How Relevant is Fire Emblem Actually?

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How relevant is Fire Emblem as a series anyway? And by relevancy I mean, widespread recognition - Niche vs Mainstream. Which is what this casual/editorial video will discuss today. My personal feelings on the series and how I grew up treating the series, to where we are today. All these years later. From Playing Fire Emblem Blazing Sword to seeing the series shrink up until Shadow Dragon, to it blowing back up again with Awakening, Fates and Three Houses, I saw the series go from niche to mainstream. This video is a personal story of how I felt about the series during those times and how it broke into Nintendo Major IP status and then some.
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intro 00:00
Niche Origins: 2:20
My Experience with FE7/Advance Wars Success 3:30
FE7 Success 5:50
Awakening and Mainstream Fire Emblem 6:40
Is FE Still Niche or Mainstream? 8:50
Other SRPGs 11:30
Fire Emblem's Recognition 13:55
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#fireemblem #fe3h #SwordOfConvallaria

[Faerghast]

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[RufioTheThird]

Saying the series is mainstream, yet the genre isn't is such a perfect way to sum it up

[imprudentdev]

Id say that it's less that Fire Emblem is mainstream, and more that Fire Emblem 3 Houses on its own is mainstream

[Xertaron.]

Engage selling far less than Three Houses was a foregone conclusion. As someone relatively new to the franchise who, when it was announced, was still going through each game for the first time, I wasn't interested in it at all. And the reason why is because it focuses on the moment to moment gameplay, while putting next to no effort in aspects that make it even remotely interesting for anyone who isn't a fan of the genre (or likes really loud character design). Fighting games used to be mostly competitive games and put no effort in attracting casual audience or new players until Mortal Kombat 9 changed that by adding the story mode so even people who are completely new to fighting games had something fun to play and maybe learn and grow to like it. This is why MK has by far the largest casual audience of any fighting game today and why Street Fighter and Tekken started doing the same.

Conversely, hardcore audience is small compared to casual one, the hardcore audience of SRPGs is even smaller. So Fire Emblem has every reason to be casual friendly more than most other franchise. Before the invention of casual mode, it was one of the most unforgiving series ever - we like to present games like Dark Souls as an example of a hardcore game, but in Dark Souls you don't lose anything permanently if you die - your progress is slowed, never impeded. In Fire Emblem, if one of your units die, you can't use them for the rest of the playthrough, which could mean several hours. And that was a damn hard sell for a casual player.

Solving that, it encountered a second problem - turn based games are generally not as exciting as real time ones and thus less appealing to casuals. Three Houses solved this by putting more emphasis on the world, the story and the characters - even if you have never played this type of game, you can still enjoy it. Thronebreaker (single player spin off of Gwent: The Witcher card game) did the same. Baldur's Gate 3... well, everyone and their mother knows why it's great. Engage meanwhile dropped the ball on that completely. Worse, rather than to casuals it tried to appeal to gacha enthusiasts, which makes sense on the surface, FEH is their golden goose, but gacha enthusiasts do not give a damn about something that isn't a gacha, casuals don't care about FEH or gacha in general, while FE fans play FEH just because it's a Fire Emblem and would drop it overnight if FE got an MMO or something, so advertising FEH to them is rather pointless - it screwed up on every level when it comes to finding the non-hardcore audience.

Tldr of all of that is - IS needs to look at why Three Houses succeeded and why Engage underperformed by comparison. Three Houses is considered "unfinished" mind you, and it is still the most successful game in the franchise and for good reason. You make a feature complete game with similar design philosophy and the mainstream will eat it up.

[MikeDrayton]

First Fire Emblem game I played was Sacred Stones.
Still in the midst of GBA being the big handheld. It was honestly the perfect introduction for me to strategy games, specifically SRPGs.

The accessibility of Sacred was enough to really have me hooked on the overall narrative/mechanics of Fire Emblem to try 7, then 6, then the Gamecube titles after.

No regrets, cause I genuinely love the series.

[jordanfrench]

Don't murder me, but my first ever fire emblem game was three houses. I had watched shadypenguinn play shadows of Valencia and loved it. Once I got my hands on three houses, I fell in love with the series and I look forward to seeing what comes next for fire emblem and plan on going back and playing the older games. In fact, fire emblem introduced me to games like triangle strategy and octopath traveler

[Faerghast]

Sorry if this video is a little rambly! But I just wanted to talk about something that I cared more about than I thought. Did you play Fire Emblem when it was still considered niche or not? Let me know down below. Also, because I've just moved, I might be a little spotty on uploads, so you might see some segments of some livestreams for content up until I settle down and get back into the swing of uploads. Thank you so much for your support as always and please check out the patreon if you're interested!

[thekoifishcoyote]

It's weird how many Nintendo games are mainstream versions of niche things.
Fire Emblem: SRPGs
Pokemon: monster collectors
Metroid: horror
Zelda: adventure
And probably a lot more

[CaptainAstronaut]

I started with FE7 and that was 20 years ago and now I feel old

[MythrilZenith]

Trying to piece out "niche" is a tough call, especially when you are within that niche. It is REALLY tough to get into the mindspace of someone else, and as such it's incredibly difficult for a FE player to get an accurate idea of how "niche" the game or the genre is.

With strategy games becoming a smaller and smaller piece of the overall gaming pie over time [mostly because new gamers aren't jumping into strategy games like older gamers were], franchises like Fire Emblem represent the last bastions of public visibility for the genre.

Fire Emblem is broadly known. But how many other strategy rpgs can the average person name? Maybe triangle strategy or Final Fantasy Tactics, both of which are carried by connection to existing brands? Unicorn Overlord had its moment in the sun, but that is the only other major release in the genre in the last few years. Even as a fan I'm struggling to name more than a handful of SRPGs in my head in general, let alone recent releases.

Engage was over a year ago. Three Houses was 5 years ago. Yet it's still THE biggest name in the genre, the only one people still talk about generally outside of "oh yeah that game exists" types of mentions.

Maybe it's just that these games are buried by more popular releases, or aren't advertised well, but I can't think of any SRPG that wasn't a Gacha or mobile game to come out in the last five years outside of Engage, UO, Triangle or Mario x Rabbids [if that even counts]. If that isn't a niche genre, I don't know what is.

[Ultimabuster]

It will be tough to surpass 3H's popularity. I STILL hear people talking about it, see new fanart almost every day etc. after more than 5! years. The game, while not perfect of course, did so much right, i get excited from just imagining an even better FE in the future, but will it come? And if yes, when?

[LunalynDragon]

Funny that Metroid and Fire Emblem are right next to each other, given that they're my two favorite Nintendo franchises. Couldn't possibly be any more different from each other, either!

[LeviAuren]

Fire emblem is relevant enough to warrant advertisers of SRPGs to target the fan base via YouTubers (looking at you, Unicorn Overlord).

[bramv]

3Houses got me into the series, then went back to the 3DS games and the Warriors titles, then came Engage and now busy with the GBA games. But I'm still basically the only person in my friend group who plays FE

[lukaskunz-ylsz]

I started with tree houses 2 years ago, I never played a S-RPG before but I wanted to try it because it sounded like it would be a lot of fun. I remember playing around 10 hours a day in the first week I had the game, it really felt like it was made just for me.

[Diamond_Aura]

Is Fire Emblem Mainstream?
Vs
Is Fire Emblem Niche?

Illusion of Choice

Another 5 years of Three Houses discourse for some reason

[audreyschicksalholmwiltz]

As long as Three Houses is still being brought up, FE will forever be relevant (still waiting for that particular "Remake" For Switch 2 title tho 🤫)

[robertspearman]

It's really great to hear that someone else had the same experience playing the first game released in the west. Idk how I managed to beat the game as a kid when it first came out. Actually reading and learning the mechanics of that game has made the series a favorite of mine. Great video @Faerghast.

[trevor]

We can take solace in the fact that Nintendo will probably not pull a dark age of Capcom and see 1 million sales and think they need to reboot it to appeal to the west

[CoolxBreese]

I beat Awakening a few months ago, and just realized that your avatar starts the game with that mark on your hand at 7:00