Played with the Lil' Manster, 1.07 Translation Patch.
Took a long time for this one to get translated to what could be considered a complete state, and was much more recently updated with scrip fixes that shows this as being easily one of the best narratives in the Fire Emblem series.
Thracia 776 tells the story of what happened to some of the character and another part of the continent in the time skipped and second generation section of Fire Emblem 4.
Good story and setting with many side characters continuing to show up in later events while more important characters give you more insight into their character when they show up in Fire Emblem 4. Not following anywhere near as much the cartoonish black and white morality of the newer games (well, apart from some of the more major antagonists of a child sacrificing cult of a dark god, but, that aside). With Thracia you get a lot of details about the different nations, their history, their past and current conflicts, geography, starving and dying populace in barren areas causing refugees or banditry, effects of occupying forces on other countries and what some nations are willing to do to not be taken over by the empire, you have two strategic advisors for a large part of the game that are giving the main character often good advice while informing him of the wider issues of the nation and its people to aid in his future rule (as opposed to newer games where they like to make some random jackass a stand in for you controlling the army over the useless lords, or somehow a teacher while your character knows nothing about the world).
Well made maps that give you a variety of objectives. Capturing a location, reaching an area, attempting to get your entire army to an escape point (one level even starting half your army at the escape point while the other half is far away and can be overwhelmed by pursuing forces), defending a location, protecting civilians, etc. Reinforcements are handled well, as are positioning of long range ballista or enemy magic users that can cause status effects on your forces and more difficult enemy groups tend to be equipped with fitting weapons that might have a high critical hit change or that might be strong against certain types of units.
The fatigue system where characters can become tired and need to be kept out of a battle and the level design causes you to use more of your large roster. Although, fatigue can pretty much be bypassed by just fighting battles in the arena, making money and buying stamina drinks to remove fatigue levels, having that option is good as the negative side of the fatigue system is that it creates issues with missing conversations and recruiting talks that first time players would have no way to know about in advance without a guide.
Capture system works well, you can fight with lowered stats in an attempt to capture an enemy which can allow you to recruit some characters, take all of their items, or just let certain characters go without killing them. Units can also be captured if they lose their offensive items by breaking them or having them stolen.
Character Leadership/FCM/Vigor stats are a good way to add more variety to characters where everyone adding to your total leadership gives every unit a bonus to hit and dodge and this applies with enemy commanders to their units as well giving leaders an actual effect on the battle, vigor from 0-5 gives a chance to be able to take a second turn, and FCM between 0-5 gives a character that number as a multiplier to their critical hit chance for their second attacks. Movement is a bit more unique in this game as well where certain characters might just start with a higher number of space they can move, and each character has a 1-3% chance to raise their movement rate with each level up.
There are a few issues. The usual thing in Fire Emblem, with some oddly poor units with character's that everything narratively tells you should be better. You get access to scrolls that can effect stat gain rates at level up and you can equip as many as a character has slots to carry items to stack all the bonuses together. On one hand this means you can make almost any character good and viable to use, on the other this makes everyone pretty similar. Stats, except for HP, are all capped at 20 and classes effect nothing except for allowing access to a set of weapons or staves to use and very few giving passive skills (swordmaster and sages learn adept to possibly attack more, thieves learn how to steal, the dancer to dance). You can easily end up with characters who gain almost no real benefit when you promote them to their next class tier and can end up in situations where certain mages might even have the same defensive and avoid value as a heavily armored knight. The game also takes status effects way too far in the last few stages where multiple enemies can just be putting your units to sleep, into a berserk state, or silencing them for the entire stage unless you knew to stock up and save some, pretty rare, restore staves while also having enough units capable of using them (while also not getting themselves hit by status effects in the process).
This is easily one of the best Fire Emblem games (along with 4, 6, and 9), and is one of the better SRPGs that I've played.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1391382884435386371
Took a long time for this one to get translated to what could be considered a complete state, and was much more recently updated with scrip fixes that shows this as being easily one of the best narratives in the Fire Emblem series.
Thracia 776 tells the story of what happened to some of the character and another part of the continent in the time skipped and second generation section of Fire Emblem 4.
Good story and setting with many side characters continuing to show up in later events while more important characters give you more insight into their character when they show up in Fire Emblem 4. Not following anywhere near as much the cartoonish black and white morality of the newer games (well, apart from some of the more major antagonists of a child sacrificing cult of a dark god, but, that aside). With Thracia you get a lot of details about the different nations, their history, their past and current conflicts, geography, starving and dying populace in barren areas causing refugees or banditry, effects of occupying forces on other countries and what some nations are willing to do to not be taken over by the empire, you have two strategic advisors for a large part of the game that are giving the main character often good advice while informing him of the wider issues of the nation and its people to aid in his future rule (as opposed to newer games where they like to make some random jackass a stand in for you controlling the army over the useless lords, or somehow a teacher while your character knows nothing about the world).
Well made maps that give you a variety of objectives. Capturing a location, reaching an area, attempting to get your entire army to an escape point (one level even starting half your army at the escape point while the other half is far away and can be overwhelmed by pursuing forces), defending a location, protecting civilians, etc. Reinforcements are handled well, as are positioning of long range ballista or enemy magic users that can cause status effects on your forces and more difficult enemy groups tend to be equipped with fitting weapons that might have a high critical hit change or that might be strong against certain types of units.
The fatigue system where characters can become tired and need to be kept out of a battle and the level design causes you to use more of your large roster. Although, fatigue can pretty much be bypassed by just fighting battles in the arena, making money and buying stamina drinks to remove fatigue levels, having that option is good as the negative side of the fatigue system is that it creates issues with missing conversations and recruiting talks that first time players would have no way to know about in advance without a guide.
Capture system works well, you can fight with lowered stats in an attempt to capture an enemy which can allow you to recruit some characters, take all of their items, or just let certain characters go without killing them. Units can also be captured if they lose their offensive items by breaking them or having them stolen.
Character Leadership/FCM/Vigor stats are a good way to add more variety to characters where everyone adding to your total leadership gives every unit a bonus to hit and dodge and this applies with enemy commanders to their units as well giving leaders an actual effect on the battle, vigor from 0-5 gives a chance to be able to take a second turn, and FCM between 0-5 gives a character that number as a multiplier to their critical hit chance for their second attacks. Movement is a bit more unique in this game as well where certain characters might just start with a higher number of space they can move, and each character has a 1-3% chance to raise their movement rate with each level up.
There are a few issues. The usual thing in Fire Emblem, with some oddly poor units with character's that everything narratively tells you should be better. You get access to scrolls that can effect stat gain rates at level up and you can equip as many as a character has slots to carry items to stack all the bonuses together. On one hand this means you can make almost any character good and viable to use, on the other this makes everyone pretty similar. Stats, except for HP, are all capped at 20 and classes effect nothing except for allowing access to a set of weapons or staves to use and very few giving passive skills (swordmaster and sages learn adept to possibly attack more, thieves learn how to steal, the dancer to dance). You can easily end up with characters who gain almost no real benefit when you promote them to their next class tier and can end up in situations where certain mages might even have the same defensive and avoid value as a heavily armored knight. The game also takes status effects way too far in the last few stages where multiple enemies can just be putting your units to sleep, into a berserk state, or silencing them for the entire stage unless you knew to stock up and save some, pretty rare, restore staves while also having enough units capable of using them (while also not getting themselves hit by status effects in the process).
This is easily one of the best Fire Emblem games (along with 4, 6, and 9), and is one of the better SRPGs that I've played.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1391382884435386371