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What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?


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39 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Herons are slight and graceful in appearance with androgynous males, they have pointy ears, they live for hundreds of years, and they have a close spiritual connection to their forest home. Are you trying to tell me that they aren't elves?

> Long-lived pointy-eared race with a deep affinity for nature

> Talking animals, including a nigh-invincible Lion character

> A character who can turn their enemies into stone

> Heavy religious theming

> Bad people doing slavery

Well shit, we already got Narnia Emblem in Tellius, huh.

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21 hours ago, WraithReborn said:

I think the next FE game should try to take more inspiration from classic Western fantasy stories, other then LoTR or Wheel of Time.

1 hour ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Narnia Emblem

Oh boy, I can't wait to see C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien duke it out in the next Fire Emblem game!

Now, I personally like the style that Fire Emblem typically takes, but heck, I'm always down for some well-made Christian evangelism.

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

Well shit, we already got Narnia Emblem in Tellius, huh.

New headcanon: Largo was mostly absent from Radiant Dawn after he developed an interest in nylons and lipstick.

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10 hours ago, ping said:

Wait, there can be Fantasy that isn't in some way inspired by Tolkien?

Directly or indirectly, almost every fantasy story will be influenced by Middle-earth, and if it's through the author's attempt to avoid writing "tolkienesque" literature.

Yeah, it’s called sword and sorcery and predates Tolkien’s work by about a decade. There are a lot of fantasy stories written before even The Hobbit was published in 1937, some examples include:

 

2 hours ago, Metal Flash said:

Could you please elaborate? In what ways do you want FE to take more inspiration from other fantasy works? I like the idea a lot, but also wonder what could be carried over without turning FE into a high fantasy series rather than the low fantasy it tends to be.

There is a lot of fantasy that isn’t high fantasy. The Black Company is gritty, and grim dark following a mercenary company, Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser is light hearted and funny sword and sorcery, The Book of the New Sun is science fantasy and religious musing from a future where the sun is dying. I can name well over a half dozen series that FE could be inspired by. What I meant was the idea that FE could try to take inspiration from the classics, much like original D&D did in the 1970s to broaden the kinds of stories it can tell. Imagine an FE game akin to Thieves’ World where you have a colorful cast of characters in a gritty city like Sanctuary, where everyone is out for themselves in a place that was once part of a empire which has recently been conquered by another empire. This creates a lot of interesting ideas as different people sucking up to the new power and politics being set up in the city or rebelling to bring back the old order or everything in between.

Edited by WraithReborn
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3 minutes ago, WraithReborn said:

Yeah, it’s called sword and sorcery and predates Tolkien’s work by about a decade. There are a lot of fantasy stories written before even The Hobbit was published in 1937, some examples include:

That's quite interesting. I've heard the term "sword and sorcery" before, but I didn't know that it goes back that far. I always assumed that it would have come up around the same time as ol' Dungeons and Dragons. Looking at the Wikipedia page, that was at least not completely without reason ("Karl Edward Wagner's Kane novels, beginning with Darkness Weaves (1970), credited with reinvigorating the genre."), so I don't feel quite as sheepish :lol:

As a vivid Baldur's Gate and Discworld fan, I'm acquaintanced with the name "Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser" - Fafhrd is used as a password for the Thieves' Guild in BG, and I know that Rincewind narrates the plot of the first Discworld novel to expies of the two titular characters.

I'll keep the audiobooks in mind for when I have to do chores, thank you for the recommendation. :]

--

@Jotari - That's fair. I still think that Tolkien was a major "filter" for what is now considered "standard western fantasy", which Fire Emblem certainly based itself on. But since WraithReborn demostrated that my sense of time in that regard has been way off, I should not fight for this position.

(I should probably specify western fantasy, just in general)

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15 minutes ago, ping said:

That's quite interesting. I've heard the term "sword and sorcery" before, but I didn't know that it goes back that far. I always assumed that it would have come up around the same time as ol' Dungeons and Dragons. Looking at the Wikipedia page, that was at least not completely without reason ("Karl Edward Wagner's Kane novels, beginning with Darkness Weaves (1970), credited with reinvigorating the genre."), so I don't feel quite as sheepish :lol:

Argued to be the first sword and sorcery tale from 1908 by Lord Dunsay:

Robert E Howard’s Kull of Atlantis story which many argue is the first true sword and sorcery tale from 1929:

Fafhrd and The Greg Mouser exert from The Swords of Lanhkmar:

 

Edited by WraithReborn
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On 10/6/2021 at 12:51 PM, WraithReborn said:

I think the next FE game should try to take more inspiration from classic Western fantasy stories, other then LoTR or Wheel of Time.

I've never seen much LoTR influence in the Fire Emblem series, I have always seen a lot more Arthurian influences. I can kinda see the Wheel of Time influences possibly seeping into it, especially with the Archanea remakes, by focusing on personal hardships that are pressed into a person when the are a chosen hero (plus the implied cyclical nature of Medeus's return...).

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18 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

plus the implied cyclical nature of Medeus's return...

I mean that could also be a nod to buddhism and to a lesser extent Hinduism. In how we are all trapped in an endless cycle of death and rebirth and that existence itself is suffering. Though over the course of many lifetimes and self-improvement we can free ourselves from that cycle. The cyclical nature of Medeus could be a reflection of this idea which traps the continent into an endless cycle of war and hate across generations. The Zelda series actually tackles similar ideas with how link, Ganon, and Zelda are all trapped in an endless cycle of reincarnation forced to conflict with one another. A lot of eastern stories take inspiration from buddhist philosophies and I doubt Fire Emblem is any exception 

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11 hours ago, WraithReborn said:

There is a lot of fantasy that isn’t high fantasy. The Black Company is gritty, and grim dark following a mercenary company, Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser is light hearted and funny sword and sorcery, The Book of the New Sun is science fantasy and religious musing from a future where the sun is dying. I can name well over a half dozen series that FE could be inspired by. What I meant was the idea that FE could try to take inspiration from the classics, much like original D&D did in the 1970s to broaden the kinds of stories it can tell. Imagine an FE game akin to Thieves’ World where you have a colorful cast of characters in a gritty city like Sanctuary, where everyone is out for themselves in a place that was once part of a empire which has recently been conquered by another empire. This creates a lot of interesting ideas as different people sucking up to the new power and politics being set up in the city or rebelling to bring back the old order or everything in between.

Alright then.

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8 hours ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

I've never seen much LoTR influence in the Fire Emblem series, I have always seen a lot more Arthurian influences. I can kinda see the Wheel of Time influences possibly seeping into it, especially with the Archanea remakes, by focusing on personal hardships that are pressed into a person when the are a chosen hero (plus the implied cyclical nature of Medeus's return...).

I was saying that FE should look to other inspirations besides LoTR due to its popularity, not that the series already copied a lot from the Tolkien’s work. Sorry if I didn’t originally make that clear enough.

Edited by WraithReborn
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4 hours ago, -Moonlight- said:

the brawler class is underappreciated by three houses players. (in my opinion at least..)
especially in felix...

What makes you say that? Personally, I think that it's a terrible class and a strong contender for the worst class in the game, so I'd be interested to hear what you like about it.

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I can see use to Brawler if you want to increase your gauntlet ranks via combat proficiency too. Getting Fistfaire as an equipable skill can be useful, but other than grinding skill ranks, yeah, I don't see a whole lot of use out of it. It doesn't provide any particularly useful skills and all the other non magic classes can use gauntlets anyway. And even if you see it as a stepping stone to getting Fistfaire, I don't think you can equip the same -faire skill twice, and if you're building a unit around gauntlets then you're probably going to stick them in Warmaster or Battle Monk anyway. And if you're putting that much investment in to try and get Fistfaire, you probably won't have many skill ranks left over to go for anything else.

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4 hours ago, -Moonlight- said:

the brawler class is underappreciated by three houses players. (in my opinion at least..)
especially in felix...

Depends, if you mean the weapon type in general, then I think people are generally pretty happy with brawling- grappler is considered a great class, as is War Master. If you mean the actual intermediate class, Brawler, then yeah I agree with lenticular that it is a pretty bad class.

1 minute ago, Jotari said:

I can see use to Brawler if you want to increase your gauntlet ranks via combat proficiency too. Getting Fistfaire as an equipable skill can be useful, but other than grinding skill ranks, yeah, I don't see a whole lot of use out of it. It doesn't provide any particularly useful skills and all the other non magic classes can use gauntlets anyway. And even if you see it as a stepping stone to getting Fistfaire, I don't think you can equip the same -faire skill twice, and if you're building a unit around gauntlets then you're probably going to stick them in Warmaster or Battle Monk anyway. And if you're putting that much investment in to try and get Fistfaire, you probably won't have many skill ranks left over to go for anything else.

Faire skills can stack if you get a class with it and the S+ version, so there is a legitimate reason for it. But yeah that is something I guess, if you really want to optimise skill ranks.

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maybe I'll have some more interesting takes once I finish a fire emblem game that isn't three houses but here's what I have right now

  • dorothea really isn't that interesting of a character and I don't know why she seems to be so popular
  • VW has a weak plot but the characters more than make up for it
  • a lot of fe7's characters are rather uninteresting.  I never made it past the last 5 chapters or so but from my experience they really don't have much going on
  • ephraim should've been in smash instead of sora.  honestly I would've preferred anyone to sora
  • you should be able to S rank felix as male byleth
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5 hours ago, Anathaco said:

Depends, if you mean the weapon type in general, then I think people are generally pretty happy with brawling- grappler is considered a great class, as is War Master. If you mean the actual intermediate class, Brawler, then yeah I agree with lenticular that it is a pretty bad class.

Faire skills can stack if you get a class with it and the S+ version, so there is a legitimate reason for it. But yeah that is something I guess, if you really want to optimise skill ranks.

yeah, i meant the weapon type themselves, not the actual intermediate class.

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2 hours ago, nonsmarts said:

dorothea really isn't that interesting of a character and I don't know why she seems to be so popular

I can think of at least two reasons 😃

Though on the whole I don't think every character needs to be interesting. Characters like Ashe or Annette for instance aren't very interesting but acquired a solid fanbase for being cute. Arthur's not interesting but he gets by on being hilarious and so on. As for Dorothea. I'd say she's decently interesting but I like her more due to being so nice...um unless you're Ferdie.

 

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5 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I can think of at least two reasons 😃

well I mean there's certainly that

 

5 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Characters like Ashe or Annette for instance aren't very interesting but acquired a solid fanbase for being cute.

honestly I found them to be very interesting.  especially ashe

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6 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I can think of at least two reasons 😃

You mean her tragic backstory and sharp sense of fashion?

9 hours ago, nonsmarts said:

VW has a weak plot but the characters more than make up for it

I don't think that's really unpopular? I personally agree. The biggest criticism of Verdant Wind I see is that it cleaves too closely to Silver Snow's story, and doesn't pursue Claude's dreams or ambitions beyond a surface-level. But nobody doesn't like Claude... okay, somebody doesn't, but he's way less divisive than any other main character in 3H.

12 hours ago, Jotari said:

I can see use to Brawler if you want to increase your gauntlet ranks via combat proficiency too.

Brawler also enjoys 10% Dex and Speed growth boosts (comparable to Thief), plus a 30% HP growth mod (comparable to Brigand). And if I recall, it gets free movement through Forests, like the Thief class. Its mastery is bad, but it offers some benefits over other infantry classes.

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

You mean her tragic backstory and sharp sense of fashion?

Yes exactly. 

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

I don't think that's really unpopular? I personally agree. The biggest criticism of Verdant Wind I see is that it cleaves too closely to Silver Snow's story, and doesn't pursue Claude's dreams or ambitions beyond a surface-level. But nobody doesn't like Claude... okay, somebody doesn't, but he's way less divisive than any other main character in 3H.

I always felt this reflected more poorly on Silver Snow than of Verdant Wind.  The two being so alike just means Silver Snow is Verdant Wind but without a lord and with the Alliance politics being taken out. Which in turn means there's essentially no reason to bother with Silver Snow. To an extend I also think such a comparison usually doesn't take into account that Azure Moon isn't particularly different from Silver Snow either. All three routes offer mostly the same stages in the exact same order. The only difference with Azure Moon is that it adds two stage between Grondor and the invasion of the Empire, while the other two routes add two stages after the empire gets taken down. Though in Azure's favor Dimitri's story has a very different ''feel'' to it than the other two.

Edited by Etrurian emperor
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3 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I always felt this reflected more poorly on Silver Snow than of Verdant Wind.  The two being so alike just means Silver Snow is Verdant Wind but without a lord and with the Alliance politics being taken out. Which in turn means there's essentially no reason to bother with Silver Snow. To an extend I also think such a comparison usually doesn't take into account that Azure Moon isn't particularly different from Silver Snow either. All three routes offer mostly the same stages in the exact same order. The only difference with Azure Moon is that it adds two stage between Grondor and the invasion of the Empire, while the other two routes add two stages after the empire gets taken down. Though in Azure's favor Dimitri's story has a very different ''feel'' to it than the other two.

Even among the stages that AM shares with SS/VW, there tend to be notable differences, either in gameplay or storytelling. AM14 makes a big deal out of Dimitri killing Randolph, SS/VW14 doesn't. AM15 sees you meeting Rodrigue, SS/VW15 makes Judith the target. AM's Fort Merceus map features a different player and enemy layout than the one in SS/VW, while AM's endgame features enemies (Hegemon Edelgard, Myson) who don't appear in the SS/VW versions.

Verdant Wind features some subtle differences relative to Silver Snow (Alliance politics in narrative, Nader and co. at the Merceus map, Gronder II, plus a different endgame), but it doesn't differ enough to effectively distinguish itself IMO. @RainbowMoon had some great ideas about distinguishing VW in a previous thread, including making Acheron more of a presence (to highlight Alliance politics) and emphasizing Claude's diplomatic abilities, among other elements. 

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1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I always felt this reflected more poorly on Silver Snow than of Verdant Wind.  The two being so alike just means Silver Snow is Verdant Wind but without a lord and with the Alliance politics being taken out. Which in turn means there's essentially no reason to bother with Silver Snow.

maybe it's just the fact that I played VW first and that I'm definitely biased towards the golden deer/claude but I must agree

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5 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Yes exactly. 

I always felt this reflected more poorly on Silver Snow than of Verdant Wind.  The two being so alike just means Silver Snow is Verdant Wind but without a lord and with the Alliance politics being taken out. Which in turn means there's essentially no reason to bother with Silver Snow. To an extend I also think such a comparison usually doesn't take into account that Azure Moon isn't particularly different from Silver Snow either. All three routes offer mostly the same stages in the exact same order. The only difference with Azure Moon is that it adds two stage between Grondor and the invasion of the Empire, while the other two routes add two stages after the empire gets taken down. Though in Azure's favor Dimitri's story has a very different ''feel'' to it than the other two.

Yeah but Silver snow was made first as confirmed by the developers themselves so if anything it reflects worse on VW because it’s a blatent copy and paste with a few added bells and whistles to account for Claude and the rest of the golden deer. CF and AM at least try to make the stories about them. Claude is hardly relevant even in his own route.

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5 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Yes exactly. 

I always felt this reflected more poorly on Silver Snow than of Verdant Wind.  The two being so alike just means Silver Snow is Verdant Wind but without a lord and with the Alliance politics being taken out. Which in turn means there's essentially no reason to bother with Silver Snow. To an extend I also think such a comparison usually doesn't take into account that Azure Moon isn't particularly different from Silver Snow either. All three routes offer mostly the same stages in the exact same order. The only difference with Azure Moon is that it adds two stage between Grondor and the invasion of the Empire, while the other two routes add two stages after the empire gets taken down. Though in Azure's favor Dimitri's story has a very different ''feel'' to it than the other two.

My unpopular opinion isnrhat the route similarities hurts Azure Moon more than the other routes. Doing the same thing you do in other routes pre-gronder undermines Dimitri's character as it means Byleth, Gilbert and Rodrigue are essnefually ignoring Dimitri. His madness isn't a problem for the war effort at all. Not is even that problematic to have a crazybking since you can just ignore him if he starts talking to himself. Dimitri should have had more of an active presence in determining what goes down in the plot in the first half of Part 2. He wants them to rush Enbarr, let them actively do it and fail miserably. And of anyone object then he's their king damnit,  young and object. This is the same guy that some how managed to convince the Blue Lions to fight you in Verdant Wind. 

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7 hours ago, Ottservia said:

Yeah but Silver snow was made first as confirmed by the developers themselves so if anything it reflects worse on VW because it’s a blatent copy and paste with a few added bells and whistles to account for Claude and the rest of the golden deer. CF and AM at least try to make the stories about them. Claude is hardly relevant even in his own route.

I don't really think Silver Snow being developed first is very significant since all stories got released in the base game at the same time. Despite being written first the game low key incentives you to play SS last which makes it doubly painful that its a blander version of VW. It does reflect poorly on the writers or those managing the production schedule that they had to resort to copy pasting, but Silver Snow being the template just means its the bare bones template while Verdant Wind is the better version due to it having bells and whistles. 

6 hours ago, Jotari said:

My unpopular opinion isnrhat the route similarities hurts Azure Moon more than the other routes. Doing the same thing you do in other routes pre-gronder undermines Dimitri's character as it means Byleth, Gilbert and Rodrigue are essnefually ignoring Dimitri. His madness isn't a problem for the war effort at all. Not is even that problematic to have a crazybking since you can just ignore him if he starts talking to himself. Dimitri should have had more of an active presence in determining what goes down in the plot in the first half of Part 2. He wants them to rush Enbarr, let them actively do it and fail miserably. And of anyone object then he's their king damnit,  young and object. This is the same guy that some how managed to convince the Blue Lions to fight you in Verdant Wind. 

I actually like that they're ignoring Dimitri. At that point in the story he's a completely irrational hobo who's lost all grasp on his sanity. At that point Bilbert and Byleth are pretty much required to do the actual work because they sure can't trust Dimitri with anything but fighting. The rush at Enbarr does kinda fail since even if you win on Grondor its like ''Oh no! We gotta get out before Imperial reinforcement get here!'' and then they all leave. I suspect Dimitri being the king and everyone having to sigh and relent to his wishes because chivalry demands it is what got them at Grondor in Verdant Wind. That's somewhat the case in Azure Moon except they have Byleth and Rodrigue to hold hobo Dimitri by the hand. 

 

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