Fire Emblem is like playing Go...maybe

[lucathia]

While playing Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance yesterday, I kept worrying out loud.

"If I move there, I'll get attacked and my troops might die. BUT WAIT, if I do this, this group will survive. Yes, I'll move here and attack this person first with this character to weaken them, and then this guy can move in..."

My mom, who was watching me play and hearing me muttering stuff, commented that it was like I was playing Go. X3;

Well, it is true that FE is a strategy game. And, knowing when to attack and when to defend is really crucial since a dead character never comes back. ;_; I kept having to restart chapter 13 because of that. Sooo frustrating.


Chapter 13: A Guiding Wind requires my characters to defend for 10 turns. Should be simple enough, except...not. Something kept going wrong. The map was small and I didn't have any promoted characters yet, and stupid crows kept coming.

Playthrough 1: Astrid died. On the 1st turn. Guh. Oh well, it was early enough that restarting didn't hurt.

Playthrough 2: Astrid somehow survived and I was already on the enemy ship...but a crow flew in and destroyed the blinking green space that I was supposed to defend. I DIDN'T KNOW THAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. D: All was going well too. Okay, I was told to protect it...I should have seen that coming.

Playthrough 3: Okay, MUST TALK TO ASTRID ON THE FIRST TURN to save myself the trouble of hoping she won't get killed and SEND SOMEONE TO STAND ON THAT BLINKING GREEN SQUARE so that the crows won't get to it. I had Nephenee and Mordecai shove and smite Ike so that he could reach Astrid. All went well until Volke got KO'd with a critical hit. Wasn't Volke's shadow skill supposed to make those guys go for someone else first? Riiight. He was the only one in range. D:

Playthrough 4: Oh no. Oh NO. I didn't send Volke out immediately to the chest on the enemy ship since he got killed last time and that really hurt, so I played it slightly safer this time around. WHICH LET THE CROW GET AWAY WITH MY OCCULT SCROLL. That is just...no. I need that occult scroll to learn the strongest skills in the game. ;_;

Playthrough 5: Astrid saved. Blinking green square protected. Occult scroll get. Time to kill the boss! I can surround him so he can't kill me with his bow. This will be easy! Hm, I'll have Jill (a wyvern rider) stab him and then fly away since mounted units can move again afterwards. Lalala. Wait. The boss has a longbow and can shoot three spaces. Jill is within range!! NOOOO. She'll get killed! I have to rescue her. Gatrie go...noo...Jill's too heavy to be rescued. Drat. Dead.

All my other units had fantastic level ups too this time, so I was really considering letting her die for good since I hadn't plan on including her in my roster...but still. I hate it when I lose anyone.

Playthrough 6: WAS DARN EASY. Everything went smoothly. I just wish it was like this from the start. I suppose I'm a bit too familiar with this level now.

I probably should have given my troops some more bonus experience to make my life easier since I had so much of it saved up. -__-;; All levels after this so far have been really easy. I'm currently on chapter 18. Chapter 17 was loooong. The third part of Chapter 17 was pretty hard, but the others were pretty easy.


Musings on my characters next. Or after I beat the game. Yeah.

Comments

[kinohiroshino.livejournal.com]

hi! remember me? no? i was at Fanime. still don't remember me? oh well.

anyways, i love the fire emblem games. i have the two for the GBA. the first english FE for the GBA was more difficult than Sacred Stones, the 2nd one, because it did not have a map you could walk around and level up on like Sacred Stones did. i literally lost count on how many times i had to restart the final level. the number of times i restarted the final level was definitely in the double digits though.

i also HATE it when a character dies so after a while i had an extremely complicated plan on how to beat the final level in that game XD. in the very end i had to fight a dragon and the only person strong enough to take two hits from the dragon without dying turned out to be this old mage who joins your party at the VERY end of the game.

so mage attack, dragon attack back twice, heal mage. rinse repeat until dragon's hp was low enough for Eliwood to kill the dragon himself in one hit. that took many hours but fortunately i was in the car on a really long family trip. killed many hours with that game.

[lucathia]

Uh, if I had a picture, I probably would remember? ^^

Hm, yeah, I think Sacred Stones was easier. Since it was my third FE, that made it easier in that way too, since I was terrible when I first started playing Fire Emblem games. I loved that thieves could promote in that game, among a lot of other things.

Oh yeah, Sacred Stones made item managing very easy too, with how Eirika could just go into the items herself right from the beginning. Merlinus was cool too for FE7, though sometimes hard to protect. (I found it funny whenever Merlinus managed to dodge enemy attacks. A tent dodging attacks!)

By the time I got to the final level in FE7, it was already my third try at the game so I had much stronger units that time around. ^^ All three of the lords were pretty strong, so I remember using them and that old mage to surround the dragon so it wouldn't kill my weaker units, and Serra healed everyone with some long range healing.

I really like the GBA FE games. :3 Path of Radiance has been fun so far, though I still hope for more portable FE games.

Have you tried any other FE games? I tried playing a rom of an old SNES FE game (I think it was...the fourth one?) and my goodness, it was hard. The map of the first level was huge. I never finished it since I never saved it.

[fromastudio]

FE4 is amazing. It's actually not that hard because you can save every turn, unlike the other FEs from FE5 onwards. I think the difficulty would go something like this (I haven't played FE9, but I've heard it's one of the harder ones).

FE5 > FE9 > FE6 > FE4 > FE6 > FE7 > FE8

...assuming Normal Mode for FE7, since Hard Mode is actually quite...hard. Also, the second half of FE4 is a pain if you don't match up the right lovers and get the right children apparently. It was already enough of a pain finishing with the right children; I've never been tempted to get substandard ones. >_<

Plus, FE4 has the most amazing characters/plot ever. I want to write like a million fanfics for FE4/5.

[lucathia]

Maybe if I went back to it now it wouldn't be as hard. And being able to save every turn doesn't sound bad. I heard that FE10 has that option too...but that it's kind of necessary since it's so hard. .___.;

Children factor into FE4? Two generations in one game? :O Every time I start a new FE, I keep thinking that I won't like the characters as much as ones from previous games...I turn out wrong of course. Ike's a pretty refreshing lord in that he starts out as a commoner. At least, that's the case from what I know so far, unless the game throws a curve ball at me.

Amazing characters you say? :D I think I might attempt FE4 again after I finish 9 and 10.

[kinohiroshino.livejournal.com]

my facebook album (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2554&l=7779d&id=510829173)
in that one giant group pic of everyone i'm the guy on the far left in black and white wit da hat.

i have not played any of the older FE games yet unfortunately. school leaves little time for any kind of RPG anymore. most of my video game time lately has been concentrated on Guitar Hero 3 XD. play a few songs for 15 minutes than get back to work.

but i read some of the older FE games have the triangle attack. i only played teh GBA FE games so the only time i've done triangle attack was with teh 3 Pegasus girls in Sacred Stones. i read that older FE games can do triangle attacks if u have 3 Pegasi(?/Pegasuses?) or 3 generals.

[lucathia]

Okay, I know you. =P Just didn't recognize your LJ name.

I haven't gotten Guitar Hero 3 yet. I never did finish hard mode for GH2. I got stuck on one of the songs.

FE takes a lot of time, especially with all that restarting. I like a lot of handheld games because most of them let you save whenever. I guess I could suspend my game in the middle of a chapter for FE...but I tend to like finishing a map in one sitting.

Oh yes, the triangle attack. I have never had all three units needed to do the triangle attack in previous games (I only ever used one Pegasus knight in each game and rarely any generals). But for Path of Radiance, I finally have all three characters necessary. :D This time, it's with three archers, two of which bows aren't their main weapon. Pretty cool.

[kinohiroshino.livejournal.com]

haha i never finished GH2 on hard either. i got stuck on hard on the 7th tier of songs. i actually beat the 7th tier of songs on hard on GH3 but it's still crazy tough. one new song on GH3 is so difficult i fail in the first second of the song. no exaggeration!

youtube link of the craziest song on GH3 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaTdBLQ5t8Q)

youtube link of the band playing to prove it is physically possible to play that fast (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3H4liC2sWg)