(this review is only for book 2)
mystery of the emblem is a pretty cool game. the mechanics aren't really very different from fe1 (apart from the inventory management being greatly improved, thank you kaga) but this game has much better balance than that game ever did. in fe1 and gaiden it often felt like you were allowed to ignore playing maps "correctly" in favor of just stat checking with strong units; here, it's much more difficult to do that and the early game is much tougher, which does a good job of teaching how the game is supposed to work. the star shards make the game a lot easier when they get introduced, but mystery is still a game where you can't play recklessly or rely on unrealistic mechanical quirks like marth's global taunt. enemies felt much more aggressive here and you can't really gamble with their ai anymore. i felt like i had actually gotten a lot better at fire emblem by the end of the game, which is ideally what a strategy game should do. oh also dancers are so fun. the game felt so much more playable once i got feena, it's unreal.
the plot is pretty stupid, though. mystery starts off strong with marth being turned against on both sides by major players from the first game, and i do love the way this integrates with the story. the early to mid-game throws a lot of maps with absurd amounts of reinforcements at you, which really makes you feel like you're on the run and you're up against something way bigger than your little band of rebels. unfortunately this devolves into marth simply going from place to place to get told (not especially interesting) lore, and the reasoning behind the events of the game are really stupid.
speed also hasn't really improved from the nes games much. units move faster but combat animations are still really slow, a lot of maps are huge, and like i said earlier there's tons of reinforcements in this game, so enemy phase can drag quite a lot. i turned combat animations off pretty early and i didn't regret it. some of them are cool, but not really enough to where it's worth the wait, imo. clarity has greatly improved from the nes games, but it's still missing some information i'd really like to see, such as enemy attack ranges. for most of the game this isn't notable because the only long range units are ballistae, which have very low hit rates, but lategame there's a lot of long ranged mages with meteor, and there's no convenient way to tell when you're in range of them.
the character endings are hilarious man marth's friends must fucking hate him
mystery of the emblem is a pretty cool game. the mechanics aren't really very different from fe1 (apart from the inventory management being greatly improved, thank you kaga) but this game has much better balance than that game ever did. in fe1 and gaiden it often felt like you were allowed to ignore playing maps "correctly" in favor of just stat checking with strong units; here, it's much more difficult to do that and the early game is much tougher, which does a good job of teaching how the game is supposed to work. the star shards make the game a lot easier when they get introduced, but mystery is still a game where you can't play recklessly or rely on unrealistic mechanical quirks like marth's global taunt. enemies felt much more aggressive here and you can't really gamble with their ai anymore. i felt like i had actually gotten a lot better at fire emblem by the end of the game, which is ideally what a strategy game should do. oh also dancers are so fun. the game felt so much more playable once i got feena, it's unreal.
the plot is pretty stupid, though. mystery starts off strong with marth being turned against on both sides by major players from the first game, and i do love the way this integrates with the story. the early to mid-game throws a lot of maps with absurd amounts of reinforcements at you, which really makes you feel like you're on the run and you're up against something way bigger than your little band of rebels. unfortunately this devolves into marth simply going from place to place to get told (not especially interesting) lore, and the reasoning behind the events of the game are really stupid.
speed also hasn't really improved from the nes games much. units move faster but combat animations are still really slow, a lot of maps are huge, and like i said earlier there's tons of reinforcements in this game, so enemy phase can drag quite a lot. i turned combat animations off pretty early and i didn't regret it. some of them are cool, but not really enough to where it's worth the wait, imo. clarity has greatly improved from the nes games, but it's still missing some information i'd really like to see, such as enemy attack ranges. for most of the game this isn't notable because the only long range units are ballistae, which have very low hit rates, but lategame there's a lot of long ranged mages with meteor, and there's no convenient way to tell when you're in range of them.
the character endings are hilarious man marth's friends must fucking hate him