Gameplay: So like my Radiant Dawn review I’ll start first with the negatives here before going onto the positives. No discussion of Holy War’s gameplay can occur without addressing the giant elephant in the room: The map size. For those of you who don’t remember I’ve brought up a “Top 5 Fire Emblem games with the Worst Map Design” list in previous reviews. However, I only mentioned four Fire Emblem games that would be on that list (Gaiden, Awakening, Fates: Birthright and Fates: Revelations). Well guess who the fifth member is? That’s right, Holy War is the fifth and final member of the “Top 5 Fire Emblem games with the Worst Map Design”. Here’s an idea of what that list looks like:
- Gaiden
- Fates: Revelations
- Awakening
- Holy War
- Fates: Birthright
^ This is what that list looks like in my opinion, although that order could easily change, but for now those are the five games in the series that I consider to have the worst map designs. Being on a list like that is a huge criticism of Holy War. You might be wondering ‘what makes the map designs so bad’? Well I’ll tell you:
- The giant size exacerbates the disproportionate advantage that high movement units have over low movement units. Objectively rating units like Levin, Sety and Shannan hurts because I have to dock points from them because of this.
- Half of the maps in the first generation require backtracking which is tedious and adds nothing to the strategy of the game.
- Most of the maps tend to have dense terrain that slows the player down for no good reason.
- There isn’t as much thought and effort put into enemy unit positioning.
- Enemy armies tend to mostly consist of either one unit or one weapon type so it’s easy to figure out how to defeat them. What’s worse is that most enemies are pretty easy to destroy so you don’t even have to put THAT much thought and effort into destroying them.
Those are the criticisms that I can think of and they are all valid. I can certainly understand why Holy War’s maps get the hatred that they do, however I don’t agree with throwing the entire game under the bus because of it. On a personal note the map size doesn’t bother me. I can objectively criticize it, but unlike the other four games on the “Worst Map Design” list I can ignore the maps here because of the fact that they add to the size and scale of the game’s story. In Holy War the giant maps make me feel like I’m in an actual country fighting against enemy armies in epic battles. The only other games that give me that feeling are Radiant Dawn, Binding Blade (sometimes) and Thracia 776 (sometimes). That’s a pretty epic feeling and for me it adds to the experience. Also, let’s not forget a point I made earlier on in this review:
“—And that’s why the maps became large?
Kaga: Indeed. We’ve made the maps that large because the world itself was broadened. The previous map size made it feel like it was a limited-scale war, and even if there were events here and there it didn’t make you feel like it was a large world. Through the system we used this time around, many of those large regions can exist at the same time, and influential individuals of each region can move independently… I thought it’d be able to express such dramatic developments. We also made it a long story going across two generations – parents and children – with that in mind. Feeling the movements of a large-scale story while letting the player shape the future depending on their playstyle were points we tried to implement.”
There was a clear cut thought process going on when Kaga and the other developers made Holy War and in my opinion they achieved their goal. Unfortunately most players don’t think along those lines and clearly have different priorities so the effect of these big maps got lost in translation. Still, I will always appreciate that element of the big maps, even if most other players don’t. Plus this point gets repeated so often that it’s just beating a dead horse over a mountain of dead horses. There’s nothing new to say and the way most people talk about it you’d think that map design was all they cared about. It’s fair to criticize the maps, just remember that map design is not all there is to a game.
The worst part of exclusively focusing on Holy War’s map design is that it takes the focus away from some of Holy War’s other design flaws. I hate doing this, but for the sake of fairness I must talk about the other flaws in Holy War’s mechanics. Flaws such as:
- Pursuit: Needing to have a skill in order to double attack is a dumb idea. As much as I love Holy War even I have to admit that I’m glad this idea didn’t get passed down to the other games in the series. The battle formula for double attacking is also dumb. Needing to have only 1 more attack speed than your enemy is not a good idea as it makes doubling attacking too easy to pull off.
However there is a myth going around that I’d like to dispel. The myth states that not having Pursuit instantly makes a character unviable. On a surface level this would seem true but the problem with this is that there are a considerable number of units in Holy War that are not only viable, but are some of your best units and they don’t have Pursuit. Take a look at some of your best units in the first generation: Lex, Levin, Sylvia, Cuan and Ethlin. None of them have Pursuit and yet they’re basically you’re best non-Sigurd units. The second generation is harder to talk about since you can manipulate the pairs so that over 90 % of your army has Pursuit but I would like to point out that Leif doesn’t have Pursuit before promotion and Levin!Arthur never gets it and they’re considered to be some of your best units in the second generation.
Now I suppose a potential counterargument is that all of your worst units in both generations tend to not have Pursuit so there has to be at least some element of truth right? Well for the sake of argument let’s say that Ardan, Diadora and Dew all had Pursuit. Would that magically make them great? My answer would be no. Ardan’s biggest disadvantage would be his incredibly low movement in a game with notoriously large maps. Plus he’s Armor Knight, they’re a class notorious for being slow. He probably wouldn’t even double attack that much anyway.
Diadora’s main problem is her lack of availability. She’s only around for 1 full chapter plus the tail-end of Chapter 1. She’d have to be as OP as the laguz royals in the Tellius games if she were to be anything below bottom tier and giving her Pursuit wouldn’t be enough to fix that problem. Plus she doesn’t have a horse.
Dew would definitely benefit the most from getting Pursuit since he’s a thief, but his strength is so crappy that I’m pretty sure a toothpick could do more damage than this little twerp. Plus he doesn’t have a horse.
So it’s definitely possible to be an awesome unit without Pursuit. However, it does put you at a disadvantage that frankly shouldn’t be there.
- The lack of trading: This is another flaw that I see people point out. I’ll admit that it’s tedious, but this one never bothered me all that much. I can see why other people wouldn’t like it though.
- Poorly designed weapon stats: Take a look at all the magic swords in this game (http://serenesforest.net/genealogy-of-the-holy-war/inventory/swords/) Notice a pattern? They all have the stats. They have the same might, the same weight, accuracy and worth. They’re basically the same weapon. Okay, the Runesword saps HP and has a fifth of the uses that the other ones do, but HOLY CRAP! Whose bright idea was that to give them identical stats?
It’s even worse with tomes (http://serenesforest.net/genealogy-of-the-holy-war/inventory/fire-thunder-wind/). Same might, same accuracy, but different weights. Why is this worse? It’s worse because Holy War’s attack speed formula subtracts the weapon weight directly from the wielder’s speed. Formulas like this give a huge advantage to weapons with lower weight. So if their might and accuracy are the same, then basically wind tomes end up being the best anima tomes since they hit just as hard, and are just as accurate, while giving fewer attack speed penalties. I love Holy War, but even I have to admit that that’s pretty stupid.
Axes and lances have absurd weights whereas swords are practically made of feathers by comparison. Why does a Brave Axe weigh less than an Iron Axe? It doesn’t make any sense at all. Also a Silver Axe has 22 might (http://serenesforest.net/genealogy-of-the-holy-war/inventory/axes/). Not even kidding. That’s a higher might than most game’s regalia.
Speaking of regalia I suppose you want me to criticize how strong this game’s regalia are right? PLOT TWIST! I actually LOVE their sheer power. 30 might, + 10 - 20 boosts and sometimes accompanied by giving an additional skill? HECKS YEAH! Boy do I love these mother flipping regalia in this mother flipping game! On a completely personal note, I love powerful regalia. I’d much rather have a game go the Holy War route than the Fates route when it comes to regalia. It’s a pet peeve of mine to see the highest ranked weapons in a game be lame or underwhelming. I won’t go into another anti-Fates tirade, but let me just say that I am not a fan of the way that game handled its Regalia. There’s just something about roflstomping entire armies that gives me such a good feeling whenever I play this game.
So tl;dr version: This game sucks at handling weapon weight. There’s one more flaw I’d like to point out before talking about the cool elements of Holy War’s gameplay, it’s formula for calculating critical hits:
“Critical rate (with Critical skill) = Skill + Weapon Kills bonus + Combination bonus [%]” (http://serenesforest.net/genealogy-of-the-holy-war/miscellaneous/calculations/
That’s right, luck is not subtracted from a unit’s critical hit rate. To be fair you could probably counter this point with the fact that critical hits either require a skill, weapon kills or the lover/sibling crit bonus which all happen in limited amounts anyway. Still, I’m not a fan of this particular calculation.
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