What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?

[redlight]

Three Houses is meh. It's okay like a 7.5ish, but they really dropped the ball.

[starburst]

On 8/20/2019 at 5:25 AM, redlight said:

Three Houses is meh. It's okay like a 7.5ish, but they really dropped the ball.

I did not like what I played of it either. But now that Three Houses has been in the wild for a couple of weeks and the hype has diminished, it is more common to read honest criticism about it. From the lack of challenge to how much re-playability is affected by both the heavy reuse of maps across campaigns and how soon the monastery gets tiresome. Or the contradiction between a layered class system and the clear favouritism to few, specific classes. Every unit can wield most weapons, yet most units prefer the exact same class and the gameplay does very little to incentivise class diversity.
Who knows. Your opinion may not be that unpopular after all.

[Vince777]

Yeah I was disappointed to see that they re-used campaign maps for the paralogues and the game difficulty, on it's hardest mode, is definitely a joke for anyone actually looking for a challenge and I'm usually not even one of those players.

The replayability is hampered a bit to me by how lenghty the pre-skip campaign is, considering it will be pretty much the same on all 4 routes. 

Never been a fan of the "every unit can be every class" formula but that isn't new to 3H.

Still love the game. 

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Vince777

[Flee Fleet!]

Pre time-skip Lorenz's hair > Post time-skip Lorenz's hair.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Flee Fleet!

[Alastor15243]

Three Houses' writing isn't very good. The writers failed to really give any sort of personality to anyone's vocabulary, causing a lot of voice performances to sound incredibly awkward despite the voice talent, and a lot of personality and charm was taken out of various in-game voice lines for the sake of overcompensating for the series' steps into the realm of anime. Nobody ever has anything remotely memorable to say when you select them, when you level them up, when they score a critical, or even when you do activities with them around the Monastery, which is a shocking downgrade from Fates and Echoes.

Everyone seems to love Claude. I guarantee that if Claude had been in Echoes, he would have had way, way better lines.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Alastor15243

[Shadow Mir]

Other opinions that I hold that are unpopular:

-Niles is a lousy unit who is outclassed by Anna and his daughter
-Malig Knight Elise is a gimmick
-Axes suck in most FE games

Edited August 22, 2019 by Shadow Mir

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Hilda as wyvern lord is better than FE10 Jill. 

[Flere210]

1 hour ago, Lysithea said:

Hilda as wyvern lord is better than FE10 Jill. 

Whit or whitout transfers?

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

11 hours ago, Flere210 said:

Whit or whitout transfers?

with

 

[De Geso]

Echoes is pretty underwhelming as a whole package, with the only really good parts isolated to a handful of maps. The story is just okay and not mind-blowing. Overall I'd rather play Fates again than Echoes.

Bernadetta isn't annoying, but her battle select quote in the Japanese dub when she gets injured is.

Edelgard was right, and would have been right even if

Spoiler

Rhea wasn't a dragon.

 

[Rapier]

Not sure if it's an unpopular opinion, but 3H's MC was the best MC execution in FE until now, imo. It's much better to have a character who has plot importance, but who doesn't outshine other characters who are responsible for driving it further. Like how Byleth is very important, but so is the main trio and they're still the driving force of the story, rather than complements to the MC.

[Alastor15243]

2 minutes ago, Rapier said:

Not sure if it's an unpopular opinion, but 3H's MC was the best MC execution in FE until now, imo. It's much better to have a character who has plot importance, but who doesn't outshine other characters who are responsible for driving it further. Like how Byleth is very important, but so is the main trio and they're still the driving force of the story, rather than complements to the MC.

In that respect I agree. I just wish Byleth were a remotely interesting character.

[Strullemia]

I like Edelgard.

I think Dimitri is overrated. I can see why people like him but I certainly disagree with him being the best lord.

Blue Lions is the worst route. I personally like the Black Eagles route the most but even so I think Golden Deer is actually the best. It has the best gameplay, it's the most challenging route and has the best full story package.

[Alastor15243]

Alright, I guess I'll drop my biggest, most controversial opinion:

The rewind mechanic, as implemented, made Three Houses a worse game.

I personally despise the rewind mechanic as implemented in Echoes and Three Houses. I wouldn't mind it if it were placed in the game as an optional difficulty setting, like casual mode or the rewinds in Invisible Inc. But the fact that the games made them an omnipresent, plot-integrated gameplay mechanic bothers me for several reasons, mainly having to do with developer mindset. I recognize that, in the strictly technical sense, I can "just not use it", but the issue is what it says about game developer intentions. It's become quite obvious to me after playing Three Houses that now that the rewind mechanic has been implemented, the developers expect everyone to use it, even the people who like the classic permadeath experience where the risk of character death was a perpetual looming threat and you had to make tough decisions whenever you screwed up and somebody died. This game expects those people to use the divine pulse and somehow be satisfied with the challenge, despite the fact that the game isn't remotely hard enough to justify the number of extra lives it gives you. How do I know this?

Because they intentionally added, and invented, various gameplay features that seem to serve no purpose but to make playing without the divine pulse as much of an exercise in anger and paranoia as it can be. The game finds all sorts of crazy ways to force you to die no matter how skilled you are, whether that be through ambush spawns where it's a roll of the dice if you even have the power to react to them (because they spawn on your turn and don't care how many units you still have left to move when they spawn), spontaneously changing victory conditions or even just flat out lying to you about what the victory conditions are and then punishing you for trying to complete them, telling you an enemy can't move and then spontaneously deciding on enemy phase that it now can, refusing to be consistent on whether enemies can or can't spawn and move on the same turn, and in one case allowing enemies to spontaneously shapeshift into new ones with different stats, again on enemy phase before you have any time to react.

None of these things can be countered with skill. None of these things can be avoided on the first try without playing in a tedious and paranoid manner that the game shouldn't be encouraging. None of these things even present a challenge at all after they sucker punch you once. They essentially serve no purpose other than to punish first time players for daring to play the old way, which is a shockingly ballsy thing to do before they even figured out how to make their new way to play remotely challenging. Because without these things, playing the game without the divine pulse would be no harder than playing Path of Radiance.

This isn't how you incentivize a new mechanic. This would be like creating a sequel to a hardcore platformer and adding in extra lives without making the difficulty any harder to compensate for it, but instead adding in assorted I Wanna Be The Guy style troll traps to make sure the player still needs those extra lives to win.

Contrast this game with Conquest, which is extremely challenging and unforgiving of mistakes, but which goes to hell and back to make sure that if you lose, it's because of something you did wrong. It makes sure to give the player enough information that a sufficiently talented player could reliably beat the whole game flawlessly on their first try. That, I feel, is way, way better game design, and I think it's a shame that it didn't become the new standard design philosophy for the series.

[Anya]

I'm not sure if these are unpopular opinions, but more like things I never hear:

- Ferdinand von Aegir has some of the most interesting dynamics with some of the characters, and I think a character like him being the MC (as in Byleth, Corrin, etc) would be interesting. They could start off the game with MC being annoying but then move them into the background of conversations rather than making a full blank slate MC.

-I wish there was the use of unreliable narration in Fire Emblem games

 

And these are probably some really controversial opinions:

- Marianne has a really cute design, and I like some of her supports, but I feel that some of them were way too gimmicky with the whole "My ancestors were cursed therefore I'm cursed". She kind of fell flat.

- I really liked Lysithea when playing Golden Deer (especially as a character, she's very sweet and cute), but the whole dark knight meme and people saying that she's super OP and basically over-promoting her as best girl has made me lose interest in her.

- A lot of people like Felix (I do too) but his character is literally just a tsundere (I only did GD and BE so maybe there's something more to him). I kind of wish there was more depth to his character, but maybe it's covered in blue lions.

- I feel that they should've made Dimitri look more muscular in post-timeskip to show how much he's grown. In post-timeskip he's literally a bishie with an eyepatch, lol.

[Ottservia]

12 minutes ago, Anya said:

A lot of people like Felix (I do too) but his character is literally just a tsundere (I only did GD and BE so maybe there's something more to him). I kind of wish there was more depth to his character, but maybe it's covered in blue lions.

And what’s wrong with Tsundere? That’s a plus in my book. 

13 minutes ago, Anya said:

Marianne has a really cute design, and I like some of her supports, but I feel that some of them were way too gimmicky with the whole "My ancestors were cursed therefore I'm cursed". She kind of fell flat.

I’m not gonna necessarily agree but I do see where you’re coming from. Personally, I tend to gravitate towards characters who are generally more abrasive and unlikable from the outset(I mean if that wasn’t obvious enough) cause usually those characters tend to have the most depth I tend to find. Cause like usually with like sweet cinnamon bun characters or nice guys or whatever, they don’t usually deviate from that characterization. Like yeah you’ll have the odd but of angst or brief burst of anger but usually your perception of them stays relatively the same. Unlikable or abrasive characters are unique in that if done well your perception of them shifts relatively dramatically over time cause of the inherent way in which they are written. Like what I find to be the most endearing about these characters is when they’re not acting so abrasively. That stark contrast from how they usually act is refreshing and adds a great deal of depth to their character which is something I appreciate. Unlike other characters these characters show the most emotional range and complexity which makes them feel very human to me. Sorry for the tangent it’s just something on my mind as of late

[Etrurian emperor]

22 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

And what’s wrong with Tsundere? That’s a plus in my book. 

Tsundere's as a whole are somewhat controversial. As a character archetype you either love it or you hate it. Where some people think its rewarding to dig through the cold to find the soft bits others find the cold shoulder treatment to be off putting. 

There are tsundere's I like such as Takumi but there's also a high failure rate where they fail to properly justify there actions and instead come off as mere jerks. At least to me. 

Edited August 25, 2019 by Etrurian emperor

[Alastor15243]

1 minute ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Tsundere's as a whole are somewhat controversial. As a character archetype you either love it or you hate it. 

There are tsundere's I like such as Takumi but there's also a high failure rate where they fail to properly justify there actions and instead come off as mere jerks. At least to me. 

Really the best ones are the ones that are transparently struggling to pretend to be assholes, or even just flat-out suck at it, while not really doing anything overtly awful.

[Ottservia]

14 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Really the best ones are the ones that are transparently struggling to pretend to be assholes, or even just flat-out suck at it, while not really doing anything overtly awful.

Bingo. Really the main crux of tsunderes is that they are absolutely terrible at hiding their feelings for one reason or another. It’s that sort of “embarrassed” duality in their words and obvious blush that just makes it really cute to me. Cause like they care but they refuse to admit to it and I find that adorable. Great tsunderes(like Taiga and Severa) have the added benefit of being complex and multi-layered characters on top of that so it’s a win win scenario for me

[Anya]

29 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

And what’s wrong with Tsundere? That’s a plus in my book. 

I’m not gonna necessarily agree but I do see where you’re coming from. Personally, I tend to gravitate towards characters who are generally more abrasive and unlikable from the outset(I mean if that wasn’t obvious enough) cause usually those characters tend to have the most depth I tend to find. Cause like usually with like sweet cinnamon bun characters or nice guys or whatever, they don’t usually deviate from that characterization. Like yeah you’ll have the odd but of angst or brief burst of anger but usually your perception of them stays relatively the same. Unlikable or abrasive characters are unique in that if done well your perception of them shifts relatively dramatically over time cause of the inherent way in which they are written. Like what I find to be the most endearing about these characters is when they’re not acting so abrasively. That stark contrast from how they usually act is refreshing and adds a great deal of depth to their character which is something I appreciate. Unlike other characters these characters show the most emotional range and complexity which makes them feel very human to me. Sorry for the tangent it’s just something on my mind as of late

There's nothing wrong with him being a tsundere, it's more that I'm writing a character who is one and when you're so exposed to them, then what they do becomes too predictable (for me at least). I play too many otome games with characters who look and act just like him, so I guess it's too much exposure to them on my part. I like it when characters break expectations, like in Ashe and Felix's support (the video links to ALL of Ashe's supports, but I embedded the link to go on Felix and Ashe).

As for Marianne, I'm not sure if I would call her abrasive or unlikable. It's more that her supports feel redundant without focusing on different aspects of her personality. It might be because I did the wrong supports, but in many of her supports, she kept saying something along the lines of "I'm not very good at talking, so..." and idk a lot of the supports felt repetitive in their solutions. I swear I'm not an Ashe fan, but I really appreciate how they approach Marianne's problem with her self-confidence (Ashe and Marianne's support), it feels different from the others, and Raphael's too.

[Strullemia]

1 hour ago, Anya said:

And these are probably some really controversial opinions:

- Marianne has a really cute design, and I like some of her supports, but I feel that some of them were way too gimmicky with the whole "My ancestors were cursed therefore I'm cursed". She kind of fell flat.

- I really liked Lysithea when playing Golden Deer (especially as a character, she's very sweet and cute), but the whole dark knight meme and people saying that she's super OP and basically over-promoting her as best girl has made me lose interest in her.

- A lot of people like Felix (I do too) but his character is literally just a tsundere (I only did GD and BE so maybe there's something more to him). I kind of wish there was more depth to his character, but maybe it's covered in blue lions.

- I feel that they should've made Dimitri look more muscular in post-timeskip to show how much he's grown. In post-timeskip he's literally a bishie with an eyepatch, lol.

Why let the way the fanbase talks about a certain character influence how you feel about them? I never understood that.

[Ottservia]

3 minutes ago, Anya said:

There's nothing wrong with him being a tsundere, it's more that I'm writing a character who is one and when you're so exposed to them, then what they do becomes too predictable (for me at least). I play too many otome games with characters who look and act just like him, so I guess it's too much exposure to them on my part. I like it when characters break expectations, like in Ashe and Felix's support (the video links to ALL of Ashe's supports, but I embedded the link to go on Felix and Ashe).

I get that. When you watch enough anime with tsundere characters you tend to really pick up on how they operate not that that stops me from liking them though.

 

4 minutes ago, Anya said:

As for Marianne, I'm not sure if I would call her abrasive or unlikable. It's more that her supports feel redundant without focusing on different aspects of her personality. It might be because I did the wrong supports, but in many of her supports, she kept saying something along the lines of "I'm not very good at talking, so..." and idk a lot of the supports felt repetitive in their solutions. I swear I'm not an Ashe fan, but I really appreciate how they approach Marianne's problem with her self-confidence (Ashe and Marianne's support), it feels different from the others, and Raphael's too.

My point wasn’t to say that Marianne was unlikable or abrasive. My main point in all of that was that I agree that Marianne is kind of flat because she doesn’t show as much emotional range or complexity as the usually abrasive characters like Felix do. Like we don’t get to see too many different sides to Marianne cause she’s sad constantly. Unlike with a character like Felix we get to see when he’s angry, frustrated, indifferent, confused, etc. we get to see different sides to him which adds depth to his character. Marianne we don’t get to see a whole lot of that which is fine for the most part but it’s nice to see characters acting out of their norm every now and again.

[Anya]

Just now, Hekselka said:

Why let the way the fanbase talks about a certain character influence how you feel about them? I never understood that.

I guess it just undermines other characters too. I was on reddit the other day, and people were comparing Hubert and Lysithea, and there was an obvious bias towards liking Lysithea even though I like both. I guess it's sort of a thing for liking the underdog (and why I like Randolph and Ignatz)

1 minute ago, Ottservia said:

My point wasn’t to say that Marianne was unlikable or abrasive. My main point in all of that was that I agree that Marianne is kind of flat because she doesn’t show as much emotional range or complexity as the usually abrasive characters like Felix do. Like we don’t get to see too many different sides to Marianne cause she’s sad constantly. Unlike with a character like Felix we get to see when he’s angry, frustrated, indifferent, confused, etc. we get to see different sides to him which adds depth to his character. Marianne we don’t get to see a whole lot of that which is fine for the most part but it’s nice to see characters acting out of their norm every now and again.

Now I wanna see a Marianne ridden with vengeance ahaha, interesting points you make!

[Julian Solo]

Echoes story is the worst Jrpg story I have ever seen in my life if not the worst written story I have ever encountered. Generic light novel anime protagonist. Who has had no actual experience compared to over 90% of the lords in the series is a super op demigod general. Who has two dimensional flat caricature cheer leader squad childhood friends. Who just exist to make him look awesome. It's even noted he doesn't have the resources to topple the superior Rigelian miltary and his army is tired from the civil war. He does it anyway with no reprocussions. Him being a secret prince make the whole big fuss of him being a commoner and that being ok pointless. And sends the opposite message that being rich makes you better then the poor. His one big character support when he tells Mycen to screw off gets ruined by him going I don't care I murdered my father and causin I just wanted you to still be my grandfather. Wait what he abused and lied to you blank of static wood. Also he tells Berkut my genocidal daddy was the coolest guy ever. When he was told not to kill Berkut because it would have reprocussions he does it anyway and no one cares because it's Alm. Also Berkuts whole thing of going to heaven because his mommy was secretly dead is vomitingly stupid and contrived even for FE standards.

Celica whose supposed to be Alms equal she isn't shes incompetent and has to get rescued a bunch of times. Then the story forgets about her despite trying harder to make her an actual character. Also they boringly reuse the damsel in distress troupe  clichely like 12 times orginal game. Plus every female gets degraded to a boring sandwich making house wife when it doesn't fit there characters just perfect writing. 

Also the supports are pretty bad and the continent is just two countries? Even Fates horrible world buildimg had 12 human tribes everyone came from.

[Dark Holy Elf]

I don't know about "worst JRPG story ever" but I do agree that Echoes' story is really bad (it actively sabotages its themes and makes negative use of its setting) and extremely misogynist.

On 8/25/2019 at 7:15 AM, Alastor15243 said:

Alright, I guess I'll drop my biggest, most controversial opinion:

The rewind mechanic, as implemented, made Three Houses a worse game.

Y'know I think I agree with this overall. Rewind has encouraged me to be a lazier FE player and I'll probably find the game less long-term satisfying from a gameplay perspective than some of the others as a result. I think I'm going to have to start forcing myself not to use it, but as you mentioned there are some things you really need to learn about the game first. I really like Three Houses so it'll be interesting to see how it holds up in no-rewind land.

Ironically the FE game which would benefit from rewind the most to my mind is FEH, since there's no RNG to abuse and of course it has a touchscreen interface where misclicks (the main thing I would really like rewind for) are more common. But it's also the only FE from the last three years not to have it.

Agreed on the comments about Conquest being beautifully designed and giving you the needed information to succeed on a classic no-rewind difficulty.