You know, i have a pretty negative opinion overall when it comes to Shouzu Kaga's games. He may be the creator of Fire Emblem but i've always felt that it was for the better that he left IntSys and Fire Emblem behind, because his track record is not that good. For the longest time, i thought the only good game the guy made was Mystery of the Emblem. Shadow Dragon NES and Gaiden both aged horrendously but i can't really fault it, to be fair. Genealogy of the Holy War and Thracia 776 are an absolute mess of game design. Berwick Saga.....is fine but i just didn't click with it so i will refrain from giving any opinion on it. Vestaria Saga started out good and got really, really bad as it went on. So where does that leave TearRing Saga, the first of these "Kaga Sagas". Well, i was pleasantly surprised to find it's actually pretty good.

The game is basically an expanded version of Gaiden and as such, the structure of the maps allowed for easy completion (mostly). There is no Weapon Triangle which is pretty based. It's a fine mechanic but both Shadows of Valentia and Three Houses show that you can do well without it and TearRing Saga is another example of that. Also, there's like two axe users in the game, a Weapon Triangle would be extremely unbalanced. Anyways, because of how short maps tended to be, i pretty much blitzed through this game, which honestly felt really nice. It is a bit on the easy side, probably comparable with Blazing Blade, but that's not bad at all.

On the narrative side, while Runan is just brown Marth, Holmes is one of my new favorite Lords. Holmes is basically the closest i'm gonna get to a Fire Emblem of the Caribbean, which means i gotta take it. I honestly kinda wish this game was just about him because while Runan is fine, i was much more invested in what Holmes was doing (even if his romance with Katri is kinda rough).

I also like how the usual kingdom vs empire plot is handled in this game. A lot of the enemy generals you face are pretty honorable. You have your shitters, of course, but the game did a good job at humanizing the bigger threats and how the war is affecting them. One particular scene i like is when the princess of the enemy faction demanded Runan's head for killing her uncle and her father is like "to think my sweet little daughter would be saying things like this". Something i really liked about Path of Radiance was how it showed how the other side was thinking. But while Path of Radiance showed it from a civilian standpoint, TearRing Saga showed it from a military and nobility standpoint. Because let's be real, in most Fire Emblems, the people of the enemy nation are perfectly fine with you marching across their lands.

The game was honestly going great buuuuuuuuuuut it really dropped the ball on the last stretch. Almost after the third route split gave me no choice but to dock several points. The map quality takes a serious beating here. Literally all of Holmes' maps are warp skip maps and while warp skipping is funny, i do think if you design a map and the player's first thought is "fuck this shit, i'm warp skipping", you did a pretty bad job. Meanwhile, Runan's maps on the third route split started getting way too cute with reinforcement spam. Ch.34 in particular is honestly a war crime. So much shit is thrown at you, it started giving me war flashbacks to Binding Blade Ch.21, time-limit included (even if TRS Ch.34 technically doesn't have one). And it all culminated in an annoying but not super terrible final map.

Narratively, the game also takes a hit in this last stretch because i really, really do not care about evil cult when the kingdom vs empire plot was way more interesting, and this is made worse because the cult is directly responsible for the entire war. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the enemy generals hate the cult but i'm just tired of evil cult being the cause of everyone's problems.

There's something interesting on paper on how the Gerxel Cult was formed after centuries of oppression and there are two characters that try to humanize the cult but it all still falls flat when all the other members of the cult are presented as nothing more than demon worshippers. The main villain is particularly pathetic, mainly because he barely shows up in the story, not to mention he has zero interactions with the main heroes. I never thought it'd be possible to write a main villain in this way. He's hardly relevant, has no interactions.

Fire Emblem has never done evil cult well and while TearRing Saga isn't technically Fire Emblem, i'm still counting this as another instance where evil cult is a big blight on an otherwise good story. Although honestly, i think the only time evil cult has ever been done well in fiction is in Star Wars, because more people wanna be Sith Lords than Jedi Knights. I think that, on very rare occasion, writing an evil cult into your story is just something that will just make you wanna roll your eyes. But maybe that's just how i see it.

Oh and the music is shit btw, with Holmes' map theme being particularly bad. Not a single certified banger, only the final map theme is alright.

Honestly though, despite the flaws i talked about, this game is pretty solid. The third route split is pretty shit but at least the ending is cute (and does have a badass scene ngl). Ch.34 has pretty much guaranteed i'll never do another playthrough but if you're a fan of Fire Emblem, you'll likely enjoy this. I may not like Kaga's games most of the time but i can say this is easily his best work which admittedly wasn't that hard, his only other good game is Mystery of the Emblem.

An extraordinary SRPG and the third in a streak of Greats from Director, Shouzou Kaga. The game as a whole feels like a ton of ideas that had been bottled up previously finally had the chance to come to fruition, following Kaga's departure from Intelligent Systems/Nintendo. In many ways, it's great to see this all realized and a refinement that takes from most every previous Fire Emblem game.

This game ultimately feels like it borrows most from Fire Emblem Thracia 776 and Fire Emblem Gaiden in its map/unit design and split paths respectively. One of my favorite aspects of Tear Ring Saga is how most units feel like they have a niche, and their own reason to be deployed, distinct even from characters in similar classes as them. This is a mark that continues to show up in Kaga's best works. You are constantly handed powerful units and/or powerful tools that only specific ones can use. It's very fun to mess around with Sierra's Warp, Raffin's Flight and Bulk, Plum's Dance, and the unique statlines of many other characters.

Throughout this game's longer-than-average runtime and with a whopping 40 main story chapters, you encounter many different map designs with smart enemy placements, fun side objectives, and tons of secrets that are fun to unravel. I enjoyed my time with most of the game's maps, though it is worth noting that some of Holmes' later maps definitely felt more worth a Warp Skip than the stronger chapters in the game.

I really love the story told in this game and the shifting perspective. The plot centers around what is effectively Medieval Mutually-Assured Destruction and seeing how the nations scramble to pick up the pieces and threaten use of such powerful deities and guardians makes a lot of sense. I also very much love how this game handles its "Fell Dragon" and "Evil Cult" compared to every single Fire Emblem game. Whereas Fire Emblem Genealogy of the Holy War touches on the persecution aspect, this game dives deep into it with a rich history of colonization and retaliation painting every side of the conflict. It's much more fascinating and enriching than the usual "Dark Cult evil just because" plot.

I won't go into full details but there are parts of this game that may necessitate trigger warnings for some players. Personally, I do think they bring up interesting gameplay ramifications and are realistic, grim parts of this world that absolutely would never have been explored in a Nintendo-published Kaga game, but I understand the perspective of people who think they are gratuitous as well. Still, it is very fascinating to me to give the player the choice to intentionally cause a very traumatic event to a character for no other purpose but a gameplay benefit. Usually games offer choices with equal gameplay trade-off, but this game tests the player and see if they're willing to make their digital characters suffer for their own benefit. It's something that feels very meta and modern, and I like that.

The game's biggest strength, can also be its weakness. Tear Ring Saga is very verbose. On the positive end, this means you get to learn a lot about EVERY last character in your cast (without it being relegated to optional or difficult to obtain conversations), every nation, and the history of this world down to the origin. On the downside, these tantalizing bits of information are not delivered in the most deft way possible. You will regularly be left with text boxes going back and forth for upwards of an hour at a time in some cases, 30 minutes on average in others.

Overall, Tear Ring Saga takes a lot of great aspects from a lot of great games and spreads its wings even further. For the Fire Emblem die-hard who's played every entry in that series, I would say this is a need-to-play. This game is an absolute joy to play and read.

Throughout Tear Ring Saga, there are multiple points where decisions you make will give you different cutscenes. One such case happens during the game's epilogue, where 1 of 2 scenes may play depending on a previous decision. These 2 possible scenes include one between Attrom and Lyria and one between Xeno and Juni. Here, I will explain how the differences between these cutscenes is a commentary on the idea of media striving to be unproblematic.

The cutscene between Attrom and Lyria is a fairly shallow moment of comedic relief. It's not poorly written, just simple. Lyria jokes about returning to a known human trafficker so that Attrom will agree to let her join him, and he gives in. Again, not terrible but also you don't learn anything profound about either these characters or the world they live in.

As for the Juni and Xeno scene, we hear how Juni's family was targeted by enemy soldiers during an unexpected attack by a neighboring country. She witnessed the murder and subsequent desecration of her family, all the while she pretended she wasn't related to them because it was the only way she could save herself. Juni laments that she had to beg her own family's murderers for mercy before confiding in Xeno that he's the only person she trusts due to them having a similar past.

We then learn that she's been changing her appearance ever since out of fear that her past will be exposed, and we get what is quite possibly gaming's first White Woman Jumpscare when Juni reveals that part of her disguise includes darkening her skin and she's actually white. I would hope the problematic elements here are obvious.

The racism in Juni amd Xeno's scene inexcusable, yet it is attached to one of the most emotional moments in the game. In contrast, Attrom and Lyria's scene contains nothing so offensive but is comparatively a very dull and forgettable part of this 2 hour epilogue.

So what is this getting at? A lot of great art contains problematic elements or is made by problematic people but if you're mature enough to understand that then you can open yourself up to a whole new world of enriching and intriguing stories. Alternatively, you can go out of your way to only consume the cleanest content conceivable but that's how you're going to end up in your 20s watching Bluey or that disney movie about the singing Colombians. There'll be no risk of your being exposed to uncomfortable topics, but you're also going to stunt your analysis skills.

The first thing I wanted to mention is that this is a game I finished for the first time fairly recently, only a few months ago as of writing this review. I played nearly every other Fire Emblem game while I was in middle school (or even elementary school with some games) so I haven't had the several years to reflect on and replay TRS like I have the others. Because of this, my TRS review may seem less considered or thoughtful than the others I've written.

TRS' story is a less than graceful combination of FE4's scale with FE5's more intimate storytelling. The world of TRS is given an excruciating amount of fleshing out, and I do mean excruciating. One of my biggest problem with TRS is the lore dumps. There are 2 instances in particular that stood out to me, those being Sylphis' exposition dump of doom where she covers multiple different topics and that part after the Welt arc where you spend like half an hour in cutscenes discussing the political affairs of a country you've heard named once with characters you've never met. I know this sounds like a bad thing, but at the very least you can't say TRS is sparse of world building. This story is nothing if not dense with information for you to parse through and if I'mbeing honest, I wouldn't have it any other way.

As mentioned prior, it's all too common for dialogue to feel never-ending but that isn't always a bad thing given how good the writing is. This is where TRS' FE5 dna shows through, with well written and complex characters that attaches you to the characters and further immerses you in the world. I appreciate how nearly every single character has a decent amount of development, meaning that the FE5 days of 2 lines of dialogue are a thing of the past. I also like how it deconstructs elements of past FE games. What if manaketes were degraded into living weapons? What if the ugly generic bandit actually had a good heart? What if the soulless military general just so happened to fight on your side? All of this is without mentioning Holmes and his story, which makes him easily my favorite protagonist thus far. While TRS does have its rough spots, it overall is able to combine the strongest parts of every prior game to make for a story that gives the Jugdral games a run for their money.

Gameplay wise, TRS is my favorite FE so far. It's an amalgamation of everything that came before it with a slew of new additions that make for one of the most in depth battle systems I've seen in an srpg. The map design is also great, with nearly every map having something about it to make it stand out. The character growth in this game is also my favorite so far. The enhanced skill system makes each unit feel more distinct and gives more of an incentive to train them to their max.

I don't talk about presentation too much in these reviews, but I would be amiss not to mention how beautiful this game looks. The portraits in particular are my favorite in any Fire Emblem with how detailed and expressive they are. The PS1's upgraded hardware allows for Mayumi Hirota's art to shine even better than on the snes.

Lastly, I normally I try to avoid talking about individual characters in my reviews for the sake of not going on never-ending tangents, but there's a special someone in this game whose reputation precedes her. I'm sure you already know Juni's story, but a Spark notes version would be "girl disguises self to escape genocide, part of disguise includes darkening her skin". I feel that the problems with this are self evident. It's a shame that this is here at all, it's such a minor part of Juni's character that was completely unnecessary and the whole ordeal lasts maybe 10 seconds but it still manages to be a noticeable blemish in a 40 hour game. I don't think this was done out of malice, it's so brief and out of nowhere that I don't think they realized the impact this moment would have on the player but that doesn't change how bad this is.

That being said, I still think TRS is great. In Kaga's first game away from Fire Emblem, he's proven that the quality of his previous games were down to his own talent rather than any help from Nintendo. Also, it's a spiritual successor to Gaiden. Of course I love it.

This is the Fire Emblem formula i absolutely adore. It has great world building and the old style fire emblem storytelling like in the genealogy saga. It's the same formula of those games, but it seems the minor characters get more scenes to shine in than i'm used to. Lot of optional conversations between characters and specific events as well, very fun to unlock everything extra you can with a guide.
It also doesn't have the ridiculous long maps of the snes FE games, the maps are short and nice. A lot of player friendly improvements since the snes days. The graphics also look a lot better. Not the ugly ps1 3D but nice 2d sprites.
The 2 armies with different commanders where you can sometimes trade characters is nicely put together, i like it better than in Radiant Down.
Last but not least: one of the main lords (Holmes) is a pirate captain bow user with thief skills and some of the funniest dialogues ever. What's not to like about that?
This is a MUST PLAY for anyone that fell in love with the FE snes games (despite their flaws). I promise you that you won't be disappointed. It really feels like an evolution of those titles.