given the right motivation i can stroke my shit for up to 8 hours

I’ve been in a sort of Fire Emblem mood this year. I mean, in the last couple months alone, I played through all of Awakening, Fates, and Three Houses. Not only are those modern Fire Emblems, but they’re games I’ve already played before, so I was already familiar with them. I wanted to enter the realm of the unknown and play a Fire Emblem that I had never played before, which is why I chose to play Genealogy of the Holy War, it’s a game I wanted to play for ages, and only now did I finally get the drive to actually start it up. I’m so glad I finally played it, Genealogy of the Holy War is such a unique game compared to what I’m used to, and nearly each and every little design choice makes the game so engaging. This is easily one of my favorite Fire Emblems, and I’m so glad I finally got around to it.

Genealogy of the Holy War immediately daunted me when I first played the game. While it may only have 12 chapters total, each individual chapter is massive, often taking 5-8 hours depending on the chapter. Each chapter has around 3-4 objectives that you have to clear, and there’s often hundreds of tiles you can move across. While it makes moving non-cavalier units difficult since they often have to move far distances often, there’s a certain feeling with moving a full army of units across a massive battlefield. As I played further and further through the game, the more I fell in love with the scale of Genealogy’s maps.

While the maps may be massive, and it may be easy for some units to fall behind in one chapter, the game accounts for that with the Arena. Every chapter has its own arena that every unit with a weapon can fight in, and if they make it to the end they’re likely to get 2-3 levels. The Arena is something really nice to have, as it helps some units catch up if they might’ve fallen behind, and you can also get a lot of gold out of it.

And I absolutely adore the inventory management of this game. You have to be really strategic with which units get which items, since you can’t trade items between units. That means that you have to weigh whether it’s better for one unit to get experience, or if it’s better for a unit to get a specific item. While there is a method to transfer items between units, it’s a little complicated as it requires selling the item from the unit holding it, and rebuying it on the unit you want to hold it. This also leads into one of my favorite aspects of Genealogy’s inventory management, each individual unit holds its own pool of gold. What I mean by that is that there isn’t a universal gold that any unit can use, rather, each unit has its own amount of gold that only it can used. That’s what makes transferring items between units a difficult balance, as the unit you want the item on may not have enough gold to buy it. I remember wanting to transfer the Paragon Ring (an item that doubles XP gain) between units, but to buy it back, it costs 40,000 Gold, which is such a high amount when you also have to balance out repairing weapons or buying new ones. This whole system is a very delicate balance, and it’s one that made the game feel really engaging.

I really adore this game’s story, and I wasn’t really expecting to get attached to the characters as much as I did. Everything with Sigurd’s story is great, I don’t really want to get into too much detail of it, but the ending of Sigurd’s story is awe inspiring. Seliph’s story is amazing too, especially with how it proceeds from Sigurd’s. I am being vague on purpose, as I think it’s worth seeing the story for yourself, and I don’t know how many people know what happens. But how Sigurd’s story can impact the gameplay of Seliph’s story is really fun. Aside from units that are scripted to be together, its possible for some units to fall in love with each other during Sigurd’s story. Who the units fall in love with can affect the characters in Seliph’s story. In Sigurd’s story, I had Ayra and Lex paired, so when I got to Seliph’s story, I had a Larcei with Astra, Paragon, and follow-up attack skills. It made Larcei a really busted unit for a large majority of Seliph’s story. It’s really cool how interconnected these two halves are because of a system like this.

If anything, I think the one thing that was frustrating through playing Genealogy of the Holy War was when enemies had shields. Sometimes enemies will have shields during battle, and it basically feels like a 50/50 whether or not an attack that hits will actually do any damage. With the fact that it’s not often that you can get a perfect hit rate, having say, a 60% hit rate, and sometimes your attacks just being “nuh uh’d” it just feels frustrating. I feel like if the shield activating just made it deal half damage instead of full damage would make things feel better.

I absolutely adored playing through Genealogy of the Holy War, it easily became one of my favorite Fire Emblems, even though I still have quite a lot left to play. Not only is its story just amazing, but its gameplay is so unique compared to what I’m used to. I’ve already expressed how much I adore the inventory management, that the entire system makes such a strong balance that persists throughout the entire game. The massive scale of each map made each chapter feel far grander than other fire emblems I’ve played, and there was a greater sense of accomplishment when actually beating each chapter for good. As I said before, Genealogy of the Holy War is one of my favorite Fire Emblems now, and I can’t really imagine any of the remaining games topping it anytime soon. I’m so glad I finally sat down and played this game.