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

[Cmdr_King]

Shining Force II- We have, at last, completed the task of 2009 CK.

So as a Fire Emblem remix I think this works better than the one SNES edition of FE I've played?  FE4 has a lot of very strange problems mind, but on the whole ShF2 is a lot breezier and doesn't need as much save manipulation and grinding.  Considering how mean ShF2 can be that sounds kinda weird!  But because revival is a thing and relatively affordable it can reliably throw 2HKO grunts at you and make every encounter dangerous.  That also means that playing around to power up a weaker unit can be a coin flip mind, but on the other hand it feels like this is a lot more deliberate a part of the design than in contemporary/GBA era FE games.

Unto itself... honestly the game settles for just shooting a LOT of plot and small twists at you to make up for each scene having about 5-10 lines of dialog.  I mean, I could tell you things about the different Greater Devils, that's a bit weird to me.  So it has a nice cheesy kinda of draw, which I like.  It's nothing amazing but yeah, it's interesting to see the contrast with some of the other games of the era.  I mean, Shining Force is perfectly happy to talk about devils, demons, hell, and damning things.  I feel like if this had become a lost game and been translated in the early '00 it'd just have swearing, which... kinda works.  It's neat.

Probably a 6/10 overall.

[Pyro]

Octopath Traveller: Finished with all C4's except for Alfyn and Tressa. The maingame is crumbling before the power of Patience and an even distribution of jobs (no prestige jobs). I've ended up making most sub-jobs the 'conjugate' character, so Merchant/Thief, Dancer/Cleric, Warrior/Hunter, Scholar/Healer. This probably isn't optimal but it's kind of fitting and works to keep all classes in combat. Healer's skillset is a little unimpressive? (The MT axes kill feeling like the worthwhile one).



Shining Force 2: Super Mode (enemy Atk is multiplied by 1.25x), trying to keep even levels.

The first battle on Super mode is a doozy. Enemy double-turns? Bye. From there things even out as long as you don't send people to the enemy and rely on formations to control how many enemy's can attack a single PC at a time. Enemy archers frustrate this quite a bit, so they have to be baited specifically if possible. Keeping even levels means modifying formations so that lower leveled PCs can swoop in for the kill. The enhanced enemy offense means most 'just send in the super-unit' strategies end in horrible death early on. Enemy units not being more durable means they die just as easily however. Although I may be biased by not having super-units due to spreading out exp. Except for Sarah the healer, who just catapults relative to everyone else courtesy of constantly getting exp while other units have to 'wait their turn'.

Kraken fight was a slap in the face (by tentacles, OHKOing things). Fortunately the kraken itself is still fairly fragile and it's offense (by being set ITD) wasn't buffed.

Taros was scarier but not by enough to matter, as spreading out units for him to target (while doing my best to avoid letting him get Bowie in any Bolts) was good enough.

Promotions are available but I'd prefer to wait till weapon upgrades justify it. At first (right after Taros) the only promotion-only weapons are swords and staves. Bowie has his own special sword about as powerful, and Slade's weapon is about as good. Kazin doesn't care about staves but needs to promote to prevent falling behind on damage if he promotes later and 'loses' levels for the purposes of learning spells. Most of Sarah's job is to heal and Promotion helps with that but not by too much so there isn't a need to promote quite yet. In fact the only other unit I really feel NEEDS to promote is Luke, whose offense without the much better Broadsword is just too low to effectively damage enemies, even with the Atk ring.

Chess battle should be fun.

[NotMiki]

Chess battle should be fun.

Really what is even the point of a tactical rpg that doesn't have a chess battle?

[Dark Holy Elf]

And what's the point of showing up to a chess battle with fewer than three queens? If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying.


Final Fantasy 7R - Up to the plate drop.

Game is quite solid. It's not really a surprise at this point with other people's comments but it's way above what I was expecting from the game before its release. The gameplay is recognizable from FF13 (ATB, staggering) but with a bit more action/positioning elements (they still aren't huge compared to something like Trials of Mana though, the game really emphasizes what you do with your turns more than avoiding enemy attacks). And of course the ability to switch between your characters is both welcome and very useful, and since they play differently it really feels like you're still controlling a team unlike some ARPGs. I'm happy with this, it definitely feels like an evolution of FF7 rather than something totally different the way FF15 is.

Challenge is generally in a good place. I lose quite a few tougher fights once and almost never more as I'm able to idenfify my mistakes and learn from them. Losing just kicks you back to before the fight so you can monkey with your setup (just like FF13). Materia system is pretty darn similar to the original's, but that's good because that was always a solid part of the original game. And the characters themselves certainly feel more differentiated with greater stat differences and a bevy of unique abilities, to say nothing of the way their basic attacks (and thus fastest method of ATB gain) are different.

My chief complaints about the gameplay is that boss fights can take a bit too long sometimes (it's interesting playing this right after Trials of Mana, a remake which sped up its boss fights; FF7R slows them down). Interruption can be frustrating since you can lose the ATB investment you made. I'm fine with it for spells/abilities overall but getting a limit break interrupted suuucks and I wish that didn't happen, would feel truer to their ATB priority in original FF7 too. Oh yeah and you really should have just healed to full between fights, spamming potions and watching the animation for each is dumb. But... none of these complaints are huge, and overall this is a very solid gameplay game for sure.


On writing... abstaining on anything related to the wraiths for now (I'm not... terribly optimistic about them but we'll see), I really like the rest of what they're going for. Remarkably it does feel like FF7's original characters and concepts, only fleshed out, and that's a very good thing. The character work is good, the setting work is good, and the game's portrayal of an environmentally devastating mega-corporation as its primary antagonist is if anything even more timely now than it was in 1997. Not everything is perfect, but they're doing a good job, and I enjoy watching the game's scenes moment-to-moment. And of course, let's take a moment to hype the final arena match in Wall Market and the Honeybee Inn sequence, anyone who has seen those knows why.

Probably my biggest disappointment is with the music (or perhaps music direction), it's generally a bit of a blur which mostly seems to coast on sprinkling in moments of "hey I recognize that melody!" This is probably the only area I think the original has a clear leg-up.


Shantae and the Seven Sirens - This sure is a Shantae game.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Ys 8 - Lacrimosa of Dana - Finished the regular ending at 37 hours. Interesting game. Its strength is in its core gameplay conceit and the differentiation between the playable characters. it has very enjoyable bosses on average and the switching mechanics are quite fluid and fun, and the gameplay is very fast-paced. I already talked about the character balance and it largely holds; I used a party of Dana, Laxia, and Ricotta and it was pretty good, especially because it covered all three element types.

My favorite part of the game was definitely the stuff involving Dana; Olga and Dana are two of the only characters who have legitimate chemistry, and they introduced a system where Dana can switch forms into the other weapon types, offering more coverage and decision-making to the process. Dana’s quest also has some really cool puzzles. I thought the Dana sections were a general strong bit of the game and had both cool gameplay elements, especially since Dana’s route doesn’t have the broken revival system which lends it a different feel than the rest of the game gameplaywise.

One thing I reflected on after beating the game is how much I liked the concept of having this Suikoden-style village where you collect people to do different functions, but I think too many of the characters in the village were not very interesting and mostly served the function of worshipping the main character in one way or another. it’s something that games with silent mains unfortunately gravitate toward, and few games are worse about it then this. Adol is chosen to be the only remaining survivor from the human race because he is the best human on Earth. Or something. Good grief.

I think the late stage plot is interesting but I was trying hard to fight off my general fatigue with the game writing-wise, with not as much success as I’d like. Dana is always a bright spot even after she joins the party, and the Great Tree of Evolution is kinda neat, but I think the present day plot just didn’t have enough to really captivate my interest, particularly with the cardboardness of the NPCs (they all have a personality trait or two, but that’s it) and the silent main. And Hummel, who feels like someone’s one-note Dungeons and Dragons character - I am a transporter! I like transporting! Sahad, Laxia, and Ricotta all have bright spots; Sahad is the character who I think has the most going for him but also has some problematic elements with his unaddressed benevolent sexism. Laxia is a likeable nerd at her best and a stereotypical female nag at her worst. And Ricotta is just generically likeable without having much good or bad going for her.

I think the game could have used to be about 75% as long; a lot of the midgame arcs feel like filler and the party often feels like it’s dealing with the same problems over and over again, and the writing quality is generally low, so it really did need less of it. It feels bloated by the desire to have a longer game, and it seems to often find excuses to burn more of your time. And sometimes the quest for items to use for synth is a bit tedious. I was playing on Hard mode and I generally needed a lot of healing, so take that as you will; it might be my own fault for not playing on the default my first time.

But I really liked the difficulty overall of the bosses, even if some of them were pretty brutal. I struggled a lot with the second of the four Wardens a lot, as well as the final boss. I think i used like 30 revival items against the final boss. I felt like the game’s boss design was not as strong before the four Wardens but after the mid-point, which is largely why the game felt like it was dragging, since the bosses are the reason to play the game, and there’s a lot of them!

Overall, I feel somewhat similarly about this game as I do about Tales of Vesperia; it is a decent game with one really big thing going for it that it doesn’t always perfectly execute, but it is an enjoyable game nonetheless. But one I did have to push myself into completing.

I realized I never posted a follow-up to Hollow Knight! Hollow Knight is great, nerds, play it.

[superaielman]

Valkyria Chronicles 4- It's VC1 even down to the same order and graphics system. As I adored VC1 this works for me!


I'm in Chapter 8, so about halfway through. The rebalancing of classes is nice; Scout still feels like the best but it's not as clear cut as VC1. Shocktroopers/Lancers/Grendiers have a lot of use. Engineers and Snipers are still pretty unimpressive though.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Cosmic Star Heroine - Finished on Heroine or whatever it was called, clocked in at a little under 12 hours. The game’s art and graphics and music are all a big improvement over Cthulhu, which seems like a good starting point of comparison. Both the regular battle theme and the boss theme are both catchy and likeable tracks, and the dungeons look and feel nicer to play due to feeling like real environments instead of weird same-y dungeon design. I also really like the character art - Alyssa, Chahn, and Lauren are all three cool looking, and even the aliens and less attractive characters are fine.

The encounter style feels very Chrono Trigger-like except more consistently thoughtful in their design, and the bosses are often but not always good. The final boss was actually quite terrible! But the second-to-last boss was pretty good. The character skillsets are all a joy to play with and the game gives you lots of tools to tinker, and because each battle everything is reset, from HP to skills, every battle feels like a mini challenge of its own. However, my biggest complaint is that many of the strategies for the characters’ actions are the same for each PC and once you get their ‘thing’ set up, I found that you often did the same things in every battle. However, the game is short enough that it didn’t feel too repetitive, since your characters were constantly switching out and learning new tricks, and thus adjusting your strategies over time. I don’t think the game should have been significantly longer than it was, though, or else it would get dull.

I ended up using Alyssa, Chahn, Orson, and Psybe for the final boss; Alyssa had high damage and buffing, Chahn has her diverse skillset, Psybe had regen and buffing Hypers, and Orson just pumped damage into enemies every three turns. I also used Sue a lot before getting Orson; I really liked the way that Counter interacted with MT damage in this game. Lauren is also a reasonably cool PC for a while but I feel like the efficacy of status decreased over the course of the game because the status rates on moves doesn’t increase as fast as enemies defenses vs. status did. Did get much use out of Clarke or Zzorv, and Finn seemed outright bad. Arete was fine but not exceptional.

If I were to replay the game, I would probably play on Super Spy.

Plotwise, it is there. The game tries to have a more serious plot than CSTW and you know they should probably just stick with humor. It consumes so little of the time spent playing the game that it scarcely matters, unlike some games that make you spend hours reading their terrible dialogue and misogynist bullshit cough cough Ys 8 cough cough, and the character designs make me happy so I honestly don’t care much.

7/10. We’ll see what’s next~

[Pyro]

One thing CSH has going for it is constantly giving you new abilities and equipment to play around with.

Finished with Octopath Traveller. Did all the sidequests, including killing Galdera.  Galdera 2 smoked me the first time and the second time I took more time to get people to even levels, use all my stat-up items, and set up my party just right to fight the two parts....

Then I got mixed up and assigned the 2 parties to the wrong parts. Still managed to swing a victory out. Apothecary's MT Items and Cleric's Saving Grace were the heroes of that fight. Ophilia and Primros brought in Full Enfeeblement (MT all stats down for 3 turns) assists which proved useful both for hitting harder and not taking as much damage. The double-hitting axe is great for handling the eye when the shields aren't up (8 shields down from one turn!). Merchant actually works well for form 2 because Hire Veteran is an MT 4 hit sword move, which nearly breaks two of the parts out of the gate (I had barely used it before that fight, and kind of regret it since getting access to multi-hit, say, daggers at little cost seems pretty good!). I've heard form 2 has Toxic Rainbow, and uh wow that would have been horrible.


Some of the epilogue sidequests for the NPCs you meet are revealing and insightful and help with building up the world as one where relationships exist between characters of different stories.

My favorite stories were Primrose, Ophilia, H'aanit, and Therion? Cyrus and Olberic were also good. Alfyn's and Tressa's felt a little too unfocused.

[Tide]

Troubleshooter:

So Act 6 of the game is crazy difficult. I just beat 6-1 after like 4 tries and even on the easiest difficulty, this level is balls-to-the-walls hard. The goal of the level is to guard Kylie and Ryo, this random sword grunt who you fought like 20 stages ago. It doesn't seem like his skills have improved much, so he's incredibly fragile and basically fodder if you leave him open. My first attempt at this was to try to wait and see what would happen since the AI gets alerted once you step in to engage with Ryo. Ryo apparently decides he is too cool for school and goes Rambo apparently and attacks the melee boss. He proceeds to get destroyed by Retaliate because Retaliate is stupid good (guaranteed 100% crit if you block the attack, boss has high block rate) and gets one shot. Welp.

Second attempt. Okay, no choice here really. I have to engage with Ryo immediately or he'll commit seppuku on his first turn. I rush Kylie in to control him. I move him around to the back of a nearby truck, but still close so he can pick off weakened units. Big mistake here as the enemies seem to realize he's made of paper and the bunch of enemies that start near me all go after him. I have Heixing set up for a bunch of reaction attacks but every enemy here sans the tank enemies apparently has LIGHTNING REFLEXES as a skill and dodges all of them. This problem is further compounded by the fact that taking a reaction shot pushes back your next turn by 30 CT. So uh, I never get another turn and the mooks come in and kill Ryo.

Third attempt. I set up Kylie for more block so she can help with some tanking. Rush and save Ryo. Have Ray boost Heixing into Overcharge so he can use his Ult. Apparently the boss has huge dodge too. Well, shit. I vainly try to hit him at 3% with Heixing's Ult and miss completely. Aw yeah. Ryo runs the fuck away, but this time, despite having notable block, by the time Kylie takes her second turn, she's taken an assload of damage, and Heixing again is not seeing a turn due to all the reaction attacks. I try to retreat, but it's too late here and she dies to a stray hit from a melee dude.

Fourth attempt. I change class on Heixing because my reaction fire set up is working against me. Instead, I give him a bunch of new skills and turn him into a Sweeper. As the name implies, it specializes in mowing down groups. I also give Leton a ton of block so he can help manage the flow of enemies by tanking. For Ray, I also give her Spider Web grenades so she can also immobolize the enemies. With that, we're ready to go. Opening leg of the fight remains the same. One thing Ryo thankfully has is a skill called Impulse Fields, which is basically similar to Pokemon's Sturdy. As long as you have more than 50% HP, attacks that would kill you instead of 50% of their damage. This thankfully saves Ryo's ASS since I finally manage to get into a position with Heixing to land a few lucky hits and take the first boss' HP down, which grants him a free Ult. He uses it on Ryo, who then runs far the hell away. I charge up Heixing and blast the boss dead, because he's by far and away the biggest problem here. There's a second boss, but I'm better positioned to take care of it since I don't have to walk into an ambush as the level demands initially. Once he's dead, the enemy reinforcements spawn on the right and come barrelling down. A big difference I do here is instead of using Kylie's defense matrix for added Block and reaction fire (remember this is bad!), I call fourth my robot friends. One of them I build is a tank with 4k HP (a lot) and has a lot of damage reduction skills. I position this one up front with Leton so the enemies can't reach Heixing easily. I then blast the enemies repeatedly with Heixing's fan AoE attack. Once the second boss rolls in, I immobolize him, then position myself in a more advantageous way so he has to either hit Leton or my drone tank. Ray juices up Heixing again so I can Ult the 2nd boss. He auto-res and gains an instant turn due to his passives and burns his ult on my drone, which absorbs the damage because that's what its designed to do. With that, I mop him up with Heixing/Kylie's offense while Ray and Leton help distract and take out the remaining supports. This level was tough that even when there were only 3 enemies left, I was still extremely cautious.

And now I'm stuck on 6-2. Two attempts so far. The goal is to defend Giselle again an army of police units as well as 6 members of your team. Problem here is, my team is skilled up the wazoo so I can't actually kill much before they overrun me. My shots with Giselle and Heixing end up getting eaten up by either Block (Albus, Kylie, Leton) or damage nulling (Albus, Sion) or auto-res (Ray, Irene). Then just for shits and giggles of course, I gave Anne a bunch of recovery skills including auto-heal a nearby target so if I can't kill anything and she's nearby, she just heals them to full. My first attempt ended with me dying in the tower because they just swarmed me as I failed to put anyone down. 2nd attempt, Heixing moved too far in front and Albus got into melee range. Horrible, horrible things proceed to happen as he dies and I have 6 elite units + like 10 police units to deal with. I realize there is a simple way of dealing with this level by disabling equips or skills on my other PCs before starting, but that feels cheap. Will give this a couple of more shots, but holy cow was this nasty.

[hinode]

Ocarina of Time 3D beaten. I got most of the items in the game, but not all; Biggoron's Sword, Ice Arrows, the fourth bottle, and Gold Skulltulas past ~54, most notably. Some very belated thoughts on this very historically important game:

-The game's pace is honestly pretty brisk if you know exactly where to go at all times, but it grinds to a halt if you ever decide to explore every nook and cranny of the game, either out of a desire to be thorough or just because you're lost and don't know where to go. I personally wound up using a guide for most of the game past the Great Deku Tree as a result, as I prioritized not wasting my time over the satisfaction of solving every single bit of the game on my own.

This isn't through any major design flaw of the game, mind you; it's just an inevitability when dealing with large maps without extremely powerful movement options. I do think Nintendo has been extremely conscious of this when designing 3D Zelda games, hence the constant use of assistant characters who can give you tips, and quite possibly the increased linearity of Zelda games up through Skyward Sword (though increased plot complexity is just as responsible for the latter, if not moreso).

-That said, Kokiri Forest deserves a lot of credit for being a carefully designed location to let players naturally learn how to control Link and use his various moves naturally, rather than making you go through a scripted tutorial. It follows in the footsteps of Peach's Castle from Mario 64 in this way. Deku Tree also deserves mention for its emphasis on verticality in both progression and puzzle solving, in a way that 2D games could not achieve. I could be wrong here, but this feels like an area where Shigeru Miyamoto put a lot of personal emphasis on designing. Meanwhile, later Zelda games where he took a backseat would go on to make their forced tutorials longer and longer, until BotW did a 180 in series direction.

-Compared to 2D iterations of Zelda, I thought that OoT's controls suffered from a lack of precision around the margins. The biggest offender was the context-sensitive A button, which frankly was overloaded on the amount of things it had to do, which lead to the occasional frustrating ambiguity. Pushing blocks vs climbing on them was a problem that came up throughout the game, while dismounting Epona vs speeding up vs (rarely) talking to an NPC took the longest time to resolve. This was never a major issue per se, and by 1998 standards I imagine the game's controls were amazing, but compared to something like ALTTP the relative imprecision is pretty noticable. The N64 just didn't have enough buttons to do everything Nintendo EAD needed players to do without making the occasional compromise.

-Enemy density is way lower than games like Zelda 1 or ALTTP, possibly due to N64 hardware limitations, and the Z-targetting (well, L-targetting on 3DS) system makes most enemies ignore you when locked on, so crowd control is almost never an issue. This meant that humanoid enemies that can block/parry your attacks (i.e. Stalfos, Lizalfos, Gerudo Guards, etc.) were just about the only things that really made me think about combat outside of bosses and mini-bosses. There's no random enemy that is as dangerous as a Lynel or Wizzrobe or Hinox, either, so as soon as I got a few bottles the game's difficulty largely flatlined. Iron Knuckles, a mini-boss, were just about the only enemies that hit hard enough to make me learn to dodge their attack patterns, but they are so slow that by the end of the game I beat the last two without taking a single hit.

-Having beaten every Zelda game prior to OoT expect for Zelda 2, I can definitively say that this is when the series really focused on making the majority of bosses into what are essentially puzzles, rather than just the occasional Arrghus here or there. Just about every boss here is designed around using the dungeon item to stun/expose them, then hit with a sword. This honestly makes sense when you remember that OoT lacks stuff like a dedicated jump or dodgeroll button that are staples on most 3D third person action games, in favor of assigning a bunch to the usual Zelda items. This leaves less options for the designers to create a good pure combat boss, so emphasizing the gimmicks does make sense on paper. This does wind up leaving a player's opinion of bosses completely dependent on how well you felt the gimmick was implemented, though.

-The most interesting puzzles, IMO, were the ones that implemented verticality in some way. The least interesting were the ones where you pushed blocks on a flat surface; they felt like slower, less interesting versions of stuff I've done a million times in 2D Zelda and Pokemon games.

-I feel like scope and spectacle are a big part of OoT's appeal to the masses, not to mention 3D Zelda in general (and arguably the entire third person action/action-adventure/action-hybrid-something genre). Oh, and immersion (something that many 'hardcore' gamers are obsessed with, in my experience), though that suffered from playing on an old 3DS where the stereoscopic 3D doesn't work properly anymore. A good example of this would be the castle collapse sequence near the end, which is trivially easy and has a timer that's practically irrelevant, but the whole sequence looks and feels cool, like you're in an interactive cutscene. The game is full of moments like this, like when you first step out onto Hyrule Field and see how large it is, or even the opening scene where Navi flies around Kokiri Forest in first person view, giving the player a good view of the game's 3D environments. I suspect that moments like these blew a lot of people's minds when they first experienced it as a kid, who would go on proclaim OoT as the greatest game of all time on various parts of the internet for the past two decades.

On balance, I'd say that OoT 3D is a good game in a genre that just... isn't one of my personal favorites. As someone who mainly grew up on 16-bit era games, I prefer the brisk pacing and tighter controls of 2D Zelda games over the grander spectacles and increased immersion of 3D Zeldas. It was still well worth the bargain basement price I paid for it, but I feel even more justified in my lack of interest in the 3D branch of the series now.

[SnowFire]

hinode: To my knowledge, it's not merely "most" enemies that ignore you when locked on, it's all of them, barring stuff like projectiles already in flight.  Thankfully Ocarina of Time is not really about the non-boss combat, because it certainly doesn't hold up.

Also, not sure if you played FF Adventure back in the day, but Adventures of Mana has some very strong Zelda I vibes in it if you haven't played it - hordes of kinda-dumb enemies in the dungeons that can crowd you out, smallish rooms, puzzles, etc.  It's not really that close to the rest of the Mana series in gameplay, but might be of interest for Zelda I variants.

--
A Hat in Time
Speaking of old games from the N64 - oddly enough, I never played Super Mario 64, nor Mario Odyssey.  3D Mario just wasn't really my cup of tea.  I figure I should remedy that a little - A Hat in Time being a Mario 64 update for 2017 tastes.  It's amusingly bonkers so far.  Since there's slightly more plot than Mario 64 (not a hard feat), they evidently decided to run with Our Heroine being some cross between Bugs Bunny and Loki to explain why she's jumping on top of everyone, pushing people off construction girders, etc.  I especially like how most of the potential enemies, at least in the first world, totally ignore you until you decide to ruin their day with unprovoked stomping or umbrella violence.  Also, just like Mario 64, landing in lava sends you inexplicably hurling skyward with damage, rather than simply melting and catching on fire.  Handy.  (But who hooked up this town's water taps to a volcano?!) 

[Luther Lansfeld]

Trials of Mana - Playing as Hawkeye, Angela, and Kevin. Great game, gameplay improvements are bomb, graphics are nice, music is nice...

And then the game decided to not trigger a cutscene before the third to last boss and now I am stuck.  Just sent an email to Square-Enix about it and they said they are 'thoroughly investigating it'.

so I have decided to re-enter the KAGATOPIA. Chapters = 2. Kidnapped women = 3. Also wow Marty is a terrible PC. 0 starting speed with 15% growth. lol

[Dark Holy Elf]

Shantae and the Seven Sirens - Beat.

Well the obvious comparison is Half-Genie Hero just because they have the same graphical style. Seven Sirens does a couple nice things compared to HGH. One is it goes back to being more of a Metroidvania-style environment, which is nice. And also, many of the movement powers are button activated instead of requiring a transformation animation, like Pirate's Curse pirate items, which makes the action much smoother. It's probably better-written overall too? It's not on the level of Pirate's Curse but there's one particularly good sequence (spoilers: Squid Baron is involved) and it's fine otherwise. There are actually new characters worth noting this time.

The downsides are that the boss design is easily the worst of the three games I care about (this + HGH + Pirate's Curse). Most of the sirens are challenging only in a puzzle of how to damage them; their attacks are typically few and not very dangerous. You also fight Risky a bunch, and she's... fine but basically copied/nerfed from her HGH appearance. The final boss continues the Shantae tradition of being a huge challenge spike, although her first form is probably the only actual good new boss design in the game.

Also the music is sadly quite a lot worse, they changed composers and the new one just isn't on the same level.

Healing in this game is ridiculous, you get just littered with healing items. I didn't use any sort of healing (aside from using the healing dance for its non-healing effects) until the final boss, and honestly it was still mostly pretty easy (there's a timed marathon of locked enemy rooms in the second to last dungeon which is pretty tough though). The final boss kinda spits on trying this though, super-durable and the second stage had a lot of stuff which seemed very difficult to avoid. (First stage is fun though.) So I let myself use the healing dance in that fight, which still made losing almost impossible despite its charge time (items don't have this so are even more broken).

6.5/10 or so? Whether this game or Half-Genie Hero is better is something that probably depends on what you're looking for in these games; they end up similar for me. Pirate's Curse is still pretty clearly the best one.


Final Fantasy 7 Remake - Beat this too.

I already covered a lot of my feelings in the previous post. The gameplay remained mostly solid up to the end. I rarely found myself playing the game just for it, but it was generally pretty enjoyable. Every boss felt like it had individual love put into it, which was nice. That said it didn't leave me precisely wanting more either; by the end I was quite happy to put the game down rather than diving into optional combat simulators and the likes. Contrast Trials of Mana where I was all in for a pure-gameplay aftergame.

Some of the fault lies in the game's pacing of course, which remains one of its notable weaknesses. Honestly I was okay with it for quite a while, but Chapter 13-15 are a major lull in the game (there's a random underground lab which doesn't actually matter for anything and features a poorly-designed boss fight [albeit easy, so it's harmless I guess?], then you have to chase some little monster through the sewers to settle some plot point involving one of the game's less effective new characters). Hojo's lab got expanded to a giant dungeon which I'm mixed on - I like that it's more characterization for Hojo and it was a good way to add some dungeon to the lategame, but it's a bit nonsensical that this is supposed to take up two floors of the Shinra building, also why on earth would we do things Hojo asks us c'mon. And the ending sequence is pretty dumb and certainly too long, but more on that later. By the end I was definitely ready for the game to be over.

I thought the ending sequence was pretty bad and fanficcy. Nonsensical anime duel between Cloud and Sephiroth, the wraiths turn into BIG GIANT WRAITH BOSS whom the game can't decide whether it's a threat or not, Zack's randomly alive I guess, blah blah blah we're fighting the fate of being an FF7 remake nope this is too navel-gazing for me, sorry. My general feeling is that Shinra is really good, Sephiroth is fine, and the wraith stuff is terrible. The game does a lot better when focusing on the former and since the ending isn't about them at all, welp.

It's hard to know what to think about this game writing-wise overall. On the one hand I have a lot of respect for FF7 and this game largely (aforementioned spoiler stuff aside) takes what's there and expands on it in a way I find very true to the original. I was really worried that this game wouldn't understand what made the original characters work but that's definitely not the case. The four PCs are basically all great (they were all good in the original IMO, Aeris/Aerith less so but she's also the most improved character by the improved produciton values IMO, we get a much stronger sense of who she is). At the same time I can't escape that part of why I like these characters is that I know they're building towards plot points that I'm already aware of, so I'm not sure what I'd think of some of them if I'd never played the original FF7! Odd situation. Red XIII is boring as hell (not much is new) but eh, he's pretty minor. I loved seeing more of Midgar, seeing more of how Shinra operates, and the look at the system they've created and the difficulty of dismantling it. It's as timely and ever and good stuff.

At the same time I'm not really that psyched for Part 2? Like there's a real risk it devolves further into Nomura nonsense and even if it doesn't it's going to look at a weaker part of FF7's narrative, and if they pad that the way they did this it could get frustrating. So like the first FF7R, it will definitely be a game I rely on the reactions of others first.

It's really hard to settle on a rating for this game. Somewhere in that 7 range, similar to where I have the original.


Fire Emblem: Three Houses - Crimson Flower Maddening. Doing a minimal-monastery run. I'm allowing myself to do one arena a month (if I choose). Recruiting is allowed, saint statues are allowed, specific quests (ones which open shops/shop functions, dancer, and the saint statues) are allowed, faculty training to get D flying (or armour/riding if I'd chosen) is allowed since there's no other way to get that, and I gave Edelgard a few gifts to ensure a C+ support.

I've done a lot of seminars as you might imagine. Perhaps the most unexpected difficulty is low professor rank which means I didn't get adjutants until chapter 8 and still only have one battle point. The game was a bit tougher than normal around chapter 3 (I didn't explore this chapter so I only had the starting three battalions), and to some extent around chapter 4-7 because I felt a bit underskilled and later underlevelled, but now that I've finally got the paralogues rolling things are getting easier again. We'll see how the lategame turns out.

[SnowFire]

A Hat in Time
Finished this up, at least the main game without DLC (all 40 time pieces).  It was quite enjoyable!  Not too long either, just ~15 hours by Steam playtime.  By law, all reviews of this game are required to use the word "charming", and...  well, it IS charming and funny, so I'll join the bandwagon.  But it's also very good at just...  surprising the player.  It mixes things up stage to stage; one moment you're doing Metal Gear Solid, the next might be a timed escape sequence, the next is delivering old mail.  It usually doesn't get too hardcore with the platforming or the boss fights, but that's fine by me (and the DLC apparently has challenge versions of the missions if you do want to get destroyed).

If I had to complain, the 4th act is kinda weak comparatively.  The 2nd and 3rd Acts are fiendishly creative and hilarious, and the 4th Act clearly wanted to be a change of pace where you just explore around at your own leisure through a peaceful Alpine floating mountains setting with no pressure except for tight parkour.  Which would be fine, except that it's also huge and far too easy to get lost.  The final mission of the 4th act was my least favorite in the game, too.  Oh well, doesn't take away from how good the earlier work was. 

[Dark Holy Elf]

FE3H - Completed chapter 11. I ended up being hitting C lances and reason by my (required for CF) chapter 11 explore so I could recruit Lorenz, Ashe, and Leonie, and did the paralogues of the former two. I'd recruited Ingrid earlier so I could get Galatea Pegasus and Luin. I'm not actually using any recruits besides the wolves.

The wolves' paralogues were really tough when I first tried, them, I had a full game over to both. Once I unlocked advanced classes on most of my PCs they weren't so bad though (after doing some other paralogues like Seteth/Flayn and Alois/Shamir). Finally hit C+ professor rank from the student question in chapter 11, which means I finally have two battles per week if I want, too late for it to matter for part 1.


Also I did a random replay of Metroid Fusion.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Trials of Mana - Ended up not being able to fix the problem by contacting Square-Enix, but thankfully I had a file at the ghost ship, which put me 5-6 hours back but at least I didn’t have to do the whole damn game again. Ended up going with Angela with Grand Diviner, Hawkeye with Nightblade, and Kevin with Fatal Fist. Skipped all of the cutscenes the second time, blitzed through dungeons, and cut three hours off of where the pace I was on the previous run before it pooped out.

Kevin as Fatal Fist is a crit-focused character. He has abilities which make crits stronger and allow them to inflict defense down, which is very cool. His limit is overpowered as fuck; pretty much clears randoms completely. Hawkeye’s Silence doesn’t seem very good in this game and the last dungeon was super dark themed, so Black Rain didn’t see much use. Honestly I feel like Ninja Master probably would have been a better choice TBH because of the MT stat downs, although the 30% instant death when inflicting a status was very cool for randoms. Lucent Beam + tore up the whole damn game and it was beautiful.

Overall, huge improvement on the original gameplaywise. Even if I still want to punch Kevin’s dad for inflicting trauma on his son. I might do a second run pretty soon with Angela/Riesz/Duran, or I might do the aftergame. Decisions~

Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 -  Currently in Chapter 9 which is a huge pain in the ass due to the weird way the map is structured. First reset I didn’t realize that the enemies could capture the exit point. Second reset was crits and third was because I didn’t realize Karin was in the range of an archer who could scale a mountain. Still working on this map.

Final Fantasy 5 4JF - I just got the third crystal for a normal run. So far I have Knight / Time Mage / Ranger. Threw Fire Rods at Byblos, died once to SIREN but that’s it so far.

[superaielman]

Valkyria Chronicles 4- I'm at chapter 12; this will not be finished before Brig gets out.

The Challenge mode unlocks after clearing The Legend of Runersia, or Main Mode. In a nutshell, it's a combination of sandbox mode and score attack mode. There isn't a story, but this mode comes with more freedom and elements of strategy. You begin the game with 10 Rune Knights of your choosing and one base. All ally and enemy units start at Level

Yes please.

[Random Consonant]

so I have decided to re-enter the KAGATOPIA. Chapters = 2. Kidnapped women = 3. Also wow Marty is a terrible PC. 0 starting speed with 15% growth. lol

Yeah even with stacking growth modifying scrolls and the fact that every non-HP stat caps at 20 the MARTY PARTY is pretty much something you do for meme value, not because it's an objectively good use of time because those bases were A Choice.  Also I'm sorry.

Trials of Mana - Ayup.  Did a Duran/Angela/Riesz playthrough.  I too went Grand Diviner with Angela and lived the Lucent Beam+ life but was left wondering if I shouldn't have gone full Dark instead, Duran went Duelist and was basically my only source of wind damage via boosted Thunder Sabre for like 90% of the game because imagine being someone who puts points into luck on Angela (and then I saw CLASS FOUR and went oh maybe I should do that after all), Riesz was mostly there for buffing.  Really my biggest complaint about the run is that Crystal Desert kind of sucks.  Also I got hit by every instance of Moon Spiral I saw and got nearly destroyed by Dolan because I'm bad at the game (he said despite not really having trouble with anything else aside from the postgame Angela doppelganger fight, where I ate four wipes because I kept mistiming dodging out of doublecasts.)

Then I started another playthrough with Kevin/Hawkeye/Charlotte which I'm currently taking a small break from just before the Mana Sanctuary because leaving the VA on at all was a mistake.  And because I apparently have a subconscious desire to make poor life decisions I decided to try Light Hawkeye so my offense against bosses is uh largely not good and not helped by my inability to remember to use dream reeds so I don't end up fighting them during the daytime but at least I'm still having fun with it so that counts for something.  Game definitely feels like it deserves a 7/10 

[Luther Lansfeld]

so I have decided to re-enter the KAGATOPIA. Chapters = 2. Kidnapped women = 3. Also wow Marty is a terrible PC. 0 starting speed with 15% growth. lol

Yeah even with stacking growth modifying scrolls and the fact that every non-HP stat caps at 20 the MARTY PARTY is pretty much something you do for meme value, not because it's an objectively good use of time because those bases were A Choice.  Also I'm sorry.

i'm sorry too. just encountered chapter 10 with like five ballistas and a tanky armor knight on a fortress

[DragonKnight Zero]

Ateleir Ayesha - replay madness journey

  Finally said 'eff it and grinded out 9 months of wandering on the map to trigger an ending on a Clear Game playthrough.  Wanted to log Juris but forgot how endings worked and unintentionally picked Keithgriff's instead.  Not a total loss since I didn't have that one yet either and it seems to have filled in some gaps in the gallery so there's that.  Ending Keithgriff is almost an entirely different character from early-game Keith; I'll leave it at that.

  Was indecisive for a while before starting a new game entirely.  My inventory was a mess on my Clear Game steamroll and I preferred starting over because of the way I'm wired.  Didn't think I'd have anything of note to mention since other than not having touched the game in a while, it's familiar territory.  The first two hours are really slow; this was one of the reasons for my initial hesitation.  Going for a full Memory diary on this run.  Some parts are a bit FAQ-bait but it's not too bad really.  Anyhow, various thoughts now that I've been through the library for the first time.

- With playing on a console comes a reminder that the A/V connections on the TV are barely clinging to life.  Fighting with the connections is something my subconscious seems to have blanked out.
- Replay bonus: Watch how spirit Nio gestures; it's consistent with what gets revealed later on.
- Did a bit of testing to satisfy my curiosity about something.  It is possible to trigger the cutscene that starts the treasure contest after the window for the first one has passed.  One does miss out on the first one that way and goodbye endings that depend on them.
- Wow, Ranum somehow manages to be even more airheaded about traveling than Ayesha.  Considering she didn't plan out where to stay when setting out, that's a rather low bar to limbo under.  I still get a laugh where she first assumes him to be a zombie.
- If you decide to go to the abandoned village without Linca despite plot pushing you to take her and my own tendency to choose allies based on who has the lowest Friendship, the "unwinnable" boss fight becomes optional.
- 'eff Watchmen.  Especially 3 of them.  I had people eating dirt, er wood (being in the library and that), in that battle and only Wilbell's Element Call saved the party from a wipe.  Something I would have never learned from testing with Lv50 characters is that it has a minimum HP it will revive with.  25 HP if 25% max HP is lower than that.  And this is a random on default difficulty.  (on PS3 so no hard mode)  The whole trip stretched my resources even with Ernie at the forest map earlier to supply me with some of the bombs I registered with him.
- Yummy Heal effects (recovers a percentage of max HP) also have a minimum HP restoration.  Most relevant with Wilbell.
- Drinking game: Take a sip every time Keithgriff complains about something he can't stand or a pet peeve.  Or don't, if you value your well-being.

Once the game got going, I felt engaged.  May be a while before I plug in a different console.

[Luther Lansfeld]

Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 - Just finished Chapter 13.

The game is interesting. It’s clearly a bridge game between the wildness that is Genealogy and the post-Kagatopia Fire Emblems. It has Rescue as a command and not just a staff, map size is more in control than Genealogy and feels more akin to modern FE, the modern concept of doubling appears (4 speed higher than the enemy!) whereas in Genealogy it’s only done with the Pursuit skill. I also like that Trading isn’t totally fucking annoying and stupid like in FE4 where you can only trade with your spouse or whatever, and the money system is also less borked than FE4 and resembles a regular money system (aside from the selling that you need to do to get money which I’ll talk about in a sec…)

There’s some neat ideas in here; I like the Fatigue mechanic because it motivates you to use the big ass roster (while still leaving some breathing room for death / benching the worst characters), and you have a supply of Stamina Potions just in case you really run into a bind, but so far I haven’t used any of them. I do like that Fatigue puts a bit of a damper on the otherwise pretty dominating Physic. The Capture mechanic is pretty clunky, on the other hand. In theory I think it’s an interesting idea, but in practice it feels a bit too much like FF8 Drawing in that you are doing something suboptimal in the present to achieve something for the future, but it’s a bit more interesting than that at least. Still a little dull and cumbersome, though, especially because selling all of these junky items is your only (?) source of income, which is annoying. Trade is actually more forgiving in this game than most of the other games in the series; you can Trade with multiple people on the same turn! Oh, and it has Attack Speed listed as a stat, which none of the games until RADIANT DAWN (!!!) brought back, which is cool.

The character balance is interesting; while there are some really bad units, I do feel like they have at least one good person in most of the major classes and didn’t make most of the cavs or fliers too OP, which some of the later games in the series are guilty of? I like the armor knight guy, and the archers don’t seem too bad at least, Tanya is very fast! Although the mages seem pretty good, especially horse girl with a brave tome. And Graftcalibur is a great weapon for little boy, especially useful against wyvern douchebags. And Leif, thanks to Light Brand, actually isn’t as bad as I feared, although he will never be an all-time great.

The first eight or so maps are relatively unmemorable, although I had a few resets on the map that Jeigan lady turns to stone due to some finnicky map design and some dumb mistakes, but I didn’t have too much trouble with much of the content. The other funny one was Macha duelling about 50 enemies while on a mountain in Chapter 7, including Shiva who is RIP dead, sorry buddy. She had 99 fatigue at the end of the map.

Chapter 9 is the first map that I really struggled with due to the weirdness of the units separated from the rest of the party; they could not hold out indefinitely, so after a couple failed attempts I ended up using Karin to bring over Dalsin the Armor Knight guy. After a couple of missteps and refining my strategy, I finally got it to work and then the map was very easy but quite long because you had to get all of the units to the exit before Leif. Not a good mechanic, sadly, even though I like the idea.

Chapter 10 I struggled with the beginning and dealing with the ballista, which haunt my dreams in this game in general. I think I had a few resets on the first few turns, partially because I really wanted to get that armor knight’s Flame Sword by Capturing him. Other than that, I got through the map without that much difficulty.

Chapter 11 was very annoying because of the inaccessible ballistas, Alfred’s general finnicky nature and not healing himself properly, and the fact that like five of my members, including my thief, were one or two shot by the ballista so they couldn’t move on in the map. And to top it off, the fucking boss and his goddamn thing where he can’t die and the game doesn’t tell you so I threw people at him with 99% chance and he countered them and stuff and GRAH. Oh well, this is what save states are for. I didn’t struggle much with 11x, especially when I realized that you can Physic Olwen when she is injured. LOL.

Chapter 12 is a boring fog map, but not too bad because it doesn’t hardcore ninja you. Don’t think I had any resets, although Sleep staff inflicting PERMANENT status is pretty damn excessive. No resets, though. Chapter 12x is really really fucking tedious and annoying and I hate it forever, too much dodging and thieving and losing weapons and fuck I hate that fucking Thief staff goddamnit. Probably my least favorite map in the game so far? But I got Pan and Tina and turned Lara into a Dancer with the power of FAQ so I’m good. (I let Ugly Guy die. The recruitment for him just seemed too damn annoying.) I missed Fortify which made me sad but I couldn’t really figure out how NOT to, so lol.

Chapter 13 was again a bit finnicky due to again a person holding off a fort as well as ballista that you can’t reach except with a flier who they one shot >_< so I just endured constant ballista swarm, which is annoying. I leaned a lot on Bolt Sword Alfred and Olwen to help eliminate a lot of the threats, so after a few resets I ended up winning. Also, Macha promoted and now she has 15 str and 20 speed which is dumb and great. She’s probably my best unit on raw stats, although other people have more move or OP weapons.

I'm definitely overall not very enamoured with the game's map design, and they seem to be getting more tedious and finnicky as I go further in. Ah well. Not like I expected too much different.

I’ve used a lot of people, but some of the better ones include Finn, Oshin, Halvan, Dagdan, Macha, Fergus, Karin, Asbel, Alfred, Olwen, Mareeta, as well as utility characters like Lara, Lithis, and obviously Safiya/Nanna. I tried using Robert because he looks like my husbando’s husband FERDINAND VON VESTRA but he sucks so I stopped. My love for Ferdinand only goes so far.

The plot is thoroughly mediocre; while Genealogy swings for the fences and mostly falls short of being a good writing game by virtue of not really developing its characters and mostly just throwing big ideas at the wall, Thracia 776 is very safe and unambitious and largely tells an unexciting, generic story of a boy reclaiming his homeland. One thing that the game is bad about is making its evil characters ridiculously evil. They kidnap children for child hunts, they laugh as they kill civilians, and they say to their subordinates “HA HA IF YOU DON’T DO WHAT I SAY I WILL KILLLL YOU”. The game’s villain cast has all of the subtlety of a jackhammer and it doesn’t make for compelling storytelling. Augustus seems like a proto-Soren; he brings up good points and emphasizes that the rich and powerful are not the only people that the Hero should be concerned with, and I think that’s beautiful. I’m really hoping he doesn’t heel-turn because it will annoy me. Everyone else is super bland.

The music is really bad. The art is really bad. You aren’t here for the aesthetics ok

[Luther Lansfeld]

ninja. ballistas. what in the ever loving fuck was that

[Random Consonant]

Trials of Mana - Finished the Kevin/Charlotte/Hawkeye run, turns out hey, putting points in Luck for Fatal Fist Kevin is a good idea.  Light Hawkeye continues to be the big loser of the remake but well someone had to be.  High Cleric being able to overheal is cute but not really changing the fact that you're probably just there for boosted Holy Sabre.

Also seriously fuck Kevin's dad.

[Luther Lansfeld]

i have encountered the man, the myth, the legend, the holy shit that guy has 10 threat range and 100% HP vantage and doubles with dire thunder even on enemy phase. well i won, by buffing a little boy and standing on a forest, but ahhhhh

also fuck that map. i hate this game

[Luther Lansfeld]

Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 - Finished without doing 24x and did not get the staff that cures stone, so 5 of my characters got turned to stone. I put my crappiest characters in range so yeah fine. Otherwise, god, the final battle was so annoying, ended up resetting a bunch of times before perfecting the strategy; hurl status staves at the siege tome users and difficult to kill bosses, bait Stone with crappy characters, and organize and intercept ninja reinforcements. Honestly after the first couple turns it was manageable; just had to get past that initial stage of siege tomes that can one shot my dancer.

Ended up with a lot of dead people thanks to the last chapter - Asbel, Linoan, Nanna, and Tanya died on the final map thanks to siege tomes + stone, and Dagdan, Alba, Glade died on some annoying chapters that I just wanted to finish. Delmund and Hicks died on the chapter they joined, and I never recruited Shiva, Sara, Xavier, Homeros, Trude, or Evalye for the last time. My MVP and killer leader was Macha, although Finn is very useful on outdoor maps. I also really liked Fergus, Nanna, Mareeta, Oshin, Dean, and Dagdan before he kicked it. Leif also ended up quite good but it took him a damn long time to get there. Lara is a dancer and thus useful. Olwen and Alfred are both decent as well.

Maps I hate the most - Chapter 14x, Chapter 20, Chapter 22. Chapter 14x has the stupid Thief tome and the thieves who steal all of your stuff. Honestly, should have just gave up on getting treasure and Warp staved to win early. Chapter 20 has ninja ballistas; Chapter 22 just has Way Too Goddamn Many ballistas. Chapter 17A was also not very fun at all. I generally feel like the maps were okay until about halfway through the game and then decline into annoying and insufferable as the game went further in. The Capture mechanic also became more and more tiresome with its excessive inventory management. Any maps with status staves is pretty annoying, especially before Restore since status is permanent in this game.

The game is just very laborious and not very often all that fun. Its character work, while better than any other game Kaga previously wrote, is not all that compelling. Augustus is a decent proto-Soren and Leif does go through a bit of a character arc where he gasps makes mistakes. Olwen and Reinhardt and Saius all have glimmers of character work (even if Reinhardt’s is mostly being incredulous that his sister has free will, lol).The plot is very paint by numbers with a coat of excess grimdark for good measure.

So I have finished some form of every Fire Emblem, so time to rate them~ For fun I tried to separate the routes in 3H, as well as Revelation. If different versions of the game have the same ordinal ranking I didn’t bother separating them, except CF/ AM because I had a lot to say about both.

13. Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 (1 playthrough)- Yeah sorry these lategame maps are just too much, along with the questionable writing, general Kaga tier woman respect, and ugliness.

12. Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (1 playthrough) - Kinda like Thracia, it has broken gameplay and bad character balance and questionable map design (worse gameplay IMO thanks to the hideously long maps), but it has glimmers of good writing that the series later salvaged into something that didn’t suck after 20whatever years.

11. Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (1 playthrough) - The most generic SRPG in existence, but at least it’s not too infuriating most of the time and has the reclassing mechanic. I can’t remember it very well and I didn’t play it that long ago, which is a bad sign. Its plot is the most generic.

10. Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem (1 playthrough) - Kinda like Shadow Dragon but slightly improved. Its plot is the most generic as well. Hardin’s turn could have been cool but instead it’s kinda stupid. It has enemy phase skip which is solid.

9. Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia (1 playthrough) - Gameplay’s wild and messy - sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating. I really like the voice acting and the art. I melted the first time I saw and heard Lucas. Alm and Celica are both interesting characters, although I feel like both are kind of botched by the end of the game, sadly. Plot is pretty bad. ’m not certain why they took a misogynist base of a game and decided to make it MORE misogynist but that’s a Decision That They Made. Berkut is ultimately a bad addition, and Rudolf is a pretty damn terrible character.

8. Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade(2 playthroughs) - This is basically tied with SoV but I kneejerked it above due to having more respect for its map design and gameplay decisions, in particular, FE6 doesn’t feature teleporting mages that can oneshot your magically fragile units. Plot is pretty bad but has Zephiel, who is at least interesting even if underwritten. Roy is pretty fucking insufferable.

Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation(1 playthrough)  - Unlike my attempt below to rate Silver Snow as a separate experience, this route is impossible to decouple from the other two, so I won’t attempt to do so, since you can’t play it your first time through anyway. Its plot makes no sense and is a raging dumpster fire, but it has some good supplemental supports and still has the Fates gameplay system which I really enjoy, even if the maps are wacky. Even with the problems I still enjoy it well enough, although I’m not exactly clamoring to replay it.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses Silver Snow(1 playthrough)  - Map design is a bit hit and miss compared to Fates which I felt like had excellent map design, but it’s still less clunky than most of the older games and allows you to play around with the class system, which is very cool, especially as you delve into the game further. Hunting by Daybreak is an annoying map. It has some solid character work with Dorothea / Ferdinand, although it seems kind of strange that your characters turn into authoritarian toadies halfway through the game? Especially with Dorothea, who is massively anti-establishment. Edelgard is a very solid character, but her turn to villain felt a little undercooked ultimately, thanks to the game doing a poor job of building up to the confrontation and not dedicating many scenes to her after she turns. The game veers into Rhea being the final boss without much foreshadowing or much of the party really caring? So it seems like you were mostly fighting for, ultimately, your main character to be the next immortal god-pope of Fodlan? Very weird. Some major wasted potential here, but not a terrible experience overall. Puts a bit of a sour taste in my mouth ultimately even with the good work. Great music and character designs too.

7. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (3 playthroughs) - Gameplaywise, I feel like it’s the least robust of 7/8/9 due to map design being weaker and the overpowered units being too overpowered. Great setting work and decent plot, although lategame is a bit derailed by the presence of Ashnard. Some strange decisions with randomly removing items from shops chapter to chapter, and the game is a bit overall slower than 7/8. Ike is a character I like less as the years go on; he is really bad in RD but shows the signs of the Insufferably Beloved and Perfect Male Main even in the second half of 9. Kieran and Marcia are fucking hilarious, and Soren is a great character compared to those who came before him.

6. Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (4 playthroughs) - Worse plot than 9 by a lot, definitely a dumpster fire, but it has overall more compelling gameplay due to the lack of overdominant Canto users. I like 7/8’s battle cut-ins more than the ones in 9 as well. Matthew, Erk, and Serra bring some humor, and Lyn is a total badass even if she isn’t super deep.

5. Fire Emblem: Awakening (3 playthroughs)  - The plot is once again a dumpster fire, and the map design is a bit worse than 7 for all that it is also less clunky with some of the weird, dysfunctional, winding maps. Ninja reinforcements are the pits. Chrom and Lucina are so loveable compared to previous FE lords, and the game is legit funny at times, moreso than any of the previous ones. Also, crit quotes / crit cut-ins are stylish as hell. It’s zany which works to its benefit much of the time but it is not good at being serious. Also, branching promotions are cool!

4. Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (Eirika/Ephraim route) (5 playthroughs)  - I didn’t bother separating out these two because they are pretty much the same. Eirika and Lyon are actually quite well-written characters despite the character assassination of Eirika that has been happening on the Internet since 2005 (a female character, subject to character assassination, surely you jest), and overall I like the maps better than 7 once you account for the fact that I haven’t played Normal mode in a thousand years. Humor is a bit weaker than FE7 but doesn’t map up for its advantages. Also, branching promotions are cool! Also, all hail Lyon, OG trauma boy.

Fire Emblem Three Houses: Verdant Wind (1 playthrough) - See SS writeup about gameplay stuff, although Gronder 2 is an excellent map. Plotwise the game benefits from having Claude, who is one of the most compelling main characters I’ve ever seen, as the ‘magnificent bastard’ main character. He has big dreams and big plans and isn’t afraid to use you and everyone around him to achieve those ideals. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a main character who is as brazenly manipulative as him, and allowing the lord to be a pretty big jerk is pretty awesome, even if he ultimately fills the ‘good guy main’ tropes. I think the game suffers a bit from a weak supporting cast; Lorenz is underutilized, Hilda is HILARIOUS but a little underused as a serious character, and Lysithea is interesting although doesn’t always have great chemistry with the other members of the Golden Deer. The rest are largely not worth caring about. The game coasts pretty hard on Claude to do its heavy lifting plotwise, and he mostly delivers.  Minus points for the totally bizarre and out of nowhere final boss, one of the worst and most random final bosses in the whole series. I thought nothing could be worse than an Evil Ugly Guy reviving an evil dragon to smite us,but I think an Evil Ugly Guy reviving a zombie of some random dead dude has it beaten in the stupidity and anticlimax category (although GSS is a good track!). A sour end to an otherwise interesting, if flawed, game plotwise.

3. Fire Emblem: Fates (Conquest/Birthright) (3 playthroughs / 2 playthroughs) - Fates has my favorite gameplay in the series; it’s strategic and fun to play around with, and it got rid of the godawful weapon breaking mechanic that has plagued every game in the series since FE4 (of all things). Conquest has better map design and better supports, Birthright has way better villains due to having those characters that you support in Conquest be the villains :p. I really like both Xander, who is a flawed human being with a major hangup over familial obligations (which i can hardcore relate to) and Camilla, who has chosen to push her own trauma far back and replaces it with her own special brand of something between insanity and charm. Leo and Elise are solid as well, although not quite as interesting or messy as their older siblings. Azama is my favorite humor character in the game due to him just being such a jerk, but I also enjoyed Odin and Selena and Niles. Plot is a dumpster fire, as usual.

2. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (7 playthroughs) - Finally a game that I can praise the plot. I really liked both Micaiah and Elinicia’s paths in Radiant Dawn - both are well-done characters are both beautiful and emanate strength and compassion. Micaiah is put in a compromising situation and watching her navigate it is quite cool. Elincia is less compelling but overall well done anyway. Again, Kieran/Marcia are good characters, I like the villain cast and how many of them have different goals and ideologies, and I like the little plot twist at the end of Part 3. Other characters I liked include Tibarn, Naliah, and Sanaki, as well Soren and Skrimir. Ike’s path is pretty disappointing and has even more slobbering over him which is disgusting but it is what it is. Gameplay is interesting due to changing between parties; something I’ve always been pretty fond of. I think the map design and difficulty level in Normal are a step above the games before it, and above the games after it aside from Fates/Conquest. And the art is soooo beautiful! I love it! Titania / Lucia / Naliah / Heather / Sigrun / Tanith are all pretty fucking hot, and Volug is a dreamboat. It’s also the first game in the series to not have any stupid bullshit with its shops - you can just buy stuff at the fucking shop in between battles. Thank god!

Fire Emblem Three Houses: Azure Moon (2 playthroughs) - Gameplay stuff is the same as the previous entries, although I love AM’s final boss fight; I love how Hegemon is a mix between monster boss and regular boss, and more terrifying than either. Probably my overall favorite map in the game. Anyone who has been around me for the last year knows that I looove Azure Moon plotwise. It really leans into the cultural trauma story which I am oh-so-fond of, and Dimitri’s story of loss, madness, and redemption is something that hit me really hard. Felix and Sylvain are also both really well-written characters, and Mercedes is sneaky good at being a sly, feminine bitch while being an empathic and decent human being. You guys can go read my long ass posts about Dimitri, Sylvain, and Felix if you want. *waves hand toward Old Post*

1. Fire Emblem Three Houses: Crimson Flower (3 playthroughs) - What I really love about Crimson Flower is a few things; it has a female protagonist who is unique, interesting, traumatized, ambitious, morally grey, and just generally very well-written. She is multi-faceted and complex, which is so refreshing to see in a series full of generic do-gooders. Hubert is an excellent second character even though he is a pretty bad person, mostly because of his genuine devotion to the cause. Dorothea is excellent as well, especially for a secondary character *waves hand toward old post* Ferdinand, Bernadetta, and Petra are all very well done as well, and Lysithea, Manuela, and Hanneman all have some major energy with the Eagles characters. It is simultaneously somber (as more blood wets my feet, they grow heavier with each step) and triumphant (see my sig!). I love its final two maps, not necessarily for the gameplay (my favorite is still AM for that) but for the sheer emotion and evocativeness that both have. It is a lovely story of how Edelgard finds herself capable of love despite her trauma, despite her ambitions pushing aside her feelings, and despite her feelings of worthlessness. And goddamn her outfit is lit. And goddamn are Ferdinand and Hubert and Dorothea and Petra all gay as fuck.

My hands are hurting so I will stop writing now and go look at Edeleth fanart.