Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones

"In case you need to break your head..."

Tactic genre is not my favourite, but when I need to get an entertainment, anything goes. I heard from a friend about this game series, Fire Emblem, and I decided to give it a try.

Plot/Character: 8/10

The game starts with a story of how some ancient heroes banished evil darkness (I rarely find a game in which darkness is good... sigh), and seal it with 5 sacred stones (thus the game title) spread among 5 nations. After ages, one of the nations started a war in hope to actually destroy the stones. What can I say, the plot is not bad, being a classic type of seduced good...

Anyway then, character development is this game's good point. Most characters are well developed, so in case you're done playing one stage, you can enjoy reading all those going on in the game.

Gameplay: 8/10

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stone is basically a standard tactic game, especially battle-wise. During a battle, you have your characters, you can move them once per turn (except for certain times), you must fulfil certain goals and so on. The battle system is as such that you must move all your characters first before your enemies get to move (or you can end your turn prematurely if so wished). When two characters are engaged in a battle, they'll both attack, and sometimes, some combatants can even attack twice in one battle.

When you're playing through stages, you can recruit new members time and time, sometimes for granted, sometimes you have to save them first, or some other times, when there are multiple recruitables, they go in chain: Recruit one, let the recruited get another, let the latter get even another etc. And speaking of characters, you'd definitely want not only to get them, but treasure them as well. One, those recruitables almost always come with some items you can use, and two, if any of your character dies, they cannot be resurected at all, so you'd better be careful with your weak units when you carry them to a stage.

In this game, each of your characters have stats which can be levelled up by beating up enemies (i.e. gaining experience points). A strong character will get less experience when beating an enemy, while a weaker character may instantly level up if they kill a strong enemy. Some characters have the chance to 'evolve' after reaching certain level, and this is good and bad: Good, because your character becomes stronger, bad, because stronger characters take ages to level up. There are multiple evolving methods: Using a special item, or exclusive to certain characters, by levelling them up enough.

Your characters need weapon to actually attack, they can't attack barehanded. Different characters use different weapons, and you can buy these weapons either during an exploration, a stage (if there's a shop), or before starting a stage. Be warned: weapon use is limited: After certain amount of use, a weapon will disappear, so you'll need to get a new one. You can buy multiple levels of weapons of differing powers, but the stronger a weapon is, the more fragile they become, that is, they will break earlier.

Aside from the constant battles, you get to semi-explore the land. You are shown a map with multiple cities, landmarks etc, and you can stop by these locations, mostly to buy stuffs. Everytime you beat a stage though, some landmarks will become infested with enemies, and you're free to come there to break them. Also, both during a stage and during exploration, there are some training spots to power up your characters if you wish to do so.

Playability: 3/10

This game stands out for being an awesome tactic game for being so true to most tactic games I've played (the few of them): Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones is insanely hard for a lot of reasons.

One: I did say that the game features a levelling up system, stores, and other things which make this game a semi RPG- not. This isn't an RPG. Look at what I say about the weapon systems: They are limited use: Once they break, they're gone, and they're expensive, and to make things worse, money is scarce. So this game is more truly a tactic-survival genre rather than tactic-RPG. Sure, I did say about training spots and such. Problem: How long can you level up before you realize you have no more weapon? So rather than training, you'd very better forget your weaker characters and mop the game with your strongest units, unless I'm missing something...

Two: This one is quite understandable, but very annoying nonetheless. Tactic games are about strategies, so if you make a wrong strategy, you're screwed. The worst problem about this is that the game almost always forces you to make the mistake when you're almost done with the stage, forcing you to replay a long stage. Remember that once a character dies, they can't return for the rest of the game (yep, the rest of the game). See below.

Three: The game AI is pretty advanced, which is good for gamers, but that means another problem. Most of the time, enemies will target your weakest unit, and since once a unit is gone they're gone for good, you may find yourself replaying a stage way too many times because you accidentally put a weak character on enemy's line of fire, mostly because you didn't think the enemy can attack from a distance. Sollution? Put your weaker characters behind, and things will go worse. Yep, that's true. In most of the stages, just when you think you're advancing well, suddenly enemies will pop out from behind you for a sandwich attack. Nice. To worsen the matter, most of the time enemies will have much more mobility that your units, so when you think you're safe, you're dead.

All I can sum up is that this game is definitely only for either the tactic gods, the super patient or insane bunch of fools. None others allowed (Okay, I'm neither of the 3, and I find that I hate this game)

Audio: 7/10

Well, the BGMs are definitely nice. The only problem lies on the sound effect: They're good, but kinda lacking here and there, or otherwise overdone.

Visual: 7/10

Sigh... talk about recolors... but then again, this game has not much need on graphics anyway... the only eye candies are the animations (some enemies particularly look good when they attack) and the character portraits.

Replay value: 5/10

Beat the game and be done with it. This game is definitely long (thanks to the difficulty), though, I forgot to tell you, there're two game paths you can take in the game, each with semi-unique story, so maybe you wouldn't mind playing them twice just to experience both plays.

Overall:

Like I said in the Playability section, this game is not for commoners. Quite a good game, but its unfriendliness is definitely a problem. Judge yourself: You want this game for fun or frustration?

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/31/05