Fire Emblem - The Sacred Stones

[Andrew]

So.... who's played this second GBA Fire Emblem installment?

I have, and finished it. Personally, I don't feel its as good as the first one with Eliwood, Lyn and Hector, but its still a good epic to battle through.

The only issue I have with it, is that in the first, unless you absued the col. it was hard to level up all your characters. Now you're given a world map to pretty much level up at will! Whilst helpful, I don't really think its a great inclusion and makes the storyline droop a bit.

However, there are some nifty new features such as Newbie Classes, such as the Student, Recruit and Journeyman. If you take care of these classes when they are most frail and level up, you'll be given a nicely powerful unit for your effort.

Finally, there's the new issue of when you choose to promote your characters, you get a choice of two options. This customization can lead to a great deal of options with your final team.

I'd give it an 8/10 a fine waste of time.

[Razola]

The permanent death feature still in? It was the only thing that really turned me off.

[Andrew]

PermaDeath is still active, and its one of the main reasons I absolutely love the game as opposed to "Advance Wars" simply because you get to know the characters and you really strive to keep them alive.

[Tainted]

Same, the perma-death feature, although frustrating, made you really care about your characters dying. I forget where I am, but I do know I'm definately past the point where you get to choose to go with the chick or the dude. I chose the dude.

I got my journeyman leveled up to a level 5 Berserker, from the tower thinger, and he has grown to be my favorite character.

Adieu,
Zak Hunter

[Andrew]

Oh, Ross, I got him to promote into a Pirate, than Beserker, he's definately one of my most powerful units. Like Ewan, he went from Student to Dark Arts fellow to a summoner. Emila the lance girl is also incredible, I got her to be fat and wear the awful clunky armour, then promoted her into the Heavy Horse thing.... lol, Axes, Lances and Swords!

Those three are by far some of the most powerful if you look after them.

[Musourenka]

I beat it just a few days ago. For the most part, it's a lot easier than the previous Fire Emblem, partly because of how you can level up units whenever you need to, and partly because the maps just don't seem as difficult this time around. I can think of perhaps four or five maps that were difficult, and I only had a few resets due to deaths. The legendary weapons are also extremely powerful. Excalibur > everything.

It's still fun, though, especially with the variety of character classes, though some classes completely outclass others (Wyvern Knight > All other flying class options).

Oh yeah... L'Arachel > All of you.

[Leon-IH]

Well, it's about 20% easier than the old fire emblem (which is one of my faveourite games of all time) which makes me very angry because having done the old one on hard in Hector mode (VERY difficult) this just doesn't seem like it's much of a challenge to me. So far though I'm only at lvl11 so it might get harder later on, but it still seems piss easy next to the old one.

On a side note: the addition of a lance based hero makes life very easy as my main issue with the old one was leveling Lyn up cause it always made me need to level one more lance type charecter and drop someone like Guy or Raven so I didn't have too many swordsmen (gotta keep it all in proportion on hector/hard mode or it's nearly impossible to beat Nergal's level).

[Dark Scizor]

I liked this game a lot. Can't be bothered to type much apart from, like the first Fire Emblem to come out on the GBA, I raised my Pegasus Knight (Tana) to kick everyone's ass. Anyone else find that there were a bit too many "legendary weapons" to use and abuse? The only beginner I raised was Amelia, I would have done the others, but I couldn't be bothered.

[Musourenka]

Yes, there are legendary weapons up the wazoo. Too bad Glepnir (the Dark tome) isn't worth a damn.