Nickname: Polished Emblem
Plot: Blazing Sword has one of the best plots in the entire Fire Emblem series. The Eliwood and Hector arcs are very unique in that instead of trying to overthrow an Empire your quest is a lot more personal. It’s rare for a Fire Emblem game to go this route but in my opinion it works really well here. As one Fire Emblem fan put it:
“The story of Blazing sword.... Rather than a prince fighting countries and evil emperors its a conflict between a fairly minor noble and his friends against a ''mere'' mercenary guild and the sorcerer pulling their strings. I think the smaller scale lends itself to some good world building. The story takes place mostly in Lycia and Bern and as a result those countries get more developed than usual.”
As he said, the smaller scale of the story lends itself to better world building and in my opinion it also lets the characters interact off each other more. The story takes it’s time to introduce these characters to us and gives enough time to actually let us get to know who these characters are. It’s a good fit for the game. You get to learn more about the politics of Elibe and the characters motivations since there isn’t as much time spent on conquering different countries.
The same guy I just quoted also said this:
“Lastly its just a competent escalation of events from fighting bandits to corrupt nobles, to a secret assassin guild and then all the way up to a dark sorcerer and his army of magical creatures.”
This story has a few gut-wrenching moments that I would be remiss to not talk about. For example, there’s the death of Eliwood’s father. It’s a genuinely tragic moment and coming from a guy who doesn’t even care much about Eliwood I have to admit that that scene hit me in the feels. There’s also the part where Eliwood accidentally kills Ninian, the Nino / Sonia scenes and most people tell me that Leila’s death hit them pretty hard. If I’m missing something feel free to say something but I think you get the point here. The fact that there are different scenes that impacted a lot of people is evidence that this story did something well. Only a small number of Fire Emblem games have been able to do this and I think that says great things about how this game handled its character writing.
My biggest complaint about Blazing Sword’s story is that both Lyn and Lyn mode are completely irrelevant to it. You could cut both out without there being any impact to the plot at all. I understand that Lyn mode is a tutorial for new players and while it succeeds at doing this I still think there could be a better way of incorporating this into Eliwood and Hector’s arcs.
Overall Summation: Still, with all that being said, Blazing Sword is a well written story and the third best one in the series. Its small scale approach is a nice and unique fit that helps to distinguish it from the other games. The world building is solid and the way it escalates the events in its narrative work. It does a very good job of executing its premise in an engaging way which lends itself to multiple playthroughs.
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