Amazon Maximum Age: 20 years Amazon Minimum Age: 60 months Binding: Video Game Brand: Nintendo of America EAN: 0045496733421 ESRB Age Rating: Everyone Label: Nintendo of America Manufacturer: Nintendo of America Platform: Game Boy Advance Publisher: Nintendo of America Sales Rank: 1973 Studio: Nintendo of America
Features:
Test your skills as a military strategist, as you guide your forces in battles with wizards and dragons.
Dominate the field war with dozens of soldiers, weapons and magic spells that will be at your command.
Take control of an army of soldiers, but use them wisely. Each of your soldiers possesses unique skills but, if they fall in battle, then they're lost forever!
Strike from above with your Pegasus Knights or guide your armored footman in close combat.
Product Description: Shortly after their journey begins, Lin must confront an unexpected destiny. She learns she is heir to the throne of the neighboring Rikea and becomes entangled in the struggle for succession. Once this news is known, knights come to serve her while assassins come to take her life. Being a well-schooled military strategist, the traveler she rescued reciprocates by coming to her aid and vowing to return her safely to Rikea, her grandfather's homeland.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Still great in 2008
I got a DS and since it's compatible with GBA games I decided to play some of the best rated GBA games on it too. I played Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (Similar game but more war based rather than rpg) and enjoyed it.
Fire Emblem was released in 2003 so I expected the graphics to be a bit dated, but they aren't that bad for a small screen. Overall, the gameplay and story was excellent. Lot's of characters, lots of plot twists, and enough strategy. I loved that if you 'lost' a character in battle that you no longer got to use them. There are optional side quests/plots, which I skipped the first time around. I definitely enjoyed this game enough to play it again to catch more of the plot details and play the side quests. It's that good. I also got the second installment for the GBA and the 3rd for the Game Cube. After I finish those, I definitely plan on playing the newest one on the Wii.
I also liked that the chapters/missions were not so hard that you had to play them over and over to finish and move onto the next part of the game/story. At times it seemed easy, and it would have been nice to be able to turn the difficulty up...but at the same time it wasn't so easy that it wasn't fun.
Anyhow, I would strongly recommend this game if you like Advance Wars, Final Fantasy, Jeanne D'arc on the PSP, and others that are similar in style).
-- Added later: Upon finishing this game, you find that more is unlocked. For example, you can go through parts with other lead characters to get more insight from their perspective. Going through to unlock other characters...etc...this game has more replay value than I originally thought and I thought it had good replay value to start with.
Rating: - Great Game
This is one of my favorite video games. It may take a while to get into (usally after lyns story) but other wise it is a great game i suggest buying the guide because it helps allot. Great Game
Rating: - Fun for all
Wow. When i first got this game for my game boy, i was so happy. It is absolutly amazing. The story line is immersing, the characters are believable, and the challenges are awesome. It is a great game for anyone interested in getting into a good, solid, fulfilling strategy game. Thand god for Fire Emblem.
Rating: - Fantasy, Strategy, and Death
Those of you looking for a good tactical strategy game have come to the right place. As if it wasn't enough that the GBA/DS has Advance Wars and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, among other great tactical games, they also get this wonderful series, finally brought over from Japan.
For those of you who have played games in the Advanced Wars series, you will find many similarities; similar story system, battle based campiagn with no exploring or overworld, anime styled grapics, etc. For those of you who haven't... well, let's go over what this game has shall we?
GRAPHICS - 5/5
For the most part, I don't think I could ask for better graphics on a handheld system. Reminicent of later SNES games, the sprites are rich and colorful, and the animations are fluid and explosive. Every spell and swordstrike is well animated and the cut scenes leave little to be desired. Every character you control loooks unique and their personalities come across well on the little screen. The only real weaknesses I can think of in the graphics department are the enemies and maps; on occassion, the simple enemy "grunts" and terrain can run into repitition and can get boring. But then, in the end, there's only so much you can do to make endless "stormtrooper" grunts unique, and only so many ways you can show water and forests on a large overhead map.
SOUND - 4/5
The sound in Fire Emblem is as crisp as you can get from the GBA/DS. The makers of the game certainly did not skimp. That said though, the music and sound effects aren't exactly memorable. This isn't to say they aren't well done though and all the sounds and music fit the game and the moods. They're just not revolutionary.
CONTROLS - 5/5
Nothing to complain about for the controls. Everything is simple to understand and do in this game, and is well explained in the earlier parts of the campaign. Nice non-intrusive menus complete with stats and percentages tell you what you need to know and what the results of your actions will most likely be.
STORY - 5/5
The story is very in depth and surprisingly unique; it seems to borrow a little from Record of Lodoss Wars in inspiration among other fantasy worlds, but the story never feels hacked or ripped off from something else. The cutscenes and text do a good job of getting you into the story and I think most people who play this game would agree that you feel like you understand everything that is happening.
CHARACTERS - 5/5
The characters are the best part of Fire Emblem. Every uniot you use is unique and oozes with personality. Everything from the way they speak to their facial expressions to their battle animations makes the characters makes them into 3D people that you actually want to live and are excited to watch grow. Not only that, but Fire Emblem manages to pull this feat off with a roster of dozens and dozens of characters!
GAME MODES - 2/5
Unfortunately, the choices of what you can do in this game leave much to be desired. For the most part there is only one gameplay mode, the campaign. There is no multiplayer mode, no scenarios, no alternate campaigns... So if you're looking for a lot of differnt things to do with this game, you'll be dissapointed.
CAMPAIGN - 2/5
The story and characters are great in the campign mode, but some problems with the game itself make playing it rather shallow and frustrating. First off is something I just mentioned, the fact that there is no alternate campaign. This means that if you don't liek the one campaign's storyline or you're stuck, you;re out of luck. Another problem is the difficulty; many of the earlier missions are quite easy, btu past a certain point you'll run into a lot of frustrations. Some of these frustrations include enemies who can see through the fog off war while you cannot, superbosses who are seemingly immune to almost everything you can throw at them and can one hit kill your characters, and the death and save systems.
-=- A special note needs to be made about these systems. In Fire Emblem, you have the ability to "suspend" your gameplay in the middle of a mission so you can turn off the gameboy and pick up in a mission where you left off. This is emmensly helpful since some of the later missions can take a long time. This would also be helpful in theory since, with the death system in this game, once you lose a character they are gone for good. No getting them back in later missions, no ability to ressurect them in the mission you're on. And with a game with one hit kills, enemy that sometimes appear out of nowhere, and characters you come to care about, this can be a big deal. What ruins this nice feature is the autosave feature of the game; if the gameboy ever runs out of batteries or you turn it off or you quit a mission, the game automatically suspends from that point. This almost single handedly ruins much of the point of the suspend system in the first place. While it is still good for putting the gamboy down during a long mission, I see little point to the feature when it will automatically save it for you when you turn it off or reset. And this also means that if you make a mistake, lose someone, or simply get unlucky, the last time you suspended it is NOT the point where you will pick up when you try the mission again; it will be the point you turned it off or reset. This means every loss or mistake or piece of badluck turns into you having to play the ENTIRE MISSION OVER if you want ot undo it. This is extremely frustrating as this can lead to you getting stuck on a long mission, playing it over and over to learn specific enemy weaknesses or where enemies will pop up from. It is easilly the worst and most frustrating part of the game.
GAMEPLAY - 4/5
Along with the easy controls, the gameplay in Fire Emblem is very easy to understand, but hardly simplistic. The game uses a rock/paper/scissors mentality, with different magic/weapon types being strong or weak against other weapon types. For instance, swords are stong against axes, but weak against lances. And Holy magic is strong against Dark magic but weak against Elemental magic. however, there is a lot more to it than this; unit stats and levels, terrain, and support effect how well your units perform. In addition, there are items that throw a wrench in thsi simplistic idea, with certain weapons reversing the order or specializing against certain unit types. It all works very very well in the end. The only two complaints I have about the gameplay are the item degridation system and the cheating of the computer on occassion. I already mentioned the second one earlier, with the computer able to see through the fog of war and some units, especially bosses, being rediculously powerful. The other feature, the item degridation, isn't especially annoying though; as you battle, your items will degrade and eventually break. This means you need to keep up your stock of weapons and magic for all your characters. Now, this would be better if it were easier to do so, but unfortunately you can only buy items in the middle of missions where you are often already pressed for time, inventory, and movement. There is also no way to "repair" items and you have to simply carry more items if you have items that are going to break. With the dozens of characters you can have in your roster, this can turn into a royal pain, especially when you need to upgrade a lot of different weapons (IE from iron to steel). I really wish they had a place between battles to buy and sell stuff where you could take care of this stuff, or at least a way to repair your items. All told though, it very livable and not too annoying, and for the most part the gameplay is smooth and fun with few hiccups.
REPLAY - 2/5
There is little to no replayablity to Fire emblem. While it can be interesting to get things you missed the first time though the campaign (side missions, missed characters, support combos, etc.) these are mostly small things. And if you didn't miss anything? Well, all you can do is play through the same story and the same missions again.
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I really do like Fire Emblem. It has a wonderful story, amazingly good graphics, solid crisp sound and music, well balanced gameplay, easy controls, and great depth. Unfortunately, it's also extremely frustrating and one dimensional. This game would be simply AMAZING with a little tweaks; the main things being a better save feature, more modes, and a few tweaks here and there to some missions.
Would I recommend Fire Emblem? Yes, if your a fan of strategy and RPGs or don't mind a little frustration; the presentation and gameplay in this game are just so good that despite it's flaws it is worth the recomendation. People who don't aren't strategy fans or who are easilly frustrated though? Save your money and get a different RPG; you probably won't get enough out of this game.
Rating: - Great Game... Hard to Find
After so may years of being a Japanese exclusive, Fire Emblem finally arrived in the USA with this game. This will not disappoint you.
NOTE: Watch out for illegal copies, Amazon Marketplace is full of them. If the label on the front of the game looks like the front of the box, it is bootleg (A poorly design illegal version).
- Still great in 2008
- Fantasy, Strategy, and Death
- Great Game... Hard to Find
