fire emblem gaiden is an immediate huge step up from it's predecessor in every way, but the staircase it's walking up occasionally has giant pits in the middle that it falls down. to move past the dumb metaphor, gaiden really shows a lot of ambition. this game has a craaaazy amount of new features and changes that feel directly responsive to the biggest issues with fe1, and it was honestly pretty shocking to me to find out after playing that nothing here comes back for several installments. some things (like the added world map) feel like they should be standard improvements to the FE gameplay loop. other things (like the magic system, inventory system, and greater emphasis on promotion) are more understandable as to why they didn't return, but are still well-justified systems in the context of this game. i really particularly enjoyed the way promotions work, because each one is genuinely very satisfying and makes you feel like you've earned a lot. when i got delthea into a priestess, she felt like a god. when i got gray into a slayer, he could now dodgetank and soak for weeks. the downside to this, of course, is that growths are very weak in gaiden.. but honestly, i rarely felt i gained a lot per level in fe1 either. here, every class gets a promotion, and every promotion is pretty darn good (sage is a little iffy, but saints, priestesses, slayers, and of course the main character promotions are all very strong). there isn't the same feel that was present in fe1, where you just literally couldn't take some characters all the way to the end because of their weapon type or lack of promotions. everyone in gaiden has a chance, which is pretty important because the cast has been greatly downsized from fe1, nearly cut in half, i believe. each individual unit matters a lot more, and each unit is given more chances to succeed. what's not to like? well... the other downside to all of this is that units rarely feel special. several units feel like they may as well be clones of each other (kamui and saber, may and boey) or otherwise end up equalling out in value. the increased emphasis on character growth through promotions also means that there's more trash encounters (infinite-spawning monsters, anyone?) because the moment to moment goal of leveling up no longer matters much, and gaiden needs to give you lots of options to get to your big promotions. i wasn't bothered by these things, because i didn't really struggle with the spawns and i'm used to grinding from actual jrpgs, but i do understand that to many fire emblem players it's considered a bad habit and antithetical to the game design.
the inventory system has been changed dramatically, only allowing one item per person. this is a big improvement. the lack of resources in gaiden makes both routes feel more meaningfully integrated with the story, and the amount of shifting bullshit around has been reduced by 99%. there simply isn't enough shit to have to sift through any of it in gaiden, which is very welcome after fe1, where half the battle is inventory management. it's also nice for newly recruited units, since they don't actually need a weapon at first to be relevant.
map design is this game's achilles heel, with the latter half loving maps that are obnoxious on purpose and don't offer fun strategic challenges. nobody wants to trudge through deserts and swamps, or run through featureless plains. i understand the reason they did this was likely to emphasize character growth over strategy, but this isn't like a traditional jrpg where combat is a breezy 1-3 minute encounter. here you're fighting battles that go on for 30 mins to an hour, so the statcheckiness of it all wears on the player a lot more. i was never really too weak, but it just isn't satisfying for these maps to be so annoying that the best solution is to warp in and one-shot the boss with alm's bow. lots of war-of-attrition stuff here, too, because of the way resource management works with magic.
oh yeah the story exists. gaiden's story isn't really anything special; celica's route deals with more interesting themes imo and later into the game there's some cool moments where the player is made to feel the urgency and disempowerment of the protagonists, but overall it's nothing to write home about. it's a more functional story than fe1, but it suffers from some pretty stupid late-game twists and a lot of the connections with 1 don't seem to make sense. i feel like this is one area they could have been bolder with.
all-in-all, gaiden is one of the most ambitious games of it's era, but it's still held back by the standards of NES storytelling and the types of jrpgs it's trying to imitate. i'm really excited to see how echoes adds to this, when i get there, because i really do feel like the mechanical framework of gaiden is very strong.
the inventory system has been changed dramatically, only allowing one item per person. this is a big improvement. the lack of resources in gaiden makes both routes feel more meaningfully integrated with the story, and the amount of shifting bullshit around has been reduced by 99%. there simply isn't enough shit to have to sift through any of it in gaiden, which is very welcome after fe1, where half the battle is inventory management. it's also nice for newly recruited units, since they don't actually need a weapon at first to be relevant.
map design is this game's achilles heel, with the latter half loving maps that are obnoxious on purpose and don't offer fun strategic challenges. nobody wants to trudge through deserts and swamps, or run through featureless plains. i understand the reason they did this was likely to emphasize character growth over strategy, but this isn't like a traditional jrpg where combat is a breezy 1-3 minute encounter. here you're fighting battles that go on for 30 mins to an hour, so the statcheckiness of it all wears on the player a lot more. i was never really too weak, but it just isn't satisfying for these maps to be so annoying that the best solution is to warp in and one-shot the boss with alm's bow. lots of war-of-attrition stuff here, too, because of the way resource management works with magic.
oh yeah the story exists. gaiden's story isn't really anything special; celica's route deals with more interesting themes imo and later into the game there's some cool moments where the player is made to feel the urgency and disempowerment of the protagonists, but overall it's nothing to write home about. it's a more functional story than fe1, but it suffers from some pretty stupid late-game twists and a lot of the connections with 1 don't seem to make sense. i feel like this is one area they could have been bolder with.
all-in-all, gaiden is one of the most ambitious games of it's era, but it's still held back by the standards of NES storytelling and the types of jrpgs it's trying to imitate. i'm really excited to see how echoes adds to this, when i get there, because i really do feel like the mechanical framework of gaiden is very strong.