Fire emblem: PoR is the first fire emblem I played, and it's actually good....
The story is about a kingdom name Crimea that has long been trying to work out it's difference between the laguz. They are becoming more closer to each other, so the kingdom of Daine, the most hated laguz country in telius, didn't like crimea allying itself to a country of "Sub-Humans". Sub-humans are what humans call laguz, which is a insult to the laguz. And when Laguz call Beorc a human, it's a insult to beorc. Beorc is what laguz call humans. So back to the story. Without warning, or declaration of war, Daine attacks crimea with it's guard down. The reason for them attacking is because of them allying itself to the laguz, and something else also plays a role in the war. The main character of the story is a boy called Ike. Ike is a amateur mercenary who is still in training. He first starts off on a few missions. He is supposed to be the one to carry the mercenary company after his father, who is the leader of the mercenary group. When daine attacked, Ike was put in charge for this mission to see is they can find any daine troops heading their way. When daine attack them, they had no choice but to fight back, as they never meant to get in a skirmish with daine troops. After they won the fight, they had found someone in the woods, it was a girl who claimed she was the princess of crimea. Ike has to and the mercenary company must go through many hardships and battles to protect her, and win back her kingdom. I'm not going any further in the story, so you will have to buy the game and experience it yourself.
The battle is somewhat like chess, mixed with levels-ups and weapon change.The battles are very strategic and long, unless you are not afraid of one of your recruits dieing, then it's not that long. Everytime you move a person toward a enemy, you will have the option to attack him or let him be. But when its the enemy turn, he will most likely attack you. You have different class of people like mages, priest, Ranger, Lord, palinon, Halbardier, berserker, warrior, pegesus knight, wyvern knight, valkyrie, Beast tribe, Bird tribe, Dragon tribe, knights, generals, and much much more that I can't think of right now. But all, except lord, have there own weakness such as mages and priest have the lower defense, which means they can be killed easily with physical attacks, but they are strong against other magics users and knights and generals.The reason knights and generals are weak against magic users is because they have poor resistance. Warriors have weaker defense, but strong offense. Weapons also count for extra advantages. Sword will beat axes, but axes will beat lances, and lances will beat swords, sort of like rock, paper, scissors, only you know what you enemy is using. Each battle should take no more than 40 - 60 minutes to beat, so expect a long itme doing one mission. Your weapons will lose it's edge after a few uses of it. You can only use the iron sword 46 times before it break, others break more often than that. The stronger the blade, the faster it breaks, unless you forge it to be strong after a few missions, you will come across a caravan that will follow you to the end of the game. They will be there to sell you weapons, items, and forge weapons for you. You can also sell your weapons and items too. You can customize how you want you weapon to be made, but it will cost you extra to make them. You can only carry four weapons and item on each person only so choose wisely. As character get to level 21, they will under go a class change, like Fighters turn into warriors, or knights into generals. When they class change, almost every thing goes up drastically. So it would be wise to class change them as soon as possible. Each character will have a consersation will another one, depending if both of them are in the field at the same time to trigger it. When they have this conversation, they will have field bonus every time the two character is together on the battle field. So it would really help that person too. When a ally die on the battle field, you will not be able to use that person anymore. This is where the game get longer than it should be. Reseting the game and starting over is the best option to use since you can just save it in the middle of battle, unless you ae suspending the game until the next time you play. But once you start off where you left off of, the suspended game will be resume so you can go back to the spot where you last start off. So you need to try your best not to have a mage run dead into dangers way, as you will not be able to use him after that, ever. I think I covered all of the game so on the final thoughts.......
Gameplay: Pretty simple and easy. But hard frustrating because of the fact you can't revive any fallen comrades. Once they are gone, they are gone for good. Each battle map is very different so you get a lot of variety from the maps.
Graphics: They are passable, but it does look ugly though. They battle animation and CGI cut-scenes are actully done great.
Sound: The music does get very repetive, but the music is great needless to say.
Value: There is alot of variety you can play this game so you will be playing this for quite some time.
Overall: You may want to rent first to see if it's actually your type of game, then buy if you like it. But the game is pretty simple and has a great story fromt the start til the finish...........