#this is jamke!ced btw

[is-it-the-dawn-brigade]

i had one of those hilarious runs of fe4 arena. here's the clip

[sealwithfeels]

I finished Fire Emblem 4: Genealogy of the Holy War!

Wew after 50 hours I'm finally finished! It certainly was an experience, and on the whole worthwhile. Excellent story and the gameplay was an interesting divergence, but had flaws mostly in that it could be a bit of a slog as turns took ages.

Some general thoughts

Played the Project Naga translation patch, hence some names and thoughts might only apply to that.

The storytelling is very different to modern Fire Emblem, but has its own charm. It's a lot more like a histoy book or epic stage play, and it's got its strengths and weaknesses. The story is told on a grand scale by a few major players, so it feels suitably epic and dignified, but at the cost of supporting characters falling by the wayside. The lack of support conversations hurts minor characters a lot here, although the conversation events do help a bit.

The game has so many funky little differences to regular FE, like everyone having their own reserves of gold, no one is able to trade but you have to use the pawnbroker instead, weapons (and some staves) have 50 uses and can be repaired from broken and repairing them enough powers them up, and abusing the arena is encouraged. All of these odd quirks quickly become quite endearing and give the game its own character, although if you don't know how to properly use them I can imagine them being more annoying than fun.

What is less fun is that the maps are HUGE and they take ages to complete. Or rather, the huge maps let you feel the scope of the story and there are some really fun tactical bits, but there are also some real bullshit things it drops on you that are more of a slog than anything, and often large stretches where you're just moving your units across the map without anything interesting happening. But making your way across the map and seeing all of the other characters (enemy, neutral or ally) acting and reacting makes it feel more alive and immersive as a game.

Horse Emblem is real here, and anyone who doesn't have a horse really falls behind when it comes to traversing maps. Ayra and her kids (Ayra x Lex OTP btw) turned out so strong, but it was so hard to use them because they just couldn't move as far ;_;

Ced with Forseti is absurd, but lacks a horse.

The pairing system is obtuse and inheritance is kind of terrifying at first, but fun to plan out. I definitely got some unintended pairings out of nowhere (Sylvia x Alec wtf) but most of them were planned and the kids were set up appropriately, and let me tell you it's very fun to make broken demigod child units /Awakening player

The ending bit was really cool, very modular and they all said their goodbyes in a way that felt pretty natural, and it was great to see everyone still alive and going off to rule well in the world. Except Verdane, Verdane got screwed because Jamke didn't marry anyone.

Oof I got some kind of glitch that set everyone's 'losses' to 116, even those that didn't fight, and my combat ranking was an E.

I really liked the story itself, and a lot of the characters stood out to me, even though I wished many of them had more dialogue and relevance. Often you'd get characters making a strong impression only to fade into the background, occasionally popping up again.

I definitely see all the inspirations that modern FE took from this. Awakening got the generational story and shipping system and demigod child soldiers. Three Houses got the epic scope and fleshed-out worldbuilding, and Edelgard owes a lot to Arvis (and I kinda wish she was more unapologetically villainous despite good intentions like he was, she feels like a watered down version, but I still <3 her), and the academy aspect probably draws from Sigurd and Eldigan's shared backstory. Fates got the incest. idk about Engage

Would I recommend it? To someone who's familiar with SRPGs, interested in a more epic grandiose story, and has a lot of patience, yes! To a newcomer or FE fan who is here for the anime hijinks and shipping, maaaaybe, depends on how appealing the gameplay all sounds - but if interested in the story and characters I'd still reccommend watching a playthrough.

Not sure where I'd personally rank it out of all the FE I've played, but story-wise it's definitely up there, gameplay-wise it's perhaps less so.