SF's opinion on the most recent FEs (11-13)

[PKL]

The last of these polls:

http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=46464

http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=46482

This time, it's Fire Emblems 11, 12 and 13.

Shadow Dragon, New Mystery of the Emblem and Awakening.

[Jedi]

Good scores across the board.

Shadow Dragon served its purposes, a more user friendly fe1 with new mechanics such as reclass and explained some back story and also allows for a lot of headcanon the writing what small amount exists is good.

New Mystery began a more intense fe. Experience with the introduction of Lunatic mode and is a very extreme game. But its difficulty is very alterable for any level player which is nice, the music is quite grand.

Fe13 served as a love letter to the fans bringing back mechanics from pretty much every game and adding the controversial to many pair up ability. Probably the base splitter of the franchise other then 6. Fun characters despite what our more cynical members here say

[RJWalker]

Shadow Dragon is my personal favourite as far as story goes.

New Mystery would be my favourite if the game hadn't turned Marth into a helpless baby who needs constant reassurance from Avatar.

Awakening. Well... the story is garbage. Easily the worst in the series and the characters are just as bad but I enjoyed the gameplay.

[Icon of Sin]

11 : could've lived without. Remaking a game that's been already remade once as FE3, then reimagined again as FE6.

12 : it's better but it still could've been a new game.

13 : there's some flashes of brillance here and there and the experience is enjoyable enough but overall there's better games in the series. A good part of the characters being terrible has a part in that.

[JSND Alter Dragon Boner]

SD is mediocre. Reclass is cool, and Dialogue is amazing, but thats it. Also the dark lighting is just.... urgh.

New Mystery is so good, it gave me heart attack.

No, really

Awakening is pretty cool, but theres too many misses that put it down. Lack of Hard Mode Plus is one of them

[SB.]

I liked FE11 a lot really, despite it's simplicity.

FE12 was boring as hell. The prologue was stupid, half the cast are unusable on higher difficulties and they didn't decide to change terrible maps like Chapter 3 into something that wasn't irritating.

FE13 was kind of mindless but it was still a fun game.

[bookofholsety]

good/good/great

with respect to FE13, i'm an man of passion optimist, so where most people (completely accurately) see a shitty story, i see an absolute goldmine of stuff to relentlessly laugh at and make fun of. unsurprisingly the game (like FE in general) is at its best when it's not trying to be SERIOUS and DRAMATIC with its halfassed plot, and between supports, children sidequests and a good chunk of the DLC there's plenty of that to keep me unironically amused. the gameplay is great but is crippled pretty severely by its mostly bland map design

(obligatory mention of FE12's ugly interface design)

[MJThom_2009]

Shadow Dragon: Comments about the first FE game I've played, I like it because of its music.

New Mystery of the Emblem: I didnt play it through because the issues of the emulator.

Awakening: I like the story, the DLCs, and the usages of the new dual system.

[Junkhead]

FE11: I don't like it very much, honestly. There's this something about it that makes me get bored of it, quickly...it's probably my least played FE. But even if I don't like it very much, that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate certain things it has to offer, that makes it good in it's own way. For example, the graphics (despite not being a fan of them), are pretty neat. The character art, is pretty great too. Nice "realistic" touch to it. Also, reclassing is a great option to have around.

Haven't played FE12.

FE13: Currently my 2nd favorite game. It's really fun, and it adds things from other FEs and innovative things as well. Sort of lacking in the difficulty department, though.

[PM ME MARIANNE ART]

I really hate Shadow Dragon.

Mew Mystery is pretty cool, so it gets 'good.'

And Awakening is awesome other than the story, so it also gets 'good.'

[ZemZem]

FE11: Good.

FE12: Good.

FE13: Good.

[Robert Stewart]

They're all terrible. :p

FE11 is okay. It did more to fix up FE1 than most give it credit for, but there's still a lot it didn't fix. For one, the class diversity is still horrible(seriously, why do we need 4 Armour Knights?). And there's the problems that it introduced(like the whole 'kill off characters to unlock Gaiden's, though it's justifiable in the case of 24x). Still enjoyable to play every once in a while.

FE12 is pretty good. It gets points over SD for the simple act of not having to kill off characters for Gaidens. Still, some of my gripes with SD are still true here(like all the freaking cavaliers!), but I still enjoy it more or less. Also, I miss weapon weight. :(

Awakening just bores me. People have pointed out flaws with the story and the gameplay, and I agree with them, but honestly my biggest gripe is just that I can't find any motivation for playing the game(and it doesn't have anything to do with difficulty or the story). Still, it's well made and polished at least.

Edited March 1, 2014 by shinpichu

[Anacybele]

Shadow Dragon turned me off because of being forced to sacrifice units, so I voted mediocre. I haven't played New Mystery of the Emblem. xP

Awakening is great except for the story and boring ass lords, but it does have some of my favorite characters and features in the series, so I give it "Good." :)

[Kinumi]

I'm somewhat surprised at the number of people who haven't played New Mystery :o

I didn't like SD's method of recruiting certain characters, but otherwise it was fine so I voted mediocre.

Awakening's gameplay was nice, but the plot and characters ruined the game for me...

[PKL]

I'm somewhat surprised at the number of people who haven't played New Mystery :o

I didn't like SD's method of recruiting certain characters, but otherwise it was fine so I voted mediocre.

Awakening's gameplay was nice, but the plot and characters ruined the game for me...

I'm not surprised at all. Remember that it was never released here, and perhaps they don't want to put up with having to emulate it.

[Xator Nova]

Shadow Dragon: Reclass is nice, but everything else was mediocre.

Heroes of Light and Shadow: Reclass is nice, well designed maps, challenging difficulty, etc. My third favorite game in the franchise.

Awakening: Production values were AMAZING, and gameplay was very good, as usual. In fact, I like the fact that it could appeal both to starters and to experts. Storywise, it sucked, but I don't play Fire Emblem for its story anyways.

[Quintessence]

FE11: Good.

FE12: Good.

FE13: Good.

this

While shadow dragon and new mystery aren't my fave, I still consider them as good games. I played them and I enjoyed them, they still need several improvements but they aren't games that I would replay one, two or three times.

I did enjoyed awakening, it's story is like the worst in the series imo, but hey let's play without avatar :D. So yeah ggs all.

[eclipse]

Shadow Dragon - good for a short, casual run (no I'm not playing H5). Good.

New Mystery - got to mostly everything Shadow Dragon missed. Great.

Awakening - I get distracted by everything, and the story characters are meh (but all the extra characters from the past are nice). Good.

[shadowofchaos]

Shadow Dragon: "Bad". Honestly, it accomplishes what it needed to... bring the story of Marth to the states. But it is horrendous in its execution in that it just feels like a "port". An outdated battle system that was put on a new handheld console. Better off playing FE3 book 1... or hell even just play the original FE1.

New Mystery of the Emblem: Prologue chapters were a drag to get through. The MU was a "distraction" per say to an already established story... the support conversations were very enjoyable though.

Awakening: I'll be controversial here. I put "Great". I loved the story. Yeah. I went there. But I won't dispute that it's a horrible mess. Being one of the first people to get the game here in Japanese *AND* actually be able to read the story... it was good enough. On the surface, it tries to envoke emotion in the player under the premise of "you are My Unit". The execution is terrible... but considering it was a new experience playing the game for the first time, I loved it. I'm the kind of player that didn't really think about the details much, and that's EXACTLY what Awakening was going for.

I might have been partly responsible for "hyping up" the story before the release of the game... but it was good enough for me. Unlike some people (actually, notorious people) on GameFAQs who absolutely praised the game when they played the Japanese release because the gameplay was so enjoyable... and then turned around and started bashing the game because they were finally able to read how mediocre the story was after the North American release... I accept that the story, without a doubt, falls apart after scrutiny. For goodness sake, even I started having some questions after seeing your "clone" in Chapter 13 on my first playthrough, wondering what the HELL was their significance after being gone for 8 chapters in Japanese.

Not to mention Emelina/Emmeryn and other characters SURVIVING when they should have been dead... it severely diminishes the impact of the story.

But even then, the atmosphere of Chapter 10, and the rain, and the music... was enough to affect me emotionally. I really didn't care about the details... and really that's okay. I cried.

But I also understand that for other people, the attempt at emotional appeal ONLY works if it makes sense as well... and they fail in that regard.

Otherwise, while the characters aren't fully developed outside of their respective supports and gaiden chapters... I enjoyed what they got. I mean while it took a while, those support conversations really made them less "cardboard cut-out" characters.

While the gameplay is broken... it's the "fun" kind of broken.

Another great point is that they really made the difficulty modes pretty darn well. Of course there could be improvements... such as a difficulty between Hard and Lunatic because the jump is just so... siginificant... as well as some tweaks on Lunatic+... But otherwise it's great on that point.

Graphically it's a very nice looking game. Not to mention the Japanese voice set has a few of my absolutely favorite voice actors and actresses.

English voice set was... okay. Just... okay.

My only beef with Awakening is the fans... not the game itself. Like some members on this board or just the fandom in general that don't even give a crap about the game/story/gameplay and just use it as a waifu/husbando/ship simulator.

Edited March 1, 2014 by shadowofchaos

[dondon151]

Shadow Dragon turned me off because of being forced to sacrifice units, so I voted mediocre.

you're not forced to sacrifice units. at all. the game does not say "you will not pass!" if you don't sacrifice unit(s) on modes above NM.

Edited March 1, 2014 by dondon151

[Junkhead]

you're not forced to sacrifice units. at all. the game does not say "you will not pass!" if you don't sacrifice unit(s) on modes above NM.

lawl

[Ema Skye]

I consider FE11 to be the worst because it feels like a game from the 1990s. Very little was changed to the game to make it feel like an actual new game.

FE12 is in a similar situation, but My Unit and the Katarina story save it from being terrible as well.

FE13 is really good. I like the characters and story.

[NinjaMonkey]

Shadow Dragon is complete and utter shit, haven't played New Mystery, and Awakening is good.

Edited March 1, 2014 by NinjaMonkey

[Thor Odinson]

SD is alright. Nothing special but not as godawful as people make it out to be. Could've been better, but hey.

NM fixes most issues that SD has, and though it adds a MU (nope) and isn't officially in English, I found Lunatic to be a really well-designed difficulty mode. Probably my favourite after Thracia.

Awakening has fun gameplay, but the writing is a giant turnoff. good game, but not great.

[BrightBow]

FE11 is a huge disappointment.
Technically simply taking the old game and giving it a visual update and a more userfriendly interface is about as it would have needed for me to say that this is a good game.
What I can't get behind, is taking everything 1 to 1 from the old game, THEN adding a bunch of new mechanics with zero consideration on how this affects the existing game. Most obvious example: Adding the weapon triangle in a game where everyone is using lances.
Plus, the visual upgrade isn't that good. The sprites are fine but the loss of individual pallets makes the characters all look very much the same. And the addition of class change makes it even more obvious.
The rest of the game still holds up for the most part but it is just saddening that the game ended so much worse then it had to be.
However, what little additions there are to the script are impressively effective. But it still stays far behind of what could have been possible. Especially knowing that a FE3 remake was effectively guaranteed to happen.


FE12 features the kind of polishing I was missing in FE11. Now Dragon Knights can not only use Axes but actually do use them. Yay!

Unfortunately with the addition of My Unit, the game's writing quality takes a HUGE dive, as the game focuses more on kissing Chris' ass rather then developing story and characters.
And the addition of instantly moving reinforcements alone drags the game far down. It simply isn't very satisfying when units die to a cheap shot.
That was in Shadow Dragon too but there is a massive difference on how they are used. And not for the better.
And while the maps are generally very well designed, the early ones tend to be more tedious then challenging. It's easy to loose the motivation during that time.
Thankfully the addition of BS Fire Emblem is a huge plus for this game. To actually play mas that are designed around the skills of your units is a nice change of pace.
Unfortunately the downloadable maps can't keep up with that quality.


I am still completely in awe of terrible FE13 is.
Mechanical wise the game is amazingly primitive. The only huge improvement over Shadow Dragon is the addition of buyable Rescue Staffs.

In some cases, it even developed backwards. Support points are once gain collected by gluing units together and new weapon skills will always start at E, rendering them effectively useless.
And what little difference the series had left in classes is killed by the awful stat inflation and Pair Up.
And because of the stat inflation, units will get very fast to the point where nothing can touch them or where they end up being completely useless.
Well, at least the game has unique palettes. So that is one thing it has over Shadow Dragon.

But the biggest problem with this game are the actual maps designs.
There is no variety whatsoever. Every map is the same onslaught of enemies then the map before and the same as the next one. Just that everyone will have gained 1+3 levels.
The game effectively doesn't have strategy as much as it has probability of victory based on munchkining and luck during level ups. Beyond those variations, it's just about going through the motions.

Add in that instantly moving reinforcements are back YET AGAIN and there will be even more unfair losses forcing a restart.

This is the one point that really dragged FE12 down for me. It simply isn't fair because you don't know what spawns, when it spawns and what weapons and skills it has. So it's impossible to prepare for it.

But not only that, unlike every other Fire Emblem, dead units can't really be replaced by newcomers because the game will just stop handing out new units after the halfway point.
Seriously, one half of the game has 24 units, the other half has 4. And one of them is in a paralouge.
So there is little choice but to restart the map and go through that whole ordeal all over again, hoping that there aren't any more scripted surprises left.

It's kinda redundant to say anything else. Even if the game had the best story and the best developed characters, it wouldn't matter since the actual game just isn't entertaining. It's tedious as heck and feels like a chore.

Edited March 1, 2014 by BrightBow