Starting my commitment to experiencing more FE with one of it's more challenging entries did a lot to help me appreciate the games more, as well as giving me fodder for why it needed to tone it down a couple hundred notches. This game will beat you into remembering it's systems. Every wrong move it's catastrophic, since party members are fragile and die for good. This is a playstyle I never even considered in new entries. The idea of losing out on the social element felt like ripping out a chunk of the game itself. That isn't how this game works, and it's honestly a great challenge and feels incredibly rewarding. That is when it isn't yanked away from you over and over again.

I know there are old FE heads who would like for the series to go back to it's brutal roots, but I just ain't one of them. Besides the aesthetics of the GBA, I felt absolutely fatigued from a lot of how this game manages itself. Hit rates are abysmal and just waste so much time. Having every single board sucker punch you with an ambush at the eleventh hour lost all effectiveness when it wouldn't have even been a problem had I not failed to hit the boss 3 TURNS in a row. Pair all that with the enemy incredibly effectively dogpiling a single unit like a school of piranha, and you just feel robbed over and over. Having to restart chapters that take well over an hour to get through, I just couldn't be bothered.


I've been saying this about a lot of series lately, but playing newer entries makes it real hard to go back. This game helped me internalize a lot of good habits with these games going forward, while giving a strong apprehension in going back.