It certainly resembles a lot to chess since, in its own terms, it’s a game majorly about positioning. Sure, there is resource management and a bit of random number trickery, but most of the strategy will revolve around who is where to counter what. Though this could be said of most tile-based strategy games, and the comparison wouldn’t be untrue, something like (ironman) XCOM (forgive my limited knowledge in strategy yet) falls a bit further when the enemy units, or the terrain, are unknown upon arrival, the base management could be its own independent game and it explicitly wants you to take into account, and use, probability percentages. XCOM asks you to take risks and to take all the consequences, no turning back.

Since competing against an AI on equal grounds isn't the most exciting approach to a chess-like game (especially at this era) Fire Emblem looks more like a chess problem. A small hint to this is that the final ranking in further entries is decided taking into account your number of turns. So Fire Emblem ends up having a lot of a puzzle game too.

If everything goes well, a map in Fire Emblem will be completed in one smooth try. But maps are usually designed so that everything goes wrong. The board then turns into a full puzzle where to calculate what the enemy can do when and how to counterattack. Of course, there are some random numbers, mainly affecting criticals and dodges, but those are small things in the greater picture, a reason to restart the level again in the worst case and a small appreciated advantage in the best. Strategizing a map ends up being a planning exercise of eradicating dangers and exploiting weaknesses.

Some problems arise when seeing the game like this. It's not fully transparent like chess since there can be, and usually are, a few hidden surprises on the map and a lot more attention needs to be put to every enemy unit since each is unique unlike the six chess pieces existent. But these secrets end up losing the surprise factor on repetition, eventually becoming just another predictable piece of the board, and errors due to a lack of proper attention end up being resettable. Unlike chess, there are a lot of units to move each turn, and in consequence turns drag on and on with too many uninteresting decisions to repeat in every try.

It could be well questioned that this is not the way to play Fire Emblem at all, except for hardcore fans who seek a good score, that the first try should be about continuing however you can, imagining your own ironman mode because autosaving in every turn was not that possible in the system and keeping only the temporal save would be troublesome in such a long game, in case some outside factor would power off the console. However, that, to my knowledge, not a single Fire Emblem or Shouzou Kaga game has completely erased this saving system makes me think that it is more of a fundamental design element. Furthermore, the conclusive evidence lies in this very first game itself. Finishing a map asks you if you want to save since maybe you are not always sure that you can continue for long just by finishing the map in any state (and maybe, in a lot of cases, you can go on, but what's always sure is that you can retry to optimize the result, resources are too scarce to give them up so easily). And, what would Marth role be? Would he still be the warrior that leads an army by actively taking arms in every battle like any of his soldiers, or would he be the subject of an escort mission where his single death could mean losing dozens of hours of progress?

I see a very thought out strategy game in here, but, ultimately, I see that it's indecisive, it wants you to examine, to try out, but also to surprise you, to clearly punish for your mistakes, and I don't think it finds harmony and rhythm in its proposal. And my biggest fear is that the failure is so fundamental that no Shouzou Kaga or Fire Emblem game can really do anything about it. I'll have to see.