The Fire Emblem Discussion

[A Black Falcon]

I kind of agree with a lot of what ABF said. A lot of the strategy lazy mentioned in his post I have never used because I never felt the need too. Again, I haven't played the original FFT, but just because there is a lot of potential depth to a game doesn't mean it is necessary for the game. Obviously, I used the elevation to my advantage, but generally I could cruise through battles just by leveling up my characters.

That is a very important point. Do you actually need to use the depth, or is it just there for you to try if you get bored with playing the game normally and grinding your way to a messy victory? Fire Emblem forces you to learn its gameplay system in order to succeed. They do a great job balancing things so that the game is complex, but intelligible and not too obtuse. The game system is there for you to see... you can understand it even better with an FAQ, but such things are not necessary to succeed. FFT? That's just not really true. Grind some levels and you can forget the strategy... get hit a few times? You have HP, and limited resurrection abilities... that is not to say that the game is easy, but it doesn't require you to use strategic thinking in the way Fire Emblem does. Not even close.

FFT is, of course, a better RPG than FE, but, well, FE is a strategy game first and foremost... :)

I will say, though, that FFTA simplified things in comparison to FFT. I don't remember exactly how it changed, but I do think that it wasn't just the story but also the gameplay that got simplified... I know that it added the needless complexity of the judge system and no death outside of the Jagd zones, but other than that I'm not sure... did they reduce the impact of attacking from height or something? I don't remember...