• A new LGBTQ+ forum is now being trialed and there have been changes made to the Support and Advice forum. To read more about these updates, click here.
  • Hey Trainers! Be sure to check out Corsola Beach, our newest section on the forums, in partnership with our friends at Corsola Cove! At the Beach, you can discuss the competitive side of the games, post your favorite Pokemon memes, and connect with other Pokemon creators!
  • Due to the recent changes with Twitter's API, it is no longer possible for Bulbagarden forum users to login via their Twitter account. If you signed up to Bulbagarden via Twitter and do not have another way to login, please contact us here with your Twitter username so that we can get you sorted.

Fire Emblem

Joined
Jun 25, 2011
Messages
10,308
Reaction score
5,011
Pronouns
  1. He/Him


Fire Emblem is a tactical RPG series developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo. Its stories are set in medieval style worlds, often featuring lords and other royalty as main characters, with the supporting cast interlocking middle-age military and commonfolk such as cavalry, swordsmen, and bandits, with fantasy-esque characters such as dragons, mages, and other mystical creatures and elements. Though its identity has changed much over the years, with each subsequent entry introducing or expanding upon unique qualities Fire Emblem's main draw is its gameplay, which features the player controlling a small barrage of units across a map to defeat larger armies. Fire Emblem is most notable for permadeath as a central feature in many of its games; once a unit dies, it can no longer be played for the remainder of the game.

From 1990 to 2002, the series was only available in Japan, spawning six games across three consoles. Upon the inclusion of Marth (the series mascot) and Roy (the main character from the sixth Fire Emblem game) in Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo GameCube, the series debuted in the West for the first time with Fire Emblem for the GameBoy Advance (or, as it is otherwise known, Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade). Subsequent entries would receive both Japanese and Western releases on the Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo Wii, and Nintendo DS.

However, declining sales numbers across both Japanese and Western audiences caused Intelligent Systems to re-evaluate the series' standing as a prominent focus for the studio; with the thought in mind that it would be the final Fire Emblem game, Nintendo released Fire Emblem: Awakening for the Nintendo 3DS in 2012, which featured a large consolidation of many of the features unique to previous entries in the series. Fire Emblem: Awakening released to critical acclaim, marking a turning point in the series, garnering over 2 million in sales worldwide, and is touted by many as one of the best games for the 3DS system. Awakening's success spawned two more 3DS entries, a spinoff game, and the massive free-to-play mobile hit, Fire Emblem Heroes. Most recently, Nintendo released Fire Emblem: Three Houses for the Nintendo Switch, which introduced character management and customization systems a la Persona 5. Fire Emblem: Three Houses has garnered almost 3 million in sales worldwide and won the Best Strategy Game award at the 2019 Game Awards.


This thread will serve as the discussion hub for all things Fire Emblem, including but not limited to: news and updates on the series, questions and answers about the series or specific games within the series, progress updates and discussion on new runs of older games, and character shipping. :p I'll get it started with a few introductory questions:
  • Have you ever played any Fire Emblem games? If so, which is your favorite? If not, what is your impression of the series?
    • Fire Emblem has a gigantic roster of characters across its series; which are some of your favorites to use and why?
  • What is your favorite part of Fire Emblem? The gameplay? The story? The character development and unique interactions between characters?
  • Are you a fan of permadeath in Fire Emblem, or as a concept in general? Why or why not?
  • Despite having the largest character roster of any Nintendo-published franchise outside of Pokemon, the number of Fire Emblem characters included in Super Smash Bros. has been a topic of debate for many fans of the latter series. Do you think Fire Emblem's representation in Smash is warranted? Why or why not?
 
Okay, before I answer the icebreaker questions, let me just get my somewhat unpopular opinion out:

I like Byleth being a silent protag WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more than Kris, Robin, and Corrin. I hope they keep the "avatar" character being silent (outside of minor dialogue options like in Three Houses) and with a set design rather than a customizable one if they have to keep doing an avatar at all. Robin admittedly wasn't horrible though, just not ideal for what I like.

With that off my chest...
Have you ever played any Fire Emblem games? If so, which is your favorite? If not, what is your impression of the series?
Been playing since the first release in English, FE7. I'm pretty fond of that one for the nostalgia and I legitimately enjoy it as a whole, but my #1 favorite is probably still FE8/Sacred Stones. I just really enjoy the story in that one, the monsters being enemies in addition to humans, and I'm a BIG fan of Ephraim and Innes.
What is your favorite part of Fire Emblem? The gameplay? The story? The character development and unique interactions between characters?
I do love the gameplay and feeling like I'm controlling a small army and all, though the main appeal to me is probably the characters. When there are so many characters in each game, you're almost guaranteed to find at least one that you really like. The character designs are generally appealing, too. Support conversations are a great way to learn more about characters and see them interact, though I will say that I HATED when the supports became way too focused on shipping for most of the 3DS-era of the franchise. I like when not every single guy can support with every single girl, because the support convo quality is much higher when the writers focused on a smaller pool of conversations.
Are you a fan of permadeath in Fire Emblem, or as a concept in general? Why or why not?
Love permadeath! It creates a stressful tension that you just don't quite get without it. Even with features like the Turnwheel in SoV and Divine Pulse in Three Houses, just knowing a character could be killed for good makes every move have an added weight to it. The fear of needing to reset an entire battle in past games was thrilling. It also fits the tone of the games well, since you're literally in wars and it makes them more serious if people die, especially when it may be a character you've grown to like for personality or battle reasons. I think having the aforementioned features to turn back time a limited amount of times is a happy medium for the series, though, and I will admit that I used it a few times in the games that had it haha.
Despite having the largest character roster of any Nintendo-published franchise outside of Pokemon, the number of Fire Emblem characters included in Super Smash Bros. has been a topic of debate for many fans of the latter series. Do you think Fire Emblem's representation in Smash is warranted? Why or why not?
Yes, it's warranted IMO since it is a very long-running franchise, the sole strategy genre rep in Smash for Nintendo, and it does very well nowadays. What I think is an issue is the way they've represented it. Had Sakurai and team branched out more and not had so many of the "blue-haired swordspeople" protags (+Roy; he was always my fave in Melee and I love him now too, but being a clone at first really didn't help either), I think people would have less of an issue with all the characters in Smash because, to be fair, they do all have a somewhat homogenous appearance to people unfamiliar with the franchise. Robin was a great step in the right direction, and honestly Corrin - controversial as a character though they may be - was good too for focusing on the dragon powers more than swordfighting. Byleth as well with so many weapons. though if it were up to me, we'd be seeing Claude rather than Byleth But I realize that a lot of the issue is with Fire Emblem for having had so many blue-haired sword lords lol. That said, I think that if Smash had featured, say, Hector with Armads or Wolf Beil (axes) or Ephraim with Reginleif or Siegmund (lances) over Ike back in Brawl, it would've at least added more weapon variety and might've lessened some of the hate that FE gets in Smash to this day. Also, why is there no villain rep in Smash? Seems really weird to have all these FE characters and not a single villain. I'd vote Demon King-possessed Lyon so that Sacred Stones gets a rep and we get a pure mage.
 
awakening was my baby! first FE game I played and aaaaa I loved it. great story with excellent characters, I made a lot of save files on several different difficulties going through things. always ended up choosing Chrom as my partner though...didn't feel right otherwise haha. fates was also good, though not on the same level as awakening for multiple reasons. three houses is also another one that's pretty much perfect and I had a lot of fun going through the golden deer route. <3 will complete others eventually :bulbaLove:
Are you a fan of permadeath in Fire Emblem, or as a concept in general? Why or why not?

Typically not! It's a bit too harsh for me as someone who usually isn't great at video games. this is probably the only setting I keep off - any other difficulty spike I can handle, but permadeath is just too exhausting in games except three houses because of its rewind feature. it just wouldn't make me too happy to lose a character after working through a tough map for 30 minutes because of one mistake.
 
Soooo I'm one of those "never played Fire Emblem before Awakening" people so I can't speak for the whole series, but I love the games I have played so much that I easily consider it one of my biggest obsessions. Awakening, of course, was my first - prior to playing Awakening I had absolutely no interest in ever playing a Fire Emblem title for reasons I don't even know. In 2014 a strange sequence of events occurred that wound up with me owning a used copy of Awakening (the tl;dr version is a guy who was into me bought me the game and I was too afraid of how he'd react if I rejected it lmao). Initially I was too weirded out by the whole situation to play the game, but at my boyfriend's insistence that I give it a shot (he's always been a Fire Emblem fan and Awakening was, at the time, his favorite) I finally played it a year later and I instantly fell in love with the characters (I have been in love with Chrom for five years, yes I'm a simp), the storyline, the music, the voice acting, and so on. So began my never-ending love for the more recent installments of this series. I adore them.

Fates has...a lot of issues but man idk what it is but I loved it anyway. The writing was definitely not exceptional but I really loved the world of Hoshido and Nohr, I love the soundtrack (and find it very underrated), and while some of the characters (cough Corrin cough) drove me up a wall I loved enough of them to make up for it. Takumi is far and away my favorite Fates character, no debate, and I will absolutely defend him to the death.

As for Echoes, I still have not finished this game all these years later due to simply losing my motivation to do so, but I really enjoyed what I did play and I do plan on going back and finishing it at some point. I can't really gush about it too much due to not finishing the game, but I had a great time with it and I LOVE the switch to full voice acting. Such an improvement over random grunts and sentences.

Three Houses is the love of my life, I'm not even kidding. More than a year since the game came out it's still on my mind constantly. It has one of my favorite casts of characters in any game ever (there are very few Three Houses characters I dislike), the voice acting was damn near flawless, and the story was just ugh so good, although I'll admit I am mainly talking about the Blue Lions and Golden Deer routes here because those were my favorites. I didn't actually care for either of the Black Eagles routes that much. I have a really hard time picking one favorite video game because I'm so indecisive, but Three Houses is definitely up there. It just impacted me in a way I can't really describe. I just have so much love for it.

Oh I almost forgot this one, but I also love Fire Emblem Warriors!! Yeah the story's kind of weak but the gameplay is super fun and it was so much fun seeing so many characters from various different Fire Emblem games interacting with each other and having supports together. I easily racked up 300+ hours of play time before I finally ran out of steam. Really hoping we get another Fire Emblem Warriors with Three Houses characters in the future!

This post wound up being a lot longer than I intended haha, but I'll end the post by saying I'm not a fan of permadeath. I am very much one of those people who needs a complete roster in any game I play, so I don't like the idea of not being able to use certain characters if they die in battle. Also, if it's a character I'm really attached to, then I obviously don't want to be without them at any point lol
 
Last edited:
Blazing Blade was my first game in the franchise, played the other English releases in the series then later played the Japan only ones; as for my favorite in the series that's hard since they're all pretty good (and as much flack I give Fates, they do have good characters and Conquest is good gameplay wise, too bad it's very little worldbuilding is terrible), I'd have to say though that it's a five way tie between GotHW, Thracia 776, PoR, RD, and Three Houses since I like the stories in those five (especially since Jugdral and Tellius have my favorite worldbuilding); and of course 4 and 5 have my two top favorite lords, Seliph and Leif.

Other lords I like as well are Roy, Dimitri, Claude, Ephraim, and Alm (I also don't mind Corrin, though I prefer the male counterpart more); as for non-lords I like then Finn, Quan, Eldigan, Ares, Sothe, Soren, Kurthnaga, Xane, Inigo, Berkut, Seth, Rath, Janaff, Niles, Kaden, Keaton, Tsubaki, Felix, Hubert, Ashe, Ferdinand, Linhardt, Yuri, Ethlyn, Lachesis, Nils, Joshua, Leo, Navarre, Volug, Ranulf, Shinon and actually quite a few more though I'll stop right now.

I do like permadeath and I do think people should try it at least once whenever they're ready, it really does put the pressure on you to make the right decisions on character placement and when to attack (which is fun for me), though I also have no problem with easier difficulties and even do that occasionally in newer games just to go through the story at my own steady pace first.

Fire Emblem's appeal for me, aside from gameplay and the occasional story and worldbuilding, is the characters. I did say I do like their stories and worldbuilding but compared to some other fantasy series it isn't anything that fantastic or new, but the characters will always draw me in. Usually design first then their personality and backstory, and certainly supports are nice to see more of a certain character, plus their interactions with others (Ike/Ranulf and Ike/Soren supports are still my favorites to this day).

And for it's rep in Smash I do think it's warranted but it's the characters chosen that usually gets people annoyed (FE and Smash fans alike). I think Sakurai/Nintendo really needs to add characters that either aren't lords or avatars, or add in a new lord that isn't a sole sword user; I say keep Marth (duh), Ike, Robin, and Byleth and remove Chrom, Lucina, and Corrin (Roy could honestly stay or go, doesn't really matter), they could add in Micaiah since she's a lord that could be a good mage rep. For non-lords they could add in Soren, Leo, Finn, Caeda, Lethe, Tiki or really anyone that isn't too obscure in the series roster.

(As an aside and while I'm thinking about it, I hope that the next installment doesn't have an avatar. I don't mind them and I really loved Kris and Byleth the most when it comes to them, but I'd rather have the next game where an avatar isn't a major focus.)
 
Ngl, I saw a thread was made and thought something big got announced for the franchise. Now I'm sad

I began playing with Awakening like a lot of people did, but since then, I've gotten a lot more into the franchise. I think the only games I haven't played are the Jugdral and Tellius games, which I have to get around to sometime because people keep saying they're really good. Technically, I also haven't played FE 1-3 either, only their remakes, but I heard FE3 is the only one of those still worth playing? :unsure: My favorite game is probably Sacred Stones, because I like the smaller roster, the muted color palette and the fact that you fight a lot more monsters than just dragons. Three houses and SoV are probably the ones I love the most after that.

I think my favorite aspect of the series is the fact that you can customize your roster however you please, since you get a lot of different units to use throughout the game. Games with customizable/changeable classes are fun, as are those with branching promotions. It makes for a different kind of challenge each time I play through the games, since I get to work with different characters.

Supports are also fun to read and give personality to characters, which is far better than having them just be generic units like in some other strategy games. Although I do think the support systems in the games at least the ones in the games I've played are all far from being perfect, that's for sure.

Generally, I go with permadeath on in most of the games where it's an option, but I'll go casual if I'm just trying out anything that is on Lunatic difficulty or higher.

also i like dark mages
 
Technically, I also haven't played FE 1-3 either, only their remakes, but I heard FE3 is the only one of those still worth playing? :unsure:
FE 3 Book 1 has cut content and plays slow even with animations off, Book 2 kind of feels a little faster but that's cause so much stuff goes on at once in some maps. If you liked the remakes well enough then you don't really need to go back and play the originals, though I say you should give them a try anyway since I still found them to be good fun; and hey, you might like them more than the remakes. Quite a few fans hail 3's gameplay to be great (the best even) in the series, so that's another point for you if you really enjoy gameplay more.
 
Well the very first FE game is getting an official English release on the Switch from December 4th to March 31st, this is for the series 30th anniversary. I'm personally going to get the Anniversary Edition of the game since it comes with an artbook (and the other goodies are a neat plus as well); it'll be nice to play this again but with portability. I'm hoping that they'll do similar releases for the rest of the Japan only games, though I just really want 4 and 5 on the Switch since they're my top two favorites in the series.
 
Ooo a Fire Emblem thread.

Got into the series thanks to FE Heroes, and I've enjoyed most of the games I've played.

While I enjoyed Awakening and plan on getting Three Houses, I still feel like the GBA era had some of the better games. Blazing Blade's still my favorite and has several of my favorite characters while Sacred Stones was also very fun. I always feel like the more recent games have a bigger focus on the romantic mechanics, which is great but does feel a bit fanservicey.

Also, very happy that FE1 is finally being released worldwide. The original may have a lot of flaws but I still want to get it.
 
Sincerely, I'm surprised that Mystery of the Emblem is finally getting out of Japan because, unlike Moon or Mother, I don't think they had any plans to release it here from the start.
 
Sincerely, I'm surprised that Mystery of the Emblem is finally getting out of Japan because, unlike Moon or Mother, I don't think they had any plans to release it here from the start.
I think you mean Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, which is the first game. Mystery of the Emblem is the third and, so far, has no English release.
 
Sincerely, I'm surprised that Mystery of the Emblem is finally getting out of Japan because, unlike Moon or Mother, I don't think they had any plans to release it here from the start.
Probably because 30 year anniversary of a long-running and popular Nintendo franchise.
 
I've never played the series myself, other than a very tiny bit of Sacred Stones, though many of my friends and people I follow on social media absolutely adore the series. I do plan on buying the first game when it comes out on Switch next month.
 
Probably because 30 year anniversary of a long-running and popular Nintendo franchise.
Yes, but it is still surprising. Both games I mentioned had aborted official translations, with Mother's being retroactively recognized via the GBA compilation since it includes the NES ending, and Moon was almost translated and brought here for the PS1, but something happened and it was cancelled.

Seeing them go out of their way to translate an old game that might have never been planned to be played in the West is amazing, 30th anniversary or not.
 
Seeing them go out of their way to translate an old game that might have never been planned to be played in the West is amazing, 30th anniversary or not.
They're even putting in a rewind feature similar to SoV and Three Houses I'm assuming, so them putting that in a 30 year old game that is mostly unchanged is even more surprising to me.

I've never played the series myself, other than a very tiny bit of Sacred Stones, though many of my friends and people I follow on social media absolutely adore the series. I do plan on buying the first game when it comes out on Switch next month.
Sacred Stones is a good start as it's pretty easy for newcomers, Blazing Blade (or just Fire Emblem in the west) is another easy starting point if you decide to play more of the series.
 
I've never played the series myself, other than a very tiny bit of Sacred Stones, though many of my friends and people I follow on social media absolutely adore the series. I do plan on buying the first game when it comes out on Switch next month.
Well as a warning for ya: FE1 is...pretty dated. To make a comparison you'd get, it's like Final Fantasy 1 NES. Be prepared for a VERY retro experience.

That said if you've never played the series before, you'll be better off. It's lacking a TON of refinements and quality of life stuff from almost every other game in the series. The two biggest offenders being not being able to level up healers except 1 point of experience at a time from dodging attacks, and having no visible movement ranges.

Awakening start here. So we'll see how horribly it goes for me. I still need to get to Three Houses someday. Been a year with no sign of any step-by-step day-by-day recruit everyone guide, so may as well just go and not worry about most of the other students.
 
Please note: The thread is from 1 year ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
Back
Top Bottom