Last time, I went through the optional dungeon added in the rerelease revolving around how the rerelease-exclusive character was very special, but I didn’t care because they didn’t put any effort into making her likable.
This time, it’s Valentine’s Day! I am dreading the horrors.
Let’s go over all the social links before the conclusion, including the ones I didn’t finish in the liveblog.
The opening of my first draft, back when I thought I’d be doing this in a single post, was “Persona 4 is better than Persona 3.” That was very naive. I’m now quite confident the opposite is true: Persona 4 is so bad it makes Persona 3 look good.
Inside: CrisTales, Axiom Verge 2, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
Hey, it’s been a while. The reason for my absence is that I’ve been working my way through the Fire Emblem series, which is quite a timesink.
I’ve been interested in strategy RPGs for a while, but they’ve rarely clicked with me, usually due to an overreliance on RNG that rather defeats the purpose of the “strategy” part. I knew that Fire Emblem was both extremely random (even stat gains are up to chance) and extremely punishing of failure, so I avoided it for a long time. However, the hype over Three Houses (the sixteenth game in the series) convinced me to try it and I quite liked what I found, so I decided to give the whole franchise a shot.
Unfortunately, as with Shin Megami Tensei, I started with the best entry in the series and experienced only disappointment thereafter. I do think there are some notable things to discuss, however.
Last time, I gave an overview of my thoughts on Fire Emblem‘s core gameplay mechanics. Now, I’ll begin giving my thoughts on individual entries in the series. This will be more focused on writing and aesthetics, though I will also discuss unique gameplay elements when they come up.
I began at the beginning, of course, though where applicable I played the remakes, because I don’t hate myself.
Shadows of Valentia is a 3DS title and a remake of the second game in the series, Fire Emblem Gaiden. It’s a true remake this time, not merely retelling the same story but adding tons of new content. It has a lot of good and a lot of bad.
I’m skipping FE4 (Genealogy of the Holy War) & 5 (Thracia 776) because the fan translations are incomplete and dodgy, so I’m waiting for the inevitable remake for those.
After FE5, the original creator of Fire Emblem left the company to make his own games, which were Fire Emblem in all but name. I’m playing them currently and will report if I have any thoughts. In the meantime, I have thoughts on the GBA games, where the series tried to reinvent itself after the creator’s departure.
After The Sacred Stones, Fire Emblem returned to home consoles and made the jump to 3D. At this point, after the mediocrity of the previous games, my expectations were at rock bottom, and I was even more pessimistic about this 3D entry, knowing that was so often where franchises went wrong.
So I was completely unprepared for how good these games would be.
The Tellius games were beautiful, awe-inspiring games that said real and meaningful things and restored my faith in the franchise. So of course they bombed and sent the company into a tailspin. After Shadow Dragon and New Mystery also underperformed, they faced an ultimatum: If the next game didn’t sell, the series was done.
Their solution was disgusting slop catered to the lowest of the lowest common denominator. It sold like gangbusters, proving there is no God.
Awakening was just plain bad. This game was hilariously bad. Improvement?
Fire Emblem Fates is actually a set of three games, but it’s not a Pokemon scam; they are genuinely different games with completely different campaigns. They are all sold separately (with the third being DLC, which I think you can’t get legally anymore now that the 3DS eShop is shuttered) I presume because they still needed money even after Awakening sold like hotcakes. They all share the same engine and core mechanics, so I’ll discuss those first before we get into the Gordian knot that is the plot.
We now have to talk about Fates‘, for lack of a better term, “plot”. It is an, uh, experience. Here’s the short version:
EDELGARD DID NOTHING WRONG
*ahem*
As I said at the beginning, this was actually my entry point into the series, as I saw tons of chatter about it on social media and wanted to see what the hype was all about. Now that I’ve played through the rest of the series, however, I’ve gained a greater appreciation for the ways in which it’s in conversation with its predecessors. But, yes, it’s still the best Fire Emblem (though Radiant Dawn has a better plot overall).
After the massively overambitious mess that was Fates, the Fire Emblem team decided to do that again, because they are categorically incapable of learning form their mistakes. Fortunately, they started by making their first good decision in a long time: They outsourced the plot to another company, Koei Tecmo (the Monster Rancher guys). Because they are competent writers who don’t have lolicon and incest fetishes, the game ended up with a really good story. In particular, it is an astoundingly insightful look at classism (though its takes on racism are… awkward at best).
Unfortunately, even with outsourcing, it’s clear the devs bit off more than they could chew; major parts of the game are blatantly unfinished, and the list of cut content is a mile long. Fortunately, the game was so successful the devs were allowed a second shot with an AU remake, Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, which implements many of the cut ideas and is overall a much better story. Unfortunately, they changed the gameplay to hack-and-slash, so I only watched it instead of playing it. But I’ll discuss both, because Three Hopes sheds more light on aspects of Three Houses.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses was an overambitious game with amazing ideas it was never able to realize. Fortunately, we got a miracle rarely seen in the industry: The writers were given the chance at a do-over with Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes, released a few years later. Rather than a sequel or straight remake, Three Hopes presents an alternate timeline where the house leaders never met Byleth, a want of a nail that changes the course of history.
I’ll be discussing the plot in detail this time, so once again I recommend playing or watching yourself. This time it’ll only take you a mere… (checks) …23 hours.
After FE5, Shouzou Kaga, the creator of Fire Emblem, left Nintendo to found his own company. He decided to pick up right where he left off with Fire Emblem Saga, a game with literally the same setting and characters as Fire Emblem. Nintendo said excuse me WTF, and took him to court. Interestingly, while the courts forced him to remove all explicit references to Fire Emblem, they did not find him guilty of copyright infringement, establishing a precedent allowing independent creators to make spiritual successors to their former works even if the IP was now owned by their former employer.
So that is how we got TearRing Saga: Yutona Heroes Chronicle for the PlayStation in 2001. It is a terrible game that would have made a pretty good novel.