"She cursed the emblem, calling it the end of war, but also the end of love..Now it has changed hands, and it is I who is cursed."

Having revisited it, FE12 surprised me. Though I had played it before and had already known it was a significant step up from Shadow Dragon, I ultimately only remembered thinking it was pretty good, but not groundbreaking. Returning to it revealed to me a tale of unrequited love, unwavering kinship, heartbreak, and loss.

I want to say first of all that although I have not finished FE3, I am mostly aware of the differences, and would like to start by saying that the story content that this remake adds is fantastic, and ties in perfectly with the pre-established themes of the original game. Say what you will about Kris being a self insert, or being overly-praised for their exploits, but I personally believe that what they bring to the table far outweighs the bad.

For one, I adore the prologue - it really captures this carefree, peaceful but determined "days of training" feeling - the calm before the storm. It serves to not only flesh Kris out but to establish their relationship with Katarina, a pivotal character introduced with the new story content. It also gives some much needed characterisation to characters who would've otherwise been literal who's in FE3. This later evolves in the form of actual support conversations once the newly added prologue ends. In addition to this, Kris, if anything, being a new member of Marth's army, works as an outlet for fleshing out Archanea's cast far better than Marth probably could. Yes, Kris getting far more supports than Marth is weird, but wouldn't it be awkward if Marth was only just discovering things about his comrades from the past war? In a sense, Kris is a blank canvas for Marth's army to project themselves onto, which serves as a far more natural gateway for the player to discover new things about them. Bottom line, Kris' presence is for the better of the whole cast, including Marth and Jagen, the two characters most commonly referred to as having their thunder stolen by Kris - I'll touch on those two later. There're plenty non-Kris support conversations too, which is something worth noting.

Though the new story content from there on out is locked behind gaiden chapters, unlocking some of it is thankfully pretty easy. If you want to see the most important thing, just make sure to have Kris promoted and at level 5 by the end of chapter 16. Regardless of how that gaiden chapter plays out, it's a real tear jerker. 20x also has some fantastic lore behind it, but uh, that means playing 20x. Don't play 20x, please. Don't even try fulfilling the 20x requirements, unless you're playing on lunatic like I was and was forced to LTC the map because of 3 waves of capped enemy paladins hounding you down. Just look the cutscenes up on youtube, or something.

I also like that Kris is an actual character and the story doesn't totally revolve around them. Their whole point is that they're Marth's most reliable and dependable friend who willingly left themselves out of the history books to let Marth be a beacon and icon of peace for the common people to believe in. Marth's shadow. I also think the concept of FE12 being not just a remake but a retelling with information that was lost to history being accounted for is really cool. It's not a rewrite, perse, it's the full story. In FE3, Marth is fed many exposition dumps, many of which on topics that he should know about, given the events of the previous war, being a descendant of Anri and whatnot. Giving these to Kris - who is instead someone who lived most of their life up to that point in a village training with their grandfather and is inherently less knowledgable of the world and grand scheme of the plot not only makes more sense from a narrative standpoint but makes Marth wiser and more experienced by comparison, something more befitting of him given his experience as the hero of the war of shadows. Marth struggling to cope with the potential loss of his companions is a key character trait that remains and is further exemplified by his attachment to Kris.

A common example I see being used to show Kris "stealing thunder" is during chapter 3, when Kris challenges Lang's authority, wherein two things happen;

Firstly, Marth apologises for Kris' outburst, only after failed attempts at diplomacy deciding to denounce Lang for the problems he's caused. This shows that Kris does not dictate Marth's emotions, and that he's also as capable as a leader as ever, believing first in diplomacy and stepping up for what he believes in when things get too out of hand.
Secondly, Jagen still challenges Lang, just like in the original game, causing him to flee from the scene. From the very start, Kris is set up to become Jagen's successor. They're the grandchild of an old friend, and given Jagen's old age and eventual passing, probably allowed him to die peacefully knowing that Marth was in capable hands. To say they're similar characters isn't unfounded, but to say that Kris steals from him is.

There's a lot of story content I want to get into that was there in the original game, but I want this to be spoiler-free. I'll just say that it feels like a natural and fitting extension and conclusion to Marth's story, and not Kaga just saying "hey let's do more Marth and Archanaea stuff". The final chapter interactions with the four clerics hit me really hard, especially one with a certain blonde haired knight. Unrequited love is a horrible thing to experience, and it can rarely be helped.

Gameplay wise, fe12 is incredibly solid. Lunatic until chapter 16 was probably some of the best time I've had playing an FE game, but everything after that gets kinda excessive. Enemies start having overly-inflated stats and forged weapons, and reinforcement/ambush spawns get downright evil, but it's doable without the rainbow potion. It actually felt playtested, contrary to FE11 Hard 5 where I farmed on earlygame bosses for several hundered turns in order to stand a chance going forward. Reclassing is back, and much better given unit balance is a lot better. There's no objective "best choice" like using Sedgar and Wolf for their ridiculous growth rates, or Caeda for demolishing bosses with the wing spear. Whereas FE11 was a weird hodge-podge of FE1/3B1 and modern FE design philosophies, FE12 feels more akin to the GBA titles, and that's for the better.

The game looks a bit nicer than FE11, too, despite re-using a lot of assets. It generally just has a brighter colour palette, better character portraits and nicer looking UI. I generally prefer the look of the DS games to Three Houses for example, honestly, since one of my favourite FE things were always the cute idle animations on the map. Fully 3D FE games just don't have them, and while I can excuse the Tellius games for being the only games with 3D models to represent units on the map for a while, they were the first 3D games in the series period. The DS games may not necessarily look good in comparison, but they and by extension every other FE game with 2D map sprites have far more charm. There're also some gorgeous illustrated stills for important cutscenes and pre-chapter story, can only hope we find hires versions of them some day.

One area that FE11 didn't fumble with was the soundtrack, and 12 is even better. All of the new story stuff has entirely new music, and it sounds fantastic across the board. Theme of Love and Puppets Don't Cry nearly brought me to tears, and the vigour behind Liberation and Holy War pushed me to actually overcome those lategame maps. I need to bring special attention to Puppet's Don't Cry, given that it's a new track added for the new story content. Again, chapter 16x can play out in multiple ways, and you're going to hear it (and maybe cry like I did) no matter what.

So yeah, FE12 is pretty good.