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AradoBalanga posted:True, but that was Elibe. This is Akaneia, things are very different over here. So, Flavia (430), Basilio (415%) Tiki(540%!) and Gregor (400%) are the relevant counterarguments, then? (I'd bring up Frederick, but like Titania before him, he seems to be in the late 20s to early 30s range, which is only old by JRPG standards.)
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Nov 26, 2016 22:53
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theshim posted:
Well, I'm not sure if I'd say it's a whole game case, but that exchange does feel very 8-4 (the localization team for Shadow Dragon), and the same sense of humor tends to show up in their other work. They also did Awakening. It's pretty fun, I think. Got a sense of humor, especially in the supports. Of course, their best work is probably Armstrong's speech in Revengeance, but expecting a whole game at that level is madness.
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Nov 29, 2016 07:58
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Imagine a whole game with this quality of writing.
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AweStriker posted:Did they do Days of Ruin, too? The one mook that was astonished that people managed to field a sizable armed force on the wing of a giant aircraft ("Sweet corn casserole, they have ROCKETS!!!") was probably the best part of that game. Nope. That was Treehouse, far as I know. And, to be fair to them (they do a lot of good work, even if I think 8-4's highlights are better), I'm pretty sure the fact Fates had a different writing team for supports and the main game was also relevant to the worse writing. I have no idea why those got outsourced.
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Nov 29, 2016 19:37
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theshim posted:Awakening's writing does indeed knock Fates out of the park, both in terms of the fact that Fates has stupid plot and ideas while Awakening's just sputters out and in that the writing itself takes often simple situations and still conveys them wonderfully. Chrom confronting Gangrel or Walhart has some spectacular dialogue, even if there's nothing crazy different about it, and the supports are mostly amazing in Awakening(I am particularly fond of Gaius/Maribelle and honestly it might be one of the best supports in the series). My favorite's probably Ricken and Henry, which is funny since I'm not so keen on Ricken (much better than Hayato, at least). Both characters develop (Ricken learns that his enemies are people, same as his friends. Henry develops attachment to people in ways he didn't have in Plegia), it retroactively gives more characterization to a few of the bosses, and it's pretty funny. But yeah. Awakening's line-by-line is topnotch, which helps when the broader plot stumbles. I'd also say it's a major problem that Fates has a worse core. Robin and Chrom are characters with reasonably fleshed out personalities. Corrin is... well, hosed if I know what Corrin is, other than awful. There's no constant personality there, yet every drat scene in the main plot revolves around him or her.)
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Nov 30, 2016 11:23
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LordHippoman posted:
I wonder if there's anything on the 8-4 podcast about it. I mean, they talk shop sometimes, including about the work on Awakening (the Demon's Ingle was the subject of some massive debate, believe it or not), and I wouldn't be surprised if they had something on Shadow Dragon at some point, even as a side note. I know they changed Marth's personality something major from reading other stuff about the Japanese version. Summing up, if I remember right, Marth found his balls stateside, which is why fan translations of FE12 Marth feel like such comparative wusses. Of course, the most badass Marth is Lucina, who based her identity on stories she heard of Marth being this take no prisoners hard case, and was rather surprised to hear the real story.
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Dec 4, 2016 01:07
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Although Shanty Pete was a legendary pirate, modern viewers know him best for his generosity. Shanty Pete's orphanage was his legacy, an institution so well run it survived for over two thousand years. It's one of the most popular income tax write-offs for Annas everywhere.
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Dec 6, 2016 06:52
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Tae posted:It's was strictly a time release thing. Awakening took close to a year for localization, so the only way to release 3 games in a relatively short amount of time (less than a year), they had to do in-house or Fates just be coming out now. Yeah, that makes sense. The bit that confuses me is how IS outsourced the supports. Those were the writing aspect people liked in Awakening. They showed that they know how to make compelling and likable characters, despite juggling a massive cast. But instead they outsource it, meaning worse writing that doesn't sync with the main game at all for two of the routes. (I'm mainly thinking of how Birthright strongly implies Garon was married, then in mourning, then married again, with all his kids coming from his first wife, where the supports say he sowed his wild oats all over the field). Outsourcing the main plot makes some sense with the game's reception. Outsourcing the one bit people loved is bizarre.
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Dec 10, 2016 23:53
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RareAcumen posted:Virion is a mage, Kellam is a thief, Lon Qu is also some kind of magic user but what is Sully supposed to be? An archer? Myrmidon. (Lon'qu's a trickster) Fun fact: Sully's daughter Kjelle was initially meant to be a myrm before they realized, hey, maybe we should have more than one knight in the game and also we have three myrmidons already.
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Dec 19, 2016 19:34
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LordHippoman posted:Huh. That's interesting, because I thought "Kjelle" was supposed to be pronounced like "Shelly", and it was like a pun based on her being a knight? Of course they could have just changed the name, or I could be totally wrong. You're probably not wrong. 8-4, like girls, loves puns. It's a known fact. But that's the localized name. In the Japanese release, Kjelle was called "Degel". 8-4 was working with the final version when they made naming decisions, and Kjelle's prior incarnation wouldn't be a factor. It's mostly just a trivia item for the artbook (which features Kjelle's myrm design) and an explanation why Kjelle is the only kid to get four base classes from her mother.
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Dec 20, 2016 04:42
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LordHippoman posted:
I dunno why, but it definitely caught on, seeing as 2,000 years later everyone was doing it. Ylisse and Valm didn't even have the excuse of being their continent's premier superpowers (at least, not until Walhart started kicking dudes in the head). As for other bits, Coyotes do have bit of a reputation for cunning, where wolves are more straightforward. He's even a popular trickster god in some folk traditions and/or webcomics.
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Dec 24, 2016 12:27
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magikid posted:I've probably asked this about Fire Emblem before, but how do you guys deal with it all? Everything about these games just seems hilariously "anti-player." Mostly it's not as bad as it looks. In most games, your units are beefy enough to take a few mistakes and keep going, there are new units who are at least okay given to you throughout the game to ensure you always have someone able to deal with poo poo, there are weapon shops in safe areas or menus between missions, and you pick up a decent chunk of cash just from playing through. It's still pretty unfriendly from time to time, with occasional levels that are just bullshit, but the basics are manageable enough. All in all, though, I admit that there's a reason it took Awakening to get the series mainstream. Infinite possible grinding in case of bad levels, high growth rates to guarantee decent stats overall, weapon shops on the map, and all the gold you could want, on top of a mode with permadeath off all adds up to make a much more approachable game.
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Dec 29, 2016 05:48
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Torrannor posted:That's true, there were a lot of ways to break Tactics. And they even throw Cid at you if you can't manage it on your own. I'd say the story is good about three quarters of the way in (if a bit rough to keep track of) and then it denigrates into "Look! Demons!" We don't actually get followthrough on the interesting core conflict between Ramza and Delita because, whoops, who gives a gently caress about the relative morality of deception and betrayal in pursuit of social reform when there are demons behind half the politics of the game so far, and they were setting everything up just for shits, giggles, and the extinction of the human race. Oh, fine, whatever, Ivalice Jesus was secretly the devil, I'm sure if I was Joe Peasant in the setting I'd be flipping my poo poo right about now, but as a player, I was invested in the personal stakes. You could reveal that Saint Ajora was Bertram motherfucking WOOSTER in a prank that went too far, and I'd react about the same. (E.g. "Huh".) I'll probably sound like I'm committing heresy here... But what matters to me is not whether it's true or not, but that I believe it to be true, or rather not that I believe it, but that I believe it. Fire Emblem Awakening has a much better endgame, narratively, than Final Fantasy Tactics. Yes, you can convict me where I stand of saying that a piece of fluff about the power of love and friendship (fine things, both, but well covered in every format) is better written than a study of war, religion, and politics with some eye for the details (much rarer in games), but Fire Emblem Awakening actually carries through to the end where Tactics falters. Awakening says "The power of love can triumph over all". Very well, it then shows it. Robin, the protagonist, is able to overcome his evil counterpart through the love of his friends and family. He's willing to die to stop the monster, for love of his friends and family. And he returns to life (with previously foreshadowed means) through (you guessed it!) the love of his friends and family. The game faffs about when it comes to a lot of things, but themes? It knows how to play a theme. Tactics, meanwhile, opens up about Politics, Nobility, Means and Ends. All good and weighty topics, and it makes some good openings. Ramza, the bastard son of a nobleman, is forced to confront the gulf between the professed value of breeding and the actual character of his kinsmen. He embraces virtue over power, and is stripped of his title to live as a soldier of fortune. Meanwhile, his friend Delita is confronted with the low worth of peasants, and accepts the sacrifice of conscience for the power to create a better world. As the story progresses, we see the war that engulfs Ivalice from both prospectives, as Ramza tries to settle matters cleanly (with mixed results) occasionally saving innocent lives but with no ability to approach the core of the problem, and from Delita's prospective as he nears the heart of the matter by sacrificing the very people his reforms were meant to protect. All to the good so far. But then, demons. The motives and politics of the opening acts slowly drain away as we spend more and more time on demons engulfing the world in war because, shock, horror, demons are assholes. And Ramza wanders off to stab some demons since he's the hero, and demons are bad. He happens to save the world, because where the problems were seemingly things like innate social inequality and the hypocrisy of those who were meant to act as a check on power, which are impossible to stab in the face, the core problem turned out to be demons, which (as DOOM taught us) get stabbed pretty easy. The question of how to best live morally in an immoral world is replaced with bland fantasy scenario #3: it turns out God was an rear end in a top hat and also you can stab him like your name's Longinus. It's a shame, because I do love some good politics, and Delita's final scene is a fine endcap to a game that actually took its central conflict to a conclusion, but it doesn't, and here we are.
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Dec 30, 2016 09:55
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get that OUT of my face posted:Good to see Fire Emblem promoting the use of child soldiers Pretty much always, yes, but the Awakening kids are all young adults. Time travel might be involved. Which, in some cases (like Owain and whoever Ricken and Donnel's kids are) means the kids are older than their parents, which can be awkward. (Kjelle has a conversation in the DLC about how, no, Ricken can't be her father, because her FATHER looked like Jonathan Joestar decided to finally get serious about his exercise routine, and Ricken is, like, four feet tall counting his hat. Meanwhile, Lissa figures out how to parent at Owain immediately.) Fates, meanwhile, has the baby microwave.
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Dec 31, 2016 11:45
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Rabbi Raccoon posted:Ugh. Even Jagen got to the beach before me this year Technically, he got to go to the beach before you thousands of years ago. Now he, and almost everyone he ever knew, is dead. So you're still winning over him. ...Unless Tiki buried him on the beach.
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Jan 4, 2017 01:53
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LordHippoman posted:I get to wondering how that works and I can really only picture Marth bashing a chest open with his shield, screaming "I AM THE CHOSEN OF HOUSE ARCHANEA, SLAYER OF THE SHADOW DRAGON" Well, I can't promise better, especially not when I decided for some reason that it was a great idea to try to draw it on a system that could play Shadow Dragon, and I still haven't done the colors but... 
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Jan 5, 2017 07:23
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LordHippoman posted:This is a really good point and something I didn't notice. There's a very noticeable shift between the very character focused plots of something like Awakening and the impersonal, history book sort of things like FE3 or those Satelliview games. You still see odd little snatches of the old view in modern endings with the "Future historians" ones, but yeah. It's been a process. Six was basically FE1 but portable, but 7 gave the player a ground level view between the tactician and the more personal story, then eight had everything focused in on the personal conflict between Lyon and the two lords, then FE9 starred the mercenaries who'd slowly get nudged to the margins of the history books... As was mentioned, it's not even so much a change to the events of the narrative as it is a change to how they're focused. Aside from the time travel, Awakening's a pretty basic Fire Emblem plot. Jackass neighboring country, evil dragon god, and wars, wars, wars. But since it's mostly from Robin's point of view, you get an offhanded mention from Chrom that his dad was a massive warmongering rear end in a top hat, where FE4 would have that be one of the central points of the opening narration. This lead, in turn, to Fates, where you get pretty much nothing about anything except insofar as it makes Corrin more special. On the other hand, post-Kaga games tend to have better odds of playable female characters over 25 (who aren't magic dragons who look 12), so, you know. That's nice.
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Jan 10, 2017 08:32
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vilkacis posted:
So, Nowi, Nyx, and Myrrh as the starting lineup? Slightly more seriously, there's not that many people over 40, proportionally, and even fewer of them are women if you leave off the "They're really TWENTY XTY SIX years old, even though they look twelve!" entries. Lessee... Niime, Flavia, and... maybe Tiki?
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Jan 14, 2017 09:09
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"you are free to stop imagining it any time"
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LordHippoman posted:I mean, (Awakening Spoiler) Lucina uses it fine, unless there was time travel shenanigan fuckery involved there, I honestly don't remember. I think the Anri thing actually doesn't get mentioned in the remakes, by the way, so I'm not sure if that's even canon now. Lucina has a skill named "Rightful King." What I'm saying is, if Lucina wants something that's normally reserved for boys, it shuts the gently caress up and gets in line if it knows what's good for it.
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Jan 18, 2017 07:09
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LordHippoman posted:He's a voting option for characters to receive a "Special Version" in the mobile game coming out. They really plumbed the bottom of the barrel for that, pretty much every remotely memorable character in the series is a voting choice. Malledus? Yep. That guy from Awakening who says "MY MUSTACHE BLOWS IN THE WIND"? Yep. Child Zephiel from FE7? Somehow. Ike's mom! Really, I'd say it's a poll where a gag option is the right option. The sensible picks like Lucina and Hector are pretty much guaranteed to be playable from launch. Meanwhile, someone like Malledua is only getting a unit if he wins the poll. Of course, the best vote is for Morgan, but you have twelve more after that, so you have some wiggle room. Edit: Also, it is perfect that one of the default lords for the mobile Gacha game is Anna. You know she's going to have some connection to the shop.
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Jan 19, 2017 00:02
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vilkacis posted:I mean. Let's be honest. And he's still around in Awakening's era. He could live to meet Tiki's daughter, even! ...Poor Ban-Ban.
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Jan 20, 2017 04:30
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vilkacis posted:I find it upsetting that no one is acknowledging the best playable (probably partly) dragon type person in all of Fire Emblem. No, I mentioned Morgan already. But it's always good to remember she exists, I suppose.
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Jan 21, 2017 08:27
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Tae posted:I like how they decided to nerf every good ranged weapon in Fates, and then introduce literally the best 1-2 range type in franchise history with the Shuriken/Daggers. No, you see it's balanced, because...
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Jan 30, 2017 03:54
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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. I guess the voters didn't believe in love after all.
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Feb 9, 2017 09:57
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Sjs00 posted:He's even losing some of his hair He's still doing better than Inferno Cop. Poor guy lost his whole face.
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Feb 16, 2017 02:13
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Blaze Dragon posted:From what FE wiki says, yes, but enemy-only and couldn't move. Beck and Jake aren't in FE3 at all (in either Book, they were some of the cut characters from FE1). Apparently, that problem is solved by the time of Awakening, considering Chrom's army marches with Ballistae as part of its equipment. To be clear, none show up in the gameplay, but a support confirms they're around. I like to think nobody uses them since they'd just bounce off Kjelle's rock hard abs.
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Mar 23, 2017 23:31
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LordHippoman posted:
Jagen's lucky it's Steve and Marth's generation around, not Chrom's. Chrom gets a little... emotional when people insult Caesar.
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Apr 1, 2017 11:16
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: Caesar was wearing a silly bandana. I didn’t like it. What kind of a name is Caesar anyway?
: You can skip ahead to the part where you start moving again, it’s alri-
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rannum posted:I spent well over 100 hours carefully going through all the (non-S for gen 1) supports. Good times, good times. Customizable leads do mess up cutscenes. The need to never show Corrin was a major handicap compared to what Awakening worked with. That said... yeah. Fate's narrative wasn't really about anyone. It's not a story where decision A leads to consequence B leads to choice C. Instead it's a sequence of random events. Good stories tend to arise from the decisions of the characters in them, whereas Fates has the characters and the story just... kind of happen near each other.
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Apr 18, 2017 05:14
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LordHippoman posted:I was a little worried I wouldn't hit them by the end, which is why I sacrificed Arran in that last update, and, uh- 8-4 knows that it's not really Fire Emblem without Shanty Pete. That's what Fates got wrong, really.
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May 22, 2017 05:23
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