Fire Emblem

[LegalLoliLover]

This isn't a "politics" thing, it's a basic human decency thing.

And that's why we should ban necromancy... Wait, wrong topic. Funny how that same excuse can be used for anything, huh?

[Spinach]

I said stop.

[Aozaki-desu]

I've been using Celine, Diamant and Pandreo this run
Diamant had to be benched for the first 2 solm chapters and it fucked his progression hard

[Spinach]

I'm learning a lot of people really liked the fixed growths maddening experience which surprises me since I kinda hated it in hindsight. It felt pretty bad how the game had a clear cut difference between the good units and the bad. Alfred is amazing on random rn, one of my MVPs because his growths are quite high and he regularly gains in all the good stats, but on fixed he'd always get terrible level -> ok level -> terrible level -> ok level. A character like Lapis is also just complete shit when Kagetsu joins and mogs her in every single way just 3 chapters later. I hope they never enforce this first time fixed growths maddening run again and just let us choose.

[GDB]

I kind of like it only in the sense of it doesn't make me feel like I need to rerun maps/level ups/manipulate arena to get good stat-ups to compete with Maddening's difficulty curve. It absolutely has downsides, like your Alfred and Kagetsu examples, or the Jean level ups that only gave +1 hp and nothing else despite his massive growths, but I can also see the positives for it.

[Aozaki-desu]

I actually had pretty poor growths this run. My Anna isnt getting the most of her growths, i have absolutely bodied 14 str Yunaka at CL17, i've been trying to baby Panette and Timerra this time and they arent doing so hot either. Chloe is carrying shit again but i'm not really happy with it and considering restarting because its getting to a point where i cant really test things i want to test because a bunch of my units are kinda bad and the inefficiencies of early plays are coming home to roost.
I know where to focus now though.

Fixed growths just feel shit to play though, yeah, these gotta go unless its some sort of challenge mode.

[Spinach]

I kind of like it only in the sense of it doesn't make me feel like I need to rerun maps/level ups/manipulate arena to get good stat-ups to compete with Maddening's difficulty curve. It absolutely has downsides, like your Alfred and Kagetsu examples, or the Jean level ups that only gave +1 hp and nothing else despite his massive growths, but I can also see the positives for it.

I've yet to test it thoroughly but I do at least know you can't manipulate your lvl ups by going in and out of a current map or playing around in the arena. I have seen someone say you can mess with the lvl up seed by entering and exiting a paralogue, but I can't confirm that as true either, because it SEEMS that RNG seeding on maddening may actually be different from other difficulty modes and I don't trust anyone to be a reliable source at this point. That said, I do wish they'd be inalterable (roll my next lvl the instant I lvl up or something so I can't cheat it) because I /did/ feel encouraged by the turnwheel to just mulligan a bad lvl up and leave a character at 99 XP in the corner of the map many times in 3H across literally 20+ maddening runs.

[Deathhappens]

You can literally switch the game to JP and not have to deal with this shit, and the shit English dub exists to encourage you to do so, who actually gives a fuck

I mean, I can do that and after 10 mins of lookups I can be mostly certain I got the meaning of a scene right, but I shouldn't have to when part of the money I paid went to someone whose job was to do it for me. And many people don't even have that option at all.

- - - Updated - - -

His job isn't translating, it's localizing. Again, they aren't the same thing. Localizing/editing is the step after translating.

And no, the disgusting thing is wanting to romance children. This isn't a "politics" thing, it's a basic human decency thing.

"Localising" is something that happens during the translation process. Yes, an editor can and will make sweeping changes on occasion, but all of those things happen in the same office with (ideally) everyone on the same table. And personally I'm really not buying into someone's core competency to become an editor of a translated text without at least surface knowledge of the language it's translated from. You'd be missing way too much cultural context to do your job properly.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm learning a lot of people really liked the fixed growths maddening experience which surprises me since I kinda hated it in hindsight. It felt pretty bad how the game had a clear cut difference between the good units and the bad. Alfred is amazing on random rn, one of my MVPs because his growths are quite high and he regularly gains in all the good stats, but on fixed he'd always get terrible level -> ok level -> terrible level -> ok level. A character like Lapis is also just complete shit when Kagetsu joins and mogs her in every single way just 3 chapters later. I hope they never enforce this first time fixed growths maddening run again and just let us choose.

I guess it's a boon for the people who treat it like a puzzle game where you have to make all the right moves, since it eliminates a significant amount of RNG from the run. Personally I never found FE combat to be more than mildly engaging so I'm fine running it down on Normal. SoV was ironically the best game for that since it was actually challenging at times.

Actually, going back on the difficulty bit, I just dont think this game could ever be properly balanced. Doing skirmish maps with significantly higher leveled enemy units (since I'm trying to bring back up at least some of the B team that has fallen behind) feels exactly like Hard did, just a bunch of meatier enemies that hit hard and come in triple your numbers. There isn't any particular strategy you can use to outmaneuver them, you just have to pull as few of them as possible at a time and gang up on them with 2-3 of your units. And then a random reinforcement shows up or an enemy comes in from the one square of darkness you didn't see and oneshots one of your guys. Rewind.

[Spinach]

Personally I never found FE combat to be more than mildly engaging so I'm fine running it down on Normal.

My question is, at that point, what are you playing Engage for, because hopefully it's not the plot or characters lol

[Deathhappens]

That's why I usually play FE for, yes. Safe to say I'm probably not going to replay it.

[Spinach]

As for me, I started with the GBA games and was never a huge fan, just pretty tame interest. The DS generation kind of killed my interest, but I really got back into it with 3H, specifically when maddening dropped. The game is hard enough with enough room for weird strategies that it's pretty fun to try and push the options at your disposal to their limit and the game difficulty is high enough to offer resistance to a degree where it doesn't feel pointless. You can't just do anything you want and it'll always work out like on higher difficulties. That's what I've started to enjoy out of this franchise. Engage has some of it so I'm still digging in.

[Malgos]

As for me, I started with the GBA games and was never a huge fan, just pretty tame interest. The DS generation kind of killed my interest, but I really got back into it with 3H, specifically when maddening dropped. The game is hard enough with enough room for weird strategies that it's pretty fun to try and push the options at your disposal to their limit and the game difficulty is high enough to offer resistance to a degree where it doesn't feel pointless. You can't just do anything you want and it'll always work out like on higher difficulties. That's what I've started to enjoy out of this franchise. Engage has some of it so I'm still digging in.

Bolded is the same as me, although I do like some of the older characters since Awakening the amount of characters I like per game dropped though. Underlined, well I already went into it but wow you estimated playing that around 20 times. I just did 4 at release, sadly no maddening there and burned out hard and never roamed that godforsaken monastery again. Thankfully I didn't get the dlc, cause that'd be a waste for a game I might never play again. I was considering it at launch. as during my Maddening run, I just realized I can't stand all the non-battle chores anymore.

Same "tired" reasons I can't get into 3 houses again, but maybe someone doesn't know my gripes yet.

I think I hate all the "mandatory" 3 house "minigames". meals for motivation are bleh, using a flower guide sucks, finding the items to raise motivation, fishing for professor level all those are just dreadful to me.

So I'm thankful that so far the new hub seems less busy. Replays will reveal more, but I'd love to just go back to map to map and "oh you forgot to buy a certain weapon type well good luck until the next shop in the map." Oh, I also miss the gba arena. I don't arena abuse or anything, but if I can afford it I like to leave a Myrm and a healer there sometimes for a little bit until I clear (so possibly 5 turns of arena tops or so), gambling with a potential restart for exp and money.

At least in Fe 12s defense it was better for me than 11, but both just look and feel bleh and like downgrades to prior titles. No rescue?! Bleh. I realize they were pretty faithful, except Kris, but we still haven't gotten the usual upgrades back imagine easy and free shove access for all infantry, and nice rescue for mounted would feel so nice again.

[Spinach]

Monastery for me is infinitely more tolerable than what the Somniel is (the Somniel is a hollow, soulless, superficial version of the Monastery). I could zoom through the monastery parts of a month in a few minutes per week. I never fished for professor levels except on some extreme challenges I'd set for myself where I really badly needed the extra actions per week. After my 3rd or 4th playthrough I never grabbed missing items or bothered with them. First of the month you run through story dialogue, grab quests, and end the week. It usually takes 5~ minutes to do that one, and subsequent weeks can take as little as 3 minutes if you know what you want to do.

At this point would I drop doing the monastery altogether? Yeah, it's not like I enjoy it. But it has never drained my motivation at all, because I spent some time early into the game learning what I actually NEED to get out of it and just speed through every week. Is it a negative? Slightly, yeah. But never a dealbreaker. In fact, on my first run of every single route, the Monastery was awesome. It's the only time FE storytelling was good, hearing the students gossip about what's going on, teachers and church characters muttering about upcoming things they're worried about, random NPCs actually being a part of the world even though they're not units I should really care about.

[Malgos]

It's the only time FE storytelling was good, hearing the students gossip about what's going on, teachers and church characters muttering about upcoming things they're worried about, random NPCs actually being a part of the world even though they're not units I should really care about.

This part was indeed very nice and I liked that, so much unique dialogue which helps the characters stand out more than Engage's, although for me the monastery run was already a chore near the end of the first route. I think some of the standouts were Felix in regards to certain events in other houses, although I think I only went full recruitment once and otherwise usually killed all the students to get the most personal tragedy out of my games, since it's kinda intended to be like that.

Spoiler:

Wow random, ballista sniper died versus wow Berndaetta burnt down, although it's weird to not get off of that burning hellscape. Must've been threatened with even more torturous experience by Edelgard, because slowly burning to death seems like one of the worst ways to die.

I guess I just suck at speedrunning the monastery, I probably just can't help myself, because I feel like I should do it to get the most out of it for my run.

So yeah Engage's hub certainly sucks for the character interactions, but it's "gameplay" loop is less worse for me. Items are marked and at most if you wanna be optimal you got to do push-ups, meals, arena and if you're extremely desperate for some money Wyvern ride. Which leaves feeding Lillth 2.0 rest is unlikely to be done every run. Although I'd still prefer a menu and having unique conversations there over all this pointless running around.

[Deathhappens]

Both the monastery and Somniel are wastes of time, but where the monastery at least had plot progession once a month with NPC dialogue discussing what happened and foreshadowing what's coming, Somniel has nothing but tedium besides the occasional support. Watching everyone run around with whatever weird outfit/accessory combo you picked out for them is funny exactly once, especially since 99% of outfits are variously colored long dresses for the ladies and sensible pants+shirt combo for the guys.

[Malgos]

I think it's kinda funny how FE managed to get me to dislike any sort of avatar/create a character system. Before it was mostly apathy, but now I just think: Wow it would've been better if they didn't waste time on this and made another real character. And if the character is a real character and they got an established background that causes people to sing their praises I can't help, but think it's player pandering like in FE since you could alerter their default appearance to make them your own character at least in looks.

I wonder if it will cause me to feel the same for hub worlds, although I wasn't exactly hype about them anyways but I usually encountered those in games that always had this so I never thought (about going back to) a menu would be better, since it gets you to the gameplay and story faster.

[GDB]

I wanted to kill those two mages in the Sigurd map sooooooooooo bad, but a 63 attack Thoron user with two break bars is just too much.

[pinetree]

I didn't even get to enjoy his map, dude just rushed into his death as soon as he could.

[GDB]

It's not a very realistic FE4 map. Only about 15% of the size.

[Malgos]

I wanted to kill those two mages in the Sigurd map sooooooooooo bad, but a 63 attack Thoron user with two break bars is just too much.

I managed that, but I failed to get the potential secret spot in the top right. Was in range of Meteor and taking on all those adds that spawn seemed too suicidal. Definitely one of the easier paralogues overall if all you want is to clear the map.