Board 8 > Fire Emblem Franchise Playthrough Topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Speaking of which, since I'm approaching the end, should I do the Ephraim route right after, or move to Geneology? I absolutely will be playing the Ephraim route for this topic either way, just a matter of when.

I'm...a little scared of FE4.

Why not just wait for the remake?

tbh I've never had an issue leveling staffbots in FE. If someone's gonna join underleveled I'd much rather it be L'Arachel than Sophia or Zeiss or Nino or whoever.

The bigger issue is that she doesn't get Slayer.

Healers almost always hit 20 before anyone else is even close for me

KamikazePotato posted...

Why not just wait for the remake?

At this point I do very much want to experience the original version of this game, and I do want to play Thracia now rather than wait for some theoretical remake for it as well in 5 years.

Even if the leak is true, I wouldn't expect to see the Geneology remake for at least another year. They aren't going to release it too close to Engage and hurt its sales like that.

A Genealogy remake has been "rumored" since like 2016.

The person who leaked all the Engage info said the FE4 Remake is late 2023, early 2024.

But nearly every FE game including Engage internally was delayed a good bit in the past, I assume that would end up being the case here.

I'm surprised to not see a well known "Definitive Edition" mod for FE4 since that game is way more popular than FE5, but maybe that speaks more to how much more FE5 needed it due to how obtuse the original release was (I am of course going entirely off of send hand info here, I've never even seen FE5 in motion as far as I know).

Kenri posted...

tbh I've never had an issue leveling staffbots in FE. If someone's gonna join underleveled I'd much rather it be L'Arachel than Sophia or Zeiss or Nino or whoever.

The bigger issue is that she doesn't get Slayer.

Honestly, I'd rather it be someone like Zeiss or Sara who joins underleveled, but has a few good stats so it's not an absolute pain to level them. Paragon helps too, like for Astrid and Sara (Funny how she keeps showing up here).

Boy I really wish I knew characters could only S rank one weapon type and I didn't lock myself out of S Rank light magic.

Again.

L'arachel definitely like top 10 character in the series imo

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/3/8/8/AAeolZAADyCc.jpg

0 to hero

Zero to valkyrie

In absolute awe of how powerful Myrrh is.

And that's Eirika down!

1st turned that final boss like a fucking champ. Berserk Ross with Garm too fucking strong.

I suppose I should wait until finishing Ephraim before giving my thoughts, though I doubt there's any chance it's going to change my opinion in a meaningful way. Still, better safe than sorry.

Obviously not a lot to talk about since I've run the whole game before, but I'm on the last map before the merge (fuck desert mapppppps).

Very different experience between the routes, definitely worth playing both, and I'm glad I started from scratch and glad I did this right away before moving on.

Think the only thing Eirika's route has over Ephraim's route is the boss quotes for Scorched Sand.

Something funny: I don't think I've ever promoted a Paladin who didn't end up terrible, where I would have been better off using a prepromote.

In New mystery, Sirius was the best Paladin by far. I already bemoaned my Alen luck in Binding and how much Percival crushed it. And now Forde is dogshit compared to Seth.

I'm starting to think Christmas Cavs just aren't worth it, though I'm sure it's just bad luck.

Forde is kinda infamous for being dogshit in general. I think it's a little exaggerated but he's worse than Kyle and way, way worse than Franz.

Yes I have seen the Mekkah videos, lol.

That said, shout-out to my randomizer run when Kyle and Forde were both dancers. Between that and mage Ephraim and bishop Orson (with no healing staff) it made for a real unique Ch5x.

I'm surprised you don't have anything to say about the boat map. That's one that usually gives people some trouble.

El oh fucking El, I sent one of Knoll's summons to chip the Berserker above Valter, the Berserk crit killed HIMSELF on counterattack with the Devil Axe, my summon RECEIVED the Devil Axe, was then killed by a Wyvern, AND I lost the Devil Axe. Fucking hilarious.

Mewtwo59 posted...

I'm surprised you don't have anything to say about the boat map. That's one that usually gives people some trouble.

Really? Didn't have a problem with that one myself, maybe just got lucky? The ghost map in Erika's was harder.

The rivers map back in chapter 13 gave me hell, though.

Ghost ship on normal mode is cake.

Ghost ship on hard mode is FE8 suddenly deciding it's out for fucking blood.

I have never seen the final boss of FE8's actual like, mechanics.

Whoever thought "lets put the boss in range of being reached turn 1" with the stats it has was... not a smart person.

Playing these back to back even the similar ones, it's fun noticing the little differences in mindset for how you treat your units in each.

Thought of this when I realized that in this game you don't need to worry about checking what mages have when sending over flyers, since Excalibur is a legendary weapon.

Oh my God the summons aggro long range magic and staves.

tcaz2 posted...

I have never seen the final boss of FE8's actual like, mechanics.

Whoever thought "lets put the boss in range of being reached turn 1" with the stats it has was... not a smart person.

Well, every final boss in the GBA games can be beaten in one turn fairly easily, so Fomortiis isn't unique in that regard

It is, however, the one that takes the least amount of effort even on hard mode, so much so that even a casual playthrough with no preparation or foreknowledge can do it.

The others at least take a little bit of prep!

God the end of chapter 19 conversation is so much better in Ephraim's route.

There really is no reason to play Eirika's route yeah.

You play Eirika's route for the hilarity of Ephraim going off to singlehandedly conquer Grado and succeeding with enough time to spare to also double back and finish Eirika's route split for her. also an enemy general is now his subordinate.

Dussel is a God in the Ephraim route BTW. I get why Seth is still the MVP, but wrecking everything. I ende duo benching both Christmas Cavs other than for filler and swapped him in. Starts A rank in all weapon types?? Get the fuck outta here.

On the last normal map now, the one outside.

Knoll sucks in combat but his once a turn get out of jail free card summon that takes the first aggri every time is has been so crucial to some of my overextending methods working out.

Yeah Summoners are kinda broken once you understand that they're utility with niche combat uses and not combat with niche utility uses.

Kenri posted...

You play Eirika's route for the hilarity of Ephraim going off to singlehandedly conquer Grado and succeeding with enough time to spare to also double back and finish Eirika's route split for her. also an enemy general is now his subordinate.

imo Ephraim being a borderline Marty Stu is probably my biggest complaint against Sacred Stones and was one of the reasons I couldn't get into it

It isn't just Eirika, literally everyone gets shafted in favor of him

I wouldn't call him a Mary Sue personally but they fumbled writing him hard. It's funny because they start off pretty well, his 5x appearance shows that he's capable and a fun character but NOT invincible. And then they forget all that and make him invincible for the rest of the game, while also being much wiser than Eirika so she really has nothing on him at all. Really the Alm vs. Celica problem all over again. FE gonna FE, I guess.

Yeah, Knoll is another in the line of dark mages who are good because of their utility and not because of their combat. He's the last one too, since until Awakening they either dropped dark magic entirely or the one guy who could use it was useless and only playable in NG+ (Pelleas).

Finished it. Yeah, Ephraim route is definitely better than the Eirika route, especially the Lyon stuff. There's just more story here, too. I liked SOME of the character stuff in Erika's route more, I think best girl L'Arachel stands out there a lot, but over Ephraim was superior.

However, definitely better to play both, and definitely better to play Erika's first.

I don't think the story was, like, amazing, it's pretty simple. But it's TOLD way better. You really can't compare presentation between this and Binding Blade at all. The absolute strongest part is the characters which they let shine so much more, and have so much more ongoing dialogue through the game. The part at the end where we get every characters closing thoughts and not just in the Epilogue windows does a ton. Easily my favorite cast of these older games.

The game was pretty easy, and I didn't grind anything this time at all other than Knoll's Dark Magic level (didn't use any pupils this time). Can't pretend that I have a problem with the game being too easy, though, I'm never one to appreciate a challenge all that much lol. Either way, I had a much, much better time with this game than Binding Blade.

1. 3 Houses
2. Awakening
3. Sacred Stones
4. Radiant Dawn
5. Blazing Blade
6. Path of Radiance
7. New Mystery of the Emblem
8. Shadow Dragon
9. Echoes
10. Fates
11. Binding Blade

Though really I'm starting to think it's just totally unfair to rate some of the games I haven't touched in a long time, so I'm going to clean this up until replays. Some of these have been a while but I do feel OK leaving on.

1. 3 Houses
2. Awakening
3. Sacred Stones
4. New Mystery of the Emblem
5. Shadow Dragon
6. Echoes
7. Fates
7. Binding Blade

In a few short hours, I will be starting up what appears to be the most polarizing game in the series, Geneology of the Holy War.

Frankly, I'm terrified.

I briefly attempted to see what I was getting into a while back, and very quickly realized there was point since I would never be able to retain it all.

I'm going to just go with the flow for now, see what happens.

I'm not sure how you feel about secrets and guides, but FE4 has a lot of cryptic secrets. I would probably recommend a spoiler-free guide.

If there is a spoiler free guide that doesn't read like I'm reading actual military battle plans that are book length per chapter, I am all for it.

In a few short hours, I will be starting up what appears to be the most polarizing game in the series, Geneology of the Holy War.

Eh. I think every FE game is polarizing to some degree but I feel like Thracia and Awakening are comfortably higher than Genealogy on that ladder.

I don't know if its possible to not have book length chapter anything in FE4 because every chapter except maybe the prologue is like 4 hours long lmao

I'm basing that on having it show up the most often at both the top of FE ranking lists and the bottom of FE ranking lists over the years many times, but may just be confirmation bias.

https://serenesforest.net/genealogy-of-the-holy-war/miscellaneous/secret-events/

This should work. Just read as you're going chapter-to-chapter.

That seems VERY useful.

Though now I'm in this wierd situation where the one thing I retained from skimming weeks ago was DON'T MISS THE SILVER SWORD and I don't even see that on the list, lol.

There's a bunch of other secrets that's pretty easy to access in-game, but can be easily missed. There's a Talk option for each character. Sometimes, the Talk option is available once a certain character shows up mid-way through the map. The Silver Sword can be received through Talking.

I think these secrets are more harder to access, like standing on a particular part of the map with a particular character. I think house dialogue may allude to these, but I haven't checked the houses in a very long time.

I'm not sure it's possible to miss the Silver Sword, unless you beat the chapter really fast.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

especially the Lyon stuff.

The Lyon stuff is what almost salvages Ephraim as a character for me. Easily the best villain in the series...in Ephraim's route, at least.