Fire Emblem Gaiden

Nickname: Hipster Emblem

                         Obvious statement in 3….2….1… Gaiden is a really old game. The reason why I bring this up is because most of Gaiden’s flaws stem from the fact that it’s really, really old. I can already see some people giving it a pass for being retro which I totally get but that doesn’t mean that I have to like it. More importantly, there are flaws in Gaiden that result from its design choices that I’ll get into later on in this review. In case you’re wondering why I’m nicknaming this game “Hipster Emblem” it’s because virtually nobody’s played it and this game has gotten some positive attention from people who have. I am not one of those people. Despite the negativity in my Awakening review, I actually dislike Gaiden more for reasons that I’m about to explain.

               Story & Characters: I’m grouping these two categories together because there isn’t much to write about here. It’s an old-school Nintendo game, so temper your expectations accordingly. The characters barely have a few lines and none of them say much, if anything about the character’s personalities. Support conversations haven’t been invented yet either so take that into consideration to.

                       The plot is pretty bare bones. Alm’s country of Sofia has been taken over by the country of Rigel prior to the start of the game’s story. Alm decides that enough is enough so he decides to lead a revolt. Meanwhile Celica also plans to start revolting against Rigel as well. That’s about all there is to the story. The only potentially spoiler in this game revolves around a character named Rudolf. Other than that it’s pretty basic and “bare-bones”. I guess the good news is that you really can’t poke holes in its story, but then again that’s because there really isn’t a story to poke holes into in the first place. Moving on….

                         Soundtrack: This game’s soundtrack is surprisingly catchy for an 8 bit game. The track at Mila’s Shrine (see video below) is one of those tracks that’ll get stuck in your head forever. Well, at least it does for me. I mean this in a good way since I happen to like it. The other tracks are basic. The game makes the most out of its technology and there are a few good tunes in here.

                   Gameplay: And here comes the main crux of the review. Mechanically speaking Gaiden is unique in comparison to other Fire Emblem games. Some of those unique mechanics work in Gaiden’s favor, others don’t. Before we begin, let’s give Gaiden credit where credit is due. Gaiden invented several mechanics that have been reused at least once in future installments of the game.

• The World Map (brought back in Sacred Stones and Awakening)

• Third Tiers (brought back in Radiant Dawn)

• Removal of weapon durability (Fates recently brought that back although Fates added its own strategy to the mix which in my opinion improved the strategy overall)

• Branched Promotion (Brought back in Sacred Stones)

                        I should also point out most of the monsters that you see in Sacred Stones were originally in Gaiden first. Sacred Stones did add a couple of monsters of their own, but most of them are originally from Gaiden. The following is a list of positives and negatives that I’ve come up with:

Positives

• The Angel Ring: There’s an item that automatically amps your luck to 40 (the caps in this game go to 40) in addition to doubling level-ups essentially allowing level-ups to become + 2’s. It’s sweet.

• Magic is “learned” rather than bought. When a spellcaster gets to a certain level they “learn” a different spell. Every mage is a little bit different too so it makes the game unique.

• Archers have legitimate 1 range. On average they’ll have 1 - 3 range and if you equip a Steel or Silver bow they get 1 - 5 range. Granted, bows have low accuracy by Gaiden standards, but who cares? Bows have freaking 1 range.

• Promotion does not require an item. Instead you go to a certain spot on the map. I wish that Sacred Stones and Awakening did something like that.

• Alm and Celica’s armies are split for 99 % of the game and yet because of the way that the World Map is set up, from Part 3 onward you get to control both armies without having to worry about screwing the availability of one army over the other.

Negatives

                  

•    This game gets my vote for “Worst Map Design of the Series”. Every map is a big, blank empty space. Terrain usually doesn’t add to the strategy of the map (or if it does it only causes the player to play unnecessarily slow), enemies are not placed well (usually they’re clumped together and there’s nothing to suggest that there was any thought behind their placement) and most of the time armies consist of a single kind of unit. Sometimes you get more variety but generally speaking there isn’t a lot of variety to begin with. There are no villages to rescue or treasure chests to go after either. The way this game sets it up is that after you beat certain spots on the map you get to explore the “villages” and open the chests that way. I can’t think of a single anti-turtling measure that’s implemented in any of the levels in this game so feel free to take your sweet time beating them.

•       Another major downside for Gaiden is the fact that every single objective is “Rout enemy”. Think Birthright, but worse. At least Birthright lets you kill enemy bosses from time to time.
• Healers don’t gain experience from healing. They either have to be attacked, or they have to attack. Not only that, but they lose HP from healing too. Sure they’re equipped with Nosferatu which wouldn’t be so bad until you realize that Nosferatu has 50 base accuracy in a game whose RNG is likely to screw you over.

• From a personal experience perspective this game’s RNG is on par with Fates, maybe even worse, in terms of how many times I’ve gotten screwed over by it.

• Alm’s promotion is easy to miss. If you miss it, you cannot go back and try to get it which essentially makes the endgame unbeatable.  Good luck trying to beat the end of Gaiden with an unpromoted Alm.
  
  
  
  
  

                           This game has two annoying superlatives going against it: “Lowest experience gains in the series” and “lowest growth totals in the series”. Leveling up in this game feels like a slow and painful process. It seems way easier to get units to promote to Level 20 in future games than it does to get these guys to Level 7 (which is the level where most of the cast promotes). Generally speaking you’re not getting much experience unless you kill and even then you’re still not getting THAT much experience.

                          So it takes the player a long period of time to level up and then you’re treated to a + 2 or below. The average growth for non-HP and Resistance stats is 20 %. For HP its 40 % and most of the cast won’t have Resistance.

• It’s possible for enemies to make the first move rather than the player. Usually this is only a minor nuisance, but there are levels where witches can warp themselves onto any part of the map which means that it’s possible for them to sneak up on your weaker units and wreck them without the player being able to do anything.

• Magic requires an HP cost every time a mage uses it which makes mages even bigger class cannons.

• There are no playable axe users in the game. This is odd because Fire Emblem 1 had plenty of those so why the change?

• The Lost Woods: Once the player draws closer to the endgame there’s this confusing and poorly designed part of the map in Celica’s route titled ‘The Lost Woods’. It’s a frustrating maze that you have to navigate out of. Bytheway, the game doesn’t do a very good job of giving hints or clues about where you are so it’s easy to be stuck in a perpetual loop. This is also where you go to promote Alm and like I said before it’s pretty easy to miss. My advice is to use this map from serenesforest.net (http://serenesforest.net/gaiden/other/lost-woods-map/) when playing through that part of the game. 
  
  
  
  
  

• There’s also another annoying part where Alm gets stuck in one spot on the map and Alm cannot be freed until Celica frees him via an event on her side of the map. Meanwhile Alm and co basically fight against random monsters that start at the opposite end of the map. Did I mention how annoying it is waiting for these monsters to come to you while you have little space to maneuver around? Yeah it gets old (you could solve the problem with the Deer spell though, but then again Deer is broken as heck)

• Annoying End-game part # 3: Celica’s army gets trapped by the penultimate boss and Alm has to navigate an annoying maze while Celica’s party continuously loses HP. It takes forever too without consulting a guide on the Internet.

                           

Overall Summation: In addition to being clunky and outdated Gaiden has a huge number of glaring flaws in its mechanics. I tried to the play the game again recently but got so bored that I ultimately dropped it. This is why I think Gaiden should get remade. Throw in a support system, an actual plot and update the mechanics and I think you’ve got the makings for a good game. Yes I know Gaiden is old but it has not aged well and even then some of its new mechanics can be a cause of frustration.