There's a realism to the pre-Awakening FE that I really admire. The franchise has always been Anime, don't get me wrong. There's gonna be the occasional demon king and dragon war here and there. But the characters really tend to avoid too many trappings. There's a quiet fact of life to them. There's whole backstories you can only find in certain supports and quiet sort of tragedies you might not ever find. Most of your party is ordinary people. You aren't repeating the same character beats over and over. Its soothing.

But honestly, the stand out star is L'arachel. A loud, boastful woman yelling about her holy purpose to smite out evil. You think she'll be annoying on the first impression. But she charmed me really quickly as this lovable narcissist character. Its a hard character beat to land, but there's something endearing about someone running around going "I'm the best in the world and therefore you, my friend, are also the best by association." Papyrus Undertale is probably the best example, but its a winning formula. Her support chain with the main girl is also just the gayest shit in the world, with L'arachel chilling out her persona for a little to genuinely, truly bond with someone. It shows you how she can operate outside of those egotistic moments and be a real person for a while.

Fire Emblem games are pretty neat, I think. Just very charming and fun.

I don't know, man. There's plenty to like here—charming characters, a cute story, semi-compelling political drama, good (enough) maps, gorgeous GBA aesthetic, whatever. But I've been frustrated and dragging my feet playing this. There is a tiny little fence between me and having fun, and no matter what I do, I cannot hop over it and be compelled to finish this game. That fence is named Seth.

Let me be clear. Lovely guy. Seems really sweet. But he is a sponge on the hypothalamus of my brain. He sucks up every drop of serotonin produced while playing this game. Instead of pumping my fist and shaking hands with another comically muscular man before we ride in a helicopter and are tricked into a death battle with a technologically superior alien species that only one of us escapes alive, I'm sucking my thumb and honk-shooing in my nightcap and gown beside a brick-and-mortar fireplace. Seth is the single most overpowered character I have ever seen in any video game. Still, with like 5 or 6 chapters left in the entire game, he one-shots every normal enemy and two-shots every boss. What are we doing here? Seth bends the very map design around him. Choke-points are no longer threatening. I stand slack-jawed as I drop the red-haired menace in front of 300 enemy goons, praying they will be enough to end his reign. Yet he stands steadfast as they all line up and take turns missing every attack and dying instantly. The Australian government cannot produce enough iron lances to feed into the Seth-powered enemy chipper. He is less a man and more an industrial machine.

Seth has ruined the thrill of permadeath. He has ruined my investment in the combat. He has stolen my crops, and he has pillaged my coffers. I never want to see this man again!

There is a lot to be said about how novel the pacing of this game is and how much I enjoy saving only at the end of chapters (and the chapter structure itself), but I'll save it for when I actually finish one of these things.

Everything about this installment makes the synapses in my brain fire off. A lot of people find this game easy, but I am not an intelligent, strategically-minded Fire Emblem fan, so even on this game’s Normal difficulty I receive enough of an interesting challenge where I’m always engaged. The characters are all the best; Neimi is my golden star, I actually enjoyed using Colm since I took care to keep him alive for the first time. I finally got to use Cormag extensively and he was a beast. Beloved fantasy character Kyle is also my favorite Great Knight ever. So many great characters whose supports are fun to explore and who are just fun to use as playable characters.

I adore this story, too. Lyon is the most impeccably well-written villain in any one of these games I’ve played. A poor soul, eaten up by his insecurity, so insecure that he cannot see how his friends try and lift him up, so insecure that he’s formed a pact with a demon king just to feel some tiny semblance of control over his fate. He only finds out he’s truly strong of heart in time to not have his essence completely consumed by the devil he’s let in. For his former friends, it is only through becoming unflinching in their self-assuredness that they are able to undo Lyon’s awful mistake. It’s an RPG for finding out that that you can always be sure of yourself when you know your friends will lift you up however much more you need to reach your goal, but you have to have your arms outstretched to your friends as much as you have them reaching out towards your desires.

I think, besides my eternally growing adoration for this cast, what really brings me back to this reserve to drink is the job system. Simple on paper, it has just the right amount of customization that has me always thinking of the next playthrough while I’m playing it. Same with the support system, which I think is so good in this game. Limiting each character to five support conversations per save file, done so that each character will be able to gain A Support with just one other character, and C or B Support with one or two more, I’m always thinking of the combinations I should try out during a run, and I as I get to know the game better with each playthrough it makes me excited to go back and try different things, different combinations, all for the pay off of having a bunch of units that are insanely fun to use. People complain about the maps, but I think they’re cool, and what this game may lack in maps it makes up for in units. These characters and classes and weapons are so fun to use. I love this game to bits.

Honestly, I'd really want to type up a long review on this game but out of spite, I'm giving it 4 stars.

Why? Because quite frankly, as petty as this is going to be, Eirika really dragged the story down. Ephraim's story is wonderful and as a character, he could carry the whole game on his back as the Protagonist.

Eirika however? Dumb, bland and boring. I never want to see her again because it's a fumble

This is my favorite Fire Emblem. It's the one I always come back to, though I haven't finished it in ages because I always try and challenge myself and do the highest difficulty and then I get frustrated having to start chapters because I let my favorite units (Neimi, Joshua) bite it because I don't know the back half of this game as well because I always try a difficult playthru and then don't finish it. lol. So I'm putting this down until I finish Engage and then I'm going to write a real review that professes my love for this.

Blazing blade foi uma repetição da formula do binding blade, concertando seus maiores problemas e sacred stones é o mesmo pro blazing blade, dupla mudança de classe, sem mais capítulos tutoriais maçantes, adição de inimgos monstros (algo somente presente no gaiden, o que incrementa bastante na variedade de inimigos) e adição de opções de grind, caso você queira se sentir mais seguro ao jogar (não que você vá precisar muito, já que o jogo é bem fácil kaka) ou grindar supports, o que pode ser visto como uma boa recomendação de jogo para um iniciante à franquia; claro que esses pontos de grind podem ser ignorados, permitindo jogadores mais "raízes" que gostam de jogar com recursos limitados, também terem uma boa experiência.

A história vai mais pro lado pessoal do que pro épico, ela é bem mais simples, porém menos bagunçada do que o título anterior, os personagens e mapas continuam sendo bons e divertidos, mesmo com a menor quantidade comparado ao título anterior.

O maior ponto ruim desse jogo é ser tão curto e simples mesmo, fazendo o jogo ser uma experiência bem rápida em comparação aos outros jogos. O jogo tem função de escolher duas rotas no meio da jogatina, sendo um bom fator replay, mas no geral, elas são somente um mudança de foco momentâneo, dando mais contexto a história e contendo alguns mapas exclusivos e logo os dois focos se tornam um e o jogo é o mesmo independente da rota. O jogo também não é tão desafiador, mesmo sem grindar, sendo um dos jogos mais fáceis da franquia, ênfase no "Seth" que é uma das units mais overpowers de toda a franquia.

Notes for my series replay:
- Pretty par for the course on GBA Fire Emblems in terms of presentation, looks a little bit more polished than the other two in some areas but ultimately plays the same.
- First game since Gaiden to have a world map, kinda neat throwback to Gaiden but just like in Gaiden it's mostly novelty and not super meaningful. If we're being technical, it actually has less purpose than Gaiden because it's a straight line and you never really have to deal with monster encounters unless you go to grind. Gaiden at least had branching paths in some cases that took you to different dungeons and maps. There are like 3 dungeons in FE8 and they don't really reward you with much of anything except for post game content.
- The easiest game I have played so far, even easier than FE7. I played Ephraim's route for my replay, and even the hardest chapter in that (chapter 14) was still mildly frustrating due to poor luck with status staves.
- Speaking of which, this must be the most straightforward entry thus far, as there are maybe like 3 maps with ballistas, occasionally siege tomes, and mostly just reinforcements to worry about, but they don't move on EP so it's not a huge deal. Yeah there are status staves, but their accuracy is kinda shoddy and you get PLENTY of restore staves, so proper positioning and burning the staves is easy enough.
- Given what I just mentioned, maps are hardly memorable or impactful. They feel pretty devoid of any real thought except for enemy placement and general setting. The bravest Sacred Stones gets with map design is putting you on three small boats in fog of war. Frustrating, sure, but not exactly engaging.
- To give credit where it's due, FE8 has an absolute slapper of a soundtrack. It goes extremely hard for absolutely no reason in some tracks. "Powerful Foe" is a awesome boss theme, "Truth, Despair, and Hope" fucking blew me out of the water the first time I heard it and it still makes me get hyped even on replays, and of course "Prince of Despair" is my favorite GBA main antag theme. In fact, of the three GBA titles, I would say either Sacred Stones has the best OST overall. It starts very mid, but picks up in the mid game and starts to blow your socks off.
- My last critique of Sacred Stones is that the cast of characters is kinda sleepy. I think there are a few awesome standouts like Joshua and Cormag, but otherwise I feel like this game has the most white bread cast up to this point, as without farming supports for dozens of turns, I get almost no characterization from most of the cast when they're recruited. And the few that you do get characterization from are just like knightly types, which is fine but it gets old after a few of them. None can touch the GOAT Seth, granted.

Overall, the best way I can describe Sacred Stones is that it has neat OST and presentation, but man is the game bland. It has a few neat departures from the standard, but ultimately they're making an already too easy game even easier. For me, I opted out of those features for the most part, and I felt like even as a standard FE game this falls a little flat in most places. Ephraim is funny though because he feels like a Michael Bay movie character in Fire Emblem which is kinda epic.

You know, as much as I hate Super Smash Bros now, I have to admit that it introduced me to some baller franchises. One of many being, you guessed it, Fire Emblem. I’ve spent literal years trying to get in this series but it just never worked out. I either didn’t have the hardware for the games I was interested in the most (FE7) or didn’t have the budget to afford ones for the systems I owned (Path of Radiance, Awakening, etc.). Then, when I eventually was led to the floodgates to the world of emulation, I finally gave the series a shot with Fire Emblem 7. Then I dropped it for some unknown reason. Then a year later, I was randomly enticed in trying this series again so I booted up Sacred Stones, and it all escalated from there.
And you know what? It basically lived up to my expectations. The strategic risk vs reward gameplay style, the dynamic cast of characters, and the simply AWESOME battle animations all culminated in a really fun experience for me. It’s truly a series that deserves it’s iconic place in Nintendo’s vast catalog of titles. Now I can’t compare this game to the other entries because, well, it’s the only one I’ve finished, but I had a good time with everything the game offered.
The story isn’t like peak fiction or anything, but I liked the protagonist duo Eirika and Ephriam a lot, and the villain is really cool because they act differently depending on what route you take, but it’s in a logical sense that fits together in the end. Whenever you save a little town, protect a falling kingdom, or have more heroes join your cause, you really feel that satisfaction of putting the world back together. When one of your units dies because of a miscalculation you made, you really feel bad for your mistake and want to try better next reset. The series in general seems to be great at giving the sense of camaraderie with the player and their units, so it makes me excited to try the other entries that do this even better.
I am… very bad at this genre. This is the first tactical JRPG I’ve ever finished, and it was an absolute struggle for me at some points. Sure, many of those problems are just a literal skill issue, but I mean come on, some of the later maps just CTRL+V enemies all over the place lmao. That being said, it gave me a big feeling of relief when I finally got through each chapter, slowly but surely beefing up my units and putting my brain to the test. I do think some level up methods are rather obtuse (healers in particular take absolutely forever to promote because they gain barely anything from casting spells), but I’d say the level up curve is mostly fair, especially considering how many broken units you can get in this game, Seth being the one who carried literally every chapter I was in, it was kind of ridiculous.
But anyway, that is all I really have to say about The Sacred Stones. It’s a neat game from a neat series I’ve had interest in for so long, and it was worth the wait. Very much looking forward to titles such as Path of Radiance and Shadows of Valentia. Also please block me immediately if I somehow start playing Fire Emblem Heroes.

replayed this one to do the ephraim route. i think coming out of a replay of the first classic fe game i ever played multiple years after starting this series has made me appreciate it a lot more. it still has one of the best casts, probably the best visuals and soundtrack the series had on the gba, the story is one of my favorites in fire emblem when viewed from both routes, and lyon is easily the best main antagonist in the series. i do think the maps are pretty easy on normal mode, but the maps are well designed and it's far from the easiest. i honestly wonder why the difficulty is such a point of contention for fe8 but not awakening which is much easier.

overall a very special game to me. it's still a bit upsetting that magvel is the only pre-modern continent we never got explored again in a future entry to the point where its mythology/lore is easily one of the least fleshed out in the series other than fates and engage. at this point hoping for a sequel to fe8 is a bit silly, so i'll just enjoy what we got the way we got it.

Fire Emblem is a series of peaks and valleys. Rarely is it bad, but there are a few games in the series that just get it. FE8 is one of those games. For it's era this is a really good Fire Emblem. Only a couple of midgame maps are really boring, but the entire cast stands out and this is the first time in the series (I suppose FE2, in a janky way, had branched promotions) that you're really given the chance to customize your units. The entire cast is great: colorful characters that don't feel too tropey, and I can forgive the GBA/early console support system for being what it is given it's from that era of Fire Emblem. Just an absolutely swell game.

The GBA Fire Emblem games are my favorites. They have the coolest style and design of all the FE games I've played. I think Blazing Blades is a bit more fun, but the story in this game was better overall.

I did a no-save challenge mode and didn't really struggle all that much. I was expecting it to be hared.

73/100

For a first time playing fire emblem, I quite enjoyed this game.
The story was decent, I loved many of the characters and the battles were hype...
Just using Seth to destroy entire armies is a sentiment of satisfaction that can't be measured.
Having replayed it on an ironman setting without any tower grinding, I believe some of the game was designed around you powerleveling your characters to not get overwhelmed by numbers. Nevertheless, the game is easy enough to not be too slow to beat and it was quite an entertaining experience