barahir

Good episode. I think one reason for why AoE2 has gotten bigger and not the others in the series is the theme. First the simple fact that people like castles, knights, trebuchets, etc and some want a more grounded take on it than Warcraft-style fantasy. The aesthetics of the middle ages still have a natural appeal to people even today, as we can see with LotR and Game of Thrones as two of the biggest new media IPs post-AoE2 (yeah I know the LotR books and part of ASoIaF came first). Also more substantially it's a setting where the counter units just make intuitive sense - a pike beats a knight, a skirmisher with a shield beats a lightly armored archer, rams can absorb arrows but get torn apart in melee, etc. In a lot of RTSes the counter units are more obscure, like gun type A beats gun type B because the game requires it (Age 3 suffers from this to some extent). Things do get a little more obscure with some of Age 2's unique units, but at least with the generic units the counter relationships are generally clean and easy to grasp which makes learning the game more inviting. AoE4 has a similar theme of course, so that is not the only reason for 2's popularity over the others and isn't exclusive with the other reasons given.

Delurking here as a long-time listener and an FE fan who hasn't played this game yet. I don't have a Switch, will definitely play if/when I get one. FE's mechanics do tend to be on the simpler side as tactics games go, though from what I've heard 3H adds some new stuff there. I would say FE (at least at its best) does a lot with its basics though - chess isn't a very complex game either, or most RTSes. Permadeath and the fact that every character is preset are pretty important to the game's tactical dynamic, as it requires you to pay close attention to your character formations and enemy ranges, and each unit being an individual character makes any loss feel meaningful. And things like the rock-paper-scissors weapon triangle, limited-use weapons, double attacks with high speed, magic attacks checking resistance instead of def, archer damage bonuses against fliers - all these are simple systems, but they can layer together and combine to create interesting tactical situations greater than the sum of its parts. And one thing I appreciate about the series is that the stat numbers stay fairly small, so +1 str or speed still feels meaningful. At its best, FE's map design can do a lot of interesting things. For example, a trick they use on indoor map design, especially in harder difficulties, is to have enemy thieves show up early to get the treasure chests on a map that might otherwise look like something you want to turtle. So instead of going slowly and defensively, the game pushes you to a more aggressive and risky style and outrace the thieves (and your own thieves aren't very good combat units) if you want to be a completionist and get all the items. Or you may have an enemy character who can be recruited, but only if you talk to them with the right character which may be tricky to set up. Of course I don't know how successful Three Houses is with all this in practice. One thing I do know about Three Houses is that the hardest difficulty mode is coming as free DLC. Hopefully they're taking the time to carefully tune it and not just statstack the enemies.