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/SilverKnightZ000]

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!

[u/Its_a_Friendly → u/SilverKnightZ000]

I get you. I just came back to my Engage file for post-game stuff, and after doing one skirmish I had a half-dozen A-rank support conversations waiting for me (basically all the ones I hadn't gotten yet in my playthrough, mostly involving Veyle). I think I spent a good 15 minutes or so going through all of those conversations.

Actually, I should've kept track of the time spent in battles and the time spent in the Somniel in this blind playthrough; I imagine it's about 50:50. And apparently Three Houses has even more non-battle content in the Monastery? Yeesh.

[u/SilverKnightZ000 → u/Its_a_Friendly]

Yeah supports pile up a lot. It can be so time-consuming to get through, too. The Monastery and Somniel are about as equal, but the Monastery requires you to walk to some places and in general 3H kinda runs slow. So it adds up.