FE10- Finished up part one. 1-3 was the hardest map in the set. 1-E I had a fair few resets, but usually it just involved how to figure out how to survive a given round of offense. I only used one of the uber PC's, and him only to kill two units who had appeared as reinforcements.
General game thoughts. Some FE9 stuff mixed in here.
The good- Saving in battle. Anything that gives you more precise control of a fight is good. I don't mind what was done with BEXP- I may prefer FE9's system, but either way it is a way to get EXP for your underleveled units without having to feed them kills. FE9 in general improved things across the board (Weapon weight, supports, etc) and FE10 kept a lot of those improvements. It rebalanced units. Mages are no longer complete jokes on the enemy or PC end. The story is a logical progression of what happened in FE9. Izuka stands out for being a scumbag (But a loyal one), and just the general effort shown to show how horrible it is to be occupied by another country. Also, that one general who wasin charge of Bergeion's forces in FE9 vanished into thin air- that raises red flags. Something has to be up there.
The bad: FE10 uses the wrong type of challenge at points. You are heavily restricted with what you can do. The enemies are better, which is nice! You however start the game both short on warm bodies and short on quality characters. Nolan is okay, but no one else in the DB can take a hit until Sothe and Aran join. I found the opening three maps to be exercises in frustration for that reason. Laura I don't even want to talk about, her ineptness at taking hits is so bad that it severly limits her use as a healer. A single bow user or a ranged weapon overkills her by some gross amount and this doesn't change until you promote her. The DB chapters turn into using a few good units (Jill, Zihark, Voluk) and hoping your underleveled characters hit good levels up, because the game can and will slaughter them without breaking a sweat. It gets much better after 1-5, when BEXP lets you catch up whichever project unit you want to use, but blah.
Also, Paragon for godlike. Laura gained something stupid like 15 levels in three maps thanks to it. She probably has the biggest turnaround that isn't Nino in any FE game that I've ever seen.
