Topic: Is Fire Emblem any good?

I know there's reviews of the games here on NL, but generally speaking is the series itself worth checking out? I never played any FE game, and telling how it looks in the screenshots and game play videos, is it supposed to work similarily to the old strategy PC games such as Age of Empires/Mythology, Civilisation and Command & Conquer? It is RPG like Pokémon and strategy like even that Star Fox Command DS game I also played and finished entirely, so maybe I would like it on roughly equal measure. I'm even interested to learn more about the origins of its characters as fighters I used many times in all the SSB games: Marth, Roy, Ike, etc. Plus I see Fire Emblem games have dragons in them too, and they are really awesome indeed! What would you lot say?

So I'm not a veteran of the series by any means. In fact, I have only just recently played Three Houses. But I absolutely loved it. I think the strategic combat works really well and goes along great with the other RPG elements. It's not very similar to AoE or Civ as far as I'm aware, it's generally quite a bit faster-paced. I would recommend looking up some gameplay of the combat to see if it looks interesting to you.

Three Houses is a great game and a good starting point in the series if you ask me!

Fire Emblem is definitely worth looking into. I bought Three Houses on a whim shortly after Byleth was added to smash bros and now I've played through it 5 times.

Thanks for your POVs, users.

So the PC games you mentioned are RTS games (barring Civ), FE has always been turn based grid movement strategy. It does layer a fairly robust (but simple to grasp) combat system with the weapon triangle, magic triangle and with class typing. The series tends to have some involvement with the Manakete/Dragon Tribe/Nabeteean or just a Dragon overall that weave themselves into the story so Dragons tend to show up quite a bit but not always in the traditional western ideal. For instance the Dragons in the last game 3Houses were able to make themselves look like people aside from two really obvious tells (ears and hair color) but for the most part remained in their human form or you met a few that refused to take their human form. So it depends on the story. Many of the FE games stand alone (not all of them, there are a number of duologies and remakes) but imo you can jump in with most of them, I feel even the original NES version still holds up decently well today. That being said there is a schism in the fanbase (when is there not?) where some prefer older entries to newer ones. I've been playing the series since I was a child and have played all of them and beaten most of them so personally I have no issues overall with the series. Some have better writing than others but for me the series has remained on a steady evolution but has not lost sight of its identity (take that with a grain of salt because I'm certain some folks would disagree). It is my favorite strategy series and I a have not met one that I didn't enjoy (I may like others better but I have enjoyed my time with all of them). The tactics are a nice middle ground imo, less complex than Tactics Ogre but not without their challenge, as the series used to be known for its permanent death aspects (which you can turn off in newer entries).

It's extremely accessible for new players, and it's probably one of the best in the genre. I've played a handful of FE games and they're some of the best on Nintendo systems.

It's good if you like tactics games. If you don't, I wouldn't bother. The systems are really in-depth, but I didn't understand them when I played Three Houses.

If we are talking of Three Houses, being a tactics fan isn’t necessarily enough imo. The game has a pretty extensive chunk which is entirely about like relationship management, slice of life busy work stuff. Kinda like the stuff you do in Persona games when you aren’t in a dungeon. I know some people love this stuff, I found it beyond tedious and eventually I gave up on the game entirely because of it.

@Pizzamorg I can't fully recall, but aren't you able to Sim the whole school sections?

You are?! If so, I might need to go back and replay.

@Pizzamorg I am fairly certain. Others might know who played recently, but I think you can pretty much skip those sequences.

You can skip most of the school stuff (never did, I liked it), but it makes it a bit harder because you get less weapon experience, so it takes longer to reach promotion ranks.

@AshleyGamer1995
It’s less like PC strategy games, more like Final Fantasy Tactics, Tatics Ogre, Advanced Wars (same dev), etc.- like a chess style game where each piece is a different character with different stats and abilities.