Collection essentials #191: Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu / Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (SNES)

This is the fourth Fire Emblem game. And it’s kind of remarkable that it’s on the same console as the third game, because it feels so much more advanced. The graphics and audio are far better, the size and depth of the game is absolutely enormous, and the story is much more complex. 

Fire Emblem is a series that’s never been afraid of experimenting, and 4 is a prime example. There are a myriad of changes and additions since the third game. Some things went on to be important recurring elementals in the series. For example, this is the first game to have the famous “weapon triangle”; swords perform well against axes, while axes beat lances, and lances excel against swords. This adds a rock-paper-scissors sort of style to the gameplay that makes combat much different and more interesting, and it’s something the series is particularly known for, so much so that it can seem very odd when one discovers that the first three games didn’t have it. There are a lot of elements in 4 that were never reused against, so there is no Fire Emblem game before or since that’s quite like this one. 

Fire Emblem 4 is very complex, and so I’m barely going to scratch the surface in describing what the game is like for brevity’s sake, and to not drive myself crazy with feeling a need to be thorough. The story involves a series of kingdoms in a fantasy-medieval sort of world, and you play as the son of a duke of one of the countries named Sigurd. At the outset, he sets off trying to rescue friends from some troublemakers, and pretty soon he meets a mysterious girl who changes everything, and a complex tale begins to unfold.

In terms of gameplay, this is still very much a strategy RPG like all other Fire Emblem games, but there are some changes that are very noticeable. For one thing, maps are HUGE. There are only a small number of chapters in the game compared to other Fire Emblems, but that’s because each chapter contains the same amount of content that would have been at least two chapters in a different game. This was the first Fire Emblem game to implement “skills”, which are spell attributes or abilities of the units who have them. It’s also the first game in which you can have different characters in your army talk to each other and eventually get married, and this is huge because midway through the game there is a time skip, after which you play as their kids! The attributes of the kids depend very much on who their parents were, so this gives the game quite a bit of replay value for those who want to experiment with different combinations. Relationships between units also would become a defining part of Fire Emblem in the future, with different games utilizing the concept in different ways. 

Fire Emblem 4 definitely has some flaws. The game can be a slog sometimes, which isn’t helped by the sheer size of the maps, so getting your units from point A to point B can be a pain. It’s also definitely a type of game that you want to have a guide handy to reference at least once a while, because it’s really easy to get bitten in the butt if you don’t know what you’re doing at times. Some of the gameplay features can be annoying, such as the fact that units can’t swap weapons and items; each character has their own individual money, and one must sell an item to a shop and have a different character buy it from that shop in order to actually trade. 

I got and played Fire Emblem 4 as a teenager. It was in Japanese, and I used a walkthrough which told me basically what was going on in the story, but didn’t translate the dialogue directly, so I probably ought to revisit this game with a proper English patch. I want to, but I’m kind of holding off because I think there’s a very reasonable chance that FE4 will get a remake one of these years (I'm coming to you from the year 2024). Fire Emblem is much more popular worldwide now than it used to be, and 4 seems like an absolute prime candidate for a remake, especially since the first three already have gotten such a treatment. 

I’m not sure whether FE4 deserves to be near the very top of a “Best of Super Nintendo” list, but it certainly has a lot of what it takes to be considered. One thing’s for sure, if this game is up your alley, it’s one that you can spend an absolute ton of time on. It’s an unforgettable entry in a beloved series, and it’s a clear essential.