The games I played as a kid are better than the games you played as a kid. You should've been born better 🤷🏿♂ (also the exact timeline of events has been slightly altered for comedic effect)
@renren5660 I can definitely agree that the gameplay wasn't innovative by nature! I did like the concept of the "free roam" dungeon especially with how it was utilized for the grima lore but it was mostly a slog. I still just really liked that old style nature of writing they did and wished they kept to it. New innovations with old story patterns basically would be nice imo
Spoilers for those who didn't play the game. Ok I'm going to be honest here: Is it really though? Cause I found Echoes' story to be stupid. Not Fates level of so stupid, but still stupid. I honestly thought Awakening had a better story than whatever Echoes was going for. Seriously, you go through the entire game being told that Alm was a nobody. A farmer of a popular warrior, but not a noble one. And we see Alm being told so many times that he's not fit to lead or that he can't be a strong person because he was born and raised as a nobody. And we see how it divides the other characters if they should stick to Alm or not because he's not noble. But he proves them all that no matter who you are, even if you aren't a noble, you can still be strong... Until the last 30 minutes of the game where they revealed that Alm is Prince and that his dad was the King, and they seriously pulled a "I am your father" bs... That is SO stupid and defeats the whole point of Alm's entire character! Or how about the beginning of the game makes you think that Alm and Celica will fight in a tragic and sad way, giving us the impressions that they went from friends to enemies. Only to reveal that...Celica was just being mind controlled for like 5 minutes and there was NO build up to that fight 🤦♂. Like are you kidding me? Again, sure, Echoes' story is better than Fates...But that's not saying much. Echoes story is just plain bad.
FE2 has always been underrated, even back in the early 2000s people treated it as "the worst" just because it was very different. I find with a lot of those "2" games from back then, which they always made quite different from the originals, you should go in pretending it's not from the series it's named. Zelda 2 is an amazing game, if you don't go in expecting a Zelda 1 sequel. Yeah it sounds stupid and like I am making excuses, but you will get more enjoyment out of the game with that mindset. I went in to FE2 the same way and ended up liking it more than FE1 (keep in mind at the time there were only 6 games).
I’m definitely part of the problem unfortunately. Despite wanting to play it, Ironically I didn’t even own a 3DS anymore because I sold it after awakening for quick cash going into college. And as a broke college student at the time I couldn’t rationalize spending money on a full priced game on a system I no longer owned just to support an old series I no longer had faith in. I think perhaps part of the problem is how many old school fans that would theoretically Support better games, don’t, because they no longer own 3DS’s and Switches? (I mean if tactics games are you thing there’s loads in the PC indie space) I’m even morbidly curious about Engage but probably will never play it because I’m not spending $300+ so I can play one game I don’t even have much faith in :(
I do wonder why they seem to have a habit of this. Thracia 776, Radiant Dawn, Echoes If I’m optimistic maybe they know these games wouldn’t sell as well at end of a console lifespan anyways so decided to make some games that appeal to the more hardcore audience. If I’m pessimistic, Nintendo sees poor sales and goes “oh clearly it’s the games that are the problem and not the time of release or lack of marketing” 🤦♂️
Doubt it lol. We all know they been thinking about that dating simulation for a long time. I still favor FE1,3,11,12 lol xD the original and the remake lol
Exactly FE was always "anime af". But the look of anime changed through the ages and as a result in 2022... we now have vtubers in FE because of course we do.
While very true, FE has shown it can do anime without looking generic and cutesy. For example, the FE Echoes artstyle is still anime, but it is incredibly cool, sleek, and grounded.
I'll always remember Fates for "Prince Ryoma will wait patiently for his revenge, but only for 25 turns" and the "dw guys it's actually not incest😍" letters they pulled out in the S supports. Iconic
Iirc, the “mother left me a scroll that says this actually isn’t incest” part of Fates was added during localization so Fates could keep its T rating in the west. In the Japanese version, the text is just “I don’t care if it’s forbidden, I love you anyways,” and you’re meant to believe that you have a happy inbred family until the big reveal later. FE censors come out swinging every game fr.
I feel like if it had been given just a few more months of development it could have been in my top 5 favorite games in general but unfortunately it was rushed a bit to much (still think it's a great game though)
The designs are definitely pretty ridiculous in Engage, but I wouldn't say it was the death of strategy in the series or anything. The gameplay seems really good and even the ridiculous heroes summons seem kinda cool with how they work in combat.
FE fans imo tend to be over dramatic. But I don’t think the design or Mika’s art style was a good choice for an FE game. Really I’m just gonna play it for the gameplay.
@@2265Hello Her designs are fine to great. 3D models just couldnt capture her art to the point the faces all became sameface in 3D when her designs arent
Till this day I still never understood the baby dimension thing in Fates. I was expecting the children to play alongside us like in Awakening, but got pretty confused when I had to...rescue and unlock my child?? Who thought sending them to an apocalypse dimension was a good idea? Also your dancing is phenomenal. Death of spaghetti
@@shizachan8421yeah but tbh fates handled it much better. the child units in fates can actually keep up in a no grind run but in an awakening no grind almost all of the children turn out too weak to be usable by the time you recruit them, which is a massive shame because no grind is probably the most enjoyable way to play awakening.
I hate the baby time chambers too. But they literally threw them there to keep them safe. Because even MyCastle just kept getting attacked and outside the realm Nohr and Hoshida is in a big war (And they're all people who fight in the frontline).
@@therealjaystone2344 alternatively they could just sell the old games on the e shop oh wait they won’t because of some weird stupid policy. Well I’ll just settle for remakes cause I ain’t got that much time to figure out emulating.
@@2265Hello Unlike Super Mario Bros. 2/Lost Levels, localizing the older FE games for an e-shop release would be a lot of effort, so of course they won't do that. I'm still completely shocked that they did it with FE1.
@@DrewPicklesTheDark or they want to squeeze out more bucks with some remakes. Which is fine if they only update graphics and add some QoL features and keep the gameplay the same.
"Gameplay looks fine, I'll take 10 copies" Yeah that sums up Engage pretty well. I was pretty lukewarm on it during the initial reveal and I'm not sold on the art style and vibe yet but the map design and gameplay elements look pretty fun so I'm on board. death of strategy
You know , I never really liked Edelgard for plunging Fodland to a world War but I probably would do the same if I knew that Toothpaste crest mcs were the future.
The last shred of hope was stepped on and vanished when Edelgard's emblem arrived in this privilege-festered land, and instead of telling us to f*ck off, she happily offered her assistance. I mean, I didn't condone her actions either, but really girl? You're going to help _these_ new brand of Seiros, specifically?
>world war How can it be a world war ? By your logic the warring states period in Japan is a world war too because they didn't have contact with people off their island
I mean when most people talk about the difficulty of a game they are usually referring to normal mode. The whole "sadistically unfair and overtuned" difficulty modes didn't really start until Shadow Dragon. This is probably why people say "FE5 is one of the hardest!" it's because FE5's _normal_ difficulty is a step up from most games. All that said, I still think FE7 is the best introduction game to the series, which is no doubt what Nintendo had in mind when they made it.
Even without DLC it's not that hard to beat, just tedious due to the RNG. Literally the optimal strategy is feed everything to Robin and their child and let them solo the game
@@DrewPicklesTheDark Well that’s because Fe5’s Normal mode was miswritten. FE5’s difficulty modes list as “Easy, Normal, Hard” Where it should be “Normal, Hard, Lunatic” So FE5’s normal is just the hard mode of every other game.
@@thelostician You are thinking of FE10 (Radiant Dawn). FE5 (Thracia 776) didn't have a difficulty setting, though you could input some button commands to make an "elite mode" which gave all your characters an in-built paragon skill (paragon was called elite in the Japanese games).
At the time I decided to check Fire Emblem out, Fates was the hot upcoming game, so it became my entrypoint to the series. To this day I'm still very attached to it. That being said the writing is ABSOLUTELY ASS, like all three routes' stories are abysmal. But the gameplay was really fun, some of the support convos were fantastic, and I love the Nohr cast especially. They're idiots, but they're MY little idiots your honour.
I think one of their biggest issues was locking the prequel storyline behind DLC (the one with Laslow, odin and severa.) It honeslty explains a lot of the plotholes in the story and kind of adds a lot more depth to Anakos
my friend gave me blazing blade in jr high. and i played that game so many times i cant even count. and story wise i still think its the best. let alone the gba games graphicaly looked so much better.
@@SilentMeteorite Fates had a very troubled development. Lets just say the writing a story for all three campaigns was alot harder than Intelligent Systems thought!!
Yeah the gacha game is just... Having played quite a few gacha's as a teen, its one of the more tolerable ones as its still pretty fun without spending money (I've been playing since 2018 without spending a cent), but you were actually being pretty kind in the powercreep aspect. There are FAR more agregious weapons
The fact that he used two DC weapons as a reference is fucking hilarious considering how much IS overvalues DC as a skill in the first place compared to everything else.
@@nuibaba280 Real talk, Shez is the closest we got to Ike in terms of protagonists. The uncouth mercenary kind who's not particularly smart but has a good heart. I dig that.
Yeah it kind of made me reexperience my first FE3h play through all over again, the additional lore was nice and the remixes of the ost were cool, (best of all, byleth is barely in the story!) so it wasn’t a very polished or innovative game but definitely a pleasant experience.
Yeah… this video spoke to me on a spiritual level. Know you said not to take it seriously but this is pretty much how I feel about the series. Three Houses really surprised me and gave me hope. It’s a super mixed bag but it had a ton of effort and actually tried to present the horrors of war in a nuanced way. Then Engage was released. Oh well.
After SoV and 3H were headed in a direction more focused on world building and politics it's a shame to see engage go straight back to Awakening/Fates style storytelling. At least there's potentially an FE4 remake to look forward to.
@@WiiSportsRemoteWe all do, but I swear on all things holy, if they insert an OC or an Avatar and ruins the tragedy of the original story, I will be so sad
@@Winter_Symphonyfor what it's worth i don't think they will. FE4 is too story focused to be played with and they advertised Sigurd through Engage so he's ought to be the main face of the remake as well
@@clementrasset4477they almost did with echoes, but dialed back since it would've been impossible since the whole two routes thing (although you can say Faye's...worship of Alm is a remnant of this) With genealogy, im pretty certain they're going to add one. Its the OG "anime dating sim chess" game of the series, they definitely will find a way if they already tried to with gaiden. The problem is that the amount of plot contrivances I fear it will bring considering how the avatar will interact with the SPOILER and then how each mother and her two children have pretty set in stone stories so its going to jarring for the avatar's kids being tacked on too with specific pairs.
@@AkameGaKillfan777a lot of people do xd and then they will argue for hours on social media about their house leader being the best and yati yata and i'm like "bro you didn't even finish the game" The worst case is when people only play crimson flowers
@@clementrasset4477 In all fairness, I'm just impressed anyone subjected themselves to finishing a single path. I would sooner self delete than run around the monastery one more time, or have another tea party, or play another incredibly straightforward and bland combat scenario. Felt like I was spending more time running around the monastery than engaging in the story and playing the battles combined, and the battles in that entry aren't even fun.
I really feel like Engage is a step back from Three Houses. Where three houses comes out swinging with enchanting mystery and believable characters, for the first few HOURS of engage you either have *OHMYGOSHISTHATDIVINEDRAGONALEAROHMYGOD* or comically evil. Its honestly been really hard to play engage for me because while yeah, the gameplay is nice, the story really hasn't brought me in.
Really? I felt like engage closer to a normal fire emblem game. Three houses for me was pretty polarizing because it made the game a lot more appealing to casual fanbases. Still, the old fire emblem players sort of hated the Monastery exploration part of the game even if I loved it. Engage sort of brought back the old playstyle of the fire emblem games even if the story is the weakest in my opinion. The best part of three houses was the removal of the kids and marriage system which I despised.
Yeah the writing really is a major step back and I f*cking hate how people are saying that its "good that they're returning to form." Engage isn't a return to classic FE, it's a return to 3DS FE. The FE era that I hate the most. Part of the reason why I love Three Houses so much is that it ditched most of the stuff that the 3DS games did: bland/bad story, forgettable characters, the dating sim aspects among other things. While Engage didn't bring back the dating stuff, the story is boring and almost every character than isn't a royal is forgettable.
@@hyperm8 When people say "returning to form", people are referring to the gameplay mainly. A lot of the old fans didn't like the gameplay for three houses and found the lack of weapon triangles and poorly designed maps and poorly designed maddening mode. Three houses made fire emblem appeal to a wider audience but was the most polarizing release for fire emblem fans despite the amazing story. The gameplay and feel of the game for engage feels solid. Storywise, it's probably up to preference. Some people love the story for the 3ds titles but some think it's god awful. Path of Radiance would be the type of story we would all love to have but it's not as appealing to the masses like Three Houses. I think the perfect in-between would be to have a story like Fire Emblem Shadows of Valentia or Binding Blade
@@kevinnguyen8631 I remember the opposite. Many people upon hearing the Weapon Triangle being gone in 3 Houses were going: "Oh well, it was never that big of a mechanic anyway." Despite the fact that one complaint I ALWAYS hear about RD is it's removed on the highest difficulty, and how in Fates it played a noticeable role in damage, hit, and avoid rates, especially with dual weapons.
Engage is a fun game, but it makes no sense. It's all the way back to black & white good & evil distinction that makes no sense at all. The world building sucks or is nonexistent and the characters are paper thin with no motivations or personal relationships or goals in their life. It's a step back alright. The game looks and plays well though and I enjoyed it for what it was, but I can't even take a discussion where someone tries to compare the two seriously.
I’m guessing it changed mainly to appeal to wider audiences. Before Awakening it was a relatively niche series with Smash being the main thing that brought its popularity up in the west. When they started getting more “weeb-like” it became much more popular. While I do like the style of the older games, I’m just glad that it’s getting more attention nowadays. I would LOVE a remake of Geneology of the Holy War though.
It didn’t change. FE has always been weeby. Trends simply change as do character designs over time. Awakening didn’t sell better because of any changes, it sold better because it was actually marketed unlike previous games. Plus it had some nice character designs unlike some of the previous games with radioactive-green hair.
@@Melkac The dating sim side mechanic was definitely a change, taking it a step further with the coomer-bait skinship mechanic of FE fates. I know Awakening was the first to get any actual widespread marketing but you can’t say that nothing has changed. Characters look way more marketable now obviously.
It's in the way I originally thought they were releasing Genshin Impact on the switch when I first saw the first leak. I couldn't have for the life of me linked it to FE without context or description, and not having played Genshin past the early chapters, it seemed completely in the cards for what I envisioned a Genshin switch sequel/port to look like.
@@pauloazuela8488 Also the only buff characters and characters with facial hair are NPCs and he's not too generic looking to fit in with them (Referring to the third character)
Dude, what are you on? Genshin may have it's lows but character design wise it's pretty up there and it has to be since that's what they sell you and where they get money from. Engage character design is just shitty beyond any other anime game I've seen so far.
Probably because the character who's supposed to be the "lord" of the game isn't playable for like 75% of the game, and the game spends more time with the previous protag than the new one. Oh, and the save transfer system would glitch and break if you used original model Wiis. Believe me, it took Micaiah fucking years to finally live down the Mary Sue accusations and to get actual character development, because the game she's supposedly the lord for spends more time with other characters. All in all, there's a lot of reason why Radiant Dawn didn't sell well lol.
@@Aleph3575 exactly. Awakening, Echoes, Three Houses and Engage are all way better designed games than RD, PoR, no hate intended, but I mean that's exactly what this video is full of. Hate, and bitter saltiness by some culturally ignorant f-boi who doesn't understand Japan or Japanese media and that the games he loved playing as a kid are from the country he's trying to shit-talk lmao
I'm sure they knew it was going to be the niche one of the 3DS games; they released it right before the Switch so everyone was saving their money for that.
I'm also buying engage for the gameplay mostly, but I genuinely think that most of the character designs look fine. some are definitely a little goofy, and some are... really goofy but a lot of the playable characters they've shown look fine imo. also I still have faith that they're gonna remake genealogy, especially with how much they showed off Sigurd in the initial engage trailers. if both fe4 and fe5 get remade on the switch it will be de facto the best console. death of strategy (edit: hopefully the fe4 and 5 remakes will/would be separate games, remaking them together isn't a great idea)
If I remember correctly, the artist/character designer only made designs for VTubers prior to working on Engage, hence why the main character has toothpaste colored hair. I don't know the source of this nor can I confirm its validity, so take it with a grain of salt.
@@leomassafm160 no, mika pkazo is a professional illustrator and character design that has unique traits by using bright pop out color but coordinated well. And yes she designed one of hololive ( a massive vtuber company) one of their member design. So she is also technically vtuber artist
@@leomassafm160 the topthpaste hair is intentonal not accidently since it will be part of the story not because the artist was a vtuber prior to engage Trust me artists like that have a lot of experience which can be seen in their portfolio which they usually show big game companies and if she was only a vtube artist they wouldn't have hired her.Her designs are superb
My two problems is first the idk how to exactly describe it……bubbly I think? art style. It’s personal taste I will admit but the other thing is well how hard it is to realize the characters actually have some dimension to them. One of the best example is the character of Alfred. Alfred comes across as well…..exactly what you would expect of the crown prince of the peaceful flower kingdom whose only thing of note is their love of peace and their tea. He is soft but still wants to defend his kingdom. And if you don’t go out of your way that is all he will ever be….hell the game incentivizes benching him due to his bad growth rates and he is overshadowed by the likes of diamant as soon as he joins your party. And then if you are dumb enough to field Alfred to the point he starts having many supports it starts painting a better picture of the character. First is he recognizes he is physically weak and tries to study someone like boucefont to learn how to get strong….ok self aware neat…..then we get a support with his sister where it’s revealed how he rushes out at every opportunity to help with any project the people around him have (granted the English localization plays this up for laugh that all of his attempts at helping is just him digging holes). And then we get a support between his sister and Alcryst where they talk about the fears they have of loosing their siblings and having to take over the throne. On this conversation She mentions how Alfred was born with chronic sickness and was constantly getting sick throughout his childhood and it was a constant fear of him dying. He has been healthy since but he has not grown as strong as other boys because of it……ok that puts things in perspective for Alfred…….and the final kicker is Celine’s ending that mentions how his sickness came back cutting Alfred’s reign short forcing her to become queen……. Ok wow suddenly Alfred has much more dimension to his character. Instead of being the soft prince of flower land he is someone who had struggled with debilitating sickness throughout his life, who tried his best for his people despite this disease and sought out ways to improve his physical deficiencies, and while his rule was beloved all he could do was make the most of the little time he had and spent it on his people……suddenly Alfred became a much better character ………my problem is just HOW HARD IT IS TO FIGURE OUT HE IS A HALFWAY DECENTLY WRITTEN CHARACTER you need to first not bench him (which the game kind of discourage by making his growths shit) support him with at least 2 characters and have 2 OTHER characters support each. Then keep him and ANOTHER character alive thru the game to realize “wait Alfred has some character” I get that with a game with unit permadeath you have to write the story in a way that allows people to be dead…..but Alfred is one of the characters who if he “dies” on classic due to how plot signficant he is. Instead of dying he retreats from the battlefield with an injury that prevents him from fighting on the battlefield anymore……with the built in plot armor on him you can afford to write in his character into the story
You took the thoughts right out of my brain and put them in writing. Thank you for bringing up Alfred! He is a fairly interesting character that suffers from this artstyle as well as the forced infantilization now strong in the FE series, which unfortunately isn't exclusive to Alfred. I nearly let Chloe kick the bucket after an irritating map where I couldn't be bothered to reset anymore, and luckily for Chloe, I decided to put my switch down for the day so that I might redo the map another time with a better mindset. Cue her support with Louis where she _finally_ displayed an ounce of self-awareness, impressive insight and understanding. Louis was one of the characters I actually liked and invested in earlier, so Chloe benefitted by being his retainer buddy, but I don't think I would have otherwise cared to look deeper. This kept happening across the board for the early cast, particularly the girls. Don't even get me started on Framme, I struggled not to kill her on purpose, and Yunaka didn't get much screen time either. Haven't touched Anna, she's a literal child. Hortensia still irks me, and I can barely take Timerra seriously. It's not that the male cast suffers less from the bubbly filter, it's that once you get down to at least one or two of their immediate supports, their personality usually shines through, whatever personality they might have. You're encouraged to at least grind up most of the guys and their supports out of curiosity for brand new characters, whereas with the girls it's almost as if half got intentionally written to be grating and obnoxious, so naturally you're less inclined to invest in them unless you're a sucker for five childlike waifus (and counting). Basically the cast improved the farther we got from the beginning bar for a few exceptions, so it's no wonder the starter crew lagged behind. Just like you said, I wound up benching people temporarily as soon as the Brodia gang joined, even poor Etie got benched for Alcryst, and I'm now grinding everybody from Firene and Lythos to an acceptable level so that they can promote and get better level gains soon enough. It's baffling how some of these characters require you to go on a journey to find something to care about them. I thought we were moving away from bland characters, but I was clearly wrong. If nothing else, I'm quite happy that Panette is both extremely enjoyable _and_ a powerhouse with Ike. By the way, that's another thing. After the Fell Dragon stand-off where we get our rings snatched, we're fresh out of Emblems. We're given Lucina and Lyn, and unless we grinded everyone up to bond level 5 with Tiki and El/Dimi/Claude prior, we're given a pretty strong incentive to go for the solid characters with the better skills and good growths. I don't even know Jean's purpose in my roster anymore, and the lil' guy is supposed to be the prodigy! He's lost in a sea of units I tried to train simultaneously while on a blind, Hard, and Classic run. Definitely my mistake. Clanne's sadly been outshined by Citrinne and Ivy, even though I kinda liked him to begin with. On another note, Celine is also surprisingly interesting, but boy did it take me some time to dig that up! She reminded me a little bit of Flayn with her mannerisms, mature mentality and overall approach to things from the jump. The Genshin design somehow didn't hinder her character for me, although you do have to grind her up a bit to get past the surface level talk of tea and flowers, which tied in rather nicely with her retainers. Those two are enamoured with an idealistic life, so they take comfort in picturesque things and the glorified happiness of others, but the important thing to remember is that both Louis and Chloe find other people's lives and behaviour fascinating because they're always adding layers of narrative on top to compensate for the mundane. Celine brings up seemingly tedious and trivial stuff again and again because she _knows_ and wants them to find comfort in experiencing every day to day joys. She wants to create a peaceful environment that's happy and joyful within the realm of possibility, letting others know they're a part of a narrative that's _good enough_ to be happy about. Her whole thing with peace took a while to set in for me, but it's actually amazing once you digest the information. It could be the translation team taking liberties that kind of over simplifies it, as with the digging for Alfred, hence you having to look for the meaning behind their words and actions. . which you really shouldn't have to. . not every single time. Anyway, I found her refreshing. She's not shy about telling Louis that he shouldn't risk his safety to provide extravagant joy, and that having everyone by her side is something she doesn't take for granted, but reminds everyone it's what matters at the end of the day: the simple, trivial little chats over tea where everyone's alive and not fighting for their necks, or their nations and their people. I still haven't gotten Celine's A support with Chloe, but judging from how it's been going so far, I take it she will try to similarly ground Chloe to reality while reassuring her that their lives can be perfectly fine without all that fanfare. Celine's so poised and proper that it's hard to get under her behemoth shell of a skirt, but she's great. EDIT: Oh, and the support you mentioned where she basically trauma bonds with Alcryst? I think that's what cemented the Flayn vibe for me. It reminded me of Flayn's support with Dimitri where they both confess to the reasons behind their insomnia, and I thought that was a pretty cool throwback. Speaking of Dimitri, the trailers for Engage had me questioning Alfred's design a little, but now I can scarcely link the two together apart from the hair. Alfred's honestly just as refreshing as his sister, and it would've been nice if he had been developed beyond the characterisation sprinkled in between the main story and supports. There's a limit to how much characters can do or even grow in Engage, which disappointed me. I mean, Alcryst immediately gets over his father's asinine death in his C support with Ivy after she says she's sorry, despite how adamant he was about his grudge against her and Hortensia. I was thrown aback because there seemed to be a good chunk of development waiting to happen. . only for it to fall flat. Alcryst starts off as the first person who tells you it's _okay_ for Elusians to believe in what they believe. He has some reservations about them because of the fricking Fell Dragon worship, a real deity who's wrought chaos, war, and destruction, but he's never cruel or judgmental, and far be it from Alcryst to judge anybody. Then Elusia launches a full on assault on his country where Hyacinth snipes the king after losing to him in combat, which is a complete dishonour by Brodian customs, and they haul ass with his father's corpse back home. As if that wasn't bad enough, they do this so that the Fell Dragon can _drink_ the king's blood before reanimating the poor guy into a Corrupted. Talk about disrespect. Alcryst is visibly f*cked by the events, and although Diamant can rationalize the Elusian princesses collusion to appease their father, Alcryst can't tolerate having them in the Divine Dragon's army and voices this very emotionally. I was super interested to see how the circumstances might change Alcryst's beliefs and stance on Elusia, how his character would be handled in order for him to overcome those burdens and inherent bias later on. Well, somebody made the call to scrap the logical turn of events because they figured it was convincing to have Alcryst forget about everything after one apology from Ivy. I wish we didn't have to mine for substance in characters, and that by the time we found a speck or two, it wasn't overshadowed by an extreme, constant character trope. . or worse still voice acting that had me borderline missing Lorenz of all people. If they wanted a light-hearted and plotless gathering of bubbly characters, they should've just made another love live entry. This stings.
The game has a "replaceability" problem with the characters. You have no reason to keep using characters you get at the beginning of the game due to limited deployment slots and strictly better units being recruited. Why would I ever use Clanne when I get Celinne literally 3 chapters after him and she's just better than him in practically every way AND she comes with an Emblem practically made for her? Then, just as you get used to Celinne, BAM you get Citrinne who is just better. Boucheron? lmao Bencheron is more like it. Pretty much the only early game unit that doesn't require significant investment to not get completely outclassed the minute you get someone of a similar class is Louis and even then he starts to fall off when Jade shows up, who can also be replaced by the defense oriented Timerra when you get her. Why bother with Lapis when you get Diamant and Kagetsu within 3 chapters of recruiting her? So yeah you have all these neat backstory things revealed in supports, but this game is one of the hardest to grind supports in (made a bit easier by the new patch but I think you need DLC for it) AND its just not worth it when you're probably just gonna be replacing each character with someone else unless you grind the shit out of them.
Oh my gosh, wait so Alfred’s supports with Celine are different in the Japanese version??? I remember her checking up on him and him digging holes, and she was like wtf? I’m baffled that the localization would recontextualize what was going on 😭 He is my favorite out of everyone in Engage tbh. I used him on Maddening and his Defense stat becomes so big by the end of the game. He can hold himself down very well, way better than Diamant tbh. Also this game is so much harder to get supports in than in 3 Houses. All those monastery activities really helped, and people just had to be in range to attack a person to get support points (I believe) whereas in Engage they need to be RIGHT next to each other. And Engage isn’t like 3H where there’s a big replay factor. Getting some of these better supports takes FOREVER, and some people just don’t care enough to play the game that long.
Tokyo Mirage Sessions was honestly quite fun. The gameplay got pretty involved and punishing, and the characters were pretty endearing the more you get to know them. Touma with his side stories especially.
Yeah TMS is lowkey one of the best entry level RPGs. It's not super serious but not terrible and the sessions really make you feel like you're strategizing. It's honestly pretty good.
I had to bend over backwards trying to get my hands on the uncensored version, but other than that TMS is a fantastic game that deserves more visibility
If it sells, the companies will produce more. Can't really blame the companies for it, since it is the majority of the playerbase's "taste" that has lead FE to go this direction. If anyone's got fingers to point, it is ourselves for not buying enough copies of the non-weeb FE games.
Hey, don't lump me in with all you, I didn't buy em. /hj Seriously though, I left the series almost a decade ago now, and haven't bought a single game since. Makes me rather sad; Fire Emblem was previously one of my favorite game series.
Well to be fair, Three Houses has sold 4.12 million copies as of now, so it’s the best selling Fire Emblem game by a good margin. If anything, the execs at Nintendo/Intelligent Systems might be pushing the devs to make another game maybe not EXACTLY like it, but similar. Guess we’ll have to see what the next mainline FE title looks like.
I have two nitpicks but otherwise this was a fun lighthearted retrospective. One, yeah this wasn't meant to be too serious but the series has always been anime, anime just changed! Kaga was a big fan of what's now "older" anime (gundam being one, Legend Of The Galactic Heroes being the other that he loved so much he would later make an entire game based on how much he loved it, Berwick Saga) and that shit was super anime! Second, Sacred stones is just gaiden 2! I'm aware of the death of strategy there, but sometimes you just wanna see number go up.
Yeah. Having overpowered units kill everything in 1 hit is good, actually, at least for some of us. I’m dumb af so if I can circumvent my lack of strategy with big number, I’m satisfied. Just play on lunatic I guess (or don’t grind).
@@Melkac the "death of strategy" comment wasn't me slagging off on sacred stones, it was referencing the end of video words to comment. SS is an easy game, but that's okay! Not everything has to be Lunatic Reverse or CQ Lunatic or Thracia, sometimes you want your Gaidens, Genealogies, or your Sacred Stones, 'coz it feels nice to be strong and wing things.
Funny that you mention Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Three Houses may as well be based on it (one of the devs straight up said they based Claude on Wen-li), Edelgard is basically "Female Reinhardt with all the settings turned up to 11".
How is that 2000's-how-to-draw-anime-tutorial artstyle is peak? Any other FE has better artstyle than that lmao (even the first because how goofy they are)
@@jefinathariwirza6578 80's and early 90's art styles were the best imo. They've gotten significantly worse over the years. Now everything looks plastic and overly cutesy.
People are saying that FE always was anime and that the look just changed over time with it. True, but that doesnt mean we cant criticize awful design. Just pointing at other currently bad design philosophies is not a valid excuse in my eyes. If something looks like shit, it looks like shit
I feel that way about anime art in general honestly. I loved the gritty semi-realistic look of a lot of 80's and early 90's anime, not the cutesy, bubbly plastic look of a lot of modern stuff.
@@nightmarishcompositions4536 It's been said that the reason Shouzou Kaga left Intelligent Systems is because he hates the idea of FireEmblem being in 3d. When I saw the Graphics of Three Houses and the Art style of Engaged I have to say, (He was RIGHT). The good news is that there are other Strategy games to chose from thanks to third parties. Valkyria Chronicles 4, Triangle Strategy, Wargroove, Live a live, Tactics Ogre Reborn, and Front Mission.
@@nightmarishcompositions4536 That older style anime was a lot closer to the western 80's an 90's action cartoons (which also had much better intro themes than more modern series). And anime was originally derived from western animation styles, both that kind and Disney styles.
@@-lord1754 but he is right. There’s a lot of people who have gaslight themselves into thinking it has good art or that Mika is a good artist (she’s not)
The paper thin personalities and similar character archetypes are a critical aspect of the design that they tried to fix not realizing it impacts the weight of the combat.
It's sad that they apparently tried to fix something they so blatantly failed at. If I have to look at the Solmian nobility again, I might ask for a refund.
"Modern JRPGs are social experiments to see how much players can gaslight into thinking that these stupid ass designs look cool and normal." Truer words have never been spoken.
@@Molten2004 i hink i have a good taste and also i think its realy sad for you old fans to hate the art of anime if this series had failed we anime fans would move o ather anime like strategy games the olmy loss in this situation is you old fans
Way back in high school I beat both Blazing Blade and Sacred Stones. Hard but definitely doable. I attempt to return to the series years later and I am just like wtf happened?
I think a HUGE issue is when the weebification affects the writing. Old Fire Emblem (FE1/FE3, Judgral, and Tellius) had complex human relationships in tragic war stories in similar vain to Gundam and Legend of the Galactic Heroes (which Kaga was inspired by heavily along with military history when writing his games). That worldbuilding and character is gone from modern where it's now a single character trait being characters' entire character and their "development" being thrown into hamfisted support conversations about literally nothing. In an interview about Berwick Saga, Kaga had no clue what a tsundere was. There's no world building either. Awakening had the biggest chance to add even more to Akaneia and Judgral (which both had HUGE worldbuilding from Japanese supplementary material) and absolutely NONE of the loose ends in those games were tied. Nice video, you're very funny and charismatic. I'm subscribing.
Agree. The most "anime" things I can think of in the interim between Kaga leaving, but before Awakening is me grasping for straws. I can only really think of like...Saul from binding blade who's contrasted by the rest of the cast being...incredibly grounded and diverse (Niime I'd the only playable old woman in the series), Neimi/Colm's "relationship" (which is just oozing with red flags) and I guess a couple of things I might be misremembering Lyre says in RD which I just go "yes, we get it, she's a catgirl" and even then Lethe is treated with respect and not reduced to just catgirl tropes. Shadow Dragon sacrificed support conversations, but gave us some strong character writing for Marth. Outlier might be self-inserts. Thankfully you can remove Mark from the story so you don't get those random moments where characters turn to the camera to acknowledge your presence and then promptly ignore you. New Mystery is when the writing was beginning to be written on the walls. Kris has a normal backstory and earns his way to being Marth's bodyguard yes...but then they exaggerate just how...much Kris means to Marth's war effort that he ask Marth to rewrite his feats as Marth's own, Elice says something about Marth being weakminded, Kris takes a lot of lines from characters in FE3 (granted he's also used as the person people exposition too as well). Then you have the (honestly can I call this an archetype?) resident self-insert worshipper character in Katarina (its a little underbaked compared to the likes of Tharja, Camilla, Ivy/Framme and Edelgard in routes that aren't hers Edelgard pls why are you saying you wished you got to walk with Byleth in the Golden deer route). Idk, I just don't like when games go all self-insert gratification especially because it comes at the expense of writing. Why does Byleth pull Dimitri out of some of his funk when three of his childhood friends and three of his retainers are all right there. Why does Edelgard have to wait for you to return for her plans to work? Just bugs me. >In an interview about Berwick Saga, Kaga had no idea what a tsundere is I don't know why I found this so funny
... you have put in video form what I have been saying for years. YEARS. Although, TBH, I feel like the downfall of traditional FE started with Radiant Dawn (what are meaningful support convos?) and Shadow Dragon (lol, let's class swap everyone!!). Granted, I'm an old fogey who's been in this fandom for far too long. You either leave a fandom with good memories or you stay long enough to watch it completely transform. Even so... I'll still have fond memories of this fandom and how it was pre-Awakening, and it was a fandom I called home as a fanfiction writer. (I need to get around to finishing that sixteen year old fic, though. Even if it has no more readers, lol.) Honestly, I don't even mind the newer games. I just have to approach it like it is its own identity and not as a "Fire Emblem" game. It's no different than seeing Resident Evil 4 take the series from "horror survival/resource management" to "action adventure". Hell, I haven't played a Final Fantasy since IX, because I don't really like JRPGs that aren't turn-based/ATB (outside of the Tales series). Sure, you miss the memories of how it used to be, but that's why there are people out there who will make new indie games that cater to that aesthetic and old-school vibe. It's time for us old school old guard folks to take a step back and let the new generation come in and enjoy that which we've built. We've got the EXP. We've classed up. If we miss the old-school FE that much, let's work together to make one ourselves!
I will die on the hill that the "too many swords" argument is stupid. The main two justification is that it makes the characters too similar to each other, but much like the series they come from, the power distribution can make a world of difference. Then there's the people that unironically try to say say that Robin, Corrin and Byleth don't do enough to be different from the rest. You know, aside from having completely different movesets that make them "similar" in the most superficial of ways, like the stance.
Honestly, I don't care if there's many swordfighters, I just want characters other than Fire Emblem being added every tuesday. I was really hoping for some Megaman representation, like Zero from the MM Zero series, or maybe Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden would have been cool. There's a lot of characters in the game that are the only ones from their series, so maybe some extra characters from their series' would be nice. I dunno, just... not more FE guys, there's like 8. I don't know how many Mario characters there are, but it's either a tie, almost a tie or FE flat out has more, and that's... pretty excessive
@@zakalot who would also prove my point on how superficial the argument is because he'd still end up swinging the axe like any other sharp weapon and how he learns sword proficiency after promoting.
Fire Emblem is about weapons other then Swords. Spear classes, Axe classes, Fist classes, Tome classes, Bow classes, mounted classes. If you sent out a party using the FE characters in Smash... wouldn't a map in FE be nightmarish? Marth, Roy, Lucina, Ike, Chrom, Corrin would all be redundant. Robin and Byleth has to carry them. At least Byleth can switch between his three weapons which give him heavy attacks, ranged attacks, or close but quick attacks when pressing down speci... oh wait that is Pokemon Trainer. Pokemon Trainer better represents Fire Emblem then Byleth. Min-min does as well. Pyra and Mythra do better. Incineroar's counter works better in representing FE then Marth's. Lucario's Aura represents the counter system better then Marth. Joker's counter without his Persona does better. Fire Emblem is treated like gutter trash by how it is represented in Smash, it deserves better treatment. It isn't the opinion "too many sword fighters" because by design of Fire Emblem itself, your team comp in smash is too many sword fighters. You'd be ignoring most of the game's mechanics and suffer for it. You are by the rules in Fire Emblem using too many sword fighters.
Fates wasn’t even that bad really. The soundtrack, and gameplay alone is reason enough to play the game and I think it’s biggest issue was it’s narrative. There were some good moments, but overall plot and world building wasn’t its strong suit.
I got into Fire Emblem since Awakening, thanks to an old friend of mine. My brother pointed out to me how much the newer fire emblems look more "weebish" more so since Fates and it's both funny to me and kinda interesting to me how that's the direction it's kinda going in. Still like the series though and I really want to get my hands on Path of Radiance
"weebish" If anime styles stopped changing around the time of Fire Emblem 1, then all FE games (and related/unrelated anime) since would resemble the anime styles of that era, duh Fire Emblem was always "weebish"
5:37: I unironically love Fates, conquest specifically, because I don’t really give a crap about the story, I am here for the gameplay and Conquest’s gameplay is one of the best, if not the best in the franchise
I'm really liking Three Houses so far! My gf got me into FE and she did all the play throughs with a male character. So, I'm doing my first run with a Female character (I chose Claude because I vibe with his antics [Even though technically I'm supposed to pick him last?]). She's pissed because I was able to recruit Sylvain as soon as I was able to recruit just because I was a girl. lol
I can't believe they ruined Fire Emblem Fates with wacky hair colors, incest, and extremely unbalanced roster! Anyway, time to go play Fire Emblem Genealogy of the Holy War.
@@cinderguard3156 I can't believe some people are stupid enough to think all Anime is exactly the same. They're just like American boomers who think all animation is for kids.
you say that like it's a bad thing; vtubers are gorgeous and mika pikazo is a wonderful artist with a great style (well i can see why it wouldn't appeal to everybody tbh)
Even tho i havent played the old games,i think Fire Emblem always had this "weeby" aspect to it. I mean,just by reading the story you understand how anime it is.
Yes, though the most recent titles have really embraced it's weebish inspirations rather than borrow form them. Same with the Xenoblade 1 to 2 transition.
I think a lot of people are missing the heart of the changes. Yes, the story is rather constant, but it’s mainly the design of the characters that have been significantly more “weebified.” Specifically, the over-the-top characters that fit more and more into common tropes (Awakening kids are especially notorious, for example Owain and Severa are really out of place compared to prior characters)… and the significantly increased sexualization, with the dating sim aspects culminating in heart-filled S-rank support romances, as well as more and more unnatural clothing and designs that make the characters look more like they come from modern day Japan than a medieval fantasy setting
@@CouchTomato87 I couldn't agree more on the unnatural "modern-looking" clothing designs. I have been seeing this more and more in Japanese fantasy lately and it bugs me. It's like they can't stand to have a character dress in medieval clothing unless it's some snooty noble we're supposed to hate.
I really liked what the series had to offer and thought the support stuff introduced in Awakening was a neat little aside to what felt like an already pretty established gameplay formula but after Fates I kinda just dipped as it became immediately apparent that the game stopped feeling like it was about assembling a troupe of ragtag mercenaries and army people who all joined for one reason or another to see some end goal. Three Houses was a decent course correct but I personally still don't really care much for the social stuff and feel like with how much more there is to it compared to Awakening find it kinda breaks up the pacing that I've grown used to way too much. I'm glad the series didn't just die but I'm kinda upset that it feels more and more like it's constantly leaning into the dating sim/social sim aspect
I can blame Persona for that. But at least in that game it's weaved in far more naturally. In fire emblem, it seriously makes the pace of the game screech to a halt while you're headpatting every single npc again.
I am so glad you mentioned 8:10. Holy shit that line is so bad in so many different ways. You could make an entire 10 minute video about how awful the line is in the context of the whole story. It is a translation error, but bro, how did nobody fix that? Oh my god bro. All she had to say was something like, "This bloodshed has been going unrecognized for decades. If it takes a war to stop it then there is no other option". Like bro, they changed the Bernie line which was a mistranslation. And they recorded more lines for the DLC, but they didn't fix that VERY important quote?
@@cloudtg462 It's been said that the reason Shouzou Kaga left Intelligent Systems is because he hates the idea of FireEmblem being in 3d. When I saw the Graphics of Three Houses and the Art style of Engaged I have to say, (He was RIGHT). The good news is that there are other Strategy games to chose from thanks to third parties. Valkyria Chronicles 4, Triangle Strategy, Wargroove, Live a live, Tactics Ogre Reborn, and Front Mission.
@@orangeslash1667 Wdym when you saw the graphics of Three Houses? Yeah they look bad, but so does every single FE game that isn't pixelated. The Tellius models look godawful, the DS models look terrible and then there's Awakening characters with no feet which has been said a million times already.
@@hyperm8 Awakening characters not have feet is more of a nitpick. I can forgive the flaws of Fates because the characters were designed by the No more Hero's artist Yūsuke Kozaki. The second reason is the game kinda looked good for a 3ds game and there wan't any other strategy game on the 3ds out side of Stella Glow. With Engage not only is Mika Pikazo is huge down grade from Yūsuke Kozaki, but without the 2d portraits of characters talking to each other, the issues of the game's graphics become even more noticeable.
I'm hoping to god whatever money they make from Engage is used as leverage for more ambitious projects like Three Houses again because I think it was proof that you can appeal to both sides of the aisle be it elitist or newcomer. And I don't really get the idea that most people just played one route over and over, but then again I wasn't looking hard at social media when the game was relevant so I could avoid spoilers (the only route I'm likely never going to play is the church route and that's because I know enough about that final boss to say it's a waste of time). I would assume all the lords were equally popular on the surface and still are - and I did want to see all of their routes at some point even after becoming biased towards one because it's hard not to get attached to the first route you play.
Yeah, I still played church for the sake of completion, but it's so much wasted potential, they should have let you play with Rhea ngl, I love Setheth, but he isn't made to be a "House leader" type character, but Rhea is, and it would have been a nice chance to see more about her story, specially the past.
@@hectorhernandezaleman3836 Rhea def should have been the focus of SS for sure. I think they just didn't realize she shouldn't be a hostage for 80% of the war. Because she's always saved in Enbarr, she can't be playable. It was bad decision making
I will always put the Tellius games above everything else because of one character. Titania. Awesome name, awesome stats, awesome design, best girl in the whole series and I know I'm right.
I have vtuber brainrot from my friends exposing me to them last year. I have been desensitized to the look...... I rlly wish people would have paid attention in their middle school english classes tho so they would understand that characters can be more complicated than hero and villain.... truly the death of strategy
Every Fire Emblem game is anime. Literally the only thing that is different is what tropes and design choices were popular at the time of the game's development. Marth is a 90s shonen protagonist and looks the part.
I feel like I literally agree with your take on all these games. The tellius series was my first introduction to fire emblem(radiant dawn in particular) and I can tell that you really like those games too!
Loved the ones on the Gameboy, and absolutely played the “Radiant” Duology so many times over it was ridiculous. I’ve definitely noticed the “Weebafication” and it bums me out lol
My experience with FE is weird in that I played Blazing Blade(?) like 10 years ago cause i thought Lyn was cute when i saw her assist trophy in brawl, was obsessed with it for a few weeks, stopped cause other stuff and ever since have only been able to muster up a casual passing outsider's level of interest in the series as a whole. Fire Emblem is like the video game epitome of a one hit wonder for me, kinda odd turn of events really. Death of strategy
It had a style, but instead of sticking to it, they decide to pander to the lowest common denominator bug eye anime characters that look ridiculous in the context of the series, and even within their own games
FE always had anime tropes and style, but the problem with Engage is that every single female character looks EXACTLY the same. Even idol anime characters are more varied than the Engage cast.
Not gonna lie, I liked fusing my characters together in Awakening, both in support teams and children. It was weird to play a Breeder Tactician, but I honestly like it better than "stand next to Support" and the new Emblem Rings.
aight i put more than 200 hours into Three Houses, ngl each house having it's own plot line in a way with another more interesting way. i ate that shit up and started to see which couples are the best. i admit it. im a sucker for dating sims and turn based strategy but only cause it's BASED (on turns that is)
same ngl the vibe was wildly different for 3H compared to older entries in terms of playable units and the plot surrounding the game. 3H's characters and overarching story were actually dynamic and the dark fantasy genre suited it really well. It taught me that I like dating sim elements _if_ there's a level of psychological horror, politics, complex situations, death, fighting, etc. involved. Any and all lighthearted moments in 3H made me happy because that shit was heavy, of course we wanted everybody to be happy and have some fun now and then. TBS x visual novel finally met and it worked, pairing the little runts up became mandatory.
…by dropping the grounded and practical designs and embracing friggen vtuber outfits. To throw away your pervious identity to chase modern tropes is to throw away your dignity. To change Fist of the North Star to some Pretty Cure ass artstyle would bastardize it despite the fact that “they’re both anime”
Unfortunately the term weeb has been extremely misused, because the correct term of a weeb is someone who disowned their own nationality and proclaimed themselves as japanese, best example of that is Geese Howard from the King of Fighters series
@@brandonwilliams6119 Not sure how you even came to that conclusion from me liking the series and saying it's been a weeb series since day 1 but go off. To further burst your bubble, never played smash bros. I have too good of a hygiene for that.
The character designs were the biggest reason I was excited for the Banner Saga. A turn based tactical combat game with lots of bearded men in belted tunics. More bearded men in belted tunics stabbing each other and not getting too emotional at inappropriate times and less Colgate mascots.
i love me some anime titties, but god damn does the banner saga handle everything else so much better than fire emblem these days. in the banner saga you aren't just a dozen dudes fighting a dozen other dudes and thats the entire war, any combat you personally partake in is just a small section of a much larger battle. you don't just move on from some big event, you have to deal with the fallout. the personal stories are just a facet of much bigger things going on. i wish fire emblem had that going for it.
@@comyuse9103 Three Houses was the perfect opportunity for them to do something like that, given that it's a story about an officer school. Instead of leading armies, though, the characters use them as equipable items.
@@EmperorSigismund i'd say three houses does it better than any other modern FE game at least, the implication is that those battalions are actually fighting alongside you. i don't remember how awakening did it, but i think fates wasn't usually that great about it and engage is the worst yet, from what little i've played you literally take an entire castle as maybe a little over a dozen people with literally no back up of any kind. no faceless soldiers, nothing. it has been a really, really long time since i played the radiant games but, iirc, they also implied there was a much bigger battle happening outside your immediate gameplay where appropriate, so it isn't like the devs haven't thought of this before
Every fire emblem game has an anime art style, the style has just changed depending on when what was most popular when rhe games came out ☠️ older fe games have art styles reminiscent of lots of older anime, its always been like this
Sorry but 2 colors hair aside, it's better than the western alternative. The alternative is either regular Fortnite-esque face design or trying hard to make stuff look like liveaction as much as possible. Better weeb than those 2 designs.
Rose tinted glasses and pessimism ruining half a series for yourself. I get you exaggerate for comedy, but it's sad seeing nitpicks and nostalgia make you dislike the majority of a series you claim to enjoy
Awakening was when I first realised I really _sucked_ at Fire Emblem because I couldn't for the life of me play on classic without messing up every single map.
I did a Corrin only Birthright run where I made 15 Corrin with different classes and used them on Birthright. It was among the most fun I've ever had playing Fire Emblem. Fates is just fun as all hell if you skip the plot xD
I think Three Houses and some Awakening designs were the peak middle ground between grounded medieval fantasy and anime styles (most older Fire Emblem games did well in those aspects too but none were maintream successes) When games went too far in either direction they were criticized (specially if they leaned more towards anime), latest example being Engage. Those games with designs that didn´t immediately alienate part of the potential players tended to do really well long term
I really do not like some of Engage's designs. Especially the main characters. They look like those anime parody characters that were based on Browser logos.
Honestly i really enjoyed fates. The story and characters while questionable n wild were still entertaining, but the gameplay and replayability is what really sold it for me. That and also the asthetic of this "light vs dark" of the two nations Also, i feel like fire emblem has always had a soet of anime asthetic/style tonit, it just took about 6-8 games to really embrace it.
Fates fans usually like the game not for the story, but despite the story. The gameplay is arguably my favorite so far. It is super diverse, extremely satisfying and fast.
I don't like how you have to reach Lv. 35 for a specific skill that was previously accessible to lv. 15 i.e Galeforce etc. Oh and for some reason Camilla's entrance in Birthright made me laugh so hard 🤣
@@PeruvianPotato Kagegurui started running 1st April 2017, Echoes was released 20th April a.k.a. style was long finalized before Kagegurui came out. Also, Kagegurui is a niche anime compared to 2017 SoA movie, AoT season 2 and others heavy hitters (notice I specifically mentioned more popular anime of its time that stylistically match other anime of their time), not to mention multiple devs supposedly personally liked Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash from 2016 which explains idea of painting-like style of the game. Go be stupid somewhere else.
@@mareczek00713 Alright so if we're applying big hitters of 2017 (even though you bring up 2016 anime) then surely you'd think it would have a similar artstyle to Re:Zero, Gintama or Black Clover? "Mentioned more popular anime of its time that stylistically match other anime of their time" Ah yes because Diamond is Unbreakable definitely had a similar art style to Seven Deadly Sins Season 2. If you STILL think all popular anime had a homogenous art style by 2016 and 17 then you clearly don't know much about anime in general. Also I'm gonna need a source for your last sentence because I couldn't find anything backing that up. Please grow up lmao
@@PeruvianPotato Tells me to grow up - pulls 2017 anime as style inspiration for 2017 game despite graphical style needing to be set up at least a year of two before game's release. Dude, you literally leave in fantasy land where games are made in a week, pretty much displaying that listening to you is a waste of time as there are no facts to base an opinion on in your head...
@@mareczek00713 Love how you just mindlessly insult like a child instead of actually refuting my argument. Always a good sign that someone ran out of actual arguments.
@@AtillaTheFun1337 it's not like I don't get that that's what he's saying, but that's how pretty much all anime transitioned over the years They were all somewhat grounded and practical, and eventually evolved to be much flashier over time
@@AtillaTheFun1337 and that also doesn't mean I like the new style, I'm just stating that it wasn't necessarily Fire Emblem that changed, but rather what became expected from the anime oriented art style by modern competitors
@@Cybersomnia One problem is that Shouzou Kaga the creator of Fire Emblem left Intelligent Systems years ago. To make matters worse most of the people that worked on FE Blazing Sword are also gone.
no bro ofc they were from back then so ofc they look like the same time period but these are all giant sparkle eyes neon hair which is not in the slightest way its old previous medivel color pallet back then
It saved it from irrelevancy or outright death but sadly had to sacrifice the series dignity to weeaboosim. Even the shift from awakening to its dlcs and fates is a massive leap. I mean did we really have to smash face first into camila's "personality" at the end of conquest? The problem isnt the games being anime, they always have been. The issue is that devolved from semi serious 80s, 90s style anime to big anime titty girl whose personality might as well just be for the rule 34 artists. Take Tharja's personality in awakening where she actually has an actual decent character in her supports and everything else afterwards kept flanderizing the yandere and "sexyness" parts of her design over everything else. I actually feel embarassed playing the games past base awakening in front of other people.
Honestly, this video made me unsub. I don't wanna be dramatic or negative or whatnot, but I just disagree with a lot of your points and videos that I've seen since I subscribed (I subbed because of haha funny MH videos). I played FE games since I was a kid, and it's one of my favorite franchises. The games have ALWAYS been "Anime". I never understood this obsession with making FE "Anime". Some, like the Tellius games, had a more raw and serious artstyle and story, which might have contributed to them being taken more seriously. Truth be told, the Tellius games are still and will most likely always be my favorites, but I don't get the "Shitting on Weaboos" part of the video. Or shitting on the "Making a game appeal to millions instead of thousands" tactic. Of course they're going to make it more appealing to more people. It's to sell better. If awakening hadn't happened, the franchise would be dead, and I SERIOUSLY would not want that. HOWEVER - That's all regarding the artstyle. If the dialogue ends up being ridiculously stupid and cheesy, then that's what I take issue with.
This video is cleary made by someone that would get embarassed if their friends found out he enjoys bright and colorful Japanese animation so he needs to make this shit ass video essay
Why were you subbed to this weeb in denial in the first place. His whole brand is screaming I am not a weeb while complaining that his japanese games are too japanese compared to his other japanese games that are just japanese enough to fit with his american sensibilities
Starting to get into fire emblem, and I can definitely see all your points. It's a shame to because I feel this Is happening for other fantasy styles games like this as well. It feels like games are just trying to give the consumer what they want rather than tell a story with meaningful and complex characters.
@@tpoboxer One problem is that Shouzou Kaga the creator of Fire Emblem left Intelligent Systems years ago. To make matters worse most of the people that worked on FE Blazing Sword are also gone. Without them, theirs nothing stoping the new staff from making a ton of changes.
As far as art style I love them both the older games are classic and have that old anime art style while the newer ones can be a bit more over the top. The only complaint I can see myself having with FE ENGAGE is the main character having red and blue hair mixed together with just throws me off even anime wise.
Well, according to the initial leaks, the blue and red hair are actually story relevant so there's that. It's important for a design to tell a story or say something about the character, so let's just wait for Engage's release and see how it goes.
@@CuteHimbo honestly not surprised they made it pretty obvious in the trailer unless you just weren’t paying attention or basic attention to detail and knowledge of troupes.
I’ve been talking about this with my FE loving friend. I started with 3H, and he pointed out to me, a Persona fan, about how he hates how Anime it’s becoming. It’s even taking shit from Persona, like the calendar system and social links. Now Engage has LITERAL PERSONAS lmao. He hates how weeb-y it’s becoming, even if we love Anime. I think it should stay more rugged, warrior looking, with a hint of anime instead of full blown. The character designs are just ridiculous. Even if I do like some.
That's so painfully true, they're taking away from Fire Emblem by shapeshifting the series into another, and I say this as a Persona fan. It was quirky when they added FE into TKS in the crossover, but now our characters aren't even characters anymore, they're literal personas. It doesn't help that the crests from Three Houses were based on the Arcana, and that you had so many allegories to the Arcana throughout that game. I really liked it, but I had just replayed P3P before 3H came out, and I asked multiple times while on my first blind run whether I was playing a Persona crossover again.
It's even more weeb than persona. At least persona managed to avoid the basic anime cliché characters that are scientifically engineered to sell body pillows
@@amuro9624 oh yeah, definitely. After beating the game, MY GOD. Apart from the gameplay itself which was extremely fun, awesome battle animations, everything else was so…cringe. The dialogue was just really bad, childish even. Story was garbage and barebones, characters were annoying or just not interesting enough, only a handful I actually liked (not counting the Emblems, cause they’re mainly all great), cutscenes though beautiful, were really awkward when you don’t see any of your units. It’s usually just Alear, maybe some other character, and the main bad guy at that certain arc. Where does everyone go during the cutscenes? Was it like this in 3H? And the normal cutscenes were worse and even more awkward. I found myself skipping cutscenes sometimes cause the cringe was too much or there was nothing interesting going on. Music was also very poor, only liked about 2-3 tracks. Games like a 7.5/10 overall, the combat pulls all the weight.
It's always been anime, but a different type of anime. OG FE was more Gundam since that was what series creator Kaga enjoyed and what was considered mainstream anime at the time with Marth essentially being fantasy Amuro and Camus being Char. FE didn't exactly change on a whim, what is considered mainstream anime changed and since the series has always aimed at middle schoolers who enjoy it in Japan they just followed suit. This reminds me a bit of how sone Mega Man fans hate Battle Network for being "too anime" when Classic and X are literally Astroboy mixed with Casshern and a dash of Super Sentai.
You wanna know the real tea? Fire Emblem designs used to look like anime one decade out of date. Until Awakening changed everything, using modern anime looks. That's why it was controversial. Fates made it worse by indulging in modern anime tropes as well, while Shadows of Valentia and Three Houses brought it back to older anime styles. (Complete with Three Hopes using a seriously 2003 design for the main character). And now, ENgage is back in full force using even brighter and shinier anime designs and tropes than ever before.
Aight. Guys. Weeb isnt just an art style. Its also the handling and the goals. The series went from solid but familiar stories to fates tier weeb writing with a focus on kid friendly edge and shipping. Three houses was a pleasant compromise for fans new and old which sure got forgotten fast with the latest game. Please highlight and take notes as needed.
The games I played as a kid are better than the games you played as a kid.
You should've been born better 🤷🏿♂
(also the exact timeline of events has been slightly altered for comedic effect)
You're too cute for words and your dancing is adorable.
This is literally the argument that Classic Spyro fans throw at Skylanders fans! And I know this because I’m a fan of the latter.
This is a really good video but tbh, your comment is the best thing I've seen on the internet this month.
That's what I think when you diss Mario Kart Wii
@@tirzahroseroot i haven't heard of Skylanders in a good decade, holy shit.
Im honestly VERY SAD about how poorly echoes performed because it was genuinely so well written and everything was just. So perfect.
The gameplay was kinda boring and already in thr end cycle of 3ds. Moreover, it just remake when people obviously hyped the new title over remake.
@renren5660 I can definitely agree that the gameplay wasn't innovative by nature! I did like the concept of the "free roam" dungeon especially with how it was utilized for the grima lore but it was mostly a slog. I still just really liked that old style nature of writing they did and wished they kept to it. New innovations with old story patterns basically would be nice imo
@@renren5660 its a remake of a game majority of people didnt play
it wasnt perfect at all
Spoilers for those who didn't play the game. Ok I'm going to be honest here: Is it really though? Cause I found Echoes' story to be stupid. Not Fates level of so stupid, but still stupid. I honestly thought Awakening had a better story than whatever Echoes was going for. Seriously, you go through the entire game being told that Alm was a nobody. A farmer of a popular warrior, but not a noble one. And we see Alm being told so many times that he's not fit to lead or that he can't be a strong person because he was born and raised as a nobody. And we see how it divides the other characters if they should stick to Alm or not because he's not noble. But he proves them all that no matter who you are, even if you aren't a noble, you can still be strong...
Until the last 30 minutes of the game where they revealed that Alm is Prince and that his dad was the King, and they seriously pulled a "I am your father" bs...
That is SO stupid and defeats the whole point of Alm's entire character!
Or how about the beginning of the game makes you think that Alm and Celica will fight in a tragic and sad way, giving us the impressions that they went from friends to enemies. Only to reveal that...Celica was just being mind controlled for like 5 minutes and there was NO build up to that fight 🤦♂. Like are you kidding me? Again, sure, Echoes' story is better than Fates...But that's not saying much. Echoes story is just plain bad.
I wish echoes didn’t sell bad because it is honestly one of my favorite games in the series (behind FE7)
FE2 has always been underrated, even back in the early 2000s people treated it as "the worst" just because it was very different. I find with a lot of those "2" games from back then, which they always made quite different from the originals, you should go in pretending it's not from the series it's named. Zelda 2 is an amazing game, if you don't go in expecting a Zelda 1 sequel. Yeah it sounds stupid and like I am making excuses, but you will get more enjoyment out of the game with that mindset. I went in to FE2 the same way and ended up liking it more than FE1 (keep in mind at the time there were only 6 games).
The curse of being released in the waning years of the 3DS lifespan, rip
I’m definitely part of the problem unfortunately. Despite wanting to play it, Ironically I didn’t even own a 3DS anymore because I sold it after awakening for quick cash going into college. And as a broke college student at the time I couldn’t rationalize spending money on a full priced game on a system I no longer owned just to support an old series I no longer had faith in. I think perhaps part of the problem is how many old school fans that would theoretically Support better games, don’t, because they no longer own 3DS’s and Switches? (I mean if tactics games are you thing there’s loads in the PC indie space) I’m even morbidly curious about Engage but probably will never play it because I’m not spending $300+ so I can play one game I don’t even have much faith in :(
I do wonder why they seem to have a habit of this.
Thracia 776, Radiant Dawn, Echoes
If I’m optimistic maybe they know these games wouldn’t sell as well at end of a console lifespan anyways so decided to make some games that appeal to the more hardcore audience.
If I’m pessimistic, Nintendo sees poor sales and goes “oh clearly it’s the games that are the problem and not the time of release or lack of marketing” 🤦♂️
I think it struggled bc it was on the 3DS post-Switch
Sometimes I like to imagine how different FE would've been if Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn sold well.
We would've gotten the third planned Tellius game for starters.
I think of this all the time. PoR and RD had such a great story premise without the weird dating sim aspect these recent games push.
Doubt it lol. We all know they been thinking about that dating simulation for a long time. I still favor FE1,3,11,12 lol xD the original and the remake lol
@@wakkaseta8351 there was a 3rd planned one? Omfg
If only 😔
I mean every Fire Emblem game has an anime aesthetic it's just that the "standard anime look" has changed over the years
Very true
engage weeb levels is really high gotta say, Citrinne looks nice though
That’s not a bad take at all. The character designs have only gotten more extreme with the times. I dig it.
Exactly FE was always "anime af".
But the look of anime changed through the ages and as a result in 2022... we now have vtubers in FE because of course we do.
While very true, FE has shown it can do anime without looking generic and cutesy. For example, the FE Echoes artstyle is still anime, but it is incredibly cool, sleek, and grounded.
That ending of "gameplay looks fine though" is the exact reason i bought this game, even after bashing pepsi hair
based
The protag looks more like if colgate have a crossover with Fire Emblem
Same. Bashed it when I saw the leaks and now I'm buying it day 1.
@@ferrihunter3749 That's why I call the protagonists Pepsi Man & Toothpaste-Chan respectively
Today we joke about pepsi hair. tommorow we wake up with pepsi hair
I'll always remember Fates for "Prince Ryoma will wait patiently for his revenge, but only for 25 turns" and the "dw guys it's actually not incest😍" letters they pulled out in the S supports. Iconic
And then the pairing the games pushed to be the alternative to the incest (corrin/Azura) ended up being the ACTUAL incest pairing lol.
Iirc, the “mother left me a scroll that says this actually isn’t incest” part of Fates was added during localization so Fates could keep its T rating in the west. In the Japanese version, the text is just “I don’t care if it’s forbidden, I love you anyways,” and you’re meant to believe that you have a happy inbred family until the big reveal later.
FE censors come out swinging every game fr.
@@innerbeast415 *bruh.*
Listen man I may want revenge, but I am also patient
And that's why you don't S rank with anyone who has royal/dragon blood in fates.
really liked 3houses story, if it was a bit more polished and with more direction, could be a top 5 switch game
Never forgetting my first playthrough
🔵🐺
And I'll never forget my first playthrough of ⚫🦅.
never forgetting my first playthrough either 🟡🦌
As infuriating as the discourse is from time to time, I think it's overall a positive. Not many games can provoke so much discussion.
🖤 🦅
I feel like if it had been given just a few more months of development it could have been in my top 5 favorite games in general but unfortunately it was rushed a bit to much (still think it's a great game though)
The designs are definitely pretty ridiculous in Engage, but I wouldn't say it was the death of strategy in the series or anything. The gameplay seems really good and even the ridiculous heroes summons seem kinda cool with how they work in combat.
FE fans imo tend to be over dramatic. But I don’t think the design or Mika’s art style was a good choice for an FE game. Really I’m just gonna play it for the gameplay.
the video literally says the gameplay looks fine at the end about Engage
I don't think anyone likes the MCs design. It looks ridiculous.
@@kylewood4488-b9r weirdly enough it’s actually grown on me. But it only looks good in Mika’s art style.
@@2265Hello Her designs are fine to great. 3D models just couldnt capture her art to the point the faces all became sameface in 3D when her designs arent
Till this day I still never understood the baby dimension thing in Fates. I was expecting the children to play alongside us like in Awakening, but got pretty confused when I had to...rescue and unlock my child?? Who thought sending them to an apocalypse dimension was a good idea?
Also your dancing is phenomenal. Death of spaghetti
Wasn't it basically just forcefully pushed into the game because the eugenics mechanic in Awakening was so popular?
@@shizachan8421yeah but tbh fates handled it much better. the child units in fates can actually keep up in a no grind run but in an awakening no grind almost all of the children turn out too weak to be usable by the time you recruit them, which is a massive shame because no grind is probably the most enjoyable way to play awakening.
I hate the baby time chambers too.
But they literally threw them there to keep them safe. Because even MyCastle just kept getting attacked and outside the realm Nohr and Hoshida is in a big war (And they're all people who fight in the frontline).
What I've realized is that fans want remakes... but that doesn't mean they'll buy said remakes!
Honestly some people will still complain that’s the new art style is killing the game and further proof that FE is dying.
FE4 remaster is coming soon
@@therealjaystone2344 alternatively they could just sell the old games on the e shop oh wait they won’t because of some weird stupid policy. Well I’ll just settle for remakes cause I ain’t got that much time to figure out emulating.
@@2265Hello Unlike Super Mario Bros. 2/Lost Levels, localizing the older FE games for an e-shop release would be a lot of effort, so of course they won't do that. I'm still completely shocked that they did it with FE1.
@@DrewPicklesTheDark or they want to squeeze out more bucks with some remakes. Which is fine if they only update graphics and add some QoL features and keep the gameplay the same.
"Gameplay looks fine, I'll take 10 copies"
Yeah that sums up Engage pretty well. I was pretty lukewarm on it during the initial reveal and I'm not sold on the art style and vibe yet but the map design and gameplay elements look pretty fun so I'm on board.
death of strategy
You know , I never really liked Edelgard for plunging Fodland to a world War but I probably would do the same if I knew that Toothpaste crest mcs were the future.
The last shred of hope was stepped on and vanished when Edelgard's emblem arrived in this privilege-festered land, and instead of telling us to f*ck off, she happily offered her assistance. I mean, I didn't condone her actions either, but really girl? You're going to help _these_ new brand of Seiros, specifically?
>world war
How can it be a world war ? By your logic the warring states period in Japan is a world war too because they didn't have contact with people off their island
@@joshuabrant3487its not a world war, but it is a continent wide war like the 30 years war.
@@bleyded The REAL Edelgard would walk up to Lumera and punch her in the face
@@theunknown_watcherSO TRUE
You know, awakening, for a game that’s supposed to have a lower barrier of entry for new players, that game is definitely a lunatic+ moment.
Lunatic + is unbalanced. Beating it is not hard, just tedious. Skills being basically "overpower this with your OP characters" on lunatic +.
I mean when most people talk about the difficulty of a game they are usually referring to normal mode. The whole "sadistically unfair and overtuned" difficulty modes didn't really start until Shadow Dragon. This is probably why people say "FE5 is one of the hardest!" it's because FE5's _normal_ difficulty is a step up from most games. All that said, I still think FE7 is the best introduction game to the series, which is no doubt what Nintendo had in mind when they made it.
Even without DLC it's not that hard to beat, just tedious due to the RNG.
Literally the optimal strategy is feed everything to Robin and their child and let them solo the game
@@DrewPicklesTheDark Well that’s because Fe5’s Normal mode was miswritten. FE5’s difficulty modes list as “Easy, Normal, Hard”
Where it should be “Normal, Hard, Lunatic”
So FE5’s normal is just the hard mode of every other game.
@@thelostician You are thinking of FE10 (Radiant Dawn). FE5 (Thracia 776) didn't have a difficulty setting, though you could input some button commands to make an "elite mode" which gave all your characters an in-built paragon skill (paragon was called elite in the Japanese games).
The first game in the series is a blue haired anime boy and his blue haired anime girlfriend stopping people with the power of friendship and love
No f*cking way!!1!
That’s Hero King Marth and the Pegasus Knight Caeda.
Until their Descendant Lucina continued where their legacy left off.
Does Caeda forcefully coercing a bunch of enemies into joining the army really count as "friendship", though?
@@XellosNi Of course it does, what else could it be
At the time I decided to check Fire Emblem out, Fates was the hot upcoming game, so it became my entrypoint to the series. To this day I'm still very attached to it.
That being said the writing is ABSOLUTELY ASS, like all three routes' stories are abysmal. But the gameplay was really fun, some of the support convos were fantastic, and I love the Nohr cast especially. They're idiots, but they're MY little idiots your honour.
I think one of their biggest issues was locking the prequel storyline behind DLC (the one with Laslow, odin and severa.) It honeslty explains a lot of the plotholes in the story and kind of adds a lot more depth to Anakos
Fr
my friend gave me blazing blade in jr high. and i played that game so many times i cant even count. and story wise i still think its the best. let alone the gba games graphicaly looked so much better.
@@SilentMeteorite Fates had a very troubled development. Lets just say the writing a story for all three campaigns was alot harder than Intelligent Systems thought!!
Yeah the gacha game is just...
Having played quite a few gacha's as a teen, its one of the more tolerable ones as its still pretty fun without spending money (I've been playing since 2018 without spending a cent), but you were actually being pretty kind in the powercreep aspect. There are FAR more agregious weapons
The fact that he used two DC weapons as a reference is fucking hilarious considering how much IS overvalues DC as a skill in the first place compared to everything else.
@@filipearaujo9981 very true, Dmitri is one of like, 3 units with actually good DC prfs
Gacha games: *Not even **_once._*
We kinda went over 6 books so far after events of Dragalia Lost and Codename S.T.E.A.M.
Veronica is now finally friends with Alfonse.
I mean, I know the Warriors game were a "death of strategy" to FE but Three Hopes isn't that bad 😅
Shez is a wonderful protagonist
I really enjoyed it, but he's spot on about the unsolved mysteries though (Shez/Arval) 😅
@@nuibaba280 Real talk, Shez is the closest we got to Ike in terms of protagonists. The uncouth mercenary kind who's not particularly smart but has a good heart. I dig that.
@@YuryVVV Based, one of the best protags in FE. Just held back because of 3 Hopes... Sad.
Yeah it kind of made me reexperience my first FE3h play through all over again, the additional lore was nice and the remixes of the ost were cool, (best of all, byleth is barely in the story!) so it wasn’t a very polished or innovative game but definitely a pleasant experience.
Yeah… this video spoke to me on a spiritual level. Know you said not to take it seriously but this is pretty much how I feel about the series. Three Houses really surprised me and gave me hope. It’s a super mixed bag but it had a ton of effort and actually tried to present the horrors of war in a nuanced way. Then Engage was released. Oh well.
After SoV and 3H were headed in a direction more focused on world building and politics it's a shame to see engage go straight back to Awakening/Fates style storytelling. At least there's potentially an FE4 remake to look forward to.
SoV's story is shit, Awakening's is objectively better, and if you disagree, you are just proving yourself as a biased elitist.
please god i want a fe4 remake so bad
@@WiiSportsRemoteWe all do, but I swear on all things holy, if they insert an OC or an Avatar and ruins the tragedy of the original story, I will be so sad
@@Winter_Symphonyfor what it's worth i don't think they will. FE4 is too story focused to be played with and they advertised Sigurd through Engage so he's ought to be the main face of the remake as well
@@clementrasset4477they almost did with echoes, but dialed back since it would've been impossible since the whole two routes thing (although you can say Faye's...worship of Alm is a remnant of this)
With genealogy, im pretty certain they're going to add one. Its the OG "anime dating sim chess" game of the series, they definitely will find a way if they already tried to with gaiden. The problem is that the amount of plot contrivances I fear it will bring considering how the avatar will interact with the SPOILER and then how each mother and her two children have pretty set in stone stories so its going to jarring for the avatar's kids being tacked on too with specific pairs.
Lol the part about people playing the same route in Three Houses over and over killed me cause of how accurate it is.
They did?
@@AkameGaKillfan777a lot of people do xd and then they will argue for hours on social media about their house leader being the best and yati yata and i'm like "bro you didn't even finish the game"
The worst case is when people only play crimson flowers
@@clementrasset4477 Where's your proof?
@@clementrasset4477 In all fairness, I'm just impressed anyone subjected themselves to finishing a single path. I would sooner self delete than run around the monastery one more time, or have another tea party, or play another incredibly straightforward and bland combat scenario. Felt like I was spending more time running around the monastery than engaging in the story and playing the battles combined, and the battles in that entry aren't even fun.
@@clementrasset4477 Edelgard stans are the worst. Crimson Flowers and its consequences have been a disaster for Fire Emblem discourse.
I really feel like Engage is a step back from Three Houses.
Where three houses comes out swinging with enchanting mystery and believable characters, for the first few HOURS of engage you either have *OHMYGOSHISTHATDIVINEDRAGONALEAROHMYGOD* or comically evil.
Its honestly been really hard to play engage for me because while yeah, the gameplay is nice, the story really hasn't brought me in.
Really? I felt like engage closer to a normal fire emblem game. Three houses for me was pretty polarizing because it made the game a lot more appealing to casual fanbases. Still, the old fire emblem players sort of hated the Monastery exploration part of the game even if I loved it. Engage sort of brought back the old playstyle of the fire emblem games even if the story is the weakest in my opinion. The best part of three houses was the removal of the kids and marriage system which I despised.
Yeah the writing really is a major step back and I f*cking hate how people are saying that its "good that they're returning to form." Engage isn't a return to classic FE, it's a return to 3DS FE. The FE era that I hate the most. Part of the reason why I love Three Houses so much is that it ditched most of the stuff that the 3DS games did: bland/bad story, forgettable characters, the dating sim aspects among other things. While Engage didn't bring back the dating stuff, the story is boring and almost every character than isn't a royal is forgettable.
@@hyperm8 When people say "returning to form", people are referring to the gameplay mainly. A lot of the old fans didn't like the gameplay for three houses and found the lack of weapon triangles and poorly designed maps and poorly designed maddening mode. Three houses made fire emblem appeal to a wider audience but was the most polarizing release for fire emblem fans despite the amazing story. The gameplay and feel of the game for engage feels solid.
Storywise, it's probably up to preference. Some people love the story for the 3ds titles but some think it's god awful. Path of Radiance would be the type of story we would all love to have but it's not as appealing to the masses like Three Houses. I think the perfect in-between would be to have a story like Fire Emblem Shadows of Valentia or Binding Blade
@@kevinnguyen8631 I remember the opposite. Many people upon hearing the Weapon Triangle being gone in 3 Houses were going: "Oh well, it was never that big of a mechanic anyway." Despite the fact that one complaint I ALWAYS hear about RD is it's removed on the highest difficulty, and how in Fates it played a noticeable role in damage, hit, and avoid rates, especially with dual weapons.
Engage is a fun game, but it makes no sense. It's all the way back to black & white good & evil distinction that makes no sense at all. The world building sucks or is nonexistent and the characters are paper thin with no motivations or personal relationships or goals in their life. It's a step back alright. The game looks and plays well though and I enjoyed it for what it was, but I can't even take a discussion where someone tries to compare the two seriously.
I’m guessing it changed mainly to appeal to wider audiences. Before Awakening it was a relatively niche series with Smash being the main thing that brought its popularity up in the west. When they started getting more “weeb-like” it became much more popular. While I do like the style of the older games, I’m just glad that it’s getting more attention nowadays. I would LOVE a remake of Geneology of the Holy War though.
Jokes on you, FE was always "weeb", it's only following what's currently trending in Japan when it comes to anime.
@@CuteHimbo this ^^
Line up past FE games with anine from the same time period and you will see the similarities
It didn’t change. FE has always been weeby.
Trends simply change as do character designs over time.
Awakening didn’t sell better because of any changes, it sold better because it was actually marketed unlike previous games. Plus it had some nice character designs unlike some of the previous games with radioactive-green hair.
@@Melkac I agree.
@@Melkac The dating sim side mechanic was definitely a change, taking it a step further with the coomer-bait skinship mechanic of FE fates. I know Awakening was the first to get any actual widespread marketing but you can’t say that nothing has changed. Characters look way more marketable now obviously.
10:05 Be honest. If this was the only leak image we got, then we 100% would think it was more Genshin Impact content instead of an actual Fire Emblem.
It's in the way I originally thought they were releasing Genshin Impact on the switch when I first saw the first leak. I couldn't have for the life of me linked it to FE without context or description, and not having played Genshin past the early chapters, it seemed completely in the cards for what I envisioned a Genshin switch sequel/port to look like.
I could easily detect if its a Genshin one or not though. The grass is too dim.
@@pauloazuela8488 Also the only buff characters and characters with facial hair are NPCs and he's not too generic looking to fit in with them (Referring to the third character)
Dude, what are you on? Genshin may have it's lows but character design wise it's pretty up there and it has to be since that's what they sell you and where they get money from. Engage character design is just shitty beyond any other anime game I've seen so far.
Genshin has much better and appealing character designs though
I'm surprised Radiant Dawn didn't sell more copies, that was my favorite game back then!
Glad that Micaiah’s Radiant Dawn Brigade crew moved to Askr instead.
Fricken hard on higher difficulties but gold
Probably because the character who's supposed to be the "lord" of the game isn't playable for like 75% of the game, and the game spends more time with the previous protag than the new one. Oh, and the save transfer system would glitch and break if you used original model Wiis. Believe me, it took Micaiah fucking years to finally live down the Mary Sue accusations and to get actual character development, because the game she's supposedly the lord for spends more time with other characters.
All in all, there's a lot of reason why Radiant Dawn didn't sell well lol.
@@Aleph3575 exactly. Awakening, Echoes, Three Houses and Engage are all way better designed games than RD, PoR, no hate intended, but I mean that's exactly what this video is full of. Hate, and bitter saltiness by some culturally ignorant f-boi who doesn't understand Japan or Japanese media and that the games he loved playing as a kid are from the country he's trying to shit-talk lmao
It came out the same day as motherfucking Mario Galaxy, that was literally just suicide for the franchise, what the hell was Nintendo thinking
So sad that Sov sold so poorly it was so good
It didn’t. It sold 750k copies.
It just didn’t sell as well as Fates and Awakening.
I'm sure they knew it was going to be the niche one of the 3DS games; they released it right before the Switch so everyone was saving their money for that.
Yeah, the only 3ds game that I liked too. But the gameplay definitely wasn't a strong point for Echoes.
I really want a FE7 remake, but I am kinda worried what they would be doing to Lyn.
We won’t see a FE7 remaster for a long time and what’ll do to Lyn to screw it up just to appeal to the modern audience
@@therealjaystone2344 since when does Nintendo appeal to the modern audience?
@@marthaawah8948 not now but sooner once Japan is bowing to the west
@@therealjaystone2344what would she look like if Nintendo tries to appeal to western audiences
@@phor8567 hint: like a man
i loved the “what the fuck” section, that was great
death of strategy
I'm also buying engage for the gameplay mostly, but I genuinely think that most of the character designs look fine. some are definitely a little goofy, and some are... really goofy but a lot of the playable characters they've shown look fine imo. also I still have faith that they're gonna remake genealogy, especially with how much they showed off Sigurd in the initial engage trailers. if both fe4 and fe5 get remade on the switch it will be de facto the best console. death of strategy
(edit: hopefully the fe4 and 5 remakes will/would be separate games, remaking them together isn't a great idea)
If I remember correctly, the artist/character designer only made designs for VTubers prior to working on Engage, hence why the main character has toothpaste colored hair. I don't know the source of this nor can I confirm its validity, so take it with a grain of salt.
@@leomassafm160 no, mika pkazo is a professional illustrator and character design that has unique traits by using bright pop out color but coordinated well. And yes she designed one of hololive ( a massive vtuber company) one of their member design. So she is also technically vtuber artist
I'm also rooting for Genealogy of the Holy War, Dark edition, literally the same dark story in plain sight, they better make that game Rated A.
@@leomassafm160 the topthpaste hair is intentonal not accidently since it will be part of the story not because the artist was a vtuber prior to engage Trust me artists like that have a lot of experience which can be seen in their portfolio which they usually show big game companies and if she was only a vtube artist they wouldn't have hired her.Her designs are superb
@@guinnmyahslaysstaymad that's literally what I just said
My two problems is first the idk how to exactly describe it……bubbly I think? art style. It’s personal taste I will admit but the other thing is well how hard it is to realize the characters actually have some dimension to them. One of the best example is the character of Alfred. Alfred comes across as well…..exactly what you would expect of the crown prince of the peaceful flower kingdom whose only thing of note is their love of peace and their tea. He is soft but still wants to defend his kingdom. And if you don’t go out of your way that is all he will ever be….hell the game incentivizes benching him due to his bad growth rates and he is overshadowed by the likes of diamant as soon as he joins your party. And then if you are dumb enough to field Alfred to the point he starts having many supports it starts painting a better picture of the character. First is he recognizes he is physically weak and tries to study someone like boucefont to learn how to get strong….ok self aware neat…..then we get a support with his sister where it’s revealed how he rushes out at every opportunity to help with any project the people around him have (granted the English localization plays this up for laugh that all of his attempts at helping is just him digging holes). And then we get a support between his sister and Alcryst where they talk about the fears they have of loosing their siblings and having to take over the throne. On this conversation She mentions how Alfred was born with chronic sickness and was constantly getting sick throughout his childhood and it was a constant fear of him dying. He has been healthy since but he has not grown as strong as other boys because of it……ok that puts things in perspective for Alfred…….and the final kicker is Celine’s ending that mentions how his sickness came back cutting Alfred’s reign short forcing her to become queen…….
Ok wow suddenly Alfred has much more dimension to his character. Instead of being the soft prince of flower land he is someone who had struggled with debilitating sickness throughout his life, who tried his best for his people despite this disease and sought out ways to improve his physical deficiencies, and while his rule was beloved all he could do was make the most of the little time he had and spent it on his people……suddenly Alfred became a much better character
………my problem is just HOW HARD IT IS TO FIGURE OUT HE IS A HALFWAY DECENTLY WRITTEN CHARACTER you need to first not bench him (which the game kind of discourage by making his growths shit) support him with at least 2 characters and have 2 OTHER characters support each. Then keep him and ANOTHER character alive thru the game to realize “wait Alfred has some character”
I get that with a game with unit permadeath you have to write the story in a way that allows people to be dead…..but Alfred is one of the characters who if he “dies” on classic due to how plot signficant he is. Instead of dying he retreats from the battlefield with an injury that prevents him from fighting on the battlefield anymore……with the built in plot armor on him you can afford to write in his character into the story
You took the thoughts right out of my brain and put them in writing.
Thank you for bringing up Alfred! He is a fairly interesting character that suffers from this artstyle as well as the forced infantilization now strong in the FE series, which unfortunately isn't exclusive to Alfred. I nearly let Chloe kick the bucket after an irritating map where I couldn't be bothered to reset anymore, and luckily for Chloe, I decided to put my switch down for the day so that I might redo the map another time with a better mindset. Cue her support with Louis where she _finally_ displayed an ounce of self-awareness, impressive insight and understanding. Louis was one of the characters I actually liked and invested in earlier, so Chloe benefitted by being his retainer buddy, but I don't think I would have otherwise cared to look deeper.
This kept happening across the board for the early cast, particularly the girls. Don't even get me started on Framme, I struggled not to kill her on purpose, and Yunaka didn't get much screen time either. Haven't touched Anna, she's a literal child. Hortensia still irks me, and I can barely take Timerra seriously. It's not that the male cast suffers less from the bubbly filter, it's that once you get down to at least one or two of their immediate supports, their personality usually shines through, whatever personality they might have. You're encouraged to at least grind up most of the guys and their supports out of curiosity for brand new characters, whereas with the girls it's almost as if half got intentionally written to be grating and obnoxious, so naturally you're less inclined to invest in them unless you're a sucker for five childlike waifus (and counting).
Basically the cast improved the farther we got from the beginning bar for a few exceptions, so it's no wonder the starter crew lagged behind. Just like you said, I wound up benching people temporarily as soon as the Brodia gang joined, even poor Etie got benched for Alcryst, and I'm now grinding everybody from Firene and Lythos to an acceptable level so that they can promote and get better level gains soon enough. It's baffling how some of these characters require you to go on a journey to find something to care about them. I thought we were moving away from bland characters, but I was clearly wrong. If nothing else, I'm quite happy that Panette is both extremely enjoyable _and_ a powerhouse with Ike.
By the way, that's another thing. After the Fell Dragon stand-off where we get our rings snatched, we're fresh out of Emblems. We're given Lucina and Lyn, and unless we grinded everyone up to bond level 5 with Tiki and El/Dimi/Claude prior, we're given a pretty strong incentive to go for the solid characters with the better skills and good growths. I don't even know Jean's purpose in my roster anymore, and the lil' guy is supposed to be the prodigy! He's lost in a sea of units I tried to train simultaneously while on a blind, Hard, and Classic run. Definitely my mistake. Clanne's sadly been outshined by Citrinne and Ivy, even though I kinda liked him to begin with.
On another note, Celine is also surprisingly interesting, but boy did it take me some time to dig that up! She reminded me a little bit of Flayn with her mannerisms, mature mentality and overall approach to things from the jump. The Genshin design somehow didn't hinder her character for me, although you do have to grind her up a bit to get past the surface level talk of tea and flowers, which tied in rather nicely with her retainers. Those two are enamoured with an idealistic life, so they take comfort in picturesque things and the glorified happiness of others, but the important thing to remember is that both Louis and Chloe find other people's lives and behaviour fascinating because they're always adding layers of narrative on top to compensate for the mundane.
Celine brings up seemingly tedious and trivial stuff again and again because she _knows_ and wants them to find comfort in experiencing every day to day joys. She wants to create a peaceful environment that's happy and joyful within the realm of possibility, letting others know they're a part of a narrative that's _good enough_ to be happy about. Her whole thing with peace took a while to set in for me, but it's actually amazing once you digest the information. It could be the translation team taking liberties that kind of over simplifies it, as with the digging for Alfred, hence you having to look for the meaning behind their words and actions. . which you really shouldn't have to. . not every single time.
Anyway, I found her refreshing. She's not shy about telling Louis that he shouldn't risk his safety to provide extravagant joy, and that having everyone by her side is something she doesn't take for granted, but reminds everyone it's what matters at the end of the day: the simple, trivial little chats over tea where everyone's alive and not fighting for their necks, or their nations and their people. I still haven't gotten Celine's A support with Chloe, but judging from how it's been going so far, I take it she will try to similarly ground Chloe to reality while reassuring her that their lives can be perfectly fine without all that fanfare. Celine's so poised and proper that it's hard to get under her behemoth shell of a skirt, but she's great.
EDIT: Oh, and the support you mentioned where she basically trauma bonds with Alcryst? I think that's what cemented the Flayn vibe for me. It reminded me of Flayn's support with Dimitri where they both confess to the reasons behind their insomnia, and I thought that was a pretty cool throwback. Speaking of Dimitri, the trailers for Engage had me questioning Alfred's design a little, but now I can scarcely link the two together apart from the hair. Alfred's honestly just as refreshing as his sister, and it would've been nice if he had been developed beyond the characterisation sprinkled in between the main story and supports.
There's a limit to how much characters can do or even grow in Engage, which disappointed me. I mean, Alcryst immediately gets over his father's asinine death in his C support with Ivy after she says she's sorry, despite how adamant he was about his grudge against her and Hortensia. I was thrown aback because there seemed to be a good chunk of development waiting to happen. . only for it to fall flat.
Alcryst starts off as the first person who tells you it's _okay_ for Elusians to believe in what they believe. He has some reservations about them because of the fricking Fell Dragon worship, a real deity who's wrought chaos, war, and destruction, but he's never cruel or judgmental, and far be it from Alcryst to judge anybody.
Then Elusia launches a full on assault on his country where Hyacinth snipes the king after losing to him in combat, which is a complete dishonour by Brodian customs, and they haul ass with his father's corpse back home. As if that wasn't bad enough, they do this so that the Fell Dragon can _drink_ the king's blood before reanimating the poor guy into a Corrupted. Talk about disrespect.
Alcryst is visibly f*cked by the events, and although Diamant can rationalize the Elusian princesses collusion to appease their father, Alcryst can't tolerate having them in the Divine Dragon's army and voices this very emotionally. I was super interested to see how the circumstances might change Alcryst's beliefs and stance on Elusia, how his character would be handled in order for him to overcome those burdens and inherent bias later on. Well, somebody made the call to scrap the logical turn of events because they figured it was convincing to have Alcryst forget about everything after one apology from Ivy.
I wish we didn't have to mine for substance in characters, and that by the time we found a speck or two, it wasn't overshadowed by an extreme, constant character trope. . or worse still voice acting that had me borderline missing Lorenz of all people. If they wanted a light-hearted and plotless gathering of bubbly characters, they should've just made another love live entry. This stings.
The game has a "replaceability" problem with the characters. You have no reason to keep using characters you get at the beginning of the game due to limited deployment slots and strictly better units being recruited. Why would I ever use Clanne when I get Celinne literally 3 chapters after him and she's just better than him in practically every way AND she comes with an Emblem practically made for her? Then, just as you get used to Celinne, BAM you get Citrinne who is just better. Boucheron? lmao Bencheron is more like it. Pretty much the only early game unit that doesn't require significant investment to not get completely outclassed the minute you get someone of a similar class is Louis and even then he starts to fall off when Jade shows up, who can also be replaced by the defense oriented Timerra when you get her. Why bother with Lapis when you get Diamant and Kagetsu within 3 chapters of recruiting her?
So yeah you have all these neat backstory things revealed in supports, but this game is one of the hardest to grind supports in (made a bit easier by the new patch but I think you need DLC for it) AND its just not worth it when you're probably just gonna be replacing each character with someone else unless you grind the shit out of them.
Oh my gosh, wait so Alfred’s supports with Celine are different in the Japanese version??? I remember her checking up on him and him digging holes, and she was like wtf? I’m baffled that the localization would recontextualize what was going on 😭
He is my favorite out of everyone in Engage tbh. I used him on Maddening and his Defense stat becomes so big by the end of the game. He can hold himself down very well, way better than Diamant tbh.
Also this game is so much harder to get supports in than in 3 Houses. All those monastery activities really helped, and people just had to be in range to attack a person to get support points (I believe) whereas in Engage they need to be RIGHT next to each other. And Engage isn’t like 3H where there’s a big replay factor. Getting some of these better supports takes FOREVER, and some people just don’t care enough to play the game that long.
@@bleyded I recommend Unicorn Overlord, its strategy RPG published by Sega.
I love how you went on a whole "death of strategy" and "Fire Emblem as we know it" tangent and then ended the video with the "I'll take 10" 🤣
Tokyo Mirage Sessions was honestly quite fun. The gameplay got pretty involved and punishing, and the characters were pretty endearing the more you get to know them. Touma with his side stories especially.
Yeah TMS is lowkey one of the best entry level RPGs. It's not super serious but not terrible and the sessions really make you feel like you're strategizing. It's honestly pretty good.
And you can attribute that to Atlus being the kings of turn based RPG design.
The protag sucks but rest is fine. Bought it when it released and was okayed by it.
I’m 7 years old and this is deep
I had to bend over backwards trying to get my hands on the uncensored version, but other than that TMS is a fantastic game that deserves more visibility
the genshin impact part looked so belivable. oh my gahh
If it sells, the companies will produce more.
Can't really blame the companies for it, since it is the majority of the playerbase's "taste" that has lead FE to go this direction. If anyone's got fingers to point, it is ourselves for not buying enough copies of the non-weeb FE games.
Hey, don't lump me in with all you, I didn't buy em. /hj
Seriously though, I left the series almost a decade ago now, and haven't bought a single game since. Makes me rather sad; Fire Emblem was previously one of my favorite game series.
Well to be fair, Three Houses has sold 4.12 million copies as of now, so it’s the best selling Fire Emblem game by a good margin. If anything, the execs at Nintendo/Intelligent Systems might be pushing the devs to make another game maybe not EXACTLY like it, but similar. Guess we’ll have to see what the next mainline FE title looks like.
@@dianaburn2474 I recommend Unicorn Overlord, its strategy RPG published by Sega.
I have two nitpicks but otherwise this was a fun lighthearted retrospective.
One, yeah this wasn't meant to be too serious but the series has always been anime, anime just changed! Kaga was a big fan of what's now "older" anime (gundam being one, Legend Of The Galactic Heroes being the other that he loved so much he would later make an entire game based on how much he loved it, Berwick Saga) and that shit was super anime!
Second, Sacred stones is just gaiden 2! I'm aware of the death of strategy there, but sometimes you just wanna see number go up.
Yeah. Having overpowered units kill everything in 1 hit is good, actually, at least for some of us. I’m dumb af so if I can circumvent my lack of strategy with big number, I’m satisfied.
Just play on lunatic I guess (or don’t grind).
@@Melkac the "death of strategy" comment wasn't me slagging off on sacred stones, it was referencing the end of video words to comment. SS is an easy game, but that's okay! Not everything has to be Lunatic Reverse or CQ Lunatic or Thracia, sometimes you want your Gaidens, Genealogies, or your Sacred Stones, 'coz it feels nice to be strong and wing things.
Funny that you mention Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Three Houses may as well be based on it (one of the devs straight up said they based Claude on Wen-li), Edelgard is basically "Female Reinhardt with all the settings turned up to 11".
Ike from the Radiant games was heavily influenced by Guts from Berserk.
Radiant Dawn/Dawn of Radiance will always have peak character design. It just looks fantastic.
Agreed
The design is nice but the art isn't fantastic though, just better than everything that came later
How is that 2000's-how-to-draw-anime-tutorial artstyle is peak?
Any other FE has better artstyle than that lmao (even the first because how goofy they are)
@@jefinathariwirza6578 odd opinion, Tellius had great characters in personality and design. I'd say it was peak of the series.
@@jefinathariwirza6578 80's and early 90's art styles were the best imo. They've gotten significantly worse over the years. Now everything looks plastic and overly cutesy.
People are saying that FE always was anime and that the look just changed over time with it. True, but that doesnt mean we cant criticize awful design. Just pointing at other currently bad design philosophies is not a valid excuse in my eyes. If something looks like shit, it looks like shit
I feel that way about anime art in general honestly. I loved the gritty semi-realistic look of a lot of 80's and early 90's anime, not the cutesy, bubbly plastic look of a lot of modern stuff.
@@nightmarishcompositions4536 It's been said that the reason Shouzou Kaga left Intelligent Systems is because he hates the idea of FireEmblem being in 3d. When I saw the Graphics of Three Houses and the Art style of Engaged I have to say, (He was RIGHT).
The good news is that there are other Strategy games to chose from thanks to third parties. Valkyria Chronicles 4, Triangle Strategy, Wargroove, Live a live, Tactics Ogre Reborn, and Front Mission.
Looks like shit... to you.
@@nightmarishcompositions4536 That older style anime was a lot closer to the western 80's an 90's action cartoons (which also had much better intro themes than more modern series). And anime was originally derived from western animation styles, both that kind and Disney styles.
especially since it's not like there aren't good designed anime aesthetics out there.
Feels like FE fans are very scared to discuss this topic 😂 It’s cool to finally see a video on it
Really vibe with the experimentation in topics recently! Love you Captain!💙
What are you talking about? The artstyle of this game has been a major point of contention since day one.
@@-lord1754 but he is right. There’s a lot of people who have gaslight themselves into thinking it has good art or that Mika is a good artist (she’s not)
@@paladinslash4721 She is a good artist, cope further.
Although I do think that they didn't do a great job of turning Pikazo's art into ingame models.
@@skeletonwar4445 Case in point.
The paper thin personalities and similar character archetypes are a critical aspect of the design that they tried to fix not realizing it impacts the weight of the combat.
It's sad that they apparently tried to fix something they so blatantly failed at. If I have to look at the Solmian nobility again, I might ask for a refund.
@@bleyded I recommend Unicorn Overlord, its strategy RPG published by Sega.
"Modern JRPGs are social experiments to see how much players can gaslight into thinking that these stupid ass designs look cool and normal."
Truer words have never been spoken.
daymmm
i personaly love how the desins look
@@konstantinos-iliasstrempas4594 you have bad taste
@@Molten2004 i hink i have a good taste and also i think its realy sad for you old fans to hate the art of anime if this series had failed we anime fans would move o ather anime like strategy games the olmy loss in this situation is you old fans
@@konstantinos-iliasstrempas4594 Nah. You have bad taste.
Way back in high school I beat both Blazing Blade and Sacred Stones. Hard but definitely doable. I attempt to return to the series years later and I am just like wtf happened?
I think a HUGE issue is when the weebification affects the writing. Old Fire Emblem (FE1/FE3, Judgral, and Tellius) had complex human relationships in tragic war stories in similar vain to Gundam and Legend of the Galactic Heroes (which Kaga was inspired by heavily along with military history when writing his games). That worldbuilding and character is gone from modern where it's now a single character trait being characters' entire character and their "development" being thrown into hamfisted support conversations about literally nothing. In an interview about Berwick Saga, Kaga had no clue what a tsundere was. There's no world building either. Awakening had the biggest chance to add even more to Akaneia and Judgral (which both had HUGE worldbuilding from Japanese supplementary material) and absolutely NONE of the loose ends in those games were tied.
Nice video, you're very funny and charismatic. I'm subscribing.
Agree. The most "anime" things I can think of in the interim between Kaga leaving, but before Awakening is me grasping for straws. I can only really think of like...Saul from binding blade who's contrasted by the rest of the cast being...incredibly grounded and diverse (Niime I'd the only playable old woman in the series), Neimi/Colm's "relationship" (which is just oozing with red flags) and I guess a couple of things I might be misremembering Lyre says in RD which I just go "yes, we get it, she's a catgirl" and even then Lethe is treated with respect and not reduced to just catgirl tropes.
Shadow Dragon sacrificed support conversations, but gave us some strong character writing for Marth.
Outlier might be self-inserts. Thankfully you can remove Mark from the story so you don't get those random moments where characters turn to the camera to acknowledge your presence and then promptly ignore you. New Mystery is when the writing was beginning to be written on the walls. Kris has a normal backstory and earns his way to being Marth's bodyguard yes...but then they exaggerate just how...much Kris means to Marth's war effort that he ask Marth to rewrite his feats as Marth's own, Elice says something about Marth being weakminded, Kris takes a lot of lines from characters in FE3 (granted he's also used as the person people exposition too as well). Then you have the (honestly can I call this an archetype?) resident self-insert worshipper character in Katarina (its a little underbaked compared to the likes of Tharja, Camilla, Ivy/Framme and Edelgard in routes that aren't hers Edelgard pls why are you saying you wished you got to walk with Byleth in the Golden deer route).
Idk, I just don't like when games go all self-insert gratification especially because it comes at the expense of writing. Why does Byleth pull Dimitri out of some of his funk when three of his childhood friends and three of his retainers are all right there. Why does Edelgard have to wait for you to return for her plans to work? Just bugs me.
>In an interview about Berwick Saga, Kaga had no idea what a tsundere is
I don't know why I found this so funny
... you have put in video form what I have been saying for years. YEARS.
Although, TBH, I feel like the downfall of traditional FE started with Radiant Dawn (what are meaningful support convos?) and Shadow Dragon (lol, let's class swap everyone!!). Granted, I'm an old fogey who's been in this fandom for far too long. You either leave a fandom with good memories or you stay long enough to watch it completely transform. Even so... I'll still have fond memories of this fandom and how it was pre-Awakening, and it was a fandom I called home as a fanfiction writer. (I need to get around to finishing that sixteen year old fic, though. Even if it has no more readers, lol.)
Honestly, I don't even mind the newer games. I just have to approach it like it is its own identity and not as a "Fire Emblem" game. It's no different than seeing Resident Evil 4 take the series from "horror survival/resource management" to "action adventure". Hell, I haven't played a Final Fantasy since IX, because I don't really like JRPGs that aren't turn-based/ATB (outside of the Tales series). Sure, you miss the memories of how it used to be, but that's why there are people out there who will make new indie games that cater to that aesthetic and old-school vibe. It's time for us old school old guard folks to take a step back and let the new generation come in and enjoy that which we've built. We've got the EXP. We've classed up. If we miss the old-school FE that much, let's work together to make one ourselves!
I will die on the hill that the "too many swords" argument is stupid. The main two justification is that it makes the characters too similar to each other, but much like the series they come from, the power distribution can make a world of difference. Then there's the people that unironically try to say say that Robin, Corrin and Byleth don't do enough to be different from the rest. You know, aside from having completely different movesets that make them "similar" in the most superficial of ways, like the stance.
Honestly, I don't care if there's many swordfighters, I just want characters other than Fire Emblem being added every tuesday. I was really hoping for some Megaman representation, like Zero from the MM Zero series, or maybe Ryu Hayabusa from Ninja Gaiden would have been cool. There's a lot of characters in the game that are the only ones from their series, so maybe some extra characters from their series' would be nice. I dunno, just... not more FE guys, there's like 8. I don't know how many Mario characters there are, but it's either a tie, almost a tie or FE flat out has more, and that's... pretty excessive
Honestly, the issue is more on the abilitys since there are soo many non-fire emblem fighters who use swords
hector.
@@zakalot who would also prove my point on how superficial the argument is because he'd still end up swinging the axe like any other sharp weapon and how he learns sword proficiency after promoting.
Fire Emblem is about weapons other then Swords.
Spear classes, Axe classes, Fist classes, Tome classes, Bow classes, mounted classes.
If you sent out a party using the FE characters in Smash... wouldn't a map in FE be nightmarish?
Marth, Roy, Lucina, Ike, Chrom, Corrin would all be redundant. Robin and Byleth has to carry them.
At least Byleth can switch between his three weapons which give him heavy attacks, ranged attacks, or close but quick attacks when pressing down speci... oh wait that is Pokemon Trainer. Pokemon Trainer better represents Fire Emblem then Byleth. Min-min does as well. Pyra and Mythra do better. Incineroar's counter works better in representing FE then Marth's. Lucario's Aura represents the counter system better then Marth. Joker's counter without his Persona does better.
Fire Emblem is treated like gutter trash by how it is represented in Smash, it deserves better treatment.
It isn't the opinion "too many sword fighters" because by design of Fire Emblem itself, your team comp in smash is too many sword fighters. You'd be ignoring most of the game's mechanics and suffer for it.
You are by the rules in Fire Emblem using too many sword fighters.
me who likes fates realizing everybody but me hates it:
I like it too, it’s my favorite
*"i hAte you"*
Fates wasn’t even that bad really. The soundtrack, and gameplay alone is reason enough to play the game and I think it’s biggest issue was it’s narrative. There were some good moments, but overall plot and world building wasn’t its strong suit.
The plot is... it's something. But the gameplay and aesthetics were so glorious I don't even care, it's 100% my 2nd favorite after Echoes.
I like fates since it was my first fire emblem game
I got into Fire Emblem since Awakening, thanks to an old friend of mine. My brother pointed out to me how much the newer fire emblems look more "weebish" more so since Fates and it's both funny to me and kinda interesting to me how that's the direction it's kinda going in. Still like the series though and I really want to get my hands on Path of Radiance
"weebish"
If anime styles stopped changing around the time of Fire Emblem 1, then all FE games (and related/unrelated anime) since would resemble the anime styles of that era, duh
Fire Emblem was always "weebish"
Echoes was so good, is a shame nobody brought it.
I end up liking Three House a lot, is a special game.
5:37: I unironically love Fates, conquest specifically, because I don’t really give a crap about the story, I am here for the gameplay and Conquest’s gameplay is one of the best, if not the best in the franchise
I'm really liking Three Houses so far! My gf got me into FE and she did all the play throughs with a male character. So, I'm doing my first run with a Female character (I chose Claude because I vibe with his antics [Even though technically I'm supposed to pick him last?]). She's pissed because I was able to recruit Sylvain as soon as I was able to recruit just because I was a girl. lol
Anyone who picked Claude as their forst playthrough are automatically based. Good choice my fren
I never knew I could love and hate a video at the same time. Loved it!
I can't believe they ruined Fire Emblem Fates with wacky hair colors, incest, and extremely unbalanced roster! Anyway, time to go play Fire Emblem Genealogy of the Holy War.
Exactly, they've always done this lmao.
"I hate Skill Emblem, I'm going back to PoR."
@@AkameGaKillfan777 I hate graphics emblem, I'm going back to og fe on the nes
@@cinderguard3156 I can't believe some people are stupid enough to think all Anime is exactly the same. They're just like American boomers who think all animation is for kids.
Who’s gonna tell him
Death of Strategy.
I thought to myself playing Engage: “Everyone looks like VTubers…”
And then I learned why.
That is because the lead artist on the game is Bae's artist.
you say that like it's a bad thing; vtubers are gorgeous and mika pikazo is a wonderful artist with a great style (well i can see why it wouldn't appeal to everybody tbh)
@@ryangallagher9723 I say it like its a bad thing because it doesn't appeal to me. Not for Fire Emblem
@@LuxLoser I recommend Unicorn Overlord, its strategy RPG published by Sega.
@@orangeslash1667 I would trust you, but why are you copy and pasting your comments
Even tho i havent played the old games,i think Fire Emblem always had this "weeby" aspect to it. I mean,just by reading the story you understand how anime it is.
Yeah, same with xenoblade, when there was controversy with xenoblade chronicles 2 artstyle
Yes, though the most recent titles have really embraced it's weebish inspirations rather than borrow form them. Same with the Xenoblade 1 to 2 transition.
@@johnbazan8674 Was there controversy with the art style? I thought it was more so the character designs.
I think a lot of people are missing the heart of the changes. Yes, the story is rather constant, but it’s mainly the design of the characters that have been significantly more “weebified.” Specifically, the over-the-top characters that fit more and more into common tropes (Awakening kids are especially notorious, for example Owain and Severa are really out of place compared to prior characters)… and the significantly increased sexualization, with the dating sim aspects culminating in heart-filled S-rank support romances, as well as more and more unnatural clothing and designs that make the characters look more like they come from modern day Japan than a medieval fantasy setting
@@CouchTomato87 I couldn't agree more on the unnatural "modern-looking" clothing designs. I have been seeing this more and more in Japanese fantasy lately and it bugs me. It's like they can't stand to have a character dress in medieval clothing unless it's some snooty noble we're supposed to hate.
I really liked what the series had to offer and thought the support stuff introduced in Awakening was a neat little aside to what felt like an already pretty established gameplay formula but after Fates I kinda just dipped as it became immediately apparent that the game stopped feeling like it was about assembling a troupe of ragtag mercenaries and army people who all joined for one reason or another to see some end goal.
Three Houses was a decent course correct but I personally still don't really care much for the social stuff and feel like with how much more there is to it compared to Awakening find it kinda breaks up the pacing that I've grown used to way too much. I'm glad the series didn't just die but I'm kinda upset that it feels more and more like it's constantly leaning into the dating sim/social sim aspect
I can blame Persona for that. But at least in that game it's weaved in far more naturally. In fire emblem, it seriously makes the pace of the game screech to a halt while you're headpatting every single npc again.
@@hickknight I recommend Unicorn Overlord, its strategy RPG published by Sega.
Im sorry but the thumbnail looks like one of those "This was what men use to look like and now look at them." videos.
I am so glad you mentioned 8:10.
Holy shit that line is so bad in so many different ways. You could make an entire 10 minute video about how awful the line is in the context of the whole story.
It is a translation error, but bro, how did nobody fix that? Oh my god bro.
All she had to say was something like, "This bloodshed has been going unrecognized for decades. If it takes a war to stop it then there is no other option".
Like bro, they changed the Bernie line which was a mistranslation. And they recorded more lines for the DLC, but they didn't fix that VERY important quote?
I mean, it fits edelgard
As a huge Fire Emblem fan this video made me smile and laugh a lot. Lot's of facts and truth as well as good jokes
Death of Strategy
oh snap, you got the same Tifa avatar I've been using on Discord, hell yeah!
@@JeannieLove ayeee
@@cloudtg462 It's been said that the reason Shouzou Kaga left Intelligent Systems is because he hates the idea of FireEmblem being in 3d. When I saw the Graphics of Three Houses and the Art style of Engaged I have to say, (He was RIGHT).
The good news is that there are other Strategy games to chose from thanks to third parties. Valkyria Chronicles 4, Triangle Strategy, Wargroove, Live a live, Tactics Ogre Reborn, and Front Mission.
@@orangeslash1667 Wdym when you saw the graphics of Three Houses? Yeah they look bad, but so does every single FE game that isn't pixelated. The Tellius models look godawful, the DS models look terrible and then there's Awakening characters with no feet which has been said a million times already.
@@hyperm8 Awakening characters not have feet is more of a nitpick. I can forgive the flaws of Fates because the characters were designed by the No more Hero's artist Yūsuke Kozaki. The second reason is the game kinda looked good for a 3ds game and there wan't any other strategy game on the 3ds out side of Stella Glow.
With Engage not only is Mika Pikazo is huge down grade from Yūsuke Kozaki, but without the 2d portraits of characters talking to each other, the issues of the game's graphics become even more noticeable.
I'm hoping to god whatever money they make from Engage is used as leverage for more ambitious projects like Three Houses again because I think it was proof that you can appeal to both sides of the aisle be it elitist or newcomer. And I don't really get the idea that most people just played one route over and over, but then again I wasn't looking hard at social media when the game was relevant so I could avoid spoilers (the only route I'm likely never going to play is the church route and that's because I know enough about that final boss to say it's a waste of time). I would assume all the lords were equally popular on the surface and still are - and I did want to see all of their routes at some point even after becoming biased towards one because it's hard not to get attached to the first route you play.
Yeah, I still played church for the sake of completion, but it's so much wasted potential, they should have let you play with Rhea ngl, I love Setheth, but he isn't made to be a "House leader" type character, but Rhea is, and it would have been a nice chance to see more about her story, specially the past.
Hopes learned it's leason and didn't do a church route and just gave the church characters to the Kingdom.
@@hectorhernandezaleman3836
Rhea def should have been the focus of SS for sure. I think they just didn't realize she shouldn't be a hostage for 80% of the war. Because she's always saved in Enbarr, she can't be playable. It was bad decision making
I will always put the Tellius games above everything else because of one character. Titania. Awesome name, awesome stats, awesome design, best girl in the whole series and I know I'm right.
Yeah how many female Hagens we have?
Everything about Titania is 10/10. They've done her so dirty in FEH.
Weebs would say their favorite technically legal dragololi is the best character
I have vtuber brainrot from my friends exposing me to them last year. I have been desensitized to the look...... I rlly wish people would have paid attention in their middle school english classes tho so they would understand that characters can be more complicated than hero and villain.... truly
the death of strategy
you don't even need to pay attention to school to understand that
Dude... fire emblem has always been an extremely weeb series. Every fire emblem is an anime style of game. This just a different style of anime
Every Fire Emblem game is anime. Literally the only thing that is different is what tropes and design choices were popular at the time of the game's development. Marth is a 90s shonen protagonist and looks the part.
Pretty much
I feel like I literally agree with your take on all these games. The tellius series was my first introduction to fire emblem(radiant dawn in particular) and I can tell that you really like those games too!
Loved the ones on the Gameboy, and absolutely played the “Radiant” Duology so many times over it was ridiculous. I’ve definitely noticed the “Weebafication” and it bums me out lol
My experience with FE is weird in that I played Blazing Blade(?) like 10 years ago cause i thought Lyn was cute when i saw her assist trophy in brawl, was obsessed with it for a few weeks, stopped cause other stuff and ever since have only been able to muster up a casual passing outsider's level of interest in the series as a whole. Fire Emblem is like the video game epitome of a one hit wonder for me, kinda odd turn of events really.
Death of strategy
fire emblem fans when a japanese game takes inspiration from japanese media and pop culture:😱
It had a style, but instead of sticking to it, they decide to pander to the lowest common denominator bug eye anime characters that look ridiculous in the context of the series, and even within their own games
@@jamespilgrim3774 fire emblem games have always looked similar to the contemporary manga and anime styles at the time
probably just fe boomers trying to gatekeep the series to newbies 😷
@@jamespilgrim3774 so games can’t change and develop over 30 fucking years?!?! go outside i beg
@@jamespilgrim3774 as if the Gameboy fire emblem series never had big eyed anime soldiers?
FE always had anime tropes and style, but the problem with Engage is that every single female character looks EXACTLY the same. Even idol anime characters are more varied than the Engage cast.
How do the Engage females look the same? What?
Yea the “Japanese art style has became more Japanese art style over the years” lol
Not gonna lie, I liked fusing my characters together in Awakening, both in support teams and children.
It was weird to play a Breeder Tactician, but I honestly like it better than "stand next to Support" and the new Emblem Rings.
aight i put more than 200 hours into Three Houses, ngl each house having it's own plot line in a way with another more interesting way. i ate that shit up and started to see which couples are the best. i admit it. im a sucker for dating sims and turn based strategy but only cause it's BASED (on turns that is)
same ngl the vibe was wildly different for 3H compared to older entries in terms of playable units and the plot surrounding the game. 3H's characters and overarching story were actually dynamic and the dark fantasy genre suited it really well. It taught me that I like dating sim elements _if_ there's a level of psychological horror, politics, complex situations, death, fighting, etc. involved. Any and all lighthearted moments in 3H made me happy because that shit was heavy, of course we wanted everybody to be happy and have some fun now and then. TBS x visual novel finally met and it worked, pairing the little runts up became mandatory.
Death of strategy my guy. This hit my funny bone in just the right way, looking forward to seeing what you have to say about engage when it's out!
"Fire emblem became a weaboo game!!!"
Fire emblem: is literally a Japanese game with an anime aethstetic that has evolved to keep up with modern anime
…by dropping the grounded and practical designs and embracing friggen vtuber outfits.
To throw away your pervious identity to chase modern tropes is to throw away your dignity.
To change Fist of the North Star to some Pretty Cure ass artstyle would bastardize it despite the fact that “they’re both anime”
@@AtillaTheFun1337 Fist of the North Star was already a bastard so why not
@@AtillaTheFun1337 I recommend Unicorn Overlord, its strategy RPG published by Sega.
The weeb series that I'll forever love.
Unfortunately the term weeb has been extremely misused, because the correct term of a weeb is someone who disowned their own nationality and proclaimed themselves as japanese, best example of that is Geese Howard from the King of Fighters series
@@groudon2006
It's fine. Sooooooo many terms have been misused nowadays by people to refer to stuff they don't like that it's not surprising
@@groudon2006 First time into people claiming words? Weeb has been watered down for some years now.
Tell me you only know of Fire Emblem through Smash Bros without telling me you only know of Fire Emblem through Smash Bros.
@@brandonwilliams6119 Not sure how you even came to that conclusion from me liking the series and saying it's been a weeb series since day 1 but go off. To further burst your bubble, never played smash bros. I have too good of a hygiene for that.
The character designs were the biggest reason I was excited for the Banner Saga. A turn based tactical combat game with lots of bearded men in belted tunics. More bearded men in belted tunics stabbing each other and not getting too emotional at inappropriate times and less Colgate mascots.
i love me some anime titties, but god damn does the banner saga handle everything else so much better than fire emblem these days. in the banner saga you aren't just a dozen dudes fighting a dozen other dudes and thats the entire war, any combat you personally partake in is just a small section of a much larger battle. you don't just move on from some big event, you have to deal with the fallout. the personal stories are just a facet of much bigger things going on.
i wish fire emblem had that going for it.
@@comyuse9103 Three Houses was the perfect opportunity for them to do something like that, given that it's a story about an officer school. Instead of leading armies, though, the characters use them as equipable items.
@@EmperorSigismund i'd say three houses does it better than any other modern FE game at least, the implication is that those battalions are actually fighting alongside you. i don't remember how awakening did it, but i think fates wasn't usually that great about it and engage is the worst yet, from what little i've played you literally take an entire castle as maybe a little over a dozen people with literally no back up of any kind. no faceless soldiers, nothing.
it has been a really, really long time since i played the radiant games but, iirc, they also implied there was a much bigger battle happening outside your immediate gameplay where appropriate, so it isn't like the devs haven't thought of this before
You should try BERWICK Saga. Recently fan patched to english
Every fire emblem game has an anime art style, the style has just changed depending on when what was most popular when rhe games came out ☠️ older fe games have art styles reminiscent of lots of older anime, its always been like this
its changing depending on what the current anime style its released on. you guys just dont like change.
mfer talks as if fire emblem wasnt anime back in the 90s jesus christ touch grass!
The fact that no one bought echoes was a SIN
LITERALLY MY FAVORITE FE GAME
Same
It's the worst FE game I ever played
@@darklordsatan4383It's good, what are you talking about? The characters and story are mostly pretty good imo, and the maps are challenging.
@@darklordsatan4383 I recommend Unicorn Overlord, its strategy RPG published by Sega.
Weaboos complaining their weaboo game series started acknowledging its audience.
Sorry but 2 colors hair aside, it's better than the western alternative.
The alternative is either regular Fortnite-esque face design or trying hard to make stuff look like liveaction as much as possible.
Better weeb than those 2 designs.
as a fan of echoes, i love that you praised shadows of valentia bcos that game deserves more love
Rose tinted glasses and pessimism ruining half a series for yourself. I get you exaggerate for comedy, but it's sad seeing nitpicks and nostalgia make you dislike the majority of a series you claim to enjoy
As someone that hopped on the series at Awakening, sorry for the whole Death of Strategy lmao
Awakening was when I first realised I really _sucked_ at Fire Emblem because I couldn't for the life of me play on classic without messing up every single map.
I am getting sick and tired of all this fake Fates slander. It has the best GAMEPLAY and is the most repayable of 3DS FE
Exactly everyone in my school played it and I enjoyed it
@@Pvt_Zee based
I did a Corrin only Birthright run where I made 15 Corrin with different classes and used them on Birthright. It was among the most fun I've ever had playing Fire Emblem. Fates is just fun as all hell if you skip the plot xD
I think Three Houses and some Awakening designs were the peak middle ground between grounded medieval fantasy and anime styles (most older Fire Emblem games did well in those aspects too but none were maintream successes) When games went too far in either direction they were criticized (specially if they leaned more towards anime), latest example being Engage.
Those games with designs that didn´t immediately alienate part of the potential players tended to do really well long term
I really do not like some of Engage's designs. Especially the main characters. They look like those anime parody characters that were based on Browser logos.
Honestly i really enjoyed fates. The story and characters while questionable n wild were still entertaining, but the gameplay and replayability is what really sold it for me. That and also the asthetic of this "light vs dark" of the two nations
Also, i feel like fire emblem has always had a soet of anime asthetic/style tonit, it just took about 6-8 games to really embrace it.
Fates fans usually like the game not for the story, but despite the story. The gameplay is arguably my favorite so far. It is super diverse, extremely satisfying and fast.
I don't like how you have to reach Lv. 35 for a specific skill that was previously accessible to lv. 15 i.e Galeforce etc.
Oh and for some reason Camilla's entrance in Birthright made me laugh so hard 🤣
@@blameitondanny I think that a skill that broken should definitely be locked behind some required effort.
@@Yunglex313 In Normal/Casual mode, sure but on harder difficulty tho?
I liked that the two factions had exclusive units and spells. It was something they hadn’t explored yet as a series and it was cool.
Engage animations and combats are cool as fuck though.
FE4/5 style - Saint Seiya
GBA - Gundam style.
Like, Fire Emblem was always anime, it's simply that popular anime styles of the period changed.
Ah yes because Echoes certainly looked like Kakegurui because both came out in 2017. Oh wait...
@@PeruvianPotato Kagegurui started running 1st April 2017, Echoes was released 20th April a.k.a. style was long finalized before Kagegurui came out.
Also, Kagegurui is a niche anime compared to 2017 SoA movie, AoT season 2 and others heavy hitters (notice I specifically mentioned more popular anime of its time that stylistically match other anime of their time), not to mention multiple devs supposedly personally liked Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash from 2016 which explains idea of painting-like style of the game.
Go be stupid somewhere else.
@@mareczek00713 Alright so if we're applying big hitters of 2017 (even though you bring up 2016 anime) then surely you'd think it would have a similar artstyle to Re:Zero, Gintama or Black Clover? "Mentioned more popular anime of its time that stylistically match other anime of their time" Ah yes because Diamond is Unbreakable definitely had a similar art style to Seven Deadly Sins Season 2. If you STILL think all popular anime had a homogenous art style by 2016 and 17 then you clearly don't know much about anime in general. Also I'm gonna need a source for your last sentence because I couldn't find anything backing that up.
Please grow up lmao
@@PeruvianPotato Tells me to grow up - pulls 2017 anime as style inspiration for 2017 game despite graphical style needing to be set up at least a year of two before game's release.
Dude, you literally leave in fantasy land where games are made in a week, pretty much displaying that listening to you is a waste of time as there are no facts to base an opinion on in your head...
@@mareczek00713 Love how you just mindlessly insult like a child instead of actually refuting my argument. Always a good sign that someone ran out of actual arguments.
This is literally what anime looked like across the generations
The point that you are missing is that older artstyle was actually grounded and practical looking as opposed vtuber looking crud we have now.
@@AtillaTheFun1337 it's not like I don't get that that's what he's saying, but that's how pretty much all anime transitioned over the years
They were all somewhat grounded and practical, and eventually evolved to be much flashier over time
@@AtillaTheFun1337 and that also doesn't mean I like the new style, I'm just stating that it wasn't necessarily Fire Emblem that changed, but rather what became expected from the anime oriented art style by modern competitors
@@Cybersomnia One problem is that Shouzou Kaga the creator of Fire Emblem left Intelligent Systems years ago. To make matters worse most of the people that worked on FE Blazing Sword are also gone.
@@AtillaTheFun1337
Are you implying that Vtuber art is bad?
"had a really nuanced story"
*2 seconds later*
"mUsT yOu CoNtInUe To ReCoNqUeR"
>Doesn't take itself seriously
"No mother, please don't die, I've known you for 2 chapters!"
"I guess I had the family I've always wanted all along."
Here is a hot take, the Fire Emblem series, since the Famicom was always anime. Also Tokyo Mirage Seesions is good game.
no bro ofc they were from back then so ofc they look like the same time period but these are all giant sparkle eyes neon hair which is not in the slightest way its old previous medivel color pallet back then
Somehow Fire Emblem went from “characters who look like the result of incest” to “characters who perform incest”
That's it, I'm wiping Fates off my homebrew 3DS 😭
@@bleyded I recommend Unicorn Overlord, its strategy RPG published by Sega.
Awakening "saves" Fire Emblem is probably the truest, most succinct way anyone could have put it.
It saved it from irrelevancy or outright death but sadly had to sacrifice the series dignity to weeaboosim.
Even the shift from awakening to its dlcs and fates is a massive leap.
I mean did we really have to smash face first into camila's "personality" at the end of conquest?
The problem isnt the games being anime, they always have been. The issue is that devolved from semi serious 80s, 90s style anime to big anime titty girl whose personality might as well just be for the rule 34 artists.
Take Tharja's personality in awakening where she actually has an actual decent character in her supports and everything else afterwards kept flanderizing the yandere and "sexyness" parts of her design over everything else.
I actually feel embarassed playing the games past base awakening in front of other people.
@@superbrainz2357You whiny children crying about “weabooism” in FE really need to grow up.
Honestly, this video made me unsub. I don't wanna be dramatic or negative or whatnot, but I just disagree with a lot of your points and videos that I've seen since I subscribed (I subbed because of haha funny MH videos).
I played FE games since I was a kid, and it's one of my favorite franchises. The games have ALWAYS been "Anime". I never understood this obsession with making FE "Anime". Some, like the Tellius games, had a more raw and serious artstyle and story, which might have contributed to them being taken more seriously. Truth be told, the Tellius games are still and will most likely always be my favorites, but I don't get the "Shitting on Weaboos" part of the video. Or shitting on the "Making a game appeal to millions instead of thousands" tactic. Of course they're going to make it more appealing to more people. It's to sell better. If awakening hadn't happened, the franchise would be dead, and I SERIOUSLY would not want that.
HOWEVER - That's all regarding the artstyle. If the dialogue ends up being ridiculously stupid and cheesy, then that's what I take issue with.
I feel the same way tbh. This video left a sour taste in my mouth
This video is cleary made by someone that would get embarassed if their friends found out he enjoys bright and colorful Japanese animation so he needs to make this shit ass video essay
Why were you subbed to this weeb in denial in the first place. His whole brand is screaming I am not a weeb while complaining that his japanese games are too japanese compared to his other japanese games that are just japanese enough to fit with his american sensibilities
Tbh this channel had always been known for bad takes. Most notoriously his take on Xenoblade chronicles 2.
Starting to get into fire emblem, and I can definitely see all your points. It's a shame to because I feel this Is happening for other fantasy styles games like this as well. It feels like games are just trying to give the consumer what they want rather than tell a story with meaningful and complex characters.
Because consumers are so entitled these days that they complain if something isn't pandering specifically to them.
@@wakkaseta8351 exactly
@@tpoboxer One problem is that Shouzou Kaga the creator of Fire Emblem left Intelligent Systems years ago. To make matters worse most of the people that worked on FE Blazing Sword are also gone. Without them, theirs nothing stoping the new staff from making a ton of changes.
As far as art style I love them both the older games are classic and have that old anime art style while the newer ones can be a bit more over the top. The only complaint I can see myself having with FE ENGAGE is the main character having red and blue hair mixed together with just throws me off even anime wise.
Hence why we call them toothpaste and Pepsi. Though it’s probably some weird story thing that isn’t going to be that deep
Well, according to the initial leaks, the blue and red hair are actually story relevant so there's that.
It's important for a design to tell a story or say something about the character, so let's just wait for Engage's release and see how it goes.
@@CuteHimbo honestly not surprised they made it pretty obvious in the trailer unless you just weren’t paying attention or basic attention to detail and knowledge of troupes.
@@CuteHimbo Ya if it's something that fits well with the story I most likely wont mind. I'm sure if it is it will grow on me :)
@@WillWonkeyTertel I recommend Unicorn Overlord, its strategy RPG published by Sega.
I’ve been talking about this with my FE loving friend. I started with 3H, and he pointed out to me, a Persona fan, about how he hates how Anime it’s becoming. It’s even taking shit from Persona, like the calendar system and social links. Now Engage has LITERAL PERSONAS lmao. He hates how weeb-y it’s becoming, even if we love Anime. I think it should stay more rugged, warrior looking, with a hint of anime instead of full blown. The character designs are just ridiculous. Even if I do like some.
That's so painfully true, they're taking away from Fire Emblem by shapeshifting the series into another, and I say this as a Persona fan. It was quirky when they added FE into TKS in the crossover, but now our characters aren't even characters anymore, they're literal personas. It doesn't help that the crests from Three Houses were based on the Arcana, and that you had so many allegories to the Arcana throughout that game. I really liked it, but I had just replayed P3P before 3H came out, and I asked multiple times while on my first blind run whether I was playing a Persona crossover again.
It's even more weeb than persona. At least persona managed to avoid the basic anime cliché characters that are scientifically engineered to sell body pillows
@@amuro9624 oh yeah, definitely. After beating the game, MY GOD. Apart from the gameplay itself which was extremely fun, awesome battle animations, everything else was so…cringe.
The dialogue was just really bad, childish even. Story was garbage and barebones, characters were annoying or just not interesting enough, only a handful I actually liked (not counting the Emblems, cause they’re mainly all great), cutscenes though beautiful, were really awkward when you don’t see any of your units. It’s usually just Alear, maybe some other character, and the main bad guy at that certain arc. Where does everyone go during the cutscenes? Was it like this in 3H? And the normal cutscenes were worse and even more awkward. I found myself skipping cutscenes sometimes cause the cringe was too much or there was nothing interesting going on. Music was also very poor, only liked about 2-3 tracks.
Games like a 7.5/10 overall, the combat pulls all the weight.
It's always been anime, but a different type of anime. OG FE was more Gundam since that was what series creator Kaga enjoyed and what was considered mainstream anime at the time with Marth essentially being fantasy Amuro and Camus being Char. FE didn't exactly change on a whim, what is considered mainstream anime changed and since the series has always aimed at middle schoolers who enjoy it in Japan they just followed suit. This reminds me a bit of how sone Mega Man fans hate Battle Network for being "too anime" when Classic and X are literally Astroboy mixed with Casshern and a dash of Super Sentai.
@@TheMexicanLynx
Gundam is mainstream now. Back then it was the show that went against the mainstream mecha anime trends.
You wanna know the real tea? Fire Emblem designs used to look like anime one decade out of date. Until Awakening changed everything, using modern anime looks. That's why it was controversial. Fates made it worse by indulging in modern anime tropes as well, while Shadows of Valentia and Three Houses brought it back to older anime styles. (Complete with Three Hopes using a seriously 2003 design for the main character). And now, ENgage is back in full force using even brighter and shinier anime designs and tropes than ever before.
My first playthrough of three houses is one of the best experiences I've had with gaming
Aight. Guys. Weeb isnt just an art style. Its also the handling and the goals.
The series went from solid but familiar stories to fates tier weeb writing with a focus on kid friendly edge and shipping. Three houses was a pleasant compromise for fans new and old which sure got forgotten fast with the latest game. Please highlight and take notes as needed.