What is it that you dislike about Fire Emblem?

[Shadowflare]

Dislike, probably most of all, it gets too easy. I've only played the 3 GBA ones, but even then, too easy. Seriously, even without statesaves, it's hard to mess up, because the RNG is my slave because the RNG likes me.

Honestly, every fanbase is hit and miss. Except the Final Fantasy fanbase. That's all miss. And yeah, the fact that Awakening saved the series is way overstated. Nowadays, 250k units is nothing to an AAA developer, especially Nintendo/ IntSys.

Hey... I like Final Fantasy...

[Topazd]

It's not overstated at all. Awakening DID save the series because the series was going to end if it didn't sell well enough, remember? I just hope that the fanservice and marriage and avatars weren't the biggest factor in that. I like to think that the marketing and casual mode were the biggest...

No, the number of sales Awakening needed to 'save' the series was a number that almost every FE game did indeed pass.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Topazd

[Florete]

I don't think there's anything I inherently dislike about the series overall, just individual aspects of the games on their own. I'm a little wary of the shift over to more fanservicey designs, but I want to play Fates before really judging.

[Anacybele]

No, the number of sales Awakening needed to 'save' the series was a number that almost every FE game did indeed pass.

Irrelevant. IS themselves stated that they would abandon the series if Awakening didn't make that sales number.

[Lantairu]

Hey... I like Final Fantasy...

Same, but I can't stand most fans of every game in the series except, like, 9.

[NinjaMonkey]

It has to be the fanbase for me.

[Retyl]

Some of the designs and otaku pandering in Fates as well as the waifu this and waifu that.

I hear that Fire Emblem Fates is solid gameplay wise, but I'm really not sure if I will buy it because of the above.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Zarin

[Jave]

Irrelevant. IS themselves stated that they would abandon the series if Awakening didn't make that sales number.

That statement sort of proves the series never really needed to be saved.

[Knight]

I wish the series built more on its core mechanics with each new game rather than swap in and out old mechanics and add tiny things like biorhythm or fluff the game up with features like Barracks or DLC. I'm curious to see how the readjusted pair up feature and weapons with buffs and debuffs will turn out in FE Fates though.

Lack of bear laguz.

No, the number of sales Awakening needed to 'save' the series was a number that almost every FE game did indeed pass.

We probably wouldn't be getting FE Fates so soon after Awakening if the latter wasn't so successful.

[Tsunami922]

Marriage (Awakening and Fates): I feel like it forces there to be too many opposite-sex supports, and many awkward S-supports.

Children (Awakening and Fates): I'd rather just have a bunch of units, instead of first-gen and second-gen units, especially when the explanations of where said children came from involve time travel.

Those couple things aside, I'm still very excited for Fates.

Is it 2016 yet?

[Zerosabers]

I'm adding long range status staves and Binding Blade chapter 16x to my list.

14 was obnoxious but this one just makes me not want to replay the game again.

Also locking players out of the true ending because they missed even one weapon is really dumb.

I'm not salty.

[Ein]

Story, units not being balanced enough, gameplay at times, Nintendo not giving the series the support it needs to succeed only until recently, the current shift of the series.

[Maritisa]

• Too many characters, and 90% of them don't have any real characterization beyond a gimmick or quirk. And then the guys who get focus are just two dimensional as opposed to one-dimensional, and the lords tend to be bland.
• Otaku pandering of recent games. I liked Awakening despite this, but with the new game it seems like it's gone too far for my taste.
• Mechanics moving too far away from Radiant Dawn, which IMO perfected FE mechanics.
• Portions of the fanbase that insist their ideology of playing the game is the "best" or "correct" way to play it.

I agree with literally all of these points.

A personal distaste that ties in with Point 1 is that permadeath is just done wrong in this series. It impacts the player, but not the game. The games hardly acknowledge somebody's dead, with the exception of some base/support conversations in the Tellius games. But that's some side stuff...

Although I personally love the base conversations because they give characterization to characters who usually don't get screen time, so it's much better there than in supports.

But yeah, permadeath should really just not be a thing forced on the player. The only reason it should exists is for "Ironman" runs, otherwise it's redundant since people restart when a character dies anyway. I know people say "There's tactics you can use in casual that you can't use in classic", but really the solution to that is to, say, force a character to sit out a battle if they get defeated, or some other method to discourage suiciding units.

An idea some folks in the FEXNA chat tossed around just for the sake of it was the idea of distributing EXP, or at least the bulk of it, at the end of a chapter. Characters who got defeated in casual could receive an XP penalty, and also on the flip side it could be set up in a way to reward units for doing roles other than killing people, like armors tanking enemies, for example.

On the subject of permadeath itself again, the way to do it RIGHT is to have a smaller cast where losing a character strongly impacts the other characters, and possibly even the entire plot if the cast is small enough.

FE games and their large casts tend to replace characters often, although this is actually being moved away from in the newer games, so that's one thing they're doing right at least...

Edited September 6, 2015 by Ritisa

[EarthboundAddict]

The post awakening magic system. Before it was very simple, mages could only use anima magic (thunder, wind and fire), dark Mages could only use dark magic and monks could only use light magic. There was even a little trinity of magic that went something like Light > dark > anima > light.

But now in awakening, dark mages can now use both anima and dark magic giving mages a lot less balance and variety, and monks and light magic have been removed all together completely destroying the once balanced and simple trinity of magic.

That and a lot of characters are usually built around a gimmick. The worst offenders of this being the children in awakening. And I'm not just talking about awakening, previous games have also had very gimmicky characters (albeit, less common)

[Carter]

Female Dark Mages and Sorcerers (Awakening and Fates) wear pretty much nothing. Female Fighters are kinda eh too, but the Berserker outfit is fine. Charlotte though, I'm okay with entirely.

Dark Fliers and Dark Knights cannot use Dark Magic. What's up with that?

Dancers in the GBA series could not fight.

Marriage (Awakening and Fates): I feel like it forces there to be too many opposite-sex supports, and many awkward S-supports.

This too.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with Fire Emblem as a whole. I still enjoy the old mechanics of previous games, and the newer mechanics that Awakening and Fates bring. Most of my problems are with the newer games though, because I don't have anything to say for the older ones.

[Zelgius]

I don't think there's anything I inherently dislike about the series overall, just individual aspects of the games on their own. I'm a little wary of the shift over to more fanservicey designs, but I want to play Fates before really judging.

I'd agree with this, there are some aspects of Fates I've seen that I'm not too sure on just yet but I'd like to get my hands on the game first.

Having said that, I would like to see some of the Tellius' armour design return (like the Marshall design), I don't really like how generals in particular are designed in Awakening.

[eclipse]

Best answer in the topic so far:

Story, units not being balanced enough, gameplay at times, Nintendo not giving the series the support it needs to succeed only until recently, the current shift of the series.

And my answer:

The sheer amount of whining I see about the games, especially those that haven't been released (whether it's "not released at all" or "not released locally" is another matter). Seriously, if a game is that bad/offensive, WHY POST ON A BOARD DEDICATED TO SAID GAME?

The other issue I have is how other fans are being treated. Most of you on SF are pretty good about treating the new guys right, so thanks for that. However, I think that badgering people for the following:

- starting with Awakening

- playing on Casual instead of Classic

- not playing on anything harder than the easiest mode

- grinding

- other trivial things that are literally personal preference regarding how the game is played

need to cut it out. All it does is make the FE fanbase look whiny and immature.

[Sunwoo]

I don't like the direction the series is going right now. I'm not inherently opposed to an avatar character, but I dislike pandering to the self-insert. Which really hurt the story and the other characters in the most recent game. The marriage mechanic (as it is) and children need to stay out unless it's actually relevant to the plot.

Another thing I dislike about FE is that the characters' join times and usability varies so hard that sometimes you can't use your favorite characters without babying them, I guess. I also miss things like fog of war. (Snow of war, on the other hand, can go fuck itself.)

[Fire Emblem Fan]

What I dislike about the series is the direction it seems to be taking. I'm very weary of it.

I do not like all the fanservice. Pokemon-Amie in Fire Emblem? I do not want to RUB my units! And all the boob-focus, all the marriage and romance focus...does every character really have to be a spouse option for every other character? This is not what made me love the series. And now, because of the same-sex marriage options in Fates, there will forever and always be the "token gay character."

I do not like the forced children characters. It worked in Genealogy. It worked in Awakening (only because of Lucina). But now? It isn't needed, it's just being forced.

I do not like that it now feels like every Lord character in future games will be an Avatar. Lyn, Ephraim, Ike, Hector, Marth, Leif...we won't be getting anymore characters like that if we'll just be getting Avatars from now on. No more non-Avatar Lords. Robin kinda pushed Chrom and Lucina away, and now the Avatar in Fates definitely makes all the Hoshido/Nohr sibling characters look like secondary characters.

I do not like the changes to the gameplay, in terms of no weapon durability and all that.

I actually liked that there were gender-exclusive classes...now that seems to be going away.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Fire Emblem Fan

[Jedi]

I do not like the changes to the gameplay, in terms of no weapon durability and all that...

Considering durability was mostly superficial in every game up till now, I don't really see the issue.

I mean staves still have durability and arguably thats the only thing it really worked for before, otherwise its a cheap gimmick to make you not use what weapons you want to due to some mindeset that you have to conserve it all.

Although it makes funds rank stuff interesting.

[Alex95]

Because of who I am, characters like Tharja and Camilia just irk me. Swearing is also a thing that gets me, so characters like Basilio and Sully don't do good on me, either. I don't think Fire Emblem needs those things, and it pains me to think that Nintendo needs to stoop so low... Other then that, the series is great!

[Jedi]

Because of who I am, characters like Tharja and Camilia just irk me. Swearing is also a thing that gets me, so characters like Basilio and Sully don't do good on me, either. I don't think Fire Emblem needs those things, and it pains me to think that Nintendo needs to stoop so low... Other then that, the series is great!

Swearing is bad...? I mean Ike and Tibarn do it too. Not really a "recent" thing.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Jedi

[Kiseki]

If there's anything about this series that I dislike other than what would've been obviously said by so many other people (because I do share a number of opinions here), it's that, well...

The series wasn't really advertised until Awakening onward. I think some games weren't advertised period.

But no seriously, had the older games been as advertised as much as Awakening and Fates now, I'm sure it'd sell.

Edited September 6, 2015 by Kiseki

[Sunwoo]

Jedi, you don't have to nitpick at what other people dislike ;/

[Jedi]

I'm merely curious as to why. That's all.