Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones — Everything the Trilogy Built Towards
Keeping up Fire Emblem’s portable streak, The Sacred Stones released for the Game Boy Advance a mere year and a half after the last entry on October 7th, 2004. While a separate team within Intelligent Systems was giving their A-game to develop what would become Path of Radiance (FE9), a separate division worked on another smaller-scale title. Not any less important, of course, but something that wouldn’t take a whole new engine and shiny 3D graphics. The GBA was still chugging along, and with two whole games to use as frameworks, it allowed the team to really focus on the design. The result? One of Fire Emblem’s best entries thus far.
Being a tactical RPG like always, you follow a lead “Lord” character as they command an army in a fantasy setting across a war that gradually expands in scope as the story progresses. Every unit is a unique character with their own history and skills, and with that, if you slip up, their death is permanent. The game revolves around making the most of your units and beating the game with as few casualties as possible, striking a balance between efficiency and survival.
Gameplay is the same as previous Fire Emblem games, particularly the GBA ones. There’s a rock-paper-scissors formula for both weapon advantage and magic. Swords beat Axes, Axes beat Lances, and Lances beat Swords. The flip side being Anima winning against Light, Light snuffing Dark, and Dark beating Anima. There are two neutral categories, with Bows being neutral yet having an advantage against flying units and Staves being entirely support or debuff-based. There are a number of exceptions and specialized classes to help further diversify your army, but those are the fundamentals.
Unlike the previous entry, the marketing for Sacred Stones felt like a significant downgrade. Which, to be fair, FE7 was the franchise’s proper worldwide debut. But I struggled a bit in trying to find promotional materials outside of a Japanese commercial. Minimal interviews, translated or otherwise. Heck, it didn’t even get an article in Nintendo Power — their own marketing! Path of Radiance got a nod in August 2004, but that’s the most acknowledgement the series got in the West until the December 2005 issue, which again, was FE9.
Fire Emblem was infamous for not being popular in the West until Awakening came out in 2012, but it’s still jarring seeing just how early the cracks formed. Rather than tightening their grip on the public, it seems like the most they did for worldwide audiences was an official Player’s Guide and a few posters. If there was more promotional material, then I’m struggling to find it.
But that’s doom and gloom, and the game is anything but! Taking place in the all-new continent of Magvel, Sacred Stones follows twin Princess Eirika and Prince Ephraim as their world spirals out of control in the blink of an eye. With the protection of the sacred stones, monstrosities have been kept at bay for milenia. But after the major nation of Grado launched a sudden attack on their kingdom (Renais), coinciding with a return of twisted beasts, it becomes a race to protect the stones and find the heart of the problem.
Back into the Swing of Things
As mentioned previously, the gameplay of Sacred Stones remains largely the same from the past two GBA entries. There’s a healthy range of classes characters that specialize in specific weapons or tools, and the class descriptions make it more clear what your unit will turn into after leveling them up enough and giving them a promotion item. Because for the first time in the series history, you can pick what class your unit will turn into.
This isn’t as radical of a change as you might expect, but it does allow you to further diversify or specialize your army in a certain direction. Annoyed at your heavily armored Knight for being so slow? Give ’em a horse and they’ll also be able to use all three main weapon types. Do you just want more defense, no frills? The General class is for you. Every class will have two options, with them usually following a pattern of one enhancing their existing set and the other either covering weaknesses or a boost in stats with a unique skill. Yup, skills are back!
Introduced in FE4 and refined in FE5, these were either class or character-specific skills that gave a range of effects ranging from a nice perk to game-breaking. Most classes had them, and if they weren’t there to boot, then you could usually count on a promotion giving you one. Sacred Stones’ approach is a bit more lax with fewer skills mainly limited to promoted classes, but still, it’s good to have them be back and more-or-less here to stay in the series going forward. A class promotion is almost always worth it, but having the added bonus of a potential 1-hit KO or guaranteed super effective damage is appreciated.
Gender-locked classes are also back. Like I’ve said every time this comes up, it’s not that big of a deal but having the same class with the same tools being two separate things always just makes me go, “Really?” There aren’t many, and I know it’s probably a developer trick to have promotions be bound to classes rather than individual characters, but it’s the principle of things.
Weapon variety is more-or-less on point from FE7 with a few new special weapons and swapping out the lore-specific ones with Magvel’s own sacred relics. They’re surprisingly not too relevant to the main plot, you kind of just find them and the main Lord goes, “Oh wow, crazy. This sure would be handy.” I don’t even mean that as an insult, since so many Fire Emblem games rely on the sacred weapon being the key to solve the plot/was the origin of the game’s disaster. I just find it funny.
Even with the signature overpowered weapons you get later, combat still felt good all the way through. Early on when units are more limited, the game provides certain “puzzle” characters that forces you to interact with the game properly in order to defeat them. It’s a great way of tutorializing the pros and cons of characters without telling the player too much in advance, and I’m happy they stuck to it. Then later on as the game progresses, you’re rewarded for diversifying your army or specializing it to the point of not needing the “correct” counter. So long as you’re cultivating your troops, you’ll probably be A-OK. Probably.
There aren’t too many new basic weapons in the core classes, but with the changes to class promotions I think it’s a fair trade-off. To be honest I kept forgetting that I had been hoarding the specialized weapons until the endgame, which certainly made a few challenges harder. But when you’re at the very end facing the best of the best, busting out all of the Killer and Silver-line weapons? It felt great to steamroll after a few uphill battles.
One thing that has felt consistently bad for the last few entries is magic, unfortunately. In the first few games, you either had Magic or Strength, no in-between. FE4 and 5 heavily expanded what certain classes could do, allowing for units to have a mix of both to either be balanced or have counters for certain niches. FE6 did away with this, and for the worse if I’m being honest.
Magic attacks against normal weapons still shred right through, but because of how weighted magic damage is against Resistance in all three GBA titles, trying to take advantage of the Magic Triangle barely means anything. You’ll either do damage or you won’t, and while it could help to use a super effective type, the difference will be negligible. Even more egregious, Light users have a distinct advantage towards the end thanks to an ability making their weapon super effective against all monsters.
Like I said, this has been a problem in all three GBA games. But it feels the most evident here when combined with the cross-class promotions and ability to get a dark magic user relatively early on. You have all three schools of magic at your hands, but it really doesn’t make a difference; use whoever has the highest Magic and won’t die in one hit. The upside is that the average enemy mage has pitiful defense, but it is a shame that the magic v. magic hasn’t recovered across all three entries.
Even still, as a whole, the combat in this game feels great. Nearly every unit is viable in some way, and even the more “pointless” characters still help give your team a nice boost when swarmed with enemies. Everything is nice and snappy, made even more so with the options to increase game speed and disable animations for the truly impatient. From a gameplay’s point of view, the pacing is simply fantastic.
Two Sides, Different Coin
But hold it, the game splits in two! Those dual Lords aren’t there for show, about a third of the way through playing as Eirika, you’re given the choice to continue as Eirika in her journey of warning and recruiting nations to their cause in a bid for the sacred stones. Ephraim’s side, him wanting to end the war before it can truly begin, makes a direct charge at the capital of Grado.
In a way, it almost feels like a spiritual successor to Fire Emblem Gaiden/FE2. Monsters returning to the land, split routes with their own maps, and both sides racing to end the war in their own way while reconvening by the end. Both have their own unique maps, and even after getting back together 2/3 through the story there are still light changes depending on the character chosen.
Unlike FE2, as you might have surmised, this is permanent across your save file. You can’t swap midway through, and this will have lasting effects until the credits roll. While the beginning of the game stays more-or-less the same, the majority will be a fresh experience or pull twists that force you to change your strategy. The order of units and how you obtain them also lightly varies, encouraging you to mix things up a little unless you’re dying to get one specific unit. As you might expect this does also come with story differences, but I’ll put a pin on that for later.
Overall, I would recommend playing through both routes! Even if 2/3 of the game are shared maps, the unique enemy placements in the final third and original middle third make both sides engaging. Maybe don’t do it right away, but eventually. I was a bit worried it would be like FE7 where 90–95% of the plot and maps would be the same with a few new chapters that really didn’t change my view of them or the world. Nope! But for the plot side, again, pin for later.
It also helps that Eirika’s route can be considered “normal” and Ephraim “hard” in addition to in-game difficulty options, granting even more variety. And as a quick aside, thank God the slow, text-scrolling tutorial is now optional and exclusive to Easy. Bar none the lowest point of FE7 was Lyn’s story that unfortunately didn’t have many meaningful character interactions and stopped to explain things every other turn. The games already provided houses you could stop at that explained certain mechanics, and I always felt like those did the job well. Having it be an optional setting? Perfect.
Normal is what you’d expect — the way the game was meant to be played for newcomers. While I consulted guides to see if there were any hidden goodies you could miss, the rest was all a big unknown. And for knowing nothing, it never felt as if the game pulled wool over my eyes or blindsided me with too strong of an enemy force — everything thrown felt reasonable. Do note that I’m a biased source who’s played several TRPGs before, but even taking that into account the game wasn’t too demanding.
For once I actually played the Hard mode (since I figured I might as well for Ephraim’s playthrough), and it’s not half-bad! It strikes a good balance of more detrimental enemy placements (and apparently a smarter AI) while still retaining the original feel of the level, along with making sense narratively. And if you’re truly struggling, guess what else is back? Dungeons!
Another boon from FE2, the destruction of the first sacred stone resulted in the Tower of Valni becoming this desecrated place you can go in to endlessly fight monsters. Some people argue it makes the game too easy, but considering that it’s completely optional and is intended as a way to level up units who are straggling behind, I really don’t see much of an issue. On my first playthrough I only checked it out once, and my second had me leveling up mages who I’d neglected from the beginning, allowing them to eventually become my main fighting force.
Again, FE2, there’s an interactive world map again! Dungeons are the main draw since you can’t outright replay maps, but monsters can also appear in the overworld with remixed versions of chapters. They’re mainly for grinding if you want to level up more, but they can also block you from getting access to shops. No longer will you forget to go to the armory before defeating the boss and be locked out of buying more 10 iron swords — after winning you can just select the area and go straight to the shop of choice. Even secret shops in the post-game, so long as you got the Member’s Card.
Sacred Stones also steps back a bit in terms of length, having a max total of 23 chapters in a single playthrough, with no optional gaiden chapters (x). When compared to FE5’s 25/33x, FE6’s 25/31x, and FE7’s impressive 32/39x or 34/42x (Eliwood vs. Hector), it seems like a downgrade. But the tighter structure allows for players to experience everything in a single, more condensed playthrough. It’s not worse, it’s different, and I quite enjoyed it.
From a player perspective, you don’t have to worry about missing anything or completing obtuse side objectives to get the true ending, see important plot beats, and/or get powerful weapons that make life much easier. From a developer’s point of view, they could probably focus on creating a tight story and really develop the main characters. No worrying about side stories, dragging plot beats out, having optional moments be worthwhile without seeming necessary, etc. And it shows, because I can only think of one map that really annoyed me with minimal difficulty spikes.
Not to mention that a returning feature from FE6 is a post-game, being the Creature Campaign. It’s mostly fluff intended to help further train and get items for your units by going through the Tower of Valni and Lagdou Ruins, but you can also unlock bonus characters and items from it. The new characters can’t be used in the game’s multiplayer mode, but I’d imagine this was done to refine your units for local battles instead of having to replay the whole dang game to give them a fighting chance. It’s not too long and has no story beats, but features 18 maps total, giving you even more stuff to do if you aren’t yet satiated.
But that’s enough about the gameplay, it’s high time to pull the pins on this parallel plot.
Twin Stories
As mentioned before, the route split is permanent across your save file. Although the story mostly stays the same, there are key differences on both sides that, when combined with the shorter length, makes both worth experiencing.
The sacred stones are prized relics held in each of the five major kingdoms, and are generally seen as taboo to mess with since, according to legend, their destruction will result in the return of monsters. And legend it was not, because they waste next to no time returning when Grado’s stone is allegedly shattered. Coinciding with this is the Grado nation invading Renais, kickstarting Eirika and Ephraim’s journey. Last and certainly not the least is Lyon, prince of the Grado nation and childhood friend of the twin Lords who has suddenly gone silent.
There are other side characters who vary in importance depending on the route chosen, but Eirika, Ephraim, and Lyon are the crux of it. Eirika’s faith in her views towards humanity, Ephraim’s questioning of how he handles his emotions, and the mystery surrounding Lyon and Grado make the plot. Not make or break, make, because I really enjoyed my time in the world of Magvel.
Rather than giving a spotlight to every nation to understand their inner workings, Sacred Stones tries to tell a more personal story to great success in my eyes. Ephraim’s route does suffer a bit due to him having less people to bounce off of, but his own journey of understanding how to express his emotions and opening his heart caught me off-guard. It’s not something that gets a lot of focus in this series, even if I wish it went further. Eirika’s overall journey is less interesting, but solidified by side characters and banter, particularly with L’arachel.
L’arachel in general was an unexpected joy. She’s set up as a bit of a joke and is a long-running meme in the community, which can go a number of ways. In Ephraim’s route, she doesn’t go much further. But for Eirika, she serves as a great contrast and surprising friend who offers different perspectives while still reaffirming the positives in herself. A lot of little moments that go a long way to developing both characters to where I truly believed in their friendship by the end. Fire Emblem can be rocky when it comes to joke characters, but L’arachel is absolutely one of the best. The best kind of quirky, genuinely.
I will say that I do think that the game is best experienced playing through Eirika’s first, then Ephraim, but considering the higher difficulty it does almost feel like the intent. Since the first 8 chapters are with Eirika, you already want to see how her journey will turn out. It also doesn’t help that in the one chapter you do play as Ephraim pre-split, he seems a bit dry and “reckless, but he pulls through anyway!” type of character.
Both have little blips that help you understand the other side a bit more, which is almost definitely by design. But it’s easy to see why people who have only played one route go, “Man, the other Lord seemed so boring.” Things like why Ephraim’s plan to bum-rush the capital succeeds and the true emotions of Lyon require you to play the whole game. Which in a way I did like, because there were still a few bombshells on Ephraim’s side that made me go, “Wait a minute, they left this out?!” Though the unexplained bits did make me question if the writers forgot to cover something important at first. A give and a take when it comes to branching paths, I suppose.
While on the subject, with the game transferring your entire army over to one side, the narrative reasons on why certain characters appear in places changes. It’s a bit of a coin toss who has better writing on either route, which is a shame but a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things. Things like Amelia being a joke character with Eirika, but Ephraim’s army helps get her out of a potentially awful situation. Or Cormag showing up to fight Ephraim while he has a whole side arc in Eirika’s route. Little things like that you pick up on, especially if you’re playing the two halves close to one another.
Supports still suck. Not the writing, but how you get them. For the uninitiated, “Supports” are a long-running Fire Emblem tradition where if two characters stand next to one another often, they’ll develop a bond and you see a side story play out. Great idea; allows you to expand on quick one-off characters to show weird dynamics, a new to units, and even change their ending. They started in the GBA games, and I hope they’re at their worst in the GBA games, because they need to stand near each other for so many turns that I thought I was doing something wrong at first. There’s still no longer a limit to how many Support points you can earn per chapter, and you can grind for them in the Creature Campaign, but it’s still a slog.
FE6 had a wet cardboard cast, so I didn’t feel like I missed much. FE7 had a decent amount of solid side characters, but with a cast of 44 a lot still didn’t hit right away to where I wanted to grind. Most characters in Sacred Stones piqued my interest in some way to where I actually wanted to see how their Supports and relationships would turn out. In the modern age you can watch them all on YouTube, but that doesn’t get rid of the issue.
Also at the risk of sounding like a goofus, I have absolutely no clue what the Affinity system is after three games. Maybe it was in the instruction manuals so that’s on me, but I don’t think it was ever explained in-game other than “Oh, well it shows which units are compatible.” Which isn’t…completely wrong. According to the Fire Emblem Wiki it signifies what stats will go up depending on the Supports they have. I don’t mind Supports giving buffs, but they handled it in the most obtuse way I feel.
Complaints aside, yeah, the story is a fun ride. Quite refreshing as a Fire Emblem plot, with a healthy balance of lighthearted moments and characters that keeps the heavier tone in check. They don’t try to detract from serious scenes with a quick one-liner, and even better, the game’s actually funny! At least to me. It was also surprisingly dark at points, particularly in the latter half, and they did a great job selling the unsettling nature of things. All in all, a good time.
Nitty-Gritty Gears
Difficulty is another thing Sacred Stones is known for…or rather, its lack thereof. Whenever you ask a veteran FE player what the easiest game is, odds are Sacred Stones gets thrown into the mix a lot. I’d even go so far as to say it’s the de facto answer. Is that a problem? Absolutely not.
Fire Emblem has always had a weird relationship with difficulty. They can vary from mostly fine with a few stinker stages, all the way down to forcing you to crawl through a large map with slow units. FE5/Thracia 776 is infamous for being the hardest, but having played through it myself, its main challenge lies in not knowing what tricks the game might play on you. I’d argue it’s even worse in FE6 where it loves to drop in same-turn enemy reinforcements that spawn in and snap your twig of a Lord in half.
The instant you realize how the game’s mechanics work, though? FE5 becomes disgustingly fun to cheese and max out your characters to where only the penultimate stage proves to be a real issue. The same applies to others like FE1 and FE3, where abusing things like stat boosters and the best units can make what’s a slog for others into a breeze for you.
Sacred Stones has its cheese, don’t get me wrong. The Myrmidon line of classes being able to crit half the time is still the answer to most endgame threats, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I never felt the need to push the game’s buttons — like the game held a gun to my head and said, “Grind in the dungeons or be stuck for hours.” Dungeons allow you to level up any straggler units more easily, rather than them becoming a liability or completely left behind. But not even on my Hard playthrough did they feel necessary.
My strategies were diverse because the game both allowed and encouraged them. I rarely felt like I had to turtle up and cower behind ranged attacks, and when I did, it felt like the natural thing to do instead of the sole option. I charged forward, I split my units up, I let the underdog take the lead, I baited with weaker units, I holed up, and I did all of that because the game said, “You paid attention, now this won’t be a problem.”
Ephraim’s Hard mode in particular was pretty fair. It had its share of roadblocks and higher-level units, but gave me more experience (and thus, options) in return. Even the final boss felt like a reasonable challenge, which felt like a significant step-up from FE7 where the first phase felt normal and then the second could just one-shot even my most broken of units on Normal difficulty.
Sacred Stones may be easy, but it’s an intentional, well-crafted ease. I felt mentally stimulated, but the game itself wasn’t too demanding. Which having played through what many consider some of the hardest games beforehand…I appreciate a break.
Graphically it’s also a step up, which makes sense as it’s the third FE game on the system. Unlike the last two entries Sacred Stones does take the backlit screen of the GBA revision models in mind, so the colors are a lot softer on the eyes. No fancy emulator setups or changes needed — pop this bad boy on original hardware, the 3DS virtual console, Wii U, Nintendo Switch Online (expansion), or emulator and you’re ready to go!
The game also has a great soundtrack. I have the opposite of a musician’s brain, but to try and condense my thoughts, it feels like it takes better advantage of the GBA’s sound chip. I enjoyed FE6 and 7’s soundtracks, but a lot of the songs blurred together in my head to where only the recurring recruitment theme sticks out, and even then, FE1’s version is still on top for me to be honest. Personal favorites include the first map theme (Determination), Twisted Shadows A, L’arachel’s theme (Laughter), and Lyon’s theme. Maybe don’t look at the comments on that last one until you’ve beaten the game.
A Lasting Legacy
As mentioned previously, it took a while for Fire Emblem to get popular. While official reasons for why it took so long to localize haven’t been released (to my knowledge), the common guess is that there wasn’t much faith. JRPGs were at first seen as this intimidating thing for the real hardcores; people who could sit down and deal with dialogue and numbers (crazy stuff). As more complex mechanics and rigorous tutorials became more prominent, it shifted into people seeing them as too daunting for the average player. This spinned into a lot of sentiments, some delving into racism, but the point being that it took a good while for the genre to become normalized.
Nowadays I’d argue we’re in a JRPG renaissance with so many games getting localized — no questions asked, because there’s faith in them selling. Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Visions of Mana, Triangle Strategy, and remasters such as the Mega Man Battle Network Collection, Live a Live, Baiten Katos, etc. are all recent games that received some level of wide marketing and attention. The commonality is that now, the genre has the respect it deserves. And if I were to take a shot in the dark, I’m guessing that when combined with being a portable entry, that’s what it lacked. Because hot damn, looking back it feels like they barely marketed the dang thing!
I tried. I really tried to find any and all promotional materials beyond a strategy guide and a few fliers that were likely hung at places like GameStop, EB Games, Toys R Us, etc. That’s it. No commercials in other languages, no figures, toys, whatever else. I found this Reddit thread where a poster came packaged with the PAL version of Dynasty Warriors Advance, which…cool? Maybe some locations had die-hard FE nuts promoting the game on their own time, but that doesn’t come out of a marketing budget. I hope the reasoning is that FE7 was so successful that they had faith it would carry all future sales, but frankly, my real hunch is that the higher ups saw it as a fluke, hoped that sequels would earn back enough overseas, and just cut any extra expenses. Left to die in water.
Which is pretty crazy, considering that it didn’t even sell that bad at around 890,000 copies sold — less than a 100k drop-off from FE7 with its more large-scale push. This is purely speculative, but considering FE7’s positive reception, the GBA still being pretty successful, and the DS having GBA support, that culmination of factors resulted in the game not doing a nosedive in sales. Especially both the GBA and DS being popular, unlike a certain other console FE9 would soon release on. I could only imagine how well it would have done had they given Sacred Stones a fraction of what FE9 had to work with.
It’s just a shame, seeing that the series clearly had its share of new fans, an existing group of people willing to either develop fan translations or go in linguistically blind, and most importantly, some great games. Sacred Stones is a wonderful time, and out of all the games I’ve both reviewed and played for myself, it probably would land as the newcomers game.
It lacks a lot of the trial-and-error when playing through normally, leading to a clean experience where I don’t know if you’d ever need to look up a guide for the sake of sanity. Great writing, an interesting world, and a good amount of variety to where I can see new people getting into it and veterans having fun breaking the game wide open. Post-game, multiplayer, replay value, strong art direction, one of the series’ best soundtracks thus far, it’s all there. And again, is very much accessible via Nintendo Switch Online or emulation.
Play it! What do you have to lose, a few hours to decide that it might not be your thing? C’mon, this is probably the most unclouded recommendation I’ll be giving for a number of entries, so stop wasting time. If you’ve already played the game, then do it again (on an alternate route, even with hard mode if you’re spicy enough). Maybe I’m overselling, but it really is a fun time, and I hope you all enjoy it just as much as I did.
