Runboard.com
Слава Україні!

PLEASE VISIT THE ALL NEW DEINONYCHUS' DEN AT DEINONYCHUSDEN.COM!

runboard.com       Sign up (learn about it) | Sign in (lost password?)

Page:  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8 

 
Optimal Megatron Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info

Head of Mecha Maintenance

Location: Between the panels
Posts: 6117
Reply | Quote
Re: Fire Emblem Fates: Or GS and OM go on about something nobody else plays


quote:

I didn't mind this for two reasons.. one, the Avatar specifically calls him out for how ridiculous it is, and two, the reasoning why is in his class - he's a Paladin. Honor is everything to him. He's duty bound to fight for his land, his king and his family even if he's personally opposed to it. He knows HE can't fix what's gone wrong, so the only real exit to it is to fall on his sword, and the only way to do that with honor and preserve Nohr's integrity is to die in a duel with you.



Yeah, I suppose if he sees himself as inseparable from the old regime under Garon (which, as Nohr's foremost military commander, he would be), then he'd have a combination of believing this was making things easier for you (no attempting to whitewash Nohr's older aggression because its primary instigator and primary enforcer are dead) and the aforementioned fact that he just wants to die after what happens with Elise.

It's not a really BRILLIANT move, and like you point out, the Avatar gets to call him on how bullshit it is. But I suppose it's consistent for his character.

quote:

That, incidentally, is the easiest fight in franchise history.

I literally clicked on him, 2x'd, triggered Dragon Fang, and t-t-t-that's all, folks. emoticon



Mine was even shorter. Dragon Fang on the first move, and a crit. Check please. :lol

Having beaten Birthright now, I'm not sure how I feel about the last few maps.

Like I said, I've been trying to avoid deaths even if they're not final, just to see how hard it is, and Garon's throne room is kinda rough there. You have to inch forward to trigger the spawns so they actually attack you, and charging forward as a group is going to get at least one person focus fired to death. I managed to inch through without any "deaths", but a lot of it was playing cheap defensive tactics (using Sophie as a stone wall, a lot of the time).

By contrast, Dragon!Garon's map was much less of a deathtrap, and Garon himself was much cheaper than his human form. However, I ended up just mulching him because my Avatar hit level 16 on that map, and I roundly abused Attack Stance to triple him in one go with the Avatar and Ryoma. Boom, done, and even if the Avatar's HP was at like, half from his attack, he didn't get a second one.

Attack and Defense stance are a LOT more tactical than they were in Awakening, and while Pair Up defense stances are kind of self explanatory, I'm finding attack stances are REALLY useful because you automatically get a double hit before the enemy's allowed to attack. It's useful for sniping enemies that return fire might kill you from, and I imagine in Conquest, with Generals, it'd be an *amazing* way to sidestep the inabiltiy to do double attacks.


---

3/30/2016, 2:23 am Link to this post Send PM to Optimal Megatron AIM
 
Greatshot Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info

Moderator

Posts: 4702
Reply | Quote
Re: Fire Emblem Fates: Or GS and OM go on about something nobody else plays


quote:



It's not a really BRILLIANT move, and like you point out, the Avatar gets to call him on how bullshit it is. But I suppose it's consistent for his character.



Exactly, and as we all know, I get all pissy about people being OOC, so I was fine with it. He died a death fitting of the character, even if it was stubbornheaded and unnecessary :lol

quote:



Mine was even shorter. Dragon Fang on the first move, and a crit. Check please. :lol



:lol Yeah, the battles with the Black Knight - especially the one in RD's Endgame, which was fundamentally the same battle as this one - you dueling the commander, your army vs theirs were MUCH better done. Xander was anticlimatic emoticon

quote:

Having beaten Birthright now, I'm not sure how I feel about the last few maps.

Like I said, I've been trying to avoid deaths even if they're not final, just to see how hard it is, and Garon's throne room is kinda rough there. You have to inch forward to trigger the spawns so they actually attack you, and charging forward as a group is going to get at least one person focus fired to death. I managed to inch through without any "deaths", but a lot of it was playing cheap defensive tactics (using Sophie as a stone wall, a lot of the time).

By contrast, Dragon!Garon's map was much less of a deathtrap, and Garon himself was much cheaper than his human form. However, I ended up just mulching him because my Avatar hit level 16 on that map, and I roundly abused Attack Stance to triple him in one go with the Avatar and Ryoma. Boom, done, and even if the Avatar's HP was at like, half from his attack, he didn't get a second one.



Yeah, I've found both games so far have a LOT of Kiting battles due to how underpowered compared to other FE games you are. I find most fights in this one are move my good Def (or Res) guy forward, kite, kill, heal, repeat, whereas the Tellius games were all about Blitz style tactics, and Awakening was just overwhelming steamroller. Ironically I found the Dragon fight harder myself (I adopted to the kiting tactic easily enough, there's situations in the other games this works too, but that one you start surrounded and I made the foolish attempt to engage out the gate. Yeah. Having to redo BOTH fights since there's no save before Endgame made me not do that again. :lol Next time around I just balled up and inched out slowly.

quote:


Attack and Defense stance are a LOT more tactical than they were in Awakening, and while Pair Up defense stances are kind of self explanatory, I'm finding attack stances are REALLY useful because you automatically get a double hit before the enemy's allowed to attack. It's useful for sniping enemies that return fire might kill you from, and I imagine in Conquest, with Generals, it'd be an *amazing* way to sidestep the inabiltiy to do double attacks.



Agreed. The fact you (and the enemy) ALWAYS proc a 2nd strike makes it a lot more viable (and predictable) a tactic. You might still RNG-screw a roll, but you can at least expect the attack. I',m beginning to suspect THIS is why your guys suck, honestly. The enemy HP/stat values are adjusted for decent supports.

But yeah, this has made the Effie/Arthur pairing insanely great. Effie as the lead gets Arthur's high crit value 2nd strike (so he often does really good bonus damage), and with her as his 2nd strike, he gets her moose-like str and high skill. She almost always hits for double digits on a 2nd strike, usually high teens.

I basically wound up NEVER pairing units other than very specific situations (needing someone weak to get a bit of muscle to get a level or to hope they could survive a counter). Beyond that it basically just became the transport system of older FE games, where I'd have slower combatants hop a ride on my mounted units to get across the map faster, whereas in Awakening that stat boost was pretty handy early on (and was a way to ABUSE THE !@#$ out of Frederick's stats without him stealing your precious xp :lol).

3/30/2016, 7:20 pm Link to this post Send PM to Greatshot
 
Optimal Megatron Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info

Head of Mecha Maintenance

Location: Between the panels
Posts: 6117
Reply | Quote
Re: Fire Emblem Fates: Or GS and OM go on about something nobody else plays


So, getting into Conquest.

Storywise, so far it's okay, though wow does Ryoma flip his !@#$ when you side with Nohr. :lol (That said, given you're siding with people who use zombie super soldiers and magical sword suicide bombs and killed your mother like, a day ago, perhaps that's not unexpected)

The first brawl after the choice section was MUCH harder than Birthright, as Xander kinda goes down like a chump there compared to Ryoma the beast. Xander almost took him down, but then Sakura healed him and so I had to settle for taking out everyone BUT Ryoma. I feel bad for Hinoka most of all, since you kind of take her entire reason for being who she is and take an axe to the trunk of it.

That said, Flora is not dead by the end of this (though holy !@#$, that freeze staff of hers is annoying) and I had to restart several times on the Ice Tribe map to get through it without losing someone and with getting the village bonus gold.

So far, I like most of my troops, though Jakob seems to have atrocious growths in general (as I've had him kill a few things simply because that unit needed to be dead before the enemy's next turn), as he routinely hits 3 stat level ups. "How irksome" indeed. The rest of the team so far are pretty good, though I'm at Dragonfall Keep (MUCH earlier than in Birthright) and that's proving interesting to do without losses, particularly with Azura playing Metal Gear Solid in the back end of the fortress with the one Samurai.

Arthur and Odin are rapidly becoming favorites just for dialogue. I got Odin as the shop keeper once and his voice acting is just great. "Welcome to my FEL STOREFRONT." "Thank you for your dark business."

Recruiting Mozu was kind of an exercise in power leveling since I basically had Silas and Jakob double team something (leaving it low on health and debuffed by Jakob's daggers) for her to smash it. Most of the map went that way.

Still, definitely interesting, for all that I'm kind of waiting for someone to address the elephant in the room that is "sure, Garon says he didn't know the sword would explode" when Xander was apparently waiting on Hoshido's border with a full army of soldiers that couldn't fight until Mikoto died and the barrier went down. That said, I think most of the royal family thinks Garon's full of !@#$ on that one.

---

4/1/2016, 6:24 pm Link to this post Send PM to Optimal Megatron AIM
 
Greatshot Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info

Moderator

Posts: 4702
Reply | Quote
Re: Fire Emblem Fates: Or GS and OM go on about something nobody else plays


quote:

Optimal Megatron wrote:

So, getting into Conquest.

Storywise, so far it's okay, though wow does Ryoma flip his !@#$ when you side with Nohr. :lol (That said, given you're siding with people who use zombie super soldiers and magical sword suicide bombs and killed your mother like, a day ago, perhaps that's not unexpected)

The first brawl after the choice section was MUCH harder than Birthright, as Xander kinda goes down like a chump there compared to Ryoma the beast. Xander almost took him down, but then Sakura healed him and so I had to settle for taking out everyone BUT Ryoma. I feel bad for Hinoka most of all, since you kind of take her entire reason for being who she is and take an axe to the trunk of it.



Yeah, I felt pretty shitty in that fight, and yep, after 3 or 4 tries I finally opted on the "run the !@#$ away from Ryoma" tactic. :lol

With RNGesus on your side you COULD beat him, but rolling hits and most likely a needed crit on those silly to hit chances without him counter-murdering someone (Dodgeplznocrit) is an exercise in "eh, I could be 3 chapters into the game by now"

quote:

That said, Flora is not dead by the end of this (though holy !@#$, that freeze staff of hers is annoying) and I had to restart several times on the Ice Tribe map to get through it without losing someone and with getting the village bonus gold.



I found that fight to be really easy, mostly because it plays like Tellius era FE and my rolling blitz strat tore through that one like butter. But yeah, freeze staves are a PITA. There's a fight later one where one came *this* close to costing me a reset at the end of the stage.

quote:

So far, I like most of my troops, though Jakob seems to have atrocious growths in general (as I've had him kill a few things simply because that unit needed to be dead before the enemy's next turn), as he routinely hits 3 stat level ups. "How irksome" indeed. The rest of the team so far are pretty good, though I'm at Dragonfall Keep (MUCH earlier than in Birthright) and that's proving interesting to do without losses, particularly with Azura playing Metal Gear Solid in the back end of the fortress with the one Samurai.



I took one look at him in both games, went "yeah, no" and he hasn't left the bench yet.

That fight was interesting. Tactical Singer Action! Though I almost lost it on stupidity. I grabbed the Naginata out of the chest for her, played avoid the Samy til the end of the map when I realised she would run out of space. Went over to attack him, looked at the numbers, realised she couldn't soak the hit and then the enemy's turn hit too, so I figured okay, pass, counter, repeat, then attack and she'll live with 1HP.

Enemy phase. Samurai whacks her, and I realize with dawning horror as the screen fades out...

That I didn't equip the Naginata. :ouch

I rushed Silas over there to kill the thing and had her pair up, but yeah. That would have been a facepalm reset. :lol

quote:

Arthur and Odin are rapidly becoming favorites just for dialogue. I got Odin as the shop keeper once and his voice acting is just great. "Welcome to my FEL STOREFRONT." "Thank you for your dark business."
quote:



I love Arthur. I enjoyed Odin's absurdy and deeply regret not using him. I kept both him and Nyx in for awhile and settled on her because her Mag growth seemed better. Though it seemed she missed alot as the game progressed, til I realized her Skill was AWFUL. Like "I'm not wasting a Master Seal on you because at level 20 it's a !@#$ Six, why are you still in my party?" awful. That's when Camilla went permanently into the vanguard as a panic callup, a change I don't regret.

quote:


Still, definitely interesting, for all that I'm kind of waiting for someone to address the elephant in the room that is "sure, Garon says he didn't know the sword would explode" when Xander was apparently waiting on Hoshido's border with a full army of soldiers that couldn't fight until Mikoto died and the barrier went down. That said, I think most of the royal family thinks Garon's full of !@#$ on that one.



I don't remember them addressing that specifically but yeah, their issues with Garon are certainly discussed.
4/2/2016, 1:28 am Link to this post Send PM to Greatshot
 
Optimal Megatron Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info

Head of Mecha Maintenance

Location: Between the panels
Posts: 6117
Reply | Quote
Re: Fire Emblem Fates: Or GS and OM go on about something nobody else plays


So, Sevenfold Sanctuary in Conquest. !@#$ OW. :lol

I've been treating my Conquest run as sort of a "Diet Classic", with a self-imposed rule of restarting if someone dies, even with permadeath off. The asterisk, of course, being for stuff like Arthur getting critted to death on a 1% chance with 20% chance to hit on the last freaking guy of the map. I looked at that and at how long it'd taken me to get there and went "Noooooope" and just finished the damn level. Bloody hell, Arthur. :lol

But the Sevenfold Sanctuary's proving a bit trickier to get even that far in without losses. Setsuna's archers have Counter which nearly killed Effie and DID kill Silas in one run, while running Rinkah's Oni Savages nukes your Res just in time to go into a room with Azama and his Diviners. Oh, and did we mention the Hex Staff that claims "only" 68% chance to hit but has yet to miss? :lol Both Effie and Silas, my main tanks, got absolutely ruined by the combo of that and Diviners who now did enough damage to take them out in two hits without any health to ablate it.

At present, I'm working a strategy of taking on Setsuna's room and Effie with a javelin to avoid the Counter skills, then working through Kaze's ninja (which are probably the WEAKEST room here) across the Room of Double Samurai to come out the stairs behind Azama, gank him before he can use the staff, wipe his Diviners, and then swing down to wipe out Rinkah and the Onis from above, before finally getting to take on Hinoka herself with her Sky Knights at the peak. Which is not going to be as easy given Hinoka snagged a skill that basically ignores the typical Pegasus weakness. :lol

Conquest is MUCH tougher than Birthright, even putting aside that I accepted temporary losses in Birthright less strictly than I am now. I've remixed my team composition a few times (Camilla providing support for Effie to make her MORE indestructible or to snipe particularly nasty threats), but the latest run had a single gap in my lines result in Nyx and Azura both getting sniped by a Samurai because I missed the ONE pair with throwing Katana. :lol

So, yeah. That's a beast of a mission. I'm reminded of my first run guarding the fort in Path of Radiance which was when it started taking a lot more thought to get through.

---

4/8/2016, 12:20 am Link to this post Send PM to Optimal Megatron AIM
 
Greatshot Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info

Moderator

Posts: 4702
Reply | Quote
Re: Fire Emblem Fates: Or GS and OM go on about something nobody else plays


The Fort Fight in PoR has an easy win. You stick Ike in the southern chokepoint with a stack of Vulnaries and Ilyana behind him to gain free levels to catch her up. That's the fight Ike evolves from "He's a decent Swordsman/Merc" to "Good lood, this guy is nearly unstoppable*" The Brothers can hold off one flank and Mia, Soren and Rhys can clam up the other so long as Mia doesn't get RNG-screwed.



*Then you promote him, give him Aether and he IS unstoppable. :lol

7-fold, on the otherhand, took a bit of doin, mostly due to the all the ways the game can screw you on counter-effects in that fight (and that !@#$ staff! Get use to them, btw. More to come).

I got thru that one by letting enemies engage ME with characters that could counter attack successfully (so Effie with Javelins and Arthur with a throwing axe took on the archers. The other side I had my fliers go after. I used pair-up a lot in that fight to mitigate the damn debuffs, and then just paced myself slowly thru it because no time limit and no penalty for taking 22 turns. :P

I need to get back to finish off Conquest. Between a bout of bad migraines and a bout of vertigo from I suspect a sinus infection/allergies, I havent been up to dealing with the 3ds and a game that makes me think lately.
4/9/2016, 10:52 pm Link to this post Send PM to Greatshot
 
Greatshot Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info

Moderator

Posts: 4702
Reply | Quote
Re: Fire Emblem Fates: Or GS and OM go on about something nobody else plays


So, my half-excitement/half disapointment of Fire Emblem Warriors has been corrected, as Nintendo finally turns FE into an actual flagship franchise, with not one, not two, not three, but FOUR (including a mobile, welcome to the 21st century Nintendo!) new games.



Warriors now looks hella fun knowing I'll get an actual game to go with:

Another 3DS game which is ninja wtf almost done already? And it's a full scale remake of Gaiden! (glad to see the mistakes of Shadow Dragon have been learned, this is how you do a remake).

A mobile game, which looks like Fire Emblem Record Keeper, so I'm totally doomed. :lol

And for the first time in a decade a console title. Yes the !@#$ please, gotta go buy a Switch now.
1/18/2017, 8:27 pm Link to this post Send PM to Greatshot
 
Optimal Megatron Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info

Head of Mecha Maintenance

Location: Between the panels
Posts: 6117
Reply | Quote
Re: Fire Emblem Fates: Or GS and OM go on about something nobody else plays


Yeah, Gaiden being announced had me go "oh, !@#$, no, not Shadow Dragon again", but this looks reliably fun. Seriously, IntSys, how do you keep these things secret? And another one set for 2018. Geeze. :lol

But yeah, my only real worry is the Fire Emblem mobile game that'd rely a bit on the random drops for characters. While you can get stuff through gameplay, the worries about pay to win are there. Though if there's mostly a single player experience rather than just PVP, that might not be as bad.

---

1/19/2017, 11:00 am Link to this post Send PM to Optimal Megatron AIM
 
Trium Shockwave Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info

Head Systems Tech

Posts: 4587
Reply | Quote
Re: Fire Emblem Fates: Or GS and OM go on about something nobody else plays


The big thing that raised an eyebrow with me about the mobile game is the "blink and you miss it" disclaimer that summoned heroes die permanently. But guess what? If all your guys are dead, you can buy a $75 pack of gems... er... spheres and get right back into it!

But I do have a question for the wise Fire Emblem oracles. I've mained Marth in Smash since Melee, but never played his game and know dick about who he actually is. I actually own the first Fire Emblem cart for the Famicom, and the remake of it for the Super Famicom. I take it from what you guys say that the DS remake isn't so good. So should I try the Famicom original, or the SuFami remake?

---

In case you don't read enough of my BS here:
http://applesanddango.wordpress.com
http://www.twitter.com/triumshockwave
1/19/2017, 2:33 pm Link to this post Send Email to Trium Shockwave   Send PM to Trium Shockwave AIM
 
Optimal Megatron Profile
Live feed
Blog
Friends
Miscellaneous info

Head of Mecha Maintenance

Location: Between the panels
Posts: 6117
Reply | Quote
Re: Fire Emblem Fates: Or GS and OM go on about something nobody else plays


So, the problem isn't that the DS remake is a bad game. It's not. It's just it mostly is a rehash of the exact same games with better graphics.

For comparison, the first US released FE was FE7: Blazing Blade (or just "Fire Emblem" in the states), while Shadow Dragon is a graphical update with only a handful of updated gameplay features of FE*1*.

A lot of things players took for granted across FE7-FE10 weren't actually in the game at launch (Most notably, the support conversations that made FE famous for making your units actual people rather than semi-faceless expendable cannon fodder). These days, playing a no-losses run is typically the expectation rather than the exception, because the games do a good job of making you want to see these people survive the game, so going forward after one dies rather than save scumming to prevent it is kind of a serious choice.

Shadow Dragon doesn't have this, so a large bulk of your army will have faces, names, and a handful of flavor text when they're recruited, but never mention any sort of background again. In fact, certain side-story missions to recruit additional characters only open up *if you've lost enough units to need the added manpower*. Effectively, the game gives you more options the worse you're doing and gives you little reason to care about your grunt troops, which was part of the game's central charm.

Shadow Dragon isn't a bad game, in terms of being playable. It's a solid port with no glitches or real weirdness. It just feels a little soulless compared to later games due to them not updating what many players consider a core mechanic into it. Mechanically, it actually is easier in a lot of ways and rebalances Dragon of Shadow and Blade of Light's gameplay far more than the original Nintendo hard. But when the story is kinda bland (it was the first of its type and doesn't do anything particularly clever BECAUSE this was the first game of its type) and the characters aren't terribly memorable, it becomes a case of beating it just to beat it. I got bored about five missions in, put it down, and never picked it up again.

I don't know about the NES and SNES versions myself, but from what I hear, a lot of people consider the DS the defining remake *of that game*. It's just...well, see above.

---

1/19/2017, 7:42 pm Link to this post Send PM to Optimal Megatron AIM
 


Add a reply

Page:  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8 





You are not logged in (login)

PLEASE VISIT THE ALL NEW DEINONYCHUS' DEN AT DEINONYCHUSDEN.COM!

EMERGENCY OFFSITE SHOUTBOX HERE