Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi

"1st GBA Fire Emblem, and it's amazing."

Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals (or Sealed Sword, but Sealed Sword shortens to SS which sacred stones also does, so I say SoS,) is the 6th (out of ten so far) game in the Fire Emblem strategy rpg series. It's the first game on the GBA, and it's great!

Story:10/10

Unlike other Fire Emblem games where you're the nice, perfect heroes stopping somebody from destroying/conquering the world, you're the Lycia Alliance Army and half the places you go, you're considered the bad guys! The villain isn't your typical madman, he was an abused child and mentally scarred, which made him think that he should "liberate the world" and give it back to the original owners: the dragons. Roy's army is fighting him, but that's not what the whole game is about. Sometimes Roy is helping out someone in need or getting the Etrurian army to join him instead of always just charging head on to Zephiel like the heroes do in other games.

Controls:9/10

The controls are easy to understand, and they even put a helpful little tutorial in the extras menue so you can easily learn to play. The only reason this didn't get a ten was because it's originally a japanese game, so the only way to play it in English is to (most likely illegally) emulate and patch it. A fairly simple process, but some people don't know how to do that, so the controls wouldn't be so easy for them. I didn't know how to patch this game, as it was my first game when I discovered emulators, and didn't know how to patch it. My first playthrough was completely in japanese, and I played it fine. If this is your first FE game then MAKE SURE you have the translation. In fact, don't even play this if it's your first FE game, you'll get slaughtered.

Music/Sound Effects:9/10

This game is pretty much like the rest of the FEs in music. A great preperations theme, good battle themes, and excellent boss themes. The map themes were nice, with my favorite: In the Name of Bern as Zephiel's phase music. Sometimes the music could get a little monotonous, though, so that's why the score isn't higher. The sound effects were just as good, and you really felt every sword slash, bolt of lightning, and devastating critical attack.

Graphics:8/10

A definate step up from Thracia 776 and Genealogy of the Holy War, you can tell units apart better, where on that, mage knights, duke knights, lord knights, great knights, master knights, bow knights, forest knights, and paladins all looked pretty similar, but on this game you can easily tell all classes apart. The battles where beautifully done, it's just the battle maps started to get a little boring, as they do in all FEs. A different shape, with mountains and forests in different places, but each fort and castle looked the same as the previous one.

Gameplay:10/10

This plays just like other english FEs, with just a few differences. The mission objective is always to seize the castle/gate instead of other things like defeat boss, survive, protect the throne, or claim a space. There is no cool class/powerful dark wizard at the end of the game. There are lots of dragons, instead of a few at the end of the game. There are 2 sets of routes, but the former are only 2 chapters. These different routes are similar to Eirika and Ephraim routes: They are in different places and have a different storyline than the other. This makes it impossible to so all of the game until you beat it twice. The battles went very smoothly, with just the right ammount of difficulty to keep you on your toes.

Difficulty:9/10

If this was your first FE, or your first strategy game at all, you would be slaughtered very early on. For some reason, the japanese thought that we americans (and europeans) were pansies and couldn't take a hard game, so they made FEs 7-9(and possibly 10) incredibly easy. Don't think this game will be the same. All japanese-only FEs (possibly excluding Fe4) are much harder than the english games. The enemies stats are much higher, your characters are weaker, and there is always lots of distractions (chests, villages, new characters) that keep you from fighting and defending yourself. Do not try hard mode unless you want to be trying to bite a whole in your computer/gba/sp/ds/whatever many times. Or if you're really good at strategy rpgs. This game's easy mode is about the same as Eliwood Hard Mode or Hard mode on PoR. It is NOT EASY, but that's what makes it fun. You have to really plan things out, there's no "Oh, I think I'll attack him, it won't really matter if I miss and get hurt." It's "Hm, should I send him there? No, he has 85% chance to hit, but if he misses then he'll be in a bad spot on the enemy phase. I could take a chance to send a dodgy healer there, but that might end in death, too. I could leave the enemy there, but they might kill this character that I'm going to recruit. Roy has to be in range of this character, so I need to move him up there, but I can't let him die. Hmm, what to do...what to do..." On a lot of chapters you can't just start playing, you have to look at the map (kinda like chess) and analyze the field, check the enemies weapons/stats, and see what other chests or villages you need to get.

Replayabillity:8/10
You have to replay this game twice to see every part of the game (except supports) but ONLY if you got every gaiden chapter in the game and the perfect ending at the end. You'll want to play the game multiple times, to test new characters or build up different supports. There's always link arena and the trial maps to play if you're bored after you beat the game, then you could start anew.

Final Score: 9/10
A great game, but not the best in the world.

Rent, buy, don't bother?:
In a person who doesn't care about doing something illegal (like me)'s case: emulate it. Free and it's fun to mess around with codebreaker. Have a Zephiel who's really Marcus as a mamkute kill Yahn. Now that's messed up.

If you can't/don't want to do that, then buy it. It costs around $50 and is only in japanese. Your choice.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/24/07