Author Topic: So I've finally gotten around to trying Fire emblem  (Read 13074 times)

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Re: So I've finally gotten around to trying Fire emblem
« Reply #30 on: October 31, 2009, 08:19:54 PM »
And what would those be? There's no player-controlled character development, there's no player-controlled plot advancement, there's no role to play for the player, therefore it's not a Role-Playing Game.
Support conversations, plot advancement done by completing missions (and the plot is actually quite substantial outside FEDS), following the story of the main character (or in FE7 the advisor)...

None of this sounds familiar or meets the criteria?

Re: So I've finally gotten around to trying Fire emblem
« Reply #31 on: October 31, 2009, 09:35:03 PM »
There's also the fact most of the games (FE5 (Thracia 776) being the one to start the trend, which continues through the GBA games) where you get split paths to choose from, affecting whom you can recruit into your army.

Fire Emblem is much different from other games like say, Langrisser. Each unit is an individual that interacts with other characters in the cast (which also means things can change based on who lives and who doesn't), unlike Langrisser where a unit with 10 HP is transferred to 10 soldiers attacking in a group. The soldiers there are faceless and you feel nothing when a unit is lost. In Fire Emblem losing a unit generally forces a restart to get them back, because while its easy to replace a unit in terms of statistics (while some units are better than others most of the English-translated games are balanced enough to use almost anyone and still get along just fine), you can't replace the 'person' who was lost.

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Re: So I've finally gotten around to trying Fire emblem
« Reply #32 on: November 01, 2009, 11:09:15 AM »
Support conversations, plot advancement done by completing missions (and the plot is actually quite substantial outside FEDS), following the story of the main character (or in FE7 the advisor)...

None of this sounds familiar or meets the criteria?

I would argue not. Plot advancement is linear (not taking into account what AlexX mentioned above on split paths) - you can't choose to not advance the plot without not playing the game, support conversations are also linear, and there is no player input in what happens in them. That said, there's input in which support conversations occur, but that's more storybuilding than roleplaying (admittedly, this critereon does reasonably qualify for RPG elements).

As for following the story of the main character... That's just the flow of narrative, and has no bearing on whether it's an RPG or not.

To be fair, the term 'RPG' is quite poorly-defined these days anyway, and what is to one person an RPG is an Action-Adventure to another. Hell, Bioshock has RPG elements, but I rarely see it being called that. What I'm saying is - if the people making the game want to call it an RPG, and it just might qualify for a few RPG criteria, I won't argue - there's plenty more interesting things to say about Fire Emblem anyway.

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Re: So I've finally gotten around to trying Fire emblem
« Reply #33 on: November 01, 2009, 02:36:14 PM »
Heh, fine, if the industry itself wants to call it that, then fine by me. But I maintain that calling calling one's chicken "fillet steak" doesn't actually make it that even if it might look like it from a distance to a blind person.

On-topic - I actually kinda liked Shadow Dragon. Units were weaker, but it still had all the usual mechanics, and some challenging fights, and that's pretty much all I want from Fire Emblem.

Uh... Your comparison there is a farcry from the actual point of contention. While it is safe to contest the FE series as an RPG, you can not make the assumption that it is nothing like a Strategy RPG considering it has elements of one in the FIRST place. Fillet steak and chicken are totally different from each other. :/ Someone who cook fillet steak that looks like chicken is a derpsicle.

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Re: So I've finally gotten around to trying Fire emblem
« Reply #34 on: November 02, 2009, 10:14:57 PM »
EDIT: I'm a moron. Please delete post.
« Last Edit: November 02, 2009, 10:16:54 PM by AlexX »

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