Turn Rewinding is Ruining Fire Emblem 

The gba games literally keep a loss counter on your units if you reset after they die, so to an extent it was anticipated or intended, long before Milas turn wheel

You make some great points and articulated yourself well. However, there is one very whacky thing I feel the need to adress. "I think Divine Pulse in Three Houses is bad" "Counter argument: Three Houses' design clashes with the idea of perma death due to a lack of late replacement characters" Counter counter argument: "But what if I change the design of Three Houses in such a way as to make Divine Pulse pointless? In my my now imaginary version of Three Houses Divine Pulse is bad!" I get that you are trying to argue that a new game could get away with not having it, which I agree with. Engage would have been a much better example here, as it truly didn't need the Draconic Time Crystal. But Three Houses specifically is the one game where it really does make sense in this particular frame work that it has. The idea that a bunch of strong replacement units can join later and reduce the need for DP is fair, but simply not applicable to Three Houses specifically. The game is all about the students, growing up innocently at an academy, then dragged into a bloody conflict. It doesn't make sense then for the game to be designed like the GBA era where your early team hits the bench the moment a tidal wave of strong prepromotes comes in. The same core cast of characters need to stick around not just because you invest into them, but also because they themselves develop so much over time. Taking all the focus away from that to add a bunch of extra characters that are barely around for a significant amount of time and expecting you to replace them like that would, in my opinion, miss the whole point of Three Houses themes and tone. And for what, to have a perma death experience? And listen, I am not saying perma death is bad. Quite the opposite in fact, I really like it. All this isn't just coming from a guy who only played Three Houses Casual mode. However, it is precisely for this reason that I appreciate Three Houses exploring the idea of war from a very different lense. For it to then be criticized for not having the same particular focus feels weird to me. I guess the best example to illustrate my point would be to apply this logic to another game series. Your argument, as I understand, is as follows: Perma death is good -> Three Houses de-emphasizes perma death -> Three Houses is less of a good game for it I find this logic flawed, and if I put into another framework you might see why. Let's use Zelda as an example: Breath of the Wild's open sandboxy design is good -> the older 3D Zelda games have less open ended world design -> the older 3D Zelda games are less good. It's easy to point out a good thing in an old game and say that a new game lacking that thing makes it inherently worse. However, as we see in this example, this is not a zero sum game. Most people would agree that in place of more open world design the older Zelda games had other strengths, that a game can deliberately downplay one aspect in order for another to take precedence. Why then is it bad for Three Houses to do something to this effect? Now if you simply prefer perma death focussed Fire Emblem, that is completely fine. We all have preferences. I simply take issue with the idea that a lack of perma death focus is categorically a bad thing in the context of Three Houses. Especially since this is the only game that really explored the idea of war through this loss of innocence, as opposed to the overwhelming amount of other FEs that all went for the perma death approach. I think it should be acceptable, applaudable even, that they found a fresh new way to put a spin on a core aspect of the series like this without just being "more of the same". Whew, did not think this comment was gonna get this long and messy. I am currently very tired and this is probably rather incohesive. I just wanted to get my thoughts out there. Hope this didn't come out too agressive, I still respect your opinion.

The main reason i like the do over button is because im a clutz and sometimes im trying to zoom through turns and mess up a wrong click then have to do an hour long map all over again because i waited instead of attacking.

For people wanting to play an ironman run or "true classic" I recommend NOT making permanent saves and only using the bookmark option plenty of FE games have.

I have many problems with your view. First, you say that the game was not designed eith reseting in mind, yet the NES had a reset button build in and the game makes no attempts at stopping you from using (i.e. autosave). Equating time to money is a poor comparison, most prople set up block of time or a goal with in their playing session (either consciously or unconsciously). You are also not taking in to account the time wasted on the unit you let die plus the tine it may require to bring an alternate unit to the level of the ibe lost ( if applicable). Playing more cautiously also adds time meaning not reseting may actually cost more time. While no game mechanics are outside of criticism, that doesnt mean "dont use it" is not a valid counter criticism. In any game they are activities and optional mechanics for which you don't have to engage with, not being able to stop yourself from using it is not a good defense, it just proves that you have no self control. Permadeath is an aspect of the game whether you let an unit die or not is up to the player, everyone is free from drawing enjoyment in whichever way the please specially in a single player game.

I feel like you are already getting vibe-checked enough for your opinion so I'll just leave you with this: Disliking Turnwheels is fine. Not using them is fine. Encouraging others to try and avoid using the turnwheel is fine. Saying shit like "The turnwheel is RUINING FIRE EMBLEM!!!" is stupid because a lot of people evidently enjoy having the option to rewind turns. The turnwheel is optional for those who feel their gameplay experience is elevated by the safety net/QoL it provides. Advocating for its removal does NOTHING for the people who don't want to use it anyway and only serves to alienate the part if the playerbase who DOES like it. It's stupid, IS will never do it and if they did it'd be a regression of the experience they have made over the last decade. I agree that not resetting or using the turnwheel makes for a vastly different experience that can be profound in its own way but it's simply not for everyone.

While you make some intresting points, lets be honest a majority of people will likely just reload save anyway if a character they love dies,so the rewind feature literally just saves those types of people 2 mintues of loading. We are in the era of accessbility and rewind feature being an optional thing seems well enough. You hear, "Just dont use it if you dont like it" a lot, but it's a very valid response.

I'm not apologizing for how long this got. I really resent the common characterization of Kaga's Golden Ideology as presented by His strongest warriors. As has been pointed out already, most of His own games don't even follow this interpretation that 'you're not supposed to reset,' which He flat-out does not say in the interview. What He DOES flat-out say is to 'have fun,' which reads to me that the player should just play the way however they damn well please, regardless of any elitist peanut gallery. If He didn't want me to reset, why allow me to reset at all? Why, in FE3, am I allowed to skip the cutscenes SPECIFICALLY after the game knows that I've reset already? Why track losses alongside total wins and total battles? If Kaga cared so deeply about not resetting, you'd think He'd be more explicit about it, and in more than exactly one line in one interview for more than just the first game in the series. Kaga also isn't afraid to sprinkle in self-awareness in games like VS, where this continues to never be mentioned, and it's another component of why I do not accept the ironmanner's interpretation of the interview. The design of the games has, indeed, radically changed in the past 30 years. The amount of actions and decisions a player makes from turn to turn has grown exponentially, and it's ridiculous to be reductive towards potential misclicks in navigating all these new options and mechanics, and that they should just be dealt with for the sake of organic storytelling because "there's no time pressure on player phase." Player phases are longer and more involved now than they've ever been. General map turncounts are really low in Engage compared to earlier games just because of how many critical and meaningful decisions are being made, often in a series of steps which must be completed in a specific sequence, for most of your units, more turns than not. What if a new mechanic is unclear and a player just wants to get a better understanding of it without having to irreversibly turn down the difficulty or start an entire new playthrough? Did you immediately understand how all the skills, debuffs, pairup, attack stance bonuses, and weapon triangle advantages worked in Fates, as well as the controls of how to maximize these mechanics? If I'm playing Port Dia in Conquest and Azura dies on turn 2 because the bronze lance in her inventory wasn't actually equipped, because the game doesn't automatically equip it from the chest in the prison chapter, I'm just going to restart and refine my strategy with the tools that I have (the fun part of the series, for me) instead of continuing the run without the extremely useful and unique gameplay character, who is also on the box art and in every single cutscene anyway, just because I can instead play Organic GMO-Free Narrative Emblem and pretend in my head that her lance wasn't equipped because, uh, her sandal fell off and she was busy fixing it? How is that even remotely comparable to unethical spending in a gacha as a way of weaponizing time as an economic element? It's not like the game will acknowledge it happening ever again, just like when Soren 'falls' in combat. If I want to engineer unique gameplay situations like not having Azura or using Bors in general, I'll just...do that anyway of my own volition, because I want to and I enjoy playing Fire Emblem. That's the biggest irony and failure of ironman, is that more often that not it homogenizes playthroughs more than it makes them distinct. Someone's already said in the comments, but you don't need more than a few units to beat any Fire Emblem game, including 3H and Engage; All you truly need are a few strong combat units, and which units are strong combat units are immediately obvious and set in stone in every game. It doesn't matter if my babied Bors dies, I could get him to 20/1 and he'd still barely even measure up to literally anybody with HM bonuses, if he was lucky. So if he dies, either because I misplayed, misclicked (which happens in GBA emblem too, and watching literally any ironman stream on this platform can corroborate this,) or just get unlucky, I'm not thinking about how unique this makes my playthrough or how I'm going have to struggle through Bors's death to find a proper replacement. I'm thinking "Great. Now I can fill this slot with a midgame unit that literally everyone autoincludes when they play FE6, instead of trying something different." Ironmans punish outside-of-the-box ways of playing, and I don't agree at all with this beautiful picture ironmanners like to paint that when a primary combat unit dies, it forces you into using and loving a unit you otherwise wouldn't. When you're out of the earlygame, you're simply not bringing in a new unit and making them a meaningful combat unit without also bringing your play speed to a miserable glacial crawl as you surround and bully archers/clerics or do 1-2 range rescue drop spam. It's ridiculous to accept grinding but not resetting and modifying one's strategies as an 'ethical' use of a player's time just because the former tells a better 'story.' Ironmanning doesn't so much "encourage careful play" so much as it does smash your toys for daring to not turtle + deathball if you don't already know the game. Or, you know. Are unlucky. If you're not deathballing, dealing with crits is not, in fact, always as simple as "just use the unit who doesn't get crit, bro." Most of your units in FE8 have abysmal luck, and most of the mages you encounter have thunder. Seth, surprise, doesn't share this problem, and I don't think "most non-Seths are at always at risk of instant death" rewards or incentivizes creative strategies when ironmanning. Let's say I play bold; I split up my units into squads and try to play fast and cover multiple objectives, but get unlucky because Seth can't be everywhere, and get forced into low-manning. It's not going to stop Seth, Duessel, Gerik, and Myyrh from running the game over. What does this add in terms of organic storytelling? Ephraim wins because he breaks character and decides to slowly huddle everyone together and only engage in one round of combat at a time against the antagonists, who will happily stand around for eternity to conga-line into you? Henning will just sit around on his throne for days on end, glaring impotently at Jagen as he throws 100 javelins? This is the kind of play that ironmanning enforces and rewards, and it's boring. Resetting, and by extension, turnwheel, allows for leeway in creating and attempting interesting strategies which also make playthroughs more distinct from one another. I remember these playthroughs where I was allowed breathing room to experiment much more than any ironman I've done, which consistently just felt like going through the motions and being forced into making bog-standard decisions and plays that I didn't want to, and already knew were very effective. And, yes, turnwheel is optional. Don't use it if it ruins the game for you. Simple as.

Me losing an hour and a half of progress because of a 2% crit Some fuckin game analysist on youtube: "Let me tell you why this is a good thing" "You shouldve accounted for it 🤓" Be fr not resetting was never the way fire emblem was ever played in majority

I don't think that the issue is rewind feature per se. Rather, I think that Fire Emblem games should be designed with iron manning in mind, with or without rewind. If they remade Path of Radiance with rewind, the game would still be perfectly doable while letting units die here and there thanks to features like Bonus EXP and more units joining later on. Conversely, removing Divine Pulse from Three Houses while keeping everything else the same would just make for a more tedious experience since letting your students die in that game isn't really a valid option. Engage ALMOST is designed around pressing past your mistakes/bad luck despite having rewind. Plenty of new units join as the chapters progress. Many of them are really good. I cleared a Hard Mode soft iron man of it (Alear died once). But no new units in the last five or so chapters (excluding Mauvier and Veyle as they join right as your deployment slots increase) right as the game takes a big difficulty spike really hurts.

I've definitely ran out of rewinds while playing on hard. getting down to your last rewind brings that level of tension that you mentioned. I think these new games are balanced around it pretty well

main issue i see with the "true classic mode" is that you can get around these limitations by getting your lord character intentionally killed, and outside the realm of challenge runs, the lord dying being permanent would be way too harsh of a punishment for any game unless it was specifically designed around the concept. personally, the way I'd handle resets is by adding an "assist menu," which is something I've seen a few games do where the premise is that the player can enable game-breaking features that are meant to power them through any given segment of the game should they find themselves unable or uninterested in completing them in the way the game intends them to. This can include anything from enabling turn rewind, disabling unit permadeath, adding a "reset chapter" button, adding a "skip chapter" button, etc. The point is that these features are not an intended part of gameplay, but they are meant to make the game more accessible. And I've found assist mode menus in the games that I've seen them in, tend to be much more dynamic in how they let players adjust difficulty since they can really be any combination of elements.

Say what you want, but if my Lucina dies in this playthrough I’m resetting. I already lost Don and Viri… and Sully…. And a few others to ambush spawns… that’s not important! Lunatic+ isn’t fair and I’m not letting Lucina die

My problem with permadeath is that the game doesn't really acknowledge it. Writing as gotten more involved but permadeath has stayed the same. Relationships are a huge part of the game but when a unit dies, there's just a void where they were. Spouses, children, and comrades don't morne dead units. FE is super positive anime save the world writing and the only characters that really die in the story are prewritten. When a character dies, all I feel is the support convos I'm locked out of and the tactical decisions I don't have. There is literally just less game I can play now. Games need at least some content that comes with dead characters.

There was a potentially significant cost for resetting in the older FE games with lower growth rates-good level ups. One difficult choice a player might have to make is choosing whether the potential of the lost unit is worth undoing a good level up on another character. It's not only a story moment, but also a strategic decision; you can technically reset a stage (very different than a turn) over and over again to get perfect levels on every unit, but so too can a monkey technically write Hamlet if given enough time on a typewriter; neither are really feasible in the scope of time a player might want to spend on the game, however. This is less about a particular gameplay reason, but permadeath was also a defining feature of Fire Emblem. Without it, Fire Emblem loses a little bit of its identity, and there are more than enough SRPGs out there with intense amounts of grinding or complex and convoluted character building mechanics, among which apart from its art style Fire Emblem loses a bit of its identity without that aspect of permadeath

The rule i have about perma death is that i can only reseting once per chapter, "am i allowed to reset?" Yes, and i would have a better chance at winning the next time, but if i do so, when someone dies i cant redo it anymore so i gotta be extra careful

I think the fact you're seeing a lot of comments saying you can just not use it, despite your mentioning it in the video and having a counter argument, is indicative of something. Mainly, I believe its a sign that to people who make that argument, your counterargument is unconvincing. Yes, you addressed it; but I don't find the argument you made against "Just don't use it" was especially convincing. If that was the point, could these people have elaborated further? Yes. However, rather than continually replying to every comment saying so with "I addressed this in the video," it may behoove you to attempt to steelman the position. Playing devil's advocate with oneself is an excellent way to further one's understanding of one's own points - and find flaws in how we think. Your whole video is premised on the concept that playing an ironman run of Fire Emblem is the best way to enjoy these games. And clearly, that works for you, so you have an inherent bias against any aspect of gameplay that defies that paradigm. Others have elaborated further on their disagreements with your actual points, and my intent isn't to add another essay to the pile. So I'll leave this comment as is and conclude by saying that I think it would be best if your scripting process added in attempting to fully steelman the arguments you're arguing against before you tackle dismantling them.

Objection 7: 'It never mattered in the first place', from my point of view that translates to 'I'd rather replay 20 turns rather than just one'.

5:10 ok just because something is unintended by the devs doesn't mean the player won't to it if they think they will get more fun out of the game by doing so. Otherwise most speedruning tactics would be worthless because "NOOoooO tHe dEvS dIdN'T iNtEnD fOr YoU tO gO ThRoUgH ThAt WaLl SkIpPiNg 3.5 HoUrs Of SuPId InTrO StuFf fDJgDuJFyHSHGf" people play how they want to play not how the devs THINK you should play

Like the vid and agree with most points but I would like to see you address some of the good points of turn rewind. The biggest one that comes to mind is that it disincentivizes boring turtle strats and encourages you to try and experiment with more fun gameplay.

you control the buttons you press

The time as an outside resource argument doesn't work, since A) this was a thing before gachas B) having more real time also means having more time to plan your moves, already giving you an advantage before resetting is taken into account. You could make a quick guess by enemy type and move your units, check the enemy stats and weapons and make an estimated calculation of what move to make, or bring up a probability spreadsheet+enemy AI algorithm before making a move (hey there dondon). This inherently turns time into an outside resource for game advantage.

I disagree with your entire section on why resetting is not a feature. It most certainly is, IMO. If it weren't, why leave the system untouched? Why track unit losses? Resetting was very clearly always known about and accounted for. Kaga's quote wasn't saying "always keep playing through every death", it was "don't get too concerned about making sure _everyone_ stays alive." Which stays completely in line with the idea that they player can choose to reset, but also choose not to depending on the circumstance. But, of course, in order for turnwheel mechanics to be 'objectively bad', you must also hold the stance that resets were never intended, so I get it. You didn't convince me, though. And the thing is, I actually do agree that the series is better without turnwheel mechanics. I think every Fire Emblem fan should play through their favorite game with perma death at least once. The tension and emotion does run much higher if you do. Not to mention that turnwheel mechanics hurt the strategy, too. I would not be opposed, though, to a once per map turnwheel that can only return to the beginning of your last player phase. Just to mitigate instances where you made the best possible move, then just lost due to bad luck. It cheapens the experience a bit, but I think the frustration of those moments outweighs the emergent narrative benefits.

I lost Navarre (one of my favorite units) in a FE 3 Book I iron man to a 2% crit on turn 1 enemy phase. Was it absolutely frustrating? Yes. Did it also create a memorable experience that would be forgotten had I simply restarted since it was literally turn one? Also yes.

I personally don’t mind it..or use it really. The only time I will is if I get like 1 percent criticaled cause I am not replaying the whole map for luck.

I definitely think more modes of gameplay would be a nice addition at least since challenge runs are so popular I think most people would rather see everything on their first playthrough in most cases, assuming the story isn’t branched. Lots of people just don’t have the time! But a game where you can choose turnwheel or not, or reverse recruitment runs… lots of potential for stuff built into the game

I don't think my objection is among the ones you mention. To me, part of the thrill of these games is trying to overcome a bad situation. That means my choices have to matter, and I need to see the consequences of them. A lot of the deaths in Fire Emblem are extremely cheap, and I refuse to accept them. If there's permadeath and a character dies, I'm going to reset to a previous save. A rewind feature not only saves me the hassle, but lets me better understand what the game wanted me to do. It's a completely optional feature, and doesn't get in the way of players wanting to go more hardcore.

I want to say at the start of this, that I agree with your proposed idea near the end. Having a selectable mode without the rewind mechanic is what I think the best solution is. That having been said, I also disagree with other things in the video. Yes, resetting wasn't expected by the devs at the start (like you said), however I believe that changed somewhat early on. As far as I can tell, both Gaiden and Genealogy weren't designed in an ironman friendly way. Some games later on gave the player ways to save mid-battle, and I'm not saying that was done specifically so player could reset faster, just that the way it was implemented in some games made it easier. The strengths of permadeath have a couple of flaws, mostly in that they're reliant on the player. Encouraging careful is good, but it has the potential to turn into risk-averse play. Obviously anti-turtle incentives exist, but depending on the game/chapter, they can often be mediocre. When it comes to tension, I'd argue it's not universal to every death chance. Others have pointed out that some units aren't that big of a deal to lose gameplay wise, and I'd add to it that there are a lot of characters that a player just won't care about. To put it another way, for every character a person cares about losing, there are likely many more that get, "Oh no, anyways...." response to their death. For organic storytelling, it also depends upon player engagement as well, but I think the games don't do enough to make the deaths matter for the story. What I mean is that when a character dies, all you get is a death quote and a "_____ fell at chapter X" ending (unless they get the "I can't fall here" treatment). One of my favorite things that changes based upon if a character is alive or not is a base conversation near the end of Radiant Dawn involving Calil. No, they don't need to do that for every character. Yeah, what I'm talking about isn't organic storytelling, but I think more people would appreciate it if the game's story did alter slightly from permadeath like that.

Something you didn’t cover is the characters nowdays have lots of scenes in the story. Permadeath feels real dumb when you still see the characters in cutscens after they die. And it would be a tremendous amount of work for the developers to have to acount for all of the story relevant characters dying in every cutscene.

Three Houses was arguably worse for the structure of the series than Awakening was. Turnwheel will exist forever because when chasing a "wider audience" a series can only give up parts of its soul, it can never get it back.

I agree with parts of this definitely; I think turn rewinds are detrimental to the series and I think a casual/classic/true-classic system would work well; however, I also disagree with a couple other points. I think you DRASTICALLY over-estimate the impact of "organic storytelling" moments and the "immersive" idea of mechanics matching in-universe tactics (and has never outweighed the frustration of bad RNG anyway); in my opinion, the real benefits of permanent-death is all about gameplay, in that it encourages a different set of tactics than an otherwise identical game would without it. To that end, chapter resets work just fine (the loss of time is not exactly fun, but is more of a necessary evil) as you still have to play cautiously, make difficult choices when gambling with the RNG, and, other than chapters with surprise ambushes and things, they don't really help you circumvent any of the core gameplay. In fact, there's even a benefit to resets that a 'true-classic' mode wouldn't have; it's much better for learning and improving. If I play a chapter, make a tactical error, and lose a unit, but press on regardless; I mostly will rationalize that loss as the RNG being against me, and learn nothing from it. Whereas if I reset the chapter and change my approach to the same situation (or through different choices elsewhere avoid the situation entirely) then I get actual, usable feedback that helps me improve; or if I keep making the same mistake multiple times, the data becomes a pattern to learn from instead of a random instance of bad luck. And this is actually more important than just a skill level thing too; being able to understand my mistakes and improve is one of the reasons tactics games are fun in the first place (or almost any game really), I don't reset because of "FOMO" or wanting the characters to survive (most of the time), I reset because I want to know I can do better, I want to be better. My favorite tactics game of all time is Into the Breach, but I find that when I lose in that game, I don't mind the game over and the run ending, but I get frustrated that I can't try that same battle again. Even if the game over still stood, I want to try and understand my failure and fix it; and that's something that FE has that would be lost entirely in a no-reset run.

it just depends on the game. 3H was all about the characters and it wanted you to keep them alive, engage had the rings and wanted to let you have fun with all sorts of whacky op shenanigans and giving you the rewind to encourage experimentation, and SOV had cantors, crits and rng teleporting witches which caused very repetitive lengthy maps that NEEDED rewind lest they would a high stress induced nightmare as you fight off endless enemy spawns. There is a certain art to permadeath but it really needs to have its own game fully designed around it. A game that actively forces and encourages you to throw your units to the wolves, so that losing them elsewhere through sheer ineptitude wouldn't matter. The "whats one more" mentality. So far I don't think that game exists yet.

Am I the only one who thinks turn rewinding was put in SoV less because they wanted a way to replace casual mode, (or phoenix mode lmao) and more just a way of doing savestates on console, because they know damn well everyone played Gaiden on emulator, notorious for letting players abuse save states. It just made it into 3H and Engage because, fuck it, might as well find some way to draw in the emulator crowd, seeing as how the Big N likes to snipe emulators online left and right. Feels like the effect on permadeath was more or less a side-effect of trying to replicate that feature on home console.

I feel like one of the best examples of fully emphasized perma-death is Darkest Dungeon. Replacements for each class funnel in weekly, and you need to recruit them and train them in case your powerful one dies and you need a backup, which will happen a lot because the game is brutal and it autosaves everything. I never even thought to try not using Divine Pulse at all, I'm on my second playthrough on Classic Hard and was considering doing my third house on Maddening but maybe another Hard Classic with no divine pulse would be more interesting having watched this.

It does seem a bit redundant with casual mode i agree. Still it's a tough balancing act. I think we can get the best of both worlds by simply giving more rewards with less use of the turn wheel or divine pulse.

One thing I'll say is that while it's daunting since you lack new opportunities to recruit units later, 3H is still a great game to ironman. The very lenient trading system, the accessories, the multitude of ways to enhance your reliability and more provide you with a lot of ways to ensure an outcome or save a unit from dying. A 3H ironman has different hurdles to overcome compared to other games in the series but I find it really satisfying.

Permadeath works in FE because the games are easy, or rather, the math it uses is easy. Since it's basic arithmetic, the "high stakes" of death, spikes what otherwise would be boring stat stacking and win. And permadeath makes sense because it's easy to avoid, just do your homework and you can even pull off cool feats. Imagine permadeath if there was in FF or Persona, hell, even in other "srpgs", look at the first warsong, its annoying, not thrilling, especially since most deaths are from the scrub cav squad. FFT puts a 3 turn timer to revive, because otherwise that's just detestable. Permadeath and FE have synergy. Take one from the other and they're much, much weaker. To me, the ideal would be making a mode without rewinds / map saves, call it "emblematic" or something. ... That said, shoutouts to sov for bringing back overworld ambushes that can and will kill units without leaving chances to be saved with rewinds.

Personally I think the best thing to do with Divine Pulse is to make it an option the player chooses at the start like Classic/Casual have been since 12. This would mean those who want to make use of Divine Pulse cheese can still have their fun without forcing such options on those who don’t want it, if we want our game to be accommodating to newcomers and veterans alike such options are downright necessary.

Good video, but honestly for myself or players like me who gravitate towards Hard and classic with the goal of figuring out a way to clear each chapter with zero casualties the change would be whether I replay the whole chapter or can go back a few turns. That is even ignoring save states with emulators. I could probably just play casual instead then, but I've decided the punishment I want is either the turn wheel or reseting (Loading states for the case of something like mystery of the emblem.) Personally, in my eyes it is a double edged sword on the concept of healing items and grinding for that matter. Yeah in an ideal world I would see all FE games hit that perfect sweet spot between waifu sim and ganeplay .... Thing is nothing is perfect, nor can it ever be. I'd rather see training wheels I can say I'll use less or outright not use them. At the end of the day though the best way to prove this argument is to speak with the power of a consumer, put your money into play.

There's a certain amount of tension you can GAIN with turnwheels I feel. Namely, it lets you have big turns you'd never try if messing up meant a 30 minute setback. Like in 3 houses if you're pushing towards an enemy and suddenly a bunch of enemies are barreling down on you from 2 sides. You have a gambit that can stun enough enemies that your other units can clean up the stragglers, but the hit rate is 60% With no resets, you really need to retreat, deathball, and pick them off as they overextend. Instead you can try to rely on a 60% hit gambit to spin it back in your favor and keep pushing. You get the tension of "If this misses I'm screwed" and makes the turn a point of rising intensity. Since resetting is in the back pocket this is watered down a little bit, but without resets you never would have tried and just turtled up instead, which is the least fun way to go. If you did this every turn, you'd burn through resets and lose. So you have to pick your moments to be bold while still having enough resets saved for inevitable risks (enemies with a 3% crit you can't survive). It gives battles a good variety of pacing, between turns where you control risk perfectly (worst case, everyone survives enemy phase) and times you need to get dangerous - mitigating risk but you can't eliminate it altogether. Fire emblem mainly falters in how many resets you get and how flexible they are. I think a better system would encourage players to minimize resets by tying it to another resource, or have some forethought by having to pick where they can rewind to BEFORE anything goes wrong.(Basically saying, I'm about to take a risk this turn, so I want THIS to be a place I can reset to. And give a cap of like 5 of these points you can set.)

2:16 some people don't like tension and find it stressful games are meant to be fun not stressful and if you remove this *optional* quality of life feature you would be alienating those players and also it's hard to feel tension when i know if any of my units die i can just turn off my console before it saves and start from the beginning of the stage divine pulse is just that but better and it's optional anyway so all you need to do to get the sudden death no takesie-backsies experience you so desperately crave is just show some self restraint and just DON'T use devine pulse (i know what a f*cking concept right?)

I think one of the problems with your arguments is that you insist that Turn Rewinding removes Permadeath. It doesn't. Permadeath is still there. Your actions still have consequences, you just get a limited opportunity to fix them. It's like a puzzle you're playing that provides you with a few cheats if your struggling. The puzzle / challenge is still there, you just get a little bit more help.

I pretty much disagree on the whole narrative improvement with perma death. In fact, I'd say it's a narrative detriment. A unit is important in cutscenes? Then they are literally immune to death, they can however "retreat permanently from battle because of tooo high an injury". A unit that isn't important to the plot? They die and no one gives a flying fuck, even if your lord yaps on constantly about not wanting anyone to die on their behalf. They won't mention them once after their death. Any character you found interesting dies? The entire narrative of that character is gone for good in this run as 80% of it is done through supports and the seldom used map conversations in certain titles, which are now inaccessible (a bit moot for the GBA as there were already low chances of seeing much of the character through them in one run, with the very limited amount of accessible supports in each run). There are some fringe exceptions, like I think Titania actually acknowledges some character deaths in the early chapters of Path of Radiance outside of death quote, but because of the way this series stories go and the involvement of the characters in most cases, narratively speaking, it is much more distracting to have perma death than to not have it.

I am of the opinion that rewinding's influence on the series is more neutral or mixed, and that it can be done better, while other issues have undermined the permadeath aspect since well before rewinding was even a consideration. There are three major problems with rewinding as it currently exists. The first is the most obvious: they give you WAY too many charges. Late in _Three Houses,_ I was rewinding minor misinputs I'd just roll with otherwise because I'd still have several left even with horrid play at that point. Rewinding should either be one charge per map (essentially insurance against the Lord getting low% crit, like what happened in my Rev playthrough), or better yet, an _extremely_ limited resource across the entire game. The current rewind system detracts from strategy a lot of the time, but five charges across the entire playthrough turns it into an extra layer of strategy (especially if the game is particularly hard). The second issue is that there is no mode that lacks rewinding. This is less of a problem if the story doesn't emphasize rewinding, but that's another issue, and there's still the issue of having to actively ignore an entire mechanic for a whole playthrough regardless. _Fire Emblem_ inherently encourages the player to get good millage out of every resource at their disposal, and having to ignore a resource to get a proper permadeath experience is awkward. This is the simplest one to fix, however; simply add an extra difficulty option for different levels of rewinding akin to what classic and casual do for permadeath, and change nothing else. Third problem: the story implementation for rewinding has been _terrible._ The odd thing is that they _nailed it_ on the first attempt; the turnwheel was *explicitly* something the characters had no idea how or why it worked, and that's as far as these mechanics need to be implemented into the story. Give enough explanation that the mechanic can be worked into a playthrough's narrative, without causing issues with the rest of the story. _Engage_ and _Three Houses_ cause issues with the rest of the story. Another issue with permadeath is that _Engage,_ rewinds aside, is the most permadeath-friendly game in over a decade that isn't a remake. _Awakening,_ _Fates,_ and _Three Houses_ all have *major* design decisions that heavily undermine permadeath: the first two have child units as pretty much the only reinforcements you're getting after a certain point of the game (and implements them in a way that is _heavily_ reliant on the player keeping certain units alive), and the latter has a heavy emphasis on growing the units you get early in the game, making permadeath _incredibly_ unforgiving on a first playthrough. If rewinding is fixed or removed, but we still have design decisions akin to those of the past few games, then permadeath is still not in good shape.

Then don't use it -_-

Regarding Argument 5 (it's optional, don't like it, don't use it), I don't think the rewind feature is comparable to an excessive amount of healing items that trivializes combat. It's not hard to avoid using a rewind feature, hence why I don't agree with your idea of a "true classic" mode. If you want a classic mode without reset options, just don't reset. Making an entire new mode simply to take away the reset option is a lot of effort for far too little reward when players can do that themselves with little real effort. On the flip side, depending on how "too many healing items" is implemented, it can be annoying to actively avoid. For example, constantly having to click thru pop-ups for obtaining yet another healing item intrudes on gameplay even if the use of said item is optional. Alternatively, if the game is balanced around the use of some healing items, playing without any healing items may end up unreasonably difficult (if not impossible), and it's hard to determine what's a right/fair amount as that's subjective to a degree and impossible to tell for a blind player. Even if the players were to find that using x number of healing items per chapter makes the game balanced, the burden of keeping track of healing item usage is put on the player. Basically, too many healing items has many ways of actively intruding on gameplay unlike a rewind option. Lastly, I will admit that a rewind feature can be detrimental if the game is balanced around the use of it. Some may consider ambush spawns an example of this (especially ambush spawns with high movement, variable stats, and/or that aren't communicated beforehand to the player) as they consider these to be simply a way for the game to "burn away uses of your rewind". While I agree that expecting players to use the rewind to overcome such obstacles is an example of rewind being detrimental, I don't agree that removing rewind is the solution. Simply not making the game with the expectation of rewind while giving players the option is perfectly fine in my eyes, just like GBA arenas or FE8's Tower of Valni. And sure, casual mode works to solve unit deaths for casual players, but not other objectives like recruiting (if the unit you need to recruit them just died/retreated), saving villages, getting items, etc. as you'll be forced to reset if you want them. Rewinding simply saves time for such players.

Adding in an Ironman mode for future Fire Emblem entries is a good idea. Whether that idea will work or not is dependent on game's core design around a turnwheel/reset system. I do think the rewind system is a bit limiting narratively speaking. I just hope the next Fire Emblem Protagonist isn't basically god, or some divine existence, or another avatar for once.

This isn't really related to Divine Pulse, which I honestly don't have too much of an opinion on since I never used it outside of Game Over conditions, but more on permadeath in Fire Emblem overall. My first FE game was Awakening, and I started off playing on permadeath, since I like the idea of the emergent story telling and punishing mistakes. But when my first character died, he kept showing up in cutscenes, and this totally broke immersion for me. "Why can't this guy join me on my missions if he is still walking around in full armor in my camp?" At that point I swapped to playing on casual and haven't tried playing in permadeath in any subsequent games. If the characters in 3H actually dies and are removed then please tell me and I'll try it again.

As someone who doesn't like or dislike the divine pulse feature my opinion is that the way the series is going the feature is necessary. when playing fire emblem engage you do have a large group of characters to chouse from allowing you to play without the resets, but there are problems such as the danger zone that is heavily relied on does not take emblems into account like Sigurd's large movement buff and Celica's teleport attack in chapter 17 (If I am not mistaken). there are much bigger problems than the divine pulse that from what I see just gets ignored like the DLC, the uprising of the monetary like base is really frustrating as well. I do think we need to get rid of the divine pulse in some way so I think it may just be better to just make it a game option like online or a difficulty setting so you have the option to turn it off or on as you so chouse. to add a little to the base problem the big issue is the large amount of time sinks like fishing for prof levels, and the dogs giving iron, steal, and silver for forging. the my castle was the probably the best managed because of how small it is in comparison. all in all good video and I do think it has in a way converted me to the no more divine pulse in its own way but it should still be a setting option.

I think we should talk about the opposite: Why not make perma Death better? With the exception of (ironic) Shadows of Valentia which give us the turn rewinding, it´s totaly doesn´t seems nobody in the army to care if a close friend dies. The charakters become depressive in their quotes and so on. That was in fact a cool thing. In three houses i fall once asleep while i playing and lost one Charakter. I noticed this HOURS later, because nobody cared about the losses. Wouldn´t it be cool they get some funeral, or wouldn´t it be cool if some charakters have different support conversations because of somebodys dead, maybe support conversations at all because they were both friends of this one charakter and had no connection to each other at all, but now where their friend died they get to know each other or something like that. Hell, if they bring child charakters back, why not make special child Charakters that you only get this way. Some mourners that learn to love each other which otherwise wouldn´t. We don´t have the blank charakters of earlier FE titles, but we have the blank death of earlier FE titles. If you want that people "enjoy" permanent death, then why not making it more worthfull?

Smash bros introduced me to Fire Emblem, but I had always avoided trying the series because of after I heard of the permadeath system. Fire Emblem Warriors and Fire Emblem Heroes got me into the series because they both don't have permadeath. When Three Houses got released, I avoided getting it because I thought permadeath was the only option in the game. However, once a free demo of Three Hopes was released, I immediately fell in love with it and decided to get Three Houses before the full game of Three Hopes got released. Both games turned me into a Fire Emblem fan. Later, Engage furthered my fandom with the best main story I ever played through. When Fire Emblem got released on Nintendo Switch Online, I stopped playing during the first chapter because of two reasons. 1) No voice acting and 2) permadeath. I play Fire Emblem the way I play digital chess which is always sacrificing pieces to reach the goal with undo always available. If it weren't for these changes I would have never got into the series and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels likes this. These changes are to make these games more accessible for newer players like me.

I started a hector hard mode ironman as my very first and got bored around chapter 19 and dropped it. I just didn't experience the almighty orgasmic organic narrative I've been told it would deliver me. And I kinda don't like it. I have more fun treating every unit as a game over condition. Most of the benefits of permadeath are based on smoke and mirrors. The belief that Erk matters. The amount you lose from a unit death could be quantified by the power difference between them, and the unit you deploy instead of them. If its Marcus, that's a lot at least in the short term, but for 90% of a game's roster its close nothing. This is enhanced by the fact that fire emblem, with its enemy phase action economy, lets a few good units do almost all the work. Understanding this removes both the stress of losing something and the drama when you do. Once you realize these guys are expendable, they're very expendable. The high stakes and stress that come from permadeath come from the idea that you'll lose something. In reality the only significant losses are thieves, staffers, and combat gods that are quite unlikely to die. Even then you only really need one of those each. People say the words "play through your mistakes," but getting Erk killed didn't have consequences to play though. It can't. What are the designers gonna do, make the game unplayable without Erk? I would learn more from the mistake if I analyzed it and found a better path, rather than moving forward basically unimpeded. So does this mean your personal experience, permadeath enjoyer, is invalid? That you are wrong, dumb, or bad at life? Obviously not. The design worked for you as intended. Gaming is a feelings based experience and so is any narrative thing. I'm just explaining where it broke down for me personally. I'm not even arguing with this video directly so much as I'm explaining my own opinion, experiences, and where they come from. I'm barely going to talk about turnwheel. People talk about permadeath as some holy grail. That its effects are wide reaching and benevolent and incredible. That fire emblem with permadeath is on a whole 'nother level to fire emblem without. It feels worshipful to me. Permadeath is just another design choice. There are objective ways in which permadeath makes the game worse. 90% of units have minimal importance to future arcs and narrative moments because they could be dead. Units can't have too many special, unique, and irreplaceable traits because they could be dead. The units cannot have any notable advantages over the rng proof late-joiners because they could be dead. Those late joiners, in fact, have to be as good as can be so they can carry a player that's horribly unlucky, or just horribly horrible. Fire emblem consistently has backward difficulty curves because of this. Hard, complicated early games and smooth, stompy mid-late games. You might hear its from the snowballing of resources that emerging from every map unscathed brings, but that's not the case. Its not like that one village I missed had the critical ingredient to Pent and Hawkeye killing everything. Its not like Erk matters. I think the things we could gain by ignoring permadeath would satisfy me as a player more than what we'd lose. I don't want the game designed around casual mode. Playing Disgaea or Unicorn Overlord, the number of player healthbars that have to be chewed through before I see an actual lose condition is absurd. Its almost funny. Its like playing fire emblem without resetting on unit death. My ideal fire emblem would have "everyone is a game over condition" as an actual setting and be designed around that. And units would have tons of unique shit that the game can design around back to front, with a relatively small cast. The things I like about fire emblem are the simplicity/intuitiveness of its mechanics. The faster game feel compared to something like tactics ogre. The absolute absence of generics player units. I'm talking a lot of shit about older fe games but I genuinely do like these games better than other strategy games. I don't want to see this series shackle itself to a set of 20 year old design rules and refuse to cover new ground. That's wasteful and uncreative, no matter how perfect you view your sacred texts. I think cool and new things should happen. You've had your fe game. Shozou Kaga has made his already. I welcome new ones with new ideas. For turnwheel, I view it as checkpoints. Checkpoints are fine. But engage and 3h both way overdo it. If they're limited enough to feel, you know, limited, I don't even think they contradict the appeals of permadeath in that case. I think 3-4 is a good number. Maybe 5-6 for longer or more difficult maps. 10 is asking me to check if things work by trying them and rng abuse. Thanks for enduring my long post.

I think the turnwheel is a good mechanic that makes the game more fun and less tedious. I enjoy earlier games like Thracia and the GBA games, but I always use save states when playing them because I hate losing units to same turn your enforcement or a small mistake. I will agree that gameplay designed around using the turn wheel is not good. Three houses maddening tried to balance the turn wheel by using same turn reinforcements and over powered enemies to burn through turnwheel uses. The lost condition has changed from having the lord die to running out of turn we all uses. I believe the game should be balanced around having to turn real as an optional feature the devs should assume the player does not have it. Higher difficulties should limit the amount of time well uses instead of forcing you to use more.

I played 3 houses with full use of the rewinds but refusing to restart maps in any other way. If I wanted to redo the whole thing it cost me a rewind. I completely ran out on the second-to-last map and had determined if I lost the map I would restart the campaign. It was a powerful experience. Rewinds as a scarce resource provide another layer of strategy that allows for risk vs reward plays and an important safety net for misclicks when combined with permadeath. No one likes to have to restart a 45 minute battle just becuase they misclicked or forgot to swap weapons or misread the opponent's crit chance. Having ~3 rewinds per battle is scarce enough to make you play nearly the same as if you had 0 in case you need them later for long battles, but provides a critical safety net for such misclicks.

The more you can build and customize your units, the harder the game is to design with permadeath. While three houses has unique design, other new games have you put tons of time and resources into each unit, like the 3ds games. With rings, engage could have moved back to replacement cannon fodder while keeping utility, but the characters have to bond with rings and upgrade skills still. GBA was the last time really that units were replacible enough to just throw a bunch more recruits at balance problems. (And 11/12 but those were remakes with even more interchangeable units than the originals)

Honestly think you underestimate what you lose with divine pulse time and resources. Yes you can slip up but on higher difficulties it’s really easy to run out of divine pluses. Three houses is definitely a game where I think divine pulse adds way more than distracts. Since like not only is it integrated to the story but the game intention definitely to keep your students alive. Hence why when you lose a unit you’re heavily punished and to much mess ups. Especially since all your students have screen time I think playing to keep everyone alive first try using divine pulse enhances the experience. Now engage where every character has one arc and they get thanos snap. Heck some characters have one scene when they’re not even the focus. And we are constantly getting units I think that’s when turn wheel really shouldn’t be there.

i've been trying to be concise with what i wanted to say. I know about 6 or so years ago. Fire Emblem Warriors came out and there were so many people up in arms that this was turned into a "Warriors" game. Myself was very intrigued because I love warrior games... but i never heard of Fire Emblem. I bought it. was really intrigued about the characters in the game and I had a 3DS so i said okay let's try awakening. and i read the reviews. and if you scratch out "rewinding time" for "Casual mode" basically your premise is right there and it could have turned me off. (thankfully I decided to give it a chance when I saw someone say on a message board "Fire Emblem Fans are miserable just try Awakening" and i LOVE the series for it). but if people had their way - based on "no spinoffs" and "no casual mode" and now "no rewinding time." there would be a LOT of people just going "eff this." and not giving this incredible series a chance a all. and I've PLAYED earlier fire emblem. and enjoyed. but if i've never done it and i need to be coddled a bit in ANY sense of the word - it's a GOOD thing. i will say in my 700 hrs of playing 3H most times that i used divine pulse was to see if i could get all the unique dialogues). i don't think i used it (i always forget its there) in Engage. but I have a friend who is new to FE who got Engage and needed it as a crutch because it was "baby's first FE." and that's OKAY. when they replayed it - they didn't need it if it wasn't there at all. the franchise loses a fan. end of story. it could be implemented better, it's not perfect, but i do not think it's right to made broad sweeping claims that impact everyone (including future fans of the series) because I don't think it's right to gatekeep how people should play... an individual game. end of story.

I would agree in any game that isn’t 3 Houses. As in Three Houses it has to exist considering that the game is designed around it. Having replacement units in 3 Houses would not really work, considering it’s a game centered around the students.

Counterpoint: Resetting is a feature. Maps have included the ability to save since the Kaga era. Resetting and restarting a chapter or going back to a mid-chapter save has always been an option and turn rewinding with limited uses is an ergonomic improvement to the dominant playstyle of the playerbase. Turn Rewinding should not be removed. It should be improved to match the playability created by using emulator savestates.

I truly don't mind turn rewind in the game because at the end of the day, it is a choice! The problem which I think you reflected in this video well is when the particular FE game is solely revolved around the fact that you are at a severe detriment if you do not use the rewind feature. Three Houses is definitely a big reflector of that, but not so in Echoes imo. I have fun doing an iron man of Echoes because I know that if I play smart, I can be rewarded and to your point on organic storytelling, it can be fun (albeit still frustrating no doubt) to see what I can do or what potential mistakes I may make. But it doesn't necessarily ruin the game whether I want to press on without units, use the rewind feature, or reset in the older titles because I want to see how things turn out or I want to be sure so-and-so is going to be able to recruit so-and-so later in the game. It's all player choice and I'm just hoping that future titles don't have to revolve around the rewind mechanic because although I do enjoy Three Houses, that was one of the bigger faults of the game.

FE4 saves automatically at the beginning of every turn, so even Kaga intended for people to reset if they wanted to. Also, it's okay to admit that you just want to be elitist and think that ironmaning is the true way to enjoy the series. You just also need to remember that many of us don't have the time to restart an entire 40+ hour game because we made a dumb mistake.

I agree with most of your points. Having 3 Modes, Casual+Rewind, Classic+Resets, and Classic+No Resets sounds like a good idea. I disagree with your point about misclicks, though, just because I like to play fast and misclicks happen to me all the time. My main problem with forcing players to Ironman New Age FE games is because while I enjoy the tense turns and paying attention to all aspects of the map to plan out turns in the OLDER games, I don't like doing it now because maps and enemies have become ridiculous on the harder difficulties. I get overwhelmed by Engage's Maddening Maps very easily because in the GBAs, all I have to do is see where this guy is going and how much damage he's gonna do with his Silver Axe. Now it's not just this guy, but it's this guy and his 10 buddies, who all have 30 Str and Brave Assist.

The lack of any real consequence of your units dying was one of the things that annoyed me most when playing Dark Deity, which I generally still enjoyed. There never was any reason to really play carefully or plan a strategy beyond simple tactics, because the stat loss from a unit death was never really that impactful. I think the Rewind feature can have a place in FE, as long as it doesn't compeltely trivialize the challenge. In SoV it didn't refresh between dungeon battles, so you could make some smaller mistakes as long as you didn't mess up all the time. It's okay to have some leeway but the mechanic became way too broken, especially when combined with casual mode.

6:41 “when a unit dies” Soren: *retreats* lol In all seriousness though amazing video. I 100% agree with all of your points except for what you say in objection 6 As there’s no need to make a new three houses where unit building and a roster of deep and memorable characters isn’t at odds with permadeath as that game already exists. It’s called: Fire Emblem Awakening

I've some desagrement with you. First of all, about the reset being directly proposed by the game when a unit die if resetting was THE intended to play the game. I think that's a stupid idea. The last thing i want the game to do after losing a unit is reminding me of that failure like 5 sec later. Personally i'll view this as a gigantic middle finger. That's probably because i don't have the right mindset but even then i'm far from the only one who would react that way. Differents options means differents reasons to pick one or the other witch means differents mindset possible to approach the game. Therefore, you can expect the players to play the game the "right way" so if THIS is the way to experience de game, then restart directly each time a unit die. But most of the first games were design for players who keep their unit ded if they screw up. So why didn't they implement your "True classic mode" where it's not possible to reset from the very start ? Technical limitation on the ness maybe ? did auta save really didn't exist a the time ? If that's the case, then the series shouldn't have started this early and they should have waited until autosave was added. Next up, they're the "organic storytelling" stuff and to be honest, i'm kinda indifferent to that. "classic" storytelling through dialogue, worldbulding, character development ect is just more appealing to me. Also if they want me to care about a unit dying, they must have a bear minimum of dialogue. Just having the recruit convo is far from enough and don't let me get started on the gba supports system who makes the very few dialogues they have tedious AF to unlock. Plus olders games tend to have way to many playables characters witch obviously prevent from being well developped for the most part. I could speak for hours about that issue but bottom line is "classic storytelling comes before "organic" storytelling for me. Some may say "lol go watch a movie you dumb*ss" but like it's an rpg so we're gonna have tons of dialogue anyway. You could argue that this is what makes a playthrough feel special but like why should i care if another player got a similar playthrough as mine ? That doesn't make my playthrough any less unique in my eyes espacially since it's not a multiplayer game. Last thing i want to bring up is the argument about ironmaning making the playthrough more engaging. Again this is more so about having the right mindset to approach fire emblem. I've a similar issue about people who think slow pacing being always equal to bad pacing in story telling ; that story being called boring as a result . In both cases, you need to make and effort; take the extra step forward in order to have more enjoyment out of a game. The difference is: in my exemple the only down side is that immersing ourselves in stories, characters, worldbuiling ect all that takes time witch explains the slow pacing at least in the first few hours of a game (or tv show or anime or ... whatever). But the wider audience is more inclined to prefer pretty graphism and jaw droping cinematics over fleched out characters and deep lore so they won't take the time to take the extra step forward if the games are lacking on the surface. But most games that are lacking in this area put they're efforts elsewhere mostly in what makes the actually core of the narrative (story, characters and lore). That means the effort made will often be worth it since these games have a high chance of delevering in those aspects and making the story engaging in the process. Back to the engaging part of an ironman: where's the problem ? Well, first of all, accepting permadeath is much more than just an extra step forward. It's one of the most unforgiving game mecanics ever concived. Yes, i'm aware of the prepromote being given to the player and S rank weapons too. The older games are designed with permadeath in mind but these efforts aren't enough. When a game force a player to deal with an unforgiving game mechanic, it's only natural that the game would deliver in the game design aspect, and when i say deliver i don't mean being just good, i mean being excellent if not flawless and being consistent at that because a SINGLE flaw can lead to an unfair loss of a unit and i'm not talking about the RNG oh no. You know what aspect of the gameplay fire emblem is being very inconsistent with ? The f*cking map design. They're so many flaws across the entire franchise : the abusive use of some game mechanics such as fog of war, ballistas, siege tomes, status staves, desert maps in general and of course these ambush spawns omFg. We can also mention all the gimmick in specific games and even specific maps: rain in some chapters and 2 druids equip with luna behind a door in the snow map in FE7 , shovel snow and moving platforms in fates revelations , execution rooms and fog of war on steroids in FE5, the entire chapter when you obtain mulagir in FE6 with the rng about seizing the right tent, the "eat rock" map and the bridge full of pitfallls for some reason in FE9... These are all exemples of bad game design. Because in my eyes, that's not good difficulty, it's just adding elements that slow down the gameplay even move. So no, the problems don't come from the RNG, in fact it can pretty muh become the nail in the coffin of the enjoyment of ironman if we had that to the pile of sh*t i just describe. Yes, they're ways to trivialise most of them maps and most of them are not as unplayable as it seems but that's not an excuse for bad map design. You can also say "this is war, it's unpredictable, it's a plus for the immersion ". And there lies my final argument : you tolerate the bad maps to fully embrace the organic storytelling and the "this is war it's unpredictable" stuff. Tolerating a flaw to get something enjoyable in return that's called a compromise. When a game force the player to make compromises on his experience, you can't expect me to be engaged the all way throught and that's why i'll most likely never do an ironman run. Maybe i can solve this issue by playing some romhacks but not anytime soon i'm afraid. That being said, i just elaborate only a few arguments you made and i agree with most of the rest of the video. "sometimes restrictions lead to a more fulfiling gameplay experience" SO TRUE. I just began recently to play somes of the games in classic mode without save states but reseting each time i lose a unit and i had a good time. permadeath is irrelevant in the recent entries but that didn't stop me from enjoying them even though i kinda prefer the pre-awakening games (aside from echoes but that's a remake so yeah). Anyway good vid

You made a lot of good points man keep up the good work

Yeah, I dunno. You lost me completely at "true classic". People already play ironman when they want that kind of experience and creating some arbitrary extra mode that tampers with your save files is just silly and goes far and beyond for the perceived value of a part of the experience.

i'm someone who thinks challenge is the core of gaming. i'm not saying that every game needs to be Dark Soul's level of hard but they should have some degree of challenge to overcome because that is a big part of what makes games fun. on the subject of turn rewinding i wasn't sure what to make of it at first but overtime i came to the conclusion that it trivializes too much of the challenge. so i believe it needs to be either nerfed or removed. now as for your True Classic mode idea, i think it's a terrible one. i do think resetting should be discouraged but not in a way that trivializes the consequences of a character's HP dropping to 0. with casual mode if a character falls at the start of a chapter they'll miss out on experience which becomes less and less of a consequences as the chapter progresses. at the same time classic is very punishing and thus alienating for anyone but the more hardcore players. this True Classic mode would only be appealing to the absolute most hardcore of the fanbase, the about 3% of the fanbase that already do ironman runs. what would they need of a mode that forces ironman when they already do that with just the regular classic mode. with so few people that this could appeal to and the fact they can already achieve it with the currently existing game mechanics it would be just a waste of time and effort on the developers to make this. instead what i would do is add a new mode called Cleric mode. the way this would work is that when characters fall in battle they are sent to a new area in the base camp called the Clinic. the player then has to spend gold to bring them back. with this there's an incentive to strategize well to prevent characters from falling since you can't just get them back for free but there's also an incentive to not reset since there is still a means to get them back.

We're still arguing about this in 2024? Let the casuals have their fun and we can just opt not to use the turn-turner mechanic.

15:30 they'd just reset before the unit dies but i still think this is a good idea, you *chose* true classic mode you deal with the consequences. You made your bed, now lie in it

Fire Emblems fan are something, just dont use it like I did.

As a pokemon fan, I'm honestly jealous you still have the choice to use it or not. For pokémon we also have a broken mecanic that break the game: the global multi exp.: starting with pokémon XY, you got an item that give exp. to all of your pokémon after a battle no matter if they participate in the battle or not. You don't have to use it, but a lot of player did It's awful on so many aspects: For the story, some pokémon evolving without even training by themself is really weird For the gameplay, it makes the game so insanely easy (pokémon is already a really easy rpg even without that, with that you don't even need to think while battling) And some pokémon lose all interest (the whole point of magikarp for exemple is that training it was painful because you had to litteraly waste turn using it if you wanted him to get exp. But if you did that long enough you get a really strong pokemon after his evolution, now, it's not even a problem and it evolve for free) Plus, since pokémon is a social game with the trading and battling between player, if you don't use it, it's hard to stay relevent with your friends or other players online And you know what... it was fine, I get that some player enjoy it more that way even if it wasn't my case, yeah I had that feeling it wasn't the best and I had to live with that option but it wasn't that bad ... and sword and shield happend. It's not a choice anymore, you have to use this broken system even if you don't want to. It felt like if, for fire emblem, every time a unit die the game reset your turn without asking you for lime 10 times per level. That is an awful decision and it's a hundread times worst than a choice in my opinion.

We already had True Ironman, if you ever played on a Physical GBA, it created a bookmark every action, and if you turned it off or ran out of battery, you could resume it at any time This isn't possible on newer hardware because of the flash memory on the GBA, and how fragile and bulky modern Saves/Memory Systems/Optimizations are

i get Echoes way, as if Alm/Celica dies, even with the turn wheel, the game is over. but 2 houses and engage just makes it where if Byleth or Alear dies, it will be used automatically. i would rather have Echoes version of it then the recent games version

Man is entirely and objectively right. Permadeath is a mechanic that largely exists to make people bad at calculations typically; 1) Use stronger units that are less likely to die 2) Cause players that are not as good to drop units falloff or not growing well passively 3) Potentially exploit death as a benefit. 4) As a feature it intentionally pushes players to look at selective investment, a pretty meta strat 5) To put it bluntly, its purpose is to idiot proof the game. The game is build that you can mess up roughly at minimum 20+ times. People act like it's intended to not play through mistakes but all these games have a large amount of wiggle room for mistakes to be not only possible but expected. And none of this even brings up how silly it is to act like people dying when they are killed in the story of a war simulator isn't intended.

I agree that Time Rewind is a flawed mechanic however fire emblem is a flawed game, time rewind exists as a band aid to these mechanics: 1. People hate losing units, the possibility of a soft lock is plausible. 2. Losing units means losing resources, supports, gaiden chapters, etc. 3. Screw crits, screw Germe. However on the other side, rewinding and avoiding punishment for failure causes this: 1. Unbalanced gameplay because you have suffered zero casualties, your army is normally way too powerful for chapters made for an army that has suffered losses. 2. Players never actually learn from their mistakes, I saw another comment stating that playing around their mistakes is more beneficial but I must disagree, because players are playing the unintended way using outside mechanics (before time rewind) to bypass failure, they never learn and adapt to the tricks used to kill their units. Players never understand the importance of resource management the purpose and utility of certain characters and so instead we get; "Jeigan sucks" even though prepromotes have inherent value. 3. When the developers see this trend we see a general downgrade in gameplay quality; Fates and Awakening have small casts, with half of them cut off permanently and you need characters to survive to get them no matter what, heavy investment is required to win and worst of all the maps are built around this bs leading to Awakening and Fate's usually horrific late game (conquest is a minor exception but it's still flawed). Then you get Echoes and 3H who attempt to use time travel to patch their poorly designed games instead of just making them actually playable. I want to play these games, I still need to freaking beat Silver Snow for goodness sakes, but playing on Hard for echoes is too much for me and screw maddening, at least you get a chance, hard or lunatic for Conquest requires you to learn the maps and understand the skill tree and classes like a degree to play without resets and god forbid you play ironman, yeah you can say I suck or whatever but people who do beat it are the best players in fire emblem, but I'm not that, I've only bee in the franchise since Post revelations and even though I beat Thracia 776 Iron man which normally should be considered a high challenge, I can't beat freaking Hard Conquest, because the mechanics are not built to play without resets. But then you get engage, which no matter what forces Predicted growths in the player first time and this is a game where they actually tried with the gameplay (story had to be sacrificed), sure it has the time crystal but that's less of an issue, because now it's actually made to be beaten mostly without the time crystal, because the engage rings and character pool is enough (mostly). If you'd like to see the absolute worst FE has to offer, if you'd like forced resets, then never fear because part 1 of Radiant Dawn exists as a symbol of what not to do when designing your game. First off the dawn brigade are weak, Nolan is the best they can offer until Taureno and his lot. The majority of the Dawn brigade cannot be killed in the early chapters even though they have no story revelance, probably because if they did die, progressing the first 5 chapters would be impossible, I wasn't even trying to play ironman yet somehow it was forced on me against my will, the enemies are strong, for reasons unknown these enemies have the bulkiest res stat in the universe and... I can go on. Points aside, time rewind is a crutch, there are mechanics to avoid this necessity like FE4's crit mechanics or FE11's Allied Reinforcements which are both boons to the players for a healthy game, It upsets me they never came back.

I value your opinions but I have to disagree I think the mechanics of turn wheel are a great edition for fire emblems story since if you look at fe 1 and fe 6 games that keep perma death in mind the games base story was lessened by perma death Take fe 6 for example Roy literally only talks to merlinus the entire game because the developers had to factor that characters can die any time that decision makes roys character worse because he only talks to two characters the entire game compared to three houses that can let character development between the Lord and side cast develop because of turn wheel And another fact is while resetting a chapter is super time consuming what's more time consuming is literally have the game be impossible because to many units die making it so the games impossible. Kaga had some good ideas when making the series but not every idea he has was gospel and kagas idea of perma death is definitely outdated with how the series works now

I don't think you're trading time for an in-game advantage, you're trading time (redoing a turn / chapter) for time (that you already invested in building up the character that died / that would be required to train another character to fill that role). Honestly, I'm more of an Advance Wars kind of guy since sacrificing some unit(s) to gain an advantage is both "realistic" and makes for a decent character moment for that one unit that was sacrificed to hold a mountain pass. Unfortunately with how punishing that would be in a FE game, it's just not viable. I've only played Path of Radiance and ultimately it wasn't really the permadeath that filtered me, but how I ended up with a mostly useless, underlevelled army aside from the few god units that killed everything in their path. And weapon durability. That was just annoying. At the end of the day, this series is not for me and that's okay, I'll let you guys fight over permadeath.

I disagree with a lot of your arguments against the objections. HOWEVER, one thing I absolutely agree on is "True Classic" mode. It's absolutely doable from a Game Dev perspective and would incorporate exactly what you and other players want from the series. I started with Awakening, but even then I choose the Classic Option because without it, I felt the game would be too easy and it didn't feel right to just let a unit die and be like, "that's fine". I want the Permadeath for a sense of challenge and tension it provides, but not because of it's outcome. I will always reset a game if I lose one of my main units. In that case I like Turn Rewinding because it still has the tension and challenge of not letting a unit die, but the opportunity to try again, with a "you made a mistake" kind of vibe. In this case, I feel like we should have 3 modes. Casual. Defeated Characters will retreat and be available after the battle. Classic. Defeated Characters will die and be unable to be used after battle. True Classic. Defeated Characters will die and be unable to be used after battle. Game Autosaves after every turn. Only 1 save is allowed. We could even have players customize if they want Turn Rewinding enabled...

If you lose your favorite unit you're most likely gonna restart the game anyways. Rewinding a turn is basically the same concept but more convenient. If you don't like it then you can also choose not to do it.

It is true that a mechanic being optional doesn't make it criticism free, it is still a solid point against its exclusion. Some people do like turn rewinding, something that you mentioned in the video, and excluding the mechanic would make it so those people cant use it st all. People who dont enjoy it can play without it, the presence of the mechanic should have 0 effect if you aren't using it either way. I'll always be adamant that giving the player more options is almost never a bad thing

Except even in pre time wheel games it was common to reset a map if a character died. This is literally a feature as it is tracked. Time wheel with permadeath enabled doesn't even allow suicidal tactics as you still need to keep them alive. Yeah Ironman is fun but its not the ONLY way to enjoy a game. Sometimes you want your challenge from doing a draft. Or its your first playthrough of a game. Or you pick the units you like rather than good ones. And misrepresenting the quote.... Nvm. Ragebait video.

I will say that Permadeath as Fire Emblem does it is the bad mechanic. And i say so as someone that plag traditional roguelikes. I lost 4 or 5 Tales of Maj'eyal runs at the final boss. First, ToME itself has a 10 to 20 hours campaign depending if you want to do everything and how fast you are. And this is one of the longest roguelikes campaign, often criticized because it is too long. Fire Emblem is easily 4 or 5 times longer. I can't just start a new run as casually. I just don't see myself ever ironmanning because of it. Except maybe an SD excelblem run. Second, in roguelikes you never lose progress, the game autosave constantly. In FE you have to play hour longs map between saves. Even people that don't reset usually restart the map if the lord fall so it is relevant. Wich mean that if you ever get stuck at something, you have to endure a slower, more boring version of the Dark Souls runbacks to attemt that portion of the map again. Third, runs are not that unique. Growth rates could make them unique but they are too weak compared to base stats. Enemy and item placement is fixed, there are little choice other than "use john instead of jack" and so on. Once you know how to beat a map you can just repeat the same moves forever. Rewinds mean you can focus on the "enemy puzzle" you haven't solved yet whitout having to constantly redo the previous ones that you already solved. Permadeath and ironman suppors are great mechanics in games with shorter, more unique runs, such as roguelikes or games with significant CoC such as Jagged Alliance to name something similar to an SRPG. For a game as long aa FE it means far too much repetition either if you reset or if you do not(failing run and restarting from chapter 1).

i dont think just perma deathing a feature you dont like, solves this issue, cause then the people who do like it.. now have to play the way you want them to.. thats not fair. we dont get to tell everyone how to play because "we are right and they are playing the game wrong." its an extremely poor start to a discussion to be had around such a topic. (also i know that is not what u said, but ur title is hot garbage is all im mostly pointing out) they spent the money. they are allowed to play a way you dont enjoy. tough shit. starting an attitude like "its ruining" fire emblem is exactly how you get such a "tough shit" response back from the ones that like it. whilst i personally only really play GBA FE mostly, i personally could careless if turn wheel is there or not even when i do play modern games. it is not fundamentally "ruining" my experience. if the game is designed in general well and not sending a billion units with high crit, forcing me to constantly reset to get 99% misses 50 times in a row. then im not exactly believing that the "turnwheel" is directly impacting the game play experience. removing features like casual (i know u were not talking about that really but it was a discussion long ago also like this one) and turn wheel could alienate many, many fire emblem players again. bringing us back to possibly the near death of a series. regardless, i think the hyperbolic title and such is ruining the discussion around these features. as they come across extremely pissy sounding almost. again, (not saying u are saying this exactly) but it comes already across as. people are not playing the game how i want them, or i cant play the game how i want because this feature exists - angry face.

and it's optional just don't use it if you don't like it personally for me it just saves time instead of having to restart the battle if I screw up

As someone who has come to see the light in regards to permadeath, I agree with most of the assessments you made and I do think the Turn Rewind mechanics as they stand are net negative. However, I would like to challenge the assertion they're ruining the series. I don't think the ability to rewind fundamentally contrasts the tension Fire Emblem normally provides, but the current implementation of the system does. Turn Rewinding is just too abundant and reliable to ignore. It is a tool in the player's arsenal, but there is little to no strategic consideration to be made for when the Rewind should be used. If a bad outcome occurs, then rewind to the exact moment you desire to rectify it. Since uses recharge automatically after every battle, there's no reason for a player to be shy about using them. Assuring that even minor mistakes can be corrected. Or even employing an insanely risky strategy knowing there was virtually no consequence if it didn't work out. But I think that the Turn Rewind only needs one change to re-frame the mechanic as a truly positive addition to the series. By imposing a harder limit on the available uses of the rewind. Instead of having a pool of 3-10 charges that replenish after a battle, I would much rather see players being given 50 charges upfront. The only difference being that when a charge is used, then it's used. I would anticipate this would naturally incline players to be more conservative with how they use the rewind. It would get them to consider which situations are worth rewinding for. It would also require the designers to be even more thoughtful with their challenge knowing there is a possibility that players could theoretically deplete all of their uses before the final chapters. In even more niche scenarios, this could even serve as a potential challenge of how many Rewinds they were able to keep upon finishing the game. I could certainly critique the Rewind more and think there are even more ways to improve the system. But that is the one thing they can do to ultimately change my mind on it.

12:40 ok and? People can just mod turn rewinding back in so the temptation is still there the existence of the modding community disproves your point

Been playing FE for awhile and even with the turnwheel, I still play the same way as I did before. Even with the turnwheel, I still sit on the edge of my seat at every attack, I still think about my actions, and I never just throw units at a boss without a plan. I have never let a character die even when the turnwheel didn't exist. You are a nutcase buddy.

When Final Fantasy IX was released on steam it had a load of optional "cheats" like invulnerability etc. People screamed that this was going to ruin the game because "why wouldn't you use them". This is that same bad argument. If Primal Liquid can beat FFIX with only items, you can beat any FE game without hitting reset. If you can win every battle without any real risk of permadeath WITHOUT using resets then that's a design flaw and why everything should have properly thought out difficulty levels. Saying that a game should take out a feature because ultimately you don't think it's the way everyone else should play the game just begs the question: who made you the fun police?

Or better option, Just dont Use it. Don't Press ZL. Problem Solved so stop complaining.

I feel like your whole argument about "real time as a resource" falls apart really quickly when you considering that: A-The lord is a game over condition B-You can lose enough firepower that they'll end up on a checkmate scenario On both of this instances, if resetting is out of the question, you have to start all the way back from the beginning of the game, and I don't know about you, but i think that's a significantly larger waste of time than just restarting a single chapter. There's also the whole absurdity regarding the statement that taking a bit more time is equal to spending real life money or any kind of irl resource, by that logic, is every single instance of a game over in a videogame sending you back to a previous checkpoint also wasting your time? Are games supposed to just let you get by without any roadblocks whatsoever, or else they're wasting your "irl resources"? The whole thing's a mess. I agree that the turnwheel/rewind is an inherintly very unhealthy mechanic and should be removed, and i also agree that people do reset too often and should be more willing to carry on with some losses, but making such arguments against resetting in general feels like a massive, MASSIVE overcorrection and fails to take into account why the turnwheel is even problematic in the first place. The issue with the turnwheel is not that it's "IS adknowlodging resetting as a game mechanic", the issue is that instead of being presented with the option between starting from the beggining of a chapter or carrying on with your loss, you can just undo your recent moves and spend almost 0 ""irl resources"", completely ruining the dynamic between playing it safe but slow or faster but riskier, as no mistakes will ever be actually punished until you start making too many of them, and at that point the chapter is basically over. I feel like a lot of people nowdays are treating FE's original intent as if it was supposed to be a roguelike, and it really isn't. It's a game that plays a massive emphasis on resource management, and will (often) provide you with the tools needed to get by even if you have lost some of those resources. But if we're meant to somehow assume that ironmans are basically the "intended way to play", then why did the original FE1 have traditional saves between every chapter instead of enforcing bookmarks? Why did no other of the kaga games attempted this once they made the jump to the more capable super famicom? Why did FE4 let you save at the beginning of each turn? And why do all of the games that kaga has made post FE5 (Tear Ring Saga, Berwick Saga and the Vestaria Saga duology) not only still have traditional saves, but some of them even allow you to save midchapter under specific conditions? So much for the "intended experience" am i right? Kaga never mentioned that you're meant to never reset during any circumstances, but that you shouldn't obsess over keeping everyone alive, which is a statement i wholeheartedly agree with. I really was not a fan of this video, not because i disagree with the core idea being presented (that the turn wheel should be removed and that no game should be designed around it), in fact, i 100% agree with that principle, but then the video turns into a case against resetting as a general concept and the arguments presented become more and more ridiculous. There's a perfectly adequate middle ground between literal ironmans and hammering the reset button 24/7, where that middle ground falls on depends on which title it is and how it's designed, and that's how FE should be experienced

as someone who is complete dogshit at the game i disagree because the turnwheel makes the game less frustrating for ME to play

>3hrt take yikes

The biggest problem with your argument, and the reason why the rewind system was implemented to begin with, is that you were never "forced to play through mistakes". If your unit dies, the average player would just turn the game off, load their save and try again. the rewind system just makes what most players were already doing more convenient. Its not making the game easier; its just saving you the time it would take to reload the save and repeat everything at the start of the map up to the point where you had difficulty. You can still ignore time rewind; just as you can ignore resetting the game.

No, dude. Rewinding is perfect. This reminds me of the people who complained about Phoenix Mode. 100% of everything Fire Emblem offers doesn't have to be for you and your preference for the purity of experience other people have doesn't come before that reality. It really is as simple as the fact that having rewinds is better for the continued health of the series than not having it. That defeats all your points, bro.

Good stuff. In my opinion, rewinding has the potential to be fun if it's properly balanced, but not an strategic fun, more like puzzle fun as is the fe4 1 turn save system. The main objetive is not avoiding risks, but solving the puzzle on how to dismantle enemy formation, of course that in fe4, you have the incentive to keep units alive, but it's not that important.

Bring back Phoenix Mode. :B

You are wrong. Perma-death FE is already perfected by GBA FE, the consequence is pretty obvious: the rich gets richer, frail units don't get to play the game. On top of that perma-death restricts map length, among other things, to prevent players from rage quitting. What the hard core fanbase want from modern FE is pretty clear: super tight lunatic mode with refreshing elements that is fun to play, not a half-baked mode with design strangled by the fossil idea of perma-death.

The issue with permadeath is that the game doesn't really punish you for resetting except wasting your time, which you're already doing anyway There's nothing stopping anyone from resetting anytime a unit they like die, so permadeath is literally just a minor inconvenience, especially considering most FE maps are short and easy Like there's a reason why ironman is a challenge and not a normal way to play FE, no one wants just to give up on a unit they like because of unlucky 3% crit Again, the game makes no effort for punishing you for resetting, what if every time you reset for a unit they become weaker? Or you lose money ? What if units will come back but only after 2-3 maps after you lose them, forcing you to restart the map ? The series just treats death as a minor inconvenience since you're not punished for resetting " Resetting was never intended actually!!! " Yes and giving Marth stat boosters and having him Solo FE1 isn't, warpskipping FE1, 3, 5, 11 isn't, forging Cadea's wing spear and having her be a boss killer isn't, Using Marcus after the early game isn't too all of these and tons of other examples i can name are valid way to play the game, i don't care about what the devs intended, they're not controlling how i play the game Also it's extremely funny that you're fine with casual mode with the excuse of : " if you want permadeath choose classic, else choose casual" because the same thing can be said about rewinding, if you want to rewind, go ahead, but if you don't want to then don't, yet you don't bring this up as an argument lol And yes i know you replied to this specific point in your follow up video, but your responses were kinda dumb

Fire Emblem should remove turnwheels, casual mode, have one difficulty only akin to FE6 hard mode, and autosave after every player death(except for game over characters) and I'm not even joking. Appealing to casuals and people who trivialize their losses/mistakes just to "win" was a mistake.