Fire Emblem owes so much of its identity and gameplay to this excellent title. This is the most engaging story in the series and characters really pop despite having so few conversations. They make up for it by having most of those conversations matter a lot both in story exposition and conveying personalities and feelings. A shorter chapter count isn’t even an issue because every mission is so dense with content that you’ll be there for hours. The challenge of each mission makes great pop-offs when things work out. Promotions are very strong and well worth the effort invested into each and every character. The skill system was a bit finnicky as a first attempt but still very fun to play around with. I’m stunned this game was born so early in the series lifespan. It’s nothing short of a masterpiece.

If I were to name downsides, one would be maps so expansive that units without horses struggle to keep up with the ebb and flow of your army, enemy armies and changes in the battlefield. This isn’t as bad in generation 2 where pairings are more of an afterthought, but in generation 1 this results in leaving certain units out of the fight until their pairing is done; further crippling your offensive and defensive capabilities. The other main issue I encountered was boss balance varying wildly, namely the ones with holy weapons. Their stat leaps are far stronger than your own to the point almost every unit you have is guaranteed to die without some major luck involved.

One of the most under-appreciated gems in the gaming sphere.
Cons: no official translation, fanbase spoils everything for anyone wanting to play the game, remake will probably spoil everything in reveal trailers (haha :)
Pros: Each map connecting to each other through starting castles is really cool, and actually makes a cohesive map when put together. It's story is by far the best in fire emblem even though it's an snes game. Sigurd, Arvis, Lewyn, Seliph, Leif, Finn, etc. The motif of the song in prologue being used in endgame as you start at chalphy for both chapters. Has one of the best osts I've heard in my life. Peak Kaga-slop.
Peak. Fiction.

genealogy of the holy war is, like gaiden before it, an attempt to emphasize the RPG in SRPG. to that extent it does an excellent job; genealogy has a more interesting and diverse cast of characters than prior installments, the plot has genuinely compelling thematic ideas, denser worldbuilding than can even be conveyed in it's runtime, and the gameplay interweaves with those thematics very well. genealogy blows every prior fire emblem story completely out of the park, it really is not close at all. i had trouble believing that this game was even written by the same person, though part of that is probably that the quality of the modern fan translation for genealogy is much much better than the translations for 1-3. also like gaiden, there's lots of big experiments for the franchise; the entire structure of how chapters play out is rethought, abilities have been introduced to freshen up combat, the famous generation gap exists, weapon rank has been introduced, the weapons triangle has been introduced, it goes on and on. the majority of these additions are really interesting and add a lot of depth, which is definitely welcome after fe3 felt a bit like an fe1 expansion pack. the biggest defining characteristic of fe4, to me, is that the game just feels HUGE. you're going through huge maps on a huge story with a huge army that has huge stats... and it takes a huge amount of time. 4's achilles heel is that it's a very padded game, the emphasis on the revamped arena system means that you can often spend over an hour optimizing and grinding units before a chapter even starts, and the chapters usually are equivalent to about 4-5 standard fire emblem chapters crammed together, most of them taking me anywhere between 1-4 hours to complete. the scale shouldnt be an inherent dealbreaker, but unfortunately these maps are just so large that much of the time spent in them isn't really in meat and potatoes SRPG stuff, instead you spend a lot of time walking across countries and maybe grinding out relationships on the way. when combat does happen, you're incentivized to finish it as quickly as possible, because fe4 has a habit of putting large blocks of enemies together and having them all swarm your units at once. the end result is a game where you're spending much more time prepping for a very intense 1-3 turn battle than actually fighting, which is definitely a bit disappointing. i get what they were going for, because elements like the arena grinding are interesting power fantasies at first and it does feel exhilarating to watch your stronger units go up against a swarm of soldiers like it's no problem, but it definitely wears on the player after 40+ hours of it. the weapon rank system is also very rough here, again leading to the issue i mentioned earlier where strong units get stronger and weak units get weaker over time. it is an absolute struggle to get some of your early game units (looking at you alec and noish) to be on par with your stronger units because they're locked to bad weapons. on the other side, your good units will often have more weapons than they know what to do with. once i get a brave lance on erin or a brave axe on lex, why would i ever use anything else? the other main issue i had with genealogy is more of an inherited issue from the games that preceded it, i felt the story was often told in too abstract a manner to connect with it emotionally. a lot of key plot points happen off screen or are portrayed through map sprites, and i found it hard to feel personally invested in the stakes of the story as a result. it also often felt to me that the story's dialogue being limited to castle seizes and the beginning of chapters meant that some of the more interesting topics (child hunts, radicalization, persecution, poverty) couldn't get explored as deeply as i would have liked. i can't fault them too much, because obviously they were simply using the format that they had used for 3 games, but considering how radical of a departure FE4's gameplay is, i wish they had been more willing to experiment with the way the story is delivered as well.

Traditional fire emblem fans love to crank off genealogy as le greatest of all time but i am going to say it it's not even that great. By far the least forgiving and player friendly game in the series between the pawn shop , inheritance and time gated child time skip, it's very difficult to play this game without a guide pulled up on the other monitor. To make up for there only being 12 chapters each chapter is 4 chapter stapled together and traversing these gigantic maps with unmounted units just plain sucks, especially when the enemy forces is just 12 guys standing in a 3x4 square. Writing and world building is way ahead of the curve compared to the rest of the series but that's not saying much and even still is overhyped.

(horse emblem, here we go)

i personally, REALLY like genealogy. it won't be enjoyed by some, but depending on how you like your fire emblem games you're either gonna love it or hate it i feel

you can tell some units are just built completely different. sigurd is a pre-promoted lord who gets a silver sword on the first chapter, and once you get 50 kills you get a critical bonus on it, meaning more likely than not, sigurd is going to one-round every unit in the game

then part 2 happens

shit does not change. mfs with wind tomes giving them +20 spd, ares simply existing, etc.

genealogy is a power fantasy game and i love it

This game is one I'm most excited to get a remake hopefully in the near future. This game in the Fire Emblem series offers an incredibly unique experience in both gameplay and story. It's also an incredibly long game, but if you take your time taking the objectives in this game instead of powering through the 12 chapters in this game which are big (Reasonably, one or two seized castles in a chapter should be enough for one session)
But the real strength is the great gameplay integration with the story, with a cast of great characters in both protagonists and villains (Even with limited writing due to being on SNES) and the gameplay showing you story elements such as with the "Exalted Weapons", enemy army affiliations, and the maps showing you the story play out using in-game mechanics.
The soundtrack is also incredibly great, having great level/map themes, themes for each kingdom whether it's their town/army/castle, and numerous dedicated character theme songs.
The only drawback are some gameplay elements not being explained properly, if at all, such as "Leadership Stars", certain "skill" descriptions being vague, and the "Support System" which directly impacts how you will play in the second half of this game. I do recommend that you talk to someone to explain to you the mechanics of this game so you know, most of them are simple anyways. And I recommend emulating this as save states are your best friend in such large levels/maps, please use the Project Naga translation patch, it's a really good English translation.
All I'm saying is, if Twilight of the Gods slapped as much as it did in Shadows of Valentia, a remake of the second Fire Emblem. I can't wait to see how they make the soundtrack of this game's remake.

For context this is the oldest Fire emblem I have played so far (the others being 7,8,13-17) so forgive me if I am just talking about classic FE and not this game specifically.

It's a hard game to rate, but I think It was fun in a challenging masochistic way, because every time I got frustrated with the game I always made it through the challenge being to figure out the strategy to win, which is probably just the appeal for the series.

what makes this one unique is the size of the maps and its time skip being split between gen 1 and gen 2. The large maps are also to make up for this game having less chapters but I liked how it made each chapter feel like little story in that continent and capturing bases and having the enemy armies respond while this is cool it does mean most of the game is moving units around and if they aren't on horse it will take extra long.

This series has always been good at tying narrative and gameplay but this game is on another level especially with the twist of gen 1.

The time skip works for both narrative and gameplay, pairing gen 1 units together for insanely overpowered units in gen 2 as well as the games theme of fixing the problems caused by the previous generation, and for a SNES game it's very impressive for what it does with its story, world, and in game politics.

My only major issue is I felt like it was hard to grasp the mechanics of the game, they don't explain it very well

But overall I enjoyed my time with it and can see its influence in the rest of the series and can see why its a fan favorite.

A phenomenal game that aged better mechanically than you would expect. The world building, story, characters, presentation, writing, music, and scope of the game are honestly stellar and incredibly ambitious especially for the time. Should note that I did do a bit of research into specific items, but I had a great time regardless. Sigurd and Seliph's story are just great to see unfold and it's amazing how the worldbuilding is put into the gameplay as a reward for helping save villages.

I definitely don't think this game will be for everyone in regards to its gameplay, especially with how later games would improve upon it with a lot of quality of life features such as trading. However, a lot of the gameplay mechanics were carefully picked to give a lot more strategic depth and management, especially for the preparation stages of chapters. I do also really like how this game incentivizes to replay the game again to get the most optimal route, as well as fully understanding the grand story that the game wants to tell.

All in all, this was a fantastic game all around.