Nintendo conducted a poll for Fire Emblem Heroes urging fans to pick a favorite character of theirs that they would love to see featured. Each fan could vote once a day for 13 days for almost any character from any of the main Fire Emblem series of games.

This is part of a miniseries I am doing on analyzing the vast amount of poll data available to us and what it means for the fandom and their favorites regarding characters.

Thanks to the tireless work of Elieson over on serenesforest.net, we can take a look at the break downs by game! Today we will focus on FE1/11 (which were combined on the official poll), and FE3/12 (which too were combined). The games will be referred to as Shadow Dragon and Mystery of the Emblem for simplicity. Combined, they form the Archanea Saga of games.

There are some general things to keep in mind before we get started, however.

• This was a worldwide contest from all territories on all the games. All votes were included to one ballot. This is useful to know when it comes to character popularity.
• The “overall place” is out of 791 characters that could be voted for. Any number you see in the “overall place” category is ##/791.
• This was just one game out of the entire series that was available to be voted on. While Nintendo recorded 1.2 million votes (actually calculated to be 1,279,158), that is across all games. For the purposes of this analysis, we will only base it on the votes that went toward the game being analyzed. Even then, it is a limited format as there are plenty of factors that come to play.
  • For instance, if this was purely a poll on Shadow Dragon, then votes would have been better distributed to what characters people actually favor, as it would be characters versus each other, rather than against characters from the entire series.
  • The assumption I am running on is simply this: If the voter picked their favorite from this game against the rest of the Fire Emblem games’ casts, then surely they would pick these characters if they were only up against other characters from their own game.
    • However, the issue with this assumption is that it ignores the 13 votes each member had, who may have distributed it across other characters from other games rather than multiple favorites they may have had in one single game. (For example: A voter votes Marth and Tiki, and though they would have cast a vote to Ogma if it was just Shadow Dragon, they instead cast their votes for Hector in Blazing Blade, thus skewing the results Ogma would have had in this game alone had it been isolated) Please be aware of these limitations when seeing the data.
• Some characters were split if they appeared in multiple games (i.e. Marth in FE11 and 12 are two different votes. This is a point worth noting, as we will see.
• Male characters and female characters were polled from the same limited set of 13. This means if someone voted for a favorite male character one day, they did not get to vote a female character the same day. This is worth noting because male/female characters are not in competition with each other. So, their voter base could only vote for a character in one gender or the other, meaning there may have been more votes for female characters overall than male, even if the voter had a male they would have preferred too. There is potential to skew the results here, as would have been solved with two polls (one for each gender).
  • For the purposes of game-by-game analysis, the gender split does not matter too much as it is purely to gauge potential popularity. However, when we address the overall gender vote later on, this will be more important –much like how it was when analyzing the top 20.
• Each individual was able to vote multiple times. One person could vote 13 times over the event period (and this assumes from one device)! As such, do not treat the total amount of votes as total amount of people who voted. Those are two very different things!
• Nintendo had released midterm results on current poll standings. I consider this an important aspect in determining the final outcome to overall popularity, as I will address if relevant to the game.

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (FE1 + 11)

Notes:

• A total of 59,167 votes were cast across all the characters of this game.
  • That means FE1/11 characters received just 6% of the overall votes.
• Of that number, Marth has 15,877 votes, or 26% of total votes for this game. He is the highest scoring male character of the game.
  • Marth also appeared on the top 20 during the midterm results. This would have swayed voters to vote for him when they may not have otherwise.
• Caeda is in 2^nd, with 5496 She is the highest scoring female character of the game.
• Only three characters made it to the top 100. (Marth, Caeda, and Tiki).
• The top ten characters on this list already have 39,859 votes combined (77%); meaning characters 11-66 had only 23% of the votes despite making up 83% percent of the cast.
• Malledus is the lowest ranked male character in last place at 66^th place (749/791 overall) and the lowest scoring female character is Midia in 57^th (632/791).

The top scorers in this game are somewhat expected. Indeed, as Intelligent Systems has plenty of the top scorers already in Fire Emblem Heroes.

A point worth noting is this Marth made it to the top 10 male characters and 12^th overall –with Caeda as 52^nd overall right after, showing the great difference between Marth compared to other characters of the game.

This is perhaps due to his status as a “face” of the series as a whole, as well as his continued presence in the Smash Bros. series –which the rest of the characters in this game lack.

Tiki’s Awakening appearance (grown up) scored much higher than she did here, and is likely where those voting for her put their votes (considering she got more than double there), explaining her relatively lower numbers here.

Next let’s look at the sequel and how it fared.

Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem (FE3 + 12)

Notes:

• A total of 34,672 votes were cast across all the characters of this game.
  • That means FE3/12 characters received just 7% of the overall votes..
• Of that number, Marth has 8670 votes, or 25% of total votes for this game. He is the highest scoring male character of the game.
  • This is significantly less than his Shadow Dragon appearance which also placed higher overall.
  • Marth is the only character from this game who made the top 100.
• This time, Tiki is in 2^nd, with 2298 She is the highest scoring female character of the game, rising from 3^rd place in the previous game.
  • A character unique to this game, Katarina, placed 3^rd with 2162
  • Caeda, in 2^nd place on the Shadow Dragon poll, dropped to 4^th here, with 1747
• The player avatar character (Kris) placed 12^th (male) and 20^th (female).
  • The remake (FE12) was the first game with customizable active avatars (compared to FE7’s passive one), but there was no marriage mechanic, which may be worth noting.
• The top ten characters on this list already have 20,376 votes combined (59%); meaning characters 11-91 had only 41% of the votes despite making up 88% percent of the cast.
• Macellan is the lowest ranked male character in last place at 91^st place, and 4^th last place (788/791) overall with just 19
• Midia is (once again) lowest ranked female character in 73^rd (705/791). She was also lowest ranked in Shadow Dragon.

Mystery of the Emblem gives interesting results compared to Shadow Dragon. Here we see less overall votes, Tiki boosted to second, and Caeda dropped to fourth.

An easy explanation for this is simply the fact neither rendition of Mystery of the Emblem saw release in the west. The games have remained Japan only, so would likely have a minority of votes from western players who had played it. As such, perhaps it leans on Japanese tastes more, explaining Tiki’s boost and Caeda’s drop, as well as low overall votes.

Shadow Dragon conversely saw more votes for its characters as the remake (FE11) was released worldwide, so players would likely vote for Shadow Dragon despite the characters in both games being more of the same.

Lastly, we take a look at combined numbers between the two games!

Notes:

• Combined total votes is: 93,796. (7.3% of overall votes).
• The above shows how numbers would be if characters were combined from both games (assuming they appeared in both).
  • This will skew the characters that only appear in one game (such as Katarina) who may have had more votes had this poll only been about Mystery of the Emblem rather than the series as a whole.
• There are too many factors to put this back against the overall poll results, and so “overall rank” (with new numbers) has been excluded.

The combined numbers obviously skew things back in Shadow Dragon characters’ favor. Caeda for instance comes out on top of Tiki here once again thanks to the bolstered numbers. Mystery/New Mystery of the Emblem characters take a hit as they only have one set of numbers to support them.

As usual, these combined numbers are just for reference and curiosity sake, as there are many factors that come into play here!

Conclusion:

Shadow Dragon and its characters outperformed the sequel’s cast in almost every way when it came to votes. A major reason is simply the fact the former had a worldwide release while the latter was Japan only.

Marth was the most significant, considering that in overall ranks, the second place in both games was much farther down the list. This is likely thanks to his “series’ face” status as well as Smash Bros. presence.

That covers those two games! Tomorrow we take a look at the lowest scoring Gaiden! Stay tuned!