Let's Talk Fire Emblem

[Nester the Lark]

So, I inadvertently took about a week off from Sacred Stones, but I've just gotten back to it. I've finished chapter 18, so I'm getting near the end. I'm wondering if I should try to do the tower before I get to the endgame. Is there a point of no return? Or any reason to do the tower outside of just for fun?

So far, I think I enjoy this game more than Blazing Blade, and at least as much as Shadow Dragon. I like being able to roam around a world map and do things between chapters, as well as the branching promotions. It makes the game feel a little more flexible. (I think Shadow Dragon let you change a character's class at any time, but I never messed with it.) Also, I like that it's only 20 chapters plus endgame. The shorter campaign keeps me from feeling too burned out, but the length can still be extended through optional content like the tower and skirmishes, so I can decide what kind of experience I want.

I did kinda miss the illustrations from Blazing Blade and Shadow Dragon, tho. There were certain story events that would've benefited from them, and their absence made it feel like Sacred Stones had a smaller budget.

Eirika and Ephraim are probably among my favorite FE lords, if mainly because of their sweet brother-sister relationship. The fact that they spend much of the game separated made it feel very satisfying when they were finally together. (Naturally, I maxed out their support level.) Neither of them had better die by the end...

I don't have much to say about the story until I finish the game.

Overall, out of the FE games I've played, I feel like this is the one I'd be most likely to replay, mainly to see Ephraim's route.

[Leon]

After you beat the final boss, you can explore the tower as much as you want, and even unlock some extra characters. As for the game feeling smaller budget, that's pretty accurate for its development. This game was announced after Path of Radiance was announced, and released before PoR, so that should give you a pretty good idea about it.

[Nester the Lark]

It took me a while to get around to it, but I finally finished Sacred Stones. I have now finished all the Fire Emblem games I own.

I don't really have much more to add from what I said before. I really enjoyed it, especially considering it's the third FE game I've finished since I started Shadow Dragon in November.

For the story... To be honest, I usually just glaze over the stories in FE, as well as many RPGs, but I did enjoy the story. I tend to be more interested in the characters, themselves, though, and I liked the cast overall at least as much as Blazing Blade's.

Special shout-out to Neimi, who is probably now my favorite FE bow-user. I wasn't sure how I felt about her at first, but then I realized that I can kinda relate to her, and I got really attached. I paired her with Artur and promoted her to a ranger, and they both ended up being some of my best units. Also, she came from a village named Lark, so what's not to love?

But now, I'm going to take a long break from FE until Three Houses comes out.

[Nester the Lark]

BUMP!

I posted this in the shoutbox, but I think it's worth preserving in a post.

Here's an English fan cover of the song "Reincarnation" from Tokyo Mirage Sessions. It's interesting because it suggests what an English dub of the game could have been like. I can easily imagine an English voice actor for Kiria sounding just like this.



This person also did a cover of "The Edge of Dawn" from Fire Emblem: Three houses that's really good, too.

[nocturnal YL]

This is quite interesting indeed. Whenever I listen to English fan covers I often get this weird feeling that something is off, but this is better than that.

I'm under the impression that they wouldn't dub ♯FE even if they have the resource to because of the story setting, but this is an interesting thought.

[Nester the Lark]

Nintendo of America is going to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Fire Emblem with a discussion with some of the English voice actors.

I'm a little disappointed that Joe Zieja (Claude in Three Houses) isn't a part of it.

[Nester the Lark]

Here's the interviews:



This isn't what I expected. I thought it might just be a quick 10-20 minute Nintendo Minute video, but this is much bigger than that. I also wasn't expecting a Fire Emblem Heroes character to be conducting the interviews. Well worth watching, though!

Christian La Monte tells the best story about voicing Ignatz's S-support conversation. (EDIT: I keep writing "S-rank" when I mean S-support.)

[Nester the Lark]

I saw this meme and thought of how YL feels about Shadow Dragon.

[nocturnal YL]

That's pretty much how I feel about Shadow Dragon DS.

[Nester the Lark]

Remember that English fan cover of "Reincarnation" from Tokyo Mirage Sessions (a few posts up)? I just discovered that the person who made it, Nicki Gee, also did an English cover of "She is..." from TMS Encore earlier this year.



I kinda think that the person singing Tsubasa's part doesn't quite fit the character, but otherwise, I think this is a really good cover!

[Nester the Lark]

So, I tried the demo for Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. I only went through the Golden Deer route, but all three are available. It took me around four hours.

I haven't really been hyped for this game at all, so I wasn't expecting much, but I have to say, I'm far more interested now. The gameplay finally feels more strategic in the way I liked about the original Hyrule Warriors. It also felt far more polished than the shoddy demos I played for other recent Musou games. Heck, the graphics even look better than Three Houses.

Plus, I have to admit it was nice seeing my Golden Deer kids again.

I still don't think this will be a day one purchase, but I'm considering more seriously about getting it at some point in the future.

[nocturnal YL]

Didn't feel like trying out the demo until this weekend, due to work and other reasons.

The demo is quite long, which reminds me of Age of Calamity. The maps aren't forced to be grid-shaped now, and enemy leaders now have a complex stun gauge with them.

It controls a bit differently from the original Fire Emblem Warriors, since now it has to incorporate skills/magic spells. And yes, switching between this demo, the original FE Warriors and the Ys games is still very confusing.

It looks like the frame rate is dynamic, with the renderer targeting 30 fps but rendering more frames if it can.

From what the demo covers, there doesn't seem to be a big difference between the three sides. Jeritza is always the teacher, and the first task is always to get to the thieves' hideout, although I didn't check what goes beyond that. The story is very different from Three Houses. I picked Edelgard, and from the get go everything was different from Three Houses.

(Edelgard's route in the demo, not really spoilers)

SPOILER: Click to show

Those Who Slither in the Dark were exposed early. They were able to save Monica (no, not Orson's dead wife; the other Monica). And there's an achievement for getting Failnaught. Maybe those carry over between playthroughs, but now I'm wondering if the three groups will eventually meet.

I like the story details it adds to the world of Fódlan. Previously unnamed nobles now have full names and are shown in person, and dead people now get a chance to show their personality. And Byleth is a lot chattier than I thought in their fight with Shez. I'm also glad Shez isn't silent.

There are a lot of minor gameplay details that I like. The weapon triangle is back, though not as an inherent mechanism. Rather, it's done with class skills. Still a lot better than what Three Houses did, which had them as equippable skills unlocked with weapon level, which often end up unused to make room for other skills. And it shows character support levels in more granular details, making it better than every other Fire Emblem title to date. The support level preview for sharing meals and volunteering also do a better job to show how exactly do support levels increase.

Classes are shown in a tree, which hopefully means there are meaningful promotion paths and more final classes. Pegasus Knights and Wyvern Knights don't have straightforward promotion paths in Three Houses.

Looks like I'm going to like this game. If anything, it puts the Fire Emblem part back to Fire Emblem Three Houses, ignoring many of its Echoes-induced weirdness.

EDIT — Also, the speed stat is now actually about speed, unlike in the original Fire Emblem Warriors.

[Nester the Lark]

NoA has released another "Castle Conversations" video, presumably due to the release of Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. This time, they only interview two of the English voice actors: Joe Zieja, the voice of Claude (and also Canas and Jamke in FE Heroes), and Erica Mendez, the voice of Bernadetta (and Deirdre in FE Heroes). It's a fun, non-serious interview.



Here are some highlights:

At one point, there's a joke quiz where Joe and Erica are asked questions about their characters. Erica gets asked really easy questions, while Joe gets stupidly hard ones.

At 25:17, Joe is asked how to spell Jamke's name in Japanese. I just wanted to say that even with my very limited knowledge of Japanese, I still picked the correct answer!

At 33:52, Erica voices a translated scene from Genealogy of the Holy War as both Deirdre and Shannan. At first, I wondered if they were teasing a localization of FE4, but then I noticed the "not actual game footage" disclaimer.

And finally, at 35:29, Erica and Fehnix reenact a scene from Three Houses as Bernadetta and Jeritza. The joke here is that Fehnix is voiced by Patrick Seitz, who is also Jeritza's voice, so he's trying to do Fehnix doing Jeritza. (I believe Seitz was also the English voice director for Three Houses and Three Hopes.)

[Nester the Lark]

So, Nicki Gee, who did the English covers of "Reincarnation" and "She is..." that I posted above, has done another cover of "Reincarnation," but this time it's the full song.



It has different instrumentation, so it doesn't quite sound the same.

[Nester the Lark]

So, I was watching this video about the evolution of permadeath in the Fire Emblem series, and it got me thinking about it, so I wanted to start a discussion.

To summarize the video, it points out that even though permadeath was a defining characteristic of the series, most of the games really aren't balanced for it, and they have been moving continuously farther away from it since even the Shouzou Kaga era. Its inclusion as an option in modern FE is mainly out of tradition. The video makes arguments both in favor of (more accessible, allows emphasis on story and characters) and against this change (removes tension, discourages risk assessment).

The video makes a good point about how so-called "iron man" runs are really just the way FE was originally supposed to be played, and not a self-imposed rule for extra challenge. But modern FE is designed more around the idea that all units are intended to be kept alive, perhaps to the point that allowing units to die is potentially game-breaking.

Most FE games I've played did not have an option for Casual mode, and while I did not have an orthodox "keep every unit alive" mentality, I would still often reset when certain units died. It certainly made playing those games a lot more stressful, and if I was far into a chapter when it happened, it was a significant (and discouraging) time loss. For the games I played on Wii U Virtual Console, I made use of the save state option. In both of my playthroughs of Three Houses, I played in Classic mode (normal difficulty), but it rarely made any difference because Divine Pulse made it easy to undo mistakes.

So, how do you guys feel about permadeath? Anyone can answer, but I guess this question is mainly aimed at YL. I think his goal in most FE games is to recruit every possible character and see every support conversation, but permadeath is more about survival.

For me, I think the video has changed my mentality a bit, and Engage will likely be the first FE game where I deliberately pick Casual mode. Modern FE is less about survival, and more about story and characters like a traditional RPG.