slopguzzler
Genealogy takes the series to heights it has not reached since. Every mechanic is carefully selected and subtly tuned to balance the difference of its strategic and role-playing elements. In fact, FE4 has such a delicate ecosystem of gameplay mechanics and loops I'm honestly terrified of any possible remake, because I know it will upset one of them, completely changing the experience; My ideal remake is a literal re-release of the super famicom rom with an updated translation patch.
1997
I had this game on one of those demo discs as a kid and decades later decided to try it out for real. Unfortunately it's a bit one note for my tastes and it definitely seems to be a product of that early 3D era of having horrendously obnoxious controls and camera angles.
This game elicits some complicated feelings from me, because I think it could have been something amazing, and it clearly had enough going on to spawn a whole sub-franchise. The main problem with the game is that it doesn't really respect the player's time, to absurd degrees. World of Sloth obviously comes to mind with that, but I feel like it's such an audacious decision to create something like that it wraps back around to being funny, maybe even clever. The real time-wasting comes with a lot of the clunky mechanics that seem to primarily be there to pad out the play time since the story is rather light. It's incredibly frustrating to recruit demons, dying demoting your guardian is frustrating, ranking up into a guardian that nerfs your build is frustrating, level design is frustrating. The whole experience seems tailor-made to taunt you the whole time you're playing. A masochist's game if I've ever played one.
Makes some much needed improvements in a lot of areas but is overall not as good as previous entries in regards to the actual meat of the game.
Got me through quite a few panic-attack induced bouts of insomnia with its serene atmosphere.
2002
Very interesting game, difficult too. I feel like in this day and age, it's primarily more interesting to people who enjoyed Hellsinker since you can see the evolution of a lot of the mechanics and themes present there in Radio Zonde. It's also hard as hell. At the end of the day, it's a free game and if you're here and haven't played it you might as well give it a go yourself.
2021
Gameplay is probably the best its ever been but boy howdy was the story a huge let down. Given the infodump cutscenes and how only one of the main alignment characters seemed to really get any development or screen time it really makes the game feel unfinished when looking back. Vengeance is coming out soon though so hopefully it fixes these issues.
2007
This might be one of the best games ever made and I'm not kidding.
2019
Disappointing in almost every regard. It has some cool ideas but they fall short in the lackluster implementation. For instance, the wild areas seem to clearly be the prototype of what Scarlet/Violet would eventually be and the disastrous design of most post-3D route designs means you wind up with a half-assed wild area with half-assed "normal" routes, the worst of both worlds. Dynamax was a boring replacement for megas. It's also never been more obvious they just ripped shit out of the game (or never bothered making) in order to sell it to you as DLC. Platinum at least felt like an upgraded version of D/P, complete games in themselves; this game legit felt like 10-20 hours of content were straight up missing. I assume that was filled in by the DLC but I wouldn't know because fuck paying for slop that should've just been in the main game.
2012
Excellent metroidvania with some incredible (if inscrutable at times) puzzles. Only major weak point is that combat sucks ass. Bonus points for making people Read The Fucking Manual™
Not to be that guy but this game really should've been billed as Persona x Fire Emblem. We could've had a game where you do demon negotiation with Hector or something but instead its just watered down persona with the shadow dragon cast. I don't mind the story revolving around idols but it's not particularly interesting and again seems more like a persona plot beat. Isn't persona more popular? WTF was the marketing team thinking. Anyway had to stop playing because the emulator kept crashing but from what I saw the dungeons were alright and the gameplay was tight if nothing else.
2021
Pretty disappointing. The map and world were pretty big let-downs and I feel like that's a huge component of metroid games. Makes it feel like any other random platformer action game so much so to the point they have to throw in a bunch of legacy characters to remind you what game you're playing. Making morph ball unavailable until like halfway through was kinda baller though. Not worth the wait in my opinion.
Earns a permanent spot on any hard drive I have. Used to play this instead of paying attention in lectures.
2008
Classic shmup goodness with a killer soundtrack to boot. The main mechanic, a bullet reflecting shield, never feels too overpowered and the game plays around with it in some interesting ways. In my opinion it's the best of the ALLTYNEX trilogy.
Game makes a big deal about exploring and then gives you a vast, empty world filled with nothing but Fisher Price puzzles and enemies you have no incentive to engage. Skyrim syndrome.