The Good Unit / Bad Unit Problem
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 พ.ค. 2024
- The Good Unit / Bad Unit Problem is the question on whether it's worse to have units that are so good that they make other units pointless, or to have units who are so bad to be pointless themselves, and how the two by necessity must exist in some form, be that at a developer intention level or a player meta level. It's a complicated subject, but let's talk about it anyway.
Mark Rosewater article, "When Good Cards Go Bad" - magic.wizards.com/en/news/mak...
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Every FE6 playthrough is a challenge run because Roy is force deployed
ch 14 is also special because its a double escort mission
Roy isn't THAT bad, because his stats actually favor his survivability in a game where hit rates are trash, AND a game that happens to just have more axe enemies than pretty much any other game... AND axes are trash in this game, which isn't the norm, either.
Eliwood, however.......
@@KuroiRenge eliwood??? look at lyn, sure, she has speed to double everyone... but so does my hector
The only problem with Roy is that he's in a game where being able to mount would be very useful
FE 6 is the legendary tale of the Boy Lord getting carried by his mercenary troupe.
I suspect one reason Ests exist mechanically is actually for lower difficulty players; they give a training option at a time when you’re training projects are all strong already, and add additional (and optional) challenge and spice to a player who enjoyed normal’s difficulty before but has crested the hump into Juggernaught Land
Second point, I think Lyre and kiza fail this bar largelly because they are laguz and training laguz through anything but bexp and stat boosters is a massive chore
@relloz6 that's part of it, but they also join into an army where you already have Mordecai and Lethe, who not only had some deployment time in part 2 but also just have higher bases across the board in the first place. The Laguz thing is a part of it, sure, but even among Laguz they're just pretty trash. Usable, but trash.
@@MythrilZenith for sure, but if they did not have the laguz exp issue, they might work as “weaker training projects the greil mercs can use to add spice to maps that are otherwise cleared by the power of the mercs as an army” that are more combat ready than mist and rolf. But because training laguz traditionally on-map is the way it is, they dont fulfill that niche
I think one factor that's often forgotten in good / bad unit debate is that these games have permadeath, and sometimes the 'better' unit is simply too dead to be any use on a given run.
To use just Awakening as an example:
If you lose Sully early on, whether to simple player error or cheap reinforcements or an unlucky crit, and really want a second cavalier for your squad...who's your best option?
Frederick can't be everywhere at once, Sumia and Cordelia aren't exactly ideal for charging enemy archers or axe users (the latter being abundant in the early game), and reclassing isn't available for a while.
Lucky for you Stahl's right there to be used, with perfectly viable stats, proficiencies, and joining early enough to accrue plenty of support ranks.
Similar examples can be seen all over this game. Lose Lissa really early? Maribelle can tide you over for healing until Libra and Anna join.
Want a second mage but Miriel fell early? Ricken is your best option until promotion and reclassing become widely available.
Lose Gaius in his recruitment chapter? Luckily there are no more locks to pick until Anna's recruitment chapter.
Lon'qu;s crit chain failed him in a fatal moment? Say'ri can be a new sword-crit machine for the mid game.
And Nah may be one of the best units in the game, but if she drops dead (or if Nowi does before recruiting her) Tiki will inevitably outperform her.
If you're a new or unskilled player who wants to actually engage with the permadeath system, or just playing a difficult FE game, mediocre yet functional units can provide much needed second winds.
You're still 'punished' with a slightly inferior unit but your run won't be softlocked and lessons will have been learned.
(This isn't particularly applicable to games with rewinds but they are still a small minority of FE games so far.)
I feel that bad units with personalities are important. I used Marisa even though I already knew she would perform terribly because I liked her design and the whole red flash shtick. I purposely hindered myself for a character I wanted in my party and make it work. It's part of game personalization, it's more about what you want to do than just a meta.
As a Marisa fan, that is legit why I use her. She's garbage, but she's *my* garbage
I think that the term unit feel is pretty appropriate for the topic discussed here. Late joining units that are either too strong or too weak have terrible unit feel. If they are too strong, they invalidate your early training projects, making you feel dumb for wasting all those resources on a unit that it ultimately outclassed. If they are too weak, then it is extremely painful to train them, which again feels very unfun.
The sweet spot is somewhere between those extremes. A later joining unit should not be better than your average trained unit in every way. It is fine for them to have some advantages over a trained early game unit, like better weapon ranks in a secondary weapon type, high stats in a niche stat like resistance or luck, uncontested supports, a cool personal skill, or anything that gives you some incentive too use them. But they also should be able to be competent in combat at the time they join, to fulfull their role as a replacement unit.
FE1/3 had the best prepromote design IMO, but that also was assisted by the low stat caps that meant trained units were limited in just how far ahead of new units they could be.
@@MythrilZenith I like this opinion. Prepromotes in FE1/3 are very servicable, but feel much worse in FE11/12, even on normal mode, where enemies are identical to the original.
I think its ok to have 1 ultra chad late game prepromote. The game does need a failsafe, like Gotoh. but earlier. lol.
As someone who is running a Fire Emblem Tabletop campaign, and has worked on many many projects involving the systems, there's one very VERY simple reason not every character can be "Good": Deployment slots. If you cannot deploy every single unit, you cannot have every unit be equally preferable to use. The best we can ever hope for is every character being Usable, which has been achieved a few times throughout the series. Primarily as mentioned Three Houses and Engage. A unit like Sophia, or units like Wade and Lot, have no realistic reason or gain to exist, and using them is most of the time exclusively detrimental to the player.
I think the goal, instead of being "Everyone should be good" it should be "No unit is detrimental to use". Games like Awakening or FE9 have some pretty weak units in them, namely Virion and Mia come to mind, but choosing to use them is a challenge, but they're far from so bad they're detrimental. Though that's another aspect, is that no matter what happens, as long as we have deployment limits, units will be "Bad" but as long as that "Bad" is closer to Mia and Virion where they take investment and the reward isn't great but it's definitely not a waste of time, and not the kind of bad some units in FE6, FE12 Bantu, or a couple of others throughout the series get, then I think we're good. To clarify, not advocating for Deployment Slots to be removed, I think deployments limits are good, just while they exist, there will always been "Bad" units.
What about FE4 then? That game game has no deployment slots, EVERYONE gets deplayed every map
@@AlexT7916 I'd argue every unit in Fe4 does in fact have their use, but Deployment Slots aren't the only problem, just one that when present causes the "Good"/"Bad" dichotomy where it isn't necessarily present. Arden and the Axe Bros exist in Fe4, and while far from unusable, I can't in good conciense call them good still.
@@AlexT7916 well, from what little I understand of that game, a unit could be detrimental if, say, training them or getting some use out of them limits your ability to do objectives and/or complete a map before you start getting too bored and sending your horses to clean everything up (or getting game overed, I think some chapters there have important timed objectives?). Those maps are so big that trying to work around low move like you can in other games seem to be just kneecapping yourself for the sake of training someone like Arden.
I'd say the problem is less about units being unimpressive at base, and more about units feeling bad to use. Seth is far worse for the game than Kyza, certainly, but I'd much rather have Sophia than Kyza. Why? The pain of training Sophia is real, but she gains experience relatively fast, and can become quite strong, if you're determined enough. And you only get three dark users anyway -- three dark users who all have weaknesses.
NOTE: The following unit comparison here is in the context of Radiant Dawn normal mode and FE6 hard mode, as those are the modes of the respective games I'm most familiar with.
For Sophia to become truly incredible, you have to get quite lucky, as well as investing heavily in her, but it's at least possible. She's hard to use, but can snowball if you get lucky, and if she gets a bit lucky, she can out-stat the other two potential dark mages by endgame just because of the sheer number of additional levels she has to grow, combined with having better growths. The problem with how Sophia was designed is all those "if you get lucky" caveats. If she had actually high growths rather than merely slightly better than Raigh, then she would be a good unit despite also being a bad unit -- if you see what I'm getting at. She would be well-designed and fun to use, despite making the game harder to play with her than without. As-is, she isn't particularly well designed, but it wouldn't take much to fix that, and she can still be rather interesting mechanically, at least some of the time.
Kyza, meanwhile, starts subpar and remains subpar relative to everyone else. He's hard to use, and he never snowballs, and on top of that, he never has an even slightly unique use case. He grows painfully slowly, and on top of that, his probable endpoint even _with_ favoritism is just worse Mordecai who joins later. Because while he has slightly more balanced growths than Mordecai, that's actually much worse in RD due to how bonus exp works.
There's absolutely no novel mechanical fun to be had with Kyza. He's just boring and unimpressive, and that's exactly where he remains for the whole game. The only thing with worse unit feel than that is a unit that starts unable to meaningfully contribute and remains there for the whole game -- you know, FE12 Bantu, and probably no one else. The upshot of this is that not only is Kyza not a good unit by conventional standards, he also feels bad to use even if you wanted to use him anyway. Mercedes is "bad" merely because there are stronger options. Sophia is bad because using her outright makes the game harder than if you didn't. Kyza is bad because he just doesn't feel good to use. Only that last one is a real problem for the game, I'd say.
Yeah. At the end of the day I would rather have a competent [but not game breaking] boring unit or an interesting but terrible unit than a unit that is either mediocre AND boring or overtuned. It's a balance.
Female shamans also have a cool looking hat.
Specifically in an 'iron man' context, where a player maybe isnt playing that if the lord dies, they start from ch. 1, but one where they arent reseting in ANYONE dies, its a better case to have a unit that is slightly overpowered instead of underpowered. But in situations where the player ISN'T playing through unit loss, it feels worse to put the training unit on the bench because some rando shows up to steal the show rather than losing them outright. Having purposeless units join is probably worse, but having generically strong units isn't good either. Strong units with obvious weaknesses is gonna be the best way to go, like FE6 Bartre, who is all strength and HP and little anything else.
Kagetsu and Panette are 2 of the biggest examples of why I think IntSys is actually still building around permadeath, even if they include turnwheel systems still. They might've overdone it a little with those 2, but they will definitely get you through the game, even if you lost a LOT of others.
Not to say that I don't enjoy using some late joining scrubs. I've trained Sophia before. It's really fun, and if nothing else, it's a fair bit of damage (dark tomes are pretty strong), a lot of chip xp or TONS of kill xp and a tiny celebration every time she manages to hit. And those moments make using late joining scrubs really fun to use.
So, in summary. Purposeless/bad late join units are more fun if you use them, but late joining powerhouses like Kagetsu and Percival make the game stable to continue through in dire times
There’s a careful balance in making bad or at least “worse” units in Fire Emblem. Personally I like it when there are power disparities between units, I love trying to make the baddies work on repeat playthroughs. That’s one of the things I like most about Fates, you can find funny builds for basically any unit to make them do SOMETHING.
Yeah, a weak unit can provide a ton of opportunity for players, from the texture of training them to the unique aspects they inevitably focus on because they don't have the same things the g
"Good" units traditionally value.
My Arthur is a God slayer in fates PvP. 100% hit/crit Arthur is a menace of momentum in PvP. You *WILL* hit, you *WILL* crit, and they *WILL* die. Then they'll revenge kill you but being able to instantly off any unit that isn't miracle Midori exactly is insanely good momentum as it let's you completely dismantle every other strategy and still severely hamper a miracle Midori team when you take out their Shigure (or if you're really lucky sometimes you get to Kaze) immediately. Really makes it easy for my counterbuild mc to dismantle a miracle Midori 1v1 and from there It's basically my win.
I like bad units, but I think they should serve a purpose beyond just being bad. Looking at the sacred stones, the three trainees are easy to clown on for being bad, but all 3 of them are (IMO) well designed. The extra promotion means they are more customizable than the rest of your units, with Ross/Ewan being of particular note due to their access to rare classes in pirate/shaman. While Amelia lacks the rare classes, and thus feels worst to use she serves that purpose of zero to hero/customizable unit. Invesely, i don't like the design of Marissa because she's just "another sword unit" and will always be one, regardless of the promotion. She also doesn't have the same "zero to hero" arc since she starts in a real class (as opposed to a trainee one) so she just kind of feels like a bad unit for the sake of being bad.
I think the mid game joiner who beats everyone like kagetsu is worse than filler like kyza
Stefan from Path of Radiance did it first lol
@@SaltyovenStefan is at least a secret character that you were likely not expected to find on your first playthrough, and even then he is sword locked. He is exceedingly powerful, yeah, but all your paladins and fliers still better even with worse stats because movement and 1-2 range.
Kagetsu meanwhile is just a better everything.
@@Saltyoven At the very least the PoR cast is generally strong enough that you don't feel like you're handicapping yourself if you use him. I like to treat him as a bonus, I unit I can whip out whenever I feel like styling on the mid game but can do without when I don't.
I like your channel because you don't parrot arguments like others TH-camrs does. For example,you made a good point about the difference between what chapter Ross and Amelia join,and that's the thing that get lost in parroted (that word doesn't exist) comments: context. It's the same thing with discussions like Eirika giving the stone to Lyon,you can't just analyze her action in a vacuum,you gotta consider the context of what came before that.
Thanks! Yeah, I don't see much a point in repeating the points made by others anymore. I might say similar things, but only if I come to the conclusions myself.
Late joins make for a better game when they're great at 1 or 2 things right off the bat.
For example, Niime is a great nuker and staffer. Raigh and Lilina will outdo her in magic and will have better general stats.
Equidna is a decently fast unit, but a trained Dieck is a great generalist and Oiger will be about as good as Equidna and has better growth.
Otherwise, something like Perceval simply trivializes all your game up to the point you him. The closest he has as weakpoints are his lack of supports and the fact grinding supports takes an eternity in this game.
...
Engage really dropped the ball here. Merrin and Kagetsu are generally better than all physical units, Pannete on crits, Pandreo and Ivy on magic with added insult to injury with the spoiler duo, Hortensia on Staves...
Pretty much the only safe career choice for early units is Qi Adept and only because high / middling STR and MAG is such a rare trait and even though, about as any brave weapon is better than a gauntlet...
16:34 I think it's best if the units who join later are, as a general rule:
1) up to the standard of performing their role perfectly well against enemy units in the chapter they join;
2) relatively inferior to properly (or at least "skillfully") trained units you've invested into (so that you can feel the value of your attachment to earlier units), but not necessarily all that worse in practice, or better yet, coming with special utility that shifts how they're used relative to their alternatives in some way;
3) noticeably better than units that haven't been trained particularly skillfully, such as by less experienced players, so that they can be used to give them the necessary tools to overcome the challenges of the present and upcoming maps even if they otherwise wouldn't have had the wherewithal to forge them themselves.
And you can simply deviate from this standard as the game structure and narrative dictates. It's fine if some later units are significantly strong for their join chapter and can carve through many enemies on their own or aren't really threatened themselves by the map they show up in, although I feel like these should be somewhat special occasions with at least some narrative backing, and they should definitely be threatened as the game goes on.
It's also fine to have mediocre characters who need investment to reach their potential, though it's preferential that said investment is worthwhile and pays off; the opportunity cost of investing in them is trading short-term benefits on a stronger unit that's automatically easier to use in exchange for long-term benefits on a unit that may well surpass that initially superior unit (if it's not good enough to just now have two excellent units rather than one; in a sense, the synergy between two great units can benefit that initially stronger unit more than simply investing in them preferentially in the first place).
What truly matters to game balance isn't that every character is perfectly good out the gate, but that they have some niche they fill or purpose that can be planned around. Although back-up units who exist to fill out your roster in case your army has been getting sheered down are fine, I think it's best if they also encourage alternative tactical decisions distinct from the role they'd normally be replacing. Jagens and how they're meant to fall off hardly even need to be mentioned, although it'd be nice if they plateaued into perfectly decent but relatively sub-optimal units in the late game that are harder to use than other units that have received training, but aren't necessarily bad (or else they can have them get killed in the plot; that's cool too).
A problem I seem to run into a lot with these sorts of discussions is that I feel like I'm using a different definition of "bad" from everyone else. Like, when I say that a unit is "bad" I mean that they are uninteresting or frustrating to use. But I feel like when other people say that a unit is "bad" they mean "It fails to clear some presumably-objective standard that I may or may not articulate" or something.
Take Marisa from FE8, for example. I don't think that Marisa is "bad" because her bases and growths are mostly just worse than a unit in the same class who joined 5 chapters earlier (though that's definitely part of it). I think she's "bad" because her introduction, design, and personality all make her seem like someone who is especially lethal and dangerous, and she's just kind of not? I feel like giving her something like an innate bonus to Crit or something would not only serve to differentiate her from Joshua, but would also serve her character better as a woman who's so fast and deadly that she's known as Crimson Flash.
Meanwhile, there's the commentor at 28:31 who says, referring to Nino, "Its not worth training her but I had fun doing it" and, like... what? Is it not "worth it" to have fun? I-Is Fire Emblem not supposed to be fun? Is Blazing Blade secretly the spiritual predecessor to Pathologic and no one told me? What are we doing here?
I come from a background in psychology, and a term used in psychological research that could definitely apply here is "Operational Definition." If we can operationally define what we mean by the term "bad," we can then set a specific understanding that is measurable and understandable, even if they specific understanding loses a bit of the greater context for what the average person might define as "bad."
I feel there is a difference between being a bad character and being a bad unit. Take that Nino example. In terms of game play is she worth it to train? No because there are much better options so as a unit she isn't worth it, however if you like her as a character then that makes her worth training for your enjoyment. There are many people who don't care about a characters personality and only care about how good they are which is why bad or not worth it usually refer to how good the unit is.
Also a bad unit usually has their uses for 1-2 chapters. late game units who are good stat wise then get penalized by the community for availability.
Some of the most fun I've had was training "bad" units. Hayato and Rinkah in BR and Neimi and Amelia in SS have been some of the most fun units to use because they can snowball real fast
Miranda should have had Bolganone, 10 shots to just nuke something, use them now to get her easy XP or save it and work to make her tankier so you can wrath nuke a more important enemy.
funny enough on harder difficulties I find some bad units become good units because they are incapable of killing in one round. Imagine this scenario...
Good unit can attack twice and one round all enemies on the map, but each enemy hits them for 5 damage. In the end they kill 5 units but die to the 6th because every time they kill, the space next to them opens up.
Bad unit is too slow to attack twice, he takes an enemy down to half health on enemy phase but takes 10 damage, but he's fine because no other enemies can attack him. Then on player phase you can heal him and finish off the enemy, leaving you once again with a full health unit going into enemy phase.
Sometimes good units die because they are too good, and bad units survive because they don't get overwhelmed.
I parallel this as a Def vs. AVO argument. In Sacred Stones I like to pair Gerik and Joshua, but Joshua tends to be the weaker link because Gerik's Def negates all damage while Joshua's AVO still gives 20-30% hit rates that will eventually kill you when facing enough enemies.
There are no good units, there are no bad units, there are only bodies for the permadeath meat grinder that is getting everyone possible killed in an ironman run, for fun, which is the objectively correct way to play.
For Kagetsu vs Kyza/Lyre, I think Kagetsu is fine. He's still in the early-mid game when I have spots in my roster that I'm willing to swap out like an Etie or Alfred. If he joins at chapter 15-16+ and still blows everyone out of the water, that would be a different story.
16:54 About the question being asked here, I'll answer with FE6 because I think it's the game that makes this the most clear for me, in term of forming my opinion (which as any opinion, may be wrong).
Dorothy is clearly designed to be a character replacement, as in, the game knows Chapter 7 is next and the player will want/need bow users for the wyverns. After a lot of years playing the game, is quite clear than uninvested Sue will be deployed as she provides both bow usage and rescue/drop to maneuver the first turns. So the question is, who's next? Wolt or Dorothy? Both have similar bases, despite their joining times, albeit Dorothy has the slightest higher growths. But would you bench Wolt if he's been leveling up well knowing you need the best possible at chapter 7? Or did Wolt die/level up horribly for Dorothy to be consider? Or maybe you got Dorothy's C support with Saul to on her join chapter. There's a lot to consider here and that's why I feel Dorothy was a unit the game designed pretty well. Same with Saul and Elen, which I could made similar arguments, although I just felt Wolt/Dorothy exemplified the point well.
Now, that doesn't answer the question really. The big 3 answers the question better. Rutger is an early game unit that, as soon as he pops, puts everyone under him with the possible exception of Marcus. Dieck did the same two chapters before, but not on the level Rutger has. Sure, HM bonuses are bugged in FE6, but that's the end product we got and Rutger is clearly overtuned. Does the story justify this? Not so much. Does the gameplay justify this? Yes, as if you overextend with Marcus or Dieck, Rutger has a very high chance of killing them with a crit.
Then we have Melady, hinted at us from chapter 2. Both story and gameplay justify her high stats. In terms of story is quite clear as she is the wyvern rider we see time and time again with Galle discussing matters few could know. May not be important matters, but if they're discussing details of Bern's plan, that means even if they're not higher ups, they're not nobodies either. And gameplay made us pretty clear, by the time she joins your party, that Bern has powerful wyvern riders. So you kinda expect a wyvern rider from Bern to be powerful, especially if she got some intel on her.
And last we have Perceval. Won't discuss him that much and just point he's one of the big three generals of Etruria, so yeah, you kinda expect him to be powerful especially since he made Narcian escape from Ostia, and with Narcian being THE wyvern lord general of Bern, and everything I just said of Bernish (?) wyvern riders on Melady, well... Perceval must be pretty strong for him to make him a believable threat in the eyes of Narcian.
So... do I think they do good for FE6? Mechanically not. Rutger may get a pass since he's an early game unit, but both Melady and Perceval feels like overtuned "security checks". Dorothy worked as a "security check" as the game provides a bow user knowing you need those for those chapters, and while nowhere near the experience or reputation of the other three in terms of story, she has enough justification for her level and attributes when she joins. Both Melady and Perceval should have high stats (as they intended, NM versions of these units feel appropiate), but be nowhere near the levels they are as they doesn't provide the player with any question to answer. What are Shanna or Thea's merit over Melady? Melady can even promote on her join time, so the pegasus duo doesn't even have that to make you doubt. And what about Perceval against 6 units? Because he is a nice check for "in case none of the four cavaliers are at a good level and the jeigan units have already fell off", but the check becomes a non-issue when even if one of your Chapter 1 cavaliers have been leveling up above average, or way above average, they won't have any chance to be as strong as Perceval. Sure, you can use more than one Paladin (and not only the game encourages you to use several mounted unit in general since maps are so big, not using your best units because they have repeated classes is a questionable decision outside of non-optimal reasons.), but design wise it feels like these characters just pop and laugh at any kind of effort you may have put into other units :P
At least you have to train Fir, which is also busted, but people often shun her because Rutger exists. So yeah, even Rutger does his harm as he ostracizes a unit not meant to be pushed aside that easily as the game houses hintes about Karel all game long (especially if you go Ilia) and Bartre is one of the two optional routes right after you hired Fir. The story put more effort on this mini-arc regarding those three characters for a reason. But to get back on topic, Fir is busted both on her HM bonuses and the stats she starts with because of them. Sure, she has some experience on the arena, but her joining stats are not below the standard of your army at her join time, which I think is what they wanted for her (besides speed), as they did with units like Gwendolyn and Sophia. Sure, those two provide the player with the "I can make them good" challenge everyone who plays with those two have, and storywise it is understandable an inexperience knight and a half-manakete who has spent her life in seclusion doesn't have the means to have stats higher than what they started with. I do love when the game shows these kind of connections, and the developers clearly had everything well thought as Gwendolyn and Sophia come after the game gave us 2 Armor Knights and a Shaman (albeit just the chapter before) before pulling this.
Then there are two characters that fails this very hard as well. One of them is Wade/Ward/theaxebro, as he contributes nothing Lot can't already do with better bases on a game that treates Axe users so badly. That guy is supposed to have some experience as a mercenary, and the game fails to show it on the gameplay (he can't even fail to double the nearby soldier if said soldier got lucky on speed...). The other one is Zeiss for the opposite reasons, it's quite clear the game wanted him to resemble Est, as lot of characters of FE6 resembles FE1 characters in lots of ways, but Zeiss will always be "that underleveled guy with near-maxed or maxed Strength", and a STR of 18~20 with the rest of his stats being solid all around beats this point quite easily. Three levels and he's gonna be good to go against whatever the game throws at you.
So... Who is worse? Most of the time, the overtuned units as they provide no option for the players. It's either use them cause they're busted or not if you want a better challenge. You may say the same for the "bad" units, but I've been playing FE since FE7 came out on the west and my experience tells me people like the underdogs. It's almost human nature as this happens in a lot of different games, so the "bad" units will always have a second chance, while the strong ones, less so. Still, I prefer overtuned units on a game to "everyone is good" imho.
That said, I think being tied to the story trumps all. Out of the "FE6 big three", I feel Perceval is the one unit that we can all agree is okay to be "busted" due to what he did in the story previous to his join time. This I don't mind, but also gotta say characters like Gotoh, Athos or the laguz royalties does the job better from a gameplay perspective since they join at the very end. Still, I think we can cut some slack on developers here because, as a player, I don't wanna force them to write in a way were their busted characters only joins at the very end. Plus I like to read quite a lot.
So my two cents. Sorry for the wall of text!
"Story context beats all" is a good way of putting it. I personally like the way FE6 handles most of its units, but I agree that Miledy and Sophia push the edges of what's acceptable at either end of the spectrum.
And I totally agree on both the fact that players love using underdogs AND players love when units are given story merit and their usability matches their story context. Cecilia is a perfect example of when this goes wrong, where the "mage general" is a mediocre support unit and not a Mage with a capital M.
If you like this type of stuff hopefully you'll like the upcoming Nino video!
@@MythrilZenith Zephiel crippled Cecilia quite hard on Chapter 13 :P But yeah, while I have given Cecilia some runs in my last game (reason why FE6 is fresh is because I'm at Niime's joining chapter already), she doesn't feel like a mage general. Still useful, 8 move and C rank staves do wonders, but she needed more oomph (especially since I got a RNG-blessed Lilina, and it's not even close how the student is outmatching her teacher).
13:00 If GSC OU has teach me something is that the former is much worse.
Kagetsu, as an example of this, doesn't make the game worse. If he didn't exist someone else would have to do the same but take more resources. So by Kagetsu existing, he allows resources to go somewhere else and lower tier units benefit from it.
If he didn't exist everything would be more unreliable and you would need to waste more resources in the carry unit
Interesting point on that. Having units that are good without requiring investment can allow the investment in other niche units.
That assumes the game balance isn't affected by Kagetsu existing, tho. Engage isn't that hard of a game but it does have a lot of stat bloat. Without the game giving you a ton of very powerful units, the difficulty could be better tuned and avoid some of the bloat.
Thinking about all this, I feel like the sweet spot for a mid-to-late joiner is just above the average power level of an average main party. That way, they’re strong enough to displace an underperformer or replace a strong unit that died, but not so strong that you feel obligated to use them if the rest of your army is performing just fine
Love the mtg shout out. All strategy games share similar elements and themes, it’s fun to recognize the crossover between genres.
A bad unit at worst will have no effect on the game because they are never deployed. If a player likes them for whatever reason then they improve someone's experience. They also make challenge runs like low tiers only, soyo drafts, and even normal drafts more interesting.
A too good unit however can easily ruin the challenge for a game. Players absolutely do optimize the fun out of a game. A unit that is just better, even if not used, can make a player feel worse about deciding to use someone else.
"a bad unit at worst will have no effect on the game because they are never deployed"
i think there are exceptions to this, like sophia in fe6. i honestly believe she exists only as an extra objective in arcadia to make the chapter harder since you have to protect her to get the gaiden. in reverse recruitment she joins chapter 2 but shes still trash thats how bad she is. it does make it that much more fun tho if you do grind her up somehow and she becomes competent it almost feels like cheating lol
@@danielju9953 Another example I can think of is Meg from Radiant Dawn. There are more than a few Dawn Brigade maps where she's practically force-deployed, and she's such dead weight that training her feels like you're spending very valuable time and resources (BEXP, kills, boosting items, etc.) to roleplay as Sisyphus.
What's even worse is that the Dawn Brigade is such a Goober Squad that competition for that time and those resources is *_STIFF,_* so spending them on the biggest goober of them all really feels like you're shooting yourself in the foot for a meme. I get that she's theoretically pretty good when trained, and people enjoy that level of suffering sometimes, but boy does her existence feel like salt in the gaping wound known as the Dawn Brigade most of the time.
Great points!
Since we engage with FE units mainly through their stats, that's where most 'unique feel' comes from. I always remember Raven's low Luck (always stressful facing non-zero CRT values!) and Lilina's HUGE Magic (a little girl roasting soldiers in one hit). I still have the visceral feelings I got when using those characters and that counts as part of their personality to me.
Storytelling function is also appealing when filling a roster. Renault is a meme, and though he's an obvious Light/Staff utility replacement, his obvious Mercenary stat block is a powerful storytelling device. Same with Shanam. Karla is essentially worthless but is a fun easter egg.
I also think growth rates synergize well with a redundant cast and put the late- and early-joiners into context. Growth rates are averages but each play through is only *one* dice roll, giving high variability to the quality of the starting units. Getting RNG screwed usually means trying out a new character.
I think there's a running design philosophy (or at least for FE 6) that younger characters have higher growth rates than adult characters, representing how much potential they have to grow and improve. Adults are set in their ways, so have little room to grow, but have already established their expertise through life and therefore have strong starting stat blocks and higher/promoted levels.
Great topic; before this video I hadn't considered all the aspects of unit design and roster balancing you brought up!
If everyone is good, no one will be
Thanks Syndrome
Kyza is my favorite character in Fire Emblem, one of my favorite character in fiction and have been for 10 years now.
Seeing him mentionned somewhere is surreal, thanks for talking about my boy.
Every FE character has at least one fan. You might be the first one I've met for Kyza in particular, but I knew at least one had to exist.
FE6 is so drastic between the quality between units, most prepromotes sucks and are worse than the units they are supposed to replace but then you you hard mode Perceval that outshines every cavalier in average stats and weapon ranks with no investment and Niime that is because of her bases and staff rank outshines Raigh and Sophia even if their stats are better than her average in the same level
Also about having a unit that joins later and it's better than the one you got early my favorite example is Olwen vs Ilios, Olwen joins early and she can bolt ballistas with little effort in chapter 14, and she can use Dire thunder to kill things despite her poor bases but she have a PCC of 4 combined with the crit of thunder tomes she is nearly guaranted to crit, and can get a personal brave sword much later, but then you have Ilios that outshines her in everything but to make the choice harder he doesn't have any personal weapons, he doesn't have supports and have a PCC of 0 meaning that his second attack never crits
I dont think characters joining with different strengths is bad especially if it fits the narrative and not particuarly strict deployment slots.
The main problem is just unit diversity. If any character can be any class then obviously it doesnt leave much of a purpose to not just use current best stats guide. Iirc the kagetsu meta problem is because he can so easily switch classes his actually starting class isnt considered good.
I think if they want too keep with such free multiclasssing they just need way more impactful personal skills to build around or something similar. A reson to choose party members beyond the best stats
If there is a story reason why one unit is weaker or stronger than the other, then I'm perfectly fine with that - I don't question why Mozu, Donnel, Nino or Est are so weak and I don't mind meme units like Shannam or overpowered units like Titania, Perceval or Ryoma.
But then you have units like Cecilia, FE7 Karel or Gunter that make me go "Why are you so bad?". Interestingly, I can't think of a unit that would make me go "Why are you so good?" - maybe Awakening Anna? But even that is a stretch.
As for, is it better for a unit to be overpowered or underpowered? I'd say overpowered, because the majority of people play casually and aren't interested in optimizing everything. I actually have an example with the most recent campaign in Heroes of Might and Magic 3: Horn of the Abyss. The campaign is called "Forged in Fire" and that's an apt name for how stupidly difficult it was before patches, even on easiest difficulty - you basically had to play every turn perfectly, first mission is still so tight that it's not possible to complete it on the first try - without knowledge of the map you will run out of time. In other words - it was a miserable experience if you're not into hardcore challenges. If something is too strong, then you can opt to not use it, if something is too weak... what are you supposed to do? Of course ideally everything would be balanced, but of two evils overpowered is better.
kagetsu definitely makes me ask "why are you so good?" I figure it would be tremendously easily for someone uninformed to invest into lapis, only to realize that kagetsu is better even if lapis got like, perfect level ups. That's just poor design.
So honestly on the topic of which is worse, a too good unit or too bad unit I think too good is way worse.
In a unit is too good either you ignore them and make the game harder on yourself without knowing that, you use them and kill the strategy of the strategy game, or you know the game really well and you either have to use them or willingly be playing bad which is never a choice a player should make.
While if a unit is too bad it makes the game harder to use them so you know you should drop them and choose to not, they make you have to plan more to use them, or you know the game and can either safely avoid them or choose to take that challenge.
And I think the easiest example of this is Seth. If you use Seth you've basically won the game is something I've heard a lot of people say and that should never be a choice. Instantly winning from 1 choice, or knowingly playing badly. That framing is just something that should not be used.
(Also early units being better should ALWAYS be the default. 99% of players are casual and like to INVEST. There is a reason players still used Clanne or Framme in the end, casual players don't like swapping team members much.)
6:30 hey now Kyza can Shove pegasus knights with wildheart, this is notable because only 2 units in the entire game can do that.
Lyre can Kill herself in 3-E which increases the counter of units dead by 1 this is much easier for lyre than other units because she can get one rounded by generic myrmidons that die to hawks.
I might be a hyper optmized player but it's typically best to find the best thing a unit can do rather than throw units aside because they can't fight. You'd be surprised what units can do if you look beyond combat.
16:40 my answer for the question is the second option in that it is better (far better I believe) to have a unit join later that is made as a replacement unit be worse than everyone else rather than better. The main reason is investment feel. What makes replacement units good design in a game with permanent death is they are a safety net for traditional play, in most fire emblems you are designed to lose units occasionally and these units are your “reward” for keeping the earlier joiners alive.
Take draug in fe1, he is your first and best armored unit. This doesn’t make the later joined armored unit bad design, they are there in case you lose draug and if they were better than him than it feels incredibly awful for those who did invest into Draug because what was the point in having him in the first place… the player is dumb for doing so.
Hana in fates has this issue. She is a really solid unit in her own right, but is an investment unit… she is on the cusp of viability but is immediately dropped below it by the existence of Hinata two chapter later in both routes you get Hana AND Ryoma exists as well which makes both Hana and Hinata completely obsolete. If you thought Hana was cool and wanted to use her well you got punished severely by trying to invest into her, ryoma joins and is magnitudes better than even a fully invested Hana with compete favoritism. Hinata is bulkier and better stated than Hana right when a used Hana would start getting online.
Your example unit is the reason that better late joiners are bad, your own experience of this dude joins and is better than everyone else so “guess I have to use him now”.
Hi, 2 things 1- Have you use Meg? 2- I dont like that your initial characters are left behind in stats and usefulness at the middle and for the end of the game with some exceptions like Seth or Ryan and Luke that you can get them good enough for the final. But the rest in each fire emblem you find someone much better in everything that logical you use it, but does not has the connection to the story and struggles since the start.
I have used Meg before. I've tried to use her in a number of runs unsuccessfully, but eventually had a run where I forced myself to bring every general into the tower. I admittedly used primarily bexp to level Meg so she didn't really grow that well, and by endgame she was struggling to fight dragons, but she was still able to find more use than I expected. Really sad about her bad weapon ranks though, that takes way too many arms scrolls to fix.
There's a lot to discuss about the desired effectiveness of late joining units.
Unfortunately, the discrepancy between story and gameplay focus will be a noticeable hurdle in said discussion.
Engage was a better _game_ (but not video-game), Three Houses had better story.
I think it's healthier to have bad or mediocre forgettable units than to have overpowered units that take minimal work to get going, if any.
Using those more forgettable characters makes for more memorable experiences and leaves more room for fun or unique challenges, in my opinion. Seth, Ryoma, Kagetsu, etc. don't really make the overall game more memorable, at least in a positive way, and I think they can make for a less enjoyable experience for the ones that join later and make it so I'm knowingly handicapping myself if I don't bench at least one of my early units I have attachment to from using them. That's why I stopped enjoying Project Ember, lots of pre promotes that outshine my whole party. They're nice if I have some deaths to help make up for them, but I much prefer someone like Oifey in FE4 where he's a beast for a while and I can comfortably use him for the full 2nd gen, but the characters I put more work into start to outshine him as they grow. That's my take.
If the game is linear, I think it’s bad to just have a bunch of broken characters be available. If decisions influence the difficulty and the availability of characters, I think that’s cool. Maybe so-and-so is busted, but the only way to unlock them is difficult or requires the player to make sacrifices or pay a ton of resources (in game, not DLC).
Exactly, which is why Lugh is such a great investment 💀
9:33 Arms Scrolls do NOT work on Laguz, but the point still stands
Fair enough. Makes sense on why the optimization to try to max Volug's strike rank is so important.
@@MythrilZenith yeah
Volug is on the cusp of one shotting 1-6-2 and further mages, so S rank strike; [The Energy Drop] simply allows a pure one-tap.
On fire mages, this is very important
Also Volug is just really cool and I like him a lot so I like making him work
Midgame engage units replacing early game units feels so weird… like it’s clearly an intentional choice, but idk I’m not a huge fan of it! They always want you to switch out the cast for the newer shinier version of the character, and idk that’s just not as cool to me
Personal skills exist but tbh most of them aren’t even that crazy, not enough to justify using one unit over another. Growths are the main difference imo, but weapon proficiencies kindaaaa do hold midgame units back since midgame leaves you with only a few emblems with lacking weapon proficiencies. I hateee that! It seems like a very intentional balancing decision, but I’m not in love with that choice
Early units are more flexible than later units bc of the proficiency system, while later units are stronger in their specific class set. At least, that's the theory. DLC throws that out the window, and even without it the early units are so many levels behind that they take a lot of investment to get up to speed. You definitely have the time to train a few, but you're realistically going to have to use at least a few mid-joiners in your army, and at that point a lot of players just default to training like Alear + one or two others and then replacing everyone else.
I personally like to generally treat Fire Emblem Games in a "if a unit is not necessary for getting an ending/recruiting another unit I will not restart for them" way, especially on hard mode runs. This leads to me using suboptimal units on a regular basis and getting to see them put in work.
For instance in my first FE6 Hard Run Ogier made his way onto my final team purely because most of the cast had died. And in doing so he fought off the dragon reinforcements in Chapter 24 with Durandal.
Likewise in my first FE11 5 star Hard run Barst became my personal MVP despite dying in the Endgame, purely because he was the only bulky unit to survive long enough to stick around.
This is obviously not a normal playstyle within the community outside of Ironman situations but it does give more units a chance to rise to the occasion when all better options are dead.
Well I'll at least say bad units are a lot more fun to use just because the process of using them is more engaging(training Ewan without the tower for example) cause you gotta figure out how to get them to work and to set up kills for them. But someone like Seth or some strong pre promote like Kagetsu is just boring to use for most people I imagine. They just come in do a lot for no real cost and the general plan to use them is pretty much set in stone because of how good said characters are known to be. I prefer when the good characters you get like pre promotes are good enough to get you through the game if you need it but not good enough to just invalidate their trained early game counterparts(like engage yikes). Least that's how it is for me if that makes any sense.
Yeah that's honestly one of the best feelings. Capitalizing on what you grow while also being able to play if your growth project meets an untimely end.
If you send Marcus/Seth in the middle of the enemies, then you missed the fun part.
That said, unlimited class options and overabundance of skills mean that characters practically do not matter, it's the build that counts.
Regarding Kagetsu vs Kyza personally I think it's better to have a unit like to get to for two reasons. The first is that since the only joins halfway through you still get a chance to use "worse" units before he joins, but the second is even if you feel compelled to use him, he only takes up one slot, so you can use him alongside the people he outclasses. If you want to use Kagetua Lapis and Amber, all of them will still be helpful, even it kagetsu is the most helpful. Meanwhile, if you deploy Kyza, there's a chance they are so outclassed by everyone else that they have no impact on the map. This is part of why I reject the Franz Hate because sure Seth does more than Franz but you have 8 slots, Franz (or ross or Garcia etc) can still do STUFF
Fair points all around. Mechanically superior units don't automatically have to be used in place of mechanically inferior ones. And even in cases where a unit is so good they warp the game around them, the player is always free to not use them. Like getting the title legendary in a Pokemon game, you're always free to choose not to use them or even not to catch them (except in Black & White where you are explicitly required to catch and use your box legendary for the setpiece battle).
There are a lot of points I wanted to discuss already covered in other comments. Instead, I want to focus on one aspect. Following the mention of unit feel, I think it can really benefit to have units that feel weak at the start of the game that then transition to equally powerful or stronger units than the rest of the army. While it might be easier to invest in a different unit and get relatively the same results, seeing the journey of a weak unit to a decent one can make a player feel like they have succeeded in that way.
Regarding powerful late joiners, I had the same experience in Dark Deity. I think that the magic range, for myself, is a unit that joins late that does not overshadow a well trained unit, but can match one that has not been trained much. Units that join later on that are much more powerful feel like they invalidate the time spent with units earlier on, in a sense.
Bad units have a place, to make the good ones look better by comparison. The problem is, when those so called good units the game tries to hype up, fall flat on their face.
A good example of bad units highlighting someone is Zelot and Hardin. Both join alongside others in the same class who are typically bad. But that just highlights how good those 2 are.
Astram comes to mind as a failure in this regard, he is mentioned as one of the strongest men on the continent, yet he's below average in SD, and laughably bad in FE3 and new mystery. And is very easy for Ogma to surpass him well in advance. Heck Ceaser probably could if you decide to use him, and well he's also bad
Astram is a well designed unit in terms of filler prepromote, but really poor in terms of story context. Especially in high difficulties where he can be 1-rounded by any one of his hero squad buddies even though he's the one with Mercurius.
26:00 It's interesting to me that you say Engage was better without the well when I think the well is one of the only things that at all saves the pre-chapter 11 units. By being able to fix their awful base SP, the pre-chapter 11 recruits can actually utilize their exclusive access to the first six emblems for 6 whole chapters (plus paralogues). This doesn't beat being outstatted for most combat units, but you may think twice about flat-out replacing Framme or Citrine with Pandreo or Ivy if they have Canter to reposition after healing and Staff Mastery to have higher hit rates with status staves. Before the well these units (especially the Firene units) would be lucky to have just one actually useful skill inherited before chapter 11 and now you can stock up on multiple units before losing your emblems. This by no means fixes Engage's problems with unit balance but it certainly helps.
Been enjoying your channel for a while, especially unit/map design 101 videos!
One thing I would like to see, as you grow and continue making these longer-from videos, is a little more scripting/post editing. This video has a lot of little corrections, awkward pauses, and moments that feel like drawn out steam of consciousness talking.
I think a more polished video essay feel/format would really suit the kind of content you've been making, and (in my uneducated opinion) could help the channel grow:)
Fair. I do a mix of content and am still only doing this part time as a hobby. Sometimes I do less editing because of the time multiplier that editing is in terms of getting a video out. I do trim even on stream of consciousness videos like this, but there are definitely times when I could trim more. It's all about finding that balance of what to leave in and what to take out and how long to spend on each step, and it's a balance I'm still finding.
Most bad units arent even bad. The community simple gives them the bad mark and forms a collective opinion of them that some follow and others dont.
A unit isn't useless if there is a better version of it. I'd go as far to say that we have not a single unusable unit in modern FE. So what even is a bad unit at this point? Even in the worst case of Marty we have the ability to make them good enough. It is more a discussion of how much one unit needs vs another.
I love the card example which is funnily quite accurate.
It depends on what you mean "modern FE" and yeah that's the reason I bring up the usability bar. People who genuinely believe any unit in 3H or Engage are permanently below the bar of being able to contribute at all have clearly never played games like FE12.
@@MythrilZenith I would pick the 3Ds area as the point where no one is useless. Before that... well I would still say with enough work most of the units on the DS can work. Last but not least due to reclassing into Staves. Even in RD, while some units are definitly below the bar, unless we have Fiona who just demands waaaaay too much from Normal onwards, most units are able to contribute stuff. Dawn Brigade being Dawn Brigade is fine (RD has actually the same problem as Engage) though they have their own maps for a fair amount thus should be rated a bit more towards that which I feel is left out too often. If all of them were useless, you could literally not start playing the game.
For me a unit is bad if it requires way too much ressources. Fiona, as I said, would take several turns grinding before she becomes viable enough. Edward and Leonardo on the other hand become outclassed. Which does make them less useful but not nearly as bad as Fiona. Kagetsu vs Lapis/Diamant/etc. is a very good example.
But yeah, thats exactly it. It is one of the main reasons why a lot of people cant understand rankings and feel offended. Especially especially because, lets face it, many people dont explain themselves correctly (on both sides). Who would take someone seriously saying their armored waifu is trash when she managed to solo the final boss on the hardest difficulty? Even more so if they become passive aggressive or try to downtalk you because you dont unserstand all the terma like LTC, Base Stats, or even are oblivious to Growth rates which are not visible in the games.
14:52 Fates does this constantly and it drives me crazy. Forget the barrel on the ship excuse, they dropped pretenses entirely and people would just magically end up in your castle between chapters, even in the middle of Revelation where it should be physically impossible to catch up to the army.
Usually those units are meh (butlermaid\Izana) or decent (Flora). But I was a little sad when I'd spent a great deal of time investing in a Dread Fighter Rinkah and then Fuga dropped in, already promoted level 10, nearly the same class (Master of Arms), but way better Str\Def and comparable Spd. It was hard to justify deploying her anymore.
Still though, I'd say I prefer some units being too good over some being purposeless. I tend to be a character loyalist and I hate it when using the character I like means having to invest in polishing a turd.
One angle of this issue you didn't directly bring up in the video is how overall roster size interacts with this phenomenon. If you have a larger number of units relative to your available deployment slots, then the competition for those slots is also going to be correspondingly greater. That will in turn put more pressure on units to stand out.
For example, suppose a game gives you nine cavaliers. Realistically, you're probably not going to want or need nine cavaliers in most circumstances. You're probably only looking for two or three. At that point it's a matter of looking at who has the better weapon ranks, stat distribution, resource access, availability, subjective appeal, etc. Those two or three cavaliers with the highest marks are considered the "good units". The other six or seven become the "bad units", or at least "worse units", and probably sit most of the game out on the bench.
Now consider an alternate version of the game that only gave you two cavaliers, and was otherwise identical in terms of map and enemy design, etc. You still want and/or need two or three cavaliers, but because the game only gives you two there is no competition for that role. Those two units become "good units" by default, since they are the only units that can fill their role (see also "high scarcity classes" such as dancers).
I think it would be really interesting to have a game where the entire roster was that tight, maybe six to twelve units total (with an equal number of deployment slots). The entire game would be spent in that "all hands on deck" mode that's normally only reserved for the early game. Admittedly, that thin of a roster would be very brittle in terms of characters dying. However, I think we also need to accept that permadeath in Fire Emblem has largely mutated into an optional challenge mode rather than a mechanic players regularly engage with, and we need to stop treating it as if it were still a core feature of the series.
Permadeath design is an interesting conundrum. We can design FE casts with it in mind, but by doing so we must acknowledge that it DOES limit the design space somewhat.
If you consider things like in-house only runs of 3 Houses, you get that "all hands on deck" style of game, and that is definitely an interesting puzzle space to play around in. But that brittleness of permadeath is also very severe.
It's a weird situation because FE to me doesn't really necessitate *permadeath,* but the mix of some inherent reward/punishment system based on the ideal run of survival, to deliberately disincentivize suicide strats which are not in the theme of FE even though they work well in most other turn-based grid strategy games. Does the solution *need* to be permadeath, or even punishment-centered? Not necessarily. Permadeath has just been the standard option and thus is the default.
@@MythrilZenith What I find interesting is that permadeath is often touted as THE defining feature of Fire Emblem as a series, but at this point it's almost completely vestigial. In an era of magic undo buttons, and where older titles are played on emulators where progress can be saved anytime at the stroke of a key, how many people actually interact meaningfully with permadeath as a mechanic? If FE18 removed permadeath as a system and made Casual Mode the default, how many players would actually notice a difference in their playthroughs? I don't have any hard data on it, but I wouldn't be surprised if we were talking about single digit percentages.
On some level, I think permadeath is one of those "losing is fun" mechanics that's only ever going to a appeal to a niche audience, and Fire Emblem as a series has grown to the scale where that niche audience is no longer a significant proportion of its playerbase. The fact that IS felt it was necessary to make systems like Causual Mode and the Turnwheel standard is evidence of that. It seems like permadeath is a relic of a design philosophy the series has moved away from, and is only being kept around as a legacy feature because the series "has" to have it. I wouldn't necessarily say that removing permadeath would make a future FE game better per se, but I do think there's a reasonable chance that doing so would open up new design space and allow for changes that would improve the experience of the median player.
The other egregious thing about Kagetsu is that his personal bases are like stupid high because Swordmaster is such a terrible class, whereas most other characters are not balanced around their starting class. That means when he reclasses, he suddenly just has crazy stats period.
I can kinda vibe with OP units coming in later if they are done like Stephan from Por/RD ( “but muh sword lock 😢” like his laguz half of the family I don’t care) cause it feels like you unlocked the secret weapon in the game, the 17th colossus , playable nemesis, and now you have something to tell your school yard friends about .
I like lyre and kysha and I love that you used them as examples in this case, they’re not on par with your army but by virtue of permadeath if you killed Lethe and Mordecai you’d still have the option to use a cat or a tiger but they just won’t be as strong as the units that you lost.
I would much rather have the game give me substantially weaker replacements than definitively better units as I progress
Personally, the game is better with 'useless' units as you may be playing with permadeath, and you do need replacements. Plus it gives you an excuse to design an interesting character, and double down on that. Whereas, warping your entire strategy around someone who is so busted means your run could just straight up end because of the investment.
It's better to have, not need, than need, not have.
I, uh, think I need to get around to that second playthrough of Engage.
Kagetsu _was_ that unit that faded into the background. I'm not sure if he saw a single battle for me. There were plenty of others who didn't get deployed again after their joining chapter, but I was playing without permadeath so I at least tried to make them work when they first joined. Many of them, I even tried to continue making work. Kagetsu I'm pretty sure saw zero combat.
Engage frustrated me, though, because the way they scaled skirmishes to your strongest characters, once a unit falls behind, they're going to stay behind. There's no saving them.
Yet another example of universal scaling being a terrible design decision *gets off soapbox*
Back to Kagetsu, I did much the same, not using him at all in my first run. In my second run on Maddening he was one of the few units that felt idiot-proof. Picked him up out of the box, didn't even bother changing him to a different class, and he worked just fine. If I had actually invested into him he would probably have been even better, but I was focusing on trying to use both Anna and Jean that run for whatever reason, so his solid stats ended up just being good enough to carry him for a decent portion of the game, not truly dominating bc Maddening but never really falling off.
FE10 is probably the poster child of "Unit comes in and steals the show from all the units you've trained the entire game." You have four entire parts to the story and three entire armies worth of units to train. You're most likely going to end up training several units from all three armies, or at least a few. And then at the end of the game, you have five maps where your roster is pared down to only ten units that you can pick yourself. At the same time, five royal laguz show up and all of them are instantly better than almost every other unit in the game.
It's not particularly fun to fill a full half of your deployment slots up with brand new free win buttons when you probably have more than ten units you've spent the entire game training already, characters you've grown attached to, who could probably beat the endgame just fine. But it's still easier if you replace the 5th to 10th best units from the 67 units you've had up to this point with the five royal laguz.
The Royal Laguz in Radiant Dawn are an odd case, because a lot of them have unique story-related dialogue if you bring them into the tower (not all of them, but some do), so by making them incredibly powerful the game creates mechanical incentives for you to bring them, thus increasing the likelihood of you seeing at least *some* of the unique dialogues.
The tower also has the only points in the game (and is one of the only times in the entire SERIES) where stat caps actually matter, and so having multiple units at or near caps with GOOD caps can definitely help. Though I will say the royals are *definitely* overtuned even for endgame, and getting so many of them all at once was a bit much.
@@MythrilZenith I definitely agree. They're all very cool thematically, the whole "all the countries come together to take down Ashera" is fitting and makes for an epic set piece. The power fantasy appeals to lots of players and can be fun. It's just that they invalidate a lot of your training projects and that can feel bad too.
Since you mentioned it and im playing it right now, whats the difference between 1.0 Engage and current versions?
I already try not to use any additional features that got added with updates because it probably wasnt in the mind of the balancing team and I want a proper challenge.
> DLC wasn't out yet (You had the free gifts and the Tiki and 3H Lords emblems but that's it).
> The Ancient Well didn't exist, meaning you couldn't chuck weapons in for stuff like SP books. In fact, there was no way to gain SP books outside of the few you got for beating the game and going back into that save file.
> This one is an actual improvement the patches made, but you couldn't access the Emblem skill inheritance from the arena, you HAD to go to the ring chamber. There were also no "put 2 units here to gain support" areas in the Somniel.
Those are the 3 big changes. If you don't have DLC anyway the first doesn't matter, and the third is a genuine improvement, but the Ancient Well's impact on the game's gold and SP economy is a total joke. Sure, some skills are borderline impossible to get without it, but the fact that you can just dump items into the well to get SP books (at random drop chances) takes the idea that the SP economy used to be important and throws it out the window.
There were some fundamental issues with the way the SP skill system was implemented, but giving players the ability to RANDOMLY turn gold into SP between chapters shouldn't have been the solution.
@@MythrilZenith really detailed answer, thanks! And good work on the channel.
Bad cards reward the more skilled player and some players enjoy discovering good bad cards can be applied in many things.
what happens if you have to use more units? does the debate of kagestu being bad for making lapis and diamant irrelevant disapear?
basically the split army idea. You have Lapis in one army and Kagetsu in another. You use both in a way Lapis is being useful, not just "I'm deploying her because I want to train her".
I think this links to a bit of a deeper dilemma in FE where because perma-death is an integral part of the game, it makes sense to have lower deployment slots so that even if you lose units and have to use weaker ones, you still have access to the same amount of actions. You also want to avoid giving units utility that's so unique that losing them would hurt really meaningfully. But then because you want every unit to contribute in a player's run, it makes sense to do things like have high deployment slots and split armies so every unit has a chance to shine. Considering modern FE doesn't really lean into perma-death and ironmanning anyways, I wish they'd explore that aspect more. Route splits with seperate teams where you pick who goes where, a party being split into smaller groups... it'd be fun to explore further.
The bad card argument do not work in Fire Emblem.
You could possibly argue characters like Amelia as "timmy" characters, but she hardly get better stats than seth so it doesn't really fulfill the fantasy of timmy card.
And FE units are too simple for any sort of Johnny unit being even possible.
Bad cards are not just trash to highlight good card, their purpose is also to appeal to different player types than the one that one to play meta. And FE characters often fail to achieve that.
I don't use Lyre because she's usable. I use her because she's a catgirl.
Had the displeasure of leveling up Lyre because of Gatrie base convo with her in RD the first time i played and cleared the game, lot's of bishop abuse to train her and her weapon, always supporting with Gatrie, maxed her stats and she still was weaker than every other unit, only to find out RD done away with 90% of paired endings, and she had nothing with him. Tellius sucks!
Before you went on to give your thoughts, I answered that having a "nothing" unit like Kyza is better than a "shows up and just always dunks on your current army" unit like Kagetsu. Disclaimer: obviously Kagetsu is a blessing to a run that is struggling with deaths or units not turning out well, but on a run that's doing fine it feels weird that he just pops up and DEMANDS that you drop someone for him or you're doing it wrong by any measurable metric, made worse by Engage low deployment slots to units provided count. A unit like Kyza can serve as a filler/meatbag if things went downhill for whatever reason, or if you just want to use the silly little guy because you like playing that way, but it will rarely if ever feel like you are blatantly kneecapping yourself by choosing to not deploy him. I haven't played Dark Deity, but if your explanation of the barrel guy is accurate, that sounds kinda horrid.
I'm pretty sure part of the reason kyza lyre are so bad is because arms scrolls don't work on laguz in radiant dawn
Kagetsu is such a funny strong unit, i just reclassed him to wyvern and slapped lyn/roy on him and he was usable in the entire playthrough. Sometimes i dont even put skills on him, bro is just good out of the box.
So personally when it comes to what people call “bad units” there a few types you can categorize.
Join late/high growth-potential : most “Ests” fall under here like Est, Nino, Zeiss etc. These work as intended: you get the challenge of raising them up and are rewarded with a strong unit at the end.
Joins around mid game with plenty of chapters to still use but is pitifully weak: Fiona, Sophia, Gwendolyn, Yubello, etc. These can be made into strong units… but their bases are crap, their growths aren’t high enough to save them, and have strong competition.
Pre-promoted failures: Karla, POR Lucia, Shanam, most of FE12 mid to late game pre-promotes especially the Wolfguard. Bad bases and their growth rates can’t save them, so they start bad and don’t get better.
Broken/over-centralizing: Seth, Robin, Kris etc. These units are too good and tend to break their respective games. So they are “bad” in a balance sense.
I want to add another argument. Units that are too good makes the game less engaging. Wich is particoularly true for Jeigans that in my opinion are straight up bad game design(with the exception of Balderoy/Vorkov from Langrisser 1).
The game is supposed to teach you mechanichs in the early game and then test you later on. Almost every game work like that. Examples are lords dtarting with a rapier to teach effective damage, or Navarres teaching critical hits.
Overtuned units throw it out of the window. Effective weapons are not necessary, crits are not necessary, the weapon triangle is not necessary and so on. The game tell you that you have to use all those things but in reality you just have to outstat everything with a broken character. Those characters woukd be fine if they required great system mastery to be made, but not if they are given out for free. Here i will add an Hot Take. FE should be willing to let the player softlock themselves.
And this is far worse with Jeigans because they do it in the middle of the learning process, making harder for the lessons to stick.
That said, the way merc work in Jagged Alliance 2 kinda solve that issue by having the stronger units just cost a lot more. You can literally start with the best unit, but he cost more than a squad of early game mercs and keeping him around require securing a source of income FAST.
6:49
Because, if I wanted to play like that, I'd just watch a Japanese speedrun. Who the hell wants to play the game using the same 10 units all the time!? If the unit can be useful and you like them, USE THEM! Why would I want to play the same game the same way more than one time?
4:51 Ashe is generally considered to be the worst student, at least from what I've seen. Bad Personal, no good unique combat arts, and no real utility. But like even then you can still make him work on Maddening, go into Sniper and have Hunter's Volley and voila.
I'm a real sucker for Bow Knight Deadeye Ashe, it's not optimal or even something 3H design inherently values, but what can I say I like having 8-range attacks. Plus it's like the one art even semi-unique to him, with only him, Bernie and Yuri getting it.
I didn't even know Ashe was bad when I played Blue Lions, admittedly it was only Hard difficulty but I just made him a wyvern and he had the offensive stats to one round most enemies plus his personal lock picking utility. Then I read that he was bad and I was surprised.
@@blahmaster6k It's really less that Ashe is bad (I believe that there's no real bad unit in Three Houses, even the worst units are just like middling) but that everything he can do anyone else can do better.
Wyvern makes anyone good just cause of how nutty the bonuses it gives you are, same with Sniper and Hunter's Volley.
Even his niche of being a flying door key isn't all that great because you can just buy door and chest keys for cheap.
It's less him being bad but more being outclassed, but he's not unusable by any means even on Maddening, it's kinda fun trying to make him work for me.
Early units in Engage do have the advantage of having access to the pre-chapter 11 emblems.
This is why I say, without DLC at least, early units are more flexible, while later units are stronger in their specific niche. Most of the midgame cast can't get magic access very easily if they don't already have it, for instance, meaning you have more opportunity to make early units mages who aren't at base. This doesn't mean they will necessarily outperform a dedicated magic unit like Pandreo or Ivy that you get in the midgame, but it gives them more options and, in theory, more access to skills during those midgame chapters that later units won't get until closer to the end of the game, like Canter or Vantage.
Ive been saying for years that bad units are good for the series. 3h is a great game in most aspects but the units are all basically the same level of good which makes for boring gameplay.
And the ones that are "bad" aren't bad because of inherent weaknesses that are fun to overcome, they're "bad" because they lack fundamentally useful tools and thus just fail to contribute in interesting ways most of the time.
This is also assuming some level of meta knowledge and deeper understanding. For a blind play-through most units are likely to feel very similar and interchangeable.
@@MythrilZenithto answer your lyza/kagetsu question, its fine to have both. Kagetsu types make runs like 0% growths possible and are also just casual play heroes. Radiant dawn hands you a full team of tower ready units at the end that can reasonably replace every single unit youve been using up to that point. most players arent going to take all of them. Theyre basically failsafes for players who want or need one.
And as established bad units are also good for the game
the laguz royals in fe10 were quite similar. even on my first playthrough, it was kind of disappointing to be just given these excellent units that seem so good you're doing yourself a disservice to not bring to the tower. it makes sense storywise why they're so strong but still
Also i did a playthrough once with Lyre and made her come to the tower, it was fun lol
My only opinion is that Faust was so stupid and funny, one of my favorite DD units. But to be fair, the majority of my squad were gag units like him and Benji
I do agree that prepromotes should have some stat penalties as to not make them dominate, but still retain their usefulness in a pinch. I'm for and against a mechanic like reclassing, it complicates things a bit and yet it's original purpose was to encourage players to push through despite the losses. I think skills are somewhat of the problem when they're involved in reclassing, although Engage seemed to have the right idea with locking class skills to the classes themselves. I wouldn't mind that going forward, maybe distribute skills not tied to classes via limited amount of scrolls?
Maybe that's because I'm not too fond of skill dipping (especially in Fates, where reclassing and supports are kinda tied together) there's so much you'd wanna do and it makes permadeath more a liability than a QoL feature...
I'd love to appease both ends and improve the systems. I like limited reclassing in concept, but not when it hinders how I should actually be playing (unpaired combat, rather than gluing a support partner to my investment target and thereby making chapters harder on myself because I'm sacrificing better combat for a reclass in a future map) I also prefer to keep units in actual classes and not build them up from a blank canvas, which also kinda takes away from what makes permadeath so great. I'm on the fence about reclassing because of all that. Make it restrictive, but I'd like to not fry my brain when thinking about what class paths to take and when to learn the skills. Keeps discussion about these games even more interesting, sure, though permadeath should be seen as a time saver and not a time waster just because of the incentive or favoring of skill builds. I know it's not necessary, but I think it's natural to want to form a strong build regardless of the type of player you are. I'm of the belief that if it's a feature, you should use it.
Sure, I could just play certain games on Casual, but I feel that's the equivalent of putting a tiny bandage on a massive wound. More power to those that can enjoy it that way, I mean ZERO disrespect to anyone who prefers playing that way, that's just not how I personally enjoy the series :(
Maybe I'm biased, who knows? I just wanted to put down my own thoughts. I welcome discussion!
Regarding Lyre and Kyza, I played on easy mode with the goal of leveling up every playable laguz strike level and character level. It took a while. They are bad units. You have to invest so much into them.
I feel purposeless units are worse for the game than overpowered units, for one reason and one reason only: its a waste of the developer's resources. I don't care if the game has "bad units", as long as they have something going for them to give them a purpose to exist. If they're completely generic AND bad, then what's the point of them being in the game?
Don't get me wrong, the existence of units like Seth is ALSO bad for the game, but at least they have a reason to exist (even if that reason is to trivialize the game)
Disagree re: 3houses. Mercedes falls below the usability bar. Especially in the Blue Lions route
She’s *godawful*.
The only pure mage in the game who comes with no offensive magic at base, the only healer that needs to get her faith rank up twice to get to physic and the only mage to have full weaknesses in the weapon triangle.
Offensively she gets outdone by every other mage and most other units that can theoretically do magical combat
Utility you have to wait till ch4 to get her physic and she gets no utility faith spells
Truly a FOUL unit. The only worse one is Anna and I’d argue that Anna has more firepower with magic (sure she has a mag bane but bolting at A is still worth it)
Playing casually, I used Mercedes in two runs (Hard NG and Maddening NG+) and she was fine, but I will go on record and state that 3H meta and analysis is the LAST thing I know about when it comes to Fire Emblem.
Mercedes might be significantly worse than the cast but that usability bar in my mind is a VERY strict metric that very, VERY few units actually fall below. But agree to disagree on definitions.
@@MythrilZenith Maybe it's because I'm not the type of player that's looking to stride/dance/warp/rescue skip every map, but just having physic access at all makes a unit extremely usable in my opinion. Healers are always nice to have in Fire Emblem, no matter what game it is.
I've got a unit idea:
Isekai self-insert who's been the talk of the town as some "chosen hero", joins with average stats but locked at 0 luck, a crazy 20 might 90 hit 1-2 range holy magic sword but weighs 20 (to represent the fact that they aren't worthy of it) no special skills just the sword. Since they get doubled when using it and they have shit luck they'll probably just get crit and die in vain ending the joke. But since with the sword they are so offense oriented they end up stealing the show (kills) from other units and the hard earned xp.
But if they don't die off they get led astray during the story and they're not so holy nature makes them end up as a boss with all the investment you gave them. (Thank you Tearring Saga for that part)
25:20 sums up really well why I dropped Engage and still need to finish it. I really enjoy Awakening, Fates, and 3H for that aspect. It was confusing to me that I didn't enjoy Engage because people hyped up Engage as being Conquest 2 and I'm someone who only really cares about gameplay. Maybe the map design makes Engage Conquest 2, but building my units long-term was really depressing.
Building bond between units and Emblems on the maps by having them fight together seemed less interesting than say, building supports in Fates, but it seemed like a decent objective to work towards on maps. And then I realized I could just watch a cutscene in the Somniel and have my units build that bond anyways.
Every unit having a unique weapon proficiency seemed cool until I realized they rarely actually mean anything. I have to have a need to push weapon ranks further ahead or lack an Emblem that gives that weapon proficiency for them to actually matter.
Speaking of which, weapon ranks are just set and don't increase on weapon use???
Supports themselves feel irrelevant and a pain to build.
Second seals are back... but they're unrestricted on what class you wanna go to and there's no skills to pick up. That's one thing that's impactful for example in Fates. What class you come from matters in terms of what skills you'll have coming into it. Because there's a lot to get out of different classes, there's more reason to jump around and what classes you have access to is significant.
Fire Emblem is all about building units to me. The on-map gameplay is interesting because there's a constant battle between maximizing things like weapon exp, regular exp and supports and actually clearing the map. Engage is JUST about clearing the maps on its own.
I also enjoy pre-Awakening games, although they feel less comparable to Engage. In those games, stat differentials, weapon ranks, and classes make units actually distinct.
Emblem rings are infuriating to me not just because I don't really enjoy what they do, but because they took over a bunch of really interesting systems in the process and stomped all over them. Awakening pair-up is the only mechanic that competes with them on most infuriating, but at least I can just download a mod to make it fun for me.
Engage appeals to a fundamentally different type of player than 3 Houses or Awakening, while Conquest appeals to subsections of both. It really has revealed just how many different hooks FE has, and when some of those hooks are taken away the types of players that drop the game reveal more about those players and then, in turn, about those games.
Each unit’s proficiencies in Weapon ranks can certainly matter in some cases. The best example of which is staff proficiency giving griffons the ability to cast warp and sages the ability to cast fortify which can basically instantly gain back engage meter when you play around it. Griffons gaining warp and rescue is huge when using something like a halberdier Louis in particular
There is no unit in engage, that is good enough to hurt the game.
I love ALL MythrilZenith videos!!!! ❤
26:10 I manually play 1.0 engage by not using the well and throwing away all the dlc unlocks and free gifts. The DLC is fun sometimes but I agree the base game is better in a lot of ways.
wendy.... she calls to me...
also laguz cant be given arms scrolls
i recently replayed dark deity and it was actually pretty balanced even at max difficulty. even when units like faust joined me, i had no reason to field him because he was equal/slightly worse than my other units. i also noticed a lot of people that talk about dark deity fall into the pitfall of only looking at stats/classes. I think the way the game was designed was for you to build units based on class skills, since they retain the previous ones even if they change to a different class branch.
My best example would be Gerrick. he does not work best as an archer. That may be his starting class, but his combat becomes unviable due to archer tree skills not stacking well with his personal skill of +15 crit damage. However, he becomes one of the best units in the game if he goes down the Drifter path, since it has skills that bring his crit damage up to +65%, and even increase his crit rate by 25%. this is expanded upon when becoming a Strider, since he has 115% crit damage modifier, as well as an insane amount of crit rate. even units his class is weak against he can have a monstrous amount of crit on, and will more than likely 1 shot them regardless of how good or bad his stats are. i actually think its a very fun game, especially after they changed the abysmal chapter 19 to a better designed map.
Is Nino the exception that proves the rule or is she just an exception?
Good calling out of my stream of consciousness verbiage slip where my brain copy-pasted four extra words that I recently heard attached onto the end of a word after almost 40 minutes straight of talking about confusing and oft-misunderstood concepts.
Its fitting that Engage encourages you to throw away your old units in favor of newer ones on average because I ended up throwing away Engage in favor of stuff like Unicorn Overlord.
Oof, but not wrong. I still need to pick up the full game, that demo blew me away.
Definitely worse the good unit. Why would I waste exp on all my cavs if I will get Percival?
It also pissed me off FE6 giving me a promotion item alongside the promoted unit that is potentially better. Do they feel pitty for the unpromoted comrades or what?
Better for your army? Kagetsu syndrome. Better game design? Nothing unit imo (as much as I adore Kagetsu)
ah, the guy who comes in and obseletes everyone in the same niche problem, or as I first learned it, the TG Cid problem
fun to fool around with a little or carry a first play but yeesh
Mercedes is based
I think it kinda just boils down to "there's too many units."
If each unit is distinct, serves a purpose no matter what skill level you have, and can stand on their own in the role they serve, then there's no "good" or "bad" units. They all need each other to function. If there's too many units you get overlap, and if there's overlap there's competing. Which is where you get good and bad units.
You can avoid that by just not giving people options.
Fire Emblem constantly has to balance how much success in the current chapter depends on previous chapters. Ridiculously powerful characters put all players on an even playing field, reardless of how well they've been doing up to this point
It's a very tricky line to walk, and one I don't envy the devs on. It's no small wonder they're able to make so many games work, particularly the ones with limited avenues of extra exp.
To me, unless you're specifically trying to speedrun or LTC, you should always use at least 1 or 2 "bad units" in your team. It doesn't feel fun if you only use good units.
This unscripted video coulda used a bit of trimming to keep on topic
final fantasy tactics?
worse units that patch up ur army if permadeath has thinned you out are good for the game. units that come in and trivialize several parts of the game are bad for the game. i dont like my games trivialized.
i find that when im streaming FE, chat is always on my ass about who's better, who's best, etc, and i end up benching or under-utilizing my 'best' units bcuz i find reducing an entire section of a map's strategy to 'god unit kills everything at choke point while taking 0 damage from chump enemies' unfun
mercedes still is considered to be one of the worst. Caspar is relatively mediocre, definitely worse than the majority of the cast but he stands above students like mercedes, ashe and anna due to bombard making his mid game pretty good. His late game falls into a similar samey-ness (wrath/vantage or wyvern spam or just being a player phase killbot in brawler/sniper) the rest of the cast does and with a non-standout early game he is generally considered a poor unit, but better than the worst. Generally though, with the exception of MAYBE the few units I stated I wouldn't say three houses really has any "bad" units.