Originally written: December 21st, 2008
This year I have played through all four Fire Emblem games currently released in North America. In January I played through Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn on easy mode, due to everybody saying how difficult the game was. During the summer I picked up Fire Emblem and beat the game on Hector Hard Mode, a setting that managed to kick my ass ever since I first got the game. During the fall, I played through Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance on Hard Mode (though PoR lacks the Japanese version's Maniac mode, so it's not that big of an accomplishment), and then I played through Radiant Dawn again, this time on normal. Now I've gotten through playing through Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones on the hardest difficulty setting, even going so far as to complete all ten floors of the game's super-hard extra dungeon.
And I'm going to rant about this while I can: what the hell am I supposed to call the first NA-released Fire Emblem? It doesn't have a subtitle, so if I talk about it, one might think I'm talking about the series in general. I could call it "Rekka no Ken", or the translation "Blazing Sword", but newcomers to Fire Emblem wouldn't know which game I'm referring to. And I can't call it "Fire Emblem 1" because it's actually the 7th game in the series (damn you Japan). However, FE7 is the most common way to refer to it, so if you didn't know that, I'm going to call it that from now on.
Anyway, Fire Emblem 7 is among my favorite games of all time, possibly because...it's flawless. Really. All the problems I've seen people have with it are all intentionally part of its design and serve a specific purpose. Don't like that you can't bring characters back to life? Go play Final Fantasy and spam Phoenix Downs, you wimp. You shouldn't have let him die in the first place. Complaining that you got critical'd with a 1 percent chance? For one, most of the time you should prepare yourself just in case luck turns against you, and besides, it doesn't happen often enough to justify changing the game. And it's not just a lack of flaws that make Fire Emblem great; Pikmin 2 was flawless but it doesn't rank among my favorite games. The Fire Emblem games have great stories, likeable characters, incredible depth and intentionally challenging gameplay, as well as a great, stylish art design. Hell, there's even just enough bugs to let you bend the game's rules without breaking the difficulty curve. Probably wasn't intentional, but cool nonetheless.
And after saying that, I just have to give an example. In FE7, there's a glitch with the mine item that allows you to take control of the enemies for a single turn. Usually the best course of action is just to make them all discard their weapons to make them easier to kill. However, in one chapter of the game, the storyline dictates that the boss is supremely overpowered and should be avoided. However, instead of making the character herself get strong stats, they just silently added the bonuses to the weapon she was carrying. If you use the mine glitch in this chapter, you can actually make her trade the item with another enemy (one with a useless droppable item), and then kill that enemy and get this superpowered weapon for yourself. Sadly, it breaks rather easily, but that's still really friggin' cool.
As well as all that, I think one of the main reason I like Fire Emblem so much is consistently good game design. I rag on the game design a lot in my Sonic Unleashed and Tales of the Abyss reviews, but the Fire Emblem developers actually seem to know what the hell they're doing. The storyline is good, but at the very least they make every cutscene skippable so you don't have to watch them if you're playing the game over again, or even if you just need to play the level or chapter over. None of the games are filled with technobabble (stupid TotA) and let a new player easily understand it the first time through. Even then, returning players can fulfill certain criteria in order to see more of the story, including hidden backstory about the side characters. It just gives you a ton of incentive to replay it.
In fact, the replayability of FE7 is probably why I still enjoy the other games in the series, even though they barely change the core gameplay. The developers seem to realize that the formula they made is a winning one, so changing it too much might end up hurting it. Yet, they also realize that they need to at least try to switch up the game so that the experience still differs. Sacred Stones had that branching promotion system, Path of Radiance gave us a base at with to distribute EXP and buy weapons, and Radiant Dawn gave us a third tier of promotions. I mean, when it comes down to it, swords still beat axes, Pegasi are still weak to bows, and there's always an overpowered Paladin at the beginning of the game to help you along, but does it really matter? The core gameplay is fine; that's why the developers are so hesitant to change it.
However...there are still a few problems with the series that I do wish they would change; this mostly applies to Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. Sacred Stones was flawed, too, but it just has an overall rushed feeling to it, so I'm not sure blaming the developers is the right idea. However, the console games have serious presentation problems. Talking heads is fine with the GBA, since that's all it's capable of, but why are you still relying on them when you have a much more powerful system at your disposal? (at the very least, give the characters a few more expressions instead of awkwardly trying to display their emotions through dialogue) The few cutscenes in the games look absolutely brilliant, but why are there so few of them? Even worse...why is the voice acting of these games so horrid? Radiant Dawn had an extremely badass cutscene ruined by awful voice acting. If a game like Disgaea can have good english voice acting, why not Fire Emblem, a freaking Nintendo game? It seems like these presentation issues are keeping Fire Emblem from getting the same kind of respect as Mario, Zelda, or Metroid. It's a shame, because I hold the series in much higher regard.
Ultimately, where's the series going to go? I plan on digging up ROMs of some of the older games in the series, and Marth's game is due on the DS in February next year, so that will be nice. However, I still have a few ideas of what the series could do. Going from turn-based strategy to real-time strategy could be a nice recreation of the series, though that could and probably would anger a lot of fans. Another idea is to take inspiration from Disgaea and make the game bright, cartoony, and nonsensical. Come on, this is a series with a flirty cleric, a swordswoman who does nothing but search for her ultimate rival, and a mage with a stomach the size of the grand canyon. Not to mention the sprite animations where they swing around weapons twice their height and do backflips in order to indicate they got a critical hit. I mean, with Advance Wars they took a cartoony series and made it dark; why not try it the other way around?
This year I have played through all four Fire Emblem games currently released in North America. In January I played through Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn on easy mode, due to everybody saying how difficult the game was. During the summer I picked up Fire Emblem and beat the game on Hector Hard Mode, a setting that managed to kick my ass ever since I first got the game. During the fall, I played through Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance on Hard Mode (though PoR lacks the Japanese version's Maniac mode, so it's not that big of an accomplishment), and then I played through Radiant Dawn again, this time on normal. Now I've gotten through playing through Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones on the hardest difficulty setting, even going so far as to complete all ten floors of the game's super-hard extra dungeon.
And I'm going to rant about this while I can: what the hell am I supposed to call the first NA-released Fire Emblem? It doesn't have a subtitle, so if I talk about it, one might think I'm talking about the series in general. I could call it "Rekka no Ken", or the translation "Blazing Sword", but newcomers to Fire Emblem wouldn't know which game I'm referring to. And I can't call it "Fire Emblem 1" because it's actually the 7th game in the series (damn you Japan). However, FE7 is the most common way to refer to it, so if you didn't know that, I'm going to call it that from now on.
Anyway, Fire Emblem 7 is among my favorite games of all time, possibly because...it's flawless. Really. All the problems I've seen people have with it are all intentionally part of its design and serve a specific purpose. Don't like that you can't bring characters back to life? Go play Final Fantasy and spam Phoenix Downs, you wimp. You shouldn't have let him die in the first place. Complaining that you got critical'd with a 1 percent chance? For one, most of the time you should prepare yourself just in case luck turns against you, and besides, it doesn't happen often enough to justify changing the game. And it's not just a lack of flaws that make Fire Emblem great; Pikmin 2 was flawless but it doesn't rank among my favorite games. The Fire Emblem games have great stories, likeable characters, incredible depth and intentionally challenging gameplay, as well as a great, stylish art design. Hell, there's even just enough bugs to let you bend the game's rules without breaking the difficulty curve. Probably wasn't intentional, but cool nonetheless.
And after saying that, I just have to give an example. In FE7, there's a glitch with the mine item that allows you to take control of the enemies for a single turn. Usually the best course of action is just to make them all discard their weapons to make them easier to kill. However, in one chapter of the game, the storyline dictates that the boss is supremely overpowered and should be avoided. However, instead of making the character herself get strong stats, they just silently added the bonuses to the weapon she was carrying. If you use the mine glitch in this chapter, you can actually make her trade the item with another enemy (one with a useless droppable item), and then kill that enemy and get this superpowered weapon for yourself. Sadly, it breaks rather easily, but that's still really friggin' cool.
As well as all that, I think one of the main reason I like Fire Emblem so much is consistently good game design. I rag on the game design a lot in my Sonic Unleashed and Tales of the Abyss reviews, but the Fire Emblem developers actually seem to know what the hell they're doing. The storyline is good, but at the very least they make every cutscene skippable so you don't have to watch them if you're playing the game over again, or even if you just need to play the level or chapter over. None of the games are filled with technobabble (stupid TotA) and let a new player easily understand it the first time through. Even then, returning players can fulfill certain criteria in order to see more of the story, including hidden backstory about the side characters. It just gives you a ton of incentive to replay it.
In fact, the replayability of FE7 is probably why I still enjoy the other games in the series, even though they barely change the core gameplay. The developers seem to realize that the formula they made is a winning one, so changing it too much might end up hurting it. Yet, they also realize that they need to at least try to switch up the game so that the experience still differs. Sacred Stones had that branching promotion system, Path of Radiance gave us a base at with to distribute EXP and buy weapons, and Radiant Dawn gave us a third tier of promotions. I mean, when it comes down to it, swords still beat axes, Pegasi are still weak to bows, and there's always an overpowered Paladin at the beginning of the game to help you along, but does it really matter? The core gameplay is fine; that's why the developers are so hesitant to change it.
However...there are still a few problems with the series that I do wish they would change; this mostly applies to Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn. Sacred Stones was flawed, too, but it just has an overall rushed feeling to it, so I'm not sure blaming the developers is the right idea. However, the console games have serious presentation problems. Talking heads is fine with the GBA, since that's all it's capable of, but why are you still relying on them when you have a much more powerful system at your disposal? (at the very least, give the characters a few more expressions instead of awkwardly trying to display their emotions through dialogue) The few cutscenes in the games look absolutely brilliant, but why are there so few of them? Even worse...why is the voice acting of these games so horrid? Radiant Dawn had an extremely badass cutscene ruined by awful voice acting. If a game like Disgaea can have good english voice acting, why not Fire Emblem, a freaking Nintendo game? It seems like these presentation issues are keeping Fire Emblem from getting the same kind of respect as Mario, Zelda, or Metroid. It's a shame, because I hold the series in much higher regard.
Ultimately, where's the series going to go? I plan on digging up ROMs of some of the older games in the series, and Marth's game is due on the DS in February next year, so that will be nice. However, I still have a few ideas of what the series could do. Going from turn-based strategy to real-time strategy could be a nice recreation of the series, though that could and probably would anger a lot of fans. Another idea is to take inspiration from Disgaea and make the game bright, cartoony, and nonsensical. Come on, this is a series with a flirty cleric, a swordswoman who does nothing but search for her ultimate rival, and a mage with a stomach the size of the grand canyon. Not to mention the sprite animations where they swing around weapons twice their height and do backflips in order to indicate they got a critical hit. I mean, with Advance Wars they took a cartoony series and made it dark; why not try it the other way around?
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