Gaming I Don't Pick Fights I Can't Win: The Fire Emblem Series

Heroes is now up on the App Store (though you may have to go through the game's website to find it).

 

So, Heroes has been fun so far. It has just the basics of the series (weapon triangle, etc) but it's designed to be played in quick bursts (one battle often only lasts about 5 minutes at most) which makes it great for getting an FE fix when you don't have time to dedicate an hour to a more complex map on a core FE game. I've gotten to the World of Awakening so far and summoned a couple good characters so far without paying anything yet.

On the other side of the franchise, I made some more progress in Awakening itself, now up to Chapter 17 (so just after the map that is set upon the roots of a giant tree). That was a fun map to play (except that I managed to clear the map the time relatively easily only to have Chrom fall to the funny mustache Man, . But I was victorious the second time through, albeit a bumpier ride) - I started to really use enemy ranges to my advantage to lure them out to ideal match-ups (or integrating "make a safe space for my healers" strategies into things) and I've even begun teaming some characters up (only a couple, though- I still prefer the flexibility of having more active units). Gregor and Cordellia have made for a good combo in battle and I'm keeping Lucina with Chrom for now until she's powered up some more because I was happy to get her back a few chapters ago after having lost her in Chapter 9 and I don't want to lose her again.

I've also remembered about Master Seals and have finally started upgrading more characters (i had previously only upgraded Fredrick and Lon'qu). And by upgrading Gaius to an assassin I finally have an archer to use all these bows i've been acquiring (as i lost Virion shortly after getting him and haven't had any other join my team since), so that's exciting.

Less exciting is, after doing this, realizing that Lon'qu also gained that ability so long ago when I upgraded him to an assassin and I just hadn't noticed. So, in reality, I've actually had an archer this entire time without realizing it.

By the listings I see, I think that means I have 10 Chapters left, not counting Paralogues and Xenologues.

 

I haven't quite fully grasped the mechanic yet. I mean, I get that there's bonuses from making characters fight together more often but it's kinda just happened rather than me taking an active role in controlling it beyond combat preferences.

But I do enjoy going through the support conversations.

 

Echoes Limited Edition announced.

Naturally it's already on the verge of selling out but I was still able to preorder one from GameStop just now.

 

(TIME TRAVEL!)

 

Yeah they're pins. The poster is also plastic, not just paper.

 

It might be a bit before I give it a go- still playing Awakening.

 

FE Warriors E3 trailer & Treehouse demo:




Watching the demo now, they show off how the subscreen map uses traditional FE sprites and commands to give to your units when you're not actively controlling them on the battlefield (though you can switch over to them, obviously). As expected, the weapons triangle is also a factor in combat- but they've also incorporated paired attacks from Awakening as well. The game is also fully voiced (as one might expect from a console release).

 

The voicework in the trailer was pretty awful, but the in-game lines in that demo didn't sound to bad/different from the 3DS titles.

It wll be interesting to see how the weapon triangle affects things. They did mention how the game is designed to be played by both FE and action game fans, so you can go more in depth with the commands if you want or charge ahead into battle, or disable the level up pop-up screens so as to not interrupt the pacing of the action, if that's what one prefer.

 

FEWA: SE now taking pre-orders in US.




"The special edition will cost $79.99, and will release on 20th October with the main game. It’ll include the game, three CDs with music from the game, a two-sided poster, and 25 character art cards"

 

New trailer:

 

Made a little line-up video of my FE stuff after picking up FEWA and the latest two amiibo.

Now I just need a Switch to play it on .

 

So, after finished ALBW finally, I intend to turn my portable attention onto FEA and hopefully finish that off in decent time (i also have a couple flights to catch in a week or two so I intend to use that time well).

Of course, that still leaves me with a growing backlog of FE titles (with Three Houses eventually making it worse). One thing I'm leaning towards is simply using any casual modes available for future titles I play. I do enjoy the classic mode (even if I've cheated a few times over characters I wasn't willing to sacrifice) and am glad I'll be finishing out that full experience with FEA, but for the sake of time I think the only reasonable approach for Fates (all three), Echoes, etc is to try and speed things up by using the casual mode so there'll be fewer restarts, etc. Since I'm interested in the stories and characters in particular, it seems like the best option (and avoids things like me losing that archer super early on in FEA who seemed to have an amusing personality and whose loss has resulted in me basically playing the majority of the game without an archer).

But, one concern does come to mind so I'd be curious to see what other people may have experienced in that mode vs the classic approach, and that concern is that if you retain more characters due to the lack of permadeath, do you find it more difficult to level up (or develop the relationships between) your characters since things are getting spread out across more characters? Or are you still finding yourself essentially leveling up the same core group of characters?