Weirdraptor's journey through Fire Emblem continues.
Jul 25, 2023 16:17:02 GMT -5
President Ackbar mini™ likes this
Post by Weirdraptor mini™ on Jul 25, 2023 16:17:02 GMT -5
You might recall my other topic about this, found here.
Fire Emblem 2/Fire Emblem Gaiden: A Forgotten Gem in the FE Franchise
Like many numbers 2’s released for the NES, Fire Emblem Gaiden (or “Side Story”), is considered a black sheep in the franchise, alongside Super Mario Bros 2 (American version), Castevania 2, Legend of Zelda 2, Megaman 2, and so forth. Nintendo was NOT afraid to make the first sequels of new titles vastly different from their predecessors and experiment around with the core concepts back in the day. Then they would commonly take what they learned from both the original and 2, and refine the gameplay elements for the third title. Fire Emblem Gaiden did not deviate from this formula at all.
In Gaiden’s case, though, I think it outclasses the game it’s a sequel to in every way, and I’m actually disappointed to see some of the tomfoolery from the first game brought back in the third game.
Background
Fire Emblem is a series of Tactical/Strategy RPGs combining elements of turn-based strategy and RPG elements, making it fairly unique among video games when it started. Characters got experience points and leveled from killing enemies and often from performing other tasks, as well (depending on their class, anyway). You could buy or pick up equipment to further augment their strength and defensive, and the series is set in a fantasy world with magic, dragons, castles, and enchanted weapons. The first game in the series came out for the Famicom/NES in 1990. I think it was the very first tactical RPG to ever exist, but ‘firsts’ are easily contested. It’s the first one to matter, anyway.
Fire Emblem 1/Fire Emblem: Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light was unique in a sweeping storyline (which you had to read the manual to figure out, because it was the NES day and the story was often in the manual, instead of written out in the game). It did however have more dialogue than most NES games, even compared against other big NES RPG games like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. The scope of its tale really made the player feel like they were in a live, breathing world more than most NES titles I’ve ever experienced. FE1 managed to be a success, but was never released outside of Japan. Fire Emblem would not reach the Western world until 2001 when Martha and Roy were included as unlockable characters in Super Smash Bros Melee. When they went over pretty well, that prompted Nintendo to release the seventh game of the series and onward internationally.
Fire Emblem Gaiden dispensed with a lot of things players complained about in the first game (unclear story, breakable weapons, near helpless Healers, no central item menu, no between level preparation, etc.). To meet this end, the devs did a lot to overhaul the first game’s engine for the better, in my opinion.
Story 7/10 (by the measure of what was possible in an NES game)
The story is set in the continent of Valencia, home to two kingdoms. In the north is the warrior kingdom of Rigel, and the peaceful kingdom of Sofia was settled in the south. These two kingdoms are devoted to the twin brother and sister gods which rule them. The northern warrior god Doma and the southern goddess of love, Mia. No points for guessing which one of these two has gone off the deep end and is the game’s villain. So, anyway, Doma has gone mad, formed a doomsday cult in his name (despite literally being the national religion of his kingdom already), and has Rigel invade the kingdom of Sofia, but in truth Doma intends have the two kingdoms wipe each other out ‘cause humans suck or something. It’s not well-explained, but apparently, gods in the Fire Emblem setting can suffer something called “degeneration”, which causes them to lose their sanity and start becoming animalistic. It’s not unlike what happens with the boar gods in Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke.
This game pits the player against Doma, his warrior kingdom, and his new cult as they try to bring destruction of the world (his original followers turn out to have defected once he went Coocoo for Cocoa Puffs and join you). The game follows the stories of two young faction leaders from the kingdom of Sofia and you switch back and forth between them as they go on their respective journeys and eventually team up for the final boss. Rather impressively for the time, the two protagonists have different goals, routes, and even fight different enemies before teaming up at the end.
The game is structured in five chapters, the first two taking place simultaneously in time, but not in-game, and onwards both stories progress at the same time.
The first story follows a teen boy named Alm, whose village is invaded (but miraculously not burned to the ground. So, points for avoiding one cliché). Alm and some of his local friends have to defend it. Together, these plucky backwater youths start moving northwards and gradually form a small army as they venture to liberate their country.
The other story follows a young priestess named Celica who tries to find the reason behind the why the dead have begun to rise as flesh-eating zombies by seeking the word of her goddess. Of course, the cause for both stories’ suffering is one and the same: Doma the northern war god having gone insane and using his country to enact his apocalyptic ambitions.
Many aspects of the plot came from the first game, and continue to appear in future Fire Emblem games: evil cults, the ruined home kingdom, sacred weapons, and a god gone mad that you have to put down with the power of friendship, etc. However, Gaiden has nice twists towards its endgame that are truly satisfying. Although I could have lived without having Alm being the secret son of one of the villains. Yeah, the influence of Star Wars over all forms of media was in full-force in 1990.
Although, to be fair to Gaiden in this regard, they also put a twist on it where their Vader figure was “secretly good the whole time” and was manipulating the situation to prep his son to take out Doma.
Gameplay 8/10 (again, measuring by NES standards)
The first thing the player will notice, and be very grateful for after suffering in a state of perpetual confusion through the first game, is that this game has a world map to help them keep track of where in the world and story they are.
(Insert Hallelujah choir)
The world map allows the player to move freely between locations of interest, much like the overworlds in many 2D Mario games. Each chapter covers a region of the game's world, all of which are geographically connected, giving the player a natural feeling of progression. You can actually observe your own progress towards the final boss, which helps to establish the game's atmosphere. This also makes it possible to return to previous places, which is necessary in several occasions. It also makes level grinding on your time table possible. In the first game, you just had to kill the enemies the game gave you on the map and hope it was enough (or that you had given levels to the right units). The places the player visits can contain recruitable characters, new items, or can trigger battles or story events.
Much of the gameplay consists of battles. These are fought on rectangular boards, with each unit (ally or enemy) occupying one square cell of it. The board has geography which effects how the battle can be fought (plains, forests, deserts. These different types of terrain affect unit movement. Like with Fire Emblem 1, the gameplay is like a chess game, but you get to move all your pieces in the same turn. You move your units across the board to defeat the enemy army, and then the computer player tries to do the same. However, different units have different amounts of spaces they can move, and I would not recommend going the maximum every time, but that is a good way to leave your Wizards and Healers in the dirt, and yes, you will need them to avoid slaughter.
Each unit belongs to a class (soldier, mage, archer, cavalry) which determines the characteristics ("stats") of the unit (speed, strength, resistance to damage, movement), its strengths and its weaknesses. New players will have to mess around them to get a feel for what each one can do and what they can withstand. But remember, permadeath is a thing in Fire Emblem.
For instance, armored knights have high physical resistance but low magical resistance, which makes them strong against other fighter units like swordsmen or cavalry but weak against mages. The player cannot create more units, each character belongs to a specific class and cannot change, but can become an advanced unit of the same type if he/she gets enough experience. Each character unit has also a name, a portrait and a background story, which gives them personality and makes them less anonymous.
As a staple element of the Fire Emblem series, the defeat of a character in battle means its death and its inability to be used further in the game, which encourages players to lay strategies carefully to avoid casualties. Being one of the oldest titles, character development for secondary characters is almost inexistent as many characters will not talk again after their recruitment, but nevertheless the player will want to have an army as large and varied as possible, given enemy armies will be composed with units of different classes. Characters raise experience in battles, which allows them to become stronger. Characters gain a little experience in fights, and much more by defeating enemies. The stronger the unit is, the less experience it receives. Each hundred experience points the unit gains a level, which raise some of its stats depending of the class and the given character.
There are several differences to other titles of the series. The first one is that victory is achieved by defeating every enemy unit on the battlefield, as opposed to capturing the enemy's castle/throne. This could be used to argue that battles become unnecessarily longer, but I don't think there is much difference, as experience is as important as in the other FE games. Another staple of the series is that weapons have limited uses and break eventually, which adds another level of strategy because players have to keep track of their inventory, manage its resources, and ensure their army is well equipped for the most difficult missions. Well, this is the biggest gripe of purists, but weapons do not break in Fire Emblem Gaiden. Each character has automatically equipped his/her basic class-specific weapon, and special weapons as magical swords are equipped like items. Each character has only one slot for items, which can be special weapons, shields, magic rings, and so on. This constrasts starkly with the previous title, in which the player could decide which specific weapons wants each character to use, provided it is possible for the given class, and much more with later entries, in which some weapons are stronger against others, and a character can have more advantages using a weapon of a different type. The absence of inventory removes the need of having shops and gold, which were present in the previous game and also all of the other entries. This mostly removes the managing aspect (the battle preparations), but not completely given the player can assign special weapons and items to the characters. I think this also contributes to lower the difficulty of the game, given the high difficulty of the previous title.
And since there is no inventory like in other entries, magic has to work a bit differently in Gaiden.
In FE1, mages equipped tomes and staves to cast spells. Now spellcasters can cast "white" or "black" magic at any time. The spells a unit can cast depend on his or her class and their level.
Even different units belonging to the same class can have different spells, which encourages experimenting and gives the characters more personality.
For instance, some spellcasters can heal characters who are far away in the battlefield, and some others can warp characters across it. As items do not wear out, magic does not either (YOOHOO!), but casting it drains some of the spellcaster's HP. The stronger the spell, the more HP it drains. This is a unique feature which is not present in other FE games, given how easy is to abuse magic having a support healer or a healing item such as a magic ring. In fact, a well-trained spellcaster can become almost invincible. Magic is not divided in elements as in other FE games, all attack magic is under "black" magic, including fire, thunder, and life-draining spells, and most are accessible to many spellcasters.
Most battles are fixed and plot-related, but some of them are spontaneous. There are no random battles, as the player can see the enemy army on the world map approaching the player's army. This army will be formed of generic enemy units (i.e., no boss characters) and will reward the player with experience if defeated or punish him/her for taking too much time on advancing. This battles reuse different battlefields from scripted battles.
Yet another concept that debuted on Gaiden is "trainee" units. These are special classes representing units in training, after which the unit can choose between several other classes to promote to. At the beginning of the game Alm and Celica both have three trainee units which after some training can become either swordfighters, mages, soldiers, cavalry, or archers, your choice. This gives the player the freedom to shape their small army just about any way they want. However, the lack of guidance on this feature can screw you if you promote someone into a class that is less than useful among your other units. This flexibility makes the game a lot easier than the previous title, though.
Also, Alm and Celica cannot exchange units between their armies, as they have a reason story-wise for joining each leader. You can only send items from one team to the other a limited number of times. Even if the two quests are independent, like if it were two separate FE games, they are intertwined in a way that makes you advance in both at the same time.
A nice feature not present on other games of the series that is only found here in Fire Emblem Gaiden is the ability to explore towns like a traditional RPG. This lets you talk to the villagers and get useful information and new recruits. You can also explore castles in the same way, which usually lets you find new items. Other dungeons include scripted battles and some can be very difficult and confusing, like with the Lost Forest (which I doubt can be cleared without a guide) and the final dungeon. As with Castlevania II, some key elements of the gameplay are not made clear in-game, so I recommend having a guide on hand.
All character recruitment takes place outside of battles, opposed to other FE games, which makes most of the recruitments easier. In some cases an NPC has to survive a previous battle in order to be recruited. This can prove difficult since the NPC units are not controlled by the player and can rush blindly against the enemy army. These units have the same color as the player, can make for confusion if they happen to look like one of your actual units. Some battles give the player the choice to withdraw, which is useful if the NPC is hurt as he/she will not return to the battle, ensuring his/her survival and making him/her recruitable after winning the battle.
Later battles have a maximum number of units the player can bring to the battlefield. You can re-arrange the order of the units in a list from which the game will take the characters to be used, but this is not made clear by the game. The player also is not told many units he/they can carry to the next battle. This is an interface problem, as the previous game had an interface to select units to be deployed.
Graphics 7/10
This is a late NES game, as in the SNES was already out. It reuses many sprites and textures from the previous game, but also has many new sprites for the new classes such as Falcon Knight and Shaman, and many new monsters like the zombies and the Zombie Dragon. It is not an ugly game, but it can be tiresome to see the same textures over and over. The presentation of the menu is also similar to the previous game. Some sprites even have several frames of animation. I personally give much less importance to graphics than to gameplay and controls, but this is a pretty good-looking NES game despite its similar appearance to its ugly predecessor.
Music 7/10
Gaiden has a nice selection of tunes, but this is still the NES. Don’t expect anything too mind-blowing by today’s standards.
Controls/Interface 7.5/10
The biggest problems of this game. The game interface is handled exclusively through text menus. Putting aside the fact that the game was never released in the West and that the only English translations are fan-made, the controls for navigating the menus (a button for accepting and a button for canceling) are simple enough but the meaning of each option is not. As stated, the player needs to know how to arrange the units on the party, especially in late missions in which very few units can be taken to battlefield (the tower of Judah comes to mind). Also, it is necessary to know how to equip items, as some key items need to be equipped in the final battle. In battle there are some global commands to make the party rally onto the enemy or to gather around the leader, but I never use these commands because they always end in tragedy.
Replay value Eh…/10
The are no hidden secrets on a second playthrough, nor a harder difficulty. The story is exactly the same on each go through, but the player can vary the characters used, try to recruit characters they missed previously, discover all the spells and promotions, and promote the trainees to different classes. The game is short enough to not be a drag, but some early missions can be tedious until you raise an appropriate army. Even while there are no surprises on a second playthrough, the plot is good enough to drive the game and enjoy it.
I don’t think its fair that this game was almost completely forgotten before it got a 3DS remake. Gaiden has a special charm and deserves much better than being the forgotten Fire Emblem title.
I therefore recommend this game to those who enjoy tactical RPGs, who like Fire Emblem, and/or who appreciate NES games.
Fire Emblem 2/Fire Emblem Gaiden: A Forgotten Gem in the FE Franchise
Like many numbers 2’s released for the NES, Fire Emblem Gaiden (or “Side Story”), is considered a black sheep in the franchise, alongside Super Mario Bros 2 (American version), Castevania 2, Legend of Zelda 2, Megaman 2, and so forth. Nintendo was NOT afraid to make the first sequels of new titles vastly different from their predecessors and experiment around with the core concepts back in the day. Then they would commonly take what they learned from both the original and 2, and refine the gameplay elements for the third title. Fire Emblem Gaiden did not deviate from this formula at all.
In Gaiden’s case, though, I think it outclasses the game it’s a sequel to in every way, and I’m actually disappointed to see some of the tomfoolery from the first game brought back in the third game.
Background
Fire Emblem is a series of Tactical/Strategy RPGs combining elements of turn-based strategy and RPG elements, making it fairly unique among video games when it started. Characters got experience points and leveled from killing enemies and often from performing other tasks, as well (depending on their class, anyway). You could buy or pick up equipment to further augment their strength and defensive, and the series is set in a fantasy world with magic, dragons, castles, and enchanted weapons. The first game in the series came out for the Famicom/NES in 1990. I think it was the very first tactical RPG to ever exist, but ‘firsts’ are easily contested. It’s the first one to matter, anyway.
Fire Emblem 1/Fire Emblem: Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light was unique in a sweeping storyline (which you had to read the manual to figure out, because it was the NES day and the story was often in the manual, instead of written out in the game). It did however have more dialogue than most NES games, even compared against other big NES RPG games like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. The scope of its tale really made the player feel like they were in a live, breathing world more than most NES titles I’ve ever experienced. FE1 managed to be a success, but was never released outside of Japan. Fire Emblem would not reach the Western world until 2001 when Martha and Roy were included as unlockable characters in Super Smash Bros Melee. When they went over pretty well, that prompted Nintendo to release the seventh game of the series and onward internationally.
Fire Emblem Gaiden dispensed with a lot of things players complained about in the first game (unclear story, breakable weapons, near helpless Healers, no central item menu, no between level preparation, etc.). To meet this end, the devs did a lot to overhaul the first game’s engine for the better, in my opinion.
Story 7/10 (by the measure of what was possible in an NES game)
The story is set in the continent of Valencia, home to two kingdoms. In the north is the warrior kingdom of Rigel, and the peaceful kingdom of Sofia was settled in the south. These two kingdoms are devoted to the twin brother and sister gods which rule them. The northern warrior god Doma and the southern goddess of love, Mia. No points for guessing which one of these two has gone off the deep end and is the game’s villain. So, anyway, Doma has gone mad, formed a doomsday cult in his name (despite literally being the national religion of his kingdom already), and has Rigel invade the kingdom of Sofia, but in truth Doma intends have the two kingdoms wipe each other out ‘cause humans suck or something. It’s not well-explained, but apparently, gods in the Fire Emblem setting can suffer something called “degeneration”, which causes them to lose their sanity and start becoming animalistic. It’s not unlike what happens with the boar gods in Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke.
This game pits the player against Doma, his warrior kingdom, and his new cult as they try to bring destruction of the world (his original followers turn out to have defected once he went Coocoo for Cocoa Puffs and join you). The game follows the stories of two young faction leaders from the kingdom of Sofia and you switch back and forth between them as they go on their respective journeys and eventually team up for the final boss. Rather impressively for the time, the two protagonists have different goals, routes, and even fight different enemies before teaming up at the end.
The game is structured in five chapters, the first two taking place simultaneously in time, but not in-game, and onwards both stories progress at the same time.
The first story follows a teen boy named Alm, whose village is invaded (but miraculously not burned to the ground. So, points for avoiding one cliché). Alm and some of his local friends have to defend it. Together, these plucky backwater youths start moving northwards and gradually form a small army as they venture to liberate their country.
The other story follows a young priestess named Celica who tries to find the reason behind the why the dead have begun to rise as flesh-eating zombies by seeking the word of her goddess. Of course, the cause for both stories’ suffering is one and the same: Doma the northern war god having gone insane and using his country to enact his apocalyptic ambitions.
Many aspects of the plot came from the first game, and continue to appear in future Fire Emblem games: evil cults, the ruined home kingdom, sacred weapons, and a god gone mad that you have to put down with the power of friendship, etc. However, Gaiden has nice twists towards its endgame that are truly satisfying. Although I could have lived without having Alm being the secret son of one of the villains. Yeah, the influence of Star Wars over all forms of media was in full-force in 1990.
Although, to be fair to Gaiden in this regard, they also put a twist on it where their Vader figure was “secretly good the whole time” and was manipulating the situation to prep his son to take out Doma.
Gameplay 8/10 (again, measuring by NES standards)
The first thing the player will notice, and be very grateful for after suffering in a state of perpetual confusion through the first game, is that this game has a world map to help them keep track of where in the world and story they are.
(Insert Hallelujah choir)
The world map allows the player to move freely between locations of interest, much like the overworlds in many 2D Mario games. Each chapter covers a region of the game's world, all of which are geographically connected, giving the player a natural feeling of progression. You can actually observe your own progress towards the final boss, which helps to establish the game's atmosphere. This also makes it possible to return to previous places, which is necessary in several occasions. It also makes level grinding on your time table possible. In the first game, you just had to kill the enemies the game gave you on the map and hope it was enough (or that you had given levels to the right units). The places the player visits can contain recruitable characters, new items, or can trigger battles or story events.
Much of the gameplay consists of battles. These are fought on rectangular boards, with each unit (ally or enemy) occupying one square cell of it. The board has geography which effects how the battle can be fought (plains, forests, deserts. These different types of terrain affect unit movement. Like with Fire Emblem 1, the gameplay is like a chess game, but you get to move all your pieces in the same turn. You move your units across the board to defeat the enemy army, and then the computer player tries to do the same. However, different units have different amounts of spaces they can move, and I would not recommend going the maximum every time, but that is a good way to leave your Wizards and Healers in the dirt, and yes, you will need them to avoid slaughter.
Each unit belongs to a class (soldier, mage, archer, cavalry) which determines the characteristics ("stats") of the unit (speed, strength, resistance to damage, movement), its strengths and its weaknesses. New players will have to mess around them to get a feel for what each one can do and what they can withstand. But remember, permadeath is a thing in Fire Emblem.
For instance, armored knights have high physical resistance but low magical resistance, which makes them strong against other fighter units like swordsmen or cavalry but weak against mages. The player cannot create more units, each character belongs to a specific class and cannot change, but can become an advanced unit of the same type if he/she gets enough experience. Each character unit has also a name, a portrait and a background story, which gives them personality and makes them less anonymous.
As a staple element of the Fire Emblem series, the defeat of a character in battle means its death and its inability to be used further in the game, which encourages players to lay strategies carefully to avoid casualties. Being one of the oldest titles, character development for secondary characters is almost inexistent as many characters will not talk again after their recruitment, but nevertheless the player will want to have an army as large and varied as possible, given enemy armies will be composed with units of different classes. Characters raise experience in battles, which allows them to become stronger. Characters gain a little experience in fights, and much more by defeating enemies. The stronger the unit is, the less experience it receives. Each hundred experience points the unit gains a level, which raise some of its stats depending of the class and the given character.
There are several differences to other titles of the series. The first one is that victory is achieved by defeating every enemy unit on the battlefield, as opposed to capturing the enemy's castle/throne. This could be used to argue that battles become unnecessarily longer, but I don't think there is much difference, as experience is as important as in the other FE games. Another staple of the series is that weapons have limited uses and break eventually, which adds another level of strategy because players have to keep track of their inventory, manage its resources, and ensure their army is well equipped for the most difficult missions. Well, this is the biggest gripe of purists, but weapons do not break in Fire Emblem Gaiden. Each character has automatically equipped his/her basic class-specific weapon, and special weapons as magical swords are equipped like items. Each character has only one slot for items, which can be special weapons, shields, magic rings, and so on. This constrasts starkly with the previous title, in which the player could decide which specific weapons wants each character to use, provided it is possible for the given class, and much more with later entries, in which some weapons are stronger against others, and a character can have more advantages using a weapon of a different type. The absence of inventory removes the need of having shops and gold, which were present in the previous game and also all of the other entries. This mostly removes the managing aspect (the battle preparations), but not completely given the player can assign special weapons and items to the characters. I think this also contributes to lower the difficulty of the game, given the high difficulty of the previous title.
And since there is no inventory like in other entries, magic has to work a bit differently in Gaiden.
In FE1, mages equipped tomes and staves to cast spells. Now spellcasters can cast "white" or "black" magic at any time. The spells a unit can cast depend on his or her class and their level.
Even different units belonging to the same class can have different spells, which encourages experimenting and gives the characters more personality.
For instance, some spellcasters can heal characters who are far away in the battlefield, and some others can warp characters across it. As items do not wear out, magic does not either (YOOHOO!), but casting it drains some of the spellcaster's HP. The stronger the spell, the more HP it drains. This is a unique feature which is not present in other FE games, given how easy is to abuse magic having a support healer or a healing item such as a magic ring. In fact, a well-trained spellcaster can become almost invincible. Magic is not divided in elements as in other FE games, all attack magic is under "black" magic, including fire, thunder, and life-draining spells, and most are accessible to many spellcasters.
Most battles are fixed and plot-related, but some of them are spontaneous. There are no random battles, as the player can see the enemy army on the world map approaching the player's army. This army will be formed of generic enemy units (i.e., no boss characters) and will reward the player with experience if defeated or punish him/her for taking too much time on advancing. This battles reuse different battlefields from scripted battles.
Yet another concept that debuted on Gaiden is "trainee" units. These are special classes representing units in training, after which the unit can choose between several other classes to promote to. At the beginning of the game Alm and Celica both have three trainee units which after some training can become either swordfighters, mages, soldiers, cavalry, or archers, your choice. This gives the player the freedom to shape their small army just about any way they want. However, the lack of guidance on this feature can screw you if you promote someone into a class that is less than useful among your other units. This flexibility makes the game a lot easier than the previous title, though.
Also, Alm and Celica cannot exchange units between their armies, as they have a reason story-wise for joining each leader. You can only send items from one team to the other a limited number of times. Even if the two quests are independent, like if it were two separate FE games, they are intertwined in a way that makes you advance in both at the same time.
A nice feature not present on other games of the series that is only found here in Fire Emblem Gaiden is the ability to explore towns like a traditional RPG. This lets you talk to the villagers and get useful information and new recruits. You can also explore castles in the same way, which usually lets you find new items. Other dungeons include scripted battles and some can be very difficult and confusing, like with the Lost Forest (which I doubt can be cleared without a guide) and the final dungeon. As with Castlevania II, some key elements of the gameplay are not made clear in-game, so I recommend having a guide on hand.
All character recruitment takes place outside of battles, opposed to other FE games, which makes most of the recruitments easier. In some cases an NPC has to survive a previous battle in order to be recruited. This can prove difficult since the NPC units are not controlled by the player and can rush blindly against the enemy army. These units have the same color as the player, can make for confusion if they happen to look like one of your actual units. Some battles give the player the choice to withdraw, which is useful if the NPC is hurt as he/she will not return to the battle, ensuring his/her survival and making him/her recruitable after winning the battle.
Later battles have a maximum number of units the player can bring to the battlefield. You can re-arrange the order of the units in a list from which the game will take the characters to be used, but this is not made clear by the game. The player also is not told many units he/they can carry to the next battle. This is an interface problem, as the previous game had an interface to select units to be deployed.
Graphics 7/10
This is a late NES game, as in the SNES was already out. It reuses many sprites and textures from the previous game, but also has many new sprites for the new classes such as Falcon Knight and Shaman, and many new monsters like the zombies and the Zombie Dragon. It is not an ugly game, but it can be tiresome to see the same textures over and over. The presentation of the menu is also similar to the previous game. Some sprites even have several frames of animation. I personally give much less importance to graphics than to gameplay and controls, but this is a pretty good-looking NES game despite its similar appearance to its ugly predecessor.
Music 7/10
Gaiden has a nice selection of tunes, but this is still the NES. Don’t expect anything too mind-blowing by today’s standards.
Controls/Interface 7.5/10
The biggest problems of this game. The game interface is handled exclusively through text menus. Putting aside the fact that the game was never released in the West and that the only English translations are fan-made, the controls for navigating the menus (a button for accepting and a button for canceling) are simple enough but the meaning of each option is not. As stated, the player needs to know how to arrange the units on the party, especially in late missions in which very few units can be taken to battlefield (the tower of Judah comes to mind). Also, it is necessary to know how to equip items, as some key items need to be equipped in the final battle. In battle there are some global commands to make the party rally onto the enemy or to gather around the leader, but I never use these commands because they always end in tragedy.
Replay value Eh…/10
The are no hidden secrets on a second playthrough, nor a harder difficulty. The story is exactly the same on each go through, but the player can vary the characters used, try to recruit characters they missed previously, discover all the spells and promotions, and promote the trainees to different classes. The game is short enough to not be a drag, but some early missions can be tedious until you raise an appropriate army. Even while there are no surprises on a second playthrough, the plot is good enough to drive the game and enjoy it.
I don’t think its fair that this game was almost completely forgotten before it got a 3DS remake. Gaiden has a special charm and deserves much better than being the forgotten Fire Emblem title.
I therefore recommend this game to those who enjoy tactical RPGs, who like Fire Emblem, and/or who appreciate NES games.