Nintendo 3DS

[tabacco]

Interesting... AT&T Park here in SF is a giant AT&T Hotspot (surprise!). I wonder if it's also a streetpass relay point. Time to bring my 3DS to the Giants game today and see what happens.

[SecretAsianMan]

So can I not buy the new Streetpass games without streetpassing at least once?  I wanted to get them before I went to PAX because once I'm in Seattle, internet access will be destroyed by the 10,000+ nerds trying to use it simultaneously.

[Roderick]

I am required to buy Streetpass Squad, for no other reason that you can get a terrific space fighter helmet there. That's right. I'm buying games for the hats now. Shit.

[TheLastBaron]

Dang, I was hoping that if I took my 3ds to class with me I might get a couple tags from the walk around campus. I just got home and looked at my system and I got a full 10.

[Yasawas]

I get 8 or 9 every day now, it's sweet. Passed someone from Tasmania today which is as cool as it is unlikely.

 

"Congratulations"

 

[Zeusthecat]

I've been taking mine to work with me and have yet to get a single one on my commute, even though I live in one of the biggest cities in the US and drive 22 miles in each direction in rush hour traffic. Haven't hit any spotpasses either.

[I Saw Dasein]

I have been playing a fair amount of Fire Emblem Awakening. I can't decide whether or not I like it very much. I am playing on "hard" since "normal" difficulty felt like a total cakewalk.

 

The game is very unforgiving, to the extent that a single misstep can easily lead to the (permanent) death of a unit. The game is not really designed for you to lose a lot of units in that units are not randomly generated or replaced, so you can't really afford to lose them. That means that the death of a unit really means the restart of a mission. I feel like this is the worst possible use of perma-death, in that it really doesn't add much to the game. It's not very fun to have to reset the game just because I made a single bad move. There should at least be a "restart mission" option in the system menu. 

 

Most of the missions feel very puzzle-y and not very tactical, in that there is often only one or two ways to realistically beat the mission. 

 

The AI also seems to be really bad/non-existent. As far as I can tell, it basically just rushes you as soon as you walk into its "aggro zone". It doesn't behave at all like a human player, and instead throws itself on your most vulnerable units. You are also pretty much always outnumbered. As a result, the best or only strategy is to play extremely defensively and let the enemies come at you (preferably one by one). Since there are no zones of control, realistically this means bunching your units up near a choke point and letting the enemy bash itself against your hardiest unit. 

 

Finally, some of the mechanics are not really explained well. "Pairing up" seems awesome, but I can't tell exactly what it does. I also have no idea how the "romance" system is supposed to work so hopefully I'm not totally botching my team. 

 

All that being sad, it's still a fun and great-looking game. I just wish it felt a little more dynamic strategically. It just seems a lot less strategically interesting than some of the other "tactics" games I've played. Maybe it will get better as I progress--I'm only six or seven missions in. 

[miffy495]

I have been considering throwing my 3DS in my bag when I leave the house for school in the morning, but am conflicted. Can I get a quick poll? Streetpassing your teacher: would it have made you think they're relatable or just weird?

[Zeusthecat]

I have been considering throwing my 3DS in my bag when I leave the house for school in the morning, but am conflicted. Can I get a quick poll? Streetpassing your teacher: would it have made you think they're relatable or just weird?

 

Definitely relatable. I couldn't imagine thinking anyone else is weird for doing the same thing I do unless I already think I'm weird. So only weird people would think you are weird.

[lobotomy42]

The weak AI is definitely this games biggest flaw.  I can see why it operates the way it does: since losing a unit is one of the worst penalties the game can inflict upon you (unit loss is worse than mission loss for most players,) it does make a certain amount of sense to just have the AI charge after the weakest, closest unit.  But it's incredibly infuriating in a way that makes it both unpredictable and stupid.  On Hard mode in particular, finishing a difficult map is often just a matter of memorizing a sequence of moves that don't result in unit losses and playing the map over and over as you extend the sequence. These kinds of slogs never feel like you "won" but out-strategizing the opponent as much as outlasting it.

 

The AI also seems to be really bad/non-existent. As far as I can tell, it basically just rushes you as soon as you walk into its "aggro zone". It doesn't behave at all like a human player, and instead throws itself on your most vulnerable units. You are also pretty much always outnumbered. As a result, the best or only strategy is to play extremely defensively and let the enemies come at you (preferably one by one). Since there are no zones of control, realistically this means bunching your units up near a choke point and letting the enemy bash itself against your hardiest unit. 

[I Saw Dasein]

The weak AI is definitely this games biggest flaw.  I can see why it operates the way it does: since losing a unit is one of the worst penalties the game can inflict upon you (unit loss is worse than mission loss for most players,) it does make a certain amount of sense to just have the AI charge after the weakest, closest unit.  But it's incredibly infuriating in a way that makes it both unpredictable and stupid.  On Hard mode in particular, finishing a difficult map is often just a matter of memorizing a sequence of moves that don't result in unit losses and playing the map over and over as you extend the sequence. These kinds of slogs never feel like you "won" but out-strategizing the opponent as much as outlasting it.

 

Well I'm glad someone else feels the same way! It's super annoying, because clearly the AI isn't playing to "win" the battle: it will attack the weakest unit whether or not that is the move that would best help it win the battle. I'm honestly surprised the game was so well received, as there are a lot of really annoying things about it. 

[Sno]

I have been playing a fair amount of Fire Emblem Awakening. I can't decide whether or not I like it very much. I am playing on "hard" since "normal" difficulty felt like a total cakewalk.

 

If this is your first Fire Emblem game, and if you're playing with permadeath on, this is a mistake. Especially on its hard setting, the game becomes very difficult around its tenth chapter when all the side missions start opening up. (You're also only about a fifth of the way through the game's content at that point.)

Also, in case it's not clear: Losing dudes is not an acceptable outcome, it's a mounting loss that snowballs as you keep playing, it will make you miss out on other recruitment opportunities and quests. FE games used to handle permadeath in a much more flud and interesting way, offering up additional quests and recruitment opportunities because you're struggling, but FEA doesn't. It wants you to keep everybody alive, the permadeath is just there to make you play cautiously. (So if that mission is going poorly, keep in mind: L & R & Start reboots the game.)

So the questionable stuff out of the way, i feel the metagame you have to play with the easily predicted AI opens up in a really interesting way once you've fleshed out your army into subsequent promotions and class changes. Your army is eventually customized to such a degree where it really feels like you're enacting your own clever strategies, rather than playing through a prescribed series of moves. I mean, If we were talking about Advance Wars, i would completely agree with your complaint, but in Fire Emblem, i believe a lot of the strategy actually comes from planning your character builds out across multiple missions. Your army eventually becomes so totally distinct to you, that the way you complete a mission will be wholly different from how somebody else is going to tackle that same mission. It's an element that is especially difficult to gauge if you're early into the game, though i don't know how far in you are. (None of the promotion, class change, or relationship stuff really even factors in until you're about ten missions in.)

 

For those early missions, just make sure you're not letting your stronger units eat up all the exp, you'll run into big problems later in the game if you do that.

As for the various systems, there are a lot of little things that aren't really adequately explained, true enough.

This is a great wealth of information about the game and its systems.

 

Let me offer some information though:

The support system, which is in part the "romance" system, has your units building affinity for eachother as they execute actions in adjacent squares from eachother. So if you attack a unit while surrounded by three other units of your own, the surrounding compatible units will all build affinity for the attacking unit. (Healing or other special support actions only build affinity for the caster and the recipient.) Eventually support conversations will be unlocked to view between missions, ranking up their support rating to offer greater adjacency bonuses while in battle, and once you unlock an S-rank conversation, those characters will get married. (How marriage determines the stats, skills, and available classes of the eventual offspring is a whole other rabbit hole. Probably don't worry about it too much, maybe read up on how skill inheritence works.)

There's also sort of two different things you might be referring to as a "pairing system".

There's the dual system, and the pair-up system.

The dual system is when an adjacent character shows up to help your attacking/defending unit. There's random chances for nullifying damage taken, adding an additional attack, or offering a morale boost, and they're all determined by the support ranking. (If there are multiple adjacent characters, the one that joins will be the one with the highest support.)

The pairing system is a seperate thing, despite being easy to conflate with the dual system, since paired units override adjacent units.

So the unit in the back of the pair lends some stat bonuses to the unit in the front, which is important for keeping weaker units competitive if you're trying to earn them some battle experience. The two units that are paired also earn support for eachother faster than adjacent units would, and the unit in the back is immune to damage.

Switching the the unit at the front of the pair is a free action, that's important to keep in mind. (You can travel far with a cavalry unit, then switch out to a knight and attack, for example.)

The reason you don't want to just pair up all your units is simply that each pair is reducing the number of available attacks in any given turn, making it more difficult to hold off an aggressive enemy.

[TheLastBaron]

Wow thanks for that post, I just got the game and that's super helpful.  XCOM has also ruined me, currently I'm still in the mindset of doing everything super slow and slowly moving my guy, making sure everyone is in an optimal position at all times. 

[Sno]

Couple other things, because i feel like it:

This is a very valuable page to keep an eye on once you're to the point where you're promoting and class changing characters. (You generally don't want to promote or class change a unit before its obtained all of the available skills it can get from its class.)

There's a lot of other arcana and nuance about which level you should be promoting/class changing characters at, but the available skills are generally the most important thing to keep an eye on before making that jump. (You also generally don't want to class change a unit with a promoted class into a non-promoted class, not even to chase some extra skills. To avoid having to do that during a class change, the promoted unit needs to first reach a certain level in its promoted class, and then it can class change from its promoted class to another promoted class, instead of having to start over at a non-promoted class.)

Some recruitment opportunities are missable too, so be careful about that stuff. The game makes it pretty obvious most of the time, but there's a few that have odd requirements.

Also, that skill inheritence thing i mentioned, it happens whenever you start a child character's paralogue, and not actually when the parents marry. With a handful of scripted exceptions, the two skills in the last open slot on each parent will be inherited to the offspring when the mission starts. (With this knowledge, you would, for example, want to make absolutely sure Donnel inherits Aptitude to whoever his kid ends up being.)

[Merus]

If this is your first Fire Emblem game, and if you're playing with permadeath on, this is a mistake. Especially on its hard setting, the game becomes very difficult around its tenth chapter when all the side missions start opening up. (You're also only about a fifth of the way through the game's content at that point.)

 

I'm not very far in, mission five or so, playing on normal with permadeath on because I'm not stellar at strategy games but I want a 'real' Fire Emblem experience. Should I just restart?

[Sno]

For a player new to the series, I would actually recommend exactly what you're already doing, normal difficulty with permadeath enabled.

The permadeath enforces the methodical, cautious tactics the series is designed around, but on normal it's not so difficult that you'll be replaying missions over and over to avoid losses, nor will small mounting mistakes have you deep in the game and critically ill-equipped for what you're facing.

 

Unlike many previous games in the series, FEA's filled with random battles and offers many opportunities to course correct, but it's still a very challenging game on its higher difficulty levels.

You know, but if somebody's comfortable with strategy RPG's, they should go right ahead and play on hard. That's what i was playing on.

[dibs]

I have been considering throwing my 3DS in my bag when I leave the house for school in the morning, but am conflicted. Can I get a quick poll? Streetpassing your teacher: would it have made you think they're relatable or just weird?

Just make sure your avatar is wearing pants.

[Sno]

Oh, hey. So i guess Recca, an incredibly rare technical marvel of the Famicom, is now available on the European 3DS Virtual Console.

I plan on buying this as soon as it becomes available in North America.

 

Speaking of scrolling shooters on the 3DS, Canada is still bizarrely excluded from the worldwide release of Kokuga. (The latest game from this dude.) I am still feeling a bit stung over that, i really wanted to play that.

[TheLastBaron]

I forgot how much I hate the X and Y buttons being reversed on the DS.  I don't think I'll ever get used to it and it's bugging me a lot.

[Sno]

Technically, it's the xbox pad that is reversed. The Nintendo layout came first by a solid decade.

[Yasawas]

Canada is still bizarrely excluded from the worldwide release of Kokuga. (The latest game from this dude.) I am still feeling a bit stung over that, i really wanted to play that.

I know Treasure's not a huge team but it impressed me to see that one man was responsible for so much of Ikaruga. Good work sir.

[Sno]

According to the game's credits, the team at Treasure that originally made Ikaruga had only five people.

[Sno]

What the fuck?

[I Saw Dasein]

Sno, thanks so much for the great Fire Emblem advice. I switched to normal/permadeath and while I think the game is too easy (at least in the early missions), it is much less frustrating. Two quick question--am I right in thinking that I should level a character to the level cap before switching classes? Also, are the stat gains at level up totally random?

[tegan]

What the fuck?

 

I saw that, and that was my reaction exactly.

 

Weirdest thing: apparently that's a single solid screen partially obscured by the casing, so the top screen is touch-sensitive now too.

 

 

EDIT:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=p986eUrW8Ic

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sAExBTWIp3M