VideoGame_Discussion

I’ll start with an unpopular opinion: Love it or hate it, Fire Emblem: Three Houses changed the FE series forever. With the Switch’s massive, new install base, whatever FE game they released on there first would be many players’ first exposure to the franchise. Three Houses was developed primarily by an outside party, Koei Tecmo. It’s pretty different from traditional FE, but it resonated extremely well with players—its fans are still raving about it five years later, and passionately debating about their favorite characters. Thing is, the game doesn’t accurately represent the rest of the series, from its gameplay approach to its extremely dramatic tone.

This became apparent when Intelligent Systems, FE’s usual developer, released Fire Emblem Engage in early 2023. Engage is much closer to 2016’s Fire Emblem Fates with a smattering of old FE stylistic choices—one story, a lighter tone, and a stronger anime influence. The new Three Houses crowd hated it on sight because it was a departure from they believed the series to always be. And with no other “proper” FE game on Switch at that time*, fans who exclusively own a Switch had nothing else to compare against.

Engage isn’t a perfect game, but it’s certainly serviceable for a longtime FE fan. But the fanbase is getting more divided now with that huge influx of fans who played one atypical game and demand more of it. As someone who didn’t enjoy Three Houses, I’m apprehensive about the series’s future direction.

*Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light was a limited-time download in 2020; the NSO releases are in Japanese or released too late to change the described event; and spin-offs hardly represent the regular gameplay.

Final Fantasy.. after they switched from turn based to live action I totally fell out of love for the game.. Bring back the old school turn based mode PLEASE!!!

shadyfozzie wrote:

I dunno man, I used to say this too, but Dragon Quest IX and FF VII Remake/Rebirth did it right. If done properly, they work quite well.

Yet, Octopath Traveler showed us turn based still works. I would appreciate a mainline game experimenting with more of an old school turn based though, just don't think it'll happen.

MrBean wrote:

Not only that, but so did persona 5, Sea of Stars and many others. FF16 was a good game, but I wouldn’t even consider it an RPG it went to far away from things, where like you said ff7 remake/rebirth did it right.

Super Smash Bros.

Not sure exactly what happened but it is a sordid tale full of

And not just one dude either. A bunch of high profile players got caught up in that.

For me, it's God of War. I loved all the Greek ones, except Ascension. Not a fan of Vikingland, so they totally lost me with GoW 2018. Just make a new character or something if you're going to change everything else and turn it into an RPG-lite (crafting, levels & skills, equipment inventory & stats, etc.).

Assassin's Creed when it went RPG was dumb, Resident Evil 5 Chris' campaign turning it into Call of Duty to appeal to morans, Resident Evil again turning it first person when it should be third person.

I'm afraid Diablo 4 is the beginning of the end. That GaaS money is just too tempting.

D3 was rough for quite awhile, D4 launched better. I'm optimistic it will get better in time, but we'll never see a D2 experience again.

Overwatch was lauded on release for having an uncharacteristically positive, non-toxic fan base. Even the game world was optimistic. Sure, there was a big war that had people picking sides, and there are still some antagonists floating around, but it's not the dystopia so many future shooters like to use as a setting.

It was almost like professional Internet trolls saw all the positive press and said "Hold my beer..." Shortly before Competitive Mode was released, everybody simultaneously grew an extra butthole.

justin_credible wrote:

Agreed - it was fine without the excessive loot and crafting. I'd rather pick up unique weapons from big bosses, and gain new skills that are tied to story progression. Origins was such a surprise to me, coming from AC: Rogue (I skipped Unity and Syndicate, but I do plan to play them - looks like skills were introduced in Unity, from the few minutes I played it). I'm thinking of toggling the setting that has the world level with Bayek, but I admit I've had some fun going back and totally trouncing enemies that had been a pain in the butt 10 levels ago.

Similarly, I didn't like how Darksiders II threw in tons of RPG elements - it was done poorly and felt dumb: the main character, Death, is supposed to be powerful and super feared, so why does he start off like such a weak newb? I don't recall a good explanation in the story; at least in Darksiders 1, the Charred Council stripped War of most of his powers. I haven't played Darksiders 3 yet, so I don't know if the developers ditched the worst of the RPG stuff (loot, levels & stats, etc.) .

SupremeSarna wrote:
I appreciated how well you explained that. As someone who hasn't played 3 Houses nor Engage, but did play a bunch of the earlier games in the series, I think I can understand what you mean.

The first thing that came to mind is Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic did the things Mario did after going 3D, but at like 1/3 of the quality and varying degrees of success since, while Mario has been pretty wildly successful. Sega has done a pretty poor job managing Sonic over the past 25 years or so, and Nintendo has found a way to keep Mario relevant in a major way.

BucketofJustice wrote:

Even Shadow the Hedgehog was a million seller. Sega can release trash Sonic games because people will buy them.