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In what order should I play FE1-12?


000tin
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I want to play some of the older Fire Emblem games before Fates is released in Europe.

Where should I start? I have only played Awakening so far.

I'm learning Japanese so I wouldn't mind playing any of the games released before FE7.

Should I just play them in the order they were released or are there some titles that I should skip? I've read that some of the games are remakes.

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Play them in order. You can skip FE1 if you want. I disagree with not bothering with 3 though, as I think it's a sufficiently different experience from 11/12 to warrant it's own playthrough as well.

Edited by Matthewtheman
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Play FE6 first and the rest in any order you want really

If you want to experience the stories in order, play 9 before 10 and 11 before 12, and (for gameplay reasons) don't play FE5 before you beat a few other FEs

Edited by Gradivus.
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7 then 6, 8, 1, (you could insert 2 here), 3 part 1, (or insert 2 here), 3 part 2, 4 part 1, 5, 4 part 2, 9 then 10, 11 then 12.

You don't necessarily have to do it in that order, but it is the order I recommend.

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11 is a remake of 1, and 12 Is a remake of 3. Other than that, they are all their own thing.

I'd advise skipping 2 if you only want to play them. It's interesting ideas don't make up for its shoddy gameplay, except for level designers and people looking for a few clever ideas.

4 and 5 take place in the same setting, but are extremely different. 4 uses the entire continent, while 5 only features a fraction of the cast in a conflict localized to a single country. Personally I think that makes 5 stand out a lot from most FE games. I'd also skip 4 because it's a really slow game, and is still easy-average difficulty despite it's length, and you honestly won't get much more tactical than "rotate your units". Also item availability locked to units, and so on stuff kinda of lend it to a guided playthough. 5 is much more interesting in map layout, and also has you taking weapons/items from the enemies throughout, which is much more pro-active than having gold handed to you or village rewards to seel at an always available vendor/armory.

7,8,9 are popular, but honestly a little light-weight. The enemy unit growths weren't thought out very well in those, even on their hard/maniac modes. On the other hand they are not as big a time sink as other games(both to set up, and to play), so if you are only playing them in prepration, that's kind of an advantage.

10 is notoriously hard to find if you want a physical copy. It's a direct sequel to 9, so I don't know what the story would be like played standalone. Definitely improves the gameplay and difficulty from 9, although it does so at the cost widening the gap between the "bad" and "good" units. As long as you don't care about the game heavily picking which characters to bench for you, instead of leaving it to your discretion (like 7-9 and awakening) it's all right.

As far as I'm concerned 11-12 are the Transformers:beast wars of Fire Emblem. They're ugly visually, and they don't care about the things unique to fire emblem from other SRPGS, but having superior gameplay to the others makes up for it.

1 has the same Kirby-esque difficulty problems as 7-9,As for FE3, I don't know, it doesn't do anything that stands out as good or bad gameplaywise, it relies on the trio of Hardin-Michalis-Camus to carry its story and a lot of other charthers are just extensions of what they do to the country/opposition foils to them. I prefer just playing the remake.

7 is intended as a prequel to 6, but the vast majority of people played it on its own. 6 is good for gameplay difficulty, although variety suffers (all seize maps), but it's story is all over the place thematically, and the supports and non-plot charathers are mostly less interesting than 7-9. Shoutouts to Treck for possibly being a stoner.

If you want to buy Fates on day 1 for Europe, I would play 7 and 8. If you don't care if you are still in the middle of your old FE playthrough, then go with 5 and 11.

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Thanks for the answers so far.

Are there any reasons why you'd start with FE7 or FE6? Are the first few games dull in terms of gameplay?

6, 7, and 8 are part of the gba era, probably one of the more beginner friendly eras. I think 7 and 8 are easier than 6. 2 and 4 are quite a bit different than the rest of the series. 3 is fine, but 1 is a bit old, but that does not mean it is bad. 5 is very brutal to newcomers and the current translation patch is bad.
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Thanks for the answers so far.

Are there any reasons why you'd start with FE7 or FE6? Are the first few games dull in terms of gameplay?

1 and 2 just had really clunky User Interface

FE7 was built for beginners, so yeah.

I mostly ranked based on difficulty tiers.

Edit: I played 10 before 9, the characters filled me in well enough, biggest problem was Ike was really boring/static since FE9 took his whole story leaving FE10 with no room.

Edited by Glaceon Mage
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Yes I don't plan on spending too much time on each individual game.

I think I'll play 7 first, then 6, then 8, then either 1-5 in the order recommended by DarkDestr0yer61 or 9-12 depending on how I feel then. I'm going to be busy playing Fates for quite a while.

Can't wait to start playing later today. Thanks for helping me out!

Edited by 000tin
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Yes I don't plan on spending too much time on each individual game.

I think I'll play 7 first, then 6, then 8, then either 1-5 in the order recommended by DarkDestr0yer61 or 9-12 depending on how I feel then. I'm going to be busy playing Fates for quite a while.

Can't wait to start playing later today. Thanks for helping me out!

At least playing 7 before 6 will net you the story of Elibe in chronological order.

Just be warned though, Roy's growths are pretty terrible, at least from my experiences. 20/25% Def Growth is just... *shudder*

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Also,

I'm learning Japanese so I wouldn't mind playing any of the games released before FE7.

you can use translation patches if you don't mind emulation.

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At least playing 7 before 6 will net you the story of Elibe in chronological order.

Just be warned though, Roy's growths are pretty terrible, at least from my experiences. 20/25% Def Growth is just... *shudder*

Roy's growths aren't bad, it's the promotion time that's the issue.
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Roy's growths aren't bad, it's the promotion time that's the issue.

Well, there's that, but being stuck at Level 20 with single digit Def Stats never really appealed to me. I'd rather not rely on his dodge capability and instead use a balance of both defensive measures so I've got more chance to survive high strength attacks.

It's odd though, because when I ran through FE7, Lyn's Defensive growth was never a problem, despite being 5% lower than Roy's...

Edited by Light Strategist
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20 def growth is roughly average for FE6, if he'd promote earlier he'd get those +5/+2/+2 promo gains and would survive things unless you really overextend him. 80 HP, 40 Str and 40 Spd growths are also about average. Roy's base stats are pretty bad though, which doesn't help. If those and his rapier would be better, he'd probably be decent.

I guess the Lyn thing is a result of FE7 being easier than FE6 overall.

Edited by Gradivus.
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All of them are probably worth playing except FE1 if you can stand them being dated. All of the pre-FE7 games have translation patches and FE12 does as well (it was never localized). I hate FE6, but my personal opinions aside.

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If you do use translation patches, you may want to hold off a bit on FE4 as it'll be getting a new translation patch soon. Of course by the time you get to it it'll probably(hopefully) already be out.

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You can play them in any order, I'd just recommend playing 9 before 10 and 11 before 12.

I haven't played 1-5, so I can't speak for them.

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I'd at least play FE7 and FE8 to start with, on account of them being beginner friendly.

Edited by Levant Mir Celestia
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FE8, FE6, FE7, FE1-3, FE4, FE9, FE10, FE5

Start with FE8 as that is one of the easiest, then move on to 6 as that is related to 7 which should be played next. I played 1-3 despite 1 and 3 having remakes, just for the experience of a prehistoric FE game. If you want to play them, play them next as they're pretty simple (they lack much of the mechanics of newer games). Haven't finished FE4, but it can be played next. I've yet to even touch FE5, but it is of course is notorious for its difficulty, and so I'd say play it last. FE10 is also difficult but should be played after FE9 as it is a sequel.

Didn't bother to include FE11 and 12 as I haven't played them, and also don't think it matters what order you play them in.

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I'd say play FE 11 and 12 over 1 and 3. I tried playing the NES games, but they're not nearly as user-friendly. I haven't played Gaiden, but since there's no remake for that, try it after all the other FEs if you still crave more FE.

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I went FE13 -> FE8 -> FE7 -> FE4 -> FE9 -> FE10 -> FE6 -> FE2 -> FE5 -> FE11 (currently playing)

It's a bit of a wonky order but it worked for me. If I had to re-marathon all of the games I'd probably play FE6 right after FE7, since it's neat to see some of the characters that you got to know in FE7 and what happens to them (sort of). I put off FE5 for a while because of the difficulty/translation and still have a rough time with it, so I'm planning on replaying it eventually.

I would definitely recommend either FE8 or FE7 first, because those two are probably the easiest and were made for beginners. They're also available on the WiiU eShop if you want to support the series/maybe push them a bit to rerelease some of the others on Virtual Console. Be warned that FE7 has an incredibly long tutorial section that railroads you through everything ("Press A to select a unit! Move the cursor! Press A again!" etc). Otherwise my only advice is to not immediately start with FE2 or FE5 because those two are a bit obtuse.

(Also if you play FE11 you don't have to play FE1 at all, but I have heard that FE12 is a bit different than FE3, so I'm personally planning on checking both out. FE12 is a remake, though)

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