Shadow dragon’s replacement units are no joke better integrated into the story than the child units in Fateswakening because they are explicitly presented as coming to you looking to join your army in a situation where it makes sense to take in extras. (And they don’t have much less personality than most of the actual Shadow Dragon characters anyway.) As opposed to the child units who effectively exist outside time and space until the player actively goes and pokes the box with OPTIONAL GAMING CONTENT written on it.
4 Likes
what’s the difference between losing so many units that no faced units with zero bases and laughable growths and making two members of your army fall in love to later make a kid that would reasonably be friends with Lucina so it would make sense that they come along back in time?
if too many people don’t die then all the Unils and Quatros will never ask to join
I’d rather have big rosters like FE6 (i.e. with units like Treck and Noah that don’t have much plot relevance, but still are characters of their own) than child units like in Awakening and (especially) Fates.
Generics like Shadow Dragon are also preferable, although I think those were a bit too weak, even for pity units.
I don’t like the matchmaking if it results in almost all characters being able to S-Support almost all opposite gender characters, I like canon or semi-canon pairings like the older games have more.
that’s fair, things like entire aspects of the game are subjective.
I had plenty of fun making the Most Optimal kiddos in all the games that feature them, but I’d be lying if I said I want them to be a regular thing. As a concept it’s inherently a bit limiting for the kinds of stories you can tell, since they either need to be generation-spanning epics like Genealogy or come up with funky magical explanations for it like the Awakening and Fates. It also leads to a lot of the writing being focused on romance and shipping, and while I don’t strictly mind that I’ll admit it’s not why I like the series and I could do with less of it.
Also don’t make fun of the replacement units. I kinda dig the idea and plan on copying it.
I dont really mind them, I greatly preferred Awakenings use of them to Fates.
Something as significant as child units shouldn’t be optional side content. lol
FE4 does it the best.
I don’t like them on 3ds, because time travel is stupid. Or at least it almost never done well. I like the idea of child units though. I’d love to incorporate a time skip, with a few children in my Mark of the Dragon if I ever had the time to be that ambitious.
Now i like the Idea of child units because telling people to have children is very based, if they’re integrated well into the story, even better. You can never have too many playable characters in FE. But don’t trash talk my Shadow Dragon homies like that. Sawyer the Sorcerer really helped me in a H5 draft once.
I didn’t hate them in FE13 because they at least had some story integration, even if said integration was poorly executed. The gameplay stuff was not well balanced.
In FE14, I really like them from a gameplay perspective - it’s fun pairing up units and minmaxing skill acquisition to get the perfect child unit. Really cool way to scale lategame replacement units, especially if your existing ones get RNG screwed. The story integration was so bad I that I have conditioned myself to just ignore it and appreciate the dumb fun that it is.
FE4’s execution for gameplah is broken, but I really like the story integration and even some of the subtle aspects like children inheriting their parents’ inventories. Something about seeing your dead units’ inventories live on through a new generation makes me feel a sense of optimism that I rarely get in games.
My primary reason for disliking kids in FE (assuming the 3DS games’ way of handling them, not FE4) is because it encourages romance/matchmaking above all, while other kinds of relationships between characters get ignored because they don’t give you a new unit. When Awakening was released, I remember reading a review saying “Awakening makes relationships as important as previous games in the series made death”. When Fates was announced and we started learning more about that game, I figured it was going to be a game exploring familial relationships (so many characters being siblings, retainers, etc to the main character) rather than romantic ones… but then surprise! We’re not actually related, Corrin-onii-sama! That means we can get married and have kids!
Compare to GBA FE, where often my favourite supports are the ones that aren’t romantic (Raven/Bartre comes to mind). Yes, you could still argue that romantic pairings are encouraged because they result in a special ending most often, but two sentences of text being different after beating the game is nothing compared to a whole extra (usually very strong, so you don’t want to miss out) unit.
2 Likes
I dislike how Awakening handled child units but am willing to tolerate it, but I hate how Fates did it.
From a purely mechanical standpoint, I have more fun going through the story and utilizing what units the game gives me as I go on. Having a third of the roster be optional and with varying quality depending on my previous actions does not appeal to me anywhere near as much as the fun of reaching a late-game chapter and realizing “Oh boy, I get to use this cool new character now!” Additionally, while characters like these were present in Awakening and Fates, their appeal is drastically lowered because they have basically no supports and inferior stats to the other units you have by that point.
However, I’m willing to begrudgingly give Awakening a pass here. While I don’t like it mechanically, it’s not handled badly, and makes perfect sense given the plot. (That said, I’d have preferred it if each chapter after the Lucina joins had a child unit join, unless their parent wasn’t married yet, in which case, they’d appear in the next instead.) However, Fates just shoehorned them in for the sake of it, which was just lame.
3ds
Child units op
yes 
1 Like
yeah i like 'em! mechanically they’re kinda awkward and can be kinda broken, but ultimately i play for the characters so the child units who are fun characters and have cool dynamics are my favs. not all of them are great characters, but uh, fire emblem has its fair share of lame characters that aren’t child units as well imo
Only if handled like in Genealogy, where time actually moves forward and no time travelling or pocket dimension bullcrap. Otherwise it just feels like the child unit thing being pushed (or just nonsense fanservice), even if the plot says something along the lines of “they want to change the future therefore time travel”.
No, it’s a bad idea. Genealogy is ok, because it’s just the second gen, but in Awakening/Fates is bullshit. Not to mention all the fucked-up consequences coming from parying the child units.
Alright, it’s been enough time so I feel like I should put out my own opinion. I, personally love child units, and I love their execution in fates and awakening, they’re optional, no matter if you like it or not if you didn’t want it in the first place you shouldn’t complain about it. Fire Emblem is usually about building bonds and friendships so this is a natural progression, I enjoy the supports between them, their parents, and their fellow children, it’s fun! My biggest disappointment of three houses is that there were no child units, before you come with your pitchforks if you think about it, child units could solve the dilemma of a frontloaded task
I would love it if child units would become a main stay, it’s not intrusive in any way and only adds to the experience. To be fair I’m a big advocate for being able to play matchmaker in Fire Emblem since the player builds connections with these characters, it is wonderful to see them happy with a family even in war (please fix the unified father supports in awakening and the unified mother supports in fates)
I just want to add that a 12-13 year old girl (don’t let Treehouse lie to you) canonically getting with a man much older (I think the youngest partner she can have is like 17) and giving birth due to the player’s actions with no questions being asked is repugnant. I am of course referring to Elise in Fates. Awakening avoided this by not having deeprealms bullshit, but no in Fates they have the child at that time and THEN send them into the baby time chamber.
Girls and children grow well.
This is one of the strange traditions of Fire Emblem.
I don’t think it’s wrong for game to feature high growth rate, because if without any bonuses for weak units, they’ll just be bench men.