Hi, don’t get me wrong with my title for the game. I felt/believe it was very good and somewhat went along with what I was looking for as a “Fire Emblem” experience while not being FE. I rated this as “8/10” on a solely personal opinion.
For the price of the game, it’s certainly worth getting. Very cool and very refreshing to me. Just a bit short and repetitive. But that makes sense, as it feels like a chapter going into a chapter. A game going into a sequel. And a beginning game at that.
Spoilers Ahead for anyone reading this:
First, leveling up units is easy in the arena. Pair your fighter with an archer and let the archer fire away at you. Each miss still counts as EXP, which is super valuable.
Also, don’t worry about potion healing at the inn. Just have your healer step into arena fights with your weak partner, heal then and then “abort”. Make sure the bet/crowns are low during those aborts, as they cost you.
As for the game, for me, I played FE for the stories compared to gameplay. Most of the time anyway. Path of Radiance did both for me. And FE7 - Lyndis, Eliwood and Hector - was a tremendous experience too. Story really gripped me with the older FE series, which is what I was looking for here.
Sadly, I feel like there was a story here but… it felt rushed? It jumped places? Especially the south rebellion? It would have been nice to see the characters interact. Even see chats between them at camp. Instead, it felt like you just moved on from chapter to chapter with some light connection between your character and the romantic interest.
And then there were politics behind closed doors; involving the north and south at each other’s throats. But there was no real side intrigue or anything. No one wondering why “this” was happening or “that”. Who was acting “suspicious” lately. No reports on the “unexpected”.
I do give points for being able to name the main character! That was very nice and helped me feel connected to the world/fantasy. And the class promotions were still encouraging, as usual. I did find it interesting to see armor units limited to one class, although there was “sword” missing.
Also, dwarf and elf weapons. Those were surprising! I wondered about what races there could be in this FE look alike. The world builds were interesting too, alongside the character sprites! I do wish that the character icons changed expressions for emotion like happy, sad, surprised and so on, to set the mood even more. But it was all still good.
Overall, I very much enjoyed this game and feel like it was a start project of some kind. I’m going to look into the sequel, which the “trailer” showed me. I had a spectacular time with Partia, although feeling a bit lost. Reminded me a bit of Dungeons and Dragons, a prologue leading into the bigger story later. A start to everything, ha ha.