Fire Emblem, The GBA one

So in 2003/04, a tactical RPG was released for GBA, and I seem to remember it got quite popular. In fact, you guys all played it quite a lot. To the extent that in 2007 we merged this forum with a Fire Emblem fan site. I also seem to remember borrowing it once from Alex, getting loads of units killed really early on, getting pissed off with the tutorial and giving it back. I also remember Fraser talking to me on MSN a few years ago about how he'd NEARLY FINISHED FIRE EMBLEM AND FUCK FUCK OH MY GOD IT'S DIFFICULT.

Eight years later, I was playing a bit of Advance Wars DS, and it popped back into my head. Remembering how much everyone enjoyed it at the time, I figured I'd give it another go, so I grabbed it from Lydia and started playing last week.


(Nice bit of leg there)

I'm actually finding it to be a pretty fantastic game. The strategy style works really well with the RPG elements (reminds me a bit of FFTA) and the storyline is nicely developed without being overbearing.


I've realised that Matthew (above) is literally Alex. Like, either Alex has based his entire personality on this character, or vice versa. Everything he ever did on FEW, everything in every game of Mafia I've ever played, everything he's currently doing to manipulate the polotics of Portsmouth University, is reflected in this character. They even look the fucking same.


For anyone who doesn't know, if a character dies in the course of a battle, you can't use them in any future missions, completely transforming the way you approach combat, and actually making the game pretty difficult pretty early on. I really quite like the idea; it's a refreshing change from most games, where your decisions in this round make no difference to what happens next round; and (as in the Nuzlocke Challenge) it makes you a lot more attached to the characters you play with. When I lost Rebecca yesterday I felt like I'd let her down as a father or something.

As for the storyline, I've been pretty impressed by the flexible elements of it. I went into a village in one of the early missions, when you think Matthew's just some random thief, and I'm guessing if any other character had gone in I'd have got some advice about hiding in forests or some shit. But as it happened, I went in with Matthew, and two lords from Ositia were waiting there and started talking to Matthew about how he was spying on everyone else in the party and secretly reporting back to them. There was like a 95% chance I'd have completely missed that little bit of story and wouldn't have found out about Matthew until much later on, but they still bothered to include it and flesh out the world a bit. A few other little bits like that have impressed me, and I'd love to know how much more I'm just missing completely.



Overall Fire Emblem 7 smells of having a lot of effort put into it by people who actually wanted to make a really good game, not people trying desperately to meet a deadline and get home early. I'm on chapter 15 now, and I look forward to playing and enjoying much more in future.

Also I hear there's this great new TV show called Friends, and apparently Opal Fruits are now called Starburst.

I was probably talking about Radiant Dawn, considering I never really had much of a problem with the GBA game and have still never completed Radiant Dawn because I've made it uncompleteable through inept save overwriting choices.

Incidentally I am Soren from FE10 IRL

Tell me when you are done on Valor Michael

What's a valour?

I have never played one of these for more than a few hours. I just can't love it as much as Advance Wars.

I think I enjoy "______s with RPG elements", even though I hate "RPGs". It's a pattern I'm noticing more and more.

I've come to realise that 90% of all traditional RPGs would be better for me if you never fought anything ever, and also if the game always made crystal clear exactly who I needed to talk to.

The major exception to this is Chrono Trigger, the best vanilla RPG ever made.

I hear you on the ridiculous leaps of logic in having to talk to random people to get anywhere in the game, but what about fighting anything? Without combat, isn't it basically just an interactive story?

Yep. Play To the Moon, which is pretty much exactly that, an interactive story in the style of a 16 bit walk around RPG. With a plot good enough any RPG with the Final Fantasy style of boring ass combat would be markedly improved by just removing it.

(Disclaimer - The Only Final Fantasy games with plots good enough for this to even remotely have a chance of working would be 6 and 9)

I think the general consensus here is that most core RPGs have completely outdated combat systems - and I would absolutely agree. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule but nine times out of ten the combat tends to be an annoying, repetitive slog between bits of story.

What Michael said about "...with RPG elements" is really the true successor to RPGs, I would argue. Sure, they may not be "pure", but the really RPG is nothing on it's own. It's role playing. That's a good description of a huge proportion of games.

What people think of as a standard RPG is actually a single, basically unchanged battle system combined with restrictive overworld elements - look at Pokemon for a great example of that. Bits and pieces are opened up as you gain new skills, and in the end you have a large world you can explore, randomly battling things. But other than the battle system, what really defines an RPG?

Statistics.

But do those statistics in any way affect anything other than the battle system?

If i'm being incredibly stupid, tell me. I feel like i'm being incredibly stupid.

Other than in games where certain values affect how others interact with you (Bioware games, Bethesda games, old interplay stuff etc), no, it's all pretty much combat focused. But whether the combat counts as RPG combat or not depends on whether the statistics involved are controlled by the player or not.

Like, in Super Mario Brothers your jump does a set damage amount, but in Paper Mario you can choose to make your attacks more powerful.

That's what is fundamentally wrong with basic RPGs like the Final Fantasy games. The fuck could you do in Final Fantasy 1? You just levelled up and got random improvements. You bought equipment when and where it was available and nowhere else.

Vanilla RPGs force you to follow a script even when you are in gameplay, and it's when you introduce other wrinkles to the gameplay with the "RPG Elements" thing and let the player actually have a tangible influence on the combat and gameplay that the games get better.

I think you've basically nailed what I was trying to say. I don't know what's wrong with me today, I re-wrote that passage like 6 times and still wasn't happy with it. Huh.

Wheres Michael? Usually he texts me about now to tell me to come on Equipninty because something exciting happened

Probably at a Pokemon society meeting.

Fun fact Tasha was testing me on my pokemon memory today and I was able to correctly remember the types of every pokemon she suggested to me. Which is pretty tragic.