FE3 over FE11?

[Arn]

As you guys can check on my previous threads I've been trying hard to get into the series, but I have kind of an OCD thing thang to play all games in "release" order, so I'd like to ask(again) which one I should pick.

My real problem is that I think FE11 is fugly, the colors are weird, the art is weirder and the sound is pretty meh, but it does have inproved/faster gameplay, while FE3 have the charming SNES sprites and decent tunes plus it looks like much faster(to finish) than the DS remakes, can you guys help me a bit?

 

I really should've been into this series earlier.

[MCProductions]

FE3 Book 1 has neater mechanics and looks nicer than FE11, but has less content overall and a worse translation.

FE11 is more in line with modern day FE titles than Book 1, but comes across as more generic because of it.

I personally prefer Book 1 myself fwiw for its FE3isms, but I can see why people prefer FE11

[Tolvir]

FE3, I hate the weird semi 3d graphics of SD and New Mystery. I would take the old style over it any day of the week.

[Arn]

Yeah, but Nintendo wanted to go full cheap with the DS remakes it seems.The GBA sprites one of the best sprites of commercial games I've saw and the 3D models of Path of Radiance are pretty good from what I've played, my biggest grip are the colors hough, it seems so weird compared of how colorful FE games are, and the models became even more generic than the games already are.

[Great Dane]

I've been playing both recently, I think FE11 is overall just better since it's a lot more fun to play around with, as it has more content and the reclass feature, which I'm a fan of. Book 1 also cut out certain chapters that I was actually kinda fond of, but on the plus side it made some Book 1 chapters more interesting with the character placement. Really I think both are worth checking out, but if I had to pick one it would be FE11.

[eclipse]

FE11 has a lot of cool features, like being able to turn off the animations so you don't have to look at the battle sprites.  The save point system was the absolute best in-game bookmark system IMO, and should return.

FE3 has ever-so-slightly different maps, and certain characters don't appear in book 1.  It is, however, the root of a really cool meme.

I suggest trying both.

[Arn]

Yeah, I tried both, played 5 chapters of FE3 before I decided it was too easy, then I said "fuck this" and I'm just playing FE11, just finished chapter 2 on H5 after countless soft resets.

The problem is that I got "gamer thumb" after coming back to playing video-games after almost 1 year without touching a controller, so I can't really play for long amount of time.

[Galap]

Aesthetically, 3 is much better IMO. I really didn't like Shadow Dragon's weird rotoscoped CG sprites, or the CG portraits, and the way the units composited onto the map made them look very out of place.

3 however is very elegant. I'm a big fan of 16 bit, and this did it very well. The characters, maps, and backgrounds are all really nice and fit together absolutely seamlessly. 

In terms of the gameplay, I only played maybe the first 10 or so chapters of shadow dragon and then lost interest (I borrowed it from a friend and I think it was actually my first experience with a fire emblem game). I later played 3 and was hooked. I think the art was the biggest difference, but I think the subtle differences in the calculations and other things like forging and combining weapons were for the worse. I definitely found the difficulty lacking in Shadow Dragon as well for some reason. There was enough of a gap between me playing shadow dragon and mystery that I won't be able to cite specific examples of that too much, just tell you what my general feeling is. There is a lot of 'weirdness' (to modern players) in the mechanics of 3, but I think that most of them are actually superior (for example the 1 rn system), or at least good as aspects to set this game apart from the others (growth enhancing star shards, stats cap at 20, funny promotions, etc.)

Plus, FE3 has book 2, which you'd have to get new mystery to play. I never found the game lacking for the cut chapters.

In terms of interface, shadow dragon does have a lot of quality of life improvements, like show you directly if you get the double strike, be able to skip enemy turns, higlight enemy range, etc. That's pretty much the one advantage I'd say it has.

 

On the whole I'd definitely recommend mystery over shadow dragon. It feels like a much more 'pure' experience and I feel there's less hand-holding.

Edited September 3, 2017 by Galap

[Emperor Hardin]

I have a plan on the back burner to create a enhance hack/patch for FE3.

Edited September 6, 2017 by Emperor Hardin

[monkey777]

SFC version, no class change and weapon triangle to mess up the original maps and gameplay. I'd rather have a few annoying maps cut out and less useless characters.

Edited October 31, 2017 by monkey777

[Kysafen]

If you want the experience to be more streamlined, albeit with some questionable aesthetics, choose FE11.

If you want better aesthetics and don't mind the engine being slower (slower=more time playing, mind you), choose FE3. Unless you don't mind using the fast-forward key on the emu.

[King Marth 64]

I would prefer Shadow Dragon, they did brought the characters from the NES version that weren't in Book 1 of Mystery of the Emblem back to this game. New Mystery of the Emblem did the same as well as bringing the characters from Book 1 from Mystery of the Emblem and the rest of the cut characters from the NES version back to the Mystery of the Emblem remake.

They did put the Weapon Triangle, some of the classes, and some of the elements that were from previous Fire Emblem titles into the DS remakes.

Edit: Whoops, I thought this was a new topic until I look at the timestamps.

Edited November 1, 2017 by King Marth 64