Good storyline, interesting characters, but a little too unforgiving of mistakes.
The main character, Ike, is the son of a mercenary commander. After years of training, Ike is finally given the chance to join the company and fight alongside his family and friends. Though the jobs are relitively smalltime, chasing bandits out of a village here and chasing out some pirates from a port there, the paltry pay and smiling faces seem payment enough. The relative peace, however, doesn’t last. An enemy country invades, slaughtering the royal army at the capital and assaulting all armed parties within the conquered nation. It doesn’t matter if the person is a surviving soldier or foreign emmisary, mercenary or innocent man hunting for food for his family. All are treated as combatants, and slaughtered without distinction. Ike is thrown into command of the company in the chaos, and his first job as leader: protect the surviving princess until her kingdom is set free.
Now, let’s talk gameplay. It’s an interesting meld of chess, rock-paper-scissors, and Final Fantasy mechanics. Sword beats ax, ax beats lance, and lance beats sword. Another interesting detail is that weapons can break in mid-battle because of how often they’ve been used. So many nice, intricate details..but very unforgiving.
In most games, when you lose a character in battle, the individual can be healed eventually. A few games have the wounded out of action for a set amount of time, and death of your men doesn’t occur unless you ‘really’ screw up. This one, however, has anyone you lose stay lost. Did you lose your only magician in the early part of the game, when the mechanics were still a mystery to you? Well, too bad for you. Dead is dead, no chance for revival or replacement. You’ll probably need his unique skills later in the game, and because of a mistake when you’re a relative amateur to the play-style, you’ll be at a permenant disadvantage. Every battle has high costs, forcing you to become cautious and hence you may lose the battle because you’re trying to protect valuable assets.
It’s one thing to risk a thousand nameless
grunts and chance them dying, but the fun ends when it’s someone
you care about. A character you’ve grown to like, who’s been at
your side in dozens of battles, and dies because of your
mistakes. Kill characters because it’s part of the storyline,
kill nameless or mostly unknown characters by the boatload.
Never, ever make someone feel like they wasted the life of
someone they like in the heat of battle. That sort of guilt in a
game doesn’t belong.