/vr/ - Retro Games

Dark Half is my favorite semi-obscure one
If you want to go all the way down the rabbit hole learn to emulate PC-X8 there's a bunch of way interesting ones on there, often with graphic sex and violence.

Should I play the original Fire Emblem on NES

Never played the series before looks interesting

Finished the DS version of Fire Emblem yesterday.

>>3605940
In my opinion the first Fire Emblem game is pretty poor. There's not much tactical depth, it's really easy and the interface is really clunky. However the 5th game in the series (Thracia 776) is among my favourites, I've replayed it something like 20 times because it's fun coming up with new improved tactics to optimize chance of success and efficiency.

Recently I replayed Langrisser IV on the ps1, that's also one of my favourite trpgs.

>not playing the superior SFC remake

>>3606012
Which Fire Emblem game is best for learning to properly play the game? I've mostly touched Sacred Stones, and when I tried to play Shadow Dragon I eventually ended up relying on kamikaze to protect my more important units.

I just finished the first Fire Emblem and really liked it.
I'm playing Gaiden now but it feels kind of "slopppy" compared to the first game, and since you can be on either defense or offense on most maps in the game, there's less of a specific puzzle to solve each map.

>>3606320
re-re-re-re-re-re-re-replaying LUCT. I just recently finished dumping several hundred hours I could have used productively into The Knight of Lodis.

>>3606329
Which version?

>>3606358
I've just restarted the ps1 version for the sake of prosperity, and that I don't feel like dealing with Coda right now but I forgot that the early music of the playstation one era games sounds... Not good.

Trying to find one to hook me again to be honest. Everything I've tried lately has left me with a 'meh' at continuing to play it at best. I don't know what the issue is, I just can't get into anything old or new right now.

Unless it's Tactics, but that's just cheating I feel like.

>>3606395
Tactics has an aesthetic level of polish that's appealing both visually and audibly. So it's pretty easy to fall back to it despite the difficulty being broken over your knee and piss easy. Or rather I should say it's BECAUSE you can bend the difficulty over your knee that it's always fun, as part of the fun is finding more ways to make the game your bitch.

>>3605985
It's fun and simple, but i have seen people recomending the Snes remake, but i have never played it.

>>3606406
Yeah, I know why I like it a lot since it's a contender for my favorite game of all time. It's just I've probably put thousands of hours into it and its mods at this point in my life easily.

I just rather try more from the genre, but, nothing really clicked as much as FFT. Not that I haven't played and beaten other TRPGs, it's just lately I can't muster up the ability to care to continue the ones I have tried.

>>3606426
Tactics Ogre?

>>3606436
Yeah I sought that out after I played Tactics the firs time. I also played and 100% (lord help me) the PSP remake a few years ago. It is a very fun games, and I do love them as well, but, even trying to replay that doesn't really interest me that much.

>>3605940
Shining Force is way better than Fire Emblem except maybe FE5

>>3606493
I've heard the first one is pretty good but the second one drops the ball for whatever reason?

>>3606441
Usually I just put the genre to one side mentally every now and again. I'm actually going back onto TRPGs after a pretty long break from the genre. That might be what you need to do.

I know for LUCT it's always on my mind always and yet I never really get in the mood to starting it until a substantial amount of time falls through.

>>3606597
Just kind of sucks the most eight now since I started a personal project I've been wanting to do involving the genre. Wanted to post up an analysis on what makes certain maps good in these games vs what makes them bad. Just the worst time to get burnt out.

>>3606493
Thats what gets me hyped about this genre. I'm loving FE, but everybody tells me there are better series or games

>>3607723
Sorry to disappoint but the Fire Emblem series is pretty much the peak of the genre in terms of level design.

>>3608009
When you have like 15 something games at the moment it's kind of hard to not have a few decent maps. I think it is heavily overrated outside of 4 and 5 though.

>>3605947
>PC-X8 there's a bunch of way interesting ones on there, often with graphic sex and violence.
I played Dragon Knight 4 and might play Foxy next.

>>3608009
>in terms of level design
Don't think I can agree with something like that with how rather, basic, level design typically is.

>>3608157
4's a nice game for story but map design wise, its one of the weaker ones. The modern games are kind of wishy washy for example 8 has some fairly nice maps bogged down by being too easy while the others have decent difficulty but the map design is terrible.

5 definitely has a lot of great maps but the difficulty is basically down to how willing you are to actually use stuff like staves to their fullest extent instead of trying to hoard. Since the difficulty is mostly from trying to figure out the stage's gimmick than actual fighting.

>>3608331
Well what makes a good map, lets discuss that? What features make a map good vs makes it bad? Does it need a puzzle to be a good map? I'm just curious to what you think.

>>3608340
Good maps are those that encourage the player to use their entire arsenal of items/characters to meet the objective. They also tend to have some side stuff but not always (eg villages in FE or reaching chests before the enemy) to encourage more diverse play.

Eg. Do I want to wait for the enemy to come to me and kill them or should I try to rush to the village or whatever before the enemy gets to it.

Bad maps come in two forms, super boring one trick ponies where there's no real effort in thinking (eg, just parking your strongest unit in the middle and mashing end turn) or they're so focused on being hard that it just doesn't even feel like actual strategy.

Do note that there's nothing wrong with simple maps like say the first stages in most Fire Emblem games (eg. FE6 Chapter 1 or FE1 Chapter) but there's definitely an issue with stuff like a lot of Alm's route in FE2 and stupid maps like that one near the end of Tear Ring Saga where 99% of the cast has effectively one movement and you're far better off just warp skipping past the map than actually trying to play it.

>>3608345
That's interesting. Does a good map require multiple solutions to complete it or could a "one trick pony" map be good at all? What are your thoughts on that?

>>3605985
Start with Fire Emblem 7 for the GBA. Good balance of old and new FEs

>>3608349
Depends. For example a defend the area map despite generally being a one trick pony can be good if the player's actually threatened by the enemies that are rushing the point that you're supposed to be camping on.

On the other hand, a stage could have multiple methods to win but is considered to be bad of the actual stage itself being unfun.

>>3608354
Got any good examples of either one? This is always fascinating to me. Could you go into detail about why they're bad too, I rarely see anyone ever talk about that.

>>3606192
Kamikaze's a perfectly valid way to play, especially in Shadow Dragon where you have t o constantly thin out your army to get to the bonus missions.

>>3608392
I recently played the first game and ended with like 75% of the cast dead.
Haven't played Shadow Dragon but what's this "thin out your army to get to the bonus missions" thing?

>>3608405
Shadow Dragon gave you short extra missions with overpowered characters if too many of your characters die.

>>3608501
>>3608392
>Overpowered
Actually, with the exception of Etzel (17x) and Nagi, they're all generally worse than the characters that you can get normally.

If you really want to break the FE1 remake over its knees, forge Sheeda/Caeda's personal weapon. Every point you dump in that thing's MT is effectively +3 MT vs most bosses in the game, this combined with her high speed makes her the premier boss killer even in low turn count runs on the highest difficulties.

In Nagi's case, you can just abuse the Aum staff and get Tiki back anyway. You should just get the normal guy instead so he can help you skip that map and kill the final boss in one turn.

>>3606582
>the second one drops the ball for whatever reason?
Absolutly not. It's a huge improvment.

>>3608501
Does it encourage building a small group of elites and killing off extras?
I tried the opposite and rotated units so that everybody got some experience without sustaining too many losses.

>>3608523
There's no point in killing off extras unless you really want to see the sidequests. Granted Shadow Dragon like most games encourage you to only use a select few all game with a few extra spots for utility characters depending on the map.

>>3608382
A good example of a bad map would be 26/28 in FE7. On paper it sounds fine, you need to rush to the other side of the map and protect the prince before he dies along with some other npc characters.

However in execution its a terrible map because its incredibly rng reliant due to one of the NPC units starting off being surrounded by a lot of strong enemies, along with a miniboss with an advantage over him. Also, the player needs at least 3 or so turns before you can actually get there to protect said ally, so what usually happens is that character dies due to some combination of rng factors or his AI not opting to heal because he never landed below 50% HP.

You also need to drag a very weak character across the map to talk to said NPC before the map's over to get a bonus mission.

On more /vr/ terms, FE4 maps tend to suffer from having a lot of turns where the player basically does nothing besides moving units across the map without doing anything else. A very notorious example would be Chapter 1's last part where you spend something like 5/6 turns traversing a forest at like 2 tiles a time.