mark_asphodel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mark_asphodel) wrote2013-02-07 05:47 pm
mark_asphodel) wrote2013-02-07 05:47 pm
Entry tags:
Initial Thoughts on FE13-- Chapters 1-5, Xenologue 1, Paralogue 1
I haven't been meta-ing sufficiently because I've been enjoying new canon. Let's just say UPS brought something yesterday that helped ease the sting of a morning that kicked off with a blown-out rear tire.
Let's start with the first point: anyone who avoided spoilers, fan-translations, and all the pre-release fanwank hoopla was smart. I should try that next time. Maybe I'll go into a bunker for SMT X FE.
Now, the spoiler thing almost doesn't matter, because you have two big honking Reveals and one Really Big Clue before you even get to the first proper battle map in this game. It's as though IS was mindful of the concept that an audience anticipates a plot twist more when primed for it.
The fan-translation thing does matter, because it's really obvious that what I have in-hand is a full-scale adaptation of the source material, one that's consistently engaging and both delivers good (IMO) things that are not in the NoJ original and excludes many objectionable things from the NoJ script. I'm not going to accuse the fan-translators of being inaccurate (though some scripts were translated from Japanese to Chinese and then English, so nuances may've been lost), as it seems evident plenty of things I deem Objectionable were what IS intended. Well, they're gone now and I'm glad. Let the butthurt complain about what was done to their precious Tiamo and Nono, I'm having fun here.
A lot of fun. Gameplay? Good. Graphics? Good. Voice acting? Surprisingly good and I'm enjoying a lot of it. The entire presentation? Beautiful. I'm still not down with the overall character design and aesthetic of Ylisse and Plegia but I can deal. Ferox is kind of weirdly appealing, though.
[Flavia = hot]
The Characters!
Chrom-- I really like this guy, though I'm not in the "love" range yet. He's just an admirable mix-- a balance-- of obligatory Naive Lord traits and more aggro qualities, and his naive moments seem understandable. It's like he's making a conscious choice, a deliberate leap of faith, to believe the best in people, the same way Ylisse has made a concious choice to embrace peace under Emmeryn's rule after what seems to have been a disastrous reign by their father. It feels genuine, and when people play dirty Chrom doesn't hesitate to push back. He's all right.
Robin-- I went with default Male 1 Robin, but gave him longish lilac hair for a Deirdre/Julia/Lyon creeper vibe for lulz. The hairstyle is surprisingly effective at evoking said vibe all on its own. Robin's actually pretty likable-- too derpy for Stuhood, but not actually stupid or annoying. I've been surprised by my positive feeling toward him.
Everyone else-- mostly pretty likable. The gimmicks are obvious-- Stahl's a sleepyhead! Vaike refers to himself in the third person! Sumia keeps falling over her own feet!-- but it's all tolerable thus far. The main one that gets on my nerves is Miriel, with her "I'm smart because I sound like my sentences were put together by a high school sophomore boning up for the SATs" act. If I want an in-your-face prodigy I'll stick with Lute, thanks. Maribell is also pretty over-the-top but it's clearly the point of the character. Basically, I'm warm to tepid to all the playable characters I've encountered through the beginning of Chapter Five. Then there's Donny... er, Donnel... er, the kid. I don't think I like him but he got me Orsin's Hatchet so I have to be grateful for something.
That said, there have been some really nice moments of dialogue, both in the actual text and the use of voice clips (Chrom gives a voiced "no" response to one of Robin's sillier questions in a way that never fails to make me giggle). Overall the best word I have for this is "engaging." I want to keep playing this game and see what happens next. By Chapter Five of FE8, I wanted to throw it into a wall, my main takeaway from Lyn's Tale was not that I liked playing the game but that I didn't hate the characters the way I hated the fanon versions thereof.
The Pairing System:
Pair Up is all kinds of awesome and if they ever do make an FE4 remake I hope to hell they incorporate this instead of the adjacent-square crap. The mechanical supports in general are really well-done, given the way you can form entire support chains. I can stick my little non-combantant healer with a front-line mounted unit and it benefits them both? Wowsers. I also like the way support conversations are implemented thus far.
[Honestly? From a mechanical perspective I think the GBA games have some of the absolute worst things the series ever coughed up, and the support implementation there is near the top of my list.]
My Pairings:
From the moment that "Soiree" was unveiled as the female red cav, I threatened to pair her Chrom. When she was revealed to be one of his limited marriage options, I figured I was going to do it even if the Chrom/Olivia supports seemed oddly pleasing. When I played the fully-voiced "Sully" in the demo I decided to hell with Olivia and I've got Chrom and Sully to B-support already. Take-no-crap childhood friend romance FTW.
[Chrom/Olivia turns out to be about as gimmicky as Finn/Tiltyu in terms of what you have to do to obtain it, anyway. If I decide I really, really, really want a Chrom-sired Olivia!Kid, I'll do it, but lemme try something else first.]
I really like Frederick in this, even if he does have this bizarre obsession with cleaning away gravel from the battlefield (-_-). Not feeling the total <3 <3 <3 I feel for Rody, but Fred's got his stellar moments... and in his Chrom supports he pretty much has the knight-boner to end all knight-boners. By comparison, Kyle demonstrates a restrained and discreet appreciation for Ephraim. Since I can't pair Frederick with Chrom I figured I'd pair him with Lissa; I initially swore I'd never do that but Lissa has good moments to balance out her annoying ones and, on the whole, I'm OK with it. Fred's not quite as awesome as I wanted him to be and Lissa's not nearly as awful as I feared she would be, so it works. Not dead-set on any other pairings yet except the Avatar and Nowi match-ups, though I'm liking what I've seen of Ricken and Maribell so far.
The DLC:
Man, did I get a kick out of seeing Alm and Celica in action. Could've done without the dialogue between Alm and Lissa, though-- since when is he unfamiliar with female melee warriors? Um... Claire? Matilda? Yeah. As for Old Hubba, the resident pervert... he claims the Einherjar aren't actual ghosts, but their behavior contradicts him in places and he's a demonstrably unreliable person. We'll see. But it was really fun playing on the Talys map in 3D. :)
Overall: Definitely the most promising beginning to an FE game I've experienced in the modern era. And it's on a handheld, so I can play it while making dinner and conducting conference calls.
PS: I think that "Phila" peg knight chick is gonna come to a bad end. You want archetypes? She feels like The Mahnya.
Let's start with the first point: anyone who avoided spoilers, fan-translations, and all the pre-release fanwank hoopla was smart. I should try that next time. Maybe I'll go into a bunker for SMT X FE.
Now, the spoiler thing almost doesn't matter, because you have two big honking Reveals and one Really Big Clue before you even get to the first proper battle map in this game. It's as though IS was mindful of the concept that an audience anticipates a plot twist more when primed for it.
The fan-translation thing does matter, because it's really obvious that what I have in-hand is a full-scale adaptation of the source material, one that's consistently engaging and both delivers good (IMO) things that are not in the NoJ original and excludes many objectionable things from the NoJ script. I'm not going to accuse the fan-translators of being inaccurate (though some scripts were translated from Japanese to Chinese and then English, so nuances may've been lost), as it seems evident plenty of things I deem Objectionable were what IS intended. Well, they're gone now and I'm glad. Let the butthurt complain about what was done to their precious Tiamo and Nono, I'm having fun here.
A lot of fun. Gameplay? Good. Graphics? Good. Voice acting? Surprisingly good and I'm enjoying a lot of it. The entire presentation? Beautiful. I'm still not down with the overall character design and aesthetic of Ylisse and Plegia but I can deal. Ferox is kind of weirdly appealing, though.
[Flavia = hot]
The Characters!
Chrom-- I really like this guy, though I'm not in the "love" range yet. He's just an admirable mix-- a balance-- of obligatory Naive Lord traits and more aggro qualities, and his naive moments seem understandable. It's like he's making a conscious choice, a deliberate leap of faith, to believe the best in people, the same way Ylisse has made a concious choice to embrace peace under Emmeryn's rule after what seems to have been a disastrous reign by their father. It feels genuine, and when people play dirty Chrom doesn't hesitate to push back. He's all right.
Robin-- I went with default Male 1 Robin, but gave him longish lilac hair for a Deirdre/Julia/Lyon creeper vibe for lulz. The hairstyle is surprisingly effective at evoking said vibe all on its own. Robin's actually pretty likable-- too derpy for Stuhood, but not actually stupid or annoying. I've been surprised by my positive feeling toward him.
Everyone else-- mostly pretty likable. The gimmicks are obvious-- Stahl's a sleepyhead! Vaike refers to himself in the third person! Sumia keeps falling over her own feet!-- but it's all tolerable thus far. The main one that gets on my nerves is Miriel, with her "I'm smart because I sound like my sentences were put together by a high school sophomore boning up for the SATs" act. If I want an in-your-face prodigy I'll stick with Lute, thanks. Maribell is also pretty over-the-top but it's clearly the point of the character. Basically, I'm warm to tepid to all the playable characters I've encountered through the beginning of Chapter Five. Then there's Donny... er, Donnel... er, the kid. I don't think I like him but he got me Orsin's Hatchet so I have to be grateful for something.
That said, there have been some really nice moments of dialogue, both in the actual text and the use of voice clips (Chrom gives a voiced "no" response to one of Robin's sillier questions in a way that never fails to make me giggle). Overall the best word I have for this is "engaging." I want to keep playing this game and see what happens next. By Chapter Five of FE8, I wanted to throw it into a wall, my main takeaway from Lyn's Tale was not that I liked playing the game but that I didn't hate the characters the way I hated the fanon versions thereof.
The Pairing System:
Pair Up is all kinds of awesome and if they ever do make an FE4 remake I hope to hell they incorporate this instead of the adjacent-square crap. The mechanical supports in general are really well-done, given the way you can form entire support chains. I can stick my little non-combantant healer with a front-line mounted unit and it benefits them both? Wowsers. I also like the way support conversations are implemented thus far.
[Honestly? From a mechanical perspective I think the GBA games have some of the absolute worst things the series ever coughed up, and the support implementation there is near the top of my list.]
My Pairings:
From the moment that "Soiree" was unveiled as the female red cav, I threatened to pair her Chrom. When she was revealed to be one of his limited marriage options, I figured I was going to do it even if the Chrom/Olivia supports seemed oddly pleasing. When I played the fully-voiced "Sully" in the demo I decided to hell with Olivia and I've got Chrom and Sully to B-support already. Take-no-crap childhood friend romance FTW.
[Chrom/Olivia turns out to be about as gimmicky as Finn/Tiltyu in terms of what you have to do to obtain it, anyway. If I decide I really, really, really want a Chrom-sired Olivia!Kid, I'll do it, but lemme try something else first.]
I really like Frederick in this, even if he does have this bizarre obsession with cleaning away gravel from the battlefield (-_-). Not feeling the total <3 <3 <3 I feel for Rody, but Fred's got his stellar moments... and in his Chrom supports he pretty much has the knight-boner to end all knight-boners. By comparison, Kyle demonstrates a restrained and discreet appreciation for Ephraim. Since I can't pair Frederick with Chrom I figured I'd pair him with Lissa; I initially swore I'd never do that but Lissa has good moments to balance out her annoying ones and, on the whole, I'm OK with it. Fred's not quite as awesome as I wanted him to be and Lissa's not nearly as awful as I feared she would be, so it works. Not dead-set on any other pairings yet except the Avatar and Nowi match-ups, though I'm liking what I've seen of Ricken and Maribell so far.
The DLC:
Man, did I get a kick out of seeing Alm and Celica in action. Could've done without the dialogue between Alm and Lissa, though-- since when is he unfamiliar with female melee warriors? Um... Claire? Matilda? Yeah. As for Old Hubba, the resident pervert... he claims the Einherjar aren't actual ghosts, but their behavior contradicts him in places and he's a demonstrably unreliable person. We'll see. But it was really fun playing on the Talys map in 3D. :)
Overall: Definitely the most promising beginning to an FE game I've experienced in the modern era. And it's on a handheld, so I can play it while making dinner and conducting conference calls.
PS: I think that "Phila" peg knight chick is gonna come to a bad end. You want archetypes? She feels like The Mahnya.
no subject
Out of curiosity, what are you planning on doing with Avatar and Nowi?
Though I actually read Alm as less "whoa woman warriors?" and more as "Oh, this random backwater also allows women to fight?" since his battle quote "You're not the strongest woman I know. But I'd sooner not take any chances." seems to imply that women warriors aren't a foreign concept to him
no subject
I actually think the voice acting helps in this regard. Except maybe with Donny. He's annoying.
Out of curiosity, what are you planning on doing with Avatar and Nowi?
Avatar's gonna marry Anna. As for Nowi... I'll talk about that when we get there.
Though I actually read Alm as less "whoa woman warriors?" and more as "Oh, this random backwater also allows women to fight?"
It was just weird and seemed very unnecessary, especially with Lissa's return jab to him.