The sad part is that there were definitely grown adults that tred to debate children on what a "real FE" is. Nowadays though, community is pretty good 👍
people who tell me to sell my goddess icons because plus 2 luck is worthless, clearly have no idea how addictied i am to seeing meaningless virtual numbers go up.
there are two devils on my shoulders one says to sell the icon for money one says to use it on a low LCK useful unit Just In Case they wouldve gotten blicked
@@alecneal602 or you use it on your dodge-tank for that +1/2 avoid depending on the game (seriously the person who nerfed luck to only give half a point in hit and avoid completely destroyed an already kinda bad stat)
Maybe we should do what Valentia did. Split the fandom into two. The Northern Elites Empire of optimization of mechanics to maximize strategy. The Southern Kingdom of easy gameplay & waifus. In order to secure everlasting peace, we all agree to never violate the other's terrority.
Until the ltc gamers attack and kill them all without any chance of retaliation because they planned an ltc of every part of the territory and swiftly demolished all opposition.
@@RichterTheGoat Little did they know that was all part of the Excelblem Clan's Secret Plan. Just having everyone dies because it's the most fun way to play.
I think the fact that the fan base has aged is pretty important to take into account Most of the 18-24 old game fans from the mid 2000s are pushing 40 and just don’t care about FE anymore or don’t have the energy to argue. I personally first played Awakening when I was 13 and now I’m 21 and by this point I’m getting tired of these nonsense arguments. At the same time, other people I know around my age who started or got serious with the 3DS era have all grown out of the immature “fuck off elitist” attitude and instead try to approach discourse in the fan base maturely.
As someone who is 37 years old and first played Path of Radiance in 2008, my perspective is that discourse tends to be pointless or unsatisfying. I never participated in discussion at the time due to being invested somewhere else, and once I grew tired of that I saw little use in online discourse in general, which included Fire Emblem. Fast forward to today, and you have someone from the GBA era who played Fire Emblem, but never talked about it online. That kind of leaves me in an odd place where I might look like a casual in typical discussions, but have in fact been playing FE games for over 15 years. I'd argue if I felt it had merit, but in practice I find doing so, as I said above, pointless, when I have so little invested in doing so and would probably come across as a "casual elitist", as it's been defined here in this video (which is ironic to me because I often sink hundreds of hours into these games and optimizing units is part of the fun for me). I find that irony the most ridiculous and amusing aspect to this topic considering how this fanbase is portrayed, if anything.
@CTM162 36 and feel the same, found the community around Radiant Dawn (Bought each FE when they came out, POR will ALWAYS be my number 1 of the POST Thracia776-PRE Awakening FE) and I regret ever doing so because of the Toxicity, only bothered looking in if only to get information like Growths and NOTHING MORE (I also have no FE I hate, other the first three NES FE) I Feel some of the toxicity and hate comes from some of them feeling salty that people aren't following what they do. Like seriously if you feel like you're personally being attacked Because i'd like something you don't like and I play how I like to play. And you feel like me ignoring your "ADVICE" Is insulting you somehow. Then I tell those people that's a you problem another me. And yes, sadly, you do have these types of people who are such massive control freaks That the idea that someone else can have their own opinion or way of playing is Foreign to them And they must be not playing how they like to play is simply because they are insulting them somehow!
I agree with what’s said late into the video about attitude. It reminds of something that’s said in the FGC “ Scrub isn’t a skill assessment, it’s about attitude.”
When I played Awakening for the first time and many times after that, I was blissfully unaware of the discourse and controversies. I just played my games and ate some popsicles. Good popsicles though. I hope engage is fun to play. It's nice to look at currently and I love how evil Marth is a canon thing that exists now.
I've had people get mad at me when I tell them I think Awakening was a step back for the series. Like I don't even hate the game. I just prefer the old ones. But some people get really defensive. Like I think Ocarina of Time isn't that great either. It's good, but the other games are better. Have also gotten crap from people for not jumping on that bandwagon. I think it's because I have good reasons for my opinion and they don't like the fact they can't argue against it because it makes them feel stupid.
@@MrScigeek101 Awakening, on top of being one of the better selling games in the series, was a hit with critics to the point it made it onto Wikipedia's "List of Video Games Considered the Best Ever". Yet fans of its predecessors have spent the last ten years talking about Awakening as if it were on par with Big Rigs, to the point I've seen people say they would have preferred if the series had been cancelled after New Mystery rather than have Awakening exist. Speaking as a guy who started the series on Path of Radiance but liked Awakening more, it got old in a hurry. I see this as fans of Awakening and its successors giving some actual pushback.
I'm such an elitist I don't consider people who play SMT4 as having play a real shen megoomy tansey game because it is basically the Awakening of mainline SMT with Apocalypse being the Fates of it Play Strange Journey for the DS and only the DS
@@mr.sellout6284 I don't get SJ on DS and only DS. The only upside is the Kanako art and no Alexandra. Everything else on 3DS is vastly improved from the voice acting to QoL and especially the new Law and Chaos endings that actually make them viable choices.
@@mr.sellout6284 I'm so elitist I think anyone who's only played SMT2 or later a fake fan. If it doesn't take multiple button presses to get to the map screen, and if your minimap doesn't rotate along with your avatar like it does in the OG, I don't want to hear it!
Being a mainline fan ( personal preference, I like being able to grind for hours and persona doesnt have enough moments to do so imo) and watching people shit on persona fans for liking one of the MANY spinoffs the series has is exhausting. Who cares if you like it more? Youre still enjoying a game you care about and engaging in the series and thats what matters when it comes down to playing anything. Yeah I could get upset that people arent trying shit but its their lives, opinions, and cash its just ride to trash someone you don't even know and mainlines fans are full of that and half the time its because something being is somehow bad forever to them
You know, about Thracia... I know it's a hard game, but I find it very interesting, so when I do recommend it (because I do that sometimes), it mostly comes from my desire to share that adventure with people.
I actually think Thracia is one of the easiest games in the series people are just playing it wrong. Sure its got some maps that are a little brutal but for the majority of the time the game is rather easy comparatively. I think part of the reason a lot don't play it is the false stereotype the game gets about being the most brutal game in the series.
Honestly I don't get why thracia is considered to be liked by elitists at all. -No jagens -Most rng dependent out of all games in the series -Bases don't matter because anyone can get to 20 in all stats with scrolls -Very different from "classic fire emblem gameplay" in general Maybe we're thinking of different types of elitists(?) But fe5 is my favorite game for gameplay and fe4 is my favorite for story and I hate that people don't play them because they think they're games for elitists or something when they might have a lot of fun playing them and they just haven't tried it
@@zyvan3179 I find alot of Thracia's reputation for being difficult is from how much the game tends to punish you far more than usual for doing a blind playthrough (that and probably the Manster Escape arc)
@@Mat-8071 I'm not sure where any of these points are coming from honestly. All of them except for the part about Thracia being a very different FE game in comparison to the others are either outright incorrect, or highly suspect takes. On Jagens, while there isn't necessarily a promoted cavalier amongst you initial squad, there most certainly exists multiple characters that essentially fill the same role: Eyvel, Dagdar, Finn, etc. There's not a 1:1 match to the archetype, sure, but that's never what archetypes were really about anyway. On RNG dependency: actually I don't understand where this is coming from. Maybe due to the lack of 100% hit rates (battles cap at 99) and potential for staves to miss at low skill thresholds (which is actually remarkably easy to mitigate). While in theory it sounds like these factors make the game unreliable, in practice this isn't the case. Also, this argument completely ignores how in later game Thracia, you can even get your offensive staves to have 100% hit, and there are multiple ways to guarantee critical hits, ensuring that damage is actually surprisingly consistent. On scrolls supposedly invalidating bases: this just straight up ain't true. Sure scrolls make raising a scrub more feasible, but you're basically always better off scroll stacking a unit that already has good bases than you are to scroll stack a scrub. Also, the fact that scrolls nullify critical hits on units that have them really incentivizes a player to use them on their strong units.
Elitism has been reduced after 3H, at least I no longer see people saying "play fe4/fe5/fe6 or you are a (insert degoratory terms here)" but in exchange we had 3H fans (aka unhinged maniacs) killing each other over who is the most right (hint: all of them are wrong), hopefully this new game will unite us all under the glorious banner of War King Marth and lead us through a crimson path towards victory
@@ebongatseabong202 Exactly! When he was stress tested in Three Hopes and lacked information he would've got in Verdant Wind, he basically came to the conclusion that "The Church is to Blame!" and instantly became just as wonderfully problematic as everyone else! Now I have a Claude-shaped wedge that I can awkwardly shove into any Rhea vs Edelgard argument and it's guaranteed to piss everyone off~
Glad you pointed out the Great Megaten Divide, because I used to only play Nocturne and V. Then, when I decided to buy Persona 5 Royal on Switch in a fit of frustration (after I had spent a whole night trying to find Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher online and then it turned out to be sold out), it was a much better experience than I thought it would be. Aside from it not being as split from its roots as people say, the time management reminds me of how I heard of people getting put off by the Pre-New Mystery games' permadeath and how Intsys would insist it wasn't such a big loss and there were plenty of units to fill in the part. And it's very ironic that I could only appreciate the time management system because the guide I was using gave me misleading info. At first, I was panicking because Councillor not reaching Rank 5 basically had a domino effect on my entire in-game schedule. However, I saw that I had much more time I could use so I replaced a Tower Arcana day with a Councillor one and was able to seamlessly max all confidants.
Glad you liked P5, there's plenty of phenomenal games from Atlas too, like P4, SMT IV, and Etrian Odyssey. At the end of the day, they're *great* RPGs, and if you want to play great RPGs I recommend giving them a try
I believe any good piece of media can be enjoyed by itself without the need for excuses. If the level isn't fun to play through normally and casually, and needs several specific, convoluted and cheesy strategies only the most hardcore LTCers of the game would know of in order to beat it, and that no sane normal player would ever think of trying, then its very fair to criticize it. And to deflect all that criticism in the very low-effort way of just blaming the players and refusing to acknowledge the flaws of a game, that is being an elitist.
@@dsc5595 It's a strategy game though. It's supposed to punish not thinking things through at least a LITTLE. And it rewards coming up with effective strategies. Those ways to make the maps easier aren't "specific, convoluted and cheesy strategies only the most hardcore LTCers of the game would know of in order to beat it, and that no sane normal player would ever think of trying" in the slightest. You just have to be strategic, consider all the options and figure out what's the best way to approach a map. Heck, some maps heavily hint at those tactics with houses you can visit and a lot of them have hints in the intro sequences. So if you miss those hints, skip them or can't even realize that a strategic warp would make the map much easier, that's on you. What we're proposing is not the equivalent of finding a secret exit to a canon to skip a few worlds in a new super mario game, it's the equivalent of learning a boss's pattern instead of just charging at him and getting hit constantly.
The only thing I can really say on the matter is that I've seen quite a bit of unsolicited backseating in a couple of fire emblem streams who were casuals. Like one distict memory I have is of a person playing Fire emblem three houses, and they wanted to make a unit into a great knight. Suddenly a wave a people came out saying not to do that because it sucked. And as a note, this person was playing on casual so it is not like there was much risk of that person trying out the Great knight class for themselves. I suppose I'm not sure if it counts as elitism at the end of the day, but personally it is frustrating that people are trying to bring ltc logic into causal streams for people.
Excelblem is personally responsible for inspiring me to get Azura's outfit ported to FF14 and Fates becoming my first FE game and it is almost entirely because of all of the memeing on Jitaro
I was in the thick of it during the Fates pre-release era when Elitism was pretty rough in the Fire Emblem community which kind of sucked as someone who started with Awakening. But even then, I don't think that era compares to what I've seen with the elitism in the SMT community.
It's comical how toxic the SMT & Persona communities are now. It used to be just SMT vs Persona but then when a single community gets called out they start blaming smaller groups, like "Not all SMT fans are toxic... It's just the SMT III fans that are!" or "Bro us Persona 5 fans aren't the loud ones, it's the elitist Persona 3 fans!" None of them can resist the urge to argue, and when they run out of victims they start targeting themselves. It's so sad all I can do is laugh at them
A yes, the classic quote; "You rather die a Hero, or live long enough to see yourself become Henning from Fire Emblem: Binding Blade, chapter 8x." - Some guy, I don't know who, I think he was in a Batman movie or something.
When I tried the Awakening Demo I liked it and went online to check out more about it before release. First thing I saw was some comments wondering why everyone suddenly was so interested in Awakening when they didn't know anything about and had never played older FEs. So then I immediately jumped into emulation (lmao imagine a world where older FEs could be legitimately bought) and played Blazing Blade, Path of Radiance (oof the bugs in that emulation...) and Shadow Dragon. They were pretty cool. I don't know who I was trying to prove myself to by playing them though.
I’m honestly glad I joined the community right around 3 houses’ release so that I didn’t have to experience it too much. My favorite part about elitism both now and then though? Rarely ever did they play a fire emblem game before fe4
My first FE game was Three Houses. After playing that game I went and have now played every other game in the franchise except the NES and SNES games. I don’t consider myself an Elitest. Especially since I choose to play on normal difficulty and like to save my units 😂
There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the Arena Abuser and the insane, the vicious and the Edelgard fans, all the units I have killed and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better Fire Emblem for anyone, in fact I want the crits to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my Game Over continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of the game; no new knowledge can be extracted from my Iron man Run. This playthrough has meant nothing.
I feel like launch week engage Twitter discussion really proved eliteism is still a thing. At least from my perspective. It went so far past "don't play casual" that I saw people unironically saying that if you didn't play maddening classic exclusively, you had no value in discussion about the game whatsoever. Like. The day it came out.
One thing I want to say is that I wouldn’t say that “nostalgic elitism” isn’t elitism, as much as I’d say that there’s simply multiple ways a person can be elitist. Obviously elitism isn’t even a word that only applies to FE. Going by the dictionary, Elitism is the opinion that particularly distinguished people deemed “elites” should be the ones who should rule a society. So to make that definition into one that can even be applied to the FE community you’d have to redefine it to something like “a person who thinks their opinions are better and more important than everyone else’s, and are antagonistic of everyone who disagrees.” I think that is what most people in the community are really trying to get at when they bring up discussions of FE3H lord debate elitism into the mix, “elitism” can refer to different things, as someone who started with awakening, I most associate the term with the “pre-awakening superiority.” Type of elitist, and considering that TONS of FE fans started with awakening, I’d assume that a lot of the modern player base either thinks of FE elitism as generational elitism or FE3H lord elitism. I didn’t even consider gameplay efficiency elitism when I answered the community pull, a lot of the newer fans don’t get nearly as into gameplay efficiency debates partly because the older fans have already had those discussions, we already have resources to know to avoid pitfalls™️. Though of course there’s also people who have their own ideas about what elitism even is, words have subjective meanings, and not everyone is going to agree on what they mean, even if that means disagreeing with the dictionary. So finally, I want to say that elitism is something that’s actually pretty hard to say it is a problem in a community, gauging how much it happens, and if it’s even a real problem when it does happen is pretty hard for a person to accurately guess at, but the way I see it, the FE community doesn’t have large scale elitism, or anything like that, but then again I pretty much only see FE youtube.
LTC being a standard for "efficiency" is one of the dumbest elitist things. Mostly because actually ltcing causes you to do some of the least efficient things ever like skipping a lot of exp, relying on resets for enemy stats, strats with low chance of success at one point or another to really push for saving turns. And other stupid things like growths being criticized is stupid, often especially when they talk about how unreliable they are without actually understanding math well enough to recognize that theory crafted average comparisons are useless, and it's better advice to check characters stats as you're using them. Half the advice they give would make the game a lot harder to a new player.
What youre talking about isnt really efficiency though, its more optimization. Getting all the exp and stuff is less efficient cuz its not necessary and takes more time, but its less optimal in non-ltc contexts because it limits your choices to those applicable in ltc strata only.
@@leaffinite2001 I don't think you know what efficiency means. Efficiency is three parts, maximum productivity, minimum effort, and minimum expense. Going for LTC might force you to have productive turns, but it doesn't force you to actually play the long game productively. Simply gimping your own units to do things faster when turns in almost all of the games are a completely free resource isn't being efficient. Taking high risks to save time, requiring deeper strategies in order to save time, or forcing intensive knowledge in order to carry yourself through the game as quickly as possible, is far from minimal effort. And considering aside from the actual self-imposed challenge of trying to do things in the least amount of turns, it's hard to argue that those efforts aren't wasted as far as the game is concerned. And when it comes to minimum expense, typically the LTC you're going to make use of all of your resources as much as you can. You will take losses simply to save time despite it being unproductive in any meaningful way. You are typically in an LTC doing things at greater expense than playing casually. And that's literally the point of LTC. Force players to do something that makes a playthrough require more effort, higher expense and more limited resources, and require them to use things in the most optimal ways possible within these limitations. No challenge run is focused on making you play more efficiently. It's more efficient to get as much growth and resources as possible. It takes less effort to go slower and safer. It's more productive to take more resources than possible in minimum number of turns possible. It's higher expense to go for low turn count. Saying doing it in less turns is more "efficient" only makes sense if your goal is to LTC, because turn count really isn't beneficial in any way most of the time. It's more effort most of the time for the same if not less reward from the game. That's why it's a popular challenge run, it effectively makes you play worse in plenty of ways to amp up difficulty lol. But in order to actually be a challenge run it can't be low effort. Part of that is hindering your productivity and diminishing your resources. But it's a stupid as saying using different really weak growth units is efficient, they typically are not the most productive units that require much more effort to use that will at best, do not take a lot of resources and tend to reward you eventually. But these are just two different sides to the the same coin of self-imposed challenge.
@coldeed there can be no measure of productivity in the goal of beating a game other than furthering your journey towards its completion. Doing so with as few turns as possible is, in terms of playing the game, the lowest effort possible, and requires the minimum expense (of the one real resource involved; your time). In that way ltc is quite efficient.
@@leaffinite2001 Time isn't a resource, and turn count isn't at all indicative of time spend in a strategy game that's turn based lol. Pretend to be a resource in the game you would actually have a time limit. That would make it a limited resource and therefore require you to play around it. And that's exactly my point it doesn't matter how many turns you take. It doesn't matter how long you take for each of those turns. You literally have to think turn count is valuable in order for LTC to make any sense and mean anything about efficiency. You're familiar with the concept of circular logic correct? LTC is efficient because LTC is efficient? Because frankly, did you beat the game more than the casual that did something else? This is the entire false premise that you're basing this off. Trying to optimize every single turn in spending a lot more time focusing on each turn is not doing things in a low effort fashion. Like the fact that you're describing efficiency around it taking less time even though the amount of turns you take has absolutely nothing to do with how long you take them is laughable. So yeah I guess if you want to play the game by looking up a walk through that describes every move that you should make ahead of time that someone probably spent hours writing out and theory crafting for as well as testing, then sure I guess it would save you a lot of time to not play the game and just follow a walkthrough like that lol. But actually going through running out and planning out an LTC takes more time than playing through a game casually usually. Especially if you're actually trying to go for a record. Even if you first try to learn the strats from others. But I mean this is like a stupid kind of horseshit argument like saying that speed running games is going to save you time as if you don't have to take a lot of time to learn all the speed running strats and practice that shit endlessly to actually be able to pull it off and have the knowledge to do it somewhat effectively lol. I mean I used to speedrun just like I've done ltc's before, all the prep work to even be able to do that shit is going to take longer then just playing the game casually the first time lol. Which frankly, the most efficient thing would probably be good advice for a new player. Doing something in a more difficult fashion is not doing something in a more efficient way. That's just what common sense should tell you. Like sure you could use a hatchet to cut down, and hey maybe you don't need the chainsaw to get it done, but the chainsaw is genuinely more efficient because of how much easier it makes it. And I genuinely have to point this out to, is LTC the hatchet in this scenario or the chainsaw? Because I have to remind you it is every type of run that people do to make the game more challenging, not easier like playing slow, safe and casual.
I used to feel disappointed at the inclusion of Casual Mode in Awakening back in the day, but honestly I just learned to appreciate that it only added an accessibility option for people to get into the series more easily, which was very important at the time. I will always praise Fire Emblem for its amount of player choice when it comes to gameplay, not taking options away that veterans like (I'm looking at you, Pokémon, force enabling Exp. Share and Switch combat mode), and I'm glad the community has overall learned to accept that we can all play these games very differently.
While i do agree that " elitists " don't exist, the people with the mindset of " new games are bad Because muh anime and fanservice, old games are good because it's traditional " shitty mentality still exist
I know i felt there were elitism issues back in the past, but I also kinda poked the bees nest & was a nino fanboy back then not to mention, I kinda haven't interacted with the FE community much in like 5 years. Only came back to FE in the last 2 months or so Edit: Yeah it was mainly about every side, including mine, being really mean about things like unit quality. Nowadays I'd rather just chill, accept the numbers and also still use who i want
@@RichterTheGoat Unfortunately for you, yes, that was his base, but he kept the broken growths of FE1. Say hello to the strength capped Hero King; he won't be poking you to death.
@@RichterTheGoat You should be more worried about Marth's endless supply of faceless expendable units. no matter how many you kill there will always be more. You will know true despair once the names begin to loop. how many generations of generics can you endure?
I was 9 years old (4 years underage lol) when I was on the gamefaqs boards arguing with people older than me about how my first, blind playthrough of Blazing Blade was a valid even if I didn't use the absolute top tier characters. When I got slightly older, had played through Sacred Stones and then Binding Blade, I was forming my own opinions and those same people still invalidated the thoughts of anyone that deviated from their own on what playstyles are worth considering. That continued til I stopped discussing these games on the internet from after Radiant Dawn released until around the time Awakening came out. From my perspective, I still see that cancerous mindset of "you don't see the game the same way I do so your thoughts are invalid" around even as I've just started lurking in the various communities forming around Engage. I don't think it's wrong to say "I play on Maddening and you play on Hard so there's clearly a difference in perspective here", as someone who exclusively plays on maddening himself, but the constant bickering over "meta" and how you should play a non-competitive single player game is absolutely still extremely prevalent in the FE community from what I see. It looks really silly when you see people push their tier list as the objective correct opinion and reject any disagreements with "You don't know fire emblem as well as I do". Generally, my opinion is just... please, be decent people to eachother. It's a video game.
At least the FE community probably has it better than the Elder Scrolls community... They have the usual morality "debates" while also having the toxic elitists - mostly Morrowind fans (and I say this as someone who likes Morrowind) - that shit on anyone that *dares* to like Oblivion or Skyrim and can't handle *any* criticism of Morrowind. Though thankfully the latter seems to be dying down a bit. Only a bit though.
Elitism is always considered a problem but a problem people don’t talk about are anti elitists because some of them are a bit too extreme in how they hate it Btw Fire Emblem is not the only community with elitism
I remember being called an elitist simply bc I PLAYED the older games. That happened when FE warriors (1) was releasing trailers and alot of people were disappointed at the character roster. I'm sure it still exists but I rarely see people being elitist/"anti elitist" anymore. But it definitely was widespread just a few years ago.
while most of it is because its a remake of an ooold game, i think a big part of it is because it was on the 3ds RIGHT before the switch was coming out. People wanted to save to buy games for the upcoming super console rather than buy an old game for an old system thats about to be replaced
I remember not really knowing about Echoes release unti it basically just had been released, which compared to the marketing that was put behind fates, 3 houses (and I guess awakening, but my memory is shody on that) meant that I, someone who was somewhat following online discourse at the time had almost missed the release. Combine that with the facts that the 3DS was basically on its way out already and the reltively little buzz the game created in discussion afterwards and it is kind of understandable why it hasn't sold that much.
I first was introduced to Fire Emblem with Super Smash Bros. Melee in 2001, when I was 15. It wasn't until the release of Path of Radiance that I played a Fire Emblem game for the first time, though, due to not having a Game Boy Advance and having little interest in getting one at the time (I did get a DS in 2004, but not to play old GBA games; the only one I did was of another of IS' games, Advance Wars). After Brawl was released in 2007 I sought out Path of Radiance and its sequel, and so those were my first to play. By the time Awakening was released I was generally avoiding online discourse as I was growing fatigued from online conversation in general (unrelated to Fire Emblem) and so didn't care what the fandom thought. That's been my viewpoint ever since. Online communities tend to grow more toxic with time due to size and changes that bring in new fans, and unless you find something to invest in (which I never did) it looks largely pointless from an outsiders' perspective.
I used to not tell people I liked Fire Emblem because I got introduced to the series right before Fates came out but I started with Awakening. I only play casual mode because my anxiety is so bad that I would have a mental breakdown if a unit died. Before you judge me you have to know I only play video games to calm my anxiety. I'm not going to do something I know will stress me out.
Broke: Paladins are good because of LTC and are therefore better than Generals. When it's about who can kill the fastest, can clear the map the fastest and there are no other factors - then there is simply no reason not to use them over a low movement unit. Woke: A General who is ahead of the level curve is effectively immortal against anything that's not a mage, trivializing entire chapters which would be very hard for anybody else, as was evidenced in Excelblem's very own Pick My Unit run. People only under-estimate Generals because they're not necessary versus their weakness - but when the chips are down, when you need someone who can survive an enemy phase -powerful generals are the ones who will carry you. Yet for this opinion alone, someone could just as easily tell me "No, you can only rate a unit by its competition, most knights aren't needed at all and fliers are more than enough to beat the game" but it's literally only coming down to preference either way. If someone's patient enough to play optimally, if they're willing to see past efficiency they will see units in entirely different lights to someone else. And in that respect, nobody is empirically right on many issues of Fire Emblem in my opinion. For some people success is never losing a unit, for some it's beating the game at any cost and for some it's beating it in as low amount of turns as possible or with the worst units they possibly can. There's no wrong way to play Fire Emblem. Not even on Phoenix Mode.
3 Houses killed Elitism by killing discussion in general. Back in the day, things like the Casual vs Classic debate were active wars, and lines were drawn much harder between the players who refuse to play any older FE games w/o casual mode and players who refused to even consider casual mode. A few months ago I tried to come back to the discussion with a retrospective of how the series has gone since Awakening, not taking sides just commenting on how things have been, and got no discussion, only a handful of people downvoting the post in silence and moving on. I know I can't get mad at 3 Houses specifically when the fact that it's been over 3 years since the last FE entry probably has more to do with the staling of the community content, but I can't help but feel like even during other content droughts the community was still more active and full of life. It was somewhat toxic but at least it had some heart. Now the only things that exist on the subreddit to get above like +20 are fanart. Even the announcement of Engage has failed to spark much interest - a small handful of people came around, spammed their opinions once, then left again.
I’ve been on serenes forest since 2010ish and I can honestly say that elitism has never been a thing until awakening came out. I actually remember the first thread that someone called me an elitist on because I recommended they try sacred stones right after awakening I will say that no I’m not 100% innocent I definitely used to come across as elitist especially back in the day it was the late 00’s what did you expect
Elitism in terms of play style nowadays is basically just a fictional player who makes everyone in 3h into wyvern riders (despite that being heavily suboptimal)
I think elitism gets confused for tribalism and Edelgard was a microcosm of the tribalism. The Fire Emblem fandom is as bad as the Sonic fandom sometimes.
Elitism is a behavior or attitude of superiority. Tribalism is loyalty towards a specific group. Tribalism is usually rooted in (misplaced) elitism. Everyone participating in morality debates is engaging in Elitism AND Tribalism.
Not just Edelgard. Dimitri and Rhea Fans are just as bad. (Apparently Clause to with 3 Hopes?) The difference with Elitism is that at least Elitist generally knows how what they're talking about even if they're ass about it. They're generally meaning well, even if they are doing it wrong. The arguments on 3H are very often based only on affect, lacking any sort of media literacy. It's pointless and tiring
I think another thing that diluted elitism is how "accessible" the games are, like with a phone from 4 years (outdated) you can play all FE from 1 to 8 with 0 problems, and theres better tl patches AND QoL patches that make older games more accessible to less knowledged gamers And now with a decent PC you can do the whole series except for 3ds which iirc had many emulation problems that need too troubleshooting for a whole afternoon FEH too helped by making some old characters REALLY powerful, like how Reinhardt is basically the icon of f2p players or LegSigurd giving a movement boost to l alloes for attacking
I'd say after the 2020 drama the FE community got a stunted growth in general, which led to less casuals trying out Fire Emblem. It also helped that a masked hooded maniac FEtuber decided that killing off everyone and intentionally making bad decisions to see how far you can get is actually more enjoyable than being a tryhard at a single player game. Genuinely playing like Excelblem is some of the most fun to have with Fire Emblem (the not caring too much about optional rewards part, you don't have to go full FE11 Marth)
But Hard Mode Bonuses are pretty sweet! Specially when you have to resort to "Ol' reliable" Crtiger to save the day 😅 I just finished a Hard playthrough of FE6 last month and I suffered more than any Meguca on Earth to try to beat Ch. 8 on time for the Gaiden and Ch. 11A for the promotion items (damn green units! I missed my sweet 5000G... I mean Orion's Bolt due to your recklessness!) but had a lot of fun! Well... I also received a ton of RNGesus blessings, specially when my Echidna narrowly avoided a 1R death by an ambush spawned Silver Blade Paladin 😰 Best regards!
@@BlazeElPadrino662 I'll try it at some point, for sure, but I love using tragically terrible characters which would be pretty insane in hard mode. I mean, normal mode fe6 is way harder than hard mode fe8 lmaooo, Nomad troopers can double and two-shot trained Lillina in Sacae Also Rutger fan < Wade and Lott with A support enjoyer
@@BlazeElPadrino662 funnily enough, I got a B support the chapter they joined lmaoooo I used only okay or worse units from Mekkah's character guide and it was the most fun I've had with a game in a while. Hard mode for that probably would have been overkill
i hate the "oh, you should/can only play on Classic/Maddening difficulty, because that's the only way to play" type way of thinking. Like, no. There's other ways to play this game. There are other modes for a reason.
The SMT shoutouts got a really good laugh out of me Now to take my chance to tell people to play Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor: Overclocked or Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker both out now on the Nintendo 3DS
i like how this video predicts not only people saying elitism exists anyways in the comments but also people typing edelgard essays. we don't deserve someone as entertaining as you in our community.
I like FEH and some of the older FE games but I'm not part of the community. Mostly because I get yelled at by said community whenever I have any opinion on FE anywhere.
From what i saw from the community is the same thing that happens with every series that gets too popular and starts to cater to newer fans over older fans, they feel betrayed and when they voice their concerns and frustrations and newer fans will feel attacked and start debates. There is a lot of things i hate in newer FEs compared to older ones: Avatar MC and Avatar worshiper characters, the focus on the "dating sim" aspects of the game and, the supports systems in general. But that makes me wonder should a series stick to it's roots and hope it doesn't die or should it renew it self at the cost of the old ways? I suppose that what people want to express is "Awakening saved the franchise and i'm glad i get to play more FEs but that doesn't mean i won't criticize the aspects i feel are not fit for the seires" I dunno maybe i talking out of my ass here, i'm not holder of truth, feel free to discuss.
Well Awakening, and fates Really compounded the issue. Awakening set the ground work, with the avatar, "dating", etc, but what really lit the fire for alot of people, was fates. Fates doubled down so hard on the romance stuff that they made up a contrived time dilation outrealm plot, to force child units into the game, many Characters were just one note fetish bait, and Corrin wasn't blood related to their "birth" family to avoid incest (oops Azura's kinda your cousin). If that wasn't bad enough the "Routes" were sold individually. Then when people got their hands on the games birthrights maps were really bland, and the story of both was atrocious. At the time it really looked like the developers threw the old fans in the trash, to appeal to shippers. The controversy around the face petting being censored didn't help. Neither did the hot spring, or the costume shop that let you deploy units in just a towel... It's not a good look. correct me if I'm wrong, but Camila is the first FE character to have a breastplate designed to expose her chest (The thing its suppose to be protecting). Camila being as popular as she is also added fuel to this fire, cause a good portion of her popularity is because of her sexualization. Now i'm not saying that The old games are better, or anything like that, but you cant deny the massive shift in focus, tone and design philosophy, the series went through because of Awakening into fates. the goal of this post was to give a brief explanation of where some of the "old school Elitism" comes from, but I've basically just shit talked Awakening/Fates in this so to be fair I'll say some of the things i liked. I actually liked the child unit mechanic, and didn't even mind it returning in fates (as nonsensical as it is). It's a fun way to introduce late game units or replacement units, that are somewhat personalized to your playthrough The customizable avatar was also a nice idea (just the story around it was meh, and it was too op) selecting a good stat and a bad stat, as well as fates limited classing could allow for unique builds, but it just wasn't balanced enough for that. If they expanded upon the customization options I would love to make a character. My castle was by far the best implementation of a base camp you could walk around. small, easy to navigate, and customizable. Fates implementation of pair up or dual strikes is incredibly fun. making formations to utilized dual strikes from you best units repeatedly, or sacrificing that ability for more safety with pair up. it's also a little similar to rescue from the GBA games which i appreciate. Conquest has some really good maps.
Tbh I felt kinda like a jerk for even suggesting to a friend newly playing FE for the first time to try Awakening on Classic, simply because of what I’ve seen the community talk about around that, but you make good points, that it’s not necessarily suggesting to play a certain mode or game that is elitist, it is how you act about it, or how you act if they make mistakes. Like don’t be like “you should’ve known this optimized thing” if they’ve never played any strategy games before. So long as we remember that, in the end, it’s just a game, with the point to have fun, we should be okay
I was called elitist at times when explaining why X unit is bad and the other person would start arguing about X unit's character or something. So not only the term was misused, but the argument was about 2 completely different things. I don't think FE has any units that are a lost cause - even Wendy, Sophia, Nino, Amelia, Ewan, PoR Rolf, Fiona or Nyx are completely viable if you commit to training them, but compared to their peers they take way more resources to become good. It's simply easier to categorize by calling them "bad" instead of "less good" or something. Some of my favourite FE characters are bad units and i'll agree with anyone who tells me they're bad. And that's fine.
My biggest issue with things like casual mode aren't that they exist or that they bring new people into the series, it's that the games are very clearly being made with them in mind as the default choice, with more classic playstyles an absolute afterthought. Casual elitism definitely became at least as big of an issue as actual elitism at some point, and there are certain points in fandom discussions where it feels like you let someone sleep on your couch, and now they're mocking you because your landlord told you to let them keep the couch.
preach!! I don't think we've had a game that looks designed for ironmans that actually lose important resources since Awakening (which looks like a good ironman game, but Ive lost my means to play it)
@@alecneal602 Awakening is definitely not a good ironman game: there's a dry spell where you don't receive any new units to make up for losses between chapter fourteen and chapter twenty-three, and many of the chapters in that range are some of the hardest in the game. The only replacement units you CAN get in that dry spell are from paralogues, which are completely missable if the female unit that unlocks them either hasn't or can't reach an s-support, or if they die before chapter thirteen's conclusion, and the paralogues are oftentimes extremely difficult if undertaken with anything other than an endgame ready team. On top of that the child units join at level ten with only C in their weapon ranks, and on hard reeking boxes are way too expensive to use without bankrupting your army, and frequent overworld risen encounters don't start cropping up until the Valm arc is almost over. Doing an ironman of Awakening is only slightly more viable than Three Houses, and even then you have to play the game almost flawlessly to avoid being forced into the Chrobin solo strategy.
excelblem WHEN are you gonna stream SMT strange journey on expert difficulty, no consumables, no compendium, matching alignments only, LUC type demonica, and no scanning forma???
As a person who has taken the brunt of FE Elitism back in the day (to the point of being bullied out of communities several times), I must say I can attest to how bad the elitism was. It was kind of silly how petty some people could be just because you liked a bad character. (Even if I generally accepted the fact they were bad in the first place.) But I must reply to the Serenes Forest jab of yours. Oh boy. OH BOY. If you ever thought Serenes Forest was the breeding grounds of toxic people... Haha... HAHAHA... You have _not_ seen FESS, during the heydey of being led by Superbus. Just to give you an idea, some of the people there, they made the common Serenes Forest elitist look _very respectful_ in comparison. And most of them were very "highly well-regarded". (Note, I'm airquoting that.) There's also FEFF. The fact that community was the same community that kept Inui around as long as they did should tell you everything you need to know. That is all. It's just wild how times have changed.
I think elitism and gatekeeping should only be applied to keep out people that want to change the fundamentals of a franchise or why it is so great. It can be a problem when people just interrupt your fun, but thats as esay to avoid as just stop looking at the mean comment on your screen. In my mind elitism is not a problem.
First of all, if you havent played every fire emblem and used only low tier characters on 0% growths no stat boosters, no promotions, no items, no weapons, LTC, no turns, player phase only, no RNG rigging, no attacking, no playing, only save deleting, literally not playing the game, then you're not a fire emblem person
I hope the Fire Emblem Engage elitism is a battle between red and blue lovers to determine which color is better so they can fight over whether Red Marth is hotter than Blue Marth. We all know Red Marth is hotter, of course, but maybe some people just prefer the color blue.
As long as we can agree that Heroes is objectively not a true fire emblem game, then everything else doesn't really matter much to me You can play all your casual and phoenix modes all you want
Heroes is as much of an FE than any other game in the series, the only people that don't consider it like that are the ones that have the "Hur Hur gacha bad" mentality
"Elitists" are the boogeyman. I think the casual elitists are the actual elitists in most if not all communities. When you like something you'll theorize and develop opinions and criticisms, when there's balance involved you WILL HAVE an opinion, biased or not, it doesn't matter. Not having one is strange... we interact with things and it's just human to try to look for patterns in general or getting emotionally involved to the point of justifying your shortcoming or justifying your conveniences. Also... people are extremely immature and get offended when not agreed to.... Everyone wants to force safespaces to play victimized hero saga.
True to an extent. Just look at any competitive game where there exist people who seem outraged at the very idea of competitive play existing. Pokemon, for example. Some people see the idea of competitive Pokemon as a betrayal to the very concept of the games...despite every single Pokemon game presenting competitive battling as the framework for how gyms and the league work...
I believe challenging games that force you to interact with their systems are the best kind. I love DOOM Eternal, Bloodborne and of course, Fire Emblem Conquest. To me, it's completely fair to tell someone "you could be having more fun if you allowed yourself to be pushed out of your comfort zone, Hard+Classic is the best experience." That's what those games tried to do. I think more games should try to do that.
I see that elitism applies to everygame in the Fire Emblem series. Even as of recent the Three Houses fans are shitting on Engage because it apparently doesnt look like Three houses.
being a megaten fan, yeah the smt community has it INSANELY rough with elitism, though I think the elitism is a lot more based on the narrative preferences and feeling like stuff like "persona is weeb trash," rather than gameplay stuff. Though like, there are people who are hella elitist over like the difficulty in modern persona compared to mainline megaten or stuff. the smt community is definitely full of unnecessary toxicity. at least the games for the most part are good, even if some are definitely hella flawed. the way the franchise experiments with a lot of its series long concepts is dope honestly and i think while im not the fan of some of the stories in mainline megaten, i think mainline has tons of cool concepts in their stories honestly. (my favorite stuff from megaten has to be stuff like p3/p5r, the dds duology, nocturne, n so on.) (sj is also cool.) dope video, i liked da points you made regarding the shifting tides of the fe community.
Moral superiority is dumb When it comes to bring you into the series. I believe almost all the games starting from the very first one Didn't hold back that the main characters were Not the pure moral superiority. I mean there's a reason the villain architypes of Camus, Michalis, Ishatar and Murdock exist...along with the Heroic Archetype of Lorenz (Thats old man Lorenz from FE1 and 3). Even Marth can commit war crimes if you so choose (Killing Gordin, killing Maria, Tiki, fail to get the Falchion back from Gharnef, kill the harmless retreating Gra troops all but the Gordin one have Consequences of course) Even if there's a good versus evil And clear villains that doesn't really change the fact that The heroes ignore What's going on around them and claim themselves heroic. And trying to basically use that to talk down to other people who like a specific character is kind of kind of Stupid and I have to question your own moral stance if you do something like that. Claude not fully innocent because he DID let his father's people into Fodlan. Even if it was a ploy To open up the country's borders For the better. Some of his allies do question this behavior. And it's only in his route where they can be convinced This is a good thing. Truthfully nobody really has the high moral ground in Three houses. And need I remind everything Seliph has to deal with is partially Sigurd fault and Sigurd DOES acknowledge his fault in the rise of the bad guys of Part 1
I played fire emblem when they came out on the gba. Just recently got engage so that's like 20 years I haven't played FE. i'll admit that for a single player srpg, the community that sprung up around the franchise is weird as fuck. Glad I missed all that
i think what i associate "elitism" with is "this is the best way to play the game" and if things differ from that path its "sub optimal" when it really means low turn count (not lowest turn count, but trying to get through the maps fast). like a common strategy for fe8 is in Erika route to just skip recruiting Marissa. I could never do that, for me part of playing FE games is to recruit as many characters as I can. I dont think speedrunning or LTCing is the best way to play fire emblem. Like go watch Kirby Mastah's fe11 speedrun. is that really getting the most out of fire emblem 11 and having the most fun? To be clear i absolutely respect those speed runs and LTC runs and understand the skill, but its a videogame, i play videogames to enjoy them and I don't necessarily want to finish them as quickly as possible. Something else about "what is good" that is commonly brought up is in FE7 with OSWIN. He isn't the best unit for LTC's other then early game, but everyone who tiers FE7 has to acknowledge how much easier he makes that game. When tier list are done its from the perspective of someone who has done tons of playthroughs of the game. such as knowing ambush spawns, specific game mechanics that take multiple playthroughs to figure out (like fe8 chapter 4 the revenant with the fetid claw that will either move OR attack not both, so only people who figure that out will know parking a 1hp Erika 2 tiles away from him is safe vs a game over) making the game easier is rarely factored into how good a character is if it slows the game down. I just think that there isn't a one accepted definition of "good" for fire emblem. I would consider myself a pretty good FE player, ive beaten fe6,fe7,fe8,fe9,fe10 all on their hardest difficulties recruiting all characters and without letting any of them die (these are not all of the fe games that i have played all the way through these are just the ones i beat on hardest difficulty). im halfway through a merciless run on fe11 so far no dead characters and maximizing the amount recruit able.(edit i did finish this run with 0 characters dead, all characters recruited, getting the good falchion and tiki) However because its at a slower pace that somehow makes my play less skilled.
I would only see that as elitism if it was somehow proposed as the pinnacle of how the game should be played. Anyone who speedruns games knows that their playstyle is unusual, that's part of the appeal. No speedrunner would claim that you're the weird one for trying to see all the content in a given playthrough, get all the hidden items and recruit all the characters etc.
"People played Fire Emblem, but unfortunately, some of them had opinions" ☠️
i think its more of a "internet children be dumb dumb idiots who like to fight" problem than a fire emblem problem
The sad part is that there were definitely grown adults that tred to debate children on what a "real FE" is. Nowadays though, community is pretty good 👍
@@CarbonMalite what about with Engage?
@@justagiantnerd8001 i think the MC looks stupid too but arguing about it makes us all look stupid
@@CarbonMalite agreed
@@CarbonMalite also the main character has grown on me. However I enjoy Armor woman, Blue archer dude, and wyvern magic lady the best
people who tell me to sell my goddess icons because plus 2 luck is worthless, clearly have no idea how addictied i am to seeing meaningless virtual numbers go up.
there are two devils on my shoulders
one says to sell the icon for money
one says to use it on a low LCK useful unit Just In Case they wouldve gotten blicked
@@alecneal602 or you use it on your dodge-tank for that +1/2 avoid depending on the game (seriously the person who nerfed luck to only give half a point in hit and avoid completely destroyed an already kinda bad stat)
Selling it also makes a virtual number go up though, it’s just your gold instead of your luck stat.
@@wriggletime1412 yes but why do that when I could liberate the blood from my opponents in sponsored deathmatches if I really needed money?
@@CaptainCFalcon well because then your unit may get screwed by the gods and sent to fight a falcoknight with 45 in all stats, thanks fire emblem 12.
As an elitist, I use Vantage + Wrath from pairing Tailtiu with Lex. That way, I can say “your mom” before the argument even starts.
It's not being an Elitist, it's just wanting to have fun. It's bad and broken in the best possible way.
elitist stopped the moment they realized Marty believers were held with more respect
Not using Marty is so obviously wrong there's no way to be an elitist about it.
Maybe we should do what Valentia did. Split the fandom into two. The Northern Elites Empire of optimization of mechanics to maximize strategy. The Southern Kingdom of easy gameplay & waifus. In order to secure everlasting peace, we all agree to never violate the other's terrority.
Until the ltc gamers attack and kill them all without any chance of retaliation because they planned an ltc of every part of the territory and swiftly demolished all opposition.
@@RichterTheGoat Little did they know that was all part of the Excelblem Clan's Secret Plan. Just having everyone dies because it's the most fun way to play.
@@shytendeakatamanoir9740That's it, I'm calling Grima
I think the fact that the fan base has aged is pretty important to take into account
Most of the 18-24 old game fans from the mid 2000s are pushing 40 and just don’t care about FE anymore or don’t have the energy to argue.
I personally first played Awakening when I was 13 and now I’m 21 and by this point I’m getting tired of these nonsense arguments. At the same time, other people I know around my age who started or got serious with the 3DS era have all grown out of the immature “fuck off elitist” attitude and instead try to approach discourse in the fan base maturely.
As someone who is 37 years old and first played Path of Radiance in 2008, my perspective is that discourse tends to be pointless or unsatisfying. I never participated in discussion at the time due to being invested somewhere else, and once I grew tired of that I saw little use in online discourse in general, which included Fire Emblem. Fast forward to today, and you have someone from the GBA era who played Fire Emblem, but never talked about it online. That kind of leaves me in an odd place where I might look like a casual in typical discussions, but have in fact been playing FE games for over 15 years. I'd argue if I felt it had merit, but in practice I find doing so, as I said above, pointless, when I have so little invested in doing so and would probably come across as a "casual elitist", as it's been defined here in this video (which is ironic to me because I often sink hundreds of hours into these games and optimizing units is part of the fun for me). I find that irony the most ridiculous and amusing aspect to this topic considering how this fanbase is portrayed, if anything.
@CTM162 36 and feel the same, found the community around Radiant Dawn (Bought each FE when they came out, POR will ALWAYS be my number 1 of the POST Thracia776-PRE Awakening FE) and I regret ever doing so because of the Toxicity, only bothered looking in if only to get information like Growths and NOTHING MORE (I also have no FE I hate, other the first three NES FE)
I Feel some of the toxicity and hate comes from some of them feeling salty that people aren't following what they do. Like seriously if you feel like you're personally being attacked Because i'd like something you don't like and I play how I like to play. And you feel like me ignoring your "ADVICE" Is insulting you somehow. Then I tell those people that's a you problem another me. And yes, sadly, you do have these types of people who are such massive control freaks That the idea that someone else can have their own opinion or way of playing is Foreign to them And they must be not playing how they like to play is simply because they are insulting them somehow!
I agree with what’s said late into the video about attitude. It reminds of something that’s said in the FGC “ Scrub isn’t a skill assessment, it’s about attitude.”
When I played Awakening for the first time and many times after that, I was blissfully unaware of the discourse and controversies. I just played my games and ate some popsicles. Good popsicles though. I hope engage is fun to play. It's nice to look at currently and I love how evil Marth is a canon thing that exists now.
I've seen simply liking the older games being called "elitism". Literally just having a game preference. The term has lost all meaning.
You either die gatekept or live to see yourself become a gatekeeper💀💀💀
Such is a common fate of most terminologies turning into meaningless buzzwords thanks to the internet's oversimplified used of said term.
I've had people get mad at me when I tell them I think Awakening was a step back for the series. Like I don't even hate the game. I just prefer the old ones. But some people get really defensive.
Like I think Ocarina of Time isn't that great either. It's good, but the other games are better. Have also gotten crap from people for not jumping on that bandwagon. I think it's because I have good reasons for my opinion and they don't like the fact they can't argue against it because it makes them feel stupid.
@@MrScigeek101 Awakening, on top of being one of the better selling games in the series, was a hit with critics to the point it made it onto Wikipedia's "List of Video Games Considered the Best Ever".
Yet fans of its predecessors have spent the last ten years talking about Awakening as if it were on par with Big Rigs, to the point I've seen people say they would have preferred if the series had been cancelled after New Mystery rather than have Awakening exist.
Speaking as a guy who started the series on Path of Radiance but liked Awakening more, it got old in a hurry. I see this as fans of Awakening and its successors giving some actual pushback.
man that SMT punchline is so painfully true as a Persona fan who also plays Mainline
I'm such an elitist I don't consider people who play SMT4 as having play a real shen megoomy tansey game because it is basically the Awakening of mainline SMT with Apocalypse being the Fates of it
Play Strange Journey for the DS and only the DS
@@mr.sellout6284 I don't get SJ on DS and only DS. The only upside is the Kanako art and no Alexandra. Everything else on 3DS is vastly improved from the voice acting to QoL and especially the new Law and Chaos endings that actually make them viable choices.
@@mr.sellout6284 I'm so elitist I think anyone who's only played SMT2 or later a fake fan. If it doesn't take multiple button presses to get to the map screen, and if your minimap doesn't rotate along with your avatar like it does in the OG, I don't want to hear it!
@@audreyii5087 damn guess I'm a true smt fan lmao
Being a mainline fan ( personal preference, I like being able to grind for hours and persona doesnt have enough moments to do so imo) and watching people shit on persona fans for liking one of the MANY spinoffs the series has is exhausting. Who cares if you like it more? Youre still enjoying a game you care about and engaging in the series and thats what matters when it comes down to playing anything. Yeah I could get upset that people arent trying shit but its their lives, opinions, and cash its just ride to trash someone you don't even know and mainlines fans are full of that and half the time its because something being is somehow bad forever to them
You know, about Thracia... I know it's a hard game, but I find it very interesting, so when I do recommend it (because I do that sometimes), it mostly comes from my desire to share that adventure with people.
I actually think Thracia is one of the easiest games in the series people are just playing it wrong. Sure its got some maps that are a little brutal but for the majority of the time the game is rather easy comparatively. I think part of the reason a lot don't play it is the false stereotype the game gets about being the most brutal game in the series.
@@zyvan3179 bro that one chapter were ur being under siege has me fucked up in thracia
Honestly I don't get why thracia is considered to be liked by elitists at all.
-No jagens
-Most rng dependent out of all games in the series
-Bases don't matter because anyone can get to 20 in all stats with scrolls
-Very different from "classic fire emblem gameplay" in general
Maybe we're thinking of different types of elitists(?) But fe5 is my favorite game for gameplay and fe4 is my favorite for story and I hate that people don't play them because they think they're games for elitists or something when they might have a lot of fun playing them and they just haven't tried it
@@zyvan3179 I find alot of Thracia's reputation for being difficult is from how much the game tends to punish you far more than usual for doing a blind playthrough (that and probably the Manster Escape arc)
@@Mat-8071 I'm not sure where any of these points are coming from honestly. All of them except for the part about Thracia being a very different FE game in comparison to the others are either outright incorrect, or highly suspect takes.
On Jagens, while there isn't necessarily a promoted cavalier amongst you initial squad, there most certainly exists multiple characters that essentially fill the same role: Eyvel, Dagdar, Finn, etc. There's not a 1:1 match to the archetype, sure, but that's never what archetypes were really about anyway.
On RNG dependency: actually I don't understand where this is coming from. Maybe due to the lack of 100% hit rates (battles cap at 99) and potential for staves to miss at low skill thresholds (which is actually remarkably easy to mitigate). While in theory it sounds like these factors make the game unreliable, in practice this isn't the case. Also, this argument completely ignores how in later game Thracia, you can even get your offensive staves to have 100% hit, and there are multiple ways to guarantee critical hits, ensuring that damage is actually surprisingly consistent.
On scrolls supposedly invalidating bases: this just straight up ain't true. Sure scrolls make raising a scrub more feasible, but you're basically always better off scroll stacking a unit that already has good bases than you are to scroll stack a scrub. Also, the fact that scrolls nullify critical hits on units that have them really incentivizes a player to use them on their strong units.
Elitism has been reduced after 3H, at least I no longer see people saying "play fe4/fe5/fe6 or you are a (insert degoratory terms here)" but in exchange we had 3H fans (aka unhinged maniacs) killing each other over who is the most right (hint: all of them are wrong), hopefully this new game will unite us all under the glorious banner of War King Marth and lead us through a crimson path towards victory
All hail Marth and his glorious regime
Signed: little girl
Except for Claude. He was objectively correct at all times
@@guestusersomething4340 oh boy here we go again
@@guestusersomething4340 claude did nothing wrong because his route is meaningless and never tests his moral compass
@@ebongatseabong202 Exactly! When he was stress tested in Three Hopes and lacked information he would've got in Verdant Wind, he basically came to the conclusion that "The Church is to Blame!" and instantly became just as wonderfully problematic as everyone else! Now I have a Claude-shaped wedge that I can awkwardly shove into any Rhea vs Edelgard argument and it's guaranteed to piss everyone off~
Glad you pointed out the Great Megaten Divide, because I used to only play Nocturne and V. Then, when I decided to buy Persona 5 Royal on Switch in a fit of frustration (after I had spent a whole night trying to find Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher online and then it turned out to be sold out), it was a much better experience than I thought it would be.
Aside from it not being as split from its roots as people say, the time management reminds me of how I heard of people getting put off by the Pre-New Mystery games' permadeath and how Intsys would insist it wasn't such a big loss and there were plenty of units to fill in the part. And it's very ironic that I could only appreciate the time management system because the guide I was using gave me misleading info. At first, I was panicking because Councillor not reaching Rank 5 basically had a domino effect on my entire in-game schedule. However, I saw that I had much more time I could use so I replaced a Tower Arcana day with a Councillor one and was able to seamlessly max all confidants.
tms is the best fire emblem and smt game
Glad you liked P5, there's plenty of phenomenal games from Atlas too, like P4, SMT IV, and Etrian Odyssey. At the end of the day, they're *great* RPGs, and if you want to play great RPGs I recommend giving them a try
@@GeorgisTrying I've actually played Etrian Odyssey Untold before i played an SMT game. EO3's my favourite so far
I remember being called elitist for telling people there are ways to deal with certain maps in thracia rather than just complaining the game is unfair
Damn, a fella can't even give advice these days... 😞
l remember a post about the selphina chapter being impossible
@@peste4592 yeah i remember that, dondon responded to it even lol
I believe any good piece of media can be enjoyed by itself without the need for excuses. If the level isn't fun to play through normally and casually, and needs several specific, convoluted and cheesy strategies only the most hardcore LTCers of the game would know of in order to beat it, and that no sane normal player would ever think of trying, then its very fair to criticize it. And to deflect all that criticism in the very low-effort way of just blaming the players and refusing to acknowledge the flaws of a game, that is being an elitist.
@@dsc5595 It's a strategy game though. It's supposed to punish not thinking things through at least a LITTLE. And it rewards coming up with effective strategies. Those ways to make the maps easier aren't "specific, convoluted and cheesy strategies only the most hardcore LTCers of the game would know of in order to beat it, and that no sane normal player would ever think of trying" in the slightest. You just have to be strategic, consider all the options and figure out what's the best way to approach a map. Heck, some maps heavily hint at those tactics with houses you can visit and a lot of them have hints in the intro sequences. So if you miss those hints, skip them or can't even realize that a strategic warp would make the map much easier, that's on you. What we're proposing is not the equivalent of finding a secret exit to a canon to skip a few worlds in a new super mario game, it's the equivalent of learning a boss's pattern instead of just charging at him and getting hit constantly.
The only thing I can really say on the matter is that I've seen quite a bit of unsolicited backseating in a couple of fire emblem streams who were casuals. Like one distict memory I have is of a person playing Fire emblem three houses, and they wanted to make a unit into a great knight. Suddenly a wave a people came out saying not to do that because it sucked. And as a note, this person was playing on casual so it is not like there was much risk of that person trying out the Great knight class for themselves.
I suppose I'm not sure if it counts as elitism at the end of the day, but personally it is frustrating that people are trying to bring ltc logic into causal streams for people.
Yeah. You can mention "Oh, that class has bad stats, just be warned" or whatever, but if someone's on casual or is new, just let them have fun.
I hate the rampant backseating on stream lets plays. Makes them unwatchable for me.
Excelblem is personally responsible for inspiring me to get Azura's outfit ported to FF14 and Fates becoming my first FE game and it is almost entirely because of all of the memeing on Jitaro
Man as a casual SMT/Persona fan I really feel that last comment. I’m lucky to dodge the worst of it but I definitely know what you mean with that.
I was in the thick of it during the Fates pre-release era when Elitism was pretty rough in the Fire Emblem community which kind of sucked as someone who started with Awakening. But even then, I don't think that era compares to what I've seen with the elitism in the SMT community.
It's comical how toxic the SMT & Persona communities are now. It used to be just SMT vs Persona but then when a single community gets called out they start blaming smaller groups, like "Not all SMT fans are toxic... It's just the SMT III fans that are!" or "Bro us Persona 5 fans aren't the loud ones, it's the elitist Persona 3 fans!"
None of them can resist the urge to argue, and when they run out of victims they start targeting themselves. It's so sad all I can do is laugh at them
A yes, the classic quote;
"You rather die a Hero, or live long enough to see yourself become Henning from Fire Emblem: Binding Blade, chapter 8x."
- Some guy, I don't know who, I think he was in a Batman movie or something.
When I tried the Awakening Demo I liked it and went online to check out more about it before release. First thing I saw was some comments wondering why everyone suddenly was so interested in Awakening when they didn't know anything about and had never played older FEs. So then I immediately jumped into emulation (lmao imagine a world where older FEs could be legitimately bought) and played Blazing Blade, Path of Radiance (oof the bugs in that emulation...) and Shadow Dragon. They were pretty cool. I don't know who I was trying to prove myself to by playing them though.
Seeing the != in the comparison immediately tells so many people that Excelblem has programming experience, lol
I appreciate when DD151 says "hello casuals" so I know my place. especially hearing it from an FE god
I’m honestly glad I joined the community right around 3 houses’ release so that I didn’t have to experience it too much. My favorite part about elitism both now and then though? Rarely ever did they play a fire emblem game before fe4
Same lol
9:05
Mirage Sessions happened. You’re linked to us now and we WILL drag you down with us.
I thought we had a joint agreement to not speak of that venture.
Petition to make excelblem wear a tuxedo and his mask in the next video
I'm no elitist I'm just racist against Three Houses shippers.
I formally induct you into the Shin Megami Tensei community. We're gonna give those social link freaks what for.
It be like that
My first FE game was Three Houses. After playing that game I went and have now played every other game in the franchise except the NES and SNES games. I don’t consider myself an Elitest. Especially since I choose to play on normal difficulty and like to save my units 😂
Dude I know exactly how you feel. I've actually started genealogy and it's great but yeah 3h was my first
The Elitists need to have a Fates wifi tournament
There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the Arena Abuser and the insane, the vicious and the Edelgard fans, all the units I have killed and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed.
My pain is constant and sharp and I do not hope for a better Fire Emblem for anyone, in fact I want the crits to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape, but even after admitting this there is no catharsis, my Game Over continues to elude me and I gain no deeper knowledge of the game; no new knowledge can be extracted from my Iron man Run.
This playthrough has meant nothing.
What Engage does to a mf
That 0.6% part of the player base that probably has a grandchild to teach the mechanics to, we salute you! You are the real backbone of the community
8:03 To the 0.6% of elderly people playing Fire Emblem and watching FE content on UA-cam: I wanna be like you when I grow up.
I feel like launch week engage Twitter discussion really proved eliteism is still a thing. At least from my perspective. It went so far past "don't play casual" that I saw people unironically saying that if you didn't play maddening classic exclusively, you had no value in discussion about the game whatsoever. Like. The day it came out.
Imagine playing Fire Emblem
One thing I want to say is that I wouldn’t say that “nostalgic elitism” isn’t elitism, as much as I’d say that there’s simply multiple ways a person can be elitist.
Obviously elitism isn’t even a word that only applies to FE. Going by the dictionary, Elitism is the opinion that particularly distinguished people deemed “elites” should be the ones who should rule a society. So to make that definition into one that can even be applied to the FE community you’d have to redefine it to something like “a person who thinks their opinions are better and more important than everyone else’s, and are antagonistic of everyone who disagrees.”
I think that is what most people in the community are really trying to get at when they bring up discussions of FE3H lord debate elitism into the mix, “elitism” can refer to different things, as someone who started with awakening, I most associate the term with the “pre-awakening superiority.” Type of elitist, and considering that TONS of FE fans started with awakening, I’d assume that a lot of the modern player base either thinks of FE elitism as generational elitism or FE3H lord elitism. I didn’t even consider gameplay efficiency elitism when I answered the community pull, a lot of the newer fans don’t get nearly as into gameplay efficiency debates partly because the older fans have already had those discussions, we already have resources to know to avoid pitfalls™️.
Though of course there’s also people who have their own ideas about what elitism even is, words have subjective meanings, and not everyone is going to agree on what they mean, even if that means disagreeing with the dictionary.
So finally, I want to say that elitism is something that’s actually pretty hard to say it is a problem in a community, gauging how much it happens, and if it’s even a real problem when it does happen is pretty hard for a person to accurately guess at, but the way I see it, the FE community doesn’t have large scale elitism, or anything like that, but then again I pretty much only see FE youtube.
LTC being a standard for "efficiency" is one of the dumbest elitist things.
Mostly because actually ltcing causes you to do some of the least efficient things ever like skipping a lot of exp, relying on resets for enemy stats, strats with low chance of success at one point or another to really push for saving turns.
And other stupid things like growths being criticized is stupid, often especially when they talk about how unreliable they are without actually understanding math well enough to recognize that theory crafted average comparisons are useless, and it's better advice to check characters stats as you're using them.
Half the advice they give would make the game a lot harder to a new player.
What youre talking about isnt really efficiency though, its more optimization. Getting all the exp and stuff is less efficient cuz its not necessary and takes more time, but its less optimal in non-ltc contexts because it limits your choices to those applicable in ltc strata only.
@@leaffinite2001 I don't think you know what efficiency means. Efficiency is three parts, maximum productivity, minimum effort, and minimum expense.
Going for LTC might force you to have productive turns, but it doesn't force you to actually play the long game productively. Simply gimping your own units to do things faster when turns in almost all of the games are a completely free resource isn't being efficient.
Taking high risks to save time, requiring deeper strategies in order to save time, or forcing intensive knowledge in order to carry yourself through the game as quickly as possible, is far from minimal effort. And considering aside from the actual self-imposed challenge of trying to do things in the least amount of turns, it's hard to argue that those efforts aren't wasted as far as the game is concerned.
And when it comes to minimum expense, typically the LTC you're going to make use of all of your resources as much as you can. You will take losses simply to save time despite it being unproductive in any meaningful way. You are typically in an LTC doing things at greater expense than playing casually.
And that's literally the point of LTC. Force players to do something that makes a playthrough require more effort, higher expense and more limited resources, and require them to use things in the most optimal ways possible within these limitations. No challenge run is focused on making you play more efficiently.
It's more efficient to get as much growth and resources as possible. It takes less effort to go slower and safer. It's more productive to take more resources than possible in minimum number of turns possible. It's higher expense to go for low turn count.
Saying doing it in less turns is more "efficient" only makes sense if your goal is to LTC, because turn count really isn't beneficial in any way most of the time. It's more effort most of the time for the same if not less reward from the game. That's why it's a popular challenge run, it effectively makes you play worse in plenty of ways to amp up difficulty lol.
But in order to actually be a challenge run it can't be low effort. Part of that is hindering your productivity and diminishing your resources. But it's a stupid as saying using different really weak growth units is efficient, they typically are not the most productive units that require much more effort to use that will at best, do not take a lot of resources and tend to reward you eventually. But these are just two different sides to the the same coin of self-imposed challenge.
@coldeed there can be no measure of productivity in the goal of beating a game other than furthering your journey towards its completion. Doing so with as few turns as possible is, in terms of playing the game, the lowest effort possible, and requires the minimum expense (of the one real resource involved; your time). In that way ltc is quite efficient.
@@coldeed its also moronic to think any advice meant to improve your ltc skills is meant for new fe players. No one on the plamet would suggest that.
@@leaffinite2001 Time isn't a resource, and turn count isn't at all indicative of time spend in a strategy game that's turn based lol.
Pretend to be a resource in the game you would actually have a time limit. That would make it a limited resource and therefore require you to play around it.
And that's exactly my point it doesn't matter how many turns you take. It doesn't matter how long you take for each of those turns.
You literally have to think turn count is valuable in order for LTC to make any sense and mean anything about efficiency.
You're familiar with the concept of circular logic correct? LTC is efficient because LTC is efficient? Because frankly, did you beat the game more than the casual that did something else?
This is the entire false premise that you're basing this off. Trying to optimize every single turn in spending a lot more time focusing on each turn is not doing things in a low effort fashion.
Like the fact that you're describing efficiency around it taking less time even though the amount of turns you take has absolutely nothing to do with how long you take them is laughable.
So yeah I guess if you want to play the game by looking up a walk through that describes every move that you should make ahead of time that someone probably spent hours writing out and theory crafting for as well as testing, then sure I guess it would save you a lot of time to not play the game and just follow a walkthrough like that lol.
But actually going through running out and planning out an LTC takes more time than playing through a game casually usually. Especially if you're actually trying to go for a record. Even if you first try to learn the strats from others.
But I mean this is like a stupid kind of horseshit argument like saying that speed running games is going to save you time as if you don't have to take a lot of time to learn all the speed running strats and practice that shit endlessly to actually be able to pull it off and have the knowledge to do it somewhat effectively lol. I mean I used to speedrun just like I've done ltc's before, all the prep work to even be able to do that shit is going to take longer then just playing the game casually the first time lol.
Which frankly, the most efficient thing would probably be good advice for a new player. Doing something in a more difficult fashion is not doing something in a more efficient way. That's just what common sense should tell you. Like sure you could use a hatchet to cut down, and hey maybe you don't need the chainsaw to get it done, but the chainsaw is genuinely more efficient because of how much easier it makes it. And I genuinely have to point this out to, is LTC the hatchet in this scenario or the chainsaw? Because I have to remind you it is every type of run that people do to make the game more challenging, not easier like playing slow, safe and casual.
I used to feel disappointed at the inclusion of Casual Mode in Awakening back in the day, but honestly I just learned to appreciate that it only added an accessibility option for people to get into the series more easily, which was very important at the time. I will always praise Fire Emblem for its amount of player choice when it comes to gameplay, not taking options away that veterans like (I'm looking at you, Pokémon, force enabling Exp. Share and Switch combat mode), and I'm glad the community has overall learned to accept that we can all play these games very differently.
Casual Mode is not just for beginners.
I'd argue it's the best way to play Lunatic(+)/Maddening for example.
While i do agree that " elitists " don't exist, the people with the mindset of " new games are bad Because muh anime and fanservice, old games are good because it's traditional " shitty mentality still exist
I know i felt there were elitism issues back in the past, but I also kinda poked the bees nest & was a nino fanboy back then
not to mention, I kinda haven't interacted with the FE community much in like 5 years. Only came back to FE in the last 2 months or so
Edit: Yeah it was mainly about every side, including mine, being really mean about things like unit quality. Nowadays I'd rather just chill, accept the numbers and also still use who i want
Elitism is definitely not a problem anymore, and if someone else disagrees... Well, Marth came back for a reason, I guess.
What is marth gonna do with his base 5 strenght, tickle me to death?
@@RichterTheGoat Unfortunately for you, yes, that was his base, but he kept the broken growths of FE1. Say hello to the strength capped Hero King; he won't be poking you to death.
@@TWLSpark MARTH CANNOT CAP STRENGTH IN FE11 ON AVERAGE
THAT 50% STRENGTH IS NOT CUTTING IT.
just use caeda at that point.
@@RichterTheGoat You should be more worried about Marth's endless supply of faceless expendable units. no matter how many you kill there will always be more. You will know true despair once the names begin to loop. how many generations of generics can you endure?
@@vivil2533 it's called gradivus + starsphere.
Ive been apart of both elitists and casual elitists but now im in my 20s and dont care the age thing feels like its directly calling me out LOL
SMT community sure does have it rough. Everyone shit talks everyone and no one can get along
My elitist attitude is based on the objectively superior support pairing options I choose. Starting with Kent/Fiora.
0:12 MEGAMAN STARFORCE
SMT players live in a society
I love your mask. Only the coolest way to stay anonymous!
I was 9 years old (4 years underage lol) when I was on the gamefaqs boards arguing with people older than me about how my first, blind playthrough of Blazing Blade was a valid even if I didn't use the absolute top tier characters. When I got slightly older, had played through Sacred Stones and then Binding Blade, I was forming my own opinions and those same people still invalidated the thoughts of anyone that deviated from their own on what playstyles are worth considering. That continued til I stopped discussing these games on the internet from after Radiant Dawn released until around the time Awakening came out.
From my perspective, I still see that cancerous mindset of "you don't see the game the same way I do so your thoughts are invalid" around even as I've just started lurking in the various communities forming around Engage. I don't think it's wrong to say "I play on Maddening and you play on Hard so there's clearly a difference in perspective here", as someone who exclusively plays on maddening himself, but the constant bickering over "meta" and how you should play a non-competitive single player game is absolutely still extremely prevalent in the FE community from what I see. It looks really silly when you see people push their tier list as the objective correct opinion and reject any disagreements with "You don't know fire emblem as well as I do".
Generally, my opinion is just... please, be decent people to eachother. It's a video game.
At least the FE community probably has it better than the Elder Scrolls community...
They have the usual morality "debates" while also having the toxic elitists - mostly Morrowind fans (and I say this as someone who likes Morrowind) - that shit on anyone that *dares* to like Oblivion or Skyrim and can't handle *any* criticism of Morrowind.
Though thankfully the latter seems to be dying down a bit. Only a bit though.
Elitism is always considered a problem but a problem people don’t talk about are anti elitists because some of them are a bit too extreme in how they hate it
Btw Fire Emblem is not the only community with elitism
I remember being called an elitist simply bc I PLAYED the older games. That happened when FE warriors (1) was releasing trailers and alot of people were disappointed at the character roster. I'm sure it still exists but I rarely see people being elitist/"anti elitist" anymore. But it definitely was widespread just a few years ago.
3:44 I'm still baffled by how badly Echoes did, it's definitely my favourite out of the new games.
while most of it is because its a remake of an ooold game, i think a big part of it is because it was on the 3ds RIGHT before the switch was coming out. People wanted to save to buy games for the upcoming super console rather than buy an old game for an old system thats about to be replaced
I remember not really knowing about Echoes release unti it basically just had been released, which compared to the marketing that was put behind fates, 3 houses (and I guess awakening, but my memory is shody on that) meant that I, someone who was somewhat following online discourse at the time had almost missed the release. Combine that with the facts that the 3DS was basically on its way out already and the reltively little buzz the game created in discussion afterwards and it is kind of understandable why it hasn't sold that much.
@@thevrex9237 It actually came out shortly after the switch launched
Echoes had one of the most appealing art styles imo.
Echoes did bad?
9:06 as someone in said community GET ME OUT GET ME OUT GET ME OUT
I first was introduced to Fire Emblem with Super Smash Bros. Melee in 2001, when I was 15. It wasn't until the release of Path of Radiance that I played a Fire Emblem game for the first time, though, due to not having a Game Boy Advance and having little interest in getting one at the time (I did get a DS in 2004, but not to play old GBA games; the only one I did was of another of IS' games, Advance Wars). After Brawl was released in 2007 I sought out Path of Radiance and its sequel, and so those were my first to play. By the time Awakening was released I was generally avoiding online discourse as I was growing fatigued from online conversation in general (unrelated to Fire Emblem) and so didn't care what the fandom thought. That's been my viewpoint ever since. Online communities tend to grow more toxic with time due to size and changes that bring in new fans, and unless you find something to invest in (which I never did) it looks largely pointless from an outsiders' perspective.
Says the elitist who unironically played Revelations
/s
I like Conquest
I used to not tell people I liked Fire Emblem because I got introduced to the series right before Fates came out but I started with Awakening. I only play casual mode because my anxiety is so bad that I would have a mental breakdown if a unit died. Before you judge me you have to know I only play video games to calm my anxiety. I'm not going to do something I know will stress me out.
9:02 Hi, I'm just here on behalf of the SMT community to say... Yeah. You're not wrong.
Chugaaconroy once said: "I've never seen a community wish their favorite franchise died so badly before"
He must not follow Star Wars
@@thekiss2083 well, that one really needs to be put out of its misery, I cant really blame the SW fans
As someone who came in with awakening, i remember the elitism clashes back then. Was... interesting
Broke: Paladins are good because of LTC and are therefore better than Generals. When it's about who can kill the fastest, can clear the map the fastest and there are no other factors - then there is simply no reason not to use them over a low movement unit. Woke: A General who is ahead of the level curve is effectively immortal against anything that's not a mage, trivializing entire chapters which would be very hard for anybody else, as was evidenced in Excelblem's very own Pick My Unit run. People only under-estimate Generals because they're not necessary versus their weakness - but when the chips are down, when you need someone who can survive an enemy phase -powerful generals are the ones who will carry you.
Yet for this opinion alone, someone could just as easily tell me "No, you can only rate a unit by its competition, most knights aren't needed at all and fliers are more than enough to beat the game" but it's literally only coming down to preference either way. If someone's patient enough to play optimally, if they're willing to see past efficiency they will see units in entirely different lights to someone else.
And in that respect, nobody is empirically right on many issues of Fire Emblem in my opinion. For some people success is never losing a unit, for some it's beating the game at any cost and for some it's beating it in as low amount of turns as possible or with the worst units they possibly can. There's no wrong way to play Fire Emblem. Not even on Phoenix Mode.
anything that stimulates my monke brain the most is good, bigger number = bigger dopamine blast
3 Houses killed Elitism by killing discussion in general. Back in the day, things like the Casual vs Classic debate were active wars, and lines were drawn much harder between the players who refuse to play any older FE games w/o casual mode and players who refused to even consider casual mode. A few months ago I tried to come back to the discussion with a retrospective of how the series has gone since Awakening, not taking sides just commenting on how things have been, and got no discussion, only a handful of people downvoting the post in silence and moving on.
I know I can't get mad at 3 Houses specifically when the fact that it's been over 3 years since the last FE entry probably has more to do with the staling of the community content, but I can't help but feel like even during other content droughts the community was still more active and full of life. It was somewhat toxic but at least it had some heart. Now the only things that exist on the subreddit to get above like +20 are fanart. Even the announcement of Engage has failed to spark much interest - a small handful of people came around, spammed their opinions once, then left again.
I’ve been on serenes forest since 2010ish and I can honestly say that elitism has never been a thing until awakening came out. I actually remember the first thread that someone called me an elitist on because I recommended they try sacred stones right after awakening
I will say that no I’m not 100% innocent I definitely used to come across as elitist especially back in the day it was the late 00’s what did you expect
Elitism in terms of play style nowadays is basically just a fictional player who makes everyone in 3h into wyvern riders (despite that being heavily suboptimal)
I think elitism gets confused for tribalism and Edelgard was a microcosm of the tribalism. The Fire Emblem fandom is as bad as the Sonic fandom sometimes.
I think you got a point there.
Elitism is a behavior or attitude of superiority.
Tribalism is loyalty towards a specific group.
Tribalism is usually rooted in (misplaced) elitism.
Everyone participating in morality debates is engaging in Elitism AND Tribalism.
Not just Edelgard. Dimitri and Rhea Fans are just as bad. (Apparently Clause to with 3 Hopes?)
The difference with Elitism is that at least Elitist generally knows how what they're talking about even if they're ass about it. They're generally meaning well, even if they are doing it wrong.
The arguments on 3H are very often based only on affect, lacking any sort of media literacy. It's pointless and tiring
After Dunkey's video, no way
I think another thing that diluted elitism is how "accessible" the games are, like with a phone from 4 years (outdated) you can play all FE from 1 to 8 with 0 problems, and theres better tl patches AND QoL patches that make older games more accessible to less knowledged gamers
And now with a decent PC you can do the whole series except for 3ds which iirc had many emulation problems that need too troubleshooting for a whole afternoon
FEH too helped by making some old characters REALLY powerful, like how Reinhardt is basically the icon of f2p players or LegSigurd giving a movement boost to l alloes for attacking
I'd say after the 2020 drama the FE community got a stunted growth in general, which led to less casuals trying out Fire Emblem.
It also helped that a masked hooded maniac FEtuber decided that killing off everyone and intentionally making bad decisions to see how far you can get is actually more enjoyable than being a tryhard at a single player game. Genuinely playing like Excelblem is some of the most fun to have with Fire Emblem (the not caring too much about optional rewards part, you don't have to go full FE11 Marth)
Elitists when I tell them my favourite game is FE6: 😃
Elitists when I tell them I like playing it on Normal: 🤬
But Hard Mode Bonuses are pretty sweet! Specially when you have to resort to "Ol' reliable" Crtiger to save the day 😅 I just finished a Hard playthrough of FE6 last month and I suffered more than any Meguca on Earth to try to beat Ch. 8 on time for the Gaiden and Ch. 11A for the promotion items (damn green units! I missed my sweet 5000G... I mean Orion's Bolt due to your recklessness!) but had a lot of fun! Well... I also received a ton of RNGesus blessings, specially when my Echidna narrowly avoided a 1R death by an ambush spawned Silver Blade Paladin 😰 Best regards!
@@BlazeElPadrino662 I'll try it at some point, for sure, but I love using tragically terrible characters which would be pretty insane in hard mode. I mean, normal mode fe6 is way harder than hard mode fe8 lmaooo, Nomad troopers can double and two-shot trained Lillina in Sacae
Also Rutger fan < Wade and Lott with A support enjoyer
@@bvd_vlvd Ah, what a fine taste! Specially considering the slow support build-up of FE6 👌
@@BlazeElPadrino662 funnily enough, I got a B support the chapter they joined lmaoooo
I used only okay or worse units from Mekkah's character guide and it was the most fun I've had with a game in a while. Hard mode for that probably would have been overkill
call me an elitist but “phoenix mode” forever belongs in the gulag
Honestly Fodlan debates are so awful and toxic they actually make me miss the days of genuine elitism
Elitism in a full PvE game with 0 multiplayer is straight up stupid.
i hate the "oh, you should/can only play on Classic/Maddening difficulty, because that's the only way to play" type way of thinking. Like, no. There's other ways to play this game. There are other modes for a reason.
The SMT shoutouts got a really good laugh out of me
Now to take my chance to tell people to play Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor: Overclocked or Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker both out now on the Nintendo 3DS
i like how this video predicts not only people saying elitism exists anyways in the comments but also people typing edelgard essays.
we don't deserve someone as entertaining as you in our community.
I like FEH and some of the older FE games but I'm not part of the community. Mostly because I get yelled at by said community whenever I have any opinion on FE anywhere.
"Damn Fire Emblem fans, they ruined Fire Emblem"
what the heck is a pitfall
From what i saw from the community is the same thing that happens with every series that gets too popular and starts to cater to newer fans over older fans, they feel betrayed and when they voice their concerns and frustrations and newer fans will feel attacked and start debates.
There is a lot of things i hate in newer FEs compared to older ones: Avatar MC and Avatar worshiper characters, the focus on the "dating sim" aspects of the game and, the supports systems in general.
But that makes me wonder should a series stick to it's roots and hope it doesn't die or should it renew it self at the cost of the old ways?
I suppose that what people want to express is "Awakening saved the franchise and i'm glad i get to play more FEs but that doesn't mean i won't criticize the aspects i feel are not fit for the seires"
I dunno maybe i talking out of my ass here, i'm not holder of truth, feel free to discuss.
Megaten fans hated persona series because it is more popular than the main series
Well Awakening, and fates Really compounded the issue. Awakening set the ground work, with the avatar, "dating", etc, but what really lit the fire for alot of people, was fates.
Fates doubled down so hard on the romance stuff that they made up a contrived time dilation outrealm plot, to force child units into the game, many Characters were just one note fetish bait, and Corrin wasn't blood related to their "birth" family to avoid incest (oops Azura's kinda your cousin). If that wasn't bad enough the "Routes" were sold individually. Then when people got their hands on the games birthrights maps were really bland, and the story of both was atrocious.
At the time it really looked like the developers threw the old fans in the trash, to appeal to shippers. The controversy around the face petting being censored didn't help. Neither did the hot spring, or the costume shop that let you deploy units in just a towel...
It's not a good look. correct me if I'm wrong, but Camila is the first FE character to have a breastplate designed to expose her chest (The thing its suppose to be protecting). Camila being as popular as she is also added fuel to this fire, cause a good portion of her popularity is because of her sexualization.
Now i'm not saying that The old games are better, or anything like that, but you cant deny the massive shift in focus, tone and design philosophy, the series went through because of Awakening into fates.
the goal of this post was to give a brief explanation of where some of the "old school Elitism" comes from, but I've basically just shit talked Awakening/Fates in this so to be fair I'll say some of the things i liked.
I actually liked the child unit mechanic, and didn't even mind it returning in fates (as nonsensical as it is). It's a fun way to introduce late game units or replacement units, that are somewhat personalized to your playthrough
The customizable avatar was also a nice idea (just the story around it was meh, and it was too op) selecting a good stat and a bad stat, as well as fates limited classing could allow for unique builds, but it just wasn't balanced enough for that. If they expanded upon the customization options I would love to make a character.
My castle was by far the best implementation of a base camp you could walk around. small, easy to navigate, and customizable.
Fates implementation of pair up or dual strikes is incredibly fun. making formations to utilized dual strikes from you best units repeatedly, or sacrificing that ability for more safety with pair up. it's also a little similar to rescue from the GBA games which i appreciate.
Conquest has some really good maps.
Tbh I felt kinda like a jerk for even suggesting to a friend newly playing FE for the first time to try Awakening on Classic, simply because of what I’ve seen the community talk about around that, but you make good points, that it’s not necessarily suggesting to play a certain mode or game that is elitist, it is how you act about it, or how you act if they make mistakes. Like don’t be like “you should’ve known this optimized thing” if they’ve never played any strategy games before. So long as we remember that, in the end, it’s just a game, with the point to have fun, we should be okay
I was called elitist at times when explaining why X unit is bad and the other person would start arguing about X unit's character or something. So not only the term was misused, but the argument was about 2 completely different things. I don't think FE has any units that are a lost cause - even Wendy, Sophia, Nino, Amelia, Ewan, PoR Rolf, Fiona or Nyx are completely viable if you commit to training them, but compared to their peers they take way more resources to become good. It's simply easier to categorize by calling them "bad" instead of "less good" or something.
Some of my favourite FE characters are bad units and i'll agree with anyone who tells me they're bad. And that's fine.
My biggest issue with things like casual mode aren't that they exist or that they bring new people into the series, it's that the games are very clearly being made with them in mind as the default choice, with more classic playstyles an absolute afterthought. Casual elitism definitely became at least as big of an issue as actual elitism at some point, and there are certain points in fandom discussions where it feels like you let someone sleep on your couch, and now they're mocking you because your landlord told you to let them keep the couch.
preach!! I don't think we've had a game that looks designed for ironmans that actually lose important resources since Awakening (which looks like a good ironman game, but Ive lost my means to play it)
my problem with casual mode is that it doesn't teach you how to get better, and can make you get bad habits or fear of games that are only classic
@@alecneal602 Awakening is definitely not a good ironman game: there's a dry spell where you don't receive any new units to make up for losses between chapter fourteen and chapter twenty-three, and many of the chapters in that range are some of the hardest in the game. The only replacement units you CAN get in that dry spell are from paralogues, which are completely missable if the female unit that unlocks them either hasn't or can't reach an s-support, or if they die before chapter thirteen's conclusion, and the paralogues are oftentimes extremely difficult if undertaken with anything other than an endgame ready team. On top of that the child units join at level ten with only C in their weapon ranks, and on hard reeking boxes are way too expensive to use without bankrupting your army, and frequent overworld risen encounters don't start cropping up until the Valm arc is almost over. Doing an ironman of Awakening is only slightly more viable than Three Houses, and even then you have to play the game almost flawlessly to avoid being forced into the Chrobin solo strategy.
excelblem WHEN are you gonna stream SMT strange journey on expert difficulty, no consumables, no compendium, matching alignments only, LUC type demonica, and no scanning forma???
9:03 Its gotten better, at least. Unfortunately, there are still those "new thing bad" types of people.
As a person who has taken the brunt of FE Elitism back in the day (to the point of being bullied out of communities several times), I must say I can attest to how bad the elitism was. It was kind of silly how petty some people could be just because you liked a bad character. (Even if I generally accepted the fact they were bad in the first place.)
But I must reply to the Serenes Forest jab of yours. Oh boy. OH BOY. If you ever thought Serenes Forest was the breeding grounds of toxic people... Haha... HAHAHA... You have _not_ seen FESS, during the heydey of being led by Superbus. Just to give you an idea, some of the people there, they made the common Serenes Forest elitist look _very respectful_ in comparison. And most of them were very "highly well-regarded". (Note, I'm airquoting that.)
There's also FEFF. The fact that community was the same community that kept Inui around as long as they did should tell you everything you need to know. That is all.
It's just wild how times have changed.
I think elitism and gatekeeping should only be applied to keep out people that want to change the fundamentals of a franchise or why it is so great.
It can be a problem when people just interrupt your fun, but thats as esay to avoid as just stop looking at the mean comment on your screen.
In my mind elitism is not a problem.
Get your own pocket elitist now!
3:42 Wait, Echoes sold that badly? That makes me sad. I enjoyed it way more than Awakening, Fates or Three Houses.
First of all, if you havent played every fire emblem and used only low tier characters on 0% growths no stat boosters, no promotions, no items, no weapons, LTC, no turns, player phase only, no RNG rigging, no attacking, no playing, only save deleting, literally not playing the game, then you're not a fire emblem person
I hope the Fire Emblem Engage elitism is a battle between red and blue lovers to determine which color is better so they can fight over whether Red Marth is hotter than Blue Marth. We all know Red Marth is hotter, of course, but maybe some people just prefer the color blue.
Red elitist smh my head my head I can't believe there are already people like you
Next one Is Artstyle elitism xD.
As long as we can agree that Heroes is objectively not a true fire emblem game, then everything else doesn't really matter much to me
You can play all your casual and phoenix modes all you want
Heroes is as much of an FE than any other game in the series, the only people that don't consider it like that are the ones that have the "Hur Hur gacha bad" mentality
@@Emiturbina I don't mind gacha
Arknights, blue archive, girls frontline
Those are fun
Heroes is not a fun gacha or true fire emblem game
"Elitists" are the boogeyman. I think the casual elitists are the actual elitists in most if not all communities. When you like something you'll theorize and develop opinions and criticisms, when there's balance involved you WILL HAVE an opinion, biased or not, it doesn't matter. Not having one is strange... we interact with things and it's just human to try to look for patterns in general or getting emotionally involved to the point of justifying your shortcoming or justifying your conveniences. Also... people are extremely immature and get offended when not agreed to.... Everyone wants to force safespaces to play victimized hero saga.
True to an extent. Just look at any competitive game where there exist people who seem outraged at the very idea of competitive play existing. Pokemon, for example. Some people see the idea of competitive Pokemon as a betrayal to the very concept of the games...despite every single Pokemon game presenting competitive battling as the framework for how gyms and the league work...
I believe challenging games that force you to interact with their systems are the best kind. I love DOOM Eternal, Bloodborne and of course, Fire Emblem Conquest. To me, it's completely fair to tell someone "you could be having more fun if you allowed yourself to be pushed out of your comfort zone, Hard+Classic is the best experience." That's what those games tried to do. I think more games should try to do that.
As a linguistic elitist, I say that idiots are using "elitism" wrong
I see that elitism applies to everygame in the Fire Emblem series. Even as of recent the Three Houses fans are shitting on Engage because it apparently doesnt look like Three houses.
>problem
I think you mean asset
there is only one good way to play... and it's... to have fun ! If you don't play to have fun then what's the point ?
being a megaten fan, yeah the smt community has it INSANELY rough with elitism, though I think the elitism is a lot more based on the narrative preferences and feeling like stuff like "persona is weeb trash," rather than gameplay stuff.
Though like, there are people who are hella elitist over like the difficulty in modern persona compared to mainline megaten or stuff.
the smt community is definitely full of unnecessary toxicity.
at least the games for the most part are good, even if some are definitely hella flawed. the way the franchise experiments with a lot of its series long concepts is dope honestly and i think while im not the fan of some of the stories in mainline megaten, i think mainline has tons of cool concepts in their stories honestly. (my favorite stuff from megaten has to be stuff like p3/p5r, the dds duology, nocturne, n so on.) (sj is also cool.)
dope video, i liked da points you made regarding the shifting tides of the fe community.
Moral superiority is dumb When it comes to bring you into the series. I believe almost all the games starting from the very first one Didn't hold back that the main characters were Not the pure moral superiority. I mean there's a reason the villain architypes of Camus, Michalis, Ishatar and Murdock exist...along with the Heroic Archetype of Lorenz (Thats old man Lorenz from FE1 and 3). Even Marth can commit war crimes if you so choose (Killing Gordin, killing Maria, Tiki, fail to get the Falchion back from Gharnef, kill the harmless retreating Gra troops all but the Gordin one have Consequences of course) Even if there's a good versus evil And clear villains that doesn't really change the fact that The heroes ignore What's going on around them and claim themselves heroic.
And trying to basically use that to talk down to other people who like a specific character is kind of kind of Stupid and I have to question your own moral stance if you do something like that. Claude not fully innocent because he DID let his father's people into Fodlan. Even if it was a ploy To open up the country's borders For the better. Some of his allies do question this behavior. And it's only in his route where they can be convinced This is a good thing. Truthfully nobody really has the high moral ground in Three houses. And need I remind everything Seliph has to deal with is partially Sigurd fault and Sigurd DOES acknowledge his fault in the rise of the bad guys of Part 1
I played fire emblem when they came out on the gba. Just recently got engage so that's like 20 years I haven't played FE.
i'll admit that for a single player srpg, the community that sprung up around the franchise is weird as fuck. Glad I missed all that
i think what i associate "elitism" with is "this is the best way to play the game" and if things differ from that path its "sub optimal" when it really means low turn count (not lowest turn count, but trying to get through the maps fast). like a common strategy for fe8 is in Erika route to just skip recruiting Marissa. I could never do that, for me part of playing FE games is to recruit as many characters as I can. I dont think speedrunning or LTCing is the best way to play fire emblem. Like go watch Kirby Mastah's fe11 speedrun. is that really getting the most out of fire emblem 11 and having the most fun? To be clear i absolutely respect those speed runs and LTC runs and understand the skill, but its a videogame, i play videogames to enjoy them and I don't necessarily want to finish them as quickly as possible.
Something else about "what is good" that is commonly brought up is in FE7 with OSWIN. He isn't the best unit for LTC's other then early game, but everyone who tiers FE7 has to acknowledge how much easier he makes that game. When tier list are done its from the perspective of someone who has done tons of playthroughs of the game. such as knowing ambush spawns, specific game mechanics that take multiple playthroughs to figure out (like fe8 chapter 4 the revenant with the fetid claw that will either move OR attack not both, so only people who figure that out will know parking a 1hp Erika 2 tiles away from him is safe vs a game over) making the game easier is rarely factored into how good a character is if it slows the game down.
I just think that there isn't a one accepted definition of "good" for fire emblem.
I would consider myself a pretty good FE player, ive beaten fe6,fe7,fe8,fe9,fe10 all on their hardest difficulties recruiting all characters and without letting any of them die (these are not all of the fe games that i have played all the way through these are just the ones i beat on hardest difficulty). im halfway through a merciless run on fe11 so far no dead characters and maximizing the amount recruit able.(edit i did finish this run with 0 characters dead, all characters recruited, getting the good falchion and tiki) However because its at a slower pace that somehow makes my play less skilled.
I would only see that as elitism if it was somehow proposed as the pinnacle of how the game should be played. Anyone who speedruns games knows that their playstyle is unusual, that's part of the appeal. No speedrunner would claim that you're the weird one for trying to see all the content in a given playthrough, get all the hidden items and recruit all the characters etc.
Excellent video.