The Fire Emblem Grind - Was it a Mistake?

DLC Deja-vu? You've been here before.

Recent Fire Emblem games have been accused of becoming a "grind-fest," that harder difficulties practically require grinding and/or purchasing DLC to complete, and that the game requires you to either overpower everything or get destroyed.

Is this true? And if it is, is it any different to how Fire Emblem games used to be? Many people have complained about Fire Emblem relying too much on randomness, or that they never get to use certain units because they are just too weak. Grinding theoretically answers both of these issues, but is there a better way?

---Infinite Grinding - Checks and Balances---

"Not even an optimal Severa." Welcome to Awakening.

Gaiden, Sacred Stones, Awakening, Fates:Birthright, Fates:Revelations and Echoes have all had dedicated grinding maps, be they monsters roaming an overworld map, side-maps you can discover, castles of other players, or repeatable DLC maps. So how do they balance these out?

In Gaiden, the only limiting factor would be diminishing returns. Experience gain slowed to a crawl after many levels, and the stat boosts from leveling were so poor and inconsistent that generally it didn't matter how much you leveled up. Class-up bonuses were so good to almost negate the need for grinding for all but mage classes, who needed raw levels in order to learn spells. The only character class which was desperately in need of grinding was the cleric, who gained no experience from healing and therefore needed to be spoon-fed levels in order to learn key spells, like Warp, Physic or Illusion.
Echoes, a remake of Gaiden, follows this trend, though healers DO get experience for healing, and while level-up bonuses aren't *that* great, class change stat bonuses aren't quite as strong as they were in Gaiden.

For Sacred Stones, you had overworld monsters and caves, but your limit was class-up items and money. Class-up items were rare, and were specific to certain unit types instead of all being master seals. Weapons also wore out exceedingly quickly in Sacred Stones, and even iron weapons weren't terribly cheap. This was mitigated of course by Arena Abuse, which we will get to later, but provided for a decently fair balance of RoI for grinding.

Awakening has perhaps the most imbalanced grind benefit ever. In harder difficulties, grinding is made much harder by increasing the cost of grind-enabling items and making the roaming monsters almost impossible to kill (seriously, max stats already when I'm only on chapter 10?). However, in easier difficulties this cost is almost negligible, and the rewards are far and away better than any other game. Skills were incredibly strong in Awakening, and while re-classing required an item, it wasn't all that rare (you could find seals when grinding sometimes), and it reset your level to 1 without harming your base stats all that much, if at all. This allowed for stupidly fast grinding, reaching incredible stat levels and broken skill combos with only a bit of time and effort. This made the normal game laughably easy, but on harder difficulties the enemies were so inflated and strong that you practically needed to be able to 1-shot everyone else just to survive.

Last but not least in this set of games is the Fates trilogy. Birthright and Revelations had effectively free grinding, you would pay some gold to find more maps but would usually get that gold back and then some from enemy drops. Leveling wasn't quite as broken as it was in Awakening, though, and though skill combos existed they weren't as game-breaking as Awakening's. The real grind of Fates, however, came in the form of support grinding.
Which leads to the curious case of Conquest, wherein you don't gain experience for grinding castle maps, but you still gain support, meaning you are still grinding to get better bonuses and unlock new units, but you aren't also gaining experience alongside that grind, making it somehow feel even MORE tedious than Birthright or Revelations, where you at least got both experience and support from these side maps.


That is the legacy of grinding maps in Fire Emblem games, though there is one aspect that most other Fire Emblem games have, that is so well-used that it is one of the most well-known terms amongst Fire Emblem fans.

---ARENA ABUSE---

The only way to make money in Thracia. Trust me.

Granting free money, infinite experience, and plenty of game resets, arenas are both loved and hated by Fire Emblem players both casual and hardcore. Just stop a unit by on the battlefield, take a turn and wager some gold, and fight until you win, die or give up! What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the first issue with arena abuse is that die part of the clause. Since you never get to see what enemy you are going to be fighting before you enter the arena, you might get placed in an unwinnable situation. Worse still, combat has to go on for at least one round before you can flee. If you get crit, or just flat out fight someone with more strength than expected, you can lose a unit with literally no way to prevent it, often causing a reset.

This is in some ways more frustrating than a normal reset, because arena abuse often happens at the very end of a map, after all the strategic difficulty of the level has been overcome. To reset here would mean not just doing your grinding over, but redoing the ENTIRE LEVEL. Such is the pain of this possibility that many players reject the arena until they are in dire need, or at least call it quits when they are only content with their haul, but not satisfied.

 Smart money says Sain dies if you don't withdraw.

This risk-reward mechanic is oftentimes enough to warrant the Arena's existence as a grinding option whilst also encouraging players not to use it. On harder difficulties in games like Blazing Blade or Shadow Dragon, arena abuse seems almost necessary, though there are usually ways to complete the game without completely abusing the arena.

Notable is the Drill Grounds in New Mystery of the Emblem, providing a safer arena-type experience because you can see your opponent before committing to the fight. This is balanced out almost too severely, though, as the gold you spend here is not refunded to you, and you also have to bring your own weapons, costing even more money overall. Your stat growths are also affected in ways that can wreck certain units endgame viability.

---Fire Emblem Games Without Grinding---

Bonus Exp was the best system.

There are really only three (arguably four) Fire Emblem games without any potential for infinite experience gain - Genealogy of the Holy War, Path of Radiance, and Radiant Dawn, with Fates:Conquest an honorable mention as DLC exists for it, and support grinding is still very much a thing.

These games are all quite difficult, especially on harder difficulties, but are usually not seen as "unfair" by hardcore fans of the series. While it is sometimes possible to "Zork" yourself into a seemingly unwinnable situation through consistent bad level-ups, losing key party members or just wasting experience on dead weight characters, this type of thing is relatively rare, and can usually be avoided if you plan your turns with experience and money on your mind.

These games also still have ways of gaining extra experience, though it isn't unlimited. Genealogy has an arena system, wherein every unit can complete up to seven fights each chapter for a good amount of gold and experience. They use their own weapons for durability, but if they lose they only lose the durability they had used, and are reduced to 1 hp. But they don't even lose their turn and can continue to try again, and if they win they will be restored to full hp! This provides opportunities to use arenas as potential full-heals throughout the course of the map, as well as an opportunity for money and experience.

As far as Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn are concerned, they have bonus objectives that give "Bonus Experience" in base, for you to give to any unit you see fit to level. Generally you gain more bonus experience for completing missions in fewer turns, but you also gain experience for such side objectives as saving burning houses, sneaking through the jail undetected, or not killing certain enemies who wouldn't normally give much experience anyway.

This bonus experience system is my personal favorite. While it messes with your level-ups in Radiant Dawn (making it best for units with poor growths but screwing over units with good growths), it provides the game with more ways to encourage specific actions, setting up unique scenarios that don't simply boil down to "get extra items" or "fight fewer enemies" for doing things a certain way. Which I find very cool.

---Closing Thoughts---

Takes some work, but Donnel breaks the game.

So is grinding inherently bad? I don't believe so. Sacred Stones, Gaiden and Echoes are some of my favorite Fire Emblem games, and you will often find me abusing arenas in most other games as well. The problem comes in when grinding is required to progress, most notably in higher difficulties of Awakening and Fates.

I also don't believe that grinding is necessary, however. Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn and Genealogy of the Holy War are at the top of my list of favorite Fire Emblem games, and one key reason for that is because they provide compelling and challenging experiences, without having to resort to cheap difficulty where grinding is required to overcome.

The Fire Emblem Anthology: My History

Oh, Fire Emblem, you wonderful series you. In just a few years, you will be celebrating your thirtieth birthday (amazing), and almost your fifteenth worldwide, with Fire Emblem 7; the Blazing Blade, your first international release.

I recently completed my quest of playing every single main-series Fire Emblem game to be released, and I loved all of them (though some more than others). I figured that this gives me a perfect excuse to share my history with Fire Emblem, my feelings about the series, and where I hope it goes in the future.

My first exposure to Fire Emblem was Path of Radiance, something like twelve years ago. I don't remember how we found it, but my brother got it for either Christmas or his birthday, and I was fascinated by it. A fantasy turn-based strategy game? No, a turn-based strategy RPG? With permanent unit death? I practically begged my brother to let me play it, and eventually he let me. It was incredible. I wasn't very good, but eventually even I was able to beat the game... On easy. Since then I've gone back and played it on normal and I *think* on hard, though it's been several years since I've touched Path of Radiance. It still is tied with Radiant Dawn as my favorite game though.

Soon after, I got Sacred Stones, and I loved that game. Still do, it's one of my favorite games of the series and, in my opinion, a wonderful "first game" to get someone into Fire Emblem proper. I played that game, beat it, then immediately played it again to see what I missed down Eirika's path (Ephraim's route is still my favorite by far). I was floored by the difficulty of Lagdou Ruins, and it wasn't until about five years ago that I finally beat all 10 floors on Hard.

Path of Radiance came out ten years ago, and I knew I wanted it. I put it #1 on my wish list for Christmas (being only 12 at the time), and sure enough I had it and was playing it all through the break. I got a little exhausted and distracted by other games around act 2 and 3, but I pushed on. I think I actually *zorked* myself into a corner my first playthrough, between forgetting what units I had trained, sending some units to Ike's team who were vital for Micaiah's, and then getting an armory glitch where none of my coins ever landed on anything good (Seriously, ten coins in a row and still no beneficial card). I was on easy, and I just couldn't seem to beat Daein's levels in Act 3. I restarted, played again, and this time I beat the game. I would go through the game at least twice more, once on Normal and once on Hard, and to this day the only reason I haven't played it more is because of its 80+ hour play time, as well as being on the Wii, when I haven't always had access to a wii and a tv to play.

I got Shadow Dragon very soon after it released, and... Well, I had an interesting experience with it. The online shop that changed with the day made me wait until certain days to play, so I could get the items I felt I needed. I was ticked off from the very beginning that the game forced me to sacrifice units (I still believe that somewhere out there there's a way to beat the final prologue map without losing anyone, though I have yet to find it), and the way they locked every bonus chapter behind a hard cap on max number of units in your party? That combined with my initial distaste about the free ability to switch unit classes made this game my least favorite Fire Emblem game, and it still is to this day. So much of the game cannot even be accessed anymore because they closed down the DS internet services several years ago.

I do, however, remember playing through the game at least twice. On my first run, I kept everyone alive, beat the game, and then realized - hey, they have online vs matches! Only to suddenly be destroyed by blatant hackers (seriously who has a Marth with 30 magic? What's the point??). So my second run, I limited my party to only the best soldiers (sorry Gordin - I will always hate you for what you did to my sanity. Five level-ups without a single stat gain?). I played every bonus chapter - including the final bonus, after which I resurrected Tiki and reclaimed Falchion thanks to an interaction with how dead comrades' weapons work, and beat the game. I also visited every secret shop along the way, saving every stat-boosting item, and then post-game created the best, non-hacked multiplayer team I could. I was even able to beat blatant hackers! Nothing felt quite as good as filling out my entire set of wifi battle cards... Though I realized my mages were next to useless because I never got Gotoh, and as such never got the only Swarm tome in the game.

It was after I played Shadow Dragon that I truly became interested in what I was missing. I tracked down Blazing Blade, and played that to completion, including Hector Hard Mode. While I didn't fill out the support log or max out my strategist stars, I did beat the game several times through all these different paths, and enjoyed it quite a bit. I need to go back and play the game again, now that I think about it. It's been over five years since I played it.

After I finished Blazing Blade, I decided to track down a translated emulator for Binding Blade. When I did finally do so and play the game... I had mixed feelings. After a few chapters in, the death of certain characters from Blazing Blade really struck me. I had spent so much time with them... was this truly their fate? I suppose it was prophesied in FE7, but it was still saddening. I beat the game, though, accessing all bonus chapters and going through. I missed a few characters because of the frustrating nature of their recruitments, but I still enjoyed the game. If I went back to play it now, I would probably do several things differently.

Awakening came out early on the 3ds, but I didn't get one then. It wasn't until summer of 2013 that I got myself a 3ds, but oh boy when I did I knew Awakening was the first game I'd get. And it was really fun. I played on normal, got absorbed in the story, and seriously binged the game for hours on end. It took me far too long to perfect my team, grinding infinitely, maxing out characters like Donnel and Severa, until eventually I finally beat it. And that's about where my enjoyment peaked. I played through again on Lunatic, and found myself getting frustrated more often than not. I finally hit a wall around chapter 20, wherein most of the child chapters were nearly impossible, I had to purchase DLC to get enough money and exp to even hope to afford everything I needed to kit out my characters, and I truly felt the cheap difficulty of the game. Awakening is an incredible experience and a great game... on normal or hard. This set the standard for Lunatic being an unfair grind-fest challenge, that continued with Fates.

The next game I played was Fire Emblem Gaiden, the second in the series and my first introduction to the Famicom Fire Emblems. It was weird, it was strange, it was hard to wrap my head around at first... And I loved it. In fact, it was finishing this game that made me start this blog, and you can check out my Original blog post on the game still.

I took a bit of time away from Fire Emblem around this time. Life carried me away to other places, and I didn't have access to the games that helped define me. But eventually I returned, and what awaited my return but another new release? Fire Emblem Fates, a trilogy of sorts. I personally wanted to return to the more classic Fire Emblem style, and bought Conquest first, though I played through Birthright first on recommendation from my friends as well as a desire to learn the mechanics and units of the game before jumping into a more difficult challenge. I had learned from my Hard playthrough of Radiant Dawn how important it was to understand the specific mechanics of the game, and oh boy was I right.

I enjoyed Birthright. I played through it swiftly on Hard difficulty, and though I got stuck a few times, I still pushed through and ended up really enjoying my time with it. I eventually turned my head toward Conquest, and for some reason believed I had what it took to play Lunatic, even though it was my first time with the Conquest story, and I had still yet to finish my Awakening Lunatic run. Lunatic Conquest was the game that stopped me in my tracks for months on end. I took a break, came back later, and played until I got stuck again. I had a desire to finish the game, but so many other things were happening in my life that I just didn't want to sit down and dedicate myself to it.

What caused me to come back was the announcement of Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. A Gaiden remake? Could it be? And it looked so wonderful, so true to the original game, that I knew I had to play it. But I couldn't bring myself to play it until I had finished what I originally set out to do - beat Conquest on Lunatic.
I eventually gritted my teeth and pushed through the game, relying on castles to skill out my units, and even a few cap-exceeding einherjars recruited from other players to help me out. Even with these units I ran into walls at Ryoma, but I still continued through and eventually beat the game, though I lost most of my army on the final mission.

Having a good week or two between beating Conquest and the release of Echoes, I decided to get Revelations and play through it. I was smarter this time, playing through on Hard instead of Lunatic, and I didn't force myself to grind out every child unit, either, as I had gotten bored of them by that point and I didn't feel like raiding castle after castle just for support points. I still did a lot of that, by the way, I just didn't do it for every single unit.

Out of all the versions of Fates, though, I probably enjoyed Revelations the most. Which might be surprising, because most people I see claim it is their least favorite. The map gimmicks didn't bother me that much - in fact it kept things fresh and interesting after having played the game two other times through - and the difficulty of it was nothing compared to the insanity of Lunatic Conquest. I mostly just used the royal families through the game, and though I never felt like I was altogether too powerful for the game (as can happen with some games), I never felt weak enough that I was forced to grind. All in all it was my favorite experience of Fates yet.

So, Echoes came out and I played it... and played it... and honestly really loved it. I loved the sheer amount of choice you could have on your army, since half of it was villagers. I ADORED Mila's Turnwheel, and found it to be the perfect stand-in for someone who still wanted the experience of Classic permadeath whilst also not wanting to replay every chapter or dungeon from the very beginning whenever they lost a unit. It was almost like using save states on an emulator, except the RNG changed every time, and I never was trapped into a bad state because of where the state was. The ability to go back and re-do ANY turn in the map, from ANY MOVE in the map, was something I adored, and something I hope they bring into future games - at least in part. It's possible Mila's Turnwheel is too strong, but like I said, I greatly appreciated it for what it was.

After Echoes, there was a fire-emblem shaped void in my life. I had no new games to play, no opportunities to experience new things... At least, that's what I thought. There were still three other games I hadn't experienced - Genealogy, Thracia 776, and Mystery of the Emblem. After reading around, I felt like I had no reason to play the first game, as I had already played Shadow Dragon, and New Mystery of the Emblem was apparently a far better version of FE3 than the original, since I had already played Shadow Dragon and had no need to replay "Book 1."

In all honesty, of these three games, I would have played Thracia 776 first, had it not been for the near impossibility of finding a working translation of it. Then in my search, I discovered that it was made to be deliberately played after Genealogy of Holy War, so I decided to start with that game instead. I played it, I was confused by it, but sure enough I loved it. I admittedly used a wiki to find all the secrets, because seriously there are some hidden things I never would have considered to try without knowing about them beforehand, but it swiftly charmed me. I loved the game, and I loved almost more its music. I downloaded the soundtrack to FE4 and have probably listened to it more than almost any other game soundtrack to this day, and I only downloaded it a few months ago!

After finishing Genealogy, it was a little while before I got into Thracia. I still was looking for a translation patch that didn't crash the game, but eventually I decided to just deal with what I had working. The story was (mostly) fine, it was just the menu info text that was messed up. Again, I used a wiki to help me play the game, because the obtuse mechanics and incredibly difficult recruitments would have gone way over my head if not for that research. Altogether, though, if you can get past the mechanics of it, the game isn't as difficult as people say. Doing a perfect run, however, where you recruit every possible character and keep everyone alive, is nearly impossible without an insane amount of luck, and I wouldn't recommend it unless you are certain you want a frustrating challenge. To see what I mean, just look at Xavier's recruitment. Yeah. It gets pretty bad.

Finally, I decided there was no reason to leave the series unfinished, and played New Mystery of the Emblem. I decided to play on Maniac, as I knew to avoid Lunatic but wanted a harder challenge than normal. And I loved it. Maniac was perfect - it was incredibly difficult, and sure it required some luck at times, but I never felt like it was hopeless. I was able to recruit everyone, get every bonus chapter, and even had to pull out a few stops like using the armory to buff a specific weapon like a hammer to help me through a level here and there. One-man armies were necessary by the end, but Ogma and Navarre weren't invincible. I actually greatly appreciated the free switching of unit classes, but never felt like it made any unit useless, like I felt with Shadow Dragon. All in all it was SO MUCH BETTER than Shadow Dragon that I was amazed it never made it to the States. I suppose the mediocre reception of Shadow Dragon (which was mediocre as far as Fire Emblem is concerned) turned Intelligent Systems off of the path of localizing it?

So that is where my Fire Emblem journey ends. Sort of. I'm still greatly enjoying Fire Emblem Heroes, and crave new content to this day. It's enough to get my fix in while I wait for another main series game, but it will never fully replace the series in my heart.

I love Fire Emblem. I still hold the Radiant games as my favorites, but Sacred Stones, Genealogy, Gaiden/Echoes and New Mystery are close behind. Shadow Dragon is at the bottom, with Binding Blade just above that, but I still enjoy those games as well. Just above that is Awakening, whose Lunatic difficulty turned me off of the game almost entirely, and above that is Thracia 776, which was fun but clunky and in dire need of a tune-up, or at least an accurate translation. Then is the fates trifecta, which is really enjoyable, but really suffered from becoming a grind-fest when trying to unlock every character in the game.
Which leaves Blazing Blade in the middle. It's a solid Fire Emblem game, but maybe it's been too long since I've played it, since I don't really remember more than a few notable stages and characters from it. Yeah. Maybe it's time I bring my old friend Hector into the field once more.

Anyway, that's my history with the Fire Emblem franchise. I'm so glad it isn't dead, and I'm eagerly awaiting any future releases it may have.

Thracia - Beyond the Mechanics

I'm adding this fresh post because I don't believe I've done Thracia 776 justice. Sure, in my Previous review I pointed out a lot of its quirks and flaws through its mechanics, but I wanted to talk about everything else about the game because it actually is quite a gem when I think back upon it, and it's kind of tragic that it has to be hidden behind such obtuse gameplay.

The story is quite simple, as far as Fire Emblem games are concerned. You start in a small town, fighting bandits, the usual, but then suddenly - you're captured! Yes, there's an entire jail/dungeon arc at the very beginning of the game, spanning 4-5 chapters (depending on if you hit bonus chapters, of which there are many). During this arc, you meet the final bosses of the game, only to never hear from them again for another 20 or so chapters. And this is fine - they are staying put, and you are running around and eventually working your way back to them, on your own terms.

Leif is a charming lord as far as FE lords are concerned. Sure he's no fan-favorite like Hector, but he's also not weak or naive, like Marth or Corrin. He's fifteen (or so), and sometimes has bad ideas, but his advisor(s) are counseling him, like good advisors should, yet still letting him make the calls, as he is technically the one in authority.

Throughout the game, Leif goes through very human emotions, constantly criticizing himself for not being better, not being able to save everyone, taking so long to do what others have miraculously done in so little time. He compares himself to Seliph and Shanan constantly, and struggles to see the bigger picture. Eventually, his advisor August tells him something I think everyone needs to hear at some point or another - "Heroes aren't born; they're made."

This game is about the MAKING of a hero, not just the life of someone who's always been a hero. And even when Leif meets Seliph, someone he's idolized and always looked up to, Seliph is the one praising Leif! He couldn't have done any of what he did had Leif not been holding off the brunt of Manster and Thracia's armies, and he knows this. It's a great story - or at the very least a great continuation of one.

This is another brilliant yet problematic design decision - you need to have played Genealogy first in order to truly appreciate what's going on. Thracia 776 fills in many of the gaps left by Genealogy, taking place in the time starting just before Genealogy chapter 6 and leading up to Genealogy chapter 8. Leif is clearly an important character, yet in Genealogy we barely got any of his story, so it's cool to see things work out this way.

You also get to see the fate of several other characters from Genealogy revealed. I won't spoil their stories here, but you actually meet one or two characters whose fates were unclear at best - or death at worst - from the parent generation of Genealogy, opening the doors for nearly all the other unexplained parent generation characters to still possibly be alive somewhere.

Another issue with the story of Thracia is that its ending assumes the end of Genealogy, not just of this game. All the character epilogues talk about "after the war," referencing not just the end of Thraica, but the end of Genealogy. It doesn't necessarily spoil the ending of Genealogy, but without knowing what goes on there would be a bit of possible confusion.


Beyond the story, though, the rest of the presentation of this game is quite good. The music in particular is spectacular. There may not be as many tracks as the massive OST Genealogy had, or even most other Fire Emblem games, but the tracks they do have are pretty solid. They mix up the chapter songs enough that not only did I not mind that there were only five or six, but I was excited for the theme from early chapters to make a comeback later on in the game.

Apparently the game even has a "near defeat" theme, which plays whenever you fail certain bonus objectives, lose certain units, or the like. It's a neat idea, but kind of weird since a lot of players will never hear that track if they're obsessed with having a perfect run, like I was.

A minor issue I had with the music is that the "approaching victory" theme played whenever the enemy had five or fewer units left - whether you could see them or not. This kind of spoiled some otherwise-tense moments in fog of war maps, but also led to some weird situations where I honestly felt I wasn't anywhere close to victory when the theme started, and then it kept changing back and forth as more enemy reinforcements would show up and/or get killed.


Weird as it is, I feel the story and music of Thracia are honestly some of the most simple, straightforward and yet still very moving and powerful that Fire Emblem as a whole has ever had. It's only a shame that such a clear and simple story is hidden beneath a cavalcade of obscure and frustrating mechanics and design choices.

Thracia 776 - Ambitious yet Troublesome.

The blood has yet to dry on the Sword of Blaggi as I write this review. Thracia 776, deemed one of the most difficult and obscure Fire Emblem games ever made, is finished. A perfect Thracian campaign, no less, recruiting every possible character my choices allowed, keeping everyone alive, and reaching every single bonus chapter. And I must say - it was worth the experience of playing it, but I'm unsure if I would go to such lengths again were I to play this game a second time.

Thracia 776 is fairly infamous as one of the most brutal Fire Emblem games ever created. The troublesome points of Thracia in my mind can be sorted out into three types.
1. Mechanics reinforcing realism and the difficulty of a small-scale rebellion.
2. Mechanics flooding the game with randomness and luck-based situations.
3. Brutally difficult side-quests, often involving NPC civilians.

--REALISM--

Thracia 776 is the story of Leif, fifteen year old heir to House Leonster, who begins his war to free Northern Thracia from the Loptyr Empire starting from a small coastal village. As such, your troops are few, your weapons are limited, and your war funds are effectively zero. Thracia reinforces these points well, requiring you to Capture enemies, strip them of their equipment, then let them go (or in rare occasions, hold a captured boss to the end of a chapter in order to recruit them and/or access a bonus chapter). I don't mind this system inherently, but in implementing this they remove any and all item drops from enemies, instead REQUIRING you to steal from them or capture them to have any hope of getting their items.

The idea of being a poor army is kind of cut short the first time you can access an arena, around the end of Chapter 7, because then you'll be fighting so much just to level up that money becomes a non-issue. The issue then comes in shops being few and far between, with not much selection either. Still, if you can stock up on stamina drinks, torches and door keys (you need like fifty keys in this game I'm not even joking), you make the game a whole lot easier.

I appreciated being able to get extra equipment by going a little out of my way, but the method of capturing enemies left you fighting at half stats, and without the option to prefer capturing over lethal attacks when defending, oftentimes the enemies you wanted to capture ended up getting killed because they attacked you first. More on this in later sections.

Another mechanic made to introduce realism is the Fatigue mechanic. Now, personally I didn't have much of an issue with this - they give you a huge roster of characters that you'll only ever touch half of more than once or twice, so this is an interesting idea to get you to use more of them. Now, it was never more than an annoyance because Stamina Drinks, while not plentiful, were common enough that if I ever desperately needed one particular person (usually a staff wielder) I could just give them a drink and send them out. I never had a shortage of drinks because of the arena grinding I did, and deliberate stocking up I did whenever they were available.

Overall the realism aspects were interesting at best and annoying at worst. Capturing was an interesting mechanic but I'm not particularly sad that it's never come back (at least in the same way), and while Fatigue made it into Echoes it's a minor annoyance at most.


---RANDOMNESS---

One of the gravest sins Thracia commits is the OVERWHELMING amount of randomness this game throws at you. People who complain that newer Fire Emblem games are "too random" are living life on a feather pillow, because Thracia is as random as it gets.

First and foremost, it is impossible to have a 100% hit chance or a 0% hit chance. At most you will get 99%, which is effective most of the time, but thanks to the single-roll RNG that Thracia uses (the last game in the series to use single-roll for hit calcualtions), that 1% can rear its ugly head often enough to have you throwing your controller down in anguish. Plus, the game uses the 99% cap to hide the fact that certain units literally have plot armor - They can fight you, you can damage them, but any lethal attack is GUARANTEED TO MISS. Luckily only a few units have this plot armor - Fred and Olwen in chapter 10, and Eyvel (an allied unit) for the first few chapters of the game.

Now that lack of guaranteed hits/misses is incredibly minor, especially since in this game you're unlikely to ever get consistent 99% hit chances until near the end of the game after you've maxed skill, speed and luck. This brings back up the point of capturing making you fight at half stats, meaning a high percentage of attacks you make (and attacks made against you) will be around 50%. Basically coin flips. The entire campaign depends on this randomness going in your favor, otherwise you're going to miss that key attack, eat an unlucky crit, or what have you.

Oh, critical hits, that reminds me of ANOTHER mechanic that the game doesn't even mention exists! PCC, or Pursuit Critical Coefficients, are unique hidden modifiers on every unit in the game. It's a number that is multiplied to your critical hit chance on the second set of attacks in any given combat, and ONLY the second set of attacks. If you have a brave weapon, it's the second set of two swings. So you already have to be attacking twice in order to access these multipliers. And while for some units the multipliers are as high as x3 or x4, some units have a PCC of 0. Meaning that even if they DO get a second attack, even if they are using a killer weapon or something, it's physically impossible for them to crit on their second attack.

Want more randomness? No? Well too bad! Because stat growths in this game are ALL OVER THE PLACE! You have Crusader Scrolls to patch up growths and make them somewhat consistent, but you'd better hit up a wiki because the game ain't telling you nothin' about what the scrolls do.

In speaking of random growths, did you know that Thracia is the only Fire Emblem game to have a growth rate for movement? Yep, every unit has a *VERY* slight chance to increase their movement rate when they level up. I only realized this when I looked and saw my Pegasus Knight had 11 movement. Because my translation was gimped so that all I ever saw was a glitchy text saying something like Animnuirau stacked on top of itself. But this extra movement is SO IMPORTANT! Movement has always been the most important stat in fire emblem, so to give units a 1% to 10% growth rate in movement is an insane decision, making units wildly more or less useful over their entire lifetime based on a handful of random rolls.

But that's not the only random element related to movement! Every unit has between 0 and 5 "Movement Stars," which are permanent features of the unit and cannot be moved. Some enemies have them, and many (but not all) of your allied units have them. For every movement star a unit has, they have a 5% chance of getting another turn after their first action. To my knowledge this can never chain more than once, but getting a second turn at a key moment can literally swing an entire chapter, and such a low percent chance of this happening across the board is mind-bendingly infuriating.


---SIDE QUESTS AND CIVILIANS---

But perhaps the most frustrating part of Thracia 776 is its insistence on putting unarmed civilians - usually children - not just in the line of fire, but VITAL to several side-quests throughout the game. They are helpless, being captured immediately or sometimes just killed by a stray javelin out of nowhere, uncontrollable, unpredictable in movement order, and also completely necessary in order to complete certain side-quests. Now, for many of them you can just carry them on your units' shoulders to their houses or the exit of the map, but in some situations the civilians need to do specific tasks.

Enter Xavier, a fairly mediocre unit all things considered, but one with perhaps the most frustrating recruitment requirement I have ever seen. To avoid explaining in detail, I will link you to my video on the topic: https://youtu.be/FA-5Zw2lotw

Simply put, eight civilians need to talk to eight armor knights. Each one is linked to a specific one, with no indication of who is linked to whom, and all eight of them need to survive the transit across the map - through hallways only 2 squares wide at best - and meet each of their matches. If the front people don't match correctly, then the joke's on you, they'll just stand there blocking each other. Absolutely infuriating.

There are other quests involving civilians too, and usually the rewards are good enough that you'd be hard-pressed not to at least try to complete these secondary objectives, but the game goes out of its way to make it infuriating. Child hunts or no, I could care less about these children who are in every single dungeon of every two-bit castle in the country.


---Final Thoughts and Overview---

So is Thracia 776 a bad game? To some people it might be, but I actually enjoyed it. Now, bear in mind that I DID play it on an emulator, and heavily abused save-scumming and RNG manipulation, but with the incredibly random and cruel nature of the game a part of me felt justified in doing so.

Whatever the case may be, this game would be a nightmare to play blind. I only used a wiki to make sure I didn't miss any recruitments or bonus chapters, but the level of difficulty this game creates is mostly amplified because of its sheer randomness and the frustrating nature of some of its bonus objectives. Take those two away, and the game becomes actually quite enjoyable and not particularly difficult.

Thracia 776 may never be my favorite FE game, but I'm certainly glad I got to enjoy it the way I did. Even if the translation was bare-bones, the game was still a Fire Emblem experience through and through. Take the legends of its difficulty with a grain of salt, as it's more frustrating and random than truly difficult, but it still stands as an excellent learning tool for what to do - and what NOT to do - when designing enjoyable and fun difficulty in a strategy game.

If you want to hear more about what I think about the NON-mechanical elements of Thracia, head over to This post. I find the rest of the game surprisingly simple and powerful, which adds all the more frustrating that the mechanics are this obtuse and complicated.

Now if you'll excuse me, there's only one Fire Emblem game I have yet to play, and it's just waiting on my desktop for me to boot up.

Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows over Valentia - A Remastered Masterpiece.

In my previous blog post, I reviewed Fire Emblem Gaiden, and stated that I would love it if they remade it with modern technology. I also recently recorded a full play-through of Gaiden on youtube. Fire Emblem Echoes is the remake I wanted, but it's more than a simple port. This game represents the tactical nature of Fire Emblem in its purest essence, right there alongside the classic plot of epic war and a quirky array of characters.

One big improvement from Gaiden is the characters themselves. Not only are the playable characters given personality, but several villains are made into recurring characters as well. Plot elements such as nobility vs commoners and even a slow descent into madness are emphasized by being able to both see and fight several of the same enemies multiple times.

A few characters have been created fresh for this game, including Faye, the somewhat annoying village girl whose only purpose is to obsess over Alm, Fernand, a prideful noble who helped start the Deliverance but doesn't care about anyone who isn't of noble blood themselves, and Berkut, the nephew of Emperor Rudolph who is obsessed with becoming emperor over all Valentia, but gets snubbed time and again when Alm beats him. While Faye doesn't really add much to the game outside of a playable female character and an extra unit for the first few maps, Fernand and Berkut are heavy influences on the plot of the game from the moment they are introduced.

The game also gives a lot more explanation and motivation for the characters to do what they're doing. In Gaiden, if you never saved Zeke, you might never know that Alm carried the Brand on his hand, but in Echoes it's told to you from moment one. Mila and Duma are also explained a bit more, not just being mysterious gods who created Valentia, but actual ancient divine dragons, who still live on Valentia to this day.

But that's enough about characters. Let's get onto my favorite part, and the most unique parts of Echoes - gameplay.

At a basic level, the game plays just like Gaiden. You have villagers, mercenaries, soldiers, archers, cavaliers, mages, pegasus riders and clerics, weapons that attack off base stats, no weapon triangle, spells that cost HP and are learned as you level up, etc. Classing up also gives you minimum base stats for that given class, meaning you won't have to grind up to 20/20/20 to still be relevant, at least for the main story of the game. Random stat increases will tend to determine who gets brought with you into the post-game and who gets shelved.

Tier 3 unit classes are all made unique in more ways, except the Gold Knight. FalconKnights are no longer insanely overpowered, but they still get +10 damage vs terrors. Barons only take half damage from bows, making them insanely good at safely drawing out enemies. Dread Fighters get an insanely good passive in Apotrope, making them take half damage from ALL magic, as well as being able to class-loop into Villager after hitting level 10. Archers get more range with every class change, making the change from sniper to bow knight less impactful, but still very good given the increased movement rate. Some mages actually learn extra spells after leveling far enough into their upper classes, such as Sonya learning Rewarp and Entrap, making them incredibly versatile.

Support conversations are much like older games such as Blazing Blade and Sacred Stones - if two support-viable units are within two squares and one of them fights, or if one of them heals the other even with a physic staff cross-map, they will gain progress toward a support conversation. Once you reach a certain level, you can have the units talk to each other on the combat map, increasing their support level. The difference is that there's no arbitrary limit of 5 conversations per character, meaning you can unlock every single conversation in a single run of the game. Some conversations are locked until certain chapters, usually A-rank conversations, but you will never be blocked from one conversation because you decided to have a different one.

So if there are no "dating sim" elements, what good is support? Well, just like in older games, if you are within 3 spaces of a unit you have support with, you get bonuses in combat! Some units provide extra hit% or crit%, others give you higher Avoid and Dodge. You can notice these bonuses by the little gold extension of your hit and crit bars on the combat forecast, as well as the greyed-out hit and crit bars on the opponent's forecast. What's more, you can stack support bonuses from as many units you have support levels with, meaning a character like Alm or the Whitewings can have some serious bonuses when working together.

The weapon arts system is both wonderful and frustrating at the same time. So instead of weapon experience, a unit will unlock weapon arts as they use each weapon more in battle. These arts are exclusive to their weapons, though a unit won't ever lose an art they've learned - they just can't use it with an incompatible weapon. Some of these are fantastic, like the longbow's Enclosure or the Regal Sword's Double Lion - let's be honest, even if the brave sword in other games cost 6 HP to attack twice in a row, you'd still use it. However others are of questionable usefulness, like the Levin Sword's Fuoydrant, because they cost HP and limit you to a single blow.

The blacksmithing is something I have a love-hate relationship with. Sure, it's a great way to customize your army and the limit on marks means you don't just always have the best weapons, but the weapon tree is needlessly confusing, and with no ability to revert weapons or reliable way to buy lower quality ones, you can end up wasting all your precious gold marks to create weapons that you'll never end up using.

Some notable weapon upgrades are the golden dagger upgrading to Beloved Zofia, Celica's unique weapon, the Blessed weapons upgrading to the Three Regalia of Shadow Dragon / Mystery of the Emblem fame (Parthia, Gradivus and Mercurius), and a silver-mark-only chain of Iron to Steel to Silver to Brave swords.

Shields and Rings are also in the game, though rings in particular have been nerfed HARD from Gaiden. Notably, the Angel Ring only gives +20 luck and doesn't double your stat increases, losing its "best item in the game" tag by a country mile. The Speed Ring doesn't max your speed and give you +5 move, instead it only gives +10 speed and +1 move. The Hexing Shield doesn't reduce magic accuracy to 10%, but it does make all magic damage half of what it would be, making the Medusa spell basically never able to kill you without other enemies nearby.

A brief note on the set-piece fights in the game. Since so many dungeon fights are the same, and so many fights are either in open plains or on boats, it's important that the game mixes it up a bit. In the times it does, the maps are incredibly interesting. The gate approach to Duma's Tower, for instance, is the same map layout used in Olivia's child-recruitment map in Awakening. The border before Rigel Castle is an intense map with several lanes of bow-knight and arcanists, topped off with Barons, making it a perfect death trap for a team with no good archers. My favorite has to be Nuibaba's Manor, however. The climb up the cliff toward a powerful sorcerer with Medusa magic? Possibly one of the most iconic maps in the entire game, so much so that it became a map in Fire Emblem Heroes!

Side-quests are another feature that I both love and dislike. Sometimes they're straightforward, like kill 20 enemies from a certain area, or kill this special boss and bring back its treasure. Other times they're cruel, asking you to farm for a fairly rare drop, or use all your merchants (yes you still have a limited number of them) to send vital quest items from one team to another. Some items you won't find for several chapters after the quest is introduced, notably the Gossamer Hair you need to make Ethereal Fishing Line to catch a Dagon. This quest chain is introduced to Celica's team near the end of chapter 2, but the gossamer hair cannot be obtained until Chapter 4, on Alm's side, under Fear Mountain. Plus, the back-tracking to turn in side quests gives the enemy more time to rally reinforcements and send them on you, which means more time spent grinding just to get back to the main story.

The worst side quest has got to be the merchant who wants steel lances. Five of them, and he'll only pay 50 silver marks each. And he's on Celica's side, in the middle of the desert. Alm gets a lot of steel lances from the keeps he visits, but Celica sure doesn't! Plus you'll probably need the lances yourself, or at least be upgrading them to keep the pegasus sisters well equipped. And by the time you hit the post-game and can bring Alm's convoy of steel lances back to him? He doesn't want them anymore, and up and leaves in a huff! But if you use all of Alm's merchants to ship over enough steel lances to barely finish the side-quest, you won't be able to ship over the gossamer hair or other vital items for other side-quests!

Perhaps the best new addition to Echoes is Mila's Turnwheel. With this handy device, you can rewind time back to ANY TURN in the entire combat, changing the RNG rolls as you go. This is perfect for when you need to save a unit that got killed because of a poor decision, but you don't want to replay the entire 30-minute level all over again. Just go back to where you made the mistake, and try something else! Or, sometimes you can just rewind to the exact same spot and the AI will do something else. The only downside is that you can't rewind after Alm or Celica get killed, as the game instantly sends you to a Game Over screen with no chance to hit the rewind button. This can be particularly frustrating on later levels, where you spend an hour getting set up for the final boss fight, and a single lucky miss or crit means you're doing the whole level all over again. That said, the Turnwheel certainly mitigates that frustration, and makes the game feel a lot more enjoyable to play on Classic mode.

As I was talking about earlier though, AI confusion is a big thing in this game. A lot of times, especially when teleporting enemies get introduced, the AI will randomly decide to kill a specific unit, or they might randomly decide to spread their attacks around and not kill anyone. Introducing allied illusions into the mix confuses the AI further, as most of the time they will prefer a guaranteed kill on an illusion than a guaranteed kill on a real unit, though sometimes they will just kill the normal unit instead. This unpredictability is something I'm not a huge fan of, as someone who just finished a Lunatic Classic run of Conquest and thrived off of knowing exactly what the AI would do every single turn.

Finally, but CERTAINLY not least, is the dungeon exploration. This is where fire emblem meets the Legend of Zelda. Third-person camera angle, smashing pots and cutting grass for money and supplies, breaking cracked walls to access secret areas, it really is a zelda-like experience. You can influence the combats you have, too - either by attacking to start further forward and damage the enemies at the start, letting them hit you from behind to make them have the first turn (not recommended), or even just sneaking past them and avoiding fights altogether.

The fatigue system in the dungeon is another thing to consider - if a unit takes too much damage or does the brunt of the work in a single fight, they will become fatigued quicker, meaning you start consuming food or else they have half HP and potentially other stat reductions.

In most missions through the main campaign, you can take every single unit you recruit into the battle, meaning every unit is worth giving some exp. And since every unit that participates in the fight gets bonus EXP, with more given to units who got more last-hits, it's easy to keep your entire team at a fairly even level.

However, in dungeons, you are limited to 10 units, and their positioning is fixed in fights based on their order in the roster. So you can only really grind-train up to 10 units at a time, and one of them is required to be Alm or Celica (just Alm for the post-game even though you have both). For the end-game and post-game in particular, this means that you need to leave about half your army behind, making the best squad of ten you can get.

The post-game is basically a wrap-up of side-quests, plus a chance to take on the final dungeon, Thabes Labyrinth, with a squad from both Alm and Celica's teams. You can also play the DLC dungeons with a full squad from here as well, if you want. Additional enemies sometimes spawn in earlier dungeons, too, such as Dagons in the opening area of the Seaside Cave. Gold marks are still incredibly rare, however, so crafting perfect end-game equipment is going to be incredibly time-consuming. 

Fire Emblem Echoes is a fantastic game, and a masterwork port from the old Fire Emblem Gaiden. It's not perfect, but just like Gaiden it tries a lot of unique things, such as the armory upgrade system, which I expect might be implemented in some fashion into future entries in the series.

Fire Emblem Gaiden - Different Done Well.

If I had to pick one game series to call my favorite, it would probably have to be Fire Emblem. The depth and difficulty, the controlled-random elements, and the characters themselves are excellent in pretty much every game.

In going back through some ROM-translations of older games, however, there is one game that is different in many ways; a game that first created many innovations that show up sporadically in other fire emblem games.

Fire Emblem: Gaiden.

The first big change, a MASSIVE change, is the way items and weapons work. You can only ever have one item or weapon at a time, and instead of having durability, the equipped weapon simply change's a unit's stats and/or capabilities. If you don't have any weapons, you will just attack with a "basic" weapon, at your basic stats. There are also no consumable items like vulneraries or elixirs, meaning the only healing you get is from clerics, healing squares, or equipment which heals you over time.
>>> This is the change that truly makes Gaiden different from any other Fire Emblem for me. While it takes out much of the depth of carrying multiple items and conservatively using your best equipment, it also makes every item choice carry more weight, and allows additional item types to be experimented with, such as rings and shields.

Because of the change to weapons, spells have also been drastically changed. Instead of being based around an equipped item, spells use up HP to cast, and each magic-using character learns new spells after they've leveled up a certain number of times.
>>> This is a change I surprisingly liked a lot, after I got used to it. Sure, mages are less durable, but there's always inexpensive healing, be it through recover spells or health-regenerating items, and by the end of the game you get at least a half dozen rings to heal yourself with. Plus, it allowed tactical use of every spell for every given situation. Things like Warp, which I almost never used in other FE games due to the 5-only limit on the staff, became a staple in my strategies in Gaiden. My only complaint is that the "weight" and power of the spells themselves aren't listed, meaning you have to figure it out on your own how much damage a spell does, and how much it slows down your attack speed.




Instead of the usual, linear mission path, it features only five chapters, each of which open up a new part of the overworld, with new battles and enemies. Some caves and graveyards have respawning enemies, meaning you can grind for experience endlessly. Some enemy forts or other locations occasionally spawn enemies which aggressively roam the overworld - If you attack an enemy with these reinforcements, they will be added in a separate group to the fight. If they roam into your party, they will attack you on that map - you will be placed where the enemies were when you first won the fight, and the roaming attackers will get the first turn.
>>> I like some aspects of this, and dislike others. On one hand, I like having the ability to do things in different orders - an open overworld provides branching paths - and it helps give a lot more shape to the world, where sometimes the mission-to-mission gameplay makes it harder to tell. On the other hand, having an open overworld encourages grinding, meaning certain battles will either be far too easy or nearly impossible, depending on how much grinding of side-missions or optional battles is done.

Having talked about items and grinding, I now have my number one complaint about Gaiden - some of the best items in the game (the Sol, Luna and Astra lances), as well as extra Angel rings and Dragon shields, can ONLY be obtained by grinding enemies for an OBSCENELY LOW drop rate. Sure, the game is beat-able without them, but it requires more level-grinding. Basically, it's grind until you get to a good level, and possibly get a lucky break on nabbing an item, though I killed hundreds of thieves, zombie dragons and gargoyles and never once found any of these items.


Speaking of awful rates, the RNG is the most cruel random number generator I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with. Instead of the system used in FE6 and onward (i.e. all worldwide-released games) where it rolls two numbers from 1 to 100 and averages them, it rolls only once. Why is this bad? Because without good item stats, support, or ANY unit with high skill. it's almost impossible to get to a 100% hit chance, and if you don't have that 100%, you're going to be missing a LOT of crucial attacks. The good news is the enemy misses a lot as well, but this makes the game feel much more random than newer FE games.

While we're on the subject of bad RNG, though, unit level-ups are terrible. In most FE games, something like a 40% growth is pretty poor. In Gaiden, 20% is the average, so 40% is a godsend. On the bright side, I think the game is rigged to always give you at least one stat increase (at least, I've never had a completely blank level-up), but with rates like this, all but the best units will average out to one, MAYBE two points up per level, and it will usually end up being just +1 HP.


That said, though, this brings us to two of my favorite things about Gaiden - the 3-tier (usually) progression system, and the two-party split. Both reappeared in Radiant Dawn, and are why that game still competes for my #1 spot despite not having real Support conversations.






First up, the two-party split. Both Alm and Celica's parties are entirely separate from one another, only being allowed to trade a small number of items at set points in the game via traders in villages. Not only does this allow a focus on two very different parties, but it works GREAT with the overworld map system, since you need to carefully manage the positions of both parties - after all, the enemy forts can still mass and send armies against the party you aren't using at the time! This is probably my favorite bit of Gaiden, and though it was done to a small extent in Radiant Dawn, I really wish they combined it with an overworld map again.

As for the 3-tier progression, every unit, except spellcasters, Alm and Celica, or pegasus knights, has three "tiers" - a basic tier, an advanced, and then their ultimate tier. Unlike in Radiant Dawn, however, the enemies start showing up in higher tiers from very early on, and by the end you are only fighting monsters and tier 3 units.

While I like the tier system, the advancement is a bit weird. Instead of using seals, or automatically advancing after hitting level 20, you go to an Angel Statue and class-up from there, getting certain stat bonuses to put you to the "minimum" for that class (so class-up bonuses can be somewhat gamed, though you're almost always better trying to level up as much as possible before classing up, just like always).

The classes themselves are:
Pegasus Knight -> FalcoKnight
Soldier -> Knight (armor) -> Baron
Mercenary -> Myrmidon -> Dread Fighter -> Villager*
Cavalier -> Paladin -> Gold Knight
Archer -> Sniper -> Bow Knight
Mage -> Sage
Sister -> Saint

Every class has, arguably, their own special abilities. FalcoKnights automatically deal max damage against monsters, and are probably the strongest class of any because of that - though they, along with Sisters and the main character classes, are a class unreachable to Villagers. Barons don't really have anything notable, but their massive defense and power make up for that and their limited movement. Gold Knights have 9 movement and above-average stats. Bow Knights can attack up to 5 spaces away even without equipment. Dread Fighters have surprisingly high movement, and can re-class back into Villager, keeping their stats and allowing them to change to a mage, archer, cavalier, soldier or back to mercenary, for potentially endless leveling! (though it's almost entirely unnecessary to do so, as the game is fairly short)



Finally playing this game to completion, there are things I certainly both love and hate about it. However, most of what I dislike is due simply to the archaic limitations of the NES. If they were to remake Gaiden for a newer platform (or at least take even more elements wholesale from it), I would certainly appreciate it.