Fire Emblem: Awakening

If you do play on casual, I wonder how people end up dealing with the exorbitant number of characters available.

ccesarano wrote:

If you do play on casual, I wonder how people end up dealing with the exorbitant number of characters available.

I try and swap in the under leveled guys on the random challenge missions, as well as working on relationships between the same group of characters.

That said there's a swath of characters that will just never get utilized fully. Without the threat of permadeath healers become much less necessary so I'm afraid poor Mirabelle and Lisa are only ever in play to mate them off.

It's a little twisted how much I'm enjoying that particularly mechanic. There's been a lot of "g'awww how cute" moments that have helped sink the hooks in more than I would have expected.

Edit: Oh, and that hayseed Donnell is just never gonna get past level 3.

ccesarano wrote:

If you do play on casual, I wonder how people end up dealing with the exorbitant number of characters available.

I ended up just ignoring a ton of them.

Yeah I made a quick spreadsheet of who I would pair off and what skills I would try to pass down.

But probably 8 or so characters are not anywhere near reaching that point, since I'm on casual. I have them at S-rank relationships but not leveled up nearly enough for the skills I want to inherit, and don't really think I will get them leveled up before finishing the game.

Not sure if I will go ahead and get the child characters before finishing or just save it for another playthrough and try to see some different things.

MojoBox wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

If you do play on casual, I wonder how people end up dealing with the exorbitant number of characters available.

I try and swap in the under leveled guys on the random challenge missions, as well as working on relationships between the same group of characters.

That said there's a swath of characters that will just never get utilized fully. Without the threat of permadeath healers become much less necessary so I'm afraid poor Mirabelle and Lisa are only ever in play to mate them off.

It's a little twisted how much I'm enjoying that particularly mechanic. There's been a lot of "g'awww how cute" moments that have helped sink the hooks in more than I would have expected.

Edit: Oh, and that hayseed Donnell is just never gonna get past level 3.

Donnel turns into a complete beast if you level him up. He was always a go-to.

I also played Casual, and really there were too many characters, but so many opportunities to set up love matches (steeples fingers in sadistic glee).

Speaking of homoeroticism,

Spoiler:

Frederick has quite the thing for Chrom. In my playthrough he and Sumia got together over their shared admiration for him.

concentric wrote:

Donnel turns into a complete beast if you level him up.

So he's the Magikarp of Fire Emblem?

Speaking of homoeroticism,
Spoiler:

Frederick has quite the thing for Chrom. In my playthrough he and Sumia got together over their shared admiration for him.

I'm... not sure how I should parse that information.

Spoiler:

"I have a big crush on Chrom." "Ooh, so do I." "Then it's obvious. We must make babies together."

Spoiler:

I guess Sumia can just close her eyes and pretend Frederik is Chrom? But then that doesn't help Freddy boy much... unless his admiration goes so far that he puts on a blue wig and y'know I think I'm putting way too much thought into this.

ccesarano wrote:
concentric wrote:

Donnel turns into a complete beast if you level him up.

So he's the Magikarp of Fire Emblem?

Something like that. He gets something like a 30% bonus chance for stats to increase upon level with his villager passive, so he ends up being much stronger than anyone else by the mid-end game.

ccesarano wrote:
Spoiler:

I guess Sumia can just close her eyes and pretend Frederik is Chrom? But then that doesn't help Freddy boy much... unless his admiration goes so far that he puts on a blue wig and y'know I think I'm putting way too much thought into this.

Spoiler:

In one of the barracks conversations with Frederick, he mentions putting up nude posters of Chrom around the camp - Chrom is a god of Justice, or something like that. In the Harvest Scramble DLC, Frederick wants Chrom to go toss coins in the fountain with him.

Yet he still wears a pot as a helmet.

Donny boy is by far the strongest of the first-generation males in Fire Emblem Awakening (a.k.a. the weakest quadrant of your roster).

I figured as much about Donnel, but I just never got around to leveling him up early and by this point it's hopelessly difficult to keep him alive even one turn.

I'm starting into this real soon, due mainly to Chris' front page article.

How spoiler free is the thread? Is it safe to go back through for tips, or is there a specific 'noob 5 do's and 5 don'ts' I should keep in mind, and then hit you with my craptacular descent into SRPGs in LiveJournal style?

Donnel is the robber baron of an axe based economy of death if you take the time to level him up. His stat growth and maxes are absurd. Fire Emblem typically has a character that starts weak but "magikarps" at some point to an unstoppable force. Donnel the Pothead is that man.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

So far, Vaike died in his first battle after getting his axe back from Miriel.

Ricken died in his first battle while he and Frederick held a choke point on the map to allow Maribelle to escape.

Maribelle died at the very end of that battle when she was left vulnerable to the enemy commander after healing a comrade.

When Sumia left his side to protect Chrom from attackers, Stahl became surrounded and died defending the Exalt from assassins.

m0nk3yboy wrote:

I'm starting into this real soon, due mainly to Chris' front page article.

How spoiler free is the thread? Is it safe to go back through for tips, or is there a specific 'noob 5 do's and 5 don'ts' I should keep in mind, and then hit you with my craptacular descent into SRPGs in LiveJournal style? ;)

I think the less you know the better. I have one "do" for you, which is to remember that the weapons and items you have are there to use. Depending on how you choose difficulty/play mode, as well as your play style, it can be a tough game. But in terms of weapons and healing items - don't save anything for a rainy day if it'd help you beat the next mission. You'll always be getting more stuff.

Kinda glad I just lost Chrom and got a game over. I'd already lost four characters and was about to lose a fifth.

I'm afraid to click on this thread now to see who died.

It's like a Game of Thrones thread.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

So far, Vaike died in his first battle after getting his axe back from Miriel.

Ricken died in his first battle while he and Frederick held a choke point on the map to allow Maribelle to escape.

Maribelle died at the very end of that battle when she was left vulnerable to the enemy commander after healing a comrade.

When Sumia left his side to protect Chrom from attackers, Stahl became surrounded and died defending the Exalt from assassins.

Kellam was pinned down by archers during the ambush at Breakneck Pass. He died at the hand of a swordsman who overwhelmed his great defenses with speed.

Virion died later in that same ambush. The enemy commander had his pick of my forces; Virion was closest and easiest to kill.

+1 for Donnel.

So I had to bookmark myself halfway through Chapter 24's battle. I just... I just wanna say "f*ck work, I'ma win this war". Gaaaah.

So I really did underestimate the value of paired units early on. Before the characters begin to truly build their support structures, it doesn't really help all too much. It basically seemed more a way to get slow moving characters like Kellam across the battlefield faster. But now that each of my units has an S-ranked pair (or A for some) it's just... Gah, I feel so powerful. Granted, I also did enough grinding that a lot of my characters have maxed out their Master class.

I think I will definitely want to go through this game a second time, though, perhaps on a harder difficulty seeing as I now know more than I had before. How to properly plan which characters to pair, how strong you can make someone if you give them a secondary class before a master class (Gaius is a God on the battlefield), and the value of paired units as a whole.

But that playthrough won't be for some time. I'm thinking I am very near the end of the game, and once I complete it I'll be moving on to the PSP Garion sent me. But I will say, I am quite glad I finally got hold of this game. It is really good.

I need to get back to this, but I burned out a tad on FE after playing hundreds of hours of them. The combat isn't as interesting when it's, oh, the 7th game you've played it in.

Alas, but in the final battle, poor Maribelle and Lissa were cut do-wait a minute...

Spoiler:

Why is Lissa in the final cut-scene if she just died? o_O

ccesarano wrote:

Alas, but in the final battle, poor Maribelle and Lissa were cut do-wait a minute...

Spoiler:

Why is Lissa in the final cut-scene if she just died? o_O

Regarding some characters not "dying"

Spoiler:

Some of the more plot important characters (Lissa, Fredrick) are "grievously injured" and not really killed, which allows them to still participate as advisors but are too injured to actually fight.

It's a compromise but an understandable one. If those characters were dead-dead instead of retired-dead, then every story sequence and pre-rendered cut scene would need to be scripted to include every possible permutation of living and dead characters (the gorgeous pre-rendered scenes are probably the biggest obstacle here and would be for showing the characters' injuries, as well). Alternatively, if the game required that those characters survive every battle, as is the case with Robin and Chrom, that would make combat more difficult and limit your strategic options.

Spoiler:

Yeah, a lot of folks were actually listed as retired. Including Cordelia, which, well, makes my front page article seem silly now, don't it? That's actually a shame to me, as it actually eliminates some of the weight of their loss.

In any event, beat the game, enjoyed a lot of the stuff during the credits, and overall enjoyed the game. One thing I found amusing:

Spoiler:

So I chose for the Tactician, whom I named Layla, to sacrifice herself and kill Grima for good. Which means that Layla and Chrom never had a second child, which means Morgan... shouldn't exist. Only in the text afterward, it stated that some scholars believed he came from a separate timeline as all the other children.

I found that to be awesome.

A++, would play again, etc.

I finally got back to this, I'm only on Ch. 8. The battle was going smoothly, until I made a dumb-$&#^ move and put Gregor where he could be hit by 3 enemies. I could have even killed one of those enemies with Sumia at no cost, but I just didn't notice they'd reach Gregor. Oh well, I have enough Sword users as it is, I suppose I'll get to hear more Gregor lines next game.

I can't remember which button does it, but as an FYI, you can highlight enemies on the field and always see where they will move. I know there's a button that shows every foe's general range, but if you hover over an enemy unit and hit X or Y or something it'll outline their range in a darker shade of red. I started using this to keep track of archers and leaders so I could avoid being caught unawares.