The rom hacking scene for Fire Emblem, especially the GBA trilogy, has really picked up a ton of steam the last few years as tools advance and the series grows more and more popular. And as big a fan as I am of Fire Emblem, the oldest entry I've played is Binding Blade, aka FE6, so when I caught myself salivating at the hack spread before me the thought occurred, maybe I should play the rest of the official releases first before swan diving too far down this rabbit hole. This endeavor began with Fire Emblem: Birthright last year, which was so effusively boring I'm glad I got it over with. The next natural step then was every FE boomer's favorite, Genealogy of the Holy War for the Super Famicom.
I've always been a bit hesitant about Genealogy, aka FE4, partly because I've heard some weird things about Shouzou Kaga, the director for most of the older FE games, over the years but mostly because of the massive scale of the maps and the reliance on horse-mounted units. I've always had a much stronger preference for infantry in these games for various reasons, the greater variety in class design, many cavaliers in the series being kind of dull personality-wise, and honestly I just think it's boring to field a bunch of balanced characters who can use all the best weapons with high movement and no real drawbacks except for maybe a rando with a horseslayer every once in a while! My Fire Emblem friends like to joke that I hate horses, but really, it's the riders. But Jugdral is horsetown and I'd just have to accept that. I can certainly respect why; the big concept for Genealogy's map design is that the battle maps are large enough to accurately reflect the out-of-battle map map's geography. You can take screenshots of every chapter in the game and slam them together to craft just about the entire continent of Jugdral in-game which is, to be perfectly honest, insanely cool. Genealogy has 12 chapters to the average FE's ~30, for some perspective on the size, with multiple castles to seize making them feel like playing several regular chapters in sequence, but with a less linear map to work with. Again in concept this is very cool, but in practice I'm a bit more divided. When you have something to do, Genealogy's maps are phenomenal. But when you don't and you're spending turn after turn shuttling your entire army through rough terrain to reach the next objective, the pacing craters. Usually this isn't too much of an issue thanks to the introduction of road terrain, a clever type of tile that actually has a movement cost of less than 1, allowing units of any type to move beyond their regular limits. I love roads, they're an excellent band-aid for the tedium I just described and I wish they showed up again in later FEs, but I understand that being able to eyeball enemy range and the danger level of the next enemy phase is paramount and roads kinda mess with that, especially because I don't think the movement cost of any terrain is listed in-game. But at least half the chapters have some kind of chokepoint or roadblock that seems tailor-made to just slow things down, Chapter 1 has the Spirit Forest, Chapter 2 has its horrible q-shaped layout, Chapter 4 has a bizarre anti-promotion hill blocking a bridge, Chapter 5 has the infamous Yied Desert, Chapter 7 has the circuitous path up to Yied Temple, and Endgame has a forest pointlessly blocking the path to Freege that's just big enough to be annoying. None of these are dealbreakers, really, to be honest I found the Spirit Forest to be much less onerous than many online, but I do dearly hope the inevitable remake incorporates the Command mechanic from Path of Radiance. When maps are on, though, they're really popping off. Endgame might actually be one of my favorite maps in the series, certainly the best final map, there's just so much happening during each leg of your journey to Belhalla. Pincer attacks! Revelations! Regret! Revenge! Brainwashing! Those three random pegasus knight sisters who happen to be the most powerful enemies in the game! More regret! More revenge! Reunion! Dragons!! Also, while "The End of the Holy War" might be a more accurate translation, I'm very attached to what my current patch used: "The Final Holy War." Now that's epic!
One of the many Firsts Genealogy brought to the series was Skills, special abilities granted on both a character and class basis that allowed units to cut through an enemy's defense, strike first no matter what if entering battle injured, buy and repair items for 50% off, and more contentiously strike twice if faster than their opponent. Doubling is a traditional mechanic in Fire Emblem that has long contributed to Speed being one of the most powerful and coveted stats, but in Genealogy you can only double if you have the Pursuit skill. I actually kinda dig this. While it definitely causes anyone with Pursuit to get kinda overvalued, at the same time anyone lacking Pursuit is free to use much heavier weapons without consequence since only bosses tend to have Pursuit themselves and even then, not often. And it forces you to be a bit more mentally present when combatting big enemy formations when you can't assume each of your units is guaranteed to kill their target. Besides, there are plenty of good units who don't have Pursuit, like Lewyn and Cuan, and bad units who do have Pursuit, like Alec and... okay so it's not a terribly balanced skill. But still, I appreciate the texture it brings to your roster and to pairing decisions. Which is another mechanic I was a bit fretful over but ended up working quite well and reinforcing my distaste for Awakening and Fates' implementations. Those games have reclassing and the majority of the children are both optional and from weird future timeholes. Genealogy, well, it's right there in the name. The story spans decades and multiple generations, and because your parent characters are much more static, your decisions on who to pair with whom feel like they matter a whole lot more. You see all of those kids navigating the world their parents left behind. The game doesn't have all that much dialogue compared to modern Fire Emblems but it manages to develop some compelling characters and stories despite that, and adeptly weaves those narrative threads together with the mechanical. While Supports as we know them were introduced in Binding Blade, Genealogy does feature a primitive version in the Talks certain characters can have on certain maps under certain conditions. I actually really like these, they're quite limited compared to supports but in return a character can earn a permanent +5 to speed or something after a training session or pep talk, or a one-of-a-kind weapon like the Berserk Staff or Brave Lance. Big bonuses with big impact on your forces! But then again I've always been a proponent of having limited supports to begin with, none of this everyone has A/B ranks with everyone nonsense in the modern games.
One mechanic with big impact I really did not like at all, however, was the Arena. In each chapter you can have your units battle through seven rounds in a combat arena accessible in each castle. There's no cost to entry besides the durability for whichever weapon they use, and losing doesn't end in death unlike every other instance of the arena in the series. It's free money and experience for every unit in your army. And boy is it tedious as hell sending everyone through, even with emulator fast-forward. But unfortunately that free money and experience is just too lucrative to ignore, especially once you acquire the Paragon Ring for boosted experience. Round after round of the same battles against the same opponents playing out, I was sick of it by Chapter 2. You can occasionally pull some shenanigans to push a weaker character through an unfavorable match-up but this is generally down to passing Slayer and Status weapons around, and I found it far more gratifying to pull such tactics in real battles. The enemy design of Genealogy relies on massive formations unlike the more scattershot smattering of enemies around the map favored by other games in the series. Dark mages notably subvert this which reinforces their threat and insidious natures, but most battles involve picking apart big ol' bricks of enemies as efficiently as you can on player phase while ensuring you won't get owned too much by the leftovers on enemy phase. These combat puzzles are quite satisfying, and getting Alec one win in the arena with all my resources behind him just doesn't hit the same as engineering an opportunity for him in the field. But characters must reach level 20 to promote, and even after sending everyone into the arena who could every chapter, only a handful of my characters in either generation reached the level cap of 30, so I'm definitely left with the impression that the arena is kinda-sorta mandatory.
I do love this game, I can grouse about specific mechanics all I want but I adore how much friction there is in things like the inventory limitations and every character having their own funds, it makes the army management side of things fulfilling without being overwhelming. And mechanical elements like inheritance allowed me to get even more swept up in the drama of the story. I was so engrossed in Tinni felling Hilda, her cruel aunt who tormented Tinni and her mother, the happy-go-lucky Tailtiu from the first generation, for years and ultimately drove Tailtiu to a tragic death, with her mother's Thoron tome in hand, aided by a sibling-critical with Arthur, I was fancifully storyboarding an over-the-top anime scene in my head afterward. And the realization that I was even doing that really cemented that this game is something special. The boomers were right. Now I can't wait to play Thracia 776, but first I think I'm going to pivot to the original Fire Emblem. But before that, I've got Shining Force CD to finish!
Also, for the record, my pairings were as follows:
First Generation:
Second Generation:
I do realize now, in retrospect, I accidentally paired some cousins up in the second generation, and that's a major oopsie on my part. Something to remember not to do in a replay I guess!!
Game Number: 31
Year Played: 2025
Platform: SNES