After taking a break from the overwhelmingly expansive, planning-heavy maps of Genealogy of the Holy war and the labyrinthian branching story paths that make up Three Houses, I was really in the mood of a more stripped back Fire Emblem experience. Once in a while, I don't want to worry about who is being reclassed to what, which skills I need to pick up at what levels, or which romantic pairings I need to build up enough rapport with to make the best "children" in the next phase of the game. I just want to hang out with memorable characters and enjoy the ride.

Thankfully, that's exactly what this game gave me. Eliwood, Hector and Lyn are already some of my favorite lords in the series, and I'm sure my opinion of them would be even higher if gaining support conversations weren't so bafflingly difficult to attain in this one. You have to put in WORK and waste many, many turns making sure two units end up next to each other again and again if you want a shot at even seeing the "C" level supports, which is a shame considering how likeable the cast is. Regardless, it's hard not to root for Eliwood and his crew throughout the 40 hour story. Even if the tale isn't anything revolutionary and has certain tropes that we'd continue to see echoes of in future installments, I think it hits all of those beats so well that they stand out on their own anyway. I genuinely got emotional towards the end knowing that my trio of multicolored-hair friends would be at the end of their journey once the big bad was vanquished, and Roy will certainly have big shoes to fill when I eventually start Binding Blade (I know it came before this one, but I'm playing in story order!).

The gameplay is extremely solid too. It's standard Fire Emblem--literally--but the progression of leveling up your units and skills just feels so good, and it's especially satisfying when you find new items and weapons to use via exploring towns or straight up stealing them from the enemy with thieves. The final map is the perfect blend of grueling and rewarding, using everything in your arsenal to survive a final boss that's almost impossible to kill, but not quite. Up until that point, the difficulty can certainly fluctuate more than some would like--I went from having to reset several times on a map where a magic user kept sniping me from the shadows to feeling overpowered and breezing through one laden with ballistae that didn't hit me a single time---but I see that kind of relief as being rewarded for slugging through the harder moments to find a feeling of empowerment on the other side. At the very least it's not as consistently easy to be over-leveled as it is in Sacred Stones.

With so many other supports to see, characters to try using, and a hard mode starring Hector, I'll definitely be coming back to this one in the future. Still a solid point to start in the series if you're curious.

This is probably my second or third favorite game of all time, I’ve played this more times than I can count over the past decade and a half or so. My last playthrough was in college 5 years ago so I decided to give it another go for old time’s sake when I saw it was on the Switch’s virtual console. I forgot how annoying replaying Lyn Mode is because you can’t skip it the first time around but thankfully you can clear that whole thing in like 45 minutes if you’re a long time player. I’m almost definitely biased but this will always be the quintessential Fire Emblem experience for me, and I would recommend it to beginning players before anything except maybe Three Houses. Your first playthrough is a good beginner’s experience to break into the strategy genre, and the subsequent re-plays add much needed difficulty and layers to the story and series lore. Most people are going to be emulating this obviously, but there are few experiences in gaming like playing Hector Hard Mode on the original cartridge as a kid, painstakingly trying to keep all your units alive and knowing any tactical error or bad luck will be a reset. And throw in a gorgeous musical score for good measure.

Notably, the first Fire Emblem to be localized.
A friend got this for his birthday, and watching him play it, I was entranced. I eventually got Sacred Stones, but this was technically the game that sparked my obsession with Fire Emblem.
The three protagonist modes and ranking system add some replay value. Some of the maps in FE6 were weird looking due to layout and coloration and that isn't the case here. Units stand out from each other and others in the overall series. Overall a more polished game than FE6 and a promising step forward for the Fire Emblem series. I wish the GBA Fire Emblem support system wasn't so bad, Blazing Blade has some good ones.

Still love this game, even after all of these years. It's just such a fun journey with a gameplay system that's infinitely replayable. Having three main characters is honestly a very welcome idea, with more main characters meaning more characters that can actually consistently have dialogue over the course of the story. Lyn, Eliwood, and Hector all bounce off one another well and the rest of the cast is easily one of my favorites in the series. While the story as a whole isn't perfect, there's a lot of great moments throughout that keep it enjoyable and exciting. I especially appreciate that even though there's a lot of neat connections in the cast, this game didn't shackle itself to just being "the prequel to The Binding Blade" and told a completely original, smaller scale story. The GBA games are also in my opinion, still the best looking games in the series and Blazing Blade might be the best, as I prefer its brighter palette over Sacred Stones. Some things I did start to notice on this playthrough is that a lot of the early maps can be really tedious. Pretty much the first half of the game is just flooded with forest tiles, rain, or other movement slowing design that makes moving your army a chore. Aside from that though, this is definitely a comfort game for me that I can come back to any day and just have a great time with.

Replayed Eliwood's story focusing on my ranking and here's my thoughts on my latest run of the game:

I still think this game is a little bland; the story is okay and the map design is bleh but I do find some charm to it, which is why I can't resist replaying it every once in a while. I will say, this was my first time playing the game on a real cartridge on a Game Boy SP. It was pretty neat, but the novelty wore off when I started getting to those longer enemy phases later on... I played at least half the game with no animations.
The ranking system is a neat idea, but with extremely weird parameters:

>Tactics = lower turn count, higher ranking
>Funds = higher endgame sum of money + item value, higher ranking
>Combat = higher percentage of winning battles, higher ranking
>EXP = higher number of exp points per chapter, higher ranking
>Survival = don't let anyone die lol

This is fine and all on surface level, but a few of these rankings are based on POOR Fire Emblem playing. In order to get an A or even an S rank, you have to play really stupidly. For instance, I only got an A ranking, which is fine, but the two categories that killed my S rank were "EXP" and "Funds." These two categories are extremely frustrating because they rely on you actively NOT using your resources to your advantage, which is super counter intuitive to LTC runs, which you would expect this to be, as "Tactics" expects you to get a lower turn count to get a better ranking. But rather, if you rely too much on your early promote units, NOPE, EXP is in the tank. Whatever.
But "Funds" is the one that really pisses me off as the expectations shift from chapter to chapter, and if you missed a chest due to turn limit or forgot to steal an item off an enemy last chapter, or shit if you even promoted one too many of your units, it's basically over for you. I ended with a 4 star in "EXP" and a 3 star in "Funds" because I needed to promote a few of my units because they hit the level 20 cap in their base classes, so that way they're not missing out on EXP, but the promotion items are a HUGE chunk of your endgame tally towards the "Funds" score. My only way to maintain all of my 5 star rankings at "Cog of Destiny" was if I replayed the entire chapter with a low level un-promoted team.
This system is a neat idea, if it wasn't so frustrating. There is no clear guidelines in the game, you have to look them all up on Serenes Forest, as well as the fact that the restrictions are super fucking tight to maintain that S rank. And keep in mind: I WAS ON ELIWOOD NORMAL MODE. The game is very very easy, but not enthralling enough to reply a handful of longer lategame chapters because I made an oopsie and tanked my rating in one turn.
I like FE7 but this was an exercise in understanding why it's a fundamentally stupid fucking game. The maps have 0 sauce, and the only map that does (Battle Before Dawn) fumble any chance of that because it's a frustrating dance between grappling with RNG and stupid NPC behavior. Game is a lot more fun when you play it as a straight up ironman and ignore the stupid letter you get at the end.