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(More customer reviews)I'm a big fan of Nintendo's Intelligent Systems; who wouldn't be after Paper Mario, Mario Kart Super Circuit, Advance Wars 1 & 2, and Metroid Fusion? Their latest game is Fire Emblem, a long running series in Japan making its first English debut.
Comparisons to Advance Wars are inevitable - turn-based strategy game, grid map, and little groups of units battling it out. At the first play, it may feel too similar to some gamers, but differences emerge making Fire Emblem a completely separate interpretation of how to make a tactical strategy game. The RPG elements included in Fire Emblem provide depth and character without sacrificing simplicity. Characters only use one type of weapon and no armor. When characters reach a certain skill level, they can advance to a new class (i.e. knights to paladins) which allows the character to use another type of weapons, further extending their usefulness. The weapon types follow a rock-paper-scissors approach, or in this case, swords-lances-axes. There's three types of magic that interlock in a similar manner. While the outlying mechanics are simple, when facing down various enemies in the battlefield, maneuvering your squad to get the right match-ups is a challenging and ultimately pleasing puzzle.
One of the notable features of Fire Emblem is frail mortality of the characters. When characters die in a level, they cannot be brought back to life and do not return for subsequent battles. Exit stage left, thank you for playing. Fire Emblem tries hard to keep the player as honest as possible by transparently saving after every menu selection. If you try to cheese the game by turning off the GBA right as a character dies, when you turn your system back on, you'll be treated to the same death scene each time you load your game. The only way to save your characters from death replaying the entire level- levels can span 30-45 minutes, and restarting can be a serious sacrifice to save a less favored character.
To further burden the decision of whether to let a character die, characters that end up along side each other develop support relationships that provide bonuses when they fight together. It takes a long time to develop these relationships and the bonus are worth the effort. A death of one of a partner in one of these relationships seriously effects the other's effectiveness, therefore it becomes even more difficult to allow one player die.
While the rigid approach the game takes to standard save/reload cheese may come off as annoying, it does much to make the game world more vivid to the player. Characters are almost as close to living things as could exist in a videogame format. You become attached to them because they can be so fragile and you think seriously about the consequences of leaving a weakened party member exposed to enemy forces. (In a brilliant turn, the game allows some characters to rescue other characters and pull them from dangerous situations.)
That said, the scenarios are entertaining, well scripted, and have a wide enough amount of variety to keep the player on their toes. Some levels feature fog of war, indoor battles with doors and breakable walls, anti-magic wells, or special requirements like defending a certain character. My favorite levels are ones where your group of a dozen soldiers has to split up and accomplish different tasks, almost in a Mission Impossible-style. Deciding who to bring on the mission, how to divide them up, equipping them correctly, and synchronizing the battle so that everything falls into place is supremely satisfying.
There's nothing that an experienced gamer hasn't seen before in Fire Emblem, but I've never seen those components stripped to their essence and combined in such a elegant matter. Fire Emblem is the only console strategy game that can be compared favorably to Advance Wars, and that's all the praise I need to give.
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Product Description:
Fire Emblem challenges you to fight for your birthright -- the throne of a nation!
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