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.