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What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?


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56 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I feel the that the series really lost its mojo during the 3DS era. It feels like the core identity of the series was sacrificed for juvenile fan service and anime tropes. A lot of people to me seem to misinterpreted the series as a "dating simulator" when really only three, maybe four games include an Avatar that can marry other characters. Games like TMS # FE and some of the character designs in Heroes help to muddy the waters of the series' identity for neophytes. Fire Emblem at its core is a War Epic which focuses on the twin themes of fellowship and tragedy forged in the crucible of war. The series shows how the conditions of battle can not only create powerful relationships between soldiers but also how it can just as easily rip them apart via death. There was also a stronger sense of grey morality with more interesting villains that the 3DS games lacked, especially Awakening and Fates. 3 Houses has done an admiral job getting the series back on track, however I've been more reluctant to play it then any other game in the series. Having spent the last two years and some change reading both classic literature and fantasy fiction, I feel as if I have inadvertently desensitised myself to this series. While 3 Houses looks to be an excellent game, it still has the same anime tropes that turned me off from this genre to begin with. I'd rather spend my free time reading the works of Clark Aston Smith, Glen Cook, Lord Dunsany, and Thomas Ligotti among many others because their works seem to contain a special ineffable quality which I find lacking in the FE series and many JRPGs in general. There is a kind of sophistication in these author's works that seems to elevate them to being what I would consider art that I no longer find in the FE series. Maybe it's just that as I get older I want the entertainment I consume to be more then just cliché tropes and cute anime girls. Maybe I'm just being unfair to FE and anime in general by comparing it to the works of some of the greatest fantasists who ever lived. Either way I still want to take a genuine crack at 3H and see if it can deliver some of that old Fire Emblem magic. 

Oh no anime tropes in a Japanese fantasy video game series?! Who would’ve ever guessed?! I’m sorry I couldn’t help myself but if you think Fire Emblem has never been anime you my good sir are deluding yourself.   

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5 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

Map Design – I think maps should be designed in such a way, that they offer a mechanic that may help the player against an enemy in a superior position and has greater numbers but does not or only rarely affects said player adversely.

This is something that FE has always struggled with. I actually really liked the inclusion of height in Radiant Dawn a lot because you could make a Defense style map(Like 3-13) where it truly felt like you were at truly a huge disadvantage with army strength, but due to having leverage and height advantage, things were much more equal.

Don't know exactly how the opposite would be handled. I guess chapter 14 of FE5 kind of works that way. Just a massive city siege where you can make all kinds of bottle necks in the streets, while the two enemy armies just throw themselves at you to try to break through.

33 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

Oh no anime tropes in a Japanese fantasy video game series?! Who would’ve ever guessed?! I’m sorry I couldn’t help myself but if you think Fire Emblem has never been anime you my good sir are deluding yourself.   

Also, I hate this argument. I don't think anybody would ever argue that Fire Emblem wasn't Japanese/anime.

But Awakening got a LOT more pandery/tropey. The weird dragon loli(That for the first time in the series was a ROMANCE OPTION), the creepy yandere, the clumsy love interest who can't express her feelings, the tomboy love interest who obviously can't get the guy she likes, the kid genius who hates getting treated like a kid, the loud, confident brute who is too stupid to reasonably ever survive in such a world... These are pretty indicative of some very modern anime tropes that are much easier to pin-point than characters tended to be before.

And to make things worse, it's been mentioned many many times(By people who aren't me) just how hard you have to work to find any nuggets of character that break the surface of what you get with these characters.

I'll bring up the comparison all the time because it always is relevant to the argument, but the writing of Canas vs. the writing of Miriel encapsulates the difference in how FE used to handle characters vs. how Awakening and Fates handled characters. In FE7, unless you were a poor, unlucky fool who happened to only support Canas with Vaida, you got to see many different sides of Canas that weren't just him talking about books, or character development and serious world building that coincided with him being a nerd. His nerdiness actually helped contextualize himself and the world, and he'd break from his schtick to move these conversations along.

With Miriel, she almost exclusively just talks about books and experiments. In almost any given convo, she just talks about how she finds her support's character quirk interesting and that she must study it. There is no contextualizing or development in these supports. It's just her being a nerd.

I'd say Echoes manages to distill more characters traits down into more palatable conversations due to how small the cast was, and how small the support pools were. Even if a character only had two support chains, you could at least be sure those chains were very different and showcased different sides of the characters. 

Three Houses went back to being more anime trope-y, but the characters(IMO) bounced off each other way better, and most of those supports had some extreme world-building in them. The timeskip and gap in supports also gives them fairly reasonable character development.

Edited by Slumber
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1 hour ago, Wraith said:

I feel the that the series really lost its mojo during the 3DS era. It feels like the core identity of the series was sacrificed for juvenile fan service and anime tropes. A lot of people to me seem to misinterpreted the series as a "dating simulator" when really only three, maybe four games include an Avatar that can marry other characters. Games like TMS # FE and some of the character designs in Heroes help to muddy the waters of the series' identity for neophytes.

I'm quite sure you just mentioned one of the more popular opinions on this site. Its a very, very common complaint. 

Quote

Oh no anime tropes in a Japanese fantasy video game series?! Who would’ve ever guessed?! I’m sorry I couldn’t help myself but if you think Fire Emblem has never been anime you my good sir are deluding yourself.  

Sure but there is a difference between merely being anime inspired and being so anime that 98% of the cast is an attractive teenager that fall into the most popular anime trope, and incest suddenly being wincest. 

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34 minutes ago, Slumber said:

Also, I hate this argument. I don't think anybody would ever argue that Fire Emblem wasn't Japanese/anime.

But Awakening got a LOT more pandery/tropey. The weird dragon loli(That for the first time in the series was a ROMANCE OPTION), the creepy yandere, the clumsy love interest who can't express her feelings, the tomboy love interest who obviously can't get the guy she likes, the kid genius who hates getting treated like a kid, the loud, confident brute who is too stupid to reasonably ever survive in such a world... These are pretty indicative of some very modern anime tropes that are much easier to pin-point than characters tended to be before.

 

We can argue about the execution of these tropes all goddamn day but my point is that just because the trope is there that doesn’t make it inherently bad. God I absolutely DESPISE the “too anime” argument cause what the fuck does it even mean?! It’s such a broad statement that ultimately means absolutely nothing and goes no where. Like yeah anime tropes, I’m not gonna argue that they’re there and easy to spot but does that make them inherently bad?! No, no it doesn’t and it infuriates me when people even remotely imply that it does. Seriously if you honestly think pointing the fact that a trope exists as a legitimate criticism against something. I’m sorry but that is one way for me to never take you seriously because tropes are inevitable so for the love of god stop complaining that they exist. Now if you wanna criticize the execution of the trope fine but please be able to back up your argument with more than just “well I don’t like this trope so it’s bad” because that is a completely subjective argument. I’m sorry for the rant but this shit just irritate me.

 

34 minutes ago, Slumber said:

I'd say Echoes manages to distill more characters traits down into more palatable conversations due to how small the cast was, and how small the support pools were. Even if a character only had two support chains, you could at least be sure those chains were very different and showcased different sides of the characters. 

Oh I love supports where it’s literally just small talk between characters without any deeper insight, depth, or nuance where we learn literally nothing about any of the characters. I’m sorry but most of the supports in SoV are not good. They’re just so boring and lack anything that even remotely resembles what can be considered good writing.

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3 minutes ago, Ottservia said:

We can argue about the execution of these tropes all goddamn day but my point is that just because the trope is there that doesn’t make it inherently bad. God I absolutely DESPISE the “too anime” argument cause what the fuck does it even mean?! It’s such a broad statement that ultimately means absolutely nothing and goes no where. Like yeah anime tropes, I’m not gonna argue that they’re there and easy to spot but does that make them inherently bad?! No, no it doesn’t and it infuriates me when people even remotely imply that it does. Seriously if you honestly think pointing the fact that a trope exists as a legitimate criticism against something. I’m sorry but that is one way for me to never take you seriously because tropes are inevitable so for the love of god stop complaining that they exist. Now if you wanna criticize the execution of the trope fine but please be able to back up your argument with more than just “well I don’t like this trope so it’s bad” because that is a completely subjective argument. I’m sorry for the rant but this shit just irritate me.

Adhering to tropes doesn't need to be bad per se. Path of Radiance is incredibly formulaic but due to the competence in which it execute that formula the game is all the richer for it. Strictly adhering to tropes can be comfortable, easy and safe, but it can also end up as feeling stale and generic. 

I think Ricken is a very good example of the  problems that come with strictly adhering to anime tropes. He's a very competent depiction of the typical anime shota. That can be endearing but Ricken also isn't anything more than that. Ricken is a typical shota but when you compare him to someone like Tormod he is a definitive downgrade. Tormod very much takes after the bratty shota archetype but his quest to liberate slaves, his bonds with Sothe and Muarim, and his recently released backstory elevate him beyond that. And the same goes for other characters. Miriel is a very typical anime nerd and while Canas does take after that trope he is more than just that trope. 

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3 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Adhering to tropes doesn't need to be bad per se. Path of Radiance is incredibly formulaic but due to the competence in which it execute that formula the game is all the richer for it. Strictly adhering to tropes can be comfortable, easy and safe, but it can also end up as feeling stale and generic. 

I think Ricken is a very good example of the  problems that come with strictly adhering to anime tropes. He's a very competent depiction of the typical anime shota. That can be endearing but Ricken also isn't anything more than that. Ricken is a typical shota but when you compare him to someone like Tormod he is a definitive downgrade. Tormod very much takes after the bratty shota archetype but his quest to liberate slaves, his bonds with Sothe and Muarim, and his recently released backstory elevate him beyond that. And the same goes for other characters. Miriel is a very typical anime nerd and while Canas does take after that trope he is more than just that trope. 

and that’s another stop comparing characters like this it does nothing. Every character is different with their own unique struggles and backstories. Comparing them to say one is better than the other like that is pointless to me it doesn’t take into account how different they truly are. Like Yeah Ricken is a trope played straight but does that make him any less of a good character? No. Miriel I’ll admit is a bad character because she’s very one dimensional and doesn’t deviate at all from that one singular trait. Ricken is a good character because we see how his backstory and struggles affect his personality, interactions with other characters, motivations, so on and so forth. Sure he’s a trope but it’s executed competently as far as I can tell. I may not personally care for it but I can appreciate competent writing when I see it. Again, we can argue about the execution of these tropes all you want. I just hate it when people say a character is nothing more than a trope and leave it at that because that’s not an argument more so than it is a statement of fact. 

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The thing whit Tormod is that while he has little screentime, that is about muarim and their liberation army. Ricken as pretty much no screentime and the little he has is boring as hell, so i think he is one of the characters that i almost never paired. I kinda liked his support whit henry that i unlocked by chance tho.

 

And i think most people just are not as familliar whit the tropes from the 90s-early 2000 because i noticed a lot more of that stuff. Raven for example is one of the most common names from Edgelords and a red flag as big as violet eyes.

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9 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

The thing whit Tormod is that while he has little screentime, that is about muarim and their liberation army. Ricken as pretty much no screentime and the little he has is boring as hell, so i think he is one of the characters that i almost never paired. I kinda liked his support whit henry that i unlocked by chance tho.

 

And i think most people just are not as familliar whit the tropes from the 90s-early 2000 because i noticed a lot more of that stuff. Raven for example is one of the most common names from Edgelords and a red flag as big as violet eyes.

Ricken saving a noble and sticking it to Aversa, yep, boring as hell. Totally.

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On 2/11/2020 at 3:05 AM, Jotari said:

My cost benefit analysis determined that Private Quarters and Tea Time literally aren't worth the time it takes to do them. It's free stuff, but the fact that it takes like a minutes and half makes that free stuff not worth it. Only time I'd consider tea time is when I absolutely have to grind a Charm level to recruit another character before the time skip.

Since I struggle with getting supports in every game not named Echoes, I appreciated the opportunity to obtain support points of my choosing outside of battle. It was a nice way of speeding up the support chain of a unit the avatar worked well with, or catching up with a character I may not have fought alongside much. Considering Corrin's personal skill relied on having a C support, this was a good call. Similar sentiment with recruiting in Three Houses, as getting supports with units was in many ways more practical than meeting the requirements normally. I do agree that these could be a tad faster, though (could private quarters be skipped? I never tried it).

Again, my issue is more how the line of dialogue in Fates rarely, if ever, added anything the characters. It usually just reinforced what was already established, instead of building upon that foundation. While I appreciate that Three Houses at least requires the player to pay attention to each characters personality to have a successful tea time, despite being told the conversation got lovely, we don't actually get an idea of their actual thoughts on the matter are. I can understand the costs of writing and recording the voice actors would prevent them from going in-depth here, but it still shares the same problem of not doing a whole lot for the characters.

On 2/11/2020 at 11:06 AM, Saint Rubenio said:

The amount of people who write off FE11's story as "barebones" without giving its glorious dialogue a chance is downright tragic. Yes, the plot's basically "good blue guys kill ugly red men until they kill big brown dragon and win", but there's so much personality to the dialogue.

I'd say the dialogue was one of the main reasons (besides gameplay) I enjoyed going through Awakening and Echoes, despite their flawed stories. I liked the interactions between characters and not only what was said but how they said it. Shadow Dragon's writing manages to be eloquent without being pretentious, and while characterization is unfortunately limited, what we do get is surprisingly non-generic and I can see a difference between Astram and Midia and Roger and Julius and so on. It's my favorite in the series, in fact. I recently started playing FE7, and despite the painfully slow tutorial (or veterans, anyway), again, the dialogue between Lyn, Kent,  and Sain (and occasionally other characters) kept an otherwise simple story engaging. And it wasn't just Fates lackluster story overall that was bad; the dialogue really didn't fit in with the "sword and sorcery" tone of the series, which didn't help disguise the lackluster execution of several ideas. For an important and surprisingly well done aspect of the series, I'm surprised it's not discussed more often

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8 hours ago, Ottservia said:

We can argue about the execution of these tropes all goddamn day but my point is that just because the trope is there that doesn’t make it inherently bad. God I absolutely DESPISE the “too anime” argument cause what the fuck does it even mean?! It’s such a broad statement that ultimately means absolutely nothing and goes no where. Like yeah anime tropes, I’m not gonna argue that they’re there and easy to spot but does that make them inherently bad?! No, no it doesn’t and it infuriates me when people even remotely imply that it does. Seriously if you honestly think pointing the fact that a trope exists as a legitimate criticism against something. I’m sorry but that is one way for me to never take you seriously because tropes are inevitable so for the love of god stop complaining that they exist. Now if you wanna criticize the execution of the trope fine but please be able to back up your argument with more than just “well I don’t like this trope so it’s bad” because that is a completely subjective argument. I’m sorry for the rant but this shit just irritate me.

I think you took the wrong message from my post. My argument wasn't "Hey, these tropes are in anime, and that's bad". My argument was "These tropes are big in anime right now, and tend to exist in these series that heavily pander to a certain demographic", hence the whole "You can really pin-point these tropes" bit. Like @Flere210 said, there are some common tropes in the older games, too, like the girly-girl Serra or the vengeful edgelord like Raven(Though admittedly, that's not his real name and one he chose to go by because he's a big 'ol edgelord), but I can't really pin-point a genre that encompasses both of those kinds of characters... whereas the typical harem characters and hyper exaggerated characters? It feels very isekai-y(Or in Fates' case, like some ecchi otaku-bait high school comedy... that's for some reason set in a super grimdark world).

The "That's bad" bit comes in how IS decided to bury significant character details in random supports, which most people won't see. Hell, I used two characters that relied on virtually the exact same character trope and were written a decade apart to showcase my point. So even though that's pretty subjective for me to say, I still feel like it's obvious that my argument was more rooted in execution, rather than things just being bad because they're just inherently bad.

I don't even know how you could infer that I was going in that direction, since going even further, I compare the execution in Awakening and Fates to Three Houses, which also leans heavily on anime tropes and character quirks. But again, Three Houses tends to use these character quirks to build the world or advance a character arc(Which then gets reinforced by the story structure of Three Houses so you can actually see characters develop and continue their relationships over the course of years). I don't even mind Bernie, even though I feel like she's one of the most egregious and over-reliant of her gimmick characters in FETH, purely because it's easy to generally see what the purpose of most of her conversations are supposed to be.

If I were to sum it up, without just completely knocking Awakening and Fates for execution, I feel like the goals of the character writing in those two games specifically was pretty different from the rest of the series. It seems like the purpose of the conversations in Awakening and Fates is 80-90% to give you more exposure to a character and just build towards the end of a relationship between characters(Probably because of the marriage and children mechanics), with 10-20% going to actual development or world building. And because of this, I guess the, uh, anime-y-ness really gets hammered home because of the exposure, and to people who aren't used to this or expect this, it hits a place that makes you go "Anime bad".

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1 hour ago, Hawkwing said:

Since I struggle with getting supports in every game not named Echoes, I appreciated the opportunity to obtain support points of my choosing outside of battle. It was a nice way of speeding up the support chain of a unit the avatar worked well with, or catching up with a character I may not have fought alongside much. Considering Corrin's personal skill relied on having a C support, this was a good call. Similar sentiment with recruiting in Three Houses, as getting supports with units was in many ways more practical than meeting the requirements normally. I do agree that these could be a tad faster, though (could private quarters be skipped? I never tried it).

Again, my issue is more how the line of dialogue in Fates rarely, if ever, added anything the characters. It usually just reinforced what was already established, instead of building upon that foundation. While I appreciate that Three Houses at least requires the player to pay attention to each characters personality to have a successful tea time, despite being told the conversation got lovely, we don't actually get an idea of their actual thoughts on the matter are. I can understand the costs of writing and recording the voice actors would prevent them from going in-depth here, but it still shares the same problem of not doing a whole lot for the characters.

I'd say the dialogue was one of the main reasons (besides gameplay) I enjoyed going through Awakening and Echoes, despite their flawed stories. I liked the interactions between characters and not only what was said but how they said it. Shadow Dragon's writing manages to be eloquent without being pretentious, and while characterization is unfortunately limited, what we do get is surprisingly non-generic and I can see a difference between Astram and Midia and Roger and Julius and so on. It's my favorite in the series, in fact. I recently started playing FE7, and despite the painfully slow tutorial (or veterans, anyway), again, the dialogue between Lyn, Kent,  and Sain (and occasionally other characters) kept an otherwise simple story engaging. And it wasn't just Fates lackluster story overall that was bad; the dialogue really didn't fit in with the "sword and sorcery" tone of the series, which didn't help disguise the lackluster execution of several ideas. For an important and surprisingly well done aspect of the series, I'm surprised it's not discussed more often

I find the opposite. Feels like supports are gained too quickly in the modern games. Which is preferable to the agonizingly slow rate of the Gameboy Advance era, but feels like I'm getting bobarded sometimes. Especially in Three Houses.

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1 minute ago, Jotari said:

I find the opposite. Feels like supports are gained too quickly in the modern games. Which is preferable to the agonizingly slow rate of the Gameboy Advance era, but feels like I'm getting bobarded sometimes. Especially in Three Houses.

Yeah, I definitely got some support fatigue in Three Houses. Finishing a chapter and seeing a dozen supports pop up filled me with dread more than anything, even though I like the cast of that game.

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2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I find the opposite. Feels like supports are gained too quickly in the modern games. Which is preferable to the agonizingly slow rate of the Gameboy Advance era, but feels like I'm getting bobarded sometimes. Especially in Three Houses.

I'm currently playing through Blazing Sword (the tutorial being slow for veterans and having around a half dozen games I'm alternating between doesn't help with progressing quickly), so I can't really comment on how well or badly the GBA games handle gaining supports. For Awakening it could just be I suck at going through with a definite plan in mind, since anytime I try, a different combination of units ends up having more synergy, or my MVP changes. Granted, each run being unique is why I enjoy they game (and Fire Emblem as a whole), but those change in plans mean I unlock things later than intended. Fates I only played once, and I ended up being very limited in who I used, so I would need some time to think and remember if I unlocked supports quickly or slowly.

I'd say Three Houses's issue is that the supports are long and the presentation is lackluster. The former has advantages, considering that several of Echoes supports suffered from being too short, and the timeskip means that several things have to be developed before and after it occurs, making the extra length necessary at points. They're just so slow and the erratic timing of the pauses inbetween each sentence doesn't help the pace. As for the presentation, it kinda gets the worst of both worlds, since the models and animations aren't static enough that most events could be left to the imagination (something portraits did accomplish, and the GBA games little bounces and movements definitely helped communicate what was happening in a scene without actually really showing anything), yet at the same time they aren't vibrant enough to be enjoyable to watch on their own merits (an advantage cinematic videogames do have). It's telling most of the conversations have basic animations, but anytime something complex happens, they switch to a black screen. I understand the production reasons behind his, but it ends up doing more harm than good.

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10 hours ago, Ottservia said:

Oh no anime tropes in a Japanese fantasy video game series?! Who would’ve ever guessed?! I’m sorry I couldn’t help myself but if you think Fire Emblem has never been anime you my good sir are deluding yourself.   

Of course FE has always had anime tropes within all the games. My issue is that in the newer games (Awakening onwards) many of the more pernicious tropes of modern anime have been more present and on the nose then ever before. Things such as revealing female clothing, one-note villains, fan service characters, inconsistency in tone, the power of friendship will save the day and over the top melodrama have really been more in your face then the earlier games. Don't get me wrong, all the games in the past have had these tropes to a certain level , but not to such a cartoonish degree that the 3DS games had them, specifically Awakening and Fates along with Heroes. When a series like Langrisser gets a mobile game and has many sexualized female characters I' m okay with it because the series has always had that kind of aesthetic design since its inception. However, for FE, I think that in the older games this trope was more toned down compared to the more recent games were you have characters such as Tharja and Camilla who exist solely for eye candy with little depth to their character. This cheapens and degrades the series as a result by dumbing it down and adding in popular tropes for a wider audience appeal instead of relying on its past strength and improving on them in modern iterations. Past FE games are not supposed to feel like the Tales of Series or a Hyperdimensional Neptunia games, because it had its own unique identity. Change in a series as old as FE is inevitable and not always a bad thing, but many of these recent changes have in my opinion been detrimental rather than positive. Thankfully 3 Houses seems to be curtailing these recent developments to come across as a more classic FE game instead of a modern one. 

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54 minutes ago, Hawkwing said:

I'd say Three Houses's issue is that the supports are long and the presentation is lackluster. The former has advantages, considering that several of Echoes supports suffered from being too short, and the timeskip means that several things have to be developed before and after it occurs, making the extra length necessary at points. They're just so slow and the erratic timing of the pauses inbetween each sentence doesn't help the pace. As for the presentation, it kinda gets the worst of both worlds, since the models and animations aren't static enough that most events could be left to the imagination (something portraits did accomplish, and the GBA games little bounces and movements definitely helped communicate what was happening in a scene without actually really showing anything), yet at the same time they aren't vibrant enough to be enjoyable to watch on their own merits (an advantage cinematic videogames do have). It's telling most of the conversations have basic animations, but anytime something complex happens, they switch to a black screen. I understand the production reasons behind his, but it ends up doing more harm than good.

Don't forget the bad JPEG backgrounds. Never forget the bad JPEG backgrounds. I swear, those backgrounds are so horrible. You have to go all the way back to FE3 to find worse conversation backgrounds - and the only reason that is so is that FE3, FE2 and FE1 do not have conversation backgrounds.

1 hour ago, Slumber said:

Yeah, I definitely got some support fatigue in Three Houses. Finishing a chapter and seeing a dozen supports pop up filled me with dread more than anything, even though I like the cast of that game.

Yes, I felt this too. I enjoy most of the Three Houses cast (even if I find a lot of the students to be overly tropey and far less complex than they're made out to be), but by God was it unbearable to look upon the 15~ unlocked supports and realize that I would spend my entire daily session of Three Houses just reading.

Anyway, since everyone is fighting over whether old FE or modern FE is the worst thing ever, I'll jump in and gush about Berwick Saga, because the truth of the matter is that FE in general sucks and Kaga can do no wrong. Yeah. Totally.

Berwick Saga does "supports" best, I feel. Quote-on-quote "supports", because Berwick Saga doesn't have traditional supports. Instead, it makes just about everything be a part of a character's development. There are paralogue-like chapters that revolve around certain characters, standard chapters that revolve around certain characters if they're alive, side objectives on standard maps that involve secondary characters, scenes for promoting, scenes for permanent recruitment, scenes dependant on the unit's happiness, the prologue has extended scenes for everybody to say their farewells instead of just ending cards...

As a result, the characters develop as the game goes, rather than through a series of set conversations. Heck, there are a few characters whose development is intertwined, and they didn't even have to sacrifice permadeath to make it possible. This, I believe, feels more natural than FE's system, and it allows for NPCs to be thrown into the mix as well, since the scenes don't necessarily have to be between two playable characters. It's not always perfect, but I mean, what is?

Also, visually, the scenes in Berwick Saga are pretty awesome. Rather than still portraits over backgrounds, 90% of the game's scenes take place in maps, much like the ones found in the gameplay, where the characters' sprites move and interact freely. It gives the scenes a lot more dynamism, and it allows for complex stuff without having to resort to the "fade to black" solution.

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16 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

 

(Disclaimer: I have no experience with TH Maddening yet, but bear with me a bit)

 

I disagree. I think 3 difficulties can work very well, but what they should abstain from in the future I feel, is:

 

Ambush Spawns – especially if I can´t predict where they will spawn, because they spawn in just about any damn spot on the map. If I get forts, stairs or whatever that let me have an educated guess where they´ll spawn I´m personally okay with them.

 

Stat Sticks – Having every enemy be able to just barely not 2HKO your guys is just not good game design imo. Enemies should be able to meet your units on equal footing, but what´s the point of having actual characters when the enemy just wipes the floor with them. At that point I may as well use generics.

 

And on that note:

 

Map Design – I think maps should be designed in such a way, that they offer a mechanic that may help the player against an enemy in a superior position and has greater numbers but does not or only rarely affects said player adversely.

 

 

The issue I have with harder difficulties is that they don't do much besides either adding stonger enemies or replacing tougher enemies instead and some small tidbits here and there.

If they could do something like adding an exclusive chapter like how FE7 did, there would be a reason to do so but apparently not anymore.

11 hours ago, Slumber said:

Three Houses went back to being more anime trope-y, but the characters(IMO) bounced off each other way better, and most of those supports had some extreme world-building in them. The timeskip and gap in supports also gives them fairly reasonable character development.

What do you mean by world building?

 

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2 hours ago, Hawkwing said:

I'm currently playing through Blazing Sword (the tutorial being slow for veterans and having around a half dozen games I'm alternating between doesn't help with progressing quickly), so I can't really comment on how well or badly the GBA games handle gaining supports. For Awakening it could just be I suck at going through with a definite plan in mind, since anytime I try, a different combination of units ends up having more synergy, or my MVP changes. Granted, each run being unique is why I enjoy they game (and Fire Emblem as a whole), but those change in plans mean I unlock things later than intended. Fates I only played once, and I ended up being very limited in who I used, so I would need some time to think and remember if I unlocked supports quickly or slowly.

I'd say Three Houses's issue is that the supports are long and the presentation is lackluster. The former has advantages, considering that several of Echoes supports suffered from being too short, and the timeskip means that several things have to be developed before and after it occurs, making the extra length necessary at points. They're just so slow and the erratic timing of the pauses inbetween each sentence doesn't help the pace. As for the presentation, it kinda gets the worst of both worlds, since the models and animations aren't static enough that most events could be left to the imagination (something portraits did accomplish, and the GBA games little bounces and movements definitely helped communicate what was happening in a scene without actually really showing anything), yet at the same time they aren't vibrant enough to be enjoyable to watch on their own merits (an advantage cinematic videogames do have). It's telling most of the conversations have basic animations, but anytime something complex happens, they switch to a black screen. I understand the production reasons behind his, but it ends up doing more harm than good.

I think the solution for this is something old fogeys have been crying for the return of for a while. And that's more limited support pools (which admittedly Shadows of Valentia had, though no one really raves about supports in that game). Essentially, less quantity, more quality. 3-4 supports per unit on average.

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1 hour ago, Harvey said:

What do you mean by world building?

Exactly what it sounds like. Development of the world the characters inhabit.

Going back to Canas, his supports with Renault cover that Morphs are actually a very old concept, and it's revealed that Renault is Nergal's former assistant who helped create Nergal's Morphs in order to bring back a friend(Which I believe was implied to be Kishuna). Or his supports with Pent, where they go into the natures of each magic, and we learn that Dark Magic seeps into your soul and desperately tries to eat away at you, and it turned Canas's brothers into living husks. Also we learn that Canas's mother is Niime, and that she's a VERY respected mage in Elibe that even turns Pent into a fanboy. FE7 is also the only game in the series that's a prequel(Sorta), so Canas's supports even explain why his son is an Anima Mage instead of a Dark Mage like the rest of his family.

In Three Houses, they actually make it really tough to find a support that doesn't involve exposition of how the politics of Fodlan work, whether it be noble kids talking about their families and their relation to the leaders of the houses or their history, or how certain groups of people are treated within Fodlan(Dedue's supports being about the Duscur or Petra and Brigid for example), or just conversations involving key people in the story, like Ashe and his history with Lonato. Sometimes they even go the extra mile and talk about the Crests themselves and how that leaves them feeling in the society of Fodlan, like with Sylvain.

All of these supports generally help paint a picture and make the world seem much grander outside of the conversations the characters are having.

Edited by Slumber
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36 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I think the solution for this is something old fogeys have been crying for the return of for a while. And that's more limited support pools (which admittedly Shadows of Valentia had, though no one really raves about supports in that game). Essentially, less quantity, more quality. 3-4 supports per unit on average.

I wouldn't be surprised if the supports in Shadows of Valentia was decided upon fairly late during the voice acting process. It seems like they decided they had enough money leftover in the voice acting budget for X many supports, so they did X many. While not bad, It does seem that the writers weren't given as much time as they could have to iron out the support conversations, resulting in most of them being merely okay.

I do agree that it would be nice for limited supports to return, if at least for a game or two. As much as I enjoy Awakening's cast and supports, you can tell that the writers bit off more than they could chew at points.

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4 hours ago, Slumber said:

 Like @Flere210 said, there are some common tropes in the older games, too, like the girly-girl Serra or the vengeful edgelord like Raven(Though admittedly, that's not his real name and one he chose to go by because he's a big 'ol edgelord), but I can't really pin-point a genre that encompasses both of those kinds of characters... whereas the typical harem characters and hyper exaggerated characters? It feels very isekai-y(Or in Fates' case, like some ecchi otaku-bait high school comedy... that's for some reason set in a super grimdark world).

I can, Kaga games are definitely reminding of Gundam-era mecha shows whitout the robots. There are many example both generic and speciphic. 

As for the GBA era, i heard some suggestionsabout Record of Lodoss war, but i never watched it so i can't say anything. Tellius is straight up Big 3 shonen tho.

In general, Fire Emblem follow whatever is currently popular in anime.

4 hours ago, Slumber said:

The "That's bad" bit comes in how IS decided to bury significant character details in random supports, which most people won't see. Hell, I used two characters that relied on virtually the exact same character trope and were written a decade apart to showcase my point. So even though that's pretty subjective for me to say, I still feel like it's obvious that my argument was more rooted in execution, rather than things just being bad because they're just inherently bad.

I criticized the execution many times. My problem is that most of the criticism is "this character is a trope" instead of "this character look like trope unless you go trough certain hops" wich imo is a fairer criticism.

4 hours ago, Jotari said:

I find the opposite. Feels like supports are gained too quickly in the modern games. Which is preferable to the agonizingly slow rate of the Gameboy Advance era, but feels like I'm getting bobarded sometimes. Especially in Three Houses.

100% agree on that.

3 hours ago, Wraith said:

Of course FE has always had anime tropes within all the games. My issue is that in the newer games (Awakening onwards) many of the more pernicious tropes of modern anime have been more present and on the nose then ever before. Things such as revealing female clothing, one-note villains, fan service characters, inconsistency in tone, the power of friendship will save the day and over the top melodrama have really been more in your face then the earlier games. 

As i mentiomed earlier, this is only because the older animes used different tropes. 

How is Camus wearing a Char mask not on the nose for example? 

3 hours ago, Wraith said:

When a series like Langrisser gets a mobile game and has many sexualized female characters I' m okay with it because the series has always had that kind of aesthetic design since its inception. However, for FE, I think that in the older games this trope was more toned down compared to the more recent games were you have characters such as Tharja and Camilla who exist solely for eye candy with little depth to their character.

First Tharja has a fair amount of depth, second, Der Langrisser was a more morally gray story than any fire emblem game despite having poor writing in general. I wouldn't dismiss it just because the character design is outlandish.

3 hours ago, Wraith said:

Past FE games are not supposed to feel like the Tales of Series or a Hyperdimensional Neptunia games, because it had its own unique identity. 

The teenage me already found many similarities between Tales of Symphonia and Path of Radiance, and back then Neptunia did not exist yet so nothing could be like that. 

 

 

In general Fire Emblem never had that unique of an identity. It always was a trend follower and never a trend setter. Fire Emblem is a litmus test of what is populat in Anime in the period it get released. Three houses is simply a reflection of the rejection that the classic Isekai formula is currently facing.

Edited by Flere210
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17 minutes ago, Flere210 said:

I can, Kaga games are definitely reminding of Gundam-era mecha shows whitout the robots. There are many example both generic and speciphic. 

As for the GBA era, i heard some suggestionsabout Record of Lodoss war, but i never watched it so i can't say anything. Tellius is straight up Big 3 shonen tho.

In general, Fire Emblem follow whatever is currently popular in anime.

This makes sense, given that Camus is a pretty notable Char clone.

Though I will say, if Kaga games are big on mecha tropes(But without the mecha), then his games would have been a bit behind the time, since mecha, especially the old school ones that come to mind now that you mention it, were more of a product of the late 70s and 80s. By the 90s when Fire Emblem rolled around, mecha was kinda starting to trend on a decline. And a lot of what was coming out was very different from the grand scale war-centric stories of the 80s where the Kaga and GBA games seemed to pull from the most. Gundam had moved on to full on pretty-boy super soldiers and shonen battle tournament series in the 90s, and Evangelion came out smack dab in the middle of the 90s and was a pretty massive deconstruction that completely derailed the genre.

I feel like the modern Fire Emblem games have their fingers more on the pulse of what's big in anime, which probably makes it a lot more apparent.

EDIT: Also I'd really only say it's Ike, Mia and probably Boyd who feel like they come from big 3 battle shounen. Ike's obvious, Boyd's the friend character who can't catch up, and even though Samurai Champloo's not really a shounen, Mia's straight up just Fuu and Mugen fused into one character. Most of the other characters still feel like the Kaga/GBA era FE characters.

Edited by Slumber
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5 hours ago, Slumber said:

I think you took the wrong message from my post. My argument wasn't "Hey, these tropes are in anime, and that's bad". My argument was "These tropes are big in anime right now, and tend to exist in these series that heavily pander to a certain demographic", hence the whole "You can really pin-point these tropes" bit. Like @Flere210 said, there are some common tropes in the older games, too, like the girly-girl Serra or the vengeful edgelord like Raven(Though admittedly, that's not his real name and one he chose to go by because he's a big 'ol edgelord), but I can't really pin-point a genre that encompasses both of those kinds of characters... whereas the typical harem characters and hyper exaggerated characters? It feels very isekai-y(Or in Fates' case, like some ecchi otaku-bait high school comedy... that's for some reason set in a super grimdark world).

The "That's bad" bit comes in how IS decided to bury significant character details in random supports, which most people won't see. Hell, I used two characters that relied on virtually the exact same character trope and were written a decade apart to showcase my point. So even though that's pretty subjective for me to say, I still feel like it's obvious that my argument was more rooted in execution, rather than things just being bad because they're just inherently bad.

I don't even know how you could infer that I was going in that direction, since going even further, I compare the execution in Awakening and Fates to Three Houses, which also leans heavily on anime tropes and character quirks. But again, Three Houses tends to use these character quirks to build the world or advance a character arc(Which then gets reinforced by the story structure of Three Houses so you can actually see characters develop and continue their relationships over the course of years). I don't even mind Bernie, even though I feel like she's one of the most egregious and over-reliant of her gimmick characters in FETH, purely because it's easy to generally see what the purpose of most of her conversations are supposed to be.

If I were to sum it up, without just completely knocking Awakening and Fates for execution, I feel like the goals of the character writing in those two games specifically was pretty different from the rest of the series. It seems like the purpose of the conversations in Awakening and Fates is 80-90% to give you more exposure to a character and just build towards the end of a relationship between characters(Probably because of the marriage and children mechanics), with 10-20% going to actual development or world building. And because of this, I guess the, uh, anime-y-ness really gets hammered home because of the exposure, and to people who aren't used to this or expect this, it hits a place that makes you go "Anime bad".

What made me angry about your initial post is 

1. You used ONE character to judge the entirety of the cast in awakening which is like me saying 3H has a boring cast solely because annette is boring and that bothers me.

2. Bold: this also irritates me a lot. It’s the phrasing of it cause here it certainly sounds like “anime bad”. I honest to god do not see where your or @Wraith’s argument is really coming from here. Like okay the tropes are a little more in your face, so what? That’s a bad thing because? I don’t get why that’s a bad thing. Locking development behind supports has been a problem with FE since its inception with the exception of maybe the tellius series. Awakening isn’t even all that bad about it. Most “gimmicks” of a character are integrated well and are used well to help better develop the characters. A lot of the “gimmicks” aren’t even that reinforced only being brought up once or twice in a support at most. I also dislike complaining about “gimmicks” in general cause what is a character “gimmick” if not just a prominent character trait. Sure it can be more prominent than other traits and can be a bit annoying at times but overall so long as there is more to the character, it doesn’t bother me personally. I personally like character “gimmicks” cause it at least makes the character memorable to me(for better or for worse) unlike some 3H and SoV characters(Annette, Ingrid, and like half SoV’s cast). Again, I find complaining about that sort of thing pointless because it doesn’t really get at the heart of the issue nor is it really an objective critique because you may feel the characters are overly gimmicky but I certainly don’t. I’m not saying awakening and fates character writing is perfect cause there are certainly a few stinkers but I honestly do not see how your argument holds any water. Cause so what if I can easily identify the trope being used? Dies that make the trope bad? No, no it doesn’t and that’s what your argument sounds like to me. There are better ways to criticize the writing of a character without resorting to “gimmick bad therefore character bad”. It’s fine to simply not like tropes but come on.

Edited by Ottservia
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13 hours ago, Ottservia said:

and that’s another stop comparing characters like this it does nothing. Every character is different with their own unique struggles and backstories. Comparing them to say one is better than the other like that is pointless to me it doesn’t take into account how different they truly are.

I disagree. Firstly because comparisons are inevitable in a series that relies so much on tropes and archetypes, but mainly because comparing similar character certainly does something. Sometimes similar characters are handled very differently and its exactly these difference that ensure one of these characters works and the other doesn't. Take the villains for instance. Its a fairly common agreement that the modern Fire Emblem villains are a large step backwards and comparing the differences between old and new villains might just clue us in about why this is. 

 

13 hours ago, Ottservia said:

 Like Yeah Ricken is a trope played straight but does that make him any less of a good character? No. Miriel I’ll admit is a bad character because she’s very one dimensional and doesn’t deviate at all from that one singular trait. Ricken is a good character because we see how his backstory and struggles affect his personality, interactions with other characters, motivations, so on and so forth. Sure he’s a trope but it’s executed competently as far as I can tell. I may not personally care for it but I can appreciate competent writing when I see it.

To an extend I agree. Ricken is a very competent depiction of the typical shota trope and as such is a decent character(unless that particular trope annoys you). But comparing him to those that came before he's still a bit of a downgrade. Fire Emblem loli's have always neatly fallen into all the popular loli tropes but shota's tended to be handled more as characters than just tropes. In that sense Ricken is a step below characters like Nils or Tormod. He's a competent depiction of his archetype and nothing more. This makes him competent but ultimately unambitious. 

And that's okay. There's very much room for that. My point isn't that Ricken is unambitious and thus bad. I used him more of an example to convey Awakening's overall style. Because the vast majority of Awakening's characters are like Ricken. They are competent but unambitious. Just like Ricken is just a shota Validar is just a Gharnef with no ambition to be anything more, Miriel is just the resident nerd without the ambition to be anything more, etcetera. In some cases it cases that works out. Certain Awakening characters are very lovable, but when figures driving the whole plot like Validar are so ordinaire it becomes a bit of a problem. 

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2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Essentially, less quantity, more quality. 3-4 supports per unit on average.

Possibly, but not certainly. Not every PoR support is perfect despite many having no more than 3-4 supports each (which seems to be more a limitation owed to rush/limited resources than intention). In fact, there are few bombs, which is pretty inevitable in any game.

FE6 looks to average 4, sometimes 5 each. FE7 seems to average 5 as well, but you have some 3s and even non-lord 7s tossed in too. FE8 seems to be usually 5, but with 6 for non-Renais royalty and Gerik.

And yet, one of the terrible supports can be found on in KnollxLute, despite Knoll only having 3, and the same is true of Haar- 2 supports but the Makalov is bad. Being on the average doesn't equate to quality either, since MarcusxIsadora and MarcusxHarken seem redundant. Nor does being above the average doesn't mean guaranteed quality- HectorxFlorina is a very bad love story.

 

6 hours ago, Hawkwing said:

I'd say Three Houses's issue is that the supports are long and the presentation is lackluster. The former has advantages, considering that several of Echoes supports suffered from being too short,

I wish there was an easy way to determine how long the average support is. Do I count the words- which is very tedious, or do I count the number of times the dialogue goes from one character to another? In both cases, I'm ignoring content thought, which is not easily converted to statistics despite being the thing that matters the most. I sorta want to figure out what the ideal support length is. Neither so short it feels unfulfilling, but nor so long you want it to end. Must a support finally end totally fulfilling, or does tantalizing you with a slight lack of finish so your craving more also suffice?

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Flere210 said:

Der Langrisser was a more morally gray story than any fire emblem game despite having poor writing in general. I wouldn't dismiss it just because the character design is outlandish.

The 1-2 remake is getting an eShop demo in a few days.😉

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25 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I disagree. Firstly because comparisons are inevitable in a series that relies so much on tropes and archetypes, but mainly because comparing similar character certainly does something. Sometimes similar characters are handled very differently and its exactly these difference that ensure one of these characters works and the other doesn't. Take the villains for instance. Its a fairly common agreement that the modern Fire Emblem villains are a large step backwards and comparing the differences between old and new villains might just clue us in about why this is. 

 

To an extend I agree. Ricken is a very competent depiction of the typical shota trope and as such is a decent character(unless that particular trope annoys you). But comparing him to those that came before he's still a bit of a downgrade. Fire Emblem loli's have always neatly fallen into all the popular loli tropes but shota's tended to be handled more as characters than just tropes. In that sense Ricken is a step below characters like Nils or Tormod. He's a competent depiction of his archetype and nothing more. This makes him competent but ultimately unambitious. 

And that's okay. There's very much room for that. My point isn't that Ricken is unambitious and thus bad. I used him more of an example to convey Awakening's overall style. Because the vast majority of Awakening's characters are like Ricken. They are competent but unambitious. Just like Ricken is just a shota Validar is just a Gharnef with no ambition to be anything more, Miriel is just the resident nerd without the ambition to be anything more, etcetera. In some cases it cases that works out. Certain Awakening characters are very lovable, but when figures driving the whole plot like Validar are so ordinaire it becomes a bit of a problem. 

I’m not saying comparisons are entirely meaningless because you can compare things and have it mean something. I compare Tobin and Ferdinand all the time because I feel Ferdinand is basically Tobin but better because the former actually has depth while the latter doesn’t. What I mean when I say Comparison is meaningless is that I feel it’s pointless to compare Grima to Arvis. One is a pure evil villain the other is a sympathetic morally gray one. Whichever you prefer is based on personal taste but comparing the two is ultimately meaningless because the roles they serve in their respective narratives are distinctly different even if they are both villains. The message the protagonist is supposed to take from their defeat is different because the stories they’re a part are different. It’s pointless to argue that Arvis is a better villain because he‘s sympathetic because Grima was never intended to be sympathetic. He’s not written that way so to criticize him for not being like arvis is completely pointless. There’s nothing wrong with “safe” or unambitious writing if the story or character does not set out to be anything more than that. If that’s all they wanted to write, then I’m not gonna criticize any further.

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