#OH THEY ALSO BOTH HAVE SHITTY DADS WHO LED THEIR KINGDOMS TO RUIN

[fore-seer]

i believe with all my heart that chrom and celica would be friends

[crystalelemental]

New Mystery of the Emblem is complete, and I have many thoughts.

Let’s just start with this: holy shit this was so much more fun than Shadow Dragon.  For three major reasons:

No one is expected to die.  Shadow Dragon bothered me immediately, because I’m required to let someone die in the prologue to escape.  That sucks, and I hated it.  I have never gotten over that, or the expectation to kill more units to access the bonus chapters.  Which, sure, you can argue are optional.  But those characters appear in this game and are recognized, so clearly those happened now didn’t they?!

SUPPORT CONVERSATIONS!  Okay, they’re not like...actual support conversations.  They’re Radiant Dawn style, where you have conversations with allies at your base and only your base.  But there’s a tier of 1-3 for most characters, and they’re essentially support conversations, and god Shadow Dragon was impossible to get in to without those.  Seriously, I may enjoy the gameplay of Fire Emblem overall, but I do not enjoy units for combat performance, I enjoy them for being characters, and thank god they feel like characters this time.

Actually interesting story.  Shadow Dragon was pretty boring, frankly.  Very basic concepts presented, not really a lot going on.  But New Mystery actually expands on a lot of this stuff.  I’ll get into that more below.

Suffice to say, I really enjoyed it more than Shadow Dragon.  I think in terms of ranking, I’d definitely place it above Shadow Dragon, Birthright, Revelation, and Sacred Stones.  Currently I think I’m putting it above Conquest too.  While Conquest is similarly fun to play, New Mystery has the benefit of being more interesting as a story.  I’m hesitant to put it over Echoes, though.  Listen, Echoes sucks as a game.  It’s really not fun to play, almost at all.  New Mystery is fun to play, so this should be obvious.  But while the story is improved, I wouldn’t put it anywhere near the level of Echoes.

See, the main thing with New Mystery is that it filled in gaps that made the world feel more organic than just generic medieval kingdom with magic and dragons and shit.  They delve into what the Fire Emblem here is, about the history of the dragons, and why, say, Tiki’s kept locked away for so long.  Also why Medeus is a villain, and out to eliminate humanity.  Turns out, he was the only Earth Dragon to listen to Naga and convert to a manakete, and even helped guard the seal over the dragons who were slowly losing their minds.  But humans, as soon as they had that advantage, exploited dragons.  Several maps showcase that these deteriorating dragons are being kept in thrall to human tribes who use their power for personal gain.  Exploitation of dragons led Medeus to despise humans, and seek to overthrow them.  Which is pretty cool!  I’m on board with that!  Tiki’s said to also be deteriorating without the seal in place, and that, as a powerful divine dragon, she’s bring ruin to the world if she weren’t contained.  So they basically kept her in stasis to avoid disaster.  Which...okay, Fallen Tiki should’ve just been that.  A feral Tiki that’s no longer all there, instead of just “Gharnef’s power is controlling her.”  Shadow Dragon’s momentarily irritable Tiki wasn’t shit compared to what they implied could happen here.

The trouble is that the game is still pretty basic.  Beyond this bit of worldbuilding, it’s still very much conflict between the kingdoms, again, all ochestrated by Gharnef, who’s working for Medeus.  Again.  They play around more with their themes and set up some cool ideas, but it’s not the most compelling of narratives by any means.  What’s also not helped is that, while support conversations exist to make characters more engaging, it’s not all of them, and not all are done well.  Some supports are just a sort of filling in the gaps.  At least, with the MU they are.  Maybe with other characters they get a bit more.

Speaking of MU, let’s divert a bit to talk about them.  Kris is like...the one MU I have heard universal hate for.  My best guess is that this is due to fans of the original FE3, who didn’t like their inclusion in the first place, because otherwise I have no idea what the problem is.  Kris seems fine.  Really boring, but fine.  The only reason they’re kinda my least favorite is because they’re supposed to be their own character but don’t do anything.  Like, Robin has a personality and is fun, and has a great dynamic with Chrom.  Corrin, for all the faults borne of Fates, feels pretty much like a typical Fire Emblem lord.  Byleth...okay, I don’t like Byleth much, I feel like their inclusion kinda hinders the game’s narrative a little bit, but otherwise they’re pretty blank and exist mostly as a support for the other lords.  But Kris...doesn’t do much of anything.  They don’t really have a dynamic with anyone, including Marth, and are just sort of...generic loyal knight with no knowledge of the world for some reason, and who only ever trained with their now dead grandfather.  Beyond that, they don’t really exude any particular personality.  Which is probably part of the problem with supports; everyone supports with Kris, but they don’t contribute much, so it’s mostly the other character doing stuff at them.  They just don’t have much to do.

With one exception.  We gotta talk about the other, presumably new character: Katarina.  I actually love Katarina.  Which is a shame, I pulled one of her in Heroes once and made her into a manual because I didn’t care.  Oh well.  Anyway, Katarina’s got a pretty solid story behind her, and is one of the more compelling pieces of the plot overall.  She’s part of a band of assassins who were orphans, taken in by Lady Eremiah.  Eremiah is super cut-throat, willing to sacrifice the lives of these children to accomplish her goals, which mostly seem to be serving Gharnef.  While Legion’s boring and lame, Clarine and Katarina are spectacular.  Clarine starts off really obnoxious, and kind of a bitch, but the chapter where she finally falls hit me pretty hard.  Katarina’s supports with Kris also give a bit more context to what had happened, particularly with the talk about how Clarine and Katarina share a birthday, because they never had one but Clarine just decided on a day and that was the end of it.  It’s a really cute dynamic you get to experience kind of in reverse.  You see how bad things have gotten, then get the history of what used to be, and why Katarina couldn’t leave.  Eremiah’s the same.  Gharnef shows up as she’s dying and reminds her of her own history.  The orphanage she worked at was burned to the ground and the children slaughtered in the last war.  In despair, Gharnef appeared and convinced her that if the children were strong, they wouldn’t die so easily, leading her to take in the next wave and train them for strength alone, all the while becoming corrupted by Gharnef’s influence.  That last part aside, pretty compelling.  I do enjoy narratives that play with the idea of kindness being manipulated to a sensible, but corrupted, conclusion.

My main problem is that Gharnef sucks.  He’s not an interesting villain at all.  He just kind of exists, and was largely motivated by getting passed over by his master when it came to who got the cool spells.  He’s a big, stinky baby man whining about not being the favorite, and I could not care less.  Yet he’s supposed to be this grand puppetmaster, of a particularly shitty puppet.  Hardin was an ally in Shadow Dragon, who became an enemy this game.  Why?  Oh, he was mad that Nyna didn’t like him back, and got super buttmad about it.  Which is honestly fair at this point, since they describe it as a depressive episode.  He gets to marry this woman he loves, only to find out she never reciprocated the feeling at all.  Feel like it’s fair to be upset.  But then Gharnef shows up and allegedly corrupts his soul with the Darksphere.  Which...okay, first?  Lame.  Second?  Why do we have that, and why does it do that?  This was a gift from Naga, why the hell is it so dangerous?  Third, super lame!  It takes away all agency Hardin had as a villain and removes it down to “oh, he was possessed.”  Which sucks, because the exact inverse happened for Michalis, and now he’s super cool!

His character arc this game was spectacular!  Showing up to take Minerva away from her captors.  Giving her refuge in the desert and helping her rendezvous with Marth?  There’s something going on, compared to last game where he was just some lame baby man who wanted power.  Minerva says Gharnef lost his hold, and Michalis is like “Oh, no, I would never bend to him.  I killed dad because we disagreed on Macedon fighting to become a major power in the world again, and he tried to have me exiled.  I did it for me, and regret nothing.”  Honestly loved that.  But when asked why he’s helping now, it turns out it’s for their sister.  He talks about how, after he was defeated, he was near death, and the first thing he saw when he came to was Maria kneeling over him, praying to the gods to save him.  He was so touched by her kindness despite his actions, that he’s now solely driven to save her as his final act.  He doesn’t regret his actions, but recognizes that he lost and needs to do something, and god damn if it’s not going to be saving his little sister.  That’s super cool!  I’m so on board with this dude now!  One of the bigger antagonists of Shadow Dragon who offered almost nothing became a big favorite in the game with a single conversation!  I feel like that encapsulates the difference between Shadow Dragon and New Mystery pretty well.

The last thing I’ll mention is gameplay.  I really enjoyed just playing this game, and I think a big component of that is because the maps are pretty short.  And yet.  They’re challenging.  There are a few that just repeatedly required me to restart the chapter, despite being maybe three turns long.  The extra chapter when you first face Legion, and it’s got the two mercenaries to the left and right of your starting position, and you can recruit both but you have to not kill them?  The map was so small they could get to just about anyone, so it was a real challenge to handle the archers with my high movement units, prevent those two from dying against the blockades to the sides, and take out the boss quickly without being swarmed.  Other times, the gimmicks were a little obnoxious.  Like Chapter 18.  You’re trying to take this one castle on the right that’s pretty well defended, but there are these super fast cav archers closing in on you from above.  You basically have one turn to get to the village on the left, so their king calls them off.  It’s a cool chapter, but I had to reset the first time, because I didn’t go into the chapter knowing that.  I put my dancer closer to the fortress, thinking I’d have to just move quickly and take out the boss to get them to back off, so Marth couldn’t reach the goal fast enough.  It’s just small things like that.

Overall, I think it’s pretty solid.  I could see playing this one again some day.  Maybe to intentionally miss one of the spheres so I can see what the bad ending is about.  But on the whole, I like it.  Still not super impressed with the characters in Marth’s game, I still feel like a lot are pretty bland (including Marth himself), but it’s a huge step up from Shadow Dragon.