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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 มี.ค. 2023
- This is a problem. Not a big problem, but a fun enough one to talk about.
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The real comedy gold is in the "Rejected" page, which lists the characters that have been suggested as being part of an archetype, or the people "mistakenly" believe are part of one, but are not, apparently. My favorite is Yen'Fay. He fits absolutely into the Camus archetype in every single way, but he was rejected because his loyalty is "not as genuine" as others in the archetype.
If your characters have to be so exactly the same to belong to the archetype... maybe they're just not well written characters. Maybe the fact that more than one character fits into it is a bad thing. Maybe characters don't need to be copied and pasted from one game to another. Maybe... some people have too much time on their hands.
what makes this extra hilarious is that despite how many completely sensible suggestions have been rejected, shamir and catherine are listed under the arran and samson section because of the fucking *whetstone quest*
- Colm is rejected from the Julian list because while he joins alongside another unit, Neimi is not a Lena
- Patty is on the Julian list
Conclusion: Shannan is a Lena
seems like an arbitrary restriction. the whole point of the camus archetype is that they are sympathetic to your cause, yet impossible to recruit. "loyalty" is the most common reason, but there are others. the reed brothers are obviously loyal to the black fang, but they fight you because of a misunderstanding, not because of priorities. they would have been recruitable had circumstances been different, and that qualifies them in my book
@@Underworlder5 Frankly I think they should just have been recruitable. Obviously you'd only get one (making them an Arran and Samson), but there's no real reason why you can't convince the other one to join you other than for the tragedy of it all. You could even still have a boss appear after they join you by just having Nergal send another replacement in.
They can fill out the roster of morphs in the final chapter by including characters like, say, Harken if you don't recruit him. Uther and Marquess Pherae could also be added, kinda surprising they weren't present there.
@@JaidynReiman i think the idea of the surviving reed brother being unrecruitable is that they depend on each other too much, and could not imagine a life without the other. notice the surviving brother seems eerily content when you kill him, as if he wanted to die so he could see his brother again. even lloyd, the more reasonable of the two, still goes "i will avenge my brother or die trying. hopefully both"
also, on a gameplay standpoint, they would probably be too strong if they were recruitable. harken is already considered incredibly busted at base. imagine how much linus would trivialize the game
As someone who used to be really into discussing archetypes, one of the biggest hurdles to any kind of discussion here is that while IS likes to reuse similar character as a shorthand for the player, a lot of characters tend to have gameplay functions and story functions. A character from FE4 might end up inheriting the gameplay function of a FE1 character while a completely DIFFERENT character inherits the story function. That's exactly what happens with Merric. Lewyn is your fast wind mage with a personal tome while Azelle is the one who has history with Sigurd. Neither characters really inherit what Merric was but at the same time they both do which makes the discussion around that archetype both annoying and really pointless. In general IS cares a lot less about this stuff than we do and don't care about how they muddy things. Is Myrrh an Est or Tiki? ...They don't really know or care, they just wanted to make getting a dragon at the end of the game really satisfying lol
IMO anything past jagen and villager shouldn't be taken as anything more than "is hotdog a sandwich" type of useless but fun chatter
Jagen's a sandwich, Oifey's a pizza, Seth is a salad. I will not elaborate.
Is Tiki a christmas turkey?
The Lord's are all hamburgers.
That's a good way to look at it, because those two have significant gameplay ramifications that none of the others really do. Camus is more of a story trope.
Time, to tier list archetypes. We can only go further, deeper into the rabbithole.
Nah, we need to tier how applicable every unit is to every archetype.
@@TechnoFall42 Dude, that is so much better than what I said. Why can't I hit in my first try
Then we need to tier the tier lists themselves.
@@vigbjornblaskeeg5813 Tiering a tier list runs into some problems. If you look at the community you will notice a wide variety of opinions. Players of various skill levels, knowledge, experience, level of accomplishment. There has always been a concept in gaming where certain characters are great for beginners, great for veterans, or some mix of the two.
@@rcrude8866 you are Zeiss in FE6 RR
Broke: Kagetsu is a high-crit enemy swordie who you can recruit, making him a Navarre
Woke: Kagetsu is voiced by Takehito Koyasu, same as Navarre, making him a Navarre
I like the Kaiba archetype. This is where you can reclass your units and so end up with 6 or 7 wyverns.
We have lot of problem's as a fandom
Maybe problems with apostrophes? Lmfao
@@eikbfsrum not everyone is blessed with a good knowledge of grammar
You don't say.
@@eikbfsrum lmao
it’s because most FE fans are teenagers. once you realize this everything makes so much more sense lol
Big shoutout to the absolute chad who started the “Is this shit really necessary” discussion at 3:21
Aaah yeah you love to see the "Enemy general that defects as their nation crumbles", archetype. They usually suck.
In particular I’ve always been annoyed by the Jagen vs Oifey distinction. I just call them Jagens. No one says “FE7 Lyn is a Roy but FE10 Ike is a Sigurd” to imply one lord is good while another lord is bad. They’re just “lords” and it is worth talking about them individually within the context of the game beyond what vague archetype they fit into.
Oifey feels like a distinction some people make just to say units they like that are Jagens, aren’t Jagens.
It’s like a holdover from the “all Jagens are bad” pitfall.
Oifey has always been an archetype that feels uninformed. Oifey himself is not much like other characters typically cited (FE7 marcus, Seth, Titania) at all.
Oifey's role in FE4 stems from the fact that you can use EVERYBODY you have at once in any given map to compensate your lack of total units. This means that Oifey, despite being a mentor character, was designed to be competent enough to contribute and not being a complete dead weight in an already undermanned and outnumbered player army..
Seth, Titania, and Frederick are easily recognized as not suck just because they're not old. This isn't even something hard to understand, since almost every pure "Jeigans" prior to them either had wrinkles/white hair or were crippling ill They still one-hit kill anything early game, so you're still encouraged to give them weaker weapons or restrict their uses until the rest of the army catches up or until the enemies are actually tough enough that they can finally go all out without hurting your EXP distribution.
Remember, archetypes are only a guideline that lets you put characters into categories so you can easily recognize their roles in the gameplay. They are not rule books that you absolutely have to abide by, because you still have to understand in-game context to get the full picture of how you should actually use them in combat.
The problem with the definition of Oifey is that its "early prepromote with decent growths" and not "early prepromote that doesn't fall off" so someone that doesn't fall off like FE1 Jagen isn't an Oifey and someone who does like Sothe is an Oifey
Oifey was kind of a dated term and it became a term back in the GameFAQs era. You know, back when characters were judged solely based on Average Stats while Availability, Relatability, Base Stats, ect were considered irrelevant? This was back when people like Mangs used to say "Marcus sucks" or same comments for various other Jagens at the time. But Seth, Titania, and Frederick always had positive feedback due to being "Oifeys" as opposed to Jagens.
This video is really giving a lot of Classic Mekkah/Pitfall series vibes and I love it.
Also, I think Jagen, Cain/Abel, Navarre, Gharnef, Camus, Villager, Linde, Arran/Samson, and Gotoh are really the only archetypes that make things easier to discuss.
That's still way too many. Just use Jagen and stop calling everyone else by fe1 names.
@@A1D7 Christmas Cavs and Villager work, but then what would you call other ones like Garnef, Arran/Samson, and Gotoh? Those ones are pretty important and repeat enough. Especially Garnef.
Jagen and Est are the only ones that really matter imo
@@tuskoub garnef is a pointless archetype with absolutely no need to exist, arran/samson doesn't even happen enough to justify it being an "archetype", I can concede gotoh somehow but even then it's still not really relevant
@@Uri433 Some games have multiple Arran/Samson splits, other games have _no_ splits at all.
You missed a Navarre on your Navarre teirlist. Navarre is the Navarre of Tokyo Mirage Sessions. Has a crit weapon, is a recruitable enemy, has a dark edgy past. He’s so much of a Navarre idk how you missed him.
My least favourite archetype to this day has got to be the “Oifey” archetype, for two reasons.
The first is that there isn’t really a purpose to differentiating from the Jeigan archetype.
The second is that it’s named after Oifey, a pre promoted paladin who isn’t even any stronger than the gen 2 units around him, who keep in mind, shows up in the same game as Sigurd. How is it not named after Sigurd.
Just got to the part of the video where he talks about Jeigans and Oifeys. If he just repeats my entire comment I’m going to scream.
lmao oifey is still one of the strongest gen 2 units, but i get what you mean he’s not as dominant as later “oifeys” like seth and titania
@@radioactiveplaythroughs7068 literally no, unless you made really bad pairings. He's ok, and even into the late game can be counted on to take or dish out a couple hits, but everyone else is usually way better except for like maybe Hannibal
Because Sigurd is the Lord. He can't be a Jeigan or an Oifey!
Also Sigurd does fall off because you don't have him the whole game. He literally... falls off...
(That's the argument that's usually made lol.)
@@JaidynReiman Every time someone makes that falling off joke I dislike Fe4 even more
It's easy to group units into stuff like cavilers or archers, but eventually it just gets into a rabbit hole that just doesn't matter
Honestly, I don't mind the archetype slotting thing, imo it's a fun part of the series, but there's one thing that upsets me a bit, which is people trying to make hard classifications when it really doesn't matter.
Stuff like saying "Frederick is not a Jagen, he's an Oifay" when you're explaining that Frederick is Awakening's Jagen. Like, uh, thanks for adding nothing to the discussion? His role still is that of a prepromoted crutch, and he falls off, so what's the point of the "correction"?
But like, he has good growths, and Jagens are supposed to have bad growths. But then like... he falls off, but if you want to, you can make him really good with some Seals and skills so does he really fall off? /s
Then there's even the discussion that you can say the OG Jagen isn't actually a Jagen.
Yeah there are just so many differences and nuances that those kind of corrections are just not worth getting into.
I do feel like the differentiation between Jagen and Oifey is a good one to have because a lot of times that difference shows whether they fall off or not and can help me know whether I should invest in them or bench them as soon as I have the chance
I could see it if the difference was "Jagens shouldn't be used long-term and Oifeys should," since that actually provides advice, but under those rules, Vander is the only actual Jagen in the series. Including Jagen himself.
I just use “Jagen” as the blanket term for early-game pre-promotes that are intended to be crutches, and I just call the really good ones like Seth “bad at their jobs.”
There are three brands of "Jaegan".
Jaegan - Strong but falls off
Oifay - Strong but settles into being good
Seth - A mountain pressed into the form of your starting unit
The use of archetypes for more complex but repeating interactions is, if nothing else, interesting to explore. They basically become tropes but as units. The rigidity or looseness of archetype definitions makes a huge amount of difference. The Navarre archetype, for instance, as typefied by the OG, is a red unit Myrmidon with a killing edge, some connection to a female healer, and is recruited fairly early on in the game.
If we want games that play it straight, we have the OG Navarre, Joshua in FE8, Rutger in FE6, and depending on your strictness of "connected to a female healer" you can drop that and add in FE7 Guy and FE9 Zihark right away.
However, if you look for similarities and subversions, you get into the discussion portion that becomes both more interesting and less useful. In FE4, is Ayra your "Navarre" because she is a red myrmidon whom you recruit early? Or is Jamke the Navarre, as he fills the "has killer weapon & connection to female healer" portion despite being an archer instead of a myrmidon? One can even make the argument that Aran from FE10 is the "navarre" of that game because he's the only red unit you recruit (outside of Oliver and the army swaps), and has a connection with Laura, your only dedicated cleric.
I think the question becomes what you are discussing, gameplay or general game design. Because "What is a Navarre" discussions don't matter as much when it comes down to gameplay, but when designing a game (or a romhack or w/e) these archetypes can be important touchstones as you know they are effective and that your audience will recognize them and so you can include some mechanical or story connection to instantly ground your game in a more classic Fire Emblem feel via mechanics.
Memed on as the Unraveled: Fire Emblem gets, the point about "Comedia del Arte" actually works here. It all just depends on what context you're drawing the connection for.
To hammer the point further, Navarre isn't even associated with a female healer! He's more associated with Phina, a dancer, while it's Julian who's associated with the female healer Lena 😅
Basically, I think that archetypes are only useful when they communicate broader concepts. If you see archetypes as something to fit someone from every game into, you're probably going to dilute the meaning of the archetype, making it less useful as a concept. I think the strongest archetypes are the ones where you don't have to reach for candidates in most games.
So the only archetypes I really recognise are Jagens, Gotohs, Ests and Lords (and honestly the christmas cavaliers are pretty consistent for a long time, too). Each of those communicates something more than a class and superficial details: Jagens are strong but shouldn't take all the experience, Gotohs are there to help with the final battles, Ests come late and are low-levelled but have a bunch of lovely +1s when you slow down to invest in them, and Lords are central to the narrative, force-deployed, and Game Over conditions.
Also, I feel like the Jagen/Oifey "distinction" is pretty meaningless. I think it might come from the time when Jagens were "ugh, filthy pre-promotes" but someone wanted to justify Oifey being good, so they declared a new "archetype" of basically "Jagen but good", and I think that's pointless in an era where most people acknowledge that most Jagens are really good.
I also think it’s nice to have a broad understanding of general stat lines of units so you can say oh Odin in fates is like a magic cavalier with a magic javelin stats wise so you use him to do a bunch of attacks on enemy phase.
I'm a discussions moderator in the pitfall wiki, and I tend to shut archetype discussions down when they get out of hand. I actually enjoy them sometimes, but they do tend to get absurdly granular and subjective.
You're totally right btw, Jagens and Oifeys are essentially the same thing. I think I could make a case for literally any Jagen to be either one of the two.
Jagens and Oifeys are especially egregious, given that, off the top of my head, Oifey was coined as a fan term after people "realized" that Oifey was a better version of Jagen that nevers fall off because he has great growths. People then sorted the bad early carries (Fe6 Marcus, Fe7 Marcus, Fe11 Jagen, Fe12 Arran) into the Jagen archetype, and kept the good ones (Seth, Fe9 Titania, Sothe, Frederick) into the Oifey archetype.
Lo and behold, x amount of years later, people figured out that Oifey actually does noticeably fall off (imo he falls off the hardest out of any non-gunther "jagen"), that most of the Jagens don't ever fall off or are so good that you should use them until they fall off, and that a lot of Oifeys (Seth excluded) fall off way harder than their Jagen counterparts, because their superior growths never end up meaning anything next to a ch5 dracoknight with a 33 might ridersbane
Oifey falls off even before joining, since the meta ch6 strat is letting Seliph mostly solo.
On that list of discussion topics on the wiki, 24: Necessity of this Page, cracked me up way more than it should.
Also, I'd tend to agree that the FE fandom gets a little to into the weeds with trying to put units into buckets. They're useful analytical tools to some extent, but people seem to miss the part where you make specific buckets to account for overwhelming trends (Jaegans for instance, being the early game pre-premote with low (mostly) growths) and don't make buckets for something small/random (Erika is a Maledius?) because those things don't need to be generalized from an analytical perspective. And even in that analytical lens, an archetype is generally more useful as a starting point, to give everyone talking an idea of what is being talked about and then springboard to the useful bits.
Also also, naming Archetypes after characters is pretty silly from the persepctive of actually explaining to new players, because someone who just picked up, say FE6, and is abusing Marcus to win early game that Marcus is a Jaegan doesn't really tell them something useful. Telling them that he's going to fall of later on is useful, which somewhat undermines the usefulness of archetypes as a discussion point.
"The killer bow is the only killer weapon in fe4" forgetting the mystletainn smh my head
mystletain effectively has 100 crit since it orkos everything, therefore it cant be a killer weapon
I think some archetypes are more about game mechanics than stats/classes/colors.
For example, the Navarre archetype is the character used to demonstrate recruitments that aren't done by the lord. New players may assume the lord recruits everyone, but they are taught by units like Navarre, Guy, and Jamke that sometimes you need to use someone else for a recruitment. That idea is more useful than "guy with killing edge" imo.
Early game mages serve a similar purpose. They show that magic can be a very useful tool, while also establishing that mages tend to be frail. That's a useful idea, which is important for new players. Yes you can nuke bosses with a mage, but that mage is gonna get murdered if you don't protect them.
Most of the "important" archetypes are essentially tutorial units.
The only problem with archetypes is when explain what Vander is new players aren't going to know what the fuck a jagen all there going to know is Vander is an early ax paliden that cooks
The Fire Emblem Fandom has a problem with making tier lists. Fire Emblem has too many odd variables that don't fit nicely into a tier list unlike say, a fighting game where everything from the timer, stage, character strength, individual rounds not being impacted by previous rounds etc.. are all fixed variables that allow you to just evaluate X character vs Y character in a vaccum and then slap them on a tier list. Any Fire Emblem tier list practically requires you to read a small essay explaining itself rather than being understandable at a glance. Many really old Fire Emblem lists look odd because it took the fandom years of arguing just to figure out how to evaluate certain character types. Even after all that a simple S->F tier list still doesn't fit Fire Emblem very well compared to lists like Mekkah's unit guides with custom tiers that actually describe a units role in the game.
And yet Fire Emblem tier lists are like candy to me. Insanity.
Good old internet doing one of many dumb things what it does best, try to put things in boxes and getting weird about it.
This somewhat reminds me of fighting game archetypes discussions that have happened recently.
From my point of view, watering down something meant to be a shortcut descriptor to the point that it'd need an explanation every time makes the shortcut useless. At that point you'd just end up having to give the long version with one step too many.
The way I’ve always looked at archtypes is that they’ve evolved over the history of the series. Like the Navarre and the Christmas archetype continues to change, rather than being the same every game, so in many ways Kagetsu and Zelkov are the 2 “enemy recruits” style characters that have evolved out of the Navare archetype (with Ivy being their recruiter)
And same with the christmas knights evolving from cavs to now a pair of characters with the red green pallets.
Alear is a Marth. You get him right away, and if he dies, you lose.
But Alear dies twice
Alear is clearly an Alm. Unknowingly fights against his own country and commits patricide.
Two things that bother me about this archetype discussion despite it being useful at times is 1. People are too fixated on using character names to name an archetype like with Merric as you say and 2. People are too fixation on making everyone that is part of an archetype to be the same.
Take your example with the “Navarre” archetype and Kagetsu. First off, I don’t like using the name “Navarre” as the name for the archetype and instead like using enemy sword fighter archetype since that is what’s really being repeated throughout the Fire Emblem series. Most of the characters that fit this archetype can be very different form one another even if a lot of them have the brooding, anti-social personality, but most if not all are enemy sword fighters that are good with a blade and can be recruited. I honestly think there doesn’t need to be a hardline on these discussions on archetype and can be simply defined as they should be boxes to fit into, not entire characters to be defined.
So in that sense, Kagetsu is certainly part of the enemy sword fighter archetype, just with the ironic twist that his personality is very much the opposite of the typical character of this archetype, which I find very fitting for a fan service game like Engage.
But yeah, that’s all I want to say on the matter. Basically, people take this whole discussion way too seriously as you say.
Sometimes I see a title and know it is going to be a spicy video.
Then when the music quick cuts to a Dark Fall at 2:36 my preconceptions are met.
We need more of these classic, analytical Mekkah videos!
One example I like to use is Merric. Every single early game mage is slotted into the 'Merric archetype'. But what is the Merric archetype? Fire Emblem has a class called Mage so it stands to reason that the game will give you a mage. That's just simple logic. That alone doesn't make it an archetype.
Who is Merric? Merric is a noble childhood friend of Marth that shows a particular talent for Wind magic and has a special Wind tome. There is a consistent use of this archetype (noble, childhood friend of another noble, affinity for wind magic, special PRF tome) in some of the games: Asvel (FE5), Maruj (TRS), Theodel (VS1). But you reach the breaking point pretty quickly. Boey is not a Merric archetype. He's just an early game mage. So is Azelle, Lugh, Lute, etc. They may bear superficial similarities but the primary categorisation is just 'early game mage'. Then you get to Soren or Ricken. There's a good reason they both specialise in Wind magic and they're childhood friends with the main lord (though this is just a passing detail with Ricken). But anything beyond that is really stretching it.
that's a good example, i'll retroactively add it to the video
@@Mekkkah I just got to the part where you talked about Merric after I typed that comment…
Man if the fandom was going to go overboard couldn’t we at least of had 76 discussions. Then it would at least have been a funny number
I think the best Oifey character is Mekkah. He joins as an early pre-promote FETuber, but the quality of his content is always good and never falls off. You can trust Mekkah will carry you in your FE-related questions and discoveries.
I kept mine on my main team because he never fell off at all. Better yet, he was my go-to for tier lists as well.
He's got some surprisingly high growth rates too, and his supports and tactical advice are so well written he almost seems like a real person at times.
Not only that but he also shares tips and tricks to the players that really solidifies his character as a Jegan
This reminds me of the futility expressed in a certain Polygon video
Archetypes definitely should only be considered an archetype if it's broad enough to have more than one or two different units that fit into the same category. Like the Xmas cavs expanding to the Xmas units archetype makes sense bc Kaze and Saizo, Lukas and Forsythe, and Clanne and Framme are multiple instances of them fitting the bill for all but the exact class. But expanding the archetype to *all* green and red units that interact with each other would be too much because it would literally only be based on the color scheme.
I've unironicially had people try to explain to me how Felicia and Jakob are "Christmas Cavs".
It makes sense, Felicia is pink which is kinda red and Jakob is... Uh... full black and white... B-but his personal skill has blue coloring, which if you mix it with yellow makes it green and Christmas Cavs are known for joining around the same time and you get... Either of the two at the beginning and the other during lategame. But uh... They're both two sets of units who have the same class but with different stats!!!1
@@VioletLunaChan bruh its not even speed vs strength statspread 😭
Waaaaait I knew about the Jaegen archetype but that was really it. Something about seeing that long ass list of "is this character actually this character???" made me crack UP. It's so silly
The biggest problem with the Jagen archetpye is that you can very convincingly argue that FE1 Jagen is one of the best units in the game and never falls off. So Jagen himself can be called an 'Oifey' which just shatters the concept of these two archetypes.
And then there's Seth. Who only makes all other units fall off.
The concept of " falling off " is extremely stupid because many units don't even fall off because they're STILL useful in the late game, it's another way of saying " i don't like this unit in these last chapters lol xd!! "
Also fe1 jagen is good but like B tier good, he's not gonna last without stat boosters and those go to much better units
Not everything needs to tie back to the first games, are we gonna start calling the main characters Marths and the avatars Krises now? Is the main villain of every game the Medeus now?
Funny thing about archetypes to me is that there's such an interesting analysis on how Fire Emblem structures itself under a system in which you have a wide character pool with RNG based growths to be had, but more often than not it just ends up being about people trying to fit a wide array of characters into a couple of designated reductive drawers ending up with muddled lines that are more complicated to determine and explain than just explaining the character in its own terms.
Next one make a mekkah tier list tier list
They're not really a fan only term one of the artbooks (I think shadow dragon or awakening?) confirmed the devs do have them as templates for making character concepts/roles
I like Archetypes but think it hurts storytelling to have every game have a "this is the X of this game".
Personally love completely changing the way units are used which is why the customizable class progression is so cool.
Example : With a 3+ SPD cap, Chloe as a General has a speed cap of 20, compared to someone like Louis at 15 with the same class.
So in a playthrough in the future I might try Chloe as a General just to see what happens. /maybe a Great Knight for the +SPD and +move.
I think I do hate archetypes in the sense that I love breaking them.
With Engage's overuse of unique classes, I have started making sure not to use unique classes in some playthroughs.
(Except keeping Veyle as a fell child for the dragon benefit + Corrin).
I feel like the most important aspect to an archetype is communicating a unit’s actual use case, Jagen and Est are archetypes that distinctly do that. The archetypes that have more to do with character traits aren’t as helpful for that, so they’re way less important and less useful, the one that comes close are the Pegasus sisters archetype, because usually that has the triangle attack association.
Most media has character archetypes, Fire Emblem didn’t invent archetypes, protagonists, mentors, character foils, loners, and so an so forth, it makes since that every game would have characters that resemble each other, but it’s obviously not super important to classify them, personally I don’t think FE intentionally repeats these ideas every time, is Lindon a navarre? He’s recruited by talking to him possibly with Ivy or Hortensia and he has high crit thanks to his personal skill, he has a tragic backstory because his wife is dead. And he leaves the continent in his ending, and by that I mean he dies of old age.
Focusing too much on them imo makes it hard to see characters for what they individually are.
They do have a purpose in communicating broad gameplay quickly and I do think this is intentionally done. Obviously a lot of the archetypes people come up with are worthless but when you have a large cast of characters and aren’t rewarded for using everyone, it has to be kind of obvious what a new unit does. Weapon type, stats, character and appearance all play a part in this
The "Anna" archetype
The listed characters are Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Anna
Edit: Forgot Anna
~8:10 Correl? Drawing a blank as to who that is.
Funnily enough i wondered if there is "Orson Archetype" which point 22 suggests. Seems like "first ally, then enemy" should be an archetype (well, story archety,pe, not stat archetype) but maybe its just not used often in series...
I can only think of two examples and they dont count since both come from romhacks... (i wont say which because that would be spoiler)
The problem I find is when characters are criticised for not being ENOUGH like the archetype the playerbase wants to put them into. "Farina sucks because she isn't a proper Est" for example.
Thank you for addressing the archetype in the room, Mr. Meqqah (Not Elon)
Keep up the fantastic work!
FYI he’s not looking at the actual archetype page guys, the actual one has about 30, and which is still too much, but not nearly as bad as 72. That being said this discussion still needed to be made
You should tier list the Camus archetype
Lindon is the Navarre archetype of Engage, minus the sword part. I'm assuming female Alear to ensure that a female must recruit him.
Some More News? Good tastes.
Also, I think archetypes are more of a general feel of a character with a handful of possible characteristics that they *should* have, but don't need. That's vague but it makes more sense then trying to stretch a self-made restriction onto things that don't fit it. Ryoma isn't a Navarre cuz he isn't Navarrish, but Felix is a Navarre because he is, even if you don't recruit him as an enemy (because you don't recruit anyone as an enemy in Three Houses except for Lysithea, Lorenz, and Ashe kinda. Atlas is only semi-Navarrish so he isn't a Navarre but Ayra is a Navarre because yeah
They're pointless and fandmade at the end of the day, so its up to interpretation. Ayra and Felix were obviously meant to be proxies for Navarre since Fire Emblem does have archetypes in a sense, but Ryoma and Atlas almost certainly weren't.
I think the only archetypes that I can say are useful are Jagen and Est because of their relative potential utility and pitfalls, and Navarre and Camus because of their recruitment conditions, or lack thereof. Most of the other ones can be more succinctly explained without bringing up series history.
Christmas Cavs are fun to talk about but not exactly useful compared to just cavaliers, Pegasus sisters for the same reason, and all the ones that are just "wow in Shadow Dragon you got an archer, mage, and knight. Better call all archers, mages, and knights after them!" That's just silly for any kind of analysis. It's fine for comparison, though. Like when Mekkah made that tier list video that specifically said he was not calling them Merrics.
For further reading, please see Brian David Gilbert's "How to tell all 596 Fire Emblem characters apart".
Honestly I think the important and interesting part of archetype discussion is the gameplay implications more than exactly matching the class, join chapter, and story role of that one mold they made in FE1 back in the day. Jagen is a useful term to get the concept across, even the (faulty) premise of the Navarre can be interesting to discuss as the dangerous enemy unit that you have to recruit with a weak to helpless character (put Faval on the Navarre list. Do it. He has more right to be there than Zihark, who literally recruits himself.)
Est is a bit more nebulous (Sophia comes to mind as a common example - doesn't join *that* late and her growths aren't *that* good but she is very underleveled, is that an Est?) and I think it'd be more useful to just talk about a character joining very underpowered and requiring exceptional effort to make useful, regardless of jointime or growths. Just because your bad meme unit joins in Chapter 8 doesn't mean they can't make for just as funny screenshots when they kill the final boss as Nino does. Put Gwendolyn on the Est list.
4:00 So why not simply call Jeigans "early-game carries" or perhaps "crutches"?
Should we stop calling the main protagonist of the story a "Lord" and call them a "Marth" instead? Marth's the first Lord after all and all other Lord character fit well into the Marth Archetype.
achsually roy is not the only person in his game who can visit villages so he doesnt fit the marth archetype
Chrom or Robin can't be a Marth because Lucina is a Marth, and Marth was unique in his game. You can't have three Marths, (unless your game is a Smash archetype game), and since Lucina is a Marth, then Robin and Chrom can't be Marths.
Similarly, if Ike is a Marth, then either Miciah can't be a Marth, because you'd have two Marths, or Ike couldn't be a Marth, because Marth never stops being a Marth, while Ike would have to stop being a Marth if Miciah became a Marth.
Thus.
The Marth archetype doesn't work
Ike doesn't fit the archetype, because he's a commoner until he gets knighted.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 I mean Zeke and Sirius are Camus, but not a Camus
I have heard Leo called "Blonde Marth" before
One major factor is that Fire Emblem 6 is a borderline remake of FE1 - in terms of its characters, when you get them, and what they're like. the only noteworthy distinctions are that you don't start with a pegasus knight in chapter 1 and there's no character like Bantu. with such strong similarities, it encourages the drawing of connections, and then when games like FE7, Path of Radiance and Awakening also hew fairly close to that structure, people start seeing patterns that aren't there. Classic pareidolia!
oh you bring this up a bit later into the video. hm.
if every fire emblem game was the only fire emblem game, these imaginary boxes wouldnt exist and we could look at every character for what they are.
Est is such a Magikarp
May favorite archtype is the dead parents archtype
FE archetypes is astrology for anime chess weebs.
The first Christmas units were higher attack/hp, d swords/e lances versus higher speed e swords/d lances. This is why Shahl is Cain and Sully is Able.
The weapon rank disparity wasn't there for Cain/Abel in FE1 (or FE3) because weapon rank was one stat. So if that's what you're defining it by, then the very first examples don't fit.
I only have 3 archetypes, good units, bad units, and bad units I give too much exp to in order for them to be useful
Lord, Jagen/Oifey, Gotoh and Est/growth unit are the only archetypes properly worth talking about gameplay-wise I think. They play substantially different to other characters - lord is self-evident, your early game prepromote (that may or may not fall off) plays different to your other early units, the late game high stat no growth serves as a crutch for permadeath runs which is a role other characters can't fulfill, late game growth units need babying in a way your other units shouldn't but may also exceed them if given attention.
Stuff like Christmas cavs, Merric, Navarre are repeated ideas/themes, yes, but imo they're more for character flavour and references to prior entries than noticeable gameplay differences - they all play within normal bounds for their class. Are we really saying Lon'qu and Navarre are not comparable because Lon'qu isn't a recruitable enemy?
Oh actually one last thing. The Jagen and Oifey “distinction” I find to be silly and I don’t like it. It’s really something to explain which Jagen’s are “bad” and which once’s are “good”, which you can do by explaining such things to people and not define a WHOLE NEW archetype to do so. It’s very silly.
But is Anna an Anna
lady anna to you.
Engage Anna is an Axe Fighter, not a Bow-User.
Making Anna NOT an Anna.
@@VioletLunaChan her specialty is bow.
@@VioletLunaChan since when was Anna ever a bow user anyways?
I'm really glad you made this video because this is a thought I've had for awhile now. Fire Emblem fans get really caught up in discussing granular topics like if Karel should be considered a Gotoh or whatever an Oifey is supposed to be. To me, getting too lost into the weeds of what is or isn't a particular archetype in these games can get really pedantic really fast and takes away from genuine discussion over the unit's themselves.
I'm incredibly disappointed by this incomplete discussion of archetypes. You didn't even mention the comedia del arte once!
When someone says 'archetype' respond: What do you mean by that: Gameplay, story or looks?
I only thought of the last point after reading: "Mika Pikazo-san [illustrator] ... gave us many ideas like ... “For Clanne and Framme, green and red might be good", considering the previous titles in the series." - (Ask the Developer Vol. 8, Fire Emblem Engage - Chapter 2). Which reminds me 21:22 Clanne and Framme are not even the same class.
10:40 It's easy to strawman definitions by saying things like "first mage to join" (12:09 or "considerably early") as those make Merric not a Merric in FE3 (then again with arguments that Oifey doesn't fit Oifey archetype perhaps it is only a true archetype if the eponymous is not eligible).
Guess my other thoughts are do the Japanese fans do the same thing and I sometimes see archetypes much like tier lists as an at a glance cheat sheet to quickly prejudge a character, "they fill those role, will have these flaws" sort of thing.
How is Volke a Gotoh
Both have five letters. Next question
How could you forget the end of POR where volke comes in in the final map and solos ashnard
@@Lucaccino17 I can't believe this comment actually made me laugh
I think a better Definition to the Merrick archetype Early Mage with Green hair, high speed and uses Excalibur or Wind tomes.
Like, out of the Magic boys I only think Merrick, Asbel, Lugh, Soren, Ricken and Linhart fit.
Boey you can argue he learns Excalibur but I would argue Tobin would be a better fit and he is canonically an Archer.
But then again, the biggest conclusion is how diferent my Def is from yours and It's the same archetype.
Ricken doesn't... have green hair.
Honestly, when it comes to archetypes, you sort of need to be specific or else you’re stretching. “End-game powerful magic unit = Gotoh” includes Athos, yes, but what about Renault? Est originally was a Pegasus, so is Nino actually? If the best you can say is “this character is sort of like this other character (in a game i haven’t played)” then probably just think of them as separate characters
spoken like someone with experience
Archetypes? I'm a Salamangreat fan personally, but I wonder what Mekkah plays?
Anyway, I agree that people take something used to define basic ideas of what to expect from a type of unit, (see: earlygame cav duo, earlygame prepromote, earlygame myrm, ect) too far, and that it's funny in a sad way to see.
Anna archetype best archetype
Barst archetype tier list when?!
Real talk though. The first time I saw an archetype discussion was on Gamefaqs I think. And back then, in the early 2000s, I was so elitist that I said to myself, "Those idiots on the internet really sure know how to take the fun out of Fire Emblem with all their pointless quibbling. Also who the hell is Jagen?"
Then I went and destroyed my sleep schedule convinced that the endgame scene of FFXI was hardcore amazing and not just a system for the insane.
In an alternate timeline there's posts from me on all those old Fire Emblem forums.
Archetypes are supposed be to a guideline that lets you put characters into categories so you can easily recognize their roles in the gameplay. They are not rule books that you absolutely have to abide by, because you still have to understand in-game context to get the full picture of how you should actually use them in combat.
Honestly the only real archetype I subscribe to is the jagen cuz that's the only one that's actually consistent lol. It appears in other games too.
Yeah I don't really use archetypes to describe units beyond the early game. Even Ests I just throw in with a much broader "growths units" category which encompasses any unit that requires more than about 3 levels of investment to be good. & Even with early game archetypes I mostly just use them for chapter 1 units; Greenarchers, early mages, early armor knights, jagens, christmas pair, self inserts, lords, & I guess axe bros even though those are kinda rare. Even "navarres" or "oifayes" I'm of the mind that not enough characters really line up to define it as an "archetype." sure, plenty of characters line up with navarre personality-wise but then is shanan a navarre just because he has a joke unit named shanam who parodies him like navarre has samto? That's more of a one off joke to compare all the edgy sword boys than anything & doesn't really contribute much to go off & say "they're the navarre of the group" every game.
That said jelloapocalypse's joke about archetypes & that one polygon video that tried to categorize every archetype are hilarious & pretty much perfectly illustrate the points you're making here in a way
This is a very Jagen video
you saying it falls off? >:(
@@Mekkkah but it carries you in the early watch! :O
Only 74 discussions? Those are rookie numbers.
I just find it annoying how fandom wiki is the best place for me to find concise chapter and item/unit data
If the other wikis caught up the slack in ease of use that would be great, serenes forest and the regular FEwiki would be so much better with a little more cleaning up
The regular FEwiki has chaoter data for almost, if not every chapter in the series. Full list of items, enemies (including their inventories and AI quirks), recruitments, and shops.
If you can't find what you're looking for there, it's probably on WoD. If it's not on WoD, it's on Serenes Forest.
check out triangleattack, it's pretty sweet
FE wiki I've found is the best for a couple of things: Chapter and story info. I've never seen chapter scripts, map data, or things like character endings on Serenes Forest.
@@jedimasterpickle3 which is one of the improvements i hope it gets soon
I made a new one
It's called the "Ocean's gray waves" archetype
It includes:
Silque
Ninian
Leanne
Emmeryn
Azura
Rhea
I will not elaborate
not sure if those last 2 fit tbh
@@Mekkkah Azura doesn't fit the "Ocean's gray waves" archetype?
@@ggevorgyan99 "Azure" means blue. Which is, in fact, NOT gray, making her not fit.
@@VioletLunaChan nah she's pretty fit, she can't be over 48 kilograms
Most archetypes are completely useless information because I have no idea who any of these characters are. The only archetypes I've seen that communicate valuable information are jeigan and est. Even "oifey" is weird, since seth is a better oifey than oifey, *and* is going to be more familiar to more players.
Is this video a Pitfall archetype?
W
The fucking "Ayra Archetype" pisses me off lol
...do Clanne and Framme even fit anymore? They're not the same class and are considered totally different unit types by Engage. At least Saizo and Kaze are both ninjas. I personally say Clanne and Framme are in the "you're bad so I'm not using you" archetype lol.
Well they are definitely intended to evoke Cain and Abel through their designs/color schemes and backgrounds but they’re definitely the loosest interpretation of an already flexible character archetype yet.
The character artist did specifically say they designed them red and green to evoke cain and abel like chracters, so they're 100% it in spirit at least
@@calregretsthis Gotcha. I'll accept that. Honestly it hadn't actually clicked that "oh red and green" until this video hah.
SOREN BEST FRIENDS WITH IKE??? FRIENDS???
Roommates
Who have sex
Fire Emblem Fandom having a problem?! SAY IT AIN'T SO!
You mention that archetype discussions aren't helpful to new players and I think that's the base of the problem. It feels very Iceberg-y and like performative deep lore. Having a series that repeats themes and make variations on those themes can be exciting and satisfying, but then fandoms try their best to explain away the variations and fit everything into rigid categories that are uninspiring at best and give an impression of "canon" playstyle that can be very misleading and fun-ruining at worst.
Everyone knows Vega is the best Navarre
At least the self inserts aren't such a thing. As while altear and corrin are flat they each have different styles gameplay and such. We honestly need more robin types that actually work as robin is the best self insert being an mc and antagonist with magic which I wish more starting fe games had ton balance the boring sword lord repeat cycle as it balances the game well and corrin doesn't count as his magic comes later and its not good
I think they're moving swords to self-inserts now, leaving other options to the actual Lords, as demonstrated by Houses.
I don’t care about debating archetypes, but I do think it’s fun to class the Three Houses characters as niches, even though it doesn’t matter and there’s overlap lol
Like Ingrid, Petra, and Leonie are all have a 60% speed growth and at least 1 mount boon + sword and or Lance boon
And everyone kinda classes neatly if you want except Felix, Hilda, and Dorothea
It’s fun if you wanna suggest easy classes for characters like Dedue, Caspar, and Raphael as War Masters. But outside of that, it’s still not important and is only for funzies
The only jagens that actually fall off ( are bad in late game ) are FE6 marcus and FE12 arran
Vander, FE3 Jeigan, FE3 Arran
@@Mekkkah do you know how pathetic the enemy stats as late as ch15 of B2 for example ? I can provide a long math if you want lol, he doesn't fall off since he can still easily kill, same for Jagen
Also agreed on Vander, forgot about him
@@mysmallnoman nah I've played FE3 recently, I know the enemies suck, I just think Jeigan and Arran do too unless they're stat boostered. they can get by I guess, but they're far inferior to your other units, and they don't start that far ahead of their peers
@@Mekkkah do i have to bring up the numbers and data to prove my point ?
Also they do start much better since they're already promoted lol
@@Mekkkah
I'll only do the math for Arran because his book has SLIGHTLY harder enemies, which means if he's good against them then so can jagen
Ok, let's do the math, I'll start from ch5 because that's after Sirius joins and everyone always compare him to Arran
Arran deals 22 (+4) dmg and has 4 AS with a sliver lance at base, he has 23 (+4) effective dmg and 7 AS with a horse slayer, 36 (+4) effective dmg and 4 AS with dragon killer, 18 (+4) dmg and 5 AS with silver sword
Ch5 = 1RKOes every enemy except the snipers who you shouldn't fight and draco knights/knights who he easily 2RKOes
Ch6 = 1RKOes every enemy except the boss
Ch7 = 1RKoes the knights and the theives, can't kill the heroes that no one should be fighting them anyway and no one can reliably kill the fire dragon
Ch8 = 1RKoes the knights, mages and theives, 2RKOes the paladins, doesn't kill the generals which is understandable since they have 17 def
Ch9 = 1RKOes everything except for dracos who he 2RKOes
Ch10 = 1RKOes everything
Ch11 = he shouldn't be here anyway
Ch12 = EXACTLY 1RKOes the fire dragons
Ch13 = same as ch12 but ice dragons instead
Ch14 = same as ch12+13
Ch15 = 1RKOes every enemy after using power ring and even then he doesn't need it for half of them ( mage and horsemen stats lol )
Ch16 = 1RKOes all enemies except heroes and snipers
Ch17 = lol
Ch18 = 2RKOes the paladins and dracos and 1RKOes the horsemen and balista ( you can also give him another power ring )
Ch19 = same thing as ch18
Ch20 = ok he's only good against mages here
Ch21+ F-1 + F-2 = 1RKOes the dragons lol
Hot take but we’re moving past archetypes entirely there hasn’t been a real Navarre or Jeigan for example in a very long time
Vander though? He's like the most Jeigan of Jeigans.
I will admit I’ve definitely fallen into this hole. Vander’s not even good enough to be a jaegen, but I still call him one!
nah Vander's 100% intended to be a Jeigan
A shame, I like using Jaegens for a while in my playthroughs. He gets outclassed in his own role by louis by the get go. He would probably be ok in older games, but because of engage’s stat bloat he gets btfo’d almost immediately.
Vander is the strongest unit. For 3 chapters. An extremely short shelf life, but that's your character roster in engage in a nutshell. Out of the first like 20 characters you get, like 4 are good enough for the whole game without much babying and feeding stat boosters.
I think if you have to ask if someone is in an archetype, then there is no point in putting them in an archetype.
you're not wrong tbh
I personally don't think Vander is even good enough to be considered a jaegan
I want to propose the Lilith archetype. As in, a cute, non-human creature that has some weird, poorly explained (if at all) connection to the main character that rarely interacts with the other characters, is not playable in the main story, and has considerably less story importance than they definitely should, especially in the late game. This includes Lilith, Sothis, Arval, and Sommie.
I originally thought of this as just a joke, but now I kind of feel like it is actually becoming an archetype.
Mascot animals are popular enough this could become a thing if it arguably hasn't already.
I'd say there is a sub archetype with merric the same as jaegan. The early fire mage that's crappy and gets replaced by the merric. Erk is one, lute is a better version, and there's a couple others.