FE4: Ancestor to many of FE's modern mechanics (Skills, Supports, among others), and praised by many as one of if not the best. So, how is it?
Incredibly overrated.
I want to start on a positive. The game excels at gameplay and story integration. What most other FEs would do in a cutscene, this game does in gameplay. You know that first encounter with the Black Knight? While I wouldn't say any one moment in-game tops the absolute terror it has, there are a lot that come close in terms of raw energy. (No, THAT moment isn't considered in-game since it happens after the chapter. THAT moment is easily the most well known part of this game and for good reason.) Its story is interesting as well, it has some laughable bits (one genuinely funny moment about a guy not wanting to kill children. There are a few more unintentionally funny moments, like Sigurd and Dierdre falling in love on their literal second conversation like what), but the main villain of the first half is one of Fire Emblem's best, he's like Edelgard but far better realized and tragic. Gameplay and Story integration is great, but it leads to its most infamous flaw, you know what it is GIVE IT UP FOR.....
THE MAPS BABY! They're Big, like REALLY BIG, like WAY TOO BIG STOP. This affects combat in many ways: Horses are essential to seeing action and whether you have one or not determines a lot about you: Even the worst mounted units are almost on par with some of the best unmounted ones (unless you have a little something special I'll get to in a bit, then you're far better than a horse without that), solely because a horse gets yo to the fight while without one by the time you get there it'll be over because Sigurd/Seliph and his horse buddies slaughtered them all already. Even worse is a lot of the unmounted units are near useless since they can't keep up to gain EXP. A few excel, but not most. The atrocious map design also leads to other issues, like enemies with infinite use weapons. I sure hope you like your entire army being put to sleep endlessly and hit with long range because that's a lot of the final map. And sleep is three to five turns!
The other problem is worse because of the way the game handles items: A lot of them come from character conversations at specific points in chapters, or going to a specific village with a specific character to get, all of which can be easily missed. The size of the maps can also make acquiring several items incredibly tough: Seliph's Holy Weapon can easily be missed because it will only be on an NPC who appears far away from Seliph's army and near some enemies who take no time killing him, meaning you can easily miss the protagonist's signature weapon (okay, besides Brave Sword.).Special shoutouts to Dierdre and her daughter Julia, who leave halfway through and don't give their items back! I hope you didn't give them your Restore staves like I did, because as far as I know...THOSE ARE THE ONLY ONES YOU GET! Combined with the previous Sleep army problem...HAVE FUN!
Even with the items you do get, exchanging them is incredibly unintuitive: Say you killed a guy and got this sick staff, let's say Fortify, and you want to give it to let's say Lena. Okay, so let's go to her, and...oh, you can't trade in this game? Alright. Maybe if I put it in my Convoy...oh, everyone has their own convoy and you can't take from others? Then what do you do? You Pawn it. Okay, so Seliph can just give Lena the Gold and-NOPE, ONLY COUPLES CAN EXCHANGE GOLD WITH EACH OTHER. Gotta End Turn with them next to them for 50 turns first, and also means Seliph can't give Lief this nice Paragon Band he picked up or the money to buy it. You can use Thieves to steal or exchange Gold with anyone, but Thieves are far and away the worst units in the game and will die to practically anything. There aren't chests in this game, so all they can do is pray to get Gold so they can give it to someone else. But items: So yep, in order to just give someone else an item you have to: 1. Go to a castle 2. Pawn the item you want to give 3. Have the receiving unit in a castle 4. Hope they have enough money to buy it, if not get it from a Thief or pray you can Arena Grind and 5. Buy it. Needlessly cumbersome.
There are three other poorly thought out ideas that affect combat (skills are for the most part fine though): Authority, Castles, and Holy Blood. Holy Blood gets a pass kind of since it's on purpose, but if you don't have it good luck contributing to the cause. But if a boss has it, and a Holy Weapon, then you're going to run into a ton of problems and only a few units can take them down reliably, usually with a team. Which, by the way, if one happens to ambush your home base while you're on the other side of the map, good luck! Authority and Castle are bigger outliers, designed to make Bosses feel like Bosses, but really just turn things to tedium: Authority buffs the hit/miss of not only you but anyone next to you, meaning just being near the Lord or Boss gives the player or enemy huge advantages. But the Bosses and Lord will always have this, and there's no way around it, making taking them out amount a lot more to Luck. Castles supply an additional boost and ON TOP OF THAT heal HP each turn. Even worse, the one class that has most of the Castle is Generals, which comes with Pavise: Even if your move hits, they still have a chance to just say NO to the damage that triggers way more than it should. Good luck conquering castles, it'll take a while in this already long game!
In addition to slow movement and cutscenes, combat animations are also incredibly slow: Two knights/Generals duking it out can take up to a minute. Even if that scenario rarely happens, there are a lot of them for you to fight and they are still very, very slow. You can turn them off, sure, but combat still takes quite a bit of time.
I really don't get what people see in this outside the story. Which is interesting and the first main villain is easily Fire Emblem's best one, but that's not a high bar to clear when your competition has the likes of Validar and Garon. No Fire Emblem game (one path being one playthrough) should be 60+ hours long. Combined with this game's absolutely dreadful map design and game design, I am absolutely baffled by what people see in this game beyond maybe a "well this was pretty impressive 25 years ago", because the game is just a chore to play and makes sure you feel that chore in every single aspect.
Looking forward to Thracia!
Incredibly overrated.
I want to start on a positive. The game excels at gameplay and story integration. What most other FEs would do in a cutscene, this game does in gameplay. You know that first encounter with the Black Knight? While I wouldn't say any one moment in-game tops the absolute terror it has, there are a lot that come close in terms of raw energy. (No, THAT moment isn't considered in-game since it happens after the chapter. THAT moment is easily the most well known part of this game and for good reason.) Its story is interesting as well, it has some laughable bits (one genuinely funny moment about a guy not wanting to kill children. There are a few more unintentionally funny moments, like Sigurd and Dierdre falling in love on their literal second conversation like what), but the main villain of the first half is one of Fire Emblem's best, he's like Edelgard but far better realized and tragic. Gameplay and Story integration is great, but it leads to its most infamous flaw, you know what it is GIVE IT UP FOR.....
THE MAPS BABY! They're Big, like REALLY BIG, like WAY TOO BIG STOP. This affects combat in many ways: Horses are essential to seeing action and whether you have one or not determines a lot about you: Even the worst mounted units are almost on par with some of the best unmounted ones (unless you have a little something special I'll get to in a bit, then you're far better than a horse without that), solely because a horse gets yo to the fight while without one by the time you get there it'll be over because Sigurd/Seliph and his horse buddies slaughtered them all already. Even worse is a lot of the unmounted units are near useless since they can't keep up to gain EXP. A few excel, but not most. The atrocious map design also leads to other issues, like enemies with infinite use weapons. I sure hope you like your entire army being put to sleep endlessly and hit with long range because that's a lot of the final map. And sleep is three to five turns!
The other problem is worse because of the way the game handles items: A lot of them come from character conversations at specific points in chapters, or going to a specific village with a specific character to get, all of which can be easily missed. The size of the maps can also make acquiring several items incredibly tough: Seliph's Holy Weapon can easily be missed because it will only be on an NPC who appears far away from Seliph's army and near some enemies who take no time killing him, meaning you can easily miss the protagonist's signature weapon (okay, besides Brave Sword.).Special shoutouts to Dierdre and her daughter Julia, who leave halfway through and don't give their items back! I hope you didn't give them your Restore staves like I did, because as far as I know...THOSE ARE THE ONLY ONES YOU GET! Combined with the previous Sleep army problem...HAVE FUN!
Even with the items you do get, exchanging them is incredibly unintuitive: Say you killed a guy and got this sick staff, let's say Fortify, and you want to give it to let's say Lena. Okay, so let's go to her, and...oh, you can't trade in this game? Alright. Maybe if I put it in my Convoy...oh, everyone has their own convoy and you can't take from others? Then what do you do? You Pawn it. Okay, so Seliph can just give Lena the Gold and-NOPE, ONLY COUPLES CAN EXCHANGE GOLD WITH EACH OTHER. Gotta End Turn with them next to them for 50 turns first, and also means Seliph can't give Lief this nice Paragon Band he picked up or the money to buy it. You can use Thieves to steal or exchange Gold with anyone, but Thieves are far and away the worst units in the game and will die to practically anything. There aren't chests in this game, so all they can do is pray to get Gold so they can give it to someone else. But items: So yep, in order to just give someone else an item you have to: 1. Go to a castle 2. Pawn the item you want to give 3. Have the receiving unit in a castle 4. Hope they have enough money to buy it, if not get it from a Thief or pray you can Arena Grind and 5. Buy it. Needlessly cumbersome.
There are three other poorly thought out ideas that affect combat (skills are for the most part fine though): Authority, Castles, and Holy Blood. Holy Blood gets a pass kind of since it's on purpose, but if you don't have it good luck contributing to the cause. But if a boss has it, and a Holy Weapon, then you're going to run into a ton of problems and only a few units can take them down reliably, usually with a team. Which, by the way, if one happens to ambush your home base while you're on the other side of the map, good luck! Authority and Castle are bigger outliers, designed to make Bosses feel like Bosses, but really just turn things to tedium: Authority buffs the hit/miss of not only you but anyone next to you, meaning just being near the Lord or Boss gives the player or enemy huge advantages. But the Bosses and Lord will always have this, and there's no way around it, making taking them out amount a lot more to Luck. Castles supply an additional boost and ON TOP OF THAT heal HP each turn. Even worse, the one class that has most of the Castle is Generals, which comes with Pavise: Even if your move hits, they still have a chance to just say NO to the damage that triggers way more than it should. Good luck conquering castles, it'll take a while in this already long game!
In addition to slow movement and cutscenes, combat animations are also incredibly slow: Two knights/Generals duking it out can take up to a minute. Even if that scenario rarely happens, there are a lot of them for you to fight and they are still very, very slow. You can turn them off, sure, but combat still takes quite a bit of time.
I really don't get what people see in this outside the story. Which is interesting and the first main villain is easily Fire Emblem's best one, but that's not a high bar to clear when your competition has the likes of Validar and Garon. No Fire Emblem game (one path being one playthrough) should be 60+ hours long. Combined with this game's absolutely dreadful map design and game design, I am absolutely baffled by what people see in this game beyond maybe a "well this was pretty impressive 25 years ago", because the game is just a chore to play and makes sure you feel that chore in every single aspect.
Looking forward to Thracia!