The rise of Fire Emblem

 Finally in the big leagues.

I can't say there was ever a point in time when Fire Emblem was a tiny unknown little tadpole wading around in a pool of big boys, even though naturally there must have been a time when that was the actual case; anyone who has floated around the extended Nintendo community has heard of Fire Emblem. It's popularity has certainly shot up to apocalyptic levels in recent years to the point where just about everyone and their deceased great ancestors has heard of the game's now, and after years in that hovering middle-state of popularity, the series was catapulted into the main stream such to the extent where the latest game announcement was the show closer of a recent Nintendo livestream. And it wasn't even a dud of an announcement either! The Internet has welcomed Fire Emblem so heartily that the public were happy a new game graced their screens.

All of that success seems almost insane to behold when you consider the fact that Fire Emblem was never originally designed to be a commercial game, but rather a passion project between college friends. The game ended up hitting some commercial success anyway, and that soon led to sequels being developed and prospects becoming heightened. The games themselves were Famicon exclusives back in their original form, which meant they were developed and localised exclusively for a Japanese audience who would embrace them. It was until two big protagonists from previous Fire Emblem games, Marth and Roy, were introduced to the widely popular rooster of Super Smash Bros. Melee that the team began to see the potential of their brand on a western audience. Couple that with the success of Advance Wars in the West and there was a clear market for turn-based strategy games just waiting to be fed.

Localisation was sporadic throughout the life of Fire Emblem, which some took to blame for the slow adoption rate of the franchise in the West. Whereas most other Nintendo properties had become household names, Fire Emblem remained a specialised title only for the Hardcore audience to really engross themselves within. Not to mention the fact that during the big rose of Nintendo home entertainment, the release of the Wii, only Radiant Dawn would see a release on Wii, alongside some ports of old titles to the virtual console. That's perhaps the most successful and widespread Nintendo console of recent years, practically untouched by a franchise just bleeding titles every other year. No wonder it was beginning to feel like fans of the franchise were going increasingly unheard and discarded; especially when Fire Emblem had a formula Western fans would absolutely love. 

Hardline turn-based strategy mixed with inter-mission melodrama that allowed players to become involved with character's personalities and backstories before having the balance of their lives put in the player's hands. Complex strengths and weakenesses equations that would even put a strain to the most practised XCom veteran. Epic sweeping narratives that would be told over the course of years and, sometimes, generations. Fire Emblem had mastered it's niche over the course of years and if only people had their chance to play the damn thing they'd be able to enjoy all of that innovation. But then the franchise found itself relegated to the absolute graveyard of Nintendo franchises; Fire Emblem become a DS series.

Now to be clear, the Nintendo DS was a hugely popular handheld device held in the backpockets of teens across all the Western world wherever they went like freakin' pocket pacemakers. You couldn't separate these kids from their DS'. But it was also a handheld absolutely inundated with a deluge of every single game that anybody with an above average concept of coding could create. Standing out in a monsoon of small titles was impossible unless you were already a household name like Mario, so even though Fire Emblem got above average representation in the West on the DS, that did little to really explode their prospect in the Western world. Their popularity grew, no doubt; but not as tremendously as it should have down thanks to a Market absolutely drowned dead in saturation. (They were fighting for store-page space against literal Mobile ports; it was a sorry state of affairs.)

All that would change with the release of 'Fire Emblem: Three Houses', which Nintendo would drop as a flagship title for their new smash hit console, the Switch. Now the Switch was not starved for games by any stretch of the imagination, but the truly AAA first party exclusive games were all intelligently spaced out so that Nintendo fans would jump from big release to big release playing across Nintendo's vast library. From Super Mario Odyssey to Animal Crossing to, inevitably, Fire Emblem. Typical Nintendo stans were fed into the Fire Emblem engine like it was part of the typical Nintendo high succeeding pantheon. And to their surprise; the game really landed with this new audience. I mean really landed with them!

Since then the Fire Emblem train hasn't slowed down one bit with the musou style warriors alternate history retelling of Three Houses called 'Three Hopes', and now we're wrapping back around to a full blown new entry that is bringing all these new fans back around to the original canon. Personally I'm someone who grew up hearing about Fire Emblem second-hand and never biting the bullet until Three Houses, (Which I thoroughly enjoyed) so I'm a little bit dubious of leaving behind the universe I came to love to go back to the well trodden Universe that old Fire Emblem canon resides in, but I can see the appeal of throwing us newbies into one of the several main canons for ourselves. I just don't know how I'm going to cope in a Fire Emblem game without spending all my time between fights trying to coax Bernie out of her room with sweet treats.

The Fire Emblem of today is not a match for the biggest Nintendo franchises out there, your Mario's and your Pokemon's; and it likely never will be. The inherently hardline stance of the turn-based strategy gameplay wherein character permadeath is the accepted way to play makes it prohibitively tough for casual gamers which make up the majority of Nintendo's playerbase. But even a lesser star in the main line-up of Nintendo's franchises is a soaring success with a wide reach, and I'm so glad that more Japanese titles are being opened up to the sorts of opportunities that such success can afford them. A full blown large budget Fire Emblem game might very well push this franchise forward as much as the Kiwami games did for the 'Like a Dragon' franchise, at least in terms of raw presentation. This could just be the beginning of the ongoing rise of Fire Emblem.