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 (threeout 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
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
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
kirbb
2 months ago