Now I want to have a mod of the final level where you fight Lyon to replace all the enemies with multiple Seth paladins ranging from level 1 to 20 and the dragons should be level 20 with stats that equal to what happens if you use all your collected stat boost items, boots included. The weaker ones get killing edges and short spears, whereas the stronger ones with brave swords and spears. That sounds like it would be a fun challenge but possibly a nightmare.
Fe6 marcus doesn’t belong with the others. He’s done very well to be the training wheels in early hard mode, where he mostly puts enemies in kill range rather than one rounding them, and he falls off enough that you’re seriously incentivized to train your other units with the opportunities he gives you in the first few chapters
Exactly. Also, FE6 hardmode enemies are also of different breed. Marcus WILL die if you misposition him in some of the early maps. (The map you get Rutger is a good example, some of the cavaliers in that map have stats almost on par with Marcus.)
Marcus is the guy you don't wanna feed him, but you keep him close for emergencies, like rescue a injured unit, rush to a village, take care of a tough enemy or set kills for the others. So Jagens are super useful, they are strong in the start when your units can't double yet.
@@deyvisonwillamy6931 most "jagens" aren't like that, though. they almost always stay relevant way longer than they should, typically thanks to factors such as amazing bases, good weapon ranks, great classes, low enemy quality, and surprisingly decent growth rates that let them keep up with your lower-leveled characters. even the og jagen from fe1 with his cartoonishly abysmal growth rates only really needs a speed ring and some silver weapons to avoid falling off, because he has decent bases and 10 movement and the enemies are laughably pathetic. fe6 marcus, fe10 sothe, fe12 arran, fe13 frederick, and fe17 vander are really the only jagen-type characters i can think of that actually work as intended.
This reminds me of my introduction to Fire Emblem. I was riding the bus to school with a friend, a friend who received allowance and games far more often than me(no allowance, games only on B-day and Xmas). He was telling me how hard the game was, as he was on Chapter 4 of Fe7(or whichever one is Dorcas recruitment chapter). His only available units were Lyn, Wil, and Dorcas. He had allowed all his other units to die. He asked me to try the game out and "fix" it for him. So I restarted his playthrough, and fixed it for him. I'd watch him on the bus after that, and guide him through not getting characters killed. A few days later, he got to Eliwood Mode. With glee he exclaimed to me, "Dude, this Marcus guy is unstoppable! The game's so easy now! Marcus is unbeatable!" Only for a day or two later to come, with him practically in tears, "I got to a really hard chapter, and Marcus got killed, and I haven't been using anyone else really and I saved it." I told him, "Marcus is supposed to be your get out of jail free card, not your entire army." It turns out, people used to say, "Don't use Marcus, he's an experience thief!" In reference to not letting other units grow. Though that reality is true, there's also the fact that units like Marcus also steal experience from the player themselves, not letting them learn the enemy's real strength nor the strengths and weaknesses of their own weaker units. Fire Emblem has long term strategy and unit schemes built into it, but without knowledge of the particulars of those in each game, high efficiency, easy to use units can become quite the trap.
Couldn't have put it better myself. I always avoid using Jeigan type characters for this reason. They are an EXP thief in both the literal and figurative sense. Overusing them will derive both the player and the units they control of much needed experience. Their purpose is to be a crutch for the early game, not a wheelchair. Lean on 'em if you have to, but don't let them carry you.
Basically he give all the xp for Marcus, he could use somebody else, if you put all the xp in Rutger for example, you will get the same results, all units fallen and Rutger being the strongest, so Marcus is not the problem, but your poor xp distribution.
Looking back, I'm pretty sure this was how my first playthrough of Sacred Stones had gone too. I over relied on super strong units like Seth and when I got to later chapters, they were difficult because my units were so weak in comparison. In later playthroughs, though, I knew more of what to avoid and played more efficiently and avoided that trap I'm kinda glad the game does have a trap like that in it, though, because it lets the player fail and learn directly not to do that and it's a lesson they can take to other games too
@@ScipiPurr maybe that warning from the very first game should have stayed in future games. basically, early on, an NPC you can visit tells you that jagen is great, but warns you not to overrely on him, and that you should focus on helping your weaker units grow, or you will struggle later on
I remember playing FE9 and getting to the “defend the fort” chapter early on, and watching as Titania held an entire entry point on her own without any healers or support made me realise then and there how overwhelmingly broken she was. If I’d have used any other unit and had Titania be the last line of defence, I would have struggled massively. That’s how much high-efficiency-high-ease-of-use characters turn the tide of battle.
Never really thought about how Jagens being too good can be a bad thing for strategy. I mean, yeah, if it's about having fun in a strategy game, throwing away the strategy in favor of 1 tough guy killing everything can be an issue. Still, tons of experienced FE players use self-imposed challenges to raise difficulty, so having an extra tool for inexperienced players doesn't seem bad. That being said, I like how you link high versatility to classes and ease of use to stats. It's a cool rule of thumb!
Jagens to me are antithetical to learning the games. Earlygame is meamt to teach you how to use the tools at yoir disposal. Brock and whitney miktank are a great example of that, because they are built to teach you about status mives instead of just spamming attacks. Now imagine if the game gave you a level 30 seaking at the start. You won't learn the intended lesson because once you meet a roadblock you just power trough it with the seaking. Good earlygame enemies should teach you about using stuff like the weapon triangle, effectiveness and terrain, and the learning curve is steeper when you have a jeigan that can do the job whitout using those systems.
I realized that this is actually why I like Lyn mode. I fucking hate Jagens. They make me feel like I'm playing with the guard rails up in a bowling alley. Just having them there totally negates any sense of actual strategy or genuine difficulty because the option is always there to just have them solo the entire level without even thinking.
@@gg2fan But the thing is, it's not a binary between "use Jagen" and "don't use Jagen". Most people don't want them to solo the entire map because it takes away EXP from other units they could be training, but It's possible to use Jagens sparingly to take out important enemies while still training your main squad. They're also very useful for map objectives such as rushing ahead to a village or etc. where many other units can't.
I agree with the point that's not really fun to have certain a units destroys everything all the time. An exhaust mechanic would be nice, in a way that you can't use strong units all the time, and they lose stats if you deploy them repeatedly and recover some if you bench them.
Yeah, I'm not sure how Jagens would really help teach players. If anything they make the early game more complicated. Still I think having a Jagen is good for adding a lot of flavour to early game FE.
I still think Sothe in RD is one of the best designed Jagen units. He's not as tanky as a traditional Jagen and he also has one of the weakest weapon types. Not only that he also has the additional burden of having to open locks and chests which means that going for certain loot requires the choice of separating him from the main army.
FE6 Marcus is the best-designed "Jagen" this series has ever had IMO, he is the perfect starting strength to require his services, but falls off hard enough so that you do not want to rely on him for too long, since he will become rather obsolete outside of rescue utility. I do like Sothe, but I am turned off by requiring to bring him to the tower and his complete inability to contribute in some of Part 3's toughest chapters in Maniac mode (3-5).
FE6 Marcus, while being great in the early game, I wouldn't quite put in with the likes of Seth and Titania. He falls off fast and hard, he just doesn't have the same potential as those guys. What makes someone like Seth so versatile is partly his long term viability, you could put base Seth in Sacred Stones Chapter 20 and he'd still keep up. FE6 Marcus would get shredded by comparison. This is especially apparent in FE6 Hard Mode, where he can't even 1 round a lot of the Chapter 1 brigands, allowing easy set ups for roy and the cavs.
marcus being unable to ORKO the enemies on the early maps is actually just the result of a programming error rather than being something the developers purposefully planned around due to a bug in the games code, fe6 erroneously runs the call in memory which sets how many bonus levels the enemies receive on hard mode twice, on the first five maps of fe6 so on chapter 1 for example, the enemies are supposed to get 4 bonus levels, but instead they get 8 bonus levels if you correct the bug, marcus ends up destroying the fighters with the iron sword he starts with because of how much lower their stats are
no bceosue marcus is to stogn for the bing of the map youonly stat consder otiosn loike lance and alen and shana bece he will fall of he makes it worts becse if you truly want you can kill everying iwth marcus wirth the silber lance and then repelc him with other units evne if other units are siemelr to him in qualtay laike rutger percial ore melody (i don't think that any of this unist are well des oside or Rtguer ) he is to good to short is liek how athos ruiens the fienal chapeter is the toels of the gmae sturi he is laike a B or a C but in that chapete isn eisn hig esa of use thaelk to the barey of toums and satbes that he can use
In addition to the defenses others have given for Jagens, I think soflock prevention is an important point. For the same reason that the games give you Gotohs, so that you have some way of completing the final chapter even if your lords are weak, prepromotes allow you to fall back on them in case something goes horribly wrong and the rest of your party is incapable of beating a chapter without them. Since you cant go back to previous chapters (without backup save files), if your party is too weak, you would be forced to restart the game in order to progress, and nobody wants to do that.
Oh so I’m the crazy one who trained up Amelia into a General(full armour tank) and just maniacally laughed as she could solo the entire game With spear sword and axe
i always do that. i hate cavalry units in pretty much every fire emblem game, i use foot units and flyers exclusively when possible. i don't know why, but whenever i do use them something disappointing happens, no exceptions because: A: they get too far ahead, kill everything hogging all the experience B: they get too far ahead and get ganked to death C: i try to use them to flank the enemy, yet the main force makes it there before they do because the back route has forests on it. D: the map is basically all forest, sand or other shit that cavalry can't actually move quickly over, thus completely nullifying any advantage they would have had over foot units with better stats.
I feel like a lot of the problems behind these classes go back to the level design of GBA fire emblems, which is one of my biggest critiques of them. I hate having to drag my army through a long level in one giant blob, which is what a lot of them come down to. This ends up leaving infantry in the dust and focusing all the actual combat on one or two carries who just do everything, usually a paladin, leaving the entire rest of your team to just sit there wondering why they even came at all. Units like armor knights can be very useful on certain maps where you spawn surrounded by enemies already, and archers can be good when the map has little side missions for the player to go take care of in their own player phase, like going off to take care of some pesky fliers with a longbow before they can harass your team.
I never really thought of this, but actually giving it a moment, and i have to agree with you. GBA FE maps don't have a lot going on. Yeah, sure, there are some villages you can get if you don't play like an actual turtle, but nothing else besides them. It's kinda shocking how little is actually going on in a lot of these
The problem I see is that there isn't all that much varied gameplay. The game usually rewards a high-mobility army by scattering side objectives across the map and placing a victory condition on the far side, often guarded by a tanky boss unit. There aren't a lot of chapters where the goal is to hold a position against overwhelming numbers, fight a few extremely powerful characters or creatures, or besiege a fortified position. In theory FE7 and 8 have chapters where you have to protect a space or character, but the reality is you can do so after running around or don't need to guard the character very carefully and can just leave them alone without a single unit within 10 spaces of them after turn 2. If the game wants you to move across the map, mobility will be one of the most important factors.
@@balsamon69 feel like that's just issue with fe7 and fe8, fe6 maps have a lot going on with different side objectives ironically, two of the most disliked GBA maps, arcadia and battle before dawn, happen to have some of the most to do in terms of optional side objectives
FE7's different game modes and ranking system can completely change the way Jagens are used, as I'm sure anyone who loves the GBA FE's is aware. Eliwood normal and hard mode might have the player skip using Marcus altogether out of EXP rank efficiency when going for the maximum overall ranking, while a ranked Hector's hard mode even in the hands of a skilled player will use Marcus remarkably close to his intended purpose, getting some of the most use and growth out of the entire cast of characters. Kind of how a Jagen might help you get through the early game and still have a decent Tactics rank, use slightly fewer weapon uses when defeating enemies, and potentially being used to set up others for kills instead of just taking them for himself whether the player wanted that or not. The only thing that really suffers from playing FE7 for ranks is the difficulty in using or at least enjoying supports and their bonuses, since they are almost always out of reach when trying to balance Tactics, Funds, and EXP in the same playthrough. Perhaps I'm just old, but FE7's most interesting design feature is its ranking system that helps decent players become great players, by learning to pass through seemingly impossible odds while striking a chaotic balance between managing speed, safety, strength, and resources, not to mention risk-aversion and forward-thinking that Fire Emblem games tend to require or reward in abundance. It's the main thing lacking in FE8 and the rest of the series for me, although I won't pretend like Thracia or Binding Blade's ranking systems are anywhere close to as well-balanced.
The ranking system for FE7 HHM is actually much harder than FE6 hard since some of the turn counts arent even counted and the exp threshold is ridiculously high. It doesn't fail to teach players to play differently (like using Marcus to set kills instead of taking them) and the sheer difficulty of getting a S rank can lead to strategies that are not the best at tackling the 'efficient' criteria while still being quite fast to reach a desired turn count.
I 100% agree, the ranking system realyl helps FE7's character balance and game balance. Essentially, all the ranks exist to stop different types of cheeses. EXP - You can't just Marcus spam and own everything, you can't just super level your Sain/Kent and steamroll everything, etc. You actually have to create a large, diverse team that is gaining a lot of EXP. Funds - You can't just spam all your stat boosters and brave weapons. You have to figure out what you can afford and what you need to stash. And so on.
I think well designed jeigans are actually pretty good design. fe6 Marcus comes to mind, units that can weaken enemy units for your weaker units so they don't fall behind, and can put out small fires with limited weapon use. They also make an excellent early game safety net for new players, especially for someone playing through their mistakes and letting things happen as they may in an ironman fashion.
I really like the takeaways from this video, and yes, I agree that if I was power gaming, I could just use the most effective units possible all the time. But that's not fun, and I do play for supports as well, even back in the GBA era where I had to replay the game over and over to see them all. There's a huge feeling of tactics and satisfaction seeing Amelia or Ross grow up, and that's far more engaging than sending best mathematical unit 1 to place 2 then watching. Thank you for this insight
In a lot of cases, Ests and Trainees becoming stronger is relevant to their own support arc. Ross wants to be a great warrior like his Dad, Nino (after an entire backstory's worth of her game's second-worst parent) wants to prove that she's not useless, Amelia doesn't want to feel helpless anymore after losing everything to bandits, and so on. Training them up isn't just getting a strong unit- it's advancing their story arc.
Based video, I hate how much unit discourse is only based on LTC/ Heavy resetting. Thankfully lately Ironman ratings have become far more common which have changed it for the better.
It's interesting, because as a VERY experienced player, the knight starts to gain more value again, especially in GBA emblem where you're focusing more and more on enemy phase. You can pick your places to purposefully overextend the bulky strength character more easily, knowing when they will and won't get doubled, and in the right spot that knight might take an extra turn to get into position, but on the enemy phase he eats half the enemy army on his own.
Was gonna say this lmao armor knights on certain games tend to become a very weird thing due to using a bunch of mechanics to cover there main weaknesses. Where a normal player would think there just shit and slow but more aggressive players might see value in warping one somewhere to just attract threats away from other units . It just comes down to this dumb idea from the older games that low turn count = good player rather than hey this may take a few more turns than the meta strat but its much more fun and challenging then sending a harr or a Camilla or a byleth in to sweep a bunch of units in a braindead way
It's just an antiquated design choice. People often jump at Marcus and Seth for "mount too good, break game" but from fe 1 that was always an issue, 3 being pretty much the same and 4 being the real stinky game that set that standard. Its the fault of high move units being built as "versatile" far too often. If they actually wanted to have the games be balanced you'd give cavs armor knight baselines and make fliers more luck blessed than speed. Sensibly, their mobility should make landing a killing blow difficult and doubling challenging (they fight on mounts, they should be doing a drive-bys, not running up, stopping and somehow landing hit after hit in succession).
Fe3 actually nerfed Paladins pretty well by forcing them to dismount indoors and requiring them to be dismounted to use swords which is important as it was basically impossible for Paladins to avoid much less double units like snipers or mercs/heroes due to how weight work. This is not factoring in the actually base speed difference was insane, could take a paladin/cav all game to reach the base speed of early game sword infantry. Map design in book 2 also hurt Paladins as many maps where not just big fields. Fe2 also had weaker Paladins and mounts. Now Fliers were pretty dang stupid Fe3 mostly due to dismounting actually helping them avoid there arrow weakness, you could fly into ballista range then dismount and no more weakness. Fe5 mounts were both really good but not dominating, mostly used for canto and being able to capture any foot unit. Fe 1 and 4 aee the games that made mounts overtuned . Gba games effed up by giving cavs two weapons at base and three after promo and not having there balanced bad good statlines be a hindrance. Also help that rescuing dropping is super duper busted so just for utility they were good to good units like Rutger or Harken into the front lines faster.
That's what I love about 3H. I can take Mercie and Annie and make them into a white knight black night power combo that slays like the queens they are instead of saying "this one shoots fire, this one shoots therapy."
It was surprising to see this put into words - I would avoid using Pegasus Knights in Awakening (my first game) because I hated how frail they were. And as I played more FE games I started to realize their value and I'm definitely a big Pegasus knight fan now. Not sure I could make it through FE6 without Shanna! And I'm definitely one to use characters I like to, I replaced Shanna with Thea in a run purely because I like her supports. She's not optimal but it's nice to change things up sometimes
This was my thought process on Dancers, it wasn't until my second or third playthrough of Fates when I realized Azura giving someone another turn was kinda busted and I shouldn't focus on her lance
Dude, actually a great point that I wish was brought up more is player proficiency with certain units that was made in the video intro. I have argued to my friends and others this point a fair bit about Ignatz in 3h being the perfect easy to use character, especially blind in a maddening no ng+ setting, because there is no class mastery one has to know before hand to speck into to make them good. Same I think applies for other characters and their classes in fe3h and other fire emblem games as well. Sorry for the rant, but I think such points make for genuinely good content, so keep it up man!
Personally I don’t think Jagens make the game more boring, much the opposite. In early maps the options the player has to them are significantly lower than at any other point in the game, and thus enemies would likely be on an equal power level. Without a Jagen, to most players, this would result in turtling and baiting and switching in different groups of enemies and slowly whittling them down. Jagens give you a unit that can handle themselves, complete side objectives, and just allow you to play games a little more dynamically. The Rutger map from fe6 is a great example. You’re hit early on from an onslaught of cavalry, the only one who can realistically withstand such a force is Marcus, and after that he can visit the bottom village somewhat self sufficiently. Without him, you would likely end up stationing two units at the front bridges and taking potshots at them until they die and the villages get destroyed. Another good example is three houses chapter 2 maddening mode, a game without a Jagen. It’s a miserable slog where only 2 units are usually able to take more than one hit from an enemy before needing healing again, while your less powerful units are likely getting one rounded so instead they’re doing single digit damage to the high HP enemies with curved shot of they even have that yet. The clunkiness of everyone having four movement doesn’t help either. If say, Jeralt was on this map players wouldn’t have to take things so slowly, he could one round dangerous enemies, set up kills, and get the chest without having to spend multiple turns going over there and then joining up with your main force. Jagens give the player ways to diversify their options early on in order to play in more varied ways.
The solution is to design the game without the Jeigan. For example your Rutger map example, you could tone down the enemies and quantities so that you aren't just completely overwhelmed without having Marcus as the crutch. My counterexample is Fates conquest. For most of the earlygame you don't have a jeigan. And the game is totally fine. In fact, probably better. Because now I actually have the opportunity to explore and try out other units. Whereas if a jeigan existed, either the developers will jack up the enemy stats to compensate and thus force me to rely on my jeigan as a crutch (FE6, FEDS, FE10, etc.), or the developers don't tweak the enemy stats and then the jeigan just steamrolls everything (FE8, FE9, etc.). But what Conquest also does is clamp down on the EXP formula; as your unit level increases, your EXP gains rapidly decrease, thus making it harder for the player to create a juggernaut that outstats all the enemies. Thus forces the player to actually make a large, diverse team.
If you don't reach the villages on Rutger map without Marcus, your strategy is wrong. Top village is pretty straightforward and you can drop Dieck on a fort using Shanna to deal with spawning pirates going towards the bottom village. I usually use Marcus and he usually fetches the item on the top village but you can definitely do it without him without much sweat
I once made Matthew from FE (GBA) into a godlike evade tank on accident once. It was rather insane, being able to send him into groups of enemies and watch him dodge everything then revenge-kill.
I do like the idea of making the Jagen a healer. Naturally less tanky to discourage 1v1ing the entire enemy army, can do stuff without hogging the spotlight, and classes like Bishop and Sage are a natural fit for a wise mentor figure anyway. There is one other Jagen I'm thinking of that did work as a "mentor" flawlessly. He's not in Fire Emblem, though. Baldarov from Warsong starts off at max level, can hire all three basic troop types from the word "go", and will mess up anything that isn't the Chapter 1 Elementals (you aren't meant to fight them) or the Chapter 4 Slimes (you're supposed to use fire on them). He's an absolute beast who can be of great help if you want to chill in Chapter 1 and fight some of the enemies... And then he dies after Chapter 5 and you have to complete the rest of the game without him. Hope you trained your other guys!
It was a really interesting video. Definitely an unusual take, i enjoyed it. I think part of the reason it's like this is because for the most part, a lot of FE games' main method pf challenging the player is through combat. The maps aren't nearly involved enough to be interesting without it. Something i noticed, is while the games under Kaga, usually had a consistent difficulty curve, the games after he left, really didn't. In FE1-5, the games got harder the closer you got to the end, but after FE6, it's really the opposite. The hardest part is the early game, where not all of your units can double enemies consistently, let alone one round any. After that, you get more and more levels, good units, kickass weaponry, and by the end, any challenge the game had evaporates. It's not surprising that when you tell someone who never played Kaga Saga of the kind of ridiculous broken fun stuff it has, their response is usually shock. If Vestaria Saga 1's Cutlasses were a thing in, say, FE6, with the kind of easy accessibility they had in that game, any challenge the game had would get Zaharas'd into the Shadow Realm. Meanwhile in VS1, they're almost a necessity. The game is still ball bustingly hard with them, and all the other cracked prf's in that game. The maps in Kaga Saga are usually much more involved, with an assload of side objectives and anti-turtling insensitives. All the while the enemies get a lot of similarly busted tools. In Berwick Saga, there's one myrm you get at the start of the game, that has Deathmatch, a skill that locks any enemy who can counter into five traditional rounds of FE combat. In a game where you can't double, this is a huge boon and makes him a great player phase nuke. There's an exploit you can do with him, though. You give him a Miracle Charm, and use Deathmatch, it won't break until the end of all 5 rounds, meaning yes, he gets to be essentially immortal for a bit. Yet, the fact there are myrms in the lategame of Berwick with this same setup, tells me Kaga knew of this, and decided to have his fun with it. Basically, what i'm saying, is that i think IS could take a page out of Kaga's book when it comes to map design. Haven't played Engage yet, but 3 Houses maps were laughable. Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk, have a good day
There usually tends be to a difficulty ramp in the middle of every game where promoted enemies start showing up, and then a difficulty spike on "that map," where each game tends to have at least one "that map." Also in my experience, every FE has gotten easier by the end solely due to the increase in options. It doesn't matter pre-Kaga or post-Kaga, giving harder hitting weapons, more characters, promotions, and The Almighty Warp Staff is going to make the game easier.
I think this is also due to the games gradually morphing more into rpgs with strategy elements than srpgs. It's the more subtle reason I think Fire Emblem from Awakening onwards is basically a different series. The modern games aren't really intended to be played with respect to permadeath at all, the game's balance and resources can't really handle it. If you lose a character you have seriously worked on in Awakening or 3 Houses, that gap is almost IMPOSSIBLE to fill, whereas the earlier games were always built with the intention that, of not every single death, many deaths would stick. With generally lower and less drastically different growths, regular speed bumps to prevent pure snowballing, and fewer builds and options a player can put together, it's generally easier to sculpt a more carefully designed experience. When the name of the game is infinite character snowballing with growths in the 60s being considered decent, slapping on autocrit, unkillable, or funny outrange everything builds, how in the world do you balance both for that, and the player who just lost two of their big guys next chapter?
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Haven't played Engage yet, does this still hold true in that game? I do think you got a point, though i'd say Fates Conquest is the exception to that. Honestly, that just brings up a point about why is permadeath still a thing. What honest function does it even serve these days? They don't do anything interesting with it, gameplay or story wise. With how much IS insists on nerfing it, one would think they'd be better off just removing it entirely
@@balsamon69 Engage does do a pretty good job, with later characters continuing to join, packed with enough immediately spendable resources to catch up to, and often even outperform a lot of early units that recieved only middling attention. You ABSOLUTELY cannot grab an older character you didn't use much to cover a death in a later chapter though, maybe at best the last round of new guys might be okay, more than that and they're playing the role of bandits on easy mode. Engage in general is a little odd, though, with the game kinda feeling like an investment treadmill. Nothing really gets good and stays good, you just kinda have to continue investing in your favorite units or they'll fall behind the curve.
Love the video and the ways to think about game balance, but the one thing you failed to consider about units like Marcus and also Marcus is the "unga bunga caveman brain" factor. Not always, but sometimes I find it more fun to just throw in one godlike character and watch the enemies just impale themselves on said characters weapon in waves. That's the scenario where those units can be good. Either that or for accessibility if a chapter is frustrating or too hard for someone. But I walk a weird line between grinding to be overpowered and nuking everything in games to using the worst characters because I like them and struggling through a tough boss underleveled instead of coming back later when I'm meant to fight it, so it's nice to have options.
In FE 7 the enemy loves to backdoor you to kill merlinus (or destroy his camp). So Oswin was really handy to park next to him, because the reinforcements did not used magic or armorslaying weapons.
I think your example of Clerics was perfect, my girlfriend just started playing and seeing the difference of how I would use the Clerics more offensively than she would even think of is really interesting
The skill vs ease of use thing is completely true. I remember in my first ever Fire Emblem run, I lost every Peg shortly after getting them. They were so fragile compared to my other units that I would lose them because of bad positioning very quickly
Hm, i really really liked this video! Its a very interesting way to consider the definition of "good", and how it changes depending on your desires for yhe game!
A good unit is one that requires little investment to be helpful, while a bad one requires investment to be mediocre Somewhere in the middle are characters that require little investment to be mediocre, and characters that require investment to be good. Better units can also make investment more available to other units, setting up kills, rescue/dropping to safety, blocking or eliminating dangerous units, ect, while worse units generally struggle to do the same. The basic idea is that you can leverage the low-investment good units to funnel investment into the units that you want to use because (?).
I'm being called out here. I love my knights but I gotta brute force myself into using my pegasus knights because they Always Keep Dying whenever I try to do anything with them. They're real tough to find any safe space for them
I think it’s kind of unfair to say that Jagens take away from strategy. Your example of chapter 1 eliwood mode is a good illustration as to how it can take away from a map, but Fire Emblem isn’t a “one map” game. If I have Amelia trained up to be equal to Seth or even better, for that chapter she isn’t more/less strategic than him just because it took more effort to get her there. I think the real problem with Jagens is that they are placed in too versatile a class with not a lot to hinder them, so they can do pretty much everything. Essentially, if you want a good unit that early, you either have to reduce their versatility or give them a job to do that needs/is encouraged to be done that only they can do. Sigurd is… a god! Perfect availability for gen 1 of FE4, his class and bases are as good as you’d ever need, and he even has amazing growths. However, you do miss out on resources and army capability only using him. There are timed objectives of sorts with villages, but Sigurd has to pretty much always going towards the main objective to seize the castle and progress the chapter. This lets the plebs have a chance at side objectives and any exp that Sigurd would have to go out of the way for. However, he can only act once per turn (twice with a dance), so his other unique aspect in his authority stars boosts the hit/avo of units within 3 tiles of him, which means he can increase the odds of success for units around him and supplement them. This helps both the units near and far away from him make up ground. Sothe is a little less complex; instead of a paladin, he’s a thief. He’s by far the strongest in the Dawn brigade for a while, but sometimes you need him to open a chest or steal an item. He also comes with a bronze dagger, a low might weapon that can never crit, meaning he can help set up kills pretty damn well in the few moments the Dawn Brigade can actually take a break! Finally Titania; basically stereotypical, but using her to do objectives faster gets you more bexp in early maps. You can either play slowly without her and get more map/weapon exp on units, or use her strategically to get bexp to assign to units. GBA games I’d say are the games with the least reason to not use your Jagen for everything. I feel like this is due to just poor design and not being creative with map layout/objectives. Here’s a couple of examples as to how to make good use out of a Jagen even without crazy stuff like different classes or authority stars -on the first map, they’re incredibly strong, but there’s a village or some objective only they can access. If you need them for the map, you slow down your time or have to do a walk of shame before the end. -one early map, to introduce the player to ambush spawns, have the player start by a choke that has a lot of high movement strong units start at, where the Jagen spawns in perfectly blocking! But, on the other side, reinforcements spawn in and you need to use other units to get through less movement units while your Jagen guards your flank. -have them spawn far away or late. PoR does this map 2 and it gives you a chance to learn what current/new units are capable of without fully removing the use out of the Jagen. Getting through the units between the two groups means you’ll be rewarded with an easier time from then on for that chapter, or vice versa.
I think that point about map design is really crucial. Marcus might be OP in most early maps with open layouts because he can just go straight out and one-shot 10 people on enemy phase. But something like the Merlinus fog chapter or the pirate ship limit his effectiveness by making enemies come from all sides. Marcus can only block one path, but if his attention is elsewhere, you need other units to be competent enough to survive.
And then there's Engage's Vander. A Jagen with an axe and a personal skill that gives him higher crit chance. Which makes for the amazing combination of a Jagen that can't reliably set up kills because of his low axe accurary, while also often randomly stealing kills he should've set up by getting a crit. Love this guy, he's so stupid lmao.
So, here before this blows up. I think it's a gro eat point to be made that a lot of people have been talking around or ignoring. That being said, I will offer an alternative perspective. 1) Pegasus Knights/Cavaliers and what have you are not JUST good for fast play. I think that's the biggest point I'd put forwards here. Certainly, an fe7 florina draft race team is going to require more effort to become good, but an average or even bad fire emblem player can still make use of the power that pegs or cavs can offer to make their lives easier. "I could play through this map OR I COULD USE THE WARP STAFF" is a meme for a reason and it's kind of true. You don't have to be a fire emblem god to pull off a warp skip and it makes your life so, so, so much easier than trying to rout a map. I'd argue warp should be renamed to "nuke" as it's essentially a staff that kills all enemies on the map while granting no exp due to the fact it basically instantly ends the map when used. I recently played through fe8 again (I was on increased growths but for the point I'm about to make that shouldn't matter) and I replayed Darkling Woods again. Routing that map takes literal hours because of the ungodly amount of enemy spawns and the winding path you have to take and a single mistake can kill one of your weaker units. It is utterly miserable to go through. I would argue that even a new player should try to skip at least part of that map to make their life easier. Now obviously warp is warp and fliers are fliers. It's not a one-to-one comparison, but I'd argue that even a very bad player is still going to have an easier time if they aren't stuck at 4 move. Whether it's a soft objective like saving villages for more loot, or a hard objective like saving a recruitable character from death, having more movement is just going to be useful in big, long maps where you need to get stuff done. A peg might be a unit you can make mistakes with, but it's also more capable of fixing your mistakes by helicoptering someone out to safety, for example. At the end of the day, "higher ceiling" units like pegs are going to have disadvantages for worse players and won't be used to the same effectiveness, but I still would argue for their strength even for worse players because of how useful having more option open to you is. Also just as a final note , I would actually argue the reason that armors suck isn't JUST that their mov is bad. It's that their mov is bad, their speed is bad and their res is bad. I think a better comparison would be a unit like fe5 Orsin. He has extremely good combat for a lot of the game, but has lower move and thus utility compared to other units. 2) Ok, remember all that stuff I just said there? About how fliers can make the game easier because of more options? Well, that isn't always true. Some games have a much heavier combat focus, such as my favourite game, awakening. In awakening, basically everything I just said doesn't apply. Having more movement or flying can matter for certain situations, but it isn't emphasized nearly as much due to the fact that the enemies are much more aggressive and maps don't have as much restrictive terrain. In these instances, units with the best combat are the best units and it opens up a new conversation with regards to movement. How good is having more movement or flight if it doesn't meaningfully make the game any easier? Ignoring the fact that I don't think you can beat awakening any FASTER with a bad combat, high mov flying unit like Sumia, I would argue that awakenings case is a lot closer to the point of view you're presenting- good combat units are so easy that the most commonly touted strategies involve walking 1 unit into the middle of the enemies and watching them all die. It's sort of the opposite end of the stick. In a game like fe8, simply having really really good combat isn't enough to make you a good unit because there's so much use for fliers and movement and such that even a bad player could make use of flight and movement to their advantage. Whereas in awakening having really really good combat IS enough to make you a good unit because there just isn't as much use for other stuff. Sumia might have wings but who cares if there aren't any relevant terrain tiles for her to fly over? 3) On Jagens: Really strong Jagens are great unit design. I'm serious. For new players, they can help carry them through their early struggles. Even a very very easy fire emblem game can cause struggles for people new to the genre and I don't know if forcing people to learn strategy from turn 1 of chapter 1 is always the best way of going about things. Instead, giving players the ability to have someone to help them out will act as a safety net for them. Again, new players are often really really bad and won't be able to use units like fe7 marcus as effectively. I know that sounds like a ridiculous statement considering that effective use of him is walking him in a straight line at the enemies, but to someone who has never seen the game before, there's a lot of things they probably won't realise- they likely won't even look at his stats or understand what they are relative to the enemies. For more experienced players, Jagens can present new challenges- either the ability to maximize their strengths to either beat the game more efficiently and help take on harder more, or it can becomes a useful puzzle of working out where everyone can contribute. You mentioned that using bad units forces you to squeeze out each bit of use out of them and if you increase the difficulty of the game this is sort of what you get. Your other units are working to get the most viability out of themselves while you're making sure your jagen is constantly firing on all cylinders just so you can beat the map. Or maybe you're so confident in your play that you're holding your jagen back just a little bit so that someone else can get more exp for something more efficient later down the line. I don't think it's fair to necessarily say that they remove strategy- simply that they are one tool in an arsenal of many to make the game more strategic. Yes, you can quite literally solo most of earlygame awakening lunatic with Frederico Dandolo, but I don't think that makes the game devoid of strategy. You now have a base framework which you can work with and you have to fill in everything else yourself- to extract the viability from the remaining units you have, figure out their strengths and use everyone to their maximum potential. Now, of course, Frederick is OP as shit and you can reasonably ignore all of what I just said and go unga bunga pick a god and pray on most of the game and then, like, promote Gregor or something and Sol the entire game to death, but that isn't the point. The point is that simply using a jagen does not strip the strategy out of the game- it's simply a different tool in the toolbox. That's all from me. A bit rambly and loosely connected, but I hope you get the gist of what I was saying. Once again, good video and well explained. Peace.
Just popping in to say I felt that comment about darkling woods in fe8. I played the game for the first time a few months back on hard, and that map specifically wore me out so much. It's really not hard, I could beat it first try without anyone dying, but it is absolutely exhausting to play. Shit takes forever, enemies keep coming for so long you start to wonder if there will ever be an end to them, I especially feel the "feels miserable to play straight" part
This is such an interesting way of thinking about unit types that i really appreciate. You're correct about Jagens however for those that are super new to strategy RPGs, they're essential. The older Fire Emblems have perma death, and as someone who's completely new to the genre, the idea that one bad move and a unit is permanently dead would make the game not enjoyable. New players need that reliable option that wont punish them later on because they're still learning the mechanics. But then again, i gues that's why they made Lynn mode in FE7 which is essentially a glorified tutorial
It's why I like doing mono class challenges in recent FE, it's a great way to learn the strenghts and weaknesses of a particular strategy/Team composition, and trying to overcome the challenges because of that makes for a fun time sink :P Fates was one of the games that I really didn't enjoyed as much as Awakening at first, but when I challenged myself to make a team of "Only Maids" suddenly I started to learn how reclassing works in Fates, which character pair ups needed to be focused to get as many maids as I could, and it was really fun!
I'd say that the op characters are kinda useful sometimes tbh, like for example, i recruited raven in fe7 and i'm trying to get him to go to the top part of the map, but there are random soldiers coming from the bottom that are very near to him, luckily, with Marcus and oswin i was able to defend raven until he got to the rest of the group
This video is really insightful! Not just to strategy games, but I think the principles you've outlined here could apply to other types of games. This can explain one way many MMOs degrade over time. Each expansion or patch sells itself on providing new 'high efficiency/high ease of use' options (usually called 'the meta'?) in order to encourage people to keep up their investment. Even if it requires skill/money/time to get these powerful rewards, phase in too many of them and it becomes very difficult for new players to learn how to play the game. Experienced players enter a world of drudgery where everyone is expected to use equipment that destroys the gameplay, and often it's not accepted to be like, 'my PREFERRED playstyle is the challenge of not using this high level equipment'; everyone who doesn't have it is assumed to be a newbie or 'prog' (in progress to getting that equipment). Eventually, either all players must be Marcus (after which you quit because it's boring, so they'll have to release 'New Marcus' to give you a new goal!) or it's so arduous to become Marcus everybody quits before experiencing all the game has to offer. Heck, even POWERWASH SIMULATOR makes sure that it's 'end game equipment' has a weakness so it's not the right choice to use all the time. It's a sort of triple high-pressure nozzle. But up close for details it leaves huge gaps in between the three water jets. So your perspective in this video can apply to a super-chill simulator where there's no winning or losing: even when the only detriment is 'frustration', a good game does not include a cruise control option.
I haven't played FE games beyond the first level of trying one out, but this was still a very nice video to watch. Neat way to think about unit quality and how a stronger asset could induce less engaged with experience. Neat.
You put to words something thats been bothering me about the Seth's of the series. If the main strategy going into a chapter is buy Javelins, are you really playing a strategy game?
What I liked a lot about Three Houses was the lack of a "Jagen". Even if you are effectively given two lords as starting units, specially in higher difficulties when you are not doubling anything some early chapters were really puzzling challenges. I was lucky enough to buy it when maddening was already available, so may be biased there a bit 😂
Knight like units are also amazing in the missions where you defend a point. You can stick them in a doorway and not have to worry about enemies from that direction
I didn't even know Marcus was supposed to be good, I saw a Jaegen and immediately took away his weapons and used him exclusively to bait enemies until my team filled up with actual units to use instead.
Perhaps having high versatility and high ease of use unit is not a bad thing. If there are multiple objectives, then the player has to decide where the overpowered unit should go. For example, the mission objective could be to save a certain amount of villages. If sufficiently spaced or enemy units are in a proper position, then Marcus will have to decide if he takes path A or B.
I like this point a lot. Its more interesting to me personally when I play fire emblem to use a lot of varied units all with their own different strengths and weaknesses, its more rewarding to me both from a strategic and narrative standpoint
I feel like part of the issue is the FE formula itself. Like one thing I really liked about RD was the variety of win/lose and environmental conditions. Your peg and wyv knights are usually pretty useful in most situations, but using them indoors nerfed them and FoW made their high mobility a risky endeavor because you could more easily send them in to a bad situation or overextend them. They were also offensively great for picking off targets on defense objectives, but they had poor defensive sustainability on those missions because archers and mages would dogpile on them if they tried to hold a choke point. Armor knights, archers, mages, and healers excelled on those maps though because the fight came to them and the optimal strategy was to stay at and hold the favorable terrain they were already on. Due to terrain they could limit dogpiling, or in the armor knights' case often just chew it up and spit it out, or simply hold a point atop a ledge/behind a fence or armor knight and attack/heal with relative impunity.
my rage at seeing Myrmidon listed as bad is palpable also I generally dont use the Jagen's because while they may be efficient in completion, they're inefficient in exp yield
"Amelia can become a paladin, one of the best classes of the game" yeah, i don't give a damn, she becomes a general because I like a tiny girl piloting a clockwork-knight-like armour.
Overpowered Jagens are best used as a get-out-of-jail card. Their kill potential is actively harmful to rest of your army, FE7 Marcus one-rounding everything that enemy-phases him for example. But have them hang out near your front line, and either rescue units you over-extended with or that got hit by bad RNG. Or eliminate key targets that could mess with your plan with the silver lance (nomads or mages being a good example that many units will have to watch out for early game)
cool video! I always found peg knights frustrating to use, as they are so limited by the mere presence of enemy archers and especially ballistas, but I’ve always played with the goal of levelling up as many characters as possible rather than quick victories.
Great video. It's funny because I'd always hated using the "Marcus" of the group because it felt too much like a crutch. I think I always had the notion starting the game (regardless of which one) that "Oh, this guy's super good now, but I bet sinking exp into him is just going to be a waste". Whether or not that's founded... I dunno, I haven't played a lot of these games in years. I honestly thought the grindiness that you could put yourself through in some of these games made the experience a bit more laid back, and seeing character interactions that happen out of it was a pretty cool surprise at the time. I always liked making Amelia a General; it was cool seeing her go from a scrawny recruit to this absolute unit of a .... unit.
i remember when classmate introduced fire emblem to me, he showed off his sacred stones save where he was on the finale (no he hadn't beaten the game) with abouuuut half the cast dead and a lv 20 general gilliam which he happily boasted about and he and i legit thought gilliam was the best character in the game
Nowadays, I replay my Ironmans using a roulette where I write down the name of non lose condition units, spin once per chapter and kill the result. I often cheat it out to kill the jeagan first so the early game isn't the same. However, I've noticed on well designed games, that often leads to LESS variety than keeping them. A good jeagan leaves enemies for others to pick, so others can get better even "bad" units. Say, FE6: The first teo chapters are awful for bors since there's a ton of axes, however, a couple of def level ups on him leaves him with enough bulk to tank out all the way up to the Western Isles.
@@cornesalvo9366 ok, maybe I phrased it in a weird way. Bors can tank well from the start of chapter 3 up to, but not including the start of the Western Isles... Ummm Chapter 2 < good bors performance < western Isles. Though I guess he could promote and tank using axes.
@@marcoasturias8520 yeah I agree with you on that sentiment. That does seem to be the intended time for bors to shine. I usually use gwendolyn on most of my runs where I want to train an armor knight though, so I can't say for certain hehe
In The Sacred Stones, Seth’s stats would cap out at lower values than the average unit once you got them to his evolution and level equivalent. So if you overused him in the early chapters and had him absorb too much excess exp, you’d pay for it later on with a weaker overall team. I think of this as a type of balancing mechanic for units like him. I found myself using him as a babysitter to protect weaker units as they leveled rather then letting him just go on a solo rampage. This was actually a pretty enjoyable tactic, as thought was still needed but I had an ace in the hole if need be. Eventually, my Seth was out-statted by practically every other unit I used and he was benched.
FE6 Marcus really shouldn’t be in the pile of those other ones that can do literally everything themselves. Just try to hop through FE6 hard mode and solo a chapter with Marcus. The first one just MIGHT be possible. Maybe. but he really isn’t strong enough to do it alone. Thus, he really feels like an actual teacher/mentor or army leader.
This idea is the driving force behind a "balance" patch for FE8 I'm working on. My initial solutions are to rebalance stat bases/growths, boost the knight-type move by 1, increase the range of most bows by 1 to give them a unique niche (as mentioned in the video), and making the magic swords more accessible to make sword-locked units more viable late-game. There are MANY more small decisions, but these are some of the big ones that "fix" the most common complainants I've seeen. They also happen to make many enemies a bit more dangerous as a bonus as far as balancing things goes.
The main weakness of armor knights is not their low movement IMO, but their traditionally low speed; there is no point having high defense if everything doubles them, including magic and axes. For example, I think Radiant Dawn Gatrie is an example of a balanced armor knight, he still has the low movement that discourages experienced players from using him, but his very high bases/growths (including speed, he has a 60 speed growth with 20 base!) make him a reasonable choice to use as a progression-focused character capable of dealing with many situations. His res is also good for an armor knight, heck his base res is 1 higher than Ike's (despite being 1 level lower) and his growth is 35 (compared to Ike's 15). The drawbacks of the armor knight are the movement, having middling res (if they are lucky), and having effective weapon weaknesses, and giving them low speed as well is just overkill and dooms them as usable combat units.
This video made me realize what type of playthrough i enjoy and why. I HATE low turn count/speedrun style gameplay because it encourages just using the same units over and over, same cheesy strategies, and disregarding parts of the core gameplay. I love even distribution, unit building, and variety. I like making it work. A ‘bad’ unit isnt typically that bad. (Unless they actually are bad stat wise and its too difficult) Leveling up a unit like Amelia, or a healer into a fighter is what makes the game fun, gives it the spice of life. Using units like this turns the game into its own challenge of keeping all of your units alive and well, sometimes straight up like a puzzle of who to kill where, when, with what unit and what weapon. I couldnt really put the feelings I had about each style into words, so thanks.
"What Makes a Bad Fire Emblem Unit?"
Not being Seth.
Now I want to have a mod of the final level where you fight Lyon to replace all the enemies with multiple Seth paladins ranging from level 1 to 20 and the dragons should be level 20 with stats that equal to what happens if you use all your collected stat boost items, boots included. The weaker ones get killing edges and short spears, whereas the stronger ones with brave swords and spears. That sounds like it would be a fun challenge but possibly a nightmare.
Using Seth early ruins exp gain for everyone else. I use him for emergencies/rescues and tanking bosses
@@jasonsoliva6678 Bold of you to assume Seth can't just steal everyone's exp and solo the entire game
Not being Lysithea*
You mean not being god sigurd and god seliph?
Marcus and Marcus, my favorite duo.
The new Cain and Abel
They should start a law firm
Marcus was pretty good too
Seth & Seth is what I would have thought
I love FE7 Marcus and FE6 Marcus
2:00 I don't often actually laugh out loud when watching a video, but the archer sliding off the screen got me really good there.
poor neimi
Her sprite so cute tho
she carried my last chapter very hard, avoiding attacks and hitting criticals all the time, dont know why is trash...
@@AdrianChrisZxany unit with enough exp can do that. A "bad" unit just takes more time and effort to achieve the same things that a "good" unit can
This is why I really like Sigurd. He's both the main lord and a Jagen. BUT, he falls off incredibly hard after chapter 5, letting the other shine!
On the one hand, lol. On the other, Seliph can eventually surpass Sigurd in everything by Chapter 10.
@@moblinmajorgeneral seliph with elite ring can promote in chapter 6 and surpass sigurd
😭
I agree his performance in chapter 5 is straight up "fire"
lol
Fe6 marcus doesn’t belong with the others. He’s done very well to be the training wheels in early hard mode, where he mostly puts enemies in kill range rather than one rounding them, and he falls off enough that you’re seriously incentivized to train your other units with the opportunities he gives you in the first few chapters
Exactly. Also, FE6 hardmode enemies are also of different breed. Marcus WILL die if you misposition him in some of the early maps. (The map you get Rutger is a good example, some of the cavaliers in that map have stats almost on par with Marcus.)
You made me love him even more
A bad fire emblem unit is all armor knights in 6 past the second stage.
Marcus is the guy you don't wanna feed him, but you keep him close for emergencies, like rescue a injured unit, rush to a village, take care of a tough enemy or set kills for the others.
So Jagens are super useful, they are strong in the start when your units can't double yet.
@@deyvisonwillamy6931 most "jagens" aren't like that, though. they almost always stay relevant way longer than they should, typically thanks to factors such as amazing bases, good weapon ranks, great classes, low enemy quality, and surprisingly decent growth rates that let them keep up with your lower-leveled characters. even the og jagen from fe1 with his cartoonishly abysmal growth rates only really needs a speed ring and some silver weapons to avoid falling off, because he has decent bases and 10 movement and the enemies are laughably pathetic. fe6 marcus, fe10 sothe, fe12 arran, fe13 frederick, and fe17 vander are really the only jagen-type characters i can think of that actually work as intended.
This reminds me of my introduction to Fire Emblem. I was riding the bus to school with a friend, a friend who received allowance and games far more often than me(no allowance, games only on B-day and Xmas). He was telling me how hard the game was, as he was on Chapter 4 of Fe7(or whichever one is Dorcas recruitment chapter). His only available units were Lyn, Wil, and Dorcas. He had allowed all his other units to die. He asked me to try the game out and "fix" it for him. So I restarted his playthrough, and fixed it for him. I'd watch him on the bus after that, and guide him through not getting characters killed. A few days later, he got to Eliwood Mode.
With glee he exclaimed to me, "Dude, this Marcus guy is unstoppable! The game's so easy now! Marcus is unbeatable!"
Only for a day or two later to come, with him practically in tears, "I got to a really hard chapter, and Marcus got killed, and I haven't been using anyone else really and I saved it." I told him, "Marcus is supposed to be your get out of jail free card, not your entire army."
It turns out, people used to say, "Don't use Marcus, he's an experience thief!" In reference to not letting other units grow. Though that reality is true, there's also the fact that units like Marcus also steal experience from the player themselves, not letting them learn the enemy's real strength nor the strengths and weaknesses of their own weaker units.
Fire Emblem has long term strategy and unit schemes built into it, but without knowledge of the particulars of those in each game, high efficiency, easy to use units can become quite the trap.
And then there's Seth, who's so busted that you can't get him killed unless you try and can solo the literal entire game lol
Couldn't have put it better myself. I always avoid using Jeigan type characters for this reason.
They are an EXP thief in both the literal and figurative sense.
Overusing them will derive both the player and the units they control of much needed experience.
Their purpose is to be a crutch for the early game, not a wheelchair. Lean on 'em if you have to, but don't let them carry you.
Basically he give all the xp for Marcus, he could use somebody else, if you put all the xp in Rutger for example, you will get the same results, all units fallen and Rutger being the strongest, so Marcus is not the problem, but your poor xp distribution.
Looking back, I'm pretty sure this was how my first playthrough of Sacred Stones had gone too. I over relied on super strong units like Seth and when I got to later chapters, they were difficult because my units were so weak in comparison. In later playthroughs, though, I knew more of what to avoid and played more efficiently and avoided that trap
I'm kinda glad the game does have a trap like that in it, though, because it lets the player fail and learn directly not to do that and it's a lesson they can take to other games too
@@ScipiPurr maybe that warning from the very first game should have stayed in future games. basically, early on, an NPC you can visit tells you that jagen is great, but warns you not to overrely on him, and that you should focus on helping your weaker units grow, or you will struggle later on
I remember playing FE9 and getting to the “defend the fort” chapter early on, and watching as Titania held an entire entry point on her own without any healers or support made me realise then and there how overwhelmingly broken she was. If I’d have used any other unit and had Titania be the last line of defence, I would have struggled massively. That’s how much high-efficiency-high-ease-of-use characters turn the tide of battle.
I'm just here to say I like the Robin visual pun.
Never really thought about how Jagens being too good can be a bad thing for strategy. I mean, yeah, if it's about having fun in a strategy game, throwing away the strategy in favor of 1 tough guy killing everything can be an issue. Still, tons of experienced FE players use self-imposed challenges to raise difficulty, so having an extra tool for inexperienced players doesn't seem bad.
That being said, I like how you link high versatility to classes and ease of use to stats. It's a cool rule of thumb!
Jagens to me are antithetical to learning the games.
Earlygame is meamt to teach you how to use the tools at yoir disposal. Brock and whitney miktank are a great example of that, because they are built to teach you about status mives instead of just spamming attacks.
Now imagine if the game gave you a level 30 seaking at the start. You won't learn the intended lesson because once you meet a roadblock you just power trough it with the seaking.
Good earlygame enemies should teach you about using stuff like the weapon triangle, effectiveness and terrain, and the learning curve is steeper when you have a jeigan that can do the job whitout using those systems.
I realized that this is actually why I like Lyn mode. I fucking hate Jagens. They make me feel like I'm playing with the guard rails up in a bowling alley. Just having them there totally negates any sense of actual strategy or genuine difficulty because the option is always there to just have them solo the entire level without even thinking.
@@gg2fan But the thing is, it's not a binary between "use Jagen" and "don't use Jagen". Most people don't want them to solo the entire map because it takes away EXP from other units they could be training, but It's possible to use Jagens sparingly to take out important enemies while still training your main squad. They're also very useful for map objectives such as rushing ahead to a village or etc. where many other units can't.
I agree with the point that's not really fun to have certain a units destroys everything all the time. An exhaust mechanic would be nice, in a way that you can't use strong units all the time, and they lose stats if you deploy them repeatedly and recover some if you bench them.
Yeah, I'm not sure how Jagens would really help teach players. If anything they make the early game more complicated.
Still I think having a Jagen is good for adding a lot of flavour to early game FE.
I still think Sothe in RD is one of the best designed Jagen units. He's not as tanky as a traditional Jagen and he also has one of the weakest weapon types. Not only that he also has the additional burden of having to open locks and chests which means that going for certain loot requires the choice of separating him from the main army.
FE6 Marcus is the best-designed "Jagen" this series has ever had IMO, he is the perfect starting strength to require his services, but falls off hard enough so that you do not want to rely on him for too long, since he will become rather obsolete outside of rescue utility. I do like Sothe, but I am turned off by requiring to bring him to the tower and his complete inability to contribute in some of Part 3's toughest chapters in Maniac mode (3-5).
FE6 Marcus, while being great in the early game, I wouldn't quite put in with the likes of Seth and Titania. He falls off fast and hard, he just doesn't have the same potential as those guys. What makes someone like Seth so versatile is partly his long term viability, you could put base Seth in Sacred Stones Chapter 20 and he'd still keep up. FE6 Marcus would get shredded by comparison.
This is especially apparent in FE6 Hard Mode, where he can't even 1 round a lot of the Chapter 1 brigands, allowing easy set ups for roy and the cavs.
And that's why fe6 Marcus îs better
To be honest, I mainly put him in for the double Marcus joke
@@RCwyatt917 valid
marcus being unable to ORKO the enemies on the early maps is actually just the result of a programming error rather than being something the developers purposefully planned around
due to a bug in the games code, fe6 erroneously runs the call in memory which sets how many bonus levels the enemies receive on hard mode twice, on the first five maps of fe6
so on chapter 1 for example, the enemies are supposed to get 4 bonus levels, but instead they get 8 bonus levels
if you correct the bug, marcus ends up destroying the fighters with the iron sword he starts with because of how much lower their stats are
no bceosue marcus is to stogn for the bing of the map youonly stat consder otiosn loike lance and alen and shana bece he will fall of he makes it worts becse if you truly want you can kill everying iwth marcus wirth the silber lance and then repelc him with other units evne if other units are siemelr to him in qualtay laike rutger percial ore melody (i don't think that any of this unist are well des oside or Rtguer ) he is to good to short is liek how athos ruiens the fienal chapeter is the toels of the gmae sturi he is laike a B or a C but in that chapete isn eisn hig esa of use thaelk to the barey of toums and satbes that he can use
Forget your chart *Turns Amelia into Armor Knight*
Chaotic Neutral, I love it
In addition to the defenses others have given for Jagens, I think soflock prevention is an important point. For the same reason that the games give you Gotohs, so that you have some way of completing the final chapter even if your lords are weak, prepromotes allow you to fall back on them in case something goes horribly wrong and the rest of your party is incapable of beating a chapter without them. Since you cant go back to previous chapters (without backup save files), if your party is too weak, you would be forced to restart the game in order to progress, and nobody wants to do that.
Oh so I’m the crazy one who trained up Amelia into a General(full armour tank) and just maniacally laughed as she could solo the entire game With spear sword and axe
You're not the only one. I guess we're both the crazy ones for turning her into a general, not a paladin, huh.
She is a great unit. Only a few unit can be lvl 60 in FE SS
I did it because I thought it was funny to see such a little girl become a walking giant hulk in armor.
@@lhfirex Amelia Mecha is a know meme XD
i always do that.
i hate cavalry units in pretty much every fire emblem game, i use foot units and flyers exclusively when possible.
i don't know why, but whenever i do use them something disappointing happens, no exceptions because:
A: they get too far ahead, kill everything hogging all the experience
B: they get too far ahead and get ganked to death
C: i try to use them to flank the enemy, yet the main force makes it there before they do because the back route has forests on it.
D: the map is basically all forest, sand or other shit that cavalry can't actually move quickly over, thus completely nullifying any advantage they would have had over foot units with better stats.
I feel like a lot of the problems behind these classes go back to the level design of GBA fire emblems, which is one of my biggest critiques of them. I hate having to drag my army through a long level in one giant blob, which is what a lot of them come down to. This ends up leaving infantry in the dust and focusing all the actual combat on one or two carries who just do everything, usually a paladin, leaving the entire rest of your team to just sit there wondering why they even came at all. Units like armor knights can be very useful on certain maps where you spawn surrounded by enemies already, and archers can be good when the map has little side missions for the player to go take care of in their own player phase, like going off to take care of some pesky fliers with a longbow before they can harass your team.
I never really thought of this, but actually giving it a moment, and i have to agree with you. GBA FE maps don't have a lot going on. Yeah, sure, there are some villages you can get if you don't play like an actual turtle, but nothing else besides them.
It's kinda shocking how little is actually going on in a lot of these
The problem I see is that there isn't all that much varied gameplay. The game usually rewards a high-mobility army by scattering side objectives across the map and placing a victory condition on the far side, often guarded by a tanky boss unit. There aren't a lot of chapters where the goal is to hold a position against overwhelming numbers, fight a few extremely powerful characters or creatures, or besiege a fortified position. In theory FE7 and 8 have chapters where you have to protect a space or character, but the reality is you can do so after running around or don't need to guard the character very carefully and can just leave them alone without a single unit within 10 spaces of them after turn 2. If the game wants you to move across the map, mobility will be one of the most important factors.
But you can carry your big armored knight with a Pegasus 🕊️
@@balsamon69 feel like that's just issue with fe7 and fe8, fe6 maps have a lot going on with different side objectives
ironically, two of the most disliked GBA maps, arcadia and battle before dawn, happen to have some of the most to do in terms of optional side objectives
FE7's different game modes and ranking system can completely change the way Jagens are used, as I'm sure anyone who loves the GBA FE's is aware.
Eliwood normal and hard mode might have the player skip using Marcus altogether out of EXP rank efficiency when going for the maximum overall ranking, while a ranked Hector's hard mode even in the hands of a skilled player will use Marcus remarkably close to his intended purpose, getting some of the most use and growth out of the entire cast of characters. Kind of how a Jagen might help you get through the early game and still have a decent Tactics rank, use slightly fewer weapon uses when defeating enemies, and potentially being used to set up others for kills instead of just taking them for himself whether the player wanted that or not. The only thing that really suffers from playing FE7 for ranks is the difficulty in using or at least enjoying supports and their bonuses, since they are almost always out of reach when trying to balance Tactics, Funds, and EXP in the same playthrough.
Perhaps I'm just old, but FE7's most interesting design feature is its ranking system that helps decent players become great players, by learning to pass through seemingly impossible odds while striking a chaotic balance between managing speed, safety, strength, and resources, not to mention risk-aversion and forward-thinking that Fire Emblem games tend to require or reward in abundance. It's the main thing lacking in FE8 and the rest of the series for me, although I won't pretend like Thracia or Binding Blade's ranking systems are anywhere close to as well-balanced.
The ranking system for FE7 HHM is actually much harder than FE6 hard since some of the turn counts arent even counted and the exp threshold is ridiculously high. It doesn't fail to teach players to play differently (like using Marcus to set kills instead of taking them) and the sheer difficulty of getting a S rank can lead to strategies that are not the best at tackling the 'efficient' criteria while still being quite fast to reach a desired turn count.
I 100% agree, the ranking system realyl helps FE7's character balance and game balance. Essentially, all the ranks exist to stop different types of cheeses.
EXP - You can't just Marcus spam and own everything, you can't just super level your Sain/Kent and steamroll everything, etc. You actually have to create a large, diverse team that is gaining a lot of EXP.
Funds - You can't just spam all your stat boosters and brave weapons. You have to figure out what you can afford and what you need to stash.
And so on.
Ranking system are for hard players
I'm glad someone made a video like this, it literally goes over all the thoughts I've had in my head for so long lol. Great video!!!
I think well designed jeigans are actually pretty good design.
fe6 Marcus comes to mind, units that can weaken enemy units for your weaker units so they don't fall behind, and can put out small fires with limited weapon use.
They also make an excellent early game safety net for new players, especially for someone playing through their mistakes and letting things happen as they may in an ironman fashion.
I only clicked this video to demand that you remove Neimi from the “bad” side of the thumbnail. Step off my GOAT
A bad player overuses his Jaegan, o good player uses him to feed kills and as a last resort in risky fights.
Amazing breakdown. Love these Fire Emblem analyses so much!
I really like the takeaways from this video, and yes, I agree that if I was power gaming, I could just use the most effective units possible all the time. But that's not fun, and I do play for supports as well, even back in the GBA era where I had to replay the game over and over to see them all. There's a huge feeling of tactics and satisfaction seeing Amelia or Ross grow up, and that's far more engaging than sending best mathematical unit 1 to place 2 then watching. Thank you for this insight
In a lot of cases, Ests and Trainees becoming stronger is relevant to their own support arc.
Ross wants to be a great warrior like his Dad, Nino (after an entire backstory's worth of her game's second-worst parent) wants to prove that she's not useless, Amelia doesn't want to feel helpless anymore after losing everything to bandits, and so on.
Training them up isn't just getting a strong unit- it's advancing their story arc.
2:50
Such great a analysis, and the charts really bring the point home.
Based video, I hate how much unit discourse is only based on LTC/ Heavy resetting.
Thankfully lately Ironman ratings have become far more common which have changed it for the better.
It's interesting, because as a VERY experienced player, the knight starts to gain more value again, especially in GBA emblem where you're focusing more and more on enemy phase. You can pick your places to purposefully overextend the bulky strength character more easily, knowing when they will and won't get doubled, and in the right spot that knight might take an extra turn to get into position, but on the enemy phase he eats half the enemy army on his own.
Was gonna say this lmao armor knights on certain games tend to become a very weird thing due to using a bunch of mechanics to cover there main weaknesses. Where a normal player would think there just shit and slow but more aggressive players might see value in warping one somewhere to just attract threats away from other units . It just comes down to this dumb idea from the older games that low turn count = good player rather than hey this may take a few more turns than the meta strat but its much more fun and challenging then sending a harr or a Camilla or a byleth in to sweep a bunch of units in a braindead way
It's just an antiquated design choice. People often jump at Marcus and Seth for "mount too good, break game" but from fe 1 that was always an issue, 3 being pretty much the same and 4 being the real stinky game that set that standard. Its the fault of high move units being built as "versatile" far too often. If they actually wanted to have the games be balanced you'd give cavs armor knight baselines and make fliers more luck blessed than speed. Sensibly, their mobility should make landing a killing blow difficult and doubling challenging (they fight on mounts, they should be doing a drive-bys, not running up, stopping and somehow landing hit after hit in succession).
Fe3 actually nerfed Paladins pretty well by forcing them to dismount indoors and requiring them to be dismounted to use swords which is important as it was basically impossible for Paladins to avoid much less double units like snipers or mercs/heroes due to how weight work.
This is not factoring in the actually base speed difference was insane, could take a paladin/cav all game to reach the base speed of early game sword infantry.
Map design in book 2 also hurt Paladins as many maps where not just big fields.
Fe2 also had weaker Paladins and mounts.
Now Fliers were pretty dang stupid Fe3 mostly due to dismounting actually helping them avoid there arrow weakness, you could fly into ballista range then dismount and no more weakness.
Fe5 mounts were both really good but not dominating, mostly used for canto and being able to capture any foot unit.
Fe 1 and 4 aee the games that made mounts overtuned .
Gba games effed up by giving cavs two weapons at base and three after promo and not having there balanced bad good statlines be a hindrance. Also help that rescuing dropping is super duper busted so just for utility they were good to good units like Rutger or Harken into the front lines faster.
That's what I love about 3H. I can take Mercie and Annie and make them into a white knight black night power combo that slays like the queens they are instead of saying "this one shoots fire, this one shoots therapy."
It was surprising to see this put into words - I would avoid using Pegasus Knights in Awakening (my first game) because I hated how frail they were. And as I played more FE games I started to realize their value and I'm definitely a big Pegasus knight fan now. Not sure I could make it through FE6 without Shanna! And I'm definitely one to use characters I like to, I replaced Shanna with Thea in a run purely because I like her supports. She's not optimal but it's nice to change things up sometimes
This was my thought process on Dancers, it wasn't until my second or third playthrough of Fates when I realized Azura giving someone another turn was kinda busted and I shouldn't focus on her lance
Dude, actually a great point that I wish was brought up more is player proficiency with certain units that was made in the video intro. I have argued to my friends and others this point a fair bit about Ignatz in 3h being the perfect easy to use character, especially blind in a maddening no ng+ setting, because there is no class mastery one has to know before hand to speck into to make them good. Same I think applies for other characters and their classes in fe3h and other fire emblem games as well. Sorry for the rant, but I think such points make for genuinely good content, so keep it up man!
Personally I don’t think Jagens make the game more boring, much the opposite. In early maps the options the player has to them are significantly lower than at any other point in the game, and thus enemies would likely be on an equal power level. Without a Jagen, to most players, this would result in turtling and baiting and switching in different groups of enemies and slowly whittling them down. Jagens give you a unit that can handle themselves, complete side objectives, and just allow you to play games a little more dynamically. The Rutger map from fe6 is a great example. You’re hit early on from an onslaught of cavalry, the only one who can realistically withstand such a force is Marcus, and after that he can visit the bottom village somewhat self sufficiently. Without him, you would likely end up stationing two units at the front bridges and taking potshots at them until they die and the villages get destroyed. Another good example is three houses chapter 2 maddening mode, a game without a Jagen. It’s a miserable slog where only 2 units are usually able to take more than one hit from an enemy before needing healing again, while your less powerful units are likely getting one rounded so instead they’re doing single digit damage to the high HP enemies with curved shot of they even have that yet. The clunkiness of everyone having four movement doesn’t help either. If say, Jeralt was on this map players wouldn’t have to take things so slowly, he could one round dangerous enemies, set up kills, and get the chest without having to spend multiple turns going over there and then joining up with your main force. Jagens give the player ways to diversify their options early on in order to play in more varied ways.
The solution is to design the game without the Jeigan. For example your Rutger map example, you could tone down the enemies and quantities so that you aren't just completely overwhelmed without having Marcus as the crutch.
My counterexample is Fates conquest. For most of the earlygame you don't have a jeigan. And the game is totally fine. In fact, probably better. Because now I actually have the opportunity to explore and try out other units. Whereas if a jeigan existed, either the developers will jack up the enemy stats to compensate and thus force me to rely on my jeigan as a crutch (FE6, FEDS, FE10, etc.), or the developers don't tweak the enemy stats and then the jeigan just steamrolls everything (FE8, FE9, etc.). But what Conquest also does is clamp down on the EXP formula; as your unit level increases, your EXP gains rapidly decrease, thus making it harder for the player to create a juggernaut that outstats all the enemies. Thus forces the player to actually make a large, diverse team.
How. A civil, rational discussion ...on the internet??
Just use Jagen to feed kills and block off frail units
If you don't reach the villages on Rutger map without Marcus, your strategy is wrong. Top village is pretty straightforward and you can drop Dieck on a fort using Shanna to deal with spawning pirates going towards the bottom village. I usually use Marcus and he usually fetches the item on the top village but you can definitely do it without him without much sweat
I just found your channel and binged all the content, love your stuff.
I once made Matthew from FE (GBA) into a godlike evade tank on accident once. It was rather insane, being able to send him into groups of enemies and watch him dodge everything then revenge-kill.
Thats not an accident. He joins at level 2 with 11 speed and 70% growth.
I did the same thing with Guy, but that might have also had to do with me only having like 7 units by the end of the game
I do like the idea of making the Jagen a healer. Naturally less tanky to discourage 1v1ing the entire enemy army, can do stuff without hogging the spotlight, and classes like Bishop and Sage are a natural fit for a wise mentor figure anyway.
There is one other Jagen I'm thinking of that did work as a "mentor" flawlessly. He's not in Fire Emblem, though.
Baldarov from Warsong starts off at max level, can hire all three basic troop types from the word "go", and will mess up anything that isn't the Chapter 1 Elementals (you aren't meant to fight them) or the Chapter 4 Slimes (you're supposed to use fire on them). He's an absolute beast who can be of great help if you want to chill in Chapter 1 and fight some of the enemies...
And then he dies after Chapter 5 and you have to complete the rest of the game without him. Hope you trained your other guys!
It was a really interesting video. Definitely an unusual take, i enjoyed it.
I think part of the reason it's like this is because for the most part, a lot of FE games' main method pf challenging the player is through combat. The maps aren't nearly involved enough to be interesting without it. Something i noticed, is while the games under Kaga, usually had a consistent difficulty curve, the games after he left, really didn't. In FE1-5, the games got harder the closer you got to the end, but after FE6, it's really the opposite. The hardest part is the early game, where not all of your units can double enemies consistently, let alone one round any. After that, you get more and more levels, good units, kickass weaponry, and by the end, any challenge the game had evaporates.
It's not surprising that when you tell someone who never played Kaga Saga of the kind of ridiculous broken fun stuff it has, their response is usually shock. If Vestaria Saga 1's Cutlasses were a thing in, say, FE6, with the kind of easy accessibility they had in that game, any challenge the game had would get Zaharas'd into the Shadow Realm. Meanwhile in VS1, they're almost a necessity. The game is still ball bustingly hard with them, and all the other cracked prf's in that game. The maps in Kaga Saga are usually much more involved, with an assload of side objectives and anti-turtling insensitives. All the while the enemies get a lot of similarly busted tools. In Berwick Saga, there's one myrm you get at the start of the game, that has Deathmatch, a skill that locks any enemy who can counter into five traditional rounds of FE combat. In a game where you can't double, this is a huge boon and makes him a great player phase nuke. There's an exploit you can do with him, though. You give him a Miracle Charm, and use Deathmatch, it won't break until the end of all 5 rounds, meaning yes, he gets to be essentially immortal for a bit. Yet, the fact there are myrms in the lategame of Berwick with this same setup, tells me Kaga knew of this, and decided to have his fun with it.
Basically, what i'm saying, is that i think IS could take a page out of Kaga's book when it comes to map design. Haven't played Engage yet, but 3 Houses maps were laughable.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk, have a good day
There usually tends be to a difficulty ramp in the middle of every game where promoted enemies start showing up, and then a difficulty spike on "that map," where each game tends to have at least one "that map."
Also in my experience, every FE has gotten easier by the end solely due to the increase in options. It doesn't matter pre-Kaga or post-Kaga, giving harder hitting weapons, more characters, promotions, and The Almighty Warp Staff is going to make the game easier.
I think this is also due to the games gradually morphing more into rpgs with strategy elements than srpgs.
It's the more subtle reason I think Fire Emblem from Awakening onwards is basically a different series.
The modern games aren't really intended to be played with respect to permadeath at all, the game's balance and resources can't really handle it.
If you lose a character you have seriously worked on in Awakening or 3 Houses, that gap is almost IMPOSSIBLE to fill, whereas the earlier games were always built with the intention that, of not every single death, many deaths would stick.
With generally lower and less drastically different growths, regular speed bumps to prevent pure snowballing, and fewer builds and options a player can put together, it's generally easier to sculpt a more carefully designed experience.
When the name of the game is infinite character snowballing with growths in the 60s being considered decent, slapping on autocrit, unkillable, or funny outrange everything builds, how in the world do you balance both for that, and the player who just lost two of their big guys next chapter?
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Haven't played Engage yet, does this still hold true in that game? I do think you got a point, though i'd say Fates Conquest is the exception to that.
Honestly, that just brings up a point about why is permadeath still a thing. What honest function does it even serve these days? They don't do anything interesting with it, gameplay or story wise. With how much IS insists on nerfing it, one would think they'd be better off just removing it entirely
@@balsamon69
Engage does do a pretty good job, with later characters continuing to join, packed with enough immediately spendable resources to catch up to, and often even outperform a lot of early units that recieved only middling attention.
You ABSOLUTELY cannot grab an older character you didn't use much to cover a death in a later chapter though, maybe at best the last round of new guys might be okay, more than that and they're playing the role of bandits on easy mode.
Engage in general is a little odd, though, with the game kinda feeling like an investment treadmill. Nothing really gets good and stays good, you just kinda have to continue investing in your favorite units or they'll fall behind the curve.
This is a really interesting take on unit balance, nice job!
As a more casual fan of the older games, this was a really interesting take. Subscribed!
Love the video and the ways to think about game balance, but the one thing you failed to consider about units like Marcus and also Marcus is the "unga bunga caveman brain" factor. Not always, but sometimes I find it more fun to just throw in one godlike character and watch the enemies just impale themselves on said characters weapon in waves. That's the scenario where those units can be good. Either that or for accessibility if a chapter is frustrating or too hard for someone.
But I walk a weird line between grinding to be overpowered and nuking everything in games to using the worst characters because I like them and struggling through a tough boss underleveled instead of coming back later when I'm meant to fight it, so it's nice to have options.
NEW RCWYATT UPLOAD LETS GOOOOO
In FE 7 the enemy loves to backdoor you to kill merlinus (or destroy his camp). So Oswin was really handy to park next to him, because the reinforcements did not used magic or armorslaying weapons.
Merlinus and Marcus support each other, so now you know who you should've left guard duty to
this is a really interesting idea, well worth the wait
I think your example of Clerics was perfect, my girlfriend just started playing and seeing the difference of how I would use the Clerics more offensively than she would even think of is really interesting
I have never played a Fire Emblem game before, but I get the general idea talked about here. This is a really cool mechanics system
I'm not used to this level of insightful game design analysis in a random youtube video. Well done.
The skill vs ease of use thing is completely true. I remember in my first ever Fire Emblem run, I lost every Peg shortly after getting them. They were so fragile compared to my other units that I would lose them because of bad positioning very quickly
Hm, i really really liked this video! Its a very interesting way to consider the definition of "good", and how it changes depending on your desires for yhe game!
A good unit is one that requires little investment to be helpful, while a bad one requires investment to be mediocre
Somewhere in the middle are characters that require little investment to be mediocre, and characters that require investment to be good.
Better units can also make investment more available to other units, setting up kills, rescue/dropping to safety, blocking or eliminating dangerous units, ect, while worse units generally struggle to do the same.
The basic idea is that you can leverage the low-investment good units to funnel investment into the units that you want to use because (?).
I'm being called out here. I love my knights but I gotta brute force myself into using my pegasus knights because they Always Keep Dying whenever I try to do anything with them. They're real tough to find any safe space for them
Yay new video!
I think it’s kind of unfair to say that Jagens take away from strategy. Your example of chapter 1 eliwood mode is a good illustration as to how it can take away from a map, but Fire Emblem isn’t a “one map” game. If I have Amelia trained up to be equal to Seth or even better, for that chapter she isn’t more/less strategic than him just because it took more effort to get her there.
I think the real problem with Jagens is that they are placed in too versatile a class with not a lot to hinder them, so they can do pretty much everything. Essentially, if you want a good unit that early, you either have to reduce their versatility or give them a job to do that needs/is encouraged to be done that only they can do.
Sigurd is… a god! Perfect availability for gen 1 of FE4, his class and bases are as good as you’d ever need, and he even has amazing growths. However, you do miss out on resources and army capability only using him. There are timed objectives of sorts with villages, but Sigurd has to pretty much always going towards the main objective to seize the castle and progress the chapter. This lets the plebs have a chance at side objectives and any exp that Sigurd would have to go out of the way for. However, he can only act once per turn (twice with a dance), so his other unique aspect in his authority stars boosts the hit/avo of units within 3 tiles of him, which means he can increase the odds of success for units around him and supplement them. This helps both the units near and far away from him make up ground.
Sothe is a little less complex; instead of a paladin, he’s a thief. He’s by far the strongest in the Dawn brigade for a while, but sometimes you need him to open a chest or steal an item. He also comes with a bronze dagger, a low might weapon that can never crit, meaning he can help set up kills pretty damn well in the few moments the Dawn Brigade can actually take a break!
Finally Titania; basically stereotypical, but using her to do objectives faster gets you more bexp in early maps. You can either play slowly without her and get more map/weapon exp on units, or use her strategically to get bexp to assign to units.
GBA games I’d say are the games with the least reason to not use your Jagen for everything. I feel like this is due to just poor design and not being creative with map layout/objectives. Here’s a couple of examples as to how to make good use out of a Jagen even without crazy stuff like different classes or authority stars
-on the first map, they’re incredibly strong, but there’s a village or some objective only they can access. If you need them for the map, you slow down your time or have to do a walk of shame before the end.
-one early map, to introduce the player to ambush spawns, have the player start by a choke that has a lot of high movement strong units start at, where the Jagen spawns in perfectly blocking! But, on the other side, reinforcements spawn in and you need to use other units to get through less movement units while your Jagen guards your flank.
-have them spawn far away or late. PoR does this map 2 and it gives you a chance to learn what current/new units are capable of without fully removing the use out of the Jagen. Getting through the units between the two groups means you’ll be rewarded with an easier time from then on for that chapter, or vice versa.
I think that point about map design is really crucial. Marcus might be OP in most early maps with open layouts because he can just go straight out and one-shot 10 people on enemy phase. But something like the Merlinus fog chapter or the pirate ship limit his effectiveness by making enemies come from all sides. Marcus can only block one path, but if his attention is elsewhere, you need other units to be competent enough to survive.
And then there's Engage's Vander.
A Jagen with an axe and a personal skill that gives him higher crit chance.
Which makes for the amazing combination of a Jagen that can't reliably set up kills because of his low axe accurary, while also often randomly stealing kills he should've set up by getting a crit.
Love this guy, he's so stupid lmao.
So, here before this blows up. I think it's a gro eat point to be made that a lot of people have been talking around or ignoring.
That being said, I will offer an alternative perspective.
1) Pegasus Knights/Cavaliers and what have you are not JUST good for fast play. I think that's the biggest point I'd put forwards here. Certainly, an fe7 florina draft race team is going to require more effort to become good, but an average or even bad fire emblem player can still make use of the power that pegs or cavs can offer to make their lives easier.
"I could play through this map OR I COULD USE THE WARP STAFF" is a meme for a reason and it's kind of true. You don't have to be a fire emblem god to pull off a warp skip and it makes your life so, so, so much easier than trying to rout a map. I'd argue warp should be renamed to "nuke" as it's essentially a staff that kills all enemies on the map while granting no exp due to the fact it basically instantly ends the map when used.
I recently played through fe8 again (I was on increased growths but for the point I'm about to make that shouldn't matter) and I replayed Darkling Woods again. Routing that map takes literal hours because of the ungodly amount of enemy spawns and the winding path you have to take and a single mistake can kill one of your weaker units. It is utterly miserable to go through. I would argue that even a new player should try to skip at least part of that map to make their life easier.
Now obviously warp is warp and fliers are fliers. It's not a one-to-one comparison, but I'd argue that even a very bad player is still going to have an easier time if they aren't stuck at 4 move. Whether it's a soft objective like saving villages for more loot, or a hard objective like saving a recruitable character from death, having more movement is just going to be useful in big, long maps where you need to get stuff done. A peg might be a unit you can make mistakes with, but it's also more capable of fixing your mistakes by helicoptering someone out to safety, for example.
At the end of the day, "higher ceiling" units like pegs are going to have disadvantages for worse players and won't be used to the same effectiveness, but I still would argue for their strength even for worse players because of how useful having more option open to you is.
Also just as a final note , I would actually argue the reason that armors suck isn't JUST that their mov is bad. It's that their mov is bad, their speed is bad and their res is bad.
I think a better comparison would be a unit like fe5 Orsin. He has extremely good combat for a lot of the game, but has lower move and thus utility compared to other units.
2) Ok, remember all that stuff I just said there? About how fliers can make the game easier because of more options?
Well, that isn't always true. Some games have a much heavier combat focus, such as my favourite game, awakening.
In awakening, basically everything I just said doesn't apply. Having more movement or flying can matter for certain situations, but it isn't emphasized nearly as much due to the fact that the enemies are much more aggressive and maps don't have as much restrictive terrain. In these instances, units with the best combat are the best units and it opens up a new conversation with regards to movement.
How good is having more movement or flight if it doesn't meaningfully make the game any easier?
Ignoring the fact that I don't think you can beat awakening any FASTER with a bad combat, high mov flying unit like Sumia, I would argue that awakenings case is a lot closer to the point of view you're presenting- good combat units are so easy that the most commonly touted strategies involve walking 1 unit into the middle of the enemies and watching them all die.
It's sort of the opposite end of the stick. In a game like fe8, simply having really really good combat isn't enough to make you a good unit because there's so much use for fliers and movement and such that even a bad player could make use of flight and movement to their advantage. Whereas in awakening having really really good combat IS enough to make you a good unit because there just isn't as much use for other stuff. Sumia might have wings but who cares if there aren't any relevant terrain tiles for her to fly over?
3) On Jagens:
Really strong Jagens are great unit design. I'm serious.
For new players, they can help carry them through their early struggles. Even a very very easy fire emblem game can cause struggles for people new to the genre and I don't know if forcing people to learn strategy from turn 1 of chapter 1 is always the best way of going about things. Instead, giving players the ability to have someone to help them out will act as a safety net for them.
Again, new players are often really really bad and won't be able to use units like fe7 marcus as effectively. I know that sounds like a ridiculous statement considering that effective use of him is walking him in a straight line at the enemies, but to someone who has never seen the game before, there's a lot of things they probably won't realise- they likely won't even look at his stats or understand what they are relative to the enemies.
For more experienced players, Jagens can present new challenges- either the ability to maximize their strengths to either beat the game more efficiently and help take on harder more, or it can becomes a useful puzzle of working out where everyone can contribute. You mentioned that using bad units forces you to squeeze out each bit of use out of them and if you increase the difficulty of the game this is sort of what you get. Your other units are working to get the most viability out of themselves while you're making sure your jagen is constantly firing on all cylinders just so you can beat the map. Or maybe you're so confident in your play that you're holding your jagen back just a little bit so that someone else can get more exp for something more efficient later down the line.
I don't think it's fair to necessarily say that they remove strategy- simply that they are one tool in an arsenal of many to make the game more strategic. Yes, you can quite literally solo most of earlygame awakening lunatic with Frederico Dandolo, but I don't think that makes the game devoid of strategy. You now have a base framework which you can work with and you have to fill in everything else yourself- to extract the viability from the remaining units you have, figure out their strengths and use everyone to their maximum potential.
Now, of course, Frederick is OP as shit and you can reasonably ignore all of what I just said and go unga bunga pick a god and pray on most of the game and then, like, promote Gregor or something and Sol the entire game to death, but that isn't the point. The point is that simply using a jagen does not strip the strategy out of the game- it's simply a different tool in the toolbox.
That's all from me. A bit rambly and loosely connected, but I hope you get the gist of what I was saying. Once again, good video and well explained. Peace.
Just popping in to say I felt that comment about darkling woods in fe8. I played the game for the first time a few months back on hard, and that map specifically wore me out so much. It's really not hard, I could beat it first try without anyone dying, but it is absolutely exhausting to play. Shit takes forever, enemies keep coming for so long you start to wonder if there will ever be an end to them, I especially feel the "feels miserable to play straight" part
All units in Fire Emblem can become absolute monsters, the difference between a good and bad unit is the amount of effort it takes to get there.
This is such an interesting way of thinking about unit types that i really appreciate. You're correct about Jagens however for those that are super new to strategy RPGs, they're essential. The older Fire Emblems have perma death, and as someone who's completely new to the genre, the idea that one bad move and a unit is permanently dead would make the game not enjoyable. New players need that reliable option that wont punish them later on because they're still learning the mechanics. But then again, i gues that's why they made Lynn mode in FE7 which is essentially a glorified tutorial
It's just speed. Remove speed stat , or just double attacks and the gap closes. Armor knight bulk means so little if everything can double them.
Poor Neimi
It's why I like doing mono class challenges in recent FE, it's a great way to learn the strenghts and weaknesses of a particular strategy/Team composition, and trying to overcome the challenges because of that makes for a fun time sink :P
Fates was one of the games that I really didn't enjoyed as much as Awakening at first, but when I challenged myself to make a team of "Only Maids" suddenly I started to learn how reclassing works in Fates, which character pair ups needed to be focused to get as many maids as I could, and it was really fun!
I'd say that the op characters are kinda useful sometimes tbh, like for example, i recruited raven in fe7 and i'm trying to get him to go to the top part of the map, but there are random soldiers coming from the bottom that are very near to him, luckily, with Marcus and oswin i was able to defend raven until he got to the rest of the group
This video is really insightful! Not just to strategy games, but I think the principles you've outlined here could apply to other types of games. This can explain one way many MMOs degrade over time. Each expansion or patch sells itself on providing new 'high efficiency/high ease of use' options (usually called 'the meta'?) in order to encourage people to keep up their investment. Even if it requires skill/money/time to get these powerful rewards, phase in too many of them and it becomes very difficult for new players to learn how to play the game. Experienced players enter a world of drudgery where everyone is expected to use equipment that destroys the gameplay, and often it's not accepted to be like, 'my PREFERRED playstyle is the challenge of not using this high level equipment'; everyone who doesn't have it is assumed to be a newbie or 'prog' (in progress to getting that equipment). Eventually, either all players must be Marcus (after which you quit because it's boring, so they'll have to release 'New Marcus' to give you a new goal!) or it's so arduous to become Marcus everybody quits before experiencing all the game has to offer.
Heck, even POWERWASH SIMULATOR makes sure that it's 'end game equipment' has a weakness so it's not the right choice to use all the time. It's a sort of triple high-pressure nozzle. But up close for details it leaves huge gaps in between the three water jets. So your perspective in this video can apply to a super-chill simulator where there's no winning or losing: even when the only detriment is 'frustration', a good game does not include a cruise control option.
Great video for new people
I haven't played FE games beyond the first level of trying one out, but this was still a very nice video to watch. Neat way to think about unit quality and how a stronger asset could induce less engaged with experience.
Neat.
I love the double Marcus part lol
Ah yes, Seth. My first fe and I was gifted a starter twig, ruined armor and a God of war
You put to words something thats been bothering me about the Seth's of the series. If the main strategy going into a chapter is buy Javelins, are you really playing a strategy game?
The graph at 1:12 really highlights why pegasus knights is my favorite class.
I’ve heard so much about FE6 Marcus, I never once considered that he’d be in FE7.
That’s surprising. Usually people know Marcus from being OP in FE7
@@pksprite6401 I haven’t played FE7
That armor knight animation in combat is absolutely goated. Wish it was used in more titles later in the series
Damn I feel kind of crestfallen with the complete shoving of the archer class. At least the mage stayed upper middle
Archers have gotten a lot of buffs the past few games.
What I liked a lot about Three Houses was the lack of a "Jagen". Even if you are effectively given two lords as starting units, specially in higher difficulties when you are not doubling anything some early chapters were really puzzling challenges.
I was lucky enough to buy it when maddening was already available, so may be biased there a bit 😂
Knight like units are also amazing in the missions where you defend a point. You can stick them in a doorway and not have to worry about enemies from that direction
I didn't even know Marcus was supposed to be good, I saw a Jaegen and immediately took away his weapons and used him exclusively to bait enemies until my team filled up with actual units to use instead.
Perhaps having high versatility and high ease of use unit is not a bad thing. If there are multiple objectives, then the player has to decide where the overpowered unit should go. For example, the mission objective could be to save a certain amount of villages. If sufficiently spaced or enemy units are in a proper position, then Marcus will have to decide if he takes path A or B.
I like this point a lot. Its more interesting to me personally when I play fire emblem to use a lot of varied units all with their own different strengths and weaknesses, its more rewarding to me both from a strategic and narrative standpoint
I feel like part of the issue is the FE formula itself. Like one thing I really liked about RD was the variety of win/lose and environmental conditions. Your peg and wyv knights are usually pretty useful in most situations, but using them indoors nerfed them and FoW made their high mobility a risky endeavor because you could more easily send them in to a bad situation or overextend them. They were also offensively great for picking off targets on defense objectives, but they had poor defensive sustainability on those missions because archers and mages would dogpile on them if they tried to hold a choke point. Armor knights, archers, mages, and healers excelled on those maps though because the fight came to them and the optimal strategy was to stay at and hold the favorable terrain they were already on. Due to terrain they could limit dogpiling, or in the armor knights' case often just chew it up and spit it out, or simply hold a point atop a ledge/behind a fence or armor knight and attack/heal with relative impunity.
my rage at seeing Myrmidon listed as bad is palpable
also I generally dont use the Jagen's because while they may be efficient in completion, they're inefficient in exp yield
"Amelia can become a paladin, one of the best classes of the game"
yeah, i don't give a damn, she becomes a general because I like a tiny girl piloting a clockwork-knight-like armour.
Babe wake up, new RCwyatt video just dropped
He will wake up when you first get one, and second when you come with an original comment.
Overpowered Jagens are best used as a get-out-of-jail card. Their kill potential is actively harmful to rest of your army, FE7 Marcus one-rounding everything that enemy-phases him for example. But have them hang out near your front line, and either rescue units you over-extended with or that got hit by bad RNG. Or eliminate key targets that could mess with your plan with the silver lance (nomads or mages being a good example that many units will have to watch out for early game)
cool video! I always found peg knights frustrating to use, as they are so limited by the mere presence of enemy archers and especially ballistas, but I’ve always played with the goal of levelling up as many characters as possible rather than quick victories.
Awesome points
i love the gba sprites
good video!
Great video. It's funny because I'd always hated using the "Marcus" of the group because it felt too much like a crutch. I think I always had the notion starting the game (regardless of which one) that "Oh, this guy's super good now, but I bet sinking exp into him is just going to be a waste". Whether or not that's founded... I dunno, I haven't played a lot of these games in years. I honestly thought the grindiness that you could put yourself through in some of these games made the experience a bit more laid back, and seeing character interactions that happen out of it was a pretty cool surprise at the time. I always liked making Amelia a General; it was cool seeing her go from a scrawny recruit to this absolute unit of a .... unit.
i remember when classmate introduced fire emblem to me, he showed off his sacred stones save where he was on the finale (no he hadn't beaten the game) with abouuuut half the cast dead and a lv 20 general gilliam which he happily boasted about and he and i legit thought gilliam was the best character in the game
Nowadays, I replay my Ironmans using a roulette where I write down the name of non lose condition units, spin once per chapter and kill the result. I often cheat it out to kill the jeagan first so the early game isn't the same.
However, I've noticed on well designed games, that often leads to LESS variety than keeping them. A good jeagan leaves enemies for others to pick, so others can get better even "bad" units. Say, FE6: The first teo chapters are awful for bors since there's a ton of axes, however, a couple of def level ups on him leaves him with enough bulk to tank out all the way up to the Western Isles.
But don't the western isles also have a ton of axes?
@@cornesalvo9366 ok, maybe I phrased it in a weird way.
Bors can tank well from the start of chapter 3 up to, but not including the start of the Western Isles... Ummm
Chapter 2 < good bors performance < western Isles.
Though I guess he could promote and tank using axes.
@@marcoasturias8520 yeah I agree with you on that sentiment. That does seem to be the intended time for bors to shine. I usually use gwendolyn on most of my runs where I want to train an armor knight though, so I can't say for certain hehe
I'd llike to think the archer just kept going
I used to use Marcus but with no weapon at all. He was the perfect distraction unit to give other units the chance to grind a few levels.
It’s been 5 hours since you posted this video and the archer is still moving to the left, even with the video paused. Jeez.
Any update on the pokemon ecological series? 👀
Not the archer sliding away 😂
Any mistakes with a peg will likely lead to their death o7
"Titania, Marcus, Marcus ..." nice
Dang it, I've had the same conclusions on Titania and Marcus, but I haven't found a good way to play completely without them 😂
In The Sacred Stones, Seth’s stats would cap out at lower values than the average unit once you got them to his evolution and level equivalent. So if you overused him in the early chapters and had him absorb too much excess exp, you’d pay for it later on with a weaker overall team. I think of this as a type of balancing mechanic for units like him.
I found myself using him as a babysitter to protect weaker units as they leveled rather then letting him just go on a solo rampage. This was actually a pretty enjoyable tactic, as thought was still needed but I had an ace in the hole if need be.
Eventually, my Seth was out-statted by practically every other unit I used and he was benched.
Archer sliding off the screen was a great gag.
2:02 The way that Neimi is slowlyy pushed off screen xDD Top Tier Comedy
FE6 Marcus really shouldn’t be in the pile of those other ones that can do literally everything themselves. Just try to hop through FE6 hard mode and solo a chapter with Marcus. The first one just MIGHT be possible. Maybe. but he really isn’t strong enough to do it alone. Thus, he really feels like an actual teacher/mentor or army leader.
This idea is the driving force behind a "balance" patch for FE8 I'm working on. My initial solutions are to rebalance stat bases/growths, boost the knight-type move by 1, increase the range of most bows by 1 to give them a unique niche (as mentioned in the video), and making the magic swords more accessible to make sword-locked units more viable late-game. There are MANY more small decisions, but these are some of the big ones that "fix" the most common complainants I've seeen. They also happen to make many enemies a bit more dangerous as a bonus as far as balancing things goes.
What about the units you use because they are cute
The main weakness of armor knights is not their low movement IMO, but their traditionally low speed; there is no point having high defense if everything doubles them, including magic and axes. For example, I think Radiant Dawn Gatrie is an example of a balanced armor knight, he still has the low movement that discourages experienced players from using him, but his very high bases/growths (including speed, he has a 60 speed growth with 20 base!) make him a reasonable choice to use as a progression-focused character capable of dealing with many situations. His res is also good for an armor knight, heck his base res is 1 higher than Ike's (despite being 1 level lower) and his growth is 35 (compared to Ike's 15).
The drawbacks of the armor knight are the movement, having middling res (if they are lucky), and having effective weapon weaknesses, and giving them low speed as well is just overkill and dooms them as usable combat units.
Yo where's that other video boss?
This video made me realize what type of playthrough i enjoy and why. I HATE low turn count/speedrun style gameplay because it encourages just using the same units over and over, same cheesy strategies, and disregarding parts of the core gameplay. I love even distribution, unit building, and variety. I like making it work. A ‘bad’ unit isnt typically that bad. (Unless they actually are bad stat wise and its too difficult) Leveling up a unit like Amelia, or a healer into a fighter is what makes the game fun, gives it the spice of life. Using units like this turns the game into its own challenge of keeping all of your units alive and well, sometimes straight up like a puzzle of who to kill where, when, with what unit and what weapon.
I couldnt really put the feelings I had about each style into words, so thanks.