Berwick Saga Review Part 2

Before moving on, there were a few additional thoughts that I had about the skill system that I wanted to talk about. Another cool aspect of how this game handles skills comes from the constant cost-benefit analysis the game forces the player to make. Let's take a look at a few of them:

• Desperation: One skill that's unique to this game is a skill called Desperation. Here's how it works: It's a command skill where the user of the skill gains an additional 22 % accuracy. If the user has higher attack speed than their enemy, they get to double attack that enemy. 

Desperation comes with a few drawbacks

 (1) Enemies get to counterattack, even if they've already taken damage.

 (2) Enemy accuracy is automatically set to 100 % so they will be able to hit you.

 

(3) The user's defense becomes 0 meaning that the enemy's attack is gonna hurt.

(4) This skill can only be used against enemies who can counterattack.

The first three drawbacks are pretty significant. Desperation becomes the ultimate high risk / high reward scenario. It gives a much needed boost to accuracy in a game where that's a meaningful positive, and it provides an opportunity to double attack. However, it has enough drawbacks to prevent it from being the solution to every problem. Thus, the player has to decide if the reward is worth the risk. 

This is not the only skill that provides such a trade-off, but it is a good example of how Berwick Saga uses skills to provide an extra layer of strategic depth. Now on to the other positives of the game.

Why Berwick Saga's Gameplay is so Legendary # 3: The Gold Standard of Resource Management

Another reason why I love Berwick Saga's gameplay has to do with how the game expertly handles resource management. Berwick Saga gives you enough gold to buy lots of things, but it also gives you a lot of extra ways to spend that gold. In fact, lets go over all the ways you can spend gold in this game:

• Buying weapons, items, and healing orbs.

• Weapon / item crafting: You can combine different materials to make cool weapons, healing orbs, or items in this game. 

• Buying Food: You know how Fates has the Mess Hall in MyCastle? Berwick Saga came out 10 years before Fates and did the food mechanic first. Kaga did it first. Kaga did it better. Food makes recruiting characters easier, provides powerful stat boosts, and can give certain units skills for a chapter.

•  Buying Horses: In this game, if a mounted unit takes damage, their horse takes that same damage too. If the horse's HP drops to 0, they permanently die. You can buy new horses, but they're expensive. Each option of horse has different HP, and some can even boost stats. 

• Recruiting Mercenaries: Berwick Saga handles recruitment differently than most other Fire Emblem games. Most of the cast will only join you if you pay them. The most powerful mercenaries cost more money to join you. If you want to permanently recruit that character, you have to follow certain criteria unique to that character. What I love about this system is that recruiting characters feels deliberate and strategic. You have to actively think about who you want to bring, and recruitment becomes an active part of your strategy.

• Furniture: Buying furniture in this game can give Reese, the main character of the game, stat boosts in various areas. It can also make recruiting female mercenaries easier to recruit. Two pieces of furniture can give you more money and more stuff. Furniture is insanely expensive, but hey, it can do some cool stuff. I bought a big rug which increased Reese's chance of activating Adept by 10 %. I must have been lucky because I noticed Reese activating Adept all the time during my playthrough.

Having numerous ways to buy things creates another layer of strategic depth since you constantly need to think about what you need most, and what will help you tackle the next chapter. However, there is another fantastic element of Berwick Saga's resource management: The game gives you numerous ways to earn more money.

• Wanted Lists: During the early and mid portions of the game there are certain bosses and mini bosses that you can either kill or capture. If you kill these enemies, you get a certain amount of gold. If you capture them, you get double the amount of gold that the wanted poster lists. 

• Capturing Enemies: Berwick Saga has a capture system similar to Thracia 776. If enemies are captured, you get all of their stuff. This gives the player access to extra resources. Unlike Thracia, there's a nifty feature where enemies will pay you to release any of the soldiers that you capture. 

• Obtaining Rare Resources: There's an NPC in this game who will you pay you to collect rare items and weapons. 

• Fulfilling Citizen Requests: As you'd expect of an RPG like this, there are NPCs who will ask you to do certain things for them. If you fulfill these requests they'll either pay you, or give you good stuff. It's generally worth it to fulfill these requests. 

As a result, you can potentially gain huge amounts of money if you know what strategies to use. It's a rewarding feeling to be able to get tons of money because your plan turned out well. The fact that you have more places to spend that money also gives the player more choices, and creates a greater level of strategic depth. This worked out so well for Berwick Saga that I want this system in every Fire Emblem game from here on out.

Why Berwick Saga's Gameplay is so Legendary # 4: The Top Notch Map Design

When I was playing Berwick Saga, I made notes on each of the maps that I've played. I feel safe in saying that Berwick Saga has even better map design than Thracia 776, the game that had previously held the title of "Best Map Design in the Series". Here's why I love Berwick Saga's map design:

- This game is excellent at designing side objectives: Throughout most of the game each map will give you multiple things to do that are fun and interesting. In some cases, they often change how you play the game because you can earn neat stuff by doing them. 

- Putting pressure on the player: This game does a very good job at punishing turtling. It also frequently pulls the player in multiple different directions. 

- Map objective variety: Berwick Saga has plenty of map objective variety. Escape, Seize, Defend, Complete X Objective in Y turns. There are even escort NPC maps and they're super fun to play! This game also manages to create different scenarios for the player that gives each map its unique flavor.

Why Berwick Saga's Gameplay is so Legendary # 5: The Difficulty

Maybe I just need to get good, but I found Berwick Saga to be more difficult than over 90 % of the titles in the Fire Emblem franchise. According to TVTropes.com Berwick Saga is more difficult than Tearring Saga:

"The game is significantly harder than its predecessor, Tear Ring Saga. due to its unique mechanics such as a new turn system, breakable weapons dictated by the RNG and far more challenging maps with strong enemies." (Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/BerwickSaga)

 The game starts out okay, but there are several difficulty spikes where the enemies get noticeably stronger. There are three different enemy unit types that stand out to me as being really strong in this game:

1) Armored Enemies: Armored enemies in the middle to later portions of the game have defense so high that regular weapons don't deal any damage to them at all. In addition to that, they generally have shields equipped and a high rate of activating them when attacked. That means that it's super difficult to deal them any damage at all. This game also hands out very few anti-armor weapons. Your best bet to beating armored enemies is to either use hammers or magic. Hammers negate armored defense and are immune to shields. I've never seen hammers be so vital before in a strategy game.

I love this design element, and I've always wished that this was how armored units were designed in regular Fire Emblem games. This for me is the gold standard on how to design armored enemies.

2) Mounted Enemies: Note to the wise - If you see Black Riders charging at you, you're probably screwed. Black Riders in this game are scary! All of them wield lances, which in this game gain additional damage for each space that they move. Let's take a look at the Greatlance for example.

The Greatlance deals 1 + 5H (5H means that it deals 5 damage for every hex you travel in). The maximum movement that a rider can move is 7 spaces. So 1 + 5(7) = 36. If your rider moves the full distance while a Greatlance is equipped, they deal an additional 36 damage in additional to their strength stat. THAT'S INSANE! I've been able to one-shot an armored unit at full health with that kind of damage. Wait, didn't you just get done saying that armored enemies are super tough? Yes I did. 

Now if I'm capable of doing that with a Greatlance, imagine what multiple mounted enemies can do with a slightly weaker lance. It's scary! Black Riders can typically kill most of your cast in 2 hits if you're unfortunate enough to be at the end of their range. They're also pretty accurate too. I love this design for mounted enemies. The further move, the more powerful they get. I wish that this was how mounted enemies were designed.

Lots of Black Riders are durable, and they equip shields that have a % chance of reflecting any damage you deal to them back at you.  

3) Ballista: The ballista in this game make the ballista of other Fire Emblem games look like a joke. They kill your most fragile units in one hit. Everyone else dies in 2 hits. Their accuracy is pretty good too. They also have skills that improve their accuracy too. I've never been so scared of ballista when playing a strategy game.

In general, the enemies toward the middle to later portions of this game are accurate, durable, and dish out a huge amount of damage. Another major reason why it's impossible to solo this game is because the enemies are really tough. There are also two extra fun ways in which enemies can screw you over:

Infinite Range Ballistic Siege Tomes

Boss Weapons That Can Cause Level-Downs

        ^ There are several bosses at the end of this game that can do that. Praised be Kaga. 

Stat Brackets

One last gameplay mechanic I'd like to gush about are stat brackets. In this game, stat brackets are a mechanic that can dictate how far a character's growths can deviate from their expected averages. This mechanic prevents your characters' stats from getting too RNG screwed. It also means that they can't be super RNG blessed either.

 As someone who's always wanted to design a strategy game like Fire Emblem, I really like this mechanic, because it allows the designers of the game to have an accurate idea of how powerful a player's characters will be in any given level. This makes it easier to design challenging enemies, which probably explains why the enemies in this game are as powerful, but fair.

A Couple of Quick Things

• This game fixed Fog of War: In this game, enemies can't see you in Fog of War maps until you come into their range either. This makes Fog of War maps actually fun to play. Coming from someone who hates Fog of War maps in normal Fire Emblem games, this is a neat improvement. There's even a map toward the end of the game where you're explicitly using Fog of War to your advantage in order to rescue NPCs and take down a ring of powerful enemies. It's a cool scenario!

• Stats Barely Matter: This game does a great job of deemphasizing stats. If you thought that Kaga era Fire Emblem games had low stats, then wait until you play this game. Let me show you what high stats look like for one of my characters at the end of the game:
  
  

            This was my Dean at the end of the game. Keep in mind that Dean is a character that you get during the first chapter of the game. All the green pluses show how much his stats increased throughout the game (it doesn't take promotion bonuses into account). All the same, this should give you a good idea of how little your character's stats will increase throughout the game. Also, here are Dean's growths:

Those growths are fairly typical for the growths in this game (minus the Axe Skill rank growth which is unusually high). The point here is that base stats and growths are really low. Weapons and skills make a much bigger difference in battle than your character's stats. For what it's worth, I love this aspect of Berwick Saga! I wish that future Fire Emblem games de-emphasized stats to this degree. When stats become less relevant, it helps to prevent juggernauting and the game becomes more about what strategies the play uses.