This game suffers from character bloat

[leonidasxiii]

So, in copying Fire Emblem but tweaking it a little, this game kept one of the FE series' biggest flaws and honestly exacerbated it. This game has too many characters.

I like most of these characters, I want to use them and see their supports, but the game makes me feel like my investment is actively discouraged.

When I get a new character I'm not excited because I know I either won't be able to use them because of the unit cap in maps or I'm not excited because I know they'll be better than one of my existing characters who I have already grown attached too. It also doesn't help that so many of the characters seem to just join for no reason or literally come out of nowhere.

Fire Emblem has the constant stream of characters because of perma-death meaning you need to be able to refill your army. This game doesn't have perma-death (its replacement isn't much better but that's a different topic) so instead it makes it so all the characters you get are way better than the ones you already have who you have invested time and effort into.

With no arena or free battles, the characters you are attached to will fall behind, so you either have to let them go in favor of people who you don't know anything about or struggle mightily.

If this game's cast was cut down to like 20, or even 24 so you could have 1 unit for each class variant, it would go a long way to making this game more enjoyable.

[Gotsa]

disagree, +/- double the max deployment roster is just the right amount to offer choice and customization in your ranks. FE suffers from bloat because of perma death, youre not intended to start over if you lose someone although many feel its an appropriate response for the completionist file. additionally many characters are very obscure and hard to obtain without a guide.

here in DD the 30 characters are required to give you variety on different classes, not characters. Take the cleric line for instance, we have lincoln, vesta, maren, faust, and samara. why give 5 healer options when really your army only needs 2 if any?

vesta is the tankiest, faust is the best for offense, and then we have 3 more on top of that. why include these other 3 at all? well this ties into the base mechanic of the game, although not perma death, you have the cripple system, if you let the same character die too often they could become unusable at all later on which soft locks you from completing the game. in which case you still need a replacement character later on.

so bloat isnt really a bad thing, no one is saying you have to use these characters or even touch the bond system. its simply an option there for you to perform.

fire emblem however has you playing matchmaker in recent titles and ties it directly into min-max thats the red flag.

DD has it better where if you dont like a unit, you can literally forget about them and they wont even develop bond unless you deploy them in game.

as for not being able to use all 30 in the same run, thats a myth, YOU CAN do it namely by grinding on archers, surrounding them, and then just dealing 0 damage with your level 2 character on a level 40 end game enemy. grinding, but available.

FINALLY you have the exp, gold, and stat tuning in file creation hitting LB. use it!

[Frostfeather]

I like the number of options, too. Between both promotions and a character's base stat growths, you can really customize how you want them to progress. But we need a number of options so we can choose between "a mage with high base speed to go the illusionist route to become a supporting dodge 'tank' later" and "a mage with high base defense to become a battlemage later" and or whatever.

For those that don't like so many characters, they can just bench or ignore most of them.

I think it might help to consider that many people (like myself) will be doing a *lot* of playthroughs, and so we don't have to use everyone the first time. We might want to do a "mage run" where we just use all the mages or something - I'm doing something like that now. We might want to mix it up next time with different characters. We might want to randomize the join order - I'm doing that now, too. The number of character options gives the game more replay options.

[awanderingswordsman]

I agree more with OP. There was a lot of times where I got a character and wanted to use them, but also didn't want to bench anyone I was currently using. And then none of your choices really matter because once you get Faust he can just solo the rest of the game as a phantom (well, he can't deal with the enemy in the very next level after you recruit him, but after that). And realistically, it was hard to even keep 14 characters involved in each map. I ended the game with some units at level 48 and my weaker characters in my 14 at level 35 or 36. That's a pretty huge discrepancy.

I don't think theres really a good solution for the current design of the game. Limited maps means limited xp and gold so you can only really use so many units. Even if you grind up a weak unit against an archer, they will still probably end up killing that archer before they get to relevance and then will once again become irrelevant after 1 more stage.

[leonidasxiii]

Originally posted by awanderingswordsman:

I don't think theres really a good solution for the current design of the game. Limited maps means limited xp and gold so you can only really use so many units. Even if you grind up a weak unit against an archer, they will still probably end up killing that archer before they get to relevance and then will once again become irrelevant after 1 more stage.

The thing is, Fire Emblem already has a solution to this problem, and it has since the first game: the arena. Fixing this exact problem is why the arena exists. If you wanna go further, the sacred stones, the FE game this most resembles imo, had the bonus grinding maps to fix this issue even more.

[Frostfeather]

Originally posted by awanderingswordsman:

I agree more with OP. There was a lot of times where I got a character and wanted to use them, but also didn't want to bench anyone I was currently using. And then none of your choices really matter because once you get Faust he can just solo the rest of the game as a phantom (well, he can't deal with the enemy in the very next level after you recruit him, but after that). And realistically, it was hard to even keep 14 characters involved in each map. I ended the game with some units at level 48 and my weaker characters in my 14 at level 35 or 36. That's a pretty huge discrepancy.

I mean, if there were fewer characters and you still relied heavily on Faust, that wouldn't change anything as far as he's concerned or as far as level discrepancy is concerned. Those are things you have to address with how you play (if it bothers you).

[snorlax.valle]

I see the excess of characters as an incentive to play the game again

[awanderingswordsman]

No I mean, I did use all 14 characters it would let me, it just started to feel kind of pointless when one would suffice and you get him late enough that most of your investment feels kind of pointless. Thats somewhat of a separate issue to the character issue though. Just feels bad to bench a unit I like whether I've had them for a while or just recruited them, but theres really no way around it.

[tonymack21]

you def need to decide who your core team is going to be for weapon token reasons

[Richard Nixon]

I don't feel like the game suffers from character bloat at all.

The "characters you have fall behind due to no arena/free battles" is more an issue with how the game's extremely high growth rates + xp rates results in units falling behind very fast. I'd rather not have features like free battles or arena.

[I gurgle for Nurgle]

Originally posted by kyle1234513:

disagree, +/- double the max deployment roster is just the right amount to offer choice and customization in your ranks. FE suffers from bloat because of perma death, youre not intended to start over if you lose someone although many feel its an appropriate response for the completionist file.

FE suffers from bloat due to stat rng. My Cia got 1 spd in 6 lvls with 70% growth rate. Now I have to bench her. Good thing I got spare thieves to fill her role.

[Frostfeather]

Originally posted by Alm:

FE suffers from bloat due to stat rng. My Cia got 1 spd in 6 lvls with 70% growth rate. Now I have to bench her. Good thing I got spare thieves to fill her role.

Playing with set stat growths instead of random can help alleviate getting screwed by RNG. Of course, then you're giving up characters that are more powerful than normal due to good luck, too.

Anyway you're right: if you're going random, it is good to have backup characters in case you do get screwed.

[David]

Agree that I somewhat miss the free battles from modern FE games.

Sure, having unlimited resources changes the game's identity, but I'd also like to be able to go wide and see all the bonds on a single playthrough. Maybe it should be available as a game setting, and there be a per-chapter level cap or something?

[Ragna]

If you want to fix the issue of wanting to see every story/max out everybody. Then just have an post game were you can grind to your heart content.

Story mode should be an refined curated experience. As much as I love fire emblem. later entry in the series is super bloated with a ton of additional side content for the purpose of maxing everybody.

For future entries if they want you to actually use everybody and expand upon the game. Have split chapters/stories going on all at the same time were you have to split up your army. Thus in the final arc everybody would be together again and you can choose your favorites out of your leveled army.

Even then you could still split up the group in later missions. Like group A assaults the front gate as a distraction, and group B sneaks in from behind to kill the leader.

I have yet to see a fire emblem style game actually utilize that your an army that doesn't have to be joined at the hip and literally do everything together.

[tonymack21]

fire emblem typically other than three houses which has a relatively smaller cast, has always had large casts due to the idea if you are doing iromnan/permadeath run you are going to need units to take their place. often these characters that come later in most fire emblem games that usually just get insta benched arent as good as your characters that youve been growing if you reset if they die.

i think DD has just about the right amount of characters, i could play the game again and use a different character loadout and see different bonds and use some different classes

[leonidasxiii]

Originally posted by Ragnarok Chu:

If you want to fix the issue of wanting to see every story/max out everybody. Then just have an post game were you can grind to your heart content.

Story mode should be an refined curated experience. As much as I love fire emblem. later entry in the series is super bloated with a ton of additional side content for the purpose of maxing everybody.

For future entries if they want you to actually use everybody and expand upon the game. Have split chapters/stories going on all at the same time were you have to split up your army. Thus in the final arc everybody would be together again and you can choose your favorites out of your leveled army.

Even then you could still split up the group in later missions. Like group A assaults the front gate as a distraction, and group B sneaks in from behind to kill the leader.

I have yet to see a fire emblem style game actually utilize that your an army that doesn't have to be joined at the hip and literally do everything together.

Didn't Radiant Dawn do that?