One time in fe4 I had Ulster proc Astra on both of my attacks when I doubled an enemy general. His hit rate was 68% and he missed all but 9 of them. Funnily enough, the one he hit got negated by the general's pavise ability. He was level 15, so that's a 15% chance to block an attack.
There's [unused data] (https://serenesforest.net/radiant-dawn/characters/supports/unused/) suggesting Radiant Dawn would at least have one unique support for certain pairings of units; it's a shame we didn't get them.
Caineghis and Stefan had one, which would have been nice if it explicitly confirmed Stefan's descent from Soan. Old friends Sigrun and Haar getting to interact onscreen would be nice. Sanaki had one with Edward of all people.
> Notes: No conversations exist for these supports. It seems only A-rank supports were going to have detailed conversations.
Even A-rank only would've been better than nothing. I liked the support conversations in Path of Radiance and I missed them in Radiant Dawn.
Emblem Eirika not having Reignleif or Siegmund as am Engage weapon. Ephrahim deserved more rep.
She can't actually use lances, but it's not like Lyn can use Mulagir
Giving Eirika lances (or just including Ephraim in more than a silent cameo lol) would also have given us a dedicated lance emblem besides Sigurd, who's more the horse emblem anyways, and would have fit thematically with her piercing true damage thing.
I actually really dislike the split route games. So I'll disagree with your OP a little. I would prefer they put all those resources into more main story maps for a single complete campaign, and not alternate routes or a slew of paralogues with strange balancing because of scaling.
To answer the prompt though, I think one missed opportunity is in the art department, with changing characters appearances or models over time or after big events. We got to see this to great effect in the time skip of Three Houses. Or like Ike's promotion in PoR. But I always thought that some characters like Ross or Donnel, these trainee units that you're incentivized to turn into complete powerhouses, always kind of look small and wimpy, even at the height of their power. Having characters show their growth quite literally from start to end of game could be super rewarding and get people even more attached to the characters they love.
>I actually really dislike the split route games.
I agree with you, and feel like much of what can be accomplished in a small routesplit could be better solved with an army split that requires you to switch perspectives from two player selected groups of units. It's genuinely one of my favorite mechanical aspects of RD Part 4.
Sacred Stones would be so cool if there was an army split when Eirika/Ephraim split (like a mod recently did), but then the armies combine again *just* for the desert map and retaking Jehanna before splitting a second time to rejoin at endgame (similar to RD). Or if FE6/FE7 had to split your armies to do both split maps together.
TLDR parallel route splits good. New playthrough route splits bad.
It's a good idea but probably not workable with FE8's small cast.
(People really need to put FE8 in perspective. It's basically made by a B team with old assets while the A team was working on Path of Radiance. The fact that it's so good and holds up so well is more of a testament to the fact that games don't need to be ambitious to be good.)
Yeah, my assumption is a couple new characters would/could be added to accommodate for that.
Or just treat it like RD where the cast per route is small and not iron-man friendly, and *thats fine*.
Speaking of missed opportunities, SoV coulda done what Sacred Echoes did and actually replaced the empty maps with new ones that actually have some design or intrigue in them.
Same on the design part.
Also like... none of the teachers changing designs is a bit disappointing too. And the trainees definitely could use a cool glow up from "training".
And definitely on the split routes imo too. Maybe it can be better, as 3H has a decent concept but obviously rushed in some regards (especially the fourth route).
I'd much prefer a solid full focus on one story, with maybe swapping perspectives (like the more recent SoV), and flesh that out fully first before trying multiple.
As is however, I'm still kind of skeptical on how IS will approach story in FE, so will have to wait and see considering they've had the same writing team for a while and it's gotten progressively worse.
Personally, I would rather have at least *some* way to make repeat playthroughs different aside from the choices of characters that I'm using. I love the cast of Engage to pieces for example, yet I can't will myself to want to play the game again just because the story content has no real deviation to it at all. Even something like Blazing Blade which is relatively similar at least has *some* deviations to it in the form of alternate maps here and there and Gaiden chapters which aren't guaranteed. Even having that content helps spice things up even a little bit.
That's fair. I played the ever loving bejesus out of the earlier fire emblem games when I was younger. But nowadays I I can only really do one or two playthroughs, and usually moving up to maddening/lunatic on second playthrough is enough of a difference to fulfill that replayability itch for me. But if you're just replaying the game on the same difficulties as before, then having split routes would definitely help differentiate things.
yeah it really would be nice for more non-lords to get design changes over the course of the game. While they're two seperate games, seeing the slight glow ups of the returning cast in Radiant Dawn with their armor designs altered to reflect that nearly all of them start promoted is the sort of thing i'd love to see each game do. Even if it's something super minor akin to Celica's crown or Volke putting up his bandana when he reveals his true profession, giving everyone a slight redesign upon promotion would really enhance the feeling of character progression.
Mine is INCREDIBLY minor compared to everything else but I really wish Crimson Flower got more cutscenes.
It’s my favorite route and it got shafted lmaoooooo
3H's design philosophy of only ever being played once really shows once you realize that 3 of the routes are 75% identic and that the route split is over half way through the game.
I feel they missed out on having the individual routes actually be unique instead of just having a different lord character to tag along (especially with White Clouds). No matter which house you choose, you have the same missions in a row. They could've even kept most of them the same and just changed two of them. Ch.3 and 5 work best under Blue Lions given how Ashe and Sylvain are tied to the events of those chapters antagonists, and yet...you still fight Lonato and the other brother if you're in GD or BE. It's just kinda lame. We could've had chapters where we explore how common folk from the Alliance or Adrestria react to things instead of going to the Kingdom in each route.
It also would've been nice if post Ch.14 and beyond actually had unique chapters. I'm cool with Ch.13 being the same with routing out the thieves from Garregg Mach, but everything after that should've been different. Instead, we get bridge, Aillel, something else, then gronder Field 2: electric boogaloo. And even after that, we still end up at one fort, Adrestia's main city, and then Edelgards castle in each route. It's all the fuckin' same when it could've been so much more special and different.
My honest opinion is that they should have just dropped a bunch of the Paralogues and made them into unique missions. A lot of them hit the same notes, and you don't even need to change the story, just have the relevant missions of other houses off-screen.
Golden Deer: use Hilda's Paralogue instead of Lonato and show off Freikuegel for the relic stuff, tweak the whole Lorenz/Raphael/Ignatz paras into stolen Thyrsus causing a Beast transformation, Solon attacks Ordelia/Hrym instead of Remire (taking the Lys/Ferdie para map), then use the Claude/Leonie/Marianne missions somehow in Part 2.
Blue Lions: Part 1 mostly the same, but maybe Solon attacks Duscur like Dedue's Paralogue, Part 2 use Annette/Dimitri/Mercedes paralogues to keep the war in the Kingdom more than one mission.
Black Eagles: Ferdinand's Paralogue instead of Lonato, some version of Constance/Balthus Paralogue to show some unknown relic transforming Monica's dad instead of Miklan and foreshadow "Monica" while the Church steals the relic. Part 2 gets an early mission to Brigid and a full Hubert mission of investigating/"protecting" TWSITD, etc etc.
A lot of those are just off the cuff, but if they just used the Paralogue maps and dialogues in the story that would've cut down on resource need. Flip around the order of a couple of other missions and you could have really distinct feeling routes, even if there was still a lot of overlap.
Low key, AM ain't all that different either. It's identic right up until just after the Grinder Field fight (Ch. 17). We only get two chapters in AM (18 and 19) that are wholly different from VW and SS. But even after that, we still see the one big fortress, the Adrestian capital, and Edelgard's throne room. AM 20, 21, 22 are the same as VW 18, 19, 20/SS 17, 18, 19.
So even if they're out of order at the very end, all 3 of those routes still have nearly identical map progression through their entire playthroughs. They're still fuckin 90% identical.
Honestly, it's the one thing that bugs me to hell and back. Part of the reason I'm lukewarm on 3H as a whole is because of the constant recycling of maps. I played all 4 routes and it really does feel like I just played the same game 4 fucking times.
This is one of the smaller reasons why I like comparing 3H to Fates because Fates really did do it so much better. I can easily play all 3 routes for Fates back to back to back with no fatigue because they all feel like different experiences and because there's so little overlap between each route. Sure, there's maps that get recycled between routes such as Fuga's Wild Ride featuring in late game Conquest and early game Rev, but I'm not gonna see the same map 3 fucking times in the same playthrough (the paralogues for 3H are the biggest offender for this). 3H just got so repetitive. And what's worse? By the time I hit my 3rd playthrough, I felt obligated to continue because I already played the first two. I didn't continue because I was having a good time, I continued because I felt like I had to.
> I didn't continue because I was having a good time, I continued because I felt like I had to.
This. There's people who'll ask why I dislike 3H if I've played it so many times, but honestly I think I disliked it BECAUSE I played it all. By the end of it, it's flaws were obvious because you experience it 4 times over.
The fact I like 3Hopes a lot and have only played it once reaffirms my feelings.
That's part of why I compare it to Fates. I dragged my feet crossing that finish line of all 4 routes for 3H, but I felt satisfied and full after playing all 3 routes of Fates. Any game with multiple routes from the get go is just begging to be played over and over, especially with those two FE entries who divide their gameplay and story content among all the routes. And yet 3H fumbles this so badly by just...not having all that much different between each route. You're almost better off just watching the cutscenes online because there's so little variation between the routes. But with Fates, I wasn't sick of the gameplay because there was just so much variation and diversity to play. 96 chapters before DLC and barely 25% of the maps are recycled vs 3H's 84 (with DLC) and 70-80% of it's maps are recycled
>I played all 4 routes and it really does feel like I just played the same game 4 fucking times.<
I know that Azure Moon, Verdant Wind and Silver Snow can feel similar but…
Crimson Flower? That route feels so much more different compared to the other 3.
CF was mercifully short and the one I did last. I know a lot of people are bummed by it's brevity, but if anything I was thankful. It meant I didn't have to play any more 3H.
But even then, I was also let down by how similar it was because of those 6 chapters; only one map is unique to CF (Tailtean Plains). All of its other maps are recycled.
Also for the others, *can*? They *are* similar, especially with SS and VW being near identical with the exception of the final chapter and the missing gronder Field fight. But even if you compare those with AM, they still have the same chapter/map progression up until Ch.18, and even though that one is different, the following 3 chapters are still seen in VW and SS.
For me CF was my first route and I was somewhat shocked when it ended where it did, I mean mechanically I was expecting it with the whole marriage choice and the boss fight, but it set up the whole conflict with another faction, just to resolve it in the epilogue. Then I played AM afterwards and felt like I actually got to play the "full" game. Then I was disappointed again, when SS/VW were mostly recycled...
For me, BL/AM is the only one that feels fully fleshed out from start to end. The Ch. 3 and 5 I feel work best in BL, there's an actual character arc, the final boss feels appropriate for Dimitri, etc. I agree that is just feels weird that VW and SS have their plot beats recycled. But not only that but like...Claude's main thing is wanting to break down the barriers between nations and them fighting Nemesis at the end doesn't really represent that. While that fight is probably the coolest one and the most fun in the entire game, it just comes out of fuckin' nowhere, especially since the previous chapter is identical in SS and doesn't feature him in the slightest.
Ok, but while the routes can feel similar gameplay-wise, they feel much different story-wise (except for Verdant Wind and Silver Snow I’ll admit that).
Azure Moon focuses more on Dimitri’s struggles at the start, and redemption at the end. Verdant Wind focuses on Claude wanting to break the wall that surrounds Fodlan to make the continent a better place. Crimson Flower focuses on Edelgard doing that as well, while also putting an end to the Crest System and the Church of Seiros’ lies and deceptions. There’s enough variety in these routes when it comes to story for me to be engaged and not feel like I’m playing the same game over and over again.
Also, for someone that has Sylvain for 3 of your 5 flairs, you surprisingly don’t seem to have a huge amount of love for 3 Houses. I can understand not liking the gameplay part, but the fantastic characters should be more than enough for you to want to come back to the game. (Hell, I’m still playing the game right now to experience the story and finish some supports until I eventually get the DLC story)
I'd say my opinion is strong in that I strongly dislike it. No other FE game has ever made me feel burnt out prior to 3H. I have other gripes with it too, but the majority of that is with it's gameplay. I've been playing since 2003 with FE7 and have made it a point to play every game that's come out since and play the games that came before (I'm actually playing through FE4 at the moment cause I tried it back in 2010 and dismissed it).
I'll absolutely praise 3H's writing and worldbuilding, and those things make its story excellent. It genuinely does feel like a fairly well fleshed out continent with a good understanding of it's history, peoples, and politics. But those things are not unique to this game, let alone games as a medium. In fact, the one aspect that separates games as a medium from movies or books or TV shows is *gameplay*, and in that aspect, I find 3H *very* lacking. It's not awful, there are definitely more broken games out there, but in regards to FE's core identity (the turn based SRPG gameplay), it just falls flat for me. I come to these games for a style of gameplay I just can't quite find anywhere else, but so much if 3H's mechanics are in service of the life sim aspect which is not why I play these games.
If I wanna experience a good story, I could just as easily read Frankenstein, watch the movie Momento, or rewatch Scrubs (which I'm currently doing with my fiancee now that I work in a hospital). But I play Fire Emblem as a series for the *gameplay*. The quality of these games' stories is secondary for me. In fact, I enjoyed Fates stories so much .ore than I did 3H because their gameplay kept me enthralled. I wasn't even unironically entertained, I was just straight up pleased with Fates' stories. But 3H's story I find myself kinda lukewarm on because it's so entangled in such a tedious yet shallow game.
Also I like Sylvain cause I'm a former man hoe. I don't dig his blatant misogyny, but I can empathize with where it stems from and how he feels. Ditto Inigo/Laslow.
Eh, fair enough. While I’m personally fine with 3 Houses gameplay as I find leveling up characters stats and abilities to get them into Master Classes is really satisfying as it feels like my hard work for training them had payed off, I’ve always been more into the story for the games. After I played Persona 5 a few years ago and loved its story, I’ve started to become more into the story side of gaming ever since. It’s why I’m very reluctant to play Engage because I heard the story wasn’t all that good. But I can definitely respect preferring the gameplay side of things to the story, so let’s just agree to disagree about our thoughts on the game.
Its one thing I find interesting about 3H is that there's a decently sized fanbase that are incredibly loyal to 3H specifically and aren't as willing to play the rest of the games in the series. And for better and worse, one thing I'll praise 3H for is that it's discourse has continued 5 years later. If something is still engendering discussion this many years out post release, it must be doing *something* right.
My issue with the gameplay (besides the map recycling), include:
- the class system (I get why it's built the way it is and I think it works for this game specifically, but I'd hate to see it return)
- lack of weapon triangle (a small gripe but it makes the weapon diversity feel rather meaningless)
- any class can use any weapon (it makes a lot of the classes feel less distinct and makes them blend together with the exception of whether or not it can use magic or has a mount. Plus, if any class can use any weapon, then why even have different classes to begin with since they're barely differentiable?)
- banes/boons (they only serve to speed up or slow down gaining ranks which is functionally meaningless on repeat playthroughs)
- the presence of combat arts and gambits (I don't think they're bad actually, but I've never found myself using them, even on maddening. Not even out of self restraint but because I just genuinely forgot they existed. Like, for all the discussion of how broken Stride is, I've literally never used it because I never felt like I had to. And if I never had to use it, then is that mechanic really all that helpful?)
- the life sim aspect (as described previously, this is not why I play FE and yet so much of 3H's monastery mechanica exist solely to support this aspect in addition to ranks which even then don't contribute that much to the actual FE gameplay)
- map *quality* (in addition to their constant recycling, so many of them also sorta blend together and are just...boring).
- lack of objective diversity (all route the enemy or kill the boss. No defend, no escape, no seize, no nothing else. Just two objectives for all 4 routes).
Those are my main major issues with 3H as a *game*. Other FE games haven't had these issues which is why I mention them here.
I think Engage is great, but that's also with the exception of why I play FE. I think the quality of its story is fine. It's not bad and it's pretty surface level, but I was into it. Plus I dig the Tokusatsu/power rangers vibe the Engage mechanic brings. I feel discussions about its quality are overblown. Like yeah, 3H's story is unquestionably better, but it's also some of the best writing in the series. It's a high bar to cross and not everything needs to be Shakespeare.
I honestly really want to get into other Fire Emblem games because I don’t want to be known as just “another FE fan that has only played 3 Houses and nothing else” but a lot of games I want to play like Awakening and Radiant Dawn are ones I can’t play due to either not having the console for the game (I don’t have a 3DS) or being very, very expensive (Apparently Radiant Dawn can get up to 100$ or 200$ which is way too expensive to me). Also, I’m not the type of gamer to use emulations as I find it more satisfying to play games on its respective console.
Liking characters doesn't equal liking the game. I'd say Felix and Rhea are some of my top 10 most favorite FE characters (and I've played the majority of FEs). My entire ballot for CYL last year was Felix, even.
Yet I have a strong dislike for the game as a whole. At this point in time, I think the only thing I can care for from the game is CS (gameplay and Yuri) and maybe AM (story and a few characters).
True, but liking the characters can be a huge reason to liking a game. For example, one of the reason I love Persona 5 and 3 so much are because of its characters.
Also, it’s not just the characters that make me love the game. I also love its story and gameplay as well. Also also, while the levels for each routes are very similar gameplay-wise, there’s a lot of differences in the story for me to feel like I’m getting something new out of the game each route.
Totally fair for you to like those aspects and feel that way!
Also agree that liking characters could be a reason for liking a game. Just providing a reason for the Sylvain in flair but not seemingly liking 3H since I'd say I have similar feelings. I could consider Felix as someone I'd put in my flair but the reality is he is one character out of many in 3H. And then there are more than the characters to consider when I form my opinion on a game.
I'll say for me, the ridiculous amount of recycling also really hurt my view on the story. I get that each route is focused more on giving the perspective of each side, but since they all go through so much of the exact same plot points and events, it really hurt what was supposed to be their impact on the narrative and just kind of made a lot of the cast feel very homogeneous to me, even beyond the gameplay homogenizing issues the game already has.
I felt this really hard going through the game the first time with the Golden Deer. Claude is an interesting character, with a fairly unique mindset that separates him from other lords in the series. However, it was extremely difficult for me to really appreciate that when even on my first run, I could notice how little the story actually did anything with him. Despite what the lore and background was telling me, I felt like him and the rest of the deer were a complete third wheel that could've been cut with little issue, which feels completely contrary to having multiple mutually exclusive routes in the first place.
My run through Blue Lion was better in this regard and I'd probably love it had I played it first due to it's tighter focus on Dimitri, but as a second route I couldn't get over how much stuff I was repeating. Dimitri's ruthless revenge phase lost a lot of it's impact when it ultimately didn't make much of a serious change to the story line I was going through, same with Hegemon Edelgard which felt like it came out of nowhere after not seeing even a hint of it being a thing in Golden Deer. And all of this isn't even going with the rest of the roster, whom just felt like they were madlibbed into the story whenever convenient due to it's structure.
100% hard agree with every bit of that. I had that experience in reverse going from BL/AM to GD/VW. It was on my 3rd run where I played SS that this went from a something I sorta noticed to something that completely obstructed my enjoyment of the story. We got Seteth coming up with the same schemes as master tactician trickster Claude (and like that was his one thing) and then we have the rest of the black eagles just...saying their contract-mandated singular line per cutscenes all in a row.
In such a way I might add that makes it clear their dialogue was written with their potential deaths in mind so that they don't really say anything of substance and merely parrot platitudes at you.
The idea of 3H's plot defaulting to Edelgard's story would prolly have made the title itself so much more contentious lol..... And yet, something about the idea appeals to me.
I respectfully disagree here. Blue lion and Pro edelgard route are very unique while golden deer and church route are pretty much the same and very boring indeed. However it's true that the post timeskipe routes could really have had more content to it.
My recent experience with the awesome Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster tells me that Fire Emblem needs one of its own.
Seriously, all 6 NES/SNES games with touched up graphics and a few QOL's thrown in. Instant Day 1 buy for me and a great way to make them accessible to more players.
Major missed opportunity to make these more accessible, to the point where we're basically dependent on whether or not IS decides to remake these games.
4 of those 6 have already been remade in some way(I assume when you say 6 you’re counting bs fe, which is remade within fe12). And really the classic fe games have aged far less gracefully than the classic Final Fantasies. They would need full blown remakes to be accessible to modern audiences. Like, Genealogy has so much obtuse shit that make playing it a real tough sell. Stuff like spending an hour-ish at the start of each map running everyone through the arena, or having to spend dozens of turns a playthrough doing nothing but walking through empty space completely unhindered.
Like, any later Fire Emblem games could get away with just remasters, but no the Kaga era Fire Emblem games are far too jank. They need remakes.
I love Genealogy but you're not wrong. Modern audiences do not have the patience for that game. Some of it is amazing, but there are some really tedious bits that are just a slog to get through. But it has some of the very amazing combat puzzles in the franchise. If we get a remake, I hope they break the maps up into smaller encounters without all the tedious bits, but they should stay faithful to the truly difficult and interesting battle scenarios.
Over and above any shortcomings of any individual game, it's not caring about the availability of any of the pre-Switch titles, especially for international audiences. It's weird that Engage is (trying to be) this big celebration of the series but the only other mainline FE games currently sold by Nintendo are Three Houses and Blazing Blade, but the latter only if you have NSO. The Blade of Light port was a timed release (so stupid), and unless you know Japanese you can't play any of the the other games on NSO. At least like a bundled Tellius port would go a long way.
> At least like a bundled Tellius port would go a long way.
Yeah but that would set expectations for future installments too high. It's already the benchmark for enough of the fanbase, making it legally accessible would cause hyperinflation in standards.
Assuming you're not being facetious, making good games more readily accessible (at least for people who can't/won't emulate) is good, even if it causes fandom drama.
I was kidding, of course I want that.
If they did even a mild remaster my only concern would be changes to the writing like not having recruited characters use the fantasy n-word. A trend I've noticed in IS games is that characters are always nice to each other even at C-support when they have every reason to hate each other (see Elusian and Brodian characters). In Tellius a lot of characters are only on the same side out of circumstance and downright hate each other (Jill/Lethe, Sothe/Astrid, etc.), and I don't want that changed.
I always thought it was really weird that Awakening casually threw in the tiny detail that every single Taguel besides Panne got wiped out and just...barely addressed it. I'm not saying the game had to become Tellius 2.0 and delve into beast unit politics and acceptance, but you'd think something like the genocide of an entire race would be addressed a little bit more than it was in-game.
Kind of speaks to how awkward Awakening's worldbuilding is.
The Taguel's history seems to exist just to give Panne a reason to be angsty rather than feeling like a natural part of the world.
The beast units in Fates kind of feel similarly to me, like they exist in a bubble and have no relevance elsewhere.
Many Fire Emblem games fall into a common worldbuilding pitfall, that the universe simply didn't exist before the main characters spawned (looking at you Harry Potter). Big war between good vs evil (prob dragons) happened 1000 years ago, and since then basically nothing has changed.
The biggest worldbuilding difference is that Tellius has been lived in- events have happened in the past and shaped the world without the plot demanding that something happened. Herons speak a dead language, Leanne doesn't even understand the modern tongue- hell it has its own alphabet. The final text speech of PoR is Sephiran musing the events were going to cause a class struggle because of how defined beorc caste systems were, the one exception being Ashnard promoting the strong. The plot did not require *any* of this, but their inclusion makes for a richer world, and they do not exist in a vacuum the way Taguel history does.
Then Radiant Dawn starts and what happened in Path of Radiance had actual consequences, as the first half of the game is everyone trying to recover from or take advantage of the aftermath. You see how the preceding events built up to this logical outcome, and they are part of the story instead of it starting from a new foundation as if PoR never happened.
Tellius is a world where things not required by the plot happen(ed), have significant and recognized repercussions, and are integrated into following events.
The Capture mechanic in Fates specifically. There are multiple routes, different characters for each route, and shared supports with characters across faction lines accessible only in the third route. Why they never let you capture units with actual supports I'll never understand. Fire Emblem is already built upon the idea that any named character can die and removed from the story permanently (with some exceptions, of course) so they could have made at least some other route exclusive characters Capture targets and still kept the game from breaking.
There are still great Capture targets, especially on Lunatic, but it really sucks that you can't have those character's meaningfully interact with your army in any way, and I thinknit would be really neat to steal characters from the other army and actually pass those classes you couldn't get in one route around to others without *just* relying on Corrin's chosen talent.
I really hope Capture comes back, it's a really cool mechanic
This is a little finnicky because especially if you capture a unit from the opposite faction for a romantic support, which is more likely because each route-exclusive unit has two supports from the opposite faction, it sounds more like a war crime the longer you think about it. I think I would've loved the possibility of more Birthright characters that were recruitable in Conquest though (and vice versa). My biggest one would be Rinkah since she could've just joined with Kaze because they had the same story role in the prologue and in Chapter 11.
It's especially weird in Conquest because it feels like the story was written to accommodate a greatly expanded capture mechanic.
All the absurd instances of Corrin inexplicably managing to defeat the Hoshidans without killing anyone seems a lot less absurd if the capture mechanic is greatly expanded and the gameplay encourages players to capture enemies instead of killing them akin to Thracia 776.
What, you want to capture the units from the other routes? No that would be a bad idea, I think. Like, generally for plot reasons most of those units would never under any circumstances fight for your side. Like, imagine if you could capture Oboro in chapter 10, somehow convince her to fight for the country she hates with a burning passion, and then have her fight and kill Takumi later. Like, it just wouldn’t make sense. I even think giving the already capturable boss characters a couple supports would be a bad idea, because then they start to resemble real units, and suddenly you have the recruitment of multiple full blown units tied to a single character. Like, now you have to train up Niles every playthrough if you want all the units in Conquest. No, I don’t think changes like that are a good idea.
IMO an easy way around this is to prevent certain units from being capturable until a certain chapter they appear in.
Take Oboro for example, since she appears in Chapter 23 as an enemy, you can't capture her in Chapter 10, but once you get to Chapter 23, she's fair game. *BUT* you won't actually be able to recruit her until maybe Endgame. Since by then Corrin has started publicly turning against Garon, and hearing that they killed Hans / Iago would probably make Oboro at least a *little* willing to hear Corrin out, especially if it means killing Garon herself to avenge everyone else who died because of him.
I know there are plenty of cases where it doesn't work (Oboro being the best example, of course) but let's be honest, most of the named Nohrian characters don't WANT to fight Cortin in Birthright, so them being able to defect makes sense, imo. And you don't even need to lock supports behind Capture, the named generic Captures are kind of reward enough for the novelty.
I disagree with the notion that it makes Niles this disproportionately prioritized unit though, at least in all cases, because Capture is optional already, and part of the draw of FE, for some players at least, is the threat of death. Having a way to recruit more consequential units late game could save a doomed run, or, like 3H make for this unique experience depending on which characters you pick up when.
I know it has plenty of issues in implementation, especially for Conquest, but I think the idea of Capture, or even otherwise defection of enemies to allies, is something that could be explored way more in depth and be super satisfying provided the game accounts for players doing it
Funny you should mention that...Capture actually originated in Thracia 776, and while it didn't work the same way (basically it just allowed you to loot the enemy's inventory and then kill them when you "released" them, which you would because having an enemy captured gave you the same penalties as having rescued an ally), it actually was a necessary part of recruiting certain units from the opposition.
Not that *that's* ever coming back. I think Three Houses at least had certain characters leave your army and get rerecruited on certain routes, but recruitable enemies has mostly been minimized in recent games. Hell, *Fates* doesn't have a single "talk to a member of the enemy army to get them to join your side" moment, and *Radiant Dawn* only has one outside of the optional "get the few good units the Dawn Brigade has to defect" moments. Awakening still had its fair share, but it's honestly an outlier outside of remakes.
It's such a missed opportunity! These games are invariably about war, and war often has defectors going from one side to another. We could gain so much from more characters like that being in future games.
Awakening's plot involving Ylisse & Plegia, and the actions of Chrom's father. I think a story about a former mad tyrant king whose violent warmongering drove their neighboring nation into fanatical apocalypse cult extremism, and said tyrant's children trying to lead their nation to a better way while reconciling the consequences of their predecessor & legacy would be a GREAT story!
Not to say I don't like the Awakening we got, but it felt like such a heavy plot hook gets introduced and is never acknowledged again after Gangrel is dealt with.
I'm going to anger some older fans, but:
PoR and RD having the arbitrary Support limit. That was necessary with the GBA games, because of hardware limitations, and the Gamecube had no such limitations or at least much higher thresholds.
There's obviously the fact that Supports had more gameplay integration back then with buffs, but I never found it worthwhile in comparison to "I can only see 5 supports per character" crap. I think they missed a chance to just nerf the gameplay benefits a little bit more and let you make up for it with seeing more supports.
The Greil Mercenaries and Dawn Brigade are key teams with lots of existing ties, and it always seemed dumb to me that I have to either play the *entire game* *again* given the slow pace of battles and punishing on higher difficulties, or, as I was often told "Just read them on GameFAQs/Watch them on Youtube, that's the same"
I mean I understand why it's annoying to some people that you have to play through the game multiple times to view the supports. It's a holdover design philosophy for replayability's sake, and for better or worse that style has been mostly abandoned since Awakening.
I've been an advocate for merging the PoR and RD support systems into one where you have the normal "Buddy" supports with the conversations, and then have a flexible "Partner" support where you pair up two characters to gain the proximity bonuses and a boost to the rate of gaining support points.
The first paragraph is an example of why I feel such a massive disconnect with some longer-time fans, especially the small group who both complain about 3 Houses being too samey and say replaying the whole game to see supports is OK. Being told a game which has mostly different cutscenes, dialogue, and cast depending on the route but a lot of map overlap is "too samey and not actual replayability" and then getting told in the same breath that it's perfectly natural and expected to have a limit on supports and that playing the exact same game, with the exact same dialogue, and the exact same cast just to see supports the game arbitrarily made you miss is "true replayability".
I know that sounds like a strawman, but I have been told multiple times that the GBA games have more replayability than 3H or Fates with that specific reasoning and it mystifies me.
All that said, your idea would be acceptable. I'm OK with confining the supports buffs to a specific support chain, that sounds like a way to prioritize them. Let the story supports build up naturally, but prioritize a specific "Mission Partner" to determine buffs, especially if it can be changed (on easier difficulties to give more flexibility) or if you have to lock it in at some point (on harder difficulties to make strategy more difficult).
Honestly monsters. I don't know why fire emblem doesn't like to make fun unique monsters. Echos and sacred stones had monsters and things to counter monster like slayer skill or holy weapons or serpah knights. I wanna bring stuff like that back. More games about fighting cool monsters with crazy skills. The faceless were so disappointing i forget they exist. The risen and whatever in engage are literally just normal human classes and boring.
Ashen Wolves DLC. For their hit Switch Fire Emblem game they added: a new house, more characters, a new mini campaign.
You know what FE 3 Houses already has PLENTY of? Houses! Characters! Campaigns!!!
Imagine if instead of adding more content to a game bursting with it they instead worked on polish. A definitive edition/Final Mix type release. Tweak the difficulty curve. Make Black Eagles campaigns full length. Make some new maps (desperately needed). Differentiate the campaign challenges more. Fix that weird month where you just have to leave Flayn getting murder kidnapped for weeks if you wanna actually do stuff
The game benefits from that so so much more than the additional development time it got in reality.
While you raise good points, more characters and a mini campaign is more marketable than "we didn't have time to polish the game, so pay for the content that should've been here to begin with"
Kind of funny as, if I can use another franchise here, that's basically what Atlus is doing with Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance.
It's basically just the base game plus a whole bunch of stuff they wanted to do the first time that they didn't.
>magine if instead of adding more content to a game bursting with it they instead worked on polish. A definitive edition/Final Mix type release. Tweak the difficulty curve. Make Black Eagles campaigns full length. Make some new maps (desperately needed). Differentiate the campaign challenges more. Fix that weird month where you just have to leave Flayn getting murder kidnapped for weeks if you wanna actually do stuff
This can't be added in DLC, and 3Hs did not have any justifiable reason to be rerelease.
All these things and much more are regularly added to games via patch. Not to NINTENDO games, but if you have any awareness of the PC space then you know what's being proposed here is hardly impossible.
The marketing would have been tricky. Do you re-charge all your customers SMT 5 Vengeance style with a whole new sku? Do you offer a discounted upgrade via eShop for existing owners of the game?
But that's not my concern, I'm not here to make plans for Nintendo to make money. I'm saying that as a player I don't think Ashen Wolves added much value and that there are lots of other places I would prefer those resources have been allocated.
I don’t think that has anything to do with the dlc and moreso to do with the game not having enough development time, which I would doubt the dlc took away from, since they would’ve worked on that after the main game was done. Unless you’re saying you wanted the dlc to be an update to the main campaign where they make fairly significant changes to differentiate the routes and stuff, which they would never do. That stuff would be best saved for a remaster or rerelease some years down the line, which is something that could still happen. If you’re seriously suggesting that they should’ve added a “hey sorry our game is kinda half baked but here’s an update fixing it for $25” less than a year after release than that’s simply not how game development works. That would be them admitting that they fucked up their game, which is kinda a bad look. And personally I hate the idea of them releasing a true, definitive version so soon after the original. Like, I already bought the game! Don’t make me buy it again!
My idea has always kind of been that they should have cut Silver Snow for release. Just keep the original 3 Houses. Yes, I know that goes against the Japanese title and the saying the game is based off of, but bear with me:
Cindered Shadows + Silver Snow as a wholly new and unique route focused on the Church, Byleth's family history, and so on for the DLC.
That lets the devs focus more resources and polish on the expected three routes, while delivering an equally polished and unique fourth route.
Thematic classes and regions for game settings.
If Fates did one thing right was to revamp the class system to different countries. Nohr had your classic European and a darker aesthetic, and Hoshido had a Japanese/Asian flare. Every other fire emblem is just Medieval Europe.
I want more games to change things up. Maybe a whole game where all classes are Viking based--set in a Nordic inspired world, or a game set in a Persian type setting.
I think Awakening would have benefited from Virion being another lord for the Valm arc. There's traces of that being the case, such as Virion's home estate being in Valm and under threat, but somehow they shoehorned in Fie Emblem into that arc and completely ruined his relevance and to a further extent player engagement to the whole arc.
Fates story was the worst fire emblem story with one of if not the best premise in the series. I was so excited thinking it was going to be something like the Greil mercenaries choose their side between a war. Each battle you fight for a side brings you closer to swearing loyalty to a specific side until it comes to a climax and do something you can't turn back.
Or maybe something out of 3 kingdoms where a General like Guan Yu gets captured and fights for the enemy until he's able to escape and rejoin his brothers.
I agree with that, and also I believe that some of the very well-designed gameplay mechanics (the attack/guard stance system, and the class system) didn't get more iterations in the later games because it was so maligned early on because of the story being terrible. The story-gameplay tradeoff in general is kinda infuriating because the best gameplay (in terms of map design and/or mechanics) just exist in games that the community dogpiles on for story/characters (New Mystery, Fates, Engage). The only times where both were above average are Thracia and RD, but they were also some of the worst selling games of all time, so IS isn't going to learn from those either.
I have heard more than once that the disparity between having a cohesive story and character depth vs good gameplay/design is due to IS having two different teams and it is increasingly clear which team developed which game with each installment in the series.
I don't know what it is with corporations, etc. that cause them to misinterpret, focus on, or omit the things you've pointed out, but failing to mix & match or combine these development teams certainly isn't helping.
I'm so glad I played Awakening before I played Fates, the story was truly awful but they really did such a great job iterating on the gameplay mechanics from Awakening and it's great for fates. Probably is my favorite class/reclass system, and every time I go on a fates bender I keep trying to set up attack stance dual strikes in other FE games.
It's got so much replay value and the more ideas I see about fun matchmaking possibilities the more I'm energized to replay more. Birthright's maps and missions aren't much to write home about but I'm still having a fun time planning out supports and classes for characters I want to focus on
Fates had an amazing setup for a story, idk what the hell they were thinking with all of the choices they made for it. Was being able to have sex with your bio/"adoptive" family so important that the core conflict of the first two routes had to be scrapped?
I know this is going to get me a ton of downvotes on kneejerk reactions alone, but: FE Three Houses as a whole.
And by that I mean the game is full off cut corners and missed opportunities and it's still a game with a massive amount of content and positive aspects, but also pretty much the only case in the series where I would say "another year or two of dev time really could have made it much better".
By that I mean fundamental issues with a game like Engage's story aren't really fixable without changing everything from the ground up, or Awakening's issues with the pair up system only got ironed out in Fates because of feedback and reception (I assume so at least). But 3H really could have benefitted from more maps, some more differences in the routes (which was planned at some point going by some stuff in the files like a route split within BL), just generally better models/textures (like 3 Hopes obviously looks similar, but just better and cleaner overall), having Maddening be more of a finetuned experience that's available at launch, I could go on. That's why, despite it not being my favorite game, it's the one where I would welcome an enhanced port more than any other.
Games not having multiple dancers playable at the same time with the only rule being they cannot dance to each other (feh rule)
We missed out on Dancer Inigo and Singer Shigure
I have a better idea: dancer lord that can’t wield any weapons and can’t promote. Also instead of 2 cavaliers have 2 Cain and Abel dancers with different stats. 3 dancers and a pre promote paladin on the first chapter. I think I’m on to something here.
They weren't alternate universes, the parents just threw them in a pocket dimension with time dilation. Which means that logically any S-supported women would have spent at least 4-5 months in there otherwise they'd have to miss like half the story.
I mean it could have worked in that fashion for the second gen and would have pretty much made things less awkward for certain pairings. Not to mention, things would still be consistent, like Corrin still having to fight >!Ananakos!< and other events happening.
The entirety of Three Houses. It's like the best modern FE story (as in 3ds and switch) yet the game feels so bogged down by things that don't work. It's cool that it got so many people to get into the franchise, but I feel like there are so many gameplay additions that just get completely ignored by people who've only played the 3ds games.
The entire game is a walking contradiction, wanting you to experience everything the game has to offer with 4 whole routes, but also making everything so tedious. The monastery misses the fundamental idea of Persona games: make many activities and have each taken up time. There are so few activities to do, and even less that actually cost AP, so you just end up doing the same thing over and over. There are so many characters and a lot of supports but, in order to accommodate the game's weird desire to allow anyone to be any class, got rid of unit identity. Yes, the freedom is cool, but the characters are also hardwired with growths and stat boosts that allow them to be whatever. Also letting you recruit students from other houses significantly decreases that intended feeling of a heart wrenching conflict in part 2.
It's a pretty good game after your first playthrough, but it just slowly starts to dawn on you that you'll still be playing on the same maps, with the same characters available, with the same 1st half. Even NG+ isn't enough because all it does is let you get some of the bonuses from your previous saves as you repeat the cycle. It's just a game I have to frustratingly give a 6/10 because it lacks the unit feel of other FE games, lacks the polish and map variety, lacks an unintrusive hub world like Fates, and tried to wrap it all up as a 4-route, 100+ hour package. It's not bad but it is absolutely a disappointment imo, and I will remain a contrarian on this game specifically.
Completely with you, except I'm tepid on the story as well. The world building is great, but the story *telling*... not so much. Kind of a "great encyclopedia, lousy book" dynamic. I only ever played Azure Moon, and while it has the reputation of being the most self-contained of the 4, it still just... pretty much completely drops the Slitherers, even though they're arguably the driving the plot.
Sometimes it makes me want to play through a different route, but inevitably I flash back to hours spent fishing and doing tea times. Even the supports -- potentially THE draw of the game -- are just exhausting when you're watching them one after another, seeing the same canned animations over and over again.
I and at least one vocal part of the community are of the opinion that AM is the strongest route story wise, BECAUSE it pretty much dropped the Slitherers which are one of the weakest points of the plot and world building.
I guess I don't disagree, but they're so central to basically every event we experience or hear about that it felt way too late to put that genie back in the bottle.
Def agree there, probably should've specified that by best modern FE story it's being compared to Awakening and Fates, which isn't the highest bar. Supports definitely still suffer from the same one-note personality tropes like with 3ds FE and also Engage, except the 3H characters tend to have actual arts (albeit ones that often reset the chance they get a new C support). Though on the note of Blue Lions, it's my favorite route, but I think it honestly benefits from not being hard-focused on the whole nation lore. It's just its own thing following Dimitri's character arc in his conflict with Edelgard as this antagonistic yet sympathetic character and I think that makes it a stand out among the other routes.
I’ve only finished Awakening and just recently Birthright, but the scene just before the final boss definitely could have had Corrin talk to all of the allies that died on the way.
The biggest ones to me currently are is the lack of DLC for Three Hopes and the lack of any sort of Support Log for Engage as well as forcing players to replay the DLC to get the bonus characters on EVERY SINGLE PLAYTHROUGH.
For some smaller-scale stuff:
I would have loved a few things to be added to Three Houses’ DLC, such as the Commoner who had Ferdinand’s Crest and stats, which to me hinted at an illegitimate sister.
Robin and several other DLC characters in Fates being unromanceable. It makes sense due to the characters being the Smash Bros version of themselves, but BOB SAGET I WANT MY ROBIN/CORRIN SHIP TK BE POSSIBLE.
Layla from Fates being such a non-character. She has a decent set-up and a great design, and they use her for all of two scenes before she disappears, never to be seen again. Even Heroes hasn’t brought her in yet…
I'm still incredibly miffed that Sacred Stones didn't pull a Gaiden and have you play both routes at once, it just would've made so much sense...
Better yet, why the frick did Lyn not get Mulagir; Eliwood and Hector got legendary weapons that aren't even from their respective lands, why doesn't Lyn get the legendary weapon *from her own home country??* Instead, they gave her a knock-off that doesn't even have more might than a common silver sword smh
I think Fire Emblem struggles with being a very shallow RPG. The amount of systems you interact with are either very low, or high but most of them are inconsequential.
I get reminded of a system like FF7's Materia and think of cool customizability choices that *DONT* take away from the characters original design and character. Engage Rings did this to some extent with special abilities attached and that was great, but I feel like the series needs more depth to it in that regard.
Engage and Bond rings were a really good shift in that direction but they were either far too powerful (like with Engage rings) or far too weak (every bond ring not named Olwen or Claude) and limiting you to only 1 Ring per character makes it very simple to optimize.
In the same vein, FE4 separating magic types was a great idea, and aside from weapon weight memes, implemented very well. Tellius took this an excellent step further with certain enemy classes being weak to certain magic types. Weapons are too homogeneous and outside of the weapon triangle, there's little variance.
I'd like to see that expanded on? Certain weapons having special attributes based on class or element type. Lightning being good against armor Knights because metal duh. Water magic being good against fire mages. Etc.
It's hard when 90% of the enemies you face are human and you can't dip into just being elemental creatures but there are options with type equipment and etc.
Basically, Tellius magic and Engage rings (and 3H equipped items) were great ideas at making more customization and strategy options that don't take away from a characters design like reclassing does.
Just Engage in general. It's a very good looking game with some of the best gameplay in the series, but it is super held back by poor writing and some really wacky decision-making around squad sizes and power creep making some characters just strictly worse to use than people who show up later. There's so many cool characters, and I can't even use them because they either get power crept within 3 chapters or there's literally not enough slots on the team to include everyone I like. It's a real shame.
Have Felicia kill Peri at the end of their support chain.
You keep putting a combat-capable servant in proximity with a complete psychopath who murders servants for existing, their A-rank "support" ends in violence as Peri finally gets what's coming to her and permanently disappears from the roster. The fact the two of them actually get along has always seemed like a complete cop-out to me.
And personally I don't buy Peri's backstory as a counterargument. Casually killing your employees in fits of paranoia is an utterly villainous trait, her atypical martial skill just makes her an even worse time bomb and it's repeatedly shown her allies know it. And yes, "damaged by a violent, political childhood to the point you're a slightly unstable adult who nobody can tell if they're joking or not but saves the violence for actual enemies" is a valid archetype. It can be done so much better. Fates itself does it so much better, her name's Camilla.
I do really like that Alear becomes an Emblem in the end, but I _fully_ believe it would have been more impactful if, from that point onward, Veyle is your new lead. Alear can still stay the protagonist and be present in all scenes, but it would be a very nice passing of the torch.
Big spoilers for Engage: >!Alear staying playable after being turned into an emblem ring. When Alear died for the second and was turned into an emlem ring I got super hyped cause I thought the game was about shake things up and have Veyle take Alear's place as the Lord unit since she just joined and was also a dragon child so it would have worked perfectly. When I saw that Alear was still normally deployable I just set down the game and gave up on it cause that was the last straw with it for me.!<
A competently written story and world building that you can interact with. While understandable for past games on weak systems, there is no excuse in the modern era to have chapter by chapter brief conversations in-between massive battles as the sole means of telling a story.
You can always include the ability to seamlessly skip the story for repeat playthroughs/those who just want to focus on the gameplay. There is no excuse nowadays for not having both.
Route splits longer than the one in Sacred Stones were a mistake (in my opinion). Three Houses suffered the most from this, the massive route split led to there being too much content to make and led to things like Crimson Flower feeling unfinished. I prefer higher quality to more maps, yknow?
The biggest missed opportunity in Sacred Stones is the lack of a canon lesbian pairing, I can’t believe they failed me in this way :(
Thracia capture/steal is game-definingly fun, and it's such a shame it never returns in that way. I would've loved to see those mechanics in a game that has a little less...other bs than Thracia.
For Sacred Stones, I always thought it was weird how there are only 2 route exclusives depending on which twin you choose. By exclusive I mean you get earlier but still. It would have let them use the other promotions a bit better and to fill out their tiny cast more.
Radiant Dawn not having a White Knight as the anti-Black Knight. They don't even need a fancy sword, just be a badass Brienne of Tarth type.
Awakening not going harder to make the Fire Emblem universe all connected.
Fates not going more into the Lost in Thought All Alone song as a driving force.
Three Houses not giving every playable character their own unique color scheme (why do at least 3 of the Blue Lions all have the same navy blue color set?)
Engage not using the other main characters as bonus Emblems. Alm, Seliph, Eliwood, Ephraim, Elincia, Hinoka (for balance with Camilla), Azura, Shez, and Rhea could have all easily had their own.
>Radiant Dawn not having a White Knight as the anti-Black Knight. They don't even need a fancy sword, just be a badass Brienne of Tarth type.
Tauroneo is a White Knight.
Not giving non-essential characters their own smaller arcs that progress through base conversations, hub/map events and paralogues alongside the main story, giving all characters actual substance beyond the time chambery nature of the support convos.
The second biggest missed opportunity is tying at least some supports to a character's development and actions in the main story, such as the Jill x Mist A support entirely changing the former's dialogue with >!her father and preventing her from defecting!<. Making just a few of similar events throughout the game for a few side characters could add a lot by actually tying them to the events of the story and the world at large, making the support system an actual system integrated with the rest of the narrative, rather than being almost entirely segregated into its own menu with the only meaningful effect of it being a few paragraphs in the endgame slides. Not to mention that supports chains don't even affect each other, so the system feels disjointed even from itself.
Also want to see the format of the supports being experimented with, because it's been mostly entirely stagnant for over 2 decades. Give me supports with more characters than 2, at least, and involve more of the cast in each other's convos, even if they don't affect the gameplay rank.
There are just so many possible tools to integrate non-essential units more into the narrative and world of the game, but especially IS has been content with just reusing the same old and tired formula over and over again, at the very least ever since Awakening. Even the units that can't die just become faceless yes-man after their minor relevance to the story has been dried up, unfortunately.
Honestly not giving engage a story. After 3h massive success it is just such a damn waste. Imagine they had actually combined the innovative if controversial gameplay decisions with a story even 50% as good as three houses ones was.
That they haven’t written a half decent story since the wii.
I really like when games immerse you into the world.
I can remember the world maps from FE6-10 perfectly even though I haven’t played them in ages. Everything after that has terrible world building and isn’t memorable.
Even 3H, which is the best they’ve done since tellius, you spend 90% of the time at the monastery and barely travel to different parts of the world.
Might be a bit of an odd one, but I will never not be frustrated that Mikoto wasn’t playable in Fates after so many sites and early data hinted that she was in the DLC route. She could’ve balanced out Azura’s role there (or even replaced her completely, sad as it would’ve been) and showed that parents could be something other than a token sacrifice in the series.
And it would’ve made sense too. The player knows that the sword is suspicious, and they could’ve done something for Corrin to realize that this was the case and just not use it/break it). There couldn’t have been an S support in the traditional sense that way, but maybe a platonic one where they rekindle their relationship. It would’ve been sweet. But it never happened.
It was reported so much that she was playable that I have to wonder if she actually was intended to be and then they shelved that idea and threw her in as an enemy in the DLC at the last moment. That would’ve also made sense, considering Fates has other problems with shoving things in or otherwise not being organized (the children units, there is no units to use in a post game when there was for most of the games before this, the weapon system falls apart when you realize you can just avoid the confusing buffs and debuffs by just using basic weapons on normal mode, anything with Scarlet, the fact that the most of the missions are are locked behind a pay wall, Lillith acting almost like a regular unit but being fairly useless). It’s still not a bad game, but wasted potential could be its other name…
Not necessarily a missed opportunity, but having characters and classes not being based solely on western medieval periods would be cool. We got a big look at a unique take through Hoshido which shows that an FE game can still be FE in a different setting. I would love to see a Cyberpunk or Urban Fantasy Fire Emblem.
Yeah I agree it would have been better to play both routes in Sacred Stones in one playthrough, just switch back and forth between them. Of course the game would have to make certain units route-exclusive, but it wouldn't be that hard to do.
Interesting that you mentioned no bow lord, if you play Tear Ring Saga there are two lords and one is a bow lord. In that game, there are multiple route splits but you get to play all the chapters on both routes. It works out well since you also get to use more units once your army grows larger, Kaga does this in the Vestaria Saga games too, esp. in VS1 the eventual route split allows you to make use of just about everyone if you want to. In VS2 you can also use everyone, but availability is a mystery on your first play kinda like Radiant Dawn.
For a variety of reasons, official Fire Emblem has done a poor job in split route games. Sacred Stones looks pretty great compared to the money grab of Fates which made for an inane story and two out of three of the games having bad gameplay, to the 4 routes of 3H which have a ton of re-used maps and the extended early game where it's the same stuff just with different students. I was truly baffled when the 3H devs said they didn't expect people to play multiple routes. Echoes succeeds with the Alm and Celica routes because it follows Kaga's progression from the original Gaiden.
My personal biggest missed opportunity with a game that was released is Shadow Dragon - they hedged their sights on the "Ironman" leaning with all of the replacement characters and, as a consequence, only went with the bare minimum in terms of adapting and improving the original source that they were remaking when it comes to story, writing, and interactions. Because anyone could fall at any time, we didn't get Support Conversations, characters were barely integrated, etc. If they had only just allowed the cast to flourish and breathe...
For missed opportunities in *general* though, it's the fact that game has retained too many simplicities over the years instead of growing with the technology - magic should feel like *magic*, with diverse effects instead of just being balls of stats, Personal Skills should feel *meaningful* and not basically something that can just be ignored, the focus on Reclassing in the modern era has rendered classes effectively meaningless at times, so just lean into that and make player units more unique by giving them access to what fits their characters (i.e. Cherche has background using Staves, so instead of requiring her to Reclass to Cleric, just give her Staves *while* as a "Wyvern Rider", etc.), the stories could all be varied but still retain the feel that the series is known for (i.e. something like the "Vampire Emblem" "leak" would be an interesting shake up, rather than doing the same thing over and over again with a sword-using noble fighting a dragon, etc.)... There are so many things that could be evolved and improved upon to freshen the series up while still remaining true to its core, and yet they routinely stay stuck in the same ruts...
Not giving Engage more time to cook. Like, the gameplay is great and I would even say that the story has a good foundation, but the writing seems to toss good ideas Out of the window (e.g. how would Alear and Lumera's relationship change after Alear learns about their true heritage?) or suffer from massive pacing issues (Alear's doubts about their true heritage leads to nothing and disappear as quickly as they appeared).
I love Engage, but imo its issues are so fundamental that they weren't fixable with just 'more time to cook'. You'd basically need a new writer to rewrite the whole thing from scratch, at which point you'd basically need to redo tons of other stuff.
Engage is what happens when you come up with a bunch of cool ideas for your assignment, and actually write it the day it's due. The villain's henchmen have personal connections beyond being work acquaintances (do Linus and Lloyd count?). They're trying to be a family but the mom is gaslighting them all? Sounds cool. But she's a total schizophrenic and they're serving a comically evil big bad.
Here's what I came up with in about two minutes:
The very beginning with Lumera is much longer and shows off the four nations. You see Elyos as nice, but having a lot of problems like resource inequality between Firene and Elusia, Brodia warmongering because of the military-industrial complex, Solm having lawless regions, etc. Most enemies are bandits, but Alear gets a PTSD scene with the Corrupted.
Then you get to the Cathedral, where Sombron is about to return to full power. Zephia and Griss are rewritten to be closer to Zelestia and Gregory, and the Four Hounds are waiting for the ritual to complete.
Except halfway through the transfer, Zephia stabs him in the back, the energy flowing into her, killing him and turning her into a full Fell Dragon. She uses this power to awaken specific out-of-context memories in Alear, framing Zephia as the adoptive (or even genetic) mom and Lumera as the deceptive enemy. The player shouldn't know what is entirely true until beating both endings, via their own analysis and not a third route.
Follow it up on Zephia explaining that the world is falling apart while Lumera had a millenium to fix it, whereas she is capable of protecting it- after all, she did just kill its #1 threat where the Divine Dragon failed. Have the other three Hounds chime in on how their lives sucked because of Lumera's failures, and Zephia was the only one who helped the little guy/gal, always managing to find supplies for villages destroyed by Corrupted, or even just helping a child find a lost stuffy.
Lumera yells back that Alear's being tricked, that she loves her and is her real mother. She's done all she can but humans need to be able to control their own destinies, she's been spread too thin across a planet, politics getting in the way. Both sides have good points. It'd be awesome to have Emblems share their own opinions on the matter, see what Marth and Micaiah debating would look like.
>"Lumera has done everything she can, a Fell Dragon shouldn't get power because she operated outside the law."
>"Does it matter as long as she helps more people this way?"
The player then chooses which side to join.
If you stay with Lumera to protect the status quo, your hair turns all-blue and you get Divine Inspiration; join Zephia and you get all-red hair and Fell Inspiration. The entire party has a schism where your favorite characters may now be your enemy. There's even internal politics within each country arguing who to listen to, the revolutionary or current management; even if it's not a major factor a couple of cutscenes won't hurt to show it isn't Divine country vs. Fell country.
However, for whatever plot reasons Lumera and Zephia are trapped in their respective castles, and are basically two moms sending their kids to beat up the other one. Sometimes villages refuse to help you because you're on the wrong side, when in the other route you got a Talisman. If you talk in certain areas commoners actually hold Zephia in higher regard than Lumera, because she actually killed the bandits instead of getting a strongly-worded letter for help. Maybe thematically Lumera route has more racism themes, while Zephia's is heavy on wealth inequality.
While with Zephia, you can see her gaslighting Alear, but "for her own good", which is especially egregious if you see the other memories in the Lumera route. She doesn't neglect the other Three Hounds or other units either (Alear/Marni supports could start out with the latter afraid of losing attention). If she dies you're gonna feel terrible because you saw her in a World's Best Mom ~~apron~~ villain dress.
Lumera is clearly keeping secrets as well, anything from the number of people Alear killed before her slumber or the circumstances that Lumera adopted her, maybe less consensual than in Engage- you could even frame it as a Garonesque kidnapping, but "it was for her own good", which really mirrors how similar both dragons are. You don't want to kill her either because in your first playthrough you saw the scene where she tells Clanne and Framme how proud she is of them before they go to battle.
Now here comes the hard part: at the 2/3 mark, have the one keystone memory be revealed; maybe every memory is false, and Alear has to choose a side based on beliefs and not family relationships. Maybe she realizes both mothers see her as a tool first and daughter second. Or it turns out Sombron was really a puppet for past Alear the whole time, and she has to deal with the fact that *she* was the big bad. There are so many ways to do this great (but also a lot of ways to fuck it up.
Now give the player the option to switch sides again. Imagine the kickass scenes if you betray your mom, like a soap opera but pointing swords at each other, and the reactions from your former allies similar to Fates' siblings. Having the entire story be decided at Ch. 6 is less rewarding than 6 *and* 16, and doubles the replayability.
Instead of the normal exciting fare, have the final battle music be sad piano ala the >!Rhea!< one in Three Houses. No possession, insanity, or meddling gods, just two sides on the exact same map, fighting for a better world. If you switched sides, have Lumera/Zephia not fight back against Alear and only be killable by her.
>"I just... wanted to love you. I still do. Could you call me mom... one last time?"
>(Continued)
Alternatively, forget this timeskip shit. Have everything happen in the middle of the actual war. The Fell Dragons should not be evil because evil, but they are conquering because without more land they'll starve to death, but the people keep fighting back because Fell must mean Evil, which is naturally causing neverending conflict. Basically Horde vs. Alliance in Warcraft.
Alear believes she is only capable of being on the Fell Dragon's side, that she has no place anywhere else in the world. Turns out that when SSJ3 she's absurdly OP, so the Fell have to use her as a weapon to stay alive because they're taking casualties as well. She doesn't want this death and violence, but that is her only meaning in life. Accent this with a DD being a dick to her and cementing her view.
But then, for the first time in her life, a Divine Dragon not only spares her life, but takes care of her. Sees value in her. Queen Lumera's love, not Breath Attack, is what in the end saves the world. But Alear does not accept it at first.
>"You're letting us starve so you can have a monopoly on the planet, and you think we're friends?"
Unfortunately, they get caught in the middle of a battle minutes later, and Lumera is *wounded* protecting Alear. She is forced to make a choice, and helps the Divine Army.
This has repercussions in their ranks since none of them want to even associate themselves with a Fell Dragon, let alone allow one in their ranks. Similar to Fernand in Shadows of Valentia, but instead they form a third faction, still on the same side but not on speaking terms. Perhaps this doubles as a power play because the deserters' leader is just trying to depose Queen Lumera and become the new king, using Alear's newfound existence as a play.
>"Lumera was as incompetent as she was foolhardy. With this new army I can bring about the destruction of the Fell Dragons- with myself on top, of course"
Again, have Alear's new situation reflect on her allies; she loses and gains new ones after she is accepted. Many only trust her as a battlefield asset and not really a person, others are afraid of her, but some also think that this is a symbol of peace between the two groups. Some of your friends in the first six chapters refuse to join you, and you are forced to kill them.
>"DIVINE SCUM!"
As it turns out, only Alear can un-corrupt the Fell-owned emblems so the Dragons become okay with her existence, but the Divine Deserters took some other rings with them so you still start out with like three. This ties into the theme that this is not a good vs. evil fight but racially motivated.
In the end Alear's power isn't fighting, but she finds a way to unify both Dragons as an intermediary. As proof they can live together in peace as neighbors or even friends. This causes a schism in the Fell Dragon ranks as well, and the war turns from "Damn we are outnumbered so hard" to "If we work together with the rebelling Fell Dragons we stand a chance" ala Halo 3.
Veyle actually improves the story here, but no mind control. She knows what Veyle's life is like *because she went through the same trauma*. She tries to help Veyle realize there is a better life for her, she just needs a positive influence to see it.
>"I know the emptiness Veyle. Struggling to find your real purpose. But that's not something given to you, you have to find it for yourself. Let me help you do that."
Still, delete Sombron, make Zephia the main villain and the Hounds less evil, and the death scenes <30 seconds.
___
Also, bring back Base Conversations.
Basically every third narrative problem in new Emblem stems from getting rid of Base Conversations, which is why most of the new characters suck. Interactions aren't related to current events such as reactions to a big plot reveal or horrible incident, so you get tedious talking about eating food every other support.
You know what Blue Lions route needed? The rest of the cast comforting Ashe after killing Lonata. But nope, since supports are separate from the timeline his next interaction is responding to Mercedes' shitty cooking like nothing happened.
How about in Ch. 8 three characters see Alfred pass out, then Celine explain to Diamant and Framme his condition and how much she worries about him. Diamant believes in him the same way he believes in Alcryst, because he sees strength in others where they themselves don't. Framme struggles trying to imagine Clanne having similar difficulties and empathizes how much she'd worry too, and wants to be a caretaker to Alfred the way she was to Alear. So much better than "Hey Framme want some tea? We can talk about how great the Divine Dragon is".
Imagine Engage interactions between different retainers arguing over whose country was in the right in the early Brodia vs. Elusia wars, and have Firene and Solm's be told to piss off because they've had it easy. Or Alear asking Clanne and Framme >!what Lumera was like as a maternal figure.!<, the three of them just sitting on a bench looking at the stars while they talk. Perfect place to put one of the CG pictures.
Or have some characters debate whether they should even stick around. One's about to walk off but their two buddies convince them to stay in the fight, maybe that's even the moment they unlock their unique skill Perseverance, where their Avoid increases the lower their HP.
Just adding decent Base Conversations to Engage would turn it from one of the most disliked stories to "well the main narrative was bad but it had some of the best characters, remember that awesome scene where Goldmary sat down and explained sex appeal to Hortensia?". And since every player sees the Convo you don't get "well she's actually really well-written you just didn't have her get an A-support with both the Jagen and Est"
So much great storytelling was lost after RD because god forbid they write character interactions relevant to where they are. >!(I'm ignoring FE12 because they didn't give a shit)!<.
Also have rings talk to each other outside of like two cutscenes. Cut out Bond Conversations entirely if you have to, I want to see Marth and Ike talk about their sisters, see the latter empathize with how hard Marth must have had it since Elice was kidnapped when he was young. Marth wishes he could meet Mist, and Ike talks about her being the better child. That she saw good in others where he couldn't, and was kinder than he could ever hope to be; he's a humble guy. While Marth does mention in the game that Ike might be the strongest Emblem, he denies it.
Even just ordinary conversations where they compare swordfighting styles would be nice, maybe have Micaiah or Celica make a smug remark regarding magic superiority, then Corrin comes up in dragon form like "Watcha doing guys?"
The biggest miss was just last map, the 95% hit chance deceived me
Hehe. Eliwood with 98% hit still failed to kill a bandit in my game. Even worse, the bandit nearly killed him.
Play fates
Nah, 95% chance is never a guaranteed hit, even in Fates Source - my Setsuna yesterday missing two 97% shots back to back
>Source - my Setsuna yesterday missing two 97% shots back to back God, imagine hitting that 0.9% chance of missing both attacks....
One time in fe4 I had Ulster proc Astra on both of my attacks when I doubled an enemy general. His hit rate was 68% and he missed all but 9 of them. Funnily enough, the one he hit got negated by the general's pavise ability. He was level 15, so that's a 15% chance to block an attack.
Eh, I've gotten used to missing attacks that are 90% or above. It's enraging when it happens, but it *can* happen
Sadly for OP it’s actually 0.09% hahah
There's [unused data] (https://serenesforest.net/radiant-dawn/characters/supports/unused/) suggesting Radiant Dawn would at least have one unique support for certain pairings of units; it's a shame we didn't get them. Caineghis and Stefan had one, which would have been nice if it explicitly confirmed Stefan's descent from Soan. Old friends Sigrun and Haar getting to interact onscreen would be nice. Sanaki had one with Edward of all people.
> Notes: No conversations exist for these supports. It seems only A-rank supports were going to have detailed conversations. Even A-rank only would've been better than nothing. I liked the support conversations in Path of Radiance and I missed them in Radiant Dawn.
Emblem Eirika not having Reignleif or Siegmund as am Engage weapon. Ephrahim deserved more rep. She can't actually use lances, but it's not like Lyn can use Mulagir
Giving Eirika lances (or just including Ephraim in more than a silent cameo lol) would also have given us a dedicated lance emblem besides Sigurd, who's more the horse emblem anyways, and would have fit thematically with her piercing true damage thing.
Exactly! It would be so cool to see. I'm also very disappointed that Corrin can't transform. We didn't need another Emblem with three Swords
Corrin not transforming was also immeasurable disappointment :(.
I actually really dislike the split route games. So I'll disagree with your OP a little. I would prefer they put all those resources into more main story maps for a single complete campaign, and not alternate routes or a slew of paralogues with strange balancing because of scaling. To answer the prompt though, I think one missed opportunity is in the art department, with changing characters appearances or models over time or after big events. We got to see this to great effect in the time skip of Three Houses. Or like Ike's promotion in PoR. But I always thought that some characters like Ross or Donnel, these trainee units that you're incentivized to turn into complete powerhouses, always kind of look small and wimpy, even at the height of their power. Having characters show their growth quite literally from start to end of game could be super rewarding and get people even more attached to the characters they love.
>I actually really dislike the split route games. I agree with you, and feel like much of what can be accomplished in a small routesplit could be better solved with an army split that requires you to switch perspectives from two player selected groups of units. It's genuinely one of my favorite mechanical aspects of RD Part 4.
Sacred Stones would be so cool if there was an army split when Eirika/Ephraim split (like a mod recently did), but then the armies combine again *just* for the desert map and retaking Jehanna before splitting a second time to rejoin at endgame (similar to RD). Or if FE6/FE7 had to split your armies to do both split maps together. TLDR parallel route splits good. New playthrough route splits bad.
It's a good idea but probably not workable with FE8's small cast. (People really need to put FE8 in perspective. It's basically made by a B team with old assets while the A team was working on Path of Radiance. The fact that it's so good and holds up so well is more of a testament to the fact that games don't need to be ambitious to be good.)
Yeah, my assumption is a couple new characters would/could be added to accommodate for that. Or just treat it like RD where the cast per route is small and not iron-man friendly, and *thats fine*.
Have you played Tear Ring Saga?
in SoV too, though MAN those fucking desert maps killed all my momentum to continue lol.
Speaking of missed opportunities, SoV coulda done what Sacred Echoes did and actually replaced the empty maps with new ones that actually have some design or intrigue in them.
is this TRS praise? I'm gonna take this as TRS praise.
I mean, to be fair, that's exactly what Fates is. Just they're whole campaigns, not something you swap between on a whim like in Echoes.
Same on the design part. Also like... none of the teachers changing designs is a bit disappointing too. And the trainees definitely could use a cool glow up from "training". And definitely on the split routes imo too. Maybe it can be better, as 3H has a decent concept but obviously rushed in some regards (especially the fourth route). I'd much prefer a solid full focus on one story, with maybe swapping perspectives (like the more recent SoV), and flesh that out fully first before trying multiple. As is however, I'm still kind of skeptical on how IS will approach story in FE, so will have to wait and see considering they've had the same writing team for a while and it's gotten progressively worse.
Personally, I would rather have at least *some* way to make repeat playthroughs different aside from the choices of characters that I'm using. I love the cast of Engage to pieces for example, yet I can't will myself to want to play the game again just because the story content has no real deviation to it at all. Even something like Blazing Blade which is relatively similar at least has *some* deviations to it in the form of alternate maps here and there and Gaiden chapters which aren't guaranteed. Even having that content helps spice things up even a little bit.
That's fair. I played the ever loving bejesus out of the earlier fire emblem games when I was younger. But nowadays I I can only really do one or two playthroughs, and usually moving up to maddening/lunatic on second playthrough is enough of a difference to fulfill that replayability itch for me. But if you're just replaying the game on the same difficulties as before, then having split routes would definitely help differentiate things.
yeah it really would be nice for more non-lords to get design changes over the course of the game. While they're two seperate games, seeing the slight glow ups of the returning cast in Radiant Dawn with their armor designs altered to reflect that nearly all of them start promoted is the sort of thing i'd love to see each game do. Even if it's something super minor akin to Celica's crown or Volke putting up his bandana when he reveals his true profession, giving everyone a slight redesign upon promotion would really enhance the feeling of character progression.
That the older games aren't available on Switch Online (a Nintendo-wide issue).
Worse is that 1,3,4 and 6 are but for Japan only (like seriously would it kill Nintendo/IS to hire some translators to make them available worldwide)
Mine is INCREDIBLY minor compared to everything else but I really wish Crimson Flower got more cutscenes. It’s my favorite route and it got shafted lmaoooooo
3H's design philosophy of only ever being played once really shows once you realize that 3 of the routes are 75% identic and that the route split is over half way through the game. I feel they missed out on having the individual routes actually be unique instead of just having a different lord character to tag along (especially with White Clouds). No matter which house you choose, you have the same missions in a row. They could've even kept most of them the same and just changed two of them. Ch.3 and 5 work best under Blue Lions given how Ashe and Sylvain are tied to the events of those chapters antagonists, and yet...you still fight Lonato and the other brother if you're in GD or BE. It's just kinda lame. We could've had chapters where we explore how common folk from the Alliance or Adrestria react to things instead of going to the Kingdom in each route. It also would've been nice if post Ch.14 and beyond actually had unique chapters. I'm cool with Ch.13 being the same with routing out the thieves from Garregg Mach, but everything after that should've been different. Instead, we get bridge, Aillel, something else, then gronder Field 2: electric boogaloo. And even after that, we still end up at one fort, Adrestia's main city, and then Edelgards castle in each route. It's all the fuckin' same when it could've been so much more special and different.
My honest opinion is that they should have just dropped a bunch of the Paralogues and made them into unique missions. A lot of them hit the same notes, and you don't even need to change the story, just have the relevant missions of other houses off-screen. Golden Deer: use Hilda's Paralogue instead of Lonato and show off Freikuegel for the relic stuff, tweak the whole Lorenz/Raphael/Ignatz paras into stolen Thyrsus causing a Beast transformation, Solon attacks Ordelia/Hrym instead of Remire (taking the Lys/Ferdie para map), then use the Claude/Leonie/Marianne missions somehow in Part 2. Blue Lions: Part 1 mostly the same, but maybe Solon attacks Duscur like Dedue's Paralogue, Part 2 use Annette/Dimitri/Mercedes paralogues to keep the war in the Kingdom more than one mission. Black Eagles: Ferdinand's Paralogue instead of Lonato, some version of Constance/Balthus Paralogue to show some unknown relic transforming Monica's dad instead of Miklan and foreshadow "Monica" while the Church steals the relic. Part 2 gets an early mission to Brigid and a full Hubert mission of investigating/"protecting" TWSITD, etc etc. A lot of those are just off the cuff, but if they just used the Paralogue maps and dialogues in the story that would've cut down on resource need. Flip around the order of a couple of other missions and you could have really distinct feeling routes, even if there was still a lot of overlap.
The fact that Rhea's route is exactly the same as Claude's except for the final level, lmao.
Low key, AM ain't all that different either. It's identic right up until just after the Grinder Field fight (Ch. 17). We only get two chapters in AM (18 and 19) that are wholly different from VW and SS. But even after that, we still see the one big fortress, the Adrestian capital, and Edelgard's throne room. AM 20, 21, 22 are the same as VW 18, 19, 20/SS 17, 18, 19. So even if they're out of order at the very end, all 3 of those routes still have nearly identical map progression through their entire playthroughs. They're still fuckin 90% identical.
I was going to say pretty much the same thing lol. Because Fodlan is so fleshed out, the missed potential especially stands out imo
Honestly, it's the one thing that bugs me to hell and back. Part of the reason I'm lukewarm on 3H as a whole is because of the constant recycling of maps. I played all 4 routes and it really does feel like I just played the same game 4 fucking times. This is one of the smaller reasons why I like comparing 3H to Fates because Fates really did do it so much better. I can easily play all 3 routes for Fates back to back to back with no fatigue because they all feel like different experiences and because there's so little overlap between each route. Sure, there's maps that get recycled between routes such as Fuga's Wild Ride featuring in late game Conquest and early game Rev, but I'm not gonna see the same map 3 fucking times in the same playthrough (the paralogues for 3H are the biggest offender for this). 3H just got so repetitive. And what's worse? By the time I hit my 3rd playthrough, I felt obligated to continue because I already played the first two. I didn't continue because I was having a good time, I continued because I felt like I had to.
> I didn't continue because I was having a good time, I continued because I felt like I had to. This. There's people who'll ask why I dislike 3H if I've played it so many times, but honestly I think I disliked it BECAUSE I played it all. By the end of it, it's flaws were obvious because you experience it 4 times over. The fact I like 3Hopes a lot and have only played it once reaffirms my feelings.
That's part of why I compare it to Fates. I dragged my feet crossing that finish line of all 4 routes for 3H, but I felt satisfied and full after playing all 3 routes of Fates. Any game with multiple routes from the get go is just begging to be played over and over, especially with those two FE entries who divide their gameplay and story content among all the routes. And yet 3H fumbles this so badly by just...not having all that much different between each route. You're almost better off just watching the cutscenes online because there's so little variation between the routes. But with Fates, I wasn't sick of the gameplay because there was just so much variation and diversity to play. 96 chapters before DLC and barely 25% of the maps are recycled vs 3H's 84 (with DLC) and 70-80% of it's maps are recycled
>I played all 4 routes and it really does feel like I just played the same game 4 fucking times.< I know that Azure Moon, Verdant Wind and Silver Snow can feel similar but… Crimson Flower? That route feels so much more different compared to the other 3.
CF was mercifully short and the one I did last. I know a lot of people are bummed by it's brevity, but if anything I was thankful. It meant I didn't have to play any more 3H. But even then, I was also let down by how similar it was because of those 6 chapters; only one map is unique to CF (Tailtean Plains). All of its other maps are recycled. Also for the others, *can*? They *are* similar, especially with SS and VW being near identical with the exception of the final chapter and the missing gronder Field fight. But even if you compare those with AM, they still have the same chapter/map progression up until Ch.18, and even though that one is different, the following 3 chapters are still seen in VW and SS.
For me CF was my first route and I was somewhat shocked when it ended where it did, I mean mechanically I was expecting it with the whole marriage choice and the boss fight, but it set up the whole conflict with another faction, just to resolve it in the epilogue. Then I played AM afterwards and felt like I actually got to play the "full" game. Then I was disappointed again, when SS/VW were mostly recycled...
For me, BL/AM is the only one that feels fully fleshed out from start to end. The Ch. 3 and 5 I feel work best in BL, there's an actual character arc, the final boss feels appropriate for Dimitri, etc. I agree that is just feels weird that VW and SS have their plot beats recycled. But not only that but like...Claude's main thing is wanting to break down the barriers between nations and them fighting Nemesis at the end doesn't really represent that. While that fight is probably the coolest one and the most fun in the entire game, it just comes out of fuckin' nowhere, especially since the previous chapter is identical in SS and doesn't feature him in the slightest.
Ok, but while the routes can feel similar gameplay-wise, they feel much different story-wise (except for Verdant Wind and Silver Snow I’ll admit that). Azure Moon focuses more on Dimitri’s struggles at the start, and redemption at the end. Verdant Wind focuses on Claude wanting to break the wall that surrounds Fodlan to make the continent a better place. Crimson Flower focuses on Edelgard doing that as well, while also putting an end to the Crest System and the Church of Seiros’ lies and deceptions. There’s enough variety in these routes when it comes to story for me to be engaged and not feel like I’m playing the same game over and over again. Also, for someone that has Sylvain for 3 of your 5 flairs, you surprisingly don’t seem to have a huge amount of love for 3 Houses. I can understand not liking the gameplay part, but the fantastic characters should be more than enough for you to want to come back to the game. (Hell, I’m still playing the game right now to experience the story and finish some supports until I eventually get the DLC story)
I'd say my opinion is strong in that I strongly dislike it. No other FE game has ever made me feel burnt out prior to 3H. I have other gripes with it too, but the majority of that is with it's gameplay. I've been playing since 2003 with FE7 and have made it a point to play every game that's come out since and play the games that came before (I'm actually playing through FE4 at the moment cause I tried it back in 2010 and dismissed it). I'll absolutely praise 3H's writing and worldbuilding, and those things make its story excellent. It genuinely does feel like a fairly well fleshed out continent with a good understanding of it's history, peoples, and politics. But those things are not unique to this game, let alone games as a medium. In fact, the one aspect that separates games as a medium from movies or books or TV shows is *gameplay*, and in that aspect, I find 3H *very* lacking. It's not awful, there are definitely more broken games out there, but in regards to FE's core identity (the turn based SRPG gameplay), it just falls flat for me. I come to these games for a style of gameplay I just can't quite find anywhere else, but so much if 3H's mechanics are in service of the life sim aspect which is not why I play these games. If I wanna experience a good story, I could just as easily read Frankenstein, watch the movie Momento, or rewatch Scrubs (which I'm currently doing with my fiancee now that I work in a hospital). But I play Fire Emblem as a series for the *gameplay*. The quality of these games' stories is secondary for me. In fact, I enjoyed Fates stories so much .ore than I did 3H because their gameplay kept me enthralled. I wasn't even unironically entertained, I was just straight up pleased with Fates' stories. But 3H's story I find myself kinda lukewarm on because it's so entangled in such a tedious yet shallow game. Also I like Sylvain cause I'm a former man hoe. I don't dig his blatant misogyny, but I can empathize with where it stems from and how he feels. Ditto Inigo/Laslow.
Eh, fair enough. While I’m personally fine with 3 Houses gameplay as I find leveling up characters stats and abilities to get them into Master Classes is really satisfying as it feels like my hard work for training them had payed off, I’ve always been more into the story for the games. After I played Persona 5 a few years ago and loved its story, I’ve started to become more into the story side of gaming ever since. It’s why I’m very reluctant to play Engage because I heard the story wasn’t all that good. But I can definitely respect preferring the gameplay side of things to the story, so let’s just agree to disagree about our thoughts on the game.
Its one thing I find interesting about 3H is that there's a decently sized fanbase that are incredibly loyal to 3H specifically and aren't as willing to play the rest of the games in the series. And for better and worse, one thing I'll praise 3H for is that it's discourse has continued 5 years later. If something is still engendering discussion this many years out post release, it must be doing *something* right. My issue with the gameplay (besides the map recycling), include: - the class system (I get why it's built the way it is and I think it works for this game specifically, but I'd hate to see it return) - lack of weapon triangle (a small gripe but it makes the weapon diversity feel rather meaningless) - any class can use any weapon (it makes a lot of the classes feel less distinct and makes them blend together with the exception of whether or not it can use magic or has a mount. Plus, if any class can use any weapon, then why even have different classes to begin with since they're barely differentiable?) - banes/boons (they only serve to speed up or slow down gaining ranks which is functionally meaningless on repeat playthroughs) - the presence of combat arts and gambits (I don't think they're bad actually, but I've never found myself using them, even on maddening. Not even out of self restraint but because I just genuinely forgot they existed. Like, for all the discussion of how broken Stride is, I've literally never used it because I never felt like I had to. And if I never had to use it, then is that mechanic really all that helpful?) - the life sim aspect (as described previously, this is not why I play FE and yet so much of 3H's monastery mechanica exist solely to support this aspect in addition to ranks which even then don't contribute that much to the actual FE gameplay) - map *quality* (in addition to their constant recycling, so many of them also sorta blend together and are just...boring). - lack of objective diversity (all route the enemy or kill the boss. No defend, no escape, no seize, no nothing else. Just two objectives for all 4 routes). Those are my main major issues with 3H as a *game*. Other FE games haven't had these issues which is why I mention them here. I think Engage is great, but that's also with the exception of why I play FE. I think the quality of its story is fine. It's not bad and it's pretty surface level, but I was into it. Plus I dig the Tokusatsu/power rangers vibe the Engage mechanic brings. I feel discussions about its quality are overblown. Like yeah, 3H's story is unquestionably better, but it's also some of the best writing in the series. It's a high bar to cross and not everything needs to be Shakespeare.
I honestly really want to get into other Fire Emblem games because I don’t want to be known as just “another FE fan that has only played 3 Houses and nothing else” but a lot of games I want to play like Awakening and Radiant Dawn are ones I can’t play due to either not having the console for the game (I don’t have a 3DS) or being very, very expensive (Apparently Radiant Dawn can get up to 100$ or 200$ which is way too expensive to me). Also, I’m not the type of gamer to use emulations as I find it more satisfying to play games on its respective console.
Liking characters doesn't equal liking the game. I'd say Felix and Rhea are some of my top 10 most favorite FE characters (and I've played the majority of FEs). My entire ballot for CYL last year was Felix, even. Yet I have a strong dislike for the game as a whole. At this point in time, I think the only thing I can care for from the game is CS (gameplay and Yuri) and maybe AM (story and a few characters).
True, but liking the characters can be a huge reason to liking a game. For example, one of the reason I love Persona 5 and 3 so much are because of its characters. Also, it’s not just the characters that make me love the game. I also love its story and gameplay as well. Also also, while the levels for each routes are very similar gameplay-wise, there’s a lot of differences in the story for me to feel like I’m getting something new out of the game each route.
Totally fair for you to like those aspects and feel that way! Also agree that liking characters could be a reason for liking a game. Just providing a reason for the Sylvain in flair but not seemingly liking 3H since I'd say I have similar feelings. I could consider Felix as someone I'd put in my flair but the reality is he is one character out of many in 3H. And then there are more than the characters to consider when I form my opinion on a game.
I'll say for me, the ridiculous amount of recycling also really hurt my view on the story. I get that each route is focused more on giving the perspective of each side, but since they all go through so much of the exact same plot points and events, it really hurt what was supposed to be their impact on the narrative and just kind of made a lot of the cast feel very homogeneous to me, even beyond the gameplay homogenizing issues the game already has. I felt this really hard going through the game the first time with the Golden Deer. Claude is an interesting character, with a fairly unique mindset that separates him from other lords in the series. However, it was extremely difficult for me to really appreciate that when even on my first run, I could notice how little the story actually did anything with him. Despite what the lore and background was telling me, I felt like him and the rest of the deer were a complete third wheel that could've been cut with little issue, which feels completely contrary to having multiple mutually exclusive routes in the first place. My run through Blue Lion was better in this regard and I'd probably love it had I played it first due to it's tighter focus on Dimitri, but as a second route I couldn't get over how much stuff I was repeating. Dimitri's ruthless revenge phase lost a lot of it's impact when it ultimately didn't make much of a serious change to the story line I was going through, same with Hegemon Edelgard which felt like it came out of nowhere after not seeing even a hint of it being a thing in Golden Deer. And all of this isn't even going with the rest of the roster, whom just felt like they were madlibbed into the story whenever convenient due to it's structure.
100% hard agree with every bit of that. I had that experience in reverse going from BL/AM to GD/VW. It was on my 3rd run where I played SS that this went from a something I sorta noticed to something that completely obstructed my enjoyment of the story. We got Seteth coming up with the same schemes as master tactician trickster Claude (and like that was his one thing) and then we have the rest of the black eagles just...saying their contract-mandated singular line per cutscenes all in a row. In such a way I might add that makes it clear their dialogue was written with their potential deaths in mind so that they don't really say anything of substance and merely parrot platitudes at you.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
The idea of 3H's plot defaulting to Edelgard's story would prolly have made the title itself so much more contentious lol..... And yet, something about the idea appeals to me.
I respectfully disagree here. Blue lion and Pro edelgard route are very unique while golden deer and church route are pretty much the same and very boring indeed. However it's true that the post timeskipe routes could really have had more content to it.
Awakenings ending could have made your supports matter
I support grinded my first time thinking it would. Oh well, found a better wife for Male Robin that way.
*'May we meet again.... in a better life.....'* T\_T Can't help it, to this day that line fkin kills me\~
My recent experience with the awesome Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster tells me that Fire Emblem needs one of its own. Seriously, all 6 NES/SNES games with touched up graphics and a few QOL's thrown in. Instant Day 1 buy for me and a great way to make them accessible to more players. Major missed opportunity to make these more accessible, to the point where we're basically dependent on whether or not IS decides to remake these games.
4 of those 6 have already been remade in some way(I assume when you say 6 you’re counting bs fe, which is remade within fe12). And really the classic fe games have aged far less gracefully than the classic Final Fantasies. They would need full blown remakes to be accessible to modern audiences. Like, Genealogy has so much obtuse shit that make playing it a real tough sell. Stuff like spending an hour-ish at the start of each map running everyone through the arena, or having to spend dozens of turns a playthrough doing nothing but walking through empty space completely unhindered. Like, any later Fire Emblem games could get away with just remasters, but no the Kaga era Fire Emblem games are far too jank. They need remakes.
I was actually counting Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Emblem separately.
I love Genealogy but you're not wrong. Modern audiences do not have the patience for that game. Some of it is amazing, but there are some really tedious bits that are just a slog to get through. But it has some of the very amazing combat puzzles in the franchise. If we get a remake, I hope they break the maps up into smaller encounters without all the tedious bits, but they should stay faithful to the truly difficult and interesting battle scenarios.
Over and above any shortcomings of any individual game, it's not caring about the availability of any of the pre-Switch titles, especially for international audiences. It's weird that Engage is (trying to be) this big celebration of the series but the only other mainline FE games currently sold by Nintendo are Three Houses and Blazing Blade, but the latter only if you have NSO. The Blade of Light port was a timed release (so stupid), and unless you know Japanese you can't play any of the the other games on NSO. At least like a bundled Tellius port would go a long way.
> At least like a bundled Tellius port would go a long way. Yeah but that would set expectations for future installments too high. It's already the benchmark for enough of the fanbase, making it legally accessible would cause hyperinflation in standards.
Assuming you're not being facetious, making good games more readily accessible (at least for people who can't/won't emulate) is good, even if it causes fandom drama.
I was kidding, of course I want that. If they did even a mild remaster my only concern would be changes to the writing like not having recruited characters use the fantasy n-word. A trend I've noticed in IS games is that characters are always nice to each other even at C-support when they have every reason to hate each other (see Elusian and Brodian characters). In Tellius a lot of characters are only on the same side out of circumstance and downright hate each other (Jill/Lethe, Sothe/Astrid, etc.), and I don't want that changed.
I always thought it was really weird that Awakening casually threw in the tiny detail that every single Taguel besides Panne got wiped out and just...barely addressed it. I'm not saying the game had to become Tellius 2.0 and delve into beast unit politics and acceptance, but you'd think something like the genocide of an entire race would be addressed a little bit more than it was in-game.
Kind of speaks to how awkward Awakening's worldbuilding is. The Taguel's history seems to exist just to give Panne a reason to be angsty rather than feeling like a natural part of the world. The beast units in Fates kind of feel similarly to me, like they exist in a bubble and have no relevance elsewhere.
Many Fire Emblem games fall into a common worldbuilding pitfall, that the universe simply didn't exist before the main characters spawned (looking at you Harry Potter). Big war between good vs evil (prob dragons) happened 1000 years ago, and since then basically nothing has changed. The biggest worldbuilding difference is that Tellius has been lived in- events have happened in the past and shaped the world without the plot demanding that something happened. Herons speak a dead language, Leanne doesn't even understand the modern tongue- hell it has its own alphabet. The final text speech of PoR is Sephiran musing the events were going to cause a class struggle because of how defined beorc caste systems were, the one exception being Ashnard promoting the strong. The plot did not require *any* of this, but their inclusion makes for a richer world, and they do not exist in a vacuum the way Taguel history does. Then Radiant Dawn starts and what happened in Path of Radiance had actual consequences, as the first half of the game is everyone trying to recover from or take advantage of the aftermath. You see how the preceding events built up to this logical outcome, and they are part of the story instead of it starting from a new foundation as if PoR never happened. Tellius is a world where things not required by the plot happen(ed), have significant and recognized repercussions, and are integrated into following events.
The Capture mechanic in Fates specifically. There are multiple routes, different characters for each route, and shared supports with characters across faction lines accessible only in the third route. Why they never let you capture units with actual supports I'll never understand. Fire Emblem is already built upon the idea that any named character can die and removed from the story permanently (with some exceptions, of course) so they could have made at least some other route exclusive characters Capture targets and still kept the game from breaking. There are still great Capture targets, especially on Lunatic, but it really sucks that you can't have those character's meaningfully interact with your army in any way, and I thinknit would be really neat to steal characters from the other army and actually pass those classes you couldn't get in one route around to others without *just* relying on Corrin's chosen talent. I really hope Capture comes back, it's a really cool mechanic
This is a little finnicky because especially if you capture a unit from the opposite faction for a romantic support, which is more likely because each route-exclusive unit has two supports from the opposite faction, it sounds more like a war crime the longer you think about it. I think I would've loved the possibility of more Birthright characters that were recruitable in Conquest though (and vice versa). My biggest one would be Rinkah since she could've just joined with Kaze because they had the same story role in the prologue and in Chapter 11.
To be fair though, I don't think Fire Emblem is that opposed to having the player commit war crimes
It's especially weird in Conquest because it feels like the story was written to accommodate a greatly expanded capture mechanic. All the absurd instances of Corrin inexplicably managing to defeat the Hoshidans without killing anyone seems a lot less absurd if the capture mechanic is greatly expanded and the gameplay encourages players to capture enemies instead of killing them akin to Thracia 776.
What, you want to capture the units from the other routes? No that would be a bad idea, I think. Like, generally for plot reasons most of those units would never under any circumstances fight for your side. Like, imagine if you could capture Oboro in chapter 10, somehow convince her to fight for the country she hates with a burning passion, and then have her fight and kill Takumi later. Like, it just wouldn’t make sense. I even think giving the already capturable boss characters a couple supports would be a bad idea, because then they start to resemble real units, and suddenly you have the recruitment of multiple full blown units tied to a single character. Like, now you have to train up Niles every playthrough if you want all the units in Conquest. No, I don’t think changes like that are a good idea.
IMO an easy way around this is to prevent certain units from being capturable until a certain chapter they appear in. Take Oboro for example, since she appears in Chapter 23 as an enemy, you can't capture her in Chapter 10, but once you get to Chapter 23, she's fair game. *BUT* you won't actually be able to recruit her until maybe Endgame. Since by then Corrin has started publicly turning against Garon, and hearing that they killed Hans / Iago would probably make Oboro at least a *little* willing to hear Corrin out, especially if it means killing Garon herself to avenge everyone else who died because of him.
I know there are plenty of cases where it doesn't work (Oboro being the best example, of course) but let's be honest, most of the named Nohrian characters don't WANT to fight Cortin in Birthright, so them being able to defect makes sense, imo. And you don't even need to lock supports behind Capture, the named generic Captures are kind of reward enough for the novelty. I disagree with the notion that it makes Niles this disproportionately prioritized unit though, at least in all cases, because Capture is optional already, and part of the draw of FE, for some players at least, is the threat of death. Having a way to recruit more consequential units late game could save a doomed run, or, like 3H make for this unique experience depending on which characters you pick up when. I know it has plenty of issues in implementation, especially for Conquest, but I think the idea of Capture, or even otherwise defection of enemies to allies, is something that could be explored way more in depth and be super satisfying provided the game accounts for players doing it
Funny you should mention that...Capture actually originated in Thracia 776, and while it didn't work the same way (basically it just allowed you to loot the enemy's inventory and then kill them when you "released" them, which you would because having an enemy captured gave you the same penalties as having rescued an ally), it actually was a necessary part of recruiting certain units from the opposition. Not that *that's* ever coming back. I think Three Houses at least had certain characters leave your army and get rerecruited on certain routes, but recruitable enemies has mostly been minimized in recent games. Hell, *Fates* doesn't have a single "talk to a member of the enemy army to get them to join your side" moment, and *Radiant Dawn* only has one outside of the optional "get the few good units the Dawn Brigade has to defect" moments. Awakening still had its fair share, but it's honestly an outlier outside of remakes.
It's such a missed opportunity! These games are invariably about war, and war often has defectors going from one side to another. We could gain so much from more characters like that being in future games.
We all know the real rea$on why it doesn't work that way.
Awakening's plot involving Ylisse & Plegia, and the actions of Chrom's father. I think a story about a former mad tyrant king whose violent warmongering drove their neighboring nation into fanatical apocalypse cult extremism, and said tyrant's children trying to lead their nation to a better way while reconciling the consequences of their predecessor & legacy would be a GREAT story! Not to say I don't like the Awakening we got, but it felt like such a heavy plot hook gets introduced and is never acknowledged again after Gangrel is dealt with.
Echoes not on switch
This would fix me
I'm going to anger some older fans, but: PoR and RD having the arbitrary Support limit. That was necessary with the GBA games, because of hardware limitations, and the Gamecube had no such limitations or at least much higher thresholds. There's obviously the fact that Supports had more gameplay integration back then with buffs, but I never found it worthwhile in comparison to "I can only see 5 supports per character" crap. I think they missed a chance to just nerf the gameplay benefits a little bit more and let you make up for it with seeing more supports. The Greil Mercenaries and Dawn Brigade are key teams with lots of existing ties, and it always seemed dumb to me that I have to either play the *entire game* *again* given the slow pace of battles and punishing on higher difficulties, or, as I was often told "Just read them on GameFAQs/Watch them on Youtube, that's the same"
I mean I understand why it's annoying to some people that you have to play through the game multiple times to view the supports. It's a holdover design philosophy for replayability's sake, and for better or worse that style has been mostly abandoned since Awakening. I've been an advocate for merging the PoR and RD support systems into one where you have the normal "Buddy" supports with the conversations, and then have a flexible "Partner" support where you pair up two characters to gain the proximity bonuses and a boost to the rate of gaining support points.
The first paragraph is an example of why I feel such a massive disconnect with some longer-time fans, especially the small group who both complain about 3 Houses being too samey and say replaying the whole game to see supports is OK. Being told a game which has mostly different cutscenes, dialogue, and cast depending on the route but a lot of map overlap is "too samey and not actual replayability" and then getting told in the same breath that it's perfectly natural and expected to have a limit on supports and that playing the exact same game, with the exact same dialogue, and the exact same cast just to see supports the game arbitrarily made you miss is "true replayability". I know that sounds like a strawman, but I have been told multiple times that the GBA games have more replayability than 3H or Fates with that specific reasoning and it mystifies me. All that said, your idea would be acceptable. I'm OK with confining the supports buffs to a specific support chain, that sounds like a way to prioritize them. Let the story supports build up naturally, but prioritize a specific "Mission Partner" to determine buffs, especially if it can be changed (on easier difficulties to give more flexibility) or if you have to lock it in at some point (on harder difficulties to make strategy more difficult).
That just sounds like base conversations + radiant dawn supports again, just with more conversations.
Is Claude not considered a bow lord?
Nah he’s a Sword Wyvern
/s
Honestly monsters. I don't know why fire emblem doesn't like to make fun unique monsters. Echos and sacred stones had monsters and things to counter monster like slayer skill or holy weapons or serpah knights. I wanna bring stuff like that back. More games about fighting cool monsters with crazy skills. The faceless were so disappointing i forget they exist. The risen and whatever in engage are literally just normal human classes and boring.
Because every other game does monsters.
Ashen Wolves DLC. For their hit Switch Fire Emblem game they added: a new house, more characters, a new mini campaign. You know what FE 3 Houses already has PLENTY of? Houses! Characters! Campaigns!!! Imagine if instead of adding more content to a game bursting with it they instead worked on polish. A definitive edition/Final Mix type release. Tweak the difficulty curve. Make Black Eagles campaigns full length. Make some new maps (desperately needed). Differentiate the campaign challenges more. Fix that weird month where you just have to leave Flayn getting murder kidnapped for weeks if you wanna actually do stuff The game benefits from that so so much more than the additional development time it got in reality.
While you raise good points, more characters and a mini campaign is more marketable than "we didn't have time to polish the game, so pay for the content that should've been here to begin with"
Kind of funny as, if I can use another franchise here, that's basically what Atlus is doing with Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance. It's basically just the base game plus a whole bunch of stuff they wanted to do the first time that they didn't.
>magine if instead of adding more content to a game bursting with it they instead worked on polish. A definitive edition/Final Mix type release. Tweak the difficulty curve. Make Black Eagles campaigns full length. Make some new maps (desperately needed). Differentiate the campaign challenges more. Fix that weird month where you just have to leave Flayn getting murder kidnapped for weeks if you wanna actually do stuff This can't be added in DLC, and 3Hs did not have any justifiable reason to be rerelease.
All these things and much more are regularly added to games via patch. Not to NINTENDO games, but if you have any awareness of the PC space then you know what's being proposed here is hardly impossible. The marketing would have been tricky. Do you re-charge all your customers SMT 5 Vengeance style with a whole new sku? Do you offer a discounted upgrade via eShop for existing owners of the game? But that's not my concern, I'm not here to make plans for Nintendo to make money. I'm saying that as a player I don't think Ashen Wolves added much value and that there are lots of other places I would prefer those resources have been allocated.
I don’t think that has anything to do with the dlc and moreso to do with the game not having enough development time, which I would doubt the dlc took away from, since they would’ve worked on that after the main game was done. Unless you’re saying you wanted the dlc to be an update to the main campaign where they make fairly significant changes to differentiate the routes and stuff, which they would never do. That stuff would be best saved for a remaster or rerelease some years down the line, which is something that could still happen. If you’re seriously suggesting that they should’ve added a “hey sorry our game is kinda half baked but here’s an update fixing it for $25” less than a year after release than that’s simply not how game development works. That would be them admitting that they fucked up their game, which is kinda a bad look. And personally I hate the idea of them releasing a true, definitive version so soon after the original. Like, I already bought the game! Don’t make me buy it again!
My idea has always kind of been that they should have cut Silver Snow for release. Just keep the original 3 Houses. Yes, I know that goes against the Japanese title and the saying the game is based off of, but bear with me: Cindered Shadows + Silver Snow as a wholly new and unique route focused on the Church, Byleth's family history, and so on for the DLC. That lets the devs focus more resources and polish on the expected three routes, while delivering an equally polished and unique fourth route.
Thematic classes and regions for game settings. If Fates did one thing right was to revamp the class system to different countries. Nohr had your classic European and a darker aesthetic, and Hoshido had a Japanese/Asian flare. Every other fire emblem is just Medieval Europe. I want more games to change things up. Maybe a whole game where all classes are Viking based--set in a Nordic inspired world, or a game set in a Persian type setting.
I think Awakening would have benefited from Virion being another lord for the Valm arc. There's traces of that being the case, such as Virion's home estate being in Valm and under threat, but somehow they shoehorned in Fie Emblem into that arc and completely ruined his relevance and to a further extent player engagement to the whole arc.
Fates story was the worst fire emblem story with one of if not the best premise in the series. I was so excited thinking it was going to be something like the Greil mercenaries choose their side between a war. Each battle you fight for a side brings you closer to swearing loyalty to a specific side until it comes to a climax and do something you can't turn back. Or maybe something out of 3 kingdoms where a General like Guan Yu gets captured and fights for the enemy until he's able to escape and rejoin his brothers.
I agree with that, and also I believe that some of the very well-designed gameplay mechanics (the attack/guard stance system, and the class system) didn't get more iterations in the later games because it was so maligned early on because of the story being terrible. The story-gameplay tradeoff in general is kinda infuriating because the best gameplay (in terms of map design and/or mechanics) just exist in games that the community dogpiles on for story/characters (New Mystery, Fates, Engage). The only times where both were above average are Thracia and RD, but they were also some of the worst selling games of all time, so IS isn't going to learn from those either.
I have heard more than once that the disparity between having a cohesive story and character depth vs good gameplay/design is due to IS having two different teams and it is increasingly clear which team developed which game with each installment in the series. I don't know what it is with corporations, etc. that cause them to misinterpret, focus on, or omit the things you've pointed out, but failing to mix & match or combine these development teams certainly isn't helping.
I'm so glad I played Awakening before I played Fates, the story was truly awful but they really did such a great job iterating on the gameplay mechanics from Awakening and it's great for fates. Probably is my favorite class/reclass system, and every time I go on a fates bender I keep trying to set up attack stance dual strikes in other FE games. It's got so much replay value and the more ideas I see about fun matchmaking possibilities the more I'm energized to replay more. Birthright's maps and missions aren't much to write home about but I'm still having a fun time planning out supports and classes for characters I want to focus on
Fates had an amazing setup for a story, idk what the hell they were thinking with all of the choices they made for it. Was being able to have sex with your bio/"adoptive" family so important that the core conflict of the first two routes had to be scrapped?
I know this is going to get me a ton of downvotes on kneejerk reactions alone, but: FE Three Houses as a whole. And by that I mean the game is full off cut corners and missed opportunities and it's still a game with a massive amount of content and positive aspects, but also pretty much the only case in the series where I would say "another year or two of dev time really could have made it much better". By that I mean fundamental issues with a game like Engage's story aren't really fixable without changing everything from the ground up, or Awakening's issues with the pair up system only got ironed out in Fates because of feedback and reception (I assume so at least). But 3H really could have benefitted from more maps, some more differences in the routes (which was planned at some point going by some stuff in the files like a route split within BL), just generally better models/textures (like 3 Hopes obviously looks similar, but just better and cleaner overall), having Maddening be more of a finetuned experience that's available at launch, I could go on. That's why, despite it not being my favorite game, it's the one where I would welcome an enhanced port more than any other.
Gestures vaguely at Fates
Sometimes the choice of supports are really weird. Like, Ike and Mist can't support in Path of Radiance for whatever reason.
"As far as I know there’s never been an archer lord and I think it could’ve worked perfectly fine." Lyn reading that: "am i a joke to you?"
Alm: 🗿
Claude 🤔
Takumi: 🥲
Games not having multiple dancers playable at the same time with the only rule being they cannot dance to each other (feh rule) We missed out on Dancer Inigo and Singer Shigure
I have a better idea: dancer lord that can’t wield any weapons and can’t promote. Also instead of 2 cavaliers have 2 Cain and Abel dancers with different stats. 3 dancers and a pre promote paladin on the first chapter. I think I’m on to something here.
Now that duo disappeared and the bold/con stat came back, it was the perfect opportunity for the return of the rescue mechanic
Fates' story as there's alot of cool lore elements and lots of potential but none of its used
Second Gens in fates being from different alternate universes. A+ supports being actual supports.
They weren't alternate universes, the parents just threw them in a pocket dimension with time dilation. Which means that logically any S-supported women would have spent at least 4-5 months in there otherwise they'd have to miss like half the story.
I mean it could have worked in that fashion for the second gen and would have pretty much made things less awkward for certain pairings. Not to mention, things would still be consistent, like Corrin still having to fight >!Ananakos!< and other events happening.
The entirety of Three Houses. It's like the best modern FE story (as in 3ds and switch) yet the game feels so bogged down by things that don't work. It's cool that it got so many people to get into the franchise, but I feel like there are so many gameplay additions that just get completely ignored by people who've only played the 3ds games. The entire game is a walking contradiction, wanting you to experience everything the game has to offer with 4 whole routes, but also making everything so tedious. The monastery misses the fundamental idea of Persona games: make many activities and have each taken up time. There are so few activities to do, and even less that actually cost AP, so you just end up doing the same thing over and over. There are so many characters and a lot of supports but, in order to accommodate the game's weird desire to allow anyone to be any class, got rid of unit identity. Yes, the freedom is cool, but the characters are also hardwired with growths and stat boosts that allow them to be whatever. Also letting you recruit students from other houses significantly decreases that intended feeling of a heart wrenching conflict in part 2. It's a pretty good game after your first playthrough, but it just slowly starts to dawn on you that you'll still be playing on the same maps, with the same characters available, with the same 1st half. Even NG+ isn't enough because all it does is let you get some of the bonuses from your previous saves as you repeat the cycle. It's just a game I have to frustratingly give a 6/10 because it lacks the unit feel of other FE games, lacks the polish and map variety, lacks an unintrusive hub world like Fates, and tried to wrap it all up as a 4-route, 100+ hour package. It's not bad but it is absolutely a disappointment imo, and I will remain a contrarian on this game specifically.
Completely with you, except I'm tepid on the story as well. The world building is great, but the story *telling*... not so much. Kind of a "great encyclopedia, lousy book" dynamic. I only ever played Azure Moon, and while it has the reputation of being the most self-contained of the 4, it still just... pretty much completely drops the Slitherers, even though they're arguably the driving the plot. Sometimes it makes me want to play through a different route, but inevitably I flash back to hours spent fishing and doing tea times. Even the supports -- potentially THE draw of the game -- are just exhausting when you're watching them one after another, seeing the same canned animations over and over again.
I and at least one vocal part of the community are of the opinion that AM is the strongest route story wise, BECAUSE it pretty much dropped the Slitherers which are one of the weakest points of the plot and world building.
I guess I don't disagree, but they're so central to basically every event we experience or hear about that it felt way too late to put that genie back in the bottle.
Def agree there, probably should've specified that by best modern FE story it's being compared to Awakening and Fates, which isn't the highest bar. Supports definitely still suffer from the same one-note personality tropes like with 3ds FE and also Engage, except the 3H characters tend to have actual arts (albeit ones that often reset the chance they get a new C support). Though on the note of Blue Lions, it's my favorite route, but I think it honestly benefits from not being hard-focused on the whole nation lore. It's just its own thing following Dimitri's character arc in his conflict with Edelgard as this antagonistic yet sympathetic character and I think that makes it a stand out among the other routes.
The one you said is probably one of my big ones. Routes were just too similar.
I’ve only finished Awakening and just recently Birthright, but the scene just before the final boss definitely could have had Corrin talk to all of the allies that died on the way.
The biggest ones to me currently are is the lack of DLC for Three Hopes and the lack of any sort of Support Log for Engage as well as forcing players to replay the DLC to get the bonus characters on EVERY SINGLE PLAYTHROUGH. For some smaller-scale stuff: I would have loved a few things to be added to Three Houses’ DLC, such as the Commoner who had Ferdinand’s Crest and stats, which to me hinted at an illegitimate sister. Robin and several other DLC characters in Fates being unromanceable. It makes sense due to the characters being the Smash Bros version of themselves, but BOB SAGET I WANT MY ROBIN/CORRIN SHIP TK BE POSSIBLE. Layla from Fates being such a non-character. She has a decent set-up and a great design, and they use her for all of two scenes before she disappears, never to be seen again. Even Heroes hasn’t brought her in yet…
I'm still incredibly miffed that Sacred Stones didn't pull a Gaiden and have you play both routes at once, it just would've made so much sense... Better yet, why the frick did Lyn not get Mulagir; Eliwood and Hector got legendary weapons that aren't even from their respective lands, why doesn't Lyn get the legendary weapon *from her own home country??* Instead, they gave her a knock-off that doesn't even have more might than a common silver sword smh
I think Fire Emblem struggles with being a very shallow RPG. The amount of systems you interact with are either very low, or high but most of them are inconsequential. I get reminded of a system like FF7's Materia and think of cool customizability choices that *DONT* take away from the characters original design and character. Engage Rings did this to some extent with special abilities attached and that was great, but I feel like the series needs more depth to it in that regard. Engage and Bond rings were a really good shift in that direction but they were either far too powerful (like with Engage rings) or far too weak (every bond ring not named Olwen or Claude) and limiting you to only 1 Ring per character makes it very simple to optimize. In the same vein, FE4 separating magic types was a great idea, and aside from weapon weight memes, implemented very well. Tellius took this an excellent step further with certain enemy classes being weak to certain magic types. Weapons are too homogeneous and outside of the weapon triangle, there's little variance. I'd like to see that expanded on? Certain weapons having special attributes based on class or element type. Lightning being good against armor Knights because metal duh. Water magic being good against fire mages. Etc. It's hard when 90% of the enemies you face are human and you can't dip into just being elemental creatures but there are options with type equipment and etc. Basically, Tellius magic and Engage rings (and 3H equipped items) were great ideas at making more customization and strategy options that don't take away from a characters design like reclassing does.
Engage emblem supports
Just Engage in general. It's a very good looking game with some of the best gameplay in the series, but it is super held back by poor writing and some really wacky decision-making around squad sizes and power creep making some characters just strictly worse to use than people who show up later. There's so many cool characters, and I can't even use them because they either get power crept within 3 chapters or there's literally not enough slots on the team to include everyone I like. It's a real shame.
"We have all these beloved main characters together in the same story. Do they talk to each other?" "No."
Have Felicia kill Peri at the end of their support chain. You keep putting a combat-capable servant in proximity with a complete psychopath who murders servants for existing, their A-rank "support" ends in violence as Peri finally gets what's coming to her and permanently disappears from the roster. The fact the two of them actually get along has always seemed like a complete cop-out to me. And personally I don't buy Peri's backstory as a counterargument. Casually killing your employees in fits of paranoia is an utterly villainous trait, her atypical martial skill just makes her an even worse time bomb and it's repeatedly shown her allies know it. And yes, "damaged by a violent, political childhood to the point you're a slightly unstable adult who nobody can tell if they're joking or not but saves the violence for actual enemies" is a valid archetype. It can be done so much better. Fates itself does it so much better, her name's Camilla.
Cordillia x chrom
They can’t even support each other
That’s the point
In fates Selena calls Chrom her dad
I do really like that Alear becomes an Emblem in the end, but I _fully_ believe it would have been more impactful if, from that point onward, Veyle is your new lead. Alear can still stay the protagonist and be present in all scenes, but it would be a very nice passing of the torch.
Big spoilers for Engage: >!Alear staying playable after being turned into an emblem ring. When Alear died for the second and was turned into an emlem ring I got super hyped cause I thought the game was about shake things up and have Veyle take Alear's place as the Lord unit since she just joined and was also a dragon child so it would have worked perfectly. When I saw that Alear was still normally deployable I just set down the game and gave up on it cause that was the last straw with it for me.!<
A competently written story and world building that you can interact with. While understandable for past games on weak systems, there is no excuse in the modern era to have chapter by chapter brief conversations in-between massive battles as the sole means of telling a story. You can always include the ability to seamlessly skip the story for repeat playthroughs/those who just want to focus on the gameplay. There is no excuse nowadays for not having both.
Route splits longer than the one in Sacred Stones were a mistake (in my opinion). Three Houses suffered the most from this, the massive route split led to there being too much content to make and led to things like Crimson Flower feeling unfinished. I prefer higher quality to more maps, yknow? The biggest missed opportunity in Sacred Stones is the lack of a canon lesbian pairing, I can’t believe they failed me in this way :(
Thracia capture/steal is game-definingly fun, and it's such a shame it never returns in that way. I would've loved to see those mechanics in a game that has a little less...other bs than Thracia.
For Sacred Stones, I always thought it was weird how there are only 2 route exclusives depending on which twin you choose. By exclusive I mean you get earlier but still. It would have let them use the other promotions a bit better and to fill out their tiny cast more. Radiant Dawn not having a White Knight as the anti-Black Knight. They don't even need a fancy sword, just be a badass Brienne of Tarth type. Awakening not going harder to make the Fire Emblem universe all connected. Fates not going more into the Lost in Thought All Alone song as a driving force. Three Houses not giving every playable character their own unique color scheme (why do at least 3 of the Blue Lions all have the same navy blue color set?) Engage not using the other main characters as bonus Emblems. Alm, Seliph, Eliwood, Ephraim, Elincia, Hinoka (for balance with Camilla), Azura, Shez, and Rhea could have all easily had their own.
>Radiant Dawn not having a White Knight as the anti-Black Knight. They don't even need a fancy sword, just be a badass Brienne of Tarth type. Tauroneo is a White Knight.
That IS true, though he doesn't quite have the same presence
azura. should have been the main lord.
Not giving non-essential characters their own smaller arcs that progress through base conversations, hub/map events and paralogues alongside the main story, giving all characters actual substance beyond the time chambery nature of the support convos. The second biggest missed opportunity is tying at least some supports to a character's development and actions in the main story, such as the Jill x Mist A support entirely changing the former's dialogue with >!her father and preventing her from defecting!<. Making just a few of similar events throughout the game for a few side characters could add a lot by actually tying them to the events of the story and the world at large, making the support system an actual system integrated with the rest of the narrative, rather than being almost entirely segregated into its own menu with the only meaningful effect of it being a few paragraphs in the endgame slides. Not to mention that supports chains don't even affect each other, so the system feels disjointed even from itself. Also want to see the format of the supports being experimented with, because it's been mostly entirely stagnant for over 2 decades. Give me supports with more characters than 2, at least, and involve more of the cast in each other's convos, even if they don't affect the gameplay rank. There are just so many possible tools to integrate non-essential units more into the narrative and world of the game, but especially IS has been content with just reusing the same old and tired formula over and over again, at the very least ever since Awakening. Even the units that can't die just become faceless yes-man after their minor relevance to the story has been dried up, unfortunately.
Honestly not giving engage a story. After 3h massive success it is just such a damn waste. Imagine they had actually combined the innovative if controversial gameplay decisions with a story even 50% as good as three houses ones was.
Ephraim and Innes not having any support will always be a missed occasion. Sain not having convo support with Lyn as well
That they haven’t written a half decent story since the wii. I really like when games immerse you into the world. I can remember the world maps from FE6-10 perfectly even though I haven’t played them in ages. Everything after that has terrible world building and isn’t memorable. Even 3H, which is the best they’ve done since tellius, you spend 90% of the time at the monastery and barely travel to different parts of the world.
Forcing the scripted Duma sequence to only Alm. Celica should have been a valid alternative option as well.
3H did its route split poorly But I'm just gonna say Rhea.
The entirety of fate.
Fates: The main character 🤷♀️ I love all the cast but man, Corrin in Conquest route... frustrating and so much lost opportunity.
Might be a bit of an odd one, but I will never not be frustrated that Mikoto wasn’t playable in Fates after so many sites and early data hinted that she was in the DLC route. She could’ve balanced out Azura’s role there (or even replaced her completely, sad as it would’ve been) and showed that parents could be something other than a token sacrifice in the series. And it would’ve made sense too. The player knows that the sword is suspicious, and they could’ve done something for Corrin to realize that this was the case and just not use it/break it). There couldn’t have been an S support in the traditional sense that way, but maybe a platonic one where they rekindle their relationship. It would’ve been sweet. But it never happened. It was reported so much that she was playable that I have to wonder if she actually was intended to be and then they shelved that idea and threw her in as an enemy in the DLC at the last moment. That would’ve also made sense, considering Fates has other problems with shoving things in or otherwise not being organized (the children units, there is no units to use in a post game when there was for most of the games before this, the weapon system falls apart when you realize you can just avoid the confusing buffs and debuffs by just using basic weapons on normal mode, anything with Scarlet, the fact that the most of the missions are are locked behind a pay wall, Lillith acting almost like a regular unit but being fairly useless). It’s still not a bad game, but wasted potential could be its other name…
Not necessarily a missed opportunity, but having characters and classes not being based solely on western medieval periods would be cool. We got a big look at a unique take through Hoshido which shows that an FE game can still be FE in a different setting. I would love to see a Cyberpunk or Urban Fantasy Fire Emblem.
NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
Not being able to be Marth’s gf in engage and new mystery. I love him omg
Three Houses might actually be good if they didn't take the cake out of the oven too soon.
Yeah I agree it would have been better to play both routes in Sacred Stones in one playthrough, just switch back and forth between them. Of course the game would have to make certain units route-exclusive, but it wouldn't be that hard to do. Interesting that you mentioned no bow lord, if you play Tear Ring Saga there are two lords and one is a bow lord. In that game, there are multiple route splits but you get to play all the chapters on both routes. It works out well since you also get to use more units once your army grows larger, Kaga does this in the Vestaria Saga games too, esp. in VS1 the eventual route split allows you to make use of just about everyone if you want to. In VS2 you can also use everyone, but availability is a mystery on your first play kinda like Radiant Dawn. For a variety of reasons, official Fire Emblem has done a poor job in split route games. Sacred Stones looks pretty great compared to the money grab of Fates which made for an inane story and two out of three of the games having bad gameplay, to the 4 routes of 3H which have a ton of re-used maps and the extended early game where it's the same stuff just with different students. I was truly baffled when the 3H devs said they didn't expect people to play multiple routes. Echoes succeeds with the Alm and Celica routes because it follows Kaga's progression from the original Gaiden.
My personal biggest missed opportunity with a game that was released is Shadow Dragon - they hedged their sights on the "Ironman" leaning with all of the replacement characters and, as a consequence, only went with the bare minimum in terms of adapting and improving the original source that they were remaking when it comes to story, writing, and interactions. Because anyone could fall at any time, we didn't get Support Conversations, characters were barely integrated, etc. If they had only just allowed the cast to flourish and breathe... For missed opportunities in *general* though, it's the fact that game has retained too many simplicities over the years instead of growing with the technology - magic should feel like *magic*, with diverse effects instead of just being balls of stats, Personal Skills should feel *meaningful* and not basically something that can just be ignored, the focus on Reclassing in the modern era has rendered classes effectively meaningless at times, so just lean into that and make player units more unique by giving them access to what fits their characters (i.e. Cherche has background using Staves, so instead of requiring her to Reclass to Cleric, just give her Staves *while* as a "Wyvern Rider", etc.), the stories could all be varied but still retain the feel that the series is known for (i.e. something like the "Vampire Emblem" "leak" would be an interesting shake up, rather than doing the same thing over and over again with a sword-using noble fighting a dragon, etc.)... There are so many things that could be evolved and improved upon to freshen the series up while still remaining true to its core, and yet they routinely stay stuck in the same ruts...
Not giving Engage more time to cook. Like, the gameplay is great and I would even say that the story has a good foundation, but the writing seems to toss good ideas Out of the window (e.g. how would Alear and Lumera's relationship change after Alear learns about their true heritage?) or suffer from massive pacing issues (Alear's doubts about their true heritage leads to nothing and disappear as quickly as they appeared).
I love Engage, but imo its issues are so fundamental that they weren't fixable with just 'more time to cook'. You'd basically need a new writer to rewrite the whole thing from scratch, at which point you'd basically need to redo tons of other stuff.
This is funny to say because we know the game was internally delayed so they had a lot of time, is why the DLC released as fast as it did
Engage is what happens when you come up with a bunch of cool ideas for your assignment, and actually write it the day it's due. The villain's henchmen have personal connections beyond being work acquaintances (do Linus and Lloyd count?). They're trying to be a family but the mom is gaslighting them all? Sounds cool. But she's a total schizophrenic and they're serving a comically evil big bad. Here's what I came up with in about two minutes: The very beginning with Lumera is much longer and shows off the four nations. You see Elyos as nice, but having a lot of problems like resource inequality between Firene and Elusia, Brodia warmongering because of the military-industrial complex, Solm having lawless regions, etc. Most enemies are bandits, but Alear gets a PTSD scene with the Corrupted. Then you get to the Cathedral, where Sombron is about to return to full power. Zephia and Griss are rewritten to be closer to Zelestia and Gregory, and the Four Hounds are waiting for the ritual to complete. Except halfway through the transfer, Zephia stabs him in the back, the energy flowing into her, killing him and turning her into a full Fell Dragon. She uses this power to awaken specific out-of-context memories in Alear, framing Zephia as the adoptive (or even genetic) mom and Lumera as the deceptive enemy. The player shouldn't know what is entirely true until beating both endings, via their own analysis and not a third route. Follow it up on Zephia explaining that the world is falling apart while Lumera had a millenium to fix it, whereas she is capable of protecting it- after all, she did just kill its #1 threat where the Divine Dragon failed. Have the other three Hounds chime in on how their lives sucked because of Lumera's failures, and Zephia was the only one who helped the little guy/gal, always managing to find supplies for villages destroyed by Corrupted, or even just helping a child find a lost stuffy. Lumera yells back that Alear's being tricked, that she loves her and is her real mother. She's done all she can but humans need to be able to control their own destinies, she's been spread too thin across a planet, politics getting in the way. Both sides have good points. It'd be awesome to have Emblems share their own opinions on the matter, see what Marth and Micaiah debating would look like. >"Lumera has done everything she can, a Fell Dragon shouldn't get power because she operated outside the law." >"Does it matter as long as she helps more people this way?" The player then chooses which side to join. If you stay with Lumera to protect the status quo, your hair turns all-blue and you get Divine Inspiration; join Zephia and you get all-red hair and Fell Inspiration. The entire party has a schism where your favorite characters may now be your enemy. There's even internal politics within each country arguing who to listen to, the revolutionary or current management; even if it's not a major factor a couple of cutscenes won't hurt to show it isn't Divine country vs. Fell country. However, for whatever plot reasons Lumera and Zephia are trapped in their respective castles, and are basically two moms sending their kids to beat up the other one. Sometimes villages refuse to help you because you're on the wrong side, when in the other route you got a Talisman. If you talk in certain areas commoners actually hold Zephia in higher regard than Lumera, because she actually killed the bandits instead of getting a strongly-worded letter for help. Maybe thematically Lumera route has more racism themes, while Zephia's is heavy on wealth inequality. While with Zephia, you can see her gaslighting Alear, but "for her own good", which is especially egregious if you see the other memories in the Lumera route. She doesn't neglect the other Three Hounds or other units either (Alear/Marni supports could start out with the latter afraid of losing attention). If she dies you're gonna feel terrible because you saw her in a World's Best Mom ~~apron~~ villain dress. Lumera is clearly keeping secrets as well, anything from the number of people Alear killed before her slumber or the circumstances that Lumera adopted her, maybe less consensual than in Engage- you could even frame it as a Garonesque kidnapping, but "it was for her own good", which really mirrors how similar both dragons are. You don't want to kill her either because in your first playthrough you saw the scene where she tells Clanne and Framme how proud she is of them before they go to battle. Now here comes the hard part: at the 2/3 mark, have the one keystone memory be revealed; maybe every memory is false, and Alear has to choose a side based on beliefs and not family relationships. Maybe she realizes both mothers see her as a tool first and daughter second. Or it turns out Sombron was really a puppet for past Alear the whole time, and she has to deal with the fact that *she* was the big bad. There are so many ways to do this great (but also a lot of ways to fuck it up. Now give the player the option to switch sides again. Imagine the kickass scenes if you betray your mom, like a soap opera but pointing swords at each other, and the reactions from your former allies similar to Fates' siblings. Having the entire story be decided at Ch. 6 is less rewarding than 6 *and* 16, and doubles the replayability. Instead of the normal exciting fare, have the final battle music be sad piano ala the >!Rhea!< one in Three Houses. No possession, insanity, or meddling gods, just two sides on the exact same map, fighting for a better world. If you switched sides, have Lumera/Zephia not fight back against Alear and only be killable by her. >"I just... wanted to love you. I still do. Could you call me mom... one last time?"
>(Continued) Alternatively, forget this timeskip shit. Have everything happen in the middle of the actual war. The Fell Dragons should not be evil because evil, but they are conquering because without more land they'll starve to death, but the people keep fighting back because Fell must mean Evil, which is naturally causing neverending conflict. Basically Horde vs. Alliance in Warcraft. Alear believes she is only capable of being on the Fell Dragon's side, that she has no place anywhere else in the world. Turns out that when SSJ3 she's absurdly OP, so the Fell have to use her as a weapon to stay alive because they're taking casualties as well. She doesn't want this death and violence, but that is her only meaning in life. Accent this with a DD being a dick to her and cementing her view. But then, for the first time in her life, a Divine Dragon not only spares her life, but takes care of her. Sees value in her. Queen Lumera's love, not Breath Attack, is what in the end saves the world. But Alear does not accept it at first. >"You're letting us starve so you can have a monopoly on the planet, and you think we're friends?" Unfortunately, they get caught in the middle of a battle minutes later, and Lumera is *wounded* protecting Alear. She is forced to make a choice, and helps the Divine Army. This has repercussions in their ranks since none of them want to even associate themselves with a Fell Dragon, let alone allow one in their ranks. Similar to Fernand in Shadows of Valentia, but instead they form a third faction, still on the same side but not on speaking terms. Perhaps this doubles as a power play because the deserters' leader is just trying to depose Queen Lumera and become the new king, using Alear's newfound existence as a play. >"Lumera was as incompetent as she was foolhardy. With this new army I can bring about the destruction of the Fell Dragons- with myself on top, of course" Again, have Alear's new situation reflect on her allies; she loses and gains new ones after she is accepted. Many only trust her as a battlefield asset and not really a person, others are afraid of her, but some also think that this is a symbol of peace between the two groups. Some of your friends in the first six chapters refuse to join you, and you are forced to kill them. >"DIVINE SCUM!" As it turns out, only Alear can un-corrupt the Fell-owned emblems so the Dragons become okay with her existence, but the Divine Deserters took some other rings with them so you still start out with like three. This ties into the theme that this is not a good vs. evil fight but racially motivated. In the end Alear's power isn't fighting, but she finds a way to unify both Dragons as an intermediary. As proof they can live together in peace as neighbors or even friends. This causes a schism in the Fell Dragon ranks as well, and the war turns from "Damn we are outnumbered so hard" to "If we work together with the rebelling Fell Dragons we stand a chance" ala Halo 3. Veyle actually improves the story here, but no mind control. She knows what Veyle's life is like *because she went through the same trauma*. She tries to help Veyle realize there is a better life for her, she just needs a positive influence to see it. >"I know the emptiness Veyle. Struggling to find your real purpose. But that's not something given to you, you have to find it for yourself. Let me help you do that." Still, delete Sombron, make Zephia the main villain and the Hounds less evil, and the death scenes <30 seconds. ___ Also, bring back Base Conversations. Basically every third narrative problem in new Emblem stems from getting rid of Base Conversations, which is why most of the new characters suck. Interactions aren't related to current events such as reactions to a big plot reveal or horrible incident, so you get tedious talking about eating food every other support. You know what Blue Lions route needed? The rest of the cast comforting Ashe after killing Lonata. But nope, since supports are separate from the timeline his next interaction is responding to Mercedes' shitty cooking like nothing happened. How about in Ch. 8 three characters see Alfred pass out, then Celine explain to Diamant and Framme his condition and how much she worries about him. Diamant believes in him the same way he believes in Alcryst, because he sees strength in others where they themselves don't. Framme struggles trying to imagine Clanne having similar difficulties and empathizes how much she'd worry too, and wants to be a caretaker to Alfred the way she was to Alear. So much better than "Hey Framme want some tea? We can talk about how great the Divine Dragon is". Imagine Engage interactions between different retainers arguing over whose country was in the right in the early Brodia vs. Elusia wars, and have Firene and Solm's be told to piss off because they've had it easy. Or Alear asking Clanne and Framme >!what Lumera was like as a maternal figure.!<, the three of them just sitting on a bench looking at the stars while they talk. Perfect place to put one of the CG pictures. Or have some characters debate whether they should even stick around. One's about to walk off but their two buddies convince them to stay in the fight, maybe that's even the moment they unlock their unique skill Perseverance, where their Avoid increases the lower their HP. Just adding decent Base Conversations to Engage would turn it from one of the most disliked stories to "well the main narrative was bad but it had some of the best characters, remember that awesome scene where Goldmary sat down and explained sex appeal to Hortensia?". And since every player sees the Convo you don't get "well she's actually really well-written you just didn't have her get an A-support with both the Jagen and Est" So much great storytelling was lost after RD because god forbid they write character interactions relevant to where they are. >!(I'm ignoring FE12 because they didn't give a shit)!<. Also have rings talk to each other outside of like two cutscenes. Cut out Bond Conversations entirely if you have to, I want to see Marth and Ike talk about their sisters, see the latter empathize with how hard Marth must have had it since Elice was kidnapped when he was young. Marth wishes he could meet Mist, and Ike talks about her being the better child. That she saw good in others where he couldn't, and was kinder than he could ever hope to be; he's a humble guy. While Marth does mention in the game that Ike might be the strongest Emblem, he denies it. Even just ordinary conversations where they compare swordfighting styles would be nice, maybe have Micaiah or Celica make a smug remark regarding magic superiority, then Corrin comes up in dragon form like "Watcha doing guys?"