If you look at the three most popular games, Fates and 3 Houses had early route splits and a lot of things to play and to discuss story-wise and lore-wise. And then FEH exists. I think it suggests that most people who are into Fire Emblem prefer not to watch others play it, but rather play it themselves. Thus, story and unit viability/builds become more searched than gameplay unless the game has an insane amount of replayability.
Fate makes you pay for other routes and TH has the worst route split in the series Both games decentivise you to play another route in some way which leads to RUclips views
@@NarrowSpark96 honestly in terms of story I think fire emblem fates the worst one but thats just me. but I am also a bit worried about fe heroes how long will it last but hmmm I mean fire emblem heroes has good drop rates, any unit can be good if done right, and etc. but even still I dont know if it can last 1-2 years or ... hmmm
@@ZX-Gear that also reminds me what I am also worry about no home either... so u cant really trade pokemon... so I dont know whats the future of pokemon...
I think it was less Cindered Shadows that caused the post 3H spike and more Byleths release in Smash Bros that created the spike. I remember the controversy was everywhere.
I get that you as a youtuber have to care about it, because views are the lifeblood of your channel, but as a fan (of any given series really) I couldn't care less. Beyond selling enough to greenlight future titles, massive mainstream popularity has never been a good thing for any series I like.
Interesting video, granted I've only been making fire emblem "content" since march 2021 but I can definitely see a correlation with the graph you showed here. Particularly videos about engage are just not that appealing and have a lower click through rate than others. Now of course that could just be due to the interests of people that like my "content" however as I don't have the largest sample size. I think you got it right, fe4 remake won't spark a large audience of interest and instead it'll require a banger of a mainline title that has a broad range of appeal. Engages biggest flaw is putting all its eggs into appealing to gameplay focused players which simply isn't the majority of the fire emblem audience anymore.
I think one of the main reasons for 3H’s popularity is that they actually marketed it well, not to mention it was also on one of the most successful consoles. A similar situation can be seen with Pikmin 4, as it sold more than all previous games combined upon release and they marketed it really well and it was on a successful console. I prefer the more classic style, like the GBA and Tellius games, with the Tellius games being my personal favorites. While I don’t think a remake of PoR would cause a great popularity spike, it would be great to have and with Ike’s popularity, at least partly due to Smash Bros., I think it would probably at least sell well. Also, I think part of the popularity spike in 2008 was due to Smash Bros. Brawl and it’s Subspace Emissary.
It’s also crazy how Roy has been in Smash for over 2 decades yet they still refuse to localize his game, maybe they were banking on him being in Engage along with the other 7 who are in Smash? But not even those 8 reps from Smash could save Engage.
Marketing can only do so much. Pikmin 4 succeeded not just because of marketing, it was a truly great game that appealed to a lot of people. Besides, Three Houses had a marketing drought for most of its release, only getting consistent information very close to its release. I think Three Houses succeeded because lots of people like the game and think it's amazing.
Engage didn't tickle enough people's fancy to keep the popularity going. If anything it disappointed too many and hopefully it didn't cause a lasting effect. Word of mouth is very important, and if you look at the temperature of the room with Engage, word of mouth was bad, regardless of the few outliers trying to say "story / writing dont matter".
It's a bit sad that they did Engage dirty. It was easily the most fun Fire Emblem gameplay in a long time, but the story and the way DLC was implemented were just sooooooo bad.
I played it and having played most fe games. Engage I couldn't get into. The characters all looked the same, not much variety. I had little to no interest in the characters and story wasn't very good. First FE game I couldn't finish. 😅
In my opinion, fire emblem needs to break out of the existing scenarios it’s always been in. It’s similar to what has been and is happening to Pokémon, where rehashing the same premise but “with a twist!” Is causing new games like sword and shield or scarlet and violet to not be as legendary as the era of gen 3, 4, 5 and stuff for long standing fans. There needs to be something wild to shake up the premise of fire emblem. Not to lose its identity for the sake of popularity but to take a risk and try something bold. Every game’s plot boils down to man vs gods/dragons if we think about it. Not that that’s a bad thing but when you do it upwards of 15+ times it gets predictable. I remember during awakening’s development they even flirted with the idea of fire emblem on Mars. But that might actually be a cool idea. Perhaps fire emblem but in the modern day, or a futuristic sci fi fire emblem. The identity of fire emblem to me at least is the gameplay. It doesn’t matter where the setting takes place as long as we have stuff like weapon triangle, weapon durability, supports, growth rates, etc. so if they were to release like a cyberpunk fire emblem who knows? It might actually do fantastic if done correctly. Maybe it’s because of how successful awakening and fates were that they felt like they had to just keep doing the same thing. But I’m low key getting bored of every story being “destroy the evil dragon/god/emperor”. Even if every game does it differently it’s still just rehashing the same premise.
I think the answer is……kinda? I think it has to do with the fact that Engage was a very overall forgettable story with most of the cast being very 1 dimensional, it had great gameplay but gameplay is not something that drives conversation as much as story and characters. It should be noted that I do not think fire emblems OVERALL popularity is diminishing I just think the world of engage did little to retain player attention past the credits, if there was FE announcement that was I do think interest would return
For me, Engage was a massive letdown. I can’t imagine being a new fan who had played three houses and expecting something akin to that experience and getting Engage. It was kind of jarring how awful the writing was and the lack of depth in the characters in a way that I have never seen in a Fire Emblem game. It really felt like it was catering to a different audience (ones who play gacha games incessantly and don’t wear deodorant), despite being a fan service anniversary title. Gameplay was good, yes, but I expect more from Intelligent Systems. They have shown how truly remarkable they can make a game, especially ones with lasting impressions that have real things to say and truly deep and profound stories to tell. Even when the story is divisive and a little rushed (Fates), it still tried and honestly kept me engaged. Engage, quite literally felt like a genuine chore for me to complete. I unlocked every single support, hoping that there would be some gem hidden or that it would add layers of depth to the characters. I did not find such things. After I completed about 200 hrs in the game, I set it down and will probably never pick it up again. Reallllllyyyyy praying for an FE4 remake for switch 2 or an original title. I think it could do a lot for the series. Something is assuredly in the works and close to releasing…
I think Engage suffered a lot from the unfortunate timing of its release like 4 months before Tears of the Kingdom. Fire Emblem was always going to be overshadowed by Zelda, and they knew it. That's probably why they rapid fire released all of the Engage DLC so quickly. They wanted to get it all out there before TotK was released, so that it wouldn't be overshadowed as much. But unfortunately it seems that actually made the drop off worse because once TotK was released that was all anyone talked about and there was nothing new left to draw people back to Engage. The DLC release schedule for Three Houses was better because it was a drip feed. They didn't put everything out so quickly, so it helped buzz around 3H last a lot longer than Engage. The sad thing is TotK itself kinda ended up dropping off in popularity pretty quickly too, at least from my perspective. Like it didn't have nearly the staying power that Breath of the Wild before it had. So if they had slowed down the releases of the Engage DLC then they probably would have been able to maintain that game's popularity for longer and we wouldn't be in the drought we're in now. All that being said I think Fire Emblem still has a bright future ahead. Even if the highs aren't as high now as they were before, FE still has a much higher profile than it did before. I used to say I was cautiously optimistic about Three Houses when it was announced, and said the same about Engage. Ended up loving both games and I truly believe they have succeeded in making Fire Emblem great again. Now if they can just find a balance between 3H and Engage in terms of gameplay and storytelling I think they will strike gold again.
While I don't think Engage killed the hype it did dampen it. A good chunk of mainline FE games tend to immerse you into the world and characters rather quickly, setting the tone for the games at an acceptable pace. Engage unquestionably has excellent gameplay with a lot of dynamism going for it. But it struggles with tone due to how it's roster of characters clash with what the conflict is trying to do. And while anecdotal, failed to invest me in anyone in the game, which is a serious problem for a tactical RPG that relies on it's story and characters. And it would appear I am far from the only one who felt that way. Entries such as the Radiant duology and Awakening were able to get me invested early on because of either their world building or characters. Perhaps FE can get another golden age if they go for a more serious and dark mainline entry, characterized in a similar way to the Judgral games. But I fear going further mainstream is a monkey's paw scenario.
This is your opinion but understand that even if it hurts, fates was the most popular along side 3H. Fates didn't have interesting stories. I would say both games have probably the best physical appealing design. They probably went too much Shojo design for Engage and not kawaii enough like Fates.
Three Houses was their attempt to go for a more serious and dark mainline entry, and we see how that worked out lol. Insanely popular yes, but at what cost to the actual fanbase? If it meant the fanbase would become populated by tourists and normies who call me a bigot because I don't think Dorothea is a lesbian then was it worth it?
@@Aleph3575 Don't forget all the normies calling people who like Edlegard a Trump supporter or a German WW2 soldier. May the over political era of the internet never ever come back I dread the 2024 election
If I may, I think Three Houses's newbie boom and Engage being 3H's anthesis from a story perspective is to blame. 3H's story was very well regarded, but it was an outlier, not the norm. So when the newbies who started with 3H got Engage, they weren't that engaged with the game, causing the drop off. You can even see this with Heroes. When 3H came out, so many banners that year were 3H banners, but Engage has only gotten two whole banners, and two more partial ones.
Not to mention how three houses is arguably the least fire emblem game at its core, for better or worse depending on who you ask. Which can attract more newcommers much easier to the game, while some fire emblem veterans might end up displeased with the lack of gameplay divided between hours upon hours of repetitive monastery sections. Guess which one draws more sells though. Engage even with its new feature ( which almost every fire emblem games presents) feels much closer to a classic fire emblem experience than three houses, which may not attract as many newcommers as three houses did.
@@mihaimercenarul7467yes exactly FE as a franchise is in a tricky spot where as a TRPG it needs to carefully balance between staying true at its core to not betray its fan and to be less of a TRPG to be more popular
@@mihaimercenarul7467 i actually wanted to play some Fire Emblem, and to pick one i asked Chat AI, which advised to play Three Houses. Man, the more i played, the more i realized it's not quite what i've seen about Fire Emblem.
@@junkolover9518 Yes, I don't think it's a bad thing if the game plays differently from the other entries, especially for those that played three houses as their first fire emblem game. But it can be a problem for the veterans, or for those that wanted to try another fire emblem game after three houses.
Videos about story are easier to produce in mass and have a wider appeal than gameplay videos. This is especially the case when branching paths are involved where people need to understand a bigger picture.
Problem is, that also leads to a lot of confusion when people get things wrong. Taking Fe8 for example, you need to see both routes to get the whole picture. However, for Fe3H each route was had its own separate history that wasn't true in each route. In CF, passed down from emperor to emperor is the story of Nemesis. A hero who was never corrupted, but rather it was the church who turned the people against the King of Liberation. As it was a battle between what kind of person (draconic or human) should rule. Thus the title, as he desired to liberate humanity just like El did in CF. This is further confirmed by the route itself as the story of El is the exact same as Nemesis. Though she worked in the shadows where Nemesis rallied entire kingdoms to his cause by force of will or diplomacy since they followed him willingly. In the SS route, the church defines nemesis as nothing more than a bandit turned warlord. Where instead of Nemesis crafting the weapons, and offering them to the leaders of the nations he allied with. Instead in SS, Nemesis already was allied with the elites before the massacre of the dragon people, and to gain their powers they had consumed the blood of the fallen dragons. So in both routes you have two entirely different histories and events. Though many people accept one as true instead of realizing both are true, but only in their respective route.
I can only speak for myself and say what killed Engage for me. First of all it was the dumb af character design choices that toned down my first impression of the game. Then when it came out it just seemed like it had very uninteresting and generic story and character writing as well. Then another issue I have with Fire Emblem is how the fanbase developed and how much Nintendo is trying to appeal to that change. I'm not sorry for saying that the current fanbase has a big coomer problem and you can observe it very well by looking at the newer FEH banner releases and the newer OCs they released lately. It's easy money for Nintendo, since a mobile game isn't in need of much complex writing, but poison for the actual series and I will die on that hill.
Engage had a pretty bad timing and marketing. A lot of anticipated games came out this year like TOTK and Pikmin 4, the game released 4 months after it was announced and the DLC released 3 months later, it really felt pretty rushed.
I wish we had raw numbers instead of a percentage. But anyways, while I think views and sales are both imperfect measures of popularity, I think sales is much closer to the truth than views most of the time. The sales of Engage do have me questioning that logic, but looking at FPS franchises, it seems sales is a much better indicator of longevity than views and I see no reason FE would be different.
Just as you said, Engage sales do not represent the game popularity on the fandom because mostly everyone is either playing the old games/3H bc Engage wasn't for them and nobody really cared after seeing how inexistent of a plot there is
As what could be considered a normie, i didnt find Engage to be that engaging. I simply didnt like it, i think the majority thinks about it the same way as i do.
I wouldn't necessarily say that Engage specifically killed the hype. I think it's more that there just isn't much to it that can maintain the hype. The story is barebones and there aren't really any standout characters, so there isn't really long-lasting content there. And while the gameplay is good, that doesn't really make for interesting RUclips content for more than a few months at most. Meanwhile all of the older games have already been talked about to death. I definitely think that if we get a game with some halfway decent writing it will bounce back to at least normal levels. I don't think this is another dark age at least.
I know this sounds like a basic response, but its quite clear that the story of Engage is to blame, nowadays people want a reason to play the game besides "Its really good", so much so that most games of recent have been quite lore heavy, if you look back a bit, you see that was something that were exclusive to RPG titles Of course, there is a game here and there that jumps over that rule, but lets all face it, FE will never be that kind of game without a lore, at least not officially Also, I know this is a hard-to-swallow pillow, but the fact that Nintendo actively dosent sues fan content shows to me how much in a hole FE is, even depiste the spikes and all
@@thebrazillianguytm2186 Most fan content for most things gets left up so what a silly comment. Theres literally a brawl fan game that backports characters from Ultimate into it and its really popular. Actually illegal and would be justified if they took it down but they dont lol. Are you gonna start claiming smash is dead?
I will forever be grateful to Smash 4 for introducing Corrin, which led me to buying Fates and introducing me to the core series. Played Fates, bought every game on the 3DS, and haven't missed a release since.
I mean, since Fates came out, there have only been two games... three if you count Echoes I guess. I'm glad you got to play Awakening and all, but the 3DS era was pretty brutal as far as quality goes outside of Awakening. The GBA games were really a league above until 3H dropped, and then Engage came out and it was... alright.
Well I hope you enjoyed that double edged sword because thanks to Corrin every Smash Fan is bitter over Fire Emblem in Smash and Corrin’s inclusion is the reason Byleth wasn’t well received, doesn’t help both were DLC that you had to pay for.
Without a doubt, imo, the absolute best looking game for the entire franchise. Wish they would have updated maps a bit as well just because of their general small and boring maps. But oh my goodness everything about this game was top tier for me.
It came out after the Switch was released, sold almost all printed copies and is of high praised. It's biggest weakness was awful sales in Japan but japan already had Gaiden and Has had a downward trend in gaming for a long time.
It's very noble of you not to show the peak of when Andarron Saga was released, it would make those other peaks look like a flatline. In seriousness though I feel like FE is in an identity vortex passing back and forth between classic, gameplay and story driven focused, to modern, focusing more on enamouring people with designs, social and relational investments. On one hand they want to support permadeath and on the other they give you a redo button. I feel like the divide you speak of between fans of Heroes and classic FE fans is actually pulling the franchise in 2 different directions, very similar to how it happened with Monster Hunter. Monster Hunter had a solution which is to keep the main titles focused on the core of what Monster Hunter is, while handheld and spinoff titles went more extreme with their setting, world building and gameplay, to satisfy both distinct tastes and widen the player and fanbase.
I think the reason why is because fire emblem three houses gave us basically 4 ish stories in 1 game. Which in turn made people watch allot to see all the routes and choices you could make as well as the broken combos of classes You can create. While the others are either bad remakes or just stories that aren't good enough to watch. Idk just what I think.
I think I just miss the way the older games were. The newer stuff doesn't really interest me like it used to..three houses was fun I have a lot of hours in it, but I have played anything fire emblem since that release
@@ZX-Gearcomparing 3H maddening to Engage maddening, I actually prefer 3H Engage often times throws big groups of enemies your way, including the boss, and only counterbalances it by giving you OP rings, at which point it almost doesn't matter anymore who you give the ring to 3H on the other hand feels like every map is a puzzle, especially with later chapters that are built very defensively and hard to crack The need to train every unit makes them feel unique, but even side characters you didn't focus on can fulfill a role if you have to field them
I don’t see this as a surprise. Fire Emblem: Engage was not good. Yeah, it had some improvements in gameplay but the story was bland, the world uninteresting, the characters forgettable and the protagonist… let’s face it, quite bad. Gameplay wise it was probably better than Three houses because of minor fixes, but the whole ring gimmick was more of a fanservice thing allowing you to use old characters than anything really compelling. Three houses presented us with a world of mistery and political intricacies which treated players as adults capable of understanding non-linear stories, with many fantastic concepts extrapolated in the fantasy setting. We had 3 political entitities with their own agendas, a church, an obscure and dark faction working in the background, non-aligned people and other countries related to the main continent. We also had ethical and moral concerns between commoners and nobles and what life meant to each of the characters. You could explore the world based on the interactions you had with the characters and understand their point of view, maybe position yourself and have your own opinion on the matter. The game just throws you in a living world and you start reading family names and all of a sudden you are fighting against people who you don’t know but are family / important for some of the students. You can dive deep in that world. And then, when it seems the game can’t just become better, it throws you a 3 year time lapse where you can even align with the “bad guys” and have to face the fact that those who were your colleagues at some point are now your enemies and you are going to have to kill them. And we are not getting into the soundtrack or how the in-game dialogs of the characters change as the game moves forward. You actually get to be a “game-changing” hero because your choices and the characters you bring with you actually shape the future of that world. Fast forward to Engage, we go back to a good vs evil plot with a couple of plot-twists, characters with shitty backgrounds and too many female characters with exagerated female attributes. Don’t get me wrong, I like some fan service, but I don’t like it if it becomes more important than the plot itself. No more political intricacies, no more ethical discussions, no more plot for grown adults. Just shonen classic tropes, a bad guy and a cast I can’t even remember the name of. I still don’t get how some people actually defended that the new characters were as interesting as 3 houses ones. I guess they just wanted it to be true.
I would like to share my Fire Emblem journey with you. I actually would never have given it a chance if I didn't get to like Robin as a Smash Bros 3DS character. That's what pushed me to order the game a little while after it was removed from the shelves. And what I got was a great experience, as I kept hooked on that game for as long as it took for Fates to come out. It really was fun to build my units from the ground up, down to the children, and even if the Valm part was not that interesting, unlocking supports was what kept me going. Even back then, it had a bit of replayability, as there are gender-exclusive skills you can get your Robin (which is the best avatar in the series, imo, for reasons I will state down the line). Then came Fates, and... I was not disappointed either, mechanics-wise. It was roughly the same as Awakening, while getting a better gameplay, the story was...good. Good in the sense that I wasn't poking the holes at the story back then, and the senseless sacrifices quickly were cast aside, for I was enjoying the gameplay. The route split added replay value (yes, even Rev.), but I never got all child units even today. Maybe I was still sick of the kids in Awakening, but the notion of the Deeprealms was quite jarring to me (making 20 years pass in days? Awakening's child units at least had a VALID LORE REASON to exist), and... yeah, the game was still enjoyable and kept me hooked for the next year and a half. A bit like you Mangs, I played Heroes and...stopped when the power-creep became too serious. The story wasn't good enough to make me care about it. I got Shadows of Valentia and... It is still one of the best games I've played. The voice acting does a lot, but the story was amazing, especially on Alm's side of things. Celica's... much less (the Jedah shenanigans). Sadly, it's not a game with a lot of replayability, but the ride was worth it. Three Houses. Ugh. I see the appeal, I really do, but... The Monastery. I have grown to hate it. The game is fine otherwise, but the gameplay is easy to cheese through. And the fact that the Empire route is the secret route had me suspend my disbelief a bit too hard for my own good. Fortunately, my next playthrough was Azure Moon, and Dimitri delivered. I haven't bought Engage. Not only did I feel they relied a bit too much on nostalgia and beanking on attracting Heroes players in the main game, the next appaling thing was the avatar. So, I've been mentionning the avatars. While I don't think they are a blight in the series, my gripe comes to the fact they try really hard to shoehorn the player into the story. Robin may have been important in the story, he is not its cornerstone - most everything happens due to Chrom's choices. The only time yours matter is at the very end. The rest of the time, it really did feel like you're just a member of the army. Why is this important? Well, we come to Corrin. Corrin is an amnesic Mary Sue. And they are also the avatar of this game. The plot revolves around them. The amnesical bit can have very easily be done without if they didn't try to shoehorn the player into this story - Corrin would have been more interesting with more flaws and... actually, s/he just needed a credible character. It doesn't help that they are also a dragon, increasing their importance, since the Dragons in Fire Emblem are quite a big deal. Byleth... Well, this time, they tried too hard not to give them character, but them being a taciturn person really doesn't sell the teacher bit well, nor did it make them more relatable. And then it turns out they're basically the second coming of Sothis... And again, the fact they don't remember their past does them the same disservice it did Corrin. And in Engage, the Avatar is a divine dragon. A.K.A the closest thing FE has to gods. We sure are elevating the players to new heights at IntelligentSystems...
I wasn't going to get Engage because I was frustrated that a $30 DCL was announced before the game even came out, and some of the emblem choices I didn't like. But then I decided to get it and I'm really glad I did. The main game has an impressive amount of content, more than most other FE games, and definitely felt worth $60 to me. The emblem choices make more sense after playing the game, and the gameplay is so good, the best in the series as far as I'm concerned. I didn't like the Monastery either and am happy with the version of it in Engage (still not perfect, but an improvement for sure). Graphics are way better as well, I was so relieved to see the gorgeous, smoothly animated movies from Awakening and Fates make a return compared to the flat-looking, choppy movies of Shadows of Valentia and 3H. A lot of people may not like Engage's story, but the visuals alone really got me into it at times. The voice acting too, is quite impressive. Just like in Shadows of Valentia, casting is great, delivery is great, and it's wonderful to have hundreds of fully voiced cutscenes/support conversations. I know financially speaking Engage can be considered a success, though there seems to be quite a bit of negativity online about it, especially compared to Three Houses. I think that kind of sucks, as I'm not a big fan of 3H and Engage is possibly my favorite overall game in the series (Fates & Shadows of Valentia too...I may be biased since I hate weapon breaking). I'm curious to see what Intelligent Systems does for the next mainline game. It seems like they have had a gameplay-first mentality lately, and that's part of the reason the story ends up lacking in some areas. I personally don't mind this if the gameplay is much better for it, but I understand it is a balancing act. I have a friend who decided he hated and never wanted to play FE Fates upon learning what happens with the children in that game. I wouldn't mind if they go back to having no self-insert character and no marriage, though they likely see that as risky.
Haven’t watched the full video yet because I’m busy, so I’ll leave my initial comment and edit it when I’m back: Imo, it’s a mix between the discussion that a game can provide and also how appealing is to masses which make something popular, not just FE specifically and that’s why Three Houses got it’s popularity. People already knew or at least had a concept of what Fire Emblem was when it was launched, however, it’s because of it’s story and characters that people got into the game, even if it is flawed in things like the monastery or the class balance, most of the people would ignore it if they can play what they see a good story and likable or well written characters. Something that would make people say “yeah, it’s anime but the story isn’t cringe and its deep” instead of just silly anime plot. If IS wants to appeal to the general public they need to focus on having a good/great story and that it can generate discussion. I would honestly prefer a game with good gameplay even if the story is thrash, but that isn’t the case with most people I think…
I genuinely believe that fire emblem is in the infancy of its popularity. Right now, the FE community isn't the most welcoming space for beginners. When I first started playing FE a few off-putting things about the community included: 1. Referring to FE games by number rather than name or main character (very confusing) 2. Discussion surrounding most games are made assuming highest difficulty (discouraging to those who are still learning the game) 3. Grinding and “slow play” heavily looked down upon 4. Separation between fans of older FE games and newer FE games (this one is less apparent, but it is something I noticed) 5. Repetitive content (Unit rankings, playthroughs using the same “best characters”, etc) I wholeheartedly believe that FE can be on the same level as Pokemon one day. We just need the overall community to be more welcoming to newcomers. Innovation in the scene is also a thing that will foster growth. I know the numbers for FE content is discouraging to look at, but Mangs please keep doing what you are doing. You are really pushing this game forward.
While I don't expect anything to reach Pokemon popularity, I very strongly agree with points 1 and 2. I got into the series around 2015, and the numbered entry thing still confuses me. What is FE11? Possibly Shadow Dragon, but I'm not really sure. Also, every time I watch a video about character viability or game difficulty, it's always assuming the highest difficulty, which I don't play and often isn't available out of the box. I'd be interested in watching a video about which game is the hardest on Normal without grinding because I think that's the default way to play, or how most new players would play.
Interesting video allowing folks like me, which came late into the scene, to grab the history of RUclips’s Fire Emblem’s story. Short version of my opinion: the long time between releases, coupled with a single route game without a lot of mysteries, revealed the true size and habits of most of FE audience. The audience (like me) play the game but only stick around for mysteries and intricated analyses. Afterward we move to other games until a new release. Regarding the video, I didn’t really pick up the metric used for popularity. I suppose it is a period number of RUclips research / views compared to the maximum number of RUclips research / views. From the outside, it might make some period worst than they are, especially with FE:Heroes taping in a different market audience. I would believe that FE RUclips’s activity is similar to others solo playing games, as most of videos, and discussions, are made around the release of the game and stop afterward (even if they were very popular). And as such, I think the main reason why the popularity of FE is declining is the fact that few games are made. At the exception of FE:Awakening, after each release the audience dwindled to 25%, sometimes lower, until the next announcement. Furthermore, the golden era has seen 7 games in the span of 3 years, against 2 in the last 2 years. This might have led to a better retention of the attention of the “casual” audience, during the golden era, allowing the franchise to grow and grow without resetting each and every time. Regarding the FE audience, I feel like you have: • a “core” audience (10-15%), which are active members interested in gameplay, franchise and ROM-Hacks • a “regular” audience (30-40%), which comes in for new releases but do not really stick around • a “casual” audience (30-40%) which manifest when a FE game manage to break the mold and have interesting characters / world building / mysteries • a “phone” audience (last 15-20%) coming from a different market and which is difficult to tap into. Thus, if a new game wanted to reach the 80ish% popularity, it would need to appeal to casual audience. And in my opinion, it needs to sparkle discussions through characters (design, stories, interactions), like for Fates and 3H, an interesting world (different sides, mysteries, politics), like Fates and 3H, volition / frustration (choosing a route, not accessing all the units in one route, choosing who will have children), like in Awakening, Fates and 3H. I really think that locking content behind routes is a good idea, as long as we don’t have to play the same map again and again (like 3H did). Why ? Because we will miss part of the story and will look around for the missing pieces, through another playthrough or videos. In this instance it is important to have different characters in each route and maps (for replay and discovery values). For instance, I played all 3 Fates routes because I wanted to learn more about the world and characters, especially seeing both sides interact in Revelation after the 2 other routes. On the other hand, I only played one of 3H’s routes, because of the first act and the fact I had all units in my first playthrough. This instead led me to go watch a lot of RUclips videos to discover the other stories, and uncover mysteries, as I didn’t want to play again. And this might be why FE:Engage is “bleeding” that much audience. The gameplay is excellent (which may explain why it was still popular), but the lack of story, mystery and deep characters lead to fewer things to explore and look for. Again good video and a lot of interesting comments which helped me putting words on my thoughts.
Did Engage kill the franchise? No, not even close. BUT i think it did the franchise a massive disservice. I mean, Fire Emblem always was the "weeb" game in the eyes of many, but with Engage that stigma got even worse, at least from my experience. Gameplay was amazing, we don't need to talk about that, but most people just couldn't take Engage seriously, myself included
Also looks like Fire Emblem’s “relevance” has always been linked to Smash Bros. We haven’t had anything for years from their side and it shows in the lack of interest we see today.
Source for the 70k copies sold in second quarter? If that's the case then it's dropped off pretty badly. Three Houses sold 3 million soon after its first year, but engage's 1.68million+(70k*2 for the next two financial quarters) is only 1.82million...and the sales probably won't even be that good. If IS keep neglecting the story, and darker style of three houses for future games, then they will kill fire emblem.
I'm new to Fire Emblem and I find the fanbase to be welcoming, helpful, and generally polite. I got Three Houses and Engage this year after my friend recommended them to me, and I plan on playing through the older games soon. But as a newbie, I'm honestly surprised that this franchise isn't more popular than it currently is. It definitely deserves to be.
Path of Radiance is my favourite, it can be played on emulator (dolphin) easily, or you can try to find a copy like I did to play on GameCube/Wii. I've yet to play its sequel but heard good things about it. So I would obviously recommend that one to you.
7:03 Yeah the toxicity would come when Three Houses was released. It kinda ties into your section on Three Houses, but 3H brought a TON of tourists and fairweather fans to the series. Normies if you would. That was the time period you were most likely to find people who would willingly admit that their favorite game in the series or that their first game was Three Houses. Alot of these people were very young and spent FAR too much time on the internet. And those people brought a TON of strife and fighting to the fandom. Suddenly, you found shipping wars and rigid enforcement of sexuality headcanons much like media such as RWBY, Persona, Honkai or the soon to be released Genshin Impact fanbases, in fact, there would be significant crossover between those fandoms with the Fire Emblem fandom as a result of Three Houses. Most of those fans would be ardent fans of Edelgard, who they frequently mischaracterized as some radfem manhating communist revolutionary out to overthrow the patriarchy, which put them at odds not just with fans of other House Leaders but other Edelgard fans. You can still pretty easily find people who subscribe to this btw despite the fact that it couldn't be anymore wrong, almost as wrong as the haters who viewed her as a nazi. This led to massive amounts of fighting throughout the fanbase to the point that a number of moderators, including at least one from the Fire Emblem reddit, resigned their posts out of disgust and frustration with prevalence and virulence of the discourse. The creator and the entire mod team of the Edelgard subreddit not only resigned their posts but eventually deleted their accounts out of frustration with in-fighting within the Edelgard fanbase over the rampant biphobia that people who preferred to pair her with other women showed towards people who paired her with male characters. "Three Houses Discourse" completely warped the way the Fire Emblem fanbase acted and was perceived by other fanbases. Now you may be wondering why I just typed that long ass paragraph about the toxicity and fighting that occurred within the Fire Emblem fanbase as a result of Three Houses, the constant splintering and rampant tribalism and how that's relevant to the video at hand. Well, its simple. The fighting created a generation of Fire Emblem fans that ONLY liked Three Houses (and to a degree, Three Hopes). This directly resulted in a decline in sales for Engage and possibly any future FE games that don't follow the Three Houses template. Yet these fans don't really understand that the Three Houses approach could only really have been done once. The devs made it abundantly clear that the development cycle for the game was hell on earth and that when they finally did release it, they couldn't wait to just be done with it. And finally, people don't like dealing with toxic fanbases that try to rigidly enforce how people should think and act. One of the reasons we play fantasy games is so we can escape such thought policing and yet here we are with legions of people telling you how you should and should not view the game. Oh, and before I forget, English Localizations. Who the hell knows why, but they have always UNIVERSALLY BEEN AWFUL for Fire Emblem. The only one that was even slightly ok was the one for Awakening and that was because they didn't use Nintendo's in house localization team. And even that game had a bunch of censorship in it otherwise. Even dating back to the Radiance games, where key integral parts of the plot were just...left out including an entire cutscene that explained how and why Daein was inflicted by the Blood Pact. It may not sound like much but the game DOES lose fans as a result of shitty localizations. Most people may not know or even care about them but there are people who drop the series because of it.
Engage is definitely to blame at least a bit. Back in the day you could find thousands of essays about the fe3h Lords, Fodlan, Fodlan characters, and route structures. Dimitri even got a whole ass *documentary*. Every plothole and every question left unanswered in the game was a good pretext to make a video. But with Engage that niche of content doesn't exist. Everybody can tell the world is sterile, the characters lack asperities, and the plot is dull and simplistic. There's no incentive to look deeper, much less make any content for Engage aside from gameplay videos. Sure Engage arrived in a moment where Heroes was at the end of the line and maybe the switch is approaching the end of its lifespan too, but that's secondary. I suspect the staying power of a game's popularity is just heavily tied to the depth and replayability of the story (a trait 3H shared with Tellius) And Engage shows that. As for your second question, I find you quite harsh on the genealogy remake. Just because it's a remake doesn't mean it can't interest new players. I doubt new players and casual players care so long as the trailer for the game looks hype and like something they want to play. You're right on the original experience needed to overturn the fate of FE of course, but I don't see why that couldn't come from a remake. So yeah, we need three things from the next FE: depth, story replay value, originality. And then I think it could work.
12:15 I think the line is primarily very low right now because it's been a bit by now since the last big spike of 3H. You can make that chart for pretty much any game series. Spikes for every release, with slowly declinging flat-lining at the floor relatively shortly after. I think comparing how high the spike for each game is and if it has a bit of an echo phase after that is alot more telling. Also since 3H I hear alot of normies using FE as the measuring stick when talking about turn-based strategy game gameplay "It's like fire emblem". I'm not sure, but I don't think that has been the case before.
Even back in the days Fire Emblem was well known for his brutal and unforgiven difficulty (which is not), a bit like Dark Souls nowadays (pretty much the same). A lot of people wouldn't touch the game because of that but the title was already famous. But contrary to FS games, I don't think a turn based strategy game can become mainstream.
I started with Awakening on my friends 3DS whom I was borrowing for a week and after finishing Mario 3D Land I tried awakening, the character selection was crude but what won my 10 year old heart was the adorable pixel art for the classes moving about, even depicting the color and style changes in hair for the avatar. Basically I think a new fire emblem game to sell well will have to capture the players hearts with a unique style and not just 3D anime game n.2841
I think we need a Fire Emblem with an actually engaging story and well written characters like we had back in the Sacred Stones and Lyn/Hector/Eliwood era. If we had an engaging story that wasn't pure cringe, I think popularity would spike again.
There's video I found asking is Fire Emblem too main stream ruclips.net/video/AOglEDMI0xI/видео.html Since Fire Emblem wasn't very popular in the past and Awakening saved the series. It made me worried that Intelligent Systems will make the gameplay and story too beginner friendly, in order to appeal to a wider audience??? Engage was my fears come to life😦😦😦😦.
That era almost literally killed the franchise, while sure as heck wouldn't call a journey to see grandpa and boy asking around if anyone has seen his dad engaging story wise...
That era was the beginning of the franchise in the West. We didn't even know about the series en mass back then. Awakening was when the vast majority learned of the series. Had they heard of the older games earlier I think it would have made a massive difference.@@V-Jes
Unsure if we can really say it's a decline so much as a return to form after the explosion outlier that was Three Houses? People that don't like Fire Emblem ADORE that game, and when the next entry in the franchise really wasn't all that much like the prior one that introduced them to the series and was the heavily character-driven narrative that it was, they bounced off. Engage is far from a perfect game, hell I'll even buckle down and say the story is outright bad. But the gameplay is pretty decently regarded by older fans from what I'd safely say (dlc aside!) But the 'New' audience was in it for the story and characters, rather than the gameplay itself. So we've hit the issue where they wanted a more VN style of game than what we've had in the past, and the lack of it being what the new mainstream audience wanted has hit the series in the ass with Engage. Time will tell how this is gonna develop for further entries as we go of course. But I'd say maybe we'll just see a bit of a slow decline to a Pre Three Houses tier of popularity. Not exactly niche anymore, but not a mega-hit.
While this is totally a fair assessment, I think it’s also a bit sweeping and dismissive of 3H fans’ expectations. I can only speak for myself but I know lots of people feel the same-Engage’s gameplay wasn’t very captivating to me even standing alone from its story. 3H gameplay felt more grounded in its strategies with more roadblocks to work around and different options and paths to choose from, with both good and bad choices to be made for your units blended with their strengths and weaknesses. The mechanics offered to me felt more rewarding and strategic to me. And of course, where the game necessitates the blending of story and gameplay, in supports, things like personal abilities and battle dialogue that characterize your units as well as the purposes of the hub worlds, 3H blows Engage out of the water in those places due to its loveable cast that guides you through the gameplay. Basically all that is to say that I think a lot of people, myself certainly included, care about both gameplay and story, and because of that just genuinely preferred 3H’s gameplay.
@@EXchoco LMAO TH having a logeable cast is nice joke but thinking TH has even decent gameplay is laughable TH is the worst designed FE and a complete mess of incoherent game design, it’s closer design wise to a rom hackers first try than an actual official game
@@thomasquesada7248 Considering it’s one of the best selling/regarded games on the switch, I’d say it’s safe to say most people disagree. It’s fine if you think that though, all subjective
@@EXchoco Careful, Thomas is always making people feel like shit, so just get your point across. I do agree that Three Houses has its fair share of flaws and positives but calling it an outlier is not the truth as each game has changed the formula of the game before it. Calling Engage a "return" is completely wrong as the only return to form is just to play fire emblem one and remake that game.
I believe one of the biggest things that hurt Engage was the poor first impressions it garnered during its reveal. Many people often struggle with changing a first impression because it is the first thing our minds latch onto when we hear about something. While some people slowly began to love Engage for its gameplay, some people like me could not stand some of the writing choices in Engage from the way the characters were portrayed to how the plot developed in the main story. Fire emblem has always had both mature and silly scenes that meld together to create a great experience along with it gameplay. Engage however, completely tried to make the story serious without having proper buildup to many of their important scene and the characters often disregarded the story to make a quick joke in many of their supports. These symptoms reminded people of Fates, which made Engage rather divisive in the community
*I would strongly disagree:* Fire emblem in the GBA days may not have had the strongest writing, but it was a setting that took itself seriously with maybe 1 or two fun / silly characters thrown in. Though you only saw that side if you did the supports, otherwise the silly aspects were easy to miss. So it was a 98% serious game with its 2% light hearted supports. Bring the DS days into the mix and the stories were mixed, but the "silly" aspects of characters were no longer just in their supports. It became the entire defining characteristics of the one or two goofy characters. We had gotten to more or less an 90 to 80% serious setting with the 10 to 20% being silly characters or archetypes. Now, we just get generic anime tropes for characters with only. Fe3H for what it tried to do to stay serious in its world building still had over 70% of the characters have silly supports or light hearted supports that had nothing to do with the plot. Engage (in my opinion) took this much further where 90% of the game was just silly nonsense barely dragged along by a generic anime story. I fear for the next FE game, and hope it's give to someone other than IS to make. Nintendo nor IS respects the franchise.
@techpriest6962 given how complete bullshit your "engage's weapon break turns it into an action game" arguments, your "x does not respect the franchise" ring hollow. I am still awaiting a response explaining how weapon break turned it into an action game.
I think heroes is as popular as ever. But Engage itself was just not popular. People not liked the desings and less people were interested to watch it. Also people thought it is a heroes spin off. I think if FE4 remake comes or something big and new with better designs it will climb again
I'd say it's too early to jump the gun on this one. Based on the trends with this graph, it only takes one good game with enough staying power to generate long-term intrigue around the series. There's always dips in between games. Engage just happened to lose its mass appeal much earlier than its predecessors. I'd be more concerned for the series if we get another mainline game or two that performed similarly to Engage and they fizzle out too fast as well. As it stands now, I think we're fine. It can still bounce back with the next one if they play their cards right. Despite Engage's fate, many franchises would LOVE to be in Fire Emblem's place right now. Try being a Mega Man fan/content creator right now... My Mega Man channel's larger than this FE one I have, but I still see faster growth on this one compared to Mega content. People are still interested in FE content today. New games simply make it a lot easier to get views. But at the end, if a video's reeeeally good, it'll do decently regardless, I think. We'll be okay, Mangs!
I feel like if Fire Emblem needs to bounce back, Koei Tecmo should buy Intelligent Systems. They managed to make Theee Houses a really compelling game, even 5 years later. And say what you will about the first Warriors game, I prefer Xander there than in Fates.
The thing with a lot of games is that more gameplay focused ones like Engage that don't have a great story need something else to keep it a float. Take pokemon for example, ignoring the massive amount of different things going into it such as the anime, tcg, etc. the pokemon games have pretty dogshit stories with no depth that have been recycled for years but they have good gameplay that is kept constantly relevant because of the competitive scene and the massive romhacking scene. While Fe does have some good romhacks (Shout out to Andaron Saga for being amazing) if the base francise itself isn't very popular then this isn't going to keep it above water. Another example would be the Dark Souls games, they are gameplay focused games that basically tell you very little of the story and leave it to you to go piece together the breadcrumbs which causes a lot of engagement for lore videos. There's also the multiplayer aspect that can be made exciting through trolling videos or goofy builds and stuff. However for FE there's no real interest in FE multiplayer because there's nothing really interesting to do with it. For engage, I imagine people watched a lot of cool videos of people making wacky builds with the rings and once they had their fill there was nothing to keep them around. Let's look at 3h and fates now, both of those games have route splits and in fates case those route splits were paid. I bet a lot of casual fans played 1 route to completion and then decided to look up videos of their favorite FEtuber in order to see the rest of the content, thereby generating a big spike in activity. I think an FE4 remake would do similarly to Engage, a decent spike of interest with a quick drop off. Realistically Fire emblem just doesn't have massive appeal because there's so little to hold your interest long term, even if you love playing the game over and over you probably aren't watching playthroughs of it over and over because they're mostly gonna look the same. I imagine you're one of the only actually popular FE creators because A. Your entertaining where most of the others are not and B. You do wacky(and dumb) shit in your playthroughs that can break up the samey feel of watching multiple playthroughs of the same game.
My guess would be that since Nintendo now knows the potential of Fire Emblem to fly off the shelves, they'll keep making games for a good while. I feel that it's unlikely for it to ever really go away, but they definitely have some reinventing to do during these drought periods.
i loved Fates Games and Three House game because they were so cool to play it but sadly i wanted to play mystery of the emblem and i hope they’ll make a remastered of it 👍. About the Data of Popularity i would say Awakening was the big splash the Fire emblem série needed for both intelligent system and the fan to increase the moral and popularity of a dark age of Fire Emblem because Awakening was really cool to play it despite a few problems ❤. i hope you will recovered soon Mangs and thank for making videos despite being sick 🤒 😢
I don't think it's declining it's just that Engage was hit and miss with people story wise, so people who came for that were disappointed after what Echoes and Three Houses/Three Hopes brought.
No games for 3 years and then a shit entry is what killed the popularity. I don't care personaly, I was there when we had forums with the same 200 people and I will stay no matter what happens.
By shit entry you mean the way The game was presented before launch? The story îs pretty bad but The gameplay is way better than three houses. But of course great gameplay can't keep discussions about the game for a very long time, The game does need an ok story at least and some story pieces to keep the game relevant, which three houses hits does better with 3 different paths and and lords and conflicted choices and characters that led to The infamous thre houses discourse, for better or worse.
Honestly people really enjoy npc interactions so it really does come down to world building and a good script. Other than that fire eblem gameplay is great formula they just don't need to go too crazy but can introduce new weapons and units just be careful that they balanced or just op in one aspect instead of overall
I'm still hoping for awakening re-release on a modern console or a remake. I'm interested in that metal slug tactics game that was announced a while back but haven't heard anything in a while.
(I mean, when Engage leaks came out people thought it was a chinese fake knock-off, don't help much.) PS : (It ended up being an official chinese fake knock-off...)
I actually think Fire Emblem being as it is nowadays is fine, is not the clusterfuck it was then Fates released and the casuals tend to avoid the elitists because they think they are toxic or whatever
People have speculated about the switch being at the end of its lifecycle for quite some time now and the discussion really picked up this year. The series probably isn't going to be resuscitated past 3H levels until the NX2 is announced imo
NX2 will probably have support of Switch games, even if it'll be digital only. So I assume they just sitting on a ready Geneaology remake to anounce it a statr game for a new console and at the same time collecting some money from Switch owners
If it will have BC, I can easily see they doing cross gen release in 2024-2025. If Switch 2 is to be released in 2024, offcourse. Next one will be only on the new system, switch will past his prime by this point.
i doubt IS would make the same mistake as with Echoes. Releasing on a declining console is not the best idea. backward comp or not. i expect the next FE on Switch 2
I dont think FE is getting anything new switch related period whether or not it does better than Engage. I think Mario Wonder and peach will be the last new noteworthy games that will be released on the system. The hardware is just too behind for devs to work with and they know that. Fun fact: Xenoblade 3, at all times, uses at least 90% of the switchs CPU. Also worth mentioning that TOTK was 70$ because the only way to run it was using a new type of SD card lol. I see this is a good thing though, it means our FE4 remake can be top notch
@@-lord1754 dunno, with current state of console gaming Nintendo, imho, won't dare to launch not backwards compatible console. Besides, according to rumors, they still collaborating with NVidea, so there is no reason hardware should be different. And because remake is on hold for years already, I see release as BotW case. It will be on Switch, but on Switch 2 it just runs smoother.
I find interesting how a lot of the popularity boosts came from Smash Bros and FE Heroes instead of the main series. I think strategy games are a niche market anyway so I wouldn't be worried for the series, and the fact that sales are still good is more than enough to keep the series alive.
I don't think you can call fire emblem niche when it sells 4 million copies. 4 million puts its sales in the top zero point five percent of sales. Calling fire emblem niche is like calling an NBA player bad at basketball
@therealjaystone2344 It has 8 reps in smash It has biannual releases Sells over a million copies for the last decade And the best game sold in the top 0.5 percent In what metric conceivable metric is it small? Not selling 10 million is us arguing about if something is niche for being in the top 0.1 or 0.5 percent. At the point it's just a subjective argument.
I think Smash Bros also has a HUGE part to play with this, as it did back in the early 2000’s with Melee being one of the main reasons FE7 (GBA) was released in the West. Seems the two series are in tied together in the west
There are a few things that bother me about this “analysis”. First of, from a statistical and scientific point of view, there are not enough evidence in order to support the claim that FE’s popularity is declining. The video only take factors about RUclips searches but it doesn’t mention sales, number of videos made, online and offline discussion etc, so the number of evidences is bit too low. The other thing is that you cannot really speak of a downfall trend with only one game after 3H, it should remain like this for at least 2/3 games in order to actually observe a trend. Especially when there are so many cases of a game selling badly, but the next selling much better. A very easy example is Pokémon Black and White, the games were a flop compared to others in the series, but after that it’s a continuous up going trend and Pokémon is still the biggest franchise in the world. Another thing to consider is the fact that for the most part, strategy RPGs are a niche, and 3H is more the exception than the norm and it sold that well because most people were interested in other aspects aside the chapter gameplay (I mean the actual maps where you fight). Plus the marketing team did a much better job marketing 3H both before and after the game launched, unlike for Engage whose marketing sucked. Also I think attributing the cause of the “downfall” to Engage seems kind of unfair, because it’s more 3H’s huge success that led to it. I mean 3H sold so much more compared to any other title even Fates and people talk about 3H so much more and is generally the most popular FE game even outside the FE community. And most of the time, when something blow up this much, expectations get way too high and are almost never met by the next instalment leading to a massive lost in popularity. An example that comes to mind is with a K-pop group, ITZY. They released Wannabe, their most successful track which led the girls becoming mainstream and of the most popular group of the 4th generation in K-pop at the time, but the tracks afterwards did not perform even remotely that high. In conclusion I think that with Engage we simply went back to Awakening/Fates era, where the serie is famous and known and people are interested to whatever will come out, but is not mainstream or as popular as it was with 3H. Plus I agree that a FE4 remake won’t bring a huge spike in popularity, because at the of the day it still is just a FE game with a good story, so a niche game. In order to regain the popularity of 3H the serie needs a title like 3H so innovating the gameplay with mechanics like the monastery with its teaching sessions, some kind of emphasis on the story Visual Novel/Persona style et similia
Possibly a hot take here before I even watch the video but as long as a series I like has gotten a handful of official titles and fan games I couldn't care less if said series dies. There's already far more games available than I'll ever play in my lifetime so a series ending due to low sales is not really a worry of mine. I started playing a Pokemon fan game a few years back but the save file got corrupted. Because there's so many good games out I've never gotten around to trying it again. I even just started Sonic Frontiers today and those first few hours felt very addicting. Edit for post video watch: Ultimately I think we'll be okay. Look at Metroid. It was in the pits for years and then Dread released. An actual release for a game that, for a few years at least I believe, fans weren't even sure was real. It went on to become the best selling game in the series, at least over 3 million sales. If Metroid can make a comeback after the disaster that was Other M, so can Fire Emblem.
Somewhat late to the party, but whatever. Of course, searchtraffic and sales are one thing, but for me as a fan Fire Emblem has been dead for a really long time now. As many in the west, my first contact with FE was of course 7, and what got me there were Marth and Roy in SSBM back in the day, and I fell totally in love with the gameboy titles in particular. But for me, the titles afterwards didn't hold up. I hated 9 and 10, 11 was okay, but I already played FE3 by that point with crappy translations, and ngl, I enjoyed some things 3 had to offer like dismounting. Awakening was the first acutally good game in a long while, and is one of the few I still would play from the newer generation. I passed on Shadows of Valencia, but since I never played Gaiden I might play it at some point. But then there was Heroes, which renewed my interest in the series, primarily because I got to know new units like Ayra. And guess what, once after playing 4 and 5, I couldn't really even look at the most modern ones. Three Houses in particular, which I even preordered and everything, turned out to be the FE game I hated the most, giving up on new FEs, especially if the new main character is supposed to be a shitty pepsi advertisement. My main interest in FE today is 3-8 and Awakening, as well as GBA romhacks of FE. It might be because it was my first contact, but nothing for me screams FE like the romhacks do, and that much is sure, all those fans that pour their sweat and love into their romhacks are more invested in the series than IS is right now. I'd rather play the fangames.
At first, we could say Fire Emblem Engage is the lead cause for decline, which in few cases is true, but I want to pinpoint three small, and yet quite crucial details. First, the Fire Emblem community is deceptively small compared to other big Nintendo franchises and has quite the uphill battle to keep its community engaged with the series. There's no high-level content to grind through, and there's no competitive side to the series either (I'm sorry, but I'm not counting Fire Emblem Heroes into this), so once you finish your playthrough of any Fire Emblem game, it's usually over for most people. Sure, you could say games like 3 Houses have replay value through its new game plus mode, and multiple routes, but that is still finite content. This leads me to my second point, the community itself. We can bash at each other on how Fire Emblem Heroes players are nothing more than gacha addicts or the only thing 3 Houses players do is talk about how Edelgard did nothing wrong, but these kinds of people are the ones who keep the franchise alive. I only advocate that kind of discourse, or at least those kinds that are in some form of moderation, because they are passionate. And passion leads to ROM hacks, fanfictions (I'm one of those myself), and funny haha memes about the egg being bald. The only thing that they could do better is easing new players in because the elitism has always been somewhat damaging. And third, Fire Emblem has niche and complex gameplay. Trying to convince anyone to play Fire Emblem who has never heard of the series is extremely difficult, or at least for me. We know it as anime chess. It's the best way to describe Fire Emblem, and it always will be, but it has so much more nuance than that. You have RPG mechanics, core systems that get more difficult to understand as the series goes on, and the main gimmicks of each main title. It's just too much information for new people to grasp. So, with that in mind, what do I think it would take for Fire Emblem to be popular again? Or at least not live under the shadows of more successful IPs? A soft reboot. Call it just Fire Emblem, and only keep the core gameplay while attaching a great story to fuel that discourse. Also, better advertisement wouldn't hurt either. Btw, get better soon, Mangs. That cold doesn't sound pretty at all.
Three things: 1. As a veteran fan who has played most of the games in the series, Engage looked like a spinoff to me. Given that, the fact that it managed to generate that much popularity in the series is a very good thing. If it was more widely seen as a mainline game, that could've made the next golden age. 2. This might seem like preaching doom but the switch itself is probably past its peak in its long lifespan as well. Most notable franchises have already released 2 mainline games already. You can just feel that the hype for Nintendo directs and (And gaming as a whole to an extent) have completely disappated, especially since E3 was repeatedly cancelled. There is always a slump of almost every franchise at the end of the old console's lifespan. 3. To answer your other question, I think Jugral remakes could bring about the next youtube golden age for Fire Emblem. This game is clearly beloved by most FEtubers that I know so their content on this game would be interesting. Indeed, much of the charm of these FEtubers is their content on the older games, games that people who are really interested in the franchise will try. Personally, the unique design features of FE4-6 are what I liked most about Fire Emblem (Big maps, world building, multiple objectives, many unequal characters etc.). For more casual players, it could very well have the same effect as a "robust new mainline game with a good story." I doubt even most FE fans who call themselves veterans have played the games. It's down there with Gaiden in terms of obscurity. It has most of the superficial aspects that made Fates so successful such as great music, great character designs, and a decent premise. The premise of Fates was just so perfect I have to admit. Even the game that generated the most popular for the series was insanly wasted potential. Genealogy can appeal to both sides of the fanbase and has stood the test of time.
I didn't get Engage either. It's just not for me. I wanted another Three Houses-styled game so it was disappointing after waiting years for a new game.
I don't think this is a problem with the Switch since many Switch games are still selling well and at the end of the GameCube's life many games at the end sold sell for a GameCube Game (look, many titles which were available on multiple platforms sold 7 to 1 in favor of the PlayStation, so if you are talking about console end of life we should talk about game sales with other GameCube games, not games in the early 2000s).
Except Genealogy is actually fun to play and the child units are something you are told about in Chapter 3 or so, unlike Fates that just bring the Babyrealm
I am someone that started at 3H, aka a noob lol. I have also played Engage and I enjoy both, just in different ways like different flavors almost. I am starting to explore older games, like Conquest, Awakening on the 3DS and Blazing Blade via NSO. I believe Sacred Stones is also slated to be on NSO in the future and I plan to experience it if it does come. I wonder if certain other things paired along with game releases also helped with generating some numbers or lowering some numbers. Like Corrin in Smash, it probably drew some people to the series that way. And lets not forget how pissed off people got with Byleth being introduced to Smash. It was almost like people who are not in FE were like okay, thats enough, i aint paying attention no more. Also world events, I wonder if some things happening around these times helped/hindered numbers. So many factors to consider when looking at data like you presented.
One factor that does come to mind is real-world events. First off, we had the COVID-19 pandemic which shut everything down and people needed something to occupy themselves while waiting for the lockdowns to end and Three Houses was made with repayablity in mind to get a whole picture of the lore and people. So people began dissecting Three Houses like crazy trying to see the whole picture that Byleth can't see due to only being one person stuck in one side of the story throughout a run. Secondly, the war in Ukraine didn't do much to relieve people's stress. Intelligence Systems had to delay the release of Advance Wars:Re-Boot Camp due to the war as a game about a war with modern weapons and gear while one was going one seemed in poor taste to people. With the war nearing its end and seeming close to Ukraine remaining independent while Russia destroys itself, a game set in a Medieval fantasy world doesn't seem like a bad idea. Now with the new war in Israel, Intelligence Systems may hold off on releasing any new games about any kind of war until it isn't being talked about by the news outlets as frequently. I saw many of those dips in the chart often coincide with events that led to people dying or getting sick/injured which makes people want any and all information on that to make sure it won't interfere with or put their lives in danger.
Wasnt 3 houses like the most sold FE game ? And engage wasnt as popular but still sold a lot ? Like I feel that if the sales are good I belive the series is doing good overall no?
The thing is it that it only sold well from returnees of Three Houses and once the lack of story became word of mouth, Engage's sales fell off a cliff beginning in March 2023
@@PeruvianPotatoYou are not wrong because first impressions and world of mouth can have a heavy affect on the longevity of a game. Engage had a lots of struggles in story and character writing which caused people to be afraid of recommending the game to others
I can say that while my love for Fire Emblem has not decreased, I've got some severe franchise fatigue right now. I didn't even finish Engage because I've just had enough for a while.
There's video I found asking is Fire Emblem too main stream ruclips.net/video/AOglEDMI0xI/видео.html Since Fire Emblem wasn't very popular in the past and Awakening saved the series. It made me worried that Intelligent Systems will make the gameplay and story too beginner friendly, in order to appeal to a wider audience??? Engage was my fears come to life😦😦😦😦.
Wish I had gotten into this series sooner. I only just tried it in May this year through the Switch's GBA virtual console and got addicted for nearly 3 months. Then I bought Engage and had a good time with it. I've played through the FE on the virtual console more than 5 times already and played through Engage twice. Definitely feel like I deprived myself of some good games lol
I think a good way to bring back a 3rd spike to the fire emblem franchise. Would have to be a well done new proper mainline game that has a good narrative and a proper spread out tutorial explanation for any and all mechanics implemented into the game. On top of releasing a reveal trailer for an Fe4 remake, an Fe9 and 10 remake, or even brief trailers for remakes of genealogy and the tellius games being in development. This way it will build up the hype for both new and long time fans to be given the chance to play an updated Version of older titles. While having a game to hold them over until said remakes are released. Not to mention if they pulled a trick in three houses book. For the trailers making everything vague for even theorists to try and decipher the plot would probably be a good tactic.
There are too many factors to really be able to pinpoint a specific reason but my FE experience was that I discovered FE with Smash Brawl and I started with the GBA titles. Awakening was my first "new" FE game that I played and I played it a lot. I also remember Fates having a lot of expectations, speculations and controversies (love potion, story, mechanics etc) before the game even came out (back when it was called Fire Emblem IF). Heroes defo brought FE into the spotlight as most of the early characters were from Awakening, Fates or the GBA era which drew in a lot of ppl and the popularity was also likely tied to guides on how to play the game and how to beat the maps with free characters (and characters spotlight videos like Mangs'). For SoV I do remember many FE tubers being hyped but most of the newer fans never played Gaiden so they didn't know what to expect but the game was well made and enjoyable. 3 houses was another big moment where ppl were hyped when the game came out and when videos about different secrets of the game were posted. I had more or less dropped the franchise when engage came out. Now I'm playing FE6 Project Ember bc I love FE6 but I don't really feel the need to replay any other FE or even to finish all routes on 3H. I'd say the gameplay being the same more or less with each entry, means that the story and the rest of the game must be top notch to even catch my attention. Ik it sounds petty but that's how I feel.
So long as there's people that played Fire Emblem and want more of it, it can lose all interest for all I care. There will be always be ROM hacks, fan games, games inspired by, etc. Maybe no one wants to care about Fire Emblem enough to find these possibilities, and that's none of my concern.
From what I've seen, kind of. The biggest spikes on Smash coincided with the addition of characters like Sepheroth from FF7, Steve from Minecraft, Byleth, and Sora from Kingdom Hearts. Their announcement trailers broke the internet as all but Byleth were characters that people wanted in Super Smash Bros for a long time, Sora's announcement actually producing the biggest spike in data for Smash.
I think Engage's problems were engage itself. Not even the story or anything even the decision to have Marth and other lords comeback in the way they did was a turn off to some. Plus emblems also added more charcters when the roster is already large so it's tough to put time in development of the engage exclusives while balancing the emblems representatives so both groups dont get too overshadowed. The art style was also pretty divisive especially Alear's design and hair. Also reclassing being bound to emblems makes it extremely hard to actually use the feature in cool ways considering the plot twist where you lose all the emblems.
You are allowed to laugh at my opinion: Give me a golden route 3H game, where I can recruit and max out literally everyone if I choose to, and I think it would at least usher in a lot of interest despite the lack of replayable value.
*What ACTUALLY went wrong with Engage?* *The honest truth is pretty ugly.* The Short Version: Nintendo put a New developer as the lead for the game who had no experience. A basic "Yes Man" who likes action games and not turn based tactics games, and was heavily influenced by Nintendo wanting to aim for a New Younger Audience which meant dumbing down the game, and making it flashier. The Long Version: If you read the "Ask the Developers" interviews that were released. The guy in charge (Tsutomu Tei), had never been a director of a game at IS before, and seemingly never discusses having any previous experience working on a FE game. So while I can't say what his previous role was, if any, it doesn't seem to be significant enough to mention in his bio. I'd link the Nintendo article, but RUclips is pretty finicky with links these days. (Typing Ask the Developer Vol. 8, Fire Emblem Engage Part 1, 2, and 3 should get you too it) If anything, just someone picked by Nintendo to lead the development. Listening to the other two employees of Nintendo that were in the interview. Tei and the two mention wanting to "appeal to a broader audience" and saying that RPG mechanics such as the Awakening / Fates marriage system took too long to play out in the game. According to them it "wan't fun" so they developed the Emblem Ring idea instead. With the goal of intruding the "fun elements" early on. I'll quote the Nintendo stooge "Higuchi: We wanted to introduce this fun element for players as early as possible. I felt that the fun of tactical RPG games wasn't as intuitive or immediate as that of action games." So basically you had Nintendo heavily influencing the game with employees who were more interested and familiar with Action games than tactics RPGs. Then from the games IS developer, "Tei: People often say that turn-based tactical RPGs seem difficult or too complicated... In fact, I’m not very good at them myself." Take of that what you will, I take it as even the new IS dev wasn't interested in making a Tactics game. Just taking orders and advice from his Nintendo handlers. "Tei: We had several candidates. We were looking for an artist whose design style would appeal to a broad audience - including younger players - as well as the ability to portray a variety of characters. Among the candidates, Mika Pikazo-san's drawings were colorful, vivid, and really popped! They were a perfect fit for the flashy direction we wanted for this title." So from that we can see the "broader audience" meant appeal to children. In spite of marketing toward long time fans, which makes no sense since new players and young players would not get any of the references. So basically they tried to do both and focused on the younger new audience by lying to the older one. As it would seem, the games development and design was all over the place. Trying to create a game for a new younger audience, while throwing a bone to the old players to make it seem like they were not being abandoned when they were. As for another section about their Artist choice that influenced the game in a bad way. "Tei: Well, I thought it'd be better to be upfront about the request. That said, there was one concern she had. Since she usually draws young characters, she was concerned about her confidence level in some of the character design." So to answer why all the characters were loli or V-tuber style. It's because that's the only style the artist knew, and he went with it. Also, it also turns put it was her idea to make toothpaste-chans hair color red and blue. As before Tei just went with whatever he was told, advised, or requested. From everything I have read, Tei should never be in charge of any product. Unless he was specifically chosen because he just follows orders and has no skill as a leader or director. "Tei: As I mentioned at the beginning, I'm not very good at strategy games myself, so during development, I hoped to create a game that even those like me would want to try out or find interesting."
FE falling off is at the feet of Nintendo and its more modern (EA of the East) Anti-Consumer business practices. Part of which can be understood by reading the above.
This is literally objectively wrong. Tsutomu Tei has been working at IS since 2006 and his first FE was Radiant Dawn... where he designed the maps which is a really well liked part of the game. He hadn't directed before and maybe hes not fit to be one but claiming hes a yes man who hates strategy rpgs is actual insanity. Saying hes not good at them=/=he doesnt like them what a dumb conclusion. I love tons of games but arent good at them.
I don't think Nintendo consoles is the right market for strategy games. It could be more popular on PC. Of course, it would depend on what exactly Nintendo does as a publisher, how much they pay for exclusivity.
Fire Emblem will be fine when the Genealogy Remake is announced. The popularity decline is mostly due to the Switch 1 dying off. Once the Genealogy remake comes out there will be a renewed interest in the series and then Nintendo will announce a new FE entry on the Switch 2 in the following year that will catapult the series to unseen popularity. The Switch 2 will lift all of Nintendo’s IPs to unfathomable success.
I got into the series and your channel with 3H. I got engage on release but dropped it shortly after and have only recently picked it up again. I know you have said on your channel before that you can always skip a bad story as long as their is good gameplay, but for me I need that story and characters to want to see things to the end. I’m learning to enjoy engage for what it is as a series celebration game with good gameplay and maps. I am also looking forward to a new game on a new console with hopefully a new engine. Imagine a FE game with a serious story and ps4 level graphics.
I think FE3H, like Awakening and Fates, really brought FE to the forefront, and of course, there's FEH, which has been running since I was in middle school. I don't think Engage really appealed to the new crowd FE3H + FEH drew in, which may be a factor. But what I will say, is that something that has potential is a remake of FE6, or even FE4.
I’m still salty New Mystery never got localized as a big appreciator of Shadow Dragon, it also ruins the consecutive localization streak that Nintendo and Intelligent Systems had going and I think it did the whole Avatar thing decent, I don’t mind Kris fans, they’re not as annoying and obnoxious as Robin, Corrin, Byleth and Alear fans. Heck even Mark in FE7 is great because aside from Lyn, every character doesn’t always drool over him and worships him and he doesn’t hog all the attention of the Plot.
Yeah the biggest problem right now engage was a let down to the more casual fan base. Personally think old game can capture both just yet can’t neglect support’s like echoes did. Give people a lot options there and create a interesting world that can get people wanting to know more.
3 Houses benefited from the pandemic, I imagine. A giant 300-hour game with lots of characters and story content was perfectly suited to lockdown life, I can speak from experience. I also think the Switch as a whole is trailing in popularity. The bigger consoles are generating more interest than any Nintendo game of the last couple years not named Zelda. We saw it at the end of the Wii U/3DS era as well.
To add on, I think pandemic worsened Engage because it probably threw them for a loop and caused a lot of internal problems that we wont see now. Mario Wonder is probably the last big nintendo release that the switch will see period.
![Lethal Company Music Video 🎵 "Follow The Orders" [VERSION A]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QeooZB4Z7RA/mqdefault.jpg)
If you look at the three most popular games, Fates and 3 Houses had early route splits and a lot of things to play and to discuss story-wise and lore-wise. And then FEH exists. I think it suggests that most people who are into Fire Emblem prefer not to watch others play it, but rather play it themselves. Thus, story and unit viability/builds become more searched than gameplay unless the game has an insane amount of replayability.
Fate makes you pay for other routes and TH has the worst route split in the series
Both games decentivise you to play another route in some way which leads to RUclips views
Thanks for saying that, Thomas. I changed my post a bit, because that's what I was trying to get at, but I just never said it.
@@NarrowSpark96 honestly in terms of story I think fire emblem fates the worst one but thats just me. but I am also a bit worried about fe heroes how long will it last but hmmm I mean fire emblem heroes has good drop rates, any unit can be good if done right, and etc. but even still I dont know if it can last 1-2 years or ... hmmm
@@ZX-Gear that also reminds me what I am also worry about no home either... so u cant really trade pokemon... so I dont know whats the future of pokemon...
@@ZX-Gear but yea mate lots of things are changing...
I think it was less Cindered Shadows that caused the post 3H spike and more Byleths release in Smash Bros that created the spike. I remember the controversy was everywhere.
Hoes truly were mad
Diamond Hoes Mad
Lol I remember that
it’s what got me to buy three houses and now i’ve played damn near every game bar the tellius games
Yup, without a new a smash to piggyback off of, Fire Emblem falls.
I get that you as a youtuber have to care about it, because views are the lifeblood of your channel, but as a fan (of any given series really) I couldn't care less. Beyond selling enough to greenlight future titles, massive mainstream popularity has never been a good thing for any series I like.
Based
Thank you!
Ngl thats a bitch mentality
@@ZX-GearIndeed! Never forget the snakes that are ever so present within the older members.
@ZX-Gear I always wonder how many came for him BECAUSE he did nothing wrong. Master-Knight for example.
Interesting video, granted I've only been making fire emblem "content" since march 2021 but I can definitely see a correlation with the graph you showed here. Particularly videos about engage are just not that appealing and have a lower click through rate than others. Now of course that could just be due to the interests of people that like my "content" however as I don't have the largest sample size. I think you got it right, fe4 remake won't spark a large audience of interest and instead it'll require a banger of a mainline title that has a broad range of appeal. Engages biggest flaw is putting all its eggs into appealing to gameplay focused players which simply isn't the majority of the fire emblem audience anymore.
After playing engaged….I appreciate 3 houses more
I think one of the main reasons for 3H’s popularity is that they actually marketed it well, not to mention it was also on one of the most successful consoles. A similar situation can be seen with Pikmin 4, as it sold more than all previous games combined upon release and they marketed it really well and it was on a successful console. I prefer the more classic style, like the GBA and Tellius games, with the Tellius games being my personal favorites. While I don’t think a remake of PoR would cause a great popularity spike, it would be great to have and with Ike’s popularity, at least partly due to Smash Bros., I think it would probably at least sell well. Also, I think part of the popularity spike in 2008 was due to Smash Bros. Brawl and it’s Subspace Emissary.
It’s also crazy how Roy has been in Smash for over 2 decades yet they still refuse to localize his game, maybe they were banking on him being in Engage along with the other 7 who are in Smash? But not even those 8 reps from Smash could save Engage.
Engage isnt as popular
@@chargemankenia Maybe, but there a lot of fans of it. Many of them prefer game play over story.
@@johnathanedwards9054 As long as those of us who prefer both story and gameplay are respected as well then that's fine.
Marketing can only do so much. Pikmin 4 succeeded not just because of marketing, it was a truly great game that appealed to a lot of people.
Besides, Three Houses had a marketing drought for most of its release, only getting consistent information very close to its release. I think Three Houses succeeded because lots of people like the game and think it's amazing.
Engage didn't tickle enough people's fancy to keep the popularity going. If anything it disappointed too many and hopefully it didn't cause a lasting effect. Word of mouth is very important, and if you look at the temperature of the room with Engage, word of mouth was bad, regardless of the few outliers trying to say "story / writing dont matter".
It's a bit sad that they did Engage dirty. It was easily the most fun Fire Emblem gameplay in a long time, but the story and the way DLC was implemented were just sooooooo bad.
I played it and having played most fe games. Engage I couldn't get into. The characters all looked the same, not much variety. I had little to no interest in the characters and story wasn't very good.
First FE game I couldn't finish. 😅
In my opinion, fire emblem needs to break out of the existing scenarios it’s always been in. It’s similar to what has been and is happening to Pokémon, where rehashing the same premise but “with a twist!” Is causing new games like sword and shield or scarlet and violet to not be as legendary as the era of gen 3, 4, 5 and stuff for long standing fans.
There needs to be something wild to shake up the premise of fire emblem. Not to lose its identity for the sake of popularity but to take a risk and try something bold. Every game’s plot boils down to man vs gods/dragons if we think about it. Not that that’s a bad thing but when you do it upwards of 15+ times it gets predictable. I remember during awakening’s development they even flirted with the idea of fire emblem on Mars. But that might actually be a cool idea. Perhaps fire emblem but in the modern day, or a futuristic sci fi fire emblem.
The identity of fire emblem to me at least is the gameplay. It doesn’t matter where the setting takes place as long as we have stuff like weapon triangle, weapon durability, supports, growth rates, etc. so if they were to release like a cyberpunk fire emblem who knows? It might actually do fantastic if done correctly. Maybe it’s because of how successful awakening and fates were that they felt like they had to just keep doing the same thing. But I’m low key getting bored of every story being “destroy the evil dragon/god/emperor”. Even if every game does it differently it’s still just rehashing the same premise.
I think the answer is……kinda? I think it has to do with the fact that Engage was a very overall forgettable story with most of the cast being very 1 dimensional, it had great gameplay but gameplay is not something that drives conversation as much as story and characters. It should be noted that I do not think fire emblems OVERALL popularity is diminishing I just think the world of engage did little to retain player attention past the credits, if there was FE announcement that was I do think interest would return
Mangs, you didn't mention the Smash games, where most of the units are sword locked and there's some cameos of characters of the mainline FE games
Maybe Fire Emblem (or really, any RPG series) should've had less swordlocked MCs if they wanted less swordies in Smash.
For me, Engage was a massive letdown. I can’t imagine being a new fan who had played three houses and expecting something akin to that experience and getting Engage. It was kind of jarring how awful the writing was and the lack of depth in the characters in a way that I have never seen in a Fire Emblem game. It really felt like it was catering to a different audience (ones who play gacha games incessantly and don’t wear deodorant), despite being a fan service anniversary title. Gameplay was good, yes, but I expect more from Intelligent Systems. They have shown how truly remarkable they can make a game, especially ones with lasting impressions that have real things to say and truly deep and profound stories to tell. Even when the story is divisive and a little rushed (Fates), it still tried and honestly kept me engaged. Engage, quite literally felt like a genuine chore for me to complete. I unlocked every single support, hoping that there would be some gem hidden or that it would add layers of depth to the characters. I did not find such things. After I completed about 200 hrs in the game, I set it down and will probably never pick it up again. Reallllllyyyyy praying for an FE4 remake for switch 2 or an original title. I think it could do a lot for the series. Something is assuredly in the works and close to releasing…
I think Engage suffered a lot from the unfortunate timing of its release like 4 months before Tears of the Kingdom. Fire Emblem was always going to be overshadowed by Zelda, and they knew it. That's probably why they rapid fire released all of the Engage DLC so quickly. They wanted to get it all out there before TotK was released, so that it wouldn't be overshadowed as much. But unfortunately it seems that actually made the drop off worse because once TotK was released that was all anyone talked about and there was nothing new left to draw people back to Engage.
The DLC release schedule for Three Houses was better because it was a drip feed. They didn't put everything out so quickly, so it helped buzz around 3H last a lot longer than Engage. The sad thing is TotK itself kinda ended up dropping off in popularity pretty quickly too, at least from my perspective. Like it didn't have nearly the staying power that Breath of the Wild before it had. So if they had slowed down the releases of the Engage DLC then they probably would have been able to maintain that game's popularity for longer and we wouldn't be in the drought we're in now.
All that being said I think Fire Emblem still has a bright future ahead. Even if the highs aren't as high now as they were before, FE still has a much higher profile than it did before. I used to say I was cautiously optimistic about Three Houses when it was announced, and said the same about Engage. Ended up loving both games and I truly believe they have succeeded in making Fire Emblem great again. Now if they can just find a balance between 3H and Engage in terms of gameplay and storytelling I think they will strike gold again.
While I don't think Engage killed the hype it did dampen it. A good chunk of mainline FE games tend to immerse you into the world and characters rather quickly, setting the tone for the games at an acceptable pace. Engage unquestionably has excellent gameplay with a lot of dynamism going for it. But it struggles with tone due to how it's roster of characters clash with what the conflict is trying to do. And while anecdotal, failed to invest me in anyone in the game, which is a serious problem for a tactical RPG that relies on it's story and characters. And it would appear I am far from the only one who felt that way. Entries such as the Radiant duology and Awakening were able to get me invested early on because of either their world building or characters. Perhaps FE can get another golden age if they go for a more serious and dark mainline entry, characterized in a similar way to the Judgral games. But I fear going further mainstream is a monkey's paw scenario.
This is your opinion but understand that even if it hurts, fates was the most popular along side 3H.
Fates didn't have interesting stories.
I would say both games have probably the best physical appealing design.
They probably went too much Shojo design for Engage and not kawaii enough like Fates.
Three Houses was their attempt to go for a more serious and dark mainline entry, and we see how that worked out lol. Insanely popular yes, but at what cost to the actual fanbase? If it meant the fanbase would become populated by tourists and normies who call me a bigot because I don't think Dorothea is a lesbian then was it worth it?
Yes! Please bring back Judgral! It's my favorite storyline of the Franchise
@@Aleph3575 Sorry that happened to you. I hope you can discuss the games toxicity free.
@@Aleph3575 Don't forget all the normies calling people who like Edlegard a Trump supporter or a German WW2 soldier.
May the over political era of the internet never ever come back
I dread the 2024 election
If I may, I think Three Houses's newbie boom and Engage being 3H's anthesis from a story perspective is to blame. 3H's story was very well regarded, but it was an outlier, not the norm. So when the newbies who started with 3H got Engage, they weren't that engaged with the game, causing the drop off.
You can even see this with Heroes. When 3H came out, so many banners that year were 3H banners, but Engage has only gotten two whole banners, and two more partial ones.
Not to mention how three houses is arguably the least fire emblem game at its core, for better or worse depending on who you ask. Which can attract more newcommers much easier to the game, while some fire emblem veterans might end up displeased with the lack of gameplay divided between hours upon hours of repetitive monastery sections. Guess which one draws more sells though. Engage even with its new feature ( which almost every fire emblem games presents) feels much closer to a classic fire emblem experience than three houses, which may not attract as many newcommers as three houses did.
@@mihaimercenarul7467yes exactly FE as a franchise is in a tricky spot where as a TRPG it needs to carefully balance between staying true at its core to not betray its fan and to be less of a TRPG to be more popular
@@mihaimercenarul7467 i actually wanted to play some Fire Emblem, and to pick one i asked Chat AI, which advised to play Three Houses. Man, the more i played, the more i realized it's not quite what i've seen about Fire Emblem.
They weren’t… engaged? :3
@@junkolover9518 Yes, I don't think it's a bad thing if the game plays differently from the other entries, especially for those that played three houses as their first fire emblem game. But it can be a problem for the veterans, or for those that wanted to try another fire emblem game after three houses.
Videos about story are easier to produce in mass and have a wider appeal than gameplay videos. This is especially the case when branching paths are involved where people need to understand a bigger picture.
Problem is, that also leads to a lot of confusion when people get things wrong.
Taking Fe8 for example, you need to see both routes to get the whole picture.
However, for Fe3H each route was had its own separate history that wasn't true in each route.
In CF, passed down from emperor to emperor is the story of Nemesis. A hero who was never corrupted, but rather it was the church who turned the people against the King of Liberation. As it was a battle between what kind of person (draconic or human) should rule. Thus the title, as he desired to liberate humanity just like El did in CF.
This is further confirmed by the route itself as the story of El is the exact same as Nemesis. Though she worked in the shadows where Nemesis rallied entire kingdoms to his cause by force of will or diplomacy since they followed him willingly.
In the SS route, the church defines nemesis as nothing more than a bandit turned warlord. Where instead of Nemesis crafting the weapons, and offering them to the leaders of the nations he allied with. Instead in SS, Nemesis already was allied with the elites before the massacre of the dragon people, and to gain their powers they had consumed the blood of the fallen dragons.
So in both routes you have two entirely different histories and events. Though many people accept one as true instead of realizing both are true, but only in their respective route.
I can only speak for myself and say what killed Engage for me. First of all it was the dumb af character design choices that toned down my first impression of the game. Then when it came out it just seemed like it had very uninteresting and generic story and character writing as well. Then another issue I have with Fire Emblem is how the fanbase developed and how much Nintendo is trying to appeal to that change. I'm not sorry for saying that the current fanbase has a big coomer problem and you can observe it very well by looking at the newer FEH banner releases and the newer OCs they released lately. It's easy money for Nintendo, since a mobile game isn't in need of much complex writing, but poison for the actual series and I will die on that hill.
Engage had a pretty bad timing and marketing. A lot of anticipated games came out this year like TOTK and Pikmin 4, the game released 4 months after it was announced and the DLC released 3 months later, it really felt pretty rushed.
I wish we had raw numbers instead of a percentage. But anyways, while I think views and sales are both imperfect measures of popularity, I think sales is much closer to the truth than views most of the time. The sales of Engage do have me questioning that logic, but looking at FPS franchises, it seems sales is a much better indicator of longevity than views and I see no reason FE would be different.
There isnt much content to make on fire emblem anyway as it is a singleplayer game, views arent really relevant for a game like this
Just as you said, Engage sales do not represent the game popularity on the fandom because mostly everyone is either playing the old games/3H bc Engage wasn't for them and nobody really cared after seeing how inexistent of a plot there is
As what could be considered a normie, i didnt find Engage to be that engaging. I simply didnt like it, i think the majority thinks about it the same way as i do.
I wouldn't necessarily say that Engage specifically killed the hype. I think it's more that there just isn't much to it that can maintain the hype. The story is barebones and there aren't really any standout characters, so there isn't really long-lasting content there. And while the gameplay is good, that doesn't really make for interesting RUclips content for more than a few months at most. Meanwhile all of the older games have already been talked about to death. I definitely think that if we get a game with some halfway decent writing it will bounce back to at least normal levels. I don't think this is another dark age at least.
Maybe it's because I'm getting older and always stressed out, so I can't get myself to play video games anymore 😔
Yet, there will be a game in the future that will draw you in.
Get a better job
@nykita427 trying actually
@lspuria8440 Maybe I'm in the minority but a fire emblem game that is rated M could be a nice change, less story restrictions
I play vydia because I'm stressed out. It's the only thing that calms me in a bad day that always works
I know this sounds like a basic response, but its quite clear that the story of Engage is to blame, nowadays people want a reason to play the game besides "Its really good", so much so that most games of recent have been quite lore heavy, if you look back a bit, you see that was something that were exclusive to RPG titles
Of course, there is a game here and there that jumps over that rule, but lets all face it, FE will never be that kind of game without a lore, at least not officially
Also, I know this is a hard-to-swallow pillow, but the fact that Nintendo actively dosent sues fan content shows to me how much in a hole FE is, even depiste the spikes and all
Story > gameplay has been a thing since persona 5
"Nintendo actively dosent sues fan content shows to me how much in a hole FE is, even depiste the spikes and all" what
@@-lord1754 I meant that, despite FE's spike, Nintendo didn't activated "protecc mode" against fan content
@@thebrazillianguytm2186 Most fan content for most things gets left up so what a silly comment. Theres literally a brawl fan game that backports characters from Ultimate into it and its really popular. Actually illegal and would be justified if they took it down but they dont lol. Are you gonna start claiming smash is dead?
I can tell you straight up that the fumbled execution of Engage kept me from buying or playing it... I still really love the older titles though.
DUDE! you forgot to tell the people about the ANDARON SAGA SPIKE!
the 4rd golden peak we will see when we have a proper mia armpit fire emblem :S
I will forever be grateful to Smash 4 for introducing Corrin, which led me to buying Fates and introducing me to the core series. Played Fates, bought every game on the 3DS, and haven't missed a release since.
I mean, since Fates came out, there have only been two games... three if you count Echoes I guess. I'm glad you got to play Awakening and all, but the 3DS era was pretty brutal as far as quality goes outside of Awakening. The GBA games were really a league above until 3H dropped, and then Engage came out and it was... alright.
@@TwinBladeFuryNah the gba games are also a league about 3h
The lack of smash being mentioned in the video is astonishing
Well I hope you enjoyed that double edged sword because thanks to Corrin every Smash Fan is bitter over Fire Emblem in Smash and Corrin’s inclusion is the reason Byleth wasn’t well received, doesn’t help both were DLC that you had to pay for.
@@TwinBladeFurywhy does that matter? They clearly had fun
They just have to release a live action series of FE. It worked for One Piece tho.
Shadows of Valentia is such a fantastic game. It's a shame it wasn't appreciated as much.
IS made the sore mistake of wanting to delay it´s release to add more languages into it and unfortunately a thracia moment happened
Without a doubt, imo, the absolute best looking game for the entire franchise. Wish they would have updated maps a bit as well just because of their general small and boring maps. But oh my goodness everything about this game was top tier for me.
It came out after the Switch was released, sold almost all printed copies and is of high praised. It's biggest weakness was awful sales in Japan but japan already had Gaiden and Has had a downward trend in gaming for a long time.
A shame they released it on a dying console.
@@bramt2000pretty much this.
The 3DS was in its last days, which impacted greatly the sales.
It's very noble of you not to show the peak of when Andarron Saga was released, it would make those other peaks look like a flatline. In seriousness though I feel like FE is in an identity vortex passing back and forth between classic, gameplay and story driven focused, to modern, focusing more on enamouring people with designs, social and relational investments. On one hand they want to support permadeath and on the other they give you a redo button. I feel like the divide you speak of between fans of Heroes and classic FE fans is actually pulling the franchise in 2 different directions, very similar to how it happened with Monster Hunter. Monster Hunter had a solution which is to keep the main titles focused on the core of what Monster Hunter is, while handheld and spinoff titles went more extreme with their setting, world building and gameplay, to satisfy both distinct tastes and widen the player and fanbase.
Andaron Saga peaking? Um xD
I think the reason why is because fire emblem three houses gave us basically 4 ish stories in 1 game. Which in turn made people watch allot to see all the routes and choices you could make as well as the broken combos of classes You can create. While the others are either bad remakes or just stories that aren't good enough to watch. Idk just what I think.
I think I just miss the way the older games were. The newer stuff doesn't really interest me like it used to..three houses was fun I have a lot of hours in it, but I have played anything fire emblem since that release
Same. Mostly because I just watch the stuff on RUclips to see if it's worth it or not. And so far it's not.
Exactly TH wouldn’t have made so many views if the route split wasn’t the worse in the series
@@thomasquesada7248 honestly I actually liked the split. But how they did it wasn't that great.
@@ZX-Gearcomparing 3H maddening to Engage maddening, I actually prefer 3H
Engage often times throws big groups of enemies your way, including the boss, and only counterbalances it by giving you OP rings, at which point it almost doesn't matter anymore who you give the ring to
3H on the other hand feels like every map is a puzzle, especially with later chapters that are built very defensively and hard to crack
The need to train every unit makes them feel unique, but even side characters you didn't focus on can fulfill a role if you have to field them
I don’t see this as a surprise. Fire Emblem: Engage was not good. Yeah, it had some improvements in gameplay but the story was bland, the world uninteresting, the characters forgettable and the protagonist… let’s face it, quite bad.
Gameplay wise it was probably better than Three houses because of minor fixes, but the whole ring gimmick was more of a fanservice thing allowing you to use old characters than anything really compelling.
Three houses presented us with a world of mistery and political intricacies which treated players as adults capable of understanding non-linear stories, with many fantastic concepts extrapolated in the fantasy setting. We had 3 political entitities with their own agendas, a church, an obscure and dark faction working in the background, non-aligned people and other countries related to the main continent. We also had ethical and moral concerns between commoners and nobles and what life meant to each of the characters.
You could explore the world based on the interactions you had with the characters and understand their point of view, maybe position yourself and have your own opinion on the matter.
The game just throws you in a living world and you start reading family names and all of a sudden you are fighting against people who you don’t know but are family / important for some of the students. You can dive deep in that world.
And then, when it seems the game can’t just become better, it throws you a 3 year time lapse where you can even align with the “bad guys” and have to face the fact that those who were your colleagues at some point are now your enemies and you are going to have to kill them. And we are not getting into the soundtrack or how the in-game dialogs of the characters change as the game moves forward.
You actually get to be a “game-changing” hero because your choices and the characters you bring with you actually shape the future of that world.
Fast forward to Engage, we go back to a good vs evil plot with a couple of plot-twists, characters with shitty backgrounds and too many female characters with exagerated female attributes. Don’t get me wrong, I like some fan service, but I don’t like it if it becomes more important than the plot itself.
No more political intricacies, no more ethical discussions, no more plot for grown adults. Just shonen classic tropes, a bad guy and a cast I can’t even remember the name of.
I still don’t get how some people actually defended that the new characters were as interesting as 3 houses ones. I guess they just wanted it to be true.
I would like to share my Fire Emblem journey with you.
I actually would never have given it a chance if I didn't get to like Robin as a Smash Bros 3DS character. That's what pushed me to order the game a little while after it was removed from the shelves. And what I got was a great experience, as I kept hooked on that game for as long as it took for Fates to come out. It really was fun to build my units from the ground up, down to the children, and even if the Valm part was not that interesting, unlocking supports was what kept me going. Even back then, it had a bit of replayability, as there are gender-exclusive skills you can get your Robin (which is the best avatar in the series, imo, for reasons I will state down the line).
Then came Fates, and... I was not disappointed either, mechanics-wise. It was roughly the same as Awakening, while getting a better gameplay, the story was...good. Good in the sense that I wasn't poking the holes at the story back then, and the senseless sacrifices quickly were cast aside, for I was enjoying the gameplay. The route split added replay value (yes, even Rev.), but I never got all child units even today. Maybe I was still sick of the kids in Awakening, but the notion of the Deeprealms was quite jarring to me (making 20 years pass in days? Awakening's child units at least had a VALID LORE REASON to exist), and... yeah, the game was still enjoyable and kept me hooked for the next year and a half.
A bit like you Mangs, I played Heroes and...stopped when the power-creep became too serious. The story wasn't good enough to make me care about it.
I got Shadows of Valentia and... It is still one of the best games I've played. The voice acting does a lot, but the story was amazing, especially on Alm's side of things. Celica's... much less (the Jedah shenanigans). Sadly, it's not a game with a lot of replayability, but the ride was worth it.
Three Houses. Ugh. I see the appeal, I really do, but... The Monastery. I have grown to hate it. The game is fine otherwise, but the gameplay is easy to cheese through. And the fact that the Empire route is the secret route had me suspend my disbelief a bit too hard for my own good. Fortunately, my next playthrough was Azure Moon, and Dimitri delivered.
I haven't bought Engage. Not only did I feel they relied a bit too much on nostalgia and beanking on attracting Heroes players in the main game, the next appaling thing was the avatar.
So, I've been mentionning the avatars. While I don't think they are a blight in the series, my gripe comes to the fact they try really hard to shoehorn the player into the story. Robin may have been important in the story, he is not its cornerstone - most everything happens due to Chrom's choices. The only time yours matter is at the very end. The rest of the time, it really did feel like you're just a member of the army. Why is this important?
Well, we come to Corrin. Corrin is an amnesic Mary Sue. And they are also the avatar of this game. The plot revolves around them. The amnesical bit can have very easily be done without if they didn't try to shoehorn the player into this story - Corrin would have been more interesting with more flaws and... actually, s/he just needed a credible character. It doesn't help that they are also a dragon, increasing their importance, since the Dragons in Fire Emblem are quite a big deal.
Byleth... Well, this time, they tried too hard not to give them character, but them being a taciturn person really doesn't sell the teacher bit well, nor did it make them more relatable. And then it turns out they're basically the second coming of Sothis... And again, the fact they don't remember their past does them the same disservice it did Corrin.
And in Engage, the Avatar is a divine dragon. A.K.A the closest thing FE has to gods. We sure are elevating the players to new heights at IntelligentSystems...
I wasn't going to get Engage because I was frustrated that a $30 DCL was announced before the game even came out, and some of the emblem choices I didn't like. But then I decided to get it and I'm really glad I did. The main game has an impressive amount of content, more than most other FE games, and definitely felt worth $60 to me. The emblem choices make more sense after playing the game, and the gameplay is so good, the best in the series as far as I'm concerned. I didn't like the Monastery either and am happy with the version of it in Engage (still not perfect, but an improvement for sure). Graphics are way better as well, I was so relieved to see the gorgeous, smoothly animated movies from Awakening and Fates make a return compared to the flat-looking, choppy movies of Shadows of Valentia and 3H. A lot of people may not like Engage's story, but the visuals alone really got me into it at times. The voice acting too, is quite impressive. Just like in Shadows of Valentia, casting is great, delivery is great, and it's wonderful to have hundreds of fully voiced cutscenes/support conversations.
I know financially speaking Engage can be considered a success, though there seems to be quite a bit of negativity online about it, especially compared to Three Houses. I think that kind of sucks, as I'm not a big fan of 3H and Engage is possibly my favorite overall game in the series (Fates & Shadows of Valentia too...I may be biased since I hate weapon breaking). I'm curious to see what Intelligent Systems does for the next mainline game. It seems like they have had a gameplay-first mentality lately, and that's part of the reason the story ends up lacking in some areas. I personally don't mind this if the gameplay is much better for it, but I understand it is a balancing act. I have a friend who decided he hated and never wanted to play FE Fates upon learning what happens with the children in that game. I wouldn't mind if they go back to having no self-insert character and no marriage, though they likely see that as risky.
Haven’t watched the full video yet because I’m busy, so I’ll leave my initial comment and edit it when I’m back:
Imo, it’s a mix between the discussion that a game can provide and also how appealing is to masses which make something popular, not just FE specifically and that’s why Three Houses got it’s popularity. People already knew or at least had a concept of what Fire Emblem was when it was launched, however, it’s because of it’s story and characters that people got into the game, even if it is flawed in things like the monastery or the class balance, most of the people would ignore it if they can play what they see a good story and likable or well written characters. Something that would make people say “yeah, it’s anime but the story isn’t cringe and its deep” instead of just silly anime plot.
If IS wants to appeal to the general public they need to focus on having a good/great story and that it can generate discussion. I would honestly prefer a game with good gameplay even if the story is thrash, but that isn’t the case with most people I think…
I genuinely believe that fire emblem is in the infancy of its popularity. Right now, the FE community isn't the most welcoming space for beginners.
When I first started playing FE a few off-putting things about the community included:
1. Referring to FE games by number rather than name or main character (very confusing)
2. Discussion surrounding most games are made assuming highest difficulty (discouraging to those who are still learning the game)
3. Grinding and “slow play” heavily looked down upon
4. Separation between fans of older FE games and newer FE games (this one is less apparent, but it is something I noticed)
5. Repetitive content (Unit rankings, playthroughs using the same “best characters”, etc)
I wholeheartedly believe that FE can be on the same level as Pokemon one day. We just need the overall community to be more welcoming to newcomers. Innovation in the scene is also a thing that will foster growth.
I know the numbers for FE content is discouraging to look at, but Mangs please keep doing what you are doing. You are really pushing this game forward.
That and the whole half the games not being in the west thing
While I don't expect anything to reach Pokemon popularity, I very strongly agree with points 1 and 2. I got into the series around 2015, and the numbered entry thing still confuses me. What is FE11? Possibly Shadow Dragon, but I'm not really sure.
Also, every time I watch a video about character viability or game difficulty, it's always assuming the highest difficulty, which I don't play and often isn't available out of the box. I'd be interested in watching a video about which game is the hardest on Normal without grinding because I think that's the default way to play, or how most new players would play.
NO
We don't need to just "accept" every new player that gets into the fanbase, there will be always problematic individuals
I mean, that goes without saying@@AzumarillConGafasBv
Interesting video allowing folks like me, which came late into the scene, to grab the history of RUclips’s Fire Emblem’s story. Short version of my opinion: the long time between releases, coupled with a single route game without a lot of mysteries, revealed the true size and habits of most of FE audience. The audience (like me) play the game but only stick around for mysteries and intricated analyses. Afterward we move to other games until a new release.
Regarding the video, I didn’t really pick up the metric used for popularity. I suppose it is a period number of RUclips research / views compared to the maximum number of RUclips research / views. From the outside, it might make some period worst than they are, especially with FE:Heroes taping in a different market audience.
I would believe that FE RUclips’s activity is similar to others solo playing games, as most of videos, and discussions, are made around the release of the game and stop afterward (even if they were very popular). And as such, I think the main reason why the popularity of FE is declining is the fact that few games are made. At the exception of FE:Awakening, after each release the audience dwindled to 25%, sometimes lower, until the next announcement. Furthermore, the golden era has seen 7 games in the span of 3 years, against 2 in the last 2 years. This might have led to a better retention of the attention of the “casual” audience, during the golden era, allowing the franchise to grow and grow without resetting each and every time.
Regarding the FE audience, I feel like you have:
• a “core” audience (10-15%), which are active members interested in gameplay, franchise and ROM-Hacks
• a “regular” audience (30-40%), which comes in for new releases but do not really stick around
• a “casual” audience (30-40%) which manifest when a FE game manage to break the mold and have interesting characters / world building / mysteries
• a “phone” audience (last 15-20%) coming from a different market and which is difficult to tap into.
Thus, if a new game wanted to reach the 80ish% popularity, it would need to appeal to casual audience. And in my opinion, it needs to sparkle discussions through characters (design, stories, interactions), like for Fates and 3H, an interesting world (different sides, mysteries, politics), like Fates and 3H, volition / frustration (choosing a route, not accessing all the units in one route, choosing who will have children), like in Awakening, Fates and 3H.
I really think that locking content behind routes is a good idea, as long as we don’t have to play the same map again and again (like 3H did). Why ? Because we will miss part of the story and will look around for the missing pieces, through another playthrough or videos. In this instance it is important to have different characters in each route and maps (for replay and discovery values). For instance, I played all 3 Fates routes because I wanted to learn more about the world and characters, especially seeing both sides interact in Revelation after the 2 other routes. On the other hand, I only played one of 3H’s routes, because of the first act and the fact I had all units in my first playthrough. This instead led me to go watch a lot of RUclips videos to discover the other stories, and uncover mysteries, as I didn’t want to play again.
And this might be why FE:Engage is “bleeding” that much audience. The gameplay is excellent (which may explain why it was still popular), but the lack of story, mystery and deep characters lead to fewer things to explore and look for.
Again good video and a lot of interesting comments which helped me putting words on my thoughts.
Did Engage kill the franchise? No, not even close. BUT i think it did the franchise a massive disservice. I mean, Fire Emblem always was the "weeb" game in the eyes of many, but with Engage that stigma got even worse, at least from my experience. Gameplay was amazing, we don't need to talk about that, but most people just couldn't take Engage seriously, myself included
Didn't become a "weeb" game until the DS iterations. Everything before was just a traditional fantasy tactics game.
Also looks like Fire Emblem’s “relevance” has always been linked to Smash Bros. We haven’t had anything for years from their side and it shows in the lack of interest we see today.
So yeah, two quarters in and Engage has only sold 1.68M. It’s only sold 70k copies since it’s first quarter. I think it’s safe to call it a flop.
If this is considered a flop then you should never go into business
Source for the 70k copies sold in second quarter? If that's the case then it's dropped off pretty badly. Three Houses sold 3 million soon after its first year, but engage's 1.68million+(70k*2 for the next two financial quarters) is only 1.82million...and the sales probably won't even be that good.
If IS keep neglecting the story, and darker style of three houses for future games, then they will kill fire emblem.
I'm new to Fire Emblem and I find the fanbase to be welcoming, helpful, and generally polite. I got Three Houses and Engage this year after my friend recommended them to me, and I plan on playing through the older games soon. But as a newbie, I'm honestly surprised that this franchise isn't more popular than it currently is. It definitely deserves to be.
Path of Radiance is my favourite, it can be played on emulator (dolphin) easily, or you can try to find a copy like I did to play on GameCube/Wii. I've yet to play its sequel but heard good things about it. So I would obviously recommend that one to you.
@@arfanik9827 I'll have to give it a go. Thanks for the recommendation.
7:03 Yeah the toxicity would come when Three Houses was released. It kinda ties into your section on Three Houses, but 3H brought a TON of tourists and fairweather fans to the series. Normies if you would. That was the time period you were most likely to find people who would willingly admit that their favorite game in the series or that their first game was Three Houses. Alot of these people were very young and spent FAR too much time on the internet. And those people brought a TON of strife and fighting to the fandom. Suddenly, you found shipping wars and rigid enforcement of sexuality headcanons much like media such as RWBY, Persona, Honkai or the soon to be released Genshin Impact fanbases, in fact, there would be significant crossover between those fandoms with the Fire Emblem fandom as a result of Three Houses. Most of those fans would be ardent fans of Edelgard, who they frequently mischaracterized as some radfem manhating communist revolutionary out to overthrow the patriarchy, which put them at odds not just with fans of other House Leaders but other Edelgard fans. You can still pretty easily find people who subscribe to this btw despite the fact that it couldn't be anymore wrong, almost as wrong as the haters who viewed her as a nazi. This led to massive amounts of fighting throughout the fanbase to the point that a number of moderators, including at least one from the Fire Emblem reddit, resigned their posts out of disgust and frustration with prevalence and virulence of the discourse. The creator and the entire mod team of the Edelgard subreddit not only resigned their posts but eventually deleted their accounts out of frustration with in-fighting within the Edelgard fanbase over the rampant biphobia that people who preferred to pair her with other women showed towards people who paired her with male characters. "Three Houses Discourse" completely warped the way the Fire Emblem fanbase acted and was perceived by other fanbases.
Now you may be wondering why I just typed that long ass paragraph about the toxicity and fighting that occurred within the Fire Emblem fanbase as a result of Three Houses, the constant splintering and rampant tribalism and how that's relevant to the video at hand. Well, its simple. The fighting created a generation of Fire Emblem fans that ONLY liked Three Houses (and to a degree, Three Hopes). This directly resulted in a decline in sales for Engage and possibly any future FE games that don't follow the Three Houses template. Yet these fans don't really understand that the Three Houses approach could only really have been done once. The devs made it abundantly clear that the development cycle for the game was hell on earth and that when they finally did release it, they couldn't wait to just be done with it. And finally, people don't like dealing with toxic fanbases that try to rigidly enforce how people should think and act. One of the reasons we play fantasy games is so we can escape such thought policing and yet here we are with legions of people telling you how you should and should not view the game.
Oh, and before I forget, English Localizations. Who the hell knows why, but they have always UNIVERSALLY BEEN AWFUL for Fire Emblem. The only one that was even slightly ok was the one for Awakening and that was because they didn't use Nintendo's in house localization team. And even that game had a bunch of censorship in it otherwise. Even dating back to the Radiance games, where key integral parts of the plot were just...left out including an entire cutscene that explained how and why Daein was inflicted by the Blood Pact. It may not sound like much but the game DOES lose fans as a result of shitty localizations. Most people may not know or even care about them but there are people who drop the series because of it.
It seems people just can't get engaged with the latest title.
The two oldest Fire Emblem videos in RUclips is a Path of Radiance intro from 2005 and a Binding Blade japanese ad a little months before it.
Engage is definitely to blame at least a bit. Back in the day you could find thousands of essays about the fe3h Lords, Fodlan, Fodlan characters, and route structures. Dimitri even got a whole ass *documentary*. Every plothole and every question left unanswered in the game was a good pretext to make a video.
But with Engage that niche of content doesn't exist. Everybody can tell the world is sterile, the characters lack asperities, and the plot is dull and simplistic. There's no incentive to look deeper, much less make any content for Engage aside from gameplay videos. Sure Engage arrived in a moment where Heroes was at the end of the line and maybe the switch is approaching the end of its lifespan too, but that's secondary. I suspect the staying power of a game's popularity is just heavily tied to the depth and replayability of the story (a trait 3H shared with Tellius) And Engage shows that.
As for your second question, I find you quite harsh on the genealogy remake. Just because it's a remake doesn't mean it can't interest new players. I doubt new players and casual players care so long as the trailer for the game looks hype and like something they want to play. You're right on the original experience needed to overturn the fate of FE of course, but I don't see why that couldn't come from a remake.
So yeah, we need three things from the next FE: depth, story replay value, originality. And then I think it could work.
12:15 I think the line is primarily very low right now because it's been a bit by now since the last big spike of 3H. You can make that chart for pretty much any game series. Spikes for every release, with slowly declinging flat-lining at the floor relatively shortly after. I think comparing how high the spike for each game is and if it has a bit of an echo phase after that is alot more telling.
Also since 3H I hear alot of normies using FE as the measuring stick when talking about turn-based strategy game gameplay "It's like fire emblem". I'm not sure, but I don't think that has been the case before.
Even back in the days Fire Emblem was well known for his brutal and unforgiven difficulty (which is not), a bit like Dark Souls nowadays (pretty much the same).
A lot of people wouldn't touch the game because of that but the title was already famous.
But contrary to FS games, I don't think a turn based strategy game can become mainstream.
@@birdbig6852 turn-based strategy games are fated to be niche
I started with Awakening on my friends 3DS whom I was borrowing for a week and after finishing Mario 3D Land I tried awakening, the character selection was crude but what won my 10 year old heart was the adorable pixel art for the classes moving about, even depicting the color and style changes in hair for the avatar. Basically I think a new fire emblem game to sell well will have to capture the players hearts with a unique style and not just 3D anime game n.2841
Really good point, the pixel sprites in awakening/fates were so utterly charming, as well as everything in GBA too.
I think we need a Fire Emblem with an actually engaging story and well written characters like we had back in the Sacred Stones and Lyn/Hector/Eliwood era. If we had an engaging story that wasn't pure cringe, I think popularity would spike again.
There's video I found asking is Fire Emblem too main stream ruclips.net/video/AOglEDMI0xI/видео.html
Since Fire Emblem wasn't very popular in the past and Awakening saved the series. It made me worried that Intelligent Systems will make the gameplay and story too beginner friendly, in order to appeal to a wider audience???
Engage was my fears come to life😦😦😦😦.
That era almost literally killed the franchise, while sure as heck wouldn't call a journey to see grandpa and boy asking around if anyone has seen his dad engaging story wise...
@@V-Jes Fire Emblem was doing decent numbers in the GBA era, but when it made the jump to 3d things went downhill fast. 3d usually cost more than 2d.
Based
That era was the beginning of the franchise in the West. We didn't even know about the series en mass back then. Awakening was when the vast majority learned of the series. Had they heard of the older games earlier I think it would have made a massive difference.@@V-Jes
The Drums of War are beating at 1:34
No man can be trusted!
What happened to Dorcas?
@@ninjafarI put poison in his mutton. Ahahahahaha
Minor thing: Tokyo Mirage Sessions Encore is a re-release not a sequel
Unsure if we can really say it's a decline so much as a return to form after the explosion outlier that was Three Houses? People that don't like Fire Emblem ADORE that game, and when the next entry in the franchise really wasn't all that much like the prior one that introduced them to the series and was the heavily character-driven narrative that it was, they bounced off. Engage is far from a perfect game, hell I'll even buckle down and say the story is outright bad. But the gameplay is pretty decently regarded by older fans from what I'd safely say (dlc aside!) But the 'New' audience was in it for the story and characters, rather than the gameplay itself.
So we've hit the issue where they wanted a more VN style of game than what we've had in the past, and the lack of it being what the new mainstream audience wanted has hit the series in the ass with Engage. Time will tell how this is gonna develop for further entries as we go of course. But I'd say maybe we'll just see a bit of a slow decline to a Pre Three Houses tier of popularity. Not exactly niche anymore, but not a mega-hit.
While this is totally a fair assessment, I think it’s also a bit sweeping and dismissive of 3H fans’ expectations. I can only speak for myself but I know lots of people feel the same-Engage’s gameplay wasn’t very captivating to me even standing alone from its story. 3H gameplay felt more grounded in its strategies with more roadblocks to work around and different options and paths to choose from, with both good and bad choices to be made for your units blended with their strengths and weaknesses. The mechanics offered to me felt more rewarding and strategic to me. And of course, where the game necessitates the blending of story and gameplay, in supports, things like personal abilities and battle dialogue that characterize your units as well as the purposes of the hub worlds, 3H blows Engage out of the water in those places due to its loveable cast that guides you through the gameplay.
Basically all that is to say that I think a lot of people, myself certainly included, care about both gameplay and story, and because of that just genuinely preferred 3H’s gameplay.
@@EXchoco LMAO TH having a logeable cast is nice joke but thinking TH has even decent gameplay is laughable
TH is the worst designed FE and a complete mess of incoherent game design, it’s closer design wise to a rom hackers first try than an actual official game
@@thomasquesada7248 Considering it’s one of the best selling/regarded games on the switch, I’d say it’s safe to say most people disagree. It’s fine if you think that though, all subjective
@@EXchoco Careful, Thomas is always making people feel like shit, so just get your point across. I do agree that Three Houses has its fair share of flaws and positives but calling it an outlier is not the truth as each game has changed the formula of the game before it. Calling Engage a "return" is completely wrong as the only return to form is just to play fire emblem one and remake that game.
Engage definitely has better gameplay but TH has a fantastic cast and honestly one of the best parts of the game@@thomasquesada7248
I believe one of the biggest things that hurt Engage was the poor first impressions it garnered during its reveal. Many people often struggle with changing a first impression because it is the first thing our minds latch onto when we hear about something. While some people slowly began to love Engage for its gameplay, some people like me could not stand some of the writing choices in Engage from the way the characters were portrayed to how the plot developed in the main story. Fire emblem has always had both mature and silly scenes that meld together to create a great experience along with it gameplay. Engage however, completely tried to make the story serious without having proper buildup to many of their important scene and the characters often disregarded the story to make a quick joke in many of their supports. These symptoms reminded people of Fates, which made Engage rather divisive in the community
*I would strongly disagree:*
Fire emblem in the GBA days may not have had the strongest writing, but it was a setting that took itself seriously with maybe 1 or two fun / silly characters thrown in. Though you only saw that side if you did the supports, otherwise the silly aspects were easy to miss.
So it was a 98% serious game with its 2% light hearted supports.
Bring the DS days into the mix and the stories were mixed, but the "silly" aspects of characters were no longer just in their supports. It became the entire defining characteristics of the one or two goofy characters.
We had gotten to more or less an 90 to 80% serious setting with the 10 to 20% being silly characters or archetypes.
Now, we just get generic anime tropes for characters with only. Fe3H for what it tried to do to stay serious in its world building still had over 70% of the characters have silly supports or light hearted supports that had nothing to do with the plot.
Engage (in my opinion) took this much further where 90% of the game was just silly nonsense barely dragged along by a generic anime story.
I fear for the next FE game, and hope it's give to someone other than IS to make. Nintendo nor IS respects the franchise.
@techpriest6962 given how complete bullshit your "engage's weapon break turns it into an action game" arguments, your "x does not respect the franchise" ring hollow.
I am still awaiting a response explaining how weapon break turned it into an action game.
I wonder how a FE6 + FE7 + FE8 HD remastered bundle would do. I'd buy it.
I started typing out a long post then deleted it. My posts have been getting ignored lately in the community so there is no point.
I been a fan of the fire emblem for 15 years and enjoyed the content of games and music and never stopped playing the new games and the old games
I think they should consider returning to old worlds like Elibe and Tellius instead of making new worlds.
I think heroes is as popular as ever. But Engage itself was just not popular. People not liked the desings and less people were interested to watch it.
Also people thought it is a heroes spin off.
I think if FE4 remake comes or something big and new with better designs it will climb again
Heroes went on a decline for a while and engage didn’t help either
I'd say it's too early to jump the gun on this one. Based on the trends with this graph, it only takes one good game with enough staying power to generate long-term intrigue around the series. There's always dips in between games. Engage just happened to lose its mass appeal much earlier than its predecessors. I'd be more concerned for the series if we get another mainline game or two that performed similarly to Engage and they fizzle out too fast as well. As it stands now, I think we're fine. It can still bounce back with the next one if they play their cards right.
Despite Engage's fate, many franchises would LOVE to be in Fire Emblem's place right now. Try being a Mega Man fan/content creator right now...
My Mega Man channel's larger than this FE one I have, but I still see faster growth on this one compared to Mega content. People are still interested in FE content today. New games simply make it a lot easier to get views. But at the end, if a video's reeeeally good, it'll do decently regardless, I think. We'll be okay, Mangs!
Megaman is dead now. Capcom should make him public domain if they aren't going to bother giving him new games anymore.
Capcom killed Megaman
@@AzumarillConGafasBv And now they've added DRM Enigma to their old games too, and have called modding "cheating" so they're trying to ban it.
I feel like if Fire Emblem needs to bounce back, Koei Tecmo should buy Intelligent Systems. They managed to make Theee Houses a really compelling game, even 5 years later.
And say what you will about the first Warriors game, I prefer Xander there than in Fates.
The thing with a lot of games is that more gameplay focused ones like Engage that don't have a great story need something else to keep it a float.
Take pokemon for example, ignoring the massive amount of different things going into it such as the anime, tcg, etc. the pokemon games have pretty dogshit stories with no depth that have been recycled for years but they have good gameplay that is kept constantly relevant because of the competitive scene and the massive romhacking scene. While Fe does have some good romhacks (Shout out to Andaron Saga for being amazing) if the base francise itself isn't very popular then this isn't going to keep it above water.
Another example would be the Dark Souls games, they are gameplay focused games that basically tell you very little of the story and leave it to you to go piece together the breadcrumbs which causes a lot of engagement for lore videos. There's also the multiplayer aspect that can be made exciting through trolling videos or goofy builds and stuff. However for FE there's no real interest in FE multiplayer because there's nothing really interesting to do with it.
For engage, I imagine people watched a lot of cool videos of people making wacky builds with the rings and once they had their fill there was nothing to keep them around. Let's look at 3h and fates now, both of those games have route splits and in fates case those route splits were paid. I bet a lot of casual fans played 1 route to completion and then decided to look up videos of their favorite FEtuber in order to see the rest of the content, thereby generating a big spike in activity.
I think an FE4 remake would do similarly to Engage, a decent spike of interest with a quick drop off. Realistically Fire emblem just doesn't have massive appeal because there's so little to hold your interest long term, even if you love playing the game over and over you probably aren't watching playthroughs of it over and over because they're mostly gonna look the same.
I imagine you're one of the only actually popular FE creators because A. Your entertaining where most of the others are not and B. You do wacky(and dumb) shit in your playthroughs that can break up the samey feel of watching multiple playthroughs of the same game.
My guess would be that since Nintendo now knows the potential of Fire Emblem to fly off the shelves, they'll keep making games for a good while. I feel that it's unlikely for it to ever really go away, but they definitely have some reinventing to do during these drought periods.
i loved Fates Games and Three House game because they were so cool to play it but sadly i wanted to play mystery of the emblem and i hope they’ll make a remastered of it 👍. About the Data of Popularity i would say Awakening was the big splash the Fire emblem série needed for both intelligent system and the fan to increase the moral and popularity of a dark age of Fire Emblem because Awakening was really cool to play it despite a few problems ❤. i hope you will recovered soon Mangs and thank for making videos despite being sick 🤒 😢
I don't think it's declining it's just that Engage was hit and miss with people story wise, so people who came for that were disappointed after what Echoes and Three Houses/Three Hopes brought.
No games for 3 years and then a shit entry is what killed the popularity. I don't care personaly, I was there when we had forums with the same 200 people and I will stay no matter what happens.
By shit entry you mean the way The game was presented before launch? The story îs pretty bad but The gameplay is way better than three houses. But of course great gameplay can't keep discussions about the game for a very long time, The game does need an ok story at least and some story pieces to keep the game relevant, which three houses hits does better with 3 different paths and and lords and conflicted choices and characters that led to The infamous thre houses discourse, for better or worse.
It looks unapealing@@mihaimercenarul7467
Werent you telling me to rope myself back when the game came out? Surprised your opinion seems to have balanced out lol@@mihaimercenarul7467
Honestly people really enjoy npc interactions so it really does come down to world building and a good script. Other than that fire eblem gameplay is great formula they just don't need to go too crazy but can introduce new weapons and units just be careful that they balanced or just op in one aspect instead of overall
I'm still hoping for awakening re-release on a modern console or a remake. I'm interested in that metal slug tactics game that was announced a while back but haven't heard anything in a while.
(I mean, when Engage leaks came out people thought it was a chinese fake knock-off, don't help much.)
PS : (It ended up being an official chinese fake knock-off...)
I hope the next FE ignites a spark yet again.
I actually think Fire Emblem being as it is nowadays is fine, is not the clusterfuck it was then Fates released and the casuals tend to avoid the elitists because they think they are toxic or whatever
People have speculated about the switch being at the end of its lifecycle for quite some time now and the discussion really picked up this year. The series probably isn't going to be resuscitated past 3H levels until the NX2 is announced imo
NX2 will probably have support of Switch games, even if it'll be digital only. So I assume they just sitting on a ready Geneaology remake to anounce it a statr game for a new console and at the same time collecting some money from Switch owners
If it will have BC, I can easily see they doing cross gen release in 2024-2025. If Switch 2 is to be released in 2024, offcourse. Next one will be only on the new system, switch will past his prime by this point.
i doubt IS would make the same mistake as with Echoes. Releasing on a declining console is not the best idea. backward comp or not. i expect the next FE on Switch 2
I dont think FE is getting anything new switch related period whether or not it does better than Engage. I think Mario Wonder and peach will be the last new noteworthy games that will be released on the system. The hardware is just too behind for devs to work with and they know that. Fun fact: Xenoblade 3, at all times, uses at least 90% of the switchs CPU. Also worth mentioning that TOTK was 70$ because the only way to run it was using a new type of SD card lol. I see this is a good thing though, it means our FE4 remake can be top notch
@@-lord1754 dunno, with current state of console gaming Nintendo, imho, won't dare to launch not backwards compatible console. Besides, according to rumors, they still collaborating with NVidea, so there is no reason hardware should be different.
And because remake is on hold for years already, I see release as BotW case. It will be on Switch, but on Switch 2 it just runs smoother.
I find interesting how a lot of the popularity boosts came from Smash Bros and FE Heroes instead of the main series. I think strategy games are a niche market anyway so I wouldn't be worried for the series, and the fact that sales are still good is more than enough to keep the series alive.
Same thing for mmos with xenoblade
I don't think you can call fire emblem niche when it sells 4 million copies. 4 million puts its sales in the top zero point five percent of sales. Calling fire emblem niche is like calling an NBA player bad at basketball
@@saintlugia it's still a niche series for it never sell 10 million
@therealjaystone2344
It has 8 reps in smash
It has biannual releases
Sells over a million copies for the last decade
And the best game sold in the top 0.5 percent
In what metric conceivable metric is it small?
Not selling 10 million is us arguing about if something is niche for being in the top 0.1 or 0.5 percent. At the point it's just a subjective argument.
@@therealjaystone2344what
MMOs and Xenoblade never had any overlap with marketing tho..?
I think Smash Bros also has a HUGE part to play with this, as it did back in the early 2000’s with Melee being one of the main reasons FE7 (GBA) was released in the West. Seems the two series are in tied together in the west
There are a few things that bother me about this “analysis”. First of, from a statistical and scientific point of view, there are not enough evidence in order to support the claim that FE’s popularity is declining. The video only take factors about RUclips searches but it doesn’t mention sales, number of videos made, online and offline discussion etc, so the number of evidences is bit too low. The other thing is that you cannot really speak of a downfall trend with only one game after 3H, it should remain like this for at least 2/3 games in order to actually observe a trend. Especially when there are so many cases of a game selling badly, but the next selling much better. A very easy example is Pokémon Black and White, the games were a flop compared to others in the series, but after that it’s a continuous up going trend and Pokémon is still the biggest franchise in the world.
Another thing to consider is the fact that for the most part, strategy RPGs are a niche, and 3H is more the exception than the norm and it sold that well because most people were interested in other aspects aside the chapter gameplay (I mean the actual maps where you fight). Plus the marketing team did a much better job marketing 3H both before and after the game launched, unlike for Engage whose marketing sucked.
Also I think attributing the cause of the “downfall” to Engage seems kind of unfair, because it’s more 3H’s huge success that led to it. I mean 3H sold so much more compared to any other title even Fates and people talk about 3H so much more and is generally the most popular FE game even outside the FE community. And most of the time, when something blow up this much, expectations get way too high and are almost never met by the next instalment leading to a massive lost in popularity. An example that comes to mind is with a K-pop group, ITZY. They released Wannabe, their most successful track which led the girls becoming mainstream and of the most popular group of the 4th generation in K-pop at the time, but the tracks afterwards did not perform even remotely that high.
In conclusion I think that with Engage we simply went back to Awakening/Fates era, where the serie is famous and known and people are interested to whatever will come out, but is not mainstream or as popular as it was with 3H. Plus I agree that a FE4 remake won’t bring a huge spike in popularity, because at the of the day it still is just a FE game with a good story, so a niche game. In order to regain the popularity of 3H the serie needs a title like 3H so innovating the gameplay with mechanics like the monastery with its teaching sessions, some kind of emphasis on the story Visual Novel/Persona style et similia
My first reaction was thinking that of sales, saying "bro it's been 1 game since three houses." Glad you clarified it quickly and I enjoyed the video.
Possibly a hot take here before I even watch the video but as long as a series I like has gotten a handful of official titles and fan games I couldn't care less if said series dies. There's already far more games available than I'll ever play in my lifetime so a series ending due to low sales is not really a worry of mine.
I started playing a Pokemon fan game a few years back but the save file got corrupted. Because there's so many good games out I've never gotten around to trying it again. I even just started Sonic Frontiers today and those first few hours felt very addicting.
Edit for post video watch: Ultimately I think we'll be okay. Look at Metroid. It was in the pits for years and then Dread released. An actual release for a game that, for a few years at least I believe, fans weren't even sure was real. It went on to become the best selling game in the series, at least over 3 million sales. If Metroid can make a comeback after the disaster that was Other M, so can Fire Emblem.
Somewhat late to the party, but whatever. Of course, searchtraffic and sales are one thing, but for me as a fan Fire Emblem has been dead for a really long time now. As many in the west, my first contact with FE was of course 7, and what got me there were Marth and Roy in SSBM back in the day, and I fell totally in love with the gameboy titles in particular. But for me, the titles afterwards didn't hold up. I hated 9 and 10, 11 was okay, but I already played FE3 by that point with crappy translations, and ngl, I enjoyed some things 3 had to offer like dismounting. Awakening was the first acutally good game in a long while, and is one of the few I still would play from the newer generation. I passed on Shadows of Valencia, but since I never played Gaiden I might play it at some point. But then there was Heroes, which renewed my interest in the series, primarily because I got to know new units like Ayra. And guess what, once after playing 4 and 5, I couldn't really even look at the most modern ones. Three Houses in particular, which I even preordered and everything, turned out to be the FE game I hated the most, giving up on new FEs, especially if the new main character is supposed to be a shitty pepsi advertisement. My main interest in FE today is 3-8 and Awakening, as well as GBA romhacks of FE. It might be because it was my first contact, but nothing for me screams FE like the romhacks do, and that much is sure, all those fans that pour their sweat and love into their romhacks are more invested in the series than IS is right now. I'd rather play the fangames.
At first, we could say Fire Emblem Engage is the lead cause for decline, which in few cases is true, but I want to pinpoint three small, and yet quite crucial details.
First, the Fire Emblem community is deceptively small compared to other big Nintendo franchises and has quite the uphill battle to keep its community engaged with the series. There's no high-level content to grind through, and there's no competitive side to the series either (I'm sorry, but I'm not counting Fire Emblem Heroes into this), so once you finish your playthrough of any Fire Emblem game, it's usually over for most people. Sure, you could say games like 3 Houses have replay value through its new game plus mode, and multiple routes, but that is still finite content.
This leads me to my second point, the community itself. We can bash at each other on how Fire Emblem Heroes players are nothing more than gacha addicts or the only thing 3 Houses players do is talk about how Edelgard did nothing wrong, but these kinds of people are the ones who keep the franchise alive. I only advocate that kind of discourse, or at least those kinds that are in some form of moderation, because they are passionate. And passion leads to ROM hacks, fanfictions (I'm one of those myself), and funny haha memes about the egg being bald. The only thing that they could do better is easing new players in because the elitism has always been somewhat damaging.
And third, Fire Emblem has niche and complex gameplay. Trying to convince anyone to play Fire Emblem who has never heard of the series is extremely difficult, or at least for me. We know it as anime chess. It's the best way to describe Fire Emblem, and it always will be, but it has so much more nuance than that. You have RPG mechanics, core systems that get more difficult to understand as the series goes on, and the main gimmicks of each main title. It's just too much information for new people to grasp.
So, with that in mind, what do I think it would take for Fire Emblem to be popular again? Or at least not live under the shadows of more successful IPs?
A soft reboot.
Call it just Fire Emblem, and only keep the core gameplay while attaching a great story to fuel that discourse.
Also, better advertisement wouldn't hurt either.
Btw, get better soon, Mangs. That cold doesn't sound pretty at all.
I blame Andaron Saga for being so good that it's eating up watchtime. This is what happens when you give your fans gold!
Three things:
1. As a veteran fan who has played most of the games in the series, Engage looked like a spinoff to me. Given that, the fact that it managed to generate that much popularity in the series is a very good thing. If it was more widely seen as a mainline game, that could've made the next golden age.
2. This might seem like preaching doom but the switch itself is probably past its peak in its long lifespan as well. Most notable franchises have already released 2 mainline games already. You can just feel that the hype for Nintendo directs and (And gaming as a whole to an extent) have completely disappated, especially since E3 was repeatedly cancelled. There is always a slump of almost every franchise at the end of the old console's lifespan.
3. To answer your other question, I think Jugral remakes could bring about the next youtube golden age for Fire Emblem. This game is clearly beloved by most FEtubers that I know so their content on this game would be interesting. Indeed, much of the charm of these FEtubers is their content on the older games, games that people who are really interested in the franchise will try. Personally, the unique design features of FE4-6 are what I liked most about Fire Emblem (Big maps, world building, multiple objectives, many unequal characters etc.).
For more casual players, it could very well have the same effect as a "robust new mainline game with a good story." I doubt even most FE fans who call themselves veterans have played the games. It's down there with Gaiden in terms of obscurity. It has most of the superficial aspects that made Fates so successful such as great music, great character designs, and a decent premise. The premise of Fates was just so perfect I have to admit. Even the game that generated the most popular for the series was insanly wasted potential. Genealogy can appeal to both sides of the fanbase and has stood the test of time.
I didn't get Engage either. It's just not for me. I wanted another Three Houses-styled game so it was disappointing after waiting years for a new game.
I don't think this is a problem with the Switch since many Switch games are still selling well and at the end of the GameCube's life many games at the end sold sell for a GameCube Game (look, many titles which were available on multiple platforms sold 7 to 1 in favor of the PlayStation, so if you are talking about console end of life we should talk about game sales with other GameCube games, not games in the early 2000s).
@@alex_zetsu Well Pikmin 4, Zelda totk and pokemon are all selling well still. So it's possible.
Except Genealogy is actually fun to play and the child units are something you are told about in Chapter 3 or so, unlike Fates that just bring the Babyrealm
Censorship in the support conversations in Engage may be to blame as well.
I am someone that started at 3H, aka a noob lol. I have also played Engage and I enjoy both, just in different ways like different flavors almost. I am starting to explore older games, like Conquest, Awakening on the 3DS and Blazing Blade via NSO. I believe Sacred Stones is also slated to be on NSO in the future and I plan to experience it if it does come.
I wonder if certain other things paired along with game releases also helped with generating some numbers or lowering some numbers. Like Corrin in Smash, it probably drew some people to the series that way. And lets not forget how pissed off people got with Byleth being introduced to Smash. It was almost like people who are not in FE were like okay, thats enough, i aint paying attention no more. Also world events, I wonder if some things happening around these times helped/hindered numbers. So many factors to consider when looking at data like you presented.
One factor that does come to mind is real-world events. First off, we had the COVID-19 pandemic which shut everything down and people needed something to occupy themselves while waiting for the lockdowns to end and Three Houses was made with repayablity in mind to get a whole picture of the lore and people. So people began dissecting Three Houses like crazy trying to see the whole picture that Byleth can't see due to only being one person stuck in one side of the story throughout a run. Secondly, the war in Ukraine didn't do much to relieve people's stress. Intelligence Systems had to delay the release of Advance Wars:Re-Boot Camp due to the war as a game about a war with modern weapons and gear while one was going one seemed in poor taste to people. With the war nearing its end and seeming close to Ukraine remaining independent while Russia destroys itself, a game set in a Medieval fantasy world doesn't seem like a bad idea. Now with the new war in Israel, Intelligence Systems may hold off on releasing any new games about any kind of war until it isn't being talked about by the news outlets as frequently. I saw many of those dips in the chart often coincide with events that led to people dying or getting sick/injured which makes people want any and all information on that to make sure it won't interfere with or put their lives in danger.
Wasnt 3 houses like the most sold FE game ? And engage wasnt as popular but still sold a lot ? Like I feel that if the sales are good I belive the series is doing good overall no?
The thing is it that it only sold well from returnees of Three Houses and once the lack of story became word of mouth, Engage's sales fell off a cliff beginning in March 2023
@@PeruvianPotatoYou are not wrong because first impressions and world of mouth can have a heavy affect on the longevity of a game. Engage had a lots of struggles in story and character writing which caused people to be afraid of recommending the game to others
I can say that while my love for Fire Emblem has not decreased, I've got some severe franchise fatigue right now. I didn't even finish Engage because I've just had enough for a while.
There's video I found asking is Fire Emblem too main stream ruclips.net/video/AOglEDMI0xI/видео.html
Since Fire Emblem wasn't very popular in the past and Awakening saved the series. It made me worried that Intelligent Systems will make the gameplay and story too beginner friendly, in order to appeal to a wider audience???
Engage was my fears come to life😦😦😦😦.
No Fire Emblem is fine. It's just too many games have been released too close together.
Wish I had gotten into this series sooner. I only just tried it in May this year through the Switch's GBA virtual console and got addicted for nearly 3 months. Then I bought Engage and had a good time with it. I've played through the FE on the virtual console more than 5 times already and played through Engage twice. Definitely feel like I deprived myself of some good games lol
I think a good way to bring back a 3rd spike to the fire emblem franchise. Would have to be a well done new proper mainline game that has a good narrative and a proper spread out tutorial explanation for any and all mechanics implemented into the game. On top of releasing a reveal trailer for an Fe4 remake, an Fe9 and 10 remake, or even brief trailers for remakes of genealogy and the tellius games being in development. This way it will build up the hype for both new and long time fans to be given the chance to play an updated Version of older titles. While having a game to hold them over until said remakes are released. Not to mention if they pulled a trick in three houses book. For the trailers making everything vague for even theorists to try and decipher the plot would probably be a good tactic.
12:09: A crossover fighting game. With Samurai Shodwon. That would be the best thing ever. Sakura and Nakoruru and finally meet! 😍😍😍
There are too many factors to really be able to pinpoint a specific reason but my FE experience was that I discovered FE with Smash Brawl and I started with the GBA titles. Awakening was my first "new" FE game that I played and I played it a lot. I also remember Fates having a lot of expectations, speculations and controversies (love potion, story, mechanics etc) before the game even came out (back when it was called Fire Emblem IF). Heroes defo brought FE into the spotlight as most of the early characters were from Awakening, Fates or the GBA era which drew in a lot of ppl and the popularity was also likely tied to guides on how to play the game and how to beat the maps with free characters (and characters spotlight videos like Mangs').
For SoV I do remember many FE tubers being hyped but most of the newer fans never played Gaiden so they didn't know what to expect but the game was well made and enjoyable.
3 houses was another big moment where ppl were hyped when the game came out and when videos about different secrets of the game were posted.
I had more or less dropped the franchise when engage came out.
Now I'm playing FE6 Project Ember bc I love FE6 but I don't really feel the need to replay any other FE or even to finish all routes on 3H. I'd say the gameplay being the same more or less with each entry, means that the story and the rest of the game must be top notch to even catch my attention. Ik it sounds petty but that's how I feel.
So long as there's people that played Fire Emblem and want more of it, it can lose all interest for all I care. There will be always be ROM hacks, fan games, games inspired by, etc. Maybe no one wants to care about Fire Emblem enough to find these possibilities, and that's none of my concern.
Romhackers are the true and uncontested GOATS of the FE community
Edit: anybody reading this should go check FEE3 RIGHT NOW
Is there any data on how smash bros influenced the search data? Like during the Corrin or Byleth release trailer
From what I've seen, kind of. The biggest spikes on Smash coincided with the addition of characters like Sepheroth from FF7, Steve from Minecraft, Byleth, and Sora from Kingdom Hearts. Their announcement trailers broke the internet as all but Byleth were characters that people wanted in Super Smash Bros for a long time, Sora's announcement actually producing the biggest spike in data for Smash.
I think Engage's problems were engage itself. Not even the story or anything even the decision to have Marth and other lords comeback in the way they did was a turn off to some. Plus emblems also added more charcters when the roster is already large so it's tough to put time in development of the engage exclusives while balancing the emblems representatives so both groups dont get too overshadowed.
The art style was also pretty divisive especially Alear's design and hair.
Also reclassing being bound to emblems makes it extremely hard to actually use the feature in cool ways considering the plot twist where you lose all the emblems.
I'm just tired of perfect protagonists. Give me a gritty and dark FE
TH nor Engage had "perfect" protagonists
You are allowed to laugh at my opinion:
Give me a golden route 3H game, where I can recruit and max out literally everyone if I choose to, and I think it would at least usher in a lot of interest despite the lack of replayable value.
*What ACTUALLY went wrong with Engage?*
*The honest truth is pretty ugly.*
The Short Version:
Nintendo put a New developer as the lead for the game who had no experience. A basic "Yes Man" who likes action games and not turn based tactics games, and was heavily influenced by Nintendo wanting to aim for a New Younger Audience which meant dumbing down the game, and making it flashier.
The Long Version:
If you read the "Ask the Developers" interviews that were released. The guy in charge (Tsutomu Tei), had never been a director of a game at IS before, and seemingly never discusses having any previous experience working on a FE game. So while I can't say what his previous role was, if any, it doesn't seem to be significant enough to mention in his bio.
I'd link the Nintendo article, but RUclips is pretty finicky with links these days. (Typing Ask the Developer Vol. 8, Fire Emblem Engage Part 1, 2, and 3 should get you too it)
If anything, just someone picked by Nintendo to lead the development.
Listening to the other two employees of Nintendo that were in the interview. Tei and the two mention wanting to "appeal to a broader audience" and saying that RPG mechanics such as the Awakening / Fates marriage system took too long to play out in the game. According to them it "wan't fun" so they developed the Emblem Ring idea instead. With the goal of intruding the "fun elements" early on.
I'll quote the Nintendo stooge "Higuchi: We wanted to introduce this fun element for players as early as possible. I felt that the fun of tactical RPG games wasn't as intuitive or immediate as that of action games."
So basically you had Nintendo heavily influencing the game with employees who were more interested and familiar with Action games than tactics RPGs.
Then from the games IS developer,
"Tei: People often say that turn-based tactical RPGs seem difficult or too complicated... In fact, I’m not very good at them myself."
Take of that what you will, I take it as even the new IS dev wasn't interested in making a Tactics game. Just taking orders and advice from his Nintendo handlers.
"Tei: We had several candidates. We were looking for an artist whose design style would appeal to a broad audience - including younger players - as well as the ability to portray a variety of characters. Among the candidates, Mika Pikazo-san's drawings were colorful, vivid, and really popped! They were a perfect fit for the flashy direction we wanted for this title."
So from that we can see the "broader audience" meant appeal to children. In spite of marketing toward long time fans, which makes no sense since new players and young players would not get any of the references. So basically they tried to do both and focused on the younger new audience by lying to the older one.
As it would seem, the games development and design was all over the place. Trying to create a game for a new younger audience, while throwing a bone to the old players to make it seem like they were not being abandoned when they were.
As for another section about their Artist choice that influenced the game in a bad way.
"Tei: Well, I thought it'd be better to be upfront about the request. That said, there was one concern she had. Since she usually draws young characters, she was concerned about her confidence level in some of the character design."
So to answer why all the characters were loli or V-tuber style. It's because that's the only style the artist knew, and he went with it. Also, it also turns put it was her idea to make toothpaste-chans hair color red and blue. As before Tei just went with whatever he was told, advised, or requested.
From everything I have read, Tei should never be in charge of any product. Unless he was specifically chosen because he just follows orders and has no skill as a leader or director.
"Tei: As I mentioned at the beginning, I'm not very good at strategy games myself, so during development, I hoped to create a game that even those like me would want to try out or find interesting."
So the dip that is occurring now isn't a surprise. Catering to the Tourists and not the Fans is a terrible idea.
FE falling off is at the feet of Nintendo and its more modern (EA of the East) Anti-Consumer business practices.
Part of which can be understood by reading the above.
This is literally objectively wrong. Tsutomu Tei has been working at IS since 2006 and his first FE was Radiant Dawn... where he designed the maps which is a really well liked part of the game. He hadn't directed before and maybe hes not fit to be one but claiming hes a yes man who hates strategy rpgs is actual insanity. Saying hes not good at them=/=he doesnt like them what a dumb conclusion. I love tons of games but arent good at them.
I don't think Nintendo consoles is the right market for strategy games. It could be more popular on PC. Of course, it would depend on what exactly Nintendo does as a publisher, how much they pay for exclusivity.
Fire Emblem will be fine when the Genealogy Remake is announced.
The popularity decline is mostly due to the Switch 1 dying off.
Once the Genealogy remake comes out there will be a renewed interest in the series and then Nintendo will announce a new FE entry on the Switch 2 in the following year that will catapult the series to unseen popularity.
The Switch 2 will lift all of Nintendo’s IPs to unfathomable success.
Fire Emblem Engage was poison to normies. I'm glad it sold far less than Three Houses and I hope IS learned their lesson.
IS can make good stories on their own like with Echoes, but it remains to be seen if they end up taking stories and writing more seriously next time.
I got into the series and your channel with 3H. I got engage on release but dropped it shortly after and have only recently picked it up again. I know you have said on your channel before that you can always skip a bad story as long as their is good gameplay, but for me I need that story and characters to want to see things to the end.
I’m learning to enjoy engage for what it is as a series celebration game with good gameplay and maps.
I am also looking forward to a new game on a new console with hopefully a new engine. Imagine a FE game with a serious story and ps4 level graphics.
I think FE3H, like Awakening and Fates, really brought FE to the forefront, and of course, there's FEH, which has been running since I was in middle school. I don't think Engage really appealed to the new crowd FE3H + FEH drew in, which may be a factor. But what I will say, is that something that has potential is a remake of FE6, or even FE4.
I’m still salty New Mystery never got localized as a big appreciator of Shadow Dragon, it also ruins the consecutive localization streak that Nintendo and Intelligent Systems had going and I think it did the whole Avatar thing decent, I don’t mind Kris fans, they’re not as annoying and obnoxious as Robin, Corrin, Byleth and Alear fans. Heck even Mark in FE7 is great because aside from Lyn, every character doesn’t always drool over him and worships him and he doesn’t hog all the attention of the Plot.
Kris is an avatar properly done, he isn't as important as Robin, Corrin and the others are and that makes him interesting and not a Mary Sue
Yeah the biggest problem right now engage was a let down to the more casual fan base. Personally think old game can capture both just yet can’t neglect support’s like echoes did. Give people a lot options there and create a interesting world that can get people wanting to know more.
3 Houses benefited from the pandemic, I imagine. A giant 300-hour game with lots of characters and story content was perfectly suited to lockdown life, I can speak from experience.
I also think the Switch as a whole is trailing in popularity. The bigger consoles are generating more interest than any Nintendo game of the last couple years not named Zelda. We saw it at the end of the Wii U/3DS era as well.
To add on, I think pandemic worsened Engage because it probably threw them for a loop and caused a lot of internal problems that we wont see now. Mario Wonder is probably the last big nintendo release that the switch will see period.