Fire Emblem

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.

Fire Emblem is a video game series for the Nintendo consoles and handhelds. It's the younger, more popular, brother of Advance Wars. Among the tRPG genre, of which it was a fairly early member of, it's unusual for its lack of player controlled generic characters: Every character the player controls is unique, has a personality and if they die, they're dead forever. In most games there is a finite number of battles and obtainable money while weapons are finite in use, which renders efficiency in combat quite important (though only a handful are particularly stingy about this). Until the 13th game, it had quite down to Earth, reasonably proportions and armored characters aside from some unusual hair colors (an artifact of the the NES's very limited color options).

Officially, we're not here to talk about any of that! Instead we're going to talk about a pair of trading card games based on it.

Games

Until the 7th game, none of these were officially translated. English titles for these are the ones used by Nintendo in crossover games. While these games have not been translated officially, fans have translated all of them and as a result many are known to older fans by slightly different translations of their titles.

Most of the games are in separate unrelated universes, with only two or three games being connected in plot. Fans refer to these subseries by the name of the world they take place in while Cipher, the second TCG, assigns each a color and a symbol.

Archanea/Falchion/Red

In Cipher characters originating from these games focus on swarming cheap units, fitting how many of these characters lacked solid personalities or dialog past their original chapter.

• Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light (ファイアーエムブレム　暗黒竜と光の剣) on the Famicom (NES), often known by early fans by the slightly different and unofficial translation Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light or just FE1. The pantless prince Marth is forced to flea from his country of Altea after Dolhr, who has obtained supernatural aid from some old artifacts and some evil dragons, invaded it. After his cover is blown in exile, he and his retainers decide to join forces with the other countries of Archanea, including the Holy Kingdom of Archanea, who are trying to fight Dolhr. Along the way he acquires the legendary sword Falchion (which isn't actually a falchion) and the Fire Emblem shield. It is regarded as exceptionally primitive and lacks many basic features of later games. The most obvious three being that healers can't level up by healing and instead can only get XP by being attacked by an enemy and not dying (quite a task given their frailty), not being able to see the enemy's movement range when selecting them, and the inability to rearrange units in the deployment phase (this can be worked around by removing all units from deployment and readding them in a particular order). Don't play it and play one of the remakes instead.
  • Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (ファイアーエムブレム　新・暗黒竜と光の剣, lit New Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light) on the DS was the 11th game and is a remake of the first game. While it fixes the basic issues and gives Marth some much needed pants, it still lacks much of the polish found in later games and for some bizarre reason makes the new content impossible to access by a rational player by requiring things like killing off the majority of player units at a rate even a horrifically bad player couldn't manage. This is corrected by a fanmade Full Content Patch.
• Fire Emblem Gaiden (ファイアーエムブレム外伝) on the Famicom was the second game and set on Valentia, a continent far to the west of Archanea. It stars Alm, a youth that eventually acquires another, separate, Falchion (that's still not a falchion!) and Celica, a sword wielding priestess. The mechanics actually got weirder here instead of more polished and introduced concepts that would never or almost never be seen in the series again like magic that requires spending HP to use, equipable shields, explorable towns and abandoning the limited resources. The maps in this game are really terrible, open with limited terrain.
  • Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia (ファイアーエムブレム Echoes もうひとりの英雄王, lit Echoes Another Hero King) on the 3DS is a remake of that. It's officially released in English, though the translation is quite lacking and has a bizarre love of adding character breaking jokes. The maps were barely improved.
• Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem (ファイアーエムブレム　紋章の謎) on the Super Famicom (SNES) was the 3rd game in the series and where it started to hit its stride. Two years after the original game Marth has found pants and become king of Altea and awaits his marriage. A two year peace ends when the Kingdom of Archanea forces Marth to assemble his men and crush a rebellion in Grust. It included a remake of the original game which uses the new mechanics and contains many differences, including removal of several filler levels. It is regarded as an excellent game.
  • BS Fire Emblem: Archanea War Chronicles (BS ファイアーエムブレム アカネイア戦記編) on the Super Famicom with the (Broadcast) Satellaview is a sidestory that was only briefly playable. Using the Mystery of the Emblem engine this set of four chapters with an objective to survive as long as possible while collecting as much loot as possible. Each chapter was a prequel or sidestory to Mystery of the Emblem.
  • New Mystery of the Emblem: Heroes of Light and Shadow (ファイアーエムブレム新・紋章の謎〜光と影の英雄〜) on the DS was the 12th game and a remake of the third. It generally tightens up the original, expands the personality of the previously bland characters, and remains quite good. It was for some reason not translated to English, but a fan translation exists. It introduced two mechanics which were well executed here but directly contributed to the downfall of the series: My Unit/The Avatar, a player created original character, and Casual Mode, where dead units only stay dead for one chapter. Since Shadow Dragon existed the remake of the original was not included, but a remake of the BS episodes are.

Elibe and Magvel/Legendary Weapons/Purple

In Cipher characters from these games focus on support skills, which is appropriate since the series's beloved support system began here. Characters from Magvel (which isn't actually in the same world as Elibe as far as we know) often have anti-monster effects or (in one case) monster tribal. As of this writing only two Yellow monsters were printed and only 4 monsters were printed overall, so this isn't utilized all that much.

• Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade (ファイアーエムブレム　封印の剣), known by early fans as Sword of Seals, was the 6th game and released on the GBA. After several failed attempts to make an N64 game (Scrapped as over ambitious, underdeveloped or designed for the ill-fated N64DD) some of the ideas and designs were recycled into this game. With his father, Eliwood, ill and the league's official leader, Hector, dead the young Roy is pressed into leadership of the Lycian League after it is invaded by its belligerent neighbor Bern. Very much a back to basics title, with a simple plot and no map objectives other than seize. It is regarded as unexceptionable but playable, albeit with very low growth rates that make it quite possible many character will turn out absolutely terrible if the dice hate you. It did however introduce the support feature that became a staple of the series. By fighting alongside each other, units could become friends and get bonuses when fighting near the other. These bonuses were accompanied by conversations between the two units which expanded upon their characterization.
• Fire Emblem (ファイアーエムブレム 烈火の剣) was the 7th game, also on the GBA, and the first to be released in English, albeit without a subtitle. It is known as The Blazing Blade in English releases of spinoff titles and older English fans refer to it as Blazing Sword (An alternate translation of the Japanese subtitle) or just FE7. The story for this game, which is a prequel set 20 years before the previous game, is divided into two parts and is unusual in that it lacks a full scale war. The first part stars Lyn, the sole survivor of a tribe of nomads that learns her grandfather, an elderly lord of the Lycian League, wants to see her before he dies, and the Tactician (Default name: Mark) a mute, player created journeyman tactician that never quite manages to appear in frame. Lyn's journey to Lycia is fraught with obstacles including vengeful bandits, agents of her great uncle who wants to keep the throne for himself, and a pack of shadowy assassins seeking a pair of mysterious children. Lyn's mode is essentially a long tutorial, but it introduced many characters who would appear in the main game. After Lyn's story the game's main story occurs one year later as Eliwood and Hector are ambushed by the same group of assassins while searching for Eliwood's missing father. This game is recommended for newcomers: In addition to being a fan favorite, it is one of the most polished/balanced titles, has a long tutorial that must be completed the first time the game is played (though a fan made "tutorial slayer" patch exists to remove this requirement) and has high replay value. It also maintained the support system of its predecessor, but with much more interesting characters.
• Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (ファイアーエムブレム 聖魔の光石) on the GBA was the 8th game in the series. It is largely a spiritual successor to Gaiden, implementing many (but not all) of its unique mechanics in a much better base game. It also reintroduced skills to the series after the 6th game removed them, albeit in a limited fashion. Set on the continent of Magvel a long-lived peace is shattered when Renais is invaded by its former ally Grado. Grado's apparent motive is to destroy the Sacred Stones of each country, a disturbing revelation as these stones are all that hold back the banished demon king from reemerging. The twin heirs to Renais, Erika and Ephraim, embark on separate quests to end Grado's assault. Despite being very easy, even without using the ability to grind infinitely, the base gameplay is solid and it continued use of the support system. Due to its best developed mechanics and largest rom size, it is the most popular base for rom hacks.

Tellius/Lehran's Medallion/Green

In Cipher characters from these games focus on leveling up and promoting to achieve high power, with abilities that only work if a character has sufficient cards on its stack.

Ylisse/Naga's Brand/Blue

In Cipher characters from this game focus on class change (but not to the extent of Tellius), orb manipulation and have easily swarmed monsters with their own tribal support. Ylisse is actually the same continent as Archanea but in the distant future where technology is exactly the same or worse.

Fódlan/???/Grey

Neither the game nor any of the cards with characters from it are out yet.

Colorless

Colorless cards are those of character original to Cipher, those of characters originating in one of the spinoff titles, or certain promotional cards. They have no set mechanics and are splashable since they don't need a color bond to deploy, but don't provide a color when played as bonds.

First TCG

An unusual, poorly supported game. It's best remembered for being the only source of official art for many characters from the first five games. No effort was made to translate it and nobody plays it.

Cipher

Cipher is the second attempt at a TCG. It is unusual among TCGs for two reasons.

Firstly, all cards represent characters, with no land, mana, spell, energy, instant or trap cards to be found. Instead deployment is fueled by setting characters down from your hand once a turn as Bonds. To deploy a character you need to spend bonds equal to their deployment cost and at least one bond with the same symbol (or both symbols in the case of cards with both Hoshido and Nohr symbols). Expended bonds return to normal during your next turn. In addition to spending bonds to deploy, certain cards also Flip bonds as a cost. Flipped bonds can not provide symbols, but can still provide points. Very few effects can unflip bonds, so this payment is largely final.

Secondly decking out does not lose the game, it only causes the discard pile to be shuffled into a new deck (and this happens instantly so you don't even miss drawing a card). Pulling cards from the discard pile, known as the Retreat Area, is actually relatively easy and doable by multiple series.

While it has not been translated officially, there is a notably sized English community for simulator play and all cards have been translated for such.