#the kaga not fire emblem games

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

Post Thracia era Fire Emblem is far more scared to experiment creating a significantly more homogeneous experience overall. This can best be shown by mounted units. They're strictly better than infantry and Kaga tried to fix this by not allowing them to be mounted in doors. In 6 when the series soft rebooted itself this reverence for the status quo made IS revert this change and a decade later mounted units are still just strictly better.

.

[tellius-brainrot]

I think people who make incest jokes about fire emblem should be FE4 Chapter Fived.

[silent-partner-412]

sometimes i’m reminded that the kaga saga games exist and goddamn i’m glad i chose not to add those to the scope of “fire emblem” games to get to during my marathon of them bc that would’ve been way too overwhelming

[eat-a-dicker]

lachussy is the first trainee in all of fire emblem and i hate her

[lemonade-juley]

Mm. Playing Awakening again using the Unofficial Gay Awakening mod and, just likes the Fates version I do applaud that the new support conversations are for the most part close to or very in character. Granted also Awakening is not the FE game I am most familiar with (the ones I am are radiant dawn, conquest, and TH) so I'm not 100% which are new to the mod and which are vanilla, which it's honestly a good thing that i can't tell.

Awakening isn't my favorite fe game for a few reasons, most of which is gameplay related, but one of the ones that isn't is due to how aggressively Hetero it is. Like I feel like a lot of the queer subtext is just gone outside of like 2 things (ones i can think of are M-Robin/Chrom, Maribelle/Lissa)

Like yeah, queer stories and all that are barely a thing in Fire Emblem in general, and even less of it is directlt confirmed canon, but like a lot of other fe games that have things that can be easily read in a queer lens, whether that's romance related or not, and it kinda feels Awakening just kinda lacks in this department.

[yukithesnowman314]

A Low-Brow Fire Emblem "Retrospective": Chapter 1 (YOUTUBE VIDEO)

A Low-Brow Fire Emblem “Retrospective”: Chapter 1 (YOUTUBE VIDEO)

Join Yuki The Snowman and TV Guru of the The Swarthy Nerd on Yuki’s personal profound and profane retrospective on Intelligent Systems classic tactical RPG series: Fire Emblem!In Chapter 1, Yuki takes us through the golden ages of Fire Emblem from its humble doujin circle-like beginnings on the Nintendo Famicom to becoming a genre-defining icon in gaming history. GAMES DISCUSSED: Fire Emblem:…

[gaslightgatekeepgirlbosscombat]

Extra tournament

Here is a little battle royale I promised around the start of submissions

And here is propoganda (or reasons for submission that collided with main tournament's rules)

Wu Zhao (real life)

The post

Little siblings (real life)

The other post

Russian communists (real life)

They tried to gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss people of 15 countries into the idea of communism.

My piano teacher (real life)

"YOU F*CKING MISTAKE YOU CAN'T EVEN PLAY THIS ONE NOTE CORRECTLY YOU NEVER DESERVED TO EXIS--oh hello child's parents! :D we were just doing some healthy criticism"

/Bro I hope u r doin ok now/

@\gayoticbeing (tumblr)

The vibes. Especially the girlbossing.

Dog (real life)

Gatekeep toys and affection. Gaslight people into giving up their own food with big eyes. Girlboss through life, commanding all love in the house.

Shouzou Kaga (real life)

Girlboss- created the fire emblem franchise. Fire Emblem elitists worship him (even though he left the franchise after the 5th game). Gatekeep- his games are known for having the most cryptic gameplay mechanics and unlocking secrets are nearly impossible without a guide. Literally one of his games came with a vhs on how to play the game. Gaslight- made up this bow for a video game and gaslit a bunch of people into thinking it was a real bow from Norse mythology (this video goes into more depth about it):

Yeltsa Kcir (life real)

Created the deadliest self defence move. Just look at it.

[aokozaki]

Kaga should make a new game. Wanna see what nonsense he can pull as Fire Emblem is increasingly safe.

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

honestly feels like kaga’s not even trying anymore

like berwick and trs feel like they have legit effort put into them

but like vestaria saga just literally uses stock srpg studio assets

and not to shit on game devs because I know it’s hard and expensive work

but romhackers genuinely feel like they actually care about srpgs

and kaga kinda feels like he’s doing this out of spite now

and idk I think that’s kinda sad? like he’s just an angry old man trying to reclaim his glory days working on early fe

(still think he’s never gotten over his dubious views on women)

.

[fioras-resolve]

What Is Fire Emblem About: an explainer for the uninitiated

this is gonna be a bit of a weird one. i feel like fire emblem fans are gonna get angry at me for mostly sidelining the story, so i'm just gonna say: i'm a game designer, and a very ludocentric person. this is just how i'm going to talk about things. but also, you can't talk about FE story without the contexts of what the games Are mechanically. with that out of the way...

Fire Emblem started as one of the earliest examples of a Simulation RPG (or Strategy RPG in the west, but, you know). it was trying to take a wargame framework and apply that to a fantasy rpg. so unlike most wargames, every unit has a name, personality, and unique attributes. but unlike most rpg's, you're moving across a battlefield. units are defined by wargame functions, like "ranged," "high movement," "flying," etc. and if one of your allies dies, they're gone for good. it creates an emotional heft, one found in most games with permadeath. to quote jon bois, talking about xcom,

in a way, fire emblem simulates war in a way that a lot of wargames don't. it makes you care about each of your units, not just because they're unique characters with lives, but because losing them means losing what they did for the army. you only get so many healers in fire emblem, so many thieves who can open a chest, and if you trained someone up for ages just to see them die to a random critical hit, it hurts.

"it immerses you via accountability. if your ranger dies, you are left with a feeling that ultimately, they counted on you to lead them, and that even in a game that is often decided by chance, it was all your fault"

or at least, that's how it works in theory. in reality, most players will just restart the chapter if they lose someone important. strict "ironman" rules have never been implemented in fire emblem, so while theoretically this is a game about living with your mistakes, in practice it's about constantly redoing a fight until you get the right results. modern fire emblem has even made rewinding to specific moments an actual game mechanic, a design choice i call "embracing the bastards." (i say this with affection, i am one of those bastards)

to make up for the fact that you can lose characters, you get a lot of them over the course of the game. a lot of these characters, especially in early FE, are just kind of there. like, you get so many characters of the same class who are clearly just backup if the other ones die. some of these units are great, with amazing stats or the ability to use some cool weapon, and others suck. if you talk to fans of "classic" FE, you'll find that a lot of people's favorite characters are decided by gameplay. as the series progressed, characters grew to be more fleshed out narratively and more balanced mechanically depending on who you ask, so a lot of modern fans are more into a character because of their personality or character arc.

which does lead us into talking about how the series has shifted over time. because when people think of "fire emblem" now, they're not thinking about the games from the 90s. they're probably not even thinking about the games from the 2000s. so let's talk about the changing identity of fire emblem. i like to split this into four "eras," broken up by major mechanical changes and shifts in who's leading the charge. i'm sure some fe fans will disagree on on this, but this is the framing the works the best for me. so!

The Kaga Era: This was an era of fire emblem led by a single guy, Shouzou Kaga. this is, i feel, where the essence of Simulation RPG is felt the most strongly. the games are hard to get into these days if you don't already play fire emblem, but there's a real artistic commitment here to trying to capture ideas through mechanics. aside from FE1, we also got Gaiden, which leaned way harder into the RPG angle with grinding, magic, and dragon-questy towns. we got Mystery of the Emblem, a direct sequel to the first game that put familiar characters in new contexts. we got Genealogy of the Holy War, an incredibly ambitious game that plays out a story of war on a massive scale. we got Archanea Saga, a very short game consisting of four incredibly potent one-shot chapters. And we got Thracia 776, an intensely challenging game left so up to randomness that even healing can miss. some oldheads view Thracia as the height of the series.

The Renaissance: After Kaga left due to a squabble with Nintendo (which is its own story), the dev team had to pick up the pieces without its auteur director. This period is arguably when Fire Emblem was most "itself." The Kaga era was foundational, but too experimental to have a consistent identity. The Renaissance was when the idea of what A Fire Emblem Game was solidified, to the point where if you ask most older fans what they think of when they imagine Fire Emblem, you'll probably get something from the Renaissance. Probably the biggest innovation from this era was the Support Conversation. Basically, if you put two characters next to each other for long enough, they might strike up a conversation with each other. You can usually do this two more times. This fleshed out the characters beyond their first impression, and made personality more of a sticking point. Later games would expand on this further.

You could maybe argue that this period was intensely safe, but I'd say after Kaga's departure, safe was probably necessary. Binding Blade was essentially a rehash of FE1, for better and worse. Blazing Blade, a prequel to Binding, was the first FE game to be released outside of Japan, so it has an extensive tutorial, and is generally a lot easier to accommodate. But also, it features some really solid and creative level design which makes it worth playing to this day. Sacred Stones did similar to Gaiden with its skill system, world map, and grinding. Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn... I actually haven't really played those or heard much about them but a lot of people view them as the height of the series. And Shadow Dragon was a remake of FE1, that actually tried very hard to encourage you to ironman it. Like, you can reclass freely, you get replacement units if you're running low, and the prologue ends by forcing you to pick a sacrifice. Unfortunately, people didn't really get the message. It was my first FE game, and I still reset whenever someone died. Caeda, my beloved.

The Maeda Era: This starts, oddly enough, with a remake of the third game, called New Mystery of the Emblem. It adds a player avatar that you can customize, support conversations, a new plotline about assassins, and crucially, a Casual Mode. Yes, you can now start the game choosing either Classic Mode, which has permadeath, and Casual Mode, which doesn't. This fundamentally changes the experience, as you can imagine, and it's still a pretty contentious topic within the FE community. A lot of new players struggle to get into classic Fire Emblem because the forced permadeath is just too punishing for them. But it's also core to the identity of the series. It was contentious within the dev team, too, with people fighting over whether or not to include it. Ultimately, it was decided that if the FE series was going to survive, it would need to be more playable to a casual audience.

This leads us into Fire Emblem: Awakening, which was a massive success compared to anything else before then. It featured the player avatar and casual mode, it featured a world map and grinding, and it also really leaned into the support system. It even combined this with the marriage and children system of Genealogy, adding a fourth support level which got characters to marry and have a child, who would then join your party by time traveling from the future. You could even marry someone with your player avatar. This did make Awakening more dating sim than tactics game in some people's eyes, but it really helped give the game a fandom that exceeded the existing FE fandom by a longshot. This kind of design was continued with Fire Emblem Fates, a game that was actually three different games you could choose between. Birthright was basically more Awakening, but Conquest took that paradigm and made it into a focused, polished, and tightly designed tactical experience. (Arguably too tight, I don't like it that much but I get why people do.) And the Maeda era ends with FE Heroes, a mobile gacha game with as much creativity as power creep. And honestly, how else could this end?

The Modern Era: Since Maeda is mostly working on Heroes now, we're in a similar situation to the Renaissance, where the series has to pick up where its leader left off. But instead of playing it safe, the new directors have experimented with it in a way we haven't seen since Kaga. It started, of course, with a remake of Gaiden, called Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. I have a soft spot for this game, but what's important for you to know is that it introduced 1) full voice acting, 2) special moves, and 3) turn rewinds, which finally just makes resetting a deliberate game design tool.

From this point on we have Three Houses, which did a similar split-path thing to Fates, but letting you choose based on preference for characters rather than gameplay. I think its mechanics are a really nice synthesis of a lot of different games, but that's not really why people care about Three Houses. People care about Three Houses because it features a hot girlboss voiced by Tara Platt, a school setting that's easy to project onto, multiple queer characters with subtext for each other, and a morally grey set of factions that people can argue passionately about for years. It is THE fandom-ready Fire Emblem game. After that is our most recent game, Engage. Now, this is structured like a traditional Fire Emblem, but it plays pretty substantially different. Now your units can summon past FE protagonists to give massive buffs and execute super moves. My favorite is the one that lets you rush through enemies in a straight line. It's also incredibly anime, like bright colors, power of friendship, character designs a bit too outlandish. It's great if that's your shit.

so, I've been talking a lot about how these games play. and if you're a big fan of these games, especially of the modern ones, that might frustrate you. you don't play rpg's for the combat, you play them for the story, which i have avoided talking about for the most part. and first of all, that's a very reductive way of looking at rpg's, and games generally. second, these things are intertwined, you cannot disconnect story from play. but third, i'm of the mind that what a game is About is decided by what happens when you interact with it. talking solely about what happens in cutscenes and dialogue is treating a game as something to watch or read, not as something to play. and i think we owe it to ourselves, and the medium, to do better than that.

but, last few notes before i finish the post. first off, there are a few games i missed, particularly spinoffs, like the Warriors spinoffs or that weird MegaTen crossover that isn't much FE or MegaTen at all. second, the setting, characters, and lore shifts with each entry. sometimes you get games in the same universe, like Awakening's continent is just the FE1 continent but a thousand years in the future. but you don't particularly need to worry about playing the other ones if you want to get into a specific game. third, there's a fair bit of Weird Anime Shit. particularly the consistent use of the thousand-year-old loli trope which has been around since the first game. Fates lets you marry and have children with your siblings, and it's really funny how each of their S-Supports have the other character pull up a letter from their mom saying you're not actually related. Break Glass In Case Of Incest. the games are almost always about royalty finding sacred weapons to kill a problems dragon, and i'm honestly not big on stories that valorize nobility, but it's a fairy tale, so whatever. i have in the backburner a game i've been working on that does this kind of story from the perspective of civilians, so keep an eye out for that in the next few years. also for the love of fuck, if you're a fire emblem fan please play other tactics games. the fe series is good, but there's a whole slue of games out there if you want to expand your horizons. i recommend triangle strategy, xcom 2, into the breach, my own catalogue, and walk with the living.

-Angie Nyx

[fayesdiary]

Looking at your Diagram of SOV, Celica getting turned into witch and Nuibaba's backstory aren't Kaga's work, but Kusakihara's. Kaga was a bit better by comparison.

On a sidenote, the brainwashing is more complciated than Kaga.

Kaga's is more like "this playable character has temporarily been put under a magic spell and become an enemy unit, talk to them with the right unit to re-recruit them."

Whilst with Kusakihara, it is more like "this female boss that seemed evil was really a brainwashed victim and we are revealing this near the end of the game."

Both are pretty sexist, honestly!

Oh believe me, I know Echoes is even more sexist than Gaiden, even if I'm not interested in who is responsible for it and I'd much rather criticize the text itself.

As for the brainwashing approaches... well, in my personal opinion the former's approach isn't inherently bad, but rather what made it an annoying and sexist trope is that it was constantly abused by Kaga with mainly if not only female characters (and unfortunately we still see it long after his departure), while the latter approach...

Well, no way I'm defending that one.

It would have been fine if it was used once or maybe twice (provided, again, you handle it well which is almost never the case), but not only it makes most of the previous moments of the character moot because it's not really her, it saps her of all of her agency in a pretty condescending way. Especially when it gives the vibes of "women cannot possibly be evil or nasty on their own merits, they must be controlled by eeevil men" as well as the literally admitted by the developers "we think people would feel bad about fighting women so we often make them more pretty and sympathetic than male antagonists". And even when brainwashing isn't involved, their tragic backstories are usually just a mix of either "i want to be a mother", "i want to be beautiful" and "man bad". Since we're talking about Echoes Nuibaba's backstory in the Accordion is a mix of the latter two and I hate it. So much.

And look, nothing wrong with making a villain sympathetic or not laughably evil regardless of their gender, but this is literally the cheapest, most insulting and, indeed, sexist way to do it.

Couple that with the often icky implication this series' writing does when it tries to explain why things like pegasi are restricted by gender (with the explanation for them in particular being iirc some shit like "oh only women are able to ride them because they are inherently more pure" which, blegh) and... yeah, Fire Emblem is not gonna win any feminist awards any time soon.

[theballmighty]

Whole thing with Palworld just reminds me of the time Fire Emblem series creator and lead designer Shozou Kaga left Nintendo to make a new fancy game on the PS1 called “Emblem Saga”, and then said in all the promotional material that it was “the next installment in the Fire Emblem series” and then got taken to court and lost super hard

[dithorba]

1, 6 and 19 about a Fire Emblem of your choice?

We're doing Genealogy

1) What OTPs in your fandom(s) do you just not get?*

- Finn/Lach. Listen. Everything about it is very after the fact. How the fandom read Beo's last lines. Finn being cold to women by Selfina. Finn's most significant relationships are exclusively men (Quan and Glade). There are even more things like the fact that Selfina specifically marries Finn's best friend. Which maybe is to imply that a younger Selfina initially had eyes for Finn but Finn didn't feel the same. Not saying that is the case but it would be a Kaga thing to do. Like with the sole exception of Brigid, Finn has such a negative presence with it comes to women. It's almost like the shonen characteristic of a character who has no impactful relationships with women being insisted as straight when there are more compelling gay or ace interpretations.

6) Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?*

- I have gotten softer to Ares/Seliph and that has to do with oofmies. I never hated the pairing. I just found the animosity that Ares has to be hard to pass. Shifting tastes and time made me more endeared to it. Toxic yaoi hm.

19) What is the one thing you hate most about your fandom?

- It's the first Fire Emblem game to have pairing choice, and yet the fandom wholeheartedly ostracizes you for choosing the "wrong" pairings. Horseti still incites people to violence.

[arkus-rhapsode]

Rambling about my anxieties about a potential FE4 Remake

So recently an interview with the developers of FE Engage had come out and it shed some interesting facts about the development like how it was meant for the 30th anniversary, it was being made at the same time as 3H and that the game was delayed for greater polish.

Now that might not seem at all extraordinary after all, if you were like me, the OG leaker for Engage basically said that all. But here’s the thing, not only is this behind the scenes look legitimizing more of the leaker’s insights, but that means there is an even higher potential of their claim that an FE4 remake is more believable. 

Now its no secret that FE Genealogy of the Holy War is one of the most anticipated Fire Emblems to receive a remake treatment like Echoes and why wouldn’t it be? After all, its still the most popular FE in Japan and is considered to be Kaga’s magnum opus and the best of the Famicom era FE. It was also never brought over to the West legally so this’ll be FE fans chances to see it in its full glory. Hell, Im excited as all hell to see FE4 remade on modern consoles, but then I sorta stopped and began to think about it for a bit. Namely, could an FE4 remake ever live up to the hype?

Now look, any old FE getting remade should happen. Especially those never officially translated. It gives others in the fandom the chance to experience the game with modern convince and not be scared off by emulation. But just for a moment I thought what a remade FE4 would even look like. 

Now Im sure anyone who played Echoes knows it is possibly one of the best produced FE’s ever. Its in game art was amazing, the sprites actually resembled people more than Awakening or Fates, fully voice acted, it was amazing. It was amazing by the standards of a 3DS. Its no secret FE has gone through a transitional period from the 3DS to the Switch. The flat 2D sprites are now 3D models and convos that took place on map painting backgrounds with character art laid onto of it, is now 3D models speaking in an open space. I think what every FE fan genuinely wants is for Fire Emblem to look the best it can on the console its on. Now Engage clearly has shown FE can look better than it ever has on switch, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. This is a console that’s 1st and 2nd parties can achieve visuals like breath of the wild, Kirby Lost World, and Xenoblade. So I don’t think its impossible to make pretty games on a switch. But FE and Insys really haven’t gone all the way to where is feels quite like its a next gen FE visually. And not to put all the blame on InSys, but I understand that even fans are split. Some will never be happy if we don’t get back to the old pixel art style and found it more visually appealing while others want to put the capabilities of FE on a home console. Any creative director is not gonna manage to appeal to both these sides and that’s honestly going to suck. 

Now, this isn’t just about graphics but lets also talk about mechanics. Its no doubt that FE4 has some legendary map design, as well as the precursor to the support system we have now. But it was a clearly unbalanced FE, cavalry has always been OP but this is the game where literally cavalry is the best. The map design is also pretty different. I know GBA era fans probably are used to the concept of an FE plot unfolding on a battlefield as opposed to more chapter long encounter then story cutscene as more modern FE, but if people forget, the maps in FE4 were huge with multiple narrative events occurring in a single map. So how do translate that? Do you get rid of the huge maps and make FE4 more like modern FE and break into smaller maps with cutscene driven stories? Engage has shown a willingness to use more cinematics than ever before, would that help moments like Sigurd’s father dying or the feeling of Quan arriving only to be ambushed? Personally, I don’t think so as moments like that make FE4 so remembered. The immersive moments of in real time plot elements playing out. Once again we arrive at some where I can’t really see how you’d do this without disappointing one end of the spectrum.

And then we have the support system. I feel pretty confident in saying that an FE4 remake will use the modernized FE support system. But as we’ve seen in Echoes, just because it may use the same system, doesn’t mean it’ll be like Awakening, Fates, or 3H level deep. Echoes support system was incredibly limited despite coming off of the more robust Fates. And As I’m sure you all recall, scaling back social sim elements are never really met with positivity like FE Engage walking back things from 3H. Im sure they’ll still let you pick who you end up with Seliph, after all he isn’t locked into an ending like Sigurd or Alm, but I am unsure if we’ll get the modernized support system we are so accused to getting retrofitted into an older game. 

Oh my god are they even going to do turn wheel?

Okay okay moving away from the gameplay portion, the last thing that worries the fact any remake of FE4 has to live up to a near monolithic reputation. FE4 is an FE that never made it the states and the only way to experience it forever was through emulation and a fan translation. This lack of availability that seemed to only be accessed by die hard FE fans willing to play the Famicom era games while also being told to other western fans that this is Japan’s favorite FE coupled with things that more modern fans would recognize like FE4 serving as the inspiration for a lot of 3H has essentially mythologized FE4 as “The Greatest Fire Emblem Game”. Now this is my personal opinion but FE4 isn’t my favorite FE, nor is it one I consider the best written, but it is certainly an operatic entry that goes beyond what FE had ever done up to the point with moments that deserve to be apart of FE history. And do you see what I’m getting at here? Any remake of FE4 has sky high expectations to clear. It was a meme forever that FF7 Remake was taking forever, but we all know that if it was nothing less than beyond perfect, then FF7R would never live up to the hype. FE4 is very likely going to be in that situation and Im not 100% sure InSys can deliver if that’s the case. 

Now look, maybe this is all just pointless lizard brain fear. I would love nothing more than to see and FE4 that flawlessly captured the spirt of the original while looking great, playing great, and living up to the bar of social simulation. I think that’s all any fan genuinely wants out of any FE game. But it just fills me with dread knowing the near herculean task the FE development team may be tasked with, and that even more fans who have never experienced FE4 are going to now have to see how “The Best FE” holds up to modern standards. 

The potential of this remake ever happening is still not set in hard stone as of the writing. So there really is no point worrying about something before it even has a chance to materialize. But I do believe that any FE4 remake will now be facing a lot of up hill battles and while I’m not using that to protect poor game design (If the game plays or looks like ass I will call it out) I do hope that people think about what an FE4 remake really does mean. 

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

sorry I’m nerving out over video games again… bc reading the developer intentions behind the fire emblem games is genuinely so fascinating. they were among the earliest in the strategy RPG genre like they started on the og NES and the reasons behind why they went with the strategy RPG formula are so interesting bc the lead dev at the time mr shouzou kaga had the design philosophy of immersion in mind. like he was trying that in 1990 on an 8 bit console. so like the fundamental core gameplay of fire emblem exists as a way to merge the story and the gameplay as much as possible despite limited technology.

the characters can’t have much personality due to space limitations but the level up system is designed to make units feel unique and get you attached to good units. the idea was that it’d make every players story unique! they'd get attached to certain characters and even if they couldn’t do that from limited dialogue the players would end up projecting personalities onto their favourites based on gameplay and their brief lines. and because the game has permadeath any death would be a genuine tragedy- not only are you attached to that character, you now have to fill their role with a worse unit- and then, you might end up getting attached to them too.

it’s genuinely genius use of limitations honestly. like they got around the inherent difficulty of telling an intricate and personal story on the nes by designing the game specifically to generate an emergent narrative. and the series only iterated on it as it developed! fe4 i often see described more as an interactive storybook than a game, bc the idea was basically for it to be told through the mechanics where the SNES didn’t have space. even more modern games without kaga are about it. even if characters are more defined their arcs and ending depend on player choice. the narrative of the story you get is as much about who fought together in the game maps and who you poured exp into as it is the actual plot bc you will be reading more support convos than seeing cutscenes. and the gameplay is still designed to tell a story! these characters dying cuts their arc short and the hole they leave in the roster is as much a tragedy as ever! even if you’re on casual units who die constantly will fall behind and end up being abandoned it’s not as hard hitting but it��s still there!