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Why do people dislike Azura?

Within Fates, I mean. There's the general anti-Fates/Awakening sentiment in part of the community (and I don't have an opinion because I didn't play anything besides Heroes), but even without that I seem to read some anti-Azura sentiment. Anyone want to enlighten me? Am I misunderstanding something or taking a vocal and miniscule minority for more than they appear to be?

Asked by Seeker1 day 18 hours ago

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My thoughts, as I don't outright hate her, is for me she felt very underwhelming.

But there are definitely times in Fates story, which I feel isn't good to begin with, where Azura seemingly just let's thing happen without doing much of anything except being there. When in actuality she knows more about the behind the scenes then anyone but again rarely does much with it.

And that's where a good bit of my gripes with her come in, the lack of her telling even smaller details that could potential lead to misunderstandings being resolved. And I know the game tries to "remedy" it with "But if I tell anyone about that otherworld I'll vanish." But for me I feel that was just trying to mask bad storytelling, or perhaps trying to patch up plotholes with the most basic uninteresting option available. And it just ultimately makes me feel like Azura's just there most of the time just for the few instances where she's absolutely needed for the story, in which case she finally does something.

So maybe it's seemingly a lack of initiative from her in the majority of the story that ends up being why I never liked her.

And this I'm most likely in the minority on, but I never found her that useful as a unit in Fates despite the refresher status. I always just ended up benching her for a character that would likely just hold their own better in battle, than wasting the time to level her up.

Hopefully this explanation wasn't too wordy as to make it hard to follow, I've been known to do that.

It's exactly this. She has knowledge of exactly what's going on behind the scenes, and refuses to use it to save lives. In the early game, before the path split, Ryoma literally asks (rhetorically) what is going on, and all Azura has to do is say "I know what's going on, and I know you're all being manipulated; just trust me and I can save a lot of lives." Ryoma probably would have listened to her, given the familiar relationship they're supposed to have, and would have at least sent some scouts with her to verify her story. But instead, she keeps silent, lets a huge war break out, and then has the audacity to pretend she cares about peace. And then all the other characters, and the writers, continue to treat her like some noble paragon of virtue, which is just insulting to the player's intelligence.

That being said, I do find her incredibly useful unit in Fates despite being worthless in combat. Dancers/refreshers have fantastic utility.

Are refreshers inferior to more combative units in Fates? They're so useful and dangerous in Heroes.

Also, very informative answer thanks.

Yes they are, Feh actually gave Azura big lift compared to her Fates self.

In pretty much every FE game, the dancer is the most useful unit you can have, even though in a lot of the older games, dancers/bards have no weapon proficiency at all. Their power comes from giving an extra action, either to a powerful offensive unit, or to a healer, or just to a tank who needs to get into a better position or a wounded unit who needs to get out of harm's way. The beauty of dancers is that they don't have to fight to drastically impact a battle.

Herons are amazing singers, and I make it a point to RNG good stats on my dancers as well as giving them the Leg Ring and Knight Ring on my Genealogy playthroughs, giving them high movement and the ability to finish their movement after dancing.

Well my reason is that she got 4 alts and Alm got none.
That's why I hate her.
But after that I don't mind her.
She's just another character in Fire Emblem that's not in my Top 5 favourites so I ignore her.

That's my opinion though.

I dislike anyone who gets unneeded alts; I don't discriminate which games they're from.

There's an abundance of characters that haven't been added from every game that I'd rather see in game than another alt of a unit.

Only exceptions to this are Myrrh, Anna, and Sharena. Myrrh because she's an adorable dragon and Anna/Sharena because they're best girls.

Claims there are no exceptions. Then list exceptions.

Point out where I said no exceptions.

"I dislike anyone..."
Had you given the exceptions within the same statement while constructing your sentence to imply, say, hyperbole, that would have been more accurate. But mostly I'm busting your balls, kid.

No.

I mean, you can SAY no, but that won't actually change anything, pizzakid.

You're trying too hard. Find another hobby, old man.

Fates and Awakening ruined the franchise. Sure, Awakenin revive the whole thing, but what good is reviving a franchise when it drops what made it great to begin with in favor of becoming a shitty dating sim while adding mechanics that make it hard not to accidentally cheese the game.

Fates in particular was doomed before retail copies even begun to be printed. The whole story was buthcered and reworked to the point where what the customer got was about 10% of what was supposed to be there. The biggest problem with fates is the story, which is just so riddled with plot holes and stupidity that you could use it as a third grade creative writing assignment and get a D for it, because so much was cut out, repalced, and reworked to fit "a broader audience", which is shorthand for saying "the stupid people that just want tits".

The games original story was said to garner an M rating, which is why so much was cut from the final product and why none of the stories make any sense. That combined with making the games' balanced around the pair up mechanic meant people that played the older games were at a disadvantage if they tried to play the RIGHT way.

Then you get down to the characters, none of which have any soul, even in the japanese version, while the entire game revolves around the player, rather than the other characters, which again kills a ton of value to the game for people that wanted more than just another generic shonen harem simulator.

Then we get to Azura, who has no redeeming qualities at all, getting shoved down our throats because japanese players LOVE their Rei-Clones, or at least thats what the Devs think. Have you seen the legendary azura trailer? Its like to dislike ratio is wild and shows the blatant disconnect the developers have with the community. They could have added someone else, like alm, and it wouldnt have gotten nearly that many dislikes,hell, they couldve added any male that wasnt fateswakening and it wouldve been well received.

But they didnt.

Amen, friend

And this is putting it nicely.

Would you say Fates' plot is kitschy?

I'll try to analyze by paragraph here:

1) Valid point about the direction of writing, but if Fates is any indication, they've refined the battle system and have made greater strides in making the gameplay more balanced between sides. Three Houses also seems to be going back to the more traditional gameplay style of FE.

2-3) I will defend Fates on many things; its story is not one of those things. Building on the comment on its possible M rating, I do think that modern FE games have intentionally strayed away from Jugdral-level dark stories, which could have really served Fates well. Ironically, if they really did go through with it, Fates may very well have ended up being one of FE's better games period, but it seems they were too intimidated to do so. If that's the case, rather than blaming Fates itself, the devs should be the ones we should be directing our ire towards.

4) Some characters I can agree are one note, to the point of being trope-y even, but if you (or anyone for that matter) find absolutely none of the characters to have any, well, character than I would argue that not only are you being incredibly narrow-minded, but also not taking the effort to actually read into the characters rather than judging them on the surface. Granted, the players shouldn't have to do that much work in order to find out about a character's depth, but it's still there and would be unfair to not allow the character's their proper justice.

5) As much as I hate to agree with this sentiment, it's fairly obvious that they're pandering much more toward the JP (native source) fanbase than any others. I really wish we could communicate with that fanbase better, or at all really, in order to gauge how much they share our thoughts on these issues. Maybe that would make it easier to know how much IS' decisions truly match up with their fanbase as a whole.

2+3. The appointed director of Awakening was also the director of Fates, which is also the only reason Severa, Inigo, and Owain were added to fates, she has a girl boner for Inigo, and constantly whined about how the games were too hard.

4. You get next to nothing out of the localization of the fates games because Treehouse butchered the localizaiton completely tot eh point where characters simply arent the same characters they were in the japanese version, case in point, Effie in Japan is soft spoken and sweet, in America shes a butch lesbian that eats nails for breakfast.

5. The japanese players that aren't happy with how things have been going say the exact same thing, but blame the western players.

2+3. That I actually didn't know. I was under the impression that they were picked because of the JP only popularity poll, but I could understand it being a simple coincidence.

4. I'm very well aware of how much Treehouse messed up (and a bit of which I personally believed they made better, but that's not the discussion here, so I digress) certain characters, but I don't feel like they can take the sole blame for this. Iago's lack of motivation, the whole mess with Conquest's plot switching halfway in to getting Garon a pretty chair, Valla's role as a whole, etc. As poor as the localization may have been, I can't see them being the reason for the story itself being as bad as it is.

5. In that case, wouldn't that further reinforce the idea that the ire should be directed more towards the devs themself rather than the games in question or either side of the fanbase, both new vs veteran and JP vs non-JP? Regardless of who they're pandering to, it's blatantly obvious that they're very out of touch with the vast majority of their audience's interests.

4. Heres about 100 comparison images showing the differences between the japanese and English versions, including the original Kana text, a literal as-close-to-1:1-as-possible translation, and the treehouse translation. https://imgur.com/a/X2w49

5. Have you not seen me repetedly call FEH "For The Devs, By The Devs", time and time again?

4. I'm well aware of how much Treehouse butchered the characterization in supports, but what evidence do we have regarding differences in story writing between JP and non-JP. Supports occasionally refer to story elements, but their characterizations are largely separate from the story itself. Xander is a shining example of how jarring a difference in his characterization is portrayed between Birthright in general and Conquest and his supports. If the story is the same, or roughly the same, between JP and non-JP, then its poor quality can't be blamed solely on Treehouse.

5. Poor wording on my part. That comment was directed toward the general audience and not you specifically. It's just me pointing out how misblamed and misdirected complaints are regarding Fates, Heroes and other related problems.

It's because those 2 games in particular and their protagonist have gotten a particular amount of in comparison to other games (eg: Warriors/Seasonal alts/Rep in Smash).

Fates arguably has the most lack-luster story in FE i.e. and by association (and also not being a well written Character) people I think it's safe to assume those are some of the reasons why Azura and co. get on people's bad side.

It's kinda like hearing that one song you hate all the time on the radio.

i do like her so idk why could she be hated much. I read some comments about how silly her desing is, somewhere, i guess that could be one of the reasons.
When it comes for my opinion, out of all females we had in Birthright i like her most.

I was originally going to say "Well what about X, or how about Y," when I realized, I have no interest in comparing shit, so.

I second all of these comments on this post (the ones that are against azura, just to clarify)

I don't think she's unlikable, but as far as characterization goes, she's largely just a walking plot device, and by extent, yet another victim of Fates' writing. I like her and personally don't see it, but I get why people would feel that way about her.

Not only do you see it, but agree to it, it's just that you don't care, and like her despite the fact. Also, it's ok to have some standards, man.

It's not that I don't care. I'm just not judging her as roughly as most would, which may be partly due to the fact that I have a lot of problems with how much flak Fates gets. Even I can recognize its flaws, and I even agree with some points that people make, to an extent at least, particularly the story. It's not that I don't think people shouldn't have standards; it's just that said standards when judging Fates are often too strict, sometimes to the point of ignoring its good points. I may recognize that Azura is not the best character as far as writing is concerned and that people might not find that to be enough to care about her, but she still has enough emotion and convictions that make her likable in my eyes.

So a quasi-consensus seems to be that her character is maybe not bad in theory but she got screwed over by really lousy plot writing which lead to bad character development?

I agree with this.
Much of it ties to the revelations plotline and the bits of it that are in the other plots.
Especially the 'can't tell anyone' bit, which was used a excuse.

Azura still isn't great in isolation, but I feel hating is a bit far. I do feel like she has personality.

I myself much more dislike Corrin, but let's not go deep in on a hate train.

Doesn't that pretty much sum up Fates' writing in a nutshell? Many characters had potential to be well-written characters and the Treehouse's idiotic, most badly localized, writing team had to butcher EVERYTHING about Fates' story and characterization, which is why characters like Xander are borderline split personality disorder depending on the path you play through.

The only, and I do mean ONLY, thing that has redeeming qualities are the rare few support conversations that actually show a different side to certain characters. Good example is Peri. I can't remember who it's with (I want to say it was Laslow, but don't quote me on that), but one of Peri's support conversations has her actually act like a decent human being for once, which is just so unlike her what you see in the main story that it's actually a breath of fresh air and you hope they would expand upon that more, but they don't outside of that one support conversation, which is DUMB.

Now I really liked the gameplay of Fates, and I do agree that the horrible localization team royally messed up the characterization, but the amount of hate that Fates, and Awakening, get as a whole is just stupid. Especially when people start getting attacked for liking these two games. What happened to just accepting other people's OPINIONS and TASTE and not crucifying them for it? Awakening is what got me into the Fire Emblem series, and I enjoyed it for what it is. I'm not saying it's any better or worse than the older games. In fact, I'm in the camp hoping to see a Genealogy, Thracia, and Binding Blade remake in the same veins as Echoes. All games have their pros and cons. Everyone should be accepting of that and let people like what they want to like.

While the localization didn't help, the writing still was quite bad.
There's only so much a localization can screw up.

I do agree that Fates is quite solid in gamplay for conquest and birthright.
The map design of revelations was horrible though.

^ Localization =/= translation.

Localization is personality. Translation is facts. Afaik, Treehouse didn't make any drastic changes, if any at all, to the story. The story would be a translation and therefore something they can't be blamed on if they didn't change anything.

I don’t dislike her but I’m completely neutral on her. The problem with her to me is she really doesn’t seem to have much in the way of a personality. Story wise she’s just an exposition bot, deus ex machina, and incentive to buy all the games.