Half-Masked

Some Clarification:

Fire Emblem: Sacred Swords is a turn-based strategy game in a Fantasy yarn. Swords, sorcery, etc. What sets this series apart is that there are no faceless waves of grunt soldiers at your disposal. Every single recruitable troop in these games have individual appearances, special skills, weaponry, personalities, back-stories and relationships with the other characters. Each one is given a real voice, even if it’s a limited voice at that. Each soul echoes into something a little more valuable than wave after wave of suicidal little polygons in green combat attire(which is what we normally get from strategy games).

Oh, and there’s no Phoenix Downs here. When a character’s Hit Points go down to zero here, they are Dead with a capital D. That’s it. The End. This can alter future cutscenes, but only the “Lords” (IE: The main characters, usually no more than 3) are required to stay alive throughout the entire game. The battles you face in these games become increasingly complex and difficult, requiring strong, careful thought and consideration as well as strategic cunning. So, it’s generally a good idea to try and conserve as many troops as possible. The last few missions are usually a doozy.

One thing I like is that, if you put certain characters next to each other enough times, they’ll have little conversations that opens them up a little to the audience. Perhaps they relate tales of their youth, or suffer an argument, or words of encouragement. This makes it so that no matter how small their contribution to the story, no matter how uninteresting or weak they are, they are all a little indispensable.

On an optional mission, I had the following recruits:

Leader, Tank, Flying, Healer, Pirate, Archer, Thief, Priest, Mage. Combined, they weigh about 92 lbs.

The top 4 are a little higher-priority than the bottom row. Anyone who has played this game can see this is a terrible group to bring into battle. It is filled with weaklings. Archers, mages, priests, thieves and “Pegasus Knights”. Only one character in this group can withstand a gentle breeze and live to tell the tale, and that’s “Gilliam” the big green Tank in the upper left (which I’ve just noticed now is either delightfully ironic or the most obscure video game reference of all time). If anyone is going to survive this battle, it’s him. He’s an immovable object. I set him up, and they can’t knock him down. It’s going to take something a little more godly to best him.

Why did I bring all of these frail specialty troops into this gargantuan battle against the undead? That’s the thing with me: I’m not the type of guy who obsessively uber-trains certain characters into the ground and lets them take care of the entire game. I prefer covering my bases, and bringing the “inferior” characters up to code. I thought this would be a good opportunity to give these guys some much-needed Experience. I did not expect to fight 26 zombies, skeleton knights, giant spiders, wolf monsters, centaurs with giant battle-axes and crazy floating eyeballs that cast instantaneous death.

Ross, Neimi, Lute, Artur, Moulder and Corm aren’t totally helpless, but they’re not too far from it. Ross was for the first 6 chapters of the game. He’s young, he’s son to a much stronger axe-wielder. He’s the smallest, has the lowest HP, but if paired with other characters, and as long as he has an escape route, he can get by. I decided to train him until he could be promoted to a stronger class. But since his momma died, and their village destroyed by bandits, he and his father “Garcia” have had something to prove. He’s this game’s Rudy.

With patience and commitment, he does become stronger. Eventually I promoted him to a Pirate, which means he wields 2 axes at the same time. You know what they say about guys with two axes.

Lute is an ego-maniacal magic prodigy, who never turns down a chance to be insulting to everyone around her. She is a very “Mike Judge” character, if you know what I mean. I know I should hate this person, but god help me, I find her massive ego and patronizing rudeness somehow entertaining. The highlight would be when she lectures Vanessa, an experienced Pegasus Knight, on Pegasus mythology. Then when the conversation ends, she only says goodbye to the horse.

And if Ross and Lute hadn’t both died on an optional zombie-exterminating mission in the Adlas Plains, I’d have liked to have seen how their little stories and relationships developed. I sort of relied on pairing them up with Reimi(archer) and Artur(light magic dude) to get by. Now my options for those two are getting thin.

Ross went down in pretty epic fashion. I knew from the 26 or so Zombies, skeletons and giant eyeball monsters that it was only a matter of time before someone died. I noticed my near-promotion Vanessa in the path of a much stronger Beholder than normal. Artur’s Light magic usually takes them out in one hit, but he only has 3 more “charges” left before he is rendered offense-less. It has a ridiculously powerful dark magic attack, but Artur has trained for this all of his life, and it doesn’t phase him. Even so, the light magic is only able to reduce the beast’s health down to 3 hit points. Since it is still alive, it sets its sight on Vanessa. Artur’s Super Effective Lightning wasn’t enough. I send Ross in, he bites the big bazooka, and it’s at this point that I feel really bad for Garcia. Lost his wife AND his kid, one mission after he got promoted.

Artur uses up the last of his spell book to take down the eyeball that felled Ross. Ross is avenged, his last words his declaration that he is at last the warrior he always wanted to be. But now Artur is without any means of saving his friends or himself. He spent the remainder of the match as a distraction/meat-shield, still trying to keep his friends from suffering the same fate as Ross(yet he still got out alive). At least Ross did not die in vain, and at least then it really did feel like there was no way around it, like it was either him or Vanessa. There is valiance in his death.

But Lute was my own damn fault. I paired her up with the meek, crybaby archer Reimi. I see Lute as being her Peppermint Patty, so to speak. I could see her bossing around this poor, emotional pink-haired archer. The strategy I used seemed sound enough: Lute would distract the zombie, whittle down its HP with her magic, and then Leimi would finish it off with her arrows. Move onto the next. It worked the first time. I chose the boss zombie next. That was a grievous error. He looked just like the other zombies on the map, but he has green skin, much more health, and murderized Lute in one swipe of his claws. Her last words were: “I… don’t want to die…”

This was followed immediately by her dying.

I should have known better. Lute was an arrogant, miserable cunt with a god complex. But she didn’t deserve to DIE for it. And I can’t attribute her end to some act of inescapable heroism. She died because I made a bad call. Now I’m left with fewer and fewer team-mates, many of whom are still quite vulnerable and just as likely to befall the same fate, and two of which are unable to attack. A team of 9 has been reduced to 5. Although eventually they band together(with help from the courageous acts of an otherwise self-involved and not-at-all-powerful thief), it sucks knowing I won’t see Ross’s plucky determination or Lute’s cutting remarks any more.

In support conversations, for some reason Ross keeps trying to get Lute’s attention. She is passive and bitter as ever, but he keeps trying. Perhaps it was not meant to be. But I still wonder what could have been. I will wonder for as long as I play this game. GameFAQS will surely have the answer, but that’s not the point. The point is this video game, this Nintendo game has actually managed to get me to care for and regret the “loss” of its most despicable character.

That’s how I know this game is a cut above the norm. And this could happen at any point in the campaign! Be it their first appearances, or even in the last battle. Or maybe they could survive. Or maybe one survives and the other doesn’t. I am amazed at the flexibility this game’s narrative is allowed.

END OF LINE

~A.H.