FIRE EMBLEM 6: The Binding Blade Retrospective - ShaneBrained

[Music] at some point or another all long-running franchises lose their original creators sometimes a series founder chooses to take the backseat helping to guide the next generation of developers in the transition while in other cases internal drama forces people's hands and everything just goes wrong whatever the case how the franchise is handled in moments like these is tremendously important and that's exactly where we find at the Fire Emblem franchise today over the past 10 years since the release of the first game shows Okada had taken a major role in the Fire Emblem series development serving as a major designer for each and every game thus far and the director for four out of five having left after the previous game was complete the next game in this series would have to go on to become the first Fire Emblem created without any of his input and the result would be one of the most controversial entries to date Fire Emblem Phooey no Ken commonly translated as the binding blade is a lot more than just the one with Roy it's actually one of the most significant games in the series history and although not every change it made would go on to be appreciated by previous fans it's possible that the new wave of fans generated by its creative direction may be responsible for the series still going on today so what is it that makes Fire Emblem 6 such a contentious entry when starting this game I really didn't know what to think about it but as I got deeper into it I soon found out that I was left with far more to say than I ever would have imagined in order to best understand what this game is and the myriad of ways that it succeeded and failed this video will go in depth examining its development history storytelling and gameplay all in an attempt to better define its place in the franchise it's time that we get started with the departure of Shozo kaga intelligent systems had lost a major creative force behind much of the series although many team members had distinguished themselves over the past titles it was Koga who defined the series direction and without his guidance a bold decision needed to be taken one which at the same time kept things familiar enough to the Past entries to allow both the audience and the developers to adjust to this new atmosphere of change in 1997 in an interview with Shigeru Miyamoto concerning upcoming games for the nintendo 64dd a game simply called Fire Emblem 64 was mentioned as being in development in September 1998 this game was officially announced under the title Fire Emblem on Cocoa nameko or maiden of Darkness only one screenshot of this game still exists today as shortly after a showing at Nintendo space world mm it was quietly cancelled although very little is known about maiden of Darkness what is known is that when intelligent systems started planning out its next entry into their iconic franchise what existed of this previous game was used as a base to work from keeping only the characters of Roy and Carol the six the Fire Emblem game it carried the maiden of darkness subtitle for half of its development time officially ditching it for its final name the binding blade in 2001 for this next game rather than going with a home console like the Nintendo 64 the Game Boy Advance was chosen instead moving the series to a portable device had been discussed and then dismissed before in the past but since this new portable console was actually more powerful than the Super Famicom the team felt it was finally time to go that route despite intelligent systems enthusiasm towards working on this new platform many struggles had to be overcome including figuring out how to best optimize their game for the tiny size of the screen including the low resolution solutions that this can be seen in many places such as the very large sprites used in battle and on the world map exposition scenes which include mini zoom ins to make the map more legible with the series first entry on a portable the team had to think about how it would now be reaching a new audience in many children given the reception of the last game which still remains as one of the most infamously difficult games to this day the new director Toru nada hero and his team decided to give a heavy focus on reducing both the difficulty and the storytelling complexity this was accompanied by a very different direction in the art with the artwork done by Ag Canada giving the characters a very young hopeful feeling which was an emotional landscape that was perfectly matched by the return yet again of Yuka to gioco as composer finally released on March 29th 2002 the binding blade was very positively received achieving high review scores on the same level of the series than most popular entry history of the emblem reaching number 4 in sales the week it was released as well as landing on the top 30 games in sales that year the binding blade was especially praised for managing to successfully transfer its classic S RPG gameplay to a portable system with the addition of a new higher difficulty option for those who wanted a tougher experience like the old games other than the remake for mystery of the emblem which will come later on the binding blade was the last game that would be released in Japan only like the other games before this one it has received a fantastic fan translation and I will be using the most recent versions of the translated names for the rest of this video although its reception around the time of its release was overwhelmingly positive more recent talk of this specific entry has only gotten more critical as time has gone on perhaps the most repeated criticism has had to do with the game's protagonist Roy who is often noted for being underpowered compared to prior Lords and also not getting an actual promotion until very very late in the game on top of this players have also expressed frustrations with the low hit rates with the hit chances of this entry having somewhat of a meme status in the community these and other topics are something that I will touch on in detail a little bit later for now though it's time to actually dive in and explore what this game holds for ourselves like all previous retrospective videos I'm going to do that by giving a clear synopsis of the events of the story followed by a full story analysis section afterwards these parts will of course contain full spoilers but all the gameplay analysis sections which will follow it will be completely spoiler free if you would like to skip the story synopsis and jump right to my analysis you can jump to the timecode at the top of the screen now on the other hand if you want to skip over all Story spoilers and get right to the gameplay discussion you can use the code on the bottom of the screen alright everybody it's your last chance to move on 3 2 1 once upon a time in a land known as a liebe man and dragon kind lived together peacefully coexisting in the bountiful land that they shared for reasons lost now at a time and this piece was shattered in an act of aggression resulting in the greatest war the continent had ever seen known today as the scouring though little is known about the war today the results are very clear humanity reigns dominant over the land while the dragons have all but disappeared a millennium after the end of the war the land of the liebe had been divided into five nations Etruria Ilya Sakai burn and the Lycian League while each region's culture had grown apart grand scale war had been generally avoided this was all until the new king of Bern zephiel suddenly invaded his neighbors Ilya and sake' conquering them both with brutal efficiency before turning his gaze of westward with in the land of lecea a young boy named Roy hurriedly rushed back to his home array where his father eliwood had requested him to come and lead the defense of their city in anticipation of Burns attack upon Lord Roy's return he found his father at the mercy of a gang of bandits that had taken advantage of the situation after first coming to his father's rescue Roy's group began heading to the town of Arif --an to meet up with the rest of the lycian army everything was going along pretty smoothly until they were suddenly approached by a woman named Ellen a simple lady-in-waiting Ellen begged Roy to rescue her mistress from a local castle on burns a side of the border to which our hero agreed upon successfully saving Ellen's mistress Roy and his company were shocked to find out that it was none other than the princess of burn and Kings fel sister and Guinevere although Roy's company was at first suspicious Guinevere explained that she was going against her brother's wishes to attempt to meet with the Lycian Lords and find a way to end the war without bloodshed with her entering Roy's care the two continued their way to era 'then only to find out that they had been too late before their arrival two of Byrnes three mighty wyvern generals already attacked and decimated the entire lycian army although Roy's group was able to clear out the remaining burn soldiers they only arrived in time to witness the last moments of the great night Hector's life Hector was a personal friend to eliwood and the father of Roy's closest friend Lew Lena before his death Ector was able to inform Roy of the reason for burns recent successes somehow despite their disappearance over the last thousand years King zephiel had somehow managed to recruit dragons to his side extremely disturbed and shocked by this news Roy's next destination was Hector's home of Ostia rushing there in an attempt to fulfill Hector's last request and save his daughter and the rest of the lycian army this would not be an easy journey as along the way at almost every stop Roy was continuously hounded by the various Lords of lecea who were now quickly shifting their loyalty to burn in an attempt to gain favour with them although it was hard going as Roy pressed on he was also able to gain many new allies one of these a priest named Saul approached Princess Guinevere to reveal that he had been sent by the church to find out why she had stolen the fire emblem out from burn in this world the fire emblem is a gym or emblem which works as a key to a shrine that houses the binding blade a mighty sword that is linked with eight other weapons that were used by humanity to defeat the dragons during the scouring these weapons were so powerful that when used they had nearly destroyed the world in the process and thus all were sealed away at the end of the scouring by the heroes who had wielded them all across the land of lead although Guinevere would not reveal her plan at this time she did cryptically mention that her taking the emblem was in some way part of her plan to end the war after finally arriving at Ostia Roy found out that burns influence had preceded them and Lina was being held hostage with him although the castle was famous for its impregnability it was Roy who had to prove this wrong fighting through and defeating both the traitors and the commander while also freeing his ladyfriend along the way with the castle safe for now the Lina was able to lead Roy to a nearby cave where within they uncovered the legendary sword Durandal although they were not skilled enough to wield this yet they did note that over time the legendary weapons had weakened and what were once a reality shattering tools or now just very effective dragon slayers something which would no doubt come in handy although saving both the castle and recovering the durandal were remarkable achievements it soon looked like their luck had run out glancing outside roy and his group discovered that the soldiers of bern had completely surrounded the castle and were preparing to overwhelm them although Roy and his group expected to make their very last stand against these overwhelming odds help suddenly came from an unexpected place the generals Percival and Cecilia of Lai CEA's Western neighbor Etruria suddenly arrived with many knights in tow announcing their intent to support the Lycian Lords against Byrnes invasion knowing that a Korea entering the fight at the stage would counter their Kings plan Byrnes wyvern general NAR sein was forced to cease his hostilities and quite suddenly a ceasefire had been called with the unexpected end of this continental conflict whenever you're left Roy's company to go and stay at the Ituri in capital while our hero Roy and his friends have marched back to fray six months of an unsteady truce had passed before Roy was called out to combat again but this time it was at the behest of a Turia Roy and the Lycian army were asked to eliminate a growing bandit threat in the Western Isles while etruria held burned to it cease fire to the east knowing that Lai SIA had a tremendous debt to its neighbor Roy acquiesced to this slightly odd request and immediately headed out to the Isles once arriving Roy soon found that though the Bandit threat was indeed very real many of the bandits seemed aware that he was coming and had already prepared for him on top of this Roy and his companions quickly noticed that the Ituri enforces seemed to be ignoring the bandits altogether instead focusing entirely on a small resistance group that was stationed on the islands unsure of what this all meant but unable to witness injustice in any form Roy intervened in the fighting between Etruria in the resistance group meeting with both l'olam a high-ranking member of the resistance and their leader the bard alpha after speaking with them at last the truth of this whole endeavor was revealed to a powerful Nobles of Korea had conspired with Bern to send Roy and the Lycian army to the Isles in order to leave lycée a defenseless upon finding out that he had been led into a trap Roy had to suddenly choose between abandoning the people of the Isles to rush back in defend his home or to stay on the islands and finish eliminating the bandits as much as he was worried about his father and friends Roy knew that if he left the people living on the Isles and a trio would be doomed to a terrible fate and so he chose to stay it was this action that proved Roy's righteousness to the resistance and soon the two groups teamed up and liberated the islands from the Bandit threat retrieving the legendary axe Armas along the way soon afterwards the group moved on to the Etruria and mainland to try and stop the traitors threat unfortunately it was soon revealed that the coup had already happened and the king of Etruria Mordred had been ousted while those loyal to him were scattered Byrne was able to march freely into a Turia with Kings fel himself arriving at the capital cutting through its defenders with remarkable skill and finally finding his traitorous sister after warning her that treason would not go unpunished again Guinevere was seized by the Knights of Bern but upon seeing her former protector milady the wyvern knight offered to help her escape again if she so desired without looking back Guinevere and milady left Bern behind returning back to the protection of Roy and his lycian army who were already nearing the capital in their march through a Turia after liberating the nearby castle Roy was surprised to find the critically injured general Cecilia completely healed up since her battle with zephiel it turns out that a mysterious girl who was also in the dungeons named Sophia had saved her life and this young girl explained that her home a mysterious desert town named Arcadia was currently under attack by burn on top of this she then dropped another bombshell Arcadia was not just a normal town in fact it was the secret home to a clan of dragons who lived peacefully with the humans they're just as had been done before the time of the scouring hoping that the dragons of Arcadia might know something about how Bern obtained its own war dragons Roy's group passed through a famously frustrating desert before arriving in town although they unfortunately were not able to learn anything new in a shrine beneath the town they were able to obtain the legendary elemental tome for blaze when taking their leave of the desert talent Roy and his group did not get very far before learning that a young dragon named Fay had actually followed them out but had unfortunately been captured by burn soldiers and was being kept in a nearby castle after rescuing her and obtaining the services of yet another one of Pretorius generals the mighty Percival who had come to their rescue before gnar sein was finally struck down avenging the death of lalana's father Hector and proving that Roy and his army were fully ready to take on even some of the mightiest soldiers of burn with their victory here at Korea was reborn with King Mordred returned to his former seat however the King understood that in the wake of this civil conflict his country was only a shell of its former self he no longer had the strength to match burn as he once did but by joining his army with Roy there was a chance that this new young hero could lead the continent back to peace as the two nations joined forces officially Roy's group was now renamed the Etruria army and it was finally time to strike back at burn from within their own territory obtaining the legendary light tome or Eola before leaving Roy decided it would be best to strike burn from the north and to do so they would have to first liberate either the countries of Eliah or sake' whichever route was taken Roy and his allies were successful and also managed to obtain the legendary spear Mel tete from Illya and the legendary bow of mullah gear from sake' crossing the border into burn at long last a Guinevere was finally able to activate her plan and so she soon guided the group to the shrine of seals of the resting place of the binding blade to counter this burn through absolutely everything it had at the heroes but nothing at all was able to stop them cutting down two of the three current wyvern generals in a single battle burns forces were finally exhausted and Roy was able to freely enter the shrine of seals within the shrine Roy's group located the dark tome apocalypse and then entered further to the resting place of the binding blade utilizing the fire emblem which Guinevere had smuggled out of her homeland all the way back when this had started the seal on the binding blade was lifted and ROI obtained the sword which a thousand years prior had ended the scouring in a single strike now only Kings fel as well as the mysterious source of his dragons remained cutting through the last of his forces Roy at last came face to face with the king until at last he was finally slain despite this feeling like the end of the war Roy knew that he still needed to discover the source of burns dragons but was unsure of how to proceed the unexpected answer came when zephiel sword X ox was brought in close proximity with the other seven legendary weapons causing a resonating event that showed Roy's group the way to a secret dragon shrine hidden within byrne after cutting through the final pocket of burns remaining army Roy and his group entered the shrine and were shocked to find not only hundreds of war dragons but one still living original dragon this dragon was named John and he had been residing at the shrine ever since the end of the scouring 1,000 years prior desiring to test Roy's will all of the war dragons suddenly began to pursue the group and as Roy and his team continued to fight through the temple finally the motive for this bloody conflict was revealed after the Kings father had tried to assassinate him Zef eole convinced himself that humans were not worthy of ruling the world and instead desired to create a new world without humanity so that the dragons could rule instead in order to do this Zef eel awakened the demon dragon which had been sealed within burn a creature that was capable of making endless numbers of mindless war dragons this creature known as a dun had already been sent away before Roy's arrival to continue zephiel plan to eliminate humanity with or without the king it done was in fact not some new kind of demon dragon as she was called instead she was originally a member of the divine dragon tribe the same kind of Dragon as Fay although the divine dragons remain neutral during the human dragon conflicts it done had been captured by a pro-war sect of dragons who had her soul removed in order to turn her into a being that could only follow commands in reality a Dun was a victim herself and the scouring had only ended when the previous wielder of the binding blade took pity on her and in his final strike chose to only seal her away rather than kill her in one final test Jean engaged with Roy himself but after being defeated the master lured Roy finally entered Dawn's chamber here the corrupted divine dragon engaged in direct combat with him but though this war could have ended the same way as before Roy instead decided to use the binding blade to create a different ending rather than just sealing away or killing her Roy chose to give her a new life with the binding blade reacting to his powerful will to do so striking down the dragon she returned back to her simple human form with the conditioning from her commands by zephiel finally broken upon fleeing the dragon shrine which crumbled around them peace at last had returned to the continent and burn Guenevere was made the new queen while Roy returned home to help his father lead lyceum although still mostly mindless Adana who had been a victim for over the last 1,000 years was finally given a life again within arcadia overseen by the residents there and the ever cheerful FEI roy always believed that there was a way for everybody to find satisfaction no matter how unlikely it looked or how damaged they had previously been it turns out he had been correct [Music] before going over how I felt about this story I just want to state where i'm coming from first i like many other fans of this series i imagine had my first introduction to the fire emblem franchise through the many characters which were included in the super smash for their series i was in middle school when I first played as Roy in melee and for many years after I always wondered what the story behind him was when I first began to try and compartmentalize my feelings about the story for the script I wanted to be very aware of my biases Roy seemed so flashy and cool and smash but every character is built to come across as very exuberant and flashy in that jumping over to Fire Emblem six he's just a skinny teenager and is a particularly weak Lord by comparison this is something that can be a bit deflating on top of this Roy is just a very simple character with as basic a personality as Marth in the very first game of the series it's really not hard to just sit here and say he's kind of milquetoast and boring and neither is that a very compelling take instead I would like to examine why despite the sheer amount of things that happened in this game this is a story that is about as straightforward a tale as they come but that's because it was specifically designed to be like that literally Roy is an unstoppable morally righteous Crusader who never loses if you're trying to write a simple protagonist to your new portable RPG franchise it's actually a good idea to make him so bland and perfect even if I prefer more nuanced and flawed characters I understand the decision-making here and I can put up with it if only the rest of the major characters and scenarios were this consistent zephiel in many ways is meant to be a mirror to Roy where Roy was trusted by his father implicitly zephiel was hated and even nearly killed by him both our hero and villain are willing to take drastic steps to make their visions of the world a reality and both also believe that they are the ones liberating the world the back story surrounding zephiel is revealed slowly by his sister and for some strange reason he's actually presented as kind of sympathetic it's totally ridiculous that he wants to kill every human in the world just because his daddy was an but what avear is a bit defensive of him when he's brought up by Roy so much so that it makes me think that this was meant to be going somewhere it wasn't that is the bad guy of the story all of his development ends up being pretty pointless he wasn't going to change or see reason or even give an alternate way of thinking a chance he's the bad guy because Roy is the good guy and any hint of depth that is given through learning his backstory is never reflected in any of the actual interactions with him I'm not even sure why they wrote all of these scenes the problem with zephiel here is indicative of Fire Emblem Six's tendency to start building up plot points but never actually pay them off when we first meet Guinevere she seems like a critical Ally after all she's surrounded by ridiculously loyal followers she stole the fire emblem itself from her homeland and she seems to be alluding to some master plan that she's working towards which will end the war without further bloodshed in reality she doesn't actually have a plan she finds Roy and from that moment on it's nonstop bloodshed the only person that he basically doesn't kill is it done win of years recapture in the middle of the story might be the worst anticlimax of the game at the start of the mission where this happens Cecilia is defeated in Guinevere is met by zephiel here we get an incredibly rare face-to-face conversation between the two which I believe was going to lead to further discussions perhaps revealing more about their relationship before the war or even better proving early on that zephiel was a hopeless case in order to set him up as the clear hateable villain for the last part of the game this could have led to a lot of interesting scenarios but instead only a few turns of the same mission later when a viewer is delivered right back to Roy's hands it turns out Guinevere's recapture wasn't the important part of the scenario the actual point of this is so Cecilia would be injured and then healed by random stranger that leads to Roy getting to meet Sophia which leads him to go into the Dragon City there's nothing learned of the dragon city which leads him to the real point obtaining the legendary weapon here the structure of this story is built so much like a MacGuffin hunt that it makes me wonder why it wasn't themed as such as much as the game tries to make it seem like Roy is heading to different places to stop Byrne from doing this or that the real reason for his trek across a liebe is to get his hands on all these magical weapons this is so important in fact that the entire true ending of this game is built around meticulously collecting all of them if you weren't aware all of the content from mission three to twenty five is only seen if the player has managed to retrieve all of the legendary weapons in their playthrough if you miss even a single one of them then you're not going through the epilogue this means that everything that's revealed near the end including the truth behind the scouring and a duns backstory as well as the actual ending of the game is completely miscible in this thirty to forty hour long RPG in most games getting the bad ending usually just means you need to go back and play a section near the end again but considering that these side quest missions which get you the legendary weapons are scattered pretty evenly throughout the game starting from mission eight even there's no such luck here the final disappointment of all of this is that the epilogue actually contains some of the best story content of the game it also leads to some really great missions in particular the dragon shrine mission where we learn the truth about the scouring while having to fight off more dragons than we ever had before the best way to do this is to use all of those legendary weapons you've been accumulating and this is a proper payoff to all that build-up even though the game ends with a pandering Li easy final boss it's not really a big deal simply by how successfully it owns true nature was revealed it was actually refreshing to see a Fire Emblem game end on a very gentle note for once here it's not just about killing the bad dragon or evil priest it's about giving autonomy back to a misunderstood and objectified tool of war it done isn't just a sympathetic character she's an actual proper example of using the symbol character outlined as a starting point before going somewhere surprising and interesting with them even with its silver linings the binding blade is a clumsy attempt at creating an easily digestible narrative even though this definitely is a huge step backwards for the series storytelling I hope that I've made it clear by now that it isn't because this plot isn't complex or serious enough there are glaring flaws and it's plotting to the point where I would call it one of the weakest stories in the series thus far with every other game besides the original presenting itself much better I am holding out hope that this is merely a fumbling first attempt by a newly adjusting team rather than a sign of things to come but I suppose I'll have to find that out for myself in the later videos for now though it's time that we finally start analyzing the gameplay changes which were introduced here and to see if the new overall direction was handled more adapt late in the story from the moment I started up the binding blade and first experienced its changes to the series gameplay I immediately knew what the theme of this chapter was going to be for the first time ever in the franchise intelligent systems has placed more of an emphasis on removing systems over adding them the sheer number of features that have been sliced off is truly staggering with the majority of the new introductions in the previous game the infamous ratio 776 suffering the most of their attention some of the features which have been cut include capturing other units escape and survival mission types stabs having a chance to miss dismounting a unit fatigue leadership bonuses character skills stat growth Scrolls and much more the gameplay is now about as simple as it once was in the Famicom days and there really is not much new to take its place this is the most minimalist sequel I have ever seen and so when it comes to finding something new to say all I can really comment on are the refinements to the system's that they actually did keep as well as the small number of completely new additions trust me there is still a lot to say here let's start out with what was cut or modified building on the introduction of the Holy Blood weapons from genealogy and the many character specific weapons of Thracia the legendary weapons of the binding blade democratized this special weapon system in a wonderful way while Fire Emblem 4 gave these only two characters who had the Holy Blood which was an extra boon to those units which already gained dramatically increased stat growth Fire Emblem 6 makes the only requirement for using its legendary weapons and s-rank in the correct weapon skill not only is this fairer limiting these late-game weapons specifically to the late-game but it also gives you a lot more flexibility in deciding who you want to include in your party since any unit of your army could eventually build up enough skill to the point of using one of them and if you have multiple master class units you can even have them trade these weapons around giving you even more tactical potential there is a bad side to the implementation of these weapons which absolutely must be said and not to echo too much of some of my points from the previous story analysis section the fact that the meticulous collection and protection of these weapons is necessary for all players to access the true end of this game also has a knock-on effect on the gameplay even with units who have the skills to wield them you still need to hold yourself back from using them until basically the last three missions of the game due to their tremendous power it's entirely possible to accidentally break them especially while defending if you accidentally break one or lose one to a character death you are going to miss out on both the end of the story and some of the best missions in the game although the implementation of the legendary weapons is decidedly mixed many of its other changes veer more towards being unquestionably positive for example Fire Emblem six has finally perfected the Kanto system powering it down into a version that I'd call the best possible outcome starting with this game if a mounted unit moves and takes a non-combat action such as trading with an ally or visiting a town they can continue to use the remaining movement to reposition themselves however if they attack in any form instead they're extra movement spaces cannot be used this effectively allows mounted units to continue to be used as couriers transporters or task managers while removing the unbalanced logistics of their offense or defensive capabilities as far as I'm concerned this could not have been handled any better and another update fog of war missions have returned but have been made a bit fairer by fully revealing the map to you rather than shrouding at all in darkness these missions continue to keep their tension but they also remove the frustration of having no idea of where you're actually going or constantly getting locked into unfavourable terrain although capturing as a mechanic was taken out the Constitution stat has stayed which mainly comes into play here with the rescuing system which has been further improved since three ship although it works much like it did before there is a notable difference in that a unit who's carrying someone no longer takes a penalty to their movements instead they just have a heavy hit to their speed and skill stats this means that many others beside mounted units can effectively pick up and move your units around as well as making it more feasible of a task to reduce the total surface area of your army so that you can more quickly pass through narrow set Shen's of a map-like chokepoints last but definitely not least one tiny change which makes a big difference is the introduction of a proper deployment mechanic what this means is that now once you've deployed your units before the battle begins you can actually swap their starting locations something that is a godsend for maps that start out your army in multiple small groups this feature seems almost too obvious to ridley warrant mention but after the lack of this feature gave me some truly massive headaches in the previous five games I have to say it's very very long overdue thankfully although fire Olympics does cut out a whole lot this is not another guidance situation where the developers removed previously half-baked mechanics in order to put new half-baked mechanics in its place instead these are very purposeful cuts that allow the extreme polish on the core mechanics to really shine going right down to the new buttery smooth animations which are just glorious to behold in many ways Fire Emblem has never felt so great to play and after the extreme complexity of the prior entries there really is something refreshing about this direction these updates are definitely some of the best developments thus far but underneath this glistening surface there are definitely some systems which are a lot more rotten to the core and that is what we must get into next up untilled the binding blade the Fire Emblem series is what I would call a bastion of good old-fashioned honest game mechanics without even going through testing if you understood the information that the game was giving you you could mathematically figure out the probable results of any combat encounter before making anything actually play out as much as players tend to complain about numbers after some strings of bad luck thanks to the game being actually very direct with its combat calculations as much as people complain it really was just bad luck this means that if the game said you had an 80% chance to hit and you missed you really did just get that one in five chance of a miss the system used to enact the hit probability in the first 5 Fire Emblem games goes by a couple of names but here I'm going to go with the term single roll random number generation or simply single roll are here's a simple explanation of what that means imagine that I have a 10 sided dice if you have a 90% chance to hit then I will roll my dice exactly one time to see if your number was anything from a 1 to a 9 which if it was would result in a hit if the dice came up as a 10 then you got a Miss straight up that is a 1 in 10 chance of a Miss or a 9 in 10 chance of a hit exactly 90% the binding blade however does not use single roll RNG instead it uses double roll orangy in a nutshell a double roll RNG is done by generating two numbers and then averaging them out the way that this affects our roll results can get very complicated very quickly but the point is that despite this system creating very different results in the binding blade they use the old system of measuring hit chance and show that to you but then use the new mechanics under the hood in a way that completely invalidates what they showed you there are a lot of great charts out there that can display the disparities between these two systems a lot better than I can here but in general display the hit chances above 50 actually have a better chance than what is being shown while hit chances below 50 have a worse chance for the first time ever you are being given incorrect information the reasoning seems to be this player units usually have higher hit chances while enemy units have lower hit chances so by showing you one number but using double roll behind the scenes this is a secretive technique that actually lowers the difficulty of the game and also is likely to make players feel luckier than they actually are putting aside the fact that this tactic is kind of distasteful there are huge knock-on effects of this which really have negative consequences when it comes to the combat balance there's sort of a meme about the weapon triangle system that many people in the community often repeat we have swords spears and the bad one although axe users were actually pretty glorious and Fire Emblem 5 in most other entries of the series they are very underwhelming and in some cases are actually left out entirely they were not a unit type that needed any kind of debuff but due to the new system in firearm 6 they are hit the hardest by new even lower hit rates unless you're going up against very low speed enemies it's really not uncommon 4ax units to get ahead chance of 40 or 30 whose true hit number translates to 32% and 18% respectively the inverse of this means that high-speed and non acts using units will comparatively almost never miss and also be able to dodge almost every single hit things have never been more unbalanced than fire emblem 6 in particular lalena Shana and Rutger are extremely well known for being god-tier dodge tanks something that you're bound to notice just by raising these characters even without any arena grinding despite the binding blade bringing on some really spot-on fixes for previously overpowered systems the seemingly thoughtless implementation of this double roll RNG has ended up turning this game's combat into something of a freak show the fun of it has stopped being the thrill of taking on a respectable challenge through utilizing your own tactics but more about how thoroughly you can break the system and watch it fall apart the knock-on effect of this change is so huge that it affects every single player in alters every single combat interaction if you think I'm coming off as a bit extreme here let me clarify my perspective single roll RNG is just a system for managing chance the same as a double roll RG both of them are completely valid options to base a hit chance system on it would be very easy to make double roll work really well simply by altering the numbers behind all of this the thing that I actually take the biggest issue with is this game pretending that nothing has actually changed even without looking under the hood it's easy to get the sense that these numbers are actually lying to you and I truly believe that once the player gets a sense that they're actually being lied to it's going to create a kind of distrust that negatively impacts the overall experience looking back now I actually have a lot more respect for the first 5 games even then there were some times that I doubted the numbers but I realize now that it was my own failure then to accept the truth behind good or bad chance those moments that I really did get incredible luck are kind of improved in a way by comparison every moment in Fire Emblem 6 feels a little bit tainted I really don't want to keep piling on here because clearly this is a change that I'm going to have to live with given that the next 6 games also use misleading numbers on a double roll are in system maybe it will make more sense in the future and maybe not but until then it's time to move on to our one last major topic at long last the binding blade or reintroduces the support system first given prominence in genealogy of the holy war but now in a forum which should be very familiar to fans of the more recent games by spending time with other units typically in the form of ending their term next to them your own units will build up hidden affection points for each other each unit other than Roy has at least five units with which they can form support relationships these have three tiers indicated by letters starting with C than B and a this should be sounding very familiar because this system complete with short conversations at each tier has gone on to become one of the most recognizable aspects of the fire emblem franchise these moments of dialogue add a lot of personality to the cast even if the conversations themselves are completely unrelated to what is happening in the plot right now although not many of these conversations are particularly deep I do think that these little chats are very charming and do a lot of heavy lifting for turning some of your units from characterless blobs of stats to more fleshed out almost real seeming people it was fun to learn that some of my units didn't really trust that Roy guy yet or to find out who in my cast was an overachiever or a secret worrywart I really did adore these support conversations and eagerly anticipated finding out what little details each next tier would teach me about my group the appeal of this system is really obvious and the sheer amount of conversations available means that very few players will ever experience them all which partially explains why it's so common to see fire in momentum certain pairings to each other honestly this is a great first step but despite all the praise it deserves as an evolution of the support mechanic there is plenty to criticize here to start off for some reason the characters with which your units do have support conversations are not told to you whatsoever keep in mind that with a total roster of 53 any given unit will have about 45 other characters with which they have nothing gained the amount of hidden information and how the support system even works is a big big problem although you can just look up support guides to see who pairs with who I personally do not enjoy playing games with a massive spreadsheet that I have to check constantly even if that doesn't bother you the glacier like pace at which these support relationships develop will likely still get on your nerves so the way that support growth works in this game is for each turn that two units will end next to each other a certain amount of hidden support points will be gained by both parties when this shared number reaches 60 they will be able to have a conversation to start the seats here with B and a tears coming at 120 and 200 points respectively every unit can have five support conversations total and this can be from five seas or 1a and 1b or any other combination that comes to five different support pairings may start out at different amounts of base points as well as having differing amounts of support points gained each turn this is what support growth means it is in the slow rate of support growth we're binding blade really drops the ball on this whole system let's break down Roy's supports as an example keep in mind that the following would only be possible through multiple playthroughs due to the five support conversation cap but it's still a good way of putting in perspective how ridiculous all of this is our boy Roy has ten different characters with which he can bond with those being lalena Marcus Walt cecilia sophia sue shana l'olam allen and lance keeping in mind the requirements for each support level let's next take a look at his base support points for each of these characters so for Lelaina he starts out at 56 which is very high but for the others it looks like this 30 30 21 1 1 1 20 and 20 note that you can only get a maximum of 120 support points per mission and there is no notification of how many of these points you have gained since the mission has started or when you have stopped receiving any support growth also I just have to say that I really take issue with how some of the characters here who join about halfway through the game still start out at only one this is something that genealogy accounted for but was left ignored here for some reason anyways here are the support point growth rates lalena and ROI gain for support points per turn which is the fastest growth rate in the game the others however break down as plus two plus two plus two plus one plus one plus one plus one plus two and plus two I hope that you're still awake because with this information we can calculate the number of turns it would take in order to go from their starting points to an a level support for lalena it's 36 turns for Marcus it's 80 freakin five bullets also takes eighty five turns while Cecelia needs 90 next we have the ones who all naturally take 199 turns each while Allen and Lance will each need 90 turns totaling all this it would take one thousand two hundred and seventy two turns to reach a ranks with all of his supports even if we have this number due to Roy having twice as many support pairings as most others 636 turns is still an entire Fire Emblem games worth of turns honestly I can't believe it but there's actually something even worse hiding behind this issue even if you spend the nonsensically long amount of time needed to get these support conversations at all the game literally does not tell you what benefit you get from having these bonds even the game's manual which I bothered to read through in Japanese does not tell you what supports do or how this extra detail on each character stat sheet affects your supported units combat performance because the game doesn't tell you I'm going to do that right now each unit can get a total of five support bonuses which are activated invisibly on units who share support bonds within three spaces of each other each sea level support counts as one bonus B's for two and a's for three so even a character surrounded by five of their SI support mounted characters would get a pretty good bonus the benefit that they get depends on their affinity and although these are themed after seven elements they could be named a through G for all it actually matters so you take the bonus given for both bonded characters and add them together and that is the benefit that they gained for their combat effectiveness even broke down into less than 150 words this system is ridiculously complicated which might explain why this entire meant panic is never taught to the player it's infuriating that this confusion is your reward for going through the ridiculously sluggish support gain system and although the bonuses that add up can be pretty useful let me just give you a little pro tip do not bother to raise any supports at all and just play through the game like they don't exist use whatever characters you like and if they gain support levels coincidentally good for you but seriously do not waste your turns or brain space trying to organize this or calculate out what your numerical reward will be if you're curious about two units interactions or look it up and read them online and for your own sake just leave it at that it's sad that this kind of support system is something that I could really get into were it handled better there is a tantalizingly wide amount of care to detail waiting to be seen but I can't imagine how all of the effort that must have gone into writing these could have been squandered even worse the successes and failures of the support system are a good example of what I meant when I said at the start that I came away from this game with more to say than I ever would have imagined given its stated design goals I thought the binding blade would be the simple RPG that it was meant to be viewed as and that this retrospective video would be a short reprieve following the two very discussion heavy usual videos clearly given this video's length that was not the case discussing the intricate balance of fire emblem sixes positives and negatives is no small feat and I clearly underestimated how much this little portable entry would really be able to shake the series down to its core as well as how much time it would take me to really break it all down I'm glad that I took the time to truly look into this but it's finally time that we put it all in perspective Fire Emblem the binding blade is not a bad game unfortunately it's not a great game either even though to me it was more enjoyable than the first three games in the series ironically I feel like it's the last game that I would ever want to return to in the future the world of a liebe is a fine new setting but it's a well-designed denizens are squandered on very poor scenario writing there are many updates to the overall experience which are fantastic but other systems like the support and hit rate changes seem like the worst versions of their later selves even though this was the easiest game in the franchise thus far I find it the most frustrating I want these characters to flesh themselves out without having to spend thousands of turns smacking them together at the end of maps I want the great ideas of this story in the world to actually turn into something satisfying it's frustrating to see a game with so many great ideas keep missing the mark over and over again ultimately what I really want is for the binding blade to just be a better Fire Emblem game than it actually is and that is something that I know I'll never get to be fair almost nobody is able to stick the landing on their first try many Studios have tried and failed and two intelligent systems credit The Binding blade is at least far from a disaster it took the first couple of attempts for kaga himself to get everything to mesh just right and despite my many gripes throughout this video the brief flashes of brilliance although far from capitalized on effectively do at least give me hope and have me eager to find out where things will go from here [Applause] our next stop on the fire emblem retrospective brings us at last to the first game in the series to finally make the leap into the West although just named fire emblem overseas this prequel set 20 years prior to Roy's adventures would bring us along on The Adventures of Roy's father eliwood his friend Hector and a mysterious swordswoman named Lin be sure to join me next time when we take on Fire Emblem seven the blazing blade if you don't feel like waiting then you can actually watch the next episode of this retrospective series right now all you have to do is click the link in the description to become a patreon supporter and for as little as $1 you can gain one week early access to my videos including the ability to go watch the blazing blade video right now for three dollars you gain access to full seasons of my videos and for five dollars you will have immediate access to everything that I make for both this and my second channel war use dojo please consider helping my channel grow and letting this series continue thank you very much I'd like to give a special thank you to my top patrons Henry Gutierrez Ignace ISIL and Minute Rice as well as to all my other supporters over on patreon thank you all very much [Music]

Channel: ShaneBrained

Views: 84,705

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Id: 85hR9lyJqks

Length: 50min 6sec (3006 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 05 2020