So I finally beat Fire Emblem 11. It was nice getting a little peek into the past and playing a remake of the first game, but it didn't really meet up to my expectations. I'm super biased because I'm always comparing every Fire Emblem to the fourth one, which just stands heads and shoulders above each other game in the series. Kind of like how some people compare every Silent Hill to the second one.
I was kind of surprised at how short it was, I mean I powergamed the hell out of it, almost from beginning to end, but I kind of expected it to go another 10 chapters, but then you beat up the bad guy and win. It's not a jarring and stilted end like in 6, but I wanted to enjoy my party that I finally got up to uber strength a bit longer. I worked really hard to get everyone up to endgame strength, and then the game just ends and I can't play with'em anymore!
I got excited near the start, because the game was being really serious and asking me to make hard decisions, that and there were so many changes from the previous games that I was just hyped about using. As I eased into the midgame though, the changes became less consequential than I thought they'd be (except for the weapon forging system, which I was always excited about using to give myself gamebreaking weapons for a pittance) and the game fell into it's routine of kill badguys and not make any important decisions.
However, I noticed that near the end, there's one last important decision you can make! You can trade in some powerful items to get another item to kill a boss to get another powerful item, or you can keep them and just ignore the boss and play through the game like that. I found that a little intriguing, but it's far too little much too late for me to give it points.
One thing I noticed though, is that if this is the progenitor of the series, then I finally found it, I found where all the shitty boring rehashed stories come from that dominate the sixth, seventh, and eighth games! I swear, for something that is referenced and alluded to so often in the other games and in separate titles like SSBM, this just has the most boring story with the most MIND-NUMBING dialogue I've ever seen.
You could literally replace Marth with any generic hero that wants to save the world from the really obviously unambiguously evil dragon king, and give that generic hero no lines whatsoever, and the game would be virtually unchanged. Actually, you could do that with EVERY SINGLE character and the game would STILL be virtually unchanged. I mean magical Jesus jumping Christ, there's NO EMOTION ANYWHERE! Nobody's personally involved in what's happening! It's hard to say if the characters even care that the world is in danger from being conquered by the evil dragon godking! It's like everyone is just following a badly written script that says they save the world, and they do it.
For example, more than one character has their whole family killed or kidnapped by the bad guys, and but does anyone get truly distressed or irrational? Nope, the most emotional that anyone gets is that they have to take a short break to 'take care of their emotions' which they weren't letting any out to begin with. Actually, I think the most charged scene in the game happens at the very end, when Marth and his OTP talk awkwardly to eachother, and even that's kind of lame because even Marth himself didn't know he had any romantic feelings for any character to begin with, it was just kind of dumped on him out of nowhere! From how the scene played out, it's like Marth forgot his lines from the script and another character has to step in and fucking remind him of it. It was so painful to watch, I've never seen a romance shoved down anyone's throat before, and so suddenly at that.
Oh, and the game's finale is disappointingly easy, I mean, come on game, I'd like it if the final boss didn't take only two hits to kill...
I don't regret playing this game, but I definitely don't want to give it another go.