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[theresattrpgforthat]

Any TTRPG recommendations for fans of Fire Emblem's gameplay? Specifically the lite-tactics combat and the class-change system?

THEME: Fire Emblem.

Alright, so I had to call in a friend to explain the class-change system you’re talking about in Fire Emblem. Based on his explanation, it sounds like this involves being able to switch your character class and carry-over some of your previous class abilities, but also experiencing a different style of play or strategy.

I’m not confident that the games I found do exactly what you’re looking for, but I have some thoughts about where you can start looking if you decide to play with mechanics a little bit to make an experience work for you!

Tacticians of Ahm, by Meatcastle Gameware.

Tacticians of Ahm is a tactical combat-focused tabletop roleplaying game in the corrupt3d fantasy world of Ahm. A bit-rotten blight has appeared in the Northern Sea and from it flows the Corrupt1on, fractured light and shattered shapes sowing chaos across the realm. As Tacticians, you alone are prepared to face the darkness spreading across the lands and reunite the scattered peoples of Ahm.

What I think you’re really going to like about Tacticians of Ahm is the tactics and combat - it gives you the thrill of moving your little guys around on the grid, but rules-wise it advertises itself as streamlined and fast. The game also definitely has classes, with abilities and attack patterns restricted to / defined by your character class. Your character is also definitely levelling up, with at least 4 levels in the game in its current iteration. I don’t think this game uses currently uses class changes, although it’s still in a non-final stage of development, so I’m not 100% sure what character level looks like.

Fabula Ultima, by Need Games.

FABULA ULTIMA is a Tabletop Roleplaying Game inspired by Japanese-style console RPGs, or JRPGs.  In Fabula Ultima, you and your friends will tell epic stories of would-be heroes and fearsome villains, set in fantasy worlds brimming with magic, wondrous locations, and uniquely bizarre monsters!

If what you’re looking for is diversity in character options, Fabula Ultima will definitely have something for you. Beginning characters must have 2 different classes at minimum, and after you level up a certain amount, your character is expected to take on a new class. However, you’re not leaving your old classes behind; your character is growing and expanding their skill set as you play. The fighting mechanics are also somewhat streamlined, with your hit and your weapon damage determined in a single roll, but I don’t think they’re as abstracted as, say, a Powered by the Apocalypse game or Forged in the Dark.

In terms of genre, Fabula Ultima is very much inspired by Final Fantasy, but not exclusively. I’ve heard Final Fantasy and Fire Emblem being mentioned side by side in various contexts, so I think if what you love about Fire Emblem is also commonly seen in other JRPGs, you might feel at home here.

Relics of Empire, by Prey Species.

Relics of Empire is a tactical skirmish ttrpg that takes heavy inspiration from Fire Emblem, Tactics Ogre, and Mordheim.  Best played with 1-3 people, Tacticians will develop their own Units and fill up their armies, while the Game Master develops a campaign and villainous factions for the Tacticians to tackle. Tacticians will level up their Units, unlock new weapons, and even discover secret Classes hidden behind locked missions.

I’m seeing some similar terminology in this game description, and the mention of unlocking classes as you play sounds like it might give you the thrill of discovering new ways to use your character in a way similar to changing classes in Fire Emblem. I noticed that the pdf attached to the storefront says 5e, but from the description, it sounds like the game designer is using a combat system and a role-play system, using terms that don’t feel like they match the stats and systems of D&D.

Heroes of Lite, by nattwentea.

A Tabletop Roleplaying Game created to emulate the Fire Emblem experience, Heroes of Lite takes inspiration from games across the entire Fire Emblem series. Most prominent are influences from the Radiance games, Sacred Stones, Awakening, Three Houses and the mobile game Heroes. Being that Fire Emblem games run a lot of math under the hood and that emulating that math in a TTRPG context would be both painstaking and time-consuming, Heroes of Lite streamlines mechanics when possible. The result is a game that is easy to play either digitally or traditionally.

Heroes of Lite uses a d20 system that might be familiar to folks who are acquainted with the rules of 5e, with detailed and crunchy character creation and combat that centres itself around different weapon types. The creator describes the rules system as “streamlined,” but the game certainly feels a bit more on the trad side compared to the rules-lite games that I typically surround myself with. There’s a few sign posts that make this game feel very tactical to me - your characters have movement types, which determine how they move (or don’t move) through terrain, and a heavy differentiation between different weapons types, meaning that you’ll likely have advantages and disadvantages for whatever you choose to wield on the field of battle.

When it comes to the themes of Fire Emblem, Heroes of Lite is probably the most on-the-nose out of what I’ve found, but I’m not necessarily certain that it’s the play experience that you’re looking for. Luckily the system is pay-what-you-want, so you should be able to check out the rules for free to decide whether or not it’s for you!

Cloudbreaker Alliance, by CJ Leung

Two thousand years ago, for reasons that remained unknown, darkened clouds fell from the sky to engulf the world. What followed was the near obliteration of all civilizations by rampaging monsters that lurked within the murky mist. That event came to be known as Cloudfall.

Cloudbreaker Alliance is a counter-apocalyptic tabletop roleplaying game about reconnecting with long-lost civilizations and uniting against the monsters that destroyed the world two millennia ago.

The Kickstarter for Cloudbreaker Alliance describes your class system as a mix-and-match system that expects you to create a unique character by multi-classing as you level up, or even take ranks in extra classes. It looks like you can switch your character classes out for something else, but judging by the levelling system (accumulating XP after every mission to gain levels) it doesn’t look like your character completely re-sets if they switch classes.

If you want to learn more about how this game works, you can check out this series of introductory videos, published on Don’t Stop Thinking’s YouTube Channel. (#6 covers multi-classing specifically!)

Terra Machina, by rollbard.

Over the course of millennia, what began as a world of fantasy and myth advances beyond its ages of primitivity, agriculture, conquest, exploration, and industry. It is now an age of technology. Life transpires on the spectrum of science and sorcery. It is a world where the gods of the machine coexist with the gods of the natural world. Welcome to Terra Machina.

Terra Machina is a tabletop RPG that imagines a fantastical world where time has passed to the point where technology is just as powerful as magic. Taking inspiration from Japanese roleplaying video games of the 32-bit console era, it is a unique experience that hopes to combine the best elements of fantasy, science fiction, and action.

Another d20 game with an XP-leveling system and a concept of character classes, Terra Machina feels unique on this list mostly due to the way you improve your character. You spend your experience points bit by bit to gradually improve your character sheet, choosing a single improvement every time. These improvements might be stat or skill bonuses, but you can also choose to gain a new skill from something called a Class Crystal, or to gain a new Class Crystal alogether. You can multi-class in Terra Machina, but you have a class cap of three - if you want to take on a new class after the fact, you must swap it with something you already had.

Since levelling is incremental, I think you might get that experience of improving stat bonuses (and keeping them) while switching out class abilities when you tire of what you have. Unlike a few other games on this list, rather than choosing from a list of weapons, it looks like you can design weapons from scratch, with outlines as to how expensive it should be to create that weapon, and what kind of modifiers you can add to make it unique.

Theme-wise, I don’t think Terra Machina fits with the genre or setting of Fire Emblem, other than the fact that it’s inspired by JRPGS. Then again, when I checked the rulebook, most of what I saw was rules and stat blocks, and little to no lore, so it’s possible that you could take the game rules and play with them to fit a setting that works better for you.

Other Thoughts..

Funnily enough, if you dive into a completely different side of design, I think Powered by the Apocalypse games can do a little bit of what you’re looking for, because while you can keep a few stats and abilities when you take the “choose another playbook” option that is present in so many PbtA games, your character class can change quite drastically when you choose a new playbook. Typically I’m playing PbtA games to explore different character journeys, so I don’t know if there’s a game out there that’s as tactical as you like, and I don’t think that you’re going to see the difference in character competency as you play in the same way a levelling system will give you, but I do think it’s kind of neat that switching playbooks can give you a different play experience even though the rules feel a lot simpler. You might also be interested in Lancer and games that branch out of it from a mechanical standpoint, even if the genre is far afield from what you're looking for. Each time you gain another license level, you can choose to either upgrade your current license or spec into an additional license - and you might be able to rule that players can dump the license levels they took previously in a system they no longer want in order to upgrade a different license level even further. You can still hold onto stat bonuses that are attached to your character though, since your character is separate from their mech.

[emblemxeno]

Cindered Shadows Thoughts

Btw if you don't wanna see thoughts on my 3H playthrough block this tag #playing fe3h

-Finished it in exactly 8 hours, at least 2 of which could've been an email /s

-It is truly a microcosm of my foundational issues with 3H as a whole, besides two things

-One is that exploration isn't as tedious because Abyss isn't as big as the monastery, but I guess that isn't really a point in its favor since that's the whole point lol

-The second is I feel like Byleth's dialogue and text selections with the characters is a bit better. There's less instances of , what I describe as "characters extrapolating how Byleth feels in 1-2 text boxes before actually responding to what they said", which I swear is a cause for why the main game reads as if it's 10% longer than it's supposed to be.

-IMO unique map objectives don't save map design that's pretty uninteresting at the end of the day.

The first map's layout is cool! Until it gets reused in chapter 4, where it's only saving grace is a new objective utilizing prior knowledge established in chapter 1. Clever, but still a reuse in a game that infamously spams repeat maps. And outside of Chapters 2 (a slog where you defeat enemies in waves which isn't fun in FE) and 7 (a cramped hall where you have to brace against a monster boss), the other maps are reused from the base game, even chapter 3 is a slightly modified sealed forest.

-Combat itself is so slow, I'm really just debating turning off animations in general when tackling the main game. Not only do the animations take forever, but they don't look interesting, are surrounded by washed out textures and models, and-my personal biggest grievance-have absolutely no momentum nor weight behind them. The Tellius games, from what I've seen, yeah the animations take decades, but from a visual and sound design point, fighting feels significant. 3H also being sandwiched between Echoes (the gorgeous culmination of handheld 3D Fire Emblem presentation after half a decade) and Engage (which to me set a new, high bar standard for 3D FE presentation going forward) is an extremely unfortunate situation and I feel really sorry for it.

-Music still hits though, Shackled Wolves never gets old

-Another thing that 3H does that this DLC reminds me of is the amount of -Stand Around- cutscenes there are. It confused me that Engage gets the most heat for this, when this game does it more, due to more drawn out dialogue, simpler camera angles, stiffer models with fewer animations, and an absolutely diabolical background setup. For a game with an expository selling point, it repeatedly falls short at being engaging in a visual sense, with its scenes always being saved by the phenomenal voice acting. Almost always, at least. The scenes where the Wolves are getting their blood drained while they just stand there is so jarring and bad, it's nearly funny, when it's obviously not supposed to be given the lines, their delivery, and the accompanying music.

-The story from A to B is sweet I guess, but given that the devs said the Cindered Shadows version of events is basically non-canon to what happens in the main game sours me on it. Like, yeah it's cool that the Wolves can technically be capable enough to do it offscreen on their own, but then what's the incentive then for me to recruit them beyond the player's pre-established care? There's no narrative payoff in the grand scheme :/

-Also the whole plot is "what if Yuri, Rhea and somewhat Claude/Linhardt do everything and also these other goobers are here" which became really funny, because after a while even the lines had characters deliberating the sheer amount of coincidences and melodrama that was occurring. 3H style writing shoved into an 8 hour timeframe is accelerated, exhausting nonsense.

-Sothis not being in the plot is fine, because even though it doesn't make sense why she wouldn't comment, it's not like there's anything of value she would contribute beyond her usual schtick of "bratty banter, where are my memories, i sleep now".

Not having Jeralt though? Absolutely ridiculous. I don't like Jeralt as a character (he's my idea of pretty face and that's it), but there's no convincing me why he couldn't be here but Alois can. Love Alois! But he was a device used to have the Knights on standby and nothing more, which Jeralt could've done and it would've let him have a proper impact on the ordeal with Aelfric.

Speaking of which, revisiting this DLC had me thinking... wow this love of Aelfric is veering very close to cult-like, and it's cut short after chapter 5 because we don't go back to abyss once that map's done. I'm left with wondering how the Abyss denizens would feel after knowing that their caretaker was Like That™️, which is a completely foreign feeling to me when discussing 3H's narrative since the game normally never lets it be remotely unclear how the characters or the player should feel about anything ever. So... props for that for making me flex that part of my brain! You did it Fodlan, the creepy custodian plotline that was left dangling was great fridge horror material.

-The constant suspicion throwing and animosity towards Rhea and the church is tiring as usual, and also sometimes downright baseless. Like, at one point it's said that orphans are among those who are relegated to Abyss or otherwise ignored on the surface which is flat out not fucking true, Rhea literally takes in former bandit kids and Remire orphans, what are we doing here.

-Balthus has a cringe "fight the system line" meanwhile he's an irresponsible jackass pushing 30; Constance is written like a joke; Hapi's writing is a joke; Yuri is as incomprehensibly competent and storied as ever and I love that cuz it's nonsense.

-Overall, not godawful terrible, but nothing in it that's worth coming back to in my eyes.

[airlock]

mathematically determining the best cooks in Fire Emblem Engage

I need to keep my hands busy to focus in class, and the way I usually accomplish this is by punishing them with some inane statistic exercise. in my most recent one, I calculated the odds of the meal outcomes from every FE17 character, and then took a stab at ranking them accordingly

these are, do duly note, not objective rankings per se; some subjective judgement goes into deciding what kinds of chance spreads are better than others -- plus, while these are ordered within the tiers, many characters do tie against each other numerically, meaning I can only tiebreak between them by basing myself on textual information

in any case, below the cut I'll provide a more in-depth analysis of each blorbo's cooking proficiency, as well as a short explanation of how the cooking roll works

so, what's cooking, good-looking?

I'm citing information from Serenes Forest, which in turn has pulled mostly from the official Fire Emblem Engage guidebook.

the basic odds on a given cooking session are thusly:

55% chance of one of the character's personal Meal Titles

35% chance of a D-rank meal

10% chance of a E, F or G-rank meal

each character has 3 personal Meal Titles assigned to them -- you know, those prefixes that run the gamut of "Firene-Style", "Spicy", "Your Favorite", etc. each of those titles is also affixed to a specific rank of meal, which can potentially vary from as high as SS to as low as G (although none of them are D-rank).

effectively, this means that the meal titles available to a character determine if and how often they'll ever soar high with their cooking. thusly, the quality of the characters' meal titles determines where the chances fall for them.

(actually using meal ingredients, and/or having the character cook meals they're Expert, Skilled or Capable with, increases the chances of landing a personal meal title and decreases the chances of a forcibly D~G-rank meal. if they're Eager with the meal, the chances of a personal title AND the chances of an E~G meal both increase, with the chances of a D-rank meal plumetting.)

with that out of the way, let's get in-depth!

X-TIER: The Master Chef

1st place: Bunet (40% S-SS, 0% A, 15% B, 35% C-D, 10% E-G)

shocking news for us to start with here: lit oventops are hot, and Bunet, the guy whose literal job is to cook excellently... can, in fact, cook excellently,

the specifics are somewhat worth enumerating, at least. Bunet is, for starters, the only character in the entire game with more than one S-rank or higher personal meal title, which makes him likelier than anyone else to hit the absolute highest marks. speaking of which -- the absolute ABSOLUTE highest mark, double-S-rank, is only available at all to two characters in the game, of which one is, naturally, Bunet here.

and of course, all the chance spreads I'm providing here assume a meal with no ingredients given and with which the character has no expertise; cook more normally, and you'll be inching ever closer to the point where he bangs out a meal to die for as often as 50% of the time.

S-TIER: Great Cooks

2nd place: Clanne (20% S-SS, 35% A, 0% B, 35% C-D, 10% E-G)

3rd~4th place: Goldmary, Zelkov (20% S-SS, 20% A, 15% B, 35% C-D, 10% E-G)

5th place: Gregory (15% S-SS, 20% A, 20% B, 35% C-D, 10% E-G)

we start this one with a slightly more unexpected outcome! yes, Clanne is indeed the second best cook in the entire game, ahead of Goldmary, and actually not so far behind Bunet that the comparison would actually be as crazy as it sounds. let's take stock of it.

all of Clanne's meal titles are either S-rank or A-rank. therefore, even if you're making him cook unfamiliar recipes without a single ingredient, there's a 55% chance he'll come out of the kitchen with a culinary miracle in his hands -- better than Bunet's 40% chances in such a scenario (as he has one B-rank personal title), and indeed, better than absolutely anyone else's chances. although he can never hit the elusive double-S-rank, Clanne's chances of cooking wonderfully only increase the more you don't subject him to utterly ridiculous conditions.

long story short, this kid makes a good fucking pickle.

narrowly yet still decisively behind comes along Goldmary -- and, numerically tied with her in another interesting twist, Zelkov. they're both capable of landing an S-rank meal, and also bat at A or higher a very solid 40% of the time. comparing the two to each other, naturally the text is far more supportive of Goldmary's cooking ability, and besides, the A-rank title that she can hit, Decadent, just sounds better than Zelkov's, which is Trendy.

inching just behind those two we have Gregory, with a very similar chance spread, just weighted 5% less in favour of hitting S-ranks.

A-TIER: Solid Cooks

6th~7th place: Framme, Timerra (40% A, 15% B, 35% C-D, 10% E-G)

8th place: Céline (15% S-SS, 0% A, 40% B, 35% C-D, 10% E-G)

9th~13th place: Merrin, Louis, Amber, Rosado (20% A, 35% B, 35% C-D, 10% E-G)

one tier down, we start looking at characters who (with one exception) aren't capable of coming through with an S-rank meal, but nonetheless have outstanding odds, etching high results frequently.

Framme and Timerra share an excellent 40% chance to make A-rank meals, as well as an overall 55% chance of batting at B-rank or higher (technically the same as Bunet, you may recall). comparing the two of them, I go off their A-rank personal meal titles -- Framme's "Divine" sounds best of all, although "Your Favorite" doesn't speak to much being that I don't know what kind of food Alear likes actually; whereas Timerra's "Courageous" and "Audacious" have me thinking that A-rank might be a pretty generous way to describe what sounds less like cooking skill and more like... inventiveness.

Céline figures here, another one boasting a 55% chance of making B-rank or higher meals. she doesn't often exceed B-rank, but when she does, it's for the S-rank.

and lastly, we have a close tie between Merrin, Louis, Amber and Rosado. not only are their chance spreads identical, but they have quite similar personal meal titles as well, with all of them potentially hitting their local "[country]-style" meal -- which is non-indicative -- and with all but Rosado also sharing the "Extremely Rich" B-rank title. comparing A-rank titles, Merrin's best is "Tasteful", Louis and Rosado share "Dainty", and Amber comes out with "Robust". and to the best of my knowledge, the only one whose cooking abilities are further remarked on textually is Rosado, who falls noticeably short of Goldmary (but still valiantly tries to make up the difference).

B-TIER: Cooks with Potential

14th place: Anna (20% S-SS, 0% A, 15% B, 55% C-D, 10% E-G)

15th place: Boucheron (20% S-SS, 0% A, 15% B, 55% C-D, 10% E-G)

16~17th place: Saphir, Alcryst (15% S-SS, 0% A, 20% B, 55% C-D, 10% E-G)

our next several cooks are -- again with just one exception -- the last few in the game who are capable of landing S-rank meals. they just aren't quite as consistent as other characters who can do so, though -- so while they're not bad, the stars have to align for them to really show off their best.

Lady Anna firmly leads this tier as she is, in fact, the one character who shares Bunet's ability to make a double-S-rank meal -- "First-Rate", as it were. Boucheron has a very similar chance spread to her, but his absolute best is only S-rank instead of double-S.

Saphir and Alcryst tie for the spot beneath those two, being just that last 5% less likely to make miracles happen in the kitchen. between the two, Saphir is textually put up as an experienced-if-not-fancy cook, capable of going head-to-head with Goldmary on a good day -- whereas Alcryst's cooking skills do not, to my knowledge, ever directly come up in his supports, but we all know that at heart he's our failgirl even if he's doing surprisingly well here. (in fact -- better than diamant! pew pew peeeeeeew)

C-TIER: Decent Cooks

18th place: Seadall (55% B, 35% C-D, 10% E-G)

19th~20th place: Jean, Lapis (20% A, 15% B, 55% C-D, 10% E-G)

21st place: Nel (15% A, 20% B, 55% C-D, 10% E-G)

22nd place: Jade (40% B, 50% C-D, 10% E-G)

23rd~25th place: Lindon, Kagetsu, Fogado (35% B, 55% C-D, 10% E-G)

by this tier, we're looking at characters who can't possibly cook an S-rank meal, but still have fairly good chances of pulling out A- or B-rank meals; they are, thusly, some of the last characters on the roster that we could fairly describe as "good at cooking". indeed, this is also where we'll cross the 20th and 21st places, and therefore, the line past which we're looking at the bottom half of the list.

Seadall heads up this tier with a sterling 55% chance of producing a B-rank meal (although he is the first character we're looking at who can't possibly make something A-rank or higher). he'll get solid results more often than not, even when if you make him cook Florida Man-style. not bad for someone who's probably shaking and crying over the smell rising out of the cookpot the entire time

and speaking of filling up on smell alone, Jean and Lapis tie for the next spot with surprisingly robust rates. their personal meal titles both generally sound humble, even at A-rank, but at their most unremarkable, Jean's C-rank meals are described as "Fresh" (or "Carefully Crafted"), while Lapis's are "Kind of Odd" (or "Delightful"). my gut tells me that in Jean's case, the more unpleasant meals you're getting just taste too much like spearmint and cough syrup, but in Lapis's case, you might have to explain that no, actually, people don't normally add that crunchy finish by pouring on ground pebbles.

Nel is just narrowly below those two, being 5% less likely than them to land on an A-rank meal. she is pretty much the most bog-standard cook in the entire list, with her chances spread pretty evenly across the most normal outcomes.

Jade is similar to Seadall in her solid chances of managing at least a B-rank meal. that's what writers are well known for, after all: consistency. anyway, wow, look at that over there! it's a guy falling off a llama to distract you from me kicking my WIPs under a rug!

Lindon, Kagetsu and Fogado, being that precious last 5% less likely than Jade to make a B-rank meal, are where our chances having a nice meal are starting to get shakier, which they'll only get moreso as we continue going down the list. Lindon is ahead of the pack here textually; his culinary experiments might not be safe or entirely ethical, but surely he's learned a thing or two from performing them. the other two are very closely tied, and so once again, my best bet is to vote against the one who's sometimes coming out with "Kind of Odd" meals (and in this case, it would be Fogado).

D-TIER: Mediocre Cooks

26th place: Ivy (40% A, 0% B, 35% C-D, 25% E-G)

27th~28th place: Vander, Diamant (20% A, 15% B, 35% C-D, 30% E-G)

29th place: Alfred (20% A, 20% B, 35% C-D, 25% E-G)

30th place: Hortensia (35% B, 35% C-D, 30% E-G)

31st~32nd place: Madeline, Etie (20% B, 70% C-D, 10% E-G)

33rd place: Citrinne (15% B, 75% C-D, 10% E-G)

34th~35th place: Chloé, Pannette (90% C-D, 10% E-G)

for the first several places on this tier, we're looking at our first cooks who have at least one negative personal meal title -- that is, one in the E to G ranks. our first order of business, then, is to understand what this does exactly to their chances.

the first thing to it is that, under our usual perfectly neutral and perfectly stupid conditions, these characters will be noticeably likelier to completely screw things up. moreover, though, you might remember that, if we give them proper ingredients and have them work with recipes they're skilled with, that increases their chances of making a meal with one of their personal titles -- including the negative one. when you crunch the numbers on it, the result is that having these characters cook properly will affect their chances of catastrophic failure minimally if at all (although their chances of putting out good results still increase -- as the chance of pulling out an underwhelming D-rank meal are also still decreasing in this case).

incidentally, a quirk of these conditions is that giving these character a shot at a recipe they're Eager to try is an especially risky affair. having them cook in the first place is already a form of playing with fire; giving them too much creative leeway as well is where we approach the point of playing with Bolganone.

and speaking of magic tomes, Ivy is the first one up here. a 40% chance to make an A-rank meal is excellent, meaning she's not overall a bad cook, but the chance of catastrophic failure is always just right around the corner with her.

trailing a few ways behind her we have the similarly screwup-prone Vander and Diamant. there's little going on to distinguish between them textually, but I'm just going to throw out a wild out-there guess that, on average, being terrified of fire can be a disincentive towards learning to cook.

on the surface, Alfred looks to have slightly better chances than those two, but there's a particular issue that weighs against him. so far, the characters we've covered have personal E-rank meal titles, which is true of the majority of characters who have negative personal titles. however, when Alfred screws things up, the result he's most liable to turning up with is a "Stomach-Churning" F-rank meal!

Hortensia doesn't fail quite that catastrophically, but unlike the other ones we've seen so far, her risk of failing isn't quite offset by a risk of actually making something amazing; she's the first one we've seen so far who can't make A-rank meals, although she still has a pretty decent chance of making it as far as B-rank, at least.

after this battery of adventure and danger, we come to the latter half of the D-tier: characters who generally won't surprise you with their cooking -- for better or for worse, as it were.

Madeline and Etie are overwhelmingly likeliest to turn up underwhelming dishes, at the C or D ranks; Citrinne is another 5% likelier than them both to make no impression whatsoever. between the former two, Madeline's personal B-rank title of "Well-Balanced" seems just a touch more inviting than Etie's "Mild".

Chloé and Pannette bottom out the tier; they are two of the only three characters in the game who cap out at C-rank, and never cook any better than that. comparing those two, Pannette is indicated in text to struggle with cooking (even under Goldmary's guidance), whereas Chloé might possibly serve something nicer if she simply doesn't insist that it should be washed down with civet coffee and snake wine.

F-TIER: Bad Cooks

36th place: Rafal (15% A, 0% B, 55% C-D, 30% E-G)

37th place: Mauvier (15% B, 55% C-D, 30% E-G)

38th place: Veyle (15% A, 0% B, 55% C-D, 30% E-G)

from here on downward, every character we cover has a negative meal title, as well as unimpressive chances of making something particularly good.

Rafal and Mauvier both have only a 15% chance of batting above C-tier; rather little to compensate for their naturally higher chances of screwing things up. at least, when Rafal gets it right, he makes an "Audacious" A-rank meal, while Mauvier's absolute best is a B-rank... "Firene-style"?? huh. I don't think I uncovered that tidbit about him anywhere else so far.

Veyle ranks lower than the both of them, in any case. that is because she shares with Alfred that special aptitude for turning up "Stomach-Churning" F-rank meals. possibly something to do with her affinity for inhumanely spicy food, which perhaps helps to paint an unpleasantly precise picture of how you'll feel when you try some of the worst she has to offer.

L-TIER: Horrible Cooks

39th place: Zelestia (15% S-SS, 0% A, 0% B, 35% C-D, 50% E-G)

40th place: Pandreo (20% B, 35% C-D, 45% E-G)

41st place: Yunaka (70% C-D, 30% E-G)

and here we are, at long last, in the absolute bottom of the barrel. boy, is there some and then some to be said for the absolute accomplishments in failure we're looking at here

Zelestia and Pandreo share a spectacularly unique dishonor: they have two negative personal meal titles. this not only makes them more likely by far than anyone else to screw things up, it also means that they actually become LIKELIER to fail if you give them proper ingredients and a recipe they supposedly specialize in. (although again, the chances of their unlikely positive results also go up in these cases, if much too little)

even compared to those two clowns, though, Yunaka lies down a cut below the rest. firstly, because unlike the two of them, she won't cook an impressively good meal even by accident, being that she caps at C-rank. what's furthermore notable, though, is that she is the only character in the entire game with a personal G-rank title -- "Completely Burnt". in other words, Yunaka will never surprise you with an unusually good dish, but she will, on roughly every fourth attempt at cooking, burn water.

go girl! give us nothing!

[calamitaswrath]

Lucia plays Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn: Part 3 Chapter 8

Compared to the previous chapters, there really is a whole lot less setup for this one, huh? But I guess when your characters are just trying to escape, there isn't much to go into strategy or what politics are at play - just gotta make a run for it.

It's nice to see though how the actual geography of Tellius comes into play for setting up the story and maps here. Based on everything I've seen thus far, this setting feels like it's one of the most fleshed-out that Fire Emblem has ever had, easily up there with Fòdlan. But becaues Three Houses and Three Hope just tend to reuse maps a lot, Fòdlan just really lacks a whole lot of the visual identity that Tellius has. That's something I was actually talking about with my friend as I was streaming for her and she also pointed out that this makes the journey (as in, the physical one, not the emotional one) that the characters go on just a whole lot more believable, which I honestly also really agree with. 3H didn't really have that.

Senator Valtome. Urgh, this guy really looks like an offensive queer stereotype, and behaves like one, too. What a wonderful type of character to have as an antagonist.

Base conversations - Skrimir really showing off his character development here. I do feel like it has happened a bit fast, but. . . ehh, let's be real - with him not being the main protagonist, it's already plenty that he's getting some at all. Not everyone gets that.

Lethe and Lyre have a bit of sibling talk! Not much to note here, but it was a nice one. Based on the title, I wasn't actually certain about which siblings this would be - my first guess was Oscar, Boyd and Rolf, my second guess was Lethe and Lyre, and then my third guess was Ike and Mist. Shame on me that I remembered them last, especially since I gushed about their sibling dynamic a while ago! . . .But also, my friend was probably having some fun listening to me trying to figure that out before I viewed the conversation, especially when it turned out to be Lethe and Lyre, after all.

Now, as for the actual map - heeyyy, it's this guy! The boss! The guy who ran away in the prologue of part three! Fat load of good that did him in the end.

You know, this whole setup and actual map reminds me rather a lot of the chapter in Awakening that takes place in the Demon's Ignle. Protagonists on the run from overwhelmingly strong enemy forces, fleeing through an area with a lot of lava, random area effects from the surroundings. . . guess I now know where they got that inspiration from.

Come to think of it though it's generally just really interesting to see so much of the DNA of the presentation that would manifest itself in a different way in Awakening and Fates here in Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn - what with the bust up body portraits for characters, the different expressions on those (though they really are more pronounced in the 3DS titles) and using the 3D models for some simple cutscenes in the background. . . it's neat to see.

Pffft, the boss doesn't have any ranged weapons. Well then!

Hey, we're in Goldoa! I was wondering when that'd come up, seeing as it was set up in the first game and then not a whole lot happened with it.

Dheginsea really is very committed to being neutral, huh? And Tibarn definitely has some good reasons for having beef with them.

Oh, Nasir and Ena are back! Nice to see them. But this really was a short meeting in the end. No way they're not coming back, though.

Come to think of it, though - Soren was once again mysteriously absent for this scene as well, no? He knows he's a branded, so he must be at least somewhat aware of his heritage.

[fiannalover]

Flawed and debatable compare-and-contrast take of the day: Final Fantasy and Fire Emblem had the exact same Game-and-Fandom Evolution Process across their first 4 games.

1: First Game in the Series, you know how it is

2: Somewhat erratic expansion of the first's that laid a lot of groundwork but is comparatively ignored, with many mechanics that never returned or were spun-off into other things.

3: Actual Refinement of 1 that gets magnum opus treatment in old-school JP Fan base. Lion's share of "back to basics" games, reimaginings, homage, etc, actually refer back to this game more than the first one.

4: I'm don't think I need to say anything here, I am completely sure that 90% of the people who played both games have said games as their favorite for the same reasons.

Already said in the above statement but must be said on its own disclaimer: Said comparison Does Not apply to any of the games released after 4. You could argue that FE 7-8 relationship is comparable, though severely scaled down, to the FF 7-8 one, but that is the singular moment where the comparison holds some water again, and, come on.

Concession: trying to brute force comparisons between the two franchises anyway does result in some very funny suggestions to FE 14.

[olivine-ocean]

top 5 games and top 5 fave characters :^)

Oh boy both of these r hard bc I’m indecisive

Top 5 Games

Mostly based on nostalgia or otherwise, most were radio show eps I did

1. Pokémon Heart Gold and Soul Silver

2. Kid Icarus: Uprising

3. Kirby Super Star Ultra

4. Fire Emblem Echos: Shadows of Valentia

5. Stardew Valley

Bonus entries go to Pokemon Legends Arceus and Splatoon

Top 5 Favorite Characters

Giving into the predicable kin picks… I’m gonna list some of my somewhat long lasting favs

1. Pit - Kid Icarus

2. Ethlyn - FE 4

3. Adaman - PLA

4. Meta Knight - Kirby

5. Risotto Nero - JJBA (can’t not include him)

Shout out to newer entrants Hector and Zelgius FE, and old faces just missing the mark with Bucky Barnes Marvel and Polnareff + Jolyne JJBA

[nowis-scales]

FE Liveblog Updates

Hey hey! It’s been a little while since I last did any live blogging — and maybe you care, maybe you don’t — but as I have… a lot of potential live-blogging to do, I wanted to give some updates, notices, and minor thoughts. So if you’ve been following along with any of them, here’s where you’ll get your info. Yay!

‣ Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia:

Hmmm… what is there to say about this one? I need to continue it, first of all. It should hopefully be picking up sooner rather than later, finishing off Act 2 in Celica’s path, and then presumably switching back to Alm. I don’t have too much to worry about here, just making sure that I’m getting a healthy dose of support conversations! If I don’t by the end, I may just play again and see what else I can gather. Otherwise… I’m considering a more stack-em-up style to my posting like the other playthroughs, just so it’s less of a spammy feeling. If you have any opinions, please do let me know!

‣ Fire Emblem Engage:

Yep yep, I’ve already got a liveblog of this one set up! As I write this post, I have just beaten Chapter 3, so you will soon be able to find the liveblog under #koto plays engage , and avoid spoilers with #Fire Emblem Engage Spoilers. I’m very excited to share my thoughts so far, so it should be super fun to share! I don’t know when exactly I’ll get that set up, but probably towards the tail end of the next liveblog I’ll be talking about…

‣ Fire Emblem Three Houses: Crimson Flower: I think, with my desire to introduce an Engage liveblog, continue the Echoes one, and someday continue this one… I might get back to this one sooner than I anticipated? I’m still somewhat iffy on this one, just because… well, in the event that you’re new here, let’s just say that CF as a route is just very much not for me. That’s not to say that I look down on or would chide anyone who enjoys it — my rule is, forever and always, as long as you’re kind I don’t mind — but it’s just not the most positive playthrough. So while I’m leaning more towards yes to going back to it, I want to make sure that it’ll be an okay experience for everyone involved.

The good news is, I have newly set up some measures to keep all of the critical stuff contained where you want it. Firstly, I have a new tag I’ll be using to tag posts with the super critical stuff (#Fódlan Fault Finding) and of course I still have the tag meant for criticism in relation to EdeIgard’s character writing in the route (#Shut up about Del). I also have a series of emblems I’m going to be using, to mark each section of the post based on how critical it is. So for example, if you only want to read the positive stuff, you’ll look for a flower with both black and white on each petal, like this: ❃ There’s about four total, ranging from positive, neutral, joking criticism, and hard criticism. That way, you can pick what you like, and go from there!

Otherwise, I think I have about 12 posts already (some of them are leftovers I missed before I stopped before) built in a Google Doc just so I had time to organize my thoughts and review them for sharpness. I’m considering posting them twice a week just to get things moving along so I don’t have a gazillion playthroughs ongoing, but let me know if you have any good ideas! I could even intersperse the posts with live blogs of the other games just to keep things cheery, if that’s preferable.

‣ Fire Emblem Three Houses: Azure Moon & Silver Snow:

These ones, I am… stumped on. I’d like to chronicle them as well, I find live-blogging a super fun endeavour (even if I realize the live-blogs mostly entertain me instead of all of you), but again that’s something to run at the same time as all the other liveblogs. I could wait until Echoes concludes, I could just pick Azure Moon up once CF concludes, or I could intersperse playthroughs with CF and AM to balance out negativity like I just mentioned. It’s hard to know exactly what to do, and even in posting AM, I’m wondering if I should just post SS at the same time… I think probably not, as that would get really confusing, but it’s also the nature of just not having so many on the go. So… yeah, I dunno! Just like for the others, thoughts are welcome.

As you can see, at the moment, it’s all just a matter of figuring out where to put what!

[gravitas-game-and-book-dev-blog]

Dev Diary 3: Battles

In this weeks dev diary I want to discuss the implementation I am working on for the turn based battles. I've pitched this game as a cross between Fire Emblem and Grand Strategy Games, so today I want to dive into the battles which will feel familiar to Fire Emblem, with several big alterations to the formula, the first of which is the distinction between Phases and Turns. Before I go into that, let's just describe the flow of a battle and army composition.

Battles will be initiated either by an Event or when 2 hostile parties meet on the map. Unlike in Fire Emblem, your armies will be composed of Troops, which represent a whole battalion of soldiers. Some Troops, like your Generals, will be named characters and some Troops are unique and lead by a Unique Captain Character, however the bulk of your armies will be made up of more, shall we say disposable, cadets. One Troop will usually represent 1,000 men and an Army can have up to 20 units in it, so that they have somewhat realistic numbers. Once a battle begins one party is designated as the attacker and the other as the defender and each side is given a deployment zone where they can freely arrange their troops before the battle starts. Once a battle begins, the Maneuver Phase begins.

Maneuver Phase

The attacker always gets to move first and during this phase they get to move 1 Troop of their choosing, but they cannot attack during this phase. Then, the turn passes to the defender who can likewise move a single Troop before passing it back to the attacker. Neither side can move the same Troop twice until all Troops have moved, which will end the Maneuver Phase and Start the Combat Phase.

Combat Phase

This phase progresses much like the Maneuver Phase, each side issuing one order and passing to the other until all Troops have their orders, except during this Phase Troops can't move and instead are told who they can attack within their range. Melee units can only attack adjacent enemies while ranged troops can attack between 2 and 4 spaces away or engage in a melee attack, though their melee stats are quite bad. Once all orders are set, Troops deliver their attacks in succession and we return to the Maneuver Phase repeating the process until the battle ends.

So why not just do things the way it works in Fire Emblem or other Tactics games? My reasoning for structuring turns like this is to encourage more aggressive play, which might not be immediately obvious. If you've ever tried or seen multiplayer Fire Emblem, it just doesn't work. Whoever is able to have a longer threat range via movement or other ranged attacks has such a significant advantage as they will be able to attack when they can inflict enough damage to kill something, forcing the other player to come forward and respond with potentially fewer units dragging them into a usually devastating follow up which ends the match. They revolve around turtling and there are limited options for handling the fact that the enemy will be able to move and attack with all of their units before you can respond. Structuring turns this way makes it so with each move, the opposing player is able to respond like a game of chess and not only that, by cleverly positioning your Troops, you can essentially force them into making certain moves, limiting their options if you're brain is wrinkly enough.

There are a few additional rules that add some layers to this, such as zone of control, which makes it so that if a unit moves adjacent to an enemy that will use up all of their movement. If a unit starts in an enemy's ZoC they can disengage and freely move away, but they will suffer an opportunity attack(1/2 normal damage) for doing so. This rewards aggression, as plunging into the enemy first can force them to get stuck into the fight, or suffer free damage for trying to pull away. On top of that, if a unit moves at least 2 spaces on the Maneuver Phase, they will deal additional Charge Damage on their turn which can be very significant. In practice this means, if you rush your opponent, they might not have the space to mount a counter charge, which might be enough to swing things in your favor.

The fact that everyone gets to move before attacking also limits kiting with ranged units as after they attack, they will frequently be within movement range of many Troops, meaning there might be an opportunity for your opponent to close the distance and get them stuck in melee or force an opportunity attack.

There are additional things like flank attacks, but rather than getting stuck in with details I want to take a step back and look at one of the other big changes, morale. Most battles throughout history have been decided by the ability of one side to crack the resolve of the other and seeing as we're representing full scale battles, we'll do the same. Morale effectively serves as a secondary health bar for a unit. When Morale reaches 0, a unit will become uncontrollable and will automatically begin fleeing to the edge of the battlefield. Once it reaches the edge, after a turn they will 'rout' fleeing the map. This gives you a chance to run down enemies as in history this is actually where the bulk of casualties are inflicted. Morale will take damage from attacks, but certain things increase morale damage, the number of nearby enemies vs allies, proximity to your General's Troop, flanking and more. Concentrating fire and focusing on breaking unit's morale will be key to secure victories you might otherwise not win.

That ends it for the day. Tune in Wednesday where I'm hoping to have a really rough prototype ready to demonstrate some of these things.

[wish-grantzed]

𝟙.𝟘 || Hello there! I’m 3-?-3... but most people just call me Postman or Victor!

ⁱ ˢᵘᵖᵖᵒˢᵉ ˢᵒᵐᵉ ᵖᵉᵒᵖˡᵉ ᵃˡˢᵒ ᶜᵃˡˡ ᵐᵉ ᵃ ˡᵒᵗ ᵒᶠ ᵒᵗʰᵉʳ ⁿᵃᵐᵉˢ... ᵗʰᵉ ᵉᵐᵇʳᵃᶜᵉ, ˢᵖᵉᶜᵗᵉʳ, ᵏᵉʸᵇᵒᵃʳᵈ, ᵗʰᵉ ᵖʳⁱⁿᶜᵉ, ᵖᵃᵖᵉʳᵇᵒʸ, ᵃᵘᵗᵘᵐⁿ ʳᵉᵛᵉʳⁱᵉ... ⁱᵗ’ˢ ᵃ ʳᵃᵗʰᵉʳ ˡᵒⁿᵍ ˡⁱˢᵗ﹗

But you can also call me Chuuya, Bun, or Fuyu if those suit your fancy more too! This is my edit blog where I do a whole host of fun source-based edits, which you can learn more about under the cut!

I used to run @kin-of-the-sheep​, and @kinning-business​ before that! Needless to say, I’ve been in the kinhelp and edit game for a while now! ☆

Since I wanted a bit of a fresh start, I decided to go ahead and make a charming new blog, so send those pretty letters my way if you’re interested in an edit! But please read the info below before requesting!!

Oh, and just so you know, all my work is free to use unless stated otherwise!

Requests are currently open!

𝟚.𝟘 || REQUEST INFO BELOW CUT

✉ || RULES

I may simply deny/delete requests if they don’t interest me, apologies! I’m going to do this in lieu of an overcomplicated blacklist/info page!

You may send in multiple requests at once, just please do them in separate asks. Requests sent in while the inbox is closed, however, will be ignored/deleted. (But you can always send asks just chatting or asking questions, even if the inbox is closed!)

I only do edits from my source list for now, apologies!

✉ || SOURCE LIST

Please note that ALL sources are technically somewhat selective, as I'll simply delete or decline any requests I don't wish to do! ^^"

Identity V

Bungou Stray Dogs

Genshin Impact

Cookie Run

Pokemon

Danganronpa

Doki Doki Literature Club

Beyblade Metal Series

Honkai Star Rail (tentative, don’t know much about source yet)

Toilet-bound Hanako Kun (anime only in terms of characters, please)

Murder Drones

The Amazing Digital Circus

Assassination Classroom

Fire Emblem: Awakening

Food Fantasy

Helltaker

Steven Universe

Ib

Angels of Death

Animal Crossing

Vocaloid

Kid Icarus: Uprising

Sonic the Hedgehog

✉ || EDIT TYPES/TAGS

ALL EDITS CAN BE FOUND UNDER THE “COMPLETED EDIT” TAG!

Icon Sets (Tagged: Icon Set), default icons will be 250x250, square, and still frame. They can be any size, gif icons, or circular upon request.

Reply Icon Sets (Tagged: Reply Icon Set), reply icons; the default is 1000x300 (250x250 icons)!

Phone Wallpapers (Tagged: Wallpaper Set), you MUST provide dimensions when requesting. Otherwise, just please provide any specifics for aesthetics, themes, or what you want on them when requesting from me! I will not do computer/desktop backgrounds, unfortunately!

Tumblr Layouts (Tagged: Profile Layout), default Tumblr layouts will be three 250x250 icons and three matching 640x60 banners, but can be any size upon request.

Moodboards (Tagged: Moodboard), a set of 9 images to make an aesthetic image board surrounding a specific character(s) or ship. Please clarify desired themes/colors when requesting. May vary in style/template.

Stimboards (Tagged: Stimboard), a set of stim gifs in a board surrounding a specific character(s) or ship. Please clarify desired themes/colors when requesting.

✉ || SIMPLIFIED BLACKLIST/DNI

I no longer have any direct DNI list as I've realized they're pretty ineffective, but I will block liberally as I deem fit.

I will not accept any requests that contain the following topics:

Kuzupeko (Fuyuhiko x Peko) from Danganronpa

Kaeya x Diluc from Genshin Impact

Medcore/Hospitalcore/etc. 

Any content that is inherently sexual in nature

I also will not entertain Chihiro gender discourse on my blog; anything goes in terms of their pronouns/gender identity, as long as you clarify what you want in a request, and are respectful to alternate interpretations of the character and/or kin canons.

[39472034658449305249465224devils]

[For Fandom Warfare Reasons, The Following Is My Opinion Only. FE Nintendo Switch era fans you frighten me. No more discourse, i beg i beg of you please.]

ok as a bit of added info, [note from the future. im sorry. i do not control the autism beam. for your convience and sanity i created both a TLDR and a 'read more'. I am so sorry for what i have done. It's like a train i just cant stop it when it starts.]

TLDR:

Awakening and Fates both have their reasons to be a starter game! Awakening recommendations tend to come with bias from fans who started there and have nostalgia for it, and it can be difficult at times but is very friendly to beginners anyways. Fates is more beginner friendly in 1 route and easier gameplay mechanics that make it a total breeze for someone who may be insecure about starting a strategy game. I would say it comes down to your own personal preference and what cast you are more excited to meet. They are very similar and share much of the same development teams in the world of sprite art and cutscenes for example.

I also give a short introduction to other mainline titles and one remake.

Game play times are a bit hard to rank for FE due to the gameplay being strategy and turn based, so some players may take it slower or faster maybe more often than other games, also things like turning off animations, difficulty settings, needing to re-start a chapter etc can play into game lengths.

But Awakening is a 1 route game with limited replayability (in my opinion) and takes between 25-40 hours according to a search, which depends based on how much side content / grinding you do.

FE:Fates (the full edition with Rev.) is 3 routes which gives it somewhat required replaying- with a similar ~~25 hours each route.

However, do not fear! You should not play all of them first! Birthright is easy. It's like, the most beginner of beginner fire emblem games you could play. It's story is bland and you learn basically no secrets about the world it's in but that can be a nice introduction to it, so im not judging too harshly. Revelations is what id call middle difficulty, and Conquest is the hardest but with the best gameplay. All can be played without permadeath and weapons do not break.

When it comes to which to play first, that is up to you. I will leave these to bear in mind:

Fates starting can be a easy start into FE due to weapons not breaking and an engaging hub world after each battle which can be helpful when remembering to buy or sell items etc, it also re-introduces older mechanics from earlier entries like the coliseum so they will be familiar later if you play earlier games (by the way, very much worth it. GBA period is really good even if you dont like retro games.) I personally prefer it's cast by a long shot to Awakening as well as it's ost and as someone who spent way too much of my youth learning and obsessing over character design I have to say, the very purposeful design choices made for Fates just makes me giddy. Seriously great ost though, I have a few tracks in my audio tag.

Awakening is where most people started- which is good and bad when you start in nearly 2025. This can be bad because lots of people will say "start with awakening" due to their nostalgia bias, when there may be better/easier introductions. It can be good however because Awakening can be very engaging and brought in a lot of new fans for a reason. Out of modern FE (can you call 2010s games modern anymore...?) it has the most "FE vibes" in it's themes and character designs. I personally feel when i look past my nostalgia, awakening is... not the best FE. I dont care for it that much and id consider it like a middle quality FE personally- but as a introduction it can be phenomenal, but it doesnt always offer the most interesting maps or memorable cast outside of the protagonists. Somehow I feel like awakening can feel more repetitive than Fates at times and as much as i was addicted to it on my first play through, the grinding somehow felt worse? But maybe thats just my personal hot take of not liking the ost compared to other games. Or the weapons breaking thing.

So basically its between a more engaging entry that is most people's entry to the series, but sometimes overhyped or frankly passion killing (there are some maps that makes me feel like saying DUDE. BE FOR REAL. out loud) OR a less good story thats a little more baby mode.

An added benifit to playing awakening first would be that if you intended to play birthright but the other 2 routes of fates were too hard and switched to awakening, you'd end up interrupting fates. If you play awakening first, you could play all routes of fates in order of difficulty to stay locked in to the cast and story.

There is a 3rd game (well, 5th but I wont get into that #SorryYourGamesAreBadMarth) on the DS, that being the remake of FE2, called Fire Emblem Echoes. And its CRAZY GOOD. One issue. It may be difficult for a new-comer. Because it is rather faithful to FE2, it's maps can be boring at times and it's mechanics can be strange for the modern era but it is just a wonderful title i cant recommend enough. It was released way too late into the life of the 3DS and thus not many people bought it as much as it deserved. Amazing ost, voice acting cast and performance (fully voice acted which is insane for FE. Kyle McCarley as Alm and espessially Ian Sinclair as Berkut totally just bring the whole game up a letter grade), and many unique features a lot of fans were saddened to see IntSys typically just never brought back lol.

Other titles and their relation to a starter:

The games with ike in them: i havent played them idk what to say about them. Ive heard theyre good, i personally am not super interested in them but I will get around to it... sometime. Gamecube and Wii are the consoles. it was the first 3d games and AFAIK you cant turn off animations or skip them and that should tell you everything about why i am not looking forward to these games.

FE8 / The Sacred Stones: The most beginner friendly for GBA period. Similar to awakening, I feel like the cast suffers sometimes and this one is less political and more straightforward and supernatural and contains zombies. But, it will teach you the way the GBA titles work and is a great place to start for the older games which are all permadeath. Sacred Stones contains a very strong character gained on the first level who can literally solo the entire game if you let him, and it allows grinding opportunities. Generally, it doesnt contain many difficult levels and is a very straightforward game both in terms of story and in mechanics. It has a good tutorial, in other words, it will teach you but it wont baby you. Which is fine, you know the game by then.

Fe7 / "Fire Emblem" in the west / The Blazing Blade: Look, I love this game. You ever wonder who Roy is? Well this is his papa's game. And thats why you play it before Roy's game. The Blazing Blade has a great main cast and a really good story as well in my opinion. Being from a time longer ago, you may not get as much story as they wanted to tell, but it's not terrible. This is a tougher and a little rougher experience from FE8, but its not bad by any means!

FE6 / The Binding Blade: You will need to patch it to english. Yep, thats right. The game Roy is from was never once released in english. Actually, it is FE7 that was released in english for... some reason...? Anyways, this game can be a headache. It's not a lost cause or need of concern for skipping but lets say theres a good and bad end and you are not getting the good end unless you break out a guide online. Roy himself as a character is a total headache in terms of gameplay. And you still arent going to meet Roy from Super Smash Brothers because he's not a real character. True story by the way. Worth the playthrough if you really want to know Roy or you end up being really into the franchise or espessially invested in what happens to the cast of FE7, but by now, it's still a lot of the same spritework and animations- though the ones that are original to this title are certainly worth seeing. No spoilers though.

FE5: Why on earth would you play this title? Most people dont play this title. Dont play this title unless you play FE4 (see below).

FE4: Why on earth would you pl- nah im just pulling your leg. FE4 is really phenomenal FE, that is if you have a brain that threatens to topple your body under it's tremendous weight and can thus actually play it. Ok, thats an exaggeration, but FE4 is not in any way for a beginner or even a passionate fan. It's balls hard at times, rather, most of the time in my experience. I havent been able to beat it. I havent even been able to track down all the manga as a scan to read it [crying to self softly before becoming composed again] It's a great game with a really wonderful cast and story for its age and really deserves the title of SRPG. It will also need an unofficial english patch, the main one / the one everyone uses does have a bit of fan tampering ive heard- but I cant confirm it because I simply cannot get far enough into this game. It's more grand scale than any FE after it and certainly any before it. This is the oldest FE worth playing. Bonus points (no pun intended) for the glorious retro handsome guy chins. you could open letters with the jaws of many FE4 guys. Please for the love of god if you are interested in this title, try to avoid spoilers relating to it. But, this is a prime title to just... Not play, and instead just read the story via wiki entries, the manga, and youtube videos about it. There's no shortage of crazy plot twists and just plain dismal darkness in this title. If you felt like the rest of the games were for babies, this is your "I eat nails for breakfast with no milk" fe title. And it's often considered worth every torturous minute.

FE1-FE3: I cant recommend these. I dont know anyone on earth who DOES recommend these. They all have DS remakes if you really HAVE to know.

3Houses: It's okay. Somehow it has 5 routes and 0 replayability to everyone ive introduced it to. They kill me for saying the truth but its frankly worse fates. It has all the same pitfalls of fates, that being stuff like "routes cut up the story in a way it suffers from" "unfinished story and story cut for time and pacing which ends up making things unclear or strange or feel really clearly unfinished" but it also has more issues than fates does like trying to ask questions that dont... really end up landing, or having really weird immersion breaking moments and aesthetic changes that just feel. gross, can i call them gross? annoying as fuck slow hub world, etc. This game is fine on your first playthrough. I recommend Blue Lions personally as it feels the most satisfying to me and I have had others agree, but my first playthrough was Black Eagles so thats not 'starting house bias'. Whatever you do, please for the love of god do not talk to 3 Houses fans. I wish the trauma of that and the wars they carry on nobody.

Engage: I couldnt tell you. Exposure for more than 1 minute to engage makes me feel like tumors are rapidly growing in my body. I had to microdose on someone else's playthrough to Engage with this game's cast and story and. I was not engaged. Im sorry this game will go down in FE history as a pile of shit i think. This game is very controversial in a different way than 3 Houses was. I dont have much more to say about it. I watched the trailer drop live and i remember just feeling so incredibly bad every 10 more seconds it played. God i was so excited at first too. Hand on the bible i would rather have to play 3 Houses twice in a row than have to play this one even once. When i think about this game i feel like i need to be healed by some kind of scam energy healer who works with crystals.

The titles I didnt mention: Not true FE games / not mainline (FE Sharp, FE Heros, the Warriors games, etc.) so im not counting them. Im also not recommending them.

also, good news you would only need to play 1 game because fire emblem is usually stand alone and really only ever connects in universes in pairs or vaguely. Niles/Zero is from Fire Emblem Fates/IF which is like 98% standalone theres just easter eggs from Awakening. However like i said it was unfortunately and infamously absolutely nearly destroyed by bizarre localization and censorship so if you usually play your games in english... bad news. It's playable, sure, but for best story i would suggest JPN if you can read it. If not, play as usual and use translations when done to supplement / patch your knowledge. There's a manga, 4koma(s? i cant remember if theres 2?) and an audio drama set as well which is both available online translated which i would recommend. The audio drama can also be listened to first iirc, and is translated on youtube with the in-game VN style. You can also ask me questions because i am something of a FEF expert its my favorite entry. english makes the story seem a lot worse than it is i promise and also it became a fandom meme to like, hate it? so dont trust fandom opinion. if you have a pc that can run skyrim it can run FEF emulated. probably. its a bit slow on citra mobile if you have a fairly recent phone but its not unplayable last i checked / on my own tests. otherwise, a cracked 3ds will run it of course best, and is the only way to actually get the ultimate edition now due to eshop shutdown. <- autism

ohh that's very good to know, thank you!! i'm a bit tempted to start with awakening and then do fates but 👀

i unfortunately can't read JPN (every day i dream about the gaming opportunities i would have if i started studying it when i first wanted to...), but i've heard there's apparently a fan patch translation of if and it might be better than the localization.

but this is so much good info, seriously thank you!! ✨

[codenamesazanka]

video games + fantasy and magic + quirk society + League:

*

“—So they’re all quirkless… But Shuuichi-kun just said some of them can shoot fire or shadow blasts.”

“Those aren’t quirks. It’s magic.”

“Like what Mister does?”

“No, it’s real magic. Er, well, real magic inside the story.”

“Sounds incredible! What the heck is real magic.”

“Ah, that. Magic is the stuff of dreams, of wonders, and grasping it within the palms of—“

“That’s got nothing to do with Insignia of the Inferno: Emergence. Don’t listen to him. Magic is a skill. It’s a supernatural power that performs ranged attacks which affects the stats of the target. You know, their condition, their health points, them as a character!”

“That just sounds like a quirk…”

“Well it isn’t! It’s fantasy. That’s how fantasy games and stories worked back then. Classical fantasy, about ancient and feudal times.”

“Ehhhh. All the stories I read when I was little had quirks. Like, Beauty and the Beast? The Beast Prince is a heteromorph, and Belle could touch mirrors to see faraway things! Or! Or like Momotaro can talk to animals, and Usagi had a transformation quirk—“

“Those don’t count as classical fantasy—“

“All those stories have all been changed from the original ones, to suit this modern extraordinary age. Remember, Toga-chan, no one had quirks back then. For most of human history until relatively recently, we were quirkless. In those original tales, the folklores and myths, the characters instead had divine blessings or otherworldly gifts… Magic, as it were.”

“Hmm…”

“Yeah, what Mister said. In Insignia, which is classical fantasy, everyone is quirkless. But! Some people, called mages, could do magic. And magic can be learned. As you level up, you learn more spells, you can use different types of attack depending on the kind of enemy. Back to the story, Alouet discovers a magic tome that contains the three ancient spells to seal away the—”

“That sounds unfair. They can do magic, but also have multiple magics?”

“Toga-chan is right, that’s cheating! And also sorta like your teacher, Shigaraki.”

“…Heh.”

“I told you guys, magic. is. not. quirks. And all mages know multiple—”

“Okay, okay! I know, magic is magic. So what happens next? Keep going, Shuuichi-kun.”

“I am! Alouet discovers the tome, and realizes that to seal away the Seven-Eyed Beast, they must travel to the each of the Three Celestial Dragons’ realms. At each realm, Prince Rhod - who has the Grace of Dawn that’s passed through the royal bloodline - performs the ritual to summon—”

“The Prince is a mage?“

“No, he’s not. Remember? The royal family had sworn to forsake magic—”

“But then how can he have this dragon summon power?”

“It’s not magic. This is something only the royal family have—”

“So they’re the only ones with a dragon quirk. I get it! I’m completely lost.”

“How many times do I have to—”

“It’s all game mechanisms, none of it has to make sense. Magic is just an attack that deals damage. Think of it as different types of weapons. Bow and arrows, throwing daggers, swords. You can get any one of them. You can use each one. That’s what magic spells are. Weapons.”

“Ooh, gotcha. And Prince Rhod?”

“Demigod. He summons dragons because they recognize him as a descendant of their former masters.”

“And then?”

“He gets the dragons, they kill the Beast, they retrieve the crown, and he’s King. The End.”

“…That’s it?”

“There’s more than that! And Prince Rhod isn’t—“

“King Rhod, now that he has the crown. Great! Wonderful retelling. Only took up…three-fourths of the hour. Now, it’s getting late—”

“Mister, I’m not finished.”

“He’s sick of your stupid video game story, Spinner! I liked it! But not really.”

“…It’s more fun to play it.”

“You’re just also a big nerd, Tomura-kun. You and Shuuichi-kun both are, classic-magic-quirk-fairy-tale-fantasy-whatever video games otakus.”

“Magic isn’t— You’re doing this on purpose, Toga! Hey—!”

“But don���t worry, I’ll still hang out with you guys~~”

*

tl;dr: Imagine how much nerdier Shigaraki and Spinner might actually seem when they have to explain historical conceptualizations of magic on top of the game mechanisms itself. RIP

[person8789]

Breakdown of Twst’s Opening Movie

Basically how it’s foreshadowed things so far and theorizing what other things it might be foreshadowing

Source from YouTube: Twisted Wonderland Opening Movie by Night Raven

Spoilers for the entirety of the game released this far, including the newest update in chapter 6!

Part 4/5

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5

First we get a close up of Lilia with a smirk seemingly powering up for some kind of attack, then the shot pans out to reveal that Silver and Sebek are next to him on both sides, either acting as guards or aiding Lilia with the attack. The last shot is of the attack itself, weather it’s supposed to be fire or wind based…. I’m not really sure. Either way, it’s a strong attack that’s aim.. most likely somewhere past the screen.

This probably has something to do with those other shots of Diasomnia in the thorns and Malleus on the hill. I don’t think it’s unlikely for them to actually be attack against Malleus here, weather it be because he’s overblot or otherwise.

Next we have some kind of… dramatic shots of Crowley in the courtyard. The first features an upward shot from a behindish-sideish view. The next is a close-up of Crowley smirking (hrmm..) and the last is a pan out of him walking through the courtyard.

Um… suspicious?? Very suspicious?? I don’t really know what this could be about, to be honest. It’s definitely highlighting Crowley to be suspicious… I think. Especially with the smirk.

Ok so once again this gives a series of shots of all of the characters that I’ll list out what’s going on in all of the shots before diving into it all:

First we get a close up with Riddle with the Heartslabuyl emblem in the background, then a pan out to the rest of the Heartslabuyl characters in cool poses a lineup:

1. Ace in front, bawling a fist

2. Riddle, looking to the left (possibly to Ace?)

3. Deuce facing away from the screen with his hands on his hips and looking the same direction as Riddle.

4. Trey facing and looking at the screen

5. Cater with his hand on Trey’s shoulder and looking to the left, not at Trey, but past him.

Next we have a close-up of Malleus with the Diasomnia emblem in the background, which then pans out to the rest of Diasomnia, all standing either next to or behind Malleus all in an upward shot.

The next shot is of the Octavenelle trio, no close up of Azul beforehand. Another upward shot, Azul is sitting down in a chair which Jade and Floyd are both leaning on the chair, all are facing and looking at the screen. Octavenelle emblem is in the background.

Next we have the Scarabia duo, Jamil taking up most of the screen in front, flashing a smile to (or maybe past) the screen, while Kalim, vibing giving a smile in the background, there is a Scarabia emblem here as well.

The next shot is of the Savanaclaw trio, Leona sitting on top of a big rock while Ruggie and Jack sit next to the rock below. Ruggie is holding something and showing it to Jack, Jack is looking at… whatever it is that Ruggie has. I can’t tell exactly what it is. Food, perhaps? Savanaclaw emblem vibes in the background.

Next we get the Shroud brothers standing back-to-back with Ortho in front. Idia is facing away from the screen but still half looking at the screen, with a bitter expression. There is some techy stuff and the Ignihyde emblem in the background.

And lastly we get a shot of the Pomefiore trio, with Vil taking a majority of the screen in front and Epel and Rook somewhat in the background, both giving side glances to the screen with Rook also giving a smirk. Vil is looking somewhat to the side and past the screen, and the Pomefiore emblem again vibes in the background.

Ok, now that we’ve gotten through that, let’s try to break it down:

First: the emblems. Say it with me everyone: they put the emblems with the dorm leaders and members so they associate those characters with that dorm.

The first dorm we see is, as usual, Heartslabuyl. The lineup of the characters here is intriguing to me, though, since it’s not what you would expect. You would expect Riddle to be in front with adeuce to be behind him then Trey and Cater, but here get get Ace first, then Riddle, and Deuce, and etc.. another interesting thing is how they shot Heartslabuyl as a lineup specifically, especially with the kind of power structure Heartslabuyl supposedly has, with Riddle at the top having absolute power. Here, though, Riddle is seen next to, and mixed in with the rest of the Heartslabuyl cast, and it’s apparent here that he’s a lot smaller than they are. Now, if you were trying to show a character with “absolute power” over their peers would you show him mixed in with the crowd so to speak? And with him… definitely not seeming like the most intimidating person in the room? Probably not, and this definitely wasn’t done unintentionally, considering the positions of the characters in some of the other dorms, so why show Riddle as an equal? This one might actually be foreshadowing for book 1… kind of. I believe Ace is in front because he’s the main catalyst for book 1, the main one going against Riddle, and the one who’s eventually able to reach out to Riddle. Ace was exactly what Heartslabuyl needed, and was the reason things were able to change. The placement of the other characters (specifically Deuce, Trey and Cater,) but there is one minor thing I wanted to mention about Cater and Trey here. I’ve seen some people mention how they think it’s like… a big deal that Cater has his hand on Trey’s shoulder. While I do think it’s (again) trying to get us to associate one character with the other (associate them as a duo), I don’t really think it means much more than that.

With Diasomnia (and with later shots), the upward shot is definitely supposed to give the characters an intimidating look. Malleus having the biggest presence, even when the shot pans out to all of the dorm members, is supposed to indicate that he’s more intimidating than even the rest of them. Lilia having the smallest presence (despite being the most powerful member of the dorm) is supposed to show that he is the one actively working to make connections with people from other dorms and trying to eliminate the stigma surrounding Diasomnia, like we see with Lilia in book 1. The fact that he is the closest to Malleus in this shot also shows that he’s emotionally closer to Malleus than Silver and/or Sebek, who are both standing off to each side, away from Malleus.

The upward shot for the Octavenelle trio is, again for the intimidation factor, except is slightly different than with Diasomnia. For Diasomnia, the fear the other students have for for students of Diasomnia is a stigma, everyone believes Diasomnia students are terrifying because of their power. Malleus specifically has to deal with this more than the other students because of his status as well. Even though this isn’t the reality of the situation, they almost seem… untouchable. It’s definitely not done on purpose, in fact, they’d rather not have this stigma surrounding them. Octavenelle, on the other hand, definitely is doing the intimidation technique on purpose. Just like always, Octavenelle is using fear to get people to do what they want. Something I find interesting about the specific positions Azul is in compared to the twins, is that I believe it’s actually somewhat of a false set of for the trio’s dynamic. In this shot, Azul is center attention sitting in a chair, boss style, while the twins are both to the sides of the chair. This is obviously supposed to send the message that Azul is the big boss, while Jade and Floyd are supposedly “henchmen”. In reality, though, this is far from true, and Azul has said specifically that he and the twins are equals, and that they are in no way serve him and may very well leave him if they see fit (weather they actually would or not is a completely different conversation..). Azul had said that Floyd pretty much never listens to Azul (or at least when he’s not in the mood to), and that Jade isn’t bound to Azul in the same way the other vise dorm leaders seem to be with their leaders. (He actually seems to be something afraid of Jade, as mentioned in Beanfest.) All of that said, why would they divert our attention from their true dynamic in this shot? Well, I believe it may be foreshadowing to book 3, since it does something similar. It sets up Jade and Floyd to do Azul’s bidding in the beginning, only to reveal throughout the book that they, in fact, aren’t bound to him and are part of the reason his plan fails.

Moving on, the Scarabia duo are in much different positions than the last time we saw these two, where they were both taking of half of the screen each. Here, Jamil is taking up the majority of the screen while Kalim is more or less in the background. This may be to highlight the kind of dynamic they have up until the end of book 4, where Jamil is making a majority of the decisions and is (quite literally) in control of Kalim. The fact that Jamil is smiling here despite the fact that he is normally a more serious-toned character might be a small foreshadow to the fact that he has a facade- even though he doesn’t use a smile as a mask specifically he still does use “politeness” as a mask.

Next is the Savanaclaw trio, in which Leona’s position causes the same upward shot to be there as with some of the other characters, while Jack and Ruggie are pretty level with the screen. Now, Savanaclaw in general is supposed to seem (at least physically) intimidating at first, but here it highlights Leona as such more than the others. This is probably a foreshadow to his nature of seeming cold in order to shut people out and seem more like a “loner” despite the fact that he actually does care about his dorm members. Ruggie and Jack are likely not in these positions to foreshadow that they are different than other Savanaclaw students.

With the Shroud brothers, there’s two likely reasons they are in the positions they’re in. One more simple explanation is the fact that if it was the other way around, we… literally wouldn’t be able to see Ortho at all and a back-to-back shot makes sense with being able to see all of the stuff in the background. There is another explanation though that I believe also makes sense. With the way that they are positioned here, even with his bright, blue flaming hair, Idia seems almost like a shadow compared to Ortho, who has a “brighter” presence on screen. I believe this is meant to symbolize and foreshadow the fact that Idia is living in the shadow of his trauma, the “Ortho” in this shot being a symbol of that trauma since he was created as a trauma response. That’s also most likely the reason for the bitter expression on Idia’s face.

And finally is the Pomefiore shot, which tbh I don’t think I have as much to say about this one. (Watch me go on for another long paragraph, calling it now). The upward shot here seems different from the others, I don’t believe it to be used for intimidation. I more believe it is trying to give a mysterious and “untouchable” air to the Pomefiore trio. I believe Rook and Epel’s distance, as well as Rook’s smirk and Vil’s “ignoring” of the screen to be working to try to achieve the same effect, as well. Vil likely has the biggest presence here to foreshadow the fact that he, as a celebrity and as a person, seems to leave a big impact or “presence” on everyone he meets.

Ok so I realize that this post is far from “short”, but I couldn’t make the image limit, so…

Have to cut this one a bit short since the next segment is 10 images by itself- yes, I’m talking about the ending segment that has a bunch of totally not spoiler clips that go by quickly!

On the plus side the next part should be the last!

[seer918]

Comparing MegaMan Robot Masters to their NetNavi counterparts; a thread in...probably a lot of parts

Because I’m hyped for the Battle Network collection’s anouncement I figured I’d shamelessly rip off a video by BumblesMcFumbles. Also it’s like way too fucking hot and I need something to hyperfixate over before I combust

Now just to note, I AM more of a fan of the Battle Network series compared to original MegaMan, hell my introduction to Megaman was the Battle Network anime so expect some bias.

(and once I’ve got the collection in hand and actually play more than just a version of 4 and 5, I’ll probably do a thread just talking about every named net navi)

Going in Robot Master Order (even if it will mean the quality of the net navi designs will go up and down as they got more used to the new design theme)

Cut Man and CutMan.EXE

Out of all the old designs that BN’s ocasional ‘chibi’ look touched, CutMan is probably the best. Never been too sure on the ‘ears’/handles on his head but the more sentai/super hero vibe I get from the BN design is rather cute. It’s a simple base design and they did all they could to it while still keeping the overal original vibe.

Though honestly I think it’s a tie because they’re just too similar and I’d have to start nitpicking to find differences. 1-all

Guts Man vs GutsMan.EXE

A complete overhaul of the original design, putting more of an emphasis on the construction equipment envoking yellows and greys than the original’s red and black.

The over pronounced chin and squaring of the head also invokes a loader. Not too sure on the backpack on EXE but I like how they turned the power crystal on the base design into the ‘emblem’ of EXE’s. The addition of green is also nice, just enough to pop but not enough to distract.

GM-EXE takes it, 1-2 in favour of Battle Network

Next is a pair I’d love to have right now to deal with the heat, Ice Man and IceMan.EXE

This one...did not take the chibification too well. And granted this picture isn’t...great for EXE’s head shape, I’m doing my best to ignore it....it’s like a ham chunk stuck in a glove...

Er, sorry. The shades of dark green and mint green aren’t really doing it for me, and are just making me wish for mint choc chip ice cream...The face swirls are...there, I guess...I like the contrast between the boots and gloves vs the rest of the design...

Yeah, classic takes it with a less is more approch. 2-2, tied up again

Bomb Man vs BombMan.EXE

...man, this was the coolest villain grunt from the show growing up, him and StoneMan.EXE introducing the concept of userless navi and how their looks are sometimes vastly different from ‘tame’ navi.

I like the overal, vaguely grenade like design for his armour decals, even if it cribs a bit from Grenade Man.

And I much prefer a ‘visable’ hammer space for pulling bombs out of-his shoulders-compared to them just appearing even though it’d make more sense for the virtual being to pull them out of thin air.

Obvious winner, 2-3 back into BN’s court

Fire Man vs FireMan.EXE

Doing my best to just let the designs do the talking instead of my love for .EXE’s user Mr Match, who was Scottish in the dubbed anime.

I really enjoy the colour inversion between the armour vs main body, with the splashes of blue and gold-y yellow adding more to the simple base design.

I can see why some wouldn’t like the head of EXE but since the clasic doesn’t have a mouth anyways, might as well go whole hog and create an imposing, slightly off-humanoid design

MMC 2-4 MMBN

And last of the first game’s robot masters, Elec Man vs ElecMan.EXE

Deffinitely my favourite change, and not just because I prefer the purple to the 4th robot master with red and/or black as their design

This took the concept of the digitized beings going more form over function (since so long as the code was good they COULD function) and ran with it. The tesla coil back spikes, the helmet mimicking the shape of the original’s...why does EM have a domino-mask, anyways?

Point being, a very imposing design and a superior one to the original

And so for this round, we end with a somewhat noticible gap of 2-5, and it would have been worse for MMC if I didn’t count draws as points for both sides. As we get further into the classic series it might even out a bit more

[repentantsky]

6 Times Nintendo Asked for Too Much Money, for Too Little in Return, on Switch, or Despite It

I’m critical of anyone who I think is ripping people off, and Nintendo, sadly, espeically since it’s games don’t drop in price, has done that a lot. That’s not to say Sony and Microsoft have never done it before, but since the Direct was an egregious reminder of how they mishandle business, I thought now was as good a time as any to remind people, they kind of have a history. 

6.  Charging over $100, for a remake’s full content

Now, I will say, in most cases a remake can go full price. If it’s ground up like a remake should be, and adds extra features or content to sweeten the deal, that’s fair play, however, locking content behind a paywall is cheap. Enter Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadow of Valentia. While the base game was just full price, which was 40 bucks on the 3DS, it cost far more to unlock all of it’s extra content. A $25 dollar Amiibo combo back, which unlocked special content, and a $50 dollar season pass, which was mostly just new dungeons and weapons, brought the total to $115 dollars for all it’s content. Hey, I get it, DLC is a thing, but a season pass that costs more than the base game, is just a shitty thing to do. Nintendo even went so far as to alter how they added it up, to make it seem cheaper than it was. To make matters worse, they did all this while giving out free content like crazy on Nintendo Switch games, kind of telling everyone who wasn’t an early adopter of the system, to screw off. It was also the first real screw ball thing they did after Satoru Iwata-San had passed away. Talk about a spit in the face. 

5. Overcharging for MicroSD’s.

One of the major problems of the Switch, is that it has too little space for all the games Nintendo wants you to buy on it, and to be fair, that we also want to buy on it. While most first party titles are pretty small in terms of what they require from the Switch, it has a massive 3rd party library as well, and how does Nintendo handle that, by charging double for what anyone could get for MicroSD’s that do exactly what the Nintendo branded ones do. I mean, seriously, imagine paying 100 bucks for 256GB of space, when you could pay 50. Be careful about that though, some MicroSD’s couldn’t be formatted, which would mean you couldn’t you them on the Switch. While that seems to have calmed down more over the years, it still happened at the time, and it still sucked. Overcharging because your name is on a product, is shameful, and screw everyone that does it, Nintendo included. 

4. Charging for Nintendo Online. 

I get it, Microsoft and Sony do it, and I hate that as well, but at least in return, you can get some actually decent games, and better deals on products, espeically with PSN for the latter, and come on, Game Pass is worth it no matter who you are. Nintendo though, even though it’s cheaper, has thus far refused to release any games past SNES era, a large portion of games released on Nintendo Online are cheap 3rd party rip-off’s of first party Nintendo games, and it really doesn’t appear like Nintendo plans to make the service truly worth it any time soon. As much as I love Nintendo, it’s really hard to justify paying for an online service that nets you so little, but alas, here we are. 

3. New Super Bros U Deluxe 

Yeah, a full price port of a game is never a good idea, and this whole list could have been made of them. Instead, I’m only going to include a few, but this one might be the worst. I mean, Super Mario Bros U is a great game, but it’s not worth full price just because it got ported. There’s not that much content there, even with the added Luigi U content inspired by the year of Luigi. It’s a hard sell trying to convince a logical person that the same 4 hour game, with an extra hour to hour and a half of content, which is just levels you already played as Mario, is a good buy, because it isn’t. I don’t know what Nintendo was thinking with this port, and it’s sad to see it, but alas, like all Nintendo games, it’s still full price on their store.

2. Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE

I will put it on record that I love Tokyo Mirage Sessions, it’s a somewhat more light-hearted game than the it’s source material, at least from Atlus’ end, but that doesn’t make it bad at all, in fact it’s great. However, it kinda failed on the Wii U, quickly leaving store shelves and never being heard from again until it’s Switch version was announced. It’s still a great game on the Switch, but either Nintendo got greedy, or Atlus let them, and a game that basically a commercial failure, came out at full price same as before, and that was easily a deterrent for many, as it should be. Selling a port of a game that flopped on a system that flopped, isn’t exactly a good consumer move, and yet, it’s exactly what happened. 

 1. Asking you to pay more for Miitopia

Look, I get that there is certain difference between playing a game on a handheld, and playing it on your 4K TV if you have one, and I’ll admit the idea of play Miitopia on my 4K display is both appealing and hilarious, but it’s just a port. It’s not a remaster, it’s a port. And for that extra 10 bucks we get what, a horse and some makeup? How people can justify that is beyond me. The “Oh I didn’t play it on 3DS so this will be my first time buying it” is an excuse to hide behind because your love of Nintendo is too strong. If don’t call out a company for it’s bad practices, or buy into those practices, they are only going to do worse, and if this list isn’t proof of that, that I don’t know what to tell you. Charging more for a port than an original release is shady though. 

And that’s my list, did I miss anything you think was too much on the Nintendo Switch? Let me know in the comments below, reblog this post if it interested you, feel free to leave a note, and hey, if you think I’m biased against Nintendo, just look at the photo I post that’s coming directly after this goes live. Have a good freaking day/night whatever your time zone’s got you on.  

[calamitaswrath]

Lucia plays Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn: Part 3 Chapter 6

Sothe's really not thrilled about this fight. Stands to reason. But Micaiah isn't either, and still does what she feels she needs to. . . oof, this really isn't gonna get any easier for her, is it?

Well then! Plenty of preperations to make, because when I last had the Dawn Brigade they were only just starting to reach their second tier stages, whereas Ike and the others are already starting to reach their third tier stages. I specifically didn't use any bonus exp on the Greil's Mercenaries, in case that is a shared pool that the player has access to, rather than something that is seperate for these armies. . . but, turns out it is seperate for the armies, and instead of ~28k I had for Greil's Mercenaries, I only have the ~8k I had for the Dawn Brigade. Ooooph.

I ended up pumping a whole ton of exp into Edward, Aran, Nolan and Jill. I figure that if anyone is going to carry me through this it'll be them. And for Aran in particular this seems to be paying off, as he's getting far better stats than Nephenee even has right now!

Now, base conversations! Sothe getting a Master Crown. . . yeah, not using that. There's no way I'm wasting the exp for any character I still have right now. Maybe if I have someone at level 20 at the base menu.

Jill - oh, she's really not buying the whole war involvement. But after all the character development she went through in PoR, this really stands to reason.

Edward, Nolan and Leonardo - how suspiciously generous of the game to give me three legendary weapons just like that. I definitely won't be needing them. . . and all three of them putting their faith in Micaiah. I'll say it again: oof.

Now, as for the gameplay part of it all: all my levelling did thankfully pay off. Aran was able to tank like it was nobody's business, Nolan managed to boost his awful 12 defence to usable levels with his new axe, Edward was putting in all the work as usual, and Jill managed to catch up on some of her stats. She's no Haar, but she's doing pretty well for herself.

I did leave Fiona and Leonardo behind despite me being technically allowed to use the entire Dawn Brigade. There's just no way that they can really contribute anything, and I think they'll most likely just get in the way.

Black Knight is back! Didn't really use him though, because there's no way I'm wasting experience like that, and there is still the fun mechanic of the AI prioritizing units that can't fight back. . . like a Black Knight who doesn't have Alondite equipped.

I also didn't attack either Lethe or Mordecai or even find them, so I'll just read up on any conversations there later. But also, I know that if Lethe somehow died already, then a random guy with literally no other role takes her place, which is just. . . lol.

I like how the story tries to frame this fight as completely hopeless for the Alliance, when it's the Dawn Brigade that is outright struggling in terms of gameplay. Guess we got a bit of Ludonarrative Dissonance™ at play here!

Though there is the part where almost calling in Skrimir gets Micaiah to reconsider. The devs really must have been at least somewhat aware of the situation they're putting the Dawn Brigade in.

Tauroneo's here! Except not really 'cause he's just delivering stuff. Short stay, that. And I doubt that he'll be able to convince Pelleas of peace.

But speaking of Pelleas. . . I was theorizing about Izuka being blackmailed into backing off earlier, but I think Pelleas getting blackmailed sounds also pretty likely. This whole. . . menu thingy that shows all the characters and their affiliation and relations does connect him with Ashnard and Almedha as "Parent and Child" with a question mark, so it's pretty obvious that his heritage is faked to some extent. The question is, who exactly is doing the blackmailing here?

Now, as for the conversations I missed - jeez, Zihark can outright become an enemy?? They really driving home that Daein shouldn't get involved here. And the conversations that Jill has. . . I'm mostly on the Jill/Mist train, but I think Jill/Lethe also has potential. Especially with conversations like this.

[puppyluver256]

[Image descriptions: Three Pokemon Trainers with the fan-made Pokemon Chikret, Calflame, and Haymuth. Three more images break them into individual Trainer and Pokemon pairings.

The first image is the feminine Pokemon Trainer. She has light skin, shoulder-length brown hair, and blue eyes. She is wearing a pink hat with button badges attached and a Pokeball design, a purple short-sleeved shirt under a creamy yellow shirt with ruffled trim, a green wristband, blue shorts with pink lace trim, aqua knee-high socks, and pink and blue slip-on shoes. She has a tan backpack with purple straps on her back, and as she is walking forward she is looking back and waving at those behind her. Beside her is the fan-made Pokemon Chikret, which is a blue egret-like creature with big blue eyes. It has its wings outstretched and is running alongside its Trainer.

The second image is the androgynous Pokemon Trainer. They have somewhat light skin, short dark brown hair, and trey eyes. They are wearing an aqua green hat with teal accents and a blue Pokeball design, a purple button-up shirt over a darker purple shirt, a green wristband with an aqua Pokeball emblem, a green jacket tied around their waist, denim cutoff shorts with purple and pink leggings underneath, and purple slip-on shoes. They have a tan backpack with purple straps, and are scratching the back of their head nervously as they walk. Beside them is the fan-made Pokemon Calflame. It is a small calf with red fur and eyes, stubby horns, brown hair on its head, and orange and yellow hair on its tail resembling fire. It is running alongside its Trainer in an attempt to keep up.

The third image is the masculine Pokemon Trainer. He has medium-brown skin, short blonde hair, and green eyes. He is wearing a backwards-turned green and black baseball cap with a Pokeball design, a red collared shirt over a dark violet t-shirt, a green wristband with an aqua Pokeball emblem, denim pants, and green and grey running shoes. He has a tan backpack with purple straps on his back, and he is excitedly running ahead. Beside him is the fan-made Pokemon Haymuth, a yellow and green mammoth covered in grass-like hair. It is happily running alongside its Trainer to keep pace with him.

End ID.]

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Introducing the player characters for Pokemon Plow and Circuit! And yes, there are three basic options available, the "girly" one that people taking my survey decided was their favorite, the "neutral" one, and the "boyish" one. And I gave the players the design elements and starter Pokemon based on what shared their placement in that survey: everything with girly placed first, everything with neutral placed second, and everything with boyish placed third. ...Okay so there were a few ties in there, but I settled them with coin flips hehe. So how do they look? If you wanna draw 'em yourselves sometime and make 'em look however you want I can throw the base ref atcha that shows the basic options, though feel free to get crazy with the hair and eye colors as I can imagine that the realm of salon dyes and colored contacts could lead those bits to some wild fun hehe :3

While the players' skin, hair, and eye color can be determined by the hypothetical player (and the hair and eye color can be changed later), these are the looks I'm going to personally stick with for any Cantessy drawings featuring the player going forward.

For storytelling purposes only, each of these player characters has a hypothetical "real" person behind them who made them look as close to themselves as possible. The girly character is Mira, and she chooses Chikret when playing Pokemon Plow. The neutral character is Briar, and they choose Calflame when playing Pokemon Circuit. And the boyish character is Jake, and while he will eventually choose Haymuth, he is currently more focused on other games and will play either Plow or Circuit when he can get both as he'd rather have the full experience. Wait, why am I so specific on which version the players pick? Weellllll...if ya know, ya know. If not, you'll find out :3c

💖🐶 Check out my pinned post for ways to support my artwork, among other things! 🐶💖

~If you like, please reblog to show your friends! Likes are appreciated, but reblogs let more people see my content! If you have something to say, feel free to give feedback in tags/comments/replies as well!~

Pokemon and related concepts © Nintendo/GameFreak Cantessy player characters, Chikret, Calflame, Haymuth, the Cantessy region, and artwork © PuppyLuver Studios