#also considering the circumstances it's gross that the writing highlights Arvis' love for Deidre as one of his positive qualities

[mayhem-ensues]

Finished FE4 for the first time today

Yeah, it was pretty good. Fire Emblem is Fire Emblem, so I was always going to enjoy it, but I'll have to think a bit more about where it ranks for me relative to the other games.

Above all else, what I admire about this game was that they really committed to the idea that it was going to be a big continent spanning adventure and they really tried to make you feel that. The big maps got tedious at times, but it was all in service to the "feel" of the game.

Also really cool how they integrated different story events into the maps and such. Most Fire Emblem games have a very clear split between "story time" and "fighting time" with the exception of like, boss conversations, so seeing so much of the story being told through the gameplay was cool.

That being said I do think the game's reputation for having a great story/writing is very much overstated. Like, there's a lot of interesting ideas at play here, but at the end of the day it's still a SNES game which is naturally limiting and means that the story is often told in the most boring way possible, long exposition dumps at the beginning of the chapter.

A particular example I can think of is in the Thracia chapter, where Lewyn tells Seliph that the people don't want them there and see them as invaders. Which is all very interesting but isn't actually dramatized in a meaningful way. Lewyn just tells you about these interesting things that are happening off-screen and Seliph angsts about it for a bit and then gets over it pretty quickly.

Also, Arvis let me down. I've heard so many people talking about what a great villain he is, but I didn't really vibe with what the writers were going for there. I think mostly because a lot of his motives come off somewhat vague. Like, he says he's against corruption, but we never really get a good look at what kind of corruption he's seeing in this story. He says he's against oppression and all which is good, but the game shoots itself in the foot here because the people being oppressed are an evil dragon cult trying to resurrect their dead dragon lord to create a world of suffering and strife, so that motive falls a bit flat as well.

Don't get me wrong, there's still some great moments in there. Killing off the entire first gen cast is the kind of extremely ballsy move that you just don't see in video game stories, but at the end of the day, good moments don't make for a good overall story.

Admittedly, I did play Gen 1 and Gen 2 a couple of months apart because of some big stuff happening in my life, so that might be partially responsible for the disconnect.

Anyway, just need to get around to Thracia and I'll have played every Fire Emblem game with plenty of time left before Engage comes out.