Fire Emblem is the Pokémon of the Strategy Role-Playing genre.
While it can be fun at times, it's very causal and is designed for meatbrains. In its decades since the first game’s release in 1990, there has not been enough innovation to warrant its prolonged, continued existence. For example, the stories and narratives of this series is almost always low quality and shallow, like the Megami Tensei series. It's always "Hot people good, ugly incest breed, run by dragon lord bad". Even when it goes into more humanizing elements of its antagonists, it's far from the first game to do such a thing. 1994's Langrisser II had a lot of humanization in many of its main baddies. And it's fleshed out remake, 1995's Der Langrisser, included the option to side with those people. 1995's Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together and 1997's Final Fantasy Tactics included well fleshed out narratives and horrific war-based stories. In those two games, it truly feels as if you are fighting in a horrific state conflict. In Fire Emblem, it just feels like 10 or so people fighting, like in a JRPG. While cutscenes may say otherwise, this immersive feel is critical during gameplay. And Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics truly show that in their gameplay. The dating simulation elements of Fire Emblem are truly barebones. 1996's Langrisser III and Sakura Wars are two examples of dating sim elements in SRPGs. While Langrisser III's dating sim content is horrific in its ending outcomes, Sakura Wars is an amazing example of a Doukyuusei clone, while being extremely original. The true innovation of the series, like in 1996's Genealogy of the Holy War and 1999's Thracia 776, were completely and immediately scraped, never to be used again. Genealogy's level design is grand and immersive. They never did it again. Thracia 776, being a very challenging endurance with major changes to the core gameplay and RNG, was forgetten about. And the core gameplay as never innovated. Yes, other SRPG series don't innovate much with the core gameplay. However, those series don't live long. Langrisser only was around for 7 years, and got 5 games. Shining Force was around for 6 years, and got 3 games. But Fire Emblem has outlived those series, getting nearly 20 games. Any gameplay changes are regulated to spinoffs. Even Kaga ditched the square tile based gameplay in favor of hexagons, like more tradiational strategy games.
As for Three Houses, it's an awful game. One of the many lackluster strategy titles of the system. Skip it. Play a better SRPG.
While it can be fun at times, it's very causal and is designed for meatbrains. In its decades since the first game’s release in 1990, there has not been enough innovation to warrant its prolonged, continued existence. For example, the stories and narratives of this series is almost always low quality and shallow, like the Megami Tensei series. It's always "Hot people good, ugly incest breed, run by dragon lord bad". Even when it goes into more humanizing elements of its antagonists, it's far from the first game to do such a thing. 1994's Langrisser II had a lot of humanization in many of its main baddies. And it's fleshed out remake, 1995's Der Langrisser, included the option to side with those people. 1995's Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together and 1997's Final Fantasy Tactics included well fleshed out narratives and horrific war-based stories. In those two games, it truly feels as if you are fighting in a horrific state conflict. In Fire Emblem, it just feels like 10 or so people fighting, like in a JRPG. While cutscenes may say otherwise, this immersive feel is critical during gameplay. And Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics truly show that in their gameplay. The dating simulation elements of Fire Emblem are truly barebones. 1996's Langrisser III and Sakura Wars are two examples of dating sim elements in SRPGs. While Langrisser III's dating sim content is horrific in its ending outcomes, Sakura Wars is an amazing example of a Doukyuusei clone, while being extremely original. The true innovation of the series, like in 1996's Genealogy of the Holy War and 1999's Thracia 776, were completely and immediately scraped, never to be used again. Genealogy's level design is grand and immersive. They never did it again. Thracia 776, being a very challenging endurance with major changes to the core gameplay and RNG, was forgetten about. And the core gameplay as never innovated. Yes, other SRPG series don't innovate much with the core gameplay. However, those series don't live long. Langrisser only was around for 7 years, and got 5 games. Shining Force was around for 6 years, and got 3 games. But Fire Emblem has outlived those series, getting nearly 20 games. Any gameplay changes are regulated to spinoffs. Even Kaga ditched the square tile based gameplay in favor of hexagons, like more tradiational strategy games.
As for Three Houses, it's an awful game. One of the many lackluster strategy titles of the system. Skip it. Play a better SRPG.
8 Comments
I would say that there is no video game that beats genealogy in terms of narrative and story, but it’s ok to hate the rest of the series i guess
I agree that Genealogy does have a very ambitious narrative and it’s pretty well done. Though, I think there are a lot of SRPGs that do narrative better. Like Tactics Ogre.
Genealogy's biggest problem is the second half,story is nearly nonexistent after 'that' scene in Chapter 5.It's still a great game,but Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics does a lot better job in nearly everything about their stories imo
idk the "war is bad, everyone is bad, this is a sad world" discourse of most of Matsuno's works doesn't resonate with me like the epic saga told through fathers and sons about the liberation of a nation, the death of your friends and companions through the gamplay (not like the death of a minion like in TO or FFT, but always the death of a friend), and the love, also through gampley. Or just walking on foot that large areas, feeling the fatigues of war, the war that comes first for the children and old, people that YOU MUST PROTECT BUT IS NOT SO EASY, and trying to protect everyone, to do the right things. For your father, for his ghosts and the ghosts of his friends. All of that it's in my guts everyday when i wake up.
Sure, the scope of FE4 is indeed huge, but it fails to flesh out that massiveness imo, compare to Tactics Ogre,a political war drama where every story bit, every choice you made, every character(that aren't generic) died on the battlefield is meaningful and affects the story, which is a really well paced, realistic political war drama, full of gut wrenching choices, twists and turns,also despite this attention to detail in it's bigger scope,it's also able to present an engaging human drama, exploring themes like suicide, manipulation of desperate people, accepting yourself as a person, family bonds, and more. Where in Fire Emblem 4,best example of humanization of characters is the romance between Sigurd and Deidare, which happens in like, 3 turns. I appreciete that they actually gave a personality to most of the playable characters, but unfortunetly it doesn't present a strong character writing for any of the main characters. I love most of the ideas in the narrative, but it really needs a remake to fully realize those ideas
genealogy is really fucking cool but i agree that it really needs a remake to fully flesh its ideas out, i feel like a lot of the weird things in how it presents itself come from trying to be that crazy ambitious on the snes. tactics ogre and thracia kinda goated though
i don't completely agree with the megaten comparison. old megaten (1987-2003, when cozy okada was the ceo and producer of atlus) typically had decent to unique narratives - for example, MT2 and SMT1 had the gall to set their stories in a real-life nuked tokyo, or how the persona games used popular psychology to create more relatable and character-driven plots. the trend of megaten games having lackluster stories really only began after mid 2000s. the exceptions to this rule are P3 (which is one of the few megaten games to have an actual ludonarrative) and SJ.
Dhoom
1 year ago