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.

At this point I'm in the rabbit hole of fire emblem and this game got my curiosity because it's considered the darkest in the series and I wanted to know why. The gameplay is different from the rest of the series with every character having their own inventory and money which at list can get convoluted. If you want to give items to other characters there's also arenas which do not kill off the unit if they lose which makes it a good option to level up. There's also fixable weapons as you can have Sigurd run the sliver sword for the rest of the game without worrying about it being gone forever. The marriage system ends up being a predecessor to the support system which ends up having some nice dialogue around the mid point of the game. The game has the largest maps in the series as there is only 11 maps (prologue and 10 chapters). The story is probably my favorite of the series due to having great characters and due to it having one of the biggest twists i seen in an rpg. The protagonist is great both gameplay and character wise with his interactions with the various characters in the game. I'm really hoping this game gets a remake for it to fix its quirks

Genealogy es definitivamente un juego

Es (en mi opinion por ahora) una de las mejores historias en un Fire Emblem, con la 1ra generación siendo bastante recordable para mi (teniendo en cuenta que empece Gen1 por Abril de 2023 y retome el juego en el cap 3 en Enero 2024) y la 2da generación, aun que buena, quizá sea menos memorable para mi (con excepción de los últimos capítulos).
El cuanto al juego como tal, los mapas son GIGANTES, aun que están hechos así para mejorar la narrativa del juego, aun que eso no quita que se vuelve algo tedioso mover cada unidad hacia el objetivo del momento. Igualmente, el juego utiliza el mapa mas grande para hacer que pienses mas lo que vas a hacer, ya que tengas que andar mas defensivos en algunos momentos por refuerzos inesperados yendo a atacar tu castillo. El balance del juego es otra cosa de la que me gusta comentar sobre este juego, con las espadas estando rotas, las hachas siendo una poronga, la magia de viento estando (en mi opinion) rota y con los tamaños de los mapas vas a querer tener siempre a mano unidades a caballo.
Incluso con sus problemitas, Genealogy sigue siendo uno de los Fire Emblem que mas disfrute tras retomarlo luego de que no tuviese tanto tiempo para jugarlo cuando lo inicie.

Ta weno.

Putting into words how much I love this dumbass game is something I find some difficulty doing. I first played this game when I was 13. The extreme grandeur of everything in this game was astonishing to me. The maps were huge, brigands were razing down villages halfway across the map, the angelical soundtrack that accompanied it all, the ability to deploy every unit you recruit all at once, the fact you can't trade normally between units, and the fact they all have their own amount of income, the unique skills they come with, makes every character feel like they bring something to the table, like they're worth using in someway no matter how minor. Not to mention the story takes place between 2 generations of people. Planning what units to ship and what items to pass down during generation 1 so I can have some overpowered units during generation 2 is always fun. Not to mention the amount of secret items you can discover. Everyone should give this game a shot, maybe the giant maps aren't for you, and maybe the way gold and item trading works isn't your cup of tea but the way this game is able to paint out the continent of Jugdral through it's gameplay and story is something you shouldn't pass up. At least give it a shot, it'll be worth a try.

Best Fire Emblem game I've played. Great map design, interesting and compelling story and characters. I love the arena and saving feature. Sigurd being able to demolish entire hordes of enemies make me feel unstoppable. Some characters just being better is great so you can just send them into battle with no fear, and keep the weak foot units together for more safety. Being able to mix and match and find the best combo for skills for the characters children allows your creativity to have no end. People hate the pawn shop but who doesnt love more mechanics to add to strategy. But I did play on emulator allowing me to speed up all the slow battle and moving units around the map.

Jesus, this game is.....something else man. The maps are huge, in a way I really don't like. In order to break up the gameplay and not irritate myself I played this game a few times a week for about 30 minutes a night over the course of a year. I ended up having some really memorable experiences with it that way. The skirmishes, when broken down into their pure gameplay, are a lot of fun. This game has a lot of mechanics I appreciate; I love the way the arena works. The fact that you can position units in such a way to have a dancer take care of four on a single turn. The fact that a lot of non-mounted units actually have a pretty big advantage if you're not playing for LTC in terms of their speed, which I quite liked with time.

But it's just....so monotonous sometimes. Some gameplay sessions were literally just moving units. Hell, some gameplay sessions were me RE-MOVING units wherein I load up from an earlier save after I realized I moved my units in a way that wasn't to my liking. It's just....boring.

The plot has interesting ideas but they mostly seemed executed in a way that was sorta basic compared to later games. At least to my understanding, my Japanese isn't great and I didn't play the fan translation.

I realize that some of my issues are because I played this game on original hardware untranslated. But I'm not critiquing Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, the game these zoomer FE fans download from some dude on Discord and play on SNES9X with graphical filters or whatever. I'm critiquing Fire Emblem: Seisen No Keifu, the game that a version of myself two decades older might have bought from a local import shop in 1996 (or even maybe an alternate version of myself that got into retro gaming earlier in the mid-late 2000s but is otherwise the same). That game is brilliant in pieces but also pretty frustrating. But it sure looks nice on a CRT. Take that, zoomers.

I can understand why diehard Fire Emblem fans recommend this game — it’s unlike any other Fire Emblem game i’ve played. The size of the maps seems intimidating at first, until you realize that each map contains enough battles to fit into about 4-5 discrete chapters in later games.

There are a few design decisions that I wouldn’t call “bad” per se, but definitely “quirky.” Each character having their own individual gold supply makes no sense, but does add an extra level of complication in maintaining everyone’s inventories, and gives the Thief class more utility as the only one able to give their gold to anyone else in the army. This also plays into the quirkiness of transferring weapons between characters, which can only be done by buying and selling at castle pawn shops.

The large, open maps force some interesting tactical considerations that don’t really factor into most other Fire Emblem games. The player must often balance offense and defense, as some armies will try to seize your home castle, and some will heavily guard their own. You often have some
say over where the opposing armies will clash, and the sense of anticipation as the two armies slowly advance towards each other over the course of several turns is something I haven’t really experienced in any other Fire Emblem games.

Overall, definitely a recommend for Fire Emblem veterans looking for something a little spicier, but would not recommend as an entry into the series.

Personally not a big fan of this one, I think it has some of the best worldbuilding in the series and it really tries to give you the impression you're fighting a war with all the giant maps that look exactly like they are on the continental map. But I still did not enjoy going through it at all, you have to sit on your ass to play through these chapters for way too long, like a lot of segments of the game is just moving your units at a snail's pace because the 5 mov units slow you down like crazy so you're away from a lot of the action for a very long time, if you cut down the maps' gigantism in this game, it would probably be the shortest experience in the serie. The way the inventory was handled in this game wasn't my cup of tea either, I hated having to exchange money between units or having to go through the arena to gain money to put specific items on specific units, I don't understand why they couldn't just let us trade between units.
I will most likely not revisit this one but who knows.