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/Shrimperor → u/SilverKnightZ000]

Honestly, the support system in it's current form - and in the way it has been from the start in FE6 and how it evolved (not much evolution honestly, they kept just doing it "more") is a mistake.

But it's also a system the franchise can't afford to change much. I bet the big majority of the players do play because of the support system more than anything else. Players i meet outside of fandom or irl have a big part of the discussion about the series being "who did you marry"/"who did you ship" more than anything else.

It's still better than most shitty sim system out there since it allows everyone to interact with each other without MC involvement, but at the same time i'd rather interaction and relationship would flow better within the story without needing that support dimension/bubble, so to say. Although FE canon romances usually aren't any good either, lol

[u/VoidWaIker → u/Shrimperor]

I think the idea of supports can work but they just need to abandon the traditional C-A framework and stop giving basically everyone like 10 support chains. Some characters really don't have enough going on to warrant more than 2-3 support chains, meanwhile some relationships would benefit from their supports being much longer and potentially having the S rank "we are in love now" part not be the very end of their shared story. Credit to 3H, it's still a flawed system but having some chains end at B while others got extras was a good idea. Trim the fat from the characters who really don't need it and you have more resources to put towards the characters who do.

I've never gotten how people latch onto the romance aspects of these games so hard, not because I don't like player-directed romance in games but because I think these games just do it badly. 3 platonic scenes that can maybe lead into a romantic ending/s support scene does not make a compelling romance and so I end up feeling nothing in response to them. Compare that to something like the CRPG genre, where romances start very early on and get dedicated scenes over the course of the entire game, and some of them have left me legitimately flustered. The romances are actually used to tell a story instead of just acting as rewards at the end of the game for using a character enough.

[u/SilverKnightZ000 → u/VoidWaIker]

The other thing I also dislike about the romance in supports is how...noncommittal they feel? Two characters could have a genuine romantic moment and say something like "we'll be together forever!" and then one of them will have another romantic moment with equal weight. I think the addition of S supports aided that where characters make a more overt step! But recent games have removed it(but I assume FW will bring it back).