My History with Fire Emblem: A top 5 countdown of my most Memorable Moments

            Fire Emblem is definitely one of my favorite gaming franchises from Nintendo along with The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Kirby, Pokémon, Metroid, and Smash Bros. Series. To honor the release of the new entry in the series; Fire Emblem Fates, I’m going to list my top five favorite moments/experiences I have had in the series. This is also to let you know how I feel about the series as I’m playing through Birthrights and Conquest right now and I plan on posting my reviews of them after I complete them.

Warning Slight Spoilers:

5. The End of Grima (Awakening)

Huge spoiler here, this is the ending in Awakening. Your avatar is given the choice to deliver the final blow to Grima who is you from Lucina’s future, or have Chrom deliver the final blow sealing Grima away. These choices impacted the idea for Fates, and rightly so. Making the choice to seal Grima away would keep the danger you face at bay, but with inevitable return of Grima in the distant future. The other choice - delivering the final blow kills your avatar, because having your past-self kill your future-self does that for some reason. Despite the nonsense that this makes, it is truly a grueling choice and all your companions are against your decision to sacrifice yourself for the greater good. I chose that as my first ending in Awakening and the emotions that were sprouted from the reactions of all my party members was truly a testimony of how well written the impact of the decision was. Which it is why it is at #5.

4. Arenas (Shadow Dragon)

Arenas are a bit of a mini game you can do in Shadow Dragon to improve your characters abilities. Now this was when perma-death was still a thing and you couldn’t turn it off. It was a risk to do the arenas to level up your characters because if they accidentally died in the arena (which happens often). When this happened I lost a character who I was working on that may have died at first try, or after a long time of doing multiple runs in the arena on that level. Let’s say that it is a bittersweet memory that I enjoy the fun I had but also disliked losing the tedious amount of hours I spent on it. Sadly arenas did not make a reappearance in Awakening (or Fates) in the way it was in Shadow Dragon.

3.  The First Game I played in the series (Sacred Stones)

            My dad is a huge influence as to why I play video games today. He is still a gamer today, and we still talk about games we played and share our opinions, and even play games online together while I’m at college. This is the story of how my dad got me into my first Fire Emblem game. I was in 3^rd Grade and I was saving my allowance for a new game boy advance game. My dad told me I should get Fire Emblem Sacred Stones. My dad was smarter than me because he looked at reviews at the time to know if the game would be any good and to know if it would be something I would enjoy. I saved up my money and picked up Sacred Stones and I adored it. I tell my dad that because of his influence I would never have gotten into the series without him pushing me to get Sacred Stones. Which is why this one of my favorite memories with this series.

2. Perma-death (The Entire Franchise)

            This is totally cheating, but hey, it is a memorable thing in my experiences. I’m in a level. My character gets cornered. And they die.  And they don’t come back.  Ever… Unless you use the L+ R + Select + Start sequence which will never you when trying to catch a Legendary Pokémon or when you try to keep your units alive in Fire Emblem. Let’s just say I’ve lost several characters I really enjoyed and couldn’t get past a level without a few sacrifices.

1.     How I finished Path of Radiance (Path of Radiance)

I was honestly surprised how long and tough Path of Radiance was in comparison to Sacred Stones and Fire Emblem on the GBA. The last boss in the game, the Mad King Ashnard could only be attacked by Ike who wielded a legendary weapon called Ragnell.  Legendary weapons are the only way legendary things can be destroyed. Which two characters in the game had legendary armor and weapons. Ashnard and the Black Knight who both had legendary weapons and armor. One just happens to be a king and the end game boss. Ashnard’s end game level was obscene even in Fire Emblem standards. Never ending high level units would come back as reinforcements. Many of my favorite characters died to them as we progressed our way to Ashnard. I eventually got to Ashnard but I needed to buy time against his elite minions. I had my units fight to the last man. All of my supporting characters died! Ike defeated Ashnard and I was super happy that I finally finished the game. However, my joy was killed as the credit rolled. In Fire Emblem games it is traditional to tell the stories of what happens to your characters after the campaign ends via text in the credits portion of the game. All of the characters who lived because of plot armor were the only ones to have text reading of what happened after the end of the game. Now all of the other characters that died - well the game rubbed salt in the wound big time. "This character died Chapter 29," as over half the cast were read that way. To make it even worse, "their stories were forever lost in history". I was in Fifth Grade when I finished the game and I sat in front of my TV reading all of this, mouth wide opened, dumb founded by being told of what happened to my beloved characters. I’m still very salty about this to this day. This is the reason why it is my number one memory of the  series. It is also my favorite story tell, and also my saltiest memory of this game I loved. It is very memorable and it is something I try to avoid in the other games  in the series because of this experience.