Topic: Gettin' Cube...finally!

[vudu]

Quote
Originally posted by: KnowsNothing
In other news, whatever you do do NOT buy Fire Emblem for GC, the game is fundamentally BROKEN and it SUCKS.

WTF are you talking about?  If you don't love Fire Emblem you don't deserve to play Zelda.

EDIT:  You're fundamentally BROKEN.  Take that.

[KnowsNothing]

OKAY I'LL EXPLAIN, but it's hard to explain so you may not understand

It's chapter 10, and I'm trying to save all the people from their cells and escaping without being seen by a guard.  Well, in order to go by like ninja, you have to remain out of range from one of the guards.  To do that you can just put the cursor over the guard and press A to see their range.  Well, what happens is if you stand on the edge of their vision thinger and then they move towards you, the next turn when you look at their range it sometimes blocks it from going past your character.  By that I mean, you can move some characters into what you THINK is a safe spot, and then when you move another character all of a sudden the game says WHOOPS LOL and shows that your character was blocking their vision so when you move all of a sudden it expands and your characters are in a DANGER ZONE that didn't exist 5 seconds ago.

It's pretty retarded.

[vudu]

It does that because if you had a different character blocking the guard's path to your other character.

Here's an example using attack range:  If you have a guard in space B1 (I'm using Battleship labeling) with a 6 space movement range and you have Oscar in space B5 and Ike in space B7 the guard won't be able to reach Ike because he'd have to move 7 spaces in order to be in adjacent square.  (3 spaces over to B4, 1 space up/down to space A4/C4, 2 spaces over to space A6/C6 and then one more space (either B6, A7 or C7) to get next to Ike.)  However, once you move Oscar out of spaces B2 to B6 range the guard has a straight 6-space shot to Ike and can attack.

It's the same principle for movement and being spotted range.  If you have someone blocking the guard's path he won't be able to reach a certain spot.  So you think to yourself "A-ha!  I'll move this guy over here and then he'll be safe.  Unfortunately, you have to make sure that by moving that character you don't open up a direct route to a different character that can then be spotted.

Chapter 10 is a pain.  I did it using stealth, but I'm not sure if it's worth it.  If I had to do it over again I'd probably just say screw the bonus experience and take everyone out.

EDIT:  Since I'm such a nice guy, I even found you a walkthough so you can beat the chapter with the bonus experience if you like.  Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance FAQs & Guides.  Go there and select Ask_B_007's walkthrough (first one in the list).  Then do a Ctrl + F and search for [FE10.1].  I didn't use this guide, but I know people who did and it seems to work just fine.  For some reason he doesn't recruit Kieran (which I think is a mistake) but I'm sure you could easily add him to the to-do list as the guards rotate on a cycle and it shouldn't be too difficult to find a pattarn to get Oscar over there.

[KDR_11k]

If you don't love Fire Emblem you don't deserve to play Zelda.

Why must I like turn based tactics to enjoy an action-adventure game? Especially now that I learn that FE has a stealth section so it's a combination of the two genres I hate the most?

[vudu]

The stealth section is not required.  There's one mission that gives you the option of sneaking around or going balls out and killing everyone (technically, you could go balls out and not kill everyone, but where's the fun in that?)

There's no penalty for doing/not doing stealth.  The only benefit to going the stealth route is that it will give you more bonus experience, which you can disperse among your party members as you see fit.  However, you probably get more experience overall if you were to fight rather than stealth.

As far as my Zelda remark, I was obviously kidding.  However, I think the game is really great.  It's much more forgiving that FE7 (the first GBA one released in America; not sure about Germany).  That game was brutal.

[KDR_11k]

However, I think the game is really great. It's much more forgiving that FE7 (the first GBA one released in America; not sure about Germany). That game was brutal.

Doesn't mean much. I've found Advance Wars brutally hard so even "easy" TBT games aren't for me.

[vudu]

Not that it'll mean much, but Advance Wars and Fire Emblem have very different flavors.  There's a lot more resource management in Advance Wars because in most levels you're expected to build new units with fairly limited funds so you have to balance the trade-off between several weak units or one very powerful unit.  Fire Emblem doesn't have any of that, so the most difficult part is not dying and making sure weak units don't fall too far behind your powerful units (and thus become unusable).

Strangely enough, I'm not even a very big strategy fan.  The only ones I've ever played are the Advance Wars series, the Fire Emblem series and Final Fantasy Tactics.

[KDR_11k]

Fire Emblem doesn't have any of that, so the most difficult part is not dying and making sure weak units don't fall too far behind your powerful units (and thus become unusable).

Oh, that's bad, I never care for characters that fall behind in any game. My motto is mostly "Useless now, useless forever", I'd probably let the weaker ones act as cannon fodder to get rid of them.

Perhaps the biggest thing I hate about TBT games is that you can't just tell a bunch of units to move somewhere (no matter where) and come back to them when they're done with that or give a group of units an order to attack a bunch of enemies and have them automatically take on the optimal targets. No, you have to manually execute every single turn and babysit every unit in your group. That's nice as long as you have three or four units like in Incubation but above that it's micromanagement hell. Oh and I hate how I always seem to be within the enemy's range but he never is within mine. That's probably because I don't micromanage my movements enough to move only to the edge of the enemy's range and wait until next turn to attack.

[vudu]

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That's probably because I don't micromanage my movements enough to move only to the edge of the enemy's range and wait until next turn to attack.

As you already know, Bingo.  Move a strong-defensive unit (physical or magical, as the situation may warrant) into an enemy's attack range and keep the others just outside.  When the enemy comes to attack gang up on him next turn.  Heal your bait, lather, rinse, repeat.

If you don't mind killing off useless units the process becomes even simpler because (a) you don't have to worry about not letting them die and (b) you can usually more even your good units into the enemy's attack range because the CPU will generally go for the weaker target (i.e. the bait you don't care about).  However, for me, I can never bare to kill-off a unit, no matter how useless.  I feel bad for his or her family.  (Such was the case with Dorcas in FE7.  No matter how worthless that guy was I would have hated to be the one who had to go and tell his missus that I let him die at the hands of a Wyvern Rider.)

[KDR_11k]

I just don't like having to look up all enemy ranges before making a turn. In an RTS you know how far an enemy can shoot but in a TBT you have to worry about his range of movement as well and that's rarely obvious.

[mantidor]

So I just found out recently that Cristal Chronicles is not a turn based RPG! yeah I know Im way behind, but the moment I saw FF in the title I assume the turn based mechanic and dissmissed the title completly. Now Im really interested to try it, I know about the whole GBA thing so is the single player part just horrible? that would be the one I get to play, no GBA for me.

[Kenology]

I thought Crystal Chonicles was pretty weak.  I hated being forced to use my GBA for everything that could've easily been shown on the big screen; and worst of all, carrying that damn pot sucks super monkey balls.

[Kenology]

Sorry for the double post... I got an error message after both posts so I didn't think they went up.  Anyways, yeah, in responce to the post below.  I think you can use the GC controller in 1-player mode (it's been a long while since I've played), but the pot carrying was very annoying to me.  And I think the GBA wasn't used in a very practical way as it was in say, 4 Swords.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

DUAL POST REVOLUTION?

[mantidor]

lol

wait, the single player needs the GBA? I thought it could be played with the GC controller.

[IceCold]

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So I just found out recently that Cristal Chronicles is not a turn based RPG! yeah I know Im way behind, but the moment I saw FF in the title I assume the turn based mechanic and dissmissed the title completly.

Have you played Tales of Symphonia yet? Only a few RPGs have ever caught my interest, and this was one of them. Probably because it's nor a traditional RPG; it's not turn based and the combat is great. I would definitely recommend it over FFCC..  

[KDR_11k]

You can use a GBA in singleplayer to get a map display (or any other display but who'd display anything but a map?) but I don't think you can even use it as a controller in SP since the GC's extra buttons are used to order the Mogry around.

Overall the SP gameplay is pretty sucky, most enemies (even the regular kind) follow a simple pattern and you have to exploit that to do anything (usually "get close enough to trigger a specific attack, run away, wait for the attack to end, hit him, repeat"). Your inventory is constantly full with various crap that you MIGHT need later but never really know because you can't read the recipes you find and the items just aren't documented in the manual. You often have to repeat levels you have already done.