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To those who started/only played with Awakening...


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I have a question for those who have started with, or only played Awakening/Fates: what is your view on the older entries of the series, before the 3DS titles?

I ask this cause I often see many veterans of Fire Emblem note how different Awakening and Fates are in comparison to the old titles, but I don't think I've ever since the opposite side's opinion. So yeah, what is your opinion of the older titles?

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Wait are you asking for people who has *only* played 13 and 14? They wouldn't be able to give much of an opinion on older games then right? If you're asking for people who has played 13 and 14 first, and then the older games, I had two friends who did that (but doesn't come on SF) and one preferred the seriousness of the older games but like some of the small conveniences of the newer games. The second couldn't get into the older games after trying 7 and now refuses to play the other games. <- Not gonna lie this guy is a total scrub in other games though and when the going gets tough, he quits.

Not sure if me posting their opinion counts for much because they're not coming on here and posting it themselves but I asked them because I was the one who got them into FE and...it matters to me? lol

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Wait are you asking for people who has *only* played 13 and 14? They wouldn't be able to give much of an opinion on older games then right? If you're asking for people who has played 13 and 14 first, and then the older games, I had two friends who did that (but doesn't come on SF) and one preferred the seriousness of the older games but like some of the small conveniences of the newer games. The second couldn't get into the older games after trying 7 and now refuses to play the other games. <- Not gonna lie this guy is a total scrub in other games though and when the going gets tough, he quits.

Not sure if me posting their opinion counts for much because they're not coming on here and posting it themselves but I asked them because I was the one who got them into FE and...it matters to me? lol

Sorry, my OP definitely left out the "started with" portion of the question. That's been fixed.

I'm asking both people who have started with Awakening/Fates and then tried to go back and play the old ones, and those who have only played Awakening/Fates. It seems silly to ask an opinion for games that haven't been played, but perhaps those people have either looked into the old games or at least heard about them. For instance, I have yet to play Fates, but I certainly know a bit about all three versions already.

And you posting their opinions does help! Thanks for sharing their responses!

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From what I've seen the awakening newcomers love the old games. A person I follow on twitter started with Awakening and ever since she was lent the Radiant games all she does is draw Ike and Soren doing silly stuff

It wasn't a problem of not wanting to play them, it's more how innacessable physical copies are in the west.

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I played Awakening, loved it. Played FE7 and FE8 and really felt they were meh. Played the Tellius games and adored them. Played Shadow Dragon and liked it enough. I tried Thracia but failed in Manster. Never finished my FE6 and 4 runs because those maps take effort

Still prefer Awakening, still think Fates will totally beat every game including Awakening.

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Started with Awakening, loved it, moved on to 7, loved it more.

I liked 8 and 9, but not as much as Awakening and 7.

Really disliked 10

Enjoyed SD, and was meh towards New Mystery.

Loved FE2 and 3

Hated FE4

Liked FE5, but I can't for the life of me get past Manster.

I really enjoyed TRS, I actually enjoy it more than all of the other Kaga era games

Loved FE6

FE1 has aged too poorly for me to give it a fair opinion

And I have very high hopes for Fates.

In short, if we got a story and characters the quality of FE7, and gameplay similar to Awakening/what my relatively spoiler free self has seen of Fates, it would be me favorite hands down.

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I played Awakening first too.

The GBA games were pretty fun. I really loved a lot of the designs.

While I liked PoR's story, the gameplay was only okay. (And dear god, those animations took forever.)

Adored RD, at least the gameplay of it.

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i played awakening and thought it was pretty good

then i played shadow dragon which i also found pretty good

i was aware that i played what many people thought was the absolute worst fire emblem, but i still liked it

then i played fe4 and i thought it was pretty great, I think i enjoyed more than either of the other two. i liked the story a lot and i actually enjoyed how unbalanced the gameplay was at times. sometimes it's just fun to mess with incredibly overpowered units

ok one thing to mention I did play fe4 for like 2 minutes once before that because one of my friends told me i should play it eventually but i didn't go back to it until after i beat shadow dragon

eventually I played fe6 i think? in fact maybe that was before i played fe4. but either way i never finished it because i hated it. still haven't.

then i played fe7 which i really, really liked! at the time i didn't feel like i enjoyed it more than fe4 but honestly after another playthrough i definitely had a lot more fun with it than any other fire emblem so far.

after that i played path of radiance, which i also really liked! it's not my favorite fire emblem but it's a pretty close second. i enjoyed the variety in maps (even though some of them were bad like the bridge and the one with the boulders) and I also liked the story a lot.

then i played radiant dawn, which i played on easy mode and never finished. easy mode is stupid easy and part 4 is just stupid.

i've played pretty much every fe at least a little and i've liked most of them.

i definitely enjoyed awakening a lot on my first playthrough but i honestly don't really like it that much anymore. i'm not really sure why but playing it just isn't very fun for me. the maps are just a bit too boring and lack any real strategy a lot of the time.

so yeah I started with awakening and i like a lot of fire emblem games. that's all really

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After having played Awakening, I moved onto FE8. At first I thought that the game is sub-par but after a year had passed, I considered it to be a decent game. Next on the list was FE7, which really got me into the older entries of the series since it was a bit harder than FE8 and had in my opinion a more interesting story. After that I played FE6, it looked like an unpolished version of FE7 with increased difficulty, which was a worthy trade-off in my opinion so I like it as well. FE11 was cool, there's not a whole lot I could say about it. FE12 was in my eyes FE11 but better in most ways. FE4 was amazing, I loved the atmosphere and (most) mechanics of the game. Until just now, I've been in a love-hate relationship with Thracia: It's really cool if you have gained a certain amount of knowledge about the game but the problem was that I was playing Blind so the game wasn't enjoyable at all.

All in all, I like the old games more than the 3ds era but I don't think that they were that hard. Thracia's difficulty was overhyped in my opinion, it's just beginner-unfriendly.

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Awakening was my first FE game and I still like it but the game has his flaws. The pair-up system is op, lack of objectives in the maps, plot holes in the story and you can't have all the children with good skills and stats without grinding (which is impossible in Lunatic unless you have the DLC). Also normal is wayy too easy and hard is tedious for the first part (and Lunatic being very hard and Lunatic+ is almost impossible).

Then I played FE8, it was wayy too easy for my taste, I didn't like the story either.

FE7 came next and I really like this game, the 3 lords, the story, the gameplay, the chapters, the side-quests.

FE6 was alright but I hate time limits chapters.

I'm currently playing FE9 so I can't say if it's good or not.

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I started with Awakening then did Sacred Stones and now I'm working my way through the other GBA titles and Tellius stuff. I've been enjoying them a lot. I don't know if I have it in me to play the NES stuff, so the SNES era is probably the farthest I'll go back. I grew up in the NES and Atari era so when I go back and play through an older franchise, I'm always completely aware that the older titles will be a different experience. So when I started playing the older Fire Emblems, I was never under the impression that it would be like Awakening. Really the only thing keeping me from playing the NES stuff is I know how terribly unforgiving that era of gaming was haha trying to play Mother 1 as an adult was certainly an experience.

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Really the only thing keeping me from playing the NES stuff is I know how terribly unforgiving that era of gaming was haha trying to play Mother 1 as an adult was certainly an experience.

The NES games are just archaic and rather unbalanced compared to being punishingly difficult like say platformers of that era. FE5 is a lot more difficult than either of them, but I wouldn't say FE1 is really worth playing, honestly.

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I played awakening first in april 2013 I think, then Radiant Dawn in November 2013, FE9, FE8, FE4, FE11, soon after. I gotta say the titles were actually better beofre awakening imo, Fates though seems to be taking the series in a newer direction and will hopefully be miles better than FE13.

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Well, I'm glad to see all this positive feedback on the older titles. :) It often felt to me like when people who started with Awakening would go on about the game, they didn't give a rat's ass about the older titles and believed that only Awakening and onward mattered. I mean, I saw people pining for Ike to be replaced with Chrom in Smash and stuff. And of course, some people even said both Marth and Ike should be replaced with Chrom and Lucina. But I might have just taken some of those folks the wrong way or was just noticing the wrong fans. xP

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I don't think I have any friends that have played Awakening that didn't want to try out the older titles. I've gotten at least 10-15 people to play Awakening and the ones that loved it have always gone on to give the older titles a try. And they often go on to being disappointed they can't play the Tellius games due to the insane pricetags/don't have a computer that can emulate them. I was fortunate to have some friends that had PoR and RD sitting around that sold them to me at a huge discount, but most people aren't so lucky.

Pretty much any time I find a game that I enjoy that's part of a larger franchise I will always go try out the older titles. Unless it's something where there's like 800 different games, I only have so much free time haha

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My first FE game was Awakening. After that, I played Shadow Dragon which I found alright. Then I moved onto Radiant Dawn, which became my favourite FE game. After that, I went to Blazing Sword and then Sacred Stones. I'd love to get my hands on the elusive PoR, but the cheapest price I see for that is around £80+.

I definitely enjoy the older games, and would actually prefer if the newer direction swayed back to the older style a little. I've yet to play Fates, mind you, so I'm saying that based off the impressions and things I've heard about the game.

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I started with Fire Emblem Awakening on a whim, just picking it up in a store because I had heard it was sort of good and I absolutely loved it; I'll be the first to admit it has a lot of serious problems, but I was hooked regardless.. Afterwards I looked up the older games and were shocked by how little I liked them. Before Fire Emblem Fates, I considered Fire Emblem seven to be one of the worst games I had ever played in terms of story (and it still is, but Fates just broke every single record by inconceivable margins), for instance. I am only familiar with the localized games, however.

And before people interject with some of the more common objections, I should point out that I generally prefer the older character (or at least armor) designs, and that I'm actually not a fan anime and I can't stand fan service. I just found the dialogue to be so stale, the plots so basic (just like Awakening, but at least the dialogue felt smoother) and I just couldn't find anything that really hooked me. Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn improved things considerably, but I still had a lot of plot related complaints, like the constant worshipping of Ike/Micaiah, the Blood Pact, Ashnard who's a complete tool, and so on. That said, if there's one thing I loved about Radiant Dawn, it's the "old badasses meet new badasses" as previous playable characters reunited.

From what I've heard, most people who started with Awakening and moved on to other games really like the older titles, so I don't know why I'm so grumpy. Oh well, it can't possibly get any worse than Fates, so the future looks bright.

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I started with Fire Emblem Awakening on a whim, just picking it up in a store because I had heard it was sort of good and I absolutely loved it; I'll be the first to admit it has a lot of serious problems, but I was hooked regardless.. Afterwards I looked up the older games and were shocked by how little I liked them. Before Fire Emblem Fates, I considered Fire Emblem seven to be one of the worst games I had ever played in terms of story (and it still is, but Fates just broke every single record by inconceivable margins), for instance. I am only familiar with the localized games, however.

And before people interject with some of the more common objections, I should point out that I generally prefer the older character (or at least armor) designs, and that I'm actually not a fan anime and I can't stand fan service. I just found the dialogue to be so stale, the plots so basic (just like Awakening, but at least the dialogue felt smoother) and I just couldn't find anything that really hooked me. Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn improved things considerably, but I still had a lot of plot related complaints, like the constant worshipping of Ike/Micaiah, the Blood Pact, Ashnard who's a complete tool, and so on. That said, if there's one thing I loved about Radiant Dawn, it's the "old badasses meet new badasses" as previous playable characters reunited.

From what I've heard, most people who started with Awakening and moved on to other games really like the older titles, so I don't know why I'm so grumpy. Oh well, it can't possibly get any worse than Fates, so the future looks bright.

What's so bad about FE7's story? It's simply decent, the only legitimate complaints i've ever seen was how the tutorial could have very well been removed and how one of Jaffar's lines makes no sense, everything else is mostly cases of someone just not understanding what actually happened or misinterpreting due to mistranslations.

Edited by OakTree
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What's so bad about FE7's story? It's simply decent, the only legitimate complaints i've ever seen was how the tutorial could have very well been removed and how one of Jaffar's lines makes no sense, everything else is mostly cases of someone just not understanding what actually happened or misinterpreting due to mistranslations.

It's all over the place and in general uninteresting. The villain's modus operandi is seriously "kill people (usually off screen) to gather energy", his lackeys who are pretty much all devoid of personality are the most incompetent in the entire series, having "more important things to take care of" than to recapture the dragon siblings; you know, their top priority - and then he opens the gate without them anyway, so the entire plot seems to be meaningless. It should also be noted that Nergal is also a complete moron much like his minions, choosing to spare his prisoner for no adequately explored reason until he can pose a threat to him and then not killing the only people who could stop his plans even though he's outright stated to having been able to do so with ease.

The cast is also probably the least memorable in the series; Lyn, Eliwood and Hector are all just...there. I remember Hector killing a random guard who was in his way and then shouting stuff like everyone in the Black Hand needing to die without people really caring, and that's about it.

There are more plot inconsistencies here than any other pre-Fates game as well, like Lundgren's assassins trying to burn down a castle for reasons I can't remember (if there were any to begin with) and then the lord of that castle says "you know what? That Lundgren fella might come out on top of this power struggle, so I don't want to help you; I want to be his ally" - that's quite something, considering he was almost burned to death along with his castle.

And then we get stuff like Ninian inexplicably coming back to life because hey, can't challenge the protagonists somehow. It's like a precursor to Fates.

I really don't remember many details since it's been a while since I played it, but those are a few things that stick out. Please inform me if I've said anything downright wrong; my memory's not perfect.

Edited by Thane
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It's all over the place and in general uninteresting. The villain's modus operandi is seriously "kill people (usually off screen) to gather energy", his lackeys who are pretty much all devoid of personality are the most incompetent in the entire series, having "more important things to take care of" than to recapture the dragon siblings; you know, their top priority - and then he opens the gate without them anyway, so the entire plot seems to be meaningless. It should also be noted that Nergal is also a complete moron much like his minions, choosing to spare his prisoner for no adequately explored reason until he can pose a threat to him and then not killing the only people who could stop his plans even though he's outright stated to having been able to do so with ease.

The cast is also probably the least memorable in the series; Lyn, Eliwood and Hector are all just...there. I remember Hector killing a random guard who was in his way and then shouting stuff like everyone in the Black Hand needing to die without people really caring, and that's about it.

There are more plot inconsistencies here than any other pre-Fates game as well, like Lundgren's assassins trying to burn down a castle for reasons I can't remember (if there were any to begin with) and then the lord of that castle says "you know what? That Lundgren fella might come out on top of this power struggle, so I don't want to help you; I want to be his ally" - that's quite something, considering he was almost burned to death along with his castle.

And then we get stuff like Ninian inexplicably coming back to life because hey, can't challenge the protagonists somehow. It's like a precursos to Fates.

I really don't remember many details since it's been a while since I played it, but those are a few things that stick out.

I agree about Nergal never actually doing anything, but he being able to open the gate doesn't make the plot meaningless, he planned to open the gate, summon all dragons and to be able to control them, with Ninian's Dragonstone he was only able to summon three of them and couldn't even give them any sort of orders. And while this may be a case of "I don't care, it's still bad", the Morphs being devoid of personality is intended.

Different tastes i guess, althrough i could see an arguement that the entire plot builds up Hector as irresponsible and violent on purpose to give him development after his brother dies, as he for the first time in his life has to start being responsible.

Im fairly sure that never happens, like at all, it's never stated that the Lord views Lundgren as an ally.

Yeah, that was dumb.

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What's so bad about FE7's story? It's simply decent, the only legitimate complaints i've ever seen was how the tutorial could have very well been removed and how one of Jaffar's lines makes no sense, everything else is mostly cases of someone just not understanding what actually happened or misinterpreting due to mistranslations.

I had a pretty good discussion with feplus about FE7's story problems on reddit the other day. He convinced me of a few points but I think there are still some issues.

[spoiler=Spoilers for FE7 and FE1/3B1/11]

  • Lundgren's behaviour towards Marquess Araphen doesn't really make any sense. The Castle is attacked and he is taken hostage by Lundgren's lackeys before Lyn is attacked in the town itself. Kicking up a fuss like that is exactly why Rath was on alert, and thus able to save Lyn. And why would Lundgren send brutes to attack Araphen when his only real target is Lyndis anyway? It would make sense if he knew of Lyndis' alliance with Araphen, but Kent only came back mere moments ago to report that the Marquess would see Lyn, they haven't even talked yet! If anything Lundgren's behaviour seems like it would set Araphen AGAINST him, except this doesn't happen because the Marquess is racist. So either that's like three contrivances in a row, or Lundgren knew Araphen hated Sacaeans and knew he could get away with it, in which case, why the hell did he attack Araphen. Additionally, Araphen is stated to be the second largest province in Lycia. Caelin is comparatively very small. It seems ridiculous for Caelin to pick a fight with Araphen like this.
  • Ephidel's general incompetance. He fails to kill not one, but TWO elderly unarmed men properly and gives poor strategic advice to Darin. Some of this can be alleviated if one argues that the entire thing was a Master Plan by Ephidel, but this is hard to swallow given how prone the villains in FE7 are to gloating about how awesome they are and explaining their plans to the protagonists in Saturday Morning Cartoon fare, yet this is never expanded on, the protagonists never wonder what the hell was going on, and Ephidel dies like a bitch despite having the ability to teleport whereever he likes in Dragon's Gate. Not to mention that his Master Plan would have to allow for Ninian having amnesia somehow (which is also absurdly contrived, as it always is). It also gets increasingly convoluted the further back along you assume it was part of the plan. Things this complicated have to be addressed or the audience is likely to assume incompetance on the part of the writer.
  • "Fargus will sail with you if you kill all his crew". What. Even invoking a defence about mechanics vs narrative (which I actually accept for many other complaints people like Banzai have), this is way too egregious to not be criticised heavily.
  • Legault does not have any idea of where the Black Fang's base of operations is despite being a high ranking member. He should at least know old HQs or former hotspots.
  • Nergal's general behaviour is not very consistent. feplus argued that Nergal's behaviour makes sense if one assumes these two things; he is predispositoned towards not harming his children in Ninils, and that he is so full of himself that he has no problems with wasting power and resources to gloat over his opponents. I don't buy it. Nergal has the ability to warp around and preform massive explosions, yet he doesn't do this himself when he could easily generate oodles of quintessence to offset the loss from simply doing things like assassinating Uther and Zephiel without the need for The Black Fang. He repeatedly doesn't kill the protagonists when he could, despite the fact he knows they're gathering tools that can stop him. He doesn't just steal Ninils whenever he wants. If there are limits on the amount of energy he can expend to preform all these actions, why does he conveniently have enough around to waste so often? If he really has a mental block on hurting his kids, why does he cause an explosion that was specifically stated to be capable of killing Nils? Not to mention that Nergal summons three Dragons at the end of the game despite supposedly not having enough quintessence or Ninils. feplus convinced me he doens't actually need Ninils alive, and that he was able to summon Dragons with Ninian's energy despite her being dead. If that's the case, why didn't he just summon dragons earlier? Not enough power? Not enough power to control them? If so, why did he waste so much energy creating a buttload of supermorphs and waste more on teleporting around? Was that still not enough? Why not summon one Dragon and control it instead of summoning three as he's dying? Nergal just does whatever the writers need to make the plot work out, there's no thought put into anything. If he's actually insane then some of this can be alleviated but it's still ridiculously contrived.
  • Ninian coming back to life at the end is also a joke. Imagine if Lyon had been ressurected at the end of FE8, or Greil came back at the end of FE9? Yet this is basically what FE7 does.
  • FE7's plot clashes horribly with FE6's regarding things like Legendary Weapons and the Ending Winter, in addition to Roy and Lilina being completely unaware of the entire fiasco.

Nergal is the biggest problem overall. Even if we do accept he suffers from extreme hubris, comparing to someone as relatively simple as Gharnef makes Nergal look dumb.Gharnef's plan was to betray EVERYONE (including Medeus) so it makes sense why he lets Marth go on his little campaign without putting much effort into stopping him. He too appears and laughs at Marth, but he doesn't care because he isn't storing energy or anything. Gharnef has Imhullu and Falchion and thinks he's invincible as a result, but didn't realise Starlight could stop him because Gotoh literally created it himself, it was a surprise. Gharnef still falls because of his overconfidence, but it is not as contrived as Nergal. In Book 2, Gharnef steals Starlight to protect himself (won't make that mistake again), and had Michalis not managed to steal it back (at the cost of his life), then Gharnef would have won. Nergal comparatively clearly knows that Eliwood and company are gathering legendary weapons, and have Athos on their side, but he still is too overconfident to take steps to eliminate potential problems to his plan.

An antagonist who loses due to his own pride is nothing special, but you should at least execute it properly. Gharnef is well executed despite having less than a fraction of the dialogue and screentime Nergal has.

EDIT: Kirokan is right, tagged my complaints into spoilers.

Edited by Irysa
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