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hey you can just call me kirb

I tend to keep my reviews somewhat short so I won't have to bore you all with text walls but I may get carried away sometimes

btw feel free to check my Lists section where you can check you my cool Video Game OST recommendations

I also make typos sometime I'm so sorry
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Favorite Games

Super Monkey Ball 2
Super Monkey Ball 2
Super Monkey Ball 2
Super Monkey Ball 2
Paper Mario: Sticker Star
Paper Mario: Sticker Star
Super Monkey Ball 2
Super Monkey Ball 2
Super Monkey Ball 2
Super Monkey Ball 2

140

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010

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007

Games Backloggd


Recently Played See More

Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge
Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge

Mar 24

Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War

Mar 23

Tekken Tag Tournament
Tekken Tag Tournament

Mar 14

Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem
Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem

Feb 27

Akumajou Densetsu
Akumajou Densetsu

Feb 13

Recently Reviewed See More

I don't normally write reviews for games I'm not interested in, but briefly watching Cr1TiKaL's stream of the game and witnessing it crash when he had to do a brb says more than enough, this is da future of gaming and you will kneel, give us your money while we shove our hecking wholesome VTubers and content creators in your face

first we start with the original, then we move on to the sequel, and now, we get the prequel....

wait that’s Castlevania

I thought Neptunia was impatient when it came to remakes, but only three games in and they’re already remaking FE1. well at least with Fire Emblem the remake’s on more powerful hardware, plus there’s an entire other game in it as well!

FE3 is divided into two sections: Book 1 (a remake of FE1), and Book 2 (a continuation of the events of Book 1). most of this review will be about Book 2 but before I move on to that I’d like to briefly talk about Book 1 and its changes. Book 1 has 20 Chapters compared to FE1’s 25 Chapters which means a shorter campaign as well as character recruits being moved a Chapter or two earlier or later. normally this would be a bad thing because “REMOVAL OF CONTENT” but for this case I’m actually okay with it and that’s because all of the five Chapters that were cut weren’t that fun to begin with so it’s more or less trimming the fat away. The Wooden Cavalry is a funny meme and I wouldn’t mind that one staying though considering that Ballisticians were reworked into stationary units it probably wouldn’t have worked. a few characters were cut as well but like with the Chapters most of the cut characters were pretty filler so it’s no big deal. the Vulnerary you get in place of Wrys in Chapter 1 is unironically more useful than Wrys himself, imagine. the items you get in armories and vendors have changed a bit as well. the Bowgun which offered high crit chances and Hammers which destroyed Knights can no longer be bought or are even in the game at all so bow units and Fighters have been nerfed a bit. Rapiers have also been moved to a single Secret Shop so Marth needs to work on conserving the Rapier he begins with. while we’re talking about weapons, Javelins got a nerf as well as their weight have been increased dramatically, making follow up attacks with them impossible, though at least you can still buy them by Chapter 13 this time around. storywise, the narrations that occurred every so often in the beginning of some Chapters now all occur before every Chapter of the game, with a map showcasing the world of Akaneia to boot. some Chapters also get new added dialogue as well, my favorite example being Chapter 11 (Land of Sorrow) where the boss of the Chapter has an argument with his lackey when he calls the rebels “the allied army” and then throws a hissy fit when he finds out the reinforcements he requested are only a bunch of pegasus knights, good stuff. there’s also animations for some of these cutscenes too like in Chapter 6 (Lefcandith Gauntlet) where Minerva flies over to the boss, dismounts off her wyvern and has a conversation with them before she hops back on and returns to her original spot, you even see the wyvern sprite next to her while she’s dismounted, very nice attention to detail that I appreciate. lastly the indoor maps have their own tilesets now and they look way cooler than the originals, mmm just look at that purple. that said I can NOT forgive this game for redesigning my favorite map into this much more generic layout, I don’t care if the tileset is cooler the smaller size removes most of the tension and you finish it in a lot less turns than the original, what a downgrade. that said Book 1 is a more polished experience of FE1 and is a great way to experience Marth’s first adventure (or rather first war), however if you can put up with the slow pace and admittedly horrible inventory management of FE1 then I’d still recommend to check the OG NES version, now then time for me to move on to Book 2.

after the events of FE1 now known as the “War of Shadows”, with the collapse of the Dolhr/Durhua Empire, Akaneia/Archanea is now able to thrive as its own empire thanks to the efforts of Hardin, now referred to as Emperor Hardin. of course since this is a fantasy work: empire = bad. a rebellion occurs over at Grunia/Grust led by General Lorenz, you know that General from the first game that you get in Chapter 20. when Marth is sent to put an end to the situation by force, he finds out Lorenz was protecting the Grunia heirs from Lang, a corrupt general hired by Hardin who has brought a bunch of suffering among the residents of Grunia and plans to execute the two young heirs, basically he’s evil irredeemable bad guy. after being sent to “resolve” another situation at Macedon, General Lang returns to order Marth to recapture and hand over the Grunia heirs who managed to get freed. knowing how much of an ass this guy is, Marth refuses. as Lang informs Emperor Hardin of Marth’s betrayal, he ends up invading Marth’s home turf Aritia/Altea in retaliation, leading to the beginning of the “War of Heroes”. all it takes is one Chapter to realize that the stakes in this game are much higher and darker than probably anything in FE1. not all of Marth’s previous allies are around, some end up being captured, some now side against him, and Chapter 1 even ends with a former ally killing himself after receiving fatal wounds, Mystery of the Emblem means business. so that’s the basic summary, I’ll actually talk a little more about what’s going on later but for now it’s back to the gameplay as well as the overall changes that were made.

wow, there’s a lot of QoL added. moving a unit shows you their movement range which is highlighted in green, the same applies when you view your enemy which means it’s a lot easier to plan your movements and lure your enemies. Priests can actually gain EXP now by using their staves so they no longer die in one hit anymore, they now die in two hits! playable Manaketes have also been reworked as while dragonstones now have durability like traditional weapons, using a dragonstone lets them transform into a dragon during the map for a total of five turns, Tiki’s Divinestone also gives her increased movement range while she’s transformed and on top of that, if you can find and have access to a secret shop in her Chapter recruitment, you can buy Magestones which make her immune to magic and Flyingstones which gives her the best movement range in the entire game, TL;DR, Tiki is OP in this game. what’s not OP though is that mounted units like the Cavaliers and Pegasus Knights are now restricted to only lances and can no longer be mounted indoors and they’re now forced to dismount which forces them to use swords (Awesome!) and have their stats temporarily lowered (Not awesome!). this isn’t too much of a problem in Book 1 but with Book 2’s abundance of rough terrain and indoor Chapters in the latter half this means Cavaliers and Paladins aren’t as amazing as they were in FE1, Pegasus Knight and Wyvern Riders are still great though since their movement is not affected by rough terrain, just make sure they get close to bow units. Item wise, the Hammerne staff no longer fixes staves so Warp cheesing will be less useful, not that it matters though since your only Warp staff isn’t until Chapter 14. continuing with the nerfs, Xane no longer copies the HP of who he’s transforming into, and his default HP isn’t that great so he becomes a glass cannon clone of who he transforms to if you don’t give him stat items that boost his HP. now this is something I learned after finishing FE1 but in that game, the AI has a tendency to attack Marth if they are in his range, while normally this would result in more game overs, you can use this to your advantage by having Marth shield some nearby units who are low on health so he can soak up the damage in their steed, from my experience this no longer works in FE3 or at least they don’t always target Marth anymore so you can’t really pull off that strat.

for buffs though, items and weapons get separate weapon slots now so units can hold four weapons and four items, Xane really benefits from this as now he can carry four different types of weapons or tomes as well as having staffs in his item slots, giving him a versatile amount of classes he can transform to right on the spot, this in turn also buffs anyone that is or can become a Bishop. the supply convoy has also been reworked as instead of going to a tile in the map and slowly store and retrieve items, Marth instead carries everything now so he’s basically a walking inventory, combine that with a proper trading system between units that doesn’t use up your unit’s turn and now Marth is OP in a different kind of way. as for class changing it works the same way it did in FE1 (get your unit to Lv. 10 then use a promotion item), however this time Knight’s Crest has been updated to also let Knights promote to Generals making them slightly less lame and Orion’s Bolt also being able to promote Hunters to Horsemen so now Kashim/Castor is suddenly the best bow unit of the game, maybe now he finally get that gold for his mother. for some reason Marich/Merric has his own unique Bishop sprite during maps and battle and I’m not sure why, I’m not complaining though because it is a nice looking sprite. lastly, the popular Support system Fire Emblem is well known for makes its debut, though it functions a lot differently here than it does later on. all it is in this game is a hidden system where if a character has connections to another and they’re within three spaces of each other then they get a +10 to their hit rate, critical chance, evasion, and critical evasion. for example, Marth and Sheeda/Caeda get Support boosts from each other since they’re in love, Minerva gives a boost to the Pegasus Sisters since they all look up to her, Tiki gives a boost to Banutu/Bantu since he’s Tiki parental guardian and he could really use all the help he can get, and Cool Dude “Tuxedo Mask” Sirius who’s definitely not a previous FE character in disguise gets a boost from Nyna because he had a really nice thirty second conversation with her. other than the boosts that’s really all that Support does in this game so unfortunately no face rubbing or giving your favorite girl a child, I’m sure a lot of you FE enthusiasts are very disappointed.

I’m combining the character discussion with some story discussion as well so there’s going to be spoilers of a 30 year old game from here on out; beware ye who tread any further

Book 2 of FE3 feels like a sneak peek of what this franchise will become later down the road as there’s more cutscene dialogue in Chapter 1 than there is in a majority of FE1. while FE1 only has one lengthly lore dump during the end of Chapter 7, in FE3 you’re getting lore dumps much more often, though a majority of them are when Marth has to make a detour to Anri’s Way during the middle of the game. this affects a lot of the characters too, as a good portion of the returning characters get more dialogue and/or backstory here. Kain/Cain and Abel actually get to speak and Abel in particular has a relationship with Est now. Jeigan/Jagen has become too old to fight so he’s now Marth’s personal tactician and advisor. Astria/Astram remains loyal to Emperor Hardin and is thus an antagonist during most and potentially all of the game. Boah DIES, Arran is on the verge of DYING due to an illness, and Lorenz JOBS. you remember Xane the funny dude who can transform into other people? turns out he’s a Divine Dragon! White Sage Gotoh/Gato? he’s a Divine Dragon too! Tiki being a Divine Dragon isn’t much of a surprise, but she’s also the daughter of Naga who’s basically the ruler of all the Divine Dragons, plus she will degenerate and become capable of destroying the world if the Binding Shield is not put back together, the Binding Shield is also the complete Fire Emblem, I think we might have let Kaga cook a little too much. now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I do enjoy the extra characterizations and backstories quite a bit it helps give them some more depth and that’s A-OK, though a small part of me misses how I was able to characterize them however I wanted in the first game, some of the imagination is….disappearing I guess? I know the later games are going to continue with this route and I’m well prepared for that and even welcome to the idea if the story continues to be fascinating like it was here, it’s just an interesting observation I’ve noticed while going through Book 2. fun fact: magazine surveys were taken during FE1’s heyday to determine which characters were fan favorites and the top two were Hardin and Lena, which is made all the more interesting considering their fates in this game. what’s that, you like Hardin? too bad, he’s an evil emperor now! what you like Lena? she’s abducted now, and you won’t see her until the end of the game! it’s a great subversion considering that it’s very likely that Lena would have been your main healer as well as Hardin being one of your main Cavaliers in the first game, that’s a really cool nod to the early days of the fanbase.

FE3 has an interesting enemy progression. it starts off what you’d expect in Chapter 1 with the Thieves, Archers, and Brigands (basically mountain Pirates), then all of a sudden Chapter 2 introduces the Wyvern Riders before Pegasus Knights even show up, granted there’s only three of them you should have 2-3 bow units at that point but still. Chapter 3 already has fort reinforcements though they’re not as annoying to deal with as in FE1, plus some more Wyvern Riders, hopefully you’re training your bow units. for a while it starts to calm down a little bit until Chapter 7 when Astria and his Hero army shows up, and never before have I been more frightened of a former ally, well I’ve probably have but not in recent memory. if one of your units ends up getting too close to the Heroes standing by the forts, all of them will start going after your army and someone will die so you’re better off going through the forest so they don’t go after you. in Chapter 8 not only do you start fighting promoted classes as regular enemies now but in a couple of turns, Astria and his Hero army emerge from the previous Chapter and starts chasing after you with a thrist of blood, on top of that Emperor Hardin is waiting for you at the top and will begin to go after you with the Gradivus, the endgame weapon once in possession of Camus during FE1, though thankfully you should make it to the seize point before he gets too close. now at Chapter 9 Marth and the gang sail to Khadein at by then you think you’re safe but UH OH Khadein views you as an enemy too but that’s fine Mages and Bishops are no big deal, but then a couple of turns later ASTRIA AND THE HEROES SOMEHOW MAKE IT TO KHADEIN AND CONTINUE THEIR ASSAULT THEY LITERALLY SWAM ALL THE WAY TO KHADEIN JUST SO THEY CAN KILL YOU. there’s not much things in video games more terrifying than seeing the message “Akaneia arrived!” during the beginning of an enemy phase, I didn’t realize I was playing through a horror game. back to enemy progression, once you arrive Anri’s Way in Chapter 11 not only are you away from civilization which means no shops of the secretless variety but you’re now up against Barbarians which are basically Brigands on steroids as well as a variety of dragons showing up as regular enemies; Fire, Ice, Flying, all here in Anri’s Way. except they’re not all here because in Chapter 20, there’s a lone Earth Dragon in the southwest corner of the map. once again heading to spoiler territory here; it all comes together in the true final Chapter in the true final map (it’s divided by into three separate maps) as you once again face off against Mediuth/Medeus, and they must have saw what I typed in my FE1 review because Mediuth has been resurrected as a proper Shadow Dragon this time around and he’s HUGE not even the small sprite ratio on the map can contain his size, that said it would have been a lot cooler if the box art and title screen didn’t already spoil his new transformation. what’s even cooler (and probably frightening) is that Mediuth’s allies during this final battle are more Earth Dragons. you thought you were hot stuff killing an Earth Dragon as a final boss in FE1? well now they’re regular enemies during the final map! the downgraded final boss trope is so kino

soundtrack appreciation time; Book 1 still uses the same couple of tracks that FE1 did but they’re not restricted to an 8-bit sound chip so they’re more pleasant to listen to this time around. Trouble! is a nice remix of the original version though it’s missing the second half from the original, wish they kept that. Under the Flag is a more mature and militaristic remix of what it originally sounded like and probably won’t drive you insane after almost 20 Chapters. Battle is a fine remix of this nothing too special, however the remixed version of the original enemy battle theme which I have not listened to more than the first twenty seconds of before typing this is an excellent track what an improvement, but the remix is also missing its second half which kinda sucks, I wonder if there was some soundtrack limitations for this game. unfortunately the remix of Gato’s theme isn’t as cool as the original IMO, it’s still good but a lot of the mystique went away in the transition to the new sound chip. I don’t even know what happened here, lol. okay I’m listening to the last part of this theme for the first time and wow that’s some Mother type beat right there, anyway the remix, don’t know which one I prefer but both have their merits. onto the Book 2 tracks, Off to War is a big contrast to the original’s traditional cutscene theme as this one sounds a lot more serious, that coupled along with the new intense map and battle theme that plays now. this was the original village theme in Book 1 but here in Book 2 they added a new one to go along with it specifically called “Sad Villager” because now the villagers are even more sad than in Book 1, war never changes. oh yeah here’s the Fire Emblem theme I forgot to show earlier, apparently the track’s name is “Together We Ride!”, don’t know if that’s official. Book 2 has a more subdued version though the Book 1 version still gets used on occasion, I prefer the Book 1 version more but this one suits the overall tone of Book 2 more. Conspiracy is the second cutscene theme and just know stuff is going to go down here, nothing good every comes out of this whenever this track comes on. this is just a Super Metroid track, it’s also the map preparation theme you hear around the second third of the game, you know when Astria and the Heroes are trying to hunt you down, are you sure this isn’t a horror game? OH MY GOD A SECOND MAP THEME THAT DOESN’T PLAY AT THE VERY LAST CHAPTER. epic and based. this is a downgrade from the first two map themes lol. and here’s the new Mediuth theme and yeah it’s kinda catchy, I think I still prefer his first theme but this is nice too, especially the beginning that’s a good buildup.

Book 2’s maps bring me pain. they’re not even bad maps they can just be a bit frustrating to go through at times. Chapter 2 looks alright but there’s a bit of an annoying Thief placement where he’ll run off to the north where all the dangerous enemies are while carrying a Lady sword and that Lady sword is pretty good at this point of the game so you’ll have to risk sending a unit with great movement to go after the guy (Arran and Katua/Catria are your only options here) and hope the enemies don’t gang up on them. Chapter 3 lets you let you two paths. do you lower the bridge and get your ass handed to you by the enemies up close, or do you go around and slowly lure the enemies in your path one-by-one, how you suffer is up to you! Chapter 5 is a cool one since it gives you a great opportunity to put Doga/Draug on the bridge in the southeast and let him go loose, though the Thief at the beginning can be annoying if you haven’t learned about unit placing since that Thief is Rickard and you need Julian to go after him before he runs off the map, damn you Rickard the item you carry is more useful than you are, I know he shows up in the next Chapter if you don’t get him here but I’m still going to call him out. Chapter 7 is a genius map design because there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on here. you have the Thieves going after Nabarl/Navarre in the forest as well as Feena/Phina who’s able to give him a turn refresh with her Dance ability, then there’s a cave in the southwest where you can lure a fire dragon out to get EXP as well as find a hidden Physic staff in front of the cave, then there’s the easy boss in the northeast who calls you a murderer when you kill him, and of course to the west you have the more fearsome Astria and his army who won’t hesitate to chase after you if you get too close to all of them, very cool. Chapter 8 is another great one because not only is it a map from the original, but instead of starting at the top and making your way down, you start in the middle and have to make it to the top left while making sure you don’t go down because Akaneia will arrive. Chapter 10 is neat because all of the enemies are going after you while a potential anime battle between Marich and an edge lord can go on in the center of the map, but if you can get Wendell to knock some sense into the guy trying to kill Marich, he apologizes and all the enemies will stop attacking you, at the same time Chapter 10 sucks because I didn’t realize there would be a Thief with a Silver Card in here and I then proceeded to miss out on halved shop prices for the rest of the game, missable content let’s gooooooo. speaking of missable content, you have to collect twelve Astral Shards throughout the game so you can repair the Starsphere which helps you get the Binding Shield which in turn lets you enter the endgame Chapters and if you miss a single Shard then no true ending for you, LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! skipping ahead to the last one I want to talk about, Chapter 17 has an interesting mechanic where the tough Akaneia soldiers are here to carry the inexperienced Gra soldiers. if you can make it to the boss of this Chapter without killing any of the Gra soldiers she’ll actually join your army, but if you decide to kill a single one then she’ll get pissed and try to kill you. thankfully the Gra soldiers refuse to fight you back out of fear so it’s really easy to keep them alive unless you’re intentionally going after them and by that point the bloodshed’s on you. anyway, new hardware means all new battle animations, but the really cool part is there’s proper battle backgrounds now, epic! there’s some really smooth battle animations here like the Pegasus Knight’s attacks as well as Knights slowly inching their way toward their opponents to then stab a lance through them, the Starlight tome even gets its own spacelike battle background when it gets used which makes sense since it’s the plot important spell that helps you get the Falchion. although there’s quite a visual improvement here, there are a few battle animations that I preferred in the NES game, Thieves don’t hit the same when they aren’t floating towards you with their capes covering them. I forgot to bring this up in the FE1 review and while this isn’t a battle animation, I also miss how the Generals in that game looked like they were in mech armor and had giant scimitars as weapons, at least they have shields this time around. lastly, the Falchion animation is a full on downgrade here because Marth no longer performs his cool backflip after he attacks with it why would you take away the backflip you just doN’T TAKE AWAY THE BACKFLIP BACKFLIPS ARE COOL WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO ME KAGA, 0/10 BAD GAME WOULD PLAY AGAIN

Fire Emblem is evolving, I’m not sure if I’m ready for Fire Emblem’s evolution but I’ll still go through with it since I enjoyed my time with FE3 along with the new changes it brought to the table. from what I’ve heard a lot of people consider FE4 to be the best one, and while that’s cool since that’s the one I’m going through next, at the same time having your franchise apparently peak at 4/17 mainline games is a very concerning sign for me. but idk if it’s really all downhill from there then I suppose I’ll strap in and enjoy the potential train wreck I’m getting myself into. okay that’s a little harsh but that would be a bit funny. surely one of these future games has to be peak media, which one will it be? who knows? oh right there’s a remake of this game on the DS, one that also didn’t get an English release, lol. from what I know, the cut characters from the original are implemented back, there’s some new classes your units can turn into, some parts of the storyline are rewritten, and there’s a self-insert character that everyone kneels to like the Second Coming. I don’t know why there needs to be another main character to share Marth’s spotlight, but people must have enjoyed it since there’s been self-inserts in almost every game since. idk maybe it’s better but I just don’t really care at the moment, though if Marth can do a backflip with the Falchion then I might be interested.

take a shot every time I mention FE1 in this review

she Fire on my Emblem till I Gaiden

recently I've learned that in an old interview with Shouzou Kaga that the first Fire Emblem sold poorly originally until a Famitsu article praising the game was written by someone who goes by the name of Nakaji, so if you're wondering why there's so many people online who are down bad for characters like Camilla, Corrin, Alear, etc., you have Nakaji to thank for that. it's not all bad though, without that article we wouldn't have Fire Emblem Gaiden, which is UH UH UH....kino

(since I played an old English translation I'll list both the translation and localized names for the characters and setting, I'll probably do this for a lot of the earlier games too)

instead of Archanea from the first game, this one instead takes place in Valentia, a neighboring continent. in the past two sibling gods by the names of Mila and Doma/Duma used to rule together, however like all siblings these two kept bickering and bickering until they decided to split Valentia into two different nations: Sofia/Zofia the peaceful one down in the south, and Rigel the militaristic one up in the north. eventually Emperor Rudolf of Rigel begins an invasion which is followed by General Dozer/Desaix killing off most of the Sofian/Zofian royal family. in a village down in the very south, Lukas/Luka tries to enlist the help of a former Sofian general named Mycen, however since he believes war is....LE BAD, his grandson Alm chooses to go in his stead. over on the other side, Celica is wondering why the crops haven't been growing for the past three years, so she sets out to the Temple of Mila along with her mage buddies so they can seek help of the goddess, all while she goes up against a bunch of pirates and eventually not only crossing paths with Alm but also getting involved in the war herself. so yeah Fire Emblem 2 has two main characters that's pretty cool. "but what about the other on the right of the box art?" oh that’s just Valbo or Valbar as the cool kids call him, don't mind him bro thinks he's a main character

since there's two main characters, this means you actually get to manage two different armies! you start off controlling Alm in Chapter 1, then Celica in Chapter 2, then both of them at the same time during Chapters 3 and 4. unlike FE1 where a Chapter is a battle on a map, FE2 goes for a more traditional JRPG approach and has them take place in different sections of an overworld. the overworld isn't as in-depth as you'd expect, you kinda just keep going up during the whole thing and occasionally you go inside a village or castle, though they're usually only a single room with not much secrets to find. during your travels in the overworld, you'll run into enemies that'll send you into an "encounter", which places you in a familiar environment where all your units go up against the enemy team in a map. just like in FE1 you got your classes, your movement, your critical hits, you get the idea, though there are some changes this time around. weapon durability is GONE, though from what I know it doesn't last after this game so, rip. for now though each character comes with their own default weapon whether it'd be swords, spears, or tomes, and they will never break and fall apart so attack to your heart's content. an interesting thing about magic users however is that all their spells cost them HP to use (Fire uses up 1, Lightning uses 2, yadda yadda) so you'll have to be wary about where you place your magic users later on in the game when they start getting more HP draining spells, speaking of HP draining, Nosferatu AKA Robin Down B is introduced here, it's the only spell that cost no HP as it instead absorbs enemy HP, it also gives Clerics a way to fight back so they're not completely useless in combat anymore, I better see this spell in the next game. the item system has also been redone and it’s much better than it was in FE1. although your units can only carry one item at a time rather than the four they could hold previously, you can now freely swap items with each character anytime in the overworld, no more constantly managing items after clearing all the enemies, though swapping items during battle still takes your unit’s turn so we can’t have everything. you can also transfer items between Alm and Celica’s armies though only through an NPC in villages that delivers them to the other army, how this NPC is able to cross a landslide presumably on foot with no combat experience I will never know.

promoting units got changed a bit too. instead of having a promotion item and using it on a unit once they’re Level 10, you’ll now have to visit Mila Shrines throughout the overworld which are pretty much mini dungeons, then at the end you go up to a statue that lets you promote your unit if they’re a high enough level. Mercenaries, Cavaliers, Soldiers, and Archers promote at Level 7, Mages, Clerics, and Pegasus Knights at Level 12, and Female Mages at Level 20 (WHY). a few promoted classes can even get upgraded to a third tier class, wow Pokémon really did rip off Fire Emblem. Myrmidon (Mercenary) promotes to Dread Fighter, Paladin (Cavalier) to Gold Knight, Knight (Soldier) to Baron, Sniper (Archer) to Bow Knight, all at Level 10. while Gold Knights and Barons seemed like straight forward upgrades, Dread Fighter get a huge buff in magic defense and Bow Knights get their movement speed increased dramatically, you’ll probably won’t reach these third their classes normally but if you have the time and patience to grind some levels in the dungeons then they will be a big help. Speaking of grinding, did you know there’s a secret option before you select your file that lets you access an easy mode that does nothing but double all the EXP you get in the game? all you have to do is press A while holding Start and Select when selecting a file and get the option to do so! I did not find out about this until Chapter 4 so I had to grind out Alm’s army with very little EXP gains! unironically play Easy Mode, it’s not even easier it’s just more convenient. back to the units, there’s also a special Villager class that can choose between becoming a Mercenary, Cavalier, Soldier, Archer, or Mage after only reaching Level 3, Alm gets a couple of them in his journey while Celica only gets one. for some reason Dread Fighters can promote to a Villager when you get them to Level 10 so in theory you can do an endless loop of Villager —> Mercenary line —> Villager and potentially create a god unit with insane stats, though I didn’t do it myself since that’s a lot of patience. another thing about the Villagers is that if the statue asks if you want to promote them and it’s a class you don’t want them to have, just choose “no” and talk to it again to cycle for a different class change. I assumed it was like Final Fantasy III where different shrines offered different classes but no it doesn’t work like that so I accidentally ended up promoting most of Alm’s Villagers into Mages which sort of handicapped his army until they got promoted to Sages and better units arrived. another thing about shrines and a few other areas is there’s these lion heads that offer a limited amount of stat boosts to any unit you choose. what’s interesting however is that at least one shrine in Alm and Celica’s path offers the ability to revive a fallen unit, which I’m assuming is only possible in this game and the remake. But get this, not only do you get to cheat death a few times in Fire Emblem, but if a unit dies in one army and you go to revive them with the other army, then they will join the army that revived them instead, which means you can transfer some units over with this method. I actually did this myself by intentionally killing Jesse in Celica’s army so I can bring him over to Alm’s army because he was severely lacking in Mercenaries due to my earlier mishap with the Mage promotions (Celica has three Mercenaries on her route SHE DOES NOT NEED THAT MANY), I have no idea if this unit transfer thing is an intentional feature or not, but either way that’s pretty cool.

like in FE1 the characters you recruit in this game are pretty simple in that they become silent protagonists once they join your team so you’re left to fill in the blanks and flesh them out yourselves. this is more of a me problem rather than the game itself, but I didn’t get as much cool or funny moments with the characters this time then I did with FE1, which is odd since each army only gets about 15 or 16 characters (the smallest FE cast afaik) so you’d think they’d be more moments for them to shine and do crazy stuff. well I’ll give the game this in that I can actually use all three Pegasus Sisters (three out of the four characters who return from FE1) at the same time since unit management for the maps isn’t as prevalent here, they were basically the monster cleanup crew since the Falcon Knight promotion lets them deal great damage to monsters often one-shotting them, yeah monsters are in this game couldn’t think of an opportunity to bring them up until now. while the Pegasus Sisters in Celica’s army were being janitors, the Mage Brothers (Robin/Tobin, Cliff/Kliff, and Ryuto/Luthier) over at Alm’s were hurling their magic at Knights and Barons as well as getting some last minute chip damage. Teeta/Tatiana mostly chilled out in the sidelines while she provided Physic and Fortify healing to the Alm gang while Silk/Silque healed her up as the magic spells drained Teeta’s HP, they probably brought some popcorn during the battles as well. Celica and Jenny/Genny had a similar thing going on since Jenny often had to use the Dear/Expel spell whenever there were too many monsters on the map and that costs a hefty HP so Celica had to stick around to heal her sometimes since as we all know in RPGs….mages have bad defense. then you have Dyute/Delthea who kinda started off as a liability early on but then when I took the time to raise her levels (all 20 of them) then promoted her into a Priestess, all of a sudden she was one of the best members in Alm’s army, maybe the best idk but she definitely starting carrying a bit. powerful Black magic, some White magic to heal up, a physical sword attack to not use up HP, okay I’m starting to understand why this class isn’t accessible until Level 20.

I find myself liking a lot more of the tracks here than in the previous game, there’s still a couple NES soundtracks that I prefer more, but I’ll say everything here is better than hearing FE1’s map theme on 4x speed during item management. Opening sounds like your typical Fire Emblem marching theme, at least I think it sounds typical I’m really only two games in. now this is Where the Wind Rustles which is the Chapter 1 overworld theme and this is fine, nothing too amazing it’s a catchy and upbeat track nothing wrong with that. but then you get to Chapter 2 and hear The Ark of Dawn for five seconds and go “damn….this is pretty good” like this track is 👌, it sounds like an NES Final Fantasy track and that is a compliment, very nice and tranquil. March to Deliverance is Alm’s battle theme and this is neat I like it a lot more than the FE1 map theme, it has that good old JRPG battle theme vibes. then With Mila’s Divine Protection comes on and all of a sudden you get so pumped up and want to kick the opponent’s ass, looks like Celica gets her second point and Alm remains at zero. also hey this is another Smash track, I didn’t even recognize it at first because of the 8-bit composition. bro that part at 0:48 is so good it made me go “OH I RECOGNIZE THAT”, I want more moments like these the further I get into these games. back to Gaiden, What Lies at the End is Alm’s near victory theme and this is alright, the beginning’s slightly rough but the latter half picks up the slack. then Celica has The Sacrifice and the Saint and damn, Celica’s got Alm beat again with the music, don’t worry though Alm’s way cooler than Celica at the end of the day. I think this guy here can describe this track better than I can: “This is the best near-victory theme in the series, because it actually makes you want to keep pushing towards the finish line, while most of them just kind of sound out of place when there's still some fighting left. Like, this is a theme that sounds like you're routing the enemy.” ~ @givecamichips, YouTube comment section. some of the non battle stuff like Melody of Water is nice too, this one sounds like yet another old FF track and it’s a pretty chill tune, not to mention this plays whenever when you get to a statue and that’s always a good thing. I don’t remember where Song of Peace plays (yes I know I just played the game, it happens) but this is another chill and relaxing track and acts as a serviceable break to all the action. the music is good.

the graphics also got a bit of a glow up this time, this is another good thing. there isn’t just one type of tileset anymore so the game can have more variety of locations then just castles and….outside. you got grassy plains, underground shrines, pirate ships, red mountainous areas, graveyards, sloppy swamps, giant towers, it’s really a sight to behold after being used to FE1’s samey looking areas. the map design on the other hand….leaves a bit to be desired. what. is. going. on. here. seriously. these look like something I’d see if I sorted by “Recent” in a Fire Emblem Maker game. Alm actually gets a lot of these boring grassy maps compared to Celica who gets the visually distinct ones, though this one near the end of Chapter 4 looks neat and is more in line with FE1’s maps. at the same time though, Celica gets a fair amount of wonderful maps such as Sloppa and Sloppa 2: Electric Boogaloo. you see all that goop in the map? that goop not only uses up your movement spaces but it all slowly chips away at your HP. If that wasn’t enough, there’s also these enemy exclusive Shaman classes that randomly summon a bunch of monsters and if you don’t have the Dear spell (which you likely won’t when you first get here) then you have to deal with all that as well. here I was thinking it’d be a walk in the park with forts losing their enemy reinforcements, but here comes Gaiden with its own reinforcement alternative. you better hope no Zombie Dragons show up on the Sloppa 2 map because there’s a good chance they’ll quickly fly over to one of your frail units and kill them before you’re able to send backup to assist them, definitely didn’t happen to me haha…. Alm isn’t getting out of this scot-free though because he gets to experience Sloppa 3 & Knuckles. now this map actually looks pretty cool, but the main problem is the Zombie Dragons. the first time there’s only a few of them and at that point of the game when you get to this map Zombie Dragons aren’t too much of an issue, but yes you heard me, first time because you need to go through this map another few times before you can more on and each time more Zombie Dragons are added to the picture and at that point they become a problem again. if you still don’t have that Dear spell, be very wary. on to something more positive, the battle animations are still top notch and a bit cleaner this time. a lot of them are reused from FE1 which is acceptable because those animations were nice but the newly introduced classes have some new animations they are pretty clean. the Dread Fighters in particular do this Dragon Ball teleportation technique when they try to attack you and that transition is….everything!!!1!!!11!! shoutouts to the final boss this time around which somehow manages to make Medeus look like a baby lizard in comparison, I’m not going to spoil too much about that dude’s deal, but he’s basically an eldritch abomination and I’m all for it. now that’s the final boss I was expecting, kino ending cutscene as well.

so yes, FIREEMBLEM 外伝 is good game. very flawed of course like damn what are some of these maps, but I still like it and there’s enough gameplay improvements to where it’s technically better than FE1, but idk I think I prefer that game slightly more despite the jank. honestly FE2 feels like a companion piece to FE1 rather than a full sequel to me, I mean Gaiden does stand for “side story”. I kinda also see it as a different take on what Fire Emblem should be, kinda like Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II. if you wondering what’s with all the Final Fantasy comparisons in this review, it’s because Shouzou Kaga is actually a huge Final Fantasy fan. remember that interview I mentioned back at the beginning? in that interview another guy in that room was none other than Hironobu Sakuguchi, the original creator of Final Fantasy, and the two spent their time praising each other’s work. I’d like to assume Kaga took inspiration from the Final Fantasy games that were out at that time and used them to help create Fire Emblem Gaiden, that or he just felt like adding some more traditional JRPG elements and this whole section is made pointless. back to what I’m saying, Gaiden is a neat and unique experience, though unless you really want to experience the original intention and/or experience everything in release order like what I’m doing, I’d probably recommend to play the remake on the 3DS instead, I mean have you seen some of those character redesigns? woooo, but it also seems to be a more refined experience and there’s also some new classes than characters can promote to so there’s some more gameplay freedom, also voice acting if you don’t feel like imagining the characters’ voices yourself. anyway that’s it for me, took me less time to complete this one than FE1 did, I hope the later games become faster paced as well because there’s still a lot more I need to go through. expect FE3 in the future which is apparently the FFIII of Fire Emblem from what I know, the Final Fantasy comparisons will never end.



of all the NES “2” games, this one gets an easy S tier