Note that I am referring specifically to the second game in the franchise, and not its remake: Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadow of Valentia. You are free to share your opinions on either, but do specify if you have not played Gaiden, I am interested to know how much of the community never played Gaiden before too.
I personally never played Gaiden. I started FE using GBA Emulators playing FE8 and FE7 for a long time, before going into FE6, and Shadow Dragon, followed by my first actual ROM in Three Houses and then back into the older games like FE4, FE9 and 3DS games (including Echoes). Any games before FE4 are too outdated in terms of graphics and UI for me to truly enjoy them properly for their gameplay. From the discussions in this forum it seems like I am with the majority when it comes to Gaiden. Many would make comments regarding to Echoes, but almost never to Gaiden specifically. He Who Shall Not Be Named also refer to Gaiden as "A game almost nobody played".
Now what inspired me to make this post is that stark contrast of the game popularity in the Chinese community. The number of fans that started FE with Gaiden (not Echoes) is massive, rivalling that of the three GBA games combined.
Not too long ago, a video ranking all mainline FE games in the series was made. I will leave a link here to the video if anyone is interested: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1xgcxzvE3L/
But to summarize, this is the final ranking:
Nothing too special about the wordings, the ranking themselves translates to "godlike", "top notch", "great", NPC and "Garbage" loosely, with games neither good nor bad usually in the 4th and not the 3rd tier. And the order within a tier is purely by order of release date.
Now the list itself is very controversial (like usual) in the community. I personally do not like this content creator for his bias against Three Houses. In his other video that ranks all FE games in terms of sales he put Fates as 1st place. Where did 3H go you ask? Well, he put it in 0th spot because he thinks 3H is too "controversial" and not worthy to be called FE o be crowned champion.
But I digress. While many of the tiers are controversial, one thing that is not controversial within the chinese community is the placement of Gaiden. Pretty much every comment regards Gaiden's placing as correct within the godlike tier. Some even argues that "FE would not have survived decades ago if Gaiden was not made", or if Gaiden (and FE4) were first released on NS they would have sold similiarly to 3H (assuming QoL standard of these games match other games launched within the period).
In actual fact, even Nintendo officially acknowledges the popularity of Gaiden within the chinese community, with Echoes being the first FE game with an official chinese translation.
Anyway feel free to share your comments either of Gaiden or of stark differences of opinions amongst different FE communities. I am interested to hear more from different communities.