Game 1 - Fire Emblem (Stages 15-19)

Stage 15 - Gadain, the Magic Country
"The evil bishop Garnef appears."

Overall this stage isn't too bad, but there are a couple of difficulties. The first one is that innate magic resistance does not exist in this game. So magic does the same damage to everyone unless you use the M Shield staff, or the permanent magic resistance item (one is in this stage). So unless you have these items, no one can really tank against magicians. However, they don't do serious damage individually.

Garnef is at the right side of the stage, but as the helpful villager tells you, he cannot be defeated (according to the instruction manual we'll take him out on stage 23).

Garnef leaves after a few turns, and the mage reinforcements around him stop. The only other difficulty is that most classes move slowly on the desert. But that's not a big deal, and the boss goes down fairly easily.

After the stage, Gato speaks to Marth through magic. He tells the story of Garnef and Miloa, who were once his disciplines. But Garnef stole the Mafu magic and now has the Falchion -- he surely hopes to control the world himself, without relying on Drua. Our only chance to beat Garnef is to find the Orb of Light and bring it to Gato, and then we will get Starlight Explosion, the only magic that can beat Mafu.


Stage 16 - The Fight in Altia
"Marth takes back his country, Altia."

This stage has a strange character, Chaney, who is the Commando class. I believe this class is only in FE1 and remakes. He can copy any other character, although he retains his own inventory and can't gain xp while copying.

Chaney

There's really not too much to this stage. I just took my party south through the building with Chaney, and then around to the boss. There are villages at the top left to recruit either Samson or Alan (you have to choose one or the other), but Marth moves fast enough that I could send him off alone to do that and then catch up later.

Now Marth has taken back his kingdom, but he still has to clear the enemies out of the castle.


Stage 17 - Starlord Marth
"Marth frees Altia castle."

This was a tough stage. I had to reset more times on this stage than in the rest of the game combined.

The left side of the map has a bunch of chests. The right side of the map has the boss, who cannot be hurt by magic. This leaves Dragon Killer swords the only really effective means of hurting him. The two priests on the right both hold important items (a Member Card and a Reserve staff, which heals all units for 10 HP). None of this would be terrible except that reinforcements begin to come out from the right of the priests on turn -- three a turn for the next 40 turns.

Marth in the treasure room

The plan I eventually came up with was to warp Marth into the treasure room (you almost have to do this to avoid losing any chests to the thieves). Then part of my group would follow him, including Julian and Boa (who has the warp staff). Meanwhile Jeigan went to get a door key from the storage to open the door to the boss. After clearing out the enemies on the left side and getting most of the chests, I warped Marth next to the priests. He was able to then use his 11 move to mostly stay ahead of the reinforcements, get back around to the throne area, and receive a Dragon Killer sword from Astria. The other one I had went to promoted Kain, and they didn't have much trouble taking down the boss.

A failure -- this was the first time I tried the stage, before I was warping Marth into the treasure room

The problems I had were mostly beating everyone on the left side without losing anyone. I had one time where I had done it but I lost a person from full HP to a critical hit. Another time I did everything right but hadn't yet realized I needed Dragon Killers, and couldn't kill the boss. Finally everything worked out and I moved on. I did not use the secret shop behind the throne.

Marth running from reinforcements

So Marth has taken back his kingdom and castle. Unfortunately his sister Ellis is still with Garnef.


Stage 18 - The Black Knights of Gurunia
"Marth faces a fierce attack from the Grunia Black Knights on the bridge spanning Kashimia."

This is another stage removed from the SFC version. After 17, it's a breeze.

Except for one stupid loss when I just wasn't paying enough attention, this was basically a matter of charging ahead and killing everything. I wanted to finish the stage before the reinforcements came out, but Est (a pegasus knight) joins here along with the Mercurius Sword, which is one of the best weapons for Marth. So I had to wait for her to catch up and face a couple of reinforcements but nothing too bad.

Est

As people on the Discord told me, she's the last pre-promote unit to join but has excellent growth to compensate. But I already have a lot of P Knights. After the battle, Modorf warns us about going to Laman Temple because there's a fierce goddess that will kill anyone who takes anything from it, but Marth needs something from there.


Stage 19 - Mamkute Princess
"Marth gains an important item at Raman Temple."

This stage is fairly small and has few enemies (and no reinforcements, but there are some tricky aspects to it.

As you can see, the Snipers will interfere if you try to use thieves to open the doors, so they have to be beaten, or you can use some other hardier class with a Door Key. I did this for a few of them but then just killed the snipers after that. The important treasures in this stage are the Earth Orb, from one of the chests, and the Light Orb, which a thief holds. They play a mean trick by having another thief equipped with a Devil Sword. I wasn't checking inventories and I got a nasty surprise and a reset.

The boss of the stage is Chiki, who Banutu told us about earlier. He can convince her to join and break out of her mind-control spell, so there actually isn't a boss to the stage.

Aftewards, Nina tells us that before going to Grunia, we should try to talk to General Camus. Camus was the one who protected her years ago when Drua attacked Akaneia, despite Medius wanting her dead. She hopes that by talking to Camus we can get him on our side. So that's the next destination.

Game 1 - Fire Emblem (Stages 10-14)

Stage 10 - Princess Minerva
"The fight at Teal Fortress."

Marth sets out to save Maria in this stage.

The captive

I sent most of my force around the building to head for the boss, while Julian and a small group went in with Marth to save Maria. I left Kashim on the fort to the east thinking that would block the reinforcements, but they come from the top of the map rather than the fort. This left Kashim completely alone vs. them, and he died. It was late enough in the stage and Kashim's not a great character so I decided to move on despite the death.

Once Marth saves Maria, Minerva the dragon rider heads towards him to join as well. She explains that although Macedonia has mostly joined up with Drua, she wants to fight against them. She urges Marth to save Kachua, Paola, and Est, her underlings who will help in the fight. The rest of the stage is easy, as Excalibur claims another victim.

This map also has the first promotion item. When characters of certain classes reach level 10, they can use an item like the Hero's Proof to advance to a new class. This resets their level to 1, and raises their stats to the base values for the promoted class if they weren't there already. I didn't have anyone at level 10 yet but I gave it to Ogma to use later. There's also a speed ring. I decided to give the stat up items in general to Marth, since he has no promotion, the Rapier is a good weapon, and enemies tend to target him.

Stage 11 - Slave City Norda
"Marth frees the slave city."

Marth heads to Norda to save Linda, who has the powerful Aura magic. This stage has the first appearance of the curious Shooter class, which is only in this game and the two remakes of it. It's an attempt to combine the Armor Knight and Archer class, which is a poor combination.

Shooter

The slave area is at the bottom right. After liberating it I spend quite a bit of time using the shops and storage unit to shift around items. Dealing with items is definitely one of the low points of this game; it's far too difficult to trade and manage inventories. They should have offered a screen between games to do this.

After this I made a save state since I wasn't going to repeat that again, and this is where I began using my "one save state per map" idea. I've found that this preserves enough of the tension and difficulty without having the extreme frustration of having to repeat 45 minutes of a map because of an unlucky critical hit or making one mistake in unit placement.

I did in fact have to reset once when I was a little too bold with my advancing and got swarmed. You can convince one of the shooters to join you, and the other one goes down easily with magic.

Now we have reached Akaneia, finally returning Nina to her home. But of course we'll have to clear it of enemies first.

Stage 12 - Akaneia Palace
"The fight against Bishop Bozen in Akaneia Castle." 

Another castle map. The trick here is that you can only send out 10 guys because there are a bunch of heroes imprisoned in the palace, with no items.

The enemies there aren't too problematic because the archers can't hurt the armor knights. So that leaves us free to make our way through the castle. Once the initial enemies were cleared, I decided not to take the direct route to the treasure. I left Julian near the door and took everyone else around the bottom.

I had to load a state at this point because that sniper has a Silver Bow that I didn't notice, and took someone out in one turn. But Marth with a Thunder Sword made quick work of him, and of course those two clerics are no problem. Mages are a bit tricky because in this game, everyone has a magic defense of 0, unless you use one of the items to increase it. So magic essentially does fixed damage. Even so, Bozen can't take too many hits before dying. That General in the treasure room can't open the door so he's easy to pick off with magic from the other side. The only other thing to do is beat a Paladin on the right, who has the subtle name of Himmler.

One thing you sometimes have to be careful about is leading with a character who is too strong. Because if they can kill the enemies in one round (with two hits), they'll keep taking damage over and over again. This game doesn't let your guys' stats easily get too high, and so someone can die pretty quickly if you're not careful.

After the stage, Nina gives us the bow Palutia, which has a limited number of uses and a high weapon level requirement. There are two other good weapons like it: the Gladius, and the Mercurial Rapier, that we should come across later.

Stage 13 - The Wooden Horse Army of Gurunia
"The army encounters the Gurunia Army in Menidi."

This stage was cut from the SNES re-release and it's not hard to see why. 15 Shooters. Fifteen.

Some people use warp staffs to deal with the stage. What I did was go forward on the middle path, taking out the shooters there, and taking Marth to the village to recruit my own shooter (who can't leave the cliff area he's stranded in). Media recruits Astria, the swordsman. Now I had this position:

I had given Marth the Boots from a previous level so his move is 11. Marik moves forward and kills the Shooter boss with Excalibur, then Marth moves to the castle and takes it over, obviating the need to deal with that wall of shooters in the back or the shooter groups at the top and bottom.

Stage 14 - Gura, the Land of Sorrow
"Marth attacks Gura, the land that betrayed Alitia."

As given in the intro story, Gura is the land that betrayed Marth's father. Although Marth doesn't have any dialogue in this map so I guess you have to invent your own story of his revenge.

After getting the magic spell from the village on the top left, the next step is to take out all those annoying archers and the priest. Meanwhile Kachua and Paola appear on turn 5 and head towards Marth, joining the team.

I guess I took too few screenshots of this stage. The bottom part of the map seems easy, but I actually had to load my mid-save stage twice. Once was because the Armor Knight got a critical on Abel and took him from full HP to 0 in one attack. The other was due to the Pegasus Knight reinforcements that start coming in from the left. They do a fair amount of damage; probably if I had shooters out there they could tank it. Winning the stage before too many of them come is easy enough, but the right side has two chests, including the all important Silver Card, which halves the price of items. The tedious and cumbersome item interface makes this less appealing than it would otherwise be, but it's still a good item.

So we have now taken back Gura, but the Falchion is not there. Apparently Garnef has taken it and fled, so it's time to follow him to the desert -- we can't beat Medius without the Falchion.

Game 1 - Fire Emblem (Stages 5-9)

Stage 5 - The Warriors of Orleans
"Marth meets up with Hardin's warrior band, who is fighting to protect Princess Nina of Akanaia kingdom, in a fortress near Orleans castle."

There are two difficulties in this stage -- making sure none of the thieves can reach the village in the north, and having all the new members of Hardin's group survive the stage. Neither are extremely hard but I did have to restart a few times. Hardin's group is not very strong and it takes some proper placement to make sure the archers can't combine with the armor knights to take down one of them.

Once the thieves are defeated and the Archer/Armor Knight group taken care of, the rest of the stage is not very hard. Wendell, a Bishop, comes to Marth and joins. Although there are a lot of strategy RPGs with enemy characters that can be persuaded to join your side, I don't know how many there are where the enemies actually approach your own troops and join on their own.

Reinforcements (a single Social Knight) come out of the fort at the top if you take too long. I used the magicians to take down the Armor Knight.

Stage 6 - Fire Emblem 
"A fight inside Orleans castle. After winning this fight, Marth pledges to Princess Nina to defeat the Drua kingdom and free all the lands of Akanaia. He sets out on his journey."

This was a tough stage for me. The main problem are the treasure chests. There are 5 of them, and four thieves on the stage that can go loot them. Unlike later FE games, defeating the thieves after they steal the chests does not give you the item. Two of the chests are impossible to get without using Lena's Warp Staff, and I decided to ignore those. I would have liked the Angel Clothes to increase max HP, but I don't know how many warp staves there are in the game. I also wasn't sure who was strong enough to send over there in the midst of the enemies -- I found a Japanese blog where the guy used Wendell to get the Angel Clothes. I guess that makes sense; he has a high defense and can do a lot of damage to the armor knights.

Even getting the other three chests was tricky, though. I kept losing guys to gangups by the archers, the social knight with the gold sword, and the magician at the top left. I think the above picture is from the time I actually won. I finally got down and closely investigated everyone's stats so that I knew who could best defend against the attacks. Julian also recruits Ricardo, giving me a second thief.

Once the chests are done, there's still the problem of the two archers and magician in the final room. I approached very slowly, killed one archer, and then fortunately the other archer and magician came forward when they could not attack anyone. This made it easy to finish them off, and Wendell and Marik's Excalibur magic finished off the boss.

Now Marth has the Fire Emblem, which will help him open a future chest that is important for the journey, and the first major section of the game is done.

Stage 7 - The Trap at Lewakandi
"In the valley of Lewakandi, Marth encounters the White Knight group of Minerva, but..."

Minerva decides that Macedonian troops should not be serving Drua, and defects with three of her pegasus knights. This draws down the forces here to a reasonable number and makes the stage pretty easy.

A few archers were enough to take out the remaining D and P Knights, leaving just a skeleton force defending the base. The boss, once again, I beat with Marik's Excalibur. That won't last for the whole game, though.

This stage also gives me the first Mamkute, Banutu. He tells us that we need Chiki, another Mamkute, to have any chance at defeating the other Mamkutes who serve Medius. He lost his stone, but fortunately I picked one up in the last stage. With the stone he gets a big defense boost and an attack that never runs out -- pretty nice! The ending dialogue of this map just summarizes the story that was already given in the instruction manual.

Stage 8 - Port City Warren
"Marth is surrounded by a large army at Warren."

The goal in this map is basically to escape to the right and take over the castle; there are large numbers of reinforcements. Some people might fight them all for experience but I finished the stage before I got overwhelmed. I accidentally set up a situation where the horsemen could not move or attack, blocking that area from further reinforcements.

My new recruit Banutu dealt well with the armor knights, who really couldn't hurt him. Excalibur once again finished off the boss.

The funny part of this stage is Sheeda's recruitment of Roger. She asks him if he believes in love and if he has anyone special in Gurunia -- after a while they have to stop talking and Roger is smitten as so many other men in the game are.

Stage 9 - The Dragon of Perati
"The fight against Commander Manu, the Mamkute." 

This is another stage that was cut from the SNES remake. The boss is a Mamkute, but gets taken out with Excalibur -- I'm definitely going to run out of uses of this before the end of the game. The main trick of this stage is getting the chests. The two closest to the start are easy because the thieves go for the town instead, and you can easily head them off.

 The harder one is at the bottom right -- not because of the thieves, but because at turn 10, pirate reinforcements start coming out at forts at the bottom of the map.

I decided the Dragon Killer was not worth it and just finished the stage.

At the end of the stage, one of Minerva's P Knights, Kachua, asks for help -- Minerva's sister Maria has been captured by Drua. Minerva is rebelling against Drua but they want our help saving Maria. And off we go!

16 stages to go.

Game 1 - Fire Emblem (Stages 1-4)

Stage 1 - Marth Sets Out
"Talis, where Marth has retreated, is attacked by pirates. Sheeda comes to request help from Marth, and he sets out to retake the castle."

This is a well-designed starting map -- it's short and fairly easy,  but not so easy that you can just do whatever you want and win. It lets the player practice without having to repeat too much if they fail. There are some potential pitfalls that prepare you for later maps, such as letting Sheeda get in range of the archers or not killing the thief before he destroys the town. The main potential danger for a new player is relying on Jeigan too much. Before I even started playing any FE I knew about avoiding the "Jeigan character" because of their low stat growths. [EDIT: Apparently this is a common misconception, and the Jeigan characters are actually quite good to use.]

The starting group: Kain, Abel, Marth, Sheeda, Jeigan, Gordon, and Dorga

I actually did use Jeigan some on this map to weaken the enemies, but I accidentally killed the boss with him. This is not as big of a deal as I thought -- I don't know if this is a consistent feature of many FE games, but in this game, the XP given by an enemy is fixed by their class, and a small bonus for their level, with perhaps another small bonus if they're the boss. I don't think your own level makes any difference.

Other than that, I made sure to recruit Rifu from the house and get the 10K gold from the first house, and I bought a few extra weapons.

Stage 2 - The Galda Pirates
"Marth sets out for Orleans to meet with Princess Nina of Akanaia, who is already fighting against the Drua Kingdom. On the way, he is attacked by pirates."

This is another fairly easy stage. It starts by getting 4 new axe users as companions. One of the pirates to the north will approach Marth and join the good guys on his own. There are two thieves but they can't really get off the island to destroy towns unless you really screw up.

The only other thing to do on the stage is recruit Kashim with Sheeda. It's obvious to do this because when he attacks, he asks Sheeda to forgive him (he needs money for his mother's medicine). Since Kashim is an archer you have to be careful. Whenever you have a recruitment conversation with the enemies, there's a BGM that I mostly associate with the FE stages of Super Smash Brothers Melee.

A battle scene -- they are unskippable, but you can turn off the animations.

One other note: I don't read strategy information beforehand unless I'm really having problems but sometimes I'll look at it afterwards. Apparently you can leave one of the thieves alive, and set Rifu on a fortress. The thief will attack him over and over again -- in this game, clerics gain XP by getting attacked. If they survive the attack they get XP equal to defeating the monster. So with this you can easily level Rifu up to 20. I tried this on other stages but I couldn't get the thieves to attack him.

Stage 3 - Devil Mountain
"A fight with the Samshian Bandits, who live in Devil Mountain, directly in front of the Orleans Plains."

This is the first stage I had to restart several times. The characters at the top are Julian and Lena, two important people that you want to keep alive. Fortunately they can stay ahead of the pursuing enemy troops. The big problem is Navarre, the mercenary above the fort. He can be recruited with Sheeda, but he has a Kill Sword, which increases critical rate. This plus the danger of the archer meant I had to try a few times before I got everyone in the right position to pull it off. After this the rest of the stage is more of the same stuff. The house gives a Devil Axe, which no one can use yet, and I'm not sure if I actually do want to use it.

Stage 4 - Fight on the Plains 
"In order to take back the Orleans castle, the team fights against the Macedonian army on the Orleans plains."

When this game was remade and repackaged with a sequel for the Super Famicom, 5 stages were removed from the FE1 portion. This is one of the stages. It's the first one where you have to select which characters to use. I'm going the cheap route and mostly using the characters with the highest total growth rates, although I did keep Jeigan along.

I had to restart the map once because I didn't know thieves could cross rivers. There's one at the top that will reach the town if you don't go after him, so rather than staying in the starting location and waiting for the troops, I had to go after them.

One of the houses has Machik, the first mage, who comes with his unique Excalibur magic as well as blizzard. Having characters that can attack from range 2 is nice but you do have to be careful -- the boss has a javelin and can counter from 2 range.

The only other potential trouble spot is recruiting Machis. You have to talk to him with Lena, the weak priest, and sending her into the middle of the enemies before other people have a chance to kill Machis could be tricky. I was able to do it in one try, though.

So far I'm having fun with the game. As I said, the tension of this game is high since a single bad move can lose you a character permanently. It's a bit like Wizardry or some roguelike games. In the past, I have always gotten frustrated by the permadeath and quit FE games before I beat them. I'm hoping that the structure of a chronoblog like this will encourage me to finish them. I considered allowing some soft cheating like "1 save state per stage" but at least for now I'm not going to do this.

Let me know about your experiences with this game or any comments on what you'd like to see in the posts, and thanks for reading!

Game 1 - Fire Emblem (Introduction)

Fire Emblem: Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light (ファイアーエムブレム 暗黒竜と光の剣)
Release Date: 4/20/1990

Behold no pants Marth and his merry band

System: Famicom, later remade on the Super Famicom and Nintendo DS
Designer: Kaga Shozo, Intelligent Systems
Publisher: Nintendo

Welcome! This is the first game I could find that fit my criteria for a strategy RPG. I've seen people claim that this is actually the first game to combine strategy and RPG elements, which is not true -- there were a number of games that did this prior to Fire Emblem. Among them are King of Kings, Fairytale, and Meimon! Takanishi Oendan. The last one, in particular, comes very close to being a strategy RPG for me -- the only thing it's lacking is a developing story.

Probably most people reading this are familiar with the Fire Emblem series, which began in 1990 and is still producing games today. I first played the series in 2003 or so, when I dabbled with FE3 and 4 but then did some (bad) script translations for part of FE6 for the now defunct Fessforum board. Despite this, I have never actually finished a Fire Emblem game, and I hope to make this the first. By my rules, I think I could have played the Super Famicom remake of this game, but since it is the first game I thought it best to experience it in its original form. The first post is going to be devoted to the background of the game and the instruction manual, to see how the company was presenting this game to consumers who may have been encountering a hybrid RPG-simulation game for the first time.

Like many early games, the game itself contains no background or opening scene to set the story, except for the opening English text "In the beginning there are dark dragon, falchion sword, and...FIRE EMBLEM." The game just immediately starts in Chapter 1. To get the backstory you have to read the manual, which has the following story which I will summarize. (The official romanizations are probably different, but some of them seem to be new names rather than actual romanizations of the Japanese so I'll just pick my own.)

Long ago, the kingdom of Akaneia was invaded by the Drua Empire led by the Dark Dragon Medius, Emperor of the Mamkute. In the midst of this chaos, in which Akaneia was almost destroyed, a  young person named Anri defeated Medius with the holy sword Falchion. Without their leader, Drua was easily defeated by Akaneia. Anri then became the first king of Altia.

100 years later, Medius has returned. He rebuilds the Drua Empire by joining the Grunia and Macedonia kingdoms, and is joined by the dark priest Garnef who also wishes to take over the world.  Akaneia once again defends itself, but has no chance in the face of Medius and Kamyu, the hero of Grunia. King Cornelia, the descendant of Anri, takes the Falchion and goes forth to fight Medius, but is betrayed by the king of Gura. Akaneia is destroyed, and the Falchion is taken. 

However, the 14 year old Prince Marth is able to escape with the help of his sister Ellis, and he escapes with his guardian Jeigan to the far away island of Talis. Princess Sheeda welcomes him, and he dreams of the day he can regain his kingdom. Two years later nothing has happened towards that end, when the Galda Pirates, working with Drua, take over Talis Castle. Sheeda and Marth join together with their small force and head for Talis.

The map of the world

The most surprising part of the manual to me is pages 6-9, which list all 25 stages of the game along with short descriptions of what happens in them. So for instance, I already know that stage 23 will be the final fight against the Dark Priest Garnef. It's unusual to find so much information in the manual. The rest of the manual is quite detailed, giving the details of most of the weapon, armor, and items, and even a suggested strategy for stage 1.

Stage 1

Perhaps they were afraid that this new kind of game would confuse the audience and wanted to make sure they had as much information as possible. There's also an ad for the upcoming hint guide (for 630 yen) at the end -- this is pretty common in Japanese games. Hint guides have always been well made, cheap, and released almost at the same time as the game itself. Not all Japanese gamers were as hardcore as people say.

There is also art for a number of the characters. This was always helpful in early games since the in-game graphics were sometimes hard to figure out.

Marth, Abel, Sheeda, Kain, and Jeigan

   

Nina, Doga, Gordon, Rifu, Daros, Hardin, Ogma, Julian, Modorof, Lena, Minerva, and Marik

The English wikipedia page actually has quite a lot of detail on this game, but here are a few interesting tidbits from the Japanese page:

• The permanent death of player units was an intentional choice to make the units seem more like individuals rather than just pawns. I always wondered if the designers intended for the player to lose units during the game but replace them with others. But apparently the large size of the army was to allow different players to use different combinations of units and strategies, and share them with friends.
• The first person to complete the game was a graphic designer not connected with the development, which convinced the team they had created a game that could be enjoyed by more than just hardcore fans.
• This was one of the first games to have popular characters, where fans would vote on which character was the best, ship their favorite characters, and such.

Finally, here are some basic notes on the gameplay. 

• As in later Fire Emblem games, the player and enemy take turns moving all their troops in any order. This means you always have to be very careful to end your turn with good placement or the enemies might swarm someone and kill them. Terrain gives bonuses to dodge but apparently not defense.
• Weapons have attack power, weight, and a "weapon level" the character has to have to be able to use them. Depending on weight and speed the attacker may get 2 attacks. The equipment is very basic -- a character has no actual "equipment", just 4 item slots, with one weapon the basic weapon that the character will use to counter attack. Weapons have a range of either 1 or 2, rarely both. Almost all weapons have a number of uses before they break.
• You cannot choose any kind of reaction to an attack; the character automatically counters if able.    
• The weapon triangle that Fire Emblem fans are familiar with is not in this game (I believe it enters the series with the 4th game). Bows are still effective against flyers. 
• Characters have a variety of classes, and can upgrade with an item when they reach level 10 -- this is familiar Fire Emblem territory although some classes cannot upgrade (like Marth's "Lord" class).
• The "growth rates", which are in most or all FE games, mean that on level up, each stat has a chance to raise by 1. This includes HP, which means that even higher level characters have fairly low HP. This reduces the advantage that a high level character has over a lower level one.
• As with many strategy RPGs, you cannot save during the map, only between maps. This makes the levels very tense, particularly near the end of them, since a single bad move can lead to a character's death. 

Next post, I will actually begin the game with the first few stages.