Fire Emblem series

[Lone MacReady II]

When I play I usually pair like this

Aideen - Midir
Gives Lester pursuit and all the Bows Midir has, Lana doesn't really matter she is always good.

Ayra - Lex
I find the sword twins are good at combat no matter what but they fall behind thanks to not having a mount.
Lex giving them Elite helps a lot.

Raquesis - Beowulf
Gives Delmud pursuit and swords, about as optimal as it gets really.

Fury/Erin - Noish/Alec

Fury's children are amazing no matter what, both have pursuit from the getgo.

Sety needs no help no matter what.

Fee appreciates all the weapons from her dad.
Nihil from Alec will patch up Fee's weakness to bows.
Noish's skills make her better at combat.
Just depends on what you want Fee to be.

Brigid - Any physical dad really

Faval kind of sucks no matter what you do and doesnt really need any other bows, Patty is always great as a thief but appreciates swords

Dancer girl I forgot the name of - Any sword dad, if you don't care for inheritance leave unpaired

Dancer Daughter needs all the help she can get if you want her to clear the arena so swords need to be passed down

If you leave her unpaired you get a good staffer with elite as replacement and a berserk staff

Tiltyu - Lewyn

Chapter 6 Arthur with Forsety is just too cool to pass up.
Tinny kinda sucks no matter what dad she has.

I'll probably focus on skill-maxxing next playthrough, I know basically nothing about Gen 2 and I'm very happy about that. Rather I'm excited to finally see new plot. It's so much more strategic when you have to build relationships alongside all the money/item-wielding management, I do like it though. When it comes to FE pairings I usually do it first time based on simple chemistry/aesthetics... like the OTP.

Based and incestpilled. Give me deviant stickers, but I always do the incest pairings in the second generation because it makes me lol. Also, (actual spoiler follows) I forget which one it is but one of the pairs has a love conversation like "Aren't we cousins?" "Yep, lmao."

Ever play Unicorn Overlord? Go for Virginia, she won't dilute the holy unicorn bloodline.

the only pairing I do sort of have a soft spot for plot-wise is Tiltyu/Azel given the chapter 4 conversation between them.

That's a good reminder, the characters often mention Years of time passing on campaign. Attention is given to the fact that this is an actual army on the move, and weeks or months could be taking place between individual battles and nation conquering liberating.

 

[Computer God Autism]

Ever play Unicorn Overlord? Go for Virginia, she won't dilute the holy unicorn bloodline.

It's even better (?) considering that she also looks a lot like Alain's mom.

 

[Lone MacReady II]

It's even better (?) considering that she also looks a lot like Alain's mom.

We're reaching levels of culture that shouldn't be possible.

 

[AWarmToiletSeat]

We're reaching levels of culture that shouldn't be possible.

You got a lot of enthusiasm for this broski shit don't you buddy?

 

[Kier]

My post got lost on the rollback, but all this time later I still want to say

I do not trust anyone who speaks in words like “broski” and “culture” in anime adjacent worlds

 

[AWarmToiletSeat]

My post got lost on the rollback, but all this time later I still want to say

I do not trust anyone who speaks in words like “broski” and “culture” in anime adjacent worlds

The reference is toward the visual novel series 9nine. In one of the story arcs, the player character bones his blood related sister. Because she speaks in gyaru slang, "nii-chan" and it's many adjacent terms are translated as utterly retarded pop culture references and other such quirked up LA. bullshit. There you go, you are now burdened with the cursed knowledge that swims around in my brain like a decaying parasite.

 

[Kier]

The reference is toward the visual novel series 9nine. In one of the story arcs, the player character bones his blood related sister. Because she speaks in gyaru slang, "nii-chan" and it's many adjacent terms are translated as utterly retarded pop culture references and other such quirked up LA. bullshit. There you go, you are now burdened with the cursed knowledge that swims around in my brain like a decaying parasite.

Yep, this is why I gatekeep

 

[AWarmToiletSeat]

Yep, this is why I gatekeep

Being clear, I 'aint into this shit. I just know about it. Because I know a little bit about everything.

 

[Neurotypical Mantis]

it's time for my annual three houses slopposting

Spoiler

for real though claude cannot just pull that shit and then get mad at balthus for wanting to fuck his mom

 

[Metallic Blood]

It's even better (?) considering that she also looks a lot like Alain's mom.

Freud proving himself to be right once again.

Turns out the game is very fun if you nut up and just learn the damn mechanics.

That's my favorite thing about Genealogy. While every Fire Emblem has the appeal of training a scrub to turn them into a killing machine, none of the games ever hit the same spot as FE4. The amount of investment the game alllows you to give an unit and transform them into a god-slayer is truly bonkers, specially if they wield a holy weapon.

 

[AnotherPleb]

That's my favorite thing about Genealogy. While every Fire Emblem has the appeal of training a scrub to turn them into a killing machine, none of the games ever hit the same spot as FE4. The amount of investment the game alllows you to give an unit and transform them into a god-slayer is truly bonkers, specially if they wield a holy weapon.

They really try to focus all the attention they have into the units they have in FE4. It's a story I don't want Treehouse to touch at all, though.

 

[Quartermaster]

That's my favorite thing about Genealogy. While every Fire Emblem has the appeal of training a scrub to turn them into a killing machine, none of the games ever hit the same spot as FE4. The amount of investment the game alllows you to give an unit and transform them into a god-slayer is truly bonkers, specially if they wield a holy weapon.

FE4 certainly falls in the category of being a complete power fantasy.

Between the Paragon Ring, Hero Sword, Bargain Ring and most of the Holy Weapons you'll leave your enemies as bloody smears in the dirt.

There are really only a handful of enemies that can properly challenge your army, really the only way you usually lose a unit is if they kill too much and thus make room for more units to attack them.

I talked about this with a few other FE people and we came to the conclusion that FE4's Gen 2 army is the strongest in the entire series story-wise and perhaps gameplay-wise too.

Most of the army are actual real demigods, no other army from any of the other games can really come close.

So yeah I agree, FE4 does make you feel like a god wiping the floor with peasants.

 

[Computer God Autism]

FE4 certainly falls in the category of being a complete power fantasy.

Between the Paragon Ring, Hero Sword, Bargain Ring and most of the Holy Weapons you'll leave your enemies as bloody smears in the dirt.

There are really only a handful of enemies that can properly challenge your army, really the only way you usually lose a unit is if they kill too much and thus make room for more units to attack them.

I talked about this with a few other FE people and we came to the conclusion that FE4's Gen 2 army is the strongest in the entire series story-wise and perhaps gameplay-wise too.

Most of the army are actual real demigods, no other army from any of the other games can really come close.

So yeah I agree, FE4 does make you feel like a god wiping the floor with peasants.

It's stuff like this that made me never understand the complaints about OP units or balance in these games. The amount of FEs where you can't train or equip most of your units into being broken are miniscule compared to all the titles that are, and half of them weren't even balanced as far as enemy scaling went (I love Radiant Dawn but I'm not going to pretend it isn't deeply flawed).

 

[Sneak 'n' Snore]

It's stuff like this that made me never understand the complaints about OP units or balance in these games.

To me it feels like parts of the playerbase really want to huff their own farts about 200 IQ strategies so the existance of units like Sigurd, Seth or Haar is a big own to any game that has them.
Not that you don't occasionally have to think about your approach or wager odds but I feel a big draw of FE is watching your trained units grow, being put into situations where anything could happen and due to the RNG nature of the series you can run into scenariors where the supposedly good unit levels badly while some no name scrub gets all the godly levels.
Plus Sigurd, Haar, etc are all established to be strong in-universe, I find units like this can add a lot of flair.

 

[Caddo Cobgang]

Faerghus is loved by Chuds despite not embodying any of their core values, only a shadow of a favored aesthetic. And Adrestria is liked by the Woke even though they'd be useless to that society's actual goals and inner-working

good point I'm Right Wing as shit and I did like Azure Moon better, Adrestia under Ionus was just a corrupt decaying Empire with Duke Aegir sucking all of the money out of commoners, I feel when Edelgard takes over Leftists just assume she fixes everything day 1 when thats not the case plus she invades the Church and Faerghus soon after taking over halting reforms, I think with Faerghus it has a lot of the issues Imperial Russia had before the Revolution, the main difference is though is that the surrounding nations of Russia were industrialized so you had a peasantry looking at countries like Britain,France,and Germany that were industrializng and modernizing and looking at the Absolute Monarchy and wondering why Russia couldnt do the same, Adrestia and Leciester are just as much of a medieval backwater so the Peasantry is still largely loyalist because they know no different, hence why when Cornelia launches the coup against the Monarchy its extremely unpopular (along with being oppressed by the Slithers), I think why I like the ending with Dimitri winning is that he manages to fix shit after the war and reform the country in a manner that is not revolutionary but is actually the beginning of a Representative Government (at least as much as a pre-industrial nation could be at least)

 

[AWarmToiletSeat]

good point I'm Right Wing as shit and I did like Azure Moon better, Adrestia under Ionus was just a corrupt decaying Empire with Duke Aegir sucking all of the money out of commoners, I feel when Edelgard takes over Leftists just assume she fixes everything day 1 when thats not the case plus she invades the Church and Faerghus soon after taking over halting reforms, I think with Faerghus it has a lot of the issues Imperial Russia had before the Revolution, the main difference is though is that the surrounding nations of Russia were industrialized so you had a peasantry looking at countries like Britain,France,and Germany that were industrializng and modernizing and looking at the Absolute Monarchy and wondering why Russia couldnt do the same, Adrestia and Leciester are just as much of a medieval backwater so the Peasantry is still largely loyalist because they know no different, hence why when Cornelia launches the coup against the Monarchy its extremely unpopular (along with being oppressed by the Slithers), I think why I like the ending with Dimitri winning is that he manages to fix shit after the war and reform the country in a manner that is not revolutionary but is actually the beginning of a Representative Government (at least as much as a pre-industrial nation could be at least)

I already had my big rant on why Edelgard is cringe. But, the short version is that she accidentally recreated China as it was during the middle ages.

 

[That Guy You Know]

To me it feels like parts of the playerbase really want to huff their own farts about 200 IQ strategies so the existance of units like Sigurd, Seth or Haar is a big own to any game that has them.
Not that you don't occasionally have to think about your approach or wager odds but I feel a big draw of FE is watching your trained units grow, being put into situations where anything could happen and due to the RNG nature of the series you can run into scenariors where the supposedly good unit levels badly while some no name scrub gets all the godly levels.
Plus Sigurd, Haar, etc are all established to be strong in-universe, I find units like this can add a lot of flair.

Not the most beautiful pic, but one that still rings true.

 

[Kier]

I really Dislike dunk culture with FE in particular, the best part of this series to me is that you have so much agency as a player to just not interact with what you don’t like.

I’ve been a perpetrator of this in the past, but I think three houses would be a much better game without the monastery, so I just don’t use it. I’ve benched Seth in every play through since I was a kid, it’s not that hard to do.

 

[That Guy You Know]

The big issue with dunk culture everywhere, but especially in fandoms like Fire Emblem with excessive amounts of fighting to determine who is the smartest and most detached gamer in any given conversation, is that it is assumed everybody is participating in it. Not saying I have never exaggerated an opinion, but no matter how much you avoid the smart guy ironic meme internet, war shall wage when you speak to somebody who you can tell is a bit more invested in the "legitimacy" of everything stated.

I agree on Three Houses with the monastery, but I had fun with it when I played it and just do not feel the need to touch it again. This would be the prompt for some debate where Three Houses being accused of being boring has to be dissected and disproved. It is like the natural evolution of the fanboys that used to be more common on the web, but now the strategy is to be more "critical" than the other guy while owning him.

 

[Computer God Autism]

I really Dislike dunk culture with FE in particular, the best part of this series to me is that you have so much agency as a player to just not interact with what you don’t like.

I’ve been a perpetrator of this in the past, but I think three houses would be a much better game without the monastery, so I just don’t use it. I’ve benched Seth in every play through since I was a kid, it’s not that hard to do.

IMO most dunks in FE games are something that is genuinely glaring (FE7's writing, FE10's bloat, FE13's streamlining, etc.) but the extent to which it impacts your enjoyment of the game is mostly up to you. I think the reason it became a lot more popular to grasp for dunks post-Awakening - aside from just the elitists in the FE fandom needing validation - is that the recent games themselves have made it a lot more difficult for people who would otherwise be willing to suffer their pet peeves to overlook them.

Awakening's writing had a lot of issues but those were miniscule compared to Fates' writing, and you didn't have to buy the game three times over just to gain the full story to boot (nevermind that only one of those versions had gameplay that was markedly better than Awakening). Echoes exploration mechanics might have been clunky but unlike 3H and Engage they were part of the battle gameplay and didn't gatekeep virtually all of your camp activities. The series has always relied on anime tropes but even Fates at its worst doesn't compare to the Vtuber horrorshow that is Engage.

I'm not going to say that new FE games are caricatures of what makes an FE game - partly because FE has had a fairly modular identity past the basic movement/combat mechanics, partly because most of the new FE games have been trying to move away from what most people would consider to be traditional FE tropes - but the changes and additions between new titles are much more exaggerated and contentious than they were in the GBA/Gamecube days.