Next Fire Emblem Expanding Casual Options, Dropping Breakable Weapons

[NerAnima]

I'm 90% sure this game was popular because of the romance system.

Yeah, Phoenix Mode just sounds completely inane, doesn't seem to be a point to it in any way, but I won't be one of those playing the mode, still incredibly stupid and pointless.

Unbreakable weapons...yeah, no. People here are complaining about how it was a hassle to deal with, and a gold sink; perhaps it was, but I contest that it made you actually think about what you were doing with your weapons. Upgrade a weapon to the absolute limit? Fine, now use it sparingly, don't just use it on the grunts...it broke already? "You'll get no sympathy from me."

Yeah, I'm an utter casual, and I don't do any of that. I just pick whatever weapon isn't complete shit. All the weapon degradation did was the old Elixer Paradox in Final Fantasy; "Huh, I found this fantastic weapon, but I can only use it 10 times. Guess I'll just shove it into the deepest, darkest parts of my inventory because it's too powerful to use".

I didn't even know you can upgrade weapons, or repair them. I'd just keep picking them up and using them as I went along. Remove weapon degradation may actually make me bother to work with weapons, because I don't get 25 hits out of them before they fall apart and waste my effort.

Same with spells; my wizard has learnt a spell, but after 25 times casting it, he forgets. What?

Okay, so are they getting rid of the Glass weapons? Are they getting rid of the Brave weapons? Or the Siege tomes? I appreciate that you didn't like it, but what issues can this bring about if not handled properly? Maybe they'll fix it perfectly, and it'll all work, but I don't have enough optimism for any company (except maybe Atlus) to give them the benefit of the doubt nowadays.

Yes, the system in Awakening was kinda crap, you just needed the gold to buy anything and everything, so they need to fix that, not scrap the system entirely.

You're probably right that it would make you actually care about what weapons you use, but it would have the opposite effect for me; I'd stop caring what weapon my soldiers are using, and just give them whatever Overpowered shit I can get my hands on.

I don't know, I'm probably just talking nonsense, but I'm not enthused about such a thing; Dragon Pulse, maybe I can get into that, will have to learn more about that.

Actually, I'd like to know a LOT more about what is going to be in the game; all I'm reminded of right now is what Yahtzee said in one of his E3 videos, "Just think for a second, what is it that they don't want you to see?"

 

[DrOswald]

Kinda shitty about the two-game thing. I get that they're psyched about Awakening's sales, but christ guys, you're not Pokémon yet. They did this two-path thing in Sacred Stones and it was one cartridge.

The two paths in Sacred Stones were each only 6 missions long, about a quarter of a Fire Emblem game. These two paths are each full length campaigns with an entirely new set of characters. This is hardly comparable to sacred stones. Also, did you know that if you buy one of the games you get the second one half off?

The whole deal seems perfectly fair to me.

That's a fair point. I'd forgotten how short the Sacred Stones paths were (Haven't played it since launch), although a part of that was probably down to chip capacity.

We don't know how big 'full length' is at this point though, do we? Awakening had I think 26 main chapters with around 20 side missions; if we're calling ~45 chapters 'full length' and the IFs give us a total of 80+ chapters, that'd be awesome. I'm concerned that 'full length' might just mean ~25 chapters per game, is why there's a sour taste in my mouth about the whole thing. The whole 'More than one purchase at launch' concept has been tainted by Day1 DLC and shit like that in the current gaming world, is all.

But hopefully IS will come through for us.

Yeah, I do agree on most of those points. But I try to judge DLC or DLC like things by the history of the particular company, not by the history of the industry at large. Some companies have a fantastic record with their DLC, some have a terrible record. Nintendo is one of the best in this respect, only really ever having 1 or two missteps, and that was early in their attempts with DLC when I genuinely think they were not sure how to properly approach the idea. And really, that DLC was only bad because the base game was lack luster, there was no need for more of it. It seems overly cynical to assume the worst from a company that has such a good track record in this particular area.

So I personally am going to give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt until they give me good a reason not to. And I would recommend others do the same, an overly cynical environment is poisonous to innovation and experimentation. New ideas are already risky enough without everyone cynically looking for every possible flaw.

I mean, look at how people have reacted to the idea of removing breakable weapons. So many don't even try to consider the advantages and simply assume that the studio that crafted the excellent games they love in the first place are complete morons who are just going to strip out the mechanic and not do anything to compensate or do anything interesting with the design space. Intelligent systems have proven their ability over many years of game creation and still people assume that IS is full of complete idiots for no reason other than they are extremely cynical and therefore anything new has to be bad. If that isn't overly cynical I don't know what is, and it plainly shows that new ideas or changes are met with irrationality and outright hostility in an overly cynical environment.

And then their is the phoenix mode thing. I cannot fathom why phoenix mode is a bad thing. We know it is 100% completely optional, and they certainly wont be designing the game around it (the director himself came up with the idea specifically so they would not have to compromise the difficulty of the game while still appealing to very casual players,) so what is the problem? That just seems like hating on something new simply because it is new.

Edit: I just found this quote from the developer:

"The chapters and story volume of White Kingdom, Black Kingdom, and the third scenario all have about the same amount as Fire Emblem Awakening, so I think that it?ll definitely be worth downloading all of them,? adds co-director Genki Yokota of Nintendo."

So if the developer is not just strait up lying we can expect each of the three entries to be similar in scope to Awakening. That is a good thing to confirm, and probably should have been in their initial announcement (they did say each would be a full length game, but as some have pointed out full length has varied greatly in the past.)

 

[Pyramid Head]

Okay, i don't mind losing breakable weapons. I always thought it was silly that a sword would break after you hit someone with it 45 times, and even more silly that steel swords broke faster than iron swords. But Phoenix mode just sounds silly. I could understand exploiting it to quickly unlock content in the support gallery, but otherwise it really does just make the game trivial. But then again, despite Casual Mode, Awakening did still have some added difficulties.


That said what i really fucking hate is Fire Emblem borrowing the EA business model. The DLC in Awakening was overpriced for what it was, and now what could easily be one game is being split into two. Just watch, the next Fire Emblem or Pokemon will have microtransactions and the justification for splitting will be even more flimsy.



Eh. Maybe the silver lining will be better supports. In Awakening no one even tried to establish a canon with the ruined future. They also pretty much used placeholder conversations for the future children resulting in a lot of out of character behavior, like Lon'qu going on a shopping spree if he's Severa's father.

And hopefully they'll tone down the lolicon fetish fuel. The guy who designed Nowi should have been fired.

 

[Dragonbums]

I am very okay with the inclusion of casual mode again. Breaks my hear to a million pieces when a character perma dies. In fact, permadeath is kind of a deal breaker to me in a lot of stuff. Half the reason being I suck so bad at these games that I would lose the entire game by the end of the third chapter.

I also don't care for Pheonix + mode either. Some people only give a toss about the story. I know I do, so why the hell not. I'm personally not going to choose it, but more difficulty options for more people makes it a lot more accessible.

I'm also very glad for the abolition of breakable weapons. That was a lot more of a nuisance than anything.

The real question though is....will there be romance?

 

[Dragonbums]

The guy who designed Nowi should have been fired.

Let's not forget about Ricken either. I accidentally romanced the both of them, and...it didn't make me very comfortable at all. Especially when kids were thrown in the mix.

Nowi is like...what, eight in her species years? That's creepy man. Forget the outfit. Her and Ricken (and maybe even Farmboy) should of been the nonromanceable characters in the game. Not the blasted Merchant.

 

[Pyramid Head]

The guy who designed Nowi should have been fired.

Let's not forget about Ricken either. I accidentally romanced the both of them, and...it didn't make me very comfortable at all. Especially when kids were thrown in the mix.

Nowi is like...what, eight in her species years? That's creepy man. Forget the outfit. Her and Ricken (and maybe even Farmboy) should of been the nonromanceable characters in the game. Not the blasted Merchant.

I think it's closer to 12 with Nowi.
Nah, on the other hand, who potentially has access to the Sorceress class, a class that goes into battle wearing less than Olivia, is probably about 8.

Oh, Japan!

 

[Atmos Duality]

All that sounds great; keep them optional and they can make it as easy as they want for new players. I'm not so sure with the breakable weapons but I found that was more tedious than fun so I'm fine with that. But...

Will they make the AI have some intelligence this time? That'd be great. Putting Frederick in front and letting bad guys literally throw themselves onto his lance just broke the last game. Protip game; you attacking a man when you have 0 max damage is not very intelligent game...

^This. So much this.
The AI in Fire Emblem games is beyond retarded; it's actively braindead and has been for just about every game in the series.

Which just boggles my mind, because this is the same company that made Advance Wars.
Days of Ruin in particular had SEVERAL different AI types it could whip out on you depending on the map and while none of the AIs were perfect and still pretty exploitable, the fact that they could TRY to trap the player made those games FAR superior.

At least there, the game required ACTUAL STRATEGY AND TACTICS beyond "Find most overpowered unit, pump all exp into them, counter-kill everything, assassinate boss."

 

[Naraku578]

Dropping breakable items could be a good thing, however I hope they balance it by making the better (killer/silver/brave) weapons incredibly expensive so you can afford only 1 without serious money grinding, and maybe having 5 ish by the end of the game.

Phoenix mode, meh its pretty much tell me a story mode.

I hope they keep the more than 5 support convos mode, but have a different ending text be the only real change for getting the highest rank.

 

[kenu12345]

Honestly I'm not that upset about unbreakable weapons for two reasons: One, that will most likely only be part of the filthy Hoshido version and will not be present for the Glorious Nohr Master Race. Two... I mean lets face it, if Second Seals are back, how many characters had access to the Mercenary classpath? Get Armsthrift then promote and levelgrind until your LCK is above 50. Now no-one ever breaks their legendary weapons.

I hope this is only for the peasant Hoshido version .3. Either way, you made me chuckle. Really hoping weapon durability at the very least is an option in one of the games in one of the modes