Jump to content

May I ask why some Fire Emblem fans act like Awakening and Fates were the worst thing to happen to the series?


Decerd
 Share

Recommended Posts

6 hours ago, Manstein said:

If not for Awakening the franchise would be dead. What was introduced in Awakening that saved the franchise? Waifus were. People love waifus and they loved Awakening because of it. It was this very aspect that made the series popular. This is what newer people were looking for in Awakening. You perhaps might not have looked for this aspect specifically, but a lot of people did. Most of the newer fans came because of it. If Awakening were like the previous entries it would not have been as successful as it was.

I am saying that the most of the newer fans like the idea of the dating mechanics, not the community as a whole, since this is the very reason that divides us in older fans and newer fans.

I can acknowledge that fanservice and so-called "waifus" appealed to certain people and helped with sales. I will not acknowledge that it's the only reason most of the new players got the game or is the primary reason the series got popular. People didn't need to buy a $40 game for anime girls. Sure, it helped the decision, but there are plenty of other things that brought new players in, casual mode being a commonly-cited one. Better marketing and more streamlined gameplay are examples of other things that helped.

I say this as someone who is both "old guard" and a fan of the new games.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 326
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

5 hours ago, Nym said:

The female armor designs for some characters is dumb, especially Camilla. You cannot defend that design, this is clearely fanservice. Kagero and Orochi too but AT LEAST they get some sort of a pass because their base class are fragile class (as such they don't wear armors). I'll defend Charlotte however, because I think this design makes sense for her character.

So just because Charlotte's a gold-digging whore, it's fine for her to wear very little? That's a very flimsy argument.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To be honest, I feel that Awakening gets too much flak if anything. As a whole, both gameplay-wise and story-wise, Awakening works just fine. In fact, one of the reasons for Awakening's popularity is due to skilled marketing skills and also being a lot more player-friendly than the old games were. Because of one little hiccup in the difficulty mode of Radiant Dawn, the sales really took a hit for the west. 

I played Shadow Dragon first before, but never finished it because it always annoyed me. But then I played Awakening and finished it, and fell in love with the series and started to go back and look at the old games, and replayed Shadow Dragon, and fell in love with how amazing Marth is. 

The story of Awakening isn't actually bad. It really isn't. It's rushed, and given what it was meant to be, it makes perfect sense. Awakening was a game designed to be a huge reference game, meant to cram in as many references as possible to give Awakening a proper send-off so that the writers can express how much fun they had over the series and how much they love it. So they really squeezed in a lot of things, but this is precisely what I felt gave so much life in the story, but also what made it feel so rushed in each arc. If you could make Awakening again, but the writers decided to separate the three arcs into full games, that would be something incredibly special. Doubtful they would, given their track record of remakes are, but I can dream. Another reason some people hate on Awakening is because this is a world set in the same universe as Archanea, being the future of that continent. Many existing things from that past, like the Binding Shield having changed functions, the Earth Dragons having vanished, and Tiki all ended up causing some people to rage on because it's not the same as back then. I honestly feel any criticism toward Awakening Tiki is a result more about how they more can't handle the fact that Tiki can actually grow up from that little girl from back then. 

The gameplay I confess is very unbalanced, but I'm really not the guy that understands what makes a "good" map, given that both Shadow Dragon and New Mystery follow a similar formula of just seizing the castle, yet those games get praised for having great gameplay. I don't honestly get what makes a good map design or not, because all I do is play it. Yeah, Awakening was not exactly balanced, but that's actually what made it fun. I have replayed Awakening and invested well over 100 hours on it. I even collected EVERY support conversation in the game. 

Fates is where I believe that IS truly messed up. There was not as much ambition placed in the game as it had the potential of actually having. This is because Fates ended up trying to focus what made Awakening so great.

This is the actual problem for how this divide between the fandom actually happened. Had Awakening not been such a huge influence over Fates, people would not hate on Awakening so much, but most would be thankful for Awakening to have given some more time and allowing more Fire Emblem to be produced. But they do hate on Awakening because of how Awakening did have so much influence over Fates, and that caused people to react harshly toward it as a result, because it caused them to fear that Fire Emblem was turning into a direction that older fans did not like. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

46 minutes ago, NinjaMonkey said:

So just because Charlotte's a gold-digging whore, it's fine for her to wear very little? That's a very flimsy argument.

Not really,  if you didn't notice all fighters in the 3ds era don't wear a lot of armor. In fact they are shirtless which reflect why they have low defense and take a lot of damage despite their big hp pool.

Charlotte being the first ever female fighter, well... she needed a similar design to male fighters.

But yes I do thing it's fine because she's a gold digger. She tries to seduce men so her outfit make sense (make me question why her personal skill has nothing to do with men but whatever). And AT LEAST it is justified by the game in some ways, Camilla's armor has no justification outside of fanservice.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Nym said:

Not really,  if you didn't notice all fighters in the 3ds era don't wear a lot of armor. In fact they are shirtless which reflect why they have low defense and take a lot of damage despite their big hp pool.

Charlotte being the first ever female fighter, well... she needed a similar design to male fighters.

But yes I do thing it's fine because she's a gold digger. She tries to seduce men so her outfit make sense (make me question why her personal skill has nothing to do with men but whatever). And AT LEAST it is justified by the game in some ways, Camilla's armor has no justification outside of fanservice.

Speaking of justification of outfits, the funny thing is that Tharja's outfit has actual justifications behind it, based on this thread:

Spoiler

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As for someone who started with the Tellius series, which had brilliant story and gameplay, I had high hopes and expectations in Awakening.

But it couldn't fulfill them in the slightest. The plot of the first part (till Emmeryn's death) was fine despite more or less a copy of FE9. After that the plot went downwards. Though the story wasn't the worst, it was the gameplay. First this game is totally unbalanced by having pair up for the player, but not for the opponent. This advantage should be cancelled out by giving the enemies OP skills in higher difficulties. Lunatic (+) is just fake difficulty. Second, the major issue, is that this game has no other mission objectives aside of rout and defeat boss. Classic defend missions don't really exist except the pseudo one in Tiki's paralogue. This made the game incredibly boring after a short time.

IS learned from that and brought some good things back in Fates. Conquest was gameplaywise a great part, Birthright is FE13 likish and Revelation tried to be innovative by adding map gimmicks which failed for the most part unfortunately. Storywise all three games were trash, but that's forgivable as long their gameplay is fine, which was the case in all three parts. Of course Conquest did it best.

Fanservice might be an issue, and yes it ruined certain potential interesting characters like Camilla, but this is common in modern RPGs.

FE4 did it perfectly with its marriage system. And although it's (more than) 20 years old both Judgral games are not less modern than Fates in terms of plot and gameplay.

Edited by Necrofantasia
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Necrofantasia said:

But it couldn't fulfill them in the slightest. The plot of the first part (till Emmeryn's death) was fine despite more or less a copy of FE9. After that the plot went downwards. Though the story wasn't the worst, it was the gameplay. First this game is totally unbalanced by having pair up for the player, but not for the opponent. This advantage should be cancelled out by giving the enemies OP skills in higher difficulties. Lunatic (+) is just fake difficulty. Second, the major issue, is that this game has no other mission objevtives aside of rout and defeat boss. Class defend missions don't really exist except the pseudo one in Tiki's paralogue. This made the game incredibly boring after a short time.

7

The interesting about this is that it actually fits into the themes in Awakening. The enemy not having Pair Up while we do? Well, we're the underdogs that are in the generally inferior army in regards to sheer numbers and forces, and we are the close-knit group that values working together and forging bonds, while the enemy do not have this lesson and everyone generally follows things under a blind faith that they cannot comprehend (Valm arc villains following Walhart) or just acting out of anger or fear (Gangrel's minions) or they do not value anything in life and wants the world to simply burn (the Grimleal). 

When you get down to it, Awakening actually handled the themes exceptionally well when you analyze things a bit closer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, omegaxis1 said:

Speaking of justification of outfits, the funny thing is that Tharja's outfit has actual justifications behind it, based on this thread:

  Hide contents

 

 

This post doesn't actually state why this would be realistic, or why a soldier wearing it is particularly justified.

1.) Sheer was largely a luxury item in ancient Egypt. The link within that post defines it as such, and keeps mentioning them as "upper-class" and "fine". It'd be like every knight on the battle field wearing crowns and jewelry. Not that I'd oppose that, but there'd need to be a precedent for me to accept it.

2.) It is true that slaves would be topless or wear very little clothing, but by the point in history which Fire Emblem vaguely takes place in(A vague age when metal forging and cloth making is at least very prevalent), most developed desert civilizations have reaped the benefits of being able to produce cloth for everyone. And we know that Plegia is capable of this, because Dark Mages also wear thicker cloth capes, which will surely leave them with very goofy sunburns. Desert civilizations across the world all realized something when they had access to such cloth: Wearing layered, loose robes is actually the best way to avoid sunburn and heatstroke in dry environments. By this point, only the desperate and poor would go out into the sun not wearing something that actually protects them from the sun.

3.) Saying it's realistic for them to wear little clothing because they're modeled after Egyptian gods is dumb. That is true, but it's still stupid and not realistic. You'd be killing your own soldiers for the sake of a mythology that doesn't exist in Fire Emblem.

But yes. FE's been full of unrealistic designs, so aside from being just really bizarre designs(It's incredibly weird to me that Fire Emblem characters would dress strictly according to Anubis, down to a jackal hat, when Egypt doesn't exist and ancient Egyptian mythology has never been referenced outside of this outfit), I don't really hold too much against the Awakening Dark Mage design in a vacuum.

As much as I just typed about that, the Dark Mages in Awakening can't hold a candle to the... complete "wut"ness that are the Fates designs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Slumber and @Sunwoo among others basically summed up my feelings on these two games, and I'm not one of those people who say anyone who likes Awakening/Fates is a bad person (I actually like Fates decently enough), but since I consider it the weakest "generation" of FE I'll give my 2 cents.

To me, what Fire Emblem was fundamentally changed with these two games. They at once simplified and overcomplicated things too much. What I mean is, the 3DS lords are good because the game says so. All of them, except Lucina at least the way I see it, are worshipped so much despite having clear faults that never get dealt with or developed. Chrom whitewashes his country's/family's dark history? It's ok, he's a nice lovable dork. Robin pulls off dumb/questionable strategies? Of course, he's (read: you, the player) the best tactician ever. Corrin can literally do no wrong and if he does it's ok because it's part of what makes them so awesome. Other characters are reduced to gimmicks and while this happened in other games it's played up to 100 here and it affects most if not all of the cast. Meanwhile, both games have needlessly complicated plots that aren't even sure what they want to accomplish. Awakening starts strong but finishes that arc before it even really gets going in favour of Validar, the most embarrassingly awful villain in the whole series, and a random Valm arc that does nothing. Fates has 3 versions that tell incomplete stories that aren't even good. And finally, the fanservice and waifus are clearly at the forefront when neither was part of I enjoyed about FE before and negatively affect the writing: ie. supports in Awakening are all whirlwind romances and Fates lets you marry your siblings, except they aren't really your siblings, but they sort of are, but not actually.

The gameplay I liked at first in Awakening, but grew to dislike the focus on reclassing and making OP kids. I ignored the kids in Fates and with the changes to Pair Up and reclassing, as well as other improvements from Awakening, I really like how those games play (except Revelation).

I also echo the sentiment that the hugely biased attention these two games got for a long time made me dislike them more than I did at first. It's gotten better now, but for a while it felt as if IS and Nintendo wanted to forget the rest of the series, and the attitude of many online was "well, it's not only natural but correct to do so since Awakening Saved the Series (TM) and the games before don't matter". It got ugly between old and new fans for a while there and unfortunately IS and Nintendo only made the divide worse instead of trying to bring the fanbase together, until Heroes imo. I do feel that after Heroes and SoV there's less animosity than before. Hopefully Three Houses will be something new and old fans can enjoy so we can move entirely past it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Slumber said:

As much as I just typed about that, the Dark Mages in Awakening can't hold a candle to the... complete "wut"ness that are the Fates designs.

Most of the fanservice for Awakening can potentially be justified and have forms of explanations, but for Fates, I feel that's again where it falls. As I said in my original post, Fates trying to take what was thought to have been what made Awakening so great is precisely what made everything go wrong. Awakening by itself isn't actually bad and if it was on its own without Fates, I think people wouldn't hate on it so much.

Fate ends up causing Awakening to get hated because how much Awakening influenced it. 

3 minutes ago, Book Bro said:

Chrom whitewashes his country's/family's dark history? It's ok, he's a nice lovable dork.

I mean, Emmeryn spent the last 15 years trying to help with that and making things right again, and Gangrel is the Mad King that wants to wage a bloody war. 

5 minutes ago, Book Bro said:

Robin pulls off dumb/questionable strategies? Of course, he's (read: you, the player) the best tactician ever.

Which ones do you find to actually be dumb? The one that I feel that would be the most questionable would be Chapter 13, where he used actual ships to ram the Valmese fleet, but that's not dumb, its a real-life strategy. Or do you mean the volcano thing? Kind of hard to do anything else as they have their backs against the wall there. 

7 minutes ago, Book Bro said:

Awakening starts strong but finishes that arc before it even really gets going in favour of Validar, the most embarrassingly awful villain in the whole series, and a random Valm arc that does nothing.

No denial that it's very rushed, but honestly, almost every villain in Fire Emblem has dumb moments. Manfroy letting Julia live, Zephiel letting Narcian in charge of anything and allowing things to get out of hand, Gharnef's plan not being really explained, but him letting Marth even live as long as he did when he had the opportunity to kill him, etc. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, omegaxis1 said:

Fate ends up causing Awakening to get hated because how much Awakening influenced it. 

I think you have a point there.

I've said it before, but I'll probably look back more kindly on these two games in general if their influence isn't too strong on FE in the future. Because then I can just look back at both as just kind of their own entries. They did their own thing, and maybe that's just fine in the bigger picture.

Inversely, with Fates being what it is, and coming right after Awakening, it makes me look back at both through a harsher lens.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, Slumber said:

I think you have a point there.

I've said it before, but I'll probably look back more kindly on these two games in general if their influence isn't too strong on FE in the future. Because then I can just look back at both as just kind of their own entries. They did their own thing, and maybe that's just fine in the bigger picture.

Inversely, with Fates being what it is, and coming right after Awakening, it makes me look back at both through a harsher lens.

Exactly. 

Awakening was made with themes, goals, and clear desires in them. The writers made the game with actual heart and soul behind it. But Fates was not made the same way. Yes, Fates improved things that Awakening did, but at the same time, it focused on what Awakening did and forgot its own themes as a result. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Having relatively recently finished New Mystery, I think it's put a lot of the non-gameplay complaints about Awakening and Fates into perspective for me.

  • Gimmick characters: In FE12 and especially FE11 most of our units were only marginally less faceless than the enemy mooks. They'd get an intro line and that's about it. FE12 at least had a few support conversations, but overall the level of character development was atrocious (FE11) or bad (FE12) for anyone who wasn't Marth. I'd rather take characters that have an actual personality and more than 5 seconds of screentime, even if it is one-note or centered around a gimmick, over "characters" whose only real distinguishing feature from replacement units is having an actual face.
  • Shipping: This is sort of a corollary to the above point. I've never played Genealogy, but there AFAIK (if I'm wrong, please correct me) the only reason for one pairing or another is what it does for the child(ren); the parents themselves don't actually have any support-like conversations. While that's not bad in as of itself, I don't think it's some great sin against Fire Emblem that Awakening allowed us to properly ship characters we like together while still having kids. After all, what distinguishes FE from Advance Wars and other such strategy series is its focus on individual characters; turning falling in love and having children, even if it is often implemented very, very clumsily (*cough* Fates Outrealms *cough*) into min-maxing stat caps and optimizing skill inheritance always did feel kind of skeevy to me even if I occasionally did it. Of course this is Serenes, home of a lot of veterans and experts, so I imagine we lean more towards the min-maxing side of things, but I don't think it's either a good business decision or the right thing to do for IS to just ignore the people who want to treat pairing choices as more than simply crunching numbers.
  • Avatar worship: Fates is really bad about this, but I'd have to say FE12 is at least as bad, not least because it tarnishes an existing (and very good, IMO) character in Marth. In Fates, even if the other characters endlessly praise you they're not portrayed as actually emotionally dependent on you. Camilla is an exception, but she's also like that with several others to an extent (particularly Selena and Elise). On the other hand FE12 Marth, rather than the stalwart hero of the war against the Shadow Dragon, ends up cripplingly dependent on Kris and not, you know, someone like his long-time paladin Jagen or his damn fiancee Caeda. At the end of the game he even wants to give you the credit (which you admittedly deserve) for winning the war, but noooo, the people need their glorious symbol. So it turns out the legendary Hero-King Marth that Chrom and Lucina idolize is almost a fiction while the true winner of the war (aka you) oh-so-nobly goes unrecognized. Almost letting you have your cake and eat it too.
  • Fanservice: While I'm not keen on a lot of the things Awakening and Fates added on this front, the panty windows, thongs, etc weren't exactly possible with pre-3DS handhelds, so I think pointing to their absence in older games isn't all that relevant. Still, I do hope that IS cuts back on it, or least the most egregious stuff. Special (optional) beach paralogues and stuff like that is fine, but I really don't need a fully rendered cutscene almost literally shoving Camilla's T&A in my face.

All in all, my non-gameplay gripes with Awakening and Fates are more in the execution than the idea. Support conversations could be refined more, and maybe not everyone has to be shippable with everyone else, but the core concept is strong. Hopefully Three Houses pays more attention to the writing than Fates. Now, for FE gameplay...

  • Grinding: This strikes me as a "if you don't like it, don't play it" matter. Unless the game was actually balanced around grinding, which it certainly isn't, the obvious solution to there being grinding options is simply to not use them if you don't like the idea. Otherwise some people aren't skilled enough, some want to mess around with all of the game's features (i.e. a team fully tricked out with all of the cool skill combinations), etc.
  • Casual: Not everyone wants to stress out over losing a unit 75% of the way through Kotaro's ninja cave (Leo, you moron...) and having to restart the whole mess. It's not like even most veterans play the way IS originally intended; they didn't give us five cavaliers in FE1 because Matthis, Roshea, and Vyland were such great characters, they gave us them because they expected us to keep trucking on if Cain or Abel died, not restart the whole level as has now become the standard for FE players.
  • Reclassing: Yet another thing introduced by FE11/12 that people instead have a habit of blaming on Awakening, although the system did change in-between. Honestly, while I can sort of appreciate it from a gameplay standpoint, giving units a little more freedom to grow, from a story standpoint I find it ridiculous. Characters are written from the perspective of their original class, and reclassing very often makes their supports nonsensical. I'll freely admit that one of my reasons for my S-supporting Lucina in Awakening is so that Morgan comes as an actual damn Tactician and not a pegasus knight or mage or whatever silliness.
  • Other stuff: I'm not sure what to call this point, so I'll just talk about some other topics of discussion I've seen. Map-wise I think Awakening seriously screwed up, most noticeably in objective variety, while Revelations was just ridiculous with all of its gimmicky stuff, but Birthright was solid/good and Conquest was great. Difficulty-wise I feel like FE games go up and down in difficulty so much that we can't really judge the recent entries based on that. Skills I don't feel qualified to comment on.

Well, there's the first serious post I've written outside the Heroes forum for a while.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, KMT4ever said:

In FE12 and especially FE11 most of our units were only marginally less faceless than the enemy mooks. They'd get an intro line and that's about it. FE12 at least had a few support conversations, but overall the level of character development was atrocious (FE11) or bad (FE12) for anyone who wasn't Marth. I'd rather take characters that have an actual personality and more than 5 seconds of screentime, even if it is one-note or centered around a gimmick, over "characters" whose only real distinguishing feature from replacement units is having an actual face.

The characters from the new style are indeed preferable to the blank slates from Archenea but as far as the old games go Shadow Dragon is the exception. When most older fans contrast the more nuanced older characters with the more wacky newer ones they generally mean the characters from Blazing Sword, Stones and Tellius rather than the blank slate brigade.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

55 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

The characters from the new style are indeed preferable to the blank slates from Archenea but as far as the old games go Shadow Dragon is the exception. When most older fans contrast the more nuanced older characters with the more wacky newer ones they generally mean the characters from Blazing Sword, Stones and Tellius rather than the blank slate brigade.

Well yes, but when IS was making Awakening their most recent experience was the backlash against Shadow Dragon and New Mystery. In that light, it's not surprising that they decided to go with what they did. Not to mention the older games, particularly the GBA ones, often had really obnoxious turn-counts (read: lots of wasting time) to pass in order to see any of that nuance for non-plot relevant characters.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well,I'm dreadfully late to this but here goes nothing (somebody's probably said what I might say in a sec)

 

I've played pretty much every game save for Tellius, and my fave is Awakening. And though I do understand that games like Awakening and Fates have their issues (story becomes lackluster during the valmese arc and slightly gets better in Grima's arc but only slightly, gameplay is easy and at times broken, etc) that it's still a good game. The same can be said for Fates (story is probably my least favorite but the cast is colorful, fanservice or not).

 

But I do have to agree with some of the posters here. Some fans do tend to go out of their way to bash on Awakening and Fates for whatever reason they may have. I myself tend to ignore them, or at least laugh my ass off when somebody makes a post trying to prove how cannon their ship is (you can like a ship, and see logic in it, but making an entire post to argue that yours is better is kinda bad XD).

I would say we should just see the faults but not hate on games like they're pure unbridled disease. They're fun, have a colorful cast, and are popular. I for one still have issues picking between my faves, which are Genealogy, Awakening, and Sacred Stones. So it's not impossible to like every era.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, KMT4ever said:

Shipping: This is sort of a corollary to the above point. I've never played Genealogy, but there AFAIK (if I'm wrong, please correct me) the only reason for one pairing or another is what it does for the child(ren); the parents themselves don't actually have any support-like conversations.

yes and no. it depends, and it's mainly based on the pairing itself.

while there wasn't any actual support function, because there were no means to bond characters with each other in order to have extra conversations, people tend to forget that there's still scripted conversations throu all the game, wich can involve specific characters in some cases( mainly if they're related by their own backstory ).

those non-support conversations back at the time had a more important role, since those not only gave more depth to the story/characters, but it was also the only way to get specific items. hence why it was/is still a unique feature of FE4.

and while one can argue that there wasn't any actual supports, i believe that the scripted convos still had the very same role. especially because in the last chapter of the 1st generation, depending on your pairings, you can have final conversations between lovers, wich in my opinion is pretty much the same thing as supports, just without extra bonus stats involved.

Edited by Fenreir
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, Anacybele said:

And of course, I absolutely love Frederick and consider him the diamond in the rough. Though I also really like Ryoma, Silas, and Kaze. But that doesn't compare with the love I have for Freddy. I think he was surprisingly an absolute brilliant character among a sea of blah.

A tad off topic, but have you ever found the blog ask-frederick? They have an amazing understanding of the character and what makes him great.

9 hours ago, omegaxis1 said:

I have replayed Awakening and invested well over 100 hours on it. I even collected EVERY support conversation in the game. 

I feel ya there man.

 image.png.ede81df91f7fadfd70ac5180507718f5.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Ren_Ambrose said:

A tad off topic, but have you ever found the blog ask-frederick? They have an amazing understanding of the character and what makes him great.

:o No, I never have! Never even heard of it! I must see that though, thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, Decerd said:

I don't understand why some people act like Awakening and Fates are the devil's products and they ruined everything about Fire Emblem. If it weren't for Awakening, this series would be dead alongside the likes of Advance Wars, F-Zero, Earthbound, and Golden Sun, and while Fates's storytelling isn't superb, I think it's gameplay and characters are solid. I understand that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but were Awakening and Fates really that bad to them?

Because a lot of us want good stories in fire emblem that focus on world building and factions interacting with each other...not stuff like this...

They're not bad games, but *surely* you can at least understand why some of us don't like them? It feels insulting to be honest that newer fans KEEP ASKING over and over again, "why do people hate this" and ignore when others tell them why they hate those games. Almost like...it's just a rhetorical question meant to attack people with the views of not liking fates and awakening.

Also news flash, awakening may of saved the series, but that fact doesn't make it immune to any criticism either...which a lot of people are acting like it does. I don't hate it when people like the newer games...but the same can't be said for when I repeatedly see newer fans bashing on older fans like this, as some sort of "revenge against elitists" kind of thing.


I'm trying to not start conflicts within the fanbase, but if people like OP aren't helping with their hyperbole (awakening and fates are apparently "the devil's products" to those who don't like them) and are just annoying more people, rather than genuinely starting any kind of reasonable discussion about what people like, then it just gets on my nerves. OP even says they understand that everyone is entitled to their own opinions...but then, why treat it as if older fans DESPISE the newer games then, rather than simply not liking them?

Edited by Dinar87
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's  just that story wise Awakening is a bit weak and some of its characters are very bland for the amount of supports they get or are just fanservicey, Fates is just an absolute wreck, having a garbage story three times really one note characters who just have a personality quirk that is done to death (Arthur's bad luck while funny is overused, and setsuna falls into a trap in all of her supports) so a lot of the supports are very similar and the child characters feel lumped in as there only really in the game to justify S-supports. 

Gameplaywise the games are either way to easy in all their modes or are Awakening Lunatic+ BS

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Speaking in general terms. my main issues with Awakening and Fates are:

The stories: I'll keep this section short as everyone knows what they're about. Awakening had three arcs and while I applaud some of the themantic elements, namely the battle of fatalism vs free will, the general plot was rather uninspired and unfocused. Fates was a trainwreck that is built entirely on player worship.

The presentation: Past games were not without levity but they did maintain some degree of seriousness in their character writing. Those games had their share of gimmicky personalities, but it was not communicated so loudly. What I mean by this is Awakening and Fates chose to shove character gimmicks into your face at every opportunity. There are barracks quotes and event tiles in Awakening where a character will mention their character gimmick and you even have people shouting puns and laughing while slaying their enemies. The 3DS games were so focused on making the characters memorable that it created a atmosphere of comedy that didn't match the more sober feeling of prior games. This is even worse when you get to supports where you need to sift through countless Gimmick A meets Gimmick B filler just to find the truly interesting supports. In some cases, a character is falsely advertised by their lines, which is why so many think of Cordelia as lovesick when most of her supports concern her perfectionism.

The relation of the player and characters: One of the biggest derailments of the series identity, to me, is the inclusion of a playable avatar. The Avatar first came about in Blazing Sword but it was very inconsequential. You had a few lines of dialogue directed at you and a few images of Lyn looking your way, but for the most part, it didn't matter. The avatar was not a person who mattered, certainly not more than the other characters did to each other.  The purpose of the cast was not to appeal to you. It was not to make you lust over them and choose a "waifu". They existed to tell a story. I would argue that once a playable avatar came about (starting in FE12 but fully realized in FE13) the story telling focused on making YOU, the player feel special, and characters were crafted less for the sake of themselves, but rather to appeal to certain tastes. If you could latch on to players with their favorite tropes, make players lust after them, then you can pull in a huge amount of players who are into that sort of thing. It's not like people couldn't do this with earlier titles but it really cranks it up to eleven when YOU are in the game, and you have characters confessing their love for YOU, in first person. But this writing direction has more sinister effect on the story. It was not so bad in Awakening, and I actually like Robin as a character, but Fates was ruined by player worship. Every significant character was required to love you and if they didn't, they were unquestionably evil. You're the chosen one, you're a dragon (not that it even matters), you're the son of the big bad, a legendary sword flies into your hand. In Conquest, all of the Hoshidans who have every right to hate your guts forgive you and apologize to you because that's the only way they can be considered sympathetic. It's sickening.

I don't think they're bad games or that they should be avoided by new players to the series. For all their writing woes, they do introduce positive gameplay elements, that were rough in Awakening but refined for Fates. If gameplay is what you're all about then you can appreciate what the games have to offer. But if you really like writing like I do, there will be a lot of eye rolling moments, frustration and discomfort while playing them (mostly Fates but some parts of Awakening).  The harshest truth is that with Awakening and Fates being such big commercial successes, it means the developers will focus more on the parts I don't like about the games when designing future titles, and for spin off games and media, the games I like will be underrepresented. 

20 hours ago, Rose482 said:

And also why do people act like FE15 isn't a thing? Like so what if it was a remake? They still could have added fanservice and all of that if they wanted too, so I really don't think it's fair for people to already be complaining about FE16, and if anything, it's just annoying? 

19 hours ago, Rose482 said:

While I'm sure FE16 will follow Fates and Awakening in some ways, I also can see it following FE15 in others, which sorta will be the best of two worlds at this point, I guess I just don't like that some people are ignoring it in this debate just becasue it was a remake? A remake of a very old game at that, which should have given them a lot of ways to make it more like FE13/FE14, which they didn't do.

SoV is a remake and faithful to Gaiden to a fault. It's hardly surprising that a remake of an old game has more in common with older titles. The only major changes were character models. I certainly appreciate them for being more tasteful. Still, SoV was treated as more of a side project for IS, not getting nearly as much promotion and it was handled by a different team iirc. Could it mean good things for FE16? Maybe, but I think they'll go where the money is, which Awakening and Fates made big piles of.

 

Edited by NekoKnight
Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, Pengaius said:

It's  just that story wise Awakening is a bit weak and some of its characters are very bland for the amount of supports they get or are just fanservicey, Fates is just an absolute wreck, having a garbage story three times really one note characters who just have a personality quirk that is done to death (Arthur's bad luck while funny is overused, and setsuna falls into a trap in all of her supports) so a lot of the supports are very similar and the child characters feel lumped in as there only really in the game to justify S-supports. 

Gameplaywise the games are either way to easy in all their modes or are Awakening Lunatic+ BS

I agree about the story, though while I didn't like the story or characters in either games, at ;east the gameplay was quite fun. However, because I'm one of the legendary few who wants BOTH good gameplay and story and won't just accept one or the other, I don't like both games overall as a result.

Avatars need to either just an option alongside a proper, dedicated protagonist...or just axed entirely. At least that's what'd appeal to people like me anyways.

Edited by Dinar87
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...