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Random thoughts on Binding Blade


Thane
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Hey.

So I've finally played through Binding Blade for the first time and feel like discussing my thoughts regarding it. I played it on a Japanese Gameboy Advance, so if I've misunderstood anything or spell name's weirdly, that's why. There was also no way for me to use save states or anything like that, which might've affected my enjoyment on some of the longer maps.

Story

I guess, for starters, this has the most video game-y feel of any of the Fire Emblem games I've played. You travel all over the world collecting legendary weapons to aid you in the struggle against the big bad. The last map has a guy drip feeding you exposition as he tests you, which I also found pretty funny. 

The story was very simple and inoffensive, but it did have its moments. I like how they at least put in the bare minimum effort of humanizing both Zephiel and some other Bern soldiers. Zephiel spares Guinevere, who in turn tells you about his past later. Brunnya prepares her suicidal defense but tells everyone it's voluntary and forcibly expels people from the army with old parents and young children. However, outside of that, there's not much that really sticks out; far too much time is spent chasing down the Etrurian traitors who're irredeemable, evil, cowardly nobles which we've all seen dozens of times. Zephiel doesn't actually do or say much, which limits his appeal a bit - I found the whole "I want to fill the world with nothing but braindead dragons bred purely for war" to be a bit strange. If he had fought for some surviving dragons holed up somewhere, then sure, I could've bought it, but he effectively fights for puppets, or at least that's how I understood it. 

My biggest complaint in regards to the story is a lot more vague though, and I find it hard to pin point a singular reason. You see, I never actually felt like the stakes were high, even though mankind was facing extinction and was to be replaced by lobotomized dragons. There are several contributing factors to this, I believe, both big and small. If we start with the biggliest, it's probably that I never felt like the army or Roy were in any danger. Sure, bad things happen like when Hector dies, but you - or Roy -  never really fail at anything, and Roy always seems to know the best course of action. Then there's the fact that the game relies heavily on exposition to present all of this, and with the limited graphics, they talk about this wearing the same expression as when they're talking to their near and dear ones. I realize this is a comparatively petty reason to bring up, but even the first Fire Emblem game gave Marth an angry sprite when necessary, and those small touches matter.

The true ending, however, was sweet as hell.

As an aside, this game makes me question why Blazing Blade is set in the time period it is, and surrounding the cast it does. After playing this game I wanted to know more about the Scouring and Zephiel, yet the sequel is a prequel about Eliwood and Hector, which is odd to me. They also jam in a bunch of characters there and have to then explain why they weren't in Binding Blade, which was another odd direction to go in, I feel. I'm left wondering why they chose to write that particular story, especially since we knew Nergal wouldn't succeed. I would've loved a game with Zephiel as the lord.

Characters

I was positively surprised by quite a few of the cast members and their supports. I believe my favorite is Niime, followed by Elffin and Sue. Elffin has some really touching supports even if those around him can't act worth a damn, Sue is an entertaining fish out of water kind of person when it comes to socializing and is as adequately different due to her heritage as I wished Lyn was in Blazing Blade, and Niime gives a negative amount of fucks and makes me want to ship old people. 

I've seen a lot of people both bashing and loving Roy, and I fall somwhere in the middle. On the one hand, I like that he's more of a brains above brawn kind of guy, but on the other, well...

Merlinus: Roy-sama, we need to do X!

Roy: Actually, we need to do the exact opposite of X, because that'll lead to optimal results.

Occasional third person: Damn, Roy's our boy.

Rinse and repeat. It gets very tiring after a while, and Roy barely showing any emotions makes him a bit hard to connect with him. The way he speaks also ties in with my earlier complaints about this game's love affair with exposition; he often has to explain everything in detail and spell it out.

Also, what the hell did they do with Bartre in Blazing Blade? He's adorable here, but in Blazing Blade words hurt his brain?

Gameplay

Oh boy. To be perfectly blunt, this was a frustrating experience. The difficulty of the maps varied greatly, with 21 being by far the hardest in the game for me and 22 - Zephiel's own freaking map - being one of the easiest, as well as the final two maps. The maps were also often far too big and relied heavily on swarming you with same turn reinforcements, which I didn't enjoy at all. It was my least favorite thing about Awakening's gameplay, and it feels even worse here because the maps are humungous  and take forever. Too many characters were borderline unusable, you kept fighting unpromoted redshirts even up until chapter 23 just to wear down your gear, and I feel like that promotes arena abuse as you need a way to supply yourself with weapons from that. 

I realize a lot of my complaints might be alleviated if you know more about the game and what to expect than I do, but I see little reason to dismiss a first time player's opinions either. 

However, my biggest complaint by far is how the game effectively encourages you to use a guide to get the true ending. Now, some chaps have told me that getting the golden ending is just a nice way to reward players for keeping everyone alive and playing through the maps fast, and I can see that point, I really can. However, that's not really all there is to it. 

First of all, I personally believe it goes against what Fire Emblem is to tell people that they need everyone alive. In that case they might as well just force a game over if anyone dies. If I mess up I want to be able to continue knowing it was my fault. I want to be able to adapt to losing a unit I've invested heavily in - having a same turn reinforcement Wyvern Lord swoop down out of nowhere and kill someone you need to unlock the true ending at the end of one of those long ass maps is frustrating enough, but having to replay it all makes it even worse.

Secondly, there's way more to getting the true ending than just keeping everyone alive and just playing through the maps quickly. Chapter 14 is a fog of war desert map which the game encourages you to explore to find hidden goodies, but you need to clear that in 25 turns or less. You have to keep the unrecruitable Douglas alive as he chases you over the entire map, but you can kill Gale - I don't know how you're supposed to know that. Then, rather than Shin filling in for Sue when informing you about Mulgir if she dies, he also needs to be alive even though he doesn't say anything about it. Then you're not allowed to use the weapons even though you get the first one before chapter nine, so if someone thought they were just a tool to get through a rough patch, they're out of luck. 

It just seems so arbitrary and needlessly cryptic, and it severely hampered my enjoyment of the game.

In general, it was an enjoyable but incredibly frustrating experience. I got Revelation flashbacks on some maps where you had to/were encouraged to wait in order to progress, like on chapter 14x where the floor could randomly disappear for several turns. You can also tell that a few quality of life additions later on in the series' life have helped tremendously. Being able to see the danger area and even the exclamation marks for enemies with super effective weapons are both great tools that are hard to be without now, I feel like.

Anyway, that was about it. Do tell me if I misunderstood something or can make something eaier for myself in future runs. So long as we agree that chapter 21 was probably made by an absolute muppet.

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Looks like you got the Sacae maps instead Illia ones, and pretty much no one likes the Sacae maps.

Regardless, the story is rather harmless, which is kinda like Birthright, which why it has some dumb moments, like Flora putting her on fire, the story as a whole is harmelss enough. 

One thing interesting about the game is the age of the cast. They are either really young or really old. There aren’t many adult characters in the game. And a lot of the characters that seem shallow at first are deeper they we think, like Clarine and Bartre. ” Clarine’s supports with Klein and Dorothy and Bartre’s supports with Cath and Karel show a very interesting side to them. And I wish Roy could have been more explored. His brains over brawns nature had a lot of potential.

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30 minutes ago, Thane said:

So long as we agree that chapter 21 was probably made by an absolute muppet.

Agreed. Ch.21 is one of the worst maps in the series. I find it funny that Ch.21 in Binding Blade and Ch.27 in Blazing Blade are both the hardest chapters of their respective games and they both take place in the same general location and both have the same goal: reach the Shrine of Seals.

Anyway

37 minutes ago, Thane said:

Zephiel doesn't actually do or say much, which limits his appeal a bit - I found the whole "I want to fill the world with nothing but braindead dragons bred purely for war" to be a bit strange. If he had fought for some surviving dragons holed up somewhere, then sure, I could've bought it, but he effectively fights for puppets, or at least that's how I understood it. 

Zephiel's whole thing is that he hates humanity because his dad tried to poison him, so he feels that dragons should be the rightful rulers of the world. It's actually kinda stupid but what i did like was that he himself admitted that he was part of the problem. When Roy tells him that Zephiel is doing the exact same things that a "hateful human" would do, Zephiel admitted it and even suggested that he would kill himself once he succeed. I can't really think of many villains where they admit they are part of the problem.

42 minutes ago, Thane said:

Roy barely showing any emotions makes him a bit hard to connect with him. The way he speaks also ties in with my earlier complaints about this game's love affair with exposition; he often has to explain everything in detail and spell it out.

While the former can simply be chalked up to the graphics (FE didn't have expressions for character portraits until FE7), the latter is a problem with the game as whole. There is exposition, and then there's Ch.24 which just opens the flood gates and dumps all this exposition at the last second. A remake would definitely fix Roy's issue of coming off as emotionless (though he has some pretty good Supports, showing how he's a perfectionist with an inferiority complex). The rate of which Supports are gained though, should be fixed. What is it with GBA FE and having Supports that take forever to get, unless it's Roy x Lilina, a.k.a, the fastest-building Support in the series.

50 minutes ago, Thane said:

Too many characters were borderline unusable, you kept fighting unpromoted redshirts even up until chapter 23 just to wear down your gear, and I feel like that promotes arena abuse as you need a way to supply yourself with weapons from that.

See, i never had this issue. I'm also the same guy who actually uses Sophia over Raigh and Niime so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and, keep in mind, this is on Normal, but aside from Ch.7, 11A 14, and 21, i never had an issue with the maps. FE6 is the hardest of the GBA games but i do think that, for the most part, it's fair. Reinforcements are a bitch though. The game feeling slow can also be just chalked up to the era it was in and a remake would definitely fix it.

1 hour ago, Thane said:

However, my biggest complaint by far is how the game effectively encourages you to use a guide to get the true ending

FE3 had this issue as well and the remake didn't fix it so i'm a bit wary of a remake not fixing it as well. But yeah, getting the true ending was cryptic if you don't have a guide. It's not like Thracia 776, where you basically need a guide for the entire game, but it's still one of the few things i don't like about Binding Blade. 

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To put my thoughts bluntly...

1 - Thank goodness for the X Button shortcut - having to search all the enemies and try to keep it all in my head was frustrating as heck, and I messed up quite a bit early on, which wouldn't have been a problem if it hadn't been Shanna(Thany) biting it EVERY FREAKING TIME, when I was trying to keep her alive because I liked her. Also Gwendolyn is a witch to train.

2 - Give us a remake, IS - I want all this in English. On the other hand, I don't want any of it toned down to be more PC like I think a remake will do, so…that's tricky.

3 - Read: Occasional Third Person's line in OP.

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7 hours ago, Water Mage said:

Looks like you got the Sacae maps instead Illia ones, and pretty much no one likes the Sacae maps.

The siege tomes, man. 

7 hours ago, Water Mage said:

Regardless, the story is rather harmless, which is kinda like Birthright, which why it has some dumb moments, like Flora putting her on fire, the story as a whole is harmelss enough. 

I wholeheartedly disagree. Birthright's story is much worse than Binding Blade's and lacks any of the latter's worldbuilding and villain characterization. Birthright is about physically getting Corrin from point A to point B after finding their brothers, whereas in Binding Blade there are a lot of preparations and some discussion of strategy which is completely absent in Fates in favor of awful melodrama.

The only comparable arc I feel is chasing down the Etrurian nobles, which does absolutely nothing for anyone. You could say they're used to show that Zephiel has a point, but there was no reason for that to last as long as it did.

6 hours ago, Armagon said:

Zephiel's whole thing is that he hates humanity because his dad tried to poison him, so he feels that dragons should be the rightful rulers of the world. It's actually kinda stupid but what i did like was that he himself admitted that he was part of the problem. When Roy tells him that Zephiel is doing the exact same things that a "hateful human" would do, Zephiel admitted it and even suggested that he would kill himself once he succeed. I can't really think of many villains where they admit they are part of the problem.

Sure, that's interesting. However, feeling like populating the world with artificial constructs who know nothing of war is the better option is a lapse in logic that I'd want to see filled. 

6 hours ago, Armagon said:

While the former can simply be chalked up to the graphics (FE didn't have expressions for character portraits until FE7)

Like I said in the OP, this is wrong. Marth ha an angry sprite in the very first Fire Emblem, which goes a long way in how you read his dialogue. Roy needed something like this too - the thousand yard stares of the GBA era send a shiver down my spine.

6 hours ago, Armagon said:

though he has some pretty good Supports, showing how he's a perfectionist with an inferiority complex

He's a perfectionist where it doesn't make sense, like thinking he can win a war without losing a single person in battle. His inferiority complex is an informed attribute in Cecilia and Lillina's support.

6 hours ago, Armagon said:

The game feeling slow can also be just chalked up to the era it was in and a remake would definitely fix it.

I'd see no reason to bring back the disappearing floors if they do, but looking at Echoes, they might keep most of the maps intact.

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8 hours ago, Thane said:

As an aside, this game makes me question why Blazing Blade is set in the time period it is, and surrounding the cast it does. After playing this game I wanted to know more about the Scouring and Zephiel, yet the sequel is a prequel about Eliwood and Hector, which is odd to me. They also jam in a bunch of characters there and have to then explain why they weren't in Binding Blade, which was another odd direction to go in, I feel. I'm left wondering why they chose to write that particular story, especially since we knew Nergal wouldn't succeed. I would've loved a game with Zephiel as the lord.

Marketability? I mean, you're playing as the parents of the previous protagonists. On paper, that sounds pretty cool. In execution, while the story is okay, it's like you said. It really doesn't add much to the setting. Though considering Ninian is implied to be Roy's mother, making him part dragon, there's a certain irony to Roy defeating Zephiel. Something that I would love to see brought up in a remake.

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1 minute ago, RedRob said:

Marketability? I mean, you're playing as the parents of the previous protagonists. On paper, that sounds pretty cool. In execution, while the story is okay, it's like you said. It really doesn't add much to the setting. Though considering Ninian is implied to be Roy's mother, making him part dragon, there's a certain irony to Roy defeating Zephiel. Something that I would love to see brought up in a remake.

Does that sound cool? I feel like "ancient war for humanity's survival against dragons" or "discover the truth behind the liberator's origins" sound more marketable and in line with how a game would be sold.

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2 minutes ago, Thane said:

Does that sound cool? I feel like "ancient war for humanity's survival against dragons" or "discover the truth behind the liberator's origins" sound more marketable and in line with how a game would be sold.

Well the Scouring was less survival and more humanity being dicks to Dragons considering humans started it. Could be IS were afraid such a premise was too morally ambigious for them, or were afraid they couldn't live up to the hype of it. Same thing for Zephiel. Might have been afraid of making him too sympathetic.

Also might be case of differing preferences between audiences. Japan's culture does have Confucian elements in it, so that might have been a factor.

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As said the story of Binding Blade is not an outstanding one, but it's not horrible either. It does it's job and moves the game forward. Some characters are questionable, but overall they are likable (from my perspective). I didn't get to the true ending yet, because I missed some optional chapters by accident, but it's not like the game tells you when you succeeded getting the gaiden chapters or not.

Talking about maps, I have a different opinion on them. 21 wasn't really my problem, so far I enjoyed that level. Some levels though felt empty after a few turns, mainly because the maps are bigger in Binding Blade, and once you are done with the enemy, there's not much to do. I generally have a dislike to desert maps, and I think this game takes the cake with level 14: fog of war, slow movement, flying enemies, time limit, sleep and silence, plus you need a map to find the buried treasures. 14x isn't much better, I don't understand when the floors appear or disappear. Sometimes we don't know how things work on a level, but I have the same feeling before every FE level (until reinforcements starts to pop in).

I will go for another try to get the true ending. If you ask me, I'd pick the Lalum/Ilia route this time, although I find Nomads to be very useful.

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Congratulations on beating the game semi-blind. It's honestly not something that I would recommend because of some of the things you've mentioned - I believe FE6 is at its strongest on hard mode, but with full awareness of enemy reinforcements, gaiden requirements and the desert treasure map, although it could still do with one or two DS-style save points to reduce the potential frustration. So well done for sticking to it, sir. ;)

RE: Story - I personally like the callbacks to the Akaneia games FE6 does - the character lineup in the first two chapters is very similar to FE1 (lord, Jagen, Xmas cavs, one green-haired archer, one knight, one peg knight, one merc, two/three fighters), Guinivere plays a similar role as Nyna, a human awakens the demon dragon, Elphin basically narrates FE3's opening to test Roy's levelheadedness (is that a word?), Mage!Shiida recruits some of the enemies by being nice... They're still as different from each other as "standard" FE games tend to be (i.e. not that much), but I enjoyed spotting the specific similarities and how the game sometimes subverts the expectations (for example, Perceval is Camus minus an affair with the princess, but he's recruitable)

Zephiel always felt very similar to WhatsHisFace, the villain of the 4th Pokémon generations, in that he feels that human emotion is the source of all evil. In that light, it's.. kinda logical? that he wants to populate the world with what are practically robots. We also don't quite know if Jahn has been telling him the exact truth, or even if he's telling us the truth. I always found him to be a somewhat unreliable source of information, especially given how he scoffs off the idea of Arcadia just because it doesn't fit in his world view. As such, I'm not a fan of the big exposition dump at the end, not only because it's just too much at a time, but also because I still don't feel like I have a good idea what really had happened.

9 hours ago, Thane said:

As an aside, this game makes me question why Blazing Blade is set in the time period it is, and surrounding the cast it does. After playing this game I wanted to know more about the Scouring and Zephiel, yet the sequel is a prequel about Eliwood and Hector, which is odd to me. They also jam in a bunch of characters there and have to then explain why they weren't in Binding Blade, which was another odd direction to go in, I feel. I'm left wondering why they chose to write that particular story, especially since we knew Nergal wouldn't succeed. I would've loved a game with Zephiel as the lord.

"Marketing", as @RedRob says, seem accurate. They were most likely trying to use the popularity of Roy in Smash and wanted a protagonist that looks exactly like him. On a more artistic level, I agre with you - Blazing Blade, despite the shared characters is a standalone story that has a number of enforced connections to Binding Blade.

9 hours ago, Thane said:

Merlinus: Roy-sama, we need to do X!

Roy: Actually, we need to do the exact opposite of X, because that'll lead to optimal results.

Occasional third person: Damn, Roy's our boy.

Accurate. ;)

In my opinion, Merlinus is the weakest part of Roy's character because it's such a hamfisted way of showcasing Roy's intelligence. That Roy is presented as smart cookie doesn't bother me as such, though, since FE6 is more plot-centered and less character-centered than the average FE game, which lets me forgive that Roy doesn't particularly grow over the course of the game. i do like him as a PoV character, because like the player, Roy basically stumbles into the Etrurian plot starting in ch.9 and doesn't have that strong personal connection to it anymore, and find that he works better than any of the designated avatars of the later games in that regard.

9 hours ago, Thane said:

However, my biggest complaint by far is how the game effectively encourages you to use a guide to get the true ending. Now, some chaps have told me that getting the golden ending is just a nice way to reward players for keeping everyone alive and playing through the maps fast, and I can see that point, I really can. However, that's not really all there is to it. 

Yes, I agree with that. The "let's insert a shitload of hidden stuff so that the players buy our guides" attitute is one of the more unfortunate aspects of video games of that era (compare Karla's recruitment or the "grind Nils to lv.7" requirement for some of Hector's gaidens, and I've read that at least Genealogy has its fair share of hidden items and mechanisms, or stuff like how to keep Shadow alive in FF6), but FE6 is particularly bad about it because it hides its whole endgame behind some rather obscure requirements. It's why I think that playing it completely blind just isn't a good idea at all. :/

There are, of course, a few tricks to make your life easier. For example, Thief vision and torch bonus stack, which makes fog of war mostly a non-issue. For the desert map in particular, there's a little trick that allows you to pick up the hidden items guaranteed with any character, which is very handy. For chapter 23, it's quite helpful to know that reinforcements are triggered by entering specific areas - here's a link with a map. It's possible to avoid them alltogether with some warping and rescue-dropping, but even if you avoid triggering all of them (I usually avoid the black, green, and blue ones on that map), it's much easier to press forward fast enough to make the time limit less of an issue. FireemblemWOD (the site I've linked) is a very helpful source in general, if you ever want to try your hand at the hard mode.

I don't quite agree with the "borderline unusable characters" - I know that @Flee Fleet! used Wendy in his first playthrough (using savestates, afaik, but still ;) ), and her, alongside with Sophia and maybe Wade and Barth, are the only characters that I would lable borderline unusable. However, it's true that FE6 does a poor job balancing its growth units. They seem to purely balance then throught their 20/20 stats, ignoring such bourgeois concepts such as base level and join time, which makes the old problem of "unit X outclasses unit Y" rather prominent in this game. (not as bad as in the DS remakes though ;) ) What I do like is how it handles prepromoted units - instead of dogmatically make every unit viable for the entire game, which gave us monsters such as Seth and Titania, most prepromotes serve as a crutch or at least a decent filler unit for a limited time span, although there are some very underpowered ones such as Yuno or Garrett.

All in all, you've probably noticed before that I have a higher opinion of FE6 than you (and most other SF posters, I guess), but I do agree with your points of criticism. I just think that FE6 is a very enjoyable game, as long as you know what it's doing, despite those flaws. Oh, and your opinion about chapter 21 is wrong and bad and stupid. :P Funnest map in the game.

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8 hours ago, Thane said:

However, feeling like populating the world with artificial constructs who know nothing of war is the better option is a lapse in logic that I'd want to see filled. 

Yeah, same. Like, there, i just chalked it up to Zephiel being insane (not like, Nergal insane but still insane). I do still think he is one of the better villains in the series but he does need to be expanded upon.

8 hours ago, Thane said:

Marth ha an angry sprite in the very first Fire Emblem, which goes a long way in how you read his dialogue.

Correction, it was actually in Mystery of the Emblem and it was only in Book II. After that, it wasn't until FE7 that we got different emotions for character portraits again.

8 hours ago, Thane said:

He's a perfectionist where it doesn't make sense, like thinking he can win a war without losing a single person in battle.

I can't think of a time where being a perfectionist was a good thing. Being a perfectionist is a flaw Roy has and i like that. It's just the story doesn't really expand upon it or his inferiority complex. It's not too big of an issue because, like @ping said, Binding Blade wasn't really about Roy, whereas other FEs have a bigger focus on the Lord(s), but it would still be nice for his personality to be expanded upon.

8 hours ago, Thane said:

I'd see no reason to bring back the disappearing floors if they do, but looking at Echoes, they might keep most of the maps intact.

I was more referring to the general pacing of the maps. You said how maps took forever because of reinforcements and i'll agree in some cases (there were times were reinforcements weren't as big of a deal) but i mentioned that a remake would fix it as in, by letting you skip the enemy phase. Basically, the remake would feel faster than the original.

Ch.14x is still a bad map though but at least it gives me an excuse to train Sophia. I'm usually able to get her to Lv.8 by the end of the map.

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7 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Correction, it was actually in Mystery of the Emblem and it was only in Book II. After that, it wasn't until FE7 that we got different emotions for character portraits again.

No. Like I keep telling you, Marth has two: one angry and one neutral. The angry one is rare, but if you look at this point in the first walkthrough of the game I could find, you'll see it. Compare it to his regular portrait.

Minerva also has two different portraits: one regular and one with her eyes closed.

35 minutes ago, Armagon said:

I can't think of a time where being a perfectionist was a good thing. Being a perfectionist is a flaw Roy has and i like that.

I mean if you think that's enough, then all the power to you. I'm not sure I'd consider that one line a sign of him being a perfectionist though, but rather naïve. I see his perfectionism as being an informed attribute in Lillina and Cecilia's support. 

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12 hours ago, Thane said:

The siege tomes, man. 

I wholeheartedly disagree. Birthright's story is much worse than Binding Blade's and lacks any of the latter's worldbuilding and villain characterization. Birthright is about physically getting Corrin from point A to point B after finding their brothers, whereas in Binding Blade there are a lot of preparations and some discussion of strategy which is completely absent in Fates in favor of awful melodrama.

I disagree since FE6's story literally felt like a half-assed rehash of Marth's tale...

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On 12/22/2017 at 2:01 PM, ping said:

I know that @Flee Fleet! used Wendy in his first playthrough (using savestates, afaik, but still ;) ), and her, alongside with Sophia and maybe Wade and Barth, are the only characters that I would lable borderline unusable

Yup. Iirc, I needed to baby Wendy through boss abuse till she got to level 8 to make her able to kill stuff on her own. I also made her kill most of the enemies in 8x to get some more level ups and be able to survive in axeland.

I also tried to baby Sophia for three chapters, but she still sucked. So I'll agree with Wendy and Sophia being borderline unsuable because their base stats are just too terrible that you need to carefully baby them. Meanwhile, Wade and Barth have speed problems that result in them being unusable, not to mention they're an axe user and armor knight respectively, two classes that you'd rather not be in this game.

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I agree with a lot of your points; the gameplay is unnecessarily frustrating at some points and the plot is kinda lacking; but I think Zephiel is being sold a little short. He's not super deep or anything, but among FE villains he's pretty unique. Most main villains in the series are either irredeemably, cartoon-villain evil (Gharnef, Ashnard, Validar, Garon) or use the cop-out of "they're good guys being mind-controlled" (Hardin, Julius, Lyon). I guess Nergal kinda shows regret at the end of FE7 if you meet a bunch of obscure requirements that make him say six more words, but he pretty much falls into the first category.

I can't think of another game in the series where the primary villain you're chasing is presented as a OK person with a really warped perspective, who isn't being mind-controlled (albeit I guess influenced by Jahn). I mean, obviously he still does hella bad things, but you get the impression Zephiel thinks it's all in service of the right thing, rather than just being mindless destruction. His viewpoint isn't all that sensible or sympathetic, but I think a plot gains a little more nuance when the villain has their own legitimate beliefs and insists they're the good guy. Idk, I know it's not a high bar to clear, I just prefer that to Ashnard just wanting to be mega-strong or Garon being possessed by Satan, lol.

Edited by TheCosmicDude
zephiel isn't really "basically an OK person", lol
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1 hour ago, TheCosmicDude said:

but I think Zephiel is being sold a little short.

I think Zephiel suffered the most from really not doing or saying much at all. I agree with your points, and I brought it up as well; he actually manages to score some sympathy points and his will is all his own. I like that, but I really think the guy needed some more screen time. I also believe his motives could've been more fleshed out if, for example, he said that the War Dragons die quickly, but they're merely tools to be used to clear the world of humanity, which would bring the dragons back from the remote corners of the world where they have hidden. It doesn't sit well with me that the War Dragons themselves are his end goal. 

Also, Walhart isn't possessed and also wants to remake the world in his image by uniting the world under his banner. 

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That's fair. The thing with his motivation is, like @ping was getting at, Zephiel says in Chapter 22 that he's fine with the dragons being mindless weapons, because human reason and emotion are exactly what he hates (seeing as it was his father's jealousy and trickery that caused him so much pain). His viewpoint isn't necessarily sensible, but I understand why he arrived there and I actually have some sympathy for him. But, I can also see why his goal seems shallow.

I'm fine with him not appearing too much, but I would have liked to hear one or two more scenes where he talks about or at least hints at his reason for what he's doing, as opposed to his one big speech.

As for Walhart, I agree but I was talking more about main villains; Walhart is really only relevant for a decent chunk in the middle of Awakening. There are plenty of side villains or bosses throughout the series that are cast as relatable or tragic, all the way back to Camus in FE1. (Ofc Walhart isn't in the same vein as him, but still)

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