#wind. Our task was to design male and female character related to all 5 elements.

[hephaestusent]

[anjoholegacy]

Since we still have no details on Fire Emblem switch, I figured I would make a list of hopes I have for the next entry in the series.

Since Fire Emblem is an ever evolving series, adding more elements as they go, I figured I would split the list into two sections: a "Keep/Add" section, and a "Remove/don't add section"

Keep/Add

Keep My Units, I am 100% for custimizable units in jrpg's and keeping that feature from the last 3 games would be great.

Add more customization for male MU's. This is something I notice with Jrpg's in general, there is a pretty big lack in good customization options. In most games, I just opt to play a female character because they not only have more options than guys, but better options. I can have multiple different, good looking, styles to pick from as a girl, but really only 1 or 2 styles that look passable as a guy. Let guys be pretty damn it.

keep the branching paths of other FE games and enhance them, make the choices actually matter. And furthermore, add far more choices. The choices in Sacred Stones and Fates were just simple choices of what static path you wanted to take, adding very minimal replay value in total.

Add more manaketes. This isn't some deep game design aspect, I just like my dragons.

Keep the dungeon and rpg elements of Gaiden/Echoes. Those aspects were incredibly unique and were the best things to come from those games, it would be a shame to never use them again especially since they were refined in Echoes.

Keep weapon skills from Echoes. These added some much more depth to the normal combat formula and provided an incentive for diversifying the weapons you used and not just giving everyone a generic weapon.

Bring back old style forging. I hated the forging in Fates. The weapons were already horrible in that game and forging them honestly offered no benefit, especially since you had to not only have multiple copies of one weapon type, but also had to have a specific resource type. Not to mention you had to keep upping the amount for higher level forging. So I think a return to either Awakening style or Radiant style Forging would be better. Personally, I am partial to Radiant style as it makes a weapon from the ground up and allows you to change it cosmetically. Speaking of....

Add more cosmetic options in forging. In the Radiant games, we were given the option of choosing what color we wanted our newly forged weapon to be. This could be anything from a spear handle to the blade of a sword. While it’s simple, I thought it was pretty neat. In lieu of that, what is we could add more? What if we could add things such as particle affects, changes in design, different blade types, guard types or what not? What if we could could change the way magic attacks looked? I know that this is, again, nothing mechanical or too important, but I just think it would be a neat thing to toy around with.

Add more difficulty, and not in the way Conquest did. Conquest was supposed to be an answer to fans of the game who said that the games were getting to easy. But instead of using fair difficulty like smarter and more aggressive AI or better map design, Conquest went for gimmicks. Take the wind tribe level for instance, it was a horrible mess of relying on one gimmick that the player had only a fraction of control over by using a limited number of non-respawning dragon veins to prematurely activate a wind effect that would move enemies. But, it would still also move YOUR units making using them almost pointless. On top of that, if you didn’t activate the vein, the wind would go off anyway, providing no difference other than the fact that ENEMIES wouldn’t be moved. So even if you didn’t use the veins, the affect would mostly be the same regardless.

Add more classes. You can never have too many classes.

Bring back weapon durability. The unlimited use weapons in Echoes weren't that bad, but that’s because they were all optional and units didn’t even have to wield them to fight. Not to mention they actively benefited the units by providing weapon skills to use. This is not the case for Fates. The weapons in Fates were horrible, being both weaker than the limited use weapons and also giving the units that use them negative affects like silver weapons decreasing attack and skill with each use and steel weapons dropping your speed by a whole 5 points. I don’t care if I have to continually buy new weapons or watch weapon uses, I would prefer that over having to watch my unit’s stats drop each time they enter a fight.

Add way more non-romantic supports. This always bothered me in Awakening and Fates, most supports were always geared toward unit marriage. While I still like these supports, I would also just like to see two units hang out as friends with no focus on romance. Not to mention, it just seems unrealistic that two guys in the same army would have nothing to say to each other, but they would chat up every girl they see.

Add more LGBT units/ marriage options. I know Fire Emblem hasn’t always had very deep supports for a long time, or even ones geared toward romance for even less. But I feel like it would simply benefit the experience to allow there to be more than just straight couples.

If weapon durability does come back, make legendary weapons unbreakable. It makes no sense that they would be breakable in the first place.

If you don’t make them unbreakable, bring back weapon repair. This was something only used in Genealogy of the Holy War, but I have no idea why it was scrapped. The ability to allow you to add more uses to weapons, especially special or forged weapons, should be a no-brainer. It just feels stupid to spend so much gold on making a weapon powerful, only to have it permanently break eventually.

Add more cosmetic items. Fates added the costume shop, and with it, the ability to buy cosmetic items to have units wear. I want that expanded to more than just masks and pauldrons, but also to wearable costumes, hairstyles, etc.

Keep the full voice acting like from Echoes. Dear god, the voice work in Echoes was a masterpiece worthy of being the first fully voiced FE game. Every character sounded how they should and every delivery was spot on. I want this to be a regular feature in fire emblem from now on.

Please make multiplayer better. Awakening’s multiplayer was kind of sub-par and unengaging and Fates’ was an easily hacked, unbalanced, mess that favored using the same 5 units over and over and over again, especially with the advent of skill castles being formed from just how easy it was to crack the game.

Add cooler critical animations. Listen, I’m a fan of all the one-liners characters have in the recent games, but the sprite criticals from the GBA games were better by far. I know it’s harder to bring back in 3D, especially with the camera buttons having multiple angles, but I feel like it’s entirely possible to spice up the rather dull critical animations 

Add an explanation to what a fire emblem actually is. At this point, there have been 7 fire emblems and they don’t have any shared commonalities other than being an all-powerful macguffin that may or may not being related to dragons. 

Bring back double roll rng. Hybrid roll didn’t work, might as well bring back double roll and throw the player a bone.

Remove/ Don’t add

For the love of god, don’t add child units. Holy War did it right, having the story broken into two sections, one where the parents were the focus and the other where the children were, thus giving the children their own identity away from their parents by virtue of having accomplished things on their own. It also made sense for the story. Awakening did it worse but still passable, having the children be woven into the story in a time travel subplot and establishing them as being their own person without their parents around. It wasn’t great, but the kids were so I let it slide. The children in Fates were both horribly written and horribly implemented. They had no story nor logical reason to exist and the pocket dimension bullshit was absolutely a garbage explanation. These children also very rarely had any real redeeming character traits or well written personalities. All in all, unless you actually have a story reason for them, and a story reason that works well, just don’t do it. Let it go.

Don’t reuse My Castle. This feature was honestly more annoying than anything, adding a bunch more annoying or outright pointless functions such as materials, crafting, or having to spend points to upgrade a weapon or rod shop just to actually get sub-par equipment. I know I talked a lot about aesthetic additions and how much I liked customization, but when customization gets in the way of proper game-play, scrap it.

Don’t tie this game to any other previous entry. I get it, Awakening and Fates made big money, but it’s high time to move on. Intelligent systems has been favoring these two games too heavily in Heroes and Warriors, and it would only stand to hurt the new game if you tied it into the plot of Awakening or Fates. Just let it have it’s own identity.

DON’T PULL THAT POKEMON SHIT YOU DID WITH FATES. Fates being cut into 3 games did nothing but harm the development of the game, player reception of the game, and force players to waste money on 3 different games all to understand the full plot and it was NOT worth it. Keep the game to one copy.

Stop adding beginner’s trap characters. I know this has been a staple in FE since the beginning, but can you just cut it out already? If you seem so keen on teaching players not to rely too heavily on one super-unit, then why put it in at all? Just focus on making the earlier levels about having different units be used for different tasks and not try to screw with unit leveling early on.

Tone down the fan service. I get that the latest entries have been centered on it and it brought more people into the series, but no one in Fates wore pants. It’s getting out of control.

Get rid of Heart and Friendship seals. I honestly see no good reason why these were added in the first place. Second seals did their job just fine and didn’t require you to grind support levels just to get more classes to switch to. These were just a waste of development resources honestly.

Remove the second seal de-level loop. Allowing your units to infinitely level up to their max stats broke the game outright, don’t allow units to reset their levels with second seals any longer.

Please, PLEASE, do no add motion controls. This is something people have hated since the wii, forcing gimmicky control schemes or innovation focused controls where they don’t belong. The game has no need for them, just don’t do it.

Don’t pull the “it was an evil dragon all along” cliche. It wasn’t clever the first time, it’s not clever now, and its continued use has done nothing but make the story predictable and actually damage how good some villains are as their whole motivation can be summed up as “I must serve my evil master who is very evil, because I am also evil.”

Don’t add the skinship feature back in. People were more upset about its removal as a meme, no one actually wants this awkward and kind of creepy feature back. If I want something like that, I would just play my copy of Senran Kagura.

Remove phoenix mode. Casual mode was already a great introduction to newer players, and provided a minor punishment for mistakes so that new players could learn tactics more comfortably with no real risk. From there, players would go on to play normal mode or harder difficulties with more confidence. Phoenix mode doesn’t do any of that. Phoenix mode teaches you nothing, does not benefit new players in the long run, and does not incentive higher levels or difficulties of play. Fire emblem requires the challenge to be engaging. Otherwise it’s just a boring slog with a pretty uninspired and not entirely well-written story. Focus on improving the game play, not harming it by adding a “press X to skip combat” button.