#i was pretty much exclusively a fan of the mobile game so i dipped out when llsif started stagnating

[curemoonliite]

me up until last week: *hasn't thought about love live or listened to any ll songs in months*

me after finding out yoshiko/yohane's seiyuu is performing live at my town's anime con: are we back? are we fucking back???

[overcaffeinated-creative]

Repairing Friendships

Summary: A character study with Kamelia staring at the unreliable narrator. IT’s set about six months before the Clone Wars start. Every word she speaks drips paranoia. 

Characters: Kamelia Malo, Solus Vetra, Lumi Kirrin, Jazari Naaji

Rating: T maybe?

Warnings: I can't stress the unreliable nature of Kamelia enough.

Kamelia came to the small gathering later than expected. It took her by surprise she decided to show up at all. Things had grown distant between the four of them as the years passed. While they had become early Padawans she remained among the Initiates far longer. Until well past fifteen in fact. Between their different schedules, and superior talents she admitted ruefully, they should have stayed separated. Yet, now they offered her a simple in with their group again.

Just sitting among them now was like being in one of those teen holodramas. The sort she loved but would never admit to watching. To her, those three could have easily fit in among the main casts. Powerful, elite girls who started with the Galaxy served up to them on a silver platter. Yet, they still played dangerous games to pass the time. Noting the smuggled bottle of wine passing between them she knew they cared nothing for rules. It really was like being invited to a new, unwelcoming world. Yet, she felt compelled to see how their lives had turned out.

She wondered if their picture perfect group had in-fighting like the dramas. Their Trio did consist of three Black Beads, with two hailing from Katarn Clan. Avoidance, manipulation, secrecy, and violence was rumored to the lifeblood for those sort. Sure, people admired their rare (and coveted) training but said training came at a cost. Everyone knew their moral compasses never pointed due north. Kamelia imagined it made it hard for them to keep friends at all. No matter the relationship the urge to screw one another over or spy would always be there. An unhealthy paranoia bred from dancing in the shadows of the Dark Side but supposedly resisting.

Paranoia crept abruptly up Kamelia’s spine from those thoughts. Was their attempt to renew their friendship with her just a game? When Jazari, the ring leader, invited her to this she sounded genuine. Even going so far as to say they all missed her. But, that could so easily be a lie. Lumi was too much of a stone cold bitch to miss anyone. Solus was an overly anxious mess that barely fit the Order. Jazari used to be the Nice One yet that could have changed. Maybe when she left they would all laugh behind her back. They were special, everyone knew they were special, but she was not. Compared to people who remembered lives outside the Temple, with impressively high midichlorians, and secret training she was painfully boring. It was hard to believe they were ever friends before.

Sipping from her juice, Kamelia used the sweet taste to focus. Her mind was too occupied with the future again as her master would say. In the here and now, they wanted to be friends again and she would accept. While unprompted, it was a kind offer to make for people not known for such actions. Unlike them, she refused to grow paranoid, exclusive, and apathetic. With their skewed morals they could understandably be those things. If anything this could be the Force wanting her to help them back to the right path. It was her job to help heal the broken as a medic and they were broken.

Sometimes, she wondered if they realized how they sounded to outsiders. The recent Padawan hung out with them for less than a night but was already witnessing their brokenness. Lumi recounted the story of some guy handing her a love note earlier. Something handwritten on flimsi then meticulously sealed with a plum ribbon. He even called her beautiful to her face while stuttering. She imitated his minor confession while scoffing as if the word was an insult. To rub salt in the wound, Lumi even brought the letter to share with them. To her ears, the young man’s words were both pretty and heartfelt. He had a crush he was trying to navigate through without breaking the rules. Yet, Solus laughed along at the prose while Jazari rolled her eyes. Both of them agreed it was insulting.

If honest with herself, Kamelia was envious at the exotic beauty they so often ignored. Compared to them she was merely human. A plain, some days awkwardly shaped human with normal, boring coloring. A slight tan with a few freckles, brown hair, and dark green eyes was nothing next to their brightness. Nor was short, sort of slim, but very stacked impressive next to literal goddesses (even if their chests were all smaller). At best, her beauty came from her personality and soft muscle tone. It keep people from calling her intimidating so she had to love it. Healers should never scare their patients.

Across from her, Lumi sprawled over three mediation cushions head on her back. Her head was pillowed on Jazari’s lap with lekku fanned out and ends curled. She looked every bit an escaped muse from a classical painting or a fountain statue come to life. Already Lumi was classed as hot, as Twi’lek were known to be, but even by their standards she was devastatingly sexy. Not even her more common base color was a slight because her patterns made her look like a nebula. It was frustrating to watch her layer that beneath robes, sweat, and engine grease. With no effort Lumi could have the world eating from the palm of her hand. Yet, she chose to be Jedi. Why would she spend so much time dreaming of the stars when she was capable of owning them with looks alone?

Solus sat above Lumi on a meditation block while scribbling away in her sketch book. What Lumi had in pure sex appeal Solus had as a more innocent sexy. Nothing about her screamed intimidating; a waifish figure with long, white curls and full, fuchsia lips. Even her predatory fangs could be passed off as cute with the right smile. Coy Imp was what the tiny girl called the act she proudly weaponized. In passing, she had even admitted to being a landed countess on Mandalore. Yet, she stayed in the Order as a future, failed Jedi. To Kamelia is was so unfair to see their resources wasted.

One hand was scrolling through her datapad but the other rubbed the base of Lumi’s lekku. In her opinion, Jazari lacked much of the sex appeal attributed to her. Far too tall with ugly hair jumped to Kamelia’s first when she thought of her former friend. She wore the strange nerf tail, Padawan cut of Master Kenobi and Padawan Skywalker’s fame. Combined with her calloused hands and defined muscles she should have looked manly. Yet, people loved it. Clad in mostly black robes she slipped between expectations. They loved the self assured way Jazari carried herself and the kind, intelligent words she spoke. A few also mentioned the brilliance she possessed as a slicer. Any company or runway (Kamelia inwardly balked at her being compared to a model) would be lucky to have her.  Perhaps, she should be thankful after all that Jazari put so little effort into her looks. Otherwise, she would be another unmatchable class of beauty.

-

“Something wrong?” Solus asked sounding almost concerned from her perch. “You keep looking at us funny.”

Kamelia felt her face blister red at being caught with her mind drifting. “I’m just amazed is all,” she stuttered out. “It’s been forever since we’ve hung out and everyones’ changed so much.”

“Huh.” Solus lifted the bottle of wine to her lips for a long sip. “Guess it has been a few years. We weren’t old enough to drink last time.”

“We’re still not old enough to drink nor allowed.” Left off was her personal opinions on them so brazenly breaking the rules. While Masters Zey and Drayson were impressive they were nothing next to Master Windu. Yet, all of their Padawans felt comfortable chancing their reputations for a vice.

“Depending on the rules you go by we are,” Solus laughed before passing the bottle to Lumi. “By my peoples’ standards I’m an adult. Master Leska even did a Coming of Age Ceremony with me to cement it.” Her sketch pad dipped down to show several nude figure studies. “And Padawans drinking is frowned upon but not forbidden.”

Jazari laughed with teeth shining against nearly forest green lips. “Sol’ika has a point. We’re not really told not too.”

Cold silver eyes bore into her own while Lumi took several silent sips. An unspoken dare to challenge anyone further on the matter. “Want some? It’s the best batch yet,” she purred in her Ryl toned words.

“No, thank you. I’ve got a shift with the Master Che in the morning and I can’t risk it.”

[burnouts3s3]

Fire Emblem: Three Houses, a review

(Disclaimer: The following is a non-profit unprofessional blog post written by an unprofessional blog poster. All purported facts and statement are little more than the subjective, biased opinion of said blog poster. In other words, don’t take anything I say too seriously.) Just the facts 'Cause you're in a Hurry! Publisher: Nintendo Entertainment Developer: Intelligent Systems and Koei Tecmo Games Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP): 59.99 USD How much I paid: 59.99 USD Rated: T for Teen due to Blood, Suggestive Themes and Violence. Can I play offline: Yes How long I played: 128 Hours to go through all 4 story routes while watching the (skippable) cutscenes. Microtransactions: 24.99 USD for an Expansion Pass, a digital license that allows downloading additional future content for the game. What I played on: My Nintendo Switch Dual Audio: Yes. Both English and Japanese voices are available. Notable Localization Changes: Certain lines were rewritten. Petra, a foreigner from a different land, speaks more like Borat than anything else. Dorothea used innuendos that have been written out. Performance Issues: The game runs well enough, for the most part. I noticed a lot of soft textures and pixilation when the game was in docked mode. In handheld mode, I noticed quite a few dips in framerate. In game movies tend to look choppy and stilted in docked mode. While in the Monastery, I waited at multiple loading screens, certain characters will not pop up until after a few seconds and certain doors into other areas take a couple of seconds to open. Can I play without 2 Joy-con controllers?: No, both controllers are required. My Personal Biases: I’ve been a fan of Fire Emblem since someone recommended me Fire Emblem: Awakening for the 3DS. So far, I’ve enjoyed the modern titles for the work such as Awakening and Fates. I bought Shadows of Valentia, but haven’t gotten around to finishing it. I never played Fire Emblem: Warriors. My Verdict: Trying to make the jump from handheld to console while retaining all the key elements is a bit of an uphill battle for Fire Emblem. While the core mechanic still remains charming, the open world exploration aspect and calendar system don’t exactly mesh well. Still, give it a shot. Buy it. Fire Emblem: Three Houses, A Review

After much waiting and the inevitable spin-offs into mobile and musou territory, Fire Emblem finally releases its latest iteration. This time, it comes to the console, the Nintendo Switch. Will Fire Emblem manage to retain the charm it had on portable devices? Let’s find out in this review of “Fire Emblem: Three Houses”! You play the role of “The Professor”, child of the mercenary, Jeralt and newest member of the Church of Seiros. Under the guidance of the Archbishop, Lady Rhea, the Church of Serios guides the land of Fodlan through an age of prosperity. There you can pick between the Three Houses and will teach one of them: Future Empress Edelgard and the Black Ravens, Future King Dimitri and the Blue Lions or Future Duke Claude and the Golden Deer. However, things are far from peaceful as a new threat emerges to shake up the church. While tutoring your students, you must also uncover the mystery surrounding the land and how best to resolve it. Certain elements for previous Fire Emblem titles had to be stripped when making the jump from handheld to console that’s sort of a handheld. The extensive character customization found in Awakening and Fates is gone, as players are limited to playing a male or female avatar. The game’s key feature, support conversations, is still there. Earn enough Support with a student will unlock a conversation with them. You can either talk to them while exploring the monastery or they’ll call you on a free day to celebrate. However, you can only unlock the S Rank / Romance ending by completing the main storyline and getting an epilogue. You cannot just grind support levels and unlock the endings before completing the main campaign like in previous titles. The Three Houses have individual storylines and the leaders of each house have different goals. Edelgard has ambitions and will stop at nothing to achieve them, Dimitri has regrets about the deaths he’s witnessed and it’s changed him and Claude is trying to keep the peace while breaking down the borders. One of the cooler aspects of the game is to recruit or ‘poach’ characters from different houses. If you level up your MC with enough of a stat and Combat Skill, you can recruit another character that’s usually exclusive to another House and into your own. For example, if you have at least 15 Strength and a C rank in Bow skills, you can recruit Bernadetta, a unit usually exclusive to the Black Eagles, into any House you want. However, because of the nature of the game and the branching paths, you will not be able to poach the House Leaders and their bodyguards. For example, no matter how high your stats or combat skills, Edelgard and her loyal friend, Hubert, cannot be recruited to any House other than the Black Eagles. The unit characters themselves are basic stock types: the loyal servant, the shy girl, the loudmouth, anime Edna Krabappel, the big eater, etc. Granted, Fire Emblem always played it fast and loose with stock types but I enjoyed the batch this time around. It also helps that in conversations with other characters, the units have interesting chemistry, as in Petra realizing Caspar’s father killed her father in a previous war, but is willing to look past that or Dorothea, who was born a commoner, putting Lorenz, a snobby noble, in his place.   The feature I was missing the most was the ability to have S class conversations between other members besides the Main Character. In Awakening and Fates, you could have romantic pairings and those pairings would produce new units, a child, to fight alongside them. However, since that feature is gone, you’re stuck with one person. The “A” Rank is considered the romance and will affect the ending titles. Since I achieved the A rank between multiple NPCs with one another, they’re automatically assigned with certain characters. (What’s interesting is that certain A ranks offer platonic endings. I was completely shocked to find an ending where Leonie and Shamir join up in an ending together to form a mercenary group as buddies). I miss seeing different characters romance one another and how said romance would affect a new unit. For example, I liked the Donnel and Maribelle pairing in Fire Emblem: Awakening and seeing their child, Brady, join the fray. So while NPCs romancing each other is still there, the child units are not there (or may possibly appear in a future DLC, but I doubt it). Of the Four Routes, I found the Blue Lions and Dimitri’s the most ‘complete’ or the most scripted and detailed of the bunch. The other routes are fine, (Edelgard and the Black Eagles is pretty interesting), but the Blue Lions route seems like the one done first or the one most detailed. New to the franchise are the use of battalions, troops that can be assigned to units to give benefits. Some battalions can attack without being countered and inflict status effects such as poison or no movement. Other battalions can heal nearby units or give them more mobility. Best of all, units with battalions grouped together can ‘join up’ and unleash a stronger attack. However, certain battalions can only be assigned to specific movement types. So only Pegasus troops can be assigned to Flying units. By upgrading a new combat skill, Authority, Units can access higher levels of Battalions that deal more damage. Be careful. If your unit takes too much damage, Battalions will retreat and you’ll have to replenish them with Gold. Also new to the franchise, Epic Beasts, large monsters that take up multiple squares, multiple health bars and have armor. While your troops do reduced damage, you can ‘break’ the armor, exposing a weak point and allows other characters to deal additional damage to the monster. The game introduces an open world element, in which your character runs around the Monastery and helps NPCs with quests. In the monastery, you can take up quests with award you with Renown. By using Renown, you can repair the statues which grant you bonuses in learning skills. As you complete side quests, help NPCs and complete story missions, you gain Professor Levels which in turn levels up your Activity Levels (the amount of activities you can do in a day) and Battle Levels (how many substantial battles you can do in a day). Higher Activity Levels means you can do more Faculty Training sessions, dining sessions, cooking with specific NPCs and have Tea Parties. Yes, you can have Tea Parties with NPCs to increase their support levels. You select specific topics out of 3 and if you get all three topics correct in a row, you can get a bonus question to answer. This is a great way to increase support with units if you’re tired of grinding in battles. You can also do other tasks such as fish and garden, to earn ingredients to cook with other students to deepen the bond. You can also spend time with students such as eating together, attending choir practice. In addition to teaching your students, you can also level up your own skills by talking with other teachers and getting Faculty training, spending an activity point to earn experience with a certain skill. For example, you can train the faith skill by using faculty training with Manuela and Rhea. To be honest, I found this aspect of the game most tedious. I find fetch quests boring enough without having the story need to rely on them, but running around and looking for individual students to chat up or professors to level up really got on my nerves. Yes, there is a Fast Travel system, but the open world aspect feels wasted on Fetch Quests. The game also introduces a Calendar system, meant to mark time and schedule dates in order to meet with other students. During most weeks, you will do as all professors do and lecture your students to improve their skills, such as sword or axe. You can also assign group tasks for 2 students to pair up and improve their flying, heavy armor or riding skills.   By assigning tasks, the students will devote themselves to learning certain weapon or spell skills throughout the week, so you won’t have to grind skills in battle. You can assign them 2 skills to double up or have them focus on one skill to speed up the progress. As the same time, you can spend energy talking to individual students and teaching them skills. But, students must have motivation to increase their learning. Motivation can be earned by answering students’ questions correctly, giving the students correct gifts or lost items or spending time with them by eating together or cooking together. Any unit can pick up any skill and become any class, but certain units are more proficient at certain abilities than others and will level up a skill faster while leveling up other skills at a slower pace. However, some students have ‘budding skills’ where in if you give them enough personal instruction, they can become proficient in the skill. For example, it’s possible for Dorothea to become a Cleric if she puts in enough points in Faith (White Magic). However, she will level up Faith slowly while she’s more proficient in leveling up Reason (Black magic) quickly. It’s clear on the outset that the game wants to discourage grinding, or at the very least, limit it. While you could spam a low Level mission, eventually units stop gaining experience and you’ll have to take a higher level mission or quest. And since missions or quests usually require spending energy, you’ll be limited on how much you can do per day. Paralogues (side stories that flesh out individual characters) return, but because of the calendar system, they must be completed before a certain date or be lost forever. In addition, certain bonds cannot progress until the paralogue has been completed. However, completing paralogues rewards battalions and unique weapons. Even the support conversations cannot advance until past a certain story point and players will be given messages such as “It will take some time for this bond to develop”. On the same coin, should you neglect a support conversation and unlock it after a major turning point in the game, the game will inform you that “you missed the opportunity to deepen this bond”. It’s almost as though Nintendo wants to replicate the SMT: Persona formula but it feels artificial instead of organic. (If I need to spend a whole week lecturing students, why can’t I go explore the Monastery?) The game also alters promoting a unit’s class or role. In previous games, a unit with a high enough level could use an item, an Advanced Seal, to advance to a higher class and gain boosted stats and bonuses. While Seals are still available, units now must pass certification exams, which allow the chance of failure if a Unit’s skill isn’t advanced enough. For example, Dorothea can take a certification exam to become a Warlock at Level 20 with a B rank in Reason (Black Magic), but has a chance to fail because the requirements suggest an A rank. It's possible to waste a Seal on a character who isn’t ready (though anyone with enough sense will just save and reload and grind until said unit passes the exam). After you finish your 1st campaign, you can import your save into New Game Plus and import the renown you put into the Statues. Better yet, you can take the extra renown and purchase class levels, professor levels and support levels you already unlocked in previous playthroughs. You can also use Renown to lower the cost requirements by unlocking support ranks. For example, using renown to unlock the C Rank for Dorothea (that you had to have earned in a previous playthrough) will lower the cost of recruiting her into another house. In terms of Performance, the game runs alright. I noticed a lot of soft textures and pixilation when the game was in docked mode. In handheld mode, I noticed quite a few dips in framerate. In game movies tend to look choppy and stilted in docked mode. While in the Monastery, I waited at multiple loading screens, certain characters will not pop up until after a few seconds and certain doors into other areas take a couple of seconds to open. Granted, I’m willing to overlook less than stellar performance in service of compelling characters and gameplay and Fire Emblem: Three Houses has plenty of that. The English Dub in the game is top notch. Granted, a lot of localization issues occur (Fans tell me that Petra’s lines were altered to make her fit better and some of Dorothea’s innuendos aren’t in the English version), but I enjoyed it for the most part. Many professional voice actors lend a hand here: David Lodge, Erica Mendez, Veronica Taylor and so on. But it’s Tara Platt who steals the show as Edelgard. Dub watchers often accuse Platt of using the same voice in multiple roles, but she really delievers both emotion and variation between switching between an Edelgard before and after the major plot point. JAPANESE VOICES ARE AVAILABLE IF YOU PREFER IT. CAVEAT: I enjoyed Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and was having a good time rerolling characters and chatting up members of my house. However, I couldn’t help but feel the new elements padded out the game instead of adding to it. Along with the lack of avatar customization that Robin and Corrin had, as well as Romantic conversations between non-MC members and the ability to produce child units, I wasn’t as obsessed with this title as I was Fates and Awakening. (Magic feels particularly unbalanced this time around. Where in previous titles, you had to purchase magic, store it in your inventory and it was capable of breaking as all other weapons. Here, it replenishes after every battle and doesn’t even take up inventory space.) And yet, the New Game Plus import, branching paths and the ability to poach characters from opposing Houses kept me engaged much more than I expected it to. Also, I did enjoy having tea time with Edelgard and Dorothea. Verdict: Buy it!

[reduxroyal]

What are you thoughts on fire emblem heroes so far? And who's on your team?

lol okay buckle the fuckle in kids this is gonna be a ride

(also thank you for this ask and I’m sorry you’re about to get way more info than you probably wanted)

We’ll start with the short answer, so people who aren’t really here for a fucking Fire Emblem history lesson can dip:

Heroes is a fun little game that is honestly a good test to see if you’d like proper titles because the mechanics are identical. They use smaller versions of the original maps, and even pull a lot of the classic music. It’s fun, it works, and there are some nice nods to the older games. My team is Lazlow, Tiki, Niles, and Frederick, all four star or below because the gotcha gods hate me.

Here’s the long answer. Like, really long answer.

Fire Emblem is, historically, not what we’d call a raging success in the US. The first six titles were Japan-exclusive. So from 1990 until 2003, nobody in the US really knew or cared about Fire Emblem because there were no fuckin games for them to play. So what happened to change that?

Melee. Melee happened.

Marth and Roy (for whatever fucking reason I still don’t know why) were on the roster of the 2001 fighter Super Smash Bros. Melee and boy howdy were they popular. You may remember that all of their voice lines were in Japanese, and that’s because they literally didn’t have English voice actors, because there were no English Fire Emblem titles. To be fair FE didn’t use cutscenes at that point so there were probably no voice actors period but like whatever.

So Roy and Marth become like, overnight sensations, and that coupled with the success of Intelligent System’s other tactical RPG, Advance Wars, prods Nintendo to give it a shot and release Blazing Blade internationally for the GBA in 2003. Blazing Blade is the story of Eliwood, Roy’s father, as well as Lyn and Hector, two other big names in FE lore.

But Blazing Blade only sells so-so. In fact, over the next eleven years, Fire Emblem hits a slump, both in Japan and abroad. Titles like Sacred Stones (the first video game I ever played) Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn (why would you put a tactical RPG on anything other than a handheld literally why why why it makes no sense omfg) and Shadow Dragon (which is a rehash of the first game, Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light) all do pretty mediocre.

So now the year is like 2010-ish and FE’s not picking up it’s lost revenue or interest, so Intelligent Systems starts planning what is essentially going to be the franchise’s finale, and that’s Fire Emblem Awakening. Intelligent Systems pulls out all the fuckin stops to make the best game they possibly can so it will be a proper last hurrah. If Awakening didn’t sell well, Fire Emblem was going to be shelved forever.

Awakening, of course, due to many things like good advertising, the right platform, a really fucking solid game with cool new mechanics, likeable characters, a decent plot, and fucking gorgeous cutscenes, becomes the best-selling game in Fire Emblem’s twenty-three year history. Which leads to the somewhat awkward question of what the fuck do you do when the thing that was supposed to be your franchise’s finale becomes the most popular installment of the whole goddamn series?

Well, if you’re Nintendo, you try to recreate it.

That’s what Fates is: a recreation. They (understandably) want to make that magic happen again. So they put together the same artists, a lot of the same voice actors, and everyone’s favorite marriage-to-child mechanic (that just does not make sense in Fates okay I’m sorry I love it and I’m here for it but we all need to agree that it just doesn’t make sense) and Fates does pretty well. Fire Emblem’s back in business.

But you’re left in this curious situation where more than half of your fanbase is only familiar with two out of fourteen titles, so it’s hard to decide where to go. Awakening and Fates are not traditional Fire Emblem games. They are so very, very different in so many ways. The pace of the games, the length of the games, the unit-recruiting process, roster size, the way Support works, even the buying and selling and acquisition of weapons like…there’s just this huge gap. How do you bridge it?

A…mobile game, I guess?

Which like don’t get me wrong, Heroes’ shortcomings have nothing to do with its platform. Like I said before: it’s cute and it’s competent. My issue lies more in the marketing of the game.

I’m sure we all remember the polls that went on to decide which Fire Emblem greats were going to be playable characters in the game, right? And you could pick anyone. Literally anyone. It didn’t matter if they were only apart of your roster for a map and a half. It didn’t matter if they were an enemy unit. It didn’t matter if they were some like, random archer you got in the third chapter so you could learn about ranged attacks. You could vote for any character from any Fire Emblem game, period.

Except, that means it’s essentially boiling down to a popularity contest between twelve practically unknown or rarely known Fire Emblem titles and the two newest, best-selling, fan favorites. Which isn’t upsetting so much as it is, like, dumb? Like of course the majority of people are gonna vote for Chrom and Camilla, that’s what they know. One of the best Fire Emblem characters (in my opinion) is Prince Innes, from Sacred Stones. He has a hilariously arrogant attitude, is bold and brash, and a sick fucking sniper who constantly insists he should be on the front lines and not in the back of the party with the rest of the ranged attackers.

Innes, of course, didn’t make the list. Because ten out of the chosen twenty male heroes were from Awakening or Fates (that ratio is 13:20 for the ladies if you were curious) So this game that was intended to like, I don’t even know, revive interest in old games or at least make them relevant, ends up not really doing that at all. Especially because out of the first eight chapters (that’s as far as I’ve gotten) four of ‘em explore the worlds of Awakening and Fates.

What about Path of Radiance? What about Sacred Stones? What about literally anything besides the last two games in the franchise because it’s not that I don’t like those games, it’s that you promised me a game that embraced all of Fire Emblem, and this ain’t it. Also you went to the trouble of giving Eirika official art and she’s not even a character you can draw what the actual fuck is she in this game or nah

BASICALLY (we’re almost done you almost made it) I think it will be interesting to see how Fire Emblem: Echoes plays out. Echoes is a remake of Fire Emblem Gaiden, a 1992 Japan-only exclusive that I, personally, know nothing about, but can tell you with relative confidence that it’s not like Awakening or Fates because nothing in FE is like Awakening or Fates. It’s coming out in May of this year and like…I’m really curious to see how the “newer” (and by the way newer does not mean in any way that you’re like less of a fan. I don’t care if the only Fire Emblem game you’ve played is Awakening, I’m just fucking glad you’re playing Fire Emblem, let’s be friends) fans will like it. The official description for it is: “Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia recreates classic Fire Emblem gameplay with a modern twist, mixing in exploration of dungeons crawling with enemies.”

I have never played a FE title that had a dungeon of any kind, unless you count the Tower of Valni from Sacred Stones. I don’t even know what that means in the terms of a tactical RPG but like, I guess we’ll see. 

tl;dr I like Fire Emblem a whole lot and will always be bitter over Eirika’s bullshit outfit in Awakening’s DLC

Thanks for reading!

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

Hi! I’m back again! And at this point lots of things have changed in regards to this post! Most notably: Heroes has added lots of older Fire Emblem characters to the game (including Innes which makes my earlier complaint look really dumb) and Echoes came out and it’s genuinely one of the best games I’ve ever played, and easily one of the best games in FE’s franchise.

Here’s the thing that past me writing this post didn’t get: newer fans are just as invested as old fans, they just don’t have as much to be invested in yet. I can prattle on and on about Sacred Stones and Binding Blade and Shadow Dragon and all the titles I’ve played, but newer players (under-fucking-standably) aren’t going to go back and play games with bad graphics from the late 90′s and early 00′s, so they just hang out with the titles they have played, which for some people, is just Awakening, or just Fates.

Echoes was universally adored by the fanbase. There were a couple times I saw comments like “well, where’s the avatar unit?” or “why can’t I marry other units and have kids?” and like, I wanted to be mad, because those aren’t staples of Fire Emblem, but if anything it’s Nintendo’s fault for making two games back-to-back that promoted the hell out of those features. How could someone who only played Awakening and Fates (which is the majority of this game’s base) know any differently?

And Heroes has really done well with bringing in more characters from other games. Every single game in the franchise (even fucking Tharcia 776) is represented by at least two characters, and they’re always adding more. I think they’re genuinely doing the best they can to please everyone, and the only people throwing a fit are "older” fans who think they deserve more because, what? They’ve put more time in? They’ve somehow “earned” it?

Nintendo is a business, and businesses rely on popularity to fucking succeed. That’s just how it works. Like it or not, the realistic faces of this franchise are characters like Lucina, Ryoma, Corrin, Camilla, and Robin. That’s just how it works. Characters like Math and Lyn will always endue because they’ve been built up as legends, but now there’s so many new characters, and so many new fans, so of course things have to change and the attention has to shift.

And new fans are picking up the old characters just as much!! Characters that haven’t gotten fanart in a fuckin decade are suddenly getting a bunch of attention, because a new fan pulled them in Heroes, didn’t know who they were but liked their design, and went to town.

tl;dr - you aren’t more important just because you’ve “been a fan” longer, it makes complete sense that Nintendo would shift the focus to games like Awakening and Fates, and if you’re waiting for a certain character to show up in Heroes give it some time.

That’s all for real this time.

Also my new team (if anyone cares) is Innes, Leo, Azura, and Raven. I don’t want to talk about how much money I spent trying to gotcha twelve year-old video game characters.

I, uh, I just really like Fire Emblem.

also for all the Path of Raidance and Radiant Dawn fans who sent me asks saying those games were the highest-selling games for their consoles: you’re wrong, and here are the fucking receipts

[gesteckt1]

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Unlike the Wi-Fi-only model, there is no option for a Core i7 processor. Microsoft’s Surface Keyboard (a necessity for basically anyone) costs an additional $129.99 (or $159.99 for one of the Alcantara fabric models). The Surface Pen (an option for most people) runs an additional $99.99. That means a fully equipped LTE Surface Pro with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage totals up to $1,679.For $150 more than the standard Surface Pro, you get an integrated modem that supports 20 bands of LTE service. (It’s a Qualcomm X16 modem, the same one found in many Android smartphones released last year.) Microsoft isn’t explicitly saying what carriers the Pro supports, but it is sold unlocked and supports bands for AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, plus international networks, so it should work almost anywhere you go. Like the cellular-equipped iPad Pro, the Surface Pro LTE has both an integrated eSIM and a tray for a nano-SIM, and you can set up service on both and switch between them through the Windows 10 settings app. The settings app also provides a data usage monitor so you can see how much cellular data you are using and set limits on it.

Microsoft says the LTE Pro lasts 12.5 hours between charges (compared to 13.5 for the Wi-Fi model), but that’s based on a looping video test and not real-world usage. In my experience, battery life on LTE has been closer to seven hours, which is a little less than I saw with the Wi-Fi version, but still in the acceptable range for this size computer. I’d have really loved to see Microsoft stick an even larger battery in this version to really make it a truly mobile computer, but I think most people will be satisfied with the LTE Pro’s battery life. The differences between using a computer that relies on a Wi-Fi network for internet and one that always just has a connection available are small, but they add up. Instead of having to set up a hot spot on my phone before opening my computer on the train and then waiting for the computer to find the hot spot and connect to it, I was able to just turn on the LTE Pro and get to work. As the train moved and the cellular connection went in and out (I tested it with T-Mobile service, but this applies to any carrier), the LTE Pro was able to find the network and reconnect faster after losing service than when I had to rely on my phone’s hot spot connection. On top of that, I don’t have to worry about draining both my phone’s battery and my laptop’s battery at the same time just to connect to the internet.

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Using a cellular-connected computer is also more secure than relying on public Wi-Fi networks, and it’s more convenient than using a hot spot that requires an account and login, such as those provided by Boingo.Getting online with the LTE Surface Pro is so easy that I never had to think about it. It’s a computer that gets out of my way and just lets me do the things I need to get done, instead of distracting me with network settings or other annoyances. This is the reason I’ve long preferred a cellular-connected iPad over a Wi-Fi-only model, but here it’s extended to a full-fledged work computer.

Since the Surface Pro is a full Windows 10 PC with a desktop browser and desktop applications, data usage is something you’ll want to keep an eye on, especially if you’re using it with a prepaid or capped data plan. In just a few days of exclusive LTE usage, I was able to burn through almost 4GB of data with just my daily workload (Slack, email, lots of browser tabs, lots of Twitter, downloading and updating apps from the Microsoft Store, etc.), which would put me close to 20GB in a month’s time. I’d use even more if I were to stream Netflix or other video. An unlimited data plan is probably the smart move if you’re using a computer like this.All of this adds up to a more seamless and pleasant working experience when away from my home or office. Instead of having to worry about whether or not I’ll have a connection or mapping out where I’ll be able to get connected ahead of time, I’m just able to turn the Surface Pro on and get to work, saving both time and hassle. That may not be worth the added cost of the LTE capability and the monthly service it requires to everyone, but for those who are constantly mobile and still need to get their jobs done (like me), it definitely is.

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Using a computer with a built-in cellular connection is so convenient that now I want every computer to have it. (It’s also something I’ve explicitly asked Microsoft for in the past.) It foreshadows a time when we won’t have to worry about whether or not the coffee shop we want to work from has Wi-Fi or if we’ll be able to take care of those emails while traveling. That future isn’t far off, and in the case of the Surface Pro LTE, it’s here now.ZDNet's Business Bargain Hunter scours the web for great deals on computers, phones, services and much more. Prices and availability are accurate at the time deals are shared. Some products and services may not be available outside the U.S. Follow BBH on Facebook and Twitter, where he's known as The Cheapskate. Plus: You'll find more Cheapskate deals on CNET.Most road-warriors already have a mobile charger -- but one that has an AC outlet in addition to USB ports? Probably not.That's too bad, because it sucks when your laptop battery gives out and you've still got work to do.

This deal to the rescue! For a limited time, and while supplies last, the Omars AC Power Bank is just $55.99 with promo code ESSOMARS. It normally sells for $80 and has rarely dipped below that price all year.Measuring roughly 5 x 7.5 x 1.7 inches, this power bank is definitely a bit chunkier than your average USB-only charger. It's also quite a bit heavier at just over two pounds.However, in exchange for that extra bulk, you get a 24,000mAh battery that can power pretty much any electrical device with up to an 80-watt draw. That should cover most laptops; the AC plug for my 13.3-inch Asus, for example, requires just 65 watts.Beyond that, the brick provides a pair of 2.2-amp USB ports. You can use any/all of them simultaneously, meaning you can charge a laptop and two devices all at once.

Omars also touts all manner of built-in protections: over-current, over-temperature, over-voltage and short-circuit.The unit has a 4-star average from around 85 buyers, and both Fakespot and ReviewMeta indicate mostly legitimate reviews. The negative ones seem to pivot around reliability issues, something to consider. Omars does back the product with a one-year warranty.There are other AC outlet-equipped mobile chargers, but prices range from $80 to $130, if not considerably higher. This is an awfully cheap way to add a laptop-friendly power bank to your travel bag.Users of laptops know all too well the stress that comes along with heat buildup in their machines, and this can cause problems not just for themselves, but also for any laptop.In general, when the temperatures within the laptop case rise to excessively high amounts, the risk of damaging important internal components of the machine also increases.

One of the top common causes of overheating is accumulation of dust within the laptop, or inadequate cooling, which usually manifests through the sound of the fans running constantly, which may indicate that the laptop is heating up and isn’t running as it should.Some signs of overheating or heat issues and causes of the same include games stopping during gameplay, Windows doesn’t respond while using it, fans become louder as they are spinning faster to remove heat, mouse and keyboard fail to respond, and you may get a black screen when starting the laptop or fault messages displayed.In extreme cases, you may experience frequent fatal exception or General Protection fault error messages depending on which Windows OS you’re using, and these are unpredictable.