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Review by Rob Hamilton
February 26, 2010
A couple of years ago, I played Fire Emblem for the Game Boy Advance. It was the first installment in the series released in America and a damn good game despite a few imperfections such as the very easy and overly-long tutorial. Still, after playing it, I was very pleased and felt that the Shining Force series had a more-than-worthy rival in the realm of turn-based strategy fun.
After playing the first SNES entry, Monshou no Nazo, I can safely say that a good deal of tinkering happened with the series between its release year of 1994 and 2003, when Fire Emblem finally came to America. This game didn't possess many of the elements that attracted me to the GBA game, instead leaving me with a large collection of brutally tough maps with next-to-no plot connecting them.
The lack of anything more than a bare-bones story didn't really surprise me. Monshou no Nazo is divided into two separate games. The first is an enhanced remake of the first NES Fire Emblem game, while the second is a sequel created specifically for this cartridge. When you're dealing with an enhanced NES game, you're not going to get a convoluted plot with betrayals happening every other chapter. You're also not going to get characters designed to potentially develop relationships with a few other party members, granting them statistical boosts if they're able to unlock a handful of "support" conversations by staying close to them on the battlefield.
What you will get is the standard Fire Emblem story without any of those frills tossed into the mix to make things more interesting. Marth is a young lord, forced into exile due to the machinations of an evil priest named Garnef, who plans to unleash hell on the world in the form of the evil dragon god Medeus. Controlling Marth and his rapidly-growing band of heroes, you'll go all over the world, righting wrongs and collecting the necessary weapons and items to put Garnef and his god in their place and end the first game. The second is...essentially the same. This time, one of Marth's comrades has seemingly turned to the dark side, so you must, once again, travel the world to find friends and important items before eventually overpowering him and taking on the resurrected tag team of Garnef and Medeus.
Simplistic or not, in a turn-based strategy game, the story is little more than that thing bridging the gap between one large-scale battle and the next, so if the fighting was awesome, it'd be easy to forgive how the plot was lacking. On one level, things were good. Most of these fights were tough and, as one expects from Fire Emblem games, mistakes can be very costly, as when a character dies, they're gone for the rest of the game. It can be very easy to lose a powerful and beloved member of your party due to a miscalculation causing him to be overrun and chopped down by foes while you watch helplessly. A big part of the strategy in this game simply involves utilizing your party members in a way that not only maximizes their effectiveness, but also keeps them alive.
Unfortunately, a very integral ingredient to this hadn't been implemented in the Fire Emblem world as of Monshou no Nazo -- having certain weapons and spells be more or less effective against other types. I loved this aspect. If a horde of axe-wielding brigands were coming after me, I'd put my swordsmen on the front lines, as they'd cut through those bandits in no time! But if those carcasses were being backed up by horse-riding knights hoisting spears, my victory would be short-lived, as lances are as effective against swords as swords are against axes. With each unit being strong against some foes and weak against others, there's a ton of depth to the combat.
Sadly, back in 1994, players got a much simplified version of all this. Let's see. Pegasus and dragon riders get butchered by archers, but are compensated with superior magic resistance and movement than the average melee character. The spells of a mage ignore physical defense, making them great at decimating heavily-armored troops. Other than that, in Monshou no Nazo, there's a certain generic feel to characters. Some guys are faster and get critical hits more often. Others ride horses (which they must dismount to participate in castle levels), so they can cover terrain more quickly. A few more either use bows, can unlock doors and chests or have superior defense at the cost of inferior speed. Overall, most of them tend to mesh together into a big glob of the mundane.
With so few party members having remarkable skills setting them apart from others, I tended to feel that success in difficult battles had about as much to do with a combination of luck and simply learning more about each level through my failures than any legitimate use of strategy on my part. A mid-game map in the first game perfectly illustrates this.
You open with Garnef giving one of those "You stupid kids are trying to challenge me? Time to die!" speeches all villains are compelled to deliver at some point. Unlike most bosses, who stand stationary on a particular building or throne you must seize to win the level, he immediately moves toward you with malicious intent. This isn't good, as he has a really, really powerful spell at his disposal AND you're currently unable to harm him. Making matters worse, a good number of mages and flying foes are also converging on your party's location. Oh yeah, there's also a thief preparing to loot both the level's treasure chests...and you'll have to get past Garnef to stop him!
My goal was to not lose a single party member. I repeatedly failed to even last a handful of turns multiple times. Garnef would grievously wound anyone who got in his range, while the enemy's dragon knights were powerful foes backed up by a number of weaklings who would swoop in like hyenas to deliver the killing blow to an injured character. And then I discovered Garnef is programmed to give a "you're wasting my time" speech and leave the fight after four or five turns! So, all I did was cluster my guys at the beginning of the stage and pick off fliers as they advanced on me...while sending my dragon knight towards the thief and treasure, using her superior mobility to keep FAR away from Garnef. After he left, I butchered everything in my path and won the level. On my third try. That's where luck came into play, as when enemies are connecting with attacks far more frequently than their mediocre hit rate would suggest (or conversely, your guys with great accuracy unexpectedly whiff on a few swings), even solid strategy can lead to failure.
I don't dislike Monshou no Nazo; it just felt outdated to me. More recent games in the Fire Emblem family gave players a deeper combat system with enough dialogue and exposition to allow me to look at characters as being more than "this guy's brother" or "that chick's subordinate". The battles can get very challenging, but seem primitive compared to those in other games. Overall, it's a reasonably fun turn-based strategy game, but not one I'd consider essential for fans of the genre for any reason other than nostalgia.
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Most recent video game reviews written by Rob Hamilton
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Xbox 360) [February 10, 2012]
Star Ocean: The Last Hope (Xbox 360) [February 03, 2012]
Scarygirl (Xbox 360) [January 28, 2012]
Faery: Legends of Avalon (Xbox 360) [January 17, 2012]
Infinite Undiscovery (Xbox 360) [January 05, 2012]
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