I typically don't write reviews on here but this game was such a fascinating mess of mistakes I just need to let it out somewhere
What Went Right:
- There's definitely some interesting map design in this game: parts which pressure you to complete a map quickly are good, and in some spots this is done well (e.g simple stuff like thieves heading towards villages you want, some instances of reinforcements behind you). I also like stuff that pressures you into using resources: I tend to be rather conservative with resources and try to promote at 20, save high level weapons/staves until I think I need them most, etc. but this game had several spots which strongly encourage you to drop these habits. I had to promote most of my party a bit earlier than intended due to a midgame difficulty spike and it felt cool having to do that and be rewarded for it.
- While objectively they're pretty broken, stuff like infinite range staves are silly and fun, I like them! Having the option to simply skip a chapter if it looks annoying and unfun is cool, and you get to do this quite a bit, given the multiple Rescue staves, Warp having 7 uses, Hammerne having 3 uses. These provide charm to a game and it gave me a few little bursts of dopamine.
What Went Wrong:
- While not the most important, it does lead into most of the others so it goes here first: roster bloat sure is a thing. This game has 80 characters and I could not tell you a single thing about most of them - I finished the game an hour ago and could maybe name 20 at most. On top of having very little personality or backstory, the game is balanced in such a way that there's little use for them in gameplay either - past the early to midgame virtually every new recruit I got was just a strictly worse version of a unit I had already trained up. The Tellius games have a similar amount of characters but they at least feel like humans I can say stuff about and they almost all get a little bit of time in the spotlight: a decent chunk of recruits in this game are just randos who show up to you after a chapter like "yo im on ur squad now" and it's like, cool? Thanks?
- By far the worst thing about this game and why I've rated it so low is the infamous same turn reinforcements. Chapters 12 and 13 are this at its worst, and the most angry I've been at this franchise in over 15 games now - untelegraphed, flying, 12 move dragons who can nuke any remotely squishy unit you have laying around. It feels like a massive middle finger to the player having to restart a chapter because you crossed some magical zone which triggers these and now any unit you tried to bring along who isn't a buffed up cav/dracoknight is dead. Want to look these up online beforehand to gain some intel? Good luck! Being as obscure as it is I found it very difficult to find accurate information on these reinforcements to plan around them - fireemblemwod is probably the best one out there but still has some inaccurate information, and I had a few spots where I relied on what it said until woops here's a few extra waves of reinforcements, time to reset!
- This ties into a general theme of information just not being properly expressed to the player. Fog of war is pretty limited in this game but unfortunately still does exist, and likes to throw ballistas or long range snipers at you to reaaaaaaaaally make sure you're not using anything but your government assigned paladins to curbstomp the map. There's several spots in the game where you can't carefully bait out enemies because none of them will notice you until you cross this magical line that triggers all 10 of them at once. While I can see some merit to this from a map design aspect, it is pretty frustrating not knowing which type it is and being owned because you guessed wrong. Some other examples include fairly obscure recruitment methods (which, to the game's defense, it does usually give you a little base conversation strongly implying you should bring a certain unit) and reliance on getting certain items to properly complete the game, but I only have so many words for this review.
- This is a bit more of a minor gripe but the amount of reused maps from FE11 was pretty disappointing, especially given if you're playing FE12 for the first time in (current year) it'll likely be because you just finished FE11 and are sunk cost fallacy-ing your way into seeing what all the other games are like. In some cases in the franchise this has been used in an interesting way but most of these either played identically or were just more annoying versions of the original, wh ich kinda sucks.
- Lastly I should bring up the story. This is the world's coldest take by now but Kris as a character kinda sucks - the amount of screentime put into hyping you up as the coolest person ever, how Marth is struggling so much but you're his magical saviour, is pretty lame, and takes away from the plot a bit. This includes parts where they alternate between serious lore dumps and Kris trying on a new hairstyle but those were funny at least! The side story with Katarina was okay, I guess? It was nice to see them reunited but it ties into a general storytelling problem in this game where it feels like nobody takes accountability for their actions - every nice character who initially starts antagonistic in this game is just being manipulated by someone (usually Gharnef!), then that stops and they're just completely cool. come on you can try a little harder (do not look at my favourite fire emblem game it is irrelevant to this plot point i promise). The reuse of Medeus and Gharnef is also just kind of boring, but I don't really care that much in a game that isn't exactly the most plot driven game in the franchise.
I do think this game has some merit to it, and there's definitely good parts to it, but it was unfortunately my least favourite game in the franchise up to this point. hopefully fe1 through fe5 don't make me change my mind on that :)
What Went Right:
- There's definitely some interesting map design in this game: parts which pressure you to complete a map quickly are good, and in some spots this is done well (e.g simple stuff like thieves heading towards villages you want, some instances of reinforcements behind you). I also like stuff that pressures you into using resources: I tend to be rather conservative with resources and try to promote at 20, save high level weapons/staves until I think I need them most, etc. but this game had several spots which strongly encourage you to drop these habits. I had to promote most of my party a bit earlier than intended due to a midgame difficulty spike and it felt cool having to do that and be rewarded for it.
- While objectively they're pretty broken, stuff like infinite range staves are silly and fun, I like them! Having the option to simply skip a chapter if it looks annoying and unfun is cool, and you get to do this quite a bit, given the multiple Rescue staves, Warp having 7 uses, Hammerne having 3 uses. These provide charm to a game and it gave me a few little bursts of dopamine.
What Went Wrong:
- While not the most important, it does lead into most of the others so it goes here first: roster bloat sure is a thing. This game has 80 characters and I could not tell you a single thing about most of them - I finished the game an hour ago and could maybe name 20 at most. On top of having very little personality or backstory, the game is balanced in such a way that there's little use for them in gameplay either - past the early to midgame virtually every new recruit I got was just a strictly worse version of a unit I had already trained up. The Tellius games have a similar amount of characters but they at least feel like humans I can say stuff about and they almost all get a little bit of time in the spotlight: a decent chunk of recruits in this game are just randos who show up to you after a chapter like "yo im on ur squad now" and it's like, cool? Thanks?
- By far the worst thing about this game and why I've rated it so low is the infamous same turn reinforcements. Chapters 12 and 13 are this at its worst, and the most angry I've been at this franchise in over 15 games now - untelegraphed, flying, 12 move dragons who can nuke any remotely squishy unit you have laying around. It feels like a massive middle finger to the player having to restart a chapter because you crossed some magical zone which triggers these and now any unit you tried to bring along who isn't a buffed up cav/dracoknight is dead. Want to look these up online beforehand to gain some intel? Good luck! Being as obscure as it is I found it very difficult to find accurate information on these reinforcements to plan around them - fireemblemwod is probably the best one out there but still has some inaccurate information, and I had a few spots where I relied on what it said until woops here's a few extra waves of reinforcements, time to reset!
- This ties into a general theme of information just not being properly expressed to the player. Fog of war is pretty limited in this game but unfortunately still does exist, and likes to throw ballistas or long range snipers at you to reaaaaaaaaally make sure you're not using anything but your government assigned paladins to curbstomp the map. There's several spots in the game where you can't carefully bait out enemies because none of them will notice you until you cross this magical line that triggers all 10 of them at once. While I can see some merit to this from a map design aspect, it is pretty frustrating not knowing which type it is and being owned because you guessed wrong. Some other examples include fairly obscure recruitment methods (which, to the game's defense, it does usually give you a little base conversation strongly implying you should bring a certain unit) and reliance on getting certain items to properly complete the game, but I only have so many words for this review.
- This is a bit more of a minor gripe but the amount of reused maps from FE11 was pretty disappointing, especially given if you're playing FE12 for the first time in (current year) it'll likely be because you just finished FE11 and are sunk cost fallacy-ing your way into seeing what all the other games are like. In some cases in the franchise this has been used in an interesting way but most of these either played identically or were just more annoying versions of the original, wh ich kinda sucks.
- Lastly I should bring up the story. This is the world's coldest take by now but Kris as a character kinda sucks - the amount of screentime put into hyping you up as the coolest person ever, how Marth is struggling so much but you're his magical saviour, is pretty lame, and takes away from the plot a bit. This includes parts where they alternate between serious lore dumps and Kris trying on a new hairstyle but those were funny at least! The side story with Katarina was okay, I guess? It was nice to see them reunited but it ties into a general storytelling problem in this game where it feels like nobody takes accountability for their actions - every nice character who initially starts antagonistic in this game is just being manipulated by someone (usually Gharnef!), then that stops and they're just completely cool. come on you can try a little harder (do not look at my favourite fire emblem game it is irrelevant to this plot point i promise). The reuse of Medeus and Gharnef is also just kind of boring, but I don't really care that much in a game that isn't exactly the most plot driven game in the franchise.
I do think this game has some merit to it, and there's definitely good parts to it, but it was unfortunately my least favourite game in the franchise up to this point. hopefully fe1 through fe5 don't make me change my mind on that :)
chainy
8 months ago