The Rise and Fall of Light Magic in Fire Emblem
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
- If you've watched my previous video on magic talking about the development of the Fire Emblem Magic Triangle, you would recall how Light Magic was amongst dark and anima in the various balancing acts of magic in the series up until magic just became one big thing with no distinction through advantage or disadvantage over an another. Light's place was rather unfortunate throughout compared to its peers, though. Where anima magic basically took over 90% of spells in the series starting after the GBA era and Dark magic became rarer, yet still retaining its identity throughout Awakening and beyond, even needing a unique class or skill to be used, Light magic kinda just fell to the wayside. It didn't die, though. Because light magic has made its return in recent titles. But its no where near as common, nor even as powerful as it once was. Today's video investigates the strong beginning to its mediocre middle all the way to its current state in the series of being "just kind of there". From Shadow Dragon, to Genealogy of the Holy War, to Three Houses and Engage...what happened to light magic?
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Woops, messed this up a second time. in FE4 Light and Dark are neutral towards each other. but they're both advantage over fire thunder and wind. I will get this right next time i bring it up LOL. I gotta find time to replay Genealogy before the remake ™
That's okay, few of us played the Jugdral games.
Why did Fire Emblem give up on Light Magic?
I think splitting magic into multiple types contributes to stronger unit identities, like Soren is the wind mage and Illyana is the thunder mage in PoR.
For Light magic to stand as its own magic type, it would need to be distinct enough from the others.
Light blinds, so I think it would make sense if light tomes came with effects that raise your AVO or debuff opponents hit rates for a turn or two, making light mages dodge tanks.
That'd be cool too, since Dark magic typically has lower hit, so it makes sense that the counterpart to it would counter it
But you could say both Light and Dark do the same thing
Light blinds with a flash of light that could Daze and Confuse and does the same thing as Shine of Engage creates a light zone for Fog of War maps for yourself and the opponents
Dark blinds with a Cloud of Darkness on the heads of the opponent that could Daze and Confuse but creates a Fog of War for yourself and the opponents
I think the solution would simply be to give them additional abilities to increase their utility and make up for the low might of most of them similarly to how Seraphim is effective against monsters. So like Shine could reduce enemy hit rate on hit or make something like Aura less powerful in exchange for inflicting silence or something.
I think that ALL of the GBA tomes needed a massive weight drop, but Light magic needed it the most; there was hardly any difference between Light and Dark once you got to the D-rank and higher spells, and even the bulkiest of Bishops (Moulder the Boulder) had trouble using anything heavier than Lightning.
And this from someone who goes out of his way to 20/20 Serra.
Anyway, I do like the idea of having effective damage, and you could take a page out of Tellius' book for this - Nature vs. Flying, Light vs. Cavalry, and Dark vs. Armor. Simple and clean, and gives each type a wider range of enemies it can figut well, not just Nature.
I think a drop in weight and a boost in power would be the best solution for the GBA specifically. Imagine if you got Serra to Bishop, and she's suddenly able to unleash an extremely powerful spell that's also effective against a lot of late game mages. That would be pretty good in my book.
@@ryuuakiyama3958 Oh, for sure. Having a 4 Mt E-rank magic weapon to grind out is annoying when everyone else is using 10+ Mt weapons.
Binding Blade probably handles the "Weight" system of tomes best as far as GBA games are concerned, if only Monks were a class in that game and there were more varieties of light tomes. Bishops were OP AF in Sacred Stones. And Aureola was sadly subpar with Luna for taking out Nergal or Fire Dragon.
@@darkdragonmedeus705 I think Luna was just too broken. If it had halved resistance, I think that would've been better. The moon being a luminous body, Luna also should've been "light".
@@ryuuakiyama3958they nerfed Luna so much in FE8
Sad as Dante wanted to fill the world with LIGHT(echo)
I hate that I laughed at this. It's so dumb. 😂😂😂
@@MaplewestYo same! 😂
Now we have to Bury the Light
@@dboyriles I'm upset that I didn't think this lol
He should have been the one fill the world with LIiIiiIggGHhtT!
I miss the magic triangle. Always gave me a reason to have all three types instead of just running Anima and Dark. Maybe making them the less damage but speedier tomes so they can double more than the other two types I could see it going a long way!
I'd love to see more base tombs that have nice sub abilities instead. Same with personal tombs as I loved those that let a specific unit use a broken weapon especially when they get recruited later.
I wish you could wield tombs as a weapon in fire emblem (it would look really funny)
In Three Houses they could have moved Sagittae into the Faith spell list (since the spell looks like arrows of light) and then given it effective damage against fliers, so that it has a unique niche like Dark Spikes T and not just another attack spell you launch at enemies.
It's _"tomes,"_ not _"tombs"_.
The first is a book and the second is where you bury someone.
Hope that helps. 😉
Magic in mainline FE: "Dark magic is usually the only one with sub effects, take it or leave it"
Magic in Heroes: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum ac consectetur erat. Aenean imperdiet, ligula sed fringilla pharetra, odio mi maximus libero, non dictum diam justo eu nibh. Aliquam pellentesque pretium nisl, non aliquam tortor imperdiet non. Nunc at dui posuere, semper velit id, auctor ligula. Praesent vel urna at urna aliquam mattis ut nec quam. Integer at mollis mauris, quis posuere urna. Sed a vehicula mi. Donec feugiat risus a consectetur vehicula. In imperdiet at turpis sit amet porttitor. Sed dolor sapien, vulputate eget ex eu, consectetur ullamcorper massa. Quisque porta ex id ante blandit ullamcorper. Fusce erat nisi, luctus id massa ac, sodales condimentum felis.
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@@StomachPlugme when I’m Niles in Ophelia’s paralogue.
_Engage_ did a good job at making wind, fire, and thunder magic incredibly unique without needing a triangle to separate them. Fire is the neutral tome type, wind has lower Mt but is effective against fliers, and thunder has 3-range and high Mt but cannot double.
Dark magic has typically had its own niche in that it deals heavy damage with lower Hit, so maybe light magic can be a class focused on reliability and survival. Maybe like how thunder magic cannot perform a follow-up attack, light magic prevents enemies from performing a follow-up attack.
Light mages themselves will still be relatively frail in terms of their Def, but they’ll have a niche in that they won’t take an extra hit from speedy enemies, making them masters of dealing chip damage. The in-universe explanation for this effect will be that light mages can create a barrier to block follow-up attacks.
Nosferatu would still be a light spell, so that could lead to great survivability for your best light mage. Nosferatu in my scenario would work like _Fates_ in that it has low-to-middling Mt and cannot double, but with the lack of enemy doubling, it becomes a good survival spell.
If a lack of enemy doubling is too OP, then maybe light magic can instead play a similar role to shurikens/daggers in Fates in that Light magic has low Might but has high Hit and inflicts debuffs on opponents.
It could also maybe lower the accuracy of enemy hits by 20 or 30%, because light blinds them. It could serve the same purpose by making light mages a bit more bulky.
Another option could be the ability to debuff enemies: maybe certain spells debuff different stats of the enemies for their next combat, or maybe they could all debuff accuracy. They could do so much
Light and Thunder share a common bonus to critical but Light has higher accuracy and lower Mt compared to Thunder.
Sacred Stones gave Light magic a buff with Effective vs Monsters and Undead when used by Bishop classes. Light magic classes and healers have emphasis on Resistance that make them akin to armor knights, allowing them to tank magic damage despite the triangle disadvantage.
Though there is the overarching note regarding Light magic is faith and power of the gods while Dark magic is understanding the ancient magic that tend to take a heavier toll on users and originated from ancient gods and horrors from time forgotten.
Akshually, Thracia has nine characters who can use Light magic. Linoan, Homer, Ced, Saias and Sara from base, and Asvel, Saphy, Tina and Sleuf once promoted.
It's still very niche though, because you only get one Resire and Lightning is very uncommon (in fact only one shop sells it in the entire game)
... Also most of these characters are competent staffers as well, and considering this is Thracia we're talking about, usually that's all they'll ever need.
Still super weird that Fates (2 while games that had a dark and light motif) didn't have light magic in it.
Light magic has always been my favorite, but it's definitely been a struggle to use it. It needs greater spell variety, more monster-effective spells, and a greater emphasis on being lighter and having higher crit.
I remember in my first playthrough of PoR, I just assumed Light magic was enemy only for some reason and was extremely confused when Oliver dropped the tome. I dropped Rhys for Mist pretty early on out of curiosity. Then again PoR has some weird choices in terms of how many characters per class appear. They're more niche classes of course but it doesn't make it any less odd.
Offensive white magic seriously needs more variety for its type to avoid niche hell. Holy Knight in 3H (THE class for offensive white mages) is arguably one of the worst classes in the game mainly due to how little it offers compared to other similar classes like Dark Knight and Valkyrie.
It’ll never make sense to me that light magic is heavier than anima. I think light being the lowest might and weight with good crit would’ve been a fine base for it, and if more is required to make them unique, effective damage would be a good idea.
It's funny because just the other day I was thinking about why Light Magic doesn't seem so good and then bam this video appears.
Completely agree that draining health being a light thing instead of a dark thing feels weird. That's why I've always thought Nosferatu makes a lot more sense as Dark magic than it does as Light magic. FE8 Light magic was definitely the best, but only if you were a Bishop.
I think Light magic being effective against "undead" or monster type units like Risen, Corrupted, and all the monsters of Gaiden/Echoes and Sacred Stones (as a Bishop at least) makes the most sense. If they just give Light tomes/spells inherent effectiveness against those kind of enemies I think that would be enough to differentiate it. Although in games like PoR and RD where there are no such enemies that solution wouldn't work.
The issue with light magic is the same with dark magic and the magic triangle: Intelligence Systems refuses to do more with it
For a Magic triangle to work, mages need to be different enough, not just the weapons, and Light itself needs an identity... And you know what, a heavy class of crit happy weapons could work, so could a super light defensive class with some crit as a bonus, but they need to just... Pick something, and do it
Well Light magic before usually came with the bonus of being able to heal. Until they pretty much let every mage do it...
Agreed, all the Mages and their magics suffer way to much from effectively being the same between each other outside of Dark being unique spells in the gba games.
Like to make light magic more interesting you’d need way more magic focused classes, like a mage parallel to Knights
@@Castersvarog Honestly, they could JUST stat the ones we have a little differently, and add Light back, but they refuse to even do that
And like, people will say they TRIED in the GBA era, but we're not talking about 3 more Defense for 2 less Resistance on Dark Mages, it needs to be more than that
I like the idea of a magic triangle just because it would put it on the same playing field as the weapons do. Plus somewhat like what Fates did by making magic in a triangle with hidden weapons and bows was fun cause now you had more options on how to take out certain units. Let's say the assassin which uses bows and swords. Now you have the option to use lances or magic against them.
A light magic enemy tended to be a bit lackluster. Mainly because a majority of your magic users were either mages who countered them, high RES light magic units, or you just threw a physical unit at them who would break them in half due to their low DEF. Thanks for the video
And also in games like fe7 monks had like 8 attack about ten maps into eliwood/hector normal mode lol
I have a bit of a crackpot of an idea, what if light magic was resisted by luck, and not resistance?
I think the concept of light magic being a power given by faith from a higher power is pretty interesting, it should imply that this higher power would have a bias to smite certain targets over others.
So undead, monsters, bandits/berserkers and Dark Mages who have next to no luck would be extremely weak to light magic because they’d have pretty bad “karma”.
In the other hand, more morally “good” classes like Paladins, Heroes, and Bishops would have higher luck to reflect that the higher power isn’t willing to smite them.
It doesn’t have to be tied to class of course, having some enemies or player controlled units that don’t fit the mold could make for some interesting narrative choices. Maybe you could have a Dark mage with unusually high luck because he takes in the corrupting powers of darkness for selfless reasons, or a Paladin that has no luck because they enjoy murder way too much.
Or it could just be limited to a specific light tome so that it doesn’t completely mess up balancing the magic system.
Do it like this:
Dark- high might and/or inflict status
Anima- average might but the variety of spells(fire, ice, elec, etc) lets them score effective damage on a large variety of units.
Light- classes that use light spells are usually res tanks anyway just double down and make light effective on other magic types, just like you would think twice about sending your sword infantry to fight an armored lance, you would rather send a physical unit againt a light tome user. Low might but add a little passive healing to them(restore 3 hp per attack or 5 hp per turn held for example) outside of nosferatu to further discourage magic attackers. And obviously if monsterous elements are in the game light magic eradicates them.
Jugdral Light and Dark were actually neutral to each other
I would like for them to lean more into the 4 schools of magic: black, white, dark and light.
Black magic for offence and and white magic for support.
Dark magic for debuffs and status effects (like swarm in and banshee in 3h)
Light magic for various buffs like a boost to stats when equiped (like relic weapons) and monster effectiveness.
As for classes go I'd say 1 base class for each school (plus maybe troubadour, it would depend). Promotion would combine black/dark and white/light. And a sage class that knows all 4.
But now I'm just daydreaming.
Another way you could distinguish light magic is to make all weapons provide buffs before or after combat - for example, wearing light magic might give one of +5 res/def/spd, or reduced damage taken after or only for the first hit, healing adjacent allies or self after combat etc. (depending on the spell), making it a defensive damaging option for mages. Basically the tanky version of a mage / cleric.
In this case, anima could be the situational element magic type (wind vs fliers, lightning vs armors/ machines, fire vs monsters/undead etc.) and dark could be the high risk high reward damage type (lower accuracy high might, reduces own def / res /spd or does self damage, high crit, only element with damaging siege tome, a tome that targets def instead of res etc.). Statuses and utility should probably be still only on staves to provide them a use outside of healing.
You can also still provide separate spell lists for different elements by providing different ranges/accuracy/crit values and different attributes on player vs. enemy phase (much like engage - some tomes are 1 range only but can't miss, some tomes always go second if possible but knock back or have brave effect, some tomes do double damage on a counter attack, some tomes can't be countered, etc.)
8:11 it's not even just that it's weird for a life draining spell to be Light Magic, it's also that the word Nosferatu as a word is believed to have come from the Romanian word for Vampire. (as well as Nosferatu also being a name once commonly used in fiction for Dracula).
they decided a spell that is literally called "Vampire" is light magic
That's on the localization team. Remember that FE7 was translated first, and Nosferatu was dark in that game, so the name stuck even after Nosferatu returned to being light. Its japanese name is Resire, or sometging like that.
I personally i would make Light Magic being tied to Religious classes or Units. So Priest/Cleric, Bishop, Valkyrie/Strategist/Holy Knights if they use Tomes, they will have Light Magic.
In terms of lore you could say that instead of just reading regular magic tomes, they have to learn the Religion's tale and Gods' message and teaching. This is why Light Magic can be deadly with dark associated units like Dark Mages and Monsters.
Dark Magic is often debuff Magic, so Light could be support magic. My priest cast this magic spell that deals damage to foe and removes 1-all debuff to 1-all adjacents allies depending on rank.
But wouldnt that overlap with staffs?
@@panetoneninjacanal2692 No. Because the tomes effects need to attack with tomes and attack needs to Land.
I know it's a bit of a stretch, but according to its appearance in Heroes, the Wind (Caller's) Genesis is also a Light tome. Some other light magic (at least by the fact that they're preceded by the Shine tome) currently includes: the Imbued Koma, the Prayer Wheel, the Professorial Guide, The Cycle's Turn, Sagittae, Worldsea Wave, True-Love Roses, the Total War Tome, Ophelia's Missiletainn, the Flower of Joy, the Goddess Temari, the Knightly Manner, and the Dawnsweet Box.
When I think of light magic the first character that comes to mind is Lucius. Guess that makes sense since FE7 was my first game in the series.
So with regards to Nosferatu, the rather dark name is something we can blame on the localization of Fe7; in the JP games it's called the rather vague "Resire".
It's generally treated as a light tome because it was first used exclusively clerics so as to offset the fact they have to drain their own hp to cast magic and they can't heal themselves directly. After that it just kinda remained associated with female light mages (Linde, Julia) for the next two games before FE5 broadened the availability of light magic.
It's specifically the GBA games and Fateswakening, both of which draw a lot from the GBA games, that have Nosferatu as a dark tome. The Archanea, Tellius, and Jugdral games, as well as 3H and Engage, all treat it as light magic owing to its roots in Gaiden as a tome associated exclusively with clerics.
The magic triangle as a whole and particularly Light magic has always seemed more thematic.
The games that its in and good are the ones with stronger themes of Holy concepts and Light vs Dark. Games like FE4, FE8, and debatably 3H and RD because of being a holy god/apostle.
In other games while their are dark forces, typically the good guys are fighting them through friendship, skill, and magic items and not so much the force of god. In awakening your even an incarnation of a Dark God and fates a water dragon with gods like Naga being weaker in power compared to Jugdral.
If light was to come back on its own outside of remakes it would again have to be because the story involves holier aspects and concepts then our recent (non 3H) ones.
Honestly I’d think it would be cool if light magic gained supportive effects to differentiate it from dark magics more offensive/ weirder effects.
Fates is the last FE game I’ve played cause I don’t have a switch so I’m going based off of that game, but I remember just how varied weapon effects were in that game, especially the random ones you could find.
The ones that had rally effects on attack immediately come to mind.
Moonlight and sheep scroll were % heal on attack and a reusable vulnerary respectively, so Nosferatu can go back to being dark magic.
Take it a step further maybe have a spell that has passive ally healing like Ameterasu or the many aura skills from fates like Camillas, Elise, and Sakura’s personal and the few from the maid/Strategist line.
That and just let Light mages act like Myrmidons or something. Make their tomes weigh less and the class be speedier to oppose the tankier slower dark mages.
I think an interesting direction to take Light Magic could be based on the idea of righteous indignation, and light magic always having an extra effect on counter which it doesn't have on attack, making it built for enemy phasing.
An example of some Light Magic tomes could be:
Prism - Blast of rainbow light. -5 Damage taken per hit when countering.
Surge - Inflicts -3 to all stats until the end of player phase when countering.
Solburst - Always Crit when countering.
Dazzle - +30 Avoid/+20 Hit when countering.
Faerghast, Subscribed because your videos are so much fun!
I think the Tellius duology and 3H had the best idea for implementing Light magic: by tying staff/healing and Light/Faith spells together, it did make them more accessible to use as combatants. I do think the idea of having Monks as dedicated Light magic user was a decent idea, but i think unless you're making a game that's particularly Monster or Dark magic heavy, Light users were gonna be niche at best outside of circumstances where they'd be useful, and since Light tended to be on the weaker side, they'd likely be slightly worse Mages most of the time.
As for the future of Light magic: outside of remakes, I think that unless they adopt a method akin to Staff rank = Light rank, i feel like Light magic isn't really all that necessary to keep around. Now, don't get me wrong: Light/Holy magic having a connection to the setting's religion/faith is pretty standard JRPG stuff and always best for worldbuilding, and Light tomes tend to have some of the coolest animations/looks in the series. But i think that, as shown by how niche Light magic is outside of games that really favors its use, that FE doesn't really need Light magic, and generally can get by fine without it. If they can rebalance it in a way to make it more usable, I'd be interested, but i won't mourn it if it vanishes beyond the occasional tome.
I've always loved light magic. I missed having it as a type in later instalments. I do hope they bring it back in some way. Along with the avatar system.
I like Genealogy and Sacred Stones versions in how they were story relevant. I think it makes sense that dark magic is the best magic (often forbidden for being too strong or having negative side effects) as it is in most fantasy settings, and light magic being its counter.
imo... make Light Magic effective against other Magics but weak to physical weapons, make Dark Magic effective against Physical Weapons but weak to other Magics -- or vice versa. If the Break mechanic gets to stay that would be really interesting I think. Then you could have a specialty Light Spell that doubles Might against Dark Magic users, and a specialty Dark Spell that doubles Might against Light Magic users. Maybe you could replace Surge with Light or Dark magic? like having _those_ be the 1-range, infinite Hit Rate spells.
your content is always flames bro
Weak against Thunder tomes
I know this dude didn’t call Oliver “lackluster”
The most perfect creation of the goddess is not lackluster
What's with you and making video topics pertaining to a game I'm recently playing (a Judgral history vid when I played FE4, now this when playing FE6)
Yeah light magic has trouble standing out. Anima magic is the standard magic that does what it says on the tin, dark magic is the interesting one (aside from flux) you got magic that can steal life, ignores resistance and increased crit change, or the spell that halves a unit’s hp. Then there is light magic which aside from greater crit and has a weaker punch
I wish light magic was still a thing but like good.
Edit: Honestly I want the GBA triangle back. Light should have its niche of being good against monsters (like how wind is strong against fliers) and type advantage over dark tomes (the common weapon of evil dark mages/cultists).
It was really interesting to see how Light started out as the superior element, accessible only to the player as the heroes of Naga, then slowly but surely faded into obscurity.
The number of light puns I had to avoid shoehorning into this script should illuminate just how bright I was feeling, but I had to sunset that because they didn't hold a candle to reasonable pacing.
I honestly think the poblem could be solved by embracing Light's natural niche as Swords of the magic types:
* It's weak so it deals chip damage unless it doubles, which its accuracy supports. It should also be made unheavy to support doubling, which also supports dodge-tanking for speedy characters. The main issue is that since Binding Blade the series has been loath to give sword-users, pegasus knights and mages effective stats to overcome weapon weight.
* All magic except siege tomes are naturally 1-2 range so they don't have range problems like Swords do.
* It would be well suited to hit fellow Light users, and have advantage over Dark which remains common through most mid- and lategames. BBEGs usually have Dark Magic using factions directly serving them.
* It's usually intertwined with Staves, and healers naturally need high Magic to do their job and high Speed for survivability. Light Magic gives promoted healers a reliably hitting and weapon type that doesn't jeopardize dodge-tanking or doubling.
I feel like, just thematically, light and dark magic will always have a place in Fire Emblem as seperate from elemental anima-spells, what with how the series likes to tell of "shadow dragons" and the like while having light dragons to oppose them, or similar motives, or just in general fights between "light and dark".
One good step to make light magic useful though could perhaps be to, similarly to how the Rapier became a mainstay as a regular sword wieldable by anyone in recent games, have the Thani become a regular light magic tome.
I feel like one thing that also REALLY hurt light magic in 3H is having to share its spell-list with healing magic. It's obvious that most characters would focus their Faith-spell list on healing spells, not offensive ones, so most characters only got light magic on their higher weapon-ranks, so you'd have to grind to that level first... and in the case of spells like Abraxas, as cool as I think it is, it's just not really worth it, especialy since they made light magic quite heavy in 3H.
Otherwise, I admit, making it in general stand out is a bit difficult, in games where each elemental-magic is different, thunder is usually the one that can crit and in more recent games has 3-range, wind is weaker but more accurate, often effective against fliers, fire is more of the allrounder with solid hit and might, dark then comes in offering high might for low accuracy and high weight, if light is simply its opposite, it's basically just copying wind magic but generally weaker but with a bit of crit. What Three Houses went for by making dark magic more debuff-focused was definitely the right step for it, it makes sense and the magic just a bit more unique than "more might but no follow-up attacks because heavy", but I feel just going the opposite for light magic again this time wouldn't work. On one hand, the healing could fit since light magic is often associated with staff users or like in 3H under the same spell-type, but due to this I feel it wouldn't help it stand out, unless we're talking about Gaiden/Echoes where your healer uses their own HP to heal and can only heal by attacking, if you need to heal you use a staff or an item. What I feel could help it would be to focus on buffs instead, give buffs to allies in range after attacking or, to put it in Heroes-terms, as a Drive, but in that case they'd basically want to take a vanguard-role where they're the first to attack each turn, always on the frontlines, and usually light mages are just too squishy for that, even if it thematically also fits many light-magic users. I do also like the idea of light magic having access to the only/strongest Brave-tome in any given game to help it stand out.
Honestly I just don't think a dedicated Light Magic type is that useful by now. It fit really well in Jugdrall games and there themes, but magic isn't exactly deep-dived so getting that nitpicky with it doesn't do much besides being complicated. The only game that's had any real deep dive into magic is 3H with Faith-V-Reason and White/Dark/Black magic types but even those were rather simple to understand and on a rather basic axis.
People take for granted the makings of the traditional weapon triangle so much nobody ever thinks about how well its done. Swords, Axes and Lances can be wielded by different classes, but their stats spreads are linked to the most common or dedicated users:
The Swordmaster's blade is weak, but fast and light, allowing it to hit the bulky, low def Berserker twice for big damage while dodging their heavy hitting attacks. Hitting the General with 10 hits of it won't put a dent on its armor, however.
The Berserker's axe, while inaccurate and heavy, will be able to hit the slow General and even double it for big damage, however, they might never land a hit on the dodgy sword man.
The General well balanced lance will land more consistent hits on the Swordmaster, and the low def of the later will make each blow more damaging.
This basic scheme obviously takes many twists and turns throughout the series, but there's a blueprint it falls back on. The WTA bonuses often magnify these advantages.
The magic triangle on the other hand is pretty much: Mage attacks → Opposing mage's resistance too high to take significant damage → ?
This is the equivalent of 3 Generals hitting each other with slightly different weapons, it just doesn't do anything and merely devolves into whose base stats are the highest.
At best each magic type just becomes a carbon copy of the traditional triangle: Dark is Axes, Light is Swords, Anima is Lances. But then again, they are just not really made to fight each other, it will often be more effective to hit magic with physical and physical with magic.
Engage giving Fire, Thunder and Wind magic very distinctive qualities was very neat imo. They don't have to fight each other, just have their own identity. That or change each mage type's base stats drastically like give dark mages high def low res but eh
I feel like a lot of hacks try to avert this issue by leaning into the boosted crit rate of Light Magic and really making that its niche. Since Thunder magic is the only other magic that traditionally sees crit rates, it gave Light something else to do.
Extremely petty corrections:
Light does not have weapon triangle advantage agianst Dark in FE4 or FE5
Bard had light magic rank in FE4 but in practice it would never come up since it was only C rank and the only bard was in gen 1 and lightning is not in gen 1
Safy, Tina, and Sleuf could use light magic on promotion in FE5 but in practice would this would rarely matter
Guinivere trail map post game class is not a special class under the hood she is just a regular sage they have a light rank too much like how adding dark magic rank via the stone glitch in fe8 works
Valaura is technically not the only accessible weapon with Poison in radiant dawn, the venim weapons can be stolen with disarm steal shenegans and unlike fe5 you would keep their poison effect
i would use a light mage ALWAYS in my play throughs if they existed in the games. they could also just always bundle it with healer classes like in PoR. i disliked in awakening how (for example) lissa and miriel end up with the same inventory after promotion. despite having clear differences early on. having each magic type have a purpose is a good idea, so they need to figure something out for light
I enjoyed 3h magic because there were spells that function like each type (even if faith and reason were the only formal division. Only edelgard/hubert/lysithea/hapi have dark magic, and different units have different named spells. I think all of Annette’s reason spells have anima names, and Marianne mostly uses reason magic with ice names.
Anyone know what the song used in the outro is?
I was about to comment this same thing. What a great track.
Honestly, I would like light magic to be opposite to dark magic. Some dark spells in 3H had negative debuffs on enemies, so what if light magic gave positive buffs on you and allies. They could act as built in rally skills, healing, etc. it makes sense thematically to do that
I actually miss the magic triangle.
I liked the idea of light magic, dark magic, and anima or like elemental magic.
But these days we’re fighting just to have a weapon triangle so… odds are we won’t have a magic triangle again.
in the next game, they need to bring back the nipple magic
3:16 Minor nitpick here. Luce is pronounced more like "loo-cheh". It's the Italian word for light.
wow i actually didn't know that, cool!
I think that the main problem with splitting off magic types into distinct identities is that then you have to have units that can use them and then balance units along those same lines. The thing is, Fire emblem isn't Pokémon, where half of all playable characters are meant to use magic/special.
Make light magic only usable by classes with staff rank. Now healers can do chip damage :))
😅 the reason why light magic was so strong and genealogy of the holy war was because light magic was considered to be holy magic ✨. Very ironic considering that in tellus games you eventually fight an actual goddess of order damn near bringer of light and yet light magic is a lot weaker in this game 😅 almost weaker than that knife combat system they try to introduce in fire emblem 9😂 that was just a bad idea in general
light magic should have been lighter so it could doble and have supporting effects like a little healing on hit or debuffing enemy units like lowering speed or skill so that anime was consistent damage dark would have powerful combat affects and light would be debuffing
Guinivere doesn't have a unique class in FE6. She just has a Light Magic rank assigned
I just want unique spell lists back tbh, i much prefer that to just slapping the same book on all your mages
Here's an idea. Talking about the history of Armored units. AKA the worst unit type.
Armors are cool, okay? Leave my bulky bois and gurls alone :
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958The last part is a joke.
@@Rabbitlord108 Eh?? What, oh you didnt need to delete it! Joke or no, you're entitled to your opinion, I was responding in kind honestly, in a casual manner.
I'm so sorry if I made you feel bad-
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 Okay.
As scriptwriter I'll just push my armor knight video script under Ghast's door lol
Tbh title made me think this was a Death Note fan theory
My personal approach to this issue was this:
Anima = Specializes in weapon effective damage based on element used
Dark = Specializes in high power and unusual effects and/or debuffs
Light = Specializes in crits and inflicting AoE Hit rate debuffs by blinding foes with its strikes
That's what I've been toying with.
Lightning in Fates is really good but yeah not technically "light"
There's not enough light-based magic in the series. And ice ones too.
I think it would be neat if light magic gave supportive effects after combat like healing allies after combat, increasing stats, ect. where dark magic is more about debuffing the foes and other harmful effects. Side note, I also think it would be neat if they added powerful dark magic that harms the user to play into that darkness lore
Considering light magic is supposed to fill the faith to gods and luck in fe is considered the "divine blessing" stat make basic light magic give an siginificant boost to luck.
I've had an idea for awhile for another game using Fates's factional classes but with 3 nations of class lines that would include each one having 2 types of magic, one common anima+dark/light/ice
With something like this that limits how much of each magic type you have available by route you could have each magic type tailored for use by its availability
The GBA era of magic i think was the best BRING BACK THE MAGIC TRIANGLE
I love ALL Faerghast videos!!!! ❤
F it, make light magic effective against infantry
What's the outro music? It's really cool
I DESPERATLY need Tellius remakes. Micaiah has to be buffed to be a modern protagonist and a usable unit.
And the general power creep making most units actually usable
Based mythrilzenith
❤❤❤
Clearly, light magic was at its best as a consumable resource (tome) that was completely separate from non combat spells. In 3H dark magic had alot of debuffing spells. Going forward I think light could have a niche doing the opposite, giving player units buffs on hit.
I honestly wish we still had the Magic Triangle System that was in the GBA Fire Emblem games. Really gave weight to the magic especially when it came to what Enemy Magic users you were facing :/
My thought on this subject is to bring the attack staves of Fire Emblem Heroes and classify them as "light magic". This would give healers something to do besides pure healing/support and could introduce an "ultra staff user" class. I'd probably limit the attack staves to higher weapon ranks so that there's still the whole "can only heal" aspect at the start, which I think is important to the identity of the classic FE cleric. But this would tie "light magic" into an existing FE structure and give it some identity as part of a staff user's kit.
Granted, this is pretty much what 3H did, though I think that game's limited offensive white magic list and the fact that every magic user could use both black and white magic with enough training differentiates it.
Personally I loved the duology created by gaidens remake. Light/dark were basically two sides of the same coin. Basically like how the force is handled in older books of the Star wars extended canon where you didn't want to go to far off either way and remain balanced. Cecilia struggles with this and does take a little dive of the witch end.
Light magic could have a niche, but it would require leaning into Anima being the middle path. If you take away 5-10 hit from most Anima tomes, then it actually has a weakness. Then Light's high hit means something. It's like how in Binding Blade, hand axes and javelins were actually balanced because of their low hit. But that would probably move the general gameplay experience more into Thracia territory, while the GBA era was primarily back to basics.
I'm a bit surprised Fates didn't make a light tome like Seraphim a Diviner/Onmyoji exclusive like Nosferatu was for Dark Mages/Sorcerors. I guess Rhajat is one of the canon Onmyoji and is not a classic light mage at all, but it would have been something.
I really wish light magic had more of an identity. The high crit/low might/high weight would work better if it was a little more drastic.
Spoilers for Death Note!
Light magic is the swords of Fire Emblem’s magic triangle. Hasn’t been good since 5 or 6 and usually gets carried because of classes and prfs. Three Houses randomly having a light magic focused class despite having non existent support will never no be funny to me.
Light is a magic type that really suffers from being rather niche in what it can do well that other weapon and magic types can do just as well. What it needs is to have spells offer a brave effect but they be rather weak compared to other spells while dealing effective damage against monsters.
I agree the different types will make a come back in our remakes; especially the upcoming FE4 remake and faithful to their originals. But the Future of FE probably prefers to just categorize all of them as Tome. As for being parts of triangles, it has had the upper hand against bows from time to time. It shared with swords to being strong against axes and bows but weak to lances and throwing weapons. Or Three Houses via bow breaker while fists had tome breaker and there was no fist breaker. Brawling in general is in a way a spiritual successor to FE4's light magic where it's dominate over tomes, bows, daggers/shuriken, and cannons but nothing is dominate against them. In true old school Final Fantasy fashion, the strongest RPG weapons if you put effort in to them are your own bare hands. Now we know why Demi-Fiend from SMT got to be so strong as a superboss.
Even as a preteen(roughly when I got into rpgs) I loved the concept of magic and really enjoyed using those characters almost exclusively. In every fire emblem I bring as many mages as I can with me. Radiant dawn I literally did runs during the final challenge where I bring every mage available except maybe olivar(I was young, didn't appreciate his majesticness)
And while I would love to not necessarily restrict myself with "weaker" units or less than optimal team dynamics. I still make it work and have a lot of fun.
that being sad I kind of want to see just kind of stat boosting defensive tomes. a little weaker but come with a defensive stat boost. kind of like the defensive "arts" from engage. Otherwise follow three houses formula. aside abrixis I think it was the most balanced use of light.
If light magic ever does come back it should either be as powerful special magic like in jugdral or have innate monster effectiveness. Either way it should probably just be a sort of supplementary magic type with a limited number of spells instead of a full-fledged weapon type of its own.
I like the idea of light magic being a special type of magic that is good against all other types. This could be balanced by locking light magic to the Bishop class.
I don't get when developers put work into things that players just don't end up using for basic reasons.
okay but hear me out:
Light magic using staff rank vs tome
Would give clerics a viable option to attack with instead of just healing, as well as making some support classes like trickster and the butler/maid class from fates have access to a magic attack as well
I always loved how flashy Light magic was in the GBA games and yeah Sacred Stones felt like it gave some uniqueness to it with the slayer effect I definitely would like to see light magic make a huge comeback.
Maybe it could have it’s might lower than normal but maybe also have even lower weight and increase the crit rate while lowering the foes crit.
Maybe have like true damage for each level tone based on certain conditions of the unit or foe I don’t know I’m not a game developer😅.
I'd rather see magic reworked to an entirely new system while keeping weapons classic. I think it could be fun to have a system where units learn spells through tasks/skill/mini games/special events giving them access to a large pool of spells, but limit their uses per battle as a sort of balance so you still have to strategize which spells to bring to each battle. I think it would be neat to think about my magic and melee units differently.
Yo! What’s the music at 10:55? Ghast has used it for so long. I wanna know so I can look it up on RUclips and listen to it. It’s so good.
My favorite idea for if they bring the magic triangle back is male light work like daggers in fates
Anima is the basic of the 3 with the most spells but most lack effects
Dark has fewer tomes but have more busted effects attached to them
Light is not heavy and provides debuffs which for a weapon attached to typicals healers gives them more utility instead of making them a worse sage
There’s just not enough reason to use light magic over other magic unfortunately which sucks because at this point I think that they need to make it situational to even use it.
Something along the lines of making anima and dark magic less effective against monsters,undead units and dark mages while making light magic less effective against regular enemies so there’s a genuine reason to use light magic in some cases while not over buffing it to where it steamrolls over other magic
damn playing fe6 and was thinking of using bishop cuz of light magic. this is the first time in my entire life i thought of using light magic in fe6 and then this vid comes out
My fav system is still the 3h where every unit had there own learn set in magic but if where sticking with times I would love light to return they can definitely do something with it and we can have 3 types of magic again because I love that it just looks nice to have 3 types
Are we getting remakes? Honestly having the NBA and wii games released in fine with me...
If they returned to old worlds then maybe light magic could return.
Why not have mage unit that specializes in one magic like a Fire mage, Wind mage, Thunder mage, Light mage an Darkness mage but they each get several special spell only they could use.
Tellius games did that. I think?