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Dustin' off the GameCube... FIRE EMBLEM

I thought FE GBA (US) had some FANTASTIC battle animations. They carried a nice sense of "oomph" (particularly the crits) and I never had the heart to disable them, they were so fun to watch. FE GCN as good?
 
To a degree I feel like I'm missing out a bit not seeing the battle animations (which do looks pretty good) but when I finish a map in 20 mins instead of 45 mins I feel glad I left them off =P. I kinda wished it would ask before each battle aka. SRW so I could check out some of the bosses and stuff, but oh well...
 
I turn battle animations off too. I mean once you've seen them once, the novelty wears off. I do leave them on for certain characters though, like Elaice.
 
yeah I love TearRing Saga, it's my favorite PS1 game. I put in 200 hours into it over 3 games. :P

I hope Berwick Saga is more of the same + the potential army building gameplay that the original game was supposed to have but didn't.

Gunpei Yokoi was the man behind the FE series. When he died, IS kind of scrapped Thracia 776. But they decided to come back together, finish the project, and release it in 2000 for the SNES. Or so I read.

Dunno where you heard that, but Yokoi was just the producer for the series just like he was the producer for all of IS and R&D1's games at the time. Shozo Kaga came up with the idea for Fire Emblem along with 3 college buddies of his. He actually left Intelligent Systems when Thracia was near completion, but he was on good terms with the company until Nintendo decided to sue him for trying to continue Fire Emblem on another platform.

I hear he left because IS wouldn't give him the copyright to his own game series (Fire Emblem), though he should have known what he was getting into when he first started. I'm not positive on this though.

Right now it seems like Taeko Kaneda is controlling the direction of Fire Emblem right now. She didn't direct Souen, but she was responsible for game design/scenario, which pretty much equals game creator. She also directed Rekka no Ken. As a side note, she got her start on Thracia 776 as a portrait artist, so I think that's a remarkable jump.
 
Damn, now you guys are starting to make me want to play TearRing Saga with all the praise you're giving it. Too bad I don't know any Japanese and even if I did, it sounds to me the PSX version is very hard to come by. Okay, back on topic with Fire Emblem, I've been wondering this and don't know if its already been answered but how do the cat-people work (do they stay in cat form all the time or can you switch out and attack in human form)?
 
It was pretty common in Japan last summer.

TRS is damn good. I'm not a big fan of Fire Emblem games and TearRing blew even me away.
 
TearRing Saga has an emphasis on training troops, especially for Holmes' storyline. And there are some really cool characters, like Krishin, who is a sword fighter with the steal skill. In TearRing Saga, steal is activated randomly, and you can steal anything from an enemy that isn't starred, and it works in the arena. :) I racked over 2500 kills with her and made myself uber rich. There's also optional towers and dungeons that have treasure chests with random items.

That's why I loved it. Though the chapters became a little ridiculously easy later on with an overpowered army.
 
Mejilan said:
I thought FE GBA (US) had some FANTASTIC battle animations. They carried a nice sense of "oomph" (particularly the crits) and I never had the heart to disable them, they were so fun to watch. FE GCN as good?


I agree.. battle animations look so cool on the one that got ported to here~~

It's part of the reason why i didn't really like the 3rd gba one... the fighting animations were really stiff and awkward...

from the videos i saw, the GC seems ok, but they just don't have that appeal that the US fire emblem had
 
Yeah the only thing I don't like about Nintendo's direction of the series is the lack of overly cinematic fighting animations which is what FE was known for before its original creator departed. That commercial of TRS2 accurately demonstrates how awsome to look at SRPG battles can be. Makes em feel less like chess pieces and more like living people with personality. Options to mount and dismount horses hasn't made its return either which saddens me. The GBA FE's are fun but severely dumbed down from the SNES versions.
 
from the videos i saw, the GC seems ok, but they just don't have that appeal that the US fire emblem had

wtf? the battle animations in the GC game are way better than the crappy animations in the GBA games...
 
I'm a bit further in now, I reckon mission 7 or 8.
The game is starting to kick serious ass, and I now realise why people prefer Fire Emblem to Advance Wars. Going into battle with just a small number of units and destroying a huge army is an insanely good feeling.

Question for the players further in than me:
Can you always recruit the green team characters by fulfilling some criteria? I missed the first one on the ship (pegasus knight), but I got the thief to join me in the current mission... I won't go back and replay it just for the first one, but are they there to be recruited?
 
You don't recruit Marcia the first time you meet her, she'll show up again later and join automatically. :) There will be other NPC units later on that can join you if you have the right person talk to them.

Oh man I started up a game on normal today just for the fun of it (because maniac is incredibly frustrating) and I was amazed at the difference. There's 1/3rd as many enemies as in maniac, and of course they're easier. Wow. Well, i'll probably do a normal game on a different memory card later, because I miss powerleveling my weak units. :( i'm being forced to use a lot of high level units in my maniac game.
 
It looks like the amount of money you gain and lose per chapter, as well as bonus exp, is based on your performance in that chapter. I don't really know what the formula is, but the general rule of thumb is that beating the chapter in the fewest turns, killing every enemy, and collecting all the items count on your performance.
I just picked up an insane 20,000 gold from beating chapter 16, which is more than sufficient for my current needs.
 
The vagueness of the gold used thing is getting really annoying. Sometimes I take home a huge amount of gold or sometimes like right now I take home nothing and USE 15,000 gold. Seriously this is not cool. I kicked ass in this last battle, beat it quickly, took out all the enemies, didn't take much damage; I was hoping to earn some good money but no I lost out 50% of my current bank.

Otherwise 20 chapters in I love this game. But wtf with a game that has 18 chapters of help menus and a help command for almost every menu item, this mysterious gold used stat is very very bad thing.
 
Hmm, well it's quite strange... I have been reading some japanese boards and they don't seem to know either. I just beat chapter 17, which is an absolutely phenomenally epic chapter (geez it was even split into four parts, took me FOREVER to beat part 4), and I lost 5000 gold and only gained 20 bonus exp. Wow! Well maybe it was because I sucked in part 4 and didn't get some of the treasures, or maybe because I took forever in part 2, oh well...

I still have a decent cash flow because in chapter 16, I somehow gained a whopping 20,000 bonus gold.
 
Yea, ch.17 was awesome. I started playing it in the evening and after the first battle I thought "oh yay, a short chapter! Maybe I'll get in 2 tonight!"...then 2 hours later I was finally finishing it :P
 
heh, it took me roughly 8 hours to get from chapter 17 part 1 to chapter 17 part 4, then about another 7 hours just to beat that part alone. >_<; man that was insane.
maniac mode is insane. :)
 
Pellham said:
wtf? the battle animations in the GC game are way better than the crappy animations in the GBA games...

well, i don't mean how smooth and well-animated the characters move... i was refering to how stylish the animations were. in GC version the characters basically just perform attacks with simple hand movements, whereas gba version the characters move their body around in a way that just has a stylish appeal~ they just... look cool when they attack~~

compare the battle animations between the first gba fe and the third one to see what i mean
 
Pellham said:
heh, it took me roughly 8 hours to get from chapter 17 part 1 to chapter 17 part 4, then about another 7 hours just to beat that part alone. >_<; man that was insane.
maniac mode is insane. :)

Wow ^^; What's your total game time currently?

Even on normal mode, with ch.1-19 finished I'm about 20:30 (add probably 3 hours for real-time due to resets).
 
my total game time is at 22:00 something or other.
However, I would add another 10-15 hours to resets. There were a lot of chapters that I was really frustrated by, although i'd say so far that 8, 11 (I think that's the chapter, maybe it was 10, i'll go back and edit this later if i remember), and 17 part 4 were the hardest by far. Having to figure out how to use 6 units against 31 is crazy. :D

whereas gba version the characters move their body around in a way that just has a stylish appeal~ they just... look cool when they attack~~

They do that in the GC game as well, well at least the mages do. I've a ton of movies of mages doing crit attacks, which look pretty cool. :) And sword fighter/swordmaster criticals are still amazing as always (they've always been the coolest animations in the FE games).
 
Does this story take place right after FE7 or FE8?
 
Nope.

FE1, G, and 3 are set in the same universe

FE4 and FE5 are set in the same universe

FE6 and FE7 are set in the same universe

FE8 is set in its own universe

FE9 is set in its own universe

I'm only slightly more than halfway through FE9, so it's too early to tell if they are going to leave enough room for the next game to be set in the same universe or not. Personally, I hope they go for another original universee, this time one with less emphasis on beast/dragon units.
 
The final boss is BS cheap and retarded. Lost 1-2 hours worth of play in 10 secs... >_<

The game was fairly normal on difficulty until this, but this is just stupid and annoying. Grrr...
 
Finished the game myself at about 33 hours. The final boss is stupid stupid stupid and bad design. I think there was a big lack of explanations in the story and that the plot overall kept building up to be awesome and epic but then at the last 10% it suddenly fell flat and you were like 'oh...right'. Still the game was filled with lots of interesting and likeable characters, and the battle locations were varied and cool looking. The biorythm system didn't really make much of a difference, and the skill system was pretty lacking; so I'd say the gameplay ended up being pretty primitive and just rock/paper/scissors like the GBA FE's. Not much environment interaction either.

So:
+Good characters
-Shallow plot
+Good battles
-Shallow battle system

Still was an addictive strategy game, and it's nice to see the GC get a B+/A- quality rpg. But I dunno, it sucks that the game kinda falls out at the end because even though I was loving the game and willing to praise it to all ends...coming from the ending now I'm kinda bummed and feeling negative about the game :(

btw, Pellham when you get to mission 27 can you finish it with the 'correct' ending and write a summary of what happens and what it explains? I didn't find out there was a different way that the chapter could've ended until I'd saved in the next chapter :\
 
Hmm, beating the game opens up:

--Trail Maps (missions you can do using the team you finished the game with)
--Character Illustrations (you can link up the GBA games and open their illustrations too)
--Sound Room (64 music tracks)
--Movie room (for the 6 movies in the game [total about 5 mins])
--GBA link (for the illustrations)
 
So Bebop, do you think the game is worthy of 50 bucks?

I'm a big Fire Emblem fan but I honestly could hold out on that title...Especially with the a second Fire Emblem GBA title being released here soon.
 
Yea, I'd say it's worth $50 if you're a strategy fan. Doing big battles with 19 units on your side is fun.

But the more I think about it, the game does have some serious issues. Like you build up this party for the entire game and then the game throws a super Orlando broken character at you at the end and a Orlando level unlimited use all powerful weapon at you and says "Use these ultra powered things we're giving you because everything you've built up through the game yourself is now worthless"...yea I dunno, the game rocks but the very end is pretty broken and bad in both plot and gameplay. Boo for IS >_<
 
Still was an addictive strategy game, and it's nice to see the GC get a B+/A- quality rpg. But I dunno, it sucks that the game kinda falls out at the end because even though I was loving the game and willing to praise it to all ends...coming from the ending now I'm kinda bummed and feeling negative about the game :(

I'm probably not going to complain as much when I get to the end because unfortunately too many previous Fire Emblem games had the exact same scenario where you have this super hard last boss that's a piece of cake with the hero's super weapon or the super unit you get near the end of the game. :( Thracia and the most recent GBA game, Seima no Kiseki are the only modern exceptions I can think of. (Thracia's boss was a patheticly weak dark bishop, but he was surrounded by 6 or so other dark bishops with killer spells, so unless your party was sufficiently buff, you'd be in deep shit).

However, I've had the time of my life with the game so far. The quality of the game design in chapters 2 - 11 on maniac mode alone make the game worth it for me. I'm up to chapter 19 and still enjoying things, but the game is starting to get a little bit easier because my units are getting stronger (hence why the earlier chapters were more fun). But we'll see.

btw, Pellham when you get to mission 27 can you finish it with the 'correct' ending and write a summary of what happens and what it explains? I didn't find out there was a different way that the chapter could've ended until I'd saved in the next chapter :\

Sure thing.
 
john tv said:
Is there an Arena this time around?

Nope.

And it turns out there's aren't 'trial missions' but just 1 'trial mission' which isn't even really a good map. You play it with your characters from when you finished the game and then it scores you.

No new game+ feature or anything either. So for replay value it's just 'play on a harder difficulty + use a FAQ to get all the characters next time'.
 
Bebpo said:
Nope.

And it turns out there's aren't 'trial missions' but just 1 'trial mission' which isn't even really a good map. You play it with your characters from when you finished the game and then it scores you.

No new game+ feature or anything either. So for replay value it's just 'play on a harder difficulty + use a FAQ to get all the characters next time'.
I see. Are there multiple endings? (Sorry if you mentioned this already, I may have missed it.)
 
john tv said:
I see. Are there multiple endings? (Sorry if you mentioned this already, I may have missed it.)

No clue. Having more people in your party slightly changes the ending as you get an ending line from each character. But there is a multi-ending chapter before the end that's very story important and I got the bad end for that chapter so getting the good end might change the final ending too.
 
geh i'm still on chapter 20...

Damn, why did Jill have to betray me >_< that's the first time I've seen THAT happen in an FE game. Later, I found out that she rejoins if you keep her alive, but I didn't know at the time... I reset the chapter after beating it...

So right now, it's taking me about 5-10 hours to beat each chapter. :P Somehow I doubt i'll replay this game on maniac again (at least not until the US version comes out).
 
Pellham said:
geh i'm still on chapter 20...

Damn, why did Jill have to betray me >_< that's the first time I've seen THAT happen in an FE game. Later, I found out that she rejoins if you keep her alive, but I didn't know at the time... I reset the chapter after beating it...

So right now, it's taking me about 5-10 hours to beat each chapter. :P Somehow I doubt i'll replay this game on maniac again (at least not until the US version comes out).

......What? She never betrayed me at all. Hmm do you have to have her in your main battle party for this event to happen?
 
kiryogi said:
Well, since I haven't gotten a reply on gamefaqs yet. Can anyone clarify what Biorhythm is for?

I think it's just how likely your skills will activate and your hits will strike or miss. Like when you're in a good mood you'll get more lucky and a bad mood will get less. Dunno for sure though, never really made any visible difference in the game as far as I could tell.
 
What? She never betrayed me at all. Hmm do you have to have her in your main battle party for this event to happen?

If you bring her onto the map, and have her talk to her father (who happens to be the boss), he convinces her to switch sides...
 
Pellham said:
If you bring her onto the map, and have her talk to her father (who happens to be the boss), he convinces her to switch sides...

I brought her up to her father and there was no talk command! So I attacked with her and he was like "blah blah, it is sad that I must fight you". Wierd. Maybe you have to have met certain requirements to allow that conversation.
 
I brought her up to her father and there was no talk command! So I attacked with her and he was like "blah blah, it is sad that I must fight you". Wierd. Maybe you have to have met certain requirements to allow that conversation.

Wow, that's weird. Yeah, I don't have a clue what the requirements could possibly be. I went to a Japanese BBS afterwards and saw others having the same issue. Maybe it's only on hard/maniac?
 
Hmm on an english messageboard, someone managed to get 2 trial maps after beating the game (on normal). So I wonder what kind of conditions are required to get that...
 
What in fucking good god hell. I thought you guys said the RNG was fixed a good bit in Souen? I ENDED UP WITH A NOSTAT LEVEL UP FOR MY WAYU... and even after resetting the map I got it again. W T F. I know I got stat ups before, so what in good karma hell is this?! WHATS THE POINT OF LEVELING WITHOUT A STAT UP? Hell.
 
That's funny, i've never had the same level up on resetting. I'd certainly say it's fixed since I've had 0 stat and 8 stat level ups for the same character.
 
Heh funny you say that. I *just* got to chapter 27 yesterday. chapter 24 and 26 gave me nightmares. I played chapter 26 for 5 hours straight on monday and Senerio died unexpectedly >_<. But then I played it yesterday and didn't have as much problems (though it still took about 4.5 hours to beat the chapter).
 
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