Pancake Balls and Path of Radiance

[mark_asphodel]

I got suckered into the current aebelskiver/apfelskifer trend a while back, when Williams-Sonoma first began carrying a 'skiver pan and touting "cherry-filled ricotta pancakes" in their recipes section.  The combination of cherries and ricotta is something I can't resist, so I bought the pan... and stuck it in a closet for a couple of years.  Well, now we're in business; I made savory aebelskivers filled with cubes of high-quality imported Gouda cheese this morning, and once I ran out of cheese I put dollops of lemon curd in the final batch.  The pancake balls turn out beautifully shaped if NOT filled; filling them with sweet stuff results in leakage and caramelization of the filling about 50% of the time.  Clearly I need to improve my technique... and my speed.  These little suckers cook fast-- you'd better know what you want to put in them and have the filling ready to dole out before you start cooking.

Also, I can't find my DS charger right now, so the urge to get deeper into FE7 will not be satisfied at present (I never did have a GBA, though my excellent spouse has three or four of them... somewhere).  So I finally popped in Path of Radiance to tide me over; my spouse actually decided to make a communal event of it and took up the controller himself to find out what this Fire Emblem mania of mine is about.  He managed to kill Boyd in the first chapter.  :)

We played through the second chapter without Boyd and decided not to save, so now I get to go back and play those chapters again.  First reactions?  3D battle is kind of weird and distracting-- the bad dudes in the first two levels looked awfully close to ethnic caricatures.  I'm used to the mooks being dark-skinned, disfigured, and ugly, but these mooks made me pretty uncomfortable.  Also, the way the horses move is just plain ungainly.  As far as characters go, Titania seems pretty cool, and Oscar and Rhys are likable.  Ike is about what I expected based on his overexposure via certain other games, and Boyd-Mist-and-Rolf are irritating as hell.  Seriously, I was half inclined to let Boyd just stay dead.  Looks like I get Shinon and Gatrie next, and I expect that'll be painful.   
 
Ike levels up like crazy, though.  @_@

Comments

[samuraiter.livejournal.com]

I ought to resume my FE9 journey. Have had it on hold for about three months due to SFG.

If you need to play FE7 at length (recommended), I suggest hooking up a Game Boy Player (GBP) to your Game Cube ... unless you are using a Wii, in which case the GBP will do you no good.

I have to keep Ike away from the front lines because of how he likes to hog EXP. :-| Which, for a Lord, is downright odd.

[myaru.livejournal.com]

After a while Ike can take most of a battlefield by himself, so if you're REALLY irritated by the supporting cast, he and Titania are tanks, and if Soren supports with Ike they're both untouchable. Jill and Astrid are pretty amazing too.

That's five units! More than enough to take an army. :P

Honestly... part of the reason I still like Radiant Dawn better, despite all of the "problems" with it, is the change of focus. The Greil Mercenaries are okay, but I never did understand what the big deal was when other groups and countries had more tension between them, and more compelling reasons to fight. RD has slightly more focus on politics and theology (if you can call it that). And it's harder.

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm using a Wii. I should just dig out one of my husband's GBAs.

Ike hogs EXP, huh? Good to know.

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

I guess part of what's bugging me already is that it's making out the whole mercenary business thing to be... no big deal. Ike is all, "Oh, hey, I get to be a real merc tomorrow." Like he's going off to be a truck driver, or a tree-cutter, or something. It's all one big happy family, doin' the family business.

I sure hope that gets subverted down the line.

[myaru.livejournal.com]

Ike isn't the brightest bulb in the fixture, you could say. He's actually kind of anachronistic. But yes, he does start to get it after a while; he's a kid when the game begins, so it's not quite fair to expect common sense out of him, although you'd think with a father like Greil he'd have more of a clue. But then, Greil himself is an idealistic figure instead of a practical, realistic one.

You see a lot of development on this front from Rolf and Mist, actually. I think everyone else that joins has some kind of experience with war and display a bit more sense as a result.

But again, they just do it better in RD. The horrible parts of war have more of an impact in that game. PoR is really... I don't know, playing around? I don't find FE7 very serious in that regard either. When the games focus on tiny groups and tiny conflicts (Nergal seems tiny and shoe-horned in compared to FE6's Zephiel), it seems to err in the direction of cute character development instead of serious themes. Unfortunately, the fandom seems to value silly character supports over serious story.

Oh look, a tangent. My fandom hate is showing.

[penandpaper71.livejournal.com]

Aww, I like Boyd, Mist, and Rolf, but to each their own. :) Hopefully, the experience will improve for you soon. That isn't my favorite game so far by any means, but I did find it fun at least.

Did your husband enjoy his first Fire Emblem experience? ^_^

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Did your husband enjoy his first Fire Emblem experience?

I think so. He didn't hate it, anyway. But he hates turn-based strategy games as a general thing.

I, on the other hand, love them, because my coordination is too terrible to play any other kind of game.

[mark-asphodel.livejournal.com]

Heh.

Nergal seems tiny and shoe-horned in compared to FE6's Zephiel

In principle, I do appreciate that FE has shown us differing levels of conflict-- I suppose the great macro-war of FE4 versus the micro-war of FE5 represent the greatest disparity. So I do kind of like that Elibe, instead of getting two massive multination dogpiles, gets an "underground" conflict as the prelude to the great nation-toppling dustup of FE6.

On the other hand, your complaints about character development vs theme exploration, and the fandom reception of each, do gel pretty well with what I've seen around the Internets.

On the other other hand, FE8 would be a not-very-successful treatment of massive continental war, IMO. Cute characters? Oh my. Convincing portrayals of the ravages of war? Not to my liking.