Is Fire Emblem's Popularity Declining? 

If you look at the three most popular games, Fates and 3 Houses had early route splits and a lot of things to play and to discuss story-wise and lore-wise. And then FEH exists. I think it suggests that most people who are into Fire Emblem prefer not to watch others play it, but rather play it themselves. Thus, story and unit viability/builds become more searched than gameplay unless the game has an insane amount of replayability.

I think it was less Cindered Shadows that caused the post 3H spike and more Byleths release in Smash Bros that created the spike. I remember the controversy was everywhere.

I get that you as a youtuber have to care about it, because views are the lifeblood of your channel, but as a fan (of any given series really) I couldn't care less. Beyond selling enough to greenlight future titles, massive mainstream popularity has never been a good thing for any series I like.

Interesting video, granted I've only been making fire emblem "content" since march 2021 but I can definitely see a correlation with the graph you showed here. Particularly videos about engage are just not that appealing and have a lower click through rate than others. Now of course that could just be due to the interests of people that like my "content" however as I don't have the largest sample size. I think you got it right, fe4 remake won't spark a large audience of interest and instead it'll require a banger of a mainline title that has a broad range of appeal. Engages biggest flaw is putting all its eggs into appealing to gameplay focused players which simply isn't the majority of the fire emblem audience anymore.

It's a bit sad that they did Engage dirty. It was easily the most fun Fire Emblem gameplay in a long time, but the story and the way DLC was implemented were just sooooooo bad.

I think one of the main reasons for 3H’s popularity is that they actually marketed it well, not to mention it was also on one of the most successful consoles. A similar situation can be seen with Pikmin 4, as it sold more than all previous games combined upon release and they marketed it really well and it was on a successful console. I prefer the more classic style, like the GBA and Tellius games, with the Tellius games being my personal favorites. While I don’t think a remake of PoR would cause a great popularity spike, it would be great to have and with Ike’s popularity, at least partly due to Smash Bros., I think it would probably at least sell well. Also, I think part of the popularity spike in 2008 was due to Smash Bros. Brawl and it’s Subspace Emissary.

After playing engaged….I appreciate 3 houses more

Engage didn't tickle enough people's fancy to keep the popularity going. If anything it disappointed too many and hopefully it didn't cause a lasting effect. Word of mouth is very important, and if you look at the temperature of the room with Engage, word of mouth was bad, regardless of the few outliers trying to say "story / writing dont matter".

I think we need a Fire Emblem with an actually engaging story and well written characters like we had back in the Sacred Stones and Lyn/Hector/Eliwood era. If we had an engaging story that wasn't pure cringe, I think popularity would spike again.

I will forever be grateful to Smash 4 for introducing Corrin, which led me to buying Fates and introducing me to the core series. Played Fates, bought every game on the 3DS, and haven't missed a release since.

Videos about story are easier to produce in mass and have a wider appeal than gameplay videos. This is especially the case when branching paths are involved where people need to understand a bigger picture.

While I don't think Engage killed the hype it did dampen it. A good chunk of mainline FE games tend to immerse you into the world and characters rather quickly, setting the tone for the games at an acceptable pace. Engage unquestionably has excellent gameplay with a lot of dynamism going for it. But it struggles with tone due to how it's roster of characters clash with what the conflict is trying to do. And while anecdotal, failed to invest me in anyone in the game, which is a serious problem for a tactical RPG that relies on it's story and characters. And it would appear I am far from the only one who felt that way. Entries such as the Radiant duology and Awakening were able to get me invested early on because of either their world building or characters. Perhaps FE can get another golden age if they go for a more serious and dark mainline entry, characterized in a similar way to the Judgral games. But I fear going further mainstream is a monkey's paw scenario.

If I may, I think Three Houses's newbie boom and Engage being 3H's anthesis from a story perspective is to blame. 3H's story was very well regarded, but it was an outlier, not the norm. So when the newbies who started with 3H got Engage, they weren't that engaged with the game, causing the drop off. You can even see this with Heroes. When 3H came out, so many banners that year were 3H banners, but Engage has only gotten two whole banners, and two more partial ones.

As what could be considered a normie, i didnt find Engage to be that engaging. I simply didnt like it, i think the majority thinks about it the same way as i do.

I think the answer is……kinda? I think it has to do with the fact that Engage was a very overall forgettable story with most of the cast being very 1 dimensional, it had great gameplay but gameplay is not something that drives conversation as much as story and characters. It should be noted that I do not think fire emblems OVERALL popularity is diminishing I just think the world of engage did little to retain player attention past the credits, if there was FE announcement that was I do think interest would return

Shadows of Valentia is such a fantastic game. It's a shame it wasn't appreciated as much.

I wish we had raw numbers instead of a percentage. But anyways, while I think views and sales are both imperfect measures of popularity, I think sales is much closer to the truth than views most of the time. The sales of Engage do have me questioning that logic, but looking at FPS franchises, it seems sales is a much better indicator of longevity than views and I see no reason FE would be different.

I know this sounds like a basic response, but its quite clear that the story of Engage is to blame, nowadays people want a reason to play the game besides "Its really good", so much so that most games of recent have been quite lore heavy, if you look back a bit, you see that was something that were exclusive to RPG titles Of course, there is a game here and there that jumps over that rule, but lets all face it, FE will never be that kind of game without a lore, at least not officially Also, I know this is a hard-to-swallow pillow, but the fact that Nintendo actively dosent sues fan content shows to me how much in a hole FE is, even depiste the spikes and all

Mangs, you didn't mention the Smash games, where most of the units are sword locked and there's some cameos of characters of the mainline FE games

For me, Engage was a massive letdown. I can’t imagine being a new fan who had played three houses and expecting something akin to that experience and getting Engage. It was kind of jarring how awful the writing was and the lack of depth in the characters in a way that I have never seen in a Fire Emblem game. It really felt like it was catering to a different audience (ones who play gacha games incessantly and don’t wear deodorant), despite being a fan service anniversary title. Gameplay was good, yes, but I expect more from Intelligent Systems. They have shown how truly remarkable they can make a game, especially ones with lasting impressions that have real things to say and truly deep and profound stories to tell. Even when the story is divisive and a little rushed (Fates), it still tried and honestly kept me engaged. Engage, quite literally felt like a genuine chore for me to complete. I unlocked every single support, hoping that there would be some gem hidden or that it would add layers of depth to the characters. I did not find such things. After I completed about 200 hrs in the game, I set it down and will probably never pick it up again. Reallllllyyyyy praying for an FE4 remake for switch 2 or an original title. I think it could do a lot for the series. Something is assuredly in the works and close to releasing…

I can tell you straight up that the fumbled execution of Engage kept me from buying or playing it... I still really love the older titles though.

Engage had a pretty bad timing and marketing. A lot of anticipated games came out this year like TOTK and Pikmin 4, the game released 4 months after it was announced and the DLC released 3 months later, it really felt pretty rushed.

I can only speak for myself and say what killed Engage for me. First of all it was the dumb af character design choices that toned down my first impression of the game. Then when it came out it just seemed like it had very uninteresting and generic story and character writing as well. Then another issue I have with Fire Emblem is how the fanbase developed and how much Nintendo is trying to appeal to that change. I'm not sorry for saying that the current fanbase has a big coomer problem and you can observe it very well by looking at the newer FEH banner releases and the newer OCs they released lately. It's easy money for Nintendo, since a mobile game isn't in need of much complex writing, but poison for the actual series and I will die on that hill.

In my opinion, fire emblem needs to break out of the existing scenarios it’s always been in. It’s similar to what has been and is happening to Pokémon, where rehashing the same premise but “with a twist!” Is causing new games like sword and shield or scarlet and violet to not be as legendary as the era of gen 3, 4, 5 and stuff for long standing fans. There needs to be something wild to shake up the premise of fire emblem. Not to lose its identity for the sake of popularity but to take a risk and try something bold. Every game’s plot boils down to man vs gods/dragons if we think about it. Not that that’s a bad thing but when you do it upwards of 15+ times it gets predictable. I remember during awakening’s development they even flirted with the idea of fire emblem on Mars. But that might actually be a cool idea. Perhaps fire emblem but in the modern day, or a futuristic sci fi fire emblem. The identity of fire emblem to me at least is the gameplay. It doesn’t matter where the setting takes place as long as we have stuff like weapon triangle, weapon durability, supports, growth rates, etc. so if they were to release like a cyberpunk fire emblem who knows? It might actually do fantastic if done correctly. Maybe it’s because of how successful awakening and fates were that they felt like they had to just keep doing the same thing. But I’m low key getting bored of every story being “destroy the evil dragon/god/emperor”. Even if every game does it differently it’s still just rehashing the same premise.

DUDE! you forgot to tell the people about the ANDARON SAGA SPIKE! the 4rd golden peak we will see when we have a proper mia armpit fire emblem :S

It's very noble of you not to show the peak of when Andarron Saga was released, it would make those other peaks look like a flatline. In seriousness though I feel like FE is in an identity vortex passing back and forth between classic, gameplay and story driven focused, to modern, focusing more on enamouring people with designs, social and relational investments. On one hand they want to support permadeath and on the other they give you a redo button. I feel like the divide you speak of between fans of Heroes and classic FE fans is actually pulling the franchise in 2 different directions, very similar to how it happened with Monster Hunter. Monster Hunter had a solution which is to keep the main titles focused on the core of what Monster Hunter is, while handheld and spinoff titles went more extreme with their setting, world building and gameplay, to satisfy both distinct tastes and widen the player and fanbase.

Maybe it's because I'm getting older and always stressed out, so I can't get myself to play video games anymore 😔

The Drums of War are beating at 1:34

I think the reason why is because fire emblem three houses gave us basically 4 ish stories in 1 game. Which in turn made people watch allot to see all the routes and choices you could make as well as the broken combos of classes You can create. While the others are either bad remakes or just stories that aren't good enough to watch. Idk just what I think.

It seems people just can't get engaged with the latest title.

I would like to share my Fire Emblem journey with you. I actually would never have given it a chance if I didn't get to like Robin as a Smash Bros 3DS character. That's what pushed me to order the game a little while after it was removed from the shelves. And what I got was a great experience, as I kept hooked on that game for as long as it took for Fates to come out. It really was fun to build my units from the ground up, down to the children, and even if the Valm part was not that interesting, unlocking supports was what kept me going. Even back then, it had a bit of replayability, as there are gender-exclusive skills you can get your Robin (which is the best avatar in the series, imo, for reasons I will state down the line). Then came Fates, and... I was not disappointed either, mechanics-wise. It was roughly the same as Awakening, while getting a better gameplay, the story was...good. Good in the sense that I wasn't poking the holes at the story back then, and the senseless sacrifices quickly were cast aside, for I was enjoying the gameplay. The route split added replay value (yes, even Rev.), but I never got all child units even today. Maybe I was still sick of the kids in Awakening, but the notion of the Deeprealms was quite jarring to me (making 20 years pass in days? Awakening's child units at least had a VALID LORE REASON to exist), and... yeah, the game was still enjoyable and kept me hooked for the next year and a half. A bit like you Mangs, I played Heroes and...stopped when the power-creep became too serious. The story wasn't good enough to make me care about it. I got Shadows of Valentia and... It is still one of the best games I've played. The voice acting does a lot, but the story was amazing, especially on Alm's side of things. Celica's... much less (the Jedah shenanigans). Sadly, it's not a game with a lot of replayability, but the ride was worth it. Three Houses. Ugh. I see the appeal, I really do, but... The Monastery. I have grown to hate it. The game is fine otherwise, but the gameplay is easy to cheese through. And the fact that the Empire route is the secret route had me suspend my disbelief a bit too hard for my own good. Fortunately, my next playthrough was Azure Moon, and Dimitri delivered. I haven't bought Engage. Not only did I feel they relied a bit too much on nostalgia and beanking on attracting Heroes players in the main game, the next appaling thing was the avatar. So, I've been mentionning the avatars. While I don't think they are a blight in the series, my gripe comes to the fact they try really hard to shoehorn the player into the story. Robin may have been important in the story, he is not its cornerstone - most everything happens due to Chrom's choices. The only time yours matter is at the very end. The rest of the time, it really did feel like you're just a member of the army. Why is this important? Well, we come to Corrin. Corrin is an amnesic Mary Sue. And they are also the avatar of this game. The plot revolves around them. The amnesical bit can have very easily be done without if they didn't try to shoehorn the player into this story - Corrin would have been more interesting with more flaws and... actually, s/he just needed a credible character. It doesn't help that they are also a dragon, increasing their importance, since the Dragons in Fire Emblem are quite a big deal. Byleth... Well, this time, they tried too hard not to give them character, but them being a taciturn person really doesn't sell the teacher bit well, nor did it make them more relatable. And then it turns out they're basically the second coming of Sothis... And again, the fact they don't remember their past does them the same disservice it did Corrin. And in Engage, the Avatar is a divine dragon. A.K.A the closest thing FE has to gods. We sure are elevating the players to new heights at IntelligentSystems...

Minor thing: Tokyo Mirage Sessions Encore is a re-release not a sequel

They just have to release a live action series of FE. It worked for One Piece tho.

I wouldn't necessarily say that Engage specifically killed the hype. I think it's more that there just isn't much to it that can maintain the hype. The story is barebones and there aren't really any standout characters, so there isn't really long-lasting content there. And while the gameplay is good, that doesn't really make for interesting RU-vid content for more than a few months at most. Meanwhile all of the older games have already been talked about to death. I definitely think that if we get a game with some halfway decent writing it will bounce back to at least normal levels. I don't think this is another dark age at least.

Also looks like Fire Emblem’s “relevance” has always been linked to Smash Bros. We haven’t had anything for years from their side and it shows in the lack of interest we see today.

I genuinely believe that fire emblem is in the infancy of its popularity. Right now, the FE community isn't the most welcoming space for beginners. When I first started playing FE a few off-putting things about the community included: 1. Referring to FE games by number rather than name or main character (very confusing) 2. Discussion surrounding most games are made assuming highest difficulty (discouraging to those who are still learning the game) 3. Grinding and “slow play” heavily looked down upon 4. Separation between fans of older FE games and newer FE games (this one is less apparent, but it is something I noticed) 5. Repetitive content (Unit rankings, playthroughs using the same “best characters”, etc) I wholeheartedly believe that FE can be on the same level as Pokemon one day. We just need the overall community to be more welcoming to newcomers. Innovation in the scene is also a thing that will foster growth. I know the numbers for FE content is discouraging to look at, but Mangs please keep doing what you are doing. You are really pushing this game forward.

Haven’t watched the full video yet because I’m busy, so I’ll leave my initial comment and edit it when I’m back: Imo, it’s a mix between the discussion that a game can provide and also how appealing is to masses which make something popular, not just FE specifically and that’s why Three Houses got it’s popularity. People already knew or at least had a concept of what Fire Emblem was when it was launched, however, it’s because of it’s story and characters that people got into the game, even if it is flawed in things like the monastery or the class balance, most of the people would ignore it if they can play what they see a good story and likable or well written characters. Something that would make people say “yeah, it’s anime but the story isn’t cringe and its deep” instead of just silly anime plot. If IS wants to appeal to the general public they need to focus on having a good/great story and that it can generate discussion. I would honestly prefer a game with good gameplay even if the story is thrash, but that isn’t the case with most people I think…

Did Engage kill the franchise? No, not even close. BUT i think it did the franchise a massive disservice. I mean, Fire Emblem always was the "weeb" game in the eyes of many, but with Engage that stigma got even worse, at least from my experience. Gameplay was amazing, we don't need to talk about that, but most people just couldn't take Engage seriously, myself included

I'm new to Fire Emblem and I find the fanbase to be welcoming, helpful, and generally polite. I got Three Houses and Engage this year after my friend recommended them to me, and I plan on playing through the older games soon. But as a newbie, I'm honestly surprised that this franchise isn't more popular than it currently is. It definitely deserves to be.

Interesting video allowing folks like me, which came late into the scene, to grab the history of RU-vid’s Fire Emblem’s story. Short version of my opinion: the long time between releases, coupled with a single route game without a lot of mysteries, revealed the true size and habits of most of FE audience. The audience (like me) play the game but only stick around for mysteries and intricated analyses. Afterward we move to other games until a new release. Regarding the video, I didn’t really pick up the metric used for popularity. I suppose it is a period number of RU-vid research / views compared to the maximum number of RU-vid research / views. From the outside, it might make some period worst than they are, especially with FE:Heroes taping in a different market audience. I would believe that FE RU-vid’s activity is similar to others solo playing games, as most of videos, and discussions, are made around the release of the game and stop afterward (even if they were very popular). And as such, I think the main reason why the popularity of FE is declining is the fact that few games are made. At the exception of FE:Awakening, after each release the audience dwindled to 25%, sometimes lower, until the next announcement. Furthermore, the golden era has seen 7 games in the span of 3 years, against 2 in the last 2 years. This might have led to a better retention of the attention of the “casual” audience, during the golden era, allowing the franchise to grow and grow without resetting each and every time. Regarding the FE audience, I feel like you have: • a “core” audience (10-15%), which are active members interested in gameplay, franchise and ROM-Hacks • a “regular” audience (30-40%), which comes in for new releases but do not really stick around • a “casual” audience (30-40%) which manifest when a FE game manage to break the mold and have interesting characters / world building / mysteries • a “phone” audience (last 15-20%) coming from a different market and which is difficult to tap into. Thus, if a new game wanted to reach the 80ish% popularity, it would need to appeal to casual audience. And in my opinion, it needs to sparkle discussions through characters (design, stories, interactions), like for Fates and 3H, an interesting world (different sides, mysteries, politics), like Fates and 3H, volition / frustration (choosing a route, not accessing all the units in one route, choosing who will have children), like in Awakening, Fates and 3H. I really think that locking content behind routes is a good idea, as long as we don’t have to play the same map again and again (like 3H did). Why ? Because we will miss part of the story and will look around for the missing pieces, through another playthrough or videos. In this instance it is important to have different characters in each route and maps (for replay and discovery values). For instance, I played all 3 Fates routes because I wanted to learn more about the world and characters, especially seeing both sides interact in Revelation after the 2 other routes. On the other hand, I only played one of 3H’s routes, because of the first act and the fact I had all units in my first playthrough. This instead led me to go watch a lot of RU-vid videos to discover the other stories, and uncover mysteries, as I didn’t want to play again. And this might be why FE:Engage is “bleeding” that much audience. The gameplay is excellent (which may explain why it was still popular), but the lack of story, mystery and deep characters lead to fewer things to explore and look for. Again good video and a lot of interesting comments which helped me putting words on my thoughts.

"Uh-oh, where will I get my revenue now?" : The Video

I believe one of the biggest things that hurt Engage was the poor first impressions it garnered during its reveal. Many people often struggle with changing a first impression because it is the first thing our minds latch onto when we hear about something. While some people slowly began to love Engage for its gameplay, some people like me could not stand some of the writing choices in Engage from the way the characters were portrayed to how the plot developed in the main story. Fire emblem has always had both mature and silly scenes that meld together to create a great experience along with it gameplay. Engage however, completely tried to make the story serious without having proper buildup to many of their important scene and the characters often disregarded the story to make a quick joke in many of their supports. These symptoms reminded people of Fates, which made Engage rather divisive in the community

My guess would be that since Nintendo now knows the potential of Fire Emblem to fly off the shelves, they'll keep making games for a good while. I feel that it's unlikely for it to ever really go away, but they definitely have some reinventing to do during these drought periods.

I been a fan of the fire emblem for 15 years and enjoyed the content of games and music and never stopped playing the new games and the old games

The two oldest Fire Emblem videos in RU-vid is a Path of Radiance intro from 2005 and a Binding Blade japanese ad a little months before it.

I hope the next FE ignites a spark yet again.

I think heroes is as popular as ever. But Engage itself was just not popular. People not liked the desings and less people were interested to watch it. Also people thought it is a heroes spin off. I think if FE4 remake comes or something big and new with better designs it will climb again

I started typing out a long post then deleted it. My posts have been getting ignored lately in the community so there is no point.

12:15 I think the line is primarily very low right now because it's been a bit by now since the last big spike of 3H. You can make that chart for pretty much any game series. Spikes for every release, with slowly declinging flat-lining at the floor relatively shortly after. I think comparing how high the spike for each game is and if it has a bit of an echo phase after that is alot more telling. Also since 3H I hear alot of normies using FE as the measuring stick when talking about turn-based strategy game gameplay "It's like fire emblem". I'm not sure, but I don't think that has been the case before.

The thing with a lot of games is that more gameplay focused ones like Engage that don't have a great story need something else to keep it a float. Take pokemon for example, ignoring the massive amount of different things going into it such as the anime, tcg, etc. the pokemon games have pretty dogshit stories with no depth that have been recycled for years but they have good gameplay that is kept constantly relevant because of the competitive scene and the massive romhacking scene. While Fe does have some good romhacks (Shout out to Andaron Saga for being amazing) if the base francise itself isn't very popular then this isn't going to keep it above water. Another example would be the Dark Souls games, they are gameplay focused games that basically tell you very little of the story and leave it to you to go piece together the breadcrumbs which causes a lot of engagement for lore videos. There's also the multiplayer aspect that can be made exciting through trolling videos or goofy builds and stuff. However for FE there's no real interest in FE multiplayer because there's nothing really interesting to do with it. For engage, I imagine people watched a lot of cool videos of people making wacky builds with the rings and once they had their fill there was nothing to keep them around. Let's look at 3h and fates now, both of those games have route splits and in fates case those route splits were paid. I bet a lot of casual fans played 1 route to completion and then decided to look up videos of their favorite FEtuber in order to see the rest of the content, thereby generating a big spike in activity. I think an FE4 remake would do similarly to Engage, a decent spike of interest with a quick drop off. Realistically Fire emblem just doesn't have massive appeal because there's so little to hold your interest long term, even if you love playing the game over and over you probably aren't watching playthroughs of it over and over because they're mostly gonna look the same. I imagine you're one of the only actually popular FE creators because A. Your entertaining where most of the others are not and B. You do wacky(and dumb) shit in your playthroughs that can break up the samey feel of watching multiple playthroughs of the same game.

Honestly people really enjoy npc interactions so it really does come down to world building and a good script. Other than that fire eblem gameplay is great formula they just don't need to go too crazy but can introduce new weapons and units just be careful that they balanced or just op in one aspect instead of overall

My first reaction was thinking that of sales, saying "bro it's been 1 game since three houses." Glad you clarified it quickly and I enjoyed the video.

(I mean, when Engage leaks came out people thought it was a chinese fake knock-off, don't help much.) PS : (It ended up being an official chinese fake knock-off...)

i loved Fates Games and Three House game because they were so cool to play it but sadly i wanted to play mystery of the emblem and i hope they’ll make a remastered of it 👍. About the Data of Popularity i would say Awakening was the big splash the Fire emblem série needed for both intelligent system and the fan to increase the moral and popularity of a dark age of Fire Emblem because Awakening was really cool to play it despite a few problems ❤. i hope you will recovered soon Mangs and thank for making videos despite being sick 🤒 😢

There are a few things that bother me about this “analysis”. First of, from a statistical and scientific point of view, there are not enough evidence in order to support the claim that FE’s popularity is declining. The video only take factors about RU-vid searches but it doesn’t mention sales, number of videos made, online and offline discussion etc, so the number of evidences is bit too low. The other thing is that you cannot really speak of a downfall trend with only one game after 3H, it should remain like this for at least 2/3 games in order to actually observe a trend. Especially when there are so many cases of a game selling badly, but the next selling much better. A very easy example is Pokémon Black and White, the games were a flop compared to others in the series, but after that it’s a continuous up going trend and Pokémon is still the biggest franchise in the world. Another thing to consider is the fact that for the most part, strategy RPGs are a niche, and 3H is more the exception than the norm and it sold that well because most people were interested in other aspects aside the chapter gameplay (I mean the actual maps where you fight). Plus the marketing team did a much better job marketing 3H both before and after the game launched, unlike for Engage whose marketing sucked. Also I think attributing the cause of the “downfall” to Engage seems kind of unfair, because it’s more 3H’s huge success that led to it. I mean 3H sold so much more compared to any other title even Fates and people talk about 3H so much more and is generally the most popular FE game even outside the FE community. And most of the time, when something blow up this much, expectations get way too high and are almost never met by the next instalment leading to a massive lost in popularity. An example that comes to mind is with a K-pop group, ITZY. They released Wannabe, their most successful track which led the girls becoming mainstream and of the most popular group of the 4th generation in K-pop at the time, but the tracks afterwards did not perform even remotely that high. In conclusion I think that with Engage we simply went back to Awakening/Fates era, where the serie is famous and known and people are interested to whatever will come out, but is not mainstream or as popular as it was with 3H. Plus I agree that a FE4 remake won’t bring a huge spike in popularity, because at the of the day it still is just a FE game with a good story, so a niche game. In order to regain the popularity of 3H the serie needs a title like 3H so innovating the gameplay with mechanics like the monastery with its teaching sessions, some kind of emphasis on the story Visual Novel/Persona style et similia

Unsure if we can really say it's a decline so much as a return to form after the explosion outlier that was Three Houses? People that don't like Fire Emblem ADORE that game, and when the next entry in the franchise really wasn't all that much like the prior one that introduced them to the series and was the heavily character-driven narrative that it was, they bounced off. Engage is far from a perfect game, hell I'll even buckle down and say the story is outright bad. But the gameplay is pretty decently regarded by older fans from what I'd safely say (dlc aside!) But the 'New' audience was in it for the story and characters, rather than the gameplay itself. So we've hit the issue where they wanted a more VN style of game than what we've had in the past, and the lack of it being what the new mainstream audience wanted has hit the series in the ass with Engage. Time will tell how this is gonna develop for further entries as we go of course. But I'd say maybe we'll just see a bit of a slow decline to a Pre Three Houses tier of popularity. Not exactly niche anymore, but not a mega-hit.

I'd say it's too early to jump the gun on this one. Based on the trends with this graph, it only takes one good game with enough staying power to generate long-term intrigue around the series. There's always dips in between games. Engage just happened to lose its mass appeal much earlier than its predecessors. I'd be more concerned for the series if we get another mainline game or two that performed similarly to Engage and they fizzle out too fast as well. As it stands now, I think we're fine. It can still bounce back with the next one if they play their cards right. Despite Engage's fate, many franchises would LOVE to be in Fire Emblem's place right now. Try being a Mega Man fan/content creator right now... My Mega Man channel's larger than this FE one I have, but I still see faster growth on this one compared to Mega content. People are still interested in FE content today. New games simply make it a lot easier to get views. But at the end, if a video's reeeeally good, it'll do decently regardless, I think. We'll be okay, Mangs!

I started with Awakening on my friends 3DS whom I was borrowing for a week and after finishing Mario 3D Land I tried awakening, the character selection was crude but what won my 10 year old heart was the adorable pixel art for the classes moving about, even depicting the color and style changes in hair for the avatar. Basically I think a new fire emblem game to sell well will have to capture the players hearts with a unique style and not just 3D anime game n.2841

So yeah, two quarters in and Engage has only sold 1.68M. It’s only sold 70k copies since it’s first quarter. I think it’s safe to call it a flop.

12:09: A crossover fighting game. With Samurai Shodwon. That would be the best thing ever. Sakura and Nakoruru and finally meet! 😍😍😍

Wasnt 3 houses like the most sold FE game ? And engage wasnt as popular but still sold a lot ? Like I feel that if the sales are good I belive the series is doing good overall no?

Possibly a hot take here before I even watch the video but as long as a series I like has gotten a handful of official titles and fan games I couldn't care less if said series dies. There's already far more games available than I'll ever play in my lifetime so a series ending due to low sales is not really a worry of mine. I started playing a Pokemon fan game a few years back but the save file got corrupted. Because there's so many good games out I've never gotten around to trying it again. I even just started Sonic Frontiers today and those first few hours felt very addicting. Edit for post video watch: Ultimately I think we'll be okay. Look at Metroid. It was in the pits for years and then Dread released. An actual release for a game that, for a few years at least I believe, fans weren't even sure was real. It went on to become the best selling game in the series, at least over 3 million sales. If Metroid can make a comeback after the disaster that was Other M, so can Fire Emblem.

Three things: 1. As a veteran fan who has played most of the games in the series, Engage looked like a spinoff to me. Given that, the fact that it managed to generate that much popularity in the series is a very good thing. If it was more widely seen as a mainline game, that could've made the next golden age. 2. This might seem like preaching doom but the switch itself is probably past its peak in its long lifespan as well. Most notable franchises have already released 2 mainline games already. You can just feel that the hype for Nintendo directs and (And gaming as a whole to an extent) have completely disappated, especially since E3 was repeatedly cancelled. There is always a slump of almost every franchise at the end of the old console's lifespan. 3. To answer your other question, I think Jugral remakes could bring about the next youtube golden age for Fire Emblem. This game is clearly beloved by most FEtubers that I know so their content on this game would be interesting. Indeed, much of the charm of these FEtubers is their content on the older games, games that people who are really interested in the franchise will try. Personally, the unique design features of FE4-6 are what I liked most about Fire Emblem (Big maps, world building, multiple objectives, many unequal characters etc.). For more casual players, it could very well have the same effect as a "robust new mainline game with a good story." I doubt even most FE fans who call themselves veterans have played the games. It's down there with Gaiden in terms of obscurity. It has most of the superficial aspects that made Fates so successful such as great music, great character designs, and a decent premise. The premise of Fates was just so perfect I have to admit. Even the game that generated the most popular for the series was insanly wasted potential. Genealogy can appeal to both sides of the fanbase and has stood the test of time.

There are too many factors to really be able to pinpoint a specific reason but my FE experience was that I discovered FE with Smash Brawl and I started with the GBA titles. Awakening was my first "new" FE game that I played and I played it a lot. I also remember Fates having a lot of expectations, speculations and controversies (love potion, story, mechanics etc) before the game even came out (back when it was called Fire Emblem IF). Heroes defo brought FE into the spotlight as most of the early characters were from Awakening, Fates or the GBA era which drew in a lot of ppl and the popularity was also likely tied to guides on how to play the game and how to beat the maps with free characters (and characters spotlight videos like Mangs'). For SoV I do remember many FE tubers being hyped but most of the newer fans never played Gaiden so they didn't know what to expect but the game was well made and enjoyable. 3 houses was another big moment where ppl were hyped when the game came out and when videos about different secrets of the game were posted. I had more or less dropped the franchise when engage came out. Now I'm playing FE6 Project Ember bc I love FE6 but I don't really feel the need to replay any other FE or even to finish all routes on 3H. I'd say the gameplay being the same more or less with each entry, means that the story and the rest of the game must be top notch to even catch my attention. Ik it sounds petty but that's how I feel.

I can say that while my love for Fire Emblem has not decreased, I've got some severe franchise fatigue right now. I didn't even finish Engage because I've just had enough for a while.

I'm still hoping for awakening re-release on a modern console or a remake. I'm interested in that metal slug tactics game that was announced a while back but haven't heard anything in a while.

I think Smash Bros also has a HUGE part to play with this, as it did back in the early 2000’s with Melee being one of the main reasons FE7 (GBA) was released in the West. Seems the two series are in tied together in the west

I blame Andaron Saga for being so good that it's eating up watchtime. This is what happens when you give your fans gold!

You are allowed to laugh at my opinion: Give me a golden route 3H game, where I can recruit and max out literally everyone if I choose to, and I think it would at least usher in a lot of interest despite the lack of replayable value.

I don’t see this as a surprise. Fire Emblem: Engage was not good. Yeah, it had some improvements in gameplay but the story was bland, the world uninteresting, the characters forgettable and the protagonist… let’s face it, quite bad. Gameplay wise it was probably better than Three houses because of minor fixes, but the whole ring gimmick was more of a fanservice thing allowing you to use old characters than anything really compelling. Three houses presented us with a world of mistery and political intricacies which treated players as adults capable of understanding non-linear stories, with many fantastic concepts extrapolated in the fantasy setting. We had 3 political entitities with their own agendas, a church, an obscure and dark faction working in the background, non-aligned people and other countries related to the main continent. We also had ethical and moral concerns between commoners and nobles and what life meant to each of the characters. You could explore the world based on the interactions you had with the characters and understand their point of view, maybe position yourself and have your own opinion on the matter. The game just throws you in a living world and you start reading family names and all of a sudden you are fighting against people who you don’t know but are family / important for some of the students. You can dive deep in that world. And then, when it seems the game can’t just become better, it throws you a 3 year time lapse where you can even align with the “bad guys” and have to face the fact that those who were your colleagues at some point are now your enemies and you are going to have to kill them. And we are not getting into the soundtrack or how the in-game dialogs of the characters change as the game moves forward. You actually get to be a “game-changing” hero because your choices and the characters you bring with you actually shape the future of that world. Fast forward to Engage, we go back to a good vs evil plot with a couple of plot-twists, characters with shitty backgrounds and too many female characters with exagerated female attributes. Don’t get me wrong, I like some fan service, but I don’t like it if it becomes more important than the plot itself. No more political intricacies, no more ethical discussions, no more plot for grown adults. Just shonen classic tropes, a bad guy and a cast I can’t even remember the name of. I still don’t get how some people actually defended that the new characters were as interesting as 3 houses ones. I guess they just wanted it to be true.

I literally spent 2016-2019 playing all the fire emblem games I couldn't play that were not on 3ds through emulator. I literally finished thracia a day before three houses came out. So yah I was addicted to fire emblem during those 4 years and that was when I found your channel Mangs, so for me I was practically glued to fire emblem content. Now I kind of play other games and less of fire emblem, I don't even replay some of the games as I did back in 2016-2019. College is sort of the blame and getting addicted to anime during COVID is also 100% why I didn't play much fire emblem. Now I just wait for the new games to release and enjoy them, rather than trying to beat every game on the hardest difficulty like I did before. And I do agree that a new original fire emblem game will spark another golden age, especially if it releases on a new console because 2023 switch popularity is nothing compared to 2019 switch popularity.

I mean fire emblems whole popularity in the West comes from Smash bros and Awakening -Three houses. With out smash representation the series will drop off for some people but that's fine that the series is Niche. It's niche and satisfying like no other game so it's always gonna have a place in Nintendo

I am someone that started at 3H, aka a noob lol. I have also played Engage and I enjoy both, just in different ways like different flavors almost. I am starting to explore older games, like Conquest, Awakening on the 3DS and Blazing Blade via NSO. I believe Sacred Stones is also slated to be on NSO in the future and I plan to experience it if it does come. I wonder if certain other things paired along with game releases also helped with generating some numbers or lowering some numbers. Like Corrin in Smash, it probably drew some people to the series that way. And lets not forget how pissed off people got with Byleth being introduced to Smash. It was almost like people who are not in FE were like okay, thats enough, i aint paying attention no more. Also world events, I wonder if some things happening around these times helped/hindered numbers. So many factors to consider when looking at data like you presented.

I feel like if Fire Emblem needs to bounce back, Koei Tecmo should buy Intelligent Systems. They managed to make Theee Houses a really compelling game, even 5 years later. And say what you will about the first Warriors game, I prefer Xander there than in Fates.

7:03 Yeah the toxicity would come when Three Houses was released. It kinda ties into your section on Three Houses, but 3H brought a TON of tourists and fairweather fans to the series. Normies if you would. That was the time period you were most likely to find people who would willingly admit that their favorite game in the series or that their first game was Three Houses. Alot of these people were very young and spent FAR too much time on the internet. And those people brought a TON of strife and fighting to the fandom. Suddenly, you found shipping wars and rigid enforcement of sexuality headcanons much like media such as RWBY, Persona, Honkai or the soon to be released Genshin Impact fanbases, in fact, there would be significant crossover between those fandoms with the Fire Emblem fandom as a result of Three Houses. Most of those fans would be ardent fans of Edelgard, who they frequently mischaracterized as some radfem manhating communist revolutionary out to overthrow the patriarchy, which put them at odds not just with fans of other House Leaders but other Edelgard fans. You can still pretty easily find people who subscribe to this btw despite the fact that it couldn't be anymore wrong, almost as wrong as the haters who viewed her as a nazi. This led to massive amounts of fighting throughout the fanbase to the point that a number of moderators, including at least one from the Fire Emblem reddit, resigned their posts out of disgust and frustration with prevalence and virulence of the discourse. The creator and the entire mod team of the Edelgard subreddit not only resigned their posts but eventually deleted their accounts out of frustration with in-fighting within the Edelgard fanbase over the rampant biphobia that people who preferred to pair her with other women showed towards people who paired her with male characters. "Three Houses Discourse" completely warped the way the Fire Emblem fanbase acted and was perceived by other fanbases. Now you may be wondering why I just typed that long ass paragraph about the toxicity and fighting that occurred within the Fire Emblem fanbase as a result of Three Houses, the constant splintering and rampant tribalism and how that's relevant to the video at hand. Well, its simple. The fighting created a generation of Fire Emblem fans that ONLY liked Three Houses (and to a degree, Three Hopes). This directly resulted in a decline in sales for Engage and possibly any future FE games that don't follow the Three Houses template. Yet these fans don't really understand that the Three Houses approach could only really have been done once. The devs made it abundantly clear that the development cycle for the game was hell on earth and that when they finally did release it, they couldn't wait to just be done with it. And finally, people don't like dealing with toxic fanbases that try to rigidly enforce how people should think and act. One of the reasons we play fantasy games is so we can escape such thought policing and yet here we are with legions of people telling you how you should and should not view the game. Oh, and before I forget, English Localizations. Who the hell knows why, but they have always UNIVERSALLY BEEN AWFUL for Fire Emblem. The only one that was even slightly ok was the one for Awakening and that was because they didn't use Nintendo's in house localization team. And even that game had a bunch of censorship in it otherwise. Even dating back to the Radiance games, where key integral parts of the plot were just...left out including an entire cutscene that explained how and why Daein was inflicted by the Blood Pact. It may not sound like much but the game DOES lose fans as a result of shitty localizations. Most people may not know or even care about them but there are people who drop the series because of it.

I think Engage's problems were engage itself. Not even the story or anything even the decision to have Marth and other lords comeback in the way they did was a turn off to some. Plus emblems also added more charcters when the roster is already large so it's tough to put time in development of the engage exclusives while balancing the emblems representatives so both groups dont get too overshadowed. The art style was also pretty divisive especially Alear's design and hair. Also reclassing being bound to emblems makes it extremely hard to actually use the feature in cool ways considering the plot twist where you lose all the emblems.

As @Smuggy97 pointed out, SSB4 is worthy of being noted on the timeline. I had played the GBA games prior to Corrin's announcement in Smash but hadn't really expressed any interest in the newer titles. I didn't even serach FE content on RU-vid until I start getting into Fates and Awakening

I always believed that fire emblem fans play modern fire emblem, check how good the old games were, then just play the old games. Every year, the number of people that go "The old one's were better before Awakening" grows.

TL:DR- Just make Fates 2

No Fire Emblem is fine. It's just too many games have been released too close together.

I’m still salty New Mystery never got localized as a big appreciator of Shadow Dragon, it also ruins the consecutive localization streak that Nintendo and Intelligent Systems had going and I think it did the whole Avatar thing decent, I don’t mind Kris fans, they’re not as annoying and obnoxious as Robin, Corrin, Byleth and Alear fans. Heck even Mark in FE7 is great because aside from Lyn, every character doesn’t always drool over him and worships him and he doesn’t hog all the attention of the Plot.

I believe it´s less about overall popularity rather than just so much new stuff coming out that unless you´re a live service game it is impossible to focus the attention on your IP longterm. Combine this with the general desire of people to constantly try different things and unless you constantly try to work the crowd with future announcements and secret projects there is simply no way to retain the broader audiences attention. The fact that Engage even got this much attention despite having such obvious flaws should at least give us hope that the future of Fire Emblem is at least secured for now. Regarding future games, I think a linear story with some variable chapters depending on player choices would be the best way to bring out the full potential of Fire Emblem storytelling without bloating the playthroughs unnecessarily would come a long way.

*What ACTUALLY went wrong with Engage?* *The honest truth is pretty ugly.* The Short Version: Nintendo put a New developer as the lead for the game who had no experience. A basic "Yes Man" who likes action games and not turn based tactics games, and was heavily influenced by Nintendo wanting to aim for a New Younger Audience which meant dumbing down the game, and making it flashier. The Long Version: If you read the "Ask the Developers" interviews that were released. The guy in charge (Tsutomu Tei), had never been a director of a game at IS before, and seemingly never discusses having any previous experience working on a FE game. So while I can't say what his previous role was, if any, it doesn't seem to be significant enough to mention in his bio. I'd link the Nintendo article, but RU-vid is pretty finicky with links these days. (Typing Ask the Developer Vol. 8, Fire Emblem Engage Part 1, 2, and 3 should get you too it) If anything, just someone picked by Nintendo to lead the development. Listening to the other two employees of Nintendo that were in the interview. Tei and the two mention wanting to "appeal to a broader audience" and saying that RPG mechanics such as the Awakening / Fates marriage system took too long to play out in the game. According to them it "wan't fun" so they developed the Emblem Ring idea instead. With the goal of intruding the "fun elements" early on. I'll quote the Nintendo stooge "Higuchi: We wanted to introduce this fun element for players as early as possible. I felt that the fun of tactical RPG games wasn't as intuitive or immediate as that of action games." So basically you had Nintendo heavily influencing the game with employees who were more interested and familiar with Action games than tactics RPGs. Then from the games IS developer, "Tei: People often say that turn-based tactical RPGs seem difficult or too complicated... In fact, I’m not very good at them myself." Take of that what you will, I take it as even the new IS dev wasn't interested in making a Tactics game. Just taking orders and advice from his Nintendo handlers. "Tei: We had several candidates. We were looking for an artist whose design style would appeal to a broad audience - including younger players - as well as the ability to portray a variety of characters. Among the candidates, Mika Pikazo-san's drawings were colorful, vivid, and really popped! They were a perfect fit for the flashy direction we wanted for this title." So from that we can see the "broader audience" meant appeal to children. In spite of marketing toward long time fans, which makes no sense since new players and young players would not get any of the references. So basically they tried to do both and focused on the younger new audience by lying to the older one. As it would seem, the games development and design was all over the place. Trying to create a game for a new younger audience, while throwing a bone to the old players to make it seem like they were not being abandoned when they were. As for another section about their Artist choice that influenced the game in a bad way. "Tei: Well, I thought it'd be better to be upfront about the request. That said, there was one concern she had. Since she usually draws young characters, she was concerned about her confidence level in some of the character design." So to answer why all the characters were loli or V-tuber style. It's because that's the only style the artist knew, and he went with it. Also, it also turns put it was her idea to make toothpaste-chans hair color red and blue. As before Tei just went with whatever he was told, advised, or requested. From everything I have read, Tei should never be in charge of any product. Unless he was specifically chosen because he just follows orders and has no skill as a leader or director. "Tei: As I mentioned at the beginning, I'm not very good at strategy games myself, so during development, I hoped to create a game that even those like me would want to try out or find interesting."

I wonder how a FE6 + FE7 + FE8 HD remastered bundle would do. I'd buy it.

Is there any data on how smash bros influenced the search data? Like during the Corrin or Byleth release trailer

3 Houses benefited from the pandemic, I imagine. A giant 300-hour game with lots of characters and story content was perfectly suited to lockdown life, I can speak from experience. I also think the Switch as a whole is trailing in popularity. The bigger consoles are generating more interest than any Nintendo game of the last couple years not named Zelda. We saw it at the end of the Wii U/3DS era as well.

People have speculated about the switch being at the end of its lifecycle for quite some time now and the discussion really picked up this year. The series probably isn't going to be resuscitated past 3H levels until the NX2 is announced imo

I actually think Fire Emblem being as it is nowadays is fine, is not the clusterfuck it was then Fates released and the casuals tend to avoid the elitists because they think they are toxic or whatever

Wish I had gotten into this series sooner. I only just tried it in May this year through the Switch's GBA virtual console and got addicted for nearly 3 months. Then I bought Engage and had a good time with it. I've played through the FE on the virtual console more than 5 times already and played through Engage twice. Definitely feel like I deprived myself of some good games lol

Somewhat late to the party, but whatever. Of course, searchtraffic and sales are one thing, but for me as a fan Fire Emblem has been dead for a really long time now. As many in the west, my first contact with FE was of course 7, and what got me there were Marth and Roy in SSBM back in the day, and I fell totally in love with the gameboy titles in particular. But for me, the titles afterwards didn't hold up. I hated 9 and 10, 11 was okay, but I already played FE3 by that point with crappy translations, and ngl, I enjoyed some things 3 had to offer like dismounting. Awakening was the first acutally good game in a long while, and is one of the few I still would play from the newer generation. I passed on Shadows of Valencia, but since I never played Gaiden I might play it at some point. But then there was Heroes, which renewed my interest in the series, primarily because I got to know new units like Ayra. And guess what, once after playing 4 and 5, I couldn't really even look at the most modern ones. Three Houses in particular, which I even preordered and everything, turned out to be the FE game I hated the most, giving up on new FEs, especially if the new main character is supposed to be a shitty pepsi advertisement. My main interest in FE today is 3-8 and Awakening, as well as GBA romhacks of FE. It might be because it was my first contact, but nothing for me screams FE like the romhacks do, and that much is sure, all those fans that pour their sweat and love into their romhacks are more invested in the series than IS is right now. I'd rather play the fangames.

i'd say people hating it and yelling about it like low tier game reviewers disincentives newer players and people yet to get it from buying, yes the game's story has flaws, but gameplay is always fire emblem, then ya got the ones that will demonize me for NOT saying it is terrible, I like it, its wholesome, the west is pretty nihilistic and apathetic and hate that sort of stuff these days, people are pretending to be some goth or emo or whatever like in the past, when life's not too bad, enjoy the endearing things, point out the flaws calmly and intellectually but not form a rage cult purely around hating something or someone because of some flaws, Personally I like the Kaga stuff on GBA era best, hence why I like Andaron Saga, _ Path of Radiance was good but I think paying for many voice actors takes from the budget that could be used to better the game, its like how people hated the part of Fallout 4 because a talking protag had less options to choose from for role play stuff and took out the reputation system that 3 and New Vegas had making most decisions meaningless like choices in Fire Emblem, similar to how some say Resident Evil 4 is one of the best but began the spiral of all the Action packed Michael Bay Indiana Jones stuff that replaced puzzles and actually needing to think and the horror aspect, just like how Final Fantasy 10 started the spiral away from what made 1-9 great, I'm not saying they should imitate the past entirely but since they are clearly different devs then the past ones, they should look at their roots, a Good king researches what made his founding ancestor and nation great, while a bad ones pride makes them destroy their legacy same logic goes for all things, my wording may sound weird to some and sorry for that but that's my opinion from playing most of the games

I don't think it's declining it's just that Engage was hit and miss with people story wise, so people who came for that were disappointed after what Echoes and Three Houses/Three Hopes brought.

I think FE3H, like Awakening and Fates, really brought FE to the forefront, and of course, there's FEH, which has been running since I was in middle school. I don't think Engage really appealed to the new crowd FE3H + FEH drew in, which may be a factor. But what I will say, is that something that has potential is a remake of FE6, or even FE4.

in my heart, Andaron Saga is a giant spike! 150% crit.

Still waiting for a story as good as the Tellius games.

Engage is why, end of story... see us next week to answer the question "is water is wet?"

It's just the standard cycle. New game comes out, people play it, beat it, then move on. Engage just has very little replayability, and it's a slog to do so with the terrible writing and somiel BS. Fates and 3 houses had route splits, and while awakening was mostly linear, it has a metric f*ckton of content. And of course, we love the GBA titles for the adorable little nostalgia generators they are.

I find interesting how a lot of the popularity boosts came from Smash Bros and FE Heroes instead of the main series. I think strategy games are a niche market anyway so I wouldn't be worried for the series, and the fact that sales are still good is more than enough to keep the series alive.

There's a lot that goes into a franchise declining in popularity I feel. Beside the more obvious stuff like the latest game not being all that well received, there's just more games people can play than in previous years. Meaning gamers aren't going to focus on one title very long before they move on to the next thing, thus less people searching RU-vid for it. Many other things could factor into this too but really the only thing that's bringing back FE's popularity is another well received entry in the series.

Maybe if they IS can get back to formula the works even if they branch out some that might be good. I don’t even know what to expect from new titles anymore. With Zelda, each game is different and the series morphs overtime. But I still know what I’m getting. Fire emblem just has such a vast difference between titles. I’d like IS to dial in on the core features to keep continuity between the games and not alienate the older fans. New game ideas are great. Just don’t leave me too far behind please. For me, Mangs was so bold with Andaron Saga but I felt like the core gameplay I’ve known for years was still there. Looking forward to a well rounded new title from IS as well as some ports/remakes.