Mandatory to listen to this on loop while reading

The Last Promise is one of those rare fangames with such a legacy to it that it might as well be counted amongst the official series. To the casual observer, that legacy is just the scene where the protagonist gives an edgy speech about handling the weight of death and kills a bunch of knights while a Sonic 06 midi plays. But to those too far gone into FE communities, it's seen as an technically impressive feat that, especially for a time where FE rom hacking was in its infancy and even more especially when you realize it was made primarily by a teenager. It is not an understatement to say that the current FE hacking scene owes its existence to this game. Playing it and checking off other FE games you unironically prefer it to in the same way a military sniper checks down their kids is a time honored rite of passage. I've seen a fair bit of people echo the sentiment that it's better than all three of the official GBA FEs and while Sacred Stones has too much personal significance for me to fully agree, I absolutely can see where these people are coming from.
Mechanically, it doesn't do anything particularly unique among other FEs. It's just a really good example of the enemy phase focused gameplay associated with 7-9. At its best, you get creative maps like Chapter 12, a Thracia style escape map balanced around having limited resources at your disposal, Chapter 5x, the rare defense map that's actually good, and Chapter 27, a map with gimmick so good that Engage may or may not have ripped it off a decade later. At its worst, you have to deal with a couple long and boring maps which are nowhere near the worst ones official FE games have churned out.
Narratively, it's a mix of genuinely cool stuff and stuff that's ironically funny. Whereas most pre-3DS FE games try to use prose that fits a medieval setting, The Last Promise is written with a bluntness that feels "online" for lack of a better term. This results in a lot of scenes taking on a more comedic tone than intended: the infamous Sonic 06 midi speech, the earlygame chapter where Siegfried gets mad at some random village for not having a milita in a way that can only be described as the former being portrayed as the Chad and the latter being portrayed as the Soyjak, and a major boss who's so edgy that his description reads "Plagued by a hatred for anything that lives, he is 'the Blood Reaper.'" But still, there is a fair bit of genuinely compelling stuff here. The prevailing dynamic between Siegfried and Kelik both being bound to a promise they made because of the death of a respective loved one but the former being an idealist who carelessly rushes into battle and the latter being more aware of his material conditions and working within them, at the cost of having a hard time trusting most people. Both learn and grow from each other as seen in the opening of Chapter 23 and a subsequent optional talk conversation where they get genuine and emotionally vulnerable with each other and their dynamic with each other culminates in an awesome climax. It's nothing groundbreaking but it's impressive for a teenager and I'd put it above most FE stories (low bar admittedly).
However, what really makes Last Promise stand out as special isn't so much any individual aspect mechanically or narratively but rather the end of an era it represents. The patch completing the main story was released on August 17th, 2012, just four months after the Japanese release of Awakening and six months before the Awakening release of said game. The Last Promise feels like a time capsule of when FE was seen as this niche thing that you played for the mystique of a game where characters can actually die and not a mainstream seller of millions of copies that you played because you wanted to date and/or fuck the characters. There's so much little things that give me anemoia for FE communities I was never in, be it Siegfried's personal weapon Nothung harkening back to a time where calling a unit a "mage-killer" wouldn't cause you to get laughed out of the discussion, the character portraits being collaborative effort by multiple FE forum users, and the use of bit crushed OSTs of more niche RPGs like Valkyrie Profile and Ys hammering that this was when most people saw FE as just like those games. Playing The Last Promise a decade after its release gave me a feeling of discovery that I haven't had with new FE games for a long time.
Is The Last Promise a masterpiece either mechanically or artistically that's worthy of a 9/10? Probably not but review scores are bullshit and shouldn't be seen as anything grander than "I like this game this much." The Last Promise just has an indescribable aura to it that transcends traditional quality. Maybe being an FE fan for this long has done too much damage to me mentally and these paragraphs seem incomprehensible to normal human beings idfk.

One thing that Unicorn Overlord excels at when nothing else can is a sense of scale; during combat, the feeling of traversing these huge lands and fighting armies at immense disadvantages is sold very well. Outside of combat, traversing the world and rebuilding it is always a fun inbetween.

Unicorn Overlord also falls apart when examined in more detail. Individual characters are extremely basic and the story behind each continent are as interesting as the characters, with an exception that Bastorias has interesting concepts that are also never really reckoned with. Team building feels shallow; not that "anything works", but there feels like there's very little real variety in individual classes. I'm also not a fan of gambit systems but that's more me than an issue with UO, but it definetly didn't convince me otherwise.

And I can't really say that it's more of the sum of its parts because the scale also works against it; by the time I reached Bastorias I was already tired because nothing really changes. The overworld aspect is repetitive, the secrets aren't really secrets and are just basic things to get good equipment, and the gameplay never really felt like it got difficult. Even in the final quest where all of these characters and nations unite, it doesn't end up making up for how the past 40 hours of Unicorn Overlord continued to be tasteless oatmeal, with a story and concepts done in much better fashion. Calling this Fire Emblem Awakening for the Switch is lowkey an insult to FE.

I cannot lie, I'm genuinely very disappointed in this game, especially with a company as consistently strong an output as Vanillaware it pains me that this game really only has those good ass Vanillaware visuals going for it.

In terms of gameplay, the game has a lot of elements that I would generally enjoy on paper, the formations and the way tactics form together should be so much better than it actually is, there's just so many variables to the point that it largely becomes a numbers game since character building, for the purposes of beating the game (played on the second highest difficulty) is really easy and it's not super hard to make even an unoptimal formation just work through sheer force of will, which really harms the strategy layer. Also the real time Ogre Battle style strategy has a lot of problems on its own. The worst being a lot of quality of life issues, such as not being able to see how your formations will do out of deployment, and the battle forecast changing at the drop of a hat. There's so many variables to battles that you can send a battalion over to an enemy where it says it'll be a sure win, and despite seemingly no other circumstances changing it suddenly switches to a stalemate of a battle which is incredibly frustrating for planning purposes, on top of the fact that if you make mistakes there's no backing out. In many ways I can't help but compare this game to the neighbouring turn based tactics genre, where at least I can make an assessment of which move I can take that would be the most optimal, Unicorn Overlord forces you to throw shit out and if it doesn't work then tough shit, which leads to an incredibly unsatisfying tactical experience. Also there's way too many liberation missions, which I know is for controlling the level curve, but even then the level curve is fucking wacked out by the endgame, there's like a 5 level recommended level jump for no reason. Nearly every gameplay element in the game is something that could work but has a botched enough execution that frustrates me because, man, I really do want to love this game.

But most frustrating of all is the story here, the only way I can describe is like bad Fire Emblem. There's a shitload of characters and they all interact with many others in the army but unlike Fire Emblem these characters offer the substance and flavour of white rice, these characters are truly bland in a way that seems almost alien to me compared to the characters in like Odin Sphere and 13 Sentinels. The story is also dead simple but still does a few things that really hurt its narrative, the villains in this game are fuckin terrible and their motivations never amount to anything interesting, meanwhile all the good guys are so generically good that even the bad guys that become good have some crutch excuse like mind control, hostage situation, or some other hackneyed out that prevents these characters from really flourishing. The rapport system is something I usually always like because it gives these characters that don't really interact in the main story a chance to be fleshed out as characters but all it can offer is the most shallow looks at these characters in their totality to the point that they're just functions to me, Armour guy, Horse guy, Bow guy they never offer anything more interesting than hating the evil empire because they're evil and it's just really surprising to see a game with so much love put into the production lean back so heavily on just being so consistently mid.

Just a really frustrating offering from Vanillaware from me, especially for a game that nearly bankrupted the company I expected so much better because this game really only has its visuals going for it, but I can get that from any other Vanillaware game and actually have a good game too.

Huge Fire Emblem Hater Excited to Play It for First Time

well I don’t hate Fire Emblem, more so the fanbase that’s associated with it, said fanbase in particular turned me off from the franchise for nearly a decade, whoops! however there’s a time where you need to put your pettiness aside and not judge a book from its cover, so I decided enough was enough and chose to play my first game of the franchise: Fire Emblem……….

Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light

alright so there’s this dude named Marth, he’s the prince of Altea but he’s not really there since his kingdom got taken over a few years ago so he’s moping about in a smaller nation named Talys. one day though some pirates from another place named Galdar attempt an invasion, but since they’re pirates Marth and his small gang of allies have no issue defeating them and saving Talys. meeting up with the king right after, he gives Marth the A-OK to venture beyond Talys so he can gather up an army that’ll stand up to the Dolhr Empire, a powerful nation that has a stronghold on the majority of Archanea, the setting of the game. as the game goes on Marth takes on more enemies as he gathers more allies whether they be from villages or held prisoner or even wanting to switch sides. Marth’s ultimate goal is to stop Medeus the Shadow Dragon, the main guy in control of Dolhr, as well as obtain the Falchion, the only weapon capable of defeating Medeus. that’s just the main summary but the game has a fair amount of cutscenes at the beginning and end of each Chapter as well as in-between with character recruitments, though not as much as the later games from what I’ve seen.

since this is my first Fire Emblem the comparisons to the later games will be kept to a minimum since my knowledge of them is pretty minimal, though I’ll still bring them up whenever I feel like it. so this is a SRPG, here all your characters or units are placed in an overworld map per Chapter and you control each unit one-by-one. your characters all have different classes that determine their stats, movement, weaponry, etc. for example Marth is a Lord who’s somewhat of an all rounder and the only one who can use Rapiers, then you have Caeda who’s a Pegasus Knight and she has a fair amount of movement in the map and can go over water and mountain tiles with ease as well as being able to use swords and lances, however Pegasus Knights have a great weakness to Archers who are able to take them down in only about a hit or two. as for the Archers like Gordin, not only are they good against Pegasus Knights but they’re also able to hit foes from a distance, the downside being that their movement isn’t the greatest and they can’t attack up close. then there’s Cain and Abel who are Cavaliers AKA horsemen and these guys are really good, their movement is great, they can equip swords lances and javelins to hit from a distance, and have really good stats, I think their only real problem is that they can’t really do much against Knights. Knights like Draug have really good defense meaning they can take on a fair amount of enemies types as well as being able to hit back decently hard, however not only is their movement bad but they have a big weakness if either the enemy uses Armorslayers or Hammers on them or is a magic based class like the Mages. Mages like Merric have fast speed which means they’re able to make follow up attacks in battle, tomes are also their main weaponry and tomes have a fixed set of damage which is helpful for taking down bulkier classes, but like every other mage in every other RPG they’re really frail so they can go down pretty easily if they’re a lot of enemies to fight against. so you kinda get the idea it’s like Pokémon’s Type system, however there’s also a promotion system where some classes can upgrade if they use a promotion item if they’re at least Level 10 or higher. Cavaliers become Paladins which are an upgrade in every way, Pegasus Knights become Wyvern Riders which while they gain a weakness against Wyrmslayers they otherwise become more bulkier and powerful. Archers become Snipers which have greater attack and speed as well as more movement on the map, and both Mages and Clerics can promote to the Bishop which can use both healing magic as well as offensive magic so they’re pretty much the DQ Sages of Fire Emblem. oddly for some reason there’s a few classes that can’t promote at all. something like the Lord makes sense but then you have Knights which are unable to promote even though there’s another class in the game called Generals that are a complete upgrade yet the two are entirely separate classes here, looking at the Wiki page it seems they change that as soon as the third game so they probably knew they screwed up. now there’s one last class I want to bring up real quick because I think it’s really fascinating. very late into the game, you’ll be able to have Marth recruit a character named Xane. Xane is the sole character of the franchise that’s apart of the Freelancer class. Xane is able to transform into any unit on your team that’s next to him, even copying their level and stats so you don’t even need to level up the guy, all you need to do is provide him with the weapons of the class you want him to be and you’re all set. there’s no other character like this dude and Fire Emblem Heroes doesn’t even his default self in that game because of his unique ability, the game that has every other playable character in the franchise from what I’ve heard, that’s pretty crazy.

now onto the other stuff, the weapons in Fire Emblem have a durability system in which there’s a limited amount of time you can use them before they break and you’ll have to use a new one, so basically Breath of the Wild. the weaker weapons like the Iron weapons tend to have more durability but the stronger ones like the Steel weapons have less of that and will break apart sooner if you aren’t good at conserving them. of course you can always buy new weapons at an armory on the map but sometimes they won’t have the weapon you’re looking for. for example there’s a good portion during the middle of the game where you’re unable to find armories selling axe weapons so your Fighters which exclusively uses axes (they don’t attack with their fists surprisingly) will be at a disadvantage if you’re using up their weapons a lot. Javelins are a strange case as they’re a common item in armories during the early game, however after Chapter 9 they never appear in armories again, 9/25 btw so Javelins are pretty much gone after the first third of the game so make sure you stock up on them, don’t stock on them too much though because you have a limited inventory. a character can only hold up to four items at a time so you’ll have to use the storage often which also has a limit of 40 items that can be held. on top of that you can’t send items to storage when you’re visiting shops, once you buy your 4th item your character’s turn is used up. if that wasn’t enough, throwing away items or even giving an item to another character takes up a turn as well, inventory management in this game is a slow hassle.

Fire Emblem also has a terrain system that plays a part in both the overworld and in battles. plain tiles don’t do anything but give you a 5% evasion during battles, forest tiles take up an extra turn of movement but provide you with an 15% evasion bonus, indoors pillar tiles function the same way as forest tiles, mountain tiles take up a lot of movement unless you’re a flying unit but in turn they also give you a small defense boost, sea tiles are only crossable by a few units and take up lots of movements but Pirates and flying units have no issue going through them, desert tiles are similar though Mages and Clerics can traverse them easily instead of Pirate, and lastly fort tiles not only boost defense but also heal a little bit of HP at the beginning of your turn. fort tiles also have a secondary effect in that sometimes after enough turns, some fort tiles on the map will begin spawning enemy reinforcements for a set amount of turns, thankfully you can minimize the damage by having your units place themselves on one of these tiles which prevents the enemies from spawning until you remove your unit or wait until the later turns where they’ll cease to spawn. if you don’t pay attention of the forts though, these reinforcements will quickly take over the map and kill your team members which leads me to my next point.

if all your unit’s HP is depleted, they’re gone. dead. terminated. there’s no way to revive them or have them come back the next Chapter, if their HP goes to 0 then they’re out for the rest of the game. Pokémon fans may refer to this as Nuzlocke rules, but Fire Emblem has been doing this while they were still Capsule Monsters. I think FE12 was when they introduced Casual Mode where units simply retreat when they lose all their HP and apparently in those later ones some plot important characters aren’t able to be killed off, however this is the first game so anyone is fair game. Caeda in particular can get you the bad ending if she ends up dying at any part of the game, leaving Marth maidenless and unable to score. permanent death was added because Kaga (the FE guy who I will probably learn more about in the future) wanted people to feel attached and care about the characters you use, incentivizing you to keep them alive, but for me the reason I want to keep them alive is because then I’d have to replace them with a low level unit who will probably die even quicker. on top of that if you lose a unit that’s in a certain class then there’s a good chance you’ll be waiting a while before you can recruit another unit of the same class. for example if you let Caeda die to something like an Archer in Chapter 1 well bad luck for you because you won’t get the chance to use another flying unit until Chapter 10. so yeah keeps your units alive.

a thing I find fascinating about FE1 is how they handle the characters. from what I know in some modern Fire Emblem games like let’s say Fates, a lot of the characters are simple in that have a singular trait that’s exaggerated to the point where it can be hard to take them seriously (feel free to prove me wrong my Fates knowledge comes from the internet though I’m not interest in starting a FE war in the comments). FE1’s characters are simple in a different way in that you know almost nothing about them since they’ll most likely only get a chance to speak when you recruit them, some of the beginning characters like Cain and Abel don’t even get dialogue at all. I guess in a way this isn’t too much different from the modern games but what makes me appreciate the simplicity here is you’re the one that’s supposed to fill in the blanks. the game doesn’t tell you how these characters are supposed to act, that’s up to you, the player. maybe Draug is the quiet type who only speaks during unexpected or important events, or perhaps Cain and Abel have a rivalry and are constantly typing to one-up another, or maybe Gordin is the guy who comes into clutch when the team needs him most, that’s how he felt to me. a personal favorite of mine is Beck the Ballistician who in the Chapter you recruit him in he’s unable to go down the mountains of the village he’s hiding at, yet he’s able to destroy the enemy Ballisticians nearby him in one hit, so I imagined him as the one dude who always go “DON’T WORRY GUYS I GOT THIS” but due to his abyssmal movement it often takes him too long to get into the actual battle, but when he actually gets to land his attacks he absolutely destroys everything in his path and is able to turn the tide into our favor, okay maybe I do care about the characters. in this game you have to use your imagination and I think that’s cool, you don’t really get the opportunity to do that in a lot of video games in our current day.

something I also appreciate about this game is the ascending enemy progression throughout. you start off having to face against Pirates at the beginning, but then you’ll move up to facing against Archers and Cavaliers, then Knights are added to the picture as well as Generals as bosses, then Mages are added as well as Wyvern Riders, it then tops off with Manaketes as bosses which are basically people that can transform into dragons, then after that eventually you get to the point where Manaketes become regular enemies and by then you’ll probably be shaking in your boots. there’s something so satisfying about heading deeper into the depths of the Dolhr stronghold while at the same time Marth’s army’s grows more powerful as well. all that accumulates to Medeus the Shadow Dragon himself, though that’s actually false advertising since he’s actually an earth dragon but I don’t care because the earth dragon design is dope he looks like a giant komodo dragon and I think those guys are awesome. I also think it’s cool that the “Shadow Dragon” is really just a title it’s a pretty neat subversion of your expectations, if only the actual fight was challenging since he goes down in three turns with the Falchion and he can’t be damaged any other way.

this is the part where I talk about the music but not really since the music’s one of the weakest aspects about the game IMO. there’s about twenty or so tracks in the game which is respectable but most of the time you’ll hear a few of them for most of the gameplay: the one during the map, one when your unit attacks an enemy, one during your enemy’s turn, one when they attack your units, one when most of the enemies are defeated, and maybe if you’re lucky you’ll sometimes hear that one theme from Smash that might be the best track in the game. otherwise most of the soundtrack is serviceable but hearing the same music over and over throughout 24 Chapters gets pretty old, to the point where I was shocked when I suddenly heard a new track after finishing a late-game chapter, great track too. there was a point when I discovered you could disable the music in the menu options and I just ended up playing Arcana and Alcahest music in the background during the last couple of Chapters. thankfully the final Chapter actually plays different music both for the map and when the enemy attacks as well as when fighting Medeus himself, I almost thought they wouldn’t do so.

if you thought hearing the same five or so tracks were repetitive, get ready to see the same set of tiles for the entire game! visually the game’s pretty samey, however the map layouts help make each Chapter stand out sometimes. Chapter 1 is just a really small island which is what Talys pretty much is, very good first map. Chapter 3 has a bunch of tall mountains everything so it gives off the look of a mountainous range, I also appreciate the detail of the two new recruits being nearby an enemy fortress to make it look like they’re running away from it, which they are. Chapter 6 is the first of many chapters to use brick and pillar tiles to simulate the look of an indoor castle. Chapter 13 uses a lot of forest tiles which makes it look like those hedge mazes and Chapter 15 in a similar manner does the same with sand tiles to make it look like a sand oasis. then you have Chapter 23 my favorite map layout. there’s that makeshift courtyard you start off at in the beginning, then you move up those big stairs, and then after that you slowly move your units up an ascending steep pathway to reach another set of stairs that takes you up to the roof of the castle, now that’s how you use your limitations. according to Kaga, FE1 was meant to be a fun passion project which is why the graphics are the way they are, so that’s all the more impressive how the team was able to create some cool looking maps with what little they had. oh yeah the battle animations are really great too. I’ve seen a lot of praise over the GBA battle animations and while the ones in this game aren’t as amazing as those they’re still neat regardless. I like how Marth has a unique animation for when he’s about to land a critical hit so you can go “OH THERE HE GOES” whenever he starts dashing over there. then when you give Marth the Falchion, stars get absorbed into the blade before he rushes over to land a hit then he proceeds to do a Richter Belmont backflip right after, kino. also shout out to Medeus’s transformation into an earth dragon as it starts off with a bunch of rubble followed up by a dragon claw popping out before his whole big ass sprite appears, the sprite is badass to which only makes me more mad that he dies in only FOUR HITS.

somehow this janky 30+ year old game made me interested in Fire Emblem and not the 30+ million people shilling the franchise, sometimes you got to do things yourself. I don't know bros I was planning to give this game a 5/10 but it started growing on me during the halfway point and then right now I decided to skip the 6/10 together and instead go for a 7/10, is this what they call the Fire Emblem brainrot? nevertheless if you don’t mind old NES games then give this one a try, though you’ll probably have to find an English translation since Nintendo took down the official translation from the eShop a few years ago, but hey if Nintendo doesn’t want you to play the game legitimately then maybe you shouldn’t wink wink. I guess if you’re still getting filtered then there’s also a SNES and DS remake that’s probably better even though I’ve never played them, though there’s also a GBA hack that I played for about twenty minutes so I can recommend you that if you know where to find it, it also uses the official translation so get BTFO’d Nintendo. so yeah my worst fears have been realized: I’m now a Fire Emblem fan, though I don’t care because it actually seems kind of cool and I am now very upset that those kinds of Fire Emblem fans made me avoid this franchise like the plague. anyway I have another 16 Fire Emblem games to play through, I wish all Fire Emblem Heroes fans a very “my favorite character did not win Choose Your Legends”

I kinda wish my first SRPG was Super Robot Wars though, it has Getter Robo