Fire Emblem series

[Zeke Von Genbu]

We must be playing Golden Deer house very differently. Byleth is destroying people as a thief with no offensive abilities other then +2 speed and sword/bow affinity in my game and outleveling the fuck out of everyone, I had to cut back on using them to let anyone else have a chance. I have the snowflake sword but I've only used it once on the first raid boss.

My tier list would be Byleth >= Claude > Rapheal >= Lysithea > Everyone Else > Ignatz

I'm actually impressed though that the spread between good units and goobers you bench on the first opportunity isn't as severe as in Awakening/Fates. Aside from Ignatz who suffers from being like the 4th or 5th best archer I have atm they are all pretty effective units.

I'm one of those "Mount > Everything else" sort of players, so this MC leaning towards foot locked sword/fist stuff isn't doing it for me because of how annoying it is to level Byleth's skills especially early on when you don't have a lot of points. Leveling riding is a pain in the ass for Byleth due to their learning restrictions and low starting ranks. Byleth's speed growth isn't also my favorite to be making a Cav without them getting maybe speed screwed due to Cav's speed growth penalty and leveling flying is about as equally annoying. I refused to make Lorenz a Cavalier for the same reason and Byleth's speed growth is only 5% higher. I benched Ignatz immediately because he looked useless and I got early Sylvain because I was playing Female Byleth.

Currently my main carries are Claude, Wyvern Hilda, and Paladin Bow Leonie alongside her side kick Sylvain. I also benched Raphael for Felix when I picked him up because Raph kept getting doubled and I wasn't liking that very much, also Felix's relic shield is really good and makes him just as bulk or bulkier than Raphael and his speed is enough to double most things anyway. Raphael is better then I thought as I expected him to be garbage unless I played really slow, but his high strength gauntlet stuff does actually help out here and there.

Robin broke Awakening better then Byleth breaks 3H and Corncob can become a Wyvern or a Cavalier within the first couple real chapters and snowball the game easily with Paladin Jakob pair up backpack.

 

[GlueAsLube]

Honestly, I’ve been having a lot of fun with the game. I chose Blue Lions first since I wasn’t too interested in them, however since then I’ve started liking the characters from the house a lot. Its’s so much better than fates, thankfully. I like that it sorta does it’s own thing. I dig the characters, too- haven’t really found any I dislike yet.
Can’t wait to play all the routes... eventually.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

How does the calendar and schedule work? It seems daunting. Are you on a time limit??

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

How does the calendar and schedule work? It seems daunting. Are you on a time limit??

I'll try and sum it up while answering your question thoroughly on how this game ultimately plays out.

So Fire Emblem traditionally has "chapters" which are forced combat map sequences this game, from what I've heard this game has roughly 20-ish chapters depending on the route. Every chapter gives you a month's worth of time where you can teach your non avatar character how to better use certain aspects of combat like all the weapons, the two schools of magic, how to ride a horse, etc. You need these stats raised to "promote" to better classes when you reach certain level thresholds.

If you just want to play and beat the story you only need to know a few things, one focus on the character's strengths skill wise (the game outright tells you these things) and the game will periodically suggest to you how you should make the characters and raise their stats overtime but you can ignore its suggestions and do whatever you want so you won't really get lost there on what class to make them. Every week on the calander you get "free time" block which lets you do 4 total options and every other day is basically automated and preset so these blocks of time are only points in time where you're really making any major choices. Most side quests are on a time limit so keep that in mind, but the game tells you those time limits so don't over think it.

Explore: This lets you walk around the school and talk to people this is also how you can raise your avatar character's stats like sword, riding, etc you basically talk to the other teachers and spend your exploration points to raise those stats which are limited per exploration section. When you run out of points and are done talking to people you can just exit and start the next week.

Seminar: This is an extra teaching session where your avatar can participate + other students, you can use this to basically cram skill points for your avatar and your students.

Battle: These are optional battles you can do, normal mode lets you grind freely and hard mode limits you to 1 or 2 battles per free time block.

Rest: This is simple you do nothing and go to next week, this gives your students a break period which can help them study a little better.

At the end of the month you're forced into a chapter like a normal fire emblem and you have to do that chapter to progress, the chapters are fairly easy imo so you'll be fine. If you've never played Fire Emblem feel free to play on casual mode to not have perma death, though if you want a challenge at all play on hard mode because normal mode is like mega baby mode from what I've heard and I don't find hard all that hard either. The game itself explains all the school and time management stuff pretty well so you won't get too lost with this stuff.

 

[ASoulMan]

I managed to nab a copy of the game! I'll be playing it later tonight.

 

[Chin of Campbell]

Hearing that the anime shit has been toned down and the writing is better is great, I'm definitely going to check this out at some point.

The school setting me has a little offput but eh. One tired anime stereotype isn't going to sour the whole thing.

 

[NerdShamer]

How does the calendar and schedule work? It seems daunting. Are you on a time limit??

Technically, you are on one if you can't stay ahead of the difficulty curve and keep buying useless shit. But you shouldn't have much of a problem if you know what to invest in your moody teenagers in order to get them to promote.

I'll try and sum it up while answering your question thoroughly on how this game ultimately plays out.

So Fire Emblem traditionally has "chapters" which are forced combat map sequences this game, from what I've heard this game has roughly 20-ish chapters depending on the route. Every chapter gives you a month's worth of time where you can teach your non avatar character how to better use certain aspects of combat like all the weapons, the two schools of magic, how to ride a horse, etc. You need these stats raised to "promote" to better classes when you reach certain level thresholds.

If you just want to play and beat the story you only need to know a few things, one focus on the character's strengths skill wise (the game outright tells you these things) and the game will periodically suggest to you how you should make the characters and raise their stats overtime but you can ignore its suggestions and do whatever you want so you won't really get lost there on what class to make them. Every week on the calander you get "free time" block which lets you do 4 total options and every other day is basically automated and preset so these blocks of time are only points in time where you're really making any major choices. Most side quests are on a time limit so keep that in mind, but the game tells you those time limits so don't over think it.

Explore: This lets you walk around the school and talk to people this is also how you can raise your avatar character's stats like sword, riding, etc you basically talk to the other teachers and spend your exploration points to raise those stats which are limited per exploration section. When you run out of points and are done talking to people you can just exit and start the next week.

Seminar: This is an extra teaching session where your avatar can participate + other students, you can use this to basically cram skill points for your avatar and your students.

Battle: These are optional battles you can do, normal mode lets you grind freely and hard mode limits you to 1 or 2 battles per free time block.

Rest: This is simple you do nothing and go to next week, this gives your students a break period which can help them study a little better.

At the end of the month you're forced into a chapter like a normal fire emblem and you have to do that chapter to progress, the chapters are fairly easy imo so you'll be fine. If you've never played Fire Emblem feel free to play on casual mode to not have perma death, though if you want a challenge at all play on hard mode because normal mode is like mega baby mode from what I've heard and I don't find hard all that hard either. The game itself explains all the school and time management stuff pretty well so you won't get too lost with this stuff.

Regarding the weekday classes, there might be an easy of farming gold by assigning 6 kids on Group Tasks, but I need to check if it stacks with your regular lesson plans. And speaking of gold, there's also the Battalions that you can hire; but those range from castrating the enemy to providing an extra heal or two.

 

[JM 590]

Hearing that the anime shit has been toned down and the writing is better is great, I'm definitely going to check this out at some point.

The school setting me has a little offput but eh. One tired anime stereotype isn't going to sour the whole thing.

Yeah, most of the characters act fairly normal, unlike Awakening, where half the cast were obnoxious anime tropes. I still don't know how that game was so critically acclaimed.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

Regarding the weekday classes, there might be an easy of farming gold by assigning 6 kids on Group Tasks, but I need to check if it stacks with your regular lesson plans. And speaking of gold, there's also the Battalions that you can hire; but those range from castrating the enemy to providing an extra heal or two.

That doesn't work, because you can only take on one group task at a time if you choose a different one it cancels the first one. So you can only do this with one group task, not 3. It does stack with your lesson plans though because that is how I managed to get Hilda to become a Wyvern Knight at level 20.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

This all sounds very complicated

 

[The Iconoclast]

Honestly I preferred Niosi's voice, I think he did a better job as Byleth.

Scuttling away from that, I got FE3H and it was REALLY fun. I chose the Black Eagles house.

Spoiler

I really should have seen that twist with Edelgard coming, what with how many times she and Hubert had "secret conversations" about their "plans", but I was still pretty surprised to see that she was actually the "villain".

I put that in quotes because it's kiiiiiiinda debatable if she's actually a villain, since she's trying to rid the world of the crests, which she believes to be a major force for inequality in Fodlan (and she's not wrong when you think of it), but I still refused to be on her side just because the only way she could fathom to make her goals a reality was to hire brigands to murder her classmates and openly side with some evil organization with literal nukes at their disposal and have them wipe out entire towns with some kind of frenzy spell. What did she think was going to happen?

Although the way Byleth slices her down mid-sentence was really funny.

Black Eagles is probably the best house to side with for a first playthrough. Also, Ferdinand is Seth.

The music was really great, the strange combination of JRPG-style music and light techno actually intrigued me.

I'm running through my second playthrough and I chose the Blue Lions. I don't know if I'll do a third with the Golden Deer, because I don't really like Claude all that much, which is apparently an unpopular opinion.

 

[Sable]

I spent a ton of gold on bait and I think it was a waste.

Gardening's awesome though, I'm going to use the products from it to bombard characters from other classes with gifts so they can join me and feed them delicious stat points.

 

[JM 590]

Honestly I preferred Niosi's voice, I think he did a better job as Byleth.

Scuttling away from that, I got FE3H and it was REALLY fun. I chose the Black Eagles house.

Spoiler

I really should have seen that twist with Edelgard coming, what with how many times she and Hubert had "secret conversations" about their "plans", but I was still pretty surprised to see that she was actually the "villain".

I put that in quotes because it's kiiiiiiinda debatable if she's actually a villain, since she's trying to rid the world of the crests, which she believes to be a major force for inequality in Fodlan (and she's not wrong when you think of it), but I still refused to be on her side just because the only way she could fathom to make her goals a reality was to hire brigands to murder her classmates and openly side with some evil organization with literal nukes at their disposal and have them wipe out entire towns with some kind of frenzy spell. What did she think was going to happen?

Although the way Byleth slices her down mid-sentence was really funny.

Black Eagles is probably the best house to side with for a first playthrough. Also, Ferdinand is Seth.

The music was really great, the strange combination of JRPG-style music and light techno actually intrigued me.

I'm running through my second playthrough and I chose the Blue Lions. I don't know if I'll do a third with the Golden Deer, because I don't really like Claude all that much, which is apparently an unpopular opinion.

How the fuck do you get through entire RPGs this fast

Games like this can take me ages to play due to just not having much time for vidya anymore

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Age 17 my ass, that bitch act 35

 

[El Porko Fako]

I had my doubts about the game, but it's been pretty good so far. I only have two gripes with so far. One is the normal difficulty, which is too easy for my taste, but that's what the harder difficulties are for I guess. My other beef is that there's no Falco Knight/ improved Pegasus Knight class at the advanced level. I feel like it leaves certain characters in a weird spot when you decide to promote them, and going from Pegasus Knight to Wyvern Rider just seems odd to me because those classes stat-wise are polar opposite of one another.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

What are some reccomended units? I've seen Lytheseia, Felix, Leonie, Petra, and Mercedes.

 

[Sable]

What are some reccomended units? I've seen Lytheseia, Felix, Leonie, Petra, and Mercedes.

Depends on your house. Playing BE so far, but all the units are perfectly functional.

Petra I will agree is SANIC fast.

I've heard good things about the others too.

I think it's less important to worry about which units to use so long as you've got them filling the right roles. Just take a glance at their bases and growth to get a feel from things, and work from there.

This advice will probably change come Lunatic mode where things are more important.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

What are some reccomended units? I've seen Lytheseia, Felix, Leonie, Petra, and Mercedes.

Hilda can be very strong, just give her an accuracy ring because her axe hit rates are sketchy. Her as a Wyvern has been very helpful for me in my golden deer run easily top 5 throughout the run if I account for everything she has done and she was pretty good before the wyvern. She has fallen off a little over time, but she is still going strong and my entire game wouldn't be the same without her

I think Lysithea is overrated imo, her bulk sucks especially physically and enemies can be just fast enough to double her with her heavy spells (almost all of them pretty much) where she'll likely die and the really fast enemies will likely easily double her. Quite a few maps I've had to be super careful with her because she is just so frail. She is a good nuker and she has warp the earliest which is broken in of itself, but I think she isn't as good for the same reasons as Felix, Leonie, or Petra who have solid combat for the entire game. She is a utility nuker that is very much worth bringing in just about every map, but doesn't carry a run directly like those other 3 can. She also has low movement for most the game if you make her the intended mage route, which really is annoying when I have more then half my army on mounts who have nearly double her movement.

I never used Mercedes but I'm playing blue lions next likely sometime tonight, so I'll know soon enough if she is actually that good.

Otherwise you don't need much unless you want to min max, the game isn't that difficult so unless you get extremely unlucky your default house's units should be just fine if you make them classes that make sense.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

I think Lysithea is overrated imo, her bulk sucks especially physically and enemies can be just fast enough to double her with her heavy spells (almost all of them pretty much) where she'll likely die and the really fast enemies will likely easily double her. Quite a few maps I've had to be super careful with her because she is just so frail. She is a good nuker and she has warp the earliest which is broken in of itself, but I think she isn't as good for the same reasons as Felix, Leonie, or Petra who have solid combat for the entire game. She is a utility nuker that is very much worth bringing in just about every map, but doesn't carry a run directly like those other 3 can.

She's a rape machine if you invest her in swords and give her a Levin Sword. Claude's hilariously broken ass is the only one that comes close to her damage output but they both have the same weakness (low bulk). I imagine if you can get her the Dancer class for the 20 avoidance when wielding swords it would basically cover her weaknesses pretty well. In my game I gave dancer to Marianne so she could support harder and the abilities she got from dancer actually made her her a pretty solid frontliner after I handed her a levin sword.

While I'm talking about Golden Deer mages, Lorenz makes for a pretty bulky wizard tank. Too bad his speed is really bad though.

 

[Zeke Von Genbu]

She's a rape machine if you invest her in swords and give her a Levin Sword. Claude's hilariously broken ass is the only one that comes close to her damage output but they both have the same weakness (low bulk). I imagine if you can get her the Dancer class for the 20 avoidance when wielding swords it would basically cover her weaknesses pretty well. In my game I gave dancer to Marianne so she could support harder and the abilities she got from dancer actually made her her a pretty solid frontliner after I handed her a levin sword.

While I'm talking about Golden Deer mages, Lorenz makes for a pretty bulky wizard tank. Too bad his speed is really bad though.

I completed Deers route and quite frankly Lysithea just couldn't keep up with my fliers or my horses unless I purposefully waited for her which I didn't feel like doing, so I made her a warp bot with optional nuking to throw Felix at the boss faster because his offense is just overkill. Mine also got so speed screwed that Lorenz was faster then her.

Lorenz is a weird dude, both as a unit and character, he has very very average growths overall but that lets him be a solid dark knight because his Str lets him easily carry spells and his speed can sometimes be just enough to double with his ignored weight penalty on enemies you want to hit with magic. I also missed dancer because I didn't know how you got it and I was just speeding through chapters out of boredom of the exploring section, so I'll have to try in my Blue Lions run.

I'm going to try Levin Sword+ 1-3 range memes with Byleth this time as I just don't trust Lysithea to be a frontliner as she has caused me so much trouble when she can get attacked, I also want two warp bots in Linhardt and Lysithea for Dimitri, Byleth, and Dedue in blue lions. Also Claude's bulk isn't that bad due to his class and his growths being better for hp and defense, I gave him most of my bulk increase stat boosters so he could play more aggressively and it paid off quite nicely because flying close counter archers that can frontline fairly well are good.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

I also missed dancer because I didn't know how you got it and I was just speeding through chapters out of boredom of the exploring section, so I'll have to try in my Blue Lions run.

Yeah, you must have been. At some point there is a ball and the person who wins the ball gets access to dancer as a class, an ability that gives +20 avoid when wielding a sword and a combat technique that does more damage based on cha. In my game the cleric teacher said you needed 13 or more cha to win, I think Marianne was somewhere in the twenties. It's also worth doing because after you pick someone to represent your class you get a training event that takes no time and just straight up gives the unit +5 to cha.

Only problem I have with Golden Deer is lack of useful strength sword users. Claude can, but he's such a great archer so it's a waste. Ignatz can, but he's a support mostly useful for break shot, speed boost and seal strength and not really made for melee. Marianne and Lysithia both have low strength and have better things to do. Everyone else has normal or low sword growth. I guess you could use Catherine but I feel that using characters that show up at such high skill/power level is disgraceful. Your only hope is to poach a sword guy from another house or just make Claude a sword guy in spite of his unique class being bow tactician guy.