Recommendations?

[Andy]

(08-13-2019, 09:05 AM)Enone Wrote: Ah, thanks so much! I am slow with this, but let's pretend that it's my super-cool youthful spirit at fault, not that I get distracted easily!

I see that people prefer older games... I assume that the gameplay got worse with times? Like the prettier it looks, the more shallow it is?

More like FE7 was an extremely well-written character-driven narrative in addition to well-implemented tactical strategy. That was the game where the Fire Emblem series found its groove. FE8 had polished mechanics and introduced a varied promotion system that was fairly well received. It experimented with skills upon promotion, and featured a story with a varied, branched path mechanic, where the meat of the story played out differently dependent on which sibling you followed after chapter 8. I can also recommend Binding Blade, also for the GBA, though things are radically different there since it was the first entry on the GBA. Timeline-wise it's a sequel to FE7 (Blazing Blade), following Eliwood's son Roy.

They experimented with various game mechanics for the next, what, 4 games? 5? Then Awakening came out, as the sum of all the things they'd learned during their experimentation, plus some new experiments, and it became wildly popular, and IS and Nintendo learned all the wrong lessons from their success. Following Awakening was Fates, which I don't have a high opinion of based on story, art design, and separate writing teams not communicating effectively leading to several instances of character dissonance. After that, they hearkened back to Fire Emblem Gaiden with the story 'Fire Emblem Echoes,' which is a good entry in the series, I think. Do go try that one out if you've got the hardware.