It's been a year.

[Sui-kun]

Man, I'm sorry. It really does break my heart to see FEP in an unrecoverable state like this. Worse yet, I've done nothing about it. I just can't muster the creative energy to care anymore. It had a good run, great RPs, spriters, even drama.

Andy even messaged me (last year!) to continue a certain old roleplay on the old forums. I said okay, but I never got back to it.

I didn't realize that there might be a Fire Emblem reddit! Alas, the community there is... uhh... mediocre at best. There is no self-moderation among posters there. RIP fansites. I know Serene's Forest exists, but the community there hasn't been active as it used to be.

[Falaflame]

To be fair, I don't think there was much anyone else could've done anyway.

[ScarletFlame]

Here's to a "new" Fire Emblem community, then. One that enjoys the likes of Awakening and Fates.

... ah well, it was inevitable.

[Jack]

I'm looking forward to the Nohr version, sounds like it could be slightly more of a throwback than Awakening and Hoshido. I'm sure I'll spend hundreds of hours min/maxing in Hoshido, but I'm more interested in Nohr. I actually really liked Awakening, for what it was. It's far from my favorite FE game, but I don't dislike it at all.

[ShinkuDragon]

i enjoyed awakening but it lacked something, i dunno i just can't get over my first FE (7)

waiting for nohr too, but i expect it to be filled with chrom's cape everywhere, got the OST and audio files saved on my computer since way back when since they're so good.

[Falaflame]

Awakening is not as bad as I've seen some people say it is (and especially the autismos who call it "Waifu Simulator"), but it's not really that good either.

To me, Awakening's biggest problem was it's lack of content. The story felt unfinished, and the characters just felt like they were just... there. (Chrom being the biggest offender of this trope) Hell tbh, none of the DLC characters interested me at all. It would've helped to give them a few lines of dialogue to at least give them something worth cracking a smile over, or laugh because of something that may be a throwback to their original respective game.

It will never be anywhere close to comparable to the luminaries that are Blazing Sword, Geneology, and Path of Radiance (respectively), But IMO, it's far from the worst game in the series. I say Radiant Dawn still holds the title of the worst of the series, with Sacred Stones, Shadow Dragon, and Thracia 776 respectively quite a distance behind from being the worst.

Hopefully Fates is more polished than Awakening was. And hopefully they won't drop the ball on it like they did Radiant Dawn.

[Jack]

Gonna have to disagree about RD. I'm not sure I could actually pick a least favorite FE game, but I would probably call it Sacred Stones.

I will fite you 776 is top 3.

[WyvernSlayer]

Radiant Dawn was pretty terrible.

And I really liked Awakening's characters! The support conversations were the best thing ever!

[Falaflame]

I just don't like Thracia 776 as a whole. Mostly from a gameplay standpoint. The story itself is fine, and the graphic art is great, and influenced GBA's artwork.

The concepts it had were neat. The fact it introduced Rescuing is also cool.
Implementation of said features, and moreso the execution of it, was rather dreadful. It worked just as well as a clunky mess.

And I haven't even begun to talk about the "difficulty" of the game.

There's easy games. There's challenging games. There's Nintendo-Hard games. That's all fine and dandy.

But then, there's bullshit-hard games.

Thracia 776 counts as bullshit-hard.

There's a reason why Thracia 776 never made it outside of Japan. And there was a reason why it was the absolute last of the FE games to get translated.

[Jack]

Actually, after playing it a few times I don't think it's as hard as it's reputation. The real difficulty comes from the unfamiliar mechanics, where if you get used to them there's not many huge challenges. Gimme a sec, I'm gonna break into analysis here.

Chapter 4 is very difficult, especially because you lose all your weapons at first. Keeping the prisoners alive and letting them escape can be challenging because I'm pretty sure the reinforcements are random. Also, if you don't pick up enough items then chapter 4x can be a bit tough, especially if you let Sety steal too many kills. Keeping Tanhya alive in chapter 8x can be tricky, but with some good tactics she'll survive. Chapter 11 can be difficult with bad positioning, but once you know how it works you shouldn't have any problems. Chapter 12x is hard if you want to get everything, although it's extremely easy if you just want to finish the chapter. Chapter 14 is one of the hardest in the game, no way around that. It's hard enough on it's own, and it's a god damn nightmare if you also want Dean's lance. The only safe way to get it is to warp him over and then rescue him. 16B is annoying because of the warp tiles, but if you look up a map of where they are then they aren't an issue. 17A can be tremendously difficult because of Cyas, but if you can beat it in 10 turns then he won't even show up. Chapter 18 on it's own is not hard, but doing everything in it is near impossible. Xavier is far and away the hardest unit to recruit in any Fire Emblem game, and getting him as well as the members card probably make up the toughest challenge of the game, which might be arguably the toughest challenge in the whole series. Recruiting the shitty units in chapter 19 can be a pain and the map is enormous, but it's not actually that difficult. Chapter 21 is tough, because of all the ballistae and reinforcements, but by this point you should have enough units that are strong enough to take a few ballistae hits and still be alright. Chapter 22 is probably the hardest chapter in the game in terms of sheer difficulty (as in not all the extra shit from chapter 18). Cyas once again makes your life a living hell, but this is one of the many chapters that can be made significantly easier with a warp staff. You can make him leave the map immediately, making it much easier.

So that's 11 hard chapters out of 36. The early chapters aren't that difficult if you understand the mechanics and the later chapters aren't too bad once your units are trained. I was ready to mention that everything from chapter 18 on is hard, but then I looked at the maps and remembered that the end of this game isn't really that difficult (other than chapter 22 of course, and even then you can cheat it with a rescue staff). Yes this game is hard, and yes the mechanics are a bit wacky. But it's definitely not old school Nintendo hard.

/rant

[Speedy - IX]

It has been a year, and things are finally beginning to change (at .least in FETO)

[Jack]

It's been a year and I finally got to debate something Fire Emble related.

Actually that's been more like 8 years, because holy shit RD is 8 years old.