No one wants to talk about this game? Seriously? Fine, then I'll just go ranting on about it.


This game takes balance in a new direction from previous games. The Pair-Up and Support options have been tuned to give much easier to understand and use bonuses. The Skill system and Reclassing make customization far more possible than in any previous game. And the new Inheritance system takes things even further.

Support and Pair Up technical talkTwo characters can "Pair-Up", essentially the Rescue system from previous games, but revamped so that the two units work together instead of one hindering the other. The main unit does all the fighting, but gets a stat bonus from the character he's carrying. It also confers Support and Proximity bonuses to the fighting character.

Proximity bonuses are a new thing. Basically, fighting in a group is very, very beneficial. If you have one unit beside you, you get +10 Hit. Two units adjacent to you +10 Hit and +10 Avoid. Three adds +10 Dodge, and four adds +10 Crit (woohoo). Of course, you might notice that being surrounded by four units is hard to do, because it means you have to be using a ranged weapon from the middle of a cluster of your own guys.

That's where the Pair-Up and Support systems come in. A Paired unit adds an extra unit to the total, and each rank of Support (C, B, A, or S) increases the bonus by an additional unit. So if you Pair-Up with a Unit that you have an A Support rank with, you get +10 to all four stats. And, if you get S Rank, or are in proximity to multiple supported units, the bonuses continue to increment, going back through the list in the same order and adding an additional +5 for each further rank and person.

These bonuses add up really fast, especially in light of the new change where Supports are unrestricted! You are no longer limited to 5 Support conversations, you can Support with anyone. Each person is limited to only one S Rank support (because the characters get married in those conversations), but you can otherwise pursue every discussion option, and accrue a ton of bonuses.


Skills and Reclassing Technical talkYeah, I absolutely adore the revamped Skill system, and Reclassing ties right in to it. Each class has two Skills that they learn naturally. For the base classes, they learn them at levels 1 and 10. For promoted classes, they learn them at 5 and 15.

Capacity count is gone, instead every character can equip a flat count of five skills. There are also no more skill scrolls (well, there are, but they're DLC only, from what I can tell, and those particular DLCs have not yet been released stateside), instead, each character can freely equip and remove any skills that they have learned.

But, wait, if you only get four skills from progressing through your basic and promoted class, how do you hit the max of five skills? Well, that's where the new reclassing system comes into play. Once you hit level 10 on a basic class, you can use a Master Seal to move to an Advanced class, or a new Second Seal. Using a Second Seal lets you switch to another basic class (each character has their own ranges of availible classes). You revert to level 1, and have your stats reduced by the base stats of your current class. However, every stat point you have gotten from levelling up is saved and applied to your new class.

This means that stat maxing is far easier than its been in any previous Fire Emblem, as you can revert to level one and start levelling up all over again, but with all of your previously gained stat boosts intact. This even saves if you reclass to something with a lower max stat (like, say, dropping from a Berserker to a Mage). The game will save your total Strength stat increase, even if it pushes you above the Mage's Strength cap, and when you change back to a class with higher strength, you'll get those points back.

The only unfortunate part is that it saves your cumulative level too, so don't think you'll start levelling as though you were a level 1 toon all over. The higher your cumulative level, the less Exp you get. Though you do get more in a basic class, and after 40 to 50 total levels, the Exp slowdown stops.

So, now that you know that each unit can have five Skills, what Skills should you take?

Here are my top recommendations:

- Galeforce - My gosh, this skill is awesome. Any female character who can become a Pegasus Knight can learn this (Dark Flyer promoted class skill, level 15). And it lets you take a second turn after you kill an enemy, once per turn. This is powerful. From just killing two enemies at once, to doing hit and run tactics, to using it to punch out of a group and escape, this ability is awesome. Learn it as soon as you can, never get rid of it.

- Despoil - An interesting ability, in that no one on your team will learn it by default, because no one has the base class of Barbarian. Yet it is one of the game's best abilities, so you'll want to pick it up at some point. Only male characters can reclass to Barbarians (and only some of them), but as soon as they do, they get this ability, which gives them a chance (a percentage equal to their Luck stat) to get a Small Bullion whenever they kill a target (no counter kills, it has to be your turn). Basically, it's a chance of a free 1000 gold any time you kill something. Given how rare money is, especially on the higher difficulties, this skill is awesome.

- Armsthrift - Yeah, this one is right up there, another incredible utility Skill. It activates as a percentage equal to twice your Luck (and Luck runs a cap of 40 to 45 on most advanced classes, which is 80 to 90%) of not using weapon durability. Those Silver Swords and Killing Edges? Yeah, use them on a character with this skill (obtained by level 1 Mercenaries) to get a lot more out of them. Heck, pair them on a unit with high luck, carrying another high luck person (to push total luck over 50), and you can use every weapon without it breaking!


Those are probably the best non-unique skills (though Gamble's -5 Hit, +10 Crit deserves mention, as Hit is fairly easy to max in this game) that are new to this game. Aether, Sol, and Luna all work as they did before, and should be familiar to players of the earlier games.

I'll be back to talk about inheritence and children units later. Ciao!