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After finishing Golden Deer/Black Eagle + Show Spoiler +/Blue Lions, on Normal/Hard/Hard I've gotta say I really enjoyed the experience. The cracks in the gameplay systems and loops really start to shine through on NG+ and NG++, but that's not too surprising and is fun in its own way.
Each route is a very different story, so I can understand why there's no "Golden Ending" even if I kind of wish there was. Final battle wise, the Black Eagle and Blue Lions final battles were much more interesting than Golden Deer (possibly because they were on Hard), though I didn't run out of Divine Pulses in any of them. The number of Fire Orbs/Ballistas/Meteor became such an absolute pain...
+ Show Spoiler +Looking forward to Black Eagle/Church Route, though it will be real tough to avoid just using War Master Byleth and Brawl Catherine to 4x 30 damage 85% crit my way through the endgame.
Story/character-wise, the only small annoyance I had was that the supports don't "lock" out of one another in the way you might expect so every character is hitting on everyone when they click A, and the fact that the timeskip can make some supports very very dumb (albeit in hilarious ways)...particularly with one of the lords. Otherwise I loved almost everyone's general progression. Except maybe Hanneman/Maneula/Alois/Gilbert but that's because they seemed a bit pointless given the 12 army/3 adjutant cap.
The best part about going crit with Byleth is hearing "I'll give you something to believe in" and "let me teach you a lesson" up to four times an attack. It's truly magical.
Overall, an amazing game. Looking forward to one more playthrough and *maybe* the DLC depending on what it adds to the story.
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Just started yesterday. Pretty excited. I don't mind the more RPG elements so far, and that seems like the harshest criticism from the bigger fans in here. It's very understandable, it's a lot of NOT traditional SRPG stuff. But so far I enjoy it, rather than just slamming mission after mission.
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The harshest criticism I have is that the map design is not that good, and made worse by how abusable Warp/Dance/Stride is.
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On August 12 2019 07:30 TheTenthDoc wrote:After finishing Golden Deer/Black Eagle + Show Spoiler +/Blue Lions, on Normal/Hard/Hard I've gotta say I really enjoyed the experience. The cracks in the gameplay systems and loops really start to shine through on NG+ and NG++, but that's not too surprising and is fun in its own way. Each route is a very different story, so I can understand why there's no "Golden Ending" even if I kind of wish there was. Final battle wise, the Black Eagle and Blue Lions final battles were much more interesting than Golden Deer (possibly because they were on Hard), though I didn't run out of Divine Pulses in any of them. The number of Fire Orbs/Ballistas/Meteor became such an absolute pain... + Show Spoiler +Looking forward to Black Eagle/Church Route, though it will be real tough to avoid just using War Master Byleth and Brawl Catherine to 4x 30 damage 85% crit my way through the endgame. Story/character-wise, the only small annoyance I had was that the supports don't "lock" out of one another in the way you might expect so every character is hitting on everyone when they click A, and the fact that the timeskip can make some supports very very dumb (albeit in hilarious ways)...particularly with one of the lords. Otherwise I loved almost everyone's general progression. Except maybe Hanneman/Maneula/Alois/Gilbert but that's because they seemed a bit pointless given the 12 army/3 adjutant cap. The best part about going crit with Byleth is hearing "I'll give you something to believe in" and "let me teach you a lesson" up to four times an attack. It's truly magical. Overall, an amazing game. Looking forward to one more playthrough and *maybe* the DLC depending on what it adds to the story.
I just finished my 3rd playthrough + Show Spoiler +Golden Deer -> Blue Lions -> Black Eagles Edelgard , and for my 4th playthrough I am going to try to recruit everyone that is recruitable. It is going to be a much more fun playthrough and comlpetely hilarious in having a full set up team from first mission of all the people I am going to take that were the best from my other playthroughs.
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Full recruitment is not that hard once you get how it works. I sort of just stumbled into it on my first playthrough. The only recruitable characters I'm missing are Ferdinand and Caspar, who are super annoying to recruit if you aren't Black Eagles because their B supports are time-gated, which means to recruit them you have to actually hit their skill requirements. Raising Heavy Armor and Brawling by the required amounts on Byleth isn't really reasonable.
Basically any character that you reach B support with can auto-recruit themselves regardless of whether you raise the stat/skill they're interested in (if you ask them, they'll say no, but they will ask to join your house in the middle of the week at some point). So once you know which skills you want to raise on Byleth, you can prioritize raising the supports of people who aren't interested in those skills, so that you can get them via them auto-recruiting themselves. Also, you're naturally going to raise Faith from using Choir Practice with your casters, so even if Faith isn't part of your build for Byleth, the characters that care about Faith (Annette and Lysithea) can still be recruited pretty naturally. Though you'll probably want to grind out Lysithea's support anyway because getting her earlier means you get Warp earlier.
The only thing that messes with this are characters with time-gated B supports, since if they can't reach B, they will never auto-recruit themselves.
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On August 12 2019 17:21 TheYango wrote: Full recruitment is not that hard once you get how it works. I sort of just stumbled into it on my first playthrough. The only recruitable characters I'm missing are Ferdinand and Caspar, who are super annoying to recruit if you aren't Black Eagles because their B supports are time-gated, which means to recruit them you have to actually hit their skill requirements. Raising Heavy Armor and Brawling by the required amounts on Byleth isn't really reasonable.
Basically any character that you reach B support with can auto-recruit themselves regardless of whether you raise the stat/skill they're interested in (if you ask them, they'll say no, but they will ask to join your house in the middle of the week at some point). So once you know which skills you want to raise on Byleth, you can prioritize raising the supports of people who aren't interested in those skills, so that you can get them via them auto-recruiting themselves. Also, you're naturally going to raise Faith from using Choir Practice with your casters, so even if Faith isn't part of your build for Byleth, the characters that care about Faith (Annette and Lysithea) can still be recruited pretty naturally. Though you'll probably want to grind out Lysithea's support anyway because getting her earlier means you get Warp earlier.
The only thing that messes with this are characters with time-gated B supports, since if they can't reach B, they will never auto-recruit themselves.
I thought this was true, but I had several students at B support rank for months before the time-skip (and continued to gift and woo them after hitting that rank)- such as Petra, Mercedes, Felix, and Sylvain- and they never came around to wanting to join my house I'm Golden Deer, if that helps. (On the other hand, Catherine asked to join my team within two months of meeting me for the first time, and I didn't even attempt to elevate her support, so I assume there's a lot of RNG that goes into this.)
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On August 12 2019 19:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2019 17:21 TheYango wrote: Full recruitment is not that hard once you get how it works. I sort of just stumbled into it on my first playthrough. The only recruitable characters I'm missing are Ferdinand and Caspar, who are super annoying to recruit if you aren't Black Eagles because their B supports are time-gated, which means to recruit them you have to actually hit their skill requirements. Raising Heavy Armor and Brawling by the required amounts on Byleth isn't really reasonable.
Basically any character that you reach B support with can auto-recruit themselves regardless of whether you raise the stat/skill they're interested in (if you ask them, they'll say no, but they will ask to join your house in the middle of the week at some point). So once you know which skills you want to raise on Byleth, you can prioritize raising the supports of people who aren't interested in those skills, so that you can get them via them auto-recruiting themselves. Also, you're naturally going to raise Faith from using Choir Practice with your casters, so even if Faith isn't part of your build for Byleth, the characters that care about Faith (Annette and Lysithea) can still be recruited pretty naturally. Though you'll probably want to grind out Lysithea's support anyway because getting her earlier means you get Warp earlier.
The only thing that messes with this are characters with time-gated B supports, since if they can't reach B, they will never auto-recruit themselves. I thought this was true, but I had several students at B support rank for months before the time-skip (and continued to gift and woo them after hitting that rank)- such as Petra, Mercedes, Felix, and Sylvain- and they never came around to wanting to join my house I'm Golden Deer, if that helps. (On the other hand, Catherine asked to join my team within two months of meeting me for the first time, and I didn't even attempt to elevate her support, so I assume there's a lot of RNG that goes into this.) If u wait for them to talk to you then during the week there is a 20% chance they ask to talk. U just got super unlucky
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On August 13 2019 00:38 Cricketer12 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2019 19:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On August 12 2019 17:21 TheYango wrote: Full recruitment is not that hard once you get how it works. I sort of just stumbled into it on my first playthrough. The only recruitable characters I'm missing are Ferdinand and Caspar, who are super annoying to recruit if you aren't Black Eagles because their B supports are time-gated, which means to recruit them you have to actually hit their skill requirements. Raising Heavy Armor and Brawling by the required amounts on Byleth isn't really reasonable.
Basically any character that you reach B support with can auto-recruit themselves regardless of whether you raise the stat/skill they're interested in (if you ask them, they'll say no, but they will ask to join your house in the middle of the week at some point). So once you know which skills you want to raise on Byleth, you can prioritize raising the supports of people who aren't interested in those skills, so that you can get them via them auto-recruiting themselves. Also, you're naturally going to raise Faith from using Choir Practice with your casters, so even if Faith isn't part of your build for Byleth, the characters that care about Faith (Annette and Lysithea) can still be recruited pretty naturally. Though you'll probably want to grind out Lysithea's support anyway because getting her earlier means you get Warp earlier.
The only thing that messes with this are characters with time-gated B supports, since if they can't reach B, they will never auto-recruit themselves. I thought this was true, but I had several students at B support rank for months before the time-skip (and continued to gift and woo them after hitting that rank)- such as Petra, Mercedes, Felix, and Sylvain- and they never came around to wanting to join my house I'm Golden Deer, if that helps. (On the other hand, Catherine asked to join my team within two months of meeting me for the first time, and I didn't even attempt to elevate her support, so I assume there's a lot of RNG that goes into this.) If u wait for them to talk to you then during the week there is a 20% chance they ask to talk. U just got super unlucky
I just looked up the issue on several forums, and some people are saying that B-rank Support guarantees recruitment (which I know is false), others are saying that B-rank Support starts an RNG chance of possible recruitment on a weekly or monthly basis (which is what you're saying), and still others are saying that B-rank Support lowers the skill levels needed to recruit characters (e.g., instead of needing a D in Lance, you only need an E+).
If any one of those three options is true, then I'm thinking that it would need to be the last one. I had several months go by with at least 4 B-rank Support characters never being recruitable (the chance of that happening with a 20% probability each week would be basically zero), and I'm fairly certain that their preferred skills weren't something I focused on (so they may not have even been at the lower, easier threshold to recruit them).
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The last two options are both true. B support greatly lowers the requirements. Ingrid for instance can be recruited with e+ in flying and sub 10 Dex. It also gives them the chance for thme to ask to join you. I've never had a b support fail to ask me you just got super unlucky. You can also save scum it to increase the chance even further.
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Both 2 and 3 are true. I've had characters that I failed to meet the direct recruitment requirements for that auto-recruited the following month after reaching B. I've likewise had characters that I recruited at B by directly recruiting them after raising the corresponding skill incrementally with faculty training. Each support rank reduces the required skill rank by a half-rank (e.g. C -> D+) but you can auto-recruit characters who will refuse if you ask them directly.
On August 13 2019 01:28 Theoren wrote: Ingrid for instance can be recruited with e+ in flying and sub 10 Dex. It also gives them the chance for thme to ask to join you. Fyi this is specific to Ingrid because she specifically only needs D Flying to recruit rather than C--most characters want a C-rank in their desired skill, which can be reduced to D by supports.
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Note that I just started up a NG+++ and scummed my supports up to B with a few characters (so literally base Byleth stats (well, level 3 Byleth stats) unless I accidentally choired my Faith up). Ashe and Lysithea asked to join my class after the first lecture, Ingrid did not. Ferdindand spent months "not being interested" in joining my class while at B rank on my Blue Lions playthrough, though.
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To be clear, there's no way to get any sort of old school style top-down map for battles right. With the little sprites. I assumed they had just fully migrated to the new 3D battlespace but seeing the little unique class icons/sprites when promoting made me raise an eyebrow.
I have no plan for what the fuck to class anyone into. I'm just winging it and will probably use whatever naturally occurs from most of the default goals idk
Edit: oh yeah also do skill strengths and weaknesses only affect Instructing, or any time skill rank is gained? Like is it a seriously bad idea to make someone a class/skill that they’re weak in or is it just a small disadvantage early on
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On August 13 2019 12:25 Duka08 wrote: To be clear, there's no way to get any sort of old school style top-down map for battles right. With the little sprites. I assumed they had just fully migrated to the new 3D battlespace but seeing the little unique class icons/sprites when promoting made me raise an eyebrow.
I have no plan for what the fuck to class anyone into. I'm just winging it and will probably use whatever naturally occurs from most of the default goals idk
Edit: oh yeah also do skill strengths and weaknesses only affect Instructing, or any time skill rank is gained? Like is it a seriously bad idea to make someone a class/skill that they’re weak in or is it just a small disadvantage early on Sadly no there is not. Would have been awesome tho.
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On August 13 2019 12:25 Duka08 wrote: Edit: oh yeah also do skill strengths and weaknesses only affect Instructing, or any time skill rank is gained? Like is it a seriously bad idea to make someone a class/skill that they’re weak in or is it just a small disadvantage early on Proficiencies affect all forms of skill experience gain, but they affect them to varying degrees. Combat XP has a base value of +1/2/3 for weak/neutral/strong, instructing is +2/4/6, goal progression is +24/28/32, and seminars are about the same as goal progression.
The tl;dr is that combat and instructing is more efficient for raising strong proficiencies, while goals and seminars raise weak and neutral proficiencies more effectively. Most characters will need to raise at least one neutral or weak proficiency to get into the most desirable lategame classes (Bow Knight, Falcon Knight, Wyvern Lord, Dark Knight, Holy Knight, Gremory), so it is worth planning ahead and getting a head start on your weaker proficiencies with goals.
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Just finished my first playthrough (Golden Deer). I really, really liked the game overall. One slight critique: given how many interesting things there were during the first half, I found that the second half dragged a bit with not as much to do (especially with the disappearance of characters). I ended up over-leveling my characters during the first half of the game, so I just one-shotted everything with Steel weapons, which means I never really explored the strong weapons, nor the Battalions. I think I'm going to do a second playthrough using Blue Lions to see how much I enjoy playing the NG+ version and the different storyline. Then if I'm still having fun, I'll do the two Black Eagles routes.
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On August 13 2019 17:53 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2019 12:25 Duka08 wrote: Edit: oh yeah also do skill strengths and weaknesses only affect Instructing, or any time skill rank is gained? Like is it a seriously bad idea to make someone a class/skill that they’re weak in or is it just a small disadvantage early on Proficiencies affect all forms of skill experience gain, but they affect them to varying degrees. Combat XP has a base value of +1/2/3 for weak/neutral/strong, instructing is +2/4/6, goal progression is +24/28/32, and seminars are about the same as goal progression. The tl;dr is that combat and instructing is more efficient for raising strong proficiencies, while goals and seminars raise weak and neutral proficiencies more effectively. Most characters will need to raise at least one neutral or weak proficiency to get into the most desirable lategame classes (Bow Knight, Falcon Knight, Wyvern Lord, Dark Knight, Holy Knight, Gremory), so it is worth planning ahead and getting a head start on your weaker proficiencies with goals. Sounds good thanks. I'm still at the point where they're introducing new monastery stuff after each battle so it feels a bit overwhelming, but overall I'm convincing myself not to worry about hyper optimizing or anything like that. Enjoying it. I don't even know the advanced classes well enough to plan super far ahead confidently, but I won't be afraid to push into weaknesses at least, especially since a lot of the weak skills seem to have the hidden potentials behind them.
Oh yeah, how does brawling fit into the weapon types? I know sword-lance-axe get progressively more attack and less accurate, but brawl is new. Might try it just for the novelty, but was curious what makes it unique.
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On August 14 2019 00:26 Duka08 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2019 17:53 TheYango wrote:On August 13 2019 12:25 Duka08 wrote: Edit: oh yeah also do skill strengths and weaknesses only affect Instructing, or any time skill rank is gained? Like is it a seriously bad idea to make someone a class/skill that they’re weak in or is it just a small disadvantage early on Proficiencies affect all forms of skill experience gain, but they affect them to varying degrees. Combat XP has a base value of +1/2/3 for weak/neutral/strong, instructing is +2/4/6, goal progression is +24/28/32, and seminars are about the same as goal progression. The tl;dr is that combat and instructing is more efficient for raising strong proficiencies, while goals and seminars raise weak and neutral proficiencies more effectively. Most characters will need to raise at least one neutral or weak proficiency to get into the most desirable lategame classes (Bow Knight, Falcon Knight, Wyvern Lord, Dark Knight, Holy Knight, Gremory), so it is worth planning ahead and getting a head start on your weaker proficiencies with goals. Sounds good thanks. I'm still at the point where they're introducing new monastery stuff after each battle so it feels a bit overwhelming, but overall I'm convincing myself not to worry about hyper optimizing or anything like that. Enjoying it. I don't even know the advanced classes well enough to plan super far ahead confidently, but I won't be afraid to push into weaknesses at least, especially since a lot of the weak skills seem to have the hidden potentials behind them. Oh yeah, how does brawling fit into the weapon types? I know sword-lance-axe get progressively more attack and less accurate, but brawl is new. Might try it just for the novelty, but was curious what makes it unique. Brawl has less might and more accuracy than swords, but gauntlets are "Brave" weapons. Meaning when you intiate combat you double before the enemy retaliates.
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Oh they're default Brave. Sick.
Is this the first FE with accessories? That part's still throwing me off. Specifically shields and the weight penalty on attacking vs the added defense. Seems like you'd only want to use them on characters/classes that are already never going to double because of low inherent speed.
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Man. Second play through is SO MUCH more efficient than the first. For my first run, I really wanted to go in spoiler free so I didn't really look anything up WRT classes/promotions or recruiting so I missed a lot of stuff.
Second time through, I was able to start training skills in anticipation of class/promotion paths so that I had mastery a level or two before hitting the minimum level requirement for the promotions. Went much better and my units are badass. I just hit the TS on the Golden Deer path and I've got 4 units in Master Class (Bly and Claude are Wyvern Lords, Lystheria is a Gremory, and Lorenz is the Dark Knight). All of them were pretty smooth getting skilled in to their master classes. I also recruited Catherine pretty early and strong armed her in to a Wyvern Rider class, and the movement is really great, but her Axe growth was really painful. I took her swords away and just let her use only Axes for the last like 15 levels with instruction and goals and she's still only like C+. She wrecks, but I don't think its the best path for her. I wish I could let her punch faces. But Sword/Brawling isn't really an endgame setup.
Lystheria sure is awesome though. Probably the best unit in the game. Send her out in front of the Army with Nosferatu and just let her counter everyone to death.
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On August 14 2019 00:59 Duka08 wrote: Is this the first FE with accessories? That part's still throwing me off. Specifically shields and the weight penalty on attacking vs the added defense. Seems like you'd only want to use them on characters/classes that are already never going to double because of low inherent speed. Early game your units are going to struggle to double, and the ones that do are just barely going to do so. As you get further, it follows the typical FE progression of your units' speed generally growing faster than enemies', and enemies falling pretty strongly into specific speed tiers.
At the point I'm at, my faster units like Catherine, Hilda, and Leonie can use relatively heavy shields and still double the majority of enemies. And the ones they can't double are just going to be difficult to double either way.
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