One random note about Byleth's Supports: Three Hero's retroactively makes Byleth & Caspar's support line from Three Houses much cooler. In Three Houses, Byleth stops Caspar from jumping into a conflict on his own, and in Three Hopes, he has a scar because Byleth wasn't around to stop him from doing such.

Honestly, I just want more boss quotes like in Radiant Dawn Conditional cutscenes like in DLATMOL and Order of the Crimson Arm would be cool too. The way it works is that the mainstory checks for if a unit is alive and if they are, they chime in to whatever the main characters/npcs were talking about or interacting with and even have the other characters react to them. For example, in order of the crimson arm during the mid-lategame after you finish a chapter, the main cast (lord, avatar, jagen, monarch, etc) begin discussing the new big bad and one of you fighter bros chimes in to tell the party about him since he is from the same homeland as the fighter bro. It took me for surprise enough to begin using him because it made that much of an impression. Another example, a boss you recruit in DLATMOL Ch6x can interact with a spell in Ch9x because its the same one she used on you and if you go to her homeland's route, she has further cutscenes with the lord, tactician and bishop. You'd think she's a major character, but you can kill her and the story moves on with changed dialogue/circumstances which is interesting for some random romhack. Would really like this to be added in an FE6 remake. Sort of like a "tour guide" where whenever you're in a country relevant to x amount of units they'd interact with Roy, Merlinus, Guinevere and Elphin. For example, if you go Sacae route then you'd have occasion where characters like Bartre and Fir, Sue and Shin or Rutger chime in and talk about the lore there. It'd be an organic way to have Rutger talk about Bulgar when it's relevant in Chapter 19, or Sue and/or Shin chime in to talk about the laws of Sacae and the Kutolah refugees in Chapter 18, or having Bartre/Fir talk about entering Sacae and wondering if Karel is there in Chapter 17.

Dude you’re sleeping on FE4. Telling us directly in a menu who can talk to who is the direct predecessor to having base convos. Automatic support growths can fix tedium, and ensure that characters make relationships because who knows what happens outside of combat, making for more believable characters. story events happening during the actual level opens up relevant cast for genuine reactions in the moment. and it has the room to be modernized with adding a more in depth base convo later on? Huge storytelling potential, especially if used with other great support system mechanics.

The only example of different dialogue in a support is Caspar-Rafael C pre or post time skip. Pre time skip Caspar talks about how he can't get any bigger no matter what he does, post time skip he says something like "I've gotten a bit bigger in the last five years, but I'm still nowhere close to you." It's just one sentence but I was kind of surprised when I heard it post time skip because I had never realized they could change before. There are probably a few others but I would assume it's generally very minor details

One very small and remote detail in Three Houses that I appreciate a lot, that they do NOWHERE ELSE in the series as far as I'm aware, is that the Ashe/Marianne A support will reference the Sylvain/Marianne B support if the latter has happened before the former. There will be a short bit of additional dialogue where Marianne will quote Sylvain about how he believes a person's value is in their smile, to which Ashe then briefly responds. In other words, continuity between supports. I do not recall a single other example where this occurs, and this dialogue does not play if the Support is rewatched from the menu, so quite few people know about it. It'd probably be pretty difficult to implement more structurally in a game, but I think it would add a lot to have more instances like that. (Obviously that doesn't really touch on the core of the issues with supports, it's just something I wanted to voice appreciation for.)

One cool thing 3H did with at least 1 support if you complete Annette and Ingrids support which is about Annette getting Ingrid to try make up. In Dorothea and Ingrids support which follows a similar plot Ingrid will tell Dorothea that Annette had convinced her to start trying make up already

Gaiden technically has supports. A single support. If Celica is standing next to Alm, he will always crit. And you could argue the triangle attack is a support mechanic and it has been there since the first game.

Is it me or is it weird that FE11 gets tiered above FE4/FE5 despite neither having normal support conversations? At least FE4 had the base conversations and the on-field conversations that build the relationship meter.

One of the worst problems with awakening and fates in particular is how a handful of characters just get... nothing? Like the "late" recruited prepromotes just get one support chain with the avatar (so not usually that interesting) and basically nothing else. It's especially weird with reina in birthright since she's recruited fairly early and it's especially frustrating for Flavia and Basilio just for the fact that they're story important and are two of the few black characters in fire emblem, a series which consistently struggles in its representation of black and brown characters.

I don’t understand why fe4’s system gets basically no praise at the start? It’s not conventional sure but sweeping the entirety of the optional convos under the rug like they’re not a thing is a bit much I think. These convos do a lot of heavy lifting for the characters in the game, their relationships with each other and the game’s overarching narrative, that’s basically what supports should do I think and that’s what fe4 does perhaps better than any other game in the series, not to mention they can give various benefits such as giving your units various weapons or staves or even stat bonuses. This is somewhat similar to what you praised TRS for in the first video so it sits a bit weird with me that you would not mention them

I think path of radiance flaws are certain supports have plot relevancy but you might miss these because you aren't using a character or if they die and you miss the base conversations which helps with the plot

I think one of the largest issues with Fire Emblem supports has always been the process of obtaining them is simply too obtuse or opaque. In older games, there is no feedback given to the player support is actually being gained until the rank unlocks. Even in modern titles, all you see is some hearts when you perform an action that does give you support. Very little indication of how far along you are to the next rank is really told to the player. And often, the only way to really tell you're getting a support boost is by comparing your combat forecast on different tiles. (3 Houses did this fairly well with directly displaying Linked Attacks as your support boosts, though could be told to you a bit clearer) Regardless of how the points are given out, how/where you access the conversations, or what those conversations contain, in my opinion the support system should give the player more feedback than some hearts and a rank up occasionally. Even if it's just a progress bar, it at least roughly tells you how far along you are and how much you still need to rank up. And then actually using those bonuses in battle should be clearly indicated, too, not just a change in the numbers.

Say what you will about fe7's absurdly high turn requirements to earn supports, but I actually think that game does a pretty good job of developing characters in other ways. These are just monologues, but I have always appreciated the pre-battle lines that characters do in fe7 when you bring them on a certain chapter. I think it's a really good way to flesh out a character's personality in the context of the situation at hand. Doing these but with combinations of characters would be the logical next step. Kind of in the same way that they locked Pent and Louise's "support" conversations to specific chapters so they talk about whats actually happening in the story. They also have non-support conversations on certain chapters, like how you can have all of the Lyn's mode characters and Eliwood talk to Lyn in Noble Lady of Caelin, or how you can have Matthew visit the house where Hector is in chapter 7 to get a special conversation. Getting these bonus conversations always felt like an achievement.

Interesting you have Engage so low, I thought it did supports really well. I really did think that most of the supports I saw were fairly distinct from one another and explored different facets of the characters, though I also might've just gotten lucky with my own sample size. They also while not as good as the monastery conversations from 3H, had the comments that every unit made after each battle, which was nice and plays towards that idea of talking about the current conflict, while letting supports focus more on the characters in downtime. My only main issue with the Engage Supports are the lack of paired endings, otherwise I think they were done really quite well

I feel like Engage supports get a bad rap since most people will unlock the Firene crew's support first. Honestly I feel like past Brodia character's support is pretty good.

One question I do have: To what extent are you taking the writing quality itself into account? Are you just evaluating the Support System itself, or the way individual supports are written? I would like that clarified. In regards to your point about transparency: Three Hopes actually did you show you how close you were to gaining a new Support. In the support menu, you can see the letter indicating the support rank fill up. Personally, I would put the Three Houses system into the top tier, at least if take writing quality into account. I simply don't have an issue with a quantity of supports if those supports are still great, which Three Houses supports are. I don't belive a Bernadetta support here and there ruins what is otherwise a fantastic vehicle for fleshing out the world and chracters to a much farther degree than any other FE has. And clearly, quantity isn't the be-all-end-all for quality. Three Houses has far more supports than Engage, especially when taking unique Base Convos into account, and yet was still written noticably better. I suppose I also just don't seem to have this fatigue issue you seem to have. As long as the support is good, I don't seem to be bothered by having to watch several back to back. People also criticized Triangle Strategy for having too much story early on and too little gameplay, but once again I can't really relate to that feeling considering I was having just as much fun following the story as I did playing the maps.

That Elemental Stars music at the start earns you a like Edit: Golden Sun music is so great, I'm glad you use it in these videos

From what i hear, what would fix most of the problems with the system is to bring back base conversations between chapters that are affected by support level, some characters being dead etc. Supports could still be separate from the story and just build characters, while base convos would fill the void of "speaking about current events". Not that they couldn't use improvement, maybe have supports being unlocked through base conversations if they're not unlocked before certain portion of the game. Especially ones that start with "Oh, you're in this army", which are a bit silly if you unlock them one chapter before the endgame.

Like most studios, having the teams talk with each other during developments helps a lot with crafting systems that work well with one another. Writing supports while bouncing ideas off of the people writing the story or designing gameplay allows people to not only suggest new ideas but improve and implement other ideas they've heard different teams talking about. Having stuff like tags for convos/scenes or systems to more easily locate and change parts of the game on the fly would make things so much smoother (IE someone has a new idea for death convos so find all convos/scenes flagged with "character name" and change accordingly) Monolith did an awesome job designing the replica soldiers in F.E.A.R to seem lifelike when they reacted to various objects in the environment because the level designers probably talked a lot with the people designing the AI. Watch some old Bungie vods and you'll see programmers talking about how they were amazed with what other teams did with their projects which made them want to further improve it.

The talk about Avatars does make me think more about how much would really change in those games if the avatar characters just... weren't avatars. Of course, what exactly makes an avatar to begin with is quite nebulous, but I would at least think having more customizable attributes than other units (like their name and appearance, not things like being able to change classes in games that already allow for that), and being able to support everyone; I'd say things like having special classes and PRF weapons are fair to keep since that's not usually an avatar-only thing, and in cases they're also the main lord, it's expected they would have those. How many would still work as characters? In fact, how many might be better characters if that aspect of them was removed? At the very least though, I think most of us can agree it'd improve the support quality if they didn't need to make supports for literally every character with them. And the characters that normally only have supports with them could benefit a lot as well if they weren't stuck with only that.

Regarding the 3 Houses supports that change, what I've seen is that some supports change based on what supports the characters involved have at that point in the game, although for the most part they don't really change. One example is how Marianne in one of her supports is told something among the lines of her having a beautiful smile or that she should be more positive, but if you get Sylvain's support prior to that one, she will retrace her thoughts how Sylvain told her she should smile more. It is like a nice wink to other supports, but it is not all that enriching for the experience imo.

You already got my attention with Zeke and Tatiana in the thumbnail :P

okay, so I’m actually okay with most of the placements here. While I think Engage has better supports than people give them credit for (Alcryst/Celine, Ivy/Hortensia, Pandreo/Pannette) I can’t deny that the early game Cs are pretty terrible. The avatar thing is also take it or leave it for me, I can’t deny that for every honestly good one (Shez/Jeralt, Alear/Merrin) there’s also a lot of filler that’s just meh. GBA games are also just terrible for end turn spamming and I don’t think anyone’s ever actually gotten them all normally. That said, I feel like this list focused a bit too much on the gameplay side of things rather than the actual writing content. It’s why I heavily disagree with SoV at the top, many of the supports are just complete nothing burgers that I can’t recall at all. And the low quantity really hurts, recruiting Deen means Genny gets zero supports period. It feels like the worst of both worlds, only a handful of conversations and most of them kinda suck. GBA may be terrible on the gameplay front but if we’re talking a writing front, I feel like they should be higher. Radiant Dawn is also a bit odd being so high, I agree with the take on it, that base conversations can help, but they do nothing for newcomers, but I’m unsure what it’s doing so high up. I’d move it down a tier.

SoV in good? It has support that make no sense at all. They did it on battlefield while talked about reading book and courting. I like the dialogue but support conversation in battlefield was big no. Fe12 was so underatted. They have support in the menu and can get statbooster after finishing the support chain.

missed this video when it came out, so I'm a bit late to comment my opinion: Personally I think FE3H's system is really good conceptually with the "Support is unlocked but you can't see it yet bc of progression" as well as some slight influences by having other supports. (Edit: With the exception of being unable to pick endings when you get multiple supports, even with the dlc fix, idk what they were thinking with that [just give us an empty A++ support for locking in endings]) Probably should still be paired with the current story progress comments from the cast, but less in a "everyone says something once a month slog" but rather a "here's a selection of characters that have something to say about this", which I think is how PoR/RD did it? Idk, it's been a while- Reducing the number of supports is a good idea, though I feel like if they handle it wrong we might end up with more one note characters again, so if they reduce them I hope they do so carefully. Having different numbers of supports for different characters (based on how many different aspects of a character there are that need showcasing) is probably better than trying for a "equal number" approach, though there still needs to be a minimum to avoid the FE3H Anna or "Robin/Corrin-sexuals" situation. What I think is important though, is if they ever make another game with some sort of child mechanic (be it like FE4 or like Awakening/Fates) I think they should have empty support chains, so you can pair "anyone" with "anyone" (unless it goes against the design of the game's story) for the sake of gameplay & replay-ability.

Something I'd like to point out is that Pent and Louise start at A rank, so it's a support that has no conversations. To make up for it, they have three chapter-specific talk events as you deploy them together. Each conversation starts framed by the current story events but they do generally feel like normal supports. It's just a really cute surprise they subverted their whole system in order to accommodate a happily married couple. And yeah it's a band-aid solution that's less robust than the base conversations model, but it's worth pointing out since it shows a side-by-side comparison of what GBA supports look like with and without precise story context

I don't consider base conversations to fall under the same category as supports so giving RD a high rank based on this is odd to me. Base conversations are closer to being extensions of the story itself than supports. RD does compensate lack of supports with a decent chunk of base conversations, plethora of boss conversations and a big story but looking at supports in isolation, it'd do pretty poorly.

I feel like the simplest way to improve the support system is exactly to do everything that was done right and some of the stuff that was done wrong so far. Hear me out. -Supports build in the battlefield asynchronously like the GBA games. -To unlock the support level, have brief conversations in the battlefield like in Radiant Dawn. -Can get unlimited supports with one unit per run, but only a limited number of the bonuses take effect at once in the battlefield. These keep the mechanical relevance of supports free from story progression. -Getting a support level unlocks optional, story sensitive base convos that become available as the story advances. There's isn't exactly a need of full three conversations for every pair. -Those base convos mostly be focused in lore and the main story if the protagonist is one of the pair. -May get extra chapters/side story chapters depending on who you support. -A high support level may change the way a character refers towards another character during the main story events. -If an unit dies after getting a high support, unlock other base conversations that deals with that loss. -If an unit with the highest support level gets deployed with another one for enough chapters, they unlock their S support base conversation and get a paired ending. This way the actual support levels are more like a battlefield camaraderie and teamwork sort of thing while the base conversations they unlock are character writing and can happen whenever is most appropriate in the story and you don't need to write a billion support conversations. You might be able to see the past base conversations framed like a flashback if you missed them in the chapter they become available. This way, every base conversation can be implied to have always happened as long as you built the supports, so the differences in the main story don't depend on you viewing the convos.

One thing i could see being a good change for me, is for characters to be bound to only one other character from the start... I would be fine to skip the dating sim for a few installments, and just have the MC have one character they end up with for an S-support during the game, and 1 or 2 A-supports, and every other character also only get one relationship support, and 1 or 2 casual supports. But the big change should be that ALL supports are tied into game progression, and who is alive at what point of the story. So if everyone is alive, you get a support or two after every battle for select characters. But if someone dies, any support they are in is just cut from that playthrough, and you might only get one, or even no supports after some maps. I also feel like it could make it more intense to have supports, if losing a set support partner not only lost you their bonusses, but even permanently lowered your stats as well as a penalty for a unit dying! Give the characters some firm, permanent mental detractors in combat for losing a friend, and slightly more for losing the love of their life... It would make ironman runs very punishing, but just the idea that an OP character could become permanently worse than normal if they lose a support partner...

My take on the topic (i have more familiarity with GBA games): * Mechanical point of view: - Supports gained per map not per proximity and turns. In case there is a support limit (example: max 5 supports like GBA), keep counting points per maps with all units in case your previous supports dies and then you can instantly stablish new supports, maybe multiple levels of the same support. - If there is a cap of 5 supports per character, then there is no cap on attributes obtained by these supports or it is a high cap. If the game allows for all available supports there should be a low cap so characters don't get too overpowered. * Mechanical and story point of view: - Some supports offers small bonuses to attributes and others offers personal skills. Some supports should even gift weapons, offer new classes or change classes, new weapons compatibility or whatever. Don't let mechanics limit what the story of the support should be. Lets say we have some jagen with even some leadership star. Perhaps he can pass that leadership star to a chrismas cavalier before being benched. - If there is a cap of 5 supports per character, other take could be (maybe in very specific support) that the unit seeks revenge when the other character dies and manage to keep the buffs (and still count as achieved relationship). Maybe Roy got A rank with Lilina and then she dies. It could be a bit awkward for Roy to just pick a new waifu and get a new ending. He then perhaps obtain a "and in the end he got his revenge after killing the dragons". - There should be default non personal supports with really low buffs. Like putting all cavalies nearby gives them some buff. * Story point of view: - Supports should evolve due to other character relationships, death and the chapter of the story. Too much work, they just take the easy way out. - Supports should be shorter.

What I would like but will never happen. Is that the text progresses at the speed the line is spoken, because if the delivery takes 10 seconds but read it in 3 I'm just waiting and tempted to skip the dialogue.

Part of the problem is that FE's tendency to have a lot of characters is more of a double edged sword. It means that there's always joke characters for people that want to take things less seriously alongside the more major characters, but it also means that some characters will inevitably be more important than others. It doesn't help that the series wide permadeath had to have some exceptions because having the main lord and advisor be the only people speaking would get kind of awkward.

3 houses not restricting every character who do have a support to always end in A or sometimes having more supports with an A+/B+ support does make it the best outside of FE9 for me The restrictions need to be worked on but in concept they are still very good Characters mentioning other convos they had is also such a great improvement. The only example I can think if right now is that in the Sylvain Marianne support he says that a smile can be quite powerful and in another convo Marianne mentions that Sylvain told her that. Also the fact you can grind them so much outside of battle is very convenient. I don't have to grind skirmishes because I'm so invested in this specific convo anymore

Path of Radiance has always been the best for me. Supports are easy to build, narrowed to a specific set of combinations, and provide meaningful bonuses.

3 houses has the worst supports for turning Fire Emblem into a shitty persona clone.

Fun thing about Three Hopes from a system perspective: it's actually both fully transparent and rather lenient about support points. It shows you how far you are from any given support level and it doesn't stop you from building points past the next level if you don't have the conversation for whatever reason. So if a certain support level is time-locked you can still keep generating points past it. Also, I have to somewhat disagree on the Fodlan games' base conversations. Yes, they're basically miniature base convos from PoR, but they suffer really badly from oversaturation, to the point where I frankly would prefer if we had less commentary around and didn't need to sift through it looking for gold. The only thing they have over the ensemble semicircles is that they're less formulaic and predictable. Engage shows the problem with reducing them though: anyone without a blue speech bubble in the Somniel instead has some kind of inane comment that detracts from immersion instead of supporting it.

Strange how you criticize engage supports for being samey when 3 houses also turns every character into a mental case with c being a dull intro, b being conflict and a being a good resolution.

Mechanically, yeah, the GBA are indefensible. Writing wise though... oh hoho! I agree that SoV having you have to make the units do things together makes a little more sense than just deploy together, but just deploy together removes all tedium. I think a nice way to balance it might be, being able to accelerate how fast a support builds by having them work together, like say if you couldn't deploy particular units until a certain point or because of having other units you wanted to use. That way you wouldn't get locked out of supports just for missing deployment criteria. Like say you didn't want to deploy Titania in the desert and on EAT ROCK, but you still wanted her A support with Ike I also definitely agree, Avatar supports are not good. They can be OK if the avatar is actually a character and not just an insert, but if that is the case, then the avatar's supports need to be restricted, too. Like any other character's. I imagine that Path of Radiance's system didn't carry forward because it didn't sell well due to being on Gamecube.

A potential solution that might be a little deranged comes to mind. What if getting C, B, and A supports only required support points instead of a conversation? You'd have base conversations that give support points instead, free to comment on the main story. Any two characters could CBA support because the writers don't need to make a conversation, while people who are close in-universe can be fed a bunch of easy support points with high-reward base conversations.

LMAO that ending tho... Anyway I just want to second what some people are saying about FE4, the original system is pretty cool and could be even better in a remake with some minor QoL updates and a bit more characterization for some of the units. Also the Substitute character hidden convos are really good in the original, maybe if they actually put subs in a remake they could make getting those convos less obscure.

Hi. This comment is hideosuly long, but I have spare time and opinions. Thanks for reading! Avatars are quite the conundrum. I have a few thoughts. First, where I stand: avatars are main characters whose gender you select at the start of the game - Kris, Robin, Corrin, Byleth, Shez, and Alear. That definition already raises a few questions, but I'll set that aside. I've never played New Mystery, so I have no opinion on Kris. I remember generally liking Robin for the role the played in Awakening's main story, but it's been so long since I've played Awakening that I can't draw any conclusions about how Robin affects supports. Corrin a very bad character in very many ways. Now it gets interesting. In my opinion, Engage's writing has a couple high points, but they were few and far between in an overall dissappointing story. Alear, however, was one of those high points. (In brief, a humble personality being thrust into a grand destiny and feeling unfit for their role. Eventually, thanks to constant support from their friends, they buy into the idea that they're a god-hero, which leads to unhealthy overconfidence and tragic mistakes. Alear's built-in dynamic with Veyle and the world of Engage is interesting in concept. The other characters and plot often fail to complement Alear's genuinely good characterization, causing it to sadly fall flat, but Alear is not the problem.) In particular, while Alear doesn't hold a candle to the Tellius lords, I firmly believe that they're a more interesting character than the lords of the GBA games I've played - Binding Blade and Sacred Stones. I'll give Erika a pass, but Ephraim is just...not good. He's a perfect paragon and unstoppable in battle - even against insurmountable odds, everything goes his way after his introduction. Rather than stay in his country in its time of crisis, he plunges into enemy territory in pursuit of glory. This would have been an interesting flaw to explore, but instead it's dismissed outright in two sentences. Sacred Stones bends over backwards to showcase how cool Ephraim is at every turn. He doesn't make mistakes, or any hard decisions. And since I've written so many words on Ephraim, all I say about Roy is that he's painfully bland. Maybe a different translation would have given him better dialogue, but in my experience I just wanted someone, anyone else to the talking besides him and Marcus. In many ways, I feel that Ephraim is the opposite of Micaiah - a more complicated character with virtuous traits (like loyalty) that are twisted into interesting flaws by her circumstances. Roy, similarly, is the opposite of Ike - a generally levelheaded character who earns your respect while also working through very real emotions, like self-doubt and anger. ~INTERMISSION~ The thing about the lords I've covered (save Tellius, perhaps) is that, whether they're avatars or not, it doesn't really matter to me. If Corrin hadn't been an avatar character - if they had one single design, and fewer support chains - I don't think things would have been particularly different. The player would still choose a route, and that choice would still be constantly reaffirmed throughout the game. Characters like Xander would still be inconsistent messes depending in the route, and I have little doubt that Corrin would be praised just as much for always dking the right thing, like retroactively revealing that they've killed nobody. Likewise, if Roy had been a fully customizable avatar character, I don't doubt that they would be equally bland. Indeed, if an avatar is meant to be a blank slate for you to self-insert as, Roy would be an excellent candidate relative to someone like Alear, who comes with their own personality, worldview, and makes key mistakes. Suppose the next Fire Emblem game has a main lord that is not an avatar. Do you think that they wouldn't be able to romance just about any other character? I doubt it - Chrom was given just about every possible romance option (the straight ones, anyways, but avatars are also locked in to mostly straight options depending on which gender you pick), and frankly his down-to-earth personality is pretty easy to roleplay as. At least for me, when I played Awakening, I remember thinking of myself as Chrom, not as Robin. So, while the argument that an avater characters consumes too many resources that could have gone to flesh out other characters is interesting, I think the truth is that the main character or characters is going to consume those resources whether or not they're an avatar. I mean, just look at Radiant Dawn. There's a solid cast of core characters, and boy do I love them, shoutout to Skrimir, but the majorty of the characters in that game are utterly shafted in terms of screentime. Not just the Dawn Brigade and co - most of the returning characters from Path of Radiance get very little characterization as well. If you play Radiant Dawn first, you really don't get much of an idea of what Zihark or Mist or Lethe or Tanith is like. No avatars in sight, and yet the game is so big and resources spread so thin that the core cast takes them all. I'd like to finalize my point about the "avatar" status not being a major factor in how a main character is written by covering the exception - Byleth. Between their muteness and their dialogue options, they're an avatar through and through. Their role is clearly to serve as the player's self-insert while the real main lord gets on with the plot - except that isn't the whole story. Byleth's professorship puts them in a very specific role in the setting, and their ties to the game's lore makes learning more about them interesting. So Byleth is not a self-insert: Byleth is a character that the player is expected to roleplay as. The dialogue choices lend well to this - your Byleth can be silly and insensitive, or they can be wise and caring. Or you can run around like an optimization machine trying to pick all the "correct" options to maximize support gain. All this greatly rewards players who get invested in the story of Three Houses, and - this may be a stretch, but it was my experience - encourages players to engage with the world creatively, from shipping characters to imagining how the politcal dominoes of Fodlan could fall under different "what-if" circumstances. Contrast that to Shez. The vast majority of folks who play as Shez have already played Three Houses, so there's very little mystery as to what Shez' "deal" is, or what the setting's factions are - all there is to do is see how things play out in this timeline. Additionally, Shez is a force of personality all their own. They're given dialogue options like Byleth, but those options fall under a narrower scope of what "Shez" is. On the other hand, Shez being their own character lets them interact with the rest of the cast in more interesting ways. They're an "avatar character" by the community definition, but the player does not decide what kind of character Shez is. In conclusion, the "avatar" status is less important than most folks believe it is. The player is almost always expected to roleplay as the main character in a Fire Emblem game, and the main character or characters will always get a disproportionate amount of the writer's attention - in modern titles, this means they will indeed be able to support with or romance just about anyone, whether they're an avatar or not. Every lord is different - some are more conducive to being self-inserts, others less so - and while avatars so far are more likely to be better self-inserts, it's not a hard and fast rule. Some avatars have their own character and personality. Some non-avatars do not. Lords can add to the story of their game, or drag it down, whether they are avatars or not. Byleth is the only avatar character that would change in major ways if they had not been made an avatar character, and while Byleth isn't for everyone, they're overall quite successful at what they set our to do. The blood pact is dumb but Micaiah is the best FE lord anyways GIVE ME MORE FE LORDS WHO MAKE BAD DECISIONS WITH CONSEQUENCES Thank you very much for your time! I've had a lot of this on my mind for a while, and I appreciate you reading it. Have a lovely day!

One aspect I don't see discussed here is the mechanical bonuses one gets from supports. In that regard I don't really like the newer FE games: You have plenty of supports and you just go grinding them all away and the bonuses you get from there are easily forgettable as you get them as long as Someone is nearby (a bit less, a bit more depending on the total amount of supports but still). Compare this to GBA games where you only get 5 support conversations but you Do feel that. You always want your axe-bros fighting together because they get so much boost from fighting close by. You actively know about all your supports because they are such a bonus to the gameplay. But the newer games just don't have that as the bonuses are way smaller but they come from many characters, not just one or two.

Personally I have no attachment to the support system, at least not in the way of support points. Like yeah it’s not inherently the reason FE character writing can be so detached and uninteresting, I just don’t think it actually has advantages, like at all, at least not in ways that can’t be circumvented in other ways. Given FE casts can contain a ton of characters, if they are were just in normal story scenes it’d make the scenes bloated like in TRS and potentially about characters the player doesn’t care about, or like FE3H where the characters that can die are written in such a way that the cutscene doesn’t need them. For the former skippable dialogue is nice, but another solution would be to just have character scenes require triggers in most cases. Your benched cavs won’t talk to each other unprompted, the scene that triggers naturally in the story about whatever it is they care about just won’t trigger if you don’t meet its conditions, like before battle starts your cav can just say something that indicates the condition like “my parents live in that village!” And then if you have that character visit the village they have a scene that’s about their story. And it could be conditions that a specific or non-specific to which character does them. Like maybe on one map there’s an enemy that has a chest key and is trying to steal something, but you can close a door and trap them in a room, and that triggers a convo at the end of a map where the side characters do something like interrogate the guy. Or like if you kill a certain enemy with your certain unit. Kinda like TRS, but there could be an in-game list of side objectives, at least for less obvious objectives. And the “side quests” are part of the side character’s stories.

People who are unhappy with FE should try Baldur's Gate 3. BG3 does everything I want in a tactical RPG. The tactical battles, story and characters are all great! And the degree of freedom is unprecedented!

Now this is an interesting addendum. I myself was not a fan of your first video's tone and brevity, and this might be what I need.

I’m probably gonna struggle to word this properly, but I actually think that Engage handles the C support problem better than most modern FE titles. In almost every Engage support I read, the characters don’t really change much. They develop an bond and understanding with one character, but their problems aren’t “fixed.” Alcryst having one nice set of conversations with one person isn’t gonna magically fix his self esteem issues, but it will cause him to feel a bit closer and more at ease around that specific character. It makes sense that, when unlocking another C support of his, he’s back to his normal ways. I think that’s better than stuff like Awakening Cordelia getting over her love of chrom in a support and then having all the rest of her dialogue in the game revolve around him. The only time the Engage system doesn’t really work is with Alear. A character will seemingly develop in a way that should change the way they speak to Alear but in the somniel they still just do what they normally do. But like you said Avatars are a problem lol. I will say I haven’t read THAT many engage supports so maybe I just got a good sample set. You mentioned Celine and Chloe and yeah those two are probably the least interesting characters in the game

I agree with most of your points much like the last video, I will say that treehopes is S tier for me because it has all the charm of the echoes supports, with the length of path of radiance supports, though it could use some context sensitive conversations like radiance. Also you got most of the points right with the avatars, they suck, and I'd also like to emphasize one point that you missed: because the avatar character is supposed to be you, & to the writers this is sort of a more in depth introduction to their characters, most of the avatar conversations come off as "hey player! This is my character trope! Check out my character trope! Aren't I tropey & cool?" Which is pretty counter-intuitive to a romance/friendship system in the first place as the surface level tropes aren't what makes you fall in love with a character. Take lysithea, most people love her shortened lifespan story, but most people kinda forget that every. Single. One of her supports is her whining about being treated like a kid in some way or another, especially byleth's. Shez is actually a brilliant workaround to this because they (& by extension all treehopes conversations) iterate on what's already there for all the fodlan characters you already know, so there's a lot more room for actual character development (most of the blue lions actually have a story arc in treehopes in ways their treehouses counterparts could only dream of) I also think FE4's talk conversations don't get enough credit. Earlier today I saw someone bring up a desire for supports in an FE4 remake & I couldn't disagree more. The talk system from genealogy is flawed, but just as easily fixed as the gba system & could be objectively better. FE4 already has a "my castle" system built in, so you could just make sigurd (or anyone if you want to revamp the classic system of controlling everyone individually in my castle) walk around a 3D home castle town, & have them talk to people to build the lover points & gain the items that they give you. Then you just tie marriage into the fortune teller rather than a hidden value that could cross the threshold at any time, & the support system is largely fixed. Then I would just add more interaction in the castle to accommodate the more modern dialogue-hungry fandom & you've got the perfect support system. You can even make extra secret events like a special conversation between brigid & finn if you bother warping them both to the castle Finally, as for the point of keeping everyone relevant to the story, treehouses is a good example of how that can go very wrong, but nobody wants every character to comment on every single thing going through the story, we just want more relevance to the characters intermittenly. FE8 does this somewhat with joshua coming back to jehanna, l'arachel having access to the last sacred stone, myrrh having to kill her adoptive father, we just want more stuff like that. Treehopes & jugdral also do this very well in different ways, though they aren't perfect. Alec, noish, arden, & most of the gen 2 characters don't quite have enough relevance & individuality beyond the base recruitment conversations so it's clear the newer games have trouble adapting the nuances of their characters to appeal to the modern fire emblem audience (fury & lex were butchered to hell though & deserved better in heroes than just being "the crybaby & the guy who lost his axe.") Treehopes was great with the paralogues, & the family ties to the nobility who actually show up with plot relevance keeping most people relevant, but a lot of the commoners still feel fairly disconnected from the main story, characters recruited outside of their main paths are bland & unconnected still with few exceptions, & maybe two too many of the paralogues are just "let's go mess with some bandits! Oh no hijinx are ensuing!" So while neither system is perfect, they're much closer to what we want out of story relevance than treehouses or even echoes & path of radiance in my opinion

While I agree that the top two are by far in a way the best in the series I still think just calling things ‘bad’ is very… engagement baiting? Which I guess worked for me so go off king.

We can just hope they make a path of radiance 2 2.

I would also prefer some supports with more than 2 people.

I like FE9's. It blows me away that they basically got jt exactly right, then never did it again.

😂 😂 😂 I think I'm the only one who loved and agreed with your last video

I don’t think you’re giving the GBA games enough credit, tbh. A lot of the problems with the modern FE support system comes down to the wide breadth of supports and the fact that there is no cap on them. There’s only so many ways to start a conversation, and the problem with C-Supports is exacerbated if you unlock 5 Celine supports in a row and feel compelled to watch them all. The GBA (and PoR as well) games side-step this by limiting the amount of supports you can get per playthrough, discouraging you from just watching the same entry-level conversation multiple times in a row. Also I think the Avatar Problem is overstated. At the end of the day, the problem with them is generally from a writing perspective. Kris is plain white bread, Corrin is a game that is poorly written in general, and Byleth isn’t allowed to freaking speak lmao. Robin, Alear, and especially Shez are all generally decently written and I don’t think many people have a problem with their supports. I think it is unrealistic to expect Avatars to ever go away at this point, so the solution is just to write them well and make them better characters.

As much as I love Awakening, more games without avatars would be great. Just give us some variety in the stories in these games. Some can have avatars, and some without. And I mean beyond just remakes.

Hm... I think you may have soured on Engage a little bit too hard, Mekkah, or at least that's really how it feels whenever you speak of that game. As for its support system, it does have two big problems(well three really, but you don't talk much about gameplay applications here so I won't either). Its early supports are pretty bad, which leaves a terrible first impression even though there are actually a lot of good ones beyond that, and supports build at a glacial pace, which they have... frankly overcorrected with the free update adding Leisure. Now you can take any given pair from C to A in less than 3 chapters, and you don't even need to use them. This did lead to me unlocking a lot more supports and generally changing my mind on their overall quality, hence this comment. Though to be frank even beyond that I'm not entirely sure what justifies it being rated as one of the worst in the series, even after your explanations. Also, the dub problem has an additional solution; switch it to japanese. It's consistently excellent and is my go-to whenever they mess up the english dub, which is fairly often unfortunately. I strongly recommend it. Well, I guess I can also see how as a primarily english let's player that wouldn't be a great idea.

There is a part of me that misses the very first games style of 'these characters have no character, but by playing you'll form your own attachments'. It's just such a unique style of creating characters that I really missed in the age of 'every character has to have a quirk.' I understand that supports are here to stay, but I like FE1's method more than having anime characters being anime.

The only halfway decent avatar was Mark in FE7.

Here's what I like for supports from a few games FE4; On-map conversations that are few but make sense in context. If we killed your father or recruited your best friend, it makes sense to comment on it. GBAFE; The number of supports and paired endings. People don't support everyone and most of support pairs make sense lore-wise, though not all of them. Paired endings are even rarer, most characters only get 1 or 2 options. FE9: Base conversations and being deployed together. I think think there should be two separate kinds of conversations. One set for being deployed and one for fighting together or doing extra activities. 3H/Engage; ways to raise supports outside of battle.

I would like to make an argument for 3 houses: 3 Houses has the best support system, not support conversations, but system.(simply stating this, as wether 3 houses has the best conversation or not, is not part of my arguement) My argument for this is, First: you can build support without having to compromise tactical decisions on map to build support rank, secondly: you are not forced to use units you might not like gameplay wise or strength/balance wise, but might like them characterwise. This i am a bit hazy on: There is still character to character talks on field, so you have both base conversation and field conversations. So to me, its the best of both worlds. Counter argument to Path of Radiance: There is important plot information hidden in some characters support conversation, so you are now FORCED to use this character to get this part of the narrative. Also if this character die, you compromise your story. You are forced to use character for X amount of maps, meaning some conversations are simply not attainable if you have to balance tactical/power vs narrative. Neutral: Not all charactere has support conversation, which might or might not be interesting.

In my first (and currently only) playthrough of Sacred Stones, where I just played the game completely normally, I think I got 3 support conversations in the entire game if you don't count the Colm/Neimi one you get for free. As far as Engage supports go, personally I would agree with that one comment in the intro that says Engage supports are mainly worse than average because of the writing quality, and not the system itself. I think it really falls into the trap of making every character talk about their 1-2 silly personality traits every time, which as you state, leads to a lot of them feeling the same no matter who the other character is (Lapis, Chloe, and Yunaka come to mind, although Yunaka in particular is an entertaining enough character to still have some pretty good supports imo). This is an issue to some extent in basically every game from Awakening onwards imo, but I think it's easily at its worst in Engage. Meanwhile, I think Three Houses actually has very good support writing quality and avoids a lot of those pitfalls, and the characters generally act in way more natural and nuanced ways with each other, as opposed to being standup comedians that recycle two jokes for their entire life. Ignatz stuck out to me a lot on my playthrough, because despite not particularly caring about him at first and thinking he kinda sucked gameplay-wise, he consistently had some really nice supports that made him grow on me a lot as a character. His B-support with Marianne in particular stuck out to me, where he takes her out to look at the sunset and it shows a unique background of the monestary and sky that I think is only used in this single support, and they have a really nice and genuinely heart-warming conversation.

I think you nailed one of the main problems which probably requires its own video. The avatar characters. Remove that or change it drastically and a return to a PoR support system should be easily doable.

Honestly, I think it's better to revamp, if not, remove the support entirely. The support level from C to A is just bad in a story sense because why would all characters have no support bonuses like they haven't met each other? I get it if it's someone new joining the group but do you mean to tell me that the Shepards (from Awakening) have no support bonuses from the start before the Avatar joined? Wouldn't Fredrick, Lissa, and Chrom have A support with each other by the start of the story? Also, characters that join by endgame like Flavia and Basilio, wouldn't by story context they together have at least a B-A support level from all the stuff they go through? Jk, they start with no support like they never met. And with the introduction of the Avatars, they introduced a problem that only the Avatars would make where you have to make every character interact with the MC because the player wants to ship themselves to a character they like. I get it, if Intelligent Systems applied it, it would be broken from the ground up, especially the Avatars. It's better if Intelligent Systems did it like how Kaga did it in Tearring Saga, Vestaria Saga, or any game made by him, give them the 'x supports y' system, put support conversations in the story, give additional benefits like unique weapons just like how Kaga did it. Then again, I'm a bit biased here because I'm been playing Vestaria Saga a lot lately.

I think the real solution is randomly generate totally hidden support bonuses between characters upon save file creation so you can't look up who has what supports and also you don't get any conversations.

They should end the players turn whenever they execute a support on the battlefield. Keep it realistic.

I would quite honestly be in favor of less supports in future games, because sometimes it just hits hard and I'd be fine if it just hit hard all the time, only the catch is there's no downtime. Nothing can be worse than Awakening with its gajillion supports that vary depending on couples (especially the very jarring father-child conversations).

17:46 - get rid of them all!

I'm a big fan of support convos. they add a lot and are unique but I agree that many games execute it poorly. POR is easily the best. The GBA ones have some great supports I just wish they would use the base system more then just in POR and RD. all the pointless running around in bases in newer games as well as a lack their of bases in older games really just shows how inconsistent IS is as a company. The only way i would be ok with supports going away at this point would be if they did what most Kaga games do, have lots of convos on the battlefield. There needs to be at that character interaction somehow.

It's kind of crazy how fast the quality of voice acted supports dropped from SoV to 3H to Engage. Thr fact that you said you wanted more in SoV is a good indicator of how well done those supports were. 3H has some good supports, but also some bad ones, and certainly too many. Engage... there's just a whole lot of nothing going on there.

you should just double down on supports being intrinsically bad instead of this weird olive branch extension. no other series known for its character writing chops forces side characters into such a restraining system, and there's functionally nothing that more expanded tellius base conversations can't do much better. you have to realize that an insane amount of the FE fandom now are people introduced into the series through 3H, who see people bashing some structure that was executed decently in their game (in terms of actual writing content) and think you're some kind of antichrist for advocating for rethinking a convention established in the literal GBA era

IMO engage has the best supports in the series most of them show new sides of characters or will reveal something major that would make sense not being talked about in the main story like alfred and celine were alfred reveals why he so obsessed with building muscle and how his over compensation is hurting those around him and he doesnt want alear and the other royals learning of his illness. some supports do start kinda samey with celine and drinking tea or seadal and fortune telling but they often end up going down unique routes with celine and mauvier looking for mauviers home village. Also the voice acting in engage supports gets really good, rosado and merrin B comes to mind also hortensia veyle C. Also I think the main character should support everyone also alear is definitely not an avatar you can only choose gender and name and name is mostly to keep you saves separate and most ring supports are platonic with the romantic one being rarer and none of the non alear supports cause any form of pairing which can be disappointing if you really care but the engage charter ending are some of the best with how they tie into the supports even if it assumes you see all of them.

If FE wants to be a visual novel/dating sim they should just embrace it and be that, and have a battles-only mode for people who don't care about that stuff. Having gameplay impact is ok but I feel like it shouldn't be the reason you're doing it. Also, and maybe this is gonna be controversial - if a character isn't going to be story relevant, they should be a generic unit and the player should get to make them or recruit them something like XCOM or Final Fantasy Tactics. There's no reason to be doing 400 support conversations for a bunch of characters that show up one time in the main story and never do anything again for the rest of the game.

One of the main things that put me off Engage is just how one-note a lot of characters were. I not sure if thats just me but when your entire thing is about tea or muscles or how attractive you are and want people to acknowledge that, it makes for boring characters, in my opinion anyway. I know its probably harder to accomplish giving everyone nuanced supports but perhaps the way to solve that is to have a smaller pool of characters and then incorporate story elements and maybe even reference other supports (like a commentor said below) to make the world feel interacted with. Supports don't have to go, but how they're done has to be reexamined.