Game:

Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (2002)

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This is part 1 of my playthrough of Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, and it goes from Chapter 1: Dawn of Destiny to the start of Chapter 10. Enjoy!

Fire Emblem is a long running series in Japan, and this was the very first one for the GBA, as well as the one that introduced certain concepts that would go on to be in almost every Fire Emblem game since. The Support System, where two units who have had a conversation mid-battle will gain certain bonuses in combat when they are within three spaces of each other, and depending on which one of seven Elemental Affinities they have will determine what sort of combat bonuses they will get. It's a really neat system that explores character backstories and it doesn't interrupt the flow of the main story at all, although your Tactics rating will take quite a nosedive.

Fire Emblem games are much less forgiving of sloppy gameplay than other SRPGs like Shining Force or FEDA: The Emblem of Justice. If you don't take proper care of your units, level them up, keep them in tip-top shape, and they buy the farm, then too bad, that unit is gone forever, and you must now make the choice of whether you want to restart the entire chapter, forfeiting progress and potentially good level ups, or do you go the rest of the playthrough without that unit being deployable because they're dead? For me, as I'm not as familiar with this game's maps as I am Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade's and Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, and this game has ambush spawns, as well, which certainly won't help things at all.

The music in this game is pretty good, but it has that cheap GBA sound chip which, while not terrible, could be better for some songs, although I do love the theme Bern gets for it's enemy phase towards the end of the game.

Graphics are pretty good, and while I enjoy the Fire Emblem GBA animations, some of 'em do make me wonder how they would work in real life, you know?

Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade boasted the largest roster of playable characters in the Fire Emblem series history at the time of it's release at a whopping 64, if I recall correctly, and you won't be able to recruit every single character on every single playthrough, and some of the units you can recruit are route-locked. For example, if I recruit Echidna in part 2 of this playthrough (which I don't even know if that's the route that I'm on) then I cannot recruit Bartre and vice-versa. As you can hopefully tell from this, Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade has quite a bit of replay value on it, making it one of the most replayable games in the series.

Unfortunately for me, though, while I loved to play as Roy back in Super Smash Bros. Melee (fun fact: Roy's voice actor, Ray Chase, also mains Roy in Super Smash Bros. Melee and I think Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, as well as voicing him in that one), in his home game, Roy sucks. To be fair, and it does pain me to say this, but I hate Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade. Okay, maybe not hate it, but I certainly don't like it as much as I do the other two GBA Fire Emblem games. Wonky hit rates, RNG screwing the player over, forcing the player to get all of the Gaiden chapters, of which you will see one during this video if you stick around that long, in order to get the best ending, characters being just outright unusable (I'm looking at YOU, Sophia!), the game is riddled with bugs and glitches and while some of them work in your favor, it only happens on hard mode, Roy doesn't get promoted until literally the very end of the game, and depending on whether you got all the gaiden chapters or not, will determine if Roy gets to go 1 map or 3 as a promoted unit.

As much as I wished back then that we would have gotten Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade on the GBA in English back after Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade came out in the States back then, I'm actually kinda glad we didn't get it officially in English. If you must play Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, go play Project Ember, it's Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade but vastly superior.

I did manage to get Elen to level 20 unpromoted, though, so one good thing about this game is that I will get to see how good she'll get in the next part, which won't be coming out for quite a while, if at all. I'll see you then, folks.

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