FIRE EMBLEM 7: The Blazing Blade Retrospective - ShaneBrained

[Music] the time has come we are finally here seven videos into the Fire Emblem retrospective and 13 years into the actual series lifespan at long last we have finally reached the first game to actually be released to the west following the success of the intelligent systems developed Advance Wars games in the Western market combined with the interest garnered from Marth and Roy's appearance in Super Smash Brothers in 2003 and for strategy RPG fans around the world finally got the chance to experience this series for themselves in the game which they received was Fire Emblem 7 the blazing blade for more than a few reasons that this game will always be a landmark in this series even though it was released overseas under the title Fire Emblem this is an entry which is more inextricably linked to the games that came before it than any other fire emblem yet with a story that serves as a direct prequel to the last game as well as gameplay systems and visuals which were nearly identical as well the details that make the blazing Blade significant can be hard to grasp for the uninitiated for many viewers of this video I'm sure that this game was very likely their first Fire Emblem or at the very least the first one that they were actually aware of even though I was actively gaming on the Game Boy Advance when this game came out I actually have no nostalgia to speak up about it only my vague memories of seeing it mentioned in gaming magazines at the time before the start of this Fire Emblem retrospective I had never played a game in the series I arrived here after being six games deep into this video series having played all of the last games in their release order while remaining blind to what developments would be lying ahead so it was from this perspective that I first approached this game and it was very curious to see how it would progress the series after the rather big shake-up of the previous game all in all I guess you could say that I was more interested in how this game holds up as a Fire Emblem game first and not as someone's first Fire Emblem in this video I'm going to be attempting to find the answer to this to do so I'm going to be examining this game from top to bottom looking at its development history giving a full rundown of the story with my own analysis afterwards and finish by covering how the seventh Fire Emblem game interpreted or enhanced the underlying gameplay systems here let's go ahead and get started in many ways the development history going from the binding blade to the blazing blade is similar to the situation surrounding the transition from genealogy of the holy war to Thracia 776 after completing genealogy Thracia was planned as a small companion game that would require significantly less development time to create unfortunately under Shozo kaga perhaps unsurprisingly the project soon began to grow out of control and the game which was originally meant to only take a year to complete ended up taking 3 actually spending longer in development than genealogy of the holy war the blazing blade length ratio was also planned to be a small companion game to follow the previous release with an original development time actually set at only seven months although this ambitious seven-month goal did eventually need to get pushed back all in all it only took one year to finish this game making this an actually successful second attempt at this companion game strategy under the producers torune are a hero and Takahiro izushi who also directed The Binding blade the development of Fire Emblem 7 came together very smoothly series veteran yukata gioco returned once more to handle the score with the character design handled by Ag Canada Sachiko wada and Daisuke Asuka the youthful extremely cheery designs of the binding blade were toned back a bit here into a direction that matched the new balanced tone of this project rather than trying to change everything up or pair more things down a large focus this time was placed on cleaning up and improving the systems which had come before to do so much of the graphics and animations were reused from the binding blade to the layman not familiar with specific maps in each entry these two games do look the same through the time saved by reusing this content intelligent system spent a whole lot more time at polishing things to an even higher degree than ever before for the story multiple profile sprites and computer generated artworks were able to be created giving certain scenes extra emphasis emotion and personality though the gameplay remained mostly the same a huge number of updates were made to already existing systems even going down to some of them my new test details of the game eventually released on April 25th 2003 in Japan November 3rd at 2003 in North America with Australian and European releases in early 2004 the blazing blade received tremendous accolades immediately upon its release in all regions while sales data in the West is still unavailable it was called a successful launch abroad by Nintendo of America securing the future of the Fire Emblem franchise in the wider gaming world even though ROI seems to be more well known at due to his inclusion in Smash Brothers it's actually the adventures of his father eliwood along with the other lords Hector and Lin who were actually most responsible for sticking the landing of the series perhaps no other moment in this franchise's lifespan was as significant as this one not only did Nintendo taking this chance and having it pay off ring a great game to the Western world it also opened the gates for many more great games in the series to follow before diving into the story of this game I'd like to give a full spoiler warning over the following two chapters of this video I will be covering the plot in detail and then analyzing it in full if you already know the story or don't feel like a refresher go ahead and jump to the timestamp seen at the top of the screen if you are looking to avoid all story spoilers whatsoever go ahead and jump to the bottom timecode to get right to the gameplay breakdown here's your last chance we're starting in 5 4 3 2 1 in the land of grass and sky known as sake' a young tactician awakens in the home of a beautiful tribes woman named Lin this young woman the last of her tribe had found and cared for the wounded tactician yet as these two became fast friends they soon found them selves the victim of a sudden bandit attack escaping with their lives of these two friends headed for a nearby village for supplies bomb begin to to Knights of the country of lycia who claimed to actually be searching for limb soon our duo were told of Lin's last remaining family member her maternal grandfather who was the Marquess essentially the ruler of the city of Kalyan unless iya these two knights had been charged with finding and escorting Lin back to her grandfather and also to protect her from the bandits continued assaults who were actually sent by the Marcus's scheming brother Lundgren as Lin and the technicians group settle for Kahlan they met a young boy named Nils along the way this young blue haired boy pleaded for help claiming that his sister the dancer Nene --an had been kidnapped and was being held not far from their location agreeing to his request Lin's group were surprised to be met at the end by a young red-haired man at carrying the beautiful girl to safety from out of her prison this man was eliwood the son of the current Marquess of hooray Elbert happening to be in the area at the time he had taken it upon himself to fight through these villains and happily returned to the girl to safety as Lundgren's attempts on Lin's life were getting more and more desperate she had finally gained an ally of some influence from within lecea through eliwood and soon he pledged to keep both for a and its allies neutral should Lundgren try to deal legitimate return with her way to her grandfather clear Lin at last arrived in Kahlan finding her new home already taken over by her villainous uncle her grandfather had been secluded to his bedroom where he lay on death's door fading away due to the effects of a poison that he had been repeatedly given by his brother as the group fought through Lundgren's final defenders Lin and the tactician were finally able to defeat Lundgren for good and clear the way for the young girl to meet her grandfather face to face as the rightful Marquess of Kahlan prepared to meet his end happy that he at least got to set eyes on his last living relative before death his newly found granddaughter Lin urged him to try and hold on to life for a little bit longer now that they were finally together in somewhat of a miracle he actually did for Kahlan its Marquess and Lin a new peaceful year began but in other parts of Lycia trouble began to brew many months after the return of Lin the Marquess Albert of hooray had disappeared along with many of his knights after waiting for as long as he could bear the heroic eliwood decided to go out in search of his father accompanied by his most and loyal vassals soon after leaving he was surprised to bump into the same tactician who had served Lin and together this new group started out by heading towards the neighboring city of Santa Rouge not long after eliwood had begun his journey his group quickly became outnumbered by numerous bandits with the nearby soldiers of Santa Rouge doing nothing but watching it was then that another hero who happened to be the brother of the current Marquess of Ostia suddenly rushed out to support his best friend eliwood this man Hector was a massive axe wielding Lord who was accompanied by his own group of osteon fighters after arriving just in time to assist eliwood the two friends combine their forces and fought all the way to the gates of Santa ruse the mark was their helman that had been an ally of foray in the past but when finally meeting him now they found that he had been recently mortally wounded shortly before their arrival with his last breath helman revealed that it was Darrin at the marquess of the city of Laos who had pushed him to aggressively resist eliwood and was in some way connected with Lord Albert's disappearance armed with this new information eliwood and hector next fought their way towards laos after having his military bested on the field Lord Arryn chooses to abandon everyone including his own son fleeing his home before he could be confronted shocked and saddened by his own father's betrayal Darrin's son Eric revealed more about Albert's disappearance to eliwood and Hector stating that it was members of a mysterious band of assassins named the black fang who had approached Lord Arryn and Lord Hellman and had plotted with them to try to take over all of Lycia having also been approached le woods father had been making a trip to Laos to try and dissuade Aaron from trusting the assassins group all shortly before disappearing himself although Daren had escaped news suddenly came to our heroes revealing where he had gone Lin's home of Kahlan had we been assaulted by the man and it was to this destination which Ellie woods group immediately departed for him after successfully defeating Darrin's troops again and then liberating the castle alongside Lin's defenders unsurprisingly the Marquess of Laos fled again with Lin now in Ellie woods debts she along with her own loyal followers joined up with the group forming a powerful alliance of these three young Lords which then immediately set out for the black fangs base on the island of valour after enlisting the aid of friendly pirates in order to set sail while defending themselves on the waters the group discovered a person floating in the water towards them after pulling the newly amnesiac nene in' out of the water Ellie would and the group endeavored to protect and reunite her with her brother just before finally landing on the island and beginning to fight their way through the black fangs defenders although they did do their best to protect her a powerful member of the black fang was able to warp himself in median out of the groups protection saying that the girl was needed for their masters ritual with even more reason to hurry Ellie would and his friends finally caught up with the villainous Lordaeron and defeated him for good with no defenders left they freely entered the black fangs inner sanctum in this mysterious room Ellie would and his group were able to find both his father and Ninian although both had been weakened severely after recognizing his son Lord Albert pleaded for Ellie wood to take Nemean away and leave him behind just before the mysterious leader of the black fang appeared this man was the extremely powerful dark sorcerer named Nergal starting his ritual Nergal seemed to use an unseen magic on Elbert draining him of his life before forcing minion to activate the artifact at the end of the room a mysterious border between worlds which was called the Dragon's Gate long ago in the world of Lieb a war between dragons and humanity known as the scouring had raged on but had ended in the defeat and banishment of the dragons Ninian was the key to reopening this gateway and allowing the dragons to return to the now undefendable world under nurdles control as she unwillingly began to open it and act that the group knew would soon spell the end of all humans on a leap it was only due to the reappearance of Nils that a catastrophe was avoided as his words and love for his sister were able to break the mind control of Nergal causing his magical ritual to fail in a massive magical explosion after awakening from this blast the group found Nergal still alive and well but just before he could attempt the ritual again Lord Albert who was still clinging to life suddenly charged at the sorcerer and stabbed him critically through the back needing to retreat after this near fatal wound Nergal disappeared just as Albert finally succumbed to his own wounds warning his son that this was far from enough to defeat the dark sorcerer with the death of Lord Albert and the retreat of Nergal our heroes finally started on their way back home with eliwood silently holding his father's lifeless hand the entire way after landing back on the mainland the siblings Nils and mean Ian who had recovered her memory explained to the group what was actually going on apart from being a very skilled magic user Nergal had the magical ability to steal something which was called quintessence this was best described as an energy which was essentially one's own life force channeling this power with his magical gifts it had allowed him to both prolong his life and use magic far beyond any mortal being and through reopening the dragon's gate and allowing dragons back into a liebe he planned to drain the quintessence of them giving him access to untold levels of power than ever before Lord Albert and his knights had attempted to stop Nergal but had instead become fodder for more quintessence in order to prepare for the dark sorcerers inevitable reappearance eliwood hector and lin next went to meet with Hector's brother the Lord of Ostia Luthor realizing that no normal power would be capable of facing Nergal luther advised the group to travel to the Nevada desert to the west saying only that they may be able to meet a living legend there this living legend was an actuality none other than Athos one of the eight heroes who had helped to end the dragon human conflict nearly 1,000 years ago this ancient mage seen their arrival coming and through his envoys he was able to guide the license right to his location upon meeting the group Athos told them that in order to defeat Nergal now they would have to find the shrine of seals a hidden temple that rested somewhere within the borders of the Eastern nation of Bern after the mage used his magic to warp the group back to for a eliwood and his group took a moment to rest knowing that traveling into Bern and getting to the shrine would be their biggest ordeal yet on top of being unwelcome by the country's aggressive King and its military Bern was also the birthplace of the black fang and contained many of its most powerful original fighters disguising themselves as simple travelers eliwood and his team headed over the border and into Bern making their way towards the capital with the plan to meet with a queen whom they hoped due to her Ettore and ancestry would be willing to meet with and assist them after successfully battling through more of the black fang the group was actually able to meet with a queen but found her already embroiled in a deep family struggle as king desmond of bern was doing everything to subvert her attempt to have her son zephiel become the next in line for the throne to do this it seemed that the king had arranged for the Fire Emblem the symbol of royal authority and Bern and an object which was needed in the ceremony that would name zephiel as the official heir to be taken and hidden away by agents of the black fang in order for the Queen to give her help she insisted that eliwood and his fellow lords recover the fire emblem for her after successfully tracking the emblem and retrieving it on the way back to the castle the group returned just in time to witness an assassination attempt on the Prince by the black fang after successfully stopping this and saving the princes life the Queen finally eventually revealed the location of the shrine to the heroes as well as promising the group safe passage into the country at least by the soldiers which were loyal to her with this guarantee only the remaining members of the black fang still stood between them and their destination and before long they entered the fabled shrine of seals within they were joined by Athos yet again who praised them on their ability to successfully reach this place and together they met another one of the still-living legendary weapon holders bremond after convincing him to assist them the ancient mage released a seal on the legendary weapons across the land that he had been managing over the ages enabling their usage against Nergal should the group be able to retrieve them immediately after leaving the shrine of seals Nergal finally made his reappearance having fully revitalized himself after absorbing the quintessence of the many powerful black fang leaders that the group had to cut through in order to get to the shrine knowing that eliwood and the others were not yet prepared to take him on Nemean offered to go with Nergal peacefully in exchange for her friends safety an offer to which the sorcerer happily agreed to as Nene installed for time Hector was able to retrieve the Thunder axe our mods while eliwood retrieved the blazing blade at Durandal when it soon became clear that Ninian would do everything to resist helping Nergal he again attempted to manually control her and while struggling as fiercely as she could against this Nene Ana accidentally transformed into her true form that of a full ice dragon both Nene and her brother Nils were actually dragons that had originally been born in the lead before the time of the scouring after being taken to the Dragon's Gate during the war their human father had asked them to cross through it should he not return and once they finally did they had unfortunately lost their memories while traveling to the new world as these two controlled the power to open and close the gate they decided to head back to a leave after hearing the voice of Nergal a millennium later and upon arriving back in their homeland they unexpectedly were forced into weak human forms and did not contain the quintessence of a full dragon that nerville needed with Ninian back in her dragon form the sorcerer knew that she was now more valuable as a source of quintessence needing her to be weak first he used his magic to teleport her in front of elly woods group the new lord of pherae wielding the Durandal acted upon instinct when seeing this massive beast suddenly appeared before him and with great speed struck out with a powerful slash which unfortunately struck true on the terrified minion as the dragon transformed back into her beautiful form eliwood was distraught to discover what he had done as Nergal recovered the girl's quintessence and disappeared he taunted the group to come back to the Dragon's Gate to confront him once and for all knowing that this was his chance to retrieve their power and finally accomplished his goal after morning the beautiful dragons death the group set out for the black fangs stronghold knowing that they had to put a stop to Nergal no matter what even though Nergal unleashed his full power against them sending unbelievably vast waves of summoned soldiers eliwood Hector Lind the tactician and the many friends and fighters they had recruited along the way cut down every bit of resistance including the revived versions of many of the black Fang leaders that they had defeated along the way when at last face-to-face with nurdle the legendary warrior Athos himself joined em using two of the legendary tomes to weaken Nergal while the Lords of Lycia cut into him with their own legendary blades at long last they had exhausted the quintessence and power of the seemingly unkillable sorcerer shocked at the reality of his own death finally coming for him Nergal used his last bit of life to finally accomplish his goal and force open the dragon's gate in no time at all three powerful Fire Dragons freely rushed through showing off the kind of power that no human on a liebe had witnessed for nearly the last thousand years as everything seemed to be spiraling out of control the legendary warrior Bremen suddenly reappeared using his own significant magical power to resurrect nyan who then immediately defeated two of the three fire dragons while weakening the third with this sudden assistance it was up to the heroes at hand to defeat the final weakened dragon and after fighting through its blazing resistance at last the group was successful with the world safe for now nene n' and nils knew that they had to close the gate before more dragons could slip through it's here where our story splits a bit and although Nils always decides to return back to the world of dragons Nemean instead decides to stay or go depending on her closeness to eliwood in either case the Dragon's Gate is closed by the power of the ice dragon siblings and Athos having successfully averted another tragedy finally passes away in the company of his new before his death the great sage took a glimpse into the future looking forward at events that were yet to come in the mists of time he saw that an evil would soon be rising in the kingdom of burn and that a new hero would rise within lesya yet again to lead the world back to peace after returning the legendary weapons back to their protective shrines our many heroes returned back to their homes true to athos's vision the power of the legendary weapons would need to be called upon yet again but for now our many heroes settled down into the peace that they had fought so hard for choosing to enjoy what time they had with those that they had come to treasure Fire Emblem 7 was basically intelligent systems second shot and making a smaller scale companion game narrative and the plot that they came up with is really something to behold whether you interpreted that last sentence as positive or negative likely depends on which side of the fire emblem seven story debate that you already fall into because this story just happens to be one of the most polarizing plots in the entire franchise let's just be honest here the plot of the blazing blade is sloppy when looked at in detail a lot of the elements of the story just fall apart and on top of this the generally poor official translation did not do anything to help matters I don't really think that any of this can really be argued against it's just kind of how this game is what surprised me as I started to actually play through this entry was the degree to which some people seem to think that this actually ruins everything else that this game is able to offer to me playing through this series in the chronologically blind way that I am what I most took away from this entry were the ways that the team behind it had become a lot more proficient and actually presenting the story and incorporating its many characters all while keeping the story appropriately simple to approach yet at the same time still making its major events seem impactful and its villains feel intimidating part of this has to do with the extra amount of time which is actually spent on characterizing the available cast of this game for once it isn't just your main heroes and their advisors that have all of dialogue instead multiple members of your army repeatedly contribute to the pre and post battle discussions and even some smaller narratives are also being presented to you at the same time as the main story increased interaction between the caste at large was something that I've been waiting for in a fireman game since the very first one but I also found myself pleasantly surprised at the frequent incorporation of various computer-generated art stills into the story itself something which does a great job at communicating the impact of the story's events to the player while I'm sure these are not to everyone's taste to me they were just a whole lot more engaging than watching the game tried to deliver the same events through simple map sprites as a result of many of these storytelling techniques playing through the blazing blades plot was just an extremely enjoyable experience from start to finish I realize that it's not the most well written story in the franchise far from it but to me this is sort of the Fire Emblem equivalent of a summer popcorn flick it's breezy and enjoyable the first time through but upon closer inspection everything turns out to just be unbelievably dumb while the complex twists and turns of a game like genealogy of the holy war is definitely my cup of tea I have to admit that the appeal of playing through a game like this with simple heroes simple villains and extremely appealing characters sprinkled throughout is also something that I can totally be in the mood for from time to time I can really understand how some people do find themselves also enjoying the story while other people might think it's the worst thing since their son this plot might just be so polarizing because in a way both camps are kind of right for me even though this was far from a masterfully crafted tale I have to admit that I just really loved my time with this story and especially with these characters honestly it's a bit of a toss-up for me exactly which games cast is now my favorite between this and genealogy of the holy war without so many improvements to presentation or such an appealing cast it's likely that I would have found this game a disaster but as it is I guess I'll just have to call it my guilty pleasure it's okay to crave junk food from time to time anyone who insists they never have is a liar [Music] when beginning this retrospective series I had a concern when it came to writing these gameplay sections I asked myself what do I do if I get to a game that is almost identical to the previous one well it's finally time to find that out because in terms of gameplay the blazing blade isn't just like the binding blade it is the binding blade again no other Fire Emblem game thus far has played as similar to any previous game before it nor has any game added so little in terms of gameplay or systems when sitting down to write the script and looking through my notes over the course of my 60 or so hours with this game my list of new additions that this game actually introduced was comically short in fact why don't we go ahead and knock those out real fast first of all of course you now control three Lords as opposed to one with a special item that has been added that will allow you to promote your non Mane's whenever you wish this seems like one of those obvious in retrospect changes and although you now have two more characters who absolutely cannot fall in battle without a game over the amount of improved dialogue in the game that this led to I feel was more than worth it due to Hector eliwood and Lin being canonically Deathproof no matter what happens your hero is going to have their two dynamic friends by their side to chat with next up a new promotion for thieves has been added leading to the assassin a class that is much more capable at fighting in exchange for losing the ability to steal on top of this certain new map conditions have been added such as rain and snow as well as a certain enemy character who is able to create magic nullification zones all of which are interesting ways to shake up your normal formations and lead to refreshing mix ups in the normal gameplay although the merchants and supply holder Merle Ennis returns here or should I say originates here in this game he starts out with a stationary Tennant and thankfully he also no longer takes up a deployments locked even though deploying him leads to you needing to defend him when reinforcements from behind appear there's a clever incentive built in the game where he gains a level for each map that he survives and when reaching level 20 he promotes allowing you to have a constant mobile supply train for the late-game I also like how this encourages you to seek out and do the extra side missions so that he can get more levels to finish things off you can now knock down trees this will make log bridges and I think that's it at Western gamers been able to experience the binding blade at its time of release and then played through the blazing blade later I have no doubt that in the media we would have seen plenty of complaints calling out this entry for being a cheap repeat of what came before there seems to be a certain segment of gamers who believe that all sequels must push the envelope in a very dramatic way in order to justify their existence personally I remember more than a few of these with the outcry over the similarities between splatoon 1 & 2 as a recent example of this frustrating trend to be very clear about my stance on this I don't think that I could be in further disagreement with these people well there's definitely a limit to how long this practice can be pushed sometimes especially with games that were as frustratingly close to greatness as the binding blade was all you really need is more of the same but better and the benefit of developers not rocking the boat every single time is how the level of mastery by the creators is able to increase if the ones making the game actually do try to learn from previous mistakes I really hate to keep calling out The Binding blade because I did enjoy and still respect it but without a doubt it was a game that intelligent systems had to learn from and thankfully they did as I said before in the series it isn't the frame but the engine that changes with each new Fire Emblem game when it comes to the blazing blade that's saying is truer than ever before it's the things here which don't stand out at a first glance that are the legacy of this game and honestly some of these fixes or improvements were more enjoyable for me to experience than many of the brand-new systems that Fire Emblem games had tinkered with before let's go ahead and start out with one of the biggest ones although the double rng system of the binding blade has returned unfortunately along with the confusing practice of still displaying incorrect hit and miss numbers the balance between different weapon types here has been significantly improved done so mostly by simply altering some numbers on the weapons with these changes slower unit types have come back into usability while bringing the completely overpowered speedy dodge tanks of before back in line with the rest of your options next up the frustrating slow growth of support points between units has also been massively improved including completely we're working how support points are limited for each individual map on top of plus 1 and plus 2 relationships being far less common you now have no cap on how many support points you can get in a single battle the control in this now limits you to one support conversation per pair per map and although this seems like a small change it actually ends up taking a lot of the frustration out of planning and executing your desired support parents thankfully you no longer need to be so clinical and planning out your support growth due to any accidental points gained never actually limiting you in any way even though in both of my playthroughs I had multiple characters reached there 5 support cap it really felt like I spent no more than 10 to 15 minutes on each run even thinking about it to top this off a little over halfway through the blazing blade you are finally able to see who each character is able to bond with all in all even though this still isn't my idea of a perfect support system yet especially due to the reality of the best way to raise these support relationships is just wasting turns in front of an empty throne at the very least this is definitely a huge step in the right direction and gave me more than enough incentive to actually seek out these relationships many of the fixes that I've mentioned thus far can massively affect every player's enjoyment of the game but at the same time it's easy for these to overshadow the myriad of other small ways that Fire Emblem 7 continued to perfect its design even though these don't loom as large as the last two small fixes like being able to use stat boosting and promotion items right from the deployment menu the health points of walls being lowered significantly the ability to have a fortune-teller predict things about upcoming maps that often give you hints for who you should bring to recruiting characters the return of the survival and destroy all enemies mission types and the ability to skip unlocked side missions if you want to all more than merit a mention about the only question will change of hidden amongst this bunch was the decision to adjust the damage multiplier on what are called effective weapons this doesn't mean the weapon triangle but rather things like using a PO against a fly enemy rather than the classic x 3 damage which is actually retained in the Japanese versions of this game all Western versions have lowered this 2 times 2 damage this seems to be a change for the sake of accessibility for new players and although I can get past most of these things like the overbearing tutorial due to it being able to be skipped on hard mode this is one change that I think was way overly precautious and a rather short-sighted decision by the developers without having taken the time to play through all the prior Fire Emblem games before this one it's likely that the improvements that the blazing Blade brought to the table would have been completely lost on me it was a pretty special experience to play it in the context of all the previous games before it and for me I think the intent of this entry to bring the fire home games to a whole new level of polish just in time for its debut worldwide was a very wise decision with all this in mind I think it's finally time that we take a step back and see how it holds up overall [Music] for me it's really remarkable that this game the one which most set out to be a perfect version of itself after learning from its failures was the one which got to be the first Fire Emblem game for thousands worldwide even though I believe that now all of the prior games are fully worthy of being released in the Western market at the time of its release I can't imagine a more perfect entry to introduce new players to this gameplay this is a game that features extremely memorable heroes and villains all set in a very well realized world this is on top of a fantastic soundtrack wonderful character animations and combat balance and despite its flaws a thoroughly engaging story needless to say I had an amazing time playing my way through the blazing blade along with genealogy of the holy war this was one of the few games that had me hungry to begin my second playthrough immediately after finishing the first had this been the first game released to the west or not I really believe that Fire Emblem 7 would still have served the same purpose that it often does today being a V standard for which subsequent games are judged all in all the blazing blade is a brilliantly balanced extremely enjoyable absolutely solid Fire Emblem experience and without a doubt it has quickly become one of my favorites in the franchise thus far a highly highly recommended game [Music] our next stop on the fire emblem retrospective it takes us into the new land of mag mel and the final game for the Game Boy Advance starring the siblings Erica and Ephram on their quest to restore their lost homeland be sure to join me next time as we jump into fire emblem 8 the sacred stones if you don't feel like waiting then you can actually watch the next episode of this retrospective series right now all you have to do is click the link in the description to become a patreon supporter for as little as $1 you can gain one week early access to all my videos including the sacred stones video right now you can also gain full seasons of my videos for $3 and immediate access to everything for both this and my second channel warriors dojo for $5 please consider helping my channel grow and this series continue with your support today until next time thank you very much for watching I'd like to give a special thank you to my top patrons Henry Gutierrez Ignace ISIL and men at Rice as well as to all my other supporters over on patreon thank you all very much [Music]

Channel: ShaneBrained

Views: 44,330

Keywords: Fire Emblem, Fire Emblem Awakening, Fire Emblem Three Houses, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Games, Series: Fire Emblem, Retrospective, Marth, Arvis, Fire Emblem Mystery of the Emblem, Fire Emblem Warriors, Thracia 776, Leif, Finn, The Blazing Blade, 2003, Blazing Sword, Eliwood, Hector, Roy, Lyn

Id: _0P5c4SU6q0

Length: 36min 49sec (2209 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 11 2020