Noonan

I was surprised to not find a thread on this one. Is anyone else playing? I'm new to the FE series but I'm loving the game so far. I think I'm on chapter 14 or 15; I just made it to the 2nd continent. What characters are people using mostly?

shumway

I have great love for the Fire Emblem series. Enough to consider purchasing both a 3DS and a WiiU. I haven't made that decision yet though. I was glad to see the excellent reviews.

starseed1981

I would love to discuss this but I'm still waiting for Amazon to ship my pre-order of it. Apparently there were manufacturing shortages or something.

fujishig

I love this game (though it's currently on pause right now because of Etrian Odyssey IV). It's the first game that I've actually gone out and bought DLC for on the 3DS.

However, much like EOIV there is very little here that couldn't have been done on the DS (at least, once you get the hang of the game and turn off the annoying 3d and the battle scenes).

That's unfortunate that people still haven't gotten this game because of the shortages, because I think the free DLC has already expired. It's only a couple bucks, but still unfortunate.

Noonan

I picked it up off the eshop. I know a lot of people would rather have a physical copy but this is a game I'd never sell, so a digital copy is fine with me. Is the DLC worth it? I grabbed that one free map and the few items I could get. I wasn't sure if the paid stuff would be worth the cost.

EOIV is probably going to be the next game I pick up after I finish up FE.

fujishig

The first map was good enough to grind at an early level, and the map packs were cheap enough that I went ahead and bought the rest of the first set and the second set (which seems to have maps dedicated to farming gold and exp, though they are too tough for me at this point). I'm not a fan of Nintendo's DLC policies but hey, I like the game enough, and I don't remember ever seeing 3DS digital sales...

The DLC characters are mainly from past games, though they are useless in that they can't grow in relationships with the other members of your team. Other than that, though, this is really a FE for newbies... the default normal difficulty is pretty easy (if you're a FE vet start with Hard) and there's a mode that allows you to keep units that die with no penalty (which is what I chose, since I do the whole restart-whenever-my-favorite-unit-dies anyway). Speaking of EOIV, that also has an "easy" mode that makes getting into it easier. Overall I hope that gets new players for both series.

Noonan

Yeah, I decided to play on Casual. I agree with the difficulty. This is my first FE game but not my first tactics game. I'm finding the game super easy so far. The main 9-10 characters I stick with can pretty much one-hit any normal enemy. I usually don't even move much; I just set them up into groups and let the enemies come to me and take themselves out when they miss and I counter with a single hit kill. If I station Frederick near a group of enemies, he can easily take out 4-5 in a single enemy turn when they keep attacking him. Final Fantasy Tactics makes this game on Normal seem like a game of tick-tack-toe...not very difficult.

fujishig

I haven't played through the game so this is not really a spoiler, but I always assumed Frederick was that uber-advanced, higher class unit that you get in the beginning of most FE games that for whatever reason down the line gets lost along the way, and thus giving him any of that precious experience from actually killing enemies was going to be a waste. He's perfect to pair up with a guy like that uber-weak-to-start farmer to help him survive until he has more experience and can change classes, though.

Noonan

The farmer in my game is still level 2 and unused. I didn't see how it could be worth building him up. Before I understood advanced classes, I kept wondering why Frederick wasn't leveling up as quickly as everyone else. Pretty soon I'll have to decide what class to change him into next. He's at A with all three weapon types and level 19. I have 3-4 who will need a full class change soon.

fujishig

The farmer has a skill which gives him an increased chance of gaining stats when he levels, so he does become quite useful if you spend some time with him. He does need extreme babying early on, though.

Noonan

It looks like I'm getting towards the end of the game. It's much shorter than I was expecting. Still a great game but I expect a big name RPG like this to be at least 35-40 hours for the story. I know I could easily get there if I took the time to max out all relationships but I don't see what the point would be if I did it after the game ended. I've had 4 marriages and, based on the recent story battles, I definitely don't need to be any stronger than I already am.

starseed1981

What do you think your estimated completion time will be?

Noonan

I looked at a chapter listing, hoping that I was wrong about being at the end. I'm on chapter 22 at 26 hours; the game has 25 chapters. Unless there's a whole lot of story and dialogue happening during the last few, I'll be finished at under 30 hours. And I feel like I took my time with the game. There were a few nights where I'd just do a few hours of random fights to level up. I may decide to buy some of the DLC to see what it adds but I'm on the fence. I enjoy the game but there isn't much challenge to it. I don't know if I want to spend money on maps I could walk through without any trouble.

fujishig

Aren't you playing on "Normal" and Casual mode, though?

Noonan

Yeah, I am. If I had known how easy Normal was, I would have picked Hard for sure. Normal should have been called Easy. I kept grinding to prepare for some brutal fights (like Wiegraf in FFT) but they never came.

LosingMyMind

This is selling really well:

ultimaton

The more marriages you have, the more levels and characters open up. I'm at roughly 31 hours and only at chapter 15, but I've been busy makin' in game babies.

Krayzie

I am planning on picking this up on Sunday with the target b2g1 sale.

Noonan

I was thinking about grinding a few more character relationships just to open up the Paralogue levels. I'll definitely end up doing another play through on Hard at some point but EOIV and Tomb Raider are both calling my name.

fujishig

If it's pretty short maybe I'll come back to it and put EOIV on hold, since that game is a time sink.

Noonan

I finished this up over the weekend. The last two stages definitely upped the difficulty level. They were the first time I would have gotten into trouble if I weren't playing on Casual. I still could have easily gotten through them but my squad would have been 4-5 members short at the end. My save time ended up at just over 30 hours thanks to the 3 bonus paralogues I downloaded.

LosingMyMind

If you register Fire Emblem: Awakening and Shin Megami Tensei IV, you will get $30 of eshop credit. The credit can be applied to either the 3DS or Wii U eshop.