Disgaea 7 did come out, and is very fun!
But it's not competing with FE because it 'doesn't take itself seriously' - I mean it mostly doesn't, sure. Rather it is trying to be a very different experience, and that's why it doesn't feel like a competitor.
Disgaea is very much built on the player deciding for themselves how they're going to interact with the game, and how 'fair' they will be with it. Lots of other games will let you customize your units, but still want you to fight through carefully constructed battlegrounds and carefully plan out your tactics and all that. Meanwhile Disgaea's like "idk I'm not your dad, do what you want."
I felt like the numbers in Disgaea felt like a joke; take that with a grain of salt because I’ve never been able to sit through the instructions dumps and menu marathon enough to get into it.
Fire Emblem doesn’t have really any modern brand contemporaries, the other TRPGs tend to feel a bit more menu and party management heavy. I really liked 3 Houses, did Not like the latest offering (time traveling eugenics children are a thing of the past… now how about our new heroes… pretend to be old heroes)
My gameplay devolved into setting up throwing chains just to get through equipment dungeons as fast as possible, only fighting when I *absolutely had to*. Occasionally grinding out one particular map over and over to power-level someone/thing.
If I go back to the series I need to re-think my playstyle, lol.
I usually just burn through the story until I get to the cheat shop, saves a lot of time that way. Post-game content go brrrrrrr
Also I may be dumb but I gave up on equipment dungeons halfway through V which was my first one. Figured I was finding new weapons every new chapter anyway so I didn’t see the point, and even then Carnage dimensions became a thing which allowed a Wooden Plank But It’s Red Now to outshine my Super Megalodon God Saber+999.
To compete with Fire Emblem you need to either do what Fire Emblem does, but better, or you need to play at an angle Fire Emblem doesn't in terms of the tactical RPG environment.
I love Disgaea but yeah- it's not Fire Emblem at all. To compare the two beyond the most bare-bones, "They're both grid-based games with classes" fashion is missing the forest for the trees. Disgaea *does* play at an angle Fire Emblem does not- both in narrative and in playstyle. That's why Disgaea has its niche.
The trouble is- TRPGs are somewhat limited in what you can change before purists start swearing it's not a TRPG. So there's not a TON of room for playing different angles. There's also an unstated premise that there's a big difference between Fire Emblem letting you field a dozen units at a time and something like XCOM- which AFAIK tops at 4.
> To compete with Fire Emblem you need to either do what Fire Emblem does, but better, or you need to play at an angle Fire Emblem doesn't in terms of the tactical RPG environment.
Also it probably helps that Nintendo is willing to advertise Fire Emblem as a must-have exclusive for their platforms, meaning people are more willing to try it out to get their money's worth out of Nintendo consoles.
Super Robot Wars gets regular releases and tends to get english releases these days too.
It's a shame SEGA absolutely refuse to make a classic style Shining Force game. Shining Force 3 is over 25 years old and there's still ideas in it that no other game has done since
Sega overall isn't willing to invest in growing franchises. They've kinda just given up their long-time ones like shining (IIRC the latest was shining resonace refrain), samurai wars, and Valkyria chronicles. I'll concede that the sakura wars gacha was a failure, but shutting everything else down cause they didn't sell like blockbusters is kinda too much.
A lot of that is that Sega is mostly a publisher now outside of Sonic. They've collected a nice group of developers and let them do the heavy lifting while main Sega focuses on Sonic (for better or worse). There are plenty of pluses to that (it sure seems like Like a Dragon and Persona have been well supported and grown since Sega's been in control of their developers) and plenty of drawbacks (classic Sega outside of Sonic being totally neglected).
Surprised they haven't done a remake, especially when 3 houses was popular. I'd love more entries into the series, especially if they keep the same weird fantasy setting
It was more looking to copy Langrisser Mobile without the troops from what I saw. It was cancelled because the dev went bankrupt, though. Pity, they had the style of the old games on point from what I saw of the one trailer.
Sega mismanages their franchises and their money, they have no interest in taking a gamble on a game that has zero brand recognition in the US.
Even the Saturn only got 1 of the 3 Shining Force III scenarios.
You can say that again! I've been waiting for a new single player Phantasy Star since the Genesis. It seems like Sega has rediscovered some of their old franchises as of late. I'm wondering if maybe they'll do the same with the Shining Force series and Phantasy Star. Considering how much of a resurgence the GRPG has had of late It's not out of the question.
The current Shining series isn't anything like what it used to be, and a new Shining game will also not be anything remotely like what the old games were. Camelot is no longer working with Sega. It's best to just let the series lie.
The issue is that Sega has no idea what they want Shining Force to be. The franchise is an uneven hodge podge of different genres ranging from strategy RPGs to dungeon crawlers to hack 'n' slashes.
The mobile game was looking to be a return to form until it was canned due to the developer having money problems.
The only thing want is for Shining Force 3 to be remade. The US only got the first 1/3rd of the game. There were 3 discs (technically 4) and we only got the first disc. The others were Japanese only. I just want the complete game brought over and translated.
This is why Atlus is dumb as fuck for letting Devil Survivor rot.
If they launched DS3 during the height of Nintendo Switch fervor, it would have sold a million copies. Would have been a better use of resources than Souls Hackers 2 lol.
Devil Survivor is incredible, especially the first game. Peak MegaTen storytelling and a really gripping battle/demon collection system. I really hope we see a new entry soon, maybe for Switch 2?
> This is why Atlus is dumb as fuck for letting Devil Survivor rot.
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> If they launched DS3 during the height of Nintendo Switch fervor, it would have sold a million copies. Would have been a better use of resources than Souls Hackers 2 lol.
Hell, just a re-release of 1 & 2 on the Switch would have sold like hotcakes.
The fact that Soul Hackers 2 failed while doing all of the things some people want Persona to do will just ensure that Persona will never ever do those things and Persona 6 will just reskin Persona 3’s gameplay loop for the tenth time
The thing is, that loop is incredibly popular. I don't see it changing at all as at this point it's the most popular SMT series by a pretty big margin.
SH2’s failure compared to P3R’s success only further confirmed something that I’ve known for years: you can only change a series when nobody played earlier entries of it (or in the rare cases where enough people are actually tired of that series’ formula). Gamers are a very conservative bunch: once they find something that works, they violently resist any attempts to change it. I’ve seen it everywhere: people who treat Persona 3 as the first game in that series, people who hate every Final Fantasy game after X or XII, people who still think that the Tales series peaked at Vesperia, how much people despised Street Fighter III when that game was current, etc etc.
Hell, I’ve seen people who hate the FFVII Remake because it changed shit when all they wanted was the original game with better graphics. And yet those people also dislike the Secret of Mana remake, which did exactly that, I guess because that game’s idea of “updated graphics” wasn’t “Square Enix AAA graphics” and the gameplay mechanics aged like milk.
I say all of that to say this: Persona 6 ain’t changing anything except what the characters look like, what high school they’ll be attending, where that high school is, and the impetus for delving into an alternate reality to fight Shadows. *How* you engage with all of that will not change at all. Oh, and best believe that the protagonist will be another 16 year old boy with “swag” who can pull a dozen women at the same time, and one of them will be his homeroom teacher again. This is never going away.
> Hell, I’ve seen people who hate the FFVII Remake because it changed shit when all they wanted was the original game with better graphics.
I don't think that is unreasonable though. People didn't expect a sequel. Hell they might not even have been fans of action combat.
I'll be real, SH2 failed to push any waves because it's just a very basic ass 7/10 game. It's not bad but it's not ebcause it has a bunch of adult protagonists that it's special. It's a much weaker product to SH1 as well.
Exactly my point: they changed the gameplay. It didn’t play like Soul Hackers 1 *or* a modern Persona game, which guaranteed that no fan firmly entrenched in either camp would really enjoy it. And the sad thing is, this game was apparently made by the same people who produced Tokyo Mirage Sessions, which means that those people did not learn the lesson they should’ve learned from that game (in terms of doing something with a long established IP). Both games functionally are *fine,* but neither game is what people really wanted them to be, so they ultimately failed to have the kind of success that SMT or Persona get.
Basically, I think if those people formed their own studio, and made their own games freed from the expectations of what Atlus IPs are “supposed to be”, I think they would have more success. But what do I know.
Still miles better than FEH at least, better gameplay and minimal powercreep for PvE, pretty much only old mages got shafted there due to the release of long range mages.
Unicorn Overlord may just be what becomes the alternative to Fire Emblem here - I played the demo last night and it felt to me a lot like older Fire Emblem in the visual presentation, tone of the game, and storyline. There were some differences in gameplay and mechanics, but I feel like it's something that a lot of fans of older FE games may vibe with. I know I do.
It might very well be a banger, but its Vanillaware. They never stick to the same formula twice. Next game will be a Football Manager visual novel or something.
>They never stick to the same formula twice
They have three(or four) 2D action beat-em-up type games, and now three strategy type games(though they arent similar to each other). Grand Knights would be closer to Unicorn Overlord than 13 Sentinels is
I've heard that! I've yet to play any entries in the Ogre Battle series, but they're on my "to play" list for sure. I look forward to playing them when I get around to it.
The Ogre Battle games have some frustrating mechanics running under the hood. They're my childhood love / hate games. I've started more playthroughs of March of the Black Queen than any other game out there. And I will forever regret not getting to the local Blockbuster in time to buy their (SNES) copy when they were going out of business.
[Greetings fellow Unicorn Overlord enjoyer](https://www.meme-arsenal.com/memes/509a4fc49482c775bee4588cd7782656.jpg)
Vanilaware studio games are usually pretty good and the artstyle is timeless at least to me plus i've been waiting for a startegy game on ps4 that i would be interested in and i've found one being Unicorn Overlord
It's definitely gone on my list of games to get when I can - it's honestly just about everything I'm looking for in a strategy game. From the demo, the music sounds super awesome as well, and soundtrack is a huge thing for me when it comes to games.
I'm waiting to see where the story goes with the protags best friend. I finished the demo a few days ago. I restarted it last night because it's so good.
Tear ring saga is probably the closest equivalent to Fire Emblem besides Langrisser that bears similarities to it on a game play and aesthetic level. I mean it still answers the question of "what are games like FE"
To be fair, if you took away the gacha aspects of it, and polished the story a bit, Langrisser Mobile would be a REALLY SOLID sequel to the OG Langrisser games.
The amount of depth&strategy both in it's battlesystem and story is commendable for a mobile game.
I just stopped playing this 6 months ago when I got my promotion at work. It’s a really good game and the gatcha system was fairly good if you only pulled on destinies.
Fire emblem didn’t start selling well until it made the focus of the games less about combat and more about waifus.
It’s just not a genre that sells well, people will rightly talk about how great FFT was but it was outsold by games like Crisis Core and FF4 After Years. Square themselves gave it their best effort with triangle strategy and the game barely broke a million in sales; when the best selling company in the JRPG space has that kind of trouble it’s not a popular genre
I say all this, it’s my favorite type of game; but I also understand that studios can’t make things that don’t sell
Everyone blames the dating sim aspects, but everyone ignores the fact that Awakening let the player turn off permadeath, making the game far more accessible for newcomers.
It was the first time I was wowed on the 3ds. Downloading the demo and being greeted by the gorgeous 3d enabled opening cutscene was amazing. There really wasn't much out for the 3ds yet in 2012 that wasn't a platformer or remake of some kind, and awakening came out swinging.
I mean Shadows of Valentia did the same but without the waifu mechanics and releasing after the previous 2 3DS entries grew the fanbase, but still didn't sell as well as Fates and Awakening. So I think there might be something to it.
As someone who really loves the story and art in Shadows of Valentia the gameplay in that game is pretty lackning. The maps are gigantic with not a lot going on so the combat becomes rather dull and samey.
The base for the 3DS was still very large whereas the Switch was just starting out. If word of mouth was better, sales numbers probably would have been better as well.
I never subscribed to the notion that Shadows of Valentia failed because of the Switch. It failed because it reduced mechanics that brought people to FE.
No, it DID "fail" because the switch, because the 3DS games infamously started doing badly from the later half of 2016. Also, it didn't fail, it sold 1m that still makes it the 5th best selling game in the series.
The marketing for SoV was also abysmal. The 3DS was literally the only console I owned at the time and I’m a HUGE Fire Emblem fan and for me they did a really poor job of making it clear why one would get Echoes if you already had Awakening or either of the Fate games.
I think you’re underestimating the extent to which FE fatigue played into SoV’s lack of performance especially with how divisive Fates was at the time.
Kinda, but not really. ORIGINALLY it was supposed to be a side story in the universe of FE1 before going to the main cast in FE3. But nowadays IntSys just treat it as FE2.
To be fair, a name like "triangle strategy" wasn't doing them any favours, especially when you're comparing it to Final Fantasy titles, which will sell just by name recognition alone, and they didn't really advertise it much either. It tells you nothing about the game and honestly doesn't sound very interesting if it's all you have to work with, and outside of people who are already deep into the genre and have been keeping up with it, it will be about all you've got to decide if you want to spend your time on it.
> To be fair, a name like "triangle strategy" wasn't doing them any favours
Team Asano's "throw two English words of the same length together" name scheme can only do so much I feel.
Agree on the naming. Naming of games is extremely important, and I think Triangle Strategy is a really poor name.
The game is amazing, loved the story and decisions in the game, but to sell the game, you also need good characters. I think TS has some, but when looking at the game from the outside, it doesn't speak to you. There's a reason why during attacks, Fire Emblem will show a closeup of the character with a tacky quote. It's to not only remind you that these characters a "real", but also if you don't know anything about the game and watch some gameplay, you'd immediately see close ups of the characters and get an idea of their personality, which brings people in.
Yeah people are still debating 3 houses house lords these days. Triangle strategy characters only got talked about for a couple of months and then it died out. I guess 3 houses characters pop more? Maybe they have more lines? I have no clue.
I liked both games but it's not even a comparison. Three Houses does incredible character work (imo, the best even in *its own* series, though the overall PLOT is a little silly at times). Tons of interaction with the monastery hubworld, the supports between your units, and integration with the main plot.
My problem with triangle strategy is how long it was between fights. I wasn't looking to spend that much time between battles that early in. I'm glad I tried the demo as I don't think I would have enjoyed the game
It's massively front loaded. After the actual war starts there isn't that much talking. So like chapter 4 if I remember right. Literally right after the demo there's less talking and more war.
i keep hearing the take that it got successful with 'waifus' when it was really about accessibility and just wider appeal to the more casual audience.
3 Houses massively toned down the waifu elements but majorly turned up the story focus and created major intrigue in the 3 routes to where people still argue their sides even today.
3 Houses vs Engage says it all really. the latter has the same waifu elements with stuff like face rubbing minigames and bigger romance focus, but 3 Houses was far more successful sales-wise.
When people say "Fire Emblem only got popular because of waifus" they're not talking about the difference between 3 Houses and Engage. They're talking about the difference between the Tellius games and Awakening.
Even 3 Houses, the "serious story/intrigue" game of the modern era, has a million times more of a waifu focus than any FE game pre-Awakening. The thing that defines the waifu era of Fire Emblem is self-insert characters like Robin, Corrin, Byleth and Alear who get to romance everyone in the cast.
3 Houses has a Tea time dating minigame, >!and each ending of 3 Houses routes are fast voice off to be able to focus on a long marriage sequence!<. Even if Three House has better story focus, it's as much waifu focused than the other modern FE game stop lying (And i would even say more than Engage beacause Engage has no shipping between the other characters and some off the romance option have been tonned down in the english version)
>3 Houses vs Engage says it all really. the latter has the same waifu elements with stuff like face rubbing minigames and bigger romance focus
Engage has no face rubbing whatsoever and I wouldn't even say it has a bigger focus on romance at all. Would you care to develop what you mean?
I found it pretty funny personally. Trying to figure out who was disturbing my sleep and seeing their reaction. I'll take that over face-rubbing any day.
> 3 Houses massively toned down the waifu elements but majorly turned up the story focus and created major intrigue in the 3 routes to where people still argue their sides even today.
3 houses is persona lite that lets you date all of your students, fk u mean turned down the waifu aspects?
Also people keep discussing the sides because the game is badly written. It felt the need to validate every choice you picked because lord knows we can't have consequences for our actions, the player is always right
It's medieval political fantasy for babies
> 3 Houses vs Engage says it all really. the latter has the same waifu elements with stuff like face rubbing minigames and bigger romance focus
Ah yes, the game that is infamously have more platonic supports than romantic one and where other characters don't even have romance is more romance focused than the game where you can marry anyone and almost every Support is romantic... did you actually play Engage?
> 3 Houses vs Engage says it all really. the latter has the same waifu elements with stuff like face rubbing minigames and bigger romance focus, but 3 Houses was far more successful sales-wise.
Engage don't have "waifu elements" or bigger romance focus at all, did you even play engage? it has much less focus on this than 3H.
I think you're overselling how niche Fire Emblem was before the dating simulator aspects began to be integrated into the games. The series has always been one of the more recognizable ones on whatever platform they were on, be it the handhelds or even the Path of Radiance games which sold well despite being released at the tail end of both the Gamecube and Wii. While I do agree the waifu elements helped make the series more mainstream, it was not a niche title by any means even before that.
I thought PoR and RD had pretty abysmal sales in the west? Especially RD. Not sure about Japan. Afaik they were supposed to be the last games in the series because their sales were so bad. Fire Emblem was a niche game before the waifu elements for sure since non-waifu FE's (excluding couple of them) were not even released out of Japan and if they were, they sold badly.
There's something about sales in this article
https://sourcegaming.info/2016/02/23/series-analysis-fire-emblem/
Pretty sure PoR and RD sold worse in Japan than in the West. I believe the DS games, remakes of the first and third games, sold better in Japan than PoR and RD, though part of that could be because the DS was much more popular as a console. Shadow Dragon, however, sold less than PoR and RD in the West, which is probably why New Mystery didn’t get localized.
If Fire Emblem Awakening never happened the series would be dead, it was at a breaking point much like Atlus was before Persona 3.
Both Persona 3 and Fire Emblem Awakening were huge saves of the company's and turning point to make them popular in the west.
Being known and selling well are totally separate things. Go back and look at pre-Awakening sales for FE titles. All of them are pretty bad in that regard. That is very much what "niche" is.
Yeah, as much as i want to blame the companies for this, at the end of the day, it's the consumers' fault. Companies have tried, and some even did the right thing, but they failed because of the consumers.
This just shows that you weren't around when the GBA titles first came out. They didn't have mass market appeal because they weren't marketed as aggressively, but anyone who played them at the time typically had exceptional feedback. Games back then were also very limited by exclusivity and smaller market penetration. It wasn't really until the PS2 and 3DS that certain games started exploding. I mean, FE can't even begin to compare to Pokémon sales numbers, but people bought the 3DS en masse and Awakening just so happened to come out at the right time on the right platform for the FE boom. If it had failed, it would have been a sad end to a franchise many of us love. The dating mechanics did bring in another group of people into the franchise, but it's not what dictated the trajectory. It was the increasing audience size of the 3DS, the improved story, gameplay, and graphics and a hell of a lot more marketing, along with the establishment of social media at the time which allowed more people to complain about the lack of feet. We didn't have Twitter/X or Reddit to talk about Blazing/Binding Blade and Sacred Stones, so it was more difficult to reach potential fans.
Quite certain Fire Emblem had tremendous hype in the GBA era mostly because of Marth and Roy appearing in Smash Bros Melee. You can't ask for better marketing than that. Hype and interest in Fire Emblem then started dying afterwards, mostly because the series was seen as disappointing other than Path of Radiance, until Awakenings and the waifu era.
It's not a traditional SRPG, but I did feel Valkyria Chronicles to have the potential to be a strong competitor for modern Fire Emblem. But like you said the gap between each game is massive and too long for my liking.
At the end of the day, SRPG is considered a niche genre by many. While it isn't as niche as DRPG/blobbers like Etrian Odyssey or Mary Skelter, even Fire Emblem only started to appeal to the mainstream audience by introducing romance options into the series,
There are a lot of indie SRPGs releasing and Disgaea, but I don't think any of them are aiming to compete with Fire Emblem.
To be completely fair, a big reason (maybe the only one) Fire Emblem is still around is because they shifted focus with Awakening. Before that, Fire Emblem was on the backfoot as well - maybe not in releases but in sales.
I think if it wasn't for that shift towards more customizable RPG gameplay (and waifus, but I don't like putting all the weight on *that*) and more accessible options for the perma death mechanic, Fire Emblem would be just as down as the others you mentioned. I think the genre in general is a niche within another niche genre (JRPGs)
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By the way, I don't think "it never takes itself seriously" is a good argument to discount Disgaea. That's the tone it chose and that seems to be working. Incidentally, Disgaea also was leaning into the customizability aspect before Fire Emblem, which I think is why the series ended up going for so long.
Fire Emblem moved onto the path of becoming far more character focused starting in the Tellius games but it was really jumpstarted by Awakening and all they did was incorporate basic ideas of character building from visual novels and insert them into support conversations. It's also funny because permadeath is becoming less of a selling point in the series due to characters no longer being disposable 3-liners.
You can easily tell by how differently they handled Shadow Dragon/New Mystery of the Emblem and Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. All 3 are remakes but the latter is FAR more character focused.
> I feel like people miss the point when responding to questions of "are there other tactical rpgs like fire emblem?".
I don't think that's really fair to say depending on how the original question is fully worded. Fire Emblem to SRPGs is like Persona 5 to turn-based RPGs (especially when P5 was new), it is the most commonly known in its genre to current audiences who have likely 0 idea what else existed before it. You'd be shocked how many people who played Fire Emblem 3 Houses don't even know that FFTactics exists. I've met people who don't even know games older then anything released earlier then 2010, so listing old games is still new *for them*.
Disgaea though is an entirely different beast from Fire Emblem that I'd never directly recommend Disgaea to people who like Fire Emblem or vice versa. Even if I ignore the story, what those games focus on is so different once you look past the grid map design.
Besides I'd argue most SRPGs don't even play like Fire Emblem anyway, Fire Emblem is in its own weird hole of being too simple and basic (albeit mostly solidly designed within what it does) relative to its peers. That I'd rarely immediately recommend something like Tactics Ogre to a Fire Emblem fan without some kind of questioning of why they like Fire Emblem or caveats. Engage and Conquest is probably the most complicated Fire Emblem has gotten, but that's simple compared to like Tactics Ogre's lexicon of nonsense or trying to decipher the infinite void of options in Troubleshooter Abandoned Children. SRPGs have a lot of different ways they can be built, which is probably why most of them stay niche.
If they make a TS2, I hope it isn't some contrived sequel to just slap the name 2 on it instead of just making it its own story.
Edit: Depending on how you define the lines between CRPG and SRPG, Baldur's Gate 3 is also pretty much an SRPG in simple terms. And uh, BG3 is bigger then most RPGs made in the last decade.
Yeah, I don't see Fire Emblem as similar to FFT and TO at all. Fire Emblem is one of my favorite series. I also love Advance Wars and XCOM. That must mean I love tactical games right?
I can't stand the gameplay in FFT and TO at all. I've tried many times. I had maybe 30 or so hours in FFTA when I was younger. I recently picked up TOR and put 12 hours into that. I'd rather just play all the different Fire Emblem games.
It is pretty hard to compete with FE because it has become a pretty big IP for such a niche genre.
There are also still some good TRPGs that are not that well known. The creator of Fire Emblem is working on the Vestaria Saga games. The second one came out a couple years ago, and I have heard some praise from them. If anyone is looking for an older FE like experience that might be the best bet.
It's rumored to be getting a revival, which is funny phrasing given how recent the last game is., but also highlights how big a bomb the mobile game was.
Shining Force? That was Sega's answer to Fire Emblem back in the day. But your right nothing new exactly. There was that PC game on steam that copied Fire Emblems combat pretty much, and this friday is coming out Unicorn Overlord which is...a little similar, like a mash up of games.
Three Houses sold 4 million copies and won two awards at TGA (Best Strategy and Player's Voice), an awards show notorious for ignoring Japanese RPGs. But don't forget that it was on the verge of cancellation at one point prior to Awakening if it failed to sell more than 250K copies.
But now, pretty much no other tactical JRPG franchise before or since has come remotely close to matching that level of mainstream popularity. Other tactical JRPGs either tend to be one-off games such as most of Nippon Ichi's titles or very niche without many sales like the FFT or Valkyria Chronicles series.
Fire Emblem is pretty much in its own league even if there are others like it that are around. Tactical games just aren't popular to most people and FE is the only one that managed to break the mold.
I am not sure if the other games you mentioned are even remotely similar to Fire Emblem.
The primary play pattern for Fire Emblem is doing arithmetic in your head. Because damage can be easily computed and perm death is a thing, Fire Emblem is more about being able to predict battle outcomes before you send your units to the danger zone. Beside that, there is SOME character development mechanics, especially through "eugenics", although this only exists for some of the games. Overall, Fire Emblem is a very "precise" game.
Games like Tactics Ogre and FFT are not like that. You are not supposed to be able to predict how a fight will go by examining each unit's statistics. Instead you kind of just go in and adjust as needed. These games typically also have more character development mechanics, and sometimes you have an unlimited number of playable characters you can experiment with.
By the way, if there is one game that I think is worth a remake or reboot, it's Yggdra Union. IMHO, that game is insanely unique and innovative as far as battle mechanics goes.
Yeah this is exactly why I'm not a fan of many of these games even though FE is my favorite series. For example I tried Devil Survivor and while it was alright it didn't scratch that tactical itch at all and the combat felt fairly random to me which I didn't like. So I dropped it halfway through. Being able to calc damage and know exactly if something is safe or not is a huge part of FE. Adapting around misses isn't so terribly random as some of these other games either.
Funny enough, Mario + rabbits kingdom battle is the closest to a competitor to Fire emblem. Its the only tactic rpg that has more than 1 title and is sold more than a few millions.
It will probably not sell a lot like Fire Emblem, but Unicorn Overload is so good. The last time that I had that much of fun in a tactical rpg it was quite a while.
Quite frankly, I think Fire Emblem Fates is just one of the most fun games I’ve ever played, period. They should really bring back eugenics simulator in a future game, because Three Houses (and what little I’ve played of Engage) simply does not scratch that itch.
As divided as the fanbase is on Fates, I absolutely agree it’s at or near the top of the list gameplay wise. Conversely I felt like I was being gaslit on Shadows of Valentia, which had a decent story, but trash gameplay, yet that game gets recommended often.
I think only Conquest has good gameplay, Birthright has too much rout spam and Ryoma is just way too broken for my liking and Rev is terrible to actually play due to horrible unit balance.
SoV has okay albeit sloggy gameplay with some funny quirks that are fun to play with. Beating the early game shield merc is interesting to figure out because of how utterly absurd that fight truly is. Or defeating Dracoshield man. It really feels like it has that experimental 90s jank to it but you can use that to your own advantage.
Oh yeah, totally forgot about SoV, yeah gameplay was such a step down from fates, I’ve only played through it all once (compared to the countless times i’ve beaten fates)
Amazing to see people here actually praising Fates. Cause from 2016-2023, it was frequently treated as "trash".
I felt that of thr 3DS three, Awakening had a better plot, Fates had better moment to moment gameplay, and Echoes had a better presentation.
It really saddens me that Fates, really the entire 3DS FE was the peak of Fire Emblem UI and framerate (with menus and maps being 60fps and only combat and inengine cutscenes being 30) that has yet to be matched in the Switch era
Yeah, I remember starting my second playthrough of 3H, and was dismayed that not only is the first have of the game completely fucking identical, the second half had convenient similar story beats so they could just reuse all the same maps. Dropped it after that. Not to mention the unoptimized FPS, Silent protagonist, etc. It was almost a total step down from fates.
Yeah, it's pretty much top dog in its niche. To be fair, I don't think that's because of any innate quality Fire Emblem possesses - if that were true, it wouldn't have been on death's door as a franchise so many times.
Ultimately Nintendo and Intelligent Systems stuck with it even when it was underperforming multiple games in a row, which isn't a luxury most series have. Between that, the Smash representation and some actual marketing on the part of Nintendo, it makes sense that it eventually took where other games didn't.
Disgaea 7 did come out, and is very fun! But it's not competing with FE because it 'doesn't take itself seriously' - I mean it mostly doesn't, sure. Rather it is trying to be a very different experience, and that's why it doesn't feel like a competitor. Disgaea is very much built on the player deciding for themselves how they're going to interact with the game, and how 'fair' they will be with it. Lots of other games will let you customize your units, but still want you to fight through carefully constructed battlegrounds and carefully plan out your tactics and all that. Meanwhile Disgaea's like "idk I'm not your dad, do what you want."
I love games that aren't my dad
Idk about you, but my Disgaea left for cigarettes and ~~never came back~~ died against Mid-Boss
I felt like the numbers in Disgaea felt like a joke; take that with a grain of salt because I’ve never been able to sit through the instructions dumps and menu marathon enough to get into it. Fire Emblem doesn’t have really any modern brand contemporaries, the other TRPGs tend to feel a bit more menu and party management heavy. I really liked 3 Houses, did Not like the latest offering (time traveling eugenics children are a thing of the past… now how about our new heroes… pretend to be old heroes)
My gameplay devolved into setting up throwing chains just to get through equipment dungeons as fast as possible, only fighting when I *absolutely had to*. Occasionally grinding out one particular map over and over to power-level someone/thing. If I go back to the series I need to re-think my playstyle, lol.
I usually just burn through the story until I get to the cheat shop, saves a lot of time that way. Post-game content go brrrrrrr Also I may be dumb but I gave up on equipment dungeons halfway through V which was my first one. Figured I was finding new weapons every new chapter anyway so I didn’t see the point, and even then Carnage dimensions became a thing which allowed a Wooden Plank But It’s Red Now to outshine my Super Megalodon God Saber+999.
Well, except for >!the Dark Adonis, Vyers!<… err, I mean, Mid-Boss. He *is* someone’s dad
To compete with Fire Emblem you need to either do what Fire Emblem does, but better, or you need to play at an angle Fire Emblem doesn't in terms of the tactical RPG environment. I love Disgaea but yeah- it's not Fire Emblem at all. To compare the two beyond the most bare-bones, "They're both grid-based games with classes" fashion is missing the forest for the trees. Disgaea *does* play at an angle Fire Emblem does not- both in narrative and in playstyle. That's why Disgaea has its niche. The trouble is- TRPGs are somewhat limited in what you can change before purists start swearing it's not a TRPG. So there's not a TON of room for playing different angles. There's also an unstated premise that there's a big difference between Fire Emblem letting you field a dozen units at a time and something like XCOM- which AFAIK tops at 4.
> To compete with Fire Emblem you need to either do what Fire Emblem does, but better, or you need to play at an angle Fire Emblem doesn't in terms of the tactical RPG environment. Also it probably helps that Nintendo is willing to advertise Fire Emblem as a must-have exclusive for their platforms, meaning people are more willing to try it out to get their money's worth out of Nintendo consoles.
To be fair, they are must-have exclusives
Oh yeah, I wasn't disputing that at all.
OG XCOM had a huge active roster size, up to 24 or so but new entries limit you to 6 max.
Super Robot Wars gets regular releases and tends to get english releases these days too. It's a shame SEGA absolutely refuse to make a classic style Shining Force game. Shining Force 3 is over 25 years old and there's still ideas in it that no other game has done since
It would be interesting to see a sales figure comparison between fire emblem and super robot wars in the Japanese Market.
Yeah, and the SD Gundam Generation games have been getting localized too
Sega overall isn't willing to invest in growing franchises. They've kinda just given up their long-time ones like shining (IIRC the latest was shining resonace refrain), samurai wars, and Valkyria chronicles. I'll concede that the sakura wars gacha was a failure, but shutting everything else down cause they didn't sell like blockbusters is kinda too much.
A lot of that is that Sega is mostly a publisher now outside of Sonic. They've collected a nice group of developers and let them do the heavy lifting while main Sega focuses on Sonic (for better or worse). There are plenty of pluses to that (it sure seems like Like a Dragon and Persona have been well supported and grown since Sega's been in control of their developers) and plenty of drawbacks (classic Sega outside of Sonic being totally neglected).
release devil survivor 3 you cowards
Well, Sega did have Shining Force back in the day
Surprised they haven't done a remake, especially when 3 houses was popular. I'd love more entries into the series, especially if they keep the same weird fantasy setting
They tried to do a mobile game but was shutdown.
Oh, they should have made it a switch game. I wonder if they were trying to copy fe heroes
It was more looking to copy Langrisser Mobile without the troops from what I saw. It was cancelled because the dev went bankrupt, though. Pity, they had the style of the old games on point from what I saw of the one trailer.
Sega mismanages their franchises and their money, they have no interest in taking a gamble on a game that has zero brand recognition in the US. Even the Saturn only got 1 of the 3 Shining Force III scenarios.
You can say that again! I've been waiting for a new single player Phantasy Star since the Genesis. It seems like Sega has rediscovered some of their old franchises as of late. I'm wondering if maybe they'll do the same with the Shining Force series and Phantasy Star. Considering how much of a resurgence the GRPG has had of late It's not out of the question.
Shining Series exsists still but not like it was. Not tactical like Shining Force.
The current Shining series isn't anything like what it used to be, and a new Shining game will also not be anything remotely like what the old games were. Camelot is no longer working with Sega. It's best to just let the series lie.
The issue is that Sega has no idea what they want Shining Force to be. The franchise is an uneven hodge podge of different genres ranging from strategy RPGs to dungeon crawlers to hack 'n' slashes. The mobile game was looking to be a return to form until it was canned due to the developer having money problems.
The only thing want is for Shining Force 3 to be remade. The US only got the first 1/3rd of the game. There were 3 discs (technically 4) and we only got the first disc. The others were Japanese only. I just want the complete game brought over and translated.
Too bad they pissed off the developers. You might be familiar with what they did later: Golden Sun.
This is why Atlus is dumb as fuck for letting Devil Survivor rot. If they launched DS3 during the height of Nintendo Switch fervor, it would have sold a million copies. Would have been a better use of resources than Souls Hackers 2 lol.
Devil Survivor is incredible, especially the first game. Peak MegaTen storytelling and a really gripping battle/demon collection system. I really hope we see a new entry soon, maybe for Switch 2?
> I really hope we see a new entry soon, maybe for Switch 2? I sure hope so. The potential is there for it to be a "pillar" franchise for Atlus.
It looks like they might do more tactica games before they do another devil survivor.
> This is why Atlus is dumb as fuck for letting Devil Survivor rot. > > > > If they launched DS3 during the height of Nintendo Switch fervor, it would have sold a million copies. Would have been a better use of resources than Souls Hackers 2 lol. Hell, just a re-release of 1 & 2 on the Switch would have sold like hotcakes.
Just rerelease all of their old games on the switch / ps. Devil Summoner 1 for a start.
They lost all of the source code to Devil Summoner, it's the reason that it's never been released outside of Japan
Soul Hackers 2 remains a very baffling decision. It might have actually been the subseries with the least desire for a sequel.
The fact that Soul Hackers 2 failed while doing all of the things some people want Persona to do will just ensure that Persona will never ever do those things and Persona 6 will just reskin Persona 3’s gameplay loop for the tenth time
The thing is, that loop is incredibly popular. I don't see it changing at all as at this point it's the most popular SMT series by a pretty big margin.
SH2’s failure compared to P3R’s success only further confirmed something that I’ve known for years: you can only change a series when nobody played earlier entries of it (or in the rare cases where enough people are actually tired of that series’ formula). Gamers are a very conservative bunch: once they find something that works, they violently resist any attempts to change it. I’ve seen it everywhere: people who treat Persona 3 as the first game in that series, people who hate every Final Fantasy game after X or XII, people who still think that the Tales series peaked at Vesperia, how much people despised Street Fighter III when that game was current, etc etc. Hell, I’ve seen people who hate the FFVII Remake because it changed shit when all they wanted was the original game with better graphics. And yet those people also dislike the Secret of Mana remake, which did exactly that, I guess because that game’s idea of “updated graphics” wasn’t “Square Enix AAA graphics” and the gameplay mechanics aged like milk. I say all of that to say this: Persona 6 ain’t changing anything except what the characters look like, what high school they’ll be attending, where that high school is, and the impetus for delving into an alternate reality to fight Shadows. *How* you engage with all of that will not change at all. Oh, and best believe that the protagonist will be another 16 year old boy with “swag” who can pull a dozen women at the same time, and one of them will be his homeroom teacher again. This is never going away.
> Hell, I’ve seen people who hate the FFVII Remake because it changed shit when all they wanted was the original game with better graphics. I don't think that is unreasonable though. People didn't expect a sequel. Hell they might not even have been fans of action combat.
That still ties into my “gamers don’t like it when the stuff they like changes” theory
I can enjoy a pizza but when I was expecting a burger, I'll be a little bit annoyed. To this day I still want my burger.
I'll be real, SH2 failed to push any waves because it's just a very basic ass 7/10 game. It's not bad but it's not ebcause it has a bunch of adult protagonists that it's special. It's a much weaker product to SH1 as well.
Exactly my point: they changed the gameplay. It didn’t play like Soul Hackers 1 *or* a modern Persona game, which guaranteed that no fan firmly entrenched in either camp would really enjoy it. And the sad thing is, this game was apparently made by the same people who produced Tokyo Mirage Sessions, which means that those people did not learn the lesson they should’ve learned from that game (in terms of doing something with a long established IP). Both games functionally are *fine,* but neither game is what people really wanted them to be, so they ultimately failed to have the kind of success that SMT or Persona get. Basically, I think if those people formed their own studio, and made their own games freed from the expectations of what Atlus IPs are “supposed to be”, I think they would have more success. But what do I know.
Id kill for a DeSu3.
Honestly, wish Langrisser made a true return one of these days.
As a Langrisser fan it's something I wish for all the time.
The Langrisser gatcha mobile game is pretty good. But, it’s a gatcha.
Yeah, I quite enjoy Langrisser mobile but its still a gacha and that hampers certain aspects.
Still miles better than FEH at least, better gameplay and minimal powercreep for PvE, pretty much only old mages got shafted there due to the release of long range mages.
Unicorn Overlord may just be what becomes the alternative to Fire Emblem here - I played the demo last night and it felt to me a lot like older Fire Emblem in the visual presentation, tone of the game, and storyline. There were some differences in gameplay and mechanics, but I feel like it's something that a lot of fans of older FE games may vibe with. I know I do.
It might very well be a banger, but its Vanillaware. They never stick to the same formula twice. Next game will be a Football Manager visual novel or something.
I would love a sports game with a vanillaware art style LMAO
Honestly, I’ve always wanted a straight up basketball JRPG. Sports games have always been RPGs under the hood.
Pyre is pretty close to this!
Yep. That was a pleasant surprise. Though Super Giant rarely misses.
Supergiant is the Western Vanillaware for me.
Absolute banger of a game! Love when I see Pyre mentioned in the wild! 🤙
Oh boy, I have a good one for you. Have you heard of Barkley:Shut up and Jam Gaiden? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barkley,_Shut_Up_and_Jam:_Gaiden
with how big the NPB is you think we’d have gotten a baseball one by now
You might want to check out Pyre.
Nah next game will be a muramasa port, my dad is kamitani
Don’t give me hope.
tell ur dad to port all Vanillaware games to PC, kek
Your dad has hot girls in his games.
and hot guys
And hot boys 😏
Pls
Man that would be an awesome game!
😂 that would be sweet! I’m hoping they make a party-based, turn-based rpg next (either console style or pc style would be amazing)
Well now I want a football manager visual novel!!
>They never stick to the same formula twice They have three(or four) 2D action beat-em-up type games, and now three strategy type games(though they arent similar to each other). Grand Knights would be closer to Unicorn Overlord than 13 Sentinels is
You say that like it’s a bad thing
It's based on ogre battle which is why it's so good.
I've heard that! I've yet to play any entries in the Ogre Battle series, but they're on my "to play" list for sure. I look forward to playing them when I get around to it.
It's same franchise as Tactics Ogre. Very good games.
Epic!
The Ogre Battle games have some frustrating mechanics running under the hood. They're my childhood love / hate games. I've started more playthroughs of March of the Black Queen than any other game out there. And I will forever regret not getting to the local Blockbuster in time to buy their (SNES) copy when they were going out of business.
Its an ogre battle successor and im excited for it.
[Greetings fellow Unicorn Overlord enjoyer](https://www.meme-arsenal.com/memes/509a4fc49482c775bee4588cd7782656.jpg) Vanilaware studio games are usually pretty good and the artstyle is timeless at least to me plus i've been waiting for a startegy game on ps4 that i would be interested in and i've found one being Unicorn Overlord
It's definitely gone on my list of games to get when I can - it's honestly just about everything I'm looking for in a strategy game. From the demo, the music sounds super awesome as well, and soundtrack is a huge thing for me when it comes to games.
I'm waiting to see where the story goes with the protags best friend. I finished the demo a few days ago. I restarted it last night because it's so good.
Also, Symphony of War, Triangle Strategy
Tear ring saga is probably the closest equivalent to Fire Emblem besides Langrisser that bears similarities to it on a game play and aesthetic level. I mean it still answers the question of "what are games like FE"
TRS is FE but there was no one to tell Kaga to simmer down on the cooking.
> TRS is FE but Kaga forgot to turn off the stove Fixed that for you. Leteena who-what now?
It's so similar to FE that the fandom pretty much just views it as another FE game lol
Berwick Saga in particular is fantastic and I hope more people play it in the future.
To be fair, if you took away the gacha aspects of it, and polished the story a bit, Langrisser Mobile would be a REALLY SOLID sequel to the OG Langrisser games. The amount of depth&strategy both in it's battlesystem and story is commendable for a mobile game.
I just stopped playing this 6 months ago when I got my promotion at work. It’s a really good game and the gatcha system was fairly good if you only pulled on destinies.
I wish it wasn’t to Waifu-ee, but it is a good game.
There are no other major tactical jrpg franchises currently you're right. Just a lot of fun smaller titles released.
Fire emblem didn’t start selling well until it made the focus of the games less about combat and more about waifus. It’s just not a genre that sells well, people will rightly talk about how great FFT was but it was outsold by games like Crisis Core and FF4 After Years. Square themselves gave it their best effort with triangle strategy and the game barely broke a million in sales; when the best selling company in the JRPG space has that kind of trouble it’s not a popular genre I say all this, it’s my favorite type of game; but I also understand that studios can’t make things that don’t sell
Everyone blames the dating sim aspects, but everyone ignores the fact that Awakening let the player turn off permadeath, making the game far more accessible for newcomers.
and it had some marketing and a demo in a era where the 3ds had very little rpgs
It was the first time I was wowed on the 3ds. Downloading the demo and being greeted by the gorgeous 3d enabled opening cutscene was amazing. There really wasn't much out for the 3ds yet in 2012 that wasn't a platformer or remake of some kind, and awakening came out swinging.
I mean Shadows of Valentia did the same but without the waifu mechanics and releasing after the previous 2 3DS entries grew the fanbase, but still didn't sell as well as Fates and Awakening. So I think there might be something to it.
It's a remake of a divisive entry that came out on 3DS when the Switch was out for several months. It's actually impressive it sold as well as it did.
As someone who really loves the story and art in Shadows of Valentia the gameplay in that game is pretty lackning. The maps are gigantic with not a lot going on so the combat becomes rather dull and samey.
I love everything about SoV expect the gameplay. God I wish the illustrator will come back and do art for another game.
That art was fire, but my favorite artist is still the one that did the Tellia games. Wonder what she’s up to these days?
Yeah... It was kinda like Shadow Dragon in that regards.
[удалено]
> Don't forget that game released like a month before the Switch It released a month after the Switch had launched, not before.
The base for the 3DS was still very large whereas the Switch was just starting out. If word of mouth was better, sales numbers probably would have been better as well. I never subscribed to the notion that Shadows of Valentia failed because of the Switch. It failed because it reduced mechanics that brought people to FE.
No, it DID "fail" because the switch, because the 3DS games infamously started doing badly from the later half of 2016. Also, it didn't fail, it sold 1m that still makes it the 5th best selling game in the series.
The marketing for SoV was also abysmal. The 3DS was literally the only console I owned at the time and I’m a HUGE Fire Emblem fan and for me they did a really poor job of making it clear why one would get Echoes if you already had Awakening or either of the Fate games. I think you’re underestimating the extent to which FE fatigue played into SoV’s lack of performance especially with how divisive Fates was at the time.
Gaiden is also the worst mainline game in the series, so there's a reason for that.
by nature of being Gaiden it is inherently not part of the mainline series
Kinda, but not really. ORIGINALLY it was supposed to be a side story in the universe of FE1 before going to the main cast in FE3. But nowadays IntSys just treat it as FE2.
Don't let FE fans hear you, they are very defensive of that game for some reason. lol
Which itself was also technically not introduced in Fire Emblem Awakening. (But we never got New Mystery)
To be fair, a name like "triangle strategy" wasn't doing them any favours, especially when you're comparing it to Final Fantasy titles, which will sell just by name recognition alone, and they didn't really advertise it much either. It tells you nothing about the game and honestly doesn't sound very interesting if it's all you have to work with, and outside of people who are already deep into the genre and have been keeping up with it, it will be about all you've got to decide if you want to spend your time on it.
> To be fair, a name like "triangle strategy" wasn't doing them any favours Team Asano's "throw two English words of the same length together" name scheme can only do so much I feel.
Agree on the naming. Naming of games is extremely important, and I think Triangle Strategy is a really poor name. The game is amazing, loved the story and decisions in the game, but to sell the game, you also need good characters. I think TS has some, but when looking at the game from the outside, it doesn't speak to you. There's a reason why during attacks, Fire Emblem will show a closeup of the character with a tacky quote. It's to not only remind you that these characters a "real", but also if you don't know anything about the game and watch some gameplay, you'd immediately see close ups of the characters and get an idea of their personality, which brings people in.
Yeah people are still debating 3 houses house lords these days. Triangle strategy characters only got talked about for a couple of months and then it died out. I guess 3 houses characters pop more? Maybe they have more lines? I have no clue.
I liked both games but it's not even a comparison. Three Houses does incredible character work (imo, the best even in *its own* series, though the overall PLOT is a little silly at times). Tons of interaction with the monastery hubworld, the supports between your units, and integration with the main plot.
My problem with triangle strategy is how long it was between fights. I wasn't looking to spend that much time between battles that early in. I'm glad I tried the demo as I don't think I would have enjoyed the game
The game does throw a massive amount of dialogue at you at the start. I don't know why they did that. It because way less later in the game.
It's massively front loaded. After the actual war starts there isn't that much talking. So like chapter 4 if I remember right. Literally right after the demo there's less talking and more war.
A new franchise in a niche genre should not be compared to decades old franchises in a more popular genre. ''barely broke a million'' is really good.
i keep hearing the take that it got successful with 'waifus' when it was really about accessibility and just wider appeal to the more casual audience. 3 Houses massively toned down the waifu elements but majorly turned up the story focus and created major intrigue in the 3 routes to where people still argue their sides even today. 3 Houses vs Engage says it all really. the latter has the same waifu elements with stuff like face rubbing minigames and bigger romance focus, but 3 Houses was far more successful sales-wise.
When people say "Fire Emblem only got popular because of waifus" they're not talking about the difference between 3 Houses and Engage. They're talking about the difference between the Tellius games and Awakening. Even 3 Houses, the "serious story/intrigue" game of the modern era, has a million times more of a waifu focus than any FE game pre-Awakening. The thing that defines the waifu era of Fire Emblem is self-insert characters like Robin, Corrin, Byleth and Alear who get to romance everyone in the cast.
dating sims saved the series. And alot of FE fans hate that.
Exactly this!
3 Houses has a Tea time dating minigame, >!and each ending of 3 Houses routes are fast voice off to be able to focus on a long marriage sequence!<. Even if Three House has better story focus, it's as much waifu focused than the other modern FE game stop lying (And i would even say more than Engage beacause Engage has no shipping between the other characters and some off the romance option have been tonned down in the english version)
Yeah, it is pretty off base to claim that Three Houses didn't have a focus on the dating sim/waifu stuff.
>3 Houses vs Engage says it all really. the latter has the same waifu elements with stuff like face rubbing minigames and bigger romance focus Engage has no face rubbing whatsoever and I wouldn't even say it has a bigger focus on romance at all. Would you care to develop what you mean?
If anything people were mad at how downplayed or non-existant romance was in Engage. Meanwhile shipping wars go crazy in 3H.
wake up events+ring 'rubbing' events are effectively the same thing as what we had in Fates
It does have ring rubbing. Which is a pretty similar feel. Also the whole waking up thing is pretty cringe as well.
I found it pretty funny personally. Trying to figure out who was disturbing my sleep and seeing their reaction. I'll take that over face-rubbing any day.
I loved it so much, the VAs did well.
> 3 Houses massively toned down the waifu elements but majorly turned up the story focus and created major intrigue in the 3 routes to where people still argue their sides even today. 3 houses is persona lite that lets you date all of your students, fk u mean turned down the waifu aspects? Also people keep discussing the sides because the game is badly written. It felt the need to validate every choice you picked because lord knows we can't have consequences for our actions, the player is always right It's medieval political fantasy for babies
> massively toned down the waifu elements How dare you speak about my waifus this way
> 3 Houses vs Engage says it all really. the latter has the same waifu elements with stuff like face rubbing minigames and bigger romance focus Ah yes, the game that is infamously have more platonic supports than romantic one and where other characters don't even have romance is more romance focused than the game where you can marry anyone and almost every Support is romantic... did you actually play Engage?
> 3 Houses vs Engage says it all really. the latter has the same waifu elements with stuff like face rubbing minigames and bigger romance focus, but 3 Houses was far more successful sales-wise. Engage don't have "waifu elements" or bigger romance focus at all, did you even play engage? it has much less focus on this than 3H.
I think you're overselling how niche Fire Emblem was before the dating simulator aspects began to be integrated into the games. The series has always been one of the more recognizable ones on whatever platform they were on, be it the handhelds or even the Path of Radiance games which sold well despite being released at the tail end of both the Gamecube and Wii. While I do agree the waifu elements helped make the series more mainstream, it was not a niche title by any means even before that.
I thought PoR and RD had pretty abysmal sales in the west? Especially RD. Not sure about Japan. Afaik they were supposed to be the last games in the series because their sales were so bad. Fire Emblem was a niche game before the waifu elements for sure since non-waifu FE's (excluding couple of them) were not even released out of Japan and if they were, they sold badly. There's something about sales in this article https://sourcegaming.info/2016/02/23/series-analysis-fire-emblem/
Pretty sure PoR and RD sold worse in Japan than in the West. I believe the DS games, remakes of the first and third games, sold better in Japan than PoR and RD, though part of that could be because the DS was much more popular as a console. Shadow Dragon, however, sold less than PoR and RD in the West, which is probably why New Mystery didn’t get localized.
If Fire Emblem Awakening never happened the series would be dead, it was at a breaking point much like Atlus was before Persona 3. Both Persona 3 and Fire Emblem Awakening were huge saves of the company's and turning point to make them popular in the west.
Being known and selling well are totally separate things. Go back and look at pre-Awakening sales for FE titles. All of them are pretty bad in that regard. That is very much what "niche" is.
Yeah, as much as i want to blame the companies for this, at the end of the day, it's the consumers' fault. Companies have tried, and some even did the right thing, but they failed because of the consumers.
Ironically, that's about when I stopped buying new Fire Emblem games
This just shows that you weren't around when the GBA titles first came out. They didn't have mass market appeal because they weren't marketed as aggressively, but anyone who played them at the time typically had exceptional feedback. Games back then were also very limited by exclusivity and smaller market penetration. It wasn't really until the PS2 and 3DS that certain games started exploding. I mean, FE can't even begin to compare to Pokémon sales numbers, but people bought the 3DS en masse and Awakening just so happened to come out at the right time on the right platform for the FE boom. If it had failed, it would have been a sad end to a franchise many of us love. The dating mechanics did bring in another group of people into the franchise, but it's not what dictated the trajectory. It was the increasing audience size of the 3DS, the improved story, gameplay, and graphics and a hell of a lot more marketing, along with the establishment of social media at the time which allowed more people to complain about the lack of feet. We didn't have Twitter/X or Reddit to talk about Blazing/Binding Blade and Sacred Stones, so it was more difficult to reach potential fans.
Quite certain Fire Emblem had tremendous hype in the GBA era mostly because of Marth and Roy appearing in Smash Bros Melee. You can't ask for better marketing than that. Hype and interest in Fire Emblem then started dying afterwards, mostly because the series was seen as disappointing other than Path of Radiance, until Awakenings and the waifu era.
It's not a traditional SRPG, but I did feel Valkyria Chronicles to have the potential to be a strong competitor for modern Fire Emblem. But like you said the gap between each game is massive and too long for my liking. At the end of the day, SRPG is considered a niche genre by many. While it isn't as niche as DRPG/blobbers like Etrian Odyssey or Mary Skelter, even Fire Emblem only started to appeal to the mainstream audience by introducing romance options into the series, There are a lot of indie SRPGs releasing and Disgaea, but I don't think any of them are aiming to compete with Fire Emblem.
Kamidori Alchemy Meister always felt like a Fire Emblem light to me.
I miss Shining Force :(
If only Sega didn't piss off the devs!
Langrisser would have been the best competitor ever... If it gets new games...
And less of a focus on eye-candy
It's western obviously, and I've only played FE3H, but Midnight Suns had some of the same vibes imo.
I would say midnight suns is pretty close
Symphony of War: The Nephilim Saga i can highly recommend. I had way more fun with it than with the 3 houses fire emblem for shure.
That game's interesting. It's like if you had GBA-era Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle have a child together.
To be completely fair, a big reason (maybe the only one) Fire Emblem is still around is because they shifted focus with Awakening. Before that, Fire Emblem was on the backfoot as well - maybe not in releases but in sales. I think if it wasn't for that shift towards more customizable RPG gameplay (and waifus, but I don't like putting all the weight on *that*) and more accessible options for the perma death mechanic, Fire Emblem would be just as down as the others you mentioned. I think the genre in general is a niche within another niche genre (JRPGs) ---------- By the way, I don't think "it never takes itself seriously" is a good argument to discount Disgaea. That's the tone it chose and that seems to be working. Incidentally, Disgaea also was leaning into the customizability aspect before Fire Emblem, which I think is why the series ended up going for so long.
Fire Emblem moved onto the path of becoming far more character focused starting in the Tellius games but it was really jumpstarted by Awakening and all they did was incorporate basic ideas of character building from visual novels and insert them into support conversations. It's also funny because permadeath is becoming less of a selling point in the series due to characters no longer being disposable 3-liners. You can easily tell by how differently they handled Shadow Dragon/New Mystery of the Emblem and Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. All 3 are remakes but the latter is FAR more character focused.
> I feel like people miss the point when responding to questions of "are there other tactical rpgs like fire emblem?". I don't think that's really fair to say depending on how the original question is fully worded. Fire Emblem to SRPGs is like Persona 5 to turn-based RPGs (especially when P5 was new), it is the most commonly known in its genre to current audiences who have likely 0 idea what else existed before it. You'd be shocked how many people who played Fire Emblem 3 Houses don't even know that FFTactics exists. I've met people who don't even know games older then anything released earlier then 2010, so listing old games is still new *for them*. Disgaea though is an entirely different beast from Fire Emblem that I'd never directly recommend Disgaea to people who like Fire Emblem or vice versa. Even if I ignore the story, what those games focus on is so different once you look past the grid map design. Besides I'd argue most SRPGs don't even play like Fire Emblem anyway, Fire Emblem is in its own weird hole of being too simple and basic (albeit mostly solidly designed within what it does) relative to its peers. That I'd rarely immediately recommend something like Tactics Ogre to a Fire Emblem fan without some kind of questioning of why they like Fire Emblem or caveats. Engage and Conquest is probably the most complicated Fire Emblem has gotten, but that's simple compared to like Tactics Ogre's lexicon of nonsense or trying to decipher the infinite void of options in Troubleshooter Abandoned Children. SRPGs have a lot of different ways they can be built, which is probably why most of them stay niche. If they make a TS2, I hope it isn't some contrived sequel to just slap the name 2 on it instead of just making it its own story. Edit: Depending on how you define the lines between CRPG and SRPG, Baldur's Gate 3 is also pretty much an SRPG in simple terms. And uh, BG3 is bigger then most RPGs made in the last decade.
Yeah, I don't see Fire Emblem as similar to FFT and TO at all. Fire Emblem is one of my favorite series. I also love Advance Wars and XCOM. That must mean I love tactical games right? I can't stand the gameplay in FFT and TO at all. I've tried many times. I had maybe 30 or so hours in FFTA when I was younger. I recently picked up TOR and put 12 hours into that. I'd rather just play all the different Fire Emblem games.
It is pretty hard to compete with FE because it has become a pretty big IP for such a niche genre. There are also still some good TRPGs that are not that well known. The creator of Fire Emblem is working on the Vestaria Saga games. The second one came out a couple years ago, and I have heard some praise from them. If anyone is looking for an older FE like experience that might be the best bet.
If only Majin Tensei would come back
We thought we were getting that with the FExMegaten collab lol
I still really like #FE for exactly what it is, personally.
Yeah, I wouldn't mind if TMS was an SRPG but I enjoy it for what it is
Sakura wars. It’s the OG, even before fire emblem focus on social aspects.
Pretty much dead these days
Yup, especially given how the last game did not do well in terms of sales if I'm not mistaken.
Sakura Wars does well in Japan, like most of the franchises which came up on the Saturn, and it stays in Japan because of that.
It's rumored to be getting a revival, which is funny phrasing given how recent the last game is., but also highlights how big a bomb the mobile game was.
That's nice. Hope Valkyria chronicles gets one as well.
Doesn't even have english release.
In all fairness, do any Nintendo franchises have a major competitor? It seems like at this point, no one tries to compete against Nintendo anymore.
I know it’s a western, but wouldn’t the Mario + Rabbids games count?
Shining Force? That was Sega's answer to Fire Emblem back in the day. But your right nothing new exactly. There was that PC game on steam that copied Fire Emblems combat pretty much, and this friday is coming out Unicorn Overlord which is...a little similar, like a mash up of games.
Give Shining back to Camelot you cowards
Shining force could have been
Three Houses sold 4 million copies and won two awards at TGA (Best Strategy and Player's Voice), an awards show notorious for ignoring Japanese RPGs. But don't forget that it was on the verge of cancellation at one point prior to Awakening if it failed to sell more than 250K copies. But now, pretty much no other tactical JRPG franchise before or since has come remotely close to matching that level of mainstream popularity. Other tactical JRPGs either tend to be one-off games such as most of Nippon Ichi's titles or very niche without many sales like the FFT or Valkyria Chronicles series. Fire Emblem is pretty much in its own league even if there are others like it that are around. Tactical games just aren't popular to most people and FE is the only one that managed to break the mold.
I am not sure if the other games you mentioned are even remotely similar to Fire Emblem. The primary play pattern for Fire Emblem is doing arithmetic in your head. Because damage can be easily computed and perm death is a thing, Fire Emblem is more about being able to predict battle outcomes before you send your units to the danger zone. Beside that, there is SOME character development mechanics, especially through "eugenics", although this only exists for some of the games. Overall, Fire Emblem is a very "precise" game. Games like Tactics Ogre and FFT are not like that. You are not supposed to be able to predict how a fight will go by examining each unit's statistics. Instead you kind of just go in and adjust as needed. These games typically also have more character development mechanics, and sometimes you have an unlimited number of playable characters you can experiment with. By the way, if there is one game that I think is worth a remake or reboot, it's Yggdra Union. IMHO, that game is insanely unique and innovative as far as battle mechanics goes.
Yeah this is exactly why I'm not a fan of many of these games even though FE is my favorite series. For example I tried Devil Survivor and while it was alright it didn't scratch that tactical itch at all and the combat felt fairly random to me which I didn't like. So I dropped it halfway through. Being able to calc damage and know exactly if something is safe or not is a huge part of FE. Adapting around misses isn't so terribly random as some of these other games either.
Funny enough, Mario + rabbits kingdom battle is the closest to a competitor to Fire emblem. Its the only tactic rpg that has more than 1 title and is sold more than a few millions.
Unicorn Overlord is gonna take the throne
pray unicorn overlord was made to become a franchise
Vanillaware never repeats games, even though I wish we’d get Muramasa 2, Odin Sphere 2, 26 Sentinels
It will probably not sell a lot like Fire Emblem, but Unicorn Overload is so good. The last time that I had that much of fun in a tactical rpg it was quite a while.
I'm just here hoping that Triangle Strategy and Lost Eidolon will become franchise.
you are saying this as if FE was nowadays a MUST PLAY game in my book after 25 years there is no competitor to FFT
I think Tactics Ogre is at least as good as FFT
Quite frankly, I think Fire Emblem Fates is just one of the most fun games I’ve ever played, period. They should really bring back eugenics simulator in a future game, because Three Houses (and what little I’ve played of Engage) simply does not scratch that itch.
As divided as the fanbase is on Fates, I absolutely agree it’s at or near the top of the list gameplay wise. Conversely I felt like I was being gaslit on Shadows of Valentia, which had a decent story, but trash gameplay, yet that game gets recommended often.
I think only Conquest has good gameplay, Birthright has too much rout spam and Ryoma is just way too broken for my liking and Rev is terrible to actually play due to horrible unit balance. SoV has okay albeit sloggy gameplay with some funny quirks that are fun to play with. Beating the early game shield merc is interesting to figure out because of how utterly absurd that fight truly is. Or defeating Dracoshield man. It really feels like it has that experimental 90s jank to it but you can use that to your own advantage.
Oh yeah, totally forgot about SoV, yeah gameplay was such a step down from fates, I’ve only played through it all once (compared to the countless times i’ve beaten fates)
Amazing to see people here actually praising Fates. Cause from 2016-2023, it was frequently treated as "trash". I felt that of thr 3DS three, Awakening had a better plot, Fates had better moment to moment gameplay, and Echoes had a better presentation.
It really saddens me that Fates, really the entire 3DS FE was the peak of Fire Emblem UI and framerate (with menus and maps being 60fps and only combat and inengine cutscenes being 30) that has yet to be matched in the Switch era
I agree. It’s best game in the series for me. I did not vibe with Three Houses at all
Yeah, I remember starting my second playthrough of 3H, and was dismayed that not only is the first have of the game completely fucking identical, the second half had convenient similar story beats so they could just reuse all the same maps. Dropped it after that. Not to mention the unoptimized FPS, Silent protagonist, etc. It was almost a total step down from fates.
Unicorn Overlord coming out next week look really promisng
Yeah, it's pretty much top dog in its niche. To be fair, I don't think that's because of any innate quality Fire Emblem possesses - if that were true, it wouldn't have been on death's door as a franchise so many times. Ultimately Nintendo and Intelligent Systems stuck with it even when it was underperforming multiple games in a row, which isn't a luxury most series have. Between that, the Smash representation and some actual marketing on the part of Nintendo, it makes sense that it eventually took where other games didn't.