What got you into Fire Emblem?

[Sub Zero]

What got you into Fire Emblem? A YouTuber? A friend? A random classmate? Im curious! ~.~

[coldhand25]

When I bought my first smartphone, everyone in class was obsessed with Pokemon Fire Red, so naturally, I as well downloaded an emulator and started playing it. After some time I got bored tho, so I went looking for good GBA games (besides Rayman Advance, which was kind of the only non-pokemon gba game I played), and stumbled upon a list including strategy titles. Now, as a big fan of strategy games since childhood (I used to play a lot of cossacks and aoe with my dad and siblings), I couldn't stop myself from checking said list, and there was Fire Emblem (7) among the titles. Which sounded pretty much like a fantasy game, which I pretty much like, so I ended up looking it up, and before I realized it became pretty much one of my favourite game series. (fun fact - no one among my friends or family knew what Fire Emblem is, and I failed to get anyone into it... they either don't like it's gameplay, or it's "too anime" for them... well, at least one of my friends loves Echoes soundtrack after Youtube recommended it for him, but that's as far as it gets)

[Von Ithipathachai]

I was looking for games to fill my 3DS library and I bought Fire Emblem: Awakening more or less on a whim.

There was a time when I thought that game was the best thing since rock n' roll.  Think I did about four straight playthroughs of the thing before I got remotely bored with it.

Edited November 27, 2018 by Von Ithipathachai

[vanguard333]

Short answer: Smash Bros. Melee and stumbling upon Path of Radiamce at the store. 

Long answer: Ssssssmmmmaaaaassssshhhhh Bbbbbrrrrroooossss. Mmmmeeeelllleeee [...]

Actual long answer: I was curious about Fire Emblem after seeing Marth and Roy in Smash Bros. Melee. My brother and I became even more curious about the game series after a distant relative visited and showed us his copy of one of the GBA FE games (I can’t remember which one, but I’m almost certain it was the one with Eliwood). My brother and I then found Path of Radiance at a video game store and we really enjoyed it. Eventually we found Radiant Dawn and Shadow Dragon. Eventually, I also got Awakening, Fates (all three versions) and Echoes. But Path of Radiance is still my favourite, with Radiant Dawn in second place.

[Light Strategist]

A combination of playing Marth and Ike in Brawl and my eagerness and anticipation for the then upcoming Pokémon X and Y. I got my 3DS for the purpose of playing Pokémon as has basically been my handheld gaming practice since I've been a gamer. I wanted a Pikachu model but they either didn't have one or it wasn't quite out yet so I get the Awakening special edition since that came with a deal that got the most games at the time, one of which was the preloaded copy of Awakening which was partially influenced through "Marth" on the boxart.

I suppose the best way of wording it may be "Destiny" or "Happenstance" because the sheer amount of things that lined up to cause my interest to really sink in was beyond a normal amount of coincidence. Heck it took all the way into Chapter 9 to hook me properly and by Chapter 13's conclusion, I wasn't gonna put it down. I was so into it that I managed to literally break away from reality. I'd stopped registering anything outside of the game.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Melee.

I did end up introducing quite a few people into the series, however.

[Rapaille]

I knew of the existence of Fire Emblem since brawl. I thought that Ike was cool but that was as far as my interest went.

When I was 15 I had more free-time then neccesary and spent most of that time playing games or watching videos about games. A lot of the channels that I watched talked about Awakening and said it was there favourite game. This made me curious so I bought the game and it was unlike any other game I played at that point. I became curious in the series and looked the other games up, saw the prices and went back to playing Awakening.

I preordered Fates and it caused me to lose interest in the series. 9 months passed and I learned a way to play the older games without spending that much money and here I am, typing how I discovered, lost interest and rediscovered Fire Emblem.  

Edited December 4, 2018 by LJwalhout

[Zihark11]

I was at a Rogers video and i had a choice as a kid between Fire emblem Radiant Dawn or Avatar the last Airbender game. Lets just say i chose correctly. Radiant dawn to this day 11 years later is still my favorite game of all time. currently on my 168th playthrough. 

[𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞𝐢𝐫]

i found out by chance that IS didn't made only the Advance Wars serie, but also FE. that was years ago, when i was searching for japanese strategy games out of curiosity.

after completing all 3 titles for GBA, i got very interested in those games since they were quite unique on their own.

in the end, i decided to buy and collect all the other remaining titles in order to have an entire FE collection. that allowed me to experience how the games played, to know what they were about and to see how they evolved to become what they are today.

[Sub Zero]

Well...Minus well tell my story as boring as it is.

I was on YouTube one day watching the AVGN when I saw a recommended video that looked interesting to me. That video was BigKlingy's first video on his playthrough of Awakening. I jumped to the video and watched it..and I was intrigued. I waited for the 2nd part of his playthrough for a bit. That wait was worth it! I was no longer intrigued..I WAS ALREADY IN LOVE WITH THE GAME! I couldn't stop watching the game and I eventually watched other playthroughs like Etika's. Now we're here, in 2018 and im still addicted with FE and i'll probably never lose interest. A big thanks to BigKlingy for introducing me into a series I love...and thanks to the community for not being jerkwads. :3  

[DemolisherBPB]

Short: a friend who'd had awakening

Long: Back around 2008-9 when I got my first laptop I went on a Super Smash bros character origins spree. Now younger Demo was a foolish child who didn't know that didn't think to translate his old games, So I ended up playing 10 minutes of Dark Dragon and the Blade of Light before moving on to Kid Icarus because the hell was I meant to understand that.
It wasn't until around 2014 that I went to a friends and we'd play smash occasionally and told me he'd actually got a FE game and let me try a random encounter in Awakening, I had fun so bought myself the game and really enjoyed it then spiraled into playing ever game in the series with only Thracia left to complete (Excluding FE1/3 since I played 11/12 One day I'll play those) I also give a shout out to Final Fantasy Tactics War of the Lions that I played in 2012 since that gave me the patience to play TRPGs that I lacked in '08

[Arcphoenix]

Two friends of mine. One in particular kept talking about it enough that I got curious, and what he talked about sounded very interesting. I picked up Conquest and have been a fan since.

[SuperNova125]

It is a looong story so read at your own cost.

So my first introduction to the series was heroes. When it came to android in early 2017 I downloaded it day one, I didn't knew what it was about at all but I just wanted to play with something as I was getting quite bored at the time. I liked the game and found it fun (I remember tiki being one of my first units and destroying everything with her). After some months I broke my phone and it would take me quite the time to get a new one. During this time I first downloaded the awakening demo (bought my 3ds some months earlier for Pokémon and got Xenoblabe with it as well, so I was quite busy playing 4 games and didn't download anything). I loved it but didn't give the series any attention just yet. I got to know about FE from an awakening You Tube playthrough and fates all tree versions followed. Saw some begginer videos and downloaded FE7. I got stuck at a point so I gave up a bit. When echoes came out I got it pretty fast and finished it in a week. After this, in the following summer I finished 7 and 8 and watched playthroughs and read on the serenes site and in other places stuff about gameplay and such to get a better feeling of the series and here I am waiting for 3Houses like a maniac.

[Denomon]

I knew about it for a while because of the Super Smash Bros. series. When Corrin was released as DLC, I decided to play Fates. Since then, I've gone on to play other Fire Emblem games.

[Slumber]

1. Marth and Roy in Melee piqued my interest
2. Nintendo was cross advertising FE7 with a bunch of games I was interested on the GBA. It was a pamphlet that was included with Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Sword of Mana, and Advanced Wars. I think after seeing it advertised in the back of the FFTA, I decided to go out and buy(AKA bug my parents until they took me to Best Buy) FE7.

Edited November 27, 2018 by Slumber

[indigoasis]

A friend of mine grew up with Path of Radiance, and he mained Ike in Brawl. I was curious as to what Fire Emblem was about, so I downloaded an emulator and FE7. I liked the look of the game and enjoyed the characters, and proceeded to play other entries in the series. I really liked the strategy behind everything, and enjoyed seeing the relationships between characters. I'm currently playing through Path of Radiance myself, and I think I've enjoyed the gameplay of it more than any other title so far.

[NSSKG151]

Corrin getting into Smash Bros as DLC and causing such a uproar that I just had to know what all the noise surrounding Fire Emblem was about. I went on to watch some videos showing gameplay of early chapters from Fates and it looked interesting to me to try and play. It led to me buying Fates: Conquest (probably wasn't the smartest decision for my first FE game) and after struggling on normal difficulty I eventually beat it and I went on to play the other 3DS games and Heroes.

So yeah I would say their decision to put Corrin in Smash Bros actually worked out because it got me to play the series (curse you Sakurai).

[Cure Naga]

I personally got into Fire Emblem by an ad in Gameinformer which had Robin, "Marth", and Chrom fighting this dragon that was entirely black. Later I looked at a video on youtube about the different games in the series up to that point which was made right before Shadow Dragon was released which I especially wanted to play Path of Radiance and Thracia 776. I also wanted to start at the beginning of the series so I tried to look at the original Fire Emblem game but realized it was all in Japenese so I instead looked at Fire Emblem Path of Radiance and found Magenight404.  I saw some of the beginning of the game at the time and tried to look at what the price of the game was which at the time was about $100.00. I just decided to wait for Awakening to come out. I pretty much played the game nonstop till I was done. Fun fact when I was playing Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the first time I thought that Marth's name was Martha.

[MozillaFiberfox]

When I was 12 and in an EB Games with my brother on his birthday, I saw a copy of Awakening on the shelf (it just launched in North America earlier that month) and my interest was piqued, although I didn't get the game then. Months later I spent my birthday money on a copy of the game and loved it. After Smash for 3DS came out I got more into the series by playing some of the games the other FE characters were in, and from there I got more and more into it. 

[XRay]

I was introduced to Fire Emblem by a friend, but I was not really into it at first. Another friend introduced me to Advance Wars next and I got hooked into that. After Advance Wars got axed, I filled the void with Fire Emblem.

I was first introduced to Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword, but after watching my friend play through the game and seeing the lack of "freedom" and little post game content, it failed to capture my interest. I was introduced to Sacred Stones next, and it is a much more fun game in my opinion. Being able to move around the map and strengthen your army after the main story made it much more interesting. I did not have my own Game Boy Advance at the time, so I was only played it a little whenever my friend and I got together.

Then I got introduced to Advance Wars Dual Strike and got really hooked, so Fire Emblem just sort of fell to the way side. Then Advance Wars Days of Ruin came out. Those two Advance Wars titles became my go to games. I also played the first few chapters of Shadow Dragon around that time, but being forced to sacrifice units to unlock more chapters was a huge turn off for me so I quickly dropped it... Yeah, I was not impressed with Fire Emblem outside of Sacred Stones.

I did not know Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn existed until Awakening came out, but based on its similarity with Blazing Sword (no over world map traveling; lack of post game content), I probably would not have liked it much.

I got a laptop during my teens around high school, towards the end of the DS's lifespan, so I was able to finally play Sacred Stones via an emulator and get the full Fire Emblem experience, so I guess Sacred Stones is my first Fire Emblem game in a way. This was also around the time that I realized Advance Wars is not going to get another sequel, so Sacred Stones helped filled the void left in my heart by Advance Wars.

I got my hands on Awakening in 2014, and I think that is when I truly became a Fire Emblem fan. By that time, Advance Wars seems like a distant memory of school crush that you moved on from, but not quite. This sounds a little weird, but the closest analogy I can think of is falling in love with and marrying your girlfriend's sister after your girlfriend died.

Edited November 28, 2018 by XRay

[starburst]

A couple of years ago, while trying some GBA games on an emulator, I noticed that Fire Emblem (the series) had always been mentioned in the ‘top’ and recommendations lists. I played a couple of chapters of ‘The Sacred Stones’ but did not get hooked.

Last year, I decided to get a 3DS to kill some time and, again, Fire Emblem appeared on every ‘must play’ list. I read more about the series and realised that it had been created by Intelligent Systems, who had also developed a favourite of mine, Advance Wars. And when I watched the trailer of ‘Fates’ I fell in love with Nohr.

I tried ‘Birthright’ first because everyone said so, but I soon got bored. I felt disappointed, for I had a lot of expectations for this game. Luckily, I found home in ‘Conquest’ Hard and have been playing it non-stop since last year.

It was because of ‘Conquest’ that I got all GBA, DS, 3DS and Tellius games. I even got a Switch earlier this year basically just for the upcoming Fire Emblem (the console is still brand new.)

[starburst]

On 28/11/2018 at 5:38 AM, XRay said:

This sounds a little weird, but the closest analogy I can think of is falling in love with and marrying your girlfriend's sister after your girlfriend died.

That sounds about normal within Fire Emblem, mate. No worries.

I am an Advance Wars fan too. To be honest, a new AW would bring me more joy than any other game.

[Crimsonvolt]

In short, my sister had FE7 and I ended up playing most of her games at the time.  When FE8 came out and it featured two main characters being siblings with their own routes, we got hooked on the series. From there we continued to buy and play each of the games. Sadly, as we got older we slowly lost interest in the more recent titles. We're looking forward to three houses though.

[pxay]

My grandpa always downloaded games for me when i was little,  so one day searching for a new game to play, i found one called "fire emblem the sacred stones" on my ROM folder . That time i didn't give it a shot, but when i moved far away,  due to not having internet connection the first weeks, i decided to play it. Later, when i was already in love with the game, i meet a guy who was in that kind of games, so we started playing it every day

[PickleKnight97]

I'd hit 17, I believe, and it suddenly dawned on me "I'm old enough to play pretty much any console game", so I decided to get the one game my parents told me I could never play and got- Pokemon. But that spirit of adventure and slight mischief eventually got me to Awakening. Kept seeing it in top RPGs, the whole "units can get married and have kids" really put me over the edge and... here I am.