Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi

"Matches wits with Fire Emblem 7 in almost every way."

It's probably going to seem strange that this review spends a lot of its time comparing Fire Emblem 6 to Fire Emblem 7, especially when 6 came first. The thing is, most people are likely going to experience the US released game before they try to venture into this one, so that's the reasoning behind the logic. What people will be familiar with is Fire Emblem 6's main character – Roy, the sword-wielding fighter from Super Smash Bros. Melee. Roy takes up the position as the lead unit in Fire Emblem 6 and travels through a multitude of missions as he finds out the truth behind an invasion into his home country.

If you've played any of the other Gameboy Advance Fire Emblem installments, you should know what to expect here. The gameplay is nearly identical in all three iterations, and the flow of the game is equally the same. You start the game with your small band of units, and as you progress through the story, you acquire new troops and level up your existing ones by winning battles with enemy units. In fact, the gameplay aspect are so similar, that if you weren't aware of it, you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Fire Emblem 6 and Fire Emblem 7. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, though, as the formula is already solid as-is, so it's hard to complain about sticking with something that works. That's not to say that both games are exactly the same. Fire Emblem 6 is noticeably more difficult than Fire Emblem 7 was, at least on average. While the last few missions don't keep the difficulty up as well as they should, you'll have a lot more units thrown at you than you're used to. In addition, you don't get the 10-mission tutorial that you did in 7; so if you don't know what you're doing, don't expect any handholding.

The similarities don't end at gameplay, however. Fire Emblem 6's story is also very similar in content. You have one country invading another for various reasons, and it all ends up having something to do with dragons. To be fair, both games take place in the same world in roughly the same time period, so it only makes sense to have some sort of coherency there. And really this is more of a fault of 7 than it is of 6, seeing as this game came first, so you can't really dock points for that. The story is certainly engaging enough, and there are a number of points in the game where the path branches off into two directions, so you'll need to play through the game twice if you want to experience all of the scenarios.

On a graphical front, Fire Emblem 6 is about as visually appealing as you'd expect from a Gameboy Advance game. The characters are easy to see on the screen, and the character portraits look nice. Menus are easy to navigate and utilize and status displays are equally as easy to read, which is good because you'll be working your way through menus and status screens quite a bit as you play through the game. Much in the same way, the sound gets the job done to the best of its ability. None of the tunes will likely stick with you after you've finished the game, but they never become obtrusive or obnoxious.

If you've played any of the other Gameboy Advance Fire Emblem titles and are hungry for more handheld strategy, you really can't go wrong with Fire Emblem 6. It might be a bit tougher that the others, but it's nothing you can't overcome with proper strategy and some ingenuity. Even though the core number of missions is smaller than that of Fire Emblem 7, each mission tends to be longer, so Fire Emblem 6 has longer legs than you'd expect, and you'll probably play it for 25 to 30 hours in one playthrough. If you're looking for a good GBA strategy fix, you can't go wrong with Fire Emblem 6.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/25/08

Game Release: Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi (JP, 03/29/02)