“OMG! This game is so broken!” If you had to take a shot every time somebody said that about a particular aspect of a Fire Emblem game how long would it take before you died of alcohol poisoning? Probably not too long. Balance seems to be one of the most vague video game conversation topics that I’ve come across. There seems to be a general sense of what balance means but nobody ever gives a solid, concrete definition which can lead to confusion about what it is and how we measure it. Based off on context I’d say that there’s an underlying expectation that every unit must be equally viable. Nothing in a Fire Emblem game should ever be dominant nor should it be completely useless. It’s all well and good in theory but it doesn’t align with reality. Every Fire Emblem game without exception is going to have the following:
- That “Super OP Juggernaut” that can destroy enemies with ease. Said juggernaut will generally be way better than everyone else.
- That “Super Weaksauce Character” that’s off to a bad start and requires a large amount of resources in order to be useable.
- A weapon type that’s superior to other weapon types. This has an effect on the balance of the game because units that use the “superior weapon type” will have an advantage while units that use the less useful weapon type will be at a disadvantage.
However, in order to even accept the premise of unit balance there needs to be an agreed upon definition of what constitutes as a “good unit”. Anybody who’s witnessed a tier list thread can tell you that the Fire Emblem community does not have a universally agreed upon definition of what makes a unit good or bad. The LTC logic of what makes a certain unit good or bad seems to be the best definition and since nobody has come up with a legitimate argument as to why we shouldn’t use it that’s the definition that I’ll be going with. Why am I bringing this up? Well, in a post discussing unit balance there needs to be a standard by which we can judge a unit’s actual performance. We can’t talk about unit balance without first establishing what makes a unit good or bad. We also need to know what definition of balance is being used so that we have clear cut terms and so that everybody is on the same page.
Here’s the standard I’ll be using to determine unit balance
- How many units are there that are usable?
- How many units are there that I can raise to at least a decent combat performance without ridiculous amounts of favoritism?
- I’ll also be taking other factors into consideration like whether or not a unit can solo a game or what kinds of advantages the best units have over others, but unlike some people this won’t be a game changer that automatically nullifies any worth and value a Fire Emblem game might have in this category.
In case you don’t know what “favoritism” means in this context here’s what I’m referring to: A lot of people will often pick and choose which units they use based off of whether they like a character’s personality or not. There’s a bunch of other types of preferences here that are totally okay when playing on your own but have zero bearing in a discussion like this. Another factor to take into consideration is that if we’re giving a character more experience and resources there HAS to be a justification presented as to why we’re doing this (ie if I give Seliph or Marcia this weapon will I clear more turns with it?). In other words, in a discussion like this you can’t just spend 50 turns grinding until a certain unit gets up to speed with everybody else. I hope that clears things up.
Okay so why am I judging unit balance like this? The reason why is because I find that certain criticisms of unit balance within the fandom tend to be very inconsistent. Some games get ripped apart while other games tend to fly underneath other people’s radars. Many Fire Emblem games exhibit the same balancing flaws over and over again but only some of those games will be criticized for them while others tend to fly underneath most people’s radars. I’ll point them out in my next post where I actually rank the unit balance of the different games. Suffice it to say, every game has certain elements and characters that are way more powerful than others. The games with the best unit balance however, tend to require the player to do more thinking and encourage the player via their mechanics to use multiple units and to experiment.
Unit balance is usually intertwined with other mechanics within a particular game. For example, how powerful are units with high movement? Having higher movement traditionally gives certain units distinct advantages. What kind of resources are available to help other units out? How powerful are swords or magic or bows? How powerful are certain classes? How does availability factor in? You get the point. The games with the best unit balance tend to also have mechanics that give multiple different characters a possible uniqueness to them that might incentivize the player to use them.
Before I end here let me give you a brief rundown of how these posts are going to happen:
- The next post is the list where I rank the games. Unlike other lists, it will just be one post that has all the games. There’s also going to be a really long quote from a person from a different Fire Emblem forum. This quote really got me thinking and caused me to consider my beliefs on certain games and I’d like to know what you guys think about it as well. I’ll also be providing commentary on it because I think it has the chance to bring thought provoking discussion to the table.
- After that I’ll be breaking down what makes for good unit balance, what makes for bad unit balance.
- The final post will be a summary of suggestions for how future Fire Emblem games can have good unit balance.
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