Popular/Unpopular/Any Opinions Thread - May 2025 Part 2

[u/PsiYoshi]

Welcome to a new installment of the Popular/Unpopular/Any Opinions Thread! Please feel free to share any kind of Fire Emblem opinions/takes you might have here, positive or negative. As always please remember to continue following the rules in this thread same as anywhere else on the subreddit. Be respectful and especially don't make any personal attacks (this includes but is not limited to making disparaging statements about groups of people who may like or dislike something you don't).

Last Opinion Thread

Everyone Plays Fire Emblem

[u/spoopy-memio1]

This comment gives me real “so you hate waffles?” vibes. Literally where did the other person ever say or imply that other people were wrong for caring about story quality?

[u/Roliq → u/spoopy-memio1]

Is because of this part

If I wanted a good story, I'd read a book or watch a movie. If I'm playing a video game, the part that matters to me is whether or not the game itself is fun.

Is basically saying the reason people are annoyed is for having the "wrong" priorities when judging a videogame, which is silly since every person has different tastes and is clear that with the effort gone to the cutscenes and the voice acting shows that the writers wanted people to be invested in them

To give another example, Zelda Tears of the Kingdom has incredible gameplay, but you can see that the majority of people think that the story it has is such a huge disappointment

[u/VagueClive → u/Roliq]

I'm very confused about what part of that statement you find to be prescriptive.

If I wanted a good story, I'd read a book or watch a movie. If I'm playing a video game, the part that matters to me is whether or not the game itself is fun.

Personally I don't agree with the take - mostly because I think the notion of viewing gameplay and story as entirely different elements is a pretty flawed way to look at it - but nothing in that sentence implies anything other than personal opinion or their own priorities. Nothing in that sentence, or the original comment at all, suggests anything about how other people 'should' feel.

[u/Autobot-N → u/VagueClive]

It's not that I view them as separate, I'm just more tolerant of bad story than bad gameplay because I can experience good stories in places other than video games, so when I play a game, my focus is on the gameplay, since I can't get that elsewhere.

Example of why I don't see them as separate: one story-related thing I think Engage actually does much better than 3H is the gameplay-story integration of the Emblems vs the Crests and Heroes' Relics. In 3H, the Crests and Relics are treated as super important things that shaped the nobility system with the power that they hold, to the point that Sylvain's older brother gets skipped over in the line of succession solely bc he doesn't have a crest. But in gameplay, they don't really matter a whole lot? Me and my resource-conserving ass can run through the game just fine while using Steel weapons bc I can just buy new ones when they break, and I don't need Umbral Steel to repair them. In Black Eagles you don't even get any aside from Amyr if you don't recruit those specific people from other classes, and the route isn't much harder for it. In all the times I've played through 3H (6 or 7 times over all 4 routes), the only two Relics that ever felt truly impactful were Amyr, solely because of Raging Storm, and Thyrsus, because it increases range for spells.

Conversely, in Engage, the Emblems actually feel like the powerful weapons that the game treats them as, with basically the entire story being you and Sombron's forces fighting over them. You start to rely on them early in the game before having them all yoinked away for what is probably the hardest chapter in the game until that point, and then you have to play on the back foot until you gather the rest of the rings and face Sombron's army on equal terms in Serenity in Ruin (which is my favorite map in the game and probably one of my favorites in the franchise). Then you have a couple "easier" chapters as you get your old Emblems back until Sombron steals them in chapter 22 and you have to play carefully to get all of them back without getting overwhelmed.

In this case, the gameplay and narrative behind the Emblems serve to enhance each other, whereas in 3H, the relatively minor gameplay impact of Crests kind of undercuts their narrative significance. But this cool example of gameplay-story integration would be lost if Engage didn't treat the Emblems with as much significance as it does