Does PoR have a settings menu where you can make units move faster
I believe there was an instant zoom setting. RD in the video you saw probably already had it enabled. And you can turn off battles just the same as any game. But both further reduce it using the hardware its on and make it even more static and underwhelming.
I actually enjoyed many of the battle scenes in the GBA games, because the sprites were beautiful and they had interesting animations. As such, I would never turn them off. So having to turn them off to improve the game is a huge step back.
I guess even its harder maps are still easy?
Its not that its entirely easy per say, but its just not a good difficulty curve. Biorhythm adds a huge layer of RNG to an already RNG heavy game. Same with Laguz units who are useless half the time and cannot even promote, yet you get quite a few.
Many units are downright broken either in the super sense (Jill, Titania) or unusable (Mist, Rolf). The game seems to expect you to abuse "bonus exp" (which you have to turn on being able to see how to get, its not on by default) to keep certain units viable. Which is worthless because you could just use it on better units.
They also renamed the Japanese Difficulties of Normal, Hard and Maniac to Easy, Normal, and Hard when porting it over. Which means nearly everyone started on Hard mode, which you can imagine wasn't exactly a fair choice. Especially because after beating the game you unlock "Bands" which is a very important part of overcoming the games difficulty. They are equipable items that boost certain stat growths unique to each item that you can use to properly raise a character. Not to mention the Fixed mode you unlock which makes all characters gain stats statically by assigned each specific stat an exp bar that grows with them, instead of the standard random chance (this one isn't as necessary but for some unlucky people it could be a lifesaver). They also just gave all the crit heavy classes (Sniper, Berserker etc) 15% more crit chance for no reason on the localization.
They also completely fucked up the Magic system. They reverted it back from the Anima>Light>Dark simple tree of the GBA games (where each was basically assigned to a class) to having Wind, Fire, Thunder, Light as all seperate entire trees with multiple levels of each Tome. Meaning you needed your mages to carry many more weapons just to compensate for when you needed them as each had significant advantages over certain units. This is more a personal thing, but it really made mages feel significantly more useless, on top of removing Dark Magic entirely for PoR.
What are your opinions on the 3DS games and Three Houses?
Awakening wasn't bad, but I found the children system underwhelming and boring. If you didn't stop to grind them out, you'd never actually get to use them and because you got them via support between two units it took away the idea of "late game units are replacements for dead units" from the game prior.
Honestly it just wasn't for me, nothing from it really stuck out as worth a replay (other than Tharja's ass), and I truly don't see it as anything above average for the series. I think a lot of the popularity was literally it being the first game most played out of sheer luck, and most people would have done the same if FE7 was their first like the rest of it.
Fates was awful. There are essays written about why by many people, so I'll spare you that.
Valentia was written incredibly well and had many neat ideas, but the outdated and straight boring map design pulled the game down hard. I think that's where most people stand on it, but it gives me hope for future remakes because most games after that had solid maps as well.
Do you think Three Houses took the series in a better direction?
Three Houses did a lot right in the Gameplay area. Maps are fun and quick, lots of units to play with, classes are "set" per unit but you can wiggle around it with proper teaching to get what you want (undoing the problem of reclassing killing a unit's identity), and many specific characters are written and voiced quite well (Bernie pre-censorship had some very unnerving stuff for an anime video game).
Unfortunately the main plot is bogged down by some dumb stuff, like Crimson Flower being easily missed and forcing you into Silver Snow. Rhea being incredibly suspicious yet we are supposed to just not notice unless we pick the "evil" path where she becomes frothing at the mouth evil herself. Crimson Flower in general was admitted to be rushed and misses a lot of necessary story beats.
Also the Monastery was a great idea but it slows the game to a damn halt. Its fun enough on your first playthrough and there is lots of beneficial stuff to do in it that you don't notice, but on replays you realize how much time you spend in it. Necessary time if you are playing on top difficulties too. It could be 20 minutes to an hour between maps spent there, every time. So I hope they find a way to streamline it.
It was also pathetically easy. I started on Hard mode by recommendation and still rolled over the game without a setback. I'm told Maddening is much harder, but to the opposite extreme where it becomes unfun and requires specific minmaxing to have a chance. I find Hector mode from FE7 to be the sweet spot of "harder but not unfairly so" with Hector Hard Mode becoming the unfair part.
All in all, an alright game and a huge improvement over Fates, and for me the best since Sacred Stones. As the guy who bought FE7 on release and considers it still the favorite (beaten it 22 times and counting).
actually, the PoR one somehow had Mist turn out as one of the god units
She can, most people use Bonus Exp on her because she is mandatory for the Black Knight fight so you generally should have her competent. Also just briefly looking at the LP he has the Bands unlocked which go very far in making shit units very good.
Mist is one of those "super weak, but will be strong if you train her" types, and massively increasing her growths with Bands will turn her into a machine. Its just the getting her strong enough part.
I think the idea of Anima magic having a triangle makes magic combat more interesting and tactical
It wasn't untactical in the GBA games. You still had the triangle with Dark/Light, and Dark Mages made up a huge portion of the enemies so it made them have actual weaknesses. As well each "school" had much more defined weaknesses/strengths to compensate. Wind was weak but accurate, Thunder had high crit and low accuracy, and Fire was reliable. So unlike Weapons you didn't just move up with Skill Ranks all the time.
At the same time, though, they're also another way to reward your investment
I won't disagree. But you also won't get to use the reward much unless you massively slow your pace down to make sure you minmax the parents, then get the unit then make sure they are leveled enough to join the team. In my playthrough (with no DLC or Spotpass) I had just started unlocking most by the last few missions of the campaign.
In a way, the children system was a compensation for being bad at the game by rewarding those who needed to grind a lot of maps, and then have absurdly overpowered characters towards the endgame. I see the merit of the system but I didn't like it and Fates showed the flaws in it much clearer.
Which game would you like to see remade next?
I agree with you on Jugdral. They are the closest to when the series "found itself" so it wouldn't be a major change but have a very unique set of challenges onto themselves I'd like to tackle without needing emulation/patch.
but I still find it very strange to see Three Houses' maps being described as quick and easy
I think the only map I had any trouble with was the final chapter of Verdant Wind, because there were just so many unique units with absurd powers. And that was fresh save on Hard Mode. But I am what you would call a veteran of the series who knows a lot of ins and outs of things.
Either way, on release the ease of the game was one of the biggest topics of discussion. Maddening Mode being released died it down a lot, but Maddening is much too far in the opposite direction and makes the game actively unfun.
Would you want to see more of that kind of stuff in these games?
I played a shit ton of Advance Wars back when that existed so I'd rather they brought that series back instead, but I'd be happy either way. I think Three Houses overbuilt its world for how little it used it and I'd rather they go back to more character driven stories instead of grand mythology with long history leading up to the story. Blue Lions was probably the best story in that regard, focusing much more on Dmitri and his struggles instead of ancient grudges.
PoR's changes to magic were basically change for the sake of change
If I remember, it was actually going back to a pre-GBA style. FE4? I think had just straight up 3 separate types of Mage for each school. Something only seen in FE4, and then RD. So it wasn't just change, it was straight stepping back in both PoR and further in RD.
Also PoR was pretty random on the mages, but because you can't see the Tome on their model you have to manually check every one. I don't know if that was rectified in RD with the class split, but I would hope so.
What kind of gameplay flaws did they exacerbate over Awakening's implementation?
Besides the aforementioned story aspects, they were given too late to be useful and required an absurd amount of minmaxing to be worth even using. Conquest, the only game anyone played because it was the only even partially redeeming one, gave almost no chance to use them unless you abused a map to powerlevel supports early on.
On the topic of difficulty, did you play Three Houses' DLC?
Did not. Did 2.5 playthroughs on release and haven't felt the need to go back. Will one day most likely.
It had a lot of unique differences like heal staffs being able to miss and double, and hit rates being clamped between 1 - 99 instead of 0 - 100. Also stats being capped at 20 for all units.
I'd say it might be a good idea to fix them to at least the GBA level of QoL just for the sake of fairness, but a lot of the game was built with these ideas in mind and might suffer with removing them. I can guarantee something will be done about the absurd difficulty level though given Fire Emblem is now a Baby Nintendo 1st Party title instead of a niche series for fans.
Is there a story behind how that happened?
The 4th/Final game tried for a grimdark and realistic followup with a lot of the overpowered stuff toned down for "competitive balance" (as this was when online gaming was taking off) and it just pleased almost nobody. The spiritual cousin/spin off Battalion Wars on console never figured out how to comfortably make its controls work and didn't take off either (a shame because it was fun when it worked).
Advance Wars was a very different game, where you used wave tactics and expendability as strategy instead of precious units and minimal options. But it was fun in its own way. Especially because the game was filled with overpowered broken shit, so much that the game was basically seeing who could abuse their OP abilities the smartest. I'd highly recommend Dual Strike for the sheer fun factor.
And yeah Dmitri was probably the best "main character" of the game. Claude was just a Mary Sue who was just a little too perfect to enjoy (though I liked his campaign for the rest of the cast), Rhea is...not well written, and Edelgard didn't get the development time she needed to make her story work. Dmitri was strong enough to carry his much weaker cast all on his own.
I believe there was an instant zoom setting. RD in the video you saw probably already had it enabled. And you can turn off battles just the same as any game. But both further reduce it using the hardware its on and make it even more static and underwhelming.
I actually enjoyed many of the battle scenes in the GBA games, because the sprites were beautiful and they had interesting animations. As such, I would never turn them off. So having to turn them off to improve the game is a huge step back.
Its not that its entirely easy per say, but its just not a good difficulty curve. Biorhythm adds a huge layer of RNG to an already RNG heavy game. Same with Laguz units who are useless half the time and cannot even promote, yet you get quite a few.
Many units are downright broken either in the super sense (Jill, Titania) or unusable (Mist, Rolf). The game seems to expect you to abuse "bonus exp" (which you have to turn on being able to see how to get, its not on by default) to keep certain units viable. Which is worthless because you could just use it on better units.
They also renamed the Japanese Difficulties of Normal, Hard and Maniac to Easy, Normal, and Hard when porting it over. Which means nearly everyone started on Hard mode, which you can imagine wasn't exactly a fair choice. Especially because after beating the game you unlock "Bands" which is a very important part of overcoming the games difficulty. They are equipable items that boost certain stat growths unique to each item that you can use to properly raise a character. Not to mention the Fixed mode you unlock which makes all characters gain stats statically by assigned each specific stat an exp bar that grows with them, instead of the standard random chance (this one isn't as necessary but for some unlucky people it could be a lifesaver). They also just gave all the crit heavy classes (Sniper, Berserker etc) 15% more crit chance for no reason on the localization.
They also completely fucked up the Magic system. They reverted it back from the Anima>Light>Dark simple tree of the GBA games (where each was basically assigned to a class) to having Wind, Fire, Thunder, Light as all seperate entire trees with multiple levels of each Tome. Meaning you needed your mages to carry many more weapons just to compensate for when you needed them as each had significant advantages over certain units. This is more a personal thing, but it really made mages feel significantly more useless, on top of removing Dark Magic entirely for PoR.
Awakening wasn't bad, but I found the children system underwhelming and boring. If you didn't stop to grind them out, you'd never actually get to use them and because you got them via support between two units it took away the idea of "late game units are replacements for dead units" from the game prior.
Honestly it just wasn't for me, nothing from it really stuck out as worth a replay (other than Tharja's ass), and I truly don't see it as anything above average for the series. I think a lot of the popularity was literally it being the first game most played out of sheer luck, and most people would have done the same if FE7 was their first like the rest of it.
Fates was awful. There are essays written about why by many people, so I'll spare you that.
Valentia was written incredibly well and had many neat ideas, but the outdated and straight boring map design pulled the game down hard. I think that's where most people stand on it, but it gives me hope for future remakes because most games after that had solid maps as well.
Three Houses did a lot right in the Gameplay area. Maps are fun and quick, lots of units to play with, classes are "set" per unit but you can wiggle around it with proper teaching to get what you want (undoing the problem of reclassing killing a unit's identity), and many specific characters are written and voiced quite well (Bernie pre-censorship had some very unnerving stuff for an anime video game).
Unfortunately the main plot is bogged down by some dumb stuff, like Crimson Flower being easily missed and forcing you into Silver Snow. Rhea being incredibly suspicious yet we are supposed to just not notice unless we pick the "evil" path where she becomes frothing at the mouth evil herself. Crimson Flower in general was admitted to be rushed and misses a lot of necessary story beats.
Also the Monastery was a great idea but it slows the game to a damn halt. Its fun enough on your first playthrough and there is lots of beneficial stuff to do in it that you don't notice, but on replays you realize how much time you spend in it. Necessary time if you are playing on top difficulties too. It could be 20 minutes to an hour between maps spent there, every time. So I hope they find a way to streamline it.
It was also pathetically easy. I started on Hard mode by recommendation and still rolled over the game without a setback. I'm told Maddening is much harder, but to the opposite extreme where it becomes unfun and requires specific minmaxing to have a chance. I find Hector mode from FE7 to be the sweet spot of "harder but not unfairly so" with Hector Hard Mode becoming the unfair part.
All in all, an alright game and a huge improvement over Fates, and for me the best since Sacred Stones. As the guy who bought FE7 on release and considers it still the favorite (beaten it 22 times and counting).
She can, most people use Bonus Exp on her because she is mandatory for the Black Knight fight so you generally should have her competent. Also just briefly looking at the LP he has the Bands unlocked which go very far in making shit units very good.
Mist is one of those "super weak, but will be strong if you train her" types, and massively increasing her growths with Bands will turn her into a machine. Its just the getting her strong enough part.
It wasn't untactical in the GBA games. You still had the triangle with Dark/Light, and Dark Mages made up a huge portion of the enemies so it made them have actual weaknesses. As well each "school" had much more defined weaknesses/strengths to compensate. Wind was weak but accurate, Thunder had high crit and low accuracy, and Fire was reliable. So unlike Weapons you didn't just move up with Skill Ranks all the time.
I won't disagree. But you also won't get to use the reward much unless you massively slow your pace down to make sure you minmax the parents, then get the unit then make sure they are leveled enough to join the team. In my playthrough (with no DLC or Spotpass) I had just started unlocking most by the last few missions of the campaign.
In a way, the children system was a compensation for being bad at the game by rewarding those who needed to grind a lot of maps, and then have absurdly overpowered characters towards the endgame. I see the merit of the system but I didn't like it and Fates showed the flaws in it much clearer.
I agree with you on Jugdral. They are the closest to when the series "found itself" so it wouldn't be a major change but have a very unique set of challenges onto themselves I'd like to tackle without needing emulation/patch.
I think the only map I had any trouble with was the final chapter of Verdant Wind, because there were just so many unique units with absurd powers. And that was fresh save on Hard Mode. But I am what you would call a veteran of the series who knows a lot of ins and outs of things.
Either way, on release the ease of the game was one of the biggest topics of discussion. Maddening Mode being released died it down a lot, but Maddening is much too far in the opposite direction and makes the game actively unfun.
I played a shit ton of Advance Wars back when that existed so I'd rather they brought that series back instead, but I'd be happy either way. I think Three Houses overbuilt its world for how little it used it and I'd rather they go back to more character driven stories instead of grand mythology with long history leading up to the story. Blue Lions was probably the best story in that regard, focusing much more on Dmitri and his struggles instead of ancient grudges.
If I remember, it was actually going back to a pre-GBA style. FE4? I think had just straight up 3 separate types of Mage for each school. Something only seen in FE4, and then RD. So it wasn't just change, it was straight stepping back in both PoR and further in RD.
Also PoR was pretty random on the mages, but because you can't see the Tome on their model you have to manually check every one. I don't know if that was rectified in RD with the class split, but I would hope so.
Besides the aforementioned story aspects, they were given too late to be useful and required an absurd amount of minmaxing to be worth even using. Conquest, the only game anyone played because it was the only even partially redeeming one, gave almost no chance to use them unless you abused a map to powerlevel supports early on.
Did not. Did 2.5 playthroughs on release and haven't felt the need to go back. Will one day most likely.
I'd say it might be a good idea to fix them to at least the GBA level of QoL just for the sake of fairness, but a lot of the game was built with these ideas in mind and might suffer with removing them. I can guarantee something will be done about the absurd difficulty level though given Fire Emblem is now a Baby Nintendo 1st Party title instead of a niche series for fans.
The 4th/Final game tried for a grimdark and realistic followup with a lot of the overpowered stuff toned down for "competitive balance" (as this was when online gaming was taking off) and it just pleased almost nobody. The spiritual cousin/spin off Battalion Wars on console never figured out how to comfortably make its controls work and didn't take off either (a shame because it was fun when it worked).
Advance Wars was a very different game, where you used wave tactics and expendability as strategy instead of precious units and minimal options. But it was fun in its own way. Especially because the game was filled with overpowered broken shit, so much that the game was basically seeing who could abuse their OP abilities the smartest. I'd highly recommend Dual Strike for the sheer fun factor.
And yeah Dmitri was probably the best "main character" of the game. Claude was just a Mary Sue who was just a little too perfect to enjoy (though I liked his campaign for the rest of the cast), Rhea is...not well written, and Edelgard didn't get the development time she needed to make her story work. Dmitri was strong enough to carry his much weaker cast all on his own.