Fire Emblem

The Good
Fire Emblem's mechanics are based on numbers and calculations. You're always doing calculations in your head. Since Advance Wars is a well-known game similar to Fire Emblem, I'll make some comparisons to that game in this review. In Advance Wars, your HP is somewhere between 1 and 10. Before each battle, you can roughly predict how much HP each unit will lose. The key word here is "roughly", because it's not shown on the screen. In Fire Emblem however, you know precisely how much HP each character will lose if they are hit. But they will not always be hit; it's possible to attack a unit and miss, dealing 0 damage. A lot of the fun is in this uncertainty: Will my guy hit? Will the enemy miss? This is the biggest reason why Fire Emblem is so much fun to play and replay and replay over and over. You're always nervous and excited about the outcome of the next battle.

Before each battle, there are 12 numbers you will look at. You will use these 12 numbers to make most of your decisions: Do I attack this enemy unit or not? Which weapon do I equip? Where do I place the characters?

The 12 numbers are: Your HP, Attack, Defense, Hit Rate, Critical Rate, Speed, and the same six attributes of your enemy.

The thought process of each battle:

1. Look for wounded characters and a) Heal them. b) Move them outside of enemy units' attack range. c) You can also move them into a defensive terrain type (such as forest), so that the enemy will probably miss and deal 0 damage. It's really more exciting than it sounds: Place a character in a forest and wait for the enemy to attack them and nervously watch the result. But don't do this with the three protagonists because it's game over if they die. d) Rescue them with another character. e) Ignore the injury if no enemy units nearby can kill your wounded character soon. (You know this by looking at the 12 numbers I mentioned.)

2. Move your character next to an enemy unit and view the attack screen. The game will display the 12 numbers. a) The first thing to do here is to compare the Speed. If [your speed - enemy speed > 3] , you will attack twice. Occasionally [enemy speed - your speed > 3] which will make the enemy attack you twice. Speed is a hugely important factor in Fire Emblem. The lead female character Lyn has high speed and everytime you work with her you will consider this. b) Calculate how much HP the enemy has left if you hit. This is [enemy HP - (your attack - enemy defense)]. c) Calculate how much HP you have left if he counter-attack and hit. This is [your HP - (enemy attack - your defense)]. d) If [enemy critical rate > 0], calculate how much HP you have left if he is lucky enough to score a critical strike. This is [your HP - (enemy attack - your defense) * 3]. e) Do this with all the enemy units that are nearby (you can see each enemy's attack range), in order to make sure that when it's the enemy's turn, they can't kill your character. It sounds like a long process but as you play more levels, you can do all the calculations in a few seconds.

3. Improve your strategies by equipping different weapons, using different characters to attack different enemies, and a variety of other options. For example,

a) When you equip different weapons, [you and your enemy's hit rate and attack] can change. [Critical rates and speed] can change too but that's usually not important. You want to have a reasonably high hit rate. If your strategies are good, you'll often get a 100% hit rate, but that takes away some of the fun in Fire Emblem. You already know the result before it happens. Boring. b) When you place your character in a special terrain type, [enemy hit rate] will decrease. The possible outcome will be that you can hit him, but he can't hit you back. c) Block the enemy's path with a very-high-defense character. This is often the "General" or "Hector". You'll often want to block enemy's path in order to protect your weaker characters.

1. The most important factor to consider, during every turn, is "can enemies kill one of my characters during this turn". In Advance Wars, the enemy AI always attacks your APC, so you can use that as a decoy to make enemy units move to a certain location. In Fire Emblem, they brought back the APC -- the enemy AI almost always attacks your weakest characters. If they can kill one of your guys, they'll do so. Therefore you must not give them that opportunity. Make it impossible for the enemy to kill one of your guys. Again, you do this by reading the 12 numbers of everyone nearby.

The good news is that, the game's difficulty is quite moderate, so even if the enemy does kill one of your guys (that's not one of the three protagonists), you can keep playing and you can still complete the game. What this means is that you can choose to play Fire Emblem very casually, without worrying too much. You only start worrying when you play for a high "ranking", or want to complete the higher difficulty modes, and need to keep your characters alive, because you need all the firepower you can get.

1. In many levels you want to save the villages from being razed, or save the chest from being opened by enemy thieves. This is among the most exciting objectives in any game. This will add another step in your thought process: try to get to the village/chest quickly. This means that you can't play defensively anymore. You have to send characters deep into enemy territory, and possibly risk getting killed. Because of this risk, it adds a whole new layer of suspense to this experience. The best moments of Fire Emblem are being exposed to enemy fire, without getting killed. It's a wonderful feeling.
   
   The Bad
   Some important rules are never explained so you need GameFAQs (but you'll probably want to read FAQs either way since it's a turn-based strategy game with so many spells and items). Some in-game text is misleading. For example, it suggests that "steel" weapons are better than "iron" weapons, which is incorrect. Overall, the game does a fantastic job at teaching you how to play, so, only nitpicking here. The real problem with Fire Emblem is the unfocused nature of its character development. You'll have about 30 characters in your army. There aren't nearly enough experience points to properly develop these characters. The ideal strategy is to choose around 6 characters and use them exclusively (plus the 3 protagonists you're forced to use), ignoring everyone else. But that doesn't work quite well either. Because the campaign gives you a new character every two chapters or so. The new character is already stronger than the ones you have developed for a while, making your old characters much less useful, and making you wonder "why did I bother developing my characters, if the game will just give me a stronger one eventually?"

Another small problem is also in the character development section. Some characters level up VERY slowly. It's never explained or hinted. Isadora for example gains very few experience points when she attacks enemies -- that doesn't feel too good. Why does the game discourage players from using certain characters? There is justification for this: The game is trying to tell us that in the real world, not everything is rewarded equally. When you get deeper into the higher difficulty modes, this will become so overwhelming. The game is really trying to say something here. Some characters just level up faster. It's unfair and it's just life.

The Bottom Line
Like all turn-based strategy games, it's entirely a matter of whether you understand and like the mechanics or not.

The Good
I've known about Fire Emblem games for a long time, the first I've known was the first NES Fire Emblem game (thanks to emulation). Back then all Fire Emblem games were japan only, and while I could understand nothing from them, I still loved how they looked, sounded and overall felt. When I heard about the Fire Emblem game on the GBA, the first to finally get an international release, I didn't hesitate much before buying it. Now, after finishing this game for the second time, I eventually feel like writing a review for it, because it is really a great game.

When playing Fire Emblem, you first start a small quest and play the role of the tactician (your role is to give orders to other units). This small quest serves as a tutorial, and your goal is to bring Lady Lindys, the grandchild of the Marquess of Caelin, back to home in order to evil plans of his brother to poison the Marquess and take the throne of Caelin. The only heir being Lyndis, her existence as a potential heir to the throne is a nuisance to him so he also wants to kill her. Your goal is to lead Lyndis and her group safely to Caelin despite the many brigands on your way. This story is rather simple but this small quest is just SO epic that I don't mind playing it again and again. On my first try I found it very hard, but now I beat it in hard more in about 3 hours. As a proof this game actually learns something to it's players.

After this is done, you then begin the real quest with Eliwood, son of the Marquess of Pherae and Hector, brother of the Marquess of Ostilla. The quest is to find Eliwood's lost father, but you'll eventually fight against a criminal band and eventually against a dark lord that want to gather evil around the world. This quest is much longer and harder than Lyn's quest. And if you beat it, you can try Hector's quest, which is basically the same as Eliwood's, except that some cutscenes are changed to reflect Hector's point of view, a few extra chapters, and some other differences too (Hector's quest is slightly harder than Eliwood's).

The scenario of the game is really top notch, each character is developed, and there is a lot of recruitable characters, although not a single of them is normal, they all have exaggerated personalities, which make the story scenes so fun (in fact that's what most RPGs does). All characters looks very cool, except maybe a couple of them (Wyvern Knights seems to be cursed to have a ugly face in this game). The artist behind Fire Emblem, whoever he is, is the only man in the world to be able to design people with green, purple or blue hair and that looks really cool (I wish hair color of people would be that varied naturally in real life, but well it's not). You will most likely never forget Sain who is charmed by absolutely every woman he sees, the rude but so good hearted Hector, or the crazy teenage girl Serra who never shut up and always says nonsense (she is probably one of the funniest character I remember). By the way sometimes I really recognize myself through Hector's acting and speaking (not always tough).

Now onto the gameplay. Fire Emblem is simply a tactical RPG, that is chapter based. Each chapter has a goal, that is often, but not exclusively, to beat the boss. When this goal is accomplished, there is a story scene, you save your game and the next chapter starts. This game is completely linear, and personally I don't find this wrong. You just cannot go back, build some level and come back to the chapter (as you can in the sequel of this game, Fire Emblem the Sacred Stones). This make the game more challenging than any other RPG in the world, because you're forced to make strategies, you cannot just build levels over and over again. If you are lucky, you will unlock gaiden chapters (with a x after their number, like chapters 7x, 13x, etc...), and those are often harder but very rewarding in terms of building levels and exploring the story. There is also chapter where the only goal is to survive so many turns, those are called defense chapters and are often easier than attack chapters.

Each unit has a "class", and each class have specific abilities and specific graphics. Also each class can use only between 1 and 3 types of "weapons" on a rock, paper, scissors basis with both physical attacks and magical attacks, so there is 3 types of weapon (sword, axe, lance) and 3 types of magic (light, dark, anima) each one is strong against another. In addition to this, there is also bows and staves which are out of the rock-paper-scissor system. However, bows are effective against flying units, and staves are only used for curing,or affect a bad status on an enemy. No class is ever able to both use a type of weapon and a type of magic, unlike what is seen in some other games, so magic users are often fairly vulnerable against weapons, and vice-versa. Eventually when a unit reaches level 10 it is able to be promoted, that is becoming of another (superior) class and in addition to gain stats it is often able to use more different weapons or types of magic. However, to do this you'll need special items, and it's really not recommended to do it before level 20 because they level up slower after being promoted. Healers level ups very slow anyway, so it's better to promote them early so that they can use other types of magic and level up faster after being promoted. Some characters comes later in the game and are already promoted, and often they are weaker than characters you build up yourself, however, they serve as a second chance if you didn't level up and promote a character of the same class. Oh, if a character's hit points are zero he becomes "too wounded to continue to fight", and there is no way to reverse this, so if this happen to one of your favorite characters be sure to reset the game and try again. No phoenix downs here. However it's possible to do the whole game with zero deaths. I did it.

Overall Fire Emblem is a hard game, as each single unit, no matter how strong it is, has it's weakness, and that the game is rather unforgiving. Also there is a limited number enemies to fight, so a limited amount of experience to gain, so beware. I didn't mention that weapon broke after a certain amount of charge, and that a weapon less unit is defenseless. However, if you have a high defense unit this can be used as an enemy-magnet and then you can have weaker units take them out to gain experience that your high defense unit doesn't need. There is a lot of strategies to try with this game, you probably won't get bored.

The soundtrack of the game is really good, and there is a lot of different tracks, so you probably will be kept entertained by the good music. The graphics of the game are excellent, all story scenes are made with animated characters portraits on a background, and this looks nice. Main characters show their emotions on their face, while minor characters don't. All of them fells somewhat alive. During battle, you get battle animations showing the two opponents fighting which are absolutely awesome. There is gorgeous impossible-but-looks-so-cool attack moves. The critical hits animations themselves are absolutely MIGHTY. This is probably the best set of animation ever made for any 2D game. I'd watch them over and over forever without being ever bored (as long as there is regularly critical hits).

As this game looks, sounds and fell good, and as there is so many different characters, extra chapters, and different difficulties available, you'll want to replay this game a lot after beating it without a single doubt.

The Bad
The only bad thing about fire emblem is the existence of really long-range attacks, such as this STUPID bolting spell ! This is an attack that allows an unit to send bolts very far away to an enemy unit, with low chance to hit, but if it hits it deals great damage, and enemies will always bolt your weaker units from miles away without warning. Bosses have very high stats, so if they have the bolting spell they will sometimes even kill weak units in one shot. Even strong units will take great damage from it to be then finished with weaker close range attacks. Thank god this stupid spells can only be used 5 times before vanishing, and you can be sure stupid enemies always use it when they can, so after wasting this stupid spell 5 times you're eventually fine.

There is also the balistas, which throws arrows for a really big distance, but at least you can take them to your advantage too by using archers. Most enemies will miss with ballistas (if you hide in woods it misses even more often), but if they hit a pegasus knight it will very likely be a one-hit death (as they are very very weak to arrows). This make pegasus knight useless for most of the game (however their good point is that they are very resistant to spell, so for example bolting is nothing to worry about if you can provoke those stupid mages with your pegasus, wait for the bolting to run out and then achieve them with all your troops).

This removes the strategy side of the quest and adds ton of frustration. Whoever at Nintendo decided to introduce this stupid bolting spell and those stupid balistas ruined the fun of a couple of missions.

Another big frustration is the fog/dark maps. When there is fog (or darkness), you don't see the enemies unless they are really close. However, they somehow sees you with no problem. So you can be attacked by any side with any weapon without even knowing it. Fortunately most fog maps are small and straightforward. However, there IS maps with both fog and ballistas (meaning you will be hit by arrows without warning nor knowing where they're from) and there is even one particular chapter with the worst combination ever created, darkness and a boss with bolting, which is the most difficult chapter in my opinion.

Another bad thing is that only a few characters actually take place in the story after they join. Most of them join for no reason, and keep in your army for no reason, or are important when they join but becomes unimportant for the rest of the game. Some join for money, too. Some join because they're bored or because they want a challenge. Many joins because they serve one of your lords or because they are friends with someone who is already in the party. Finally there is really a couple of people in the party that really joint to fight evil and save the world, but that's really 4 or 5 people at most.

A final bad point is that there is no map of Elibe continent where the game take place in the manual nor in the game (you only see big plans of the map, not a global map) making the understanding of the scenario difficult at first. To get one either search the internet or get Fire Emblem 6 with a translation patch, as the game take place in the same continent and actually does introduce the player to it (that's probably why it's not done again in this game).

The Bottom Line
Fire Emblem is a great game, with great characters and great gameplay. If you're not too good with strategy games then you're going to have a lot of trouble beating this (like I did when I first got the game), but after this is done you will probably be much better at strategy games (like I guess am now, with no big pretension tough). I played this game 2 times completely. The first time it has taken me 4 years. The second time it took me a week. No joke.

The game really isn't as hard as it seems at first, the trick is that the difficulty is directly proportional on how much you use Marcus. Who is Marcus may you ask ? He's a knight serving Eliwood. He's by far the strongest character in your starting party (in Eliwood's story). What's wrong with him if he's strong, may you ask ? Well, the game tricks the player by stating he's a Paladin, but for real he's not, he's a thief instead. That's right, an EXP thief. If you use him to kill your enemies he will steal the EXP to the other members of your party, making them keep weak. And even if you level him up among with the rest of your party, he'll very probably end up much weaker than most people in the end, even if he was stronger on the start. The experience you get is somewhat proportional to the difference of level between the characters. If you fight a very weak enemy with a very strong ally, he will get little experience. If you fight a very strong enemy with a very weak ally, he will get a ton of experience. So chose well right from the start, use Marcus that kills a guy in one blow and get 10 EXP, or use 2 other guys that harms the enemy and get 20 EXP, plus one third to give the finish blow that gains 40 EXP ? The first solution will be no risk for sure, as Marcus starts almost invincible, but your overall party will gain 10 EXP, and that on a character who will end up weak. The second solution gives 80 EXP to your party and build better characters in the end. Also I didn't mention that levels are limited to 20, so once you reach level 20 (promoted) you cannot level up any further, that's probably why Marcus is so bad, starting already at high level he cannot gain much stats. Also stats gain on level up is partially random, so the power of your characters isn't very well indicated by their level, but rather by their stats.

And if you want a tip, this game feature a lot of characters. If you want to level all your characters up and hope to keep a nice rounded party, then don't play Fire Emblem, as this just isn't possible. To have victory you should always use the same set of characters in order to keep them strong, and you WILL have to abandon at least a half of them. If you don't then you probably will end up with a party of everyone being too weak to survive (pretty much what happened to me on my first playthrough). If you really want to level up everyone the only way is to do multiple playthroughs.

Eventually, as most enemies in the game are weapon users, I recommend to build up magic users as much as possible, because weapon users are vulnerable to magic (and vice versa). Magic is less expensive than weapons and often last longer before breaking, high-level magic users tends to dodge attacks a lot more than weapon users (getting no damage is better than get little damage after all), and magic users can always counter attack to both long-range and short-range attacks, while weapon users can only counter short range and bow users only long range. Of course you want to have good weapon users on your side too, but avoid the cavalier/paladin class, I consider it over-rated, as it starts pretty good, but end up too average, and in the end average characters will be vulnerable to everything, and you'll rather want more specific characters who are very vulnerable to some attacks, but completely invulnerable to others, such as mages and infantry. My personal favorite class is mercenary/hero, as they look awesome in battle and are very strong in attack, defense and dodge. You only get two of them in this game, tough.

In summary Fire Emblem is a very good introduction to the series to us western people who couldn't play this series before, I turned out to be a real fan of this game and if you haven't played it then I can only recommend you to try it especially if you like strategy RPGs, because it's practically perfect. If you don't like strategy RPGs you shouldn't be even reading this anyway, so my advice is to go try this game as soon as you can no matter what. And yes, this game is in my opinion much better than its sequel Fire Emblem Sacred Stones. There is better characters, more missions, enemies aren't as annoying, etc... It's just my own opinion. If you were to buy only one Fire Emblem game for the GBA by all means try this one.

The Good
Fire Emblem is a hybrid roleplaying and turn-based strategy game. It sacrifices the open-ended gameplay and random encounters of traditional RPGs in favor of scripted battles with much greater depth. One might think that this genre was pioneered by the classic Final Fantasy Tactics on the Sony Playstation, but the Fire Emblem series actually dates all the way back to the 8-bit Nintendo Famicom. Fire Emblem for the Game Boy Advance is simply the first title in the series that Nintendo has seen fit to publish in the United States. Given the top-notch quality of this game, it's hard to believe they didn't do it sooner.

Fire Emblem has the kind of truly classic gameplay that doesn't come around too often. I love a game that's easy to pick up, yet has enough depth to keep you coming back until you have beaten it. The game mechanic is infinitely admirable because it is perfectly balanced in so many areas. The game is difficult, but never frustrating. Instead of giving up after you have lost a round, you'll feel like you just need one more try to correct your mistakes and win it. It features plenty of items and upgrades, but never resorts to forcing the gamer to micromanage like so many other strategy games. Your characters will level up and become more powerful, but you will never feel forced to grind away on a "leveling treadmill" like in so many other roleplaying games. In short, the game mechanic is practically perfect, and fans of classic 8- and 16-bit games should feel right at home.

The game has an incredible amount of bang for the buck. There are 31 missions in all, not counting optional side quests (and new game modes unlocked once you have beaten the normal game). I played Fire Emblem every chance I got, and it still took me approximately two weeks to finish. I was by no means disappointed; never before have I seen a handheld game with so much plot depth. The game actually has two full story arcs; the first third functions as a tutorial, each mission teaching you another aspect of the game mechanic. By the end of the tenth mission, you will know everything you need to in order to play the game effectively.

The tutorial was so well done, in fact, even going so far as to feature a long epilogue detailing what became of each character, I actually thought that it was the game. Little did I know that it was all just preparation for the real story.

And it's a wonderful story, by the way. Fire Emblem does contain the occasional RPG cliche here and there, but you'll like the characters so much that you won't mind. Scripts published on the Internet show that the game contains almost a full megabyte of text, and the plot is advanced almost entirely through dialogue. Animated character portraits talk to each other onscreen in speech bubbles, and the game cuts away to full screen hand-drawn CGs for important plot events.

Fire Emblem's characters are terrific, and beautifully drawn. Rather than the generic military units of a typical pure strategy combat game, this title features more than 40 unique player-controlled characters, each with his or her own personality and back story. The game has plenty of replay value, since plot elements will change depending on which characters you use, and how you have them interact with one another.

The Bad
There was just one thing about Fire Emblem that I would have liked to see changed. The "character" you play is actually not one of the game's characters at all, but rather the team's military tactician. As such, you function as an observer of the story instead of being an actual participant. This is an interesting plot device, and it has merit, but it tends to lessen one's immersion into the story somewhat.

The Bottom Line
Fire Emblem is the most entertaining turn-based strategy game that I have ever played, and it's a shame that the previous titles in the series never made it to the United States. My previous favorite, Jagged Alliance 2 for the PC, may best it in terms of gameplay depth and challenge level. In terms of plot and overall fun factor, however, Fire Emblem has no equal that I've found. A story this long and immersive, rivaling many pure roleplaying games, seems even more impressive when you consider the fact that it was done on a handheld.

Intelligent Systems is currently working on a new Fire Emblem game for the Gamecube. Although plans for a US release have not been announced, it seems likely given the fact that the Game Boy Advance version was greeted by strong sales and positive reviews.

Nintendo lost my interest when Zelda and Mario went 3D, losing the wonderful gameplay of the 8- and 16-bit titles (in this reviewer's opinion). However, the day the Gamecube version of Fire Emblem is released in the US will be the day that I buy a Gamecube. That's the highest compliment I can pay to this game.

The Good
The system itself is simple and effective. The system is a respectable fantasy warfare system without the need for 20 pages of rules on hit modifiers. There's a simple rock-paper-scissors method, with random element and some situational things. Easy enough to learn and keep in mind, complex enough to keep things interesting. And the AI is pretty fun: It can actually retreat to keep me annoyed at times, and can pick weak units and attack them. (Nothing like getting everything done 90% correctly, almost ready to crush the last baddies like bugs, and this smart thing decides to do just what I hoped it wouldn't do: kill the leader, Game Over.)

One thing that struck me that this game has great characters. Each of them have a lot of personality. There's good dialogue and nicely tangled yet generally straightforward plot.

Graphics rock - very nice sprite animations here too. Music is just plain amazing.

A weird thing is that I liked the auto-save thing. I'm either staying current or having to get the whole chapter done from the beginning. If I've taken a break and can't remember a thing, I can always restart the chapter and not feel bad, because the chapters are generally pretty nice and short. And the chapters are generally pretty well designed to keep things balanced as I pick up more and more of the game: The 10-chapter tutorial doesn't even feel like a tutorial.

The Bad
Once again, here we have a really, really nice game that's just about perfect in every way and the only things to complain about are in the technicalities. I think the only really annoying thing is the fact that the text speed cannot be changed, and every letter appears slooowly on screen and make beep when they appear on screen. (That's so 1980s. When do the game makers learn this isn't the way to go anymore?) The dialogue can be sped up (and skipped), so this isn't that bad, except when you speed up the text, you miss character animation...

The Bottom Line
I had heard that Fire Emblem was a great series, yet when I heard it was a strategy game and from the team that made Advance Wars, I was a bit skeptical - I thought Advance Wars was decent but it didn't just get me really really excited. But I have always liked fantasy strategy games more than modern/sci-fi strategy games, so I just got it.

And my skepticism was uncalled for.

It's actually a very fun game, quite challenging yet it's never really annoying at all. If I mess up, it's never really depressing to start the chapter over. The story is fun to follow, characters are great, and in general, everything in the game makes sense.

Fantasy strategy at its finest, indeed!

The Good
Fire Emblem 7, the first game to make it to the shores of the USA. This game is virtually flawless. All of the characters have deep storylines in them, and I found myself having affinities with quite a few of them. This is the game that stars Roy's father, NOT Roy. Every weapon is perfectly balanced. The weapons triangle adds a nice twist of strategy. The realistic factor of not being able to revive the dead adds difficulty and more strategy. This game is better than Final Fantasy tactics Advance by far, since it actually requires thought.

The Bad
Hmmm... Some parts were tedious, but nevertheless fun. The not-being-able-to-revive-the-dead thing also makes the game too hard for some people (cough, cough, FFTA fans). Some might find the storyline cheesy and cliched, but that's the translator's fault.

The Bottom Line
If you own a GBA, go buy this game now. I'm serious. Don't go for FFTA, go for Fire Emblem. The graphics rule. The gameplay rules, The storyline rules. Blinking portraits and animated characters rule. The sprites are awesome. Just go buy Fire Emblem.

The Good
First of all I would just like to say that there arn't that many good Gameboy Advance games out there. Most of the gameboy games out there have very poor graphics, not a good plotline, and is simply not even fun to play. There are a few amazing gameboy games like Metroid Fusion, Metroid Zero Mission(i think that that is the name), Golden sun and Golden Sun The Lost Age, and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Firemblem easily joins that list. The games graphics are quite good, at least for a gameboy game. You don't get to build your own character, and you really don't have that much to do with any characters generation. The combat system is straight forward, easy to pick up, but complex enough for more strategic people. Basically the story is that dragons have been locked away for thousands of years, dragons in this case are bad, anywho an evil leader named Nergall is trying to free them to use against the world. The battle graphics are quite good. There arn't that many different weapons. There are a few that get stronger as you buy them in steel and silver classes.

The Bad
What I didn't like about this game is that the leveling up process is almost completely random. You gain a hundred xp, and some if only one of your stats will just automaticly go up by a single point.

The Bottom Line
Buy the game if you like strategic games.

The Good
This game sucks you in right from the beginning. The tactician role was perfect, although the game overglorifies the player sometimes. The story is great, with it's many plot twists and tragedy and drama. All in all, it's balanced, has a decent difficulty, and replayability is great, as you try to get all of the CG's.

The Bad
Well, the fact it's on the gba as a 2D strategy game irks me, because it would have been SOOOO sweet if it was a fully fledged 3D rpg game on the Gamecube, complete with cinematics and graphics. (oh and the char. dies no revive irks me too)

The Bottom Line
dude, just go buy the game and enjoy the immersiveness of it!!!