it's why I think the people who maintain they only care about gameplay are either lying, burned out or just desperate for a decent traditional-esque FE game and why SRPGMaker will unfortunately never take off as genuine competition, even with Shouzou Kaga himself giving it his blessing.
I'm not really following your logic. From my perspective as Grognard, gameplay-focused players seem to quite like Engage, though usually not as much as Fates, and it's more people who are mad about non-gameplay elements in nu-Emblem (many of whom played the Engage equivalent of FE7 Lyn mode, at most) that keep trying to convince me, Grognard, that my fun with Engage/nu-Emblem is fake, ironic, and/or lesser somehow, and that I should be playing Vestaria Saga instead. The same people who don't even know or care that VS1 got a big update this year. I've played them, and I didn't like them. I don't like Kaga's design philosophies and I think his games are ugly, unpolished, dull, and hugely padded and bloated in the context of Fire Emblem as a series. Even disregarding rom hacks that explicitly aim for Kaga's style, it's not hard to find traditional styled SRPGs in current year. Me, Grognard, is desperate for more experimentation and re-iteration on Fire Emblem's unique mechanics (or 'gimmicks' as they're called when Kaga didn't make them), not something traditional. I've played traditional to death and I'm sick of it. For anyone who wants traditional, there is an ocean of options new and old. I don't care how much the game is like Legend of Galactic Heroes when none of my decisions for most of the game are going to be as significant as equipping my chapter 1 mounted unit with a javelin or a hand axe.
No offense, but I also get the impression that your interpretation of the "the only thing that matters is gameplay" argument is grounded in the most literal possible interpretation of that sentence. I'm sure that flavor of Grognard is very much real, but fwiw, what
I mean when saying that, is that I don't let it bother me that the minutiae of the story doesn't make sense, or that the models having clipping issues, or that the game looks kind of gay. I like Slay the Spire even though I think it's ugly as sin, and I don't really care when, in Thracia, Manfroy, Veld, Ishtar, Julius, and probably someone else I've forgotten all sit around eating cheetos and jacking off throughout the entire Munster escape because otherwise the story can't happen.
At the very least the production value of what was supposed to be the anniversary game for the series seemed amateurish compared to 3H.
absolutely fuckin not mate, come on now. we are not going to just ignore the muted color scheme, basic lighting-less background designs, and zero aliasing.
please do not tempt me and say this is cherrypicking. please. you can call these comparisons as lopsided and unfair as you want, but i hate looking at 3H so much, man. i'm not going out of my way to hunt down examples for a more balanced comparison
Also, I'm just going to get it off my chest, not to anyone in this thread specifically just to be clear, but the wannabe oldfags and their persecution complex, storyfag elitism, double standards, and general defensiveness, hypocrisy, and refusal to look at and appreciate these games and the overall series objectively has done a huge part in souring my perceptions and enjoyment of the older games and Kaga games in general. I can't really play them anymore without some insipid nu-Emblem criticism gnawing at the back of my mind which always ends up being just as, if not way more, applicable to whatever pre-Komuro game or heckin based Kagakino hidden gemerino I'm playing at the time. I used to be that kind of Fire Emblem fan during Awakening era until I hate-played Fates, ended up really enjoying it, and had to re-think a lot of things about what it is I like about and want from the series. Not to suck myself off as a navel-gazing brain genius or whatever, but that's just not something that most people will be willing to go out of their way to do when it's so much easier and comfortable to say that FE7 (my first one) or <insert your first FE here> is the platonic ideal for one of these games, in a series whose identity is constantly reinventing itself.