| Fire Emblem | 
 enlarge | From: Nintendo of America
Category: Video Games
List Price: $55.06
Buy New: $19.99
You Save: $35.07 (64%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $19.99
Avg. Customer Rating:   (145 reviews)
Sales Rank: 3194
Languages: German (Manual), German (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Italian (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled)
Platform: Game Boy Advance
ESRB: Everyone
Media: Video Game
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Age: 5 - 20 years
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 5 x 5 x 1
MPN: AGBPAE7E
UPC: 045496733421
EAN: 0045496733421
ASIN: B00009WAUL
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Great Game April 7, 2008
This is one of my favorite video games. It may take a while to get into (usally after lyns story) but other wise it is a great game i suggest buying the guide because it helps allot. Great Game
Fun for all December 9, 2007
Wow. When i first got this game for my game boy, i was so happy. It is absolutly amazing. The story line is immersing, the characters are believable, and the challenges are awesome. It is a great game for anyone interested in getting into a good, solid, fulfilling strategy game. Thand god for Fire Emblem.
 Fantasy, Strategy, and Death August 22, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
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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.
 Great Game... Hard to Find June 11, 2007
After so may years of being a Japanese exclusive, Fire Emblem finally arrived in the USA with this game. This will not disappoint you.
NOTE: Watch out for illegal copies, Amazon Marketplace is full of them. If the label on the front of the game looks like the front of the box, it is bootleg (A poorly design illegal version).
Fire Emblem is great, but... March 7, 2007
3 out of 6 found this review helpful
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.
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