This is the way.

I only knew of this franchise because of Super Smash Bros Melee. As a little one, I played Roy and spammed his moves like every kid did. I didn’t know anything about this character beyond that he was a cool guy with a cool sword.

Growing up, I heard little whispers of the franchise but this wasn’t one that landed in my gaming bubble. That was the case until Three Houses for the Switch came out, then some of my favorite YouTubers gushed about it. Slight interest was piqued for me, but I sold my Switch before I would have money for that game.

Fast forward to now, and emulation is my main friend. This has remained the way I play most of my games now due to time constraints on my PC usage. Adulting and parenting are sure something else. Anyways, now the chance to jump into the franchise is here. What came of my first adventure?

For those who don’t care and don’t have the time
TLDR:
The game rocks and many of the main crew are great to alright. I found the permadeath mechanic fun, sad, and engaging which made my risky moves even more so. The turn based combat was good enough for me, sometimes leading to fun maps and interesting encounters. The story was fine, the characters definitely carried the story. The sprites and animation overall were a lot of fun to look at and watch. I am looking forward to the rest of the franchise.

This is a turn-based fighting chess-like game. Certain characters are in classes that can do certain moves or hold different types of weapons. In this year of our Lord 2024, no one should be a stranger to these sorts of mechanics in a game. It is easy to grasp and understand.

Because this game is the first game of the franchise to be released into the great land of ‘Murica (over 20 years ago!), there is a nice prologue that teaches you the game and does it incredibly well for this one level. However, the game will not hold your hand in other matters. I was in the middle of a chapter in the much later half of the game and I realized that there’s a “Support” mechanic. You can deepen your connections between characters by talking to them at certain points with certain characters. This also opens up backgrounds on characters and may even lead to relationships. Kinda sucks that I never was at least pointed to this. Other mechanics are taught, but some are just left unspoken unless you stumble across it. For those who are interested in this game, look up a quick “Things I Wish I Knew” kinda guide.

I immediately liked Lyn and the other characters that pop up like Sain and Kent. The game presents many characters throughout the two stories. The permadeath mechanic doesn’t feel like you MUST restart a chapter since you will get a new character in the same class down the road. If one of your main characters (Lyn in her story and the second story, Eliwood & Hector in the second story) dies, then the level restarts.

However, there are certain characters who unlock different branches of dialogue and even side chapters. I lost a lot of my characters, and still felt like I had most of the game throughout it all. I plan on reading and YouTubing some content that I may have missed.

I do think this game has replay value to it, I want to try Hector’s story someday (which is just Hard Mode). However, I’ve been pushing off Pokemon and want to finish my SoulSilver run.

For a game released in early 2003, the menus were sometimes annoying. I didn’t love the frustration of hopping over one menu to get to one certain screen. However, that is 2024 me complaining and not 2003 kid me who stomached some annoying Pokemon menus back in the day.

The sprites rock! I loved seeing unique animations for our 3 main characters, but seeing each class have unique animations was crazy too. I wrote down a few that I really enjoyed seeing.

Hawkeye’s crit animation with the “Killer Axe” (I was so sad when he died, he was a tank).
Oswin’s crit animation with the “Lance”.
Lyn’s crit animations in both forms (first is best).
Karel’s crit animation with “Wo Dao”

More on Lyn’s animations. I really enjoyed the work they did on her specifically. Both of her crit animations look phenomenal and I would quietly say: anime everytime. I love the sprites across the board, but Lyn’s anime adds an oomph to the attacks. There’s a beauty to 2D sprites that spark imagination and leaves the player filling in gaps within the frames to make it cinematic. This is why I prefer many 2D sprites over fully 3D sprites (this is why it's taking me a long time to get through Pokemon. I doubt I will play past the 5th generation).

I loved the strategy that came with each new chapter (level) and having so many new characters to replace the ones that I didn’t keep alive. Most levels did good at showing a new enemy or way to progress your tactical brain even if you’ve seen this enemy many times. The difficulty ramped up slightly while also giving you plenty of opportunity to do well. If you make a mistake or move a healer or main character a little too close to the enemies, then the AI enemy will capitalize on it.

The game gives you a Fortune Lady to use to help figure out your strategy of what units and weapons to bring. I used this feature three times, forgot to do it the time after that and then never again. Only 50 gold (quite small amount in the context of this game) but it didn’t really help me out that much. Perhaps on the higher difficulty it’s reliable, but me actively not using a mechanic the game gives me shows how little it was needed to begin with.

I will complain about Eliwood, this dude felt weak. I would have to babysit him in the later levels from going too close to the enemies and dying. That was frustrating and made our main guy feel like he wasn’t progressing like the others. In reality, the new characters we were getting in the latter half of the second story were just strong right upfront. Jaffar was a great help. I was very mad when he died, he had a crazy dodge and crit skill set that made him valuable every level.

There was a nice detail of our main character’s acknowledgment of those who are struck down/died with conversation that would happen after a battle. Until… Kent died in my run of Eliwood’s story. I was a little sad with how long I’ve had the character, but accepted it.

Buuut none of the characters cared? Lyn. What are you doing? This is your guy who’s been with you for so long. Maybe it happened twice in her story so I thought the GBA sized game would have more coding to it? I accepted this odd complaint and moved on.

The first story with Lyn is shorter than the second story with Eliwood. I enjoyed both while finding the second story more engaging because the scope was much bigger. First is more personal and intimate of a girl returning to a home she didn’t know she had. Second is about world-ending consequences and a mad dash against the clock to stop it.

I don’t remember most of the bosses, but one that was somewhat early in Eliwood’s is still in my memory. Uhai was a tough boss. Horse guy with a bow. That guy eliminated 3 of my characters in two turns, he was ruthless and it sucked losing those characters. At least one of those deaths was my fault for not healing the character enough. While late game bosses were incredibly difficult without some form of strategy (sometimes restarting a save state more than once to get a good ending), Uhai wrecked early and quickly.

From Chapter 25 onwards, you see enemies use abilities (bolting being the main offender) that can hit targets incredibly far. It was this BS moment that I said: if I lose someone important to that, I’m restarting the chapter. If the game is gonna be lame like that, I will fight it back. Yes, the chances to hit become very slim % wise, but the idea of these magic abilities made me annoyed.

Here lies my graveyard of characters that died (or retreated due to being relevant to the plot but never fought again):
Sain, Kent, Florina, Wil, Dorcas, Serra, Erk, Matthew, Lucius, Lowen, Batre, Rebecca, Canas, Dart, Isadora, Nino, Jaffar, Vaida, Marcus, Oswin, Karel, Nils, and Hawkeye.

Now, there are some characters I never encountered or are only available through Hector’s story. However, I don’t find myself wanting to replay the game because of that, but I understand if someone wants to experience all that this game has to offer. It’s a lot of fun with great music and a decent story.

I’ve written little of the story, and think I’ll keep it that way. It’s nothing spectacular for those who have encountered plenty of media, but it works enough for these characters. Most of the characters that I had were cliques, but still good. Some I barely knew much about them before they died so I felt nothing besides annoyance that I was out of healers or flying units.

Great game, I enjoyed it. I now want to play more games in this franchise. It’s quite interesting seeing that I started this franchise with the character, Eliwood, who is the dad of Roy. Melee is love, Melee is life.

I’ll end on a nice quote from a cool character in the game.

“You cannot hope to succeed if you cannot trust your own strength. Your own power must drive you. That is the most important thing.” Athos