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What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?


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3 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Perhaps minor villain wasn't the best phrase. I was toying with other names such as junior or secondary villains.

What I had in mind when I wrote that were the likes of Petrine, Valter, Lang and Ephidel. Villains who carry the first acts of the story, are portrayed as very dangerous but who are not the highest ranking among the villain totum pole. Petrine for instance seems quite a lot more Junior than the Black Knight despite officially holding the same rank, Valter and Caelach don't seem in the know about the demon king, and while the leading villain of the first movie Tarkin is ''just'' a mof, rather than a sith lord. But despite having very powerful seniors looming over them these villains are all real threats for the heroes that people like Iago or Solon just aren't.

 

 

 

A minor villain? In his moment of triumph? I think you underestimate his prominence.

For real, though, maybe "recurring villains" would be the term? The "minor villains" I pointed to weren't "recurring", but they did get much more characterization and narrative function than "Uglyface McGee". Other "minor villains" who tend to be highly-regarded could be folks like Shiharam, Mustafa, or Mannu (yes I will die on this peninsula).

On 1/15/2023 at 1:04 AM, Jotari said:

Well my personal head canon is that is was Xane dicking around between the Archanean games trying to avoid Gotoh giving him any more responsibilities.

Haha. I like this one. Although, it makes me not want to kill him anymore. I couldn't face Tiki after doing that.

On 1/15/2023 at 1:04 AM, Jotari said:

Honestly I think Lonato and Miklan were better done than the actual major villains in the game. Kronya also manages to make herself decently hateable in the short time she's around, though I might be biased from really liking how she plays in Heroes.

Kronya is... I don't know how to feel about her. It's hard to hate her for killing the man who raised a 39-and-a-half foot death flag. She has a fun design and good VA, and I like how dodgy she is as an enemy. But I don't really understand her motivation, beyond "IDK whatever the Agarthans want me to do". At least with Solon, it feels like he has a personal investment in kidnapping Flayn for her blood, for the sake of his research, mad-scientist style. Kronya has a similar enthusiasm for killing Jeralt, because... she likes killing? Is that it? Is this Peri all over again? I dunno.

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

Mannu (yes I will die on this peninsula).

Come on, man. I'm Mannu's biggest supporter, but the game did not treat him as highly regarded XD They didn't even bother to bring him back for Old Mystery!

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

Kronya is... I don't know how to feel about her. It's hard to hate her for killing the man who raised a 39-and-a-half foot death flag. She has a fun design and good VA, and I like how dodgy she is as an enemy. But I don't really understand her motivation, beyond "IDK whatever the Agarthans want me to do". At least with Solon, it feels like he has a personal investment in kidnapping Flayn for her blood, for the sake of his research, mad-scientist style. Kronya has a similar enthusiasm for killing Jeralt, because... she likes killing? Is that it? Is this Peri all over again? I dunno.

Yeah, but at least she's an actual villain, unlike Peri (who doesn't even do anything villainous in Birthright!). No, Kronya is not a high quality deep character with clearly defined motivations and an arc, but she has a pretty specific role in the plot to play and she manages to do it. And that, to me, makes me like her better than Solon or Thales who seem to care about what they're doing and want something more, but are so vague, uninteresting and kind of stupid about it that it brings them down a notch. Cornelia likewise doesn't really show any more motivation for the things she does than Kronya does, but it's less noticable because she's overall much less cartoonish about her actions.

Of course best Agarthan is Myson.

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8 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Come on, man. I'm Mannu's biggest supporter, but the game did not treat him as highly regarded XD They didn't even bother to bring him back for Old Mystery!

Precisely. I said I would die on this peninsula, and that's what I'm going to do. Truthfully, Michaelis would've been a better example from Shadow Dragon.

10 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Yeah, but at least she's an actual villain, unlike Peri (who doesn't even do anything villainous in Birthright!). No, Kronya is not a high quality deep character with clearly defined motivations and an arc, but she has a pretty specific role in the plot to play and she manages to do it. And that, to me, makes me like her better than Solon or Thales who seem to care about what they're doing and want something more, but are so vague, uninteresting and kind of stupid about it that it brings them down a notch. Cornelia likewise doesn't really show any more motivation for the things she does than Kronya does, but it's less noticable because she's overall much less cartoonish about her actions.

Seems like an "agree to disagree" moment. I really enjoyed Tomas in the monastery, and seeing him actually be a villain broke my heart. Monica... I felt nothing for. And even if Solon was an ineffective villain, he was a gigantic ham. Which I personally appreciate more than Kronya's "e-girl killer clown" vibe.

Technically, Thales is the most competent Slitherer, because he knocked Teach down a crevasse for five years. But he's also the most boring one, so.

14 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Of course best Agarthan is Myson.

It was a weird take, going from Alm's father figure and mentor to a faceless dark mage. But hey, this is the same game that turned a wicked stepmother who burns kids alive for fun into a spunky axe-user who's too lazy to get anything done. So go figure!

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

Seems like an "agree to disagree" moment. I really enjoyed Tomas in the monastery, and seeing him actually be a villain broke my heart. Monica... I felt nothing for. And even if Solon was an ineffective villain, he was a gigantic ham. Which I personally appreciate more than Kronya's "e-girl killer clown" vibe.

Well, you see the difference there is that it looks like you actually talked to Tomas in the monastery and actually knew who he was when it turned out he's a traitor while I was like "Who?" (okay, I know there's like one mandatory scene with Tomas in at least one of the routes before the reveal, but, seriously, who?)

And I'm not kidding that Heroes might have biased me in favour of Kronya. Her gameplay in Heroes is really fun and they came out so close together, for a time I had to actively remind myself that she's even in Three Houses and not a Heroes original character.

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

 

It was a weird take, going from Alm's father figure and mentor to a faceless dark mage. But hey, this is the same game that turned a wicked stepmother who burns kids alive for fun into a spunky axe-user who's too lazy to get anything done. So go figure!

You make that joke, but I'm pretty sure this was the first time I have ever spelled Myson's name correctly and didn't refer to him as Mycen XD

Don't forget Lorenz blowing himself up some how restored his eye and turned him into a purple haired teenager.

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Lunatic+ was a hair's breadth away from being a good idea, and I wish it were implemented in a game with a better head on its shoulders regarding difficulty. The idea of powerful, randomized skills on enemies is something I would absolutely adore seeing added to a more sanely-balanced difficulty.

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I feel like how major a villain is can be a bit of spectrum unless they're very obviously the main villain.

For example, with Petrine she feels like a minor villain because she is below Black Knight and Ashnard (which are The Dragon and the Big Bad respectively), but considering her presence in the story is actually quite noticeable, I feel like calling her a minor villain could make a bit of a disservice to her role? Personally I feel like the term "Secondary villains" feels more appropiate, specially when we're in a context where we have villains that only appear in a chapter or two like Shiharam and all the bandit bosses.

On 1/17/2023 at 11:09 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Precisely. I said I would die on this peninsula, and that's what I'm going to do. Truthfully, Michaelis would've been a better example from Shadow Dragon.

Seems like an "agree to disagree" moment. I really enjoyed Tomas in the monastery, and seeing him actually be a villain broke my heart. Monica... I felt nothing for. And even if Solon was an ineffective villain, he was a gigantic ham. Which I personally appreciate more than Kronya's "e-girl killer clown" vibe.

Technically, Thales is the most competent Slitherer, because he knocked Teach down a crevasse for five years. But he's also the most boring one, so.

It was a weird take, going from Alm's father figure and mentor to a faceless dark mage. But hey, this is the same game that turned a wicked stepmother who burns kids alive for fun into a spunky axe-user who's too lazy to get anything done. So go figure!

Also I agree, Thales was VERY convincing in his role as Tomas, he only did like one or two that could be considered mildly suspicious, but he did his job really well in revealing that this old man was actually a heretic sorcerer this whole time!

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On 1/12/2023 at 3:31 PM, Etrurian emperor said:

I think Fire Emblem as a series lost the art of creating minor villains. And minor villains are actually pretty important. A story is only as good as its minor villains. The Rebels can't start with overthrowing the Emperor after all. They need someone like Tarkin who's both a legitimate threat, as well as weak enough that you can easily imagine much bigger threats above him.

Petrine is a good example of a very solid minor villain. Out of the Daein generals she's clearly the runt of the bunch. The weakest, overly trigger happy and less competent than her peers. But despite this she's also very intimidating and generally competent enough. She's a dangerous enemy general and as a combatant there are a lot of indications that Petrine is really powerful. The Greil mercenaries start out defeating Petrine's forces time after time, but the entire time they're on the run because Petrine can and will kill them easily if she catches up to them. Out of everyone in the group only Greil is capable of facing Petrine, and ultimately the Greil mercenaries only survive Petrine by the skin of their teeth. Later on this previously mortal danger to Ike is the first of the villains to fall in order to showcase how far Ike has come. 

Same with Jarod. In the grand scheme of things he's not really important or dangerous, but throughout part 1 he has the power and strength of personality to be a consistent, and very dangerous threat to the Dawn Brigade. That he's scripted to be the only enemy in part one not to get one rounded by the Black knight implies he's both a mighty warrior, and a ruthless antagonist. Even a complete joke villain like Narcian was a very solid junior villain. While bombastic and over the top he was also clearly a danger to Roy, to the point Roy had to go grovel to Etruria to survive him. In Blazing Sword it keeps being said or implied that the Four Fangs are stronger than the lords upon first meeting them, and the Grado Generals have the designs, personality and presence to consistently appear a real threat to the twins rather than wimpy stepping stones they need to easily topple before reaching Lyon.

After Radiant Dawn however this trend of consistently threatening minor villains mostly vanished. In Awakening no nation lasted long enough for a more minor antagonist to emerge, and Exellus who most closely fit the bill was a joke character and thus not threatening by definition.

In Fates we had to endure Iago and Hans who never came across as effective or threatening beyond their ability to hide behind Garon's skirt. There was never a sense that Hans and Iago could pose a legitimate danger to Corrin, Xander and Ryoma no matter how hard they tried or how many resources they have available. If they scheme against Corrin it either fails or solely succeeds through Garon's intervention, and there's nothing to suggest they are powerful enough to face any of the siblings aside from the little sisters in combat.

In Echoes Berkut was created as a rival to Alm and an entity above Desaix during part 1, but all Berkut ever does is lose and then run with his tail between his legs, enduring he can never put Alm in any sort of danger. Slayde meanwhile is menacing only to a bunch of preteen children and becomes more of a nuisance than a danger as soon as these kids turn into teenagers. 

And in Three Houses the most consistent threat during White Clouds would be Solon who's also not up to snuff. Every plot Solon has fails, and there's actually nothing to imply he's either very clever, or actually any stronger than any of the high school students he's up again. Same with Cornelia who's vaguely more competent than her peers but who'd easily be torn to shred by Dimitri if left alone with him, and who's regime takes about a single chapter to overthrow. 

Where first you had minor villains who were both stated or implied to be among the most fiercest of warriors, and generals who were able to push the heroes to the edge you now have a bunch of joke villains who consistently fail to pose any sort of threat, and would probably be beaten to a pulp by any member of your army in a fight. An enemy like Petrine is an extremely dangerous threat that's rewarding to overcome, but villains like Exelus are just wimpy weaklings who's failures are inevitable and richly deserved. Its actually quite the noticeable downgrade. 

Minor villains are on a real losing streak lately, so I hope the Four Hounds from Engage will be portrayed as dangerous and effective foes, rather than a bunch of joke villain Alear keeps easily beating up.

I agree with your overall point; I just don't think these are examples of minor villains, but secondary villains/arc villains if that makes sense. When I hear "minor villain", I don't think of characters like Petrine, Berkut, Jarod, or Tarkin; I think of villains whose roles in the story and game are minor, hence minor villain.

But yeah; there haven't really been good examples of effective secondary/arc villains ever since Radiant Dawn.

 

On 1/17/2023 at 7:46 PM, Etrurian emperor said:

Perhaps minor villain wasn't the best phrase. I was toying with other names such as junior or secondary villains.

What I had in mind when I wrote that were the likes of Petrine, Valter, Lang and Ephidel. Villains who carry the first acts of the story, are portrayed as very dangerous but who are not the highest ranking among the villain totum pole. Petrine for instance seems quite a lot more Junior than the Black Knight despite officially holding the same rank, Valter and Caelach don't seem in the know about the demon king, and while the leading villain of the first movie Tarkin is ''just'' a mof, rather than a sith lord. But despite having very powerful seniors looming over them these villains are all real threats for the heroes that people like Iago or Solon just aren't.

Oh; okay, someone brought this up already. Never mind. I don't know what the umbrella term for all these villains would be, but I can think of a few terms TV Tropes uses that does fit some of them:

Arc Villain: a villain who is the main antagonist of a specific story arc, but not the overarching narrative. This would fit Petrine and Jarod, but not Berkut since he appeared sporadically and never as the main villain.

Disc-One Final Boss: a character who is built up as the main villain, and indeed they are... for the first chunk of the story. This would fit Jarod and Desaix, but not Petrine or Berkut.

Interim Villain: the villain in between the first main villain and the next one. This would fit characters like Ludveck, but not Petrine, Jarod, etc.

The Heavy: the villain who does the heavy lifting while the primary villain is acting behind-the-scenes. This would fit Berkut, Jarod and Petrine, but it would also fit The Black Knight among others.

So, yeah; not even TV Tropes has a name that would perfectly fit all these characters.

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On 11/26/2022 at 4:11 PM, AnonymousSpeed said:

>Awakening was almost a decade ago

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngmuchdistress

Only Phila fan I'd believe, but there's gotta be at least one other Soleil simp.

Unironically I popped off when I saw Phila was getting released on FEH and literally I made this profile pic in MS paint the day I saw her artwork lmaoooo.

Soleil best girl :D.  She's like the only reason I always end up using Laslow in my FE CONQ runs lol.

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On 11/27/2022 at 7:04 PM, Skillshare said:

...Fates is the best game in the series. And also my favorite game ever made...and my most played non-Smash game...and my most replayed game ever. I liked its ideas, I actually enjoyed the story, and I really liked most of the characters.

I agree in every way! I’m not sure how many hours I’ve put into Super Smash Bros. (any of them or all of them combined,) but like Fates, it was at least a few hundred hours.

On 1/14/2023 at 6:25 AM, Eltosian Kadath said:

It feels arbitrary to exclude villains like Gangrell, and Walhart the Conqueror from consideration from Awakening, and both of them do a sufficient job of being imposing minor villains over fairly significant arcs of the story.

 

Or the opposing royal siblings from Birthright and Conquest. Camilla is certainly an imposing minor villain to the player in Birthright, and Ryoma is likewise during Conquest. Plus I kinda see Iago on a similar level as Narcian, making schemes that often requires the intervention of allies to overcome.

I consider Gangrel a major villain, and maybe Walhart. Their actions significantly influence Awakening’s conflict, although Walhart doesn’t have as much time on screen.

This is one aspect of Fates I really enjoyed, the idea that “the antagonist is the hero of the other side.” None of the royal siblings are nefarious villains; they just have goals that bring them into opposition with your goals. Iago and Hans should have been much more minor characters (on par with characters like Zola and Kotaro) and the opposing royal siblings should have been more prominent.

On the topic of minor villains, do minor villains who join your army count? Some of them are awesome. Shura, Naesala and Minerve are among my favorite characters in their respective games.

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Not sure if this is unpopular, but I wanna see another villian group like the Black Fang. Rather than another religion worshipping the obviously evil god, it would be nice to see a group that had a noble cause at the start, but strayed away from that over time as.

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3 hours ago, Metal Flash said:

Not sure if this is unpopular, but I wanna see another villian group like the Black Fang. Rather than another religion worshipping the obviously evil god, it would be nice to see a group that had a noble cause at the start, but strayed away from that over time as.

How about we dispense with the straying over time and just genuinely given them a noble cause with ignoble methods? The Agarthans were ripe for something like that, but we never actually end up truly discovering what it is they actually want other than Rhea gone.

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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

How about we dispense with the straying over time and just genuinely given them a noble cause with ignoble methods? The Agarthans were ripe for something like that, but we never actually end up truly discovering what it is they actually want other than Rhea gone.

That might actually work better, now that I think about it more.

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Not sure if this is that unpopular here, but even the worst FE game (for me it's Fates) is loads of fun and better than most games I would've played at the time.

Talking to some IRLs shitting on the visuals of Engage while they go on about the cookie-cutter open world FOTM and I'm like at least FE is fun lol...

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On 1/26/2023 at 5:28 PM, Magenta Fantasies said:

I consider Gangrel a major villain, and maybe Walhart. Their actions significantly influence Awakening’s conflict, although Walhart doesn’t have as much time on screen.

I think it's fair to consider them both "arc villains". Every game has them - Chagall in Genealogy, Lundgren in FE7, Jarod in Radiant Dawn, Desaix in Echoes - but whether that makes them "major" or "minor" is subjective. Honestly, the terms themselves are frustratingly subjective. Maybe better terminology would be "final boss", "principal villain", "arc villain", "one-off boss", and "miniboss"?

On 1/26/2023 at 2:16 PM, Mordred said:

Fire emblem needs a masked antagonist like Char from Gundam 0079.  Can you imagine how awesome that would be????

We's gots one in the forms of Legion (aka Roro), from New Mystery. He's also in Heroes.

The Black Knight and Death Knight are both notoriously masked, too.

On 1/18/2023 at 12:32 AM, Jotari said:

Well, you see the difference there is that it looks like you actually talked to Tomas in the monastery and actually knew who he was when it turned out he's a traitor while I was like "Who?" (okay, I know there's like one mandatory scene with Tomas in at least one of the routes before the reveal, but, seriously, who?)

And I'm not kidding that Heroes might have biased me in favour of Kronya. Her gameplay in Heroes is really fun and they came out so close together, for a time I had to actively remind myself that she's even in Three Houses and not a Heroes original character.

Regarding Tomas - yes, that is true. I insisted on hearing all his monastery lines. Which Monica did not have nearly as many of. And I've not played Heroes since 3H came out, so I've no Kronya exposure there.

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On 2/2/2023 at 8:47 PM, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

We's gots one in the forms of Legion (aka Roro), from New Mystery. He's also in Heroes.

The Black Knight and Death Knight are both notoriously masked, too.

Ah yes, Legion.  I can't tell if I like Legion ironically or unironically.  Tbh Death Knight was very underwhelming for me in game considering he's supposed to be this extremely strong blood thirsty killer when the only map he actually comes off as a threat on is the first one he shows up on.  Black Knight is also a total dub but I'm not so into the whole hidden face behind a helmet so much a hidden face behind a mask like Sirius/Camus

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I don't know if this is a popular or unpopular opinion but I'm also tired of every protag recently being related to dragons in some form or another.

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10 hours ago, Mordred said:

I don't know if this is a popular or unpopular opinion but I'm also tired of every protag recently being related to dragons in some form or another.

This is part of why Tellius has my favorite worldbuilding. Dragons exist, yes, but they're not overwhelmingly powerful nor targets of worship. They're just strong, long-lived scaly folks. None of the main protagonists or villains are directly connected to the dragons, either.

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

This is part of why Tellius has my favorite worldbuilding. Dragons exist, yes, but they're not overwhelmingly powerful nor targets of worship. They're just strong, long-lived scaly folks. None of the main protagonists or villains are directly connected to the dragons, either.

Well, other than Dheginsea by the very end, but yes.

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2 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

Well, other than Dheginsea by the very end, but yes.

TBH I meant main playable characters and antagonists, namely:

Spoiler

Ike, Micaiah, Ashnard, Ashera, and Sephiran

If anything, the fact that you fight a very powerful dragon, but they're neither the main antagonist nor the final boss, is an affirmation of the notion that dragons aren't a super-powerful or exalted race in this setting.

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

TBH I meant main playable characters and antagonists, namely:

  Hide contents

Ike, Micaiah, Ashnard, Ashera, and Sephiran

If anything, the fact that you fight a very powerful dragon, but they're neither the main antagonist nor the final boss, is an affirmation of the notion that dragons aren't a super-powerful or exalted race in this setting.

Well

Spoiler

Dheginsea is one of Ashera's champions.

But yeah, the fight happens more because Fire Emblem has to have you fight a powerful dragon.

Games with even less dragon relevancy would be Gaiden (pre-SoV) and Sacred Stones. 

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

This is part of why Tellius has my favorite worldbuilding. Dragons exist, yes, but they're not overwhelmingly powerful nor targets of worship. They're just strong, long-lived scaly folks. None of the main protagonists or villains are directly connected to the dragons, either.

I think Dheginsea actually is supposed to be overwhelmingly powerful. Up to the point one characters suggest even Ashera might be a little bit scared of him. And the weakest dragon is strong enough to blow up a castle. One conversation has Nasir imply Goldoa could burn down much if Tellius if they wished for, and that they'd have done it if Ashnard has successfully provoked them. 

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Micaiah may not be related to a dragon, but

she's still related to Lehran, who's from a tribe of laguz that are arguably just as powerful and special as dragons, so I'm not sure if this one is THAT much better. Although the general sentiment that all the laguz tribes, like the beorc, are merely mortal beings and not divine still stands.

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43 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I think Dheginsea actually is supposed to be overwhelmingly powerful. Up to the point one characters suggest even Ashera might be a little bit scared of him. And the weakest dragon is strong enough to blow up a castle. One conversation has Nasir imply Goldoa could burn down much if Tellius if they wished for, and that they'd have done it if Ashnard has successfully provoked them. 

Kurthnaga may be the youngest dragon, but I am doubtful that he is the weakest. He's the son of Dheginsea, the strongest known dragon, after all.

Regarding Goldoa "burning down Tellius", that may have been an exaggeration, to highlight the ferocity of an enraged dragon. ...Or it may have been accurate. Who knows? We never really see it.

Spoiler

I don't recall anyone saying Ashera might fear Dheginsea? I don't know if Ashera, in her current form, has such a feeling as fear. I doubt that, on his own, Dheginsea could pose a serious threat to Ashera. Our army of many of Tellius' strongest is only able to stand up to her thanks to Yune's blessing.

 

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

Kurthnaga may be the youngest dragon, but I am doubtful that he is the weakest. He's the son of Dheginsea, the strongest known dragon, after all.

Regarding Goldoa "burning down Tellius", that may have been an exaggeration, to highlight the ferocity of an enraged dragon. ...Or it may have been accurate. Who knows? We never really see it.

  Hide contents

I don't recall anyone saying Ashera might fear Dheginsea? I don't know if Ashera, in her current form, has such a feeling as fear. I doubt that, on his own, Dheginsea could pose a serious threat to Ashera. Our army of many of Tellius' strongest is only able to stand up to her thanks to Yune's blessing.

 

Its his boss conversation with Naesalla.

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