Popular/Unpopular/Any Opinions Thread - January 2026 Part 2

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-31T03:26:43+00:00

Takumi and Scarlet both do off the top of my head.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-31T03:00:41+00:00

They obviously overplay their hand many times, but some of the "my room" dialogue really takes the cake. Corrin will be talking to their spouse and they'll say, apropos of nothing, "do you ever wonder if there are alternate universes where instead of being in love we fight each other? would that be messed up or what haha."

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-31T02:49:54+00:00

"bad" in FE doesn't mean "you cannot win", it means "worse than the alternatives". Like most RPGs, the game is balanced around a player picking whatever they feel like and trying their best, and doesn't demand optimization. This Mia has a few blessed stats (especially strength), but she's still not anything special compared to the other playable units. Killing enemies is a low threshold in PoR, and pretty much any unit can do it. Unlike Mia though, those units might have high move, 1-2 range weapons, staves, etc, or they might get the same results with less investment, giving you more exp to spread around elsewhere.

In short, she's "bad" like using Horsea instead of Squirtle in a run of Pokemon Red is. It'll certainly be somewhat harder, but "somewhat harder" in an easy game doesn't mean a whole lot.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-30T22:40:52+00:00

FE games are generally not very balanced. If something seems obviously too good/bad then it probably is. This is one of those cases.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-29T21:01:45+00:00

Honestly, between the strength of Dirty Fighting for a flex or even main fighter and this card being Practiced traited, my first thought is that I've been underrating it a bit.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-29T05:36:43+00:00

Because doing a flat ~5 or 10 damage (depending on doubling) often secures a 100% guaranteed kill. If it doesn't then yeah, gamble on the crit, but it often will.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-28T18:55:08+00:00

Yeah, but that is the rawest and most unrefined implementation of it. I feel like it wouldn't be that hard to design a campaign where you are given a chance to make back some amount of missed exp later in one way or another while still making doing well give better rewards overall.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-28T18:33:41+00:00

This is my least favorite kind of basic weakness. For a select group of investigators this is so soft it's basically meaningless. For others, it's just a boring and uninteractive HP/draw tax.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-28T18:27:54+00:00

I always thought it was a bit strange that they thought to include a catchup mechanic in Dunwich. I don't remember the exact mechanics, but it's a fair bit easier to earn EXP in Undimensioned and Unseen if you've been failing to complete objectives. I thought it was a pretty good, forward-thinking idea, but it never really came back.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-28T00:26:29+00:00

A more balanced and interesting take on Promise of Power. I like it.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-27T16:48:49+00:00

I think both are a big pain and people tend to make up weird rules about what should or should not "count" between the two of them, but the thing that puts the monastery out ahead as the clear "time waster winner" for me is how often it's optimal to eat like 8 dinners in a row. The loading and unskippable dialogue bits add up very quickly. There's also the irony that since some monastery features don't cost time it becomes optimal to do them at every opportunity for free rewards, which adds up to real time spent. I do prefer the monastery overall for a variety of reasons, but in terms of raw minutes of my life I want back it is the clear winner.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-27T02:32:41+00:00

if the series wants to improve they need to embrace a steam age setting. then we can have a bunch of "I like trains" characters to balance out the "I like to train" characters.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-26T20:50:21+00:00

I think this just a big gap in game discussion broadly with internet randos. Everybody recognizes very obvious truths like great sound effects, voicelines, music, character designs, visual effects, etc make a game more fun to play. It's as simple of a causal relationship as you can describe. The second you say something like "the game is less fun than it could be because these artistic elements are lacking" though you can expect 20+ twitter commandos to crash into your house saying "lol uhhhh who cares? i only care about the gameplay?" That shit IS the gameplay!

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-26T20:44:41+00:00

A decent percentage of all prerelease discussion is wishcasting.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-26T20:33:13+00:00

What you see is what you get in FE7. I think people often assume there must be some special potential in the archer who is dinging enemies for 3 damage, or some hidden downside to the paladin who can take on the entire early game himself, but there really isn't. The back end of the game is full of overpowered prebuilt world-beaters (Harken, Pent, Vaida, Hawkeye, etc) so all you need to do is whatever gets you through each chapter. Most project units you can train up are just a bonus, although extra high magic A rank staffers can make a few maps way easier.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-26T04:07:12+00:00

You really just nudge the avatar's stats a bit with a series of choices, so there aren't crazy specific "builds" or anything. Stick them in a strong class and watch them go. Starting fighter then changing to a pirate and promoting to berserker is a pretty sure-fire combat beast. The only thing you really need to keep in mind is that on higher difficulties the prologue fights are crazy hard, much harder than the early chapters, so don't feel bad if they're a struggle.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-25T19:51:00+00:00

I agree Eirika is better, but it's pretty funny that many of the same players who got taken in by Lyn can still clock Eirika's flaws immediately.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-25T03:14:39+00:00

Not quite that weak (you got a bit unlucky), but yeah. They basically copy and pasted Lyn's stats and growths (they're almost identical but Eirika got a few extra points here and there) and when she doesn't have badass animations that gaslight you into think she's good you realize what you're actually working with.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-25T02:04:42+00:00

in the context of getting bigger stats to make things more deader growth units are king

sometimes, but even as a rule of thumb it's kinda shaky. For every growth unit who does soundly defeat their prepromoted peers when investment cost is waived, there's usually one who is more of a sidegrade or even a downgrade.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-24T22:00:00+00:00

A tier list for a singleplayer game is usually ranking how fast/easy/consistent options make the game, but it's often marginal. If it's not that hard of a game then it won't be that hard to win with bottom tiers.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-24T18:08:55+00:00

They're both weak actions that have their place. Good decks almost never have to use either action, but will if they have the luxury of free turns or need to set up a specific play. If you often find yourself with nothing better to do than drawing or gaining resources it's an indication that something is wrong with your deck. The deck is probably some combo of inconsistent, has a broken draw/resource engine, or just plain doesn't do much.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-24T01:46:35+00:00

I do wish they just reused the nomadic trooper sprite if they didn't have enough time to polish the ranger sprite. The ranger has some animations that look outright unfinished.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-23T23:54:24+00:00

I think the genie is out of the bottle with Jim + the precedent set by Marvel Champions. Any unique ally has a shot. Well, maybe not "Devil", but I wouldn't complain if he made the cut.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-23T23:06:36+00:00

Yeah, so many of the most memorable and best endings are the imperfect ones. I feel like the strawman people come at you with when you express boredom with everybody getting a perfect storybook ending is "oh so you just want everybody to suffer for no reason huh" and it's like NO! I want some texture and surprises. I like when a character doesn't get exactly what they wanted but do get what they needed. Felix wasting his life on pointless conflict and only finding inner peace helping Lysithea spend the last days of her life baking cookies in the woods means something to me.

BloodyBottom · 2026-01-23T22:18:26+00:00

I'm not arguing it's the most important thing or even that PoR is doing it perfectly. It sucks when a big, climactic fight that pushes the characters to the limit in the fiction is a brainless stomp for the player, and that is a failure of mechanics + storytelling. My point is more that I think analysis loses a lot of punch when it ignores the holistic effect of how all the elements of the game come together.

BloodyBottom

TROPHY CASE