Fire Emblem Catch All

Malkroth wrote:

What do the online elements add to the game? I have not purchased the Nintendo online pass yet so I would have to to enable the features for this game. Any idea if it is worth it yet?

Almost nothing, as far as I can make out.

You get to see the statistical spread of what other players did at various junctures - which characters have been recruited the most, which activities got chosen, that kind of thing.

Unless I'm missing something, I'd say you won't get much bang for your buck in this game.

Jonman wrote:

Lost my first student (Hilda). Did the "Fire Emblem chin stroke", where I briefly consider save-scumming to undo my mistake. Decided to live with it and learn the lesson to pay more attention to the UI showing who the enemy will be attacking, and more importantly, how many of the enemy will be attacking the same person.

You. Monster. How dare you let Hilda die.

Malkroth wrote:

What do the online elements add to the game? I have not purchased the Nintendo online pass yet so I would have to to enable the features for this game. Any idea if it is worth it yet?

The purple and yellow patches on the ground during battles are online features I think. The rusted weapons may not seem like much, but check their details after battles because they may be blacksmithed into good or even unique weapons.

Jonman wrote:
Malkroth wrote:

What do the online elements add to the game? I have not purchased the Nintendo online pass yet so I would have to to enable the features for this game. Any idea if it is worth it yet?

Almost nothing, as far as I can make out.

You get to see the statistical spread of what other players did at various junctures - which characters have been recruited the most, which activities got chosen, that kind of thing.

Unless I'm missing something, I'd say you won't get much bang for your buck in this game.

You're missing a lot.

As Certis said, rusted weapons in battles. Also free xp spots in battle.

Then at the school you get visitors. They carry an item that you can buy for a discount. You choose one of your characters to do the same and share an item for others to buy.

And there's a mini game where visitors hide in the school and if you find them in time you get professor xp. Haven't tried it yet but it mentioned some extra bonuses if you find multiple people.

Huh. Had no idea the rusted weapons and purple/yellow patches were online features. That seems downright silly.

Yeah, there's a bunch of invisible walls that are odd.

Jonman wrote:

Lost my first student (Hilda). Did the "Fire Emblem chin stroke", where I briefly consider save-scumming to undo my mistake. Decided to live with it and learn the lesson to pay more attention to the UI showing who the enemy will be attacking, and more importantly, how many of the enemy will be attacking the same person.

Save scumming is built into the game, not gonna use it?

garion333 wrote:
Jonman wrote:

Lost my first student (Hilda). Did the "Fire Emblem chin stroke", where I briefly consider save-scumming to undo my mistake. Decided to live with it and learn the lesson to pay more attention to the UI showing who the enemy will be attacking, and more importantly, how many of the enemy will be attacking the same person.

Save scumming is built into the game, not gonna use it?

I picked the "Classic" option at the start - live by the sword/axe/lance, die by the sword/axe/lance.

Also, I used the rewind in that battle, then mucked up the do-over so Hilda still got five swords to the face and couldn't re-rewind.

garion333 wrote:

Yeah, there's a bunch of invisible walls that are odd.

Yeah lots in the garden areas too. Clearly I could fit through that space but no.

Malkroth wrote:

What do the online elements add to the game? I have not purchased the Nintendo online pass yet so I would have to to enable the features for this game. Any idea if it is worth it yet?

PM'd you.

Stele wrote:

Then at the school you get visitors. They carry an item that you can buy for a discount. You choose one of your characters to do the same and share an item for others to buy.

About that. What is my incentive to put an item up for sale? Do I really lose it if it's sold? I see discounted class change seals and I wonder if I'm taking them away from the other players when I buy them.

One thing that's throwing me a little is the relationship between skills and what the game thinks they should be good at (the column with the stars).

Many of my party members are starting out with far different goals from the skills the game seems to be telling me they're predestined to be good at. What am I missing here?

Also I have a couple of house members that have a really low magic number, but when I'm training them it has the 3 stars in the column for faith.

Which may mean I don't fully understand the skill system yet.

The stars mean that character will get a bonus, like an extra spell or special ability, when they level that skill. I think the designers intended for it to be a hard choice with no "best" answer: When do I take the extra time to chase stars in an area where the student learns slowly?

Agathos wrote:
Stele wrote:

Then at the school you get visitors. They carry an item that you can buy for a discount. You choose one of your characters to do the same and share an item for others to buy.

About that. What is my incentive to put an item up for sale? Do I really lose it if it's sold? I see discounted class change seals and I wonder if I'm taking them away from the other players when I buy them.

I'm not sure if you get the item back if you recall the person. But I think the bonus is they can sell it to more than one person online? Spread the good items around for cheap.

Agathos was on it. The 3 stars are for a special hidden talent. If you directly level that skill you can unlock a special power or maybe change a weakness into a strength. I'm not sure on the exact results without reading spoilers.

The red down arrows are weak skills. Training those incurs a penalty.

The blue up arrows are strong skills. Training those gets a bonus.

On retreating while playing "classic" perma-death. Say I lose all my rewinds and then lose a party member. If I retreat and take all experience back with me, will I restart that mission with the party member back? If so, I don't really understand why they give you an option to take all experience followed by another option to not take it!

I three-starred two characters in skills they were neutral in regarding stats, and it unlocked bonus abilities and such. It's supposed to be a sort of investment thing, take them in an uncommon class route. There are some characters I don't feel like going that way for, such as Felix, whom I just discovered is a mother-frelling beast with gauntlets why didn't anyone tell me they were so awesome. Like, dude started the fog map low-level, ends up beasting a bunch of guys by getting four hits on them.

Came up to me wanting to update his goals to focus on swordsmanship and I sent him right back to his desk. That boy is a pugilist now, and he can take his Duscar hatin' attitude and shove it.

Which reminds, somehow Felix and Dedue improved their support despite having a conversation that could have broken out into a fight at any moment? Video game logic.

Meant to post this the other day in re text/font:

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EART_3lXYAITCaa?format=jpg&name=medium)

Huh. Changed the font to be a more fitting style in English.

I discovered that you aren't limited to just one battle when you choose that for your Saturday activity and now all my characters are BAMFs.

Actually, I had trouble picking a school because I had the impression I would only like maybe one or two from each house, but I'm actually liking everyone in Blue Lions. I'm really enjoying myself with this game. I'm so glad this is the direction Nintendo has gone with it.

So the English localization dropped a serif font in for no reason. Have we learned nothing?

ccesarano wrote:

I discovered that you aren't limited to just one battle when you choose that for your Saturday activity and now all my characters are BAMFs.

Normal mode yes. Hard mode only the one battle that costs an activity point is there.

Kind of let's you make normal as easy as you want. I got caught up tonight grinding 3 battles and didn't get to the next story mission to advance the month.

So say I'm a person whose only experience with anything remotely like this game was Shining Force about 26 years ago -- how approachable is Fire Emblem?

Much more approachable than in the past.

You can choose whether or not to leave permadeath on or to have any fallen characters resurrect after battle.

There's a (limited) rewind feature in-battles to undo mistakes you made.

Heck, this new version shows you who enemies will target next turn if they're in range.

That said, there's still a lot of systems, stats and classes at play, which may be overwhelming at first.

billt721 wrote:

So say I'm a person whose only experience with anything remotely like this game was Shining Force about 26 years ago -- how approachable is Fire Emblem?

Uhh, that's really hard to say given the tactical-RPG genre itself has evolved a lot since then, and given that Shining Force was sort of SEGA's variant of Fire Emblem it's an even bigger question.

I'd say it'll be familiar but way different because we're 26 years later into game development, design trends, and other shifts in the industry.

It's funny how I don't feel very far into the game and yet I've evidently clocked 13-ish hours in fewer days than anything else I've played the past few months.

I don't recall the chapter names or numbers, but the Death Knight. Anyone able to beat him on their first encounter with him?

Spoiler:

I feel like, unless you grind a lot, you won't stand even a chance against him without risking character death. And sure enough, he was surrounded by yellow mist things. I think there's a lot of new players that haven't figured out to attack a lot of these boss-types with Ranged first, especially when they're melee class.

But that's the thing. This dude could counter-attack anywhere, regardless of range. Given he was level 16, his stats were high enough he could kill any character in one counter. I ended up doing a Gambit from ranged on him, and that was my first time rewind because once you attack him, he goes mobile. So I just left him be the whole time, but there's gotta be folks that were able to defeat him.

No Death Knight yet. I hope that's my next mission. Got a mage at 10 and I need an item to change him to dark mage and I think that might be where it comes from.

Ok, and this may seem absurd, but do these kiddos aesthetically armor up / change visually as they promote? I think the last time I could stick with an FE, for more than a few hours, was back with Ike & Co.

Recreational Villain wrote:

Ok, and this may seem absurd, but do these kiddos aesthetically armor up / change visually as they promote? I think the last time I could stick with an FE, for more than a few hours, was back with Ike & Co.

Yup. Change class, get a new outfit.

Hot damn, that may change things. Thanks!
(now to decide whether to risk some audio clips at work to gauge the VO)

Recreational Villain wrote:

Hot damn, that may change things. Thanks!
(now to decide whether to risk some audio clips at work to gauge the VO)

The VO is excellent. It was also excellent in Echoes. They've been improving at presentation for a while.

Jarring thing - characters who've fallen in battle, with Classic mode on (i.e. permadeath), still appear in cutscenes.

Very jarring to see zombie Hilda happily chatting with the rest of the gang.

Jonman wrote:

Jarring thing - characters who've fallen in battle, with Classic mode on (i.e. permadeath), still appear in cutscenes.

Very jarring to see zombie Hilda happily chatting with the rest of the gang.

Yeah. I don't think at this point Intelligent Systems intends for Classic mode to be the default.

Chaz made this observation (maybe on IRC) that the systems and difficulty curve in Awakening seemed geared towards a casual playthrough. I believe the above also happened in previous games.

All of the above is why I just decided to play Casual this time.