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!

1993 wrap-up

1993 had six games:

Albert Odyssey
Ogre Battle
Shining Force Gaiden II
Super Robot Taisen 3

Shining Force II
Sword Master

In terms of new developments, Ogre Battle is the first real-time SRPG on my list. Along with Super Robot Taisen 3, it also brings in the multiple paths and endings that become more common with SRPGs as we move forward. 1993 has the first Super Famicom game and the last PC Engine game.

Choosing a game of the year is tough here -- I know that a lot of people would pick Shining Force II, but as I said in my review I was somewhat disappointed with it. Ogre Battle would be another popular choice but once again I found it frustrating. For me, I think I would have to go with Super Robot Taisen 3. The branching storylines, multiple endings, and large cast list are a huge advance on SRT 2 and I had a lot of fun with this game. It's difficult until you figure out how to manage the system, though.

In addition to SRT 3, I would recommend Shining Force II, Shining Force Gaiden II (better to play the CD remake), and Ogre Battle. Albert Odyssey is not a good game. Sword Master has an impressive story and visuals, but the gameplay is not especially good.

1994 is all Super Famicom and Mega Drive games (the last 3 MD games I'll be playing). Fire Emblem 3 is probably the biggest and best known game on the list, but I'm interested in Hioden, which is another real-time game that has SFC mouse support.

One other thing that I'm going to try to do going forward is make at least one video for every game, even ones that I'm skipping because I've already played them or they're ports. A lot of these games either have no videos, the videos that exist are short and of poor quality, or you won't find them unless you search the game name in Japanese. At some point I would like to go back and make videos for the games I've already done but that's not a priority.

Games of the year:
1990: Fire Emblem
1991: Langrisser
1992: Just Breed
1993: Super Robot Taisen 3

Game 20 - Sword Master wrap-up

 FACTS

1. Turn type: Player turn/enemy turn
2. Maps: Medium to large. There is terrain that gives bonuses.
3. Character Customization: None; characters promote at some point but you have no control.
4. Character Development: Standard XP level system.
5. Party Size: For most of the game, your entire party (up to 24 units)
6. Equipment: Four equipment slots -- weapon, armor, two items.
7. Game Flow: The game is purely linear with no returning to previous battles; there are dungeons where you can explore and fight some optional battles.
   
8. Saving: Anywhere, but only one save slot
9. Death: Permanent.

 IMPRESSIONS

This is the final game of 1993 and the last PC Engine game. The PC Engine continued on strongly through 1994 and limped along until 1996, but no more strategy RPGs came out for the system.

The story is pretty good for 1993. Most of your party members have little to no presence in the story but Aks and the main characters have developed backstories. There are a lot of cinematic sequences and voiced sections of the story. 

The gameplay, unfortunately, is not as good. The game suffers from pretty serious balance issues. The first problem is that the damage you take or do can vary widely -- with reloading I've seen the same attack do 1 damage, and then do 23 damage. For reference, the final boss has 32 HP and your characters will likely not get into the 30s. This wild luck also seems to affect the level up bonuses. A lot of times you get nothing on a level up.

But the most serious problem to me is the XP awards. I'm not completely sure what the formula is, but it's clear that by far the most important factor is the amount of damage you do. There seems to be a small effect from level difference and from killing a monster, but if you kill a monster at 1 HP by doing 1 damage, you will get almost nothing. This makes it extremely difficult to use your full party, because you can't really catch up the weaker characters. The game has no money or shops, meaning all the equipment you get is pre-determined, and there's nowhere near enough equipment to outfit your entire party.

The game is not especially hard since you can save as many times as you want, and having a few strong characters is good enough to clear the game. But it's more satisfying to be able to use a larger party rather than just having them sit back and watch.

So I probably wouldn't really recommend this game; as I said, the story is interesting enough, and if you really like the PC Engine it might be worth a play. But there are better SRPGs even in this period.

Game 20 - Sword Master (Part 3)

Battle 16

On the way to the dwarf village we encounter a group of Dark Elves -- despite the story making them seem scary they're just basic enemies.

The dwarf chieftain initially refuses to help us but when Aks shows him the God Orbs he agrees to help, and gives us a bunch of armor and weapons. They're just basic upgrades like Chainmail, so I'm not sure what makes them particularly useful against the dark elves. There was also a movement ring which I gave to the iron golem -- he moves so slowly that I haven't even gotten to make an attack with him yet; I'm not sure this upgrade will help much but he might get a chance.

There's also a little event you can do in town (I'm not sure if it's optional or not) with a wounded child. This gets me 20 healing herbs, and then a dwarf joined the party. Now we continue on to Crystoll Temple and encounter another set of Dark Elves.

Battle 17

I now have 22 units which makes the turns take a while. This is a really long fight because of how long it takes to move everyone and how many people do 1 damage. This is a general problem with this game and it's exacerbated by the way the XP system works. It seems to me like your XP gains are partly dependent on the amount of damage you do, which means weaker characters have a really hard time catching up.

After this, Aks makes it to the port town that will take him to Crystoll Temple. But the ship only holds 10 people, so you have to select who to bring. I took my highest damage dealers, and a magician and priest.

On the other side of the ship, there's a black fog that separates Aks from his companions, and all four Shitteno are waiting for him.

He's ready to fight them all, but...

Arselia is there, and they threaten to kill her. So they start beating Aks up and he doesn't resist...but then they kill Arselia anyway. This pisses Aks off so much that some light energy comes out of him and gets rid of the black cloud, bringing in the companions.

Battle 18

You would think a fight against all the Shitenno at once would be difficult, but it really wasn't. Partly this is due to the horrible AI, which made the Shitenno hardly move and sometimes not use spells even when they were in range. But also they seem to be the same strength they were when you first fought them. So Gazes, the first one you fight, is incredibly weak.

Once the fight is over, Aks apologizes to Arselia's corpse....

Except she's still alive! The dragon gave her protection against the Shitenno earlier in the story, so this protected her. She an Aks share a romantic(?) moment.

She then opens the temple for us, and Aks has her go back to her village while he goes in. No battles here, but Aks receives the Holy Sword from a goddess who watches over those from Aks' village. He isn't sure why someone who is the son of the devil can use the Holy Sword, but the goddess doesn't have answers. Aks heads back and picks up all the party members, as well as two new Holy Knights from the temple -- they're helpful because they have healing spells.

From this point on we have all 24 members but the game never gives you enough equipment to make using them all viable. In the last set of battles I basically used a small party of Aks, Ganesha, and the ninja guy for damage, Mute for magic damage, all the healers, and then the dragon knights and horse knights in cases where I needed to charge ahead and take out magicians before they could do too much damage (or to do the last 2-3 necessary to kill something). I also got another MP restoring ring which meant I could use the other magician as well.

Aks heads towards the cave leading to Dark Castle, and meets Arselia along the way, who tells him that there's another evil power in the castle besides Balgas.

Next up is a series of 4 or 5 grunt battles as Aks makes his way through the caves to Dark Castle, and then the castle itself. None of them were particularly hard; with all that healing and the powerful attacks of Aks and Ganesha, plus two magicians with MP restore, the enemies are quite easy.

Finally, Aks reaches Balgas' room.

Balgas threatens the party, but Aks just retorts that Balgas is a plaything of his dad. And that seems to be the case since he has low HP and is no harder than any other boss in the game (he has the same HP total as the first boss in the second stage of the game). Balgas does indicate that he's serving some other boss than Aks' dad but doesn't explain further.

After the battle, Aks sends Balgas' spirit back to the demon world, and then you get a chance to talk to one party member (with a voiced sequence). Aks says he has something else to do, and then goes back with a small party to a warp zone behind Balgas' throne.

This is Lucifer, who serves Aks' dad Satan(!); he initially pretends to be congratulating Aks but then declares he'll control the world, etc. The fight is not very hard because Aks is ridiculous and you get two healers. Aks then decides to use Satan's power one time to banish Lucifer.

Aks now returns to the mainland and begins to live a quiet life with Arselia, which includes sex because this is on the PC Engine.

But after a while Aks decides he needs to go settle the score with Satan before he can live in peace, and leaves Arselia in the night, saying he'll be back. She cries and the game ends -- nice happy ending!

Game 20 - Sword Master (Part 2)

One aspect of the battle system I overlooked in the manual that's useful to know -- if you have multiple allies around a monster (up to 3) they can all attack at the same time, and the enemy only gets to counterattack the initial attacker. This is very helpful to let weaker characters join a fight. The enemies will also use this technique against you.

Battle 7


Aksu's party continues towards the cave, stopping at a fortress. Enemies attack and the entire fortress battalion flees, but two remaining archers join the party. The enemy attacking is Prince Serius. I guess I didn't get any screenshots of this battle but it wasn't too bad. When we beat Serius, a disembodied voice tells us that he was being controlled by evil powers, and so we just killed the prince who wasn't acting out of his own will.

Battle 8

This is actually a series of battles in the cave; the first one is the hardest battle I've faced yet. 12 gargoyles who have very long movement range and do decent damage. I had to reload a lot and keep repositioning my guys until I survived. Aksu's Return magic doesn't work in these fights.

I believe this is one of my failures

The cave has a bunch of tricks and traps, and you have to find two keys to get through to the final room where the next of the Shittenno is waiting.

Aksu is pretty great

She was strangely easy, doing only 1 damage to everyone while I beat the tar out of her.  Unfortunately, she kills Ris Tis, who can only tell us to find the 4 Jimmu orbs (I mistook these as "god weapons" in the last post) to turn into the sacred sword which can beat Belgas. The first of the orbs is in the Dark Castle.

This ends the cave section and now we're on to Dark Castle itself.

Battle 9

The castle is similar to the cave, with several intermediate battles and then the boss, who is the next of the Shitenno. He was the one who controlled Prince Serius, and now guards the blue orb, the first of the God orbs.

After the fight we get the typical "castle is crumbling" but we can't escape, until a dragon rider shows up to save the party.

Not only does Akurus save us, but he also offers to lead us to his home, where the Red Orb is in the care of a dragon.


After the long cave and castle, there's now an extended section with no battles. First, we travel to a fortress where we actually get some equipment ugprades! It's disappointing that the previous dungeons have no chests or items, but the fortress gives some weapon and armor upgrades, and some herbs. Of course they can't spare anyone but in the next town there's the opportunity to trade a jewel from the fortress to hire a mercenary. You have a choice between 3 (this is why the instruction manual says you can get 24 out of 26 characters in a playthrough). I chose the female warrior.


Next up is the cave. First we reunite with Aselia, who is sad to hear about Ris Tis' death. She has been summoned here by the dragon Bistors about the Crystoll Temple.

Bistors seems to know who Aks is, calling him the たわむれの落とし子 -- I'm not sure what a good translation for that is. Joke child? The dragon thinks that Aks can defeat Balgas if he can gather the 4 orbs and unseal Crystoll Temple, where the orbs will become the Holy Sword -- this is something only the Meifu Clan can do, and Aselia is the only one of them left. She isn't sure how to do this, but they eventually find out that Aks needs to use an item Ris Tis gave him. Aselia heads for Crystoll by herself while Aks looks for the other orbs (and gets the red orb from the dragon). But the cave gets attacked by the 3rd of the Shitenno.

Battle 10

The 4th of the Shitenno has a strong attack, but other than that the battle's not too tough. The damage in this game is so variable that you can just reset until you get 2-4 damage instead of 18 damage.

Aks' next goal is across the sea, where he hopes to meet a magician who knows more about the orbs.

Battle 11

Crossing the sea is tough because there's a ghost ship. Of course it attacks the ship Aks takes. The ship itself has a few battles against skeletons, and then the boss, another Shitenno. He's not especially difficult.

On the ship we also find out the spirit of Prince Serius is there; sorry for killing you.

On arriving in the new continent, it seems that Aks is a wanted man -- everyone there believes that Serius' evil activity was part of the kingdom's wishes and that everyone else associated with Saturnia is bad. But somehow Aks immediately convinces him otherwise, and the king of this new place gives us the green orb! Also some new weapons, armor, and companions. How trusting!

Battle 12

This is a long battle on a large map, but it's just grunts, so no problem. Our force is getting bigger -- you can always use your full group!

Battle 13

Next up is Damud cave. This is another long cave with a lot of warp zones and incidental fights against grunts. Once we get through all that, Aks gets taken to a  room with the magician Zabra Muba, who reveals a lot of backstory.

Aks' name

It seems that Aks is the child of a human priestess and the evil god, who was accidentally(?) summoned by these villagers. He reminds Aks that if he used his innate power he could crush Balgas without the Sacred Sword, but Aks is determined not to use his father's power. It turns out that Zabra Muba was a childhood friend of Aks' mother and escaped the village with her. After Aks was born, his mother returned to their village to warn them about its impending destruction, but it was too late and she was killed (maybe) along with the village. Zabra Muba and Aks were both put into hibernation by "that person" (Aks' father?) 1000 years ago, and now they're both back to deal with Balgas. So it's off to Crystoll Temple.

Along the way we stop at a town to pick up a new party member (an Iron Golem) and then the next fight.

Battle 14

This battle had 1 enemy, which seems like a bug or programming error. There are other areas of the game that I feel are this way also -- a few characters gain almost no experience from killing things, for no clear reason I can see. Sometimes you get no stat increases on a level up, particularly at odd-numbered levels.

Battle 15

Next we stop in another fortress, which gets attacked once again; this time you fight the two mercenaries that you didn't hire back earlier in the game. I also started getting class upgrades here (which seems to happen around level 18-20). I'm not sure what the class upgrades do other than give you some stat boosts.

Then in the next town Aselia is there -- she stayed back to warn us that the Shitenno are back with Dark Elf weapons, and the only way we're going to be able to deal with those is to visit the dwarves in the nearby forest and get their special armor.

So that's where I am now. Based on a Japanese "let's play" of this game on Youtube, I'm at about the halfway point in the game.