What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?

[Jotari]

2 minutes ago, Florete said:

I'm pretty sure that's not a thing.

I mean, it's not that I necessarily disagree with all of this, but it's not always clear what's strictly platonic and what could turn romantic. A conversation that you see as platonic, someone else might see as romantic, or at least having romantic undertones, and vice versa. Fire Emblem letting the player choose their own partner and often also play matchmaker for others is always going to result in some level of awkwardness, whether it be support chains going from seemingly platonic to romantic instantly, or everyone seeming to want to smooch everyone else at the same time.

And as I said, that inevitable awkwardness is better worked around than leaned into.

2 minutes ago, Florete said:

I do disagree with. Players have been conditioned to understand that S rank is romance, regardless of what happens before then. Suddenly pulling the rug out from beneath them with no warning is bad form, imo.

But S rank isn't romance as of Three Houses. And if someone seriously got to their A support with Alois and at Chapter 25 seriously thought he was about to leave his family for Byleth, then I don't think they were actually seeing Alois for who he is as a character.

[Florete]

11 minutes ago, Jotari said:

And as I said, that inevitable awkwardness is better worked around than leaned into.

I'm saying that awkwardness comes with the territory.

11 minutes ago, Jotari said:

But S rank isn't romance as of Three Houses. And if someone seriously got to their A support with Alois and at Chapter 25 seriously thought he was about to leave his family for Byleth, then I don't think they were actually seeing Alois for who he is as a character.

S rank is romantic for almost everyone in Three Houses. I think it's just Alois and Gilbert who aren't. Even Hanneman, Rhea, and Sothis S ranks are clearly romantic. Maybe you're right about Alois, but this is about more than just him (and there are other issues with that one, anyway).

Edited December 9, 2023 by Florete

[Jotari]

12 minutes ago, Florete said:

I'm saying that awkwardness comes with the territory.

Of course it does. I didn't dispute that. In fact, I even said it before you. But I still think we should want to see actively good writing that can compensate for awkwardness, and not bad writing that is only justified because of the awkwardness, which is the result you'll get if supports aren't cohesive in tone between C and S. Alois abandoning his family out of nowhere in the last chapter of the game would be very much awkward as a result of mechanics, but I don't think that's a reason to do it.

12 minutes ago, Florete said:

S rank is romantic for almost everyone in Three Houses. I think it's just Alois and Gilbert who aren't. Even Hanneman, Rhea, and Sothis S ranks are clearly romantic. Maybe you're right about Alois, but this is about more than just him (and there are other issues with that one, anyway).

But those are the examples we have so far. It's Alois, Gilbert and the psuedo romantic bi-fest where everyone is simultaneously written as romantic and platonic to varying degrees. I think the logic I'm using should hold true regardless though. Competent writing will make it clear what characters feel for each other as their time together develops. If you have viewed C, B and A supports, it should be pretty obvious where a support will go in an S support. And if it isn't, that is, generally speaking, a bad thing (a really good writer might be able to pull off making something feel like it's going one way, and then go in a completely unexpected direction that on retrospect makes perfect sense and consistency, but such a bait and switch wouldn't really be in line with what supports are meant to be either). In other words, people shouldn't feel betrayed by the end result of a support chain if everything in the support chain leading up to has laid the foundation for the final support.

I should clarify I'm not at all against labeling supports as platonic and romantic. It does no harm, so sure, why not. I just don't like the motivation being to pander to people who aren't actually viewing the characters as they're written. I think labelling supports is fine, but I think with good writing, and we should always demand good writing even if we never get it, what a support is should be obvious.

Also if we do label platonic supports and romantic supports differently we should also label parent child and siblings supports differently too. Because love isn't neatly divided into romantic and non-romantic.

[Acacia Sgt]

7 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I recall when the same sex options' were first revealed that there was a very funny comic about the male options. A crying male Byleth being stuck with a sleeping Linhardt, Alois who says ''its okay my wife won't mind!'' and an uncomfortable Gilbert when Annette enters the room. Meanwhile on the female half Fembeth was chilling with all cool female options. I'm still heartbroken we couldn't get those scenarios. 

I take it's this one.

Yeah, it is pretty amusing. lol

Though I suppose thanks to DLC, it's not quite true anymore. With Jeritza and Yuri being options too.

[Florete]

23 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I think the logic I'm using should hold true regardless though. Competent writing will make it clear what characters feel for each other as their time together develops. If you have viewed C, B and A supports, it should be pretty obvious where a support will go in an S support.

That goes back to what I said earlier about how different people will interpret things differently. It often doesn't how matter how good the writing is. Even with Alois, what makes it obvious that it will be platonic is the fact that he's married, not the content of the conversations otherwise. The A rank convo even has Byleth able to say "You're handsome when you brood," and "You're making me blush."

I don't know if you happen to be watching the anime Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, but literally just a couple hours ago on Discord I had a conversation with someone who thought Frieren developed romantic feelings for Himmel, while I didn't see it as romantic. And this series is considered to be pretty well-written.

29 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Also if we do label platonic supports and romantic supports differently we should also label parent child and siblings supports differently too. Because love isn't neatly divided into romantic and non-romantic.

I mean, not that I would be against this, but I think players are likely to know which characters are related to each other already.

[Jotari]

1 hour ago, Florete said:

That goes back to what I said earlier about how different people will interpret things differently. It often doesn't how matter how good the writing is. Even with Alois, what makes it obvious that it will be platonic is the fact that he's married, not the content of the conversations otherwise. The A rank convo even has Byleth able to say "You're handsome when you brood," and "You're making me blush."

I don't know if you happen to be watching the anime Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, but literally just a couple hours ago on Discord I had a conversation with someone who thought Frieren developed romantic feelings for Himmel, while I didn't see it as romantic. And this series is considered to be pretty well-written.

Of course things should be open to interpretation too. But that's not the scenario we're talking about. If something is intended to be ambiguous then it should be written as ambiguous and interpretive, and people again have no reason to be upset that it doesn't conform to their interpretation. The Alois one is not meant to be ambiguous though, as far as I see. Meanwhile I'd say the multitude of Alear same sex pairings, or even crack opposite sex pairings are intended to have a high level of ambiguity.

1 hour ago, Florete said:

I mean, not that I would be against this, but I think players are likely to know which characters are related to each other already.

...we...uh... actually have precedent for that not being the case with Fates' magic Ryoma letter. Like, for that game is it fair for us to pander to the hypothetical people upset because it wasn't incestuous enough?

Edited December 9, 2023 by Jotari

[Metal Flash]

6 hours ago, lenticular said:

OK, OK, I'll elaborate. If all supports with potential romance endings had to be romantic in nature, then that leads to one of two options, both of which I consider undesirable. One possibility would be to dramatically reduce the number of potential romance options. The other is to have pretty much the entire cast flirting with pretty much everyone else throughout the entire duration of the game. We already have too many instances of "why is this person vaguely flirting witheveryone in their A supports?" and I want less of it, not more. And besides, "friends to lovers" is one of my favourite tropes. I like seeing relationships that start off with a solid bond of friendship and then become romantic later on and wouldn't want that to go away.

I agree with this, While having some build up to the romantic relationship would be nice,  I`d rather not have characters  semi-flirting with nearly everyone they support with (unless that is part of their character, like Sylvain or Inigo). A more gradual change from "just friends" to "feelings are developing" would be better imo. Three Houses and Engage have both moved away from the "everyone supports everyone" situation of the 3Ds games, which leans nicely into having fewer romance options.

As an aside, I would also like to see future games have more platonic opposite-sex pairs and some romantic same-sex pairs for non-Avatar characters. Engage touched on the former with AlfredxEtie and FogadoxHortensia. The former pair cannot see each other as anything more than friends, while the latter never goes into romantic territory. Even as someone who enjoys romantic paired endings, I think some non-romantic ones would be nice to have. 

[Florete]

13 hours ago, Jotari said:

Of course things should be open to interpretation too. But that's not the scenario we're talking about. If something is intended to be ambiguous then it should be written as ambiguous and interpretive, and people again have no reason to be upset that it doesn't conform to their interpretation. The Alois one is not meant to be ambiguous though, as far as I see. Meanwhile I'd say the multitude of Alear same sex pairings, or even crack opposite sex pairings are intended to have a high level of ambiguity.

I think this is just where we need to agree to disagree.

13 hours ago, Jotari said:

...we...uh... actually have precedent for that not being the case with Fates' magic Ryoma letter. Like, for that game is it fair for us to pander to the hypothetical people upset because it wasn't incestuous enough?

I see that more as an anomaly than something we should expect going forward, and it didn't seem like what you were getting at to begin with. Now I'm just not even sure what you're getting at with this.

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Florete said:

I think this is just where we need to agree to disagree.

I see that more as an anomaly than something we should expect going forward, and it didn't seem like what you were getting at to begin with. Now I'm just not even sure what you're getting at with this.

What I'm getting at is that the end result of a support should be choreographed within the support itself. The Fates example is just plain bad writing and that more clear labeling doesn't make something like that better. Labeling the supports is a fine idea, but if the writer is capable then it shouldn't be necessary.

[lenticular]

Unpopular opinions, Radiant Dawn edition! (AKA, no prizes for guessing what game I've been replaying.)

1. Ludveck is the best antagonist in the history of Fire Emblem. He has decent characterisation and motivation rather than just being a Saturday-morning-cartoon mustache-twirler. He's also actually pretty smart, coming up with decent plans and strategies that we need to thwart.

2. Ike should have been a Gotoh. His presence through part 3 and the pre-tower parts of part 4 add nothing to the game, and going through the process of training him up from zero to hero again detracts from his Path of Radiance arc. Much better to have him be mysteriously absent through most of the game ("he disappeared after the Mad King's War and nobody has been able to find him") and then give him an epic moment of triumphant return as we're about to enter the Tower. Some combination of Soren, Titania, Mist, Ranulf, and Skrimir would have been more than enough to fill his story role, and it's not as if the Greil mercs are hurting for strong units.

3. Escort missions are good actually. Do you remember 3-P? That's the one where Skrimir and his Gallian army go full Leeroy Jenkins on you and you have to run to keep up with them and try to take out mages and ballistas. It's a pretty easy level, but as I played it, the one thing that I kept finding myself thinking was "Three Houses should have had a level like this where you have to chase after Boar Prince Dimitri".

4. 3-12 archer is better than 3-13 archer. They're both pretty easy levels, so it's ultimately inconsequential, but the archers who sit at the top of the western cliff and let you completely ignore that side of the map are way more convenient than anything that 3-13 archer accomplishes.

5. A remake should have unique support conversations for every possible pairing. If we ever get one, that is. Common wisdom seems to be that of course there aren't support conversations in Radiant Dawn, because with every pairing being allowed and the cast being so big, that would just be too many supports. I do not agree with this common wisdom. I'm not saying that there should full length support conversations, but little one-liners are entirely within the realms of possibility. Think of something of comparable length and complexity to what Engage has for the conversations with Emblems. Or, for that matter, think of the few unique support conversations that already exist in Radiant Dawn. Like, did you know that Lyre has unique lines for when you support her with Oliver? I wonder if anyone has ever actually seen that in game.

6. A Faint Light is the hardest chapter in Radiant Dawn. For anyone who doesn't remember and is too lazy to look it up, A Faint Light is chapter 1-3, aka "the one where you recruit Aran and Ilyana". I don't know what it is about this chapter, but I seem to end up resetting in it every single time that I replay Radiant Dawn. There are other chapters that give me problems sometimes, but none of them nearly as consistently as A Faint Light.

7. Fiona is a pretty decent unit. Yeah, obviously she's greatly underleveled when you recruit her so she's going to be a bit of a project if you do want to use her. I'm not denying that. But Radiant Dawn is a game that makes it really easy for underleveled units to catch up, mainly through bexp btu also through the existence of multiple paragon scrolls, so if you do want to catch her up then it's really not remotely difficult. And then if you do so, she does have some genuine upside with inate Imbue and Savior and an Earth affinity. The combination of Savior and Earth affinity means she can effectively have a stat backpack, turning a deployment slot (which the game gives us way too many of) into +45 avoid. Combine this with high speed and you end up with a unit who seldom gets hit. And then when she does get hit, high def means she doesn't take much damage. And then when she does take damage, she heals it back again with Imbue and (eventually) Sol. She's not the greatest unit in the world, but she is pretty decent.

[Interdimensional Observer]

39 minutes ago, lenticular said:

2. Ike should have been a Gotoh. His presence through part 3 and the pre-tower parts of part 4 add nothing to the game, and going through the process of training him up from zero to hero again detracts from his Path of Radiance arc. Much better to have him be mysteriously absent through most of the game ("he disappeared after the Mad King's War and nobody has been able to find him") and then give him an epic moment of triumphant return as we're about to enter the Tower. Some combination of Soren, Titania, Mist, Ranulf, and Skrimir would have been more than enough to fill his story role, and it's not as if the Greil mercs are hurting for strong units.

Or, he knows the Black Knight has returned. He could leave the GMs to investigate his whereabouts. -But then Ike seems to have fallen into the "I got my revenge when I thought I killed him, I'm satisfied" trope. Would he set aside his mercenary professionalism and pursue a personally-motivated "that man is dangerous, I must keep an eye on whatever he is up to, for me, but also for everyone"?

As for Skrimir, as is, I think he gets nice character arc through Parts 3 & 4, simple -from pure musclehead to actually thinking about his actions- yet good. The young lion could, I think, make a good Part 3 lead -backed by the other characters you mention, of course.

[Jotari]

50 minutes ago, lenticular said:

Unpopular opinions, Radiant Dawn edition! (AKA, no prizes for guessing what game I've been replaying.)

1. Ludveck is the best antagonist in the history of Fire Emblem. He has decent characterisation and motivation rather than just being a Saturday-morning-cartoon mustache-twirler. He's also actually pretty smart, coming up with decent plans and strategies that we need to thwart.

Is his motivation all that deep? From what I recall he's basically just an opportunist out for his own power. Maybe he does genuinely think Elincia is weak and that he'd make a better king, but it's not like the game ever depicts him as an earnest patriot intending to serve his country. He's serving himself first and foremost because he just wants power.

[Etrurian emperor]

1 hour ago, lenticular said:

1. Ludveck is the best antagonist in the history of Fire Emblem. He has decent characterisation and motivation rather than just being a Saturday-morning-cartoon mustache-twirler. He's also actually pretty smart, coming up with decent plans and strategies that we need to thwart.

Ludbeck is indeed a pretty great antagonist. Though his motivations are implied to just be window dressing and good PR to hide the fact he really IS a mustache twirler deep down. 

[Jotari]

36 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Ludbeck is indeed a pretty great antagonist. Though his motivations are implied to just be window dressing and good PR to hide the fact he really IS a mustache twirler deep down. 

Much like the thread I made on the Mystery of the Emblem bosses, I'd like some indication as to what he was doing during Path of Radiance. Radiant Dawn on the whole is a lot better than Mystery of the Emblem in this regard, but Ludveck still feels blatantly retconned into existence with no history prior to the start of the game. And wether he fought until the bitter end for Crimea or capitulated to Daein would be pretty informing of his character. Ideally for the stories to be more connected, I think he should have been one of the partisans Lucia mentions that we never see.

[Acacia Sgt]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Is his motivation all that deep? From what I recall he's basically just an opportunist out for his own power. Maybe he does genuinely think Elincia is weak and that he'd make a better king, but it's not like the game ever depicts him as an earnest patriot intending to serve his country. He's serving himself first and foremost because he just wants power.

If I recall from dialogue coming from him and his subordinates, part of the greivances against Elincia is that indeed she is "weak" by not doing anything regarding Daein making a comeback, and working on fostering friendly relations with Laguz.

Like, if he had won, he likely would've mounted an invasion of Daein at first opporunity.

[Florete]

2 hours ago, lenticular said:

But Radiant Dawn is a game that makes it really easy for underleveled units to catch up, mainly through bexp btu also through the existence of multiple paragon scrolls, so if you do want to catch her up then it's really not remotely difficult.

Fiona can't equip Paragon until she promotes once. It costs 15, and Fiona only has 5 available initially on account of Canto forcibly taking 10.

[lenticular]

2 hours ago, Jotari said:

Is his motivation all that deep? From what I recall he's basically just an opportunist out for his own power. Maybe he does genuinely think Elincia is weak and that he'd make a better king, but it's not like the game ever depicts him as an earnest patriot intending to serve his country. He's serving himself first and foremost because he just wants power.

I don't think he's super deep, no, but we are grading on a curve here. A lot of Fire Emblem antagonists are just straight up members of the Leopards Dragons Eating People's Faces Party, who seem to want to bring about the end of the world without stopping to consider that they are a part of the world. Hyacinth would be a particularly egregious recent example of this sort of thinking. Yes, Ludveck is mostly just seeking power, but he's doing so in a very human way. He's seeking political power by using subterfuge and military might. I find this way more compelling and believable than any other FE antagonist I can think of.

35 minutes ago, Florete said:

Fiona can't equip Paragon until she promotes once. It costs 15, and Fiona only has 5 available initially on account of Canto forcibly taking 10.

Yeah, I know. That's why I said that bexp was the main method of catching up and Paragon a supplemental one. You use a combination of bexp and a bit of regular fighting to get her to her first promotion, and then you can give her Paragon if you want to speed her up even further. (This isn't hypothetical; I've been using her to good effect in my current game. She's a level 5 Silver Knight as I'm about to start Part IV.)

[Jotari]

32 minutes ago, lenticular said:

I don't think he's super deep, no, but we are grading on a curve here. A lot of Fire Emblem antagonists are just straight up members of the Leopards Dragons Eating People's Faces Party, who seem to want to bring about the end of the world without stopping to consider that they are a part of the world. Hyacinth would be a particularly egregious recent example of this sort of thinking. Yes, Ludveck is mostly just seeking power, but he's doing so in a very human way. He's seeking political power by using subterfuge and military might. I find this way more compelling and believable than any other FE antagonist I can think of.

I think that's a bit disingenuous to Fire Emblem villains. Sure, there definitely are some villains who are evil for the sake of being evil, but by and large Fire Emblem villains do have motivations for the stuff they do. And some of them have down right complex motivations. Even on Tellius alone I can easily name Sephiran, Deghensea and, yeah, even Ashnard, as motivated villains with genuine philosophies and goals motivating them. Not to say Ludveck is a poor villain, not at all, he's as good as any other villain to be a favourite, but the way you've phrased it makes him sound like the only one of minimum decent quality out of a bad batch when I think Fire Emblem's writing is a tad bit better than that 

[Etrurian emperor]

10 hours ago, Jotari said:

Much like the thread I made on the Mystery of the Emblem bosses, I'd like some indication as to what he was doing during Path of Radiance. Radiant Dawn on the whole is a lot better than Mystery of the Emblem in this regard, but Ludveck still feels blatantly retconned into existence with no history prior to the start of the game. And wether he fought until the bitter end for Crimea or capitulated to Daein would be pretty informing of his character. Ideally for the stories to be more connected, I think he should have been one of the partisans Lucia mentions that we never see.

To be fair its a big world. Ludbeck's presence in itself isn't all that different then the likes of Numida or Valtome. It makes sense for Elincia and co to not have met every noble. 

I recall Lucia does list a set of nobles in the resistance when first meeting them. Maybe he's mentioned there as count Frelia. 

[Jotari]

17 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I recall Lucia does list a set of nobles in the resistance when first meeting them. Maybe he's mentioned there as count Frelia.

Those are the partisans I referred to. She says: "Also, General Tagio, Marquis Katol's orphan, Silok, and Marquis Mitnala are all with us." None of which are clearly Ludveck. We can imagine in our own headcanon that he's Marquis Katol's orphan or that his surname is Silok or something, but in truth they weren't thinking about this line when they created him, because if they were they would have made it clear and called him General Tagio or something directly. It's not huge issue that they didn't, it just would have been nice. But even without utilizing the line, Radiant Dawn still could have given us some info on what he had been up to previously. Hell if he did fight the entire time he even could have used that in his propaganda against Elincia. "I stood by Crimea and fought against Daein while our Queen ran and hid behind the coattails of Begnion! I know what it means to face Daein directly while she only knows how to run!"

In other news, dedicated topic to What if Ludveck won

 

Edited January 2 by Jotari

[lenticular]

13 hours ago, Jotari said:

I think that's a bit disingenuous to Fire Emblem villains. Sure, there definitely are some villains who are evil for the sake of being evil, but by and large Fire Emblem villains do have motivations for the stuff they do. And some of them have down right complex motivations. Even on Tellius alone I can easily name Sephiran, Deghensea and, yeah, even Ashnard, as motivated villains with genuine philosophies and goals motivating them. Not to say Ludveck is a poor villain, not at all, he's as good as any other villain to be a favourite, but the way you've phrased it makes him sound like the only one of minimum decent quality out of a bad batch when I think Fire Emblem's writing is a tad bit better than that 

Part of this is definitely just personal preference (this is the unpopular opinions thread, after all). I like more grounded characters and motivations, and I'm a big fan of the "we've won the war and now we have to win the peace" trope, so I am just predisposed to like Ludveck more than a lot of other antagonists. But even with that said, I do have some problems with all of the other three that you mention.

Ashnard comes across as weird and inconsistent to me. On the one hand, he has his utmost commitment to social darwinism, the triumph of the strong over the weak, and the desire to test himself in fights against the strongest opponents. But on the other hand, he also has magic armour that renders him effectively impervious to harm from almost all enemies ensuring that he almost never enters a fair fight. And he also used a blood pact to come to power which goes against his philosophy of strength of arms. And then there's the whole dragons eating people's faces party thing, where he was trying to awaken the "dark god" even though there was no reason to suspect that would end well for him. There are things to like about Ashnard, for sure, but he's a bit too muddled for me to truly like him.

Deghinsea, I think, is a good character but a poor antagonist. For the majority of the duology he's a hardnosed isolationist and pacifist, neither for nor against the player, and I like him in that role. But when you fight him near the end of Radiant Dawn, it's mostly a case of "oh yeah, and this guy is here too". He doesn't really have much agency of his own at that point. We're fighting Ashera, and he's just another roadblock that she puts in front of us. Because fighting dragons is cool, I guess?

Sephiran is somewhat similar in that I like him as a character but not as an antagonist. He never feels like the guy who we are working against, even when he is. He's too deep into the background. It's obvious that there's something weird going on with Sephiran that we don't know about, but we only really learn about it as we're about to fight him. For an antagonist to really work for me, I want to see more push and pull of the protgaonist and antagonist at odds with each other and actively trying to outmaneuvre the other. With Sephiran, we just get the big reveal that he had been plotting everything in the background all along, and then he dies/repents.

[Etrurian emperor]

Leo is very popular and I like Leo. Still I don't think Leo's very important and that future spinoffs would benefit from excluding him to prevent Fates bloat. 

As the original Warriors showed doing all the royals at once is a giant strain on the roster so for a solid roster choices need to be made. Hinoka is the obvious one to exclude but Leo isn't far behind. He lacks the story importance of Takumi and the older siblings. His main contribution would be as Takumi's foil and rival. The problem with that position is that Camilla already takes that role pretty neatly. As a very confident and teasing adult lady she's instantly a foil to an incredibly insecure, prickly and immature young boy. In the story the two also occasionally clash and don't get along. 

[Eltosian Kadath]

5 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Leo is very popular and I like Leo. Still I don't think Leo's very important and that future spinoffs would benefit from excluding him to prevent Fates bloat.

Leo is more important to Fate's story than people think, as he is the one to use the orb of Anankos revelation in Birthright, kills the traitorous Zola in Conquest, wields one of the legendary weapons that awakens the Fire Emblem, and even becomes the King of Nohr in Birhtright. People don't want to hear this, but Camilla is by far the Nohrian with the least plot significance, despite having one of the strongest impacts on the gameplay.

 

5 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

 

As the original Warriors showed doing all the royals at once is a giant strain on the roster so for a solid roster choices need to be made. Hinoka is the obvious one to exclude but Leo isn't far behind. He lacks the story importance of Takumi and the older siblings. His main contribution would be as Takumi's foil and rival. The problem with that position is that Camilla already takes that role pretty neatly. As a very confident and teasing adult lady she's instantly a foil to an incredibly insecure, prickly and immature young boy. In the story the two also occasionally clash and don't get along. 

And its probably controversial to say, but I see Sakura as less plot significant than Hinoka, as she does become the Queen of Hoshido in one of the ending...but its not by a large margin admittedly.

[Jotari]

6 hours ago, lenticular said:

Part of this is definitely just personal preference (this is the unpopular opinions thread, after all). I like more grounded characters and motivations, and I'm a big fan of the "we've won the war and now we have to win the peace" trope, so I am just predisposed to like Ludveck more than a lot of other antagonists. But even with that said, I do have some problems with all of the other three that you mention.

Ashnard comes across as weird and inconsistent to me. On the one hand, he has his utmost commitment to social darwinism, the triumph of the strong over the weak, and the desire to test himself in fights against the strongest opponents. But on the other hand, he also has magic armour that renders him effectively impervious to harm from almost all enemies ensuring that he almost never enters a fair fight. And he also used a blood pact to come to power which goes against his philosophy of strength of arms. And then there's the whole dragons eating people's faces party thing, where he was trying to awaken the "dark god" even though there was no reason to suspect that would end well for him. There are things to like about Ashnard, for sure, but he's a bit too muddled for me to truly like him.

Deghinsea, I think, is a good character but a poor antagonist. For the majority of the duology he's a hardnosed isolationist and pacifist, neither for nor against the player, and I like him in that role. But when you fight him near the end of Radiant Dawn, it's mostly a case of "oh yeah, and this guy is here too". He doesn't really have much agency of his own at that point. We're fighting Ashera, and he's just another roadblock that she puts in front of us. Because fighting dragons is cool, I guess?

Sephiran is somewhat similar in that I like him as a character but not as an antagonist. He never feels like the guy who we are working against, even when he is. He's too deep into the background. It's obvious that there's something weird going on with Sephiran that we don't know about, but we only really learn about it as we're about to fight him. For an antagonist to really work for me, I want to see more push and pull of the protgaonist and antagonist at odds with each other and actively trying to outmaneuvre the other. With Sephiran, we just get the big reveal that he had been plotting everything in the background all along, and then he dies/repents.

That's fair, they are bigger characters so bigger problems will inevitably come, I was just going against the specific idea that Fire Emblem villains all lack motivation and are all basically Validar.

[Etrurian emperor]

On 1/3/2024 at 1:33 AM, Eltosian Kadath said:

Leo is more important to Fate's story than people think, as he is the one to use the orb of Anankos revelation in Birthright, kills the traitorous Zola in Conquest, wields one of the legendary weapons that awakens the Fire Emblem, and even becomes the King of Nohr in Birhtright. People don't want to hear this, but Camilla is by far the Nohrian with the least plot significance, despite having one of the strongest impacts on the gameplay.

That's an interesting way to look at it but I don't quite see it as Leo being important. Just that he occasionally gets the odd job that keeps the plot moving. In contrast Takumi being among the main antagonist and being the royal with the most growing to do, or Xander and Ryoma being in charge of their nations armies are more fundamentally important. Give the orb to Azure and nothing would chance, but being Anankos vessel isn't really a role that can be given to anyone else. 

Wielding one of the legendaries isn't really important either because the legendaries themselves are not important. They exist but aren't really as lore important as legendaries from other games. They're just there. 

That said the line between getting the plot device job and being fundamentally important is pretty vague and likely varies from person to person. 

On 1/2/2024 at 7:29 PM, lenticular said:

Part of this is definitely just personal preference (this is the unpopular opinions thread, after all). I like more grounded characters and motivations, and I'm a big fan of the "we've won the war and now we have to win the peace" trope, so I am just predisposed to like Ludveck more than a lot of other antagonists. But even with that said, I do have some problems with all of the other three that you mention.

I think that's why I think Lekain stands out. He's a very human villain. He's not an evil cultist nor a tyrant with globe conquering ambitions. He's just a racist politician who wants to keep himself and his class on top while keeping that lucrative corruption train going. Even when gods intrude in the more mundane war he ends up as a cultist out of confusion and self delusion rather than faith. 

On 1/2/2024 at 7:29 PM, lenticular said:

Ashnard comes across as weird and inconsistent to me. On the one hand, he has his utmost commitment to social darwinism, the triumph of the strong over the weak, and the desire to test himself in fights against the strongest opponents. But on the other hand, he also has magic armour that renders him effectively impervious to harm from almost all enemies ensuring that he almost never enters a fair fight. And he also used a blood pact to come to power which goes against his philosophy of strength of arms. And then there's the whole dragons eating people's faces party thing, where he was trying to awaken the "dark god" even though there was no reason to suspect that would end well for him. There are things to like about Ashnard, for sure, but he's a bit too muddled for me to truly like him.

I've always felt this rang more true from the Black Knight who self defines as a supremely honorable warrior despite wearing a cheat armor code and murdering people for the lulz when he knows they can't fight back fairly. But the same definitely goes for Ashnard too. The blood pact is more murky. One could argue Ashnard operates from the assumption that if he got sick and died from a blood pack he wasn't worthy of the throne to begin with. 

Surprisingly the Dragons eating peoples faces party tend not to be that incompetent. Gharnef revives his dark dragon but plots to betray him, Manfroy and his followers are placed as a privileged class by their dragon, Jedah is devoted to a dragon that doesn't have a track record of abusing his followers, Dragons eating people's faces is the literal point of Zephiel's scheme and Nergal wants to change roles and eat the dragon's face.

Most dragons don't seem interested in eating the faces of their followers. I think only Sombron and maybe Grima stand out as being out to get their followers.