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Fire Emblem - Sealed Sword: Reviews

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Game Score: 8/10

Fire Emblem: Sword of Seals (or Fuin no Tsurugi/Sealed Sword... whatever floats your boat. It will be hereon referred to as FE6) is the first installment of Fire Emblem for the GBA. It chronologically takes place twenty-or-so years after FE7 (Blazing Sword), featuring the children of our favorite lords from FE7.

GAMEPLAY: 9/10

I've written a review for a Fire Emblem game before (Sacred Stones, to be specific), and my opinions do not change here. The gameplay for FE6 is just as good as all the other games, and the fact that it was produced before all the other games does not change this factor. A quick summary would be that it's a turn-based strategy game. Like most other games, it is based on a grid and you take turns with the enemy to move your characters and kill things. Good times.

Though there are some drawbacks to this game. There are fewer classes to promote your characters into-- in fact, each character has their own specialized class that they will promote to if you give them the proper item. Zero choice involved. I guess this spares players from the stress that many experienced during FE8-- being "OMG WHAT CLASS SHOULD I CHOOSE UGH WALKTHROUGH ASDGKLJ;" and variations.

In general, this game is far more structured than FE8, and its gameplay is pretty much the same as FE7's. In FE6 you go straight from one battle to another, so when you get the chance to stock up on weapons you'd better take the chance because you don't know when it'll happen again. No extra training time here, so don't expect that you can grind for hours at a time and then breeze through the game-- not to mention that the main lord in this game, Roy, is probably the naturally weakest lord out of all of the FE games combined. There are, however, extra chapters that you can unlock if you fill certain "unspoken" requirements in the main story-progression chapters.

Which brings me to another point about this game is its almost-but-not-quite-insane difficulty. If you are a complete newbie to strategy games, in terms of the fact that you may have NEVER played a Fire Emblem/FF Tactics/etc. etc.-type strategy game before, STEER CLEAR. Complete beginners to strategy games will probably become frustrated with the difficulty this game presents, so, no offense, you're better off playing FE8 on easy a few times before you pick this one up.

So how is it difficult? Let me tell you. The enemies are strong to an ungodly extent (especially the armored knights, my God), and more often than not they are carrying Killer Lances and Bows (veteran players of Fire Emblem, you will understand what I mean). The general skill levels of the characters (which determines whether or not your attacks hit or miss) is much lower than that of FE7/8, where if you had trained adequately you would be virtually guaranteed 100% hit rates every single time. Added to their initially low strength levels upon recruitment, you will be finding your characters dying quite often if you don't plan accordingly. This initial weakness is also a huge trap that'll make you want to train your prepromotes (characters of upgraded classes without any of your manual training whatsoever)-- which is pretty much almost always a bad idea when it comes to FE games. Be prepared to devote about an hour of your time to completing a battle.

Oh, and of course, the suspiciously intuitive "when characters die they're dead." theme is still in play. Phoenix downs? Obsolete. And trademarked, probably.

SOUND: 8/10

Nothing new here, but I do like some of the themes. I'm giving music and sounds an eight, but you can't really take anyone's word for it when it comes to... video game music.

GRAPHICS: 9/10

Even though this game was made long before FE8, the graphics are still great. Even so, I'm taking off a point because some of the colors are a lot... blander than those of other games. Though if I wrote this at the time that FE6 came out, I'd probably give it a 10/10, given the fact that I wouldn't have been spoiled by fancier graphics from later games.

STORYLINE: 8/10

Chances are, if English is your first language, you played FE7 or FE8 before you even thought about picking up the only-released-in-Japan FE6. The storyline is pretty much the same to that of FE7, with the common theme of political distress revolving around big empires conquering small ones, and dragons. Oh, and side quests meant for collecting several ultimate weapons, don't forget those. Yeah, good times here. I won't write too much about the storyline here in fear of spoiling it, but if all else fails you can look it up on one of the several FE fansites out there.

As a side note, the support conversations (dialogues that occur when you position two certain units next to each other for a while) are much shorter in FE6 than they were in other FE games. The character development in personality and relationships is pretty much zero, so don't expect any blockbuster characters to be popping up here.

REPLAY FACTOR: 7/10

There's a hard mode.

...

If you read the part about the normal part being difficult enough in itself, this fact will either delight you to an unnatural extent or make you want to pull your hair out.

OVERALL: 8/10

I may have sounded a bit harsh in this review, but if you look at the numbers you can probably tell that I love this game. It might just be because I'm a Fire Emblem fan in general, but I really like the difficulty this game presents. Though the difficulty may turn some players off, it really is a great game and hey, if you want a good strategy game then it won't hurt to give it a chance. Last I checked, Fire Emblem never failed to please.