What do Animations add to your experience?

[Imuabicus]

I´m just a bit curious because I myself don´t really see anything in them – to me they just look like a repetitive waste of time when there is FE to be played. But I have seen serious discussions over which game has the best animations or what the best animation is and it´s quite unclear to me why they are even a thing. The very first thing I´ll do when starting a FE game up is disabling every combat/support animation I can. And by now, whenever I start up a campaign and try to play with animations it´s just so... ugh.

So, what do they add to your FE experience?

[𝙵ᴇɴʀᴇɪʀ]

it depends on the player.

the whole point of having battle animations beside map animations would be to make the encounter visually more dynamic and entertaining, rather than having "an ant swinging a sword at another ant" due to the size of each unit on the map and their default, simple animations.

then again, once you've seen the same battle animation over and over again for about a hundred times, it may end up becoming quite boring to watch in the long run, therefore some people prefer to turn them off entirely after a couple of campaign runs in order to have a smoother, faster gameplay.

[lightcosmo]

Well from RD and up, i like the character personal models and such they added. It makes the character feel more like "themselves" to me.

[whase]

It adds character. The better the animations, the easier it is to think of these pixels as people. The animations really add to the emotional experience imo.

(Not that I had any problem becoming emotionally invested in GBA pixels, but it helps.)

Though yes, after some time they do get repetitive, but promotes help with that, giving new animations and such.

[Sooks]

They’re visually entertaining. So I always play with them on, unless I’m trying to get through a chapter as fast as possible.

[vanguard333]

They're visually entertaining, they add a bit of character, and when abilities or critical hits activate, the animations give a lot more weight to them. Plus, in Path of Radiance, watching generals cause the ground to shake with every step they walked was hilarious. 

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

What others have said. They're fun and cool to watch, they add to the immersion and character/class definition, and sometimes the combat theme is better than the map theme.

I don't put them on in all games, though. Genealogy and Path of Radiance, I usually prefer the map animations.

[Axie]

i wish fire emblem had an option of more elaborate map animations for people who do think animations add to the experience but find the standard animations to be too much to be constantly exposed to them. that would be my ideal setup. as it is, i do turn animations off even if i don't really enjoy playing without them either.

[Interdimensional Observer]

An interesting question, different from the more expectable “Which animations do you like the most?”

Nowadays, after one playthrough, I usually turn animations off barring rare moments. In the cases of Fates and beyond, I turn them off from the very start.

As for why to like them, flashiness has a certain appeal. Though even for the diehard lovers of spectacle, they eventually lose their luster, for time at least. Spectacle can have a deeper purpose of adding weight to the ongoing story. Seeing Sirius crit that bandit as he helps protect Ogma and the Grust twins can be a form of fan-invented development that Sirius is iron-willed in his goal of defending his country’s heirs.

You can also say that animations starting with Awakening more objectively showcase the characters’ personalities. The critical quips for instance.

 

3 minutes ago, Axie said:

i wish fire emblem had an option of more elaborate map animations for people who do think animations add to the experience but find the standard animations to be too much to be constantly exposed to them. that would be my ideal setup. as it is, i do turn animations off even if i don't really enjoy playing without them either.

Jugdral, Tellius, and the Kaga Sagas do maintain simple animations even when set to map. I like them. There’s still a solid thud in every hit of an axe, and wispiness in every dodge. That’s what I want, it’s dynamic, clean, and charming. GBA, DS and beyond took a step back by merely having a unit nudge itself towards the other when attacking on a map.

RD also had a no animations at all option (oddly 2nd playthrough-only), which is proof you can have three options here.

[LJ_Tenma]

As others have said, they're just fun to watch but also it just adds a more immersive experience to it. Without the animations, I feel like the game would be pretty lifeless. I especially enjoy the anime-esque cutscenes that were included from Awakening onward.

The only time I turn off animations is if I'm grinding and I'm just trying to get through the map, or if I was forced to restart the level several times. And even then, once I reach a point in the map that was past the point from where I restarted, I turn animations back on because it just feels boring without it.

[kradeelav]

I enjoy them for the first/second playthroughs for immersion's purpose (and giving the overall game a bit of flavor with the UX), but when you're working on 70+ playthroughs of a game... yeah the repetition's a bit obnoxious for how much time it takes up.  Adding another point to everyone's excellent observations up above is i also like seeing the setting of the locations - PoR/RD would not be the same if it weren't for the vividly different in-combat scenes/"stages" that added life-size coolness and a unique flavor other than just the map.  (Blood Runs Red with the vaguely claustrophobic village, Talrega with the bleak snowyness... etc) 

On that note 3H is probably my least favorite sine the environment is always so ... bland and same-y. 

What I would love is some kind of 2D art / more complex sprite to shake things up a bit. FEH goes sort of in that direction, but I feel like there's more room there.

[GlitchWarrior]

This might be an odd take but... Honestly, I prefer sprite animations to 3D ones. I do love 3DSFE and 3H's animations, but the FEGBA animations have a certain charm to them that not many think about most of the time. I'd vouch for an option to have advance-style sprites in a later game.

[Glennstavos]

When Raphael did a Zangief-inspired spinning lariat as his grappler crit animation I was so pumped up for that. Hype moments may not be the norm in Fire Emblem animations, but if they were the norm, they wouldn't be hype. If the animations don't do anything for you, feel free to turn them off. That's what the option is there for, after all.

Edited December 31, 2020 by Glennstavos

[GodSejeong97]

It makes me appreciate skill procs, criticals and overall just liking using battle animations in general. Hell, I've never turned them off in games with elaborate animations like Thracia, GBAFE and Tellius.

Edited December 31, 2020 by GodSejeong97

[joevar]

18 hours ago, Imuabicus said:

So, what do they add to your FE experience?

lots.

seeing your favorite character throwing fancy art move or just normal attack the enemy after dodging is delight in itself to me. A very big plus why i love FE over many other SRPG is the animation. so the only SRPG thats higher than FE in terms of animation is SRW series, obviously because everyone have different animation.

BUT i can 100% understand if you prefer to skip it. because I DO SKIP IT too. but i will spare you the lecture how someone who loves animation ends up skip animation.

BUT! I NEVER SKIP BOSS FIGHT ANIMATION

Edited December 31, 2020 by joevar

[L3xandr3]

Depends on which game we're talking about. Ancient era FE (FE 1-3), Sprite era (4-8), 3D (9, 10, 13-16), or psuedo-3D (11 & 12)? Ancient is bleh. 3D- Telluis is excellent, 13 & 14 are meagre in comparison (with the exception of 13's Hero). Psuedo-3D is alright. Sprites are love, Sprites are life! Especially FE8's Great Knight.

As for what they add... It's mostly flavor. Aesthetically pleasing, you might say. As long as they're fast or over-the-top, it's great. Fast as in NOT FE9, and over-the-top as in Jugdral's & Telluis's S-rank Tomes.

As for skipping, if I just want the map to be over, then skip away.

[Wuchtbrumme Flavia]

They do nothing for me. For me, they're a waste of time. I (maybe) watch every animation once or twice and then turn them off. Though that was only the case with the Sprite era games. I think I watched only a handful of animations of Awakening and Fates and then turned them off.

[Imuabicus]

19 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

An interesting question, different from the more expectable “Which animations do you like the most?”

I mean think about it, even the first game had animations but it´s basically 50 pixels going to another 50 pixels (this is exaggeration for the record) and making contact - but why is it even there? What´s the animations Raison d’Être? Who looked at the game and said:” Y´know what? Needs more animation, 0/10, can´t sell this.” As in, I´d assume even SDatBoL animations cost something to make.

And from what I´ve been reading here and there SDatBoL was one of the first SRPG ever made – there was no (or at least I know of none) precedent game, that would have made animations some form of canon for this genre.

Another thing imaginable, would be that otherwise there wouldn´t be much to the game, no? Like there isn´t much happening on the maps themselves, is there (though there is a good deal of subjectivity to note here)? No enemy ranges, everything moves slow and the maps themselves don´t offer much for the eye to snack on – considering for example the details on TH maps, or the vast amount of information you´ll have on Fates maps.

 

Spoiler

Also the best animation is clearly SD generals nonchalantly chucking javelins.

[ping]

I mean, "visually pleasing" is a sufficient raison d'être on its own. FE animations are almost always cool or funny or both (and occationally totes adorbs, like Fae, Ewan, or Amelia), so it's nice to watch them, at the very least for your first playthrough. Visuals are an important aspect of basically every video game, and animations add to that.

The payoff of slower gameplay, especially when there's a lot of combat happening on enemy phase, means that I'll eventually turn them off, but for an initial playthrough (or when I haven't played a game from that particular era in a while), they're just fun to watch.

[CervantesStache]

I like the animations because they often look pretty nice, and in the older games they're the only means of hearing the great battle themes, but another factor I dig is that their inherently drawn out nature increases tension, at least for me. Those 1% crit rates are a lot scarier when you're staring at the screen praying for nobody to do a flip out of nowhere and cause your favorite unit to explode, after all, and the same applies to any other scary luck reliant situation like incredibly low but non-zero hitrates on a low health unit or something. 

[Samz707]

Ideally when done right they add a satisfying visual to combat.

I definitely fell in love Echoes right away when Mycen's horse kicked a dude in combat at the start.

Sure I end up skipping them by the end but it's fun to watch your units and the enemy stabbing/setting each other on fire and such.