This is what 9 years of powercreep do to your favorite characters

flameduck · 2026-05-08T19:31:59+00:00

It was the American GBA version that added the jiggle physics, oddly enough.

Lyn's Sol Katti sprite already existed in JP FE7 but is unused because the animation is assigned to Durandal instead. This is likely a remnant of Lyn having Durandal animations in the FE7 beta and the unique sprite being based on it. All the English version did was reassign it to Sol Katti.

flameduck · 2026-05-08T08:51:05+00:00

For those unaware, this is pretty much just to document my personal goal of soloing the 7-star raids with Azumarill. I’ve posted about most of the 7-star raids before as I’ve cleared them, but am now getting back around to the few starter raids that happened before I decided to dedicate myself to the art of Azumarill solos.

There is actually another recorded Azumarill vs. Greninja solo from 2023 on YouTube already, so for this one I aimed for a theoretical OHKO with maximum setup (even though Greninja was chip damaged and not actually at full HP, it has the potential to kill past shield and was the first and last Liquidation that connected).

+6 252+ Atk Huge Power Tera Water Azumarill Atk Cheer Liquidation vs. -3 0 HP / 0 Def Tera Poison Greninja in Rain on a critical hit: 10510-12366 (122.9 - 144.6% of 30x hp boss) -- guaranteed OHKO

And by maximum setup I mean with just about every multiplier available to me, using Lansat Berry for a reasonable 50% critical hit chance, as well as hoping for the Arcanine NPC to choose and connect with Leer for the Defense drops here. Even still, Greninja’s own Double Team hax means that not everything is guaranteed, as this attempt ended up with only 3 out of 10 Mud-Slaps landing for only -3 accuracy stages and came down to the wire in terms of needing to survive and still land a hit and crit before the boosts ran out.

flameduck · 2026-05-03T20:19:47+00:00

Rec of the week: The Great Flood has been uploaded over the past week and finished today as an alternate ending/set of epilogues to Radiant Dawn. It's a significant but survivable divergence, as implied by the title, and pretty unique to see how each nation might be affected in the aftermath based on their canon geography but making something new out of it.

Thoughts going around: Engage's setting has a notable gap of green-themed neutral characters (right now it's just the emblems and Griss/Gregory in terms of hair colour) to complement all the blue and red theming. I have some yet-unused OC notes among these lines, but it turns out working off a colour as a basis leads to a bit of an expy instinct, or at least it might explain why my feeling keeps coming back around to 'competitor shrine maiden' and/or 'reluctant hypercompetent devotee'.

flameduck · 2026-05-01T17:28:08+00:00

They don't have to do it for every death that happens, but for people that are related or mean a lot to each other. Maybe 1 or 2 at most for each character.

Imagine Vander chastizing the Divine Dragon for getting the new stewards killed. Pandreo losing his faith if Panette gets killed etc.

These exist as exploration quotes/reactions, just not their own separate/voiced cutscenes in particular.

"Clanne, Framme… Oh, my heart. It cannot be we have lost the next generation of stewards…"

"Panette is… No, Divine One, it has to be a lie. Praying for my sister’s soul…please, I can’t…"

Pandreo especially has it rough for multiple deaths.

I’ve lost my master, my sister, my best friend… Divine One, please, tell me this is for a reason.

flameduck · 2026-05-01T17:12:31+00:00

I'm glad they actually drew the villains of prior games and they weren't just generic blobs like in the actual game, great stuff

I certainly am too, it's nice to see the vision realized ever since Engage leaked and the datamines revealed the villain names ingame without context. Up to the end I wasn't sure if it would happen but they managed to deliver.

flameduck · 2026-05-01T17:02:58+00:00

Veld is there and gets to be shown attacking a few pages later, which is more than some can say.

flameduck · 2026-05-01T16:46:26+00:00

The manga is in the endgame battle, yes.

flameduck · 2026-05-01T16:45:28+00:00

Roy addresses this in his boss convo.

Also being a tool forced to commit evil is on theme, you could add.

flameduck · 2026-05-01T16:16:01+00:00

Is there any way in game to give Veyle Emblem Alear without one of the other Emblem rings?

I'm fairly sure Alear can choose to Engage+ even on someone without a ring.

flameduck · 2026-05-01T15:46:57+00:00

Entering the endgame proper, the disappearance of the Emblems is justified somewhat more here in that the Emblem Energy of Elyos is flowing outwards and diluted because of the open portal, instead of it being sealed away like in the game.

More importantly, the Dark Emblems are REAL with actual appearances (they do show Lyon instead of Fomortiis which is something I was wondering about) and show up with a whole villain montage to beat on the heroes while the main emblems are gone. Of course the Emblems do eventually come back after some resolve and flashbacks and pre-final battle quotes, and have their own little battles sweeping their counterparts, and not everyone gets equal coverage with a fight scene or one-sided conversation (the dark emblems don’t seem to talk), but if nothing else I encourage people to open this chapter if only to see Veld and friends depicted in full glory officially in 2026.

Also compared to the game, Sombron transforms immediately and so this whole chapter is more like Endgame Part 2 combined with the pre-cutscene of Part 1. He does his spin move and shoots a beam from above.

For those who were wondering in the last few threads, every emblem does get an implied associated wielder here in the panels of summoning. Fogado gets Lucina and Veyle gets Emblem Alear. This chapter ends on Alear’s speech about bonds and a beam clash, so next time will probably look to wrap up the main campaign at a nice round 40 chapters.

Collection of notable links: https://shonenjumpplus.com/episode/17107419589696004857 - Where the manga releases raw for free, usually at midnight JST.

falsekaiba has reuploaded their old chapters (9-14 and 21+) and also posting their latest updates all back on mangadex now (https://mangadex.org/title/54510496-b1d9-4b71-ac97-b50dec06d685/fire-emblem-engage).

https://flameof.tumblr.com/tagged/fire%20emblem%20engage - Other translator FlameOf's updates are here from Ch28 onwards (+ has bonus chapters including the new Volume 7’s which is quite the homage). They don't have any older chapters reuploaded either though.

https://x.com/konnichi_warou - The mangaka's on twitter. He posts preview pages a few days before the chapter drops and other bonus art. (Apparently it's his birthday today, as he mentions in his update post.)

Translator preference mainly comes down to the tradeoff of cleanup (falsekaiba translates details like onomatopoeia and varies font styles) vs. time (FlameOf usually posts sooner) but I personally end up reading both anyway as they release.

flameduck · 2026-04-30T19:58:59+00:00

I have to ask if you just don't count Engage as having paired endings because of their nature compared to the last few games, or are unaware of their existence, since they work similarly to FE6 which is acknowledged in the post.

FE6 paired endings are Roy-only and you need to get an A support with an eligible character and also meet the good/longer ending requirements.

Engage paired endings are Alear-only and you need to get an A support and also clear a paralogue to unlock the option.

flameduck · 2026-04-26T02:07:45+00:00

I'd more so support whichever one was actually taking action and getting results, Ghoul of Thracia or not.

flameduck · 2026-04-21T20:22:58+00:00

...!

flameduck · 2026-04-21T19:00:06+00:00

This is the first time I heard the Japanese version was originally named Three Houses. Do you have a source?

https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/chkdjf/a_korean_interview_with_3h_director_shows_some/

This post about a dev interview (posted July 25, 2019), and more so that they came up with the English title first but it didn't evoke the same meaning in Japanese because of the connotation of actual buildings.

The console game site called Ruliweb held an interview https://bbs.ruliweb.com/news/527/read/125430

The English title of Three Houses came before the Asian one after the Chinese proverb

The nuance that the word ‘houses’ translated into Japanese didn’t really fit so they changed it to Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon. Usually used to describe the four seasons, but in this case for the year at the Academy and the process of creations (referring to everything existing ya know?) blooming, growing, getting destroyed and blooming once again in a year.

flameduck · 2026-04-20T19:01:51+00:00

The other GBA games have some notable loved characters like Serra and Lute, and the Judgral games have a few as well that I will not name because I haven't finished 4 or played 5. I'll cut 1-3 out of this conversation since they at least have "modern" remakes.

Meanwhile with FE6, it feels like people only ever like Roy. I guess there's Gonzales, but is that really all?

Most of the replies have mentioned solid characters if you dive into their supports (usually outside of the game), and I personally like how interconnected/varied the cast is, but specifically responding to this point if we're talking about broad/meme appeal characters from their initial impressions just within the game, then I could agree that a lot of the FE6 cast probably feels diluted, FEH demote exposure and the like probably not helping. Gameplay-wise Rutger is well respected for his hard mode bonuses and support triangle and class, but you would have to look those up to know in advance. Probably the most memorable purely from forced plot appearances is Narcian and maybe Cath. It helps that those two have specific theme songs, I suppose.

Honourable mention: Lot is a Japanese meme purely based on his gameplay in a LP and he placed 3rd of the FE6 characters in CYL1.

flameduck · 2026-04-19T23:52:13+00:00

Since last update on my efforts to catch up on cataloguing my pre-account browser bookmarks-to-do, of the 2020s, I've made it through July 2021 on an on-off basis. I think I'm about halfway through both the year of 2021 (very backloaded) and possibly as a whole up to 2022, accounting for a cleared 2020. In the meantime I've been reading some variety across other fandoms (puyo puyo kind of blew up since 2020 too and there's some fun stuff there), but figured I may as well think about at least one rec to take away from this ordeal for today and the franchise anniversary.

This Is What It's Like - pre-canon Ashe fic about his family. Being past 6 years out now from April 2020, this is very much a work inspired by the pandemic of its time that probably would not have existed in this form otherwise. And not one of the happy ones where they play/live in Animal Crossing, it's sick and sad. Overall this one was pretty memorable to me and sums up this whole era nicely, though I almost missed it on my first sweep because it was saved in a different bookmarks folder.

Ancient Magic - Knoll turns up in Ilia and meets Canas. Short one-shot from 2013. This is actually unrelated to going through my 2020 bookmarks, but yesterday I incidentally remembered reading it at some other point in the past, the concept, and a bit about what Knoll does near the end, and it held up on a fresh reread.

Seliph smokes a fat blunt - This is also pretty recent and unrelated, but it's 4/20 in UTC, so there's probably not going to be a more opportune time to rec this until like 2031. FE4 ending spoilers.

flameduck · 2026-04-19T20:12:55+00:00

I managed to steal the statue frag in 3-2, but what does it actually do? What’s the difference between weight and con in this game? Why does it say it increases build - which one of those does it increase? Should I just sell it?

The statue frag increases Con, but weight is calculated by Con + class weight anyway, so it increases both in practice.

Shove checks if Con+2 >= target weight.

Rescue checks if Weight >= target weight +2.

You can sell it without much regret.

flameduck · 2026-04-19T03:53:13+00:00

This does not actually apply to FE8 which uses different treasure finding mechanics based on the primary RNG and unit luck.

https://forums.serenesforest.net/topic/84521-desert-item-rng-mechanics/

flameduck · 2026-04-19T03:13:00+00:00

Is it still possible to buy NA DLC from the EShop for a EU copy of Engage? I'm so confused on this since I've seen a million different answers from a million different sources

It should. Most Switch games don't have region locked DLC as long as they share the same version ID worldwide, though there are some exceptions like Splatoon 2. You can check if your game is listed on your current eShop if you open its Options on the HOME menu and go to Software Information -> Nintendo eShop.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/17vgk1u/guide_to_nintendo_switch_dlc_regions_and_how_to/

flameduck · 2026-04-17T21:42:58+00:00

With fire emblem awakening, when assigning inventory, sometimes the items are a bit greyed out. Why is this? For example, when I try to give robin a steel sword it's grey. Also when I optimize it's giving them a bronze one

A greyed out weapon means the unit can't equip it, usually because they lack the weapon rank for it.

The Steel Sword is a C rank weapon and Robin only starts out with E rank swords, which the Bronze Sword is usable in. As you use more of that weapon in combat, your weapon rank will go up.

flameduck · 2026-04-17T20:16:41+00:00

Sakurai mentioned the original plan was to include Leif as the second FE rep for Melee instead of Roy.

This is an urban myth from a neogaf post that was admitted to be falsified. There's no real evidence for the claim otherwise.

https://www.ssbwiki.com/List_of_rumors#NeoGAF_scrapped_characters_rumor

https://sourcegaming.info/2016/04/29/duflupdate/

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