Fire Emblem

Just your average heroes in your average fantasy world?but not your average strategy game.

If video games had gourmet cuisine equivalents (they don?t, really, but bear with me), Fire Emblem would be the work of a world-class chef laboring in a middle-class suburban kitchen. It takes mundane ingredients?a generic fantasy setting, boring anime portraits, ancient tile-based sword-and-axe gameplay?and blends them into something sublime. Intelligent Systems is Iron Chef Strategy/RPG.

Nostalgia Soup
While most strategy/RPGs attempt to stand out in the crowd by introducing weird new twists like laws or headband collecting, this one relies solely on the essentials: swords and axes, dragon riders and pegasi, fire magic and lightning bolts. There are no fancy job assignments or cat-cactus-system combos to speak of?just the basics, thanks, carefully balanced and weighed.

Several features stand out. The game moves fast, thanks to a menu and control scheme designed for speed, and quick battle animations. The story is excellent, a complex (but not convoluted) classic fantasy yarn with twists and drama and all that other good medieval stuff. The maps are thoughtfully designed, you can have a dozen units in a given battle, and the strategy is elegantly balanced with a seemingly simple rock-paper-scissors weapons triangle that goes deceptively deep.

The catch is that there are fewer options than in, say, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. The game is very linear (of 30-plus missions, only a couple are optional ones), and if you liked FFTA?s complex job-switching system, well, too bad! The game gives you very minimal control over your characters? development. Not necessarily a bad thing, just something you should know.

The Pope?s Ramen
While the ingredients are generic and the presentation trapped in the past, Fire Emblem is still the product of masters. It?s a can of Beefaroni prepared by Julia Child for the Queen of Mozambique.

Comments [0]

post a comment

Post a Comment