Kind of a mixed bag, if you're the type of player that loves to optimise stuff and wants to get a 'perfect' speedy, low turn count playthrough then this game will be up your ally.

A remake of FE3 and as a follow up to Shadow Dragon it seems to have added a bit more colour into the maps, portraits and combat screens, the artist doing the CGs for in between the maps still hates drawing eyes though.

This game keeps a lot of FE11's new features like replacement units if you lose too many and allowing you to change most character's classes, this lets players who know what they're doing get pretty experimental with what type of character builds you can do, along with the forging system being back give advanced players lots of potential to mess with but more casual players can end up just being blinded with options. One big thing missing from FE11 is ballisticians which is very sad cus 10 range weapons are funny.

With that said I'm not a fan of how the difficulty modes work, along with the stat creep of FE11 this game also does stuff like taking away the warp staff in higher difficulties and having lunatic reverse, wherein not only is every enemy stat creeped but they all also move first in combat no matter what.

Much like the original I'm not a fan of having miss-able items which lock you out of the 'true' ending really sucks, however it's easier to not miss any of them but it still points a new player towards wanting to look up a guide which isn't great in my opinion. This also goes against the rest of the mechanics pushing you to go for no resets and pushing through your mistakes.

Adding in a remake of BSFE is also a nice touch and kind of required as trying to play the original in today's world is near impossible.

In terms of story it's mostly the same as FE3 but a lot of the new stuff drags the game down a bit, the new plot points don't really mesh well with the original story and the time scale of the whole orphanage thing makes zero sense. Speaking of new stuff the new maps also aren't great but at least they're only 1-2 turn puzzles, while I didn't enjoy them it's another thing this game gives for puzzle-emblem enjoyers.

Overall it's a decent game but would probably end up replaying FE3 over this in the future if I felt like playing more Marth emblem. If you're a big fan of FE11 it's worth having a look at, try out hard 1 or 2 and if you loved that then the harder modes will be enjoyable too.

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.

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.

This game walked so the future of Fire Emblem could run.
The main features attributing to what many would say caused Awakening's success are actually found here. Unfortunately it was released late in the DS lifespan and was never released outside of Japan (The first FE since FE6 to do so and hopefully the last) that many missed out on the impact this game started.

FE12 is a remake of Book 2 from FE3 but unlike FE11 before it, this chooses to change things up a bit more. First we have the addition of a Casual mode where units will not stay permadead if fallen. Instead they will return in the next chapter, available to use again and this is huge for widening the appeal of the series. Do I ever use it? Outside of Conquest, no. Permadeath is part of the appeal of FE to me and I like having it on. But as an optional feature for those turned off by permadeath? Casual mode is a fantastic addition and one I wholeheartedly welcome to the series.
Now the other major is a "my unit" character. Essentially you can create your own character and use them throughout the game like a regular character, which is really neat. There's a decent amount of customisation available and being able to self insert yourself into the game is pretty cool. I'm not a huge fan of how they essentially become Marth's right hand person and have a lot of importance placed on them throughout the plot (something I wish they would stop doing with avatar characters personally) but I can appreciate the appeal of having your own personal character.

Now FE12 addresses many of the issues I had with it's prequel FE11. The artstyle, while still not great, is decently cleaned up enough to not look so drab. Side chapters are available through beating maps quickly instead of having few units left. We now have a Tellius style base before every chapter where we can have base conversations to flesh out the lore and the world and the story via Jagien and even support conversations to flesh out the characters! I think Kris (the avatar) has conversations with everybody while everyone else essentially have a handful with important characters to them (like the Whitewings and Minerva all have supports with each other) but this is very helpful for making these characters more interesting. On top of that we can even access a Radiant Dawn still character tree to see connections to everyone and each country has descriptions about them on the map. They did everything possible to flesh out Archanea at last and I appreciate so much. They even brought in cut characters like Barst so we have axe users! Truly they wanted to make this the best FE3 experience possible.

Now this being a remake though does mean it carries across the major issue I had with FE3 Book 2: collecting the Starsphere shards and Binding Shield orbs to access the true ending. I don't like a linear game with no way to backtrack locking a true ending behind missable items, especially in FE.

The few grievances aside, this is a fantastic remake of Book 2 from FE3. It fleshes out it's character and world while updating it's gameplay and accessibility for a wider player base.

Cleric!Athena moves up so that she can rescue Draco!Minerva, Draco!Minerva proceeds to move to Maria to recruit her and give her the one use rescue she had in her inventory. Next Maria rescues Julian (who has a forged Elfire tome called SpitElfire) and proceeds to recruit Lena and give her the tome. Lena then attacks and exactly one-rounds Elice with the new tome she's got.

Feena now dances for Cleric!Athena so that she can rescue Marth. Paladin!Dice proceeds to move forward and one-shot Nyna with Gradivus. Marth finally attacks Medeus with his Falchion.

Capped level Bishop!Arran will then use his again staff on Lena so she can move once more and heal Marth with the Recover staff. Capped level Sorcerer!Beck takes the one use Again staff from Arran so that Marth can act again.

Horseman!Caesar uses the map save point and resets the game until Marth gets a critical hit on Medeus.

Finally, Sage!Radd grabs the Rescue staff from Athena and ends his turn. Sage!FeMU then grabs the last another one use Again staff from Arran so that Sage!Radd gets to act again.

Radd moves forwards and then proceeds to Rescue Berserker!Roshea close enough that he can reach Medues. Berserker!Roshea then gets the final hit on Medeus and wins the map.

Thank you for playing Lunatic Reverse!

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.

The best FE game. New Mystery is the best designed game in the series from a gameplay standpoint. All of its maps are memorable, it turns hated tropes like dessert maps into amazing maps (Anri's way), and has such a customizable cast of units. Reclassing is vital in this game and is so fun to mess around, and the stat boosters really help make any unit you like into a great one. Hard is the perfect difficulty, and the ones above can be great challenges. While its story is not great, the characters are fun, and some of them are amazing, like Minerva, Michalis, Katarina and Xane for example in terms of writting.