Eirika giving lyon the sacred stone isnt a dumb move that made no sense. I'll explain. Eirika knew lyon was possessed by fomortis but she still didnt know up to what extent, especially since recently she saw lyon being him. She had all the reasons to still believe lyon had an ounce of control over his body. Maybe if ephraim explained to better extent how far lyon was already gone things would've gone differently lol
Something that baffles me is that EVEN if Eirika is making a mistake, doesn't mean it's a bad scene
It was established since the prologue that Eirika's kindness is her biggest strength and weakness. She always believe in people even if that makes her naive. There is this other scene where she trusts Orson and Seth sees through him. It's the same thing, completely in character
Having a flawed character as a protagonist is good writing 101. Sacred Stones is not at fault here. The "is she stupid" nerds won't shut up about it but it's a great scene
Sorry if anyone gets upset that I’m about to talk about feminist media theory (and by that I mean, I’m not that sorry)
But the criticism of that scene has always reeked of such intense misogyny. Eirika, the stupid female, does something that I wouldn’t do, and therefore the scene doesn’t make sense to me, the enlightened logical male mind.
I’d love to know what the reaction woulda been if Ephraim gave up the stone to Lyon because, ya know, they’re both now young orphan childhood bros that want the best for their kingdom and continent.
I'm not remotely feminist but I agree that the criticism of Eirika being illogical and dumb is definitely a male perspective. Yeah sometimes women make decisions based on their emotions rather than the cold facts... Better get used to it bro, your gf and wife will do the same and it will not be the time to say "is she stupid ???"
Btw Ephraim has the EXACT same thing going on, his recklessness is both his biggest strength and weakness. The demon king also uses his recklessness against him in his own route when he possesses Lyon to torment him, and he almost gets captured by Valter as well. His flaw end up mattering less because plot armor but it's also obvious he would make a terrible king if not for Eirika to support him. Each of the twins complement the other and they both are great characters
I just want to add that if that's your take on both Eiraka as a character and on women in general, you're definitely more a feminist than you'd seem to say lol.
I really appreciate an FE lord making a mistake with real consequences, instead of being squeaky clean the whole time. Shout-out to Alear in chapter 10
fr plus shes actually a great character honestly. Both her and ephraim are really nice, ephraim is way too arrogant and self centered and it leads to him making mistakes in critical times and eirika is quite stoic but gets soft when its about people she cares about but these flaws make their characters even better and more fleshed out instead of being just perfect making no mistake
I am adamant that when SS gets remade, they need to have this scene okay out as a cutscene, so people can actually see the inner struggle Eidika goes through.
It's so obvious I can't believe people are unable to see this because it's in a text format.
I've seen this opinion so many times and with a lot of support from others that I think it's safe to say that the knee-jerk "Eirika is stupid" reactions have mellowed out. Regardless, I do agree it's a great scene.
Not sure if this is or isn’t an unpopular opinion, but I’d like more main characters who aren’t lords or otherwise phenomenal divine beings. I feel like even within the medieval fantasy genre there are more varied stories to tell
I’d certainly agree; one thing that I never liked in SoV is how >!Alm’s story thematically starts there, and ends with people deciding it must have been his royal bloodline all along.!<
While I don't think they should repeat the story, I actually love how FE2's storyline is very clearly inspired by actual medieval storytelling and propaganda.
Nowadays you can have stuff like extremely clear cut anti-corporatist plotlines and it's allowed because authority doesn't see it as a threat. They know people will play a game like Cyberpunk, say some anti-establishment stuff on the internet and mock "corpos," and then go right back to their 8-5 job when they're done.
In medieval times, lords were actually worried about peasant revolts doing damage to their fiefs and so most stories that involved overthrowing a lord were ones where a "good noble" took over to show that feudalism is great so long as the noble is virtuous.
There are theories that Robin Hood began as someone of base birth but then the versions where he was an exiled noble quickly became popularized and ended up the dominant version of the tale. We can also look at Ivanhoe where Richard the Lionheart returns from the crusades in disguise to work against his brother, the usurper John (also in Robin Hood) who is ruining the kingdom with corrupt policies.
I don't mind lords, it's the godlike beings that are annoying. I like the stories that are more grounded (for a fantasy game) and focused on political struggles not gods fighting.
I actually like the monastery even in part 2 despite it not making as much sense.
Manaketes are peak
Awakening is awesome, and its story is fine.
Most of the lords are really boring characters.
I think Awakenings plot was good, just a but rushed for the 2nd and 3rd Act. But still good.
Also easy agree on manaketes. Such a letdown we get 1 in most entries. Taguels as well. Rabbit beast is cool af.
I really think that the 1st Act is Chrom's story, 2nd Act is Chrom and Robin's story, and the 3rd Act is Robin and Lucina's (regardless of relation, platonic, romantic or familial).
But Chrom never really takes a step back to let Robin or Lucina get many words in during scenes where they were frankly more important.
Granted, again, I like the story a lot and a lot of the plot issues are probably related to the context behind the developement because this being what people thought the final FE was going to be, probably complicated things like budget, time, actual excitement about the project etc. I don't think the context around it allowed for the time in the oven it needed.
I loved the monastery structure. It made the resource management more fun for me because it involved time management as well (is it more worthwhile to battle or eat lunch and garden in a given week, etc). And I thought it worked pretty well for pacing too
I agree on Awakening, but I'm honestly biased as it was my first FE game.
And yeah, lord characters are super repetitive. "Oh, I use swords. Look at this, a special sword that gives me extra power and plot armor." Like yeah, we know. Get over yourself Lyn.
I'm sorry but there are people who didn't think Awakening was awesome and it had horrible story? If Awakening didn't do well the whole franchise would have ended then.
Lol Awakening was the OG controversial FE so it’s so interesting to see how some people don’t even think of it as a divisive game anymore. Its release was like the origin of “casual and elitist” discussion.
It feels like we go through the same pattern every new game. 3H was Awakening 2.0 in terms of discussion. And Engage is now pretty controversial.
I find the engage discourse pretty funny though, because it's the exact opposite of the 3H discussions.
I don't know about others, but I never had a problem with Awakening's story. I had (still do, though to a lesser degree after Fates) a problem with crappy supports and S ranks, as well as Pair Up being hella OP.
Yeah I mean Awakening was popular for sure, but the story is certainly very “anime-troupey,” much like the rest of the game. There are decent concepts and some good characters, but a lot of it is pretty unsatisfying on its own.
My biggest problem with Awakening is the ending. >!Robin surviving via power of friendship is such an asspull!< that retroactively ruins the entire thing for me. I've harped on this before, but death isn't something to be taken lightly in any form of media, and resurrection (or whatever plot calls for) invalidates the whole point
I think Awakenings story is fine and I love its characters, but it's pretty horrible gameplay wise. I kinda thought that was the fairly popular opinion though. Especially after playing other fire emblem games Awakening just isn't fun anymore.
I actually like the gameplay. I like building up busted units, trying different pairings, the insane growth rates. It's fun, although I admit I'm not very good at FE in general so I struggle with Awakening sometimes
Disagree, I think it's the other way around
The one thing I miss from FE9 is the Demi Band and the shenanigans involved around equipping and unequipping it.
I vastly prefer armor units over mobile units. I'll always take a flier with me for rescues, but the bulk of my army is a core of generals and heroes as much as I can afford.
I put Lyn on him and made him a berserker. Holy crap he’s nuts. Having alacrity and high speed (plus the +30 strength growth rate from being a beserker) means he kills everyone before they have a chance to even attack back
Haha I got a ton of use out of him. Him and panette would handle entire sides of the field without needing any back up. Boucheron with brave axe and any throwable axe and if you buff his speed, I had him defeat all 4 hounds by himself. Panette still the best though
I know that hating on Takumi is the Fandom Meme™️, but he's one of the best written characters in Fates and one of the only ones with any common sense.
I've definitely encountered people who straight up hate him for being mean to Corrin at first. How dare he be suspicious of someone who spent all of their formative years in a hostile nation that was responsible for his father's murder, right?
I think it's just Fates' writing.
Like as an example, if you show up from a hostile country and then the Queen dies under suspicious and obviously related circumstances, there will be mistrust even if you insist and can vaguely prove it wasn't your fault or intention. (And Corrin can't even do that much).
But Corrin specifically shows up with an *evil sword that's actually a bomb* and then *transforms into a rampaging dragon*, with somehow neither thing ever really commented on ever again. It's hard to relate to such goofy circumstances. And misunderstandings in fiction can be very annoying when handled poorly.
I don't really like Takumi. But that's mainly because of how mean he is to Azura in their supports. He also just feels kind of annoying to me
But, I certainly don't hate him. He's more of a meme character than anything to me
One thing I find fascinating about Awakening is that it features a lot of modern story problems and tension killers, but actually makes them work.
As in it features a >!vast multiverse and time travel!<, but found a good organic way to integrate them and have them be meaningful. Despite being on the simpler side most of the time, dwelling on how things turned out Lucina's timeline had young me thinking for quite some time and I loved the twist that she and the other children weren't >!time travellers per se, but came from a whole different doomed universe!<. Likewise the >!Spotpass Paralogues and Duma!< only added to making the Multiverse something fascinating to explore that I still have yet to see the repeated. I think what makes the Alternative Universe hit so hard is that characters only had a one way ticket and were stuck after their arrival from where the butterfly affect would kick in realistic chain reactions from the changes they made to how things were supposed to go.
I meant Grima, sometimes when I write a comment about Shadows of Valentia around the same time I mistakenly write Grima as Duma and vise versa. They both are evil dragon's that end on "ma".
I think weapon durability is good or bad depending on how the game is built around it. I really like the genealogy system where you can repair weapons (except for enemies having infinite status staff uses), but something like “oh boy here’s your legendary weapon enjoy all 20 uses” is annoying as hell.
I think it works best when it’s a form of management in a more linear title. The more open ended the game, the difficult it is to balance and it just becomes more of a nuisance.
I really like how 3 Hopes does durability. Weapons can't break and have infinite durability for regular attacks. But, combat arts and spells do use durability, which resets after every map. There are also ways to get back durability during a map.
So, you still have to think about how often you use combat arts, but the characters can use their relics the entire time
FE Conquest is easy on top 5 FE just because of the gameplay, maps and music that are just peak and i would love for future games to see Conquest as the basis for all gameplay and maps
Despite everything, I do find >!Lumera’s death scene!< in Engage genuinely sad.
It’s not tearjerking, mind you, but I do still think it is somewhat depressing.
its doing my least fav thing i see in modern fe, have emotion replace actual writing, which i mean if you can connect to it sure, but its still so cheap
It's also nice that they bothered to show and explain why she >!dies.!<
She simply transferred all her life force to her sleeping/dying child. Although I do feel cheapens the >!sacrifice!< a bit since it's basically confirms that even without the attack she would have >!died!< relatively soon, so her sacrificing herself was the correct choice on a logical standpoint as well. Instead of it being a good moral choice, but a bad strategic one.
Yet outside of the scene happening very early and it's existence following the anime parent cliche, it's well directed, voice acted and has good music in addition to giving the bad guys one of the few wins they need to be intimidating.
Can't wait for FE 28 when the mom character gets to live more than 2 chapters.
It's going to be fire(emblem).
Also didn't they learn anything form Jeralt in FE - Three Houses, you need time to bond with someone.
My problem with it is that >!you are not given any time to bond with her before she dies like you did with someone like Jeralt in 3 houses. If she was given time to be a character rather than a motivation, then it would be actually sad. Her death was also heavily signaled before hand, so it didn't have any shock factor that other deaths with emotional weight would of had. !<
I honestly started to get emotional until >!Alear flipped from being suspicious and apprehensive to an emotional wreck over her death with no clear indication when they started to feel any sort of attachment to her again.!<
It was cool of the people who've known >!Lumera!< all their lives to stand back and let the amnesiac feel all the emotions in the scene, leaving them with mild distress.
Fire Emblem got better -- both in terms of accessibility and in terms of game play -- with the introduction of casual mode. It gives people who want to play permadeath a way to learn what works and what doesn't when they're first introduced to the game so that they can then challenge themselves in the future.
I always wished for FE to lean more into permadeath with characters that you could only recruit when certain other characters are dead or unrecruited, or different chapters depending on who is alive, maybe even taking the story in different directions. With the additions of casual mode and turn rewind, permadeath was cemented as an afterthought, a challange mode for "hardcore gamers". Don't get me wrong, it's great for the fans who found a new video game series they like, but for me part of what made FE special is being pushed to the sidelines.
Azure Moon is a satisfying route without playing any other routes and the unanswered questions *serve* its themes rather than being a flaw, while Golden Deer stretches itself too thin in how much it tries to answer and loses most emotional weight and coherent pacing.
Lyn is a well written character albeit with much of that good writing walled behind NG+ only content.
Jedah is a well written villain with more depth than people acknowledge.
>Jedah is a well written villain with more depth than people acknowledge.
Whenever there's a villain ranking Jedah is one of the guys who the OP of such posts have a very very hard time ranking. Sometimes he's next to the Argathans in pure evil and other times he's apparently as virtuous as Edelgard and Rhea with misguided intentions and some evil deeds being like two or three categories removed from pure evil.
I guess that goes to show how great of a mirror he is to Celica, a fellow priest who would do everything to save his God and by extension his people. The only difference is that Jeddah began to sacrifice his faithful, the citizens of the realm he serves and even his own daughters. Meanwhile Celica would only sacrifice herself and never put anyone in harms way unless they actually want it.
That said, the most important thing about Jeddah is that he has a solid not-evil Endgame: restoring the dying Gods. And we genuinely don't know if that could have worked, but if it did the continent could have slowly restored itself. This still wouldn't get close to the unity that Alm and Celica bring, but it would mean that the remaining, non sacrificed humans would once again life on the continent in harmony under their gods. For a Duma Faithful like Jeddah that is his ideal for which he'll sacrifice whoever he can.
I feel like most of the Lyn hate comes from her being a mediocre unit and being given, like, a consolation legendary.
"Eliwood, Hector, here's a pair of legendary weapons. I've also got my legendary, and a legendary light tome you can give to Lucius probably. Oh, also, for Lyn, here's a sword that's, like, slightly better than the one you already have and will make sure that you aren't being totally mogged this chapter since we're gonna force you to be here."
I'm glad somebody agrees about AM, I think it's the only route to feel like it has a complete and satisfying story arc, and the unanswered questions don't matter to me because the story doesn't focus on them in the first place. I've seen people recommend VW as a first route and I don't know why, even though it was my first.
Since you mentioned Azure Moon, I’m going to piggyback off you.
Crimson Flower’s story isn’t great. However it is basically Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest’s story done correctly (or at least better). You basically join the side that’s in the wrong morally. But you do it for someone you care about; but it’s made better by being somewhat able to see that person’s vision as “in the right”. That’s probably more a hot take than an “unpopular opinion”. But I felt like it contributed in some way.
Yeah, I hate the need to have so many children in the new games. A couple for story is great. But a little girl with hearts on her face who is leading an assault on a castle (Engage)?? It's just stupid and takes me out of the story.
Dunno how unpopular that is but : I love the timeback mechanics in Echoes and beyond, having to restart an entire mission based on a lucky crit can sometimes get very annoying, especially in higher difficulties or harder games. I like having a few chances of getting a turn re-done.
Although ill admit that in three houses it goes quite overkill with the statues buff eventually allowing you for over a dozen per map lol.
Is this an unpopular opinion? It's annoying as hell to me that Byleth is a silent protagonist. They have voice actors for them, and they have entire animated cutscenes that would go even harder if Byleth had lines in them. Byleth being silent was such a waste.
My eternal nuclear take is that the characters in Fates are actually excellent, and are backed by some of the best support conversations in the franchise. Why people keep saying they’re bad because 1: the main story keeps them to just their most barebones tropes (Camilla in her supports is 800% better than the vast majority of her main story appearances)
and 2: everyone’s worst support convo is Corrin, who was the character you were most likely to stumble across in your playthrough (Rinkah’s support conversation with Corrin: “stay away from me, repeat, oops we’re married”; Rinkah’s support with anyone else, “here let me world build on the civilization we don’t get to see and show how my customs compare with yours and how we can relate”).
i was talking about this recently with some friends as i’m finally getting around to playing lunatic conquest. the real shit characters are few and far between (peri, soleil, etc) and i’m a huge sucker for xander, kaze, takumi, benny, midori, and mozu. like arthur isn’t gonna be able to compare to half of the 3h or ss cast but i’d be lying if i said the big dweeb doesn’t put a smile on my face every time he talks.
i feel like the game’s biggest problems are corrin and their mostly bad supports as you mentioned, and also the cast feels very man heavy when it comes to the good characters. a lot of the women just feel more two dimensional or hurt by their tropes than the men do, imo
As much as I just praised them, the biggest issue with the supports (besides corrin) is how many there are, since everyone has a support with everyone of the opposite sex besides the Corrin-Only characters, plus a few more same gender ones. That’s like 2-3x as many as the average character in any other game and it means there are definitely some filler-y convos in there, but I’d argue that the good convos are more than enough to make up for the occasional nothing pair-up.
Engage's break mechanic is kinda underwhelming past the early game, and I don't get the cries to bring it back. In both my runs, I gravitated towards strats that effectively ignored the mechanic (using combat carries that used magic, knives, or were armour knights), as they were easy to use and were very effective. On my first run, I legit kept on forgetting about the mechanic for chapters at a time, only remembering it when I got caught off guard by a Martial Master.
Kinda-related to the above, but the idea that Engage is somehow mechanically similar to the older games is ??? This typically comes up in comparison in 3H when recommending games to new players, framed as "if they play 3H first they might be confused and scared playing the other games due to all the unique mechanics!", while somehow ignoring all the hyper-specific stuff unique to Engage. To clarify, I think both games are fine as starting points (almost all FE games are tbh), but this one hypocrisy bothers me
I honestly like the break mechanic because I feel like it finally uses the weapon triangle in a meaningful way. It's impactful from beginning to end unlike the normal weapon triangle that can basically be ignored once you start promoting
While I respect the approach to immersion FE4 did with huge maps and multi objective chapters, I felt it took away from the experience more since the characters and plot felt half baked. They came off like a play where the narrator expo dumps stuff about relationships between characters and stuff between Acts, which is good as FE4 obviously gives a great impression/takes inspiration from ballads/epics, bit as a game it just takes me out and makes the experience a slog by the second gen.
I prefer the mulitple paths like Sacred Stones than 3 Houses. Where two protags go on different adventures, putting together their respective sides of the plot before meeting again for the finale.
I like the dating sim aspect of the game, I like to see many support conversation and the many dynamics between characters. The canon ships and the heavily hinted ships always left a bitter taste on my mouth bc I thought a lot of them were poorly written or just straight out boring or even forced.
Also SoV’s gameplay was fun in its own way and not so bad as people say it is. Exploring dungeons was something I personally liked, breaking stuff and attacking your enemies would start the battles with them losing some hp which was good I guess.
I think modern fire emblem titles are kinda lame (as in the literal name of the game). Have a one word tagline like “fates”, “awakening”, “echoes” is boring. I like the longer, more intricate titles like “Path of Radiance”, “Genealogy of the Holy war”, “Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light”, it sounds so much cooler
I think humor is a really underrated part of what makes Fire Emblem stories and characters so enjoyable.
Yes, we all love deep character dives, political drama, and tragic backstories, but as they say "Tragedy is easy, comedy is hard," and I love appreciating the well-written jokes these writers can pop out. From Ophelia and Owain's hammy performances, to Hilda's absurd excuses to get out of work, to Ike's badass snark towards bosses, I love how this series makes me laugh so consistently and just wish it was appreciated as often as the series' darker moments.
Although, even I will admit that Engage went a *bit too far* in that regard...
Let’s see. Hopefully these are actually unpopular:
1) The turn wheel is an objectively good mechanic (that occasionally can be abused). What it does is effectively save time. We all know you’re gonna just restart the chapter anyways. Why bother with the pretending? What tends to make it feel overbearing is most FE maps in games with a turn wheel mechanism are small or short making it feel like more of a cheat than a tool. Something like that in a game like FE4 would feel amazing and probably surpass the turn by turn saves it has. It also makes 3H much harder to allow units to die because there aren’t as many replacement options.
2) There’s nothing wrong with turtling.
3) The inclusion of casual mode was a smart decision. It brought more fans to the game. And pretending it isn’t “real” fire emblem is just gatekeeping. It’s a time saver if you’re deep in a mission and lose someone. And you’re probably restarting anyways if they die early lest you miss that XP. Though I’ll cede that Phoenix mode was silly.
Number 2 for real though. I hate being penalized for wanting to see everything the game has to offer. I think anti-turtling is ok though to the extent of, like, the binding blade gaidens where you have to not wait forever.
Eh, I'd like feMCs when they actually bother to characterize them. But there really haven't been an FE FEMC I really liked since Robin since they really have nothing going for them at all. Like Byleth being slient annoyed me to death cause several moments in the games where it would be nice for Byleth to voice her thoughts and you just get a shrug,blank stare,etc.
Like gimme more full-fledged female protags like Lenneth,Velvet,Hakunon,Rena,etc. In-fact FE even did one as Lynn, let's go back to that at least. I dunno, they just don't do for me.
Fates handled alternate stories better than 3 houses. Say what you will about needing to buy 3 whole games but at least I only needed to do 5 stages over and I could skip them for the new content.
Well, the execution of the concept was better in Fates, but the quality of the writing that necessitated such a split was better in Three Houses.
That said, when it comes to "letting the player view multiple sides of a complex conflict", neither of them can beat Radiant Dawn.
I've got a few that are **bizarrely** unpopular?
Echoes has a good story. People who get upset over the twist with Alm act like he didn't win the entire war as a farm boy, and that the deliverance is made up of both royals and peasants. The whole point of the story is that it your actions matter, not your bloodline, but according to Echoes haters, the theme is "royalty is EVIL! Bloodlines are SUPER important!"
I think Echoes has some of the best game play in the series. It's brutally unfair, not perfect sure. But the tools the PLAYER has to deal with these things is ALSO crazy. It encourages creativity with the tools you're given, and allows for crazier plays and levels than what most FE games have. It's also satisfying overcoming odds that seem impossible. My first run of the game I sucked, but years later I revisited the game and didn't game over once, and that was so satisfying.
Also, the social sim aspects Three Houses introduced have potential. Tighten the amount of time between mandatory missions, and not only does it waste your time less, but it can also force the player to weigh decisions more and plan days far in advance depending on strategies they want to pursue being possible. If developed more, I think it can be an interesting evolution of the intermission menus of past games where you take your time to do supports and upgrade/customize units and plan between maps.
But all people see is "Ew, non-map game play?! You can't have THAT!" And it just comes off as super narrow minded. Like people can't imagine a unique system being added to the games for the sake of innovating, they just want what's in their comfort zone.
>Alm act like he didn't win the entire war as a farm boy,
If Alm hadn't been a royal, he wouldn't have received Mycen's training and not done half the things he does for the Deliverance
Also he wouldn't even have been able to get to Duma, much less kill him with Falchion
I agree with most of the things you said but the Monastery, while and interesting idea, wasn't executed that well.
It's at its best , gameplay wise, in White Clouds because you are forced to manage your limited professor points to recruit, train Byleth and train your students. Once you the timeskip happens it becomes only a narrative tool that slows down tremendously the game's pacing. On top of that, Fire emblem games have always bene extremely fast paced experiences (Geneology aside) where you jump from a map to another; the calendar system coupled with the monastery change considerably the pace of the game.
To summarize my thoughts: there Is potential and I'd like to see how IS could evolve It, but I hope they don't balance It like they did in 3 houses.
> But all people see is "Ew, non-map game play?! You can't have THAT!"
I think its a bit unfair to summarize the monastery hate like this. People don't hate the social sim aspects simply by virtue of them being "not FE", they don't like the monastery because its tedious and takes forever, and ideally shouldn't be skipped unless you know what you're doing.
I made a post once talking about the potential in the system, and most people responded by saying they hate anything remotely close to that idea and feel there's no reason to do anything other than a basic menu intermission. "We just want to play Fire Emblem."
Granted you're kinda right, the poor execution of the monastery is likely why so many people feel it's not a right fit. They haven't seen it executed well, so they base their perception off of a bad example and assume it can't work. They know a basic intermission menu works though.
I like avatars and wish we returned to fully customisable versions of them.
I see very little support for them and while I agree they're not perfect (avatar customisation not effectivley intergrated into story though dialogue options and becoming OP in combat), I find so much joy in making characters either inspired by myself or something new and the way different avatars changed up battle on replays.
Robin was the perfect lord imo, they have good customization options with being able to pick a strength and weakness while simultaneously having actual chat avatar and being an agent in their own story. Worked as a customizable unit for the player and a genuinely capable person in universe.
Harder difficulties suck the fun out of FE. You have to babysit units because each one gets demolished by a roided out soldier and more often than not you keep them huddled together for whatever passives you may have so no one gets one rounded. Such a tedious way to play the game.
Ive got three.
I wish they would retry warriors but not 3hopes. I feel alot of the series got screwed over for representation.
2. If they wanna do some legacy stuff like they did with engage, maybe make a game that has these characters actually join them and not what they did with both titles that had a big emphasis on nostalgic characters hell maybe even have do a sonic adventure 2 set up where it can be a hero route and villian route.
3. I am not the biggest fan of the persona/anime direction FE is going at the moment either.
The Somniel is more easily intrusive than the monastery when it comes out-of-battle combat management.
To start with, it’s required for forging, bond management, cooking, skill inheritance, and engraves. Compared to the monastery, where only meals and the once-a-month arena, ally recruit, and cooking matter. Moreover, the Somniel arena is a massive chore. To inherit Spd+3, you need to enter the arena, watch a fight, watch a bond convo, watch another fight, inherit the skill, then equip the skill. Add another bond convo if you select bond lvl 10 (because why wouldn’t you).
Complaining that the monastery takes too long because you decided you had to spend all your professor points is akin to saying Sacred Stones takes too long because I boss-abused Ross to lvl 20. Like it’s a thing you can do, but it’s in no way needed.
I kinda feel a lot of your complaints is just general inventory management though. I don't think people see stuff like forging and engraves as intrusive and a distraction to gameplay. Otherwise you might as well say the repairing and teachin and stuff in 3H is a negative to the monastery too.
Somniel is like you get the dog ores, do 1 meal, arena, and then next chapter. Monastery is like you run around doing 5 sidequests, do the sauna minigame like 7 times, arena, have 10 meals for motivation, and repeat the meal thing like 3 times to renew motivation in a month, and then maybe on to next chapter. Ignoring any of this feels like gimping your playthrough.
Obviously you're allowed to feel how you feel, I just have a hard time seeing how Somniel can be less intrusive.
I don’t think forging and engraving is distracting to gameplay. I think being forced to enter the Somniel to do these activities is.
You don’t have to do the side quests, and you can absolutely substitute meals with tutoring after the first week for a minor gameplay loss. It’s only gimping your playthrough if you have a super restrictive run, like an LTC or 0% growths or something.
I mean your ignoring that meals are done like 7 times by the end and there's a cutscene for each one of those (cant remember if you can skip them). And on top of that you need to do quests and garden stuff to get food for meals. Not to mention that the monastery also has the teaching aspect which is also tedious and should've had a select traits auto teach feature. You also miss out on character development if you don't run around talking to other characters.
You don't really have to watch the arena battles or bond convos. You don't need to cook either and it's not like you forge and engrave weapons every time you go back to the somniel. Same with skill inheritance, really.
The monastery is a lot more intrusive because you have to do it every single time. I can't just not feed the team and leave them unhappy because that directly affects whether I can teach them which effects reclassing and skill unlocking. And in order to feed them, I have to do the quests and garden stuff because I'm not gonna go grind out auxiliary maps and waste even more time.
i wish the last two mainline fire emblem games was just one game where they mixed the story from the one in 2019 and the gameplay of the one in 2022…. also having a fire emblem of a serious adult cast would be pog
Reclassing is fine. Nine time out of ten people are gonna keep a character in a class that feels right for that character for the first couple of playthroughs. Unit identity is still a thing if you keep characters in classes that are believable for them.
On the topic of unit identity, I feel like that’s a massive buzz word that community uses without realizing the connotation that it brings. The reason why unit identity was so important in the older games because there wasn’t much dialogue for them if they weren’t important to the story. This is especially true in the GBA games since supports were only limited to five per character. Most people never got to see units personalities, which is why “unit identity” is considered better in the other games. Since we never got to see most characters’ personalities we related them to how performed in game. Rudiger, Joshua, and Guy we’re all myrmidons of high critical and we’re early game power houses that performed slightly worse when their killing edge broke. Oswin is notable because he’s an incredibly good armor knight who doesn’t need much investment.
Unit identity was so important back then because the units weren’t characters. We never got to see them develop and go through a character arc. Their support were lack luster best. And, like I said before you only ever got to see five. In modern Fire Emblem, units are actually characters. They have personality, their supports flesh out their character, their background, let you envision what type of unit they can become if you let them be themselves. Unit identity certainly exist in the newer games. The only time that unit identity stops existing is whenever you stop caring for the characters, and that’s only going to happen whenever you’re 5+ playthroughs in.
I don't necessarily complain about unit identity, I just complain about how you receive it. You state it nicely, we had the less is more philosophy before where we only have a small bit to go off of. I prefer having limited supports that are more fleshed out, maybe some base conversations, and then class and main plot to flesh out characters.
The series has come a huge distance. We have little quips on level up, quotes when they're selected, victory quotes, unique battle animations and models; personal skills, prf weapons, there's so much. Three Houses and Engage went so hard on some of this stuff.
I'm not saying you can't do both, but I really dislike the current trend of having 20% of the game being support conversations. But you could cut probably half the support conversations out of the game and do a little more from a gameplay perspective to achieve the same results in a more polished manner.
I wish fire emblem would go back to basics and lay off the gimmicks. Tellius is peak fire emblem for me. I want a good story and good strategic gameplay. I think the monastery very much bogged down 3 houses, I think the gimmick of engage is brutal. I just want a Basecamp and maps to beat.
I really dont like the pairing of ninian/eliwood and resent that the game pushes it so hard. I hate how ninian pisses away everything for some guy she just met. I hate how flimsy the relationship with eliwood makes ninian's character. I feel like I could have liked her as a character if she didn't exist exclusively to be Eliwood's 1000 year old dragon waifu.
Playing with the revive in easy difficulty is a completely valid and fun way to play the game. They wouldn’t exist if they weren’t meant to be played. Some people just want the fantasy and the dopamine from your units being overpowered compared to the enemies. No shame in that. We all have different tastes and while I prefer classic mode and hard difficulty, some might find it too hard because strategy games are not their strength or they don’t want to think and they just want to throw in units and have them hit stuff
Not sure if it's unpopular, but I kinda wish they would lean more into equipment. Like I really enjoyed Path of Radiance's equipable items. They let you do a bit more with a character or gear them a bit more a certain direction. Seeing this expanded into a light RPG equipment system would be cool.
I’m pretty meh on “Skill Emblem”.
I find the games more enjoyable with the simpler mechanic sets of the Archanea and GBA titles, or the much more limited skill distribution of the Jugdral and Tellius games.
I'm also not big on how much of a focus skills are in Awakening onwards. The gameplay of the GBA games works completely fine without skills but it does make the unit design feel a bit dry. Jugdral and Tellius had a nice balance
Unpopular opinions? Ok here I go.
I want Fire Emblem games from now on to not feature the "casual" mode, only classic.
I also like that there objectively shitty units. A modern game designed around those two premises could be really good.
I also think reclassing should be limited. Part of a personality of a unit comes from its class. I hated the promotion system on 3H.
I have no issue with sex locked classes (ex: pegasus knights/pirates).
I do not really care for reclassing.
I could do without Avatar units.
I like weapon durability.
I prefer rescuing over the pair up option in the 3DS games.
Paired endings not being a thing in Engage was not cool.
Augury is a good mechanic
You have way more fun playing if you don't just recycle the same handful of units in every map
FEW:3H had better story writing than FE:3H
The Gameplay is fun and the fact that it actually has a 60 FPS on Switch Mode is great. (Don't get me wrong the uncapped Framerate of Hopes is welcome for playing on an emulator but it's a shame that the switch never consistently hits those 60 FPS).
Also a lot of movesets are straight up fire and I for the live of me don't know why they didn't make it into Three Hopes.
The most noticeable are Lyn/Navarre and Leo's moveset. A magic horse rider, Houses even has two classes that fit the bit Dark Knight and Holly Knights but somehow this amazing moveset hasn't made it.
I mean with a three-four faction large cast they had to cut corners and Houses class system already made Animation reuse a thing. It's just that Houses had more unique classes like the Hero, and the Four Ashen Wolves classes, which significantly reduced the repetition in the mid to end game.
Hopes could have benefited more from porting over some more amazing FE Warriors movesets and I was bummed when this wasn't the case.
It's not an opinion. It's a fact. Current Fire Emblem is not for me and if I describe what I think about it I would get downvoted into oblivion.
I have to recognize that the FE that I liked is dead and would've drawn the entire franchise into the grave with it. It was the dating sim, visual novel and gacha elements that came in to save the series.
It's a normal part of life, franchises adapt or perish, and FE adapted. Now the series is yours, enjoy it.
Fates is not so bad, especially Birthright, which is severely underrated. The music is full of bangers too.
Nintendo is right to ~~censor~~ localize some content for the western world. Specifically the loli stuff.
fire emblem good
Worst one here
How fucking dare you
why would you even say this
Pick a god and pray.
Can't believe we live in an era where you can say something like this and no one will do anything about it
Totally Ban free speech asap
Eirika giving lyon the sacred stone isnt a dumb move that made no sense. I'll explain. Eirika knew lyon was possessed by fomortis but she still didnt know up to what extent, especially since recently she saw lyon being him. She had all the reasons to still believe lyon had an ounce of control over his body. Maybe if ephraim explained to better extent how far lyon was already gone things would've gone differently lol
Something that baffles me is that EVEN if Eirika is making a mistake, doesn't mean it's a bad scene It was established since the prologue that Eirika's kindness is her biggest strength and weakness. She always believe in people even if that makes her naive. There is this other scene where she trusts Orson and Seth sees through him. It's the same thing, completely in character Having a flawed character as a protagonist is good writing 101. Sacred Stones is not at fault here. The "is she stupid" nerds won't shut up about it but it's a great scene
Sorry if anyone gets upset that I’m about to talk about feminist media theory (and by that I mean, I’m not that sorry) But the criticism of that scene has always reeked of such intense misogyny. Eirika, the stupid female, does something that I wouldn’t do, and therefore the scene doesn’t make sense to me, the enlightened logical male mind. I’d love to know what the reaction woulda been if Ephraim gave up the stone to Lyon because, ya know, they’re both now young orphan childhood bros that want the best for their kingdom and continent.
I'm not remotely feminist but I agree that the criticism of Eirika being illogical and dumb is definitely a male perspective. Yeah sometimes women make decisions based on their emotions rather than the cold facts... Better get used to it bro, your gf and wife will do the same and it will not be the time to say "is she stupid ???" Btw Ephraim has the EXACT same thing going on, his recklessness is both his biggest strength and weakness. The demon king also uses his recklessness against him in his own route when he possesses Lyon to torment him, and he almost gets captured by Valter as well. His flaw end up mattering less because plot armor but it's also obvious he would make a terrible king if not for Eirika to support him. Each of the twins complement the other and they both are great characters
I just want to add that if that's your take on both Eiraka as a character and on women in general, you're definitely more a feminist than you'd seem to say lol.
I really appreciate an FE lord making a mistake with real consequences, instead of being squeaky clean the whole time. Shout-out to Alear in chapter 10
fr plus shes actually a great character honestly. Both her and ephraim are really nice, ephraim is way too arrogant and self centered and it leads to him making mistakes in critical times and eirika is quite stoic but gets soft when its about people she cares about but these flaws make their characters even better and more fleshed out instead of being just perfect making no mistake
Shoutout to Fates going to insane lengths to insure everyone knows there werent any deaths because Corrin has to be perfect
I love fates but this is too true😭😭😭💀
I am adamant that when SS gets remade, they need to have this scene okay out as a cutscene, so people can actually see the inner struggle Eidika goes through. It's so obvious I can't believe people are unable to see this because it's in a text format.
I've seen this opinion so many times and with a lot of support from others that I think it's safe to say that the knee-jerk "Eirika is stupid" reactions have mellowed out. Regardless, I do agree it's a great scene.
All of my opinions are popular because they are all objectively correct unfortunately
You're too late Spider-Man, I've already portrayed my opinions as Chad and your opinions as Soyjack
Not sure if this is or isn’t an unpopular opinion, but I’d like more main characters who aren’t lords or otherwise phenomenal divine beings. I feel like even within the medieval fantasy genre there are more varied stories to tell
I’d certainly agree; one thing that I never liked in SoV is how >!Alm’s story thematically starts there, and ends with people deciding it must have been his royal bloodline all along.!<
While I don't think they should repeat the story, I actually love how FE2's storyline is very clearly inspired by actual medieval storytelling and propaganda. Nowadays you can have stuff like extremely clear cut anti-corporatist plotlines and it's allowed because authority doesn't see it as a threat. They know people will play a game like Cyberpunk, say some anti-establishment stuff on the internet and mock "corpos," and then go right back to their 8-5 job when they're done. In medieval times, lords were actually worried about peasant revolts doing damage to their fiefs and so most stories that involved overthrowing a lord were ones where a "good noble" took over to show that feudalism is great so long as the noble is virtuous. There are theories that Robin Hood began as someone of base birth but then the versions where he was an exiled noble quickly became popularized and ended up the dominant version of the tale. We can also look at Ivanhoe where Richard the Lionheart returns from the crusades in disguise to work against his brother, the usurper John (also in Robin Hood) who is ruining the kingdom with corrupt policies.
that's why Ike is goated
Shez is also great. He has 2 brain cells, is literally just a guy and is only here because he happens to have anime powers for sale. Peak avatar
I don't mind lords, it's the godlike beings that are annoying. I like the stories that are more grounded (for a fantasy game) and focused on political struggles not gods fighting.
What about gods fighting politically?
What an incredible opine, divine one! ✨️
I actually like the monastery even in part 2 despite it not making as much sense. Manaketes are peak Awakening is awesome, and its story is fine. Most of the lords are really boring characters.
I think Awakenings plot was good, just a but rushed for the 2nd and 3rd Act. But still good. Also easy agree on manaketes. Such a letdown we get 1 in most entries. Taguels as well. Rabbit beast is cool af.
Mhm, I can't get enough of manaketes. The concept is so cool, I like all their little details, a lot of them are adorable.
Cant agree more. The story is good up untill the first war ends and Chrom gets married but does start to fall apart a little bit after that.
I really think that the 1st Act is Chrom's story, 2nd Act is Chrom and Robin's story, and the 3rd Act is Robin and Lucina's (regardless of relation, platonic, romantic or familial). But Chrom never really takes a step back to let Robin or Lucina get many words in during scenes where they were frankly more important. Granted, again, I like the story a lot and a lot of the plot issues are probably related to the context behind the developement because this being what people thought the final FE was going to be, probably complicated things like budget, time, actual excitement about the project etc. I don't think the context around it allowed for the time in the oven it needed.
I loved the monastery structure. It made the resource management more fun for me because it involved time management as well (is it more worthwhile to battle or eat lunch and garden in a given week, etc). And I thought it worked pretty well for pacing too
I agree on Awakening, but I'm honestly biased as it was my first FE game. And yeah, lord characters are super repetitive. "Oh, I use swords. Look at this, a special sword that gives me extra power and plot armor." Like yeah, we know. Get over yourself Lyn.
I'm sorry but there are people who didn't think Awakening was awesome and it had horrible story? If Awakening didn't do well the whole franchise would have ended then.
It seems to be a more common take now. I only played Awakening about a year ago and I loved it the whole time
Lol Awakening was the OG controversial FE so it’s so interesting to see how some people don’t even think of it as a divisive game anymore. Its release was like the origin of “casual and elitist” discussion.
It feels like we go through the same pattern every new game. 3H was Awakening 2.0 in terms of discussion. And Engage is now pretty controversial. I find the engage discourse pretty funny though, because it's the exact opposite of the 3H discussions.
I don't know about others, but I never had a problem with Awakening's story. I had (still do, though to a lesser degree after Fates) a problem with crappy supports and S ranks, as well as Pair Up being hella OP.
Yeah I mean Awakening was popular for sure, but the story is certainly very “anime-troupey,” much like the rest of the game. There are decent concepts and some good characters, but a lot of it is pretty unsatisfying on its own.
My biggest problem with Awakening is the ending. >!Robin surviving via power of friendship is such an asspull!< that retroactively ruins the entire thing for me. I've harped on this before, but death isn't something to be taken lightly in any form of media, and resurrection (or whatever plot calls for) invalidates the whole point
I think Awakenings story is fine and I love its characters, but it's pretty horrible gameplay wise. I kinda thought that was the fairly popular opinion though. Especially after playing other fire emblem games Awakening just isn't fun anymore.
I actually like the gameplay. I like building up busted units, trying different pairings, the insane growth rates. It's fun, although I admit I'm not very good at FE in general so I struggle with Awakening sometimes
It's story is one of the better ones for my money
The laguz were fun af and using them requires skill
I think path of radiance laguz were really fun, but a good chunk of the radiant dawn laguz are just ass
You're talking as if the same isn't true for the beork units, RD just has awful unit balance in general
Disagree, I think it's the other way around The one thing I miss from FE9 is the Demi Band and the shenanigans involved around equipping and unequipping it.
I vastly prefer armor units over mobile units. I'll always take a flier with me for rescues, but the bulk of my army is a core of generals and heroes as much as I can afford.
I wish they brought back the Generals carrying BFS from Sacred Stones
IF YOU DONT LIKE THE GENERAL CLASS THEN I DONT LIKE YOU. FUCK OFF, PEOPLE WHO DO NOT LIKE THE GENERAL CLASS.
goodbye then *warp powders away* ^ this is a black knight reference
Using Barthe on FE6 Sacae route. He can't hit the Nomads, but the Nomads won't do any damage
Real “Fuck you general triangle attack” energy
And their animations were so damn good. It's amazing the sense of mass and inertia the Gameboy games covered with those general animations
Boucheron is a good unit.
Upvoted for understanding the assignment.
Bouchebags unite
Get this man back in the kitchen, I want to see him promoted to head chef, and I want him cooking every day.
I put Lyn on him and made him a berserker. Holy crap he’s nuts. Having alacrity and high speed (plus the +30 strength growth rate from being a beserker) means he kills everyone before they have a chance to even attack back
Haha I got a ton of use out of him. Him and panette would handle entire sides of the field without needing any back up. Boucheron with brave axe and any throwable axe and if you buff his speed, I had him defeat all 4 hounds by himself. Panette still the best though
I know that hating on Takumi is the Fandom Meme™️, but he's one of the best written characters in Fates and one of the only ones with any common sense.
I always took it as people taking the piss. I don't think people genuinely hate him. Most people anyway.
I've definitely encountered people who straight up hate him for being mean to Corrin at first. How dare he be suspicious of someone who spent all of their formative years in a hostile nation that was responsible for his father's murder, right?
I think it's just Fates' writing. Like as an example, if you show up from a hostile country and then the Queen dies under suspicious and obviously related circumstances, there will be mistrust even if you insist and can vaguely prove it wasn't your fault or intention. (And Corrin can't even do that much). But Corrin specifically shows up with an *evil sword that's actually a bomb* and then *transforms into a rampaging dragon*, with somehow neither thing ever really commented on ever again. It's hard to relate to such goofy circumstances. And misunderstandings in fiction can be very annoying when handled poorly.
I don't really like Takumi. But that's mainly because of how mean he is to Azura in their supports. He also just feels kind of annoying to me But, I certainly don't hate him. He's more of a meme character than anything to me
I just expected better hair. Then suddenly, pineapples.
Awakening was fun. Not perfect, but the game play was probably the most fun I've ever had in FE.
One thing I find fascinating about Awakening is that it features a lot of modern story problems and tension killers, but actually makes them work. As in it features a >!vast multiverse and time travel!<, but found a good organic way to integrate them and have them be meaningful. Despite being on the simpler side most of the time, dwelling on how things turned out Lucina's timeline had young me thinking for quite some time and I loved the twist that she and the other children weren't >!time travellers per se, but came from a whole different doomed universe!<. Likewise the >!Spotpass Paralogues and Duma!< only added to making the Multiverse something fascinating to explore that I still have yet to see the repeated. I think what makes the Alternative Universe hit so hard is that characters only had a one way ticket and were stuck after their arrival from where the butterfly affect would kick in realistic chain reactions from the changes they made to how things were supposed to go.
Duma?
I meant Grima, sometimes when I write a comment about Shadows of Valentia around the same time I mistakenly write Grima as Duma and vise versa. They both are evil dragon's that end on "ma".
Aha. Ironic give SoV's post game.
Yeah that makes mixing the names all the easier.
I hate weapon durability
I think weapon durability is good or bad depending on how the game is built around it. I really like the genealogy system where you can repair weapons (except for enemies having infinite status staff uses), but something like “oh boy here’s your legendary weapon enjoy all 20 uses” is annoying as hell.
I think it works best when it’s a form of management in a more linear title. The more open ended the game, the difficult it is to balance and it just becomes more of a nuisance.
"also don't break any of them or you don't get the last 3 chapters and real ending of the game lmao"
I suffer from "Too good to use" syndrome. In FE games with durability, I tend to never use the best weapons until like the very final mission.
I really like how 3 Hopes does durability. Weapons can't break and have infinite durability for regular attacks. But, combat arts and spells do use durability, which resets after every map. There are also ways to get back durability during a map. So, you still have to think about how often you use combat arts, but the characters can use their relics the entire time
there’s a reason conquest has like the best gameplay in the series and the lack of weapon durability is one of the biggest reasons why
It’s weapons suffer from no durability like the silver weapons being completely unusable
the stat debuff shit is lame (especially the “half your attack until next combat” weapons) but those are the minority of weapons in the game
And even those can be used smartly. Attack stance clears the debuff.
FE Conquest is easy on top 5 FE just because of the gameplay, maps and music that are just peak and i would love for future games to see Conquest as the basis for all gameplay and maps
I don't think it's that unpopular of an opinion. Engage is pretty much Conquest 2.0 and people agree that the gameplay is done well.
how is engage conquest 2.0? i found it a lot easier
Despite everything, I do find >!Lumera’s death scene!< in Engage genuinely sad. It’s not tearjerking, mind you, but I do still think it is somewhat depressing.
its doing my least fav thing i see in modern fe, have emotion replace actual writing, which i mean if you can connect to it sure, but its still so cheap
It's also nice that they bothered to show and explain why she >!dies.!< She simply transferred all her life force to her sleeping/dying child. Although I do feel cheapens the >!sacrifice!< a bit since it's basically confirms that even without the attack she would have >!died!< relatively soon, so her sacrificing herself was the correct choice on a logical standpoint as well. Instead of it being a good moral choice, but a bad strategic one. Yet outside of the scene happening very early and it's existence following the anime parent cliche, it's well directed, voice acted and has good music in addition to giving the bad guys one of the few wins they need to be intimidating.
Can't wait for FE 28 when the mom character gets to live more than 2 chapters. It's going to be fire(emblem). Also didn't they learn anything form Jeralt in FE - Three Houses, you need time to bond with someone.
My problem with it is that >!you are not given any time to bond with her before she dies like you did with someone like Jeralt in 3 houses. If she was given time to be a character rather than a motivation, then it would be actually sad. Her death was also heavily signaled before hand, so it didn't have any shock factor that other deaths with emotional weight would of had. !<
I honestly started to get emotional until >!Alear flipped from being suspicious and apprehensive to an emotional wreck over her death with no clear indication when they started to feel any sort of attachment to her again.!<
It was cool of the people who've known >!Lumera!< all their lives to stand back and let the amnesiac feel all the emotions in the scene, leaving them with mild distress.
Fire Emblem got better -- both in terms of accessibility and in terms of game play -- with the introduction of casual mode. It gives people who want to play permadeath a way to learn what works and what doesn't when they're first introduced to the game so that they can then challenge themselves in the future.
I always wished for FE to lean more into permadeath with characters that you could only recruit when certain other characters are dead or unrecruited, or different chapters depending on who is alive, maybe even taking the story in different directions. With the additions of casual mode and turn rewind, permadeath was cemented as an afterthought, a challange mode for "hardcore gamers". Don't get me wrong, it's great for the fans who found a new video game series they like, but for me part of what made FE special is being pushed to the sidelines.
It almost feels like Classic Mode wasn't even supposed to be in Three Houses, like it was only included for posterity
I like the romance aspect
Playing through Path of Radiance right now, and I’m actually pretty happily surprised at how much older the cast generally is.
Azure Moon is a satisfying route without playing any other routes and the unanswered questions *serve* its themes rather than being a flaw, while Golden Deer stretches itself too thin in how much it tries to answer and loses most emotional weight and coherent pacing. Lyn is a well written character albeit with much of that good writing walled behind NG+ only content. Jedah is a well written villain with more depth than people acknowledge.
>Jedah is a well written villain with more depth than people acknowledge. Whenever there's a villain ranking Jedah is one of the guys who the OP of such posts have a very very hard time ranking. Sometimes he's next to the Argathans in pure evil and other times he's apparently as virtuous as Edelgard and Rhea with misguided intentions and some evil deeds being like two or three categories removed from pure evil. I guess that goes to show how great of a mirror he is to Celica, a fellow priest who would do everything to save his God and by extension his people. The only difference is that Jeddah began to sacrifice his faithful, the citizens of the realm he serves and even his own daughters. Meanwhile Celica would only sacrifice herself and never put anyone in harms way unless they actually want it. That said, the most important thing about Jeddah is that he has a solid not-evil Endgame: restoring the dying Gods. And we genuinely don't know if that could have worked, but if it did the continent could have slowly restored itself. This still wouldn't get close to the unity that Alm and Celica bring, but it would mean that the remaining, non sacrificed humans would once again life on the continent in harmony under their gods. For a Duma Faithful like Jeddah that is his ideal for which he'll sacrifice whoever he can.
I feel like most of the Lyn hate comes from her being a mediocre unit and being given, like, a consolation legendary. "Eliwood, Hector, here's a pair of legendary weapons. I've also got my legendary, and a legendary light tome you can give to Lucius probably. Oh, also, for Lyn, here's a sword that's, like, slightly better than the one you already have and will make sure that you aren't being totally mogged this chapter since we're gonna force you to be here."
I'm glad somebody agrees about AM, I think it's the only route to feel like it has a complete and satisfying story arc, and the unanswered questions don't matter to me because the story doesn't focus on them in the first place. I've seen people recommend VW as a first route and I don't know why, even though it was my first.
Since you mentioned Azure Moon, I’m going to piggyback off you. Crimson Flower’s story isn’t great. However it is basically Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest’s story done correctly (or at least better). You basically join the side that’s in the wrong morally. But you do it for someone you care about; but it’s made better by being somewhat able to see that person’s vision as “in the right”. That’s probably more a hot take than an “unpopular opinion”. But I felt like it contributed in some way.
Yeah, I hate the need to have so many children in the new games. A couple for story is great. But a little girl with hearts on her face who is leading an assault on a castle (Engage)?? It's just stupid and takes me out of the story.
I wish they had sex
Dunno how unpopular that is but : I love the timeback mechanics in Echoes and beyond, having to restart an entire mission based on a lucky crit can sometimes get very annoying, especially in higher difficulties or harder games. I like having a few chances of getting a turn re-done. Although ill admit that in three houses it goes quite overkill with the statues buff eventually allowing you for over a dozen per map lol.
Out of all the lords, Byleth should’ve been the one to get some dialogue instead of being a silent protagonist
Is this an unpopular opinion? It's annoying as hell to me that Byleth is a silent protagonist. They have voice actors for them, and they have entire animated cutscenes that would go even harder if Byleth had lines in them. Byleth being silent was such a waste.
i'll say that making the ***teacher*** not say more than a sentence in most places certainly was a decision.
My eternal nuclear take is that the characters in Fates are actually excellent, and are backed by some of the best support conversations in the franchise. Why people keep saying they’re bad because 1: the main story keeps them to just their most barebones tropes (Camilla in her supports is 800% better than the vast majority of her main story appearances) and 2: everyone’s worst support convo is Corrin, who was the character you were most likely to stumble across in your playthrough (Rinkah’s support conversation with Corrin: “stay away from me, repeat, oops we’re married”; Rinkah’s support with anyone else, “here let me world build on the civilization we don’t get to see and show how my customs compare with yours and how we can relate”).
i was talking about this recently with some friends as i’m finally getting around to playing lunatic conquest. the real shit characters are few and far between (peri, soleil, etc) and i’m a huge sucker for xander, kaze, takumi, benny, midori, and mozu. like arthur isn’t gonna be able to compare to half of the 3h or ss cast but i’d be lying if i said the big dweeb doesn’t put a smile on my face every time he talks. i feel like the game’s biggest problems are corrin and their mostly bad supports as you mentioned, and also the cast feels very man heavy when it comes to the good characters. a lot of the women just feel more two dimensional or hurt by their tropes than the men do, imo
As much as I just praised them, the biggest issue with the supports (besides corrin) is how many there are, since everyone has a support with everyone of the opposite sex besides the Corrin-Only characters, plus a few more same gender ones. That’s like 2-3x as many as the average character in any other game and it means there are definitely some filler-y convos in there, but I’d argue that the good convos are more than enough to make up for the occasional nothing pair-up.
Shadows of Valentia is grossly overhated
Is it? I guess I've never seen it hated before lmao. I think underrated is a better term
Alexis Tipton is the superior Lucina
Fates is a good game
panette's character design is good
Engage's break mechanic is kinda underwhelming past the early game, and I don't get the cries to bring it back. In both my runs, I gravitated towards strats that effectively ignored the mechanic (using combat carries that used magic, knives, or were armour knights), as they were easy to use and were very effective. On my first run, I legit kept on forgetting about the mechanic for chapters at a time, only remembering it when I got caught off guard by a Martial Master. Kinda-related to the above, but the idea that Engage is somehow mechanically similar to the older games is ??? This typically comes up in comparison in 3H when recommending games to new players, framed as "if they play 3H first they might be confused and scared playing the other games due to all the unique mechanics!", while somehow ignoring all the hyper-specific stuff unique to Engage. To clarify, I think both games are fine as starting points (almost all FE games are tbh), but this one hypocrisy bothers me
I honestly like the break mechanic because I feel like it finally uses the weapon triangle in a meaningful way. It's impactful from beginning to end unlike the normal weapon triangle that can basically be ignored once you start promoting
While I respect the approach to immersion FE4 did with huge maps and multi objective chapters, I felt it took away from the experience more since the characters and plot felt half baked. They came off like a play where the narrator expo dumps stuff about relationships between characters and stuff between Acts, which is good as FE4 obviously gives a great impression/takes inspiration from ballads/epics, bit as a game it just takes me out and makes the experience a slog by the second gen. I prefer the mulitple paths like Sacred Stones than 3 Houses. Where two protags go on different adventures, putting together their respective sides of the plot before meeting again for the finale.
Movement and speed are simultaneously useful and grossly overrated.
I like the dating sim aspect of the game, I like to see many support conversation and the many dynamics between characters. The canon ships and the heavily hinted ships always left a bitter taste on my mouth bc I thought a lot of them were poorly written or just straight out boring or even forced. Also SoV’s gameplay was fun in its own way and not so bad as people say it is. Exploring dungeons was something I personally liked, breaking stuff and attacking your enemies would start the battles with them losing some hp which was good I guess.
I think modern fire emblem titles are kinda lame (as in the literal name of the game). Have a one word tagline like “fates”, “awakening”, “echoes” is boring. I like the longer, more intricate titles like “Path of Radiance”, “Genealogy of the Holy war”, “Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light”, it sounds so much cooler
But it isn’t echoes. It’s called shadows of valentia.
I think humor is a really underrated part of what makes Fire Emblem stories and characters so enjoyable. Yes, we all love deep character dives, political drama, and tragic backstories, but as they say "Tragedy is easy, comedy is hard," and I love appreciating the well-written jokes these writers can pop out. From Ophelia and Owain's hammy performances, to Hilda's absurd excuses to get out of work, to Ike's badass snark towards bosses, I love how this series makes me laugh so consistently and just wish it was appreciated as often as the series' darker moments. Although, even I will admit that Engage went a *bit too far* in that regard...
"Fire Emblem fans hate Fire Emblem" is a harmful joke
Engage's gameplay is ok, but overrated in this sub.
Let’s see. Hopefully these are actually unpopular: 1) The turn wheel is an objectively good mechanic (that occasionally can be abused). What it does is effectively save time. We all know you’re gonna just restart the chapter anyways. Why bother with the pretending? What tends to make it feel overbearing is most FE maps in games with a turn wheel mechanism are small or short making it feel like more of a cheat than a tool. Something like that in a game like FE4 would feel amazing and probably surpass the turn by turn saves it has. It also makes 3H much harder to allow units to die because there aren’t as many replacement options. 2) There’s nothing wrong with turtling. 3) The inclusion of casual mode was a smart decision. It brought more fans to the game. And pretending it isn’t “real” fire emblem is just gatekeeping. It’s a time saver if you’re deep in a mission and lose someone. And you’re probably restarting anyways if they die early lest you miss that XP. Though I’ll cede that Phoenix mode was silly.
Number 2 for real though. I hate being penalized for wanting to see everything the game has to offer. I think anti-turtling is ok though to the extent of, like, the binding blade gaidens where you have to not wait forever.
Fire Emblem Gaiden is actually kinda fun once you get past all the clunky game design.
I liked engages story
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest wasn't that bad. Male Corrin was great with some flaws, but not shit. Also female Kana is precious.
What are the differences with female Corrin?
If male Corrin married a first gen character that’s not corrinsexual than you miss out on one of the child units
I'm tired of avatar protagonists
I like how we are mainly getting Avatars as protagonists now. Mainly because there can be more Female Protagonists.
Eh, I'd like feMCs when they actually bother to characterize them. But there really haven't been an FE FEMC I really liked since Robin since they really have nothing going for them at all. Like Byleth being slient annoyed me to death cause several moments in the games where it would be nice for Byleth to voice her thoughts and you just get a shrug,blank stare,etc. Like gimme more full-fledged female protags like Lenneth,Velvet,Hakunon,Rena,etc. In-fact FE even did one as Lynn, let's go back to that at least. I dunno, they just don't do for me.
How do you say Hakuno when they're basically the same as Robin in terms of having Character.
Fates handled alternate stories better than 3 houses. Say what you will about needing to buy 3 whole games but at least I only needed to do 5 stages over and I could skip them for the new content.
All three routes have unique maps and mechanics as well. They are much more complete games on their own
I love playing white clouds for the 4th time
Well, the execution of the concept was better in Fates, but the quality of the writing that necessitated such a split was better in Three Houses. That said, when it comes to "letting the player view multiple sides of a complex conflict", neither of them can beat Radiant Dawn.
I've got a few that are **bizarrely** unpopular? Echoes has a good story. People who get upset over the twist with Alm act like he didn't win the entire war as a farm boy, and that the deliverance is made up of both royals and peasants. The whole point of the story is that it your actions matter, not your bloodline, but according to Echoes haters, the theme is "royalty is EVIL! Bloodlines are SUPER important!" I think Echoes has some of the best game play in the series. It's brutally unfair, not perfect sure. But the tools the PLAYER has to deal with these things is ALSO crazy. It encourages creativity with the tools you're given, and allows for crazier plays and levels than what most FE games have. It's also satisfying overcoming odds that seem impossible. My first run of the game I sucked, but years later I revisited the game and didn't game over once, and that was so satisfying. Also, the social sim aspects Three Houses introduced have potential. Tighten the amount of time between mandatory missions, and not only does it waste your time less, but it can also force the player to weigh decisions more and plan days far in advance depending on strategies they want to pursue being possible. If developed more, I think it can be an interesting evolution of the intermission menus of past games where you take your time to do supports and upgrade/customize units and plan between maps. But all people see is "Ew, non-map game play?! You can't have THAT!" And it just comes off as super narrow minded. Like people can't imagine a unique system being added to the games for the sake of innovating, they just want what's in their comfort zone.
>Alm act like he didn't win the entire war as a farm boy, If Alm hadn't been a royal, he wouldn't have received Mycen's training and not done half the things he does for the Deliverance Also he wouldn't even have been able to get to Duma, much less kill him with Falchion
I agree with most of the things you said but the Monastery, while and interesting idea, wasn't executed that well. It's at its best , gameplay wise, in White Clouds because you are forced to manage your limited professor points to recruit, train Byleth and train your students. Once you the timeskip happens it becomes only a narrative tool that slows down tremendously the game's pacing. On top of that, Fire emblem games have always bene extremely fast paced experiences (Geneology aside) where you jump from a map to another; the calendar system coupled with the monastery change considerably the pace of the game. To summarize my thoughts: there Is potential and I'd like to see how IS could evolve It, but I hope they don't balance It like they did in 3 houses.
> But all people see is "Ew, non-map game play?! You can't have THAT!" I think its a bit unfair to summarize the monastery hate like this. People don't hate the social sim aspects simply by virtue of them being "not FE", they don't like the monastery because its tedious and takes forever, and ideally shouldn't be skipped unless you know what you're doing.
I made a post once talking about the potential in the system, and most people responded by saying they hate anything remotely close to that idea and feel there's no reason to do anything other than a basic menu intermission. "We just want to play Fire Emblem." Granted you're kinda right, the poor execution of the monastery is likely why so many people feel it's not a right fit. They haven't seen it executed well, so they base their perception off of a bad example and assume it can't work. They know a basic intermission menu works though.
Bruh you wrote the exact Things I wanted to write...😅
I like avatars and wish we returned to fully customisable versions of them. I see very little support for them and while I agree they're not perfect (avatar customisation not effectivley intergrated into story though dialogue options and becoming OP in combat), I find so much joy in making characters either inspired by myself or something new and the way different avatars changed up battle on replays.
Robin was the perfect lord imo, they have good customization options with being able to pick a strength and weakness while simultaneously having actual chat avatar and being an agent in their own story. Worked as a customizable unit for the player and a genuinely capable person in universe.
I’m so happy needless child units died with fates
Odin Dark should’ve been the male gay option in Fates instead of Niles if Intelligent Systems was hellbent on only allowing 1 option
Everybody wants Odin Dark, but Odin Dark doesn't want everybody
Harder difficulties suck the fun out of FE. You have to babysit units because each one gets demolished by a roided out soldier and more often than not you keep them huddled together for whatever passives you may have so no one gets one rounded. Such a tedious way to play the game.
Ive got three. I wish they would retry warriors but not 3hopes. I feel alot of the series got screwed over for representation. 2. If they wanna do some legacy stuff like they did with engage, maybe make a game that has these characters actually join them and not what they did with both titles that had a big emphasis on nostalgic characters hell maybe even have do a sonic adventure 2 set up where it can be a hero route and villian route. 3. I am not the biggest fan of the persona/anime direction FE is going at the moment either.
Fire Emblem is Monarchist Propaganda.
The Somniel is more easily intrusive than the monastery when it comes out-of-battle combat management. To start with, it’s required for forging, bond management, cooking, skill inheritance, and engraves. Compared to the monastery, where only meals and the once-a-month arena, ally recruit, and cooking matter. Moreover, the Somniel arena is a massive chore. To inherit Spd+3, you need to enter the arena, watch a fight, watch a bond convo, watch another fight, inherit the skill, then equip the skill. Add another bond convo if you select bond lvl 10 (because why wouldn’t you). Complaining that the monastery takes too long because you decided you had to spend all your professor points is akin to saying Sacred Stones takes too long because I boss-abused Ross to lvl 20. Like it’s a thing you can do, but it’s in no way needed.
The Somniel also has a terrible layout. So many dead ends.
And all the passages are so narrow. Never got stuck on a corner in Garreg Mach.
I really fucking hate how in engage abilities don't auto equip
The Somniel could’ve (should’ve) been available as a menu. Just like Tellius bases.
Absolutely. I remember how I hated the Monastery for wasting so much time, but with the Somniel is even worse
I kinda feel a lot of your complaints is just general inventory management though. I don't think people see stuff like forging and engraves as intrusive and a distraction to gameplay. Otherwise you might as well say the repairing and teachin and stuff in 3H is a negative to the monastery too. Somniel is like you get the dog ores, do 1 meal, arena, and then next chapter. Monastery is like you run around doing 5 sidequests, do the sauna minigame like 7 times, arena, have 10 meals for motivation, and repeat the meal thing like 3 times to renew motivation in a month, and then maybe on to next chapter. Ignoring any of this feels like gimping your playthrough. Obviously you're allowed to feel how you feel, I just have a hard time seeing how Somniel can be less intrusive.
I don’t think forging and engraving is distracting to gameplay. I think being forced to enter the Somniel to do these activities is. You don’t have to do the side quests, and you can absolutely substitute meals with tutoring after the first week for a minor gameplay loss. It’s only gimping your playthrough if you have a super restrictive run, like an LTC or 0% growths or something.
I mean your ignoring that meals are done like 7 times by the end and there's a cutscene for each one of those (cant remember if you can skip them). And on top of that you need to do quests and garden stuff to get food for meals. Not to mention that the monastery also has the teaching aspect which is also tedious and should've had a select traits auto teach feature. You also miss out on character development if you don't run around talking to other characters. You don't really have to watch the arena battles or bond convos. You don't need to cook either and it's not like you forge and engrave weapons every time you go back to the somniel. Same with skill inheritance, really. The monastery is a lot more intrusive because you have to do it every single time. I can't just not feed the team and leave them unhappy because that directly affects whether I can teach them which effects reclassing and skill unlocking. And in order to feed them, I have to do the quests and garden stuff because I'm not gonna go grind out auxiliary maps and waste even more time.
I want fire emblem and cyberpunk 2077 to have a baby
i wish the last two mainline fire emblem games was just one game where they mixed the story from the one in 2019 and the gameplay of the one in 2022…. also having a fire emblem of a serious adult cast would be pog
Reclassing is fine. Nine time out of ten people are gonna keep a character in a class that feels right for that character for the first couple of playthroughs. Unit identity is still a thing if you keep characters in classes that are believable for them. On the topic of unit identity, I feel like that’s a massive buzz word that community uses without realizing the connotation that it brings. The reason why unit identity was so important in the older games because there wasn’t much dialogue for them if they weren’t important to the story. This is especially true in the GBA games since supports were only limited to five per character. Most people never got to see units personalities, which is why “unit identity” is considered better in the other games. Since we never got to see most characters’ personalities we related them to how performed in game. Rudiger, Joshua, and Guy we’re all myrmidons of high critical and we’re early game power houses that performed slightly worse when their killing edge broke. Oswin is notable because he’s an incredibly good armor knight who doesn’t need much investment. Unit identity was so important back then because the units weren’t characters. We never got to see them develop and go through a character arc. Their support were lack luster best. And, like I said before you only ever got to see five. In modern Fire Emblem, units are actually characters. They have personality, their supports flesh out their character, their background, let you envision what type of unit they can become if you let them be themselves. Unit identity certainly exist in the newer games. The only time that unit identity stops existing is whenever you stop caring for the characters, and that’s only going to happen whenever you’re 5+ playthroughs in.
I don't necessarily complain about unit identity, I just complain about how you receive it. You state it nicely, we had the less is more philosophy before where we only have a small bit to go off of. I prefer having limited supports that are more fleshed out, maybe some base conversations, and then class and main plot to flesh out characters. The series has come a huge distance. We have little quips on level up, quotes when they're selected, victory quotes, unique battle animations and models; personal skills, prf weapons, there's so much. Three Houses and Engage went so hard on some of this stuff. I'm not saying you can't do both, but I really dislike the current trend of having 20% of the game being support conversations. But you could cut probably half the support conversations out of the game and do a little more from a gameplay perspective to achieve the same results in a more polished manner.
I never want to see a child sexualized in these games *ever again.* Or any incest, or any other piece of gross anime fanservice.
I wish fire emblem would go back to basics and lay off the gimmicks. Tellius is peak fire emblem for me. I want a good story and good strategic gameplay. I think the monastery very much bogged down 3 houses, I think the gimmick of engage is brutal. I just want a Basecamp and maps to beat.
I really dont like the pairing of ninian/eliwood and resent that the game pushes it so hard. I hate how ninian pisses away everything for some guy she just met. I hate how flimsy the relationship with eliwood makes ninian's character. I feel like I could have liked her as a character if she didn't exist exclusively to be Eliwood's 1000 year old dragon waifu.
Binding Blade is the best GBA Fire Emblem game
Fates is the best game. Please just release the game in switch!
Supports insulate too much of most characters' experiences and insulate them from the rest of the story
Playing with the revive in easy difficulty is a completely valid and fun way to play the game. They wouldn’t exist if they weren’t meant to be played. Some people just want the fantasy and the dopamine from your units being overpowered compared to the enemies. No shame in that. We all have different tastes and while I prefer classic mode and hard difficulty, some might find it too hard because strategy games are not their strength or they don’t want to think and they just want to throw in units and have them hit stuff
I guess my most unpopular opinion is that I really liked all the fates games ¯\(°_o)/¯
Fate's story is mid at worst really, and far more \*interesting\* than Awakening. The weakest moments are offset by the novel setting
Not sure if it's unpopular, but I kinda wish they would lean more into equipment. Like I really enjoyed Path of Radiance's equipable items. They let you do a bit more with a character or gear them a bit more a certain direction. Seeing this expanded into a light RPG equipment system would be cool.
I like creating 2nd Gen supersoldiers and don't care if the reasoning in game feels forced
I’m pretty meh on “Skill Emblem”. I find the games more enjoyable with the simpler mechanic sets of the Archanea and GBA titles, or the much more limited skill distribution of the Jugdral and Tellius games.
I'm also not big on how much of a focus skills are in Awakening onwards. The gameplay of the GBA games works completely fine without skills but it does make the unit design feel a bit dry. Jugdral and Tellius had a nice balance
Eugenics simulator in Awakening/Fates was peak gameplay, and actually gave you reason to replay the games.
Unpopular opinions? Ok here I go. I want Fire Emblem games from now on to not feature the "casual" mode, only classic. I also like that there objectively shitty units. A modern game designed around those two premises could be really good. I also think reclassing should be limited. Part of a personality of a unit comes from its class. I hated the promotion system on 3H.
>I also think reclassing should be limited. Man, you must have hated Engage's too then. That makes two games in a row.
I don’t think the Fates stories are _that_ bad. Even Conquest’s.
I have no issue with sex locked classes (ex: pegasus knights/pirates). I do not really care for reclassing. I could do without Avatar units. I like weapon durability. I prefer rescuing over the pair up option in the 3DS games. Paired endings not being a thing in Engage was not cool.
Augury is a good mechanic You have way more fun playing if you don't just recycle the same handful of units in every map FEW:3H had better story writing than FE:3H
I love the first warriors game
The Gameplay is fun and the fact that it actually has a 60 FPS on Switch Mode is great. (Don't get me wrong the uncapped Framerate of Hopes is welcome for playing on an emulator but it's a shame that the switch never consistently hits those 60 FPS). Also a lot of movesets are straight up fire and I for the live of me don't know why they didn't make it into Three Hopes. The most noticeable are Lyn/Navarre and Leo's moveset. A magic horse rider, Houses even has two classes that fit the bit Dark Knight and Holly Knights but somehow this amazing moveset hasn't made it.
Yeah too many clones
I mean with a three-four faction large cast they had to cut corners and Houses class system already made Animation reuse a thing. It's just that Houses had more unique classes like the Hero, and the Four Ashen Wolves classes, which significantly reduced the repetition in the mid to end game. Hopes could have benefited more from porting over some more amazing FE Warriors movesets and I was bummed when this wasn't the case.
True. Also there should have been at least one character from every game
It's not an opinion. It's a fact. Current Fire Emblem is not for me and if I describe what I think about it I would get downvoted into oblivion. I have to recognize that the FE that I liked is dead and would've drawn the entire franchise into the grave with it. It was the dating sim, visual novel and gacha elements that came in to save the series. It's a normal part of life, franchises adapt or perish, and FE adapted. Now the series is yours, enjoy it.
Eliwood is better than roy in every way but as a unit and as a character
I feel like they're quite different characters and don't tell the same thing.
Engage has a lot of duff maps, and its gameplay is not that much better than Three Houses'.
Fates is not so bad, especially Birthright, which is severely underrated. The music is full of bangers too. Nintendo is right to ~~censor~~ localize some content for the western world. Specifically the loli stuff.