Personthing

Good job against Blake, that was definitely a close one.

I hate to double post, but now that I've just beaten Sirius at Yureyu, I may as well give somewhat detailed impressions while they are still somewhat fresh on memory. Oh right, one point of my playthrough was that for my final team I could use 3 of my favorite Pokemon (Typhlosion, Feraligatr, and Pangoro) and 3 Pokemon I've never used before in any Pokemon game (Nidoking, Magneton, and Mismagius), not including temporary party members such as Stoutland or Mightyena. EDIT: Started a new file, again for a no trading at all playthrough, so no Feraligatr for me. Anyways my thoughts on this (Warning, very long!): Hopefully some of the feedback can help, and if not I'm very sorry for rambling for so long.

CoolTrainer (Male) Darren - Typhlosion - Pangoro - Kabutops - Noivern - Raichu - Aegislash Opening: I've travelled all over the world, honing my skills. Do you honestly think that you stand a chance? Closing/Defeat: I've come all this way, and it's still not enough... Ideally in a late game area like victory road, although should he be fought earlier feel free to devolve pokemon and/or remove team members.

I'm probably going to sound really lame, but my basement at home. (Yes, I do live in it, it's like an apartment rather than a basement) Just being in a place that's completely my own lets me really feel at peace and think clearly if I'm having a rough time.

I've said it before (perhaps even on this tread), but reasons like this is why Noel is by far the easiest Gym Leader. He's far too easy to cheese with Fire types, and his field effect barely does him any good. In fact, he'd be better off without it entirely. While I believe Ame stated that Noel won't be getting a new field effect, I think it'd be cool if Noel's battle has forced rain, similar to how the weather effect turns to rain before the orphanage raid. This way he wouldn't effectively gain another weakness, and his team would benefit from this without drastically changing it.

Route 1 and it's hellish forest can burn for all I care. Being forced to look into Titania's diary is kind of awkward, but I can't really think of a way around it. Finally Terra kind of clashes with everything in Reborn, and while the glitch city is kind of amusing, doesn't fit at all. Otherwise, I have no real issues.

The episode that introduced Route 1, which I believe was Episode 10. I really like Reborn, but Route 1 is by far my least favorite area in any Pokemon game I've ever played.

I'm quite good at knowing how long it will take me to handle any task I'm familiar with, so I'll usually put it off until I know I have to start it to finish on time. It also helps that I'm capable of producing high quality work quickly, and that I work best under pressure. On a task that I'm unfamiliar with, I will get it done as soon as possible, so that I can know how long a task takes me to finish, and how much time I'll need for a similar task of a larger/smaller scale. The downside is, when there isn't pressure of a time limit on me and I know what I'm doing, I am usually very unmotivated and will often produce work that I'm less than pleased with. So it's a blessing and a curse.

I wouldn't call it heartbreaking, but it'd definitely be saddening if anything serious happened to most of the major recurring characters, particularly Cain, Charlotte, Anna, Noel, or Shelly. In regards to Sigmund and Fern, I'd like it if Sigmund eventually realized the harm he's caused and comes around, as he seems genuinely misguided and suffering from a lot of issues rather than evil. For Fern, he's a self important high school prick who needs a reality check, and while I do hope he keeps his general personality I want him to eventually become a somewhat nicer person. I have feeling that something would have to happen to Florinia for that to happen though.

Noel or Radomus. Noel's field makes him weak to fire, and Radomus has a very weak team. Both of these guys need buffs.

Froakie is pretty bad in game though. It barely gets any decent moves until the late game.

Blaziken being ridiculous is common knowledge. The only way to fix this would be to remove it, which would be a bad idea IMO, as it would irritate people who like the Pokemon, and randomly being able to not choose one starter when the game lets you choose every other would be jarring. I also believe you posted on the wrong section of the forums.

Yes there is, but skirmishes are very limited in Nohr (you get a few at pre-set parts in the story), and you can't just spend gold to get them like you can in Hoshido, so you're limited in how much you can level your characters. I don't know how this will work for the third path, and if there will be grinding DLC. (I believe after you beat the game, it just pushes you back to right before the final chapter like in Awakening.) Dark Mages, excluding Kamui are Nohr and Third route exclusive, and same goes for Armor Knights. So on Hoshido you cannot get the combination of Dark Mages with the no doubling skill, and I believe there is no dark magic obtained in the Hoshido campaign.

Unless you make Kamui's second class option a Dark Mage (or A rank/S rank Nyx/Odin) and give him/her HP as his/her asset, Odin will be your bulkiest Dark Mage with a 55% HP growth, and a 40% defence growth. (With S rank and A+ rank seals, other characters can become Dark Mages, but only Elise can make good use of that class outside of Odin, Nyx, and Kamui.) Even then, by the late game he will have around 33-38 HP, and still be sort of lacking in Defence. Nosferatu only heals half of the damage it does, so even if you do equip the no doubling skill, (Odin would have to S rank Elfie to get this skill, Nyx would have to S rank Benoit, and Kamui would have to A rank either Elfie or Benoit) they won't be surviving more than two rounds of combat at the most due to how hard enemies hit. Getting the no doubling skill on your Dark Mages takes a lot of investment as well, especially since you are much more limited on combat in the Nohr campaign (not to mention specific S ranks are needed!), and Kamui is the only Dark Mage/Armor Knight you can get in the Hoshido campaign, but you can only choose one of those. Not to mention Elfie is a bad mother for Odin's daughter Ophelia, and Nyx is a bad mother for Benoit's son Ignis.

Units taking advantage of Nosferatu will be Dark Mages. While more bulky than their standard Mage counterpart, part of what made Nosferatu good in Awakening was the ability to double with it, as in previous games Nosferatu was extremely heavy which caused most dark magic users to be unable to dobule with it, (FE4, FE5, FE6, FE7, FE8) which kept it's balance in check, and even then it healed more HP than it does in Fates and Awakening. (It used to heal all damage done, now it heals half) This, combined with low HP in general and hard hitting enemies causes Nosferatu to not nearly be as overpowered as it was before, even if you pair it up with the no doubling skill.

Yeah, HP is oddly low in this game. I've looked at one of the end game chapters for Nohr, and only two characters broke 40 HP, and they were well level'd. I'm at the mid game, and only one of my characters, (Arthur, the blonde Axe Fighter) has more than 30 HP. It makes the higher difficulties much harder.

Attack Stance: When two units are adjacent to each other and one of them engages in combat, the unit adjacent to the unit who is currently fighting will always do a dual strike that does half of the damage that their attack would usually do to that enemy. Dual strikes can miss, and Attack stance will not be activated should the unit in combat already be in Guard stance. Enemies make great use of this on higher difficulties, and the additional damage forces the player to act quickly and rid themselves of the foes attacking them, which emphasizes the player phase. Guard Stance: Replaces Pair-Up from Awakening. To get into Guard stance, just use the Pair-up command. When in guard stance, the leading unit gets stat boosts based on the supporting unit's class. The lead and supporting unit can be switched around. The supporting unit will always protect the lead unit from enemy dual strikes, and for every attack the lead unit deals/gets hit with a shield gauge builds up. When the shield gauge is full, one normal attack will always be negated by the supporting unit. Enemies that make use of this stance are very dangerous. So basically a massive balance change for the better.

Powerful Pokemon such as Elekid were moved back later (far too late in my opinion) so that their competition wouldn't be ignored, and to get the player to try out Pokemon that you would likely never even looked at. They also had the tendency to trivialize certain boss fights. Sorry, but I just have to clear this misconception. Talonflame is not a good in game Pokemon. It's best moves until level 44 are Peck, Ember, and Flame Charge. (Which isn't gotten until level 39) It does not have access to Bulk-up or Swords dance in Reborn, which is what makes it so dangerous. Without those moves, readily available Fire-type Pokemon such as Blaziken, Infernape, Typloshion, Arcanine, and Darmanitan all hit harder than Talonflame ever will, and are also faster than most opponents. Talonflame only gets Fire, Flying, and Normal type attacks by level up, so it is completely walled by every rock type in the game, which are plentiful in Reborn. Talonflame may be a good competitive Pokemon, but it is vastly outclassed in game without all of it's tools available to it. I don't like Talonflame, and I would never use it if it were added in game, but being a good competitive Pokemon does not equal being good in game. EDIT: Whoops, somehow missed the above post. The point had already been explained.

I've been getting farther into Fates, and one thing I've noticed is that this game has had a pretty large stat deflation from Awakening, for both the player characters and the enemies. (Growth rates are far lower than in Awakening) Also, they greatly lowered HP growths and bases in general for everybody. At chapter 10 of Nohr Lunatic mode, the only unit on my team that breaks 25 HP is Arthur (the glorious blonde fighter with the jaw of justice), and my armor knight doesn't even do that. Very few enemies have had more than 30 HP, and most of them that do are bosses. Due to almost no characters being able to survive more than two rounds of combat (especially with the enemies constantly using attack stance, and they have very clever usage of guard stance when they use it) this game feels like it's trying to heavily emphasize the player phase, which is the exact opposite of what Awakening did with ridiculously high stat growths and a broken pair-up. (These made the enemy phase more important in Awakening) Just pairing two units up and throwing them into enemy territories does not work in Fates like it did in Awakening, and I love that. Also, only the thief Zero and the player created character with speed set as his stat asset have been consistently able to double attack.

Been playing Fates, and watching ahead in some streams. My soul is drained. This game is really fricking dark. I like it. Gameplay is also much improved from Awakening, with better maps, and a more reasonable Lunatic mode. (Nobody except the cleric is getting killed in one round of combat, for example)