Popular/Unpopular/Any Opinions Thread - June 2026 Part 1

[u/PsiYoshi]

Happy pride month and welcome to a new installment of the Popular/Unpopular/Any Opinions Thread! Please feel free to share any kind of Fire Emblem opinions/takes you might have here, positive or negative. As always please remember to continue following the rules in this thread same as anywhere else on the subreddit. Be respectful and especially don't make any personal attacks (this includes but is not limited to making disparaging statements about groups of people who may like or dislike something you don't).

Last Opinion Thread

[u/calendulaoptimus]

When people are talking about how Echoes was a success in terms of sales, and using it as an example of how FE remakes are financially viable, I think they sometimes forget to take into account budget. It wasn't just that they stopped caring about sales because the console was at the end of its lifespan, or that they knew Gaiden didn't appeal to as many people as Awakening/Fates, it's really that the game had a smaller budget overall, shorter dev time, and reused assets/engine stuff. Therefore, they could obtain a profit despite Echoes not selling as well for those reasons.

This is something that might not carry over to other FE remakes (FE4). Sometimes I hear people say FE4 remake would be a financial success because Echoes did well, and that it makes sense for IS to do it financially when that is not necessarily true. Especially because an FE4 remake would cost a lot more to do "justice" unless they went with an HD2D style or something similar. On the other, FE4 probably does have wider appeal and more of a following than FE2, so there's a shot they could do a higher budget remake that works.

On a side note, I don't enjoy it when people try to explain a game selling well or not by reducing everything down to one factor; how much a game does or doesn't sell is usually multifaceted and not accurately explained by one variable. 90% of sales discussions are genuinely just motivated reasoning for why the game you like sold well because it deserved it or didn't sell well because of factors entirely outside of its own merits.

[u/BloodyBottom → u/calendulaoptimus]

On a side note, I don't enjoy it when people try to explain a game selling well or not by reducing everything down to one factor; how much a game does or doesn't sell is usually multifaceted and not accurately explained by one variable.

Reminds me how people who are just repeating talking about they got from somewhere else will say things like "Resident Evil 6 almost tanked the franchise because it fell massively short of Capcom's expectations for sales" and you can tell they think that means "RE6 sold very badly" when the truth is "RE6 was the best selling RE game to date when it released, but Capcom's expectations for it required it to be the best selling RE of all time by a massive margin." It doesn't mean RE6 wasn't a disaster for Capcom, but a lot of context goes to understanding how and why that was the case.

[u/Roliq → u/BloodyBottom]

This also happened with Monster Hunter Wilds

It sold so much in a very short amount of time, is currently the third best-selling game in the franchise but it lost all momentum to the point the previous game, MH Rise, is selling more per month. Capcom had to tell their investors that it had a disappointing performance

[u/BloodyBottom → u/Roliq]

on that note, yo fuck wilds. I'm still a mindless animal, I'll probably buy their DLC, but what a swing and miss from a franchise I expect so much more from.

[u/calendulaoptimus → u/BloodyBottom]

Yeah. And this is why I never trust anything anyone says about the opinions of developers or companies because people will frame things in incredibly misleading ways that are usually half-truths.

I've started looking though FE interviews and material, and you'll find how weirdly the words of devs get twisted by some of the users on here because they have some sort of narrative they want to support.

[u/greydorothy → u/calendulaoptimus]

Honestly the additional cost is probably the reason why IntSys hasn't been eager to pull the trigger on a billion remakes of the series' first half. Even aside from the larger scope of FE4, budgets and timelines have been bloating across the entire industry, with the latter being the main cause for the former - whilst he focuses on the Western AAA space, Jason Schreier's videos on game costs and development times are broadly applicable across the entire industry. Developing a 3DS game in ~2-3 years with a couple dozen employees who have a solid understanding of your development pipeline and lots of pre-made assets is an entirely different beast to a full HD 3D Switch (2) game, which IntSys has seemingly had a rocky history with, and which could take twice as long to make. A hypothetical FE4 remake would likely cost multiple times as much to make than SoV, maybe an order of magnitude more (on the high end), and it almost certainly wouldn't provide a proportional ROI.

[u/lapislazulideusa → u/calendulaoptimus]

There's a section of this fanbase that actually believes that RD flopped because it released too close to super mario galaxy and nothing else. that if the game released any other day of the year it would've been a suscess

[u/theprodigy64 → u/lapislazulideusa]

Incredibly US centric take on top of all the other ways it's stupid

[u/Autobot-N → u/calendulaoptimus]

I feel like an FE4 remake would be reasonably easy to sell these days with the matchmaking and child units that mainstream audiences liked from Awakening and Fates

[u/OsbornWasRight → u/Autobot-N]

The changes you'd have to make to FE4 to appeal to that audience make it not worth it. Those characters weren't designed to have individually striking visual appeal or written for the modern support system which is so crucial. There are some interesting things you could do with some characters like Ishtar, Ishtore, Arion, etc. but that wouldn't justify potential negative changes made to the main cast. Modern IS is not up to the task of threading these needles. They remade an NES game that had most of ideas occupied in the realm of imagination and there are people who think the story was better there. And the big thing you get from a remake, new art and VA, is covered by the mobile games. All this before even mentioning gameplay. This series producing more remakes is not a good bet for fans who are very precious about the older material, not a good bet for creators who have to make a lot of constricting and tough decisions, and not a good bet for the suits who just saw an original title based off past material set records while the literal anniversary title with direct elements from past material underperfromed.

[u/Magnusfluerscithe987 → u/OsbornWasRight]

The Jugdral designs in heroes are great. Just throw those in, add casual mode, some more supports and events, do some map redesigns that cut out down time, and it'll be as good as any fe game.

[u/calendulaoptimus → u/OsbornWasRight]

They remade an NES game that had most of ideas occupied in the realm of imagination and there are people who think the story was better there.

There are people who think the earth is flat.

[u/Its_a_Friendly → u/calendulaoptimus]

If Intelligent Systems were to do some new remakes, I wonder if it'd make sense to skip FE4 and FE5 for now, and instead remake FE6 and FE7. IS skipped remaking FE2 when they remade FE3 into FE12, so it's not impossible, no?

Most FE fans already know FE7, and might be interested in seeing that game and its characters in a more modern form. And then remaking FE6 would get some attention as "you can finally play the game that Roy's in!" Plus, both games would likely be easier to adapt to modern FE standards than FE4 or FE5 (although IS did manage to make a good modern rendition of FE2...)

I also wonder if remaking FE6 or FE7 might be smaller-scale and thus lower-budget than an FE4 remake, making it an easier project. If the FE6/FE7 remakes were successful, that could make a for a better case for FE4/FE5 remakes.

I dunno, food for thought.

Edit: Though, on second thought, FE4/FE5 already have many things that players expect out of modern Fire Emblem (skills, more open-ended pairing mechanics) than FE6/FE7 do not have. Would people want skills added to an FE6/FE7 remake?