Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade is a Japanese tactical role-playing game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo. The game was released on March 29, 2002 in Japan, is the sixth game in the Fire Emblem series, and the first of three games in the series that have appeared on Nintendo's Game Boy Advance handheld. It was the last Fire Emblem game to be released exclusively in Japan until the release of Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem. The Binding Blade was followed by a prequel, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade, set twenty years earlier.
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After Shouzou Kaga's departure from Intelligent Systems, it feels like they weren't sure what to do next. While all Fire Emblem games make use of the character archetypes established in the original Fire Emblem, the early game recruits are functionally identical to Shadow Dragon's. You even start the game with an identical set of units to Shadow Dragon, minus a stand-in for Caeda. This improves as the game goes on.
The maps seem to borrow from past Fire Emblem as well. The large waves of reinforcements and overall large size of maps make some chapters play out like a small Genealogy map. The layout of Chapter 7 of Binding Blade is Thracia's Chapter 6.
The Binding Blade is post-Kaga Fire Emblem at it's core. If you strip away all the bells and whistles of every succeeding Fire Emblem game (maybe not Three Houses though) this is the game you're left with. And it's good.
The maps seem to borrow from past Fire Emblem as well. The large waves of reinforcements and overall large size of maps make some chapters play out like a small Genealogy map. The layout of Chapter 7 of Binding Blade is Thracia's Chapter 6.
The Binding Blade is post-Kaga Fire Emblem at it's core. If you strip away all the bells and whistles of every succeeding Fire Emblem game (maybe not Three Houses though) this is the game you're left with. And it's good.
melady is one of the most fun units to use in the entire fire emblem franchise. unfortunately the maps kind of suck sometimes
Pretty middle of the road FE. There isn't much variety in chapters since the game basically consists of siege only maps. There's a lot of really bad filler units that the game constantly gives you, when in the end I just kept using the same characters for the whole game.
Story is also nothing too special. It just feels like a combination of Archanea and Jugdral's stories, and it doesn't really do anything special with them. The true ending however is pretty sweet, and I wished the game had more focus on Lilina, Fae, and Idunn since I think that's what the game really excelled at.
Nothing else much to say tbh. This game is whatever and the foundation is greatly improved with later GBA FE titles.
Story is also nothing too special. It just feels like a combination of Archanea and Jugdral's stories, and it doesn't really do anything special with them. The true ending however is pretty sweet, and I wished the game had more focus on Lilina, Fae, and Idunn since I think that's what the game really excelled at.
Nothing else much to say tbh. This game is whatever and the foundation is greatly improved with later GBA FE titles.
Played this fully through in 2023 on the Steamdeck. Solid game. Difficult game. Story wasn't as fun as FE7 or FE8 though.
A very fun game bogged down but the GBA Fire Emblem's simple mechanics and certain weird choices when it comes to the difficulty. The characters in this game are extremely unbalanced, but that's kind of the charm. The game feels very rewarding in various different ways, most of which other Fire Emblems can't touch.
The best fire emblem game
only true scholars understand
only true scholars understand