Fire Emblem

Sacred Stones.

Technically Shadow Dragon, but I got bored and quit a few chapters in. So really Sacred Stones, as that's when I started to actually care about the series.

Shadow Dragon is a pretty flawed game, yeah- Especially in just how primitive it is.

And before anyone jumps down my throat about it, yes, it was a major advancement over the the game it was based on. Doesn't mean it wasn't three steps back from even the GBA games.

Awakening for me.

Shadow Dragon.

I'm an Awakening newb and I have no interest in replaying the old games due to their lack of quality-of-life features. It'd be too hard to go back, and I'd rather just go forward.

I've done my best to understand some of the plots and characters of previous games, though, so that I can at least contribute to discussion.

7 and 8 are really accessible, though.

Path of Radiance is pretty accessible too. Radiant Dawn can also be as much for someone who comes in from at least one other Fire Emblem. I definitely agree that Awakening streamlined the UI a lot compared to the older games, though.

As for my first, it was Blazing Sword. It was the only Fire Emblem I've ever ground out the entire support log for and that has since made me not keen on ever completing another one.

I can never take complaints about older games in any series lacking 'quality of life' features seriously.

My first was Sacred Stones (I think), but Awakening is the first one I've beaten.

@Kuroi: PoR would be accessible if it didn't cost $100 on Amazon.

@RJW: Fire Emblem does have a slight reputation for having frustrating mechanics for no reason other than the Grandfather Clause.

Dolphin!

My first experience with Fire Emblem was one of the SNES ones in Japanese, but I don't know which one since I didn't play it very long and had no idea what was going on.

The first one I beat was FE7.

Technically speaking, Blazing Sword of Flame Whateverthehellitscalled was my first.

But for all intents and purposes, Shadow Dragon.

edited 5th Jul '15 1:28:01 PM by TheAirman

I'm an Awakening noob. Started Sacred Stones but was forced to stop halfway through due to circumstances beyond my control.

In hindsight I think Sacred Stones was the best one to start with. The game's a bit easier than others, has cool features that makes the game fun, and has an interesting plot to go with it (especially Ephraim's route, but Eirka has good moments too).

I had a really odd order for the games I played, going Sacred Stones -> Radiant Dawn -> Blazing Sword -> Path of Radiance -> Awakening. If I get Fates (which is very uncertain right now) it will be the first time I've played a set of games in sequence.

Also, current run of Sacred Stones, I got Ross to level 10 Journeyman by Chapter 3 thanks to intense supervision. Probably going to promote him into a Pirate since I think he makes a better Berzerker than Dozla. Current stats:

• Ross (Level 10 Journeyman)
  • HP: 23/Str: 9/Skill: 5/Spd: 7/Luck: 10/Def: 5/Res: 2

I'm an Awakening newb, too. A friend of mine is recommending I track down and emulate the one with Lyn in it; I don't know which one that is, but seeing some of the crit animations, I might just have to.

Blazing Sword. Sadly she gets replaced with a boring piece of toast 7 chapters in.

Anything I should know about it re: grinding and supports? I suppose I could just read all the supports online if I can only max a few of them per run like I've heard some of the older games do, but eh.

To be fair, she comes right back not too long into Milquetoast and Proto-Ike's Grand Adventure and sticks around for the whole trip. She's not as plot important as those two, but she gets to be part of the banter often enough that I don't mind.

Blazing Sword doesn't have any proper/obvious grinding opportunities outside of the rare and occasionally undependable Arena, so you'll be better off deciding what units you're going to be feeding experience to early on and leaving the rest to the bench. With a few adjustments for new recruits here and there, naturally.

As for supports, the GBA games all had a weird system where you had to keep all compatible units adjacent to each other for a varying number of turns before the support would be unlocked, and a character could only view one support per map. Just something to keep in mind as you shuffle your lord towards the Seize point.

edited 5th Jul '15 5:02:00 PM by Demonfly

Don't listen to them Red, Eliwood is just fine. Blazing Sword is a great game and easy to emulate, although, given that you've only played Awakening, you might want to play Sacred Stones first, which is something of a midpoint between Awakening and Blazing Sword (while neatly avoiding Seinfeld Is Unfunny by virtue of being a legitimately great game in a vacuum). Supports can only be ground by ending a turn with the two characters in adjacent tiles, which in some cases (like Erk/Serra, which is totally worth the effort) will take you forever to complete. However, a lot of the maps are of the Seize variety, so you can grind to your heart's content with no problem if you so want. However, note that each character can have a maximum of five Support points — so you can only have one A and one B, two B and one C, and so on. So I recommend you plan ahead, if you don't want to end with incomplete Support chains.

Oh, and as far as grinding for EXP goes, you can only do so on Arenas, so if that's what you wanna do you might want to use the Dance exploit. But again, yu might want to make a stop at Sacred Stones to acclimate yourself to the GBA environment before leaping into Blazing Sword. (It's fine if you don't, though.)

edited 5th Jul '15 4:57:42 PM by Ninety

Blazing Sword(AKA just "Fire Emblem" outside Japan and the fan community) and Sacred Stones are both very accessible games with casual difficulty, and many features.

As are Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn, though they're probably hard to buy easily now.

It's worth noting that Blazing Sword doesn't require you to actually save in order to save acquired supports to the support log. So if you're really dead set on grinding them out, you can do what I did and have two saves: one at an opportune starting point with three easy seize maps in a row; and another disposable save for running those maps. The disposable save can then be used to build an A support. Revert back to the other save afterward to get around the 5-support limit. Do note that some A-rank supports take as long as 240 turns to build (80 per rank).

Alright. Doing the final Future's Past Map.

After that, it's Apotheosis.