There were a few assertions that you made in the video which I heavily disagree with: - You implied, if not outright stated, that players who reset on a unit death instead of continuing weren't "actively" engaging with the permadeath mechanic. Part of this engagement is forcing the player to make a decision when a unit dies whether to reset or to push through. That players overwhelmingly decide to reset (especially on modern higher difficulties where they can't afford to lose good units) doesn't mean that they refuse to actively engage with the mechanic. - I don't think you ever addressed how IS could reconcile cast balance with difficulty, as you pointed out that higher difficulties tended to have less balanced casts. The point of a lower difficulty is to allow the player to play through their mistakes, while the point of a higher difficulty is to severely punish a player for mistakes and discourage them altogether. - Speaking of that, you gave examples of what you believed to be balanced or unbalanced games, defining a balanced cast to be one that has fewer unusable bottom-tier units. Using your definition, FE12 only has an unbalanced cast if you're playing on its highest difficulty. You're free to play on lower difficulties for a similar kind of gameplay experience to FE3. The complaint about Fire Emblem deviating from its original design philosophy of players "engaging" with permadeath is a product of tunnel vision on higher difficulty settings. I do think that, for example, FE12 could have had better unit base stat scaling on its higher difficulties (base stats more like Belf and Leiden rather than Abel or Wolf), which could've alleviated its imbalance problem somewhat, but they still need to be weaker on the whole in order to reward the player for managing EXP on units who have been around for longer. I don't think that higher game difficulty necessarily results in a less balanced cast; it's just that IS hasn't done a good job at designing casts for a higher difficulty.
- This is something that I could have been more clear on, but I don't blame players or think that players are "playing wrong" if they choose to restart. I do think that the choice the game leaves you with (play through mistakes OR restart and try again) is a bad choice to force on players. I remember the first times I played Fire Emblem and I always reset out of fear, and players, especially new players, making decisions because they fear being soft-locked or screwing themselves later is not good. So, this isn't the players fault, but rather the games failing to communicate how much more interesting they can be if you play past mistakes. This is why I actually think that Divine Pulse/Turnwheel are great additions because they allow players to have a baseline of allowed mistakes and add a third option to turn back time rather than restart or push through. Still though, I don't like the idea of the games encouraging restarts. It's a punishment for poor play when rewards for good/fast play (such as saving villages) work much better at making the games fun. Resets just feel bad. - That's not really a goal of this video to come up with ideas to rebalance casts for difficulty, but I do think your suggestion at the end about scaling stats (a la hard mode bonuses) is good to at least give you more workable units. - I think that it's a good point that difficulty options give player choice and affect balancing, but I do think that it's important for mid-to-late game characters to be serviceable no matter what difficulty. They should be worse than trained units who've been around forever, but getting whack characters instead of serviceable characters feels bad and makes the games feel more punishing rather than more interesting. I like these disagreements though because they depend almost entirely what you want out of perma-death and how much you value emergent gameplay narratives vs. keeping characters alive. Personally, I want perma-death to be something that can always be pushed through (outside of game-over conditions) because I value a more reflexive play style.
It’s weird that Leiden and Belf are just... so great compared to when the join over others... I think they end up better than the average Christmas cav at the beginning of the game.. I think only Cav Kris has a shot at beatingn their bases at level 13 The only bad thing about them is average weapon ranks (i believe they have C lance, D sword) which can be aliviated quickly with an arms scroll
@@rontheauraknight9606 I don't use those Sable Knights much because by that point my team is filled with Kris, Marisha, Caeda, Palla, Catria, Erzel/Wendell, Feena, Sirius, Minerva, and even Arran if he can reclass into something useful. At least the blue and green dudes have short term usage in the early game. I don't really want to spend resources on these guys. I'm also pretty sure that if you use Luke heavily, he will be better than the Sable Knights.
@@rontheauraknight9606 C rank is really the only rank that matters, you have access to forged steel and effective lances, which is really all you need in fe12. I think they’re great failsafe options
@@Bunnymafia8150 that is true I guess I’m only halfway through my first H1 run just so I can learn the chapters through experience (and unlock the second male set) and it’s not like Shadow Dragon with it having a weight stat
So I think balance is less important than lost content. In conquest (my first fire emblem game) I found permadeath exciting and kept me on the edge of my seat. I lost my first unit something like 17 maps in. It was my wife. She died in front of our child. I was so excited to find out what interactions that opened up, I didnt care that I lost my strongest mage. I wanted to experience a more difficult struggle alongside my child after a tear jerking conversation about our loss. Instead nothing happened. Nothing changed. I just lost one extra text box every cutscene and my team sucked more. Like why the fuck would I do that? Harder is fine. I can do harder. But less story sucks. I would just like to play the game and watch all my friends die around me struggle through the final map alone, a broken man and throw myself off the top of the mountain after I take down the baddie. I do not want to beat the game and get the same ending with fewer people high fiving me at the end. I would gladly suffer if that suffering "pays off" in a story related way. Until then I save scum.(oh and if this sort of thing happens in older games tell me so I can play it)
Asleep: FE6 is best fire emblem because it hard and I did it Woke: Being able to play through mistakes makes the games more dynamic and engaging Bespoke: Meg max stats is S tier
@@ProfessorBopper idk Ralph’s from Thracia 776 is probably more forgettable random midgame hero with average basses and the most generic design ever dude looks like a village mpc
6:12 Im having trouble hearing here with yhe game volume being too high. I do very much enjoy your analyses and am excited to see how you continue to grow
Thanks! I actually have headphones now so I can better mix the audio! It’s excited and it definitely frustrates me to hear the sound mixing in these videos
Even if you reset after every death it honestly does affect the game. Imagine playing chess, but you automatically forfeit if any piece dies. It would change the entirety of how you play the game. In Casual versions. You can sacrafice units. And play risks. They die, whatever, it's fine. In Permadeath mode, even if you reset, it means that you flat out can't play as loose and risky. You'll lose the entire map if you just lose ONE unit. That's sort of the beauty of the game, I've always felt. Where I can see enjoyment in holding onto your consequences and believe me I do love it better when a game is more rounded and balanced. It's a game where every piece if valuable. Here is where I think the BIG question is. For more casual players (It is I), I think a big difference that could be made, is the flavor in which units die. Imagine if in the game, none of the units "Died"... But rather, were just heavily injured and couldn't fight anymore. The question is, would that alter how many people reset. Because often a lot of people reset or play casual not just for the sake of gameplay but because of guilt.
I think that players want to avoid any gameplay risks, because many of the games have avoided characters dying in the story, but there definitely are a lot of players that do what you said and reset out of guilt. I think letting characters die is just one of those things you just have to break out of, and the games could definitely be designed to better discourage soft resetting. Even if you're a more casual player, I'd recommend giving one of the games (maybe like Birthright or Sacred Stones a try while iron manning it; you may be surprised how much more fun it makes the game).
@@ProfessorBopper Yeah I mostly feel bad about losing characters, but I also really enjoy the feeling of making my favourites strong! Maybe if they add a difficulty that causes you to lose any exp/levels gained in a map for a character who falls in combat, but not kill them permanently? Like a Casual+, you can afford to have someone "die" a couple times but do it too much and they become unviable. Alternatively you could punish the player by removing their availability for 1 or more levels afterwards as they recuperate.
I remember that on my first playthrough of FE7 I had to sacrifice Lucius to get through chapter 26x. While I’ve had many other memories with Fire Emblem, that one sticks out because that permadeath impacted my playthrough. I think that that’s one of the greatest strenghts of Permadeath.
I never really understood why people play past their mistakes in FE until I tried an Ironman run of the rom Hack Vision Quest. Its basically designed around ironmanning, I think it has around 40ish people. It was a blast, even if I suck at the game! woOoO
I disagree that resetting is not engaging with the mechanic, since you CAN use deaths to your advantage if you don't care, but can't if you do, but I do agree that the games are generally more balanced when permadeath is assumed. Stronger units are going to be placed into more dangerous circumstances almost by design, and face death more readily as a result. Radiant Dawn is the alternative approach, where every unit has viability by virtue of being your only choice on some map, somewhere. Meg may not be great, but if your options are Meg, or literally nothing, then Meg is balanced around doing the best she can for the team. Games where units have limits on how many maps they could be deployed on would be the best answer, I think, whether that be managed by a Stamina-like system, or else just sets of maps where units you deploy to one can't be deployed to the others.
Fe5 is best girl; the second most complicated availability (except maybe like fates or 3h idk much about either) and a fatigue system I get the "elitists" praise it but I'm a turtling loser and it's still the most fun fe game imo
I just discovered your channel and I'm bingeing THE HELL out of it. I know several people have already called you underrated and have told you that you need more views, but DAMN, you really do. This is some of the most entertaining FE content I've seen since before *Rona* ages.
This video is really entertaining and brings up some really valid points about balance in Fire Emblem. However I struggled to hear it sometimes over the loud background music and occasional cut-in audio cues. Some better sound mixing and balancing of your own would have improved this video’s watchability greatly.
I just found you channel because of the Jeigan video and i'm really enjoying it. I got into Fire Emblem very recently, and i love Permadeath. I started with Fire Emblem 1 on the Nes and played blind ironman. Only 4 characters survived (Marth, Tiki, Gato and Wyris). It was an awesome experiencie. The tension, the unlucky criticals, the unexpected reinforcements or events, the sacrifices and choices i had to make to beat the map or save Marth's life. I loved it. Having to work with mediocre or bad units because i had no other choice was really interesting, even if they all died anyways because i sucked. I did way better in FE3, i finished both Books a few days ago. I lost some good units, and it forced me to use some i wouldn't have used otherwise and they did their jobs. For example Oguma died early because of a critical and i chose to use Radd because i liked his sprite, and it took a while but he became a decent replacement and i ended up liking him. I wouldn't even remembered his existence if i reseted to save Oguma. I feel like there's a lot to the experience that gets lost if i just reset and do everything perefctly, at least in a first/standard difficulty playthrough. I just started FE4 so that's where my experience ends. Well. I bought 3Houses because i was having a lot of fun with FE1 but i dropped it because i found it really boring and easy, the tension, the decision making, the sacrifices and all that other stuff i loved in FE1 are nonexistent. Anyways, i guess i like the balanced cast, having characters that are inferior to others, but viable enough to allow anyone to die and beat the game anyways. Having to work with what you have left even if it's not the best is one of the most interesting aspects for me, but if it becomes unplayable unless i use the best of the best there is no point.
I know I’m suuuuuuuuuper late to this video, but I just wanted to say that my favorite aspect about an unbalanced cast (mainly fe6), is that if the player does go on without the 5 good characters, a lot of the lower tier characters will surprise you with how useful they can be, and I think it has to do with binding blade giving the player a ton of characters to start off with in the first 3 or 4 chapters. I think The game allows you to be experimental with who you use across multiple play-throughs (especially considering the different routes and the potential to miss the true ending). An unbalanced cast is fun in the sense that seeing an underdog character (with a dash of luck of course) rise above the challenges meant for more capable characters is really satisfying. It may just be my personal preference, but having a cast like birthright, or three houses, where every unit has the ability to become these gods amongst men is far more boring to me, than using a bad unit or three will ever be
I never play past mistakes, but I definitely prefer a balanced cast. Having units that have no purpose but to be filler only bloats the army with generics I’ll never touch. FE11 (and 12, I assume) has it even worse than usual, because reclassing makes every unit basically the same. I do enjoy FE6’s insanely large cast, for some reason, unbalanced as it may be. I also feel like story and permadeath can’t coexist. If every character but the main one is disposable, you can’t integrate any into the story. That’s why I think that if the series wishes to go on in the same direction as 3H, story permadeath needs to go. Azure Moon feels very limited because of it (and shoddy writing) You can have permadeath in the gameplay, but the major characters shouldn’t die in the story. Then again, when has story ever mattered in Fire Emblem?
Perma-death definitely causes problems with the story, which is why “I can’t fall here!” Has become such a meme. The games haven’t really figured out a good way to rectify perma-death with story. What helps the bloated FE6 army, I think, is the presence of supports and a much better art style than FE11/12 where most characters have little story and generic designs. And, for your final question, almost never
@Zxylo 5 The gap between Fates' story and the other games is not nearly as big as most people think. Outside of Corrin (who really is an awful main character), Fates is not any worse than most of the generic FE stories (which is basically all of them except FE5 and 9, and I really like 8's story, but I know that's contentious).
Great video! Very interesting information presented here, with a clear bent toward covering the series as a whole, not just the newer games. The only critique I'd put out there is the audio mixing, with the music overtaking your voice at times and making it hard to pay attention. You can't just throw out FE4 enhanced OST and expect me to listen to what you're saying :D
I'm pretty sure the 1-on-1 tactical combat where each participating unit acts, if able, on both on player and enemy phase, is The Feature of Fire Emblem
Chaz made a video of this. To be honest the best way to enjoy perma death is by playing iron man. Trust me, that will teach you how to be more hard core. I'm currently working on a FE8 rebalance patch and I am having loads of fun so far.
I thought so too at first but then I got sick of babysitting every unit some of them always getting into danger so I learned to deal with the permadeath. I only do deathless now on higher difficulties as occasional challenge runs to make my big brain do maximum strategizing.
I really like Shadow Dragon giving generic units if you somehow exhaust every other unit. It is by far the best way to handle perma death. As those units are legitimately bad, and given names to match like Wymp, Auffle, and Lucer. Their campaign will be hard fought, and many of them will die, but their victories are that of legends.
I only left my units to die un Radiant Dawn ( ALMOST EVERY DAWN BRIGADE MEMBER because I played when I was 9 ) , Shadow Dragon (Paladin Cain) And Blazing Sword ( Matthew And Canas ) . I only leave my units to die when I've already beaten the Game before.
I'm really not so sure about conquest being a "balanced game" because I played it several times and even with high investment, most characters couldn't do HALF of what the royals did with minimal investment. Maybe it's just me, but I get the feeling it literally doesn't matter what characters you use other than the royals aside from just effie for early game tanking and niles for capturing because a lot of the generic or boss enemies you can capture are just insane compared to randos like arthur or odin
What about the role of state booster with in the franchise should they be used for replacement units or bad units or given to the best units increasing your confidence in them witch also increases there chance of death because of an over estimation of there ability
Whenever I play an FE game blindly I always play in normal mode. I prioritize enjoying the story over the gameplay and I use normal mode as an opportunity to scout out the maps, bosses, objectives etc. And what characters I like or not. If a unit dies they die because I know it's not as punishing. If I'm playing hardmode it depends on whether the unit is integral to my teams ability to complete the game or not. I remember in my first ever play through in FE7 I didn't know how growth rates worked so none of my units besides athos were able to do enough damage to the final boss and I almost got softlocked. And in FE6 I didn't know you had to collect the legendary weapons or the requirements to unlock the secret chapters so I got the incomplete ending. It's honestly more fun this way I think it encourages the player to play the games over and over again. One crucial detail is that all cutscenes are skipable and you can speed up text and animations or skip them. The games overall are meant to be played on repeat
I prefer unbalanced cast since that way when someone dies I can move on and i can even sacrifice them for other units meanwhile if everyone in the cast is interesting and good i have a hard time moving on i always remember fe 6 chapter 5x i just promoted Rutger send him to the boss and gets crit it was so pathetic that this unit I was hyping so much dies in a single round that I said fuck it we using deck now
I think a having a balanced cast is better for harder games because it alowes for some mistakes and not emidit restart like tracia or even conquest luntic you can afored to lose units if you really want to because if you get kids then can useally replace or work as a substitute for many units but for easier games like fe 7-9 and rd jp hard en normal or fe 6 normal or hard for somepeople having a inbalanced cast can be fun its punishment for making mistakes with your good units without you having to restart or challange yourself with a scrub squad can be fun but my fondness memories was my first playthrew of fe 7and barly having enopg units to fill my teem at victory or death or early game my first awacking play threw i did on hard when i would have a empty unit slot for most of it untill mid game ambush spawns would make me restart my save file im one of the crazy people who is a new fan but joined because of permadeath being a thing and was intrested in it shown by my early experiences hell in my first time playing fe when i rented 3h for a week and got about half way threw the game on normal i let didue die because i frogot dp existed along with gilbert at the battle of gronder feild because hilda keep criting him i want to try a run of 3h not quite a iron man because i may restart from time to time on hard to see if its any fun with leting permadeath kinda exist by not useing devine pulse i tried it with ecos hard and it was getting not fun so i ended up just restricting my self to 3 turn wheels about half way threw there has always been permadeath games and non perma death games even back with kaga with fe 2 and 4 but we have not realy goten one since awacking i hope the next game weather its a remake or a new game is a game were permadeath can exist and before you call me out on being hipocritical with saying fates is a nonpermadeath game because i said you could let people die but its like ecos/gidon you can let people die but your not really ment to witch is why revive fountains exist.
A bigger question in all this is “What is Fire Emblem?” No. Really. I tend to come at the games more from a “strategy game with RPG elements” perspective. The old Panzer General and XCOM mentality. As such, death and losing units is all but expected unless you save scum to hell. To me, having a nice balanced set of characters you can pop off the bench is important as I like upping the difficulty until I feel sacrifices may be necessary because I bite off too much for me to reasonably chew through. It says more about me as a tactician if I have to grab the benchwarmers. That said, if you’re coming in from a “Fire Emblem is an RPG taking place on a grid” perspective, losing your favourite character because you plopped them in the middle of an enemy’s attack range is not fun. So unit balance isn’t as important as having ways to tell good emergent narratives. Like that time Erk almost died and you dropped everything so Serra could come to rescue him.
I am too OCD to let units die. I did feel that in 7, 8, 9, and a bit of 10, different units benefitted different maps. Sand levels specifically encouraged magic users and fliers, defend maps favored armor knights, early maps with bandits are good for swordsmen but later military with lances make your fighters more desirable. Sure, you want to train up an elite squad for the final battle but there is enough experience to go around and possible late game units that the whole game does not need to be in sole preparation for one fight, and fielding units in unfavorable maps because you want to train them more feels like a poor strategy. In other words, yeah, maybe you won't bring units that are poor in stats to the big battles but for the chapter they join or a few specific maps later, they might still have some use, and I am ok with that.
I have a narrative objection to unbalanced casts -- Fire Emblem, especially modern Fire Emblem, has a dual mandate of being a fun game AND keeping you engaged with the characters. Unless a game is specifically trying to make you feel uncomfortable with your choices (i.e. Death's Hand in Jade Empire or Byuu in Bahamut Lagoon) it's honestly rather narratively disengaging for a game to go 'this character is an annoying butthole you hate but you have to use them' or 'this character is an awesome and hilarious badass but they will only drag you down if you use them'. Thankfully Fire Emblem isn't difficult enough except EXCEPT for the higher difficulties of FE11, FE12, and Hard Mode FE6 that you're forced to use characters you might find loathsome and bench characters you'd otherwise like... but the problem of unbalanced casts can theoretically get so bad that they take you out of the story. Which is what you don't want to have happen in Fire Emblem, a franchise that differentiates itself from games like Battle for Wesnoth and Advance Wars by having an army and story you're supposed to engage with.
The reason I reset after a character death has nothing to do with gameplay, I just really feel bad for the boy who I've grown to love why do I keep playing classic then? I don't want to be labeled a scrub
The main problem I have with this video was mainly when you were talking about FE6 and how you said the game was terrible for ironmans because of some characters feeling like liabilities. I.e. the archers, the armor knights and Sophia. While they are pretty terrible units all things considered, the issue is that your very much exaggerating the truth that because of most early game units being bad that the whole game is bad for ironmans is really dumb in my eyes. Thing is even if you lose some high tier units early on like rutger, shin, saul, and shanna you still have other units who work well enough as replacements like geese, ellen, klein, thea, clarine, Noah and fir who also have there own niche's over other units like klein having a high bow rank or Noah having a c rank in swords that the game can still be fun even to play past the deaths of good units. Hell even units like ogier and Treck are still units who can be brought of the bench and can be trained into decent enough viable characters since FE6 does have many opportunities to train weaker units like chapter 8x due to it's enemies being absolute joke's that it's very much possible to get them up to snuff with the rest of your team. Plus FE6 also throws many prepromotes at you that act as crutches in case if your team is struggling with losses of units or rng screwed level ups. I already mentioned klein, but there is also jerrot, echidna, bartre, igrene, Cecilia, yoder, niime, and karel who all act as either utility crutch or combat crutch units so even if you loose some of your untrained units you still have these units to lean on. Even units like Garrett, Douglas, and Dayan can still work well in there own right as filler units. Essentially what im trying to say is that I feel like your exaggerating the truth as fe6 is still a very ironman friendly game.
@@mysteryguy2725 It's okay, I just can't stand gatekeeping. I will let you in on a little secret though: I don't really care for this video. It's easily my least favorite video essay on this channel and it remains up for posterity's sake. I'm actually remaking it (kinda; I want to take a more philosophical and design approach rather than over-emphasizing specific examples that don't illuminate very much). I can't resist a goof FE6 fight though, and I'll sort of outline myself here. The problem I have with Binding Blade is that the ways you can kill enemies are pretty limited and the focus is on whether you can survive a round of combat, can you double, etc. This is not a problem as FE7-9 and 11-12 show, but those games make the more simplistic systems work by either A.) making enemies weak so that the thresholds needed to survive/double/kill are lessened or B.) have stonk enemies with very reliable hit rates. To me, FE11 and 12 are the ideal expression of FE6's ideas (although 11 does have some egregious issues early on in H5). Honestly, I think the easiest fix for FE6 for me would be a better support system that either worked like Thracia's support system or had supports that built much more quickly.
I disagree with the notion that an FE game's balance should be judged by their worst units. You yourself claim that FE1, FE3, and FE4 are three of the most balanced game in the series (though calling FE4 balanced is really stretching it) but they still give you some god awful, nigh unusable characters like Jake, Sheema, and Arden. Judging an FE game by how much their top tiers break them is a much better metric imo. Characters like Sigurd and Seth warp the entire game around them, and make otherwise solid units like Joshua pointless. I think more than balance, what makes permadeath and ironmans fun is what niches replacement units can fill. Using FE6 as an example, even if you lose Rutger, Jerrot, Shin, Saul, and Shanna, you're free to use characters like Geese, Klein, Thea, Noah, or Clarine. Each of these units has at least one meaningful niche over the unit they replace and can provide a fresh experience while still "engaging with permadeath in a meaningful way." The game gives you so many strong prepromotes and units of each class that it doesn't matter that Gwendy, Barthe, and Sophia suck because you're never gonna be in a situation where you're forced to deploy them outside of their recruitment chapter. Also, I find it funny that you point to Tomas as the main "bad" unit in FE1 when he's arguably better than Jeorge. Slightly better growths, two levels from promotion, +2 base Speed compared to Jeorge post promotion, can use Parthia at base with a Manual, both obtained in his recruitment chapter... he's not exactly Macellan. The 0% growths LTC uses Tomas alongside Jeorge without losing any turns.
I think an argument against using the top tiers for balance alone is the fact that you can opt out of them. You technically don't NEED to use the strongest 2 or 3 units in a game, and a good metric is how hard the game punishes you for not using those specific units. Low tier units can't really be opted in to if they are so bad that they aren't usable in a reasonable sense. You could choose to use Rutger or not, but you can't even really choose to use Wendy.
Dude fuck. The mixing is unbearable! I love your content and I know this video is old but Jesus Christ bro, I can't even hear you over the music. I didn't know you learned editing from the English release of sonic adventure 2 battle on GameCube.
i have to say, as someone that always resets i like permadeath cause it makes me play to my max so that everyone can survive to become big and strong, even fe6, i changed some people but none of them died, and i feel good when i beat something hard and all survive to tell the tale.
I remember when I finished echoes Tobin died, during the credits we can read what is their life after and when I read that grey became depressed and an alcoholic bc Tobin died I felt so bad and can’t let character died now :(
My first time playing Fire Emblem was with Sacred Stones for free on 3DS, I knew nothing about the series except for the fact that Marth, Roy and Ike came from it. So I experienced permadeath in full, never resetting and it made my playthrough that much more entertaining for me.
I discovered fe in the same way! However I lost so many units that it actually became unbeatable. Then again I'm alot better at fe now. If I had my save file for the final map that consisted of Erika, Ephraim, Seth and all my unpromoted bench like a level 8 Garcia and a Marisa I could just barely promote at level ten, I may have been able to beat it now just from abusing Seth and myrrh.
I'm in the middle of playing my first ironman run of Path of Radiance hard mode. I've really enjoyed pushing through with perma death. (Of which there have been quite a few deaths early on). Outside of gameplay. The little story moments really hit me quite abit by surprise. I got Boyd killed early on. So when Rolf joins he actually mentions something about Boyd never coming back and not wanting to lose Oscar too or something to that effect. Lots of moments like that kept popping up. It feels like my little rag tag squad have really gone through a war. Mistakes i've made have had some lasting impact. I'm going into the last chapter tonight. Hopefully it ends well.
I agree with the assertion that Fire Emblem does a bad job at making the player engage with the permadeath mechanic as choosing to restart is simply that: ignoring your mistake or unlikely outcome in the hopes of either playing to get a better time, turn count or to keep a unit alive. If FE actually had backups or consistent contingency for something as dire as a branching story if the lord died that would actively engage the player in the permadeath idea. Say in this hypothetical FE that if the lord died the Jaegan or maybe the charismatic second in command stepped in you'd get a different set of characters or different ending that would FORCE players to interact with the mechanic rather than ignoring it since you lose out on gameplay elements, story, or both. If FE had a proper ironman difficulty or actually had backup ideas like the FE4 substitute children if your lead or main party all got wiped it would be much more likely for players to engage with the permadeath idea. But as it stands I think for the most part IS has done a subpar job with the idea. The only real time permadeath matters significantly is if a side character is particularly good or recruits a bunch of other good characters or is the only utility unit that can fit that role on the team.
I recently played Undertale and a lot of the ideas in that game like the game keeping track of your actions through the Flowey character and other endings depending on which characters you kill would be great to implement in Fire Emblem to make permadeath even more impactful and meaningful. Like for example you let a unit die and then reset, then at the end of the game someone kept track of your resets and talks to you about it.
I would say Three Houses does this the worst specifically because using units you haven't trained if another dies is extremely detrimental. The game essentially makes your team for you and your stuck with them and some faculty on a blind playthrough. My level 30 Petra died good thing I have a benched level 8 Felix. Extreme scenario I agree but this is 100% could happen on a blind play through and just leave a sour taste in your mouth now that you have to start focusing on a new very fragile character.
3 houses probably has both the most brutal and weakest permadeath, with how few units you can realistically recruit pre times skip (not counting NG+). Losing a unit without ever really getting the chance to replace them is brutal. But the game makes up for no replacement units with way to many turn wheels. Making losing a unit permenatly harder than keeping them all alive
I wish the latest games did the recruitment mechanic of fates where you can capture generics if you needed a replacement or just wanted to try a class that was not outright available to you. In birthright, you do got a knight at all or a wyvern rider until like chapter 20-ish? This leaves you with ALMOST no tank units and when you are on lunatic and have dozens upon dozens of fliers and physical units rushing and debuffing you, it becomes more and more apparent a tank was intended for the route but just doesn't exist outside hinoka or oboro. Its wild that they based the game on grinding when it costs money to scout and when that money is an outright necessity for refining weapons so the enemies don't outscale you.
Inbalance tells story. Sigurd and other holy bloods are op and they show it. Making a weak(er) character like Arden, Roshea, Marty, Wade, etc. as strong as possible is more fun than only using the very same guys over and over again. Just because an option is the best doesn't mean it's better than what we want and even a "balanced" cast will have units like fliers, gotohs, etc. who are good/better than others. But in the end it's up to your playstyle and preferences.
Fighting through permadeath is definitely a lot of fun, but I think that the balance of the cast isn't necessariliy what ends up encouraging it (or not) all the time. I like to think a vast majority of the playerbase is very casual (I am). FE being character driven chess, a lot of casual players I feel might reset for totally non gameplay reasons if they feel like it's not too much work. Obvious example is because their favorite character died, but also it can be that they just feel whatever just happened was bullshit, they were wanting to see the next support conversation, or whatever other "lore" bullshit they were trying to accomplish and now can't. It's a slog to grind through some levels a lot of times, but you can find people trying to save Serra even if she's just trash because she looks cute. I feel like this whole comment section (and video) is dedicated to somewhat hardcore, raw gameplay enjoyment of the series, so I wanted to drop my two cents here from an outsider's pov.
Honestly, it's the sort of thing that is better for a second playthrough. I played wayfoward ducktales remastered, and basically, there is no reason to start with the medium diffaculty, because it is way too easy go get stuck in a death loop without experience. So easy mode basically not punishing you for dying is basically neccessary to actually learn the levels without going insane with repetition.
When restarting after deaths on y first playthrough of an FE game I felt like I was cheating so on my next one I played without doing so in a higher difficulty. It was only after this that I discovered what I had started with was the norm
As a casual who started FE with Path of Radiance and mostly plays for the story, I think FE has not implemented permadeath well at all from a story perspective. Granted, I've always played FE as a puzzle game where you save everyone in your little troupe (at the cost of green units, even), so maybe I've missed some unique interactions from character deaths, but where a living character can get dialogue in cutscenes and support conversations, a dead character gets their death quote and then nothing. The story marches on without them, which is humbling, but as a giant softie I would feel much better about permadeath if there were at least interactions that acknowledged the characters after the fact. Something like a scripted funeral cutscene that you could access in the caravan where people who had support levels with the dead character would show up. Or maybe there could be unique support conversations where if one person dies, then two people bond over their death. Obviously with as many characters as FE has, this is asking for a monstrous amount of writing (and support convos are already strained as it is), but it would be my ideal.
I did not see Lyre in the video even once during the entire run, I have never been more disappointed. 0/10, dislike, unsubscribe. While I'm memeing I might as well say other things too I guess. I understand why it might be interesting to actually not reset when someone dies, but gonna be honest, not for me. Love Fire Emblem but I'm not going to ever engage with perma death in that way. I still have it on, it's still a threat since I have to restart, but I'm never going to play through it. Also as far as I'm concerned hard modes can be put directly in the trash. One level higher then normal is probably fine but I can't find any enjoyment in anything more then that. As for balanced casts, it should always be balanced. Everyone should be able to be worth using. My favorite character they added in FE10 is Lyre and it really sucks that using her is borderline impossible due to how bad she is, how lagguz just suck in general, and her poor availability where she has to compete with the best characters in the game every map. I'd rather use characters I like rather then characters that are good so when the cast is imbalanced that just leads to a bad experience. Also playing music with lyrics while you talk really made it hard to focus on what you were saying near the end, please don't do that
My (possibly) bad take is that fe would be so much more interesting if they designed games around the ironman style of play and accounted in some way for softlocks by making game overs interesting
Actually, it's permadeath mechanic that got me in FE. I view it as the mechanic that makes FE different from other SRPG, and, at least for the older games, I would say it is a core feature.
I'm sure this isn't a novel take, but I suspect that there's a lot of players who're less likely to play through character deaths because of supports. When you lose a character, you lose any future support conversations that you might've seen with them, and the only way to see them again would be to start a new save. I feel like at least for the first playthrough, supports incentivize the player to keep their favorite units alive so they can see more of their conversations with the rest of the cast.
Well, I'm about to test character viability in Shadow Dragon H5 by only fielding the newest recruited units (and those necessary to recruit in a given chapter). Wish me luck and/or send help.
i like how you mention FE6 being awful for ironmans because i discovered that on my own, i haven't posted a recording of chapter 5 because i can't seem to really make it past the first two or three turns, so the run is basically over anyways. granted this is because i am bad and unfamiliar with FE6's hard mode, but does the starting cast really have to suck that hard?
Its a tough question. On one hand, when playing Fe10 if a unit dies i just dont really care because they weren't contributing anyways and I don't feel like praising that apathy. Do i want a game where every unit is essential to the completion of the game though? No absolutely not. I love radiant dawn, and a lot of times i play l, i end up handholding lyre with blossom and bexp. I think options are important for fe, buff more than nerf ya know.
I’m hindsight, this is a good prequel video to your “Case Against Resetting” essay - i know you’ve said in the past that this isn’t one of your favorite essays, but there’s a clear idea and philosophy being put forth here that’s later clarified and expanded upon very well in the other essay I mentioned. And generally, I really appreciate the perspective you’re bringing here and how you’re choosing to engage with this series. It’s definitely helped me rethink some of my a priori assumptions about how I can most enjoy playing Fire Emblem.
One problem I feel you didn't mention is that new players have no clue who's good or bad until its likely too late. The only way most first time players can figure out if a unit might be good is by their class and bases, which means that if you get a unit who is in a class you don't have, a new player might use them alot, then discover several chapters later that they wasted large amounts of xp and time on a meh unit who is now completely outclassed by a new unit. Since new players can't magically know what units are good and bad, or what units are coming up, having a balanced cast allows new players to use units without the fear of being stuck with 3 berserkers ranking from good to meh to bad, with the myrmidon, who you didn't promote in favor of using the hero crest on the first and worst berserker, not being able to output any amount of reasonable damage.
well my own personal idea for a balanced cast is when everyone has at least some niche even if the niche is small it should exist and be useable for it. like for exmaple Bantu on hard 5 can actually be a tank for the misson you recruit him in ( he nearly dies in 1 round but the fact he out of the box 100% of the time will live 1 round of combat is impressive and can allow you to use him to lure in enemies and kill them ) and if your lucky enough to level up speed at least once he can do it for the next chapther as well ( though you'd need some extreme luck to make him useful any longer than this )
This is one of my main problems with three houses. If a unit dies, you just Devine pulse but when one does die the option of playing on becomes much less viable than resetting. This is because three houses requires insane levels of investment into each unit which makes them very difficult to replace especially on harder difficulties. In my opinion, I feel like the main thing that should set units apart should be investment, a unit may start out inferior to other units but has potential to reach or surpass the potential of those stronger units.
