Sunshine Revival Challenge #5

[elyusion]

Journaling prompt: Be a carnival barker for your favorite movie, book, or show (or any other of your choice - game, comic, anything else)! Write a post that showcases the best your chosen title has to offer and entices passersby to check it out.

Play Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War (Super Famicom, 1996)! We got:
- a strategy game for math fans and people who just like playing war
- a sense of scale far more grand than any other Fire Emblem
- battle animations that, while not as snappy as the GBA ones, are still pretty great, in my humble opinion
- an actually fun arena
- 50000000000000 characters (okay, more like a little less than 200)
- like half of the cast being related to each other somehow
- wild family drama
- wild friendship drama too
- romance
- tragedy (so much tragedy, and I do mean in the classical sense as well as in the modern "bad thing happening to good person" sense)
- court intrigue and everything surrounding it
- eventual triumph!! (At what cost?)
- a sense of humor despite the incredibly shitty world that is the setting
- hype moments and aura
- plot so good FE3H (a later Fire Emblem game) took blatant inspiration, but they didn't do nearly as good a job
- one of my favorite video game opening demos, ever. (Also one of the best renditions of the Fire Emblem theme.)
- banger soundtrack
- 90s fantasy ass designs
- lots of lore
- atmosphere.... There's definitely a better way to say this but the vibes are so. They're so. As I sit here and try to recall the game's events all those emotions are coming back to me, and they're just about as clear as when I actually first played the game.
- a game that makes OP's eyes sting from thinking about it even now
- beautiful art, if you know where to look




It's been a while, so I forgot where to find the really good art by other artists. Rika Suzuki is goated though, so it's fine.

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If you have time to waste, you can read this really long fanifesto I wrote for Angelique during Three Weeks for Dreamwidth. It's super long, but I have no clue how to give all the necessary information while making it a lot shorter.

Comments

[sarajayechan]

♥ FE4! Some of the mechanics could drive me up a wall but I love the characters and story and I always had a blast trying out different parent combos.

[elyusion]

Cute icon!
I have yet to really try out a bunch of parent combos because there's so many games in the world I want to play that I can't often afford to fully replay games (sad) but also... something about FE4 feels really unreplay-friendly? I guess the maps are so long that it feels like if you're looking forward to a specific part of the story, if it's anywhere beyond Chapter 2 it feels like it takes forever to get there TT But I really really like the big maps anyways.

[sarajayechan]

Thanks!

YEAH, the maps and certain obstacles, like trying to get to a village for an item because the bandits will always go for that one first.

[elyusion]

I genuinely have no clue how one is supposed to save all those villages at the center of Disturbance in Agustria to this day.

[zenigotchas]

I NEED TO FINISH IT. I keep making new files but I've only gotten as close to chappy 2.... But I do love the gameplay and dragon lore. I love Sigurd, he's so broken it's fun.

[elyusion]

I'd say take your time, but depending on how good your memory is... If you want to play for the plot, it's probably best to make sure you don't forget too much of what's already happened for this game. [pause] Actually, it's probably not a big deal since you can look up the game's script on Serene's Forest (a fansite) and reread what you forgot at any time.
I realized that despite this being a post recommending a game, I didn't talk about gameplay a lot 🗿 I think I'm not knowledgeable enough in game design to discuss it, but at least you're here to confirm for anyone looking: The game is fun to play, I swear. Sigurd feels so good to use. I hope you find the time to finish the game one day ^__^!!

[wintermintly]

i think genealogy is like. peak cici game to me. this is your game bro.

[elyusion]

so true! post cancelled everyone; ive decided no one should be able to play this game but me. *men in blacks you and everyone else*

[wintermintly]

erm! oopsie sorry everyone!!

[haunted_cherries]

TIL about a Fire Emblem game I never even knew existed HDJSHKDJS also the art and comics for it look so GORGEOUS!! (And what's an FE game without a little tragedy as a TREAT xD)