Correlation between FE and Pokemon players

[Avioncore]

This is maybe a weird topic but I want to know how many of you DON'T care for Pokemon. I noticed almost every FE player I know is really into Pokemon as well (which makes sense because of Pokemon being a lot of people's intro into jrpgs and both of them being Nintendo franchises and also gameplay similarities like team building) but I want to know if anyone here actually doesn't like Pokemon as a game or is completely indifferent to it.

[Integrity]

i'm generally completely indifferent to it. had fun with red when i was a tiny child, and eventually beat it as an adult, but outside of individual mons i don't have any particular or enduring love for it outside of a brief tenure with pokemon go as a nostalgia trip

[Fabulously Olivier]

I loved Pokemon gens 1-3. Hated 4. Liked Black and White. Haven't really clicked with any of them since. And I know it's popular to chalk that up to nostalgia, but my opinion on the matter is that the games have actually gotten worse, because I am still able to enjoy their competitors in that genre.

 

Anyway, I think the overlap exists primarily because:

1) Pokemon is huge. Most people are/were Pokemon fans.

2) If you already own the console, you're more likely to get into other games on it.

Edited October 23, 2023 by Fabulously Olivier

[Baron the Shining Blade]

I enjoyed gens 1-3 during childhood, but since I never had a DS I didn't get back into Pokemon. I did play Shield on the Switch, and while I have individual faves and the series does hold at least a small place in my heart, I can't say I ever truly got back into it, so I slowly veer towards but remain just above indifference

[Dayni]

The correlation is true in my case, but that makes sense given Pokemon itself was big, there's close enough of relations through shared publishers and console releases and the emulation scene would have been pretty significant for both, partly due to ease of access. I'll say I'm more enthused about Pokemon right now than I had been the last few years though.

As someone at the right age for Pokemon back in the late 90's, I was into it during much of the early peak. Then it kinda waned here before 3rd Gen and I skipped the GBA at the time. So I wouldn't have seen FE much at the time it was relevant (not to mention it was less so in Europe Vs. America at the time). It'd take me getting into Pokemon again with the DS, getting into nuzlocking early on and in that fanbase learning about FE before I'd actually play anything in FE, which took years overall.

[Shaky Jones]

I used to like Pokémon, but I think I just grew out of it as I got into FE instead. Not really an era where I liked both. 

Honestly, now I'd need random growths in Pokémon that increase stats by 1 over whatever the heck EV's are to enjoy Pokémon again. 

FE feels really fun and replayable with the large casts, growths that can make or break how good or bad a unit is, and I end up caring about each individual increase in most given stats, thinking carefully about distributing stat boosters, how I want to forge certain weapons, what weapons to bring for the sake of effective weaponry or item preservation. It is a strategy game after all. Pokémon though is just having 1 v 1's most of the time so just have the correct type matchup and you win. When I level, I gain stats. I dunno what stats, but it doesn't really matter because it's Pokémon. It's a kids game, although I'd appreciate difficulty choice to incentive strategizing your team to balance out potential problems you could have against certain matchups given that Nintendo knows that this game is played by millions of all ages. Even then, 1 v 1 style combat just feels like I have to outdamage them and spam a potion every other turn if they're strong unless I'm actively banning mid battle items. Most fun I can have is just a self imposed no items challenge with a ban of certain metas and just trying out very peculiar "builds", but most of that feels like a pointless effort to bring fun into something I simply don't enjoy anymore. If I wanna play a more pure rpg game with catchable monsters and type advantages, I'd honestly just play SMT (you may laugh now).

There's a lotta Pokémon, but it certainly isn't as eye catching regarding replay value as people with personalities...sometimes, and different growths, supports, and general experience with using units you aren't familiar with. I imagine that the plethora of FE fans who are still Pokémon fans find similarity in that Pokémon technically also have a kind of growth rate, starting stats, and types that would split up your choices for who of what type to have in your team (which water mon do I pick vs which archer do I train?), but I suppose it simply feels more clean and natural to work with when it comes to the FE formula. I like overthinking natures in Pokémon, but that's about it. 

Truth be told, I could tl;dr all this as "I'm tired of jrpg's" and leave it at that. It's true. I still love rpg, but specifically as a subgenre. By that I mean shooter rpg's (Fallout NV, Mass Effect 1), SRPG (what do you think?), stuff like that. I find stuff like Pokémon to be boring nowadays, even if we're ignoring the fact that a lot of that is likely from the games being too easy for an adult because duh. Personally, I don't see the appeal of the game from the perspective of an FE fan. I loved playing Pokémon mindlessly as a child using the same 3 things to steamroll the game and would've likely hated FE (except maybe Awakening), but now I love FE and can't bring myself to pick up a Pokémon game anymore. I think Pokémon was made to be mindless, and tryna make it super hard through mods just reveals how shallow the gameplay feels, at least for me. Yeah, I can try focusing on all the details and strategize my team, but now I'm just tryna not get one shot and insta kill them with type advantages while spamming revives without any clear plan that isn't knowing the boss's entire team by heart because I sure ain't gonna focus on the nitty gritty stats like in FE and there's only so much I can do with that without going getting a doctor's degree in EV's (i don't even know if that's what it's called). 

Yes I posted this just to rant on popular thing. Unlucky. 

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I'm like the ground zero generation for the Pokemon Boom and have a lot of nostalgia and expertise with it. But I'm disproportionately a fan of those older games and don't pay attention to new stuff. I wish today's kids had better games to play, but I'm equally mad at men my age turning the trading card game into something totally gross. Plenty of blame to go around. Favorite pokemon games in retrospect are the gamecube ones. It's funny, no one at the development team for Colosseum had ever had direct experience playing the games, but someone in charge just let them get weird making the first home console pokemon rpg. 

I don't think my interest in Pokemon correlated to me picking up Fire Emblem on the GBA. Smash is to blame for that. As for why I owned a GBA, it was just a hand me down from a family friend. My pokemon interest had heavily waned by Gen 3 and when I finally did play them I thought it was kind of lame.

Edited October 24, 2023 by Zapp Branniglenn

[Jotari]

I wouldn't say there's any intrinsic link between Pokemon fans and Fire Emblem fans. The apparent overlap probably comes from Pokemon being one of the most popular franchises out there and sharing a system with Fire Emblem.

For myself, the last one I played was X and it basically killed my enthusiasm. Their attempts to vary each game have been weak to say the most. Which is a shame since Pokemon's gameplay is actually really well designed and I have had my fun on pokemon showdown. But they've just done little to expand beyond the central campaign of 8 gyms and any attempts to fully engaged with the mechanics of the game are  only in post games. Shame they didn't make more games like Colosseum which managed to mix up the formula while retaining the gameplay.

Edited October 24, 2023 by Jotari

[ARMADS!!!]

I've played only Pokemon Fire Red and didn't beat it yet (I have it paused for like... more than a year I think), it was sorta cool, but in general I think don't care for the Pokemon games all that much, mostly because I don't have the pacience to learn how the less simple stats work (so it's a lot harder to know what I'm doing and to plan startegies, which would be the fun part for me) and also don't have the pacience for these games with that force you to grind and have surprise ambushes and "dungeons" of sorts (man... I hated every time I had to enter some sort of cave in that Pokemon...). Perhaps the fact that they don't display my foes's stats (at least that I know of, maybe I'm just dumb...)  made it less enjoyable too. I mean, I was hooked on it for like 2 weeks or so (and got my sister hooked too) but eventually I got tired, I find it sorta hard to relate it to Fire Emblem too.

 Thats the same reason I couldn't finish Final Fantasy IV, I really wanted to like it but I just don't get how a bunch of the stats work (and didn't quickly find any site that explained it easily, with Fire Emblem I luckly found the "calculation" page for each I played AND my first one was FE7 so they explained everything you absolutely needed to know right on the tutotial). Also I can't get past the surprise ambushes and dungeons too, and you lose money for running away! I think I just really don't like having to grind, in general, so I'd say Pokemon is more comparable to Final Fantasy, to me. (One day, though, I might try to learn the stat thing better and try to beat this game bc the story was pretty cool).

 But going back to the topic, yeah, I was obsessed with Pokemon as a kid, with the anime, the movies, random trivia, the lore (of the Pokemon, of the characters, of the manga, you name it), stuff like Pokemon cafés or the Pokemon theme park,... basically everything that wasn't the games or the cards... Maybe that's why it was so jarring when I played the game and realized I didn't know anything, when I thought I did (basically, the strategies on the anime are a lot different, I mean... they are pretty dumbed down, so when I thought I was an expert I really wasn't). I'd definitively consider myself to be a fan of Pokemon in general though, I like the lore and the music and the Pokemons a lot, even have an official Chespin plushie that I don't see myself giving up on anytime soon.

 

 Actually, funnily enough, now that I'm writing this I remembered that I first played FE sorta because of Pokemon... I was playing a mobile game called Monster Legends at the time (because Pokemon didn't have any mobile game and I wanted to play Pokemon, years ago) but the game crashed ALL the time and required you to spend a bunch of money to get cool things (and I didn't have my own money), so I desperately started to look for another turn-based strategy RPG on playstore to replace Monster Legends, and ended up finding Fire Emblem Heroes, the only one of them that wasn't crap or too focused on taking your money or making you interact with other players in "guilds", eventually I grew interest on the characters portrayed in FEH and started to play regular FEs too.

 

Edited October 24, 2023 by ARMADS!!!

[Samu_77]

Pokemon is my favorite media franchise of all time and has shaped me more then any other video game, movie, tv show, anime, manga whatever. I love Gen1,3,5 and Legends Arceus to absolutely pieces, really like Gen7, like Gen4, am indifferent to Gen 2,6 and 8 and don't like 9 whatsoever, that said as a kid while I begged for every plushie, trading card and spin-off game I could find, the older I get the more I start to tune out a lot of what I don't care about and just play main-series games with occasional competitive battling.

Conversly I picked up Awakening in 2014 because of the immense popularity it had and when your a kid Awakening feels like a good stepping stone from Pokemon I feel because it's a lot of one guy destroying everything. From there I just starting bouncing around playing the FE games I feel like. I do believe there is some similarity, but also given it's one of the top selling video games series I think there's inevitably comparison from any fanbase is how I see it.

Edited October 24, 2023 by Samu_77

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

16 hours ago, Avioncore said:

This is maybe a weird topic but I want to know how many of you DON'T care for Pokemon.

If that's what you're looking for, then the thread title is doing you no favors. FE players who aren't Pokemon fans are likely to say "oh, this isn't the thread for me". Maybe change it to something like "How many of y'all AREN'T into Pokemon?".

Anyway, I'm gonna echo the rest of the lapsed Pokemon fans here. I actually played all the way up to USUM on the 3DS. I was thinking Gen VIII might be my "last hurrah", where I could bring forward all my teams I've built over the years. And then I learned they were cutting Z-moves. And Mega evolutions. And half the Dex. And Pokemon Bank support.

...To no one's surprise, I didn't get Sword/Shield. From what I've heard, I wasn't missing all the much. Scarlet/Violet sounded like they were doing some interesting things, but with all the technical issues, it doesn't look worthwhile. The only Pokemin games I've gotten in the last 5 years have been Picross, Shuffle (free 3DS titles), New Pokemon Snap, and Legends Arceus. The last one, I like as a partial reivention of the series, but it definitely doesn't feel like a "mainline game".

[ARMADS!!!]

3 minutes ago, Samu_77 said:

but also given it's one of the top selling I think there's inevitably comparison from any fanbase is how I see it.

Yeah, I think that might be the main reason, for example, I've seen a LOT of Fire Emblem fans that are obssessed with Ace Attorney (so much that I first heard of it here on SF, and now I'm crazy about it too) but I'd have to stretch it a lot to find some relevant connection between the two franchises, probably most people that like both just had a GBA and happened to own both Fire Emblem and Ace Attorney/Pokemon games.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

51 minutes ago, ARMADS!!! said:

Yeah, I think that might be the main reason, for example, I've seen a LOT of Fire Emblem fans that are obssessed with Ace Attorney (so much that I first heard of it here on SF, and now I'm crazy about it too) but I'd have to stretch it a lot to find some relevant connection between the two franchises, probably most people that like both just had a GBA and happened to own both Fire Emblem and Ace Attorney/Pokemon games.

Er, the Ace Attorney games were on DS. They were originally on GBA, but only in Japan. The DS was the first console on which an international audience could play Ace Attorney, Fire Emblem, and Pokemon.

Of course, the DS was a hyper-successful handheld, so that helps. On top of that, players who had previously played Pokemon or Fire Emblem on GBA, would be more likely to stick with those same franchises (and discover new ones) on DS.

[Fabulously Olivier]

The actual "this vinn diagram is a circle" overlap with FE fans is Persona and Trails. And maybe Utawarerumono if those particular fans are especially clued in to gaming.

 

9 hours ago, Jotari said:

Which is a shame since Pokemon's gameplay is actually really well designed 

Is it though? I've played enough JRPGs to know that Pokemon is the single most basic "use super effective move to 1-2 shot everything" game there is. Most other turn-based JRPGs at least flesh that out. That only actually changes at the competitive level because teams are so optimized. And the hidden stat progression systems to optimize your teams are easily some of the most obtuse, poorly designed, and busy progression systems in any game.

[ARMADS!!!]

7 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

Er, the Ace Attorney games were on DS. They were originally on GBA, but only in Japan. The DS was the first console on which an international audience could play Ace Attorney, Fire Emblem, and Pokemon.

Of course, the DS was a hyper-successful handheld, so that helps. On top of that, players who had previously played Pokemon or Fire Emblem on GBA, would be more likely to stick with those same franchises (and discover new ones) on DS.

lol, seriously? I've always seen them refered to as "The GBA trilogy of Ace Attorney" or "The GBA FE games",... So it just never really ocurred to me that this wasn't the case, I guess it really shows that I played those games on emulator. Well, we live and learn, thanks for giving me this information before I put myself on a situation where I'd be embarassed for real for not knowing it.

 

2 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

The actual "this vinn diagram is a circle" overlap with FE fans is Persona and Trails. And maybe Utawarerumono if those particular fans are especially clued in to gaming.

 

Is it though? I've played enough JRPGs to know that Pokemon is the single most basic "use super effective move to 1-2 shot everything" game there is. Most other turn-based JRPGs at least flesh that out. That only actually changes at the competitive level because teams are so optimized. And the hidden stat progression systems to optimize your teams are easily some of the most obtuse, poorly designed, and busy progression systems in any game.

 Oh, you actually might have unintentionally pinpointed what relates FE fans to Ace Attorney fans: Persona (meanwhile, another circle on the Venn diagram overlaps Danganronpa with Ace Attorney and Persona, but not with Fire Emblem).

 Also another thing that for some reason FE fans love too: Xenoblade Chronicles, no clue why and I have no clue about anything related to this game either, I just know some people here and on FE boards on Gamefaqs are crazy about it.

[Fabulously Olivier]

8 minutes ago, ARMADS!!! said:

lol, seriously? I've always seen them refered to as "The GBA trilogy of Ace Attorney" or "The GBA FE games",... So it just never really ocurred to me that this wasn't the case, I guess it really shows that I played those games on emulator. Well, we live and learn, thanks for giving me this information before I put myself on a situation where I'd be embarassed for real for not knowing it.

 

 Oh, you actually might have unintentionally pinpointed what relates FE fans to Ace Attorney fans: Persona (meanwhile, another circle on the Venn diagram overlaps Danganronpa with Ace Attorney and Persona, but not with Fire Emblem).

 Also another thing that for some reason FE fans love too: Xenoblade Chronicles, no clue why and I have no clue about anything related to this game either, I just know some people here and on FE boards on Gamefaqs are crazy about it.

Well, it helps that the most common pairing of visual novel gameplay like Ace Attorney these days is now tactics gameplay. We have ample games like Utawarerumono, Digimon Survive, and 13 Sentinels that pair these two genres.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

21 minutes ago, ARMADS!!! said:

ol, seriously? I've always seen them refered to as "The GBA trilogy of Ace Attorney" or "The GBA FE games",... So it just never really ocurred to me that this wasn't the case, I guess it really shows that I played those games on emulator. Well, we live and learn, thanks for giving me this information before I put myself on a situation where I'd be embarassed for real for not knowing it.

To clarify: the DS was the first console in which the combination of all three series could be played outside of Japan. Fire Emblem was present worldwide on the GBA from FE7 onward, whereas Pokemon was available to an international audience from Red & Blue onward (on the original Game Boy). It was just Ace Attorney that took until the DS years to make it out of Japan.

30 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

The actual "this vinn diagram is a circle" overlap with FE fans is Persona and Trails. And maybe Utawarerumono if those particular fans are especially clued in to gaming.

I'm not a fan of any of those three. I've heard of Trails of Coldsteel, which I assume is starring Coldsteel teh Hedgeheg? Or, are you saying fans of FE, and one of those games you mentioned, are also fans of the other games you mentioned?

Edited October 24, 2023 by Shanty Pete's 1st Mate
Clarification.

[Jotari]

34 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

Is it though? I've played enough JRPGs to know that Pokemon is the single most basic "use super effective move to 1-2 shot everything" game there is. Most other turn-based JRPGs at least flesh that out. That only actually changes at the competitive level because teams are so optimized. And the hidden stat progression systems to optimize your teams are easily some of the most obtuse, poorly designed, and busy progression systems in any game.

That's what I'm referring to. Pokemon, over the years, went to the trouble to design and refine a system that requires diversity in team compensation and moment to moment predictions of what the opponent will do, where a single bad decision can destroy a match...and then tossed it all out the window by putting it in a game where just spamming the same attacks over and over again to beat every enemy in the game bar maybe one gym leader. Pokemon games are not well designed, but the actual Pokemon gameplay it has is, in my opinion, really good. The game just rarely if ever asks you to engage in it, and in the rare occasions it might, it expects you to put a thousand hours into incest breeding the perfect team (and even then AI players never play the way human players do, particularly when it comes to swapping mid battle).

Edited October 24, 2023 by Jotari

[Fabulously Olivier]

5 minutes ago, Jotari said:

That's what I'm referring to. Pokemon, over the years, went to the trouble to design and refine a system that requires diversity in team compensation and moment to moment predictions of what the opponent will do, where a single bad decision can destroy a match...and then tossed it all out the window by putting it in a game where just spamming the same attacks over and over again to beat every enemy in the game bar maybe one gym leader. Pokemon games are not well designed, but the actual Pokemon gameplay it has is, in my opinion, really good. The game just rarely if ever asks you to engage in it, and in the rare occasions it might, it expects you to put a thousand hours into incest breeding the perfect team (and even then AI players never play the way human players do, particularly when it comes to swapping mid battle).

But that's the thing. I don't actually think the competitive gameplay it has is a virtue of the gameplay mechanics. I think it's a virtue of the size of the community. You put a big community and an online competitive matchmaking system in just about any JRPG and it will be just as deep, or deeper than Pokemon. One can only dream of SMT having that kind of mode.

[ARMADS!!!]

4 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

To clarify: the DS was the first console in which the combination of all three series could be played outside of Japan. Fire Emblem was present worldwide on the GBA from FE7 onward, whereas Pokemon was available to an international audience from Red & Blue onward. It was just Ace Attorney that took until the DS years to make it out of Japan.

Oh, Ok!

4 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

I'm not a fan of any of those three. I've heard of Trails of Coldsteel, which I assume is starring Coldsteel teh Hedgeheg? Or, are you saying fans of FE, and one of those games you mentioned, are also fans of the other games you mentioned?

Ah yes, I replied to the other comment and forgot to add that I'm not a fan of either of the three two (I have an interest in trying Persona on the future, as I see it be compared to Ace Attorney a lot, though).

Ha Ha! It's been long since I last heard of Coldsteel the Hedgehog ("Pshhhhh... Nothin P E R S O N N E L....kid...", dude uses as much elipses on his speech as Sofia from FE6), although it'd only ever be acceptable to make a game starring him if the OST consisted of actual Nine Inch Nails (the band) songs, he had nine inch nails (on fingers) and was of the cool purple (not the gay kind of purple). 

[Jotari]

20 minutes ago, Fabulously Olivier said:

But that's the thing. I don't actually think the competitive gameplay it has is a virtue of the gameplay mechanics. I think it's a virtue of the size of the community. You put a big community and an online competitive matchmaking system in just about any JRPG and it will be just as deep, or deeper than Pokemon. One can only dream of SMT having that kind of mode.

Well, sure, is SMT had that then yeah, it would probably be amazing. But SMT is also a really, really well design series of RPGs. But most of them, no, probably not. I'd say for most other RPG battle systems there's going to be pretty objectively superior strategies. Like I tried to play Digimon Cyber Sleuth online and the community was just dead. It wasn't hard to see why, because any matches I eventually got connected with involved me getting destroyed instantly by defense ignoring attacks, which I'd already discovered from the main game are just the best way to go about things. Likewise in most Final Fantasy games spamming limit breaks or such as much as you can is always going to be most effective. And, I guess, even thinking about SMT, if it were to suddenly just become PvP (idk, maybe some of them are there's like 700 games in the series), Almighty attacks certainly feel like they would be the only surefire strategy to use. That's not a dig at any of those games, they're good (Digimon Cyber Sleuth is actually fantastic and more people should play it) they just weren't meant to have combat systems that are tightly designed and robust in a PvP setting, all the gameplay decisions are built around where you are at any point in the game and going up against bosses that statistically outweigh you. And it's probably not an accident either. Player interaction was obviously part of the original Pokemon concept, and while the code for Red and Blue is held together with staplers and elastic bands with some hilarious interactions, they probably did think a lot on what players would do in battle.

Edited October 24, 2023 by Jotari

[Hrothgar777]

I have almost zero interest in the newer Pokemon games. The last one I tried was Scarlet; there was a kind of novelty and fun to it for like the first hour or two, and then I found myself wanting to drop it (which I did). Before that I never tried Gen. VIII and my go at Gen. VII was similarly aborted early. The last one I actually finished was Y. Which was okay but not memorable.

As a kid/teen I genuinely enjoyed Silver and White. Those two generations are probably my favorite. If I had a chance to replay Silver today, chances are decent that I would finish.

 

As for why I both liked Pokemon then and like FE now, it's just because I play video games put out by Nintendo. Both are mainstream franchises at this point and have been since c. 2013. So I checked both out. I don't think there's a specific correlation here that isn't also seen with, say, Zelda or Smash fans.

[Jotari]

9 minutes ago, Hrothgar777 said:

I have almost zero interest in the newer Pokemon games. The last one I tried was Scarlet; there was a kind of novelty and fun to it for like the first hour or two, and then I found myself wanting to drop it (which I did). Before that I never tried Gen. VIII and my go at Gen. VII was similarly aborted early. The last one I actually finished was Y. Which was okay but not memorable.

As a kid/teen I genuinely enjoyed Silver and White. Those two generations are probably my favorite. If I had a chance to replay Silver today, chances are decent that I would finish.

 

As for why I both liked Pokemon then and like FE now, it's just because I play video games put out by Nintendo. Both are mainstream franchises at this point and have been since c. 2013. So I checked both out. I don't think there's a specific correlation here that isn't also seen with, say, Zelda or Smash fans.

If there is any correlation with Fire Emblem and another series it probably is Smash. Because, aside from the all encompassing fact that Smash is a crossover and thus has overlap with everything, Smash played a key role in bringing Fire Emblem to the west and thus was the gateway into the series for a lot of older players. And even in the newer generations, Smash has been very kind of Fire Emblem representation, some would say even disproportionately so compared to other series of a similar size.