They started on the SNES originally, though the first one to make it out of Japan was the second GBA title. The first two games were remade on the DS and 3DS respectively, though they were and still are super barebones.
The support system I described is the one used in the GBA games (6-8), which is also the first games to not be Japan only (7 was the first international game, 1/2 were remade on the DS/3DS later while 3-6 are still fan translation only).
What's amusing is that the relationship system was first setup back in the 4th game all the way back in 1996. With literally every piece of it being hugely impactful on your characters and the story, as you spend most of the time post-timeskip using the children of your original generation's pairings. And it goes in depth with it.
So there isn't an excuse for any RPG game to be lazy about it as it was already figured out by a fucking niche (at the time) SNES series.
Thanks. That really puts into perspective just how horrible and lazy a lot of today's RPGs are, and how agenda-driven they are when it comes to the romance systems, since I cannot think of any recent RPGs that use a similar system as the one you described from the older Fire Emblem games.
Although, I do seem to recall a similar system being in Bahamut Lagoon as you developed the relationships/partnerships between the characters and the dragons, or maybe I'm remembering it wrong. Either way, meaningful relationships in games seems to be a thing of a bygone era.
I think a lot of PS1 era JRPGs had some amount of it, it was just often buried and not explained. Even FF7 had an entire complex system for a throwaway romance sidequest that spanned the entire game up until that point.
Heck the Star Ocean 2 romance value system spans the entire game and is incredibly complex with its interactions, though it doesn't do a whole lot as a gameplay integration.
Unfortunately it seems the PS1 era is when that kind of thing ended because my knowledge of anything like it ends there.
They started on the SNES originally, though the first one to make it out of Japan was the second GBA title. The first two games were remade on the DS and 3DS respectively, though they were and still are super barebones.
The support system I described is the one used in the GBA games (6-8), which is also the first games to not be Japan only (7 was the first international game, 1/2 were remade on the DS/3DS later while 3-6 are still fan translation only).
What's amusing is that the relationship system was first setup back in the 4th game all the way back in 1996. With literally every piece of it being hugely impactful on your characters and the story, as you spend most of the time post-timeskip using the children of your original generation's pairings. And it goes in depth with it.
So there isn't an excuse for any RPG game to be lazy about it as it was already figured out by a fucking niche (at the time) SNES series.
Thanks. That really puts into perspective just how horrible and lazy a lot of today's RPGs are, and how agenda-driven they are when it comes to the romance systems, since I cannot think of any recent RPGs that use a similar system as the one you described from the older Fire Emblem games.
Although, I do seem to recall a similar system being in Bahamut Lagoon as you developed the relationships/partnerships between the characters and the dragons, or maybe I'm remembering it wrong. Either way, meaningful relationships in games seems to be a thing of a bygone era.
I think a lot of PS1 era JRPGs had some amount of it, it was just often buried and not explained. Even FF7 had an entire complex system for a throwaway romance sidequest that spanned the entire game up until that point.
Heck the Star Ocean 2 romance value system spans the entire game and is incredibly complex with its interactions, though it doesn't do a whole lot as a gameplay integration.
Unfortunately it seems the PS1 era is when that kind of thing ended because my knowledge of anything like it ends there.