I Did Promise Content

I promised fun stuff, so instead you can read nerd stuff.

Today, I want to talk about Fire Emblem, a series of strategy games spanning 20 years or so, that I've been a fan of for the last two or three years, by Intelligent Systems. They're relatively well-known in the west, after leaving Japan's shores officially in 2003, and have a fairly impressive fandom.

The series also thrives on several factors often not common in the SRPG genre:

• Permanent death: You lose a character; they are lost forever. 
• This is being changed with the advent of Casual mode
• Huge armies with every character named (and hopefully with a backstory)
• Coupled with perma-death, the average player is prone to resetting every time they lose. The death quotes often being tragic do not help with this compulsion. 
• Breakable weapons
• Everything, including the UBER-weapon that you shouldn't use until the final boss, will break if used a certain number of times. Combined with limited funds, this can be a pretty wonderful resource management lesson. 
• This was changed in FE2 where weapons cannot break, and FE10, where certain super-spoiler events can stop weapon breakage. 
• Luck-based leveling
• Each unit has growth rates, and so their stats which, unlike most games, stay in the double digits, will go up purely based on luck - say a unit has a 35% growth in HP. They therefore have a 35% chance of getting a +1 to their HP stat. 
• The fun thing about this is that every game you play will be subtly different because even the godly units can get badly screwed by the Random Number Generator, or the RNG Goddess as known in common parlance. You might get an amazing unit one run, and the next one, that same person will fail horrifyingly as you weep in his wake. 

They are however more famous for some of the incredible bullshit they pull on you at regular intervals and the incredible satisfaction and fun you get from the games. It may seem a little strange - you aren't actively involved in the game. There aren't any super-sexy combat situations to mash buttons in. No guns, man. The graphics are passable, but not great, and most of the time the animations are going to be switched off because they get kinda boring after the 10000000th time. Myself, I love the series, though I haven't played all of the games yet, and not all of them at MAXIMUM bullshit mode.

I've played, out of the twelve released (soon to be thirteen), seven titles. I'm planning on starting an eighth soon enough, which I may chronicle on this blog. If I feel like it. These are (in order of number, name, translated title if applicable, system and highest difficulty withstood):

1. FE4: Seisen no Keifu [Geneology of the Holy War] SNES -> Normal mode
   This actually has a Hard mode hidden in the Config menu. I honestly had no clue about this until an LPer on SomethingAwful showed it off. The more you know, I guess. It also is one of the few games that literally sends a wave o'dudes after you every few turns, and it is amazing. 
2. FE6: Fuin no Tsurugi [Sword of Seals] GBA -> Normal mode
   My masochism has no bounds, but the units here are so bad that I balk at the thought of using them in Hard. Really, mediocre people in any other game are truly gods among men in FE6. 
3. FE7: Blazing Sword (prequel to FE6) GBA -> Prologue/Eliwood Hard and Hector Normal
   This one is funny because it has three mode of gameplay - a tutorial prologue called Lyn Mode, the regular game in Eliwood mode, and the regular game in Hector mode. The names of the modes are based of the main characters in each mode. 
4. FE8: Sacred Stones GBA -> Hard mode
   This is the easiest game for a reason. Hard mode is a joke. 
5. FE9: Path of Radiance Gamecube -> Normal mode
   There is no reason I haven't played Hard yet except lack of motivation. It's pretty easy too, in comparison to the other Hards. 
6. FE10: Radiant Dawn (sequel to FE9) Wii - Hard mode
   Easy is the Japanese Normal, Normal is the Japanese Hard and Hard is the Japanese Maniac mode. This was obviously Nintendo trolling the people who said the west got only the easy games. It's also unironically my favourite. 
7. FE11: Shadow Dragon (remake of FE1) NDS - Hard 4
   This is also funny because it has Normal, and then five degrees of Hard, which is basically another word for degrees of sadism. Normal has a prologue that tries to explain the setting to you, while Hard 1-5 do not. 

I'm planning on starting FE5: Thracia 776 soon enough, and once the patch for FE12 is complete, I'll go through that as well. I refuse to inflict 1, 2, and 3 upon myself because of how unpolished they feel to me now. I did try 2, though I gave up after being mobbed by Zombie Dragons. 

Anyways, enough of me ranting about my love for Fire Emblem. Such a cheesy title. Trust me though - if you like tactical games in any way, then this is a must try series. I'd recommend either 7 or 8 as a gateway, though 9 is just as good if you own a Wii.