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Fire Emblem is having an identity crisis.


Zachmac
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  1. 1. Are you fine with the direction Awakening and Fates have been taking Fire Emblem in?

    • I love shipping anime characters together!
      59
    • You're not meant to be a dating simulator, Fire Emblem. Stop trying to be one.
      64
    • I don't care as long as the gameplay is good.
      163
    • These answers are worse than Azura's HP growths. My opinion is totally different then any of these!
      46
  2. 2. Are you fine with gender exclusive classes and weapons?

    • Genderlocks are unnecessary. Why shouldn't a man ride a pegasus?
      135
    • Genderlocks are actually a little sexist at times. Looking at you, Bride class.
      27
    • Fire Emblem has always had gender exlusive classes. I don't see the problem.
      93
    • Removing the gender locks on several classes and then adding genderlocked weapons and DLC classes is just dumb.
      59
    • These answers are worse than a promoted Asama's personal skill. My opinion is totally different then any of these!
      18


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Again, I'll point out that the Archanea games established men can ride pegasi. Mystery of the Emblem had enemy Pegasus Knights with sprites that showed they were men unlike Caeda and the Pegasus Sisters. Thracia 776 had a PK tell another character pegasi would rather have women ride them and there you go.

Edited by Alazen
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As far as strategic gameplay taking a lower priority, I'm not concerned with the fate (uugh) of Fire Emblem. FE14 has some of the most progressive gameplay changes to the series and kept most of the positive elements from past games. It's not perfect but the effort on the developers part is duly noted.

As for style and story, there definitely is a crisis. On one hand, you have the group who wants to write a compelling story and characters, and you have another group that wants "to make a truckload of money". Waifus, shipping, self-inserts and fanservice are all very popular, and the style and story are sacrificed to accommodate them. Everything is fine in moderation, but as Fates has shown, "moderation" isn't a word they are familiar with. With its inconsistent tone and hamfisted storytelling, Fates is the definitive example of wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

XD I'm a girl, I just get super annoyed about fe constantly acting like pegasi are the same as unicorns. Pegasus was ridden by a guy. Unicorns can only be approached by virgin maidens. Getting the myths mixed up is a pet peeve of mine.

Fire Emblem creates its own lore. I don't see anyone complaining about dragons being depicted as intelligent beings going feral just because real world mythology doesn't mention it.

Edited by NekoKnight
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I think the dark flier is a "falcon", the one Tsubaki references.

Oh, I got confused because I'm not used to referring to Nohr as "Anya". Still, it's kind of a lousy excuse.

I personally don't think it is.

The problem I see most people are doing are judging the games and FE series by the story, the character designs and of course the character interactions.

Yes there are gameplay changes here, some design changes, features added and removed and various presentation differences with each sequel but overall, majority of the gameplay has been pretty much the same. A tile based strategy tactics game with RPG elements where you control units to victory and battles.

If anything, a game having an identity crisis would be Chibi Robo as it keeps completely changing its gameplay formula that it has no idea what kind of game the series should be. We went from a 3D cleaning house simulator to random spin offs that has nothing to do with the original game and now a 2D action puzzle platformer.

My problem isn't that Fate's doesn't match up with the rest of the franchise, it's that it doesn't always match up with itself.

As far as strategic gameplay taking a lower priority, I'm not concerned with the fate (uugh) of Fire Emblem. FE14 has some of the most progressive gameplay changes to the series and kept most of the positive elements from past games. It's not perfect but the effort on the developers part is duly noted.

As for style and story, there definitely is a crisis. On one hand, you have the group who wants to write a compelling story and characters, and you have another group that wants "to make a truckload of money". Waifus, shipping, self-inserts and fanservice are all very popular, and the style and story are sacrificed to accommodate them. Everything is fine in moderation, but as Fates has shown, "moderation" isn't a word they are familiar with. With its inconsistent tone and hamfisted storytelling, Fates is the definitive example of wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

Yeah, I don't think anyone is too concerned about the gameplay anymore. It's made some huge improvements, especially compared to Awakening, and it's the main reason I'm still excited for this game.

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As far as strategic gameplay taking a lower priority, I'm not concerned with the fate (uugh) of Fire Emblem. FE14 has some of the most progressive gameplay changes to the series and kept most of the positive elements from past games. It's not perfect but the effort on the developers part is duly noted.

As for style and story, there definitely is a crisis. On one hand, you have the group who wants to write a compelling story and characters, and you have another group that wants "to make a truckload of money". Waifus, shipping, self-inserts and fanservice are all very popular, and the style and story are sacrificed to accommodate them. Everything is fine in moderation, but as Fates has shown, "moderation" isn't a word they are familiar with. With its inconsistent tone and hamfisted storytelling, Fates is the definitive example of wanting to have your cake and eat it too.

GOD DAMN IT BARB!

But you're right about the moderation problem. In my opinion, they were trying to do too many things at once i.e. three different story paths, characters, supports, online features, DLC, gameplay improvements, my castle ETC and they wound up spreading themselves too thin. The new way they handle supports is reflective of what happened with Fates; they tried so hard to have so many things going that they sacrificed overall quality (doesn't stop them from having some absolute gems mind you).

Edited by Phillius
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GOD DAMN IT BARB!

But you're right about the moderation problem. In my opinion, they were trying to do too many things at once i.e. three different story paths, characters, supports, online features, DLC, gameplay improvements, my castle ETC and they wound up spreading themselves too thin. The new way they handle supports is reflective of what happened with Fates; they tried so hard to have so many things going that they sacrificed overall quality (doesn't stop them from having some absolute gems mind you).

I don't think it's a lack of resources. There is a lot of content in the game. As we've discussed in the story threads, all the parts for a good game are there, they are just horribly implemented.

A lot of the class models look great!...But fanservice demands battle-panties...

Some characters and supports are really intriguing!.... and here's a boatload of incest, pedophilia and other dodgy things...

Having a self-insert is fun!....and now several characters and the story are gutted to worship me...

It's nice to have a game focused on platonic, familial relationships.... and now you can have children with them....

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Shipping, fanservice, waifus, or whatever don't bother me too much. That's what the kind of audience IS is appealing to now likes, so...

I like children when they have a point. FE4 was good, Awakening was acceptable, but Fates is ridiculous.

I'm not entirely satisfied with modern FE gameplay either. At the least, Fates was an improvement from Awakening.

In short, I have no idea how to feel about Fire Emblem at the moment.

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Well, think on the flipside here. If Intelligent Systems cranked out Fire Emblem games that all played the same, everyone would be complaining about Fire Emblem being repetitive like the Mario platformer series.

um what. no one ever calls mario repetitive unless theyre talking about nsmb or they have no idea what theyre talking about...they always change mario

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um what. no one ever calls mario repetitive unless theyre talking about nsmb or they have no idea what theyre talking about...they always change mario

i think he was talking about nsmb though

which people call repetitive all the time

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it seems pretty clear to me that they're hedging their bets, trying to sell both versions of fire emblem at once and seeing which one holds water

if it goes in a new direction that's okay with me, designers gotta explore. all my old favourites are still there and five-ten years from now the devs will swing back around and try to do a revival of the older concepts again

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I don't think it's a lack of resources. There is a lot of content in the game. As we've discussed in the story threads, all the parts for a good game are there, they are just horribly implemented.

A lot of the class models look great!...But fanservice demands battle-panties...

Some characters and supports are really intriguing!.... and here's a boatload of incest, pedophilia and other dodgy things...

Having a self-insert is fun!....and now several characters and the story are gutted to worship me...

It's nice to have a game focused on platonic, familial relationships.... and now you can have children with them....

There are times when a post sums up perfectly how I feel about Fates. This is one of those posts. I wish the devs could be tied up and forced to read this and manymanymany others. Edited by Cinnamon Bun
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I don't think it's a lack of resources. There is a lot of content in the game. As we've discussed in the story threads, all the parts for a good game are there, they are just horribly implemented.

A lot of the class models look great!...But fanservice demands battle-panties...

Some characters and supports are really intriguing!.... and here's a boatload of incest, pedophilia and other dodgy things...

Having a self-insert is fun!....and now several characters and the story are gutted to worship me...

It's nice to have a game focused on platonic, familial relationships.... and now you can have children with them....

This is pretty much how I feel about Fates. While there are some good things in the game there are many parts of the game that are so bad that they turn me off from liking it more than I want to. Yeah the developers want the series to stay alive and FE14 added some good things to the battle system, but at the same time some of the ways they are going about keeping the series running is questionable.

Edited by Frelia
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Whoever pointed out that Fates' suffers from doing too much for what the developers were willing or able to do hit the nail on the head. Just look at Kamui's siblings, sidekicks, and Aqua. Aqua in particular is an expositionbot who proposes silly plans and hints at the 3rd Path. Me and others in the thread about fixing Fates' narrative have considered trimming the cast down (I've at least cut Aqua, merged Felicia with Flora, cut Sakura, and merged Ryoma with Hinoka). I even suspect that Conquest shouldn't have had Nohr go full-throttle on the invasion of Hoshido.

Another issue with Fates's narrative is that the magical and/or otherworldly element goes out of bounds.

The King of Nohr turns out to be a slimeman who gets revealed on Hoshido's magical throne, trivializing the issue of getting all of the Nohr siblings to rebel. Aqua can't talk about Touma thanks to a curse (which conveniently restricts taking down the Ultimate Mastermind Behind It All to the Golden Ending DLC). Hydra is a WoW raid boss who sticks his nose all over the continent and so the playable cast friends-up against him. Along with anything else I haven't mentioned.

Edited by Alazen
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Yeah the incest thing kinda weirds me out. Yes my favorite is fe4 but be fair aside from one major plot point the only incest that actually happens was part of an evil plot. Some possible first gen incest can happen if the player chooses, and they might not even realize the characters were related in some cases. Second gen flat out won't let you pair siblings outside of one glitch and while it has no issues with cousins you can choose not to make those pairings.

That said fates way of getting around incest pairings is something that weirds me out and makes you feel a bit cheated with how they got around it. At least fe4 had the balls to make its potential incest pairings actually incest!

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I'm not sure how I feel about the series's direction, on one hand it's great that popularity of the series rose due to the direction they took in Awakening. Though on the other hand I'm disappointed that the strategy elements didn't get developed as much.

While there are some strategy elements such as personal skills for characters, classes, pair up, and stances it doesn't help that most classes don't offer much besides 1-2 range attacks and staves and get outclassed by others.

Like why use an archer when mages and mounted units could do an archer's job just as well and not be EXP starved. Or why use knights when cavaliers and wyvern riders can get to the action/chokepoint before them and have almost the same durability as knights. I just wish they give classes a unique function to make each class worth using besides the reason of the character's appearance and personality.

I mean Awakening and Fates still retain the elements of past FE games so its identity is in a way still the same but more emphasis on what the market wants instead of what the veterans want. Kinda like how Resident Evil 4 focused more on action but some elements such as horror are there but not as much.

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The implementation is what I have a problem with more than the actual themes itself. In FE4, the main incest was between two half-siblings who were tricked into procreating so that they'd produce a compatible vessel for an evil god. The marriage system was present because in FE4 the majority of your first generation dies and their children take up the helm some 17 years later. The incest and the marriage system both have a plot point in FE4, which is why it was implemented well. I think that marriage was all right in Awakening because the story was about time-traveling kids from the future who came back to stop a great disaster from happening. Whether the story itself was great or not, there was a reason for the kids and the marriage system coming back.

Fates doesn't have a story reason for the kids to be there, and even less of a reason for them to grow up so fast after they are born. The main storyline (and by storyline I mean the main chapters, no supports or paralogues or DLC) always pushes the Nohr and Hoshido siblings as Kamui's family, and it's especially egregious that you never find out that the Hoshido siblings aren't related to you in the Hoshido route. Honestly, they were pushing a theme of family and sibling love and then they decided to make siblings marriageable and it basically contradicted its own theme.

That's basically what I have a problem with. To my knowledge, no other FE game has contradicted its own damn theme as hard as Fates did.

The second paragraph pretty much. I haven't played the game but I wish the Hoshidan's were full siblings and marrying them I think is silly.

Finally we have axe ladies who and pegasus men!! I don't mind shipping and S-Supports as long as the supports develop character.

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I don't mind S-ranks at all, it's a fun thing to do on the side and it's not even necessary to advance the game. Sure, it gives bonuses but A and A+ ranks do as well. Imho, if some players don't want to marry the characters, they have every right to and similarly, if some do want to ship them then it's their choice. Why can't we all just get along?

Concerning genderlocked classes, I'm not fond of it if it's unecessary (*cough*PegasusWarrior*cough*) but there are some classes, like Valkyrie, which are clearly meant for female characters.

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I'm not exactly adverse to the series' direction. I still have fun with the games, and while I do disagree with a few of Fates' features, the rest of the game is enjoyable enough to outweigh them for me.

Like why use an archer when mages and mounted units could do an archer's job just as well and not be EXP starved. Or why use knights when cavaliers and wyvern riders can get to the action/chokepoint before them and have almost the same durability as knights. I just wish they give classes a unique function to make each class worth using besides the reason of the character's appearance and personality.

I mean Awakening and Fates still retain the elements of past FE games so its identity is in a way still the same but more emphasis on what the market wants instead of what the veterans want. Kinda like how Resident Evil 4 focused more on action but some elements such as horror are there but not as much.

Simple, in Fates' 1-2 ranged has been nerfed, and a lot of magic users are quite poor. Combined with the fact that bows have been buffed, and most of the playable Archers are pretty good, Archers now have a niche.

I completely understand why the new direction turns some people off though.

Edited by Mighty Kamina
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Like why use an archer when mages and mounted units could do an archer's job just as well and not be EXP starved. Or why use knights when cavaliers and wyvern riders can get to the action/chokepoint before them and have almost the same durability as knights. I just wish they give classes a unique function to make each class worth using besides the reason of the character's appearance and personality.

Have you not seen the murder-machines, Takumi and Elfie?

Archers are good now because outside of magic (which is now countered by several weapons and classes) there are no ranged weapons that don't also have some kind of drawback (can't crit, easier to get doubled, can't double yourself, low hit). Plus they can be used to take out fliers (another reason why Knights can be better than Dracoknights).

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I don't mind the shipping or child mechanics up to a point. Fire Emblem 4 did them well and so did Awakening, aside from the way you unlock them. My main problem now is that its there for the sake of being there. The children in fates serve no purpose in the story, the explenation is dumb and to me it looked like they weren't meant to be included either since many characters are...a little bit questionable when you consider the ages and the incest. At least Awakening could somewhat handwave those complaints away, but I don't see it happening here.

As for Genderlocked classes. I'm not against them in theory, but IS always seems to give one side the shaft. Females get their special winged ponies and magic using horseman. Males on the other hand get an axefighter and....another axefighter. Its pretty boring in comparison. The reverse happened in Awakening where males got the extremely cool and usefull dread fighter, while females got something as corny as a bride.

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I don't think the series is having an identity crisis at all. Rather than the resulting mess being a mistake, in my view, it's very intentional. There's a prominent market of people who want to feel culturally enriched by engaging with these superficially grandiose products without having to face the more uncomfortable facets of the scenario. You're not supposed to think about the ramifications of anything, you're supposed to just take what you're presented with in a constant stream of aesthetically pleasing and mildly stimulating data. Rather than a psuedo-intellectual game (because it doesn't pretend to be smart), it's a psuedo-cultural game (because it pretends to be cultured), a game of indulgence, "Just satisfy your desires and don't think about it" ; that sums up their overall design philosophy pretty well. I used to think philistinism was the enemy of art but the rise of media like this is in some way worse, it's like an evolution of the philistine.

Edited by Irysa
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The only identiy crisis I see is as such, Fates want to take itself seriously, yet, have the worst kind of JRPGlike writing ever, with the plot and writing that go with it, that is also worst than usual. And there's the children, waifuying, and the amie that are either otaku-pandering or FEA-pandering.

As it's been said thousands of time by people much more eloquent than me, it want to eat the cake and keep it too, and here's the result.

Now if they actually did it right without hurting the writing, I would have no problem with it, but it's not case.

Gameplay wise, I have no problem, they did it right.

Edited by B.Leu
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Gameplay wise, Fire Emblem is stepping in the right direction. They've added more strategic elements to take into consideration, like updated WTA, and weapon pros vs cons, outside of herp derp durability. Nintendo obviously wants to make this game more multiplayer friendly, and it's hard enough to do that with a turnbase sRPG, Just give em time and they'll get it right.

Everything else, such as story, etc... is subjected to personal opinion.

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I think one of the problems with FE Fates was the idea of going after a guest writer in the first place. It's clear that the main story wasn't written with the actual gameplay features in mind at all, which is why we end up with things like the family theme in the main story, while in the supports we have the revelation that they aren't blood related. This conflict wouldn't exist if the person writting the story was closer to IS in the first place. The point of going after a guest writer would have been a better quality story, but it clearly didn't accomplish that either considering the negative reactions here, so it was all pointless.

The DLC is just messy in general. They aren't even attempting to keep parity in male vs female classes due to the two extra Amiibo ones.

Edited by NeonZ
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Fire Emblem is going through something that anime (which the series aspires to be like, now) is going through; it's become more about viewer/player pandering and indulging than telling a story or (not to sound hifalutin) being art.

I'd say yes, there's definitely some sort of internal struggle going on; how it will turn out, however, I have no idea.

Edited by The DanMan
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I don't see a problem with Fates' optional features. Not gonna lie, I actually enjoy seeing characters past their default mugs. Castle battles are fun, online portions are fun, supports are generally better than Awakening, lots of fun weapons, fun missions, fun gameplay, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun.


Even the story isn't bad. I think it's off course and leaves out a lot of explanations, but at least it isn't Awakening. My only real complaint is probably the children mechanic and locked DLC. Shoehorned and unneeded, the kids are only there for fan service, even more so for Hoshido who have genuine clones of characters, Grey being a carbon copy of Gaius, Syalla being weird and once again obsessed with the Avatar like Tharja, and Matoi being Cordelia minus her annoying Chrom obsession.

As for the DLC, I think it's pretty messed up we have all the amiibo classes and the Witch/Ballistic classes still in the game, and we are charged to bring it out. At least it gives a map, though, but damn, why give Western developers heat for this and not Nintendo?

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