[Show Intro] Jala Hey, thanks for coming! I'm glad you're here. Come on in! Everyone's out on the patio right now. Looks like a couple of people are in the garden. I can't wait to introduce you! Can I get you anything? [turned away] Hey folks, our new guest is here! [Intro music] 00:00.00 Jala Hello world and welcome to Jala-chan's Place. I'm your host Jala Prendes (she/her) and today I am joined by Adelaide (she/her) and Nick (he/him). How are you both doing today? 00:38.78 Adelaide I'm doing Okay I just I made a mad dash here to the podcast from my place of business. So I'm a little ah frazzled but you know excited to be talking about Fire Emblem. 00:53.40 Jala Yay although frazzled is not yay, but hopefully you can like chill out during the real you know, just breathe and just kind of relax and listen to Nick's Dulcet Tones. Nick is a surprise guest for today we were originally going to have on my Fire Emblem sherpa Phred and Phred could not make it this evening said emergency type stuff. Um, but Nick was very kind to just very last minute within a few hours of recording I was like hey do you want to come on my podcast talk about Fire Emblem and here we are today. So Nick thank you very much for being here today. 01:33.29 Nick Fakhoury Thank you so much for having me I really appreciate it and jalla and it's wonderful to meet you Adelaide. So I'm really excited to to be on Jala-chan's Place and talk about Fire Emblem I was surprised whether or not we were going to be on video today I know it's kind of a roll of the dice with the with new shows. But I have a very very yeah, thematic and. Symbolic ah picture behind me of ah itl guard and dmitri in ah in a certain claud. So yeah, it's ah it's very ah, timely for the episode that we're doing today but I've been doing well had a pretty good day. 02:05.97 Nick Fakhoury Work has been work as it always is but I'm I'm excited to to get to know you both and talk some more Fire Emblem. 02:11.40 Jala Yeah, and also listeners should be aware that you also host a podcast of your own called Friday Night Gamecast. Do you want to tell folks what that is. 02:22.98 Nick Fakhoury Absolutely yeah, thank you again so much for that I am the hosts a Friday Night Gamecast I'm joined by my co-host Will every week usually whether or not he has to to take a break sometimes things happen. We we love having guests on um Friday Night Gamecast is a collaborative based podcast kind of. You're towards celebrating video games I think there's a lot of negativity in the gaming realm as I'm sure both of you are aware from interacting with a lot of folks on Twitter but will and I very purposefully tried to jump into this project to make it a very inclusive and welcoming space. That's focused on celebrating all of this wonderful ip that has touched our lives. Um, throughout the course of our gaming journey and we really want to create just a lot of diaspora voices on our show. Most recently I did a side project early in the year called fireside talks and that's where I had ah a lot of friends who are also content creators and they run their own podcasts come on my show. As well and you know just talk about podcasting in general in their favorite games. So there's lots to pick and choose from in our content we we generally are a variety topical podcast. So when we week we might be talking about Xbox in another week. We might be talking about final fantasy. You never know what's going to happen. Um, so that's kind of just a quick rundown of where we are if you want to reach out to us. We are found at Twitter at Fngc Pod and you can find us on all podcasting platforms and that's just the Friday night Gamecast. 03:45.20 Jala Yeah, and I will of course put link in the show notes for everybody to check that out. So um, Addie also is a content creator of Addie is on Twitch Addie is also on Youtube. 03:56.11 Adelaide That's true. 03:59.99 Jala Addy you want to talk about your stuff that you do to remind folks who maybe had not heard all 5 or whatever episodes you've been on before. 04:08.30 Adelaide Ah, yeah, so I do Youtube videos mostly just sort of like game review as style videos I tend to focus on like more niche titles or like ah you know like english. Rom hacks or things like that. Um and it does not get picked up by the algorithm. But I like making them anyway. Um, so yeah that you can find that um my my channel is ah back on my bs um. On Youtube and then every once in a while I've been doing it less and less but I would like to start doing it more Um I stream on Twitch at Sister Adelaide there who. 04:53.39 Jala Yes, and of course links in the show notes for that and we will also be linking a video that Addie did a little while ago about perma death as it appears in Fire Emblem which of course Fire Emblem as an ip is what we're talking about today as you know from the title of this episode when you downloaded it. 05:13.40 Jala But before we get into that topic I want to remind everyone about our coffee you can sport this show by going to ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia and either drop us a one-time donation or subscribing yes, coffee has patron tearsers just like Patreon and there's extra stuff for subscribers. And and all donations are given a shout-out on the show and are greatly appreciated. You can also rate and review us on your podcasting platform of choice. It gives me warm fuzzies to see each and every one of those okay admin is over. Let's talk about Fire Emblem. Um. Before we actually talk about Fire Emblem proper. We need to talk about the genre that Fire Emblem is really kind of responsible in a lot of ways for I I don't know if this genre would have had as much kind of um. 06:07.40 Jala Prominence as it does if it weren't for the Fire Emblems series. It is a tactical Rpg or a strategy RpgTRpg or S Rpg whichever way you want to say it trpgs are a subgenre of rpgs that incorporates strategy game Elements. So Typically these don't have exploration modes for the overworld or towns or dungeons. The emphasis is mostly on the battle strategy players can train and build up their characters often with the capacity to switch primary weapons or classes characters Gain Xp to gain levels. But they also gain some form of skill points to advance ah level classes and skill trees and battles have specific wind conditions that the player must fulfill in order to complete the map between the battles players can adjust their inventory and their equipment. Assign skill points train characters or change classes of course in Fire Emblem. There's a whole like especially the more recent ones. There's like this whole social development that's kind of been going on for quite a number of titles at this Juncture. So You know like there's there's been a lot added to that very basic. 07:22.70 Jala Definition of a trpg but my first roleplaying game like video game roleplaying game of any type was actually Shining Force which that one that one is like the genesis you know, kind of version of like a Fire Emblem ish title. 07:41.70 Jala Ah, and that was the one that I played first that was my first rpg so I have loved this subgenre for quite a lot long time running. Um I kind of think I prefer it in a lot of ways to the turn-based kind of. You know regular? Ah, especially the ones that have like the random encounters on the map kind of rpgs like jrpgs and things like that. Um there's been a lot of evolution in the way that other types of rpgs have worked over time. 08:17.90 Jala That have made them kind of more palatable to me than just like random encounters every 5 minutes you know or not not 5 minutes 5 seconds 5 steps depending on the title right? Some of the old final final fantasy games. You could not walk more than like you know, 2 squares before you get. 08:35.16 Nick Fakhoury Some of the new ones. Do. 08:35.87 Jala Attack by something. Yeah, yeah, so so yeah, like I have a very special place in my heart for this subgenre. But before we kind of continue on to like what was the first trpg you know trpg like. 08:52.44 Jala Or whatever what what contributed to the development of this subgenre before we get into that I want to ask so Nick like what was your first rpg in general and what was your first trpg. 09:05.33 Nick Fakhoury Oh ah, good good question in terms of rpg in general. That's that's a tough one for me I would have to probably go back and say I jumped into rpgs a little bit later in life. But I would say my first touch on a really. You know hardcore rpg would most likely be elder schools for bolivion um was when I first jumped into it and started learning it and I guess if there are any rpgs to get into there that that probably is one of them. Um, a lot of my touch was more on kind of some of the earlier mario games and then I wasn't. 09:40.97 Nick Fakhoury Introduced to fire and lo as a franchise until a little bit later and realistically the first way that I was introduced to it was in super smash bros when of course they had Roy and Martha's playable characters in melee when that came out on the game cube. Ah but my very first ah trpd was also my first. 09:58.85 Nick Fakhoury Ah, Fire Emblem game itself and that was going to be ah the sacred stones that came out in 2005 is when I play that on the game boy advance. 10:07.16 Jala Cool cool. So it's funny that you mentioned that because on the last um media episode that we did that was on Metroid Fusion the other Nick on the network Nick/Moonborne/TripleSMoon, so "Moon." 10:19.69 Nick Fakhoury Um, yeah, all we love Moon. 10:25.70 Jala Um, had come to Samus via Smash Bros and ended up playing Fusion from there and playing other Metroid games from there but his first introduction to Samus as a character overall was in Smash. 10:39.66 Nick Fakhoury Yeah, yeah, it's the perfect marketing strategy is making it make an award winning fighter and then everybody's going to want to play your other IP that connected to it. 10:49.56 Jala Oh and and we have to put a pin in this um because we need to to get to Addie. But um, we need to talk about later. How Fire Emblem is a weirdo in the rpg market because. It keeps like recently it is pulling like in Fire Emblem heroes and Fire Emblem and gauge particularly it's pulling all of these old characters from all the old games into it in a way trying to tie them together in a way that is very unique to this series like most. Jrpgs or whatever crpgs any of those they don't really pull characters from game to game to game in like a 20 entry series that's unheard of but this series is doing that more recently and we'll talk about that. We'll talk about that later for now. 11:39.33 Jala Addie, what about you? What was your first rpg slash trpg. 11:43.22 Adelaide Um, so it's it's hard for me to say for like a hundred percent sure I know um so growing up me and my brother my dad had like an original Nintendo entertainment system and we also had a super nittendo we were growing up. Um I know for certain that we had ah both ultiba three um and ah ultima 4 quest for the avatar which is like their conversion obviously like console ports of of pc games. But um, they play. Kind of like crpgs but they have like a tactical battle interface to them. Um, so like that might have counted It's entirely possible that like I think maybe like Mario Rpg might have been my first rpg um. 12:32.92 Jala Oh and they're remaking that Yay. Ah. 12:34.55 Adelaide Yeah, I'm super excited for that. Um, and then in terms of like tactical rpgs like I I feel like it has to have been final fantasy tactics I Know that was definitely like a big um cornerstone like game for me when I was growing up. Um. 12:52.52 Adelaide And it's possible that maybe um I had played other technical rpgs before that but that 1 is really the first one that stands out and kind of like cemented my my love of the genre. 13:03.26 Jala Awesome! Awesome and it's funny that you mention ultima 3 because that is in this whole like study of what were the first trpgs that one is mentioned because of the battle system. So let's talk a little bit about this and we'll kind of tag team some of this Addie. 13:22.56 Jala So ah, one of the earliest Jrpgs was coas the dragon and the princess for the pc um eighty ah one in 1982 it is wow that's a long time ago. Ah it is considered. 13:37.85 Jala The precursor to the trpg genre it utilized a random encounter which transitioned transitioned to a separate graphical overhead Battlesc screen with tactical turn-based combat so tunnels of doom and ultima. 3 which were 1982 and 1983 respectively. Both employed similar combat modes. So that's kind of like that weird crossover between like a jrpg and a trpg thing that you were mentioning. 14:06.80 Adelaide Yeah, and if I remember correctly a lot of those you know before they were really known for like Dynasty Warriors as a franchise ah Coa had like a lot of. Like historical recreation simulators that were like half grand strategy but all of the battle ah plays out in sort of like a turn base tactical format. So that that's something they definitely like carried forward. 14:30.56 Jala Right? And that also led into the other genre of like the real time strategy games and how those came about so. 14:42.62 Jala Yeah, during the 8 bit era. There was ah bokuska wars a game developed for the sharp x 1 in 1982 which was later ported to the and nes that was responsible for laying the foundations of. The trpg proper with its blend of roleplaying and strategy game elements and this same game is also considered to be another early prototype of the real time strategy genre. So. 15:09.14 Adelaide And I I think it's really interesting that like this is a fun little history. Note for me is that like Fire Emblem was developed by the same ah people intelligence systems that were working on the ah book. Bokutzuka wars and then later like famicom wars and and that series. Um, and so you can kind of think of it as like a spinoff of the famicon wars series. Um, which you know they were both for very long time japanese exclusive releases. Um. You know Fire Emblem blazing blade got an american release once? Um Martha Roy were popular characters but then the corresponding ah wars game which was advanced wars was also given an american release on the back of Fire Emblems. Ah. Popularity in in the Us and the and the success of sales of blazing blade which I think it' just kind of like ah a fun like coming back around. 16:09.31 Jala Yeah, yeah, that's really awesome. So in 1988 the ah p pc eighty eight zero ah 1 srpg silver ghost was cited by camelot software planning as inspiration for the shining series. So you know Shining Force and you know the other shining game shining wisdom shining, whatever the hell um, and unlike other later trpg's silver ghost used real-time strategy and action rpg elements as well as a point and click interface so that just like. 16:44.67 Jala From a mechanical standpoint that sounds like a very wild game to play and I kind of I should have looked up what that looks like actually like just look at a long play as somebody playing that to really look at it but I did not. 17:00.44 Jala I will definitely try to find it and then put like a link in the show notes if I can remember to do that later, but some other early titles include first queen and master of monsters. Both of which provided their own unique twist to the rpg format with their own hybridization of strategy war and action elements a lot of different people. Were trying their hand at making like um, a mishmash of a tactics game in an rpg and you know thinking about it. Um, outside of video games themselves if you think about it in terms of like dungeons and dragons and dungeons and dragons having been born out of. 17:37.20 Jala War games and strategy games and things like that it kind of makes a lot of sense that they're trying to you know mash those things together when they're trying to make a video game version. So then Nick how about. Telling us a little bit about some of the other notable trpg franchises that were out there. 17:57.92 Nick Fakhoury Okay, so there are a few of them that that we have here from the trpg genre. Of course we have Shining Force which jala mentioned previously. She has a little bit of depth with the legacy of great intention which was developer of the sega genesis in 9092 and then subsequently the entire shining series that's attached to that. Um, of course then we also have something like tactics ogre let us cling together which was developed on the superfamicom 9095 and which was again later ported to the sega saturn and playstation on 96 and 97 and then of course that series ah subsequent installments in remakes and then the one in only what we've all been mentioning or talking about or referencing is the final fantasy tactics which was a little bit of a divergence from the mainline final fantasy series which was made for the playstation in 9097 and that also has remasters in remakes which I'm excited to learn a but little bit more about on the show. 18:54.68 Jala Yeah, yeah, so final fantasy tactics is very funny because um I have played basically every other kind every other trpg at least a little bit except for funnel Fantasy tactics was like the last one I play. Um and I think. 19:11.16 Jala Reason for that is because when it came out I had us friends that played it and then they were just like you have to know so like they were telling me about it and they were telling me all these in-depth things and I'm like I don't know if I have enough energy to try to keep track of all this crap and so I like. 19:31.40 Jala Didn't want to play it for a long time. They're like oh but it's really good and I'm like no no nobody has noses I hate this and that was that was the extent of that I'm going to go over here and play like ah, a proper final fantasy game. Yeah, and that's how I took it for a long time hey. 19:44.30 Nick Fakhoury Um, exactly where they give all these characters noses like they shouldn't anime. 19:50.52 Jala Yeah, so that that was my breaking point. Yeah, just to make everybody mad like before we get into 30 minute Mark here. Let me but no so I did I put it off for a very very long time and then um I eventually played it and when i. 20:05.50 Jala Did I was playing it and I was talking about it on the level and I was just pooling all of the people in the duck feed network like their their social circles and saying guys. What is this? How do I do This is this worth my time and like asking everybody. 20:17.70 Nick Fakhoury Yeah. 20:22.13 Jala God and everybody please save me and tell me what this is because it's very opaque on your first playthrough you know so I feel like that that is a game that definitely benefits from like replays. Um and I kind of feel the same way about Fire Emblem and Engageuge as well. I mean like every Fire Emblem but Engage in particular. 20:25.68 Nick Fakhoury Right? right. 20:41.43 Jala But we'll talk about that later. So yeah, let's talk a little bit about Fire Emblem overall as a series so it is a fantasy tactical role-playing game franchise developed by intelligent systems which we already mentioned previously. It was published by Nintendo starting in 1990 the Fire Emblem series converted the till then middling trpg scene into a far more prolific affair becoming an archetype for the entire genre. It really kind of defined. What. 21:15.38 Jala Trpgs were doing and as much as I love the shining series like I played those before I ever played a Fire Emblem and I love Shining Force the first one I especially love Shining Force three at which I have all the discs for even though only 1 onethird of the game came out in the Us. 21:34.60 Jala I have all of them and I played through all of them and I love I Love what it's doing because of the story. The story is very involved very detailed has a lot of political intrigue and cool stuff going on I Love it. However, mechanically it is nowhere near as as. 21:36.16 Adelaide That's cool. 21:54.00 Jala Refined as the different iterations of Fire Emblem over time. So like I can say that having played a lot of Fire Emblem and then looking back at that one and going you know like they have some of those elements. They don't have nearly the depth of Fire Emblem and that's because you know they didn't have the benefit of. 22:07.80 Nick Fakhoury Right. 22:13.27 Jala Having Camelot did not make this many titles prior to making shining verse 3 so like they were leaning more on the role-playing narrative side and to be fair I think that in a lot of the Fire Emblem games. The story is really not what anybody is there for. 22:32.47 Jala Ah, you know like there lately. They've been doing better with that I think 3 houses and Engage definitely have a more involved so more interesting plot that's going on right? like there's there's more stuff. There's more pieces in play particularly three houses I would say did a better job than Engage did on that front. 22:51.68 Jala But um, you know, like as a series as a whole it doesn't really have that kind of involved narrative that has so many different moving parts. So um, what do you guys think about storywise. 23:08.11 Jala Fire Emblem versus a final fantasy tactics a tactics ogur a shining game. Whatever it is that you've got experience with. 23:14.95 Nick Fakhoury So I'll jump in and tackle this one I think that Fire Emblem certainly made its bread and butter specifically on the gameplay side of what it was bringing with the trpg genre and how they kind of cemented themselves and solidify themselves as like the 1 place kind of. The the flag waiver the flagbearer of the trpg genre kind of defining that grid system and having these interactive characters I I think when it comes to to narrative that might not necessarily be anything that anyone cares about I'm sure that there were plenty of players when the earlier games. Came out in the 90 s and early two thousand s that just pressed and held a to skip through as many of the cut scenes as possible so they could get to the next gameplay moment but I personally will say you know in my experience I felt like the earlier games started off very typical jrpg. Very typical hero's quest. And then if you gave it time if you stuck with it through the end of it. They offered wrinkles and other little contextual elements to the narrative or the character stories as they would progress throughout the game that made it more memorable and stick in my mind like oh my god actually I'm I'm starting to empathize with this assassin whoa. Princess is not just a princess. She also has this going on sort of thing. So I think that there are also there there's a lot of value if you get kind of towards the later end gameme which is true for a lot of jrpgs but I think Fire Emblem specifically was want to do that early on. 24:44.49 Jala And I will throw in there too that that strong characterization and the levels of depth that they give the characters where they feel more human rather than flat is something that they carry forward through every Fire Emblem I have played like every Fire Emblem. 25:01.96 Jala It's always a joy The the real strength of the not battle parts for me are not the main story. It's usually those support conversations that you have with your units. You know like those tend to flesh out the characters in ways that are sometimes hilarious sometimes heartwarming but you know like sometimes. 25:21.43 Jala you're just wild and you're just like what is going on right now with this weirdo you know, but um, they are definitely memorable and I definitely had like I I used to live tweet everything when I was playing every game and you know back when twitter still worked and so like. 25:21.64 Adelaide A social association. 25:40.31 Jala Ah, you know like I went back through and I'm like boy I was dying and wanted to talk about these characters and you know like their relationships with each other and these interactions that they're having because it feels like you know the the characters are really developed and made with a lot of love and care. It's not um, you know. 25:59.27 Jala A flat characterization by any means at least in some of the you know more recent games because I will tell you my first Fire Emblem game was awakening I have played every other game since awakening I have not played anything older than awakening. So. 26:14.70 Jala I am deficient in that I have not played any of the earlier Fire Emblems. Although they just recently brought what was it binding blade that they came over on switch blazing blade. Okay so the binding blade is an actual weapon isn't it. It's also a game. 26:22.59 Adelaide Blazing Blade. Yeah. 26:27.53 Adelaide Yeah, yeah, it's it's the it's the prequel to or sequel. It's the sequel to blazing blade. Yeah finding blade is the one that has Roy in it. 26:33.67 Jala Ah, it is okay, there's both of yeah by a binding blade 2002 blazing blade 2003 okay I have not lost my mind I was like did I just miss oh my god no okay, okay, we're good. We're good. 26:43.13 Nick Fakhoury You didn't make it up jala. 26:49.81 Jala So yeah, Addie, how about you? What do you think? Storywise um, when it comes to Fire Emblem versus everything else when it comes to rpgs. 26:58.35 Adelaide Honestly, like I really I don't I did I I don't care about the story in Fire Emblem games mostly and and it's really too bad because like it's definitely a series that I've invested a lot of time in but like. It so quickly boils down to like such an archetypical. Ah here all I'll give you the the general plot summary of almost every Fire Emblem game. Your character is part of a country who's nice to everyone there's a country who's mean to everyone ah this country that's mean to everyone they might have been nice to everyone before and maybe now they're mean for mysterious reasons your character gets chased out of their country has to go on the rud forms of a band of ragtag rebels and you go back to the the mean people country and it turns out there's a dragon involved. And that's like it ah along the way you find the fire at Blu and but like literally that's every game and like I don't know like I have a lot of affection for the characters and like placing played like I think the the trio of lords in that in that game like genuinely are fun and well writtent but like. Ah, even even even like ah sacred stones which like attempts to give you some sort of like emotional connection to the villain who's like supposed to be your childhood friend or whatever like it. It just ends up being bad guy dragon at at the end. So. 28:26.00 Nick Fakhoury Um, yeah, cool fight though. 28:27.27 Adelaide I Don't know I yeah for sure. Um, but like I don't know it just it just boils down to the same like story archetype every time. Um, so it's I don't know it kind of wears on me. 28:40.18 Jala And let us not forget nobility. Always good nobility. Always good and it's It's a bad guy. The bad guy is not a noble person unless they're a dragon in which case they might be bad. 28:45.80 Adelaide Oh yeah, for sure. 28:45.86 Nick Fakhoury Oh yeah, oh yeah, definitely never been. 28:59.77 Jala You know, um, that kind of a thing. It's always kind of the same same high highlights. You know like the same beats I will say though that like at least with 3 houses. They're doing like with all of the different installments that I've played they've done something. Usually that is kind of interesting like an awakening Fire Emblem awakening my first one they had this whole timey whimy time traveling thing where you you know your children from the future come back. 29:28.14 Jala Through time and you know you have to face off with them and then you find out. No, that's my baby and then you go and you have to save the future and all of this mess and so like that's a wild thing they had going there. Um and Fire Emblem echoes which is a remake of guidance the second game in the series. I played that one and in that 1 you actually get split up between the 2 forces of Alm and selica and you're both trying to go towards the same end of saving the world but like from different angles and with a different approach Alm is like, "Bad guy! Attack with sword" and Celica is like "no, we must love them all" and that's that's the the interesting and you're going between these 2 things um trying to reach this end and turns out you know there was a ah god dragon that lost his mind and whatever. So you know there's that. 30:22.37 Jala Um, and then in fates which is the one that I didn't like you know the one that I liked least out of the all the ones I played ah has like the split of countries where you you were born in 1 country but raised in a different one and you think everybody is your sibling but you know this that in the other. But also you're a dragon and. 30:42.30 Jala I don't know there's a lot of different things going on there and like who you choose as your alliance. Ah really makes a big difference to the story and there's 3 different paths. There's the one country the other country and then I choose myself and only me you know and that plays out differently in that game. 31:00.31 Jala Um, but the same story beats are still there. We're going to revive the dead God Dragon guy and use the power. Whatever. 31:02.99 Adelaide Yeah, it's definitely going to work this time. It's not going to be a problem. 31:11.69 Jala Well to be fair, most of these games like okay in Gaiden you can actually in the end game I don't know if it was part of the dlc or part of the just the end game. You could actually travel I think it was dlc back to Altea. 31:26.31 Jala And go to like a little dungeon that has linking to the original first Fire Emblem game so you know like that's kind of cool. But for the most part these are taking place on different worlds entirely? Um, so. 31:42.18 Jala So know that this has been repeated 7000000 times in every other Fire Emblem game you know. But yeah, yeah, yet is is a good good point because ah so three houses had dragon bad guy and whatever. But then it also ties in like. 31:44.70 Adelaide Yeah, that's fair. 32:01.60 Jala God Rebirth and you know like these different nations with their political machinations and I have to ask this question. Um, which house did you pick first. Both of you. 32:13.27 Adelaide Oh um, I didn't play all of the game but I picked the one with Edelgard in it. 32:19.97 Jala Ah, okay I will not spoil anything further about that for you. How about you nick. 32:26.66 Nick Fakhoury Oh so I might have said it earlier but I picked Blue Lions very first because Dimitri he really fooled me. That's all say about that because I don't want to spoil it for anybody who might be prospective higher and Boom players. 32:35.27 Jala Um, ah ok I write write I I am a solid Claude lover I loved Claude from the beginning I had I was on the the winning horse. Let's just put it that way. 32:44.65 Nick Fakhoury Um, yeah, yeah, that's right and he yeah he he was clearly the the best route honestly in that game I wish I had picked him because his story has kind of the most. Ah. Depth in terms of the narrative but I liked playing is a blue lines. Very first time. 33:04.18 Jala Yeah, yeah, well and Addie whenever you get back to 3 houses and you go and you play. Ah you will have some really interesting choices to make let's just put it that way. Yes, now it's it's worth. It's worth seeing through to the end. So yes, so. 33:10.69 Adelaide Okay, that's good. 33:18.85 Adelaide Gotcha. 33:21.23 Jala Ah, there's that and then in Engage that one's weird because you're like I really thought they were going to make a bigger deal out of ah the main character. Um alier being like because you you find this out at the very very beginning like you are um, like a divine dragon but you also have like. 33:40.25 Jala Dark dragon energy because of course you do because you have 2 colored hair and that's the indicator you got 2 colored eyed 2 colored hair. You are Pepsi Coke-chan you know, Colgate-chan. Yeah, but ah so anyway, um. 33:51.80 Nick Fakhoury Ah Colgate-chan 33:57.16 Jala Really thought they were going to make a bigger deal out of that than they actually did as the game played out. Um we will not spoil anything in the end game for that for folks because that just came out this year. But at least not on this podcast. We'll talk Nick about possibly talking about it on your podcast but ah. 34:11.84 Nick Fakhoury Oh yeah, I'd love to. 34:15.37 Jala Yeah, so um, but in that game it to me it. It feels like most of the game is just like there's not a whole lot of plot stuff happening and then like hey at the last 2 chapters feel free to have like this sudden info dump of all of this information about these. 34:35.31 Jala Enemy characters and their motives and even the the big bad's motives and stuff like you get to see all this development that I really wish would have happened space throughout the game rather than just jumping you with it all at the end. 34:50.60 Jala But so it goes at least there was story like I really thought the game was going to be really story. Light. You know, um, as can compared to 3 houses and then it kind of surprised me at the very end and especially in the fells xenologues as well like that's just a wild mirror dimension. Dlc. So um, that's also very weird. so so yeah like they had story in Engage but it just kind of happened all at the end. There's largely large swaths of the game where there's doesn't feel like there's that much happening. 35:27.30 Jala So like ah on that in that way I think 3 houses did the best job of doing like an interesting narrative that has high rate replayability. Um I just didn't care about the way it was presented in fates and it seemed like in a lot of ways. Face is just really horny and. 35:46.97 Jala Just trying to shoehorn in a bunch of stuff. Um, for legacy reasons it felt like like having your characters have kids that come forward, but we just threw them into an alternate dimension so that they could grow up really fast over there and be safe from war. Oh wait now that they're. 36:06.61 Jala 15 they can come fight with us like okay, yeah, yeah, so so yeah, ah the long story short about that is fire ammblem is yeah I mean like there's there's a strong character writing very strong character writing. Ah the main beats of the plot are. 36:09.83 Nick Fakhoury You're right right. 36:26.44 Jala Very predictable for the most part at least the the broad strokes of it. So there is no direct continuity between each of the ins installments of Fire Emblem each is set in a medieval or renaissance-themed time period usually with royalty or a mercenary protagonist. It's caught in between 2 or more countries into conflict. We talked about that there are sometimes mentioning of other continents and stuff such as in echoes where you can actually go to another continent There's also in the dlc for echoes. A few characters that popped in from the card game and they appeared yeah they they appeared and I actually liked those characters better than I liked any of the other characters in the game and I was so sad that I was I was like oh I'm going to see them in. Fire Emblem heroes which is you know the mobile game that has every character. No Camilla has like 7 or 8 skins. But Roland is not in it at all why? Ok but. 37:05.30 Nick Fakhoury Oh no way. 37:15.60 Nick Fakhoury Ah, sad. 37:27.64 Adelaide Justice for Roland. 37:29.47 Nick Fakhoury Jala I want to take a quick second to ask you how much time have you put into heroes thus far. 37:35.51 Jala Oh I put a lot of time into it until I got a new phone and then it won't work on my new phone. It actually saved it. It actually saved me from being sucked into that game perpetually because I was playing it every day every day for a long time I was playing it all the time and then Phred. 37:39.71 Nick Fakhoury What oh man. Okay. 37:54.48 Jala Aforementioned Phred would post about it on Twitter about the new event or the new new whatever going on and then that even if I stopped playing for like three days he would post something and I'd be like oh I got to go see what my sherp is talking about and then I would be back in it again. So. 38:13.40 Jala I do not know how many hours I wish it had a play clock. Maybe I don't wish it had a play clock. So ah, but for people listening so Fire Emblem Heroes is a mobile game. It's a gatcha game. You know where you you know, save up orbs to eventually do like a random pull of characters to see if you get new skins or new characters that you can use as units in your battles. What's cool about it is that they're very short bite size battles that you can do on a quick turnaround. So if you have just a few minutes at work or something you're waiting in a line you can play some battles. 38:51.20 Jala And you know it saves where you're at so you can come back to it later. So if you need to close your phone. You can do that and come back and that's really fun when you you know don't have a lot of time to sit down to devote to a big map or something like that. But you want to get that fix of strategy stuff. 39:03.53 Nick Fakhoury Right. 39:08.39 Jala And depending upon what level you're playing at and what type of map you're playing on. They can be anywhere from some bread and butter Easy. No brainer to actually really hard bang your head have to remake your units swap out your party to figure out how to get the battle one and. That's really fun and it also pulls forward a lot of different mechanics from basically every single Fire Emblem. There are different mechanics that they pull forward like you know they have the pair up ability. They have the ability to swap or. 39:42.51 Jala Ah pivot or this that and the other in a lot of the different attacks and stuff all the the legacy weapons a bunch of the different characters from you know, even the older games that you don't really get access to in the Us they're all there. So. 39:59.20 Jala It's very easy to lose like if you like any Fire Emblem you will want to play more Fire Emblem if you play that game because you want to know who these characters are and then like it's it's kind of like one of those those super addicting things because especially if you like a particular character a lot. You really want to get that character then you're going to keep playing until you get that character and then you're going to want to level him up and make them your best boy or girl so ah and sadly like 1 of my favorite characters is like 1 of the older ones that came out right when the game first launched and so ah, there's no way that he can ever catch up. 40:37.92 Jala To anybody because he was one of the very first characters. Um, but anyway so um, yeah, in Fire Emblem games. There's always a mcguffin that's called the Fire Emblem the titular fight or Fire Emblem and it takes different forms in every single game. And it's used to fell evil Dragons Mad Gods Warlords bent on oppressive rule. It's always that kind of thing. There's always dragons or shapeshiffters of some sort and in more recent entries intelligent systems in endeavors to deepen that plot. So in fates. 41:15.59 Jala You have to choose you know who you want to fight for the nation you were raised in the nation of your birth or neither of these um and in 3 houses you have to select a house leader from among the offspring of the rulers of 3 nations to follow their story and 1 of these. Happens to be an enemy that is tearing a lot of continents apart with their machinations and in Engage as the divine dragon you recruit princes and princesses of the kingdoms of elios to fight the fell dragon and the Fire Emblem the titular Fire Emblem and Engage. Made me face palms so hard and it made my husband Dave burst out into laughter the moment we found out what the Fire Emblem actually is in Engage. So yes, the power. 42:04.84 Nick Fakhoury Ah, it's me I'm the Fire Emblem. 42:13.80 Jala Was inside me all along oh my God anyway. Okay, so so let us move on to the gameplay elements So Fire Emblem uses a grid-based overhead map so you have a set number of units per battle and the number of units you use can vary. 42:31.20 Jala From battle to battle each unit's class affects their strengths weaknesses and movement and during the fight characters gain xp for attacking or killing enemies or healing allies and things like that doing buffs those kinds of things a key element to the combat since Genealogy of the holy war from 9096 is weapon triangle which is a rock paper scissors style of strengths and weaknesses for weapons and magic types and this gets like real into the weeds and I don't really need to read off everything but like the way that it works the very very bare bones version. Lances are better than swords swords are better than axes axes are better than lances and it kind of goes in a little circle and so if you are a sword guy. You are fighting a guy with a lance you are at a disadvantage in that guy you know versus that guy. 43:22.92 Jala If you fight an axe guy you have the advantage over the axe guy. That's how that works out so and the same thing happens with magics as well. So fire is better than wind wind is better than Thunder Thunder is better than fire and it's a whole circle. So you you know like you can get like that. 43:41.38 Jala Strengths and weaknesses flow um in in more recent titles. They actually put it on the screen for you So you can see it which is very helpful or they will have like um the entire weapon break system from Engage which is I think this is new is this new. Okay, so. 43:55.87 Nick Fakhoury It is new. It is new to Engage. Yeah. 44:00.67 Jala Who wants to talk about the weapon break system. 44:05.48 Nick Fakhoury Well I I will just jump in here if that's okay with you Addie. Um I will say that when you're in Engage. It's kind of very similar to it. It is very basic concept in terms of the weapon break if you are using a weapon class. 44:19.62 Nick Fakhoury That is advantageous to the enemy unit that you're fighting. Um, you're able to do kind of like what's a critical attack on them which will break their weapon which will cause that enemy unit to drop their weapon leaving them open to attack this can happen both to the npc as well as the player character if you so happen to be. Ah, in a fog type situation and somebody comes out of the fog where that is a disvantage disadvantageous matchup to your unit. Um, then that will ah break your enemy unit meaning that you don't have a weapon in your hand anymore meaning that if there are any other enemy units they can attack you for free. And essentially get ah hits I don't know if the damage they do to your unit is greater I imagine that it is one ah hundred percent but I do know that multiple enemy units especially when Engaged they'll gang up on your your unit and then try to eliminate them off the map but this can also be used to the player's advantage if you're able to be strategic enough about it. Ah, but it's a very simple concept. You break 1 unit you get through them and then you can kind of work your way slowly through their map like that. 45:21.49 Jala Right? right? But the thing about it though is that like when your unit is broken after they get some enemy attacks them. The enemy gets a free attack on you the next enemy after that you've picked up your weapon again and you have your weapon and that takes place. 45:38.20 Nick Fakhoury That's right. 45:39.27 Jala For both the enemies that you're fighting as well as for your unit. So like if you are up against a lance guy. You are a sword guy. They break your weapon then like the next guy to hit you will get the entire turn free attacking you and you can't attack but then you pick your weapon up. So if a third guy comes. 45:58.86 Jala You're ready for that guy. So um, you know Weapon breaks are really really useful and ah they are a fun mechanic. There's also a staff in Engage that allows you It's called fracture it allows you to also break a weapon from afar with your mage character. 46:15.10 Nick Fakhoury Which is awesome. 46:18.41 Jala So Addie tell us a little bit about weapon durability. 46:23.83 Adelaide Um, so most of the games use a weapon durability system. Um, which basically means after a certain number of uses the weapon will break specifically in Genealogy of the holy war weapons can be repaired on a blacksmith. Um, in path of radiance and future games. Weapons can be bought and upgraded um in fates. The durability system was replaced with a system where a more powerful weapon way. Ah weakens some of the wielder stats many of the games develop. Character relationships both on the battlefield and outside the battle these supports affect certain battle abilities with characters who have stronger support stats overall for forming better side by side with units unfamiliar to them. 47:10.30 Jala Yeah, and so from Genealogy of the holy war on to many of the other installments characters who fall in love can have a child. We talked about that. Um and they can inherit certain skills and stats from the parents. 47:25.80 Jala Making them playable units later in the game that have certain stats. So like there are of course optimal parentages like there's so many different graphs you can find out on the internet about this if you really want to dig in I never cared I just pick people who I thought had fun interactions with each other to have children. 47:43.31 Jala Because that is how I roll like I favor the character development in the fun interactions more than I favored the like the battle edge. You know like I'm not a min maxer. Let's put it that way I'm not a bi max or I am not playing this on super hard. You know, insane mode or whatever. Um. 47:52.67 Nick Fakhoury For sure for sure. 48:01.49 Jala You know, usually I play on normal the first playthrough and then I'll go through on hard the next time I play it but you know the first time through I just want to play on normal mode and kind of absorb the story as much as I can before you know things start getting to the point where I'm banging my head against it. So. 48:12.97 Nick Fakhoury Yeah John how often have you replayed some of the older final fan or excuse me ah Fire Emblem games. 48:22.26 Jala Um I dabble in going back to them and playing them again later but like I I find what ends up happening when I start putting it on 1 of those higher difficulty modes and I start getting to the points where I have a sticking point is like. I played it a little bit I bang my head on it and I'm like you know I have such a backlog of other video I need to be playing right now and I set it down and then like the next time I start I want to restart from the beginning because I don't remember where I'm at and then it happens again. So like it. It tends to be. 48:50.16 Nick Fakhoury Wow Oh no. 48:55.52 Jala I don't replay them with a and then's it's also like the the time tax right? because this isn't like a short game that you're playing this is you know like a very involved game that you know but I want to go back and I want to replay the other houses on 3 houses I've only played it the 1 time through. 48:59.23 Nick Fakhoury Right? Nope not at all. 49:15.26 Jala I Had a lot of fun doing it but that game has so much going on. 49:18.73 Nick Fakhoury Jala Jala, you have to go finish it I need you to put at least two hundred more hours into to um, three houses. oh oh okay 49:22.50 Jala Oh my god like let me get past all my other assignment play first I mean like you know I've got like a dishonored I p thing coming up and you know us in a simulacra I p thing coming up and the next year probably a bioshock one. So like I've got a lot of games. 49:41.77 Jala Already on my plate that's not even including the bonus levels and guest spots I mean I got a lot going lined up whenever I have whenever I have two hundred more hours I would love to go back in and play those others. 49:49.69 Nick Fakhoury Um, that's fair. That's fair I empathize with you incredibly. 49:58.99 Jala Because like I know there's going to be some really fun and worthwhile interactions especially with 3 houses I feel like some of those characters because those characters you see from like they're very early. You know I'm a child in in this academy. 50:14.62 Jala To like adulthood like you get to see them develop and grow and they have like some of them not I don't um I don't feel like every single one of them has but some of them have like an actual growth arc so so that's really really cool I like that a lot other things. 50:23.91 Nick Fakhoury They do definitely. 50:31.39 Jala About the ah mechanics of a general Fire Emblem game all of the games have perma death permanent death of a character when they fall in battle with the exception of the main character if the main character falls its game over so Fire Emblem new mystery of the emblem from 2010 introduced casual mode in which dead characters revive at the end of a battle Fire Emblem fates in 152 added phoenix mode which I didn't even know was a thing where defeated characters are revived on the player's next turn so like it made it even easier. But I don't think they brought that forward into. 51:07.33 Jala 3 houses or Engage I don't remember seeing that as a thing is that a thing. Okay, okay, so also Fire Emblem echoes added Milla's turn wheel which is a mechanic with many different. 51:10.68 Adelaide Yeah I don't think so. 51:12.72 Nick Fakhoury Ah, they did not do that they did not do that in 3 houses or Engaged. Yeah. 51:27.38 Jala Names in the games since that that allows the player a limited number of chances per map to rewind the game state back to an earlier state allowing you more efficiency in altering your tactics in the event of a character death so that you can avoid it now in the Mill is turnwheel in echoes. Ah, had definitely like a very limited number of uses. You couldn't turn back the clock very much and in in Engage though that one seems to be unlimited at least on normal mode. Um I don't know if they change it on the hard mode if it it's fit. 51:57.97 Adelaide Yeah, yeah. 52:04.87 Jala Limits it when you're on a harder difficulty and Engage but it definitely it. It was it limited in 3 houses as well I believe like I did I kept on forgetting that it was even there to use it. 52:14.90 Nick Fakhoury Right. 52:16.60 Jala But I think it was more limited in 3 houses and Engages the first time that you can like backtrack basically through the entire battle. so so yeah that's like a general overview of some of the mechanics. Do you guys have any notes about like just general mechanics of Fire Emblems overall. 52:38.40 Adelaide Um, there's been a lot of sorry to cut you off there? Um, there's been a lot of ah mechanics that have kind of come and go from the series that one of the interesting things is since it's been around for so longs like things pop up and then disappear and then pop up again. So like. 52:40.74 Nick Fakhoury Um, so do no go ahead. Go ahead, please. 52:55.93 Adelaide I I believe starting around Genealogy um, you could pick up um, units with either mounted units or stronger units and carry them around at a cost to like your defense and that that was a mechanic all the way through the game boy advance games and that I think disappeared. From the game. Cute games onward and then you have like the team up mechanic and awakening. Um, which is similar but different than to the way that it works in like um in fates. Which has a similar again a similar mechanic but it it like works slightly different. 53:33.70 Jala Yeah, and when you pair up in fates. What happens is both of the characters take 1 tile on the map. One character is the damaged sok character. But both characters get an attack the second character that's just tagging along. 53:48.30 Jala Doesn't have a very strong attack. It's kind of like um if you have 2 units side by side and Engage and both of them can chain attack together that they they basically do a chain attack and help you. 53:58.62 Nick Fakhoury Right? I would say that the only other thing is that what off fire in limb often does and they've done this in many iterations of the game is they offer you in terms of the maps. I find that to be 1 of the more intriguing aspects of the gameplay itself. Every single game has a different iteration in terms of the different types of curveballs that they'll throw at the players. Um, whether that's creating certain automatons that are on the map. 54:29.16 Nick Fakhoury Um I don't know if in some of the earlier installments they had monsters but especially in in fight 3 houses as well as Engage they have monsters that are more ah heavy tankier enemies that you kind of have to approach as a group. It's very unwise to approach those as single players those are. Um, some notable things that have happened in a lot of games but a lot of the time. Tactically, you can see the map in an in an overview form so where you have all of your characters on one side and they're very clearly pointed out whether you're playing on a game boy advance game or some of the later games too. And then the grid itself can generally show you unless it's specifically hiding the enemy units from you. It'll show you where the enemy units are so you as the player can kind of plan. Ah okay I Want to send my archer here I Want to send my mage over there and then maybe send a Tanker or cavalry unit up the middle. Ah, that's just kind of good example of some of the gameplay techniques that you can use when you're approaching the various maps in this game I will say that one of the one of the greatest things I can say about Engage is the map diversity that they offer you and all of the different ah weird Gameplay elements. They try to roll the dice on. 55:41.23 Nick Fakhoury And it worked for me a lot of the time. So yeah, there's there's something to always something different in every different iteration of a Fire Emblem game to kind of get used to your surroundings. You have your basic elements that we kind of laid out in terms of Gameplay. You have your grid. You have the the weapon triangle and then you just. Trying to make sure which units are your favorite and how to take care of them the best way and then that next aspect is how am I going to move my characters through the map. 56:04.18 Jala Right? right? and then too like they have different types of terrain that will affect stuff and Engage specifically the map changes quite a lot like the topography of the map will change especially in some of the later levels. There is also like the the fact that you could have. 56:14.94 Nick Fakhoury Yes. 56:22.30 Jala Reinforcements coming from somewhere on the map at any given time and whenever that happens and you are not prepared for it that can really jack you up if you are not a cautious player. Let's say if you are more aggressive and less defensive. You might find yourself in a pickle in those situations. 56:40.19 Jala Those monsters that you mention are definitely like if you tackle them with a character who might have like a high attack but also has ah a fairly low defense or you know at least against the type of weapon that particular monster has they can be wiped out in one hit before they can finish the monster. 56:59.60 Jala Off so that's where you get into the here. How can I pick this off. Let's get some people doing some super long rage like longbow stuff from over here or if you're an Engage ah using like Soren's ability to attack from across the freaking map. You know all of those different elements and you're you're trying to do like deal some little. 57:18.72 Jala Damage to it So that way your big tanky character can go up there and finish them off. But then there's also like some of these characters have like the healing tonics like you know extra lives if you will. So after you wipe them out. They come back and you're like dang it. It's still alive. 57:32.60 Nick Fakhoury Yeah, exactly exactly. 57:37.83 Jala You know? and and this is handled differently in some of the other games like I want to say in 3 houses. It wasn't like you you drop it down to 0 and then it regens it was just that it had multiple life bars that you had to go through um, but it's a different kind of feeling psychologically. 57:54.29 Jala When you see multiple life bars and you're knocking it down. You're like okay, there's another life bar. Okay, there's another one. This is the color I think this is the last one versus oh dang it I didn't realize there was a little red dot under its hit points. It just died I thought I was good now I have to worry about all those characters up on the frontline. 58:12.30 Nick Fakhoury Right? Exactly exactly in in some of the tank your enemies to the the strategy is to try and hit them with large Aoe attacks If you have a mage that can do that because they have kind of have shields around them and they can be prepping their attacks for the next turn which can be devastating at times. 58:30.53 Nick Fakhoury But if you have the ah capacity to actually break their shield similar to how ah units can be broken and Engage then in that case, you can actually stun them. They can't do an attack and then you get another round of some free attacks to so it's ah it's a lot of different twisting elements. Another thing that. Think the developers often do is they'll play around with how you start on maps a lot of times you're starting in 1 main group kind of in this very triangle format with the house leaders or maybe the rulers at the front kind of leading leading the charge. There are sometimes though where thematically it always it always works because. Maybe it's an infiltration mission or it's it's a grab and rescue mission type situation and they'll start your units which are on two separate sides of the map and if you didn't check that map beforehand to make sure to arrange your units the way you want to. It can be a huge headache to try because it will just randomly disperse them. 59:26.80 Nick Fakhoury And then you have to pick up the pieces with well I have all my weak characters on 1 side and all of my actual heavy ones on this side. So it's they do a great job of switching up the gameplay in that in that regard. 59:34.63 Jala Yeah, and I really like the fact that every time I play a Fire Emblem game. It's not exactly the same there are elements that are familiar enough that if you play awakening you can play 3 houses and know what you're doing. But also you know there's always going to be tweaks. 59:53.45 Jala To each installment that you know changed the way that the mechanics of the game work and say for example, something that I like about Engage is the fact that they have that inheritance system from some of the earlier titles where you could have children. But instead of inheriting them from 2 parents and having those 2 parents you you know you have to nurse that relationship along for halfway through the game where you'll start unlocking this new character that has these new abilities or whatever instead of that you have the emblems. That you can pair with so and Engage you have these rings. There's 12 of them and you have to collect them from all around the world because these emblems when they're all brought together have the power to make a miracle happen and. 01:00:42.78 Jala Ah, the bad guys. Want to resurrect you know use ultimate power or whatever and you of course want to stop that from happening and save the world from evil but evil bad dragon man. Um, which boy when you find out all of his backstory at the very end of the game like you know the tenth hour or whatever. You know of of the last battle the very end you're like really wow ok ah when they drop the his full past on you? Yeah I don't want to spoil it but boy is it something. We'll talk about it on another show. Ah, but anyway. 01:01:11.62 Nick Fakhoury I Hate that I hate that I don't want to I If that's what a good year. Okay. 01:01:22.60 Jala So like ah you get the emblems and you can develop relationships bonds with these emblems when you assign that ring to a specific unit and those 2 fight together and that unit is you know, engaging with that emblem. On the battlefield which gives you like power up. She basically mergge together. It's more or less like if anybody has seen the anime Shaman King it's like doing like merging with a spirit in Shaman King and you power up and you have their abilities and stuff on hand and you you know you're like a higher level fighter and all this other stuff. Um. 01:01:56.57 Nick Fakhoury Very cool. 01:01:59.12 Jala And you get like basically supers you know and so you get that and each of the different characters have different passive abilities that you just have equipped like Marth has a lot of um, high evasion rate and you know different stuff like that that helps him. Dodge more easily. So I used marth on basically everybody I've made everybody have perceptive as an ability because that's just a really good ability to have um you know so a lot of times even if there were enemies that could take out one of my units say for example Chloe who is a flying. Night. Um, she would be up against an archer and all of the archers would miss because she was really high with Marth and had all of these skills that helped her dodge and avoid and she has high luck anyway. So like you know it was really really a good time to see how those strategies and you know and. 01:02:53.11 Jala Revealed themselves as you played the game you know unfolded before you but at the same time. Ah you get these different abilities these different passive abilities when you equip the ring and also you can unlock them to keep them on your character Even if they have a different ring on their person or no ring at all and. 01:03:13.70 Jala That allows you you know some some leeway with how you want to play and design your units because you can inherit skills from anybody as long as you have enough bond points or Bond fragments or whatever. Um. And and things like that like there's of course a currency involved because you can't just do this unlimited amounts. But ah, it's really cool the way that they do that because it gives you a lot more flexibility with how you want to style your characters. 01:03:41.15 Jala So um, in terms of gameplay Stuff. Engage is probably my favorite one because of what you mentioned about the maps, the maps having a lot of variety to them and the way that they have this new inheritance system and things like that. So awakening had been my favorite one. But I think I actually want to move that. Over to say Engage I like 3 houses story. The best I like 3 houses story The best but I like Engages gameplay the best. 01:04:03.18 Nick Fakhoury Gotcha Okay, definitive. Yeah. 01:04:14.40 Jala Um, Addie, Addie. 01:04:19.80 Adelaide Sorry I sorry I got a little lost of the weeds there in terms of ah like favorite Fire Emblems Um I think probably like awakening is my favorite. Although I really did enjoy Engage as Well. Um. For me like I don't know like I I want to really get into 3 houses. But I think it's just like there's so much system bloat going on in that game that it's like really kind of off putting to me it. It feels like. You know the logical conclusion of the way that the series has been moving since awakening you know focusing on that like social aspect but also like the base building sort of aspect of it. But like that that stuff isn't really interesting to me. Um, so like what I really Appreciate. Ah, appreciate about Engage is like it feels like more of a return to what you might consider quote unquote the classic series. Um, but I really enjoy awakening because it feels like a really good um example of of that of that. Like expression of of like classic fire ablum. Um, and and I think that's that's really what's most enjoyable to me also like the this the like player character is fun and interesting. Um and like. 01:05:46.85 Adelaide Ah, Robin's relationship with the other characters is fun. Um that I I think a lot of the characters in that game really stood out for me more um and I think also I was just like really excited when it came out because like like I had mentioned previously like I I got in with like blazing blade. Um, and after sacred stones. Um I didn't I I never had a game cube so I didn't get either the game q or the we game um and like I tried shadow dragon and I think it's such a disgusting game to look at. 01:06:23.77 Adelaide Ah, that I refused to play it. Um, so like I was really like when awakening got announced I was really excited for it and and it paid off for sure. 01:06:37.13 Jala Yeah, yeah I I Really like awakening in part because it was like the first Fire Emblem that I played and really because of those support conversations I don't care about the story in that game. Ah, but the support conversations were just. 01:06:53.27 Jala Gold to me I just love poring over the the different ways that those characters interact with each other It's very goofy in a lot of cases. But um, the thing that you mentioned about 3 houses. It reminded me and I think I said this on the level back when I was playing 3 houses for the first time. The way that it has so many different systems Engaged at the same time feels like the pokemon problem to me which I I have talked about this on the level a lot but ah pokemon games they have so many systems they're not needed. You don't need to Engage with any of them. 01:07:28.76 Jala And and you know like ah okay, 3 houses is not like pokemon in that Pokemon is very easy and like you don't need to Engage with the systems to finish the game at All. It has all of those systems carried forward all the time for the people who've been playing it forever. But you don't need to touch any of them and that's a shame I Wish that there were more tactical elements to a pokemon game. Maybe that's just because my first Rpg was a T R P G and I think ever needs to have strategy involved but um at the same time. 01:07:59.99 Jala You know, ah the 3 houses the thing about the social like I I like some of the social stuff I will say that in ga I got tired of going to the Somniel and doing a loop around to go pick up the dongles in the chinese even though I had 97 nuts I had to go get that shiny because it might have been a gem I could hand somebody. Yeah I did it I did for 80 hours hours 01:08:12.89 Nick Fakhoury Stop it stop it child. You can't You can't do that yourself. 01:08:26.40 Adelaide Ah, yeah, but what if it's a piece of iron even better. What if it's silver. 01:08:32.61 Jala Right? right? so so I did that whole number. Okay I got so bored of making the loop in the Somnel I will say that I didn't really get bored of the stuff in 3 houses because there were so many different things you could do um but. I can also see how that totally breaks the pacing for people who are in it for those strategy elements and they don't give a flip about what's going on outside of that I don't want to go fishing stop trying to make me go fishing I don't want to fucking fish if I wanted to play fish I would play Dredge. Yeah. 01:08:55.57 Adelaide Um, yeah, if a game never if a game never asked to be to fish ever again I would be perfectly happy. 01:09:10.66 Jala Stop trying to tell me to fish I don't want to right right? So I mean like there's definitely that although I I will say I had a lot of fun trying to steal members from other houses. Um to make them part of my house. So. 01:09:26.73 Jala I mean Sylvain's a freebie if you start the game as a girl. 01:09:29.85 Nick Fakhoury There you go there, you go Sylvain (arguably the best boy) just to get I confirm we can cut this out later but are we skipping straight to the favorite entry 01:09:39.39 Jala Oh we. At this point we're just kind of open open game. We will talk about all the different questions touch on them. Whatever you like at this point we're just open. It's usually how it ends up happening. We just kind of organically talk about some of the questions earlier in the thing and then we just. 01:09:49.60 Nick Fakhoury Sorry yeah, no, that's wonderful. 01:09:59.80 Jala You know, sit on whatever we want to sit on at the end and just kind of chill. 01:10:00.60 Nick Fakhoury Oh nice. Okay, wonderful. Well, it's so funny that you that you both have very very ah cemented and in concrete opinions on both fates and awakening I was going to show I didn't know if whether or not we were going to be on video today but I was going to show you that I just recently. Ah, earlier this year after playing Engage found myself with ah with a burning desire of trying wanting to learn more about some of the ah some of the emblems that you find and Engage in some of the different lead characters that they're bringing from from the earlier titles in the series and I have to say I'm in. 01:10:37.83 Nick Fakhoury C incrediblyd excited to get my hands on awakening just because I loved Lucina and I thought her introduction as like that. Um, as kind of like the emblem ring that picks a leer up off the ground after her you know defeat that she had never really faced before was a really interesting way to kind of. Throw her into the situation and then if I'm not if I'm not ah confused are are is Lucina in Marth are they ancestors of each other in some way it might not wrong about that. 01:11:06.69 Jala See when Lucina shows up in awakening if she comes back through time. Um, and when that occurs she's wearing a mask and she has the little hair thing that looks very much like Marth she's wearing Marth outfit. 01:11:20.51 Adelaide That's right. 01:11:22.95 Jala She calls herself marth. So yeah, yeah, she also has the falchion and so like I don't know. Um, if if in all of the deep lore of Fire Emblem like I think they're in a different world entirely but like there that Marth Marth appears 01:11:24.31 Adelaide She also has the the falchion. 01:11:37.89 Nick Fakhoury Okay, yeah, everywhere in all the games. 01:11:42.70 Jala Everywhere Marth shows up kind of in like it's marth is kind of like Cid. He kind of shows up somehow everywhere you know? so. 01:11:53.77 Nick Fakhoury that's that's wonderful yeah I um I got the world edition of awakening and then a good friend of mine. Let me loan his or just borrow his ah 3 ds indefinitely so I do have access to actually play some of these earlier 3 ds games now that the library has shut down. Um. 01:12:09.29 Nick Fakhoury Which is very sad for all 3 ds owners but I was a little bit more curious in terms of the differences if you if you both had more hands on in terms of fire and blowve fates because I think earlier in the show you had mentioned Jalla that this is split like the the world or the story of fates is split into. Do. 01:12:28.30 Nick Fakhoury 2 different games and 1 iss conquest and then the other is named something different if I'm if I'm correct worth right? Ok, that's that's right? Okay I see okay. 01:12:32.71 Adelaide Yeah, what is birthright? Yeah, right? who. 01:12:34.95 Jala Birthright and then there's also the dlc which is the third path but you have to finish one of the other ones before you can do that path so horn fest. Yeah yes, it's a horn fest. 01:12:45.96 Nick Fakhoury Yeah, so I'm curious but you said it was like this just ah, absolute ah whole point. Yeah okay Horny Horny Fest got it got it. 01:12:52.72 Jala So let but let me explain that a little bit further for you. So okay, awakening was the the first horn fest. Ah, everybody wants to have children real bad and that's okay because they do great and like they have a story reason for having the children come back. Okay, great. Um, then they made echoes which is a remake of guidance. 01:13:00.00 Nick Fakhoury Okay, okay, awesome. 01:13:12.80 Jala And ah, that game doesn't have all the deep deep support conversations and stuff it has some really cool and unique things to it like there's a whole dungeon crawling thing that's from a different point of view like it's a. 01:13:24.56 Jala Real time dungeon crawling thing where you can dodge enemies on the map and like break stuff and that'll alert enemies to your presence and you can sneak around. Um but then it switches to a tactical map when you actually have an encounter with said enemy. 01:13:40.19 Jala And so it's got some cool mechanical stuff that goes on in echoes but it is simpler in terms of like the support conversations and some of those other things like the support conversations and that only ever happen on the battle map. There is no um like the only thing you can do is go around on the map and maybe go into a town to go see a blacksmith or something. 01:13:59.59 Jala But like there's not really exploration or hanging out with your people. So. 01:14:02.98 Nick Fakhoury Kind of like OG sacred stones and blazing blade where they're like we want this to occur real time. We don't want to worry about a hub to have to manage. Okay. 01:14:10.51 Jala Yeah, yeah, so so that's what echoes is like because again, it's a remake of the second game in the series. Then you had fates and fates was really trying to pull the popularity from awakening. Forward and so they're like okay we got to do those children things again and everybody like those weren't out characters. What if we put in face petting guys and that was a thing that was taken out of the us version but in the original you could take characters to your room and pet their face while they blush at you and say weird things. 01:14:42.93 Nick Fakhoury Um, what no way. 01:14:45.65 Jala And you oggle them so like ah the tea parties in 3 houses which are also gross because you're you're like the teacher taking your students to tea and then they're like why are you touching me there like what's like that is the cheap. Yes, those those horny tea parties are because of fates. 01:14:55.24 Adelaide Good day I ever got the that part takess. 01:14:55.27 Nick Fakhoury Yeah, why are you looking at me so closely. Yeah. 01:15:04.89 Jala It's because of fates that exists. So yes, Yes, so ah, that is that is a thing and then two Oh my God There is a part. Okay that that game came out on the Ds Ah there is a part where if you marry one of the characters. There's certain things that happen. 01:15:05.30 Nick Fakhoury Oh I see. 01:15:21.14 Jala X number of times you know every few times that you go and you hang out in your house at your base and like one of those things is your spouse will take a hot bath and then it'll have a message and say oh your your spouse is. Too hot from the bath and they're going to pass out and so they're blushy and fainting and you have to blow this is using the Ds hardware to blow on them to make them to to cool them down and it was a thing and like you had to blow and then not. 01:15:43.20 Nick Fakhoury No way. No, you're lying to me just. 01:15:54.66 Jala That but like at at first I tried to just like blow it says blow gently right? So the first time this happened I was playing on my ds I was earth three DS and I was blowing gently and then it's like you know it just kind of fades to black and it's like next time try to blow harder. But what. 01:16:10.20 Nick Fakhoury Um, my god No way. 01:16:11.75 Jala But so it's like it's trying to make you like really get all up in your Ds and like do all this nonsense and it was just wild and I'm like what is going on and then not only that but you can marry people who are your blood relatives and also the people who were your adopted siblings and you find. 01:16:27.82 Nick Fakhoury Oh that didn't change in these new games. You can still do that too. 01:16:30.32 Jala Doubt well you find out that um, if there's like a letter from your mother who tells you oh you're not actually related I was pregnant before I became the queen of the the whatever so you're you're you're still half. Siblings you're still half simple now. So it's it's messed up so it's it's and and then ah you know it gets real real horned out but then too like when you have children. 01:16:52.66 Nick Fakhoury Ah, what are you doing step fell dragon kind of energy. 01:17:06.43 Jala You send them into this nether dimension where they go and grow up away from you and away from the war. Um, ah, ostensibly nominally so that you can you know, save them from the the trauma of war. But then like the moment they turn 15 they all come out of hiding and then come in and appear in your party if you do their paralogue. So whatever you know, but you can even marry some of the children too. 01:17:24.93 Nick Fakhoury No okay, typical. Oh oh no. 01:17:33.12 Jala Like if you haven't married someone by the time the children start appearing you can marry the children in that game. So that's why it's too horned. Yeah, that's face. Yes, yes. 01:17:37.34 Nick Fakhoury Okay, and this was this was fates not or or echoes okay those fates all right, got it? Well I guess that you know you win some and you lose some and in Fire Emblem is not. 01:17:42.99 Adelaide Yeah. 01:17:52.97 Nick Fakhoury You know this interesting thing I remember reading about awakening specifically was the idea that ah that intelligent systems was ready to step away from the series because it was kind of like path of radiance and Radiant dawn had really really poor performance numbers on the game cube. 01:18:10.84 Nick Fakhoury if I'm if I'm correct in saying that and then obviously they had a couple of releases after those that were either in Japan only or kind of just didn't even sell well in their indigenous markets. But I heard that like awakening was the team's last chance to put together a story and to putette put together a game. Could say okay this is the last one we're ever going to do for virable. Um, let's make it a good one and it ended up being an absolute banngger in terms of like exactly what Adelaide was saying earlier a crystallization of what they have been trying to bring you since you know the genealogy of the holy war and thatia seventeen seven 7 6 like so I respect it so much for that and that just kind of gets me even more excited to learn. You know that much about crom and and luna and how bear kind of stories intertwine if if if you guys think it is relevant at all as as we're going through this game. 01:19:03.30 Jala Yeah, so the the thing about crom. Okay, ah I with the first time that crom appears on the screen. It's real obvious that they are trying to make you swoon over crom from the very beginning of the game because he finds Robin and so you know whatever. But like if you happen to be playing girl Robin and you end up in a relationship with this man. He is the dumbest brick the dumbest brick and it's so sad because like he's otherwise fine and he's fine whenever he peers in other games. 01:19:25.90 Nick Fakhoury Really. 01:19:34.45 Jala But he is the dumbest brick ever in your interactions with him if you get married to him and it's like the stupidest thing ever. So you know like it's It's very weird. 01:19:41.60 Nick Fakhoury That's unfortunate. It's almost like the developers didn't know how to write a man who was like emotionally intelligent in a marriage type situation. 01:19:48.33 Jala Yeah I guess I guess although they had they had several other um male characters who were really really sweet like I I totally ship Sully and what's what's dang it crap. Um the green one and the red one. 01:20:07.81 Jala Awakening God I'm blanking out Sully is the red one who's the green one I can't remember his name--Stahl! Stahl and Sully. Okay, ah Stahl and Sully they are very cute. They are a very cute little couple. 01:20:22.60 Jala And um, you know like they are sweet and Stahl is very adorable and some of the characters that are are just really really good. Um, you know, just in general and then when they you pair them up with people and you get to learn their stories. They are actually pretty neat and I like that they have like a chnibo ah which is like the the basically like the little. 01:20:41.31 Jala Eighth grader. Yeah, and kind of um, super nerd dude in there. Ah Jerome he's one of the children and he looks like he's trying to be like Robin or Batman or something and he rides a whivern and he just like announces himself like a superhero every time he appears. 01:20:59.87 Jala And it's just really nonsense a lot of nonsense. Yes, so so yeah, like there's there's a lot of goofy goofy characters in that but they're very memorable because you know like you don't see those characters in an Rpg Usually um. 01:21:03.33 Nick Fakhoury Um, also he's like black star from Soul eater. Okay perfect. 01:21:19.37 Jala Some of these these archetypes that they have here and some of them like they they start off seeming like an archetype of something and then the more you dig into their character the more you find you know dimensionality to them that makes them much more than what they seem on the surface. So yeah. 01:21:32.91 Nick Fakhoury Much more believable. Okay, got it. Wonderful. 01:21:39.21 Jala Yeah, so that's a awakening. But yeah, so with 3 houses that one I believe is is the one that you like best Nick. 01:21:50.50 Nick Fakhoury that is right? that is right ah my favorite hands down is 3 houses as I mentioned earlier I even bought some some art that I found off of good old Etsy for a nice big poster to hang up in my room try to compliment my backdrop but 3 houses. 01:22:06.17 Nick Fakhoury Had been my return to firemblem after many many years of really not being involved with it. It was one of the first games that I played after I came back to the states I had been living in Japan for a year and teaching over there and I returned to North Carolina and I had my switch and I had just recently got a new job and then I had to get surgery on my my left ankle which left me bedridden for a number of weeks and thankfully a week before the actual surgery take place I didn't do this knowingly but it was fortuitous in the way that it worked out because I had just bought. Fire fire andlim 3 houses right before that and so I was kind of just laid up in bed. Ah during that time and ah doing nothing but that for almost you know eighteen twenty hours a day and that was quite the experience I just think that in terms of the way that they presented this game i. I totally agree with you Jala and Addie in terms of the the system bloat that they have in that game that it in terms of the replay ability. They should have implemented maybe a few more structures or a few more mechanisms to allow the player. Choice to when you get back to the monastery to either streamline it completely the way they do in the somnneel and Engage or opt out of it entirely and just autolevel your characters because you reached a certain point and for me it was around hour two hundred after I had. 01:23:34.78 Nick Fakhoury It did the yeah after I completed the ah the black eagle route with Adel Guard I jumped in and I started the golden deer route and I was like oh no it. It kind of gave me that that 6 to your stomach feeling I have to do this entirely over again. But I really wanted the lore. 01:23:49.79 Nick Fakhoury Ah, but so I had to put it down exactly as ah, jawless as she's done and in several other iterations of of the games that she's played and I and I hope to return it soon enough just so I can do that I have a couple of good friends. Colby and Tyler who are fire move 3 houses fans and we are both adamant that we are all adamant that we're going to do some coverage. On Fire Emblem. Ah three hopes so that is it in how that relates to 3 houses and maybe what they did got right? What they didn't get right? So it's just the story itself is very very interweaving and it is the most adult story that I think I've ever consumed in. Ah, trpg or jrpg as a whole I think that the way that they presented the crests and the questions that they ask you with like about who is lady raya and how does she relate to your player character. And the goddess of the realm and everything that you're working with there I'm trying my best to kind of explain why I love without spoiling which is difficult. Yeah, it's very very hard. But I think the crux of it is that the cup of tea productions that they got for the voice actors to play. 01:24:46.84 Jala Um, explain without spoiling. It's very hard. Ah yeah. 01:24:58.13 Nick Fakhoury You know, essentially all of the characters that they ported over to the the english version of this game I mean all you all you need to know is that the voice actor Chris Hackney who plays Dimitri has put on one of the best performances of the year and the fact that he did not win 19 s best performance at the year as dmitri blathed is just a travesty I know that ah western media and a lot of like the the events in terms of ah the game awards are very much like the the emmys or the the golden globes or the academy awards. Of the movie world. But at the same time he just put on an incredible performance as well as all of the jeremy lay as as ah, lady raya and every other character and voice voice actor that that played in there. They just worked beautifully together. It seemed like they had an incredible director that was in the room with him really explaining to these voice actors. These are these characters motivations and this is what they want out of it and everything just kind of seems so desperate. The first time you play through it and when you lost a unit it really hurt when I was young Nick and I was playing sacred stones in the far past. I didn't know about the perma death mechanism in this game and so I spent hours and hours leveling up. Ah this archer I think and trying trying to get her in a good place and then she got just absolutely one shot on the map and I young Nick was devastated. He was devastated. That's the first time. I. 01:26:23.56 Nick Fakhoury Had been devastated so hard in a game and of course it was supposed to come from a fire and bloom game of all of those but I kind of quickly learned and reset and repositioned and was able to push through it but 3 houses hands down is just it's it's beautiful in the way they tell the story and I think that um, the score too went. Miles and miles of making me feel at home in the monastery it kind of gives me the same feeling being in Garrick Mock monastery in fire and loom three houses as that first time that you see and that you that you see school. The first time that you're walking around and you're learning all about these different classrooms and these new people that you meet it's it's just very It was a very formative experience. No, that's not the right right word for it I would say it's just a very ah just mesmerizing experience walking around that and just the. The tune that will will play as you're going through Erick Mack and just the score as a whole I will listen to the fire moon three houses. Ah Ost just randomly throughout my day if I need to get through work. So it's it's it's really really good from top to bottom and I came to find out that the writers for this game were not from intelligent systems. But instead. Writers that came from coate heckmo to write which I feel very very fascinating because the depth of the writing that you get and Engage ah was disappointing to say the least about that that experience. So yeah, that's kind of where I stand there. 01:27:35.69 Adelaide Huh That's interesting. 01:27:48.70 Jala Oh yeah, yeah for sure and I will say like 3 houses really went above and beyond on the story in a way that no other Fire Emblem game does not to that extent like they they do some writing but they don't pace the writing out. 01:28:07.66 Jala It doesn't feel like it's always like the last part of the game where you find something interesting that's going on like it's never like the first 2 thirds of the game. It's always the last bit. 01:28:18.32 Jala Where you really find anything cool going on and it's really about then that that you have warmed up to the characters and they've marinated long enough that you start to get those interesting interactions and things like that as well. So. 01:28:32.58 Jala You know as a result that leaves you kind of wanting for a lot of the the game and it kind of trains you to only be there for the mechanics right? So then you get to something like 3 houses and 3 houses. Okay I'm going to absolutely have to actually sit here and talk about Shining Force 3 a little bit because 3 houses. 01:28:48.20 Nick Fakhoury Okay, let's go. 01:28:52.57 Jala To me feels like they are taking the concept of what they were doing what camelot was doing with Shining Force 3 and then kind of running with it in a direction so in shiningning force three it was released in 3 different disks on the sega saturn and these disks. Were different Shining Forces that had different parts of 1 large story that intertwined between each of these different games that they released and so the one that came to America was the first one the first disc and it was the one where you play as symbios and his group and the game ends. 01:29:16.99 Nick Fakhoury Oh interesting. 01:29:29.43 Jala A cliffhanger because he comes to the final battle. But then you have to wait and stop and go back on the second installment to see what happens with mediin's group and how they interact and each of the different characters each of the Shining Forces interact with one another and they appear. 01:29:48.67 Jala At different times at story important points and help each other and do whatever as they all approach the same kind of like resolution point from different angles. You've got symbios who's like the son of ah, a guy who runs the republic which is like. An independent nation. That's all about equality then you've got medean who is the bastard son of the emperor you know and the empire wants to absorb the republic and there's like political machinations happening behind the scenes. That's unintentional on on you know the prince the prince has nothing to do with it. Neither does the the lord's. Son from the republic and then there's like a mercenary guy whose name is Julian and he's like the third third force for the third game and he's got different reasons for being there and getting involved in all of this crap and they all have different characters. Um, in them. They have those support conversations and you know ah relationships and things like that in battle things that are interesting about it in that way some of the maps are really interesting and cool. Um, and then they also have different layers of maps like in the Shining Force 3 game. You would have. Ah, sometimes ruins or things like that where thieves would open up something that sealed up and then you would have a second map running at the same time as your main map and you could send some party members in to try to get these goodies from the thieves before they leave with them because those were like really you know. 01:31:06.82 Nick Fakhoury Oh wow. 01:31:08.49 Adelaide Smooth. 01:31:17.78 Jala Super rare magical items and stuff like that that you could get off of these characters provided. You can tactically manage splitting your force in two. So it had a lot of cool elements and then the final fight which culminates. 01:31:25.48 Adelaide Interesting. 01:31:32.75 Jala And of course your save data and all of your choices matter from 1 disc to the other and changes who is available in what game and different elements like that it changes from game to game as you go through each of those different installments when you get to the final battle in the third disc you have 3 Shining Forces. 01:31:52.35 Jala Attacking different areas of this massive fortress to try to finish off the bad guy and it's super cool. It is so cool and it is such a shame that we never got that game because like we only got the first installment. 01:31:57.47 Nick Fakhoury Wow. 01:32:07.46 Jala And then the other games I've had to buy the Japanese version and my friend Mogi who runs shunning for central shunningforcentral dot Com ah has translations that fans have made of all of the dialogue so you can go through the game and actually know what the story is there was even a. 01:32:21.92 Nick Fakhoury Oh wow, That's a lot of work. 01:32:25.90 Jala Yeah, there was even a fan project for a while to get like a working english Rom hack I don't know if they ever managed to finish that but I've actually played the game several times through the way it is so they even released a premium disc over in Japan which had a bunch of omaque just like a. Extra stuff where you could play any map with anybody from any of your different forces. Any of the 3 discs and you could play versus dark dragon the villain from the very first Shining Force and things like that now looking at that game now because it's sega saturn and they decided to make it three d rather than you know like a sprite based thing. It's. 01:33:02.39 Jala Ugly as Sin It is ugly to go back to especially now on New Tvs. It looks bad but it has so much going on that. It's so cool and you know like you can train your different characters up. Ah you do you do have like locked in character classes. 01:33:19.54 Jala Right? So ah, you have like a centaur Knight who turns into you know like a centaur. Whatever the hell. The next thing is um and they have paths that they go on but you can train them in different weapons and then they can improve with different weapons and you can switch them from a lance to a spear if you want to or whatever. Um. So There is a little bit of flexibility. It's not as in-depth as a Fire Emblem but the story in the way that the mechanics work within that story are super cool and I feel I explain all of that about Shining Force three which I want to sit and talk about on my show at some point in super detail. 01:33:46.20 Nick Fakhoury That's awesome. 01:33:53.79 Jala But that finding anybody who's actually played all the games is very hard. Um, so. 01:33:55.51 Nick Fakhoury So what I'm hearing Jella is that we want Sega to stop remaking sonics and instead remake some Shining Forces. Yeah yeah. 01:34:03.59 Adelaide Oh yeah. 01:34:04.64 Jala They need to at least bring it forward God I mean like Shining Force Three was such an interesting game and so like that was like weird and unique and they they eventually there were other series that did this like you know you know dot hack had different installments of a game that. 01:34:23.27 Jala All culminated in some big battle but it wasn't the way that Shining Force 3 did it where you have different groups of people you know, ah going through a bunch of different stuff. It was just like you know segments of a ongoing series with the same characters in the Da hack. So Not the same kind of thing. So when you get to 3 houses. It feels similar in some ways because there are those political machinations. There are a lot of moving parts and things going on that you don't know about until it starts unfolding as the story goes. But unlike. The Shining Force 3 game. You don't have these multiple people that you know are all joining forces to to do a thing and then you have all these different cool ways that that interacts with the maps but it does have 3 storylines that all. 01:35:09.14 Nick Fakhoury Yeah. 01:35:14.10 Jala Come together to explain what's going on and in order to get the full story of 3 houses you really have to go through the game 3 times. 01:35:21.13 Nick Fakhoury 4 times technically but you don't have to do it the entire time for the fourth one. 01:35:29.83 Jala So ah, yeah, you just have to see what happens at that particular point in that that particular choice that has to be made. But um. 01:35:35.33 Nick Fakhoury Which is a which I'm sorry to to interject here but for any for pro players who are or any newcomers to fireland 3 houses after you finish white clouds make a save state and always go back to that safe state because there is no reason for you to go back. And replay white clouds because of how long that that ah and Introductory chapter is you could just jump into whichever route that you want to choose when you're ready ready to make that choice. 01:36:02.16 Jala Yes, yes, so ah, the same kind of thing can also be said for like fates. There's like a yeah after you get to a certain point like there's there's like a whole prologue section and then you get to pick your your route so like same thing happens in fates. So pro tip. 01:36:14.18 Nick Fakhoury Oh okay, good to know. 01:36:19.51 Jala Go look up where that prologue ends save it there. Whatever that's at. 01:36:20.50 Adelaide And I think there's actually for fates. Um, there's actually a mechanic built into the game if I remember correctly that like each time you start a new game and if it detects save like a clear data from the opposite game. Um, then it'll prompt you to start from that branch point if I'm remembering correctly. Um, and then you can choose the other thing or the other thing. 01:36:40.80 Jala Oh cool, cool. 01:36:47.49 Jala Yeah, need very cool. so so yeah but like um, 3 houses has some similarities to Shining Force 3 but not nearly as in depth. Um, so like to me Shining Force three was. 01:37:04.20 Jala Actually in some ways doing more of a Fire Emblemy type of thing than Fire Emblem did in 3 houses if that makes any sense because 3 houses breaks from the rest of the series and being so social section heavy. 01:37:20.26 Jala And so full of different things that are not battles to be doing in this tactical Rpg and it also has so much emphasis on the storyline which I mean you can still have story and still have primarily just the battle gameplay as you did in Shining Force three. 01:37:37.50 Jala But they added so many of these other elements and I think part of the reason for that is again that popularity from the awakening game and how much people liked the interactions in the the whatever like that's what I've already cited as being one of my favorite things about Fire Emblem other than battle is. Just the interactions between the characters. So How do we make more of that happen. Well let's give them like you know, let's integrate that my my castle from fates where you have your little base builder and let's just move it forward and then let's. 01:38:13.45 Jala Add a bunch of social stuff in there and add different ways that you can interact with different characters including characters that aren't even in your house and oh maybe you can recruit some of them if you happen to you know, learn enough about them to give them the right goodies and. 01:38:29.55 Jala You know, get their bar up just enough that they want to be on your side or whatever. Um you know and so like it it. It's trying to lean into what made awakening successful and it you know it did It was another one that kind of reclaimed. 01:38:40.12 Nick Fakhoury Interesting. 01:38:47.31 Jala Series in a lot of ways because it has that unique depth of story to it and because it has memorable characters I will say I don't like any of the 3 houses characters as much as I like characters in awakening like I still don't I I still don't like any of the characters in ah 3 houses. 01:38:59.27 Nick Fakhoury No way really. 01:39:08.87 Nick Fakhoury Even the even the lords and in their their individual story arcs and everything that goes on with them that that's that's high praise if ah for for me personally to get excited about awakening if that's true. 01:39:18.60 Jala Yeah, like the way that ah I I went back and I was looking through old tweets okay of what I had posted of ah you know back when I was live tweeting playing awakening and I was looking through all of those and. 01:39:33.60 Jala Then I was looking at the interactions and stuff that were going on with the characters in 3 houses and I'm like you know I just don't I don't some of these characters I ended up liking a fair bit by the end ly cythia Laurens I really liked by the end surprising me. 01:39:45.74 Nick Fakhoury Um, really yeah, his yeah his his character arc yeah goes through a lot. 01:39:49.24 Jala Because I hated Laren's at the beginning but ah, his character art goes through a lot and especially like if you put Lorenz and Sylvain together and let them chit chat they are hilarious. They are so weird together. Um. 01:40:05.12 Jala But yeah, and then like ah the way that claude stuff ends up panning out again. Like again if you are playing a female be left and you are marrying claude. It is disappointing what happens there like okay this is this is not where I thought this was going to go given how you were acting in the beginning of the game. My bro. 01:40:22.67 Nick Fakhoury My guy. 01:40:23.58 Jala You know? Ah yeah, So so it's just kind of falls Down. It's kind of the same thing that happened to Crom it. It falls down the same way if you are not playing female then it might be a little bit different. Um, you know if you aren't romancing clawed or whatever if you pick somebody else. Um, you know then maybe that's not So. Disappointing or sad but dmitry I didn't play through the blood the blue blue lion route but like ah. 01:40:51.54 Nick Fakhoury Oh dalla if you if I can recommend anything ah to play it if you are going to go back to 3 houses at any point in time play it at least to the beginning of the time skip because some of the things that happened to Dmitri are. 01:41:07.52 Nick Fakhoury It's it's one of the most talented like I guess as as I said earlier, it's one of the best voice acting that I've heard in years and that includes some of these you know stellar performances that we get and you know a lot of the Sony first- party ah games that were provided these days so I strongly recommend going back and and starting with that you can skip black eagles. 01:41:25.44 Nick Fakhoury That's not It's a throwaway one anyway and the black route is the 1 they actually developed to last and so there was a ton of crunch that was put into it and it's kind of shortened. It's the shortest chapter of the 3 so you know canonically it's probably best that players you get a full scope of what's happening in 3 houses if you play through. Um. Obviously clouds. You know the golden de route and then going to the blue lions then getting a better understanding just do your own reading. You don't have to put another you know 400 hours to get all the routes into the king but it's funny what you said to jalla about um about getting talking to some of the other characters in the different houses. Ah, to recruit them onto your team. Ah, that's true. But if you are if your heart is as fragile as mine. Ah you can also recruit all of them if you grind enough. That's all you grind to because if you yeah because some things happen after the time skip that are incredibly heartbreaking and. They do some things to really try and you know play with the player's emotions ah in terms of what they make the player do to some of these other characters after the time skip in 3 houses and I was not a fan of that and my second playthro I was like I'm not playing ah this game anymore and I can't I can't see this happen again. So I mean. 01:42:39.48 Jala But oh I have to tell you a couple of things. Well first off, um I usually play these games in Japanese Because I speak a fair amount of japanese and so I understand better what the nuances of the character are when I hear them speak in japanese because there are. 01:42:59.70 Jala Different things about the original language that are hard to translate over to english or I find that they take a lot of liberties with the localization but it's usually losing something when it comes over. So even though I do have friends like I have I'm friends with Brandon Mcinnis who is the guy who plays male allier in Engage and he's been a good friend of mine for a number of years and back before he was ever a voice actor back when he was in a um rock band and playing at cons. Ah so. 01:43:20.20 Nick Fakhoury Um, no way that's awesome. 01:43:33.21 Jala You know I've known him for a number of years and I want to play Engage in english specifically to hear him but my first playthrough of that game I wanted to play female character. So I did that first and so the next time I play I will play on hard mode with perma death and have ah english voice on for that reason. But I usually play in japanese. So but if you tell me that the english is really good I might have to switch over I I think I can probably just go into a menu and change it. It doesn't have to stay the entire time as one or the other hopefully. 01:44:05.50 Nick Fakhoury I think that you can change it but the english is for for for me, it's required listening um for for fire and blow 3 houses more than any other game I can say in this in the franchise for sure I bet you you can probably take so much more away from it. You know if you if you do have a functional grip of Japanese and. In terms of the way because I totally agree with you. There are ways that they characterize um you know some some of these ah some of these different figures in their stories that just is not and there's there's not an easy way to translate that and so the. You know the the translator you know studio needs to take some liberties with that. But yeah I I would say that. Yeah, if you you are in for a treat if you listen to the the english dub from because topic a cup of tea production specifically has a great partnership with intelligence systems. They worked with him again on Engage although I was ah. Very very disappointing at a lot of the voice acting direction that was given to some of the characters in Engage. But that's that's just a personal that's a personal quibble. You know I can't you know say that as a whole there were some bright moments there. Ah but entirely in 3 houses that was just it was a masterstroke in terms of the way they. Had the right characters. Um, and the right voice actors paired up. So yeah, highly recommend that if you are going to go through the boot lines Rob. 01:45:20.39 Jala Oh I will say about Engages voice actors. So Brandon is half japanese and so he speaks the language fluently and has done lots of translation and interpretation work as well. And so ah, whenever he plays a character. He's the one who plays male Alear mind you. 01:45:37.99 Jala Um, he goes back and listens to the Japanese original and will take cues from what he understands that they're doing in the original version and he's also like a working anime voice actor as well. So like you'll see him in other anime. Ah yeah, yeah. 01:45:50.58 Nick Fakhoury Yeah I see that he worked on demon slayer too which is insane. Okay, oh okay, that's that's amazing I love doing. 01:45:56.13 Jala And he's a super sweetie I absolutely love him and his husband plays louis so ah, Louie is his husband so and also Brandon's sang the english version of the song because he's also as I mentioned a singer so you know. 01:46:09.73 Nick Fakhoury Wow. 01:46:12.26 Jala Yeah, so like definitely um I do want to go back after I have had a healthy break because I just did 80 hours of it. Um I do want to go back to Engage and play in english to hear Brandon and his husband both. So um, but yeah, like ah so I want to talk a little bit about what. 01:46:23.12 Nick Fakhoury Oh yeah, absolutely. 01:46:32.20 Jala Everybody thinks Fire Emblem series is unique for like what? what? What would you consider unique about Fire Emblem versus other tactical games or other types of rpgs in general. However, you want to phrase that I will actually kick it off myself. Because I've been sitting here thinking about it. Ah so for me I actually came to Fire Emblem basically because once Shining Force went through its original several iterations through Shining Force three and then camelot you know did a bunch of mobile games. Like Shiningny Force was alive for a very long time on mobile games that only came out in Japan and we never got to see them There were so many of them and they just never got brought over so I never got to see any of those but it was very well very alive and very well for a very long time in that format. 01:47:25.87 Jala And then the rights were taken over by like a different studio and then the game series just kind of went way off the rails into a totally different direction. It became like an action rpg or something that's only nominally a Shining Force. It's not Shining Force the way. The tactical rpgs were in the first several iterations and the way that they were when they were on the cell phones. 01:47:45.78 Jala So ah, when I found out the Fire Emblem was basically kind of like a Shining Force. That's what made me want to come play it because I had played Shining Force and I was missing Shining Force and I'm like I guess I'll play this Fire Emblem thing I didn't have ans a s okay. Until way late in its cycle like by the time the playstation was well on its way. It's been in its second year or something that's when I got in s and es so I didn't get to play a lot of old rpgs that were on the super and es or anything like that I had a sega I had all the sega stuff. And I had had an nes and then I just kind of like went over to sega had all the sega systems then I got a game boy advance in an s and es late in its life cycle and then just kind of you know, ah went into a bunch of different you know systems from there but I missed. A lot of these original games. So like I didn't get to play the fire I probably would have played them if I had had in sn es while it was extant but ah coming to it as late as I did I missed all of that. So again wanting more tactical stuff people recommended. Why not try Fire Emblem awakening this is a really good game and said okay and I was like well what's it look like and how does it play. Oh it looks kind of like a Shining Force. Okay, cool. So ah, what do I think is unique about it in terms of and I've already kind of mentioned it in terms of Shining Force versus Fire Emblem right. 01:49:16.64 Jala Ah, it's the depth of the mechanics and the things like that. Um even something like final fantasy tactics that has a lot of depth to it but the trick about final fantasy tactics is that it's very opaque when you first play it. Because it doesn't really explain a lot of stuff to you and you don't really know what's a good class and what's like at the oh this is a crappy class except in these certain situations until you go through the game whereas in Fire Emblem like. And you find out stuff pretty easily.. It feels pretty natural to me like when I picked up final fantasy Tactics I had to swim around at a bunch of guides and get referred through several different you know, flow charts and crap and ask people when I got into Fire Emblem. 01:49:58.38 Nick Fakhoury Interesting. 01:50:02.36 Jala I Could just pick up the game and play it and it was fine. 01:50:04.42 Nick Fakhoury Okay. Yeah I would say that in terms of the uniqueness in the fryarembblem franchise when it comes to I can agree wholeheartedly with everything that you're saying Joe I would say that the the strategy as well as like the way that they pair strategy with. Relationships and building relationships with characters and games. You don't really see that in a lot of other um, you know Rts games I've played a lot of Rts I'm a huge commanding conquer fan. Ah, but when you get in obviously with the tactical rts they have much more of a. Ah, legacy I mean surely there have been plenty of you know, real-time strategy games throughout the years but you know Fire Emblem is ah you know, kind of a very very early foundational franchise in in the trpg genre and so what I would say is that in terms of the way that they for for me, it's it's how they make me care about the characters because. Gameplay is fun. Gameplay is perfectly fine and I stuck stuck it out through the end of Engage because of how wonderful the gameplay was and for lack of a better term engaging it was but I would say that in terms of you know when I get through games the way that I the player that I am. 01:51:22.77 Nick Fakhoury I seek out narrative I seek out stories and that's what I've loved you know ever since you know from the sacred stones and learning more about Erica and ephraim and their journey and trying to discover you know this this bad you know evil bad guy and you know how his relationship you know, ah with the entire empire affects their fates and their journeys. I just think that you know there is a lot of opportunity in these games to become attached to various characters and you know ah become favorites and again 3 houses did a wonderful job of really building dimensionality and really creating characters that did have 3 dimensions and I think they did that. Ah, to their credit across the board with both their female and male characters because I do think that a lot of the female characters in some of the earlier iterations were ah very shallowly written. But of course you know as you get forward I think they're bringing on more perspectives and more. Ah. Ah, diverse team members onto onto the writing staff and I think that 3 houses for me was a great job in building up people in this fantasy world and having it feel real to me and that's that is what pushed me through those. 200 hours from my experience there whether or not that will for anyone else. It kind of just depends on what your taste profile is and what you're like but um, that is one of the more unique things about this series that you really can't find in any other type of rpg besides Fire Emblem. 01:52:43.72 Jala Right? right? and they do have some of that ah social stuff and some of those character interactions and things like that again in shunning force 3 um in particular but like again, that's not one that very many people have played. It's not very accessible. 01:53:00.23 Jala Um, you know like it's not even fully in english although you can find a translation so it's unfortunate I really kind of wish that camelot had been able to continue on with Shining Force games in the tactical style so we could see. How those would have panned out over time I don't know what those mobile games are like so so Addie, what about you. 01:53:19.86 Adelaide Yeah I Actually it's funny I think I think I'm on the same page with all of you if like because I've you know I played a fair amount of um of tactical roleplaying games myself like it is definitely as well. One of my favorite genres. Um. 01:53:39.78 Adelaide And if I think about like you know, usually in those games you are either. You have a handful of main characters and then a bunch of like generic characters that fill out your roster or you're just working with a much smaller pool of people. Um, and so like the unique thing about. Fire Emblem and and you know like we've said maybe the reason that there is such a low emphasis on overall story for most of the games is because a lot of the emphasis is on the characters themselves and those character interactions and making them feel interesting and vibrant and. And like actual characters within the game instead of just being like you know a a character design and a voice actor. 01:54:25.60 Nick Fakhoury Right. 01:54:26.50 Jala Um, yeah, yeah for sure and so what do you guys think are some of the most interesting mechanical things that you've seen happen in these games. In particular I've already mentioned in fates the pair up ability I like that ability a lot because another way you can use that ability is you can take 1 of your very armored Knight guys and put them paired with like a pegasus knight and let the Pegasus Knight ferry them across the screen and then drop them. 01:55:01.10 Jala So you can get your your very slow units somewhere very quickly without having so like they they um, obviate the use the need for this in Engage because you have warp staffs. You have the ability for your major characters to warp characters around and they also had that in echoes. Um. 01:55:19.72 Jala But like I do like the fact that you also have that capacity even if you're not a major character to pair up characters and you know toggle them you can also so prevent characters from being killed like if you have that same Pegasus Knight you can have the armored guy be the frontman and protect them from archers. Temporarily and then split back off again when the archers are dead. You know things like that where you can use that to your advantage and I really like the way that that works again like there are other ways that you can do that in Engage like ah Sorin has a capacity. To assign a decoy so that everybody attacks 1 guy so you can have 1 guy as your tank and everybody in range is going to attack that 1 guy if he has assigned the decoy he or she so that's pretty cool. Ah there's also the inheritance of traits that we mentioned with the. Children and you know how they come forward and then Engage where they took that away from being like married relationships you you marry and have children with somebody to just being the emblem rings themselves which gives you even more malleability and a lot more power in how you want to? basically. Create your characters I like that because that also opens it up to more diversity in the pairings that you can have and your supports so you can have s rank support with I think it's every character and Engage isn't it. Um. 01:56:47.75 Jala Every character that you can recruit you can have s class support and if they are too young then you won't have like you won't have a ah sexy time relationship with them. You will have a a platonic relationship with the children. Some of them are kind of flirty but they don't get with you. 01:57:06.30 Jala And then some of them will marry you and they will marry you regardless of what gender your character is and they even have rosato who is a character that both Addie and I at least read as being trans femme or you know nonbinary but femme, you know or whatever something along those lines you know. 01:57:25.80 Jala Not being you know, ah exactly yeah, some some kind of gender nonconforming individual rather than being just that's a guy you know that kind of a thing. So. 01:57:26.44 Adelaide That Yeah, at least like some sort of stripe of nonconforming. 01:57:38.68 Nick Fakhoury Which I thought was wonderful in terms of the representation of the diversity and Engage you get a lot more than you did in 3 houses. So I thought that was a step in the right direction specifically and and and a great thing to call out in terms of. 01:57:53.60 Nick Fakhoury Them bringing in different different individuals as the characters of this game. Also it helps that ah Rosato is incredibly powerful if you use them correctly. 01:58:03.23 Jala Yeah, yeah, absolutely and ah, he's also just ah, they they refer to rosato as a he I will say he just because of that. Um, but in the Japanese It's kind of interesting the way that he talks um because of course it's kind of like a mishmash of of you know, like different nuances of speech. So anyway, um so Rosato is really cool. Um, Rosato is also an artist. That's very neat. 01:58:23.76 Nick Fakhoury Um, really. 01:58:35.74 Jala Um, but yeah, like also very into cute things very obsessed with cute things and being cute. It's it's very fun and it makes a lot of sense. Why he's a retainer of Hortensia so but um. 01:58:51.62 Jala Yeah I like the fact that they have that representation and they actually have some dark skin characters in the game I mean they also they also had dark skin characters and awakening the ferroxies. The the ferroxy people are awesome. They're so badass I I love them. 01:59:09.20 Jala So um, when you see those whenever you play awakening Nick ah you will appreciate them. They're very cool I actually feel like I like the ferroxy folks better than I like the um oh what is solm is it solm the where they're from. Yeah. 01:59:15.24 Nick Fakhoury Um, wonderful I'm looking forward to that. 01:59:26.54 Jala So I like the ferroxies better than I like the solm people but it's just like ah the culture cultural differences between how the solm people are super laid back and just kind of cheery and nondescript versus the Ferroxy which are like you know a pretty battle you know? yeah. 01:59:42.64 Adelaide Yeah, listen. 01:59:44.88 Jala Already and you know they have combat trial by combat to be the con or whatever and but they are also very straight shooter like that's more my my speed you know? So but yeah, ah so. 01:59:48.83 Adelaide Right. 01:59:54.62 Nick Fakhoury Okay, okay, got it. It's wonderful. 02:00:02.00 Jala Yeah, Addie, what do you think. 02:00:04.32 Adelaide Um I Think honestly for me that the single most interesting mechanic is the the way that they've sort of refined class and character building I I Love the the idea of ah like. Playing a game over the course of generations and like being able to play each each generation like I've never actually made a successful playthrough of genealogy of the holy war because it's a long game and the maps are typically very very big in comparison to other fair. Fire Emblem games. Um, also just for old Fire Emblem games are hard anything before the gay Boy advance is just like annoyingly hard. Um, but like the way that it pops up in um, awakening and fates to a lesser degree like that's such a cool cool idea. 02:00:59.66 Adelaide Of like oh you want the kid to be. You know, let's say there. They've got in you know, like a weird like nonstandard high growth in a certain area so you pick 2 like parents that like really take advantage of that. And so even though the kid like starts out as like ah ah you know sword fighter or Mirmadon or whatever you want to call him. You know you can like ah you can like class change them and actually they turn out to be a really good wizard or you know stuff like that I love I love the crunchiness of it. 02:01:35.56 Adelaide Um, that's so fun and engaging to me. 02:01:40.28 Jala Yeah, yeah, and I will also shout out additional notes from Fred from the ah notes for the show. The weapon break system from Engage. So The Weapon Triangle system has always helped swing battles but the brake takes it to a whole new level changing how you approach a battle. And combined with the Engage mechanic encourages more daring aggressive player phase plays rather than turtling in enemy phase. It's yeah, it's either that or rewinds as someone who often compulsively resets the entire chapter if I use a unit I like and you know yeah. 02:02:05.39 Adelaide Oh oh sure. 02:02:12.40 Nick Fakhoury Um, oh I'm not losing anybody. 02:02:17.98 Jala Yeah, like although like I do want to sit on some perma death I mean like ah we mentioned Addie had a video about it and why perma death is actually a good thing and I I will say um the the reason why I play on normal mode casual mode. 02:02:33.38 Jala When I first play these is because I want to see the story and see all the characters and all their supports and stuff without having to worry about losing them. However, on a replay I will put it on Perma Death I will put it on hard mode. Um, and that is because like um. 02:02:52.81 Jala Will let Addie talk in more detail about ah her thoughts on it but like definitely an Engage I felt like I had unit bloat I had too many units I had way too many units by the end of this game and I was sick of trying to keep everybody evenly leveled to see who I wanted to use in the final battle. 02:03:01.31 Nick Fakhoury Oh yeah, oh gosh. 02:03:08.98 Nick Fakhoury I just I just found the the right 10 that I needed in just the only people that I could load into maps. That's the only people I worked with. 02:03:10.97 Jala And. Um I can't do that I can't I can't do that every time every single time I have a bunch of people ever since the first one of these and when I first played Shining Force. 02:03:29.92 Jala From the very beginning if I every single character even if I got like there are characters in the original Shining Force game you ah in that game you go up to level 10 and then you can be promoted to your second class. You know your advanced class. Well at a certain point in the game you are like level 2 and 3 advanced. 02:03:49.54 Jala And you get level 1 base class characters. You get like 2 or 3 of them at the same time and I would stop and grind and they would do like 1 hip point of damage I would grind until I got those suckers up to level. 02:03:59.40 Adelaide Oh my God 02:04:07.64 Jala And they were super useful for the end of the game because one of them was a really strong healer and another one was a very strong mage. The head Thunder Magic that is a huge Aoe so like getting them leveled up was worth your time but it was a pain in the ass and I would do that. 02:04:25.10 Jala And I would do that on every site like every single time I go through a map I always pick the lowest level characters and put them out there and level them up to get them even with everybody else. 02:04:36.56 Nick Fakhoury That's so fascinating that you say that too because I did these I I did the exact same thing in fire and blowm 3 houses and I did it in the most mind numbing way when I was first playing it because I wanted all I just had the desire to see all of my units like reach those master classes. And see what they would look like on the battlefield that one of the it's one of the fun parts and one of the most engaging parts is seeing the character designs as they're getting. You know, put on. You know you you pick you? whoever are your favorite characters among that incredible cast that they give you and then you you make them a yeah ah you know a pegasus knight or either a. 02:05:11.26 Nick Fakhoury You know, ah riding you know Cavalry Cavalry like Mounted Knight or something like that or a paladin. Whatever it may be um, it's really nice to see that evolution over time. But yeah I would I did the exact same thing Jalla I would take my units I would go into one of those free training things. And just sit there for hours and hours and hours until they were up to a certain level and I almost wonder part of me wonders if the developers know that they're character like that players are doing that sort of thing because I often find in a lot of fire lum games that the ramp up the difficulty ramp up towards the endgame gets kind of crazy. 02:05:46.86 Nick Fakhoury It gets kind of wild in terms of what they're expecting you to do and the level of the npcs that they're throwing at you but I kind of take the same approach that I take to you know my real-time strategy games is I want to be a tank I want to go in there and I want to send my units wherever I want to. And have them just drop in and be able to just absolutely decimate. Whatever strategy that the enemy was kind of implementing in that map. Um, which is one of the reasons I appreciated Engaged so much because exactly as Fred was saying it really does encourage aggressive play now. Did I completely bite the dust multiple times with several characters that I dearly dearly loved and have to rewind yes, of course I did but did that stop me no not at all, you know it's it's funny that you say that I did have a question and I'm not going to divert away from what I think is the most interesting mechanic but I did have a question for Addie about the genealogy of the holy war leaf. 02:06:39.45 Nick Fakhoury Is the primary protagonist for that game right. 02:06:42.40 Adelaide No leaf is the main character in three CS 7 7 6 the main. Well the main character for the first generation I guess um is Sigurd and then I think leaf is also in genealogy. 02:06:53.96 Nick Fakhoury Figured. Okay. 02:06:56.68 Adelaide But threeia 7 7 6 is like a side story from it's it's like it takes place like later in the timeline but also at the same like like a mid cool I guess ah from genealogy. 02:07:01.33 Nick Fakhoury Interesting. 02:07:09.35 Nick Fakhoury Oh okay, so it's like the same universe at that point. Okay, okay because I was going to askulate is he as crazy powerful in the original game as he isn't Engaged because his his Engage power is absolutely. 02:07:25.93 Nick Fakhoury Bonkers. It's insane whenever you get to use him. Oh okay, got it? Yeah oh yeah, definitely. 02:07:28.31 Adelaide So like I don't actually know that much about those games because again like I haven't played them that much in their hard. Um, but but yeah, he's like 1 of the best Engaged people I feel like for sure. 02:07:39.99 Jala Especially if your name is alfred and I only learned that from fred I have to to mention Phred again invoke the name of of my sherpa. 02:07:41.21 Nick Fakhoury Yeah, yeah, definitely. 02:07:50.85 Nick Fakhoury You know, do you know who I put s cigarette on I put her on ch cloe and Engage and she became and I put her on ch cloe after I put a different character I can't remember who else I had on ch cloy. But I think it was the ah the character that allowed her to. Ah, to shoot arrows um and it came it is Lyn. Yeah, it was Lynn I had Lynn on cloy for a while there and then I switched over to Sigurd and she became nearly unstoppable. Um, until I finally switched sigurd over to Alfred. 02:08:10.24 Adelaide Lyn. Yeah. 02:08:12.11 Jala Lyn 02:08:25.82 Nick Fakhoury Who turned out to be 1 of my favorite characters. The game a good friend of mine Eric guess from the unlockables ah, he should be in Dave's Discord too. But ah, he he recommended or he was talking about his play style and I copied him shamelessly in putting Sigurd on the um on Alfred as this heavy night. 02:08:43.45 Nick Fakhoury Ah, with with you know, heavy armor and everything and he could move 10 steps. It was incredible. He could move across the map as fast as some mounted characters once you leveled him up enough. But um I will say that in in kind of answering this question of what I thought it was the most. 02:08:59.17 Nick Fakhoury Unique introduce in the series I got to go back to Engage even though there are several like unique ways that they implement, especially kind of like the school simulator in 3 houses. But I'm a huge fan of anime and the hype that anime brings to like awesome action moments and if you can say. 02:09:15.32 Nick Fakhoury Anything about fi emblem Engage is that they brought that anime special hype to every single scene whenever and you're in a map when they're when whenever you do a special attack and you do an emblems specific attack because what you can do is you Engage and the character changes their their colors they change their entire uniform. 02:09:34.26 Nick Fakhoury And they look almost like angels that are kind of replicas of whatever ah protagonist that they're kind of emulating in that map right there and then they do it and the main character is sitting into the special cut scene where one of the protagonists are like leaping down and doing you know, sword thrusts and stuff like that is just. 02:09:52.66 Nick Fakhoury It's very very much exciting to kind of see that and see your characters working together. Um, at that time so I will say that the entire Engaged system is powerful and it is just exciting to watch and so I have to say that that's probably 1 of my favorites that I've actually seen in the series because of. How much fun I had with it going along and how much complexity it brings to the gameplay. 02:10:14.30 Jala And I will say too that like it's very fun to take different units and even if you don't pair them with a particular emblem for very long just to see what they look like and and everything like you know the animation's the same but you just want to know what they look like with this different emblem and how that makes them look and. 02:10:33.52 Jala All of that. It's very fun. Um, it is super like you're just doing who I got they from the Shaman King Onime series is what you're doing like it's just you are merging like the spirit goes into you. You are one with the spirit for a time and you can assume their abilities and stuff. It's very cool. Um. 02:10:50.23 Nick Fakhoury Um, like power rangers. 02:10:53.60 Jala Yeah, it's also power rangers-y but it's very directly like go look up Shaman King go look up when he he merges and does like the spirit merging with the character and that like you'd see what I'm talking about it looks so much the same especially like later on in the shaman king series where like you know the the. 02:11:10.86 Jala Expression of the spirit gets bigger and bigger but like especially towards the end of the game when you get the ability to have like that Finally unlock that s support class with somebody and you do that and then you get stuff like ah you can do like the Bond blast and stuff like that at the very end of the game. Um that that's really cool. 02:11:30.85 Jala And the the way that the strengths of the characters play out as as they go in like the different buffs they can give each other. It's so cool. Um, just especially because each of your characters has passive abilities that are innate and unique to them. 02:11:48.16 Jala So like you know there's ah vander for example, vander in Engage when paired sitting next to a leer will buffaleer and himself so it always benefits you to put vander next to air because the 2 of them. 02:12:04.58 Jala Will naturally buff each other every single time they're paired together. So it's it's little cool things like that where it's like ah the the strengths and weaknesses balance each other out a lot of times ah depending on how you pair your people on the battlefield that gives it so much more complexity. Um. 02:12:23.60 Jala Then I feel that you've had in some of the earlier games because you didn't have that passive ability on all the different characters I don't believe in the other games that I played a Fire Emblem at least back to awakening I don't know if before they had passives but this one has innate 1 innate passive ability. That is unique to each character. Plus you can equip 2 other passive abilities that you can unlock from emblems so um, there's just so many different levels of of just being able to morph your character in Engage and then you also have enough time with your characters. 02:13:01.70 Jala That if you really keep a character in for every single map. You can level them up and then get them all the way through their advanced class and cap them level cap them again and start them over at as another advanced class and they keep their stats and then they just. 02:13:17.60 Jala Gain more stuff and start training another path and it's just wild. It's really fun to be able to do all of that without actually grinding like I didn't I played maybe 1 or 2 of the extra things but I wasn't grinding in Engage at all and you know I still had the ability. 02:13:29.55 Nick Fakhoury Yeah, yeah, same. 02:13:33.73 Jala To do that to reach that level cap and then start them over as something new and then if you do the fell xeno logs not only do you get several more units which I think there's unit bloat already. Um, Addie I swear we will talk about perma death. Um, but. 02:13:50.22 Jala But also you get 2 more classes unlocked at the end as well as a bunch of goodies you get the enchanter class and the mage canon ear class and both of those look really fun. But I played the rest of the fell xenologues after I finished the main game so I have no reason to go and Jack around with it now. 02:14:05.87 Nick Fakhoury Yeah, absolutely. 02:14:09.98 Jala So perma death looping all the way the back to that herma death unit bloat. Ah, there's definitely unit bloat in Engage I definitely feel that way and I feel like I would have liked I would have benefited from putting it on perma death and Addie. 02:14:28.40 Jala Take it away tell us about Perma death and your feelings about it. 02:14:31.85 Adelaide Um, basically I mean I did like a 15 minute Youtube video on a video on it. Um, but what I was I used to play ah Fire Emblem games. Um, specifically as no death runs right? So you at every time you lost a character you'd restart. Ah Map um, which in the older games was frustrating because you'd manually have to like restart the game and reload the map from the beginning. Um, obviously in the earlier in later games where you can just roll back time. That's a little bit easier to do but um, what I started to. 02:14:57.78 Nick Fakhoury Reload The save. Yeah. 02:15:07.63 Adelaide To realize is that by the end of the game I just had so many units and none of them got used ever. Um and like I'm the type of person that typically um, if there aren't any like outstanding characters that I really like or like. And awakening or fates if they don't come with any skills that I find interesting. Um, then I just really stick to the first party. The first characters that you ever get in the game are usually the ones that carry through with me to the end of the game. Um and ah and like. 02:15:44.83 Adelaide What I came to realize is I think by and large even the more modern games but especially the older games were designed with that perma death in in mind. Essentially what they're doing is they're giving you a large cast of characters because. They're expecting you to lose them and so that way you have ways to make up your losses later on in the game you'll notice like a lot of times after a certain cutoff point you're only getting pre-provoted units. Um, and you know. Obviously in the later games where you have a little bit more control over like what weapons characters are using or what classes they are. You have a lot more like diversity and in in what you can field but in the older games where characters were locked into a like a class and a weapon. Usage. Um it you know, losing your cavalier for instance would lose you access to lances and swords but you at almost every game gives you 2 cavaliers right? off the bat. Um, and that's you know there there are slight. Differences between them and there's usually at least 1 more throughout the story and and yeah, that's ah like I'm pretty sure that's a specific design choice on the part of the game makers to. 02:17:15.51 Adelaide Makeup for the fact that you are going to lose characters. You're supposed to lose characters in the game. 02:17:20.00 Jala Well and then two you also have the fact that if you have Permaf you have like your version of the story where you know like you you tell a cool tale and I'm not going to spoil it because I want people to go look at your video but you tell a story about something that happened to you with Engage. 02:17:38.84 Jala Your favorite character I will actually tell a story about ah Dave my husband and his playthrough on 3 houses and how it crushed his soul because he forgot he had perma death on and that he could rewind time and save this character. He lost bernadetta and that was his favorite. He killed her and. 02:17:57.51 Jala Then he was very very very sad and then like she and he's like but I didn't kill her. She's still in the the Academy She just won't come outside anymore and you know that character is a shut in character who just is like just wants to be left alone in her room and like. 02:18:12.30 Adelaide Aha. 02:18:15.96 Jala So so you know for him. His story is that he she got traumatized in battle and then like never wanted to see him again and just never came out of her room again. So yeah, and and so you know you get those kinds of stories where like that's just the way that it is and it's kind of like in D&D you're not supposed to be immortal. 02:18:24.13 Nick Fakhoury A head canon. 02:18:25.41 Adelaide Yeah. 02:18:35.70 Jala Your characters are supposed to die and they're supposed to die so that you can make new ones and move on and in Fire Emblem. You can't make new ones but you are given new ones all the time like you have several cavalry you know Cavalry units by the end you have several axe people you don't need to use every single one of them now. Ah, the reason why I. 02:18:55.23 Jala Choose to do casual on my first playthrough on Fire Emblem is because I don't know the growth pattern of all these characters and who I'm going to like best and this that and the other like I can have perma death in the future and you know already have explored. You know the the stuff I like about the best characters that I like the most and then maybe I you know if they die then oh well, it's ok I already know about what happens with them I can just kind of move on and you know do a different path this time and kind of get over it. But um, you know I feel like that's. Still kind of a cop out the way that I play is still a cop out like it really should be permit death from the beginning but you know I can't help myself I really am with Nick in that I am there to learn about these characters I'm always characterforward always storyforward if not story then characters. So I want to see that. Expounded on as much as I can before I start killing him off and I know they know that there are people who are like that which is why they have the casual mode in the first place you know and I like the fact that in Engage you can rewind time unlimited at least on normal mode I don't know about hard. So. 02:20:07.78 Jala Um, but still like Perma death does have a place in these games and it does make those unique narratives and I really want to go through and play it another time and play it where if the character dies I don't rewind time I roll with it and I move forward because if you can rewind time. 02:20:27.37 Jala You'll be tempted if you have permatath on to do so anyway and you know or reload that save the way that Nick was talking about right and and just keep you know going back until you can do it without them dying and you know like in in a lot of ways that feels like cheating yourself out of those. 02:20:45.24 Jala Narrative moments that happen organically through the gameplay because like you can you can kind of invent a whole narrative around that and like your character died heroically like in in the case of Dave with bernadetta bernadetta tad the final blow on you know this one bad you know, terrible boss guy and. You know then somebody else took or took her out like right at the last second or whatever but because of her sacrifice we were able to beat this unbeatable foe or whatever so you know like you have those those moments where you can keep that with you and I think that that's really cool and because that's not something that was around in Shining Force. 02:21:23.32 Nick Fakhoury I just want to say shame on on your husband Dave for for not protecting bernadetta at all costs. How could you even fathom of letting her go out there on her own. She's just a. She's just a little trauma being why why would you do that to her. 02:21:38.73 Jala Ah, he forgot that there was ability to time to rewind time and that is why he forgot that he could rewind time and he also forgot that he had Perma death on he thought that she was going to come back to life and then she did not she stayed in her room and he didn't understand. 02:21:55.99 Jala He didn't understand for several several bits until like after he had saved over his data that she was gone. Yeah, so Nope no. 02:21:58.54 Nick Fakhoury Oh no, oh that's that's the most heart wrenching part you there's you can't go back from that. Can't You can't do it unless you start a new game and then go down a different route and then you're fine just recruit her and it's like it never happened. 02:22:12.85 Jala I don't even think he finished 3 houses because of that like I think he just stopped he. He just lost his spirit. 02:22:16.54 Adelaide Oh wow. 02:22:17.82 Nick Fakhoury What I mean I see yeah I see that happening especially for some folks who like aren't longtime fireble fans if they one of their favorite characters dies I can see that actually you know the bouncing off the game If if that's the case and I'm ah um'm a new player. 02:22:33.96 Jala Yeah, yeah, especially since they invest so much in those characters to begin with. But yeah, so ah, those are are kind of some of those things 1 last question that I want to ask though is what would you like to see in the next. 02:22:48.57 Jala Mainline Fire Emblem game not all at once. Addie. 02:22:56.42 Adelaide Um I think bare bones. Um, we should be getting translated ports of every single game. There's literally no reason for them to do that or not do that at this point. Um, there's enough like. I feel like there's enough Goodwill built from heroes and Engage to have interest in the older games. Ah that those like they did that limited with translation of shadow or the first one shadow dragon not shadow dragon but like the actual first one. Um, and it was only like available for a month or something stupid. Um, but yeah, every every Fire Emblem game should be on the switch. Um I ah like mechanically I don't really know that I can think of anything that I would really add more. 02:23:52.78 Adelaide To the games. Um I would love to see them and again I haven't gotten all the way through 3 houses. So perhaps this has already happened but I would like to see them start to do something more interesting with their narratives I I like. 02:24:11.49 Adelaide It's fine. It's fine if the Fire Emblem gets to be the the fancy thing that you know kills the bad guy every time but like I want I want us to move Beyond shadow dragons like there's got to be other interesting stories. We could tell. 02:24:26.90 Nick Fakhoury Yeah, yeah, and I think that that you know to your to your point there Addie that 3 houses at least by renaming the emblems to crests. 02:24:38.25 Nick Fakhoury Was the barest minimum of trying to separate or trying to get the audience away from the idea of like what actually is a Fire Emblem unless you're playing super close attention to the yeah ah Kristen skies route. But I um I would say that I agree I agree with you as well. I would love I would love love love. If they were able to bring some of those earlier games and have them I don't know how much work it would be or if it would be profitable but if they are able to bring them onto the nintendos which online version and whether it just be the bases bare bones. You're you're playing it. You know it is just very light kind of like a shining diamond. 02:25:15.65 Nick Fakhoury Brilliant Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl remake where they do a a nice little. Um and nice little graphical fidelity upgrade for each of the games and then just bring the same stories voice if there is any voice acting in any of the older ones. Um, until the earlier ones I don't know when they started actually voice acting some of these games. 02:25:33.69 Adelaide Awakening I think was the first. Yeah. 02:25:34.61 Nick Fakhoury Was it awakening the 1 they did that makes sense because that was kind of like the last Ferah there but I would um I would say that I would love to see that and of course they started. They started to bring you know. Obviously we have the switch online ah version of ah blazing blade that came through so that's very exciting I haven't had enough time. 02:25:52.27 Nick Fakhoury Myself personally just because like Jall I have a lot of assignments that I've given to myself to try and get through other content and Ip but I would say that I love the art style so much. Um, from Engage that like if you kept it it. It is like it is very um. 02:26:12.19 Nick Fakhoury Polarizing in terms of the way they made the art style because people kind of really very much and a lot of friends that I know who to play via emblem gravitated to the more adult grounded version of the world of Faudland that they gave you in 3 houses. Um I love that I want more of that but I also love kind of that very um effervescent anime-styled art direction that they didn't Engage and so if they were able to find a way to merge those 2 together in an adult way. Give us an m rated Fire Emblem game with some really impactful characters that have wonderful motivations I think that they could find a way to you know. You know make their way to the path of what adelaide is trying to say and in telling us a new and engaging story in that Fire Emblem universe and that's really going to hinge on the fact of that they need to get you know, strongly written characters with you paired up with really good voice actors and I think that's kind of the the. Template of what I would want to see going forward also give us some more special weapons. There's not enough special weapons in these games you you always have your steel blades and then you go up to silver and then occasionally you have like of course 3 houses gave us you know those crest weapons or rather the. The ones that were based off of the the bones of the dead gods and goddesses and all that stuff and all the kind of intrigue that's attached to it. But if they gave us more magic items kind of spice it up a little bit more I think that would that would be really funny engaging too. 02:27:36.70 Jala Oh yeah, especially if they had like there is 1 wand in this one is only found in 1 place and you can only get one of them. There are no no more. 02:27:44.21 Nick Fakhoury Yeah, and there's only one of them. There are no backups. Yeah. 02:27:49.62 Jala Yeah there's no more of these and and that kind of a thing then that would be really cool because that could be like you know your your deisx mock and how to get through something really bad or whatever. Um. So I definitely want them to bring all the games forward. That's not something that is you know unheard of or or impossible to do I would not mind some quality of life tweaks though because the thought of going back to a 1990 trpg sounds real bad sounds like a tough time to be. 02:28:20.77 Jala I don't know that sounds like it would take me forever to get through that and it might get set down. You know, like 1 of those situations I also really wish it I said I think I said roll in earlier. It's Randall Randall from echoes ah who is actually from the card game cipher Fire Emblem cipher the card game. 02:28:39.20 Jala And um I would love for them to make the card game into an actual video game or at least bring some of those characters forward like they did in echoes where they have randall pop up and some of the other characters. Um, other than that if as long as that M rated game isn't M because it's horny as Hell. Um. I Just I cannot have another fates on my hands here I can't I can't. 02:29:01.31 Nick Fakhoury Yeah, yeah, yeah, Definitely definitely you know tone down ah tone down your syl veins ah tone down some of these other like super duper horny characters and just make it more about the core over the relationship. That's not built on sexual tension. Um, if there really is any sexual tension. There's like they they they don't even build on that at the very least it's more of just like ah you're you're on a pretty woman. Why don't you be my wife and then they get rejected and that's that's the extent of ah some of that. But then of course like the weirder more player oriented kind of fan service that they bake into that. They could just step back from it very easily just step back from it and I again like I I agree with you wholeheartedly like I want to see some more mature content like I would love to see a little bit more you know a little bit more intense violence. Ah you know I know that's not everybody's cup of tea. But I think that would be fun to kind of. Just add more grounded texture um into that into that world. 02:29:58.19 Jala Oh my God you say that and we're talking M rated game and this that and the other and talking Perma death and I'm like dark souls but fire am long did somebody just speak that into existence Oh God but right right. 02:30:08.49 Nick Fakhoury Um, oh yeah, oh bad I namco from Software Are you. 02:30:08.68 Adelaide Um, oh no fire Souls dark emblem are. 02:30:16.10 Jala So ah, that would be ah that would be wild if we got something that was more violent and more whatever and more serious and everything kind of had like a from treatment or at least some from ah elements to it right? So um. 02:30:35.50 Jala Yeah, and then mechanically I don't really know I have faith in intelligent systems to make a solidly you know working game and recycle their bits and bobs and add new elements and adjust things tweak them as they go because Engage to me. Um, Engage. The story did not do it for me the way that the story in 3 houses did um but the characterization in Engage I like the way that they worked with that and the fact that the s supports are not all everybody wants to get it on. Ah. You know I like the fact that they have like more more open and flexibility where like you know your character can romance whoever is romanceable is romanceable regardless of what your gender is I think that's a good move. Um I like all of that. Um, but yeah, like insofar as the actual just. 02:31:29.83 Jala Elements of of the gameplay Intelligence Systems knows what they're doing. Um, it's really like to me it feels like they've got the battle part down just right? What they are trying to do is see what of the social elements and character designs and interactions and stuff. Are the things that are bringing people back because they I think they know it's not the story I Think by this point they are very aware bla. Blaringly you know it's pleading obvious that very few people are actually in Fire Emblem as a series as an I p for the story Even if they like the story of. 02:32:06.44 Jala 3 houses for example, but like that's not why everybody's playing Fire Emblems you know at their core. So um, yeah I I feel like it is a good move for them to continue to have the the flexibility of you can have permanent death or not. 02:32:09.78 Nick Fakhoury Why they there? Yeah right. 02:32:10.58 Adelaide Right? yeah. 02:32:24.58 Jala You have different difficulty settings and you can select those. But yeah, if they did go on a more mature more you know, um, violent kind of route with things I feel like I feel like they were starting to get there with Engage with some of the stuff that happens waylaid in the game and in the fell xenologues in particular like. I'm not going to spoil any of that. But like it's real dark the the way that that pans out and they have like a kind of happy resolution at the end of it sort of but like um, it's still real massive and real bad. Um, so you know it's It's a pretty bleak. 02:33:02.29 Jala Bleak kind of thing so it feels to me like they started touching on that perhaps to even see if there is a market for that kind of thing were people interested in the fells xenologues were they interested in some of these wild elements that they threw in very the very end of the game and that kind of stuff. 02:33:19.61 Jala Um, because like they are branching out in the end of Engage from just the basic here's a dragon. The dragon went nuts and now we're here you know or whatever here's the Dragon The Dragon wants all the power. Okay, that's still the thing here. But. 02:33:36.30 Jala Once you learn his reasoning right? at the very end of the game. You're like Wow I wish I knew more of that ahead of time you know, um that kind of thing and you know I think they're kind of dropping those kernels in there to see if there's any bites you know, um and I think they're still trying to figure out exactly the. 02:33:55.44 Jala The right balance of how to do that social stuff and those character interactions in a way that is you know, universally successful, not just successful for the people who really like the narrative parts and really you know dig that. But for everybody who wants to play Fire Emblem. You know because definitely 3 houses although it has the best plot people bounce off of it because that social stuff is so it it detracts so much from the pacing of what's going on in the story and from the pacing of the battles and if you're in it primarily for the battles and you don't care about all this other crap then you have like. As much time as you have in battle is spent in the monastery while you know that gets taxing especially as you continue on playing and you know they they kind of ah tried to to have a happier medium and have a little bit of that and have. Options available for you mini games and stuff you can do and Engage. Um, or you can just skip over that part you know and I think that's kind of a good move. Um, some people want to Engage with that and some people don't so going forward I Just like to see them kind of. I Don't know keep keep working in the vein of what they were doing with Engage but maybe pull in some more narrative stuff and like get some more some better pacing going with their story. You know. 02:35:18.61 Nick Fakhoury Let me ask you let me propose you both this. How would you feel about it if intelligence systems took the approach that Ubasoft has done with the assassinsreed mirage and said hey next fireemblem game. We're telling you a 20 to 25 hour story tops. 02:35:36.91 Adelaide I think I'd be okay with that. Um I I I am a big fan of like very well tuned concise small experiences like I think of ah, ah, there's a game called ah Momodora Reverie in the moonlight. 02:35:37.39 Nick Fakhoury Um, really yeah. 02:35:54.51 Adelaide Which I think is one of the best souls like games maybe ever made and it's got like an hour of gameplay. Um, ah so I don't know like I don't I don't need my games to last until ah eternity like sometimes that's actually like honestly terrible. 02:35:59.40 Nick Fakhoury Um, oh Wow Wow That's fascinating. 02:36:14.18 Adelaide Like ah you know sometimes that that gameplay the longer the longer I Engage with a game and there's I feel like there's more of a chance that I will fall off of it when something else comes along. 02:36:31.80 Nick Fakhoury Yeah I I used to I I don't know if either of you have ever done this before but I would often find myself playing ah firemone three houses and Engage in bed as I'm falling asleep. That's my going a bed game and ah the amount of times that I passed out. 02:36:47.33 Nick Fakhoury While I was in the middle of a battle in this and I just wake up at like 7 in the switch is just lying on my chest I'm like oh no, what am I done and it's dead in my safe state is gone. Yeah I don't that might just be me. But yeah I I totally get you there. 02:37:01.27 Jala Yeah, yeah, I definitely played for like an hour before bed every day you know more or less on Engage for a long time but like ah people who've listened to me on the level for a long time know that I will play. Ah, lots and lots of indie games I was really into indie games for a while because I just didn't have long spans of time to sink into something like a Fire Emblem and so um I would play a bunch of really interesting short games that are like an hour to 4 hours at tops. And I would just play a lot of those and come every week talking about a bunch of random stuff that no one's ever heard of before um and so like I I definitely appreciate a short game. Ah when it comes to something like an rpg even a tactical rpg. 02:37:49.67 Jala If It is a solid story that they can tell in that time and it has a good pace to it and it is you know developed in whatever that's fine to me narratively speaking. There is a lot of dead time in Fire Emblem games. Narratively speaking. There's a lot of dead time. There's a lot of battles that are just arbitrarily there to pad out the number of battles you have you know there's a and it's like I can do without that you know you can add some stuff in the paralogues or the you know the dlc stuff that you want to add if you want to add more crap to that game but like. 02:38:09.21 Nick Fakhoury Or to give you another character. 02:38:10.84 Adelaide Yeah. 02:38:23.17 Jala You know you can start out with a shorter game and I would be absolutely fine with that that probably would help like their regular writing staff that they didn't have in you know for all of the rest of the firearm lim games other than 3 houses you know, ah to to get that story developed in everything because you know if they didn't. 02:38:42.99 Jala You know if if Engage were shorter if it was like a 25 hour game or something then I'm sure that that story stuff would have been way more impactful at the end of the game rather than being at the end of an 80 hour experience you know so so yeah that's all I've got. 02:38:54.40 Nick Fakhoury Oh absolutely absolutely hundred percent agree 02:38:54.40 Adelaide Awesome. 02:39:02.91 Jala Wrap up thoughts about Fire Emblem as an IP, tactical rpgs in general, Addie I'm going to throw to you again. 02:39:13.52 Adelaide Ah, like I said tactical rpgs are among my favorite genre. Um I have played so many and enjoyed so many. Um I'm really happy that I came to Fire Emblem. Um. Even if not every game has been like a complete like complete when I think my time spent with the series overall has been like really really positive. Um, and I'm really I'm really curious to see where like I but seeing the promotional materials for Engage when it first. What. Came out like I was excited for it because it was a Fire Emblem game but I was already not super into 3 houses and like it basically looked like a fan service game to me so I was like ah I mean like this might be cool, but it doesn't look that great and it you know turned out to be like. 02:40:08.53 Adelaide Really incredible and and like I am totally blown away that they actually like managed to work in the concept of the like emblems as an entity. Um and like make that make some sort of sense with the world that the game takes place. So like. Ah, um, so like I guess you know I will I will eagerly Await Whatever comes next. 02:40:39.64 Jala Yeah, yeah, how about you nick. 02:40:43.79 Nick Fakhoury So I would say exactly as as we've all kind of been saying this whole time I I just I love the fact that I was introduced to Fire Emblem so early on it's actually kind of a funny story because. I was I was like I was younger and I was looking for game boy advanced games with for my Sp and my mom of course didn't know anything about games at all and it's funny because like the the gamestop employee guy who ah who. Kind of introduced me to the sacred stones that got me into the fire of franchise. He I've never remember this dude but it's so funny the way that he went about it and I was just talking to him about my frustration I was like yeah I don't I'm not really a harvest moon player I'm I'm kind of bored by Pokemon I want something different. And so he takes out a cartridge and slides it across the countertop to me. He's like here you go buddy I got something where your right here like it's like what are we doing a drug deal right now what is going on and and so yeah, that was great and then I played the heck out of sacred stones. 02:41:35.84 Jala Yeah, that's very good. 02:41:44.43 Nick Fakhoury And then came back and he did the same thing for me for advance whereas he's like I got another one who passs it down the countertop to me and it was ah yeah, that was that was a fun time in my life. So Fire Emblem has hit me emotionally and a lot of different points in my life. It has got me through some tough times. 02:41:45.85 Adelaide Nice. 02:42:01.43 Nick Fakhoury And it has still been in my life now even more frequently as I've gotten older and I've learned to appreciate it in very different ways. So if you're listening to this I would be surprised if you got this far and you haven't played ah firemblem game before. But even if you have I would strongly encourage anyone to kind of branch out. 02:42:19.41 Nick Fakhoury Um, if they have access to a 3 ds or if you have a ninten switch online membership go play some of the older games or go play something else that that hasn't been introduced here. Ah kind of referring to Engage specifically shout out to mika piazzo I think who is the yeah mika ah picaso. Who was the lead artistic director in the character design for Fire Emblem Engage. They had a wonderful, wonderful kind of just cool art style that I hope that it is unique and it was really interesting to see intelligent systems. Ah, grab her and use her work primarily to build around the design of this whole game. So I'd look to hopefully find more uniqueness in the future. Um, but other than that yeah I think that just fire enlom is a special franchise and I hope it kind of continues on for many years to come. 02:43:08.23 Jala Yeah, for sure and so for me Adi mentioned the emblems and how they were using those characters and that's something we talked about at the very beginning of the episode remember many years ago when we when we first started the episode and I talked about. 02:43:24.00 Adelaide It's all coming back. 02:43:25.61 Jala Talked about those heroes they brought the heroes forward from all the different games and so that is very unique to this series I've never seen something like that done in another rpg unless you count something like a kingdom hearts. But that's like trying to be you know, like ah porn for all Disney and square enix fans. You know to have all of their little characters together. Um, so in that way, it's not new because kingdom hearts did it first but you know like it's it is unique in rpg territory generally speaking for the canon series. 02:44:00.39 Jala To bring forward all of the characters from all of the other games and like brings somebody from everything and to me that feels like the perfect stepping stone for intelligence systems to then either go on a remaking spree or at least bring everything forward and update it before their next title. 02:44:18.54 Jala Because they made between heroes which they've been working on for so long like what six or seven years at this point that Fire Emblem heroes has been out on mobile between that and then Engage where they bring all of the heroes you know the main heroes forward from all these different games like. 02:44:37.23 Jala They are setting it up to make the new generation of players who has never touched those games to go who is this really and who is this like what is this character where did they come from what's their story you know and it makes everybody curious So to me, it's like they are they are setting it up. For them to go on like a spree of doing remakes or bringing it forward or you know, ah somehow working in those other Heroes and doing more multi-level stories with Heroes from different dimensions all mushed together like I'm curious to see what they end up doing because especially And. Engage. Not only did they do that. They also did some weird multidimensional stuff near the end of the game and multiple worlds and this that and the other there's lots of parallel universes lots of different worlds that are mentioned and so like that's a thing that's in heroes. 02:45:19.27 Nick Fakhoury Oh yeah, they did. Yeah. 02:45:32.40 Jala So I'm really curious to see if the next thing they do is going to play with more with that and possibly give you some play in different worlds and dimensions but insofar as like tactical rpgs in general. 02:45:47.25 Jala Ah, tactical rpgs that the Shining Force was my first one. My first Rpg of any stripe ah in a video game format. So for me trpgs are you know my favorite type of Rpg Video game Rpg that there is ah. And Fire Emblem is really cool and fun I like the fact that it dips into so many different mechanics in ways that you know, ah the original games that I was playing the Shining Force series didn't do and in ways that are easier to pick up and run with than something like a final fantasy Tactics. So you know for me, it kind of it really is a definition of what a trpg should look like it does fall down as an Ip in some ways as we've discussed. But it does have a lot of strengths and although I don't know that there's really a lot of room for a bunch of trpgs out on the market because I don't know how big of a fan-based trpgs have whatever intelligent systems does next. 02:46:43.82 Nick Fakhoury Yeah. 02:46:48.24 Jala Could really open that up to more possibilities for other ips to start up in their image. So yeah I think that's a good place to wrap it up so where on the internet in the world can people find you. 02:46:52.96 Nick Fakhoury Right? right. 02:47:04.52 Jala Addie, if you are to be found anywhere. 02:47:07.40 Adelaide Um, I hang out in Jala's discord um, as previously mentioned I make Youtube videos sometimes that's Back On My BS um, and then I stream on twitch sometimes and I stream at Sister Adelaide um otherwise I try to stay away from internet people. 02:47:28.71 Jala Yes, yes, but we love you on the show all the same definitely check out all of the stuff that Addie is doing so Nick how about you where can people find you. 02:47:41.89 Nick Fakhoury Absolutely if you want to interact with me directly or my cohost will you can find us on Twitter for as long as it's still a dumpster fire at Fngc Pod um if you obviously want to listen to any of our other work. We have a wonderful Fire Emblem 3 Houses a full blown spoiler cast on our our main feed. Ah, which is you know you can find it on Spotify ah Apple Podcasts any of your podcast catchers and that's just Friday Night Gamecast catch us there. We also have an Instagram too. 02:48:12.38 Jala Yay! And of course you can find me anywhere I may be found @jalachan in places including jalachan.place where you got this episode and all of the others and that is all for now folks until next time take care of yourself and remember to smile. [Show Outro] Jala Jala-chan's Place is brought to you by Fireheart Media. If you enjoyed the show, please share this and all of our episodes with friends and remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. Word of mouth is the only way we grow. If you like, you can also kick us a few bucks to help us keep the lights on at ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia. Check out our other show Monster Dear Monster: A Monster Exploration Podcast at monsterdear.monster. Music composed and produced by Jake Lionhart with additional guitars and mixed by Spencer Smith. Follow along with my adventures via jalachan.place or find me at jalachan in places on the net! [Outro Music]