@fafonio Oh boy, you haven’t played Fire Emblem in recent years at all, have you?
The weapon triangle has evolved mate. Or rather, it’s disappeared. It no longer exists. Instead you strategically focus on certain stats, classes, weapons and skills with the traits you want in order to build units a certain way. There’s no rock paper scissors to it anymore – that’s long gone.
In Three Houses, for example, there’s these different weapon types:
Swords
Lances
Axes
Bows
Gauntlets (Brawling)
Monster-only
Black & Dark Magic (Reason)
White Magic (Faith)
Within each weapon type there are a multitude of different weapons with all kinds of effects, ranging from simple damage vs weight difference (affecting speed) to simple stat boosts, to special interactions like hitting twice guaranteed, dealing magic based dmg with a physical weapon class, inflicting dmg to yourself or the enemy after combat, healing a percentage of damage dealt, or simply healing per turn when equipped, inflicting status effects, effective vs certain classes etc.
Increasing your proficiency with different weapon types also unlocks passive/active skills that range from special combat interactions to stat buffs to terrain bonuses and much, much, much more.
FE 3 Houses also has 37 classes, and each unit has certain stats that they’re bad at but that if you build into them unlock hidden talents that can make them good with any build.
Increasing proficiency also unlocks a ton of active skills with vastly different effects as well like increased range, ignoring damage reduction, hitting multiple targets or increased accuracy, heck, even preventing movement or moving 1 space after combat, increased damage based on defensive stats, debuffs, effectiveness vs all units etc.
On top of that there are crests, which provide each unit with unique effects that can be enhanced through use of specific weapons or simply building them in ways that allows you to maximize potential output with said crests. You can even get crests later in the game that you can put on units to change the effect.
On top of this, what route you choose to take while promoting your units on the way to the target final class also matters and defines your unit.
Then we also have the support system which affects characters strategically as who you choose for these interactions change their bonuses when they are close to each other in combat – add to that linked attacks which also power up and change based on who you place in the correct pattern, battalions which change up stats and interactions and grant “Gambits”, unique special attacks you can only execute usually once or twice a match, with all sorts of effects ranging from group healing to rooting enemies to increasing move values for a turn to decreasing avoidance making you more likely to hit the enemy or increasing stats of nearby friendly units – AND they’re vital for use vs big monster enemies – and you’ve got one hell of a strategy cocktail.
And there’s more. But you get the gist. Fire Emblem isn’t as much an sRPG as it’s a STRATEGY rpg.
It essentially has everything that AW has, and much, much more. Terrain affinity, advantages, characteristics, weaknesses, usefulness in different scenarios, several unit types different movement ranges and movement values in different terrain, different expenses associated with improving the units, and about a million skills and other things that lets you build them in a way that can give you the upper hand over other units.
