PogueSquadron said:

My Chrom married Sumia. I thought it fit perfectly.

Even if you don't use someone a lot, he'll marry the female that he has the highest affinity with.

I have no idea where a female MU fits despite mostly using her in my runs but I've always shipped her off with Chrom and then scrambled to get Ignis so it gets passed down to Lucinda

Btw those supports with the two are comedy gold.

Man, at the end with only 10 characters left, hope I haven't screwed myself. Playing this game old school hard mode is tough, definitely the most challenging Fire Emblem game.

Finished. I have to catch a bus so I'll have to write deeper thoughts later. For now I'll say... great game, although I don't know that I think it is like the BEST STRATEGY GAME EVAR. I'm not even sure if it is my favorite Fire Emblem, though if not, it is certainly up there. And I still prefer Advance Wars.

I'm curious though... how does the game decide who retires versus dying? Is it based on anything I do, or just tied to the character?

I took a peek at my brother's file and I have no idea how he got the team he got. He ended with like 30 people, including a ton of the bosses.

@Zero

You think Awakening is harder than Radiant Dawn? What difficulty level did you play RD on?

Characters retire if they're important enough to the story. You can recruit boss characters in free downloadable post-game missions.

I'm curious. How would you order these three games based solely on personal preference: Advance Wars, your favorite Fire Emblem, and Valkyria Chronicles?

I always play on hard. I think this game was definitely tougher than Radiant Dawn. But it might have been connected to the fact that I didn't exploit the marriage system? It didn't really dawn on me until late in the game that the kids only show up if you make marriages happen. By that point ... the only marriages I ever pulled off were Chrom and "me", so only a few kids showed up. And some of those kids are powerhouses! Whereas in Radiant Dawn the game just basically hands you a new high powered character every few stages, especially near the end.

Looking at the scores that I gave on here I did score Awakening the highest. I suppose it was my favorite. It was close though. I feel like, in the end, I'm going to have more strong positive feelings for Radiant Dawn.

Ratingwise I'd go Favorite Advance Wars > Valkyria Chronicles > Favorite Fire Emblem. I like the Fire Emblem games, but something about them keeps them from really knocking it into the next level for me. I think it is the fact that, no matter what other strategies I try, it seems like it pretty much just always turns out best to keep all of my characters in a tight formation and let the enemies come break themselves on me. This doesn't work on every stage, but it does work on like 90% of them, and by "work" I mean really just ends up being the best way to keep everyone alive. It doesn't feel as dynamic as something like Advance Wars where there are real reasons to break up, hold various fronts, etc. And there seemed to be less reason to really push forward right away in Awakening, just a few thieves running around and such that you could beat to treasure (or kill if they got it first, though that feels evil to me, why kill someone who isn't actively engaging me in battle?!), in past games there were more random characters you could save to get join your team and such...

@Zero

I think that's why I enjoy Fire Emblem so much. I almost always keep my units together in strategy games and advance very slowly. I'll occasionally break up into two groups or send a speedy character ahead when the situation demands, but other than that I like having a big group. That's how I play Fire Emblem, Valkyria Chronicles, Halo Wars, and XCOM. Fire Emblem's focus is on maintaining a solid group of units and slowly moving into the enemies' agro range. You must then adapt to how the enemies advance towards you and where reinforcements spawn, oftentimes being attacked from multiple sides by a variety of units and trying to maintain control of a delicate balance of strengths and weaknesses. In many cases, you're going to need to have multiple units attacking the same foe. And sending out a small group means that they can easily be surrounded and killed quickly. This is all very reactionary. It feels like the game is structured around turtling and slow, methodical movement. That's a pure description of how I usually play strategy games. Perhaps I like Fire Emblem so much because my preferred strategy is, in most cases, the optimal strategy. What reasons does Advance Wars give you to split up? Is approaching it like Fire Emblem a plausible strategy?

I did miss recruiting enemy characters. There are only a few instances of that. In Shadow Dragon, most of the recruitable characters start out as enemies.

Well, I'd say the main reason for splitting up in Advance Wars is that whoever controls the most bases has a huge advantage. So trying to stick together in a single group would just let the other side run around grabbing up the bases.

Not every map has bases, so the ones that don't might lend themselves well to the Fire Emblem one big turtle group strategy, but I'd say probably 90% or so of the maps have bases?

There are probably other advantages I'm not thinking of at the moment as well. Surrounding enemies, terrain advantages, etc.

I'm playing the free SpotPass maps now and man... some of these are rough. I got through all of them but 2. The one where you have to fight a bunch of clones and the one with like a billion enemies. The clone one I could totally "beat" but trying to do it without losing a bunch of fighters... I dunno. The other one just looks totally insane.

I feel like I'm talking to myself here though.

@Zero

I am at the same mark of progress, the same Xenologue chapters left to be done with. Sort of. I restarted my save file so I could re-class everybody and make sure each and every unit has it's best skills. I've been whipping my army to shape for some time now and I've got some true beasts in there. I'm playing this on Hard-Classic mode, so grinding wasn't and hasn't been easy for the once forgotten units I left in the corner.

I still have some Paralogue chapters left too, but that's because I want to get some skills with certain characters first. Galeforce Forever

Chrom and my Avatar are strong enough to take on the Final Chapter with no real problems, just the dynamic duo. Yet, I still need some good grinding before taking on Priam.

I've been playing this game for quite a bit lately. I just forget to post here.

Didn't know about the Spotpass Paralogues! I love this game.

My Chrom sucks. I don't know why, I used him a fair amount and beefed him up with a variety of stat boosting items he just... never got good. I suppose I could have used him more.

My avatar was awesome as a Dark Knight but he ran out of room to progress so I changed him to a um... whatever the dragon-like rider class is... and now he blows. Not sure why I did that. He is E at all his weapons and super weak against archers and certain spells and yeah... he's basically worthless now. Probably will switch him to something better before trying to go much further.

Not that there is much of anywhere left to go. I might just be done now.

I finally completed Awakening after a marathon session today. I'll score it high - probably my favorite Fire Emblem game.

These games are pretty tough, man. I played on Normal and I thought it was still kind of "break your fist on a wall" hard at points. But that's cool, too. Or maybe I'm just reckless or not playing enough side-missions.

Some details from my particular playthrough:

Chrom ended up married to Sully, which was pretty damn funny. To be honest, I don't think I adapted to the partnering system the way I was supposed to. I think I worked under the assumption that working together from adjacent squares meant the support level would rise, but I'm pretty sure that's not true, in retrospect. Or, if it is, it's not very efficient compared to actually pairing up. So I had about 4 married couples who worked together, but usually not paired up, so I could do more damage during the player phase. Unlike Zero, I tend to try to take it to the enemy in these games, just because that's more fun. I don't know if it's a better strategy or not, but that's the way I play.

My avatar married Miriel, which I thought would be funny, since she was so analytical and boring. And damned if I didn't have a great deal of affection for that pair by the end of the game. We both ended up as mages, so we were like a power couple by the end, mopping up hoardes of guys ourselves.

Gregor and Panne ended up together, another funny odd couple. I think I just favored getting the oddballs together more than anything else. Lissa didn't end up with anyone, so clearly I should have had a support character paired with her for muscle. Maybe next time.

Also, I adore the animation style in the handful of cut scenes. I would absolutely go to a Fire Emblem movie if it looked like that. Well, I'd go anyway. But I'd be excited for it.

Anyway, I think I'll play it again, but in Casual mode this time. I'm getting to the point where, while I enjoy replaying levels and the tension that comes with player death, I just don't know if I want to spare the actual time it takes to replay a level anymore. I guess what I wish Fire Emblem had was a rewind button, like Civ had, where you could go back a few moves and play from where you goofed up. I know that's counter to the spirit of Fire Emblem, but I guess I've played enough of them the "correct" way that I'm willing to go with something a little more forgiving now.

That said, this is a darn near perfect Fire Emblem game. This and Uprising are the two definitive 3DS experiences I've had so far. Well done, Nintendo.

Is replaying levels when someone dies really the "correct" way? I think we all just sort of do it, but I'm not sure that is what Intelligent Systems intends.

Anyway, I've tried to get more used to accepting deaths, but man, I ended the game with a low amount of characters... was worried at points that I wouldn't be able to finish it.

@Zero But all of the other games have a soft reset (and this one does via the home menu). They wouldn't put a soft reset into the game unless they wanted you to be able to restart quickly.

I think Shadow Dragon was the only one that really encouraged small parties. I think they gave you better endings if you completed the game with less characters.

Yeah but the logic behind that could be "you made a bunch of bad decisions and know that continuing down this path will lead to ultimate destruction, reset!" more than "you lost one of your favorite characters, reset!"

Is there that much of a difference? The soft reset works for both a series of bad decisions and one slight misstep. I never really viewed the FE games as being at ALL encouraging about a "going with the flow - if they die they die" mentality. In fact I feel like the opposite is true - the games make you feel awful when someone dies, especially someone you're attached to.

With Shadow Dragon (from what I played) they pulled it off okay - you get so many characters you don't care about, that it's easier to view them as fodder in battle.

Zero said:

Is replaying levels when someone dies really the "correct" way? I think we all just sort of do it, but I'm not sure that is what Intelligent Systems intends.

I once read an interview in which some Intelligent Systems employees said that they reset the game if they don't like their randomized stat gains upon leveling up. So I don't think they have any issue with resetting until you achieve your desired results.

PogueSquadron said:

I never really viewed the FE games as being at ALL encouraging about a "going with the flow - if they die they die" mentality. In fact I feel like the opposite is true - the games make you feel awful when someone dies, especially someone you're attached to.

This is especially true for the FE games that don't offer opportunities to grind between levels. Holes in your team that appear late in the game can be left perpetually empty thanks to under-leveled units that never have a chance to level up.

To return to Zero's point, I don't think resetting is the "wrong" way to play Fire Emblem. If resetting and keeping everybody alive allows you to better enjoy the game, then I say go for it. That's typically how I play Fire Emblem, throwing in the occasional "no reset" run when I want to mix things up. My initial reaction is to say that there is no "wrong" way to play any game as long as you're having fun, but I'd have to spend some time thinking about that before making such a statement.

Well, I'm the one who said the "correct" way, initially. And I put quotes around it for a reason. I just meant classic mode, where there's a significant risk if you lose, as opposed to a system where you could save anywhere. I don't think there's really a right or wrong way, only that Fire Emblem is certainly designed around player death and, while casual mode is a net positive for the series, I don't think I'd be comfortable saying it's the definitive way to play the game or that it's even equal to the classic mode. I'm just getting to the point where... well, really, what I'd like is to be able to go back, now that I've beat the game, and play the levels over and fix mistakes without having to launch a whole new playthrough.

@Zero a playthrough I had with sacred swords where on ephirim's path I lost a ton of people and ended up in a borderline unwinnable situation of like 3 people on chapter 14. I chose not to restart for the most part and that's where that got me.

I've been working through this again recently. I think I'm about to start Chapter 14, but I want to recruit my children...I have Lucina and Owain thus far.

My one big question mark is Olivia. I maxed her level out (30) and she's pretty decent with a blade (B rank right now), but I wonder if I should reclass her to grow skills. She's married to Henry.

The only unit I've used a second seal on is Maribelle. Once she hit level 10 as a Troubador, I reclassed her into a Mage with hopes of promoting her to a Sage soon (she's level 17 now).

So technically, everyone but Maribelle and Gaius are still lower classes, but they're both really close to hitting 20.