One of the best Strategy/RPG games available
User Rating: 9.5 | Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones GBA
Story: The game is about two main characters, Prince Ephraim and Princess Eirika, twin heirs to the throne of Renais. They are thrust into an unwanted war with the Grado Empire when it invades their homeland and kills the king. Gameplay: The game is a RPG/Strategy. For weapons there are Swords, bows, axes, and spears. For magic there is anima, holy, and dark. To add to the strategy of the game they use a weapon system that is set up rather nicely and works well with the game. Certain weapons and magic are good against others. Swords are good against axes. Axes good against spears. Spears are good against swords. Magic is set up in a similar way. There are also Staves that allow some characters that know how to use them heal others. There are over 30 characters in this game each with his or her own personality. Characters can sometimes talk to each other in the middle of battles to raise their support levels, this makes them fight better when they are near each other and lets you get to know more about the characters. When two people are fighting in a battle and have high support levels they fight better. When you beat the game you unlock an option to view all support conversation and characters that have joined you. I've been playing the game over and over to try to unlock all the support conversations. Once you finish the game it will tell you what each character does afterwards, like the Suikoden series. Support conversation may change a characters ending. In this game you have to be sure to protect your characters because if they die they are gone forever, there is no way to bring them back. Once characters reach a certain level they can be upgraded if you use certain items on them. The upgrade improves their stats, allows them to gain more levels, and it might let them use new weapons. A change that I don’t like that they made in this game is that, unlike the other Fire Emblems, there are random battles and ruins that you can visit. You can use those to gain levels and to get support conversations, this makes the game even easier, and it is already the easiest game in the Fire Emblem series to begin with. A change that I do like is the branching promotions. Unlike the previous Fire Emblem games where you can only promote a person to one thing this game lets you choose between multiple units. For instance Fire Emblem 7 let you promote a swordfighter to a swordmaster and a thief to an assassin. Fire Emblem 8 let’s you choose if you want your swordfighter to become a swordmaster or assassin and you can choose to make your thief an assassin or a rouge which is one of the games many new classes. Graphics: The graphics on the battlefield are only 2-D but they are well designed. When two characters fight it zooms in on the action the graphics are amazing. The cut scenes have nice backgrounds as well. Unfortunately there are hardly any CGs like there were in Fire Emblem 7. Value: With three different difficulty levels to choose from, branching promotions, two separate story lines each containing around 15 chapters, over 30 different characters, and extras like the sound room and support conversations this game is worth the price. Sound: The music that is present in the game is wonderful. And once you beat the game you unlock a Sound Room that lets you listen to the music that you have unlocked. The only problem is that the music does tend to get repetitive and some of the music does not sound very different from others. Tilt: One of the best Strategy/RPG games that not only the GBA has to offer but also one of the best strategy/RPG ever made. I like Fire Emblem 7 a little bit more than this one though. Difficulty: Easy, this is the easiest game in the entire Fire Emblem series.
