What is your unpopular Fire Emblem opinion?

[Florete]

On 11/22/2023 at 7:34 PM, MeteorPhoenix said:

Yes, but those are not better or worse. A casual player isn't likely to come off thinking "wow, Engage is clearly the gameplay Fire Emblem", as is popularly understood in this community. My original point is that this idea that Engage is far and away superior to 3H in gameplay in a sentiment that exists exclusively in Fire Emblem hardcore communities. The quality of the gameplay, I'd you're on normal (and honestly, casual) is the same.

This just goes back to what I said before: differences invite comparisons, comparisons result in preferences. And that wasn't your original point. Your original point, and I quote, was:

On 11/21/2023 at 11:15 AM, MeteorPhoenix said:

Three Houses gameplay is indistinguishable from Engage's in the modes that matter

I could agree with the idea that, to a casual player, they have similar gameplay value to most players, as Dark Holy Elf stated above, because which one someone prefers is just someone's personal feelings on the matter. But that's not what you've been saying, at least as far as I've understood it. They are not indistinguishable, as people will notice differences.

If your intended point is that the idea that Engage is specifically better in gameplay than Three Houses is a hardcore opinion that won't always be shared by others, I don't think there's anything wrong with that and I probably wouldn't have responded to you in the first place.

[lenticular]

One thing that I think is worth adding is that just because someone isn't able to articulate a difference doesn't mean that they don't notice the difference.

For instance, I am not remotely an expert in apples. I eat apples; I like apples; I don't know very much about apples. I am a casual apple eater, if you will. But if you hand me two different apples, I will absolutely be able to tell you which one I like better. What I wouldn't be able to tell you is why. I might be able to wave my hand and mumble something about crispness or sweetness, but ultimately it would come down to "I don't know why I like it; I just do".

The same sort of thing can equally as well be true with Fire Emblem (or with other games). A casual player probably isn't going to know -- for instance -- the difference between the 2RN calculation for hit rate in Three Houses and the sine-based hit rate formula in Engage, but that doesn't mean they won't notice it. Maybe they like stacking evade and get frustrated that it doesn't seem to work as well in Engage as they were expecting it to.

Or as another example, a casual player probably won't be able to articulate differences in how the AI works but they might notice that the pacing of the games feels different. And so on and so forth.

[AnonymousSpeed]

On 11/23/2023 at 12:29 AM, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Mfers still saying "ItS oPtIoNaL" in 2023.

22 hours ago, Jotari said:

I'm not sure what mfers is meant to be, but, like, it is. The Sominel stuff is not pushed. It's just there.

"mfers" is short for (pardon my French) "motherfuckers", referring to people in general. Glenn is using a common meme format which mocks a position by saying "people are still doing this in present year", in a sort of "can you believe people still do this?" kind of way.

That said, the real question is not whether it's optional, but how it affects the experience. The Somniel doesn't really benefit the experience but it's easy to ignore and the "costs" (lack of gains) for doing so aren't experience-ruining. I would not say the game would be better without it, but it would probably have been better if they came up with something else.

On 11/23/2023 at 12:29 AM, Zapp Branniglenn said:

At least Three Houses took a risk on a new story with all new mechanics. Engage is selling us "Marth From Smash Bros" as if there aren't already half a dozen low effort crossover titles in this series already. Safe. Boring.

Re: Mechanics. Engage has new mechanics, the rings especially. Some are good, some are bad, but it has as much as "new" stuff as the last few Fire Emblem games had.

Re: Plot. Yadda yadda yadda "plot in games bad, we get it Uncle Anon, please stop drinking eggnog", but more seriously. Three Houses is a game. If there was nothing in those risks to improve ludo-narrative integration compared to previous titles, there was nothing to gain in taking them. I think it actually made that integration worse by moving even further away from perma-death, the way relics are handled, etc. This is true regardless of whether the plot is actually good or new or not.

On 11/22/2023 at 8:42 PM, Zapp Branniglenn said:

And also your Emblems get taken away at some point? So there's a time limit on getting the most out of those things

There is actually some interesting game design here (the DLC kind of ruins it, go figure). You have one set of rings and they get taken away, so you have to build up another set with radically different abilities. The game shakes up your strategic options and forces you to adapt. Doing so is not optional, unless you buy the DLC pass.

So have you picked up the game? I'm not saying you should. I haven't played Engage since March and I really don't miss it. However, I do think "it looks boring and safe and cringe" is a bad reason to avoid it though, since Fire Emblem has been all those things since Gaiden.

Behold, I am achieving the final form of Fire Emblem fan. Nobody hates Fire Emblem more than Fire Emblem fans, and I will soon achieve the level of no longer liking Fire Emblem at all.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

4 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

"mfers" is short for (pardon my French) "motherfuckers", referring to people in general. Glenn is using a common meme format which mocks a position by saying "people are still doing this in present year", in a sort of "can you believe people still do this?" kind of way.

All correct, but let's not forget the context. Three Houses is four years old now, and hearing It's Optional again tells me we've learned a whole lot of Nothing from critiquing that game. The Monastery wasn't just a bunch of Extra mechanics and fluff. It was a core part of the experience that you are expected to engage with on a regular basis to clear the game. Yes I've seen No Monastery runs and they should inform us of just how much a playthrough depends on them, not vindicate the 2019-2020 counter argument: It's Optional. Put another way, the existence of 0% growths runs does not tell us level ups don't matter. You don't have to be good at Fire Emblem to understand it's a game that runs on Numbers, therefore the Numbers matter.

Somniel isn't in Engage by accident. It found its way there at the direct expense (development time, resources, voice acting, animation, and writing budgets) of the Fire Emblem parts. Three Houses was delayed so much because of the unexpected strain that the Monastery had on finishing the game's three four routes. We can't really speculate how it impacted Engage because that was developed so incognito that the game was content complete before our first trailer.

Quote

So have you picked up the game? I'm not saying you should. I haven't played Engage since March and I really don't miss it. However, I do think "it looks boring and safe and cringe" is a bad reason to avoid it though, since Fire Emblem has been all those things since Gaiden.

I do not posses a copy of Engage, no. I made an easy bet my sixty dollars would be better spent on Pikmin 4.

Hey, quick clarification. No one said "Cringe", or at least I haven't. Incidentally yeah I don't like the game's aesthetics. I believe my first verbal utterance to my friend sitting next to me was "oh, maybe it's another mobile game". When I had more time to digest the trailer and jump on these forums, I pointed out the downgrade in battle scenes. That jerky camera work that cuts, instead of Echoes/Three houses' smooth use of panning. Also I'm sure I would miss character portraits, but I understand removing them in dialogue scenes due to the redundancy of seeing a person's face twice in-frame like we did in Three Houses. These are surface level issues. If I was confronted with Bad Gameplay and Bad Art, the Bad Art is almost assuredly something I'd get over across a game's 40 hour run time. 

Edited November 24, 2023 by Zapp Branniglenn

[AnonymousSpeed]

2 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Yes I've seen No Monastery runs and they should inform us of just how much a playthrough depends on them, not vindicate the 2019-2020 counter argument: It's Optional. Put another way, the existence of 0% growths runs does not tell us level ups don't matter. You don't have to be good at Fire Emblem to understand it's a game that runs on Numbers, therefore the Numbers matter.

This is true, but my point is not that the Somniel is irrelevant. Numbers matter, but 500 strength vs. 5,000 strength isn't a meaningful difference in Fire Emblem. Things matter, but in different degrees. I don't think the Somniel's impact on Engage is as adverse as impact of the Monastery was on Three Houses.

2 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Somniel isn't in Engage by accident. It found its way there at the direct expense (development time, resources, voice acting, animation, and writing budgets) of the Fire Emblem parts.

Probably (I don't know how much those areas draw from the same labor pool), but I'm only assessing what we have and not a hypothetical game that could have been.

2 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Hey, quick clarification. No one said "Cringe", or at least I haven't. Incidentally yeah

Pretty much, yeah. I apologize for putting words in your mouth, but it came through that you didn't like some aspects of it that "cringe" seemed to encapsulate pretty well.

[Etrurian emperor]

2 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

Three Houses was delayed so much because of the unexpected strain that the Monastery had on finishing the game's three four routes. We can't really speculate how it impacted Engage because that was developed so incognito that the game was content complete before our first trailer.

That certainly explains why the monastery kept being the main hub even where it shouldn't. In Verdant Wind and Crimson Flower it would make much more sense and be so much more cooler if Derdriu and Enbarr were the main hubs. But if the monastery alone was already such a hassle then such a thing was never going to be in the cards. 

That said I'm not sure how much more difficult the Somniel would be in comparison. Its much smaller, its got no horde of npc's walking around and the game typically didn't give everyone different dialogue each chapter like Engage did. 

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Zapp Branniglenn said:

All correct, but let's not forget the context. Three Houses is four years old now, and hearing It's Optional again tells me we've learned a whole lot of Nothing from critiquing that game. 

But the people here saying it's optional weren't talking about Three Houses. I agree it's very much not optional in Three Houses while it is in Engage.

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

That certainly explains why the monastery kept being the main hub even where it shouldn't. In Verdant Wind and Crimson Flower it would make much more sense and be so much more cooler if Derdriu and Enbarr were the main hubs. But if the monastery alone was already such a hassle then such a thing was never going to be in the cards. 

Or, pull a Final Fantasy VIII, turn the monastery into a flying school. We already have The Things That Go Bump In The Night sci-fi technology, if ICBMs are made to fit FE, you could install thrusters and whatnot far beneath the monastery no problemo. Throw some under/near the political capitals too for epic clashes. As long as you don't arm the ancient airships with serious weapons, you can justify having Peg Knights, Snipers and War Masters doing all the fighting. Floating fortresses wouldn't render normal defenses totally obsolete either, since they presumably wouldn't be able to move that fast, and being HUGE means it'd be impossible not for the enemy to spot you and have time to prepare the defense when your troops try to disembark. On not-Crimson Flower, I take it the Athenian Sage could provide Edelgard with some surface-to-air missiles that could shoot the Mach 2 Monastery straight out of the sky too, limiting how close By' & Bestie could maneuver towards imperial strongholds.

[Jotari]

30 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Or, pull a Final Fantasy VIII, turn the monastery into a flying school. We already have The Things That Go Bump In The Night sci-fi technology, if ICBMs are made to fit FE, you could install thrusters and whatnot far beneath the monastery no problemo. Throw some under/near the political capitals too for epic clashes. As long as you don't arm the ancient airships with serious weapons, you can justify having Peg Knights, Snipers and War Masters doing all the fighting. Floating fortresses wouldn't render normal defenses totally obsolete either, since they presumably wouldn't be able to move that fast, and being HUGE means it'd be impossible not for the enemy to spot you and have time to prepare the defense when your troops try to disembark. On not-Crimson Flower, I take it the Athenian Sage could provide Edelgard with some surface-to-air missiles that could shoot the Mach 2 Monastery straight out of the sky too, limiting how close By' & Bestie could maneuver towards imperial strongholds.

That's what Engage did.

[Interdimensional Observer]

42 minutes ago, Jotari said:

That's what Engage did.

-I know it's almost a year out and it sounds strange to say on an FE forum, but I still haven't bought Engage just yet.😅 I'm glad they learned then!

[Acacia Sgt]

Now I got reminded to be disappointed there was nothing akin to the Battle of the Gardens in Engage...

[SnowFire]

57 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

-I know it's almost a year out and it sounds strange to say on an FE forum, but I still haven't bought Engage just yet.😅 I'm glad they learned then!

To be clear, tastes differ, but...  I will say that both Engage's floating Somniel (that everyone reaches via...  Teleportation?  Pegasi transport off-screen?) and Fate's pocket-dimension castle kinda work against the game any time that they want to actually have tension and threat.  Both games seem to just ignore that they exist when discussing the rest of the plot, which is probably the right call, but they clearly do exist, so ???.  While it's a little weird that Garreg Mach is apparently the closest place to everywhere in the setting, this is indeed an actual plot point and it's less jarring.

[Jotari]

2 hours ago, SnowFire said:

To be clear, tastes differ, but...  I will say that both Engage's floating Somniel (that everyone reaches via...  Teleportation?  Pegasi transport off-screen?) and Fate's pocket-dimension castle kinda work against the game any time that they want to actually have tension and threat.  Both games seem to just ignore that they exist when discussing the rest of the plot, which is probably the right call, but they clearly do exist, so ???.  While it's a little weird that Garreg Mach is apparently the closest place to everywhere in the setting, this is indeed an actual plot point and it's less jarring.

And that's why Three Hopes unironically has the best hub. Because they just set up an identical military camp everywhere they go. Like pretty much every other game only in explorable 3D.

Edited November 25, 2023 by Jotari

[Samz707]

8 hours ago, Jotari said:

And that's why Three Hopes unironically has the best hub. Because they just set up an identical military camp everywhere they go. Like pretty much every other game only in explorable 3D.

Three Hopes Camp the GOAT.

My only real complaint is the lack of voiced dialogue.

Edited November 25, 2023 by Samz707

[Spiritfox55]

Off the top of my head I can think of:

Hinoka > Camilla

Yuri is better Claude (he's actually gay, pulls off his plans, etc.)

Fire Emblem Engage was a good game, the DLC had great characters

Berkut/Rinea is a cute ship (their also totally Marianne's parents)

Hilda (FE3H) is best girl

Julius/Ishtar > Reinhardt/Ishtar

I despise Reinhardt and Olwen (magic is NOT everything)

Ashe is the best character in the whole franchise

Roy is a good character (he and Leif are the best lords)

Voice crack crit quotes are hilarious and the sole reason M!Kana is better than F!Kana

I like Asugi

Binding Blade is the best game, but Holy War has the best story

Eldigan and Ares have the best Father & Son relationship despite never interacting on screen

(There are more, but it's late and my brain is dead)

[Etrurian emperor]

On 12/2/2023 at 5:12 AM, Spiritfox55 said:

Julius/Ishtar > Reinhardt/Ishtar

Yeah. I can get the idea behind it because at least Reinhardt isn't Satan who's abusive to Isthar but I never liked it. Reinhardt having known Ishtar since she was a child makes the pairing a little sus. I don't think Reinhardt's age is ever firmly established but he's at least comfortably an adult. Ishtar on the other hand might just barely be out of her teens if she's a peer of Julius who we know is younger than Seliph is.

I also the two don't really have much chemistry while Ishtar and Julius do. Its kind of a creepy chemistry but Julius does seem really smitten with Ishtar and makes it a point to try and spoil her. And while Julius is supposed to be a creep I don't think Reinhardt was intended as such.

[Sunwoo]

I never considered Reinhardt to have a crush on Ishtar. Excluding Heroes (since it doesn't represent its non-OCs very well), the only thing that Reinhardt ever says about Ishtar canonically is that she dismissed him from her service because she has no need for him anymore. Since Thracia doesn't have voiced dialogue, his tone of voice could be whatever you imagine it to be. (Personally, I interpreted it as flat and matter-of-fact.) Julius is also not a very objective judge of, well, anything. He's possessed, and also possessive. It don't think it'd be OOC for him to misinterpret Reinhardt's knightly devotion and respect towards his lady as a crush.

And, personally, I really like Reinhardt as a character and would be super disappointed if all of his motivations boiled down simply to "he loves Ishtar and that's all there is to him". For his lack of screen time, there's a lot you can reasonably assume about him just using basic human psychology. Maybe a remake will prove it all wrong one day, but until then I like to imagine Reinhardt as a dude who grew up believing that as a knight, you had to follow your liege no matter what. And because he's in so deep with Friege's misdeeds and because Ishtar herself is not necessarily a horrible person, he feels he doesn't have the option to just leave. Maybe he doesn't even really have any of his own thoughts on what Friege is doing, because he believes that as a knight all that matters is what his lord orders.

Besides, he's one of the few Camus archetypes who actually gets called out for being ... well, complicit. I never really liked the Camus archetype because it felt like in general the story's trying to cover their ass and portray them as, "Isn't it so sad that this noble person died fighting against you when they could've been your ally? Ignore their misdeeds and/or stupidity and just be sad for them!" Reinhardt feels like what the Camus archetype should be, a respectable warrior who should still be held accountable for their actions (or lack thereof).

[Etrurian emperor]

30 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

I never considered Reinhardt to have a crush on Ishtar. Excluding Heroes (since it doesn't represent its non-OCs very well), the only thing that Reinhardt ever says about Ishtar canonically is that she dismissed him from her service because she has no need for him anymore. Since Thracia doesn't have voiced dialogue, his tone of voice could be whatever you imagine it to be. (Personally, I interpreted it as flat and matter-of-fact.) Julius is also not a very objective judge of, well, anything. He's possessed, and also possessive. It don't think it'd be OOC for him to misinterpret Reinhardt's knightly devotion and respect towards his lady as a crush.

And, personally, I really like Reinhardt as a character and would be super disappointed if all of his motivations boiled down simply to "he loves Ishtar and that's all there is to him". For his lack of screen time, there's a lot you can reasonably assume about him just using basic human psychology. Maybe a remake will prove it all wrong one day, but until then I like to imagine Reinhardt as a dude who grew up believing that as a knight, you had to follow your liege no matter what. And because he's in so deep with Friege's misdeeds and because Ishtar herself is not necessarily a horrible person, he feels he doesn't have the option to just leave. Maybe he doesn't even really have any of his own thoughts on what Friege is doing, because he believes that as a knight all that matters is what his lord orders.

Besides, he's one of the few Camus archetypes who actually gets called out for being ... well, complicit. I never really liked the Camus archetype because it felt like in general the story's trying to cover their ass and portray them as, "Isn't it so sad that this noble person died fighting against you when they could've been your ally? Ignore their misdeeds and/or stupidity and just be sad for them!" Reinhardt feels like what the Camus archetype should be, a respectable warrior who should still be held accountable for their actions (or lack thereof).

I don't think there's much of a canon justification for it either. But the pairing seems at least a bit prominent in the fandom. Probably because it cuts the abusive Julius out of the equation and because Reinhard became a bit of a meme. Perhaps some misguided attempt to protect their ''gacha waifu'' plays a role too.

 

[Jotari]

41 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

I never considered Reinhardt to have a crush on Ishtar. Excluding Heroes (since it doesn't represent its non-OCs very well), the only thing that Reinhardt ever says about Ishtar canonically is that she dismissed him from her service because she has no need for him anymore. Since Thracia doesn't have voiced dialogue, his tone of voice could be whatever you imagine it to be. (Personally, I interpreted it as flat and matter-of-fact.) Julius is also not a very objective judge of, well, anything. He's possessed, and also possessive. It don't think it'd be OOC for him to misinterpret Reinhardt's knightly devotion and respect towards his lady as a crush.

And, personally, I really like Reinhardt as a character and would be super disappointed if all of his motivations boiled down simply to "he loves Ishtar and that's all there is to him". For his lack of screen time, there's a lot you can reasonably assume about him just using basic human psychology. Maybe a remake will prove it all wrong one day, but until then I like to imagine Reinhardt as a dude who grew up believing that as a knight, you had to follow your liege no matter what. And because he's in so deep with Friege's misdeeds and because Ishtar herself is not necessarily a horrible person, he feels he doesn't have the option to just leave. Maybe he doesn't even really have any of his own thoughts on what Friege is doing, because he believes that as a knight all that matters is what his lord orders.

Besides, he's one of the few Camus archetypes who actually gets called out for being ... well, complicit. I never really liked the Camus archetype because it felt like in general the story's trying to cover their ass and portray them as, "Isn't it so sad that this noble person died fighting against you when they could've been your ally? Ignore their misdeeds and/or stupidity and just be sad for them!" Reinhardt feels like what the Camus archetype should be, a respectable warrior who should still be held accountable for their actions (or lack thereof).

This is summer up really well. I was getting ready to respond with pretty much exactly this but you've done it better than I likely could have.

8 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I don't think there's much of a canon justification for it either. But the pairing seems at least a bit prominent in the fandom. Probably because it cuts the abusive Julius out of the equation and because Reinhard became a bit of a meme. Perhaps some misguided attempt to protect their ''gacha waifu'' plays a role too.

 

And that's why we and, especially the developers, shouldn't care what fans thing. If we get a Thracia remake and they turn Reinhardt into a Tharja for Ishtar then I'll be pretty peeved.

[Etrurian emperor]

3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

And that's why we and, especially the developers, shouldn't care what fans thing. 

Reinhardt being on the dancing banner with Ishtar while Julius got locked up in the basement implies that ship kinda sailed several books ago. I highly suspect the devs will ''capitalize'' on Reinhardt's fame in a way that's going to be to his detriment. 

[Sunwoo]

5 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

I don't think there's much of a canon justification for it either. But the pairing seems at least a bit prominent in the fandom. Probably because it cuts the abusive Julius out of the equation and because Reinhard became a bit of a meme. Perhaps some misguided attempt to protect their ''gacha waifu'' plays a role too.

Hilariously enough, a lot of the people who ship Ishtar/Reinhardt because Julius is abusive tend to make the Ishtar/Reinhardt relationship bad and unhealthy for wholly different reasons. There's one particular series of Ishtar/Reinhardt stories written by a single person that completely turned me off to the pairing entirely, which isn't always an easy thing to do! (Usually, it takes several bad fics by several people to do that.)

Nobody fucking knows how to write romance.

And yes, while getting a dancing Reinhardt was pretty damn awesome the shippy aspects of him being on the banner with Ishtar were not. Soiree Reinhardt is part of the reason for my not being able to take Heroes characterization seriously. Just for that banner, Reinhardt's characterization suddenly veers into "love" territory when there is really nothing in canon to back that up.

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Reinhardt being on the dancing banner with Ishtar while Julius got locked up in the basement implies that ship kinda sailed several books ago. I highly suspect the devs will ''capitalize'' on Reinhardt's fame in a way that's going to be to his detriment. 

What are the odds they end up making him playable? They did it with Michalis in New Mystery and there was far less going for him there.

35 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

Nobody fucking knows how to write romance.

40-60 year old women know how to write romance. And the only people that actually like Romance are also 40-60 year old women.

[Sunwoo]

2 minutes ago, Jotari said:

40-60 year old women know how to write romance. And the only people that actually like Romance are also 40-60 year old women.

Lol, I gotta hard disagree with you there Jotari.

Romance in general is a pretty crap genre. But it's also not really FE related so I probably won't elaborate here (although if you want to PM me about it, feel free).

But yeah, Julius/Ishtar is by no means a healthy pairing. It's also kind of the point of their relationship. I only wish that the timeline of certain events wasn't so weird, because it feels like the characters' intended ages sometimes are in contradiction to the timeskip.

[Jotari]

8 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

Lol, I gotta hard disagree with you there Jotari.

Romance in general is a pretty crap genre. But it's also not really FE related so I probably won't elaborate here (although if you want to PM me about it, feel free).

Hey, just because we don't like it doesn't make it crap. The reality is that the market is saturated with Romance novels. It's just so far from the ven diagram covering Fire Emblem and video games in general that we're unlikely to see any overlap between officially released stuff or fan interest.

[Sunwoo]

4 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Hey, just because we don't like it doesn't make it crap. The reality is that the market is saturated with Romance novels. It's just so far from the ven diagram covering Fire Emblem and video games in general that we're unlikely to see any overlap between officially released stuff or fan interest.

No, like, I legitimately think it's crap. Not because I dislike the genre but because I think it's full of bad messages and examples, especially for impressionable young people who may be voyaging into their first romance. There are way too many stories romanticizing abusive men, portraying awful female leads as the "everygirl" we're supposed to project ourselves onto, discarding friends and family because they're not your lover, or some combination of a bunch of awful things. And even the ones that aren't outright awful still tend to demonstrate dubious behavior as romantic when it's really not. For example, the only romance book I ever read seriously still had some hints of the male lead manipulating the female lead with his innate magical powers at a point when they weren't actually in a relationship. And there are just some very icky elements about it that are portrayed as romantic when some of this is problematic IRL.

The issue comes when people don't recognize these red flag behaviors as something you should run away from IRL, because they think that because it was in this book where it was portrayed as romantic, it's fine. And there are more people like that than we'd think.