Fire Emblem is in a Golden Age

[Thane]

Sure is a lot of unbridled optimism and negativity here. I find myself in the middle of both extremes; while I think fan service has gone too far and that some areas of the series is heading in the wrong direction, to think that completely destroys Fire Emblem as a series is a bit dramatic in my opinion.

I believe there's a tendency to romanticize past titles in this series while forgetting some of their flaws. I don't see myself going back to Gaiden or Binding Blade again on my own volition in a very long time since I simply didn't enjoy them very much as games in general. If Fire Emblem had continued without addressing Binding Blade's faults, I would most likely not have stuck with the series. Likewise I found Blazing Blade to have the worst story until Fates came along and shattered my innocent mind.

On a more positive note, all the recent success led to Fire Emblem Heroes, and I do love seeing some old favorites given voices and some spiffy new artwork.

With any luck, Fire Emblem Switch will combine the better parts of both the new and the old, take itself a bit more seriously, and bring its own unique flair to the series. This E3 promises to be very exciting.

 

Edited May 31, 2018 by Thane

[NekoKnight]

Throw me in for mixed feelings.

Undoubtedly, Fire Emblem is the most popular and profitable it has ever been. What this brings is more attention and funding to the series which is for the best...in theory. On the gameplay front, we have generally been moving forward. New but unpolished gameplay elements introduced in Awakening were largely refined for the release of Fates and map design (for Conquest at least) was improved. Heroes is also a lot of fun with its unique gameplay mechanics, and while I don't think it will or should represent the direction of the core series, I'm glad it exists. SoV is a remake so I will partially pardon its archaic gameplay.

Writing and presentation is where things start to go downhill. Awakening wasn't overtly offensive but the story was by-the-numbers and disjointed. The Fates story was a disaster of conflicting priorities that undermined its themes and is so absorbed in its player  worship, it practically becomes a parody of itself. Heroes barely has a story and SoV's story is quite problematic despite their best efforts.

The real damning thing of modern FE titles is the lack of self-respect they have. All the shallow, base pandering leads to a very uncomfortable product. Just off the top of my head, the series now has children getting married and procreating, fetishised sibling incest, serial killers written off because they're cute and SO MUCH GOD DAMN FANSERVICE. This is a series that, for no other reason than to titillate the player, has the player avatar's sister introduced by focusing on her tits and ass. You can't even make this stuff up.

I want the series to do well, but game after game selling out to a broader "anime fan" audience, makes me teeter between cautious optimism and pessimism.

Edited June 1, 2018 by NekoKnight

[Sunwoo]

I mean

Both the old games and the new games have their positives and negatives, and people will like different things about each. That said, I do have to agree with NekoKnight about some of the things he's said about the newer games. They had the potential to be really good, the problem is that they've decided to cash in on pandering to the player, putting it above all else, to the point where characters who do not-so-good things are not called out because they're "the good guys" and has a very protagonist-centered morality. I do not find games sucking up to the player very fun when said player/protagonist characters do not deserve said sucking up.

Heroes is a phone game that just wants to bring all the characters from the previous games in one place, though, so I can forgive it for not having a story.

[Refa]

In terms of sales, yes.  Most Golden Ages are not defined by sales numbers, though, so that seems to be a rather poor metric to me.

In terms of quality, I would disagree.  Let's disregard plot/characters and Heroes' ethical issues for now, they've been discussed enough.

Awakening has poor map design, an unfun primary mechanic (pair up in Awakening relies to much on randomness to be strategically rewarding), the worst ambush spawns in the series, and bloated game design which exacerbates all of the prior issues and adds a few new ones of its own.

Fates is more well designed (Conquest in particular) but the map design still suffers in Birthright and Revelation.  The My Castle wastes time without adding any meaningful content that the FE9 base didn't have, it had one of the worst forging systems in anything...ever, unlimited weapon uses was a good idea in theory but how they balanced it made many of the weapons suboptimal or too situational for their own good, the final maps don't let you save for some god forsaken reason (this is very minor and isn't something that detracts significantly from the quality of the game, I just...hate it so much), and the stat inflation (which was much worse in Awakening, to be fair) is pretty obnoxious because it means underleveled units start off/drop off much worse/quicker than they would in previous titles for minimal strategic benefit.  Especially annoying was how it imposed soft stat inflation with the introduction of enemy debuffs, which in practice meant you either had to ORKO enemies with debuff skills (so they didn't go off) or have the stats to be able to tank said debuffs.  Not very interesting at all.

Heroes is a grind fest, most of its gameplay is in service of getting more orbs in order to get more characters in order to play the game more.  The character building is surprisingly robust and deep but 1) locked behind a pay wall 2) most of the content you build your characters for is not particularly interesting in the long run.

I don't know shit about Warriors other than Jedi likes it lol.  It's probably fine for people who likes Warriors games, with my only complaint being the pretty common one about the character choice for the game.

[SullyMcGully]

8 hours ago, Refa said:

In terms of sales, yes.  Most Golden Ages are not defined by sales numbers, though, so that seems to be a rather poor metric to me.

In terms of quality, I would disagree.  Let's disregard plot/characters and Heroes' ethical issues for now, they've been discussed enough.

Awakening has poor map design, an unfun primary mechanic (pair up in Awakening relies to much on randomness to be strategically rewarding), the worst ambush spawns in the series, and bloated game design which exacerbates all of the prior issues and adds a few new ones of its own.

Fates is more well designed (Conquest in particular) but the map design still suffers in Birthright and Revelation.  The My Castle wastes time without adding any meaningful content that the FE9 base didn't have, it had one of the worst forging systems in anything...ever, unlimited weapon uses was a good idea in theory but how they balanced it made many of the weapons suboptimal or too situational for their own good, the final maps don't let you save for some god forsaken reason (this is very minor and isn't something that detracts significantly from the quality of the game, I just...hate it so much), and the stat inflation (which was much worse in Awakening, to be fair) is pretty obnoxious because it means underleveled units start off/drop off much worse/quicker than they would in previous titles for minimal strategic benefit.  Especially annoying was how it imposed soft stat inflation with the introduction of enemy debuffs, which in practice meant you either had to ORKO enemies with debuff skills (so they didn't go off) or have the stats to be able to tank said debuffs.  Not very interesting at all.

Heroes is a grind fest, most of its gameplay is in service of getting more orbs in order to get more characters in order to play the game more.  The character building is surprisingly robust and deep but 1) locked behind a pay wall 2) most of the content you build your characters for is not particularly interesting in the long run.

I don't know shit about Warriors other than Jedi likes it lol.  It's probably fine for people who likes Warriors games, with my only complaint being the pretty common one about the character choice for the game.

But Refa, you forgot Echoes! Honestly, Echoes salvaged my opinion of modern FE. It shows they still appreciate some of the classic mechanics (though maybe Echoes appreciates those re-used map designs a little too much). I feel like I can still support FE as a series that can appeal to all of its fans, not just those from one time period or another. 

[thecrimsonflash]

1 hour ago, SullyMcGully said:

But Refa, you forgot Echoes! Honestly, Echoes salvaged my opinion of modern FE. It shows they still appreciate some of the classic mechanics (though maybe Echoes appreciates those re-used map designs a little too much). I feel like I can still support FE as a series that can appeal to all of its fans, not just those from one time period or another. 

SoV means nothing in the greater scheme of modern fire emblem, it was a remake and therefore was only going to be what the original game was.

[BrightBow]

39 minutes ago, thecrimsonflash said:

SoV means nothing in the greater scheme of modern fire emblem, it was a remake and therefore was only going to be what the original game was.

Honestly, even I don't think it's quite that simple. The DS remakes were very different from the way Echoes was handled. They seemed to have changed mechanics with no consideration for how they would affect the game. Most notably they added the weapon triangle in a game where almost all enemies where using lances. And New Mystery most certainly wasn't above exploiting that game for embarrassing Avatar asskissing.

Echoes also displayed an attention for detail that the DS remakes were sorely missing. It has all those little things from the original game, like the ability to kill the final boss with Nosferatu or the Dreadfighter loop. They even included the cheat code for the soundtest. Shadow Dragon and New Mystery couldn't even be bothered to give Marth a different set of sprites for when he is holding the Fire Emblem, like the original games did.

So I'd say Echoes faithfulness is not something that could have been taken for granted. Somebody really must have cared for it to turn out the way it did.

Edited June 1, 2018 by BrightBow

[Refa]

10 hours ago, SullyMcGully said:

But Refa, you forgot Echoes! Honestly, Echoes salvaged my opinion of modern FE. It shows they still appreciate some of the classic mechanics (though maybe Echoes appreciates those re-used map designs a little too much). I feel like I can still support FE as a series that can appeal to all of its fans, not just those from one time period or another. 

Yeah, I really like Echoes.  It's not perfect (could have fixed more issues from the original game, a lot of the story changes felt like they detracted more than they added, etc.) but overall it was good and I'd be happy to buy more games like it.

EDIT BTW, fuck FE's DLC.  It's so bad, even in Echoes.

[Slumber]

42 minutes ago, Refa said:

Yeah, I really like Echoes.  It's not perfect (could have fixed more issues from the original game, a lot of the story changes felt like they detracted more than they added, etc.) but overall it was good and I'd be happy to buy more games like it.

EDIT BTW, fuck FE's DLC.  It's so bad, even in Echoes.

Fire Emblem's DLC has gotten worse with each game.

Awakening had some fun challenge maps and some grinding maps, and had probably the best writing of the game with the Future Past DLC. 

Fates tried to do the exact thing, except the challenge maps weren't fun, grinding was pointless and difficult in the Fates DLC and generally much easier to do through MyCastle, and nobody gave a shit about the awful kid units and the Derp Realms, so its equivalent of Future Past went over like a racist redneck doing stand-up at the Apollo. 

Echoes managed to go a step further and more or less just made the DLC shit that was already in the game, barring the Starsphere shards, which, along with the Overclasses, are pointless when the Post Game is doable without them and there are NO challenge maps or online system to put them to use. Its prequel story DLC was fine, as was the inclusion of the Cipher characters, but for like, half a dozen maps to be worth it when all the DLC costs more than the base game? Come on, IS. 

I dread to see what FE16's DLC is. 

Edited June 2, 2018 by Slumber

[Jotari]

4 hours ago, Slumber said:

Fire Emblem's DLC has gotten worse with each game.

Awakening had some fun challenge maps and some grinding maps, and had probably the best writing of the game with the Future Past DLC. 

Fates tried to do the exact thing, except the challenge maps weren't fun, grinding was pointless and difficult in the Fates DLC and generally much easier to do through MyCastle, and nobody gave a shit about the awful kid units and the Derp Realms, so its equivalent of Future Past went over like a racist redneck doing stand-up at the Apollo. 

Echoes managed to go a step further and more or less just made the DLC shit that was already in the game, barring the Starsphere shards, which, along with the Overclasses, are pointless when the Post Game is doable without them and there are NO challenge maps or online system to put them to use. Its prequel story DLC was fine, as was the inclusion of the Cipher characters, but for like, half a dozen maps to be worth it when all the DLC costs more than the base game? Come on, IS. 

I dread to see what FE16's DLC is. 

Fe16 will jarringly end after beating the Zephiel expy, confronting the Idoun expy will be DLC.

[henrymidfields]

I'm really conflicted about the cutrent state. Sure, its great that we've got FE Heroes to celebrate the franchise and the characters, amd to help publicise the series more. And I have to agree that past titles like Binding Blade had their own problems. However, I have to agree with the dissenting people here who said that the story/character -writing in particular hasn't been up to scratch. The well-detailed characters (at least by Nintendo standards) and backstory was what brought me to FE with Binding Blade, even if the actual story was basic. The huge focus on politics is the reason why I'm getting a GC-compatible Wii to play the Tellius games, and why I want the Jugdral games to be localised. Where was all of that in Awakening or Fates? At least the earlier entries and their inadequacies are more excusable because they were just starting out. Awakening/Fates have no such excuses.

Edited June 21, 2018 by henrymidfields