From our other sites
The story
Nintendo’s newly revealed Fire Emblem title, Bansen Senkō (‘a riot of colors’), has a story where an evil god is resurrected and the hero time-leaps into the past to save comrades who’ve already died. The thread’s original poster called the device ’embarrassingly cringe by now,’ but reactions were split. Some defended it, arguing the game world is allowed a bit of over-the-top flair, while more cautious posters pointed to how Three Houses and Engage’s stories were received, arguing it all comes down to the quality of the writing and presentation. The talk also spilled into the long-running debate over the sales gap between Three Houses and Engage, and which direction — story depth or SRPG polish — the series should lean toward.
What people said
Everything up to the end of the Direct was great, but that final time-leap reveal suddenly reeks of Engage.
I'll eat my words if it turns out good, but…
A flat story with zero momentum isn't fun either, is it?
Let's enjoy some fantastical vibes, at least in the game lol
A little of it is fine, but after living through Awakening and Fates, you can't help being wary.
Did they really need to make you give up the rings — the game's whole selling point — partway through?
If it comes with actual gameplay, like retreat battles or figuring out how to beat a ring whose powers you already know, having it stolen from you isn't a bad situation. Engage just ended up looking goofy because of the writing and how those scenes played out.
As a story it's good — it shows the contrast between the Divine Dragon and the Fell Dragon, and above all, having Lucina and Lyn turn up here is great. The small details, like the ring getting stolen, are garbage, though. Whether a long absence makes sense in a leveling-up game is a separate issue.
Deadpool alone got people talking, lol. As a game, though, it's pretty much trash.
Going just off what's been revealed, starting five years later doesn't really make sense. If Balor's army is attacking, come help then — showing up only after everyone's already dead makes for a pretty useless Valkyrie. They probably just wanted to match Three Houses, but that game's 'I was asleep for five whole years' setup was a garbage scenario too.
Maybe the god only starts intervening once defeat is already certain?
The intervention just happens to land whenever the game gets interesting. From the god's perspective, the year probably doesn't matter anyway.
Doesn't sound like you need to collect all the Utsushie (BotW's memory flashbacks) first.
Your level is already 40 at the start of the game, and the trailer shows it going up to 60, so Part 2 isn't just a single fight with the final boss and done.
Three Houses broke from that mold and became the best-selling entry. Engage went back to classic FE and sales got cut in half. At this point it's pretty obvious where the actual demand is — sales don't lie.
Sounds like you don't realize Three Houses' more laid-back support conversations were great too. This new game's Dietrich's crew already looks primed for comic relief as well.
That's really just an in-crowd echo chamber inflating the score — proof that hardcore-fan ratings can't be trusted at all. And honestly, dragging in old-game callbacks and maps that Awakening and Fates used to sell as $2 DLC only makes the diehards happy. Most players, in Japan and abroad alike, have no clue about the older games.
No matter how highly the core fans rate it, once the majority says no… it's just not well-received. Sales don't lie.
Honestly, anyone complaining about that part of Three Houses doesn't get what made it good in the first place, so they're not qualified to weigh in.
No, I think the strategy portion is fun — probably second only to Fates: Conquest.
Well, chuunibyo types like dark, gloomy, complicated worldbuilding, but that lane alone is saturated and only gets thinner from here. Western RPGs go all in on exactly that, and it just doesn't land with Japanese players at all. The core of Fire Emblem is being an SRPG anyway, so leaning into an Engage-style tone to widen the audience is a legitimate move.
Do you have a source showing kids actually responded better to it than to Three Houses?
Engage is rated CERO B, so elementary schoolers technically aren't even supposed to play it. If they built it for kids outside the rated age range, that's just dumb — and if the platform holder is ignoring its own CERO rating, that's a problem in itself.
With Three Houses, the exploration segments were a hassle and the balance was way too sloppy. Cavalry having negative speed growth, or the huge gender gap between classes leaving male mages universally underpowered — it was riddled with problems.
It just didn't spike the way Three Houses did — looking at the series as a whole, it actually sold pretty well. Fates had its sales split across multiple versions, and Engage still hit a decent bar on its own.
A 'core base that champions SRPGs for their own sake' is a tiny minority. A game aimed at that kind of niche is exactly the sort of thing Nintendo shouldn't bother releasing at full price — an indie title would do just fine.
If it sells around 1.5 to 2 million every time, that's plenty.
Background and key points of this debate
The Fire Emblem series has long been split between entries like Awakening, Fates, and Engage, which lean into ‘SRPG number-crunching’ gameplay, and Three Houses, which leans into a ‘weighty, story-driven’ style. As pointed out within the thread, Three Houses recorded the series’ best-ever sales, while Engage, which returned to the franchise’s roots, saw sales cut in half — and that sales gap sits behind the ongoing argument over how much chuunibyo-style flair should be tolerated. There were also replies clarifying the new title’s ‘starts five years later’ structure: early on, the story loops back five years to save fallen comrades, a point that was easy to misread from the announcement alone. It’s also worth noting, on both the defense and criticism side, that Engage carries a CERO B rating, meaning it was never intended as a game for elementary schoolers in the first place.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread ‘FE Bansen Senkō: ‘The Evil God Is Back! Time-Leap and Face It With Your Friends!’ — Isn’t This Vibe Getting a Little Cringe?‘
Leave a Reply