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Following claims that Fire Emblem Engage has been gaining a better reputation in the time since its release, a debate broke out on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Geha) board over whether its standing has actually improved. The thread saw comparisons to past entries like Fates and Radiant Dawn, complaints about how hard it is to get emotionally attached to the characters, the fact that not a single character made the “Hall of Fame” in the character popularity poll, and doubts about the series’ future direction given the sales drop from the previous title, Three Houses — all pointing to a reputation that’s far from settled.
What people said
Honestly, I think those two are the top two anyway
Shame it's 3DS-only, which makes it awkward for streaming
Conquest just feels a bit old-school by comparison — if you're going to play that, you might as well play Binding Blade or Blazing Blade instead. Personally I'd recommend the Shadow Dragon remake
After Manshisenkou, I bet the sluggish pacing will drive you nuts
The opening movie is just noisy
The Emblems (the summonable hero-spirits) loom so large that the regular characters end up as nothing but pedestals to carry them
Characters with flat-out better stats but paper-thin personalities just keep joining one after another
And constantly swapping out your lineup before you even get a chance to like anyone wasn't a great flow either
In the end, nobody made the Hall of Fame in the big popularity poll
Even Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE managed to get someone in
This is seriously a disastrous mismatch between the game system, the story, and the characters
The characters' backgrounds and dialogue weren't exactly poll-topping material to begin with, and on top of that the system itself practically encourages treating them as disposable
Play it straight without self-imposed restrictions and you'll clear the game without ever getting evenly attached to everyone
Regardless, it's an undeniable fact that sales dropped hard from Three Houses, and sticking with this direction is the real dead end
If they keep going with the Manshisenkou-style approach, it's over
Depends on overseas sales, but I think they'll stick with the Manshisenkou-style approach
For the other line, personally I'd be fine with a return to 2D — a simpler FE
Kind of like how Metroid does it
Even Radiant Dawn got propped up as a stick to beat Awakening with back in the day
When Awakening was selling well, there were tons of revisionists going 'Radiant Dawn wasn't getting bashed back then, but look at Awakening'
But Radiant Dawn came out back when FE itself was still a minor series, and it got trashed so badly that mocking it basically became a meme
The more people get into Part 3, the more the rating's going to drop
Just started Part 3 today and I'm enjoying it
Though if you rush through only unlocking one character, I feel like that'd be rough and probably tank your opinion of it
So what's your take on it, then?
Path of Radiance had a good story, and by the standards of its time the combat was well-balanced and reasonably challenging too — but it didn't actually go over that well with users
Neither one is really a selling point for reaching a mass audience
Engage isn't garbage-tier bad though
It's just a by-the-numbers, standard story
He cleared the Fell Dragon fight on Lunatic+ even while calling it an unclearable garbage game
Yeah, the Three Houses story-obsessed crowd (fans whose brains got cooked by the story) were the ones trashing it the hardest
The story was good, but Three Houses was riddled with flaws as an SRPG, yet there were way too many kids propping it up while dumping on Engage
The only indefensible thing about Engage is the opening movie — as an SRPG it's way more fun
That's the main reason he won't touch Conquest
If you can't praise the game system just because of the character designs, you've got no right calling yourself a veteran Emblem fan
About Engage, he said something like 'Sure, everyone's cute, but it's all the same flavor of cute'
And he still ranked it highly, so he must be judging it on the system, right?
Guess to this guy, Engage's cookie-cutter faces ('hanko-gao', stamped-out-looking faces) beat Kozaki's plain, understated ones ('shio-gao')
Minoru's fanboys hype him up, but honestly that's probably just about right
Bandwagon fans just nitpick the smallest details to stir up console-war-style arguments
Honestly, I've decided I'm not buying another one unless they drop the My Unit (custom avatar character) system
As for Intelligent Systems, Heroes (the mobile gacha game) has been a bad influence on them
They're clearly using Heroes as a testing ground for stuff like gender selection and multiple secondary protagonists, and the damage that's done to the main series has completely blown past the limit
If you're a real veteran who still plays FE, there's a doujin game out there by a certain ex-FE developer who went independent, and it's got maid characters in-game (not treated the way Fates did it) and meta-commentary type stuff — so I'd say the fandom's tolerance runs pretty deep
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Fire Emblem is known as a series where opinion tends to flip with every new release — “the previous game was better” — and posters in the thread noted that Radiant Dawn held that same position when Awakening launched, with Engage now finding itself in the same spot. Engage is said to have sold worse than its predecessor, Three Houses, though no concrete figures were given; it’s worth noting that the thread’s talk of a “reappraisal” isn’t based on sales data or aggregated review scores, but is a subjective read on shifting chatter across social media and 5ch. The fact that not a single character made the Hall of Fame in the character popularity poll was cited as backing for the claim that the characters are hard to get emotionally invested in.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “[Good News] FE Engage Keeps Getting Reappraised, Climbs to the Position of the Series’ Greatest Masterpiece” (translated from the original Japanese).
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