VideoGame Rekka No Ken
Rekka No Ken, or simply "Fire Emblem" as released in the states, is a tactical RPG where three young heroes lead an army to battle against treacherous nobles, a league of assassins, and a mad wizard bent on ruling the world. The game is easy to learn, the gameplay is polished, the auto-save makes it ideal for gaming on the go, and the sprite art and animations have a lot of character beneath their simple designs. With three difficulty levels and two versions of the 30+ chapter campaign, the game is a challenge for any skill level, though it would benefit from the restrictive tutorial being skippable outside of Hard Mode.
Beyond that, the Support System is one of the best features of the game, turning player units from pawns into unique, identifiable characters with their own hopes, dreams, and struggles beyond the main plot. Supporting allows player unit pairs to advance relationships, subplots, and stat bonuses when near each other in battle, and adds a lot of replay value to the game. This is good, because restarting is basically the only thing to do after beating the final boss, forcing the player to abandon a literal army of characters they've nurtured to power. Rekka No Ken would have greatly benefited from a post-game like Fire Emblem The Sacred Stones' Creature Campaign, with level gauntlets and random battles.
The game's other main weakness is Eliwood, who is out-shined by Lyn and Hector as both a unit and character despite being billed as the main protagonist. Eliwood is The Mario to Lyn's Fragile Speedster and Hector's Mighty Glacier, but often ends up merely mediocre by comparison due to stat growth. Worse, his Wide Eyed Idealism is much less interesting than Lyn's Action Girl compassion, Noble Savage pride, and tragic backstory, or Hector's Blood Knight tendencies clashing with responsibility in the face of his older brother's impending mortality. Lyn's case is especially frustrating, as she becomes largely irrelevant after the tutorial and never gets to make good on her oath against the bandits to who killed her tribe.
These are relatively minor complaints, though. Rekka No Ken is a great game with challenging but accessible gameplay, memorable characters, and plenty of depth beneath its simple surface. It may not be perfect, but fans of tactical games and more traditional RPGs should both find plenty to love here.
VideoGame The first localized Fire Emblem
Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, released as "Fire Emblem" in the US, is the first FE game released in the West.
The game, which is a prequel to The Binding Blade, focuses on three different Lords- Lyn has focus in the prologue, and for the main game, you can choose between Eliwood and Hector- and gradually escalates from infighting between noble houses to a potential world-ending evil plan. It's fairly decent overall, but there are some odd continuity issues with The Binding Blade, albeit ones that those not familiar with the game won't notice.
One problem with the route structure is that while choosing between Hector and Roy affects which character gets focus, which characters can be recruited and how difficult some maps are(separate from the difficulty selection), the two campaigns are largely identical in terms of levels and story.
Like Binding Blade and Sacred Stones, Blazing Blade has supports, but with the same problems- the five-support limit forces you to play repeatedly (or watch Youtube) to see them all, while many of the supports can take excruciatingly long times to complete. It can also be rather impractical to leave two units next to each other for long periods of time later on, since you're always under pressere to be on the move.
Like with Sacred Stones, I find Blazing Blade's reputation for being easy to be a bit exaggerated(at least based on Eliwood's Normal mode; Hector Hard Mode is notoriously difficult). Not only is there no option to turn off permadeath or see all enemy ranges, but you can't even do skirmishes to level grind. Similarly, the maps have Fog of War and other annoying mechanics, and while reinforcements mercifully don't act on the same turn they arrive, there can often be an obnoxious number of them, like in "Cog of Destiny" and "Victory or Death." It also doesn't help that the Lords are rather lackluster units who promote late, which often results in them being liabilities.
The game features the ability to unlock "gaiden" chapters, or even change which enemies you face in certain levels, by fulfilling certain conditions. Unfortnately, not only does the game neglect to tell you any of this, but some of those conditions involve jumping through hoops.
A few other mechanics are rather inconvenient. For example, you can only shop at stores by traveling to them during maps and can often go for a few missions without a chance to resupply, forcing you to plan ahead. Additionally, you only unlock the Convoy once you recruit Merlinus midway through the game, and not only must he be protected, he won' always accompany you.
The review may sound rather negative, but despite my complaints, the core FE gameplay is solid. All in all, I can appreciate the role Blazing Blade played in bringing FE to the West, but there are more polished and user-friendly games that are better entry points to the series.