Saturday, August 31, 2019

Fire Emblem Fever

It's not a secret what my favorite Nintendo franchises are. There's The Legend of Zelda on top of course, where I've been a fan for almost 22 years now, and there is also the Metroid series in second. And then there's Super Smash Bros. and the rest, where for the most part I enjoy various platformers...

But recently another Nintendo franchise has piqued my interest: Fire Emblem. Well, I've been mostly playing Fire Emblem: Heroes on my Smartphone for the past two years, where it has become my favorite mobile game and part of my daily routine. But with these Smartphone games Nintendo primarily wants to bring more attention to their main products and this certainly worked in my case with Fire Emblem...

photo of the Limited Editions of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Fire Emblem Warriors and Fire Emblem: Fates, all European versions

After the recent hype around Three Houses, I went on an ebay shopping spree this month and got myself the Limited Editions of three Fire Emblem games, all new and sealed – Fire Emblem: Fates, Fire Emblem: Warriors and Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

I've also gotten a copy of Fire Emblem: Awakening last year and I'm still currently playing this game. And here's the thing... I'm still playing it, because I'm barely making any progress. Unlike Heroes, where the entire game is build around quick play sessions, the main Fire Emblem games sure take their time. One battle in Heroes might only last for a minute, while it can take up to thirty minutes in Awakening, plus some time for preparing your inventories and other things. And this really eats on my motivation, because playing it feels really slow...

So, I guess I won't become a super big Fire Emblem fan any time soon and I'm personally more interested in the stories of the characters that I got to know from Fire Emblem: Heroes and the Super Smash Bros. series than the actual games. In a way this is the complete opposite to the Zelda games...

Whenever someone tells me that he or she plays the Zelda games mainly for their stories, it usually amuses me, because I really don't do that. I play the Zelda games for the exploration and the overall gameplay, where I run around, hit things with a sword, solve puzzles and discover secrets. The story is normally just something that sets the foundations for whatever the gameplay has to offer and is often not that important to me. At least when it comes to the main story, because I do enjoy talking to NPCs and all that stuff, all the story bits that you get from exploring. The more the story is intertwined with the exploration, the better, where I tend to enjoy games like Link's Awakening or Majora's Mask much more.

With Fire Emblem, however, things are different, because I'm generally more interested in the main story and character relations than the tactical gameplay. It's funny, how during battles I'm more invested in enhancing the support between certain characters than the actual strategy. There are also so many options of how to make progress with the characters that it's kind of overwhelming and these games were made to be played through many times over.

Anyway, with these games I'll have enough to play when I'm not busy with either Zelda or Metroid and it will certainly take me quite some time to play through it all, but I'm not in a hurry and I have no plans on blogging about these games any time soon.

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