I’ve had a little experience with Fire Emblem before, but never with permadeath (because of anxiety) and FE8 pushed me out of my comfort zone in that way. And I really enjoyed it! It felt like a good starting off point for running with permadeath and has me genuinely wanting to keep playing with it now, when I was anxious about the idea before.

FE8 isn’t anything too hard, though I did play on easy so I could have the tutorial (I’ve played Fire Emblem before but I wanted it on just in case) so I got an easier experience to start. I appreciate how you do have a spot to grind levels if you want to (though I didn’t partially because, well, easy mode, but also because I was too lazy to be bothered).

I like the cast, and the overall story was solid. Nothing extraordinary to me, but there were some stand-out moments for sure. Though I will say I genuinely hate how GBA support conversations work, because it's way harder for me to actually NOTICE them. Which sucks, because a lot of where characterization shines in Fire Emblem is through support conversations.

The gameplay is fun! Most maps are fun, ignoring fog of war being fog of war, and… yeah, I can’t avoid Seth for much longer. Seth breaks the game in half, for better or for worse. I can definitely see why Seth can make the game drag for some people. But I kinda liked having him? Maybe it’s because I’m bad/relatively unfamiliar and unskilled with tactical RPGs, and of course I acknowledge he is broken to an unreasonable degree, but I also didn’t mind. It’s not like he was the only unit of mine who cooked, and I liked having him around. I dunno how to word it, I just think he’s neat.

Overall I had a fun time and it’s definitely helped open the door to me for playing more Fire Emblem games. Definitely worth giving a shot!