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What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?


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8 minutes ago, Silver-Haired Maiden said:

My biggest issue with this is that if everyone's unique, unique stops being important or memorable. Unless you majorly downgrade the number of units the game gives you. With a cast of 20 or more characters though it would become a bit of a slog more than anything unique or memorable.

i'd be down for less units if that means more original classes and characters tbh

that could also help with the "too many supports -> low quality supports" problem that's been a thing since Awakening

 

EDIT:

@Jotari "True, but then there's also been a trend in significantly reducing the number of later game prepromotes you acquire in recent Fire Emblem games too. Especially in Three Houses where you pretty much have your entire team from the start of the second chapter."

yeah, that's true, but keep in mind that 3H is a very unusual FE, it's not really fair to compare it to older "more classic" FE games

Edited by Yexin
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1 hour ago, Yexin said:

point is, you're playing a strategy game, not a musou: thinking and acquiring as many informations as possible is this kind of games' core
also, if you lose a unit because you didn't want to check skills and stats, that's your fault for being superficial, not the game's for having added new elements

Compare to chess. Chess has six different types of piece. (Go would be an even more extreme example, with only one type of piece.) The interesting part of chess is not in having a ton of different rules and pieces and such. It's in the interesting ways that a small number of rules interact with each other. When I lose at chess, it's never because I've forgotten how the bishop moves or overlooked some obscure mechanic. It's because my strategy wasn't sound or I overlooked some tactical possibility. I find this a much more satisfying and less objectionable reason to lose than "I didn't want to spend ten minutes double checking every enemy unit's abilities because that's boring".

1 hour ago, Yexin said:

again, your arguments are in complete contrast with the fact that 3H is your favorite FE, which added so many redundant mechanics
i don't get this

Three Houses is my favourite primarily because of its characters and worldbuilding. This should absolutely not be taken to mean that I find it a flawless game or agree with all the design decisions made for it.

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16 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Compare to chess. Chess has six different types of piece. (Go would be an even more extreme example, with only one type of piece.) The interesting part of chess is not in having a ton of different rules and pieces and such. It's in the interesting ways that a small number of rules interact with each other. When I lose at chess, it's never because I've forgotten how the bishop moves or overlooked some obscure mechanic. It's because my strategy wasn't sound or I overlooked some tactical possibility. I find this a much more satisfying and less objectionable reason to lose than "I didn't want to spend ten minutes double checking every enemy unit's abilities because that's boring".

while FE borrows many elements from Chess, the fact that it is a single-player strategy Role Playing (Video)Game makes it completely different at the same time

Chess is a board strategy game where you necessarily need another player, a human being, to play (or a robot or an AI, even though they're still programmed to play like a competent human being would)
neither you and your opponent can cheat, and both of you need to have the same elements, because what makes the difference is your ability to see through your opponent's moves and counterattack


in FE you're not playing against another human, you're playing against a fairly dumb and exploitable AI, and you're supposed to overcome the challenges it presents you, because you have a story to follow and characters to meet
the game can cheat with elements the player's not allowed to use (unique mechanics and skills, higher stat caps, etc.), but you can do the same (dlc, farming and so on)
but even if you're supposed to win, this doesn't mean the game can't try to create difficult situations for you as a player (this is entirely up to IntSys' will to test players' skills, though)

recent FE games tried to add new mechanics (just like Pokemon) because IntSys knows FE can't go on always recycling the same elements game after game (unlike Pokemon), but imo they're missing the point of what needs to be added and what needs to be changed

16 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Three Houses is my favourite primarily because of its characters and worldbuilding. This should absolutely not be taken to mean that I find it a flawless game or agree with all the design decisions made for it.

fair enough, i'm sorry i assumed things

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33 minutes ago, Yexin said:

i'd be down for less units if that means more original classes and characters tbh

that could also help with the "too many supports -> low quality supports" problem that's been a thing since Awakening

That's fair and while I personally would be fine with that I can see the complaints already if they actually did it.

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1 hour ago, Yexin said:

i'd be down for less units if that means more original classes and characters tbh

that could also help with the "too many supports -> low quality supports" problem that's been a thing since Awakening

 

EDIT:

@Jotari "True, but then there's also been a trend in significantly reducing the number of later game prepromotes you acquire in recent Fire Emblem games too. Especially in Three Houses where you pretty much have your entire team from the start of the second chapter."

yeah, that's true, but keep in mind that 3H is a very unusual FE, it's not really fair to compare it to older "more classic" FE games

Well not just Three Houses. The bulk of units you acquire in the second half of the game for Awakening and Fates is almost entirely composed of child units, who don't really fit into the second half prepromote archtype. In fact they're designed to be inherently better than their parents mechanically and serve to displace them if you're willing to go out of your way to train them. Sure there are still some later game prepromotes like Flavia and Ryoma, but compare to pre Awakening games where you gain a new character on average every map and it doesn't really slow down that much at all towards the end game. When was the last time we've seen a Gotoh archtype? Not since Radiant Dawn as far as I can see (excluding remakes). My overall point here is that Fire Emblem has trended away towards perma death being a key design feature of the game and they have naturally compensated for this by making the recruitment in the game very front heavy. So complaining about Fire Emblem having late game units who are "the same class but worse" isn't something to really complain about when modern Fire Emblem isn't really doing it a whole lot anymore. And in the older games where they did do it they did it for good reason because, whether the fans decided to use it or not, the games were more designed around perma death being an aspect necessitating replacement units.

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18 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well not just Three Houses. The bulk of units you acquire in the second half of the game for Awakening and Fates is almost entirely composed of child units, who don't really fit into the second half prepromote archtype. In fact they're designed to be inherently better than their parents mechanically and serve to displace them if you're willing to go out of your way to train them.

In Awakening, yes, but in Fates they very much serve as serviceable but generally inferior prepromotes. With a few exceptions, the parents are nearly always better than the children, but you can recruit children at basically any time, auto-leveled to your point in the game, should you need them. It's... a weird use of child units, but mechanically it works surprisingly well.

Edited by Alastor15243
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Kinda related to @Yexin's post:
"Strategy-RPG" is a bad term to file the Fire Emblem series under.

Everything "strategical" about FE games already falls under "RPG". There's no economic planning, no diplomatic consideretions. Your long-term planning solely revolves around improving your characters and (to a smaller degree) item management - a.k.a. RPG elements. Otherwise, the games are focused on distinct fights that do not require any game-encompassing considereations outside of said RPG elements.

The much more accurate term would "Tactical RPG" (which I think is commonly used, too) or, if you want to be cynical, "Puzzle RPG" because the AI tends to be very readable and exploitable and hardly ever makes an effort to outmaneuver the player.

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1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

In Awakening, yes, but in Fates they very much serve as serviceable but generally inferior prepromotes. With a few exceptions, the parents are nearly always better than the children, but you can recruit children at basically any time, auto-leveled to your point in the game, should you need them. It's... a weird use of child units, but mechanically it works surprisingly well.

Well I can't say I've gamed the child units all that much because I really don't care about them that much, but if that's true then it's pretty horrid design, as the parents literally need to be alive for the children to be recruited. So they can never serve as replacement units and, if worse, suck as displacement units. Still I do personally find it nice to have a second Manakete/Wolfskin/Kitsune as those are generally pretty good classes in my experience.

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10 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well I can't say I've gamed the child units all that much because I really don't care about them that much, but if that's true then it's pretty horrid design, as the parents literally need to be alive for the children to be recruited. So they can never serve as replacement units and, if worse, suck as displacement units. Still I do personally find it nice to have a second Manakete/Wolfskin/Kitsune as those are generally pretty good classes in my experience.

I actually think (can't confirm personally but I've heard this from others) that you can still do paralogues even after the parents are dead, as long as you got them to S support.

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1 hour ago, ping said:

Kinda related to @Yexin's post:
"Strategy-RPG" is a bad term to file the Fire Emblem series under.

Everything "strategical" about FE games already falls under "RPG". There's no economic planning, no diplomatic consideretions. Your long-term planning solely revolves around improving your characters and (to a smaller degree) item management - a.k.a. RPG elements. Otherwise, the games are focused on distinct fights that do not require any game-encompassing considereations outside of said RPG elements.

The much more accurate term would "Tactical RPG" (which I think is commonly used, too) or, if you want to be cynical, "Puzzle RPG" because the AI tends to be very readable and exploitable and hardly ever makes an effort to outmaneuver the player.

Technically, there is economic planning, it's managing your money and inventory. (Well, in the games like Fe7 where you can't always buy stuff and money is actually somewhat scarce, enough to the point where you can't buy tons of everything.)
 

You're mostly thinking of Grand Strategy games/resource gathering strategy games.

Men of War tends to be labelled as a strategy game and it's basically just all about the combat side and nothing carries over into later missions. (Outside of a small handful of missions in the very first game, Soldiers:Heroes of WW2).)

Codename:Steam also lacks those elements and tends to be labelled a strategy game as well as good few other games where the focus is pretty much just on individual troop combat.

 

 

Edited by Samz707
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53 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Well I can't say I've gamed the child units all that much because I really don't care about them that much, but if that's true then it's pretty horrid design, as the parents literally need to be alive for the children to be recruited. So they can never serve as replacement units and, if worse, suck as displacement units. Still I do personally find it nice to have a second Manakete/Wolfskin/Kitsune as those are generally pretty good classes in my experience.

It was only his opinion. I, for example, think that Nina, Ophelia, Velouria, Percy and Ignatius are objectively better than their parents in all situations. And that is already half of the cast.
Sophie and Soleil are less sturdy than their papas but can be stronger, faster and defter; Forrest and Midori are different units than their papas, and Siegbert is worse than Xander, but he could be equal if he could wield Siegfried --which he should.

 

41 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

I actually think (can't confirm personally but I've heard this from others) that you can still do paralogues even after the parents are dead, as long as you got them to S support.

In various cases the papas need to "talk" to their children to recruit them. If the papa is dead, you must pray that the child survives the chapter (it remains a Green Unit until the end.)

 

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

My overall point here is that Fire Emblem has trended away towards perma death being a key design feature of the game and they have naturally compensated for this by making the recruitment in the game very front heavy. So complaining about Fire Emblem having late game units who are "the same class but worse" isn't something to really complain about when modern Fire Emblem isn't really doing it a whole lot anymore. And in the older games where they did do it they did it for good reason because, whether the fans decided to use it or not, the games were more designed around perma death being an aspect necessitating replacement units.

They could limit the number of units per map, say, from 14-15 to 10. This way, even if you recruited fifty units, you would necessarily focus on a smaller party. Supports would be unaffected because your party members may simply not interact with each other (I would still grant [some] support bonuses, even if no conversation were available among units.) And if they varied the growths/ bases/ skills of units that share the same class, you would have an incentive to try different units on different maps/ campaigns.

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21 hours ago, Yexin said:

i'd be down for less units if that means more original classes and characters tbh

that could also help with the "too many supports -> low quality supports" problem that's been a thing since Awakening

Ooh, time for my unpopular opinion!

"General support quality is independent of the number of supports available."

The GBA games have a lot of poor supports, that people seem to forget about (like Wil-Raven and Dorcas-Vaida). And Echoes, while it has the fewest support conversations in the series, has some really weak ones (Tobin-Kliff and Faye-Silque come to mind).

Meanwhile, as much as there are cringey and bad supports in Fates, there are lots of good ones, too (Oboro-Takumi, Jakob-Mozu, Corrin-Reina, Ryoma-Xander, to name a few). And Three Houses, despite coming just behind Fateswakening in number of supports, has some of my favorites in the series (Dimitri-Marianne, Annette-Gilbert, Seteth-Ingrid, Hubert-Ferdinand all come to mind).

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3 hours ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Ooh, time for my unpopular opinion!

"General support quality is independent of the number of supports available."

The GBA games have a lot of poor supports, that people seem to forget about (like Wil-Raven and Dorcas-Vaida). And Echoes, while it has the fewest support conversations in the series, has some really weak ones (Tobin-Kliff and Faye-Silque come to mind).

Meanwhile, as much as there are cringey and bad supports in Fates, there are lots of good ones, too (Oboro-Takumi, Jakob-Mozu, Corrin-Reina, Ryoma-Xander, to name a few). And Three Houses, despite coming just behind Fateswakening in number of supports, has some of my favorites in the series (Dimitri-Marianne, Annette-Gilbert, Seteth-Ingrid, Hubert-Ferdinand all come to mind).

Oh my god thank you!!!!! I am so tired of people saying fewer supports = better quality as if it has anything to do with quality vs quantity issue when quantity has NOTHING to do with it. It is purely a quality issue

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Probably also because earlier games with supports limited the number you could see in some way - you have to actively work towards them in the gba games and Path of Radiance limited each character to viewing 5 support convos period. Awakening removed the limit of the number of supports you can see (except for S Supports, which you can only see one per pair), and thus you can theoretically see most of the non-S supports in a single playthrough.

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On 7/26/2020 at 7:50 PM, Samz707 said:

Technically, there is economic planning, it's managing your money and inventory. (Well, in the games like Fe7 where you can't always buy stuff and money is actually somewhat scarce, enough to the point where you can't buy tons of everything.)
 

You're mostly thinking of Grand Strategy games/resource gathering strategy games.

Men of War tends to be labelled as a strategy game and it's basically just all about the combat side and nothing carries over into later missions. (Outside of a small handful of missions in the very first game, Soldiers:Heroes of WW2).)

Codename:Steam also lacks those elements and tends to be labelled a strategy game as well as good few other games where the focus is pretty much just on individual troop combat.

I haven't played those games, but the way you describe them, it's likely that I would file them under tactical games. ;):

Money management in FE is pretty much the same as it is in Pokémon or Final Fantasy, and I would think that both of those franchises are very definitely RPGs. You find money and valuables from drops, on the map (chests and villages in FE) and the occasional story event. You spend money on equipment and, sometimes, stat boosters. FE is different in that all of your equipment is finite in usage, but there's no mechanics to generate money that are separate from the tactical aspects of FE.

I mean nothing of this as a slight against Fire Emblem, by the way, not even the "Puzzle RPG". More doesn't always equal better, I think FE is pretty good at what it does do, and I doubt that a tacked-on economic simulation would improve the series.

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Three Houses should have used the Fates model of having routes sold separately.

Crimson Flower is too short. Verdant Wind and Silver Snow are nearly identical, and Azure Moon isn't much different from them, either. All of them feel like they have pieces missing, and the first half of the game is the same no matter which one you pick. How many of you have made these same complaints?

Say what you will about the quality of Fates' writing and I will probably agree with you, but you can't make the above complaints. Birthright, Conquest, and Revelation are all the same length, all pretty drastically different from one another, and all tell their full story. Why? Because each one was deliberately made to be its own full game experience due to how the game was being sold in three parts. I defended it even back then, understanding that if they sold it all in one package we would have gotten less, and Three Houses proved me right.

People whined about Fates being sold in parts, so Three Houses came in one package, but the result is quantity over quality. I'd much prefer to have payed $60 for one route that feels truly complete, and another $60 for two (or three) more equally complete, than pay $60 for recycled and unfinished content.

I have a conflicted relationship with Three Houses...

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9 minutes ago, Florete said:

Three Houses should have used the Fates model of having routes sold separately.

Crimson Flower is too short. Verdant Wind and Silver Snow are nearly identical, and Azure Moon isn't much different from them, either. All of them feel like they have pieces missing, and the first half of the game is the same no matter which one you pick. How many of you have made these same complaints?

Say what you will about the quality of Fates' writing and I will probably agree with you, but you can't make the above complaints. Birthright, Conquest, and Revelation are all the same length, all pretty drastically different from one another, and all tell their full story. Why? Because each one was deliberately made to be its own full game experience due to how the game was being sold in three parts. I defended it even back then, understanding that if they sold it all in one package we would have gotten less, and Three Houses proved me right.

People whined about Fates being sold in parts, so Three Houses came in one package, but the result is quantity over quality. I'd much prefer to have payed $60 for one route that feels truly complete, and another $60 for two (or three) more equally complete, than pay $60 for recycled and unfinished content.

I have a conflicted relationship with Three Houses...

I'm not sure that would have been viable. Much as people complained about Fates, but all things considered it really wasn't that expensive. A single copy of Three Houses is almost as expensive as all three routes of Fates on release, having to buy that four times over probably wouldn't have garnered the same sales.

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1 minute ago, Jotari said:

I'm not sure that would have been viable. Much as people complained about Fates, but all things considered it really wasn't that expensive. A single copy of Three Houses is almost as expensive as all three routes of Fates on release, having to buy that four times over probably wouldn't have garnered the same sales.

If they'd done it this way, and thus planned it from the start, I think they would have limited it to three routes (or even two), so Silver Snow wouldn't exist. And I also assume subsequent routes would be half price like Fates so you wouldn't be paying $60 (or your regional equivalent) for every route. That aside, maybe you're right, but that wasn't my point. I'm just saying it would have resulted in a better experience.

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1 hour ago, Florete said:

If they'd done it this way, and thus planned it from the start, I think they would have limited it to three routes (or even two), so Silver Snow wouldn't exist. And I also assume subsequent routes would be half price like Fates so you wouldn't be paying $60 (or your regional equivalent) for every route. That aside, maybe you're right, but that wasn't my point. I'm just saying it would have resulted in a better experience.

I could see maybe two games, but really for something like that you'd need to restructure the entire narrative and probably cut Claude and Byleth. That would be pretty cool if both were developed as two full parallel games, but for what we got I trust Nintendo examined exactly how they could grab as much cash as possible from the developing project and determined multiple routes for sale wasn't the best way to go about it. I wouldn't expect them to back way from that choice after how sucessful it was for Fates, so I can only conclude they determined it wasn't a sound strategy for the scale they wanted.

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On 7/27/2020 at 11:51 AM, RomanFlour said:

Probably also because earlier games with supports limited the number you could see in some way - you have to actively work towards them in the gba games and Path of Radiance limited each character to viewing 5 support convos period. Awakening removed the limit of the number of supports you can see (except for S Supports, which you can only see one per pair), and thus you can theoretically see most of the non-S supports in a single playthrough.

I'm confused, what are you trying to say here? Like, I acknowledge that the ability to gain supports was more limited in earlier games, while Awakening onward made many more acessible on a single playthrough. But how does that relate to the support conversations' quality, or the perception thereof?

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24 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I'm confused, what are you trying to say here? Like, I acknowledge that the ability to gain supports was more limited in earlier games, while Awakening onward made many more acessible on a single playthrough. But how does that relate to the support conversations' quality, or the perception thereof?

I guess the logic is that in the older games the average player sees far fewer supports, so they also see far fewer bad supports. But in modern games where it's easy to see the majority of available supports in a single playthrough, you also get to see far more of the bad supports. So while the percentage of bad supports never actually changed, the accessibility to them did which altered perception.

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13 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I guess the logic is that in the older games the average player sees far fewer supports, so they also see far fewer bad supports. But in modern games where it's easy to see the majority of available supports in a single playthrough, you also get to see far more of the bad supports. So while the percentage of bad supports never actually changed, the accessibility to them did which altered perception.

For me personally I found it to be the opposite, my perception of the characters in the older games is actually far worse due to the limited number of supports I could view because the supports I did see were lacking in depth which made my general impression of the character feel like they were more one dimensional than they actually were. In contrast the more supports I saw in the newer titles the more my appreciation for the character grew simply because I got to see more of them and gain an appreciation for all the little nuances that make them up.

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2 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

For me personally I found it to be the opposite, my perception of the characters in the older games is actually far worse due to the limited number of supports I could view because the supports I did see were lacking in depth which made my general impression of the character feel like they were more one dimensional than they actually were. In contrast the more supports I saw in the newer titles the more my appreciation for the character grew simply because I got to see more of them and gain an appreciation for all the little nuances that make them up.

I wasn't really talking about the actual characters, but the supports themselves.

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I think Edelgard is a fantastic character. A lot of people dislike her but I feel she is incredibly well written and a great 

Spoiler

antagonist

I remember I lost my mind when I found out the twist of

Spoiler

Her being the Flame Emperor

when I first played the game on Golden Deer. It was so unexpected. And her war speech following right after gave me goosebumps and I still remember just being in awe and at shock through out the entirety of it while watching that scene. It was such a well done twist and she lived up to being such a well done antagonist. My favorite in the series by far. Let me know what you guys think about Edelgard!!

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