Can you give me reviews of older FE-games (which are available only in Japan)?

[NewDisplayName]

Can you give me reviews of older FE-games (which are available only in Japan)?

[wumples]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Could you elaborate, please?

[Yoshi2398]

i can definitely recommend FE12 if your'e familiar with awakening because a lot of awakenings mechanics originated here.

i can also recommend FE6 if you've played the other GBA titles.

as for the rest i'd reccomend looking up more information before playing them as they have a much higher learning curve.

although i'd just skip FE1 and FE3 as they have remakes you can play instead

[Magical Glace]

FE6 is the best FE I've played. The mechanics are pretty much the same as FE7 making them easy to learn, the maps are great, the support system was introduced in this game. However, I don't recommend it for new players, playing FE7/8 is a better idea for that.

It also has Wolt. Yeah, he's a crummy unit, but Wolt.

[Alastor15243]

FE6 is the best FE I've played. The mechanics are pretty much the same as FE7 making them easy to learn, the maps are great, the support system was introduced in this game. However, I don't recommend it for new players, playing FE7/8 is a better idea for that.

It also has Wolt. Yeah, he's a crummy unit, but Wolt.

Just don't play it if you like having a powerful main character. Roy is easily the worst lord in the entire series, with a ridiculously late promotion time, underwhelming stats, lame animations when he's not using his 20(!?) use ultimate sword, and generally poor performance without that sword too.

Fire Emblem 4 is really fun with unique map design and lots of entertaining skills and units, and was until Awakening the only game in the series that used the awesome child mechanic, but just be warned, it's broken as all hell, and literally appears to have been balanced by interpreting the arbitrary shrieks of a howler monkey.

Fire Emblem 5 is way more balanced, maintains most of FE4's strong points (save for children and the ability to repair weapons) and does a ton of fascinating things that no other game in the series has done, but it's also very, very hard and unforgiving, I highly recommend playing it with a guide.

Don't bother with FE1, it has two remakes, both of which are superior in basically every way, and the original game has not aged well.

FE2 is fascinating and, like FE5, did tons of stuff no other game in the series has done, but be warned that it can be slow.

I haven't really played much of FE3, but from what I can gather, you're better off getting a translation of FE12, its remake, if you can.

[Gradivus.]

Just don't play it if you like having a powerful main character. Roy is easily the worst lord in the entire series, with a ridiculously late promotion time, underwhelming stats, lame animations when he's not using his 20(!?) use ultimate sword, and generally poor performance without that sword too.

don't avoid it just because of Roy, he never really drags the team down despite being bad in pretty many situations (although he's decent early to mid imo)

it's also very, very hard and unforgiving, I highly recommend playing it with a guide.

no, don't

you'd lose out on the notion of figuring stuff on your own (which feels more rewarding), just look up the most important mechanics in capturing, fatigue, escape chapters etc because the game only indicates them vaguely.

Anyway from what I played...

- Can't really recommend FE3 so far although it's too early for me to judge ultimately because I haven't played far into it yet. It's an improvement on what I heard from FE1 but it's still relatively clunky, weight system is done very poorly and some more. It has some unique stuff so it's probably worth trying out, but I think the DS games are way better overall. If I had to give it a rating... uh, 5/10, to avoid making my judgment more mild because other people consider it well-aged and/or good for its time. My view on it isn't too unlikely to change a bit though.

- FE4 is pretty tedious in my opinion. It's way too easy to solo with Sigurd in the first gen, and overall has lots of needlessly miles-long maps that you must slog your unit(s) through, which can generally lead to tedium pretty easily. Enemies aren't placed with a lot of thought, either - them typically coming in large bunches makes it take an unusual amount of extra effort to try training your weak units instead of having your main character just take wipe them out in one swoop. I'm no fan of the 2-gen system, especially with the gen 1 characters getting killed before the second gen. It also suffers from the bad weight system. It has some great mechanics in weapon kills (increasing crit rates), base arena and weapon repair though. Given how polarizing it is, one is likely to be biased towards or against it, so you should probably still try playing it if you're interested. I give it a 2/10 for really ruiningly poor execution.

- FE5 is a massive improvement. It removed the overkill map size and dull design, added some awesome extra mechanics in fatigue, PCC, capture, stealing and escape maps, which along with the amounts and types of tools it gives the player (skills, unique weapons, status staves, other unique items such as the really buffed pure waters) and the design to discourage bruteforce strats make it a very interesting game. 8/10.

- FE6 is pretty good too. Great map designs, well-scaled enemy stats and a hard mode that is pretty impressive considering it's the first hard mode in FE. It's biggest flaw is probably the big discrepancy in quality between the great units and the more mediocre ones, but that's not particularly rare in FE, and it's not hard to forgive if you want to given that the vast majority is viable without lots of effort. 9/10. I find it way better than FE7 and can't stand people trying to concede things along the lines of "FE7 may be objectively better, but I still like FE6".

- FE12 is great aswell. Very good map designs, good difficulty scaling and focus on strategy because even with bruteforce strategies you can't roflstomp it without any thought. Its mechanics are done pretty well, in that reclass allows for great diversity in unit usage, while Lunatic statboosters (and RP) and Drill Grounds allow for units to catch up more easily. The prologue does a good job giving the players chances to get exp and introducing them to the gameplay in a way that fits the difficulty they choose. It tries a bit too hard to avoid getting cheesed though, for example by removing ballistae which were very fun to use in FE11, and its unit usability could be a bit better. I still think the usability issues are a bit overstated, it's just that the difference in their quality is unusually big and the game fails to encourage using them enough for them to be common choices. It isn't prohibitively hard to use them though. 9.5/10.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Gradivus.

[Alastor15243]

no, don't

you'd lose out on the notion of figuring stuff on your own (which feels more rewarding), just look up the most important mechanics in capturing, fatigue, escape chapters etc because the game only indicates them vaguely.

The game also pulls bullshit on you too, like, full restart from chapter 1 worthy bullshit, towards the beginning of the game that you cannot see coming and that it would be unreasonable for somebody to expect you to see coming.

Edited January 26, 2016 by Alastor15243

[Gradivus.]

It's impossible to get wholly stuck as long as you don't kill off any characters

Might also look up gaiden requirements because they're very non-obvious, though, along with some things that don't get clear from the menus and the warp tiles in chapter 24x.

Staff misses are bullshit but there's no way to solve them.

Edited January 26, 2016 by Gradivus.