Genealogy of the Horny War (Fire Emblem Thread)

[Tradegood]

@StuartGipp

I am seeking impressions of Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes.

I’ve only played a few hours of Three Hopes (because the music and presentation always makes me want to go back and finish my maddening run of Three Houses), but it doesn’t have any dating as far as I’m aware. But there are supports you can earn from pairing up with a character so support convos are there if you want it. Three Houses’ ‘dating’ is blown a little out of proportion, there are a lot of support conversations, and an optional tea party guessing minigame, but relationships are a lot less diagetically important than many FE games. I think because it’s voice acted and scenes go on a bit long, people put more of an emphasis on it. But you can easily skip them and not miss anything.

@treefroggy

So I am gonna play Blazing or Binding blade, whichever is the first one from 2002!

Do it! Both are great games though Blazing Blade is my favorite of the two where you play as Roy’s dad Eliwood. Roy is just there as a cameo. If you do play Binding Blade to play as Roy, don’t be discouraged by the low hit rates! Once you get Rutger you’ll be able to really use the low hit rates to your advantage. Roy himself is not meant to be a powerhouse of a unit, he’s supposed to grow into the role during the course of the last few chapters, so don’t be discouraged by that either.

There’s also the Project Ember rom hack which balances things a bit more and makes more units viable if you want to avoid some frustration. Just remember to use the weapon triangle, it’s much more powerful in that game than FE8.

@selib

Has anyone played any romhacks of the GBA games?

Not a lot but I played Sacred Echoes which is the GBA remake of the 3DS remake of the NES game. I also played the Shadow Dragon 3DS remake for the novelty, but idk FE11 is fine, you probably shouldn’t play this over that. And of course, I love a randomizer and someday wouldn’t mind building my own romhack!

As far as total overhauls though, I’ve read good things about Vision Quest!

[captain]

@Tradegood since you’ve played the game in English: would you say it’s necessary to use a guide to get all the gaiden chapters in FE6? I’m playing it now myself but haven’t gotten to any of those yet. I have no qualms consulting serenesforest.net but wonder if it will be necessary for treefroggy

[treefroggy]

I became aware of roy’s part in blazing blade this week. really made me want to play binding blade since he’s technically only in one game and it’s its own story separate from Marth’s main series. That really makes it easy to just jump in and validate myself for I think only liking the GBA fire emblem games. I will probably give thracia or the other sufami ones a go after I finish the gba trilogy though. I don’t get discouraged easily either. Couldn’t be too hard or punishing. It’s Nintendo. it’s why they probably started a new continuity for the GBA games in the first place: keeping it approachable. Sacred stones was like that. No prior knowledge needed. shit was awesome. I got every unit.

[treefroggy]

Remembering how I am with TRPGs. Starting with like chapter 6 difficulty spike I’m playing each chapter 20 times to get it absolutely perfect, get all loot, 0 casualties.
I may be missing some mechanics that make things easier. Like the “support” feature, and how weapon levels work

Edit: ok the game is going more smoothly after following advice from this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/nnn094/tips_for_playing_binding_blade/

[treefroggy]

Wtf did I just stumble upon… Apparently all the names in Binding Blade are from Wrestlers.
https://etymology-of-the-emblem.tumblr.com/post/678630343076659200/the-many-wrestling-references-in-the-binding-blade/amp

[Tradegood]

@captain

would you say it’s necessary to use a guide to get all the gaiden chapters in FE6?

It’s fine to play either way! I used one because of the route split and missable characters and I wanted to play as many of the Gaidens as I could. There’s also a true ending that you can easily miss if you don’t do the Gaidens and you have to save your superweapons for the final map. Don’t feel like you have to beat it that way to get the true ending. I think it could also be a lot of fun if you just try to see how far you can make it!

You can find a very good guide here: Fire Emblem The Binding Blade / Sword of Seals (GBA) - Fire Emblem Wars of Dragons

@treefroggy

Starting with like chapter 6 difficulty spike I’m playing each chapter 20 times to get it absolutely perfect, get all loot, 0 casualties.

Nice, but I gotta warn you, Chapter 7 is a doozy, that’s the real difficulty spike if you haven’t done it already! It’s ok to leave Trec die if you can’t get to him in time. This game has so many units and many of them aren’t that useful compared to other, so it’s ok to let some of them permadie!

@treefroggy

I may be missing some mechanics that make things easier. Like the “support” feature, and how weapon levels work

Honestly in this game, supports require you to just spam ‘end turn’ with units you like next to each other. Even within the GBA series it’s grindy and unnecessary. For weapon levels, you have to use the weapon, and once you get enough experience on it you will gain weapon level. You can actually view your progress towards both of these on the map, something I learned after I had beaten all of the games lol.

[treefroggy]

The advice I got was so good it got me through ch7 somewhat smoothly. 6 I did sooo many times. Starting to pay attention to difference in hit rates. I got steel weapons for all my guys only to realize iron is often preferable. Thankfully you can buy them between chapters.

The main annoying thing about support is it seems I can only activate one per chapter/battle. I’m fine with grinding, that’s fun and enjoyable to me. I did ch 6 like 30 times in a row, after all.

Yeah I’m finally coming to grips with all the menus and mechanics. It’s been a long time since I played sacred stones in 2005…

Also I just progressed my first class! The branching paths in SS was the coolest thing ever in 2005. But this is fine. I progressed Lot, my axe dude.

Usually I manage 0 deaths until around the final boss. But yeah Treck seems like he wouldn’t mind dying.

I’ve seen it said that Binding Blade is the toughest FE to play Blind. That’s funny considering it’s the first in the GBA trilogy. Trying to imagine the n64 version as I go.

[kyleprocrastinations]

- YouTube

[captain]

I started FE6 back in August, took a break during September, and finished it today. I had played through it twice before in Japanese (once blind—got the bad ending—and once with a sidequest chapter guide), but this is the first time I played it in English.

I became acquainted a long time ago with the popular fan translated names, which themselves were based on English transcriptions of names as presented in character art/the manual. In this updated translation Thany => Shanna, Tate => Thea, Yodel => Yoder, and so on. It escapes me why they changed Alan back to Alen, and Ellen to Elen.

The first 14 or so chapters are fun. Somewhere after that, they began to feel too similar—in my case I fell into heavily manipulating the level-up RNG to get around what seemed to me like the game’s sense of cruelty (+1 HP or + nothing at all), but it unfortunately made the late game too easy; past a certain point playing the game felt like building IKEA furniture, just a matter of putting your characters in the correct position, which was usually obvious. Usually the last two chapters of a Fire Emblem game tend to feel this way, but that imo is acceptably in line with taking a victory lap before fighting the final boss. Here it was at least 10 chapters of perfunctory play, and the story didn’t do much to make up for what I had inadvertently turned the game into. I don’t think it was all my fault, though: in the second half of the game the level design begins to feel the same from one chapter to the next, and when it deviates from the standard it isn’t anything you don’t see in the first half of the game.

Figured the story must be at least close to as compelling as its prequel successor, but I was mistaken. FE7 is certainly more focused on the personal dramas of its main characters than the Tellius games and, from what I’ve seen, the Kaga games, but there’s enough substance there to hold interest. 6, on the other hand, tries to translate the more politically oriented story of a SNES Fire Emblem to a handheld console, but many of the inter-chapter Warren Report-style summaries of geopolitical activity feel pretty disconnected from one another, and on top of that don’t really influence the story of Roy and his allies. If anything I’m impressed the team was able to change their approach to this aspect of the game when developing FE7 while preserving the good stuff (in addition to adding things like varying mission objectives and unique level designs).

I have an abiding fondness for FE6 as part of the GBA trilogy—and it certainly earns credit for establishing much of what makes its sequels good, like the speed and feel of gameplay, elegant character menus, and the best battle animations in the series—but am glad to have had this opportunity to see it for what it is: a stepping stone on the way to better games.

Special recognition due Taeko Kaneda and Sachiko Wada for their art, and Yuka Tsujiyoko for her music (even if I disagree with whoever decided one Player Phase and one Enemy Phase battle theme was sufficient for the whole 30-hour game).

[connrrr]

sorry if you’ve seen this already, FriEnds.

https://bsky.app/profile/punchyfakegamer.bsky.social/post/3lad2kbdgdh2a

[Hunter]