Fire Emblem

So I tried playing Shadow Dragon and I’m like how the f*ck do people play this? It’s fricken ridiculously bad. Like I’m screaming at least 5 minutes about the game design. Why is Jagen super unhelpful? Why does Gordin move at the speed of a knight? Why are everyone’s stat growths atrocious? Why is there a Wt stat on weapons but no con? Why is there no rescuing? Why can only Marth visit villages? Why is Gordin so ass? Why are the bosses so goddamn hard to kill? WHY DOES CHAPTER 3 BOSS HAVE 14 SPEED?! Why do I not get heals til chapter 4? Why do I not start with vulneraries or any means of getting them? Why do I have 17 units by chapter 3? What is this fricken game?!

1 Like

I think SD was one of the games that checked Wt against the character’s strength stat. Otherwise, you could add: Why do I need to kill my units to get to the Gaiden chapters?

2 Likes

There’s never any love for Shadow Dragon.

Honestly its pretty shit, especially compared to a good Fire Emblem game, but I still hurt a little when I hear people talk about it. Shadow Dragon was my first FE game, and not realizing that its issues were in fact issue I actually really had a lot of fun with it. I can never go back and replay it, but I’ll always remember saying “fuck this” and abusing Warp staves to beat the last chapter in 2 turns.

As for the bosses being strong, I would rather they actually be a threat. In newer games they’re basically slightly buffed normal enemies. Really the issue with Shadow Dragon is its a remake and they didn’t really do much to modernize it. And the old games did not age well.

Oh yeah I learned about that later when I was looking up a character guide to find out why the hell Gordin is so trash. My friend told me to play shadow dragon and he used Gordin a lot and I’m like but how?! His growths are disgustingly bad and his bases are eww…

@Arete to me, the bosses are less challenging and more like unkillable. My hit rates against the boss are usually <70 and only a few people can actually attack and not get instakilled. Even if I use those guys only, there’s barely any damage output. Adding in the fact that healing is basically non-existent for the first chapter your only option is to sit at the fort and heal. Also the throne will heal the boss of any damage I inflicted it’s just a long cycle of tediousness.

YOOOOOO

Who else is hyped that there will be no pair ups in Echoes? Also apparently stat growths are low just like they were in Gaiden. Oh well, gotta get that full Gaiden experience somehow. The footage actually looks pretty ridiculous, archers with more than 2 range? This looks like its gonna be really interesting…

1 Like

Echoes is looking pretty sweet. Can’t say I’m excited that there’s no pair up, since I found the way Fates handled it to be pretty fun, but it’s not like I mind it not being there. They’re just staying true to the original, and the series is more than capable of being good without pairup, as evidenced by a majority of the games in the series.

I think the pair up system does add a lot of good complexity to the game, but I’m not particularly perturbed that it won’t be in the remake. I think there are some questionable game design decisions in Gaiden that are hopefully brought to modern standards, but in the end it should still definitively be a Gaiden remake.

I’m looking forward to playing Echoes. I won’t really miss the pair up system. I think it makes the games too easy.

I want to grab Echos but with Breath of the Wild being as big as it is and Persona 5 just around the corner I am going to hold off for now. Maybe by the time I am able to play I will have a chance to get it on sale or something.

I am still playing Heroes fairly regularly. I have fun with it though I think the Gatcha is pretty cruel. The ability to give characters skills from other characters is a fun addition that can do a lot to change up how you can use some units. I gave Wings of Mercy to one of my slow moving tanks to help her be more useful in battle and messed with a few others.

I started playing Fire Emblem, thanks to one of my close friends. He said to me that it was an awesome series and I may enjoy it. I started with FE7, i really love it i really liked some of the characters like lyndis and nino. I was trying to get awakening , but i couldn’t; however i luckily got conquest months ago, is really difficult(classic mode) and I don’t have enough time to finish it. My friend and I wanted to play Heroes,but it wasn’t available in my country. He recently told me about Echoes and yeah he sounded really excited. I hope this game turns out well, but I know it would not disappoint me. Also, I hope i could get Echoes and enough time to play it xd.

So just got Echoes and it’s super weird. It’s barely feels like a Fire Emblem game I’ve been having a lot of fun with it so far. I’m not sure what you’re looking for but since you started with FE7 like I did I’d recommend FE8 if you have spare time but you could try out Echoes as well. I’m not really sure what everyone else thinks but I find it quite bizarre.

I finished Echoes a few days ago. The biggest flaw it had was that the maps weren’t very interesting, but there was a lot of them, so that might make up for it. Otherwise, good cast, good battle system, good music. I was worried because the last FE game (Fates) was awful, but they fixed Fates’ issues from the get-go in Echoes.

Very different to FE7 though. They aren’t too comparable.

1 Like

I forgot to mention that I finished Echoes like a week ago and holy crap I absolutely loved it. I think it might actually be my favorite in the series and I have played all the localized games except for Shadow Dragon. I just have to say that the features are hella weird and the game feels more like a JRPG than a normal FE game but it’s still really fun to play. The story is fricken amazing and the voice acting is so natural, I love it. I talked to a few people who were like, “I can’t play Echoes because I haven’t finished Fates,” and I’m just like, “No. Stop it. Fates is nothing compared to Echoes. It’s not worth your time to finish it.” So yup that’s my feelings about Echoes now that I finished the main story. I highly recommend playing it; IGN doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about lol.

1 Like

I feel that that part is already known for a long time. I’m sadly spoiled on the basic story because I watched a plot summary of Gaiden back when nobody knew a Gaiden remake would actually happen, but I still can’t wait to play it (currently other things on my To-Play/Read-List, that’s why I haven’t started yet).

1 Like

I watched that same video and honestly it didn’t spoil the story too much because they added sooo much new stuff to the story. There are tons of new characters and everyone seems to be written such that they actually have very legitimate sounding motivations, not just having generically evil antagonists.

Also Delthea best girl

I’m glad I’ve found another man of culture around these parts.

1 Like

Nice!

Then I’ll look forward to all the new stuff!

1 Like

Alright, I recently got Echoes and I’ve been playing it a lot the past couple days. Currently 15 hours in, with some thoughts about the game:

Obviously coming off the heels of the more recent Fire Emblem titles (being Awakening and…Fates), it’s pretty refreshing to not be dealing with the whole pairing/shipping aspect of the game. The characters are much better, and while not especially deep by any means, they’re still mostly likeable enough given how many there are. Particularly nice is not having a bland self insert protagonist, which I always find tiresome since I never really appreciated character customization enough for it to offset the negatives of the main character having all the personality of a bag of rocks. The villains (with the exception of the Duma cult dudes, who are just your average freaky dark wizard fantasy cult) are much more interesting, although I’d have to again reiterate that I don’t think they’re especially deep by any means.

With THAT out of the way, holy crap is it obvious that Fire Emblem has come so far in its gameplay since Gaiden. I’m still having fun with Echoes but some of the mechanics and map design are so whack that I sometimes just feel an overbearing urge to put the game down after completing one or two chapters. The bosses that just spawn endless waves of enemies make for particularly tedious maps, so I pretty much audibly groan every time I see a boss unit with “conjure” in their ability list.

I’ve also personally found that mages and archers are just ridiculously powerful and the only real reason to use units that aren’t protagonists + ranged units is just because there’s not enough of them to clear maps with. The range archers have is particularly absurd, and half the difficult maps that don’t involve mook spam are only so because there’s a bunch of archers and mages to contend with. Amusingly enough, generally the units that will see you through these situations are…your own archers and mages.

Making matters worse are the witches, who will just randomly teleport anywhere on the map they please, and whether they kill a unit or not is an RNG crapshoot. Their AI is dumb and rarely teleports to and targets weak to magic or low hp units, but when they do that unit is basically guaranteed to be dead. You pretty much have no control over these outcomes, which makes witches probably the number one enemy outside of bosses that necessitate usage of Mila’s Turnwheel.

I’ll be honest. I’m glad Echoes has the Turnwheel. I think it’s entirely dumb for a game like Fire Emblem to have it, but I think Echoes in particular needs to have this sort of mechanic. So many of the maps force you into situations where you just have to keep rerolling RNG until the stars align (Desaix’s fort probably being the first prominent example…), and fortunately Mila’s Turnwheel is there to let you do just that. Unfortunately, this often creates maps where you’re just brute forcing RNG solutions rather than carefully strategizing your way through, but it is what it is.

I have a LOT of other complaints about the gameplay in particular, but this post is already too long winded. Suffice it to say that I’m quite enjoying Echoes, and as far as everything but gameplay is concerned it is vastly superior to Fates. However, the gameplay of Conquest is…obviously years ahead of Echoes, and goddamn does it show.

PS: Why the hell is Delthea so OP. Holy crap ever since I’ve gotten her it feels like she, Alm, and Python are basically carrying me through all of Alms chapters.

While it’s still somewhat random, to me it seems that witches will try to teleport if they see one member of your party as somewhat isolated. So you can manipulate them a little bit.

One problem I had with the protagonists was the duel-story thing. Once I was playing one protagonist I really didn’t want to switch, and going back to a completely different set of units felt frustrating somehow.

Giant waves of enemies, balls of tanks and archers, terrain that only lets you move one step each turn. Very slow paced and annoying to deal with.[quote=“ThePlasticSpork, post:219, topic:1842”]
I’ve also personally found that mages and archers are just ridiculously powerful
[/quote]

I never really used mages because it felt like if I used them for offense they’d be torn apart by witches and archers. I pretty much gave all the work to my healers, archers and fliers. The Whitewings, Eri, and Jenny were my carries for the most part.[quote=“ThePlasticSpork, post:219, topic:1842”]
Making matters worse are the witches, who will just randomly teleport anywhere on the map they please, and whether they kill a unit or not is an RNG crapshoot.
[/quote]

I had to deselect one of my tanks multiple times (don’t remember who exactly) because they were randomly getting one-shot by witches and there was no way to keep him alive. There were a handful of times I just left people dead when they died to witches. My main way of dealing with them has been to charge them and get them so low that they can’t cast spells.