Together, We Ride!

One of my favorite video game series is Fire Emblem, a series of turn-based strategy games. I won't go into a lengthy description here. In essence, battles are fought on a field overlayed with a grid. Various types of terrain affect the combat. Once units earn enough experience from fighting, they will gain levels and can eventually promote into stronger units. This is a type of gameplay that really appeals to me, though I am terrible at chess. one never has to play a battle the same way twice; you have to form your army and guide it through many battles, making the ultimate fighting machine that suits your approach to saving the world.

After years of not being as good at platformers as my brothers, I discovered the first Fire Emblem released in the United States: Fire Emblem for the Game Boy Advance. The game is also known as Fire Emblem 7 and Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken, particularly when it is necessary to differentiate it from all the other games in the series before it that were only released in Japan.

I heard about the game and wanted to try it, but not spend money on it immediately, so I downloaded the ROM and played it on my computer. After finishing the tutorial, about ten chapters centered around a girl named Lyn and an inheritance dispute, I decided I loved it.

So my next video game purchase, though not immediate, was the eighth in the series and second in the US, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, also for the GBA. (I eventually managed to acquire a used copy of Seven, with the manual, which was important to me. The game is now out of print.) Gameplay-wise, FE8 is very similar to FE7, with a few minor upgrades. Now there were branching promotion trees! Now my cavaliers didn't just have to be paladins when they grew up, but they could be great knights if they wanted!

Many have criticized number eight for being too easy. In most other games, once the army is done with a battle, it moves on. In Eight, players have the option of returning to towns and forests and liberating them from evil creatures over and over again, allowing units to earn more experience between battles, though if one does this too much, breaking weapons and no income can become a problem.

This game also has branching story paths. One may choose to follow Prince Ephraim or Princess Eirika early on. Eventually they meet up again and continue their campaigns as one. Touches like this, and the ability to play FE7 from the point of view of another character after completing the game once, are part of what makes the games full of replay value for me, as well. I am not the sort to play a game once and sell it back. If I think I won't want to play it more than once, I will borrow it or buy it later, when it is on serious sale.

Now that I own both of these games, it may seem a little odd for me to post about them here on a blog about coveting, but I'll try to justify it: the reason the series was even introduced to the United States was the appearance of two characters from previous games, Marth and Roy, in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Fans went nuts over these guys.

And it was tremendously lovely of Nintendo to release for us Rekka no Ken. Truly. But that game, my friends, is a prequel to number six, Fuuin no Tsurugi, the game that featured Roy as its main character. Years later, they remade the first game in the series, Ankoku Ryū to Hikari no Tsurugi, and gave us Marth, but we still haven't seen Roy on this side of the pond, aside from dedicated bilingual fans providing a translation patch for ROMs.

In conclusion, I think Nintendo should hurry up and release Fuuin no Tsurugi over here. The end.

Buy Fire Emblem through Amazon for varying prices.

Buy Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones through Amazon for almost fifty dollars. Good God. It was thirty at Target when I got my copy.