Fire Emblem: Fates (3DS)

[Rendakor]

This drops tomorrow; anyone else getting it? If so, which one? I'm getting the SE so I'll have all 3, but I'm going to start with Birthright because 1) lolweeb and 2) it's the easier one.

[Soulflame]

There will be 2-4 copies of this in my house.

The children have been playing Awakening for weeks now in preparation.  Or something.

[Arinon]

Awakening was my first FE exposure and I liked it a lot.  Was late to the pre-order party on this one and spent the last few weeks checking for an SE copy.  No Dice. 

Going in completely blind and went with Birthright for no discernible reason.  Fully plan to download the other two but would have been nice to have it all on a cart.

Powering through my ironman X-Com 2 run this weekend as I don't really want to have both on the go at once.

[Azuredream]

I pre-ordered Birthright. Depending on how much I like it I'll get Conquest. I'm a fan of the whole series so I'm not expecting to be disappointed. I've heard that the two games are very different, rather than being like Pokemon where which version you get makes basically no difference. It still stinks of greedy money-grubbing though. I wish they'd just release one game at a time but I'm sure this will be wildly successful and they'll decide to continuing doing it from now on.

[Rendakor]

I don't like the dual (tri, really) games shit at all either, but I was going to be buying the SE anyway and at $80 for all 3 games plus the bells and whistles I can't really complain.

The biggest difficulty hurdle of Conquest is supposedly the lack of grinding, but I wonder if Streetpass changes that. I don't work at Gamestop anymore so I won't have infinite, but at least 1 of my D&D players will be getting it and I might make a save file on the wife's 3DS too if so.

[Margalis]

I got Conquest. I've played most Fire Emblems, including some of the old Japanese-only ones (adjust hipster glasses) so I'm down with the no grinding thing. Apparently Conquest is a bit harder and has more varied objectives. Depending on how that goes may pick up Birthright after and maybe play it on Hard.

[Rendakor]

Enjoying this so far. There's a free DLC map out that's a prequel to Awakening; if you beat it without any of the guests dying you get a unique class promotion item.

My castle address is 14345-41461 82307-90224; wouldn't mind swapping castle visits with anyone here. You can do it by Friend code too; mine is 4811-6947-3967.

[Rendakor]

Spoilers for Birthright regarding a character dying via cutscene:
Happened to me and I didn't realize it was optional until I had saved. Restarting because of it, and because I had forgotten the "don't promote until level 20" rule and screwed up Mozu and MC-san.

[Sophismata]

Pre-ordered the special Everything Edition. I look forward to playing the game whenever it finally hits shelves .

[Arinon]

I may be dense but how do you download the Before Awakening DLC map?  Do you have to progress to a certain point in the story or do it from some in-game hub?

All the main menu DLC options are telling me there is nothing to get.

[Rendakor]

You need to progress the story up to the decision point. Finishing Chapter 6 will put you in your castle; choose the "Next Battle" option from your assistant to go to the world map (it doesn't actually start the next battle). From there, pick Dragon Gate which is the DLC hub; you can download it there.

[Azuredream]

Visiting Lilith's Temple/Arena after every scouting mission is really annoying. I've decided I'm just not going to bother anymore.

I really like the music in this one.

[Rendakor]

I've found Lillith to be pretty useless anyway, since there is no reward for winning castle defenses.

[Margalis]

At least in Conquest there are optional castle invasion missions you can do, and you earn XP from them. My Lilith is super weak and useless though.

I'm up to chapter 20 of Conquest. I usually play Fire Emblem games on Normal / Classic rather than Hard, but I try to level up all my guys pretty evenly until it's no longer feasible so it's a big of a handicap - I've hit the point where it's no longer feasible. Enemies are now level 4 or so in a promoted class and a bunch of my troops are still level 14-16 in pre-promoted classes. My damage dealers do almost no damage and my tanks are made out of paper. My axe users are all basically useless because their hit rates are so low, even with good weapon-triangle matchups.

On chapter 19 I finally had to break out the big guns and start using the pre-promoted Nohr royalty sibling units.

I really like the system changes to the game - pairing up in FE Awakening was way too good, now it feels pretty fair. The fact that paired units in Awakening could often double attack and block made them just way too good.

[Azuredream]

Apparently you can visit other castles that people specifically design so that all the defenders do nothing so you win for free, and as a reward you get to copy one of their unit's skills to yours. I did it once and got Ryoma Sol for basically 2 minutes of effort. I decided then not to do that anymore because the game would become piss easy if I gave everyone all the OP skills. I heard there are even hacked skills (aptitude from villager on non-villager classes) available at some castles. I'm not sure if you can do this in Conquest though.

[Arinon]

This turned into a slow burn for me so far.  Playing Birthright on Hard - Classic as I heard that Normal was essentially a snooze-fest.  Might have been a mistake as I generally won't keep a save where someone dies, and there have been several missions where I've missed one thing and ate OHKOs.

Just gave up feeding exp to everyone as well, and I've unlocked all but two of the child paralogues, so I'm expecting things to snowball pretty soon as I can concentrate on the minute to minute tactics rather then play the long game.  Characters in general seem fragile so most plans boil down to building a couple of monster tanks, baiting out the AI, dogpile with the rest of my team, repeat.

This is only my second FE game and I'm feeling my lack of mechanical knowledge a lot.  Weapon triangle and vulnerabilities are all well and good but basic stat interactions, class trees, stat growths, and the various minutiae of building good characters isn't obvious and a lot of the wikis and stuff assume you have a fuckton of knowledge from previous games.

May table Conquest and Revelations until I feel up to a deep dive.  Still think it's a great game though.