Jagen's Song: Let's Play Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Jagen's Song: Let's Play Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon!

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Hey, Hippoman's doing another Fire Emblem LP, awesome. It's too bad it's the one where you gotta kill everybody and gently caress up big time to get all the gaiden chapters. I hope you show off all the names the devs gave the faceless randos, though, they get kind of amazing. I see you killed off Wolf, which is too bad, but at least Sedgar appears okay for now. The two of them were just laughably overpowered in Shadow Dragon, quite at odds with their mediocre showing in New Mystery and nigh-uselessness in the original FE. I even made Wolf a Berserker since Darros isn't very good. Wolf's Strength growth is such that he usually gains two points in Strength each level, allowing him to get almost all the way to the Strength cap unaided (but the cap is actually so high that even that growth can't cap it without an Energy Drop or two).

On the topic of Heroes, I'm frustrated that Tellius and Jungdral aren't available yet. I know they're saving the Gaiden cast for when that new remake hits, but I want some Path of Radiance characters, dammit. They can just skip adding Sacred Stones. Ever.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 06:58

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 00:20

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

LordHippoman posted:

Sheena's in Heroes? I think she's the only New Mystery exclusive character there, then.

Sheena is recruitable in the original Mystery of the Emblem, actually. You can even level her up by having her attack her own soldiers in that one! :eng101:

# ¿ Feb 6, 2017 23:55

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Camel Pimp posted:

They released the results of the popularity poll, and apparently Roger (at least the FE3/FE12 version) is the fifth least liked character in the entire series. The Shadow Dragon version didn't do much better, by the by.

Poor Roger.

Micaiah was in the top ten while Sigurd and Celice didn't even place, so I wouldn't put too much stock in the poll results. Plus Roy was the second-place male character, a clear indication that a lot of the voters only knew the characters from Smash Bros, where Roy is actually good.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2017 10:20

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Personally, I just used a save point right before making a run for Jake, his accuracy's not fantastic, especially as Caeda was my peg. knight of choice and thus fairly high-level (I don't use a lot of fliers, and it felt unfair not to use all three Whitewings if I used any of them, and that's frankly too many arrow magnets for my liking). Granted, I was on Normal Mode, but looking at the screenshot, it looks like Jake's still working with a pretty iffy chance to hit, so I'd say a couple reloads would be better, or at least less frustrating, than reworking the entire strategy.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2017 01:28

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Personally, I really liked the Ballista characters, there were certainly some maps they weren't well-suited for, but I greatly enjoyed wasting enemies from half a mile away. They're especially useful for eliminating archers before I send fliers into an area, since I'd otherwise need to hold the fliers back until non-flying units could get over there, at which point they just wipe out everything and there's nothing for my flier to do.

Also Fire Emblem comes up with the most creative expletive phrases. :allears:

# ¿ Feb 20, 2017 04:16

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

LordHippoman posted:

You won't get to see it because this isn't an LP for his game (and it is certainly HIS game), but this is my favorite thing about Awakening Owain.

Don't worry, I've played every game except Thracia 776 and Gaiden, and with Echoes on the way, the latter will soon be handled. And Odin carries on his old habits from Awakening, which is a lot of fun (particularly as he gets an inherent +10 to his crit rate for having a custom weapon with a long name). Well, and perhaps ironically given my info dump about it in the New Mystery thread, I haven't played the actual Satellaview maps, aside from as part of New Mystery. They're available enough, but really, without the voice acting (which was streamed semi-live, and is thus lost forever unless the files are still in the radio station's archive room somewhere), there's no point to playing the original versions.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2017 05:15

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

AweStriker posted:

On the other hand, Tomas has an actual character trait now: he's awful with names.

Also he just straight-up nearly kills people by practicing in really ill-advised ways. Of course, in Shadow Dragon, he really is just completely generic, thanks to having fewer lines than most of the random villagers. Shadow Dragon didn't really do much to expand upon the cast, it wasn't until New Mystery that most of these guys got anything resembling personality. Much as I liked Shadow Dragon, it was actually pretty meh, in terms of writing, especially compared to the games both before and after it.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2017 06:10

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

rannum posted:

Pair Up and the Attack/Defense stances are gone (so far as we know), but supports are definitely in and provide the usual boosts to avoid if nothing else. We've also seen some in-battle "Talks" with units you already have so its also feasible we're going back to in-battle talks rather than base talks.

It makes sense that Pair Up would be removed for the remake of Gaiden, it would require a massive overhaul to the mission design to compensate, and would ultimately result in an experience too far removed from the original Gaiden to feel like a proper remake. Supports seem to exist as they did in previous games (though the exact numeric benefits are not yet clear), as you've observed, and character skills may also be included, but I can't see actual in-combat support happening this time around.

# ¿ Mar 17, 2017 08:46

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

LordHippoman posted:

He's a loser, baby, so why don't you kill him? He's deadweight. You should say goodbye. But maybe it's all in your mind. Everybody's gotta learn sometime, once in a blue moon, a lost cause will figure out where it's at.

Devil's haircut.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2017 00:16

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

LordHippoman posted:

It took me a while to get this, but when I did

Unfortunately, there's no gifs of him getting one-shot by this fellow:

So the other reference one can make based on that ballistician's name will have to remain implied.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2017 02:01

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Camel Pimp posted:

So inspired by the FE7 LP I've been attempting to do a woman (and Marth) only run of this game. I'm doing it on normal, though, so it's not really been very hard. Also I've been pretty flagrantly using all of the male units as meat shields (partially to get to 6x, but also because I can.) It's weird, but mass sacrificing your units is... fun.

Well, given their overall lack of characterization, the cast of Shadow Dragon is ideal for mass sacrifice.

By the way, let's talk a bit about how replacements work (hopefully nobody else beat me to it without me noticing). First, LHM was slightly off-base about their growths and bases. They actually do not have their own growths and base stats, per se. They use the flat, unmodified bases and growths from their randomly-selected class (which will always be in a class you're yet to hit the maximum reclass capacity for, gender is also random, where applicable). When they join above level 1, they use the average level of all your units, and then generate average stats for that level based on the class' growth rates. I'm not sure if this results in lower base Resistance for most classes as they level up, given that most classes have negative growths on Res, and the only unpromoted classes with base Res above zero also have positive Res growths, so maybe once promoted guys start showing up, we can observe the effect. Ditto for Magic, but most physical units have little need for that.

Additionally, the names of the replacements follow a theme, but they're different themes in each region (they all cycle through 31 names, then start over). In Japan, all the names are in German, first the numbers one through twelve (coincidentally, this naming scheme was used for Julian's twelve generals in the final chapter of Geneaology of the Holy War), then the days of the week, then the months of the year. The German version does the same pattern, but in Japanese. The Italian version's names are all based on German runes, from the Pagan days. The middle seven names of the Spanish version use the musical scale. The last twelve of the French version are based on the Zodiac. The PAL English version is a bunch of random boring names. As for the version we're seeing, the set we're currently in is based loosely on Latin numbers one through twelve (Penvo being 5), as you may have noticed. However, it's replacements #13-19 that are the real stars of the NA version (I certainly hope LHM keeps them in his party when they show up).

# ¿ Mar 20, 2017 08:26

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

MythosDragon posted:

Also hey Vilk, I'm on a Suikoden series runthrough and I gotta thank you again for giving me the power to just quit 4 and read it instead when I get there.

What a coincidence, I started playing through the Suikoden series recently, myself, and had much the same thought! :hfive:

# ¿ Mar 25, 2017 22:33

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

MythosDragon posted:

She has a horsy. One of the few horsies I get to use too.
She has great growths.
The absolute least damning thing in any FE is being low level, especially in a bonus exp game.

I'm pretty sure being tanned gives you immense amounts of power in the FE universe too.

Fiona has poor bases and is part of the Dawn Brigade, who receive far less experience than the rest of the cast, making leveling her impractical when you have Edward, Leonardo, Aran, and Nolan ready to wreck everything as-is. If you're willing to spend the entirety of Part 1 babying her, you'll end up with a unit who'll still probably be overshadowed by every other mounted unit in the game due to her being five to ten levels lower in Part 4. And there's no need for her when Edward, Leonardo, Nolan, and Aran are enough to carry you through every Dawn Brigade chapter on their own. This is basically the same problem Meg has. Her growths are actually quite good, but she shows up underleveled with iffy bases, and simply isn't worth the effort to raise, since the characters you don't have to babysit are sufficient to handle anything the Dawn Brigade deals with, and by Part 4, you've got better people available. It doesn't help that so many chapters in Part 1 (including the only ones Fiona is usable in, as noted above) impose movement penalties on mounted/armored units, making it that much harder for them to keep up in level if you don't deliberately feed them kills.

Also, a low starting level is, in fact, a weakness in Radiant Dawn, because characters that appear later have good bases at higher starting levels, so the lower starting levels just mean more opportunities to get screwed by the RNG, especially for the Dawn Brigade, who are less able to abuse BEXP due to having much less of it on one hand, and being less likely to cap stats early on the other (a requirement for BEXP abuse in RD). And that's before getting into Data Transfer.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2017 05:20

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

MythosDragon posted:

How do you guys play Standard FE(6-12)?

I choose units to use and never ever give anyone else a drop of EXP. Example: Miciah solo's the first few chapters, everyone else meat shields without weapons as appropriate cuz tissue. I also keep levels about even at all times. So I've never experienced what youre talking about.

I identify the characters that are good (as a function not only of growth rates, but of bases, starting levels, ease of leveling, being Stefan, and availability), then use them in much the same manner you describe. Of course, since the entire Dawn Brigade is outclassed by their various counterparts in Part 4, perfectly optimizing their experience distribution is pointless long-term (the good Dawn Brigade characters get all the experience they need without manipulating the map), so all it really boils down to for them is casting aside anyone I can't immediately use to mow down scores of foes in my quest to get to the good parts of the game. And that mainly means Fiona and Meg get benched forever. If I only used the Dawn Brigade characters that were going to show up in the final chapter, it would just be Micaiah and Sothe getting all the kills which is coincidentally my shorthand for "worst possible Fire Emblem experience".

# ¿ Apr 15, 2017 06:25

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Miacis posted:

Another common complaint I've heard about Kris is they are rather one-note and uninteresting compared to say, Robin. While this wouldn't be much an issue in a game full of one-note characters, they've also got a ton of lines of dialogue (not even counting supports), so their grampa/training/dutiful shtick wears thing rather quickly.

Being incredibly overpowered probably didn't win Kris any favors when the game first came out either. Now with Rob'n'Corr doing the same, we've gotten used to it.

I feel like the games since New Mystery each illustrated a good way to incorporate character creation into Fire Emblem going forward. In Fates, your character is the star of the show and everything revolves around them. In Awakening, you share a deuteragonist role with the main lord and while a lot of the story's about them, the other half is still focused on you. In New Mystery, you're just a very important friend to the main lord, with your own little subplot that takes place in gaiden chapters, away from the main story. I'll agree that the characterization in the last case was a little threadbare, but it's a good start. I don't think it'd be a good move to have the Avatar always be the main character, as in Fates, so I hope they use the other two models when they make the next new game.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2017 21:39

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

HardDiskD posted:

Dame Steve?

"Dame" is the female counterpart to "Sir" when speaking to those who hold a knighthood, it's used frequently in the Fire Emblem series.

LordHippoman posted:

Here are our new Generics for this update. Hepto here has some ridiculous HP, but only five defense to back it up.

Octu’s made of tissue paper.

Naunu has one more strength than Caeda. They all have Resistance, though! And...zero luck. Huh.

I said it before, but the generic units are literally just procedurally generated using their class' base stats and unmodified growth rates (that is, no personal growth rates are generated), two generic units of the same class and level should be identical. That's why they have Resistance and no Luck, every promoted class except Berserker (the class Intelligent Systems hates) has at least one point of Resistance, and every class has zero Luck, both for bases and growths. Also the classes are completely random, taken from the basic reclass pool (that is to say, no Falcoknights). They also won't generate as any class that's had its reclass limit maxed out, but you'd be hard-pressed to manage that for most classes, given that you need to murder your whole army just to unlock these guys.

Anyway, since we're working with level 1 promoted units, the stat formula is a little more complicated, adding a bonus equal to approximately fourteen times the class' growth rate (converted to a decimal) in each stat (though not exactly, as you can see by Hepto's stats being a point or two off that formula in places like HP and Skill), due to their promotion level being set at 15. As to the minor discrepancies, it may be that a couple random points are assigned to prevent the issue with guys being identical that I pointed out above, or it could be that the formula is more complex than the data miners claim.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2017 20:08

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

LordHippoman posted:

The Generics are like, surprisingly not all complete garbage? Like EclecticTastes mentioned, they'll always have that awful Luck, but it's the least important stat and they can usually hold their own decently for the places they come in.

As long as you maintain a high rate of turnover, the generation formula for replacement units will usually churn out half-decent characters, serviceable at whatever they're supposed to be good at, though still nothing compared to the "real" characters beyond a couple of the worst prepromotes (however, even Astram will quickly outshine Nauna). Though, the higher your army's average level goes, the worse the generics get in comparison to what you'd normally expect at that level. Some especially upsetting examples are the axe classes, which never gain a single point beyond their base Defense due to a 0% growth, and Generals proving to be double magnets due to never gaining a single point of Speed. Interestingly, Sages have enough base Strength that never gaining any is fine, as most tomes have WT of 3 or less (the heaviest are only at 4), but Sorcerors have a base of 2, and Bishops only 1, which causes tomes to weigh them right down. Additionally, if they're not a magic-using class, they'll never gain any Resistance. HP and Skill are the only stats that every class has a positive growth rate for.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2017 06:03

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Etzel's the kind of guy you want to like based on his design, but a magic-user that can't double consistently isn't a magic-user worth fielding. Speed is sort of the be-all, end-all stat in Fire Emblem in general, anyone that can't turn that number green by the endgame is just begging for a place on the bench, unless they're a General (and in some games in the series, Generals aren't all that great, the FE1/3 remakes being two of them*).

*Because most of the maps require a lot of movement, Generals end up being a bit of a millstone, forcing you to hang back to let them catch up. It's the same reason Arden and Hannibal in FE4 were only useful for standing on each map's initial castle. Compare with the Radiant games, which often had more compact maps, and had a number of defense objectives, or otherwise encouraged holding your ground rather than advancing, making Generals extremely useful for turning choke points into meat grinders.

# ¿ Apr 24, 2017 02:38

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

LordHippoman posted:

: Feena clearly has a type.

: It�s called �bad taste�, Sir Jagen.

Way to put Navbarbler on blast. Of course, given that Feena treats a male MU similarly, it's also a pretty solid indirect self-own on Steve's part.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2017 20:44

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

LordHippoman posted:

Caeda goes Dracoknight and...actually loses stats? For some incomprehensible reason...split promotions ARE in this game. Kinda. Only Pegasus Knights can use them, and can also choose to become Falcoknights by using the Elysian Whip.

Falcoknights aren�t as strong as Dracos, or as physically durable, but they get more resistance and speed, basically just being �Pegasus Knights But Moreso�. They can also wield swords instead of Axes.

The reason I�m telling you this instead of showing you is that getting the Elysian Whip requires buying it from the Nintendo Wifi Shop, a feature that is no longer active with the shutdown of the DS online capabilities. Sucks, but oh well. It had some pretty great items too, like Brave Weapons and more Master Seals.

Falcoknights didn't exist in the original Fire Emblem, the Elysian Whip was added so players could have the promotion they're more used to for Caeda and/or the Whitewings. Dracoknights have lower base Resistance and Magic, which is traditional for the class chain. Not sure why they didn't make at least a couple whips available in the main game, though.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 02:30

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

rannum posted:

FE1's promotions were nonsense. Pegs become Dragons, but Fighters can't promote and I don't think there were even enemy-exclusive promotions for them. Speaking of, Generals existed but were enemy exclusive and player Knights can't promote. Hunters also couldn't promote and horsemen didnt exist until FE3

Yeah, the whole thing was a giant pile of nonsense, though Horsemen did exist in the first game, it's what Wolf and Sedgar always were, they just weren't connected to Hunters. Mages also promoted to Bishops, which is why Wendell is one rather than a Sage.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 03:01

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

vilkacis posted:

Because Ests are bad and people who like Ests are also bad, and thus they must suffer.

Ironically for IS (knowing what classes and character types they hate), the most usuable Est-type character (late join time at low relative level, but with good growths and a lot of potential) in my opinion is Largo from Path of Radiance, i.e. a Berserker. If you use him every chapter after he joins, he quickly becomes Boyd But More, and I'm convinced that the reason he wasn't included in Radiant Dawn is because they couldn't find a way to balance the Berserker class properly.

# ¿ May 4, 2017 00:30

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

I don't get it, it's just Casval Deikun.

# ¿ May 9, 2017 19:48

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

MythosDragon posted:

WIMP
LAME
AWFUL

OH MY GOD, THID IS REAL, I LOVE THIS!

Im getting my LE in a few hours.

You forgot :owned:

Yeah I've been waiting for LHM to hit this rich, rich vein of excellent names for these guys. It's gonna keep going for the next several replacements, try to spot them all!

# ¿ May 19, 2017 18:24

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

MythosDragon posted:

Dungeons fit a bit better than just infinite grinding and playing zelda in my FE is fun. Getting to visit towns and see what people think of the wars more often adds alot to the tone.

This part is kinda how Shining Force distinguished itself, a lot of town exploration and other escapades outside of the SRPG battles. It was pretty good, but also ran with a considerably smaller cast than most FE games. The real problem with plot involvement in FE is permadeath, it's not reasonable to expect them to make contingent lines/scenes for everyone. However, at this point, they've been walking permadeath back so much with features like Casual Mode that they may as well retire the concept entirely in order to let the whole cast participate in the story. A bunch of purists will probably lose their poo poo even though 99% of them reset immediately when anyone dies, anyway, but the thing is, FE has already made other significant changes to the series. They completely overhauled how weapons work for Fates, and the tone has gradually shifted to be less like a fantasy/war novel and more like a lighthearted action anime with each installment since Genealogy of the Holy War (no, really, compare any scene from Genealogy with a scene from Fates, the tonal difference is jarring), not to mention that the world map and grinding are apparently here to stay (though they'd experimented with that in the past, obviously). At this point, if it lets them finally include the extensive supporting cast in the plot, I see no reason not to add permadeath to the list of changes.

# ¿ May 24, 2017 06:05

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Miacis posted:

That's an argument I've seen more than once and I'm still not sure what rooted that idea. If a character is dead, any conversations they participate in are gone, and that's about it. If their interlocutors relied on that character's presence to continue their character development, welp, they're dead now, so their development will either halt or go a different direction.
The Tellius games had this going mostly through base conversations, and occasionally having side-characters piping in during plot sequences. Even Tearring Saga did it (almost to a fault) with its side cast, despite having way more plot-relevant units available for chatting than Fates or Awakening. And it had what, a quarter of the budget? If Radiant Dawn could juggle the insanity of if_alive/if_in_team conditionals that is Act 4, it doesn't seem that unreasonnable to me for the next FE game to achieve it, permadeath or no.

Heck, if the FE writers are so terrified of if Unit_alive!=1 then display text switches, they can just do with the side cast what the series has always done with plot-armor units and make characters suffer a "crippling injury" so they won't directly fight but still participate in conversations.
Permadeath isn't really the issue here, it's the writers being generally bad at involving their side cast into the plot past their recruitment chapter..

If you want a bunch of disconnected conversations tangentially related to the story, there's Support conversations. Base conversations, while more pointed, are basically the same thing in terms of programming. I liked them, sure, but I think the initial request was more along the lines of participation in actual story scenes (and I don't really count a single-line "hey I'm alive too" line as actual participation). There is an example of complex survival conditionals in FE's story, for Genealogy of the Holy War. The one with only twenty-four people total at any one time. Ultimately, it's just not feasible to include everybody in the story with that many characters without deliberately making scenes purely for them to chime in. Look at Suikoden, the only time much of the cast did anything story-related after being recruited was during special scenes made just for them prior to certain war battles, and even then, a huge percentage of the cast was left out of even those.

As for replacing permadeath with just having the whole cast get "too injured" at zero HP, you may as well drop the mechanic entirely then, because then there's no impact from a character dying, it's literally nothing more than a detriment to the gameplay at that point.

# ¿ May 24, 2017 21:36

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

MythosDragon posted:

I think permadeath is good, but I'd also say it only works with no grinding and a limited support focus. If I have to grind or play stupid to get supports its a problem, if I'm grinding and forget to save for hours and someone dies to an unlucky crit or super monster, then I'm gonna hate the game.

I consider supports much more integral to the series than permadeath so yeah, I say ditch it going forward, or pull a tactics ogre and give characters 3 lives before they permadie.

Well, this is kind of my point, is that if IS is planning to stick with the model they've used for Awakening and Fates (and given that prior to that Awakening selling a bajillion copies, Fire Emblem was slated to get the axe, it's safe to assume that outside of remakes, they absolutely are), they should drop permadeath, as well. Now, this will just change it into something more akin to FFT or Ogre Battle, given, but, there's no point in going halfway, given the other changes. The vast majority of Fire Emblem was about managing your units and resources over a linear experience, picking and choosing which characters get used, and which stay on the bench forever. With grinding and class changing, everyone can get everything, which largely eliminates the strategic considerations regarding who you're going to use.

Additionally, while the kids work great in Genealogy of the Holy War, and setting up your supports just right for your preferred Anime Eugenics plan can provide some strategic challenges (like which unfortunate kid gets stuck with Setsuna as their mother, those are some rough growth rates to inherit), if they do go back to being linear, they gotta drop the system again. It worked in Genealogy because there weren't any actual choices about who to deploy, everyone participated in every map, but Conquest was actually kind of a bad time because I had to manage a mostly-linear campaign while also making sure to square away all the supports (I didn't get the DLC maps until after I'd grabbed the other two campaigns). It wound up feeling very restrictive.

# ¿ May 25, 2017 01:50

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Miacis posted:

I'm not sure what you mean with Genealogy, though? It's got the complex conditional epilogue, but that's because it tried to replicate actual inheritance of duchies and whatnot. If anything, the blood/marriage systems made it more of a mess than permadeath did.

FE4 had a lot of lines where people would chime in if they weren't dead. One widely-circulated fan translation (the one I first played, in fact) didn't even bother translating one of Oifaye's, instead just putting a placeholder that literally said, "If I'm still alive, I say something here." There were also a ton of optional conversations available during each map based on who was alive to talk to who, but that's more like support/base conversations.

Miacis posted:

(And if the assumption is that it's not workable to have side characters participating unless the devs are sure they're in the player's team... doesn't that mean also removing recruitment conditions and making all characters mandatory?)

This is basically how Fates worked for just about the entire cast aside from some of the children (who have no actual relevance to the story, anyway, unlike in Awakening where there was that "bad future" subplot). The most complex recruit condition was "talk to glaringly obvious new recruit under circumstances that make it so you'd have to deliberately ignore them to not get them". Not that Awakening was much better at that, the recruits were all pretty simple there, too.

However, the reason for that is yet another reason permadeath has no place in a Fire Emblem with grinding. In the old FEs, if you want to play the game after finishing the final chapter, you just start over and play through it again. But, with grinding and a world map and DLC and online play and so on, suddenly, you have a postgame. So, where in older games, if you were one of those guys who let people stay dead, you'd just see them again next time you started a new game, if they die in Awakening or Fates, they're dead forever, unless you're willing to give up all the results of your hours of grinding and farming and whatever else. That's also why recruiting was made easier, since missing someone means missing them forever without a reset. It's just a poor fit, permadeath doesn't belong in a game where you're expected and/or encouraged to just keep playing the same save file forever.

# ¿ May 25, 2017 07:54

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

AradoBalanga posted:

The only question now is which artist should get the honor of drawing Pants-Free Marth for Heroes.

Junji Ito. :unsmigghh:

# ¿ May 26, 2017 02:04

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

It's a shame you can't use the Aum staff to bring back the person you sacrificed in the prologue, though it's subtle foreshadowing of the revelation in New Mystery that Frey (the canon choice) managed to survive.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2017 17:22

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Hey, more growth rate chat! The various bad guys you get to play as in that DLC map have such poor growths because, as is usually the case, they have no personal growth rates of their own, and have only the abysmal growths offered by their class. The only growth above fifty percent among the four of them is the 70% on HP Berserkers have, everything else that isn't a flat zero tops off at 40%. Katarina and Athena, being full-fledged characters, have actual growth rates, hence their solid level-ups.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2017 00:00

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

Interesting note, 24x is actually the only one of these gaiden chapters not to be canon. When Nagi is reintroduced for New Mystery, it's as a newcomer who, while vaguely familiar, is confirmed to not have participated in the previous war (likely due to the vast number of plot holes it would raise). Literally all of the other gaiden chapters are counted as canon, though, but also so are all the other characters joining Marth, which implies that New Mystery takes place in an alternate timeline where you didn't have to kill off your entire army to recruit the new guys.

Also, I think Malledus gets so much involvement in the 24x route because the devs assumed he was the only non-generic character left alive besides Marth at that point.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2017 03:35

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 00:20

EclecticTastes: Sep 17, 2012; "Most plans are critically flawed by their own logic. A failure at any step will ruin everything after it. That's just basic cause and effect. It's easy for a good plan to fall apart. Therefore, a plan that has no attachment to logic cannot be stopped."

LordHippoman posted:

Back to thanks, EclecticTastes provided me with information on how the Generic Units actually function, which explained a lot of my confusion with their stats. I appreciate that!

Always happy to help. If you ever lose your mind and LP Echoes to complete the set of games set during Marth's lifetime, you can expect me to show up and :spergin:

some more about math, not to mention make a bunch of jokes about the handsome blond general we've definitely never seen before and who has no connection to anything.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2017 20:55

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Jagen's Song: Let's Play Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon!