Awakening was my first FE. I Just opened up Fates special edition and....

[DarkWind]

I'm really struggling to like it as much as I did with Awakening. I'm nearing chapter 6 but I'm having a hard time being drawn into my character/me and what's going on with this new fire emblem. 

And really doesn't help that the character creation in Fates... Well.... Sucks! It was great in Awakening when I could make and avatar that looked older and sounded older like I am in my mid 30s, I could identify my character more and see myself easier. I usually make characters in my RPGs based on me vs a fake one. 

So it's really not helping me that I look like a Japanese fairy tale male teenager no matter what I did.  

And why the hell am I stuck with red eyes only and have elf ears? Cmon! 

Edited March 24, 2017 by DarkWind

[Punished Dayni]

Hello again Mr. Enthusiastic.

Well, Corrin is certainly not liked as much. However, the degree of customisation in Awakening was arguably less so except for the fact that older faces were an option in Awakening, which is a shame here. Elf boy Corrin really is harder to feel a connection to, at least from my experience. 

As for the eyes and ears.... What chapter are you actually on?

[Thunderstar]

Don't worry about some of the characters. Some will get more interesting after chapter 6 and there would be supports to make some of them more interesting but yeah I also think that before the split, it's quite hard to be interested in the royals since we don't really see how Corrin/the avatar's life was with them.

I also wished Corrin especially the male one had better customization options.

1 hour ago, DarkWind said:

And why the hell am I stuck with red eyes only and have elf ears? Cmon! 

Spoilers for chapter 4 and 5 :

Spoiler

For the elf ears, it's because the avatar is a dragon and most of them in this series with a few exceptions have elf ears.

For the red eyes, it's probably because of Mikoto's eyes being red/brown

 

Edited March 24, 2017 by Thunderstar

[Harvey]

Yeah I agree. Besides a few exceptions like those great designs from Conquest characters, Awakenings characters are better designed.

I have a hard time remembering the fates characters..atleast in Birthright.

As for difficulty, if you ask me, Awakening is better balanced compared to Birthright interms of difficulty alone.

 

[DarkWind]

59 minutes ago, Thunderstar said:

Don't worry about some of the characters. Some will get more interesting after chapter 6 and there would be supports to make some of them more interesting but yeah I also think that before the split, it's quite hard to be interested in the royals since we don't really see how Corrin/the avatar's life was with them.

I also wished Corrin especially the male one had better customization options.

Spoilers for chapter 4 and 5 :

  Hide contents

For the elf ears, it's because the avatar is a dragon and most of them in this series with a few exceptions have elf ears.

For the red eyes, it's probably because of Mikoto's eyes being red/brown

 

 

I just made connection about the ears after chapter 6, I remember Taki and Nani now, makes sense. 

[Augestein]

2 hours ago, Harvey said:

Yeah I agree. Besides a few exceptions like those great designs from Conquest characters, Awakenings characters are better designed.

I have a hard time remembering the fates characters..atleast in Birthright.

As for difficulty, if you ask me, Awakening is better balanced compared to Birthright interms of difficulty alone.

 

I found the character designs to be superior in Fates tbh. In Awakening, there's some very distracting and stupid looking armor in the game. I do like the coloration though. 

In terms of balance, I honestly can't say Awakening is more balanced. Awakening because super stat war like from the start. Even birthright doesn't start out that bad. It gets Awakening like later, but at least it had it's fun portion. 

[Tolvir]

Avatar wise, I definitely agree. I had a hard time making Corrin, especially since there is only one hairstyle I actually like. In the end though you get used to it. Just give it some time.

 

Gameplay wise Fates is a ton of fun, so I would not let Corrin bother you too much. Fates has a lot of fun maps and classes to use.

[Slumber]

Corrin sucks, and the main plot of Birthright and Revelations are pretty bad(Plus, the rush to make you like Hoshido ruins all 3 paths to some degree), but Conquest is better than Awakening in just about every possible way, IMO. 

I can see why some might not like Fates as much, though. Especially at the start. YOU'RE supposed to be the Avatar, and Awakening does a better job at tossing YOU into a new world. Corrin really should have just been a static character, since compared to Robin, he/she has a much more established backstory and role in the world from the get-go. 

Stick with it, though. The Fates is a much better strategy game than Awakening, so if that's your thing, you might find out you really like Fates. And if you don't know if it's your thing, maybe you'll find out you like it, and it'll lead you to playing the pre-Awakening games, since Fates(Conquest in particular) takes a lot from them in terms of game design. 

Edited March 24, 2017 by Slumber

[Vaximillian]

46 minutes ago, Slumber said:

YOU'RE supposed to be the Avatar, and Awakening does a better job at tossing YOU into a new world. Corrin really should have just been a static character, since compared to Robin, he/she has a much more established backstory and role in the world from the get-go. 

I just treat the avatars as static characters and am fine with it. They are static for all intents and purposes.
The only not static thing in them is their name and appearance. Everything else is fixed.

[NekoKnight]

I think you're looking at the game the wrong way if you object to not having a perfect representation of you. Yes, Corrin is an avatar character but they're even more defined than Robin was in terms of who they are in the world. 8 siblings where you are roughly supposed to fall in the middle of, age-wise. The eyes and ears are also part of a preestablished character.

Edited March 24, 2017 by NekoKnight

[Slumber]

Just now, Vaximillian said:

I just treat the avatars as static characters and am fine with it. They are static for all intents and purposes.
The only not static thing in them is their name and appearance. Everything else is fixed.

This is true, but Awakening starts you as an amnesiac who knows very little about the world with 0 connections to any characters. It isn't until about halfway until the game that Robin becomes a character with a defined place in the world.

Fates starts you off as somebody who sort of knows about the world(Albeit due to being restrained to a castle, is very sheltered and naive), with parent figures, siblings, and even a best friend.

[DarkWind]

Hmm ok, i'll keep playing and try not to constantly compare it to Awakening which is proving really really hard.  I'm also struggling to enjoy the basic "Japan" clone that Hoshido is vs the Nohr which I don't like because of that king and I know conquest is much harder which will just frustrate and anger me because I am new to Fire Emblem and I don't like games that are hard and make me upset or I just quit playing, so I chose Birthright 

[Harvey]

20 hours ago, Augestein said:

In terms of balance, I honestly can't say Awakening is more balanced. Awakening because super stat war like from the start. Even birthright doesn't start out that bad. It gets Awakening like later, but at least it had it's fun portion. 

 

My biggest problem with Birthright is how bland the map design and how all of what the game offers means nothing when in the end, you get Ryoma who thanks to his Rajito can pretty much solo the rest of the game.

Awakening you can't do that kind of thing unless you do some grinding since there's weapon limit and that there's also the other problem that the game doesn't have single units that can solo the rest of the game atleast to my knowledge.

 

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Quote

As for difficulty, if you ask me, Awakening is better balanced compared to Birthright interms of difficulty alone.

Awakening is like the least balanced FE game interms of difficulty simply because the existence of lunatic (+).
Giving the enemies skills you can't even learn just to make this game artificially harder is the exact opposite of good balance.

As for the lowest difficulties I can't see how the one game is more balanced than the other.
Birthright seemed to be balanced as far as my memories can go back.

Edited March 25, 2017 by Magillanica Lou Mayvin

[shadowofchaos]

50 minutes ago, Magillanica Lou Mayvin said:

Awakening is like the least balanced FE game interms of difficulty simply because the existence of lunatic (+).
Giving the enemies skills you can't even learn just to make this game artificially harder is the exact opposite of good balance.

As for the lowest difficulties I can't see how the one game is more balanced than the other.
Birthright seemed to be balanced as far as my memories can go back.

The thing is. It's AI. If humans had access to the same skills, it's no contest.

For argument's sake, Conquest's design has weapons, items, and skill access the player doesn't have.

I mean I don't disagree with your opinion. But that statement isn't a fair route to the conclusion.

Lunatic+ is grossly unfair. However, there is a logic behind the randomized skills. Each skill is a literal counter to each strategy that breaks Vanilla lunatic.

Edited March 25, 2017 by shadowofchaos

[Magical Glace]

My main issue with FE13 and difficulty is more how wonky the jumps are.  The jump from Normal to Hard barely even exists, and the jump from Hard to Lunatic is gigantic in comparison.  They needed some middle ground difficulties between Hard and Lunatic, or at least making Hard harder compared to Normal.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Quote

For argument's sake, Conquest's design has weapons, items, and skill access the player doesn't have.

Ok, I didn't remember that.



Just to clarify: My definition of a balanced difficulty is that your team and the opponent have the exact same access and make use of the given ressources.
Class skills and forged weapons are absolutely fine if you have them too. That means enemies only may have forged weapon when you have access to a blacksmith.
Sure lunatic requires strategical thought but it's not what I would call a balanced difficulty because the game is made "pro enemy" by giving them access to sth. you don't have.
Lunatic + is just gambling. It manly ends that you restart the chapter all over again till none of the enemies has luna +.

The exact opposite example to FE13's lunatic (+) is FE10 where you have third tier allies with OP class skills fighting against "pseudo" third tier enemies, units who are still in tier two but have the stats, caps and crit skill of third tiers. Also totally unbalanced from the positive view of the player however.

[Augestein]

4 hours ago, Harvey said:

 

My biggest problem with Birthright is how bland the map design and how all of what the game offers means nothing when in the end, you get Ryoma who thanks to his Rajito can pretty much solo the rest of the game.

Awakening you can't do that kind of thing unless you do some grinding since there's weapon limit and that there's also the other problem that the game doesn't have single units that can solo the rest of the game atleast to my knowledge.

 

Awakening suffers from bland maps more than Birthright does. After the first 6 chapters, most of them are just wide open fields or straight path corridors that you can run down with no reason to split up, no mini-objectives or any incentives to use multiple characters outside of Robin with Chrom inside of him. Ryoma's Rajinto can definitely help you to win in Birthright, but even he still has tangible hit rates on him enough and he still gets 3HKOed or less in Lunatic. Robin on the other hand, doesn't even need to really "grind" just have most of the EXP funneled into him. You can easily have Chrom be Robin's pair up partner and survive all of the game this way. 

Robin can easily do this. Place Chrom inside of Robin, and Robin has access to the convoy at all moments. Robin I'd argue can solo the game even easier than Ryoma because Robin has access to every skill in the game that isn't gender locked or an exclusive class skill like Shadowtouch. Plus, it had uninhibited Nosferatu, which is just gross. 

28 minutes ago, shadowofchaos said:

The thing is. It's AI. If humans had access to the same skills, it's no contest.

For argument's sake, Conquest's design has weapons, items, and skill access the player doesn't have.

I mean I don't disagree with your opinion. But that statement isn't a fair route to the conclusion.

Lunatic+ is grossly unfair. However, there is a logic behind the randomized skills. Each skill is a literal counter to each strategy that breaks Va

For me personally, it's not even the fact that enemies have enemy only skills that get me. It's the fact that you practically need a guide to deal with a good deal of them, because of ambush spawns + some skill that there's no way you could have even known existed screwing you over--AKA Hawkeye and Counter the first time you see that they can possibly exist on a spectrum of moves available. Sure, once you know it exist you can plan for it in future runthrough but that's quite the problem considering that if ambush spawns couldn't happen, this would have made the enemy only skills far less frustrating. 

Lunatic+ I'd argue is grossly unfair because regular Lunatic was already insanely unfair to begin with. Lunatic+ could have been really fun for a lot of people if they had literally just kept randomized skills in, but the ambush spawns make it a trial of memorization of spawns or a LTC playthrough to keep your sanity intact. When I beat it, I think most of my maps were beaten in like... 4 turns. Which is impressive that a game can jam you in such a bad position that you DO play really well, but I think it's for the wrong reasons. 

9 minutes ago, Glaceon Mage said:

My main issue with FE13 and difficulty is more how wonky the jumps are.  The jump from Normal to Hard barely even exists, and the jump from Hard to Lunatic is gigantic in comparison.  They needed some middle ground difficulties between Hard and Lunatic, or at least making Hard harder compared to Normal.

The jump from normal to hard is pretty noticeable once you get to promoted enemies if you're trying to use everyone. I'd honestly say that there should have been 5 difficulties, but it seems that "Casual" was used as a difficult modifier as well. Normal Casual, Normal Classic, Hard Casual, Hard Classic... I especially say this, because beating Lunatic in Casual doesn't actually unlock Lunatic+ Classic. Very suspicious indeed...

 

@Magillanica Lou Mayvin: Lunatic+'s enemy only skills aren't even that bad honestly in the sense that they are 100% activation. In this regard this makes it better because it removes all of the RNG from what they do. The issue is that the enemies' stats are so stupidly high and they all zerg rush the player combined with ambush spawns makes for a nightmare. Counter is by far the worst skill enemies can have on Lunatic+ and it's not even enemy only. Because in Awakening, it doesn't just activate on Player Phase. It activated on both... Which is a pile of garbage.

[Anacybele]

I only played through Birthright all the way (though I failed to beat the Endgame after some bad luck led Corrin to miss a most important hit and still haven't tried again...), but I prefer it over Awakening by miles. The story wasn't anything too special to me, but it was better, and I liked the gameplay more too. Pair-up wasn't completely broken, it was nicer, the character designs are better overall (aside from a few stupid ones like Camilla, dark mages, and Charlotte, imo). Seeing Japanese-themed classes felt kinda fresh too!

Choose your path wisely though. Conquest is supposed to be quite hard while Birthright is easier, but with less complex gameplay and less varied chapter objectives. Revelations seems to be in between the two, but it's always recommended to play that one after you've played one or both of the other two.

[Harvey]

3 hours ago, Augestein said:

Awakening suffers from bland maps more than Birthright does. After the first 6 chapters, most of them are just wide open fields or straight path corridors that you can run down with no reason to split up, no mini-objectives or any incentives to use multiple characters outside of Robin with Chrom inside of him. Ryoma's Rajinto can definitely help you to win in Birthright, but even he still has tangible hit rates on him enough and he still gets 3HKOed or less in Lunatic. Robin on the other hand, doesn't even need to really "grind" just have most of the EXP funneled into him. You can easily have Chrom be Robin's pair up partner and survive all of the game this way. 

Robin can easily do this. Place Chrom inside of Robin, and Robin has access to the convoy at all moments. Robin I'd argue can solo the game even easier than Ryoma because Robin has access to every skill in the game that isn't gender locked or an exclusive class skill like Shadowtouch. Plus, it had uninhibited Nosferatu, which is just gross.

 

Yeah like I said, I'm not aware much about Awakening because I only played it twice and that's just casually.

But comparing the game to birthright, to me, I prefer the maps in Awakening. For starters, Birthright is plain easy once you get Ryoma who joins after 13 chapters. Before him, there are units that are damn good enough to make them pathetic by the time Ryoma shows up.

Yeah, I'm fully aware that FE tends to have overpowered/broken units...but Ryoma is so broken that he makes other broken units decent. For Percival to be broken, he needs to be in Hard mode. Sigurd's brokeness is simply because of how the the game's first generation is meant to be easy going. Ryoma is simply broken at the start of the game itself. Sure, he's fragile but that fragility means nothing if his avoid is already that high enough to begin with.

Chrom, Robin are decent broken units simply because they can't solo the first chapters and it takes some time and dedication for that to eventually happen assuming all requirements are met.

Ryoma doesn't need any of this when his sword is 1-2 range, has duelest blow and Vantage skils at the very start and his sword giving him good strength whether he uses it or not and with his personal skill Bushido in mind, he hardly needs ANY grinding to start being a real threat.

As for maps....I guess its subjective. Comparing Birthright's maps to Conquest, the latter is better designed and more entertaining so with that in mind, I'd prefer Awakening's maps over Birthright. If only because I like the map environments in AW better than BR.

 

[Nobody]

9 hours ago, Harvey said:

Awakening you can't do that kind of thing unless you do some grinding since there's weapon limit and that there's also the other problem that the game doesn't have single units that can solo the rest of the game atleast to my knowledge.

You can definitely do that in awakening without any sort of grinding, just by giving enough kills to robin. Robin breaks awakening, even on Lunatic, way harder than Ryoma could ever dream of breaking Birthright.

Just stack robin's invetory with tomes or ranged weapons and he'll work as well as Rajinto Ryoma, except, depending on your asset and flaw, it will be easier for him to either avoid stuff (due to awakening's rng), or tank, since ryoma is way less bulky than Robin.

I've beaten Awakening on Lunatic in under three hours just by letting Robin kill everything while paired up with Chrom, all the effort that it takes is using Frederick to feed him some kills in the prologue, and then Robin can deal with everything. Even if Ryoma broke Birthright as hard as Robin, he only joins at chapter 13. That's 12 chapters without him, while Awakening only has the prologue in which Robin doesn't dominate.

Edited March 25, 2017 by Nobody

[shadowofchaos]

9 hours ago, Harvey said:

Awakening you can't do that kind of thing unless you do some grinding since there's weapon limit and that there's also the other problem that the game doesn't have single units that can solo the rest of the game atleast to my knowledge.

Robin + Veteran + Class change to Merc + Class change to Dark Mage + Sell everything for Nosferatu + Solo with Chrom

Edited March 25, 2017 by shadowofchaos

[Dragrath]

What people are missing regarding Lunatic+ in awakening is that it isn't the enemy only skills that break the balance of the game but the randomness of enemy skills particularly near the beginning of the game. If the strategies to beat a mode include reset until a workable enemy skill set is found then that mode isn't balanced period. 

Fates fixed this by setting each enemies skills which by far is a step in the proper direction Even the enemy only skills are fine (The only exception I'd argue would be the loss of skills on captured units considering generics pretty much suck anyway it felt like an unnecessary F*** You to the player)

Enemies with set skill sets actually provides a tactical layer to the game that players can predict around(Random skills are a bit unfair due to being unpredictable semi random would be far more acceptable)

[Sias]

52 minutes ago, Dragrath said:

What people are missing regarding Lunatic+ in awakening is that it isn't the enemy only skills that break the balance of the game but the randomness of enemy skills particularly near the beginning of the game. If the strategies to beat a mode include reset until a workable enemy skill set is found then that mode isn't balanced period. 

Fates fixed this by setting each enemies skills which by far is a step in the proper direction Even the enemy only skills are fine (The only exception I'd argue would be the loss of skills on captured units considering generics pretty much suck anyway it felt like an unnecessary F*** You to the player)

Enemies with set skill sets actually provides a tactical layer to the game that players can predict around(Random skills are a bit unfair due to being unpredictable semi random would be far more acceptable)

I don't know for sure, but I always thought the semi-random distribution of extremely powerful skills was the whole point of Awakening's Lunatic+? Like, they wanted to create a difficulty mode that couldn't be solved by the standard "move character X to attack enemy Y on turn Z" - and they succeeded in doing that due to the randomness. It's probably to encourage the player to create new tactics and to adapt to each new scenario you might get.

And even then, aren't there nevertheless Lunatic+ guides floating around somewhere on the forums that still managed to do walkthroughs no matter the skill distribution? I'm pretty sure.

Regardless of what their original intention for Lunatic+ was, I agree that it's absolutely brutal sometimes and very restricting on your team composition, but I still wouldn't describe it as "unbalanced", just heavily weighed in the enemy's favor. Personally I do enjoy standard Lunatic far more though, mainly because it allows me to use whomever I want while still doing some really stupid stuff like soloing Gangrel with Maribelle.

 

[Dragrath]

26 minutes ago, Sias said:

I don't know for sure, but I always thought the semi-random distribution of extremely powerful skills was the whole point of Awakening's Lunatic+? Like, they wanted to create a difficulty mode that couldn't be solved by the standard "move character X to attack enemy Y on turn Z" - and they succeeded in doing that due to the randomness. It's probably to encourage the player to create new tactics and to adapt to each new scenario you might get.

And even then, aren't there nevertheless Lunatic+ guides floating around somewhere on the forums that still managed to do walkthroughs no matter the skill distribution? I'm pretty sure.

Regardless of what their original intention for Lunatic+ was, I agree that it's absolutely brutal sometimes and very restricting on your team composition, but I still wouldn't describe it as "unbalanced", just heavily weighed in the enemy's favor. Personally I do enjoy standard Lunatic far more though, mainly because it allows me to use whomever I want while still doing some really stupid stuff like soloing Gangrel with Maribelle.

 

No the problem is that certain enemy skill combinations were outright impossible to win against... you weren't just "adapting your strategy" you were "resetting until the game seems possible..." That is the standard that any Luna+ Guides will give due to the absolute brokenness in the early chapters in particular.

This is especially bad for the early maps in particular the one where if an enemy gets Luna+ they can proceed to kill any and all of your units irregardless of the players action.(because even Freddy can't take a hit or OHKO said enemy...)