I here for the Eirika defense. I never thought about it like that! That she would have to live with the thought that she could've saved her best friend after watching that friends die. I always looked at it like you did, that from her perspective, she saw him struggling with the demon king's influence like a friend or family member struggling with an addiction.
Sacred Stones is very much my comfort FE. It was the first one I ever played, and that certainly helps, but I find it to be the most playable game in the series just in general. It's in that nice middle ground where it's pretty easy for an experienced player but not completely braindead. Most maps are relatively short compared to the other games of its era, and there are relatively few of them overall which makes for a pretty snappy experience. I feel like the game often doesn't get enough credit for how good its map design (mostly) is, especially the early game maps which have a surprisingly nice flow to them. Obviously there are plenty of stinkers as well, but that's an advantage of being an "easy" game; bad maps are often more forgivable when you can trivialize and/or brute force your way through them. Overall it's not my favorite game in the franchise, probably in no small part due to that lack of "flair" or "wow factor" like you mentioned. Plus I find the super vanilla story is too dependent on its weak leads. As a kid I loved Ephraim and Eirika but as I grow older I realize more and more how deeply problematic they both are as characters. So it doesn't top my objective rankings, but it is still handily the game I've played the most, both in total hours and in cumulative runs. Also gonna have to hard disagree with you on Ephraim's route being better. Eph has not *only* Phantom Ship, but also Fort Rigwald a.k.a. Long Snaking Hallway Simulator, and the Selena map, which is Why Is This A Rout Map incarnate. Both routes have terrible slogs of a chapter 14 capped off with an obnoxiously dodgy boss, but I give the slight edge to Eirika's version for not being quite as spammy with status staves. Meanwhile Eirika's maps are largely inoffensive, with chapter 9 being an uncharacteristically decent rout map and chapter 11 being an uncharacteristically decent Fog of War map. Shitty Monster Rout Map is undeniably bad, no defense there. Chapter 13 I find is actually a decently designed defend map on paper mostly robbed of its challenge by poor enemy quality, and easily slips into the inoffensive category once you make peace with the fact that Eirika!Cormag isn't even very good and you probably weren't gonna use him anyway. I agree with you that the layout of chapter 10 is kinda weird, but I will point out that Eirika doesn't have to recruit Innes and Co. Tana can recruit her brother instead, which is overall far more expedient. She can even sneak around the left side without needing anyone to deal with the interceding enemies; there is a Hard-exclusive archer there that is presumably meant to scare you away from doing that but for some reason I've found his AI is broken and he won't even attack her. Also, you literally don't even need to recruit them at all; if you're willing to cede Marisa (again, you weren't gonna use her anyway) then they can easily survive on their own long enough to seize the gate and they auto-recruit on chapter end so long as they're alive.
You make a fair point about the Innes crew + Marisa because honestly on any normal run you are right in that I probably wouldn’t bother recruiting them. I think it’s only something I noticed because it was decided in my latest run of the game that I had to use them and was not allowed to use Tana for the recruitment of Innes and things With Eirika Cormag it is also fair because he is much less useful in that route anyway, but that is probably one of the reasons that I’ll always prefer Ephraim’s route because I do like to use Cormag generally speaking and he comes so much earlier there Edit: also forgot to mention I did not even know that Innes crew auto-recruited on chapter end anyway, nice thing to be aware of
I here for the Eirika defense.
I never thought about it like that! That she would have to live with the thought that she could've saved her best friend after watching that friends die.
I always looked at it like you did, that from her perspective, she saw him struggling with the demon king's influence like a friend or family member struggling with an addiction.
Sacred Stones is very much my comfort FE. It was the first one I ever played, and that certainly helps, but I find it to be the most playable game in the series just in general. It's in that nice middle ground where it's pretty easy for an experienced player but not completely braindead. Most maps are relatively short compared to the other games of its era, and there are relatively few of them overall which makes for a pretty snappy experience. I feel like the game often doesn't get enough credit for how good its map design (mostly) is, especially the early game maps which have a surprisingly nice flow to them. Obviously there are plenty of stinkers as well, but that's an advantage of being an "easy" game; bad maps are often more forgivable when you can trivialize and/or brute force your way through them.
Overall it's not my favorite game in the franchise, probably in no small part due to that lack of "flair" or "wow factor" like you mentioned. Plus I find the super vanilla story is too dependent on its weak leads. As a kid I loved Ephraim and Eirika but as I grow older I realize more and more how deeply problematic they both are as characters. So it doesn't top my objective rankings, but it is still handily the game I've played the most, both in total hours and in cumulative runs.
Also gonna have to hard disagree with you on Ephraim's route being better. Eph has not *only* Phantom Ship, but also Fort Rigwald a.k.a. Long Snaking Hallway Simulator, and the Selena map, which is Why Is This A Rout Map incarnate. Both routes have terrible slogs of a chapter 14 capped off with an obnoxiously dodgy boss, but I give the slight edge to Eirika's version for not being quite as spammy with status staves. Meanwhile Eirika's maps are largely inoffensive, with chapter 9 being an uncharacteristically decent rout map and chapter 11 being an uncharacteristically decent Fog of War map. Shitty Monster Rout Map is undeniably bad, no defense there. Chapter 13 I find is actually a decently designed defend map on paper mostly robbed of its challenge by poor enemy quality, and easily slips into the inoffensive category once you make peace with the fact that Eirika!Cormag isn't even very good and you probably weren't gonna use him anyway. I agree with you that the layout of chapter 10 is kinda weird, but I will point out that Eirika doesn't have to recruit Innes and Co. Tana can recruit her brother instead, which is overall far more expedient. She can even sneak around the left side without needing anyone to deal with the interceding enemies; there is a Hard-exclusive archer there that is presumably meant to scare you away from doing that but for some reason I've found his AI is broken and he won't even attack her. Also, you literally don't even need to recruit them at all; if you're willing to cede Marisa (again, you weren't gonna use her anyway) then they can easily survive on their own long enough to seize the gate and they auto-recruit on chapter end so long as they're alive.
You make a fair point about the Innes crew + Marisa because honestly on any normal run you are right in that I probably wouldn’t bother recruiting them. I think it’s only something I noticed because it was decided in my latest run of the game that I had to use them and was not allowed to use Tana for the recruitment of Innes and things
With Eirika Cormag it is also fair because he is much less useful in that route anyway, but that is probably one of the reasons that I’ll always prefer Ephraim’s route because I do like to use Cormag generally speaking and he comes so much earlier there
Edit: also forgot to mention I did not even know that Innes crew auto-recruited on chapter end anyway, nice thing to be aware of
My nostalgia for FE8 is huge and I will fully admit that but I will still defend this game as at least a flawed gem
the worst thing about fe8 is Eirika's maps and i know you agree
yeah