. Like, Makalov-level pathetic, and he doesn't even get the girl (his sister, which he has clearly incestuous overtones towards) in the end.
The 30 FPS footage is killing me
I never ever use bad units unless they are the Lords or my thief 🤷🏾♂️
What FE6 is, is bad. It is one the worst FE games imo. They did not know what to do after Kaga left and just made a bad game. I like some of the characters and designs though. I hope in 20 years when they finally remake it they can turn it into a really good game.