Fe7 is a pretty good game, all things considered, but it has problems. In preparation for a rebalance that may or may not happen, I wanted to ask what problems the community feels should be adressed. Excluding the story, (That’s a whole thing that I don’t really wanna get into in a discussion about game balance lol.) What do you guys feel is annoying/unfun about Fe7?
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Pretty sure the others will find more things about FE7, but for me, one of the problems I have with it is, sometimes (if not, most times) the effective weaponry is not very useful against the units it’s supposed to be very effective, due to the localizers for some reason nerfing the effective damage multiplier from x3 to x2. This mainly affects bow users, since they’re supposed to be good against fliers, yet this is one of the things that makes them not so good. Maybe including the original damage multiplier (alongside buffing either the bow weapons, the bow users, or both) will help in making the effective damage weapons be more threathening in the long run (maybe this time there won’t be a myrmidon that does 0 damage with an armorslayer against Oswin, back in that boat map lol).
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I could not aggree more.
Another thing more of a design issue i find trouble with is tactician. He is always talked with or about in lyn mode. Like lyn consults with him in her chapters but in eliwood or hector mode they talk in chapter 11 and not for dont know how long. I dont see why they even made him if he cant talk and or fight. Give the guy a small knif or a dagger or something.
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effectiveness and general cast balance mainly. Enemy phase games are generally fine enough but there just isn’t much balance at all. Rebecca gets eclipsed by Louise, Erk by Pent, and Guy by Karel/Harken.
also make promotion items more available and Matthew less vital lol, guy gives you way too much stuff his loss is felt WAY too much until Lagault.
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And i dont know why would even train them if u get the god,the legend jaffer as well.
Now that he mention it you can safely get all promoted who are really good later in the game which really out casts the entire early units like even isodora can be considered good with little to nothing(16000gold for a bit con and str ahem)
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Generally I like Fe7, but I would say
- Effective weaponry is just bad in this game
- The amount of excellent Prepromotes make early game units redundant to train
- The slowness of supports (but this is gba Fe after all)
All in all it’s probably my second favorite gba Fe, I have my issues but its nothing unique to this game.
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deployment slots and effective weaponry
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Nah, no problem. In fact, I am an ardent admirer of its vibrant crayon colors, something in common with all the early gba games, for reasons of contrast and visibility on the first, small, unlit gba screen.
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FE7 is one of the worst fe games.
The map design can be pretty meh, and the incredibly low deployment slots, combined with the extra lord units means you can barely train anyone, it’s just quite boring.
Probably an unpopular opinion but i also find a good amount of the characters pretty forgetable and boring. Especially the pegasus knights.
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It’s been a bit since I’ve last played Fe7, but I’d like to add that Lyn Mode is a wacky addition that makes balancing lots of early units pretty tricky. Lyn Mode itself is boring and easy, but its existence also means that you can train usually bad units like Lyn, Erk, Lucius, Serra, Florina, etc. with tons of Exp, making them good once you get to the main campaign. I’m honestly not sure how to address this without making keeping the Lyn Mode units crappy or buffing those units in the main campaign and then booting out Lyn Mode from consideration.
One system I’ve seen in one particular rom hack is that instead of rewarding you with EXP for going through Lyn Mode, you get gold based off of how much EXP the units you have recieve (maybe they come with gems in their inventories when they join based on the level of EXP they collected, or maybe they can simply arrive with higher tier weapons). You could then buff the characters without having to worry about them being too OP if you play Lyn Mode, while still giving some reward to play Lyn Mode if you want.
Aside from that, the usual problems apply: low deployment slots, cruddy effective weaponry, weak enemies making javelins and hand-axes incredible while swords and bows suffer, class balance being wack (Paladins with full wt comes to mind), two of your lords being deadweight, assassins losing steal and requiring a stupid unique promotional item that could have been shared with an ocean seal, etc.
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Erk isn’t the best unit in the game. This is the sin that keeps humanity from returning to the Garden of Eden.
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So basic issues:
- Effective weapons suck.
- Most units are undertuned in terms of bases. Surprisingly i’d argue most of their growths are pretty fair.
- Enemy quality is a joke across alot of the mid-to-lategame, even in HHM.
- Lyn mode is snooze fest.
- Lyn and Eliwood are a tad bellow the benchmarks of a viable lord.
- Nino needs a payoff. Her growths are excelent, but her bases are abysmal, her CON is miserable and at her join time she has the worst of the 3 magic types since she can’t use either Aureola or Luna for the final bosses. So in the end you only get the illusion of an investment unit.
- The general stinginess of access to rare weapons and statboosters. Hell i’d take an increase in difficulty by an order of magnitude if i could actually get access to some quality tools and units
Now for some not so common ones:
- The S rank weapons suck. Yeah they hit hard, but they are so heavy that you will barely make use of the extra damage unless you are speed blessed and have a Body Ring on hand.
- Luna warps the game. It’s a C-rank tome with true damage and crit, it turns bosses and the S-rank Dark tome in the game into a joke. It also surprisingly makes Canas irrelevant in the final map since Athos will always overtake him even if he caps MAG.
- Generals should be the ones with full access to WT. They don’t have speed, they don’t have mobility and their tankiness is undercut by their risks of doubling, magic damege and crit.
- The Trinity of Magic needs a rework. Outside of Luna and Aureola, there’s little to no distinction between a Elder, Anima or Light magic unit.
- Snipers should get the Crit +15 bonus that Berserkers and Swordmasters get, being mono-weapon footlocked units. Atleast then you could justify training an archer. Somewhat.
- Wallace and his entire Lyn mode thing needs a rework. He is horrifically bad as a unit and even worse the way that he’s set up with the Knight’s Crest just leads to a cheese strat that benefits the already overtuned Paladin class.
- Morphs need a niche to make then feel actually distinct from regular mooks.
- The entire mode system needs to be scrapped. Cuz unless you are playing Lyn mode into HHM, you are losing out maps and units, plus it turns Lyn’s part of the tale into a joke because it’s essencially an extended tutorial. Hell just make it so all 3 lords can seize and make it so both Eliwood and Hector chapters are playable, it’s not all that gamebreaking.
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All of my personal peeves about the game I addressed in my own mod.
Oddly, I don’t have the typical issue people have with effective weapons, but adalvar covers a lot of other things I do agree with, especially in the case of Lyn and Roybut7.
As an aside, Lyn mode being a 10 chapter tutorial is kind of annoying, about as much as Fates doing the same thing with a similar themed route split at the end. At the same time, if tuned just right, would be kind of broken to stack up early Tactician score- one of the few things I really liked about 7 over its peers. (The other being alternate sprites.)
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im actually a big fan of fe7 for someone who typically doesnt like games like fe7 (i hate 8 and 9). i think i like it because its nostalgic comfort food for me as my first fire emblem because i have a lot of problems with the way the game is designed
this isnt the games fault but its really ugly and oversaturated on modern displays
swords and bows (and light magic to an extent but thats marginal) feel like an active detriment even when they should have the advantage over other weapons. this is a weird theory and i dont really have much of a justification for it but i think fire emblem is better when swords and bows are good vs when axes and lances are good
map design is very shaky overall. even in the best maps theres lots of chokepoints where your units turn into a death ball and in the bad maps theres no reason to break up the death ball because side objectives are lacking and stop mattering late in the game. most lategame chapters in general are pretty terrible and rely on fe6 ch21 tier zone reinforcements to impede your path. fog is used poorly and weather is an obviously terrible and worthless gimmick
promotions in fe7 give you +1 to most of your stats and an e rank in a weapon type that probably sucks. its extremely unrewarding. i understand that if they were any higher the already wide gap between you and your enemies would become even wider but like. it shouldnt be that way!
almost every gaiden chapter and routesplit in the game has some sort of absurd requirement thats either tedious to grind or difficult to keep track of
there isnt a good difficulty option. lyn mode is a complete joke. eliwood mode is a complete joke. hector mode doesnt have enough deployment slots to complete the joke. its an absurdly easy game, which is fine, but it doesnt really feel like youre breaking the game, it feels like the game isnt putting up a fight
the game in general is terrified of giving the player any fun tools. things that are broken are usually broken in really boring ways. marcus can move a far distance and kill the enemies with his hand axe. cool. who cares? you get actual staves that arent just mend halfway through the game in a secret shop. actual fun stuff like rescue comes even later. hammernes only purpose in this game is to facilitate warp skips. warps only purpose in this game is to skip bad maps. in terms of units guys like harken are kinda funny in terms of sheer magnitude of power over the enemy but thats the only emotion they really make you feel
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Weapon eff, maps and lack of deploy slots hurt the game a ton. This could all be solved if Rebecca was buffed and given 12 range
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Low deployment is only an issue on hector hard I think it’s mostly fine on normal modes [The Berserker is still a joke]
Lyn Mode really could have been compressed down like the Dorcas and Florina chapters could be one map for example.
Some Hector Hard enemy placements such as Cog of Destiny are over tuned. [Value of life is a good example of Hector Hard placement]
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Not hard enough. And was that the one where Roy’s superweapons are missable and missing them locks you out of the good ending? Not a fan of that choice.
Roy’s game is FE6, not FE7
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The Zephiel chapter is borderline unfair. It gets worse the higher the difficulty. And lorewise it’d have been better if he died there. If you play FE7 first and 6 second that leads to the “What have I done” question. But since the games released the other way around it does rub some more salt in the wound. I think it’d already make it a lot better if you wouldn’t have to hope for Jaffar to survive as long. While not required to beat the chapter, it is just not cool to know that there is little you can do to secure the Gaiden Requirements. And a mounted unit with long range magic that can move in fog of war… Do I gotta elaborate?
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Are you talking about Battle Before Dawn? That’s the worst FE map of all time!
Sure, shoveling snow and waiting for elevators is tedious, but at least those maps won’t cause you to fail through no fault of your own just because of RNG.
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