Backlog Game Reviews 16 : Fire Emblem : Mystery of the Emblem part 1 (SNES)

     Hey there and welcome to Backlog Game Reviews. This time let's talk about another Fire Emblem Game. Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem on the SNES. It was released only in Japan on January 21st, 1994. It's a remake of the first Fire Emblem game and a sequel as well. It's essentially two games in one. Let's start with the remake of Dark Dragon and the Blade of Light and see how it holds up to the original.

Sheeda telling Marth about the invading pirates.

The story is the same as the Famicom version. Nothing new was added but, it was condensed to 20 chapters. As a result of taking 5 chapters out minor story elements were removed and some recruitable characters are gone too. Other than that, there's not much more to say about the story.

The story is told largely through narrations in-between battles.

The gameplay is largely the same. Your goal is still to defeat the boss and have Marth take the enemy castle or throne if you're fighting inside. All of the gameplay elements that were in the first game are here.

Marth vs a pirate.

The only new battle mechanic that was added is that characters that ride a horse, dragon, or Pegasus can now dismount their ride and walk on foot. Dismounting has its advantages and disadvantages. The distance that a character can move will be reduced after dismounting, but they'll lose any weakness they had when on their mount. Dragon riders and Pegasus knights, for example, will no longer take massive damage from bows when dismounted.

Sheeda fighting on her Pegasus.

Sheeda fighting off of her Pegasus.

  

Mounted units can't ride their mounts indoors in this game, unlike the Famicom version. They'll start the fight on foot if selected to participate in a battle that takes place inside.

Selecting characters to participate in a battle.

Besides dismounting nothing new was added, but some tweaks were made to make the game flow better. On the Famicom, each character could only hold up to four items. Weapons and items shared the same space so you had to choose between holding more weapons but fewer items or sacrifice weapon space for more items. Needless to say, your inventory was very limited and you had to stop and organize items during battles a lot. But now each character can hold up to eight items. Everybody has four slots for weapons and four slots for items. You don't feel as limited anymore and you have fewer items sitting around in your storehouse.

Marth's weapons and items.

Speaking of the storehouse it's much better in this game. On the Famicom, the storehouse worked like a shop. You had to walk a character over to it during a battle if you wanted to use it. Using the storehouse always ate up a lot of time because it was usually on the far end of the map and getting your characters over to it usually took multiple turns, and when you did make it to the storehouse only one character could use it per turn.

The storehouse on the Famicom version.

In this game, the storehouse has been removed from the map. It's only accessible when you're making preparations before a battle. This small change saves so much time, I'm so happy this was changed.

The new storehouse.

The problem I had with the menus has been fixed too. If you want to look at a character's stats or have them perform an action you only need to click on them once, instead of three or four times. This makes the game so much more convenient.

You only need to select a character once to look at their stats.

The core gameplay is the same but I would say the SNES version is superior to the original. It's much more streamlined and less time-consuming.

Talking to a villager.

Now that the gameplay is out of the way let's take a look at the presentation. As you would expect it's been heavily improved upon. This being a Super Nintendo game the graphics are much better, and battles have backgrounds instead of just a black screen. The soundtrack is pretty much the same but it's been upgraded to 16 bits, and the old shop and NPC theme has been replaced with a new song. I'm glad I never have to hear that song again.

An opening cutscene that explains every character class in the game.

All in all, this is a really good remake. If you like the original game then you'll love this, and if you're into strategy RPGs and want to play the first Fire Emblem then I definitely recommend playing this version. It's a great improvement and I can't think of anything negative about it.

That's all I have to say about this game. This is a fun SRPG that I feel would appeal not only to Fire Emblem fans but RPG fans in general. If you ever get the chance give this game a try. Thank you for reading. Next time will be a review on a Gameboy Advance game. I hope to see you again at Backlog Game Reviews.

       Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 Gameplay Video