How Has the Design of Units in Fire Emblem Evolved?

Local man discusses how even though grid based gameplay with units has been a mainstay in the Fire Emblem series, the purpose and functions they fulfil has been altered drastically from game to game, especially 3 Houses.

0:00 Intro
0:28 FE1-3
2:34 FE4-5
6:17 FE6-10
9:51 3DS
13:26 Switch
15:47 closing thoughts and updates

[ivanbluecool]

Designs went downhill after we lost the best hairstyle ever the "joey wheeler" hairstyle from genealogy of the holy war.

[Xeconis]

Three Houses missed the biggest opportunity to have a fun and cool Jagen archetype in Jeralt and I will never forgive them for this. It would make Maddening a stomachable experience for the average player looking for a challenge (hard is still pretty easy for vets) AND there is story integration for you to stop deploying the XP sink. The man already has stats and growths and a class and his personal skill is literally perfect for a unit designed to set uo kills for other units. This is mostly unrelated to the video I don't know why I am talking about this other than Jagens make it harder to lose your weaker units most of the time I guess.

[Supergupo]

I want benefits to a character's death that could maybe incentivize pushing on. The Archanea remakes sort of did this with death-locked gaiden chapters, but I want something a bit more tangible and immediate.

For example, say in a theoretical Thracia remake, if you have Dagdar die on Ch. 8x (Gomes level), I want to see immediate repercussions and responses for it happening. Maybe have Marty go into a rage and gain an appreciable Str boost for the rest of the chapter (maybe even make it permanent if their support was high enough so you gain an immediate effective replacement for Dagdar), or let Tanya gain the ability to use axes upon seeing her father's death and take up the mantle of the head of the Freeblades, or even maybe have the Chapter's boss in Gomes regret his actions and have the chapter immediately end in the brigand's surrender.

I just want observable and appreciable narrative weight to push forward with a character's death, and if there's some neat little ludo-narrative response from a character's mechanical perspective, that'd be rad.

[arclight]

The tradeoff of "a unit should be unique so their death feels impactful" and "a unit shouldn't be completely irreplaceable" is the daring dance Fire Emblem has always had to tackle throughout the series' history. Permadeath is one of the things that makes Fire Emblem so unique and engaging, but it's also what drives people away. No one wants to lose something they invest in.

I don't really know if there is a good solution for this problem. Engage and 3H are the perfect microcosm of the critical dichotomy.

In 3H, units have amazing personalities and fit a variety of unique roles that suit their aptitude. But recruitment takes a backseat, so your roster is small and losses are incredibly impactful both story and gameplay wise, so "engaging" with the permadeath mechanic is less fun.

In Engage, all units are replaceable. In Maddening, I can't help but feel encouraged to replace my old units as soon as I get new ones. Growth investment is very difficult for the first 10 or so chapters, and units are easily reclassable. You get plenty of units, so you are generally never at a loss for deployment slots or specific utility. The most important tools, the emblem rings themselves, you always have them. Units themselves have quirky personalities, but contribute very little to the narrative other thsn serving as the soundboard for the main characters. Once they join the party, their part in the story just doesn't matter.

But thats what I love about all the different FE games. They in no way replace each other, and each game is so different, it makes going back and playing older ones feel just as unique and interesting as playing newer ones. I think if FE settled on a "permanent" solution to unit design, it would be detrimental to the series.

[joeyjose]

It’s tricky. My play style isn’t usually using permadeath, but I acknowledge it’s cool and an interesting challenge. I’d like if they built a real Ironman mode where you literally can’t save scum

[Lando-My-Love]

Echoes is so interesting - the art and VA direction easily makes it my favorite casts, but I think a lot of the system mechanics and gameplay elements fail to allow player interaction in ways that I personally find engaging

[LP-znsc]

I really miss "unit feel". While it's nice to have more open class systems we've gotten to a point where things are so homogeneous. With engage now literally anyone can do pretty much anything, the only unique thing characters have is whether they can use magic well or not. The problem with this is that characters who are good now completely eclipse others because there's no reason to use them other than memes.

[OrlandoAguirre]

Ignatz mentioned! Ignatz Number 1!!!

I too enjoy Ignatz as a unit and somewhat as a character (a friend kinda convinced me otherwise that he's a smidge boring)

[juicyjuustar]

At 2:01 you mention that you can choose the class your Villagers go into. As someone who is playing Gaiden right now I can tell you, you dont get to pick their class, its actually entirely random chance.

[fingkof]

How am I supposed to enjoy this Fire Emblem video? You didn’t talk about how much you hate Engage and how much better Three Houses is.

[BigGnome]

"Fire Emblem sets itself from other mainstream strategy games that often use generic unit types"
This is why niche strategy games are peak. Glory to Grog Drinkwater from the Vandal Hearts franchise 🫡

[thefrubblewarrior]

0:38 No matter what, wether it be because of investment, strategic use, or design it will be inevitably heartbreaking when a character dies. They may LOOK generic but how they function on the battlefield can define an arc for them.

[EctoZ]

Not huge on FE, but this is a great video, super informative and concise

[abbieburton]

I've enjoyed unit design from every era of fire emblem, because if, like me, you don't enjoy or find the permanent death aspect necessary, there's always a way to play that puts it in the backseat (1-2 emulator savestates per chapter in fe1-10, chapter saves in 11 & 12 and casual mode from then onward).

I like early fire emblem units because spending a whole game raising a bundle of stats with no story relevance but a funny face and an axe in hand is extremely satisfying to me. The early games, replacement filler nits or not, gave you more connection to your units than other srpgs at the time just by giving them a lil face. You can even see kaga in interviews sorta jokingly saying that he wished players would let their units die more often. Then, moving into the later games, the role in the story and world started to fill that instant charm threshold. Although I do often find myself gravitating towards the more plot irrelevant units still. I love jean, I love mozu, I love awakening anna, I especially love rd meg.

Ultimately I don't mind if the future games cater to ironman runs or not, but I would love to see a return to thracia's design of bountiful prfs.

[RisingSunReviews]

You're comment about how you like the story of Three Houses but it feels different than the older Fire Emblem is how I felt. The characters felt much richer than any of the other Fire Emblem games which I think was a positive, but I've gone back and played FE7 and FE8 lately, and while I like many of the changes since these older games, there's something in the feel of it that these older games had.

[Face]

In fates you can kinda use both the capture units or the purchasable generics but it's definitely a risk in resources depending on difficulty

[maxyaju]

I'm just gonna try to sell you on Tear ring saga by saying it's unit design is pretty much Thracia's on crack while also allowing them to have dialogue and conversation spreaded through the game.
Anyways, banger video.

[Xeconis]

I think it's worth mentioning that Radiant Dawn due to deadlines and overambition decided to move their support "conversations" from menus back to the battlefield where two characters say some kind of "Hey I got your back" generic line (with a few exceptions) that doesn't really give much character. Fortunately for about 85% of the cast, they were characterized in the previous game and didn't get retconned (how tf did that happen) so they don't care but the rest got shafted. Anyone not with decent screentime in Path of Radiance is left to scrap for main story dialogue, unique battle lines, and base conversations.

Alternatively you can read the Radiant Dawn installment of the Tellius Recollection to find out that Nolan and Leonardo love reading and Heather steals to pay for her ill mother's medicine (alt timeline Dorcas lol) and that Edward and Leonardo met when one of them saved the other's life and I cannot remember which one was about to die. Probably Leonardo?

Oh yeah, base conversations were skipped entirely, they're basically like adding in minor dialogue moments that would otherwise be in a support but you don't have to unlock them and usually impossible to miss unless you don't check the base conversation list. That makes them better than supoorts for developing traits since it was very easy to never learn anything about someone before them.

Remember this number, they cut 334 support pairings from Radiant Dawn while they had planned to do the same tyoe of supports as 6 through 9.

Not important for my main point but Path of Radianc had a decent chunk of cut ones, far less than 334, though. Volke was going to have more than 2 pairs and Elincia lost like 6 or something.

[BlueClouds]

Before I even watch the video I want to drop this. I'm sad that they dropped 2d portraits. If they want to go 3d, they should have done it like engage where the characters are 3d in the scene but the faces on the side are 2d

It would have allowed for us to see Mika Pikazo's cool artwork

[skypaladin]

Another part of engage is the Emblem rings being a large part of a characters strength means a character death will have less negative impact on the gameplay, while still giving a skill list silmilar to what characters in The previous games had to try and achieve over half the game.