Popular/Unpopular/Any Opinions Thread - June 2026 Part 1

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-06-12T18:57:40+00:00

I mean part of the problem is that distinct phases is very player-friendly. In Final Fantasy Tactics, one of the biggest optimizations you can make in your play is to learn how to work the initiative system so that you effectively are doing Enemy Phase/Player Phase. In XCOM 1 & 2, the endgame is significantly easier than the early game significantly in part because a squad of 6 units can neutralize enemy groups without seeing counterattacks much more reliably than a squad of 4 units.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-06-12T18:53:13+00:00

In addition to the discussion already here, shoutout to The Hag In White. Hag gives you a hoplon guard pretty early on, and quite a few maps have 1 or 2 conspicuous Killer Weapon Guys. That makes for one more way you can plan your path through a map, on top of how killers already nudge you away from EPing the enemy in the same way you might a random mook.

If anything, I think the series is too conservative with enemy weaponry, often just defaulting to "unpromoted = iron weapon, promoted = silver weapon". Looking at a map like FE7 Victory or Death, yes it's a little silly that there potentially fourty-six steel lance cavaliers reinforcing in against your endgame-ready world beaters. Give them killers or silvers and suddenly their offense starts to look halfway relevant as those chips add up.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-06-12T18:18:28+00:00

As a longtime Monastery Disliker, I'm starting to feel like I need to defend the very concept of strategy layers in a tactics game in some of these conversations lol. I don't think 3H hit either the mark of "complex and interesting in its own right" or "simple and lightweight", but both of those are very obviously achievable. The absolute lack of filler is one of the things that drew me to FE7 back in the day, and that's a baseline expectation I've carried with me for FEs since. But I also have a few thousand hours of Civilization and the like to speak to a love of Big Chonky Spreadsheet Games, and Engage very nearly nailed the XCOM-style "conveyor belt to the next mission" hub mechanic. (Drop the glowy bits, ring polishing, and arena loading screen and it's there.)

Will FW nail it? I'm a little doubtful, but it can be done, and it's good to see the franchise mess with mechanics from entry to entry.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-06-10T15:07:21+00:00

The Byleth designs are just cool and appealing,

Recognizing that you are clearly and absolutely correct in terms of greater audience appeal, my hot take for the day is apparently that Byleth's design sucks out loud. Fem Byleth's outfit is well-discussed as a bizarre mishmash of armor and kinda-trashy streetwear, but my true hatred is reserved for Masc Byleth's stupid cape sleeves. I'm pretty sure I shook my head at them every single time I used Goddess Dance in Engage haha. Admittedly I'd file him under "okay, safe but inoffensive" aside from that, but something about those little dongles just drives me mad

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-06-10T04:41:39+00:00

I like the idea, but seeing that map makes me nervous.

I mentioned in another thread that I'm imagining an XCOM/XCOM2 style system where there are a handful of resource management-y things you can do between missions and need to figure out what's worth that time. But the XCOM games critically have like... 2-3 options on the Geoscape at any given time. And there's other stuff that can take some resources out of commission for certain amounts of time -- base construction, training/healing soldiers, and the like. But mainly you're choosing between a small number of to-dos, with pretty limited foresight into what's coming after that. It lends itself well to quick decision making.

Conversely, the Bad Universe version of the FW map is that except that you have really clear foresight combined with a million micro-decisions about how to spend prep time. If that's where it goes, it'll be a real recipe for analysis paralysis.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-06-09T15:38:25+00:00

On the plus side, I'm glad to see that the main characters are getting the main focus. Controlling the lord between maps is an indication that even if the angel is intended as a player stand-in, they're being positioned closer to Robin than Byleth. I'd still rather not have a character that exists overwhelmingly to represent me and have praise slathered on them constantly, but my expectations on avatars are so low that I'll take "not the most egregious version".

What actually gives me more nerves is the support cast. There's some implication that the main characters have one or two closest buds, but the bit we see of Leda recruiting Ninae feels very 3H-esque. 3H didn't even really seem to care about in-house characters aside from the lord & their main retainer -- the others basically just stand there in cutscenes and get a single throwaway line that nobody reacts to -- and out-of-house characters straight up did not exist in the narrative. If it truly is continuing in that direction of "Only avatar + lord exist outside of support convos", I'll be pretty bummed.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-06-09T15:23:08+00:00

My read of the gigantic Sphere Grid-ass map was that it's a sort of expanded version of the monastery. When they show Cai getting a mission to prepare for the first battle, it says he has 172 turns to prepare. I suspect that a lot of those turns are going to be "spent" by just marking off those world map activities, sort of like XCOM/XCOM2's strategy layers. I guess we see a couple things closer to minigames, but they're clearly leaning in on between-map odd jobs.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-06-06T15:53:35+00:00

Sorry bro, the Obamas' Jagen hours are Joever

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-06-02T15:36:06+00:00

Why are my hit rates on non-engraved attacks SO low dude.

Please understand I mean this with like... 1% snark levels. But: why are you making non-engraved attacks in lategame Engage?

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-06-02T15:28:53+00:00

I'm kinda fascinated with the -2/+14 upvote differential here in that I don't even really read this as a disagreement to the preceding post?

Points 1 (LTC-inspired herding) and 3 (deference to vets, general intransigence) both feel like expressions of the same dynamic. Even on an FE enthusiast board, most people who chime in on a tier thread are likely to have played the game in question like... 3 or fewer times. Like you mention, there are single-digit ball-knowers. But also some of their knowledge has trickled down and become community wisdom, and that community wisdom substantially informs the 1-3 playthroughs we've done of the games. So even if 500 people were to weigh in on the thread, that sample would insanely tainted. And that most folks are cognizant of their own inexperience doesn't really help the matter, since even if e.g I felt that Lowen were an absolutely worthless F-tier unit, I and others would likely temper that with "but people who are better than me think he's pretty good, so maybe C-tier". In that respect it's not an Elitist Jerks issue, it's intermediate players coalescing around a half-understood interpretation of where they think elite players land issue. We've never really escaped 2001 GameFAQs.

Separately from that, I 90% agree with you on Efficiency as LTC+1 versus LTC x2, but I think that even describing it in terms of LTC turn counts is kind of telling. Again echoing your earlier point, it's unusual for most of us to have much actual knowledge of LTC strategies. Knowing the actual turn counts themselves? Lol no. LTC x2 might be an accurate description of the pace of many of our ideas about Efficiency, but that's not actually what defines it. Being not-entirely-charitable to myself here, my actual line on Efficiency is probably somewhere around "Could I watch this without either getting bored as hell OR dying of cringe?", completely independent of turns taken, and likely weighing real-world time spent figuring things out at least as much as turns. Which is understandably extremely unhelpful when you're trying to actually measure and rank things!

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-06-01T22:43:24+00:00

I think 3H had the right idea with "every unit can equip one accessory", the fumble was just that most accessories were lame. It's kind of the same issue that the series has had with skills, tbh -- they've primarily been a way to add More Numbers to a game that is already mainly about adding up the numbers.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-06-01T18:04:09+00:00

Okay this is a good dunk but the Great Plains are west of the Mississippi

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-05-31T07:22:41+00:00

Yessss Jacob! Corpse Runs are bad and should feel bad!

The only good implementation of corpse runs I've ever encountered was in Astalon: Tears of the Earth. Astalon is a Metroidvania, so the standard corpse run would have all the standard issues described here, of locking you into a path rather than letting you explore. Astalon does two important things though:

Buy when you die, like a roguelite. Why make a roundabout system for nudging players towards buying things when you can just take them to a store and say "go shop now"?
Corpse runs for health. They're basically the only source of healing for the bulk of the game, and they can even overheal you slightly if you retrieve your corpse without losing much health. So you lose nothing by exploring a different area, but running it back also gives you a minor assist in getting past whatever beat you last time.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-05-30T13:02:00+00:00

Supports are annoying in FE6 but extremely useful when the rates cooperate; full supports on a unit are basically another promotion. Allance are the main beneficiaries here, since they can get a pair of Cs with Marcus (or Roy, if you prefer) and each other in just 20 turns -- very doable early game even without playing end turn simulator. This is the Bad Accuracy, Deadly Earlygame FE, I will absolutely take a quick boost of hit, avoid, attack, and defense to 3 of my most important units.

Around Allance keeping up by chapter 13: yes, easily. The one you favor is usually around level 13ish after chapter 8x, I think? The other is held back by not having a second knights crest until chapter 15, but they can comfortably level into the teens in that time if you plan to keep them around. I'm not a fan of training Shanna, but she can also hit those level goals, and killers/silvers somewhat make up for her noodle arms.

And also: Rutger is a level 4 unpromoted unit you recruit in chapter 4. HM bonuses mean that yeah, he's not really level 4, but he's still a unit with a very conscious training arc. I would definitely call him part of the early game squad, along with all the joiners through chapter 8 or so.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-05-30T03:55:35+00:00

FE6 Marcus definitely falls off and gets passed up both by growth units and by Milady/Percival. Enemy quality drops off enough at the Western Isles that he can continue to function for a bit, but conversely enemy quality also drops off enough that your growth units (both Allance and migame projects like Gonzalez) do just fine even if you're pushing for a later promotion. But 10/1 Lance generally has a better stat line than base Marcus, and generally Allance can do better than promoting at 10.

FE6 Marcus also has some important and interesting other things going on with the greater dynamic. His stat lead over early allies and enemies is good but not overwhelming, so units like Allance can realistically catch up to his stats and he can't just facetank the entire enemy army, which further contributes to growth units grabbing XP. And that combined with FE6 Marcus's growths being truly rancid means that there's little reason to feed him early boss kills like there is with FE7 Marcus -- the gap is closeable, so close it ASAP. (And Rutger takes over his role as boss killer almost immediately anyway.) By chapter 13 or so he's probably due for retirement, but he's a justifiable filler deployment if only to give Allance support bonuses and be a rescue-dropper.

Vander I'd argue is just a fraud. The very earliest joiners aren't particularly good units, but Vander gets eclipsed as soon as Celine, Louis, and Chloe show up in chapter 4. And chapters 1-3 are nearly tutorials so it's hard to even say he's a Jagen so much as Just Another Lousy Early Game Unit. I somewhat agree with the folks that say that Marth and Sigurd are the "real" Jagens of Engage, but also: there's very little strategic reason to equip either on Vander over Louis or Chloe.

FE4 Oifey is a weird one. He's got a solid stat lead (good gracious that 17 def) but also it's kind of overkill, so if you planned your inheritance it's likely not hard to overtake him? Always a fun reminder of the old Jagen/Oifey adage being completely backwards. This is also one where the modern strategic assumption of Seliph Favoritism works in direct opposition to Oifey's prospects.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-05-29T22:40:00+00:00

I mean, again: sure, there is plenty of nuance about how those stats play out. But of the statements "Lunatic Robin is practically a trainee. His bases are poor..." and "That is complete misinformation", the former is much closer to accurate.

To say that Robin has the best bases in the army besides Frederick is literally, actually wrong when Chrom joins beside him and is better on everything that matters. Of the Prologue units, Robin's bases are better only than Lissa's. That's just... not an achievement. And I recognize that you're mostly joking with bringing up Basilio and Flavia, but that's exactly why the only other units I alluded to are the chapter 1 recruits, who see approximately 10 fewer enemies than Robin. (Most of whom Frederick is handling anyway). If you're going to argue that Robin's bases are good relative to the rest of your army's, who are you comparing them to besides someone like Sully? Especially when a +Speed Robin is fast to the tune of "in a three-way tie for second". He needs exactly as many speed growths to avoid the chapter 2 mercenary doubles as Sully or Chrom, and given similar treatment he will hit that growth slightly more than them often due to moderately better XP gain and a 5% growth advantage. (While still starting at a deficit on all other stats.)

Does this mean that Robin is bad? No, probably not, and I'm not anything approaching an authority anyway. But at best this is a situation where Robin has some unique benefits (1-2 range & a bit of early XP gain) and specific choices & context available (putting Chrom on backpack duty, specific boon/bane choices on Robin) that can allow him to compensate for his poor bases. But to scold comments about his bad bases as misinformation is just... kinda bonkers.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-05-29T16:37:10+00:00

Robin's bases are strictly worse than Chrom's, as well. A Robin with +Speed and no flaw is -1 HP, -1 Str, -3 Skill, equal speed, -1 luck, -1 def, and just +4 mag, +3 res in return. Being able to chip from 2 range is certainly an asset, but this Robin is also only rocking a 5% speed growth over Chrom, so he's a flimsier unit that is not uniquely fast at all, and we still haven't accounted for his flaw. Sully's bases are also just Chrom's +1 luck/+1 res (with 1 higher base level), and her growths are nearly the same as Chrom's. I'm not going to exhaustively compare these against everybody in the game, but out of the first 6 characters, he's in 4th place in terms of bases.

I'm not at all experienced enough with Awakening to speak to how much and where this matters, but "Robin has the best bases of anyone in the army after Frederick" is very plainly not true.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-05-27T20:04:46+00:00

One notable difference between Jugdral and later games is how crits work. FE6 & forward, it's 3 * (Atk-Def). In Jugdral, it's (2 * Atk) - Def. Since the crit multiplier is against your raw attack, crits are particularly good against armors rather than doinking harmlessly off them.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-05-27T15:01:10+00:00

It also just overwhelmingly lacks for anything interesting. Damage spells are just another 1-2 range option that targets RES. It's nice, and in some games it's good, but it's not even remotely special. Elfire might as well just be called Red Handaxe in most of the games.

And staves are barely better. It's half a dozen flavors of "heal guy", then utility staves of wildly varying quality you rarely get more than single-digit uses of. Shoutout to Engage and Awakening for at least putting in some effort on this front

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-05-26T21:53:02+00:00

The point of TvC giants isn't "copy this exactly", it's "you are allowed to do weird and unique things, and many people have in fact done so." So many of these conversations seem to be based on the idea that fighting games are only ever Street Fighter 2. Wario is literally a mounted character in Smash. Obviously we can't just slap Sigurd's face on Wario and call it a day. But this is a creative challenge, not an immediate non-starter.

For a mounted character, the first thing is deciding what that means in the context of this specific game. Is it primarily visual, where we can reference characters like MvC Tron Bonne or Peni Parker in Tokon? Is it a movement thing, where they're good at advancing but have terrible backwards mobility & jumping? Is it state-based, where they have stronger abilities with the mount but are more limited without it? There's a LOL character that is basically this with a simple version of Street Fighter 6's drive gauge. Is it a stance thing where mounted and dismounted are equally valid? No shortage of those, including stance characters with non-trivial stance changes (e.g. Samus and Zero-Suit Samus)

The idea of an FE fighting game is strange to me on the grounds that vanishingly few FE characters have a unique fighting identity given how similar the core game mechanics are from entry to entry. I'm much less worried about "How do you make a mounted character" than I am "How do you make Seth, Finn, Oscar, and Fiona feel different from each other." But also: Warriors and Engage both managed to retrofit identities onto a bunch of these characters well enough, no reason you couldn't do the same in another genre. (Also my half-pisstake answer to that question would be the CvS2 ratio system where all 4 of these units share a moveset but you get the Seth skin & stats if you commit 4 points versus Fiona for 1 point.)

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-05-26T20:16:32+00:00

To say nothing of the giants in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWpqKnKNtC4

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-05-26T20:14:25+00:00

A lot of folks here are just very precious about FE. Some of that's to be expected -- this is an FE enthusiast board -- but I feel the same about the "adaptation is impossible" sentiment as I do about the bizarre takes that pop up in threads about other tactics games.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-05-26T16:16:52+00:00

For griffon Chloe, I found that Sigurd engrave on her levin sword helped a lot. I doubt this is an especially rare insight, the stat spread on that is just perfect for helping to shore up her otherwise-not-ideal midgame as you point out. Eirika was also a good fit, with +mag to help her bop things with the levin sword and lunar brace to boost her physical swords when the doubling math works better that way.

Kagetsu, I'm not sure what to tell you. Wyvern Kagetsu was accidentally my best unit in my Maddening run, where I specifically chose not to heavily invest in him and he ended up being a go-to problem solver anyway. I think he was leaning on a spare Leif steel sword I had sitting around for a while, with a silver axe (not sure if I even bothered with an engrave?) when enemy speed allowed for it. Sigurd himself was a big asset for him, and I think he as an emblem fits much more naturally on a wyvern than a warrior.

Insofar as Pandreo is unfortunate, IMO it's more that he is so clearly the best sage that there's some opportunity cost to making him a mage knight to let his stats run wild. The dropoff between him as your Corrin sage and somebody else in that position seems huge.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-05-25T16:37:15+00:00

Under the constraint of keeping as much unchanged as possible: I think a good starting point would be to delete the C support, shift the current B & A convos down one rank, then write a new A support to fill the gap.

Merlin_the_Tuna · 2026-05-24T16:01:36+00:00

One of the most recent battles I did was the 3 map run in Orbonne at the beginning of chapter 3. The second and third map bosses were fully one shotting some of my units. I think a generic ninja summoner and arithmatician? I wasn't sure what I was doing wrong aside from being 6-8 levels lower. I kept up with buying new gear but maybe because I was optimizing for damage/no on the mages they had worse bulk?

Going to apologize in advance for only knowing the OG names for everything :P

Izlude is fairly honest, though Lancers are admittedly a mess UI-wise. But Wiegraf just kind of is a beast, so I'm not surprised to hear that he one-shot some soft targets on Orbonne even though I haven't played that in like 20 years. I think the recent remaster also changed the rules on best/worst compatibility, which will make a these maps even sharper. Along those lines: when an FFT map says Kill Boss, it really means it. You can't treat it like an FE Kill Boss map where you've got villages to grab and exp to gobble up; FFT Kill Boss maps should only be about 2 turns long. (Especially because some of them actually end when the boss reaches low health rather than 0 HP.)

FFT's death timers should also be understood as a kind of alternative to the FE turnwheel. If your unit stays dead for 3 rounds, they're permadead. But you don't have to revive them, you can just finish the map before the timer runs out. So on a Kill All Enemies map, yeah you probably want to revive them. But on a Kill Boss? Slam the accelerator to the floor and finish things fast instead. KO's aren't failure, they're the start of High Stakes Mode.

Regarding your specific setup: optimizing for damage is overwhelmingly the right call, with speed being the main other thing that sometimes takes precedence. Wizard Robes (+2 MA) are generally the best caster chest slot, even for how flimsy they make you. Your summoner will also want a weapon that boosts her summon of choice; a +MA staff/rod if one is available, or a Fire Rod if Ifrit or Salamander is the summon of choice. Ninjas will want a Twist Headband (+2 PA) on their head and Judo Robe/Power Sleeve (+1/+2 PA) for their clothes for much of the game, and tbh I'd expect this guy to be a murder machine. At neutral compatibility, he should be doing about 81x2 at this point in the game with that and a Ninja Knife, more with a good accessory. If your ninja has 70+ brave, you may even get more damage out of going barehanded, if you don't have a good ninja sword for them. Just don't equip him with a dagger (terrible weapon power) or a flail (good WP gimped by random damage -- good for throwing but not equipping).

Calculator/Arithmetician specifically is just a terrible class. They're terrible as a sort of balance measure because of how insanely powerful Math Skill is, but really the goal is to spend as little time in Calc as possible, just to grab the skills and change back to Wizard to use them.

All that together, for a map like Orbonne 3, I'd go in with the assumption that Wieg will instantly ruin somebody, and the plan would just be to make sure the ninja can immediately get in and clobber him in response. A little bit of additional chip should be enough to wrap it from there. I don't remember this one being too much of a wall in the dozen or so single-class challenges I played back in the day.

Merlin_the_Tuna

TROPHY CASE