Why I Hated FE4, and Why I Grew to Love it
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ย. 2024
- Full Playlist of this series: • Ranking Fire Emblem Games
if you stopped playing FE4 because you were bored of it/hated it, you are not alone. but as someone who shared your pain i can say that it does become worth it in the end. i still have problems with it as i say, but i expected to hate it through to the end and i was proven wrong. i guess that's the purpose of this rant lol
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#FireEmblem #FE4 #GenealogyOfTheHolyWar
FE4 would have greatly benefited from a way to counteract weight of weapons but Kaga didn’t get that idea until the next game.
1. Great video
2. I get why people get pissed off at hearing or first encountering some mechanics, but at the same time a lot of them are needed to make half of what the game wants to do work. The dead zones in big ass maps are needed to help you feel part of the journey, the pawn shop is there to hinder good weapons as well as to make inheritance of inventory stand out, and a lot of other annoying things are necessary.
3. Also I am a bit surprised you didn’t use Ayra, I know foot units meh in this game but stat and ability wise she is insanely fun. Astra doesn’t do half damage, you do 5 full damage hits and it gets doubled to 10 if you use the brave sword. Other characters have stuff like this; Noish with the pursuit ring, Alec with a magic sword build after promotion, Dew to get chip damage and gold from every hit, and Raquesis with her INSANE promotion. A future run may let you test out this stuff, and you aren’t really punished for making smaller mistakes given you can save each turn.
4. The only thing I want gone is the love points; making it so vague when people fall in love and it’s just whoever reaches the arbitrary amount first is stupid and means you usually need to devote some characters during chapters 3 and 4 to just standing next to each other and falling in love.
5. Great video, even if I disagree with you it’s good to voice your opinion man, as not everyone will think how I feel.
With Ayra (and a lot of the Gen 1 units) i was still in my sort of impatient phase where i just wanted to get through in order to experience the story beats, so i used Sigurd Lex and Midir for 90% of combat. It wasnt until Gen 2 where i felt like i slowed down willingly and enjoyed it, so im sure a second playthrough would make me want to try more things in Gen 1 that i didnt spend time with. I also agree about your point 4, i have a similar issue with GBA supports and how they were implemented too because standing two units next to each other for a set amount of turns is very silly lol.
But i definitely will play it again and im certain i will have more fun with it/be experiencing plenty of new things which i am looking forward to
Bro what you feel towards fe4 is what I feel towards fe6 😭 I came to love it because every playthrough gives a newfound appreciation, call it a love-hate relationship.
Fe6 is amazing man, I fell in love with it as soon as I started playing it and that love has nurtured and grown so much. Truly the best fe game.
This was a fun vid to watch!
I'm a bit of a FE4 fanboy and I think (based on like 1-3 videos I watched before watching this, might be wrong) our general playstyles/focus differ a lot so take this with a grain of salt: I think the problem was not the game design of the game itself, rather the feeling that you had to rush it in order to get to Thracia.
To me, you deciding which units to use beforehand based on other people's ratings rather than your own in order to be more effective sounds like a recipe for disaster. I think no Fire Emblem would be fun to play this way (and I think you agree, based on your comparison of the gen 1 and gen 2 gameplay. Now that I think of it, this whole post might be a big "duh, that was the point" for you...) and even if it was on some other Fire Emblem, I think FE4 is an exception because of the limitless team size and the strength difference of the units.
The strength difference might sound a bit off but I think FE4 is a game where you SHOULD use or at least try the weaker units. Not because they are super great after alot of investment (some are), but because they make your Sigurd (and the other holy blood wielders) feel so much better, enhancing the narrative of the Holy Blood even further. On top of that, to me at least, the first FE run is the most important and the self-made narrative around gameplay and the characters is the part that makes the game series in general so enjoyable for me, so optimizing efficiency of the fun is kind of dangerous, especially when the FE4 talk is kinda binary, like "map big = infantry bad = no use infantry."
As said, this was a very fun video to watch! I think FE Tube needs more discussion that focus on people's playing experiences. Looking forward to the next one!
Im glad you enjoyed it first off. But in general YES, you are correct and im glad because that means the point of the video was delivered at least decently well, where a lot of my initial distaste for it was completely my own fault and i wasnt experiencing it for what it was/i was distracted by how different a lot of things are compared to what im used to. I do still think that FE4 for a newcomer can be daunting in some ways even with an open mind, so i wanted to express that even with a bad attitude at the start (which i acknowledge) i still ended up really enjoying the game as a whole and it is definitely worth the time invested, and i also plan to replay it in the future and experience plenty of new things!
@@ElutPesto Yeah, getting to FE4 is rough! Especially when you don't pay attention to stuff like the arena at the start, which can make the run either incredibly easy or hard for a first timer. While I like the general gameplay pattern of the preparation phase, I think it is the most annoying part of the game. Have you started Thracia yet? I'm playing it on and off for the first time and would love to hear your thoughts on it someday!
@@VeijariMash i did start it pretty recently but im only at like chapter 3 so far lol. Maybe ill make an impressions type video like this one too
Great watch! I just finally finished it after being intimidated to start it for so long and I agree with a lot of your points (the banger chapter 1 map theme LOL). I found a lot of the mechanics not all that bad after a while but yes the payoff of knowing you literally travelled the whole continent and took down literal hordes of armies gave a great sense of satisfaction in the end along with the story beats :)
if you just solo with sigurd is the devs telling you "yes we put the speedrun button BUT... how about try and use others? like have fun with the game"
I was confused when I couldn't trade because I think you could in every other game BUT this (not sure, don't quote me on that) then I learned how to and it wasn't a chore anymore, just look out for the items and preparing the right unit to pick it; Ayra and her kids are demons for Arena regardless of who you pair her with, unless it's... Claud?
I became enthralled with Lewyn after he got Forsetti and even then he grew up on me as a character too
Claude!ayra kids are still good. In fact, the only dad that doesn't do much other than passing weapons to ulster is Alec. He gives skills that are already on ayra's kids to begin with.
Tbh Fe4 debatably has my favourite gameplay in the series, everything from the awkward gameplay quirks to the units and general graphics and game feel i really enjoy.
Really nice video, it sounded like someone having a conversation with me. Problem with a lot of more commercialized videos is they have edited and corny punch lines, where I just wanted an honest opinion of the game as someone who is on the fence about it rn. Cheers bro, thank you
Well I’m glad you enjoyed the video and if you do decide to try it I hope you have fun. Since this video I’ve played through it another time and liked it even more on that run
If you get a chance, check out the manga adaptation of this game. Thats what made me love playing it.
If I were to make a suggestion for a future playthrough, try fe4 binary. It fixes a lot of the weapon balancing issues, and ups the difficulty in a lot of ways
Fe 4 is a lot like Majora's Mask, in that, it's a lot more fun on a second playthrough, when you know more about how the game wants you to organize your resources.
I just finished FE4 last night and I think your take on it is the one I jive with the most.
I think it's a good game, but I'm also glad that some of its mechanics didn't catch on to the rest of the series. Example: I'm okay with the trading/pawnshop thing, but I'm glad that didn't become the norm for games moving forward. But all that aside, I had fun, but after I finished, I couldn't help but wonder if I'd have had more fun if I just played something else. I think FE4 has the skeleton of something really special, and I would love to see a spiritual successor to it to iterate on its ideas like how SS did with Gaiden. I think a proper spiritual successor ought to rebalance foot soldiers and/or maybe give more of those secret items to characters who don't get holy blood to level the playing field. I also wasn't a fan of the blobs/waves of enemies and I'd love to see the continental maps have some more...intentionality to them with enemy placement and reinforcements.
I have a weird relationship with FE4 because basically everything about it is top notch except for the actual moment-to-moment tactical gameplay, which is pretty boring when usually it's the most fun part of any given FE. It could really use a remake to modernize all the great stuff, but you couldn't really make that tactical aspect of it more fun without just completely changing the kind of game that it is. Honestly despite it all I respect the hell out of this game for having a very particular vision and sticking to it regardless of consequences. It's still one of my favorites despite all of its multiple layers of jank. I especially love the way gameplay and story are integrated.
Edit: To explain in a bit more detail, the way the game makes you fight huge blocks of identical enemies really limits what you can do on any given player phase, since if you try to play aggressively you will get swarmed and probably die. You basically have to place big blobs of blue units (or Sigurd/Seliph/a holy weapon user) and wait for the big blob of red units to slam into it on enemy phase. This is never particularly fun, but I don't know how the game could make it feel like you have these big organized armies being led by larger-than-life figures duking it out on a continent-scale war otherwise. Like you, I think I wasn't having fun until I figured out that the fun in FE4 is less how you'd manage it turn by turn like in a normal FE game and more in trying to figure out ways to build your units into monsters, which stuff like the trading/money system, the game having repairable weapons it encourages you to hold onto a specific unit for a really long time, and inheritance makes really engaging IMO.
As for story/gameplay integration, one of my favorite instances of this is the end of Chapter 5, where you have this miserable death march through the desert, having to fight off a ton of wyverns and siege tomes, everything is going wrong in-story, you're trudging along to an excruciating pace, and then at last you reach the final clash with Reptor and it looks like you have *finally* reached your deliverance...and then it turns out the light at the end of the tunnel was actually a Valflame headed straight for your face. It puts you, the player, in the same mindset as Sigurd and company, and I think that's genius. I also think of Seliph's character arc: everyone is placing all these expectations on him because his dad was a great hero and the biggest badass on the continent, but Seliph's just...not that. Sure enough, when he starts out he is not even close to being what Sigurd was. But if he decides to take on his duty, he can become just as strong, if not stronger, since he doesn't really have the choice in being the hero Jugdral needs right now-and that initial humility is the reason why he can actually win while Sigurd was screwed virtually from the start.
Yeah I had a similar experience with FE4 the first time I played it as well. I think it gets much better on subsequent playthroughs because it becomes an exercise in planning.
Although these days every time I play through it… I don’t exactly like it less, but I do feel like there’s a lot of missed potential that could have been amazing had it been iterated on (although Thracia is my favorite). I think that Ch. 1, 2, 3, and 5 are some of the best chapters in the whole series and I just get disappointed that the rest of the game doesn’t really live up to the standard set.
you should be excited for your next run through , trying to make the most op gen 2 units through the romance system is soooooo fun .
Extraordinary video, this game will always be my favorite. Through the intro and The Judgral Chronology, the tone and music are just masterfully done 🥹🤌
I get massive goosebumps everytime
fe 4 is brillliant because you use all the units you get. no one says in the castle
I’m kinda morbidly curious about a remake of this game because to me the mechanics sound more annoying than enjoyable, but I’ve played games I didn’t like at first but grew to love (Dragon Quest XI I’m looking at you! ❤️)
I’m very impatient and get hung up on stuff like inconvenient mechanics or UI, so I really don’t know if a modern FE4 would be for me. But I am still curious
Decent video, I feel like for my second playthrough I'd train Azel with Paragon ring and pair him with Talitu. The one time I agree with you on using a guide is on chapter 4 where the game waits until the FINAL village to tell you about the Dew draw bridge mechanic which fucked me over because I left that bumass thief at the castle and it's entirely possible other players didn't save the final village so they'd be stumped with no clues iirc. Complaining about hidden items is kinda dumb tho ngl. Lex is still a good unit without Brave axe, Lewyn is still great without Forseti or even a pursuit ring if you train him, the knight ring is pretty whatever ngl, and even tho it's not hidden you don't need to repair Tyrfing to get past the final map on Gen 1. You don't need to midmax every FE you play lol. It seems you figured out the easiest way to break every FE game is to just send your 3 golden gooses to carry so idk why you complained about the hidden weapons/events beyond the narrative crumbs. You'd be fine without them as most people were before the internet told us about them. Before I played the game I thought I'd dislike it because the holy blood in conjunction with substitutes because seemed very unfair. After playing it I came to love those mechanics since they reward players who took their time to pair units in Gen 1 99% of the time.
My opinion on looking up hidden items/events on a first playthrough of fe4 has nothing to do with being optimal, just fun factor. Lex imo is insanely boring without the brave axe so I think if you know about it it is more fun. Thats all
@@ElutPesto Wait how is Lex more fun with a better weapon to you when you felt bored by the difficulty being too low by chapter 1?
@@polyman6859 because doubling and/or one-rounding is inherently more fun than chipping for one attack at a time lol
@@ElutPesto Right I can see that, but you said you were bored even by chapter 3. Did I miss/forget something with your timing in reassessing the game that made you enjoy it?
@@polyman6859 i guess ill try to be more clear here: a lot of why i wasnt enjoying early game of fe4 was that i was not in an open mindset when playing and initially my motivation was to play it just to get to thracia. Because of that in combination with new mechanics/information coming at me i didnt at first give it the chance it deserved and didnt see fe4 for what it was. This is an old video and i have since replayed the game, but the point of making it was to encourage people to give it that fair chance. I never hated the game because it was easy, in other videos ive made ive said that easy games can still be fun (and fe4 is fun) but there were things about my mentality that at first kept me from enjoying it/giving it a fair shot
Along with having an open mind going into the game for the first time, i also still would recommend spoiler free guides to new players for items and events simply because it adds to the fun of fe4 because its more stuff to experiment/play around with. Lex doesnt need the brave axe to be solid sure, but i think once i found that event he stood out to me more as a unit and helped get me invested into the very unique experience that is fe4
Funny enough, I had the opposite case with FE4.
When I first finished FE4 in 2016 (the year of my first playthrough), I thought the story was fantastic - the best in the series, even, and touted it as one of my personal favorites. And for the most part, it is still memorable. However, over time when I came back to it, I realized that the characters were super undercooked to make way for the grand plot, and I just saw it as inferior to the other True Fire Emblems. It's still a good game, but FE5 is simply better in every way, in my opinion. Not just the gameplay.
Totally agree that Thracia is the superior title by a noticeable margin, game is incredible
I love Fe4 so much It and 776 is peck fire emblem too me!
For me binding blade is boring except for the final chapters.
I cant understand why people loves it so much, Roy is not even that interesting as a main character...
Instead, Blazing blade is so much fun and beautiful.
fe4 represent fe well p1 trade gamplay for story p2 trade story for gameplay
The biggest mistake people make with FE4 is expecting it to be like a Fire Emblem game and then playing it like a Fire Emblem game. It may have FE in the title, but tbh it really isn't one. The bestI've ever heard it described as is "an open world FE game"
The biggest thing is that the game is really easy. Like maybe the easiest ever FE game. Its so easy to solo the game with Sigurd, Seliph, Ares, and Leif and no one else. But to me, that actually makes the game less fun. It's weird because in other FE games, I do enjoy wiping out hordes of enemies with just a few units but not in FE4 and I think that's because I know the game is easy so I know I'm not really doing anything special. You talked about how your first try at the game, you didn't feel like it was a tactics game. And that's because if you play the easy way, it really isn't.
Which leads me to the next biggest thing about FE4, unlimited deployment slots. The game really, really wants you to train everyone. Your units that are actually good are kind supposed to be there just for emergencies or when you need to something specific to happen. Otherwise, you're supposed to be training your weaker units like Azelle, Ayra, Beowulf, Lachesis, Erinys, and the like. That's where the game actually becomes a tactics game.
And that brings me to my personal classification of the game. it's a unit-raising sim. Even though you don't have unlimited grinding, you basically do. You can easily get every unit in both gens to promotion. Promoting units also allows also allows their kids to be better too by giving them more options for inheritance. Speaking of the kids, you raise them too but not only that, you choose what skills and weapons they do and dont have. You can choose to make some units great and some units bad. Or you can choose to make the entire Gen 2 just "pretty good" or anywhere in between. But yeah, it's a unit-raising sim. And the closest other game in the series to that is Awakening, which borrows a lot of design choices from FE4, and it saved the series.