I Have Very Mixed Feelings on SoV (no story spoilers)

[Captain Karnage]

so first off, I don't know any Japanes so I already have a language barrier affecting me, so I'm playing on casual mode to help alievate some mistakes

second, I'm currently on ch 4.

though I'm not  very good at articulating my thoughts into paragraphs I'll be making my thoughts into points.

and yes I know this is a remake of gaiden and I had some expectations as to what should have been tweaked

1. Terrain Bonouses - first off, the terrain bonouses given to a unit standing on a tile are way to much, if a unit is staying on one of these tiles, it's way too luck reliant trying to hit them, and you can't wse them to help avoid magic attacks.

2. Overworld ambushes, sure you get to when they spawn and where they're at but if one we're to move down and attack you, you as a player have no say in to where your starting positions are at, and because of this if you're playing on classic mode and your 1 healer gets killed well good fucking luck, hope you didn't overwrite that last save file. I wouldn't have minded this that much if I could have just chosen where my units will start the on the map.

3. These maps can get really tedious, especially the ones you have to walk over tile that hurts you each turn, and because of how few healers you get it just becomes impossible, especially if there is a summoner on the map who keeps spawning gargoyles.

4. hit rates are just garbage, I mean this, my guys are missing just way just to many 95% and the enemeis seem to hit at 20% far to often.

5 witches, fighting these units just suck, since they can warp anywhere on the map, and ther's no real way to tell who they're going to attack, as they don't always like to hit units with really bad RES, and they seem to have a thing when it comes to attacking archers, the only units who can retaliate with physicall attack.

6. summoners are annoying to fight, you'll know when you get there

 

1. fatigue isn't as bad as you think, I really mean that, the penalty isn't all that bad, it only becomes a problem when you fight summoners.

2. it's got good musc

3. it move much much much faster than gaiden

I'm at least having fun with it, it's just some of the BS that the game throws at you makes me not want to play on classic, and with what I've seen , I feel that this game might have been just too frustrating to play through without Mila's turnwheel.

[Captain Karnage]

 

no intentionall double post, I think SF is glitching

Edited April 30, 2017 by Captain Karnage

[Armagon]

So, as someone who has played Gaiden (at least halfway through), i wanna respond to some of this (yes i haven't played Echoes but Gaiden counts)

6 minutes ago, Captain Karnage said:

1. Terrain Bonouses - first off, the terrain bonouses given to a unit standing on a tile are way to much, if a unit is staying on one of these tiles, it's way too luck reliant trying to hit them, and you can't wse them to help avoid magic attacks.

Yeah, that's why positioning and terrain is so important. This is why the Weapon Triangle isn't in the game.

 

11 minutes ago, Captain Karnage said:

2. Overworld ambushes, sure you get to when they spawn and where they're at but if one we're to move down and attack you, you as a player have no say in to where your starting positions are at,

Huh? I've seen the "arrange units" option in SoV footage before. But even if you can't re-arrange positions, the enemy still takes a turn to get to you. Are you just rushing in?

13 minutes ago, Captain Karnage said:

4. hit rates are just garbage, I mean this, my guys are missing just way just to many 95% and the enemeis seem to hit at 20% far to often.

So it's like in Fatesland and Binding Blade then.

15 minutes ago, Captain Karnage said:

5 witches, fighting these units just suck, since they can warp anywhere on the map, and ther's no real way to tell who they're going to attack, as they don't always like to hit units with really bad RES, and they seem to have a thing when it comes to attacking archers, the only units who can retaliate with physicall attack.

Just use Invoke, literally everything goes for your summoned units. The AI is dumb like that.

[Lanko]

Geez, they kept Fates RNG? 

[Captain Karnage]

35 minutes ago, Armagon said:

So, as someone who has played Gaiden (at least halfway through), i wanna respond to some of this (yes i haven't played Echoes but Gaiden counts)

Yeah, that's why positioning and terrain is so important. This is why the Weapon Triangle isn't in the game.

 

Huh? I've seen the "arrange units" option in SoV footage before. But even if you can't re-arrange positions, the enemy still takes a turn to get to you. Are you just rushing in?

 

Just use Invoke, literally everything goes for your summoned units. The AI is dumb like that.

but when an enemy unit get's stuck on one it just gets way to hard to hit them

nope, they get the first turn advantage, if you get ambushed you have no say where your units start on the map

not always, not always

[Wayward Alchemist]

20 minutes ago, Lanko said:

Geez, they kept Fates RNG? 

Pretty sure it's one RN, not Fates's pseudo-single RN. So like a 50% hit rate is actually a 50% hit rate. That's why there are more low-percent hits, high-percent misses, and 1-10% Crits for days, just like old Gaiden.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

3 hours ago, Armagon said:

Yeah, that's why positioning and terrain is so important. This is why the Weapon Triangle isn't in the game.

 

Huh? I've seen the "arrange units" option in SoV footage before. But even if you can't re-arrange positions, the enemy still takes a turn to get to you. Are you just rushing in?

 

Just use Invoke, literally everything goes for your summoned units. The AI is dumb like that.

I can't really defend terrain bonuses as "positioning" when for some inane reason the entirety of a castle has 20 Avoid, when it's just regular floor, and just makes it really hard to advance. When you do make it into the castle, everything becomes a slog because neither you nor the enemy can hit anything.

On some maps, the enemies can reach you on Turn 1, so if a healer happens to be in that one spot it's lol.

I abuse Invoke a lot too, but iirc the AI ignores the illusions if they can ORKO an actual unit. I haven't actually tested it though, just from personal experience.

Edited May 1, 2017 by SatsumaFSoysoy

[Armagon]

26 minutes ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

I can't really defend terrain bonuses as "positioning" when for some inane reason the entirety of a castle has 20 Avoid, when it's just regular floor, and just makes it really hard to advance. When you do make it into the castle, everything becomes a slog because neither you nor the enemy can hit anything.

On some maps, the enemies can reach you on Turn 1, so if a healer happens to be in that one spot it's lol.

I abuse Invoke a lot too, but iirc the AI ignores the illusions if they can ORKO an actual unit. I haven't actually tested it though, just from personal experience.

I mainly brought up terrain because whenever someone asks "why isn't the Weapon Triangle here" people are always like "because there's a bigger emphasis on terrain and the Weapon Triangle would unbalance that".

I got nothing.

Huh, interesting. What difficulty were you playing on? Thane always mentioned how the AI would always go for the illusions, even if a real unit could be ORKO'd. But i think he was also playing on Normal.

[SatsumaFSoysoy]

Just now, Armagon said:

I mainly brought up terrain because whenever someone asks "why isn't the Weapon Triangle here" people are always like "because there's a bigger emphasis on terrain and the Weapon Triangle would unbalance that".

I got nothing.

Huh, interesting. What difficulty were you playing on? Thane always mentioned how the AI would always go for the illusions, even if a real unit could be ORKO'd. But i think he was also playing on Normal.

I was playing on Hard. Could be related? I've definitely had enemies ignore my illusions once or twice.

[Armagon]

9 minutes ago, SatsumaFSoysoy said:

I was playing on Hard. Could be related? I've definitely had enemies ignore my illusions once or twice.

Yeah, that's probably it then. Thane said that the AI would always go for the illusions every time, except in Ch.6 where the final boss ignored the illusions literally once and killed Sonia. That was on Normal too, i think. I need confirmation though. @Thane can you confirm?

[Ertrick36]

I mean, most of this sounds like problems from the original Gaiden.  Does that excuse those faults?  Eh, not really.  A lot of the mechanics of Gaiden were really experimental.  It was back when FE was still forming into its own.  I think there are a lot of things they could've done to make Echoes a better game while still staying true to the original game.  Keeping the very basic RNG and the hilariously bland map designs aren't necessarily among those.

I do agree with the music part, though.  I always loved Gaiden's music, ever since I first heard the encounter theme and then reintroduced myself to Celica's battle map music.

4 hours ago, Armagon said:

Huh? I've seen the "arrange units" option in SoV footage before. But even if you can't re-arrange positions, the enemy still takes a turn to get to you. Are you just rushing in?

I actually do remember in the footage posted by NintenDann, there was a preparation screen at the start of one or more of the maps, and they had "select units" and "view map" as a couple of options there.  I assume it's taken away when an enemy comes to a space occupied by one of your armies in the overworld map.  I think as far as the one-turn ambush maps, if you're able to position your units before battle, you might at least be able to move weak units out of the way.  Alternatively, there are always summons which you'll very likely have before enemies can even move in the overworld, and they seem to usually attack those before anything else.

[NaokiP]

Witches will always target the extremes of your formation, so either whoever is at the very front or at the very back. You can use this and have high res units take those positions.

[Tsak]

Apparently if you are displeased with a witches course of attack you can mila turnwheel their turn back. Apparently their AI is so random it changes almost everytime you use the turnwheel. Sometimes this makes it so they don't even warp at all. This helps alleviate some of those crazy situations i'd imagine

[Baldrick]

Re: ambushing, the original had a Wait option so you could always choose to engage enemy groups on your terms. There's one specific exception (no spoilers), iirc you could reset and swap party members around to get a more favourable deployment.

[Thane]

6 hours ago, Armagon said:

Yeah, that's probably it then. Thane said that the AI would always go for the illusions every time, except in Ch.6 where the final boss ignored the illusions literally once and killed Sonia. That was on Normal too, i think. I need confirmation though. @Thane can you confirm?

I only ever talked about Genny's Soldiers and later on in the game. I would say the AI prioritizes enemies that can't retaliate, but seeing as the AI always ignored my units even if they couldn't hit back, there must be something with HP and Defense differences, or their ability to double or something. I'm unsure about the latter, as many units in chapter 6 doubled mine but still went for the Illusions.

When I played through the game, I could literally place Genny right next to four units, summon Illusions, and they would never attack her. I must've done this literally over 100 times, and the only exception was the one you mentioned - I wouldn't have been so surprised if they AI didn't deviate that one single time, since it followed the pattern both before and after that.

[Miatt]

21 hours ago, Armagon said:

Yeah, that's probably it then. Thane said that the AI would always go for the illusions every time, except in Ch.6 where the final boss ignored the illusions literally once and killed Sonia. That was on Normal too, i think. I need confirmation though. @Thane can you confirm?

Not only the boss. Personally I have experienced it several times. The ennemi chose to kill my healer or a weak unit instead. This is rare but when they do this, this is to kill your unit. And it's really frustrating because you're invoking phantoms in purpose, and that's all for nothing.

And I Play in normal. But maybe my team is too weak.

[Tsak]

36 minutes ago, Miatt said:

Not only the boss. Personally I have experienced it several times. The ennemi chose to kill my healer or a weak unit instead. This is rare but when they do this, this is to kill your unit. And it's really frustrating because you're invoking phantoms in purpose, and that's all for nothing.

And I Play in normal. But maybe my team is too weak.

Well in that case the AI seems slightly unpredictable. Which is good in a sense but also frustrating because it feels cheap. 

[Armagon]

43 minutes ago, Miatt said:

Not only the boss. Personally I have experienced it several times. The ennemi chose to kill my healer or a weak unit instead. This is rare but when they do this, this is to kill your unit. And it's really frustrating because you're invoking phantoms in purpose, and that's all for nothing.

And I Play in normal. But maybe my team is too weak.

No Turnwheel? Cuz this seems like the best times to use it.

8 minutes ago, Tsak said:

Well in that case the AI seems slightly unpredictable. Which is good in a sense but also frustrating because it feels cheap. 

I don't really mind. The AI sometimes does unpredictable things in every FE really. 

 

[Miatt]

Just now, Armagon said:

No Turnwheel? Cuz this seems like the best times to use it.

 

Yup, but for the last dungeon your turnwheel is precious.

[Tsak]

Yeah in every fire emblem I've seen some hilarious play calls. Some that went in the enemies favor other that looked really suspect. Comes with the territory

[Lyon's Dirge]

On 4/30/2017 at 4:39 PM, Lanko said:

Geez, they kept Fates RNG? 

Fates RNG is fine. 

 

[Armagon]

43 minutes ago, Lyon's Dirge said:

Fates RNG is fine. 

 

Not when Takumi missed with a 95% hit-rate twice. Yes, that's a true story.

[s07195]

I've played the game since JP release and I might be getting burned out but lately all the BS in this game is starting to stand out.

[Lyon's Dirge]

10 hours ago, Armagon said:

Not when Takumi missed with a 95% hit-rate twice. Yes, that's a true story.

Do you not know what probability is? A 95% hit-rate is not guaranteed.

[John_of_Valentia]

10 hours ago, Armagon said:

Not when Takumi missed with a 95% hit-rate twice. Yes, that's a true story.

Hard luck. I think the worst I had was Xander missing with two 88%.