As you can see, the community may or may not be dying.
We’ll have to see.
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The fanbase mostly seems fine to me. If anything, the more recent games seems to be making the fanbase even bigger than before. It brings more people in, and I think it’s a good thing.
It’s easy to forget that the fandom also exists outside of the internet, though.
Yes and I killed it
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Some say the FEU will end in lawyers,
Some say in Engage.
From what I’ve tasted of DMCAs
I hold with those who favor lawyers.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hacks
To say that for destruction Engage
Is also great
And would suffice.
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The only thing I find good in Engage is good gameplay, good music and maps… Story-wise it’s pure shit. Now please don’t kill me. I don’t want to be mean to Engage fans just pointing out things I don’t like and can potentially lead to the death of franchise.
Spoiler for Engage
If I really cared about graphics and gameplay then there are plenty of games who fulfill that role for me. Legend Of Zelda Botw, GTA 5 are few to name. But the most important thing I like about Fire Emblem is it’s story and how good a game can become if it’s properly executed.
Engage literally ruined it. No character development for the lord. Says and does some stupid and funny things that doesn’t suit a protagonist. “You Divine one, whose bravery knows no bounds.” And then Alear is like “No, let’s run”. Some of the moments in game are pure meme material. You start out as a god and you end as a god. There’s no adventure, no development only an avatar worship which is dragged to batshit level. “O divine one, O divine one.”
Some of the cutscenes were outright hilarious. Like when it’s revealed near the endgame that Zephia wanted to have children with Sombron and it was so direct that it hit me like a truck.
Another thing I disliked was how Sombron managed to summon the dark emblems as his pawns. Imo it completely devalued the final bosses of other games like Grima, Loptyr and Ashera who were literal god-like beings.
If it wasn’t for some of the emblem characters like Ike and Marth etc., I would’ve ended up completely hating this game.
I will agree that most of my points are biased but that’s totally because I’m a story-focused player. I believe the franchise should have ended with Radiant Dawn (Lack of support convo was stupid). You literally kill a god and end racism. I don’t know why they still continued it.
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Engage spoilers!
In particular for the ‘let’s run’ thing you seem to have missed the past Alear thing, they’re terrified of Corrupted due to Sombron ordering they kill Alear’s siblings, so Alear wanting to run is a little bit of instinctual memory from that and not just because it’s funny.
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you’re really really really really REALLY REALLY that bored huh
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Fire Emblem died with FE12, anything past that is more like a skinwalker trying to act like fire emblem, sometimes more successful, sometimes less successful. FE’s spirit lives on in Kaga’s works and several fan projects, and at this point i hope someone will be able to carry the torch when he passes.
This doesn’t necesarrily mean anything past FE11 are bad games, a good amount of them can still be pretty fun. But they just no longer hold the same core ideas and design decisions as earlier FE titles.
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What?
No!
If anything, FE is more popular than ever.
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What kind of schizo take is this? Engage simply has much, much better gameplay than 3H which was incredibly disappointing on that front. I won’t defend its story, but making it about some boogeyman elitists is just dumb.
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Does it matter if the community is dying or not? Was the Fire Emblem community ever alive to begin with, or have we entered a different “age” where the tides have shifted a bit?
I don’t really care if it is dying or not, because “The Fire Emblem Community” is extremely abstract. Anything can be “The Fire Emblem community” in my eyes.
Perhaps a better question is: What do you/I consider to be “The Fire Emblem Community”. There’s a lot more to enjoy by creating your own definition of the community, rather than speculating whether the collective of all Fire Emblem enjoyers is dying or not.
tl;dr: I don’t really care. You’re better of focussing on your own Fire Emblem community than worrying about the collective.
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The elitists would have totally trashed Engage had it come after Fates, but they are embracing Engage because they know it will bring in less new fans than 3H and can weaponize it to be contrarian against the larger 3H noob demographic. This mirrors what the alt-right did with Pepe the Frog: Engage’s characters and aesthetic are a big meme with designs that most found ugly, but came to be “ironically” liked and memed by a certain demographic, and eventually weaponize. These trolls will do what they can to hurt the largest amount of people, because at the core they are hypocrites who don’t really care about “hardcore strategy gameplay” (as illustrated by the FE1 thing) but dominating their fandom and wanting all FE fans to share their “values” but since they have no real “values”, it means “suck up, shut up or leave.”
bro i think people just realized fates was a lot better in retrospect, everyone who ive seen who has played engage and liked it are very upfront about what it does well and what it does poorly, and express a genuine love for the game regardless (which hey, is the same for a lot of FE12/CQ fans nowadays)
CQ is probably my favorite game in the series, and i don’t think thats an entirely unpopular opinion, this reads as a stretch at best
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this basically. Fire Emblem and its community is so abstract at this point that saying something like “it died after X game” or the statement that baffles me “this isn’t fire emblem anymore” sort of misses what Fire Emblem is as a series in the first place. The series is always experimenting and trying new things whether that’s an artstyle like the DS game’s style, the GBA style, 3H’s style, or Engage’s style or gameplay like large maps, a split army, pair up, or emblem rings. To say that any changes to the ‘‘formula’’ of FE makes it not FE anymore inherently misses the point of the series as a whole.
People also seem to fail to mention that there’s this wonderful thing called subjectivity and always fail to reason that things aren’t so black and white all the time, some people may dislike Fate’s story but love the supports like me, or even like Engage’s story and think it as one of the best like Excelblem.
FE as a concept is malleable and abstract and so is its community and focusing on where it dies or where it isn’t the same anymore is narrowminded and comes off as something like an old man waving their cane at all the youngsters saying that things were better back in their day
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If we talk about Fire Emblem itself, my answer is no. I’m sure Fire Emblem has never been as alive as it is now, being the one to open a Nintendo Direct a few times (as big Nintendo IPs usually do).
But if we talk about the community… it’s hard to answer. Here at FEU I usually participate very little, I’m usually an observer, but every time I come here to take a look, usually the same people are the ones who tend to be active. Although of course, this place usually has a niche that is for hacking issues, so it is understandable.
What I have come to see several times, is the rejection that the “old” tend to have with the new, the vast majority of times because they will never know what “a real Fire Emblem is”.
With all due respect to those who think this, but saying that Fire Emblem is no longer what it used to be seems stupid to me. What makes a Fire Emblem a Fire Emblem to begin with? The gameplay? the artistic style? the history? literally each and every one of the games are usually different from each other. It does not usually have a pattern. It always has its ups and downs and its novelties in each of those aspects.
Something that made me sad is the aggressive and unjustified criticism that Engage had as soon as they found out that the character designer usually designs for VTubers. Lots of people saying it’s rubbish or that they ruined the series without even playing the game…
Normally communities tend to be toxic, and although FE has not reached extreme heights like others, it does have its portions of toxicity. It has even had its controversies, like that of a certain YouTuber who by now knows who I’m talking about.
In conclusion to all this: FE is not dead, much less there are Heroes that give it a lot of profit. The community… hasn’t died either, but it will be difficult for new people to arrive if this type of rejection continues.
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The community was alive before any game was even localised. It was alive in the gap between 12 and 13, when we were all convincing ourselves that a 12 localisation was totally coming to the west, that the delay was totally normal… (and, you know, that 12 was good).
Obviously it’s alive now, probably more alive than it’s ever been. 13 brought a massive influx into the series, so did 16, and it’s clearer than ever the series isn’t going anywhere. Of course the community isn’t going to die, it’s just changing shape, as communities always do. Now, is Fire Emblem itself dying? Obviously not. Engage looks really stupid and is seemingly filled with really obnoxious characters, but so was Fates. I’d be very disappointed if this was the direction they committed to going forward, for good, but I feel it’s a lot more likely that 13 was a necessary shift to revive a series that actually was dying, 14 rode on 13’s coattails, and Engage is the goofy 30th Anniversary celebration that got out of hand. There’ll be a course correction.
What if there isn’t, and it is like this forever? Then Fire Emblem will have changed, fundamentally, sure. But it still won’t have died.
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She died 33 years ago. The accident wasn’t your fault. She’d want you to be happy and move on.
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the FIRE EMBLEM fandom is dying! I need SIX tacticians to post, not share, this message to show you are always there to win against gharnef if someone needs it
EDIT: In all seriousness nah, it’s doing fine, at least in terms of size.
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If most of the players are gameplay-focused then fire emblem may be more alive than ever. There are many people who put graphics above everything. And well… That’s good right ?
Community aside, I wish the Fire Emblem franchise would start dying out again. Awakening was a mistake.
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Maybe the community were the friends we made along the way.
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