FE5 is fine, FE4 is full of spending turns doing nothing but moving your units to where the enemies are which is not engaging gameplay in any capacity. The maps could be several orders of magnitude smaller and have the same amount of things happening within them, giant maps that you waste time just moving across artificially pads the length of the game with mindless and boring stretches spent doing effectively nothing.
By using the roads you can get to your target location within 3 turns mounted
and 5 by feet.
And of course the road between objectives isn’t empty as you claim
but have things to do like armies, bandits, villages and even secret events.
I’m having real difficulty to think of a place where it’s “empty for miles spending turns just to walk”
and there are only 2 places:
Ch2 Austria’s 2nd half where you have to return to the middle and
Ch4 Silesia where you need to backtrack back to your castle
and of course return ring and staves from the very early game.
And I can go on about mechanics and even the turn ranking
but if you think that FE4 is dragging
then the official GBA games are also doing it with the bigger maps
because
(the movement is nerfed despite the maps being smaller)
3-5 turns spent just moving is still 3-5 too many turns spent just moving (which is especially slow in FE4 when you don’t use emulator speed hacks due to how slow everything in that game is even with map animations on). No well-designed map in any game should have the player spend turns doing nothing but moving their units to the next objective, that’s mindless and unfun.
3~5 turns moving and killing enemies on the road is bad design for you?
Because then you didn’t even play the game and just parrot what others said or just watched some bad LP on Youtube.
And I have the physical cartridge of the game. Not even savestates and beaten it 8 times.
It just a matter of getting gud at it.
Very very rarely will the game drag by having you walk empty spaces.
Meanwhile we haven’t got a proper map since FE12 back in 2010.
On the contrary we have Heroes’ 1 screen map lol.
Might as well make the game a turn-based RPG and just remove movement.
Spending 3-5 turns moving on a road and killing occasional enemies is bad design in a strategy game because it takes zero strategy to do so. If your objective is go from Castle A to seize Castle B and the path from Castle A to Castle B is completely empty and there’s 20-30 enemies stationed right outside of Castle B, until almost you arrive at Castle B there is zero threat from anything. Even if some of the enemies at Castle B approach you as you approach them it’s never enough to actually be a threat, and thus they can be dealt with using zero strategy. Any amount of time in a strategy game that you spend doing something that doesn’t require any amount of strategy to do is poorly designed, and “git gud” does not excuse poor design.
Having played an actual copy of the game, FE4 without emulator cheats is slow when you’re actually engaged with the enemy in some semblance of a strategic encounter, but is mind-numblingly boring the rest of the time as it takes no thought to move units and everything is slow enough that it just becomes a slog to get through.
Itss not only about emptiness but variety. Even if we do get things to do on the fray, I can only agree with the secondary objectives like saving villages that get pillaged every turn, which is a mechanic Id like to see coming back actually…
Rambling again. The thing is, aside froma couple trees and fortresses theres not much variety on how to approach combat in those spaces. There are many places that use the map to make skirmishing fun, but most of the time on the road its just blitzing through the enemies. Since I dont care about LTC I normally just ran to the places I could strategize in and ambushed the enemies. A good way to use my normally useless Great Knights.
And it makes more sense for a small unit against a whole army to use the terrain for dividing enemy forces, by the way.
So you played maybe 1~2 chapters and dropped it?
Because the enemies aren’t spread.
There are a good amount of enemies stationed at the goal castle
and the are tons of enemies on the map and on the way in formation and groups.
Certainly not “occasional” and certainly demanding in strategy
and “gitting gud” actually cuts the time spent walking by a huge margin even on the few occasions.
Slow in what? Speed. Ha! You should see the older ones then.
Actually FE4 is average in speed. But not slow.
But from your post I get that you skip all encounters as boring.
Are you playing the game just to press start and skip everything on the stage until you hit a cutscene? Or do you skip the cutscene too?
Which brings the problem with difficulty:
Allow cheese like in FE4 => Complain for allowing that
Make Thracia punish EXP gouging and solo rambo units harder to use => The game is broken hard
And Great Knights are amazing with Hero Axes. Front liners with the others.
Exactly. Enemies are all together and you spend turns moving towards them instead of doing anything engaging
Not really? And not large enough groups to be a threat
“Gitting gud” in order to cut down on the amount of time spent not doing anything is bad design; requiring the player to have a level of skill or knowledge from the beginning that they couldnt reasonably have is not fun for anyone but experienced veterans.
Of the 15 FE games FE4 is the third or fourth slowest, after NESFE and possibly Radiant Dawn my opinion on that shifts every so often. It is by no means average compared to the rest of the series.
Are you so personally offended by someone having an issue with the design in a game that you like that you’re going to use personal attacks and not address arguments?
Nice quote edit: The enemies aren’t spread, even those on the road like I said before.
Play past the Prologue?
Yes, did you play the game just once and then dropped it?
And yes micromanagement is part of strategy.
We are talking about a difference of seconds between FE4 and the GBA games.
But whatever.
Nope. Are you? You started all this drama.
I just corrected your wrong bias from your limited experience with the game.
FE4 is in my opinion the most important game in the franchise from a mechanical aspect, introducing many of the most important features weve used unconsciously in every game from there onwards. But like any game, especially on the time it came out, was not without its flaws. The balance and pacing required for such maps is still a hard task no matter how much technology advances because you need to trace a way for your players without getting on TLOZ Skyward Sword levels of hand-holding, and with so much space, you can not really predict how the players will move a hundred percent of time. Thats why since then the maps had become much smaller, they allow for ease of planning in the mind of developers to simulate different scenarios and having a certain level of fore knowledge about he players state on that given occassion. Its impossible to do so in FE4, there were at least three different routes to go to in the first turn of every map, we can`t really blame anyone if at some point they just started placing enemies where they thought could obstaculize movement and from there onwards spending their efforts in making the actual castle seizing more of a challenge with better placed units.
With the concept they were working with FE4 did exemplary for what it`s worth. Better than Thracia 776 at least in my opinion, even if I do prefer Thracia over FE4.
The other problem was that like with many Kaga games, this was an experience mostly for the mostly for Hardcore emblemiers, sometimes hard to enjoy even, it could be heart wrenchingly tough and limiting, but you felt goood after getting past those tight spots.
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A game should always be enjoyable on the first run man.
This one was actually kind of a dick move. Really, I can see your mindset now and I get it but you can`t expect everyone to be as experienced as you, play the same way you do, nor like the same things you do. FE4 was not sparse but obviously not focused either for reasons I mentioned above.
Sure FE4 is far from perfect but certainly not “Horse Emblem” or “Waifu Emblem” or some other meme.
Sure it’s overwhelming, but that’s the nice thing of it:
You have reason to get back and do a better run, then a better run, then another better run.
Let’s criticize FE4 for what it did wrong like the obscure support levels,
the unexpected child mechanic etc etc
but not because we had trouble with the map crossing.
Sounds like ROM hacking XD
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True and if someone hates it so bad
maybe it’s just the game not being for them and not because the game sucked.
And what do you want me to tell him?
That he is right and that the game is among the worse ones because of personal beefs
for things the game offers solutions or just isn’t as he remembers?
???
Not quoting the rest because it’s all “you didnt play the game” even though I have played it all??? The fact that you seem to think the only way someone could disagree with you is if they havent played the game speaks volumes to how weak your defense has been
And for the record I’m not the one that’s using insults and questioning the intelligence of the person making the claims rather than addressing the claims with something more than “because I said so”
I’d appreciate it if you stopped going “well obviously you played the game wrong/are bas st it/didnt play enough/didnt play it at all” and actually addressed the substance of what I’m saying please
I meant this.
Don`t get this on personal matters. As developers we get really fond of the games we play as if we made them our selves, we know them to a level to say so!
But like I said, some people may not like the almost mechanic flow of the game and the hardware making animations a bit slower than others. Id lie if I were to say I didnt keep A button down most of the time on the 3DS, and turning off animations felt bad. Its not that he didnt remember, it FELT that way for him. And you need to understand that.
Yes 
In the end, the game might suck for some, they couldnt get a hang on the experience like you and me, but for them the game DID suck and of course theyll say that too.
Sme is not one to thrash talk Ive seen him in other posts, hes cool. He plainly didn`t like the game.
When you are telling me that the game has “few spread enemy units all over the map”
then yes I have a solid foundation to doubt you.
Didn’t question your intelligence
only your experience with the game.
Part of your arguments are linked with exactly those reasons
so it’s hard to ignore them.
And I’ve addressed the main point many times as your feelings are irrelevant:
- No, the enemies aren’t spread and few. They are in many parts of the map in groups.
- Yes, you can cheese with Holy Blood, but it’s not a must thing to win
- No, the maps aren’t dragging. It’s on the same length to the large official GBA games.
- No the game doesn’t waste your time. You can A rank the turns to clear the game and have all units Lv25+ in Gen1 and Lv30 in Gen2
Why don’t we all just agree Fire Emblem sucks and go play a real man’s SRPG like Langrisser instead
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Come on man. The topic was getting back on rails.
And how old are you? You are either a connoiseur or lived through this games.
I’d like to add Tactics Ogre to the mix 
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