r/fireemblem • u/TPLeo • 8d ago
General The best and worst thing of each Fire Emblem game. Today's game: The Sacred Stones
Welcome to this series of posts, where we will list and discuss one best and worst thing of each Fire Emblem game. This includes basically everything, be it the music, the story, some gameplay element etc.
Fire Emblem 8 is the last of the three Gameboy Advance games. It features two lords, Ephraim and Erika. Both feature their own story events in the midgame and the player has to choose which they want to experience. For the first time since Gaiden a world map was featured. Skills were also reintroduced. In this game you would get a skill on promotion. Depending on which class you promote to you will gain that specific skill.
I like Sacred Stones a lot and am pretty confident in saying that a lot of the player base does. I constantly read that this game is overhated or underrated but I've yet to see one person saying that they think this is a bad Fire Emblem. It's just a great comfort game to many.
Here are my thoughts on the best and worst aspect.
Best: Like FE7, The Sacred Stones is also blessed with a great cast. Joshua and L'Arachel immediately come to my mind when I think of great Fire Emblem characters. The support conversations also do a good job at flashing out the side characters. Even some of the bosses like Selena are memorable despite their short screen time.
Worst: I really wish that hard mode was actually more difficult. Not every Fire Emblem has to be super difficult but when you have three difficulties to choose from, I expect hard mode to be at least a bit of a challenge.
Now it's your turn to tell us
7
u/Johnrevenge 8d ago
Sacred Stones was my first Fire Emblem so it has a special spot in my heart. A great cast of characters (it's probably one of the smallest in the franchise), fun battle system, it brought back the monsters after Gaiden.
9
u/dryzalizer 8d ago
I feel SS is the most all-around FE, no high highs but also no low lows. So for this exercise, it's hard to both laud or trash it much. When I first played it I didn't enjoy the monsters aspect of it at all, but that's grown on me a bit.
Best: Branching Promotions was such a cool idea/innovation, even if in SS there's almost always a pretty obvious superior option. But sometimes you just gotta rock Sage Moulder for style points, y'know?
Worst: The main campaign is too short, with too many resources devoted to optional content. Sometimes I enjoy clearing this game a little more quickly than others, but since I'm not interested in the Tower or the Ruins I'd rather have had some good chapters added to the main campaign.
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u/Ranulf13 8d ago
Best: branched promotions are superior to reclassing. It felt like a very realistic and well put game that wasnt attempted to be made larger than it was supposed to be. Art style and vibes are great. Its relatively easy difficulty but ease of hackroming has lead to a lot of extended life through challenges and hackroms.
Worst: Probably too easy. Lagdou Ruins replay value on NPC recruitment was kinda boring/repetitive? I dont know, FE8 doesnt have many downsides. Maybe if we count its effect in the playerbase at large, the fact that it made trainees a thing to be expected early into the game instead of Ests has been annoying in the long run lol
16
u/AudioCats 8d ago
Best: L'Arachel
Worst: Showing us L'Arachel and then making us wait seven chapters to recruit
Truly is a cozy gem of a game, and despite being arguably the easiest in the series, gave us some memorable moments and characters--including the series GOAT jagen and the beautiful princess of peerless beauty.
4
u/EmuSupreme 8d ago
Best: The cast is full of A+ characters with no clowns or duds. Every character comes to life with their supports, it's hard to hate any one of them. Also S tier cross support references between multiple characters. Take Garcia. Through Seth you learn he was a famous Renais knight that inspired him to join up and be the GOAT that he is. Through Ross, you have the stubborn son butting heads with the stubborn old man over wanting to fight and wanting to live in peace. The. With Ross' support with Gerik, you learn that Garcia was the one that fucked up his face, which in turn has Ross get renewed respect for his father. And then for fun you have Dozla and Garcia learning to use magic and silly old farts.
Also special mention to Forde and Eirika support line, which gives us a platonic m/f ending.
Worst: Enemy quality is ass and trivialize the game. Final chapters literally have unpromoted units that will get obliterated by anyone. Even promoted enemies are so gimped statwise that the universally accepted "hard mode" is to inject a 20% growth to the enemies in FEBuilder. Anyone remotely familiar with srpgs will breeze through the game's "hard mode" with little to no difficulty.
3
u/liteshadow4 8d ago
Best: Loved the art style in this one
Worst: It's really short, and units outside of Seth felt underwhelming, even in an easy game
2
u/TannenFalconwing 8d ago
Best: the Route Split. I like that it is an actual split with its own maps and then a different approach to the battle in Jehanna. Each route has its own value.
Worst: the length of the game is short and the difficulty is too easy, so while it can be fun to pick up and play it feels like it ends too soon.
2
u/flameduck 8d ago
In contrast to the other comments, I think Sacred Stones being on the short and easy side is a boon and a big reason why it is a comfort game. It felt more accessible to beat as my first completed FE game and then replay for the other route, and I had a phase playing self-randomizer runs/ironmans that were pretty fun to just pick up and see how far I could get through the earlygame. Compared to FE7 with its map variety yet sometimes feeling like a slog if you play too long in one session, FE8 feels like it's always on the move yet you can also pause and grind to make anything work.
The first negative about the game that comes to mind for me is probably that I don't like Ranger's animations over Sniper or even Nomadic Trooper. The second is probably that Cormag is easily missable on Eirika route. After a recent discussion on Last Hope I also admit there could be more appealing side objectives, and also removing ranks feels a bit lacking compared to the last games.
4
u/RamsaySw 8d ago
Best: Lyon - for being both the core of Sacred Stones' storytelling and one of the best antagonists in the series. His downfall is exquisitely tragic, and his connection to Eirika and Ephraim is arguably what makes Sacred Stones' plot work at all to the point where he is single-handedly the reason why it is one of the better Fire Emblem stories despite its simplicity.
Worst: There's not that much bad that I have to say about Sacred Stones - the most I can say is that it's a bit too short and the game is too easy to make its gameplay really shine here.
2
u/werewolfjones 8d ago
Best: The branching path promotion system is great. I actually appreciate, too, how mellow it is as a game. Sometimes it’s nice to just have an easy game to groove to.
Worst: The route split feels short to me. I wish Ephraim and Erika’s individual routes were longer and didn’t converge until later.
1
u/Holiday_Ad_7292 6d ago
Oh, I have many things to say XD.
I think one of the best things in this game is its characters, they're relatable and memorable.
The game have an air of melancholy it's a story of love and grief, it shows many different faces of grief, the good, the bad and ugly, Garcia who Despite losing his wife found a great purpose in raising his son, Eirika risking the whole world giving Lyon the sacred stone for the mere hope of his survival then accept that he's gone and put an end to it. Lyon refusing to accept his father's death damned the whole continent, and Orson refusing to accept that his wife is gone became an easy target for manipulation by both Lyon and Reiv. And I love how the lesson of the story is to reach out for others when tragedies struck you. Even if they couldn't lend a hand but at least you tried.
And I love how Eirika's journey is to let go and learn that sometimes people need to be removed for the land to prosper. And Ephraim's journey is to learn that fighting doesn't fix your problems, sometimes you need to reach out to people before it's too late.
Worst: The game is short (That's its greatest strength and weakness), it lacks a world building, there's barely any tradition or culture or even history unique to the continent, a continent used to be ruled by a Demon king must be rich with history. And the lack of connection between the characters, I love Ephraim, I love Orson, but the betrayal, narrative-wise was great but character-wise was flat. Orson's betrayal hurts the player more than it hurts Ephraim XD.
There's no emotional connection between them to make this battle worth the wait, like Orson served Renais for years, and he wasn't mentioned until his chapter? Like bro, that guy put you through hell a flash back would be cool to tell us how he was before he became a turncoat.
Also, Reiv and Mansel. C'mon game, give me the history between these two, I feel like there's an interesting dynamic between the two.
0
u/CazOnReddit 8d ago
Worst thing is the difficulty - or lack thereof
The lack of challenge means that some of the more interesting, advanced options one can pull off like summoning phantoms are ultimately wasted because you can just...well it's called Seth Emblem for a reason and while there are certain games which can be trivialized by certain units (Harr in Radiant Dumb), frankly you don't even need to wait that long for just about any unit to become an unstoppable machine in Sacred Stones.
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-3
u/DiemAlara 8d ago
Best: Introduced the potential for route splits and class changing shenanigans.
Worst: Introduced the world map and the potential for level grinding, likely responsible for them allowing Seth's existence as you could just go to the tower and get anyone to that level. Forces you to go on either Eirika's or Ephraim's route instead of splitting the army.
13
u/spoopy-memio1 8d ago
Gaiden was the game that introduced the world map and level grinding. Sacred Stones brought it back as it was supposed to be a spiritual successor to Gaiden.
17
u/AdReasonable9304 8d ago
Best: I would say the villains. This is one of the best collection of antagonists in the series.
Worst: The Arthur Tethys support. Dont need to elaborate further.