Game 21 - Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblems (Stages 8-14)

Sometimes the game design of an SRPG can get a bit lazy -- every stage is "kill all enemies" and the enemies have a predictable AI, so the same basic strategy works on every stage. FE3 does have the same goal on every stage (capture the castle/throne) but the designers put a lot of details into the stage to increase the variety. You often have to prevent thieves from destroying towns or stealing treasure, and you aren't always meant to kill everything. That makes the game harder but also forces you to think more, which is always good.


Stage 8

This stage is a good example of what I said above. The reinforcements that come from the bottom are very difficult, and while I imagine some enterprising players have probably defeated them, it's better to just finish the stage before they can reach your guys. This is complicated by the village to the right where you get Banutu. I sent Marth over there and then used Rescue to get him out. The boss can be persuaded.

I did beat those Generals coming in from the right with magic and Armor Killers; one has a Manual (stat up item) which is good incentive to try to take out some of them.

Here's what the bottom of the map looked like when I finished the stage:

Stage 9

This is a big desert map, sot he move is annoying as usual. This has the same issue as the previous map where you have to move up quickly to get away from the coming reinforcements -- but not too quickly or the mages and dragon knights will overwhelm you. Add to that the chests and the items a bunch of the enemies have and this is a busy map.

Finally, I made sure to buy a bunch of stuff since this is the last shop for a while.


Stage 10

This is an interesting map. You don't have to kill any units to win. Marik starts out up near the boss, I warped him out to make sure he didn't get killed or kill Elrain (the boss) accidentally. Elrain will then chase after you, and convincing him with Wendell gets him on the player side. The rest of the enemies then do not attack you.

As long as you don't kill any of the Sisters, a thief will come out with a Silver Card. the Cards are much more useful in this game than they are in FE1 because when you buy things they can go into storage (in FE1 you could only buy what you could carry).

Stage 11 

Ugh. An all desert map with lots of buried treasure for the thieves to find -- this is not a hard stage, but it takes forever. There are also dragons that can screw you over if you move wrong and they come and get you, since the breath has no defense against it. Minerva came with a Dragon Killer which is helpful, as are Silver Bow archers.

 I made sure to buy several Dragon Killers in the secret store here for the next few stages.

Stage 13

Lots of fire dragons and barbarians. I went after the barbarians with Cecil armed with the Lady Sword, and the Fire Dragons were taken down by various units with Dragon Killers, and silver bow archers.

The only trouble here is the reinforcements, but once the dragon reinforcements stop coming the barbarians can be dealt with easily.

Stage 14

This is a trickier stage than the last one because all the Frost Dragons except the boss head for your guys immediately. As long as you can manage to deal with that initial assault without losing anyone, the rest of the stage is not hard; there are Frost Dragon reinforcements but they come out slowly.

Game 21 - Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblems (Stages 3-7)

I've been making slow progress on this game -- it seems harder than the previous games.

Stage 3

This stage has 10 dragon knights but it's not that bad. The 6 near the boss don't move unless you're in their range, and the 4 on the mountains don't move unless you go to the store (for some reason).

Paola arrives, and I had her immediately take care of the thief and then sit on a base and deal with the Social Knight reinforcements while I sent Marth all the way around the side to get Julian in the top right town. Meanwhile I had Paola and Kachua fight the DKnights on the mountains with some gold lances.

One oddity is that there are no axe users in this game so the town gives you a silver axe and just tells you to sell it.

After getting Julian, I used Warren's gate key to open the drawbridge and then sent people at the other enemies from both sides. Machis can be convinced with Julian; fortunately he has a Javelin so he'll often be attacking from 2 spaces and thus won't get a counterattack. The boss is fairly easy to beat with Linda's magic, and I made sure to get the hidden item with Julian around the castle before finishing the stage.

Stage 4

No Dragon Knights!

This stage basically divides into two parts and the enemies are mostly axe users. The main challenge is on the right; Ogma can immediately convince Sirius, who can hold off most of the enemies over there. Meanwhile I blocked the town with the kid mage. The thief has a Devil Sword, which is always a trap if you're not careful. One odd thing about this game is that you only get items that are in the enemies' inventory, not equipped. So there are many enemies in this game that have an equipped weapon, and then a second copy of it in the inventory so they can drop it when beaten.

 

Sirius and Ogma can probably take out the enemies by themselves (using the kid mage to beat the boss); Marth can move quickly enough to get through the desert area but it may make more sense just to leave the rest of the party to the left, picking off the reinforcements if you feel like it.

Stage 5 

I had to reset a lot on this stage even though it seems rather simple. Marth has to run up to the top right to visit the town, but that requires drawing out all the Dragon Knights from the mountains and killing them -- I kept making wrong moves and messing this part up. The thief is easily killed with a pegasus knight.

Once that's done, the rest of the stage is not as bad, although I did have some difficulty at the bottom with the Social Knights that come. You can sit on fortresses so it's not too bad. The boss is easily beaten with Armor Killer + magic.

Stage 6

This is the first interior stage. I lost a few times until I tried a different strategy. Initially I was trying to head off the reinforcements at the bottom like this:

After a few losses instead I tried taking everyone up to the top right.

This worked much better. I used archers to take out the bishops behind the walls -- the one with Worm is especially nasty, but the Libro guy sucks too. After I cleared out all the reinforcements and armor knights, Julian went down to get the chests, and then it was time for the boss.

Armor Killer + magic.

Stage 7

I forgot to get screenshots for this one. It's an odd little stage -- the main things to do are beat a whole bunch of thieves, and then get a dragon that comes out of a cave to the left. The dragon, even though it seems to be walking, does (maybe?) take a lot of damage from bows? Or maybe not. In any case he didn't do enough damage to kill anyone in one turn so everyone could gang up on him.

Meanwhile you have Navarre and a new class, the Dancer, who can use her "cheer" command to give someone an extra turn. I lost a few times because the thieves attacked her and she died, but once I moved her in the right place the rest wasn't bad. I ignored the rest of the enemies.

The boss does have a Thunder Sword so he's not a total pushover, especially when mages with Elfire are coming from the west, but I manged it.

I have a bunch of promotion items now so I can finally upgrade some guys.

Game 21 - Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblems (SFC) (Stages 1-2)

Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblems (ファイアーエムブレム 紋章の)
Released 1/21/1994
Developer: Intelligent Systems
Publisher: Nintendo
 
This is the third Fire Emblem game, and the first of three on the Super Famicom. It's the game that really began Fire Emblem's popularity. Originally it was going to be a sequel to the first game, but they decided to add a remade version of FE1 to the beginning. I'm only going to play the second new part, not the remake.

The system sticks fairly closely to the original game (the weapon triangle won't appear until the next entry). The biggest change is the introduction of the "mount" and "dismount" system, where Social and Pegasus knights can get off their horses. This lets them use swords rather than spears, and the terrain costs change. They also have to dismount for indoor maps.

Because a patch is available I'm not going to give detailed story summaries.

Stage 1

The story is much more detailed than either FE1 or Gaiden, something that will continue with SRPGs in general I think.


Jeigan has retired to become the advisor so now Alan is our Jeigan character.

The interface is also much better -- you can trade items between maps, see the enemy movement range and stats, and other things like that. The animation skip is new but it's not perfect; you can't see the unit's stat gains on a level up if you skipped the animation.

The first stage is not very hard but has an annoying choke point in the middle.

Most of the units can't get through that fort area, or if they can, very slowly. Eventually I just had Marth sit on the fort and take everyone out. There's no boss because you talk to the boss and he kills himself.

Stage 2

Phew, this one took a while. I think the difficulty of Part 2 is based on the idea that you did part 1 first. There are a lot of difficulties here, but the prime one is defeating the thief with the Lady Sword, who runs towards the NW. This wouldn't be so difficult except for the Dragon Knights (including the boss) who have a huge range and will move if you move into their range. The boss has a Knight Killer, which affects the majority of your team.

The Lady Sword thief

Another frustrating thing I found is that the thief's movements are not predictable. From what I saw, he had two basic movement patterns. The first one allows you to defeat him with Alan without getting in range of the boss, but you will have to get in range of the left DKnight. The other one does not allow this, and the only thing I could see to defeat the thief on this version is Kachua with a Javelin.

The extreme range of the boss

Even once that's done you still have troubles because of the three Dragon Knights, including the boss. One of the enemy archers (Warren) can be convinced by Kachua, leaving you 3 of them to fight the DKs. But they move very slowly through the forest, and you have to be extremely careful not to lure the boss down before you're ready. I found Marth was the best unit to lure him down because he's not a knight. He can't stand up to the 3 archers all fighting him at once.

One of my failed attempts

That stage had 3 DKnights, the next one has 10. So we're in for some fun next time!