#the supports kind of feel like gba era in a good way :-)

[ninashiki]

i'm really enjoying fe engage besides the lack of gold + support building opportunities

[falciesystemessays]

it's kinda fascinating, when fire emblem echoes was in its hype phases and even upon release i remember feeling like it was this return to the Old Days. it's a remake of the second ever fire emblem game from the famicom days, and its advertisement explicitly distanced itself from the then recent fe fates. but when i think about what fe echoes was actually doing, it's not really nostalgic for any one period of fire emblem so much as just enamored with the vague concept of "classic fire emblem."

there's a lot of specific design decisions in echoes that are incomprehensible if the goal is to be faithful to fire emblem gaiden. the support conversation system is implemented specifically like the gba era, despite supports not being a thing at all in the famicom originals. i'm not saying having supports in a gaiden remake is bad, it's a great idea actually! but doing it gba-style where you start the conversations on the battlefield rather than between battles is completely anachronistic. the only reason you would do it like that is to feel more like "the good old days."

it's same thing with the ui. fire emblem these days tends to have combat forecasts that show the damage, accuracy, and crit rate of the move you're about to make. the stuff you actually need. echoes has this ui too, but for some reason defaults to the more "advanced" ui that shows the user's attack and the target's defense as separate stats. why? what does it add, making me subtract the defense from the attack? this is a purely semiotic gambit, meant to harken back to the super famicom era when that's how they did it. but fire emblem gaiden didn't have combat forecasts to begin with, at least not until after the combat started!

there's plenty more examples of anachronisms i could give, but they all amount to the same thing: nostalgia baiting for a past that is idealized but non-specific. an amalgam of symbols meant to convey "we hear you, fates was a mistake, and we're bringing fe back to what it should be." and the thing is, it worked! it worked on me when it came out, and it worked on my friends who at the time hated fates as much as i did! the game took on meaning not just as a game that was good, but as a representation of a narrative.

and that narrative ended up clouding our judgements. to prove that, i want to talk about a friend of mine, discussing echoes' randomness.

now, for context, fire emblem is one of many turn-based games that secretly massage their probabilities under the hood. this makes 90% feel more like 90% to people who don't know better, because in general people are just really fucking bad at understanding randomness. i will come to defense of this system for many reasons, but the one big weakness is that dedicated players eventually find out and lose their trust in the system forever. game designer (and known workplace abuser) jennifer scheurle has compared game design to a magic trick in this respect, and the biggest hitch to that is that very few people actually want to know how the trick is pulled off.

here's the thing, though. when echoes came out, this true-blue fire emblem oldhead told me "it's so relieving how this game doesn't lie to you like fates does." now this is very funny in that kind of bitter way, because fates and echoes use the exact same rng system, that uses the true value below 50% and uses a weaker weighting above it. this friend accidentally fabricated a mechanic, because they were treating the game as an embodiment of everything in the series they thought they loved.

now this is, honestly, a pretty lightweight example. the values being expressed here are about a sense of mechanical purism more than anything else, and every fire emblem fan i've met has some bullshit take on mechanical esoterica, including me. where this gets dangerous is when a game's symbolic meaning goes further than mild fandom squabbles.

i started thinking about this topic while watching youtuber shaun's video "Stellar Blade: The Fake Outrage". this video talks about how a korean nier automata clone became a symbol in the culture war. these losers had already constructed narratives around how this game was a stalwart defender in the war against woke, simply for having a scantily clad woman and never bothering to appeal to anyone but straight men. they didn't give a shit about the game as a game, just as a symbol for a concept. and i think it's worth looking out for that in ourselves, when we're looking at games not as works of art, but as sets of signifiers. these games deserve better than to be subsumed into the narratives we make for ourselves.

[queenlua]

let's see about 5, 11, 12, 13 for the ask meme?

5. What game would you recommend to someone new to the series?

ugh this is so HARD because i don't think there's any game that's perfect for this...

if they're new to the series but have enjoyed at least a couple older video games at some point (and thus have some tolerance for a bit of gameplay cruft and GBA-era rough edges), i'd be really tempted to throw Sacred Stones at them. absolutely gorgeous sprites, good music, probably the most solid/focused/best-executed story in the series, fun support conversations, and very good gameplay whose only flaw is "it's kinda too easy." but it's satisfying and if someone likes everything about it but "too easy," then that's an easy problem to fix with subsequent games lol

i suspect Awakening is probably the objectively-better answer, though. first "modern"-feeling FE in terms of how streamlined and nice the mechanics feel, the depth/multiplicity of strategies, the storyline is weaker but still has definite highlights (especially when the kids show up), etc

Three Houses is a solid contender but the game is kind of bloated with extras that i think can make playing it feel like a bit of a drag; i know a lot of people who just kinda flaked out or gave up b/c of all the monastery stuff, and i wouldn't want someone's first FE to end that way

i do love the Tellius games but i wouldn't recommend them as starter games. the 3d sprites are kinda ugly and it definitely shows its age a bit in terms of gameplay cruft

11. A character that deserved better?

Edelgard, tbh. she's fantastic when the game isn't trying to make her all woobie/waifu/etc. wouldn't even take many changes to fix this one!

also Renning. i love what's on the page but he gets so little and shows up so late. give the dude some damn base conversations plz

also Meg. the game is so mean to her, goddamn.

12. A game that deserved better?

oh boy. the problem here is, if i finished playing an FE game, that means i liked it well enough over all, even if there's stuff i didn't like. like, i wish Awakening's storyline was stronger, but it definitely feels like it executed on exactly what it wanted to do, so i wouldn't say the game deserves better per se

so i guess i'll say the two FE games i tried and failed to play:

fe6: i ragequit on the map with the fucking reinforcements that move the same turn that they spawn. motherfuckers. why

fe14: i was already pretty "eh" on the story and then that one fucking "defend [x] turns" map (unhappy reunion iirc) took SO much finicky effort to survive that by the time i finished it i was like. ugh. i'm so tired. and then i put it down for a while and never picked it back up oops

13. What do you like most about Fire Emblem?

...god this is going to make me sound SO uncultured but, the support conversations, especially in the older games, are just so delightful. delightful in-and-of-themselves (especially when they would happen DIRECTLY ON THE BATTLEFIELD lmao), and also, were probably weirdly influential in how i thought about game writing / writing generally. conveyed a huge amount of personality & implied huge things about the world & in a relatively small space; and also refused to let anyone be just a rando soldier in your army; you can look back at short fiction i wrote in middle school and see how much i was striving to get that huge-cast-small-space-feel in that format. simple but effective approach

also it's nice to have a big-name game series that executes so well on story and gameplay, on average. i've played a lot of Final Fantasy and i love those games but. often the gameplay is just kinda mediocre/grind-y, right, and i'm forcing my way through for the story? could NOT be fire emblem lol

[crystalelemental]

Before I shift into my game playing for the day, I have been going through Thracia.  Thoughts under the cut.

Full disclosure: I am cheating at this point.  I have the codes on and do not give a fuck.  I hit Chapter 4 and was pretty much done the instant I opened the north gate.  For anyone who likes a bit of karma, though, it turns out the cheat codes I’m using also affect the enemies.  If I turn on “100% re-move,” then enemies also get to go again.  If I turn on max movement range, the enemies get that too.  Though that one was funny, because it gave it to the children in 4X, who then booked it in one turn.  If I add stat modifying codes, the enemies are all that strong too.  I did find a workaround by applying them only at the end of chapters when the enemies are all dead, but guess what.  Sometimes the codes stop working and your stats return.  Which led to Leif having the stats he had back in Chapter 4, and getting immediately hit by a Sleep staff from all the way across the map.  I did not find out until after beating it that Sleep, and all status conditions, do not wear off at all.  So the map was impossible to complete.  Because Leif was fucking asleep, and no power in earth or heaven would wake this sleepy bitch.

I think this is the best indicator of why I’m not enjoying Thracia.  Even while cheating just to blitz the game, it’s still a pain in the ass.  There’s still all manner of nonsense that can just throw off your entire progression.  And what’s worse?  If it weren’t for the fact the game is just too finicky and obnoxious to want to play fairly, it would have nothing holding it back from being one of the best in the series.

Story?  Excellent.  I love this.  I think it stems from my general love of side stories.  Blazing Blade is still my favorite after all.  Leif’s progression just within Thracia is great to follow, and it’s really engaging to see him work through this rebellion.  It’s also great to have the game focused on other antagonists.  The major ones, like Travant and Ishtar, have made brief (and great) appearances, but there are new antagonists to focus on because again, you’re not the main story.  I love that shit.

Characters?  Fantastic.  Like, granted, it suffers in the same way as every game that pre-dates support conversations, in that a lot of the cast is pretty one-note and then doesn’t do anything.  But there are more prominent faces in general, and they’re all really good.  Leif is a great protagonist.  He’s got the right amount of fire in him, and I’m actually stunned he’s not more popular.  I know it’s because Thracia isn’t popular, but I feel like he’s the same general personality type as Hector, who people love.  Driven, intense, ready to throw down at a moment’s notice, and honest to a fault.  Also it’s really, really funny to me how your advisor (who I don’t trust for shit) tells you about the child hunts, and Leif is like “Shut the fuck up, that’s not real.”  Olwen does it too, which is also funny.  She’s fighting on this side, sees the children in cages, and is like “I just thought this was some kind of liberal propaganda.”  Although man, I really love Olwen.  She’s great.  Trying to stab Kempf is absolutely the correct move, and her decision to defect as soon as she learns the truth is the correct course.  I can’t wait to hate Reinhardt because he won’t defect despite knowing the truth.

Eyvel is the best.  I adore her, what an absolutely fantastic early-game pre-promote unit.  Granted, she’s basically gone forever now that she’s turned to stone, but she’s so good while she’s conscious.  Mareeeta’s just as good.  Everything surrounding her and the Shadow Sword is super compelling, and her conversation with the Bishop was incredibly powerful.  Dagdar is really interesting, not just in what’s good about him, but also in his faults.  He’s trying to live an honest life, like Eyvel showed him to, but at the same time he’s so caught up in this lifestyle that people are dying under his care because there’s no food.  I love how that whole arc was another instance of where the hardship stems from and the why of a situation, blurring those lines between who’s good and who’s evil until it all seems like a matter of circumstance.  That’s my favorite.  Even the minor freeblades have some great dynamics, and while they don’t get much past that point, your recruits in Chapter 4 all get really funny dialogue that makes them feel a lot more fleshed out.  This is probably the best job you can do with character development in a game that pre-dates support conversations.

If there are any characters I don’t like...Lithis?  I don’t care for him.  He’s stuck around, so he’s not a complete flake, but he doesn’t seem to really stand for anything, he just goes along with you to not die, and his only motivation seems to be attempting to get into Safiya’s pants.  Not happening, my friend.  Not while I’m playing.  Also not a big fan of Dalsin, who only joins when you save his sibling who was taken for the child hunts.  Entirely because he works for the enemy, and when you recruit him, he says that he joined because they said his family would be spared.  So you’re willing to toss everyone else’s families into complete disarray and sorrow, as long as you’re unscathed.  Okay, Dorcas.  I also don’t know how to feel about Pan.  He seems alright?  Like, he’s one of the honorable thief types, and his talk with Lara does suggest he’s decent, considering “I used to love watching you dance until I realized you were still a kid” implies that, once he found out she’s underage, he stuck it back in his pants and was like “hell nah.”  I just can’t get a good read on whether he’s actually good or mostly a shitheel trying to pretend he’s doing good, so like...to be determined.  Also, hate to say it, but Nanna isn’t that interesting.  I don’t dislike her, but I’m also not as invested in her as I want to be.  So far, she’s been kidnapped, protected by Eyvel, saved by Leif, and has kinda been silent since.  Maybe more modern games have spoiled me, but I expected the protagonist’s love interest to have more to say and do.  But I guess we are still in the Kaga era, so...

The maps themselves do remind me a lot of the GBA era, and retroactively, I can really see Thracia’s influence on them.  I got up to Chapter 14, and the map layout is identical to the one on the Sacae route in Binding Blade.  If I have any serious complaints, aside from general enemy difficulty and my dislike of the capture mechanic, it’s that enemy formations are a bit too genealogy.  “What does that mean? “ Everything is a goddamn block of the same enemy type.  Like here’s your block of 10 armor knights.  Here’s your block of a bunch of cavalry units.  Maybe it’s bias, because a block formation like this is probably more accurate to general warfare tactics, but I like when things are spaced out instead of placing things in a massive blob.  Oh, also the Escape mechanic is hilariously dumb.  They spell it out, thankfully, because if they hadn’t I would’ve killed myself.  Apparently, if Leif escapes before any of his allies, those allies are lost forever.  For some reason.  Now, if they hadn’t explained that?  My solution would’ve been to open the door and fucking book it with Leif to end the chapter.  And I would have lost everyone.  That’s such an annoying mechanic, especially since it still happens even if there are no enemies left on the map.

I’m also not the biggest fan of some recruitment procedures.  “Capture this boss to recruit them when you go to Chapter 12x!”  Okay.  My best unit is dealing 3 damage with the capture command.  Also his tome can poison, and if it does, there’s no way to remove that status during the chapter.  He’s on a fort that gives +10 defense and heals most of that damage.  I’m supposed to do this how?  Like I actually can’t figure out how some of these conditions are supposed to be met without cheating.  I really, truly cannot.  It’s overall very similar to the GBA era, but just a lot more ridiculous and obtuse.  I’m sorry, like...who would have thought to capture a boss and hold them until the end of the chapter?  And you’re expected to do that twice!  I just...I dunno, man.  Sometimes Thracia feels super obtuse.

Overall it’s...really not fun to play, but is fun to experience.  This really feels like a game that I would adore if it were given a remake that make it less stressful to play.  Instead, it’s another to add to the pile of “Fantastic concept and I love it in general, but can’t stand playing it without cheating.”

[elligames]

emulating on the psp: a review

I initially bought a psp because i am obsessed with kingdom hearts, and knew that birth by sleep was an incredible installment. (spoiler alert: I was right. totally worth it to buy the psp just for that.) but when I bought it, i was surprised the psp held it’s value. my friend informed me that it’s because the modding community for the psp is incredibly strong, and emulation is really easy. needless to say, my almonds activated. so, that was a couple of years ago now. and I’ve had a lot of experience with the handheld since then, so i wanna share what I’ve come to know as someone who uses their psp for retro gaming.

The System Itself

whether you’re emulating on the system or not, there’s a couple of things to note about the system. it’s roughly the same size as the largest iPhones, so it is a pretty good size for a handheld. it’s quite thick, and not exactly pocket-sized, but it’s definitely portable. I keep mine in a 3DS case, and you can find those anywhere. the handheld doesn’t fold, so you might want a screen protector. I’m personally a fan of the screen, which is quite large for any emulation needs. it’s 16:9 though, so it can get annoying to have to change emulation settings back to 4:3. fortunately, though, this is usually a 1 time deal, and i think most emulators for any system are going to require tweaking for personal taste. the sound has decent volume scale, and the system includes a headphone jack. 

what weirds me out the most is that it’s kind of difficult to turn completely off. you can put it to sleep with the power slider, and the battery holds pretty well. but i never feel like i’ve turned my system all the way down. it’s also the only handheld i know of that runs games from a disk drive, in case that means anything to you. the SD cards are also not proprietary like the vita’s are, which is nice.

Library

the first thing to understand is what the psp can actually do. it is a smooth ride up to the 32-bit ps1 system. there are emulators for n64 and sega saturn, but i admit i have not tried them. i have heard everything from “it’s sketchy at best” to “it totally runs smoothly!” so i’ve been wary. the psp can sideload ps1 and native psp games, and emulators from the 16-bit era and below have a huge following behind them.

sideloaded psp games run just as smoothly as games running from disks, which is really nice. 

emulators vary in quality. the great thing is, though, if you don’t like an emulator, there’s almost always a different one for the same system. and most of them have been worked on thoroughly. i recommend snes9x tyl, gpSP, and masterboy. i had huge issues with snes9x euphoria, but made the switch like a week ago to tyl and i’m never going back - the sound and game stability are both fantastic. i admit i’m a stupid nintendo fangirl, so that’s what i use the most. i noticed that my genesis emulator doesn’t use the psp’s joystick, and i’m not sure if i avoid sega because i’m uninterested, or if i dislike the controls. more on that in a minute.

to note, i am running on a psp 1000, which is the first model - so really all models are powerful enough for most emulators. (though this might change if you really are going to research n64 emulators)

Setup

holy crap, it’s stupidly easy. and there’s a lot of guides out there. i used one that was literally just like, “alright, you’re going to put these files in this folder on your system” and that was about all it took. and once you have that file system setup, adding new emulators and roms is really just a matter of moving things over whenever you want. it’s fantastic.

i really recommend using a guide that installs a recovery option. for the setup i used, i need to run this recovery option when the system loses battery. it’s not a huge deal, and doesn’t affect the game saves, but it’s like the system forgot about my files or something. 

Controls

okay, this is the part that really surprised me the most. emulation in general takes you away from the native experience, so some difference in controls is to be expected. so i didn’t really ever expect that to bother me. 

but this is the kicker: there’s no dedicated d-pad. the arrows on the left side are all individual buttons, which means the handheld does not support diagonal directions. i didn’t even consider this on purchase. i had heard other gamers talk about how important a good d-pad is, but i kind of brushed it off. for the most part, i still think i am pretty casual gamer, and i think a low-quality d-pad would not bother me. at least it would still be there.

but the setup of the psp kind of requires you to use the joystick for all games, which really takes you out of the moment for GBA and SNES games. it’s also slightly uncomfortable because of the location of the joystick, and the fact that the joystick is a similar rubber-band-y setup to the 3DS, and not a true stick. if you’re looking to emulate games that require lots of precision, this is an even bigger consideration. i don’t play a lot of games like that (i’m mostly doing adventure-style and jrpgs personally, no intense shooters or anything) but i will say, the 15-second game in LTTP is a bitch and a half on this thing. it is immensely easier on a setup with a real d-pad. moving around corners with a time limit is a real pain in the ass with this rubber-band joystick. and, i will also note that when looking at psp models, i personally think the joystick on the psp go looks awkward, but that’s just something to consider.

it’s honestly annoying enough at certain times like that, that i recommend moving save files back and forth. or at least for that one mini game. 

this also means that, like i said, because my genesis emulator doesn’t support the joystick, controlling sonic feels jilted and unnatural. so if i ever develop an interest in sega, i’ll have to post some updates.

for what it’s worth, the psp includes L & R shoulder buttons, the four shape buttons you see on dualshock controllers, and the aforementioned arrow buttons and joystick. so, in theory, there’s plenty of input for the majority of emulation. 

i will say the controls can also be confusing because the psp has opposite controls of nintendo consoles, and switching your brain between the two can take some getting used to. most emulators use the playstation controls in their settings menus, though i remember snes9x euphoria would use the nintendo controls - which i constantly forgot and found confusing, so there’s another point for snes9x tyl. 

Conclusions

even though the psp has held a value, it still remains to be one of the cheapest options for the library available to it and the quality of emulation. it’s got a great screen, great sound, and a community behind the emulators that ensure you’re likely going to find something stable and worth playing. while the controls severely hold the handheld back, i find myself really, really fond of my psp. i notice cheaper emulation options that pop up, and there’s almost always issues reviewers bring up such as screen tearing or poor sound. more expensive options might fix issues the psp has, but i almost always see them at least double the price of what i paid for my psp. 

of course, the value is going to depend on your local retro gaming store, so it might be comparable to other emulation options. and it might not even be worth it if you’ve got a device, such as a tablet or phone, that can do emulation. you might want to consider bluetooth controllers instead! but as a dedicated machine for gaming, i’d recommend it. i have to say that the psp is a very smooth experience and definitely worth checking out. 

[gascon-en-exil]

A Not Actually Definitive Ranking of Fire Emblem Games

So after a lot of deliberation I’ve decided not to revisit last year’s Zelda ranking project on a full scale for FE, but that doesn’t mean it’s not something I really wanted to do. 2018 is the year we’re going to get alternatively hyped for and disappointed by FE16, after all. With that in mind have an abbreviated list that will end up being one very long post. I’ve got games to gush over and an anon or two (and very likely actual followers…eep) to piss off, so here we go.

The “personal favorites of the series, love revisiting them” Tier - FE10, FE2/15, FE4

I’m never going to argue that Radiant Dawn is a perfect game or even just a perfect FE game, but damned if it doesn’t manage to do so much right all at once. An extremely ambitious story that builds off its mostly conventional predecessor in a variety of interesting ways, deconstructing a bunch of series narrative standards (life in a defeated country kind of sucks and there are people that don’t warm that quickly to young and inexperienced rulers, go figure) and taking an eleventh hour hard right at Nietzchean atheism as read by a Pride parade. Kind of falls on its ass by the end, but every experimental FE story does the same thing so I can’t fault this one. I love the army switching as motivation to try different units almost as much as I love the oh-so-exploitable growth and BEXP mechanics. Its Easy mode also hits a sweet spot for me of being challenging enough to not be a complete snore while also allowing the freedom for all manner of weird self-imposed challenges that don’t even require grinding. By all accounts Hard mode is one lazy design choice after another, but I don’t play at that level so no complaints here.

Never played Gaiden, but to its credit around half of the unique gameplay mechanics I like in Shadows of Valentia were also in the original: the modest army size, the novel approaches to inventory management and magic, the pretty basic class system with just a hint of nuance. The remake threw in some hit-or-miss questing, dungeon exploration, and achievements, but all the rest was either a solid addition or a continuation of NES-era annoyances that I could live with. And the story…SoV makes me dislike the DS games even more just because this game does so much with so little. Even leaving aside the mostly great voice acting there’s a bunch of new content that characterizes almost everybody and makes half of them (the men, anyway, because this is a remake of a Kaga-era game and therefore misogynistic as can be) gay because why the hell not, and then some development that constitutes the only solid attempt at worldbuilding Archanea-Valentia-Ylisse has ever really gotten and also retcons some stuff from Awakening into making sense. It’s even got some solid DLC with lots of character stuff for the Deliverance, the least sucky grinding of the 3DS games, and probably the only context in which I’ll ever be able to comment on anything from Cipher.

No remake needed for Genealogy of the Holy War to make it competitive with the rest of the top tier - just an excellent translation patch and the standard features of an emulator. I’ve never watched Game of Thrones and probably don’t plan on it, but I gather that this game provides the same essential experience with less blood and female nudity and marginally more egalitarianism for all. I can forgive it for being the original Het Baby Fest since you’d be hard-pressed to find a single entirely healthy and well-adjusted individual anywhere on Jugdral and I relate to that just as much. Screwed up family dynamics for everyone! It’s also arguably got a more fun breeding meta than either of the 3DS games, lacking Awakening’s optimization around a single postgame map with very specific parameters or Fates’s high level of balance that ironically stymies analysis. This is another game for interesting inventory management and unit leveling that isn’t too obnoxious, which mostly makes up for the maps taking an eon to play through even with an emulator speeding through those enemy phases. This would be a strange game to remake, but if it got a localized one of the same caliber as SoV I fully acknowledge that this could climb to the #2 spot. SoV would probably have the queer edge though unless they do some strange things to the plot or just make Gen 2 really gay…but then again Gen 2 is the part that’s more in need of fleshing out as it is. (Also, this game has So. Much. Incest. That’s not even really a kink of mine especially as it’s all straight incest, but I just find that hilarious in light of how Tumblr’s purity culture speaks of such things.)

The “good games, but don’t come back to them as much” Tier - FE7, FE9, FE8

Blazing Sword is not here for nostalgia purposes, especially since when I first played the game at 14 years old most of what I like about it didn’t really register. It was just that game with RPG elements that I liked and permadeath that I didn’t, and it took a few games after that for me to become an established fan of the franchise. Massive props for putting such an unconventional spin on a prequel to a textbook FE; this is a game in a series about war in which no war is fought, how crazy is that? We actually get to see the backstory of FE6′s tragic antagonist, even as it’s completely tangential to the plot of this game and so just feels like random Jugdral-esque family drama without context, and on top of that we get the first hints of interdimensional travel and kinky human/shapeshifter sex several years before either of those became controversial talking points about how they were ruining the series. I am so there. Lyn doesn’t matter to the saga, but her character arc is distinct and self-contained and also she picked up a disproportionately large fanbase while being bisexual and biracial so go her. Eliwood is sympathetic and homosocially-inclined even if his growths frequently make me want to cry (at least he gets a horse unlike his similarly-challenged son), and I can live with Hector even if I could have done without his lordly legacy. Throw in some average-for-the-time gameplay with just enough variety across the two routes and even more good character work *waves at Sonia and Renault and Priscilla -> Raven/Lucius and Serra and…* and it’s all in all a solid experience. The ranking system can go die in a fire though, which funnily enough it did after this game. Yay!

Like most early 3D games - except on Gamecube so it’s even more embarrassing - Path of Radiance has aged terribly by every aesthetic measure aside from the soundtrack. It’s also painfully slow, and my computer can’t run Dolphin apparently so an emulator’s not going to fix that for me. Those obvious flaws aside, it’s still an entertaining game, and more importantly it’s the prologue that had the crucial task of setting up all the pins RD knocked over in stellar fashion, whether we’re talking about the basic storyline that actually isn’t or the many het relationship fake-outs (more so in localization…I guess we’ll never know if NoA was actively planning that when they pushed Ike/Elincia like they did). PoR is also a love letter to Jugdral in both gameplay and themes, albeit an occasionally critical one. The jury’s still out on whether Jugdral or Tellius succeeds the most (fails the least?) of the FE settings at developing a complete world with a nuanced and resonant saga narrative, but that Tellius manages to be competitive while being kind of clumsy overall with racism and shifting the series’s overarching motif of dragon-blooded superhumans to one of kinky interracial sex is pretty impressive. The less I say about Ike the better since it’s only his endings in RD that save him for me; suffice it to point out that his worldview and general personality were clearly designed to appeal to a demographic that does not include me.

And finally comes The Sacred Stones, truly my average benchmark FE as I like it but struggle to have any particularly strong feelings on it one way or the other. The story is standard but has a few intriguing quirks, like the light vs. dark magic meta, surprise necrophilia, and how the main antagonist’s sexuality sort of depends on which route you take (except he’s still never getting laid so does it really matter?). It also seems to have been the first game to have made a legitimate effort toward the kind of replayability that’s normal for RPGs, what with the branched promotions, the route split, and the actual postgame. That’s all much more engaging than just filling up a support log. The gameplay is also more polished and (I think?) more balanced than the other GBA games, if one is willing to overlook the minor issue of Seth. Let’s see…something something twincest that’s now an IS running gag, something something guys talking intimately about their lances, something something SoV did the whole dungeon crawling with monsters bit better but I can forgive SS for not taking it that far. Moving on….

The “they have Problems” Tier - FE14, FE13

Probably qualifies as a fandom heresy, but yes I’m putting Fates first of these two. Fates is in every conceivable way for me the “You Tried” game, because I had such high hopes for it from the moment we got the earliest promotional content. I was expecting a World of Warcraft-style conflict between two morally grey factions with myriad convoluted grievances against each other messily resolving themselves one way or the other according to player choice (though note that this is already somewhat damning with faint praise as no one’s going to call WoW a storytelling masterpiece), with Conquest in particular a true villain campaign that I imagined might play out as European Imperialism: The Game. What we actually got was…not that, not at all, but amid all the complaints about plot holes and idiot balls and moral myopia most fans seem to have forgotten just how much there is to this game. It’s three full stories that together average out to be just about passable, with possibly the biggest gameplay variety in the series that fixed most of Awakening’s more broken elements (pair-up, children being unquestionably superior to the first generation) while also adding in new features that undoubtedly appealed to someone or other like Phoenix mode and the castle-building aspect. I can even mostly forgive the obvious growing pains Fates exhibits in terms of queer content, as they were pretty much inevitable once the developers realized that (almost) everyone was picking up on the subtext and that that approach just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Again, they tried, and if the results included face-touching fanservice and plot contrivances left and right and two-way cultural posturing that inevitably crosses over into real world racism at some point I can still step back for a moment and acknowledge that Fates began as a distinctive, high-concept setting on par with Tellius and Jugdral that was willing to do something different with the narrative norm (for two of its routes at least, and even so I’m not begrudging Birthright its conventionality because that grounding is important overall). And who knows? Maybe a later game will come along and retroactively make this setting coherent.

Fates might have more sexual fanservice, but if there’s any FE that I feel ends up a slave to fanservice in a broader sense it would be Awakening. Yeah, I get that when it was in development everyone thought this would be the final game, so it makes sense that the finished product turned out to be a nostalgia-laden greatest hits piece. It’s still hard to forgive Awakening for feeling so insubstantial, doubly so since it ended up revitalizing the franchise and now it and Fates are everywhere. It’s got a plot that only makes some sense in light of SoV and possibly on a meta level (following my theory that the plot structure is meant to mirror FE1-3 in sequence), the first iteration of an Avatar dating game heavily coloring the characterization and support system, and a queasily feel-good atmosphere that allows almost no character to actually remain dead and centers everything around the self-insert and the power of friendship. So much for the series’s traditionally dim view of human nature and recurring theme of the inevitability of conflict. What’s more, in spite of its theoretically broad scope (including a criminally under-explored time travel plot with a bad future) and numerous call-backs to older games Awakening does surprisingly little for developing the series’s most frequently-visited setting. I think it was in large part how generic this game has always felt to me even before release that I never got very hyped for it and as a consequence was never very disappointed by it. It’s just….there, with its nostalgia and its chronic “no homo” and its host of hilariously broken mechanics. I wonder if we’d have ended up viewing Awakening more favorably if it really had been the last game? Eh, probably not.

The “needs a remake or needs a better remake” Tier - FE5, FE6, FE3/12, FE1/11

I don’t have a specific order for these, except that FE1/11 is almost certainly the bottom since 5 and 6 have remake potential and, lack of localization aside, New Mystery was a better remake than Shadow Dragon.

I still haven’t fully played Thracia 776, but I’ve watched and read through Let’s Plays and have read more than enough analysis and meta on the game to where I can definitively say that I wouldn’t enjoy playing it too much and don’t feel all that emotionally connected to the story except insofar as it relates to the overall Jugdral saga. The concept of a standard FE plot that ends with the playable cast losing is an intriguing one, though they really could have done better than the weird non-ending that is this game’s final boss. I’m also not as invested in Leif the fallen aristocrat as I usually am those types of characters, possibly because it’s a foregone conclusion that he eventually gets his kingship anyway. I would like a remake, hopefully one that smooths over some of the original’s mechanical roughness and also makes a bunch of characters gay because the material’s certainly there in places, but I also admit that I’d rather have a remake of Genealogy first. Or, for that matter….

Binding Blade doesn’t have the potential for an amazing story-driven remake that Thracia does; after all, it’s basically a soft reboot of FE1 with an equally bland lord saved by his Super Smash Bros. fanbase and possibly his weirdly large harem. That said, there’s a fair amount of character potential and worldbuilding opportunities what with the series’s first true support system and the content of its unorthodox prequel. Even by itself I feel like BB does more to sell Elibe as its own distinctive world than any of Marth’s games ever did for Archanea, and that’s even with the reality that like the Archanea games this playable cast is inflated with some really forgettable characters (that seem to have followed a semi-rigid numerical quota by class in this instance. It’s weird.). This game never really stuck in my mind as a good playable experience either, not helped by the fact that it feels simple and antiquated compared not only to the GBA games that followed it but to the Jugdral games that preceded it. Good on them for throwing out some of Thracia’s more unwieldy mechanics, but did they have to throw out skills, hybrid classes, and varied chapter objectives too? The space limitations of the GBA couldn’t have been that severe.

While I’ve been spending much of this post ragging on Archanea, I will say that (New) Mystery of the Emblem has some interesting character beats, like the resolution of the Camus/Nyna/Hardin tragedy, Rickard and the situationally bisexual(?) Julian, and some of the antics of Marth’s retainers. I did like bits of the remake’s new assassin plot even if most of it is cribbed from the Black Fang; Eremiya’s no Sonia, but Clarisse and Katarina have their moments. Also, Kris isn’t that offensive to me since I was never all that engaged in Marth’s inconsistent personality and from what I’ve seen his/her supports don’t all devolve into a dating sim. New Mystery has a broader array of characters than either the original or the previous remake, without requiring the player to kill off characters just to get some of the new ones. That said, the reclassing in the DS games is still broken and allows the player to strip even more character out of their personality-deprived units. I’m getting to the point where I’m having trouble separating the two actually, so I’ll just go ahead and remark that I think everyone can agree that Shadow Dragon is the worst of the three remakes so far, with no supports, the aforementioned killing of units, a prologue that adds to the story but only exists on Normal mode and also requires you to kill someone off (seriously, what is it with this game? Is it commentary on the necessary sacrifices of war that they tried forcing on the player for one game until they realized it was a terrible idea?), the needless removal of features from earlier games like rescuing even as others like weapon ranks and forging were left in, that first clumsy iteration of reclassing, and little to nothing that I can see as elevating the story above the standard fantasy adventure fare of Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light that might have been good in 1990 but didn’t look so hot in 2008. Archanea just feels so lifeless overall compared to every other setting in the franchise, to the point where I don’t even feel that guilty about putting the first game in the series way down at the bottom when over in the Zelda ranking I raised the NES games above ones I found more fun to play solely because of their historical significance. Isn’t FE1 arguably the first tactical RPG? I feel like I should appreciate it more, but I just can’t. *shrugs*

[spinnerprincess]

Hello, I saw your old Restoration Queen post and thought it was AMAZING. I was just wondering if you could talk about how you felt the female characters have been treated in the more recent Fire Emblem games? (if you've played them), ie Awakening, Fates. Mostly because from my perspective Awakening did a fairly good job with it's female characters, especially when playing with a female avatar. But since you and your friend felt so strongly about Fire Emblem 8 I just wanted your 2 cents on it.

I don’t want to get into in too much detail but in brief I talked with Glitz a little about it!

I think the thing we agree on was that compared to the GBA games the level of sexism in fe13/14 is kind of “a step sideways” as Glitz called it. The sexism manifests itself in different ways. It’s not necessarily better or worse.

For example, yeah, the writing is a lot better, and you’re right, especially for a female avatar! Girls no longer feel like most of their stories are in service of boys’ stories, which was often the case in the GBA era. Also, in the old games there was a lot of behavior that pigeonholed women for acting in ways the creators thought were unfeminine. The games often reinforced that women were supposed to be pure and fall for dudes and modest and so on. 

So FE13/14 fix a lot of that but the downside is that where the writing improves the general approach to them gets worse. I’m talking about super sexualized outfits, characters that cater to specific fetishes (y o u r  s i s t e r s), and while a lot of the outright “be pure and modest” goes away, much of it is just played for laughs instead of being genuine. Like you’re supposed to laugh at women in FE13/14 who care about being buff, for example, where in previous games women who wanted to be strong were given shit for it. 

Also playing as a male avatar they clearly still want to cater to gross dudes because part of the reason you get such nice supports playing as a girl is because you explicitly read different ones sometimes... Also outside of women the new games are just kind of more creepily sexual in general?

So yeah. It’s a mixed bag, comparing the GBA era to the FE13/14 era. There are things that are exhausting about both.

Now the really sad part though is that FE9 and FE10 actually did pretty well by their women without the baggage they carry in these new ones. So while compared to something like FE8 FE13 looks pretty good, it’s definitely a step down from the last couple games in the series.

Boo. Still, FE13/14 are really fun though, don’t get me wrong, we’ve both put a lot of hours into them. And RQ is nothing if not a frustrated labor of love. But that’s how we see it. 

[gascon-en-exil]

The Top Ten Women of Fire Emblem (As Written by a Gay Man)

#7 - Celica

I… I’m afraid I know little of kingdoms or the scope of rule. But I have people I wish to protect. Both here and elsewhere. I wish for this by my will alone. For my own happiness. Is that resolve enough?

In hindsight I believe it’s safe to say that we were expecting too much of Celica. As irritating as it may be that FE has never had a (non-Avatar) female lord who has not been left compromised by her game’s narrative in some way, to hope that the remake of one of the more casually misogynistic games in the series would deliver on that point seems entirely too optimistic. Sure, FE15 doubled down on the misogyny in new and unexpected ways, but it’s Gaiden that sends Alm off to clash against the armies of an invading nation while leaving Celica to fuss about with bandits and cultists, and that relegates her and her entire army to the damsel(s) in distress position for almost all of Act 5. Towards the end of the game especially Alm and Celica feel less like deuterotagonists on equal footing than Eirika and Ephraim or even Ike and Micaiah (or Micaiah+Yune, anyway) and more like a Marth-esque protagonist and a supportive character along the lines of Caeda or Nyna. In FE2 Celica wasn’t being slapped around by her roleplaying brother or voluntarily brainwashed by a villain who’s somehow less trustworthy than Garon, but what I’m saying is that the material for that type of expansion was already much in evidence. 

Now that all the much-analyzed negatives are out of the way, let’s talk about what works about Celica. She and Alm benefit from being realized characters on a level superseding that of anyone else in the series to date, from their voice acting to their Avatar-esque PoV during base conversations and most story events to their running commentary on the varied locales they visit and all the curiosities (and cats) the player cares to click on. While I’m not going to pretend that I’m invested enough in either character to fully distinguish their voices as point-and-click-adventure protagonists - about all I’ve got is that Alm is kind of dumb and enjoys bad puns, whereas Celica is a bit snobbish and a teetotaler but it’s not like anyone can drink in this game anyway - it’s nonetheless an endearing addition. 

That doesn’t make up for the lack of balance in their story roles, but as mentioned above the writers were fighting a battle they’d already half lost in trying to make Celica’s goals as impactful as Alm’s...or as logical, as anyone who labels Celica a hypocrite based on her fight with Alm after Act 2 will attest (Celica’s half of the story is less of a pacifist route than Conquest - which reflects worse on Conquest than on this game, frankly, but still). Even so, it’s remarkable that even in the blatantly sexist pre-GBA era Celica is given the agency to go on a quest of her own and character-specific motivations to back up that agency. I’ll be going into this more in a later ranking, but I do enjoy the ways in which FE depicts its (pseudo-Catholic) faiths, and that’s clearly present in FE15 with Celica the convent priory girl and her actually meaningful devotion to a female deity who appears not unlike a fantastic rendering of the Mother of Christ. Imagine: if Jedah hadn’t been such a mustache-twirling caricature we might have gotten some serious comparative theology and a philosophical consideration of the series-wide problem of dragons going insane. Are we ever going to see this series consider an option for its constantly ailing dragons that isn’t death or the vaguely-explained dragonstones? Not in a remake, that’s for sure.

Celica also comes with an appreciable amount of political nuance: she’s a royal incognito who manages to be both sharply critical of her father and willing to assume his throne for the good of her people, and this despite the fact that she has an older brother in the remake. It may be amusing to contemplate the cracky situation of Alm needing to bone Conrad for the good of Valentia, but this retcon of Zofia’s rules of succession allows Celica to come off looking better in the end - certainly more so than women like Julia or Eirika who are in similar positions but are unable to be recognized as rulers in their own right. Progress, yay. Except Act 4 and 5 still play out as they do, and then Alm’s legacy becomes the new name of their united kingdom (and also Walhart), while’s Celica’s is...the Mila Tree, I guess?

Ah, well. Celica’s got her glaring issues, but I still like her regardless.