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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Fire Emblem's new anime direction (RANT)

ToraTiger said:
Airaku said:
You have a somewhat compelling argument on your hands. Your fallacy is simply that you are turned off by the "anime" art style. Fire Emblem has always had a classic Japanese art style to it. Even Fire Emblem: Path or Radiance had it (phenomenal game btw, it was my first FE game). The interesting thing about Fire Emblems cut scenes is that it is a blend of both cel-shading and 3D. It's hard to call it one or the other as it is a unique blend of both that you can't really find else where. It adds a very special layer of depth to the visuals that really stands out and defines the cut scenes. Of course this is completely personal tastes but I love it!

I don't get how you see the whole marriage system as a "waifu" simulator, but you sure gave me a laugh and a smile. Thank you for that! :) I absolutely loved the whole "waifu sim" as you call it. It added a whole new gameplay mechanic to the series and honestly I have yet to see a game do it better. Getting characters married and then they have children who come back in time to help you. If they don't get married, well then I guess the children can't be born. Besides I freaking love Tharja! Her crazy insane obsession with me made her use some seriously messed up voodoo magic and then suddenly I had this crazy insane obsession with her! -_-

The Fire Emblem series is debatably Nintendo's darkest franchise. At least one of them, the games are incredibly mature in terms of subject matters. Not in the sense of blood and gore, but a different form of violence. The games are very political and heavily focused on geo-domination, conquest, and power. I liked how Awakening shaked things up and went back to the roots with Grima. While still having conquest with Walhart, though he does not come remotely close to Black Knight. Black Knight while not being a major villain, he was one of the series most formidable foes and a serious threat to Ike and the world he lived in.

The Fire Emblem series is phenomenal and Awakening in my opinion was easily one of the best and the story was without a doubt one of my favorites in video games. Plot has always been a strong point for the series and Awakening was no different. The plot twist blew me away, and I know it blew many other fans away as well! These games are quite dark and gritty at times and that is a huge part of it's universe.

It's more than the art style.  You see the older games while obviously japanese didn't look like the typical low budget anime shows you see now a days () Older FE art was considerably more realistic in how they draw the face and with the details.  In awakening there is almost no details, the characters are skinny as phuck and they're facial expressions are typical and pronounced.  e.i mad face, sad face, shy face, sexy face, bland face, ect.

On the topic of art style, compare the art on Path of Radiance, compare the cutscenes in both games to awakening and you will see what im talking about with the simplified anime kiddish art.

I like the marriage mechanic, but the conversations and were bland and the characters weren't very deep.  If they had this dynamic in Path of raidance I probably would have liked it, since that game had actually good deep characters that I liked. 

I agree about the maturity, but Awakening was basic and kiddy regardless of how dark it was.   In awakening the characters didnt even have conversations about the dead characters after they die like in POR (Get everyone killed in the first 4 chapters of POR and the whole tone of that part changes, freaking awesome) Also in awakening the characters usually dont even die or change the story they just "retreat" and remain in the  cutscenes just the same.  I loved the permadeath feature it made for some great outcomes in some chapters, but in awakening like that. 

I bet Tharja is into some weird kinky sh!t btw.   50 shades of Robin

I agree on the art style bit to some extent. Older Japanese art styles looked much more realistic, Zelda is a prime example of this. This is very much the same case for anime today. I had some favorite animes growing up but when I look at anything that came out in the last decade it seems so simplistic to me. Some of it makes me want to take ice cream scoopers and rip my eyes out -_- jk but no seriously! For me, I personally find Fire Emblem's art style very mature by todays standards of anime. A decade ago I may have given a different answer but I would actually argue that Fire Emblem's cut scenes is worlds away better than a lot of animes today. For example animes like Bleach and One Piece are far to simplistic and lack details (and I love the One Piece manga!!!!). This is of course personal tastes but I find that there are much more details and facial expressions than a lot of recent anime styles. although sometimes it can be over used in the games, but I think they do that because the characters are in still frames when they talk their dialogue. On the subject of dialogue, I found that Awakening was great at parts and extremely weak and childish at other parts.

As for the whole characters dying bit, I really can't argue much on that for two reasons. One, in Awakening I play it in classic mode so when someone dies they die! Two, I'm that jackass that literally powers off the system when someone dies regardless of the game I'm playing. Why don't I play casual then? Simply because it isn't as intense and it forces me to not take risks and play strategically as well as double check all my moves. My mistakes are not forgiven and I need to replay the level or at least to my last save point.

Oh you will NOT believe the kinky stuff Tharja does. It is absolutely unreal and you are missing out. Her magic literally amplifies everything and she is always in control, her voodoo bullsh!t is so OP you have no sense of freewill and are forced to complete submission. So technically speaking it's "50 shades of Tharja". Hell she even manifests this OP dark whip!

PS. The proper name for Robin is actually "The Avatar". I have no idea why they didn't use that name for Super Smash Bros. It seems like a silly mistake on their end....




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Yeah, I HATE Fire Emblems new anime direction...

I mean, it's so NEW!



Story: PoR > FE7 > Awakening > SS > RD > SD

Characters: PoR > RD > Awakening > FE7 > SS > SD

Gameplay: PoR > RD > FE7 > Awakening > SS > SD

Awakening wasn't my favorite entry in the franchise, but it's pretty far from the weakest. It definitely tries to appeal to the Japanese/Anime fanbase more, though I'm honestly not convinced the fanbase shift was that severe. Shipping was still a thing in the GBA titles, and characters and story usually fell into certain anime tropes as well, one of the most notable being the numbered group of villains that shounen authors seem to love (*looks at Oda*).

The characters in Awakening were a lot more trope-ish though...which was a little bit annoying. I liked the supports a lot more in the GBA titles and PoR. The impression I got was that Awakening was focusing more on breadth than depth, which can be good or bad depending on your perspective.

I don't know if the direction of this thread has changed since the first page, so I apologize if it has. Usually I try to read through most of the posts before responding, but gosh there's a lot here. I'll read it later.



NNID: Zephyr25 / PSN: Zephyr--25 / Switch: SW-4450-3680-7334

Super_Boom said:
Story: PoR > FE7 > Awakening > SS > RD > SD


Awakening in third place for the story ? Really ? (especially better than Radiant dawn ?)

It's one of the worst for me, with bad time-travel story, and non-interesting/déjà-vu story otherwise.

Awakening has some good point, but i really can't say the scenario is one of them...far from it . you don't play awakening for his story, at all. And that's why i wait the next FE, who will get a better story...because it's hard to do something worse than awakening.



Namiirei said:

Awakening in third place for the story ? Really ? (especially better than Radiant dawn ?)

It's one of the worst for me, with bad time-travel story, and non-interesting/déjà-vu story otherwise.

Awakening has some good point, but i really can't say the scenario is one of them...far from it . you don't play awakening for his story, at all. And that's why i wait the next FE, who will get a better story...because it's hard to do something worse than awakening.

I liked Radiant Dawn in the sense that it was a follow-up to my favorite entry, but I found the story prior to the Greil's Mercenaries' return to be less interesting than a lot of the others. I never did find myself caring that much about the Dawn Brigade, and that only got worse when they were forced to fight against Ike's team. The idea was to pit two sympathetic teams against each other, but I can't possibly think of scenario where I would have possibly rooted for Micaiah over Ike. I still can't figure out why someone who wasn't involved with the blood pact signing didn't just come up with a plan to tell Ike without arousing suspicion, it's not like Micaiah's team didn't know him or anything. Admittedly this was a character problem, but since a large part of story was dependent on it, it was something I found a bit annoying.

Awakening on the other hand, though definitely with its own cliches, had a multi-arc story I found more engaging. In particular, the portion of the the game after Emm dies and the Valm arc really kept me hooked. It had also had more strong emotional sequences that hooked me, moreso than RD did.



NNID: Zephyr25 / PSN: Zephyr--25 / Switch: SW-4450-3680-7334

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To be fair, while I don't personally care for the direction the series is headed it does occur to me that an ever increasing number of games and franchises are made in the "western" art style and storytelling conventions. There's nothing wrong with a series attempting to appeal more to the east than the west... It's only fair that some do.

If the gameplay is good and the dialogue doesn't become too silly then I can live with it :p



Airaku said:
ToraTiger said:

It's more than the art style.  You see the older games while obviously japanese didn't look like the typical low budget anime shows you see now a days () Older FE art was considerably more realistic in how they draw the face and with the details.  In awakening there is almost no details, the characters are skinny as phuck and they're facial expressions are typical and pronounced.  e.i mad face, sad face, shy face, sexy face, bland face, ect.

On the topic of art style, compare the art on Path of Radiance, compare the cutscenes in both games to awakening and you will see what im talking about with the simplified anime kiddish art.

I like the marriage mechanic, but the conversations and were bland and the characters weren't very deep.  If they had this dynamic in Path of raidance I probably would have liked it, since that game had actually good deep characters that I liked. 

I agree about the maturity, but Awakening was basic and kiddy regardless of how dark it was.   In awakening the characters didnt even have conversations about the dead characters after they die like in POR (Get everyone killed in the first 4 chapters of POR and the whole tone of that part changes, freaking awesome) Also in awakening the characters usually dont even die or change the story they just "retreat" and remain in the  cutscenes just the same.  I loved the permadeath feature it made for some great outcomes in some chapters, but in awakening like that. 

I bet Tharja is into some weird kinky sh!t btw.   50 shades of Robin

I agree on the art style bit to some extent. Older Japanese art styles looked much more realistic, Zelda is a prime example of this. This is very much the same case for anime today. I had some favorite animes growing up but when I look at anything that came out in the last decade it seems so simplistic to me. Some of it makes me want to take ice cream scoopers and rip my eyes out -_- jk but no seriously! For me, I personally find Fire Emblem's art style very mature by todays standards of anime. A decade ago I may have given a different answer but I would actually argue that Fire Emblem's cut scenes is worlds away better than a lot of animes today. For example animes like Bleach and One Piece are far to simplistic and lack details (and I love the One Piece manga!!!!). This is of course personal tastes but I find that there are much more details and facial expressions than a lot of recent anime styles. although sometimes it can be over used in the games, but I think they do that because the characters are in still frames when they talk their dialogue. On the subject of dialogue, I found that Awakening was great at parts and extremely weak and childish at other parts.

As for the whole characters dying bit, I really can't argue much on that for two reasons. One, in Awakening I play it in classic mode so when someone dies they die! Two, I'm that jackass that literally powers off the system when someone dies regardless of the game I'm playing. Why don't I play casual then? Simply because it isn't as intense and it forces me to not take risks and play strategically as well as double check all my moves. My mistakes are not forgiven and I need to replay the level or at least to my last save point.

Oh you will NOT believe the kinky stuff Tharja does. It is absolutely unreal and you are missing out. Her magic literally amplifies everything and she is always in control, her voodoo bullsh!t is so OP you have no sense of freewill and are forced to complete submission. So technically speaking it's "50 shades of Tharja". Hell she even manifests this OP dark whip!

PS. The proper name for Robin is actually "The Avatar". I have no idea why they didn't use that name for Super Smash Bros. It seems like a silly mistake on their end....

Robin is the default name in Awakening, remember?



ToraTiger said:

Look at the sales figures on Wikipedia, and it says it sold more in 2012 in Japan (8 months on shelves) than by september 2013 in America (Also About 8 months)I dont take these figures seriously on this site, as they're highly overtracked especially with Nintendo games. 

There is no point in arguing with someone who is defending the inclusion of Dark Pit and Lucina, who literally add zero to the game but filler in the rooster.   If you just said "Hey they're a bonus!" I would have agreed.  But if you expect me to take that seriously, that somehow since Lucina's sword tip is slightly different to Marth's is a reason for her to be included, than I honestly don't know what to say.  They have the exact same kit down to FS and B attacks. 

And I gave several reasons why I disliked most parts of Awakening, the hit and miss support system and dualstrike mechanic, the cliche characters, the overpriced DLC for exclusive classes, the artstyle which is a completely slapface from previous games in the series, the bland relationship conversations, the less than perfect story, ect.

Also this is relative to other FE games, not games in generally.  I just feel as though the tone and direction, art and new mechanics of Awakening makes it one of the weakest games in the series

Really your source is wikipedia also Awakening only released February 2013 in NA so September 2013 is only 6 or so months as far as the game's release goes so you're comparing 8 months to 6 months. To further highlight how out of your league you are here according to Wikipedia your very own source the game sold 390k by September in NA compared to the 455k in the 8 months you're touting so in 8 months it only sold 65k more then NA did in 6 months.

As Smash goes you're out of your league and it's clear you don't know what you're talking about on this front, I've explained it to you twice in simple terms I'll even link you to Event Hubs for you to read the comments for an in depth explaination from pro and competitive players, so far you've yet to explain how they're carbon copies after you've been given an easy to understand explaination.



Xxain said:
Nem said:
Sounds like you are having problems with a japanese game beeing japanese.

I didnt notice any problems at all. I am super excited for both games.


Uh no. Terrible way to excuse a growing problem within the Japanese game industry.


If you say so. But i do believe there is a level of arrogance in westerners saying how Japanese should do the art on their games.

If you dont like it, skip the game? Its not like they are going to change because of western audiences. Just like the Tales of series... they are games aimed at japanese audiences. You are fighting a losing battle.



Why is anime style bad? It's fine if you don't like it, but you're making it out to be objectively wrong. Also cliches, stereotypes, tropes, etc. aren't restricted to any one medium. As for the game itself, sure it's probably not the best FE, but it's atleast solid and not blatantly bad enough to make one give up on the series, and even if it was, that doesn't mean future installments will be just as bad. The latest two Paper Marios weren't what I was hoping for either but I'll still consider myself a fan of the series.