So I just finished playing a magnificent SRPG. You may have seen me gushing about it. It's called Berwick Saga. Or, as I may or may not call it in the future: "My Berwick Bae." Here's a current tier list of my favorite Fire Emblem games:
Berwick Saga is easily in the top tier, and for good reason: This game is fantastic! Berwick Saga easily has some of the best gameplay of the Fire Emblem franchise. It shakes up the Fire Emblem formula in unique and interesting ways. In addition to that, there are several mechanics that Berwick Saga handles so well that I wish every Fire Emblem game moving forward handled things the way this game did. It probably won't happen, but a man can dream.
Most of this review will focus on the gameplay, since it's the gameplay that blew me out of the water, but I'll make sure to leave a few non-spoiler thoughts about the story, since that was pretty good too. Alright, let's jump in.
Why Berwick Saga's Gameplay is so Legendary # 1: The Flow of Combat
- The Changed Combat Flow: One of the biggest changes that Berwick Saga makes to the normal Fire Emblem formula are the changes made to the flow of combat. I'd like to demonstrate this, by using an example. Let's pretend that in a regular Fire Emblem game there are two units fighting that are both using weapons with the same range (let's say they're both using Iron Lances). Here is how combat would go down:
Fire Emblem Combat Flow
Unit A attacks Unit B. Unit B counterattacks Unit A. If either unit has significantly higher Attack Speed, they get to double attack.
Now, let's take these same combatants and apply the Berwick Saga combat flow:
Berwick Saga Combat Flow
Unit A attacks Unit B. If Unit A dealt damage, then combat ends. Unit B does not get to counterattack. Unit A does not get to double attack, even if their Attack Speed is significantly higher.
The basic rule of thumb when it comes to combat in Berwick Saga is that combat ends once damage has been dealt.
Now here's where things get a little more complicated: That basic rule of thumb has exceptions. There are plenty of skills and weapons in Berwick Saga that either let you attack multiple times or let you counterattack even if you've taken damage. This is something I'll talk more about later, but in this game weapons and skills make a much bigger difference in combat than stats do. If you want a more in-depth breakdown of how combat works in Berwick Saga, you can read this combat guide that goes more in-depth.
Why Should We Care?
You're probably wondering why changing up the flow of combat matters. There are two major ways in which changing up the flow of combat makes a difference:
1) You can't send your most powerful character into a group of enemies and watch that character solo them. No matter how much more powerful your character's stats are than the enemy's, if they get hit they probably won't be able to counterattack. Only one character in your army has the skill "Counter" which lets you counterattack even if you've taken damage. This leads to the second major impact which is...
2) There's a bigger emphasis on the player taking the initiative: Since your characters aren't going to counterattack all that much, the onus is on the player to initiate combat and be proactive in defeating enemies. As many Fire Emblem veterans will tell you, Fire Emblem style gameplay always benefits whenever it incentivizes the player to be proactive. Berwick Saga accomplishes this just by taking away the likelihood of counterattacking.
Why Berwick Saga's Gameplay is so Legendary # 2: The Gold Standard of Unit Balance
One aspect of Berwick Saga's gameplay that's amazing is how the game approaches unit balance. In fact, Berwick Saga handles unit balance / unit differentiation so well that it's become the gold standard of how Fire Emblem games ought to handle unit balance in the future. So how does Berwick Saga handle unit balance?
Everyone in this game has a niche that only they can fulfill. Everyone in your army is capable of making some kind of meaningful contribution that will come in handy at least a few times throughout the game. It's pretty common to switch up your roster, and use a new set of characters because they have specific traits that are useful for a particular map.
The main way that Berwick Saga accomplishes this is by giving everyone has a unique combination of skills. Skills and equipment are the main way that characters are kept different from each other. One Berwick Saga review that I've read does a good job at explaining this:
"So, how does Berwick Saga handle these three elements? The classes determine what equipment a unit can use and whether it can use a horse. So, if you look at 2 mounted units the only actual difference between them is stats... But only at a first glance. If we take a look at Leon and Adel, the first 2 units we get in the same class in the very first chapter:
| Name | Class | Lvl | HP | Str | Def | Spd | Skills |
|---|
| Leon | Spear Knight | 1 | 28 | 6 | 4 | 7 | Deathmatch, Robust, Supporter |
| Adel | Spear Knight | 1 | 29 | 4 | 3 | 8 | Vantage, Throw, Fork, Supporter |
So, if we only compared their stats, there wouldn't be that much of a difference between these 2, Leon is just a bit bulkier and deals higher damage. However, the skills they posses put them in completely different niches in Berwick.
From the very first chapter Leon is able to ORKO some enemies thanks to his deathmatch skill, which is a command skill that you have to use on your turn and it triggers 5 rounds of combat that are much more akin to the usual FE battle flow with guaranteed counterattacks and doubling if any of the units has higher Attack Speed. Of course, 5 rounds of combat can be extremely dangerous against stronger enemies, so this skill is not even close to a delete button against anything.
Adel, on the other hand, has the unique (or at least innate) access to Vantage, which is a passive skill more akin to the Tracia version of the skill, except it also requires Adel's AS to be higher than the enemy's. But remember, in a normal round of combat in Berwick, if your unit damages an enemy, that enemy can't counterattack at all and that means the end of their turn. So, Adel has a niche completely different from that of Leon's, which is to aggro slow enemies that he can damage, weakening the enemy and also completely robbing them of their turn. And again, Vantage isn't a magic pill to trivialize all the enemies in the game, since enemies will often have higher AS than Adel or defense that he can't get through (Not to mention his spear growth is so low he'll have trouble hitting anything when he's outside of Leon's support range)."
(Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/fireemblem/comments/ffii8e/i_beat_berwick_saga_final_team_and_thoughts_also/)
This post is getting so I'll end the fan gushing here and come back to it later. Berwick Saga's gameplay is just so good that there's a lot to talk about and praise. In this post, I've covered how Berwick Saga's changes to the flow of combat are enough to incentivize the player taking the initiative and how it prevents soloing. I've also covered Berwick Saga's top notch unit balance too.
In the next post I'll be going over the following:
- Berwick Saga's expert resource management system and it's base menu.
- The well handled difficulty.
- The switch up to how recruitment is handled.
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