mikemariano

Fire Emblem

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I bought last year's DS remake of Fire Emblem (Shadow Dragon) a few weeks ago, but I'm really starting to loathe it.

Fire Emblem does away with a lot of the JRPG trappings of games like Shining Force 2 (the only other strategy RPG I've played). This isn't necessarily bad---it emphasizes battles over walking around town annoying every villager. But Fire Emblem doesn't feel pure, it feels flimsy. Everything not on the battlefield is either an emotionally inert cutscene or a pause menu.

Fire Emblem has been mentioned on Idle Forums with regard to its permanent death feature---any character that falls in battle stays dead!

Forum member Aon said that permanent death causes you to care more about your characters, but I actually think a lot of characterization is lost by having to create a story where almost everyone is disposable. Most characters only speak in two scenarios:

  1. When they are recruited.
  2. When they die.

That's not much characterization.

I'd forgive all of this if Fire Emblem had better combat. Like Shining Force, the best strategy is to tiptoe close to the enemy, draw a few of their units toward you, and overwhelm them.

But Fire Emblem makes this dead stupid. In Shining Force, turn order is semi-random and you're never quite sure how many spaces enemy units can move. This makes it a challenge to get close, but not too close. In contrast, Fire Emblem lets you move all of your units at once and puts a bright red line on the ground to represent enemy range. Your strategy: don't cross that line until all your units can cross that line.

The rock/paper/scissors combat system of sword/axe/lance also fizzles. Individual unit strength and double-strike advantages play much more of a role. My lance-wielding knight plowed his way through many supposedly advantaged axe-wielding pirates; meanwhile my sword-wielding paladin made little more than a dent.

I suspect that if I don't move my units to the exact squares the developers intend, then it's nothing but one-hit kills and permanent death for me. I don't see why this is an enduring series, or where the strategy comes into play.

Did people just love playing as Marth in Smash Bros?

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I can't comment on the DS version of Fire Emblem - I've only played the GameCube iterations. But I'd say that based on my experience with those games, I disagree with most of your points.

In Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones, characterization, and how much of it you want to explore, is actually tied directly into strategy. You can select a limited number of "conversations" that occur between various members of your party. Each character can only have a total of three conversations, so there's no way to see all the dialogue in one playthrough. Each conversation between two characters also gives the two units bonus stats when they're placed in proximity to each other on the battlefield. As a result, the characters you become the most attached to are also the strongest. There were also lots of between-mission dialogues where certain characters interact with the plot in various ways, assuming they're still alive in your party. (In at least one mission, a certain character can actually be convinced to leave your party and join the enemy depending on how the battle goes.)

I agree that swords/lances/axes are not the most prominent element of the strategy, but what would you expect? It's a tactical RPG - if stats are all that matter, there's no strategy. If tactics are all that matter, it's just a strategy game. For me, Fire Emblem struck a good balance - my tactics affect not only the outcome of the battle, but also how much XP my units receive, as well as whether or not all my characters make it. In turn, the stats granted by my XP and which units survived affected my tactical options.

I do agree that Fire Emblem encourages a very conservative sort of strategy. Since you're overly-cautious about character death, you end up doing a little tip-toe dance to avoid exposing any character to accidental death. But I don't think this detracts from the gameplay that much - every set of rules is going to favor certain strategies over others. Would you rather they *didn't* show you the lines demarcating ranges? That seems like it would only be more frustrating. There are also other strategic decisions to keep in mind. Do I send a unit to that far corner of the map to grab that cool item and risk getting him killed? Should I put my weak units up front so they can grab some XP, or should I keep my stronger units up front to keep everyone safe? Variety in map and mission structure also help with this. I never once felt like there were "right" or "wrong" squares to move my characters onto.

Maybe the qualms you have are exacerbated in the DS version of the game. (If it is, as you say, a remake of the original game, then perhaps they didn't iron out these kinks until later on in the series?) But for me, I found Fire Emblem to be obsessively addicting and quite challenging.

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I have always been tempted to play a Fire Emblem just every time I have been about to take the plunge something cooler has come out, notably Golden Sun. I am likely to get a new DS with Golden Sun DS, Pokemon Heart Gold and possibly some others.

Did people just love playing as Marth in Smash Bros?

Nah, Roy is where it's at.

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Thanks for your response, lobotomy42. It sounds like the Gamecube versions let you get more out of the Fire Emblem setup than this remake does. In Shadow Dragon, there are no conversations and (so far) no cleverly-designed maps. It's all process without any reward showing you why you should be playing a tactical RPG this way.

It's weird; I get the sensation that Shadow Dragon isn't the best introduction to this series, even though it's technically the first game.

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It's weird; I get the sensation that Shadow Dragon isn't the best introduction to this series, even though it's technically the first game.

How far are you into it? I do recall that the first 5-6 maps in a lot of these games are pretty basic.

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How far are you into it? I do recall that the first 5-6 maps in a lot of these games are pretty basic.

Ah, I am at the beginning of Chapter 4, plus four "prologue" battles before that. I expected the prologue to be basic and restricted, so I was disappointed to see that nothing had changed when the numbered Chapters began.

Chapter 4 is when the game finally lets you choose your units, equip them, and place them on the battlefield. This is good to have, but the spartan execution put me off.

It reminded me of the Action Button review of Final Fantasy XIII I linked previously. As described, FFXIII says to the player, "Hey, here's a neat battle system, but you're not allowed to actually use it fully until halfway into the game."

I was worried that Fire Emblem was doing the same thing to me. I'm probably overly suspicious, but there's nothing here I can fall in love with yet.

Especially with dialogue like this:

Malledus: You are a son of House Archanea, and sole heir to Falchion---our only hope of defeating Medeus, emperor of Dolhr.

That...isn't exactly charming. But I guess it beats the dialogue I'm hearing over and over again in Mass Effect 2.

Jacob: Gravity is one mean mother...!

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If your complaints hold through more play, I'd recommend picking up one of the GBA games on the cheap sometime. Like lobotomy42 with the Gamecube ones, the only entries in the series I have played are the two GBA ones (I believe the first was simply "Fire Emblem" and the second "The Sacred Stones" or something similar). I loved both of them though, and have been meaning to try the DS one for a while now. I had to pick between that and Advance Wars: Days of Ruin a while back though, and picked Advance Wars (also a great game) for my Intelligent Systems fix.

What he said about the gamecube version applies to the GBA ones as well. The characters are much more fleshed out. The Sacred Stones adds the affinity system (which sounds like the "bonus stats and conversations" thing that lobotomy mentioned in the GCN versions) and both have a lot of talk between characters. It's too bad, because based on my love for the series I have recommended in the past that friends play Shadow Dragon. From what you're saying the fact that it's a remake of the first game means that many of the systems that made the series so engaging for me just didn't exist in the original and weren't added. Pity. Still, I'd like to give it a shot sometime. Let us know if it improves, eh?

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