Fire Emblem (Game Boy Advance) Playthrough [1 of 3]
91A playthrough of Nintendo's 2003 strategy role-playing game for the Game Boy Advance, Fire Emblem.
This video is the first part of a three-part playthrough.
Part 2: https://youtu.be/XSqSxEf5Z4Q
Part 3: https://youtu.be/o1FcmyPYQsc
*Lyn's campaign*
Prologue: A Girl from the Plains 3:17
Chapter 1: Footsteps of Fate 11:19
Chapter 2: Sword of Spirits 29:47
Chapter 3: Band of Mercenaries 45:29
Chapter 4: In Occupation's Shadow 1:06:50
Chapter 5: Beyond the Borders 1:30:03
Chapter 6: Blood of Pride 1:48:39
Chapter 7: Siblings Abroad 2:13:41
Chapter 7x: The Black Shadow 2:44:08
Chapter 8: Vortex of Strategy 3:04:45
Chapter 9: A Grim Reunion 3:29:14
Chapter 10: The Distant Plains 3:57:12
*Eliwood's campaign begins*
Chapter 11: Taking Leave 4:46:08
Chapter 12: Birds of a Feather 5:07:03
Chapter 13: In Search of Truth 5:34:05
Chapter 13x: The Peddler Merlinus 6:04:07
Chapter 14: False Friends 6:27:50
Chapter 15: Noble Lady of Caelin 7:16:26
Chapter 16: Whereabouts Unknown 8:09:55
Chapter 16x: The Port of Badon 9:04:38
Fire Emblem for the Game Boy Advance, known in Japan as Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken (The Blazing Blade), is the seventh game in the main-line Fire Emblem series, and it was the first to see an international release.
Like every other game in the series since its inception on the Famicom back in 1990, Fire Emblem is a turn-based strategy game in which you command an army through a series of military engagements that take place on a gridded battlefield. It's similar in many ways to Sega/Camelot's Shining Force games (https://youtu.be/NoczxtVoFY4), though it features a heavier emphasis on its story and it's far less forgiving of sloppy play: in Fire Emblem, if someone goes down in battle, they aren't just temporarily incapacitated. Unless you reload from a saved game, they're dead, and they stay that way.
The game plays out over the course of a few campaigns. The first tells the story of Lyn, a teenage girl from a nomadic tribe whose family was wiped out by bandits. Her story serves as an extended tutorial that'll acquaint you with the game's mechanics and the story's major players.
The second tells the story of a young lord, Eliwood, whose father has gone missing, and Eliwood's campaign makes up the real meat and potatoes of the plot and the gameplay. A third campaign featuring Eliwood's best friend, Hector, also becomes available once the main game has been completed, and all three campaigns feature an unlockable hard mode for anyone that wants an even bigger challenge.
Unlike many SRPGs, Fire Emblem carefully balances its combat-based gameplay with the emphasis it places on character development. You're encouraged to build relationships between people through their interactions on the battlefield, and your actions in battle often have unforeseen, far-reaching impacts on how things ultimately play out. The primary characters are nicely fleshed out and likable, and though the talking head scenes can feel a bit long in the tooth at times, the story and the well-written dialogue are engaging and the translation work is top notch. It's doesn't pander to the kiddie crowd, either. I was pretty surprised back in the day by how the plainly the characters spoke about the violence they rain down on their enemies. It's not often a character in a Nintendo game acknowledges things such as how a castle corridor is drenched in blood as a direct result of the player's actions, nor murders someone outright onscreen.
The overall presentation is likewise excellent. Limitations of the GBA hardware nonwithstanding, the cutscene art, the fantastic battle sequences, and the massive orchestral soundtrack are all on par with what you'd expect from a console game in terms of quality and scope, as the sheer volume of meaningful content packed into this cartridge is staggering.
I remember getting hooked and sinking well over sixty hours into it back when I was in college. It still impresses me to think that it wasn't a $60, triple-A GameCube production, but a $30 handheld Game Boy title.
Producing games like Fire Emblem, it's little wonder that Intelligent Systems is regarded among Nintendo's top development studios. Fire Emblem 7 is a genre classic that deserves to be played, and now that it has been made available through the Switch's online service, many more people will get the chance to experience this bit of SRPG magic. Happy days!
*Recorded with a Retroarch shader to mimic the look of the original hardware.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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