If you haven't played this, you haven't played Fire Emblem.
User Rating: 8.6 | Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu SNES
INTRODUCTION Most gamers have, by now, heard of Fire Emblem now that it's been introduced to the US in the form of two GBA games (and soon a GameCube game as well). But many fail to realize that there were Fire Emblems that came before the English ones... this is just one of the several prequels. GAMEPLAY What can I say? It's Fire Emblem. Love it or hate it, that's down to your own preference, but for those who enjoy strategy games Fire Emblem's gameplay is classic and great fun (albeit, sometimes frustrating) It's easy to use and navigate around... assuming, that is, that you can read Japanese or have a fan translation. I would strongly suggest the latter, of course, because it doesn't much change the game besides the text, and really enhances the great gameplay that's already there. GRAPHICS Well, I suppose they could have been better, but for its time the animations were stunning. They're still pretty cool to look at, but the colors have a strange sort of mix to them. They're almost too dark or washy... it doesn't quite look as good as the newer Fire Emblems, but they're still fairly good. SOUND I guess that if anywhere this game really has a faulty point, it's probably in its sound, because there's not much sound to be had. The music is of relatively average quality, and that's pretty much the majority of the sound, save for the sound effects that come with battles and ocassionally other things as well. None of these are particularly well-designed either, but they did what they could on the SNES platform. VALUE Certainly, there's not much replay value since it's pretty linear in that you can't play it much differently a second time. But the first play lasts a long time, and certainly has great worth to it. Seisen no Keifu is definitely worth it in this respect. OVERALL Seisen no Keifu is a great game, though it's unlikely you'll be able to find it as an import and even less likely you'll be able to buy it anywhere else. If you're lucky (as I was) you might be able to obtain a copy from eBay, but how you get it is up to you. In any case, it's a definite must-play, doubly so for any fan of the series.
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