Prologue
Vocalist
Verdant Maiden in Violet
- Location
- By a Cedar Tree
Well, hello there. (Sorry about the tiny screenshots. I figure out how to fix them later.)
This here is my attempt to document my playthough of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, the eighth game in the long-running strategy RPG series. It is my first full playthrough of any retro FE game. Although I've been calling myself a Fire Emblem fan for years, I have only ever played the modern (i.e. Awakening and later) games. I simply don't own the platforms for most of them. But emulating the Game Boy Advance, I am told, is fairly idiot-proof – and there are three Fire Emblems on that console.
Of the three, why did I choose Sacred Stones? Well, the other two are a duology, and because I have a fairly bad track record of finishing games I preferred the one with a self-contained story. Secondly, that game has a reputation for being far too easy – and, given the sort of devoted minmaxers who populate the FE fandom, I think it should offer a challenge more appropriate for my own skills. Thirdly…well, given the choice to play as a man or a woman, I will pick the woman, nine times out of ten! (And that other time is limited to second playthroughs where I'm trying to romance unfortunately-heterosexual ladies).
And Sacred Stones lets you choose which of two twins – Ephraim or Eirika – you want to be the main character. Sold. I'm doing this.
Now a word on my setup: I am playing this on my laptop using the emulator Visual Boy Advance. Modders apparently understand the code for this game about as well as their ABCs by this point, and everything from bug-fixes to entire new campaigns in the same engine are available, but for my first playthrough I was going to go completely vanilla.
Then while browsing Serenes Forest I followed a link to this mod, Restoration Queen. It's a "script edit focused on bringing Eirika and other female characters to the forefront of the story" – in other words, there was a palpable aura of misogyny hanging around some parts, where you could tell the writers didn't really respect the female characters, and these two modders did their best to counteract that. (You know, the kind of moment where a male character is like, "But as a FRAGILE WOMAN you must stay here and be safe while I fight!" despite the fact that his party has been half-female for the whole game.) I definitely vibe with that urge – in fact, I have actually written fix-it fanfiction for similar reasons – but I feel that it's important to experience the original script and form my own opinions on it, rather than the version filtered through someone else's –
Oh and the mod also includes explicitly romantic female/female supports? Sold. I'm doing this.
So the following playthough will be of the Restoration Queen version, which does not make any major changes to the story's events. Sorry if you wanted to read my thoughts on sexism in Japanese media, but my lesbian yearnings need to be fed.
One more thing that I ought to address before I start is my position on spoilers: please don't. While we are all in this thread, any material that happens later than my latest post does not exist, and you will not hint at it. It's admittedly an artificial barrier, maintained mostly for the sake of preserving my emotional reactions. I've never played this game before, but you can't hang around FE fandom spaces without absorbing some details through osmosis. However, for the purposes of this Let's Play I will be taking all that knowledge and shoving it in a desk drawer, and I recommend that you do the same.
So! Let's begin!
We begin with a killer opening. Ephraim and Eirika get flashy introductions (while I was still figuring out how to take screenshots), followed by some more characters.
This guy's portrait looks a little janky though? It's more zoomed-out than everyone else's and that makes his face look small. I think they were trying to fit his horse in the portrait, but then they cropped the horse almost entirely out and it just looks bad.
Then what seems like every character in the game gets a little portrait that flashes by quickly. (Fire Emblem, for the unfamiliar, are strategy games where you control a whole army, or at least an approximation of one. They tend to have a lot of playable characters.)
We land on the title screen, I start a new game, and – since the game's reputed level of difficulty is very low – I choose to play on Difficult. I'm not great at these games, but I like to think I'm not bad, either.
We then get a pretty generic backstory text crawl. Ancient darkness, Demon King, all hope was lost, the hero Grado sealed it away with Sacred Stones, yadda yadda. What follows that generic exposition dump is a much more specific exposition dump, one of those zoomed-out views of the continent (called Magvel, by the way) that proceeds to highlight each country and talk about them one by one. I love these. I don't care if they're cliché and they promote an over-simplified view of geopolitics, I love it when stories do this.
Unfortunately, I can't include all my screenshots because of the limit on images per post, so have the most relevant two countries and Jehanna, which gets special treatment on account of Queen Ismaire being very pretty. Will she be a playable character? Gods, I hope so. FE tends to be stingy with mature female characters – you'll get one or two grizzled male war veterans, but women, apparently, wilt like lettuce after age 20. Grumble grumble. Of the countries I couldn't show you, Frelia is ruled by Hayden the Sage King, Rausten is ruled by the Divine Emperor Mansel, and Carcino is a merchant republic (with no named ruler). It's not every day you see one of those represented in this kind of story (since they cleave so tightly to an idealized vision of monarchy). I'm not confident that Carcino will be very important, but we'll see.
Finally, the background is out of the way and the story proper starts: Grado (the country was presumably named after the ancient hero) has invaded Renais. Their devastating advance is conveyed through some red enemy sprites on the map, surrounding the blue 'player' sprites. I also love this style.
We now transition to a scene within the throne room of Castle Renais (by the way, is anyone else here irritated by the tendency of some stories to give a country's capital the same name as the country itself? It's confusing and it breaks my suspension of disbelief. Just make up a second name!) Ah, back on topic: King Fado receives a message runner who tells him that the gates have been breached and there's no way they can pull through. Prince Ephraim is fighting elsewhere, but they haven't had word from him in days and he's certainly too far away to lend aid.
He replies to this news with an amazingly composed, "I understand." Then he gives the order for all his men to lay down their weapons. It's an understated scene, but it's clear that, despite being called a warrior king, he doesn't want his men to throw their lives away fighting in a last stand. Then he calls to his daughter, Eirika, who is standing beside the throne.
…He asks her about her bracelet, oddly enough. The conversation is calm, and he orders a red-haired guy (I think it's the janky-looking guy on a horse from the intro!) named General Seth to take his daughter to Frelia and ask the king there for aid. Despite the matter-of-fact dialogue, this scene is quite tense (there's an excellent music track playing) and as it goes on you can see these people start to break down, starting to get more emotional.
King Fado refuses to flee. It's not just that he feels it's his duty as king to stay here to the very end – he also feels a burning desire to know why the Empire of Grado invaded, and aims to ask them himself. It's becoming clear to me now that Renais's swift fall wasn't just because Grado was bigger and more powerful, wasn't just because this is the first act crisis that can't be stopped – they simply weren't prepared at all. The two nations were allies.
Usually, wars don't break out overnight. War is actually very expensive and usually unpopular. It's a political last resort. Wars break out after tensions build for years. Nations invade when there are clear advantages to doing so, and they invade the neighbors who were already scared because of the clear possibility of an invasion. Grado invading Renais would be like the United States invading Canada. Why break into your friend's house and rob the place when you could just ask him for a loan?
Eirika starts yelling, trying to make him reconsider. It's clear that they all expect King Fado to die doing this. Seth just…well, the animations are limited, but it really looks like he just throws her onto his horse and leaves (let's not question what his horse was doing inside the throne room). Another cavalier leaves with them.
Immediately, the room fills with red sprites (red means enemy, and in this case, presumably Grado's soldiers. Gradoan soldiers? Gradene? I'll decide later. I've already decided that the demonym for people from Renais will be Renaisian.) Fado's last words are a plea for his children to pull through. The scene fades out.
Outside, we learn that the soldier who left with Seth and Eirika is named Franz. Seth orders him to ride ahead. Fire Emblem usually operates on the assumption that the characters you control are a sort of abstraction – of course you didn't win this battle with just eleven people, there was a whole army there, these are just the important people in the army. But in this moment, it's clear that Eirika, Franz, and Seth are literally just Eirika, Franz, and Seth. And they would really appreciate not being just Eirika, Franz, and Seth while the whole country is crawling with hostile soldiers, so Seth sends Franz on ahead in the hopes that he can get some extra men from Frelia – leaving just Eirika and Seth.
And what do you know! Some hostile soldiers show up! The sprites are tiny and complex, but I think those are supposed to be wyvern riders, a recurring class in FE. They're led by a dude named Valter, who claims to be a Gradoan General, and immediately he pegs Eirika as the princess. As an example of the kind of changes introduced by the Restoration Queen mod, in the original script Valter's line is "You there, with the girl. Tell me, would that be the wayward princess of Renais?" He's addressing Seth, not Eirika herself.
There's a little in-game battle cutscene as Seth stands in defense of his charge (Valter delivers a badass line here, which I screenshotted for posterity. Note, too, his sick pink-and-indigo mount.)(Another note: he's using a lance, when in the games I'm accustomed to, wyvern riders use axes. Interesting.) Seth cannot beat him, and after one round of combat he grabs Eirika again and skedaddles. Valter stands there and boasts a little more, but he doesn't pursue despite the fact that, as a flying class, he and his men should have mobility equal or superior to Seth's.
In the following scene, Seth apologizes for grabbing her (again) and Eirika tells him that he has standing permission to carry her out of life-threatening peril from now on. I find this scene funny because it seems to confirm the interpretation that Seth really has been throwing her on his horse like a royal potato sack and riding like hell. Ouch.
Seth hands Eirika a weapon (a Rapier) and tells her she'll need to defend herself, even though her sprite has been holding a sword this whole time.
And immediately after this, soldiers appear! It's time for the combat tutorial!
This first map is quite small and simple in layout. Only three enemies, arranged in a tight corridor bounded by mountains. All of the enemies in this chapter are axe fighters (even though Valter's wyvern riders would logically be the ones in pursuit), the better for Eirika to style on. You see, where other games have elemental strengths and weaknesses, Fire Emblem has a 'weapon triangle'. Swords beat axes, axes beat lances, and lances beat swords. It's just a point of damage and a few percentage points of accuracy either way, but it matters a surprising amount. HP in Fire Emblem games is relatively constrained – as an example, Eirika here starts with 16 HP, which is fragile, but I've seen fragiler. As a rough benchmark – because this does differ from game to game – 40 HP is good for a tanky player character, and 80 HP is late-game boss material. So a one-point difference in damage is actually significant. Plus, an enemy you can't kill in one round is an enemy who can deal full damage to you on their turn. While I'm explaining the basics of Fire Emblem, I'll go through basic combat.
You start your turn by selecting a unit, moving…
Selecting an action from the menu (Eirika is in range of an enemy, so she can attack)…
Checking the combat forecast to make sure it's a good idea to attack that guy… (To read the combat forecast, just remember that blue means player and red means enemy. So Eirika here has 16 HP, deals 7 damage (times two, she attacks twice because she has greater speed), with 100 percent accuracy and a 14 percent chance to do a critical hit. Meanwhile, the enemy soldier has 23 HP, does 9 damage, with a 39 percent chance to hit and a 0 percent chance to crit.
And on her very first try, Eirika gets a critical hit! Critical hits double your damage, so all together she does 21 damage to this guy…leaving him with two HP. Huh.
You know, I think I understand now why people say that Eirika is a weak character. She can't kill an enemy in her tutorial chapter with a critical hit – she starts with 4 Strength, which is not ideal for someone who uses a sword – and is so fragile that those same enemies can kill her in two hits. Sure, they only have a 39 percent chance to land those hits, but it's still not comfortable. Let's say Eirika were to get hit during this first battle, taking 9 away from her HP and leaving her with 7. If you use Seth to then kill one of the two fighters in front of her, your turn would be over because all of your units have moved. Then, the remaining fighter would go, attack Eirika, and – if he got lucky and hit – kill her. Game over. On the tutorial battle.
Well, these enemies have bad enough accuracy that we don't actually take any damage in my run. Although, in a nice touch, Seth still has only 13 HP left from his unsuccessful attempt to fight Valter. I like it when FE integrates story and gameplay like that. Perhaps it's also an attempt to encourage players to use Eirika, since Seth is more than strong enough to kill all the enemies by himself. Yes, even with his injuries – they only do like 2 damage to him, and unlike Eirika, he does enough damage to kill them in one round.
Look at how much better his numbers are! Seth is an example of a "Jeigan" – it's a character archetype named after a guy named Jeigan from the first game (the FE fandom is full of terms like this – imagine if, every time a dark knight showed up in a Final Fantasy game, fans started calling him 'a Cecil', and then other fans would object, arguing that he can't be a true Cecil if he doesn't start on the side of evil and then defect). Anyway, a Jeigan is an experienced older knight who rides a horse, fights with a lance (Seth starts with both a lance and a sword), advises and guards the hero, and has stats and equipment that the other characters can't hope to match until much later in the game.
Why am I telling you this? On one hand, it is kind of silly and immaterial trivia. On the other hand, it's a great example of how Fire Emblem likes to meld story and gameplay. Of course the experienced knight starts at a higher level than the fresh-faced young protagonist. Of course an important noble would have a bodyguard for protection.
A good way of viewing Fire Emblem gameplay is that each character the game gives you is a tool in your toolbox. Each tool has the uses it's suited for. Seth – and characters like him – are exceptionally powerful tools. You can send them to thin a swarm of enemies and they'll make it through dinged but alive; you can send them across the map to reach a side objective with their high mobility (being on a horse and all); you can use them to safely kill a boss with high defenses that no one else can touch. But know that, since their level is so much higher than the enemies in the early game, they will gain very little experience from kills. Your other units could have used that kill to get a level up…oh, and that fancy lance? It's got limited durability. Weapons in Fire Emblem can only be used a limited number of times before they break. Seth can hit an enemy exactly twenty times with his powerful Silver Lance, and thirty times with his less-powerful Steel Sword. I am going to be treating him going forward like, say, a powerful gun with limited ammo. Use him for the jobs no one else can do, and otherwise save the exp for my faster-growing units.
Gods know Eirika's going to need it. 4 Strength and 3 Defense. Wow. This is my protagonist. I have to use her in every battle.
Anyway I use Seth to take down the boss, a Gradoan commander named O'Neill, and that's the end of this battle. There's another small scene. Eirika and Seth catch their breath, and Eirika takes the time to air some of her feelings.
Of course you're fine, you didn't take any damage in that battle! More seriously – Eirika has never killed people before. She's only ever known training, not real battle (Still doesn't excuse not being able to kill enemies in the tutorial with a crit! If your story's getting in the way of good gameplay, change the story!). Her brother seems like more of a warrior – and it's too early to say anything about this Lyon character – but she really doesn't like killing people. She recognizes the true ugliness of war.
And then she's done. Excellent!
I'm genuinely being complimentary here – Eirika's monologue, Seth's response, and her concluding statement are done in ten presses of the A button (well, the Enter key, I'm playing this on a laptop). I counted. She expresses her shock and disgust, asks why the Emperor of Grado would start a war, resolves to keep fighting until she can be reunited with her father and brother, and we're done. It's evocative, economical writing, and I say that in a spirit of praise. I've played enough JRPGs and visual novels that go on and on – characters will say they're storming out in anger and take ten presses of the A button to get to the door. Perhaps there's something to be said for old-fashioned memory space limitations.
And with that, we're done with the Prologue!
(I'd like some feedback - how are the images looking? It took me a lot of wrangling to get them here, and I know they're a little small. I can try to make them bigger.)
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