Were the Fire Emblem games diluted as the series continued and where do they go now?

[demondance]

Its really more about tone than complexity. There's lots of straightforward storytelling and relatively one dimensional characters in old FE. The GBA ones were less pratfall-y but they could've been adaptations of fairy tales or something. Not exactly gritty and complex.

As long as they don't follow up Three Houses with another Fates I think most people will be happy. Three Houses itself already rolls back on some of the more egregious wackiness. It feels more in line with the rest of the series than something like Fates as it is, and it's set against some of the most complex lore in the series.

 

[neonneongod]

Awakening was actually done by 8-4 and not Treehouse, but your comment still holds true. The 3DS games leaned a lot more comedic in their optional missions and supports.

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yeah, it was jarring coming from the by-the-books FE fare that the DS games were.

Comedy is the most effective way for you to connect with characters when you have so little time to develop them (Supports).

It is one of the reasons why the MCU is so successful, for example.

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A. They did a perfectly good job of developing characters before that point without all the shenanigans. and
B. The series was in no way devoid of humor before awakening, but it was done in a manner that (at least imo) felt a lot more in line with the series' tone and setting.

 

[Glio]

yeah, it was jarring coming from the by-the-books FE fare that the DS games were.

A. They did a perfectly good job of developing characters before that point without all the shenanigans. and
B. The series was in no way devoid of humor before awakening, but it was done in a manner that (at least imo) felt a lot more in line with the series' tone and setting.

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Quite the opposite. You could complete the games that because of how the supports were written and the difficulty to see them, you barely knew who you had completed the game with.

Three conversations is no way to meet a three-dimensional character. If you have to work with that limitation, better adapt to it.

 

[the_wart]

A. They did a perfectly good job of developing characters before that point without all the shenanigans. and

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I don't understand how anyone could possibly think this is true. The only characters with more than a handful of lines were the Lords, and the Lords were uniformly personality black holes.

Comedy is the most effective way for you to connect with characters when you have so little time to develop them (Supports).

It is one of the reasons why the MCU is so successful, for example.

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Exactly this. Awakening characters certainly weren't any deeper than those in previous FEs (nor vice versa), but the way they hammed up their defining traits made them memorable and entertaining. The old FE casts are piles of soggy cardboard cutouts; the Awakening cast is dudes in banana costumes dancing on the side of the highway. I dunno if either are good, but I know which one I'd rather spend time watching.

 

[Quinton]

Just give me more in the vein of Three Houses. I'm a believer now.

 

[Vampirolol]

I was dreaming yesterday about a Fire Emblem with Minolith Soft supervising story and overworld.

 

[Lunar15]

I think Genealogy is the result of Kaga (the original director) going way off the deep end with ambition. So much so it got him fired later, and I think the team was worn out by the development of that game. The Irony here is that Genealogy is where the whole dating/children aspect came from originally.

I think the directors looked at the ever declining sales of Fire Emblem from 6-10 and realized that the material was a bit dry. They pushed focus to the supports and lessened the amount of surrounding lore in order to just simply highlight the characters. Awakening was intentionally a collection of tropes and specific references to old games as they viewed it as kind of the "last hurrah" of the series. If anything, the marriage was more an incentive for Japanese fans of FE4 to come back than only for casual players looking to play matchmaker, but it was ultimately a hit with both.

In my opinion, Fates is the true outlier, and it's clear that ambition just bit them in the ass. They felt like they had to cater to what made Awakening possible leading to things that didn't make a lot of sense, and them pushing for three routes ended up getting underbaked as they kept making changes to the story all the way to near the end of development. But even then, Fates was full of concessions to people who had problems with Awakening, as it made Conquest which stripped out the grinding and focused on harder maps with battle conditions and kept the whole thing a linear progression.

Echoes was them trying to recreate a very specific feeling from FE2, but due to time constraints they had to fall back on the old maps which aren't great. They wanted to make new maps, but just couldn't accomplish it. I think their writers struggled a little bit with updating FE2's story which had some troubles.

With Three Houses, I think they realized what went wrong with Fates story. They realized that they really just wanted to recreate the feel of the older game stories as well as Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so they just got the team who works on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games to write it. And it was a good call. IS makes a lot of missteps, but I really do think they're aware of the different wants from the fanbase and are trying to cater wherever possible.

 

[Renna Hazel]

I was rereading some of the synopsis from the earlier games and man there is just so much political intrigue, backstabbing, etc there and it seems that started from Awakening those elements were diluted in favor of (admittedly, I do like these anime aspects to many peoples chagrin) of anime aesthetic, shipping and less complicated storylines.

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Do these things really have anything to do with each other? I don't think the visual style has anything to do with the story changes. Also Fire Emblem has always looked like an anime.

 

[Glio]

Exactly this. Awakening characters certainly weren't any deeper than those in previous FEs (nor vice versa), but the way they hammed up their defining traits made them memorable and entertaining. The old FE casts are piles of soggy cardboard cutouts; the Awakening cast is dudes in banana costumes dancing on the side of the highway. I dunno if either are good, but I know which one I'd rather spend time watching.

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Yep. If you're going to have so little time to work with a character, at least make it memorable.

Luckily Three Houses has found a way to give more importance to the secondary characters in the story and that there are more ways to interact with them. The fact that so many characters could die or not get to recruit them in the old Fire Emblem was a huge narrative limitation.

 

[SubvertedTrope]

I don't understand how anyone could possibly think this is true. The only characters with more than a handful of lines were the Lords, and the Lords were uniformly personality black holes.



Exactly this. Awakening characters certainly weren't any deeper than those in previous FEs (nor vice versa), but the way they hammed up their defining traits made them memorable and entertaining. The old FE casts are piles of soggy cardboard cutouts; the Awakening cast is dudes in banana costumes dancing on the side of the highway. I dunno if either are good, but I know which one I'd rather spend time watching.

Click to shrink...

Lol at this revisionist history, the days of truly great characters and relationships like Jill/Lethe, Lyn/Wallace, Mist/Anyone may be long over but it doesn't mean they didn't exist. Nowadays they would just repeat their one character trait and have a shallow copy paste "conversation".

FE is a perverse parody of it's former self, I would have preferred to see it end than being defiled by fates.

I think this is the first time I've seen anyone defending the grotesque character writing of "I am this one trope" as memorable or entertaining, let me guess, first FE was awakening.

 

[Vault]

The story telling in Awaking and Fates was so embarrassingly bad I thought the series was dead.

Three Houses gives me hope for the series future

 

[Glio]

Lol at this revisionist history, the days of truly great characters and relationships like Jill/Lethe, Lyn/Wallace, Mist/Anyone may be long over but it doesn't mean they didn't exist. Nowadays they would just repeat their one character trait and have a shallow copy paste "conversation".

FE is a perverse parody of it's former self, I would have preferred to see it end than being defiled by fates.

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Revisionism is pretending that three conversations of an optional character made a great character development.

Of course, Wallace had many character traits, like being a loyal warrior who loves to fight and ...

Being bald counts as a personality?

 

[Disclaimer]

Lol at this revisionist history, the days of truly great characters and relationships like Jill/Lethe, Lyn/Wallace, Mist/Anyone may be long over but it doesn't mean they didn't exist. Nowadays they would just repeat their one character trait and have a shallow copy paste "conversation".

FE is a perverse parody of it's former self, I would have preferred to see it end than being defiled by fates.

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Uh... have you even played Three Houses? It overall has the deepest supports and characterization in the entire series, and it isn't close. Why would you "rather see FE end"? Fates was a huge outlier of a misstep.

 

[kvetcha]

This is good to know. I'll try Auto-ing through the next couple months and see if the pace clicks with me a little more better and that hopefully I don't feel like I'm missing out on valuable character progression. Thanks!


Everyone's allowed to like different parts of the game to different degrees. I can especially see how you could be more positive on the social gameplay if you're more receptive to that feeling of satisfaction that comes from the "grinding" treadmill where you're constantly making a little bit more and more progress filling meters and working toward long term goals. That sort of component exists in all sorts of games large and small nowadays, including AAA games like God of War - I just personally think that it's not implemented nearly as well in this game compared to others.

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Fair. I'm not suggesting it couldn't be more elegantly entwined into the battle systems, but even as is it's pretty satisfying. Always room for improvement.

 

[the_wart]

Lol at this revisionist history, the days of truly great characters and relationships like Jill/Lethe, Lyn/Wallace, Mist/Anyone may be long over but it doesn't mean they didn't exist. Nowadays they would just repeat their one character trait and have a shallow copy paste "conversation".

FE is a perverse parody of it's former self, I would have preferred to see it end than being defiled by fates.

I think this is the first time I've seen anyone defending the grotesque character writing of "I am this one trope" as memorable or entertaining, let me guess, first FE was awakening.

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I really don't think I'm the person doing the revising here. And in any case 3H has the actual substantive relationships between characters that you say the previous games had, so... maybe you should give it a shot?

Also maybe recalibrate your level of investment in a videogame series if you find yourself talking about it like it's the sacred text of your people. You'd think we were talking about the fucking Torah.

 

[Soulflarz]

FE is not as deep as people want to pretend it was.

 

[Horohorohoro]

Awakening was no different from your average Fire Emblem plot. Fates is really the only FE game that has a plot that's bad, the rest are either serviceable or good. Three Houses is definitely the best plot there's been.

 

[banshee150]

Is Fates really worse than Awakening? My memory is a bit hazy but i felt more satisfied after finishing the trio of the Fate storylines compared to Awakening...

 

[Horohorohoro]

Is Fates really worse than Awakening? My memory is a bit hazy but i felt more satisfied after finishing the trio of the Fate storylines compared to Awakening...

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Yes, Fates has such wonderful plot points as.

• Make our father sit on this throne so he can turn into an evil slime person
• Look into this crystal ball that breaks after one use that we only use in this route to see that your dad is evil
• Let's fight an entire war without killing anyone
• Corrin convinces everyone to jump off a cliff because you can't speak about this hidden world for some reason
• Lol none of these routes matter because revelation is the happy ending!
• I know Elise sacrificed herself to tell me not to fight but we need to fight!
• Let's throw our babies into the hyperbolic time chamber so we can make child soldiers!
• World building is so small that the Fates continent doesn't even have a name
• Nohr is obviously evil so even the Nohrian game has you basically fighting against Nohr

Fates apparently was written by a manga author who wrote hundreds of pages of plot, but IS only used ten pages.

​

​

 

[Deleted member 49438]

Revisionism is pretending that three conversations of an optional character made a great character development.

Of course, Wallace had many character traits, like being a loyal warrior who loves to fight and ...

Being bald counts as a personality?

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Honestly, supports have only improved, but it's fine to acknowledge the weaknesses of each era's Supports system & how they've been improved in Three Houses.

GBA had some interesting supports, but you were limited in that you could only support 5 times with each character in the game. You did feel more invested in them though, because you could only reach A-Rank support with 1 other character & you had to spend time near each other in battle to raise the points. Supports ranged from lost siblings reuniting, people's dark pasts, mild romance, or people just goofing around, but largely they fit the character's & games tone/personality.

By contrast, Awakening let's you support with pretty much every other character in the cast repeatedly without limitations. However, because of the nature of the game, the support conversations were railroaded towards a relationship (this generally applies to Fates as well). This was a turn-off for many people, as they could get old quick. But the huge increase in options, as well as not having to replay the game over & over again to experience all the support conversations was a welcome change.

The issue with both the Pre-3DS & 3DS era games is that most characters only have a few characters they have quality support options with, and the rest of are just kind of fluff, and rarely memorable. Just like you can say for Wallace that being a bald general isn't a personality, I can say I don't remember a thing about Gaius other than he likes candy. Characters have been & will always probably be, somewhat tropey (FE indluges in their own tropes like the Red & Green Knights). I will say that supports in Echoes are pretty good, but the smaller & tighter cast of characters will help with that.

I think it's most important to just be happy that Three Houses gave us the ability to support between most of our units & quality ones at that. Characters have reasonably deep backstories fleshed out in supports, with the occasional humor depending on the pairing. Overall they fit the tone of this game way better than the 3DS entries did with theirs, and with way more substance than any of the previous games. Overall I am just happy where we ended up.

 

[SubvertedTrope]

I really don't think I'm the person doing the revising here. And in any case 3H has the actual substantive relationships between characters that you say the previous games had, so... maybe you should give it a shot?

Also maybe recalibrate your level of investment in a videogame series if you find yourself talking about it like it's the sacred text of your people. You'd think we were talking about the fucking Torah.

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Yeah I'm so invested in the series I don't care about the new one, sure. I just came across a post from someone pretending they knew what they were talking about that's all, but stay mad if you want.

 

[BurritoBushido]

People exaggerate a lot with the old Fire Emblem plots as if they were Game of Thrones or something.

"Oh, are you telling me that the bad-looking ruler is BAD?"

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I love Fire Emblem to death, I'm always super engaged in the plot and characters, and it has always struck me as "generic fantasy-ass fantasy." Years after I've played them I couldn't tell you a damn thing that happens in those stories. Only Echoes and so far Three Houses stand out to me as having superbly engaging writing and characters, and that might even just be a bias of how recent they are and how great the full voice acting is.

 

[spam musubi]

If going forward they decide to double down on the social aspects in between missions, they've gotta 1) improve the quality of the writing, quest design, and level design of the social space tremendously, and 2) weave it around the battles in a much better paced way. Right now it just drags the pace down considerably because honestly everything about the social space is pretty much awful, but it feels like you've gotta put time into it if you want to keep everyone at their best for when the battles do come.

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This. The social aspects just feel behind other games that do stuff like this and feel shoehorned in without much care.

 

[HylianSeven]

Quite the opposite. You could complete the games that because of how the supports were written and the difficulty to see them, you barely knew who you had completed the game with.

Three conversations is no way to meet a three-dimensional character. If you have to work with that limitation, better adapt to it.

Click to shrink...

I'd argue in Awakening and Fates I felt like I knew the characters less so than in previous games, since they would constantly talk about one thing and one thing only. Kellam would only talk about how no one could see him. Tharja talked about putting curses on Robin. Sumia would always talk about being clumsy, this applied for just about every single character in the games.

 

[Exist 2 Inspire]

I honestly wish somebody would just make a straight up Social Sim in that kind of setting and that scale without any kind of combat at all lol.

 

[Lunar15]

I love the old game, but, outside of a handful, a lot of supports were pretty dull in 6-10. I agree that I wasn't super fond of the supports in awakening in fates as they had a little less to do with the world, but the writing was considerably less dry. I think this is why people like Echoes/Three Fates: The supports are a little more grounded but the writing is way less dry than it used to be.

And single motive supports have always been a thing. Ilyana, Mia, etc. People liked those characters, so they really just double downed with Awakening and Fates.

 

[Drax]

I think Genealogy is the result of Kaga (the original director) going way off the deep end with ambition. So much so it got him fired later, and I think the team was worn out by the development of that game. The Irony here is that Genealogy is where the whole dating/children aspect came from originally.

I think the directors looked at the ever declining sales of Fire Emblem from 6-10 and realized that the material was a bit dry. They pushed focus to the supports and lessened the amount of surrounding lore in order to just simply highlight the characters. Awakening was intentionally a collection of tropes and specific references to old games as they viewed it as kind of the "last hurrah" of the series. If anything, the marriage was more an incentive for Japanese fans of FE4 to come back than only for casual players looking to play matchmaker, but it was ultimately a hit with both.

In my opinion, Fates is the true outlier, and it's clear that ambition just bit them in the ass. They felt like they had to cater to what made Awakening possible leading to things that didn't make a lot of sense, and them pushing for three routes ended up getting underbaked as they kept making changes to the story all the way to near the end of development. But even then, Fates was full of concessions to people who had problems with Awakening, as it made Conquest which stripped out the grinding and focused on harder maps with battle conditions and kept the whole thing a linear progression.

Echoes was them trying to recreate a very specific feeling from FE2, but due to time constraints they had to fall back on the old maps which aren't great. They wanted to make new maps, but just couldn't accomplish it. I think their writers struggled a little bit with updating FE2's story which had some troubles.

With Three Houses, I think they realized what went wrong with Fates story. They realized that they really just wanted to recreate the feel of the older game stories as well as Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so they just got the team who works on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms games to write it. And it was a good call. IS makes a lot of missteps, but I really do think they're aware of the different wants from the fanbase and are trying to cater wherever possible.

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Also, to compount this at the time some of the more popular characters of the Tellius era at the time were the Mias and the Ilyanas's of the world.

 

[Linde]

fates is far worse than awakening in terms of story
awakening isn't completely terrible, it's just hard to take it seriously some times. I think I need to replay it to really discuss it because the story wasn't memorable whatsoever.
I think there is some truth to a discrepancy in story scale and depth between the console and handheld entries. though the GBA games still give me that history book feeling where you're fighting a war between different kingdoms and evils, all with proper motivations. they're just a little more lighthearted generally. the awful colour palette definitely lends a hand in that.

it's still absolutely hilarious that fatesland doesn't have a name

 

[Hailinel]

Yes, but /shrug. I'm starting to make peace with the games just being for a different audience now that I haven't loved one in almost a decade.

Diluted is also the wrong word - the focus is just elsewhere. They've added plenty to make up for it - arguably too much since I think Three Houses is bloated as hell, having turned a couple menus into hours of content that functionally does the same thing (okay, maybe diluted is the right word :P).

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That new content is what makes Three Houses special, though. It offers a sense of place and interaction that the other games just lack. That's not to say that earlier games are worse, but the way the game is structured offers more to the world and lore than we would get from a series of battles stitched together with battle preparation menus.

 

[Oreiller]

Fire Emblem never got intricate stories, it's always been pretty basic (note: haven't played 4 or 5 yet).

 

[the_wart]

I'd argue in Awakening and Fates I felt like I knew the characters less so than in previous games, since they would constantly talk about one thing and one thing only. Kellam would only talk about how no one could see him. Tharja talked about putting curses on Robin. Sumia would always talk about being clumsy, this applied for just about every single character in the games.

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Oh for sure, but you would at least know that one thing about them. You could easily go through the old FEs not knowing a single distinguishing characteristic about 99% of the characters. Ultra fans could go out of their way to seek out those handful of supports with more substance, but I think most people were just barely cognizant that supports existed.

 

[Ceadeus]

The only thing I dislike about three house is the anime style and romance.

I just can't stand it. Are Japanese so lonely they need to put romance in anything virtual they can?

What a contrast, the opening cutscene is an epic battle that hype the fuck up, then next scene is a green haired preteen princess that speak with her 5 years old voice. Then you meet the crew and I'm like, wow none of them look like bad ass knight. Looks like they all came out from a fashion show with their pinky cheek.

 

[StrangeRoboMemory]

The stories were never that complex. Most of the recent stories have been no better or worse than the old stuff.

If there's a change that has caused me to bounce off the series, it's the pairing/shipping/love side stuff. The emphasis on romance has been an extreme turn-off for me. I could barely stomach it in the 3DS games, and now it's gone nuclear. Three Houses looks like it was specifically created to not appeal to me.

The series doesn't seem to be for me any longer, which is too bad, but I'll always have the old games.

 

[Drax]

Awakening had a really weak second arc, and imho its villians are lacking.

It also was a fast paced game, which feth is the complete opposite.

 

[Hailinel]

The only thing I dislike about three house is the anime style and romance.

I just can't stand it. Are Japanese so lonely they need to put romance in anything virtual they can?

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Was this really necessary to say?

 

[Deleted member 49438]

If there's a change that has caused me to bounce off the series, it's the pairing/shipping/love side stuff. The emphasis on romance has been an extreme turn-off for me. I could barely stomach it in the 3DS games, and now it's gone nuclear. Three Houses looks like it was specifically created to not appeal to me.

Click to shrink...

The romance & shipping mechanics have been significantly scaled back in Three Houses so that they're basically just classic GBA supports. You get to choose one significant other for your MC, but are given the option to choose no one if that's what you prefer. You may have already made up your mind about the game, but I did want to at least let you know about this.

 

[Kino]

The stories were never that complex. Most of the recent stories have been no better or worse than the old stuff.

If there's a change that has caused me to bounce off the series, it's the pairing/shipping/love side stuff. The emphasis on romance has been an extreme turn-off for me. I could barely stomach it in the 3DS games, and now it's gone nuclear. Three Houses looks like it was specifically created to not appeal to me.

The series doesn't seem to be for me any longer, which is too bad, but I'll always have the old games.

Click to shrink...

I'm a series newcomer and I hate romance/dating sim stuff. I love three houses. The support convos feel organic and bring a lot of drama and personality to the characters. It does s good job of making you feel like a homeroom teacher growing closer with your class.

 

[Horohorohoro]

The only thing I dislike about three house is the anime style and romance.

I just can't stand it. Are Japanese so lonely they need to put romance in anything virtual they can?

What a contrast, the opening cutscene is an epic battle that hype the fuck up, then next scene is a green haired preteen princess that speak with her 5 years old voice. Then you meet the crew and I'm like, wow none of them look like bad ass knight. Looks like they all came out from a fashion show with their pinky cheek.

Click to shrink...

None of them are bad-ass knights yet, though. That's the point.

Also, the romance is literally relegated to the very end of the game and paired ending which every game with supports had had.

Also also, every FE game is anime.

Also also also, low-key (or high-key) kinda racist sounding there.

 

[Drax]

The romance & shipping mechanics have been significantly scaled back in Three Houses so that they're basically just classic GBA supports. You get to choose one significant other for your MC, but are given the option to choose no one if that's what you prefer. You may have already made up your mind about the game, but I did want to at least let you know about this.

Click to shrink...

to be honest ... its kinda worse in feth, there' s alot of people noticing the tonal whiplash from c/b then suddenly a is incredibly different in some supports, but at the same time. Supports were pretty much impossible to get in the GBA days, so people really didn't notice how FE7 in particular was a shipping simulator to make all the kids in FE6.

 

[Neoleo2143]

The character writing is the strongest it's ever been holistically in the FE series with Three Houses. Supports make up the vast majority of the scenes players will see, so it's good that a lot of them cover plenty of fun mini-stories that also lace and foreshadow the main plot, add all the other details about the characters, how they respond to events, in-map actions as well as using paralogues to progress character important stories, and three houses is one of the most well-rounded casts in the series. Even the more one-note characters have very tangible progression thanks to the time skip. On top of that, the world-building is the best in the series. Even other calendar set up games like Persona probably have less ambitious character writing because you're stuck in the perspective of your single avatar and that limits the number of smaller stories they do with a single character and the people each character interact with (for example, Ryuji and Ann's relationship isn't explored much)

The "diluted" problem comes with the lessened complexity in map design. The series has never come back to the complexity of maps in FE5, the base took away having to purchase items and talk to townsfolk on the map itself. Encounter design is the heart of the FE games, and FE5 is the most resonant showing of it, which is kind of pity for the series all these years later that with all the advances in technology, they couldn't match a SNES game in that area.

 

[Hailinel]

to be honest ... its kinda worse in feth, there' s alot of people noticing the tonal whiplash from c/b then suddenly a is incredibly different in some supports, but at the same time. Supports were pretty much impossible to get in the GBA days, so people really didn't notice how FE7 in particular was a shipping simulator to make all the kids in FE6.

Click to shrink...

Unless I'm mistaken, isn't it impossible to get A supports before the time skip in Three Houses?

 

[Eumi]

The stories were never that complex. Most of the recent stories have been no better or worse than the old stuff.

If there's a change that has caused me to bounce off the series, it's the pairing/shipping/love side stuff. The emphasis on romance has been an extreme turn-off for me. I could barely stomach it in the 3DS games, and now it's gone nuclear. Three Houses looks like it was specifically created to not appeal to me.

The series doesn't seem to be for me any longer, which is too bad, but I'll always have the old games.

Click to shrink...

Shipping has been paired down to next to nothing in Three Houses. There's one optional conversation in the entire game that you can have about a romance, after the last map.

Either you've been misinformed, or you've just assumed something about the game without checking.

 

[Dorkmgl]

I'm sure they had their hands full returning to console since a lot of the rumors are saying that the bulk of developers on the game weren't even NIS so they clearly needed manpower for their small team.

The monastery was a neat idea and I feel like the calendar is a good evolution for the game. When compared to games like Persona its still very weak, but Persona has had quite a few games to iterate on. I think if they try another game with the calendar system we will see vast improvements. Especially since we know NIS collects tons of data on what people do for various activities.

One thing that has always bugged me about Fire Emblem was the "time" felt arbitrary. Now we have names of days and dates and everything feels so much more legitimately chronological. You have a real sense for how time is passing between events and even simple activities.

 

[Drax]

Unless I'm mistaken, isn't it impossible to get A supports before the time skip in Three Houses?

Click to shrink...

yes, but some of the b supports are gated to post time skip as well. Romance Spoilers ahead

Spoiler

You will have a alot of confessions in the a supports so its kinda weird especially when the game picks for you which couples gets married.

 

[StrangeRoboMemory]

Huh...color me surprised. Thanks for the responses to my posts. I guess I've been misinformed + the shipping stuff seems to be so forefront of the marketing (and to dominate the fan conversation). If it's really such a small part of the game, I'll give it another look.

 

[Lunar15]

I think when people talk about complexity or what they "miss" from the old games, I think it's just the idea of having more than one country or player in a conflict that you don't have complete control over or interaction with right away. Awakening didn't focus too much on its world, nor did Fates (which doesn't even have a named continent). People liked the idea of having a bunch of different countries and then figuring out what they were up to. I don't think it was ever all that complex in the GBA or GC games, but there was at least some thought. That's what people were missing.

 

[Dorkmgl]

Huh...color me surprised. Thanks for the responses to my posts. I guess I've been misinformed + the shipping stuff seems to be so forefront of the marketing (and to dominate the fan conversation). If it's really such a small part of the game, I'll give it another look.

Click to shrink...

One thing they definitely got right was letting you choose how much to engage with the shipping and the teaching. Fear of min maxing aside you can really just blow through the whole game like those features don't exist and let it make a lot of decisions for you if you want the core combat experience and plot.

Whether thats a great way to play or not, I haven't tried personally.

 

[Pau]

The stories were never that complex. Most of the recent stories have been no better or worse than the old stuff.

If there's a change that has caused me to bounce off the series, it's the pairing/shipping/love side stuff. The emphasis on romance has been an extreme turn-off for me. I could barely stomach it in the 3DS games, and now it's gone nuclear. Three Houses looks like it was specifically created to not appeal to me.

The series doesn't seem to be for me any longer, which is too bad, but I'll always have the old games.

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Edit: Nevermind saw you respond to the other posts. If you do try the game I hope you enjoy it!

No way is the romance more of a focus in Three Houses than in the 3DS games. In the 3DS games, every single support with every single character of another gender was available and romantic. In Three Houses, you only have around four romance options per character, every other support is platonic. And there is no reward/consequence for romance (like children) except for a few ending lines like in the previous games you love. You can absolutely skip it all.

Saying it's going nuclear is just flat out wrong. It's doing the opposite.

I get not wanting to be burned again. I hated the designs of the 3DS games. But I found Three Houses to be much closer to the games that made Fire Emblem my favorite video game series.

If you really enjoy Fire Emblem, I think it's worth giving it a shot.

 

[Deleted member 49438]

Huh...color me surprised. Thanks for the responses to my posts. I guess I've been misinformed + the shipping stuff seems to be so forefront of the marketing (and to dominate the fan conversation). If it's really such a small part of the game, I'll give it another look.

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yes, shipping conversation is big in the community mostly b/c FE fans are thirsty AF (because of the games that turned you off from the franchise in the first place lol)

 

[Hailinel]

I think when people talk about complexity or what they "miss" from the old games, I think it's just the idea of having more than one country or player in a conflict that you don't have complete control over or interaction with right away. Awakening didn't focus too much on its world, nor did Fates (which doesn't even have a named continent). People liked the idea of having a bunch of different countries and then figuring out what they were up to. I don't think it was ever all that complex in the GBA or GC games, but there was at least some thought. That's what people were missing.

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The world building in the older games definitely had its share of quirks. Like how the Tellius series had Hatari just being this nation at the other end of a vast desert that absolutely no one even knew existed until some wolf laguz show up and say hello.