TDAWS_MP132

You will not get the level 15 skill if you promote before then, it is meant to be a tradeoff of sorts. There are some early game scenes that appear to have errors, the dev team is working on fixing them asap, but just using start to skip the scene works as a temporary solution.

What makes XNA fog different? I'm curious.

You can dismiss them for easy money, or because most of them have low health, I suppose you could use them on characters with battalion skill builds. (Battalion Wrath, Battalion Vantage, est.) I've never ran any of those builds, seemed kinda fun but too gimmicky, and so I always just dismissed them for some spending money.

The best way to get the more rare smiting materials it to armor break demonic beasts; breaking all of their yellow barriers at once with attacks or gambits will rob the enemy of their turn and give you a variety of types and quantities of rare materials. Umbra Steel is dropped pretty often by the "Dragonic" Demonic Beasts, in amounts ranging from 1 to 5. And you only need 3 to repair most hero relics.

Tight. I'll look forward to the new announcements.

Right Away, All the Way. The only exception is Alm and Celica, getting them to 15+ is great, but not necessary. This is because of how promotions work in Gaiden (and Echoes), Instead of set stat bonuses on promotion, stats that are below class base are raised to the new class bases, while other stats remain untouched. Plus, Characters will have plenty of levels to grow once in their 2nd or 3rd tier. It's common for units to only be in the early levels of tier 3 at endgame.

MORE BOAT MAPS HYPE!!!

For this map in particular, there aren't many enemies, and the go to strat is to move/warp someone with high defence, like Lukas, onto the bridge to choke it. I do believe said bridges, like floor tiles in gaiden, give 20 avoid, but I could be wrong. Then just keep squishy units like silk away from the front or on one of the few trees. With the improved UI and Speed of the remake, this map may take 4-5 min tops on a first playthrough, and maybe even faster without animations.

Honesty, I don't think maps like this one are a big deal. Sure, it could and maybe should be better, but when played, this map just has the two armies farther apart for 2 or 3 turns, and then everything continues as normal. It's not like this map is a 30 min long hell filled with ridiculous enemy density and an annoying map gimmick.

MEGAQUAKE IS BACK! YEAH!

They cap at 20, but they can promote starting from lv 3. In gaiden, because of how promotions work, you should almost never wait to promote, so getting them to 20 is kind of irrelevant.

I agree. I think they'll either go all the way and allow all 5 potential villager options to loop to villager, or none at all.

I feel like as far as possible additions go, archsage would be nice, but the largest change that I think should be made is female mage promotion time. Maybe standardize it to 12 like the other 2 tier only classes. The promotion to priestess is good, but it isn't so good that it should wait to 20.

This diagram is a pretty decent explanation of how classes work in gaiden. Note that some a few player classes are absent, this diagram only details classes that the villagers can become.

This was a super interesting read! I wonder in what ways SOV will compare and contrast with this take on the og Gaiden story.

OG Gaiden had a few environmental puzzles, but I can't see them adding too many more. It looks like IS wants to facilitate exploration with the more nonlinear designs, and allowing players to sneak or run past encounters is a huge improvement. I could see maybe 1 or 2 new environmental puzzles, maybe in the amiibo dungeons, but nothing on the scale of zelda or other adventure games. They are not exactly designed for that purpose.

Time will tell if the dungeon exploration itself will be great, although I hope it will be. I'm looking forward more to the interior designs of the dungeons. I want to see what the dragon shrine, forest shrine, and and lost woods would look like.

Saber, Genny, and Valbar are my favorites, but the designs as a whole are so good! I like both of the new character designs too.

If IS adds difficulty settings more similar to future instalments (Not the normal, paragon mode choice in og gaiden), maybe they could make the summon amount consistent, as suggested above, but also change that amount per difficulty? (2 on normal, 4 on hard, 6 or 8 on lunatic, est.) I could see that being a cool change to many summoner maps, but I could also see the enemy density becoming ridiculous on higher difficulties. Regardless, consistent amounts of summoned enemies would go far in making summoners more fair and more fun.

I'm certain someone in the community that reads japanese will have some sort of translations soon. But man, every screenshot of this game looks amazing! It get's me hyped!

Thanks, and even better! I sincerely doubt mages will get the short end of the stick in SoV.

I wouldn't assume that mages are screwed in SoV. Sure spells cost hp, but most units in Gaiden have large enough health pools to afford casting. Plus, many spells are simply better than any physical counterpart, apart from the legendary weapons. It's important to remember that in Gaiden, very few units have good res, so even the weak spells like fire hit hard. Thunder has 1-3 range, Excalibur has 100 base hit and 20% base crit, and Ragnarok, while rare and expensive, costing 24 hp(!) has 24 might and 100 base hit. Mages and the like where always valuable in Gaiden, and I imagine the same will occur here, regardless of health costs.

I was just thinking about this too! I imagine that IS will continue the trend in SoV. I really like the idea of a dlc campaign that explores the past, and fleshes out the world, rather than one that is about an alternate future or a what if scenario.

I agree with much of what you posted, many of these are my thoughts exactly! I think that while some maps are most definitely in need of some work, many of the maps are excellent. In fact, Gaiden does a great job of having memorable maps. The map in Ch 1 where there is a powerful enemy merc boss who starts far from his allies, but comes over the mountains and has a leather shield. The map while Valbar and Co. battle Daha, and Celica's forces arrive mid battle. The sea shire map with a single very powerful draco zombie. I don't think in general that Gaiden's map design is bad, rather I think it is the terrain design, if you will. Many maps have large open expanses with either too little or too much terrain, which can make the turn by turn travel a slog. I do, however, like how important terrain bonuses are in Gaiden's physical combat. I was thinking about this the other day. Ch 4's Fear Mountain was remade already for fates as a dlc map. I compared the two map's terrain, and while fates moves around and adds more tree terrain to improve the map, the core of the map remains the same. (Witches spawn from the mountain fort, while an army of physical units comes from the south.) If SoV keeps the core of the maps design intact, while modifying the terrain, it could have some truly amazing maps.

Hi! Just got done playing the chapter test. It was a fun, silly chapter! Here are some things I noticed: Cecil's res stat was broken, instead of 0, or any number for that matter, it was the N/A dashes. Didn't really affect the hack though, since no mages. The custom battle sprite pallets needed some work, mostly just polish. They could have easily been worse, and they were accurate to the original characters, as far as I could tell. The map design was passable, but pretty bland and uninspired. However, that is expected of a test, and the map functioned perfectly as far as gameplay is concerned. The writing was good! Nothing had me roaring with laughter, but there were plenty of chuckles. I especially liked the armory dialogue. All and all, not a bad first attempt at making a chapter! Hope and future efforts are successful!