MAR7 Day 2023 and Marth... Emblem Marth is BORING!

By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - It's not the real Marth, though. But is it close enough to what he's like?

One of the things that Intelligent Systems had promised in the Ask the Developer series for Fire Emblem Engage was...

“[W]e have prepared Bond conversations for all Emblems, which is about 1,300 conversations. There's quite a lot of content there for those who want to listen to every conversation. [...] We have a great cast of voice actors, so we hope you'll enjoy these conversations. [...] I hope players will enjoy choosing the pairs they like and strengthening their favorite characters to their heart's content.”

Those words from Tsutomo Tei, director of Intelligent Systems, seemed like fairly promising hype about Emblem Bond Supports in Fire Emblem Engage. So for MAR7 Day, or Marth Day, I listened to the ~40 minutes of Marth Bond Support content in Fire Emblem Engage. And... it's... SO BORING. It's ridiculous that they hyped these conversations with the verb “enjoy”!

Emblem Marth's “personality” involves being a humble, level-headed guy who believes in the power of friendship who is thankful for having people who believe in him. And he is also boring with no concept of what fun is. He's basically a glowing wooden plank. His one interesting quirk is that he's been watching Alear for Alear's whole lifetime at every moment, and that's less “interesting” and more “that's kinda creepy.”

Emblem Marth literally doesn't know how to have fun or any concept of hobbies.
While all Emblems can't do things like eat, I listened to Emblem Micaiah's Bond Supports, and she at least said her idea of fun is reading books in quiet.
...And that she plays games (but won't cheat at them with her foresight powers).
That means that Emblem Marth is uniquely boring, and that's not a shared trait to all Emblems.

While the Emblems in the Emblem Rings aren't... literally those heroes, they do have those heroes’ memories and personalities and much of their combat prowess. Emblem Marth is quite the opposite of how I portrayed Marth for MAR7 Day 2022—a bloodthirsty madman who sacrificed his soldiers with human wave tactics and an endless supply of generic units. That Marth was at least interesting. This Marth is a bore. Seriously, I almost missed publishing this article on MAR7 because watching that video of conversations put me to sleep.

As for combat prowess, that's all that Emblem Marth is good for. Many of the other Emblem Rings provide utility outside of killing off a selected enemy. And that causes Emblem Marth to drop off in usefulness by the game's later chapters where you need some more strategic options. Too bad Marth's games never had a Sleep Sword or Sleep staff, because with how boring he is, that would've been good utility for him.

That's not the end of Marth's disappointments this year. There is finally an “official” Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tier list, and he was ranked as the 54th best of 82 characters. That is quite the drop from being a high or top tier in all of his preceding Super Smash Bros. titles. Now Roy is a top tier instead, thanks to the game making spacing more difficult due to its pacing, and plenty of other characters outclassing Marth as distance demons. Marth has nothing going for him lately!


Ludwig doesn't believe that Marth actually deserves having his own day in the year, since Marth is dripping with loser energy. But since Ludwig hasn't actually played Fire Emblem Engage, perhaps his impression of Marth is...wrong? Let him know in the comments if so!