Little correction on SoV: Not every unit gets a unique spell list. In fact, most of them don't. It's only units that can reach magic classes without pitchforks that get unique spell lists, so mages, villagers, and units in the mercenary line. Also Conrad for some reason, who weirdly enough shares his spell list with Nomah. All other units get a generic apell list in the magic classes.
I loved those personal tombs that need high rank from others but E for the one who owns it. Like Ophelia and Odin that get a bonus it gives character to the units
I'm telling you, Ike is as cracked as he is jacked. I ran into him around camp forging iron swords and buying adult diapers. I asked him what the diapers were for and he told me "they contain my full power so I don't shit all over the Dawn Brigade". Then he buckled the Black Knight's armor with an Aether proc and ran away.
Surge tomes in Engage aren't just very accurate. They're perfectly accurate, having outright infinity Hit. It's impossible to miss with them. This takes what is normally a rather common utility of lighter weapons and turns it into an absolute property that no other weapon has, making them a great weapon type for when you have to deal that last bit of damage, as well as a hard counter to any dodge-tanking. Being the only tome outside the Fire/Wind/Thunder trinity of Anima magics that comprises most regular tomes in Engage, Surge has the feel of Dark/Light magic despite Engage not having a separate category for those. It would be interesting to see Surge come back in future games.
I remember the first time I played Engage Chapter 17, I had only one boss left and lost a lot of time rewinds due to people missing the final blow I needed (I think the boss ended up on an avoid tile). Then I realized I could use Surge to guarantee the final hit. Another thing I like doing with Surge is giving it to a Sage with Byleth, giving it 1-3 range instead of being locked to 1. This opens up a LOT.
Triangle attack list them having 255 hit. I wonder if that means the inability to miss isn’t hardcoded. And if you can scrape together 155+ total avoid somehow to make an low level mage miss with it in theory.
@@wouterW24 I was curious, and checked Triangle Attack's maps. As far as I could see, the first Surge-using enemy unit is a Mage that uses a droppable Elsurge on Chapter 9 (Last chapter before the Rings are stolen) It's down past Zelkov's fort, part of the bottom-right formation). Considering you have Yunaka, all the first set Emblems, and it's right next to several great pieces of Terrain, the situation seems perfect to test it out. The Mage spawns only on Hard and Maddening. On Hard, it's Level 11 with 277 hit according to TA (Elsurge 255 plus 22 from the Mage's stats). Yunaka needs 178 Avoid to make that hit 99. - 60 from Covert on Fort. 118 - 40 from Dawn Engraving. 78 - 20 from Avoid+20 Skill. 58 - 10 from A-Support with Alfred. 48 - 10 from C or higher Support with Alear and Citrine. 38. Welp, as long as your Yunaka is at least... _checks notes_ Level 6 (base level), this setup is enough to get her to 168 Avoid. At base Yunaka has 12 Speed and 8 Luck, making for 28 Avoid from her stats. Have fun maxing her stats with Meal/Tonic and the Marth Ring from there, to see just how low you can get it. Edit: I goofed hard while cooking. 178-60 is 118, not 108. So you'll need to raise Yunaka by 5 speed. Hypothetically a Speed Tonic, the Marth Ring, and 2-3 levels should suffice to make up the difference. You know, ignoring that she needs 2500 SP for Avoid+20 and high Support, so she'll get the exp naturally anyway.
Had to fix a couple numbers afterwards, but tldr a Yunaka that you level to Alfred A-Support, Alear and Citrine C-Support, Marth Bond 9, and 2500sp for Avoid+20 can do it with a Michiah Engraved weapon on a Fort. Theoretically. I don't have time to test it, and idk how practical it is
@@researchinbreeder You missed a bit there. Mystics ignore terrain Avo bonuses entirely, which is what makes them counter Coverts even without Surge. The fort doesn't give Yunaka +60 Avo against a Surge mage, it gives her 0.
Re: "Most enemies do not have a lot of res in FE1" This is underselling things a bit - almost all enemies and all but one player unit have 0 res in FE1. Player units also all have 0% res growth. The only enemies who don't I think are some dragons who negate magic damage. And the only player unit with any res base is Gotoh, who comes with 7.
15:14 I remember seeing a headcanon that the "heavier" books take up more words so apart from the tome literally being bigger, the spell takes longer to cast, and how buff your mage is does not affect how fast they can read.
my favorite thing with Celica's Echo in Engage is using it on the Corrupted right by where she starts. It's such a good introduction to Emblem Celica. She can one-round the armor knight I believe even with the reduced damage, because effective damage and she doubles, and she takes off I think about half of the soldier's health, so if you chip with Boucheron and Etie you can take care of all of the enemies in the immediate vicinity. It's really clever map design. Honestly Chapter 4 might be one of the best maps in Engage funny enough haha.
Magic in FEH is very interesting in the sense that it is very evidently a channeling type of magic There are implications of people having magic potential but basically no one that is human (or adjacent) can cast without a staff, book or artifact that channels that magic potential I know Gaiden magic implies that it's not necessary but i think it makes it be more of a "necessary to not hurt yourself"
I always saw Gaiden magic as the game treating HP as "MP". You're using your raw life force as energy to cast the spell. A bigger boom takes more life force. Why (sorry if I'm wrong) healers can't heal themselves. Wouldn't make sense to take from you to give back to you.
Couple notes: 1) In FE5, a lot of the higher rank dark tomes will actually be downgraded to the basic one if you steal them off enemies, so Salem doesn't get to play with the weirder effects like poison or autoreduction to 1 HP. 2) In FE8, Druids can also use anima magic. This is pretty easy to miss with how most people promote Knoll and Shaman!Ewan to Summoner, but it probably exists as a reason to not just make them summoners, the same way Sage's light magic access is a reason not to promote mages to Mage Knight.
Heyyyy, I did a similar thing with the same concept, but as write-ups on Reddit. It’s a very cool part of the series and there is just so many changes and nuances in every game, let alone the entire series. Looking forward to watching the rest of this video
I was hoping you'd eventually do a video for this! Great Job! I feel like more than anything else, magic feels like it changes the most from one game to another, and I always thought that helped make magic more exciting.
I think that magic can ether be decent to really great. One thing I like about gba, awakening, and three houses is that there the dark tomb are the funky and "gimmick" tombes. It gives dark mage an different feel to other magic units and also quite fun.
The best tome in FE history is definitely Arcane Blutgang! Seriously, I've been waiting for AGES to get a Marianne in FEH who uses Blutgang, and then they make it a TOME???
There is a glitch in FE1 that lets you max out Res for everyone. If you use a talisman after getting a barrier, the game won't consume it and it stays at 7 permanently.
I know you didnt mention Three Hopes since its fire emblem in name only, but its really funny you mention how fitting teaching other characters spells would be fitting in 3 Houses and that exact mechanic appears for spells and combat arts in 3 Hopes adjacent to the support and pair up system
Aww, the three houses section misses one of the most "wait, what?" in the individual spell lists -- Hilda and her Bolting access. Why a physical unit who, at best, has 35% MAG growth, is one of three (counting DLC, 2 not) characters with Bolting access (and one of six, 4 if not counting DLC, with access to siege tomes in general), surprises me -- the other siege users make sense, mostly, because they're on more magically inclined characters; Hanneman and Dorothea have Meteor, as does Anna (DLC) who at least has a history of magic-using classes in Trickster, where as Manuela has Bolting (as well as Constance, also DLC).
Bolting also stands out for how hard it is to get use out of without DLC, as Hilda is a magically inept fighter who excels much more in physical classes, while Manuela is saddled with a bane in Reason and cones in chapter 8 at the earliest.
My favorite trick with the Celica Emblem from Engage is that while engaged Echo allows a high Magic unit (i.e. Celine or Gregory) in a Mystic class (for the 20% bonus damage) to ORKO many enemies regardless of speed and even kill two enemy Corrupted Generals in the same attack with the Seraphim tome.
Berwick has 3 forms of Anima magic. Each of the three mages primaries in one and secondaries in another. Thunder: 1-2 range. The thunder specialist has an archer-specific +evasion skill which gives him some utility if there's no heavy armor enemies, although he's restricted to fighting filler archers because he's still squishy enough not to risk getting hit against anything else. His prf is a brave tome and he has Adept, so occasionally he just pops off. Wind: low might, multistrike. The higher level tomes offer the same might and additional strikes. The wind mage prf is 4 attacks. The wind mage has a once-every-7-turns skill that boosts her might and hit, making her the best option for taking out powerful bosses, although she is the weakest against generic enemies. Fire: highest might, highest hit. The Est promotes into a fire mage. Her prf gives her damage in the high 30s. She is strongest against other enemies with high res that the thunder and wind tomes will struggle to punch through. There's also Dark magic but that's 90% enemy only.
On the off chance you see this: In Three Hopes a character can teach a spell to an adjutant if they use the spell often enough and the adjutant had the reason or faith level to learn it.
Quick thing I noticed about the luna tome-- at 22:55 , you said the accuracy of luna was reduced from 45 to 50. I'm assuming that was an error(?), because I'm pretty sure it went from 95 in fe7 to 50 in fe8 (at least, according to the fe wiki).
I was thinking this earlier and not too surprised you didn’t mention it, but what about the magical physical weapons? Like, should we count the Levin sword as a Thunder tome? What about the shock stick from awakening & the Flame lance in engage? I do wish Soren’s Anima focus skill triggered off of these magic weapons, it would be incredibly funny, but also pretty interesting, specifically for the hurricane axe and Levin sword Aside from that, this has been a very interesting look through and I’m definitely going to rewatch it a few times!! X3c
rare moment I am early to comment! hey pal, love ur vids. my friend who introduced me to FE years ago also introduced me to ur vids. Hope all is well and you keep making interesting content! P.S. FE9 is my fave, Ike is my goat, whats yours?
You missed a “How’s Everyone” tome in FE12. Merric’s tome has 8 mt, 100 hit and a massive 30 crit with a respectable 20 uses. Etzel is also very useful in FE12 because he can survive a hit from wyverns and one-shot them with Excalibur. Such an overlooked unit. Edit: most characters in SoV do have a resistance growth, but the highest is still a single digit percentage. It’s very similar to FE3 where every character has a 3% resistance growth. It’s going to happen a few times in any given playthrough, but it’s not going to make much of an impact.
I personally wish we had more fun toned with effects and found engage disappointing. I want things like Luna, nosferatu, lighting, waste, mire, eff v cav. More fun things I can't even think of.
My In-verse theory about 3H magic system is that it's been stated Sothis Directly created humans in Fodlan and that they were different from the original inhabitants. So maybe humans and fodlan use magic differently because they've been generically altered
In a number of games, it seems like all the posing is necessary to cast a spell properly. In that sense, I can understand why a tome being physically heavier can be a real penalty.
It funny you say that magic is the worst in radiant dawn because I definitely consistently fielded 5 or more mages in my final team….I even did a play through with my final team including every mage 😅…..it didn’t help that my favorite characters from radiant dawn growing up was tormad
One minor, but still important to me, thing about the FE1 section is that almost NOBODY has any RES, player or enemy. It's not that the RES stat is low, it's essentially non-existent unless you use a Talisman.
For FE12, there is another tome you get from the "How's Everyone" feature: Merric's Book. Merric's Book is basically a Shaver tome with 1 more might and 10 more crit. It's a really good find since it's relatively strong for a D rank tome. And while you mentioned Bolganone comparing it to Katarina's Tome, it is worth nothing that it is basically unobtainable until Endgame, where Elice joins with the only copy. Also, they did get rid of Blizzard and Fire tomes doing super effective damage on Fire and Ice Dragons respectively, which is kinda lame. FE3 Bolganone is so funny in how any mage that uses it will always obliterate every Ice Dragon in the game.
High Wt Tomes makes sense in older games bc they have more pages, and not being offset by Con represents having to turn so many pages. Source: I made it up.
I feel like the purpose of Dark Mage/Bishop is because, with Gremory being female-only, Hubert would otherwise be left without an ideal magic class between the beginner and master rank classes. And to add the flavor of the dark-casting mages aligned with villainous factions.
I dislike how dark magic works in Three Houses in practice. I do like how black magic is mostly normal, where the special effects are stuff like range, crit, or just big might, so it's just numbers, but then dark magic can do stuff like inflict debuffs or ignore res. I also like its unique aesthetics. It feels different from black magic, at least a bit. It has a lot of problems, though. In the video, you mention that dark magic is not more prevalent amongst men despite its class being male locked. This is an understatement, as it's actually more prevalent among women. The only man to learn a full set of dark magic is Hubert, and while Jeritza gets to learn one singular dark spell he has his own unique magic class he'd likely prefer. The Dark Mage line pretty much only exists only for Hubert, who may prefer Dark Knight anyway. (I find Dark Mage and Dark Bishop sort of work for a support oriented Ignatz too, but he doesn't actually get any dark magic of his own, which makes that end up feeling weird) Other issues stem from the fact that dark magic and black magic skills are separated. Warlock only buffs black magic, so Lysithea and Hapi are stuck without a good class between Mage and Gremory due to the inexplicable gender lock on Dark Bishop. This also messes up Edelgard and Jeritza, who have both Black and Dark magic. They get Dark Magic Range +1 at S reason, which only helps some of their spells. But Edelgard also gets Black Magic Crit +10 with her budding talent, which buffs the other half of her spell list in a different way. It's very awkward when compared to other units who get to buff their entire spell lists at once. Also, while not directly related to dark magic, I think Edelgard's unique classes should have been able to use magic. It would have been a magic using armor class, which I don't think we've had yet, so it would have made it feel unique and possibly encouraged more people to use it instead of just putting her on a wyvern. The game seems to agree with me, weirdly enough, since Armored Lord and Emperor increase her strength and magic growths in equal measure. They're the only classes unable to use magic that raise magic growth, which makes me think they were planned at some point to use magic, and I don't know why they didn't go through with it.
Stronger tomes are obviously heavier because they're more difficult to cast and thus the books have more pages! ...that was meant as a joke, but that actually might be a good explanation...
While I like it when magic feels different from physical weapons, I prefer how later games handle it compared to FE1. To me it makes the mages themselves feel inconsequential.
Fellow por magic defender spotted! Another thing about Rd magic users is that they all feel so slow, barring the few early chapters of Tormod. Not only you're hitting decent res stats, they often can't reach doubling thresholds against armor knights, who are reasonably fast-ish in this game.
@@BlazingRaptor it was an example, the knights aren't fast enough that they can't be doubled Heck late game knights have 24-26 AS, and even the slowest mages ever have 30 spd cap, which is enough to double them
@@mysmallnoman The fact you need to put in effort to double them IS my point though. With any other fe game mages well, do their job and actually kill armors at base. Heck, sometimes they still survive being doubled bc they have a res stat and it's rd magic
@BlazingRaptor you can forge tomes and you have enough mag to 2HKO at base, units like soren and Rhys can do that for example, 2HKOing many enemies And it's not much effort because the scaling of enemies stats between chapters is small lol, for example having 25-26 AS is enough to double like 95% of P3 enemies
Agreed that the magic triangle is often completly uselles since magic unit very often have strong res and low def, so it just weirdly backward. Shoutout to RD for having both a anima triangle and a light/dark/anima wich sound cool on paper until you realize it's RD and that in just never come out (and then Hard mode don't have triangle at all) FE4 also have that thing where the anima reflect the weapon triangle and each line have different weight, but while there is only a 2 might difference between wind and fire, they have 11! weight difference, in a game with no way to mitigate weight. It just make fire (and lighting to a lesser extend) feel very bad since even if you have pursuit you can't really use it and make Azelle first impression even worse. In general I also feel like light is very wasted in the series, in many game it boil down to a bad sidearm for your staffer or a just worse version of anima since Dark magic is often the only tomes allowed to have wacky effect. In particular I'm half conviced the reason Athos have Aureola in FE7 is because you basically cannot use it FE6 if you don't hate yourself ( _Cough_ _Cough_ another reason to make Guinivere playable _Cough_ _Cough_ )
Actually, in FE4, it's even worse. All Anima tomes of the same rank have identical might. Wind, Fire, and Thunder all have 8 might, but Wind has 2 weight, Thunder has 7, and Fire has 12. The same is true of El- tomes. They all have 14 might, and all weigh the same as the lower-rank tome of the same type. In fact, the only time a higher rank Anima tome has increased weight is with the holy weapons, and even then, Forseti (5 weight) still weighs less than Thunder, and Mjolnir (10 weight) still weighs less than Fire. FE4 doesn't even pretend it cares about balancing the magic types.
@@jemolk8945 Yeah your right, I think my brain just refused to belive it would just worse with no compensation. Even axe at least deal significantly more damage to compensate the horrible weight
@@mysmallnoman The thing is, there are usually a lot more physical units than magical, both on your side and as enemies, and on top of that there exist a lot more physical units with bad or merely okay def than magic units with bad or just okay res. If physical weapons are the default, and magic units are highly vulnerable to attack from them, it will usually be preferable to use one of your many physical units to deal with an enemy mage, rather than using one of your rather scarce supply of glass cannons on a target they're noticeably less effective against. The magic triangle helps that a little, but it doesn't make nearly as big a difference as the physical one, just because of the relative rarity of mages and the relative lack of variation between those mages.
Bru, the shade to my element Darkness. Dark is the "axe" of the tome world and so is incredibly op'd if you focus your druids/dark mages into speed. Coupled eith defense they literally can solo the game. Thats what i did with my girl Sophie, especially since shes infamous for being pathetic, i built her up where she soloed the map prior to the dark tome bonus level. I had to restock her with fluxes because she ran out of a full inventory of them.
Magic in RD isn't bad, contrary to a popular belief Yes enemies have res and tomes have low mt, however every magic used has tons of magic at base that they deal more dmg than enemies have res, resulting in most of them 2HKOing enemies at base Micaiah has Thany and 80% mag growth, ilyana has 12/14 mag base and can use a spirit dust for more mag, also you can easily just forge a thunder tome with better hit and mt lol Pellas and Sanaki have tons of magic and strong tomes, calil, soren, and even rhys start with high enough mag base/growth that they 2HKO most enemies
The problem is that mages have weak weapons for most of the game. Outside of the bargains in Part 1 endgame, mages have to work with El level tomes for almost the whole game before Part 4. Doesn't help that long-range magic got nerfed to hell. Sanaki can at least do heavy damage to most enemies, but most other mages aren't so lucky, as they're stuck with Elfire and its 7 might for most of the game. When physical units get weapons that dwarf that as early as in Part 1 endgame... mages just get left in the dust, especially when they often struggle to double armored units (who, by the way, have much greater resistance in RD). Also of note, Soren is stuck on the worst route for mages BY FAR, and Pelleas, aside from coming underleveled, tends to have accuracy problems thanks to being stuck with the two most inaccurate magic types, to say nothing of how terrible dark magic is in RD.
I generally dislike juggernauting and 1 rounding in FE games. I want to use tactics mixed with character building to beat the games. Not to have broken characters give me victory on a platter.
I have nothing much to add on most of this (rip RD Mages, I feel ONE of "tone down tome might", "reduce magic class speed caps" and "give enemies Res stats" would've been a fine nerf, but all three at once?!) but I do want to mention more things about Engage magic I find fun. First is Byleth. On a Mystical (which has the interesting drawback of being incompatible with Mage Knight), Byleth gives +2 tome range, which leads to even longer Thunder snipes or Surge beyond 1 range, or just Bolganoning things over walls. The downside is you give up Speed Instruct. Soren also gives Dragon units doubled Crit on tomes, which is very, very funny with a certain lategame unit. (Who also happens to have the most hilariously unfitting voice and personality for Soren's one-liners, it's great)
@@diegotimon4570 Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a long-lasting disorder in which a person experiences uncontrollable and recurring thoughts (obsessions), engages in repetitive behaviors (compulsions), or both. People with OCD have time-consuming symptoms that can cause significant distress or interfere with daily life.
Little correction on SoV: Not every unit gets a unique spell list. In fact, most of them don't. It's only units that can reach magic classes without pitchforks that get unique spell lists, so mages, villagers, and units in the mercenary line. Also Conrad for some reason, who weirdly enough shares his spell list with Nomah.
All other units get a generic apell list in the magic classes.
I loved those personal tombs that need high rank from others but E for the one who owns it. Like Ophelia and Odin that get a bonus it gives character to the units
Yeah i prefer we had more perosnal weapons that work like.
I'm telling you, Ike is as cracked as he is jacked. I ran into him around camp forging iron swords and buying adult diapers. I asked him what the diapers were for and he told me "they contain my full power so I don't shit all over the Dawn Brigade". Then he buckled the Black Knight's armor with an Aether proc and ran away.
Surge tomes in Engage aren't just very accurate. They're perfectly accurate, having outright infinity Hit. It's impossible to miss with them. This takes what is normally a rather common utility of lighter weapons and turns it into an absolute property that no other weapon has, making them a great weapon type for when you have to deal that last bit of damage, as well as a hard counter to any dodge-tanking. Being the only tome outside the Fire/Wind/Thunder trinity of Anima magics that comprises most regular tomes in Engage, Surge has the feel of Dark/Light magic despite Engage not having a separate category for those. It would be interesting to see Surge come back in future games.
I remember the first time I played Engage Chapter 17, I had only one boss left and lost a lot of time rewinds due to people missing the final blow I needed (I think the boss ended up on an avoid tile). Then I realized I could use Surge to guarantee the final hit.
Another thing I like doing with Surge is giving it to a Sage with Byleth, giving it 1-3 range instead of being locked to 1. This opens up a LOT.
Triangle attack list them having 255 hit. I wonder if that means the inability to miss isn’t hardcoded. And if you can scrape together 155+ total avoid somehow to make an low level mage miss with it in theory.
@@wouterW24 I was curious, and checked Triangle Attack's maps. As far as I could see, the first Surge-using enemy unit is a Mage that uses a droppable Elsurge on Chapter 9 (Last chapter before the Rings are stolen) It's down past Zelkov's fort, part of the bottom-right formation). Considering you have Yunaka, all the first set Emblems, and it's right next to several great pieces of Terrain, the situation seems perfect to test it out.
The Mage spawns only on Hard and Maddening. On Hard, it's Level 11 with 277 hit according to TA (Elsurge 255 plus 22 from the Mage's stats).
Yunaka needs 178 Avoid to make that hit 99.
- 60 from Covert on Fort. 118
- 40 from Dawn Engraving. 78
- 20 from Avoid+20 Skill. 58
- 10 from A-Support with Alfred. 48
- 10 from C or higher Support with Alear and Citrine. 38.
Welp, as long as your Yunaka is at least... _checks notes_ Level 6 (base level), this setup is enough to get her to 168 Avoid. At base Yunaka has 12 Speed and 8 Luck, making for 28 Avoid from her stats. Have fun maxing her stats with Meal/Tonic and the Marth Ring from there, to see just how low you can get it.
Edit: I goofed hard while cooking. 178-60 is 118, not 108. So you'll need to raise Yunaka by 5 speed. Hypothetically a Speed Tonic, the Marth Ring, and 2-3 levels should suffice to make up the difference. You know, ignoring that she needs 2500 SP for Avoid+20 and high Support, so she'll get the exp naturally anyway.
Had to fix a couple numbers afterwards, but tldr a Yunaka that you level to Alfred A-Support, Alear and Citrine C-Support, Marth Bond 9, and 2500sp for Avoid+20 can do it with a Michiah Engraved weapon on a Fort. Theoretically. I don't have time to test it, and idk how practical it is
@@researchinbreeder You missed a bit there. Mystics ignore terrain Avo bonuses entirely, which is what makes them counter Coverts even without Surge. The fort doesn't give Yunaka +60 Avo against a Surge mage, it gives her 0.
Re: "Most enemies do not have a lot of res in FE1"
This is underselling things a bit - almost all enemies and all but one player unit have 0 res in FE1. Player units also all have 0% res growth.
The only enemies who don't I think are some dragons who negate magic damage. And the only player unit with any res base is Gotoh, who comes with 7.
Yeah "the vast majority of enemies have no res" would have been more accurate
@@actuallizardI mean, 0 is not a lot
15:14 I remember seeing a headcanon that the "heavier" books take up more words so apart from the tome literally being bigger, the spell takes longer to cast, and how buff your mage is does not affect how fast they can read.
my favorite thing with Celica's Echo in Engage is using it on the Corrupted right by where she starts. It's such a good introduction to Emblem Celica. She can one-round the armor knight I believe even with the reduced damage, because effective damage and she doubles, and she takes off I think about half of the soldier's health, so if you chip with Boucheron and Etie you can take care of all of the enemies in the immediate vicinity. It's really clever map design. Honestly Chapter 4 might be one of the best maps in Engage funny enough haha.
Magic in FEH is very interesting in the sense that it is very evidently a channeling type of magic
There are implications of people having magic potential but basically no one that is human (or adjacent) can cast without a staff, book or artifact that channels that magic potential
I know Gaiden magic implies that it's not necessary but i think it makes it be more of a "necessary to not hurt yourself"
I always saw Gaiden magic as the game treating HP as "MP". You're using your raw life force as energy to cast the spell. A bigger boom takes more life force. Why (sorry if I'm wrong) healers can't heal themselves. Wouldn't make sense to take from you to give back to you.
Couple notes:
1) In FE5, a lot of the higher rank dark tomes will actually be downgraded to the basic one if you steal them off enemies, so Salem doesn't get to play with the weirder effects like poison or autoreduction to 1 HP.
2) In FE8, Druids can also use anima magic. This is pretty easy to miss with how most people promote Knoll and Shaman!Ewan to Summoner, but it probably exists as a reason to not just make them summoners, the same way Sage's light magic access is a reason not to promote mages to Mage Knight.
Fire Emblem
So true bestie
Couldn't have said it better myself
Fireemblem
🗣🗣🗣
FE, in fact.
Sage is my favourite class ever.
And "mounted sages" are even better!
The "Flying Sage" from Engage is definitely a fun class
Soren is now in the Dawn Brigade
Me when I misspeak
He still does more to help the Dawn Brigade in parts 1 and 3 than Fiona does. I'd count him as part of the team.
Fiona stands on a ledge in 3-13. Value!
i’ll be for real i did not realize this video was an hour long when i clicked on it but i’m not mad
It's hard to keep these "a look at the whole series" videos concise haha. Even an hour long video is spending < 5 minutes per game on average
Heyyyy, I did a similar thing with the same concept, but as write-ups on Reddit. It’s a very cool part of the series and there is just so many changes and nuances in every game, let alone the entire series. Looking forward to watching the rest of this video
I was hoping you'd eventually do a video for this! Great Job!
I feel like more than anything else, magic feels like it changes the most from one game to another, and I always thought that helped make magic more exciting.
I think that magic can ether be decent to really great. One thing I like about gba, awakening, and three houses is that there the dark tomb are the funky and "gimmick" tombes. It gives dark mage an different feel to other magic units and also quite fun.
Even though I will never play FE1 or 2 I like that you cover them in all your videos. The added context on the subject just reinforces the subject.
If you want a less clunky FE1 experience, there's actually a fe8 remaster of it on feuniverse if you want to check it out
Wait, a 1 hour long video??!!!
This is where the fun begins
The best tome in FE history is definitely Arcane Blutgang!
Seriously, I've been waiting for AGES to get a Marianne in FEH who uses Blutgang, and then they make it a TOME???
There is a glitch in FE1 that lets you max out Res for everyone. If you use a talisman after getting a barrier, the game won't consume it and it stays at 7 permanently.
Azelle on the thumbnail. I have to watch all the way through now
I know you didnt mention Three Hopes since its fire emblem in name only, but its really funny you mention how fitting teaching other characters spells would be fitting in 3 Houses and that exact mechanic appears for spells and combat arts in 3 Hopes adjacent to the support and pair up system
9:52 you can use star shards to cap their magic pretty easily
Hi Lizard!
Great overview! These are some of my favorite videos.
You’re like my favorite channel now! You’re awesome! 🎉🎉😊
OMG I’m so happy u used my song !! Great video as usual👌🔥
I love ALL ActualLizard videos!!!! ❤
Aww, the three houses section misses one of the most "wait, what?" in the individual spell lists -- Hilda and her Bolting access. Why a physical unit who, at best, has 35% MAG growth, is one of three (counting DLC, 2 not) characters with Bolting access (and one of six, 4 if not counting DLC, with access to siege tomes in general), surprises me -- the other siege users make sense, mostly, because they're on more magically inclined characters; Hanneman and Dorothea have Meteor, as does Anna (DLC) who at least has a history of magic-using classes in Trickster, where as Manuela has Bolting (as well as Constance, also DLC).
Bolting also stands out for how hard it is to get use out of without DLC, as Hilda is a magically inept fighter who excels much more in physical classes, while Manuela is saddled with a bane in Reason and cones in chapter 8 at the earliest.
To be fair, it does feel in character for Hilda to decide to use siege magic so she doesn't have to move as much
I thought Azel would be like paper, but he started doubling and became my favorite magic user.
My favorite trick with the Celica Emblem from Engage is that while engaged Echo allows a high Magic unit (i.e. Celine or Gregory) in a Mystic class (for the 20% bonus damage) to ORKO many enemies regardless of speed and even kill two enemy Corrupted Generals in the same attack with the Seraphim tome.
Amazing as always!
I LOVE ACTUALLIZARD
i feel like there shouldve been a mention of how the resistance stat in thracia works here, but everything else was fairly comprehensive, good video 👍
This is an interesting topic! Guess i know what I'll be watching this evening!
So the best analogue to FE1 tomes would be FE10 crossbows, I guess.
Berwick has 3 forms of Anima magic. Each of the three mages primaries in one and secondaries in another.
Thunder: 1-2 range. The thunder specialist has an archer-specific +evasion skill which gives him some utility if there's no heavy armor enemies, although he's restricted to fighting filler archers because he's still squishy enough not to risk getting hit against anything else. His prf is a brave tome and he has Adept, so occasionally he just pops off.
Wind: low might, multistrike. The higher level tomes offer the same might and additional strikes. The wind mage prf is 4 attacks. The wind mage has a once-every-7-turns skill that boosts her might and hit, making her the best option for taking out powerful bosses, although she is the weakest against generic enemies.
Fire: highest might, highest hit. The Est promotes into a fire mage. Her prf gives her damage in the high 30s. She is strongest against other enemies with high res that the thunder and wind tomes will struggle to punch through.
There's also Dark magic but that's 90% enemy only.
On the off chance you see this: In Three Hopes a character can teach a spell to an adjutant if they use the spell often enough and the adjutant had the reason or faith level to learn it.
Oh hell yeah an hour this is gonna be good
What a great way to spend an hour on a Sunday :)
Quick thing I noticed about the luna tome-- at 22:55 , you said the accuracy of luna was reduced from 45 to 50. I'm assuming that was an error(?), because I'm pretty sure it went from 95 in fe7 to 50 in fe8 (at least, according to the fe wiki).
sorry if this was unclear, I was saying the previous tome accuracy in fe7 (95) was reduced by 45, to arrive at the new tome accuracy of 50
love your vids
I was thinking this earlier and not too surprised you didn’t mention it, but what about the magical physical weapons?
Like, should we count the Levin sword as a Thunder tome? What about the shock stick from awakening & the Flame lance in engage?
I do wish Soren’s Anima focus skill triggered off of these magic weapons, it would be incredibly funny, but also pretty interesting, specifically for the hurricane axe and Levin sword
Aside from that, this has been a very interesting look through and I’m definitely going to rewatch it a few times!! X3c
Iirc, he talked about the magic swords in the sword video
You forgot to mention the 14th emblem ring in Engage: Olwen's dire thunder is also pretty neat
I like to imagine Azelle in FE4's Prologue is to teach you how sad it is to be a footlocked unit
rare moment I am early to comment!
hey pal, love ur vids. my friend who introduced me to FE years ago also introduced me to ur vids. Hope all is well and you keep making interesting content!
P.S. FE9 is my fave, Ike is my goat, whats yours?
You missed a “How’s Everyone” tome in FE12. Merric’s tome has 8 mt, 100 hit and a massive 30 crit with a respectable 20 uses. Etzel is also very useful in FE12 because he can survive a hit from wyverns and one-shot them with Excalibur. Such an overlooked unit.
Edit: most characters in SoV do have a resistance growth, but the highest is still a single digit percentage. It’s very similar to FE3 where every character has a 3% resistance growth. It’s going to happen a few times in any given playthrough, but it’s not going to make much of an impact.
I personally wish we had more fun toned with effects and found engage disappointing. I want things like Luna, nosferatu, lighting, waste, mire, eff v cav. More fun things I can't even think of.
Magic is Everything
My In-verse theory about 3H magic system is that it's been stated Sothis Directly created humans in Fodlan and that they were different from the original inhabitants.
So maybe humans and fodlan use magic differently because they've been generically altered
In a number of games, it seems like all the posing is necessary to cast a spell properly. In that sense, I can understand why a tome being physically heavier can be a real penalty.
Engaging with Emblem Byleth on a magical unit to get a 3 range Elsurge gives me life
I'm still going to give my lovely Luthier love, no matter what! ❤
It funny you say that magic is the worst in radiant dawn because I definitely consistently fielded 5 or more mages in my final team….I even did a play through with my final team including every mage 😅…..it didn’t help that my favorite characters from radiant dawn growing up was tormad
Magic is everything!
One minor, but still important to me, thing about the FE1 section is that almost NOBODY has any RES, player or enemy. It's not that the RES stat is low, it's essentially non-existent unless you use a Talisman.
For FE12, there is another tome you get from the "How's Everyone" feature: Merric's Book. Merric's Book is basically a Shaver tome with 1 more might and 10 more crit. It's a really good find since it's relatively strong for a D rank tome. And while you mentioned Bolganone comparing it to Katarina's Tome, it is worth nothing that it is basically unobtainable until Endgame, where Elice joins with the only copy.
Also, they did get rid of Blizzard and Fire tomes doing super effective damage on Fire and Ice Dragons respectively, which is kinda lame. FE3 Bolganone is so funny in how any mage that uses it will always obliterate every Ice Dragon in the game.
High Wt Tomes makes sense in older games bc they have more pages, and not being offset by Con represents having to turn so many pages.
Source: I made it up.
Source(s): Kaga told me about it in a dream
@AzumarillConGafasBv it was meant as a joke answer, but in hindsight that's not super clear lol
2:00 wait did you mean might or weight?
I feel like the purpose of Dark Mage/Bishop is because, with Gremory being female-only, Hubert would otherwise be left without an ideal magic class between the beginner and master rank classes. And to add the flavor of the dark-casting mages aligned with villainous factions.
I’m here because I heard Sharena was in this video 🥰
it would have been funny if you included how magic is in fire emblem heroes as a bonus game to cover
Severe not having a horse syndrome XD that made me laugh harder than it should have
I dislike how dark magic works in Three Houses in practice. I do like how black magic is mostly normal, where the special effects are stuff like range, crit, or just big might, so it's just numbers, but then dark magic can do stuff like inflict debuffs or ignore res. I also like its unique aesthetics. It feels different from black magic, at least a bit. It has a lot of problems, though. In the video, you mention that dark magic is not more prevalent amongst men despite its class being male locked. This is an understatement, as it's actually more prevalent among women. The only man to learn a full set of dark magic is Hubert, and while Jeritza gets to learn one singular dark spell he has his own unique magic class he'd likely prefer. The Dark Mage line pretty much only exists only for Hubert, who may prefer Dark Knight anyway. (I find Dark Mage and Dark Bishop sort of work for a support oriented Ignatz too, but he doesn't actually get any dark magic of his own, which makes that end up feeling weird)
Other issues stem from the fact that dark magic and black magic skills are separated. Warlock only buffs black magic, so Lysithea and Hapi are stuck without a good class between Mage and Gremory due to the inexplicable gender lock on Dark Bishop. This also messes up Edelgard and Jeritza, who have both Black and Dark magic. They get Dark Magic Range +1 at S reason, which only helps some of their spells. But Edelgard also gets Black Magic Crit +10 with her budding talent, which buffs the other half of her spell list in a different way. It's very awkward when compared to other units who get to buff their entire spell lists at once.
Also, while not directly related to dark magic, I think Edelgard's unique classes should have been able to use magic. It would have been a magic using armor class, which I don't think we've had yet, so it would have made it feel unique and possibly encouraged more people to use it instead of just putting her on a wyvern. The game seems to agree with me, weirdly enough, since Armored Lord and Emperor increase her strength and magic growths in equal measure. They're the only classes unable to use magic that raise magic growth, which makes me think they were planned at some point to use magic, and I don't know why they didn't go through with it.
Gender locked classes are the bane of my life like why do they still exist man it’s 2024(or whenever three houses came out)
You know, I think that was the first time I've ever heard someone say they wished 3H's units were less unique lol
dragonquest mention with lizard art text boxe
Ah nosferatu, the most confused weapon in FE history
Second (Just like Linde, the second mage in the series)
Anyways, thanks for posting smth I can watch while eating lunch. Your vids are informative while entertaining.
Liked as soon as I saw azel
Stronger tomes are obviously heavier because they're more difficult to cast and thus the books have more pages!
...that was meant as a joke, but that actually might be a good explanation...
Radiant Dawn Magic: Having the best animations in any fire emblem game.
While I like it when magic feels different from physical weapons, I prefer how later games handle it compared to FE1. To me it makes the mages themselves feel inconsequential.
Fellow por magic defender spotted!
Another thing about Rd magic users is that they all feel so slow, barring the few early chapters of Tormod. Not only you're hitting decent res stats, they often can't reach doubling thresholds against armor knights, who are reasonably fast-ish in this game.
That's not true lol
Base ilyana can double knights, especially with promo
Soren with transfers and a lvl up can double stuff
@ You having to list out transfer bonuses with a level shows its an exception and not a rule lol
@@BlazingRaptor it was an example, the knights aren't fast enough that they can't be doubled
Heck late game knights have 24-26 AS, and even the slowest mages ever have 30 spd cap, which is enough to double them
@@mysmallnoman The fact you need to put in effort to double them IS my point though. With any other fe game mages well, do their job and actually kill armors at base. Heck, sometimes they still survive being doubled bc they have a res stat and it's rd magic
@BlazingRaptor you can forge tomes and you have enough mag to 2HKO at base, units like soren and Rhys can do that for example, 2HKOing many enemies
And it's not much effort because the scaling of enemies stats between chapters is small lol, for example having 25-26 AS is enough to double like 95% of P3 enemies
Agreed that the magic triangle is often completly uselles since magic unit very often have strong res and low def, so it just weirdly backward. Shoutout to RD for having both a anima triangle and a light/dark/anima wich sound cool on paper until you realize it's RD and that in just never come out (and then Hard mode don't have triangle at all)
FE4 also have that thing where the anima reflect the weapon triangle and each line have different weight, but while there is only a 2 might difference between wind and fire, they have 11! weight difference, in a game with no way to mitigate weight. It just make fire (and lighting to a lesser extend) feel very bad since even if you have pursuit you can't really use it and make Azelle first impression even worse. In general I also feel like light is very wasted in the series, in many game it boil down to a bad sidearm for your staffer or a just worse version of anima since Dark magic is often the only tomes allowed to have wacky effect. In particular I'm half conviced the reason Athos have Aureola in FE7 is because you basically cannot use it FE6 if you don't hate yourself ( _Cough_ _Cough_ another reason to make Guinivere playable _Cough_ _Cough_ )
Actually, in FE4, it's even worse. All Anima tomes of the same rank have identical might. Wind, Fire, and Thunder all have 8 might, but Wind has 2 weight, Thunder has 7, and Fire has 12. The same is true of El- tomes. They all have 14 might, and all weigh the same as the lower-rank tome of the same type. In fact, the only time a higher rank Anima tome has increased weight is with the holy weapons, and even then, Forseti (5 weight) still weighs less than Thunder, and Mjolnir (10 weight) still weighs less than Fire. FE4 doesn't even pretend it cares about balancing the magic types.
@@jemolk8945 Yeah your right, I think my brain just refused to belive it would just worse with no compensation. Even axe at least deal significantly more damage to compensate the horrible weight
@@AliScrooge Yeah, it's completely insane.
That's like saying Weapons triangle is useless because physical units have good def than res
@@mysmallnoman The thing is, there are usually a lot more physical units than magical, both on your side and as enemies, and on top of that there exist a lot more physical units with bad or merely okay def than magic units with bad or just okay res. If physical weapons are the default, and magic units are highly vulnerable to attack from them, it will usually be preferable to use one of your many physical units to deal with an enemy mage, rather than using one of your rather scarce supply of glass cannons on a target they're noticeably less effective against. The magic triangle helps that a little, but it doesn't make nearly as big a difference as the physical one, just because of the relative rarity of mages and the relative lack of variation between those mages.
Bru, the shade to my element Darkness. Dark is the "axe" of the tome world and so is incredibly op'd if you focus your druids/dark mages into speed. Coupled eith defense they literally can solo the game. Thats what i did with my girl Sophie, especially since shes infamous for being pathetic, i built her up where she soloed the map prior to the dark tome bonus level. I had to restock her with fluxes because she ran out of a full inventory of them.
Why the heck is Excalibur a tome and not a sword?
Magic in RD isn't bad, contrary to a popular belief
Yes enemies have res and tomes have low mt, however every magic used has tons of magic at base that they deal more dmg than enemies have res, resulting in most of them 2HKOing enemies at base
Micaiah has Thany and 80% mag growth, ilyana has 12/14 mag base and can use a spirit dust for more mag, also you can easily just forge a thunder tome with better hit and mt lol
Pellas and Sanaki have tons of magic and strong tomes, calil, soren, and even rhys start with high enough mag base/growth that they 2HKO most enemies
The problem is that mages have weak weapons for most of the game. Outside of the bargains in Part 1 endgame, mages have to work with El level tomes for almost the whole game before Part 4. Doesn't help that long-range magic got nerfed to hell. Sanaki can at least do heavy damage to most enemies, but most other mages aren't so lucky, as they're stuck with Elfire and its 7 might for most of the game. When physical units get weapons that dwarf that as early as in Part 1 endgame... mages just get left in the dust, especially when they often struggle to double armored units (who, by the way, have much greater resistance in RD). Also of note, Soren is stuck on the worst route for mages BY FAR, and Pelleas, aside from coming underleveled, tends to have accuracy problems thanks to being stuck with the two most inaccurate magic types, to say nothing of how terrible dark magic is in RD.
I loved magic in FE1 and 3 thanks to its fixed nature. It was surprisingly balanced against weapon use damagewise.
I generally dislike juggernauting and 1 rounding in FE games. I want to use tactics mixed with character building to beat the games. Not to have broken characters give me victory on a platter.
@@Nyug3rsame
... History of LQBTQ?
Also good videos
I have nothing much to add on most of this (rip RD Mages, I feel ONE of "tone down tome might", "reduce magic class speed caps" and "give enemies Res stats" would've been a fine nerf, but all three at once?!) but I do want to mention more things about Engage magic I find fun. First is Byleth. On a Mystical (which has the interesting drawback of being incompatible with Mage Knight), Byleth gives +2 tome range, which leads to even longer Thunder snipes or Surge beyond 1 range, or just Bolganoning things over walls. The downside is you give up Speed Instruct. Soren also gives Dragon units doubled Crit on tomes, which is very, very funny with a certain lategame unit. (Who also happens to have the most hilariously unfitting voice and personality for Soren's one-liners, it's great)
I hate how they nerfed Thani in Engage, the animation is so much worse! I wanna see Micaiah drop a nuke again!
wow thats long😍
books are heavy because they hold the souls of the dead to power the magic.
its pronounced Lind!
linde=lind
Wait wait wait… we HAVE to talk about Dancer Hubert 💀💀💀
53:17
I hate fire emblem
Then don't watch a fire emblem video
@@diegotimon4570 Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a long-lasting disorder in which a person experiences uncontrollable and recurring thoughts (obsessions), engages in repetitive behaviors (compulsions), or both. People with OCD have time-consuming symptoms that can cause significant distress or interfere with daily life.
So true
^ this nibba thinks im joking
Spoken like a true fire emblem fan
Houses IMO has the best magic system but for the love of god get rid of Warp in that system.