Axie

while all of this points are valid, it's also ultimately something i can easily put aside. while tellius putting its money where its mouth is with so much of the storytelling is mostly preferrable, this is a very palatable suspension of disbelief, specially when a) as you said yourself, it's gameplay motivated and i don't mind that taking priority at all, and b) katarina's sidestory is in my opinion so good and definitely worth a bit of prologue "but why?". so altea is happy recruiting strategists along with knights. not the most nonsensical thing i've ever seen. that is better than having katarina fight and then losing her and all the exp she got, though that wouldn't be the end of the world either (orson existed, after all). i guess i was surprised by you saying it was the worse plot point of the marathon so far, but then again i wasn't particularly bothered by most of the other ones you put on the same level, which were seth finding out something he already knew (just clumsy writing or maybe even clumsy localization for the fact they needed to expose the same information twice) and the time paradox in SS (we are not supposed to read the two routes as happening concurrently and exactly as they are shown, because, you know, most characters appear in both and that would be weird). if i had to explain it, how bad plot points are to me depend on how much they actually damage the main storyline or the worldbuilding (so much of BlaBla is worse than the three examples above lol. the black fang alone sinks that storyline below all games but awakening and fates, and then i think it fucks up further for me to prefer awakening too). the "serenes forest is the size of gallia" example you also gave also fits - i actually would chalk it as a map/story disconnect with no consequences for most of the two games, but then all the bird tribes move there in the ending of RD, so there's little way out of acknowledging that (burned and then restored by galldr) hole by then.

just started new mystery! soon enough i will be commenting on the current chapters like everyone else. but i need to mention it right now, i don't get the indignation with katarina in the prologue. she claims to be a strategist. we never see strategists actually doing strategy in fire emblem, they just take credit for our player work. being upset at her being acknowledged in the prologue as useful is like being upset at mark or soren for the same reason lol. i am entirely fine with how that was written, and actually really enjoy katarina in general.

i think it's so disappointing that we haven't been given the fixed mode option again. it should have been a mainstay. random growths should never go away because personal experience makes the fandom so much fun, but fixed mode guarantees a playthrough will be viable.

i am fine with a dancer lord (though, to be nitpicky, they'd be a bard or songstress, i don't think a noble would be dancing like that lol). the cons are very minor (specially the rapier one), it's very easy to explain storyline-wise, it makes it more comfortable to add some BlaBla/heron-esque special powers instead of just keeping it simple, and it would be different and interesting. i am very on board. (now imagine a game with three lords, BlaBla-style, but they are this dancer lord, a micaiah-esque mage lord with crap durability, and an archer lord. i want it.)

julius is way too easy with julia and way too hard without her. i actually think it should be harder for you to damage him with julia, a bit easier (but still pretty hard) to do it with others (actually the problem is surviving a hit from him i guess), and then they could pull a RD and code it so julia needs to deliver the final blow to julius or else he doesn't actually die. simple.

every time i use lilina in BinBla she always outperforms her average in speed. her 20/20 average speed is 20, and she's never needed to get that far for 20+ speed. i am starting a BinBla replay and let's see if the trend continues. edit: i just finished chapter 10 and she is +1 on her spd average for level 7. IT BEGINS. but i am editing mostly to report on my shanna because i have been randomly giving her kills so she can do her flier job better, and YOU GUYS. she has more str than rutger right now lol. iconic. edit: just finished chapter 16 and promoted lilina in it. i didn't save state for this (or i'd just make her magic and skill not be below her 20/1 average too tbh), and gave her no speedwings because dieck and melady needed them because their speed stats were going undergrown city. lilina's own speed, however? told you guys, it's every time for me. also i gave shanna a dragonshield and she has 15 defense at 20/1 lmao.

i guess, but you get the point, they still play like 2D games

oh, no no no no. i am 100% fine with us getting an avatar in genealogy gen 1 if it gets remade, but they die like everyone else. we get their kid in gen 2 and that's enough. even the replacement could be customisable (but ultimately worse than a kid) if the avatar dies single. having a probably overpowered avatar still alive and playable in gen 2 and also their even more overpowered child is too much. finn is fine because he isn't overpowered and serves a story purpose. the game could even make the kid/replacement the same gender as the avatar instead of opposite as morgan/kanna were, so it's effectively two self-inserts instead of one.

thank you so much i also agree with you guys with that zephiel arc of BlaBla is really good, which is just as well because that was the ONE job the game had. that's why the game should have focused on that part and not have created... all of the others. imagine this (does it count as headcanon? i also imagined this in 30 minutes so don't be scared if it sucks):

they took the entirely wrong approach for the game. nothing about binding blade stopped a prequel from actually having conflicts between the nations happening, i am pretty sure. the fact they are not mentioned just means no major ones happened. they could have explored the internal biran [i will make the NoE names happen] issues that led to zephiel being what he is so much better with a war. it doesn't need to be a full scale war! T776 exists and it's fine! find a way to get lycia (and therefore eliwood and hector) involved and bim bam boom, prequel achieved. why did we need nergal, and the dragon's gate, and quintessence, and half-dragons that can actually transform, and the entire concept of the black fang, which still stands as one of the silliest things ever written in this franchise and we only pretend to not see it because it has a handful of hot badasses? no, lloyd reed, your characterization and design being literal perfection does not save the writing of your father's organization. but no, they chose to make a weird story full of holes where no war actually happens and none of its events have any actual historical relevance whatsoever so it's like it never even existed. the main characters have absolutely no development whatsoever and end the exact same way they started the game as, so i guess it fits. can you guys tell i am not fond of blazing blade's writing? thank god the gameplay is pretty good. oh, sorry, i went a bit offtopic. headcanon for elibe: eliwood and hector actually fought a war after the events of BlaBla so their status in BinBla actually means crap. also eliwood didn't marry ninian and she fucked off back to dragontopia or whatever the hell dragons live. roy doesn't need this can of worms in his dna. yet another husband for Nameless Maiden in this franchise (the only eliwood pairing based on his supports i actually like is... hector himself, which, lol. couldn't they have written his potential wives a bit better?).

i mean it might as well not have happened considering how it impacted exactly nothing in binding blade's story not that much of a headcanon

aw, i like the DS animations. i know that's not popular, because the remakes are not popular, but they look fine to me. better than the 3DS games to be honest, i have never gotten used to the 3D models and mostly play those games with the animations off. i guess it's hard to follow the glory of the GBA in 2D.

the thing with conquest is that, as i said, it has the worst premise, and it starts terrible basically from chapter 7, so you kind of just expect to be frustrated throughout, and while revelations actually has more of a reason to exist story-wise, it's convoluted enough that you also expect to have some "why are you like this???????" breakdowns. but birthright? it was supposed to be the straightforward one. good guys defeat bad guys. how did they manage to fuck that up so badly and insert so many ham-fisted moments that amount to nothing and still end up with plotholes (if you ignore the other two storylines)? it's frankly shocking. it plays out like a parody of one of the simpler fire emblem games after chapter 17 or so. it definitely has an argument for worst storyline of the whole franchise too (even though, conversely, i think its gameplay gets unfairly shat on - it's harder to break than awakening and harder than the easier FEs if you decide to not break it).

in terms of the characters actually looking like they fit in the world of the game, the best designs are the remakes (both archaneas and echoes) and fates. the remakes come closest to shedding all anime characterization and looking like medieval fantasy, and fates just downright feels like an anime in worldbuilding too, so the characters looking like that actually feel natural. the others all fall in a strange non-committal gray area, specially judgral (looking like 90s shonen anime is... still looking like anime lol). in terms of my actual preferences, i am partial to magvel, where the GBA style was perfected, since it was the third game already. a shame it had fewer characters to show for it. if BinBla ever gets a remake, i hope they stay as close to this style as possible for the new artwork.

posting just to observe that i have started reading this (from genealogy onwards because my memories of the original archanea games are mostly lost to dark haze of faraway memories of a more primitive time and i pay dust to them since the remakes, and i plan on getting my hands on echoes soon so i kind of want to forget gaiden for now lol) and it's most enlightening and fun and has made me want to replay most games again! i mean, i don't think i have disagreed more with someone on the writing of both blazing blade AND sacred stones, but still it's all incredibly well put and i hope you keep it going until the end because i NEED to be here when this gets to fates (which of the three has the worst written storyline?? valid arguments for all three, even if conquest is the worst premise with the least potential) currently reading radiant dawn and once again my long exile from the fandom is playing tricks on my dinosaur mind. i thought it was mostly agreed mia was pretty great in this game? you gave her no chance and nobody seemed to even mention it so far (i am at 3-5 in the playlog i think?)

genealogy is the one game where children and inheritance actually made sense storywise AND gameplaywise and we all love to cheese gen 2 with overpowered kids, game design problems notwithstanding. what's the problem with adding one more? genealogy is actually the one pre-awakening game an avatar would be the least intrusive in. a bit of new mystery-esque line stealing (which, as i said a few times, did not bother me much at all) and it works. i also would be fine with a modern weapon system and not having them being inherited at all. weapon inheritance was one of the big reasons only a few pairings made any sense, and so many other aspects of the characters are inherited. it would be fine.

the unpopular part is mostly "i want intsys to change genealogy beyond recognition" because it's the year of our virus 2020 and people still worship the the disk space that rom walks on, though it is a bit surprising to me to see people being not as averse to change as they were, say, after new mystery (which is still very much on the faithful side of remakes, fyi). guess echoes being almost a glorified port made everyone more open to the idea, even with the risk of a less faithful remake looking more like one of the less heralded newer games.

binding blade is one remake away from showing all y'all serfs why it already is the best fire emblem game and would be even better with only some slight modernisation with that said, my actual unpopular opinion for the post is that intsys is actually way too faithful in its remakes and i wouldn't mind if the next was a bit more different from the original. genealogy, in particular, would benefit from being remade into basically a different game lol.

i definitely agree the stu/sue term is beyond worthless! it's a cop out when people are bothered and don't know how to express themselves. it's how people call them, though, so that's what i have to mention lol. but notice i said "was". micaiah was very controversial and mostly disliked for years after RD was released. if the fandom has grown to appreciate her (as i did; i did have many reservations with her at first but now i think she is fine) then i am glad to know that. even so, alm got no such controversy even after echoes revealed him to the larger fandom, and even the small sect of the fandom who actually played gaiden didn't seem to have much of a problem with him for years and years.

not as nearly as common as criticising rey even considering the size of the fandoms, though. alm being a gary stu isn't as nearly as big of an issue in this fandom as micaiah supposedly being a mary sue (for being a more nuanced and flawed character, even) was, for example.

thank you!! this is why blazing sword was the inferior translation, we'd just be calling the game BS. only its story is that, you guys. as for fates' storyline: while people do conflate "characters making bad decisions" with "characters being badly written" in their rush to criticize the game(s), it's srill very much in the badly written territory for me indeed. not so much the characters (though apparently that's a point of contention because of anime tropes or something? which, newsflash, this is a japanese game franchise and the only thing stopping us from seeing more of this as soon as BinBla wasn't superior writing but the fact fire emblem wasn't yet doing supports as a dating sim, the real sin of awakening and beyond), but conquest basically never has a leg to stand on, revelations isn't much better, and birthright as the conventional route was putting up a fighting chance until the ice tribe then it fell into the abyss and never came back. i think if i did a ranking of all fire emblem storylines (without 3H because i am a pahr brazilian whose currency can't even look at nintendo without cowering in shame), all three fates titles would be the bottom 3. it's a shame because i like the gameplay so, so much, even for the less heralded non-conquest routes which i think are underrated gameplay-wise just because conquest is there being so good. also fates single-handedly lifted BlaBla from being the worst storyline to me (as i actually like awakening more) to out of my bottom 3. incredible work by the game.

oh, i definitely agree. most criticism of sacred stones seems to conflate "eirika does bad decisions" with "eirika is badly written", anyway. i wish she was portrayed in a more empowering way, but give me her restrained and mistake-ridden but ultimately meaningful arc over blazing blade hoodwinking you into buying a story where pretty much nothing ever actually happened ever. i think this used to be the popular opinion five years ago, though. it seems to be recent that we have reversed back to BlaBla's story [yes i did it] being more enjoyed than SS's.

no one has thought lilina is a very good unit in BinBla [still making this happen] since the pre-efficiency days when lugh vs lilina mattered lol her stat spread (enormous magic, low speed and defense) has been repeated many times since then and the degree of success depends almost entirely on how nice the game is to that. which, BinBla is not, but lilina is still redeemable since anima is so good in that game

as i just added to my post, genealogy gen 1 does have a "the appeal IS the fact it's utterly inscrutable" charm to it. it doesn't go nearly all the way with it, and also i don't think that's why the fandom at large enjoys it, but it's there. i enjoy it too. blazing blade is also not without its redeeming features (and neither is fates birthright to be honest - as i said before, until roughly the ice tribe it was shaping up to be better planned than either one of those two).

lmao you are not wrong! not the time to start dragging the blazing blade storyline though, we could be here all week. also, actual really unpopular opinion incoming: nostalgia is the only thing that makes people view genealogy gen 1 and blazing blade as good stories but fates birthright as a bad story. the latter is cut from the exact same cloth - increasingly desperate use of emotional gut punches to conceal from the player that this storyline has gone off the rails and fell off the cliff for a while now. all three even have occasionally good writing for a handful of characters to further convince the player this journey has been worth it (to varying extents, which i guess is why fates birthright doesn't have the same benefit of doubt - it IS a more scant occurence there as opposed to blazing blade). of course (and the unpopular opinions keep coming), the journey IS more worth it for the former two, not because of nostalgia, but because their stories are continued at genealogy gen 2 and binding blade, which, while more straightforward and not devoid of flaws, both are better at telling their stories without making me go "but FOR WHY". (i do enjoy the genealogy gen 1 story though, as messed up as it is. i even wish it had committed a bit more fully to its final fantasy tactics-esque "you will never have a hope of understanding even half of the behind-the-scenes mess" aspirations.)