It's a fire emblem game, so the combat is fun. Some of the cast is nice. However, this is another game where I can't really wrap my head around why people like it so much. The story isn't particularly attention-grabbing and I don't really notice any moments that stood out enough for it to be more than just your standard fire emblem experience. I'll go over what I like about it first before I forget..

To start with, one thing I enjoyed was the 'how's everyone' feature on the preparations menu. I thought it was a pretty good way to get dialogue from characters you don't get to use or interact with. And I enjoyed the amount of support conversations that were in the game, I just wish more of them were between other characters that weren't my protagonist. I enjoyed a good chunk of the characters in this game, my favorites were Malice, Minerva, Sirius, Arren, Linde, Navarre, and Palla... they were all pretty interesting without falling too much into a single trope, and their designs are pleasing to look at. The art in this game is very good but I especially enjoyed the drawings that would show up during key moments and in between chapters... I don't really know the name for what they are but the point is they looked very visually distinct, I almost wish the whole game was made in that style. And the attack animations are very smooth too, which was a nice surprise.

That's all the praise I can really give this game. Personally, I can not stand Marth. But maybe even more so, I can't stand our custom protagonist. I obviously chose to be a female, and the way this game writes your female protag is very much indicative of how the series would end up in its next entry. Constant mentions of how my character wasn't 'feminine' enough and how much that truly worried her, multiple scenes where characters were talking about her body being 'manly and rough' and there were even a few anime-esque moments involving my characters chest. Very obnoxious... if I'm choosing to be a girl then why would I find it blasphemous that she's capable of fighting? And I gave my character a really short haircut too, I obviously don't care that she doesn't look like a pin-up girl. Beyond that, she only cares about training and Marth and fighting and it's really exhausting when every support conversation is just about one of those three subjects. I got to choose her backstory, which is nice, but I didn't know making her an orphan would give her an abusive grandfather that raised her from day one to be in the army. Which is uncomfortable but the game talks about it like it's a laudable thing. I did not enjoy playing as a fantasy boot-boy.

The gameplay is nice but aggravated me more than any other fire emblem game besides Echoes that I've ever played, and I had save states. Where do I begin.... well, it's very confusing that every character but Marth lacks a distinct sprite. I had several swordmasters and they all looked the same on the map, leading to me accidentally moving characters that I didn't mean to pick. And they all look the same in the zoomed-in attack scenes that happen too, which is maybe more understandable, but it's still off-putting. And on that subject, there are far too many characters in this game. There is someone you have to talk to to recruit every chapter, and it's very very stressful. It gets exhausting really quick, especially when these characters are set up to be your enemies and you don't want to kill them or else Marth will get sad at you despite the fact that he's a prince and therefore is destined to screw people over by the nature of how monarchies work. But anyways, most of these recruitment characters are not interesting at all and are mostly filler, which makes it even more of a chore to have to recruit them. And only Marth can talk to them most of the time, which is very inconvenient and difficult to plan out. Besides that, your armory never upgrades so it's always selling iron weapons which is very annoying. The amount of people you can take into battle seems really low for the amount of characters in the game. I also had to reset constantly because even my strongest units died far too frequently for my liking, even during drills, which is a really aggrivating descision that you can permanently lose a unit just from training (that you pay for).

The story was not bad but I also felt no attachment to it either, partially because I do not have any interest in stories like these that revolve around princes and princesses and very fantastical politics. That's why I liked playing fe7 as Lyndis, and my favorite fe game overall is Path of Radiance. And my final regret with this game... the process which you have to go through to get Tiki is really frustrating, and I missed out of her; one of my favorite characters that I was really looking forward to finally seeing. That obtaining her relies on getting missable items that are very easy to kill a unit trying to obtain them is very unfair, and even on a second playthrough is incredibly easy to miss and never have another chance at it again.

Overall I didn't have a very fun time with this game. It was very stressful and grating, and I feel like there was not enough to coarse me to finish it. I spent more time strategizing on how to not kill certain recruitable units, which really interrupted the flow of the game for me. And some of the writing makes this game feel reminiscent of Awakening, which isn't what I play a Fire Emblem game to see. I think I found my match in Path of Radiance, so I think this is the last fe game I'll check out. That and the gba games are enough for me!