Fire Emblem Megathread: Class-change warfare

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Fire Emblem Megathread: Class-change warfare

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Internet Kraken posted:

I must be the only person that always had Lyn turn out great and literally never had a good Hector. I don't know how Hector managed to suck in all of my attempted runs but he found a way.

Any unit has the ability to be lovely. The thing is that in most runs Hector is going to end up having all the advantages of a knight (crazy def) and a warrior (good HP and strength) with none of the weaknesses (decent agility and not weak to anti-armor). A good Lyn is still just a myrmidon (and like a myrmidon has many more ways of being stat-screwed) and I don't even know if there's such a thing as a good Eliwood.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2013 01:14

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 04:26

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Gamerofthegame posted:

fe is one of those things where i am super surprised they got to, uh, fourteen games

now granted it was a hail mary at one point but still

More than that I'm amazed by how little it's changed over fourteen games and three decades. Like forget re-used mechanics and formulas--in Awakening (2012) and Shadow Dragon (1990) you get pretty much the same iron sword that has 40-43 uses, a 95-100% hit rate, and deals 5 damage.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2018 13:17

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Manatee Cannon posted:

yea awakening is front loaded in difficulty. well fire emblem games tend to be in general but awakening moreso

especially on the lunatic difficulties, which aren't fun at all

Looking at Serenes after playing one of the things I noticed is that growths were for the most part doubled from the GBA games while everything else (base stats and formulas) is largely unchanged. So while in the GBA games low level units remain viable into the midgame and at the end your carefully cultivated 20/20 might have a 30 in one or two stats by the midgame of Awakening you'll usually have a couple invincible promotes with multiple 30s and a bunch of low level units with single-digit stats who can't catch up. It has a number of other interesting effects, like how speed is now the god stat instead of strength/defense (which are de-emphasized) and the tendency of massive pools of HP to be wiped out in an instant.

I suspect the reason for the change was to make leveling more fun for the player by handing out more stats, although in my experience it had the opposite effect. Awakening's level up screen is more like a spreadsheet where I have to consult a statistical table to determine whether the level was good or not while in the GBA games it's styled like a slot machine and swings between the disappointment of HP-only levels and slaughtering the fattened calf because Lyn gained a point of strength.

Another component of the front-loading is that units acquire skills as they level and they go from mediocre unpromoted skills to fantastic promoted unit skills.

# ¿ Oct 12, 2018 05:08

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

cheetah7071 posted:

The idea that Sacred Stones is easy comes from two angles:

Its hardest difficulty is legitimately much easier than the hardest difficulties of FE5-7 (and games before that didn't have hard modes, FE4's bizarre hard mode doesn't really count).
You can always grind out of difficulty in the tower.

I would say that no-grinding FE8 hard mode isn't exactly easy, but if your basis of comparison is the hard modes of the other two GBA games, and you don't discount grinding, then it seems easy by comparison if nothing else.

Looking at the average stats, I would also say

1. Growths have been buffed across the board compared to FE7
2. Growths have been buffed the most where it matters (i.e. Str/Def) and if nerfed they're nerfed where they don't have a huge effect (i.e. Skl)
3. A lot of the buffs happened to classes that are already good (e.g. lords, paladins) and most of the dud units are ones you'd never use (e.g. Syrene)

Let's look at Marcus, who's considered a strong Oifey. At level 20 he has on average

code:

HP:  43.35
Str: 20.7
Skl: 24.5
Spd: 15.75
Lck: 13.7
Def: 12.85
Res: 14.65

Now let's look at Seth, who is possibly the most game-breaking unit ever added to a Fire Emblem game.

code:

HP:  47.1
Str: 23.5
Skl: 21.55
Spd: 20.55
Lck: 17.75
Def: 18.6
Res: 13.7

In exchange for 3 points of skill and a point of resistance he gained 4 HP, 3 strength, 5! speed, 4 luck, and 6! def. He's a pre-promote who's stronger than most 20/20s, hits like a truck (usually twice), can zoom across the map, can dodge, and can tank. It's not that he can solo the game but that he will solo the game if you don't take steps to prevent him from doing so.

For other comparisons, Eirika is Lyn with every stat except strength (which is the same) buffed by 1-5 points down to capping skill and speed two levels earlier and Ephraim is straight-up better than Eliwood at everything except resistance (down by about half a point). Hector gets to be a bit tougher (+1 HP, +7! Def) and stronger (+3 Str) but at the expense of -3 Skl, -3 Spd, -11! Lck, -1 Res, and not being nearly as mobile.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2018 04:49

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

That's why I don't say that Seth is the strongest or the best at solo unit challenges. I say "game breaking" because Seth doesn't need any tactical or strategic decisions to dominate gameplay.

Nosferatu Robin has a strong case but it requires the (minor) decision to class change and use nosferatu and is in a game full of broken combos that tends to break naturally if someone gets ahead of the level curve (admittedly this is very likely due to Robin's 1.5x EXP).

# ¿ Oct 13, 2018 05:35

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Fire Emblem has always had a problem with map memorization being as or more important than correctly utilizing the game's systems. Telegraphing what units will appear when means first time players don't have to constantly restart due to bullshit and experienced players on higher difficulties don't need a wiki page open at all times.

rear end in a top hat reinforcements are less interesting from a strategic perspective because the only way to respond is to pull out of their range (possibly leaving behind a unit to kill them in the enemy phase). Fire Emblem already has a problem with offensively focused units (depends on the game, but almost always includes archers) being underpowered compared to units that can kill multiple enemies in the enemy phase (depends on the game, but almost always includes paladins). Having the reinforcements be vulnerable allows a choice between retreating and devoting resources to blunting the damage.

It's a problem if it's just three guys running into your army to be slaughtered at your leisure but if there isn't another force bearing down on you or bandits that need to be stopped then it's the map's fault, not the reinforcements.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2018 04:39

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

chiasaur11 posted:

I actually liked pair up in Awakening overall.

Yes, yes, it made the game incredibly unbalanced in the player's favor, but it also was some first rate incorporation of narrative themes into gameplay, and if a game's going to break under pressure, I tend to prefer it to break in a way that favors me than in one that makes every level a frustrating slog.

Fates, meanwhile, did about everything wrong in fixing Awakening's problems. (As it did in so many other areas). The balance was better, but by changing the stat boosts it discouraged using both characters instead of speed-promoting a backpack, the enemy pairups hurt the transparency that makes Fire Emblem work so well, and the plot didn't center around bonds so you didn't have anything but the raw mechanics.

It's a more balanced, but that just exposed more of the underlying flaws.

Wide open maps, inflated stats, and the pair up system might lead to terrible gameplay, but I do have to admit that them causing the optimal strategy to be thoughtlessly mashing everyone into one big pulsing fuckpile is entirely consistent with what Awakening is trying to do with its story and tone.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2018 08:20

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Blaze Dragon posted:

Hell, I'd say even now the GBA games have the best animations in the entire franchise, with expert use of smears and exaggeration (and spins, lots and lots of spins). If it's for graphical quality, I definitely recommend them over how aggressively ugly everything between Path of Radiance and New Mystery is.

Awakening was the first game to not be awfully ugly in a long way, and even there it took until Echoes for genuinely very good animations.

Awakening might not be awfully ugly, but "technically competent for what they're working with" is probably the highest praise I'd give.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2018 16:25

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Endorph posted:

I agree. I think recruitment should have been limited to the characters that are less tied to their faction and you should have only been allowed to do it 2 or 3 times. Lysithea and Edelgard's support is very good, and Sylvain joining the Beagles or the Deer just because Byleth is a hot lady is funny, but I don't remember Felix or Ingrid's cross-faction supports being that good and it doesn't really make much sense at all for them to join the other houses.

imo, the characters that work as joining other factions are

Beagles:
Bernie (She doesn't like her dad and all)
Dorothea (No real ties to the Black Eagles as a faction)
Linhardt (He's pretty self-reliant and seems like the type who'd do what he wants before anything else)

Blue Lions:
Mercedes (Already rejected the Nobility)
Ashe (No real ties to anything after his dad croaks)
Annette (No ties to anything really)
Sylvain (Intentionally rejecting his family, I could buy him wanting to get away so bad he ditches his friends)

Deer:
Raphael (Commoner)
Ignatz (Commoner)
Lysithea (Fairly freespirited, admittedly a slight stretch but the Edelgard thing is too good to abandon)
Leonie (Commoner)

add, maybe caspar or petra (they both have some issues, Caspar seems to actually like his dad and Petra's entire deal is that she's there to show fealty to the empire so her abandoning the empire house is very strange, but they make more sense than freaking Ferdi) for Beagles and things are even and you've somewhat solved an issue.

I think the issue isn't necessarily that there isn't enough mandatory student killing and more that apart from enemy lords the player's response is guaranteed to be either "who are you again?" (people they didn't spend time with at the monestary) or "simp in hell loser" (Hubert/Dedue).

In older FE games, each level would start with a cutscene explaining who the 2-3 main characters for that map are, what their motivations are, and why they are joining/can join/won't join the protagonists. In 3H, every character being recruitable from Chapter 2 means that after that point no one but the lords can play an active role in the story. It also has a really weird recruitment curve where instead of having 1-2 units trickle in per mission, its

Ch 1: get your full 9-unit roster (although all units are largely interchangeable pre-trainees)
Ch 2-4: nothing
Ch 5-8: 1-2 units per chapter as your most intense recruitment efforts pay off and some of the faculty open up
Ch 9-11: the floodgates burst as everyone starts hitting B support, overfilling your bench with warmers
Ch 12-13: the last few units join
Ch 13-22: nothing

It also removes one of the most fun elements of the time skip, which is seeing who picked what side. Monastary recruitment definitely needs some limits, and another thing that would help is if all of your house members developed their pre-timeskip supports, even (especially) with members outside your house. This could even set up some timeskip shakeups, like if you aren't playing GD then Lysithea defects to BE (and would rather die there than uphold the crest system with SS/BL) or if you aren't playing BE then Petra defects to GD.

As people said earlier, I think a lot of the flaws in 3H are from the need to create rewards for the life sim segment, to the detriment of everything else, including the life sim segment.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2021 16:46

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

I started a BL maddening run yesterday and it gave me a chance to test the one Chapter 1 strategy I couldn't cover in my earlier post. Turns out it works and is the easiest to execute by far. The trick is that while killing the northwest professor will activate the three students in the northeast as a group, luring them one-by-one won't.

So the strategy works out to

1. Survive the initial 3-student onslaught, usually by killing the two most dangerous and eating a hit from the third

2. Activate the lord/retainer behind the barricade using curved shot and 5v2 them when they run around

3. Head to the northeast and position a decoy unit at the edge of Hubert/Dedue's range to activate them, then kill them when they advance

4. Repeat one-by-one for Edelgard/Dimitri, Ferdinand/Mercedes, and Manuela/Hanneman, then kill the final professor in the northwest

It's not going to win any Low Turn-Count runs, but it results in fighting enemies in packs of 3-2-1-1-1-1-1. From there you just need to keep an eye on enemy attack speeds to avoid getting doubled (Byleth is often the best decoy because they have the speed/weapons to avoid getting doubled and decent defense on top of it), use magic/bows to chip enemies down (fighting the enemies in small groups means the 5 spell uses can be saved for the difficult fights, most likely the initial onslaught and the lords/retainers), and overcome the hoarder mentality (combat arts are at this point are attacks but better in every way (and this is where the gains are the biggest and the weapons wielded are the cheapest) and vulneraries will be mostly useless by the time you run out)

# ¿ Apr 4, 2021 18:20

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

Going back to the previous games, one of the things that's really missing from 3H is a mechanic like rescue/pair-up that allows fast units to contribute movement to slow units and durable units to protect frail units. The beauty of it is that if it's implemented right it's essentially self-balancing, as if you have slow units you want fast units to extend their range and if you have fast units you're less penalized for bringing slow units.

Pair-up might have been overpowered as implemented due to the stat bonuses and linked attacks, but it's interesting to consider how Awakening/Fates are the few games where, while mounted units are good, classes don't need a mount to be top-tier.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2021 20:20

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

cheetah7071 posted:

it's in as warp and rescue having per-map charges, in my mind.

The problem with warp/rescue/stride is that they have limited uses per map, and are much better spent making a maneuverable unit even more maneuverable (low-turning a boss, killing a ballista and canto-ing out of range...) than for the mundane task of ensuring foot units can keep up with the pack turn-by-turn. Rescue/pair-up is a very elegant solution because it means that a group of units not engaged in combat moves at the speed of the median unit (e.g. three pegasus knights and three armor knights moves at the speed of a pegasus knight) instead of moving at the speed of the slowest unit. This is especially relevant in 3H, where the campaign maps feel very large (and full of movement-hindering terrain).

If I were doing an implementation it'd be that every mounted unit has a "pick up" ability that lets them use their movement to pick up a non-mounted ally and drop them off elsewhere, and heavy armor units would have a "defend" ability that lets them take the place of an adjacent non-armored unit during the enemy phase. So you could have a pegasus knight pick up an armor knight, fly them to a 2-wide chokepoint, then have the armor knight use defend on the pegasus to block both spaces.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2021 22:25

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# ¿ Apr 24, 2024 04:26

Microcline: Jul 27, 2012

golden bubble posted:

So you are saying that Guidance, Ground Orders, Near Save, and Far Save all need to be added to the next FE game.

I haven't played Heroes to know how those are implemented, and I don't know if they're needed, but going back to the GBA/DS games after 3H did remind me that having some way for high movement units to move less mobile units with them is a fairly elegant solution to a lot of design problems.

Though as with the weapon triangle, I'd rather have stuff like that be universal systems instead of a skill.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2021 02:53

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