With the announcement of the upcoming Fire Emblem Echoes, I thought it might be nice to have a thread that discusses the series. Myself, I have been a fan of Fire Emblem since the very first once was released here in North America, "Fire Emblem" back in 2003! I've played and completed (except for Fates, still playing that) all the officially released Fire Emblem games (plus, I'm going to get a few English repros thanks to Clarky soon, can't wait  

Anyway, what have I enjoyed about the series? I would say the following: Music, Challenge, Characters, Story, Gameplay
Yeah, the plot is nothing to write home about, it's almost always some terrible evil you have to defeat, but the story is usually not half bad. The characters are in large part what make the game great. Yeah, some characters are annoying, some are funny, some are endearing, and at least a few are on the sexy side (oh hello, female-dancer type)! In general, it's been that if you lose a charcter, it's permanent-death! Yup, gone for good! So, you really have to think and strategize. Otherwise, you could play a level for a couple of hours, only to lose that one character you love at the every end (yup, happened more than once)! In Awakening and Fates, you can set the difficulty level. Right now I'm playing Birthright on Classic Mode (permanent death) and Lunatic Difficulty. Haven't lost anyone, but this is easily the most difficult FE I have ever played. Anyway, the gameplay is quite simple, but very fun. It's a bit like Final Fantasy Tactics, Arc the Lad, or other such tactical RPGs. NO ARMOR. Yup, the games have no armor, it's all about weapons. Which honestly, is OK, but I hope in echoes you can equip armor. I think it would add a bit of fresh air to the series (thoughts?)

As I said, I've played all the games thus far released in the States (and Canada  
In my ranking I'm leaving Fates out, because I won't rank that until I've completed all three games (Birthright, Conquest, Revelation) since they are meant to be played together. That said, here is my current list from favorite to most forgettable:

Path of Radiance, Awakening, Fire Emblem (GBA), Shadow Dragon, Radiant Dawn, The Sacred Stones

The above is of course my personal opinion. I thought Path of Radiance did everything right. Then Radiant Dawn messed most of it up with too large a cast, an obtuse story, and nothing particularly memorable -apart from the music. I think Radiant Dawn probably had the best music in the series. Awakening was splendid! Not quite as magical as PoR, but close. Good music too. The original Fire Emblem was just that, the first one I played. Really well done! I woudl replay it now, although of course the graphics and sound are forgettable compared to what we have today, but that's OK. Still great! I thought Shadow Dragon was surprisingly fun, despite being rather simple. I finished the Sacred Stones, but remember basically nothing about it. Don't remember what the plot was or anything.

Anyway, glad Fire Emblem is making a resurrgence! I recall reading that Nintendo thought about canceling the series if Awakening did not do well. Thankfully, it did extremely well.
 

I've only played Awakening and Fates. I absolutely loved Awakening, it's probably one of the best 3DS games I have played. I wasn't super crazy about Fates. I played through Birthright and Conquest, and kind of got tired of the game before I could start Revelation.

I have Echoes preordered so I'm excited to experience that game. I plan on playing through the older games as well, I do have two of them on the Wii U VC and just need to track down the console versions.

Being honest here, have never actually played a Fire Emblem game and I feel bad about it. I started playing a teensy bit of Path of Radiance but the game left me confused and didn't hook me. I can't tell if I need to start with the GBA games or the 3DS games to get myself into the series or what.

I think Awakening is a good game to start with. Fates, not so much unless you have prior exposure. Play through Awakening, and then you can go back to Path of Radiance and fully appreciate the awesomeness... and you'll probably want to play through Radiant Dawn to just complete the experience, although it's ho-hum after PoR.

 

Great thread idea!  I do enjoy me some Fire Emblem.  I got the start on GBA and my first post/thread here was to showcase my Fire Emblem set (I updated it later and might update again when Echoes come out as I've gotten a few more things since then).


http://vintage.nintendoage.com/fo...


I love the series as the challenge and permadeath is what hooked me to it moreso than Advance Wars (I love me some Advance Wars) back when it first was released in North America.  Stories were always simple but engaging with enough character development throughout to keep you invested and protective of your units in battle.  I've beaten every game in the series except for the 3 Fates games.  Man, I just could not get in to those.

I'm pretty excited for Echoes to come out, Gaiden on NES was fairly challenging but ultimately I enjoyed my time with it.  It did a few things differently and some were good and some were bleh but overall it was a good experience.  One thing that I have mixed feelings toward from it (and Sacred Stones) were the constant zombie battles.  On the one hand, it was nice to level up weaker units, but on the other hand you could spam the fights to overpower units.  I tried not doing this unless I absolutely need to go through the area or it was an accident.  

I'm hoping that they get away from the dating sim in the update of Echoes.  It was a neat in Awakening as a throwback to GotHW, but it felt unnecessary in Fates.  I love Fire Emblem as a whole but I wasn't feeling it with Fates.  The dialogue was rambling, the relationship building was not fun (to me) at all like it was with Awakening, and the adjacent units always helping made your units feel overpowered sometimes and other times it made it near impossible to predict enemy attack strength if a wave of units were moving it.  I still haven't finished Fates.  I'm hoping that Echoes will rekindle my love for all-things Fire Emblem and I can go back and beat Fates.  

I got a late start.

First, I ignored Awakening on 3DS.

Once I saw Fates, I started to think it was worth checking out.

I played through my Ambassador copy of Sacred Stones first to see if I'd like it.

I then went on to get Fates (Conquest / Revelations), which I thoroughly enjoyed. It became my second most played 3DS game.

From there, I played Path of Radiance.

I am currently working through Awakening. Of course, we have Shadows releasing fairly soon. I also have Shadow Dragon on backup until I get a chance to play. That leaves GBA and Radiant Dawn untouched thus far.

I've always loved the music in Fire Emblem, and here is my FE music collection


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So actually, a few (but not most) of those are for sale if anyone is interested  

Look at what the cat dragged in...


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Whoa. Where did you get those? They look really nice.

Says ClarkyCreations on it, so I would assume he got them from Clarky.

Fire Emblem Echoes may end up being one of my favorite FEs. Currently my two favorite are:

Fire Emblem Path of Radiance

&

FIre Emblem Awakening

although all the FE games are fun, the two aforementioned are easily my favorite. One thing I already like about FE Echoes is the voice acting. Holy heck! previous FEs have voice acting in the cinematics but otherwise characters say things like "hey - NO! - now I'm angry! - Ugggg! - Yes? - Okay" basically their vocabulary is roughly 20 words. I think the first 60 minutes of Echoes has more spoken dialogue than all the previous Fire Emblem games combined! Nicely done Nintendo (welcome to the modern age)! Hopefully they'll keep up with this trend  

I just started Echoes, but it is interestingly different - both some retro throwbacks and modern user experience conveniences at the same time. I'm sure to like it overall, but it is too early to judge relative to the others.

My entry to the series was a rapid playthrough of Sacred Stones to test prior to purchase and extensive play of Fates. Hence, for me, this will be discovering how much I care about the "depth" (i.e. more equipment, relationships & children, teaming up in battle) versus the relatively "streamlined" classic play. We'll see.

If you haven't played Awakening, I highly recommend it. And if you ever get the chance to play Path of Radiance, I really recommend that! PoR is for the GameCube, but Awakening for the 3DS. Honestly, I'm sure one day there will be a remake of PoR.

 

I picked up a tharja figure a few years ago. Got all the north American games in the series, few amiibo and guide books. Fire emblem is great!

Thanks. Those were the last 2 I played (also this year). Besides the new one, I think Shadow Dragon and 1st GBA are the only US ones left. I have played them in a crazy order, but all have been great.

Since I played Fates first, Awakening felt quite similar. I suppose it would work the other way for people who played in order. I dug really deep into Fates with the Revelations and experimenting with extra characters, whereas I did not with Awakening (just barely finished it in time to play Echoes). POR started slow, but the story got interesting with the various animal tribes. The mounted units are way too powerful though. 

POR really appealed with the characters and music. It was epic from start to finish! Mounted units were overpowered, but so was Ike. He pretty much can take on everyone single-handedly after he gets Aether. But, still a lovely game. I thought Radiant Dawn was a disappointment in the story. Got too messy for my taste. Lovely music though  

Oh, I didn't play Radiant Dawn yet either, so still a few left.

New Switch Fire Emblem Game!





Amazon says "This item will be released on December 27, 2019. " I'm going to assume they meant 2018  

If you guys like GBA fire emblem.

Make sure to check out the translation for Fire Emblem: The binding blade/Sword of seals.

There is a rom for it and also repro carts. You get to play as Roy, who happens to be my favorite FE character, and it is a great game.

During the presentation it said Spring 2019. So I'm assuming 2019 is correct and December 27 was a place holder date.

I'm a little apprehensive of all of those random nameless soldiers shown on the battle grid. I hope it doesn't play like Fire Emblem Warriors.

I remember in one of the Fire Emblem games I made my bow and arrow guy absurdly strong and the enemy AI would just space themselves away from him until they were all in a corner. I'd then proceed to pick them off one by one. Good times!

Probably my favorite of these types of grid based soldier/commander games is Warsong on the Sega Genesis(Langrisser on the Mega Drive.) It has a lot of depth, and buying soldiers for each type of commander is imporant. Commander influence range is a huge deal as well. Plus the terrain and "pre-rendered" fight scenes are not just the same ones over and over. They are exciting live fights where the outcome can change drastically based on what terrain you attack from or defend from and to. Sometimes a unit racks up kills and goes on a rampage! It's an amazing game with a great OST. There's a great long campaign, and a few cool secrets and such. Even a hidden Power Ranger class! Check it out if you haven't:

Gameplay:




OST:

So, I've been having a great time with Three Houses. It's a great game, but definitely not a perfect game nor the best Fire Emblem. I can say without hesitation that the best Fire Emblem thus far (I've played every single FE game released in NA) is

Fire Emblem Echoes

My full list from best to worst is (haven't decided yet where Three Houses should go, probably after Path of Radiance)

Echoes > Awakening ~ Path of Radiance > Fire Emblem (GBA) > Radiant Dawn ~ Shadow Dragon > Fates > Sacred Stones

What I like about Three Houses:
+Fully Voiced, good voice actors
+Characters are fun, lots of variety
+The skills are excellent and there are many of them
+Beasts are fun to battle!
+Interacting with students is also fun

What I don't like about Three Houses:
-I find that moving about the monastery is unnecessary. In fact, it's not that pretty (graphics are okay) nor exciting (well, actually it's boring). A better approach would have been to have a screen where you could simply visit point A, or point B, etc and then just interact with people, or interact with the screen, similar to what they did with Echoes.

-Similar to the point above, fetch quests and lost item quests are rather boring, and there are lots and lots of them...

-In case you forget this is a Nintendo game, here's a boring fishing minigame for you!

-Too easy. I'm playing on hard and classic and so far haven't really worried about losing anyone! (maybe there's a hardcore mode after you beat it once, I have yet to find out)

What I find neither good nor bad:
-Music, it's okay. I think the opening song is way out of place, but the rest is nothing too exciting. Best music is easily Echoes.
-Graphics, it's okay. Characters are nice, but the backgrounds have honestly been quite underwhelming although nothing terrible.

edit: also I haven't fully decided if I like or dislike the fact that the game will tell you whom enemy characters will strike, right now I'm thinking this is a negative, at least on "hard" that feature should be off

I definitely agree with your assessment of echoes being the best fire emblem game, that is until I complete three houses. I'm disappointed so many people skipped over echoes. It's incredible. I also agree with your difficulty assessment of three houses. I did hard classic mode and I haven't found any level to be difficult yet (I'm on chapter 14).

That being said, if you want a challenge, play fire emblem Conquest. By far the most challenging fire emblem game there is. The freaking wind level alone took me a month to beat (granted I wasnt playing every day but still). And i had to sacrifice my entire team on the very last level to win.

Thanks for reminding me, I forgot to include Fates on the list! As a whole, I wasn't that impressed. Some of the battles were amazing, and Conquest was the best of the three. I did finish all three on classic and lunatic. It was a challenge, and in general I found it more of a grind than anything else. Overall one of the lesser FE games, taken as a whole. Conquest was fun. Also the intro to Fates was great, and so was the prologue, too bad the rest was fairly bland. I think for the last boss of Conquest I lost a character or two, but it wasn't so bad if you got there quickly. The last boss on Revelation was a joke in comparison.