User Reviews (1 - 11 of 143)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

EWWWWWWWW

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 38
Date: June 17, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I hate this game. Not because its stratagy but because its completey boring. I like final fantasy, KOTOR ect. but this is just soooooooo bad I hate it. All you do is move your little person around on a map and then watch them fight eachother...WATCH...THATS IT!! You have NO control over who wins or loses at all there is no attack button or menu you are just watching and if your person loses there gone...FOREVER. This is the worst game I have ever bought if you want a fun RPG go buy Final Fantasy I & II there much better. Although In the 2nd one you cant switch people in the line so thats a little odd. I like 1 better. Please unless you like crappy games do NOT buy this heck dont even take it for free. ITS THAT BAD!!

Horrid, just horrid

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 14
Date: January 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Although the tactics to this game are highly advanced, the story takes up to much of your time. It seems that you read more then you actually get to play. Also, their is no exploring outside of the story line, which means no other battles, so you have to rely on just the story mode alone to level up. The battle graphics are fun, though. The tactics are extreme, and not for the light at heart. A definite waste of $30.

REALLY BORING

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 21
Date: June 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

the most boring game on earth you cant do any thing and there are toooooo many videos

Shouldn't be rated E

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 24
Date: July 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I purchased this ?E? rated game for my son, and was surprised at the graphically violent nature of the introduction listed in the manual, as follows: ??All that was lost when mankind disrupted this balance with a sudden attack, a brutal slaughter that bathed the land in blood. Each fought for domination in a savage war that shook the foundations of nature itself.?

I hardly consider the vivid imagery of this passage to be appropriate for all ages. Either the rating system is not suitably designed or this one slipped through the cracks.

Yawn. Been done and done heaps better.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 13
Date: June 01, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Remember Shining Force I and II? Remember? Those turn based top-down view rpgs on the Sega Mega Drive with cool characters, heaps of cool magic and detailed combat animations?

Well those were classic sega games that came out a full DECADE ago. Compared to those strategy rpgs of yore, Fire Emblem (this the 7th in the series) makes NO PROGRESS WHATSOEVER.

It has lacklustre character designs, an overly wordy plot, a simplistic and boring combat system, a lack of difficulty and an annoying "support" feature which is somehow the developers attempt at adding replay value to this game.

Overall, to the utter newbie whose only prior experience with these kind of games was with Advance Wars(which is arguably a better game than this one), Fire Emblem might seem like a solid choice. I agree, it IS a solid choice. It is also, however, a throwback of a game. A disappointing retread of gameplay that has been done bigger and better(on lower end systems I might add).

How to begin? I will make a short comparison between this game and Shining Force II, which many of you have already played. Let me remind you that:

*SFII had more exciting animations. In Fire Emblem, most of the art went to the character portraits. When it comes to the top-down graphics in battle, as well as the battle animations themselves, this game looks extremely poor for a GBA game.

*SFII had more varied character designs. FE's characters might look "pretty", but are pretty much all same-ish anime fare, color-coded hair and all.

*SFII had HEAPS more: weapons, armours, spells, items. It was much more varied. Compared to this, all FE has going for it is a nice little "weapon triangle" system and your token herbs and potions. Not very exciting. In SFII you could cast spells like gigantic lightning storms which affect entire areas. In FE the magic works just like a weapon. You attack one square at a time. BO-Ring.

*SFII had BETWEEN-COMBAT exploration. In FE, it's pretty much battle after battle. Consequently the plot is FORCED to be told in huge CHUNKS pre and post-battle. Not very immersive.

*SFII was fun and worth replaying. Just go try it. In FE however, any semblance of replayability is in the form of placing different units next to each other and wait turn after turn in hope of getting new support combos. Wheee.

It seems abit ridiculous for me to compare this hand-held game with a console game, but bear in mind that the console game in question came out more than 10 years before this. The game boy advance is both graphically and performance wise better than the Mega Drive in every respect. Why can't Intelligent Sys. make a game that fully utilises its potential?

Not living up to its name

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 28
Date: November 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

When I got Fire Emblem, I thought It would be great. I have a thing for fantasy and sword games so I was naturally drawn to it. Plus i have heard that fire emblem was a big hit in japan. I was so wrong. The graphics are medicore, although the characters are tiny on the screen. During battles, you are looking down on the characters with a birds-eye view, and they are really small. the sound was the usual cheap japanese music with a few sound effects of flying arrows and clanging swords. Talking is described with rapid beeping noises. The game play was crude and simple, but it still worked. A big downfall is once a charater is defeated, they may NEVER come back. So it gets really frustrating that i have to keep repeating the chapter over and over again to finally win the battle. Another noticable fault is the fact that you can't go back to redo battles. There are also no random battles either. This makes it extremely difficult to spread experience throughout your charaters. The story was about a plains dweller girl named Lyndis (or Lyn). You meet her in the very beginning and your party expands very rapidly throughout the game. You play as a tactician and tell you r units what to do. Apparently, Lyn is heir to her kingdom called Rikea, but her greatuncle will do anything do get the king dom for himself. Each battle is a new chapter, and its gameover if one of your lords are defeated (Eliwood, Lyn, and Hector).
Graphics 3.0
Sound 2.5
Gameplay 2.5
Fun Factor 2.0
Overall, if you're going to get a tactical strategy game, I'd suggest Final Fantasy Tactics Advance or one of the Advance Wars games. Don't be lured by the cool name or the awesome reputation it has earned. Fire Emblem is definitely not a good choice for the holidays.

Saved games reset - *sigh*

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 7
Date: April 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

A fun strategy game overall, but has a major flaw - I can't stand any game that does not let you save anytime you want. I know this game allows you to save at anytime, but the game auto saves for you at the last turn, so that when you die you cannot revert to where you originally saved. I know the designers of Fire Emblem did this so to make the game more challenging or "realistic", so that players can't "cheat" by playing from that save point over and over again, but it actually makes the game more annoying and frustrating. If you character dies, by lets say a way to powerful and out of balanced mini boss attacking you and killing you with one shot, you have to start the whole stupid level over again.

Otherwise, this game would have received 5 stars - trust me, you'll get frustrated and annoyed the 100th time you main character dies, and you are forced to play the level over again.

An all around decent game.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 12
Date: November 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Fire embelm had a huge hype around it from both that weird TV comercial, and a good friend who talked me in to buying it. I put down Final fantasy Advance, and pooped it in. the first thing i noticed, there is ALOT OF TALKING THAT REALLY DOESN'T ADD ANYHTING TO THE GAMEPLAY. The graphics are probably some of the worst ive ever seen in gameboy advance, higher only than that of the yu gi oh games i used to play. The only good graphics I have seen in this game are during the second long blips of fight scene when one unit attacks another. Barring the excess amount of talking, and the crap graphics, there are really weird rules that make attacking an enemy, or changing the class of your units escpecially confusing.
The only reason I gave it three stars, is because the gameplay is SO challenging. You are fighting units ususally as skilled as your own, Units can miss attacks, and there are alot of cool abilities. On top of that, When a unit of yours dies, say goodbye, because he/she is gone FOREVER, so several times i have had to restart a battle (actually hundreds more like it), because they have swarmed my paladin with a million archers...
All in all, if you are looking for a hard game, but graphics dont matter too much to you, I'd Definatley reccomend this game

Fire Emblem is great, but...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: March 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Well, here's the thing. I love Advance Wars, and Fire Emblem is similar. Add fantasy and role-playing elements and you get the gist. There's a lot of things that are better about this game than Advance Wars, namely character development and story. However, there's one glaring problem that bothers me to no end, but some people really don't mind: when your character dies, he's gone. That's it. No revival, no counter. Nothing. He's dead. That creates an awful amount of frustration on tougher levels when one of your best guys gets totally ambushed and dies when you thought he was completely safe...then you either have to do without him or restart over and over and over again. It's aggravating, but if you don't mind, go right on ahead.

Fantasy, Strategy, and Death

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: August 22, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Those of you looking for a good tactical strategy game have come to the right place. As if it wasn't enough that the GBA/DS has Advance Wars and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, among other great tactical games, they also get this wonderful series, finally brought over from Japan.

For those of you who have played games in the Advanced Wars series, you will find many similarities; similar story system, battle based campiagn with no exploring or overworld, anime styled grapics, etc. For those of you who haven't... well, let's go over what this game has shall we?

GRAPHICS - 5/5
For the most part, I don't think I could ask for better graphics on a handheld system. Reminicent of later SNES games, the sprites are rich and colorful, and the animations are fluid and explosive. Every spell and swordstrike is well animated and the cut scenes leave little to be desired. Every character you control loooks unique and their personalities come across well on the little screen. The only real weaknesses I can think of in the graphics department are the enemies and maps; on occassion, the simple enemy "grunts" and terrain can run into repitition and can get boring. But then, in the end, there's only so much you can do to make endless "stormtrooper" grunts unique, and only so many ways you can show water and forests on a large overhead map.

SOUND - 4/5
The sound in Fire Emblem is as crisp as you can get from the GBA/DS. The makers of the game certainly did not skimp. That said though, the music and sound effects aren't exactly memorable. This isn't to say they aren't well done though and all the sounds and music fit the game and the moods. They're just not revolutionary.

CONTROLS - 5/5
Nothing to complain about for the controls. Everything is simple to understand and do in this game, and is well explained in the earlier parts of the campaign. Nice non-intrusive menus complete with stats and percentages tell you what you need to know and what the results of your actions will most likely be.

STORY - 5/5
The story is very in depth and surprisingly unique; it seems to borrow a little from Record of Lodoss Wars in inspiration among other fantasy worlds, but the story never feels hacked or ripped off from something else. The cutscenes and text do a good job of getting you into the story and I think most people who play this game would agree that you feel like you understand everything that is happening.

CHARACTERS - 5/5
The characters are the best part of Fire Emblem. Every uniot you use is unique and oozes with personality. Everything from the way they speak to their facial expressions to their battle animations makes the characters makes them into 3D people that you actually want to live and are excited to watch grow. Not only that, but Fire Emblem manages to pull this feat off with a roster of dozens and dozens of characters!

GAME MODES - 2/5
Unfortunately, the choices of what you can do in this game leave much to be desired. For the most part there is only one gameplay mode, the campaign. There is no multiplayer mode, no scenarios, no alternate campaigns... So if you're looking for a lot of differnt things to do with this game, you'll be dissapointed.

CAMPAIGN - 2/5
The story and characters are great in the campign mode, but some problems with the game itself make playing it rather shallow and frustrating. First off is something I just mentioned, the fact that there is no alternate campaign. This means that if you don't liek the one campaign's storyline or you're stuck, you;re out of luck. Another problem is the difficulty; many of the earlier missions are quite easy, btu past a certain point you'll run into a lot of frustrations. Some of these frustrations include enemies who can see through the fog off war while you cannot, superbosses who are seemingly immune to almost everything you can throw at them and can one hit kill your characters, and the death and save systems.
-=- A special note needs to be made about these systems. In Fire Emblem, you have the ability to "suspend" your gameplay in the middle of a mission so you can turn off the gameboy and pick up in a mission where you left off. This is emmensly helpful since some of the later missions can take a long time. This would also be helpful in theory since, with the death system in this game, once you lose a character they are gone for good. No getting them back in later missions, no ability to ressurect them in the mission you're on. And with a game with one hit kills, enemy that sometimes appear out of nowhere, and characters you come to care about, this can be a big deal. What ruins this nice feature is the autosave feature of the game; if the gameboy ever runs out of batteries or you turn it off or you quit a mission, the game automatically suspends from that point. This almost single handedly ruins much of the point of the suspend system in the first place. While it is still good for putting the gamboy down during a long mission, I see little point to the feature when it will automatically save it for you when you turn it off or reset. And this also means that if you make a mistake, lose someone, or simply get unlucky, the last time you suspended it is NOT the point where you will pick up when you try the mission again; it will be the point you turned it off or reset. This means every loss or mistake or piece of badluck turns into you having to play the ENTIRE MISSION OVER if you want ot undo it. This is extremely frustrating as this can lead to you getting stuck on a long mission, playing it over and over to learn specific enemy weaknesses or where enemies will pop up from. It is easilly the worst and most frustrating part of the game.

GAMEPLAY - 4/5
Along with the easy controls, the gameplay in Fire Emblem is very easy to understand, but hardly simplistic. The game uses a rock/paper/scissors mentality, with different magic/weapon types being strong or weak against other weapon types. For instance, swords are stong against axes, but weak against lances. And Holy magic is strong against Dark magic but weak against Elemental magic. however, there is a lot more to it than this; unit stats and levels, terrain, and support effect how well your units perform. In addition, there are items that throw a wrench in thsi simplistic idea, with certain weapons reversing the order or specializing against certain unit types. It all works very very well in the end. The only two complaints I have about the gameplay are the item degridation system and the cheating of the computer on occassion. I already mentioned the second one earlier, with the computer able to see through the fog of war and some units, especially bosses, being rediculously powerful. The other feature, the item degridation, isn't especially annoying though; as you battle, your items will degrade and eventually break. This means you need to keep up your stock of weapons and magic for all your characters. Now, this would be better if it were easier to do so, but unfortunately you can only buy items in the middle of missions where you are often already pressed for time, inventory, and movement. There is also no way to "repair" items and you have to simply carry more items if you have items that are going to break. With the dozens of characters you can have in your roster, this can turn into a royal pain, especially when you need to upgrade a lot of different weapons (IE from iron to steel). I really wish they had a place between battles to buy and sell stuff where you could take care of this stuff, or at least a way to repair your items. All told though, it very livable and not too annoying, and for the most part the gameplay is smooth and fun with few hiccups.

REPLAY - 2/5
There is little to no replayablity to Fire emblem. While it can be interesting to get things you missed the first time though the campaign (side missions, missed characters, support combos, etc.) these are mostly small things. And if you didn't miss anything? Well, all you can do is play through the same story and the same missions again.
========================================

I really do like Fire Emblem. It has a wonderful story, amazingly good graphics, solid crisp sound and music, well balanced gameplay, easy controls, and great depth. Unfortunately, it's also extremely frustrating and one dimensional. This game would be simply AMAZING with a little tweaks; the main things being a better save feature, more modes, and a few tweaks here and there to some missions.

Would I recommend Fire Emblem? Yes, if your a fan of strategy and RPGs or don't mind a little frustration; the presentation and gameplay in this game are just so good that despite it's flaws it is worth the recomendation. People who don't aren't strategy fans or who are easilly frustrated though? Save your money and get a different RPG; you probably won't get enough out of this game.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next 

Actions