This is another one of those rare games that perfectly blends its themes and narrative with the experience of gameplay. Leif, the protagonist, is around 15 when this game takes place. Thracia 776 starts with Leif living in exile with a surrogate family of sorts, having been forced to flee his home by the pressure of an invading army. As the plot ramps up, Leif finds himself thrust into a leadership position where he has to command an impromptu army and lead them in a campaign to drive away the invading forces. The plot of Thracia is rather simple and on the whole isn’t terribly important. What is important, however, is Leif. Leif’s experience - being saddled with more responsibility than he could possibly imagine and being forced to cope with this new reality is rendered in a way that is pretty much unparalleled in the FE series in terms of depth and realism. Leif’s story is at once sad, poignant, inspiring, and life affirming, and Thracia 776 does an excellent job at getting the player to relate with and see themselves in Leif.

The gameplay perfectly compliments this narrative and it’s themes. It’s no secret that Thracia 776 is one of the most difficult FE games out there. You will often feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of enemy soldiers and reinforcements to deal with. In Chapter 4 - which is one of my all time favorite levels in a videogame, you’re tasked with escaping an enemy prison and freeing the civilians imprisoned with you. As you do this, reinforcements appear from all sides to kill you, your comrades, and the escaping civilians. Once you manage to ensure the safety of the civilians - which is quite a challenge - you throw open the doors of the cell block thinking you’ll be able to make a clean break. When you do this, you’re met with a literal wall of armored guards. Now all you have to do is fight through them with your five under leveled and likely now injured party members. This is one of the most memorable “oh shit” moments I’ve ever had in gaming. This all sounds impossible, unfair, and frustrating, right? Wrong. One of the best things about Thracia 776 is that through all this struggle, against these seemingly insurmountable odds, victory is always possible with the right strategy even if this doesn’t seem to be the case. As you bang your head against the wall and reset the level you eventually will be able to get through those armored guards and escape. This experience is replicated several times throughout Thracia 776, and it is immensely satisfying every time.

Your journey as the player beautifully mirrors that of Leif. As Leif struggles facing units that far outnumber and outclass his own, so will you as the player. As Leif grows into his role as a leader you will grow into your role as a strategist. It’s one of the best underdog stories in gaming and Thracia’s design allows you to truly identify with the struggle and triumph of its protagonist.

This is a really special game and one that has stuck with me for years. While it isn’t a game that is particularly critical or one with something really unique to say, it is one that provides an unforgettable experience for the player. Despite having some very heavy themes and sad moments, Thracia is in many ways, a feel good story. It’s a story of inspiration and perseverance, of struggle and triumph, a story where intelligence, kindness, and grit are able to conquer any enemy. Most importantly, it’s also a story of hope. In our world, where our efforts are seldom rewarded and where hopefulness is often a fleeting and hard won state of mind, being able to actively participate in a story where struggle, and kindness, and hopefulness is rewarded can be very healing. One of the benefits of having a story like this in the medium of video games vs. film for instance is the ability for the player to identify with and actually feel the emotions of the protagonist via active participation. Being able to really feel emotions like triumph and hopefulness is honestly pretty rare. Some might balk at the idea of playing a videogame to experience these emotions, but isn’t that one of the most important functions of art - to make the person engaging with it feel something. Thracia 776 made me feel hopeful and triumphant, and that’s something that I think is very valuable.

I would recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of RPGs or strategy games. It can be challenging and daunting at first, but if you stick with it, I believe you’ll find it to be a rewarding and impactful experience.

Absolutely amazing game and surely one of the most influential and important crpgs of all time. this was one of the first rpgs to make speech and dialogue options a legitimate strategy for finishing the game. in this vein the game has some of the best writing and truly open ended choice based gameplay ive seen in an rpg. This game as well as fallout 2 are games that are truly interested in the political and sociological impacts of your actions. People say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and this is definitely reflected in the writing of fallout. This is one of the only games I've seen where the apparently moral choices can lead to massive unintended consequences that make you truly question your ways of thinking about the game world and your place in it. The best part about this is that these unintended consequences never seem unfair and are always things that a perceptive player can anticipate. *SPOILER WARNING**: One of the best instances of this is in the Junktown arc. If a player choses to side with the town's sherrif and drive away the criminals operating there, the town ends up becoming a shell of its former self. This is because these criminal enterprises - despite being obviously immoral - are the backbone of the town's economy. This is never choreographed by the game. You never have an NPC saying something like "i wish these criminals were gone but I bet that would mess up the town's economy, huh". A player can only anticipate this result by observing the town and noticing that the majority of the people there are engaged in or supported by criminal enterprise. These kinds of choices and consequences are present throughout the entirety of fallout one and two and in a somewhat more user-friendly and IMO slightly less effective but still brilliant form in fallout new vegas. *END SPOILER WARNING**

Looking at the reviews on this site I'm honestly shocked its not ranked higher. I can understand the gameplay being rough for people not used to playing games from this era - although if you stick with it through a potentially difficult first couple of hours one acclimates very quickly. At the end of the day you dont have to like this game and you're not an idiot if you don't like it (I would severely question your judgment if you tried to make the case that this game is bad or fails as an rpg but there's nothing wrong with not liking its, its not for everyone). If you're someone who doesn't care about story or story based mechanics and is playing this entirely for combat you're probably going to be disappointed. While the combat could be better - and was definitely improved upon in Fallout 2, combat was never the focus of the fallout series in the early days. One of the reasons this game is so important and so beloved is the importance of dialogue to the progression of the game. This is an early example and one of the most successful examples of an rpg where THE primary method of interacting with the world is talking and not combat. If you're not interested in that you probably wont like this game. However, for people who think that sounds interesting, this is undeniably one of the best RPGs of all time and I have no doubt that you'll love this game.