I’m kind of disappointed that Nintendo hasn’t yet showed any signs of producing the Sealed Sword for the US market. (What you’re playing is the Blazing Sword, the sequel/prequel to the first GBA Fire Emblem game, which has features the Smash Brothers character.) I’m sure by the extremely positive reaction and reviews and sales the game received they could have some more easy on their hands. But then is the company that won’t release, the Japanese-developed Advance Wars in Japan. I swear, I’m never forgiving them for that.
In any case, Dave, I bet you four years from now, if they do translate Sealed Sword and maybe make a compilation pack of all the older Fire Emblem games, and after Trail of Blue Flames is released, you’ll go back to this game one day, and say, “How in the world did I ever find this hard?” breezing through an iron man challenge in the space of a day! ;)
In any case, keep us updated on what you find in the Hector campaign, your FE stories are cool. And hey, this time remember NOT to equip high critical hit weapons when you’re creating a choke wall and to not use Myrmidons or Thieves in walls either. I love how the strategies and nuances of Fire Emblem continue to slowly unveil naturally as you play and replay the games. Truly, if you haven’t replayed a Fire Emblem, its almost like you haven’t played it in the first place, as the first run through is almost like the trial run.
Hopefully one day Nintendo will translate or remake Genealogy of the Holy War, the second Fire Emblem on the SFC, as as great GBA FE is, its even better with the much huger maps and where your decisions REALLY have some hefty weight in deciding the branches of the story. I did think some group was working on a translation patch for it, but I don’t think they are done yet.
I like difficult games, so I look forward to that day, if it comes! Although iron man stuff holds no appeal to me, I’m sure I’ll know lots more about good strategy by then.
Yeah, no kidding. It was 1:30am, and I just wanted to finish the level before going to bed. I made a little mistake pushing buttons and made Dorcas hold in position as opposed to move into the choke wall, so I was like, what the heck, Lyn can do it. You know the rest of the story!
I’ve been trying to get through the game without losing a single character. I was doing fine until episode 26x, where I keep making stupid mistakes that cost me a character. The shifting bridges, reinforcements and enemies with far-ranged magic attacks really come together to teach you a lesson about tactics :(
I think I’m on my seventh or eighth attempt.
I totally blow at this game - I think my issue is that I just can’t accept a guy dying. I restart missions constantly as soon as someone dies, which happens all the time, since the AI infuriatingly acts just like a real player and will mass target my weakest guys. I constantly have happen what Dave describes: the AI will send a wave of weak guys at even my strong characters set up in bottleneck positions. These weak characters then die on the counter attack, leaving my bottleneck character a tad weaker and then open to another attack until he eventually dies.
Don’t restart the missions. You’ll have plenty of people to fill in the holes as the campaign progresses and you will enjoy the game a lot more if you just roll with it and carry on. Seriously. I lost characters all the time but still made it to the end ok.
What Dave’s doing is just playing it a different way to have a different kind of fun.
Every time we have a new thread about Fire Emblem, my jaw drops, and when I pick it back up I think, “I guess I just don’t know how to play console games.”
I played FE all the way through without restarting and enjoyed it, and deleted my saves when I was finished. I just recruited whom I could, did all the side missions, and used the obvious tactics to win battles. But I had ZERO suspicion of all the hidden stuff: conversations, shops, items, Hector campaign, etc. As far as I can remember, I didn’t unlock a damn thing.
I hope when I finish Mario and Luigi (should be today) I don’t find out I missed half the game. :?
You’re not missing half the game. You just didn’t absorb all the extras. You shouldn’t have deleted your saves. Don’t know why you’d do that? When you finish the game, you unlock Hard as a setting for the campaigns as well as Hector’s campaign. Things like hidden shops, characters you missed, all that… it’s just bonuses. You finished the game without it didn’t you?
You’re bound to miss some things in Mario & Luigi. I did and everyone I know did. But that’s part of the fun. If you go back to play it again, you look harder for those things. That’s just how games work.
What other kinds of games is he capable of enjoying?[/quote]
He’s played through Pokemon Ruby about a dozen times now. He loves it.
He also played a bit of Zelda (Windows version) but that was before he’d gotten the GBA and he hasn’t touched it since. But he’s still interested in Zelda so maybe that’s the way I should go… I see that there’s the old classic Zelda available for GBA.
An adventure game might be good too, so maybe something along the lines of The Hobbit. Was that any good?
I think 8 might be okay… I’m trying to remember when my younger brother got really into the Shining Force series on the Genesis (which is a similar style game). I think he was probably nine or ten
edit: especially if he’s played through a Pokemon game, he’s probably familiar with the concepts of item management and basic paper-rock-scissor tactics
Ha. There is no question I’d love it (along with a number of other GBA titles) which is precisely why I don’t have a GBA! My PC is already quite capable of keeping me in trouble with the wife as it is, thank you very much.
I think I may go for a “lite” RPG title like Zelda or an adventure/RPG like The Hobbit for my son for now. I’ll save the more “hardcore” RPG’s for later… Thanks for the feedback, folks.
Buy him Shining Force. I LOVED that game when I was his age and the GBA version is even better - it even has implemented a Yugi-Oh card powerup system to use in battles. It is sort of Fire Emblem very light - it is a compelling RPG in its own right but it is a good groundwork for some of the skills you’d use in Fire Emblem, without the annoying perma death penalty. Fire Emblem is way too tricky and nuanced for an 8 year old, but if he plays Shining Force first, he might be able to work up to it. There’s no doubt that Fire Emblem is a much better game (I have a hard time playing Shining Force after FE - I can’t stand the seemingly arbitrary way it decides attack order) but Shining Force is awesome in its own right.
Also, the Mario and Luigi RPG is one of the most charming games I’ve ever played. He’ll love it.
Yeah, if he’s reading well, Mario & Luigi fits your bill to a T. Super fun and not too easy/not too hard. It’s got all the cool RPG stuff mixed with a little bit of hand-eye coordination in the battles. I swear I’ve seen the whole game three times now. First by myself and now with the kids playing through it twice…
