The First Fire Emblem to Reach the West

Fire Emblem is Nintendo's longest running strategy series to ever put gamers to the test of strategy role-playing. Although the Fire Emblem series first made its debut on Nintendo's 8-bit Japanese Famicom system, the series itself had never made it to the western world simply because the game as Nintendo had put it, is way too difficult for western gamers to handle. Despite this, sequels after sequels had appeared only in the Japanese market and it looks as if Nintendo will never bring this incredible series here, but thanks to a GameCube multiplaying fighting game called "Super Smash Bros. Melee," two never before seen Nintendo icons had made their appearances for the first time in the western gaming community. These two icons are Marth and Roy both from the Fire Emblem series, Marth is the main character from the very first Fire Emblem which was only released in the land of the rising sun and Roy is the main character from the sixth installment of the Fire Emblem series and which is the first Fire Emblem game to ever appeared on the Game Boy Advance but was still exclusive in Japan. Since their appearances in Super Smash Bros. Melee, many Nintendo and strategy game fans had high demands for the Fire Emblem series that Nintendo finally agreed to bring the series to the western side of the world.

This is the first Fire Emblem game to be released in the U.S. and was the second installment of the Fire Emblem series for the Game Boy Advance and also as a prequel to the already released "Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi" for the GBA in Japan which actually stars Roy as the main character. In this game, you play the role of a skill tactician who must control an army unit of different class characters ranging from pegasus knights to archers and cavaliers to fighters. In playing you'll follow the story of the game's event chapter after chapter and the more characters you encounter will be added to your group of units which you'll need later on in the game to plan for strategy sake. Fire Emblem is a game in which you will have to plan out a strategy before you can engage into battle. You will get to control the action of a lord(Lyn, Eliwood and/or Hector) and if he or she die in battle the game is over, but if a unit character die they are gone forever ending your strategy plan in ruin and since the game auto saved your every moves you can't repeat the same process over again unless you reset the chapter and restart it over again.

Though, this game had a lot with strategy much like its Advance Wars counterpart it follows a very unique storyline ranging from rivalry and betrayal to assassination and impending doom. There are also chapters where some enemy units may even become your allies if you can communicate with them with a related characters like Guy for example who can be recruit to the good side by comunicating him with Matthew. As far as the gameplay goes, the fight scene and the graphics are well inspiring, there are plenty of sidequests to build up your experiences though they are optional but do come in handy and well worth your effort. You might even want to take some time fighting for money in the colosseum as well.

Now the main part of the game is the battlefield where both you and your enemies' units will engage in battle, during a battle, you'll have to move your units to complete one or several requirements for example in one chapter, you'll have to seize the throne of a particualr area guarded by an enemy leader, in another you'll have to defeat the boss of that battlefield, also in another you'll have to survive a number of turns to make the enemy units retreat as well as guarding a host to prevent the enemy units from attacking them until all turns are over. These kind of requirements often made the battles very difficult and at the same time made the chapter way too long to accomplish. Another thing to mention is that every enemy units in the battlefield are more clever than an average player might think, sometimes they can gang up on your strong unit one by one even though they knew they are low level characters, often they prefer attacking your weaker units even though your stronger ones are closer to them, and sometimes they may even pretend to retreat from your point of advantage and lead your units to an ambush for example a surprise in the fog, a sneak attack from the wall, or a shot from a far in the hills or fort. With clever enemy units like these and hard fought battles ranging in and out, it's often difficult to complete a requirement on one chapter even though some players may think it sound so simple.

With battles like these, this game is super difficult once you get further into the game and it will even continue to get more harder when you lose one or more of your characters who you deeply need for the next chapter, but as far as everything goes, the game is a great treat to many strategy fans. No wonder Nintendo never release a game like this in the U.S. once you play it, you will feel so attached to it that sometimes it might even scare you or make you cry almost as if you are part of it. Despite some characters actually talking to you, it will definitely makes you feel totally part of the group yourself unlike many other strategy games like Shining Force and Ogre Battle where your recruited characters are nothing but units and there are no reactions from them at all which doesn't make you feel as part of the game yourself.

I would like to give thanks to both Nintendo and Intelligent Systems for releasing this version of Fire Emblem to the GBA here in the U.S. for the first time. This game is a solid hit and pure addictive, I'm also glad that more sequels of this incredible series are now available stateside for GBA and GameCube as well as the upcoming Wii system too, but still none of the available Fire Emblem games had the same feeling or difficulty as this one. If you just want to have fun with the FE series, try the other FE games first until when you are really serious about true strategy than come back to this one later.