AlexArtsHere

This is so much more worthy and elegant than the text block I posted. I have nothing to add except that I forgot about My Castle and is definitely a promising concept as a central hub with all the commodities players could need (personal I love the slice of life feel in the married barracks exchanges), though I think travelling Annas could still have a place on the map in selling higher grade items. And, to reiterate something that's already been said a bunch; In terms of success, going mainstream has only done good things for the Fire Emblem series.

Hey. Read a bit of these forums before, turns out I've had an account I've never posted with. Personally, I'm in complete agreement with Thane here. Being mainstream will only do good for Fire Emblem in my opinion. I don't think Nintendo's really one to appeal to the lowest common denominator in this day and age, or I doubt we'd never have IPs like Splatoon and ARMS, but with that said, more eyes on the series does create more pressure on IS to perform well. As Thane has said, there was a lot of ire concerning Fates story. As someone who cites Conquest as his favourite game for its unique premise and giving us a dark side of one of the lords in the series, I will admit in a heartbeat that the writing is riddled with plot holes and nonsensical decisions and it's certainly easy for me to see why people don't like it, even if I do. In terms of sexually oriented fanservice, I'm of the camp that a bit of it won't hurt (the Summer Scramble type DLC maps, for example), but the series is definitely at risk of becoming saturated with it, even if it's being applied with male and female characters. I'm personally very fond of the marriage mechanic because I'm a sad nerd who will never have a girlfriend, but I do think IS is at the point of shoe-horning it now. I opine that only the avatar (another newbie addition I'm also very fond of; basically a development of Blazing Sword's Tactician, Mark) should be able to marry every opposite gender (and some of those of the same gender!) who is not related to them, of an incompatible sexual orientation, or otherwise already spoken for, but that really should be it, and I would love to see some supports end only in a platonic manner (Xander-Sakura, anyone?). Well, I obviously got rather side-tracked here, but to sum up: I don't think being "mainstream" will ever ruin Fire Emblem, but instead encourage IS to do the best they can with each game. As I have laid out in my post, I think that the more controversial elements of Fire Emblem can stay, but need to become more subtle. Specifically, I think they should take a back seat to focusing on solid gameplay (which I believe is definitely already there) and a good story, because surely we can live in a world where Fire Emblem games accommodate both epic, politically driven plots and a smattering of nerd fantasy (for lack of a better term, I know it's awful, and I apologise) in the form of the marriage (but not necessarily the child) mechanic? Apologies for the text wall and all those parentheses, but I just wanted to weigh in. I hope that I'm welcome here in the forums. :)