Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave
Oddly futuristic. UI elements look so good. Read a helpful tips and tricks thing that says it's better to play the characters serially instead of in parallel.
I've decided to play as Cai first, the character I care about least, since if I fuck up any of the systems as I'm learning I won't care so much. His start feels very not Fire Emblem and just kind of bog standard jrpg stuff. I like the lords and ladies and the military paegentry and all that jazz.
Cai's story is really just fucking wild and random. His party members seem not very good so far or maybe he's just very strong. It's hard to keep a balanced party, they just don't deal good damage.
Settings wise I really like the Mediterranean/Romanesque vibe.
The turn based dungeon battles haven't really justified themselves to me so far. Mechanically it's very shallow and before I used to get all the stuff I needed via battles and the monastery and now I have to do this other second thing which seems bolted on and largely filler. Maybe they'll get better.
I'm also getting like...Triangle Strategy levels of nonsense between the actual story battles.
It's fine right now. I feel like there are so many systems and yet they don't bother to go very deep on any of them in explanation, even when some of the systems are actually deep. I'm not sure what to equip on who.
Alright I really don't know how I feel about this. The main battles are so good and there's SO MUCH FILLER between it. I wish it would just let me sim the overworld battles. They're extremely boring and sometimes you have to do them multiple times. Same battles, same map. Same boring.
And it's so easy. I'm playing on hard and it's still easy. But I also wouldn't want it to be harder because then the stupid repetitive overworld battles would just take longer.
I think I might have to let go of what Fire Emblem was/what I want it to be and evaluate my relationship with it now based on what it is. Which I'm fine with that. I don't want to come across as someone who fears change and wants stuff to be the same. I can evaluate it without the baggage of my hopes or what it was as a stand alone unit.
But I'm not sure what it is what I want out of it. Or at least not large chunks of it.
Chapter 5's battle was the first one I felt I wasn't absolutely facerolling. It was a fun one, (but damn those chariots). The battle was so good, and so fun, and the plot around the main story stuff is so good and then there's just a lot of extra between me and the next part.
Cai is growing on me, but fighting alongside Theorora or Dietrich and their retinues, his friends feel woefully out of place. They're bog standard jrpg "kids save the world" characters in the wrong game.
This game is one that I do think benefits from a guide because there are so many options for every step of what I could be doing with my time that it's just paralyzing. And I guess to be fair, this game is so easy it really doesn't matter, but it feels like for advanced classes I want to be planning that out. And I personally just don't know enough to look at this and say "ah, Cai should do this, therefore I should do this into that."
As I play this game I'm reminded a lot of Tom Haverford in this episode of Parks & Rec where they're trying out food and Tom declined to eat something because it came with a dipping sauce. His reason: drizzle it on there for me! I'm not here to do work.
I feel like that a lot with a bunch of the mechanics here. Let me just skip the dungeons, press the button, get the rewards. Let me skip the overworld battles! Just make everything faster. It's not like there's actually good content here. Once you've seen it once you've seen it.
Having said that, I'm having a lot of fun. I've gotten as far as the chapter 7 main battle and I've managed to get a couple characters to the next level. I think some of the problem is a lot of QOL shit is gated, you get the fast travel stations waaaaay too late.
The lack of a weapon triangle definitely I think removes some texture. Sure, it's just rock paper scissors, but it means Cai can't just tank EVERYONE, an axe wielder makes you think twice. And sure spears do more vs mounted units but you can dismount for very free.
I think I'm also not using weapon arts aggressively enough but the game doesn't make me so...
Bird time is the silliest mechanic ever. Every time I do it I just think about how dumb it is in fiction. Imagine being a bystander for this exchange.
"Bird, do you ever think I'll be better than my dad with a spear?"
Bird sings a song
"You're right, I'll NEVER be as good as him. I'M A FAILURE! ...so anyways, today's a perfect day for fishing, you wanna come along?"
It is currently the middle of the night.
If they want to rip off persona so much just do it harder in the dungeons. Make it a one more system. Make it at least mildly interesting.
It's getting pretty interesting and I've gotten to the part where I've unlocked the paralogues.
One thing that I do find frustrating about this is just the recruitment requirements and I wish they would telegraph that stuff in advance: "Oh I need to save money" or "I need to be gathering these items out on the overworld to be prepared for it." That would just be a nice quality-of-life thing.
I do also really like the Roman Mediterranean setting and I wish Fire Emblem would do this stuff more. I thought it was such a cool breath of fresh air when we got Face and there was a Japan-inspired one. Why haven't we revisited that? Can we do more? Can we go to a Nordic-inspired area or a Middle Eastern-inspired area?
The first paralogue was really good. It was a three way battle with bandits and birds to collect treasure. Fun and interesting, so much better than your standard boring overworld battles.
The paralogues are so good and they made me smile the whole time with how interesting and inventive they are. Some of the best fights this game has to offer so far and I just wish there were more.
For all my gripes, I think my biggest one is that I can't recruit Anatolia.
I'm getting close to turning off combat animations to speed it up. This game never totally recaptured the charm of the pixel art versions.
Ending a battle with the turn based boss mode is a cool idea...if the turn based jrpg battle thing was more interesting.
The restart chapter button really shouldn't be so close to the battle one...
Alright, we're on Cai's final chapter. Initially I had thought to play Leda next but now I'm not sure! I might want to save her for even later, when she'll be even more powerful. Bwahaha.
Beaten Cai's final battle. It was good! Story was fine. I maintain Cai feels like a character in the wrong franchise and nothing about his story really changed my opinion of that.
Some spoilers: His dad's illness still seems random and pointless.
I disliked how many adult characters appeared to...just be waiting for him to be of age which is...a vibe.
The "gods" in this setting are just weird and I think it's partially because they've all been flattened age wise. Solel is Aurora's dad but she could just be his sister or lover or whatever.
Overall I think subsequent runs will go much faster without all the side questing to do. Which, good! The game takes too long between major plot elements. I just wonder how much there will even be to do. I now know I don't need to recruit as much so there's kind of a double lessening of time pressure.
We're on to Theodora next. She seemed like the opposite side of Cai's coin. Going to try to reduce overlap with some of my characters from last time.
Oof, it is ROUGH to go back to level 1, three units, and intro fights. I think the overall tutorialization could be further reduced here.
Dyan sucks but we're laying it on a bit thick with the forked tongue? It's so hard to take this greaser with the pompadour seriously. He's so anachronistic. There's a lot of tell, don't show about the Saraminians being a sea people.
Overall her story feels much more in line with a standard Fire Emblem, at least to start. A lord with a mission for their people. It also goes MUCH faster this time between story battles which is a good thing. Part of that is definitely me just knowing the ropes better, and part of it is just that by having done the other route a lot of things are just done for me.
It really feels like THIS is the way the game should be played. Although one caveat, don't go so deep in the paint on the karma shard prizes. They can really quickly trivialize the game and it's a one way ratchet: I can't reinstate 10% exp boost, now it's 30% or nothing.