Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones Part 2 - The Gameplay, Soundtrack and Final Thoughts

                Gameplay: So let’s address the elephant in the room shall we? It’s really, really easy. Unfortunately I agree with this summary but on the bright side of things it does make the game a fantastic entry point for newcomers to the series.  

                       A lot of people bring up Seth soloing or “Sethskip” and while I do agree that this reflects poorly on the game the problem here is that there are a lot of games in this series that can either be soloed or can be low manned really easily. For the sake of fairness I would have to criticize practically the entire series since this is a problem that can be found across the board and I don’t want to do that. Even if Sethskip is taken out of the equation this game is still really easy so that criticism is fair game.

                         Most of the gameplay here is a copy/paste of Gaiden’s mechanics (they even brought back all the monsters from Gaiden in addition to adding a few of their own) with some GBA mechanics sprinkled in here and there. Sacred Stones doesn’t add anything new so there isn’t much to talk about here. I will say that I think Gaiden handled the world map, trainee and split armies aspect better though. 

                     The map design in this game is pretty solid overall so it has that going for it. I give this game props for having a post game though. I’ve heard that the creature campaign is pretty fun even thought I’ve never played it. If you’re reading this and you have played the Creature Campaign feel free to let me know what you thought about it. Before I forget, I’m also a fan of the branch promotion system here too. I like having options when promoting. It just adds to the replayability and makes promotion all the more exciting.

  Overall Summation: This game is really hurt by it’s lack of difficulty. Infinite grinding doesn’t help either. It also hurts that Sacred Stones didn’t add anything new in terms of mechanics, it just makes you think that it did since Gaiden is an obscure game that very few people have played. The map design and Creature Campaign are worthy of praise and I like the branch promotion stuff, but even with that taken into account gameplay is not the best category for Sacred Stones.

                             Soundtrack: RPGamer said everything I wanted to say about this game’s soundtrack:  “As with it's predecessor, the game's soundtrack is rather average, at best. While there are no terrible tracks, there are none that really stand out either.” (Source: https://www.rpgamer.com/games/fe/fe9/reviews/fe9rdrev2.html)

                      Overall Thoughts: I like this game more than I used to. It’s not the greatest game in the series but I would much rather play Sacred Stones than Awakening or Fates any day of the week. I’m starting to believe that this game doesn’t get enough credit. It does have a fairly good story and cast of characters. Maybe not Holy War / Path of Radiance level of awesome, but it’s still good on its own merits. It’s been a while since I’ve beaten this game. I might have to go back and play it again.


 The 2 Videos I Quoted In Part 1:

# 1 (Ghast's Review of Sacred Stones):

# 2 (Caz's Review of Sacred Stones):

Fire Emblem Sacred Stones Part 1 - The Story and Characters

Game’s Nickname: Seth Emblem / Fire Emblem: The Sacred Seth

                           One of the main reasons why I decided to go back and do these reviews is because looking back I feel I was too hard on the GBA games. Sure they’re not perfect, but they are better than I initially gave them credit for. Having the misfortune of playing Fates and having my position on Awakening radically altered changed my mindset. The GBA games, by comparison, look amazing and frankly I’d rather play both of those than play the 3DS games again. Sacred Stones may not be the best Fire Emblem game in this series, but it does have its charm so let’s talk about Sacred Stones.

                     The Plot: So I’m not exactly sure how I feel about this plot. On the one hand it does have it’s fair share of cliches that keep it from greatness. The entire plot is a MacGuffin gathering quest with a sealed Dark Lord that has to be defeated again. Yeah, not the most original thing under the sun. To be fair, there are several Fire Emblem games that have MacGuffins too and most of the final bosses in the Fire Emblem series are either huge dragons or deities of some kind so it’s not like Sacred Stones is the only game to have this problem.

                                  On the other hand, I think this game has a better plot than a significant number of other Fire Emblem games (the 4 Marth games, Binding Blade, Awakening, Fates, Radiant Dawn) but I also think that it’s not quite up to par with Holy War, Path of Radiance, or Blazing Sword’s stories either. What it does have going for it is it’s cast. Because of the fact that this game actually bothers to characterize its cast you care about what happens to them. There are also some good plot twists too and I do think that the story handles the MacGuffin element better than the Marth games handle theirs.  The politics in this game aren’t bad, but it leaves room to be desired. The same thing could be said about the game’s world-building. 

                           I think RPGamer summed up the plot of this game the best:  “There are a few twists and turns in the story and a few interesting characters as well, but nothing you have not seen in various RPGs before this one…. Overall, the storyline is fairly standard for a tactical RPG and is slightly above average as a whole.” (Source: https://www.rpgamer.com/games/fe/fe9/reviews/fe9rdrev2.html)

                     The Characters: This game’s cast, much like its plot, is better than the cast of most of the games in the series, but its not the best cast in the series. Eirika comes across as a bit of an idiot with a boring, pacifist approach to war. It’s been a while since I’ve played Sacred Stones but I remember Eirika making some face palm-worthy decisions throughout the game that led to me not enjoying the game. Ephraim is pretty cool even if there isn’t a lot to his character. To quote Caz “Ephraim’s got swag”, I mean the guy makes Lyon jealous of him and Innes refers to himself as Ephraim’s rival and L’Arachel refers to him having a “well toned body” so this guy must be pretty cool.

                        L’Arachel (how do you pronounce her name bytheway?) cracks me up everytime she’s on screen. She’s like the GBA precursor to Owain in terms of delusional hilarity. Her B support with Ephraim where she completely freaks out at seeing his naked shoulder is HILARIOUS! It’s got to be my favorite support in Sacred Stones.             

             

                     There is an unpopular opinion I want to get off my chest though: I find Joshua to be a poorly done Levin clone. Think about it: They’re both princes that ran away from their homes except Levin had a more compelling reason to do so while Joshua’s explanation is rather lacking. They’re both characterized by having a carefree personality and they both have distinctive headgear as well. Both of their countries are ruled by single queens whose husbands died prior to the events of the game, both women die and both men are supposed to man up and assume the responsibility of the throne. Joshua also has the Wind affinity as his support affinity while Levin is a wind mage. That’s why I don’t find Joshua’s character to be all that compelling.

                      Moving on, Lute is a fun character. She’s Miriel done right. Then we’ve also got “General Sean Connery” (to quote Ghast’s review of Sacred Stone’s plot), I mean Duessel. I highly recommend Duessel x Amelia A Support. It’s pretty good. His B and A supports with Knoll are also worth checking out. Honestly, I could probably keep on going but I think you get the point. 

                       Something that this game also has going for it are its villains and boy does this game have some great villains. Valter works as a great bloodthirsty villain, Orson is REALLY creepy and I agree with Ghast that he’s one of the best minor villains in the series. Then there’s Lyon. Lyon works as a sympathetic villain. You understand his motivation and you feel sorry for him. I think the reason why Lyon works as well as he does is because the game gave him a great connection with Eirika and Ephraim. Those flashbacks worked really well at establishing his relationship with the Wonder Twins. Because Lyon matters to Eirika and Ephraim, he matters to us and when you do get around to killing him it’s usually not a happy point in the story.  

                                  Overall Summation: This game has one of the better casts in the series. Not the best, mind you, but there are a lot of memorable characters who add a lot of flavor to the story. This game has some good supports too to back it up.

Fire Emblem 3 Book 2: Mystery of the Emblem

   Nickname: Hipster Emblem 2.0

                      The Plot & Characters: Here’s an accurate summary of the plot that I found: “Monshou no Nazo’s story picks up several years after the end of Shadow Dragon. Formerly an ally of Marth's in the quest to defeat Medeus, Hardin has become seized by a lust for power and is conquering his neighboring countries to prove it. Leading the resistance once again is Marth, and the power behind Hardin's actions may just prove to be one he'll recognize, especially when dragons start appearing as adversaries.” (Source: https://www.rpgamer.com/games/fe/feme/reviews/femestrev1.html)

                           This is a plot I feel neutral about. I can’t think of any holes to poke, but I also can’t think of anything in it that would qualify as special or outstanding either. It does feel a little repetitive at times. Medeus and Gharnef come back to life and we have to go kill them again. Oh joy. There’s another MacGuffin side plot we have to go on in order to defeat said bad guys. Hooray. I like the idea behind Hardin’s turn to evil but because of how poor the characterization is in Fire Emblem 1 / 11 this betrayal has no emotional impact on the player whatsoever. This should feel like a punch to the gut, but it doesn’t and as a result it feels like Hardin’s just another bad guy that we need to kill. Outside of Hardin’s turn to evil there’s nothing else that stands out.

                                 Be warned though: There are HUGE walls of text in this game and you can’t skip over them. It takes forever for certain characters to finish whatever they’re saying and I found that pretty aggravating to get through when I beat this game. 

                               As far as the characters go, this also is not a point in the game’s favor. Most of them barely say anything at all which makes it easy to forget about them. Believe it or not I consider Shadow Dragon’s characterization to be superior to this one’s.

                               Overall Summation: This plot is boring. It’s a shame because it had some good ideas that could have panned out really well had the game been better executed in this department. The characters are also really bland too.

        

                            Soundtrack: Not going to lie, it’s pretty underwhelming. The music in this game fails to leave an impression.

                            Gameplay: And now we get to the one category in this game that really works: the gameplay. Fire Emblem 3 Book 2 has a lot of cool features, some of which returned in Thracia 776.

• This game introduced dismounting. More importantly it has indoor maps that force units like Palla and Catria to dismount, which means that they cannot fly or have high movement. It’s a really nice feature and I’d like to see this make a comeback in future games. Mounted units can only use lances while unmounted units have to use swords.

• The Star-shards: This game gives you items that increase growth rates by a certain amount. It’s one of my favorite things about this game. You can theoretically stack a bunch of orbs onto one character and watch them get amazing level-ups.
  
  
  
  
  

•  The map design in this game is stellar. In fact I’m pretty sure I’d put this game in the “Top 5 Fire Emblem Games with the Best Map Design” list. One map that stands out in my mind is Chapter 2. Chapter 2 involves an enemy that drops a Lady Sword (which is a powerful weapon) that has a head start on the player and will leave the map. This is a really good incentive for the player to play fast. There’s also a recruitable bow user which is nice, especially when you take into consideration that the boss flies from his throne and has high defense. There are other maps from this game that I could list that I really enjoyed but for the sake of time I’m moving on.

                    The only issues I had with the gameplay were:

• A lack of a weapon triangle (FE 4 invented that)
• Trade was clunky, so was being able to check an enemy’s movement range.
• Enemies are pretty weak
• If you don’t find all the Star shards you can’t beat Gharnef and can’t advance through the game. I could be wrong on this one though.

                            Overall Summation: Gameplay is by far the strongest category for this game. It’s still pretty good overall and makes for decent replays. The issues I had with it are relatively small in comparison to the things that I liked about it. The top tier map design really adds a lot to the overall enjoyment of the game.

                                   Final Thoughts: As much as I appreciate this game there’s usually one thought that dominates my thinking process when playing this game: “Why play this game when Fire Emblem 12 exists?” Fire Emblem 12 (the remake of Fire Emblem 3 Book 2) blows this game out of the water and the fact that 12 exists kind of decreases my desire to play this one. On its own merits this game is fine, albeit a tad clunky and outdated, but still totally serviceable. If you play 12 and consider that good enough between 12 and this game I don’t blame you at all. 

Fire Emblem Awakening Part 3 - The Finale

Soundtrack: This is an above average soundtrack in my opinion. There are memorable tracks here that I really enjoyed. Id for example is a soundtrack that I still enjoy as much now as I did when I first heard it:

     I’m also a fan of “Don’t Speak Her Name”:

      Other wonderful tracks: “Conquest (Ablaze)”, Id (Serenity), Mastermind. Also this:

                         This game also has some average tracks too, but overall I still think that this game’s soundtracks beats out most of the soundtracks of the other games.

Overall Summation: This soundtrack deserves a lot of praise. It’s not Holy War / Radiant Dawn good, but it’s still better than 90 % of the other soundtracks in the series.

    Other Points

• This game has the best voice acting in the series.
• This game has the best cutscenes.
• Not a big fan of the fanservicey artwork and class designs. Also insert obligatory “where’s the feet?” joke here.

                     Review Summary: I wish I could simply turn my brain off and have as much fun with this game like I used to. However, I simply cannot do that anymore. I can totally understand why someone else would loathe this game as there as simply too many flaws to ignore. However, I can at least say that I USED to enjoy this game, which is something that I never will be able to say about Fates. I spent a lot of hours beating this game and for that reason alone I’ve chosen to move it’s ranking up on my “Favorites” list. In spite of the fact that Fates mops the floor with this game in the gameplay department I still like Awakening more. Why? Well here’s a list of reasons why:

• Awakening has better world-building than Fates (we actually know the names of these continents)

• The second generation has a completely valid reason to exist in this game unlike Fates.

• This game has better voice acting.

• This game has better cutscenes.

• Robin is superior to Corrin both gameplay wise and character wise.

• I like way more characters in Awakening than in Fates.

• Awakening has a better story than Conquest. 
  
  
  • I like Awakening's soundtrack more than Fates' soundtrack.
   
   
   
  
  
   

                  I know this isn’t a popular opinion but I don’t care. As it stands I still like this game more than most people do, even after bashing it to pieces. This review by no means is designed to change anybody’s minds. This is me simply sharing my viewpoint, nothing more nothing less. 

                   P.S. Here’s the nickname that I give for this game: Waifu Emblem. (I intend to give all the games in this series some kind of nickname bytheway).

Fire Emblem Awakening Part 2 - The Characters and Gameplay

Characters: I’ll start off with the negatives before proceeding to the positives. This game had some really lame villains. None of them had properly fleshed out motivations, only Gangrel actually did something that had an impact on the plot and it felt like they were evil just to be evil. Only Fates can claim to having worse villains.

                        Now to the main cast: Believe it or not, I actually like a significant number of characters. Lucina is my favorite non-Tellius female character, Owain is hilarious and as I was watching Steins Gate last night I couldn’t help but think of Kyoma as a mad scientist version of Owain which made me instantly love him as a character. So yeah, I still love Owain. Inigo might just be the best characterized of the “manwhore” archetype we’ve ever gotten and I particularly enjoyed his interactions with other characters. Noire and Henry are wonderfully crazy, Female Morgan can be a wonderful sadist while also being adorable when she’s having her daddy-daughter moments. Gregor is great and I still really like Basilio. There’s also Brady who’s pretty cool and I get the occasional kick out of Frederick too. If I’m being frank here I like way more Awakening characters than I do Blazing Sword or Sacred Stones. In fact, the only games I can think of where I like THIS much of the cast are Holy War and Path of Radiance, aka my Top 2 favorite Fire Emblem games.

                         That being said, there are also plenty of characters that I simply don’t like either: Severa, Miriel, Tharja, Panne, Yarne, Kjelle, Vaike, Gerome, Sumia, Nah, Sully, Kellam and Donnel. I used to like Chrom, but now I agree that he’s boring. Robin of course is also one of the biggest Mary Sues in the entire franchise (Robin was the biggest Mary Sue up until Corrin came along and stole the crown) and while I still maintain that Robin has the best personality of the three My Unit characters that still doesn’t mean that Robin has an interesting personality on their own merits.

                       Overall Summation: So in the end this is a cast of extremes for me. If I like a character here, I very likely will enjoy them. If I don’t like a character, chances are I’m really not going to like them. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a more polarizing cast than this one. For me Fire Emblem casts are either boring, awesome or lame. This cast on the other hand gives me a variety of personalities to choose from with mixed results. While it’s true that they may be “gimmicky” I still don’t give a crap since at least these characters are actually memorable. This game did a better job at getting me to care about more than 2 or 3 of its characters and that’s by no means an easy feat so I have to give Awakening some measure of credit for that. On the other hand, there are also a lot of characters that I really dislike which hurts my enjoyment of the game overall. Also, the fact that this game had some of the worst villains in the series really hurts this game for me.

Gameplay: Oh boy here we go. This game is one of the most poorly designed games in the series. Many of its design choices make the game less strategic in general. For example…

• If I made a “Top 5 Fire Emblem Games with the Worst Map Design in the Series” list you can bet that Awakening would be on here alongside Birthright and Revelation. No thought or effort went into enemy unit placement and rarely does the game ever place terrain in a way that actually helps the strategy of the game. Because of that movement, positioning and tactics don’t really matter as much which is bad for a strategy game. The strategy for the majority of the game remains the same and Awakening doesn’t require as much thought and effort on the player’s part as other Fire Emblem games do.
  
  
  
  
  

• Pair Up is way too powerful. I can’t think of a reason not to use it and the stat bonuses it gives are insane. This means that having higher stats is more important than good tactics which means that this game can easily turn into a Robin solo. It’s also way too RNG reliant plus it gives the player a massive advantage over enemies. I’m really, really grateful that Fates fixed this. In fact, it’s hard for me to go back and play this after playing Fates. The Awakening version of Pair Up seems so poorly implemented and boring after seeing what Fates did with this.

• This game holds a neon sign that says “GRIND FOR 1,000,000 HOURS!” Between the way that the second seals and reclassing work to the way that this game handled DLC and the world map mechanic this is pretty obvious. I loved this aspect once upon a time because it was fun getting different combinations of skills but from an objective standpoint it screws the strategy the game.
  
  
• This game has the worst difficulty scaling in the history of the series. The jump between Hard mode and Lunatic is ridiculous and Lunatic + is too RNG centric and comes across as fake difficulty. I find this baffling because Fire Emblem 12, the game that came before it, has the best difficulty scaling in the entire series. Did these guys learn nothing from the design successes of Fire Emblem 12? This is one of my least favorite aspects of the game. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• The Einherjar as a concept disappointed me. I still think that we should have been allowed to fight the real characters from previous games. Still, I got a massive nostalgia overload as I listened to the music from previous games. Even with all that said I still appreciated the fact that we at least got to fight the previous characters in some sort of way.

• I wish that S rank supports were more limited and that there would be a greater variation between how the kids would turn out between different parents. It feels like your choices don’t matter as much in this game, which is the main reason why I like Holy War’s execution better. Plus having Robin be the best parent for every kid is not a good design choice. It’s more fun when there are pros and cons that each possible parent can bring with them. Also, Robin being able to bang the second generation is kind of weird. I’m just saying. 
  
  
  
  
  

                              Overall Summation: Objectively speaking, this is one of the most poorly designed games in the franchise. The design choices make the game less strategic. That being said, there are still enjoyable elements to be had if you’re like I was 2 years ago and you simply want to breed different Pokemon characters then this game will be enjoyable. It’s really easy to spend obscene numbers of hours playing this game but that doesn’t mean it’s a well designed game.

Fire Emblem Awakening Part 1 - The Plot

                              If I had to pick one game where my opinion has changed the most since I did my last reviews back in 2014 I would pick Awakening. Back in 2014 I said that Awakening was my third favorite game. I had even put it above the likes of Thracia 776 and Radiant Dawn. So what changed? Well I’ve learned a lot about analyzing Fire Emblem and how different mechanics impact the game. This caused me to take a more critical eye towards the games and, well I ended up agreeing with Awakening’s critics when I took a closer look at the game. Even though I’ve begrudgingly admitted that Awakening is a seriously flawed game, I still enjoyed it once upon a time. You might be wondering why I’ve put Awakening above Fates. I’ll get to why even though I imagine most people will think differently than me.

                Plot: First, let’s start with Awakening’s story. The game divides itself into three arcs. The first arc is the best one and had the potential to be good. The idea of the main character’s country starting an unjust  war and then having the bad guys be vengeful about it due to the consequences it had is a fantastic idea overall, but unfortunately the game botches the execution. Plegia is obviously in the wrong while Ylisse is obviously in the right. Had a better writer stepped in and tried to give this game more moral ambiguity this could have been a fantastic arc. Another main point I’d like to touch upon is Emmeryn’s death. I’m not going to deny that this moment in the game emotionally impacted me, but I do think that this could have been done better. We should have spent more time with Emmeryn.

                            Then there’s Valm. If you cut the Valm arc out of the game nothing would change. The game forgets that Valm ever existed once the player finishes it. The arc isn’t very memorable and there aren’t a whole lot of narrative stakes involved since once again you spend most of the time waltzing through different parts of Valm wrecking everything in sight. I remember that Say’ri had a brother and he died….I think. Was his death supposed to be memorable or was it supposed to hit us in the feels? Personally I didn’t care about the character so when the game tries to “hit me in the feels” it comes across as hollow and contrived.

                            As far as the final arc is concerned: It wasn’t terrible. The dark bishop finally puts his plan into action by bringing about the Big Bad final villain. How...totally generic for a Fire Emblem game. I do have to say that I LOVED the plot twist that happened though. I actually thought the writers were going to kill him off. Then to have Basilio come back and explain everything as in “in your face” moment was admittedly cool for me. Then there’s the ending. I wish the choice that the game gave you actually mattered. I wish that we could actually have different outcomes. Instead Robin will survive regardless of whatever decision the player actually makes. Lame! -_- 

Other points

• I wish that Lucina had more to do in the story. She’s a cool character that deserved to have a bigger role in the story. She saves Chrom’s life a couple of times and delivers vital information but outside of that she takes a backseat to Chrom and Robin. As it stands Lucina suffers from Trinity syndrome. Speaking of Lucina why did she have to dress up as Marth again? What purpose did that serve in the story? It’s not like the first generation would have recognized her anyway. Also, while the Chrom vs. Lucina cutscene was cool it doesn’t make sense. What if Lucina had accidentally killed Chrom? Wouldn’t she cease to exist by that point? Even if that wasn’t the case I don’t see how she would have benefited from doing that.

• I disagree with the criticism that “Robin steals the spotlight from Chrom”. This criticism operates under the assumption that Chrom is the sole protagonist of Awakening while Robin is only a side character. I’ve always believed that both Chrom and Robin are the main characters of Awakening. If Robin dies its game over. Plus Robin always is important to the plot so I don’t think that I’m suggesting anything crazy by mentioning that both Chrom and Robin are the main characters of the story. Part 1 is mostly about Chrom while Part 3 is mostly about Robin. They’re about equally important in Part 2 so I’d say that that both characters are important to the story.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

• This game did not do time travel properly. There are only 3 stories that I’ve personally witnessed that do time travel right: The Back to the Future trilogy, Chrono Trigger and Stein’s Gate. The reason why time travel works in those stories is because it’s the main focus, as opposed to being a one-time gimmick, and there are clearly established rules that they follow. Awakening never bothers to establish any rules for its time travel so couldn’t they go back in time before Grima was a threat and just simply kill him off? This is the same criticism I have of the Harry Potter franchise too. See “How Harry Potter Should Have Ended” below:

                                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsYWT5Q_R_w

                            It just feels like time travel was used so that Awakening could have a second generation without doing what Holy War did before it. At the very least they should have done more with time travel and I would have LOVED to have a Fire Emblem game that mainly dealt with time travel. As it stands, it hurts the story.

                    Overall Summation: This game has one of the worst plots in the entire franchise. It deserves the criticism that it gets for it. It had good ideas, but its execution is poor.