[Fire Emblem] Awakening: Out now in the colonies. Europe suffers still.

Andy Joe

Griffon riders? Flying spellcasters!?

EVOL

Maz- wrote: »

The game scored 36/40 in this month's Famitsu, by the way. Not bad..though Famitsu scores tend to be a little weird sometimes.

People moan continuously that the mainstream western gaming press is dominated by moneyhats and shitty reviews, and is just kinda terrible in general, right?

Well, Famitsu is on a whole different level. I wouldn't put any merit in the scores that they give.


I was going to buy this game this month, but it looks like I'll be busy with Devil Survivor 2. Anybody else importing?

WotanAnubis

EVOL wrote: »

I was going to buy this game this month, but it looks like I'll be busy with Devil Survivor 2. Anybody else importing?

Nah, I think I'll just wait for the Euro release. A Fire Emblem I can't understand the story of is a Fire Emblem I don't want to play.

Chen

Does everyone have Japanese 3DSes or something? Otherwise I'd import. The only Fire Emblem I played in English is FE7, but even then I double-dipped and played it in Japanese first.

MrBlarney

Well, I've completed Path of Radiance. Fairly easy going once I got past Chapter 13, though I did have a couple of retries on the final stage to keep a perfect record free of casualties. (Okay, so it was only Normal difficulty, but eh, victories are victories.) Three 20/20 characters to carry over to Radiant Dawn: Ike, Mist, and Gatrie.

So, do I go into Radiant Dawn on Easy (original Normal) or Normal (original Hard), having never played a Fire Emblem game above Normal difficulty? Or do I give some rest to the series and jump into Xenoblade? Hmm...

Maz-

Radiant Dawn is rather challenging but I'd still advise playing it on Normal.
The first few chapters can be kinda rough, but it's absolutely doable. If you have any trouble, just post here.

Z0re

So, Awakening got leaked early.

http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=31969&st=0

Link to the Serenes thread where they're talking about it. Lots of spoilers in there, most are tagged though.

As a note, the game looks amazing. Also incredibly, incredibly insane in a way that surpasses any other Fire Emblem's insanity. I really like it, but it is very much in the vein of FE 4 or 10 in terms of crazy magic driving large portions of the plot.

Real Spoilers for story,

Spoiler:

We've got time travel. A lot of time travel.

Our strategist can have a strategist son who's default name is Mark!

Masked Marth identity.

Spoiler:

Masked Marth is Krom's daughter from the future hiding her identity. What.

Maz-

I was planning on waiting till a redesign was released or another significant price drop was announced but eff that, I'm gonna buy a 3DS for this. I just can't pass up a Fire Emblem game (well, a good Fire Emblem game..couldn't get into Shadow Dragon).
The game looks gorgeous, the new mechanics seem interesting and the characters look great.
Hopefully it'll be released here in 2012.

Maz-

http://mynintendonews.com/2012/05/07/fire-emblem-radiant-dawns-elincia-hits-fire-emblem-awakening/

Interesting.

WotanAnubis

If by 'interesting' you mean 'terrible'. I liked that in Fire Emblem some outfits actually looked somewhat realistic. This new Elincia design is going a bit overboard for me.

Daypigeon

WotanAnubis wrote: »

If by 'interesting' you mean 'terrible'. I liked that in Fire Emblem some outfits actually looked somewhat realistic. This new Elincia design is going a bit overboard for me.

don't look at the new micaiah design, then

it's pretty much everything terrible about anime. Some of the DLC guest art is pretty good, some of it looks like it was taken off a particularly bad deviantart.

Zephiran

The DLC for Elincia makes her look like she'd be right at home in one of the older Mecha animes too!

Chen

Apparently, the Elincia art is done by the artist of Full Metal Panic. The DLC art is apparently done by various guest artists hired by Nintendo. Except Ike. Fuck him, so sayeth Nintendo.

EVOL

As someone who has no idea of the previous design of that character, that design looks like ass. Overdesigned, 'let's make this character look as ridiculous as we possibly can' + 'terribly inappropriate fanservice which makes no goddamn sense' shit.

Basically, everything wrong about modern anime design. Bleh.

Chen

EVOL wrote: »

As someone who has no idea of the previous design of that character

EVOL

...Wow. Maybe the newer one makes sense in context, but as an admittedly ignorant outsider it just looks like they just drew some completely different girl with long green hair and said 'see, they have green hair, they're the same character!'

Zephiran

She does wear something kind of similar to her DLC costume canonically in the two Radiance games, but there's quite a bit of difference between the two.



As compared to:

Xenogears of Bore

where did her other leg go????

Zephiran

She's a one-legged unicorn these days man.

Maz-

*shrug* I don't know what your problem is, guys. She's just flashing her thighs, that's all. Doesn't really look too out of place.

Micaiah's outfit though (assuming she does look like that ingame and it's not just some random drawing)..hooo boy.

I wonder if us outside Japan will even get any of that DLC.

Z0re

I think the best, worst?, part is that almost everyone in the main game is still designed/looks fairly sensible. Better than usual for a Fire Emblem game even, especially the Pegasus Knights.

The big exceptions seem to be the dark mages, who have good drawn designs oddly but awful and revealing ingame models, and Velvet the girl who turns into a monster bunny and wears virtually nothing.

Micaiah and Elincia are just awful though. They really should have just stuck with the artist who did the main game characters.

Chen

I don't know about that. Some of the story's character designs are still pretty ridiculous.

Zephiran

This has been scratching my balls for quite some time now, but I finally realised why I thought the DLC Elincia looked so familiar yet so odd to my mind.

It's fucking Kaname Chidori with a hair dye.



The connection to FMP shines through!

Z0re

I sort of see where you're coming from on the first, the neck armor is pretty weird and dumb, but

Chen wrote: »

I don't know about that. Some of the story's character designs are still pretty ridiculous.

Eh, those are a little silly but not really outrageous or bad. There are some better examples than these guys too if you want to play the ridiculous/silly game, like the Jeigan who's wearing a full suit under his armor.

Mostly though I prefer this kind of design to the creepy oversexualization of Elincia and Micaiah's new designs.

Xenogears of Bore

I love the regular artist in this game.

Maz-

I still prefer Radiance's / Dawn's designs but these are good enough.

Much better than Shadow Dragon's at any rate...ugh.

Zephiran

Is that a teddybear lollipop with ketchup on top?

Wyborn

Anybody seen this? Anybody? The music in this game is super nice!

This game coming out in Japan has got me all hot under the collar. And you know what? I realize that even though I beat FE7 and both Radiance games, I never beat Sacred Stones. So I'm going to do that.

Any word on if Hector will be a DLC character? I really love Hector.

Xenogears of Bore

This game is amazing.

Z0re

Wyborn wrote: »

Anybody seen this? Anybody? The music in this game is super nice!

This game coming out in Japan has got me all hot under the collar. And you know what? I realize that even though I beat FE7 and both Radiance games, I never beat Sacred Stones. So I'm going to do that.

Any word on if Hector will be a DLC character? I really love Hector.

So far the major DLC characters have been Marth, Roy, Leaf, Arum, Elincia and Micaiah. Ephraim was just announced today so we should get word on the FE7 characters soon.


Besides those characters which you can recruit through special Otherworld Story quests, you can also pick up 'greatest hits' teams by defeating them on the world map or by straight up paying them. They show up randomly a certain bit into the story as random encounters and are the toughest groups of enemies in the game. The FE9 and 10 teams for example are,

Ike - Hero
Elincia - Falcon Knight
Geoffrey - Paladin
Lucia - Swordmaster
Ashnard - Dragonmaster
Mia - Swordmaster
Titania - Great Knight
Soren - Sage
Zihark - Swordmaster
Mist - Valkyrie

Micaiah - Sage
Sothe - Trickster
Sephiran - Sage
Sigrun - Falcon Knight
Black Knight - General
Nephenee - General
Brom - General
Leonardo - Sniper
Edward - Swordmaster
Sanaki - Sage


So Hector is almost definitely going to show up. Probably as a General like he was in FE6 with Eliwood as a Paladin and Lyn as an assassin. The ones who aren't special DLC characters are pretty much just generic models with the proper name/hair color though.

Also, Nergal as a Sorcerer should be pretty sweet.

Maz-

Nephenee as a General? Is there no Lancer / Soldier / Halberdier / whatever class anymore? Balls.

Wyborn

I'd have Lyndis pinned for a Swordmaster. Or something.

A Swordmaster who can use bows

WotanAnubis

Maz- wrote: »

Nephenee as a General? Is there no Lancer / Soldier / Halberdier / whatever class anymore? Balls.

Well, there's that guy with a pot on his head. Though his class is 'Villager'.

But yeah, kinda sucks Soldier is gone again. I liked having a Spear specialist beside my Sword, Axe and Bow specialists.

Chen

Wait, why is Ashnard on Ike's team and not Jill or Haar? I don't understand.

Grey Paladin

I feel like they really dropped the ball when it comes to character design this time around. It doesn't even looks like a Fire Emblem game. The characters could belong to any generic jRPG.

herojoe

I planned on buying a 3DS for this game, but luckily my friend just bought one so I just have to buy the game. Whenever it comes out in the US. :-s

So how does the DLC work? Do you just get to download a really powerful character to use right from the start? Does downloading them have them appear later in the game?

WotanAnubis

Grey Paladin wrote: »

I feel like they really dropped the ball when it comes to character design this time around. It doesn't even looks like a Fire Emblem game. The characters could belong to any generic jRPG.

Yeah, I agree. The new art style doesn't really scream 'Fire Emblem' me either. It reminds me more of Suikoden, for some reason.

Still, at least the armour still looks fairly functional (in my admittedly unprofessional opinion). I'd be really disappointed in Fire Emblem if supposedly defence-oriented units suddenly started baring their midrifs or something. In other games, I would just accept that kind of thing with a sigh, but I hold Fire Emblem to a higher standard.

MNC Dover

"Nephenee - General"

O...M...G!! It's over for all enemy units in her path.

Z0re

The other good thing about Awakening is that everyone has individualized stat caps so Nephenee has better speed, but worse strength than most generals.

Everyone has a good stat and bad stat. Having best stat magic, for instance, means your magic cap is 4 higher and your speed is 2 higher in every class. Worst stat luck means your luck cap is 3 lower and your strength and magic caps are 1 lower in every class.

It really gets crazy with the gen 2 characters who inherit the sum of their parents cap modifiers plus 1 to every stat.

MNC Dover

Ephiram is on the way! His art style is more like the usual FE flare as well. They probably have multiple artists working across the various DLC packs.