Well, the beastcast thread is just as embarassing as I imagined it to be. I mean they even called it in the podcast. I guess no matter how many times they say "don't be an asshole", people still want to be an asshole.
@turambar: The fact that they're difficult to do and entirely situational is why theyre not well known. Everyone of course posting on the Web would know about it. The fact that you got one by accident because you just so happened to have marcus next to merlinus says it all really. From my own first playthrough I didn't get a single one. people describe the fire emblem series as "that strategy game with permanent death", not that series where "oh yeah you can see conversations between characters after a billion turns of them next to each other on a map". Well until awakening made it easy. You keep saying they were important to the identity of the series but that's not really true is it? Now if you want to argue that they're important now after Awakening, then yeah, totally.
@turambar: People posting on gamefaqs, serene's forest, or on the internet in general aren't most players. Like you do know how supports worked in those games, right? Having specific characters being next to each other for an absurd amount of turns, limited to five per playthrough, and no easy indicator if they were gaining anything or not until said support happens. Not to mention the games not even really mentioning them or telling you to do them.
@turambar: When it's so hidden away and most players miss out on them? Not really. If they were so important, IS would have made them easier to do in FE7 and FE8. They would have made some up for Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Emblem remakes. Of course one could say that those latter two games failed because of the lack of supports, but that would be ignoring all the other reasons.
@turambar: Supports and relationships have never been that important. They gave a minor stat boost when units were next to each other, some additional background story and gave you a different epilogue screen. Now you can't even get units without engaging with it. Compared to FE4 which at least gave you alternative units if you didn't get the adults married before the time skip. But then FE4 actually made narrative and gameplay sense.
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