Superbus

Shrinking the maps is an absolute. The maps are so large, and after taking some castles, it's so customary to see a first time player take a castle, and then find out "oops, here comes an entire army aaaaand Noish's dead". Some maps can be cut up into three or four stages with modern standards. They also need to consider streamlining supports. It's not just about making Seisen better, it's about making Seisen palatable to modern gamers.

Every unit in this game, assuming RNG friendliness, is usable. Even Anna can be used effectively. I do think Manuela has some usable niches - she's an outstanding trickster - but would she be as good with as much training as any other Assassin-trained character? I.E.: in any way, shape or form, is she as good in that role as Petra, Ignatz, or especially Felix? And even as a Trickster, is she better than Marianne?

I'll go one better: it's a *benefit*. All of the interface issues, once you get over them, are able to be adjusted to. Once you get used to it, the things like animations and the like don't really matter. And any interface issues this game has, it's still better than what the Famicom and earlier Super Famicom games had. At least these, we're working with full English; the older games, until recently, you had to fight through them either in Japanese or with a not-100% patch. Now consider that the game runs sharp. Click, bang, you have a move. More recent Fire Emblem games look great, but they tend to meander. You load this game up and you're killing bandits within a minute. And this game can run on just about anything, so even lower-end systems can play this at 100%. If you're old school or are familiar with Battle for Wesnoth, this is actually a nice change of pace.

A lot has changed since I was last a regular member of the Fire Emblem fandom. A LOT. In the time that's passed, I went from being simply "the old guy" to an actual old guy. As such, I'm now involved in a lot of charities in my hometown, where over a thousand people simultaneously went insane on November 5th and elected me as a legislator. Our usual charities are typical fare; breakfasts, 50/50, etc. I'd like to change that to bring in younger people and get some attention. But I'm not really updated on how the gaming community works now - I play games at home and that's about it - so my ideas need to be fleshed out. One major idea I had was a Smash tournament, because it's virtually ubiquitous, would bring in people from surrounding towns, and the Switch travels well. So that's why I come here for ideas: - What is understood to be a good Smash ruleset for low-level tournaments? - What would go into getting so many people together and playing simultaneously? - Would it be beneficial to have multiple brackets (I.E.: 1v1, free for all, etc.)? I know a lot about video games, but the last time I actually played in and won a tournament was a Madden tournament on my old ship in 2002; that's legitimately older than some of the members here. So I need some people to explain how today's tournaments work, and I thank you all in advance.

My first couple of times through, I did everything I could to recruit whoever I could. So the only character I missed in the first run (Crimson) was Lorenz, and who cares. I figured once I beat all the routes, I could go through and do a minimal recruit; only recruit people who asked. I can't do it. The characters are so entrenched into this game, that I can't see myself going through and taking out anyone I don't absolutely have to take out (I.E.: Hilda in CF, the leaders and their retainers, etc.). I'm too OCD to not recruit everyone, and too attached to murder them, so I resort instead to Youtube videos if I want to see how it goes down.

I'm going back through the Edelgard routes now, and... much to @Etrurian emperor's point above, it's almost like i'm playing a different game. The things I'm noticing pre-timeskip compared to my first playthrough are exceptional. I just have an alarm in my head going off saying "this chick is not playing around". My first playthrough (CF), I picked Edelgard because I couldn't see myself going for an increasingly unhinged Rhea. Second time through (SS), I couldn't see myself going with someone who was so obviously working with the enemy (though I'm interested to see how a playable Jeritza works into this).

That wasn't my understanding from my CF playthrough, which is also the only one that didn't give me the Paralogue with Ferdinand and Lysithea. It was my first playthrough so I could have made some mistakes, though. Basically, I thought that in CF (and only CF?), Hubert basically killed everyone. His father, Count Varley, Duke Aegir, etc.

I just wanted to say I think you are 100% spot on regarding most of this, particularly the Crimson Flower route. That was my first route, so on my first playthrough it was a strongly written one, but having seen the rest now, it just feels... kind of schizophrenic in hindsight. Then again, I think - and this is positive criticism, what they did with the story of this game was exceptional - everyone feels like their whole purpose in life is to bend to the whims of Byleth. Fire Emblem in the MU era has always been Mary Sue/Gary Stu-ish, and it isn't as bad in this game as it was in the abominably written Fates games, but watching the reactions of each character to their situation is kind of jarring, especially comparing Silver Snow to Crimson Flower. Particularly with the noble classes, because Ferdinand von Aegir~ openly serves the woman who like KILLED HIS DAMN FATHER. They kind of papered over a lot of the background stuff in Crimson Flower to point out that Edelgard really likes the professor. I get where they were going with it, I just don't think the results quite matched the ambitions. But that they came so close is to their credit. Excellent write-up.

I honestly think it's the best Musou crossover game ever. It's got the catharsis of killing a whole bunch of people, a sliding scale on difficulty in stages, a lot of things to do, a constant effort to keep improving, and it took in the personality of the characters very well as well (though I miss not having the Elibe characters). Tecmo Koei has shown - particularly with TH - that they are a very good development house so long as they have a strong hand on their shoulders. With their own properties - ROTK, Nobunaga, I'll even put Dead or Alive here - they've really faltered, and DW9 was atrocious. But the FE and Zelda Warriors games were good.

I've had a problem with the Fire Emblem games for almost 15 years: I am addicted to "metagaming", or as it's known now, "min-maxing". When the Game Boy games were still new, I would take the ROM versions, load Codebreaker codes onto them, and just see how people did when I leveled them up infinitely. What were their stats at 20, 20-20, and how long would it take to cap them out. I know there's maths for that, but I didn't bomb out of Nuke School in 2000 to be doing that kind of nonsense. I think my habit started with the Suikoden games. For those who don't know how Suikoden works, if you don't do certain things JUST right, you won't get all 108 characters, and if that happens, your favourite character fucking dies. Later favourite games of mine were not much better: Trails (Cold Steel/In The Sky), Persona, and Atelier were made for obsessive-compulsives who tolerate GameFAQs text files and the amateur comedians who write them. My min-max tendencies continued with Awakening and Fates - the latter an almost aggressively shitty set of games, nothing more than Mary Sue fanfiction with a pinch of horny - as I would pair up characters with different pairings* to see how the kids turned out, how certain combinations came out, etc. (* - Not always. IT WILL ALWAYS BE CHROM X SUMIA AND TAKUMI X OBORO, DAMNIT) Then came Three Heroes. Not only is there a certain way to adjust growths, but I'm guessing (no FUCKING SPOILERS, I'm still in June) a perfectly done way of who to talk to on X school day, who to give what gifts to, and a scientifically perfect way of ensuring that you get everyone on your team with S supports and perfectly calibrated stats and if my experiences back at FESS are indicative, they will tell you this at high volume with much caps-lock usage. When I got the game and learned what I was in for, I was intimidated. I am obsessive about good runs and leaving nothing left behind, if only because I'm damn near 40, with a wife and a home I own and like 42 different careers, and don't have time to go back and do it again, but right this time. It looked like I was dealing with a game that combined the worst OCD tendencies of Trails, Suikoden and Fire Emblem. That's when I realized... let it happen! I don't need FAQs, or Prima Guides (pour one out), or anything like that. So what if I don't get all the items, or if someone dies because I killed them? Let it happen! Let's take this as an indication of my skill, and see what actually *role playing* is good for! This is exceptionally good for this game, where half the game seems to be a personality test. I don't 'even remember what kind of flowers my wife likes, I'm not going to study a website to find out that Random Anime Trope 81 likes cats. I feel relieved. I feel free! I feel like dancing in a field of flowers barefoot while singing showtunes, until I realize that I'm not as agile as I was as a young man and things start to ache and I start sweating profusely and also my wife is telling me nonsense like "honey, you're outside of a Wendy's, please stop embarrassing me".

Any votes I don't use on Tate, I'm going to burn on Makalov. Some people just like to watch the world burn.

If I have to pick five... 5: Fire Emblem - Though it's still the most *important* to me, there are games I like better. 4: Suikoden - Only dropped down a spot or two because holy hell did IV and Tierkreis suck. 3: Zelda - I can't describe what it was like to play that game 30 years ago, before walkthroughs became ubiquitous. I don't know if it's different for little kids playing, oh, BotW. But this game was so far ahead of its time it wasn't funny, and the others expanded upon it perfectly. 2: NHL - Don't laugh. This game has been there for me every year since the early 90s. 1: Final Fantasy - Just so many hits, so many life-changing games. I beat VII again for the first time since it was new, and... yeah, it is still great. Apologies to the haters.

One of the things they could do is break up FE4's stages - which were very large, and often prone to issues where taking one castle too early leads to cheap deaths - into smaller chunks. You could get 25 stages out of that. That way, you can also use Thracia as a sequel of sorts. The issue then becomes the fact that you are fundamentally changing how the game works. They showed they were willing to do that for Monshou, but they kept it close to the vest for Echoes for the most part.

You know this isn't a competition, right?