Woooooo you've opened the floodgates, sir. This is going to be a
long post. Also, if anything I say gets under anyone's skin, my apologies. I'm a very opinionated person and I also speak bluntly.
I prefer the
old style of Fire Emblem for various reasons.
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Story, Characters, and Setting
First and foremost, by forcing child characters to be a thing, they're cutting into storyline potential and actually making the stories worse and it makes support conversations more about hooking up and other inane things instead of the characters' backgrounds. The only support conversation I actually enjoyed in Fire Emblem Awakening was between Virion and Cherche where it was revealed how Virion's authority and land were seized by Walhart. Then we have Gaius who is just candy, candy, candy and we jump to Fates and some dude's obsessed with pickles. One of Sumia's supports with Chrom is just talking about making him a pie. Really? Food?
Great, that's the content I'm here for, let me tell you.
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You speak of a lack of supports, but a number of older games had support conversations. They were admittedly a mixed bag, some of them weren't good. But then you had others that really stood out like:
Mist and Jill's shared support conversations from Path of Radiance (Mist extended friendship to Jill, a former enemy along country lines, and Jill learned the error of her ways and the need to get over racism she had been raised and indoctrinated into by her home country)
Jill and Lethe's shared support conversations from Path of Radiance (Jill learning to overcome the aforementioned racism by talking to a member of the race she was taught to hate)
Soren and Ike's support conversations from Path of Radiance (and what it unlocks in Radiant Dawn if you carry over a save with A rank support from Path of Radiance)
Stefan's shared support conversations with Mordecai from Path of Radiance
Sothe and Astrid's shared support conversations from Path of Radiance
Lyn and Wallace's shared support conversations from The Blazing Blade
Renault's support conversations from The Blazing Blade
Jaffar and Matthew's shared support conversations from The Blazing Blade
There are more great ones as well but this post ends up being ridiculously long, and those are some of the best.
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None of the previously listed supports were romance-based, but there were romance based supports present in some of the the older games as well. Some characters ended up together canonically.
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Also, hey, characters had children in the past games who became characters. How did they do it? They actually let time pass naturally.
Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade canonically takes place twenty years after Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade and the main characters, Roy and Lilina, are respectively the son and the daughter of Eliwood (Roy's father) and Hector (Lilina's father), the two male Lords (alongside Lyn) of The Blazing Blade.
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War introduced the coupling mechanic to produce child characters into the series and the game's story is split between two generations, the first portion following the parent characters and the second portion following their children.
Throwing your kids into an interdimensional Easy Bake Oven is lazy and embarassing pandering to the fans who just like shipping. They might as well split the development team up between a turn-based tactical game team and a visual novel game team since some people just seem to want to hook characters up and don't care to learn the tactics.
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Another reason I prefer the classic style of Fire Emblem is because of a better sense of realism.This ties into my next point, the ridiculous armor some of the women were wearing in Awakening and especially Fates. Camilla and Charlotte in particular. If you really want your torso slashed open or skewered through because sex appeal is distracting to the opponent then have at it. Pandering like this is not only insulting to the female characters but to the setting the characters are placed into. Compare female armor like
Camilla's boob window and especially
Charlotte from Fire Emblem: Fates' underwear armor to
Titania's from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn or
Minerva's from Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and you'll see what I'm talking about. It's almost like more armor is more practical and more clothing will actually help catch weapons so they don't sink into your flesh as easily.
I'm a bit more lenient when it comes to dancer units since they're not intended for front-line combat and shouldn't be taking damage in the first place, and mages have always tended toward robes because of the fictional aesthetic association and aren't decked out in armor, but
really, Tharja? You too, Nyx? Are you sure neither of you would like some
more fabric or even just a
simple breastplate for some sort of protection? Maybe some
boots? No? Okay.
And no, this isn't to put down the female form. The female form is great. The fanservice outfits aren't empowering and, I reckon, just push the objectification people are up in arms about these days.
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Frankly, I don't see why fanservice and shipping mechanics
have to force their way into the wider world of the setting. People are going to ship anyway, why does it need to be a gameplay feature? As much as I love what the series was,
I would have happily let it die with Awakening if all we have to look forward to is women getting stripped from battle damage and all of the other characters from outside of Marth's games, Awakening, and Fates getting ignored in stuff like Fire Emblem Warriors when the series had been going for two entire decades before Awakening was released. I'd happily trade the public perception of waifu simulators for a dead series that actually had integrity.
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Another thing I don't like is the introduction of Avatar characters in the Japanese exclusive Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem, which saw a return in Fire Emblem: Awakening, Fire Emblem: Fates, and presumably Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I don't see the appeal of Avatar characters, I don't play as "myself" in games, and it's really boring when all of the characters just look up to you and tell you how great you are all the time. It's great and all if that somehow boosts people's self-esteem or something, but as far as I'm concerned, I'd rather follow around a group of characters and see their stories unfold instead of having to be the big hero who everyone loves and just so happen to be vital to the plot.
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I hate the introduction of the Outrealms. It's just an excuse to fleece people with DLC (Awakening) and to try to tie things together like some Hyrule Historia for Fire Emblem. A chunk of these games don't even take place on the same world.
Marth's games (Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, Mystery of the Emblem, Shadow Dragon, New Mystery of the Emblem), Alm's games(Gaiden and Echoes: Shadows of Valentia), and Awakening share a world and Awakening's countries are just the same countries from Marth and Alm's games but thousands of years later. Genealogy of the Holy War and Thracia 776 also take place on this same world, but they're on a different continent called Jugdral elsewhere on the planet.
Meanwhile, The Binding Blade and The Blazing Blade are on the continent of Elibe in a different world.The Sacred Stones is on the continent of Magvel on another world. Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn take place on the continent of Tellius on a different world from the others. We can discern this from the lore. There's no reason for these characters to be crossing over into any other worlds and there should also be no reason for these characters to even know of each other at all.
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Next, let's talk about enemy motivations. Garon from Fates is just cartoonishly evil with no redeeming qualities.
Meanwhile, Ashnard from Path of Radiance wants to enforce Social Darwinism on the world, survival of the fittest, and allow the strong to reign freely.
Ashera, the goddess of Tellius revealed in Radiant Dawn, seeks to eliminate all life on Tellius and start life anew because she is the embodiment of Order and the races of Tellius were prone to warring. She was, at one point, named Ashunera but her grief over the hatred and violence her creations inflicted on one another caused her to flood a majority of the planet, except for the continent the PoR and RD take place on, and split into Ashera the goddess of Order and Yune the goddess of Chaos.
There is a minor enemy in New Mystery of the Emblem named Eremiya. She was once a kindhearted bishop in charge of an orphanage, but she witnessed orphans die due to war. One of the primary antagonists of the game, Gharnef, used a spell to erase her memory of the event and warp her grief into hatred, effectively brainwashing her. She became twisted, becoming cruel to the orphans still under her watch and raising them to be assassins. After you strike her down in battle, Gharnef, just to be terrible, unlocked the memory he had sealed away and let Eremiya die in despair.
Zephiel from The Binding Blade's motivations are represented well enough in this quote: He plans to return the world to being ruled by dragons instead of humans. What makes him an even better villain is that you, the player, are somewhat (though not wholly) responsible for the events that transpire.
Nergal from The Blazing Blade, suffice it to say, wasn't always as bad as he comes off through the story. You should experience it for yourself though since it's available relatively cheaply (if you own a Wii U).
The reprehensible lengths the Loptyrian Cult go to achieve their goals, and what happens under their watch in the story, is delightfully devilish
Seymour.
The motivations behind Lehran and The Black Knight's actions as revealed in Radiant Dawn are too good to spoil here.
Suffice it to say that there are some great villains scattered throughout the old games.
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Finally for this section, let's address endings real quick. In Awakening, it was all a bunch of happily ever afters for the lovebirds and it's practically all positive. Meanwhile, in some games, some characters wander off never to be heard from again. One guy actually died in an avalanche. Some others set up their own countries or started their own businesses. That's more realistic, and more interesting, than sickeningly saccharine "Wow, isn't it just great how everything just worked out for everyone?" endings.
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Gameplay
Old Fire Emblem's main gimmick and draw was permanent death. It made you get more invested in the characters and forced you to actually learn how to play the game to avoid losing characters. Sure, some people just soft reset the game when a character died and would re-do the map, but that actually teaches you to become competent with tactics games instead of holding your hand.
Some people prefer Casual mode so they don't have to stress over it. Cool. Have at it, I guess. I suppose I just don't understand why you are actually spending money and playing instead of watching a playthrough online if you don't want to actually be challenged and get better at strategizing.
Also, earlier, I addressed the loss of realism in modern Fire Emblem installments. Part of that is the removal of series mainstay weapon durability in Fire Emblem: Fates. I prefer having weapon durability because it allows me to get more into the world. Weapons actually deteriorate over time in real life and need replaced.
Another hit to realism comes with the wide variety of reclassing options available. Reclassing has been possible in the past, but promotions for the most part save for a few exceptions kept to classes that were appropriate to the individual character's starting class. Like an Archer becoming a Sniper or Bow Knight, a Knight becoming a General, a Mage becoming a Sage, Cavaliers becoming Paladins, and so on and so forth. I won't say it's impossible for certain characters to learn other weapons in the new games, but it does break the immersion for me. I can live with it because the option is there for me not to take those reclassing options for myself and it brings joy to other players, but from a story standpoint it bugs me.
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What was that about castles and being more restrictive? Let's slow down there with that sort of talk please, sir.
As you can see from the numerous
links I just posted in each individual word and punctuation mark in the previous two sentences, it is not the case. There were more detailed and interesting maps than
just castles in past installments, some of them with nice terrain mechanics, and there were also
varied victory requirements. Heck, Elincia's Gambit, the one I tied to the word restrictive, was such a good, standout map that they brought it back in Fates as DLC.
The gameplay found in Gaiden and, thus, Echoes: Shadow of Valentia is a poor representation of the gameplay from the GBA, DS, GameCube, and Wii games. Gaiden was a very experimental game that has its own style of gameplay and Echoes: SoV, perhaps to its detriment for some, is a faithful recreation of that. Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, and Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon from the Game Boy Advance and DS eras can be purchased on the Wii U eShop as Virtual Console titles. Unfortunately, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn are quite expensive due to their limited run, poor advertisement, and the high fan demand for them years later.
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Final Thoughts
Earlier on in the post I said I'd have been content if the series had died with Awakening
or preferably prior, but here we are and the series isn't dead yet. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia ended up being a
perhaps too faithful remake
for some people of Fire Emblem Gaiden with fantastic presentation in terms of music, character design, and voice acting. Meanwhile, Fire Emblem: Three Houses looks great from the trailer they showed at E3, though unfortunately it appears we're still bogged down with an Avatar character.
I had planned to swear off of the series after seeing Awakening's time travel shenanigans and the nightmare Fates was with its baby dimension and all that storyline garbage but Echoes: Shadows of Valentia convinced me to give the series another shot.
If Three Houses ends up being either a disappointment or too much moneygrubbing (Echoes DLC combined costs more than the main game) then I'll either just stick to presumed Echoes games in the future when they might just remake older games, or I'll get back to the original plan of quitting the franchise and just playing the older games.
I would encourage you and others to please not judge old Fire Emblem just on Echoes: Shadows of Valentia gameplay. Again, it's not representative of the rest of the series and does its own thing. Honestly neither I nor any other fans I know actually like it for the gameplay but for everything else, and no one I know has any incentive to replay it anytime soon, unlike the other older FE games we can play over and over.
If you have a Wii U or happen to find them in a game store, give Fire Emblem for the Game Boy Advance a shot. It's the best of the old games that are easily available in gameplay and story, and it has support conversations. I personally enjoy Shadow Dragon but others don't since it lacks support conversations and some people don't enjoy the maps as much. The Sacred Stones is the second (or third now?) easiest installment behind Awakening and Fates: Birthright if that's more your speed, though of the three I'd say it has the weakest story save for a few things like Orson, though it's still a serviceable plot and not that bad.
Ultimately, why am I so adamant and aggressive in my love of old Fire Emblem? Enough so that I made this atrociously long post extolling my love for the retro and expressing how much I dislike the modern direction that probably no one is going to read?
As an aspiring author, story is important to me in games, and I cannot enjoy a Fire Emblem that does not have a balance of a decent story, well-rounded characters, and good gameplay. I heard good things about Fates: Conquest's gameplay but knowing how bad the story was I couldn't bring myself to play it.
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is not only the first Fire Emblem game I played, but it also has the best story beside Genealogy of the Holy War (which is based on a 13th century Icelandic work of prose known as the V?lsunga saga) and it affected me the most, so much so that it is my favorite video game of all time. The point of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is disparate groups of people coming together, learning to get over old hatreds and trying to combat classism and racism to improve everyone's lot in life. I have seen nothing close to that deep, meaningful, or competent from Fire Emblem in the past 11 years.
I might be considered a "Genwunner" or an elitist or whatever else, but I don't care. That I'm making a post this long should show that the series, at least at one time, meant a lot to me, and it's honestly disappointing that other people I know who would probably enjoy the gameplay don't get into the series because they see stuff like Elise in Fates just being an imouto/little sister trope and are bombarded with the waifu simulator reputation the series has now. At this point I don't know whether I want the stories to get better in future games or to maintain their course so I can just abandon ship entirely and move on wholly. For everyone's sake, I hope they can manage to bridge the gap, but hey, if they don't, it saves me money.
Thank you for making this thread. It was good to get that all out.
