The Case Against Resetting: A Fire Emblem Analysis 

Check out the Birthright Iron Man with SpeedyHawk here! We definitely don't fail the Iron Man in the first chapter. It didn't happen! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YXN7chsHoNg.html

If the developers made content for when your allies died. It would incentive people to not reset. Like be bold; have a funeral, make them unique to the characters, have people question your leadership, if it was a lucky crit then have character dialogue acknowledging how unlucky the character was. If a generic NPC kills your guy, then how about them running away and randomly showing up in a future battle, and you can have a revenge subplot. So many ideas but no execution, thus their are no incentives to not reset.

Our beef is VERY Organic. That clip is completely in context.

I feel like the only appropriate way to play ironman is to be streaming in front of live audience that can hold you accountable for your mistakes and go be in the journey with you.

I don't think that the existence of turnwheel/divine pulse gives the developers more license to be lazy with their map design, mostly because it probably gives them too much credit. I think they were going to be lazy with their map design regardless. Without divine pulse, the game would be equally flawed, just without this quick & easy fix to make it tolerable for the player. For FE3H specifically, the ramped up complexity and troubled development are probably bigger factors.

I feel the games most of the time don't respond to perma death is a problem with it as well. Really in your FE8 Iron Man besides tons of fun with 3% crits stuff or so things happened like Ewan shot down almost next to his sister and she never responded at all to it. Tethys raised her baby brother on the street by dancing to random strangers and her dancing also made Ewan cry less. The fact that she never responded to her baby brother's death is very unlikely. The game goes through all the trouble of letting you build supports but if someone dies it is like that shit never happened at all. Really why not make some unique events happen from death? I mean even unfun stuff like how FE7 has Pent and Louise leave if just one is 'killed' but say Erk was alive still Pent would ask his student to carry on for him and as a result maybe Erk learns light magic?

Fundamentally the problem is that the fanbase will never be happy. As you've pointed out before, there's two different kinds of fire emblem. There's campaign emblem which has you play through a drawn out campaign focusing on macro strategic difficulty of managing resources, and puzzle emblem which focuses on micro tactical difficulty where every turn every unit's positioning matters. These two styles of gameplay are inherently antagonistic because campaign emblem needs to hand out lots of resources in terms of characters and equipment because it expects you to lose them, while puzzle emblem needs a scarcity of resources to make the puzzles interesting. Turnwheel itself is sort of a mundane problem, it should just be a settings toggle at the start of the campaign like casual/classic is. The real problem for campaign emblem is the rise of a third style of FE with awakening which I'll call RPG emblem. RPG emblem ramps up the RPG elements to 11 through unit customization including class switching, skill combination, forging, combat arts and then further increases your engagement with the characters by deeply integrating them into the story. The problem for campaign emblem is that RPG emblem has many systems that overlap with puzzle emblem since its in that design's interest to keep characters alive in order to enable more elaborate customization, but very few that overlap with campaign emblem; and RPG emblem has been vastly more successful than campaign emblem.

From personal experience in recommending Fire Emblem games to people, those that strive for the most "perfect" playthroughs also tend to get the most frustrated with the games due to suffering from self-inflicted repetition and making minimal progress per unit of time spent on the game. Besides resetting for deaths I have heard of players who reset upon getting a poor level up or losing a relatively worthless item (say, an elixir or something less valuable than that) to an enemy thief. The opposite extreme would likely be an ironman run, and those are fun in and of themselves, but I find that playing an "imperfect" run where you only reset for a strict game over usually offers a pretty relaxed experience, even on higher difficulty levels.

14:08 "Look Gary, there I am again!" While I do think there is some merit to resetting chapters (although I don't want to get sidetracked with a massive wall of text), I 100% agree that Fire Emblem games should be designed with permadeath in mind. Take the Turn wheel for example. On its own, I don't see it as an issue. In fact, it can expedite the process of resetting if players want to protect their precious waifu or husbando. Imagine if Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance got a remake that gave players two or three turn wheel uses per map (I vastly prefer a low number in order to preserve tension). Not using them grants a little extra gold and/or (bonus) experience. This wouldn't undermine the game's features like late game units or the bonus experience system. The problem becomes when the game is designed entirely around the turn wheel. I adore Three Houses, but letting your units die in that game simply isn't an option for the vast majority of players. The lack of any new units gained in the second half of the game plus your house units being force deployed in the notoriously difficult chapter 13 really hurts. Also, having ambush spawns on maddening because the player can rewind is bullcrap. Ambush spawns always suck @$$, regardless of systems in place like turn wheel, replacement units, bonus experience, grinding, etc.

three houses is a weird case I think because the game relies so heavily on growth units that playing through a tough loss is almost unthinkable. I think the initial 3 divine pulses is an appropriate amount-enough to give beginner players or players who like to experiment a safety net if something goes wrong, but not so much that it feels like your moves don’t have consequences. The problem is that once you expend those resets, if someone dies, it’s hard to justify playing through, especially post timeskip. Pre-timeskip it’s reasonable to poach someone from another house, assuming you didn’t already recruit everyone and you can meet the requirements, and usually their stats and class will at least be competent for where you are in the game. But 3h units rely heavily on class mastery skills to really excel (esp on maddening) and the fact that you can recruit someone in Chapter 10 and they haven’t even mastered Noble/Commoner is kind of a headache. Plus as Bopper said, you’re hung out to dry post-timeskip. I’ve seen the argument made that 3h is not designed with permadeath in mind, and I think that’s completely true. In that sense, it’s good that they give you so many divine pulses, so you can prevent those hard losses from happening. Moving forward, though, it would be nice to see some restraint with the turn wheel, maybe 5 uses at most, and design that works with the permadeath rather than against it.

I have a weird love-hate relationship with Fire Emblem Iron Man runs. On the one hand, I find them to be interesting and having the potential for some really fun and exciting playthroughs. On the other, the fear of permadeath and losing a unit I like usually has me just play it safe rather than attempt any fun or interesting strategy. It's actually why I like the introduction of the turn wheel/divine pulse, it lets me experiment with more bold and fun strategy while not needing to worry about unit death from trying to do something interesting. I do agree that divine pulse can and has lead to some more lazy design on the developers part and the potential fear of them leaning to hard on the mechanic to save them from poor design choices does worry me a bit going forward.. But I don't feel the fault lies in the mechanic itself.

I said this before and I'll say it again but the only way to make it so that players will indulge in not resetting is to make differing campaigns or endings depending on how many main lords the player has ran through. I would design not a 2nd generation type story but a story that alters depending on whether or not the main lord has fallen and who will replace them. Either the Jaegan character, charismatic 2nd in command, or lord from another region takes up the fight and they become the main lord after the 1st one's death in battle. Having legitimate outcomes based on your actions is the only way to enforce the idea to the average player as you really would be missing out on 1 or more narratives if you only played the first lord each time with no resets.

In my 10 or so years of being a Fire Emblem fan, I had never enjoyed playing as much as I did when I finally started playing with no resets (even though I still do in the games that are clearly not designed around it). I love the feeling of having actual stakes, having to move on with what I have, be forced to be more careful etc. It really makes the game shine as a strategy rpg where your decisions truly matter. One thing I expected to hate and instead I loved, is how RNG can screw you over; I thought it was just me getting punished for no reason, but tbh including probability more into the decision making process only made it even more fun.

Permadeath is a bit closely intertwined with the development of the whole series as a whole. Echoes cleary included it as a quality of life feature, but 3 houses then went and made units development more complex, and has the core esemble of characters get many supports and appear in the main story, you build up a character for a long-term role. It's not quite just the ''can you keep going and beat the game'' anyone, but also losing a character screws with the whole gameplay experience, and a lot of the narrative. It's quite likely newer games will experiment a bit like this. Ironmans are a good concept(and I would like to do one eventually). The case in the video doesn't adress the snowballing of units deaths though. It heavily depends on game, difficulty setting, and players skill, but if particulary reliable frontliner falls, you might have to take more risks to make ends meet later on. Sometimes compensating units indeed creative a compelling narrative, but another thing that often happen is gradually losing more units until a softlock experience happens by having a weak army. The whole argument rests on a certain amount of competence exists. Yet here you can slowly fail over time, instead of like with most games a failstate happens if you don't happen to be good enough at a certain point, and you either pass that or not. In addition to this if you assume a new player, these are more likely to be invested in story/characters, have information shortage regarding avoiding mistakes, or judging the severity of losing a unit/adapting to a new one. Most probably don't take too kindly to the unexpected surprise. I'm taking a Lowest common denominator approach here, but the analysis focused on resetting not being needed on a failstate is encountered, so I took it to a possible logical conclusion. FE games are usually doable if you keep soldiering on(on a reasonable difficulty, but a player needs to know that, might get unmotivated. Quite a bit of newer games are lengthy too. Casual mode took care of most the fears of first timers, and provides a way to keep going full power/narrative or fail, but it has a bit of a poor reputation. Personally I dislike unit deaths,but am fond of just being able to make regular saves. Still the earliest simpler games, or the middle of the road(regarding character uniqueness) GBA games are both already quite a bit in the past. The original FE had the whole cast tuned around being able to keep going. Such a approach is increasingly infeasible unless they opt to go for a an explicit ''generics emblem'' game Personally I think permadeath might be a bit too much of a sacred cow of the series. Ironmans aren't bad but in modern times a very specific appraoch. Casual mode of course has the of cited drawback of some players adopting sacrifical strategy, but I think it's a bit overstated(a lot of people probably dislike having their units KOed on principle). Still, it's a bit slap on the wrist. Yet permadeath is a severe punishment that restricts how characters can be accounted for for gameplay/narrative. I'm curious if they will opt for some alternative form of penalty in the future that discourages KO's but also allows characters to be be counted on to be present for gameplay/narrative. Permadeath probably works better if a series remains heavily tuned for it, like Xcom. With FE this isn't quite the case anymore, by a long shot, although of course different games in the series could go for different things.

I *love* the DS games' mid-battle save system. They allow for resets without having to do the whole chapter again, yes, but they also do something else I like a lot. They, without overwriting a 'safe' save file, allow you to save yourself into bad situations. When you do, resetting isn't just "Oh I guess I'll just not send my flier over there because ambush spawn archers" or w/e, but instead becomes a puzzle, and one that, due to the number of variables in FE, is often unique to that particular playthrough. And sometimes there's no way out without a unit dying, so they can, assuming one doesn't restart the whole chapter, force the player to make the hard decision of "Who can I let die here?" Full resets are pretty boring, and I'm glad I've stopped doing them as much since I started watching you, but these mid-battle saves I think do offer their own kind of fun because of the ability to save in a bad spot. That doesn't excuse all the *fucking ambush archers* tho. Fuck ambush archers.

My favourite way to play is resetting if somebody dies on the first few turns of a map (or one of my favourites), but letting permadeath take its toll when somebody dies near the end of a map. It's a happy medium that still allows for player driven narratives/meaning, while keeping my favourites alive and myself sane. I really liked your discussion of turnwheel. I don't think about it often because I don't really play the newer games, but you make a good case for how it excuses design decisions.

I think the turn wheel is a great way to counter bad rng and undue things like being crit by an enemy with a low percentage. The problem is that it's a bandaid solution and not a good one. To use 3H as an example - there are plenty of unplayable units that could have been used as replacements. Ladislava would have been a great late game replacement unit but we never got use her. Hilda's brother Holst is another example of what could have been. Markyjoe has a great video about fire emblem balance and talks about how FE is balanced around imperfect play. Since awakening there has been a shift to perfect play being the focus. The newer games just don't give as much leeway to live with mistakes imo.

Resetting is, and should always be, a voluntary action. If intelligent systems introduces the turn wheel then subsequently introduces bad map design into it because of their own mechanic, the only people that should be criticized are intelligent systems for designing things poorly. Not the players that reset. I reset because I want my first playthrough to feel complete. I wanna see the characters' endings and I don't wanna feel that empty feeling I got when I beat FE7 for the first time as a kid and saw the characters I let die. Arguably, if I were to play through it again for the sake of seeing everything, that's just as much or more time spent than if I were to just reset, so I don't really see a difference. But on a second playthrough, ironmans are fun. Maybe a little too intense for someone that prefers to play all the modern games on lunatic/maddening, but the earlier ones are very fun for it. I don't agree with everything you've said, but good video.

i hope the turnwheel stays, because being able to rewind after a misclick is an appreciated QOL improvement (accidentally selecting End Turn at the start of my turn and watching the carnage ensue in my last FE6 run didn't have me appreciating the sanctity of permadeath or whatever). most of the time i forget the turnwheel is even there, and play as if it isn't, but with more peace of mind. intelligent systems just needs to relearn the lessons they'd apparently learned for fates (no one likes ambush spawns or fog of war), then we're... probably fine? idk i just see the turnwheel as a necessary mechanic to make a wildly investment-heavy game like three houses function at all, rather than something that portends ill for future fire emblem design. also when i'm in a crowd of units and accidentally heal the wrong person [uncle rico voice] "ohhhh, man i wish i could go back in time."

I just can't bring myself to play without saving everyone. For me that is the main objective of the games: "How do I win this without letting anyone die?"

I've always had two main ideas to make resetting after death less immediately enticing. Martyrdom- A character dying gives a stat buff for the rest of the mission. Maybe a small blanket stat buff to the whole army and a bigger one to anyone they have support with. Memorial Banners- One I've put a lot of thought into. A character dying drops a banner memorializing them that can be equipped to a character, giving a buff similar to if that character were doubled up with them awakening/fates style. Banner buff would be based on a combination of character and class, and like pairing up, would be stronger if given to someone they had support with. Maybe it could hold a single skill of theirs as well.

I've always thought that the best way to implement permadeath in a meaningful way was through a life system. All characters except the lord(s) have 2-3 "lives". Meaning that they can survive getting wounded but aren't immortal gods either. If a unit bites the dust they retreat or you could even make it so that another unit needs to rescue them at the cost of stats like speed or dexterity making it an on the moment decision wether to risk more units or let them die for good. Then they can't be deployed for the next chapter since they would be recovering and their next level up will have a chance to be negative level ups since they have wounds that afflict their growth. Then if the player screws up again the character would permanently die, if they are strong enough (maybe a stat check or some other measure like just a luck roll) then they get 1 more chance albeit with a more prominent chance at negative level ups. The characters that suffer life threatening wounds should show their disgruntlement towards the player for making the choices that led to that outcome (could even depend on the character how they react) and have the closest friend of that character berate you while they recover (again could also depend). This is basically the best permadeath i could come up with, since the units get 1 more chance and if they are good enough even 1 extra chance, but it won't be for free and the game will make sure you don't forget that fuck up. Idk this feels like the best way to tell players to live with their mistakes without giving them the middle finger for losing to a 1% crit. Anyways good video, loved it

The two DS games were the only ones I actually liked for the tension Having the save point as something to plan for was amazing. They were the two FE games I never used save states the first time

My most memorable fire emblem experience was my first play through of echoes, it was the first game I didn’t reset the level for my units. I lost silque, one of the only good healers on alms route, and on celicas I missed out on palls and catria because I didn’t realize you could find them in one of the villages if you failed to recruit them. I remember loving the map design, and when I heard people hated it, I was very confused. I think the reason I liked it so much was that I HAD to use unique and interesting mechanics to get through most maps, I didn’t have two busted Pegasus knights during all the sand and swamp terrain on celicas route, and on alms, every bit of damage was much more impactful than it would have been otherwise. Writing that out, the experience sounds terrible, but it was fun because of the unique challenges that were determined by MY unique choices throughout that play through.

Interesting, I usually reset all the time during my playthroughs but this video makes some good points. I actually just recently was playing Fates conquest and my Azura died to an archer that previously wasn't moving and I reset but realistically I guess I don't need Azura to finish the game. I think I'm gonna try to do this the next time I play a fire emblem game. Thanks Bopper!

This speedy beef is hilarious. You guys are great together. Also Fear of missing out (FOMO) seems like a big part of it for many players.

The thing that worries me about the turn wheel so far is that in the two games it's in it almost feels like an excuse to not create or revisit maps so that they actually engage the player in ways that aren't artificial because "the player will just experiment until they find the proper solution" rather than make reasoned decisions based on experiences the devs always expect every player to have. When the most a game has to offer, lets say at it's highest difficulty, is creating forced instances where the players natural tendencies is to reset (be it FOMO, perfectionism, favoritism etc.) it really turns me off from the experience. Its why the imperfect runs I have of FE9 still bring me back because I know the developers behind that game give tutorial maps through the first seven or so chapters that clearly set expectations of the player that are specific and realistic - they have every intention of giving someone everything they need to succeed for the rest of the game (knowledge of different objectives, unit type strengths and weaknesses, a fallback unit via Titania etc.). They don't just throw a time altering device to a newbie and say "see what happens".

This was a super enlightening perspective I didn't realize I needed to hear. I've played through every English FE, and have never done an ironman run; however, I HAVE stopped playthroughs for up to months at a time because a death "forced me" to restart a chapter that I really didn't want to replay. For some reason it never even occurred to me that permadeath was there for a reason, as a game mechanic, rather than as an especially real-life-resource consuming failure state. This video was amazing, and you've absolutely convinced me to make my next playthrough an ironman one for sure. Thanks Bopper, love the content as always :)

I am going to contradict myself, but I love that Fire Emblem has permadeath, it makes the game series very unique and encourages you to explore the many colorful characters it has, without intrusively shoving them in your face. By having a cast larger than what you can deploy, then having some of them die, everyone's experience of the same game will be COMPLETELY different. And that's what makes the series so beautiful. Being able to talk about the same game you enjoyed, but sharing completely different stories. I like talking about my game experiences with my friends. By eliminating permadeath, by resetting, these stories start to become a lot more similar, a lot more boring, and therefore less worth to talk about. Because what is there to talk about if we all just tell the same story? And yet, I'm a culprit of abusing resets. Why? Fear. It's simple as that. I am scared of letting go of something in a video game. Isn't that crazy? And I'm going to make a wild assumption here, but I'm sure some people might feel the same. It's this crazy idea I have, that video games may be the one thing I have the control and power over to make perfect. To get the 100% and make it flawless and complete. This fear of losing a 32pixel sprite I like is so deeply rooted within me that I can't just let it go. I never learned to let go. And not letting a safe environment such as a video game teach me, will never help the cause. But also, I haven't properly played a Fire Emblem Game in a while. I'm soon playing Path of Radiance with my friends for the first time, and I'm actually pretty excited to play past my mistakes. (Not like I would ever make any mistakes)

I usually reset on my blind runs with normal difficulty to "test" the game and rerun without resets on hard, it's always painful when your favorite character dies just like Gilliam eating 3%

Saying that "resetting a map is an interesting choice" is legitimately not something I've ever heard, or anything vaguely similar to that

I never feel satisfied without reseting, though the Ironman challenges are memorable, I cannot bear to lose a unit, especially if I actually like the character I lost (Like Lissa, Charlotte and Silque). Resetting also allows me to get to know them better (which is how I learned to appreciate units like Rinkah, Leon, Florina and Nino) as I can read their supports and get to the end. You do raise good points, but sadly, I won't do a "Iron man" challenge anytime soon.

I would definitely argue that resetting is a game mechanic. The developers were well aware of the hardware they were working on. If they didn't want the player to be able to reset they would've made some sort of autosave system that overwrote your save after each action or the midbattle save system from Awakening where it deleted the save once it was loaded.

Over time, I find that newer FE games focus more and more on the player story of raising units and taking ownership of them, so much so that the games actively discourage letting anyone die because the amount of investment you put in makes your units irreplaceable. Sure, the same can be said of other games in the series, but if you consider something like Three Houses or even Awakening, you see just how hard it is to replace a good unit because the game just don't give viable replacements later on into the game. I personally feel that resetting isn't a choice anymore, or at least, it is as much of a choice as picking what type of Undertale run you're going for - all the decisions are made before you pick up the controller, and you just have to slog through until you feel like the frustration isn't worth the run.

Another refreshing take. I'm glad you're making content and (hopefully) enjoying doing it. I always seem to get caught in the fomo and strive for a 'perfect' run but maybe I can break that habit next time I start up the game

I’m glad you talked about player-created stories as I feel it’s a very important part of these games that’s not talked about enough. FE4 is praised for a lot, but one thing I’ve not seen anyone praise is how unique the ending is relative to your experience. Between gen 1 pairings (or lack thereof), gen 2 pairings, and character deaths, FE4’s ending will be drastically different for every player. I’ll never forget Janne mentioning her dead lover, or Patty not being able to be with hers because Faval died and she had to inherit Jungby instead. I think more mechanics like the FE4 ending, Ilios’ recruitment requirement in Thracia and the 2nd FE6 route split, where the player’s individual experience directly affects the narrative, are great ways to enhance player created stories, and in turn elevate permadeath as more than just a gameplay mechanic.

While the video was great, I have a couple of disagreements. The comparison with gacha games is pretty iffy at best. I get what you're saying, but I don't think it works because time is a resource that we spend on basically everything. I don't begrudge resetting in the same way I don't begrudge the training room in a fighting game or the time spent learning a song on an instrument. When it comes to bad design choices, I don't think resets normalize it, but make them more noticeable. If someone plays the same chapter multiples times, the bad design decisions should become apparent by virtue of exposure. At the very least, the frustration from losing a unit to ambush reinforcements in either an ironman or reset run is most likely comparable. Personally I think you're underselling player-created stories that can occur with resets.

I will always reset,so I can see each character's post game story

In my FE8 iron man my tana managed to survive a berserked seth for 4 turns and is something that will always stick in my mind

Three houses was my first FE but I'm a long time player of games like x-com. You did a great job of putting into words the awkward feeling I had around the divine pulse mechanic and lack of ability to recover during the campaign. It's also WILD to me that they put permadeath in a character-focused game but don't even account for it in the narrative. No one's story arcs change even a little by someone getting killed! It's like the devs just shrugged their shoulders and assumed no one would let anyone die anyway so why bother.

I’m somewhere in the middle. I’ll reset if I lose something super valuable to me, even if it isn’t necessary to beating the game, but I generally want to complete a map on my first try, without resetting.

On god this is one of the best eye openers I've ever had the luck to land upon, really made me realize what I dislike and what keeps me going on a fire emblem game. I am also in awe at how this video is 10 times more eloquent and effective in teaching game design than everyday game design videos. Wow just wow

What I find a bit silly is the implication that Kaga and his team didn’t take the save feature or the reset button into account when designing their games. I also advocate for playing past your mistakes, but I do think that “interesting choice” of playing on vs resetting was deliberate.

Really well thought out arguments! My main draw was the self made stories your run gets from allowing character death. Its a role playing game and it allows for tragedies to happen outside of the main story.

Because of this video, I was inspired to do an Ironman of Shadow Dragon, one of my favorite FEs. I got complacent and lost Marth on Chapter 13, so I had to quit the run, but it was still one of the most fun Fire Emblem experiences I’ve had in a really long time. Thanks, Bopper.

playing ironman in fire emblem is soooo fun and more engaging experience

I'll be frank, I love the old mechanics for replacement units and stuff, specially generic playable characters which I find hilarious. But that's it, I find them interesting and funny. I like the idea of having them available, I certainly do not like the idea of relying on them. All in all, i like the idea of having the games be designed around not resetting, BUT giving the schnazzy overkill Casual Mode and Turnwheel mechanics a chance to also exists. I feel like having options are better than not having them, even if they would detract from the "ideal play" envisioned. As you can probably tell, I am quite partial to games having built in "cheat" menus.

Even in the GBA games, they aknowledge the soft resets in a way. they count the number of times a character dies and show it to the player. Which would be pointless outside of the lords if they didn't consider that players would reset upon losing characters

I had a run of radiant dawn in like 2010 where I just gave up at Rebirth 4 because I would always lose someone and reset (Boyd and his crap res). I came back to that file 8 years later equipped with more knowledge of fire emblem games, benched Boyd, and played the chapter super carefully for several turns. I was taking full advantage of the terrain until I lost Rhys to a random crit. I was already like a half hour in and I was NOT doing all that again, so I just forged ahead without him since there was one chapter left anyway. It's something my fire emblem friend won't let me live down but it's still the most memorable event of any fire emblem I've had to this day. I've got a lot of other games on my plate right now, but watching your videos really make me want to do an iron man of my own one day.

I understand why people don't like resetting on deaths but I really enjoy the challenge of doing deathless runs. It forces me to play more tactically and I like feeling like I'm overcoming serious obstacles.

So I do admittedly have a few issues with this. While resetting is, indeed often player indulgence, the fact is that the game has often had mechanics that encourage resetting to get out of bad situations that you put yourself into. Not just in modern FEs, not just the save points in Shadow Dragon, but all the way back in Fire Emblem 4, where you can save at the start of each turn(Which, yeah, you mention, but the way I look at it, I feel like it's just acknowledging and justifying that the general feel towards the game is different than their original intentions and shifting to meet it). And fact of the matter is that, let's be blunt here, the games are literally designed around the notion that they'll push you into soft-resetting. I actually have a very strong memory of fighting Walhart, going one on one between him and Chrom, it was a hype fight and I was on the edge of my seat. I thought I had a good chance of winning... Until Walhart ran past Chrom, ran past all my army, just to get to Gaius in the back and smack him to death. Cue soft reset. This is why I play on casual mode when it's available now: Because the AI doesn't play like it's a living, breathing world so why should I? There's no acknowledgement of character deaths 95% of the time, the AI constantly does petty over-extensions and kill units that, in a war-like setting would be completely useless, just to whittle you down, and ultimately the games have many times supported this choice anyway. I'm there for a fun story and an enjoyable ride, and y'know what? If I can't take that journey without Bernie, Panne, Ross, Guy, etc, then I don't want to take that journey at all. Another thing is, I understand your argument about how Iron Man creates "memorable moments", but I'd argue that it's less Iron Man and more just moments that stick out. Like, using Sacred Stones, yeah I reset during it at times, like when I lost Ross, and y'know what? One of my most memorable moments of that playthrough came later on when I was pinned down in Fluorspar's Oath, Ch.13 on the Ephraim Route. I was having a rough time moving in, but Selena was going to hammer us with the Bolting tome, and it kept some of my weaker-in-resistance units from approaching, it was a pretty hairy situation. So I did the one thing I could: I used careful positioning to get the Barrier staff safely with Vanessa, brought it over to Moulder, who then used the newly acquired Barrier staff on Ross, who could walk on water because he had become a Pirate(and then a Berserker), and sent him out. He fought brilliantly, pushing through until he got close enough to Selena and, although roughed up, managed to get a strong hit to take her out. My boy Ross saved the day there. Another one was on a recent playthrough of Shadow Dragon, in Chapter 8. Wolf and Sedgar were fighting the enemy, and I had initially written off Roger...but then I started to feel bad. I did the mental math and figured that Caeda could, possibly, recruit him and Roger could tank some hits while making his escape as long as Wolf took care of the archers. Cue a tense battle of Wolf taking hit after hit, ensuring the archers were down, before Caeda ran in to recruit Roger, with the both of them quickly making their escape after and leaving the rest to Wolf who could actually fight back now. So y'see, sure, I didn't "Ironman" it, but I had two incredibly tense, exciting fights there, ones that I'll always remember far more than..well, pretty much anything I did in my first FE game's run(Blazing Blade) where I didn't reset too often, 'cause really, a death sucked, but didn't really make me feel sad because the game never tried to affect me that way(Ironically enough, if I had lost Matthew on a certain chapter, that probably would have had that effect...). Ironmans can be exciting, but it's entirely on the person who does it. For someone like me: It's not my bag. Honestly, I think Permadeath is the series' greatest weakness, it really holds the whole plot of the game back. So many of the characters are reduced to just "into+support" because IS refuses to take into account these characters and their potential deaths for the stories. And it's such a damn shame, it's such wasted potential. I know people give the Monastery some shit in 3 Houses, but y'know what? I think it was brilliant because it actually let us interact with these characters, to get a feel for their personalities and understand their depth, and it actually makes those character deaths feel impactful and meaningful for once in the game's existence.

I'd argue that at the very least radiant dawn and three houses resetting is a mechanic even even if it's never said. Soft resetting was added specifically in those games as a game feature, and was not a function of the console itself. Not to say I disagree with your points, I definitely think they should build the game around people who do let their units die, and not people who go out of their way not let them die. Three Houses felt like it had a classic mode option just so people didn't freak out when it was gone, and that's not okay.

Hot take: casual mode has a place in fire emblem games It creates a more relaxing experience that lets people who are bad at these games still experience the characters and stories while still keeping a sort of challenge

wow the resident evil comparison is fantastic, I didn't realize how similar these two series are in their design philosophy of supplying resources! great work on this video!! I've been trying to get back into playing fire emblems ironman style like I did when I first played awakening and fe7 nearly a decade ago haha. on a side note, as nice as divine pulse/turnwheel is I found myself abusing it multiple times for "risky" strategies that weren't actually risky since you could just undo them if they didn't work. I think having the ability to do so is actually a good thing, but at the same time you're given so many undos that the tension of meaningful decision-making is largely stripped away. but it's difficult to balance its limitation in a way that would satisfy all players as people playing more casually like in a first playthrough would want more uses while people playing for more challenge would want less uses. it's an interesting topic for sure because it's a genius QoL addition to fire emblem and allows you to play in ways you couldn't before but the lack of limitation has caused that classic fire emblem "every decision counts" feeling to disappear.

You have me convinced! I'm playing FE7 Hector hard mode right now, which I've played many times, but with resetting along with savestates... I had gotten into the habit of resetting for any small mistake or bad luck and it's been VERY refreshing to play without being as concerned about missed objectives. I'm not a full iron man yet, as I did reset once for an early Matthew death, but Rebecca is gone (bait to save Eliwood in False Friends woops) and I've missed a couple villages which I certainly would have reset for in previous playthroughs.

Watched a friend finish FE7 for the first time and Athos died on the first round and he kept going despite me feeling very anxious (i had developed an instinct to reset whenever someone important died) and watching him play through the mistakes and get some lucky crits to beat the chapter made for a much more enjoyable experience then slowly grinding myself down trying to get perfect runs.

Interesting! I'll try out a no-resets playthrough as you've suggested.

Dark deity grave wounds system. Deaths give small stat penalties rather than actually killing people.

As a new player, I'm okay with the turn wheel partially cause I suck at strategy. But more importantly, I see it as a interesting mechanic that can be done well. In three houses, you have a limit to how many you can use it, so I think that's the best approach to treating it, as a resource. Then again, I almost always play on casual mode so this might be a moot point, but still.

It's never gonna go like this, but this is what I'd do to turnwheels: Gives 1-2 per map max. I honestly dont mind a couple uses being around but goodness they give too many. Better yet: Allow them for game overs. Let them assist the players in learning why they game overed and how to fix it, instead of giving them frustration from resetting the entire chapter. I think turninh back time can have a welcome place in these games, just that IS hasnt implemented them well yet.

Nowadays I tend to avoid resetting in general, unless I’m playing the 3DS games, where deaths result in me having less content.. I’m also a fan of rewinding time, but with a stricter cap on how often you can use it (maybe even to how many turns you can go back) cause it allows me (a big dummy) to learn from mistakes and get better at strategising in the future, or to avoid snowballing death scenarios to unexpected RNG. Good video btw~ they should definitely bring back those mid battle saves.

10:35 I was also thinking exactly about that moment in POR with all the dragons that you could be soft-locked.

I was going in expecting something really preachy, like “people who pick Casual Mode shouldn’t even play the game” but I was pleasantly surprised that it was more about it being a fault of game design, rather than player choice. I’ll be honest, I will never not use Casual Mode when given the option, it’s just how I enjoy the game. But I also do a lot of Pokémon Nuzlockes, so I understand the appeal of never resetting. All in all, good video!

Another good argument against resetting, in recent Awakening playthroughs I’ve gotten frustrated any time a unit dies and had to reset because I’ve put hours into their build and have considered playing my next run on casual but I think I’ll just play with deaths and see how that goes

I know for me personally I just love the tension created when I play with resets. It forces you to really think about your moves before you make them. I think Ironman or Draft runs are great fun too. The only way I don’t really suggest people play is Casual mode where units come right back. To me that’s the equivalent of when a previously quarter munching beat’em up is played with unlimited continues. It just devolves into mindlessness.

Recently I've changed my opinion about Casual Mode. In Abstract Strategy Games like Chess, Checkers and well basically any game where you lose piece, sacrificing pieces is a highly encouraged strategy with both risks and benefits. In Fire Emblem, sacrificing units doesn't matter as much. Players have health so there's a reliable safety net if you want to use them as bait on Enemy Phase, plus you're not nearly as limited in terms of movement and tile spaces for it to matter as much. That said, there are still benefits, but the losses usually outweigh the benefits. However in Casual Mode, this can become a viable strategy and it allows to play in a completely new way where unit placement is just as important as what stats they have. The problem is this has the opposite problem as Classic Mode where the benefits outweigh the losses. In Shogi, which is a Japanese equivalent to Chess, they specifically design the game around sacrificing pieces. If you lose a piece in that game, the opponent now has that piece and can use a turn to place that piece almost anywhere on the board. Obviously you can do the same as well, so while you might lose resources quickly, you can rebuild them just as quickly. You also often find yourself in situations where you'd want to sacrifice a piece so you can capture another piece so sacrificing has fluctuating risks and benefits that change depending on the pieces and state of the board. Obviously I'm not suggesting that Fire Emblem should allow you to convert enemy units to allies and vice-versa, but I think there should still be a slight tangible benefit to sacrificing units without making it as broken a Casual Mode. One idea I had was that when a unit dies, they'll leave behind a soul. Maybe this soul can give permanent stat buffs or experience to one of your living units. Maybe it can be used like a turnwheel, starting from the next map onward. Whatever it's used for, there should be a reason players will want to use it and convince players to make strategic sacrifices without locking away content in the form of chapters and characters.

Thanks for this video, Professor. I appreciate it.

I played the GBA Fire Emblems with resetting, and by the time I got to Path of Radiance, I was so sick of all the time wasted. So I just let things happen as they would and I had a much better time for it. I think resetting is one of those things we do, thinking it improves our experience when it really sabotages it.

Sometimes, you just don’t want Florina to die.

I think I may now agree with this sentiment of resetting can make the experience lesser I’ll give my example. I’m a new fire emblem fan and I’ve been playing both Awakening and Sacred Stones semi-blindish. Awakening is a hard mode playthrough and Sacred Stones is an iron man on hard mode. Awakening has been a frustrating game to get through for me where chapter 11 had me take quite a few weeks of break because the ambush spawns kept on killing my units so I reset. I did eventually beat it.. but only through brute forcing the reinforcements, resetting and then taking multiple attempts to get the desired out come. But when I finally did finish. It felt like I got a chore done. The only reason i wanted to play was to get Henry which was a character that I liked from heroes. But I didn’t feel satisfied with winning. This is in comparison to my Sacred stones play through where I’ve lost 3 units so far. Garcia, Artur and Moulder. Garcia was lost in chapter 5 to a failure of math. And I was sad at the death. This led to me deciding to use Ross who would’ve stayed on the bench, but that was a minor loss compared to the next two. I’ve heard of the whole Moulder the Boulder thing which I assume is because can take hits/dodge well. I’ve also heard that Natasha is not as good as Moulder. So I gave him both a heal staff and mend staff when I went into chapter 6. (I didn’t buy torch staff because I didn’t know it was fog of war). I only brought Natasha to be extra healing. Around the middle of the map. I lost Artur because of a few surprise units jumping his defense. But other than that it was fine. That death sucked overall more because of my blatant favoritism towards magic units. Yet I still pushed on. At on point I had Gilliam go forward slightly where multiple soldiers and a sword fighter came into site. And I doubted he could survive them. So I had to rescue him with Franz. This inadvertently led to Moulder’s death as Franz was too slow to take out a soldier and I miscounted the range it had. So Moulder was dead which sucked. Despite this I persevered and beat the map. What I went on with all this rambling is that The sacred stones story was more memorable in the moment while the Awakening story was just me doing the equivalent of hitting my head against a wall until it worked. The death of Moulder meant Natasha would become an essential part of the team. But even after the 3 deaths I had faced by chapter 6 I still wanted to play. To continue on. Not for a character I knew I’d get soon. But to play. Because it didn’t feel like I got some chore that I had to finish done, but because I was wanting to avenge the dead comrades. So that gave me a new perspective on resetting vs. not resetting.

Great vid my guy, gave me a lot to think about in terms of how I approach my FE experiences (though the only game I've actually beaten is Awakening). Is there a particular FE game where you'd say the permadeath balance is at its best? I'd like to curb my soft-reset habits and want to know what one would be best to try that with

From a personal standpoint, ironmans have been amongst the most fun way to play FE games, I've gotten many personal memes and stories out of those playthroughs, and I highly encourage others to attempt those. Honestly it's a lot more interesting and less tedious than constant resetting for a perfect run. I'd probably only contest to the latter if I were doing some ETC/LTC, though units dying can be used effectively for strategies (see Palla Emblem's New Mystery H4 0% Growths LTC).

This is a pretty good video. Surprisingly, when I did my first ever iron man play through with Awakening, I didn't lose a single unit. Granted, I did play on Normal mode, but still.

I don't really have a strong opinion on whether resetting is intended or not, but I do think that chapters in Thracia specifically show that it is expected. The intro dialogue to 12x essentially tells the player "hey bro maybe you should bring Lara instead of Lifis this time" and 21's intro says "yeah you should probably bring Linoan". There's probably a few more, but these are the ones that I remember off the top of my head. The problem is that these conversations happen after you've started the chapter, so it's too late to make these changes in game, meaning that you have to restart if you want to cash in. Personally I think it would've been much better in general if these kinds of conversations happened before deployment, but given that they happen after I think it shows that the devs were definitely planning at least some interactions leading to the player restarting (if not more than a few).

Wasn't expecting my unbridled hatred for code veronica to turn up in an FE video but my god thank you for it.

I always use save states, but I might try a run where I don't reset. Thanks for this video!

Thought: (this went on way longer than I initially intended once I started writing) How would you feel if the Enemy had a turnwheel use? How would you feel if the enemy had a Shadow Drag / New mystery point to return to? I think that second one would make for quite a neat twist in a level. Especially if you add story to make it make a little bit of sense. Like imagine you see the main baddie walk over to a mysterious ruin (or whatever context you want to provide) and is doing... something. You don't know what it is but you know they can't be up to any good. X amount of turns later, you go to slay the enemy and they pull this trump card out. Maybe they escape now with this new attempt. Now this also sets up for if you want the bad guy to use it again, you can now know of it and plan around it. The best parts of Fire emblem are always those you can reasonably plan around. Sure, you may not be able to do so for that first use, but then again, the most you could have lost was a lucky roll or two that occurred in that time. Now imagine the devs build the stage this first occurs around this, making it easy to get to the baddie, but have a bunch of bad guys on your tail and presenting the win condition as defeat boss. You've lured the player into finding a clever strategy that they were planning on using just to survive what was about to be a heavy onslaught, one that very well may have taken some of your units from you if you weren't fast enough to getting to the boss. BAM this design just made the ENEMY save/reload into something likely to reward the player with a second chance for their characters. The only piece I'm missing right now creatively is how the objective changes in the second chance at the stage, because just doing the same thing would likely be boring and arbitrary, so you have to mix something up. That's why my initial thought is the bad guy bails, but now I just need a good option on what happens now. The only thing I've got so far would be a very defensible position back towards the beginning of the map that can now be utilized. The problem with that is players might just do that from the start if it allows them to fight the "onslaught." Perhaps the magic ruin creates a crack in the terrain/mountain/etc that creates a new position from which to either allow big advantage over the onslaught forces or simply flee. I don't see an enemy turn wheel bringing any interesting ideas in gameplay or narrative like this. It would likely just be a "nah I'm not going to actually die here" button for them. Granted my option does the same, but I've rather easily made an engaging scenario of it.

I've always felt that resetting is just casual mode with extra steps

I'll never forget my first Awakening run because of how much I forgot most of the cast. It was my first Fire Emblem and I didn't even consider resetting the game as an option. For the first few chapters I also didn't quite understand that I had to give unarmed characters weapons, so many died because of their dumb tactician. Chrom even lost his sister quite early on. After all that loss, coming to understand the game better, and reaching the final map, I looked at all the empty spaces with no units to fill them, watched Chrom and my tactician take the whole battle on their own like it was nothing, and I thought to myself "wow I played this game wrong". Now I look back on it kinda fondly though, there's a personal story there but I know I could never play the game like that again without feeling that need to reset.

Resetting is not a mechanic. And there is honestly no way of seriously arguing that, based on the construction of the game itself. That being said, I like to reset, at least on my first playthrough, so that I can experience the characters that I want to for the specific game. If I didn't reset, I wouldn't have come to love certain characters the way I have; of which, a number are some of my favorite video game characters of all time. I do like to return to the game, and do a run without resets, to experience the game as intended, and to have that more unique and varied experience. Both sides are entirely valid, and in a weird way, I essentially side with both. When it comes down to it, as was even stated in the video, enjoy it your way.👍

What really turned me around was the realization of the following: You'd think that an Iron Man run, which is a challenge run by nature, where you aren't allowed to go back and undo your mistakes wouldn't be fun or even frustrating. However, the fact that I never have to play a single part of the game more than once helps the pacing, and also allows me to take a breather here and there because I know that I'm only ever going to deal with this section once, and then I'll be done. Essentially, Iron Man Runs are somehow more relaxing than my usual playthroughs, which you wouldn't expect from a challenge run. The stories that ensue are great as well. I poayed my own Sacred Stones Randomizer Iron Man along with Boppers SS Iron Man. I remember killing the Demon King with Swordmaster Eirika and Ranger Seth. I remember losing Ross in the Arena. I remember Wyvern Knight Joshua's Death in the Desert right after he got all the stat boosters, including the Swift Soles. I remember Ephraim dodging two lethal attacks at 50% in 19 and 20. I don't remember anything like that from my first playthrough, which was only 2 years ago. But I'm just rambling at this point. Bottom Line, Iron Man Runs are super fun.

I think that I generally like to play past mistakes, especially when I’m playing blind. If I don’t know a unit is important, I won’t reset for them. I do reset for Jagens and personal favorites, but otherwise after watching your fe10 Ironman I decided to stop resetting in my first run and it was really exciting. My fe9 playthrough I reset once for Seth but otherwise it was fun to play past mistakes. Overall, I prefer not to rest since playing things over and over is very unfun.

I'm too lazy to go in depth, but I both agree and disagree with you. I'll admit though, the DS games' save system is great.

I think there is also some context to when the unit death occurs that causes a slippery slope of thinking. When a unit dies in the first couple turns it feels pretty bad to continue when it's much easier, even a trivial amount of time to restart. Suddenly the threshold for when the player would want to restart starts to increase. It goes from the first couple turns to then 5 turns or even 10, to then entirety of the map that the player is willing to spend time to reset.

I found the best mechanic between turnwheel and full resetting is battle save from fates. If you forget to save and need to reset you're fault, but it's a mechanic that rewards you for using it while discouraging you over its tediousness. I played conquest hard classic blind and the battle save was a huge time saver but also punished me for not using it by keeping the permadeath active and made me weigh up my time or the character (mozu, silas and kaze) that I had grown attached to.

I was not expecting to see a Hotline Miami reference already a minute within the video, but I am very grateful for it

Even though my first was Awakening and I played on Casual (then) I played as if PermaDeath was a thing. I planned out my *whole turn* before moving a single unit. Always considered "am I comfortable with the units HP if ambush enemies appear?" Each map took me an hour or longer but I never lost anyone. After that I took the same mindset into Conquest. And while I didn't beat it (good GOD the plot was bad) I remember it more than anything because of how beautifully designed the maps were and how much my playstyle meshed with the map design. I know I'm an outlier. And many would look at my playstyle and say "that's boring" but there's nothing quite like a well laid plan coming to fruition.

Great points!

going through blazing sword, for like the 4th time but i never finished, doing all kinds of savestate shananagains, just cause, but also thinking of following up with a no reset after on normal mode where i pick who i use by rolling a d20 for each charactor and highest rolls get used, sounds like fun, tho will probably have lots of deaths, might look up ambush spawns tho, that shit basically asks you to memorize where it is

Personally, after going through FE3h on Hard/Classic, Awakening on Hard/Casual, and trying to play FE6... I want an All-Lord mode. If I'm playing a permadeath mode, and someone dies, I am going to reset, or hopefully Divine Pulse, end of story. Can't we just automate it? The challenge of Permadeath in Fire Emblem is, to me, Not Letting Anyone Die. If someone dies, you reset, that's just what you do. And it's time consuming, and exhausting, and annoying...

Still, I don't understand people choosing Classic and resetting upon death. When you have the option, you may as well play Casual directly.

This has made me entirely rethink how I view resets in this game series. I have only beaten Three Houses--but I am currently playing Awakening (Normal/Classic), and have both Fates and Echoes in my backlog. Whenever I lose a character, I just immediately reset--aside from the one time I let Caspar die in my initial 3 Houses playthrough. As a kid, I always thought the permadeath feature in Fire Emblem was really cool, but I never had an opportunity to play the any games in the franchise until just last year when I got to play Three Houses, and it never really occurred to me until watching this video that it's a bit silly of me to want a challenge, actively choose Classic mode, and then erase all of my consequences when I make mistakes anyway. For all that, I should have just chosen Casual mode. You have made an excellent case for not resetting, and I'm going to actually going to try to do so moving forward. I don't know if I'll NEVER reset because I think the circumstances do matter in regards to whether a reset is really necessary or not, but I think I will continue playing Awakening with the mindset of not resetting because I actually do want to see what kind of unique experience it presents. I've always felt some shame in resetting after a mistake, too, so a part of me has always wanted to do a reset-free run of these games.

I just enjoy doing no death runs, so I reset if a character dies so I can redo the chapter with better strategy based on what I learn from the chapter and learn to not make the same mistakes in the future to get better at Fire Emblem. Especially because I'm relatively new to FE and always trying to improve my skills

As someone who's played most of the older games and who prefers Three Houses on classic-maddening mode, I actually really like Divine Pulse. Without it, I wouldn't have the confidence to be playing classic-maddening, but to me playing any other difficulty doesn't provide a stimulating challenge so I wouldnt enjoy it as much. And yet I do agree with a lot of the points you made. What I think would be an ideal solution would be to add more benefits to letting your units die. This could be in the form of temporary or permanent boosts to other units (if Sylvain and Felix reached an A support but then Sylvain dies, perhaps Felix could receive some sort of boost for the rest of the battle, or the rest of the game as he fights with more vigor to avenge his fallen friend). Maybe it could return to what Shadow Dragon did with only unlocking certain characters if enough of your units die. Maybe even in a NG+ the units who died return to the game with the stats and equipment they had when they fell (this one is probably not such a good idea, but I'm just throwing them out there). Whatever the solution, i think the problem is and has always been having to ask the question "Am I willing to sacrifice this?" To which the answer for most players is "No," because that sacrifice yields no rewards.

You acknowledge why people do it but don't offer any counter except "maybe don't". I agree that ironmanning a run has it's merits and can produce a unique experience that is not available to resetters, but I can also applaud a Nuzlocke for the very same reasons and yet it's kind of on the opposite spectrum. A nuzlocke is a player enforced rule that ensures consequence to an otherwise easy game. Where as that same mechanic is built into Fire Emblem, where resetting becomes a player choice of balancing keeping a character for whatever reason or keeping chapter progress. There is plenty incentive not to reset, I mean the amount of times I've sat thinking "is this worth resetting and losing 45 minutes of good level ups for this one character?" I think that decision gives important agency to the player. You established you clearly don't have to do it as there are many ways built into the game to support players who roll with the punches, but at the same time, it being an option at all enables you to learn it enables you to make the decision in sacrificing that good run for the sentimental. Let's face it, you don't ever reset Advance Wars runs because one tank dies. Fire Emblem has much of it's appeal not because of permadeath, but because of each unit in your army being unique. People treasure these characters and will absolutely sacrifice themselves to keep them around. The attachment people have is pretty cool, honestly. Not many games give you the ability to hold your characters lives in your hands like that. Aerith dies no matter what; no resetting will fix that, but Mia dying is something you can avoid. Or...You can continue. The choice is the beautiful thing here. I wouldn't make a case against resetting nor would I make a case for it. It's a personal choice of play that both have their pros and cons, much like a Nuzlocke.

1000% agree. Although, I think part of the problem is the paradox of keeping permadeath as a central mechanic while continuously upping how invested you are/have to be in the characters each game (and theres far less of them). I played Project Ember as first ever ironman, i can't believe I didn't play this way before, its so much better, but to be fair the hack does a lot to stop the cheap stuff described in this video, and so many units are ready out of the box...

Overall i really agree with the thoughts expressed. The fire emblems runs i remember and think of are ones where people died. Characters that i liked enough to mourne as people. And even if the other characters didnt respond, i did mourn their deaths as i felt i failed them. And their tragic tale is recorded forever in my memory. Strength and honor, whatever happens we were in it together. With the last 3 fire emblem games i do 2 play throughs of each route. 1 natural playthrough. No resets, no knowledge on encouters, and no forcing a game over. And them 1 perfect world where everyone lives. The perfect world really does feel hollow as a victory in story telling. Its hard to really love or be interested in something or someone if your only desire is to keep it alive and intact. When you actually place yourself mentally amoung the world and simulate yourself as the general it is so much more heroic and tragic. But thats just the washed up opinion of a 30 year old dude who has been playing them since the gamecube and has thus gone back and played the originals.

My first copy of FireEmblem was a bootleg FE6 cartridge that literally didn't let me save because the save battery died. Every time I tried to play was an iron run. It was surprisingly satisfying! Each time was like an alternate universe. There were a few runs where an unexpected character became absolutely jacked. A few where old Marcus died. A few where I couldn't recruit Rutger. It was a surprisingly liberating way of playing the game. I think I might do more iron runs of games now.

You've changed my mind bopper.

The best FE to do ironman runs in, by story content alone, has to be Path of Radiance. Every scene occurs differently if this or that character is dead, people acknowledge these and react accordingly, it's a real joy to see those. Too bad most of them happen in the first maps where it sucks the most to have dead characters, but i really like it. I also know FE7 has one or other "funeral" scene, Matthew being the one most people remember since it's a very nice scene. Wonder which other game has those