Fire Emblem series

[Atypical Dog]

Reminds me of FE10 Gatrie, the big bulky "slow" General, having a 60% speed growth, higher than what every other Greil Mercenary has aside from Mia and Shinon

He gets his speed from being quick on the rebound after getting dumped.

 

[Metallic Blood]

The worst one obviously being Rinkah having horrible strength while Kagero has crazy strength.

Kagero growths are so funny to me, you'd think that a level-headed ninja with a interest in fine arts and having her initial reclass option to be a Diviner would make her have high Skill and maybe good Magic growths... But nope! She has the highest strength growth in the entire game, (65% without class bonuses) with only a measly 20% Skill and absolutely 0% Magic Growth,

Rinkah also being mogged by Sakura in strength growths is also pretty hilarious to me.

 

[NerdShamer]

I never could get over Rinkah's growth rates. Mines was turning into an mage-killer and I really needed someone else who had an green weapon... Which was an extremely short list, come to think of it.

I just settled for swords and spears, in that run.

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

Playing Valkyria Chronicles, it makes me miss the little ive played of FE. The way you raise wet-eared losers to fully-visually clocked masters of arms and what have you. Is there anything on Steam of similar style?

 

[NerdShamer]

Playing Valkyria Chronicles, it makes me miss the little ive played of FE. The way you raise wet-eared losers to fully-visually clocked masters of arms and what have you. Is there anything on Steam of similar style?

Gameplay wise, there's an old game called Phoenix Point. But that's essentially XCOM with free aim and a different kind of bullshit going on.

 

[JamusActimus]

Weird how there's a wave of fire emblem engage is actually good type of take lately on youtube and reddit.

People actually believe it's a good game.

 

[NerdShamer]

Weird how there's a wave of fire emblem engage is actually good type of take lately on youtube and reddit.

People actually believe it's a good game.

I mean, it's good if you don't look into it, too hard. But it's coming off the heels of faked incest and politisperging, so it's kind of hard to fuck that up

 

[Computer God Autism]

Weird how there's a wave of fire emblem engage is actually good type of take lately on youtube and reddit.

People actually believe it's a good game.

I remember seeing a few videos talking about how it's not worth getting worked up over but people are actually saying it's unironically good? I mean if you only care about gaming, sure, I can see where you're coming from, but you could recreate Fire Emblem gameplay in windows excel with enough patience.

 

[Atypical Dog]

I remember seeing a few videos talking about how it's not worth getting worked up over but people are actually saying it's unironically good? I mean if you only care about gaming, sure, I can see where you're coming from, but you could recreate Fire Emblem gameplay in windows excel with enough patience.

Not quite replicated but I know some people who assembled a battle calculator for Three Houses over the pandemic with battlemaps on Roll20. Building a truth table or something for skills was a step too far though.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kqTfjx-T4oDhF0bOqk3_i4fBEf5qU3x1AIIL2yrkVmY/edit?usp=sharing

They even built a second version with homebrew skills replacing the 3h ones when the gameplay turned into rocket tag.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dIGHDh-uNMWWOvzDJqku3JWsrohc0VGh5gNxG2sCD0M/edit?usp=sharing

 

[Peru oso donas]

Weird how there's a wave of fire emblem engage is actually good type of take lately on youtube and reddit.

People actually believe it's a good game.

I mean, mechanically wise it is definitely better than 3H and IMO, better than conquest, it's just that plotwise it's so uninteresting and forgettable, that people prefer to keep arguing about Edelgard being bad or not, or shitting on Fates' localization.

 

[Computer God Autism]

I mean, mechanically wise it is definitely better than 3H and IMO, better than conquest, it's just that plotwise it's so uninteresting and forgettable, that people prefer to keep arguing about Edelgard being bad or not, or shitting on Fates' localization.

The worst thing I take issue with in praising or trying to redeem Engage is not lowering the bar even further for decent (or at least memorably bad) writing, but that Engage represents the takeover of mainline FE by Heroes.

 

[Tony2Timez]

Honestly I'd much rather the series go in a direction where they focus on gameplay and maps that are actually fun that can be enjoyed many times over instead of trying to derive replayablity through splitting an overwritten narrative into multiple parts at the expense of monotonous, unpolished gameplay. I don't hate 3H or anything but Engage was such a nice change of pace after it, even with the shift in tone.

I've actually been replaying Engage on Maddening again on and off and I just skip the cutscenes and dialogue to get to the actual game, as (I'd assume) most people do when they replay pretty much any game because they've already experienced the story. This series is built on each new playthrough being unique, so I'd much rather IS take steps to ensure that it's fun all the way through than prioritize the political intrigue of the writing so that autistic teenagers on Twitter can argue about a game that they watch the cutscenes from on YouTube as opposed to actually playing (and this isn't to say that Engage's writing is even that atrocious - it's just cookie-cutter lol calm down).

Of course, ideally they'd be able to achieve both, but that's

 

[Leaf Wage Slave Jr]

Weird how there's a wave of fire emblem engage is actually good type of take lately on youtube and reddit.

People actually believe it's a good game.

If we’re talking purely mechanically, I can agree.

It’s just everything else around it that drags it down.

 

[Caddo Cobgang]

Weird how there's a wave of fire emblem engage is actually good type of take lately on youtube and reddit.

People actually believe it's a good game.

It fucking sucks, it literally has the worst characters story-wise and design-wise of any of the FE Games, and dont even get me started on Elusia

 

[mrs thickness]

boucheron only having a higher str growth than citrinne and pandreo, and having the exact same personal str growth as hortensia and jean (who gets all of his numbers from class bonuses anyway) is so deranged. i actually think he's a pretty great unit but the way it contrasts with his character, design, and starting class is just fuckin nuts

also i started up a rom hack called The Morrow's Golden Country by the FEU user 'Retina', whose pfp is the game's protagonist exposing their armpit and chest, because it's popular with a lot of literal fags, and I had a pretty hearty chuckle early on


all i'll be able to think about playing this shit is the angry starfield pronoun rant. yeah thanks Retina, noone would have ever picked up on the incredibly important character detail of them being androgynous and possibly having a penis if you didn't directly spell it out. the Touhou and SMT V music in the first chapter didn't give it away either. thanks. i'll probably still play it at some point (after Dark Stone, which kicks ass so far) because the gameplay seems really autistic and well-polished, the portraits are pretty good, and the the music arrangements are actually incredible, but hey, saw an easy shot and had to share it.

you could recreate Fire Emblem gameplay in windows excel with enough patience.

this isn't necessarily wrong, but if it were more correct, the many other games that try to be fire emblem, and lex talionis, and SRPG studio would be much more competitive alternatives than rom hacks. predominantly GBA romhacks too, which requires all sorts of esotoric bullshit (which, generally, only highly autistic trannies such as Retina will go through such that pronouns can be neatly, and impressively, honestly, included in character description) that also limits you to a paltry 32 MB. it also doesn't account for how much heavy lifting aesthetics and sound do for gameplay and first impressions. people not giving engage a fair shake purely because of how it looks used to piss me off severely, but honestly, how a game looks is one of the most important parts of getting someone to, well, fucking try it. if you're picking up a new genre or whatever, what are you most likely to try? probably something that you like how it looks. cuphead isn't really a Gamer's shmup, but that's ok because of how it looks and sounds. how engage characters look doesn't bother me, it's not my favorite by any means, but i certainly can't in good faith deny the allegations of it being pretty fucking gay

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Weird how there's a wave of fire emblem engage is actually good type of take lately on youtube and reddit.

People actually believe it's a good game.

it's a weird "post-ironic" meme to keep restating it's good.

 

[Metallic Blood]

and I had a pretty hearty chuckle early on

I have no idea why, but what gets me the most is that they bothered to put the character's age in the help box as well. It's such a specific and odd detail and I dunno why I find it funny, but it just is to me. Maybe I'm not too used for this amount of character detail in a FE GBA game.

it also doesn't account for how much heavy lifting aesthetics and sound do for gameplay and first impressions. people not giving engage a fair shake purely because of how it looks used to piss me off severely, but honestly, how a game looks is one of the most important parts of getting someone to, well, fucking try it.

Well said. Fire Emblem has good gameplay in general even if it's something that you theorically could just get a d100 and some sheet of papers for basic math, but not seeing axes flying around and characters not performing olympic levels of acrobatics mid-fight then that's basically half of it's fun just gone.

I remember playing FE7 on my phone at school break and proceeding to let my friend play it for a bit to see how he would go, he absolutely loved seeing the game's battle animations, and he gave the dumbest smile I ever seen when he saw Lyn's crit animation for the first time, felt like a kid opening his christmas present.

I only mentioned the battle animations, but that also applies to map designs, character quotes, sound effects, menu design... even a simple thing like making a prison break chapter does wonders. Which is why Engage character designs and some other design choices are kinda sad, because really, the game excels in so many aspects that it's so unreal (the 3D battle animations are just getting better and better for example).

 

[Quartermaster]

It's a bizarre thing these days that I keep seeing, this strange contrarianism of "Oh this thing that everyone hates for obvious and objective reasons is actually awesome guys."

I saw it happen with the Star Wars Prequels when The Force Unleashed was released, also saw it happen with Dark Souls 2 and most recently with fucking Final Fantasy 13 of all games.

And now people are saying Engage is actually good?

A Fire Emblem game is more than just it's gameplay which is the only thing Engage gets right aside from the animations.
Fire Emblem once it got good after Kaga left is about the characters mostly, their relationships and how they interact with the world.

In FE7 you have a very personal story with Eliwood looking for his father and Hector his best friend accompanying him despite his duties as the Marquis' younger brother. And then every single character actually has a reason to tag along, be it for gold or deeply personal reasons like Nino.
The story is driven forward by the characters and their decisions.

FE9 had by comparison an unremarkable or largely unimportant Main Character with Ike but the comradery of the first 10 or so chapters with multiple possible ways for the dialogue to go depending on who dies and lives was just amazing.

Hell, even Awakening had things have a little weight to it with the first arc and Emmeryn's fall.

But with Engage? I haven't managed to play the game past chapter 6 or 7 because I have absolutely no connection to the main character or those he surrounds himself with.
There is no character there, the main character is surrounded by people lining up to worship the ground he walks on because he is a super special awesome divine dragon or something.

It's just too much, there's nothing to relate to and it's all so flaccid and fake, no substance.
By chapter 7 in PoR I was heavily invested in the small shitty conflicts the Greil Mercenaries got into, by Chapter 7 in Engage I resented every character except the Jagen.

 

[Computer God Autism]

the Touhou and SMT V music in the first chapter didn't give it away either.

Whenever I feel some self-awareness about being a fan of Fire Emblem, I immediately remember that Touhou exists. And yeah, you'd have to be an accountant to have fun playing an SRPG on something with all the aesthetical fidelity of excel, it's why I think the people who maintain they only care about gameplay are either lying, burned out or just desperate for a decent traditional-esque FE game and why SRPGMaker will unfortunately never take off as genuine competition, even with Shouzou Kaga himself giving it his blessing.

it's a weird "post-ironic" meme to keep restating it's good.

One would hope. Modern gamers are increasingly conditioned for slop.

I have no idea why, but what gets me the most is that they bothered to put the character's age in the help box as well. It's such a specific and odd detail and I dunno why I find it funny, but it just is to me. Maybe I'm not too used for this amount of character detail in a FE GBA game.

Knowing it was made by an autistic tranny with at least a passing interest in Touhou makes it a lot less odd to me.

A Fire Emblem game is more than just it's gameplay which is the only thing Engage gets right aside from the animations.

I don't think it even got the animations right either; granted I didn't get through but eight or nine chapters, but the amount of hair clipping I noticed in cutscenes was absurd. At the very least the production value of what was supposed to be the anniversary game for the series seemed amateurish compared to 3H.

 

[Alexander Thaut]

Whenever I feel some self-awareness about being a fan of Fire Emblem, I immediately remember that Touhou exists. And yeah, you'd have to be an accountant to have fun playing an SRPG on something with all the aesthetical fidelity of excel, it's why I think the people who maintain they only care about gameplay are either lying, burned out or just desperate for a decent traditional-esque FE game and why SRPGMaker will unfortunately never take off as genuine competition, even with Shouzou Kaga himself giving it his blessing.

One would hope. Modern gamers are increasingly conditioned for slop.

Knowing it was made by an autistic tranny with at least a passing interest in Touhou makes it a lot less odd to me.

I don't think it even got the animations right either; granted I didn't get through but eight or nine chapters, but the amount of hair clipping I noticed in cutscenes was absurd. At the very least the production value of what was supposed to be the anniversary game for the series seemed amateurish compared to 3H.

the issue is that FE peaked with Kaga