Fire Emblem Discussion

[Kong Wen]

I'm still a long ways away from the finish line. To be clear about something, the Black Eagles story is actually multiple chapters shorter than the other 3 routes for some reason.

Spoiler

I believe this is probably because there are two Black Eagles paths.

With respect to your point about the different paths for instance, I'm actually not entirely happy about including all the paths on the same file instead of selling them separately. The reason I feel this way is because all the paths are the same pre-timeskip, which makes 2/3 of the game tedious if you want to do another path.

I don't mind replaying the early days at the Monastery as part of a different house, because you get to spend time bonding with different characters. Forging relationships with the various students is a big part of why the execution of the timeskip and subsequent events actually works well for me. And this whole section will go by a lot quicker now that you know what to do.

In the case of Three Houses, it feels like they wrote the pre-timeskip for Blue Lions and then retroactively applied it to Black Eagles and Golden Deer. There is no reason why Golden Deer should care about Ashe's adoptive father or Sylvain's brother. It simply does not make sense for them to experience the exact same conflicts as the Blue Lions. [...]

I'm not as concerned about storyline in Fire Emblem. [...] In all honesty, I never expect much from the story of a Fire Emblem game. I usually enjoy these games more for the supports that flesh out characters individually. [...] If I do review the game, you will find that I do not even consider story as a point of interest in my review. This is not because I don't care about the story. It's because I don't value story much in games, or even at all.

It's fine to value (or not value) story as a game production value. But even if I didn't care about story, I'd still be concerned about the "craftsmanship" of a game that literally has breaks/gaps and loose threads. That's simply bad production values. Again, I'll have to play the other paths to make sure this isn't something that gets filled in later, but having hugely important characters with high-level supports who claim to be like family to you simply disappear from the game, never show their faces again, and never even get mentioned by the other characters who knew them ("where the fuck is so-and-so?!") is bad.

Only having Ashe and Sylvain missions cooked into the main storyline is an element of that problem. There should have been WAY more House-themed mission focus in the early part of the game, and WAY more crossover in the later part of the game, otherwise the whole "Three Houses" high concept is squandered. Instead of choosing which side of a conflict you're going to look at, you're choosing which discrete path you're going to follow / which other paths you're not going to be involved with.

[Corwin]

I'm coming from the TFO.net forum that Kong Wen is also part of, to join this discussion (and possibly others). I may have made an account on here previously with another screen name... not sure.

Anyway! I beat it last night as well. I chose Black Eagles and ended up with the default storyline on Normal. I liked the second half from storyline perspective and wished that I had recruited more characters because I liked the paralogue battles the best. It was cool that many (most?) of the support conversations also acknowledged the 5 year time jump. It dragged a bit though gameplaywise as I was obscenely powerful by the end, so just ended up resting and auto-lessoning through almost the entire 3 months. The final boss was challenging but otherwise I had no need to plan development my characters at all. I'm planning to replay with Golden Deer on hard hoping that the New Game+ abilities allow me to blaze through most of the first half and hoping they add Lunatic soonish.

Spoiler

In the second half supposedly they provide a lot more backstory on Those who Slither in the Dark that really only comes up in the final 2 battles in the Black Eagle Storyline.

Re: The weapon triangle, I may be in the minority in that I don't miss it, as in Awakening and Fates after a certain power level it stopped being impactful for me. I haven't tried playing either game on Lunatic though, maybe at that level of difficulty it's something that needs to be taken into account. OTOH, because weight has a much bigger impact in this game in my experience, there are clearly superior weapons: it seemed like gauntlets and bows were categorically the most powerful. The former because they were the most lightweight, and speed seems to me to be the most important stat in FE games--the latter because of the additional range compared to earlier FEs--especially coupled to the movement range of if you have a bow knight. My Caspar as a Warmaster with gauntlets was routinely doing over 30 damage/hit, with 4x hits, and ~30% Crit rate with over 50 hp at the end.

I beat this earlier tonight.

Spoiler

The encounters I was disappointed with were with Ashe and Lorentz, but I had never recruited them, so maybe that's why I never had the opportunity to even talk to them. Still very disappointing. I beat Ashe's map without hurting him, and instead of having a brief dialogue where he gets away, or says anything, the game just carries on at lightning pace. Even a "go back home, Ashe" after the battle would have been nice.

On that note, I do find that the plot in this game is kind of all over the place. The opening is nicely paced, but then when it gets into the real calamitous stuff, it just tosses you from one big encounter to the next with little build-up. The final three battles are things that could have been supported by entire chapters. Plus stuff like the identity of the Death Knight was just a shallow, repercussion-free crappy version of something like Black Knight from Tellius, which had actual weighty story consequences.

Spoiler

It doesn't help that this was treated in a very off the cuff way in my play-through. Seteth just says something like "we never even found out if Jeritza is the Death Knight"—and then after defeating him a couple more times, we still never find out! Anti-climactic.

Light spoilers in reply to your spoiler.

Spoiler

You do find out from one of the paralogues who the Death Knight is, depending obviously on who you end up recruiting. Apparently they never informed Seteth, however, because he asked the same question in my playthrough.

Part of the problem here might be that you're expected to fill in the blanks with snippets you pick up in play-throughs of the other 3 paths, so I suppose that's what I'll do now before I start to put together final thoughts. Even if this is the case—which I'll generously assume to be true for now—it's an odd structure to leave important information out of an entire start-to-credits play-through unless you play the game again. Still, I'm happy they included all of the paths on the same fucking cart this time instead of selling them separately. *cough*Fates*cough*

Spoiler

Also, after the timeskip for my path at least, Alois, Manuela, and Hanneman never make another appearance and are never mentioned again. Byleth sees a vision of Dimitri, but it's never explored or paid off in any way. It's very annoying just how many loose ends are in this unraveled plot just for the sake of rushing things along. Even if the others paths do rectify this by filling in gaps, this game is going to lose points for the presentation by keeping players frustrated for 60 hours. The first play-through should be the most engaging and satisfying one, since most players are only going to finish the game once.

Also in reply to your spoiler.

Spoiler

I assumed that I had the vision of Dmitri because I declined to join the battle of the three houses, and just decided to let them use the bridge instead. I'm wondering, as with the Death Knight whether Dmitri might show up in a paralogue depending on who you recruited. Also, I'm not sure if you recruited them, but Manuela, Alois and Hanneman showed up in the second half, and although not crucial to the story, they have their own paralogues

[Kong Wen]

Welcome! Definitely feel free to hop into any other discussion that piques your interest (or the chat on the front page).

Light spoilers in reply to your spoiler.

Spoiler

You do find out from one of the paralogues who the Death Knight is, depending obviously on who you end up recruiting. Apparently they never informed Seteth, however, because he asked the same question in my playthrough.

Interesting. In previous games, a lot of content is hidden behind support levels (especially the games that have time-traveling kids). By contrast, this one seems to lock content behind recruiting people. I wanted a pure Black Eagle first run, so I stuck to the students in my class and didn't recruit anyone else (except Hilda, by accident, because I was spamming the button through her dialogue ).

I wonder if it's possible to recruit every single character, thanks to

Spoiler

NG+ stat purchases?

Also in reply to your spoiler.

Spoiler

I'm not sure if you recruited them, but Manuela, Alois and Hanneman showed up in the second half, and although not crucial to the story, they have their own paralogues

It's comforting to know that they still exist. Still, I think I'll stick to my point that the game should at least have someone mention them. Just because they weren't taking classes from me doesn't mean they're unimportant enough never to show up at the Monastery again, especially someone like Alois.

[The Shoemaker]

Haven't read a lot of the previous posts due to spoilers, but I'm just past the time skip now and one of my favorite things is seeing the visual change of all the characters. Ferdinand and Edlegard in particular.

[Kong Wen]

Haven't read a lot of the previous posts due to spoilers, but I'm just past the time skip now and one of my favorite things is seeing the visual change of all the characters. Ferdinand and Edlegard in particular.

No spoiler: Ferdinand is a fucking great character. At first I thought he was a prick, but all of his story scenes and support conversations bring a smile to my face.

[The Shoemaker]

Haven't read a lot of the previous posts due to spoilers, but I'm just past the time skip now and one of my favorite things is seeing the visual change of all the characters. Ferdinand and Edlegard in particular.

No spoiler: Ferdinand is a fucking great character. At first I thought he was a prick, but all of his story scenes and support conversations bring a smile to my face.

He really did grow on me. Comes off as pretentious at first, and that's how people see him, but he really is looking to be the best person he can be.

[Jordan]

I love Ferdinand and Lorenz. Unfortunately, they both seem to have bad luck with growths in my playthroughs.

[The Shoemaker]

I love Ferdinand and Lorenz. Unfortunately, they both seem to have bad luck with growths in my playthroughs.

My Ferdinand is a beast. Speed ring + weight -3 skill makes him my second fastest character, with great defence and strength on top of it.

[Kong Wen]

How did you guys build your Ferdinand?

I went Cavalier > Paladin > Great Knight. He was one of my primary tanks / baits throughout the game.

[The Shoemaker]

How did you guys build your Ferdinand?

I went Cavalier > Paladin > Great Knight. He was one of my primary tanks / baits throughout the game.

That's the same path I took. Being a noble among nobles it only seemed right to go the paladin route. I didn't look ahead to see class requirements but luckily I was building up his heavy armor skill in the off chance I made him a fortress Knight.

I actually heavily contemplated making him a holy/bow knight just because his armor is magnificent in those classes.

I've almost switched everyone over to master classes. Since I didn't look ahead, I have A LOT of units I needed to grind riding skills for.

Has anyone been focusing on leveling up a class fully before moving on? Some class mastery skills are great while others are mediocre. Pretty sure growth rates go up with each class rank up as well so it usually felt worthwhile to me to rank up as soon as possible. Grappler and sniper classes have good mastery skills.