Ranking EVERY Fire Emblem on Gameplay and Story!

[@lametrain9667]

It’s just odd to me how Story vs Gameplay discourses have been so common in recent games. I get that they try to do different things every game but it’s pretty tiring having to flip a coin every installment.

[@BigKlingy]

The biggest frustration I have now is Three Houses' story was SO good you've got a large contingent of the fanbase who doesn't think gameplay matters in Fire Emblem at all. I guess this is a form of "suffering from success". Even during the days of Awakening's "newbie boom", most people still respected the importance of gameplay in the franchise.

[@JustABitGamer]

@@BigKlingyImo gameplay actually matters more than story, a good story will help keep me motivated to get through a game, but I’m more likely to stick with a game with good gameplay and bad story, vs a game with bad gameplay and good story. Also good gameplay provides more replayability than a good story, because the story isn’t gonna change, but (at least with the recent games) you can use your units with different builds, and even with the older games, you can still use units that you maybe neglected in a previous playthrough. Even though, with route splits, you can add replayability that way, that also isn’t going to have as much replayability as good gameplay gives, and depending on the circumstances people might not even want to do the other routes. For example, as someone who’s only gotten into Fire Emblem these past 1-2 years, I looked up story details about 3H after I did my first run, just because I really didn’t want to play through all those same maps again, just to get to a route split, that seems to still recycle several maps. TL;DR Story is good, but gameplay is WAY more important imo.

[@BigKlingy]

@@JustABitGamer How I sum it up is, in most Fire Emblems at least, you can just press start to skip the story. Without a ton of Warp staves, you can't skip bad gameplay. (And even Warp will only take you so far if you're dealing with Rout maps..)

[@zxylo786]

​@BigKlingy That made me sick when I was a member of the FE subreddits. 3Hs doesn't even have a great story. It's full of plotholes and tell don't show.

[@megarotom1590]

@@BigKlingy personally for me the characters or story needs to be good though... that's one issue with fates is that despite how good Conquest's gameplay is, I can't make myself replay it because I just... can't bring myself to care about the characters or plot

[@heathed4945]

I like that you put fe7 and awakening opposite to each other as I feel like those two games and engage are some of the best newcomer friendly games.

[@BigKlingy]

I don't think it's a coincidence Engage gives you both their emblems in the same chapter. Also, Engage is nice because Notmal is great for newcomers and Hard and Maddening are great for veterans.

[@stevey.8514]

Smart to use the alignment chart. Says a lot that my favorite fire emblem games that I've played are Echoes and Three Houses, but I haven't touched either of them in a long time (still stuck on my last 3H route, what you said about burnout was basically my experience too). I like story in my games and don't replay them too often, so it's interesting hearing another person's take on the series! Ngl one of my favorite experiences w FE has been your PoR/RD playthroughs haha, glad I got to experience those games when I wouldn't have otherwise

[@hannahbun]

I honestly like the blood contract storyline. I think the main flaw is just that they introduced the concept out of nowhere. If Naesala's blood contract reveal happened in Path of Radiance, and then throughout Radiant Dawn we knew he was trying to get his nation out of it, then learning Daein was suffering a similar problem would end up being an actually compelling twist instead of just a 'huh??? what's this new blood contract thing???' moment.

[@BigKlingy]

I agree. It's not a bad concept, it's just introduced very suddenly.

[@lionwithglasses8590]

Really hope this style of alignment chart becomes more popular. It definitely makes you think about placement more. I agree with a lot of stuff here! Funnily enough, my first Fire Emblem game was Radiant Dawn. I didn't play Path of Radiance until later on. As such, those two titles have a special place in my heart. Seeing them placed so close to each other is very fitting. Becuase honestly, I can't decide which one I like more. I tend to flip between the two a lot.

[@BigKlingy]

Radiant Dawn is great and it's nice to hear the stories of those who grew up with it.

[@plates7245]

What annoys me about Awakening is that Robin as a character and not an avatar is one of the best twists on the possessed prince/traitor characters with his goal to avoid it occurring.

[@BigKlingy]

He's kind of Julius from FE4 except playable. But overall, their personality was too generic and their self-insert elements detracted from their character to me.

[@Error403HRD]

Exactly! It makes me very sad that their personality is just... nonexistent. They would've been my favorite insert had it not been for their lack of individuality, as it is Alear is hard to top in regards to Avatars. Byleth was sad too, but at least they had an EXCUSE, Robin got nothing! It makes me very angry, and I will wallow in Fanon because they had so much potential :(

[@LoudWaffle]

@@BigKlingy Funnily enough I found Robin to be by far the best self-insert avatar they've done. He's a well defined enough character to have his own story and struggles, and be pretty fun in his dynamics with other characters, but also be easily self-inserted into. This is compared to, frankly, every other avatar in the series who feel like wet noodles of personality (or worse, Corrin) that I can't enjoy as their own person nor even really self-insert into. Robin's supports are the only avatar support logs who I actually enjoy, all the others I find are a remarkable dip in quality compared to other supports in their own games (which is extra unfortunate since the avatars support with everyone).

[@samflood5631]

What about Byleth? Some can argue that he/she is a bad main character, but at least they’re more of a supporting character in some routes like Crimson Flower and Azure Moon as both stories focus on the two lords, Edelgard and Dimitri. And given that they’re silent protagonists, at least Byleth doesn’t do anything stupid like Corrin or cliched like Alear. Byleth is not as good as Robin, but a hell of a lot better than both Corrin and Alear.

[@UnlimitedMrX]

5:55 The thing that makes this even worse to me is that Echoes does this whole "premonition" thing better in the same game. Celica's side starts with her having a dream that Alm is gonna get himself killed, with said dream being part of what sets her off on her journey and also helps justify her outburst at him when they meet at the end of Chapter 2. They could've just had that if they wanted to hit some "premonition quota" because lol Awakening has a premonition opening and it sold well so every game after it must have one as well, no matter how little sense they make. With that in mind, the whole Witch Celica thing just seems doubly stupid.

[@starmaker75]

Yeah what was that Celica's dream. It's just kinda there.

[@Flametix]

@@starmaker75 Incidentally the plot point of Celica's dream was not an Echoes invention (though the cutscene of it was) and actually originally mentioned in NES Gaiden in Celica's final map dialogue.

[@BigKlingy]

People say Engage's premonition was pointless, but Echoes' is too. Actually thinking about it, so is Fates', so of all the Premonition games ONLY AWAKENING'S MADE SENSE.

[@kittenfan7664]

@@BigKlingy i HEAVALY DISSAGREE. on my first playthrough of echos, that premonition gave me an AMAZING ammount of suspense after celica gave up her soul. and the other one is to get celica to be unreasonably mad, and to try to get alm not attack rudolf. becuase what if her premontion is true. she can't have him diying on the battlefield. the engage one just shows an attack on the final boss.

[@plates7245]

Engage's premonition actually does serve a purpose. Alear did meet the Lords in the Past Alear chapter where they see themselves surrounded by companions they trust and don't have to fear like the corrupted. Also assuming it a warped remembering of Sombron's sealing it shows a counter to Sombron's view on power and relationships, Past Alear is everything Sombron sees himself as to the point of being defeated near singlehandedly by Alear and Alear hates being alone and always fighting.

[@Ajia_No_Envy]

Currently playing through PoR for the first time and am absolutely loving it. The story is probably the best I've seen from fire emblem. The gameplay is good for the most part, the only thing about it is the shear amount of broken units you get, titania, basically any of the laguz, and you can just go through the game fairly easy after beating the first few chapters. I do wish the balance was a lot better, but at the same time I don't have to use those characters, so it's not like it's an intrinsic thing about the game, you can always modify the difficulty by leaving certain units out

[@BigKlingy]

Yeah PoR is pretty unbalanced, but it's fun on replays since pretty much everyone is usable. I've used Brom a few times. The characters are also excellent and the Base Conversation system ensures they get development even if you don't use them.

[@Fermin-hw5pd]

PoR is pretty easy yes, the only rough maps that I remember are those "survive 11 turns" on the fortresses, where I was a bit overwhelmed, then maybe the Burger King fight, which is kinda bs

[@brandontherabboat4850]

I’m pretty much in the same boat when it comes to FEs I’ve played, so I’ll offer some of my thoughts: -Awakening’s overall problem for me is that it doesn’t have a difficulty between “Brainless” and “Rigged”. But I have to say that Robin is still my favorite Avatar, and it is the game that sparked my love for this series. -Fates’s plot is… Fates’s plot, but whenever the developers weren’t being distractingly horny, it has some of my favorite character designs in the whole series AND my favorite set of classes and maps. I even got inspired by the walled town in Soleil’s paralogue as a setting in my own personal story. Shadows of Valentia has some of the most memorable FE characters I’ve ever seen, with Gray and Mae being the ones I especially look forward to in replays. Alm was even my favorite Lord for a while before he got dethroned by Claude. But my word, the lack of map, unit, and class variety in it suuuucked. Three Houses’s worldbuilding and story completely leaves everything else in the dust, and the way that a ton of characters are explored is just exquisite. That being said, it is TOO. DAMN. LONG. Going back to it is such a slog, and you are actively punished for skipping the Monastery and teaching sections. Engage feels like a deliberate return to classic FE after Houses, and had tons of fun playing it. It captures everything I love about this series in a vibrant, engaging package, and this is the first game where I feel like all the classes are genuinely, perfectly balanced.

[@BigKlingy]

I'm with you on Awakening. I wish there was a difficulty between Hard and Lunatic, because I find Hard too easy and Lunatic too, as you said, "rigged". I'm with you on Fates' designs too. A lot of the Hoshido and Nohr visual styles are great and very different from most Fire Emblem designs. But then you have a maid class with panty shots in battle animations, female Cavaliers not wearing pants, and everything about Camilla. I LOVE how Echoes promoted Gray, Tobin, Mae and Boey from boring generics to getting the best story lines.

[@brandontherabboat4850]

@@BigKlingy One more thing about Three Houses: I normally detest when this word is used to describe a video game or its makers, but if I had to sum up 3H’s art direction in everything but the animated cutscenes or illustrations, it would be “lazy”. There’s the infamous 2D-fruit stand, the background visibly warping in Supports, and the environments in general being pretty meh. On the battle side of things, skill icons are constantly reused, various personal Skills are copy-pasted from Fates under different names (Flayn’s and Raphael’s didn’t even get the latter!), the number of maps that aren’t recycled in some way can be counted on one hand, and worst of all (to me) are the Combat Arts. In Valentia, they were all special techniques that had their own unique flourish when a character used them. When you used Tempest Lance, it kicked up a windstorm. When you used Armorcrush, you saw metal pieces fly off the enemy with an appropriate sound effect. In Three Houses, there is NO visual difference between Tempest Lance, Frozen Lance, or Glowing Ember. As I’m currently in a Crimson Flower repeat, I got reminded of how completely disappointing that was.

[@BigKlingy]

I wouldn't call 3H lazy personally, and I don't mind the supports (Engage does that too). It's when they try to do dramatic scenes with in-game 3D models and static backgrounds that it becomes a problem. (The lead-in to the timeskip on Crimson Flower is hilariously anticlimactic, especially since every other route gets a CG movie) It's still bizarre to me that Raphael's personal is still called "Goody Basket" when that name was clearly meant for Velouria. They could've re-named it in the localization, at least.

[@starmaker75]

Yeah even back then I noticed how weirdly horny and down bad fates got. Seriously there are times I remember the meme "the writer barely disguises fetish" . I mean look at Camilla and Corrin/kamui. -also I'm just going to said it, Camilla design looks like something out of a porn game-

[@BigKlingy]

The writers openly comparing Camilla to a cow in an interview shows where their priorities lay.

[@barttrodd7918]

Radiant Dawn is such a good game. It’s also my favourite just for the story alone. I miss the feature of rewarding experience as well 😭 Fire Emblem (as a franchise) has a pattern of releasing a new game, then a spin off game (like warriors), and then a remake. So I’m really hoping that Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn get a remake 😍 along with Binding Blade! On three houses, I’ve never cared more for fire emblem characters than three houses because I’ve spent soooo much time with them lol 😂 so I didn’t mind the monastery exploration. Loved the video ❤

[@BigKlingy]

I'd prefer a Virtual Console release of PoR and RD, and save the full remake for Genealogy or Binding Blade. Either way, I'd like them to be more accessible.

[@sophbird8215]

As someone who adores three houses and played it as my first fire emblem game, I think pretty much everything you said about it was valid. I was 100% expecting 3H to go in the lower end of the gameplay anyway, I'm just a much more story/character focused person than gameplay focused person. And honestly, even taking into account your comments on the story, I fully agree. If I hadn't played Azure Moon first, I don't know that I would have loved it as much as I do. But yeah, the way you tend to gravitate more towards the right side of your chart than the left, my favorite games that I've experienced so far are 3H, POR, and Thracia, and I really like Genealogy and RD, so I tend to gravitate more towards the top of the chart than the bottom. I've played Awakening and Engage too and enjoyed both of them, but I definitely stopped thinking about them much quicker than some of the others.

[@BigKlingy]

There are some franchises that I'm more into for story than gameplay, e.g Trails. So I totally see that viewpoint. I think it's just that FE is my favourite game franchise and nothing else plays like it, so the gameplay means a lot to me.

[@sophbird8215]

@@BigKlingy Completely fair. I definitely have some other games I prefer more for their gameplay, but for me what got me interested in FE in the first place was the idea of a game with a support system allowing you to get to know characters better, plus the fact that I just like medieval fantasy in general. Of course, turns out not every FE game has that exact system, but I still ended up loving how gaming works as a medium for storytelling in FE. It’s pretty cool how this series can appeal to people with both aspects :)

[@BigKlingy]

@@sophbird8215 I mainly like the games with support systems too, but if you like story I think Shadow Dragon's is actually pretty good in spite of lacking supports.

[@PurpleRupees]

A big issue with the three houses story is that it does a terrible job of justifying Edelgard's actions. My first route was Crimson Flower and I was so confused. We don't see Rhea or the church do anything wrong. Edelgard just tells us that they are bad.

[@BigKlingy]

I don't want to open up all the discourse again, but I felt that too. I've played a lot of JRPGs so I've seen tons of evil churches, and compared to them the Church of Seiros was pretty benign. I also felt Dimitri's route did a better job of showing Fodlan's issues and the people's plights.

[@LFPman]

I think another problem is, is that we never really see how evil Rhea and/ or The Church is during the White Clouds Arc. Rhea clearly does not show mercy to anyone that stands against her like Lonato in Chapter 3, The Western Church in Chapter 4 and Seteh and Flayn’s paralogue. But that’s as best as we’re gonna get. We’ve seen some sketchy stuff about Rhea during the White Clouds Arc such as killing of Lonato’s militia, executing Western Church members without looking into whether they’re truly guilty, covering up the events of Miklan’s transformation and the dangers of Heroes’ Relics in Chapter 5, not to mention how friendly she is to Byleth and what her true intentions were when seating Byleth in the Holy Tomb’s throne. So many opportunities that could’ve been fleshed into of the avatar and even the player doubting the church, and the next chapter come’s along and Rhea goes, “forget that and worship me!”

[@AldoAnotherEden]

@@LFPman i felt like white clouds was really just blue lion's begining storyline and every other house's playthrough of white clouds has no real emotional attachment to it. It kinda wasnt really done well.

[@LFPman]

@@AldoAnotherEden Yeah… Dimitri’s White Clouds Arc just feels more compelling compared to Claude, Edelgard and even Rhea. The earliest point at the end of chapter 3, you already see the disparity in him for having to kill citizens who just believed what they were doing was right, and were extremely loyal to Lonato. Edelgard and Claude’s version are… well I can’t remember off the top of my head, so that’s saying something. Well, after looking both up, Edelgard questions whether Lonato and her are the same as they share a similar enemy to the goddess, and Claude is basically: We just killed innocent people? Oh, I was too focused on how cool Catherine’s Thunderbrand looked! Yeah… not the most compelling when you see Dimitri or even Edelgard’s perspective. Chapter 5 is where all three are evenly compelling with each other. Dimitri has to deal with the fact of Miklan’s gang being his territory and shows genuine concern for the villages that got looted, and the ethics behind stealing. Then later giving exposition on why crests are an absolute necessity to House Gautier compared to the other houses of the Kingdom, and even disagrees with the Margrave’s decision to ditch Miklan for lacking a crest the moment Sylvain was born. Edelgard’s, well… crests. Need I say more. Claude is still fascinated over the relics, but his after battle discussion with Tomas (Solon) is exposition on the crests and the ten elites, and brought up by Claude that Rhea wanted the events of Milklan’s transformation kept secret, basically off the manifest. Then later, Claude being vague about his intentions. In Chapter 8, Dimitri drops the bomb him and Edelgard are step siblings are that Arundel is alive and well despite his sudden halt of periodic donations to the church. Post battle, Dimitri explains his first instance of being completely enraged of what he saw on the day of the Duscur Tragedy and a gist of what Dimitri’s end goals are. Edelgard tests her professor’s detective skills and later tries to subtly hint her secret identity seeing whether Byleth would trust her alter ego or not. Claude’s studying relics and crests again, but now has an illegal image of Rhea’s dragon form that is considered not part of the library’s collection and Seteh immediately confiscating it, continuing off chapter 5, that Rhea wants certain things hidden. But it doesn’t ever test Byleth’s loyalty to her unfortunately, and just doing more investigations post battle. Then last i’d focus on is Chapter 9, and early Chapter 10 when Jeralt gets the Fire Emblem Dad Treatment. Dimitri shows up earlier than Edelgard and Claude do as they speak with Byleth in Chapter 10. Dimitri empathises with Byleth over the loss of the latter’s father. But he also tells Byleth, that it’s fine to grieve. But that when they’re ready, to pick themselves up and find their reason to keep going, whatever it may be. Edelgard very bluntly tries to force Byleth up without considering the fact they just lost their father, and admits she had no intention to sit with them to comfort them while they grieve. Claude’s route… well… “Hey Teach, can I borrow your dad’s personal journal and disregard his and your privacy for my own personal gain?” “No” “Can I?” “No” “Can I?” “No” “Can I?” “No” “Can I?” “No” “Can I?” “No” “Can I?” “Fine” “You’re the best teach!” Yeah… So I can see why you’d think Blue Lions has the better White Clouds arc than the other two.

[@hannahbun]

I don't really think it does a terrible job of justifying her actions honestly. I disagree with her actions personally, but people argue in favor of Edelgard online every day. And they make a lot of good arguments. She has a massive fanbase that believes in her cause, all because the game was able to give her actions enough justification to win them over. If her actions were given any more justification, all that would really achieve is reducing the other routes to being the definite 'wrong' choices. As it stands, the routes are pretty balanced. They all have their varying merits and justifications, and people can argue endlessly about who's right and who's wrong.

[@h_moment.mp4966]

Awakening is always really fun to mess with. On my first playthrough I swept through the entire second half of the game with Donnel of all units.

[@BigKlingy]

Donnel's pretty fun, his stats are usually insane by his first reclass and he only falls off later on. (As-in, kinda postgame)

[@Dakress23]

Just my 2 cents on Intelligent Systems having a growing "anti-dragon bias": I don't think that's actually true, as you're mixing up 2 different factors: ** A. IS reusing the dragon degeneration shtick three times in a row (Fates' Anankos, SoV Duma, and SS Rhea), which in execution serves the purpose of making dragons a threat to while also stripping away their agency from the plot AND making them victims as well. In that sense, I am glad Engage's Zephia and Sombron are just bad people who also happen to be big f**k-ups because the whole dragon degeneration stick is IMO a pretty cheap way to force conflict. ** B. The KT writers having a hate-boner against Rhea, as they're the ones who wrote Azure Moon, Crimson Flower and Verdant Wind. People speculated this back in the day, but Warriors: Three Hopes more or less confirmed it without saying it outright because *oh man* poor Rhea just cannot catch a break there (if you know, you know). As for my take on 3H's slitherers; in spite of the lore relevance, dudes are *secondary villains* by trade so it's not worth getting too heated about them.

[@SomeAsian]

Rhea just couldn't catch a break in Golden Wildfire especially (seriously, forget Claude, the fact that EVEN DIMITRI just left her to die on that route says everything)

[@BigKlingy]

I fully agree on degeneration, and like you I LOVE how Engage fixes that. Fell Dragons aren't inherently evil and Sombron and Zephia are clearly established as villains for their ACTIONS rather than something inherent in their species. I still think the whole idea of dragon degeneration has racist implications though. It's similar to D&D's "Always Chaotic Evil" races getting more scrutiny lately: dragons in most Fire Emblem games have something inherent in the genetics of their race that inevitably turns them into a villain, and Echoes and Fates establishing that ALL dragons suffer, not just those who willingly gave up Dragonstones out of pride (in Marth's games, degeneration felt like a karmic punishment for dragons who considered themselves above humans), was the tipping point for me. Again, Engage fixed it.

[@firecraft7032]

Its annoying how with the lack of screentime Rhea gets in that route, the games sorta feel biased towards the anti-Rhea side in a way. I'm not sure where Azure Gleam falls under the Anti-Rhea bias catagory, other then just uniting the Edelgard and Dimitri fans over their mutual dislike of the route.

[@starmaker75]

​​@@BigKlingyseriously when the dragon degeneracy has become so overly used with some bad implications and eye roll, you make some people go "you know what just give me a standard big mean dragon to take down that isn't tragic"

[@BigKlingy]

Regarding the "Rhea hate-boner", the biggest case of that to me is... WE NEVER GET A FULL VERSION OF THE SONG OF THE NABATAEANS. You get one verse of it in Part 1, and it's Rhea's final boss theme on Silver Snow. And yet, you never hear its full lyrics. Do they even exist?

[@3xpoc3nt3r]

putting path of radiance as the best story was an immediate like from me on this video! It really is by far the best story in the series and it's not even close.

[@unaiestanconapelaez2526]

Fire emblem 8 has an amazing cast of characters partially because they are played completely straight even in the funny moments in the supports something that more modern fire emblems doesn't manage to do in my admittedly limited experience.

[@BigKlingy]

I get that. The most comedic support I remember is Garcia and Dozla hilariously failing at using healing staves, but it makes sense for them (and was accidental foreshadowing for reclassing). Though apparently this support was censorship. In the Japanese version, it was a drinking contest. (Which likely would be left in unchanged now)

[@Zastralord]

I was pleasantly surprised by your rating for RD's story. People usually fixate too hard on the blood pacts and ignore everything else that the story does.

[@BigKlingy]

I've always liked Radiant Dawn and it's weaker story moments didn't bother me much. It's also interesting how much people turned around on Micaiah, she was really hated back in the day.

[@BeefinOut]

The blood pact thing is definitely a bit of a cop out, but that's honestly a pretty minor part of the story, and even if the plot device is contrived, that doesn't diminish thr very real emotions of the characters as they deal with the horror of it all.

[@BigKlingy]

@@BeefinOut Agreed. A lot of people blow it out of proportion.

[@LoudWaffle]

Yeah as much as I hate the blood pact, that and the lack of supports are really my only big problems with the writing. And even though the blood pact itself is really stupid, we still got a lot of really good character moments out of it.

[@BloomBox36]

@@BigKlingy Poor Micaiah. I really think she was shoved out of her own story when she was set aside by Yune, and she suffered from a lack of dialogue about her actions during the war and... Her not talking to Yune or the Black Knight after they revealed themselves fully and saying goodbye to them is just... I think they had to cut out these kinds of things because of the RD cut content including a line regarding Micaiah and BK. She really lacks a payoff due to Ike.

[@dkong1]

You're insane for putting Engage where it is for story

[@NekoNikkiNyan]

Agreed.

[@grandarkfang_1482]

This'll be a good one for the flight to Vegas tomorrow.

[@BigKlingy]

I've been uploading a lot of long videos lately. One of these days, I'll upload one that's less than an hour...

[@zanis_summers8284]

Radiant Dawn is my absolute favorite Fire Emblem and it’s mostly due to the units and combat. As you said, it allows for pretty much any character to be good. Even though there’s a ton of variety available, I LOVE LOVE LOVE getting Haar and just absolutely wrecking everything that he touches. One of the best units in FE history.

[@vava5848]

Your experience with 3H sounds similar to my own. Played all the routes effectively back to back…and then ashen wolves stuff came out. By that point I’ve been so burnt out from that game that I haven’t had a motivation to see it to the end

[@BigKlingy]

I did play Cindered Shadows... and then I got soured when I found out none of it was canon. You have to beat it to recruit the Wolves anyway, why NOT make it canon?

[@vava5848]

@@BigKlingy both it and Echoes are the two I can’t see myself coming back to still for the foreseeable future as much as I enjoyed them story wise Somehow I still get replayability from Revelations (and gained an enjoyment of PMU runs from it). PoR, is one I plan to do again from my enjoyment of everything from it, but because my first run was a group draft of the game, part of me really wants my second run to be that too now that I’d want to see how much better I’d do compared to my first time

[@BigKlingy]

Revelation seems to be a fun game for drafting/PMUs... although I feel bad for anyone who gets one of those "can't do anything in their join chapter" people. Sigh, now I'm reliving some pain. I wanted to use Nyx there since I didn't on Conquest, but she joins so late with such a bad start there that I wasn't able to.

[@zxylo786]

​@@vava5848Revelations is just a Fates sandbox first. That's why Revelations is replayable and why you can make your own fun with it.

[@nintenbone7934]

I do wonder if the next fire emblem game will try to combine both the good aspects of three houses and engage to please everyone(hopefully with no route splits). I say this because three houses still gets so much attention because of its wonderful cast of characters and fantastic story(mainly azure moon). And engage has the best gameplay in the series and some of the best level design. And as for the emblem rings I do hope that we get a similar mechanic in a future fire emblem game though it will be harder to do without relying on nostalgia and fan service Intelligent systems does have a tight rope to walk on because I don’t think fans would want another Saturday morning cartoon like story again(I think engages story is average but I don’t think many fans want that kind of story again and only tolerated it because it was an anniversary title) When ever we will get a new fire emblem game fans are going to be insanely critical for both the story and gameplay

[@alistairmarston9405]

Thanks so much for making this. I’ve only played Three Houses, a little of Three Hopes, and Engage, so I’ll voice my thoughts on those ones. Similar to the video, I’ll separate my thoughts into story and gameplay, and I’ll do one comment for each. (I actually deleted this comment and reposted it because I had so much more to say than I realized and made several edits). Three Houses was my very first taste of Fire Emblem, and it’s the game that inspired me to get a Nintendo Switch in the first place after seeing NicoB’s Let’s Play of the Blue Lions route. I fell in love with the Blue Lions all over again playing through it myself, and while I knew everything that would happen, it didn’t hinder my enjoyment of it. My first playthrough took 120 hours and I enjoyed it. I then went through every other route. For reference, I’ve done five playthroughs: Each of the four routes once, and then a second Blue Lions one. My Switch profile says I’ve put over 500 hours into Three Houses, which should say a lot about how much I love it. Three Houses’s story: I was captivated by the branching narratives and worldbuilding of Fodlan. All of the extra texts and characters’ explanations detailing the continent’s history made the world come alive. It really helped me immerse myself in the story. I would actually go so far as to say that the story is like a piece of classic literature weaved into a strategy RPG. Each route has various themes such as redemption, social class tension, the nature of war, how people deal with tragedy, and so much more. They come together to form one vast narrative akin to something like Game of Thrones. I love this game’s cast so much; Dimitri and the rest of the Blue Lions have become some of my favorite characters in anything ever. Azure Moon is one of the best stories I have seen in a game. Each time a playthrough was completed, it felt like coming to the end of a lengthy classic literature story, with feelings of wonder and awe at what had happened. Of course, the story is not perfect. The handling of Those Who Slither could have been much better, and Claude's character on his route did not satisfy me. We hear so much about how much of a schemer and opportunist Claude is, but the story never really shows him having a darker side like it does for Dimitri and Edelgard. I was surprised to see that the most questionable of the lords from the start ended up being the most morally good of them all. I've heard that this aspect of him is given light in Three Hopes, so I'll have to see that for myself. Three Houses’s gameplay: I’m gonna start immediately with a shocker: I was never bothered by the monastery at any point. I went through my first four playthroughs of the game on new save files, which meant no New Game Plus features. Being my first Fire Emblem, I had no reference as to how long or short the space would be in between battles, so I simply embraced the downtime at the monastery and grew to enjoy it. The auxiliary battles you can do on free days certainly helped quell my longing for battle, and it really helped during my second Blue Lions playthrough which carries over your maximum three battle points. I would also say that my intense love for this game’s cast kept me motivated to play and helped me overlook some of the game’s flaws. Every time a new chapter began, I would eagerly go out to see what everyone had to say regarding what was happening or their reactions to what other people were doing. All the little interactions they could have with each other made me really happy. Of course, I am not trying to say that the monastery is perfect; I can perfectly understand people being burnt out as the routine can become repetitive, especially over multiple playthroughs. I simply conditioned myself to embrace it, which I think helped me maintain my enthusiasm for the game all throughout. I think I’ll start a sixth playthrough and use all the New Game Plus features to see how much of the monastery it can mitigate. As a personal criticism, I wish there was a greater variety of activities to do at the monastery, especially once you get the maximum number of activity points. That aside, I did enjoy the game's simple approach to combat and incrementally adding in more complicated elements. The first few maps do a good job of easing the player into the swing of things, especially if it's their first Fire Emblem. I will agree that the map design has much room for improvement. Three out of the four routes have a similar structure in beating back the Empire; it could have been tweaked to a couple unique maps per route to add to each one's appeal. Overall, I really enjoyed Three Houses as my first foray into tactical RPG gameplay, and while I will say that its gameplay is inferior to Engage’s, it will always remain special to me as my introduction to Fire Emblem, and it is still one of my top ten games to this day. I’m gonna be writing my thoughts on Engage soon in a different comment. Stay tuned!

[@shibeking1809]

I like Tokyo mirage sessions story a lot actually cause it feels like it doesn’t take itself too seriously to good affect. It’s just a goofy story about idols and stuff while giving some kinda neat insight into the idol industry. The characters aren’t super in depth but they’re charming and fun. Really just captures a silly casual tone for the game. I might be biased as it is one of my fav games. Gameplay is top tier too imo

[@jsilvuh6194]

The mentions of FE6 Marcus being a good crutch character vs FE7 Marcus invalidating most of the cast reminds me of a video I found a while back that offered an interesting view on what makes a bad Fire Emblem unit. The conclusion was that the 'real' bad units are the overpowered ones that stay relevant in combat throughout the game, negative impacting the strategic gameplay. The same video also described levelling up the FE8 trainee units _in the main chapters only_ as a fun challenge, while doing so in the Tower of Valni just feels like a homework assignment. I don't think(?) I've ever levelled Amelia and Ewan outside the Tower, so that'd be interesting to try if I revisit FE8. 37:10 Man, that's a throwback I'm grateful to my past self for not playing all the Three Houses routes back to back. I'm a bit less enthusiastic about the game than I used to be, but I reckon I would be a lot more negative on it if I burned myself out on the reused maps and the monastery segments. I still enjoy the story a lot though. Actually, I've still yet to play Silver Snow and revisit my first route Crimson Flower.

[@BigKlingy]

Personally I wouldn't try levelling the trainees in chapters, as for Amelia you generally need to box an enemy in and slowly poke them to death. But still, it's possible. Especially since Trainees get like 30 exp just for hitting things. Silver Snow isn't as bad as people say, and it reveals some things Verdant Wind doesn't. (It's basically Byleth's route) I hope you enjoy it once you get to it.

[@jimjimson6208]

Bro the Amelia AI manipulation where you trap the archer and the healer at the end of the 1 block wide tunnel is so juicy though

[@SuperClucky]

I actually think Kris not having a lot of impact or agency in the main story in spite of being one of the main characters is a bad thing because if anyone should get agency, it should be someone in one of the prominent roles. They definitely could've served as a foil to Jagen as advsior by providing a younger, more righteous perspective in serving Marth while being combat ready. They could also possibly look to Jagen as a guide in ways they can help Marth. We see this in one scene where Kris snaps on someone on behalf of Marth and in spite of Jagen's advice to do otherwise. They even could have used Kris as a way to communicate alternate map objectives like recruiting characters or rescuing villages. It at the very least gives something to do other than being a cheerleader with a sword.

[@Sean_Bird]

This should surely be interesting, especially with the structure you've got. Even if I haven't played that many of the older FE games, I'll still throw some of my thoughts out here. The Celica fakeout certainly... exists in Echoes, for sure. Kinda shows how the whole "premonition" chapter that the series has been using since Awakening doesn't need to be in every game. 14:20 ...Why is that a thing!? I saw a post that noted how a lot of FE6 rebalance hacks try to put a lot of modern elements like skills and personal weapons in the game, but doing so doesn't always work super well due to FE6's design, flaws and all. I found that interesting. The bases in the Tellius games should definitely be taken influence from if FE still wants to have hub areas like the Monastery or the Somniel, or at the very least, they need a quick menu for them to speed up preparations if you want to cut out the fluff. And base conversations should absolutely come back, those are great. Honestly, how different the routes are Fates kinda hurts them in some ways, which is kinda funny, considering Three Houses has the reverse problem. I will give Three Houses the pick for my favorite cast in the series, at least of the games I've played. It is also the game in the series with my favorite character in the series, so there's that. I'd certainly bump Engage's story below average myself. That's mainly due to a lot of writing moments I just really don't like, though I also don't share your love for Alear, I find them pretty meh. It's a simple story that just doesn't work too well for me, compared to something like Sacred Stones for example. If I had to place Three Hopes somewhere, I'd probably put it a bit to to the right and a little up of where you placed BSFE. Gameplay was pretty enjoyable for my first Warriors game, although I'd say it's certainly not super hard, at least if you are at the recommended levels. As for story, I'd say all routes are at least okay. Of the routes, I'd say Scarlet Blaze is consistently soild, Azure Gleam has a strong front but a weaker second half that drags it down a bit, and Golden Wildfire probably has the least interesting overall plot, but I like the character moments it has the most. Like Three Houses, it’s the cast who is the real star of the writing. Shez is also the best Avatar-like character, and their presence bumps up the story for me a bit alone. Anyways, for something only partially related, Fire Emblem is finally going on Death Battle! Dimitri is going to fight Guts from Berserk. That should be fun to see.

[@BigKlingy]

The Celica fakeout thing is really dumb and I wish it didn't exist. At least she got a cool Cipher card out of it? 14:20 Whoever designed the maps was feeling like a sadist that day? Oh and by the way: Berserkers in Thracia always crit with counterattacks! And the ones in 24x mostly have Devil Axes if I remember right. I feel a lot of FE6 "rebalance" hacks don't get FE6's design. All you really need to change is buff Lot, Wade, Gwendolyn and Sophia, and maybe make axes slightly more accurate. (Going too much would rob swords of their "reliably hitting" niche, so it's a fine line) I'm sure I'd like Shez, and 3 Hopes also has the double advantage of Byleth actually talking and Jeralt not dying, so we actually get to see their parent/child relationship.

[@thefloppybigo1755]

I may be a bit biased since PoR is the game with which I got introduced to the series (through a let's play, in Italian, in which the guy voice acted all the characters and made gags which lasted the entire series about them, and made the viewers select the characters he will use in the next chapter and the weapons to forge) but I really love the Tellius games and their characters, and I got back to the series with your RD playthrough, where I found out about the extended script. This made me appreciate the story even more, being probably my favourite in any FE I played (not many though) because of, as far as I can tell, a difference in tone and overall story structure and tropes than the others. Radiant Dawn is probably my favorite, the good plot points are veeeeeery good in my opinion (Naesala), Ike is a fantastic main character, and he grew a lot since the previous game, not to mention the villains which I love. All of this to say, at end, that if they ever make a re-release, I would love for them to adjust the weird and confusing plot points and make the story greater than it already is, and most importantly (this is a necessity I think) Spoiler Alert! PLEASE keep the localisation change about how th BK escaped Nados Castle; when I heard about it in your playthrough I was completely amazed at how dumb the original plot point was and how cool and fully in character the localisation version was, I hope IS noticed it.

[@LFPman]

Here’s how i’d personally rank FE Warriors (The 2017 One) and Three Hopes: FE Warriors 2017 Gameplay: The gameplay is fun. I’ve never played Warriors titles outside of Warriors and Three Hopes, so if the other titles are just like this, with hack and slash and just mash attacks then yeah, the combat is generally fun. Each unit being set to their own class and promotions keep them pretty unique and even if 4 characters share the same Archer moves, they differ a lot from each other, like Anna focusing more on the Luck stat and Takumi with Skill etc. I don’t find the Crest Market too bad, as if you complete the Main Story and especially all of History Mode, it isn’t too hard to max out units you’re focusing on. So you can basically ‘Astra go brrr’. The forging of weapons in this game is really good too. Even if you don’t have the DLC, you’re bound to collect lots of weapons with attributes that buff your Strong Attacks, prolong your Awakening gauge, effectiveness bonus on certain enemies that you can simply forge onto your higher ranked weapons. So even if you have the DLC, you then can have everyone with their unique weapon, have certain buffs and effectiveness bonus attributes catered just for them. But let’s say you’re short on gold for forging, crest market, level ups, supports for convos or items for crest market, or whatever else. Maybe i’m just patient, but grinding in this game isn’t as boring as you’d think. History Mode battles are pretty unqiue in what non-generic enemies and side objectives to do as you’re raking in the riches, weapons or unlocking weapon attributes. So i’d rank gameplay of the first Warriors game, in between of Tokyo Mirage and Radiant Dawn. It’s a simple hack and slash to enjoy and History Mode is a big save for post game content which can help cut down grinding time. Story: Well, most of you who have played the game know what the critiques of the story will be. To start, the protagonists of Rowan and Lianna are pretty boring and their characters are nothing unique. One’s the hot headed fighter who’d rather fight battles than sit on a throne. The other’s the more cool headed of the duo yet even she doesn’t want to take the throne. As you can tell, this game is catered to fanservice with an all-star cast of protags of some of the most famous games of the Fire Emblem Franchise to the more general audiences who are familiar with Fire Emblem. Unfortunately there’s a fair amount of notable characters from the Fates crew of 12, when other games like Lyn and Celica’s barely scrape by with just them representing, when not even Ike who is relatively known due to the Smash Bros. series didn’t make it in. The main story is really and I mean really nothing special. You’re just being retold the stories of Awakening and Fates in a more concise version that doesn’t do them justice. And it’s worse when those arcs are over, characters relating to them just don’t do anything relevant to the plot and just… be there. It is definitely nice with supports that we see characters from different games interact with each other. Although those are more catered to players unfamiliar with those characters, so they don’t provide anything new to players knowing so much as the gist of them already. So story i’d say, goes between Binding Blade and Awakening. It’s bad, but not ‘god awful bad’. In summary, a great hack and slash game where you can play SOME of your favourite all stars of the Fire Emblem franchise, where pretty much no unit doesn’t perform horribly. Grinding in this game is okay but depends on how you yourself find it. Again, History Mode is a big save for post game content. Three Hopes review further in the reply thread. Happy reading

[@LFPman]

FE Warriors: Three Hopes 2022: Gameplay: (Heads up, this is going to be very comparative to the 2017 version) Instead of each unit being locked into two classes that have the same moveset, now every unit has access to every class, outside of classes locked to Shez, Byleth, the three lords and gender-locked classes. Abilities unlocked from the crest market are now gained from mastering the three tiers within each class. Now their unique warrior special animations are locked into their preferred classes. However, those are the only unique warrior animations they have. In the first game, each unit had a unique animation for warrior specials when unpaired, paired up and when their Awakening gauge is depleted. This wouldn’t be that big of an issue, but some of their unique animations don’t play if that unit is in a Master class which you’ll most likely have your units remained in. So characters like Jeralt, Rodrigue, Mercedes, Flayn, Dedue, Hilda, Caspar, Ashe, Ignatz, Bernadetta, Shamir and more have their unique specials animation only in the intermediate and advanced classes, and the latter half having to dismount. The crest market is now focused with the Tactics Instructor, now with building materials to allow you to upgrade to the next level, rather than have the materials and upgrade whenever you wish. One of the more interesting things of this game compared to Three Houses, is not everyone is recruitable and it not just being the lords and their retainers. Most of the Blue Lions students are Azure Gleam exclusive, and Caspar and Ferdinand now being Scarlet Blaze exclusive. However most of the Golden Deer students can be recruited into non- Golden Wildfire routes outside of Hilda and Lysithea and Leonie not recruitable in Azure Gleam. It’s a nice touch as some students coming back to join the opposing nations to their own didn’t make much sense. Forging weapons is now worse compared to the 2017 game in my opinion. Now attributes are locked onto weapons when you receive them, so what you see is what you get. This is pretty bad, as most of the time, you’ll have your units using their Heroes’ Relics or Sacred Weapons associated with them, especially as they’re the most highest damage and durability weapons you have. Unfortunately that means if you find a disposable trash stats weapon that has great weapon attributes like effectiveness bonuses, better gold, stronger in Awakening state, well they’re stuck on those weapons and can’t be used on character’s unique weapons. Grinding in this game is… horrible. Gold is way more necessary to level up characters in the Training Grounds, upgrade characters and facilities, and worst of all, forging. No matter the weapon, they require high amounts of ore to forge when the 2017 game only required gold. Finding ore may be a lot more frequent compared to Three Houses, but if you intend to max out damage and durability of your weapons, then you’ll need to accumulate tons of ore just for one weapon, and enough gold to ruin Fódlan into economic crisis. It doesn’t help when there isn’t an ability that can help generate extra gold like in the 2017 game of Anna’s personal skill, that could be unlocked with every unit. Now the only ability that can generate extra gold is Balthus’ personal, Golden Fists. And if you want to transfer it onto anyone, you need to forfeit your Merc Whistle, as well as any other personal skills worth more such as Lorenz’s, Felix’s, Sylvain’s etc. for one run and wait all the way until your next opportunity until NG+. Oh yeah, and Balthus’ personal doesn’t even generate much gold per battle anyway! The combat aspects compared to the 2017 game are not as good. The game does not know what frame rate it wants to be, so it boasts itself with 60fps performance, but barely can even show it and you’ll be playing in 30fps most of the time. The only times the game performs at 60fps, is in the secret passage of Enbarr’s palace, and the Watchtower of your base camp… at a very specific angle. Otherwise the game cannot do 60fps in open spaces. At least the 2017 game picked a frame rate, and was able to stick to it. Edit: On my latest replay of the 2017 game, I realised the only time the frame rate significantly drops down is during the warrior, pair up and Awakening specials animations. Other than that, frame rate is very consistent despite swarms of enemies on the map. Combat is now a bit slower. The Astra skill in the 2017 game makes a big difference in how fast can your unit complete a combo. Now no-one can has access to that skill, and it’s only been sprinkled into a few units’ personal skills such as Felix, Ferdinand, Leonie, Holst and maybe one or two more. So without Merc Whistling them onto another unit, combat is way noticeably slower if you’re used to the 2017 game and having Astra on every unit.

[@LFPman]

Gameplay (Continued): Breaking the stun gauge is also harder in this game. Now the gauge is only up for a certain amount of time until the enemy charges an attack that exposes it, or some of your attacks can, as well as factoring whether you have a weapon triangle advantage on them or not. It’s even worse when some of your combat arts (your most go-to methods of damage output) can’t even break the gauge, meaning only your basic combo strings can. Breaking the gauge in the 2017 game was easier as the gauge would remain, so long as you kept hitting them. There was also the pair up system, where you could summon your support unit to expose the gauge for you, if your attacks couldn’t because you didn’t have a weapon triangle advantage over them. But now it’s worse in Three Hopes, as you can’t choose when to summon them, and the game does it automatically for you. And it does it at some of the most awkward times, and practically never when you need it most. There’s also when you break the gauge that the game doesn’t automatically force your unit to do the all out decimate-your-opponent’s-hp-bar attack and you now have to trigger it yourself. Which isn’t necessarily bad, as you can better position yourself to catch more enemies efficiently. S-ranking battles is hard. There are some cases where the timer is strict, but it’s not too often i’d reckon. But the worst part, is the kill quota. In the 2017 game, you only need to hit an the generic enemies (that don’t have a displayed HP bar) with one basic attack… with ONE basic attack, (Edit: correction it is maximum TWO basic attacks to kill non hp bar enemies, Astra go brr) and that counts towards the required kill count goal for S-ranking the battle. But unlike here. Not any more, the only way to guarantee a kill on the generic goons that purely exist for the kill quota, is being lucky with a full combo string, catching them into most of your warrior special and your offensive combat arts and spells. Normally in History mode of the 2017 game that required 2000 kills (outside of certain battles that didn’t) were easily achievable with little to no planning. In this game, you have to take a more slower approach, while having the timer requirement being inched closer and closer. Just why did they decide that? That was dumb. History Mode is gone, and is now replaced with the campaign map. Between each main story battle, you have to progress through battles to make your way to unlock the main story battle. Essentially working like History Mode. This wouldn’t be that much of an issue, except the battles are SO BORING! There’s nothing creative nor super unique about them and it sure as hell doesn’t help that the S-Rank conditions are all the same of 7 minutes, 500 kills, and 20 - 40% damage taken (can’t exactly remember off the top of my head). Sure the 2017 game did the same with most History Mode battles having the same S-Rank conditions, but at least they weren’t as boring when you had many named characters as enemies. The side objectives are also boring as they’re just the same, ‘rescue the Villager’, or ‘get a certain amount of kills’. Except they don’t feel as rewarding. There’s also the fact that unlike History Mode, these battles tie into the main story. Meaning you don’t fight characters from the main cast, unless the very off chance they’re the final boss of the battle. Otherwise you’re just fighting generics with the names of rules or generals of the noble houses of the region. Oh yeah, these battles also cut down the map, making you fight only on a small portion of it. So sure, it saves travel time for the S-rank condition, but ultimately makes the map even more boring. So yeah, these side battles are incredibly boring. And what’s even worse is, the devs must have realised that these battles seem boring, so they added the Vanguard Whistle for NG+ rendering the battles to an all new level of uselessness. The difficulty in this game is bad, but not terrible. From the perspective of a first run, Easy is there for those wanting to breeze through the battles and is there for the story. Normal has the enemies around the same level as you without being too difficult. Hard is where the difficulty increases by a substantial margin. Here, enemies take FOREVER to kill because for some reason, they have a substantial level difference to you, and their weapons are forged to high levels of damage stats. And while Maddening is unlocked after completing one playthrough. Enemies basically have +90 - 100 levels compared to what they originally were in normal mode. Meaning so yes, they take an eternity to kill and have insane amounts of damage output on you if you’re not dodging them. The menu screens of the 2017 game, and the Monastery of Three Houses, is now replaced with the Base Camp. Which actually works with gameplay story integration. It always felt so illogical, especially in Part 2 of Three Houses that after closing in towards either the Empire’s or Kingdom’s capital, we head back to the Monastery to set off back the way we came. And thankfully, the Base Camp is a lot smaller, with all the necessary shopping vendors where you need them. You can still gain exposition of the story with notes scattered throughout the camp as the story progresses. Skip Travelling to speak with units is a lot simpler now, with you just being able to warp to the unit’s exact position, so that’s definitely a nice touch. One last thing I forgot to mention originally, was that the NG+ restrictions are god awful. For those who are unaware, when completing your first route and start a new route, all your units retain they’re stats, levels, mastered classes, current class (outside of chapters 1 - 3), weapons etc. And we also get three characters via Renown. Great! Since we want to breeze through the other two routes you haven’t completed, let’s take these new ones for a spin… “What do you mean they can only be used in the Record Keeper?!” And to make the salt pour on the wound, if you carried over characters that are exclusive to the route you’re not carrying them into, ie Hilda into Scarlet Blaze, Leonie into Azure Gleam, Ferdinand into Golden Wildfire, well you can’t even use them in the actual story campaign at all. Hell! Not even the obligatory side missions that lead up to the main chapter battle! God is it awful! Who thought that was perfectly fine when NG+ already broke suspension of disbelief when they thought chucking a level 50+ Shez on level 10 chapter 4 enemies isn’t suspension of disbelief at all? IT… IS… STUPID BEYOND The gameplay is overall worse compared to Fire Emblem Warriors (2017) in my opinion, the Base Camp did improve the aspects of the Monastery exploration from Three Houses. Progressing through the main story from making your way through the side missions is boring as hell and can be skipped by the Vanguard Whistle from NG+, So i’m placing Gameplay around between Birthright and Three Houses. If it were they only Warriors game of the Fire Emblem franchise and not have its 2017 counterpart to compare to, then maybe it would be Path of Radiance and Awakening. Because still the obligatory side battles between main story battles are boring. And gold grinding to make the game easier, is a nightmare.

[@LFPman]

Story: Right, so after reading all that, ranting about this game’s gameplay, you thought you were done reading? Nope, not at all. The story of Three Hopes overall is underwhelming and very disappointing. The marketing for this game was great. But we were fooled for the wrong reasons. Instead, we’re back to the three routes depending on the house you pick, and just have the story turn out differently compared to how they did in Three Houses. That wouldn’t necessarily be bad, but the problem that many players picked up on, is that all the routes didn’t properly end the story. In the 2017 game, all the characters from their worlds return to the worlds of their games and Rowan and Lianna assume rulership of their kingdom. In all four routes of Three Houses, you put an end to the war by defeating the final boss/ leader of the enemy faction, feeling pretty much complete… aside from Crimson Flower when you fight Those Who Slither In The Dark offscreen and in Jeritza’s S-support conversation. But in each route of Three Hopes, the war doesn’t end. In Azure Gleam, sure we defeat the head of TWSITD and subdue Edelgard, but the Empire hasn’t exactly been overthrown yet. Golden Wildfire, yes we defeat the head of the Church, but TWSITD still lurk around waiting for the most opportune time, and tensions still remain between the Kingdom, Empire and Federation. Scarlet Blaze having the most closure of defeating both the head’s of the Church and TWSITD, but not enough as the Empire still has to deal with the Kingdom, and the Alliance in the non-Byleth ending. I’ve heard supposedly the reason why the writers didn’t end the routes properly was so Byleth’s efforts of Three Houses isn’t invalidated, but that doesn’t even matter as Edelgard’s plan in Chapter 3 worked showing that Byleth was a setback in her plans to start the war. Also with Azure Moon being the best of the four routes in Three Houses, it’s now the worst of three as it had a great Part 1, but it’s Part 2 is ruined by the Edelgard brainwashing situation and the absurdity on how no one alive doesn’t question it, and it’s left to speculation whether Hubert and Ferdiand were disposed of due to them catching on. And then it’s even more worse in the Byleth recruited route that Edelgard’s perfectly fine in Zaharas, but returns into the mind-broken state once they’ve escaped. (Edit: I’ve slowly come around to believing Azure Gleam is the worst route, and am debating whether it’s better or worse than Golden Wildfire. Seriously, GW is a mess too) Golden Wildfire was iffy in the sense of, while it’s a major improvement of Three Houses’ Verdant Wind being a ‘Silver Snow clone with added Claude and extra Judith’, it’s still an oddly written route. Part 1 is just them goofing around, and getting nowhere. Then Part 2 Claude suddenly decides to 180 on the Church without even giving us a proper reason to. At least Edelgard did it better with Scarlet Blaze than Crimson Flower, but Claude’s turn onto the Church just doesn’t seem justified, due to the fact it isn’t explained well. Then there’s the inclusion of Byleth. I find Shez to be a more compelling character, due to the fact, they actually speak and have a personality. Especially when they show what the merc life’s truly like as a struggle and the trust and loyalty with him and the house leader they choose to ally with. Byleth I think is setted out better as what they were meant to be before joining the Officers Academy of the Monastery. A heartless killing machine that wouldn’t think twice about mercy and has an ‘It’s just the job, no hard feelings’ attitude. But the results of them being recruitable feels wrong. They get shoved in as a late game recruitment, and only allows Jeralt to be fanservice playable. They give you two extra chapters where Epimenides possesses Shez and turns on Byleth, only to trap them in Zaharas (which for some reason I feel Byleth should’ve been there for it), and have pretty much no impact on the route after that as well as Byleth pretty much doing nothing significant and just existing for the rest of the game. Personal note, I honestly thought the first of the two Byleth recruitable chapters (where Epimenedes possesses Shez) would be a ‘This world aint’ big enough for the two of us’ and Shez would be killed, causing Byleth to replace them, just as Shez kills Byleth in the non-Byleth recruited route. And with this whole Byleth and Shez vendetta, there’s also a vendetta between Sothis and Arval, which isn’t even fleshed into. Not much I have to say with that regard, the game just made such a big deal out of it, yet by the end of the game, nothing really was mentioned after that. There’s also the fact that this game indirectly requires you to be decently familiar with Three Houses’ story of all routes, as you get shoved many character’s faces and names and if you’re not familiar with these characters (especially if the ones that have something significantly bad happen to them), you’ll pretty much say ‘Who is this guy? Why should I care?”. It’s even weirder when some characters that game clearly shows you have connections to each other through paired up battle dialogue, and dining interactions, have no support conversations whatsoever, with The Ashen Wolves and each other, such as Yuri and Bernadetta, Constance and Mercedes, Jeralt and Byleth having practically each other (and Shez and Manuela for Jeralt). The 2017 game didn’t make you feel like you had to play the other games, as I didn’t know any of the Shadow Dragon cast, as i’ve never played their games, but the 2017 game’s support conversations told me the important gists of what newcomers and I needed to know of those characters. The best way I can sum up Three Hopes' story is ‘Wasted Potential’. We believed we would play a spinoff Golden Ending, in the hack and slash genre of the Warriors games, where the three nations team up to fight the true big bad instead of each other. We instead got unfinished stories and underwhelming potential. So i’d place Three Hopes’ story just ever so slightly above Conquest. Well, if you did for whatever reason read all that, my condolences to your possibly messed up eyesight, and killed time. Thanks to you if you were actually reading

[@BigKlingy]

I read most of that, and I appreciated it. I'd like to play the original Warriors someday, I originally passed on it because of burnout from Hyrule Warriors and some dissatisfaction with the roster (going for only the safest, most popular picks, and yet no Ike. Celica without Alm also feels very strange) but I hear its gameplay is really good. Not expecting much from the story anyway, you can tell it's mostly meant for fanservice and was never going for anything deep, and I'd rather have that than a game promise a good story and not deliver (it's why most people are harsh on Fates). Three Hopes... yeah, from what I hear of the story it's pretty weird, and the Arval stuff seems incredibly bizarre: a couple of optional chapters slotted in before the finale that pose more questions than answers and are instantly forgotten afterwards. And not giving any route a conclusive ending so as to not "invalidate Byleth" was another weird choice.

[@Vegeta241]

After hearing your thoughts on Revelation, I can’t help but wonder if Fates would have been better off getting the gen 5 Pokémon treatment; instead of Revelations, we’d get Birthright 2 and Conquest 2. I wonder what kind of story could be told. It’d be tricky I’m sure, considering Azura’s fate on Conquest and especially Birthright. What do you think?

[@BigKlingy]

That could've been interesting (and Cipher sets go with that premise, check out their art of Queen Hinoka and King Leo), but honestly a sequel to 3H's routes might also be interesting.

[@SomeAsian]

Three Houses's customization was cool but it was let down by how unbalanced it was. It was just "All Wyverns All Day" there. Story is pretty nice tho and the meme culture killed me. Engage's story is just good enough while its balancing and customization is really balanced and refined and also Kagetsu Awakening is just asking to be broken Revelation died with the eShop. Whoops.

[@starmaker75]

Funny how revelation is going to be lost media. Also way to make your "true path" of the game be digital DLC. Again this is why making video game less physical is a bad idea and just anger fans. It feels weird how three houses was a game that was talk about alot in 2019, but engage to alot casual and non fans were going "okay". I guess the tone whiplash was too strong for some

[@BigKlingy]

I mean, is Revelation dying such a big loss...? (Still kinda sad about it though)

[@SomeAsian]

​@@BigKlingy No, but it's extremely funny to me.

[@BigKlingy]

I hope this stops companies locking entire games behind DLC but... who am I kidding?

[@SomeAsian]

​@@BigKlingy On a more positive note, you want a metric on just how good Engage's gameplay is? One day I just sat my friend down and forced him to play Leif's Paralogue on Hard. He never played any FE game before and was never interested in playing one. He not only LOVED it, he nearly BEAT IT FIRST TRY (and bear in mind, he did so WITHOUT HEALERS, since he got Ivy and Hortensia killed comically early in the map). So yeah.

[@auraguard0212]

Alear: _acquires Leif in Chapter 9_ Also Alear: _makes Leif's Thracia 776 mistake in Chapter 10/11_ Heh.

[@CasualFehPlayer-rf6sl]

I remember when I first played Echoes and was so confused with how the game was playing as I’d never seen much of Gaiden originally and had played so much of Awakening and Fates that it was a weird but fun experience for me. Things like always taking 1 damage, using HP for magic, as well as said magic completely ignoring terrain effects being able to double if your 1 point faster than your foe (that one took some getting used to), some really janky hit rates, nobody having a Res stat and of course the insane 1-5 range bows. And yet I found myself loving and playing it more than any of the other 3DS games just because it played so different from the other games I’m well aware it has problems like the poor map design, low difficulty, weak enemies and Celica’s stupidity as well as her overall section of the game, (I still like her though) but it felt like the game gave you enough stuff to deal with it and really I only ever struggled with early game as I do in most RPGs the combat arts were a fun new edition too and bringing back the super rare relics was cool even though I still to this day haven’t got any of them. This is all my opinion of course😅😊

[@edwardbuott9270]

I think you'll enjoy three hopes, for a couple of reasons, two of which are, that Shez does a fairly good job at giving us a commen soldiers perspective/experience of a war,veven though I don't like, feeling that I'm out of the loop/not involved in major decisions, and also that while the canonicity of the info can be questionable because it's an alternate timeline, it does reveal/if looked for, provide information that clarifys some of three houses murkier points

[@BigKlingy]

I don't like what they did to Claude, though. Looking at stuff, the only route I'd probably like is Azure Gleam, although Scarlet Blaze at least seems light-years better than Crimson Flower, I still really can't stand Edelgard as a character and her presence in anything is a turn-off.

[@nintenbone7934]

⁠​⁠​⁠@@BigKlingywhat aspects of three hopes Claude that you do not like I’m curious because I have mix feelings on him as well

[@HolyAlondite]

@@BigKlingy I always felt like 3 Hopes Claude was them attempting to be more accurate to that one specific line from the 3H trailer when if anything, the disconnect felt to meentirely intentional. Claude may say he's not a great person, but turns out to be the best of the 3 while the 2 who claim to be good people both kinda suck really.

[@frankieseward8667]

​@@BigKlingyoh you'll love Azure Gleam especially with ine character.

[@Naoto-kun1085]

Three Houses fans: story is important Engage fans: gameplay is important Why cant we have both? Take the writers of Three Houses and put them with the Engage game designers

[@auraguard0212]

Cain: "Tell the others... I did not run..." _body bursts into flames from how awesome that was_

[@donian960]

I'd place TMS in good story too because it was really funny to play. Both TMS and Engage have a story that I consider "really good if you're just trying to have fun". imo they're the two best games in the series.

[@BigKlingy]

It's okay, and Mamori and Kiria are pretty good characters.

[@galladeforce]

So using your format I will go over every game I’ve played in the main series and how much I personally like them, that’s every localised game bar one, also spoilers for most Fire Emblem games, to make sure I have room it’s pre Awakening and Awakening itself and post Awakening Shadow Dragon 4/10 Gameplay, 3/10 Story I’m not the biggest fan of Shadow Dragon, gameplay wise I feel it’s similar to the GBA games combined with Archanea ans I would rather play them and since a lot of the characters have limited dialogue and aren’t that strong I often don’t get attached to about half the cast in anyway. My favroutes include Navarre, Palla, Ogma, Horace, Merrick, Linde, Barst and Julian Echoes Shadows of Valentia 5/10 Gameplay, 6/10 Story As a whole while I do enjoy the gameplay at times a lot of the issues you mentioned drag it down to me, with a lot of large non descriptive maps that I cannot really distinguish between with most of the map I do like being more indoors and often contained, with ones like Nuibabas Abode and mist of Celica’s Desert maps being ones i downright dislike, do find that most of the cast is good to decent at what role I anted to use them in. Character and Story Wise, while I enjoy a fair amount of the characters writing an dialogue I feel aspects like very short and lacking supports don’t help them and a lot of the story aspects I find are mishandled, like trying to do a Nobles vs Commoner story I a game which doesn’t really go into it that much and has Alm be royalty when he’s at the centre of that plotpint as an example, I tended to like Forsyth, Python, Clair, Mathilda, Saber, Conrad, Mae, Zeke, Tatiana and Valbar more overall. Blazing Blade 6/10 Gameplay, 7/10 Story Blazing Blade is to me gameplay wise the epitome of average, it’s a bit on the simple side and doesn’t have as many interesting units or gameplay mechanics you would get in later games, while many people will argue that certain units are bad when I’ve played it I’ve found that even units considered bad like Lyn and Dorcas if trained they can perform what their main role is, Story wise I like the fact that it focuses more on a story of fighting an Assassin cult and Nergal rather than being a Archnean esque world war, a lot of the games cast have either interactions I like, story moments I like or both, compared to its direct predecessor, I would consider Hector, Sain, Serra, Oswin, Canas, Raven, Dart and Farina my overall favroutes in no particular order. But I cannot name many story parts which really stand out to me, I just prefer a lot of the smaller moments like Eliwood and Nininan relationships Sacred Stone 7.5/10 Gameplay, 8/10 Story It’s essentially just a more interesting Blazing Blade in feels of gameplay, had better enemy variety due to the extra promoted classes and monster, added more promotions to characters. Character wise I feel it has many good characters, many characters either have designs, supports or personality’s that I find enjoyable, mainly Joshua, Gerik, Tana, Larachel, Lute, Natasha and Cormag. Story wise I do like the backstory that had effected how Grado is how it’s now, a lot of the story involving Cormag and Joshua Radiant Dawn Gameplay, 7.5-8 depending on how I’m feeling, Story 7.5/10 This is a game of great strengths, has a variety of army’s giving a lot of people time to shine, has a lot of characters that I find interesting in gameplay, has a lot of variety in its maps with designs and layout, has a robust skill system with interesting options, but it also has a fair amount of units who are quite weak or don’t have as much time to be used and I really don’t like the Laguz mechanics in general. Story wise, I feel it’s mainly held up by Part 2 and a few aspects of later arcs like the planning of Part 3 as well as lot of the backstory the game brings out, but a lot of characters lack much focus or strong character , Overall I would put Haar, Elincia, Stefan, Soren, Gaitre, Ike, Tibarn, Pelleas and Shinon quite highly for being interesting or entertaining Awakening 7.5/10 Gameplay, 7/10 Story Awakening is a game that I enjoy a lot for being quite cozy, you can make a quite powerful army with a lot of skill variety, while it’s not going to have you use many interesting skills, I feel it’s mainly a numbers game as most skills are just bonuses to numbers, they do not change how the characters play I feel like. And I do like the 2nd Generation mechanics Story wise, as a whole I like many of the stories moments, mainly what surrounds the later Plegia Arc so Chapter 7-11 and the early part of the Final Arc culminating in Chapter 23 but find that it lacks sone coherence, I like the Valm Arc by itself but it does pretty much nothing for any other arc, The Final Arc feels like a sequel to the Plegia Arc as it wouldn’t be possible without what happens there, character wise, i feel that since the main cast is very heavily based on a set group of characteristics I feel that part of how you like them depends on how you like their main traits, hence I find most of its cast okay, but I do find that since we have a set of First Generation characters I like, mainly Chrom, Sumia, Lon’Qu, Gaius, Vaike, Gregor, Lisia, Cordelia, Tharja, but I find that the Awakening Second Generation who have both quirky personality but serious backstory it’s that informs them and they do have serious moments, combining a lot of aspects I like in a character. Owain is my overall favourite character in the series but I also really like characters like Severa, Brady, Gerome and Cynthia a lot.

[@minyoungjo3419]

I swear, there has to be some evil mastermind preventing the creation of a modern fire emblem with good story and gameplay.

[@BigKlingy]

Honestly I've always been in the "FE has never had truly amazing stories" camp, except maybe FE4. It's always the characters I find stronger than the stories. (I forgot to mention it here, but in spite of Fates' plots I think its cast is pretty good)

[@minyoungjo3419]

Yeah now I th8nk about it it's more of a triangle where you can only choose 2 points out of, good gameplay, story writing, or support writing. Three houses did story and characters, fe7 did characters and gameplay, conquest did gameplay and characters.... but never all three

[@chatyxd6078]

Echoes is my favorite fire emblem ive played so far, and arguably i havent played a lot which is why im watching this video 😅. I love the characters and story, the "limited" cast means i have to use everyone so i get attached to every one of them. I also actually like the gameplay, idk but only having 1 weapon means i have to think about how i equip my army, same with the classes, and i absolutely love the way magic works in the game.

[@BigKlingy]

Echoes is a perfectly good game. It's just not personally what I look for in a Fire Emblem game, feeling more like a normal JRPG. But that's still good.

[@JohnC6723]

My hot take is: I like all the games I’ve played. They’re pretty fun. Are there some I’d rather replay than others? Definitely, but to me gameplay and story are equally important, but I play for both of them and for fun. While I have some differing opinions on say, Three Houses gameplay (I played through each route twice, and have also beaten each route in Three Hopes) for story I pretty much agree. Even though I haven’t played the Tellius games (Which I should someday.) I loved watching your playthroughs of them and hold them in high regard now. Other games I haven’t beaten are 4 (Got stuck on the final chapter before my save was lost), 5 (At the route split, I was gonna do the B route to spite people), and 6 (Stopped at the Illia/Sacae route split, yes I did have two files for going through each, also experiencing both Western Isles routes.). In terms of a sandbox FE game I’d agree that Awakening is one, but Revelations is also a good one imo. Since you have twice the army you’d have in BR or CQ, your composition can be pretty open and since skirmishes are available in Rev if you really want certain units on your team through Valla it’s possible. Cross-country supports and pairings also bring a lot more interesting things to it, since every Gen 1 character that isn’t neutral gets at least 1 good Nohr-Hoshido pairing, if not 2. I really liked Engage, can’t wait for your playthrough of it. I might play along on Hard tbh, though the question of when to get the dlc emblems is there as well as the Fell Xenologue. I’d love to use the dlc units, but when would be the best time to get them to not mess up levels? Anyways, I could talk about this series for days on end, so needless to say I enjoyed listening to your opinions about the games. Keep up the good work!

[@BigKlingy]

I'd say I'm similar. "Bad" gameplay by Fire Emblem standards is still very, very good by normal videogame standards, so these rankings are more within the series than in general. Even FE's "worst" stories are still better than most bad movies. The sandbox elements are why I still enjoy Revelation despite its seemingly low ranking here. The sheer number of characters makes it very fun to build parties, even if you have to hold yourself back from using the 8 royals.

[@90kalos1]

A comment about the trainees in FE8, every one of them can easily be leveled to promotion in either the chapter they are recruited it or the chapter after, except for maybe Amelia in Eirika's route.

[@Alnix2]

I think I'll just go with some recent takes or slight opinion changes I may have had recently with some of the entries Genealogy: I think unit building in that game remains some of my favorite in the series and even Substitutes with exclusive items you get from them also increases the chance of me doing a sub child only run one day, but the maps I feel still bog the game down quite a bit for me Blazing Sword: The most "existing" entry in the series I feel at this point, while EHM can prove to be a fine enough little relaxation ride (Would still pick PoR and SD as my relaxation entries over it though) and the mode I'm more than likely gonna come to the most if I'm returning to it. But EXP feeling like molasses in the midgame + weather does still make it middle of the road for me Sacred stones: I'm honestly not a huge fan of how a lot of the later maps pan out in the game but I do think that this game manages to have one of my favorite ways of how the unit structure(?) was handled and how almost all the units in SS can really have a usage for everybody New Mystery: Might need to replay the most to really have my final thoughts clear on it, but the enemy weapon exclusivity you mentioned with FE6 feels more apparent in this game to me with Spears, Tomahawks, Siege weapons, etc being enemy only. Plus I feel like even if this game has more customability than SD, I feel like the high growth rates of generally everyone making people feeling relatively to cap out in some class areas honestly makes this one honestly less fun to build units in if that makes any sense and I would prefer to meme around in SD

[@BigKlingy]

Building people in FE4 has always been fun, and substitutes add replay value. The issue I have with FE7 is Eliwood Hard mode doesn't even have hard mode bonuses outside of the rare promoted enemy, while HHM's limited deployment slots and reduced exp hurt my enjoyment. I think New Mystery overcorrected for Ballisticians in Shadow Dragon by not giving you any. They were a cool class, they just needed a bit of balancing.

[@ThatGuyGreen8710]

I have too say this is an interesting list, there are honestly very few things i have to say that i disagree with. I do think that the overall story of Tms almost isn't there. But the characters are great and honestly pretty overlooked, especially if you don't do the side stories. Conquest might be my favourite fe game due to the gameplay. The customisation, interesting maps and challenge (without feeling unfair or cheap) that the game offers are great! The characters are great i would say in support convos. Brithright i do understand it's placement but i wouldn't say it deserves that bad and the only reason revelations exists is for the now not used online so it makes sense where it is. However none of them have good main stories. Im glad someone shares my opinion on 3H. The gameplay of it is dreadful in my opinion and the imbalance of classes is huge. The fact that too play the full story you have to play the first half of the game with next to no changes a minimum 3 TIMES is insane to me. It is one of those games that whenever i try to replay i just can't bring myself to do it. However the characters and (most) stories are amazing and very well written and voiced. As a since release active FeH player i can understand the mindset with skill inheritance being bad and removing individuality for characters. On the other hand, skill inheritance makes it so that almost any unit can be viable. Which is something i love about the game in comparison with other gacha games. Without it the game would be so incredibly P2W in comparison and making low rarity characters unusable. Of course you need to use resources to get skills to inherit but i still think that it is a good part of the game. I do always find it fun to hear opinions and the reasons behind them. You clearly explained things your opinions and it was a good ranking video.

[@BigKlingy]

I was probably too harsh on TMS here. Kiria, Mamori (dang how did I forget how amazing she was?) and surprisingly Tsubasa I remember being pretty decent. The issue is Itsuki, Touma and Ellie are generic and Barry is... Barry. I kinda wish 3H had a "skip Part 1" feature, even if it hurt your army's levels.

[@Wibiki43]

The talk about Shadow Dragon reminded me how both the game and its reputation earlier in the community's lifetime is similar to that of Engage. Both were released after huge, sprawling FE games with a large scope, opted to focus more on gameplay rather than story, and have a pretty divisive art style. In that same vein, Shadow Dragon was definitely ragged on a lot by the community when it first came out, (or so I hear, I wasn't in the FE space back then,) but its reputation has absolutely gotten better with time and I have no don't that in a couple years time, when Three Houses isn't the gold standard as to what every single new FE should be compared to, Engage will get a lot of love and its story and characters will be looked back at more fondly. (Hell, we're already seeing that certain sub sections of the community and I still wouldn't say that the overall reception isn't as bad as a lot of other people claim it is. Just goes to show how many play and like Fire Emblem for many different reasons.)

[@BigKlingy]

That's actually a really good point. The FE games with a gameplay focus tend to get re-evaluated positively over time, FE6 went through the same thing. And yes, Shadow Dragon was ragged on a lot, mostly for lacking supports but also the reclass system. (Now that reclassing is the norm, it's looked on much better)

[@Wibiki43]

@@BigKlingy I would also guess the admittedly weird mechanic of killing off most of your army to get the new characters and chapters rubbed most people the wrong way, even though they're just designed to help with newcomers, along with the prologue.

[@BigKlingy]

The general consensus, that I agree with, is that people misunderstood the purpose of Shadow Dragon's sidequests, but you can't blame them because sidequests were always treated as a reward in past games. Here, they're a compensation to help struggling players.

[@dimik6745]

finish thracia, its important, leif needs your help and he is stuck in munster in that rewarp shed, where you can only get out with a rescue, you cant leave him like that man

[@BigKlingy]

lol. I really want to get back to it actually.

[@weepingdalek2568]

Man quit at 24x in Thracia Kinda unfortunate but also very fair

[@BigKlingy]

I really, really want to get back to it someday, and probably will. But I still think it says something that fan translations had to invent new dialogue about some "diabolical Lopt Cult trap" so that gimmick had an explanation.

[@weepingdalek2568]

@BigKlingy Oh no, I agree that 24x sucks, it's just unfortunate since it's the second last map

[@BigKlingy]

@@weepingdalek2568 From what I remember, Tharcia's ending feels sort of anticlimactic anyway. You've already liberated Leif's home in Chapter 24, and Veld is just a pawn of a villain who won't be deal with until FE4. Still a good game, the last few chapters just feel more like cleanup than a conclusion.

[@PhoenixNetworkOfficialChannel]

It's pretty cool seeing you play the official version of AII2 after working on the fan patch.

[@BigKlingy]

Yeah, it's been fun.

[@SomeAsian]

I finally got to sit back and watch the video. Ah, the #Aran4Endgame era. Good times.

[@BigKlingy]

I actually miss Aran now. I don't even think he's in Heroes yet.

[@Alnix2]

@@BigKlingy + Still no Dawn Brigade as well in spite of all these years Considering how a lot of banners are handled these days of having an alt of a popular character or maybe an OC to help make a banner sell, my dream DB banner is not gonna happen if they were to ever get into feh

[@BigKlingy]

@@Alnix2 Holy crap, Edward STILL isn't in Heroes?! Leonardo and Nolan too? Wow.

[@emilstoqanov3270]

​​@@BigKlingyit's because PoR and RD get combined for yearly banners(aka we only get 1 Tellius "New Heroes" banner a year) And Tellius tend to focus on PoR characters(be it in their PoR or RD incarnations) On unrelated note SoV is currently missing only 3/4(Mycen/Jesse/Nomah and "Stuck in seasonal Hell" Deen)playable characters to get in the game!(discounting SoV Cipher Units because they have never been in CYL despite other DLC characters getting in)

[@hyperm8]

I am in love with Three Houses' story and worldbuilding. But having to redo the academy phase was so annoying to get to the good stuff. So what I did was I utilised the many many save slots in Three Houses. I saved right before every part 2 chapter with perfect fixed weapons, items and battalions on each character. I did it for every Crimson Flower chapter, every Azure Moon chapter and almost every Verdant Wind chapter. Not Silver Snow cause there weren't enough save slots and Silver Snow sucks. Like this, I can enjoy the fantastic story with a classic FE battle to battle style of gameplay.

[@BigKlingy]

Kind of interesting way to handle it, although I'd prefer if the game just... worked like that all the time. Though Three Hopes did a good job of condensing the base while keeping the best aspects of it.

[@Laurmachi]

Personally for me, Engage's story is trying to take itself seriously. Stuff like a 7 minute death scene of a character we barely know and the main character barely knows does not strike me as them trying to be silly, but they're trying too much to tug at your heart strings. And with Alear, the only real notable flaw he has never comes up in the story after he Engages with Marth. Sombron's whole backstory may be different, but when it's not hinted at at all throughout the entire game and is just dropped on you right at the end out of nowhere it feels... cheap. And if your name isn't Alear or Veyle, you're not important to the plot at all. You *might* get more than your 3 chapters of screentime as a royal, but outside of that no one really has a presence in the story. It worked fine with games like Shadow Dragon and Binding Blade because you had a full character at the forefront, while with Engage we have an avatar and as many royals and retainers as we did with Fates, with a smaller cast as well. Not to mention writing feels very sloppy at moments (more foreshadowing of Morion's death than an eclipse, Alfred mentioning you don't see a prince as a border guard every day to Fogado when he saw that same thing with Alcryst, and just generally people saying a lot of things but ultimately saying nothing. Funny when a single character like Bastian does it as an intentional joke, not so much when the game wants me to take things seriously.) I can't stand Engage's story, but hey that's just me.

[@BigKlingy]

It's strange, but the way you described that early death is exactly how I felt about the Chapter 9 death in Three Houses. I found it cheesy, emotionally-manipulative garbage that ultimately didn't affect much, and easily the worst part of Part 1's story and maybe the worst part of 3H's plot overall. People REALLY got on my case for that. I chalk it up to a few things: Byleth not talking, the one who died being around for 9 chapters but doing so little I felt I knew them even less than the one who died in Engage, and the 3H dead character being FAR more interesting if they'd stayed alive. (How would they react to who you sided with/the timeskip in general? Would you have to fight them on some routes?)

[@Laurmachi]

@@BigKlingy I can get the stuff with them being more interesting with them being alive making things more interesting, and Byleth not having much at all in characterization. But knowing them even less than the Engage death I would have to disagree with. We know like, two surface level things, and then the rest of their dialogue is just exposition about Alear, and emblems, and the world, rather than anything to make us care for them. Granted we didn't know a whole lot about the Three Houses death either, but we at least somethings to go off of. Honestly I would say the Engage one is just as bad as the Fates one, they're pretty similar when you think about it.

[@BigKlingy]

The 3H one bothers me more simply for the fact they were around for 9 chapters longer and I still felt I knew barely anything about them. And that 3H's story takes itself a lot more seriously and is broadly better-written, so the bad moments of writing are FAR more jarring.

[@Laurmachi]

@@BigKlingy I can get that. Different perspectives. At least PoR's is great.

[@BigKlingy]

I think we can all agree that PoR's is one of the best scripted deaths, awkward voice acting aside.

[@unstablepc5913]

Shadow Dragon justice! Hell yeah!

[@BigKlingy]

Past me: No supports, boo! Reclassing sucks! Present me: The gameplay is pretty good tho and Marth is written very well.

[@bificommander7472]

While I personally I am a bigger fan of 3H than Engage, I am also hoping for a game that combines the best of both. A Genealogy remake in the Engage engine would be an easy "Shut up and take my money" to me. I'd actually like to keep a toned down version of the monestary (no, Somiel doesn't count, it just removed all I liked from the monestary, then made the remaining busywork easier to ignore.) I think the big mistake was keeping nearly all of the monestary activities post timeskip. The place was in ruins, but aside from the lost items thing, all the tasks were still there. This would have been the perfect time to wipe the slate clean and introduce new gameplay elements. Still, I do like the chance to live in a place between battles, not just access everything from a menu. Those base conversations would be a good addition though.

[@BigKlingy]

I've heard Three Hopes did a decent job of condensing the monastery while keeping its best aspects, and also justifying it better by having it be a base camp. (Your army going back to the monastery after campaigns halfway across the continent always felt weird) The Somniel was weird to me. I hated it at first, then it grew on me, but I still don't care much about its minigames. But that's mostly because the core map gameplay of Engage is so GOOD that I was always eager to get back to it.

[@bificommander7472]

@@BigKlingy Ah, I picked up Three Hopes, but haven't played it yet. But it's good to know, I'm looking forward to seeing it. With the post-battle exploration in Engage, I think they could've moved the few useful features of Somiel to there and then scrapped it. I personally think a ship could make for a great "base" in a future game. Big enough that you can have some rooms and features there, but still limited in size so it doesn't have to be too big a time sink. You could upgrade it to unlock new optional missions (a stronger hull to travel past some reefs, a lookout nest to spot a hidden island) or bonuses on missions (put on a catapult to give you limited-use artillery support on maps, add boats to get more unit slots or more advantageous spawn points, extra cargo space for more merchant resources, defenses for the inevitable sea battle map.) Plus, you don't introduce plot holes when you return to the same base camp no matter where on the map you fought. And hey, a bit of a pirate theme would be a nice fresh angle.

[@BigKlingy]

Having a ship as a base would be pretty cool, nice idea.

[@carolbrokethewallagain]

Ooo, this is my type of video. I’m glad I could wake up today and experience “FE Opinions from Klingy, The Movie”. Jokes aside, this was great to listen to, especially know that’s its been a while since the last iteration of these. Naturally, I do disagree at points, but it’s a taste and perspective thing. I can completely understand everything here, and it’s kind of cool seeing some continuity or breaking of continuity with opinions from the LPs. I mean, this is “FE Opinions from Klingy” so I knew I was going to get a kick out of it. But of course, I have to contribute to the discussion like usual. These will be general grab bag of hopefully brief thoughts both story and also some gameplay from some of the ones I’ve played. Starting off swinging with both FE4 and 5, I don’t like their stories. And it’s annoying, because it mainly has to with how they’re told than a lot of the content. Something that ends up in the Kaga game’s writing a ton is characters showing up abruptly and falling off in a few chapters to never return. Or they do return many chapters later. Olwen is a perfect example where her and Kempf’s stuff is good(in addition to her “are we the baddies” realization) before it’s settled to never be addressed again and Olwen to fall of in relevance. At least until 6+ chapters later with one conversation with Reinhardt, and then she disappears again. And this happens with potential relevant and important stuff like Eyvel’s stoning and how important it is to Leif. I swear between the stoning and you rescuing her it comes up one other time if you recruit Mareeta when this is valuable material. Often there is clear potential depth that feels underutilized. I feel this more with FE5(don’t get me started on villains like Raydrick who disappear for most of the game). I do think this with characters like Travant in 4 though. In general the rotating of villains isn’t something I’m a fan of. FE4 has a more specific issue. I want to like it more, but I feel like it’s not told in the best way. I genuinely like Gen 1’s story but that’s mainly Sigurd’s tragedy. For a political drama, the scope feels too myopic in terms of what we see because it’s mostly in Sigurd’s vicinity and the political plotting happens away from that or in the long text dumps. I think more “somewhere in villain-land” scenes in castles not in the chapter could’ve helped. Gen 2 I flat out don’t like because while the villain stuff is worthwhile when it is there, everything on the heroes side is pretty much Lewyn talking at Seliph for most of it. Nevermind the other characters falling off because the story can’t assume they’re all close to the castle, I barely get anything out of Seliph apart from a few cases and the supports because most of the time he’s being lectured at by Lewyn. Maybe I missed some of the more substantial dialogue since it has been a while, but I never think the Life Ring conversation between Sigurd, Deidre, and Seliph is earned, let alone that Seliph struggles much to begin with. Jumping back to FE5 for gameplay, I think it’s one I dislike more and more as I play it. There’s layers to it too. For one, and this is something Kaga’s game have more of too is “point-of-interest” design. There’s interesting things on the map but not everywhere and unfortunately once you do clear something out, there’s a lot of walking with nothing happening. It’s not only a pace I dislike, but I feel like some potential is lost when you can take things at your leisure so much. But what makes me dislike Thracia more is how On/Off its difficult elements are. What I mean is that there isn’t a spectrum where you can cheese or negate varying amounts of it for varying difficulty. You either deal with every status staff immediately or you have to deal with curing them slowly. You either block reinforcements or deal with annoying waves. It feels like if I don’t cheese these things, they’ll be annoying and not fun. But when I do, the maps become boring. The main culprit of that being enemy strength and combat in general being so weak. Your units are so strong in comparison at every point of the game that difficultly is supposed to be everything else. But then, because you can deal with them so quickly, it feels like you can solve the maps on turn one or two. And that’s fun, but not doing leaves some really annoying slogs. And sometimes I don’t want to solve them, but then they aren’t fun to me. The only maps I really enjoy are the ones that meet the balance more like the Munster stuff where I could block reinforcements or not deal with the harder formations, but not doing so is actually compelling. Wouldn’t you know, this is the case only when enemies aren’t pathetic in Thracia. Jumping ahead to SS and also Birthright as well, they have a quality that easier games in general have which appeals heavily to me. And that is challenge run potential. Because they’re easier at a base level, you can tack on a lot of extra restrictions without breaking anything. Whether it’s your team comp or banning certain things, they hold up and the engines themselves are quality enough to make them enjoyable innately. If anything, that’s why I return to Birthright more than other games like FE7 and Awakening. I honestly think the Fates engine is the best FE engine in terms of mechanics besides Engage’s. And briefly, I’ve fallen off of TH. I’ve listen to too many critiques and TH’s weak points are in the places I cant really deal with. Mainly plot-hole stuff and underutilizations. It was great for a while, but it’s lost it. I’d be more willing to replace 3H if there was difficulty between Hard and Maddening. Unlike Lunatic Birthright, which can be substantial difficult under impositions and restrictions, 3H Hard really can’t be and Maddening is really hard to like. The only part I remember liking in terms of enemy strength vs yours is during the later parts of pre-skip where enemy quality isn’t ludicrous. Then again, ambush spawns are always a turn-off for me, so Maddening is a hard sell to begin with. It really is sad how much I’ve fallen off of 3H. At least the characters are still amazing. But okay, there’s my college paper-length essay of the day. Thanks for reading btw. If I remember, this is supposed to be precursor to the Engage LP, so I’m pretty hyped. This is coming in a great time where my FE interest is piqued.

[@BigKlingy]

I definitely remember that FE4 Part 2 suffered from that FE6 issue: the plot being "The Lord and Their Advisor Show". The series didn't really stop that until FE7. I didn't mention it here, but I don't like 3H Maddening, for being "every enemy is a brick wall that takes hours to die" mode. I like that Combat Arts are more useful but... enemies should've had a bit less defenses and speed while keeping their scary offense. To paraphrase Mekkah, the "meta" for early Maddening is slowly chipping down enemies one-by-one from range with your entire army, and that's not fun to me.

[@ChillstoneBlakeBlast]

9:20 While Horses do invalidate Foot units on reaching onjectives quicker, It's not like the Horses are the ones that need to save the villages. You can always defeat the Brigands that are pillaging them and have the Foot units pick them up. Foot units are usually better at the arena than mounted units since Myrmidons/Archers have Pursuit as a class skill and Other foot units are mages. Thieves are the only ones that heavily struggle in the arena, but their role in the game is to attack an enemy and steal their Gold ( Especially Brigands, Pirates and Squad Captains/Bosses since they have the highest gold). As for the pairings, while some pairings are way more viable than others, i think the fun of the Pairings is making them all work out. While some fathers like Lex and Dew are Godscents for EXP (Lex has Paragon and dew has Bargain, which allows units to Pawn items at 0 gold lost). Other pairings have amazing, interesting quirks, Like Tailtyu/Lex giving Vantage/Wrath Magis with low magic Growth, High defense. The child system has yet to be replicated as good as it was in FE4.

[@BigKlingy]

There's a decent number of viable FE4 pairings. Like I said, it's about 4-5 per mother. The main issue is it's very obtuse to newcomers without a guide.

[@igorsantarosa8842]

Arriving late but I have to say my word; Of all the fire emblems, Duo Tellius is, without a doubt, the best in terms of story, everything is tied up and explained at the end with an engaging narrative. The atmosphere of constant war is what makes it unparalleled and the actions of the lords are the plus of the series (the battle in chapter 6 part III of Ike vs Micaiah of RD is one of the best done events of any strategy game I've ever played and look, I played a lot). The gameplay is simple but functional and is fully customizable, which is a must for games of this type. In general, each game has its ups and downs but Duo Tellius has the best execution of both worlds with perhaps a story that I doubt will be surpassed.

[@frankieseward8667]

Yay ranking time! Gameplay Fe1- Very basic and rather tough curve. Story nonexistent FE15- It's called the black sheep for a reason. It's clear why some mechanics haven't returned. Story really good. FE3- Really improved mechanics and more compelling story. Definitely improved on FE1. FE4-Really ambitious and amazing story, but rather unintutive mechanics and very long chapters hurts it. FE5-Criminally underated. Geeat story, great lord in Leif, and most fun mechanics. Also Sara is best Est. FE6- Back to basics, not always good. Roy is blah, units are woefully unbalanced, and gameplay can be a slog asude from a few maps. Also F*** ARCADIA! Zephiel is amazing though and has the among best Camus. FE7-Pretty good story, 3 great lords, balanced units and compelling villains. Gateway game for a good reason. FE8-Leon is a great villain, branching promotion is cool, and story is nice. However, way too easy, Eirika gets shafted over Emphriam, who himself borders on Mary Sue terrority, and feels a bit too short. FE9-Arguably the best game. Great lord, fun mechanics, amazing story, great lord in Ike, fantastic villains, and is just a great experience FE10- Ambitious and grand and overall ststifying conclusion to the Tellius duology, but let down by poor story pacing, horribly unbalanced units, no supports, arguably the worst plot device in the series, and really needed another year. FE11-Massive step back. No character development, poor balance, stupid gauden stipulations, and judt all around not a fun experience Fe12-Massive improvement. Great story, better character development, fun mechanics, great tutorial, fun side story, and great villain in Hardin. Though units are crazy large so be ready to shift through a lot. FE13-The true breakthrough. Great tribute to the franchise, and fun replay value thanks to child mechanics. However 2nd acts feels irrelevant, and 3rd act hijacks the plot in favor of Robin and Grima, at least until Echoes, sucked. Also difficulty unbalanced FE14-Really Ambitious and love the branching story and great mechanics including the dragon vein. However all three stories fall flat, Corrin sucks as a lord especially in Revelation, and why the child mechanics. Also each story could've used 6 to 8 more chapters. Fe16-Does fates but better. Each lord is compelling, cast is amazing, love the training mechanics, and the game really tries hard. However could've benefited from having house exclusive chapters, time skip needed more chapters, and Black Eagles is easily the weakest. FE17- Best gameplay and Alear works well. But story feels rushed, and tone is inconsistent which hurts. But commend it for trying something new. This was definitely one fun video.

[@andresalasthemessenger]

Fates is FE14. Woops.

[@luthierisbestboy8177]

Hey! Gaiden has some gameplay mechanics that are different from SoV's, particularly more broken items, spells, classes, and abilities. Gaiden deserves to be separate, just like the other titles.

[@captainnickname293]

Ike's so good your FE9 review has 2 points about it! In all seriousness the lad deserves it

[@jeffsmith9126]

After seeing the Engage character rankings (and being a fan for years!), I knew this was going to be a good list and it was! THANK YOU for talking about the 10-11 chapter filler arc in Awakening; it really seems like only in the last year or so people have revisited the Valm arc in terms of 'But why is this here?' for the narrative. Echoes presentation getting it the points while the gameplay e.g. maps let it down was also respectful. PoR and RD love is what we expect and you deliver in a way that people who haven't played them yet can understand (though were you talking about Shiharam as the character death in PoR just curious?) On the note of Fates, it's has gotten such a lease of life in the modding community and it's really freshened it up for me e.g. Playing through Conquest with Birthright characters, Gay Fates Supports, the Playable Lilith mod. It's been reminding me of the good aspects of Fates more and more.

[@BigKlingy]

The Valm arc was ALWAYS my biggest problem with Awakening. It would've been okay as its own game, but it's only VERY loosely connected to the wider Grima plot, and filler is one of my biggest pet peeves in a story. For PoR I meant the death after Chapter 7. Fates has a lot of good aspects, like Conquest's map design and even its supports (supports in Fates are generally good, barring a few clear duds). I typically don't play with mods though, I prefer games as they were intended, flaws and all.

[@PurpleStar929]

I'd bought the Switch version of FE1 when it came out. I've played a bit of it, but I keep getting distracted by other games. It's been gathering dust in my backlog ever since. I'll probably get back to it eventually, especially since there aren't any major releases for this year I'm super hyped for, but even then I still have P4G and three Layton games to get through first. The main things I remember from what little I've played is Caeda having enough speed to not be slowed down by a silver weapon is quite fun. 3:24 Don't forget high movement. It's telling that the only maps in Echoes I really remember are Grieth's Citadel, the final boss map, the one which was reused in Awakening, the one against Berkut where you're the large army combating a small elite force, and the one with a single bridge on a river. Thabes Labyrinth was really fun though. I loved how the dungeon started off with just regular bandits looting the place, but as you get deeper it's becomes more and more terrifying. You learn bit by bit the story of what lurks at the bottom before you inevitably fight it. (Even though my first time fighting it was cheesed by having Tobin pick it off from outside its range with Parthia.) My thoughts on Echoes' DLC characters: -Emma: The best one by a long shot. I always put her on Celica's team, because having a pre-promoted flyer is an absolute blessing when dealing with all those desert chapters. Like, my main strategy for dealing with Grieth's Citadel is to just park her on the healing tile in the southern room and let the zombies feed her EXP until the main army manages to arrive. Her personal weapon is really good, its combat art letting her hit an enemy three times, each with their own crit rate, before the enemy can attack. -Randal: Having an extra cavalier would normally be a valuable unit, but Alm's route has too many horses already and Celica's has all the awful terrain. As for his personal weapon; it's good, but not on him. It's best to give it a lance user with better accuracy. -Shade: She's okay. Since I put the previous two in Celica's party, the latter two always go to Alm. -Yuzu: A sword unit with 4 movement, very few spells and too little HP to properly make use of them? Yeah, she's easily the worst of the four. Even her personal sword isn't all that great. Can't say much about FE 4-8, though I'm considering trying out FE7 on the Switch. Any tips you can give me on that game? 13:45 Was that the mechanic where if the lord escapes first everyone else gets captured by the enemy? Wow, it's already been five years since you've played the Tellius games? Time really does fly... Can't say anything about FE 11&12 either. I was one of the people who got into the series through that game. And I *can* believe it's been ten years since that game came out. My opinions on it are pretty similar to yours; very easy to break, but fun because of it. Maybe I'm just crazy, but when I played Golden Deer Maddening I had a lot of fun with it. I loved the claustrophobic feel of the gameplay, how I had to plan out each move carefully to get the results I wanted. I also loved the design of how front-loaded each chapter's difficulty was, meaning if you lost you lost quickly. The experience also led to some moments I still remember very well, such as NPC Hanneman in Chapter 12 being an absolute dodge tank against enemy pegasus knights or the ambush spawn reinforcements in Blood of the Eagle and Lion having the stupidest targeting AI I've ever seen in a video game. Engage is a game I played a bit of, but lost interest in about halfway through. I am hoping your series will explain the gameplay better and get me more invested in it. How I understood Heroes' meta: 1. Make a team of 4 fallen Edelgards 2. Turn on Auto-Battle 3. Profit Echoes I might replay in the future, once my memories of it have faded a bit more. Right now, the main reason I'd go back to Three Houses would be to 100% the support library.

[@BigKlingy]

I actually want to play FE1, but missed its official release. I wish I got to the Thabes Labyrinth. I couldn't get past the Dagons in the sea, realized I'd need to grind a ton, and nope'd out. I love how the DLC characters from Cipher actually got localizaed. 13:45 Yes. And it's not fully explained.

[@TheHearthGuy]

Gonna throw my opinions on the FE games I've played before I watch the video so I can come back and see how they compare with yours. I'll do so in the order I first played them. Fates: Fire Emblem Fates suffers from a chronic problem of trying to do so much but exploring so little of it. With interesting ideas for characters and world elements that get bogged down by the writers either unnecessary horniness or inability to understand character depth outside of supports. I kid you not, Xander in his supports is an entirely different character than he is in the main story. With that said, Fates has some of the best and most enjoyable stretches of gameplay in the series, with several maps on Conquest feeling like legitimate challenges without being unfair. That said, the gap between difficulties is somewhat ridiculous, especially when it comes to Lunatic. As for the story, well, I won't beat a dead horse too much and just put it like this. Birthright has the best story and is the most "traditional" of the three, Conquest has the best gameplay with occasional interesting ideas, and Revelations is the worst of both worlds with tedious map design and story choices that give me physical pain. It is a wonder that after Fates that I even continued with the series, luckily it had some incredibly engaging characters that made it worth it. Awakening: Its not hard to see how and why Awakening was able to revitalize the series. From what I know of older titles, Awakening really rejuvenated the gameplay in a way that made people want to keep playing, with genuinely fascinating characters strewn in-between. Awakening's story wasn't the most groundbreaking, but it didn't really have to b. It was a high fantasy adventure about saving the world from a necromancer dragon from the future, it was fun. I do have some complaints though, like how I don't really see a reason they had to bring back the previously dead characters for the Spotpass characters, except Priam, he's cool. I like where some of their arcs went, but it really felt tonally dissonant with the rest of the game. That said, all around its a very solid game regardless. Echoes: Echoes was a weird game for me at first, because it was just SO different from the previous one's I'd played. First, the lower number of supports, the limited classes, and the comparatively straightforward story actually turned out to be rather engaging for me. Less supports meant the ones we had were more well-thought out. Limited classes were a bit unfortunate, but they allowed for a lot of very good unit designs. And without a lot of the more complicated ideas that Awakening and Fates had, it could tell a story that had a lot more clear focus. Its far from perfect though. Certain decisions, especially on Celica's side, don't always make sense and Conrad's masked charade drags on a little longer than I'd like. Alm's side of the story however was excellent, with some of the best characters to date and with Alm being my favorite lord all the way until Three Hopes came along and showed me how good Claude could be. Alm felt like a very human character, very down to earth, especially compared to previous lords like Chrom or Corrin. Still, if I had to choose a favorite FE game, it'd still probably be Shadows of Valentia. Three Houses: Okay, here's a hot take: The popularity of Three Houses has skewed the fandom's perceptions of what Fire Emblem is supposed to be. Three Houses is really the black sheep of the franchise, and it can get irritating to see people complain about other FE games not being like it. That said, Three Houses has perhaps the best world building of any FE game I've played along with excellent character writing. All the possible routes have something of value, that are carried on the backs of very memorable characters. The clash of Edelgard's ideals against the rest of the continent is a very compelling story, but there are several big issues. First, obviously, is the length. Three Houses takes SO LONG just for a single route. After a total of four you are going to be burnt the hell out. Second, the disparity between the effort put into each route. Its clear that routes like Silver Snow and Azure Moon had far more care and effort put in than Crimson Flower and Verdant Wind. Azure Moon has practically double the cinematics and artwork of the other routes combined. Another big issue is with the main character: Byleth, who is essentially a cardboard cutout of a person. The biggest weakness of Byleth is the combined fact that they are canonically meant to be emotionless as well as the fact that they are a silent protagonist. I don't care what anyone says, Byleth doesn't become an actual character until Three Hopes. Which is a similar problem for Claude, who isn't allowed to be as memorable as Dimitri or Edelgard, even in his own route. I never thought of Verdant Wind as the "Claude Route" like I thought of Crimson Flower as the "Edelgard Route" or Azure Moon as the "Dimitri Route" Instead Claude's ideals feel like just Nicer Edelgard and his actions have less weight due to Verdant Wind being almost beat for beat with Silver Snow. Three Hopes thankfully came along and allowed Claude to be the more scheming master tactician we're told he is but never actually gets to be. Edelgard is a fascinating character with an understandable perspective, even if I don't agree with her action. You see enough of why the Crest system is bad, but I have to say, Edelgard really does take a "My way or the highway" kind of approach. I mean, it works with the story and allows her to be a good foil to Rhea, but I wish the game would point out the fact that Rhea and Edelgard are almost literally the SAME PERSON. With the same loss and the same desires to fix things, just directed in two opposite directions. Rhea is the deepest character in the game but we get soo little time with her, even in her own route. I just wish we had the time to see how she thinks, her ideals. I suppose you can see a lot of her ideals in how the Church of Seiros works, but we also know a lot of that's just a front she puts on to A) protect the last remaining Nabateans, and B) to keep the peace and prevent another huge war **cough** Edelgard **cough** And as for Dimitri, I think he's fine. Yeah, I don't think he's the best character ever written, though I do think he's given the best written route. Azure Moon is just a much more tightly written story compare to the other three routes. I think Dimitri's spiral is believable, though I wish his turn around after Rodrigue's death was allow to take more time. The guy's been through a lot, he shouldn't be back to a (somewhat) functional state after one pep talk from Byleth McCardboard. I really think Azure Moon shafted Felix, since he should've been the one to give Dimitri the push he needed, especially after all the build up of the tension between them. And finally, the Agarthans. The biggest question mark of the entire game, who, in this game all about the tragedies of war and gray morality, we have the crazy, cultist mole men who are behind everything. Three Houses introduces a lot of ideas and has trouble adequately exploring them, but the Slitherers are just the worst case of this. You could remove them from the game and lost almost nothing in the grand scheme of things due to how little they do in the actual game, but due to their influence on the pasts of so many characters they then become absolutely vital to the plot. Despite this, they rarely every felt like they were important in any way, even Three Hopes barely had any real development or insight into them. What we *did* get only raised more questions than it answered. In summation: Three Houses, a lot of good ideas, but those ideas aren't always handled well especially considering how much time you have to put into it. Engage: The most recent FE game is a real hot button issue right now, and I can see why. Its main character is hard to like due to their rampant naivety, the story is incredibly simple and cheesy, and for those who played Fates it feels like it retreads old ground again and again. Characters are almost like cartoons, I, however, actually had a lot of fun with it. I don't think its a huge revelation to see that each FE game is written like a different type of story. Awakening is high fantasy, Echoes is like a fairy tale or an epic myth, Three Houses is a political war drama, Fates is basically a CW show, and I'd compare Engage to an episode of Power Rangers. Its silly, its cheesy, but it still has genuine heart behind it all even if it doesn't always shine through. And sometimes, it can hit you with real emotions when you least expect them. I suppose you could also compare Engage to an opera, a story that cares more for emotional storytelling than technical storytelling, but as my knowledge of the opera genre is barebones at best, I can't say more. On that note, the gameplay is the best its ever been. Its such an upgrade from Three Houses that I almost questioned whether they were made for the same console. The fluidity and depth to Engage's gameplay is mile ahead most of the other FE games I've played in the past. While I can see why people had issues with it, I can't bring myself to hate Engage and think people are maybe just a bit too harsh on it, especially for what it is. Thank you for coming to my rambling TEDtalk about Fire Emblem games.

[@BigKlingy]

You had a lot of great points and we ended up agreeing on a ton, especially regarding Engage. Like I said here, it's not ashamed of what it is. (And also like I said, it's not like Fates, trying to take itself seriously despite being just as trope-y and silly when you think about it) "The popularity of Three Houses has skewed the fandom's perceptions of what Fire Emblem is supposed to be. Three Houses is really the black sheep of the franchise, and it can get irritating to see people complain about other FE games not being like it. That said, Three Houses has perhaps the best world building of any FE game I've played along with excellent character writing." I don't think this is a hot take since... it's exactly my opinion. I noticed another comment who got tripped up by Engage's class system via being introduced through Three Houses, not realizing 3H is the exception and not the rule. I'm kinda with you on Dimitri's change happening a bit suddenly, that and the Gronder Field 3-way happening for flimsy reasons and Rhea being treated like a big deal when she's really not are my biggest issues with the otherwise great Azure Moon. And I also see CF that way, Byleth becomes a yes-man and all the Black Eagles minus Hubert get the shaft, and Edelgard never realizes how similar she and Rhea are which imo is a huge waste.

[@TheHearthGuy]

@@BigKlingy Definitely agree on the Gronder Field thing, if Claude's scheming was a bit more prevalent then maybe it'd be believable that he'd try to take the Kingdom out too, but otherwise it comes outta nowhere in Azure Moon. It has some better justifications in Verdant Wind, since Dimitri's not really in the negotiating mood and he doesn't have Byleth holding his leash, but still. Agree with the CF point too, its actually a major issue with all the route imo. Only Felix ever really voices concerns about Dimitri's state of mind, no one examines Edelgard under any serious scrutiny, and in Silver Snow no one asks the important question of whether the Church of Seiros is *really* the power that should be in charge after all of this. I think CF would've been perhaps even better than AM if we had a scene where Edelgard is forced to confront the similarities between herself and Rhea, but Rhea goes nuts in CF so we don't really get that comparison.

[@BigKlingy]

My personal idea for how an AM Gronder Field battle could've worked is: Claude pretends to ally with Edelgard in order to backstab her later. Dimitri sees the supposed alliance, and being in the state he is, declares the Alliance has sided with his hated enemies and therefore he must "kill every last one of them." Like you said, it makes more sense on Verdant Wind. And it's weird it's not on either Black Eagles route, but given developer interviews, it's likely the Black Eagles story was written before the Kingdom and Alliance EXISTED, so that'd explain a lot. Rhea going nuts ruins a lot of Crimson Flower imo. It feels like the only route that portrays its enemy as pure evil, which gave a lot of people who played it first the wrong impression of the story and also ensured Edelgard never had a reason to challenge her own beliefs. (Since Rhea conveniently went insane and became everything Edelgard thought she was)

[@TheHearthGuy]

@@BigKlingy That's a pretty good idea for how to make Gronder work. Personally, I'd set up Claude's suspicion of Dimitri beforehand considering his less than stable mental state and when the Kingdom army goes and conquers the Great Bridge, which is Alliance land. Add onto it Claude's suspicion of the Church that Dimitri is allied with which never gets resolved except in Verdant Wind and there is a case to be made for Claude just outright not trusting Dimitri or our army. Gronder wouldn't be all that hard for CF, though I can see it getting tricky with Silver Snow, since it'd likely require having a total of four individual armies on one map. Rhea's breakdown in CF makes sense narratively, but the result is rather disappointing, especially when it comes to those who play CF first and then have that color their views for the rest of the game. Also, they missed a huge opportunity for a similar questioning of Edelgard's actions with the Arianrhod situation, they straight up had Edelgard rewriting history to blame the Church for the destruction of Arianrhod and not once does the story or the characters get the chance to point out the obvious hypocrisy. I love Hubert, but I wish he was less of a yes man.

[@MetalGearRaxis]

1, Birthrout, Awakening, and FE4 over 3H, and Engage, RD, and 6 over 12 and Thracia in terms of gameplay sure were decisions.

[@BigKlingy]

Bear in mind that I haven't played Thracia in years. And while I think it's GOOD, I don't think it's the best, and I have to knock it a bit for its obtuse mechanics that are too punishing to blind players. FE6 is imo a better, more accessible version of FE5's style of gameplay. The reason I put 3H behind those is entirely because of the Monastery. It's hard to rank a Fire Emblem where you spend so little time playing Fire Emblem over games that still have maps as the main focus.

[@simshadows]

Personally I would rate Birthrout over 3H just because it shares it's battle system with conquest which is pretty deep. While it's not related at all to gameplay, I find Birthright art direction quite stellar while Awakening and Fates are pretty bland in this department. I really dislike 3H class system, how everyone unit is kinda the same at first. FE4 is hard to judge, in my eyes it's kinda not a Fire Emblem gameplay wise, I mean, it is FE, but just like Gaiden, it does it's own things. I also wouldn't put FE6 so high, but it was one of the first game in the series I played a long time ago, I was really bad at the time.

[@matt6888]

Three Houses is a really great game, but after doing all the routes and a maddening run after we got access to it, I never really got the motivation to play it again. Engage though is by far the most replayable FE game, EVER. Since it released last year i probably have put more hours into Engage, than in any other FE game simply because the gameplay is just so good. It has pretty much everthing: Player Phase focus (which is far superior), Great map design, great difficulty balance, the best unit building sandbox EVER, the best combat animations,.

[@BigKlingy]

It's nice to see people who feel this way, as I often feel I'm in the minority and I'm TERRIFIED the next FE game is going to dump everything good about Engage and be another 3H style "80% social sim, 20% mediocre map design" because that apparently sells better. Engage is now my most played Switch game by a very wide margin.

[@nintenbone7934]

@@BigKlingy I personally don’t think they will forget every element of engage for example the size of the hub base is very similar to three hopes so I highly doubt we will get three houses level of social sim My prediction is that they’ll try and combine the best aspects of both engage and three houses to hopefully please everyone happy I can see intelligent systems mainly focus on the map design while rehire koei techmo to write the story and characters. I can also see them doing a morally grey story again since that seems to be very popular but with only one route so that intelligent systems can focus have time to work on the map design. Intelligent systems seems like the type of company that wants to please all the fans

[@OmniMon94]

i can honestly respect your opinions i might make my own tier list using this system because im interested

[@BigKlingy]

I haven't seen people use Alignment Charts like this much before, and I encourage more people to do it.

[@OmniMon94]

@@BigKlingy yeah I might even do it on the Pokémon games up to scarlet and violet

[@brandonterrell8370]

Since you my thoughts on video for engage my opinion has improved dramatically

[@robinthedragonhunter64]

I love a lot about awakening it’s gameplay is such a enjoyable experience for me especially now that I’m playing it with mods and I can put everyone on massive amounts of stat buffs

[@MikulOnIce85]

My main thoughts over these games that I wish to mention: Fe Echoes: I think the game stuck to the original story a little too faithfully because I've seen a lot of people have issues with the stories sexism, and they messed up the execution for how berkut's life ends. Seeing Rinea forgive him after he kills her leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. Binding Blade: Wow did axes and the axe users in that game suck overall. If they had better units then I feel all the wyverns in the game would have been easier to deal with. Sacred Stones: I like the route split so much because it lets the player examine Lyon from two different angles that help increase one's appreciation of Lyon. Path of Radiance: I strongly agree about Base conversations, and how you used Jill as an example. Imagine if Ingrid had as much focus as Jill did in her base conversations about overcoming her own prejudice about Duscur. Awakening: Agree about the villains, although I really liked Walhart's boss conversations when he fights Chrom. Fates Conquest: I'm glad you were able to get some amusement out of the plot being so bad. I got genuinely frustrated with the Nohr Sibs treating the Hoshido Sibs like garbage despite being the agressors in the war that I stopped sympathizing about their awful situation. A game's story shouldn't make me want to start punching the main characters faces out of anger. Three houses: You mentioned Class favoritism in path of radiance, and I think the bias towards Wyvern/Pegasus fliers was even stronger here. I felt there was little to no reason to use those classes unless the characters in question were magic focused. Personally I'd rank Three Houses story more harshly based on three points: Rhea as a character is HORRIBLY underutilized considering how much she's a big part of the game's lore. Everything Edelgard does as the Flame Emperor is discarded after the timeskip and no character brings it up ever again. Crimson Flower turns everyone into a yes man/woman who never object to her plans to invade and destroy the other nations when you would otherwise hear characters say she's wrong for doing so in other routes.

[@BigKlingy]

I actually feel Echoes made Celica's "sexism" issues WORSE than the original, via the Witch subplot (it says something that her simply getting captured by Jedah in the original made her look better). Berkut being forgiven was kinda dumb too. I played a patch of FE6 that buffed Lot and Wade (among others), and Lot became one of my best characters. I think Jill is more popular than Ingrid because you're guaranteed to see her development, even if you don't unlock her supports. Walhart in isolation is a good villain. He's just shoehorned in to a plot that's actually about Grima, with a very, very loose connection. Which makes him even more frustrating. Oh boy 3H's class issues... free Dismounting was NOT a good idea. That's why I like Azure Moon, Dimitri actually gets called out by the rest of the army.

[@RSimpkinuk57]

If you don't like Rinea forgiving Berkut, then maybe that wasn't her spirit, just a hallucination of his imagination as he died. For me, an emotionally moving moment. Echoes has plenty of meaty story for people to have issues with it being not quite the story we'd wish for. Like Celica being so near yet so far from not being a born loser/young female who is victimised. (Yeah, blame her, not the victimiser.) Not the situation we want for a main protagonist we have to spend near half the game identifying with. But I'll forgive that for the presentation, the rest of the characters, and yes, the gameplay. Maybe this is something we take for granted in all FE games, but played right, the growth curve matches the opposition and the hazards.

[@BigKlingy]

@@RSimpkinuk57 The thing you have to remember about Celica is she and her arc were written in 1992, and at a time when videogames rarely had stories.

[@RSimpkinuk57]

@@BigKlingy I thought we were discussing the later, Echoes version of her story. Anyway, who messes up worse, Celica (Gaiden or Echoes) or Sigurd (Genealogy)?

[@starmaker75]

Admitting it been a while since i play fire emblem. So here my thought on some the games I play Fire emblem 2/15: ehoces may have one of the better story and writing. However the map design is ether bland(alm) or made by a sadist(Celica). Also alot of the mechanics are more of a drag then anything. Fire emblem 3: haven't finish it, but it still enjoyable. Fire emblem 4: while the inheritance and child buildings is great. Also the story is nice and one of the better one. However it really unbalance with foot and calvary and the maps go on forever. Fire emblem 6: this is a game looking back, i enjoyed and appreciate more. The map design and unit balance is great. Also like how the challenge is for most part is moslty fair. Also the few times we get to see the character writing is nice. However I don't like how low hit rates combined with this being the only game where you don't wanted the 2RGN system. Also support system is so slow to advanced. Fire emblem 7: it a classic. Granted unit balance is not the best, but I do like how to bulid ups fire emblem 6. Also do like the trio dynamics. Just wished it wasn't rule by 1-2 long range Fire emblem 8: weirdly this is one of the more forgettable ones to me. I think it because the world isn't as interesting and game being rather easy for the most part. Fire emblem 9 and 10 are the game I did watch it story, but never really played it. writing wise it great. Fire emblem 13: my first fire emblem game. I admit it very easy to break(in fact it harder to not to break it). Also it telling 3 stories did hurt the writing. However it still enjoyable and like the sandbox element of it(even if some of that is gone). Fire emblem 14/fates: this is a game(s) i both dislike amd like. On one hand I like the gameplay, the classes and some of the characters, however the story of all 3 are poorly written. Many characters are just......sure..... Also fire emblem revelation sandbox approach is not good Fire emblem 16/three houses: while admittimg thr gameplay is tiring and the fact you have the play game with almost the same maps 4 TIMES(by sliver snow I was zoned out). The story is good even if bit rushed in part 2(especially crimson flower) AND PLAYING IT 4 TIMES. It probably has my favorite cast of characters.

[@eleonorepb4565]

The story of FE6 is quite good we don't have some sensational moments that make no sense (like the Durandal incident of fe7), the characters are generally good (even if to see that you need to grind supports), Roy is one of the most unique lord who is way smarter than most other main characters (he find out Elffin's true identity), the story show that Zephiel have a point in that some humans are bastards but also show that some others are good people

[@-grey]

I was surprised by Three Houses. It's the only one I played after asking for advice between Engage and 3H. I really like the monastery aspect, even though it trailed off in usefulness towards the second half. I did feel like I never had a enough time there when I needed it and too much time when I didn't. Do you think I wouldn't enjoy other Fire Emblem games if I'm a fan of Three Houses?

[@BigKlingy]

You probably will, just be aware that Three Houses is the outlier and no other game has anything like the Monastery or the calendar system, and most Fire Emblem stories are nowhere near as morally-grey and political. I'd recommend Awakening if you want a more accessible experience that's also closer to how Fire Emblem usually is. Sacred Stones is another decent option. Blazing Blade (simply called "Fire Emblem" in English because it was the first one released outside Japan despite being the 7th game) is good, but it has a very overbearing tutorial that hasn't aged well.

[@crishendrixx]

@@BigKlingyI totally agree! I’m a 3H baby and it was really confusing to me when I started playing other FE games. I didn’t even get the weapon triangle 🤣 Now I’ve played most of the games in the series and I have to say I liked them all. They’re all different and enjoyable in their own right.

[@surehit2496]

Ah yes, let's not forget the casualty of "Revelations Character balance": THE HAYATO INCIDENT; He's the 1st mage to join, except he joins at a perfect timing for his starting level, making him one that I always end up accidentially overusing due to the general utility he has there. Also yeah Feh text is getting a bit out if hand... but one thing that you are right is that characters are now much more reliant on their Unique Weapons/Skills (i.e. L!Claude's fallen star), meaning older characters who have powercrept weapons and already got them refined HAVE to defalt into the generic Arcane weapons, where character archetypes can further devolve into "cookie cutter" builds.

[@BigKlingy]

There's also Shura and Nyx, who both join in the same chapter but Shura is late into his promoted levels while Nyx is basically starting-level unpromoted.

[@willbill6942]

This is the first time I've seen some mention the overbearing complexity of Conquest's system. The game basically requires you know what every chapter is, and what skills each class grants in order to properly play any of it. It's just incompatible with causal playthroughs unless you have an encyclopedic understanding of the game. As well balanced as things are, I think this flaw is understated.

[@BigKlingy]

I've played this series for over 2 decades now and I still can't get a handle on Conquest's "meta" or what it "expects from me". The Ryoma chapter seems to demand you have someone with Shurikenbreaker and I've never got that in time. Another understated flaw (dunno if I mentioned it here) is non-Nohrian child Paralogues on Conquest Lunatic are NOT FUN, because they don't have Conquest's map design philosophy so they just ultra-inflate the enemy stats. I do appreciate how the cast is shockingly balanced for such a hard game (except Camilla being OP), though. Engage's Maddening might be significantly easier than Conquest's by comparison, but I appreciate it because "builds" are easier to grasp there, and most of the cast still feels viable there.

[@willbill6942]

@@BigKlingy Yes, Engage was everything I wished Conquest would be. The access to builds is so much better and straightforward to understand.

[@BigKlingy]

@@willbill6942 Engage was everything I wanted Conquest to be too, and I feel it's rare to find someone who shares that opinion. (Also just looked at your channel and realized you're the "Fire Emblem War Crimes" guy. Nice! Haven't watch that because it probably involves 3H stuff and I'm still on discourse burnout, but I might one day.)

[@willbill6942]

@@BigKlingy don't watch it, it's a bad video XD There was lots of "3H Discourse" in the comments section, to my dismay.

[@BigKlingy]

@@willbill6942 And that's why I don't like talking about 3H... sigh. IT'S BEEN 5 YEARS, PEOPLE! Literally the only good thing about 3H discourse is it killed the "Awakening new fans vs old fans" discourse simply by virtue of being WORSE.

[@EphemeralMemory1]

You had a great analysis. I started FE with Awakening, then Fates, shadows of valentia, then 3H. Robin is my favorite protag but completely understand they're more of an insert avatar. It's pretty understandable that your experience in the third arc really depends on you having a connection with your self insert character. Fates was its own thing, and 3H was great almost despite itself. I agree that of all of them Conquest had the most satisfying gameplay elements, and 3H felt either janky (maddening) or easy (hard and below). Also, you convinced me to try out engage. The story does not seem that great, imo, but I'm curious about the gameplay. Also will save a few others for plane rides coming up for work

[@BigKlingy]

I've kinda realized lately that I don't get invested in self-inserts often. This might seem like a tangent, but I got back into Sonic lately and I feel like I can get invested BECAUSE Sonic is his own established character radically different from myself. 3H really is either too tedious or too easy. I feel Engage has the best difficulty balance so far: Normal is pretty easy, Hard isn't trivial for veterans but isn't too frustrating either, and Maddening is tough but fair and is do-able without fully optimizing/only using "the BEST units". I fully admit I'm biased with Engage because I prefer characters over story in Fire Emblem, and I like Engage's cast a lot more than I expected. They're not 3H or Path of Radiance level, but they're at the "upper middle" of my list at least. My other bias is I'm sick to death of bleak, "grey morality" fantasy stories and would rather have a flawed story as long as it's simple. Hope you enjoy Engage's gameplay.

[@EphemeralMemory1]

@@BigKlingy Thanks for your perspective! I liked your PoR/RD playthroughs

[@lorddelibird]

My dying words will be “no fire emblem game with ambush spawns has good gameplay”

[@BigKlingy]

Fair. I now only play FE6 with patches that remove them, and if there's a remake, I hope it removes ambush spawns.

[@aurielayala9683]

You predicted my reaction with the echoes placement 😂. But tbh I love echoes gameplay even with all it's faults

[@ThaPlaya1994]

Can't comment on all of them but I can say something about the ones I played: Blazing Blade: Mixed Story, Mixed Gameplay. Weirdly enough my favorite part was Lyn's. I liked that every character had something to add to the plot. Eilwood's part was ok. Didn't get interesting until plot death #1. After that it was soild. Gameplay was also pretty good. Maps were eh. Still mad that I didn't get an A support with Eliwood and Nirian to spite her little brother. XD Awakening: Good Gameplay, Mixed Story. This was my first Fire Emblem so bias? I'm basically with BK on the first 11 chapters are good, then kinda stalls for a bit(Say'ri is super cool though) and picked up at the end. The characters are one note sure I still enjoy them and their supports. Okay so the balance is heavily in the player's favor but to me personally Fun>Balance. I think that's a very hot take? Besides I prefer a game that's too easy that it's kinda boring than one that's so hard that it's unfair. Also Lucina is in the game so yeah. Three Houses: Good Story, Good Gameplay. I think all the routes are soild personally. Personally it's SS>VW>CF>AM. I know that's a hot take. Love the cast and supports. So gameplay. Yes the maps aren't that interesting but I don't mind since building up your army pays off wonderfully. I also love the monastery. I like talking to the cast and getting their input on what's currently happening. The activities are quick and to the point which I appreciate. I personally decided to space out my playthoughs for one route every 6 months. Since I knew that playing all of them back to back is asking for trouble. So yeah 3H real good imo. Engage: Good/Mixed Gameplay, Bad Story. Gameplay is very strong with the emblems, customization, and the units. Could've gone without the let's put characters in classes they'll be bad at(Clanne and Anna) but whatever. However the Sominel to me is what the monastery was to everyone else. Tedious. Going back and forth between the ring room and the arena with a loading screen each time nearly drove me insane. So thankful for the patch. The minigames I stopped doing because it was so boring and doing them each time for bonuses stopped being worth it. Also I hated Chapter 12( A route chapter with reinforcements in a desert) and Chapter 25 (ENDLESS REINFORCEMENTS). Also my playstyle which is turtling aka trying to keep people alive is discouraged and that was irritating to adjust to. Now Story. First characters. At first, not feeling them. After a while, I gravitated to quite a few of them. They're even more stereotypical than Awakening. Still, I really dug some of them. It just took a while. Story on the another hand is a dumpster fire. Chapter 3 death, plot twist about Alear im Chapter 20 that was spoiled in Chapter 3, Villains suddenly getting depth at the very last minute, the hounds becoming the equivalent of Team Rocket from Pokémon, Past Alear being 1000 times more interesting than Normal Alear and I could go on. The story is simple but it also takes itself seriously. And it fails massively. Some of the characters are cool at least... By the way, looking forward to the playthough. Sorry if this is too long but yeah those are my thoughts.

[@BigKlingy]

Playing recently, I also think Lyn's story is pretty good. Parts of the tutorial haven't aged well, but like you, I love how every character is integrated into the story. And its plot is simple but well-executed. Say'ri is cool, I just wish Valm was more relevant to things. You never even see her homeland either. Awakening is a very fun game in spite of, no, BECAUSE of its imbalance. It's broken, but the fun kind of broken. (And because most of the broken stuff can be used by everyone, nobody feels useless. I've noticed most people don't care about Awakening tier list debates, besides saying Virion and Ricken have issues and that Donnel losing lances on promotion sucks.) It's nice to see a rare Silver Snow enjoyer. I came to appreciate it far more once interviews revealed it was the first route written and the one the rest of the world building is based off. So it's not "Verdant Wind without Claude", Verdant Wind is Silver Snow With Claude. Funny thing is, first playthrough of Engage I blasted Chapter 12 in a couple of turns, and enjoyed the breather after Chapter 11. Then I played it on Maddening and realized... you REALLY want to blast through it in a couple of turns.

[@williamlaney7208]

fuckin love Radiant dawn

[@someoneontheinternet4714]

While I haven’t played as much FE, I agree with a large portion of this. I’ll admit, I’m mostly a character focused player. I can live with mediocre gameplay if I love the characters. Story is.. 50/50. I can handle it and still enjoy a game with a bad story, but it will lose points. Like I really love conquests gameplay and a lot of his characters..but it’s story is..yeah. Out of all the games I’ve played, my personal favorite is Awakening because it’s mostly a comfort game for me that got me out of a bad spot when I was younger. It’s not the best, but it’s just pretty important to me sentimentally I also rlly need to play Engage..I haven’t played it cause I saw all the old characters and was worried it was going to be all fan service. But I have definitely changed my mind since and do wanna play the games

[@someoneontheinternet4714]

Also big agree on three houses, I loved it for a long time because I played Azure Moon. Then I tried playing the others…and got so burnt out due to the same map design and the monastery..it just hurts it

[@BigKlingy]

I agree there, there's plenty of mediocre stories I like a lot more than I should because the characters are good (e.g FE7, Persona 4 kinda) The "old characters" in Engage barely impact the main plot, Marth and Sigurd are the only ones who do anything meaningful and even then it's not much. So don't worry about that.

[@absoul112]

Normally this is where I'd make a joke about how this comment section will be completely fine and no one is going to be a jerk for no reason, but I don't remember the last time things got controversial on this channel, so maybe it will be fine. Personally I more or less agree with your younger self when it comes to FE6. Maybe I wouldn't be as harsh, but I would put it in the bad story and bad gameplay quadrant. I've played the vanilla version twice and seen 6 or more let's plays of it. The only time I had fun playing was when I tried Project Ember. It's probably just not the game for me. Also 100% agree with what you said about the story. The only other differences in opinion worth mentioning is that I'd switch the gameplay spots of Engage and Conquest, and I found Rev more fun than Echoes. I've never really cared much about the meta in FE outside of a basic understanding, so for me there really isn't much decision paralysis to be had.

[@BigKlingy]

I've come to appreciate FE6 more once I realized I was "playing it wrong" before. FE6 heavily favors early promotion, once you do that I find it's a lot more manageable.

[@JohnnyGobs]

I’m playing FE7 right now and yeah I figured out almost immediately that you can pretty beat the whole game with Marcus and Oswin alone. Around chapter 22 I had to start leaving them at camp just to get some variety in gameplay.

[@BigKlingy]

I really dislike FE7 Marcus. Even though Seth and Titania are similar, both of them feel more fun because they have decent growths, and I can justify using people alongside them. FE7's cast is aggressively mediocre outside of Marcus and early Oswin, and maybe Raven, and enemies are VERY weak, which makes the problem worse.

[@xenoinazuma7631]

I’m not going to comment on most contents of the video as it is all opinion based and while I disagree on some stuff I respect the opinions. That being said. I think everyone can agree, Bonus Exp needs to come back. It was such a cool mechanic and gave reason to speed through maps or not kill enemies or save the house or villages even if their items were crappy. Screw the one stealth segment though. That one is just dumb. Though I will put my two cents on the Warriors. First on Hopes cause. I think it is somehow worse than the worse parts of Three Houses. While also making Byleth somehow not interesting? Despite Jeralt and Byleth having a Support and Byleth being Shea’s goal, speaking of Shez. Like the voices. Hate the character. Like we don’t know enough about her mercenary company to feel, in my opinion their emotions are justified. While it is kind of cool to see the Three Houses Leaders being quite different without Byleth to anchor them in some cases it just. I don’t know. Makes them weaker. Either that or stupider in some cases. And the fact that the true ending is a bit of a guide dang it! Also doesn’t help. Gameplay wise. It’s alright but. Won’t lie. Felt more boring than any other game. Like I never felt bored in the first game or other Warriors type games but this one. Felt bored part way in. The first one. While the story wasn’t great and the characters for the game weren’t great. The returning characters. Oh god they have som really good moments. Like the fact that Iago is called out for not being as smart by Leo and Takemi. The fact that Corrin has a personality. And the supports that are voiced for max ranks are great. Chrom and Ryoma’s is amazing considering it is Matt Mercer talking to Matt Mercer, but there is also nice ones like Lyn and Anna, Lyn and Takemi, Oboro and Leo, Lissa and a lot of the cast. Tiki and everyone, Caeda and Niles, though Caeda is also got some weird great ones. Gameplay wise everyone feels different enough. The twins have slight different combos, Chrom and Lucina are a bit different, Ryoma and Owain if you have the DLC are different, Niles, Takemi and Anna are different, Lyn and Celica have unique move sets when unlocked, Marth is great. The Pegasus knights play different with their specials and weapons, Caeda even getting a special change to her’s if you max Supports with Cordelia and Hinoka and get the Triangle Attack and get an achievement, Robin in the base game was annoyingly the only tome using magic user. Seighorse. And Tiki being absolutely adorable and amazing with her transformation. The downsides? Maps are kind of easy, most villains are mages, no villain is playable despite being model swaps, Lyn, Anna and Celica aren’t involved in the story, and so many of the personal weapons have dragon slayer on them it’s easier to count what doesn’t, Corrin gameplay wise is terrible, and if you know what your doing you can easily whip up your best characters with the best skills on them their weapons and get max levels and damage without trying, doubly so with Caeda if you have DLC and get her Wing Spear with Plateslayer and horseplayer allowing dracoslayer practically killing everything. But I had more fun with it than Hopes. And I can swear if they did something like this for the the region of Tellius it could work as a nice simulation of war. But yeah that’s my two cents I don’t have since I’m not American. Hah.

[@thel-iteralone4592]

Of the main series, I've only played and finished Sacred Stones, Theee Houses, and Engage. I did try Binding Blade and Blazing Sword, but I never got around to finishing those games. Heroes is the game I play the most, and I both like and dislike this game at the same time. I'm strictly free to play, and it's fun when I get to make my favorite characters downright broken, but that goes both ways when powercreep is incredibly rampant. There's always a period of time when the most broken units are the ones with no direct counters to them, such as Legendary Male Robin right now and Fallen Edelgard two years ago.

[@BigKlingy]

I'm also 100% F2P in Heroes, and I guess it's part of why I don't use skill inheritance. I didn't play much of arena, so units being overpowered wasn't a big concern for me.

[@Shireikai]

Thracia's difficulty comes from the fact that you have no idea wtf the game is and how to play it. A lot of mechanics that aren't introduced to you in almost any way at all. Outside of that, it's def not extremely difficult. It's kind of like Engage lunatic. Once you know how it works it's not bad

[@BigKlingy]

The game originally came bundled with a VHS strategy guide, and it kind of assumes you've watched that.

[@dougskotnitsky3579]

I gotta say. This is a pretty accurate list.

[@firecraft7032]

I find that I'm not a huge fan of tierlists tbh, usually because it ends being a way for people to disguise their subjective opinion as an objective opinion, and use that to shit on other people. I know objective ranking exists, but no matter how much FE7 is ranked, I ain't changing my mind on how much I like that game, so I don't really see a point in doing objective rankings. That being said, while I do believe its perfectly valid to like Fates story over Engage story due to personal prefrances, I will admit that I have a hard time accepting that some people believe Fates story is objectively better then Engage's story. The only situation I can believe that could be true is possibly Birthright. Conquest and Revelation have so many stories fumbles that the idea that their stories is better then Engage.... well, If I said what it makes me feel I would probably insult those people by accident. Still, I understand why people dislike Engage story, and prefer Conqeust and Revelation story more. So bad can actually be enjoyable. Although engage has a lot more shitposting material then one might think

[@BigKlingy]

That's why I made this a spectrum, rather than a tier list. I hope it was interesting.

[@lunaamethyst5724]

I really enjoyed the monastery myself, I just find it relaxing to go through and find it really pretty. I also like the bits of lore scattered in the monastery details, like the books. I also don't see the point in conflict between TH and Engage fans, at least story wise, cuz they're so different that its hard to compare them. I also find Revelations extremely satisfying to play through, especially considering how bad things can go for the characters on the route they're not playable in.

[@BigKlingy]

While I get that (it reminds me of why I find Persona relaxing), it's not the experience I personally want from a Fire Emblem game. And while I agree that they shouldn't be in conflict... Engage is getting review bombed by vocal 3H fans (and even some professional critics) just for not having as good of a story, which is going to hurt the chances of new players trying it.

[@lunaamethyst5724]

@@BigKlingy Wow, that sucks. I love both games equally, and each do great at what they're trying to do. I wouldn't want every single game to be like TH or Engage, both tones have their place in FE.

[@BigKlingy]

I'm glad both games exist and appeal to different groups of people, I'm just... terrified of a "Breath of the Wild" or "Pokemon XY" situation happen, where the developers only listen to one group and leave the other in the dust.

[@Shadgeta]

I fully agree with Engage. Gameplay easily the best and story simple but works. I don't get why people complain about Alear being scared and plain. Them being scared of corrupted at the starts makes them like a character how grows and the "worshiping" isn't as bad as people make it out. Sure characters call them the Divine Dragon but it's mostly done for cutscenes as since it's voice they want a term all the characters can use without having a empty spot (like Shez in some cutscenes and supports) Byleth did this too with Professor even after the time skip. Gameplay always matters to me (it's why I still play Pokemon games and dislike gen 7 with the story ruining the flow of the game mainly the start). To anyone that think Engaged "flopped" no it didn't it sold very well and 3 houses was spoken about way longer even to now cause the three routes and none being the true route. If you haven't played Engage you r missing out and if the story is that bad to you think of it like a Saturday morning cartoon something there to pass the events while still being enjoyable. Is it deep no does it need to be also no.

[@BigKlingy]

I also feel that, at least there's an excuse for some of the worship with Alear (even though, like you said, people drop it quickly). It feels more jarring with Corrin, who everyone adores and would do anything for despite barely knowing them. And Byleth felt awkward because they're supposedly an experienced mercenary who doesn't have amnesia, but is treated like they don't know anything and can't act like they know anything because they're silent.

[@turtersvongenbu]

I find the worship Robin gets to be more bothersome than Alear's. A Divine dragon is considered to be akin to a Deity so it is warranted in his case. Robin is just a guy. He is supposed to be a talented strategist but doesn't really do anything all that special. He even gets fawned over for really common maneuvers that he only pulled off due to excessive prompting from other characters. Flavia basically tells them to use the excess oil and the spare ships. Most characters adore Robin for no reason. The game has to go out of its way to gush about how perfect Robin is. Even Validar goes on about how Robin is a perfect creation and the ideal host for Grima. The only thing worse is how rather than a protagonist, Chrom ends up feeling like the president of Robin's fan club.

[@BigKlingy]

@@turtersvongenbu Yeah that's kind of my issue, though I personally think Corrin is even worse, as people literally kill and die for them, and one person even COMMITS SUICIDE because the can't live with betraying Corrin. (Well, partly. But still.)

[@turtersvongenbu]

@@BigKlingy What exactly are referring to when you talk about people killing and dying for Corrin? As for the Flora thing, I think it's supposed to be the culmination of a lot of the trauma she had been through. Her father would have probably been killed when the ice tribe rebellion was quashed, leaving her the head of the tribe. She was left wracked with guilt, knowing that under her command the entire ice tribe had been wiped out after fighting Corrin's troops. Nearly every single person Flora cared about would now be dead. With her emotions spiraling, she rejected the sympathy Corrin tried to give and may have attempted to justify this through emphasizing her supposed betrayal of Corrin. The game could still do a much better job with the scene regardless.

[@BigKlingy]

I mostly refer to how Leo kills Zola on both Conquest and Revelation, and also kills Hans and/or Iago on several routes, JUST to keep Corrin's hands clean. Apart from Zola on Birthright, these are all people Corrin probably wouldn't have any reservations with killing. It just felt like they didn't want the player self-insert doing anything morally questionable.

[@raphaelsorel6907]

Shadows of Valentia is a personal favorite. The characters were fun and story was compelling. The gameplay may not have been the best, but it was still fun. However, if there was one thing about the game I despised, it was the post game. The final boss of it I had to defeat with a cheese tactic: Hunter’s Volley. That’s not good game design. RPGs tend to have such post game content with cheap difficulty that’s it’s unfair and this one is no exception. Pokémon is one of the exceptions of this. Its postgame is challenging without feeling cheap.

[@24hr-Gaming]

With Awakening I 100% agree that it needed another difficulty between Hard and Lunatic. Three Houses I feel the same way. And Three Houses the first half of the game should have been more house-specific to make replayability better. Engage is a bit frustrating because it does have good story elements, but they should have taken itself seriously from the start and also please no more create a characters, Alear would have been fine as a standard Lord. I actually liked that Three Houses gave you a lot of flexibility with units so I didn't mind the monastery sections as each run I'd try more and more silly armies, but a quick mode would have been good for people who just wanted to stick with standard units. I also agree that Path of Radiance is so far Fire Emblem at it's best. And if I were to fix Awakening's story, I think that game would have worked from being split up like FE10. Arc 1 is Chrom's army. Arc 2 is Lucina's army where she recruits the kids. And Arc 3 is both armies combining with the focus being on Robin. Otherwise I don't think Awakening's story was bad, just it could have been a lot better. I also love Conquest gameplay-wise, but there's no saving that story but at least it's not Revelations. I am pretty sure Revelations is the worst in the series with no contest.

[@BigKlingy]

It's often a problem in Fire Emblem that Hard is too easy for veterans but Lunatic/Maddening is too frustrating. I think New Mystery and Engage have the most "perfect" difficulty modes. (i.e ranging from "good for new players" to "challenging but not brutal" to "tough but fair") Awakening's acts being split like that would've made so much sense.

[@RoysOurBoyy]

This guys experience With binding blade as someone quoted is as follows "Switching Sides"

[@BigKlingy]

I'm hoping they remake it, because with better characterization for the cast and voice acting, it might become one of my favourites.

[@Wibiki43]

One last thing I'll mention is that if the Avater is going to stick around for every new non-remake FE, which I've begrudgingly accepted at this point, I really want to go back to the way Kris was handled and actually choose what their starting class is, just to make replayability all that more interesting, especially in the early game, which FE has always struggled with in that aspect. (Granted, this would also probably have to be in a game where they're not the main character so the game balancing doesn't go completely out of whack, which is unlikely, but not impossible.)

[@BigKlingy]

That'd be cool, although at this point I'd prefer if they dropped Avatars and just had fixed protagonists. Alear, Byleth and Shez are all essentially just fixed protagonists, except you get to choose their name. At this point I don't see much point in treating them as Avatars anymore.

[@sympathism]

The thing with echoes is that map design is adding an element of realism to it, unlike fates where every map has hoolahoops and giggles and pitfalls where you probably need to restart if you get position swapped by ninja dolls into narnia. Yea the maps are straightforward, but they are not terrible and I would certainly not shove the game all the way to the left because of it. The gameplay and difficulty is balanced, you have simple and fun choices on how to promote the first set of characters and it is still good fire emblem as we know it.

[@dinar8749]

Yeah I felt BigKlingy was too harsh on echoe's gameplay. I thought it was similar to awakening and fates gameplay wise, just more linear. Didn't have issues with the map design personally.

[@AkameGaKillfan777]

Fates doesn't have swamp tiles galore, randomly teleporting witches, or Cantors which infinitely spawn enemies.

[@sympathism]

@@AkameGaKillfan777 nah just 14 movement flyers, rock throwers with infinite range, unavoidable poison crap, untargettable assassin dog units, entrap staff setups, constant debuffing of stats due to ninja stars, pots, seal defense which is everywhere. It is a fantastic game but I think its comparing apples to oranges.

[@RSimpkinuk57]

I agree with you @sympathism. Echoes' maps are about the opposition first and foremost, the starting positions then the layout (and in some case the environment), occasionally the objectives (defeat boss instead of the usual rout, or green units to save). Regarding layouts, there are some carefully judged distances. and little obstacles in just the right places. Swamps (that far into the game) are a good addition. Randomly teleporting witches, with things they will not do, are a good addition. (Whereas intelligently coordinated teleporting witches, less fussy about where they are willing to go, could have been a nightmare.) Cantors supplying endless EXP on tap are a good addition. All features that give more party members things to do. (The two map I do have issues with are different ones, and for different reasons, from those I've read complaints about.)

[@AkameGaKillfan777]

@@sympathism Your first 2 points are incorrect

[@sesshyandenvyfreak]

Speaking of 3 Houses, there's also the DLC story, The Ashen Wolves one. I don't know if you've played that one. It's really hard but fun. And you get some good stuff after beating it. When doing a new file you get the DLC items which are really good. One of the items is called the Chalice of Begennings which gives you the ability to counterattack enemies and nullify weapons that would do extra damage i.e. bows on flying units.

[@alistairmarston9405]

He actually has played the Cindered Shadows DLC. He has a ten episode LP of it in the Fire Emblem playlists of his channel.

[@BigKlingy]

Yeah I played Cindered Shadows. It's good, but... I'm really sore that its not canon. You need to beat it to even recruit the Wolves in the main game anyway, so why NOT treat it as canon? It doesn't exactly conflict with anything, except Rhea explaining Byleth's origins at the end. (Which feels more like the developers realizing "oh right, barely anyone played Silver Snow")

[@karmenion]

I'd like to point out that most polls I saw online about best routes in Three Houses put Azure Moon pretty low even tho I never care about those. I am really glad I played it first and I almost feel no incentive to finish any other(because I hate grind in academy)

[@BigKlingy]

I want to know what polls you're using, because the majority I've seen rank Azure Moon highest in terms of writing. Though it depends on how they define "best", as some do separate polls for "which is best for Fodlan" vs "which is the best written". Azure Moon typically scores high in the second.

[@karmenion]

@@BigKlingy It was around month ago and I don't remember what I exactly wrote in google, but I remember that first few I saw were really torn between Crimson Flower and Golden Wind. Also some comment were arguing that storywise Golden Wind is just worse Church route.

[@BDeity]

(1:01:49) I wonder what's your take on the Shin Megami Tensei series if that's not your taste. I always love those stories for being the height of ideology and personal interpretation. I think some games like Strange Journey and SMT II skew it too much and remove the point of Chaos vs. Order. But games like Nocturne and SMT If... are the height of that type of storytelling. What do you think Klingy?

[@BigKlingy]

It's precisely why I don't enjoy mainline SMT stories and vastly prefer Persona. Right now I'm loving Nocturne for its gameplay, but I'm having to intentionally disengage from the story/not take it seriously because I don't find "the universe is so f*ed that the only way to fix it is to side with Lucifer, destroy reality (killing billions) and declare war of God" to be a very uplifting or hopeful story. I do, admittedly, appreciate the three Reasons for being an attempt at something different from standard Law/Chaos/Neutral, but I doubt anyone reasonable would want to side with any of them. And the series went back to Law vs Chaos afterwards, sigh. (At least SMT4 was the best handling of Law/Chaos reps in the series, making you actually care about them before their descent)

[@BDeity]

​@BigKlingy I won't spoil the endings of Nocturne if you haven't finished it, but I find it an uplifting and introspective in its own way (although mainly the freedom ending if we're talking "uplifting"). It's a tale of people too smart for their own good bestowed ultimate power. Especially since all are seen as their traditional human selves before becoming abominations, inside and out. The best part is that this journey of theirs is one the player cannot judge, as they will be forced into their own ideology. I think some people knock Reasons for being well...unreasonable, but I think that is their points. You aren't given a sunshine & rainbows option, but rather grave trade-offs that ask questions about yourself, and presenting an illusion of choice (as you don't go in thinking a Reason is completely moral and sound). This makes you have cognitive disconnence and in-turn radicalization as you would in real life ideology. This even happened to me where I chose the True Demon path solely because of the extra content, but by the end I was one to one with Lucifer’s thinking believing I was doing the right thing by destroying all fabric of life and time due to the abuse and tyranny of God. Not everyday a videogame makes you think that! In terms of True Demon ending, I think it helps reinforce one of Nocturne's biggest themes: sacrifice. It makes demi-fiend who's by all means a normal guy at the start to do the unimaginable. One that doesn't benefit himself in any way. It's only because he is compelled that it is right. The pursuit of power drains his humanity day by day. But what I love about SMT, is that it's just a matter of fact you judge, and it raises the possibility it's not a "bad guy" thing (in this context). Demi-fiend could relish in his moral superiority, but in a world this brutal he would be dead in a matter of seconds. And perhaps a balance is not ideal at all, forcing his existence to be in mediocrity and waistful if it does not have direction. This type of stuff gets me always coming back to these stories, but I understand your perspective with the reasons you gave.

[@BDeity]

TL;DR While subjective morality stories are hard to sell, it's when beliefs are derived and exemplify your life. While an objective story is "hopeful and uplifting", it's also can be preachy, lazy, and maybe a bit offensive if you don't personal agree with what it's selling. A subjective story requires you to be a well-functioning human and active participant much life real life, and it's an escapism that hones your reason and morality in real life, or at the very least leaves you pondering.

[@BigKlingy]

See, to me, stories like Nocturne come across as more preachy and "offensive if you don't personally agree with what it's selling". Mostly because the writers' biases will usually show in the options they give you, Three Houses is the closest a "choose your path" story has come to balancing the options and even then it's got some awkwardness in how it handles Edelgard and Rhea. Most of SMT's writers are incapable of portraying anyone on the Law side with any nuance, which makes the choices it offers feel like an illusion.

[@hylianfelldragon1308]

NGL, I used to hate Fire Emblem Engage's story but after a second casual playthrough, I actually find myself agreeing with your ranking on the stoty side.

[@BigKlingy]

After doing a full recorded series on KZbin, I've realized I like its characters a lot more than I initially thought, too. They're probably above Awakening's cast for me. Not as high as PoR or 3H's cast, but definitely in the upper-mid category.

[@Hellifiknow111]

My personal enjoyment for games goes 1: Characters 2: Gameplay 3: Story Awakening will always be my favorite fe game for getting me through a really lonely and depressive episode in my life. Though the other games are super fun! Though I admit, I dropped Echos for a bit to just watch a let’s play cause the maps bored me so much. But throughout going through and playing the games I have been having a lot of fun. Just wish the older titles were easier to find and play.. In any case; when it comes to modern fire emblem I think if we mixed Engages gameplay with Three houses story, specifically like blue lions, we could have an almost perfect fire emblem game.

[@BigKlingy]

I really wish I had the same "magical" experience a lot of people had with Awakening. Don't get me wrong, I still like it, it's just doesn't have that "huge part of my life" feel that it does for a lot of people, and its cast still don't really click with me. But I do agree with your list a lot, to me characters matter more than story in FE. e.g I'm not a huge fan of Echoes' plot but its characters and great (and voice acting makes them even better), and I think Fates' cast is surprisingly deep for such a messy plot. I like Engage's cast a lot too. Meanwhile, FE6's plot is fine, but I'm not too attached to its characters, mainly due to how long supports take. There's some good supports, but you need to sit at the end of chapters pressing End Turn over and over to see them, and there's also a support point cap per chapter unlike the other GBA games.

[@Hellifiknow111]

@@BigKlingy I gotta admit, if I played Awakening for the first time now I probably wouldn’t have had the same intense impact as it did. It was just a game that came to me at the perfect time so I’ll always appreciate and have that game highly for that reason. It’s understandable as not everyone has that same impact to games. Yeah if I dislike the characters; than I don’t care how good the story is and vice versa. It’s why despite its faults, I do really like Fates expecially conquests. While I couldn’t get into the gameplay, echos cast is also a favorite of mine. I still haven’t played FE6, but that definitely does sound rather bothersome.

[@DanielJ1495]

For me, Echoes ost Uprising will always be my favorite Klingy.

[@BigKlingy]

Echoes OST is incredible. I wonder if I'll do a music tierlist sometime. (FE6 is my least favourite, FE5's is incredibly boring, but the rest are great to amazing)

[@kl4969]

Heck yeah, Thracia good story good gameplay represent! Thank god someone finally acknowledges that the low hit rates in FE6 are a GOOD thing! There's a stat that gives hit rate and swords are accurate with no range for a reason! But Nergal's the undisputed king of cartoon villains (until Garon of course), excuse backstory notwithstanding :P 21:36 Roy shows a lot of cunning that goes beyond just being nice, even in the main story (Ch.6, Ch. 11 with a certain bard character). Revelations was such a cash grab, lol 56:58 God it's awful!!! Thanks for making another in-depth analysis video... I always look forward to these!

[@BigKlingy]

I really need to replay Thracia. I will admit, Chapter 24x is awful and I don't know what Kaga was on when he thought it was a good idea. The Skill stat ends up useless in a lot of FEs due to everyone always hitting anyway (it's especially notable in Radiant Dawn, where even axes have base hit rates above 80). Swords are a lot more useful when reliable accuracy is an actual niche that matters. That's why I like Rutger so much. I find Nergal's backstory interesting, the issue is it's locked behind multiple playthroughs and several obscure sidequests. 21:36 Oh yeah, there's a few moments. I just wish you got to see it more. Roy is a good character, it's just... really hard to see it. Or rather, Roys is a good character WHEN THE STORY LETS HIM BE (which isn't often).

[@naeshaunedwards7731]

Honestly I think that Three Houses could and should be the first game to benefit from some kind of deluxe version. It’s like you know they could’ve done more and there’s still so much they could do. I think they could give combat arts especially the relic weapons unique animations, add cutscenes to CF route and fix Edelgard’s character and let us actually fight TWSITD in a epilogue, add new and unique maps for each route, maybe give everyone an updated spell list, and add more weapons.

[@BigKlingy]

I feel like Warriors Three Hopes was already kind of that.

[@elpopman2055]

​@@BigKlingyNot Really.

[@ORenIshiio]

I dunno about you guys, but I really do love Fates so so so much!