The story has awful plot holes, but in its defense, it was also so boring to the point where I couldn't bother to pay enough attention to notice them while playing. Also funny how the one touted for having a good cast of characters caps supports per character. It has the issue of a boring first 1/3 of the game being Lyn's boring filler arc with as boring as shit kindergarten class levels, and late game would have shit levels too what with the boring rout levels, one of which has WEATHER, and spammy trash mob levels that dial the enemy phase up to fucking eleven as well as fog of war levels that hide bolting mages and flyers that can engage your units beyond torch/thief range so just where the fuck is the counterplay. The other levels were fine, and I thought the game was decent because I like fire emblem gameplay in general.

Fun combat but sometimes dungeoning back to fucking back can get very burnout inducing. I liked the story on paper and in certain aspects but there were some “let’s be stupid for the sake of creating stakes” moments. It can feel too much like Colette is a vehicle, and Lloyd might not jive with everyone as a protagonist. Still, while modern fans call this game dated, I think it was enjoyable for its fast paced combat and whimsical worldbuilding. I played the 60fps version and the fact combat on modern releases doesn’t play smooth like this might deter people playing on said versions.

It kinda continues some of the episodic feeling of fc but some of said episodes are worse like, the hologram projector episode in ch1 (ooh a picture how scary) ch2’s earthquakes and so on and it can at times feel like it has aimless / boring shit and the heroes can sometimes be written to either let villains escape or be overredeeming to them, as well as there being backtracking in the final chapter as well as story cutscenes exclusive to having certain people in the party involving even more backtracking. But that is most of my gripes with it, as the rest of what transpires is great and further realizes its characters like Agate, Joshua, and I think Weissmann is one of my favorite villains in this genre. Very fun turn based combat, Ishibashi’s work here is great, and the gameplay is better than in fc where dungeons and items aren’t as good and the economy is more stingy. Might overall like this more than fc.