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.
Oh hey, looks like they made another game after Three Houses! Tough act to follow, but I wonder what they came up with?
…Never mind.
Please stop trying to make a Fire Emblem Ultimate Universe, Intelligent Systems. Try making good games instead of reminding us of better ones. If you could stop jerking off the player every five minutes, that would be great too.
It’s that time of year when I finally get around to talking about that time of year again!
Inside: Heart Star, Loop Hero, Return of the Obra Dinn
Together in Battle is the latest entry in the Telepath RPG series and the followup to Telepath Tactics, which I reviewed… a decade ago, wow it’s been a while. In the intervening time I’ve gotten a lot more experience with tactical RPGs through binging the entire Fire Emblem franchise, so I have broader knowledge to compare it against.
Together in Battle is structured more like a roguelike: Characters, maps, and events are randomly generated except for a few story-related battles. To this end there is now a life sim aspect where you can only do a limited number of things per day, and your characters regularly drain food and money. I can see the reasoning in this — it makes sense to try something qualitatively different rather than just making Telepath Tactics again. Unfortunately, I don’t think it accomplished what it was going for nearly as well this time, and overall left me feeling oddly disappointed.
Inside: Duskers, Golden Light, Earthlock, Surviving the Aftermath, Amnesia: The Bunker
I tried some games the internet told me were good: Final Fantasy V, Octopath Traveler, and Lost Eidolons. They all sucked.
Inside: Rue Valley demo, Blue Prince, LOVE, Infinifactory, Mewgenics.