Okay, so you've played Advance Wars. Time to step it up a notch with this wonderful, until recently Japan-only series. Fire Emblem for the GBA is the first game of the series to see a US release, but it's the 7th game in the series from Japan.
The concept is simple, yet so very complex. As you start the game, you are a tactician, and you wake up in the house of Lyn, a nomad from the Sacae plains. As the two of you speak, you learn of her tragic past and of her limitless resolve. Then, a noise outside startles the girl, and she runs outside. Finding a small band of thugs descending on her house, she requests your aid as a battle tactician to fight them off. They pose little challenge (None actually, the game holds your hand through this entire battle), and afterwards Lyn decides to journey to find out who she really is. Little did she know how much there was to find.
If you only had Lyn (and further in the game, the game switches to two other characters, Eliwood and Hector, as the "main" characters), you wouldn't make it very far in the harsh, bandit filled world. As such, in your travels, you come upon dozens of soldiers willing to join your cause. The romantic buffoon Sain. The proud cavalier Kent. The axe-weilding Dorcas just looking for money to help his family. The male-fearing Pegasus rider Florina. The arrogant and annoying Serra. The list goes on and on, each character has their own personality and reason for joining you. Each party member becomes close to you, which makes it hard to see them...die.
Yes, die. Fighters who lose all of their HP aren't just "Phoenix Down" dead. They're "FMV Sequence" dead, and they ain't coming back (Although some who die in Lyn's chapter may reappear "healed" during Eliwoods chapter). This throws and interesting dynamic into the game. Do you really want to risk your archer getting near enough to a boss to kill him so they can get the experience, or send in your unstoppable Paladin for a guaranteed kill, but wasting the experience on someone who does't need it (you who've played, you KNOW what Paladin I'm referring to).
On to the weapons. Each character weilds three types of weapons and magic. For weapons, axes, spears, and swords, and most characters can only weild one or two types. As for magic, there is Light, Dark, and Anima (elemental) magic tomes. Now then, the easiest way to describe the weapon system is rock-paper-scissors. Rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, paper beats rock. In the same way, axes beat spears, spears beat swords, and swords beat axes. This is a *crucial* order to learn, so you know who to send in to take on what enemies. Sending in a swordfighter to attack an enemy with a spear will end badly for you, but send in someone with an axe, and now you're talking. There are some slight deviations though. Airborne units like Pegasus Knights take double damage from arrows. The same three-way hierarchy applies to magic too.
For a GBA game, Fire Emblem musters quite an epic story, and lasts quite a while too (30 individual battles in all, not counting extra ones that can be obtained). All things considered, this is one of the flagship titles on the Game Boy Advance right now. If you enjoyed Advance Wars, Fire Emblem will blow you away.
Haha, I thought this was a thread about the new Fire Emblem being released next week since I just clicked the link from the New Posts listing. I was really confused when you started by saying it would be the first Fire Emblem released in the U.S. Anyway, I fell in love with Fire Emblem after playing it as many of you might know based on the 10 part History of Fire Emblem I wrote that N-Philes has since taken down. Anyone who hasn't seen it can go to
http://www.derekmiller.us/fireemblem. Good review EM.
<i>Edit: Hmm...I'll keep this for that interesting Fire Emblem page. Thanks, Derek.</i>
I beat this today (Eliwood's Normal mode), finally. Beat the dragon with Athos using Luna. Just heal him after every time he's hit, get the healer out of there, and repeat a few times... I did lose Rebecca during the first part of the final mission (Vaida had a 2% chance of critical, which was the only way she could win. So of course she criticals... ack...), but decided to finish anyway because redoing the mission over and over is very, very tedious.
Not sure if I'm going to replay it in Hector's mode...
Oh, I beat TSS a week or two ago as well. FE was more satisfying... longer and more challenging. And I actually had a few A-level supports; in TSS I don't think I had any...
Man, and Sacred Stones made it a lot easier to get supports too...you must have done a lot of just sitting around and continuously hitting "End Turn" until your option came up. In SS, I would get supports without even expecting them at times (Colm and Moulder, in particular. What an odd match.)
I never did finish FE. I got to the dragon, but when I played, I largely underused my lords, thus severely hampering my attack power. I couldn't win, to be blunt. I haven't had the motivation to start again just to beat that one inal battle, especially now that I have the far superior SS and PoR.
I had A-support with Hector and Florina and Erk and Priscilla... would have had Lyn and Eliwood if I hadn't been stupid and wasted Lyn's last support (almost restarted mission ... what was it, 29 or something? over that... didn't, but almost did...)... but yes, the only way to get any supports is wasting dozens of turns hitting 'end turn'. In both games. It's tedious, frusterating, overly annoying, and it REALLY gets bad when then you lose someone fighting the boss -- since you have to do it before killing the boss -- and have to decide between permanantly losing someone and doing it all over AGAIN... yeah, not good. It's a great idea, but so badly implemented... and that is why I don't bother with supports for most characters, and don't generally go out of my way to make supports (that is play with characters I usually don't just to get some support of theirs I want with some other character I use more)...
It's like, I look at the FAQs and see supports I'd like to get, but the actual GETTING of them is so annoying and poorly done that it's just not much fun at all to actually do it. Sad... I like reading the supports, and find them a good gameplay element, but in both games they just are way, way too hard to get. If they're going to force characters to be next to eachother to get supports, the number of turns should be like ... single digits... not sixty or seventy like some FE ones are (sure, TSS reduces it to like thirty, but how is that so much better?). Really, what they SHOULD do is make it so that it doesn't require adjacency, but just being near the other character (like a few squares). That'd be so much better... reduce the number and increase the range that increases the support number. Otherwise I'll continue doing what I'm doing... liking the idea of getting supports for all the characters, but mostly not bothering with it because of what a pain it is.
You should NEVER have to sit there for fifty turns hitting 'end turn' just to have two characters have a conversation. Maybe spread it out so you can't get B supports before mission X and A supports before mission X+10 if you want to spread them out over the game (so you can't just get them three missions in a row) or something, but do something about irritating such a nice feature is.
Great games though, I couldn't help but start Lyn's hard mode (and then probably Hector's mode once I finish that, instead of Eliwood's hard mode).
If it were only single digits to reach support levels, that would defeat the purpose. TSS has a good necessary amount for most characters. Simply keeping them near one another throughout missions greatly reduces the amount you need to waste hitting End Turn so much. Like I said, many times, I got many supports in TSS without even consciously trying. I did take a few wasted turns to acquire the supports I wanted to aid the characters I used most, but all in all found much less difficulty than I experienced in FE. 30 or 40 certainly sounds better than 100+ turns like some FE characters have. If I recall correctly, an A-Level compatability between Wil and Rath would have taken well over 200 turns. That's an absurd figure, and impossible to acquire without wasting turn after turn. TSS is well balanced compared to FE.
But it's not natural to keep people next to eachother during missions... it happens, but not nearly often enough to get supports anywhere. Maybe I got a couple of supports to get high enough by accident, but very, very few...
Of course, part of it's because I looked at the FAQs and stuff (as well as looking at the characters and, when you get them, the ingame lists of who each character can get supports with) and kept trying to decide who to have supports with who... but even so, there are supports I tried somewhat to get (in both games) but, because I didn't spend enough time at the end of the battle hitting 'end turn' over and over (and I would definitely say that in both games that's the only way to do it... sure, in TSS you're doing it for half or fewer as many turns... but as I said... 30 or 40 or 50 or 60 (for upper-level supports) is only marginally better than 200. In both cases you're going to have to tediously waste some time. That shouldn't have to happen in such good games.
Perhaps it's just your style of play. I keep my units in a tight, self-protective group. They move as one, fight as one, and defend as one, and thus, a lot of my units end up near each other quite a bit. Maybe you just fan your units out more but, to me, that's asking for individual units to get ganged up on. Unless we're talking about Marcus or Seth, who are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, I don't feel safe keeping any one unit seperated, even in small part, from the group. They can get surrounded and overwhelmed so quickly, and the game can be very unforgiving.
When there are several paths, I split my people up to cover all of them if at all possible. When some people are faster than others, I send them on ahead unless they're really weak and can't survive... then I might send them anyway but be sure to keep them out of range. Sure, sometimes lines or stuff are useful, and you often have to have groups of a few units to guard narrow points, but the people in the group will be chosen by their abilities, not by if they have possible supports... and it's only for a few turns, not dozens!
And anyway, it's always nice to have characters who can take out bunches of enemies alone... of course you need to move units in strategic groups, covering eachother, etc. But that does not necessarially mean that they are actually touching eachother... it's more likely that I'd have more scattered groups, with a couple people contiguous but each group seperated from the others.
Stupid FE dragon... the TSS one was too easy, but the FE one was such a pain. Making it essentially invulnerable to almost everything was a BAD idea. If I hadn't had Luna... yeah, that would have been very, very bad. With Eliwood only at about 20/10, his speed was too low with the special weapon (just 9), so the dragon got two hits and always killed him, ending the game. Hector (20/4) and Lyn (20/15)? Not good enough to both do damage to it (Lyn... 20% crit chance with the sol katti, but base attack with the best weapon was 29 vs. its armor of 30... and the sol katti was less.) and do damage worth mentioning to it and/or survive (Hector)... so they were useless. Florina with the Rex Hasta (she finished at level 20/20. :)) could do like four damage, but that's not exactly too helpful... and just about everyone else would die and/or do no damage. Only Athos was capable, and as I said, I had to heal him then rescue the healer every turn after he attacked... (because the dragon has 3 range) Really, what finally got me to beat the dragon was realizing that it was just a 3-range unit, so I could do that and it'd work. Before I was trying to beat it in one or two turns and of course it didn't work... but of course, there's also the fact that the level before it is hard and very frusterating. I beat the dragon in like four tries, but that level... it probably took a dozen times for each time I got to the dragon, at least... oh, most of them didn't get too far before someone died or something, but still.
I know, that's the FE game design. Cruel frusteration and forcing people to redo missions endlessly. It's just hard, and drives me away from the games for a while after another paticularly frusterating loss...
A Black Falcon Wrote:I know, that's the FE game design. Cruel frusteration and forcing people to redo missions endlessly. It's just hard, and drives me away from the games for a while after another paticularly frusterating loss...
I wouldn't say they "force" you to redo missions. Whether or not you choose to continue after losing a member or two is totally your perogative. That's the whole underlying premise of the series: careful planning and precise tactical strategy will lead to great dividends. The game punishes poor leadership, and if you make just one wrong step, and the enemy exploits it as you know they will, then you'll be in quite a bind. If you're careful, vigilant, and (most importantly) know your enemy and their weapons, you needn't worry about losing a soul. Moving units haphazardly and simply thrusting them forward will always cause casualties, but a well-laid battle plan, executed properly, will see everyone out of it alive time and time again.
Thus is Fire Emblem.
Not always true. There is always the chance that bad luck will kill you -- like my losing someone because of that successful 2% chance that the enemy had to critical -- or when there is fog of war, and the only way to get through the mission is random chance... or rote memorization...
Anyway, you only beat the easy missions on the first try without losing anyone. Expecting to get through a long, challenging mission with absolutely no mistakes... in a game like this, it's not very realistic most of the time. Yes, using strategy you can definitely reduce the number of times you lose. But sometimes you have to take a chance, and sometimes those chances go bad...
Use theives in fog of war. Even better, have your theives use torches to even further expand their sight. As large as theives sight is in fog, it can also be increased drastically with torches. In this way, fog of war can be but a minor distraction.
Yeah, luck plays a part, definitely. All you can do about that aspect of it is hope for the best and prepare for the worst, as the saying goes. Even if someone should die, that's not an instant reason to start over. Both games provide you with a vast army of characters to choose from. Pick another intheir place and move on. I know it's though because, odd as it sounds, you get to care about what happens to the characters, but if you reset every time you lose someone, it'll take you forever to beat the game.
Quote:Yeah, luck plays a part, definitely. All you can do about that aspect of it is hope for the best and prepare for the worst, as the saying goes. Even if someone should die, that's not an instant reason to start over. Both games provide you with a vast army of characters to choose from. Pick another intheir place and move on. I know it's though because, odd as it sounds, you get to care about what happens to the characters, but if you reset every time you lose someone, it'll take you forever to beat the game.
Especially if you're playing a Fire Emblem game in Hard Mode... and don't let your characters die...
But if I let them die, I'd regret it in a few missions when they weren't there! And often the ones that die are the ones I like to use the most, and I'm not going to just let the ones I like to use (or ones that are unique at that point in the game) die...
... of course, I say this being in the middle of Path of Radiance, and I was very stupid and set it to Hard Mode... yeah, I'm just on mission 13... brutally difficult only begins to describe it... I've reset every time someone died so far, though. ... yeah, this game will take me a long time... in Fire Emblem 1 when I played through (on Normal of course), I only took one casualty I think... and that was because I'd been playing the mission for a really long time and had died so many times I just took it... in TSS though I played on normal and finished without losing anyone. Haven't replayed TSS, but I did start Hector's Normal mode in FE, got partway, and had not allowed any casualties yet... because as I said, I don't want to let them die! I don't think it's strange to get attached to the characters... they have names, and personalities... they are not just "Bow Soldier #3"... and you use the ones you like, so you aren't going to want to lose them for the rest of the game!
I'm on mission 24 in PoR on normal and haven't lost anybody yet. I had one mission where I lost Rolf on the turn before I was going to beat the mission and I was really conflicted about what to do. He was far and away my best archer and I made a stupid mistake to lose him, but it was a long mission. Obviously, I reset and did the mission over. This Fire Emblem does seem to be more difficult than the GBA games, though, which is a good thing in my opinion.
You must be really careful... how often did you lose people playing the GBA games on normal? I know I'd often have to reset to avoid losing people... maybe not on every mission, it varies from one to the next... but my experience says that no matter how much strategy you use, games like Fire Emblem have a luck component. You cannot deal with every possibility, and thus it's normal to lose someone...
Maybe it's the units I use? I like Mages, Pegasus Knights, Myrmidions... I take at least two healers... and I like to de-emphasize use of tank units like knights or cavaliers... oh yes, and I dislike axe units in general... magic and lances are good, swords okay, and axes bad. :)
As for PoR in specific, though, of course part of the problem is hard vs. normal mode... I'm sure the game is far harder here than it is in normal... but I rememember the first Fire Emblem being fairly challenging in normal, and if TSS wasn't quite as hard, I certainly did have to replay a good number of missions, even if I don't remember exactly how many, and the number of replays required probably wasn't as high as FE...
Quote:I had one mission where I lost Rolf on the turn before I was going to beat the mission and I was really conflicted about what to do. He was far and away my best archer and I made a stupid mistake to lose him, but it was a long mission. Obviously, I reset and did the mission over. This Fire Emblem does seem to be more difficult than the GBA games, though, which is a good thing in my opinion.
In mission 13, one of the times I played it today, (ship combat, vs 'pirates', with Begnion allies), I had beaten it... only the boss was left and I hadn't lost anyone... but I messed up, made a really, really stupid mistake, and left Jill within range of the boss' longbow... so of course she died in one hit, and I restarted... right at the end... because I don't want to lose anyone, but also because while in FE and TSS I didn't like Wyvern Riders much, and barely used them, this time I'm trying them a bit more... though I still prefer Pegasus Knights. :) They need to be kept away from archers, but at least you don't need to run and hide from mages too like you do with wyverns!
I've lost units plenty of times in this Fire Emblem, but generally it's been close to the beginning of the missions so I have no qualms about restarting. I tend to use the heavy units a lot. I've maxed out Oscar and Boyd from using them so much. I used Ike way too much in the beginning since I got him to level 20 waaay before the mission where he gets promoted so he was pretty much useless for a long time. I pretty much use the heavy units and the mages. I'll always bring two healers, although Soren is my emergency third healer since he carries a heal staff with him. Rolf is really the only archer I use, and I don't use the flying units all that much besides Tanith, but I only use her because she is already incredibly powerful when you get her. I've always hated the fact that the flying units are incredibly vulnerable at the low levels and need to be babied.
Anyway, I love the fact that you can use bonus experience points outside of battle to upgrade units. I actually prefer this to the GBA versions method of leveling up in which you would have to go out and fight like a normal RPG. It was just a time-waster, in my opinion. This way you can keep weak characters you want to level-up out of battle until you have used enough bonus EP on them to bring them in.
I think, if memory serves, I made it through PoR and lost only three warriors. Mist, Gatrie, and one other which eludes me at the moment.
Yes, this was a very difficult FE but, without spoiling too much, wait until the final battle. That mission alone took me about an hour.
:D
That's one nice thing about FE, everyone can play it differently... just having finished mission 13 (and highly conflicted: I got through all right, but I didn't get the Speedwing! I got the other five items, but not that one... and I badly want one... should I restart to get it?)... and in that mission, you can take 12 people... so I took both my mages, both myrmidions, both clerics, a theif (for the chests), the archer, both flyers, Ike, and Mordecai, so that he can push Ike (because you have to push Ike 3 spaces at the start so that he can talk to Astrid on turn one; otherwise, she gets killed by enemies before you can reach her nine times out of ten... yeah, that was INCREDIBLY frusterating until I looked online and saw this little trick...); otherwise, I would have taken Kieran for the last spot. My highest level rank 1 unit is Soren at level 18... the next highest are Ilyana, Mia, and Gatrie at 15, and Gatrie joined at that. You've always got to make choices about which units to use, though... like now there are two archers, so which do I use more... I also usually only take one (so mostly Rebecca in FE, though I used Will some too)... and when you don't let people die, you've got lots to choose from. As my list above suggests, I often like to take just a few of the traditional 'tank' units (Cavaliers/knights), and more I have to be more careful with... though often those ones can, with high enough levels, get very good (I think that Florina was the only one other than the heroes who could injure the final boss of Fire Emblem... only did like 4 damage, with her best weapon, but that's better than the rest... or high level mages, those are awesome), though.
Anyway... bonus experience is interesting. You don't get a whole lot of it on Hard, so I mostly have to level in battle, but it's nice for the ones who join at low levels compared to the main group... a nice addition to the game, I guess, though I'd like to see other things instead (for instance, thieves should be getting experience for stealing and opening chests! They're such bad fighters that it'd only be fair...)... healers? They are often a bit behind, but I usually have managed to get them to rank 2 at least, by trying to heal every time I can, even if it's just a 1hp heal...
Yeah, I don't understand why thieves don't get experience for opening doors and chests. I did have Volke at a pretty high level when he got promoted, but that was just because I would have him finish off weakened enemies any chance I got. It is very tough to get experience for him even after he was promoted because he can be killed pretty easily. The healers aren't too bad since I just do what you said ABF and heal every chance I get. I have Rhys almost maxed out, and Mist is almost at level 10 after her promotion. Mist is actually pretty tough after her promotion and can probably take 2 or 3 hits before dying depending on the strength of the enemy.