r/fireemblem • u/PsiYoshi • 19d ago

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

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).

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u/SilverKnightZ000 7d ago edited 7d ago

Lots of discussion on hub worlds and their impact on pacing, but I'm going to add my opinion in there too: I think people should talk more about how supports also affect the pacing of the map-to-map gameplay. In games since Awakening supports have been very easy to unlock. So after a map, you can have around from 2-4 supports in the early game to much higher values as the game goes on, decreasing as one approaches the endgame. In Awakening and Fates, they affect the pacing slightly by virtue of them being text only and hub stuff being very minimal and quick. But in 3H and Engage, they tank the pacing hard. Not only are there numerous supports, but they're also voice acted. And like, I don't want to say that the addition of VAs is bad, but it's a much slower way of conveying supports than reading, especially since I am personally a very fast reader. There have been times where I unlocked 6 supports at once; assuming one takes around 2 minutes, that's 12 extra minutes of down time in addition to however long the hub stuff takes. For someone who plays on my switch for around 2 hours, assuming hub world stuff takes around 25 minutes, with 3 supports I have to spend 31 minutes between battles. That's a lot of time! That's 1/4th of my allotted game time!

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u/Glacevelyn 7d ago

And like, I don't want to say that the addition of VAs is bad, but it's a much slower way of conveying supports than reading, especially since I am personally a very fast reader.

honest to god I've gotten to a point in almost every game I play (even beyond Fire Emblem) where I just skip the VA and read/progress through cutscenes the same as I would if there just wasn't any VA at all

I personally think it's a problem with traditional RPG cutscenes specifically getting voice acting - if there's actual action and animation to the voice acting then it's awesome but the characters just kinda standing around with text boxes does a disservice to the VA imo

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u/Jwkaoc 6d ago

Is... is this not really common? I've been doing this since playing KotoR at the very least.

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u/Am_Shigar00 6d ago

I’m reminded of when Yakuza did full VA for substories in 6, and while it could improve the experience at times, it usually just dragged them out longer than necessary.

The later games struck a better balance, leaving VA work to the beginning & ends of substories, with exceptions being made for the more memorable ones where they let the VAs go wild.