Favorite Game Franchises Outside of Fire Emblem

[Fire Emblem Fan]

What are some of your favorite game franchises outside of the Fire Emblem series? Are there any you like more than FE? Talk about them!

I play a number of different series. Some of my favorite bigger, more notable series are Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Mass Effect, Castlevania, Ratchet & Clank, Resident Evil, Metroid, Tekken, Super Smash Bros., Uncharted, and Final Fantasy.

My absolute favorite game franchise of all time is Crash Bandicoot, I've been playing that since it first came out in 1996 and I'll keep going until it reaches its conclusion. Warped is my favorite game of all time (as of right now), I've played both the original Crash Team Racing and the Nitro-Fueled remaster/remake more times than I can count or remember, and I've even been crazy enough to get the maximum completion percentages on most of them. Including the insane 106% in It's About Time. Nothing tops Crash for me, although the original Spyro trilogy (and the Reignited remaster) is a close second.

My love of Mario extends to beyond just the platformers. I enjoy the Kart games, and I really love the Mario & Luigi RPGs. Especially Bowser's Inside Story, that's one of my favorite games of all time. I even enjoy some of the Party games here and there, despite the randomness of the CPU cheating you again and again. The sports games aren't as good to me, though. I enjoy the Tennis ones, for the most part, but I've had a hard time getting into Strikers and Golf, and I didn't care much for Sports Mix.

Mass Effect is one that sucks me in every time I play it, even though I've beaten it before. It did such a fantastic job of making me care a whole lot about those characters and that story. I love it every single time, and I'm always a little sad when I finish it, because it means saying goodbye. Even though it's a temporary goodbye. It's one of the best trilogies in all of gaming.

Ratchet & Clank is a special one, I my uncle introducing it to me back when the first game came out on PS2, he was very correct in thinking it'd be something I'd get into. Those games absolutely, without question came the closest to recapturing some of the magic I felt on the PS1 playing Crash, Spyro, and Ape Escape. I go back to those ones a lot, and I've really liked how the series evolved on the PS3 with the Future games, and now with Rift Apart? R&C is in a really good place. It's almost always been in a good place, actually.

Tekken is without question my favorite traditional fighting game series, and the one I go back to the most. Nothing against Street Fighter or SoulCalibur, they're good, but Tekken is the one I find the most fun. Although that may be because I don't get super competitive with it, but in my opinion, competitive play very often misses the point of video games. But that's not a conversation for here. Anyway! Tekken, it's great, love it.

Some other games I enjoy that I didn't list above are the Dishonored games, Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, the original Tomb Raider trilogy (haven't played the new reboot trilogy yet, but I think I'd like it), the original two Twisted Metal games, the first Ape Escape, the first The Last of Us, Until Dawn, The Quarry, Death's Door, Insomniac's Spider-Man and the first PS1 Spider-Man, Earthbound, The Last Story, and various Star Wars games.

[Fabulously Olivier]

Guild Wars, Yakuza, Persona, Mass Effect, The Witcher, Trails, Ys, and Warriors.

 

There's also franchises like Xenoblade, Final Fantasy, God of War, and Shin Megami Tensei that I could grow really attached to if they keep up the quality/direction of their most recent entries.

[vanguard333]

For me, definitely The Legend of Zelda. Outside of that, Fire Emblem and I guess Super Smash Bros.... I'm more someone to have favourite games than favourite franchises.

I do really like the BoxBoy franchise; they're really good puzzle-platformers.

I'm not a huge fan of Metroid as a whole, but I did really enjoy the Metroid Prime trilogy, so I could consider myself a fan of the Metroid Prime sub-franchise.

I used to be a Pokémon fan; I largely quit after gen 7 and have only played Legends: Arceus since then.

Other than that, I've more been a fan of individual games than franchises. I like Shadow of the Colossus, but I have not played any other Team Ico games; I mostly loved Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, but I have not played any other Ys games; I like Persona 5 Royal apart from the fact that my first playthrough is over 160 hours long and I somehow still haven't finished it, but I haven't played any other Persona games; etc.

 

EDIT: I just remembered the Mega Man Battle Network and Star Force games. I enjoyed the last two games in the former and all three games in the latter.

Edited January 2 by vanguard333

[ARMADS!!!]

My favorites? There's a bunch I like a lot (Streets of Rage, Mortal Kombat, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (although I liked this one mainly throught other media, think I've only played me game), love Battletoads but not sure I can say I follow the franchise since I only played one, Megaman is pretty cool but I suck at it, I also like Kirby, adore Pokémon since I remember being alive and it's absolutely not only for the games too,... there's probably more if I remember more later I might edit the comment).

 

 But my absolute favorites are Sonic and Ace Attorney (probably Pokémon too, but I'm not sure it's fair to call it among my "abolute favorite gaming franchises" yet, since I only played 2 Pokémon games and didn't finish either yet, so I think that for now I'll only say it's among my absolute favorite franchises overall, with no underline on the gaming part, I follow it since I was a toddler but I only started to play the games less than 2 years ago).

I'd say I like Sonic more since I started to play Ace Attorney less than 2 years ago but I've been playing Sonic since I remember being alive (and I also follow a bunch of of the official Sonic comics, the cartoons, the movies, absolutely played some 15 games or so, and finished more than 5- which for me is a lot since I have the horrible habit of not finishing games- I even finished Sonic 3 and Knuckles around 5 times on the spam of a summer break once, I played a bunch of fan games too, listen to a bunch of the OST on a frequent basis, follow their YouTube channel, etc, lol I even remember watching those cringey Sonic Couples videos when I was a kid). I know the story of most games is corny as fuck, but I'm a sucker for overly corny stuff, and the franchise has been doing well as of very recently so after years of making and reading rants about how bad Sonic's been going, I can finally see it go well. Also as bad as the story can be or as poor as they write the characters in some games, the Gameplay is always THE BEST (which is probably the main motive I like Sonic anyway).

 I'd place Fire Emblem between Sonic and Ace Attorney.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Fallout takes up a lot of my mindspace. And I'd never miss a Kirby game. I like a lot of games, but playing for decades causes a lot of heartache as franchises fall by the wayside. You start to appreciate the ones that have been quietly grinding away in search of perfection, and not doubling down on mistakes. Being a dork of Resident Evil for decades and watching it suddenly catapult back into the prestige gaming space is a wild phenomenon. Ditto for God of War. Bravo both of you.

Edited January 2 by Zapp Branniglenn

[indigoasis]

There's something I really love about stories or games that have that generational aspect to them. Not as in, "Oh, I used to play that game as a kid and now my son is playing a new game in that series!" but more like a passing of the torch from entry to entry kinda thing. In my mind, Castlevania and The Legend of Zelda are the perfect examples of that (in both ways, lol), which is partly why they're my two all-time favorite video game franchises. I can pretty easily point to them as my quintessential video games. Great gameplay, phenomenal music, and enough lore and untapped potential to keep people interested for years after they've been past their prime.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

17 hours ago, viahaiha said:

My all-time favorite game franchise is Crash Bandicoot. I've been a fan since its initial release in 1996, and I plan to continue playing until its conclusion. Currently, my favorite game is Warped. I've extensively played both the original Crash Team Racing and the Nitro-Fueled remaster, surpassing my countable memory, and I've even achieved maximum completion percentages in most of them, including the challenging 106% in It's About Time. Crash holds a special place for me, although the original Spyro trilogy (and the Reignited remaster) is a close second.

 

So, uh, just copy-pasting part of my post, and...it reads like a grammar-correcting bot or something. Huh.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Mainly RPGs like 

• Persona
• Ys
• The Legends of Heroes
• Xenoblade Chronicles
• Tales of
• Octopath Traveler
• Star Ocean
• Atelier

and nostalgic series like Mario, Kirby and Donkey Kong and Metroidvanias.

[ARMADS!!!]

On 1/2/2024 at 8:40 AM, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Fallout takes up a lot of my mindspace. And I'd never miss a Kirby game. I like a lot of games, but playing for decades causes a lot of heartache as franchises fall by the wayside. You start to appreciate the ones that have been quietly grinding away in search of perfection, and not doubling down on mistakes. Being a dork of Resident Evil for decades and watching it suddenly catapult back into the prestige gaming space is a wild phenomenon. Ditto for God of War. Bravo both of you.

 I've been feeling like this about Sonic lately, for years it has been a meme among the fandom that the franschise was going horribly for years. Then on 2017 or so they released Sonic Mania (that is among the best Sonic games since ever) and started a new Comic (the IDW ones) with a writer everyone praised (Ian Flynn) because he "saved" the previous comic (Sonic from the Archie comics) that had been screwed WAY BEYOND comprehension to meme levels (I mean, there had been literal Nazist alegories, domestic violence, a kid dying of LSD overdose ON SCREEN, a 30 years old suposedly taking the virginty of a teen, etc ON A SONIC COMIC) before he came and fixed it, and right now (as of 2020 and after) they released the Live action movie and the sequel and are doing a third one, came back with putting lore on the games and writing them well (and even actually hired Ian Flynn to write the games's story! Before, his work was on the comics only), released the cartoon Sonic Prime that is pretty good and featured the characters everyone wanted to see (and with actual characterization, unlike it has been on the previous games like Sonic Forces or Sonic Generations) AND it already got a second season, and now they even released a game that has Rouge and Cream as playable characters (which had not happened in... decades I think, and everyone wanted). I think I even missed something good, but it has been going so well it makes me proud of having stuck on the bad, horrible times.

Edited January 9 by ARMADS!!!

[henrymidfields]

None, actually. There are franchises I still keep in touch, but they all have their stinkers, with some more than others. And yes, this includes FE. One franchise in particular which has become ridiculous to watch considering a particular someone keeps getting kidnapped, except, turned out, she fights back just fine in Smash Bros.

In terms of FE, I'm baulking at Fate Conquest's ridiculous story, the ridiculous price of the Tellius games (and also how surprisingly one-sided Radiant Dawn is), and the shallow gameplay of Awakening. For Zelda, I ended up throwing away Spirit Tracks due to its awkward controls (and I was also kind of disappointed by the story too...), and I've little interest in Link's Awakening Remake version which was essentially a glorified remaster of the original. For Pokemon, RSE unfortunately made the departure from the real-life setting that I thought defined Pokemon until then, and BW1+2's Unova is an overrated region and is a half-hearted depiction of fake-America that Earthbound's Eagleland did way better with.

Earthbound's probably the closest though. Mother 1+2 had a great immersion narrative in an 80s-90s fake-America world, and I've also started to warm up to Mother 3 when I was previously turned off by the radical departure in the story. (The story itself is worth experiencing, but I still do wonder if it had been better as a spin-off instead of a fully-fledged sequel.)

Edited February 24 by henrymidfields

[Wist]

Despite my best efforts Fire Emblem is my favourite series. But I've always been keen on the Final Fantasy and Valkyria Chronicles series (series...es?). It's not make or break for me, but I think I like games with lots of characters but not so many I lose track of who they all are. In these games I feel like I'm going on an adventure with people.

Like vanguard333 I've fallen away from Pokemon for various reasons, though I did enjoy Arceus. The Zelda series is nostalgic. Unfortunately I get bored near the end of most of them. If Link had more character I think I would get back into them? Then again I had fun with Elden Ring. Maybe I judge Zelda more harshly than I should.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Yeah, I enjoy some Pokemon, but I've also kinda fallen off of it. SoulSilver was fantastic, and I enjoyed X and Y, but all the others since then I've had a hard time getting into. Not that they're bad, just...eh, I guess not as engaging for me.

[Sidereal Wraith]

For me personally I’ve very much fallen out of the habit of playing video games over the last few years. While I’ll still play FE and it was once my favorite series, Engage really left a bad taste in my mouth. The only real exception to this rule which I recently discovered was the Legacy of Kain series. I can’t explain in words have gratifying its been to find a video game series that has not only excellent voice acting but a fascinating world and incredibly engaging plot with many twists and turns. Experiencing the earlier games in the series is almost like playing through a story written by Brian McNaughton, Karl Edward Wagner or Michael Moorcock and it’s incredible.