The Fire Emblem Thread

[Siveon]

Fucking waifufags, get the fuck off my board. Picking Hoshido first is a damn disgrace.

Overlook the dumb moments in the story and pick a waifu you like and you will enjoy this game. Under all the anime bullshit, there's a fun campaign in there and tons of side quests to do. If you are too much of a fucking normie to not fall in love with a fictional character and think story matters, you might get bored quickly.

And so my cynicism rages on.

 

[Delterius]

Odds are that if you play Nohr first you'll either sleep through Hoshido or you won't play it anyway. So you might as well pick the latter first.

 

[TigerKnee]

Still about halfway through Hoshido.

I'm playing through Nohr and it's definitely more in tune towards what people think of Pre-Awakening FEs with a "linear" no-grind campaign. Can't help you if petting big tittied waifus triggers you but at bare minimum the gameplay and mission design of Nohr campaign is MUCH better than the snoozefest that was Awakening's

 

[Siveon]

Still about halfway through Hoshido.

I'm playing through Nohr and it's definitely more in tune towards what people think of Pre-Awakening FEs with a "linear" no-grind campaign. Can't help you if petting big tittied waifus triggers you but at bare minimum the gameplay and mission design of Nohr campaign is MUCH better than the snoozefest that was Awakening's

Now this is a ringing endorsement.

Jokes and 4chan memes aside, I just wish Fire Emblem didn't devolve into the series about waifus, with some combat on the side. On the bright side, at least the combat might still be worth a damn.

 

[Morality Games]

As an add on to my earlier tirade, I'll note the Shonen tropes and motifs that have derailed storytelling in Japanese media did exist back in the day, but they were handled with much more subtlety and maturity. Its the difference between how Shatner's Kirk handled the ladies and Chris Pine's Kirk handles the ladies.

Nowhere is this more apparent than the ending epilogues between any GBA Fire Emblem and Awakening, although I guess maybe the writing was on the wall with FE8's ending slides -- in Awakening, every pairing reads the same, happy endings all round. In FE7, even characters in romantic supports didn't always get what they wanted or even figured out what they wanted.

 

[Mr. Pink]

where the fuck do you recruit Anna?

 

[Morality Games]

Odds are that if you play Nohr first you'll either sleep through Hoshido or you won't play it anyway. So you might as well pick the latter first.

That implies that Hoshido is a waste of time.

 

[Mr. Pink]

Odds are that if you play Nohr first you'll either sleep through Hoshido or you won't play it anyway. So you might as well pick the latter first.

That implies that Hoshido is a waste of time.

hoshido is fun but nohr is harder. if you're relatively new to the series, i'd start with hoshido first so the inevitable mistakes you make when building your characters can be learned from in your next playthrough.

also nohrs story is designed to make you feel like shit for picking the wrong route constantly.

 

[Siveon]

hoshido is fun but nohr is harder. if you're relatively new to the series, i'd start with hoshido first so the inevitable mistakes you make when building your characters can be learned from in your next playthrough.

Or you could just play Nohr again. Save the dough, won't have to deal with the crappy Nipponese. Hell, maybe try the third route first. Anything sounds better than Hoshido, really. Except playing Awakening again, of course.

also nohrs story is designed to make you feel like shit for picking the wrong route constantly.

How would you know that? You only played the first chapter.

 

[TigerKnee]

Hell, maybe try the third route first.

According to what I've heard, 3rd route has Hoshido-tier gameplay anyway.

 

[Morality Games]

Almost our moral duty to boycott them then. We can't give the impression Awakening combat is more acceptable than it is.

Don't break lines men. The future of the franchise depends on us.

 

[Mr. Pink]

60 hours in.

I would give all the bones in my body for a Beast Killer right now. All the fire emblem staples like beast killers and killer edges are in nohr, so my swordmasters suck without big crits and I get raped by massed horses.

I'm close to the end of this route, and it's been a lot of fun. The writing started pretty bad but it either got better or I developed a tolerance to anime bullshit. I married Mozuke, who is currently my invincible unstoppable great merchant tank, and rely on Hanazaka (sword master), Oboro (Holy Lancer) Setsuna (Holy Bowman) and Crimson (Wyv Rider) to carry my team of useless underleveled fucks to glory and victory. I probably should have invested more in making a decent puppeteer, but my only Ninja went elite instead, which turned out to be not that good.

 

[Rivmusique]

Why did relationships become a big deal in FE? I only played 7, and on that it was some weird shit where you had to end a turn with certain characters standing next to each other and then you got some dialogue between them or something. I never bothered trying for it because setting it up so x and y were holding hands meant playing inefficiently and I had no interest in seeing any more of that games dialogue. So how did it come to face rubbing? Is the stand next to each other stuff out now? Am I partially to blame for bitching about the old system, and now this is their idea of an improvement ? .

 

[Mr. Pink]

Why did relationships become a big deal in FE? I only played 7, and on that it was some weird shit where you had to end a turn with certain characters standing next to each other and then you got some dialogue between them or something. I never bothered trying for it because setting it up so x and y were holding hands meant playing inefficiently and I had no interest in seeing any more of that games dialogue. So how did it come to face rubbing? Is the stand next to each other stuff out now? Am I partially to blame for bitching about the old system, and now this is their idea of an improvement ? .

You need to hit the enemy with units next to eachother to gains support points. when you have enough points, a cutscene will happen in the overmap showing some minor interaction between characters. if you do this four times, they FUCK eachother.

Don't blame yourself. Blame the massive audience of disgusting female nerds that love this kind of thing. The idea itself isn't bad, just the execution. I'd be happy if there were less characters, less dumb support convos about rhubarb pie and stale jokes, atleast early in. It seems like every support line goes from "Help me learn how to be less clumsy" to "I love you please bear my children" in 4 conversations.

 

[TigerKnee]

Awakening was the exact game when it went full-waifuism and it was apparently so successfuly we've moved on into face rubbing

Some of the concepts like Eugenics existed in earlier games but you were never really supposed to "self-insert" yourself into the roles back then.

I bet Bioware is behind this

 

[Mr. Pink]

 

[Archibald]

How common is this bullshit?

 

[Mr. Pink]

How common is this bullshit?

It's the DLC beach mission that's super hard.

 

[Morality Games]

For fuck's sake, I'm 25 but seeing how much the sensibilities have changed in JRPGs in the last 10-15 years is giving me an empathy of what it feels like to grow old. Crappy.

I have to wonder if this is a new development or if this decline was always lurking behind those 8-byte sprites.

 

[grudgebringer]

take it easy. that's just a bit of a fan service.

 

[Mr. Pink]

take it easy. that's just a bit of a fan service.

Optional fanservice in a DLC mission that doesn't give out items or XP. You'd have to be a real loser to even pay for it.

 

[Morality Games]

take it easy. that's just a bit of a fan service.

In a series which once told stories that compared with great works of speculative fiction. Sort of like a kiddy or diet version of the Game of Thrones or maybe like a less angsty fantasy version of Gundam. In a series that innovated in the relationship between story and gameplay, we now have Pokemon petting your sister with the DS stylus.

For instance, if you look at the support conversations for FE7 and their ending slides, you'll note not every set of conversations was happy or conventionally fulfilling, but sometimes characters winded up together anyway. Sometimes people who genuinely cared for each other didn't get to be together in the end because of their situations, duties, or social standings. Sometimes couples that ended up together faced hard choices, death, or separation.

Now, pretty much every support conversation and every ending slide has the exact same fanfic fluff flavor. Every couple gets *exactly* the same thing. Because you wouldn't want to offend anyone who played 40-70 hours to get to end with anything less than a picture perfect ending for the couples they were shipping for. Sure, the pig boy farm peasant can take the King's sister off to the farm, why the heck not? Mm, yeah your fanfic tactician can marry your best friend's time travelling daughter from the future, I mean, that's a Tuesday for me.

 

[TigerKnee]

In a series which once told stories that compared with great works of speculative fiction.

Huh? I remembered Fire Emblem's writing always being shit regardless of time period.

 

[Archibald]

Wouldn't say it was shit, but saying that it was great is pushing it.

 

[Morality Games]

Huh? I remembered Fire Emblem's writing always being shit regardless of time period.

Key word is "compared." Means you can compare writing in the games with choices great speculative fiction writers made or would have made.

For video games and especially jRPGs it generally exhibited outstanding qualities.

Going to the beach as if you were Japanese high school students on summer vacation when you live in a medieval society isn't outstanding quality. Especially if you're a royal princess in an essentially autocratic monarchical society. I'm not even sure through what law, institution, or cultural mechanism such thing would be conceivable.

In contrast, going different routes in FE8 teased out different aspects of the villain's increasingly dual personality, and the whole thematic undertow was about the friendship that existed between the villain and protagonists.

That's a great writing decision that gives the narrative an emotional core that would have been absent otherwise.