What games are you playing 2020: The true last year of the current decade

[Luther Lansfeld]

Ys 8: The Lacrimosa of Dana - I’m near the end of Chapter 4, about 17 or 18 hours in.

Things I like:

1. The base gameplay is quite enjoyable. There are five different PCs (so far), plus an extra PC that you control separately, and all of the playable characters feels different from each other. I really like the PC diversity.

-Laxia is a speed character with short range but fast attacks (her dash forward attack is really powerful, the invincibility frames are quite generous on it).  Because she is a speed character, she can dodge more quickly than some of the other characters directly from attack and can kite agains bosses effectively. I find her the overall best character of the five PCs due to her speed and the dash forward attack.

-Adol is a generic sword boy, not as fast the girls but not as slow as Sahad. I mostly use him to hit weakness on characters who are weak to slashing.

-Sahad is a slow bruiser with good AoE. I find him a little too slow to use in boss battles but he can be a good random clearer. I haven’t used him as much since I got Ricotta. Because of the way that the system works, I often end up switching to him in a boss fight when I am about to take a big hit because he has high HP and whoever you switch to is in the position that your old character was in (as a contrast to Trials of Mana, where when you switch the character is where they were located on the battlefield).

-Ricotta is more AoE focused than Laxia but has lower HP so she is easier to kill. She is a joy to play as, and I feel like CT would like using her.

-Hummel is a mixed ranged/melee character but also a total wanker so I don’t use him much. He seems decent though?

-Dana is a PC that you play separately as a solo character, and obviously you can’t compare her directly to the others (yet?) but she seems fun to play and quite good, fast and generally has strong skills. I’m not sure if I will ever get her in my party, but she seems very fun to play if so!

2. Cool boss and (sometimes) random design. The game’s random design is a bit hit and miss due to not really designing specific random encounters, but rather just putting enemies in certain areas in places, but sometimes the randoms hit a fun sweet spot. I found them too easy at first but after changing the game to Hard mode I found the randoms much more fun because they actually did damage to me and posed a real threat. The bosses are quite enjoyable on average.



This guy’s probably the single hardest boss I’ve fought so far? Also, sweet boss intros are sweet. The T-rex guy, the giant spider, the hippo, and the Dana boss Grazios.

3. The music. One of the first things I knew about Ys aside from seeing its random anime game covers on the shelf was its music, which has its own unique style distinct from most other RPGs. While I feel like the music is a bit contextless in the sense that it isn’t particularly evocative to a specific setting or theme, but it is pretty kickin’ rock music mixed with video game music which I am always up for. I enjoy most of the tracks well enough.

4. The game’s graphics are pretty nice. The game is obviously not top-of-the-line, but it is bright and colorful and the environments are nice to look at. I think some of the cave areas feel a little same-y, as do the grasslands, but it’s all nice enough. Not on the level of ToV for backgrounds, but pretty nice.

5. I really like the Bayonetta-esque mechanics around dodging; there is a pseudo Witch Time as well as a timed block which add some spice to the game. I like this game’s implementation of Witch Time better than Bayonetta because the amount of time it lasts seems much less variable than Bayonetta, which is desirable.

6. The game reminds me a lot of a Xenoblade with gameplay that doesn’t make me want to stab my eyeballs out with an ice pick. You do little quests and missions and you explore around big open spaces.

Things I don’t like:

1. The writing. Oh man oh man oh man. It has really terrible writing all around; bad plot, bad character work, bad setting work. And there is so much talking!

The game is set on a castaway island and you have to rescue people from the island and they come to your little village. It seems like something interesting could be made of this premise, but there really really isn’t. it is kind of like a really generic RPG town, except that there is only one in the game and there is no setting otherwise (yeah, yeah, I know there are other games, don’t care). My ‘favorite’ part is when there is a serial killer in your town, and when you catch him you learn that he is doing it because he is… ideologically evil. He believes that good people are oppressive toward the concept of evil and try to eliminate it whenever possible and that without evil in the world there can be no world or something. This is so lunatic batshit that I can’t even. This is like Flay motivation except this character is supposed to be taken seriously as an antagonist?

The rest of the plot, as it were, is mostly just a goofy set of excuses to fight monsters. BUT THERE IS SO MUCH TALKING! It has a looooot more plot than Bloodstained despite somehow being even more poorly written. It has campfire scenes for the characters to interact! But… I dislike pretty much the entire PC cast, so I just want them to end. The silent main is boring, Hummel is stupid and insufferable (I am too cool to tell the party anything even if I am stuck on a deserted island!!!), and….

The game is, sadly, steeped in its share of insidious misogyny and general disrespect for women.

Laxia places the role of the stereotypical hysterical heroine who gets super angry when she drops her towel in front of a man. She is generally portrayed as overly emotional, naive, and generally pretty unreasonable, although sometimes she is regarded unreasonable by the game when she is not being unreasonable (see below). She ends up finding a niche in the midgame where she uses her knowledge of archaeology to help the party. But of course, she obtained this knowledge by hanging out with her father. Women getting their skills from men seems to be a common thing in this setting, as both the blacksmith Kathleen and the tailor Alison are not members of their profession, but Kathleen’s father and Alison’s husband are and they have just acquired their skills from their male relatives. But don’t worry, the cook who puts hearts after every sentence didn’t acquire her skill in cooking from a man. Definitely not leaning hard in on stereotypes here. And Ricotta, the other female PC in the main party, is motivated by (gasp) being inspired by her father. Yep, yep, yep.

(There are a couple of minor female characters, Dina and Nia, who are not motivated by men. But… not too many.)

So let’s talk about Sahad. Sahad is a fisherman who is… in his 30’s somewhere? Anyway, he reminds me of older men I’ve encountered in various walks of life, who subtly disrespect women in a variety of ways. First of all, he addresses the women by cute little titles; he calls Laxia “lil lady” and Ricotta “squirt” whereas he calls Adol and Hummel by their names. This is something that is used to subtly demean women in the workforce and in other settings, even if it's not intended as such. Also, when Laxia expresses (understandable) concern about Hummel joining the party without stating his reason and purpose, he treats her like she is being a hysterical moron. The other thing I thought was very, uh, interesting is that when he is talking about someone to help him or assist in anything, from fighting to castaway village tasks, he only refers to the male PCs are ‘people he relies on’.

I had a bit of an argument with Jim about if a game had to address misogyny in a character, having established that they are a misogynist. I think that it depends on how sympathetic the character is; if Valter or Albedo is a misogynist, it’s because they are bad people and that’s what bad people do. If Sahad is supposed to be a misogynist, then it should 100% be addressed, or else I will be led to the conclusion that it’s the writers who are themselves misogynist, and that the character is not a critique of misogyny in games. Unsurprisingly, the game has not critiqued Sahad, which makes me think that the person who wrote the game considers his actions to be normal / correct, which is unsurprising considering its general opinion on women but still disappointing.

I actually think Sahad is at base more likeable than most of the other characters, so ruining him with insidious, unaddressed misogyny is such a damn shame.

The one thing in the game’s favor on this front thus far is Dana’s arc. Dana is a cool and badass female character and she is surrounded by other badass female characters. I’m not sure if this arc was written by someone who isn’t braindead or what, but the writing in this arc is of higher quality than in the rest of the game (not to say it is fabulous, but…). I am waiting to see how it all unfolds in order to judge the game, but there is some glimmers of potential in Dana’s arc.

2. I think the game is going to end up feeling a bit too long to sustain my complete interest, which is how I often feel about purely gameplay driven games, particularly action games. I feel like Bayonetta / DMC hit a sweet spot in terms of length for an action game (15-20 hours), and even with the added RPG elements, Ys 8 feels more like an action game than an RPG overall.

Overall, though, it’s been decently fun, although I’m not sure if I will play another game in the series.

Hollow Knight - Started this up and it has been capturing my interest much more than Ys 8. Will write more about later.

[VySaika]

Megaman 11
Beat all the robot masters, once I got the first two down it was pretty smooth from there. Wily stage 1 also complete, but that took me SO many tries(as did the usual pudding monster). Figured out his weakness weapon on the second try tho, so it was just a matter of learning when I could attack instead of figuring out how.

Kusogrande
Got 2nd place in my round 2 match, which gives me just BARELY enough points to go to round 3. Need to get 1st to move on to round 4, though. Let's hope it's a game that plays well to my biases. i burned pretty hard in SPISPOPD but Domino Man was both fun and not too rough for me, which was a wonderful change.

Shovel Knight: King of Cards
I love King Knight's platforming but did not love Joustus at all the first time I tried playing this. Still not a fan, but I have embraced the Cheater Lyfe and just keep stocked up on cheats from Chester to make sure I don't lose any unique cards. Fighting the other Knights is kind of amusing, since they really don't have any REASON to fight...but I guess that's what two Knights do when they encounter eachother in this setting. The unique bosses are great though, esp fighting the Trouple King(LONG MAY HIS STEM GROW!).
Mom Knight is of course the best character~

[Luther Lansfeld]

Hollow Knight - Been playing this a bunch in the last few days. It is a Metroidvania, with a greater emphasis on the Metroid than the Castlevania overall, I feel. At first I was a bit confused about what I was doing, but after a while, I’ve really found myself enjoying the game. I have explored a few of the areas, including the Forgotten Crossroads, Fungal Wastes, and Greenpath, as well as most of the City of Tears. I’ve gotten the Mantis Claw and the dash ability, and I just beat the boss that give you downward floor breaking powers, which seems at least somewhat useful. I’ve been rotating between accessories, but I like the one that makes the nail longer, as well as the shell and the 2 temp ‘HP’ buffer thingie. Also, I got to six health finally and I got my weapon sharpened to be more powerful. Woo hoo!

Great game. Good mix of fun platforming, good boss design, and fun randoms. The mapping features are interesting; lenient enough not to be too onerous, but you still have to work for the map functionality, especially in the earlygame. And having to equip an accessory to see yourself on the map is just rude, lol. I sometimes unequip it for a boss but then regret it immediately afterwards. I beat up a fire spider before getting any of the upgrades and I died many times. Memories of Phantom~ I do like the accessory equipping system because it gives you plenty of options and things to do, but again doesn’t just let you change on the fly.

I think the most disappointing thing about the game so far is the lack of consistent music. It’s a shame, because Hornet is a beautiful song, but I wish the game’s soundtrack were a bit more present.

I am currently scaling the Crystal Peak. Just beat up the laser beaming boss that sits on the Rest point. How impolite of him.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Trials of Mana - Beaten. I was above Level 63, game was just over 20 hours. Compared to the original, you gain levels faster especially early; I feel like I was about a dozen levels higher than I'm used to by the the fire/ice manastones and pretty much stayed there the rest of the way.

Good game! Surprisingly so even.

It's probably pointless to talk about this game without talking about the original Seiken Densetsu 3. SD3's an odd bird of a game; its detractors will correctly point out that its gameplay has a bunch of annoying flaws (chief amongst them: battles constantly stopping for spell animations, positioning being mostly pointless, evasion/criticals being bugged rendering some abilities pointless, needing to constantly replenish your items in the menu) and its plot is uh not very good. Yet it's a game I definitely have some fondness for, which largely comes from the fact that it's well-paced (with good replay value from the class system), it's got good music, and it's one of the prettiest games on the SNES particularly in enemy design.

What makes Trials of Mana such a successful remake is it manages to properly capture the strengths of the original while giving the battle system a massive makeover, and turns out the result is a lot of fun. Graphically, the game is something I've wanted for years: it takes the old 2D sprite style and recreates it faithfully with modern graphics (the town and dungeon layouts are clearly the same). Music's great, upgraded from the old SNES synth but still does a great job of evoking the different environments and boss fights.

The plot is the same as always, like word-for-word I'm pretty sure (except that characters talk in dungeons sometimes now). I like that Angela radiates this wonderful bitch energy and early on has some sarcastic/sassy comments when dealing with certain NPCs but otherwise you're not playing for this.

The gameplay is the seriously made over part of the game and it's certainly good fun. It's pretty standard ARPG fare. Compared to say Tales there's more emphasis on avoiding enemy attacks (ironic given how this was impossible in the original) and those are telegraphed more strongly than is usual for the genre (the AoE they will hit is visible before they strike). To make up for this, in tougher boss fights you can expected attacks to be absolutely littered over the battlefield giving you lots of things to avoid while finding openings to attack. Items remain powerful but running out of them is certainly a concern (you can only use 9 of each per battle) although less than it was in the original because boss durability has been scaled back generally (especially the final boss). Bosses can overpower you without needing to run out the item supply though, especially certain super moves which the game wants you to try to interrupt (though you can facetank some of those if needed). Utility spells like buffs and debuffs remain extremely useful for tilting things your way. Probably my biggest complaint about the gameplay is that the difficulty is a bit inconsistent, but there are worse flaws for a game to have.

My biggest non-gameplay complaint is that like so many current-gen games the load times are longer than I'd like, though even despite those it remains a fast-paced game, and hey there's sceneskip now.

Definitely a game worth checking out if you're remotely a fan of the original, or even if you're not but are in the mood for a solid ARPG and don't mind the fact that its writing is 25 years old (and wasn't great even then). For me it's probably at least reasonably comparable to the best Star Ocean games and that's a good place to be.

[Random Consonant]

Not gonna lie, Trails of Mana turning out to be legit kind of shocks me more than FF7R turning out to be legit.  Sage/Tonfa/I were talking about it while watching it and turns out all SD3 needed to do was not turbojank the player for trying to interact with the game and someone actually realized that and fixed the worst problems without finding new and exciting ways to shit the bed?  Madness to expect from a remake of a Square game.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah I basically agree of course. Like in theory the things needed to improve the game aren't surprising (most everyone agrees on what its gameplay flaws are, whether they like the game or not) although even then that was no guarantee they'd be fixed. And like you I'm kinda surprised Square Enix didn't fuck it up like some of their previous efforts to remake their own games in a redesigned 3D engine (FF3 and FF4).

[hinode]

The thing about Trials is that we saw gameplay footage back when the game was first announced, and it was clear that the battle mechanics were completely revamped into something resembling a modern arpg. It was pretty clear that Square-Enix actually listened to the complaints about the previous Secret of Mana remake. That was no guarantee of quality, obviously (and I haven't played past the demo yet, so I can't speak to that myself yet), but at that point I already thought the devs were at least on the right track.

Pop'n Twinbee - Started this up on a whim, and was pleasantly surprised. A shoot'em-up game with an energy bar and an energy shield, and both can be recharged by drops? Plus a difficulty slider in the options menu? Holy crap, a rare shmup that I can play without savestates and not get my ass kicked! It was also a lot more newbie friendly than the NES Twinbee game, which I had tried out last fall; that game was probably easier than Gradius overall, but I still wasn't getting anywhere without savestates. The game has no mid-stage checkpoints from what I can tell, but is overall forgiving enough that you shouldn't need them, at least once you learn how the power-up system works to prioritize getting shields and options.

The in general is designed around the SNES's strengths and weaknesses as a system, which is to say it's fairly slow-paced for its genre but has lots of color and pretty sprite graphics. From what I can tell it's an outlier within the whole series for being made for a console originally rather than starting out in the arcades, but as a shmup novice I can really appreciate its design choices.

Zelda 1 - So as a kid, I got all the way to level 9, but got stuck there in the pre-internet days and lost interest in the game. Never got around to picking it up, and even if I could dig it out from my parent's home I'd imagine the battery's dead by now. Finally felt in the mood to go back to it a few days back, and I'm already paying for NSO so it's 'free'. Used the SP ROM to cut out on a ton of money grinding since my main interest was getting back to level 9 quickly.

At first I started playing blind, more out of laziness than anything. Went straight to level 1 and cleared it out in a few minutes. After that, I vaguely remembered level 2 being to the east, but I got lost and somehow managed to stumble on level 8 next of all dungeons, which has to be the most Zelda 1 thing to do ever.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I definitely remember thinking Level 2 was tough to find (being not only quite far from the starting point but also requiring some surprising doubling back). I think I found Level 8 first as well. And definitely Level 3.


Trials of Mana - Some more notes.

Beat the aftergame (Level 71, game clock at 24 hours now). It was enjoyable enough. The hardest fight was definitely Angela's one-on-one duel; it has instant death and that's not even the hardest part of the fight; the boss could doublecast some large AoE moves which I had to be very careful to dodge at least partly because getting fully cuaght by both was a ORKO. Kevin also had a one-on-one duel but that boss's scary stuff is melee so much easier to deal with. The superboss had an easy first form then a legit second form which wore down my Angel Grail supply fast, too bad space rocks wore her down even faster once I finally learned to find the openings I needed.

Side note only big fans of the game will care about: I did Angela's optional fight first and the game played Strange Medicine. My mind immediately jumped to what music would be most approprite for Kevin and Riesz's fights, and I guessed either Obsession or Black Soup for Kevin and High-Tension Wire for Riesz. Which hedging my bets on Kevin made it easier I'm still amused to note I was spot on, so clearly the devs thought along the same lines as me.

In the maingame I think the boss I found hardest was either Tonfa's old idol Zehnoa (the furnace) or Xan Bie (fire benevedon) which is funny because I don't think either was remotely difficult in the original. Both definitely got the memo that the best way to be a difficult boss in this game is to throw lots of things at you at once. I also died twice to the harpy boss but that's because it was trial by fire for learning how to cancel boss super moves and hey Supersonic is MT OHKO if she gets it off on Hard. I didn't lose to Mispolm but I feel like mentioning that he got quite an upgrade, definitely in the upper half of benevedons now! Zable Fahr is still legit, Dragon Emperor was definitely a bit disappointing though (a rare time where I definitely think a boss probably could have used a bit more HP, even though I generally applaud the move towards faster fights in the remake).


Anyway, PC notes:


I chose my first class change based on personal preference and then for the second I just grabbed whichever promotion item the game tossed at me first. Fortunately I think I did well out of that random chance.

Angela: Dark/Dark (Magus). Compared to the original Angela starts a bit more slowly. She can't MT her spells, they have small AoEs until she's able to upgrade them. The upgrade system also means that elemental coverage is something she needs to work towards (in fact, I didn't even get wind damage for her until right before Land Umber's dungeon, which I deliberately left as my seventh benevedon). That said, the more the game goes on, the better she gets. The AoE damage does come with time and it's glorious. Being able to attack from long range is huge, unshockingly, and boss fights often boiled down into learning how to dodge some of their moves and learning their openings, and then punishing like mad when those showed up. By the end Angela feels like cheating, because Ancient Curse is ridiculous (long charge time, but you get a passive which makes you immune to being knocked out of it, then the damage does horrendous things) and she can stack so many damage-boosting passives. Eat your allies' HP, they don't need it.

Kevin: Light/Dark (Warrior Monk). Kevin's definitely a bit nerfed compared to the original, his physical damage is no longer that much better than Riesz's. Still, he seemed fine at it. He gets some skills that let him use class strikes more often, and since CSes are very potent that's cool. Monk gets singletarget healing which I don't find that special, but the multitarget which Warrior Monk picks up is quite nice; much better on action economy than using ST items (I should note that I ignored the black market, which still has MT healing as an option). Also later he gets a passives that lets his healing cure status and also makes his Leaf Sabre double as a damage buff.

Riesz: Dark/Dark (Fenrir Knight). Multitarget stat downs are still ridiculous. Stat downs wear off in this version of the game, but Fenrir Knight gets a passive which makes them permanent again, good times. Start any fight that looks to be difficult by using all three of her stat downs (they got rid of the glitched Speed Down), enjoy. Hexas/Lamia Naga still does some pretty nice damage, though sadly the AI is bad at using it because it covers an AoE centred on Riesz. Anyway Riesz has a reasonably competent physical game too, her CSes are really good (both the first two cover large AoEs, surprisingly so in the case of the L1). Late she even gets a trick to start spamming them more often like Kevin, namely she can charge them by spamming stat downs. Don't mind if I do~

As you can probably guess I went light Kevin because I wanted healing and dark Riesz because I wanted debuffs, Angela I mostly went dark because I was warned that the new skill tree system would make it difficult to take advantage of the light side's former dominance using elemental L2s. And also because my wife demanded Edelgard-style devil horns in the aftergame, and who am I to deny her?

Lots of fun, will definitely replay at some point. I definitely want to play the game without Angela and see how that changes things, even if the thought makes me kinda sad.

[SnowFire]

Disco Elysium - Finished.  It's very, very good!  Check it out.  Since it's a detective story, don't read anything about it, not even this post.  Just go play it!  Great writing, great fun.

Okay, I suppose I will talk a bit more.  Disco Elysium really figures out how to do skill checks right.  It understands that vanilla success is boring.  Too much of old D&D based systems go something like "skill check for 'easy way' to detect a trap / lie / something, otherwise combat", which makes skill checks reward you with gameplay skip.  Meh.  In DE, having high skills give you more options, but they aren't always good ones, and some skill checks it's actually "better" to fail on or not attempt in the first place.  Compare this with something like Mass Effect, where you don't even need to read the options or listen to the dialogue - if you have a Paragon / Renegade trigger, you will get a better outcome than the default options, so pick it every time.  DE forces you to actually pay attention, that maybe your Logic check succeeding doesn't mean you should correct somebody for including a double negative, and your Drama check doesn't mean you should lie for the lulz.  Anyway, in general, failure is interesting and still moves things forward, and when it isn't, there are various prods to let you try again until you get past something that is truly required.  Plenty of story branches you will only see after failing at something - sorry Miss but FYI, I stuck a corpse in your fridge. 

As an additional thing in the game's favor - the setting is great, and far too rare.  It's an alternate world fantasy-ish 1980s, although the city of Revanchol itself feels more 1940s-50s in part due to being a bit frozen in time in-setting, a bit of a Havana Cuba effect.  About the only series that comes close is Fallout, since its future is very 1950s-inspired.  (Bioshock doesn't count here, too sci-fiy.)  There's all sorts of interesting stuff going on in the "modern" era, do it more often games than yon average fantasy or yon average sci-fi setting.  Ties a bit into the game's politics, but they also bothered to create a whole history of the world with change over time.  Lots of generic settings out there are forever trapped in the "mode" they want to be, similar to Star Wars planets - here's King Arthur's Court, here's Ancient China, here's cybpepunkville, here's Steampunkland, and they never change even when they "should".

Anyway, I was a centrist sorry cop / good cop with an all mental build (5/5/1/1), worked pretty well.  We'll see how a supercop physical build goes and if it'll be a comrade or a nationalist some day as well, there's clearly far more replayability than usual for a detective game - if nothing else, the order you talk to people and do quests IS relevant, people do react differently and problems will be different depending on what you know so far.

Not really willing to talk about the plot for fear of spoilers, but I guess I will mention one mild spoilery thing because it only requires knowing the initial setup, and is something that Isn't Actually True but just something SnowFire thought might be true: I was definitely assuming that Our Hero might have already solved the case, or discovered some Truth Too Terrible To Share, like that the symbol of peace holding things together was actually a murderer, or that he himself was the killer, or that everyone was doomed by some encroaching unstoppable threat.  This was really depressing so they got black-out drunk, and unwittingly started down the same path to re-finding that Horrible Truth afterward.  Nope.  Although who knows, maybe a certain weird threat is related to the memory loss, but seems pretty clear that regardless of the investigation, Our Hero really did have a self-destructive streak a mile long at least and didn't do any useful investigation beforehand!

One final odd thing: the soundtrack, while fine, is...  not very funky?!  Weird call if your game has "Disco" in the title, but sure.  (Disco is kinda dead in-setting is the excuse I guess?)

[hinode]

Zelda 1: So after stumbling upon level 8, I decided to go left and see how far I could go blind. I managed to get the book, but took enough damage in the process to convince me not to go any further. At that point I decided to go look up maps online, and just blitz through until I got back to level 9 with a full inventory. I realize that by doing so I was kinda missing the point of Zelda 1 for a lot of people, but I wanted to get to level 9 while my interest was still strong. I remembered enough of the game between my vague childhood memories and some speedruns I've watched recently to have a truly blind experience, anyhow.

Once I beat the initial eight dungeons, I bought a fresh potion, went to the entrance of the final dungeon (which I still remembered clearly, it's a pretty memorable location), and attempted to go as far as I could while playing blind. I used NSO's rewind if a bomb didn't reveal a hidden path since the bomb count is so low, but otherwise avoided save states or rewind within the dungeon. My general strategy was to go down any stairs that I came across since I needed the Silver Arrows and wanted the Red Ring if possible, and otherwise avoid any unnecessary combat. I managed to get the Silver Arrows along the way, but didn't find the Red Ring. Eventually I stumbled upon the Patra room that I knew from watching speedruns was right before Ganon with ~5 hearts left and no more potion uses remaining. I did not expect to beat Ganon blind since I didn't even know his pattern at the time, so I saved and quitted from the dungeon, to buy another red potion before coming back.

Some thoughts on Level 9, as well as Zelda 1 in general:

- Level 9 is seriously huge compared to previous dungeons, no wonder I got stuck as a kid in the pre-internet age. The huge quantity of non-item stairs complicated navigation a lot, as well. If I were taking this more seriously I would've resorted to hand-drawing my own map, just to mark down all the stair connections since you don't see those on the in-game map.

- IMO the low bomb count (8, upgradable to 16) works well for combat purposes, but was low for finding hidden passageways. Not being to spam bombs freely makes Darknut rooms a lot more challenging and also kept midboss Dodongo encounters from being total fodder, the limits felt like they really made sense there. On the other hand, every bomb that you waste trying to find a secret passage but failing is really painful, especially in a large dungeon like level 9, hence the limited rewind use. The larger bomb counts of newer Zelda games would've made up for the lack of wall indicators in dungeons, since you know hidden paths can only be in the very center of a wall if they exist, but as it is you do wind up feeling that absence.

- Ganon's pattern is kinda neat once you understand it, but if you don't the fight winds up being kinda dumb and frustrating.

- In general, I think the greatest strength of Zelda 1 is the brisk pacing. The game goes by really quickly in segments where you know what you're doing, and even when you're stumped it doesn't take long to wander around trying stuff out. Neither the combat mechanics or the game's primitive puzzles are all that interesting in a vacuum, but moving quickly from room to room felt quite satisfying, while even wandering around blindly didn't feel tedious since I never got *completely* stumped at point in time. It helps that while the game can be admittedly obtuse at times, the actually mechanical difficulty never gets painful the way it does in many NES games, while still retaining enough challenge to feel engaging.

A lot has been said and written about how later Zelda games have gotten progressively more linear and guided up (up until the radical course change of ALBW and BOTW), but I suspect the reason Nintendo went in that direction is because they realized that the games were getting slower to navigate, especially after the jump to 3D. It's a lot more reasonable to expect a player to explore every nook and cranny of an overworld when you can go from one end of the map to the other in a few minutes without a fast travel mechanic.

Super Mario Maker 2

While I'm at it, I might as well write something about the game that spiked my interest in Zelda for the first time since ALBW's release back in 2014. I've played SMM2 on and off since it was released last year, but most of my favorite levels have been utilizing the Master Sword power-up added last December.

For self-explanatory reasons, Mario Maker will never have the extensive one-off stage features that Nintendo utilizes to keep things fresh in regular Mario games. The unfortunately consequence of this, though, is that it can make the easier levels really forgettable if they don't have some sort of theme or really clever design to them. Easy difficulty Endless mode in particular got tedious pretty quickly. That largely left puzzle levels, gimmicky levels, and high difficulty levels. The former two are hit-or-miss for me, and while I do enjoy the occasional challenge level so long as it doesn't hit Kaizo level, my hands start hurting after playing one of those for a while, which forces me to take a break. The various speedrun levels that clog up popular can be fun in moderate doses, but too many of them gets repetitive, plus they obviously don't amount to long play times.

The Master Sword mixed things up by encouraging level creators to make exploration heavy levels in Zelda-esque manner, which I wound up really enjoying. Link's moveset adds a ton of options for interacting with on/off switches, pow blocks, p switches, etc., while also making combat more engaging than the usual Mario level. The net result is a lot of lengthy, moderate difficulty levels that can keep me engaged without causing hand pains while offering an experience that obviously can't be obtained from any commercial Mario game. Or Zelda game, for that matter, although I now wish Nintendo would make a Zelda platformer that played like this. Incidentally, I also tried out Zelda 2 on Switch, but lost interest in it pretty quickly - its combat mechanics are much less interesting to me than SMM2 Link's.

(It has also resulted in some kaizo levels that are mind blowing to watch when a top-level player manages to complete them, like this one by CarlSagan42, not that I'm crazy enough to ever attempt those myself.).

I briefly considered replaying ALTTP or ALBW or Cadence of Hyrule to follow-up on Zelda 1, but then I spotted OoT 3D going for really cheap on ebay and order it on a whim. Stay turned in a few weeks for my incredibly belated opinions on Zelda's jump to 3D, assuming I don't have to resort to ebay's money-back program.

[Pyro]

I played Zelda 1 fairly recently (to troll my daughter, who wanted to watch me play Zelda Breath of the Wild). I wondered if my childhood recollections about Level 9 were overblown from my age but no it's really that ridiculously huge and mazelike.


Cold Steel 3:

Completed Nightmare mode. What a waste of a massive amount of dialog.


Octopath Traveller:
Finished all the C3's except Primroses's. Olivia's, Cyrus', H'aanit, and Therion's really built up for a C4 in a way that is promising. I never could care too much about Tressa's story, Alfyn's story doesn't seem to have a clear narrative, and Olberic's character arc feels like it finished at the end of C3.

[Dhyerwolf]

In "fairness", a lot of those issues basically describe Cold Steel 2 as well. Someone needs to remind the designers that they are making an actual game writing-wise and not fanfiction.

I am Setsuna- Got the airship. Last boss did cause me several resets (some of the later ones because I wasn't really choosing good tech Spiritnite). More on the frustrating than fun side unlike the previous bosses. I can also guess with plot point made Ciato say that sometimes the game holds onto plot points for too long (Aeterna! It makes no sense on several levels that there has been no conversation about her).

[Random Consonant]

I dunno, "in fairness" at times it kind of felt like they always were "writing fanfiction" (for lack of a better term to describe it).  See Sky FC with the mayor who just so happened to have a time controlling artifact in case he got caught doing crimes, whole underground complex under Grancel complete with ancient-yet-somehow still functional robots of various sizes, the introduction of the anime illuminati, and the treatment Cassius gets 95% of the time.  Sure, the previous games had actual writing going for them at times, but it always felt pretty uneven overall.  And this is without getting into all the stuff the series insists on leaving more or less completely unexplained after all this time, for all the presence the anime illuminati has had in the series it's still basically a space flea.

CS2 (well, and CS1's ending, good lord that was just garbage all around) going in the direction it did and CS3 doubling down on it is still dumb as hell though, and it's not helped by Rean being the least compelling series protagonist to begin with and somehow he keeps getting worse.

[SnowFire]

Dhyer: The boss in the airship was one of the more challenging bosses in the game to my recollection, so no shame for having some trouble with it.  I intentionally wasn't trying to build uber Spritnite or forge weapons or anything and things generally got easier afterward.

Trails talk: It's an aspect that's always been in the series, but it definitely seems to have unhealthily grown from game-to-game in general.  Like, I get it, it's a game, we're gonna find excuses for Awesome People Having Awesome Battles, but the earlier Trails games remembered to at least have some sort of stakes.  Cloud fighting Sephiroth for the fate of Planet, sure, Cloud fighting Sephiroth in some Dissidia simulator 1000 times, well, that's okay but don't expect much dramatic heft.  At some point the anime battles became an end unto themselves rather than at least being vaguely related to Today's Plot.

This is kinda random but for whatever reason this reminded me a tad about the Zack Snyder DCU movies.  Big dramatic showdowns!  That are kinda empty and meaningless because the plot didn't set them up right!  Plus, if they're gonna kill Superman, give him a damn movie off which would give the next movie a bit of an identity.  Kinda similar to how CS3 shoulda chucked tons of returning characters and picked just a few to focus on.

Disco Elysium meets Trails: Since I talked a bit about DE above - so one of the things DE is known for is including politics rather heavily in the setting.  The writers (aside from being bona-fide communists) were clearly were inspired/scarred a bit by their local history - Estonia whipsawed from a rebellion against the old tsarist Russian Empire and the war between the Whites & Reds, independence, being invaded by the Soviets who shot everyone, being invaded by the Nazis who shot everyone, being re-invaded and conquered by the Soviets who shot everyone, then got independence and went hardcore liberal EU free market friendly in response.  Something similar happened to Revanchol in-setting, with a bit of a monarchists followed by a Paris Commune followed by military defeat and foreign occupation.  Anyway, something interesting about DE is that it doesn't really have any moderate political options in the sense of, like, Greek philosopher moderate.  There's no Third Way standard social liberal option, no vanilla conservative, no apathetic choice.  The three vanilla options are communist, nationalist, capitalist, and if you attempt to say "none of the above" too much, you basically end up as a centrist.  But. You're an active do nothing, everything is fine *crusader* - an aggressive moderate, that is, that makes it an active stance in favor of the status quo rather than a passive accepting one.  It's also a bit rude to this standpoint, seeing at as a preening, intellectual vanity, feel better about yourself kind of thing - you get healing to Morale by saying I'm above it all, let everyone go according to their conscience, no need to have any flawed ideologies.  It's kind of a refreshing change from Japanese stuff which often elevate neutrality to be Gooder than Good - certainly Trails of Cold Steel II was a weird and nonsensical example of this, where Our Heroes were allegedly some neutral peace-bringing force, "better" than both sides of the war.  Shin Megami Tensei is usually an even worse offender of course, with Various Wacky Ideologies that want to mold the world in their image, and then neutrality to bring back good ol' perfect status quo.  (Mind, I was still a centrist in Disco Elysium ANYWAY, I'm just glad they didn't pretend that I'd cracked the code and found true morality or something.)

[Dhyerwolf]

I agree that the blowsiness of Trails really started to become noticable in CS 2. CS 1 had a really sensible plot progression and worked effectively to keep tension ramped up. CS 2 exploded with supposed deadly robots running around everywhere, but the only impact they had was to kill a mayor who I'm not even sure they bothered to give a name to. The Infernal Castle certainly hammered home the anime battle-ness to a point that I wonder if they are just intending for this to be a hyper-parody. Unfortunately, that seems to be the direction the series is running.

[Niu]

I agree that the blowsiness of Trails really started to become noticable in CS 2. CS 1 had a really sensible plot progression and worked effectively to keep tension ramped up. CS 2 exploded with supposed deadly robots running around everywhere, but the only impact they had was to kill a mayor who I'm not even sure they bothered to give a name to. The Infernal Castle certainly hammered home the anime battle-ness to a point that I wonder if they are just intending for this to be a hyper-parody. Unfortunately, that seems to be the direction the series is running.

It got worse, it got A LOT worse.
Dragging through Sen 3 and Sen 4 was like a torture to me. Old school anime problems just explodes in full scale on the writing.
They fucking seriously needs to stop on the whole "hahaha I know everything but I won't tell you." And on both sides, STOP please. (I felt suicidal when Roze did this to everyone, and my brain literally stopped for a few seconds when Grand Master did this to Vita.)
It feels horrible when you find out the whole plot was driven not by logic and reasonable developments, but because people are not explaining things properly.
Oh, and cut off the "sokomadeda!" and "sonohitsuyohanai!" I am going to scream if they pull out those bad anime sequence every again.
The script needs writing also needs a lot of work. The way the characters boasting each other is just embarrassing.
Oh, and there is STILL no proper explanation on what Project Phantasmal Flame is all about. It took 6 games and they still cannot sort this out.
Seriously, the only reason I am still playing this series is because I already came this far.


SD3 ToM - Second cycle done, and full tried out every characters in game thanks to class reset. Here are me 2 cents.

Angela - game MVP, she is just great with her overpowering fire power. Grad Divina is great at busting grunts. She just need to Saint Beam most of times and things die. If not, Double Spell well do the magic. Arch Mage is more boss focused, but we have Magus for that.
Rune Master outright sucks because all lv.3 spells are buyable this time. Instant Death is also less potent. The only worth of this class is to carry over the Unfair link passive to the next cycle.
Magus is the true boss killed. Loads all the Pain Magic passive and both Anise and Black Rabi dies within 30 secs to Ancient.
EDIT: Tried Angela against Anise in light class. She can one shot Anise as well and much faster. So Magus is useless too now.

Duran - The man who can one shot Anise. Sword Master is just ridiculously strong that Duelist is rendered useless, and light jobs is only worth it if you have no healer. Seriously, Sword Master's passive is just too STRAONG. Duran can have up to 65% crit rate in class 4 under Sword Master. And since can get a 70% damage boost in crit, landing crit becomes super important.
The weakness passive and saber magic passive combined with Sword Master's already huge selection of saber spells just made it even more ridiculous. Light saber being buyable also fixed his only flaw.
Then there is Cyclone Sword, which hits huge area and big damage. A properly buffed Duran with light saber just one shots Anise in her second form.

Kevin - The poor man who got nerfed. He lost his advantage from multi hits. His passive isn't as good as Duran. He has crit damage amplification like Duran, but has no passive to boost the rate of it occurring. He does have a functioning energy ball now, but still not as high as Duran's 60%, but using the Energy Ball on Duran is a very good idea.
But he does became a better healer as Warrior Monk due to the passive that combines Heal Light with Tinkle Rain.

Charwette - Dechi! She is the person who choose her class depends on who you do not have in the team. Or else just go with Evil Shaman.
First, Arch Bishop is pretty much trash now that Turn Undead got nerfed.
Sage is pretty much a nerfed Sword Master.
Necromancer is good with Black Curse, but Riesz has bigger debuff value with her magic.
So the only job that stands out is Evil Shaman, who has the most comprehensive auto state reduction passive, that stacks too.

Riesz - Best buffer/debuffer due to her passive that boosts buff and debuff value.
Star Lancer is her best job due to permanent MT buff and auto state up passives. But Marduke got nerfed, silence rarely hits now.
Fenrir is the debuff version of Star Lancer, but less effective because the auto state down passive went to Charlotte.
Other two jobs are just masters of none that's not worth it.

Hawkeye - Weakest character in game as he is status attack focused, and those are not very effective in game.
Yes, chibi status is a great grunts killer. But Angela kills grunts much faster by just bew! bew! with Saint Beam or Double Spell.
Yes, ninjatsu has debuff, but Charlotte and Riesz does it better.
Then the heavens crushes down now that max hp reduction does not hit bosses, so Hawkeye lost his best weapon.
He does have a crit damage kit in Wanderer, but like Kevin, not as good as Duran. His atk is lower too, so overall not as good.
He also has a less comprehensive auto state up/down kit in Wanderer/Night Blade. Which may is only useful if Charlotte and Riesz is not around.
In the end, his contribution usually comes from casting Energy Ball as Wanderer on Duran, or be a Ninja Master and let Duran use the weakness hitting passive.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Fire Emblem Three Houses: Crimson Flower Bad-Bad run

Goal: Use characters in classes where they have at least one Weak skill. Cannot have a Strength in two top skills, but can be Strong in tertiary skill if applicable. Units strong in Authority are not permittied to train Authority, but can use battalions (I felt like this would be too harsh and have a lopsided effect that was not intended). Byleth is not Weak in anything, so he is going to do ARMOR KNIGHT cuz whatever I hate my life. I can use weapons that I am neutral in but not Strong in. I am playing on Hard rather than Maddening because I don’t think I have the insanity required to do this on Maddening.

M!Byleth
Armor Knight because fuck my life. I am a Soldier right now.

Edelgard
strength in swords, axes, reason, armor, auth
Weak in bows, faith

So far I’ve been working on bows with her, and I just got Close Counter. She has 23 strength and 13 speed and is generally a terror. She’s just finishing up Fighter and will move into Archer next. Probably will aim for Sniper -> Bow Knight long term. MVP obv

Hubert
strength in lance, bow, reason, auth
weak in axe, faith, flying

Hubert is Priest right now. The only Faith spell he gets is Nosferatu but you know it’s better than nothing. probably gonna aim for trickster/bishop/HK long term.

Dorothea
strength in sword, reason, faith
weak in flying, riding

Gonna go for Pegasus Knight / Wyvern Rider / Lord. Now that she has Tempest Lance, her damage is less ass. Peg Knight having only D requirement in Flying is great. I’m already there but trying to grab Reposition before moving on.

Bernie
strength in lance, bow, riding
weak in sword, axe, brawling, auth

The plan is Trickster because she has Physic, which I am pretty hard up for in this playthrough. Right now she’s a Thief, though, and is one of my best units because of 14 str/13 speed/Persecution Complex.

Caspar
strength in axe, brawling
weak in bow, reason, auth

He is following a similar trajectory to Edie except is way shittier because Caspar. Likely benched long term.

Lin
strength in reason, faith
weak in axe, brawling

5 str and 0 AS with iron axe? First PC dumped.

Petra
strength in sword, axe, bow, flying
weak in reason, faith

Petra is a Mage. Her magic was good enough to one-round armors with Sagittae on the last map, but unfortunately that is the highest rank Reason spell she gets. Gonna aim for Valkyrie / Warlock long term.

Mercedes
strength in bow, reason, faith
weak in sword, lance, axe, armor

peggie / wyvern?, haven’t recruited yet, may or may not use.

Ashe
strength in lance, axe, bow
weak in reason

Warlock long term (has physic). Just recruited and I'm working on reason and faith right now. Just backtracking with him as an adjunct while he's waiting for a skillset.

Sylvain
strength in lance, axe, riding, reason
weak in bow

bow bitch, haven’t recruited yet. will probably be better than caspar because caspar sucks.

Lysithea
strong in sword, reason, faith, auth
weak in lance, axe, armor

wyvern / peg?, haven’t recruited yet. May or may not use.

Shamir
strength in lance, bow
weak in faith

Just recruited, will probably go with War Cleric because her strength is pretty high. She has Physic too!

Yuri
strength in sword, bows, reason, faith, auth
weak in lance, axe, riding, flying

Working on Wyvern with him. We’ll see how tough it is with the double Weaknesses. He is very good so far; 15 str and 13 speed and decent defenses, especially res.

Balthus
strength in sword, axe, brawling, reason, faith, armor
weak in lance, bow, flying

Worse than Edie, better than Caspar at the same role. Not a particularly inspiring unit. Maybe Paladin could have been a better option?

Hapi
strength in axe, reason, riding, flying
weak in brawling, authority, armor

War Cleric (has Physic). She is still a Commoner because she would lose Physic until tier 3 otherwise! Probably mostly a heal bot because her strength is not so great. May or may not use her.

Felix/Ingrid/Leonie/Ferdinand don't have weaknesses, on in the case of Felix Authority doesn't count. Constance and Marianne have Armor as their only real option, Annette is bows but will be worse than the boys at it, and Raphael and Ignatz... well, kinda suck. And you don't want to recruit characters very late in this run so I will be limiting my recruits.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Azure Moon Maddening - the return. The goal of this playthrough was to use a few of the staff/church characters I hadn't used much before, and also to try out the DLC classes.

Let's talk about the classes first.

Trickster: Although it can use magic, the halved uses means you're perhaps better off thinking of it as a physical class, but it lacks a -faire (Lucky Seven is a very poor replacement) so I guess it's moot. Anyway, Foul Play is great, as anyone who has played Cindered Shadows knows. But it does lose something since it's locked to a 5-move class without canto (in CS, you just leave the Fetters of Dromi on Yuri. Here, that shit is going to the dancer so fast). Overall I think it's the weakest new class, good though Foul Play is.

War Monk/Cleric: Finally, a use for Catherine's brawling skill! And in general, if you ever wanted to have female characters punch things. Compared to Grappler, it isn't quite as mobile (still 6 move, but only has mage-level terrain ignoring) and doesn't get Fierce Iron Fist, but it can heal and gets a great mastery ability in Brawl Avo +20, which stacks nicely with Fist Prowess's higher avoid boosts for a build in that direction. Still has melee infantry problems.

Dark Flier: The trend of fliers being broken continues. Warlock used to be the standard Advanced mage job; it has 4 move. Dark Flier has 7, flight, and canto. Wellll then. It also has a speed focus to a far greater degree than any other mage job, with a +4 speed mod (no other mage exceeds +1) and a speed growth boost, though the magic is a bit lower to compensate. It's not perfect, as you do lose out on Black Uses x2 and there's only one flying batallion which raises magic, so if you build multiple the extra ones will lose a bit of punch beyond just the lower magic.

Valkyrie: Horse mage. Only 6 move, but again, that still beats the hell out of 4. And they get Black/Dark Range +1. Yes, you read that right: there is finally an Advanced class that dark mages (except Hubert ) can use which has a passive that actually benefits them. Anyway, expanded range is always great, this is basically the Bow Knight of mages, only available in Advanced tier. While I transitioned to Dark Knight (1 more move, 3 more damage, 1 less range), there's a case not to. And finally, like War Cleric it has a great mastery ability: Uncanny Blow grants a massive +30 hit on player phase.

Very disappointing that not one but both of the new mage classes are genderlocked. This definitely tilts things towards the female mages relatively. I'd also say the new classes are a particular boon to Lysithea (gets way better in Advanced tier than before) and Marianne (her riding/flying proficiencies matter more and being only neutral in Reason neutral hurts her less), while less of a boon to Dorothea (misses Black Uses x2 and is weak in both Riding/Flying) with the male mages obviously faring the worst. Mercedes and Annette fall somewhere in the middle, benefitting generically.

Overall, Dark Flier > Valkyrie > War Cleric > Trickster


Anyway, time to break down the units from this playthrough... mostly talking about one new build in particular.

Dimitri: Brigand -> Wyvern. No it's not hard to get him to this, while getting authority even. He's a hell of a good wyvern with that strength + Brave Axe option + good stats otherwise, basically Edelgard without Raging Storm. But wait, that's not all! I set him up with Battalion Vantage and Battalion Wrath this playthrough. How these skills work is that if you battalion is below 1/3 health, you get Vantage and Wrath, i.e. strike first on the enemy phase with +50 crit. Toss in Cichol Wyverns (+15 hit/crit), an adjutant, an Accuracy Ring, and a Killer Axe+, and Dimitri will strike first with near-100 hit and crit against anything that initiates on him. It's only range 1, you say? The Retribution gambit says differently, granting 5 turns of Distant Counter twice per battle. Now it's range infinite. This even works on Meteor/Bolting mages, which is absolutely cathartic on the final Azure Moon map (still had three Divine Pulse uses figuring out how to have my other PCs kite the range of the reinforcements properly though...). It's not perfect, because monsters + some fortress knights can survive the crit, and some attacks (staggering blows, ballistas, fire orbs, AM final's range-30 move) are uncounterable. Also those hit/crit numbers usually aren't quite 100, and either not kicking in can be bad! Both because enemies who actually attack might kill Dimitri (particularly fast mages) and because any damage he takes damages his already injured battalion, and if it retreats, you're fucked (the skills stop working). Dimitri's high evade from his personal does help here a bit admittedly. There's no way to partially heal battalions between fights either, sadly. I ended up settling with a setup of Battalion Vantage, Battalion Wrath, Axe Prowess, Death Blow, and Defensive Tactics, so the Cichol Wyverns could take 140 damage between reaching Vantage/Wrath territory before retreating. It was barely enough, they would have retreated in the final battle on the very turn I won.

Anyway, if it's not obvious, stupidly good PC. Is Battalion Wrath/Vantage better than Raging Storm? I dunno. It never matters since they don't compete. (And before you ask: no other PC gets both Battalion Vantage and Battalion Wrath, and one without the other ain't special.)


Byleth: Brigand -> War Cleric. Byleth brings the strength to punch things well, and solid speed so quadding is an option against slower things. Melt some monsters. Also had really high charm and since Dimitri was on a wyvern, she got the mighty King of Lions battalion and its silly gambit. Was quite good for a while though at the end, was definitely surpassed by a certain someone.

Catherine: Brigand -> War Cleric. Since she doesn't have charm, it made sense to prioritise her battalion for avoid instead (the good avoid battalions don't have offensive gambits, I used Gautier with Stride), and she was over 100 avoid which is nifty. So a dodge-tank who could punch things to death pretty well.

Alois: Brigand -> Grappler. You have to drop him back into Brigand when you get it which kinda sucks, and he does need it for long-term value. Obviously worse than Byleth and Catherine by a huge margin (even once he catches up, he's much slower and can't heal), until he got Fierce Iron Fist, which did give him a nice offensive push against things that are hard to double. Rally Str+Luck is okay.

Ashe: Brigand -> Sniper -> Bow Knight. Well y'know, left side of Reunion of Dawn and all that. Kinda his generic self, has thief utility and decent but not exceptional speed and iffy strength, so he's bad at killing things that don't fly but at least he can hit whatever he wants and offers good linked attacks.

Annette: Mage -> Dark Flier. Compared to Wyvern Annette, she loses a bit of power off her axe combat arts but gains her spells back and is faster, which is a winning trade. I won't even talk about infantry mage Annette. An okay mage (the spell list is still kinda bad although her relic does help) with Rally Str/Speed and flier-killing. Good authority lets her reach Nuvelle Fliers quickly which is nice.

Marianne: Mage -> Dark Flier. The only non-dancer Physic user on this run, she was obviously invaluable (same as last run, funnily enough). Didn't have as much raw power as my other mages (no +mag gambit, her Soulblade isn't as potent as Annette's Dust/Lightning Axe) but was speedy with great res.

Lysithea: Mage -> Valkyrie -> Dark Knight. Loads of power off her limited-use spells. Valkyrie does a lot for her as already mentioned, and it had the bonus of speeding her to both Move+1 and Dark Range+1, which was great. Those + Uncanny Blow + Fiendish Blow + Reason Prowess is a hell of a skill loadout. I barely used her Warp since she was too busy reliably killing things.

Hanneman: Mage -> Warlock -> Dark Knight. Oh dear, Hanneman has problems. First off, he misses out on Draw Back which other mages have, that's a notable loss. Then, he's stuck in Warlock in tier 3. He does get Meteor, but not until A+ Reason, unlike Dorothea who gets it at A (and in fact can quite possibly have it around the time he joins). And his speed/durability is awful. He's still a mage with Meteor/Thoron and his raw magic is just behind Lysithea, so he's not devoid of worth.

Manuela: Monk -> Trickster. Unlike Hanneman I did have her fall back to Monk for Mag+2/Draw Back, but this is because she has a harder time getting to Mage for Fiendish Blow, so not really a win. Anyway she ended up with no power at all but lots of utility: Draw Back, Warp (limited range), Foul Play. I laser-focused Reason for her (she's bad it) so she could get Bolting and thus give her some much needed link attack utility.

Seteth: Wyvern. He joins late enough that I felt I couldn't justify a backtrack for Death Blow. Anyway, he runs around and Swift Strikes things, though unless they're on a horse or very squishy he usually falls short of ORKO, so he likes friends who can chip things a bit first. Decent def but bad speed. He doesn't compare with the better student wyverns, but being on a wyvern with essentially a free brave weapon (lower power but higher hit) definitely gives one a decent baseline performance in this game.

Hapi: Mage -> Dancer. Hapi's kinda like Dorothea, with below-average-for-a-mage magic but a good spell list (Death, Physic, Banshee, late Warp... no Meteor though). I considered benching mine when she wasn't turning out well for stats, but hey, Dancer solves everything.

I definitely missed not having Pegasus Knight on this run, and only having one high-tier physical flier.

MVP was of course Dimitri, LVP was one of Alois/Hanneman/Manuela. Of note, I briefly tried to use Gilbert, who rewarded me with a 0-stat level, and even disregarding that is clearly... significantly worse than Alois, which is a very bad place to be indeed. Just in case there was any doubt who the worst PC in the game is.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Crimson Flower Bad-Bad run - Just finished Chapter 16. Four fliers means that I did pretty well for myself, although obviously a lot of the characters were a bit understatted because of their role-reversal. The best units are generally those with good physical stats who don’t have to switch into magical roles - primarily Edelgard and Yuri. This didn’t save Caspar and Balthus from being cut from the team - both of those characters feel like they depend on Wyvern Rider’s general dominance to be viable, and that was against the rules! I ended up doing a lot of sub-100% rolls for classes, bought a few extra of Advanced Tier and Master Tier seals for extra dicerolls for the iffier units, and some resetting as well.

M!Byleth: He is very, very strength screwed - 22 strength at level 32, and with 4 move and terrain penalties and 18 speed so he can’t kill enemies worth a shit, he is easily LVP. The defense is nice for baiting, but can’t withstand magic punishment, nor high speed/strength enemies. Got plastered by Nader, which in theory is what he should be good at because that is literal job, but he took 80 damage. LOL, That assumes that this build is good at anything. Still has high charm when he actually reaches enemies, at least, so he can Gambit. The degree to which he is worse than mages as wyverns and Petra as a mage is baffling and embarrassing. I ended up giving him a gaudy glowing shield  and Curved Shot so he can 3hko enemies from three squares away. 

Edelgard: Edelgard has been a Sniper for a good portion of this run - qualified for it around Level 22 (I’ve been generally going for B+ for A ranked units). I bought her a Brave Bow in Chapter 12 and ever since then she has been a force of unstoppable doom from Range 3. She got Hunter’s Volley around Chapter 14 and has been raising unholy hell from Range 4 instead . At Level 36 (lol), I finally qualified her for Bow Knight, so now she has ridiculous move. I think she has 43 strength right now. M-V-P.

Hubert: So my gothy little bitch channelled his inner Sothis freak and went to Bishop and then Holy Knight for Chapter 16. He wears black as Bishop/HK because of course he does. He mostly baits Armor Knights and steals their HP with Nosferatu. Otherwise, he is pretty damaging and can heal very well with Recover, although it’s a shame he doesn’t have a better Faith list; he only has 12 uses of offensive magic per battle now that I am in Holy Knight (It’s kinda funny - HK is not a given considering the low charges of Nos, even for a character who can’t use Reason spells! Kinda sad for HK’s general prospects as a PC.) Not a great PC, but he’s Hubert - I am obligated to use him on every CF run, and he was very useful early and always has utility.

Dorothea: Did Peg Knight ->Wyvern Rider -> Falcon Knight. Picking up Reposition + Darting Blow makes her pretty great, even with low power in Peg Knight (10 STR), and then the Wyvern Rider bases in STR and DEF made her overall stat build look much better. I ended up going over to Falcon Knight to use Arrow of Indra on Lancefaire, since the source of Arcane Crystals to forge Bolt Axes comes quite a bit after Arrow of Indra. She is a solid mixed unit - decent physicals backed up with a good magic attack and flier move for most of the game. One of the better characters in the party. Ended up qualifying for Falcon Knight at Level 31 - pretty low for my party.

Bernie: Ended up going for her as Dancer because it is objectively the worst choice imaginable. She has high evade and does Dancer Things.



Look at that face.

Petra: Unlike Edie and Yuri, who were able to go into physical jobs, Petra was forced into a magic build, where she is bad in both reason and faith. Her magic lists are bad so she mastered most of them pretty quickly and then started working on Valkyrie, which she was able to access at Level 20 despite the weakness in Reason and qualified for Warlock a couple levels later, which gave her magic (I think she gained about 8 magic from three different promos). At first she was really really good, but she ended up getting a bit speed-screwed, so she wasn’t doubling as many enemies as time went on, which is a damn shame because her power growth was actually pretty good. I gave her Thyrsus to complement her role as primary mage, even though it does 10 damage. Ended up not using Warlock and vaulting to DK around Level 32 to increase her power.

Yuri: He is bad in Axes and Flying and Lances. So it was impossible to access to Wyvern Rider??? Well, no. Wyvern Rider has pretty lenient requirements - B in Axe and C in Flying is only 980 skill points to achieve, whereas A in one skill requires 1320 skill points. But there’s more! For Wyvern Rider, being 1 skill rank down gives a ~75% chance of success, whereas B+ in say, Bow for qualifying for Sniper gives you a ~65% to succeed. Even worse is when you are down 2 skill ranks. Wyvern Rider is about ~40%, whereas B in Bow does not allow you to qualify for Sniper unless you have really high luck (you have to have 30% to even try; most of my characters were sitting at 25-29%). I am going to throw some shade at Snowfire for docking points for Wyvern Rider access on someone who doesn't even have a relevant skill weakness because after looking at these numbers, it is trivial to qualify for, so much so that Yuri was actually the first character in my army to qualify to go into his Advanced Tier job!  And boy howdy he is a damn good PC once he gets there. Great stat build; high str and speed and charm. First person to go to master tier as well, although I had to pass 50% test.

Hapi: Honestly she ended up being quite a hassle because she had to train Brawling and I couldn’t both make her a healer and a brawler. I made her a Brawler and made her an adjutant for most of the game. Ended up getting her to War Cleric, but honestly haven’t used her much because her strength is pretty low for a brawling class. I pull her out when the roster is at 12.

Mercedes: Recruited in Chapter 5. She’s pretty bad as a Fighter / Brigand at first, but she can duel down mages effectively with her stupid high Res and decent speed. After going to Wyvern Rider she is very solid, high res and that sweet strength minimum. She and Lysithea have fought over the Bolt Axe until this chapter, where I have made more

Lysithea: Also recruited in Chapter 5. Worse stats than Mercie except speed, but especially res and charm, and was quite bad early, but Mastermind means she learns things quickly, and she ended up grabbing B in Authority for Galtaea Peg Knights even though I was forbidden from training it, because she gains it quite quickly if you give her a battalion. Overall a bit worse than Mercie I think, even with that advantage, but still a decent unit once she gets out of the doldrums of her bad start. Passing 41% exam for Wyvern Rider helped!

Ashe: Recruited in Chapter 4. You know that stuff I chronicled in Yuri’s entry about A rank being a gigantic pain in in the ass to get for this run? Well… Ashe was hit pretty hard by this. Because Physic is so so so useful, I beelined for it as soon as I qualified for Mage, but that delayed his progress to Warlock even further. It was worth it, because Physic is just that damn good, but he got to Level 27 before getting to B+ in Reason to try to qualify for Warlock. The good news is that Ashe was blessed in speed and doubles most enemies, even though his damage before Warlock was sub-par. I just got him Dark Knight at level 34 but haven’t used it in battle yet. I know the last two maps aren’t super nice to Cavalry but probably still better than Warlock. Honestly, I really wish he could qualify for Gremory so I could give him White Magic uses x 2 for Physic.

Shamir: Recruited in Chapter 6. Same general trajectory as Hapi but higher strength means she can actually kill things (though not all things buy any means), which is a great boon. She is pretty evasive and has high HP so she tanks well, but low move and only mid-tier strength prevents her from being a fantastic unit. Physic is still fucking great, even with only three uses. I ended up qualifying her for Bishop at B in Chapter 15 since her luck meant that she had 31% chance to do it and I had some extra Advanced Seals. 3 magic is 3 magic!

—

Caspar: Dumped in the trash because Caspar. It is really amazing that, even with a good physical build in the wings with his weakness, he still SUCKS. He doesn’t even come close to one-shotting enemies, doesn’t get damage support from Bow because Curved Shot, and didn’t last until Brave Bow which might allow him to one-round some enemies? I tried, but this character is just no good.

Balthus: Used longer than Caspar, but same problems of low speed remain, so I ended up dumping him too. As much as I wanted to have an ascended Fire Emblem bandit in my army.

Sylvain: Didn’t end up using him. Just stole his lance because I’m an asshole.

[Random Consonant]

M!Byleth: He is very, very strength screwed - 22 strength at level 32, and with 4 move and terrain penalties and 18 speed so he can’t kill enemies worth a shit, he is easily LVP. The defense is nice for baiting, but can’t withstand magic punishment, nor high speed/strength enemies. Got plastered by Nader, which in theory is what he should be good at because that is literal job, but he took 80 damage. LOL, That assumes that this build is good at anything. Still has high charm when he actually reaches enemies, at least, so he can Gambit. The degree to which he is worse than mages as wyverns and Petra as a mage is baffling and embarrassing. I ended up giving him a gaudy glowing shield  and Curved Shot so he can 3hko enemies from three squares away

armor knights, a perpetual disappointment

So it was impossible to access to Wyvern Rider??? Well, no. Wyvern Rider has pretty lenient requirements - B in Axe and C in Flying is only 980 skill points to achieve, whereas A in one skill requires 1320 skill points. But there’s more! For Wyvern Rider, being 1 skill rank down gives a ~75% chance of success, whereas B+ in say, Bow for qualifying for Sniper gives you a ~65% to succeed. Even worse is when you are down 2 skill ranks. Wyvern Rider is about ~40%, whereas B in Bow does not allow you to qualify for Sniper unless you have really high luck (you have to have 30% to even try; most of my characters were sitting at 25-29%).

I still have no idea why they thought they needed to make wyvern rider reqs as lenient as they did or why anyone would argue that hitting it is geniunely difficult unless you were deliberately avoiding statue bonuses because as you point out it's absurd.  Hmm yes let's give the best advanced tier class the easiest reqs to hit this is totes balanced, IntSys brain geniuses strike again.

e: Pokemon Sword - Also, right, I play games too.  Started this, went with the Fire starter for the first time since... shit, Gen 3?  I appreciate some things about it but honestly on the "otherwise, is Pokemon" scale there's nothing that I find myself latching onto so far, plus some of what they did add is kind of annoying.  Yes game, I know I caught a Magikarp, you don't need to reinform me of this fact, please let me turn this off.

[Luther Lansfeld]

armor knights, a perpetual disappointment

I decided Great Knight was too good for this playthrough, but it costs 3240 skill points and also sucks. Wyvern Lord is 300 less and infinitely better - LOL.

I still have no idea why they thought they needed to make wyvern rider reqs as lenient as they did or why anyone would argue that hitting it is geniunely difficult unless you were deliberately avoiding statue bonuses because as you point out it's absurd.  Hmm yes let's give the best advanced tier class the easiest reqs to hit this is totes balanced, IntSys brain geniuses strike again.

Wyvern Rider really needed to be rethought in general. It has a speed base of 17 (14 base min + +3 mod), strength base of 21 (18 base min + 3 mod) AND deletes the only disadvantage that they have because you can Dismount anytime you want! And they have 7 move and skip terrain. It's just... amazingly poorly balanced. Even in this playthrough, where I had three mages running Wyvern Rider, those bases mean that they are pretty functional units anyway and can fly away once they attack! And characters with low speed like Raphael and Dedue can cheat by jumping speed in WR - I think Dedue gained like 6 when he promoted? And they are the easiest class to qualify to promote into. Just... why.

Anyway, I wrapped up the two last maps last night. Edie and Yuri co-MVPs, slaying bitches, Hubert murdered lots of Great Knights with their amazing 2 AS, M!Byleth baited some peggies on the last map (mostly because he fell behind due to TWO MOVE ON THE LAST MAP HA HA HA BLACK MATERIA) and then had to be Repositioned over the wall because a golem was coming to do 20x2 damage to him with probably 15-20 crit, evade twinked Bernie got Little Cultist / Rhea Bootlicker down to 3% hit with his Brave Axe, Wyvern Lord army did their thing, had lots of Physic for doom and gloom, and married a cute girl, saved her from dying at a young age, and opened up a bakery because dammit if you marry Lysithea, you should make her life wonderful because she deserves it. I see portliness in our future, but it's fine!

[Dark Holy Elf]

In principle I kinda like the canto classes being more powerful on average because I like using them (making good use of the extra positioning options makes me feel like a better player, y'know?) but they definitely went too far with the wyvern line. Which is weird because I think they did a pretty decent job of balancing the cavalier line.

I also realized that with how common terrain is in FE3H, that I have basically no respect for classes that need to reach melee range to attack and don't have some way to mitigate terrain (or in paladin's case, make up for it by having 8 move before terrain is factored), which is armour knights, swordmasters (sorry Catherine, gtfo of that class ASAP you zealot), warriors, heroes, and war masters. At least mages ignore thickets.

[Cmdr_King]

I think I mentioned it the other day, but looking at the requirements for WR it seems like at some point in development they might have had it as an Intermediate class.  Which suggests they had some inkling of how good it was and did a fairly last minute balance thing with them.  Not enough clearly, but holding it back a few levels is something I guess.

[Random Consonant]

In principle I kinda like the canto classes being more powerful on average because I like using them (making good use of the extra positioning options makes me feel like a better player, y'know?) but they definitely went too far with the wyvern line. Which is weird because I think they did a pretty decent job of balancing the cavalier line.

Yeah for all that I remain unenthusiastic about paladin in hindsight the mounted classes all have reasonable enough downsides so they don't -completely- shit on infantry like cavs did in 9, which just makes the op state of wyverns all the more baffling.

And yeah maybe I thought a little too much of swordmasters when comparing them to other classes, especially considering how often I felt pulled to assassin instead despite that class's own downsides and my poor opinion of locktouch, 5 move standard infantry movement with no bow perks just feels kind of bad, worse than 4 move mage movement at times as you point out.  War Master at least gets 6 move out of that bunch but you have to train two melee weapon types to A which is questionable to begin with and one of those is axes so that literally could've been a wyvern instead so it doesn't really deserve respect regardless.

[superaielman]

Valkyria Chronicles 4- In Mission 4. It feels like a VC1 DLC rather than a new game which is a good thing as I adored VC1. It's still broken in some of the same ways (Orders way too strong) but the classes feel a little more balanced on the whole. Or at least Shocktrooper is better.  Writing veers off into cringey anime stuff at times but by and large it's solid enough.