Alistair

Since Fates, Fire Emblem has had something of a tradition of each individual mainline game having its own theme song separate from the general Fire Emblem theme that plays during the opening and/or end credits. Fates itself has "Lost in Thoughts All Alone", Echoes "Heritors of Arcadia", Three Houses "The Edge of Dawn," and Engage "Fiery Bonds". I wondered what people thought of all of them. I think my favorite one is probably Heritors of Arcadia. It's got some great lyrics and it being from Mila's POV is really interesting (though it would have been more interesting if it was a duet with Duma). It's not as plot critical like "Lost" but it provides a good emotional capstone to the game.

Mechanically, it's one of the high points of the series, especially Conquest. Basically every system that helped made Awakening so successful is here, and most are straight-up improvements -- reclassing especially is a lot more interesting here than it was in Awakening imo. It also introduced other ideas like Dragon Veins and the debuff versions of shuriken/daggers that I hope stick around in some way going forward. What makes the story more interesting in hindsight is the Three Houses comparison. Both lean into route splits much more than any of the previous games and yet they go about it in vastly different ways: Fates has multiple versions that you have to buy separately, while Three Houses has them all in one cartridge; the choices of Fates are imo much less compelling than Three Houses (particularly with the Silver Snow/Crimson Flower split) but the actual act of making the choice is better contextualized, etc. If IS wants to keep making FE route splits -- not something I necessarily think would be good but that's besides the point -- they'd do well to figure out what worked and didn't work about both approaches.

Yeah, that was why I didn't include Bramimond in the list, since there's a lot up for interpretation and argument that there isn't with other characters like, say, Limstella.

I guess? The official Heroes site uses he/him pronouns even post-dark magic but Athos does use gender-neutral pronouns in FE7, so I think it may be up to interpretation. And in any case you could argue that Bramimond being genderless wouldn't be the best rep since it frames the loss of cisgender-ness as a negative consequence of using dark magic rather than an inherent part of the character. I'm personally inclined to include them. It's not as if every character in Three Houses, for example, can be S-Supported regardless of Byleth's gender, so for me characters like Lindhart and Jeritza are bi even if their only same-sex S-Supports are with Male!Byleth. I guess those factors would exclude those two from romantic same-sex S-Supports, provided polyamory isn't an option. But I think the bigger question is why they were written to be such in the first place, rather than the in-universe justification. For example, there's nothing that mandates Alois be a character with a wife (especially as IIRC we don't see her in person in the game) but the developers still made the decision to write them as platonic S-Supports when every other S-Support in the game is explicitly romantic.

Since we're in the middle of Pride month (and with Limstella making their debut in Heroes, coincidentally) I thought it could be worthwhile to talk about LGBT+ rep in Fire Emblem. I've made a list of characters who are, to my knowledge, explicitly LGBT+ characters in the games so far: Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about any of these or have forgotten someone; I haven't played all the games in question. In general, Fire Emblem's rep is bisexual, with some gay and non-binary characters, and both of the non-binary characters were made so in Heroes. Additionally, the number of LGBT characters increased dramatically between Fates and Three Houses. Additionally, Fates locked certain characters behind different routes that you had to pay for, and Soleil is unable to S-Support any women despite preferring women over men. Three Houses, meanwhile, has Gilbert and Alois who are S-Supportable for both Byleths but non-romantic. Overall, Fire Emblem doesn't have the best LGBT representation in all of video games, but it's a made a lot of progress, especially between Fates' initial release and now.

Yeah, SMT V's player character is a guy with long blue hair who doesn't have a canon name but whose title is more or less Nahobino. Here are some screenshots for reference. Personally, thought the UI and environment don't look like anything from SMT V, so if it is an edit it's a very involved one.

I don't know, there's a reason giving the player a good (combat) unit in the early game is a good idea. Early games are IMO usually the most difficult parts of Fire Emblems because it's when you have the least resources and you're the weakest relative to the enemy troops. Even if you're not doing a challenge run or playing on higher difficulties, prepromotes are great for helping first time players getting the hang of the game. And in any case I think it's good to have a variety of playstyles on the table for RPGs, and getting rid of prepromotes as a rule would limit and not expand player choice.

Another DLC-related change: Hapi's budding talent in axes gets her Exhaustive Strike, when that runs of her worse strength stat. I would have swapped it out for Lightning Axe, the magic axe combat art.

Maybe it's because I've been using her for my current SS Maddening run, but I think Anna needs either a personal skill or supports. As it is, she's incredibly mediocre, especially with respect to her Reason bane negating her getting Bolting. Personally, I think that she should have had either her Fates personal (getting a luck% chance of getting a random amount of gold upon killing an enemy) or Spendthrift (a Merchant class skill in Fates that consumed a billion to increase damage).

As I understand it, Nevada and Georgia will have updates at 9 pm est, so there may not be much in the way of substantial updates until then.

Rest in power. I'm pretty sure court packing would be politically unfeasible, depending on how popular it would be with the public I'm also unsure about Trump stealing the election. I think Gorusch at least would join the liberals and Robert's wants to uphold the idea that the court is non partisan (which lol but whatever).

A new whistleblower complaint alleges that a privately run ICE detention center has carried out mass hysterectomies . Now, as far as I know, this is one complaint against a specific center and perhaps not an agency-wide policy, but it's disgusting all the same. Mass hysterectomies amount to forced sterilization which makes ICE even more concentration camp-y than they previously were.

Trump tells supporters in North Carolina (which I believe is a swing state) to vote twice in the election. Which is illegal.

have fun nerd

"Elitists were done better in Tear Ring Saga." "Marcus is racist." "Seth ruined Fire Emblem."

I think like a lot of people my opinion has gone from "one of the best ever" to "significantly flawed but still really enjoyable." If nothing else I would still rank it among my favorites in the series because it's really ambitious and pulls off a number of things well. I think there are two things that are pretty much unambiguous negatives, which get worse on subsequent playthroughs and prevent it from reaching its full potential. The Agarthans are pretty underdeveloped and while it would be forgivable to the extent that they still needed a faction to kickstart a lot of the backstory and status quo, they're never entertaining or intimidating enough to make the confrontations with them all that memorable. It's why, imo, the last few chapters of Verdant Wind feel really out of left field. The second one is the map reuse. My personal conspiracy theory is that it was because of the "zoom in" feature the maps were too resource-intensive to make a lot of, which is why White Clouds and the first halves of non-CF routes are so similar. Because of that, all of the routes are much more homogeneous than they should have been. On the subject of Three Houses' potential influence on future entries, I do think that Three Houses is kind of a culmination of design trends in recent titles, like leaning into RPG/social sim stuff like S supports or having to chose between multiple campaigns. I think the next game should distinguish itself by at least not doing the multiple campaigns thing because both Fates and Three Houses suffered from overstretch because of it.

Is Rhea's tea time stuff paid DLC? Or is it part of the free updates like 25 save slots and Jeritza?

Here's the link. It auto-generates some Fire Emblem hot takes (some of which are NSFW). Here are some of my favorites: "Wil ended slavery." "Gwendolyn is a war criminal." "Romance ruined Awakening."

While I also prefer Blazing over Binding, I do want to say that its gameplay elements aren't necessarily devoid of merit. Lower hit rates, for example, mean that myrmidons and swordmasters' niche is actually super important because they can take advantage of enemy's hit rates (which is why Rutger is one of the better myrmidons in the series) and make bosses consistent challenges because throne bonuses are great in that system. I'd also say that enemies are in general a lot more threatening than in Blazing.

I really like this., since it helps set up Crimson Flower's big departures from the other routes in terms of level design and central narrative. The only thing I would maybe cut down on is the presence of golems and phantom soldiers, especially the bow knights, considering they're meant for a post-timeskip party. I also think that maybe having other Church characters appear might be interesting. I'm going to agree with Omegaxis that this seems unnecessary, but for different reasons. To my mind, if the central conflict of CF is Empire vs Church, then a detour to Shambhala right before the Tailtean Plains would interrupt the pacing of that conflict. I also think that one of Crimson Flower's strong points is that it's very different than the anti-Edelgard routes in terms of story structure, and having to fight Those Who Dubstep undermines that since it's already present in two other campaigns.

Here's a pretty good intro to battalions. That goes over pretty much everything, but here are some specific answers: Endurance is basically the battalion's HP and will go down by roughly half of the damage the unit takes (if the unit on the map takes four damage, for instance, the endurance will go down by two points). That being said, there is a "rule of thirds" benchmark system: battalions will never lose more than a third of their endurance in any one hit (denoted by the triangles next to battalion name; you can also see them on the map). Battalions don't "die" like a unit would in Classic Mode, but if their endurance hits zero they "retreat", nullifying any stat boosts they provide and preventing you from using their gambit. You'll have to spend some money at the battalion guild replenishing them, since there isn't anyway to raise their endurance mid-battle barring online functions. Authority Prowess only raises the might of offensive gambits, and charm increases damage, hit and avoidance (though it has much more impact on the hit/avoidance than damage). However, battalions have a base authority rank needed to use them, like weapons needing a certain skill rank before being usable. Gambit Boosts (Linked Attacks but for Gambits) don't require the other units to have battalions, just that the target of the gambit be in their range(s). I would say battalions are very much worth it. They provide lots of stat boosts for one thing (particularly to hit/avoid/critical) and have great crowd control capabilities since any unit hit by a gambit will be "rattled" and thus prevented from moving for a turn. Offensive gambits are also the most efficient and reliable way to combat monsters, since they can break armor. Support gambits also exist that have arguably some of the most broken effects in the game. Stride, for example, is a gambit that increases units' move by 5 points which can help immensely.

I mean, according to some CNN research from 2018, it seems like Kanye has "higher favorability among white voters and Republicans than non-white voters and Democrats." That suggests to me that he would eat into Trump's base more than Biden's, and that's already presupposing that a) he's entirely serious with this b) he even gets the paperwork and fundraising done needed to even get on ballots and c) he doesn't drop out by Election Day. Remember, Trump declared his nomination at the the beginning of the primary process and had campaign and party infrastructures. Kanye has none of that and, frankly, I think this is probably a sign of an upcoming album more than of a serious campaign. I mean, that's all anecdotal. While I don't doubt some (at best naive) people would vote for him over Trump or Biden I seriously doubt he'd make that much impact. When McMullin announced his candidacy in August 2016 he had political experience and campaign infrastructure and only barely managed to get on ballots in the first place, much less have an appreciable impact on the Electoral College.

I'm looking forward to it! And good luck with the rest of the game.

Count me interested. Sorry to pressure you (I know game development is very intensive), but do you know a timeframe for the release of the demo?

Kaga is apparently working on a new Vestaria Saga spin off which will be like Nobunaga's Ambition, of Pokemon crossover fame. I've not played either, and since the other gaiden game is yet to be localized, I wonder if/when we'll be getting this.