Post by spidershinobi on May 28, 2017 19:52:43 GMT
Has any of you had issues or particularities just identifying what to expect of a series after playing a spin-off product?
I bring you guys this discussion because recently my understanding of one of my favorite Nintendo series has been shaken, and even if not negatively it just feels weird.
My first Fire Emblem was Path of Radiance on the GameCube; the game was a joy to play and the story was amazing, and because it was my first it set my expectations for how the other games in the series would play like. My next FE was Sacred Stones (GBA), and it was very different from Path of Radiance in that for many characters I had to choose the classes they'd be updgraded to, and the story was absolute garbage.
After those games I have watched the series go forward and improve (at least most of the time) with each release, but only now I got back into it with Fire Emblem Heroes (Android/iOS), and holy shit! Yes, the game is severely stramlined in comparison to previous regular games, but the things they got right were stuff that needed fixing for so long that I never expected the developers to actually tackle those issues. The weapon triangle was rearranged into colors, which means that now - for the first time apparently - the books also fit in this mechanic. Another unexpected improvement was that weapons are relegated to the skill menu of the units instead of a dedicated inventory, but more importantly, that means we don't need to pay attention to weapon durability and weapons have been balanced; and I fully remember avoiding both Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance before because I didn't feel like managing items that day! The lack of support conversations, hit chance and critical hit chance all made room for more sophisticated and strategic mechanics such as units actually buffing others through proximity, and for the first time actually feeling some form of danger while fighting against axe fighters (as they won't miss every single swing like in the games before). And talk about danger, FEH is also the first game in which character death can't happen at all (because of gacha), and thus the stages have been finally designed to destroy you, rather than designed around trying to kill a single one of your units to make you reset like how it happened previously. Btw, I'm finally playing as the characters I want to play from a collection of other games.
All of these things make me look at the main games and think that I simply can't go back for them (specially Sacred Stones), and hope that the new Switch game takes into consideration all the improvements taking place.
I bring you guys this discussion because recently my understanding of one of my favorite Nintendo series has been shaken, and even if not negatively it just feels weird.
My first Fire Emblem was Path of Radiance on the GameCube; the game was a joy to play and the story was amazing, and because it was my first it set my expectations for how the other games in the series would play like. My next FE was Sacred Stones (GBA), and it was very different from Path of Radiance in that for many characters I had to choose the classes they'd be updgraded to, and the story was absolute garbage.
After those games I have watched the series go forward and improve (at least most of the time) with each release, but only now I got back into it with Fire Emblem Heroes (Android/iOS), and holy shit! Yes, the game is severely stramlined in comparison to previous regular games, but the things they got right were stuff that needed fixing for so long that I never expected the developers to actually tackle those issues. The weapon triangle was rearranged into colors, which means that now - for the first time apparently - the books also fit in this mechanic. Another unexpected improvement was that weapons are relegated to the skill menu of the units instead of a dedicated inventory, but more importantly, that means we don't need to pay attention to weapon durability and weapons have been balanced; and I fully remember avoiding both Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance before because I didn't feel like managing items that day! The lack of support conversations, hit chance and critical hit chance all made room for more sophisticated and strategic mechanics such as units actually buffing others through proximity, and for the first time actually feeling some form of danger while fighting against axe fighters (as they won't miss every single swing like in the games before). And talk about danger, FEH is also the first game in which character death can't happen at all (because of gacha), and thus the stages have been finally designed to destroy you, rather than designed around trying to kill a single one of your units to make you reset like how it happened previously. Btw, I'm finally playing as the characters I want to play from a collection of other games.
All of these things make me look at the main games and think that I simply can't go back for them (specially Sacred Stones), and hope that the new Switch game takes into consideration all the improvements taking place.
