Why do people hate fire Emblem?

Okay three walls of text was maybe a bit too much so here's one which sums up the ones I deleted :

Fire Emblem is the licence I like to hate the most. I know this sounds like a attemp at trolling but I'm serious.

Awakening was the beginning of it all. It was the first step of some kind of growth, an evolution. I clearly wasn't satisfied by this game and the more I played it, the more I realized why : this game did not feel at all like the vision I had of the ideal Fire Emblem game, even worse, it felt like the opposite (note that I use the singular first person, keep that in mind). Sure, the first hours were fun : I discovered the game, the mechanics and the characters, the idea that every character could support and romance each other felt interesting at first, the pair-up system sounded promising, the story seemed epic. Everything was set for a perfect little adventure in a cute Japanese RPG. But all of this never resonated with me.

The more I played it, the more Awakening seemed like a hollow game, the presentation was nice, the soundtrack was good, the characters felt more alive and enjoyable that what was previously seen before. But the enthusiasm disappeared very quickly, the maps were boring, the characters became annoying really fast, the conversations felt as impersonal as a bad reality-show, the story took itself seriously while juggling with interesting elements that were never treated in an optimal way in my opinion thanks to an extremely manichean setting, and those little references to the previous games felt more like convenient fanservice than anything.

Easiness. That is the word I would use to describe my feelings towards Awakening. These feelings turned into hatred as I saw this game I found so mediocre and inferior to what this licence have provided before getting fame, recognition, being hailed as "one the best game of the 3DS/of all times". I started to wonder and thought "So that's it ? Awakening doesn't do anything interesting, doesn't inovate anything, it just rehashes everything it can, hides its emptiness behind fanservice such as a poor man's dating sim mechanic, nonsensical references, stupid humour, completely broken unit customization yet it doesn't develop anything valuable in its storyline, it tricks the players by making them think they're playing Chrono Cross when it's just a Fairy Tail OVA. Its marketing campaign is the only thing that surpasses the previous games, of course it's so easy to sell when the competition doesn't exist, when Nintendo desperately wants to sell the 3DS which is currently having a hard time finding buyers. That's all it takes ? Marketing ? That's all it takes to make mediocre game like this one little gems ? To be released at a good time ? It saved the franchise ? AH ! Fire Emblem has always been unfairly ignored by Nintendo. It's so easy to save a series like this, it's so easy to prentend the other games don't exist when they were never given a chance, and yet they deserve so much more recognition than this fraud which is labelled as a tactical RPG even though there's barely any strategy involved , where's the 95 metacritic score for Path of Radiance ? "

This reasoning illustrates the passion I felt for this licence at the time. I spent so much time and money on Fire Emblem and the disappointment brought by Awakening was so big that a feeling of unfairness was starting to grow inside of me. FE13 was becoming my most hated game of all time which is not something I declare everyday, love and hate are two extremes that you can only experience in certain circumstances and with specific people.

Despite my hatred of Awakening, I decided to give Fates a chance and even bought the Special Edition. Conquest was satisfying, Birthright had some nice maps, Revelation was messy. The pair-up mechanic finally looked finished, there were more balance among the cast and customization had its limits. And yet, when I beat the three paths, I just shrugged, just like Awakening. Nothing really clicked with me, I wasn't annoyed, just...unconcerned.

To me, Fates is just the logical sequel to Awakening. When a hollow game succeeds, why would the guys from IS refrain themselves from using the same winning formula : a story which deals with some interesting things but do anything it can to not develop them properly, a setting that is even more manichean than Awakening's, characters who all had potential but needs to be shipped instead of being characters with true individuality, better have crappy romances rather than down to earth characters, right ? Who would have thought that controling the love lives of fictional characters made them suddenly more likable ? Well no matter, enjoy this strange feature ripped from otome games where you can listen a useless quote from the character of your choice (yes, I know, some dialogues were meaningful in the orignal script) while gazing at a 3D model. Let's not forget the bath house, a key feature of My Castle. Wait until Three Houses introduces student council president election and culture festival and then this'll be the most perfect slice of life game. In the end, I'm much more lenient towards Fates but it also reinforced my hatred for Awakening.

Progressively, by going deeper in my thoughts, I felt... bored, maybe ? Between Awakening's release and Fates' annoucement, I took the time to play the unreleased games. Nowadays, I can safely say that there are only 5 games that I really like : the Jugdral and Tellius duologies and Echoes, but by no means do I see them as perfect. When Echoes was announced, I was burnt out of Fire Emblem, I bought it soon after its release but did not play it around a year later. After dropping Fates, I discovered more licences, more games I had yet to play. Fates and my journey across the Fire Emblem battelfield made me wonder if Fire Emblem was still a licence for me. Since Awakening, my tastes evolved, my standards changed, I had a clear definition of what I wanted from a videogame, a story,. By the time I beat Awakening, I did not have the reflexes to ask myself how to judge a game but by replaying FE13 many times, building a stance against it and developping it, I eventually developped my expectations.

To me, Fire Emblem is a licence that never really grew narratively, I put it on the same tier as some other JRPG series such as Star Ocean which range from decent to good but rarely great. Sure, some FE games stick out but even them don't really compare with Final Fantasy or the Atlus games just to give a few examples. Before writing this, I replayed every FE sometimes to completion. The reason why I hate Awakening (well, one of the reasons) is because it barely elevates the qualitative level of the series in my opinion. Each FE games have something to offer without being paragons of storytelling but after ending my FE marathon, I had the feeling that this series always lacked the ambition to really tackle themes and buil a proper stance around it, this applies to every game, not just Awakening. So why do I still hate it ? Because it shares the same issue but I also have this feeling of easiness permeating the game, this game never develops anything interesting despite promising pemises. I don't call Awakening a bad game, it's a decent one at least but to me it's a souless game that sabotaged the potential of a series that had always been neglected, because it was such a huge success, its shadow keeps hovering above the whole licence. Fates confirmed this idea and the spinoffs made it worse.

Which now raises the question "Is Fire Emblem still a licence for me ?". Fire Emblem is a product that needs to be sold just like every other videogame, thus it needs to evolve as time passes, I felt it took a direction that I didn't like; meanwhile my tastes, my standards, my way of thinking and observing things also evolved to the point that FE barely matched all of that, yet I spent so much time on it that I still want to believe in its potential to reach new heights, MY heights.

I stopped caring about many other videogame licences because of a lack of interest but Fire Emblem is probably the only one I cling to so much. Now I'm waiting for Three Houses : this game will either show me that I can expect more things from this series or if I should just drop it for good.

By arguing about this series, complaining about it, I came to know myself a little more, and this is why it's my favorite licence to hate, by expecting big things from it, I can see more clearly what I want.

I mean everything I said and I know that some people will totally disagree with my opinions, but that's alright, to forge an opinion means to face opposition one day or another, that's a conclusion I came up with a lot of times in a lot of circumstances. I don't like people who always look down on others by complaining about criticism, everyone have their visions, their standards, their tastes, disagreement, misunderstanding and conflict are part of everyday life so might as well enjoy it. Well I say that but I'm not in the whole "let's write an essay to prove people how deep this game/story/character is so that you start liking it like I do" anymore; I think that some Fire Emblem players are obsessed with this ambiguous notion of depth, seriously, how many times did I see the words "deep and complex" to describe characters. Personally, I now think that Fire Emblem is a very straightforward licence when it comes to writing, thus I don't believe in the idea of depth, everything can become deep if it resonates with you. Which is why I want you to keep in mind that I'm completely subjective here, I don't believe in objectivity either when it comes to art, especially videogames. I don't think there is one optimal way to look at things or/and appreciate them, again, it's all a question of tastes and standards. I'm sure someone out there has completely opposed opinions that they can back up, that's the beauty of human minds.

/r/fireemblem Thread