"Intelligent Systems makes their first attempt at a Fire Emblem......and succeeds."

Before I start, I might as well admit that I'm biased for war games. Example? For some time, I was literally obsessed with Super Famicom Wars. If you didn't know, that is a prequel to Advance Wars. However, this bias can probably be justified nowadays, judging from AW's apparent popularity. Anyway, on to the review!

Graphics: 7/10

Well, you never see a background in battle, which costs the game a couple of points for this category (since some earlier NES games had battle backgrounds too), but at least you do see the attacks, and that's important......with this category anyway.

Story: 8/10

From what I understand of it, the world goes nuts and as part of the result Marth suffers exile and separation his sister, and then a few years later Marth going on a revolt after pirates attack the home he had for a few years and having to find people to save or help fix the problems.

Audio: 9/10

Not bad, and the music is catchy too. The music is also worthwhile and it tends to fit the mood, although it is NES style anyway.

Gameplay: 9/10

This is the game's strong point. You and the computer battle on a map, ala AW. However, battling is not the only thing to do; you can also shop, visit villages to save them or houses to get information from (it's in Japanese, though, so it doesn't help), or even talk to ''enemy'' units with certain characters to get them to join. Also, this is the best Fire Emblem to start at, since you have basic stuff to handle. Capturing was a neat feature of Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 (Fire Emblem 5), but it also added to strategy so much that if you decide to play it, well, good luck beating it without cheating. The castle and arena systems in Fire Emblem: Seisen No Keifu (Fire Emblem 4) were also nice, but they made the chapters ridiculously long. (Thankfully, there are only 12 in that one, and you can permanently save in the middle of one in that game too.) Anyway, enough about the other Fire Emblems. The victory condition is to always take over the castle/throne within the stage. However, Marth is the only one who may do this, so either keep him alive or get a Game Over. Your other troops also should be kept alive, as you can't revive them throughout at least most of the game. Unnecessary usage of weapons, especially rare ones (such as Marth's Rapier), is discouraged as well; most items have a limited number of uses (thankfully, for weapons, if an enemy evades your attack, you don't lose the use.....realistic anyway, seeing as you can't wear down a weapon without striking something with it), and if they run out, they're gone, so you should always be ready to replace your stuff or you probably won't make it far. Also note, that like in any typical RPG, units gain experience when they kill an enemy, but unlike a typical RPG, if they attack they still gain experience, and if a unit gets 100 experience points, it gets somewhat stronger. No stat ever goes up by more than one point per level up, and some stats may not even go up. (For some people, they never naturally gain anything for certain stats.) I knocked off a point because of a couple of flaws: the way the arena arena (what's this? To get money and experience for a unit from this place, you have to gamble both some money AND the unit itself first? I wouldn't be surprised if people liked FE4's Arena system more than this game's.), and the way unpromoted healers get experience (they have to get attacked to get it.....at least this flaw is fixed later on, in one way or another, in later FEs, but FE2's way of making healers gain experience can be worse......thankfully you get a reasonable amount of experience with each attack they survive).

Difficulty: 10/10

The difficutly in saving villages, getting treasures, and preventing soldiers from being murdered is VERY high, considering the fact that the enemies will have enough strength and/or numbers to beat you around. If you think ADVANCE WARS was hard, then you're just not going to get much if any further than Chapter 5, even if you know Japanese well enough.

Replayability: 4/10

This is the game's biggest flaw. No multiplayer, despite the fact that some earlier NES games has it. And there are also other Fire Emblems you could be busy with if you replayed this one. Still, replaying the original, unedited Fire Emblem 1 can be a bit worthwhile.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/08/02, Updated 02/24/03