My Mechanics List Part 1

10 Mechanics I’d Like to See in Future Games List

Honorable Mention: 3rd Tiers

                     

  No matter how many times I play Fire Emblem promotion never stops being cool. So naturally the more promotions available the better. It’s a great feeling to see all your hard work pay off at the end of the game after spending time training your units to be these awe-inspiring killing machines. It also helps when the artwork for the class designs look great like they did in Radiant Dawn  

                             That being said, in order to do this well you have to:

1. Make sure the game gives everyone enough time to level up. This means that you’ll have to have enough experience to go around.

2. Your game has to be long enough to justify a return to third tiers

3. Don’t give them 1 Hit KO Mastery Skills like Radiant Dawn did

4. Make sure that generic enemies can be third tiers too

                    I’m sure there’s more, but those are the main ones I’ve come across. As a side note I like some of the names too like Baron or Trueblade. Third tiers are on this list as an honorable mention because if a new Fire Emblem game wouldn’t have it I wouldn’t be disappointed if they weren’t there. This is more of a “if this shows up again I’ll be happy, but if not then oh well” kind of deal. Still doesn’t change the fact that I’d like to see more third tiers in the future.

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10 Mechanics That Should Be Gone in Future Games List

Dishonorable Mention: Money

                            As crazy as this might sound, I’m all for getting rid of money in Fire Emblem games. For starters, every Fire Emblem game that gives the player money, hands out way too much. During my last playthrough of Path of Radiance I was able to get up to 90,000 gold and possibly could have attained more than that. During my last Binding Blade playthrough I had over 100,000 gold. In both instances that’s way too much!

                             One problem is that weapon durability gets undermined since it ultimately doesn’t matter if one weapon breaks, you can just replace that javelin with 50 more. If a game has a secret shop you can buy an obscene number of promotion items or stat boosters which can trivialize a game. In essence, too much money makes a game significantly easier.

I can already hear someone rushing to their keyboard going “but wait, the answer is simple. Just lower the amount of money that the game gives to the player. Problem solved!” The problem, however, is not solved. Restrict money too much and the game becomes less fun because the player lacks the freedom to acquire what they want. When I first played Conquest I felt super restricted by the amount of money I had and it was less fun to pass up cool looking weapons because I had already spent my limited supply of money on other things. While this problem did not exist in my subsequent playthroughs (to the point where I felt like I had all the money in the world by my Lunatic run) that experience still left a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve also been told that the harder difficulties of Fire Emblem 12 (ie Lunatic and Reverse Lunatic) do this too, although I could be wrong there.

                             The ideal here is to replace money with a mechanic that still provides the player the freedom to acquire what they want, but still make them earn whatever weapons and items they want so that they still have to be smart and strategic. Fortunately I already have a solution for a replacement to money in mind that comes in the form of a preexisting mechanic. If you don’t already know, you’ll just have to wait and see what I’m talking about.