Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (FE4) is an ambitious product for the time and a good evolution to the series's formula in its gameplay.

To start, the game take place in the continent of Judgral (which happens in the distant past before the Archanea games) and the players goes through twelve chapters of enormous maps. The player controls a team of about 24 units and the game is split up between two generations with another team of 24 units.

The gameplay is a lot more refine and slightly faster than FE3, with the U.I. being easier to check up on weapons, the cursor is faster to move, and the animations are pretty flashy, yet has that classic painting style that FE3 had. The first big addition is a home base which kind of acts as both a convoy, shop, and arena. The second is the introduction of the weapon triangle which makes managing a units weapons a lot more important. Finally, its the first game to integrate a marriage system with it including the child units that make up the bulk of the 2nd generation's cast.

Now for the positives. Music is absolutely fantastic as every map and enemy phrase have all unique music. So good that I sometimes recommend turned off the animations just to appreciate the music.

The lore of Jugdral is deep with so many details that will not make since the first time, but will for every subsequent replay. Though, I will say it does hide too many important context through villages and only implicitly told.

The playable characters are fine. Due to this being Kaga Emblem, the characters are still pretty simple in terms of characterization. However, some characters really do shine and the context that surrounds them in Jugdral makes them a lot more deeper than at first glance. Of my favorites, it would probably be Sigurd, Lewyn (my GOAT), Ayra, Quan, Ethlyn, Brighid, Finn, Tailtiu, Seliph, Julia, Leif, Altena, Oifey, Shannan, Ares, Tine, and Ced to name a few.

The standouts are the villains. Half of them are apologetically evil or just there to be washed (Chagall) while the others have more layers that doesn't justify why they do it, but you could see why they did it (Arvis, Travant, Ishtar).

The story is pretty ambitious thanks to the two generation aspect. The tale of Sigurd has some of the best moments in the series that ends with one of the most iconic moments being the way the first generation ends (something that really shouldn't be spoiled so needlessly). Seliph's tale kind of becomes a retread of Marth's story in FE1, though it becomes a bit more layered due to the context of Jugdral's lore.

Despite my praises of the music, story, and characters, the gameplay does take points off from the experience. For one, unit balancing is absolutely in favor of mounted units and against infantry (foot) units (which is kind the norm for most Fire Emblem games). Due to the large scale of the maps, the mounted units usually are fast enough to move around the map and thus can engage against a lot more enemies. This becomes a problem as the foot units don't gain any experience and thus fall behind levels. Thus, if you want to effectively level up everyone, you are going to have to meticulously grind through boss abuse.

The second negative is item management. For some reason, you can't trade in the game thus there is a system known as the pawn shop where units would either sell items or buy other items in order to essentially trade an item. I don't really mind the system, though I would've still preferred simply trading the items like FE3.

The third negative is this game can either be ridiculously easy or pretty difficult. While Gen 1 is fairly hard until acquiring peculiar weapons make it easy, Gen 2 can be either still easy or actually difficult to the point of softlocks. If you don't pair specific Gen 1 units together, the results of Gen 2 can be out of control as some pairings nerfs that child units or boost them up to Seth-levels of efficiency.

The last negative that ultimately really give the game my score is the pacing. Even with the upgraded mechanics and better graphical style, FE4 is still a pretty slow game that can drag on at times. Half of the time, there is fluff in between missions (or castles) where you only just move your units. The other time, enemy turns still take really long despite the great music their turns provide. It was that slow that by the time I made it to Chapter 10, I just turned animations off as it was faster to progress the maps (not that it doesn't hide the fact I wanted to listen to Miletos and Granvale Army's themes).

Overall, I still liked the game. The marriage and child inheritance by default gives the game replayability (with this incarnation of child units still being my favorite). The gameplay is still solid Fire Emblem and the music is filled with bangers. It's really the pacing that hurts my ranking of this game in comparison to other titles. Despite that, I still recommend every Fire Emblem fan to at least try out the game once as it is a pretty memorable experience. It's a game that really should be localized through a port or a much-needed remake. 3.5 / 5.