To give my honest opinion, I was going to get the game, but now they killed any sort of excitement for me and well, threw any potential out of the window, and honestly, they've made so many backwards choices that I am no longer going to buy the game. I know that seems petty, but keep in mind I came in with Awakening and Fates, and I defended the initial roster because frankly it made sense, Awakening and Fates were the two biggest selling games and helped to establish FE as a major IP(even though there reasoning was horse crap really, you don't want to include characters all around for risk of having too many sword characters, when the box art is nothing but sword characters and their are 10 sword characters in the game as we know. Not to mention the two original characters were supposed to wield an ax and a lance but they changed it because somehow people wouldn't be able to get the weapons triangle as easy, you mean rock, paper, scissors format that literally anybody with a brain could get.) That said I still understand the focus on said games.
But that said you would think that they would at least include Roy and Ike in the base game, you know, the two most popular male characters in the series. You would think they would include Alm with Celica , but I guess we can't have other sword characters in a game that already has more than enough.
And don't get me started on the DLC. Really, your telling me that SD, Awakening and Fates are the only games out of a 15 game series with any unique characters. That's not to say that they won't include anymore old school characters, but Hyrule Warriors got it right with having multiple different games across the Zelda series represented, what's this games excuse. Not to mention, this seems completely counter intuitive to appealing to the fan-base as a whole, when you are only pulling from the games that are already represented, and thus, only appealing to those fans. As harsh as this may sound, I think Koe Techmo is just completely inept to the idea of appealing to the fans, as a whole, with this title, and one that had easy money written all over it. Even I, someone who adores Awakening and Fates for what they are and will defend those two games, know that Koei Techmo, frankly didn't do a good job with the character roster. And that said, the base roster as well is just extremely safe, not inherently bad, but just so predictable. If you ask me, Intelligent Systems should've been more involved with this title, because they are at least attempting (and with some regard of success) to appeal to everyone with titles like Heroes and Echoes. They at least acknowledge that they don't only have three games in their series + some random characters that are just popular for some reason and happen to be from some Fire Emblem game.
Even Hyrule Warriors at least had the Majora's Mask DLC pack, you know, a game that wasn't really represented in the original version.
And on the subject of Azura, they should've just included her from the get go. I know there's already a good amount of Fates characters, but if your already just going to add more, then just put her in the base game to add some variety, seriously a lance user with water magic, why not have her in?
As for my argument of appealing to fans as a whole, some will argue 'well they included Lyn, isn't that old school enough.' Okay sure, but then like I said, where's Roy and Ike then, why not have the DLC based around their games instead of giving fans more of something that's ultimately going to disappoint many people, in fact most of the people I've talked to and the comments I've seen online, are more of disappointment rather than that of excitement, even from those who enjoy Awakening and Fates.
This is one of those games that I hope gets a sequel, and hopefully by then the developers will actually open their eyes and see that they just threw away a potentially amazing game for BOTH old and new fans, and that's what really irritates me about this title. I'm someone who wants to see anything live up to it's fullest potential, but that fact that Koei Techmo just somehow doesn't seem to know what there doing with this title really irritates me to no end and legitimately gets me angry because of that.
With all of that said, I'm sure the game will be just fine, but man Koei Techmo really really dropped the ball here, and I'm not going to get the game and instead spend my money on Mario Odyssey. And for me personally, I'll just stick with Heroes, because at least IS gets it. That and I'll wait for the new FE for Switch as well. If you disagree with my opinion that's fine, but I just really needed to get my opinion out there.
EDIT: IF, and this is a big IF, they have more DLC focusing on the older titles and add in more representation from the older games in a better balance, then maybe I'll reconsider, but as it stands currently, I have zero interest anymore.
