Rating: 8.5/10 | Gameplay Rating: 9/10 | Story Rating: 7/10 | Music Rating: 7.5/10 | Best Song: Victory Now!
Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade was the second Fire Emblem game I ever completed after Awakening on the 3DS. Going into it, I had an expectation that it was going to be slightly more annoying to play considering the QOL features that so many people always mention when talking about the revolutionary transition from FE12 to FE13. This was absolutely not the case. I loved my experience the entire way through, even going as far as to say I loved it far more than my experience within Awakening.
Starting off strong, I loved how simple and straightfoward the gameplay was while still allowing for thoughtful decisions throughout certain maps. While not needing to think as hard about which specific units I needed within certain maps, there were still meaningful decisions to be made when planning out which groups of units should stay together and the paths they needed to take through enemies. Ensuring that mages and healers were able to make effective use of their high utility throughout maps while at the same time being able to guarantee their safety after their actions was always a joy to plan out. The idea of thinking 5 moves ahead and about ideal ending formations for each turn stayed interesting throughout both Lyn and Eliwood's story. While I did not end up touching on Hector's story just yet so I could move on to Shadow Dragon, I would love to go back and explore the differences between maps and difficulty in the future. I felt like I had great RNG for my characters as well throughout my run, helping greatly in making my gameplay a smoother experience where I had a varied and useful cast. OH YEAH sound design was absolutely incredible too, the little boops and beeps from navigating around the menu to the satisfying critical hit sound made a huge difference in my experience.
Storywise? It was servicable, definitely nothing groundbreaking in the world of JRPGs. In no way was it bad though, just a simple romp throughout the kingdoms in an effort to save Eliwoods's father and to stop a great evil. What I did really like though was that Lyn's mode introduced many characters that ended up coming back in multiple different situations through Eliwood's story. Encountering these units again felt like fanservice for me, always envoking that "OMG HEY THAT CHARACTER'S BACK I WAS WAITING FOR YA!!!"
Of course, though, if you're playing a Fire Emblem game you are probably coming for the unique and varied cast of units. I loved each unit and I think the beautiful sprites and animations contributed greatly to my opinions about these units. Animations were absolutely top notch, especially for units like Lyn where she would cast shadow clone jutsu and just go ham on the opposition. While I do love the more recent artwork of units in newer games, there will always be a certain level of charm and appreciation for beautiful, hand-crafted pixel art. The 3 main characters were all cool to me, seal of approval (ദ്ദി˙ᗜ˙). I even ended up buying a Lyn figure (pls someone make an Eliwood and Hector figure PLSSS). Big props for somehow making me care about 3 separate main protagonists equally that is always nice.
The Blazing Blade felt like my real first experience in Fire Emblem. I had an amazing time playing it the whole way through and have officially fallen in love with the series because of this game alone.