Fire Emblem 'Casual mode'

[NightmareExpress]

Real Fire Emblem players play hard and don't need to reload saves.
Get on my level, scrubs! How do you even gloat of playing a series that has a punishing system if not even yourselves can handle it?

/lol, elitism

Anyhoo, different difficulties are there for the same reason there exists different levels of academic streams. It depends on your skill level. If you think you are "easy mode" material but then find out that you're rocking pretty hard, it would be a logical choice to kick the difficulty up a notch. Maybe even several, if that isn't enough.

If you are somebody that never chooses easy anyway (which I assume is the majority of us), then you really have nothing to complain about. It's an option there meant for different people, it helps keep the people making the games afloat and you should be secretly thankful for the casuals that somehow get tempted towards the FE series (likely through Smash Brothers). They become fellow fans, and you gain a possible ally to complain about things with on the internet if they actually like the game (regardless of difficulty selected).

That's about all there is to it.

 

[Talyn Wulf]

If you play Casual Mode in Fire Emblem, you are not playing Fire Emblem.
If you play Easy Mode in Dark Souls, you are not playing Dark Souls.
If you play Kids Mode in Viewtiful Joe, you are not playing Viewtiful Joe.

If all that matters to you is the difficaulty your not worth talking to

OT: i gotta say im in favor of this cause its getting my nephew to actually play the games.

Thank you. Where did I say, that difficulty is all that matters?

He is indicating your post which amounts to "If you are playing on easy mode, you aren't playing the game" which is a load of horseshit and you know it.

That post of yours seems like you care about higher difficulties and if a person isn't playing on the difficulty YOU play at, that means they aren't real gamers/actually playing the game.

If you play Fire Emblem on easy mode, in my opinion you're detracting from your own experience. Fire Emblem probably wouldn't be my favorite game if I played it on easy mode.

When you play on normal mode, a character dying means something. You develop an emotional connection with the character and when they die you feel kind of sad. With that taken out, the emotional investment you put into the game is taken away, making the overall experience a lot worse.

I'm not saying that easy mode ruins Fire Emblem, however I'd personally recommend playing it on classic mode to anyone, in my opinion the permanent death makes it a much better game.

I think that the name of the easiest mode in Deus Ex: Human Revolution sums up my feelings on all this: Tell me a Story. It's why I am a gamer instead of a bookworm. I get more engrossed and like a story better if I can interact with it. If the gameplay is good, I will replay it on harder settings, but I ALWAYS begin by beating it on the easiest mode so I can experience the story. Therefore, I cannot "detract from my own experience" by playing with all the ease I want because that makes my first playthrough experience what I want.
On a related note, about the first post in this quote chain, because of this I can't even "play" Dark Souls, period. The story is, shall we say.... Not up to par with the stuff I'm used to. Plus the game is exercise in patience for the reward of having done it rather than getting more exposition. I really couldn't carry on with after a while because I had no motivation to beat the next creature. However, I do not think that it's a bad game, just not one that I can enjoy.
In summary, there are a lot of ways to play and yours is not the "best". If you say it is, you're wrong. Play it your way, I'll play it mine and we'll both have the most amount of fun that we possibly could with that game. And that's what gaming is all about: having fun. And I will hunt for games that give me that fun. Games that tell a compelling or at least interesting/funny story. And are fun to play, or else they just become an exercise in frustration.

 

[Loonyyy]

I agree with almost everything you say, but it's hardly save scumming when you go back 30 minutes in progress over a mistake. That's one of the things you can do in casual though. In classic you save at the start of a mission and if you have to quit you get to make a save point where you can start from the next time, but this is not a save point, it's more to keep you from losing progress.

But it's hardly respecting the mechanic of consequentialism included in the game. The game intends that your decisions have lasting consequences, and that mistakes make the game different, and potentially more challenging. If you think you've got to respect the game, you have to respect that mechanic. Which OP clearly doesn't.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't savescum, and I've certainly done my share of it. Particularly in Shogun 2. I've got absolutely no trouble with it. But, I wouldn't argue against a casual mode in that game, that say, allowed you to reverse time. But I'm saying, the argument about not including this casual mode can't be made unless similar styles of play are also accepted as invalid. Having more than one attempt at the fight is clearly not the intended way to go through, so the argument about purity and respecting the game is invalid.

 

[romanator0]

It should be worth mentioning that Shadow Dragon also had an easy mode...

Awakening isn't the first Fire Emblem game to do this.

Didn't Shadow Dragon not even get a western release though? I wouldn't have played it anyway (did not have/want ds, did not like the lack of the newer features in the series), but I'm pretty certain it wasn't released outside of Japan. This is a western site so it really isn't that surprising that this would only become a topic of discussion now.

Shadow Dragon was released outside of Japan, however its sequel was not.

Fire Emblem Shin monshou no nazo (the sequel to Shadow Dragon) was also the first Fire Emblem game to have a player avatar.

Just looked it up, and from what I can see it was only in the sequel.
http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Casual_Mode

No... No it isn't...

I'm looking at the game on my DS right now...

Well this is awkward, because I can't find anywhere else saying you're right. I guess we'll agree to disagree. About an easily observable fact. Because I don't know what else to do at this point. I even have a link to an Iwata asks which claims new mystery of the emblem was the first to have it.

I just loaded up my DS and checked whether Shadow Dragon had an easy mode or not and I can confirm it does or at least an equivalent called normal. However there doesn't exist a Casual mode or any other option that disables permadeath, which is what this thread is about. Easy mode is just another difficulty option which wouldn't be that much of a deal considering multiple difficulties wouldn't be new to Fire Emblem, however a mode which disables permadeath is relatively new.

 

[Dood]

As someone said Awakening wasn't the first to have a casual mode. I also don't see the problem with not having the characters die so they can be used in other battles or how it decreases the amount of strategy used; you'll be down a man with probably even more overwhelming odds against you, you'll have fewer options for attack and/or healing, and if everyone is defeated deployed(and still possibly if it's just the main character) you'll lose the game.

 

[ten.to.ten]

I was recently introduced to the Fire Emblem series and I have to say, it's brutal. As much as I respect Intelligent Systems as a developer, and I do "get" what Fire Emblem is about, as a newcomer the game is irritating to the point of it not actually being worth playing. The learning curve is too steep, it doesn't do a good job of properly teaching you how to get things right and making mistakes is punished so severely that you can't learn from it.

When I found out that Awakening had an option for non-permadeath I got a lot more excited for the game. I'm considering pausing the Fire Emblem I'm currently playing to play through Awakening to hopefully learn how to play the older games better. As long as the game doesn't force you to play with casual mode on then I don't understand why you'd complain about it. As it stands now, the series is just not fucking fun for me, maybe casual mode would help me learn how to get the most out of it so I can play it "properly" later.

 

[romanator0]

I was recently introduced to the Fire Emblem series and I have to say, it's brutal. As much as I respect Intelligent Systems as a developer, and I do "get" what Fire Emblem is about, as a newcomer the game is irritating to the point of it not actually being worth playing. The learning curve is too steep, it doesn't do a good job of properly teaching you how to get things right and making mistakes is punished so severely that you can't learn from it.

Which Fire Emblem game was the one that you started with? I started when I was rather young with Fire Emblem 7 (just Fire Emblem here in NA) and I didn't find it difficult to get into at all. The tutorial level told everything about the basic mechanics of the game and most if not all of the lesser mechanics in the game were introduced in the first 10 missions during the first portion of the game.

It also helps if you try to anticipate every possible enemy reaction when you move a unit. If you get too aggressive you could move a slow or weak unit into a position where it's vulnerable to several different enemies at the same time. Especially if you don't take the terrain into account.

 

[PunkRex]

I never let someone die. If anyone dies, I restart the level and play differently so I can keep everyone alive.

Never leave a soldier behind! Thats what I like to hear and I definatly agree that playing without perma-death does take something away from the game, HOWEVER, I can't be mad as thats just how some like it. If it means more can enjoy it, great, as long as its not crapping on my experience.

 

[ten.to.ten]

Which Fire Emblem game was the one that you started with?

Sacred Stones.

 

[ninjapenguin1414]

You know something what you described sounds absolutely PERFECT. There should be modes like this in as many games as possible. This mode doesn't break the rest of the game, and doesn't insult long time players by screwing up the difficulty so bad that you can spam your way to victory on the mode that is supposed to be for experienced players. (Looking at you DmC.)

Are you talking about Hell and Hell how the checkpoints are so lax u never care if your hit anyway so the "hardest" difficulty is still kinda easy? Cause I couldn't believe NT actually screwed up something so bad until I actually played it.

OT: As everyone else has said it's an option so i don't see how it affects anyone who want a similar experience to the old ones. I also like how the hardest difficulty is available from the start I love it when games do that.

Captcha: and that's the way it is, I guess captcha agrees with me?

 

[thejackyl]

This coming from someone who enjoys both Dark Souls, Rogue-Likes, and Fire Emblem, so take that as you will.

I'm not good at strategy games. I make easy mistakes. I tend to save every turn if I don't have a huge loss. However I don't like having to start an entire mission over because of one little mistake. In Sacred Stones, perma-death just made me farm the tower relentlessly until the next mission offered next to no challenge.

In Dark Souls, if you die you lose MAYBE 10 minutes of work. If you had 9 million souls on you chances are you weren't going to spend them anyways, and Humanity isn't hard to come by, the game gives you like 40 per run or so.

Rogue-Likes have perma-death, and you restart from scratch everytime. But these games are much less about story and more about "How far can I get this time" and "One more floor/move"

In Fire Emblem if you focused on getting one character up, and lost him due to a mistake you are out ALL OF THE TIME YOU SPENT LEVELING HIM/HER UP. Yes, it makes the game harder, but also more frustrating when a random 1% crit wipes out your strongest attacker. So what does a person like me do? I restart the level, and I'll end up making a mistake later and resetting again. Yes I could make a better strategy (and I do), but somewhere along the line Fog of War[footnote]I hate this mechanic in singleplayer games, I understand why it's there in multiplayer, I still don't like it but I accept it because other players have to deal with it as well. Most singleplayer games the FoW means nothing to the enemy. See Advance Wars. The enemy can move and attack unseen units in FoW when you can't.[/footnote], or enemies spawning on day X just in range of your team to wipe them out, or something else beyond the players control. So I have to restart again and try again.

Final Word(And word of the day): OPTION. Just like I'm not against an Easy mode option for Dark Souls (provided they balance the game around it's standard difficulty), and I don't hate on Dungeons of Dredmor for having a non-perma-death mode, I wouldn't mind FE having a "Casual Mode". That and I might actually play through another one.

 

[ninjapenguin1414]

I usualy play games through several types of dificulty, starting with normal and eventualy beating hard mode, sutch is the case with No More Heroes, Devil May Cry 3 : Special Edition, and i have no problem with this game having an easy difficulty mode. I remember losing so many characters in fire emblem 7, that made the game a bit of a pain for me sometimes.

The only problem i have with Fire Emblem: Awakening, is that they don't use those awesome sprite animations, that were in the GBA games.

soo cool...

I had the same reaction to Shadow Dragon on the DS the 3D sprites made me want to stop playing the game, I'm really glad Awakening is at least consistent with the background and everything else being 3D

 

[recruit00]

First off, the Dark Souls thread is that way.

Second, difficulty for some games, higher levels are what it should be like permadeath in FE and Dark Souls.

Third, is the difficulty in this one more like Sacred Stones of FE 7. If it is the latter, I may pass because although I do like difficulty, that type of difficulty feels too much like, "If you don't make the exact move, you will lose". Sacred Stones was good because it was difficult and challenging yet possible. Gave up on trying to save that idiot Franz though...

 

[Eliwood10]

I adore Fire Emblem, and I had to make an account just to chime in on this thread, so... hi.

I echo with what most everyone has been saying here; no one is forcing you play on casual mode (unless you're playing the demo interestingly enough.) and it's a good way to attract players that may have been put off by the permadeath feature.

I would like to add though that just because your characters don't die permanently on casual, doesn't mean there is no punishment for letting them die. If a character dies in the middle of a chapter you lose any potential growth for that character in that chapter, making them less effective in the future. You also find yourself short on forces within the chapter making clearing it that much more difficult.

Is it as bad as losing a character permanently? No, but it's still a punishment, and it's actually more of a punishment than restarting a level completely, where all you lose it time.

 

[Yopaz]

I agree with almost everything you say, but it's hardly save scumming when you go back 30 minutes in progress over a mistake. That's one of the things you can do in casual though. In classic you save at the start of a mission and if you have to quit you get to make a save point where you can start from the next time, but this is not a save point, it's more to keep you from losing progress.

But it's hardly respecting the mechanic of consequentialism included in the game. The game intends that your decisions have lasting consequences, and that mistakes make the game different, and potentially more challenging. If you think you've got to respect the game, you have to respect that mechanic. Which OP clearly doesn't.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't savescum, and I've certainly done my share of it. Particularly in Shogun 2. I've got absolutely no trouble with it. But, I wouldn't argue against a casual mode in that game, that say, allowed you to reverse time. But I'm saying, the argument about not including this casual mode can't be made unless similar styles of play are also accepted as invalid. Having more than one attempt at the fight is clearly not the intended way to go through, so the argument about purity and respecting the game is invalid.

I'm not arguing against what you're saying now. I am simply pointing out that this isn't save scumming. If you save before sending a unit to fight another unit then reload when the result isn't as good as you wanted, that is savescumming. If you save only after doing especially well, that is savescumming.

If you save once and only go back to that point once things go very bad meaning half an hour or more of your progress is lost from it, that is not savescumming. It might not respect the game, but it's not savescumming. If you want to accuse someone of savescumming, try to consider if it actually is savescumming first. He was in fact annoyed at the fact that it's possible to savescum in casual. Now he is an elitist fan and I am really annoyed that he doesn't want the game to have casual mode despite this not affecting game one bit, so I could probably make some accusations myself out of annoyance.

 

[Kilo24]

Frankly, I'm fairly happy with the addition. Based on my play of Sacred Stones, Fire Emblem (on Hard Mode) forces you to take attacks that may kill your characters in one hit if they make a 1-3% or so crit. You can mitigate a lot of risk in the game, but you can't do all of it - you run the not-insubstantial possibility of permanently losing characters to pure luck. That forces you to either lose the character permanently or reset the mission.

This isn't Dark Souls. In Dark Souls, you lose a few minutes of progress, and run the risk of losing your currency if you die twice (but you can get it back fairly easily.)

This isn't Spelunky. Spelunky is incredibly random, but it's very short and designed around it.

FTL is fair enough, and crew members can be replaced. Dungeons of Dredmor has enough items and skills to avoid death if you're careful.

This is closer to Nethack, where you can walk on a random tile and get insta-killed by the poison in a spiked pit. There's always a non-zero chance of that for anybody until they get poison resistance.

Permadeath can be a great mechanic, but it's not a good fit for Fire Emblem IMO. Other people have different opinions, and that's fine - the mode doesn't need to be for them.

 

[The Hero Killer]

I'm not sure where I stand on this. I normally instantly restart or reload my file if a unit that I cared about died on past games but I dont like the inclusion of this casual mode.

I suppose the difference lies in that I am actually taking the time to start the entire chapter over, where the casual mode players can just keep going and get their characters back at the end without putting in the work to see what went wrong.

 

[V8 Ninja]

You're wondering whether or not you should be angry over completely optional difficulty sliders. It's not as if the game is pandering to the audience that disliked the perma-death either; the game just has an extra mode that allows for those that did hate the perma-death to enjoy the other content of the game.

 

[TreuloseTomate]

If you play Casual Mode in Fire Emblem, you are not playing Fire Emblem.
If you play Easy Mode in Dark Souls, you are not playing Dark Souls.
If you play Kids Mode in Viewtiful Joe, you are not playing Viewtiful Joe.

If all that matters to you is the difficaulty your not worth talking to

OT: i gotta say im in favor of this cause its getting my nephew to actually play the games.

Thank you. Where did I say, that difficulty is all that matters?

im sorry but your post read like this to me:

"if you cant play the game at the same level as me your not really playing it"

and if you go back and read your post youll notice it comes off like that.

I didn't mean it like that. I don't care how anybody plays their games. If you think, you'll have more fun with casual mode, go ahead, hf. All I'm saying is, that's not Fire Emblem. Like diet coke is not real coke. The tension is part of the design.
Also, if you are so interested in video games that you are discussing it on the escapist forums, you are probably "experienced" enough to enjoy Fire Emblem's normal mode. They didn't include casual mode for you. It's just there to widen the audience, to get people playing that normaly don't play video games.