Ten Tips To Improve Fire Emblem: # 1 - Get Rid of Extra Movement Shenanigans

                    So my first suggestion for improving the Fire Emblem series is to get rid of the following: Warp, the Rescue staff, the Again staff and maybe dancers. All of these things (except for dancers) are extremely abusable and they promote playing the game less. In fact, pretty much anything that gives the player additional movement can and will get abused as players seek new ways to break games. First I’ll start with Warp since it’s the biggest offender here and the one that I want to see gone for good the most.

                    Ever heard of the term “warpskip”? It’s a term that applies to strategies where the player uses the warp staff to “skip” various levels in the game. The warp staff (especially the infinite range kinds) allows players to bypass entire levels which in my opinion goes contrary to the design aspect of the games. Thracia 776, the fifth Fire Emblem game, over the years has earned the title of “Staff Emblem”. Why? Well, the biggest reason why is because of how powerful staves are and the fact that over half of the game can be warpskipped.  

                According to serenesforest.net the player in theory has access to 15 warp staves. I say “in theory” because the overwhelming majority of these come from enemies and some of them are very hard to get but because the capture mechanic exists in this game the player in theory can get these. Though it is highly unlikely that the player will get all of these staves even having a third of these warp staves is more than enough to break the game (don’t forget that the player gets the Hammerene staff from chapter 3 onward). As a result staff bots are considered some of the best units in the game for the simple reason that staves are broken. Even tvtropes.org knows this:

                 “Staff range for ranged staves is unlimited in FE 5, so for the Warp and Rescue staves, the player is able to move a unit to anywhere else on the map or retrieve a unit from anywhere else on the map, respectively. This allows for game breaking strategies that, for example, essentially allow the player to defeat a boss and seize a throne or gate to end a chapter in 1 turn. Warp is useful in maps with a seize objective; Rescue is useful in maps with an escape objective. Repair allows the player to repair any weapon to its original state, which means that the player can exhaust all 5 uses of Repair on a single Warp or Rescue staff to obtain 6 times as many uses out of that staff. By extension, since Saphy is the only unit capable of using the Repair staff, she is also a game-breaker.”

                 Let’s take an example where warp “skips” a level to demonstrate its negative effects on the game. Let’s take Chapter 22 of Thracia 776 shall we? In this chapter you have a boss with an unlimited range berserk staff, another enemy with 10 leadership stars and a character named Reinhardt who has Ambush, Adept, Charge and Great Shield. Oh did I mention that he has the Dime Thunder tome, a tome that has the same ability as a Brave Weapon, and a Master Sword which is basically a Brave Sword? Also, the guy with the 10 leadership stars turns weakling enemy mooks into warriors that can actually hit your characters and have a surprising amount of avoid. It sounds pretty scary and during my first playthrough I really struggled with this level. In fact I still remember how tough and frustrating it could be. During my last playthrough this level wasn’t even remotely challenging for me. Why? Because of the warp staff that’s why. You can easily warp Asvel to the forest tile next to the boss and proceed to have Asvel annihilate said boss. During the enemy phase the guy with the 10 leadership stars will leave the map thus making the enemy mooks significantly weaker and Reinhardt isn’t very difficult for a properly leveled Asvel on a forest tile, especially if Asvel is wielding a Wind tome of some kind. So here is a level that could have posed a major challenge for the player but because of the fact that warp exists this level is pretty much a joke. Chapter 22 isn’t the only example of a level that warp completely trivializes. Experienced players could also come up with numerous examples of how warp trivializes the game, but that just reinforces my point.

              The rescue staff is more or less just a slightly nerfed version of warp and most of what can be said about warp can be said about the rescue staff. It may require a little more effort, but the rescue staff basically can trivialize games almost as much as the Warp staff can and in my opinion is harmful to the design of the game.

              As far as dancers go, I’m a little conflicted. On the one hand, they do actually add to the strategy of the game but on the other hand they can pull off some pretty crazy shenanigans as well, especially if they can refresh four units at a time. In fact, dancers are so broken that you never get more than one at a time in any game that you play. Yeah, dancers are so broken that having two of them can cause the game to break into a million tiny pieces. It’s even worse when dancers are capable of moving long distances (the rescue mechanic says hi) or when this happens: 

          -_-   Yeah way to go Fates! If you’re going to make the argument that it’s a DLC skill, then that doesn’t matter because it still exists. You don’t get a free pass for being optional. So much for balancing things out.   Moving on, I can see a good argument being made to keep dancers in the game, but my point still stands that they’re ridiculous and broken.

                Moral of the story: Extra movement mechanics are far more harmful to the game than they are helpful and should be taken out. The ability to move long distances in short periods of time has, and will continue to be, easily exploitable. Getting rid of these exploitable mechanics in my opinion will help to boost the strategy of the game significantly by making chapters harder to trivialize.