What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?

[Florina's #1 Fan]

1 minute ago, I'm a Spheal said:

I've started playing Genealogy of the Holy War a bit, the size of the maps doesn't bother me in slightest, I have some admiration for it (granted I'm on Chapter 1 still, but it's long). 

I think the reason Genealogy is more tolerable is because we have emulators that let us constantly save. Genealogy's massive maps meant, for those who didn't have the luxury of an emulator, if you messed up and a unit died, you;d have to do everything again. Which, to me, sounds like horrible torture that no one should have to endure.

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 minute ago, Florina's #1 Fan said:

I think the reason Genealogy is more tolerable is because we have emulators that let us constantly save. Genealogy's massive maps meant, for those who didn't have the luxury of an emulator, if you messed up and a unit died, you;d have to do everything again. Which, to me, sounds like horrible torture that no one should have to endure.

Odd, I thought there was a built in autosave feature or something?

[Florina's #1 Fan]

Just now, Interdimensional Observer said:

Odd, I thought there was a built in autosave feature or something?

Actually, I am wrong. Battle Saves are in Genealogy, I just never noticed. Then I actually agree with @I'm a Spheal, I see no issues with gigantic maps.

[Armagon]

15 minutes ago, I'm a Spheal said:

I've started playing Genealogy of the Holy War a bit, the size of the maps doesn't bother me in slightest, I have some admiration for it (granted I'm on Chapter 1 still, but it's long). 

Ch.1 is actually pretty tolerable, and i say this as someone who hates Genealogy with a passion. Ch.2 is when the maps start to get bad because it introduces mandatory backtracking, something that you'll be seeing in a couple of maps later on.

Ch.7 is probably the worst designed map in the series. Desert maps are terrible. Ch.7 is a huge desert map. Now granted, the entire map isn't desert, but about half of it is, which is still pretty huge.

Spoiler

This is what Ch.7 looks like. The entire north and western portion is just desert.

7 minutes ago, Florina's #1 Fan said:

I see no issues with gigantic maps.

My issue with them is just how long it takes to get somewhere. Also how it massively unbalances the game by making infantry units almost useless, since mounted units will always get to the battle first. Also the backtracking in later chapters. I'm sorry but FE4 has the worst map design in the entire series. At least Gaiden/SoV maps can be finished quickly.

Edited September 23, 2017 by Armagon

[Slumber]

10 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Ch.1 is actually pretty tolerable, and i say this as someone who hates Genealogy with a passion. Ch.2 is when the maps start to get bad because it introduces mandatory backtracking, something that you'll be seeing in a couple of maps later on.

Ch.7 is probably the worst designed map in the series. Desert maps are terrible. Ch.7 is a huge desert map. Now granted, the entire map isn't desert, but about half of it is, which is still pretty huge.

  Hide contents

This is what Ch.7 looks like. The entire north and western portion is just desert.

My issue with them is just how long it takes to get somewhere. Also how it massively unbalances the game by making infantry units almost useless, since mounted units will always get to the battle first. Also the backtracking in later chapters. I'm sorry but FE4 has the worst map design in the entire series. At least Gaiden/SoV maps can be finished quickly.

There he is! Only about 1/3 of Chapter 7's map is desert, and you only have to deal with Yied Castle there. The desert portion of chapter 7 is no more arduous than any other desert map in the franchise. The bad part is having to trudge a unit to Yied and back(If you want to keep using them), but it's really not that ridiculous.

The other brown parts of the map are either road, which you actually get a movement BONUS on, or sand tiles, which actually don't hinder your movement at all.

Edited September 23, 2017 by Slumber

[Armagon]

6 minutes ago, Slumber said:

The bad part is having to trudge a unit to Yied and back(If you want to keep using them), but it's really not that ridiculous.

iirc, there were some Fenrir-casting in that desert, and Fenrir has a range of 3-10 in FE4. So ending just one unit might not be the best idea. And then there's the backtracking from Yied to the main route. The map gets a bit better once your past Yied but that's not saying much.

 

[Slumber]

8 minutes ago, Armagon said:

iirc, there were some Fenrir-casting in that desert, and Fenrir has a range of 3-10 in FE4. So ending just one unit might not be the best idea. And then there's the backtracking from Yied to the main route. The map gets a bit better once your past Yied but that's not saying much.

 

You don't have to backtrack from Yied if you don't really want to, and Shannan can pretty much take Yied castle all by himself with Balmung. Yes, the Fenrirs look threatening, but Patty can easily make it out of Yied, and is expected to do so, since she starts right next to Shannan just a few turns away from the castle. It's ultimately not a very tricky situation to deal with.

The whole Yied segment of the chapter is arguably the easiest and quickest part of the chapter, since the resistance leading up to it is sparse, and if you just take the route directly east of the starting castle, you only have to deal with maybe 6 or 7 tiles of desert. Or, if you just go along the road, there's a segment where you can reach Yied with NO desert tiles in the way.

Edited September 23, 2017 by Slumber

[Koumal8]

1 hour ago, Slumber said:

You don't have to backtrack from Yied if you don't really want to, and Shannan can pretty much take Yied castle all by himself with Balmung. Yes, the Fenrirs look threatening, but Patty can easily make it out of Yied, and is expected to do so, since she starts right next to Shannan just a few turns away from the castle. It's ultimately not a very tricky situation to deal with.

The whole Yied segment of the chapter is arguably the easiest and quickest part of the chapter, since the resistance leading up to it is sparse, and if you just take the route directly east of the starting castle, you only have to deal with maybe 6 or 7 tiles of desert. Or, if you just go along the road, there's a segment where you can reach Yied with NO desert tiles in the way.

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

iirc, there were some Fenrir-casting in that desert, and Fenrir has a range of 3-10 in FE4. So ending just one unit might not be the best idea. And then there's the backtracking from Yied to the main route. The map gets a bit better once your past Yied but that's not saying much.

Wait, maybe playing Reverse Recruitment is distorting what I remember of vanilla FE4 but... isn't Seliph the only unit you need to cross the desert with (+Shannan and Patty, of course)? Shannan can solo the Yied castle area by himself (he has what? 50 base avoid?), Patty needs to get out of the desert to get to the action, Seliph needs to cross the desert to seize Yied and then he needs to cross it again together with Shannan to go south to Ishore's castle. It's definitely annoying, but none of the other units need to cross it, they're much better off sticking to the road path that goes south-west. Seliph though does need to backtrack from Yied (it's not technically backtracking since a new path south opens, but it's still through the desert).

Edited September 23, 2017 by Koumal8

[Etrurian emperor]

Allowing Patty to inherit the return ring is a pretty handy way to get her out of Yied and allow Shanan to take the entire castle by himself without her getting in the way. 

[Harvey]

If we're talking about save states, I think Thracia kinda encourages you to do such a thing.

I just beated chapter 17a in less than 10 turns I think and managed to get two warp staves for the price of one...oh and I got a rescue staff as well.

[Slumber]

6 hours ago, Koumal8 said:

Wait, maybe playing Reverse Recruitment is distorting what I remember of vanilla FE4 but... isn't Seliph the only unit you need to cross the desert with (+Shannan and Patty, of course)? Shannan can solo the Yied castle area by himself (he has what? 50 base avoid?), Patty needs to get out of the desert to get to the action, Seliph needs to cross the desert to seize Yied and then he needs to cross it again together with Shannan to go south to Ishore's castle. It's definitely annoying, but none of the other units need to cross it, they're much better off sticking to the road path that goes south-west. Seliph though does need to backtrack from Yied (it's not technically backtracking since a new path south opens, but it's still through the desert).

Yes, Seliph is the only one who needs to "backtrack". 

[Florina's #1 Fan]

10 hours ago, Armagon said:

My issue with them is just how long it takes to get somewhere. Also how it massively unbalances the game by making infantry units almost useless, since mounted units will always get to the battle first. Also the backtracking in later chapters. I'm sorry but FE4 has the worst map design in the entire series. At least Gaiden/SoV maps can be finished quickly.

Yeah, I understand that. If there is a remake of Genealogy, or another game that uses large maps, this is what I would do to fix the issues:

1. Less cavaliers in general: If there are less horseback units, you can't abuse their movement and your group can move as a whole.
2. Not having the map quite as big: I like big maps, but Genealogy was way overboard with that, it takes far too long to traverse the map (maybe warping between captured castles so that units with low mov. could transport to the next castle quickly)
3. More road spaces: It would make sense for there to be roads to the castles, or at least close to them, which would make things go a lot faster, especially if they changed roads to give more movement to infantry and not to horses, or if roads were the only spaces that didn't penalize the movement of mounted units.
4. Less reinforcements: One of the problems with large maps is that you spend so much time traveling, and then a horde of enemies comes up from behind and quickly heads toward your home castle, marking the end of the map if you cannot catch them and kill them in time. With less annoying reinforcements to storm your castle randomly, or at least a warning that they're coming, it'll be easier to divide and conquer, as well as protect your home castle.

It isn't the idea of big maps that was the issue, it was how they handled it. Other frustrating things, like needing a castle and money to spare to transfer items, sort of made the giant size of maps even more irritating because to do even simple things meant getting to a castle. Obviously that would need to be remedied as well, but like I said, the map size wasn't really the problem.

[Armagon]

4 minutes ago, Florina's #1 Fan said:

Yeah, I understand that. If there is a remake of Genealogy, or another game that uses large maps, this is what I would do to fix the issues:

1. Less cavaliers in general: If there are less horseback units, you can't abuse their movement and your group can move as a whole.
2. Not having the map quite as big: I like big maps, but Genealogy was way overboard with that, it takes far too long to traverse the map (maybe warping between captured castles so that units with low mov. could transport to the next castle quickly)
3. More road spaces: It would make sense for there to be roads to the castles, or at least close to them, which would make things go a lot faster, especially if they changed roads to give more movement to infantry and not to horses, or if roads were the only spaces that didn't penalize the movement of mounted units.
4. Less reinforcements: One of the problems with large maps is that you spend so much time traveling, and then a horde of enemies comes up from behind and quickly heads toward your home castle, marking the end of the map if you cannot catch them and kill them in time. With less annoying reinforcements to storm your castle randomly, or at least a warning that they're coming, it'll be easier to divide and conquer, as well as protect your home castle.

 

1. They can keep the amount of mounted units, just make them less broken.
2. FE7 Ch.27 in Hector's Tale actually does the FE4 formula of capturing multiple castles, except it does it right.
   Spoiler

   

   Three castles to conquer without the map being unnecessarily big.

    

3. Yeah, that makes sense.
4. To be fair, you'd usually leave your armor unit behind guarding the castle because, honestly, what else are armor units gonna do in FE4? The bigger issue i have is that the size of the maps will sometimes prevent you from rescuing a village completely intact (though that's mostly due to bandits starting close by or on the village itself at the start of the chapter).

9 minutes ago, Florina's #1 Fan said:

Other frustrating things, like needing a castle and money to spare to transfer items, sort of made the giant size of maps even more irritating because to do even simple things meant getting to a castle.

This is arguably my most hated thing about FE4. The Pawn Shop is absolute garbage and if a remake ever happens, they need to get rid of it entirely and just replace it with regular Trading. I should not have to backtrack to a castle just so i can exchange a weapon that i can't use.

11 minutes ago, Florina's #1 Fan said:

It isn't the idea of big maps that was the issue, it was how they handled it.

I agree, especially since that chapter in Hector's Tale showed that big maps can be done right. The maps in FE4 weren't just big, they were unnecessarily big.

[Vaximillian]

13 hours ago, Slumber said:

And the art/art direction.

Guess my unpopular opinion is that I like the DS art/art direction.
Except that weird thick black outline of Shadow Dragon’s map sprites. It’s just ugly.

My other unpopular opinion is when they remake Genealogy, they should keep everything that makes Genealogy Genealogy: huge maps, item management, enemy swarms. They might (and should) rebalance the items and characters, but overall impression shouldn’t change. Seeing how E:SoV compares with Gaiden and how faithful it has been is reassuring.

Edited September 24, 2017 by Vaximillian

[Koumal8]

4 hours ago, Armagon said:

This is arguably my most hated thing about FE4. The Pawn Shop is absolute garbage and if a remake ever happens, they need to get rid of it entirely and just replace it with regular Trading. I should not have to backtrack to a castle just so i can exchange a weapon that i can't use.

Yeah, we don't want resource management to be a thing in our Fire Emblem games, am I right? The pawn shop is virtually the only thing FE4 did right and with no inherent flaw in its conception (individual money should have ben handled better though + just why must Dew suck so much?). 

4 hours ago, Florina's #1 Fan said:

Less cavaliers in general: If there are less horseback units, you can't abuse their movement and your group can move as a whole.

Actually, the most common way of balancing the cast in FE4 mods is to give footies more movement (like 7 promoted); this way they can keep up better with the cavs and their superior combat makes them worth your time. Vanilla FE4 in Gen1 doesn't even have that many broken cavs: Quan+Finn+Ethlin leave halfway through the game, Midir+Noish+Alec are underwhelming (yes, there are ways to fix each of them, but not bothering with them works just as well), mounted Azel comes into play late into the game and Beowolf, while I personally find him better than the Chalphy knights, is far from broken. Sigurd is the only really broken cav you have in gen 1. Post-Ch.7/8 gen 2 is admittedly another story...

EDIT: forgot Lex, which means you have 2 broken cavs in Gen1

Edited September 24, 2017 by Koumal8

[familyplayer]

8 hours ago, Vaximillian said:

Guess my unpopular opinion is that I like the DS art/art direction.

I'm not the only weird one?! Hurray!

[Harvey]

Just beated chapter 18 in thracia and while I get that the process of recruiting Xavier is a bit tedious, its not really that hard as people exaggerate it to be in my most unpopular opinion.

 

[Armagon]

6 hours ago, Koumal8 said:

Yeah, we don't want resource management to be a thing in our Fire Emblem games, am I right? The pawn shop is virtually the only thing FE4 did right and with no inherent flaw in its conception (individual money should have ben handled better though + just why must Dew suck so much?). 

That's where you're wrong. The Pawn Shop is very flawed and i know i'm not the only one who feels this way. When every other game in the series has regular Trading, the Pawn Shop just looks tedious. Again, i should not have to backtrack halfway across an unnecessarily big map just so i can exchange the weapon i can't use.Oh sure, there's the Return Staff that warps you to a player castle, but then that unit that was warped has to travel all the way back to the group, and it just wastes time. Fire Emblem games already have resource management. It's not something exclusive to FE4. 

1 hour ago, Harvey said:

Just beated chapter 18 in thracia and while I get that the process of recruiting Xavier is a bit tedious, its not really that hard as people exaggerate it to be in my most unpopular opinion.

 

From what i hear, it's not that it's hard, but rather, no player going in blind will ever recruit him.

I say "from what i hear" because i never played that far into Thracia, since i gave up on it's bullshit a long time ago.

[Koumal8]

44 minutes ago, Armagon said:

That's where you're wrong. The Pawn Shop is very flawed and i know i'm not the only one who feels this way. When every other game in the series has regular Trading, the Pawn Shop just looks tedious. Again, i should not have to backtrack halfway across an unnecessarily big map just so i can exchange the weapon i can't use.Oh sure, there's the Return Staff that warps you to a player castle, but then that unit that was warped has to travel all the way back to the group, and it just wastes time. Fire Emblem games already have resource management. It's not something exclusive to FE4.

So what if you can't trade an item you can use right away? Leaving aside the fact that I literally never ever had that need mid-Chapter, you're supposed not to be able to do it. Again, I understand that you don't like it, but like with villages and rewards, what you want do to is just not possible and the game is balanced around that. Only because other games let you do that doesn't mean all the other games you should let you. It's as if I complained about Awakening because it doesn't let me reclass a unit to whatever class I want just because SD and New Mystery let you: you're not supposed to able to do that.

The pawn shop+individual money system is a carefully handled system that prevents the abuse of staves and powerful weapons. You want unit x to have the Sleep staff? Okay, but beware, because if you then change your mind it's gonna cost you freaking 30k gold to give it to that other unit, so choose wisely who you give it to. You also can't do trade chains to pass strong weapons between units in order to use them multiple times in a given turn, so again choose wisely who you give your brave weapons to; and while you can totally pass them around to clear the arena or just give them to a different unit every chapter, it's gonna take its toll on your gold and most likely prevent your units from buying rings. You want Lex!Ulster to inherit Chagall's Silver Blade (the only weapon can inherit if you do AyraxLex)? Good, then step up your game and have Lex kill Chagall or bust (okay, this is not an example of item management, but you get my point with this). You want your healer to abuse their pricey high experience staff to promotion? Have it your way, but keep in mind that you'll have to find a way around their limited gold reserve. And let not even get me started on rings, which can give a unit a massive upgrade... for the more than appropriate price of 20k or 40k gold (+5 Str or Mag or Spd is extremely good, the Thief Ring makes you capable of spamming Legendary weapons or strong staves etc...). No other game in the series has ever had this much emphasis on weapon and item management. I don't think stat boosters management in later games compares. Maybe scroll+stat boosters management in Fe5, but I haven't played that game (only up to Ch.7), or just maybe skill management in Fe10.

btw let me jump on the DS graphics love train real quick: I find the battle models pretty boring, but everything else is top notch. The realistic portraits are IMO the best in the series, they give the game a serious and charming atmosphere. 

Edited September 24, 2017 by Koumal8

[Armagon]

2 minutes ago, Koumal8 said:

So what if you can't trade an item you can use right away? Leaving aside the fact that I literally never ever had that need mid-Chapter, you're supposed not to be able to do it. 

Once you've played the game enough, you know which villages and such will give your units which weapons. A player who goes in blind (like myself) for the first time won't know that, so i had to backtrack several times just to exchange a weapon. And even then, sometimes your unit will get a weapon they can't use because it was the only unit that could save a village.

4 minutes ago, Koumal8 said:

what you want do to is just not possible and the game is balanced around that.

Except it's something that i should be able to do. Just because the game is balanced around it's bullshit doesn't make it less bullshit.

5 minutes ago, Koumal8 said:

The pawn shop+individual money system is a carefully handled system that prevents the abuse of staves and powerful weapons.

Which is something that Weapon Durability has always done.

6 minutes ago, Koumal8 said:

No other game in the series has ever had this much emphasis on weapon and item management.

You may be right but unfortunately, FE4's way of doing it is garbage. It's super tedious and just wastes time and it doesn't help that FE4's gameplay in general is an unbalanced mess. Because of that, the Pawn Shop doesn't deserve any praise.

[Koumal8]

1 minute ago, Armagon said:

Once you've played the game enough, you know which villages and such will give your units which weapons. A player who goes in blind (like myself) for the first time won't know that, so i had to backtrack several times just to exchange a weapon. And even then, sometimes your unit will get a weapon they can't use because it was the only unit that could save a village.

The only weapon you get from a village in Fe4 are the Armorslayer, the Wing Clipper and the Barrier Sword with Sylvia. Trust me, no player, neither new nor seasoned, will be bothered by not being able to do use said weapons for a chapter.

3 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Except it's something that i should be able to do. Just because the game is balanced around it's bullshit doesn't make it less bullshit.

As long as the game is balanced around something, that something is in no way "bullshit". I can see how big-ass maps can be called "bullshit", but just because you don't like the pawn shop system doesn't mean it's "bullshit". Big-ass maps are tedious because they force the player to spend boring turns just moving their units from x to y. The pawn shop system is tedious because if forces the player to think which units gets which weapon.

5 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Which is something that Weapon Durability has always done.

Have you even read what I wrote? Durability will never accomplish what the pawn shop system accomplishes. Not because durability is bad in any way, it just can't replicate the situations I described. In every game you have to think about which unit gets which weapon, true, but no game actually punishes you for giving it the wrong (or suboptimal) unit since you can just... you know... trade it away...

13 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Because of that, the Pawn Shop doesn't deserve any praise.

Emphasis being put on item management doesn't deserve praise because the game is bad, got it... but not really got it.

[Armagon]

20 minutes ago, Koumal8 said:

Trust me, no player, neither new nor seasoned, will be bothered by not being able to do use said weapons for a chapter.

I clearly was, and given that chapters can last for an hour or more, i think it's a valid complaint.

20 minutes ago, Koumal8 said:

As long as the game is balanced around something, that something is in no way "bullshit".

Except it is. All the game balance is doing is working with those mechanics to make them flow, but said mechanics are still bullshit.

20 minutes ago, Koumal8 said:

The pawn shop system is tedious because if forces the player to think which units gets which weapon.

The Pawn Shop is tedious compared to regular Trading.

20 minutes ago, Koumal8 said:

Emphasis being put on item management doesn't deserve praise because the game is bad, got it... but not really got it.

It's a bad emphasis. FE4 tried but failed here. They could've made a good emphasis on item management, but Kaga was just too ambitious with this game.

Edited September 24, 2017 by Armagon

[Koumal8]

11 minutes ago, Armagon said:

I clearly was, and given that chapters can last for an hour or more, i think it's a valid complaint.

What I meant is that you don't need them at all to complete the game. I can think of very few instances where they have a significant impact on the game. Mainly because armor knights come in packs and having one unit be able to oneround one of them reliably doesn't really help when all the others are nearby and still quite difficult to take down for all your other units. The same holds true for Peg Knights; also fun fact: there are no enemy peg knights in gen2.

19 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Except it is. All the game balance is doing is working with those mechanics to make them flow, but said mechanics are still bullshit.

You seem to prove my point in that you call such mechanics "bullshit" only because you don't like it. Personally, I think a "bullshit" mechanic is such only if it doesn't work/is inherently flawed/is unfair etc... But, you know, de gustibus.

21 minutes ago, Armagon said:

The Pawn Shop is tedious compared to regular Trading.

It's exactly what I wrote. But it's tedious not because it wastes your time or something along those lines (most of your "trading" is supposed to happen in the main castle at the start of each chapter and outside of LTC or very specific playstyles you shouldn't really ever need to access the pawn shop mid-Chapter), it's "tedious" bacause it forces you to think carefully.

25 minutes ago, Armagon said:

It's a bad emphasis. FE4 tried but failed here. They could've made a good emphasis on item management, but Kaga was just too ambitious with this game.

Dunno, there's no such thing as "bad emphasis" IMHO. Either there's emphasis on something or there isn't. What would be another example of "bad emphasis" in the series, so that I can understand?

[Stephen the Great]

29 minutes ago, Armagon said:

It's a bad emphasis. FE4 tried but failed here. They could've made a good emphasis on item management, but Kaga was just too ambitious with this game.

... so then was Kaga's departure for the best?

[Armagon]

32 minutes ago, Koumal8 said:

Personally, I think a "bullshit" mechanic is such only if it doesn't work/is inherently flawed/is unfair etc...

So most of Jugdral then. Because Thracia has it's own bullshit mechanics as well.

32 minutes ago, Koumal8 said:

But it's tedious not because it wastes your time or something along those lines (most of your "trading" is supposed to happen in the main castle at the start of each chapter and outside of LTC or very specific playstyles you shouldn't really ever need to access the pawn shop mid-Chapter),

Except in the cases where you do need to access the Pawn Shop mid-chapter. Sure, it doesn't happen all the time, but it's frustrating when it does.

32 minutes ago, Koumal8 said:

What would be another example of "bad emphasis" in the series, so that I can understand?

Pair-Up in Awakening. The game clearly wants you to use it but it's so broken and unbalanced.

30 minutes ago, Sigismund of Luxemburg said:

... so then was Kaga's departure for the best?

Yes, yes it was. If Kaga was still on the team, i don't think i'd be playing Fire Emblem today. Actually, i think the series would've died if he was still on the team. He did a good job with Mystery of the Emblem but that's it. I can't comment on the TearRing Saga (and the other two Saga games) since i've never played. I've heard good things about them but i've also heard good things about the Jugdral games and we all know what my opinion on Jugdral is.

Edited September 24, 2017 by Armagon