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Who on this board has played a Fire Emblem game and which one is your favorite?

I know that a lot of people would be able to recognize the series by only two of its characters, but it wouldn't surprise me that not as many people have played a Fire Emblem game. After all, we've only just gotten a 5th Fire Emblem while the series runs with a total of 12 games.





So what is Fire Emblem?
Fire Emblem is a turned based strategy game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo. The first game of the series was released on April 20, 1990 and only for Nintendo's Famicom System (the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System, the NES). It was called Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ry? to Hikari no Ken (translated to Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragons and the Blade of Light).
It wouldn't be until the 8th game that gamers living outside of the land of the rising sun would get a taste of Fire Emblem. That title was Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken (translated to Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword) in Japan (released there on April 25, 2003), Fire Emblem for the rest of the world (released on November 3, 2003 in the States), and it was only for the Game Boy Advance.

The tactical turned based system is heavily based off of Intelligent Systems' other franchise Nintendo Wars (commonly known as only Advance Wars outside of Japan). The two series share the same structure where there are different types of units that move across a map from a top-down point of view. There are different types of terrain that will affect a units movement, vision, and combat stats and often must be used or avoided when composing a strategy for victory.



The similarities stop here.
Where in Advance Wars you had an HQ that had to be defended while you were trying to either capture the enemy's HQ or wipe-out its forces, Fire Emblem has you defending a Lord character who is super important to the game's story. The many chapters had an enemy general or boss character that needed to be taken down to complete it. The Lord character behaves like any other unit under your control but if he were to fall in combat that would be the end of your game.

Speaking of in-game death: Advance Wars was based on capturing cities to increase your income of funds that you spent on building up you army from factories; if, say, your War Tank was destroyed, you could just build another one from a factory, or two, provided that you had the funds. Once a chapter was completed, the game basically reset your army to few units, reset your funds, and gave you a new map with new enemies to take down and called it the next chapter.
Fire Emblem treats death very differently, harshly increasing the penalty to the player for having a character die. If a Lord character dies, its Game Over, but what about the other characters? If a character dies, then they are truly dead; they won't return to your army in any of the future chapters (the entire rest of the game). Because the game starts you off on a new chapter with the whole army you had in the previous chapter, it is worth it to bump up the steps in strategy and caution to make sure that all of your units survive an encounter. The bigger your army is, the more options you have when you face the later, far more challenging chapters of the game

It's worth mentioning that the chances of getter a new character become smaller and smaller as the game mores on. Unlike Advance Wars, there are only two ways to add units to your army. The first is the fact that characters will join you as the story moves on.
Example: A thief brother and a cleric sister pair meet up with Hector (the lord character) and the army after fighting back the common foe. They appear on-screen when the map gets loaded. Guess what, now you have a new thief and cleric.
The other, more challenging chance but far more common, is having an enemy character change factions. Specific enemy characters in a level will have a special image instead of a generic one. If the said character stays in one spot all of the time, it's the chapter's boss, but if the said character moves around like all of the other units, then he can be converted. Most of the time this requires that you to move a specific character near this enemy character so that they can talk. This also ties into the way death is handled: say, if your archer, Shara, dies in a chapter, you won't be able to recruit her sister in a later chapter because she's dead and you need her to convince the sister that your side is better. Thus you loss two units.

Another aspect in Fire Emblem that is very different from Advance Wars is the fact that every character has their own set of stats that grow when the character is used more.



When a character reaches level 10, that character will be able to be promoted to their advance classes.

Another job that us put on the player is to keep his/her army well equipped. Each weapon, staff, and spell book has a set number of times it can be used before it breaks and rendered useless. There are armories and shops that the player can use to buy replacement equipment and tools like torches for Fog-of-War chapters.


What's the story of Fire Emblem?
That would depend on what Fire Emblem game you're playing/talking about. The Fire Emblem series follows in the footsteps of Square-Enix's Final Fantasy series; all of the games either take place in different worlds or the time between them is so vast, resulting in a fresh story and setting every time. Unlike Final Fantasy, most Fire Emblem game do relate to each other.

What are the games in the series?
Currently, there are 12 games.

Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ry? to Hikari no Ken (Famicom/NES, Japan Only)
Fire Emblem Gaiden (Famicom/NES, Japan Only) (A side story to the first game using new characters)
Fire Emblem: Monsh? no Nazo (Super Famicom/SNES, Japan Only) (A two part game. First part is a remake of the first game, second part is a continuation to the same story)
Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu (Super Famicom/SNES, Japan Only)
BS Fire Emblem: Akaneia Senki (Super Famicom/SNES, Japan Only) (A prequel to the first game. Part of Satellaview service)
Fire Emblem: Thracia 776 (Super Famicom/SNES, Japan Only) (A side story to 4th game)
Fire Emblem: F?in no Tsurugi (Game Boy Advance, Japan Only) (The first Fire Emblem game on a handheld system)
Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken / Fire Emblem (Game Boy Advance) (First Fire Emblem game to reach gamers outside of Japan)
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (Game Boy Advance) (Reuses features not used since the 2nd game)
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (Game Cube) (First game in 3D.)
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Wii) (Sequel to Path of Radiance)
Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (DS) (Remake of the first game. First game to use Nintendo WiFi Connection Online service)

What was the deal with including Marth and Roy in Super Smash Bros. Melee when gamers outside of Japan have never seen them before?
Good question.
Marth was put into the game in the same way Ice Climbers and Mr. Game and Watch were added, to introduce a new series into the Super Smash Bros. series. He was the Lord character in the first game, Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ry? to Hikari no Ken. It was planned that he would only be available in the Japanese version of the game and would be removed by Nintendo of America (NOA) during the translation phase. That never happened because Marth became a very popular character amongst the American testers; they scrapped the idea of removing him.
Roy was included in the game as a marketing strategy by Nintendo to advertise the then to be released Fire Emblem: F?in no Tsurugi Game Boy Advance game (Roy was the Lord character in that game). NOA kept him in the game for the same reason they kept Marth.
Roy was eventually replaced in Super Smash Bros. Brawl by a character that was more familiar to non Japanese gamers, the Lord of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Ike.



I've only played a small bit of our first game, Fire Emblem, and I recently bought and currently playing Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. Between the two of them, my favorite one is Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.

I simply LOVE Fire Emblem! I cant live without it! By the way, Have you ever played Fire Emblem 2? It's really good-Even for a NES game!

I've never heard of it being called that way. I'm guessing it's Fire Emblem: Gaiden.

I've only played the first Fire Emblem that was released outside of Japan and the newest one Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon.

If you haven't played the game that Ike is from(Path of Raidience), you haven't lived!

I figured I'd work my way up, but that's proving to be too slow. I'll barrow Radiant Dawn from my friend, who just beat it. Still, I've heard 2D Fire Emblem game have been generally better than the two in 3D. I won't let that prevent me from trying the games.

Just so the story makes sense, play path of raidience first. I'ts the first game that Ike was in. In raidient dawn he is still a lord as well as sothe and miciah by the way.