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Are the switch games good enough to get a switch for?
I loved FE7 (just titled Fire emblem here, blazing blade in JP), liked 8 (sacred stones), didn't care that much for path of radiance and the remake of the original. I've been considering getting a switch for a while, but tbh I'm not sure which games other than Zelda and maybe Pokémon I'd buy.
I've been craving for a good tactical rpg in the vein of FE or FFT for a while, sadly there don't seem to be a lot on PC.
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On February 03 2023 23:10 Archeon wrote: Are the switch games good enough to get a switch for?
I loved FE7 (just titled Fire emblem here, blazing blade in JP), liked 8 (sacred stones), didn't care that much for path of radiance and the remake of the original. I've been considering getting a switch for a while, but tbh I'm not sure which games other than Zelda and maybe Pokémon I'd buy.
I've been craving for a good tactical rpg in the vein of FE or FFT for a while, sadly there don't seem to be a lot on PC. Fwiw Kaga (FE's creator) made a new tactics rpg on steam, Vestaria saga.
I don't reallly use switch too much, so idk if it would be worth for you or not. 3Houses sucked (unless you really like the non-combat aspects of modern fe. Story is decent. VA work carries. Soundtrack is top 5 in the series. Combat is piss, especially since it's so easy to break the game.
Engage is the opposite. Very good gameplay. Story is safe and simple.
The only other FE switch title is Warriors, which I'd call a 1/10 game because I despise the genre.
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I'm on chapter 17 (which I hear is a huge wall) and this is heavily dependent on whether or not you have DLC, and this is on Lunatic, but
S: Ryul, Dancer, Kagetsu, Hortensia, Ivy, Panetta - Ryul has ridiculous stats particularly when paired with Tiki, Kagetsu is just flat-out broken stats, dancer gonna dancer, flying casters have always been ridiculous, and Panetta is the absolute ideal all-ranged physical damage dealer when switched to warrior A: Anna, Chloe, Yunaca/Shadowman, Merin - mageknight Anna also ends up with some silly stats to go with additional income, Chloe has pretty good dodgetank stats though offensively she can be a bit hit or miss, and the three default dagger-users have all the sillyness that comes with daggers (both thief and wolfknight) along with some busted passives. Merin in particular with her +5 acc/dod for women is pretty whack. B: Goldmarie, Etie - purely off stats, Goldmarie is a solid brave hero (one of the better all-around classes) while Etie is an ideal backup warrior for ranged hits, just happens to be strictly worse than Panetta. C: Everyone else - just not statistically standout and their passives not strong enough to make up for the difference, particularly given the distance to Starsphere. Mystera has ok stats and comes with Starsphere SP but I don't believe in single-weapon-type melee characters with non-special stats... you can change her to brave hero or something but she's just strictly worse than Kagetsu and Goldmarie in that role. D: Louis, Jade, starting trio - raw tanks just aren't very valuable particularly due to Ike, and the starting trio just have some truly scuffed stats
On February 03 2023 23:10 Archeon wrote: Are the switch games good enough to get a switch for?
I use my Switch for a lot of things like Splatoon... I believe it has a good amount of SRPGs like Triangle Strategy and Tactics Ogre Reborn (though I believe both are available for PC), while it doesn't have access to games like Battletech (PC), SRW (PS/PC), and shares access to stuff like Symphony of War, so do keep that in mind.
Contrary to the above, I loved 3H - I only play on Lunatic so the first run was brutal (particularly as I usually play these games with a blind first run) but hilarious dealing with instant-move reinforcements and the ridiculous firepower almost all enemies have (second chapter onward your squishies basically get one-shot). If you like building up units this was IMO the best game in the franchise, because no other game has given as much raw flexibility in building up characters from a skills and stats perspective. I still need to clear the 4th route and I'm looking forward to going back to it after Engage to finish it off. I also felt like while the story had its usual JRPG jank moments, overall it was a pretty well-built world/setting with decent characters and a good-enough plot. If anything I felt like there could have been more of certain interactions (ie. Mercedes and another character). However, if you prefer a raw strategy game like TriStrat vs. games like SRW the ability to break things may not be up your alley.
So far about 1/3 through Engage, I find the story and characters absolute garbage - it's very clearly just a glorified advertisement for older FE games and a way to add/introduce 3 dozen characters for FE Heroes. However from a system perspective this is it - the Engage mechanic adds a very cool strategic twist (despite using older characters as Jojo stands...) and the core system comes with a combination of cool older mechanics like Chain Attacks. I will say the UI has been incredibly frustrating though, from having Engage as the first option instead of Attack (why??), not displaying levels (what the fuck??), and being incredibly slippery (how and why??) such that I would hit down arrow and it jumps two menu slots. All that said, this is a game where I've ignored the godawful writing and the UI hijinks because the gameplay has just been that good (on Lunatic). When I look at (JP) twitter and the like this seems the sentiment all around, as I've basically only seeing some rabid skewering of the writing. You could go ahead and just skip all the dialogue and story because it's just that bad.
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On February 03 2023 23:36 Southlight wrote:I'm on chapter 17 (which I hear is a huge wall) and this is heavily dependent on whether or not you have DLC, and this is on Lunatic, but S: Ryul, Dancer, Kagetsu, Hortensia, Ivy, Panetta - Ryul has ridiculous stats particularly when paired with Tiki, Kagetsu is just flat-out broken stats, dancer gonna dancer, flying casters have always been ridiculous, and Panetta is the absolute ideal all-ranged physical damage dealer when switched to warrior A: Anna, Chloe, Yunaca/Shadowman, Merin - mageknight Anna also ends up with some silly stats to go with additional income, Chloe has pretty good dodgetank stats though offensively she can be a bit hit or miss, and the three default dagger-users have all the sillyness that comes with daggers (both thief and wolfknight) along with some busted passives. Merin in particular with her +5 acc/dod for women is pretty whack. B: Goldmarie, Etie - purely off stats, Goldmarie is a solid brave hero (one of the better all-around classes) while Etie is an ideal backup warrior for ranged hits, just happens to be strictly worse than Panetta. C: Everyone else - just not statistically standout and their passives not strong enough to make up for the difference, particularly given the distance to Starsphere. Mystera has ok stats and comes with Starsphere SP but I don't believe in single-weapon-type melee characters with non-special stats... you can change her to brave hero or something but she's just strictly worse than Kagetsu and Goldmarie in that role. D: Louis, Jade, starting trio - raw tanks just aren't very valuable particularly due to Ike, and the starting trio just have some truly scuffed stats Show nested quote +On February 03 2023 23:10 Archeon wrote: Are the switch games good enough to get a switch for? I use my Switch for a lot of things like Splatoon... I believe it has a good amount of SRPGs like Triangle Strategy and Tactics Ogre Reborn (though I believe both are available for PC), while it doesn't have access to games like Battletech (PC), SRW (PS/PC), and shares access to stuff like Symphony of War, so do keep that in mind. Contrary to the above, I loved 3H - I only play on Lunatic so the first run was brutal (particularly as I usually play these games with a blind first run) but hilarious dealing with instant-move reinforcements and the ridiculous firepower almost all enemies have (second chapter onward your squishies basically get one-shot). If you like building up units this was IMO the best game in the franchise, because no other game has given as much raw flexibility in building up characters from a skills and stats perspective. I still need to clear the 4th route and I'm looking forward to going back to it after Engage to finish it off. I also felt like while the story had its usual JRPG jank moments, overall it was a pretty well-built world/setting with decent characters and a good-enough plot. If anything I felt like there could have been more of certain interactions (ie. Mercedes and another character). However, if you prefer a raw strategy game like TriStrat vs. games like SRW the ability to break things may not be up your alley. So far about 1/3 through Engage, I find the story and characters absolute garbage - it's very clearly just a glorified advertisement for older FE games and a way to add/introduce 3 dozen characters for FE Heroes. However from a system perspective this is it - the Engage mechanic adds a very cool strategic twist (despite using older characters as Jojo stands...) and the core system comes with a combination of cool older mechanics like Chain Attacks. I will say the UI has been incredibly frustrating though, from having Engage as the first option instead of Attack (why??), not displaying levels (what the fuck??), and being incredibly slippery (how and why??) such that I would hit down arrow and it jumps two menu slots. All that said, this is a game where I've ignored the godawful writing and the UI hijinks because the gameplay has just been that good (on Lunatic). When I look at (JP) twitter and the like this seems the sentiment all around, as I've basically only seeing some rabid skewering of the writing. You could go ahead and just skip all the dialogue and story because it's just that bad.
I'm doing hard blind ironman and im really not happy I lost Chloe. The dagger units and pannette are great. Currently doing some paralogues before ch15.
Ch17 is rough I've seen, just try and retreat to spawn when the final push starts and then dogpile on the big boys one at a time
The story complaints I think are a little overexaggerated. Yes, in a vacumn this is a 3/10 story, but name more than 3/4 good fe stories. This is solidly middle of the road for the franchise. The writing itself is poor with cringe dialogue, but it's not conquest or revelation tier bad.
I didn't intend to imply that 3H is a bad game. If you enioy story and world building it's top of tier 2 bottom of tier 1 for the series. My point was moreso that if you like me, prefer the more on the rails FE experience like FE 5-8 3H wouldn't appeal as much. The game was more focused on giving you a small group at the start and building them up the whole game. The hub area is the largest and most fleshed out in the franchise, but personally I couldn't care less about any of that.
There is a reason it dethroned Awakening as the most popular game in the series, and I enjoyed my first path run fairly well, I just have no intention of going back. Such is not the case for Engage.
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Chloe's major issue is that she's a flying melee character, and the bow vs. flying hardcounter is well and truly brutal this game such that I think any flying unit comes with a default viability hit. That plus the distance she has to achieve Starsphere means she's statistically arguably worse than many other characters. Her staying that high on the list is a testament to how bonkers her base stat gains are, because she is one of the best mage assassins in the game. Will have to really think about what ring to stick on her though, because while I have Lucina on her for the silly Dual Assist distance I think her viability really goes down without mini-Canto... and she just doesn't have enough SP to get there yet. There are a lot of characters/classes that are IMO simply not particularly viable because of the copious amounts of longbows and Elthunder/Tron in the game.
On February 03 2023 23:58 Cricketer12 wrote: I didn't intend to imply that 3H is a bad game. If you enioy story and world building it's top of tier 2 bottom of tier 1 for the series. My point was moreso that if you like me, prefer the more on the rails FE experience like FE 5-8 3H wouldn't appeal as much. The game was more focused on giving you a small group at the start and building them up the whole game. The hub area is the largest and most fleshed out in the franchise, but personally I couldn't care less about any of that.
There is a reason it dethroned Awakening as the most popular game in the series, and I enjoyed my first path run fairly well, I just have no intention of going back. Such is not the case for Engage.
Yeah I just adore the unit-building that it allows, particularly because you can pseudo-carry-over the building from run to run (via using carry-over points on ability scores) and create some truly monstrous things. I finished Emerald Wind last month and I had this hilarious triumvirate of Sword Falcon Knight (with Dancer +20 Sword Dodge) Ingrid, maxed-abilities Dark Pegasus Lysethia, and the usual 1vX Byleth shenanigans to go with a horde of siege tanks (Constanze, Dorothea, Bernie, and eventually Claude). I still had to wrack my head against certain things and make sure I didn't use rewind too much, but creating those monstrosities has been enjoyable and rewarding, even if it obviously lowered the overall difficulty of the game. Last run I'll probably go back to Fist Byleth because that was too broken to pass up (went with Falcon Knight Axe Byleth this time and it was fine but just strictly worse) - should be able to speed run it for the most part with a busted Byleth, Lysethia, and Ingrid again. Byleth soloing Emerald Wind's final boss was a truly cursed sight to behold.
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On February 04 2023 00:08 Southlight wrote:Chloe's major issue is that she's a flying melee character, and the bow vs. flying hardcounter is well and truly brutal this game such that I think any flying unit comes with a default viability hit. That plus the distance she has to achieve Starsphere means she's statistically arguably worse than many other characters. Her staying that high on the list is a testament to how bonkers her base stat gains are, because she is one of the best mage assassins in the game. Will have to really think about what ring to stick on her though, because while I have Lucina on her for the silly Dual Assist distance I think her viability really goes down without mini-Canto... and she just doesn't have enough SP to get there yet. There are a lot of characters/classes that are IMO simply not particularly viable because of the copious amounts of longbows and Elthunder/Tron in the game. Show nested quote +On February 03 2023 23:58 Cricketer12 wrote: I didn't intend to imply that 3H is a bad game. If you enioy story and world building it's top of tier 2 bottom of tier 1 for the series. My point was moreso that if you like me, prefer the more on the rails FE experience like FE 5-8 3H wouldn't appeal as much. The game was more focused on giving you a small group at the start and building them up the whole game. The hub area is the largest and most fleshed out in the franchise, but personally I couldn't care less about any of that.
There is a reason it dethroned Awakening as the most popular game in the series, and I enjoyed my first path run fairly well, I just have no intention of going back. Such is not the case for Engage.
Yeah I just adore the unit-building that it allows, particularly because you can pseudo-carry-over the building from run to run (via using carry-over points on ability scores) and create some truly monstrous things. I finished Emerald Wind last month and I had this hilarious triumvirate of Sword Falcon Knight (with Dancer +20 Sword Dodge) Ingrid, maxed-abilities Dark Pegasus Lysethia, and the usual 1vX Byleth shenanigans to go with a horde of siege tanks (Constanze, Dorothea, Bernie, and eventually Claude). I still had to wrack my head against certain things and make sure I didn't use rewind too much, but creating those monstrosities has been enjoyable and rewarding, even if it obviously lowered the overall difficulty of the game. Last run I'll probably go back to Fist Byleth because that was too broken to pass up (went with Falcon Knight Axe Byleth this time and it was fine but just strictly worse) - should be able to speed run it for the most part with a busted Byleth, Lysethia, and Ingrid again. Byleth soloing Emerald Wind's final boss was a truly cursed sight to behold. I will say I haven't gotten DLC so that does make a notable difference for viability.
As far as 3H goes, my blind run was Golden Deer, and 2nd half of the game was just lysithea warp claude to orko boss and win on turn 2. Funny but it got old, and I just didnt have the energy to start over and do another path, especially given how long white clouds is.
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At least on Luna, I think only Byleth's overall firepower/durability has been good enough to one-shot any boss, particularly through break gauges. Frankly despite having some cursed units, both Azure Moon and Emerald Wind required me to oongaboonga a lot of bosses with only melee units due to Retribution, because for example even a super buff Lysethia with ~40 MAG lacked the sufficient firepower to kill the final Death Knight fights and then she'd just instantly die on the counterattack. Incidentally, I found Golden Deer difficulty wasn't as tied to bosses as much as the reinforcements. Emberr was difficult because of the triple Pegasus reinforce on turn 3 and finding a way to clear enough enemies and create enough distance to prevent being overrun by them - the boss itself was whatever. Palace, dubstep, and final boss were all similar in that not being overrun en route was more difficult than the bosses, though I did have to warp-kill the boss on dubstep map because that spell was one-shot heaven.
For what it's worth, my blind run was Crimson Flower, which I do think ended up being the easiest for a clean Luna run because you don't have to deal with that godawful post-skip map with the swarm of bandits. I also felt like the sequence of Crimson->Azure->Emerald was pretty good from a narrative standpoint because you get the outside/opposition perspective, the emo neutral perspective, and then the actually-figuring-out-what-happened perspective. Will see what Silver Snow is like, though I don't think it'll top the closure Emerald gave.
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Thanks for the answers and recommendations, think I'll just try Vestaria out for now. Imo the advantage of railroading is that you have tighter character and story development, which was one of the reasons I preferred 7 over 8, I just liked the characters a lot more. Then again I played this like 15 years ago, so things may have changed.
I don't care much for Splatoon, I may give xenoblade a shot but haven't played it's predecessors. Metroid would be another reason to get it, but idk if I want to spend 600 bucks on like 5 games.
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should have* tighter character and story development 
There's a Switch thread with a lot more info so you might want to check that out. FWIW I thought XBC1 had a decent story but hit-or-miss characters and a very bleh combat system; XBC2 had a good/great world/setting, good combat system, and was held back by a god awful protagonist and player cast; XBC3 had an interesting setting but middling combat system and ultimately its writing was as shallow as a footbath. The only predecessor you'd potentially want to care for is Xenogears but that game is (mostly) great on its own merit anyways.
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Thanks for the rundown, weird that the quality of elements sways so much between games. Think I'll snatch a switch if I see one cheap somewhere.
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The best predecessor Xenoblade game was XCX on Wii U!
A switch is definitely worth getting imo, think I'm up to 20 games owned now, which is unusual for me. FE:Engage is the latest one, end of the month Octopath Traveler 2 is coming, then the new Zelda... It just doesn't stop, and I still have XC3 and Mario + Rabbids 2 in the backlog.
Anyways, hyped to start Engage today, all the reviews i've read say the gameplay is among the best in the series, sounds good!
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3 missions in and can't comment on gameplay yet but man is that story and characters cringe. Actually embarrassed to load this game up when my gf is around lol. Bring back FE10 story/setting please.
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Yeah it's awful, hah. I'll also say while the puzzle-solving aspect of the game is fun*, you don't really feel like you have more of a choice of tools until like chapter 12 or so.
*spoken as someone playing on Lunatic
Have made it to chapter 20; 17 wasn't all that it was cracked up to be (cleared blind first try with only one rewind, which was on a killing blow on the last enemy that managed to get a counter-crit lol). 19 and some of the paralogues were way way way more difficult/annoying.
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Is Lunatic the same as Maddening on the english version? Or does the JP version have an extra difficulty again?
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Netherlands45349 Posts
Did something change about Master sealing? Do I just send it at level 10 now? i used to greed as much as possible (altho maddening made that hard) but I heard thats not neccesary
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On February 06 2023 22:08 Kipsate wrote: Did something change about Master sealing? Do I just send it at level 10 now? i used to greed as much as possible (altho maddening made that hard) but I heard thats not neccesary Upgrade immediately. It looks like using seal reverts you to lvl 1, and exp gain is determined by lvl ups and using a seal is valued at 1 lvl up. Pure incentive to early promote with nothing lost (unless you like to infinite grind and cap stats). Because you can infinitely reseal, your only limiting factor is the number of seals/money to buy them.
On February 06 2023 17:32 Laurens wrote: Is Lunatic the same as Maddening on the english version? Or does the JP version have an extra difficulty again? It's the same
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How important is donating to the other nations? Currently pouring all my money in them as there is nothing else to spend it on, just don't want to regret it later lol.
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To clarify, it visually resets you to 1 but your character's internal level is retained - if you upgrade at level 10 your character is effectively level 11 despite visually displaying as 1. Similarly, if you upgrade at 17, your character is effectively level 18 despite visually displaying as 1. The difference in terms of power is that you've spent 7 more levels with worse class-based stat gains, so you're losing out. However, you're not gaining anything notable in terms of exp efficiency. Incidentally, the visual display vs. internal level is why you basically can't tell what level anything is in this game, and it's incredibly strange and annoying.
On February 06 2023 23:43 Laurens wrote: How important is donating to the other nations? Currently pouring all my money in them as there is nothing else to spend it on, just don't want to regret it later lol.
If you're not playing on Luna/Mad it might be an OK investment if you see a lot of skirmishes - the effect is that you have an increased chance of getting exp/gold skirmishes (default is you just beat a bunch of enemies that don't really give you anything except level X exp), and after the skirmish you go back into the exploration map and the stuff you can pick up has increased gains based off your investment level. For example, an item pickup in the exploration map that would by default give you 1 milk might give like 3 milk instead depending on your investment.
I say OK because IMO unless you get a lot of gold skirmishes you'll probably never make that money back. Also skirmishes are pretty rough in general because they scale purely to your highest-level character, hah. I don't know how much gold skirmishes give and IIRC after like one investment level the chance of getting a gold skirmish in that area is like 10%.
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Okay so I should stop donating to the other nations then, seems pretty pointless. Cheers.
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From what I've heard, Engage's main writer came from Fates. Figures, right? I don't know how many writers they have and why they didn't use 3H's writers again.
White Clouds is definitely one of Three Houses' most questionable decisions. I'm currently playing Three Hopes (the musou spin-off) and the path split occurs on chapter 3. I get that 3H needed some world building for players on their first path but they still could've made the common path a lot shorter.
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