Tearring Saga Chapters 6 - 10

                Here’s another update by yours truly on Tearring Saga.

Pros

• Narron is a beast! He’s a clear cut example of an Est done right. In fact, he might just end up holding of “Best Est”. I’m really glad I listened to everyone who told me to use him and I’m amazed that the best unit in the game is an Est archetype. Well done Tearring Saga. Well done indeed.

• Here’s what I think of the map design from about Chapter 5 onward:

• Chapter 5: I appreciate the little corridors down at the bottom where you had to split your army up in half single file. Unfortunately the downside here is that there’s a pretty big open space after that.
  
  http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Beyond_The_Legend

• Chapters 6 & 7: Wonderfully designed chapters. Your army is split up into smaller groups, both chapters throw enemy reinforcements in places that encourage the player to play faster and the enemy positioning is fairly well done. Before I forget I really liked how the boss in Chapter 6 was designed. He 1 shots your weaker units, 2 shots everyone else and can tank anything that isn’t Runan’s Rapier, magic or Raquel’s Master Bow.

                 http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/The_River-Crossing_Operation

                http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Liberation_of_the_Capital

• Chapter 8: Treasures all over the map. Pirates are positioned in different spots and there are multiple ways to approach this map. It feels like a step down from 6 & 7 but still better than 5. The main problem here is that the enemies are FE 8 levels of scrub (this point will be addressed later in this post)

                       http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Holy_Dragon_Neuron

• Chapter 9: Not a fan. It’s mostly an open field with enemy reinforcements that could be easily blocked off. Sure you have some bushes and terrain but for the most part it’s an open field.

                                          http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Two_Paths

• Chapter 10: Actually I like this level. You have enemies charging at you from the north while there are recruitable mercenaries from the town that could also swing at you. There’s an interesting event regarding one of your healers that could have some fun long-term consequences. I like stuff like that so this chapter gets kudos from me. There’s also a character recruitment trade-off that seems interesting (although the wording behind said recruitment seems confusing to me, but I think I know what the idea is and I’m a fan). There’s lots to do and terrain is implemented well again.

                                 http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Freedom_and_Justice

                          Map Design Summation: With the exception of 5 & 9 the map design seems pretty good to me. There’s interesting stuff going on, the terrain is usually well implemented and some of the concepts are at least interesting.

• Enemy AI: I really like the fact that hurt enemies will retreat in order to get healing. It’s totally preferable to enemies that zombie charge you like the ones in Awakening.

• Skills: This game has the skill system! Skills are cool! Although I wish that there were some way to click on the skills to see what they could do rather than look them up on serenesforest.net.

• Holy War Style Talk Alerts: Like Holy War, Tearring Saga will inform you in some way about who needs to talk to who in one of the characters menus. I appreciate little touches like that.

Cons

• Scrubby enemies: I have to say I’m a little disappointed at how easy these enemies are to kill. Most enemies will easily have below 0 Attack Speed which doesn’t make it all that difficult to kill them. The zombie chapter is incredibly easy. Here’s a picture I took of the average zombie in that level:
  
  
  
  
  

                              Yeah, zeroes all across the board. That’s pretty lame. Unfortunately the enemy reinforcements are positioned in such a way as to encourage grinding. In fact, that’s exactly what I did: I got my Pegasus Knight and Sasha 3 whole levels from this chapter while also providing additional level-ups for guys like Narron and Zieg. Unfortunately most enemies in other levels aren’t that much stronger either.

• Clunky World Map: Also not a fan of the clunky world map so far. You’re only ever given one route to go and it’s pretty obviously where you need to go. Maybe I’m just being impatient and need to wait until later on.

• The Arena System: This game has an abusable GBA styled arena system.

                        Overall: I’m still enjoying this game. There’s plenty of nice little touches that make it all the more enjoyable. It’s not perfect (no Fire Emblem game is) but the positives definitely outweigh the negatives.