I'm surprised how long it's taken me to write about Fire Emblem on this blog. Not actually, of course, I obviously have an idea of what I want to write about and have absolutely cancelled Fire Emblem drafts before. Maybe some day I'll get that Three Houses draft together. Probably not though now that Nintendo has promised us five more years of Three Houses discourse. Anyways, I used to adore FE. It was probably, for a like 7 year stretch between Awakening and Three Houses, my favorite Nintendo franchise. I, like most people in the West, found out about FE from Smash originally but I also had the benefit of a content creator I watched being an FE fan.
Former content creator and anime journalist Jacob Chapman, then going by JesuOtaku online, used to do streams on Twitch where he would play dating sims and watch Detective Conan. They were super fun and also super late night, which was perfect for me at the time as I was a homeschool kid who had never slept well in his life. But Jacob would also play Fire Emblem, specifically the Ike duology. And I remember falling in love with just the core ideal of Fire Emblem. An RPG where failure had a very steep consequence was novel to me, and I was enthralled by the implications therein. I remember excitedly telling high school friends about Fire Emblem, trying to convert them over since they had played Advance Wars and so were familiar with the core gameplay. Unfortunately this was still a time when I was, a, not buying games for myself so had to be picky, and 2, not in a place where I could easily access Fire Emblem games. My GameStop's PS2 section was full of cheap copies of every RPG you could ever think of but a single FE game? Nah fam.
So I'm excited to get into this. Excited to finally play FE for the blog, hopefully not for the last time. By the way, I know people can probably infer which Fire Emblem I'm talking about because there's only one that has ever been released in any country I'm pretty sure that just carries the title "Fire Emblem". But I am talking about the seventh game in the series, first to be released outside of Japan, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade. It's been on my to-play list forever and I'm excited to finally get into it.
Review:
I did not finish Fire Emblem. Not in the sense that I'm DNF-ing it and calling it quits, it's just playing Fire Emblem on its WiiU VC release proved to be more annoying than I had thought it was going to be. Fire Emblem for GBA is a game best equipped for like playing curled up in bed or playing on the go and the WiiU made both of these things either inconvenient or impossible! Having to completely reset maps each time a Lord died proved to be very frustrating and the WiiU just made that worse by both limiting where I could play, ensuring I couldn't easily pick up and play, and also how long I could play as the WiiU gamepad has a worse battery life than the Sega Game Gear. So in the interest of not playing Fire Emblem for the rest of the year and wanting to have the best experience possible with Fire Emblem, I'm putting it on ice until I can afford to get the NSO version where I can at least rewind when a Lord dies. So I'll only state, for now, that I really liked Fire Emblem and look forward to someday playing it for real. 8.1/10
Diary:
3/27/26
Okay, so two things real quick. The first is that I have, in the past, played a chunk of Fire Emblem. I bought the game on the WiiU Virtual Console years ago and had, at that time, played through to chapter 10 I believe before getting walled by the big boss of that chapter and going "oh I'll get back to this later." I never got back to it. So everything I played tonight is something that I had experienced before. But also I'm glad that I didn't pick up from where I previously played because I forgot so much of the first part, let me tell you. The second thing is that, for this Fire Emblem game and any Fire Emblem game I play for the blog with permadeath on, I'm going to just take my losses. I know I'm going to regret that later on, trust me, but here's the thing. I used to be the type of FE player who would turn permadeath on and then play a map over and over again until I did it deathless. What is the point? Legitimately, what is the purpose of that. The whole purpose of permadeath as a mechanic is that you have to live with your consequences, just resetting an infinite amount of times renders the whole thing worthless. No, I'm choosing to just play through, take my losses as they come, and if it puts me in a no-win situation later on because I've lost so many units that I can't progress, then I'll gladly take the L.
I was immediately reminded how much I love Lyn as a character. I don't want to pretend like Fire Emblem has the best writing in the world, mind, especially when it comes to its characters. Three Houses is notable among the fandom for being a game with an actual story that has something interesting to say about the nuance of war, that's kind of where we are. But Lyn is so atypical for a "Lord" archetype. Fire Emblem lords are people who are usually defined by their sense of honor and duty. They're usually princes and fit the same rough vibe as characters. See: the Smash Fire Emblem roster where we have 8 Fire Emblem characters and it's difficult to tell them apart. Lyn, meanwhile, is just totally unique among the cast of Lords.
She isn't a super refined classically trained fencer, her swordsmanship was learned surviving as a nomad on the plains. She attacks swiftly and, usually, tries to cut as many times as possible, a stark contrast to the typical FE lord who is more classically trained. And this fighting style reflects in how her character moves through the world. She is disinterested in becoming a noble, in ruling. She's a nomad first and foremost and an heir second, a woman hyper aware that the nobles she would be playing politics with look down on her for being, essentially, half-Romani and only play nice when there is favor to gain. She just simply wants to meet her grandfather before he passes on, and finds her granduncle's attempts to assassinate her to be a waste of time as she does not crave the throne. I know Lyn isn't the character we follow long term, that FE7 is built around the three protagonists. But she's a nice introduction to the world of Fire Emblem and it's not surprising how popular she remains, especially among Western Fire Emblem fans.
The rest of the cast is pretty whatever though so far. Like, Fire Emblem characters have a habit of being pretty one note and fitting into existing archetypes. You have two knights, one who is a boring stick in the mud and the other who is a flirtatious cad. An awkward and shy pegasus knight who finds combat easier than talking to men. The healer who is an absolute gremlin, sewing chaos in the group. The cynical and sarcastic mage. The thief who is a bit too forward about his profession. You get the idea. They aren't bad but they also aren't like. Noteworthy. I understand that FE7 does have support conversations but support conversations seem like a nightmare to try and get in this game and don't seem super worth it in the end so if they reveal more nuance about these characters, then ignore me about them being one note. But also, don't lock the depth behind optional supports, y'know.
I completely forgot that basically the entire first part of FE7 was just tutorial chapters. Now, on the one hand, I appreciate this. Every game in a series is likely to be a player's first game in that series, and I feel like playing it safe and overtutorializing is, more often than not, the better play. Onboarding new players is better than shutting them out in most cases. And I do like how FE7 presents its tutorials, starting with just Lyn battling a couple grunts to learn the combat and strategy basics, then introducing knights to communicate increased mobility and weapon switching, then introducing a different kind of objective, and so on. And also I've been out of FE for long enough that reminders on the basics are kind of welcome. On the other hand, I do think it goes on for a bit too long? You could've probably condensed down some of these tutorials, like why do we need two separate entire maps to tell us how "knights" and "knights that fly" work.
I forgot that you get Dorcas this early. Dorcas is not a super notable character in the actual game, he's an ax-wielding warrior who is introduced in the game's chapter about recruiting enemy NPCs. He's a man who is in desperate need of money to afford a healer for a disease that makes his wife have great difficulty walking and in that desperation, he finds himself allied with a group of bandits. Dorcas is, however, infamous to me because he makes me think of the original US Fire Emblem commercial which bizarrely tells the player to "trust nobody", which is not the point of Fire Emblem at all, but also features a moment where Dorcas falls over dead because one of his allies poisoned his ale. My guy catching strays.
I haven't lost anyone yet! I mean, I'm still in the tutorial so it's not expected that I'll lose anyone, hopefully I'm not that bad of a strategist. But still, I have yet to get a disastrous 1% crit that just murders someone out of nowhere. I have to say, having gotten so used to the modern games, I'm finding it a little difficult to adapt to classic FE where there's like. Limited experience due to not having random mercenary fights to grind with, having units that cannot deal any actual damage and thus serve hyper-specialized roles and rarely, if ever, level up, just in general not having my units be even levels. In particular the fact that like, the Healer is only meant for healing and the bard/dancer class is only meant for giving extra turns is something I need to get used to, I'm used to those classes being able to do SOMETHING in battle. Also, just as a random aside, the way this game uses Together We Ride is hilarious. The classic FE theme is used literally any time a new recruit joins the party so sometimes Lyn will literally walk into a home and it'll start playing because there's an NPC there that can join up. Anyways, here's hoping that my entire army has a long and prosperous life and I don't lose anyone throughout the game.
3/29/26
I'm just going to complain about the WiiU controller battery here for a sec, hope you don't mind. So, I've been playing this on the WiiU, as previously stated, because that's just where I own FE7. I bought it off the VC many years ago and played through most of the first 10 chapters before I stopped at literally the boss of Chapter 10, as I got in a situation that, to me, seemed unwinnable. So what I would like to be doing with this playthrough is to curl up in bed using the WiiU gamepad as a handheld device to play the game on while I throw up like, a movie or a YouTube video essay on the TV. After all, the gamepad has a screen for this very reason, to play on it so the TV can still be usable. And maybe it's because my WiiU is now 12 years old so it's getting a bit long in the tooth, but I swear it's like. I'm playing for maybe 90 minutes before the red light comes on. It's ridiculous. The WiiU, man. Decisions were certainly made.
It's so funny getting to the end of Lyn's story and getting a series of descriptors on what happened to the cast after you beat it. Like this is an actual ending to the game only 4 hours in. I wonder how many kids turned their game off at this juncture thinking they had beaten the game, not knowing that the game had barely even started. I knew FE7 was split between three protagonists, it's difficult not to know actually because the box art of the game is the three protagonists standing side by side in battle. So I figured Lyn's story was going to reach its conclusion partway through the game. I did not expect it to both be so early on in the game, nor did I expect it to be such a definitive changeover. I assumed there would be a more natural transition, like you follow Lyn until chapter 14 and then she fights with Eliwood by her side and then that would be the end of Lyn's story but because you already have Eliwood, you just follow him from there instead. Wild that it's as abrupt as it is.
Something I forgot about Lyn's character, which also serves to make her feel very distinctive from other Lords in the series, is that she is just willing to throw hands with anyone. Like, she's not violent by any means, but it's clear that her different perspective, being a woman who has had to fight in the plains to survive with no concrete home, has led her to be quick to throw down. If there is someone who needs to be taken care of, there is very little hesitation on Lyn's behalf, very little hand wringing about whether it's "right" to kill someone just because they're a bad person. She sees a problem, and she wants to solve it. Other lords will get super philosophical about whether or not wanton violence is truly the only way but Lyn is like "I will make sure you never know Mother Earth's embrace". She's so much fun, I wish we got more time with her as the main character.
Unfortunately though, we have to spend time with Eliwood. Eliwood is fine, I think of the Fire Emblems I've played, he's by far the most boring lord. For a long time I thought he was Roy from Super Smash Bros. Melee, his actual game of origin, because they look a lot alike. He's actually Roy's father, go figure. Eliwood is the way more traditional FE lord at the center of this game, a young, heroic prince to lead the army behind a truly noble cause. He's so refined that his default weapon is literally a rapier, like THE sport fencing weapon. Eliwood detests the concept of going to war as he cannot stomach the hardship that war will cause the innocent citizens of the various kingdoms scattered about the continent. He believes that individual conflicts are easy but a largescale war would be too much. Also, he can be very trusting, and is loyal to a fault, something the villains try to exploit at one point in the part of his story I played.
But forget about Eliwood, because we also meet our third lord for this adventure, Hector. Hector is introduced in Chapter 12, the chapter after we take control of Eliwood, and he's also the lord from FE7 I've heard the most about over the years. Like obviously there's a lot of love for Lyn out there, she's usually the one who gets brought back for other projects. But people who have played FE7 tend to really like Hector, in my experience. And it's not difficult to see why, dude's a blast. Hector is the second son of the Marquess of Ostia, a large and powerful nation on the continent. He's sarcastic and unpretentious, he lets his feelings be known directly and usually in a smarmy way. He feels the least like a Lord of the three lords we have in FE7, having more in common with Fire Emblem's history of thief and barbarian characters. Which is, itself, pretty on point as Hector favors a large axe over the typical swords the other Lords tend to use. He's a lot of fun, and the dynamic between himself and Eliwood is very entertaining as, despite being close friends, they are so definitively opposites. The enemies in Chapter 14, the chapter I left off on, seemed surprised they were traveling together for this very reason.
So we've stumbled into the plot of the game, though arguably we stumbled into it in the last section it's just like. At that time, the main villains were just a bunch of grunts trying to kidnap a girl. We'd be here forever if I described the story to each individual map. Anyways, the Black Fang are our big bads (for now), an assassin's guild on the continent who is the backbone of a conspiracy that is brewing under the noses of Eliwood, Hector, and Lyn. Eliwood's part of the story starts with Eliwood leaving his kingdom to go search for his lost father, who rode off one day to investigate rumors of unrest across the continent and never returned home. Upon reaching a neighboring kingdom, with whom Eliwood's kingdom has always had close relations, Eliwood seeks their aid. Only to then be attacked by Black Fang assassins who cut him off in the mountains, using the auspicious terrain to put Eliwood at a disadvantage. The Black Fang are attempting to stop Eliwood from moving forward by any means necessary, as they do not wish for him to uncover their conspiracy, a conspiracy which unifies multiple kingdoms across the continent for a goal we know not yet.
I believe FE7 is the first game in the series where the Tactician is a real character in the plot and not just a representative of the player on the map, and you can tell. Like, the tactician is still meant to be representative of the player, but now it's more of a player self insert than it is just "there's a little green guy on the map sometimes and that's the strategist making the plans". Characters will now talk to you directly and have conversations with you. The way they choose to handle this, however, is very funny. You don't get like dialog options or anything, instead the characters stare directly at the screen and talk at the player, and then when they ask them for questions or advice they pause for a second before saying a response to some advice the player allegedly said. It's such an odd vibe to include.
As well, in Eliwood's story they will slowly trickle in characters that were part of Lyn's party in the first part of the game, and all of these characters will react excitedly to seeing the player again. But again, it's like. We're not enough of a character to be able to appear on screen and respond but we're too much of a character to be allowed to fully be a self-insert, it's kind of a clumsy incorporation. It's very charming, mind, and there are some scenes where it works. Like Lyn saying goodbye to the player at the end of her story does feel more impactful because she's talking directly at us. But it's very clumsy and it needs a lot of refinement.
So far I've only lost two units and both of them were in Lyn's part of the game, meaning they weren't actually lost. It is weird that the game has training wheels for the first 10 chapters before being like "okay, NOW if anyone dies they're dead". I have to wonder if this game was always made with the intention of it being the first game to release overseas, as they seemed to really focus in on this being a tutorial game. Anyways, Lucius, the Monk, was lost to me in Chapter 8 of the story, the ballista tutorial level. I had Lucius as part of a squad that was taking a sneaky path around the mountains to try and pincer attack the enemy while my other squad tried to blitz attack the Ballista, but I miscalculated how effectively I would be able to descend on the ballista and it took me considerably more time to get there than I would've liked. Lucius got overwhelmed on his trek around the mountains, the ballista found an easy target, and so he was picked off. RIP.
The other unit I lost was Erk, the mage. Erk I lost in Chapter 9, the fog of war tutorial level. If you know this game, that does mean that both of my offensive magic users were out of commission before the boss of Lyn's section, so you can imagine how tedious that was. Erk was just the result of me not being cautious enough when going into the fog. I again split the party up into two, this time not trying to pincer the enemy but rather to access the northern part of the map, where there were houses to access. I left Erk a bit too open as we entered some of the foggier parts of the map, thinking foolishly "how many enemies could there really be anyways, it's so far from the objective". Blissfully unaware that there was a fort up north which was spawning new units every couple turns for the first so many turns of this map. Erk got swarmed and I lost my only other mage. But hey, at least both of the deaths so far were my fault, right!? I can accept it when it's my fault, it's way more upsetting when it's like "you played correctly and the opponent just landed a 1% crit on you". I actually haven't had a 1% crit situation yet, if you can believe it. I did, however, miss two 93% hits in a row. Fire Emblem's calcs are wild, y'all.
4/4/26
I know, that's a pretty wide gap between entries. I got in kind of a writing mood, I was writing "who was the first playable woman of color in Super Smash Bros." and then I used that momentum to start writing a review/essay on Pyre which hopefully will be out by the time this gaming diary is out so I can link it. Then I did a big dumb, like just a massive dumb. I got curious what my save state was on my WiiU and reloaded it, setting me back three chapters, so I had to replay three chapters. Actually kind of four because I did do the sidequest on chapter 13. So understandably I kind of didn't want to play Fire Emblem for a few days. Reloading the wrong state and losing a ton of progress is the worst feeling, I swear. Thankfully I still didn't lose anyone on my replays of those chapters but man, did the game want me too. The enemy landed a 20%! They miss every 80 they have but they sure can land a 20, huh?
So, the good news is that I still haven't lost anyone. I've come close, god knows, especially in chapter 15, the second of the two maps I've gotten done tonight. Chapter 15 is a siege map, your goal is to cut enemies down until you can successfully route a path to the central goal. At which point, after capturing it, the map ends. And it's common in siege maps for enemies to respawn endlessly so that the player doesn't just stall for a million turns and is incentivized to win the map. So in Chapter 15, they just keep spawning enemies to descend from behind you, sort of entrapping you if you can't push forward and putting a clock on how long you can hold your central position. But outside of losing my tent for that map, I haven't permanently lost anyone yet.
The bad news is that the reason why I haven't lost anyone yet is not because I haven't been losing. Instead, it's because I keep losing my lords. This isn't uncommon, your lords are often the strongest units you have so it's not difficult to end up in situations where you send them out to deal with a problem, only for them to get overwhelmed and die. And especially in this game, it's an outcome that you'll run into from time to time just because you have three Lords, so there's a lot more opportunity for each of them to get overwhelmed individually. The thing is, lords aren't allowed to die. It's the one exception to the permanent death rule, if your lord dies, you have to either restart from the start of the turn that killed them or just restart the map over. Except it's not really a real option, because FE7 calculates the enemy's hits at the start of their turn, so you can't keep reloading a turn to try and manipulate the RNG. If your lord dies on an enemy turn, you have to restart the map. Which is also probably why I only got two maps done tonight.
Lyn is back, by the way. Hence why I now have three lords. After the events of Chapter 14, which reveals the conspiracy to Eliwood and Hector, and also implicates Eliwood's missing father in said conspiracy, we move to Lyn's nation of Caelin. Caelin has been taken over by the big bad of this section of the game, the Lord who would be king if the conspiracy succeeds, overthrowing the current ruling house and redistributing their power among the Lords involved with the conspiracy. Who are now mostly dead. They're mostly dead. Anyways, Eliwood and crew move into Caelin to aid Lyn in reclaiming her home, meaning Lyn reunites with the player insert AND Eliwood. And also meets Hector. There is drama immediately. Lyn, who is very measured and precise in how she handles her weapon, having been taught to preserve the blade and strike only when needed, finds Hector to be a brutish oaf who swings his weapon without a care in the world. She chides him immediately, before apologizing for speaking out of turn. I hope there's more drama to come between these two absolutely.
I feel like progress is going to slow down considerably. Not because I don't like the game, mind, I do. Playing Fire Emblem has been a lot of fun. It's such a junk food RPG, just good mindless fun. It's the kind of thing I need sometimes. I'm just sick of fighting the WiiU. I really don't like how quickly the WiiU gamepad battery drains while I'm playing FE, with it losing its charge after only a map and a half usually. And I don't really want to play with it on the charger the entire time because I like being able to curl up in bed with it. It feels like, out of necessity, I'm probably going to have to adapt to only playing one map at a time. Disappointing but like, I'll do it. I want to finish this game. Don't be surprised though if other games get done/other gaming diaries have come out while I'm making my way through Fire Emblem, only being able to play for like 90-120 minutes before the WiiU throws a fit does open up as lot of possibility.
4/10/26
It was a week, y'all. Yeah so I didn't play like any Fire Emblem this week. I was dealing with an eye infection and just not feeling like doing anything, really. Probably a bit of gaming burnout too. Also time blindness has been hitting REAL HARD lately, I don't know what that's about, but there were a couple nights where I was like "I'm going to do at least a chapter of Fire Emblem, I'm just going to watch this YouTube video first" and then I watch like five and suddenly it's midnight and I missed my window to play. I'm mad at myself because it's like. It's not that I don't want to play more Fire Emblem, I really like this game, it's just that I haven't found the drive to do so. It's been a week of "I don't want to play right now so maybe I'll just work on some drafts" too but that's also been slow going. It's been making me big depresso.
On top of that I will admit that my fighting with the WiiU Gamepad has made me not want to return to Fire Emblem. It's been genuinely deflating getting like a chapter done and being excited to jump into the next one only for that red light to come on. I know this is such a minor thing, but like, I like being able to really commit to a play session, y'know? Spend 3 or 4 hours on something, especially if my goal is to write about it. So the WiiU being this way just got me like "I don't know if I want to do this". I think I have a solution though, and I'm mad I didn't think of it before as it's the solution I usually come to: the Super Nintendo controller. I own the SNES Classic, lovely little device, and something fun about the SNES Classic is that the controllers have the same input as the Wii Remote port. So what you can do is plug a SNES Classic controller into the bottom of the Wii Remote and use it as a Classic controller for Wii/WiiU games. It's not a very good Classic controller in most situations, mind, since it lacks sticks and therefore couldn't really play the more "hardcore" Wii games you'd want to play with it. But for VC stuff, it should work well. If I had a nickel for every time the Super Nintendo controller came in clutch, I swear. A friend's FireRed playthrough improved tremendously once she switched to SNES controller. Truly the GOAT, I should always be thinking about it.
So I finished Chapters 16 and 17 in this play session. The plot to this game like so doesn't matter, y'all. Like, again, Fire Emblem plots are famously just nothing, this isn't surprising. It's just like, man, this plot is hard to latch onto. But basically what happened in this section is that we met a spy who, allegedly, has been working as a double agent for Hector's kingdom by posing as a Black Fang. Or I guess a triple agent? She's working for Hector's father by pretending she's working for the Black Fang by pretending she's working for Hector's father. I don't know, I don't really trust her but like, this is early Fire Emblem. There are rarely characters with super complex allegiances. Anyways, she informs us that the Black Fang were once a vigilante group operating on the continent, killing corrupt nobles who abused their power to make life better for the citizens. But that just over a year ago, their leader remarried, and their new wife has ties to a mysterious figure known as "Nergal". Nergal seeks to use the Black Fang to ally a group of kingdoms and stage a coup, and that Eliwood's father is very likely alive and with the other leaders of the other kingdoms. Although the spy cannot say if his father is truly part of the coup or is just being held hostage by them. Oh also, the girl the Black Fang tried to kidnap earlier is back. Her name is Ninian. She's obviously very important to whatever plan they're scheming but right now she's just a girl with no memory.
With that, we sail South. Which means we get a boat stage!!! Love a good old Fire Emblem boat stage. Hilariously, despite there literally being a class of character in Blazing Blade called "pirates", the pirates that attack the boat aren't actual pirates. Annoyingly, they are mostly dark mages, meaning that my army has an uphill battle with them. I do appreciate that dark magic in FE7 has a pretty low chance of hitting, rarely over 50%, which means it's not immediately decimating a party. Unfortunately my luck is terrible and enemies have hit basically every hit below 50. And, for reasons I'll get into in a minute, I don't actually have a party member who is equipped to counterplaying dark mages specifically. So my strategy ended up being "throw out my Pegasus Knight, have her tank every hit, retreat her when her health got to low, deal with the fallout". It worked surprisingly well, but I did have to rely on lucky rolls because when Florina retreated for heals, she did leave my party pretty vulnerable. That being said, Florina is the GOAT, she held down that map basically all on her own, Pegasus Knight supremacy.
Speaking of being unlucky, man, my level up rolls y'all. So, bad level up rolls are a universal experience to Fire Emblem players. It is very common that you will finally get a character to a level up, which is much harder for some characters than others, only for your level up reward to just be "+1 HP". Or, the worst feeling, you get a cracked level up where everything goes up +1 or you roll a very rare +2 on a beneficial stat, then you lose the lord and have to replay the map and your next go through you get a much worse level. But in particular, I've been getting horrible roles. Florina is like the only unit that has gotten strength upgrades in like 3 hours of play, despite many of my units being almost in a position to reach their higher class many of their attack stats are really low. It's very difficult not to rely on the singular pre-upgraded unit I have unlocked, Marcus, because I know the pre-upgraded units are usually worse long term. But like, he's the only one with a decent damage output right now. And that's just strength buffs! I don't even want to talk about how fragile all my units are! So many level ups are just "HP and Luck".
Still haven't lost anyone... kind of. I did lose Guy on the boat level but then had to reset when Lyn died (as she is want to do, apparently). And then upon reload I was like "I'm not going to force Guy to die just because he technically already has". Though maybe I should've, given how I intentionally didn't let him die when I replayed through chapters earlier when I reloaded my save incorrectly so he'd still be where he would end up "canonically". Hmmmm. Regardless, the problem is actually that I failed to gain a couple new recruits. In Chapter 16, there is a prisoner of war who joins up with the enemy party, as he seeks to take revenge on Hector for what the kingdom of Ostia did to his family. He does this despite swearing loyalty to Lyn's royal family. This guy, Raven, is apparently the brother of my Troubadour party member Priscilla and if I had brought her all the way to him to talk to, I could've recruited him. I don't know if that's something Priscilla said and I just missed it or it's something I would've found out through like context clues? Regardless, I played cautiously, as I often do, and the non-playable green army got to him. More pressing though is that he was imprisoned with his friend Lucius, a person that we had met in Lyn's part of the story. Lucius is a monk, meaning he is capable of using Light Magic. Not recruiting him is the exact reason why the boat mission was so hard, as he would've had advantage on all those dark mages. Oh well, though, we eat our losses. Two units officially lost so far.
4/13/26
Welp, I finally lost someone for real. If you're counting, this is technically my fifth unit lost but it's also the first one that is actually "lost" per se. In Chapter 18, I recruited the sister of my GOAT Florina, Fiora, and thought I had safely cornered the boss, surrounding them with lance users. He got a tricky hit on Fiora and she died on her very first mission with the party. RIP Fiora, I was excited to have a second Pegasus knight if only for a moment. By the way, I don't know when the Pegasus Knight is able to get a class up, I would really like that about now. Florina has been putting in the work and I really want her to get the credit.
I got a singular chapter done in this session, though not for lack of trying. I was really wanting to sit down and go "I'm going to play like A LOT of Fire Emblem tonight". At least get through 3 or 4 chapters. And it seemed like it was going well, I made it through Chapter 18 with losses but not too many all told and I was almost to the end of Chapter 19. It seemed like getting through a few more chapters of Fire Emblem was more than in the cards. But as I reached the boss of Chapter 19, the kind of main villain of this act of FE7, I started to rally my units and get a good position to try and storm the boss. What happened, however, was that enemies started flooding in from my backline and I set up Eliwood, who is the main lord, to defend. He had full HP and had just received a pretty crucial level up, so he was a good candidate in my mind. Eliwood then proceeds to be hit by 5 40% hits in a row and dies in one turn, meaning I have to reset. I got Fire Emblem'd hard. And because of how FE7 works, I just have to reset the map. As much as I enjoy Fire Emblem, I'm not going to pretend like having to reset so often isn't a very deflating experience. It feels like there are just a lot of reasons working against me, Fire Emblem 7 is probably going to be a very long term project.
I don't enjoy having three Lords. This is more a criticism on Fire Emblem as a whole, especially in the modern era, but the number of Lords available to us in this game is more a detriment than a boon. Especially on a map like Chapter 19, wherein the three lords must all be deployed. I know that this is one of the reasons why FE7 is so beloved, the triple Lords who all have their individual storylines coexisting. Although Lyn basically exists as a side character in the Eliwood section. But from a gameplay perspective, having this many units that are instant game overs if they die is just a headache more than anything. I've probably actually had like 9 or 10 unit deaths at this point but they're always the Lords so they just don't count for anything. It's especially annoying as you reach the bosses, who are just always a massive difficulty spike. Like, the reason I lost Fiora is that I could not outpace the boss in damage before he could start attacking my units. I'm having to swarm bosses and hope that I get good hit and dodge rolls as I deal 3 damage knowing that every boss in this game can just swing for an entire character's HP.
So the spy from the last section is dead. The Black Fang effectively crucified her, stringing her up as a warning to Eliwood's party to turn back. I guess she was actually on our side in the end. The Black Fang revealed in this part what their plan actually is: their boss, Nergal, wants to bring dragons back into the world, intending to use them as a powerful force with which to conquer the continent. It's a good thing I had watched the intro for the first time last play session, otherwise I wouldn't have even known there were dragons in this Fire Emblem. I could've assumed, mind, it is a Fire Emblem. There are very few Fire Emblems without dragons. But I wouldn't have known that the dragons had a war with humanity that ended with them losing and being sealed away. And now Nergal seemingly wants to bring back dragons to get their revenge on humanity. This is also why Eliwood's father was "involved" in the coup, he was trying to see what the Black Fang's goals were so he could put a stop to them.
While Chapter 19 did make me feel pretty deflated after losing it right at the end, it's probably my favorite map so far? It takes place in this abandoned fortress with a bunch of locked doors and breakable walls. It's very nonlinear with how to progress, you have multiple pathways through which to attack the goal, it's super cool. I actually really like maps that are in enclosed like this, it feels like I'm properly flanking the enemy, using my best strategy possible to enclose them. Which ultimately doesn't matter when you get to the boss and he's just sitting there, menacingly, and your party struggles to take him down for like 8 turns while he can just one shot everyone but it's really fun map design regardless. Also, unrelated, I've finally figured out the deal with Merlinus and his tent and I really love it actually. I think it's fun to have to work with limited resources on a map, leaving units behind to defend the castle as I push forward.
I hope progress starts picking up because like. I do like Blazing Blade. I think it is fun, I think it is a solid Fire Emblem. But there is no worse feeling than having to redo an entire map over and over because of unlucky rolls. Just instantly deflates my want to play. I want to beat this, mind, I am committed to beating this. It's just progress is slow going and every time I have to reset a map I just no longer want to play. I've been thinking of alternating games since Fire Emblem is being like this and I might just start doing that, especially since we're now in mid-April and I have yet to beat a game this month. Start doing some of my smaller projects that don't need gaming diaries. Or maybe some that do, I don't know. A problem I'm having is that a lot of the games I want to play ARE games that I want to do gaming diaries on. Like currently on my queue, I have 3 games I want to write about for sure (including another TRPG, ahhh) and then a few more that I'm sure once I start feeling them out, I might want to write about them (Hi Sonic Adventure). We'll see.
4/21/26
Y'all, I don't know if I can do this. I don't think I'm strong enough. Which is disappointing to me, because I like Fire Emblem and I want to play it. I think this game is very good, when I am making progress it's really fun. I redid a map 5 times because an opponent kept hitting a 30% on me. And I still haven't beaten it. It's to the point where I feel like, before I end my turn, I have to make a save state and save scum, hoping my opponent rolls poorly to make genuine progress. It's not a thing I'm above, lord knows I've always save stated and rewound on NSO games before when needed, but the WiiU just makes this so much more frustrating than it needs to be. A massive part of me is just like "scrap this, put it on the backburner until I can play it on Switch" because the entire experience of playing Fire Emblem on the WiiU has made me not want to play the game in any capacity.
As you may have noticed, the updates are very staggered for this one and there are a number of reasons why that is, but I legitimately have just has a lot of nights where I go "this whole process seems miserable, I don't want to do this". I think I would just simply have a better time playing it on Switch where I can at least have some recompense when the game just has my Lord catch a stray. So do not expect this to be my only Gaming Diary about Fire Emblem the Blazing Blade, because like, I think it's kind of over at least in this form. I'm not having fun, even if I like the game a whole lot, and I have the potential for another version which would allow me to have more fun. The decision seems simple.
It sucks though because I was finally gaining access to upgraded units!!! I upgraded the knight Oswin to a General, which maybe wasn't the play. Dorcas, my boy whose mutton was poisoned, he got upgraded into a Warrior. My girl Rebecca became a sniper, with their comically large bow. And, of course, my girl Florina, the GOAT, my best unit, she became a Falcoknight and started tearing up things before I had to redo the same chapter 5 times. Which was also the chapter I got the item to upgrade her, so I had to upgrade her five times. I really like how they introduce the upgrades. You start to gain them at about the halfway point but they give you time to sort of settle into who you want to gain said boons. Let you think on it for a bit. But also not too long, they do just go "hey, you have to make these choices or else". Powercreep comes for the units quickly, especially with regards to bosses. Chapter 19 in particular is very much an "upgrade your units now or die", as the boss can very easily decimate an entire party without a few upgraded units. It gives you the room to make choices but doesn't let you go forever without making them.
The story, for how kind of "yep that's a story", was also just starting to pick up. We get to the end of Chapter 19 and have this dramatic confrontation with the main villain, Nergal. We had, unknowingly, brought him exactly what he wanted as Ninian was needed to open the Dragon Gate and unleash all the dragons into the world. So by rescuing Ninian out at sea and taking her with us onto the island, we had ensured Nergal could complete his ritual. This is also why Eliwood's father, Marquess Elbert, was led here. Nergal requires the willpower of humans to complete his goals, their "essence" in a sense. It's why he wanted to start a war that would span the continent, a war is a good way to harvest human willpower. People die en masse, and Nergal can absorb all that through his proxies, amassing more and more power. But Elbert walking right into his hands was very beneficial to Nergal. Elbert has enough willpower for a hundred people, his single sacrifice could be enough to open the Dragon Gate on his own. With everything in place, Nergal manages to open the gate, bringing forth a dragon. But he is stopped by the combined efforts of Elbert, who spends his last moments trying to stop the dark mage, and Ninian's twin brother Nils, who manages to break Ninian from the trance Nergal put her under. The dragon gate closes, for the moment, but Nergal escapes. Eliwood cradles his father's dying body, before returning to the mainland to regroup.
I will return to Fire Emblem some day. I promise. I really want to play this title, as well as the other GBA English release, the Sacred Stones. It's just the WiiU was not the vibe. I don't mind losing units, I think that's part of what is great about Fire Emblem. That there's this large cast of characters you grow to care about, and that your decisions might result in their deaths. But having to restart entire chapters over and over again because the Lords keep dying on a console where I have no option to just rewind and try again is frustrating in a way that kills my want to play this game. This isn't the end for Fire Emblem, but for now I feel like I have to shelve it. That being said, I did really enjoy this game. This isn't the best Fire Emblem title by any stretch. Its plot is pretty basic, its characters don't really do a lot, it having three Lords is really cool until you realize how often it causes problems. It's also very difficult, as I'm sure you can tell from how I've spoken of it. But it is, in my mind, the platonic ideal of Fire Emblem. It has fun maps, good strategy gameplay, a nice risk vs. reward balance, Lyn. It's just a very solid game and I look forward to returning to it later on and going through it for real. Until then. 8.1/10
