I have two wolves inside me, one loves New Mystery, the other hates it. They both kiss each other goodnight.

New Mystery was never released outside Japan, has a new character in Kris the avatar and all other characters that never played a role in Book 2 of the SNES original, making the game a sort of Mortal Kombat Armageddon: everyone is here, everyone fights. There has never been so many characters (77!) in a Fire Emblem game and all are recruitable in a single playthrough. Together with base conversations, we have a semblance of Support, too. There has never been so much content.

Yet it's bland. Some characters shine in their portrayal (I will always love Palla and Catria with all of my heart), yet the worst offender is weirdly enough the protagonist(s), Kris and Marth. In the original game, Marth had a new role as Akaneia's peace keeper, everybody knew him and respected him. Kris steals the show in the remake, always having something to say and to add, yet his\her characterization is ... loyalty to Marth and Altea. That's it. To make things worse, all the new cavaliers and knights feel now like lackeys of Kris, rather than his\her companions. It's fun to make some wacky builds for Kris, I won't lie: I had a female mage reclassed into Cavalier\Pegasus Knight until her Str\Spd were good enough. Then I reclassed to Swordmaster to use a Levin Sword with her good magic bases. If you were to play the harder difficulties you won't have such luck: if you don't play Knight\Berserker, you're playing to lose. Lunatic + is a devious little scoundrel and I won't ever finish it, thank you.

Map design on the other hand is vexing. Some maps are incredible, most are immense. I can feel some sort of map design, like the Ogma & Sirius map or the original content. Others are straight from the 90s, in a bad way. To this day, I would like to know what sort of zaza the person who made the desert chapter smoked. He gave wyverns the 1-2 range! Normal doesn't have it, but still.

As you can see, as an Akaneia fanboy I am torn. Book 2 originally was the cherry on top of the franchise, a little bow to present you the perfect duology of Marth and his friends' fight. The story and the important moments are still there, but they feel less important, less impactful, because a hero that was never there now has to take the spotlight, just to canonically disappear at the end. He was never there ...

The special chapters are fun, challenging and offer a different perspective on characters. They made me appreciate Midia! The audacity! Who even likes Midia?! I would recommend playing this game just for that one aspect, yet the game is still fun, it can be enjoyable and it has its moments. Just ... please, let's not talk about Kris. Let's talk about Robin instead. They learned their lesson and decided that maybe a bit of cognitive dissonance is better compared to a protagonist with no redeeming qualities.

I typically don't write reviews on here but this game was such a fascinating mess of mistakes I just need to let it out somewhere

What Went Right:

- There's definitely some interesting map design in this game: parts which pressure you to complete a map quickly are good, and in some spots this is done well (e.g simple stuff like thieves heading towards villages you want, some instances of reinforcements behind you). I also like stuff that pressures you into using resources: I tend to be rather conservative with resources and try to promote at 20, save high level weapons/staves until I think I need them most, etc. but this game had several spots which strongly encourage you to drop these habits. I had to promote most of my party a bit earlier than intended due to a midgame difficulty spike and it felt cool having to do that and be rewarded for it.

- While objectively they're pretty broken, stuff like infinite range staves are silly and fun, I like them! Having the option to simply skip a chapter if it looks annoying and unfun is cool, and you get to do this quite a bit, given the multiple Rescue staves, Warp having 7 uses, Hammerne having 3 uses. These provide charm to a game and it gave me a few little bursts of dopamine.

What Went Wrong:

- While not the most important, it does lead into most of the others so it goes here first: roster bloat sure is a thing. This game has 80 characters and I could not tell you a single thing about most of them - I finished the game an hour ago and could maybe name 20 at most. On top of having very little personality or backstory, the game is balanced in such a way that there's little use for them in gameplay either - past the early to midgame virtually every new recruit I got was just a strictly worse version of a unit I had already trained up. The Tellius games have a similar amount of characters but they at least feel like humans I can say stuff about and they almost all get a little bit of time in the spotlight: a decent chunk of recruits in this game are just randos who show up to you after a chapter like "yo im on ur squad now" and it's like, cool? Thanks?

- By far the worst thing about this game and why I've rated it so low is the infamous same turn reinforcements. Chapters 12 and 13 are this at its worst, and the most angry I've been at this franchise in over 15 games now - untelegraphed, flying, 12 move dragons who can nuke any remotely squishy unit you have laying around. It feels like a massive middle finger to the player having to restart a chapter because you crossed some magical zone which triggers these and now any unit you tried to bring along who isn't a buffed up cav/dracoknight is dead. Want to look these up online beforehand to gain some intel? Good luck! Being as obscure as it is I found it very difficult to find accurate information on these reinforcements to plan around them - fireemblemwod is probably the best one out there but still has some inaccurate information, and I had a few spots where I relied on what it said until woops here's a few extra waves of reinforcements, time to reset!

- This ties into a general theme of information just not being properly expressed to the player. Fog of war is pretty limited in this game but unfortunately still does exist, and likes to throw ballistas or long range snipers at you to reaaaaaaaaally make sure you're not using anything but your government assigned paladins to curbstomp the map. There's several spots in the game where you can't carefully bait out enemies because none of them will notice you until you cross this magical line that triggers all 10 of them at once. While I can see some merit to this from a map design aspect, it is pretty frustrating not knowing which type it is and being owned because you guessed wrong. Some other examples include fairly obscure recruitment methods (which, to the game's defense, it does usually give you a little base conversation strongly implying you should bring a certain unit) and reliance on getting certain items to properly complete the game, but I only have so many words for this review.

- This is a bit more of a minor gripe but the amount of reused maps from FE11 was pretty disappointing, especially given if you're playing FE12 for the first time in (current year) it'll likely be because you just finished FE11 and are sunk cost fallacy-ing your way into seeing what all the other games are like. In some cases in the franchise this has been used in an interesting way but most of these either played identically or were just more annoying versions of the original, wh ich kinda sucks.

- Lastly I should bring up the story. This is the world's coldest take by now but Kris as a character kinda sucks - the amount of screentime put into hyping you up as the coolest person ever, how Marth is struggling so much but you're his magical saviour, is pretty lame, and takes away from the plot a bit. This includes parts where they alternate between serious lore dumps and Kris trying on a new hairstyle but those were funny at least! The side story with Katarina was okay, I guess? It was nice to see them reunited but it ties into a general storytelling problem in this game where it feels like nobody takes accountability for their actions - every nice character who initially starts antagonistic in this game is just being manipulated by someone (usually Gharnef!), then that stops and they're just completely cool. come on you can try a little harder (do not look at my favourite fire emblem game it is irrelevant to this plot point i promise). The reuse of Medeus and Gharnef is also just kind of boring, but I don't really care that much in a game that isn't exactly the most plot driven game in the franchise.


I do think this game has some merit to it, and there's definitely good parts to it, but it was unfortunately my least favourite game in the franchise up to this point. hopefully fe1 through fe5 don't make me change my mind on that :)

This game was another delight to play. It takes things that I already enjoyed from shadow dragon and put them in an even better package. It was also cool to see how much of this game would go on to shape awakening and that is probably why is had so much fun with this game. A player avatar, casual mode, more detailed and easily accessible support convos, among other things. Game was very enjoyable and I definitely see myself coming back to it. Not everything was a winner of course, I'm somewhat in the camp that this game might have a bit too many units and the requirements to recruit some of them can make some chapters drag or be more annoying then they would otherwise. But otherwise this is an easy recommend from me if you can get ahold of a english translation.

i’m done giving this game chances. i’ve played and beaten almost every fe game (most multiple times) and never once have i bounced off of one to the point that i can’t finish it. on like 10 different occasions i’ve tried to like this game and around the halfway point i realize i haven’t had fun in like 7 chapters. the entire game is trial and error and punishing you for not using the most optimal units at all times. in prologue, you made kris any of the classes with bad defense? have fun resetting because every enemy has double your move and orkos you! in the rest of the game, you used ANYONE other than the fliers and malicia? enjoy dogshit growths, half as much movement, and 12 movement dragons that ignore def that spawn as ambush reinforcements for like 5 straight chapters! the balance is atrocious in every sense of the word and using anyone but a squad of wyverns is miserable. while it was the first game in the series to add a bunch of player freedom it also punishes you for messing with any of the fun tools.

This was a game that I had dived into immediately after finishing Shadow Dragon and as such, all of the characters and everything were fresh in the mind, which helped a great deal. To begin with, this game has an enormous cast of over 100 characters that you can recruit into your army, and this is both a boon and a curse.

Of course, you have a very wide selection of characters to choose from and that's very fun, as well as getting to see all of the characters return from Shadow Dragon and all the new things that they do. But at the same time, there are an overwhelming number of people. I refused to let anyone perish and as such, my party was so large and so, so many characters went unused.

All the same, the story is an interesting one and has the first 'avatar' unit, allowing you to have someone fully customized for your run and being able to handle pretty much any role you need filled.

The maps are fun although there are quite a few too many caster enemies the further you get into the game so Resistance becomes far far more useful than Defense as it goes on, and some of the maps are so sprawling that your flying units are basically required...but all-in-all it's a worthy successor to Shadow Dragon and I enjoyed it immensely.

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.

Really great game, a lot of improvements to Shadow Dragon, Better Story and better Gameplay.
The Avatar was a bit bland tho.
Etzel was my Favourite Character.

<3 Etzel, Merrick, Minerva
<3 My Dracoknight Trio Minerva, Palla and Catria

There were some things I quite liked better than Shadow Dragon. There are a couple maps that are a step above most FE11 ones, the units are a lot more fun to mess around with, supports flesh everything out a bit more, the hidden objectives are way less vague, etc. Yet this is still a worse game overall for a few reasons. Despite having some new maps, there is SO MUCH rehashing from Shadow Dragon, like seriously a ton of repeats. There are also so many repeated units, which leads to a really bloated cast by the end where it's really hard to even figure out what to invest in, especially after getting like 3 new units every map. The balancing in this game takes everything frustrating about FE11 and just makes it even more bullshit, like they expected you to use a guide lmao. Kris is a very broken unit and Marth is a lot better than Shadow Dragon but I almost felt like I never had an army without some liabilities, and a deathless run seemed impossible. I don't mind difficulty in these games but nothing about this felt fun, just ridiculously strong enemies that can't be touched by effective weapons a lot of the time and not really a lot of utility either. All of this would be better if the rest of the game was good but there's nothing to write home about really. The story feels like more rehashed aspects of the first game, and not to beat a dead horse but Kris is seriously one of the worst characters in the series lol. I think you can still have fun with this game but it was definitely my least favorite FE so far.

Fire Emblem: New Mysetery of the Emblem introduces a lot of the mechanics that we have grown accustomed to in more modern games. The game itself, is massive, with a whopping cast of over 80 playable characters. However, similarly to Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, this game still lacks strong characterization for everyone outside of a select few major characters.

This game adds an additional story beat with the addition of Katarina and her group. I personally enjoyed the content with Katarina a good bit, and didn't feel that it hurt the original narrative with its addition. However, the rest of the story is rather barebones.

This game is the first Fire Emblem entry to feature an Avatar character to try making the player feel more invested in the narrative. How the Avatar character is implemented does take away from the game in my opinion, as Kris is treated as this perfect character that no one can find any fault in.

The gameplay itself is more player-phased oriented, and it is more enjoyable in comparison to the previous Shadow Dragon. I think this game is certainly worth a try for those interested, but Shadow Dragon should be played for the best experience.

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

God, this one is rough. It still has decent bones for being Fire Emblem, and mostly pulls from the same mechanics as Shadow Dragon, an entry in the series that I quite like, but this game has a few glaring problems:

- There is a lot of bloat in this game. The roster is even larger than Shadow Dragon's, but so many units join so late that they're extremely difficult to use, yet deployment is reduced in this game compared to its predecessor. There are also so many new items in this game, with a lot of them locked to the time based How's Everyone mode.
- Several maps which range from bad to terrible. The Anri's way arc is miserable, with a special shoutout to the map which is made up nearly entirely of desert tiles. The few chapters in a row where you run from Astram and co. are also pretty bad. Even some early chapters are weirdly difficult (dracoknights in chapter two).
- The narrative centering itself around My Unit really swerves it in a direction I don't really personally enjoy. I know the SNES game this game is based on wasn't known for a huge spectacle of a plot, but Kris basically took over Jagen's role and stole most of his good content.

It's not all awful. The mixed male reclass system is pretty good (unfortunately at the expense of female units, but they got some expanded classes too at least here). Including the BSFE maps and three bonus maps is neat. I largely felt frustrated when playing this game though, I have to say. It's still Fire Emblem though, so I'll probably come back to it again some day.

Despite enjoying myself in the early- and midgame, no fire emblem game (besides Revelations) has left me with such a viscerally negative experience, so I'm just going to rattle off a bunch of things I disliked because the general gameplay is solid:

- My main gripe is just don't play Hard mode for this one. Ruined my endgame experience and made me dislike this game so much more than it probably deserves. Adding (unbelievably strong) ambush spawns and siege tomes and fortify staves to maps that originally didn't have them drags the gameplay out and makes you reset levels which would never have been a problem otherwise. Just give me a fucking turn to react if your going to spawn in wyvern knights which are stronger than the enemies i'm currently fighting jesus christ.

- Prologue sucks and its wayyy too long. Should've been like 5 maps at most.

- I despise Kris with a passion. And a large part of the 7th platoon for that matter. Just a bunch of voids of emotions or bad tropes.

If I were to replay this on normal mode, I would probably find myself rating it a 3.5/5 or higher, as the early- and midgame was fun, but the ambush spawns and siege weapons spam in endgame was genuinely miserable to play through.

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.

"She cursed the emblem, calling it the end of war, but also the end of love..Now it has changed hands, and it is I who is cursed."

Having revisited it, FE12 surprised me. Though I had played it before and had already known it was a significant step up from Shadow Dragon, I ultimately only remembered thinking it was pretty good, but not groundbreaking. Returning to it revealed to me a tale of unrequited love, unwavering kinship, heartbreak, and loss.

I want to say first of all that although I have not finished FE3, I am mostly aware of the differences, and would like to start by saying that the story content that this remake adds is fantastic, and ties in perfectly with the pre-established themes of the original game. Say what you will about Kris being a self insert, or being overly-praised for their exploits, but I personally believe that what they bring to the table far outweighs the bad.

For one, I adore the prologue - it really captures this carefree, peaceful but determined "days of training" feeling - the calm before the storm. It serves to not only flesh Kris out but to establish their relationship with Katarina, a pivotal character introduced with the new story content. It also gives some much needed characterisation to characters who would've otherwise been literal who's in FE3. This later evolves in the form of actual support conversations once the newly added prologue ends. In addition to this, Kris, if anything, being a new member of Marth's army, works as an outlet for fleshing out Archanea's cast far better than Marth probably could. Yes, Kris getting far more supports than Marth is weird, but wouldn't it be awkward if Marth was only just discovering things about his comrades from the past war? In a sense, Kris is a blank canvas for Marth's army to project themselves onto, which serves as a far more natural gateway for the player to discover new things about them. Bottom line, Kris' presence is for the better of the whole cast, including Marth and Jagen, the two characters most commonly referred to as having their thunder stolen by Kris - I'll touch on those two later. There're plenty non-Kris support conversations too, which is something worth noting.

Though the new story content from there on out is locked behind gaiden chapters, unlocking some of it is thankfully pretty easy. If you want to see the most important thing, just make sure to have Kris promoted and at level 5 by the end of chapter 16. Regardless of how that gaiden chapter plays out, it's a real tear jerker. 20x also has some fantastic lore behind it, but uh, that means playing 20x. Don't play 20x, please. Don't even try fulfilling the 20x requirements, unless you're playing on lunatic like I was and was forced to LTC the map because of 3 waves of capped enemy paladins hounding you down. Just look the cutscenes up on youtube, or something.

I also like that Kris is an actual character and the story doesn't totally revolve around them. Their whole point is that they're Marth's most reliable and dependable friend who willingly left themselves out of the history books to let Marth be a beacon and icon of peace for the common people to believe in. Marth's shadow. I also think the concept of FE12 being not just a remake but a retelling with information that was lost to history being accounted for is really cool. It's not a rewrite, perse, it's the full story. In FE3, Marth is fed many exposition dumps, many of which on topics that he should know about, given the events of the previous war, being a descendant of Anri and whatnot. Giving these to Kris - who is instead someone who lived most of their life up to that point in a village training with their grandfather and is inherently less knowledgable of the world and grand scheme of the plot not only makes more sense from a narrative standpoint but makes Marth wiser and more experienced by comparison, something more befitting of him given his experience as the hero of the war of shadows. Marth struggling to cope with the potential loss of his companions is a key character trait that remains and is further exemplified by his attachment to Kris.

A common example I see being used to show Kris "stealing thunder" is during chapter 3, when Kris challenges Lang's authority, wherein two things happen;

Firstly, Marth apologises for Kris' outburst, only after failed attempts at diplomacy deciding to denounce Lang for the problems he's caused. This shows that Kris does not 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.
Secondly, Jagen still challenges Lang, just like in the original game, causing him to flee from the scene. From the very start, Kris is set up to become Jagen's successor. They're the grandchild of an old friend, and given Jagen's old age and eventual passing, probably allowed him to die peacefully knowing that Marth was in capable hands. To say they're similar characters isn't unfounded, but to say that Kris steals from him is.

There's a lot of story content I want to get into that was there in the original game, but I want this to be spoiler-free. I'll just say that it feels like a natural and fitting extension and conclusion to Marth's story, and not Kaga just saying "hey let's do more Marth and Archanaea stuff". The final chapter interactions with the four clerics hit me really hard, especially one with a certain blonde haired knight. Unrequited love is a horrible thing to experience, and it can rarely be helped.

Gameplay wise, fe12 is incredibly solid. Lunatic until chapter 16 was probably some of the best time I've had playing an FE game, but everything after that gets kinda excessive. Enemies start having overly-inflated stats and forged weapons, and reinforcement/ambush spawns get downright evil, but it's doable without the rainbow potion. It actually felt playtested, contrary to FE11 Hard 5 where I farmed on earlygame bosses for several hundered turns in order to stand a chance going forward. Reclassing is back, and much better given unit balance is a lot better. There's no objective "best choice" like using Sedgar and Wolf for their ridiculous growth rates, or Caeda for demolishing bosses with the wing spear. Whereas FE11 was a weird hodge-podge of FE1/3B1 and modern FE design philosophies, FE12 feels more akin to the GBA titles, and that's for the better.

The game looks a bit nicer than FE11, too, despite re-using a lot of assets. It generally just has a brighter colour palette, better character portraits and nicer looking UI. I generally prefer the look of the DS games to Three Houses for example, honestly, since one of my favourite FE things were always the cute idle animations on the map. Fully 3D FE games just don't have them, and while I can excuse the Tellius games for being the only games with 3D models to represent units on the map for a while, they were the first 3D games in the series period. The DS games may not necessarily look good in comparison, but they and by extension every other FE game with 2D map sprites have far more charm. There're also some gorgeous illustrated stills for important cutscenes and pre-chapter story, can only hope we find hires versions of them some day.

One area that FE11 didn't fumble with was the soundtrack, and 12 is even better. All of the new story stuff has entirely new music, and it sounds fantastic across the board. Theme of Love and Puppets Don't Cry nearly brought me to tears, and the vigour behind Liberation and Holy War pushed me to actually overcome those lategame maps. I need to bring special attention to Puppet's Don't Cry, given that it's a new track added for the new story content. Again, chapter 16x can play out in multiple ways, and you're going to hear it (and maybe cry like I did) no matter what.

So yeah, FE12 is pretty good.