The second half of Marth's story that never got released in the US, so I had to play a fan translation. Being similar to Shadow Dragon, another game I didn't enjoy very much, and coming off the heels of Path of Radiance, getting used to no Canto took time. Marth is still a sword locked foot locked Lord who can't reclass, but unlike my Shadow Dragon playthrough, I actually capped his level this time.

As a game, it does feel like New Mystery, like Shadow Dragon, hooks you up with the best units you can get early on, and while you get A LOT of units in this game, most aren't very good. It honestly feels like the game expects you to cannon fodder off some of these weakling units, especially with the number of weapons enemies drop on maps. These weapons do feel like they clutter up the convoy after a while, though.

Money, on the other hand, is pretty tight. Arenas aren't nearly as common this time to farm gold, along with the risk of losing units, the reward isn't too worth it. You don't even get the Silver Card until about halfway through the game, too, and most of your money will be spent on Silver weapons since they start giving them to you fairly early.

But let's address the elephant in the room, the New Mystery content, seeing as this is a remake of FE3. I had no real issues with the prologue chapters, barring the last one, which felt like an odd difficulty spike. The few extra chapters sprinkled in were...eh, I guess. They cut down your unit count to 5 or 7 in some cases, which was pretty bleh, but at the very least, there's more than one set of conditions to access them. It's also the only way to get Iote's Shield for one of your fliers, so good luck.

However, I now understand why people hate Corrin so much in Fates. Literally everyone sucks off Kris like they're some sort of second messiah, while Kris does the same to Marth. Keep in mind Marth's character is about the exact same as it was in Shadow Dragon, so Marth just kinda feels like a generic "good boy who does good" kind of character. At the very least, he didn't let his previous defeat of Medeus go to his head.

This game really ups the number of dragon enemies you fight, and with dragon slaying weapons not coming by too often, it did get a bit rough at times. Chapters 11-14 in particular weren't very fun due to the sheer damage output these dragons could put out. Please note I was playing on Classic, even though the option for Casual exists. At the same time, I was doing a no deaths run, so if any units died, including certain ones, I reset.

Speaking of which, mandatory units needed for the finale, one of which being a thief who doesn't reclass at all. That's just great. At the very least, Minerva and Sirius, who totally isn't Camus, are pretty usable. Characters just don't stay dead in this game, do they? Medeus comes back, Gharnef comes back, Camus isn't dead either.

Overall, my feelings about New Mystery are almost the same as with Shadow Dragon. It's alright, but there are better Fire Emblem games out there than this one. I do see a bit why this game never got released outside of Japan, though. Probably sales. Truly a shame we only got half of Marth's story in the US.

I want to preface this review by saying this is the first Fire Emblem game I've played and completed in full since I beat Fire Emblem Awakening 3 and a half years ago. (I played a little bit of Echoes but only got a few hours in, and I got 60% through the Blue Lions route of Three Houses and dropped it because the game was just too ridiculously long and had a very tedious and overly drawn out gameplay loop).

I've played a good amount of the FE games up to now and consider myself a veteran of the series, and when I played this game, I thought it'd be just another standard FE experience (okay story, decent cast, and all right gameplay), and in some ways it is, but this game honestly surprised me in a number of ways I wasn't expecting. I think it's very underrated in the fanbase and deserves a lot more love, and I'll explain why.

First I'll start by discussing the story. I know the biggest point of contention with this game's story is the new story content, specifically the addition of the Avatar named Chris, along with Katarina and her subplot. I know most people go on about how Chris steals Marth and Jagen's thunder they had in the original narrative and think Katarina's subplot is just filler, but I want to echo some sentiments that Qlip (another reviewer on this site) said in regards to these criticisms.

A common example used to show Chris monopolizing Marth and Jagen's importance is during Chapter 3 when he challenges Lang's authority. This prompts Marth to apologize for his outburst, which shows that Chris doesn't dictate Marth's emotions, and that he's also as capable as a leader as ever, believing first in diplomacy and stepping up for what he believes in when things get too out of hand. Meanwhile, Jagen still challenges Lang, just like in the original game, causing him to flee from the scene.

The thing people fail to acknowledge is that Chris, while a main focus, does not steal the spotlight from Marth, this is still Marth's story and he leads the charge of his army to fight against the new threats plaguing Archanea. Chris is merely there to support him. This isn't like Awakening where Robin (the avatar) basically becomes the main character halfway through the story and steals a lot of spotlight from Chrom.

Another important point to consider is that, in the original Mystery of the Emblem, Marth gets a lot of Archanea's lore and history infodumped to him throughout the game, even though a lot of it is stuff he should already know as the ruler of the continent who had to study all this history for a nation he is going to rule, and would likely also want to know the story behind his ancestors and their reigns. It makes a lot more sense for Chris to be the one told these things given his rural upbringing in a secluded village by his grandfather who didn't teach him these things. Marth obviously doesn't know some things regarding the nature of the dragons and their goals, as well as Naga's and Medeus's plans, so he's still infodumped on these things in the cutscenes which makes sense. It also just makes sense for Chris to be getting more supports with the cast than Marth, given Marth is already well-acquainted with most of his army as of the previous game, while Chris is a new character who can learn a lot from these pre-established characters and see new sides to them that Marth would already know. In short, I disagree hard with people saying the Avatar is bad for the story, if anything I think his inclusion makes a lot of sense.

As for why I think Katarina's additions to the story also work really well thematically and narratively, I have to talk about New Mystery's story as a whole, which will include spoilers, so skip this section if you wish to avoid being spoiled.

To me, the main theme of this game is really about love in many forms; the sting of unrequited love, faked love via manipulation and abuse, friendship, romantic love, and unconditional/pure love in general. We see this many times throughout the game, such as Hardin being corrupted by his bitterness toward not having his love reciprocated by Princess Nyna, Marth and how much the bonds he makes with his friends pushes him forward and helps him become the beacon of light the world needs, Minerva and her struggle to reconnect with her brother Michalis, etc.

Katarina's subplot ties into the story very seamlessly, as she and Chris start off in the prologue of the story as knights in training who become very close friends along with the rest of the trainees, and we grow attached to them and their relationship. (The prologue in general captures a really nice calm before the storm buildup that helps flesh out and get us attached to the new characters at a solid pace that doesn't take too long but does enough to justify their place in the story.)

Sadly, at the end of the prologue, Katarina "reveals her true colors" as an assassin trying to kill Marth and betrays Chris, leaving the party. We learn throughout the rest of the game that she's been manipulated and raised as an assassin by a warped Bishop who is working for Gharnef, and was pushed onto the wrong side through no fault of her own. Even so, she still clings hard to this twisted love for her adopted sister and adopted mother because she doesn't want to be alone and has nothing else to live for, even though she knows deep down it's wrong, and it's hard to blame her. But of course, it's Chris's unconditional love and friendship with her that comes from a genuine place of caring that saves her, and gets her to come to the right side in the end. I teared up a little seeing her reunite with Chris, her main music theme called "Puppets Don't Cry" is really moving.

The last thing I'll say on the story front is that I love how the final map perfectly encapsulates the theme of love that New Mystery embodies so perfectly. The final map is a very difficult trek down a wide corridor filled with a literal army of dragons who are surrounding and protecting Medeus. The only real way to beat this map without letting anyone die is to have everyone fighting literally shoulder to shoulder to form a moving wall of soldiers, so they wall out the dragons and slowly advance toward Medeus as a turtle pack against what would normally seem like an insurmountable foe. When you reach Medeus, you find he's being protected by 4 Clerics, who are characters all close to the main leads of the story (Elise being Marth's sister and Merric's love interest, Lena being Julian's lover, Nyna being totally not Camus's love interest, and Maria being Minerva and Michalis's sister they want to save), except they're being brainwashed by Medeus into helping him and becoming sacrifices for his resurrection. Naturally, it's only through the characters closest to them reaching out to them and fighting tooth and nail to break them free from this brainwashing that saves them from their horrible fate, and gives Marth the opening he needs to slay Medeus once and for all. (Naturally I used the three focal characters of the story to defeat the final boss, I had Chris who I made a mage pincer Medeus with Starlight from the right side, Katarina pincer him from the left with Hellfire, and sent Marth in from the front to finish him off with Falchion.) Love literally saves the day, and I love how well the gameplay reinforces that theme.

On that note, I'd like to segue into how amazingly well crafted the gameplay is in this game compared to previous Fire Emblem entries I've played. I'll be comparing it a lot to Fire Emblem Awakening in particular, given this game is the direct prequel to it and shares a lot in common with it.

For reference, I played this game on Hard/Classic Mode, the usual norm I play each FE on for a first playthrough. The game is pretty challenging with a lot of strong units, but the game is well balanced in the sense that for however many difficult opponents you face, your own army is also very strong due to growth rates being buffed more in this game compared to previous Classic FE titles, but not to the point that it makes your units broken. This game in general is very good at introducing a lot of really nice QoL additions to classic Fire Emblem gameplay that make it more friendly to newcomers while leaving options for and maintaining the challenge that the series is known for.

One nice QoL feature added that this game carries over the Tellius duology's Bonus EXP system mechanic in the form of the Drill Grounds training, which makes you guaranteed to get stat level ups when you level up there. Another is the "How's Everyone" mechanic that updates after you leave the game for usually several hours to a day, which gives free EXP to your units and really good items such as better healing items and strong weapons to help even the odds. It's a good way to get an edge on the enemy, but not to the point where it breaks the difficulty of the game, as it's not abusable. You have to wait through real time to get some of these rewards, and even then, sometimes they're not great. As for the Drill Grounds, they cost a lot of gold to use to farm EXP, so if you're not careful using it, you'll have nothing left to use to actually stock your army up on supplies, so that's another good balancing factor. Compare this to Awakening, where you have DLC maps that let you infinitely grind for few money/EXP without any consequence to get as overpowered as you want, and it's clear where the balancing philosophy was directed when each game was made.

Another mechanic in modern FE that I think was used better here is the mid map save points feature, which was the predecessor to what would become the rewind feature in later games. The mid map save points are great for 2 reasons. One is since it lets you take a break if you need it during the long and difficult maps this game presents (some took me 1 to 2 hours) and lets you keep this save permanently unlike a suspend save in case you get screwed over by bad luck. I'm honestly surprised Awakening didn't have this feature given how geared toward newcomers it is. But the second reason why it's done well is because the save points are strategically placed by the developers and puts the balancing around this sort of "rewind/failsafe" mechanic more in their ballpark than the players. The rewimd mechanic, especially in Engage, is very abusable and can trivialize game difficulty by negating game overs and character death; you're encouraged to use it heavily in the games it's in as it's your most precious resource in a game series all about important resource management. However, with the map save points, not only do they let you take a break from the game if needed, but they're only mitigated to whatever spots the devs dictate to keep the game balanced and not make them broken like Engage's infinite rewind (and even then I'd say the save points placements are incredibly fair for the most part). I do think to balance the rewind mechanic in newer games, a system should be implemented that either makes the rewinds a resource you need to replenish manually for a cost if you overuse it, or give a reward to players who choose to use it less or not at all as incentive. Or heck, maybe even do both depending on how challenging you want the game to be!

Back on topic though, New Mystery also made me use a lot of creative strategies to clear its maps that I hadn't ever been pushed to use in other entries, such as using the Warp/Rescue staff to strategically provoke enemies into attack range or to collect key items, as well as having to think outside the box for recruiting a lot of units in more precarious situations to get them out alive.

As much as I do love this game though, it naturally has its flaws, like any game. The one real sticking point of this game (which most FE games have to some degree, though none as bad as this entry of the ones I've played) is how badly you NEED a guide when playing this game if you want to actually beat it without having a hard time/keeping everyone alive, and seeing all of the maps the game has to offer.

The main complaint I'm referring to here is that New Mystery is unneccesarily vague with how to collect the Zodiac Shards, which are key to getting the true ending of the game. It's weird considering the game's "Talk with Everyone" option gives you tons of hints on how to get most of the recruitable units in this game (very nice QoL feature by the way), but when it comes to the true ending, they don't say a lot. They at least address its importance in the plot, but for some reason the developers had the great idea of informing the player about their importance... only after you finish the chapter where you can easily miss a Zodiac Shard in a chest if you don't know it's there. Up until that chapter they're pretty easy to not miss given bosses drop them, but I don't know what they were thinking with placing it after the first easily missable shard, that just seems like bad/mean game design to me. There's also other stuff like how Starlight (a legendary magic tome that's the only thing that can kill Gharnef) and Falchion (the legendary sword that makes the fight against Medeus more doable due to how incredibly tough he is) are also easily missable and can make your run of the game much harder as a result, which makes a near flawless game fall a bit short for me. Luckily this is one of the only real issues the game actually has.

The other main critique I have regarding needing a guide to complete this game without getting frustrated are two main points:

1. This game has way too many fog of war maps if you do all the Gaiden Chapters, which aren't fun because they're just a ridiculous amount of trial and error unless you look up where the unit placements are ahead of time to avoid unneeded frustration.

2. This game has so many reinforcement triggers that it's not even funny. This is the first time I actually had to go out of my way to look up what causes and where the reinforcement triggers are located on the maps in order to plan my strategy around that gameplay-wise, since it was getting annoying dealing with nearly every single chapter in the game. I got through even Fire Emblem The Binding Blade (a game notorious for its difficult and annoying reinforcements) without having to look them up. Though then again, I was in my teens when I played it and more stubborn, so I likely just toughed it out and didn't think to look it up at the time. Side note, the guide I used to help me with map triggers and such was the FEWOD website (Fire Emblem War of Dragons), it's a really handy site for stuff like this that gives general strategies and helps you with formulating your own for every map in the series, I'd recommend it to anyone big FE fan!

Despite the QoL additions the game adds to make it friendly for newcomers, I will admit that it's not best for newcomers due to its challenge and need for a guide in order to complete the game without much frustration or missing out on important story content, Awakening is definitely better for newcomers in comparison. However, for veteran FE players, I think this game is perfect at finding the best of both worlds of classic and modern FE gameplay wise and would recommend it to any long time Fire Emblem player.

This last part is personal preference, but I feel that the classic more grounded style of Fire Emblem's storytelling/aesthetic that this game was the last to embody fits the series better as a war drama, rather than the more lighthearted/comedic and anime route that Awakening onwards went with. I really miss that style. Thankfully Intelligent Systems does still cater to us classic fans with their remakes, as Fire Emblem Echoes shows by maintaining that classic style and not remaking it to be more like the more modern style we see in recent FE mainlines.

Also, I have to say, the OST for this game is just stellar. It takes a lot of SNES music and fleshes it out for modern standards incredibly well, and the new music is nothing to scoff at either. The final boss theme, "Reign of Despair" is incredibly epic and blows the SNES version out of the water. It truly captures that feeling that everything is on the line, and that this is the last push to end this tragic war once and for all, which feels very satisfying after how harsh this trial has been on all of the main characters involved.

The last thing I want to touch on is that I disagree with people who say the sprites in this game look ugly. They don't have the same kind of charm and polish that the GBA games do I'll admit, but those games just went above and beyond in that department. The portrait sprites for this game still look solid enough, though I will admit that the previous game (Shadow Dragon's remake on DS) actually does have some legitimately ugly sprites, such as timeskip Marth's whose has scraggly looking hair and a weird block chin. Thankfully they fixed his design with his portrait sprite here.

I'm honestly saddened that Nintendo took more effort to translate the original version of FE1 (Marth's first game) over translating this wonderful remake. Then again, the fact the first game is so barebones writing wise and has much less text as a result was probably one big reason why upon closer inspection. I'm so incredibly grateful to Heroes of Shadow for translating this wonderful hidden gem of a game in a series I've loved for many years.

If anyone reading this ever plays the game for themselves, I hope you enjoy this entry as much as I did. It deserves far more love in the fandom and is much better than most people will make you think if you ask their opinion on it. This game was a fantastic note for Classic Fire Emblem's era to end on, and I wish we had more entries like it.

It's Shadow Dragon but they make it far harder and interesting to play! That's good.
They add a self-insert OC who interferes with an existing story. That's bad.
But it comes with Katarina! Thats good.
The Katarina is cursed. That's bad.
But they broke Palla!
...
(That's good!)

For real Palla Emblem is worth playing and outside the final map BS is much improved over Shadow Dragon and you can only sometimes JUST USE THE WARP STAFF.

In my personal opinion, this is Fire Emblem at its peak, wonderful story (thanks to FE3 Book 2), amazing new cast of characters, units are actually good to use and the avatar contrary to what many say, is actually good that doesn't apply to Kris, they take some lines of Jaegen of the original but other than that isn't something as intrusive to the story as Robin, Corrin, Byleth and Alear are due to his sub story being told on the Gaiden chapters.

Some things such as the Drill Grounds, talking to your characters for random items or buffs and the readable lore you can watch any time are things that aren't present at all in other games when they should, the Forge is a good one and not the batshit insane stuff you have on Fates (+15 Iron sword goes brrrr) that requires actual brain and strategy.
Even tho the visuals aren't that good compared to what we had on the WII/GCN, GBA and the SNES but they are fine, at least they got better compared to what we have on Shadow Dragon.

The new-addons are neat that are not intrusive and are totally 100% optional, unlike Shadow Dragon they actually did new content that wasn't hidden by literally having to do a rampage with your own units, the DLC is fine and not as the shit we have with either Awakening and Fates that is just fanservice or a grind fest.

Overall is one of the best games if not the best of the series, you can also play with Wrys 10/10.

This is probably the hardest Fire emblem experience you can get in vanilla games that isn't bullshit (looking at awakening lunatic+).
Lunatic reverse is such a satisfying challenge to face. The game always puts you in a difficult spot and it just makes you feel good when you're done dealing with its bullshit. Managing to get every side objective and keeping every character alive makes you feel like you completely dominated the game and I love it.
Overall solid but I don't think I'd replay it on lunatic reverse if I had to ever revisit.

As a Fire Emblem game, New Mystery is in the top two for actual strategy and map design in the series. So starting off, you will be met with the difficulty selection. The difficulties in New Mystery are my personal favorite in the series. This is really the only Fire Emblem game where you can play all the difficulties in order and have an increasingly difficult time. Starting off with Normal, the enemies are similar in strength to the original Fire Emblem Mystery of the Emblem. Because of the overall increased growth rates of the cast and the slightly simpler machanics it makes for an easier experience. Hard mode increases enemy stats by quite a bit, however most of the enemy stat improvements over the higher difficulties are in strength, skill and speed. This means that aside from doubling threshholds enemy durability is kept similar to in normal mode, even when playing on Lunatic. Hard mode also adds ambush spawn reinforcements. This isn't necessarily a good thing to be quite honest. But FE12 does handle these reinforcements better than the other Fire Emblems that feature them. The player is taught to be weary of forts early on and the trial and error nature of the game, in addition to the in-map save points, returning from Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon, make them less of a nuisence in a regular playthrough. As for the third difficulty, Maniac mode, enemy stats are increased again by about the same amount. Maniac mode generally serves a more leniant version of Lunatic, the speed benchmarks are lowered by about two accross the board. Maniac and Hard serve as decent difficulty for no-reset runs which are generally the most fun way to play Fire Emblem in my personal opinion. As for Lunatic and Lunatic Reverse, they are considered to be the hardest challenges offered in the entire series, with high enemy offences, no warp or silence staves (silence is also removed in Maniac), while still being hard in a fun well designed way and is only rivaled by Fire Emblem Fates Conquest in this department. The unit balance however could use a little improvement in the higher difficulties. As some of the later characters in the game, who are meant to serve as replacement characters for any deaths one might have suffered, are nearly unusable. The get onerounded by nearly every enemy. This should be easily fixable with some hard mode bonusses to at least give them enough of a speedboost to not get doubled.
I overall think this game is just a very good experience for any fan of the series, with some of the most fast-paced and fun gameplay.

If FE11 was the gold standard for a remake, FE12 is the exact opposite. It does everything it can to impose itself onto the original and ruins all the good that FE3 had to offer.

Similarly to FE11, the plot of this remake doesn't do much to deviate from the original. Unlike FE11, FE12 seems to have absolutely no respect for the original game and constantly tries to inject its own concepts with such gracelessness that it makes what good is left difficult to enjoy. FE12 will be damned if it doesn't try to ruin FE3's story every step of the way. The way it tries to do this most is through the one, the only, Kris.

Kris is a self insert character brand new to FE12. This as actually not FE's first swing at this type of character, but FE7's Mark is so irrelevant that most analyses of FE7's story don't even mention them. Kris on the other hand is painfully relevant. They are constantly inserted into story scenes to the detriment of every single character around them. They make Jeigan seem weak and Marth frequently makes out of character decisions in the service of making the player avatar seem cool. Even if you ignored all that and tried to examine Kris in a void, they're still a horribly written character. They frequently act differently which makes it hard to pin down what their personality even is but the one constant is that they give characters bad advice that somehow just works out in the end. For example, in Arran's support with them he confesses that he once killed a village of people who were rebelling against their corrupt king. Kris' response to this? To tell him he isn't to blame. No, Kris, Arran does share some of the blame. He can't just kill an entire village and claim innocence by virtue of "following orders". But of course Kris isn't challenged because they need to do everything in their power to make Kris seem cool.

FE12 brings in every single Archanea character (including those absent from FE3) and makes previously unrecruitable characters available as well. This removes a lot of weight from the story as you're no longer fighting former allies, now you just need to convince them to join your side and they automatically do so no matter how improbable it is for that character. An example that really irks me in this regard is the case of Midia's group. In FE3, it's said that Midia took part in a rebellion within the kingdom and many of her soldiers died. The game never says it but we're meant to assume that Dolph, Macellan, and Tomas are included among the casualties. While they weren't the most memorable characters on earth, the fact remains that people who you once knew are dead because of this war. Not in FE12 though! They're right here ready to fight alongside you. Can't have the player thinking about how deeply war affects people when they're supposed to be engrossed in a self insert power fantasy where every pre established character loves them unconditionally.

FE12 gives at least one support to every character in the game. This seems like a good thing given how little characterization this cast got in FE3. That is it seems that way until you learn that a majority only have one support and that one support is with Kris. The supports tend to focus more on Kris and I walk away from them feeling that I learned as much about the other character there as I did through their minimal (or even non existent) dialogue in FE3. It doesn't help that the writing is atrocious. This easily takes the cake as the worst writing in FE so far, with characters feeling like walking clichés instead of people. Let's take Cecille for example. Her entire character revolves around the fact that she is a woman who doesn't act stereotypically feminine. There are scant scenes that don't revolve around this quirk. This goes for just about every character in this game with all of them having some character trait that the writing completely latches onto. They had the opportunity to better flesh out this cast and they completely dropped the ball.

FE11 introduced new chapters that were fairly inoffensive in terms of writing. They mainly felt like filler but they weren't too bad and it was clear that they designed those chapters with gameplay in mind rather than the story. The opposite is the case in FE12. Granted, they don't have any impact on the main plot but that doesn't atone for just how horribly they're written. It's comprised entirely original material which means that since it can't just look to FE3 for what to do we're treated to 14 chapters of melodrama between pieces of cardboard. The whole assassin guild whatever the hell makes no sense. I cannot believe I am about to complement a GBA game, but even FE7's Black Fang was handled better than this. At least I halfway cared about dome characters in that group. Further, Kris is the sole main character of these chapters with Marthipan taking a backseat which just makes it all the worse. Gameplay wise it doesn't fare well either. The maps range from frustrating to boring and I'm just left wondering why these are here at all (that's a lie. The reason these are here is to make the player insert seem even cooler and give them a waifu in the form of Katarina).

Being a carbon copy of FE11's mechanics, the gameplay is pretty alright. I feel that FE3's map design isn't quite as timeless as FE1 but it's by no means bad. Though bringing over FE11's mechanics verbatim seems ill considered. FE3 was already flyer dominant but reclassing just makes it even worse. In FE3, you could trivialize maps with your group of 5 uber charged flyers. In FE12, you can do the same but this time with 7 fliers and reclass means you can make any unit you want into one of those fliers.

I think the flier problem stated in the previous paragraph is exacerbated by the fact that unit individuality has been completely forsaken in FE12's pursuit to make every single Archanea character recruitable. There are 77 recruitable characters in this game. It doesn't take long before you just start getting pelted by pre promotes in every chapters and they all blend in with one another as generic blobs of stats with nothing to make them stand out. I know I praised FE11 for consistently giving you new units, but this is absolutely too much.

The difficulties of FE12 are also questionably designed. The lower difficulties are fine, but at higher levels the game starts to crack. The ambush spawns are particularly egregious. They're incredibly strong which results in many maps devolving into trial and error and the enemy strength often results in maps just becoming more tedious.

FE12 added a base which is pretty alright but it makes grinding way too easy. There have historically been 2 ways to grind in FE, either going to optional maps or visiting the arena. Both of these are balanced by their unpredictability. You never really know what you're getting into meaning that there is always a risk of death. The arena present in FE12's base is not unpredictable, it literally gives you a battle forecast beforehand. There's also no time investment given that you can access in battle preps, meaning that all it costs is a couple thousand gold and maybe 5 or so minutes to make a unit into a juggernaut.

There's also FE12's biggest change, casual mode. Permadeath is one of the core tenets of Fire Emblem and removing it does nothing but water down the game for the purpose of appealing to the lowest common denominator. FE should resist players who don't want to engage with the game, not bend to their whim. What if a Zelda game had an optional mode where it would automatically tell you the solution to puzzles? What if Final Fantasy had a mode where you would start the game at max level? What if Resident Evil had a mode that gave you infinite resources? Just because it's an optional mode doesn't make it a good addition and if a series' core mechanic scares you away from playing it then that's on you, not the game.

The one good thing I have to say about FE12 is that it remade the Archanea Saga stories. They're devoid of anything original to FE12 making them actually enjoyable. There are some dlc chapters but I haven't played them and, knowing what the next few games are like, I would honestly prefer not to discuss dlc in these reviews.

After FE11 was a nearly perfect remake, FE12 was thoroughly disappointing. Easilt the worst writing in the series and uninspired gameplay makes this one of the worst games so far. At the very least Intelligent Systems can learn from this and get rid of that "Kouhei Maeda" guy and get on a director who knows how to make a half decent game. Haha.

Notes for my series replay:
- See my SD review about this games' presentation (if you care).
- I want to get the elephant in the room addressed before I talk about anything else. Kris is a fucking wild addition to this game. I think that the drawn-out prologue the exposition dumps Kris and Katarina's relationship is kinda terrible, and their chemistry even worse. Kris absolutely obliterates any semblance of balance that Mystery had, which wasn't much to begin with, mind you. Kris is the most malleable unit in the game, with essentially infinite potential. I don't know how they didn't expect this character to snap the game over their leg, or maybe they just didn't care, but honestly Kris' presence diminishes Marth's story in this game, and I didn't really care for it. FE3 is fucking awesome because Marth travels the path of Anri, this untouchable hero whose legacy he's expected to fulfill, but rather he rises above that and breaks the curse of Anri and Artemis, as well as putting Medeus back in the ground. So tell me why they decided to put his OP Gary Stew bodyguard in this remake, completely negating that entire arc for Marth??? Wild.
-Previous anger aside, I think that this game is super interesting from a gameplay perspective. Kris obviously trivializes the difficulty, but this game has so many tools for the player to abuse other than Kris, I wanted to note a few. The Again staff is a dancer staff that is never seen again after this, which is a shame. Warp and Rescue are back, as well as Hammerne. This game has an abundance of powerful staves, making it feel like this game very breakable aside from Kris (on lower difficulties, that is).
- Seize maps. Again, it's a remake, I get it. But seize maps that are fucking massive, which involves moving Marth long ass distances across the map, despite being a foot-locked unit. Those boots can't come fast enough. Oh, and no rescue dropping either, just like Shadow Dragon.
- All of that hate aside, I still love the reclass system, as having half a dozen Dracoknights bowling across a map is really satisfying. It also helps a lot with getting through some of the tougher maps in the mid-game, as there are flying dragons, and if you don't intercept them, they can be a serious threat to your weaker supportive units.
- I gotta hop back on the hate bus for my last point, but I honestly prefer the FE3 soundtrack to this game. I find that the tracks lose a lot of their luster given the more "grounded" tone they were going for this time. For instance, "Holy War" sounds a lot less emotionally driven in this game, which was a huge blow for me. There are some tracks I prefer in this game, like the Hardin battle theme, but ultimately, this game feels like a more washed out take on the original's OST.

I feel bad writing such a negative review on this game, as it's honestly not too bad to play, but having just played the game it's based off of, I found myself sorely disappointed in many areas. It's kind of ironic, because I get on Shadow Dragon's case for being too close to the original source material, but then most of the changes this game made were kinda downgrades, so I still prefer Shadow Dragon of the two? It's strange. Tl;dr, fun gameplay, but seriously neutered version of FE3.

I'm gonna preface by saying that i like that there's an avatar for you to "self-insert" into, it makes the supports a bit more meaningful and you get to see the characters from a more private side.
That aside, i do like the story, both the added chapters and the original plot. I'm a sucker for having to find 12 of some magical whatever to combat the villain's dark magic of death, and the villain's story is very human and makes sense. There's still a lot to catch up on geopolitically, so it's not a game for people who can't remember names of 10 kingdoms and visualize the state of the world as the story goes on.

Great sequel to the first game in the series even though it is similarly lacking as a remastered version.
+ optional conversations between chapters offering helpful tips and much-needed characterization
+ solid map design overall without many frustrating parts
+ much better enemy variety making more strategies viable
+ snappy gameplay as should be expected
+ strong customizable player character who also brings some humor to the table
- few visual upgrades
- marginally improved by dialogue yet still simplistic narrative
- too many unremarkable units even if most of them aren't new