Best Fire Emblem Games Of All Time

My favourite Fire Emblem game is Smash Bros Ultimate.

Path of Radiance will always be my number 1.It got me hooked on Fire Emblem.

The one with Camilla

Shadows of Valentia is up in the top three for me

I still really want to play Awakening and Path of Radiance to see what all the hype is about and become more well-versed in the series. I think once I finish Engage I'll be all in on these games.

Top 3 for me would be: Fire Emblem (Blazing Blade), Three Houses and Mystery of the Emblem. FE4 is another really good one that I hope gets remade eventually.

Overall FE is one of my favourite Nintendo IPs and I'm glad to see the success the franchise has had over the years. Especially considering it was on its last legs 10 years ago.

Really shocked to see Awakening over Three Houses, Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn... all three of those games smack Awakening in both narrative and gameplay. Granted these kinds of lists are more popularity contests then objective lists breaking down the merits of each game.

Though I am slightly saddened to see Echoes so low... it really only beat out Shadow Dragon and Fates. It really is the better game over Sacred Stones and Rekka no Ken. But, what can you do.

EDIT: On a side note despite being lower on the list (it's a spin-off so duh) Tokyo Mirage Sessions is a very good game. If you just finished Persona 5 and looking for a similar game to scratch that itch, give it a go. ESPECIALLY if you like Fire Emblem.

Idk, as someone who really loves JRPGs I didn't really like Tokyo Mirage Session. I guess the combination of lack of eng dub and idol setting didn't do it for me. It really didn't do a good job at being a Fire Emblem, SMT or Persona (since that's what TMS felt most similar to) game imo. Not really sure for whom that game was for

Nice to see some love for the GBA FEs. I remember my first 4 carts for the GBA were Pokemon Emerald, Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, and FFTA. What a line-up. What a great little handheld it was!

It is a nice list, I wish Fates was up in the top 3.

@Wexter You've got to bear in mind that Fire Emblem: Awakening benefited from being listed on this site during the lull years when it really flew the flag for the series and everyone was raving about it, so I reckon a lot of its votes date back to that period. And the revival it brought in means subsequent games don't stand out as easily.

@gcunit That is very fair! I remember having a love affair with it too so it does make sense. Just wish the hype around it would start to settle down. It did great things for the franchise, but sadly overall it is probably one of the more middling entries when the hype goggles come off. Still a very solid SRGP, but not nearly as good as Three Houses, Echoes, Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn.

Fire Emblem Blazing Blade is probably my favorite game of all time. It came to my life in a pretty desperate situation and made me crawl back from the depths of life to be a successful man. I can't overstate how much this game means to me and how changed my entire life.

@mariomaster96 I think it does what it says on the tin. It is a JRPG that merges elements from SMT (more Persona) and Fire Emblem. It is an odd bird of the game, but with an open mind it really is fantastic. Granted some of the spit shine is missing like an English dub. The game did come out during the latter Wii U years when Nintendo was cost cutting on niche titles (like only releasing Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water digitally in the West outside of special editions in the EU) so that is why one is missing. Overall it is a very solid package and I'm sure a sequel would be amazing!... if we ever got one.

I loved Fates. I remember that it got criticised because of it's story but aside from Birthright (they ruin Xander) , I really liked it. The Conquest campaign was my favourite because it had the best characters and story as well as more difficulty.

Haven't played a Fire Emblem since Path of Radiance, which I very very regrettably sold as a teenager. Also loved the GBA ones.

Not really a fan of the current "relationship sim" direction the series seems to have gone. An HD re-release of Path of Radiance + Radiant Dawn would be ideal.

@Cool-Breeze The "dating sim" was more a Fates feature. If you can I think you'd really enjoy Echoes if you can find a copy. It really is a back-to-basics experience that feels like a more modern version of the GBA games. That and Three Houses is also fantastic! I recommend both of those to get a better vibe of where the franchise is heading personally.

Idk about Tokyo Mirage Session over Three Hopes. The dungeons in that game were so boring.

Hahaha... You are talking about how series' localizations are fantastic... Well, if changing characters' names(and race) means a «fantastic localization» for you, then you're right... But that's wrong. Games should be translated, not localized! Total/Pure localization is one of the worst things that can happen with Japanese games! Because of those "fantastic localizations" I can't play games like Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, Gyakuten Saiban, and etc. These games got totally localized... Oh, and why you didn't mentioned awful Nintendo Treehouse's localization and censorship of Fire Emblem Fates, huh?

@Vyacheslav333 you know straight translations are awful to read and super clunky to hear unless you're super immersed in Japanese culture because some words and phrases do not translate to English? For example honorifics are not a thing commonly used in modern English. Also, Japan loves their puns and a lot of them do not translate into English directly and instead the translator needs to figure out an equivalent pun that does work in English. Localization has to happen for the game to be playable by an audience that may have no familiarity with Japanese.

Fates is robbed, as usual, although I'm not sure if including all 3 in one helps it or not. Conquest's campaign is unrivaled for its gameplay, combining difficulty, variety, player agency, and fairness in a way every other FE has struggled with. For me, that's more than enough, and anyone complaining about the story can tell me what the heck Awakening is doing in first then (that and a few others, but that's a deeper discussion, Echoes...)

But then, Birthright is just "pretty good", IMO - interesting map designs for a new player, but a lack of difficulty makes the game a boring steamroll once you understand it. And Revelation has garbage maps.

But I mean, it's not like anyone is forcing you to play those, any more than you're forced to grind for hours to play Awakening's Apotheosis.

But it's all moot in the end, because the cowards at NintendoLife didn't even put the best FE game on this list. Where is Code Name S.T.E.A.M.???

@Wexter

I agree with you entirely on this, although i do think Fates in particular had a pretty awful translation. A lot of stuff was really just changed "because they could".

Like, Harold- Sorry, Arthur - has a big H on his belt - that's his name, H for Harold. Named after Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, who was known for being very unlucky. So why change his name to Arthur?

Or Saizo and Beruka's C support, which went from a conversation about their lives as assassins for rival nations, to just "...". Literally removed the conversation and replaced it with Ellipses.

Or Effie's entire character being changed. She was a soft-spoken girl with a surprising appetite and hidden strength. Not a muscle-headed jock. You can certainly prefer one to the other, but it's not as if Western audiences wouldn't "get" Effie, she was never a complicated character.

Then there's Hisama's dub-induced pickle fetish, and just, ok enough.

At the time people who brought it up were ignored because "it's just Fates", but it's funny how many more people care now that Three Houses has been found to have significant issues in the English script that didn't exist in Japanese...

I've nothing against Fire Emblem as such, but I find it strange that Nintendo seems to have gone into overdrive pumping these games out in recent years, while poor old Advance Wars is left to rot without even the remake coming out.

Heroes is still the only one I've sunk more than a dozen hours into. A game where I constantly have to make decisions that I'm stuck with for the rest of the playthrough will always be more stressful than fun for me.

@Vyacheslav333 lol this is a wildly silly take. Localization is extremely important to make a game/show/manga relevant to foreign consumers. Comedy is especially important (not that Fire Emblem is comedic, just an example) to localize, because directly translating puns simply causes them not to work. There are bad decisions that can be made when localizing - changing non-pun-based character names and races sucks (though honestly I don't know who you're talking about when mentioning races changing) - but a direct translation would be worse.

@Anachronism Every game starting with Awakening allows you to turn off permadeath.

@BLD indeed Fates localization was terrible in retrospect. But, stuff like Xenoblade actually have really good localizations which is why I feel I need to remind people that "pure translations" are hot trash unless you're a total weeb or know Japanese. Localizations are very important as even the best translated games, are just games with seamless localizations. For example Witcher 3 was not developed or written in English. Rather it had an amazing localization to the point you would never notice it was originally written in Polish.

@Bret that is actually not true. The first FE with the option to turn off permadeath was New Mystery of the Emblem. But, that was only ever released in Japan so that is why it is a misnomer in the West to claim Awakening was the first with that feature.

@Wexter Well... There can be some Japanese language-specific phrases/words/things that cannot be translated straight into another language. And localization exists for solving troubles like this... That's can be very hard or impossible to adapt some Japanese word plays into other languages. Localization exists for these things. I know about it. But, I was talking about TOTAL/PURE LOCALIZATIONS. And Fire Emblem fits into that category alongside Xenoblade and Gyakuten Saiban.

Not much I wouldn't do for remakes or re-releases of the JP-only ones.

Warriors, Three Hopes, and Tokyo Mirage Sessions counted as proper Fire Emblem games. Meanwhile, all three Fates games are lumped into a single entry.

This is a weird list.

@Bret You still have to choose story paths, playable characters, classes, relationships, etc. If I can't experience everything of significance in one playthrough, I'm not interested.

@Bret I know that it's important. And I don't deny that there can be some language-specific things/words/word plays that need to be localized and cannot be translated properly. What's about bad decisions, well... I'VE SEEN A LOT OF THEM. I'm still see them today, and will see them in the future, sadly. Localizers can do whatever they want with the characters and/or other things during localization process, and that's annoys me. What's about races changing - let's take Gyakuten Saiban for example. Ryūichi Naruhodō, Reiji Mitsurugi, Mayoi Ayasato, and Mei Karuma. They are all Japanese. What's about their appearance in Ace Attorney? Well... Ryūichi and Reiji are Americans(Phoenix and Miles), while Karuma is German or French(Franziska von Karma), and Mayoi is Chinese(Maya Fay). Also, now I know how this method of translation/localization is called. A transcreation. And transcreation is the worst thing that can happen with Japanese games! Transcreation means total/pure localization of the games. And Fire Emblem series is not localized... It's transcreated! The same bs happened with Gyakuten Saiban and Xenoblade... Now I'm know the true name of this horrible disease - transcreation... I've confused transcreation with localization because they are similar. Very similar...

What would be a good entry point to the series?

@ComfyAko
Awakening

To me Sacred Stones is the best due to the excellent characters and cool as heck monster designs, the game keeps throwing ya new content all around but doesn't feel as messy as Radiant Dawn.

PoR is great, but yeah, it's always less interesting when there are no monsters.

I haven't played FE after the hyper-anime reboot but seeing that Awakening is top spot I'll have to finally give the game a look.

For me, #4 was more about Lyn; Eliwood was kinda boring IMO.

Conquest is the best in the series gameplay-wise and the worst in the series narratively.

I don't think there is a bad game in any of those in the list. Granted, I haven't played a couple of them. I'd've had Three Hopes and Fates higher up on the list but it's no biggy.

@Vyacheslav333 with every translation comes also decision how much you want to include not only the words but also the context. Problem is that context comes also with deep understanding of culture. And for this culture I don't mean only history, but also traditions, puns, honorifics, customs, etc. It is almost impossible to translate all these layers. Yes, it may happen that something is lost in translation and not according to your expectations, but for most of people does not have knowledge of entire culture of source material. So I am okay with it and to be honest I have not feeling of something missing in FE: 3 houses/hopes or XC 1/3. I had it definitely in TMS #FE Encore, but overall it was only an itch, not something that struck me to the head. So I wouldn't call it disease. It is just decision of translators how to make source material the most accessible to target auditorium. I only presume that you never translated something for larger group of people because if you did, you would know that every translation is only a compromise between authors' meaning of source, translators' understanding of source and your understanding of both. I know only a few translators that were on par with originals or better.

Heroes deserves more respect since Fire Emblem is more than just the game mechanics and Heroes has a ton of personality and endless variants of the characters.
There is so much content that you can play for free and not run out of things to do

@Herna @Don Thank you very much

@AlienX I think you'll enjoy Awakening, but if you liked Sacred Stones and cool monsters than Echoes will be far more your jam (followed by Three Houses)!!! I'll keep plugging that game hard as my 4th favourite in the franchise! It's hard to overtake FE GBA (Rekka no Ken), but it is really, really good!

@Vyacheslav333 what about Polish games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Witcher? Or Russian/Ukrainian games like Metro or S.T.A.L.K.E.R? Or Chinese games like Genshin Impact? You seem to mostly have bugaboo about Japanese games in particular and not talking about other cultures and their games translated into English. Why is this the worst with Japanese games rather than like the other ones I mentioned?

If you're this passionate about Japanese games why not learn Japanese and play them in Japanese. The option is there in game to use Japanese text with Japanese voices. So, if you hate localization that much then just go that route. I'd say at least 40-50% of the users of this site have a different native language than English like German, Polish, French or Spanish and they learned English to play games in English. So nothing stopping you from learning Japanese.

Awakening is first, I'm not disappointed.

I love Fire Emblem so much.

• Awakening was my first.
• Then I beat Fates Birthright.
• Then I beat Fates Conquest.
• Then I beat Shadows of Valentia
• Then I beat Three Houses Black Eagles church route.
• I'm at the end of the game in Blazing Blade (FE7) on GBA, I'm about 5 chapters away from beating Three Houses Blue Lions path, and same for Black Eagles path Edelgard route, and have dabbled in all the rest.

I even picked up Fates again yesterday and started playing Revelation. That game is way better than I remember. Ya, the story is wack and characters not as appealing, but the gameplay is so so so sooo good. And I think having come to a place of acceptance now, I find the cheesy story kind of endearing. I feel blessed we have so much Fire Emblem content in Fates and Three Houses to fall back on for new playthroughs.

It's a tie between Awakening and Three Houses for me....they were both the best of their Generation imo...

Fire Emblem Awakening is one of my favorite games of all time.

I'm one of those neo Fire Emblem fans who got into the series with Awakening, and I still think that's the game to beat. I also bought Radiant Dawn after the fact, but I've only played a few missions (my Wii and Wii U are packed away).

Fates had some of the best music in the series, but I wasn't crazy about some of the decisions in the story/gameplay, and I particularly hated the fact that the option for Japanese audio was excised from the English-language release considering that it was included in Awakening (and subsequent games).

Three Houses was wayyyy too convoluted with far too much fluff thrown in between missions. It's a good game and all, but had it not been a "Fire Emblem" game, I likely would have skipped it, frankly. I play it once in a while, but I never feel as if I am making any meaningful progress or that I know anything about what I am doing with regard to the game's multitude of micro-mechanics.

Echoes of Valentia is way too low. The maps are amazingly well designed and the dungeons are an amazing addition. Plus, all of the characters are very well written.

Awakening is also excellent, but I wish it had more win condition variety other than rout the enemy or defeat the commander.

Okay so I want to try fire emblem but I don't have a 3ds. Would I be best trying out engage or am I best getting three houses? Cheers in advance

@JohnnyMind Excellent! Thank you for the well detailed reply. I think I will take a look for a pre order. I took a quick look at the prices for three houses and they are actually extortionate still and also hard to find a copy.

Great point about taking part in here as well and I think I will lean into that too

@Vyacheslav333 LMAO yes yes, how DARE they translate "karuma" to "karma"?! You can't just translate a word into... the word it already is! The fools!

I am in awe of your "changing races" accusation being in relation to PHOENIX WRIGHT of all things. Phoenix Wright is a series of gag characters. The localization is EXTREMELY important here. Changing a character like Aiga Hoshidake, which is certainly some kind of pun in Japanese, to Luke Atmey is paramount to making the game work for an English audience. 99.9999% of westerners who play it aren't going to get that... just checking the wiki here... Aiga Hoshidake comes from the phrase "ai ga hoshii dake (愛がほしいだけ)" meaning "I just want love", fitting with his egocentric personality. Luke Atmey is "look at me", an equivalently silly name localized to have the same meaning.

Even Phoenix Wright is originally a pun name! His last name is Naruhodo, which you've heard a million times watching anime because it is a general affirmative statement like "I see" or "indeed" or... gasp... "right", as in Phoenix Wright! And Phoenix wasn't exactly chosen randomly either. And you're over here accusing such changes as being meant to change characters' races. It's incredible.

@JohnnyMind I will definitely keep an eye out but I think I am going to bite the bullet now on engage!

I really feel that including the Warriors games and Tokyo Mirage was a bad move. Those aren't mainline FE games and I feel they were added to pad the count.

@Rockboy247 If you like petting people and having long drawn out conversations that you have no real control over other than being there, get Three Houses/Fates. If you want to play a strategy game get any of the others besides the Warriors ones or Tokyo Mirage.

@Goofonzo love the phrasing 😂 just ordered engage

@Herna The early maps are definitely dull, but the second half of the game has some great ones like the battles on the ships, the battle against Rudolph, and, of course, the final map.

I have never played one Fire emblem game but I want to play Fire emblem engage and Fire emblem three hopes warriors.

Back in college, I saw Path of Radiance on sale for $15 once, and passed on it because I didn't have time to start an RPG. If only I had known.

@Wexter I don't know Polish language and culture, so I can't say anything about translation/localization's quality of CDPR games. And I don't know Ukrainian language, and don't know anything about S.T.A.L.K.E.R's development process, so I can't say anything about it as well.
«Why is this the worst with Japanese games rather than like the other ones I mentioned?»
Well, I was talking about the types of translation of Japanese video games only. I didn't prioritize translations of Japanese games over other foreign language games.
Well, despite my negative attitude towards localizations(localizers' poor attitude towards source material), for me, it is the only one way to play Japanese games officially. What's about learning Japanese language, well... This is an Asian language that consists of hieroglyphs, not a European language that consists of Latin/Roman. Imo, learning Asian language is harder than learning German language, for example. So, that's important to have quite a lot of free time and good memory to learn foreign language(-s). Especially Asian ones...
«I'd say at least 40-50% of the users of this site have a different native language than English like German, Polish, French or Spanish and they learned English to play games in English.»
Well, seems to be true. My native language is Russian, and I've learned(and still learning) English language to play video games.
«So nothing stopping you from learning Japanese.»
Time. Not enough free time. And, very likely, I need to become fluent in English language first, before starting learning another language...

@JohnnyMind Well, as how I found out before, Gyakuten Saiban(Ace Attorney) and Fire Emblem series are transcreated, not localized. And transcreation is worse than bad localization. 'Cause transcreation means absolute freedom in translation, while localization means partial freedom in translation. For example, if character's name in the original script and localization was Satoshi Baba, then, in transcreation this name transforms into Samuel Birkin. Sounds stupid, yes? Well, that's how transcreation works. Term "transcreation" is rarely used, sadly. And I for a long time confused this term with "localization". This fact annoys me, 'cause even game journalists/game reviewers confuse "transcreation" term with "localization" term! Or, they just don't know about the existence of this term!
On a side note... How much time(years) passed since you began learning Japanese language? Oh, and... Can you say some kind of advice, please? About starting learning Japanese language...

@Bret Well, that's not a localization. That's a transcreation. That's no longer(if it ever was?) possible to even localize Gyakuten Saiban game... Gyakuten Saiban series is transcreated, not localized. Like, Pokémon series, Fire Emblem series, Yu-Gi-Oh series, Yōkai Watch series, and many others...

@Vyacheslav333 This is a wack take to me. Good localization can often be better than just translation for some cases like Splatoon's Octo Expansion where I much prefer the NA English versions writing most of the time even though I can read Japanese. The NA version's end is more nuanced and dark I like the writing better for most situations.

Sure I can get behind arguing against censorship vast majority of cases and you don't want to water down the original versions character or the author's/maker's intentions. But localization is essential for many situations so the game is more entertaining (many things simply can't be translated due to language structural limitations) and you don't have bad situations where you say that one word that is an extreme slur in UK but is no more offensive than the "goofy" everywhere else in the world in Mario Party, or that one gesture in Mariokart. Yeah you don't want anything dumb changed though like food in Pokèmon tv show, why not share culture and show both instead of changing it?

@JohnnyMind O... Oh... More than 10 years...
Hiragana and katakana... Katakana looks easy and memorable, and I like how it looks. I'm even remember some (favourite?) katakana letters like "a", "ri", "ru", "ka/ga", "yo", "e", "ki/gi", "mi", "su/zu", "ra", "ko/go", "i", "do"... Though, what's about hiragana... Hiragana looks complicated(if compare to katakana) and terrifying. From hiragana I remember only "i" letter, 'cause it looks memorable. Well... Okay. Bolshoye spasibo(Большое спасибо/thank you very much) for the advices! In one of your comments I've seen that you want to become a master in Japanese... Well, I wish you the best of luck! 😊

@Vyacheslav333 You keep simply saying "transcreation bad" over and over without demonstrating why it's bad.

Yes, Pokemon has many examples of bad transcreation/localization/whatever you feel like calling it, such as Brock's insistence that his rice balls are jelly donuts. But the practice is not inherently bad. Phoenix Wright's is masterfully made, and the series would be nowhere near as successful without it.

I know your type. If it came from Japan, it's godly. It can't be altered in any way, even if that alteration is entirely in line with the intent of the creator. It's perfect just because it's Japanese. But that's silly. Japan isn't special, America isn't special, the UK isn't special. We're all just trying to enjoy each other's products, and localization allows that to happen.

For me personally, it's gotta be Shadows of Valentia on 1, then Three Houses, then Awakening, probably. But to be fair, the GBA game was my first introduction to the series and it will forever hold a special place in my heart. Can't wait to see what Nintendo will do with the series next. Engage was pretty darn good, with its focus on combat, but after Three Houses, I feel like I was spoiled rotten with the amount of content and one of the best video game stories ever.

Just a word of warning. If you play 3 Houses, do it in Japanese with subs. The VA is beyond *****. Had I not switched language, I would have hated and sold what went on to become my favourite game ever. The OST is one of the best in gaming.

Awakening I messed up an early battle and restarted repeating my moves before I messed up. I then realised that it was absolute BS RNG. I switched off and on restarting the level and the outcome of the first move was different every single time. It just seemed totally pointless playing a strategy game with no strategy. How can you practice and learn from your errors when the outcome changes everytime?

Radiant Dawn. I played very little and sold. Strangely because I loved it. I played from 6 at night until around 5am. Had 2 hours sleep and I have every intention of getting it again when my life allows me silly amounts of spare time.

Fire Emblem and Sacred Stones.
They were both great to play but one of them has ***** music and I can't remember which now.

Engage was awful. I paid for the special edition too at about £80. I was really pissed off. Horrible, irritating characters. I just couldn't play it. It was just cheesy *****.

Radiance I played on a ROM and I couldn't get in to it. It all looked a bit dull. I have a bigger monitor now, so might try it again but I didn't get that straight off first play addiction I got with Radiant Dawn.

#FE I was actually enjoying but it was ruined by the annoying squeaky little ***** of a character.

The Musou game I just didn't like.

Can't wait to try the other DS ones Fates and Echoes. Such an amazing franchise. I'm going to pass on the early ones though. I started gaming in 86 and going back to those very old graphics annoys me. It's like watching a VHS film in 480p on a 28" screen after getting used to 55" 4K, it just looks *****.

Just looked on eBay, and Shadow Dragon DS isn't THAT insane compared the OBSCENE prices I saw for Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. Not even GameCube Twilight Princess is that expensive.

SDDS goes for 70 with case, 30 without. I paid more for my solo cart of Kirby Planet Robobot.

At any rate, I'm willing to give this series a try. . .after I finish going through several other Nintendo franchises.

@Princess-Corrin If we ever meet, we'll definitely be friends.

Three Houses with all that monastery sh1t, was too boring for me