Fire Emblem Games Ranked for an Enigmatic Mind
Are you ready for the most deranged Fire Emblem opinions? You are not ready.
Only ranking games I have actually played. Yes these are all Fire Emblem games.
Only ranking games I have actually played. Yes these are all Fire Emblem games.
22 Games
It has taken me a long time to get here. In which I am able to confidently proclaim my love for a game in which there is an overwhelming lukewarm consensus. Even more so that I acknowledge that my infatuation mostly stems from the fact that I played it during a formative period in my life. I no longer care. I will no longer be dissuaded from stating how I feel no matter how irrational it is. So what if the overall conflict is mostly meaningless and arbitrary? That is the point. This game is not about that, it is just the excuse in which a cast of characters can exist and interact. Characters that I have spent seemingly aeons ruminating upon in head canons within my mind. I attribute my love with stories and how I interpret them to how this game made my engage with it. It is almost certain this appreciation of media would have been formed by countless other stories but this is the one that did it for me.
There is another aspect to this game I am not yet ready to discuss. An object of fascination that is unique to this game that I hope to be able to settle my thoughts on eventually. The concept that is named Bramimond. Unraveling the empty enigma that I have projected onto Bramimond has remained unsolved throughout those aeons. How many more will it take before I can form an answer?
Do not consider this game being at the top of the list as an endorsement. It is not a hidden underappraciated masterpiece that people misunderstood. My love of this game is very personal and what I see is likely not even there.
There is another aspect to this game I am not yet ready to discuss. An object of fascination that is unique to this game that I hope to be able to settle my thoughts on eventually. The concept that is named Bramimond. Unraveling the empty enigma that I have projected onto Bramimond has remained unsolved throughout those aeons. How many more will it take before I can form an answer?
Do not consider this game being at the top of the list as an endorsement. It is not a hidden underappraciated masterpiece that people misunderstood. My love of this game is very personal and what I see is likely not even there.
1
Ignoring the para-social relationship I have formed for this series I think this one is actually the most conventionally good whilst also maintaining the aspect of Fire Emblem I really love of discovering context piecemeal. It carries over a lot of the ideas of the previous game on the list but instead of being relegated to it's side stories it is presented forefront in its main narrative. Lyon is a fascinating layered character you are forced to engage with and ascribe your own interpretation because of how this game presents its narrative.
Of all the Fire Emblem games on this list this is perhaps the only one I would actually recommend to someone.
Of all the Fire Emblem games on this list this is perhaps the only one I would actually recommend to someone.
2
There is a lot to say about this game but the most telling is that there are a lot of people finding much to say about this game. It rekindled my appreciation of what this series originally meant to me beyond mechanical nuance. The endless discourse it propagates may yet save this series or condemn it.
3
The team behind Tactics Ogre challenges Fire Emblem's premise of story through gameplay by presenting you with actual literature first and foremost and punishing you with gameplay for playing a game instead of reading an actual book. It is surprisingly effective lesson. This is the most grounded depiction of conflict I have read. I should read some books.
4
I wrote a little piece about how I felt about this game here: https://www.backloggd.com/u/GingerV/review/1499034/
TL;DR this is most fun I have had with an SRPG mechanically and its objectively contrived story is important to me in a way that is incomprehensible.
TL;DR this is most fun I have had with an SRPG mechanically and its objectively contrived story is important to me in a way that is incomprehensible.
5
If only Abrahamic theology was actually as sincerely engaged with by its practitioners as this series made to appeal to edgy teenagers would have you believe. This is the only SMT game where the routes are presented as choices that seek to compel you over instead of a cruel compromise between intangible concepts. Even the law route in this game, which I tend to vehemently oppose on principle, I find convincing. Its gameplay I also consider conventionally fun but this is a controversial opinion. The game will still gatekeep you from playing it if you dont have the motivation to meet its challenge.
6
This is a toy. One of the greatest mechanical experience I have ever had with a game. Even better than Engage but more unforgiving to the point where I hesitate to challenge it a second time. It is unfathomable to me how this was made immediately coming off from a game I revile for its gameplay. Its ambitious story concept fails to achieve what it sets out to do so hard that it wraps around to almost being a great parody its own premise.
7
This is a surprisingly candid depiction of war and the dark aspects of human nature from a series that previously would have you think that nationwide conflicts are silly little cartoonish games. It is bizarre to me that the series was able to recontexualise itself on a dime like this and make a story like this before disappearing into the ether forever.
8
I did not appreciate this game at the time when I actually played it so long ago. Back then I was disappointed with it. Fire Emblem to me was about its support system and the intertwined micro-stories of its cast. Without that I saw little value in Fire Emblem's gameplay and chapter to chapter storytelling. I have both grown since then, and been presented a different perspective through the lens of others whom have earnestly engaged in what this game seeks to convey. I am convinced this is good now. Great even. I want to appreciate it like I see others do. I seek to do an iron man of it or its sequel at some point.
9
This game is a complete mess and likely would have been the death knell of the series had it not been 'saved' by Awakening. Overly ambitious with a half baked script that is full of plot contrivances to force artificial conflict in which to make a game. And yet I love that it shot for the moon even if it missed the mark. Fire Emblem's formative design philosophy of gameplay emergent storytelling was sought to be rekindled here. There is a creative purpose behind its flaws.
10
I love the frequent and sporadic tone shifts this game oscillates between. This game is both an absurd comedy and a deeply serious drama about unrequited love. Its gameplay is beautifully chaotic. A game about dominating the action economy through spamming a dozen different crowd control spells all at once in the hope that a singular enemy isnt able to squeeze a turn in to one shot you. This is an experimental mess of a concoction that was miraculously stitched together into a stable produce that will never be replicated again. I love it personally but this love is certainly unconventional
11
I feel this is my most controversial Fire Emblem opinion in where I place this game in the list of its contemporaries. I struggle to really formulate what I don't like about it compared to the GBA peers. The cast are grounded and react like real people, the gameplay is good. The quality of Its stories, themes and world building not noticeable worse. I think it is because I see it as incomplete. A tale half told, which might be influenced in the knowledge of its sequel. I dont find the microstories conclude in satisfying ways and the overall conflict unambitious. Much of its ideas I feel left unspoken to be elaborated upon in the next game. Perhaps I should be packaging this game together with that of its sequel but on its own I am left wanting.
12
This is a big DnD adventure that a poor thankless GM didn't have to work a million hours to design and curate for you only for you to force them to work a gazillion hours more when you work against their direction and go off on some weird tangent they were not prepared for. I think its really good. The companions I feel really make it because there are a few different ways each of their stories can progress that I feel result in valid and interesting resolutions. I love you Laezel so much.
13
This is a game for children and I enjoyed it as a child. When an alternative reading became accepted into the mainstream that questioned the moral infallibility of its protagonist the creator as a response was so abhored by this interpretation that they made a sequel that explicitly retconned the ending of the previous game as to be like "See. Marche is a good person. He never destroyed an entire universe for his own selfish wants. Why would you say that its the opposite of that". That this was seen as a necessary thing to do is the main reason I like this game.
14
Never has a turd been this polished!. Ok that is not true I don't (completely) believe that. But what is here to love has to contend that it is affixed to a questionable story that betrays its own ideas. The Jedah/Celica parallel and ultimate message of the game I do find meaninnngful. And the aesthetic and soundtrack might be the best in the series. But that gameplay...
15
I have slowly warmed up to this game. That is why it is here and not 6 games below. Droplets of water in millennia old ice. I used to hold this game solely responsible for the degradation of the series as a whole, but I have slowly turned around to believe that cannot be true. This game was conceived before Fire Emblem was the juggernaut that it would become. Its design decisions sincerely made, before the abomination that is heroes was conceptualized. At the very least its existence has served as a domino in a chain of events that has resulted in future works I enjoy and allowed me to meet and engage with people that are important to me.
16
Of the three Larian games I played think this is the worst one both as a mechanical objective and a narrative experience. It is almost the opposite experience from Divinity Original Sin 1 despite having similar gameplay. This game has a consistently grim tone in which you are repeatedly forced to make horrible choices with no recourse for a better future. It is misery porn and while I think there is some merit in a setting that subverts the convention of adventures being optimistic experiences I failed to ascribe any tangible meaning on the journey. Its gameplay is no better. There is little to incentivize experimentation with the limited action economy and damage formulas that discourage any action outside of physical damage. It is carried from the very bottom to here because I played it with friends whom I betrayed at the very end because they didn't engage with the narrative at all and thought giving up their claim to divinity to a tyrant with a god complex because 'he asked nicely' was the right thing to do. Absolute media illiterate fools, they are lucky to have me to save them from themselves.
17
This is chaos driven game design. There is almost seemingly no cohesion between a bunch of ideas that are blended together because why not. It does somehow pull itself together at the very end with a surprisingly sincere take but until then it is very freeform, which I think is its main appeal in how it subverts your every expectation. I dont think its very fun or mechanically interesting however. Sorry Emma.
18
What a surreal concept. How does this game exist? How was it pitched to a board of directors? Who greenlit its budget? Who was it made to appeal to? Who was inspired to conceive its setting and write story? Who programmed and implemented its bizarre gameplay? Why is Lucina here and the most powerful character in it? This game is not real. I refuse to believe it exists as a physical object and is not a delusion that I dreamed. It was a little bit fun.
19
I was drawn to this game for two reasons. The first that I had played a previous game by this developer that was fascinating to me because it was the worst game I had played that managed to captivate my attention to play it the whole way through (Sand of Destruction) and I had a morbid fascination to see if this feat could be replicated.
The second being out of spite for how I felt for Fire Emblem Awakening at the time.
This game's premise is disgustingly misogynistic. It is a harem anime condensed in video-game form. I do think unlike Sands of Destruction there were moments in its story and nuance to its narrative that I did like but I can't remember them. The game now is a blur to me. Perhaps the most positive thing I recall is that the game allows you to reject its premise and pursue multiple yaoi endings instead. I did find it's gameplay was a lot better than Awakening but that is trivially low bar to achieve.
The second being out of spite for how I felt for Fire Emblem Awakening at the time.
This game's premise is disgustingly misogynistic. It is a harem anime condensed in video-game form. I do think unlike Sands of Destruction there were moments in its story and nuance to its narrative that I did like but I can't remember them. The game now is a blur to me. Perhaps the most positive thing I recall is that the game allows you to reject its premise and pursue multiple yaoi endings instead. I did find it's gameplay was a lot better than Awakening but that is trivially low bar to achieve.
20
I was given the impression that the gameplay was actually fire and mechanically nuanced and challenging. It turned out to be the fucking easiest game and I steamrolled it with no issue. Are people not using anything Luigi does? What a waste of time.
21
