Best and Worst Gameplay in the Series

[Armagon]

As the title of the topic suggests, which game in the series has the best gameplay? Which one has the worst?

For me, i think Fates: Conquest has the best gameplay in the series. There was enough variation in the victory objectives. Pair-up was actually balanced in Fates as a whole, and the fact that the enemy could use it meant you had to really, really think about your strategies. The inclusion of Personal Skills was a nice addition, and it made each unit feel unique. Some of the maps, i really liked as well. Dragon Veins added another small layer of strategy. Of course, it's not perfect. The gameplay suffered a bit from some of the stat debuffs that would happen when you use a Silver weapon and such, discouraging use of more powerful weapons. In addition, some chapters in Conquest were pretty bullshit, like the Wind Tribe Village and the Kitsune Lair. Don't even get me started on Ninja Hell. Forging was handled absolutely terribly in this game.

As for the worst gameplay in the series, i think that belongs to Genealogy of the Holy War. While i like that the maps fit like pieces of a puzzle if you place them over the map of Jugdral, i despise how big they are. It makes getting from point A to point B feel like a slog. This is why i believe that Genealogy of the Holy War has the worst map design in the entire series. I'd rather have Awakening and SoV's bland maps. Hell, i'd rather have Revelation's gimmicky maps. Ch.7 in Genealogy of the Holy War is the worst map in the entire series. Desert maps are terrible. Here's one that's huge. It's also filled with Fenrir-casting Druids. Fenrir has a range of 3-10 in this game. Have fun. There's also cases of really bad game design when it comes to villages. You see, whenever you save a village, whoever saves it gets rewarded 5000 gold. So far, so good. For every house destroyed in the village, you get 500 less gold. Makes sense. Here's the problem. At the start of a chapter, bandits just love starting nearby or on the village. To show you an example

Spoiler

As you can see, that bandit is on top of the village in the top-left corner.

As you can see, none of my three horse units can reach that village in time. This is the prolouge and i'm already fucked out of getting the best reward from that village. I haven't even done anything yet. Unless i use cheats, i can't save that village fully intact. Maybe from a narrative perspective, it fits with the game's dark themes, but from a gameplay perspective, it's just bad game design. You'll be seeing a lot of these "unsavable" villages throughout the game, btw.

This game also has terrible unit balance. The way it works is, units who have either a mount, a Holy Weapon (and by extension, Holy Blood), or the Pursuit Skill are automatically better than units who don't have that. Granted, most characters, especially those in the 2nd Gen, have Holy Blood, but they are still inferior to those who have Holy Blood AND a mount. I also still question Kaga's decision to remove the trade mechanic, replacing it with a pawnshop mechanic that is really just trading, except it takes much longer than it should. Plus, it effectively means that the simple action of trading costs money. Another reason why i think this game has bad gameplay is because, the enemy is capable of switching weapons during the player phase. For example, Generals can use all physical weapons. During the enemy phase, a General attacks with a bow. Then, during the player phase, you attack that same General, only for it to automatically equip it's lance and counter-attack. You can't do that but the enemy can. It's not even fair. And then, as a personal nitpick, i never liked how Lv.20 is the minimum promotion level requirement. It takes too long to get there, especially for Staff-users.

FE4's gameplay does have good things. The introduction of the Weapon Triangle is one, even if it is broken in this game. I wouldn't mind seeing the "conquer multiple castles" thing return either, provided it's done on a smaller scale. Losing in the Arena doesn't mean instant death and i liked that. I also liked using gold to repair weapons. But FE4's bad points in gameplay outweighs it's good ones. I'm not a "gameplay vs story" type of guy, but Genealogy's abysmal gameplay really makes this game my least favorite game in the entire series. I tried playing it again to hopefully get a better opinion, but i just couldn't.

Dishonorable mention for worst gameplay goes to Thracia 776 for bullshit mechanics such as Fatigue, Fog of War (other games had it too but not as bullshit), missable heals, and status effects that last the whole chapter. Thracia 776 is also tied with FE4 for my least favorite FE.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Armagon

[Interdimensional Observer]

2 hours ago, Armagon said:

It takes too long to get there, especially for Staff-users.

Warp is available in Chapter 1, has 10 uses (costs 10K total) and gives 60 EXP a use. Return gives a little more than half the EXP of Warp, comes in the same early chapter, same number of uses, and half the price. Use Dew for money and spam these. 10 Warp uses = 6 levels- that's not bad.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

FE5 had the best gameplay ideas for me but some of them weren't implemented well like Fatigue. Other mechanics like Capturing belong to the best in the entire series. I also like how dismounting was handled and the idea of scrolls to fix growthrates. However the generic caps for each class kill the point of having individual classes.
It was the pretty much the first FE game with the gameplay we still have. It introduced all the mission objectives we have now and other features like trading items (no idea if it existed before 4).
Other parts had great gameplay elements too like ledges from  FE10, Fates's weapon weight system and Echoes's Turnwheel as replacement for casual mode. 
So there's no real FE game with best gameplay for me. If I was forced to vote, then I'd go for FE5 simply because of its ideas. 

[Armagon]

4 hours ago, Reimu Hakurei said:

other features like trading items (no idea if it existed before 4).

Trading existed in every game except FE4. But yeah, you're right on Thracia introducing new mission objectives. Before it was just "seize the castle" (FE1,3,4) or "route the enemy" (FE2). There would occasionally be "kill the commander" but it was rare.

[Dunal]

Radiant Dawn has the best core gameplay IMO but Conquest has the better balancing/execution of its mechanics (while still having great core gameplay). Overall I'd say Conquest. 

Worst would probably be Gaiden. Mostly because it's far too slow/clunky for what the game was trying to accomplish. While Echoes isn't fantastic either, it definitely smoothed things out and enabled the player to speed things up tremendously.

Honourable mentions are FE5 for best and FE1/Awakening/Rev for worst.

Edited August 13, 2017 by DLuna

[Anacybele]

RD for best gameplay, no contest. The cool new features it introduces like ledge mechanics and unique objectives are awesome! It does have balancing/availability issues, but that's really it.

Awakening has the worst. It's too easy, pair-up is too OP, the objectives are nothing but route enemy, etc. So boring.

[Reality]

I went with Genealogy for worst. God it's awful. As the saying goes, it's the best Fire Emblem the first time you play, and the worst the second time. Once you get beyond enjoying the story, it simply has nothing to offer. Low difficulty, tedious, clunky, etc. Gaiden is also quite bad, but at least it can have spurts of novelty factor. But no chapter of The Holy War is really worth replaying, none of them. I would say that Shadows of Valentia was also badly designed, but due to speeding up gameplay, and refining player abilities, it isn't necessarily un-fun to play most of the time like Gaiden is. However, some of its bad maps (eg the postgame) rival or even surpass Gaiden in badness and the inclusion of many gaiden mechanics is baffling considering that the developers would have had hindsight this time.

Awakening is also often criticized and the normal and hard modes are indeed heinously easy. However I think that Lunatic and Lunatic+ can get you to think more than almost anything in FE6-9. Even if the difficulty of the latter focuses more on your pre-planning than on-map positioning. I've gotten over some of my distaste for it. Revelations and Birthright have weakish lunatic modes but they still avoid the pitfalls of FE6-7 Hard mode (EG suddenly letting up on the difficulty between C8-14 as you recruit the bulk of the good units after the long drought during the most interesting part of the game) and don't turn into the exclusive playground for hardcore players that FE11 12 and Awakening do. This helps to mitigate their NM being as bad as Awakening NM. I find they're probably like 7th and 8th best game playwise and not entirely horrible as some people act like they are.

As for good gameplay. New Mystery, FE11, and Conquest are easily the best, although the former rely on their extended difficulties more than Conquest does.  

FE10 is probably the next best thing, but is held behind  due to overly long enemy phases, animation quality, and kind of being front loaded map design wise due to the relatively trivial GM maps and to an extent the endgame as well. Also while Radiant Dawn's maps (especially it's Maniac mode maps) are designed better than earlier games, some of it's unique mechanics are not well designed. Base EXP comes to mind. Thankfully they aren't as totalizing as the mechanics in games like Awakening,Fates,Valentia are, which largely allows the map design to stand on its own. FE5 is close behind it, althogh I find the game to drop a little in quality post-lenster and the gaiden maps are also a low point. Like FE10, it has good map design with a larger "some exceptions" than FE10, but not necessarily good unique mechanics (movement stars seem nice until you start to think of them as an additional "crit" factor)

 

[Jedi]

Anyone who doesn't say Rev has the worst gameplay in the entire franchise is utterly kidding themselves.

[NinjaMonkey]

Best: Radiant Dawn

Worst: Shadow Dragon

[Sire]

Best: Conquest, although it is basically tied with Radiant Dawn. I love both titles - their map design and varied objectives make for some of the best gameplay in the franchise.

Worst: I haven't played anything before Blazing Sword (save for the remakes Shadow Dragon and Shadows of Valentia), so I am saying Revelation is the worst. While the "super happy, recruit everyone" route is fine, the gameplay gimmicks in Revelations are so BS that it put me off of finishing the story. I still have yet to get back to playing Revelations and finishing it.

[Tolvir]

3 hours ago, Jedi said:

Anyone who doesn't say Rev has the worst gameplay in the entire franchise is utterly kidding themselves.

I actually liked Rev. I also think it's far from worst. It has terrible unit balance and some failed concepts that ended up making bad maps, but it's overall gameplay wasn't as bad as something like Gaiden. 

As for worst, I would have to say Holy War. From everything I have seen and read it is literal horse emblem, and balance is thrown out the window. The large maps, while a cool concept, just make everything a slog. 

Second worst would be Awakening. It just took everything Gaiden did, but made it worst due to trivializing it with Pair Up and Robin being as OP as they are. And later on you can add in Galeforce as well. 

Best has to go to Conquest. It achieved being difficult without having false difficulty (inflated stats, skills, and enemy count). Instead it relied on good map design, enemy placement and types, a good mix of different objectives, and some interesting things thrown into the mix like Dragon Veins and things like the pots from Chapter 13 (I think).

second would go to Radiant Dawn. It unfortunately has issues with balance, some false difficulty issues, and a terrible hard mode. Otherwise, it would easily be the best if not for Conquest and it's overall design.

 

[Book Bro]

Worst: Genealo--

4 hours ago, Jedi said:

Anyone who doesn't say Rev has the worst gameplay in the entire franchise is utterly kidding themselves.

Oh right, Revelation exists. I had forcefully blocked it from my memory. 

Anyway, I was going to say FE4 because it's the only game where playing felt like a chore. There are some cool concepts but they aren't really user-friendly, especially the inventory/trading system. I like FE4 a lot, but it's gameplay is not part of why I like it.

But as Jedi pointed out, Revelation exists and that game was absolute trash. Awful map design, awful balancing, awful recruitment times, generally awful. 

Best: Radiant Dawn. I can't think of any time the gameplay felt boring or cheap. The skill system is one of the better ones. The new mechanics were all good additions and didn't make things easier or harder on their own. Conquest is also one of my top gameplay FEs but it has too many cases of cheap difficulty, like Fuga's Wild Ride.

[Azure Sen]

Best: New Mystery of the Emblem. It's got good unit balance, the difficulty feels consistent across the chapters, the reclassing system is interesting and balanced by its hard caps on how many of a certain unit you can have, and the harder difficulties also feel balanced, especially compared to some later games'.

Honorable mentions to Binding Blade and Shadow Dragon.

Worst: Genealogy of the Holy War. Horse Emblem at its worst, terrible unit balance in general, long boring slogs of maps that are cool on paper but are just unfun to actually play, obnoxious and frustrating mechanics abound, the inheritance system is ridiculously and needlessly convoluted...it's just a huge, unfun mess of a game.

Dishonorable mentions to Gaiden and Thracia, who didn't make it in over Genealogy only because they had some interesting experimental ideas.

4 hours ago, Jedi said:

Anyone who doesn't say Rev has the worst gameplay in the entire franchise is utterly kidding themselves.

I'm not inclined to agree. Granted, my opinions on Conquest and Reveation are pretty much the opposite opposite of the more common ones--I don't find Conquest to be the best gameplay of the series and I think it suffers from a lot of the same problems people slam Revelation for, and Revelation is not the worst gameplay in the series (although I wouldn't call it good overall, either) and actually has some really fun chapters.

[Nobody]

41 minutes ago, AzureSen said:

New Mystery of the Emblem. It's got good unit balance

what

please explain

90% of the cast is unusable on lunatic

[Shadow Mir]

7 hours ago, Jedi said:

Anyone who doesn't say Rev has the worst gameplay in the entire franchise is utterly kidding themselves.

I'm not inclined to agree with this.

Anyways, Genealogy for worst gameplay thanks to bloated maps (I honestly believe that Genealogy's map design is the worst in the entire series for this reason), too many obnoxious and frustrating mechanics, and godawful unit balance, all of which render it unplayable. Dishonourable mention to Thracia for fatigue, healing staves being able to miss, permanent status effects and losing units that didn't escape before Leif, and Shadow Dragon for feeling pretty much exactly like FE1, as well as bad unit balance.

As for best, that's harder, because a good deal of games have good core gameplay. Anyways, voted Conquest, with honorable mention to Radiant Dawn.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Levant Mir Celestia

[Slumber]

Best: Take a guess. 

Honorable mention to Conquest, because it shares a lot of what I love about T776. However, despite the extra 15 years of experience and polish, some of Fates' quirks bring it down a little bit for me. 

Worst: Gaiden. For people who have only played Echoes, you have no idea how much that game improved on the original. Its worst sin is that Gaiden is even slower than Genealogy, even though the maps and army sizes are 1/10 the size. It's a pure chore, and one of only two(The other being the original FE1) FEs I couldn't force myself to finish. 

Dishonorable mentions go to Shadow Dragon and Blade of Light, though this one is mostly due to it being the first game in the franchise, so the ideas weren't quite all fleshed out. Hard to hold it against it when it was basically the first of its kind... And Awakening. The game had some decent theory crafting on how to make babies, but in raw game play, it loses a bunch of points for being a huge step back in virtually every way. Went back to only rout/kill leader objectives, maps were the flatest, simplest and most barren maps had been since Gaiden, there were no optional objectives to earn rewards(Aside from getting Donnel in his map), all side chapters were relegated to the meta-game of making babies, unit/class/skill balance was awful, the difficulty scaling was atrocious, and pair-ups was a half-assed idea that still hasn't justified its place in FE's game play for me. I get that a lot of this was done to make the game more accessible, but I don't like what it did to the overall gameplay. 

Edited August 14, 2017 by Slumber

[Jotari]

Not sure about best. I'd jump between Shadow Dragon and Sword of Seals. Really liked Shadows of Valentia too despite some misgivings but I'll need longer for it to sit with me before deciding if it's my favourite.

Unquestionably though, the worst has to be Path of Radiance for me. It's pathetically easy. Money is basically infinite and prepromotes are really good and gained really early. Even if those problems were fixed with Japanese lunatic retained in the localisation, it wouldn't stop the skill system from being very poorly thought out, bosses with literal plot armour, an outright lack of certain S Ranked weapons and mounted superiority.

I actually have a lot of beef with Conquest's difficulty. But in a sort of Catch 22 I don't feel justified complaining about it until I've given it a second playthrough while I don't feel inclined to do a second playthrough because I don't like the gameplay.

On 8/13/2017 at 8:46 AM, Armagon said:

There's also cases of really bad game design when it comes to villages. You see, whenever you save a village, whoever saves it gets rewarded 5000 gold. So far, so good. For every house destroyed in the village, you get 500 less gold. Makes sense. Here's the problem. At the start of a chapter, bandits just love starting nearby or on the village. To show you an example

  Hide contents

As you can see, that bandit is on top of the village in the top-left corner.

As you can see, none of my three horse units can reach that village in time. This is the prolouge and i'm already fucked out of getting the best reward from that village. I haven't even done anything yet. Unless i use cheats, i can't save that village fully intact. Maybe from a narrative perspective, it fits with the game's dark themes, but from a gameplay perspective, it's just bad game design. You'll be seeing a lot of these "unsavable" villages throughout the game, btw.

 

I think having a village like that in the prologue is actually very good game design. It shows the player exactly how villages work in this game as opposed to previous games where bandits one shotted them.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Jotari

[link16hit]

well, I hate FE11 and FE12 for how they calc hit and avoid compared to the Genealogy/GBA/Tellius one. Spd = 2 Av and Lck = 1 av instead they cut in half (so less avoid) AND weapon have higher rate than the GBA one (an iron sword have 100 hit seriously)...oh and weapon triangle is weaker when you are have a low wp level... did I say forest are weaker too? (no defense boost!). Also for getting gaiden chapter you need to kill your characters, which is the stupiest thing ever (FE12 did it right) I didn't really like the modeling clay graphics. They could have use the 4/4 item invetory but noo they keep the 5 item inventory and the shield of seals take a slot...and marth DIDN'T USE the shield in combat unlike FE3. Also the "seize the castle/throne" is annoying, visiting village...only marth can, too much character. separating Str and Mag...

My problem with FE is you have a list of character and in some chapter you can bring like the half or third...the heck. I'm glad Echoes stick like the original (excepting in dungeon)

in FE2/Echoes. I like how you have villager which can access to multiple classes, also you can retreat the map, mage gaining new magic with level! unlimited uses of a weapon. Archer can counter-attack up close, the cap of a stats is character dependent excepting HP, which is 52. 3rd tier.

fyi my favourite top 3 are Echoes, Genealogy and Rekka no ken!

[Florete]

Conquest for best. Honorable mention to Radiant Dawn.

Thracia for worst. It's the only game that just pissed me off too much for me to even want to bother finishing it. Capture, fatigue, dismounting, etc. were all a pain to deal with. This is having played all but the first 3.

11 hours ago, Jedi said:

Anyone who doesn't say Rev has the worst gameplay in the entire franchise is utterly kidding themselves.

All Fates games are more or less saved from having the worst gameplay in the series by the core mechanics alone. Rev is the worst Fates game, but still has better gameplay than some other FE games.

[Armagon]

4 hours ago, Jotari said:

I think having a village like that in the prologue is actually very good game design. It shows the player exactly how villages work in this game as opposed to previous games where bandits one shotted them.

I have to disagree. If they wanted to do that, they could've put that village farther in the chapter and give you a decent amount of time before bandits start tearing apart. So you can have a chance to save it, and if you don't, you get to see the consequences. Having it right out of the gate and "unsavable" means that, no matter what you do, it's impossible to get the best reward out of saving that first village (unless you use cheats). It's bad game design.

3 hours ago, Florete said:

Thracia for worst. It's the only game that just pissed me off too much for me to even want to bother finishing it. Capture, fatigue, dismounting, etc. were all a pain to deal with.

You know what? I agree with this. Out of all the games i've played, Thracia is the only one i gave up on for being bullshit. The only reason i didn't talk about it is because i thought it would be unfair to criticize the gameplay of a game i never finished. But this is an dishonorable mention for worst gameplay. I'll add this to my original post.

 

Edited August 14, 2017 by Armagon

[Jotari]

5 hours ago, Armagon said:

I have to disagree. If they wanted to do that, they could've put that village farther in the chapter and give you a decent amount of time before bandits start tearing apart. So you can have a chance to save it, and if you don't, you get to see the consequences. Having it right out of the gate and "unsavable" means that, no matter what you do, it's impossible to get the best reward out of saving that first village (unless you use cheats). It's bad game design.

You know what? I agree with this. Out of all the games i've played, Thracia is the only one i gave up on for being bullshit. The only reason i didn't talk about it is because i thought it would be unfair to criticize the gameplay of a game i never finished. But this is an dishonorable mention for worst gameplay. I'll add this to my original post.

 

It's impossible to get the best reward but the game shows you that the rewards are scaling and not absolute. If getting the best possible reward was something the game provides in the first chapter then it would not teach the player that this is an element of the game. It's like how in the first game a thief destroys a village south of Marth's starting chapter before gameplay even starts. That shows that thieves can destroy towns. You'll never be able to save that town or get some reward from it because it doesn't exist. It's purpose is to teach the player the mechanics of the game.

[Armagon]

9 minutes ago, Jotari said:

It's impossible to get the best reward but the game shows you that the rewards are scaling and not absolute. If getting the best possible reward was something the game provides in the first chapter then it would not teach the player that this is an element of the game. It's like how in the first game a thief destroys a village south of Marth's starting chapter before gameplay even starts. That shows that thieves can destroy towns. You'll never be able to save that town or get some reward from it because it doesn't exist. It's purpose is to teach the player the mechanics of the game.

Thing is, the game doesn't even tell you that rewards are scaling. I mean, maybe it does in the manual, but the game itself doesn't tell you. But ok, let's say that was the point of the prolouge. What about when it happens in basically every other chapter? In every chapter, there's at least one or two villages that are "unsavable". Like, in Ch.2, there's the set of villages that's impossible to save intact. Why? Because you basically have to blitz there faster than the speed of light, and even when you get there, you have to cross a forest, which is bad for horse emblem (which is what this game is based upon). Sure, Sylvia and Lewen spawn there and help a bit, but you aren't saving all those villages completely intact. There was a case in Ch.5 where there are two villages west of the starting point. And the chapter begins with bandits either near them, or on them. Thus making these villages "unsavable" as well. Unless you use cheats. I shouldn't have to be using cheats.

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, Armagon said:

Thing is, the game doesn't even tell you that rewards are scaling. I mean, maybe it does in the manual, but the game itself doesn't tell you. But ok, let's say that was the point of the prolouge. What about when it happens in basically every other chapter? In every chapter, there's at least one or two villages that are "unsavable". Like, in Ch.2, there's the set of villages that's impossible to save intact. Why? Because you basically have to blitz there faster than the speed of light, and even when you get there, you have to cross a forest, which is bad for horse emblem (which is what this game is based upon). Sure, Sylvia and Lewen spawn there and help a bit, but you aren't saving all those villages completely intact. There was a case in Ch.5 where there are two villages west of the starting point. And the chapter begins with bandits either near them, or on them. Thus making these villages "unsavable" as well. Unless you use cheats. I shouldn't have to be using cheats.

They're not unsaveable though. The maximum theoretical reward is impossible but you can still save the village and gain benefits. Bandits slowly burning villages puts a very tangible (and actually very generous) time limit on saving villages compared to other games. Don't think of it as you're losing something by not getting there fast enough. Think of it as getting there quicker offers higher rewards. It's not like the amount of gold possibly gained versus theoretically gained is even that big.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

FE5 was the most realistic part regarding gameplay. Capturing and dismounting absolutely work well for me. Only Fatigue needed lots of improvement because you were screwed too much by getting tons of important units busted. Echoes brought it back but made it pointless. Also no guaranteed hit and miss was an issue because it made the factor luck more important.
 

[Shadow Mir]

34 minutes ago, Reimu Hakurei said:

FE5 was the most realistic part regarding gameplay. Capturing and dismounting absolutely work well for me. Only Fatigue needed lots of improvement because you were screwed too much by getting tons of important units busted. Echoes brought it back but made it pointless. Also no guaranteed hit and miss was an issue because it made the factor luck more important.
 

Most realistic??? "Only" fatigue needed improvement??? Hah! I dunno about you, but having some units nerfed to the point of near uselessness in indoor maps is pretty questionable game design, and healing staves being able to miss is frigging inexcusable.

Edited August 14, 2017 by Levant Mir Celestia