Lurker > Kenri

I'm looking at a picture of it now and I honestly can't tell.

Camorse.

MacArrowny posted...

Isn't that also true in previous games?

No, typically you can move into FOW but if you hit an enemy your move immediately ends. It lends itself to some risky strategies where you can scout into the fog by undoing your moves until you find an enemy. I can understand why they did away with it but I think the solution needs work, since this way slows things down.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Also I think Saphir is a warrior? I know she looks like an armor knight.

lmao probably, I'll admit I didn't check and just went off appearance. I'm actually having a big problem telling classes apart in this game, which is probably a personal problem but damn it makes me long for the more abstracted style of the GBA games. ...In fact I'm having issues with terrain and enemy ranges too so maybe I'm just going blind.

I also didn't even realize Fogado was riding a camel instead of a horse until yesterday because I have the animations turned off and it looks the same from above lol

fuck yeah playable Saphir if only I had room on my team for a mediocre armor knight. good chapter, I liked the touch where they tell you outright that there aren't any survivors and if you go to the houses anyway it just spawns corrupted (of course they have loot so you still wanna do it). Mauvier definitely gonna change sides and I feel like Marni is unfortunately gonna come with him.

C20 was pretty great too but did they really make it so you can't move through fog of war...?

wow alear's VA really nailing this "I am devastated by this shocking plot twist" voice. actually never mind it got better but the lines in the FMV were baaad.

MacArrowny posted...

Good news. Only Alear has paired endings

https://youtu.be/oVZiLdtzAGQ?t=5

https://www.humblebundle.com/games/simple-life

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles
Lake
Townscaper
Staxel
Summer in Mara
Luna's Fishing Garden
Garden Paws
Winkeltje

Anyone play these? I've been debating this bundle for like a week and there are only 2 days left on it now :/

In love with Sigurd's paralogue. Who else but Sigurd would summon like 40 reinforcements then run ahead of all of them and get killed.

I kinda adore the big sister/little brother vibes the Chloe/Jean support has going on please don't give them a paired ending where they hook up

which is gayer, being gay or whatever louis/rosado have goin on in their support. like their C support alone has more chemistry than some marriage proposals in other FEs

and speaking of being gay, WOW goldmary put the moves on etie really fuckin fast in that A support

"This is where my fate branched" shut up corrin

ship map ship map ship map

They really brought back Abyme for C18 huh. That's a deep cut.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

https://twitter.com/taniel/status/1625548077754122240?s=46&t=eiXq16Q1DGu0l9nhONB4Zg

:/

Bizarre but not particularly surprising in the current era of unqualified, unaccountable conservative judges.

TheRock1525 posted...

I honestly don't remember Awakening being silly.

Gangrel was definitely the silliest (major) villain in the series up til that point (IMO it worked though), and character bits like Sumia being a ditz or Henry being a goofball were incorporated into the main plot in ways that typically didn't happen in earlier FE. Games before Awakening had silly characters and villains (especially 6-10) but they weren't as in your face about it.

TheRock1525 posted...

I think the worst part is going from stories of political conflict where all sides can be justified in some way to the main villains being just "I like to kill. Killing is fun. Kill kill kill."

I was just thinking earlier about how modern FE really doesn't get the series' themes. I think probably those themes were all Kaga, and it stuck around for the post-Kaga games that followed his notes, but now the writers either don't get it or are intentionally going a different way.

The villains aren't just caricatures now; a big theme used to be that even villains had friends and family they legitimately loved, but now villains don't care about anyone, now matter how much it feels like they should. And the way loyalty is treated is almost completely different in the new games, which is sad because that used to be my favorite part of FE's stories.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

My biggest dissociation with the FE fanbase at this point seems to be how much I do not care about Lucina at ALLLLLLL.

Man even as an Awakening hater I think Lucina is rad. Anytime they put her in something instead of Chrom or Robin it's a win.

Bitto posted...

You know, I don't think I give 3H enough credit for basically taking the Fates premise and making it really good.

The Fates premise was a subplot in FE4 and it was better there too!

McDonalds is absolute bottom of the barrel fast food, so easy choice for Taco Bell

Oh noooo I made Alear a wolf knight and now she has Merrin's ridiculous tail

Panthera posted...

I think you could fight the Death Knight six or seven times on a single playthrough. Chapter 4 where he first shows up, chapter six where you rout everyone else or beat him, chapter 8 in Remire, chapter 11 of non-CF routes, Mercedes/Caspar paralogue, Fort Merceus and SS/VW Enbarr. I'm not sure if the paralogue is on non-AM routes and he's dead by Enbarr on that route so it might be a maximum of six on any given route.

My first time playing (AM) I couldn't beat him in C4, 6, or 8 and didn't recruit Caspar so it didn't feel like too much.

In VW it was definitely more of a "this little shit again?" situation

3 maybe?

I think I'm actually just wrong. A lot of enemies are fought 3 times. Ishtar, Kishuna, the Death Knight, etc. Though some of those fights are optional. Maybe these guys in Engage just stand out to me because there are four of them and I don't like them lmao

Natalie posted...

Coming back and learning this about Ulti was so disappointing. He seemed cool back in the day.

Idk, I started coming to this board in like 2004 and he was already insufferable back then, it was just about nerd shit instead of politics.

Hubert is optional to beat in several of the chapters you fight him in, at least. But yeah I did forget about him.

I was almost going to say it was worth the Hounds being unkillable if we get to off every single one of them in a single chapter but they're fucking STILL alive after C17?? This has to be the most you ever fight a single unit in an FE game without them dying right?

Also that chapter took me like 2 hours, most of it spent trying to figure out a way to hurt Mauvier

JRPGs have a serious "not butchering recurring villains the moment they show up to talk" problem but it's especially bad in Engage because FE usually doesn't have that problem. Like here we fight Mauvier and Marni in C16 and then immediately go to C17 and they're there again? Did we travel together? Are we buds now on a road trip? Fuck off. Plus we're not just attacking Zephia on sight because... why, exactly? I get that stuff like this is in service to the plot but it actually makes the plot significantly worse. Just invent new bit villains instead of keeping shitty ones around past their expiration date.

Hard classic

I figured that's what you meant, just clarifying that I'm fine with it since I wasn't sure if I sounded complain-y!

Definitely not complaining about the game getting harder, since I've breezed through the story (and the appropriately-leveled paralogues) up til now.

fun fact Asura's Wrath is not on Switch, PS4, PS5, or Steam.

Chapter 16 was probably the toughest story chapter so far but fuck yeah I have Rosado now! I was really hoping Marni and Mauvier would bite it in this chapter but no such luck. I'm still half-expecting Mauvier to be the game's Lorenz archetype and switch sides but it feels less likely now than it did when he was first introduced. And for a moment Griss had me believing he'd be a Jaffar analogue and help Good!Veyle escape but that feeling was pretty short-lived. I may not like these characters but at least I'm interested in where the game's going with them.

why is goldmary trying to ASMR me in this C-support

RySenkari posted...

I don't know why all the pro-boycott folks are saying "You shouldn't play this game, it sucks!" If boycotting is about taking a moral stand, it could be Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring-level quality and you still shouldn't play it. If the game sucks, then boycotting it says nothing about your actual solidarity with trans people.

People keep saying this but it makes perfect sense to me. The exact point is that it shouldn't even be a "sacrifice" to not play it, because it looks super bad. Yeah maybe this "cheapens the boycott" or whatever but the idea is that a boycott shouldn't even be necessary in the first place.

It made a lot more sense with Benny tbh. You can't convince me that 99% of kids wouldn't think Zelkov looks cool as hell.

So I tried the Ike paralogue and it uh. It went poorly. In that I got to the end and then barely had anyone who could even damage Ike without immediately dying to his counterattack. Maybe "suggested level: lvl 3 advanced class" means 20/3 and not 10/3...

pezzicle posted...

One of the most basic questions that you ask someone in a therapy questions is: "what would happen if that part stopped doing it's job? What is that part afraid would occur if it wasn't doing what it thinks it's supposed to?"

Hate is protective. But protective of what is the question

To be fair I'm looking at this through that kind of lens cause I'm a certified IFS clinical psychologist so bear that in mind lol

What sort of answer would you expect (or is this a rhetorical question)?

I think I've been asked the same question in therapy myself (about a completely different fear though) and didn't really have an answer for it. But that was for a pretty intangible fear. If it was about something like a fear of spiders (which I had as a kid) my answer would be more like "nothing would happen, my fear is 100% unreasonable". This is potentially straying off-topic but I'm curious to hear your thoughts if you're up to posting about it!

azuarc posted...

What if I prefer Oakland or Fresno?

it's called "having bad taste"

pezzicle posted...

I think I'd argue that it's hate motivated by fear

I don't think I agree. If anything fear can be leveraged to win more rights for oppressed groups in some circumstances. This is why, for example, Ida B Wells said the best defense against being lynched was owning a Winchester. But even if hate does come from fear: where does the fear come from?

DeepsPraw posted...

I completely disagree. You can't just hate someone out of the blue. I feel like as milennials, our schoolteachers have completely failed us on understanding the root causes of prejudice. I remember it was drilled into our heads that racism was caused by people who hated others "simply because of the color of their skin".

To expand a little on this: my take as someone with two degrees in US history is that "it was because of the color of their skin" is more inaccurate than straight-up incorrect. It wasn't because of skin color and we know that because light-skinned black people were also oppressed, and because oppression exists within groups that all share a skin color.

But it is a convenient marker for who to oppress, isn't it? And that marker could be anything. Hair color, eye color, skin color, the way you talk, the way you walk, the place you live, whether you own a sheep or not, really anything at all. The justification that says "actually people with [trait] are subhuman" comes post hoc, after the oppression supposedly caused by it, as a way of shifting the blame.

The truth is that oppression and bigotry come from opportunity. They come from a powerful group realizing there's a way for them to gain an advantage over others. It has absolutely nothing to do with the oppressed group. 0%. It's entirely arbitrary.

We teach kids "black people were hated just for the color of their skin" because that's a explanation that most people aren't significantly troubled by. The alternative explanation is "some otherwise indistinguishable humans throughout history are arbitrarily and systemically hated because it is economically and politically profitable to other groups to do so" and that's uncomfortable because it assigns much more blame.

Natalie posted...

"Where's the trans Harvey Milk?" Jesus christ.

yeah i decided to let that one go but holy shit, one of the worst things i've ever seen posted on this board

Gender critical people will definitely debate me on a lot of things.

Side note but we gotta retake the name "gender critical" from these people, it's like Catholics calling themselves "Pope critical".

DeepsPraw posted...

This is a pretty big logical fallacy. Nobody becomes a bigot because they want to be hateful. They do it because they want to protect something, whether that is a group of people, a way of life, or the status quo.

These are actually the same thing, just with a veneer of respectability.

When no one is actually in danger (and when your way of life/status quo is actually shit) it is in fact just hate motivated by hate. Or, in the US, it's more like hate motivated by a need for a distraction/wedge issue that you can get elected on, but the hate is still super important.

I didn't think Soren's voice particularly fit him at first but I gotta admit it's growing on me

MacArrowny posted...

Protip: don't invest in countries. It's not worth it.

Yeah I did the first couple levels for Brodia and Firene and the rewards seemed pretty middling, and then the next level is 25k so fuck that

Finished up chapter 14. Hortensia really is the fucking worst isn't she. On the other hand this game really should've been about Ivy since she's got way more invested in the conflict than Alear and is actually an interesting character.

The chapter itself was kind of a slog (especially when FUCKING Fogado kept missing attacks at 90% hit) and then Hortensia folded like paper even with 2 revival stones and a rage mode that she never got to use. Admittedly, I'm fine with this after 3 other bosses.

thank god the game finally gave me more money i was so broke

MZero posted...

Anecdotal but I don't know how anyone can spend money on silly video games when they could be helping starving children

The trick is to spend money on non-silly video games

>be clanne
>asked for help by zelkov in C support
>he's black
>it must be help with committing a crime

why did they make the little kid racist

SirChris posted...

I think the issue here is that a generation has grown pretty numb to supporting bad people who profit from their purchase decisions. Because it feels like a lot of those choices happen lately.

I think the mistake here is the litmus test was sprung on people who have grown very used to ignoring that willfully because reality is painful.

Absolutely. Though I think there's much, much less numbness regarding media that profits bad people vs. food or technology or clothing that profits bad people. I'm not sure if that's fair but it makes sense, since the latter are practically necessary and fewer good alternatives exist. Like, lots of people intuitively understand the litmus test that exists with media strongly associated with Donald Trump or Ben Shapiro or whoever, but still seem baffled that JKR gets put in the same category even though she's exactly the same kind of person.

The people you most need to convince about changing laws to protect trans people are like 80 years old and don't play video games. You don't need to sell this boycott to them.

A lot of people in their teens, 20s, and 30s already think the laws should protect trans people. This game is getting attention because trans people are seeing their friends and family (and content creators) that they thought were supportive directly give money to The Big TERF.

Yes the former is obviously more important (and effective) but that sorta misses why the latter has blown up.

X-point scale where X = the total number of all video games that exist, and each rating is only ever assigned to a single video game

Oh I like Seforia a lot. Why couldn't the playable cast have designs like this. At least Fogado is really good too design-wise, even if it seems like every other playable character from Solm is... not...

mnk posted...

One of these days I'll read Alfred and stop immediately picturing Vander. Damn you Batman.

it really would make more sense the other way around, wouldn't it?

MacArrowny posted...

I always save before cooking and reload if it goes bad...

I thought about this but it feels cheap somehow

Okay about to start chapter 12

Chapter 10 was a slog and the writing. Bad. All the villains in this game are so dumb. are we sure this isn't the same lead writer as fates? like have we ever seen them in a room together?

Chapter 11 is extremely good though. Easily best chapter so far. Also I kinda like Ivy now (even if the save from her was predictable) so I guess I'm using her even though her design is super super dumb.

Alear acts like they lost a bunch but frankly Morion threw his life away by being a dumbfuck and they still have just as many rings as when they started, so it feels like this whole bungled operation could have gone way, way worse. Call me when half your army gets annihilated Alear.

I've been getting only good ranks at cooking but Alfred just hit me with a fat F that dropped almost every stat by 1. on his expert-rated meal. smh

Who's your favorite Sega-game-turned-girl? Mine's Seaman

I don't know how else to describe it except to say that this chapter 10 writing sure is the exact middle point between Tales of the Abyss writing and FE Fates writing

ZeroSignal posted...

Netflix is about to eliminate password sharing through multiple households. They didn't give a shit then, and don't give a shit now.

They think this will increase subscriptions though

MacArrowny posted...

It's specifically a monarch's blood, not risk blood. Bit of a translation miss

That seems even easier! Just appoint someone else king with yourself as heir, then kill them.

Chapter 9 was fine but I'm not a big fan of symmetrical chapter design like that. It's much more interesting when chapters are set up asymmetrically imo, even when you're supposed to split your units down two paths. So more like the Anna paralogue, although that one was a bit easy.

Actually I think I'm going to stop using the arena in Somniel because the game has been not challenging at all for the last couple chapters. And now I've promoted Alear and Chloe so the enemy needs some time to catch up tbh

[story stuff] If Hyacinth needed royal blood for his ritual why didn't he just use his daughter that he already intended to sacrifice? whatever, i should just accept that this game's villains are bad. Don't spoil me if this is actually answered later pls

masterplum posted...

Would you?

Suppose you actually did this. What do you gain? One transphobic rich person is hurt and draconian anti trans laws are passed? Thats the goal?

That is what we're talking about, right? If you want to shift focus to broader protections for trans people I can name some other buildings that are flammable.

masterplum posted...

When is the last time you saw people shut down a highway and literally anything good was said about those people or their cause.

The point is (very explicitly) not to have good things said about you, the point is to make caving to your demands less disruptive than allowing your protests to continue. If every store that sells Harry Potter merch just happens to burn down they'll stop selling it. They'll be furious with you but you'll win.

Making people who are largely indifferent actively angry is the purpose behind a lot of political action.

I don't think spoilers really accomplish anything but that's not why.

Re: Scientology, I think it being a religion gives it a massive shield against (even well-deserved) criticism, especially in America. The whole topic of "is this religion bad actually?" is kinda untouchable (and sometimes for good reason because people will use it as a veneer for their racism, or whatever).

Whereas transphobia is just like, "I've decided I need some group to beat on for political points. What's the smallest, weakest one I can find?" It comes across as incredibly needless, cruel, and disingenuous, and that's not even mentioning how lots of anti-trans positions are actually an attack on the rights of literally everyone else as well.

So basically, you can think of Revelation as DLC, but full game length. You can buy it as DLC no matter which of the other two games you own and it's the same regardless, but it can't be the first game you buy. All three routes are the same up until chapter 6, which is the route split. You can start the game at the route split if you want (only second playthrough onward) but you'll miss out on the earlier chapters, sorta like skipping Lyn mode in FE7 if that comparison is helpful at all.

Going off memory for all of this so apologies if I got anything wrong!

GavsEvans123 posted...

Of course, if Harry Potter really was never good to begin with, this whole controversy wouldn't be happening because the series would never have blown up the way it did

Counterpoint: lots of terrible garbage is extremely popular

masterplum posted...

If the game sucked it wouldn't be a boycott! You wouldn't have bought it anyways!

Counterpoint: lots of people intentionally consume terrible media, especially if it's part of the pop cultural zeitgeist

(But that being said, yeah if you weren't going to buy it anyway then you're not really boycotting it, by definition -- though I guess you could still participate in the boycott by other means.)

Yeah that explains a lot regarding why Jean can suddenly chip people for 4-6 despite his abysmal strength