Topic: Fire Emblem - Which one is the easiest?

Cheers, everyone!

I've never played Fire Emblem but have become a bit fascinated of its story, as I've read a couple of articles about it and it sounds a lot of fun and incredibly interesting, or at least that's the opinion I have.

The reason for not playing it yet is that every thing I've read about it says it's super difficult, so somehow I was put off by it. That's why I thought about asking you, is it that difficult? I am under the impression it takes a lot of time to get accustomed to it, especially as I'm not used to the genre having never play it before.

Am I correct thinking it's that hard? And if I were to pick it up, which of the games on Switch would you recommend to start with so I can just take it one step at a time?

If you're worried about it being too challenging, I would start with any of the more modern games, which have a Casual mode (as opposed to "Classic" mode which includes permadeath — i.e. when your units die they are lost forever). AFAIK that's every Fire Emblem game from Awakening (3DS) onwards, so will include the Switch titles (Three Houses and Engage).

As for which game on Switch is best to go with? Really it depends what you're after. I have a personal bias towards Three Houses myself, but it's more to my tastes:

• Fire Emblem: Three Houses is probably the easier of the two. It is a lot more story and character focused, and puts a lot more weight on mechanics outside of combat (e.g. developing your units through teaching). If you're more interested in general RPG and life-sim elements, I recommend this game.
• Fire Emblem Engage arguably has the better (and deeper) tactical gameplay, but has a far weaker story and characters.

I cannot git gud at the blazing sword. I recognize that enemies attack the weakest unit in their range, but it feels like I'm inching forward and can't even get my units in to attack without them getting slaughtered. I think I'm on mission 11 or something? I'd been a while lol. Anyway, all of this is to say that I'm looking forward to Three Houses sometime soon haha.

I'd strongly recommend FE: Engage.
This game is very light on story, but the tactical gameplay is among the best in the series — and honestly: FE was never about the story, it is about the tactics. If you want a story-first tactics game, go play Triangle Strategy (another excellent game)

Also, do keep in mind that Engage has lots of user-friendly options for newbies: you can turn off perma-death, can save mid-battles, can replay checkpoints, etc, etc. This is extremely good if you want to experiment what works and what isn't, without the fear of screwing things up.

Engage is not dumbed down though: if you are okay with the concepts, you can crank up the difficulty at your will — and you may get a real taste of that legendary white-knuckles FE experience.

I'd suggest starting with Three Houses, which is my favorite for the entire series. It can be the easiest or hardest of the games, depending on what you set the difficulty level to.

Engage is also a very good game. I just found the story lacking compared to Three Houses.

Fire Emblem Warriors and Three Hopes are hack-and-slash games from the makers of the Destiny Warriors series. If that's your thing, give them a look. Otherwise, they're not the best ones to start with.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions is an RPG from Atlus, the makers of Shin Megami Tensei, which features Fire Emblem characters and lore. It's only loosely related to the series, but I still found it very enjoyable.