A tactical RPG from the makers of Advance Wars? What more could a TRPG-loving GBA owner ask for? Coming down from Final Fantasy Tactics Advance I know I was jonesing for another dose of tactical gameplay. While I was very excited by the prospect of this game, in the end, the implementation gets downright boring. There is nothing wrong with Fire Emblem, per se. The graphics are pretty slick, the is interface well laid out, and the gameplay feels quick. The problem is that after a while it feels like the same old thing over and over again. Character development is no where as exciting as in FFTA. Your characters will level-up when your experience meter reaches 100% and your abilities are randomly bumped by the CPU. The thing is, where in FFTA you get to improve your magic or weapon skills, you just don't get that same level of satisfaction in Fire Emblem because the abilities are fairly mundane. One very cool aspect of the game is you can just switch the GBA off mid-battle and resume the game next session from where you left off. This also turns out to be a curse when one of your characters die and you are forced either to do the entire level again or lose them forever. The game saves before every single move, both player and CPU. So if you make a stupid move with one of your characters then the CPU kills that character you can turn the GBA off and resume only to see that character die the exact same way everytime. It gets pretty frustrating fighting a 20-minute battle only to have one of your lead characters die and have to do the same battle all over again. So basically the game boils down to watching a 2-minute cut scene, fighting a 10 - 30 minute battle, watching another 2-minute cut scene, repeat. The story is pretty good and the dialogue is excellent. But overall, it's just not the kid of game I have to force myself to put down. In fact, I can only really take it in one-battle doses. The battles are so long and so stressful at times that I, for one, really need a break from the game after winning one.
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