I don't think it was women so much as horny 13 year old western redditors. Awakening was a massive, massive success internationally that basically brought the franchise back from the brink of extinsion. This is why is filled so much with fanservice (of all kinds), it was a sort of "last hurrah" for the series, either they made bank or they would have been sent to frozen storage for a few decades.Tangerine wrote: ↑ March 31st, 2025, 01:15I don't know if they started trying to appeal to women with Awakening, but the dating sim aspect of it was like cat nip to them and the series has been ultra-faggoty ever since.psychic_dream wrote: ↑ March 31st, 2025, 01:03Out of all the Fire Emblem entries, I’ve only played Path of Radiance. Are the newer ones any good? If I recall correctly, the story in Path of Radiance was pretty typical by JRPG standards. I’ve always heard this series described as the bedrock of degeneracy in Japanese games—incest, lolis, faggotry, and the like. How much of that is present in the later games? I remember when Engage came out, the graphics looked like something a literal who indie dev would churn out.
But yes, it leaned heavily into the dating sim aspect and, as other Fire Emblems before it, extreme glazing of the protagonist unit which was meant as a self-insert. So, extreme pandering to the player. And because it was so popular it basically marks a watershed moment for the series, with it considered the "nu Fe" in contrast to the GBA era and the Shouzo Kaga era in the SNES and NES. I would be curious to see how the popularity has shifted in demographics after Awakening.

