You know, i have a pretty negative opinion overall when it comes to Shouzu Kaga's games. He may be the creator of Fire Emblem but i've always felt that it was for the better that he left IntSys and Fire Emblem behind, because his track record is not that good. For the longest time, i thought the only good game the guy made was Mystery of the Emblem. Shadow Dragon NES and Gaiden both aged horrendously but i can't really fault it, to be fair. Genealogy of the Holy War and Thracia 776 are an absolute mess of game design. Berwick Saga.....is fine but i just didn't click with it so i will refrain from giving any opinion on it. Vestaria Saga started out good and got really, really bad as it went on. So where does that leave TearRing Saga, the first of these "Kaga Sagas". Well, i was pleasantly surprised to find it's actually pretty good.

The game is basically an expanded version of Gaiden and as such, the structure of the maps allowed for easy completion (mostly). There is no Weapon Triangle which is pretty based. It's a fine mechanic but both Shadows of Valentia and Three Houses show that you can do well without it and TearRing Saga is another example of that. Also, there's like two axe users in the game, a Weapon Triangle would be extremely unbalanced. Anyways, because of how short maps tended to be, i pretty much blitzed through this game, which honestly felt really nice. It is a bit on the easy side, probably comparable with Blazing Blade, but that's not bad at all.

On the narrative side, while Runan is just brown Marth, Holmes is one of my new favorite Lords. Holmes is basically the closest i'm gonna get to a Fire Emblem of the Caribbean, which means i gotta take it. I honestly kinda wish this game was just about him because while Runan is fine, i was much more invested in what Holmes was doing (even if his romance with Katri is kinda rough).

I also like how the usual kingdom vs empire plot is handled in this game. A lot of the enemy generals you face are pretty honorable. You have your shitters, of course, but the game did a good job at humanizing the bigger threats and how the war is affecting them. One particular scene i like is when the princess of the enemy faction demanded Runan's head for killing her uncle and her father is like "to think my sweet little daughter would be saying things like this". Something i really liked about Path of Radiance was how it showed how the other side was thinking. But while Path of Radiance showed it from a civilian standpoint, TearRing Saga showed it from a military and nobility standpoint. Because let's be real, in most Fire Emblems, the people of the enemy nation are perfectly fine with you marching across their lands.

The game was honestly going great buuuuuuuuuuut it really dropped the ball on the last stretch. Almost after the third route split gave me no choice but to dock several points. The map quality takes a serious beating here. Literally all of Holmes' maps are warp skip maps and while warp skipping is funny, i do think if you design a map and the player's first thought is "fuck this shit, i'm warp skipping", you did a pretty bad job. Meanwhile, Runan's maps on the third route split started getting way too cute with reinforcement spam. Ch.34 in particular is honestly a war crime. So much shit is thrown at you, it started giving me war flashbacks to Binding Blade Ch.21, time-limit included (even if TRS Ch.34 technically doesn't have one). And it all culminated in an annoying but not super terrible final map.

Narratively, the game also takes a hit in this last stretch because i really, really do not care about evil cult when the kingdom vs empire plot was way more interesting, and this is made worse because the cult is directly responsible for the entire war. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the enemy generals hate the cult but i'm just tired of evil cult being the cause of everyone's problems.

There's something interesting on paper on how the Gerxel Cult was formed after centuries of oppression and there are two characters that try to humanize the cult but it all still falls flat when all the other members of the cult are presented as nothing more than demon worshippers. The main villain is particularly pathetic, mainly because he barely shows up in the story, not to mention he has zero interactions with the main heroes. I never thought it'd be possible to write a main villain in this way. He's hardly relevant, has no interactions.

Fire Emblem has never done evil cult well and while TearRing Saga isn't technically Fire Emblem, i'm still counting this as another instance where evil cult is a big blight on an otherwise good story. Although honestly, i think the only time evil cult has ever been done well in fiction is in Star Wars, because more people wanna be Sith Lords than Jedi Knights. I think that, on very rare occasion, writing an evil cult into your story is just something that will just make you wanna roll your eyes. But maybe that's just how i see it.

Oh and the music is shit btw, with Holmes' map theme being particularly bad. Not a single certified banger, only the final map theme is alright.

Honestly though, despite the flaws i talked about, this game is pretty solid. The third route split is pretty shit but at least the ending is cute (and does have a badass scene ngl). Ch.34 has pretty much guaranteed i'll never do another playthrough but if you're a fan of Fire Emblem, you'll likely enjoy this. I may not like Kaga's games most of the time but i can say this is easily his best work which admittedly wasn't that hard, his only other good game is Mystery of the Emblem.