Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade — A Stellar Introduction to the World
Coming out just over a year after the previous title, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade released on April 25th, 2003 on the Game Boy Advance. Its legacy? A well-balanced game that’s great for newcomers, a fun story with a heavy emphasis on tight character interactions, and most critically — as the title implies — it released worldwide. Although later games would make Fire Emblem into the juggernaut franchise it is nowadays, this was the one to tip that first domino. Internationally, it was localized under the simple name of, “Fire Emblem.” But for clarity’s sake, I’ll be referring to it as either Blazing Blade or FE7 from here on out.
But first, what even is a Fire Emblem? Originating in 1990, it has you control a wide array of units on a grid-based map as you take turns controlling your troops against an enemy army. This type of game is referred to as a tactical/strategy RPG (TRPG), with Fire Emblem being one of the first few titles to make it popular on the Famicom. Typically featuring heavy fantasy elements and taking place in a medieval world, all of your units are named, have a dedicated class with weapons/tools they can use, and their own personal relationships. You follow the story through the eyes of one or more main “Lords,” and if they die it’s a game over. But if a random unit dies? Tough luck, they’re gone permanently. It was this cycle of forcing you to care for your units on top of increasingly difficult maps that made the gameplay loop so addicting for many, and why countless more wanted it to be released worldwide.
Thanks to Super Smash Bros. Melee including two Fire Emblem characters (Marth and Roy) as fighters, suddenly millions of people were going, “Wait a minute, who the heck are they?” An explicit reason for why Fire Emblem hadn’t gone international before has never been given as far as I’m aware, but the most likely answer is the stigma with both tactical RPGs and Japanese RPGs for the time period. Too complex, too niche of an audience, and too hard of a sell. And with the ever-growing scope and complexity of the titles as the series went on, it wouldn’t surprise me if they got into a cycle where it was the safer option to go all-in on Japanese markets. But with eyes on the franchise, the success of their other title Advance Wars, and likely no better opportunity, it gave both Nintendo and its developer Intelligent Systems the chance to go, “Why not?”
The framework was already there thanks to FE6’s Binding Blade releasing a year prior, so there were next-to-no development struggles trying to work with the Nintendo 64 DD or moving to new hardware. Having it take place in the same continent of Elibe was also a conscious choice right from the get-go to help expand on the world instead of quickly coming up with something new. It was also a perfect excuse for careful asset reuse to further speed up development so that they could focus on the core design and have it appeal towards newcomers — which was considered the main focus according to a developer interview. And considering it was the first time the series was going global, it makes all the sense in the world.
I love the past titles, but they were also riddled with beginner’s traps and…questionable game design, to be polite. Enemy reinforcements that would show up and attack you on the same turn, random invisible warp tiles that would force you to re-trek through a thick forest, maps that were way too wide for their own good, swords and/or lances blatantly being the best weapon, etc. Although there are still some balancing issues, I can confidently say that Blazing Blade is the best game for newcomers (so far) with its story, balancing, and gameplay mostly striking the right chords. Not to mention, it’s not Japan-exclusive!
A Standalone Prequel
Blazing Blade takes place roughly 20 years before the events of Binding Blade (FE6) in the fictional continent of Elibe. Starring a nobleman from Pharae named Eliwood, his childhood best friend and prince of Ostia called Hector, and a nomadic woman known as Lyn from the plains of Sacae. Unlike past games, all three are classified as Lords and will cause a game over upon being killed, although you only need to bring your main Lord into each chapter.
The game is divided into three stories, with Lyn being a prologue, Eliwood as the real central character, and Hector showing the main story from his perspective as a post-game reward. On top of that, each of these three routes are a built-in difficulty scale, with Lyn as easy, Eliwood as normal, and Hector as hard — on top of an actual hard mode for all three!
Lyn is unfortunately done a bit dirty with her story. It’s a very sluggish tutorial in a game that already explains itself quite well in my opinion, and it doesn’t help that it frequently stops you mid-chapter to dump information and tell you to move X unit to Y position. I have also played seven of these games in the past (several of which are considered some of the most challenging), so I’m coming from a biased perspective. But at the same time a tutorial doesn’t have to be inherently slow and stop you to get its point across. This was the first time they ever had in-game dialogue boxes stop to explain information rather than the optional (but encouraged) tutorial houses in games prior, so I have hope that they’ve streamlined it in future entries.
As for the actual meat of Lyn’s story, it’s effectively a condensed stereotypical Fire Emblem plot. Lyn is a lone nomad travelling the plains of Sacae after her tribe was wiped out by hordes of bandits years prior. There she finds a wandering tactician, several knights, and plenty of baddies hoping to chop off her head. Lyn discovers that she’s actually the daughter of the Marquess in the Caelin region, and is technically the current heir. A rival uncle wants to seize power for himself, and 11 chapters later you rise up, knock him off his high horse, and rest easy. Along the way you recruit several characters such as two knights who are serious and goofy respectively, a childhood best friend of the same gender, a mage and healer who are traveling together, a thief, and other archetypes.
Nothing bad, but nothing new. While it of course has different elements from past plots, it’s the same general structure. It also doesn’t help that for Japanese players, you can outright skip over it if you connect your game to FE6. But it’s also the tutorial, so no harm no foul.
The real addition is the tactician: Mark. Yes, that is their real (default) name. They’re essentially a way to characterize moving your units around on a grid, with all three Lords placing their trust in Mark to guide them forward with minimal casualties. According to interviews there were concerns about newcomers understanding the idea of controlling an army, and thus they made a personified tactician. A cute idea, but Mark is ultimately a blank slate with little-to-no substance. It’s also a little funny when characters look at the screen to talk to you. Later games would have more complex self-insert characters, but that’s a solid five titles ahead.
Now then, the REAL plot. Eliwood’s story kicks off a year after Lyn’s, with him leaving in search of his father after going missing for several months. Hector, without telling his family, heads out in pursuit of Eliwood to give him all the help he needs. And after assisting Lyn with more trouble in Caelin, she finds herself obligated to help Eliwood after discovering that it might have to do with a mysterious group known as the Black Fang. As the plot unfolds, it becomes a bit of a conspiracy talking about the origins of the Black Fang, the history of dragons in the region, and the absolute catastrophe that would unfold if their leader Nergal were to complete his plan.
All in all? Yeah, it’s a great time! The real hooks in my eyes are the dynamic between Eliwood, Hector, and Lyn, as well as the Black Fang themselves. Eliwood is a bit of a standard FE protag as a young noble who’s honest and kind, but I think the writers did a good job of characterizing his naivety and family-driven motivation in a compelling way. Hector starts off appearing as the brash and rude one, but also strikes a balance talking about his reluctance towards nobility and shows his softer side as events intensify. Lyn’s story has her be a bit boring, but the main plot lets her open up significantly more to where she’s a bit brash and bold — in a fun way! You can tell she never intends to come across as rude, but is brutally honest and likes to strike to the heart of issues. When all three start bouncing back and forth, THAT’S when FE7 really kicks off.
The Black Fang are also fairly compelling as villains. Nothing too crazy, but it’s unique from the past FE games where the major villain group was usually an evil warmonger, a possessed lord, or simply an evil cult. Black Fang members have history — and a positive one at that. Originally famed for killing abusive noblemen, it’s only around the start of Lyn’s story where they actually turn thanks to a change in leadership. Some members are reluctant to accept that they’re betraying the trust of the people, and others refuse to back down and stand by them ’til the end. Others were raised by the new leaders pre-Fang, and struggle coming to terms with their abuse. Even if it’s not the deepest plot, I think that they do enough with it to where the emotional core shines through.
I do have a few gripes, albeit pretty minor. Sometimes it falls into the classic FE trap of exposition dumping a bit too often, which can make the pacing a bit weird. Still, nothing that didn’t damper my experience. The real issue however is in the support system. In addition to the main story, having units be near each other by the end of a turn will slowly build up “Support” points to where they can have a conversation.
They’re purely flavor text, but when the focus on characters is as big as it is, it’s a shame that you basically have to grind to see any of them. FE6 introduced supports and also had grinding, but to be frank, 90% of the characters weren’t as interesting as the bulk of the FE7 cast. Nowadays you can just look on YouTube and see them all, but that’s a bandaid on a pretty annoying system. Even worse? I’m pretty sure they don’t fix this until FE12. Life truly is pain.
But still, once again that is an extra aspect to the story to help further flesh out the characters and worldbuilding. All-around, FE7’s story strikes a good balance and works well at easing people not just into the franchise, but into Elibe if the player hasn’t touched FE6 (or even knew of its existence). But for those who have played those games, there are a few fun cameos that are ultimately optional, but are pretty cool to exist at all. The villain has a fun backstory, the game really helps make the idea of even just one dragon strike fear into you, and it’s hard to go wrong with the main trio!
Stagnant, but Solid
Graphically the game is very similar to FE6, which is certainly not a negative. The world is vibrant, the character designs (both in-game and their full artwork) look great, and FE7 helps take you to a number of unique locations despite being relatively contained to a few surrounding countries. The animations are also fantastic — you can really tell they were having a blast with the critical hit animations for each class.
There is a light snub, but this isn’t the game’s fault. Because of the GBA lacking a backlight in its original model, many, MANY games cranked up their brightness to compensate and make sure any player on every model could make things out clearly. But since we live in a future where every screen is backlit, the average emulation job (and playing a GBA SP/Micro/DS with a backlight) will make the game look very washed out.
The emulator I used (mGBA) has a number of shaders pre-installed, with “Pokefan531” and “hunterk” making the wonderful “GBA Color” shader. It’s very easy to enable in the settings and worked great at making the characters resemble their original artwork. Screenshots don’t take into account shaders, however, so know that every other in-game picture you see here will unfortunately look a bit off. Alternatively, Nintendo has since released a GBA emulator for the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pass — with a color-correction shader included! No other official way of playing these games has this, so if you want to do things legit, show your support!
I would also like to take a quick second to appreciate the game’s music, which has a nice variety of songs and seems to have more prominent melodies compared to FE6’s “just okay” soundtrack. I’m the exact opposite of a musician and thus don’t have anything too insightful to say, but it’s always worth appreciating.
The mechanics are largely unchanged from Binding Blade, but with enough tweaks in the actual tools you can use to be noteworthy. The Weapons and Magic Triangle are the same from FE6, meaning that you have swords, lances, axes, and bows as physical weapons with anima, light, dark, and staff magic. Swords beat axes, axes beat lances, lances beat swords, and bows are neutral but effective on flying units. Dark magic beats anima, anima beats light, and light beats dark, with staves acting as a support/healing option. Having your units use them will slowly build up their skill, ranging from E (the worst rank) up to S (the best).
In addition, there is further diversity in how each weapon “handles.” Swords have average damage with a high hit chance, lances have slightly less accuracy in favor of being a bit stronger, and axes have the lowest hit chance while being the strongest. Anima, light, and dark magic are similar in that same exact order. But while the foundation is the same as previous games, there have been tweaks to significantly change their effectiveness.
All weapons received an increase in accuracy, with axes receiving the most noteworthy boost. I won’t go over every little stat change, but they’ve effectively been increased to the level in which lances were in FE6 — if not more accurate. As a quick side note, huge thanks to the editors of the Fire Emblem wiki for documenting the values of swords, lances, axes, and everything else (with detailed values on the individual weapon pages). In short, most axes now have the accuracy values of their lance counterparts in FE6, serving as a major buff.
Of course hit percent chance isn’t everything, but it was arguably the biggest drawback axe units had to where it was a heavy gamble. Now that axes are the new lances, however, they become an all-around force of nature to be reckoned with thanks to their high strength and HP. I also noticed that many axe-wielding units have an increased chance to their Skill and Luck growth rates; two stats that increase hit chance. In other words, axe-users have been promoted from bait to lure out enemies to menaces thanks to these light tweaks.
Also in regards to gameplay, Gaiden Chapters (officially called side quests now) make a return. Simply put, completing an additional objective in a map will result in an extra set of dialogue playing, and being able to go on an optional chapter that doesn’t impact the main story. Unlike every other iteration, however, you can decline them. These chapters are advertised as high-risk and high-reward, and while the rewards are quite nice, they’re surprisingly chill for the most part. I never had to restart a single one and my strategies are notoriously flawed, so you might as well do them for the extra experience and goodies.
Another significant upgrade is that unlike FE6, they are truly optional. Missing any of them won’t disqualify you from going to the final set of chapters — which thank God for that. The core focus is on additional rewards and more story context, which is a perfectly fine use for them.
I do wish that they were more clear with what unlocks them like in both past and future entries, because I don’t think the requirements were ever acknowledged in-game a single time. They’re very scattered; sometimes needing to get 700 experience on a map, completing a map quickly, visiting an innocuous village, getting a specific character to level 7 in Lyn’s story (???), etc. Varied objectives aren’t bad, though I wish they were at least alluded to.
Yet with these gripes — with these changes — none of these impact the gameplay for the worse. I would consider it an overall improvement, with a faster pacing thanks to the increased hit chance and a healthy variety of units with their own niches. But with you the player getting all of these new advantages, did the designers bounce back and have enemy forces take advantage of them?
Mapping Out a Challenge
The gameplay changes might seem minor, but have some drastic ramifications on the overall balancing. As mentioned previously axe units are now miniature forces of nature, with a major factor likely being Hector as a protagonist and the devs wanting him to be viable. And with high strength, skill, luck, and speed to dish out heavy damage and avoid attacks? They certainly succeeded. Eliwood and Lyn also have high rates for their stats to increase each level-up, which isn’t too surprising since Lords who wield swords are (usually) quite strong.
Speaking of which, swords are still the most dependable with the highest chance to score a critical hit, and bows being in a similar camp except ranged. Lance units are typically either mobile-yet-frail or tanky-but-slow, on top of being the most common weapon enemies use. Axes are rarely used against you while also giving you several units early on that use them, meaning that you have very strong tools at your disposal early on.
Magic is still busted as ever, but admittedly a bit boring. Due to the simplified magic system introduced in FE6, the game heavily encourages anima while also only giving you access to two basic spells until near the end of the game. Light and dark magic users exist, but their tomes are less accessible until later on, meaning your anima users will likely be ahead. I think FE6 could be a bit dry, but somehow the magic was more exciting there because it simply gave more options.
Regardless, you now have an incredibly diverse set of options on top of several buffed weapons. I didn’t go through and check every unit, but stat growth rates also seem to be upped on average considering several of my units on both playthroughs managed to max out their stats without items. Combined with magic being a bit brain-dead, sword units being critical-hit-crazy, lance units being dependable, you have a LOT of firepower on your side. And for better or for worse, I’m not too sure that the game designers took this into consideration.
The early maps are fairly well-balanced and encourage you to strike first or face the consequences of getting blocked by enemies later. But even if you were a bit cautious, the game never throws that many units your way as a major obstacle — just a select number of stronger troops. Even the majority of bosses aren’t too bad, but I’ll touch up on that later.
Lyn’s maps are, as expected, simple and tutorial-y, while Eliwood/Hector’s build-up gradually like one would expect. There’s a great variety of terrain this time around, including pirate ships, desert temples, poison-filled ruins, caverns, grassy fields, and of course, castles. And yet despite this, you’re very localized to the region and don’t travel much further than Lycia itself, making it feel like a wonderfully diverse world in just a few small countries. Compared to past games where even globe-trotting adventures could look same-y, it’s a great step up.
Objectives are also varied to further diversify gameplay without straying too far from the tactics routes. Some chapters have you defeat a boss and capture their throne, while sometimes you need to kill everyone. Certain chapters only need you to kill a boss, and other times it expects you to stay and defend a set point. My only critique is that the designers don’t push these concepts as far as they could in my opinion, particularly for defense. In FE5 these were tense missions where you had to make sure your defense was up to snuff lest you wanted casualties, whereas in FE7 I could just kill everyone by turn 5 and just skip the last 5 turns.
There’s also a noticeable reduction in the game throwing hurdles out of nowhere — such as reinforcements that appear with no warning and kill one of your best units in one turn and make you feel really sad and mildly bitter. Ah, not coming from personal experience, of course. But yes, mechanics feel well-explained even without the extensive tutorials, and the game gives you the right tools for the job unless you’re very reckless with your units. Another new addition is the Augury — having a character predict your “future,” AKA give hints for the next chapter. I never personally needed them, but I’ll never complain about optional dialogue to help the game be more accessible.
However, because of your units typically having higher stats, combined with increased weapon accuracy, further combined with more tools at your disposal on average, the chapters become noticeably easier as you go on. I was able to keep most of my units alive, but even if I took the usually-sneered at late game units with worse growths and come pre-promoted, I wouldn’t have had too much trouble.
Is this a good thing? Bad thing? It’s hard to say, and can heavily depend on what you’re looking for in a TRPG/Fire Emblem game. It’s more lax and forgiving, but some might see this as a weakness and look away at FE7 for being so accessible. Lyn’s story is painfully boring with how easy her maps are, while Eliwood’s are consistently alright. Hector’s variants of Eliwood’s maps are more complex, but both suffer from similar endgame issues.
Rather than giving more complex enemy formations, there’s a noticeable trend of the game heavily inflating enemy general stats for the last few chapters to an almost unfair degree. Out of nowhere they have insane defense and resistance stats when previously you were able to one-shot promoted enemy troops; damage values so high you basically need anyone who fights them to be on life support.
This is especially egregious for the final map and boss in particular, which feels closer to a trap to make you restart for your good units to have a happy ending than a legitimate challenge you think through and overcome. It’s a very weird turn in a game that’s normally so concerned with being well-balanced, and almost makes me wonder if it was a last-second decision to help make it feel more like a finale.
This is hard to condense since there’s always nuance to difficulty and balance, but hear me out for a quick comparison. These are both endgame bosses in the penultimate chapter for FE6 (left) and FE7 (right). They have roughly the same stats, but the left is a dragon in a game where they give you many weapons that deal 3x damage to them. The right is a mage with a strong tome you don’t have access to, has heavy physical and especially magic resistance, and their only weakness is light magic. Not to mention that most units who can hit hard physically have low resistance. It doesn’t feel challenging, it feels annoying.
Hector, through virtue of having more maps and thus more opportunities for experience, does sort-of alleviate these issues. But the endgame stat bloat is still just as bad, which can lead to cheap last-second deaths on the final map. But if you enjoyed it the first time and wanted more context (or more importantly, extra Hector time!), then it’s certainly worth the replay. Just maybe don’t do it right away because, at the end of the day, the core of it is still Eliwood’s gameplay.
But that’s a dull note to cap this section on — and this is still a freaking great game! The stronger focus on both main and side-character writing made me care about my units surviving far more when devising a strategy. Even with the ease, that isn’t a problem in the slightest so long as you aren’t demanding a hard experience. It’s just a more accessible game with the amount of buffs and tools at your disposal, allowing for a varied TRPG with a lot of wiggle-room on how you can tackle your strategies. From a casual playthrough where you sweep everything as Hector to trying to recruit everyone and be well-rounded, there’s likely a mode and method for you.
Worth Playing? It’d Be a Crime Not To
Don’t let my gripes deceive you — Blazing Blade is absolutely a fun time. The reason I rag on it is because it manages to do so much else right: characters, class variety, environments, animations, music, and more. There are regressions in certain aspects like map complexity, and its overall ease of difficulty can be off-putting for the more hardcore players of the genre.
But to call Blazing Blade a bad experience would be a gross exaggeration — and ignoring its importance to Fire Emblem history. Most who are in the know are aware that it was actually 2012’s Fire Emblem: Awakening that made the series explode in popularity. But this, THIS is what made people care. And for good reason.
Even if the story has its snags and a few holes, the heart is very much there and a major departure from past games in a great way. There’s a tight focus on the main cast with more attention given to the cast than most games prior, with even the simplest of characters having at least three others they can Support with. Heck, if you manage to keep some of the nicher characters alive, then they even have extra little moments during cutscenes. It’s such a glow-up from FE6’s wet cardboard cast that it really does highlight how badly the team wanted FE7 to succeed.
The game is mostly easy, but if you aren’t dead-set on a challenging time then I think it still forces you to think critically. It also helps that, similarly to FE6, there’s now an unlockable hard mode for all three characters after beating their respective route. I haven’t played them and can’t make too detailed comments, but from what I’ve read they seem to be carefully thought-out upgrades to maps rather than simple enemy stat boosts. Hector’s hard mode in particular seems like quite the challenge if that’s your cup of tea.
Experienced fans who enjoy an intense challenge or a political thriller plot might be left disappointed, but don’t let that dissuade you from trying the game. It has a legacy for a reason, and although it took another nine years for the series to really take off the ground and become a Nintendo mainstay, this was the entry that helped them go, “The world cares.” You should, too.
