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[Save 'N Quit]

Tempted to buy the money DLC, especially since I plan on playing Lunatic/+ after I'm done with Hard.

Not really liking Roy's and Micaiah's DLC, would have perferred those two to be much cheaper.

 

[Mr. Fix]

Ah, okay. Any word on name/price of the new bundle? I watched the Direct but I can't remember anything from it, haha.

The money one alone is 2.50, and the bundle is 6.

 

[WrenchNinja]

I'm going to get so much use out of this this year.

 

[ultron87]

I kind of want to hook Henry up with everyone. He's hilarious.

 

[NeonZ]

I hear later DLCs are a lot better, but as is always the problem, unless it downscaled my characters or something, I suspect my end-game party will power through them. I know some DLCs are meant to be crazy hard with enemies that have insanely high stats, but I doubt those will come out anytime soon.

If they take one week for each past character map, yeah, we only will be seeing maps harder than the final chapter in six weeks. I think they might handle the next set of character maps differently though, considering how it's three chapters all featuring DLC characters who never had their games released outside of Japan.

The map itself is quite big though, coming from FE4, the second chapter has a new class and the third one a new skill, so I guess there's a chance they might think that's enough to carry it. The other 6 remaining character maps after those three all feature characters from games released in the West though, so they could might start releasing both at once or something, which could help getting to those higher level maps, and known characters, much sooner. Maybe start with the first map of character collection 2 next week, alongside the bundle for it, and then start releasing the third set in the following week, with Elincia's map, alongside the bundle for that pack.

 

[Lusankya]

Btw. EU will also get a slightly different box art:

I like it better than the title in the black box.

 

[Mr. Fix]

If we're following the JP release slightly similarly, I'd expect to have

Spoiler

Gangrel

's spotpass paralogue today.

 

[zroid]

ugh yeah I'm going to need the second DLC bundle. $6 down the hole.

 

[Projectjustice]

I dont see the DLC bundle. When will it be released?

 

[Mr. Fix]

I dont see the DLC bundle. When will it be released?

Usually at noon. About an hour and a half from now.

 

[Busaiku]

So if we keep getting $6 bundles of 3, it won't be that much more than $50 for us, which isn't too bad, I guess.

 

[mercviper]

Ok so Insane's insane. Downright impossible. I got the first two missions alright, beat them in the demo too, but the third mission's impossible. The Northroad one, with the bridge, and you get your whole team starting down in the middle of nowhere. Tried reaching the west woods, the mountain, rushing Fred towards a Fortress... it's impossible. Fred gets killed in 3 hits ! These guys have 26 ATK and I've barely even started. Hard was easy, kind of like Radiant Dawn's Normal and easier than Path of Radiance's Hard, but this is such a big step.

I know that feel, bro. Having a Hammer against you in the first mission is pretty bullshit too lol.

West woods & mountain is totally the way to go though. I had Fred take out the swordsmen then retreat to my setup over there. Ended up having Fred take out most of the guys across the bridge too, to my reluctance. Boss just does too much damage and is ranged to boot.

Still working on Ch. 5 myself. I have a save with it beaten... but at the cost of Virion + Maribelle. They were lost due to amateur mistakes and me being greedy though, so I'm replaying til I get frustrated before deciding to continue.

 

[RPGamer92]

Has there been any word on when NOA is gonna send new shipments to retailers?

 

[semiconscious]

2 likely already asked paralogue questions:

are they accessible indefinitely, or do you have to do them immediately?

re: paralogue 14 (desert):

Spoiler

i blew it, afa getting laurent. all i had to do was have chrom visit that first town? or did the mother (miriel) have to visit it? either way, kinda nasty, to the extent that i've been able to see on the map the other paralogue children i've gotten...

 

[Mr. Fix]

2 likely already asked paralogue questions:

are they accessible indefinitely, or do you have to do them immediately?

re: paralogue 14 (desert):

Spoiler

i blew it, afa getting laurent. all i had to do was have chrom visit that first town? or did the mother (miriel) have to visit it? either way, kinda nasty, to the extent that i've been able to see on the map the other paralogue children i've done...

They won't disappear until you beat them. And yeah, Chrom or the mothers recruit the kids.

 

[semiconscious]

They won't disappear until you beat them. And yeah, Chrom or the mothers recruit the kids.

thanks! ...

 

[slayn]

I'm pretty far in at this point (chapter 20ish on hard) and I've decided I don't like the pair up mechanic at all. It seems to easily remove all thought I put into positioning my units because I can pair everyone up so that no weaker characters are on the field during the enemy's turn. I don't even pay attention to attack ranges anymore. And the stat bonus for taking the approach of pairing up means there is only benefits. Hell, with S rank pair ups both units usually end up attacking anyway.

Rescuing people in fire emblem 9/10 was a much more interesting choice because while a unit in danger could be protected there were a lot of drawbacks to it.

If pair up is going to provide stat boosts and extra attacks, then I think you have to take away the complete protection of the 2nd unit. Give the enemy the potential to attack the unit in back or add some other kind of threat to it.

As it is now, I just stuff my healers/mages into the back pockets of my tanks and march forward.

 

[Ace Harding]

Is the new DLC up yet?

Its starting to sound like the DLC breaks the game even more than the infinite grinding - hopefully it gets much, much harder. Maybe I need to just beat the game before playing DLC and the Paralogues - I finally went back to the main story last night and just destroyed every enemy on Chapter 14 - I don't think I suffered 1 point of damage. At the end I was just holding my guys up to go grab the loot before one-shotting the boss.

If I totally stop all side stuff and go through the rest of the story, will I continue to be OP for the rest of the game?

I don't even feel like I was grinding that much - was mostly just developing support and my lower-leveled characters, and did like 3 of the Bonus Team challenges and both DLC missions. The other problem is that sometimes I have time to play a quick battle (like 15 minutes) but not enough time to go through a chapter with all the cutscenes and stuff.

I feel like maybe they should have tweaked the leveling curves a bit, but I understand that people want to experiment with different classes and new characters and that requires some faster leveling. Definitely some difficult decisions to make there to balance the game for everybody.

 

[zroid]

I guess I'll just buy a $20 card. Will need to pick up Harmoknight in a few weeks, anyway.

 

[flyinpiranha]

64



Did you try the demo?

I haven't given it a full try yet. There was a lot of talking right off the bat and I'm pretty hooked on Tales of the Abyss with limited time to really play lately.

Can't say I've given it an honest try yet. Is it a good representative of what the game entails? I swear I've watched about 10 gameplay videos and they all look different!

 

[HawthorneKitty]

Woo the DLCs are up.

 

[Basileus777]

There doesn't seem to be any new spotpass content.

 

[Mr. Fix]

There doesn't seem to be any new spotpass content.

Did your other spotpass stuff arrive yet? I'm kind of doubting it myself though. Also 72k per run on the Gold map. It's also mildly okay for levels since there's about 6 or 7 level 20 promoted units.

 

[Busaiku]

Did your other spotpass stuff arrive yet? I'm kind of doubting it myself though. Also 72k per run on the Gold map. It's also mildly okay for levels since there's about 6 or 7 level 20 promoted units.

Level 20 promoted units?
Seriously, how the heck am I supposed to do this now...

 

[Mr. Fix]

Level 20 promoted units?
Seriously, how the heck am I supposed to do this now...

There's a bunch. The level 20 promoted units drop 7k, the weaker ones drop 1k, 3k, and 5k. They don't attack on their turn though, they just run down the map. They will attack back if you engage them though.

 

[Roto13]

Where mah SpotPass content at?

No new daily Sacred Stones team, no new weekly set of teams (which should unlock the remaining 5 Sacred Stones teams anyway), no items or Paralogues or anything.

Boo-urns.

 

[NeonZ]

I'm pretty far in at this point (chapter 20ish on hard) and I've decided I don't like the pair up mechanic at all. It seems to easily remove all thought I put into positioning my units because I can pair everyone up so that no weaker characters are on the field during the enemy's turn. I don't even pay attention to attack ranges anymore. And the stat bonus for taking the approach of pairing up means there is only benefits. Hell, with S rank pair ups both units usually end up attacking anyway.

Well, the main point is that the benefits are necessary though, and need to be handled well. Pairing up magic and physical units due to the smaller defense or resistance of each one can result in valuable wasted physical or magical bonus. I haven't played on normal, but, at least on hard, that kind of thing is only pointless if you're so overpowered you could walk all over the enemies without pair up in the first place.

Rescuing people in fire emblem 9/10 was a much more interesting choice because while a unit in danger could be protected there were a lot of drawbacks to it.

Pair Up can't really be used to rescue a unit in danger though. I guess you can move a hurt unit to the backside if you aren't using healers with Pair Up, but you can't actually remove one from the enemy's line of fire after they've attacked, unlike with Rescue and Shove.

The game handles bonuses to enemy units that the own playable units lack (like higher stats for the enemy versions than the playable versions in spotpass battles), and pair up is how the player makes up for that. It's a very different design focus than the ones that resulted from Rescue.

 

[anddo0]

So I finally decided to play this game. I wanted to download the dlc before starting and was greeted with this message " this software is extra data is corrupted and must be recreated". It also claims that there is no sd card. My card is fine, it reads on my laptop etc...

will re-downloading the game fix this issue? Anyone else have this problem?

 

[The_Darkest_Red]

I'm pretty far in at this point (chapter 20ish on hard) and I've decided I don't like the pair up mechanic at all. It seems to easily remove all thought I put into positioning my units because I can pair everyone up so that no weaker characters are on the field during the enemy's turn. I don't even pay attention to attack ranges anymore. And the stat bonus for taking the approach of pairing up means there is only benefits. Hell, with S rank pair ups both units usually end up attacking anyway.

Rescuing people in fire emblem 9/10 was a much more interesting choice because while a unit in danger could be protected there were a lot of drawbacks to it.

If pair up is going to provide stat boosts and extra attacks, then I think you have to take away the complete protection of the 2nd unit. Give the enemy the potential to attack the unit in back or add some other kind of threat to it.

As it is now, I just stuff my healers/mages into the back pockets of my tanks and march forward.

The pair up mechanic is a game changer, there's no doubt about it. I do think the guaranteed and constant ability to protect weaker units can be a small downside to the mechanic, as you've mentioned, but I think the upside is worth it. It's true that healers and mages stay protected when they are tagging along as a support unit but they don't gain EXP at a reasonable rate in that role, so if you want them to be useful you'll still have to expose them to danger at some point. On top of that, if you want to use a healer you'll be forced to make them the lead unit which could leave them open to attack (requiring you to think about your positioning).

The upsides of the pair up mechanic are very enjoyable and impactful to the overall FE formula, I think. I like that relationships now have a huge impact on the way that a battle plays out, and also that units who have a bond formed between them can help and protect each other. The stat bonuses provided from pairing up are also a great addition and can require some additional strategy to manage (if you want to match up units that will benefit each other in very meaningful ways).

Overall I think the pair up mechanic is a lot of fun and an interesting new wrinkle to the series' mechanics. It is extremely powerful, perhaps a little too powerful, but there are enough trade-offs to keep it from feeling broken to me (bad EXP gains for the support unit, less actions per turn, lessened ability to control areas of the map, etc.).

 

[SpaceBridge]

Okay you guys convinced me to train Donnel. I'm using the legacy DLC chapters to train him. Any other tactics to get him to lvl 20?

Also what did you guys promote Frederick to?

 

[scy]

If Pair Up returns (and it really should), it just needs to be taken advantage of by the enemy a bit better. More maps where the reduced unit count is relevant, for instance. That and giving the enemy access to Pair Up could go a long way in balancing things out.

It's also worth note that Hard is kind of "eh?" in the difficulty scale for those familiar with the game. Lunatic(+) is where Pair Up becomes a necessity rather than "Look, no damage!"

 

[WrenchNinja]

Okay you guys convinced me to train Donnel. I'm using the legacy DLC chapters to train him. Any other tactics to get him to lvl 20?

Also what did you guys promote Frederick to?

Donnel doesn't need to go up to 20, promote him at 15. His max cap is 30 since he's a villager.

Frederick is already promoted. You can can use a second seal to switch to a different class if you want.

 

["God's Beard!"]

Man, these paralogues are rough. I'm glad hard mode is finally starting to live up to its name, I had to drop to 8 characters to survive, and then Chrom got one-shotted by the boss when there were only two units left -_-

 

[EvilMario]

If Pair Up returns (and it really should), it just needs to be taken advantage of by the enemy a bit better. More maps where the reduced unit count is relevant, for instance. That and giving the enemy access to Pair Up could go a long way in balancing things out.

It's also worth note that Hard is kind of "eh?" in the difficulty scale for those familiar with the game. Lunatic(+) is where Pair Up becomes a necessity rather than "Look, no damage!"

I really thought toward the end of the game we would have seen some boss units pairing up. Alas.

 

[Duane Cunningham]

So I assume Chrom will be the FE rep in the next Smash Bros... I wonder if it would be better to use Anna so they don't have to change it every time?

 

[chickdigger802]

I kinda wish Main character could be in Smash. A mix of magic and sword could be quite interesting.

Is the 'default' face just white hair middle build? Don't remember.

 

[WrenchNinja]

So I assume Chrom will be the FE rep in the next Smash Bros... I wonder if it would be better to use Anna so they don't have to change it every time?

It's not going to be Chrom.

Spoiler

Lucina is more popular

Plus they need more female representation.

 

[ultron87]

I'd be fine with Chrom or Lucina but I also wouldn't mind a FE representative in Smash that isn't "person with sword".

 

[The_Darkest_Red]

If Pair Up returns (and it really should), it just needs to be taken advantage of by the enemy a bit better. More maps where the reduced unit count is relevant, for instance. That and giving the enemy access to Pair Up could go a long way in balancing things out.

It's also worth note that Hard is kind of "eh?" in the difficulty scale for those familiar with the game. Lunatic(+) is where Pair Up becomes a necessity rather than "Look, no damage!"

I honestly think it could get to be a bit too much if enemies were able to pair up. When you get to the point where almost every battle is a 2 v 2 or something it would really become an almost entirely different game.

I agree with you on more maps where the reduced unit count is relevant, though. That is one of the biggest downsides of using pair up but it isn't a factor very often in Awakening.

Also, out of curiosity, have you finished the game on Lunatic? I'm wondering if anyone around here has done it yet. I'm trying to decide if I should do Lunatic next or another Hard run for more experimentation.

 

[EvilMario]

I kinda wish Main character could be in Smash. A mix of magic and sword could be quite interesting.

Is the 'default' face just white hair middle build? Don't remember.

Morgan would be a cool character. Two colour palettes can be for Male Morgan, two can be for female Morgan.

Or maybe the new FE character will be an Ice Climber like character (Chrom + Sumai) to represent the Pairup feature in Awakening.

 

[NeonZ]

That and giving the enemy access to Pair Up could go a long way in balancing things out.

Only if they completely changed the attack/defense mechanic. Giving critical rates to enemies is fair game because high luck, defense or resistence units, as well as different range options, can get through that, but giving the enemy random chances of extra attacks and completely nullifying the damage without any opportunity to counter that would just make the experience too random.

It works for players because you can still work out an strategy without relying on those chances, but the moment you can't be assured you'll hit an enemy the game becomes just bad (I hate Thracia's capture mechanic for this).

 

[Roto13]

I didn't realize we were getting the Golden Gaffe map today. (Plus a bundle for it.)

 

[Lunar15]

So I assume Chrom will be the FE rep in the next Smash Bros... I wonder if it would be better to use Anna so they don't have to change it every time?

I would actually be kind of surprised if they dropped Ike. Roy was a Marth clone, but Ike was his own fighter with distinct moves. Knowing how much Sakurai likes Fire Emblem (he says it's his favorite) and given the popularity of the series in japan right now, we could just see Marth, Ike, AND Chrom.

 

[DXB-KNIGHT]

Golden GAFfe? Eight Foooouuurrrrrrrrrr

 

[Roto13]

I'd much rather see Lucina than Chrom.

 

[HawthorneKitty]

I would actually be kind of surprised if they dropped Ike. Roy was a Marth clone, but Ike was his own fighter with distinct moves. Knowing how much Sakurai likes Fire Emblem (he says it's his favorite) and given the popularity of the series in japan right now, we could just see Marth, Ike, AND Chrom.

I like Ike, but Chrom stole his Aether...

 

[scy]

I honestly think it could get to be a bit too much if enemies were able to pair up. When you get to the point where almost every battle is a 2 v 2 or something it would really become an almost entirely different game.

Only if they completely changed the attack/defense mechanic. Giving critical rates to enemies is fair game because high luck units can get through that, but giving the enemy random chances of extra attacks and completely nullifying the damage without any opportunity to counter that would just make the experience too random.

It works for players because you can still work out an strategy without relying on those chances, but the moment you can't be assured you'll hit an enemy the game becomes just bad (I hate Thracia's capture mechanic for this).

Yeah, it'd have to be a modified version of Pair Up. Basically something with a guaranteed chance for both units to attack with different stat mechanics. Nullified crits and no Guard chance for Enemy Pair Up, for instance.

Though, the argument could be made for just making them better units to begin with to compensate for your Pair Up but, hey! Just figured them using it is better than free stats to equal it.

Also, out of curiosity, have you finished the game on Lunatic? I'm wondering if anyone around here has done it yet. I'm trying to decide if I should do Lunatic next or another Hard run for more experimentation.

I chickened out at the start and went for Hard. I really should've restarted around Chapter 5 or so and went for Lunatic ;_;

Oh well.

Edit: I actually haven't beaten the game either. Too much Support grinding as I try to figure out how I want to do my pairings

Spoiler

that will be irrelevant when I do them all for stats and classes anyway

 

[backlot]

They should put some kind of magic user in Smash. It would be more interesting.

 

[GeekyDad]

So if we keep getting $6 bundles of 3, it won't be that much more than $50 for us, which isn't too bad, I guess.

I'm sure Nintendo appreciates you thinking that.

I love this game, but considering these DLCs, I'm not sure Awakening is cumulatively a $90 value for me.

 

[ultron87]

I would actually be kind of surprised if they dropped Ike. Roy was a Marth clone, but Ike was his own fighter with distinct moves. Knowing how much Sakurai likes Fire Emblem (he says it's his favorite) and given the popularity of the series in japan right now, we could just see Marth, Ike, AND Chrom.

It seems like Chrom would fight pretty similarly to Ike.

Obviously we just need Marth with alternate Lucina skin and voice pack and Ike with alternate Chrom.