LogFAQs > #957868406

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (GBA)

Fire Emblem, to me, is a series kind of defined by peaks and valleys. The majority of its entries all have one or two aspects - whether it's map design, characters, plot, overall gameplay, etc. - that it does notably better than most other games in the franchise and one or two that it does notably worse.

Sacred Stones bucks that trend for me by just being pretty consistently decent throughout. There aren't any real standout chapters or any that I had a miserable time with. The narrative is pretty standard FE fare, and it feels pretty rushed at the end, but it has some interesting beats, most of which come from Lyon - I know he's kind of polarizing among the fanbase, but I found him to be one of its more compelling villains. And Ephraim (whose route I played) is probably one of its better Lords. The rest of the cast is fine but probably one of the more forgettable lineups all said.

The gameplay ended up being the weakest piece for me. SS does some things I like, like branching promotions (even if that ends up being kinda half-baked and poorly balanced), shops on the world map, and the trainee system... in theory, at least. But it's just waaaay too easy, and that's a big deal for an SRPG where so much of the inherent draw comes from the challenge. Most of my army felt invincible by the end as long as I didn't do something silly like put Syrene in range of a Sniper, and that's with the only grinding I did being for supports (a system which still sucks, by the way). Granted, my Ephraim got very RNG blessed, but no one else was having any trouble either.

Overall, I think it lands toward the bottom-middle of my series ranking, but with Fire Emblem being one of my favorite series, that's not an insult; it takes a lot to make an FE game actively bad to me. Good game.

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Chilly McFreeze
https://imgur.com/UYamul2