Fire Emblem

[Jowy]

I've really tried to enjoy these games but they're so smurfing aggravating. I don't like the thought of permanently losing any of my party members in the event of them dying. Having to bash reset and try a different position every five minutes isn't my idea of a good time. Anyone here ever finish an FE game without save-state abuse? How long did it take?

[Agent Proto]

Fire Emblem is a pretty hard game to play without having to restart a level each time you lose a character. I never really managed to complete a game without losing at least one person.

[KentaRawr!]

I'm not sure if this holds true for the whole series, but in the first game, the AI always goes for whoever is in range, no matter what. So if you take a look at how far the enemy can move, you can pretty much decide which of your characters are going to be able to be attacked during the AI's turn.

[Shauna]

I remember I tried playing a Fire Emblem game once, and didn't know that when a character dies in the game, he dies in real life. I got like 3 hours into the game and found this out when I entered a battle just with only my MC available. I don't know how it took me so long to notice. ._.

[Pumpkin]

I played Awakening on casual, so no losing anyone, and I still found it really friggin hard. But luckily I liked it enough to keep playing. Haven't finished yet though. But yeah it would be infuriating to permanently lose a character

[Vyk]

I think they realized they were losing potential fans, hence the addition of casual mode. Since nobody plays Fire Emblem for the permadeath. They play it for good strategic gameplay. Which can be granted without murdering main characters. To that end, I finally enjoyed Awakening more than I have any other Fire Emblem game

But alas, it still suffers from battle fatigue, just like every other strategy RPG these days. They don't know how to make a real RPG around the battle mechanics whenever they make a strategy game, and it just ends up being a bunch of scripted events and a monotonous ton of consecutive battles. You never get to explore towns or dungeons or even a world map. It's just pre-determined dots on a regular no-frills fold-out map. Yawn..

Still loved the game for what it was, though. And sadly that's probably as good as it's ever going to get

Ironically I finally got my SRPG-with-exploration fix with a western developed game: Divinity: Original Sin (and since then, Wasteland 2 has followed suit. At least someone knows how to make a real rpg with strategic battles)

[Del Murder]

The permadeath is annoying but I see trying to win without losing a character as part of the challenge. I managed to get through Awakening in hard mode without losing anyone so it is possible.

[Rez09]

I'm not sure if this holds true for the whole series, but in the first game, the AI always goes for whoever is in range, no matter what. So if you take a look at how far the enemy can move, you can pretty much decide which of your characters are going to be able to be attacked during the AI's turn.

Yeah, that's pretty much always been a thing in the series and is easily one of its most exploitable elements. You just move a defensive unit into enemy range, end turn your turn, then reap the rewards on the next turn. I generally use the pre-promo unit you get in each game for damage sponging and feed the kill xp to the rest of my team in the early game, which _usually_ makes most of the remaining game a cakewalk.

That said, I've completed most of the series without too many problems and few resets, barring some of the battles in the SNES games that have ridiculous bosses. I haven't done much with the two NES titles, though, since they are really clunky and, I found, quite unenjoyable, so those might be crazy hard. There's also a DS title I didn't play, but I hear it was pretty solid and there's a patch floating around for it, so I'll get around to trying it out sometime.

[Ayen]

I never played a Fire Emblem game.

inb4 "Tori, you have to play a Fire Emblem game right now!"

[Vyk]

Not unless you have a 3DS. Awakening is the most accessible to a wider variety of strategy fans, with probably the best graphics, art, and voice acting, along with the option to not murder your companions, as well as difficulty options. The other Fire Emblem games seemed very straight forward to me. This one has a lot more meat to sink your teeth into and is a bit friendlier to new comers both to the genre and the series

But then again, I'm not a fan of the entire series. I've tried almost all of them, and I can't vouch for any of the others. Even on the GC and Wii they failed to capture my interest and inspire me to stay invested. Just, again, seemed very bare-bones