#fe14 hate

i was already vaguely annoyed with some of the mechanics awakening introduced, but i didnt full-out hate the game or anything like i do with fates. most of the problems fates has though, stem directly from awakening, so... i can’t completely absolve fe13 either.

so the main thing fe13 introduced that i didnt like was the children system. see the problem with that is it makes it so that there are Way Too Many Fucking Supports, especially ones that should never happen (eg Vaike and Tharja). these supports existed only so that characters could be straight married and have kids.

plus another thing is that by making all of the different gender supports about marriage, it kind of... cheapened them? like not all of the supports in the past had to be about romance; there were many other kinds of supports, like Ephraim and Myrrh in fe8, who had a strictly sibling-like relationship. but in fe13 you have a character like Nowi being romantically shipped with someone like Lon’qu and it’s just... wtf?

i just feel like in general the supports in fe13 were just... bad. this isn’t to say that the supports in fe games have always been amazing, but at least they were selected deliberately and characters had a reason to talk to each other. in fe13, trying to find good supports was like trying to find your lost contact lens. you had to weed through so many shit supports just to find one that made you happy. and the wasted potential on so many of them, holy shit. (like, i know i’m not the only one peeved that Lon’qu and Libra didn’t have a support together.)

in fe13 the prioritization of marriage and all of that really ruined a lot of things. but i figured it would be a one-time thing, since an fe game did children before (fe4), so i just assumed that for fe14 they wouldn’t have children again and the supports would be normal like before.

and then in fe14 they did it again??? and it’s just. Why? there’s literally no justification for why children should be back. there’s no time travel element, and even further than that, it’s straight up fucking abusive. in fe13, the parents died - it wasn’t their choice to not be able to raise their children into adulthood. but in fe14?? they... just throw their children into a BABY PORTAL?? and then take them out when they’re at a ready age to fight??? that is literally child neglect among other things, and i have an extremely hard time believing that said children would be socialized properly or even know how to converse the way they are shown to. yes, i know there’s some plot excuses for why they raise their children in the deeprealms, but everyone knows it’s just poorly-constructed excuses to bring back a completely unnecessary gameplay mechanic.

okay, so ignoring the whole children thing, the whole trainwreck regarding the same gender S-supports. on one hand, yes, i’m glad they added some canon lgbt characters. on the other hand, it’s not really progress if the two canon lgbt characters are both highly sexual, kinky, and morally ambiguous? i’m not saying that Niles is a bad character, but there’s no denying that he has a sexual element to him, and that plays into harmful stereotypes that oversexualize lgbt people. as for Rhajat, i’m... i’m not going to go there, all i’m gonna say is that i’m furious she’s the lesbian option when a character like Soleil exists.

(also, a bit off-tangent, but on the note of how the lgbt characters are counterproductive, the fact that they made Niles’s daughter a fujoshi is super, SUPER fucking gross.)

and honestly, fe14 is so filled with garbage plot excuses. the whole thing with Owain, Inigo, and Severa made me so, SO angry. i would rather have them just be expies like Rhajat and Asugi than the actual characters from fe13 brought over across the dimensions because blah blah blah LIKE NO??? that is so SOOO silly and we all know it is. (and this is super petty, but i find it infuriating that they decided to pay homage to fe13, the game that had just come out. if they wanted even a chance of not pissing off older fe fans they should have made expies of characters from the older games that literally never get talked about... you know. hector. eliwood. ephraim. eirika. lyn.)

also the plot of fe14. a mess. it’s just a complete mess. there are moments of it that are okay, but the overarching story for the large part, particularly when you include Revelation, is just... disgusting. fe13′s story wasn’t too amazing, but it wasn’t outright bad, and the Future Past dlc was so incredibly written that i could just forget about how much i disliked the game sometimes. no such luck with fe14′s dlc, which is just... it is garbage. it’s bad.

okay, and the incest shit in fe14 is just ridiculous. i don’t really want to get into it too much but it grosses me the fuck out, it’s disgusting, and psychologically it makes no sense (especially on the nohr side). the fact that everyone is kind of related to everyone is really... it’s skeevy and it frustrates me because, again, one of the most common defenses against legalizing lgbt marriage is ~if we allow the gays to marry what’s next are we gonna let cousins marry~ and fe14 pretty much. stuck them both in the same game and was like “this is fine”.

okay, so all of that is the writing stuff really. as for the gameplay stuff: i’m not one of the super pretentious people that thinks everyone should play on classic mode, but i will admit that i think phoenix mode is a bit much. it makes things *too* easy. again, i don’t have a problem with people who play on normal and casual, but i think phoenix mode makes the game straight up... not a strategy game. i don’t even know what it is anymore at this point. is it trying to be a dating sim? i don’t know. is it still sort of a tactical rpg? i don’t know.

speaking of dating sims. umm. the whole skinship stuff really creeps me out. this is just a personal thing, but things like that make me extremely uncomfortable, and i was very unhappy to see it being included in fe14. and this stems directly off my point that fe13 kind of caused a lot of the problems that were exacerbated in fe14. like, fire emblem has been kinda anime for a long time. but it was never really part of the “waifu” crowd until fe13 came and introduced the marriage system. the updated art style contributed as well, but not to the same degree as the prioritization on romance did. now fe14 is just all about the “waifu”isms, and i find that really detestable personally.

there are also some gameplay changes fe14 made that... angered me. i still have mixed feelings about getting rid of weapon usage, but the main thing that bothers me is the updated integrated weapon triangle. it makes... no sense. i have no idea why bows and magic and shuriken or whatever are being included in with swords, lances, and axes. that straight up makes no sense and overcomplicates a system that was already perfectly fine. i understand it was in an attempt to nerf magic, which has a long history of being overpowered in fe, but it ended up making the game needlessly complicated and nonsensical (more than it already is, ha ha).

okay, very very last thing is about money, which in the end is what matters most. the two versions thing. really? really? it’s not like cartridge space is a problem as it would have been historically. there is no, NO reason at all to do this to players. this isn’t pokemon. pokemon does it to encourage players and their friends to buy different games and trade with each other; the content of the games is still largely the same. in the case of fe14, you literally only get half the story if you spend fucking $40 on one game, which is goddamn wild (and revelation is an additional $20!!). simply put, this was a cashgrab, and an absolutely disgusting, unprecedented one at that when you consider other fe games have had split storylines in the past and they were still packaged in the same fucking cartridge.

for a while just seeing shit about fe14 would make me feel extremely upset and sad. because i was so, SO hyped when the trailer first came out. i couldn’t stop watching it, i was so pulled in by it. but after more info came out, the game just made me... sad. and soon enough i really wanted nothing to do with it. now, i’m not as upset anymore, i’m just angry. angry because a franchise i genuinely liked is honest to god dead, and angry because they had so many chances and so much potential to do something good but instead they made this... thing.