...So I just hooked up my way and fired up RD for the first time in 7 years...

[Shoblongoo]

Basically doing a play-through to see, after all these years, how well it holds up to the newer titles.

...Is it as good as I remember, and are the new games as shit as I think they are?
...Or am I just wearing nostalgia-goggles, and remembering everything I love about the game + forgetting its flaws.  

Curious if anyone else has had this experience . Where they go many years without touching the games, played the new releases, then went back to revisit Tellius with a modern Fire Emblem PoV?

Is it still the game you remember?  
Did it age well, or did it feel dated?

...so far its still the game I fell in love with 10 years ago...

Even still throwing me a few curveballs. (My god--I forgot how squishy Miciah is)

Anyone else have a return-to-tellius story?

EDIT: Hooked up my Wii, if a mod would be so kind as to edit the thread title.

Edited July 6, 2017 by Shoblongoo

[Interdimensional Observer]

I never really forgot Tellius, I played the games too much in the past to do so. I'm doing a RD draft right now, and the game holds up very well still, nearly all the quality of life elements found in the 3DS games can be found here, barring that all enemies' danger zones combined feature (and Casual Mode, but I never use it). The game has flaws sure, but none of them are due to archaisms.

Playing FE7 on the VC several times on the other hand was interesting since I had last played it years ago when I was a newbie. Gosh Normal Mode is painfully easy, though Hard is a pretty good challenge, though it is too restrictive on deployment slots. And I hate having to count out the distance on the Bolting tomes of Aion, Ursula, Sonia, and Limstella since their attack ranges shows them as able to move, when none of them can save low-HP Ursula.

[The Baroness of Blainswal]

Maybe it's because it was the first in the series that I played, but I still find myself particularly fond of this game. I gave it a replay about a year ago and I think it holds up fairly well, it is missing features added in the modern games like an avatar character, waifu/husbando dating and pair-up though personally for me there's no big loss there.

The only problem I can think of off the top of my head is that I forgot how underwhelming the support conversations were.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

FE10 consumed a part of my life. I played it like 150 times at least just because I love it so much.

It has two reasons: 

1. It was my introduction in FE.
2. The gameplay is amazing. It features so many interesting missions and game mechanics. Only FE5 and Conquest are a match for it in terms of good chapter design and mission objective variety. However the later you are in the game, the less creative the maps are. Part 4 is just a filler. 

Whenever I'm out of games, I always return to FE10.
It's still my favorite game of all time and the only reason why I still own a Wii.

[JHufself]

Recently played Radiant Dawn for the first time! Unfortunately, I wasn't a fan of Path of Radiance and while RD was a slight improvement, it's not much better. It's got pretty decent mechanics and gameplay but is grossly unbalanced.

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, JHufself said:

Recently played Radiant Dawn for the first time! Unfortunately, I wasn't a fan of Path of Radiance and while RD was a slight improvement, it's not much better. It's got pretty decent mechanics and gameplay but is grossly unbalanced.

>Complains about RD's balance

>Favorite Fire Emblem Game: Genealogy of the Holy War

...What.

 

[Shoblongoo]

1 hour ago, JHufself said:

Recently played Radiant Dawn for the first time! Unfortunately, I wasn't a fan of Path of Radiance and while RD was a slight improvement, it's not much better. It's got pretty decent mechanics and gameplay but is grossly unbalanced.

I actually do remember that being one of the major issues with RD.

…like every Fire Emblem game has its top tiers and low tiers; some characters are just naturally BETTER at what they do.

But RD was particularly wonky with its top tiers being off-the-charts broken, and its low tiers being complete trash.

I don’t recall that ever really bothering me though.

Lets see if that’s changed (the new games have admittedly gotten much better at not putting out characters as game-breakingly busted as Naesala and Tibarn, or as worthless as Kyza and Lyre)

Edited July 6, 2017 by Shoblongoo

[Tessiro]

Going back to PoR after playing portable FE games only for quite a while made me remember how slow the pace of the game was. Maybe I'm spoiled by the 3DS games letting me skip the enemy phase entirely, heh.

[JHufself]

2 hours ago, Levant Mir Celestia said:

>Complains about RD's balance

>Favorite Fire Emblem Game: Genealogy of the Holy War

...What.

 

Compared to RD, Genealogy seems to build entirely around this "broken"-ness. The cast is smaller and fully deployed, which makes it seem like more characters are good (most non-holy blood aren't that good); also, many enemies also possess the same or similar amount of "broken"-ness, with entire Holy Weapons being locked to Enemy only. I'm also not really complaining, per say, but there are definitely balance issues when more than half the playable cast is near useless or has another unit who can do their job better. Fates: Revelation has the most similar feeling, and it's probably why RD and Rev are about the same on my personal ranking of FE games.

[Shadow Mir]

6 hours ago, JHufself said:

Compared to RD, Genealogy seems to build entirely around this "broken"-ness. The cast is smaller and fully deployed, which makes it seem like more characters are good (most non-holy blood aren't that good); also, many enemies also possess the same or similar amount of "broken"-ness, with entire Holy Weapons being locked to Enemy only. I'm also not really complaining, per say, but there are definitely balance issues when more than half the playable cast is near useless or has another unit who can do their job better. Fates: Revelation has the most similar feeling, and it's probably why RD and Rev are about the same on my personal ranking of FE games.

My big problem with Genealogy balance wise is that units that have a horse, a holy weapon, or Pursuit are automatically better than those without. And that's not even getting into the lack of weapon balance. Also, while everyone is deployable, that doesn't do jack nor shit to hide how worthless some units *cough Arden cough Corple hack* are.

Edited July 7, 2017 by Levant Mir Celestia

[Interdimensional Observer]

Being to field everyone doesn't suddenly give everyone uses. All the P3 DB chapters let you field everyone, but I don't think that's really helping Fiona at all. And SoV lets you field everyone until the postgame and in dungeons, but that hardly helps Valbar or Forsyth. 

Thinking on map design in RD, part of the good design comes from Height messing around with things- I heard somebody say Elincia's Gambit in Fates is much inferior without Height being around. Another reason is the Part system constantly shuffles around your team, and in particular Part 2's battles take advantage of this. BEXP side-objectives might have played a tiny role too. And the abundance of Allied or NPC units on some maps makes the battles more immersive. The map designs do taper off in Part 4, but 4-F-3 and 4-F-5 do make efforts to restore some form of quality.

One personal nitpick of mine is that there are too many enemies that wholly stationary for no good reason, or are at least stationary until their HP drops low enough that they enter the Heal AI, which also makes them start moving and attacking when they get healed or if someone killable is within range (as I just discovered with Leanne and a Stone Thrower Sniper today).

I will say Part 2 and Part 3 (until the end of 3-11) are very well-written and I particularly love the feeling of a grand military campaign that Part 3 gives off. What FE provides a comparable feeling? You have victories and you have losses, the flow is dynamic and not lopsidedly for the good guys. You have flanking and retreats, war room planning and discussion and one-on-one clashes on the battlefield, wartime politics with a little nuance and leadership disputes. It's such a shame the guano that ends Part 3 has to stop the war prematurely (though said manure does have a silver lining- we get a lord in the form of Micaiah who is struggling just to stay barely afloat).

[Weeping Dalek (MK)]

On 7/6/2017 at 8:11 AM, Interdimensional Observer said:

I never really forgot Tellius, I played the games too much in the past to do so. I'm doing a RD draft right now, and the game holds up very well still, nearly all the quality of life elements found in the 3DS games can be found here, barring that all enemies' danger zones combined feature (and Casual Mode, but I never use it). The game has flaws sure, but none of them are due to archaisms.

Playing FE7 on the VC several times on the other hand was interesting since I had last played it years ago when I was a newbie. Gosh Normal Mode is painfully easy, though Hard is a pretty good challenge, though it is too restrictive on deployment slots. And I hate having to count out the distance on the Bolting tomes of Aion, Ursula, Sonia, and Limstella since their attack ranges shows them as able to move, when none of them can save low-HP Ursula.

I'm pretty sure in HHM Ursula moves starting on Turn 13 iirc from the video I watched about it

[Shoblongoo]

...so I was thinking I was going to cheese this game super-hard after getting use to lunatic difficulty on the newer games. Not gonna lie. Still a ton of deaths and restarts on Part 1. Goodness--these Dawn Brigade kids love getting one-rounded.

Edited July 10, 2017 by Shoblongoo

[Shadow Mir]

On July 6, 2017 at 2:30 PM, Shoblongoo said:

I actually do remember that being one of the major issues with RD.

…like every Fire Emblem game has its top tiers and low tiers; some characters are just naturally BETTER at what they do.

But RD was particularly wonky with its top tiers being off-the-charts broken, and its low tiers being complete trash.

I don’t recall that ever really bothering me though.

Lets see if that’s changed (the new games have admittedly gotten much better at not putting out characters as game-breakingly busted as Naesala and Tibarn, or as worthless as Kyza and Lyre)

Perhaps, but to be fair, they're only available in part 4. Also, they lack range, and they can't be everywhere at once, meaning that part 4 demands other well-trained units to finish its chapters quickly. Also, while there is some truth to that last statement, I'd say that Fates bucked that trend of avoiding putting out worthless units when they came up with Arthur.

Edited July 21, 2017 by Levant Mir Celestia

[sorenwind]

Replayed radiant dawn last fall when I realized that wrath on micaiah is a viable strat for part 1 that turns her into an absolute monster

[Extrasolar]

I absolutely adore Radiant Dawn, partially because it was the very first game in the series I played and turned me on to the rest of FE. I haven't played it in a while (after playing it through three times within a few months of having it), and I am thinking about going back and playing through it again.

My favorite part about RD is the scope, to the point that no other FE game comes close to matching it. I had never even heard of Tellius before I played RD, and I was sucked in, caring about these characters I had never seen before. We were introduced to Tellius in PoR (of course, it was the opposite for me, since I went back and played it later), but it was RD that truly fleshed it out and turned it into a huge and expansive world. The plot of RD is also a high point for me, in that we only slowly learn the significance of Lehran's Medallion and about Ashera, and looking back it deconstructs a whole bunch of stuff that PoR and FE tends to do as a whole (What's this, the evil country from the first game actually isn't completely evil, and being occupied by Begnion is causing them to suffer?)

The map design was very interesting imo, too, with the different elevations, and the battle animations and skill activations are absolutely stunning, to the point that I think they're still the best in the series. (Shadows of Valentia would be second.)

A lot of side characters got the chance to shine in RD in comparison to PoR, which I always thought was cool (seriously, Sothe is one of the main characters in this? Talk about the character people would least expect, lol.)

But...looking back on it, the game has a lot of problems. Like people brought up, it's unbalanced as hell. Haar, Shinon, Ike, and the Greil Mercenaries (also the Laguz royals) are good, and anyone who's not them is...eh to godawful, with a few contested people like Micaiah smattered in there somewhere. Unit availability can be very questionable, to the point that it screws lots of units (poor, poor Tormod and Fiona).

Early hard mode Dawn Brigade is a complete nightmare, and I was one of the people who chose "Normal" mode thinking it was, well, normal mode. Thanks, localizers. :l

The supports are generic and lame. And I was never a fan of the "you have to beat the game first to unlock cool thing [x]" with Pelleas and Sephiran's recruitment, doubled with the fact that they're two of my favorite characters in the game. Not to mention to unlock a lot of the plot-ending conversations in endgame, you have to jump through a lot of hoops. Data transferring... I couldn't do that, so I had to read that final Ike and Soren conversation online. >.>

I've always been pretty bummed that the Tellius series wasn't financially successful, and that it isn't very popular in comparison either here or in Japan, since I see a lot of great in those games. But I can definitely acknowledge their flaws. I try not to get blinded by nostalgia.

Edited July 30, 2017 by Extrasolar

[thecrimsonflash]

a few weeks after first seeing this thread I decided to dust off the old wii and do a marathon of PoR and RD, and I still must say while I think PoR could use a facelift the story is quite solid, RD is just as good as I remember. The map design for the most part (no FE is without at least one map that you detest [loved 3-13 and a god chunk of the DB chapters though except that one where you recruit fiona that was crap]) is great as others have noted height really contributed to that. The music and character design is quite possibly the best in the series I loved how actual thought was put into every character's class changes rather than focusing exclusively on lords and plot relevant characters. I do agree that the op occult skills and classes are dubious at best, I think that absorbing all health with sol and negating all defense with luna is acceptable (the typical halfies, I think isn't enough maybe 75%is an ok compromise) but the 3x damage is stupidly overkill, eclipse is ok though because it is enemy only. I feel like the best solution would be the return of the occult scroll and more tier 3 enemies.

Edited August 3, 2017 by thecrimsonflash

[Slumber]

I started u p another PoR/RD playthrough like... two years ago? And it's still ongoing, but I'm at the last few maps of RD.

And while some modern conveniences are a little missed(Not being able to skip movement of players/enemies, not being able to fast forward battle animations), I'd say the games still hold up really well.

Edited August 4, 2017 by Slumber

[Lady Sansa]

Will always be the last good FE game.

[thecrimsonflash]

On 9/3/2017 at 2:23 AM, Lady Sansa said:

Will always be the last good FE game.

nb4 fe 17 is an RD remake.

[COOL]

I've beaten the game around 45 times since owning it... my most recent playthrough a few months ago was the first time I beat it on hard mode. I've never been more proud, lol.