Board 8 > Fire Emblem Series Census - Results

(+) Yeah! (+)

About a month ago I ran a FE Series Census on both the Fire Emblem Heroes Subreddit and Fire Emblem (Main) Subreddit. I forgot to post the results here, so for anyone who's interested, the questions I asked were:

-Which mainline Fire Emblem games have you played?
tl;dr Results: 3DS games>GBA games>everything else in playrate.

-Which mainline Fire Emblem games is your favorite?
tl;dr Results: Awakening, the GBA games, Echoes, and Ike's games all have their fans.

-What is your favorite character in all of Fire Emblem?
tl;dr Results: We like Ike.

-What is the first mainline Fire Emblem game you played?
tl;dr Results: Awakening or Blazing Blade, by a clear margin.

-On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate ____?
tl;dr Results: Ike's games are by far the highest-rated. Fates was not particularly well-received

-Which mainline Fire Emblem protagonist is your favorite?
tl;dr Results: We still like Ike.

-Which mainline Fire Emblem game has your favorite cast of characters?
tl;dr Results: Ike's games overall won. Sacred Stones, Awakening, Echoes, and Blazing Blade are not far behind.

-Which mainline Fire Emblem game has your favorite story?
tl;dr Results: Genealogy of the Holy War won by a landslide among those who have played it.

-Which mainline Fire Emblem game has your favorite music?
tl;dr Results: Fire Emblem Echoes dominated. By a lot.

-Which mainline Fire Emblem game has your favorite gameplay?
tl;dr Results: Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest was the clear victor, with Radiant Dawn and Awakening leading the rest of the pack.

-Which mainline Fire Emblem game has your favorite graphics/art style?
tl;dr Results: Fire Emblem Echoes dominated. By a lot.

-Out of the mainline Fire Emblem games you have NOT played, which are you most interested in playing?
tl;dr Results: People want to try out Genealogy, Thracia 776, and Ike's games.

Detailed Results are here:
Fire Emblem Heroes Subreddit Results
https://imgur.com/a/oDOUo

Fire Emblem (Main) Subreddit Results
https://imgur.com/a/uLjGc

Might run a B8 FE Census but the amount of responses would be significantly smaller so it's probably not worth it.
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Id love if the older games all got a 3DS style remake/polish to them. I tried playing some of Sacred Stones and just couldnt stay into it like I did Awakening. I think if it got mega updated with some voice acting and improved visuals/gameplay I wouldve been all over it

I think the GBA sprites/artwork hold up surprisingly well, but the audio quality is in desperate need of a boost. The GBA soundchip doesn't cut it anymore.
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Just re-release everything with Casual Mode and I'll play them all.
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Older FE games on Easy mode is pretty close to Casual. Anyone who knows how the games work should not be losing units on Easy mode.
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One thing that needs a major revamp is Support bond building or whatever. Sacred Stones felt so so so slow compared to Awakening in that regard

The ideal support system is a combination of Path of Radiance and Awakening. Awakening has supports for basically all the characters with all the other characters, but they never end up reacting to current plot events like they can in PoR with their 'custom' Talk events that can happen via plot progression.
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I'm completely out of the loop at this point (still haven't gotten around to playing Awakening) but Sacred Stones > Blazing Sword surprises me; that was most definitely not the consensus in the 00s, as reflected in those games' rating and review averages on this site. I guess SS is a generally kinder game though, since you can do optional battles and shop from the map. It also doesn't force you into a long tutorial your first time through, which, yeah, is probably pretty annoying if you go into these games fresh nowadays.
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Blazing Blade is probably still the more-loved game among the general populace simply because it came first, but yeah, the SS love among the (relatively speaking) bigger fans was surprising to me.
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Sacred Stones has a lot more in common with Awakening than Blazing Blade so people who started with Awakening probably gravitate towards that more than most of the older Fire Emblems. Alternatively people who didn't lose interest with the series after Awakening "tainted" the formula (ie people who would frequent reddits for the series in this day and age)
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Blazing Blade was preferred at first because it's the first one. Now that the population of people who've played the games generally didn't start with either, the gap mostly evaporates. Personally I prefer Blazing for gameplay (despite some warts like its shop system) and Sacred Stones for writing, with gameplay being more important, so slight edge to Blazing overall.

The poll results seem more down on Fates than most other places I've been at. Or hell, even here. Fates doesn't even get a mention on your favourite cast note, but over in the Save My FE Character thread there are zero Echoes characters left and like 7-8 from Fates last I checked. Dunno if some of that's just Reddit demographics or what.
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In general, the more FE games someone plays, the less they appreciate Fates. That sounds elitist, but it's true (I have the data!). Reddits are biased towards people who are predisposed towards playing Fire Emblem games, which is why Binding Blade - a Japan-only release - has a way higher playrate than it normally would. I don't think B8 is a particularly large bastion of FE fans so if held here I imagine the results would be more 'casual'.
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Is there a reason why FE1 got left out of the playrate poll? I hated that game and am curious to know how many others suffered through it out of sad completionism despite Mystery of the Emblem having existed well before anyone in the west had played either.

As flawed as Shadow Dragon is, Mystery of the Emblem having a higher rating strikes me as misguided, especially with New Mystery existing; but, that result could be blamed on SD having quadruple the playrate.

Binding Blade having a higher playrate than Radiant Dawn is definitely not what I would have guessed - and in the latter survey Radiant Dawn outright won favorite game despite that! I guess once you get deep enough into fandom, the percentage of people willing to emulate if they have no other options to play the game in English is pretty high.

Interesting that Hector > Lyn remains true for the protagonist poll. I had thought that one was obvious but over the years people doing stuff like getting Lyn into the 2013 Character Battle or hyping up the possibility of playable Lyn in Smash had made me doubt myself a little and figure maybe my expectations were out of whack due to the FE7 board being so weird about Lyn. Aaaand now I look at the first survey again and see Lyn beat Hector on the"favorite in all of Fire Emblem" question. Huh.

Yay for 3-13 Archer getting a vote. I assume people have forgotten Gheb, Batta, and Glass at this point? Guess those were mostly gamefaqs-centric jokes, though.
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For the FEH Subreddit poll I merged Fire Emblem 1 and New Mystery. For the main subreddit poll...yeah no idea where it went. Probably forgot to list it, now that it matters too much.

Lyn is definitely more popular than Hector among the casual audience. She won the female side of Choose Your Legend 1 after all. I think Hector is slightly more popular among the less casual fans though.

It bugs me that Binding Blade has a higher playrate than Radiant Dawn when RD is easily emulated too, but what can you do.
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I'd be utterly stunned if Lyn weren't also more popular than Hector among women, which makes Hector seem relatively more popular on places like GameFAQs. Not sure on the Subreddit demographics there. I forget, did your poll ask any questions on age/gender? Would have been interesting.

The data about Fates being more popular among people who've played fewer games is interesting because it doesn't really fit with my experience on Serenes and RPGDL at all, where the players who've played lots of games hold it up for its gameplay/map design being so standout good while the more casual fans are less likely to care about this and thus judge it purely on other metrics where it's a mixed bag. I don't know Reddit nearly as well but it always comes across as much more toxic, the type of place where people hate on games for (inane, IMO) reasons like the localization changing things. Not that there aren't valid reasons to criticise Fates but yeah.

Echoes being so popular feels like the other big anomaly. It's not a casual game at all and it's already almost dead on Serenes. Love that artwork, though - I'm down with it winning that, for all that I suspect I voted for RD.

GBA emulation is quite a bit easier than Wii emulation... that might not be so true now but it was back when both those games were relatively newer, so BB having a higher playrate isn't totally crazy (although disappointing to me as someone who puts RD as his personal favourite). Also, RD has the issue of being "behind" Path of Radiance - people are usually encouraged to play PoR first, which consigns RD playerbase to being mostly a subset of PoR's, which is inherently limiting.
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As strange as it may seem, don't people usually recommend playing FE7 before FE6?
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Reddit also holds up Conquest as having the best gameplay in the series. The problem is that characters/story in all three Fates games are extremely poorly regarded. Not sure what Serenes is like, but it sounds like that prioritize gameplay over everything else, while Reddit needs the full package in a game.
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Really happy to see Sacred Stones do well in the character department. I'd say 7 > Awakening > Stones
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Oh yeah, and I didn't ask if responders were Male/Female or their age. Something to consider for a poll rerun months down the line.
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AFAIK most subreddits are male-dominated, like in the 80-20 range.

At least Conquest gets recognized for gameplay, though I did like the whole package there.
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I missed the first poll, so I'd definitely be interested in taking the second one
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Hector and Lyn had to have sff'd each other in the "best main"

Thats the only way I can accept Ike winning.

Blazing Blade def has the best supports in the series, which I would consider good enough to give the crown of "best writing" to it.
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honestly im "playing" conquest right now (read: i've made no progress besides beating the dumb saizo ninja map)

and my thought is that it really honestly isn't that good. just simply because the difficulty in it is just annoying with dumb gimmicks/dragon veins, etc.
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I drool over a BB and BS (Blazing Sword) combo remake every time I think about it. It really needs to happen. I mean, people only know about Roy from Smash and can't even play the game he's from in the West -_-
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SantamBraveWii posted...

Hector and Lyn had to have sff'd each other in the "best main"

Thats the only way I can accept Ike winning.

Actually, Ike has almost as many votes as Eliwood, Hector, and Lyn combined. This is not counting Micaiah - combined with her votes, he wins. And in the 'favorite character' poll, Ike does in fact have more votes than all 3 combined even without adding Micaiah.
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SantamBraveWii posted...

Hector and Lyn had to have sff'd each other in the "best main"

Thats the only way I can accept Ike winning.

Blazing Blade def has the best supports in the series, which I would consider good enough to give the crown of "best writing" to it.

I dunno. I mean, this is the game that gave us Raven/Priscilla!
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Hector would have won if he had a sword and was in Smash Bros
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