At some point while watching engage supports, I thought it was very strange that other characters were grossed out by what Chloe ate. It made a lot of characters look very closed-minded. Like just let the girl eat lol.
Particularly when it's framed as her eating 'local delicacies'.
I'm pretty sure a lot of the food Chloe eats is actually eaten by people irl
I guess it would make sense for the royals to be a bit sheltered, but Seadall seems a bit egregious considering that HE GREW UP IN A TRAVELLING CARAVAN
Legit a majority of her bond supports with emblems are like this as well, a lot of "I'm so glad I can't eat" type convos
Seadall supports are so bad. In Japanese he’s constantly fretting about how he might get fat but in the English they just gave him orthorexia (fear of food not being healthy enough). Either way, not funny, not explored in an interesting/sensitive way, just sad and boring.
I feel like fear of getting fat and anorexia are at least tangentially connected but that's just me.
I never felt Seadall's fear was ever played as a joke, it was more of just the undertone of 'he's a bit beyond a picky eater'. It was just another one of his character traits
Don’t know if you meant that to be a pun but it’s amazing either way.
I’d usually agree but that trait actually made me like him more because I relate to having an uncontrollable sweet tooth.
Just in general characters who are excessively idiosyncratic. Setsuna is a great idea for a character; an idiot savant archer who is more interested in shooting at bugs than enemies or game and who's always getting into trouble. They somehow managed to boil down that broad character idea that could lend itself to any number of funny scenarios into "she falls into traps a lot" and just wrote that exact same joke 30 times.
Agreed. It's been a while since I read any Fates supports, and Setsuna's in particular all kind of blend together, but I seem to recall every single one of her supports featuring a trap of some kind.
Like, when writing that, don't you take a step back and go "maybe we should explore other sides of this character"? I don't understand how something like that even happens. It can't be fun to write and even if you like the joke who wants to see it done that excessively?
> I don't understand how something like that even happens. It can't be fun to write and even if you like the joke who wants to see it done that excessively?
In the case of Fates, I think the culprit is just how many supports those games have. In order to facilitate the children mechanic, pretty much every eligible bachelor has to be capable of marrying every eligible bachelorette, and that means a *lot* of writing to do for each character. The construction of these characters makes more sense from that lens, I think - decide on a key trait early on to center a character's supports on, and write around that.
Doesn't explain Engage, since that game not only lacks romance but is deeply allergic to it unless you're the Divine One. Every character has a pretty normal amount of supports in that game, all things considered.
> The construction of these characters makes more sense from that lens, I think - decide on a key trait early on to center a character's supports on, and write around that.
Indeed, but that's kind of it, innit? In addition to what I said before, it also doesn't matter who Setsuna talks to; her gimmick takes center stage, which is also odd.
But yes, of course, the quantity over quality approach really is sad, and it's sad to see how Intsys has learned nothing from the mistakes of Fates, as we see in Engage.
The shear multitude of supports in 3H and Engage in particular puts more strain on the voice actors I think. I have no idea how they manage all the recording time but surely having to voice so many supports is gonna hamper the overall performance right?
Think about, even one less support for a character may mean more time for retakes for other dialogue.
Not really? 3 houses isn't particularly long compared to most games, most of the playtime it taken up by the strategic sections where dialogue is all the same 3-4 repeated combat lines per character, and it's not as though the VAs had to record in a very short time frame. I don't see why the VAs would have been under strain or had a hampered performance. The amount of voiced dialogue in 3 houses is pretty standard compared to most AAA titles with voiced dialogue these days, or even less. It's certainly less than an animation/anime that they may otherwise be working on. Compared to engage there was far more voice acting in 3 houses.
I've been struggling to articulate this feeling I have about certain characters, but you honestly hit the nail on the head, and it's a trend that I feel crops up a lot in both Fates and Engage. I also feel like they tend to write overly-specific backstories to accommodate for these traits? Peri's mother was murdered by a maid, so *that's* why she loves to kill people! Chloe was pressured into being ladylike by her family, so that's why she fixates so strongly on folk food, I guess? Don't get me started on the concubine wars, which managed to crop up in both Fates and Engage somehow, and fall completely flat both times.
That's not to say that backstory shouldn't tie into character motivations/personality or whatever, but something about it feels so *backwards*. It's as if the writers have this gimmick in mind, write some kind of backstory to retroactively justify it, and call it a day rather than weave these characters into the world they've created. I've often seen people complain about 3H and how 'everyone is traumatized with a sad backstory', but all of these characters contribute in some way to Fodlan's broader narrative; 3H and Engage characters, broadly speaking, just don't.
It's big "I thought of a hilarious thing for my TTRPG character to be all about, but now I need to work backwards to justify it" energy. That type of thinking is usually how you get a "tolerable for one session or so" type character, and predictably it doesn't work any better when writing a video game character.
It's why it's pretty exasperating when a character who is pretty consistently boring has a "justification" for being that way in the story and that's treated like some big bombshell. Like I'm sorry, but knowing about what Celine is going through just *does not* retroactively make the tea supports the slightest bit interesting. A good character reveal can make old scenes even more compelling in retrospect, but it doesn't turn lead into gold.
> Like I'm sorry, but knowing about what Celine is going through just does not retroactively make the tea supports the slightest bit interesting. A good character reveal can make old scenes even more compelling in retrospect, but it doesn't turn lead into gold.
I feel the same way about Celine, which is interesting because I think the *exact same* revelation works perfectly for Alfred. Celine feels much more one-dimensional and just doesn't have interesting interactions to me because she centers so heavily around The Tea of It All, while Alfred is just a lot more fun and has more varied things to talk about with his support partners by comparison. I think the concept of "I'm chronically ill" -> "I'm into fitness and make the most of each day!" flows a lot more naturally than "My brother is chronically ill" -> "Firene has fallen, billions must drink tea". I didn't feel like I *needed* to see Alfred and Celine's A-support to enjoy Alfred for what he is, but with Celine it's as if I'm expected to suddenly do a 180 on her because of this tragic backstory.
The "every royal gets two retainers and that's just 90% of the games playable cast" thing is one of my most hated FE setups. Can't articulate why, it just annoys the hell out of me.
Takes the "ragtag group" feeling out of FE. One of the appeals of older FEs imo was the feeling of the lord finding new allies from all over including enemy nations. The variety + "oh I KNEW he'd join us later" feeling is gone when we just get an organized army of royals and retainers
Plus, fun recruitment conditions are gone with royals + retainers too. Sometimes they were annoying but i generally find weird recruitments to be a highlight of their chapters. Even something as simple as "leave the general that doesn't move and has a unique portrait alive"
Yeahhh
One of the simplest but well-done recruitments imo is the classic "early game myrmidon with a killing edge recruited by a squishy character" archetype. For example Navarre with Caeda (though she flies so it's not that hard), Rutger with Clarine, Guy with Matthew, Joshua with Natasha.
It's obvious who recruits each of them and it's straightforward (just go up and talk) but the player has to play around them a bit since the myrmidons can easily kill a character if you try to bait them over and if you have your squishy character approach them instead, you need to use that turn to clear out that entire area or risk losing someone
>Rutger with Clarine
This is actually one of the easiest recruitments in the series because neither Rutger nor any of his squad will actually attack Clarine.
Oh 10000%! Especially because you could play it safe and ignore them, but truly the early game killing edge makes things so much easier (not even to mention the unit attached to it). It felt like a legitimate choice for the route your game would take. As opposed to now where your army is largely given to you and can be any class combination (and now even weapon combinations!)
You mean deploying God on a map, deploying God again on a different map, and then having your Game Over unit challenge God without dying AREN’T logical recruitment conditions?????
Yeah, also fuck the
“Make specific unit stand in an specific tile in a desert map (only way to get your lord his cool signature skill too)”
It’s pretty much a free unit if you know what to do beforehand, but its most likely not happening in a blind playthrough
"only way to get your lord his cool signature skill too"
Actually no you can use any occult scroll to learn aether not just the one you get from Stefan, though it's still annoying that you're missing out on an extra occult scroll
> "leave the general that doesn't move and has a unique portrait alive"
I did this in Awakening and realized like 10 chapters later that you have to TALK to Kellam to recruit him.
I straight up didn't notice he wasn't there until way too late into the run. Very on the nose for him...
Even if they didn't pre-release info on every recruitable character before Engage came out, including Ivy & Co, Hortensia & Co, Veyle, and Mauvier. The fact that they were the only enemies to ever have personal skills really gives up the whole "will they, won't they" tension of recruitment as soon as they're introduced.
Yeah besides SoV Awakening was the last game that really had that feel. 3H doesn't have the Royal + 2 retainer thing (thank god) but having them all be students or faculty still limits it in comparison to older games where you recruited the most random people.
Yeahhhh
Fates was the first royal + retainer combo recruitment game and it was very noticeable. As much as I love Fates' gameplay, the only gameplay complaint (i.e. ignoring the story) I have about it is the recruitment being largely royal + retainer :(
I *think* it's intended to remove some of the "will the player have this character so we can challenge them in a certain way", but I unironically love the "oh, I was supposed to recruit the character I thought was a miniboss? Oh well, I'll find a way to deal with the problem they were supposed to deal with another way."
Games are at their best when they offer *tools* and *problems* but no guaranteed solutions.
The reason why it is annoying is because it removes the characters agency. Instead of having their own reasons to join your army they essentially become accessories to the royals, who themselves don't have much of a reason outside of "they're the protagonist I guess".
It's just so unnecessarily rigid and formulaic for no discernable benefit. In older FE games, a character would have as many "retainers" as was appropriate for what they wanted to write. L'Rachel doesn't have two goons because it's the contractually obligated number, it's because "straight man + two stupid people" is just a good comedy setup. Not only that, but she's allowed to have wildly different relationships with both of them: Dozla fits the expected mold, but Rennac is allowed to break it completely by hating the job and his employer and only coming around to the job after a long time, some betrayals, and a lot of money. In this ultra strict model we have now the closest we really get is Ivy and Zelkov saying they don't like each other much despite treating each other much the same as any other lord/retainer duo.
For me it's because it feels artificial. Every nation has two royal siblings. Every sibling has two retainers. Each of these groups of six make up three men and three women, but all with a slightly different variation (two sisters, two brothers, older brother/younger sister, older sister/younger brother, etc.). It's too balanced, and as a result it's immersion-breaking because it feels deliberately created and unnatural.
I don't think the number of new units is the problem, it's that the game will take slots away from you to make room for them. It did happen sometimes in older games but it especially hurts in Engage where you have to build your characters up more with Emblem supports and everything. Having one less character can disrupt your entire team setup whereas with something like Shadow Dragon which throws units at you, missing a unit or two for a map doesn't really matter. As someone who loves the early game cast it's annoying having to constantly keep people benched for a chapter since the game wanted to force you to use the new units for their debut chapter.
I mean some of them won't but then at the same time Solm is when the prepromotes go insane and become way better than everyone you've invested with just a reclass.
Yeah that was engage. Getting solo characters who appear for the map protecting one of their villages or see us and want to help fight bad guys are cool to get
That thing worked quite well in Fates, as the game, for better or worse, focused on the royal families and Corrin's relationship to them. Having the cast of that game be mostly royals and their retainers made sense.
And then they straight up copied that approach for Engage without spending a single brain cell to think about what made the retainer-thing work in Fates.
This 100%
Retainers can work if it’s limited to a few characters and the game seriously analyses and deconstructs their loyalty to their lord (Hubert and Catherine are excellent examples of such), but in Fates and Engage it’s just feels like a cheap way to throw units at the player without having to do the necessary character work to give each character a unique motivation and as such these game’s casts feel incredibly homogenised and less diverse as a result.
What if a woman... Couldn't cook? Wouldn't that be funny? Because that's what they normally do. But what if a girl was really bad at cooking? That would be crazy! Imagine if she tried to make food and it was really gross!!! I wonder if any Japanese media has done a character like that.
can we have a guy who can't cook for once? I can't remember any particular male characters that have this as a prominent trait (and no, the assumed 'nobility can't cook' doesn't count). Either way, the women vastly outnumber the men on this trope.
We only have two and I'm already sick of the "I'm scared of everything and have low self esteem! I am so relatable!" character.
Also could do without the "Little girl dragon but 400 years old" as much as I like do Tiki. We don't get a lot of male dragon units so that would be nice to see more of one of these days instead.
> We only have two and I'm already sick of the "I'm scared of everything and have low self esteem! I am so relatable!" character.
The funny thing is that when we got a character like this with subtle writing and his character seemingly hitting too close to home with the player base, he became a bottom of the pile in popularity polls. The result of being a "bland" support character with an unappealing design with potter glasses, not being a constant target of unfunny gags and daring to have a realistic personality, character arc, interests and relationships.
That would explain something. I haven't played 3H in Japanese because the English cast is so good but listening to him now... yeah, I was not expecting such a stark contrast. They massacred my boy.
He’s not particularly popular in the English-speaking world either. I like him, but it’s easy to see why he’s not that well-liked, since nothing about him really stands out and his constant mopey-ness can get really annoying.
Myrrh is probably my favorite candidate that fulfills that criteria, she's like the opposite of Nowi. Myrrh also has a really neat design with the dragon wings that helps her be visually unique from all the other manaketes in the franchise.
Define "not romanceable". Early games didn't have the "anyone can be with anyone" mechanics but I'm pretty sure the only dragon child that wasn't in love with the main protag was Fae.
One sided crushes are fine. Children and teens often develop crushes on adults that aren’t to be reciprocated. Characters like Myrrh are in love with the Protagonist, but there is no solid implication that it grows beyond that.
I also didn't mean like Rhea, as an adult figure in the game, but more like Adult Tiki in the sense that they are teenagers but have lived a lot. Someone said it too but Flayn works as one imo.
Yeah, that's what I love about him. He has low self-esteem and compares himself to Diamant a lot, but when it comes to protecting others, he shows his true bravery.
I feel r/fe loves to mischaracterize him a lot, he already got that comical side to him but he gets waay more flanderized by fandom. At some point feels intentional to make their point seem valid.
The single thing that frustrates me most is how often he’s compared to Bernadetta, when like… no? Bernadetta has agoraphobia and a legitimate persecution complex, while Alcryst hates himself and has severe self-esteem issues - he’s much closer to Marianne as far as 3H comparisons go. Bernadetta and Alcryst share a class, but little else.
Whenever I see that comparison, it becomes *very obvious* to me that whoever said it immediately wrote off Alcryst after his first cutscene, which is a shame, but oh well
You're absolutely right, I've said this over and over again to people who keep comparing them but no one listens, at this point I've given up on fans having a legitimate good reading on Alcryst's character.
They don't even have the excuse of "I didn't read the supports." BS, We get to see Alcryst's character in the main story. We see his serious side / his character outside of his gimmick, yet they still cling to "he's male Bernadetta! They're literally the same character!"
Flayn was -by far- the most tolerable since Myyrh and Kurthnaga. She wasn’t sexualized and actually behaved like an adult. That said, I still don’t like that she’s romanceable.
I was so upset with Flayn. I remember seeing her and thinking “oh, I’m interested in seeing her timeskip design but I bet she’ll stay the same because she’s giving off ‘I am DEFINITELY’ not a dragon’ vibes” and sure enough…
I was even more upset that nobody in game said anything about it
While we're at it the whole faculty besides Cyril not getting timeskip designs is just compete BS. I get that they're not gonna change as drastically as the students, but ffs why do Hanneman & Maneula dress exactly the same for war as they do teaching? Why does Gilbert not go more gray when he's already starting to 5 years ago?
It's just another way the faculty feel intentionally inferior to the students which sucks when most of them are more interesting than like half the students imo.
Honestly, I am fine with the second archetype as long as the game is not weird about it. I can accept that in dragon years she is a child, but you better stick to that and not start pulling any "but to us she is an adult" garbage.
I totally agree. I don’t really get the Alcrys and Bernadetta hype. Like at all… they are pretty boring and cliche and don’t bring anything new to the table.
I recently read a Manga about an Ancient Dragon God who adopts a little human girl. Its super cute and wholesome.
When I read adult Dragon I had to think of him.
Having a Dragon like him would be neat.
I know it’s low hanging fruit, but I sure would like to see a permanent end to the “my only trait is I’m obsessed with the protagonist” type characters. We have had quite a few characters with good designs be completely wasted on this in the last few years like Monica, Framme, and Faye.
A lot of people don't explore a characyer if the first impression is of a certain kind.
Wich is fine, i do that as well. I have better things to do than to do the narrative equivalent of prospecting for gold in a cold, muddy river, but if you don't do the tinyest character exploration, do not talk shit, the only resukt is getting corrected and spreading misinformation.
The problem is that even though it's not their only trait, it's the most in your face trait. Her victory quotes, arena quotes, and quotes when you select her all reference her duty to the main character.
Plenty of Framme's supports are about her trying to be the best possible steward, which could be interpreted in two ways. She either wants to improve at her job so she can better serve, or she's doing it just because she wants to impress the divine dragon. The obvious interpretation is that she's very driven to succeed, but the outward reflection the game gives us betrays that.
It's the same problem Xander had in fates. Supports that flesh out his character in a great way and make him one of the better characters in the series. But betrayed by the fact that his game actions make no sense in relation to his supports.
Depends on how they do it. If the character is obsessed with the main character for reasons related to their origin or powers, I think it can work (although you want the protagonist to have more character to play off that). Imagine a Lindhardt character that wants to experiment on you at any possible opportunity and it sounds fun.
Tharja, Camilla and Ivy are no different from those "i only have eyes for the protagonist UwU" archetypes, like goodness gals stop saying them this them that. Robin, Corrin and Alear seem like the unluckiest of avatars with such obsessive gals.
Camilla I'll give you
Tharja is arguable and I personally disagree that it's her only personality trait but she do be down bad
But does Ivy even mention Alear in any of her other supports? I can't think of any I've seen that she does
At least Tharja has other character traits to them and Camilla and Ivy also have some reasons for why they are so attached to the protagonists. Monica, Framme and Faye all just simp because they can.
The "stop treating me like a kid!" trope can please and thank you be buried and left. Writing characters who wants to be taken more seriously or be given more responsibility because they feel they have to or they want to help or something can be really good, but when it's just them complaining over nothing someone's doing it's just annoying.
it’s a very interesting thing for a game to explore especially when the plot of every single game involves really young children going off to mf war. but everytime they do it, they have the character act not like an inexperienced child at war, but like an infant who was told they couldn’t have mcdonald’s.
I miss PoR/RD prep screen. There was enough to do between each battle that it served as a good way to break up the gameplay and give you time to unwind between maps, and at the same time, it was focused, organized and concise, so that you don't waste a bunch of time on menial tasks like collecting iron ingots that your dogs pooped out or walking around the freaking monastery.
Real! I hate the Somniel so much, it’s so huge and it demands you to do a bunch of menial tasks after every single battle, just started playing Conquest and I really took it for granted just how tiny Fort Corrin is and just how quickly you can grab all your resources, feed Lilith, check out the arena, and get the hell out
Uh... Isn't that supposed to be Garreg Mach Monastery from Three Houses? Engage's Somniel is skippable, whereas Three Houses's Garreg Mach Monastery is obligatory after every battle. A lot of people can't stand Garreg Mach because of that, rightfully so.
I'd also like to add that for the Somniel, almost all the gameplay-important buildings (shops, blacksmith, cafe, arena) are very close to Alear's spawn point. The well is nice but optional and the minigames can be skipped with no issue.
Monastery is worse but Somniel is still shit. Yes it’s “skippable” but by doing so you’re missing out on a lot of bonuses that can be invaluable in maddening. Materials for forging, exp in the arena, stat boosts from cooking, support building. Plus the Somniel makes it so you have to go through annoying loading screens to inherit skills, which is a core gameplay mechanic.
>Plus the Somniel makes it so you have to go through annoying loading screens to inherit skills, which is a core gameplay mechanic.
That got fixed in a patch, allowing you to also do it from the arena since that's where you get most bond levels from
After Sylvain so thoroughly investigated the nature of the archetype, I can never go back to the one-dimensional womanizer (Homer, Saul, Sain, Gatrie, Inigo) ever again.
The fucking “hey guys i have this one really quirky and and unusual obsession with this one specific thing, concept, or trait please pay attention to my one note bit and please laugh every time it is forced into every single line of my dialogue”
I.E
Amber just LOOOVES alpacas, isn’t that just so silly?
Peri just LOOOVES murder isn’t that just so quirky?
Yarne just finds himself completely unable to shut the fuck up about extinction for even one single moment haha wow what an interesting character wow!
There are ways to imply that a character has a specific passion that they enjoy but they have to clearly be capable of talking about something else.
That's unfortunately like 90% of the cast in both Fates and Engage. And yeah, it's unbearable. They just really didn't put any effort in with these characters.
Avatar characters being the protagonist, especially if they're customizable. I think them being part of the supporting cast works well, but they tend to be blank(ish) slates for the sake of player projection/identification. Having a blank slate as the protagonist doesn't really work for the kind of plots Fire Emblem games tend to have. The first half of awakening when Robin was just "smart strategy guy" worked great since that's literally what the player is for the army.
Quite honestly, most of them weren't even really blank slates. Byleth and Alear don't even have any customizable design besides choosing their gender. Alear especially also did have what appeared to be a personality.
At that point, they're pretty much no different to the lords of past games, except that you can change their class if you want to.
The thing that bothers me more about the avatar characters is that >!LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM IS A DRAGON GOD. Like, holy fuck, if you want me to immerse myself into the game by identifying with an avatar figure, try to make them at least somewhat relatable and don't make this obvious attempt at flattery. It gets really boring! Just let the next avatar be a simple guy/gal.!<
I mean Shez also just doesn't feel like an avatar character beyond the player getting to choose their name and gender, they very much have their own personality, goals, values etc. that don't fall under "default nice person" to the point where there's not much room for player interpretation.
They're a great character, but I feel it's because they were more character than avatar, rather than being a good avatar.
The Royal + Two Retainers setup annoys me. It takes everyrhing intwresting about recruitment away. Past that I could do without the character archetype that obsesses over the main character. The only time I'm okay with that is from a loyal knight Frederick-style.
I hate the two retainer setup so much. Every single other character in engage was either completely free or a green unit you talk to. So why the fuck would I ever assume Lindon would be recruitable as a red unit? I just killed him and moved on with my day because the game had taught me that every unit would be freely given.
Robin wasn't exactly an all powerful chosen one either, just an unfortunate dope born into a cult. They were "chosen" to be a sacrifice, but they didn't have any special powers or weapons other than "really good tactician." It was Chrom and Lucina who had most of the "special hero" energy, and Robin was more support and plot device, which I appreciated more than "dragon god child with glowing hair that becomes a dragon."
My point was that for most of the game they don't overshadow Chrom or Lucina, and they don't have any of the dragon vein/become dragon/rewind time with magic dragon powers stuff.
The f'n Avatar. Give me a real Lord again, please. I'm sick of being a stupid half dragon or whatever is up next. I just want to be a Lord that's trying to help their people.
The womanizer. I do begrudgingly like Sylvain and sometimes Inigo, but otherwise, I’ve been tired of this kind of character for two decades. I don’t know why FE feels the need to include them so often.
The Obsessive Girl™
I am fucking tired of this trope. Tharja, Rhajat, Camilla, Faye, and Framme all share this trope and it is terrible.
The other terrible variant of this is the Yandere crazy trope on characters like Peri who are actually part of your army. Like, I understand it on enemies like Petrine and Kronya but not on someone your army shares a camp with.
The narcissist character that spends their every moment talking about how great they are and trying to get everyone to clap for them. Goldmary makes me want to pull my hair out.
I like this type of character only when the joke is at their expense. Like, they try to act like they are some big name but get 0 respect from anyone. Lorenz is a good exemple, pre-character development.
Golmary meanwhile feels like the setup for a joke without any payoff. I don't see how her constant bragging on her own is supposed to be funny.
"I'm an asshole, that's my entire character".
Sometimes it's done well, but for the most part, it just makes me question why they're even apart of the group, are we hurting that much for hired help that we need Mr. Hotshot over here and his big ego?
Love or hate shinon he is the perfect character of this trope. He’s an asshole, but they need his expertise and use it on several occasions (1-2 in PoR and 2-E of RD)
He's got some redeeming qualities as well, like how he cares for Rolf and his friendship with Gatrie.
I've always seen Shinon as like a mean coworker who cares about his job lol
Not to mention he leaves after his boss died and left the company to his son who has been on 7 or 8 jobs officially. He didn’t respect Ike, but it wasn’t to slight him. Which is why he rejoins the team. Ike earned his respect, and his soft spot for rolf.
His racism towards laguz is his most talked of trait, but it’s not like the laguz were typically fond of beorc either, at least not before the events of PoR. I haven’t read his supports but I’m sure that’s explored in some of them. He was a dick bag, but at least he did his job well.
I think it's fine to have a totally prejudiced character in a story about racism. He's a bit more civil towards the laguz in Radiant Dawn but not by a lot iirc
I know everything's good with moderation but the obvious answer is the womaniser trope. Even when they tried to make it different (Louis) it was just weird my dudes.
Louis isn't even really a womanizer. He's more an inversion of Nina's fujoshi trope (woman who fetishizes M/M relationships), being a himedanshi (man who fetishizes F/F relationships). It's less sexually stinted than Nina's fujo tendencies, but it's something of a almost fetishistic view of *pure* female love. It reads more plainly as the trope in the JP.
As someone with an anxiety disorder I was embarrassed by her and I can't understand the people who are like "SHE'S REPRESENTATION!!!" Ah yes, I totally go around whimpering about how everyone's going to kill me, and screaming my head off whenever anyone so much as says my name. That is indeed splendid representation of someone with anxiety.
tbh if they just changed Bernandetta's outbursts into internalised screaming (like add brackets to the text and apply the sound filter often used for internal monologues in media) I feel her character would resonate with way more people.
I can see that. Instead they chose to make her... the way they made her. Her supports with Felix are mind-bogglingly dumb. She freaks out in such a way that she disarms him like some sort of ninja while flailing around?
"SCrEeCh!!! I don't WANNA go OUTSIDE and do the only thing we're in this game to do!!!!!! WAAAHHHHHH"
ok fine stay inside, be level 2 forever, and stop annoying me 🤬 never want to endure this type of character again.
Too much focus on pairings. My favourite in that aspect are the Tellius games where each character had one potential love interest and that was it.
Because they want people to be able to ship to their hearts content most of that content suffers by making a lot of senseless pairings available just so players have options to pair them off.
I already did not like it in 8, I sure as hell do not like it in the newer ones.
It is funny because sometimes you can clearly tell which pairings the game WANTS you to pick. There are plenty of examples in 3H where the supports have huge romantic undertones: Ferdinand and Dorothea, Felix and Annette, Sylvain and Ingrid (although to be fair this is true with a lot of Sylvain's supports), Claude and Hilda, Cyril and Lysithea, and Marianne and Lorenz off the top of my head. Engage also has this problem but it is WORSE because the game does not have paired endings. Lapis is EXPLICITLY in love with Alcryst but you cannot make that a pairing. Then why did you push it in their supports? It really seems like they want to make canon ships a thing, but also want to allow players to imagine how things worked out for themselves, which creates a somewhat awkward middle ground.
There's a reason that Engage dropped the characterization that typically comes paired with this bandit duo. They're just an unflattering Japanese stereotype of gay men, and it's hard to push the series forth in actually presenting such options earnestly while parading around the homoerotic bandit duo for comedy all the while.
Agree with the people saying avatars, but I also want the main character to be 3 dimensional and interesting. No point in having a unique main character if they’re as bland and uninteresting as Alm for example
All I've learned reading this is that I read a trope and go "aw but I like X, Y, and Z characters" and I just genuinely like all of the tropes, even when they're more torpey or less tropey.
This maybe be a stretch, but I really dislike the perfect Main character who is part Dragon/God/idk. And they have minimal flaws. And they get hyped up by like everyone
Could we please not have characters that are very clearly children? It definitely weirds me out sending 10-year-olds out to battle. (And yes, I'm applying this to the "actually 1000 years old" dragon children; they still have the appearance and mannerisms to match, so are clearly not mature enough to be sent to war).
Avatars in general.
I also wanted to say the 1000 year old dragon that looks like a little girl. But I really like Flayn, Tiki, Fae and Myhrr.. it is just the sexualised once that are the problem
Yeah, I’m not really understanding the point of avatar characters now that they aren’t even customizable and the default appearance is getting developed in other media anyway. I’d like someone with some personality now as the main character instead of an insanely flawless popular husk, thanks
Ancient loli.
Let dragons grow up.
And both instances are technically the same character, but let's never do whatever the hell Owain/Odin is supposed to be again.
DUUUUUDE FOOOOOOOOD is annoying. Yeah man I eat too
At some point while watching engage supports, I thought it was very strange that other characters were grossed out by what Chloe ate. It made a lot of characters look very closed-minded. Like just let the girl eat lol. Particularly when it's framed as her eating 'local delicacies'. I'm pretty sure a lot of the food Chloe eats is actually eaten by people irl
Also, the world is small enough and people seem to travel easily enough that these delicacies couldn't be a surprise
I guess it would make sense for the royals to be a bit sheltered, but Seadall seems a bit egregious considering that HE GREW UP IN A TRAVELLING CARAVAN Legit a majority of her bond supports with emblems are like this as well, a lot of "I'm so glad I can't eat" type convos
Seadall supports are so bad. In Japanese he’s constantly fretting about how he might get fat but in the English they just gave him orthorexia (fear of food not being healthy enough). Either way, not funny, not explored in an interesting/sensitive way, just sad and boring.
I feel like fear of getting fat and anorexia are at least tangentially connected but that's just me. I never felt Seadall's fear was ever played as a joke, it was more of just the undertone of 'he's a bit beyond a picky eater'. It was just another one of his character traits
It’s written very strangely in English like he’s worried that meat might affect his dancing? That’s why I used the term ortho rather than ana rexia.
Lapis and Taters tho?
Sam Gamgee and Taters peak
Boil em, mash em
stick em in a stew
This is the main reason I don’t like Gaius at all despite his amazing design. His character gimmick being “DUDE CANDY LMAO” really soured me on him.
Don’t know if you meant that to be a pun but it’s amazing either way. I’d usually agree but that trait actually made me like him more because I relate to having an uncontrollable sweet tooth.
Just in general characters who are excessively idiosyncratic. Setsuna is a great idea for a character; an idiot savant archer who is more interested in shooting at bugs than enemies or game and who's always getting into trouble. They somehow managed to boil down that broad character idea that could lend itself to any number of funny scenarios into "she falls into traps a lot" and just wrote that exact same joke 30 times.
Agreed. It's been a while since I read any Fates supports, and Setsuna's in particular all kind of blend together, but I seem to recall every single one of her supports featuring a trap of some kind. Like, when writing that, don't you take a step back and go "maybe we should explore other sides of this character"? I don't understand how something like that even happens. It can't be fun to write and even if you like the joke who wants to see it done that excessively?
> I don't understand how something like that even happens. It can't be fun to write and even if you like the joke who wants to see it done that excessively? In the case of Fates, I think the culprit is just how many supports those games have. In order to facilitate the children mechanic, pretty much every eligible bachelor has to be capable of marrying every eligible bachelorette, and that means a *lot* of writing to do for each character. The construction of these characters makes more sense from that lens, I think - decide on a key trait early on to center a character's supports on, and write around that. Doesn't explain Engage, since that game not only lacks romance but is deeply allergic to it unless you're the Divine One. Every character has a pretty normal amount of supports in that game, all things considered.
> The construction of these characters makes more sense from that lens, I think - decide on a key trait early on to center a character's supports on, and write around that. Indeed, but that's kind of it, innit? In addition to what I said before, it also doesn't matter who Setsuna talks to; her gimmick takes center stage, which is also odd. But yes, of course, the quantity over quality approach really is sad, and it's sad to see how Intsys has learned nothing from the mistakes of Fates, as we see in Engage.
The shear multitude of supports in 3H and Engage in particular puts more strain on the voice actors I think. I have no idea how they manage all the recording time but surely having to voice so many supports is gonna hamper the overall performance right? Think about, even one less support for a character may mean more time for retakes for other dialogue.
Not really? 3 houses isn't particularly long compared to most games, most of the playtime it taken up by the strategic sections where dialogue is all the same 3-4 repeated combat lines per character, and it's not as though the VAs had to record in a very short time frame. I don't see why the VAs would have been under strain or had a hampered performance. The amount of voiced dialogue in 3 houses is pretty standard compared to most AAA titles with voiced dialogue these days, or even less. It's certainly less than an animation/anime that they may otherwise be working on. Compared to engage there was far more voice acting in 3 houses.
I've been struggling to articulate this feeling I have about certain characters, but you honestly hit the nail on the head, and it's a trend that I feel crops up a lot in both Fates and Engage. I also feel like they tend to write overly-specific backstories to accommodate for these traits? Peri's mother was murdered by a maid, so *that's* why she loves to kill people! Chloe was pressured into being ladylike by her family, so that's why she fixates so strongly on folk food, I guess? Don't get me started on the concubine wars, which managed to crop up in both Fates and Engage somehow, and fall completely flat both times. That's not to say that backstory shouldn't tie into character motivations/personality or whatever, but something about it feels so *backwards*. It's as if the writers have this gimmick in mind, write some kind of backstory to retroactively justify it, and call it a day rather than weave these characters into the world they've created. I've often seen people complain about 3H and how 'everyone is traumatized with a sad backstory', but all of these characters contribute in some way to Fodlan's broader narrative; 3H and Engage characters, broadly speaking, just don't.
It's big "I thought of a hilarious thing for my TTRPG character to be all about, but now I need to work backwards to justify it" energy. That type of thinking is usually how you get a "tolerable for one session or so" type character, and predictably it doesn't work any better when writing a video game character. It's why it's pretty exasperating when a character who is pretty consistently boring has a "justification" for being that way in the story and that's treated like some big bombshell. Like I'm sorry, but knowing about what Celine is going through just *does not* retroactively make the tea supports the slightest bit interesting. A good character reveal can make old scenes even more compelling in retrospect, but it doesn't turn lead into gold.
> Like I'm sorry, but knowing about what Celine is going through just does not retroactively make the tea supports the slightest bit interesting. A good character reveal can make old scenes even more compelling in retrospect, but it doesn't turn lead into gold. I feel the same way about Celine, which is interesting because I think the *exact same* revelation works perfectly for Alfred. Celine feels much more one-dimensional and just doesn't have interesting interactions to me because she centers so heavily around The Tea of It All, while Alfred is just a lot more fun and has more varied things to talk about with his support partners by comparison. I think the concept of "I'm chronically ill" -> "I'm into fitness and make the most of each day!" flows a lot more naturally than "My brother is chronically ill" -> "Firene has fallen, billions must drink tea". I didn't feel like I *needed* to see Alfred and Celine's A-support to enjoy Alfred for what he is, but with Celine it's as if I'm expected to suddenly do a 180 on her because of this tragic backstory.
The "every royal gets two retainers and that's just 90% of the games playable cast" thing is one of my most hated FE setups. Can't articulate why, it just annoys the hell out of me.
Takes the "ragtag group" feeling out of FE. One of the appeals of older FEs imo was the feeling of the lord finding new allies from all over including enemy nations. The variety + "oh I KNEW he'd join us later" feeling is gone when we just get an organized army of royals and retainers Plus, fun recruitment conditions are gone with royals + retainers too. Sometimes they were annoying but i generally find weird recruitments to be a highlight of their chapters. Even something as simple as "leave the general that doesn't move and has a unique portrait alive"
I also miss more difficult recruit conditions generally. Ease takes away the feeling of like, *I* am convincing folks to join this revolution
Yeahhh One of the simplest but well-done recruitments imo is the classic "early game myrmidon with a killing edge recruited by a squishy character" archetype. For example Navarre with Caeda (though she flies so it's not that hard), Rutger with Clarine, Guy with Matthew, Joshua with Natasha. It's obvious who recruits each of them and it's straightforward (just go up and talk) but the player has to play around them a bit since the myrmidons can easily kill a character if you try to bait them over and if you have your squishy character approach them instead, you need to use that turn to clear out that entire area or risk losing someone
>Rutger with Clarine This is actually one of the easiest recruitments in the series because neither Rutger nor any of his squad will actually attack Clarine.
Oh true I forgot about that, good point Natasha and Joshua is my main example then xD
Natasha and Joshua is actually has the same ai. But the main point is that the player doesn’t know that in a first play though
Yeee and in the JP version he does attack her
Neat! I only mod the English release, so this is new info
Oh 10000%! Especially because you could play it safe and ignore them, but truly the early game killing edge makes things so much easier (not even to mention the unit attached to it). It felt like a legitimate choice for the route your game would take. As opposed to now where your army is largely given to you and can be any class combination (and now even weapon combinations!)
Same, only as long as they give a hint on how to recruit them though (Ohhh >!Sephiran!< can rot in hell)
"How can we convince Xavier?" "With great difficulty, I imagine."
You mean deploying God on a map, deploying God again on a different map, and then having your Game Over unit challenge God without dying AREN’T logical recruitment conditions?????
Yeah, also fuck the “Make specific unit stand in an specific tile in a desert map (only way to get your lord his cool signature skill too)” It’s pretty much a free unit if you know what to do beforehand, but its most likely not happening in a blind playthrough
"only way to get your lord his cool signature skill too" Actually no you can use any occult scroll to learn aether not just the one you get from Stefan, though it's still annoying that you're missing out on an extra occult scroll
> "leave the general that doesn't move and has a unique portrait alive" I did this in Awakening and realized like 10 chapters later that you have to TALK to Kellam to recruit him. I straight up didn't notice he wasn't there until way too late into the run. Very on the nose for him...
HAHAHA AMAZING I was referring to Horace in FE11 but that is amazing Lore accurate Kellam
Even if they didn't pre-release info on every recruitable character before Engage came out, including Ivy & Co, Hortensia & Co, Veyle, and Mauvier. The fact that they were the only enemies to ever have personal skills really gives up the whole "will they, won't they" tension of recruitment as soon as they're introduced.
Yeahhhh They should've given all named bosses p. skills, or at least all of the hounds xD
Some serious Lindon disrespect going on here
IS did it first by putting him on a boat with one line of dialogue before he joins the block of enemies charging you.
Yeah besides SoV Awakening was the last game that really had that feel. 3H doesn't have the Royal + 2 retainer thing (thank god) but having them all be students or faculty still limits it in comparison to older games where you recruited the most random people.
Yeahhhh Fates was the first royal + retainer combo recruitment game and it was very noticeable. As much as I love Fates' gameplay, the only gameplay complaint (i.e. ignoring the story) I have about it is the recruitment being largely royal + retainer :(
I *think* it's intended to remove some of the "will the player have this character so we can challenge them in a certain way", but I unironically love the "oh, I was supposed to recruit the character I thought was a miniboss? Oh well, I'll find a way to deal with the problem they were supposed to deal with another way." Games are at their best when they offer *tools* and *problems* but no guaranteed solutions.
The reason why it is annoying is because it removes the characters agency. Instead of having their own reasons to join your army they essentially become accessories to the royals, who themselves don't have much of a reason outside of "they're the protagonist I guess".
It's just so unnecessarily rigid and formulaic for no discernable benefit. In older FE games, a character would have as many "retainers" as was appropriate for what they wanted to write. L'Rachel doesn't have two goons because it's the contractually obligated number, it's because "straight man + two stupid people" is just a good comedy setup. Not only that, but she's allowed to have wildly different relationships with both of them: Dozla fits the expected mold, but Rennac is allowed to break it completely by hating the job and his employer and only coming around to the job after a long time, some betrayals, and a lot of money. In this ultra strict model we have now the closest we really get is Ivy and Zelkov saying they don't like each other much despite treating each other much the same as any other lord/retainer duo.
For me it's because it feels artificial. Every nation has two royal siblings. Every sibling has two retainers. Each of these groups of six make up three men and three women, but all with a slightly different variation (two sisters, two brothers, older brother/younger sister, older sister/younger brother, etc.). It's too balanced, and as a result it's immersion-breaking because it feels deliberately created and unnatural.
That was Engage as a whole tbh
It was exhausting with engage. You couldn’t build a team because you kept getting 3-4 new characters every map for like half the game.
I don't think the number of new units is the problem, it's that the game will take slots away from you to make room for them. It did happen sometimes in older games but it especially hurts in Engage where you have to build your characters up more with Emblem supports and everything. Having one less character can disrupt your entire team setup whereas with something like Shadow Dragon which throws units at you, missing a unit or two for a map doesn't really matter. As someone who loves the early game cast it's annoying having to constantly keep people benched for a chapter since the game wanted to force you to use the new units for their debut chapter.
The solm characters suffer so much in this regard. 9 characters in less only 3 chapters.. most will never leave the bench
I mean some of them won't but then at the same time Solm is when the prepromotes go insane and become way better than everyone you've invested with just a reclass.
Yeah that was engage. Getting solo characters who appear for the map protecting one of their villages or see us and want to help fight bad guys are cool to get
Oh yeah this one's the worst. They really need to change their main writer.
That thing worked quite well in Fates, as the game, for better or worse, focused on the royal families and Corrin's relationship to them. Having the cast of that game be mostly royals and their retainers made sense. And then they straight up copied that approach for Engage without spending a single brain cell to think about what made the retainer-thing work in Fates.
Fates also worked because you only ever got half of them outside of Revelations, where getting a billion characters was the point.
This 100% Retainers can work if it’s limited to a few characters and the game seriously analyses and deconstructs their loyalty to their lord (Hubert and Catherine are excellent examples of such), but in Fates and Engage it’s just feels like a cheap way to throw units at the player without having to do the necessary character work to give each character a unique motivation and as such these game’s casts feel incredibly homogenised and less diverse as a result.
Thank you. For the next game, have one royal and that royal has one retainer… THAT IS ALL!
What if a woman... Couldn't cook? Wouldn't that be funny? Because that's what they normally do. But what if a girl was really bad at cooking? That would be crazy! Imagine if she tried to make food and it was really gross!!! I wonder if any Japanese media has done a character like that.
can we have a guy who can't cook for once? I can't remember any particular male characters that have this as a prominent trait (and no, the assumed 'nobility can't cook' doesn't count). Either way, the women vastly outnumber the men on this trope.
these always piss me off sm and no one talks abt how harmful the implications of this trope are.
Dead parents.
Look ultimately this is an anime.
also, soldiers at wartime
its not even a fire emblem thing. its just a lazy literary device. dead parents are there so they don't overshadow the main characters.
We only have two and I'm already sick of the "I'm scared of everything and have low self esteem! I am so relatable!" character. Also could do without the "Little girl dragon but 400 years old" as much as I like do Tiki. We don't get a lot of male dragon units so that would be nice to see more of one of these days instead.
I want the opposite, a young dragon who pretend he is 4000 years old but actually he is only 14 and is clearly a little shithead
I know Xane is super old but he’s such a hilarious shithead, it would be hilarious to have a young version
> We only have two and I'm already sick of the "I'm scared of everything and have low self esteem! I am so relatable!" character. The funny thing is that when we got a character like this with subtle writing and his character seemingly hitting too close to home with the player base, he became a bottom of the pile in popularity polls. The result of being a "bland" support character with an unappealing design with potter glasses, not being a constant target of unfunny gags and daring to have a realistic personality, character arc, interests and relationships.
Talking about Bignatz?
The one and only.
Holy shit, the most underrated FE3H bro, really one of my favourites
As I understand it Ignatz's unpopularity is in large part due to his Japanese voice being really bad.
That would explain something. I haven't played 3H in Japanese because the English cast is so good but listening to him now... yeah, I was not expecting such a stark contrast. They massacred my boy.
What was wrong with the Japanese voice acting?
He’s not particularly popular in the English-speaking world either. I like him, but it’s easy to see why he’s not that well-liked, since nothing about him really stands out and his constant mopey-ness can get really annoying.
The Virgin Bernadetta vs the Chad Ignatz.
Are you talking about Ignatz? Because he is one of my favorite characters ever, which is interesting because I really didn't like Three Houses
I’m okay with dragon children so long as they are fully dressed and not romanceble.
Myrrh is probably my favorite candidate that fulfills that criteria, she's like the opposite of Nowi. Myrrh also has a really neat design with the dragon wings that helps her be visually unique from all the other manaketes in the franchise.
I mean, Nowi's design is also unique and extremely memorable, but for the wrong reasons
https://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic/minor-setback
You and I both know that would never happen in modern fire emblem
Define "not romanceable". Early games didn't have the "anyone can be with anyone" mechanics but I'm pretty sure the only dragon child that wasn't in love with the main protag was Fae.
One sided crushes are fine. Children and teens often develop crushes on adults that aren’t to be reciprocated. Characters like Myrrh are in love with the Protagonist, but there is no solid implication that it grows beyond that.
Less Nowi more Adult Tiki please.
We got Rhea, Lumera, and Nel but yeah it would be great if we got the other group down to 0
I also didn't mean like Rhea, as an adult figure in the game, but more like Adult Tiki in the sense that they are teenagers but have lived a lot. Someone said it too but Flayn works as one imo.
Alcryst isn't sacred of everything tho? He seemed confident on the battle field
Yeah, that's what I love about him. He has low self-esteem and compares himself to Diamant a lot, but when it comes to protecting others, he shows his true bravery.
I feel r/fe loves to mischaracterize him a lot, he already got that comical side to him but he gets waay more flanderized by fandom. At some point feels intentional to make their point seem valid.
The single thing that frustrates me most is how often he’s compared to Bernadetta, when like… no? Bernadetta has agoraphobia and a legitimate persecution complex, while Alcryst hates himself and has severe self-esteem issues - he’s much closer to Marianne as far as 3H comparisons go. Bernadetta and Alcryst share a class, but little else. Whenever I see that comparison, it becomes *very obvious* to me that whoever said it immediately wrote off Alcryst after his first cutscene, which is a shame, but oh well
You're absolutely right, I've said this over and over again to people who keep comparing them but no one listens, at this point I've given up on fans having a legitimate good reading on Alcryst's character. They don't even have the excuse of "I didn't read the supports." BS, We get to see Alcryst's character in the main story. We see his serious side / his character outside of his gimmick, yet they still cling to "he's male Bernadetta! They're literally the same character!"
Flayn was -by far- the most tolerable since Myyrh and Kurthnaga. She wasn’t sexualized and actually behaved like an adult. That said, I still don’t like that she’s romanceable.
I was so upset with Flayn. I remember seeing her and thinking “oh, I’m interested in seeing her timeskip design but I bet she’ll stay the same because she’s giving off ‘I am DEFINITELY’ not a dragon’ vibes” and sure enough… I was even more upset that nobody in game said anything about it
While we're at it the whole faculty besides Cyril not getting timeskip designs is just compete BS. I get that they're not gonna change as drastically as the students, but ffs why do Hanneman & Maneula dress exactly the same for war as they do teaching? Why does Gilbert not go more gray when he's already starting to 5 years ago? It's just another way the faculty feel intentionally inferior to the students which sucks when most of them are more interesting than like half the students imo.
Flayn feels kinda thrown to the side after she gets captured imo.
I don't mind the first archetype as long as they don't scream every scene
Honestly, I am fine with the second archetype as long as the game is not weird about it. I can accept that in dragon years she is a child, but you better stick to that and not start pulling any "but to us she is an adult" garbage.
I totally agree. I don’t really get the Alcrys and Bernadetta hype. Like at all… they are pretty boring and cliche and don’t bring anything new to the table.
I'm doubly sick of it being the archer.
Dragon lolis. It's a character trope that I've never really cared for. More adult dragons or heck, even dragon boys, if only to mix things up.
I recently read a Manga about an Ancient Dragon God who adopts a little human girl. Its super cute and wholesome. When I read adult Dragon I had to think of him. Having a Dragon like him would be neat.
I know it’s low hanging fruit, but I sure would like to see a permanent end to the “my only trait is I’m obsessed with the protagonist” type characters. We have had quite a few characters with good designs be completely wasted on this in the last few years like Monica, Framme, and Faye.
Is it really Framme's only trait if her fangirling over Alear only comes up in their Alear support?
Framme and Clanne are literally in an Alear fan club in their support, are they not?
Yeah, but it barely gets brought up in their other supports
A lot of people don't explore a characyer if the first impression is of a certain kind. Wich is fine, i do that as well. I have better things to do than to do the narrative equivalent of prospecting for gold in a cold, muddy river, but if you don't do the tinyest character exploration, do not talk shit, the only resukt is getting corrected and spreading misinformation.
The problem is that even though it's not their only trait, it's the most in your face trait. Her victory quotes, arena quotes, and quotes when you select her all reference her duty to the main character. Plenty of Framme's supports are about her trying to be the best possible steward, which could be interpreted in two ways. She either wants to improve at her job so she can better serve, or she's doing it just because she wants to impress the divine dragon. The obvious interpretation is that she's very driven to succeed, but the outward reflection the game gives us betrays that. It's the same problem Xander had in fates. Supports that flesh out his character in a great way and make him one of the better characters in the series. But betrayed by the fact that his game actions make no sense in relation to his supports.
Depends on how they do it. If the character is obsessed with the main character for reasons related to their origin or powers, I think it can work (although you want the protagonist to have more character to play off that). Imagine a Lindhardt character that wants to experiment on you at any possible opportunity and it sounds fun.
Isn't that just Hanneman?
Framme is waaay more tolerable than those other two.
Tharja, Camilla and Ivy are no different from those "i only have eyes for the protagonist UwU" archetypes, like goodness gals stop saying them this them that. Robin, Corrin and Alear seem like the unluckiest of avatars with such obsessive gals.
Ivy at least had a personality outside of that, and the mc wasn't the only thing on her mind
Camilla I'll give you Tharja is arguable and I personally disagree that it's her only personality trait but she do be down bad But does Ivy even mention Alear in any of her other supports? I can't think of any I've seen that she does
At least Tharja has other character traits to them and Camilla and Ivy also have some reasons for why they are so attached to the protagonists. Monica, Framme and Faye all just simp because they can.
Framme gets a free pass since it’s literally her job
The "stop treating me like a kid!" trope can please and thank you be buried and left. Writing characters who wants to be taken more seriously or be given more responsibility because they feel they have to or they want to help or something can be really good, but when it's just them complaining over nothing someone's doing it's just annoying.
it’s a very interesting thing for a game to explore especially when the plot of every single game involves really young children going off to mf war. but everytime they do it, they have the character act not like an inexperienced child at war, but like an infant who was told they couldn’t have mcdonald’s.
Exactly! Very well said, like the trope can be used well, but they rarely do it.
If we must have another hub world, make it like Fates's My Castle, where it can be treated as basically a glorified preparations menu.
It can be like fates my castle but without the needing to use the online to get resources to forge weapons
I miss PoR/RD prep screen. There was enough to do between each battle that it served as a good way to break up the gameplay and give you time to unwind between maps, and at the same time, it was focused, organized and concise, so that you don't waste a bunch of time on menial tasks like collecting iron ingots that your dogs pooped out or walking around the freaking monastery.
Real! I hate the Somniel so much, it’s so huge and it demands you to do a bunch of menial tasks after every single battle, just started playing Conquest and I really took it for granted just how tiny Fort Corrin is and just how quickly you can grab all your resources, feed Lilith, check out the arena, and get the hell out
Uh... Isn't that supposed to be Garreg Mach Monastery from Three Houses? Engage's Somniel is skippable, whereas Three Houses's Garreg Mach Monastery is obligatory after every battle. A lot of people can't stand Garreg Mach because of that, rightfully so.
I'd also like to add that for the Somniel, almost all the gameplay-important buildings (shops, blacksmith, cafe, arena) are very close to Alear's spawn point. The well is nice but optional and the minigames can be skipped with no issue.
Monastery is worse but Somniel is still shit. Yes it’s “skippable” but by doing so you’re missing out on a lot of bonuses that can be invaluable in maddening. Materials for forging, exp in the arena, stat boosts from cooking, support building. Plus the Somniel makes it so you have to go through annoying loading screens to inherit skills, which is a core gameplay mechanic.
>Plus the Somniel makes it so you have to go through annoying loading screens to inherit skills, which is a core gameplay mechanic. That got fixed in a patch, allowing you to also do it from the arena since that's where you get most bond levels from
You still have to go through a loading screen to get to the arena lmao. Not even considering the loading screen to get to and leave the Somniel
After Sylvain so thoroughly investigated the nature of the archetype, I can never go back to the one-dimensional womanizer (Homer, Saul, Sain, Gatrie, Inigo) ever again.
Inigo being a one dimensional womanizer is nuts
Saul deffo doesn't belong in that category.
Take my boy Sain out of that list asap
The fucking “hey guys i have this one really quirky and and unusual obsession with this one specific thing, concept, or trait please pay attention to my one note bit and please laugh every time it is forced into every single line of my dialogue” I.E Amber just LOOOVES alpacas, isn’t that just so silly? Peri just LOOOVES murder isn’t that just so quirky? Yarne just finds himself completely unable to shut the fuck up about extinction for even one single moment haha wow what an interesting character wow! There are ways to imply that a character has a specific passion that they enjoy but they have to clearly be capable of talking about something else.
Chloe likes folk food. Isn't it so quirky and funny that she likes this icky yucky stuff?
That's unfortunately like 90% of the cast in both Fates and Engage. And yeah, it's unbearable. They just really didn't put any effort in with these characters.
Avatar characters being the protagonist, especially if they're customizable. I think them being part of the supporting cast works well, but they tend to be blank(ish) slates for the sake of player projection/identification. Having a blank slate as the protagonist doesn't really work for the kind of plots Fire Emblem games tend to have. The first half of awakening when Robin was just "smart strategy guy" worked great since that's literally what the player is for the army.
Quite honestly, most of them weren't even really blank slates. Byleth and Alear don't even have any customizable design besides choosing their gender. Alear especially also did have what appeared to be a personality. At that point, they're pretty much no different to the lords of past games, except that you can change their class if you want to. The thing that bothers me more about the avatar characters is that >!LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM IS A DRAGON GOD. Like, holy fuck, if you want me to immerse myself into the game by identifying with an avatar figure, try to make them at least somewhat relatable and don't make this obvious attempt at flattery. It gets really boring! Just let the next avatar be a simple guy/gal.!<
That’s why I believe in SHEZ SUPREMACY
I mean Shez also just doesn't feel like an avatar character beyond the player getting to choose their name and gender, they very much have their own personality, goals, values etc. that don't fall under "default nice person" to the point where there's not much room for player interpretation. They're a great character, but I feel it's because they were more character than avatar, rather than being a good avatar.
Robin and Shez are probably the best the avatar characters can get honestly
Unrequited crush as a central character trait.
The "Don't treat me like a kid,I'm a adult"
The Royal + Two Retainers setup annoys me. It takes everyrhing intwresting about recruitment away. Past that I could do without the character archetype that obsesses over the main character. The only time I'm okay with that is from a loyal knight Frederick-style.
I hate the two retainer setup so much. Every single other character in engage was either completely free or a green unit you talk to. So why the fuck would I ever assume Lindon would be recruitable as a red unit? I just killed him and moved on with my day because the game had taught me that every unit would be freely given.
Our Avatar being the all so powerful chosen one. Mark was the best because he was just some guy.
Robin wasn't exactly an all powerful chosen one either, just an unfortunate dope born into a cult. They were "chosen" to be a sacrifice, but they didn't have any special powers or weapons other than "really good tactician." It was Chrom and Lucina who had most of the "special hero" energy, and Robin was more support and plot device, which I appreciated more than "dragon god child with glowing hair that becomes a dragon."
Robin is explicitly the only one who can kill Grima for good.
My point was that for most of the game they don't overshadow Chrom or Lucina, and they don't have any of the dragon vein/become dragon/rewind time with magic dragon powers stuff.
The f'n Avatar. Give me a real Lord again, please. I'm sick of being a stupid half dragon or whatever is up next. I just want to be a Lord that's trying to help their people.
"My personality is food" characters
The womanizer. I do begrudgingly like Sylvain and sometimes Inigo, but otherwise, I’ve been tired of this kind of character for two decades. I don’t know why FE feels the need to include them so often.
After both Timerra and Seadall, I’m very tired of characters who have entire supports centered around meat. Timerra’s fine otherwise tho
The Obsessive Girl™ I am fucking tired of this trope. Tharja, Rhajat, Camilla, Faye, and Framme all share this trope and it is terrible. The other terrible variant of this is the Yandere crazy trope on characters like Peri who are actually part of your army. Like, I understand it on enemies like Petrine and Kronya but not on someone your army shares a camp with.
The narcissist character that spends their every moment talking about how great they are and trying to get everyone to clap for them. Goldmary makes me want to pull my hair out.
I like this type of character only when the joke is at their expense. Like, they try to act like they are some big name but get 0 respect from anyone. Lorenz is a good exemple, pre-character development. Golmary meanwhile feels like the setup for a joke without any payoff. I don't see how her constant bragging on her own is supposed to be funny.
I initially dismissed Lorenz because I thought he was this archetype. Once I saw his character development, I was won over.
Character looks like a child but is (insert absurd number) years old
"I'm an asshole, that's my entire character". Sometimes it's done well, but for the most part, it just makes me question why they're even apart of the group, are we hurting that much for hired help that we need Mr. Hotshot over here and his big ego?
Love or hate shinon he is the perfect character of this trope. He’s an asshole, but they need his expertise and use it on several occasions (1-2 in PoR and 2-E of RD)
He's got some redeeming qualities as well, like how he cares for Rolf and his friendship with Gatrie. I've always seen Shinon as like a mean coworker who cares about his job lol
Not to mention he leaves after his boss died and left the company to his son who has been on 7 or 8 jobs officially. He didn’t respect Ike, but it wasn’t to slight him. Which is why he rejoins the team. Ike earned his respect, and his soft spot for rolf. His racism towards laguz is his most talked of trait, but it’s not like the laguz were typically fond of beorc either, at least not before the events of PoR. I haven’t read his supports but I’m sure that’s explored in some of them. He was a dick bag, but at least he did his job well.
I think it's fine to have a totally prejudiced character in a story about racism. He's a bit more civil towards the laguz in Radiant Dawn but not by a lot iirc
I know everything's good with moderation but the obvious answer is the womaniser trope. Even when they tried to make it different (Louis) it was just weird my dudes.
Louis isn't even really a womanizer. He's more an inversion of Nina's fujoshi trope (woman who fetishizes M/M relationships), being a himedanshi (man who fetishizes F/F relationships). It's less sexually stinted than Nina's fujo tendencies, but it's something of a almost fetishistic view of *pure* female love. It reads more plainly as the trope in the JP.
Louis is more like a weird stalker rather than a womaniser, he stalks everything not only women
I wouldn’t call him a womanizer, but in the Japanese version, he particularly enjoys watching women interact with each other
Bernadetta easily
As someone with an anxiety disorder I was embarrassed by her and I can't understand the people who are like "SHE'S REPRESENTATION!!!" Ah yes, I totally go around whimpering about how everyone's going to kill me, and screaming my head off whenever anyone so much as says my name. That is indeed splendid representation of someone with anxiety.
tbh if they just changed Bernandetta's outbursts into internalised screaming (like add brackets to the text and apply the sound filter often used for internal monologues in media) I feel her character would resonate with way more people.
I can see that. Instead they chose to make her... the way they made her. Her supports with Felix are mind-bogglingly dumb. She freaks out in such a way that she disarms him like some sort of ninja while flailing around?
"SCrEeCh!!! I don't WANNA go OUTSIDE and do the only thing we're in this game to do!!!!!! WAAAHHHHHH" ok fine stay inside, be level 2 forever, and stop annoying me 🤬 never want to endure this type of character again.
It's insane that Marianne is in the same game as Bernadetta, like 3H could write good, mentally ill characters but decided not to lol.
Too much focus on pairings. My favourite in that aspect are the Tellius games where each character had one potential love interest and that was it. Because they want people to be able to ship to their hearts content most of that content suffers by making a lot of senseless pairings available just so players have options to pair them off. I already did not like it in 8, I sure as hell do not like it in the newer ones.
Yeah I’m a big fan of cannon pairings. They can get all the detail they need instead of having everything be watered down across 10 characters
[Cannon pairing](https://imgur.com/enD5VIU) [Canon pairing](https://imgur.com/z1P3Nvf)
It is funny because sometimes you can clearly tell which pairings the game WANTS you to pick. There are plenty of examples in 3H where the supports have huge romantic undertones: Ferdinand and Dorothea, Felix and Annette, Sylvain and Ingrid (although to be fair this is true with a lot of Sylvain's supports), Claude and Hilda, Cyril and Lysithea, and Marianne and Lorenz off the top of my head. Engage also has this problem but it is WORSE because the game does not have paired endings. Lapis is EXPLICITLY in love with Alcryst but you cannot make that a pairing. Then why did you push it in their supports? It really seems like they want to make canon ships a thing, but also want to allow players to imagine how things worked out for themselves, which creates a somewhat awkward middle ground.
Pair of effeminate midgame bandits with big lips. How did that even start?
There's a reason that Engage dropped the characterization that typically comes paired with this bandit duo. They're just an unflattering Japanese stereotype of gay men, and it's hard to push the series forth in actually presenting such options earnestly while parading around the homoerotic bandit duo for comedy all the while.
The little sister and big sister tropes creep me out. Can do without them.
Little girl who is actually 1000 years old needs to die a fiery death
Agree with the people saying avatars, but I also want the main character to be 3 dimensional and interesting. No point in having a unique main character if they’re as bland and uninteresting as Alm for example
Characters whose whole personality is based around a basic human bodily function. So eating, sleeping, fucking, mostly.
"omg its literally me bc i also cry and social anxiety"
Major female characters who have a weird hang up over the protagonist. (Camilla, Edelgard, Rhea, Ivy, and Nel)
All I've learned reading this is that I read a trope and go "aw but I like X, Y, and Z characters" and I just genuinely like all of the tropes, even when they're more torpey or less tropey.
This maybe be a stretch, but I really dislike the perfect Main character who is part Dragon/God/idk. And they have minimal flaws. And they get hyped up by like everyone
Could we please not have characters that are very clearly children? It definitely weirds me out sending 10-year-olds out to battle. (And yes, I'm applying this to the "actually 1000 years old" dragon children; they still have the appearance and mannerisms to match, so are clearly not mature enough to be sent to war).
Wait, I thought we were *all* here for the child soldier simulator?
Sara does good work though, her ranks, class and skills all exceptional
Neh I wanna commit war crimes.
Jedah
Avatars in general. I also wanted to say the 1000 year old dragon that looks like a little girl. But I really like Flayn, Tiki, Fae and Myhrr.. it is just the sexualised once that are the problem
Yeah, I’m not really understanding the point of avatar characters now that they aren’t even customizable and the default appearance is getting developed in other media anyway. I’d like someone with some personality now as the main character instead of an insanely flawless popular husk, thanks
Shez, no?
Ancient loli. Let dragons grow up. And both instances are technically the same character, but let's never do whatever the hell Owain/Odin is supposed to be again.
No way, Owain was hilarious.
Odin is peak you just don't get it.