Fire Emblem Thracia 776. Survival and Efficency. (A video about the Past and the Future of Fire Emblem) by Ronaldo Villanueva.

[Troykv]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXjyJdUVlG8

Xator Nova/Ronaldo Villanueva decided to talk about one of his favorite games, Thracia 776 in probably his most ambicious project nowadays.

He wants to defend the position of Thracia as one of the best Strategical Games in the Story of the Videogames.

Note: The video is in spanish (his native languaje), but has notes with english subtitules.

[SalShich10N]

What a curious way to speak. He yells, or raises his voice at the end of some of his sentences. I feel he was a bit punitive and dismissive about the grind type of SRPGs in the beginning. Like the japanese name of the genre entails "Simulation RPG", the goal wasn't really to focus on tactics. Fire Emblem's gimmick WAS the focus on tactics back in the SNES original after all. Also Fire Emblem was not even close to being the roots of the genre, as it was almost a decade old. Predecessors did not became as popular, though.

He doesn't seem to mention that the reason permanent death is a thing was to force the player to restart the whole chapter, so that they get to rethink their strategy all over and evaluate themselves when they're faced with the loss of an important unit.

He also overhypes Thracia's difficulty. It is true that the game has very demanding requirements and difficult adversities, but also the game gives you PLENTY, and I mean PLENTY of means to get more resources, better stats, powerful units. You can steal weapons from enemies, for Christs sake. Efficiency isn't as much of a focus as he claims to be, the game rewards the player more for being dilligent and attentive to the objectives of a map. Every single vulnerary in the game heals the full amount of HP.

And it's rich he criticizes other Fire Emblem's difficulty is born from RNG when Thracia itself has you depending on Dodge tanking for the whole Manster escape chapters and several maps. Warp Skipping is also very much a thing in Thracia since experience isn't worth as much there is a far less penalty in just warping Leif to a seize spot early. He sites chapter 6 as being a good example, when that's the very same map that requires you to fly Karin around the houses dodging multiple armor Knights with bows that can kill her in on. He criticizes trial and error in Shadow Dragon's difficulty while also using chapter 12x and using the strategy of warping Lara, which is itself very trial-and error since you don't know where they are as the map is all dark when you begin. Warping Lara there is very much trial and error. Recruiting Salem in the chapter before has the odd condition of capturing him, but not killing him which is unorthodox to say the least. The strategy he proposes for chapter 13 completely skips the Knight Proof which is invaluable in this game, and all the cool weapons enemies might be using.

Fatigue system doesn't has a much impact as he claims as the ammount of good units is large and there are several units that can fill for other's roles fairly well, specially since the stat cap is very low and HP value in combat units is very high. Indoor maps are good opportunities to give mounted units rest and outdoors are good chances to let a few unmounted units rest. You get plenty of competent staffers too, and several magical units tha can be both, damage dealers and staff users without the need of even promoting.

He claims it's the release to the west what tamed Fire Emblem, when it ignores completely the fact that Thracia is an unconventional game in the series, the fact that staff in the series changed completely after Thracia and Japanese audience also prefers easier games, it's not just the west. He seems to believe getting a low turn count in later games is the expected way to play, which is rich coming from someone reviewing Thracia, which has the most strict gaiden chapter requirements and greatly depends on additional objectives on the map.

He spends a good chunk of his own video ranting why other fire emblems are worse in his eyes than actually talking about Thracia. Overall I think he's blinded by his own playstyle, and he doesn't even seem to see other strong points that Thracia has, which is the freedom to use many different units, or the absolute power rush you get from having so many powerful units and options.

Overall he listed more reasons to hate other games, than to like Thracia, which is a terrible format filled with negativity.