Fire Emblem

"A Legend of Swords and Dragons (10 for a Reason)"

(Note that All of this is in my opinion, and is just what I think of the game)

First of all I'd like to say that we missed out on a great thing by not getting the Fire Emblem games sooner. Second this is one of the only 5 games I will give a 10. You might've heard of Fire Emblem (or FE) from Super Smash Brothers Melee, because Marth and Roy are in it. To prevent future complications and n00bisim know that MARTH IS NOT IN THIS GAME. Roy is Eliwood's son! He is the star of the sequel to this Fire Emblem.

Now to the review.

Gameplay
Fire Emblem is a Strategy RPG much like the Old-School Genesis game Shining Force, but not straying too far off the system of games such as the Final Fantasy Tactics series, and has some elements of Ogre Battle. But the biggest similarity is Advance Wars, but with a medieval setting. Now don't fret, if you don't like Advance Wars or aren't good at it, that does NOT mean you will suck at this (myself being one of the thousands that suck at Advance Wars, but I'm good at this and other S-RPG's).

Fire Emblem has a certain battle design, It will start out with a conversation, send you to a battle preparations screen (there are some exceptions that won't have this screen), here is the part where you have a battle, it will have the boss say something, then there will be a ending scene, then you go to a save screen. Saving is something else I must talk about. To some people the save system will become very frustrating and to others it will be a good change. You can save 3 ways: One at the end of a battle, another to suspend the game, and the other is if you turn off the game it will save on the LAST action you do. So if a knight kills you, and you turn it off before the knight can hit you, and you restart the game, the knight will still kill you. It's complicated, but once you play the game it will become easier to understand. A battle in Fire Emblem works like this: you have a turn to do as much havoc or whatever as you can, then the enemies do the same. In order to win battles there are an objective to complete. These are the objectives:
-Seize the Castle (bring Eliwood [or Lyn during her chapter] to a Castle after defeating a boss)
-Defeat All Enemies
-Protect [name here] for [number of turns here]

Character customization isn't too much different than any other RPG or Strategy RPG but it has a few differences. You can get higher stats by gaining experience points and gaining a level. This gets higher the higher level you are. Each character has a certain growth rate potential in each stat (the percentage it will get 1-4 points in a stat), and sometimes it can be aggravating to get nothing in a couple stats. This makes it so that if you have two Fire Emblem games, one will be slightly different in character design than the other. There are a great amount of classes from the horse-mounted Cavalier to the tank that is a General. Be aware of the fact that each character you get has a set class, and the only way to change it is to promote it (unless it's already promoted). You can do this by giving them an item if they are above level 10. Only promote a character if they're level 20.. Trust me on this, because if they can not gain a level missed from before. Alright that sounds confusing so I'll explain it like this: Each character has a max level of 40, 20 from the unpromoted class, and 20 for the promoted class. If you promote at level 17 you can only get a max level of 37. Remember this it will help you!

Now there is no game that is perfect, so this game DOES have flaws despite the fact that it's a ten. The shop system in this game is flawed, and you can only buy things in certain battles with an armory or vendor. Money you can only get by selling items or finding it. I don't find this as a flaw; but there is something about this game that is very innovative but can be VERY frustrating: If a unit dies, it's gone FOREVER. The only way to revive it is by restarting the chapter. This isn't that hard if you're really good at this game, but if your not, this can be very difficult. Let me give you some advice about this: Always make sure that a unit will not be killed by planning ahead and making sure that if an enemy hits you, your unit wont die. Keep units' health as high as possible as much as possible. Don't send a unit like an archer or mage into a huge group of enemies, it most likely will die, but again there are exceptions to this. And finally never send a unit off alone unless it's really powerful and has stats a lot higher than the enemies.

All in all gameplay is quite solid and has very small flaws except for the shopping and maybe the character loss.
-
Gameplay: 9.5

Graphics
Graphics in this game aren't amazing but they aren't bad either. The cinematics or conversation sequences are nice because the talking characters blink and change expressions when the dialogue is displayed. There are some still anime images, which are awesome. The battle graphics are not that good as a lot of them are sort of blocky, but when you engage an enemy it goes into a little battle screen (much like Shining Force or Advance Wars) and those graphics are great. Nothing phenomenal about this aspect, but nothing near bad either.
-
Graphics: 8.6

Audio
Audio for Gameboy Advance games is always a little bit limited, what with the one speaker and all, but the sounds and music in this game are great. There are sounds like sword clashings, and stuff like that, and the music is memorable (the song together we ride is a great tune and its on Super Smash Brothers Melee). Again nothing that deserves a standing ovation, but very good none the less.
Audio : 9.6

Story
I really wish I could give this more than a ten. This has one of the best stories I've ever seen in a video game. I don't want want to ruin too much of it so I'll be brief.

A long time ago humans and dragons co-existed in peace. But after several disagreements they began to fight one another, thus making the humans banish the dragons to a seprate realm. Now something is threatening the threshold between the two realms, and the world is dependent upon three heroes who must save the world from annihilation.

The game begins when Lyn finds your character (a tactician who has no part of this game except for the fact that you are mentioned in movie scenes and the character seem to depend on you). She then finds two knights Kent, who is a serious man but is very loyal, and Sain, who is a flirt and is very humorous but also very loyal. Lyn's grandfather falls ill and this leads to a huge tale of corruption and power.

You control Lyn through the first 10 chapters which is really only 1/4 of this game, and you control Eliwood from chapter 11 to the end of the game.
-
Story: 10

Replay
Replay in this game is actually high for an RPG. There are about 31 chapters and a lot of side quest chapters so there's about 39-40 chapters in the game. You can also unlock another person's mode where you play from chapter 11 to the end of the game, which adds more chapters. Then there's hard mode.. which is well.. HARD. Hard mode with Lyn and Eliwood's story plus the secret person's chapters, is well.. You do the math. Then there's the sound test, and you must hear the songs before their added, so you have to go to every side quest to accomplish this. There's a support conversation section which is added by having certain members of you party talk with one another. There's also a link feature in which you can compose a team of characters and fight someone else's team. I see this as a Poke' on battle. There's a whole lot of content on here about 120 hours+ if you want to unlock and finish everything.

Replay : 9

Buy or Rent?
I strongly suggest you buy this game, because of its sheer beauty. But there is something for everyone here, so not many people will be disappointed with this title.

BUY! BUY! BUY!

I love this game so much, its got many of the things I look for in a game. Its even on my top 5 games of all time, as stated earlier. If you don't believe me play this game yourself!!
TOTAL: 10

Fire Emblem 7: Sword of Fire

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/24/03