Gameplay: And now for the moment that you’ve been waiting for. This is the real reason why Thracia 776 is my third favorite Fire Emblem game: The gameplay. Thracia 776 has some excellent gameplay that deserves to be looked at.
For starters this is the first game in the series that had multiple map objectives. Three of the four previous Fire Emblem games only had seize as an objective and Gaiden only had the route objective. Thracia is the game where escape and defend chapters made their debut. This game has the best escape chapters in the series along with the fact that every unit must escape otherwise they get left behind. Multiple map objectives tend to make the gameplay more varied and fun and I’m grateful for Thracia for doing this.
Thracia also invented the Gaiden chapters, which is another really neat feature of this game. The Gaiden chapters also force the player to think ahead in advance about how they’ll play certain chapters because who wouldn’t want to unlock those chapters? Thracia also invented the Rescue mechanic too, which I believe a lot of people seem to like so kudos for Thracia. Thracia also wisely chose to bring back the dismounting feature from Fire Emblem 3 Book 2 which was a smart choice on its part. Then of course there are the two mechanics this game invented that I love so much: Capture and Fatigue.
Capturing happens when a player hits the “Capture” command which halves their units stats. When an enemy’s HP drops to 0 instead of dying they get “captured”. Once an enemy gets captured the player can then take their hostages weapons and items. Oh boy is this mechanic so much fun to exploit! It is a very satisfying feeling to capture a powerful enemy who has rare and valuable stuff and then claim it as your own.
The capture system also eliminates the need for money. Think about it, you only need money to buy things like weapons and maybe other items. With the capture system as long as you have enemies (which you always will have because that’s how these games work) you have items. I’ve never felt impressed by how most Fire Emblems handle money. Most games give you too much money which makes the game easy because you can always stock up on whatever you need to destroy the game with. Then there’s Fire Emblems 10, 12 and Conquest where you get limited amounts of money, which is better but the problem here is that it feels too restrictive. With capturing you can still have tons of weapons and items, but you’re forced to earn it which means that you still have to put thought and effort into resource management without feeling super restricted. I love this mechanic so much that I’m bringing it back in my own game.
I also have to point out that I don’t like the way that Fates handles “capturing” because it feels like such a fluffy gimmick in comparison to Thracia 776. In Thracia capturing is the predominant way of getting stuff. In Fates you could cut capturing out of the game and it wouldn’t make a significant difference on the gameplay. While it shares the same name as Thracia’s mechanic the way it functions and its impact on its game is completely different from Thracia’s which leads me to view it as completely different from Thracia’s mechanic.
Then there’s the fatigue mechanic. Here’s how fatigue works: Whenever a unit does something like fighting, healing or dancing their fatigue meter increases by a certain amount. Once their fatigue meter becomes greater than or equal to their Max HP they have to sit out the next level. This mechanic encourages the player to use a bigger army which I am all for. Sometimes you have to actively sit a unit out in one chapter because you need them for another one and you want their HP to be 0 for that one. I like that aspect of the game. Fatigue, like Capture, is a system that I’m also bringing back because I think it has a valuable impact on the design of the game.
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