Great game, but they could have done more...

User Rating: 8.4 | Fire Emblem: Souen no Kiseki GC
By doingy | Review Date:
This was my first foray into the Fire Emblem series. I gotta say, it's a great game. It's fun, it's simple to learn, and the level of depth you can get from it is just incredible. The game mechanics are wide and varied, and the number of things you can consider before moving each individual unit is tremendous. I suspect at the later levels I could spend half an hour just considering the strategy of a single move. The story is kind of interesting too, and the way you have to consider your units as characters is new to me. I work hard to make sure they all survive, not just for strategic reasons but because I get depressed if these characters die. Also, the graphics are pretty nice, and the battles are generally interesting to watch (though past a certain point I turn off the longer animations just because there's so much going on in one turn). However, there's a LOT of wasted potential here.

What is it with Japanese game designers and wasting the potential of the 'cube? The graphics are nice, but they could have done much, much better. Increased the number of animations, fancied up the magic effects, even allowed you to customize character models to some degree.

Even moving on from graphics, they didn't do all that great a job of implementing the "characters can die" mechanic. I lose a character, and instead of the commander being immediately riddled by doubt and his relations suffering right after the battle, his absence is only really noticed a couple levels later and only in passing. I find this annoying. They could have made the death of a character a much more powerful experience.

In the end, the game is good, and I'll probably sacrifice a lot of my time to it, but even though I'm awed by the gameplay and entertained by the story, I'm constantly disappointed by things that could have been truly amazing and just weren't.

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