has basically no story and absolutely requires heavy use of fast forward but honestly this game is mostly mechanically sound and kinda holds up. it's very simple, but it does a good job of allowing you to use the mechanics to shape your own little story. it's also easy enough to where off-beat mechanical quirks don't really impact the player enough to be frustrating, which is pretty nice. all that being said i think the game kind of falls flat in it's last stretch; the last level in particular is pretty frustrating as it arbitrarily splits your party up and doesn't allow you to select who starts where. it didn't end up mattering because i just cheesed the unit selection to have marth start alongside wendell and warp to the final bosses, but it's pretty lame. inventory management is also something that gets very obnoxious very fast, in the back half of the game i think i spent more time in the inventory menus than i did actually playing. also, marth being incredibly strong feels very cool, but it's a little less cool when he's at level cap and enemies always want to try to kill him, because he 1 taps them and soaks xp too easily. all this stuff could easily be improved on and it's totally understandable why it would have been an afterthought considering this was basically an indie project, but it's still worth mentioning. honestly, in a lot of ways FE1 feels like playing something like sonic 1, where they have a lot of what's important figured out... but just enough wrong to where it's not really recognizably a classic franchise yet. still definitely an interesting game to play (and reasonably short!)