Kaga: It’s not a big problem if some of your characters die in Fire Emblem; I want each player to create their own unique story. Don’t get caught up trying to get a “perfect ending.” Have fun!
Fire Emblem’s synthesis of two core ideas - RPG elements and permadeath - work together as a powerful combination for creating unique experiences. Different units will grow in different ways and between the dicerolls and each player’s personal preference, they’ll end up with armies that look and function largely differently from each other. Throwing an extra curveball in this is permadeath, as poor planning or just plain rotten luck can lead to favourite units dying and being unavailable for the rest of the game, with the consequence usually being to try training a new unit - likely one you didn’t have much attachment to in the first place - bringing further diversity as well as a new story to tell.
Thracia 776 is by far and away the best Fire Emblem game at creating these emergent stories. The first reason is that it’s easily the most freeform game in the series for a number of reasons. Stat caps are fairly low and growths can be boosted by holding Crusader Scrolls, letting just about any character be endgame-viable if you want to put the work in as well as making it easier to train up a new unit to recover from a particularly crushing loss. Other factors like skills, personal weapons, movement stars and FCM, as well as the fabled movement growth, keep everyone feeling unique and give you something to get attached to. All these tools bring the gameplay to feel incredibly open - while Thracia has a well-earned reputation as the “staff game”, as status staves are just as hilariously overpowered as they are hilarious to use, it’s more just the most easily-observable result of this. The game gives you so many powerful tools - between items like insane personal weapons and staves, as well as mechanical tools like Canto and infinite trading - that there’s so much individuality and expression in how you approach a chapter or weasel yourself through tight situations, which is only compounded by how uniquely any one person’s army is going to fall together. Fatigue seems like it would take away from this uniqueness by forcing everyone to use most of the characters across the game, but it makes each chapter’s potential difficulty and solution vary even more depending on when you have access to your strongest units.
The second is its tendency towards surprises, and though the aforementioned movement stars and movement levels, as well as the tendency of crits to skew heavily in your favour, all play into this, its more interesting display is shown through its chapter design. Thracia’s design mentality would be absolutely aggravating in any other game, as each chapter aims to properly convey the situation that Leif’s army finds itself in - this means it often puts you in heavily disadvantageous positions and loves to throw heavy curveballs at you as the chapters’ stories advance and the opposition’s own plans advance alongside yours. What makes this feel reasonable in Thracia is the sheer strength and number of tools you have to navigate around these tricks. They will catch you off guard - and likely steal some of your soldiers away from you - but they rarely felt outright unfair, instead feeling like I could have prepared better, or could have played better. Chapters often feel like real opponents constantly trying to keep you on your toes, and while it’s crushing to lose a strong unit to something you didn’t expect, the stakes make it even more satisfying to defy the odds.
Its story compounds those themes held up by the gameplay, as while the broad strokes involve the reclamation and unification of an entire country, the details focus on the people of the story, their victories and losses, their choices and resulting consequences, their perseverance or lack thereof. Leif’s inexperience leads him to struggle to lead the Liberation, making multiple brash mistakes that set back his goals and get those close to him killed, as he stumbles forward in pursuit of a personal goal that almost none of the other fighters can even relate to, all while being overshadowed by the fighters beyond the borders. It’s his perseverance, in spite of all his losses and heartbreak, that leads him to eventually recapture Munster from the Empire. Just as Leif’s own quest is imperfect, the game expects yours to be, as not only can multiple events only be seen with certain characters kept alive, but small details change when certain characters *die* - Leif can even fail to achieve his own strongest motivation if the right mistakes are made. Why bother implementing these, if not for these losses being an expected part of the experience?
After all, if everyone’s story was perfect, nobody’s story would be unique.
Fire Emblem’s synthesis of two core ideas - RPG elements and permadeath - work together as a powerful combination for creating unique experiences. Different units will grow in different ways and between the dicerolls and each player’s personal preference, they’ll end up with armies that look and function largely differently from each other. Throwing an extra curveball in this is permadeath, as poor planning or just plain rotten luck can lead to favourite units dying and being unavailable for the rest of the game, with the consequence usually being to try training a new unit - likely one you didn’t have much attachment to in the first place - bringing further diversity as well as a new story to tell.
Thracia 776 is by far and away the best Fire Emblem game at creating these emergent stories. The first reason is that it’s easily the most freeform game in the series for a number of reasons. Stat caps are fairly low and growths can be boosted by holding Crusader Scrolls, letting just about any character be endgame-viable if you want to put the work in as well as making it easier to train up a new unit to recover from a particularly crushing loss. Other factors like skills, personal weapons, movement stars and FCM, as well as the fabled movement growth, keep everyone feeling unique and give you something to get attached to. All these tools bring the gameplay to feel incredibly open - while Thracia has a well-earned reputation as the “staff game”, as status staves are just as hilariously overpowered as they are hilarious to use, it’s more just the most easily-observable result of this. The game gives you so many powerful tools - between items like insane personal weapons and staves, as well as mechanical tools like Canto and infinite trading - that there’s so much individuality and expression in how you approach a chapter or weasel yourself through tight situations, which is only compounded by how uniquely any one person’s army is going to fall together. Fatigue seems like it would take away from this uniqueness by forcing everyone to use most of the characters across the game, but it makes each chapter’s potential difficulty and solution vary even more depending on when you have access to your strongest units.
The second is its tendency towards surprises, and though the aforementioned movement stars and movement levels, as well as the tendency of crits to skew heavily in your favour, all play into this, its more interesting display is shown through its chapter design. Thracia’s design mentality would be absolutely aggravating in any other game, as each chapter aims to properly convey the situation that Leif’s army finds itself in - this means it often puts you in heavily disadvantageous positions and loves to throw heavy curveballs at you as the chapters’ stories advance and the opposition’s own plans advance alongside yours. What makes this feel reasonable in Thracia is the sheer strength and number of tools you have to navigate around these tricks. They will catch you off guard - and likely steal some of your soldiers away from you - but they rarely felt outright unfair, instead feeling like I could have prepared better, or could have played better. Chapters often feel like real opponents constantly trying to keep you on your toes, and while it’s crushing to lose a strong unit to something you didn’t expect, the stakes make it even more satisfying to defy the odds.
Its story compounds those themes held up by the gameplay, as while the broad strokes involve the reclamation and unification of an entire country, the details focus on the people of the story, their victories and losses, their choices and resulting consequences, their perseverance or lack thereof. Leif’s inexperience leads him to struggle to lead the Liberation, making multiple brash mistakes that set back his goals and get those close to him killed, as he stumbles forward in pursuit of a personal goal that almost none of the other fighters can even relate to, all while being overshadowed by the fighters beyond the borders. It’s his perseverance, in spite of all his losses and heartbreak, that leads him to eventually recapture Munster from the Empire. Just as Leif’s own quest is imperfect, the game expects yours to be, as not only can multiple events only be seen with certain characters kept alive, but small details change when certain characters *die* - Leif can even fail to achieve his own strongest motivation if the right mistakes are made. Why bother implementing these, if not for these losses being an expected part of the experience?
After all, if everyone’s story was perfect, nobody’s story would be unique.
3 Comments
thank you for posting the translation patch, I don't really know much about fire emblem but this one sounds the most in my wheelhouse so I'd like to check it out
faea
3 months ago
to go along with this, and to hopefully help prove everything i've been talking about, i documented a few of the more memorable moments from my playthough, stuff that came from gaps in my knowledge and a general willingness to Let Shit Happen - go ahead and read em here!