#but her gameplay is pretty niche + she’s a 4-star + she doesn’t seem to be very popular in general

[ninas-gf]

part of me thinks that hyv originally intended for sara to have more of a presence in events and stuff

[sothe]

I finished Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE and I liked it a lot more than I thought I would..so I tried to make the main cast into FEH units...explanations under the cut.

Itsuki Aoi - Everyman

Type - Sword Infantry 

BST - 163

Stats - HP (43) Attack (34) Speed (36) Defense (25) Resistance (25)

Weapon - Idol Falchion (Effective against dragon units, Inflicts -7 Attack to unit on enemy team with the highest Attack until their next action, Grants Def/Res +3 to adjacent allied units)

Assist - Rally Up Atk/Spd+ (Grants Attack/Speed +4 to target ally and all allies within two spaces of target, excluding unit, for one turn)

Special - Aether

A Skill - Fury 3

B Skill - Chill Speed 

C Skill - N/A

Explanation: Itsuki is an all-arounder type of unit. His stats look impressive, but that’s due to Fury’s +3 to all stats. Chill Attack in his weapon and Chill Speed as his skill give him a supportive niche...that I just realized Soren has with his tome. But whatever, Soren is a green mage and Lon’qu and Raven have the same refine so just let me have this. Rally Up Atk/Spd is something that i see coming since Ophelia brought the first Rally Up skill and it took a little bit for dual rallies to come out. Most of the Falchion users have some support based bonus granted by their sword so I made Itsuki’s help out allies instead of himself since in TMS he is usually helping instead being on the forefront. (Story-wise, gameplay wise he is force deployed whether you want him or not lmaoo) He doesn’t have his own show or song, but he’s always helping his friends with their show business jobs. 

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Tsubasa Oribe - Dreamer

Type - Flying Lance Singer

BST - 150

Stats - HP (32) Attack (31) Speed (37) Defense (24) Resistance (26)

Weapon - Ethereal Feather (If Sing is used on an allied unit grants unit another action and heals unit 10 HP)

Assist - Sing

Special - N/A

A Skill - HP/Atk 2

B Skill - Aerobatics 3

C Skill - Distant Guard 3

Explanation: So she could have just been a regular Peg Knight but since in TMS her main focus is becoming an idol I made her a singer/refresher. Her Weapon is supportive and not offensive because tbh...she doesn’t have the best offensive capabilities compared to Touma, the other lance user in TMS. He beats her in raw physical dmg, but she destroys him in the magic department, BUT Kiria takes the cake for best magic user so Tsubasa is best used as a support healer with some offensive moves thrown in. Distant Guard helps give her teammates some extra def/res and Aerobatics help her get to her teammates, but Wings of Mercy is easily another skill that could be there. IS hasn’t actually given a dancer/singer WoM so I figured it was just taboo for them and I was ‘trying’ to go for realism.

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Touma Akagi - Just an Extra

Type - Lance Cavalier 

BST - 157

Stats - HP (42) Attack (35) Speed (28) Defense (31) Resistance (21)

Weapon - Brionac (Grants Atk+3, If units attack is greater than enemies attack then special cooldown -1 for each attack)

Assist - Shove

Special - Growing Flame

A Skill - Atk/Def Solo 3

B Skill - Quick Riposte 3

C Skill - N/A

Explanation: Touma is best boy. Ok, but he is my favorite of the cast and his whole journey as a character is him trying to become a hero people look up to. So I wanted his kit to represent that. His weapon has Heavy Blade built into it since he is pretty slow and he needs the extra cooldown reductions. He has Atk/Def solo to represent his want of being a hero on his own and he has Shove to get a nearby ally away from him so he can take advantage of his skill. Quick Riposte would have been his go-to B skill so I just gave it to him and it makes sense for the kit. TBH no one in this game is slow...besides Mamori so I put him in the high attack/def, low speed category since I didn’t want all the builds to look the same?

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Kiria Kurono - Poker Face

Type - Green Infantry Mage

BST - 140

Stats - HP (32) Attack (34) Speed (30) Defense (15) Resistance (29)

Weapon - Sharur (Grants Res +3, if unit is adjacent to an ally at the start of the turn then ally and unit granted Atk/Spd +3)

Assist - Sing

Special - N/A

A Skill - N/A

B Skill - Chill Res 3

C Skill - Spd Ploy 3

Explanation: Kiria is another one of my favorite characters, her cool demeanor and hidden love for cute things is fun. (Plus her aesthetic is on point) She is the resident magic nuke of the bunch, and even though I gave her lower BST than regular mages I tried to represent that as well. Kind of anyways, she is already an established idol by the begining of the game so I made her a refresher. I wanted her to be supportive since a refresher’s job is to help teammates and give extra turns, but I also tried to make her a threat. Her weapon Sharur grants an adjacent ally, and Kiria herself, +3 Atk/Spd. The buff coupled with Spd Ploy gives her a decent offensive presence if needed. Chill Res is to help her and any other mages on her team, and Spd Ploy is just helpful all around. 

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Eleonora Yumizuru - Rising Star

Type - Blue Infantry Archer

BST - 150

Stats - HP (35) Attack (32) Speed (38) Defense (23) Resistance (22)

Weapon - Pinaka (Grants Def +3, After combat, if unit attacked, inflicts status on target and foes within 2 spaces of target preventing counterattacks through their next actions)

Assist - N/A

Special - Blazing Thunder

A Skill - Mirror Strike 2

B Skill - Windsweep 3

C Skill - N/A

Explanation: So Eleonora grew on me since at first she seemed supper arrogant, but through her side missions and with her appearances in other side stories she shows a lot of character that would be missed otherwise. She’s like the groups big sister, and ironically she’s younger than most of the cast, but like Yashiro and Kiria she’s been in the entertainment industry longer than Itsuki, Tsubasa, Touma, and Mamori so she has the knowledge. So in TMS she has quite a few moves that inflict status effects like Charm, Poison, etc. I tried representing that in her weapon which acts like the healer stave Candlelight+. Blazing Thunder is because her affinity is electric imo since she learns more electric attacks than any other magic element. That’s also my reasoning for making her a blue archer since thunder mages are usually represented in FEH as blue. Windsweep is to apply the Candlelight debuff safely on physical units with DC, and Mirror Strike is to even out her defenses if she were to initiate on a Dragon unit or mage.

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Mamori Minamoto - Microwave Idol

Type - Green Axe Armor

BST - 175

Stats - HP (46) Attack (35) Speed (27) Defense (36) Resistance (31)

Weapon - Holy Axe (Grants Res +3, Allies within two spaces of unit are granted Def/Res +3 during combat)

Assist - N/A

Special - Pavise

A Skill - N/A

B Skill - Vengeful Fighter 3

C Skill - Close Guard 3

Explanation: So Mamori is the newest mirage master and she’s the most supportive of all of them. She literally protects her friends from attacks and takes them herself. So I tried to make her supportive in a defensive way. Her weapon Holy Axe gives her more Res and is basically Drive Def/Res for any allies within two spaces. Pavise hearkens to her Radiant Skill that reduces dmg taken when she protects an ally. Vengeful Fighter is just disgustingly good and she’s an armor who isn’t fast enough for Special Fighter and since she has the stats for defense instead of offense I chose VF. Close Guard is also supposed to be a callback to her protecting skills. 

Something to note is that the cast is sort of split into singers and actors. All the characters cross into the other form of entertainment at some point in the game, and Mamori is more focused on becoming a singer over becoming an actor or something. BUT an armored singer would be weird so I just didn’t make her one...

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Yashiro Tsurugi - Cold Hearted

Type - Red Sword Infantry

BST - 149

Stats - HP (37) Attack (34) Speed (37) Defense (22) Resistance (22)

Weapon - Futsuno Mitama (At the start of the turn enemies within two spaces of unit receive -5 Atk/Spd)

Assist - Sing

Special - N/A

A Skill - Spd/Def Bond 3

B Skill - N/A

C Skill - Spur Atk/Def 2

Explanation: Yashiro is a good representation for the ‘enemy becomes an ally’ trope. I feel like that’s a spoiler but it’s not like he does anything super important as an ‘enemy’ he’s just the typical angsty “I’m just measuring your abilities” guy for a while until he decides Itsuki and co are cool enough to hang with. MOST of the time I dislike those characters since if I was Itsuki I would have called bullshit and told him to screw off, but Yashiro has the best character growth throughout the game imo. He’s a myrmidon so high atk/spd and low defenses, but since I made him a Singer due to his established Idol status his defenses are...bad. His skills are offensive and defensive since I wanted him to be potent as a killer and decent as a support. His weapon is both supportive and offensive as well since it debuffs for either him or an ally to take out the enemy.

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Tiki - Mirage Uta-loid

Type - Green Infantry Dragon

BST - 150

Stats - HP (33) Attack (32) Speed (36) Defense (22) Resistance (27)

Weapon - Divine Songstone (Grants ally atk/spd/def/res +3 when refreshed, also if foe is ranged targets lower of the foes defense or resistance)

Assist - Sing

Special - N/A

A Skill - N/A

B Skill - Wings of Mercy 3

C Skill - Guidance 3

Explanation: So Tiki isn’t playable, but she does play a big part of the story and she’s well known in the FEH community so I made her into a unit as well. I keep saying the word supportive in these explanations but Tiki literally can’t help with anything offensive besides forging weapons for the main cast to use. So her Songstone grants the Uror/Skuld buffs, Wings of Mercy is taboo for a refresher to have by default but I don’t care, and then Guidance is to help ferry her team. In TMS Tiki exists as an Vocaloid like Hatsune Miku, but they call them Uta-loids(?) so she is also a refresher. This build was mostly for fun and had the least amount of thought put into it. :)

[jonathanraychapman]

My Thoughts on Current FGO

I’ve been playing Fate Grand Order (a mobile game) since a few months after it came out.  While I don’t want to throw out a monetary number, I’ve spent nearly as much money as Touhou or Shotgun Shogun on this game.  I’ve played every event except the first Nerofest - leveling up characters and skills along the way.  I’ve been following the anime series since it first came out and that’s first and foremost what got me into this game.  I play the game quite a bit.  It’s how I start my morning.  Sometimes it’s how I spend my lunch (jamming to music in my car and playing the game to get away from the office).  I often play the game while watching movies or videos or while hiking.  It’s something I can do with my mobile phone to pass the time.

Anyways, here’s some of my thoughts on the game.  This is partially to explain my position playing it to people that follow me and partially to give Shotgun Shogun some ideas for talking to the creators at anime conventions.

Things I like about the game:  

The Flexible Difficulty:  It’s as hard or as easy as you make it out to be.  If you’re in the farming mood you can either brute-force the game with your powerful servants or take your time and use the less-used characters in your roster (with more-casual characters that have fun interactions).  This customization of gameplay is extended - based on the class system and ability to use command seals.   If those archers are too easy, then fight them with a neutral class.  Really want a challenge?  Bring your sabers to fight the uphill battle.  This carries over to events with the different tiers and challenge quests.  I do wish the tiers had some niche or reason to play them for flavor or secondary advantage.

The Humor:  The translations are pretty good overall and some of the dialogs or in-jokes in the game are fun.  Sometimes I wish that - story-wise - FGO would dial things back to scary or dramatic or intense more.  You get a little taste of this sometimes (like Liz’s scenes during the Kara no Kyoukai event - where she realizes what she’s done in her lore).  While I enjoy my Tamamo/Kiyo memes or Blackbeard lolli humor, I want more balance.  The Camelot storyline was a pretty good example of how things should be while the London story was not great.  If you were just playing the game you might not get the dramatic story behind characters (it’s like FGO is just the meme version of the series).

The Art:  I think the game does a fantastic job on the details in the backgrounds.  And I like the different art on the characters and their noble phantasms.  The music is great too (especially some of the event music), but I mostly leave the sound turned off (since non-skippable NP animations get really repetitive).

The Lore:  The lore of the series is a huge part of the appeal of this game.  And it’s not necessarily even done by the game as much as the anime and visual novel games that precede it.  It’s fine for the game to ride on the coat-tails of the story as long hints to character lore are preserved out (and they are for the most part).  I do get the feeling that the mobile game is sort of a meme of Fate moreso than I would have expected.  That might be because half of the events are around holidays and those really are where the game breaks the fourth wall (it’s also mostly what I remember because of all the grinding).

Things I dislike about the game:

Lack of Player Interactions:  The only way we have to interact with other players in the game is through the friends list and guest system.  Unless you know people in real life, this make the game overall a pretty cold experience.  I know the can of worms that having chat would open up, but man it would be nice to let people know what you like and maybe don’t like about their servant lineup.  I’d also love to add different kinds of supports.  I want to share Tamamo for arts teams to use while having Waver for other teams.  I’d like to share my Nero Bride for her skills while letting people use my Okita for stars or for her NP damage (or my Saber Artoria for farming).  A friend can only bring one of your servants (and it’s mandatory) so why not give them more options?

Lack of Company/Community Communication:  So I have watched the convention events when I could to see what’s coming up, but those are far and few between (and there’s been a lot of problems with news being held back because of a convention).  That’s just not how to run things - especially online.  The communication just really isn’t there with the player base and it hasn’t gotten better.  Often the twitter account will post about events that started days ago so if I had relied on that for news, I would be in a bad spot (I’d be a couple of days behind on farming an event).  And the events are kind of odd (like last year’s Thanksgiving banner).  When seeing announcements through streams, It’s like watching the event in another country (maybe because there’s a lot of Japanese and a lot of translating and it’s not done very well).  I get the voice actors being Japanese and I get that the game is natively Japanese in origin, but this is the US market and a US port/translation of the game.  Please get a more-native PR spokesperson that’s also enthusiastic about the game and add more polish to these announcements.

Can’t Skip Noble Phantasm Animations:  I’ve read about this being a purposeful decision and I get that the company wants players to take time to watch the art for the experience (and likely psychological reasons), but after seeing the Arash explosion for the literal 1000th time, it’s not adding to my experience.  And that’s a quick animation.  There’s also the animations that seem to take forever (like the Lancer Artoria one).  I wish that tapping the screen would somehow shorten the NP.  Also, often when the animation finishes, I can barely see the numbers on the damage before the whole screen wipes.  Sometimes I’m trying to figure out if an enemy was demonic by testing it with a NP or skill and it’s just hard to with the NP animation obfuscating things.  It would also be great to be able to see the traits of enemies.  I’d like to know if a skeleton is a humanoid because my Florence gets a buff against that type.  Or I’d like to know if the Skeleton King is considered demonic to use my Rama against.  I know later in Japan we get to see the crit star distribution, but I’m not sure if we ever get to see attributes.

Gatcha System Too Greedy (And the Statistics Inaccurate):  FGO is a gambling game and I totally get that.  The company might not want to admit that too freely out of fear or regulation, but the players know it’s about getting players to spend money to roll for characters.  I absolutely enjoy spending money and gambling for characters and I’m fine with it being this way.  But the rates are just really bad and the side-rewards (i.e. CE/Character cards you burn) don’t justify the expenditure.  I don’t want to dwell on this too much because I’m sure others have called it out, but the game gives too little back while gambling.  When you do a 10-spin and get a minimum roll (meaning a 4-star junk CE), it really feels like you got cheated.  I also frequently have one five-star character on rate-up - meaning I have a 0.07% chance of rolling them, only to go through two or three other five-star servants before getting the one on rate-up (and the chance of that is extremely low).  I know it’s not just my bad luck.  There’s definitely something wrong with the rate-up statistics posted (I’ve just seen it happen too many times over thousands and thousands of quartz).   Also, the banners could be tweaked to let people have a good chance one one servant or the other.  When you put up a banner with two five-stars on rate-up (one of which I don’t exactly like or I already have a NP5 of), it’s not a banner I’m going to roll on.

Farming Materials Too Tedious:  I get that you need long-term goals to feel like you’re progressing as a player, but some of the materials requirements are just kind of ridiculous in regards to the amount of time needed.  When you grind a free node with a supposed 19% chance to drop crystals for 8 hours to maybe get 10 crystals (when you need 20 per skill), that’s just not fun.  It’s also ridiculous when an event drops and gives you easy access to crystals or the rate is now 60% or you can buy 10 from the shop for basically nothing.  It just doesn’t feel rewarding and it makes you have to grind the game when you don’t really want to (especially around holidays).  That’s just too much of a grind for most players and it takes a toll on me as well.  Take hearts for example.  Right now, you can spend a whole day and maybe get one heart from a caster daily node.  So you basically have to get these during events or from their shops.  And there’s a lot of servants requiring a lot of hearts.

I’ll be honest.  I’ve either burned or not rolled for characters after looking at their materials requirements (Tristran I’m looking at you).  I don’t want that character sitting in my roster with low skills and I don’t want to grind it out to increase their skills if they’re just not good.  So I just avoid the whole thing (especially if they’re not someone I exactly care for).  The same is true for characters that just have really weak kits but high-end requirements (like Stheno).

Can’t Really Customize Characters:  I know we get a few some skins/costumes later-on, but more of this would be a really welcome addition to the game.  Maybe just being able to change colors on the outfits or buy skins would do so much to make the game feel more personable.  If part of the appeal of this game is the waifu thing, then why not lean into this area more and make some money.  And if it was implemented, let it be a DLC type of purchase instead of a gatcha thing.  Or maybe it could be a secondary reward for excess servants or gold mana prisms - like something to do with the 11th copy of Fion you’ve picked up.  Every character in the game should have alternate costume/skin options.