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22degreehaloChallenge #9
Rec Us Your Newest Thing. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.
OKAY so I was prepared to maybe do this for Day 6 even though it didn’t entirely fit the question, so I am more than happy to be given the violently blasting green light to really just go hog wild on this rec right here :’DDD (even though it still doesn’t ENTIRELY fit the question because it’s not a ‘new thing’ by any meaning of the phrase but WHATEVER).
Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. AKA the coolest, most experimental, and most influential game you have probably never, ever heard of!!
It came out initially on the SNES back in 1996 as the fourth instalment of the extremely long-lived Fire Emblem franchise, and depending on who you ask, it might just be the best of all of them. That’s not just me saying that: a poll from a few years back asking Japanese fans their favourite Fire Emblem game had FE4 up on top, even against the recently-released and insanely popular Fire Emblem Three Houses, and in an unrelated survey of Japanese players’ favourite games of all time, FE4 was one of a VERY few games not released within the last few years to make the top 100, right alongside such iconic greats as Personas 3 and 4!
Why isn’t it more well known in the English-speaking world? Well, you could say that about all Fire Emblem games, really: the franchise has always been hugely influential in Japan, as evidenced by, for example, its dominance in the Super Smash Bros roster. (To the point of undue hostility by many Smash fans…) Add in that the game has never been officially translated into English, and it all sorta makes sense, as much of a shame as it is. FE4 came out a year before Final Fantasy VII, and its ambition and successes in treating video games as a medium for art and tragedy and literature could have caused it to take its place in the popular consciousness.
But FE4 (and FE7!) is a game, and so that’s where I’m going to start: the mechanics. Because while these are usually considered the weakest aspect of FE4 as a ‘best game’, they’re still incredibly unique and interesting and absolutely perfect for the right kind of player!
Preamble
So, necessary preamble for those not familiar with the franchise: Fire Emblem is known as a Strategy Role-Playing Game, which means that gameplay takes place on maps in which the player fields various different units, each other their own strengths and weaknesses, and directs them to overpower enemy units and reach the objective. Fire Emblem is especially renowned for its very high number of playable units, all of which have their own unique names, stories, relationships, and mechanical capabilities. Of course, in earlier days – certainly in the pre-FE4 games – these units were much less distinguishable, and the whole relationship aspect didn’t really come in until FE4, but the franchise has always thrived on Emergent Narratives: i.e., the ability of the player to interpret mechanical events as part of the overarching story. (E.g., moving a character to take a hit in the place of another can be imagined as that character choosing to make themselves a human shield for someone they love!)
Fire Emblem games typically take place in a sort of generic fantasy world of swords and spells and knights and castles, with the main iconic figures being dragon-human shapeshifters (yes, FE is the originator of the ‘actually 5,000 years old dragon who looks like a little kid’; however, FE4 specifically actually doesn’t have any of those), and wind-riding pegasus knights. Due to the sheer number of new characters in every game, there are many recurring archetypes: the main character is the Lord, the heir to a royal throne who usually must do battle against evil emperors and dark cults to bring peace to the continent.
Why do I talk about all this in relation to mechanics? Well, here’s the first big thing about FE4, that still to this day distinguishes it from every other Fire Emblem game: its maps are fucking massive.
Most Fire Emblem games tell the story of a war, but in fragments: each chapter zooms in on a particular road or city or so forth (even a particular bridge!) to depict a singular battle taking place in that area. There isn’t anything like a World Map; each map is its own totally unique, independent thing. Not so for FE4. Every map in this game shows an entire kingdom, more or less, with villages taking up only six tiles out of thousands and multiple castle-towns viewable at once. When NPCs (accessible by traveling to villages, of course!) speak of a towering mountain range, that’s not just a few poky tiles in the bottom corner: it’s an actual monstrous range dividing two kingdoms like a gash, and one that must be factored in when directing your units.
This gives the world of FE4 a sense of immersion that others can lack: the whole world exists as in-game tiles, potentially traversable by the right unit (better get out those Pegasus ladies for some parts, though!). I said that Fire Emblem is a strategy RPG, but in Japan it’s always been known as a war simulation game, and no game illustrates that better than FE4. You can actually see future enemies (and allies!) manoeuvring around the map before you can reach them, and even violent clashes between NPC parties! Defence must also be considered, because if an enemy unit manages to seize one of your castles, it’s gone! Questions of movement are also vitally important: will your units actually be able to reach these places on time? Is it better to split your army in case of a surprise attack from that general who’s keeping to himself through the fighting? It truly is a game of strategy, not just tactics!
And that immersion carries in through other aspects of the worldbuilding and mechanics, too. In FE4, the nobility are preoccupied by the matter of Holy Blood: the true-blooded descendants of the Crusaders, who fought back the dark dragon Loptous hundreds of years earlier. Those who possess Minor Holy Blood are given boosts to their overall strength in battle (which is echoed in their mechanical stat growths), but Major Holy Blood is the real deal: those who possess it are vastly more powerful, especially if they are able to get their hands on a fabled Holy Weapon, also passed down by the Crusaders. If you’re familiar with these sorts of games, you might be thinking: cool! A nice sword with extra crit damage! Or something. Nope!!! These weapons truly are game-breaking, granting absurd boosts that will truly make its wielder feel like a demi-god!
Now, this particular kind of immersion is sorta controversial, at least among FE games. There are many players who just like to be able to use their favourites only and build them up to be super powerful no matter what. However, there are also many who really like each individual unit to have their own ‘identity’: a certain feel of use that grants them mechanical uniqueness as well as story-based. I personally like both kinds at different points, so I do appreciate that FE4 is a game which so successfully commits to the latter: the strength of some units relevant to others makes the story and setting feel real, and not just tacked-on, in ways it just can’t where even the so-called ‘weak’ units aren’t much of any less strong than the hardened veterans.
It also means that there are very native ways to adjust your difficulty level. Want a harder game? Try relying on the commoner units in the second half of the game instead of your fancy heirs! Again, some will be upset that it’s so much harder to use ‘normal people’ in gameplay… but isn’t that the point? That royal heirs possess many privileges, and have an easier time in the world, compared to ordinary people? Raising a commoner up into a final boss-slaying badass takes a lot of work, but that’s why it’s so satisfying!! On the other hand, if you’re nervous about not being able to complete the game at all, following a guide or two will give you some very strong units that will make things much easier!
And the best thing is, FE4 does offer strong amounts of customisibility, too!! I said before that Fire Emblem is known for its relationship mechanics, but this game is where they began: have two units of different genders end their turns next to one another and they’ll gain ‘Love Points’, making them closer as people! Do that enough and they’ll even get married, and when a married couple fight side-by-side they even get a special chance to do a critical hit! Unfortunately, this is still before Support Conversations joined the franchise (that was in FE6, The Binding Blade), but instead the game includes the ‘Talk’ command, which at certain maps/game stages can initiate a conversation between two characters! These are usually plot-focused, but particular pairs of units can also have ‘Lovers’ Conversations’, showing how they interact as a potential or established couple! While these have less text than later Support Conversations will have, their ties to particular points in game progression allow them to react to current events in a very natural way, so much so that I really hope they aren’t taken out in a remake!!
But, of course it doesn’t end there. Now, this is technically a spoiler – and rest assured that I’ll avoid detailing all other big spoilers here – but it’s both almost impossible to avoid and definitely impossible to really properly describe the game without it.
When your units get married, that’s not the end. In the second half of the game, you will get to meet their children, who have inherited the traits of their mother and father into something totally unique to your playthrough!!! This massively expands the customisability of the game, and many people start the game primarily with a focus on pairing up different units (and therefore getting very different child units!) to previous play-throughs! To make it clear, the base stats and identity of the units are associated with their mother, but the father can ‘donate’ (so to speak) all sorts to them: stat bonuses, weapon ranks, and even holy blood – including the capacity to wield holy weapons!
And that’s not even all! There’s another big mechanic that is totally unique to FE4: the inventory system. In most games, the inventory basically belongs to the Lord unit, and all things – money, items, equipment – can be shared around easily. But most Fire Emblem games are more about tactical groups of soldiers working under the Lord. FE4 is more about a meeting together of nobles of common interests, each with their own history and legacy and resources. In FE4, every unit has their own inventory. Married units can share money, but to share equipment between anyone – and there is some very good equipment in this game – it has to go through the pawn shop, and the receiving unit has to be able to afford it.
It sounds annoying and roundabout, but in practice it actually feels surprisingly natural? Of course the hardened mercenary wouldn’t so easily give up his beloved blade! It avoids the whole sorta shifting around of weapons that can happen in some FE games to the point of breaking immersion, and gives a much bigger incentive for weaker units to deal the killing blow against powerful enemies. Best of all, child units are capable of inheriting their parents’ inventories, bringing a whole extra layer of strategic thinking for your future playthroughs!
FE4’s gameplay doesn’t come without its faults. The large maps can mean long travel times, which while realistic and even kinda relaxing in many ways, can just… take a lot of time; it’s not really a game for very fast-paced play. It also has its detractors for being ‘too easy’, though as I’ve said above, it’s not too hard to come up with your own limitations to bring up the challenge level. The good news there, though, is that if you’re after a famously difficult game where you will need to use every possible resource available to you to come out on top, where the game actively punishes you for conserving items for later or not wanting to ‘waste exp’… the game you really should be playing is FE5, Thracia 776, aka FE4’s sequel/interquel. So it looks like you really ought to play FE4 now, anyway. :)
Story
Okay. Here we are at the real, grade-A level meat of this sandwich. ‘Could have had the same pop cultural impact as FFVII’ is a self-admittedly bonkers claim, but by the end of this section I hope you’ll understand why I felt blasphemous enough to make it. (Again, as stated above: I am avoiding major spoilers whenever possible, though!!!)
First of all, to recap the above: the worldbuilding in this game is incredible. The sheer depth of the family trees and ties that underpin the characters, and the way they all work together to fit into the plot, is just unbelievable! It’s sometimes said that FE4 is like an all-stars cast of legendary heroes, because so many of them have their own birthrights to work and right for, and they’re all affected in all sorts of subtle ways by the events of the plot. You can even affect these destinies based on both who you pair up in the first generation, and then again who you pair up (or kill off!) in the second, leading to an unprecedented number of potential ending texts in this game even compared to modern Fire Emblem!
But, you say, a story all about noble heroes trying to retake their thrones? That sounds a little… generic. Does this story do anything different from every single other Fire Emblem game in existence?
Hoo hoo hoo boyy. DOES it.
I will preface this by saying that the word ‘deconstruction’ has been utilised by many modern-day commentators beyond any potential usefulness of the term, as though it simply means ‘this story is Smart and Bad Things Happen.’ I prefer to use it only sparingly, with a very specific meaning: ‘a story that shows the real-world negative impacts of common story tropes.’ So believe that I truly do mean something significant when I say this:
FE4 is a deconstruction of Fire Emblem games in their entirety. And the best damn one anyone has ever managed to do.
The protagonist, Sigurd, is a pretty darn likeable guy. The heir to a noble house with close ties to the ageing king, he’s left behind to protect his home castle while his father travels to fight a war incited without provocation from a seeming ally. It sort of chafes at him, because he wants to be helping in person as well, but he’s easygoing and humble so he does his duty. Until, that is, his friend (also a noble of the peaceful Kingdom of Grannvale) is suddenly beset by brigands from neighboring Verdane, taking advantage of Grannvale’s divided attention to launch a surprise attack!
So, you chase after her and push them back, gaining control of two other castles of Grannvale in the process, to prevent them from falling into Verdanite hands. But Sigurd is too slow, so when Edain is taken back into Verdane proper, Sigurd wastes no time following after.
Is this an invasion, technically? Well, yeah. But the Verdanites are so obviously Bad Guys: they’re ugly and muscular and they wield axes, the weapon of choice for brutal bandits and thugs. Even if you might have misgivings – and Sigurd’s close friend from the academy Eldigan, noble lord of another neighboring kingdom Agustria, does indeed point out that this is a bit aggressive – this is a Fire Emblem game. Fighting bad guys and going to war are just what you DO. What did you expect, that Sigurd would open up a diplomatic menu to threaten trade embargoes?!
So that continues, and even after Edain is rescued Sigurd continues his quest, because the King of Verdane has been acting strangely militaristic of late (oooh plot foreshadowing~) and needs to be stopped. So, okay: now Verdane is sorta technically under Grannvale’s control. But they’re bad guys, so that’s all for the better!
But other kings are getting a bit trigger-happy (or whatever the medieval equivalent is), too. The respectable and honorable lord Eldigan becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the King of Agustria’s unwillingness to punish the other Agustrian lords, who are lapsing in their duties of protection to their commoners in favour of building up their own armies. But King Chagall reacts even worse than Eldigan expected, imprisoning him immediately, leaving Eldigan’s castle – and younger sister, Lachesis – open for plundering by another power-hungry Agustrian lord. So, in goes Sigurd again, to protect Lachesis and rescue Eldigan!
He fights his way through Agustria, and it’s gruelling. There are so many enemies here – both lordly armies and roving bandits threatening the villages (and that’s a hell of an incentive to get your units to them ASAP, or they might not remain standing) – and at a certain point, again, you might be thinking… hum. Is this really such a good idea, actually…?
Enter Lewyn: a wandering bard who is definitely not any kind of secret prince of yet another kingdom running away from his responsibilities, nope nope. And when he meets Sigurd to his face, he tells him the truth straight up: “I know what your hobby is: war, war, war!” He asks Sigurd if slaughtering these armies comprised mainly of commoners is actually helping anyone, really? Or if he’s just antagonising the otherwise self-interested Agustrian lords into facing him head-on, causing even more damage and violence than would otherwise be inflicted. Sigurd realises that he has a point Pretty Dang Quickly, but Lewyn also mentions that it’d kinda be shitty to come in here and mess everything up and then just leave, so. Turns out we’re still going.
And so you travel on up to Agusty, capital of Agustria. And there’s King Chagall, just chilling on the fortress with an HP bar beneath him. So you attack and kill him.
And then Eldigan (freed out of fear by Chagall, hopeful that Eldigan will talk his friend Sigurd out of attacking), shows his face. And tells Sigurd in no uncertain terms how monumentally, astronomically he has fucked this whole situation right up in the fucking arse. (But… more eloquently. Eldigan wouldn’t swear.)
Is Chagall a shitty king? Yes. Was imprisoning Eldigan a bad thing that Eldigan really wishes he hadn’t done? Sure thing! But Chagall also happens to be the only universally-recognised legitimate heir to the Agustrian throne. With all the other lords mobilising their serfs and eyeing one another’s land, Chagall is the only person with even a hope of averting outright civil war.
And it gets worse. ‘Cause, Sigurd hasn’t exactly been doing all of this in private: Grannvale is well aware of his journeys of conquest, and they’re not at all unhappy about them. Before long, further Grannvalian battalions are swarming in, and Sigurd is being given orders to hold Agusty as their colonial outpost, and it is all absolutely 100% Sigurd’s fault.
So often in these games, violence is presented as the straightforward answer: kill the bad guys, replace them with good guys, and everything will be better! It’s a foundational trope of the Fire Emblem franchise, and for good reason! And yet this game – only the fourth in its series, released all the way back on the SNES – understood it all up and down, and sat and thought about it, and presented the most plausibly scathing critique of it all possible.
Sigurd fucks up. The player is lulled into a false sense of security – invited along with his journey simply because he’s the protagonist and that’s how these games go – but so very much of this game, even beyond this particular plot, revolves around examining the consequences of our lord hero’s actions. Sometimes they’re very good; Sigurd isn’t a bad person, inherently, just naive and privileged and short-sighted. But when they’re bad, they are very goddamned bad. Remember what I was saying about Verdane earlier up? Yeah, that whole conquest has some pretty damn far-reaching consequences, too, and almost twenty years later the kingdom is still trying to rebuild and function on its on in that wake.
FE4 isn’t just realistic in its consequences, either. Other FE games tend to shy away from the brutalities of the setting: the villains are evil, but we don’t see in too much detail why. But FE4 isn’t called the darkest Fire Emblem game for no reason: terrible, tragic things really do happen. Among other things, y’know how I said power in this world revolves around who does or doesn’t possess holy blood? What d’you think might happen if two people with the same kind of blood were to have a child together? Mythology and medieval European societies both rebound with inbreeding, and that’s sure as hell happening in Jugdral, too: sometimes in absolutely devastating ways.
FE4 is harsh. It’s often bleak. There aren’t any easy right answers, and sometimes the villains have very good reasons for doing what they’re doing. Merely being a basically good person with a lot of friends simply isn’t always enough.
By this point, you probably get why I gush about this game so much. But maybe you’re squirming a little bit. You actually like some Fire Emblem games! A Fire Emblem game that’s all about how Fire Emblem games suck and wouldn’t work, and you’re dumb for believing in them, would be… pretty unpleasant to actually play.
FE4 is not like that. It isn’t the kind of deconstruction that hates its genre, and tears down everything good and resonant into some sad-sack grimdark world of darkness that nobody could possibly care about. FE4 is one of the most deeply emotional, sincere, and ultimately optimistic games I have ever played.
Sigurd’s fuck up in Agustria isn’t just a parody of Fire Emblem protagonists, it’s a tragedy. He’s sincerely trying to do good, and so was Eldigan when he first travelled to the king in the first place. The two are long-time friends – from back in the academy in fact, which was indeed the inspiration for Three House’s academy setting – and sincerely care for one another. When they chat and wish one another well and look forward to the next time they can drink a fine red wine together, it’s clear that their friendship is sincere. Seeing them pit against one another now – unable to resist the pressures this increasingly war-torn world has put on their friendship and good natures – is heart-breaking.
FE4 is fundamentally a story abut hope – even at the darkest of times.
The line that brings us into the second half of the game – the line that grounds FE4’s reconstruction, as it examines and expresses what a true good and rightful King would be – is ‘but where was the light?’
Emotion
Fire Emblem as a franchise rests on its characters. They’re not always the most complex or multi-faceted, given the extreme number and the limited ability for most to interact with the plot, but each unit is not merely a pawn to be disposed off at will. (I mean, unless you’re Excelblem, anyway.) You’re supposed to care about them: to try and keep them safe, and build them up to be stronger, because losing a unit doesn’t just mean they’re out of commission for this or future battles, it means that character dies.
Few FE games have managed this better than FE4: the main cast are so likeable, have so much history, and have so many relationships with one another, that even given the limited capabilities of the SNES. Like I said above, the usage of ‘Talk’ commands over support conversations means that every character has the ability to respond to the plot – it’s not something happening elsewhere, divorced from the calm world of the sidequests, it’s actively happening all around the characters all the time.
It says something that FE4 characters tend to do so well in popularity contests, and that FE4 has some of the most genuinely heartfelt and story-relevant alts in the mobile game Fire Emblem Heroes. Despite its age, there are people who haven’t even played the game who are attached to the characters solely because of what they know and have heard about the story!
And that, unfortunately… is where I must cut myself off.
I said above that FE4 could have been comparable to Final Fantasy VII in terms of impact. And if you know anything at all about FFVII, you probably have a theory on why I’m saying that… and why I can’t say any more.
So, yes: there are twists in FE4. Big ones. One particular very big one that changes absolutely everything – a thing unprecedented even in modern day video games.
A thing that can only best be experienced blind… which almost never actually happens in practice, because nobody ever plays this game until they’re knee-deep in Fire Emblem lore and already know most of the spoilers already.
So, sorry: I know this is a very unsatisfying way to end an otherwise extremely in-depth review. If you’re truly desperate to know, there are ways to look it up (or… I could tell you!! Because who doesn’t secretly kind of really want to tell the big amazing spoiler?!?!?).
But if I could encourage even one person to try to play the game knowing only what’s contained in here… I would be over the moon. (And please, please tell me if so!!!!)
How to Play
So. After all this, how would someone even go about playing this more than twenty-five year old game?
You’ll need an emulator for it: the game has never officially been translated into English. (I guess if you were really committed you might be able to find a modded physical release? But I wouldn’t know much about that, as much as I’d like to buy one someday!) Snes9x is the most commonly-used one; I personally had an issue where it stopped recognising my game in the mobile app, but when I copied the files over to my laptop it worked fine.
As for roms, you might want to search for ‘seisen no keifu’ (the romanised Japanese name), and you’ll want the Project Naga translation. It’s slightly outdated in that Fire Emblem Heroes has revealed official versions for many characters since it came out, but that’s hardly a big issue: the translation itself is perfectly fine.
You can either get a prepatched rom or just the plain Japanese rom and then apply the translation patch yourself; it’ll all depend on your source. Unfortunately, I first got the game several years ago soooo I’m actually not the person to ask for links haha;;, but googling for roms seems to offer many options!
And I do encourage you to consider it!! FE4 is an old game, but it’s not overly complicated or difficult to understand: the biggest hurdle is simply the lack of tutorials or gameplay explanations, but those can be outsourced just fine. If you’ve already played one Fire Emblem game, you’ll definitely be fine, even despite FE4’s unique mechanics.
Choops’ ‘Genealogy for Everyone! Play The Best Game Ever Made RIGHT NOW’ video is an A+ starting place for beginner’s tips, and Mekkah’s ‘Newcomer’s Companion to FE4: Genealogy of the Holy War’ is similarly good if you prefer text, and also want a couple of hints as to fun easter eggs you wouldn’t otherwise know about. (But they’re hidden under spoilers in case you don’t want to see!!)
And after all this… yes, there is one final thing to mention: it’s pretty likely that this game will eventually get a remake, updating it for modern hardware and game norms.
It’d be easy to just wait until that day comes. But I do want to strongly encourage you otherwise. There hasn’t been any actual sign of the ephemeral FE4 remake truly being in development except as an off-hand line in a leak that did turn out to be true. But there are real reasons why it might be better if they take their time: apart from FE4 just being so good and iconic that it should be done properly, imagining the huge maps being programmed into the Nintendo Switch is… difficult. Frankly, the Switch is getting kind of old now, anyway: maybe the next generation would make for a better showcase?
And, well. You certainly could wait until the remake comes out, as I myself pondered some two years ago. But then I would never have gotten to enjoy the stellar, superb, unparalleled game that already exists! For however many years, I would have had to wait to immerse myself in this world and get to know these characters for real!
There are so many ways to enjoy this game. You could even read the Oosawa Mitsuki manga, available on MangaDex!
But even if your only connection to this game ends up being ‘I read this weirdly long rant one time on dreamwidth but the author seemed to really love it so now I know a bunch about a game I’ll never play’, I think that’s still cool!! I enjoyed writing this, and I hope you enjoyed reading it, too. :)
...but also you should play the game for real if you’re considering it!!!!!!!!!
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