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 shopsof 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
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
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