@@LoudWaffleI don’t count any of those paralogues as canon, I consider them to be just the same thing as the creature campaign from fe8 where you just get to play with the characters for fun.
This video coming out 15 minutes after I had to put down my copy of FE6 because I lost someone to Same Turn Reinforcements was a sign from Kaga himself.
During the only playthrough I did of Awaking I actually ripped the game out of the DS and threw it across the room when a fighter ambush spawn killed the dancer on the map you fight the weird trickster king.
This is why I always use fireemblemwod to see exactly where and when ambush spawns are for whatever game their in because my god it is the most rage inducing thing.
I'll preach this until the day I die but FE6 ambush spawns are way overblown by the fandom. More often than not they're telegraphed through structures such as stairs and forts or otherwise you're given warning ahead of time of when/where they'll appear via cutscene. Zone based reinforcements are BS but aside from Ch21 being the most prominent example they're not super common. Awakening and 3H by far have worse instances of ambush spawns, Cherche's map being a standout example because they surround you on an enclosed map and 3H Ch5 being quite infamous.
I think an interesting way to present reinforcements is numerical only tells. The game lets you know where enemies are about to spawn, but not what the enemies are. That way, you have incomplete information, but can still try to plan for it. The same could work for fog of war, you see shapes in the fog but don't know the actual umit type and threat level until you get close.
The issue about the tells is the devs now have to be very through about what they're doing. I played Banner of yhe Maid, and it has footprints telling from where the ambush spawns come... But often that isn't the case and they just come from wherever they want. I know this is telling someone to do their job, but they could make their job easier b6 simply having normal spawns. ... The silhouettes in the fog is actually a neat idea, though I still prefer no FoW at all.
FE being mostly a war setting, i always found it odd a recon unit/character doesn't exist, something that gives you a heads up or marks the map for reinforcements, allies, weather ect before they come, instead FE just gives vague dialogue that notions the event happening. The closest thing that comes to a heads up other than the story foreshadowing it, is Jaigen or a grandma Fortune teller who says limited information for a map that can be ripped off in like 3 seconds.
But i will say that in a lot of scenarios having a detailed reconnaissance would be hard to explain, since a lot of FE games are about the Lord rushing to an objective or being in a unpredictable situation with one day skirmishes unlike a slow drawn war. Example: being in prison, being ambushed Or anything magical.
gaiden and echoes have a charmingly janky solution to reinforcements - the maps are gigantic and enemies that you're supposed to fight later are on the other side of them rather than near you, making them more literally reinforcements but without any information problems. However, it also has witches with warp, instantly ruining this idea as a comedy joke
I actually think cantors are a decent way of doing reinforcements as well. They're interactive, you know what they're going to do, it's no major issue to plan around them
The feeling of unfairness pretty much boils down to player agency. Fire emblem is driven by player desicions and rewards good strategy and planning. Anbush spawns, when handled poorly take that away. If you got no indication about them, you either know they are coming because you played the map already or you are screwed. Same with everything revolving heavily around rng. If your strategy boils down to either reload the map or pray, then that's no strategy at all. Newer games try to alleviate that a lot by giving players hints pre battle on where reinforcements appear and by ging them the ability to rewind time.
I was going to comment, but the like button ambushed me and I reflexively counter-attacked instead, spending the last of my "Silver Keyboard 1/30"! Seriously though, really good video, I always appreciate how deep these dives have always felt quite thoughtful about the mechanics!
Fog of War is a big one, and not because the mechanic is inherently bad - Fire emblem just refuses to do what is necessary to make the mechanic work well. Entire genres make use of the mechanic without having it feel like crap. However the combination of it only affecting the player, the fact that many play as if no unit is expendable, and the fact that it rarely uses the mechanic in a truly interesting way means that all it really does is exist to frustrate the player and not much else.
fire emblem three houses marienne paralogue because of the lack of information, I couldn't see how one of the beasts was in position to attack my characters, and I had a few characters in range of the beast that would have gotten one shotted by the beast, trying to divine pulse back did not save my units and I had to let manuella die to progress
Full video on fairness in Fire Emblem and yet zero FE6 mentions. Curious. I actually did see that Reddit post you mentioned at the start and I was one of the few people that didn't cite Lunatic+ or Thracia as the most unfair FE games in the series, instead citing FE6's inconsistency in information, constant lack of reliable tools, and AI shenanigans that can result in a player doing quite literally everything in their power to plan for a map and utilize all the tools in their possession the way they should be used and still be forced into a no-win situation. I think it's kind of funny how you mention that C16 awakening is unfair when it at least tells you literally anything whereas 11A in FE6 just goes "Yeah, no, FE6 hates you, here's completely unwarned Echidna ambush spawns that can kill most of your units." Thinking about ambush spawns has just made me feel like ambush spawns just don't need to exist in Fire Emblem games. If you have a reinforcement that just spawns 1 turn earlier but is not an ambush spawn, realistically speaking, what are we losing here? People that know where the reinforcements spawn can spawn camp and kill them even IF they're ambush spawns, so that's not really a great argument against it, and what you get in return is some form of mild guarantee that the player will have the ability to react to information and at least try to get themselves out of a pickle instead of potentially dooming them. I've seen middle grounds suggested like some hacks that spawn in future reinforcements as green units that can't be attacked and then activate next turn so you know where the reinforcements will come but can't camp them, and while I do applaud these efforts, I just don't think it's that big of a deal to take out ambush spawns entirely. Another thing that can feel really unfair is when maps just give enemies things the players could never hope to utilize. This ranges from extremely obvious stuff like Felix having Darting blow as an enemy when he can't get access to it normally to every fe6 lategame map spamming status staves and siege weaponry against you in positions where you can't realistically do it to the same effect back to them. Enemy quality is also a big thing here; I feel like if I'm playing an FE game where the enemies outnumber me 3 to 1 (AKA most FE games) and I would rather take any generic enemy than most of my player army because the enemies are that good, it just results in (for lack of a better word) hopelessness and frustration that no matter how hard you work on your army you'll never be as good as the nepo babies the enemies spit out like a factory.
To mention fe6 I would have to play it again I agree on ambush spawns though, I can't think of an ambush spawn I wouldn't rather it just be a regular reinforcement that spawns one turn earlier. There are ambush spawns that I don't mind (like awakening ch 9), but I still think they would be better if they weren't ambushes.
Arcadia as a whole is more unfair than any ambush spawns in any game. Which is funny because Arcadia doesnt have any reinforcements i would call unfair
I agree with you on ambush spawns, but I disagree that it's unfair that the enemy gets access to things that the player can't access or that are significantly less beneficial for the player. The player gets access to plenty of things that enemies rarely or never get to use such as supports, rescue, dancers, the warp staff, tonics and game-specific mechanics like shove in the Tellius games, pair-up in Awakening and combat arts in Echoes and Three Houses. Enemies also have significantly less skills, until Awakening non-boss enemies rarely got access to skills that aren't innate to their class at all. This is especially relevant in FE4 because it means enemies are rarely able to double or crit. Even on Engage maddening, enemies will only have one non-class skill, meanwhile your units will have a personal skill, up to two inherited skills and up to 3 sync skills even while not engaged. I also think the enemy being stronger than the player in the lategame is fine because the player is expected to be smarter than the enemy. Granted, I'm not a fan of Binding Blade in particular because it takes this idea too far, I think the player units (at least the ones that don't get hard mode bonuses) are too weak, and IS seems to have designed the game assuming that the player will utilize supports, which are mindless and time-consuming to build.
@@davey_rulez7301 you’re right about the lack of access to things to some extent, but I think it really goes over the line when the balance is shattered and the stuff the player can do that the enemy can’t is far outnumbered by what the enemy can do that the player can’t
I will have to make a counterpoint on ambush spawn. If they appear one turn earlier that means you, the player, has the first strike on them. That means that if you know or can guess where they will spawn you can camp the place and just murder them as they appear. If I remember right, FE7 and 8 are good examples, often reinforcement come in the form of one or two units in a fort, so you can just wait by the fort and farm for exp. The reinforcement then changes from a danger to an exp piñata. Don't get me wrong, I hate badly done ambush spawns (I am going through fe3h on maddening right now and some maps kinda suck because of it). But I do think they have their space in the design of a map. Not every reinforcement need to be ambush spawn (and I would rather they weren't) but in certain situations I do think there is value.
I feel like I was one of the few people who really didn't mind the ambush spawns in Three Houses Maddening, and that was because of divine pulse. The game had us playing someone who others see as a tactical genius who seemed to have a sixth sense on how to avoid or overcome the enemy's traps. So, to me, it honestly made sense that Byleth would fall for these traps, watch his friends die, reset time, then warn everyone about what's coming and look like a genius to everyone around him. Just in general, divine pulse made ambush spawns feel more like 'a few mandated uses of divine pulse per chapter just to keep you honest and make sure you earn your reputation as a genius' rather than a 'gotcha and game over' moment, so they didn't bother me at all there. I also didn't mind ambush spawns in Thracia... most of the time. Usually they were either pretty predictable (most were on a repeated loop), coming from a place that obviously might spawn reinforcements, heavily foreshadowed by the dialogue, or placed in a way that made perfect sense with the game's story. The most unfair element of that game was probably its tendency to place bolting/meteor mages in dark levels, which was ridiculous, but most of the time I found myself just being like, 'yeah, you know, based on the story Leif probably would have lost a couple soldiers there, the ambush spawns check out.' In other games I've been more frustrated by ambush spawns, and I know I would have been really upset with Three Houses ambushes if divine pulse weren't around.
See, Divine pulse made me actually hate ambush spawns even more. Or at least the game design of three houses being a game where you're supposed to pulse every time a character dies made it more annoying. In a game where you're actually expected to leave characters dead, it's not the end of the world if the occasional setback leaves you with one less character to work with. But in three houses, if a character dies you pulse and do it again because the game isn't designed around the idea that you might leave somebody dead.
@@MegiDolaDyne 3H is probably THE most Ironman-unfriendly game in the series as well, due to the sheer amount of time and resources you need to sink into every unit (so accepting a death costs you a LOT) and the lack of "plug-and-play" replacements. (Recruitments also stop at the start of the timeskip, minus Lysithea in CF but that's only 2 chapters in and she sucks if recruited that way) Later FE games were always designed with the reset playstyle in mind, but 3H also seems to assume you'll be rewinding every death, and not just with its Maddening ambush spawns. I prefer Engage's approach, where every character CAN be customized a lot, but they also all have serviceable-to-amazing base stats and levels for their join-time, aside from the trainees where starting weak is part of their appeal.
I agree, I think divine pulse makes it a lot better since you can go back with the information you have and plan ahead, rather than the ambush spawns feeling cheap
@@MegiDolaDyneIt's really a small minority of players who actually play that way still, modern Fire Emblem meta is to reset after deaths to preserve your units, hence the purpose of Iron man runs
When I played ch11 of Engage the first time, I had to risk a potential killing crit against my favorite unit to keep my mages safe. It was one of the most memorable moments I've ever had in Fire Emblem, and never would've happened if the game hadn't taken me so off guard and taken away the time crystal.
Thanks for basing the discussion of the implied messages of people who say things like "X thing in fire emblem is unfair". Of course like you said, the literal interpretation would be moot because the game is based off of asymmetric sides, so of course things would be unfair. But that's clearly what people aren't discussing on this topic. Not the Fire Emblem community or anything, just in general, I've found people can be really annoying on discourse about games and design when they take the basic literal interpretation of complaints, then make a strawman out of it. If someone says "remove X because it is OP", they probably mean the risk reward is unusually skewed to make less interesting gameplay. And just like here, if someone says something is unfair in Fire Emblem, they mean it's unfair in a frustrating way or an unusually unfair way
Anna's paralogue in FE3H has particularly mean ambush reinforcements. It spawns a bunch of bow knights all at once, and their enormous range is pretty much impossible to handle in a first playthrough
@@LFielding07 I handled it quite well. Although of course I also used glitches to get infinite grinding so I was overleveled as heck for it, but still.
When I say something was unfair, it's normally the game doing something "in bad faith" Like, the game can seem to set you up with all the details, then kinda pull the rug out and surprise you with something there was no real way to prepare for
Man Chapter 11 of Engage was one of my favorite maps from that game. I think it was totally fair: We're warned that we won't be able to return to the Somniel, and the really powerful reinforcements don't spawn in until you've met up with Ivy and the objective is to escape anyway. But I loved the jumpscare it gave me. It was the biggest "oh fuck" I've ever experienced. I'd been hoarding onto my master seals until that point so I felt forced to promote immediately. Alear got one; I didn't know if only Alear needed to escape or if everyone did, but if she died it's game over. Celine got one; I thought Flamme and Jean were horrible units and didn't use them so I relied on Micaiah's ring for healing, and Celine got staves on promotion. The last Seal was a bit tricky to assign. Ultimately I gave it to Alcryst so he'd gain an extra point of movement and I could start him further behind the others. I was almost disappointed to get the Draconic Time Crystal back, but it felt nice having new tools to use.
What's also interesting is that map actually takes mercy on you by having the enemies "cheat" in a bad way: all enemies on that map (besides the bosses, who you aren't supposed to fight) have an invisible skill that stops them critting when initiating combat. I never knew this until I found Triangle Attack's in-depth map info.
@@BigKlingy Could you link that video? Can't seem to find a channel with that name. Searching for "triangle attack" just gives me videos of, well, a triangle attack
@@jedimasterpickle3 It's not a video, it's a website. Search "Triangle Attack engage" and you should find it. Has interactive maps with mouse-over popups for enemy stats/skills on all difficulties. It's where I learned that Normal Mode gives all enemies a hidden "Hit/Avoid -20" skill.
The Justice and Pride mod has the War Room, where you can view tips as well as warning of any surprise ahead in the chapter. I think it would be a good feature.
3:20 this right here is the point I agree with the most. Oftentimes unfairness can really be boiled down to a lack of agency (same turn reinforcements, changing map objectives, recruits that are horrendously underpowered for their debut map, dodgy bosses on thrones, etc.). It’s important to balance out challenge with ways to alleviate said challenge and adapt to the changing battle situation. This way, you are tactically challenged and also feel like the eventual win was your own, leading your units to victory despite the unpredictable circumstances. I feel like Three Houses Maddening is a good example of a mode made with almost no regard to this, as ambush spawns only taking place in that difficulty breaks how you approach most maps in the game. Combined with the enemy strength and numbers (chapter 5 and AM endgame are standout moments) it feels like it was made with the expectation that you use Divine Pulse multiple times to “scout” out ambush spawns and changing map objectives and deal with them after they’ve already happened to you, which kills the pacing. It makes me feel like the game is playing me, not the other way around.
One of the problems 3 houses had is that maddening was an afterthought. Some ambush spawns like hilda spawn right on top of you with little you can do about it
oooh, im SO glad we discussed the tree map in awakening. those, and another similar set of ambush reinforcements on another map, are the REASON i dont play awakening as much. those specific reinforcements.
I feel like my one gripe is reinforcements getting a turn to act as soon as they arrive. Now that's just trial and error bs instead "hey, lemme try to regroup and form a strat"
Exactly. It was same turn reinforcements that made me decide to drop Awakening my first time playing (I also played it like an iron man, sans save wiping.)
@@drmetroid912 That one chapter at the tree is probably worse offender. Like yea, they do give you a warning. But Imma be real, nothing justifies them picking off your units immediately like that.
I just found your videos, and I really like them! As for the topic of reinforcements, my biggest issue is when they seemingly only exist to waste time. I just finished Engage blind on hard mode (I usually only play FE normal bc I want to relax) and the times when the reinforcements annoyed me the most was when they slowed me down. In maps like the seaside village, the snow mountain, and even the final part of the final chapter, I just wanted to be done and every new unit that spawned just meant more time till I got to whoop some boss butt. Like in the seaside village, the tides already slowed me down bc my army only had a few fliers, so I had to keep a few units a few steps behind to watch out for the reinforcements, and then they caught by the tides, making them fall behind even more. The combination of gimmick and reinforcements just slowed my pace down to a crawl and felt more like a nuisance than a challenge to overcome. Same with part 2 of the final battle. I knew I could take down Sombron quickly, but every time a new set spawned I felt my stomach drop as I knew I just had more work to do before I got what I wanted. The story being so bland didn't help, bc at the point seeing the conclusion wasn't a driving factor to seeing it through to the end. It felt the game just wanted to prolong itself, when I just wanted it to be over. But chapter 11's felt fair, like you mentioned bc of the story relevance. Also the fliers that come in at the bottom of the Solm castle map once you start engaging the hounds felt good bc it wasn't too much, you had a good choke point at the hallway, and it felt properly tense and challenging as they put pressure between you and some bosses. Those were just my thoughts coming from a mostly casual fan. A lot of my problems might come from skill issues, but I felt like sharing. Thanks for the videos! I'll be watching a lot more.
Explicit reinforcement previews would be nice, tbh. Some friends and I are nearly done with Gloomhaven, a so-so digital adaptation of a popular tactics board game I am not particularly fond of. But for all my many grumbles with it, when it's going to spawn reinforcements, it shows a ghostly version of the incoming unit on the relevant tile the round before it joins the fray. There would be challenges in adapting it to Fire Emblem, but it'd be a nice touch in allowing ambush spawns without them feeling like a cheap shot 99% of the time. And it makes some diagetic sense -- the unit hasn't reached the map yet, but I can see them coming this way in the distance.
I want to bring up another map from Awakening that really bothered me: Laurent's paralogue. It's in a desert with an oasis (i.e. pond\lake) in the middle. The side objective involves visiting some towns that only appear in a certain order, and they're in the corners of the map. The reinforcements _also_ spawn in the corners of the map, not with a poor warning, but with _no_ warning that I can remember. Not only are you incentivized to meander around the edges of the map to go between the towns, but because of the lake, you're actually _prevented_ from huddling in the middle like you might want to do on the tree map. I cannot stress enough that I _despise_ the same-turn-acting reinforcements. I thought they were exclusive to Lunatic+ but no, they even show up in standard Hard mode! Even in Engage maps where at least once, enemy reinforcements have spawned basically _on top of_ my army, I didn't hate that as much. It really is about player agency.
I swear, that instance is one of the most unfair examples of reinforcements in the series, which is ironic considering that it's supposed to be the game's introduction to them. Unlike the usual turn-based reinforcements, that map waits until you cross an invisible line within the range of the forts to start spawning in the enemies. It wouldn't be so bad if the enemies were relatively weak, but to give one effective weaponry is a bafflingly punishing decision to me.
I don't think I ever had to fight such an uphill battle as the dawn brigade chapter in part 3, I felt robbed when I got control of Micaiah's squad but god damn that defense map was memorable. Like at that point I only played PoR and the GBA games and RD was very rough but that part especially
I think the reinforcements that stuck with me the most as unenjoyable come from Shadow Dragon; there have been some maps with out of the way Forts that seem to infinitely(?) spawn high level Paladins and the like (the map where you have to choose between Arran and Samson comes to mind), and the sheer number of them always struck me as really hard to work with. The best option that I have seen is to place tanky Knights at all of the bottlenecks they come from or even just have units occupy all of those forts for the whole map.
I'd say the middle game is the problem where you are just getting units to level up and or evolve and then the enemy has a a entire army of promoted units. Same issue with pokemon. The developers have the best time with the early map as it's a puzzle more so than s game like awakening where everything is made well same as engage for you to use those limited resources to your advantage Pokemon middle of the game the foes are either too strong or weak
Honestly I don't think it's that complicated. All you have to do is create two points in a game: 1. After this chapter, occasional generic promoted enemies will show up on chapter alongside the majority unpromoted enemies 2. After this chapter, every single enemy is going to be promoted and MAKE SURE YOU GET UNITS ACCORDING TO THAT RULE (Aka after point 1 is when you start getting your occasional prepromote and after point 2 you only get promoted recruits for the rest of the game). If you set this up then it's a pretty obvious warning bell to the player when every unit on the map is promoted and all the recruits you get are promoted that you should have your army promoting by this point.
@@lagspike7763 yeah I can see that working. Make the pre promoted units the bosses so you can feel the danger of one of them and then when your army begins to gain traction in story the enemies start sending some real enemies against you and boom you get more promoted units. Awakening I'd say after lucina is recruited as that opens up the entire game. Engage after the rings get taken and so on.
Turnwheel/Divine Pulse make Ambush spawns completely fair and balanced IMO. I actually think they fit especially well in the context of 3 Houses; since a large part of the story hinges on the MC's divine ability to straight up undo many undesirable outcomes. In practice, the ability to get ambushed, be like "oh shit", rewind time, and then prepare for the exact same ambush takes the IRL experience of "I have knowledge of this event that WILL happen because I'm a real person that has either played the game before or has the internet", and translates it seamlessly into both a gameplay AND storytelling mechanic. In games without rewind mechanics, the "story" that ends up being told through gameplay (when the player restarts, saves, plays the game again, etc) is that the tactician/MC just so happens to be some sort of supreme being of unsurpassed intellect, that is always seemingly prepared for things that they realistically shouldn't be. This often clashes against how the characters are depicted in the story -- since while they're often characterized as intelligent or having extensive tactical training, there's no way they'd have knowledge of SOME things, simply because they're human, after all. In 3 Houses, though, that dissonance is resolved; with Divine Pulse being narratively tied to a literal diety with time powers in game, with an inextricable connection to the MC, their foreknowledge of seemingly unpredictable events is now completely explained in-universe. The Professor always seems to know *exactly* what to do and seems to almost have future-sight.... because they literally *do* know what's about to happen and when. I have mixed feelings on how the feature is implemented in pretty much every other entry in the series, but 3 Houses nails it IMO.
6:16 Ah, the gotcha moments. I absolutely hate the kind of games where not only spawns arrive unannounced, but they spawn even though you're blocking forts/caves/whatever indicates it may be a spawn zone and trap your units instead haha. There's Lunatic, which I love, and then there's bullshit, which is that you're describing. So yeah, had to jump and state it.
The way I see it is that, in a vacuum, these mechanics aren't inherently unfair. In most other games, especially most other RPGs, these mechanics are perfectly acceptable. Enemies that call for reinforcements in Dragon Quest, and especially notably when they don't just call for more copies of themselves, are exciting and fun and I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about them. The problem largely comes from the fact that Fire Emblem, and many tactics RPGs in general really, flip the general rules of RPGs over. Instead of saving the challenge for the boss fights or rare strong enemies and going for a death by a thousand cuts strategy with random encounters like most RPGs, enemies in tactics RPGs are usually much stronger. Everything is a threat to at least one of your units and has to be carefully considered. To compensate for this significant increase in the lethality of what you're facing, the game gives you way more information than normal RPGs. In Dragon Quest, you don't even get to see enemy HP let alone any individual stats. You don't know their weapons, spells, abilities, items, or even what they might drop until you see it happen. In Fire Emblem, all of that is immediately visible, and on most maps, all of it is visible before you even start to play during prep. When those are the initial design considerations for your game and you use them as justification to go very hard against the player, you have to be very careful when reintroducing the mechanics you deliberately cut. You established a new baseline of fairness by giving us all of the information and saying, "the challenge is juggling the volume of information, not guessing about it" and it will inherently feel unfair to at least some people when you go, "actually, nevermind, the challenge is hidden information again". I think the biggest sin is that often times the most unfair things aren't hard when you know what they are. If you get lucky and don't fall for it the first time, you're usually fine. If you get unlucky, you have to restart the map and account for the new information you have now. It's really a one-time deal, or an n-time deal where n is the number of ambush turns. Subsequent playthroughs are way easier if you remember.
One of my favorite “unfair” moments in FE that I continue to remember was the Black Beast fight during my first playthrough of FE3H. I play generally cautiously and defensively so most of the map I am carefully pushing forward and dealing with enemy units at a gentle clip. And then come the end of the map after Miklan has transformed I am panickedly scrambling to do enough damage to this monster whose mechanics I have *never* seen before and whose attacks hit like a truck compared to anything else I have run into. Perfect way to introduce monsters in the game.
The fact, that anyone could complain about unfairness in Engage Chapter 11, when its some of the best gameplay to story integration we have in the series in a game that largely fails to provide a compelling narrative otherwise, is wild to me. They absolutely nailed the "Oh Fuck, im so screwed" moment, we probably all had there. We often dont really appreciate the things we have, until they are taken away. Or in this case even worse, turned against us. But some people apparently only like winning and nothing else
Imo I think having a mix of ambush and non-ambush spawns is the best. I really like ambush spawns when they're placed in areas where the player has no business being at a certain turn count, as it creates more tension, and can act as very good turtling disincentives (FE6 does this a lot, having ambush spawns which spawn where your units start, usually beginning after 10~ turns on a map, meaning there's almost no way they'll ever blindside you unless you're deliberately refusing to interact with the challenge the developers have presented) My favorite non-ambush spawns are when they show up around the boss, once you've entered their territory, as they present multiple ways of being dealt with, as if you're well positioned to defeat the boss and seize, you don't even have to interact with them, whereas if you aren't equipped enough to guarantee you'll be capable of beating the boss during the player phase, you can make use of your player phase to lessen what reinforcements just appeared so they don't immediately defeat anyone. One of my favorite maps that does this is Lunatic Conquest Ch19, where several paired up Sorcerer's and Hero's spawn around where the boss is once you engage with him. Since the goal of the chapter only requires you to defeat the boss (and two miniboss-type enemies), you're free to set yourself up properly to take the boss down before your phase ends.
Petra's Paralogue in 3H is unfairness in FE's final form. Not only does it change the objective right when it looks like you've won, but it also ambush-spawns Hubert WITH METEOR (or Catherine, not sure which is worse but I'll give the edge to ambush-spawning Meteor because SERIOUSLY. Flashbacks to FE6's Bolting ambush spawns. Also, Hubert can't even learn Meteor as a player unit. It's like they wanted to merge EVERY form of unfair design.) 3:13 This hilariously also sums up why Sonic fans hate untelegraphed pits in 2D stages. Awakening has a lot of wyvern reinforcement spawns, but another factor that I feel makes them manageable is Chrom has an unlimited-use dragon effective prf weapon with WTA on them, meaning you'll always had an answer to them.
Your concluding point towards the end of the video about unfair elements providing a positive value really resonated with me as a TTRPG DM - this is something I utilize all the time at my table and I think it's extremely effective. Often times, a main antagonist will have a lot advantages over the party. Information, power, numbers, magical items, back up plans, and so on. These things can make it frustrating for the players to come up with an effective strategy to finally take them down, but the victory is made SO much sweeter because of it. When they're finally able to take down the baddie that's been stalking them with scrying magics, sending ambush teams out at night to attack them, and generally being a pain in the ass at every turn, everyone celebrates and they're like "YEAH, FUCK THAT GUY!" 🤣 Of course it is possible to go too far with this - if you go overboard on "unfair" elements, you can cause a victory to feel hollow even when those elements are overcome. It's all about balance and moderation, just like I think FE should be in regards to these elements.
As someone who has spent some time designing maps in SRPG Studio, something that I personally have to balance on Ambush style reinforcements is that they are SUPPOSED to be unfair. You don't create an ambush because you want it to be fair, you do it because it should be, unexpected, scary, and force a rapid change in plans. On the other hand the player has a vested interest in their units, and doesn't want them to die, so a tactic that is designed to be unexpected can have unexpected results such as killing a character. At heart, I think for most players Permadeath creates a system where they just reload when a character dies, which can lead to a scenario where they run a war with no loses. In this case, any mechanic that leads to an unexpected lose of a character becomes viewed as unfair. Whether that's an ambush, change in objectives, or a cutscene death of a character they had invested in.
I think you really hit the nail on the head on this one. Very good analysis, to the point that I would recommend this video to aspiring game designers. Plenty of food for thought here.
One thing that comes to mind is Battle before Dawn in FE7 (HHM). People say it is unfair, but they knee cap themselves by not doing Lyn mode and then give themselves too many goals to complete (rescue Jaffar, Nino, and Zephiel; get all the treasure). If you aren't going to use Jaffar or Nino, then why save them?
I believe reinforcements can be fun if it is built up. Someone can warn the player that their opponents will often have reinforcements in the battlefield. In the early maps, a player will be notified when, what kind of reinforcements appear, and where they will appear. Later on, the maps will only tell the player the what kind of reinforcements and where they will appear. In the final maps, players will only know where potential reinforcements may spawn.
I'm generally in favour of ambush reinforcements, but they do have to be done well. In the chapter 11 awakening example the potential threat of these reinforcements can be mitigated to the point of triviality if they weren't ambush reinforcements by parking powerful combat units near the start, especially bow users if the enemy just shows up and then the player gets first pickings. This is especially easy given the amount of information given to the player. Such a thing happening would be the opposite of encouraging players to rush. This encouragement to go slow or camp near the start can still be mitigated by providing other time sensitive objectives elsewhere but then the reinforcements lose a bit of their purpose. I find that this is generally how a lot of reinforcements can feel if they can't move right away unless they are exceptionally powerful like the Black Knight appearing in Path of Radiance (who would work just fine not being an ambush spawn) or the bosses in chapter 11 of Engage. The Wyverns in chapter 11 of Awakening COULD be made exceptionally powerful while not being ambush reinforcements in order to still encourage the player to really move (and that could also be signaled to the player ahead of time), but I feel like that would clash with the feel of the world a bit too hard to have these insane, boss threat level, or stronger than boss level enemies just show up as random nobodies. It would feel very "gamey". Overall I think the game giving the player the warning it does along with these being ambush reinforcements works really well.
Me and my best friend have been playing Fates Conquest together lately, and one thing that's been stuck with me since our last session was how he called the Chapter 9 reinforcements unfair, saying that while I can deal with them no problem, a blind player could just get killed by them if everyone was in their combined range even though they're not ambush spawns so if you're in no state to fight them you could just run away, also they're area based so you can't trigger them unless a majority of your units are within range to start fighting them, it really has me questioning his ability in Fire Emblem
you know what's missing in fire emblem maps? invisible walls. Ok hear me out, what if a map was bigger than what you can actually visit, and the reinforcement spawned in the unreachable area and they have some way to go through where you are (like a one way tunnel or something). That way you can spot them before they can become a danger. Maybe even add something like watchtowers that reveal fog of war in those unreachable areas to make it a mission objective that gives you information on the state of reinforcements.
FE really only creates a problematic kind of "unfairness" under 3 scenarios. 1) When an ambush spawn is badly telegraphed AND it is powerfull enough that it breaks your strategy and forces a reset. This makes for an annoying surprise reset; but also means that in future attempts you're going to be focused on that ambush which is often to the detriment of the map as a whole. For example, CH 11 in engage can be immensly frustrating because of this. Initially a large chunk of the army behind you doesn't move, but if your frontline moves too quickly suddenly they start moving and your slower backline is screwed. So the next time you try it you just wait 1 square before the trigger for your slower units to catch up, completly undermining the theme of the map. 2) When the map forces a specific playstyle that isn't particularly fun. Usually this means gimmicky maps with gimmicky enemies (e.g. a map with a lot of staff users with sleep, or a map filled with balistas). But it can also be a generally awkward map lay-out that doesn't give you much to work with (E.g. too little/too much terrain), or when enemies are programmed to behave in a rather annoying way (e.g. too aggresive, too passive, behaviour triggers work differently than expected (E.g. the boss randomly turning aggresive because you triggered enemy group #32 and now rushing at you from the other side of the map)) 3) Overpowered enemies that kind of break the entire game, my favorite example of this being the Sigrid summoned in one of the engage DLC maps. He literally runs across the entire map in like 2 turns tops, which is just silly.
I don’t know if everyone knows about this because I have no idea how often skirmishes come up in engage, but there was one I got into before chapter 20 where I was at a port. I wanna say it was literally the chapter 19 map, but instead of maybe a little less than half the spaces being miasma & empowering the corrupted, in the skirmish it was like 90% of the map. I was like “DUDE”
I don't really mind ambush spawns in games like FE11 and FE12 where you have save points to alleviate the surprise. That and the games make it clear where reinforcements come from *most of the time* so you can prepare as long as you're aware. Maybe I'm the weird one but it feels like a fair challenge in those games.
Thieves or some other class could have additional utility of being able to scout ambush reinforcements so they either A) Become regular reinforcements or B) Appear as warning sign or something in a part of the map they're about spawn in. Or even give the task to scope the area to one of your units before chapter begins and depending on who you assign you'll get different information. Then you could assign a unit as a scout during the chapter to keep you informed which would also give units you don't deploy something to do. Cause that's kind of a problem most FE games have - after early game your army grows and yet you're still limited to 10-15 deployment slots while everyone else has nothing to do.
Playing through FE6 currently. Chapter that Rutger shows up he walks outta the castle right up to Elen instantly killing her and then has Clarie recruit him right after. Dude did not want two healers on my team.
Ambush reinforcements are sometimes very good but usually they are annoying. For example in thracia an ambush reinforcement stole all the stuff I gave to Safy and that was funny but other times You think youre safe but then a guy spawns that kills the lord and you have to repeat the map
I don’t have much FE experience but I do know that the fights in Final Fantasy Tactics where you have to fight bosses as only Ramza were some straight bullshit I would’ve never figured out as a kid without a strategy guide + loads of grinding.
Surprised you didn’t talk about the inclusion of the turnwheel and how that can affect both the designer and the player’s perspective of ‘fairness’. Before the turnwheel was introduced, ambush spawns could very well lead to a reset, but now that it’s been introduced (and appears to be a permanent addition), those kind of gotchas are mostly just relegated to rewind charge resource management.
The turnwheel changes things in theory, but in practice I think people still find the sorts of design decisions that are frustrating in older games to be frustrating in turnwheel games too. One of the maps I hear the most complaints about in 3h is chapter 5, specifically because of the thief ambush spawns for example. I do think turnwheel can help them feel a little less frustrating since you don't have to reset, but it's still annoying to have to burn a turnwheel on a jumpscare reinforcement
@@actuallizard I agree that it doesn’t really ‘fix’ them but I do wonder if the existence of the turnwheel makes the devs more willing to do unfair stuff because the players have an ‘out’.
@@actuallizard I think the 3H Ch 5 thieves are kinda interesting since they're only ambush spawns on higher difficulties. They're also not even much of a threat on Hard. They're a pain to plan around on Maddening, though, since they get Pass.
I dont think ambush spawns really have anything interesting to offer as opposed to player phase spawns. The absolute least ambush spawns can do is punish a particularly slow style of play which I really do not think is a good idea as all it does is punish new players who aren't good enough at the game to make it to a certain nebulous point in the map. It's really interesting talking about the differences that makes certain game design decisions feel fair and fun and others unfair and frustrating, especially in a game as malleable as Fire Emblem in experience, permadeath easily making anything surprising that results in a unit death all the more frustrating
@@actuallizard i suppose there could be an argument that it's too trivial to kill enemies on player phase but I think that just promotes player action when utilized well instead of enemy phasing
@@theghostcreator776 And if you know what you're doing you can still bait out the enemies on enemy phase and camp them, it's just that you have to know the reinforcements ahead of time.
I can’t remember exactly what the scenario was, but I do remember getting royally pissed off at one of the maps in the three houses DLC route. I believe that the objective is having to escape, but then either the objective changes or is extended. I remember having a hard time just clearing the original objective without losing anyone, only for me to not have nearly enough time to clear the second one. That map was legit harder than base game lunatic routes. Shit was whack yo.
I find the sudden reinforcements in some games to be completely unfair. I remember playing a blind playthrough in a FE game (I can't remember which ones), and a bunch of reinforcements shows up suddenly somewhere near the end of the map and killing a few of my characters. That made me restart the chapter and use a guide for every chapter just to check if there are reinforcements or not. FE4 had a lot of reinforcements showing up after reaching a certain area or conquering a certain castle. Thankfully, that game had battlesaves, I usually reset the game and load from that battlesave. FE11 had an issue with almost endless reinforcements showing up on forts, but at least that could be stopped.
I have no idea what the community opinion is, but in Three Houses war phase Gronder Field Blue Lions (man that's unwieldy), when a whole force of alliance units spawned behind me it literally killed me. It felt so unfair until I realized, yeah that's the point. My army literally opened the path for them, a more organized army, to march straight up to me. This probably applies in retrospect to more games that I haven't played or smth
Chapter 11 should have a few adjustments- I think that you should be able to swap in and out units in case of a fatality and Freeze stave Miciah is just too much.
The most unfair thing about Engage Ch.11 is that I spent tens of turns slowly whittling down Veyle's health with the Edelgard ring power that creates fire terrain (since she can't be damaged in combat), only to learn that terrain damage can't finish off units. There's not any good reason to experiment much with the power before this, because the first thing you learn about it is that the damage per turn is very low compared to your combat damage against any normal unit. So this is really the first good opportunity to learn this, and it wastes like half an hour of your time!
I’m surprised that FE6 wasn’t discussed at all in regards to this topic. Almost every reinforcement is an ambush spawn, the hit rates are abysmal, and Gaiden/route split criteria are not always clear. I don’t hate most of these elements-once you know to be careful around forts, stairs, and never leave units near the start of the map, it’s usually not hard to avoid getting blindsided by reinforcements. The horrendous hit rates of lances and axes kind of serve to balance swords and bows, which are typically the two worst weapon types in FE games with inflated/normal hit rates. You can usually get all Gaiden chapters just by playing quickly. I still wish that some of the hidden info like route splits or specific recruitments were better telegraphed, though (e.g. why does Lilina have to be the one to recruit Gonzalez?).
Archers on maddening 3h paralogies super range pin point accuracy and ambushing spawns... also on paralogues youre likely to not have leveled a character.
Not Fire Emblem, but what I really like in the Kaga saga (particularly Vestaria Saga) is that the game almost always hints at enemy reinforcements in dialogue. A good example is probably Chapter 11, where, in the opening cutscene, one of the characters immediately points out directions to different places, with one of them being the direction of the enemy capital. Not only does this contribute to world-building, but it also gives the player a helpful mental note of where the enemy spawns are most likely going to be concentrated. Even if you missed it the nearby villages also give useful hints at enemy reinforcements points etc. Currently playing through the game, and I don't think I've ever been truly blindsided by ambush spawns in the game because of how well the game is at conveying important information without necessarily giving it directly.
It is interesting that most of the things you list as unfair. Like hidden information or rng. Were solved or somewhat alleviated by the rewind time mechanic in three houses. That mechanic allowed for a new thing to happen and a player to be like “okay lets rewind back to a place when I can handle that eventuality”
Maybe I'm just blind and/or bad at video games, but the most unfair thing to me in Fire Emblem has been the Witches in Echoes. I know where they are, I know what they can do, but I feel absolutely powerless in doing anything about it. It feels like each turn is rush to kill them ASAP and pray they choose to not "nothing personnel, kid" my 0 Res units. But I also concede that I may have completely missed the game informing me about some kind of counterplay to Warp, since I rarely see anyone else bring them up. Other than that, my gripes are the standard fare. Ch 16 Awakening in openly hostile to the player with those Falcoknights. Rutger moving like four spaces out of Laus Castle then getting his 5 move turn with a KILLING EDGE is just a dick move and I will not hear arguments to the contrary. And Awakening Lunatic+ is just not worth the time investment of resetting until the enemies don't roll so many + skills
There is some counter play to witches. Every map has a direction they like to teleport and attack you from which is usually in the "back" relative to your starting position and the enemy's. They also don't like to break your line so units in the center of your party can be protected by higher res units on the edge of your formation.
Overall, great video, but I do have a nitpick that I guess I'll dump all over your comment section for to please the yourtubs. I think your definition of "fair" at the beginning is a bit too semantic. For the most part, I don't think there is an expectation of symmetry in single player video games. No one complains that Bowser from Super Mario Bros. on NES is "unfair" because the player isn't also given a massive hitbox, jump attack invulnerability, and a projectile with no collision. I say this because I don't think Frustration is a great metric for what a Fire Emblem player might feel is "unfair". I think a start would be to look at what is reasonable for a player to expect or respond to. That fits with your examples of "bad" quickmoving/powerful reinforcements or changing map goals against the elements that are properly telegraphed. Even then, sometimes things that seem unfair might just be trying to teach the player something about the game. Here, for example, units spawning where the player was after a few turns teaches the player to keep advancing along the map and not play too slow. You might take damage or even reset, but you know for the rest of the time you play game that slow play is punished. I haven't played the latest FF, but that example to me seems like it can go either way. It can be frustrating to remove tools from the player, but that is also a tactic many games have done in the past for narrative and/or gameplay reasons. It sounds like the compounding aspects of depowering the player while having them do a marathon of two maps uninterrupted could push some players over their limit. This might be especially true if they struggle in the latter chapter and decide their only way forward is to replay two maps.
The last statement you made about a map looking daunting or unfair but being quite doable once you evaluate your resources is interesting. It makes me wonder how people learn fire emblem. The main punishment for a mistake in this game series is a unit dying and, for most players, (for most games) results in a reset. This, like you said, lends itself to a trial and error playstyle. If you have to make mistakes to learn and mistakes pretty much require a reset, the game doesn't teach you damage formulas, seems to insist that weapon triangle is as important as Pokémon typing, communicates that armor knights are defensive, how does a new player come to understand the mechanics of the game? And where do they find fun?
If I rant on everything I hate about Awakening Lunatic I feel I’ll just end up parroting everyone so I’ll try to simplify it. Lunatic Awakening can ONLY beat you with what’s under the table. Not what’s on it. And it’s painfully aware of this fact and abuses it to no end. I never felt like I was truly challenged on Lunatic. I only ever felt like I lost because the game had some nonsense up it’s sleeve. It’s just not a fun or engaging way to lose. Is Awakening the hardest FE game? Not by a long shot. Is it one of the more frustrating, unfun, and unrewarding titles to play through on Lunatic? YES. I threw in the towel on the map with infinite spawning sniper mages. I couldn’t handle any more of the game’s BS after that. Just for clarity, I do think Awakening is a good game with a solid plot and characters, but I am NEVER playing it on a mode above normal again. It’s the I Wanna Be the Guy of Fire Emblem: I didn’t die because I did anything wrong, I died because I didn’t know the game was going to yoink that pixel away. And there’s only so much of that you can tolerate.
In defense of the Chapter 9 reinforcements, if they didn't move they would not be threatening, and you would not be incentivize to push ahead, kill the enemies and reclaim the forts as soon as possible. This is, in my opinion, one of the most memorable chapters in the game in Lunatic for that reason. Of course, they could just have then spawn in an inaccessible place like a mountain and it would serve the same purpose while not hiding any information from the player, so even in the best scenarios, I don't think ambush spawn add anything that cannot be replicated in other forms of reinforcement.
Dear god i keep forgetting how bad awakening map 16 reinforcements are becuase i always assume they spawn at the start becasude the way the map works (roots up a tree) imply thats where they are coming from, so i always forget there mid map fliers
How annoying ambush spawns are to me is how they influence your overall playstyle in a negative way. For example, in awakening, you are incentivized to avoid using glass cannons and even avoid using your dancer in case an ambush spawn surprises you. I also played at a much slower pace and kept lots of my units on top of forts doing nothing because I was worried about ambush spawns that may or may not spawn on those forts when I left them.
Speaking of unfair, fe1 critical hits because there is no dodge stat. Towards the end of the game crits for both sides start to happen all the time as crit goes up and up.
That Engage second objective felt like the worst possible example. Like, all the rings are on one half of the map and then theres a boss with multiple life crustals sitting at the opposite end of the map. I can not believe someone would call that unfair, mostly because if someone is caught off guard by *that* then I'd almost doubt they'd eben gotten to the rings with that severe lack of pattern recognition
The First 2 times i played crumbling league i had rutger and the death squad he spawns with kill one of my units, in the third time(and my current playtrought) i managed to recruit him deathless, and i really think It shows my progress with strategy RPGs Now with that being Said f*ck the bandit caves that are in the hero of the west, why are the caves almost inside the villages on a game with ambush spawns? Like seriously why?
Chapter 11 Engage suuuuucks. It's a cool concept for a chapter, but there's so much misinformation given to the player. The wyrms at the beginning never attack you despite being in range, the gravity staff unit in the back will always go for the closest unit to them despite no other character from the backline activating. You have no idea which rings are going to be given to the next corrupted which feels cheap. The Tomahawk corrupted also never attacks you despite being in range. But by far the worst part about that chapter is the Hounds won't activate until you reach a very specific point in the map. Meaning that you can turtle halfway through and take your time picking off enemies when the story is constantly telling you that you need to run. It turns a cool set piece into an absolute joke of a hard map and narrative cohesion.
Enemy cries are an abomination. Having a 4%chance to just kill something that should be able to handle you easily is fine for players, but not especially good or useful. But when enemies do it, it only takes one to permadeath your favorite unit out of nowhere.
I've only played Engage but the reinforcements felt like they tip toed the borderline of balance for a blind maddening run. I cant imagine playing a version where they could act on the same turn they spawn. Trial and error resetting completely drains the fun out of a strategy game.
FYI, Fire Emblem was originally meant for there to be unexpected surprises, much like real warfare. An effective strategist will know how to play cautiously, defend vulnerable units, and minimize losses (and there WILL be losses.) Some may argue this is not fun cuz they just want to rush through everything, but it is far from being antithetical to a strategy game. Expect the unexpected, as the popular military saying goes.
My biggest gripe is infinite reinforcements, or too many waves of reinforcements (and Engage is a big offender with this). In some chapters they work well (ch25 is the one I remember the most, tense and forces you to avoid turtling, especially on higher difficulties, but you also /can/ cheese them with warp), but on others it becomes incredibly tedious. Tiki's paralogue doesn't have infinite reinforcements, but spending tons of turns just camping a reinforcement spot is not fun or challenging for me, and there is no reasonable way to clear the rest of the map and reach Tiki while the reinforcements are pursuing you (at least, I didn't find it feasible on Maddening as I'd just get overrun). And we're talking like... 30+ turns before they stop spawning if I remember correctly. The final map has a really neat gimmick with the dark emblems, but I never engage (hah) with it beyond the first wave, because the infinite reinforcements (especially the griffons... seriously, they suck) just makes it a matter of time before you get overrun and lose. On hard I killed the first wave and beat the boss in the same turn. On Maddening I just killed all but one emblem and had one person smack the boss for what felt like forever while the rest tried to keep up with all the reinforcements. This was not a fun experience, just tedious. The final map of the Xenologue are even worse with infinite reinforcements, and the set levels and classes. It just makes the issues of the forced classes & levels an even bigger problem. It's been a while since I played through some of the other games, so I don't remember how much of an issue this was in them, but it's definitely something I hope future FE games do away with.
So i was playing lunatic in fates conquest, and i had finally aproached haitaka, 9 drop spawns in the middle of my army, fast samurai, strong archers, and lancers with a magic targeting spear mixed in. I lost immediately and was immensely displeased to haave lost because i didnt read a strategy guide
The most unfair mechanic in an srpg I've ever experienced is the conditions of attacks in Unicorn Overlord. A ton of dubious options of which it feels the game loves to ignore and it takes much more time than simply selecting what to do and who to target in combat. Oh and the results of the changes you do are shown *after* you pick the conditions, just to be extra detestable.
The real unfair thing in Fire Emblem Awakening is that Mustafa isn't recruitable
Project Thabes adds him as a recruit!
He could have worked as a secret recruit character
Instead we got amnesiac Gangrel from a paralogue...
@@LoudWaffleI don’t count any of those paralogues as canon, I consider them to be just the same thing as the creature campaign from fe8 where you just get to play with the characters for fun.
Errmm, it's called a Camus sweaty 😘 try looking it up 💅
This video coming out 15 minutes after I had to put down my copy of FE6 because I lost someone to Same Turn Reinforcements was a sign from Kaga himself.
During the only playthrough I did of Awaking I actually ripped the game out of the DS and threw it across the room when a fighter ambush spawn killed the dancer on the map you fight the weird trickster king.
This is why I always use fireemblemwod to see exactly where and when ambush spawns are for whatever game their in because my god it is the most rage inducing thing.
I'll preach this until the day I die but FE6 ambush spawns are way overblown by the fandom. More often than not they're telegraphed through structures such as stairs and forts or otherwise you're given warning ahead of time of when/where they'll appear via cutscene. Zone based reinforcements are BS but aside from Ch21 being the most prominent example they're not super common. Awakening and 3H by far have worse instances of ambush spawns, Cherche's map being a standout example because they surround you on an enclosed map and 3H Ch5 being quite infamous.
@@MrCactuar13 You're not given a warning that they will attack the same turn they spawn.
@@niquel5831 and modern FE is still worse about that compared to FE6
I think an interesting way to present reinforcements is numerical only tells. The game lets you know where enemies are about to spawn, but not what the enemies are. That way, you have incomplete information, but can still try to plan for it.
The same could work for fog of war, you see shapes in the fog but don't know the actual umit type and threat level until you get close.
The issue about the tells is the devs now have to be very through about what they're doing.
I played Banner of yhe Maid, and it has footprints telling from where the ambush spawns come... But often that isn't the case and they just come from wherever they want. I know this is telling someone to do their job, but they could make their job easier b6 simply having normal spawns.
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The silhouettes in the fog is actually a neat idea, though I still prefer no FoW at all.
I really like the shadows in fog of war idea.
That fog of war idea is nice.
I wouldn't want that for the _entire_ map, but anything within a unit's range of movement would be cool.
FE being mostly a war setting, i always found it odd a recon unit/character doesn't exist, something that gives you a heads up or marks the map for reinforcements, allies, weather ect before they come, instead FE just gives vague dialogue that notions the event happening.
The closest thing that comes to a heads up other than the story foreshadowing it, is Jaigen or a grandma Fortune teller who says limited information for a map that can be ripped off in like 3 seconds.
But i will say that in a lot of scenarios having a detailed reconnaissance would be hard to explain, since a lot of FE games are about the Lord rushing to an objective or being in a unpredictable situation with one day skirmishes unlike a slow drawn war.
Example: being in prison, being ambushed Or anything magical.
gaiden and echoes have a charmingly janky solution to reinforcements - the maps are gigantic and enemies that you're supposed to fight later are on the other side of them rather than near you, making them more literally reinforcements but without any information problems. However, it also has witches with warp, instantly ruining this idea as a comedy joke
I actually think cantors are a decent way of doing reinforcements as well. They're interactive, you know what they're going to do, it's no major issue to plan around them
The feeling of unfairness pretty much boils down to player agency. Fire emblem is driven by player desicions and rewards good strategy and planning.
Anbush spawns, when handled poorly take that away. If you got no indication about them, you either know they are coming because you played the map already or you are screwed. Same with everything revolving heavily around rng.
If your strategy boils down to either reload the map or pray, then that's no strategy at all.
Newer games try to alleviate that a lot by giving players hints pre battle on where reinforcements appear and by ging them the ability to rewind time.
I was going to comment, but the like button ambushed me and I reflexively counter-attacked instead, spending the last of my "Silver Keyboard 1/30"!
Seriously though, really good video, I always appreciate how deep these dives have always felt quite thoughtful about the mechanics!
Fog of War is a big one, and not because the mechanic is inherently bad - Fire emblem just refuses to do what is necessary to make the mechanic work well. Entire genres make use of the mechanic without having it feel like crap. However the combination of it only affecting the player, the fact that many play as if no unit is expendable, and the fact that it rarely uses the mechanic in a truly interesting way means that all it really does is exist to frustrate the player and not much else.
fire emblem three houses marienne paralogue
because of the lack of information, I couldn't see how one of the beasts was in position to attack my characters, and I had a few characters in range of the beast that would have gotten one shotted by the beast, trying to divine pulse back did not save my units and I had to let manuella die to progress
Full video on fairness in Fire Emblem and yet zero FE6 mentions. Curious.
I actually did see that Reddit post you mentioned at the start and I was one of the few people that didn't cite Lunatic+ or Thracia as the most unfair FE games in the series, instead citing FE6's inconsistency in information, constant lack of reliable tools, and AI shenanigans that can result in a player doing quite literally everything in their power to plan for a map and utilize all the tools in their possession the way they should be used and still be forced into a no-win situation. I think it's kind of funny how you mention that C16 awakening is unfair when it at least tells you literally anything whereas 11A in FE6 just goes "Yeah, no, FE6 hates you, here's completely unwarned Echidna ambush spawns that can kill most of your units."
Thinking about ambush spawns has just made me feel like ambush spawns just don't need to exist in Fire Emblem games. If you have a reinforcement that just spawns 1 turn earlier but is not an ambush spawn, realistically speaking, what are we losing here? People that know where the reinforcements spawn can spawn camp and kill them even IF they're ambush spawns, so that's not really a great argument against it, and what you get in return is some form of mild guarantee that the player will have the ability to react to information and at least try to get themselves out of a pickle instead of potentially dooming them. I've seen middle grounds suggested like some hacks that spawn in future reinforcements as green units that can't be attacked and then activate next turn so you know where the reinforcements will come but can't camp them, and while I do applaud these efforts, I just don't think it's that big of a deal to take out ambush spawns entirely.
Another thing that can feel really unfair is when maps just give enemies things the players could never hope to utilize. This ranges from extremely obvious stuff like Felix having Darting blow as an enemy when he can't get access to it normally to every fe6 lategame map spamming status staves and siege weaponry against you in positions where you can't realistically do it to the same effect back to them. Enemy quality is also a big thing here; I feel like if I'm playing an FE game where the enemies outnumber me 3 to 1 (AKA most FE games) and I would rather take any generic enemy than most of my player army because the enemies are that good, it just results in (for lack of a better word) hopelessness and frustration that no matter how hard you work on your army you'll never be as good as the nepo babies the enemies spit out like a factory.
To mention fe6 I would have to play it again
I agree on ambush spawns though, I can't think of an ambush spawn I wouldn't rather it just be a regular reinforcement that spawns one turn earlier. There are ambush spawns that I don't mind (like awakening ch 9), but I still think they would be better if they weren't ambushes.
Arcadia as a whole is more unfair than any ambush spawns in any game. Which is funny because Arcadia doesnt have any reinforcements i would call unfair
I agree with you on ambush spawns, but I disagree that it's unfair that the enemy gets access to things that the player can't access or that are significantly less beneficial for the player. The player gets access to plenty of things that enemies rarely or never get to use such as supports, rescue, dancers, the warp staff, tonics and game-specific mechanics like shove in the Tellius games, pair-up in Awakening and combat arts in Echoes and Three Houses. Enemies also have significantly less skills, until Awakening non-boss enemies rarely got access to skills that aren't innate to their class at all. This is especially relevant in FE4 because it means enemies are rarely able to double or crit. Even on Engage maddening, enemies will only have one non-class skill, meanwhile your units will have a personal skill, up to two inherited skills and up to 3 sync skills even while not engaged.
I also think the enemy being stronger than the player in the lategame is fine because the player is expected to be smarter than the enemy. Granted, I'm not a fan of Binding Blade in particular because it takes this idea too far, I think the player units (at least the ones that don't get hard mode bonuses) are too weak, and IS seems to have designed the game assuming that the player will utilize supports, which are mindless and time-consuming to build.
@@davey_rulez7301 you’re right about the lack of access to things to some extent, but I think it really goes over the line when the balance is shattered and the stuff the player can do that the enemy can’t is far outnumbered by what the enemy can do that the player can’t
I will have to make a counterpoint on ambush spawn. If they appear one turn earlier that means you, the player, has the first strike on them. That means that if you know or can guess where they will spawn you can camp the place and just murder them as they appear. If I remember right, FE7 and 8 are good examples, often reinforcement come in the form of one or two units in a fort, so you can just wait by the fort and farm for exp. The reinforcement then changes from a danger to an exp piñata.
Don't get me wrong, I hate badly done ambush spawns (I am going through fe3h on maddening right now and some maps kinda suck because of it). But I do think they have their space in the design of a map. Not every reinforcement need to be ambush spawn (and I would rather they weren't) but in certain situations I do think there is value.
I feel like I was one of the few people who really didn't mind the ambush spawns in Three Houses Maddening, and that was because of divine pulse. The game had us playing someone who others see as a tactical genius who seemed to have a sixth sense on how to avoid or overcome the enemy's traps. So, to me, it honestly made sense that Byleth would fall for these traps, watch his friends die, reset time, then warn everyone about what's coming and look like a genius to everyone around him. Just in general, divine pulse made ambush spawns feel more like 'a few mandated uses of divine pulse per chapter just to keep you honest and make sure you earn your reputation as a genius' rather than a 'gotcha and game over' moment, so they didn't bother me at all there.
I also didn't mind ambush spawns in Thracia... most of the time. Usually they were either pretty predictable (most were on a repeated loop), coming from a place that obviously might spawn reinforcements, heavily foreshadowed by the dialogue, or placed in a way that made perfect sense with the game's story. The most unfair element of that game was probably its tendency to place bolting/meteor mages in dark levels, which was ridiculous, but most of the time I found myself just being like, 'yeah, you know, based on the story Leif probably would have lost a couple soldiers there, the ambush spawns check out.'
In other games I've been more frustrated by ambush spawns, and I know I would have been really upset with Three Houses ambushes if divine pulse weren't around.
See, Divine pulse made me actually hate ambush spawns even more. Or at least the game design of three houses being a game where you're supposed to pulse every time a character dies made it more annoying. In a game where you're actually expected to leave characters dead, it's not the end of the world if the occasional setback leaves you with one less character to work with. But in three houses, if a character dies you pulse and do it again because the game isn't designed around the idea that you might leave somebody dead.
@@MegiDolaDyne 3H is probably THE most Ironman-unfriendly game in the series as well, due to the sheer amount of time and resources you need to sink into every unit (so accepting a death costs you a LOT) and the lack of "plug-and-play" replacements. (Recruitments also stop at the start of the timeskip, minus Lysithea in CF but that's only 2 chapters in and she sucks if recruited that way) Later FE games were always designed with the reset playstyle in mind, but 3H also seems to assume you'll be rewinding every death, and not just with its Maddening ambush spawns.
I prefer Engage's approach, where every character CAN be customized a lot, but they also all have serviceable-to-amazing base stats and levels for their join-time, aside from the trainees where starting weak is part of their appeal.
I agree, I think divine pulse makes it a lot better since you can go back with the information you have and plan ahead, rather than the ambush spawns feeling cheap
@@MegiDolaDyneIt's really a small minority of players who actually play that way still, modern Fire Emblem meta is to reset after deaths to preserve your units, hence the purpose of Iron man runs
When I played ch11 of Engage the first time, I had to risk a potential killing crit against my favorite unit to keep my mages safe. It was one of the most memorable moments I've ever had in Fire Emblem, and never would've happened if the game hadn't taken me so off guard and taken away the time crystal.
Thanks for basing the discussion of the implied messages of people who say things like "X thing in fire emblem is unfair". Of course like you said, the literal interpretation would be moot because the game is based off of asymmetric sides, so of course things would be unfair. But that's clearly what people aren't discussing on this topic.
Not the Fire Emblem community or anything, just in general, I've found people can be really annoying on discourse about games and design when they take the basic literal interpretation of complaints, then make a strawman out of it. If someone says "remove X because it is OP", they probably mean the risk reward is unusually skewed to make less interesting gameplay. And just like here, if someone says something is unfair in Fire Emblem, they mean it's unfair in a frustrating way or an unusually unfair way
Anna's paralogue in FE3H has particularly mean ambush reinforcements. It spawns a bunch of bow knights all at once, and their enormous range is pretty much impossible to handle in a first playthrough
@@LFielding07 I handled it quite well. Although of course I also used glitches to get infinite grinding so I was overleveled as heck for it, but still.
@@nathanielmarino5989 so you didn't really handle it.
When I say something was unfair, it's normally the game doing something "in bad faith"
Like, the game can seem to set you up with all the details, then kinda pull the rug out and surprise you with something there was no real way to prepare for
Man Chapter 11 of Engage was one of my favorite maps from that game. I think it was totally fair: We're warned that we won't be able to return to the Somniel, and the really powerful reinforcements don't spawn in until you've met up with Ivy and the objective is to escape anyway. But I loved the jumpscare it gave me. It was the biggest "oh fuck" I've ever experienced. I'd been hoarding onto my master seals until that point so I felt forced to promote immediately. Alear got one; I didn't know if only Alear needed to escape or if everyone did, but if she died it's game over. Celine got one; I thought Flamme and Jean were horrible units and didn't use them so I relied on Micaiah's ring for healing, and Celine got staves on promotion. The last Seal was a bit tricky to assign. Ultimately I gave it to Alcryst so he'd gain an extra point of movement and I could start him further behind the others. I was almost disappointed to get the Draconic Time Crystal back, but it felt nice having new tools to use.
What's also interesting is that map actually takes mercy on you by having the enemies "cheat" in a bad way: all enemies on that map (besides the bosses, who you aren't supposed to fight) have an invisible skill that stops them critting when initiating combat. I never knew this until I found Triangle Attack's in-depth map info.
@@BigKlingy Could you link that video? Can't seem to find a channel with that name. Searching for "triangle attack" just gives me videos of, well, a triangle attack
@@jedimasterpickle3 It's not a video, it's a website. Search "Triangle Attack engage" and you should find it. Has interactive maps with mouse-over popups for enemy stats/skills on all difficulties. It's where I learned that Normal Mode gives all enemies a hidden "Hit/Avoid -20" skill.
The Justice and Pride mod has the War Room, where you can view tips as well as warning of any surprise ahead in the chapter. I think it would be a good feature.
That sounds neat! I'll have to give it a look
3:20 this right here is the point I agree with the most. Oftentimes unfairness can really be boiled down to a lack of agency (same turn reinforcements, changing map objectives, recruits that are horrendously underpowered for their debut map, dodgy bosses on thrones, etc.). It’s important to balance out challenge with ways to alleviate said challenge and adapt to the changing battle situation. This way, you are tactically challenged and also feel like the eventual win was your own, leading your units to victory despite the unpredictable circumstances.
I feel like Three Houses Maddening is a good example of a mode made with almost no regard to this, as ambush spawns only taking place in that difficulty breaks how you approach most maps in the game. Combined with the enemy strength and numbers (chapter 5 and AM endgame are standout moments) it feels like it was made with the expectation that you use Divine Pulse multiple times to “scout” out ambush spawns and changing map objectives and deal with them after they’ve already happened to you, which kills the pacing. It makes me feel like the game is playing me, not the other way around.
In Soviet Russia video game plays you...
One of the problems 3 houses had is that maddening was an afterthought. Some ambush spawns like hilda spawn right on top of you with little you can do about it
oooh, im SO glad we discussed the tree map in awakening. those, and another similar set of ambush reinforcements on another map, are the REASON i dont play awakening as much. those specific reinforcements.
I feel like my one gripe is reinforcements getting a turn to act as soon as they arrive. Now that's just trial and error bs instead "hey, lemme try to regroup and form a strat"
Exactly. It was same turn reinforcements that made me decide to drop Awakening my first time playing (I also played it like an iron man, sans save wiping.)
@@drmetroid912 That one chapter at the tree is probably worse offender. Like yea, they do give you a warning. But Imma be real, nothing justifies them picking off your units immediately like that.
I just found your videos, and I really like them!
As for the topic of reinforcements, my biggest issue is when they seemingly only exist to waste time. I just finished Engage blind on hard mode (I usually only play FE normal bc I want to relax) and the times when the reinforcements annoyed me the most was when they slowed me down. In maps like the seaside village, the snow mountain, and even the final part of the final chapter, I just wanted to be done and every new unit that spawned just meant more time till I got to whoop some boss butt.
Like in the seaside village, the tides already slowed me down bc my army only had a few fliers, so I had to keep a few units a few steps behind to watch out for the reinforcements, and then they caught by the tides, making them fall behind even more. The combination of gimmick and reinforcements just slowed my pace down to a crawl and felt more like a nuisance than a challenge to overcome.
Same with part 2 of the final battle. I knew I could take down Sombron quickly, but every time a new set spawned I felt my stomach drop as I knew I just had more work to do before I got what I wanted. The story being so bland didn't help, bc at the point seeing the conclusion wasn't a driving factor to seeing it through to the end. It felt the game just wanted to prolong itself, when I just wanted it to be over.
But chapter 11's felt fair, like you mentioned bc of the story relevance. Also the fliers that come in at the bottom of the Solm castle map once you start engaging the hounds felt good bc it wasn't too much, you had a good choke point at the hallway, and it felt properly tense and challenging as they put pressure between you and some bosses.
Those were just my thoughts coming from a mostly casual fan. A lot of my problems might come from skill issues, but I felt like sharing. Thanks for the videos! I'll be watching a lot more.
Explicit reinforcement previews would be nice, tbh.
Some friends and I are nearly done with Gloomhaven, a so-so digital adaptation of a popular tactics board game I am not particularly fond of. But for all my many grumbles with it, when it's going to spawn reinforcements, it shows a ghostly version of the incoming unit on the relevant tile the round before it joins the fray. There would be challenges in adapting it to Fire Emblem, but it'd be a nice touch in allowing ambush spawns without them feeling like a cheap shot 99% of the time. And it makes some diagetic sense -- the unit hasn't reached the map yet, but I can see them coming this way in the distance.
I want to bring up another map from Awakening that really bothered me: Laurent's paralogue.
It's in a desert with an oasis (i.e. pond\lake) in the middle. The side objective involves visiting some towns that only appear in a certain order, and they're in the corners of the map.
The reinforcements _also_ spawn in the corners of the map, not with a poor warning, but with _no_ warning that I can remember.
Not only are you incentivized to meander around the edges of the map to go between the towns, but because of the lake, you're actually _prevented_ from huddling in the middle like you might want to do on the tree map.
I cannot stress enough that I _despise_ the same-turn-acting reinforcements. I thought they were exclusive to Lunatic+ but no, they even show up in standard Hard mode!
Even in Engage maps where at least once, enemy reinforcements have spawned basically _on top of_ my army, I didn't hate that as much. It really is about player agency.
These always drop in the middle of my night shifts and they are one of the only things that keeps me going
I played shadow dragon recently, and the most unfair moment was when the first reinforcement i saw instantly killed Hardin with a horseslayer
I swear, that instance is one of the most unfair examples of reinforcements in the series, which is ironic considering that it's supposed to be the game's introduction to them. Unlike the usual turn-based reinforcements, that map waits until you cross an invisible line within the range of the forts to start spawning in the enemies. It wouldn't be so bad if the enemies were relatively weak, but to give one effective weaponry is a bafflingly punishing decision to me.
I don't think I ever had to fight such an uphill battle as the dawn brigade chapter in part 3, I felt robbed when I got control of Micaiah's squad but god damn that defense map was memorable. Like at that point I only played PoR and the GBA games and RD was very rough but that part especially
I think the reinforcements that stuck with me the most as unenjoyable come from Shadow Dragon; there have been some maps with out of the way Forts that seem to infinitely(?) spawn high level Paladins and the like (the map where you have to choose between Arran and Samson comes to mind), and the sheer number of them always struck me as really hard to work with. The best option that I have seen is to place tanky Knights at all of the bottlenecks they come from or even just have units occupy all of those forts for the whole map.
I'd say the middle game is the problem where you are just getting units to level up and or evolve and then the enemy has a a entire army of promoted units.
Same issue with pokemon. The developers have the best time with the early map as it's a puzzle more so than s game like awakening where everything is made well same as engage for you to use those limited resources to your advantage
Pokemon middle of the game the foes are either too strong or weak
Honestly I don't think it's that complicated. All you have to do is create two points in a game:
1. After this chapter, occasional generic promoted enemies will show up on chapter alongside the majority unpromoted enemies
2. After this chapter, every single enemy is going to be promoted
and MAKE SURE YOU GET UNITS ACCORDING TO THAT RULE (Aka after point 1 is when you start getting your occasional prepromote and after point 2 you only get promoted recruits for the rest of the game).
If you set this up then it's a pretty obvious warning bell to the player when every unit on the map is promoted and all the recruits you get are promoted that you should have your army promoting by this point.
@@lagspike7763 yeah I can see that working. Make the pre promoted units the bosses so you can feel the danger of one of them and then when your army begins to gain traction in story the enemies start sending some real enemies against you and boom you get more promoted units.
Awakening I'd say after lucina is recruited as that opens up the entire game. Engage after the rings get taken and so on.
Turnwheel/Divine Pulse make Ambush spawns completely fair and balanced IMO. I actually think they fit especially well in the context of 3 Houses; since a large part of the story hinges on the MC's divine ability to straight up undo many undesirable outcomes.
In practice, the ability to get ambushed, be like "oh shit", rewind time, and then prepare for the exact same ambush takes the IRL experience of "I have knowledge of this event that WILL happen because I'm a real person that has either played the game before or has the internet", and translates it seamlessly into both a gameplay AND storytelling mechanic.
In games without rewind mechanics, the "story" that ends up being told through gameplay (when the player restarts, saves, plays the game again, etc) is that the tactician/MC just so happens to be some sort of supreme being of unsurpassed intellect, that is always seemingly prepared for things that they realistically shouldn't be. This often clashes against how the characters are depicted in the story -- since while they're often characterized as intelligent or having extensive tactical training, there's no way they'd have knowledge of SOME things, simply because they're human, after all.
In 3 Houses, though, that dissonance is resolved; with Divine Pulse being narratively tied to a literal diety with time powers in game, with an inextricable connection to the MC, their foreknowledge of seemingly unpredictable events is now completely explained in-universe. The Professor always seems to know *exactly* what to do and seems to almost have future-sight.... because they literally *do* know what's about to happen and when.
I have mixed feelings on how the feature is implemented in pretty much every other entry in the series, but 3 Houses nails it IMO.
6:16 Ah, the gotcha moments. I absolutely hate the kind of games where not only spawns arrive unannounced, but they spawn even though you're blocking forts/caves/whatever indicates it may be a spawn zone and trap your units instead haha. There's Lunatic, which I love, and then there's bullshit, which is that you're describing. So yeah, had to jump and state it.
The way I see it is that, in a vacuum, these mechanics aren't inherently unfair. In most other games, especially most other RPGs, these mechanics are perfectly acceptable. Enemies that call for reinforcements in Dragon Quest, and especially notably when they don't just call for more copies of themselves, are exciting and fun and I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about them.
The problem largely comes from the fact that Fire Emblem, and many tactics RPGs in general really, flip the general rules of RPGs over. Instead of saving the challenge for the boss fights or rare strong enemies and going for a death by a thousand cuts strategy with random encounters like most RPGs, enemies in tactics RPGs are usually much stronger. Everything is a threat to at least one of your units and has to be carefully considered. To compensate for this significant increase in the lethality of what you're facing, the game gives you way more information than normal RPGs. In Dragon Quest, you don't even get to see enemy HP let alone any individual stats. You don't know their weapons, spells, abilities, items, or even what they might drop until you see it happen. In Fire Emblem, all of that is immediately visible, and on most maps, all of it is visible before you even start to play during prep.
When those are the initial design considerations for your game and you use them as justification to go very hard against the player, you have to be very careful when reintroducing the mechanics you deliberately cut. You established a new baseline of fairness by giving us all of the information and saying, "the challenge is juggling the volume of information, not guessing about it" and it will inherently feel unfair to at least some people when you go, "actually, nevermind, the challenge is hidden information again".
I think the biggest sin is that often times the most unfair things aren't hard when you know what they are. If you get lucky and don't fall for it the first time, you're usually fine. If you get unlucky, you have to restart the map and account for the new information you have now. It's really a one-time deal, or an n-time deal where n is the number of ambush turns. Subsequent playthroughs are way easier if you remember.
One of my favorite “unfair” moments in FE that I continue to remember was the Black Beast fight during my first playthrough of FE3H. I play generally cautiously and defensively so most of the map I am carefully pushing forward and dealing with enemy units at a gentle clip. And then come the end of the map after Miklan has transformed I am panickedly scrambling to do enough damage to this monster whose mechanics I have *never* seen before and whose attacks hit like a truck compared to anything else I have run into.
Perfect way to introduce monsters in the game.
The fact, that anyone could complain about unfairness in Engage Chapter 11, when its some of the best gameplay to story integration we have in the series in a game that largely fails to provide a compelling narrative otherwise, is wild to me.
They absolutely nailed the "Oh Fuck, im so screwed" moment, we probably all had there. We often dont really appreciate the things we have, until they are taken away. Or in this case even worse, turned against us. But some people apparently only like winning and nothing else
Imo I think having a mix of ambush and non-ambush spawns is the best. I really like ambush spawns when they're placed in areas where the player has no business being at a certain turn count, as it creates more tension, and can act as very good turtling disincentives (FE6 does this a lot, having ambush spawns which spawn where your units start, usually beginning after 10~ turns on a map, meaning there's almost no way they'll ever blindside you unless you're deliberately refusing to interact with the challenge the developers have presented)
My favorite non-ambush spawns are when they show up around the boss, once you've entered their territory, as they present multiple ways of being dealt with, as if you're well positioned to defeat the boss and seize, you don't even have to interact with them, whereas if you aren't equipped enough to guarantee you'll be capable of beating the boss during the player phase, you can make use of your player phase to lessen what reinforcements just appeared so they don't immediately defeat anyone. One of my favorite maps that does this is Lunatic Conquest Ch19, where several paired up Sorcerer's and Hero's spawn around where the boss is once you engage with him. Since the goal of the chapter only requires you to defeat the boss (and two miniboss-type enemies), you're free to set yourself up properly to take the boss down before your phase ends.
Petra's Paralogue in 3H is unfairness in FE's final form. Not only does it change the objective right when it looks like you've won, but it also ambush-spawns Hubert WITH METEOR (or Catherine, not sure which is worse but I'll give the edge to ambush-spawning Meteor because SERIOUSLY. Flashbacks to FE6's Bolting ambush spawns. Also, Hubert can't even learn Meteor as a player unit. It's like they wanted to merge EVERY form of unfair design.)
3:13 This hilariously also sums up why Sonic fans hate untelegraphed pits in 2D stages.
Awakening has a lot of wyvern reinforcement spawns, but another factor that I feel makes them manageable is Chrom has an unlimited-use dragon effective prf weapon with WTA on them, meaning you'll always had an answer to them.
Your concluding point towards the end of the video about unfair elements providing a positive value really resonated with me as a TTRPG DM - this is something I utilize all the time at my table and I think it's extremely effective. Often times, a main antagonist will have a lot advantages over the party. Information, power, numbers, magical items, back up plans, and so on. These things can make it frustrating for the players to come up with an effective strategy to finally take them down, but the victory is made SO much sweeter because of it. When they're finally able to take down the baddie that's been stalking them with scrying magics, sending ambush teams out at night to attack them, and generally being a pain in the ass at every turn, everyone celebrates and they're like "YEAH, FUCK THAT GUY!" 🤣
Of course it is possible to go too far with this - if you go overboard on "unfair" elements, you can cause a victory to feel hollow even when those elements are overcome. It's all about balance and moderation, just like I think FE should be in regards to these elements.
As someone who has spent some time designing maps in SRPG Studio, something that I personally have to balance on Ambush style reinforcements is that they are SUPPOSED to be unfair.
You don't create an ambush because you want it to be fair, you do it because it should be, unexpected, scary, and force a rapid change in plans. On the other hand the player has a vested interest in their units, and doesn't want them to die, so a tactic that is designed to be unexpected can have unexpected results such as killing a character.
At heart, I think for most players Permadeath creates a system where they just reload when a character dies, which can lead to a scenario where they run a war with no loses. In this case, any mechanic that leads to an unexpected lose of a character becomes viewed as unfair. Whether that's an ambush, change in objectives, or a cutscene death of a character they had invested in.
I recently played Engage Ch11 and had a blast - I did play on Hard, but I didn't think it was unfair
The top 10 worst feeling reinforcements have to be that Paladin with a killing edge on the dock town level in FE7
I never really had an issue with that guy. I always put a promoted Oswin in his way and watched him suicide into him.
I think you really hit the nail on the head on this one. Very good analysis, to the point that I would recommend this video to aspiring game designers. Plenty of food for thought here.
One thing that comes to mind is Battle before Dawn in FE7 (HHM). People say it is unfair, but they knee cap themselves by not doing Lyn mode and then give themselves too many goals to complete (rescue Jaffar, Nino, and Zephiel; get all the treasure). If you aren't going to use Jaffar or Nino, then why save them?
I believe reinforcements can be fun if it is built up. Someone can warn the player that their opponents will often have reinforcements in the battlefield. In the early maps, a player will be notified when, what kind of reinforcements appear, and where they will appear. Later on, the maps will only tell the player the what kind of reinforcements and where they will appear. In the final maps, players will only know where potential reinforcements may spawn.
I'm generally in favour of ambush reinforcements, but they do have to be done well. In the chapter 11 awakening example the potential threat of these reinforcements can be mitigated to the point of triviality if they weren't ambush reinforcements by parking powerful combat units near the start, especially bow users if the enemy just shows up and then the player gets first pickings. This is especially easy given the amount of information given to the player. Such a thing happening would be the opposite of encouraging players to rush. This encouragement to go slow or camp near the start can still be mitigated by providing other time sensitive objectives elsewhere but then the reinforcements lose a bit of their purpose. I find that this is generally how a lot of reinforcements can feel if they can't move right away unless they are exceptionally powerful like the Black Knight appearing in Path of Radiance (who would work just fine not being an ambush spawn) or the bosses in chapter 11 of Engage.
The Wyverns in chapter 11 of Awakening COULD be made exceptionally powerful while not being ambush reinforcements in order to still encourage the player to really move (and that could also be signaled to the player ahead of time), but I feel like that would clash with the feel of the world a bit too hard to have these insane, boss threat level, or stronger than boss level enemies just show up as random nobodies. It would feel very "gamey". Overall I think the game giving the player the warning it does along with these being ambush reinforcements works really well.
Me and my best friend have been playing Fates Conquest together lately, and one thing that's been stuck with me since our last session was how he called the Chapter 9 reinforcements unfair, saying that while I can deal with them no problem, a blind player could just get killed by them if everyone was in their combined range even though they're not ambush spawns so if you're in no state to fight them you could just run away, also they're area based so you can't trigger them unless a majority of your units are within range to start fighting them, it really has me questioning his ability in Fire Emblem
you know what's missing in fire emblem maps? invisible walls.
Ok hear me out, what if a map was bigger than what you can actually visit, and the reinforcement spawned in the unreachable area and they have some way to go through where you are (like a one way tunnel or something). That way you can spot them before they can become a danger. Maybe even add something like watchtowers that reveal fog of war in those unreachable areas to make it a mission objective that gives you information on the state of reinforcements.
FE really only creates a problematic kind of "unfairness" under 3 scenarios.
1) When an ambush spawn is badly telegraphed AND it is powerfull enough that it breaks your strategy and forces a reset. This makes for an annoying surprise reset; but also means that in future attempts you're going to be focused on that ambush which is often to the detriment of the map as a whole.
For example, CH 11 in engage can be immensly frustrating because of this. Initially a large chunk of the army behind you doesn't move, but if your frontline moves too quickly suddenly they start moving and your slower backline is screwed. So the next time you try it you just wait 1 square before the trigger for your slower units to catch up, completly undermining the theme of the map.
2) When the map forces a specific playstyle that isn't particularly fun. Usually this means gimmicky maps with gimmicky enemies (e.g. a map with a lot of staff users with sleep, or a map filled with balistas). But it can also be a generally awkward map lay-out that doesn't give you much to work with (E.g. too little/too much terrain), or when enemies are programmed to behave in a rather annoying way (e.g. too aggresive, too passive, behaviour triggers work differently than expected (E.g. the boss randomly turning aggresive because you triggered enemy group #32 and now rushing at you from the other side of the map))
3) Overpowered enemies that kind of break the entire game, my favorite example of this being the Sigrid summoned in one of the engage DLC maps. He literally runs across the entire map in like 2 turns tops, which is just silly.
Just choke point Sigurd with edelgard’s flame gambit
I don’t know if everyone knows about this because I have no idea how often skirmishes come up in engage, but there was one I got into before chapter 20 where I was at a port. I wanna say it was literally the chapter 19 map, but instead of maybe a little less than half the spaces being miasma & empowering the corrupted, in the skirmish it was like 90% of the map. I was like “DUDE”
I don't really mind ambush spawns in games like FE11 and FE12 where you have save points to alleviate the surprise. That and the games make it clear where reinforcements come from *most of the time* so you can prepare as long as you're aware. Maybe I'm the weird one but it feels like a fair challenge in those games.
Thieves or some other class could have additional utility of being able to scout ambush reinforcements so they either A) Become regular reinforcements or B) Appear as warning sign or something in a part of the map they're about spawn in. Or even give the task to scope the area to one of your units before chapter begins and depending on who you assign you'll get different information. Then you could assign a unit as a scout during the chapter to keep you informed which would also give units you don't deploy something to do. Cause that's kind of a problem most FE games have - after early game your army grows and yet you're still limited to 10-15 deployment slots while everyone else has nothing to do.
Playing through FE6 currently. Chapter that Rutger shows up he walks outta the castle right up to Elen instantly killing her and then has Clarie recruit him right after. Dude did not want two healers on my team.
Blindfire before watching: "Nothing is more unfair than ambush reinforcement promoted flyers."
Can't believe the last chapters of conquest were not mentioned
Ambush reinforcements are sometimes very good but usually they are annoying. For example in thracia an ambush reinforcement stole all the stuff I gave to Safy and that was funny but other times You think youre safe but then a guy spawns that kills the lord and you have to repeat the map
I don’t have much FE experience but I do know that the fights in Final Fantasy Tactics where you have to fight bosses as only Ramza were some straight bullshit I would’ve never figured out as a kid without a strategy guide + loads of grinding.
Surprised you didn’t talk about the inclusion of the turnwheel and how that can affect both the designer and the player’s perspective of ‘fairness’.
Before the turnwheel was introduced, ambush spawns could very well lead to a reset, but now that it’s been introduced (and appears to be a permanent addition), those kind of gotchas are mostly just relegated to rewind charge resource management.
The turnwheel changes things in theory, but in practice I think people still find the sorts of design decisions that are frustrating in older games to be frustrating in turnwheel games too. One of the maps I hear the most complaints about in 3h is chapter 5, specifically because of the thief ambush spawns for example.
I do think turnwheel can help them feel a little less frustrating since you don't have to reset, but it's still annoying to have to burn a turnwheel on a jumpscare reinforcement
@@actuallizard I agree that it doesn’t really ‘fix’ them but I do wonder if the existence of the turnwheel makes the devs more willing to do unfair stuff because the players have an ‘out’.
@@actuallizard I think the 3H Ch 5 thieves are kinda interesting since they're only ambush spawns on higher difficulties. They're also not even much of a threat on Hard. They're a pain to plan around on Maddening, though, since they get Pass.
@@TheNotty I think it definitely does affect the devs' approach the game design.
I dont think ambush spawns really have anything interesting to offer as opposed to player phase spawns.
The absolute least ambush spawns can do is punish a particularly slow style of play which I really do not think is a good idea as all it does is punish new players who aren't good enough at the game to make it to a certain nebulous point in the map.
It's really interesting talking about the differences that makes certain game design decisions feel fair and fun and others unfair and frustrating, especially in a game as malleable as Fire Emblem in experience, permadeath easily making anything surprising that results in a unit death all the more frustrating
Yeah I would agree. I can't think off the top of my head of any ambush spawns that I wouldn't prefer to be non ambush spawns that come 1 turn earlier
@@actuallizard i suppose there could be an argument that it's too trivial to kill enemies on player phase but I think that just promotes player action when utilized well instead of enemy phasing
@@theghostcreator776 And if you know what you're doing you can still bait out the enemies on enemy phase and camp them, it's just that you have to know the reinforcements ahead of time.
@@lagspike7763 yeah that too, it ultimately is just a player phase action vs. predicted enemy phase action orientation.
Reinforcements should be sign posted on all cases
I can’t remember exactly what the scenario was, but I do remember getting royally pissed off at one of the maps in the three houses DLC route. I believe that the objective is having to escape, but then either the objective changes or is extended. I remember having a hard time just clearing the original objective without losing anyone, only for me to not have nearly enough time to clear the second one. That map was legit harder than base game lunatic routes. Shit was whack yo.
I find the sudden reinforcements in some games to be completely unfair. I remember playing a blind playthrough in a FE game (I can't remember which ones), and a bunch of reinforcements shows up suddenly somewhere near the end of the map and killing a few of my characters. That made me restart the chapter and use a guide for every chapter just to check if there are reinforcements or not.
FE4 had a lot of reinforcements showing up after reaching a certain area or conquering a certain castle. Thankfully, that game had battlesaves, I usually reset the game and load from that battlesave. FE11 had an issue with almost endless reinforcements showing up on forts, but at least that could be stopped.
Sometimes, I wish there was a mission where we ambush the reinforcement as an objective
I have no idea what the community opinion is, but in Three Houses war phase Gronder Field Blue Lions (man that's unwieldy), when a whole force of alliance units spawned behind me it literally killed me.
It felt so unfair until I realized, yeah that's the point. My army literally opened the path for them, a more organized army, to march straight up to me.
This probably applies in retrospect to more games that I haven't played or smth
Chapter 11 should have a few adjustments- I think that you should be able to swap in and out units in case of a fatality and Freeze stave Miciah is just too much.
The most unfair thing about Engage Ch.11 is that I spent tens of turns slowly whittling down Veyle's health with the Edelgard ring power that creates fire terrain (since she can't be damaged in combat), only to learn that terrain damage can't finish off units. There's not any good reason to experiment much with the power before this, because the first thing you learn about it is that the damage per turn is very low compared to your combat damage against any normal unit. So this is really the first good opportunity to learn this, and it wastes like half an hour of your time!
I’m surprised that FE6 wasn’t discussed at all in regards to this topic. Almost every reinforcement is an ambush spawn, the hit rates are abysmal, and Gaiden/route split criteria are not always clear. I don’t hate most of these elements-once you know to be careful around forts, stairs, and never leave units near the start of the map, it’s usually not hard to avoid getting blindsided by reinforcements. The horrendous hit rates of lances and axes kind of serve to balance swords and bows, which are typically the two worst weapon types in FE games with inflated/normal hit rates. You can usually get all Gaiden chapters just by playing quickly. I still wish that some of the hidden info like route splits or specific recruitments were better telegraphed, though (e.g. why does Lilina have to be the one to recruit Gonzalez?).
Archers on maddening 3h paralogies super range pin point accuracy and ambushing spawns... also on paralogues youre likely to not have leveled a character.
Not Fire Emblem, but what I really like in the Kaga saga (particularly Vestaria Saga) is that the game almost always hints at enemy reinforcements in dialogue. A good example is probably Chapter 11, where, in the opening cutscene, one of the characters immediately points out directions to different places, with one of them being the direction of the enemy capital. Not only does this contribute to world-building, but it also gives the player a helpful mental note of where the enemy spawns are most likely going to be concentrated. Even if you missed it the nearby villages also give useful hints at enemy reinforcements points etc.
Currently playing through the game, and I don't think I've ever been truly blindsided by ambush spawns in the game because of how well the game is at conveying important information without necessarily giving it directly.
Hope you're having a good day
>Unfair Reinforcements
Super Robot Wars laughing along with FE in distance.
Hi Lizard!
Great thoughts!
It is interesting that most of the things you list as unfair. Like hidden information or rng.
Were solved or somewhat alleviated by the rewind time mechanic in three houses. That mechanic allowed for a new thing to happen and a player to be like “okay lets rewind back to a place when I can handle that eventuality”
Maybe I'm just blind and/or bad at video games, but the most unfair thing to me in Fire Emblem has been the Witches in Echoes. I know where they are, I know what they can do, but I feel absolutely powerless in doing anything about it. It feels like each turn is rush to kill them ASAP and pray they choose to not "nothing personnel, kid" my 0 Res units. But I also concede that I may have completely missed the game informing me about some kind of counterplay to Warp, since I rarely see anyone else bring them up.
Other than that, my gripes are the standard fare. Ch 16 Awakening in openly hostile to the player with those Falcoknights. Rutger moving like four spaces out of Laus Castle then getting his 5 move turn with a KILLING EDGE is just a dick move and I will not hear arguments to the contrary. And Awakening Lunatic+ is just not worth the time investment of resetting until the enemies don't roll so many + skills
There is some counter play to witches. Every map has a direction they like to teleport and attack you from which is usually in the "back" relative to your starting position and the enemy's. They also don't like to break your line so units in the center of your party can be protected by higher res units on the edge of your formation.
Tbh I mostly hate chapter 11 of Engage because of that damn freeze staff unit
Overall, great video, but I do have a nitpick that I guess I'll dump all over your comment section for to please the yourtubs.
I think your definition of "fair" at the beginning is a bit too semantic. For the most part, I don't think there is an expectation of symmetry in single player video games. No one complains that Bowser from Super Mario Bros. on NES is "unfair" because the player isn't also given a massive hitbox, jump attack invulnerability, and a projectile with no collision.
I say this because I don't think Frustration is a great metric for what a Fire Emblem player might feel is "unfair". I think a start would be to look at what is reasonable for a player to expect or respond to. That fits with your examples of "bad" quickmoving/powerful reinforcements or changing map goals against the elements that are properly telegraphed.
Even then, sometimes things that seem unfair might just be trying to teach the player something about the game. Here, for example, units spawning where the player was after a few turns teaches the player to keep advancing along the map and not play too slow. You might take damage or even reset, but you know for the rest of the time you play game that slow play is punished.
I haven't played the latest FF, but that example to me seems like it can go either way. It can be frustrating to remove tools from the player, but that is also a tactic many games have done in the past for narrative and/or gameplay reasons. It sounds like the compounding aspects of depowering the player while having them do a marathon of two maps uninterrupted could push some players over their limit. This might be especially true if they struggle in the latter chapter and decide their only way forward is to replay two maps.
The last statement you made about a map looking daunting or unfair but being quite doable once you evaluate your resources is interesting. It makes me wonder how people learn fire emblem. The main punishment for a mistake in this game series is a unit dying and, for most players, (for most games) results in a reset. This, like you said, lends itself to a trial and error playstyle. If you have to make mistakes to learn and mistakes pretty much require a reset, the game doesn't teach you damage formulas, seems to insist that weapon triangle is as important as Pokémon typing, communicates that armor knights are defensive, how does a new player come to understand the mechanics of the game? And where do they find fun?
If I rant on everything I hate about Awakening Lunatic I feel I’ll just end up parroting everyone so I’ll try to simplify it.
Lunatic Awakening can ONLY beat you with what’s under the table. Not what’s on it. And it’s painfully aware of this fact and abuses it to no end.
I never felt like I was truly challenged on Lunatic. I only ever felt like I lost because the game had some nonsense up it’s sleeve. It’s just not a fun or engaging way to lose. Is Awakening the hardest FE game? Not by a long shot. Is it one of the more frustrating, unfun, and unrewarding titles to play through on Lunatic? YES.
I threw in the towel on the map with infinite spawning sniper mages. I couldn’t handle any more of the game’s BS after that. Just for clarity, I do think Awakening is a good game with a solid plot and characters, but I am NEVER playing it on a mode above normal again. It’s the I Wanna Be the Guy of Fire Emblem: I didn’t die because I did anything wrong, I died because I didn’t know the game was going to yoink that pixel away. And there’s only so much of that you can tolerate.
no way u didnt mention chapter 13 of three houses, the most unfair map in the saga
In defense of the Chapter 9 reinforcements, if they didn't move they would not be threatening, and you would not be incentivize to push ahead, kill the enemies and reclaim the forts as soon as possible. This is, in my opinion, one of the most memorable chapters in the game in Lunatic for that reason.
Of course, they could just have then spawn in an inaccessible place like a mountain and it would serve the same purpose while not hiding any information from the player, so even in the best scenarios, I don't think ambush spawn add anything that cannot be replicated in other forms of reinforcement.
I hate and I say it again
When I'm trying to kill a enemy and
Then
My character miss the hit with 70% of hit chance
Dear god i keep forgetting how bad awakening map 16 reinforcements are becuase i always assume they spawn at the start becasude the way the map works (roots up a tree) imply thats where they are coming from, so i always forget there mid map fliers
Hmm, I think Awakening has caught me off guard the most, but usually long range weapon reinforcements are the worst overall
How annoying ambush spawns are to me is how they influence your overall playstyle in a negative way. For example, in awakening, you are incentivized to avoid using glass cannons and even avoid using your dancer in case an ambush spawn surprises you. I also played at a much slower pace and kept lots of my units on top of forts doing nothing because I was worried about ambush spawns that may or may not spawn on those forts when I left them.
Speaking of unfair, fe1 critical hits because there is no dodge stat. Towards the end of the game crits for both sides start to happen all the time as crit goes up and up.
i like the reinforcements where an group of slow overpowered enemies follow you. It is like playing with a time/turn limit.
That Engage second objective felt like the worst possible example. Like, all the rings are on one half of the map and then theres a boss with multiple life crustals sitting at the opposite end of the map. I can not believe someone would call that unfair, mostly because if someone is caught off guard by *that* then I'd almost doubt they'd eben gotten to the rings with that severe lack of pattern recognition
Didn't even mention FE6 reinforcements who get to move on arrival, and the vast majority of reinforcements are high stated fliers.
An ambush-spawned mage on chapter 15 of shadow dragon just killed my Marth wtf 😭😭😭
The First 2 times i played crumbling league i had rutger and the death squad he spawns with kill one of my units, in the third time(and my current playtrought) i managed to recruit him deathless, and i really think It shows my progress with strategy RPGs
Now with that being Said f*ck the bandit caves that are in the hero of the west, why are the caves almost inside the villages on a game with ambush spawns? Like seriously why?
Chapter 11 Engage suuuuucks. It's a cool concept for a chapter, but there's so much misinformation given to the player. The wyrms at the beginning never attack you despite being in range, the gravity staff unit in the back will always go for the closest unit to them despite no other character from the backline activating. You have no idea which rings are going to be given to the next corrupted which feels cheap. The Tomahawk corrupted also never attacks you despite being in range.
But by far the worst part about that chapter is the Hounds won't activate until you reach a very specific point in the map. Meaning that you can turtle halfway through and take your time picking off enemies when the story is constantly telling you that you need to run. It turns a cool set piece into an absolute joke of a hard map and narrative cohesion.
Enemy cries are an abomination. Having a 4%chance to just kill something that should be able to handle you easily is fine for players, but not especially good or useful. But when enemies do it, it only takes one to permadeath your favorite unit out of nowhere.
8:19 did you just move up to range 1 to use a physic staff...?
I've only played Engage but the reinforcements felt like they tip toed the borderline of balance for a blind maddening run. I cant imagine playing a version where they could act on the same turn they spawn. Trial and error resetting completely drains the fun out of a strategy game.
FYI, Fire Emblem was originally meant for there to be unexpected surprises, much like real warfare. An effective strategist will know how to play cautiously, defend vulnerable units, and minimize losses (and there WILL be losses.)
Some may argue this is not fun cuz they just want to rush through everything, but it is far from being antithetical to a strategy game. Expect the unexpected, as the popular military saying goes.
My biggest gripe is infinite reinforcements, or too many waves of reinforcements (and Engage is a big offender with this).
In some chapters they work well (ch25 is the one I remember the most, tense and forces you to avoid turtling, especially on higher difficulties, but you also /can/ cheese them with warp), but on others it becomes incredibly tedious.
Tiki's paralogue doesn't have infinite reinforcements, but spending tons of turns just camping a reinforcement spot is not fun or challenging for me, and there is no reasonable way to clear the rest of the map and reach Tiki while the reinforcements are pursuing you (at least, I didn't find it feasible on Maddening as I'd just get overrun). And we're talking like... 30+ turns before they stop spawning if I remember correctly.
The final map has a really neat gimmick with the dark emblems, but I never engage (hah) with it beyond the first wave, because the infinite reinforcements (especially the griffons... seriously, they suck) just makes it a matter of time before you get overrun and lose. On hard I killed the first wave and beat the boss in the same turn. On Maddening I just killed all but one emblem and had one person smack the boss for what felt like forever while the rest tried to keep up with all the reinforcements. This was not a fun experience, just tedious.
The final map of the Xenologue are even worse with infinite reinforcements, and the set levels and classes. It just makes the issues of the forced classes & levels an even bigger problem.
It's been a while since I played through some of the other games, so I don't remember how much of an issue this was in them, but it's definitely something I hope future FE games do away with.
Kaga = fair? Critical for you!!! And more dragons from the rear.
Counterpoint: it is Cervantes and he does not do anything wrong
So i was playing lunatic in fates conquest, and i had finally aproached haitaka, 9 drop spawns in the middle of my army, fast samurai, strong archers, and lancers with a magic targeting spear mixed in. I lost immediately and was immensely displeased to haave lost because i didnt read a strategy guide
The most unfair mechanic in an srpg I've ever experienced is the conditions of attacks in Unicorn Overlord.
A ton of dubious options of which it feels the game loves to ignore and it takes much more time than simply selecting what to do and who to target in combat. Oh and the results of the changes you do are shown *after* you pick the conditions, just to be extra detestable.
"I read a reddit thread-"
Oh no
I love when the enemy reinforces because every generic garbage red unit is an opportunity to turn iron weapons into EXP.
How did you go through an entire thread and the top two games aren't FE11 and 12? Those games were barely play tested on low difficulties.
Chapter 11 is unfair because the girl is litterally unkillable 😂
Its really unfair in awakening that they wont let me gay marry panne
One of the greatest crimes ever committed by IS