Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones

released on Oct 07, 2004

In Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, you must help protect the nation of Renais from the invading Grado Empire. Plan your strategy, choose your units, and then lead your soldiers in to battle. The more experience your soldiers gain, the more you can upgrade their abilities. This time, your soldiers can gain experience by fighting new monsters in the Tower of Valni.


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A difficult FE entry to rank to be honest.

For starters i don't like open map FE because it completely takes away the careful planning and managerial aspect of this series. On the other hand it has a much better story than other GBA titles, albeit very short. Minor characters are more present in the story than other entries and there's also unexpected reveals and hidden dialogues for them too that really enhances the narration. Cool classes are unique to this FE too, like the Summoner that can almost break the game by creating expendable pawns that can move onto ANY tile. The music is also very good, which is probably the only thing that is common to all the FE games.

Other aspects are not fleshed out however. The pacing gets really fast towards the end and the quality of the story depends on which route you pick. Ephraims is much harder but has a worse narrative experience in my opinion than Erikas, Cormag for example has a more satisfying personal story in Erika's route but is barely useless because he joins very late. The trainee units are just bad in general to use except Ross, who is the only one to join at the start of the game and has a reliable distance weapon.

Training them is more of a pain in the ass than a fulfilling objective, but then again, in open map FE you can just ignore all of this and train everyone to your heart's content (dungeons are also super boring). So you either destroy the pacing by making everyone super strong or play normally and suffer.

All in all it's not a bad game by all means, but it depends on what you prioritize for an FE experience, personally i liked it despite the open map system, for me the story more than made up for it.

P.S. Probably the greatest crime of this game is that Amelia doesn't have unique sprites.

Es un juego increíble para empezar en Fire Emblem. Clásico de GBA que te dará libertad

Here it is, the very first Fire Emblem game I ever played, as someone who’s favorite franchise of all time is Fire Emblem.

I like Sacred Stones, not exclusively because I have a lot of nostalgia for this entry. It’s a shorter Fire Emblem game than most, its roster of units is pretty small, but its maps are pretty varied and fun for the most part. This factor is definitely childhood bias but, I love unit and balance discussion with Sacred Stones’s roster, since it’s been around forever online.

The Eirika and Ephraim routes are both fun but I enjoy playing Ephraim’s route just a bit more. The maps there are more engaging and challenging to me. This is also a great looking and sounding game, the new sprites they added for this entry DO stick out like a sore thumb, however, compared to sprites being brought back from The Binding Blade, the new ones are so buttery smooth.

The story is fine! I don’t have any problems with it (no, the Eirika thing is not a problem, any person would’ve done what she did), but it’s not the most intriguing or compelling tale out there.

I mentioned in my review of The Blazing Blade that it’s the ideal “first Fire Emblem” but you can’t go wrong with this one either. It’s a very solid entry, but not the most standout, in my opinion, just like Blazing Blade. It’s pretty straightforward, but has some depth with its maps (even if one of the “easier” Fire Emblem games for veterans). Alternatively, if you’ve only played the newer games and want to try the older ones (but are intimidated), this is the perfect bridge to get into them! (I’ve never played the Creature Campaign but it looks fun and is such a cool idea for postgame)

Good game. Seth is the GOAT.

Turns out you can't just run over every enemy in the game with Seth - I'll let 8-year-old me know

the least fun gba FE, simultaneously is the easiest gba fe and most frustrating, still gba fe formula is excellent