KINO
PEAK FICTION
GREATEST OF ALL TIME
This game is pretty much fucking perfect like holy shit
The maps
The characters
The story
I thought that second gen wouldn't be able to live up to first and that the children would feel like a worse version of their parents
But that's not at all what happened, Almost every character feels complete in story and battle with the children feeling like their own distinct characters even when there are some with identical roles
And every one feels good to play and manoeuvre around these massive maps
The size and scale of the maps is probably my favourite thing about this game and is sorely missed in every other FE game I've played
The multiple capture points expands the scope of the game as well as add heightened strategy especially in the later parts of the game
Fucking hell mate it just felt fucking good to play like holy shit it's amazing

Loptyr felled
Belhalla Seized
Jugdral liberated

FE4 is the best SRPG ever made and I'd hazard to guess that it won't be losing that title any time soon. It had far and beyond the best story in a game for it's time and even 25 years later it still stands as one of the best in the medium.

FE4's predecessors felt like a mix of political drama and a typical fantasy adventure, but FE4 leans harder into the political drama than any game thus far. The excellent writing alongside the immense amount of world building makes for an immersive story that results in certain plot twists (you know) hitting a lot harder than a video game story has any right to. This is all complemented by...

The gameplay! First thing that anyone will know about FE4 is that these maps are huuuuuuge. In my many years inhabiting the FE fandom I've seen many a scrub get filtered by these larger maps, but to say they add more than they hinder would be an understatement. In prior games there was story at the start and end of battles, but rarely in the middle. These larger maps allow for story to be told during the battle as well as have the maps change in accordance to events in the narrative. There's also a greater emphasis placed on side objectives, mostly in the form of villages that you must save or secret events that are character exclusive. There are times where these side objectives can feel more like sidequests, most notable being getting Arden the pursuit ring in chapter 2 and then accumulating the gold to give it to someone else. This results in the most memorable maps the series has seen yet with a wide variety of ways to approach each challenge.

Now that I've written a suitably long paragraph discussing the maps, I should probably mention the other aspects of FE4's gameplay. The inheritance system allows for an obscene amount of replayability alongside secret events that encourage you to replay and scour the game for cutscenes you may have missed, and that's not even considering the entire cast of unique characters you can get by simply avoiding the marriage system. There's also the rework to the weapon level system, which makes certain elements of your character feel less random because you'll know that at least your weapon rank will slowly increase. It's that good old unit building that the prior 3 games got right, dialed up to 11.

There's also the ludonarrative. This game conveys a large scale war better than any Fire Emblem before (or since) thanks to the large maps and unit density. There's also the inheritance system. A big part of gen 2's story is how Seliph was basically set up to win by the cast of gen 1. While this will be lost on most players their first playthrough, on repeat playthroughs it works as a way of acknowledging the effort that you put into making the child units as strong as possible.

While it's heresy to claim FE4 is anything less than perfect, there are some parts I believe could have been done better. Firstly, some characters feel a little flat. Characters like Noish, Rodolbahn, and Mana are just a few examples of characters without much going on but I still wouldn't call them bad characters per se, I just think they would benefit from some further fleshing out. Another thing I don't particularly like is how most of the substitute kids are just less interesting versions of their main unit. This frustrates me because we see through Radney that they can write substitutes who feel notably different whithout requiring too much effort on their part.

I've decided to make it a point to stop ending these reviews with a closing paragraph that opens with "so, yeah" so you're getting this instead. FE4 is not only my favorite Fire Emblem, but just my favorite game in general. Everything about it resonates with me and it truly is, in my opinion, Shouzou Kaga's magnum opus.