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Just finished FE1 on Switch. Thoughts + Tier list!


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I've been working on this playthrough bit by bit for the last month or two. It's been a quaint experience. I haven't played one of the Kaga games since 2012  and I certainly didn't imagine ever playing this particular one, but if you put it on the Switch during the months leading up to a new Fire Emblem game, I really can't resist. Since this game only exists on the Famicom app, I had to make a Nintendo account with the region set to Japan, then link that account to one of my switch profiles in order to download the app for free. As for the language barrier, I've already played the remake so I didn't need to know what's going on in the dialogue. I do have some command over the language, but it's rusty. Thankfully no kanji or I'd just give up on reading anything. And for learning which stat and which weapon was which, I just pulled up a bunch of resources until everything was committed to memory. I was thinking of writing a proper review, but settled on bullet points of things I like and don't like.

Cool stuff

  • Spoiler

     

    • Marth is great in this game: I was very surprised to see one of the stereotypically weak Lords actually be good, maybe one of the best units overall. I had him sit around level 10 for the whole mid game, something typical of any Shadow Dragon playthrough, and he was still one rounding bosses despite mediocre stats. The Rapier is one of the most common buyable items in the game, the miracle sword is great too – really does increase his stat growths by the way. I kind of wish I tried out this game's version of the Falchion, because Medeuth is ridiculously hard without it and I'm curious if the attack negation is as broken as it sounds.
    • You can break the end game: Buyable stat boosters lets you stat cap your whole army and breeze through the final maps. With inventory management being what it is, it'll take an hour, but the game hands you more than enough money to buy the hundred items necessary. If you don't have that kind of time, just settle for capping out Marth, Tiki, and any other units you like. Also the 12 uses of hammerne basically make your three warp staves infinite. 
    • Funny name translations: Gato (Gotoh, but I guess he's a cat now), Barts (Barst, but I guess he's the guy from Final Fantasy 5), Macedonia (Macedon, I just like that they didn't try for a moment to hide it), Cheney (Xane, but he shot his friend "on accident" during a hunting trip)
    • Arena is (safely) exploitable if you know what you're doing: Despite the inability to back out of a fight, the Arena can be tamed with strategy. As best I can tell, the power of your opponent depends only on your level, up to 20. So promoting and becoming level 1 gives you the weakest enemies again for some safe grinding. You can also choose which weapon to use giving yourself an edge. Just mind the durability, since if your weapon breaks your character just stands there and waits to die. Xane's opponents are dependent on his personal level, and not the level of the unit he copied, and he won't level up, so you can freely get gold with him.
    • The Starsphere/Starlight choice had unexpectedly severe repurcussions: I didn't think much of not getting Starlight, it was the obvious choice in Shadow Dragon but otherwise didn't impact your playthrough too much in that game. In this game, The Starsphere is even more valuable because the regalia and personal weapons cannot be Hammerne'd for more uses. However, Starlight leads to Falcion, and that's the only weapon in the game that deals reasonable damage to Medeus since they made him so hard to hurt and only one person can engage him at a time while he heals every turn. Plus sources claim Falcion has the attack negation property? Can't imagine Marth being even better. Without Falcion, I was chipping Medeus away 5 damage per hit with stat capped Shiida packing Gradivus at one range. Magic should still work at melee range but his physical defense was surprising.

     

     

Nitpicks

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    • The AI is pretty bad. There are thieves in some indoor chapters (like 14 or 19) that just stand around when they should be heading to villages or chests. The map design looks explicitly designed for this sort of challenge in pushing the player forward, but it was the programmer's day off, I guess. Thieves work in other chapters, so something's up. You'd think three years is long enough to make a game like this with Famicom Wars as a foundation.
    • Reinforcements: They're all Ambush spawns (reinforcements that appear and move to attack you on the same enemy phase). Also the vast majority of reinforcements are mounted units so they can reach anybody standing near their spawn point, or somebody heading to their fort to heal. These guys caused way more resets than unlucky crits have, and it makes the level design very trial and error in practice. Reinforcements are also typically stronger than that chapter's basic enemies in terms of stats and weapon loadout. The real jaw dropper for me was Infinite spawning reinforcements which I was not mentally prepared for. Technically not “infinite”, I think the game runs out of memory at some point on these chapters: 8, 9, 17, 24, 25, maybe more that I don't remember. I think they maintain some ridiculous numbers of reinforcements in the remakes, but they're programmed to stop if you kill the boss, giving you time to shop and arrange items. Not so in this version of the game. If you can't put butts in those spawn points you will be overwhelmed.
    • inventory management: you cannot trade, only give. Each character has four inventory slots, and there's a convoy you can access at certain parts of the map. But the act of buying something or withdrawing something for another unit is a multi-turn ordeal. Every action ends your turn, even equipping a weapon or dropping one to make room for another. And the inability to manage items or access the convoy in the battle preparations screen means you have to deploy a unit that's holding an item you want. Also you can't sell items, which doesn't matter much since money is so plentiful, but it's hard not to feel wasteful when you decide to drop a weapon just to make space for something. And when you kill an enemy with a droppable weapon or item, your choices are to send it to the convoy or drop something you're currently holding. There's no option to send one of your existing items to the convoy instead.
    • Promotions: This game doesn't have master seals, but class specific items to promote. Here are their locations besides the Chapter 23 secret shop:
    • -Hero's Proof: Chapter 10, 16
    • -Knight's Crest: Chapter 12, 17, 18, 21
    • -Orion's Bolt: Chapter 12, 19
    • -Dragon whip: 19, 22
    • -Bishop Ring: 19, 23

    See how long fliers and mages have to wait? Raising Est isn't even a joke in this game since you can get her to level 15 in her join chapter safely in the arena, then squeeze in more levels in the next three chapters. Also promotion does very little for you in this game. No promotion bonuses, just a movement increase for most classes, the ability to keep gaining exp, and Mages can finally use staves.

    • Can't see weapon stats: I tried to make it through this game without a guide telling me all I want to know, but the one thing I conceded on was having the weapon stats pages handy. I can't run calculations without it. If the original game's release manual had this information, then that's fine, but if not this is an oof design choice for a strategy game.

     

     

And now the reason we're all here, the tier list. I have never seen a tier list for FE1, so I guess that makes mine the definitive one. I'll be using the Shadow Dragon translations of their names.

Spoiler

Rules:

  • This tier list is not assuming LTC or any other challenge imposed outside the game
  • The player is assumed to understand the game's mechanics and take advantage of any exploits and secrets they want to. So smart arena abuse and infinite stat boosters are on the table. 
  • And as for how I view availability, I prefer to look at it as how useful that unit is from their join chapter onward but no arbitrary penalties to the units that join late in the game. Since naturally if you're only there for a few chapters, you're not contributing as much as the cumulative totals help earlier units might provide.

Top Tier

  1. Nobody. I considered Tiki and Xane for this tier since they are so unique and so powerful. But Xane is only as strong as your strongest guy, and Tiki feels an odd pick for top tier when she relies on arena/stat boosters more than other units. Low stat caps and unimpressive stats on recruitable units also keep your army homogenized at a particular power level. Tiki can solo the Michalis chapter, Marth can solo some chapters, but in general enemies get stronger at the same rate you do, and even stat capped units struggle to one round opponents in the final chapter.

High Tier (in order)

  1. Tiki: Secret shops let you stat cap her for an insane 32 attack and 35 defense. Her weapon never breaks, has 100 accuracy, and tears up opposing dragons like nothing else (except medeus for some reason). Manaketes are the only units that can get past the 20 defense cap. Plus I assume she can be leveled up very safely in the chapter 20 arena, but I don't remember trying it.
  2. Xane: A copy of your best unit (HP included!). Can't use personal weapons. Has to re-transform every five turns but as long as he doesn't go off on his own it's never an issue since he won't revert on enemy phase. Can also fight and level up untransformed but there's no point. 
  3. Marth: Has exclusive access to the three best swords in the game. Rapiers are deadly and are buyable in almost every chapter. And he's a regular prince of thieves who can fill in for Julian. I'm also making the assumption Falcion works how sources claim it works in this game, though it's one of very few details I can't personally confirm from experience.
  4. Linda: Aura is so strong. Gets close to capping stats by level 20, though promotion naturally gives her warp staff utility.
  5. Merric: Excalibur is a great boss killer for early to mid game. But it's basically thoron for the late game so don't feel bad about deleting a tough enemy with it here or there. Ballistaes are pretty much indestructible without strong magic.
  6. Wendell: Joins with enough wplv to wield any stave or tome. His role in the early/mid game is exclusively staff utility and chip damage because lack of strong tomes until the Thoron secret shop in Chapter 17 keep him from one-rounding anything. Not that you should be in a hurry to feed him kills, his stat growths are garbage and he'll be relying on his bases. And of course in endgame you can boost him up to be on par with the bishops you made out of Merric and Linde.
  7. Gotoh: There's nothing Gotoh can potentially do that your units couldn't but he comes with the second of two Fortify staves in the game. He's also the only recruitable unit that comes with resistance and has near capped stats across the board so he'll keep up with you're own stat capped units. Basically here just to ensure you could finish the game since he should be able to survive against medeus with healing support.
  8. Boah: Basically Wendell but with less stats and growths everywhere except speed. In particular the lack of Luck and HP is the biggest drawback but otherwise makes a good replacement bishop 
  9. Bantu: Very helpful tank in the early game, particularly for walling off reinforcements. You can stat cap him for the endgame and get 35 attack and 32 defense. For reference 20 is the natural cap for non manaketes, and 32 attack is what you get with capped strength and a silver weapon. But his weapon has 80 accuracy and his pitiful 18 HP makes him very vulnerable to magic, so he has nothing to do mid game and naturally gets nothing out of any accrued experience.
  10. Barst: His base stats are the highest of any non-promoted unit and only needs 15 levels of exp to reach the strength that other early units require 30. Also his defense growth is a top of the line 50% so he ends up with the bulk to face many attackers.
  11. Hardin: Great bases for his level, and his speed growth is an insanely high 60% like Cain.
  12. Lena: First user of warp and exclusive access to hammerne staff to spam your way through the final chapters. Too bad the only items worth hammerning are the three warp staves and fortify since you can't use it on regalia or personal weapons. Lena can't use fortify or ward naturally, but there is a single manual in the game, and I can't find any use for it other than Lena or jeorge
  13. Ceada: Ace shopper and hunter of thieves in early game so that you won't be rushed as you spoon feed exp to the few units that can make use of it. There's a lot of tasks only Ceada can handle in the early game. She can also lob javelins from mountain peaks and use Jagen's silver lance better than him at base. To make her good at fighting long term you need to dump stat boosters on her in addition to spoon feeding kills but in general I'd rely on knight killers and armor killers for meaningful damage against the right opponent
  14. Kain and Abel: Pretty poor base stats and growths aren't fantastic but they're there from Chapter 1, giving them a lot of opportunities for some lucky level ups and cavs are a great class.

Mid Tier (in order): useable to a reasonable degree.

  1. Ogma: excellent base stats, mercenaries/heroes just aren't a notable class since everybody and their mother can wield the best swords.
  2. Est
  3. Minerva: Flying armor knight, but has to avoid getting one shot by archers and ballistaes.
  4. Jeorge: This game dumps silver bows and the partia on you very early and his stats are good for his join chapter. Unfortunately there are almost no fliers after he joins until nearly the end of the game. Also needs several level ups or a manual to use partia, whose pure water effect is actually very good.
  5. Lawrence: Best example of a bad class. 5 movement and locked to swords. His base physical bulk is excellent though and his growths are quite good too. 
  6. Samson
  7. Paola
  8. Navarre: Poor bases but great growths and availability so he'll catch up to Ogma in 20 levels-ish.
  9. Raddy: Navarre but with less availability
  10. Catria: Level 3 pegasus knight halfway through the game? Ew.
  11. Astram
  12. Midia
  13. Cord
  14. Bord
  15. Arran
  16. Julian: Non-commital rating of thieves. On the one hand, they get me lots of items and save me from buying and managing door keys in my inventory. On the other hand, Marth potentially does everything they can with only a little more hassle. Also I feel like people rate thieves on the items they can get, but never characters like Sheeda and Marth based on their uniquely recruiting more characters, and that's a lapse in logic I think. Not one I'm prepared to reconcile for this tier list though. Regardless, despite Marth-level growths, I wouldn't waste a single point of exp on Julian. If a treasure room is dangerous to approach and about to be raided, warp a strong unit in that room's doorway.
  17. Rickard: Julian but without the above average growths so deserves the same spot.

Low Tier, fundamentally unappealing to use or only has one use (in order)

  1. Maria: If Lena dies I'm resetting, but her recruitment convo is pretty funny, and you can justify two healers for mid game since the game is forcing you to deploy so many units all the time.
  2. Elice: Alm staff can potentially be clutch.
  3. Roger: Can stand in as the other half of your wall for the infinite reinforcements of his join chapter alongside Bantu so that's handy.
  4. Dolph
  5. Darros: Behind the fighters in stats and growths. But he can move two tiles at a time in the ocean.
  6. Jake: Ballisticians are just tanky archers by being two range locked.
  7. Beck
  8. Doga
  9. Wolf
  10. Jagen
  11. Castor: 6 movement and higher stats, and growths than Gordin but cannot promote
  12. Gordin: 5 movement (7 after promoting). Before the first chapter they throw fliers at you, you have many archers to deal with them.
  13. Tomas: decent bases but somehow worse growths than Gordin.
  14. Ceasar
  15. Matthis
  16. Vyland 

Bottom Tier (in order)

  1. Wrys: Chapter 2 is the only full chapter in which he can reasonably contribute.
  2. Sedgar
  3. Macellan: Straight up worse than Dolph's stats or growths.

 

Edited by Glennstavos
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7 minutes ago, Zihark11 said:

i thought only the japanese the got FE1? is there way for NA people to play it?

Yep, as I mentioned in the OP. Make another Nintendo account with the region set to Japan, and link it to a profile on your switch. Then get the famicom app from the eshop. Downloading the app doesn't require the switch online membership, but actually playing it does like any other NES game.

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14 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Yep, as I mentioned in the OP. Make another Nintendo account with the region set to Japan, and link it to a profile on your switch. Then get the famicom app from the eshop. Downloading the app doesn't require the switch online membership, but actually playing it does like any other NES game.

ah i figured that was the way. glad to hear that it actually works and sorry didint read the whole post haha. thanks for the info.

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6 minutes ago, Zihark11 said:

ah i figured that was the way. glad to hear that it actually works and sorry didint read the whole post haha. thanks for the info.

No problem, part of the reason I wanted to make this thread actually is to point out to all the people waiting to play the new Fire Emblem on their switch that there IS a Fire Emblem game they could be playing on their switch if they take the ten minutes to get the famicom app.

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17 minutes ago, BergelomeuSantos said:

Sorry for not being related to anything, but..Is Gaiden also available on the Famicom App?

Nope, but fingers crossed it gets added in the future! I understand there's an "easy mode" setting that doubles experience gains to make the game far less grindy.

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24 minutes ago, Glennstavos said:

Nope, but fingers crossed it gets added in the future! I understand there's an "easy mode" setting that doubles experience gains to make the game far less grindy.

Yeah there is, I actually played it on the PC for a bit but couldnt activate it because you need to press 3 buttons at the same time, I don't think that will be a problem for you but just saying

PD: It's Start and Select and A, I circumvented this by making one key function as Start and Select both.

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1 hour ago, This boi uses Nino said:

Yeah there is, I actually played it on the PC for a bit but couldnt activate it because you need to press 3 buttons at the same time, I don't think that will be a problem for you but just saying

PD: It's Start and Select and A, I circumvented this by making one key function as Start and Select both.

Wow, there's such thing as a ''Secret Mode'' in Fire Emblem 2? I thought it was only a myth! Got to try that on my Next Run. Thanks for the info.

 

Also..How was your experience against mages in this game? I heard that resistance in this game is a joke. (0 Base and 0% Growth, right?)

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1 hour ago, BergelomeuSantos said:

Also..How was your experience against mages in this game? I heard that resistance in this game is a joke. (0 Base and 0% Growth, right?)

Every single unit in the game has 0 resistance. All enemies and all allies with one lone exception - Gotoh. So essentially magic attacks deal "fixed damage" until you can improve your units' resistance. All resistance growths are 0% so they don't increase naturally. The cap for Res is 7, or the equivalent of using one talisman. And the pure water item also exists. Enemy Mages are easy with these items, only packing threatening spells like Worm at the end of the game. No siege tomes to worry about either, unlike the DS remake. I think the only issue I've had with mages is the lack of buyable javelins. They disappear completely from shops after chapter 9. Countering a mage's 1-2 range with your own 1-2 range weapon is ideal, but there's never enough javelins to go around unless you stock up your convoy ahead of time, which I wish I did.

In the hands of the player, magic is very useful for boss killing. Most bosses have a 1 range weapon, and magic also ignores terrain, so your mages will have the safest matchup against them. This game also loves its units with massively high defense that can only be bogged down by your strongest physical attacks, or some spells. Enemy Ballistaes are especially hard to kill since the only weapon that deals effective damage against them is another ballistae and I don't want to trudge one of these guys to the end of the map with their 4 movement and difficulty with terrain. Warp helps them get there, but they can't outrun any other enemies they attract so that tactic might end up killing them. Armor knights, manaketes, and dragon knights can be just as tanky, but their weaknesses are much easier to exploit.

Edited by Glennstavos
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Wait you can Hammene Warp?

 

I don't disagree with your list much considering the criteria, but honestly Wendell should be one of the Top Tier if Merric is one. He performed near identical to Merric thanks to 14 speed, and Merric didn't promote until super late into the game. And as you said stats defficiency can be fixed with Boosters anyway, and Merric is barely able to beat Wendell stats because of the absurd base of Bishop class

 

Falchion does indeed works by making iirc melee attacker ignores you. Its cute for the final chapter but you do have ballista to deal with still

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3 hours ago, JSND Alter Dragon Boner said:

Wait you can Hammene Warp?

 

Yes. Hammerne only fails on personal weapons, and the two other regalia: Parthia and Gradivus

Quote

I don't disagree with your list much considering the criteria, but honestly Wendell should be one of the Top Tier if Merric is one. He performed near identical to Merric thanks to 14 speed, and Merric didn't promote until super late into the game. And as you said stats defficiency can be fixed with Boosters anyway, and Merric is barely able to beat Wendell stats because of the absurd base of Bishop class

Yes I agree with this discrepancy. The bishops are great. I guess I just stuck him in mid tier since I didn't recall using him for anything other than chip damage. To be fair, the lack of a strong tome like the mages have keeps him from ever one-rounding enemies until you get to the secret shop with Thoron, so he shouldn't actually be "performing identical to Merric" unless you're saving Excalibur uses for the end of the game which I do not recommend. I will add them to high tier though.

Quote

Falchion does indeed works by making iirc melee attacker ignores you. Its cute for the final chapter but you do have ballista to deal with still

Can you clarify this? Do you mean Marth cannot be counterattacked by those enemies on player phase? Or do you mean those enemies will not try to fight Marth on enemy phase?

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9 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

Yes. Hammerne only fails on personal weapons, and the two other regalia: Parthia and Gradivus

Yes I agree with this discrepancy. The bishops are great. I guess I just stuck him in mid tier since I didn't recall using him for anything other than chip damage. To be fair, the lack of a strong tome like the mages have keeps him from ever one-rounding enemies until you get to the secret shop with Thoron, so he shouldn't actually be "performing identical to Merric" unless you're saving Excalibur uses for the end of the game which I do not recommend. I will add them to high tier though.

Can you clarify this? Do you mean Marth cannot be counterattacked by those enemies on player phase? Or do you mean those enemies will not try to fight Marth on enemy phase?

So uh Falchion in 1 ability is to negate direct as in (1 range) attack right? except Manaketes

 

So this is how it works

 

If you initiates(obviously on close range) the enemy won't counter regardless of their attack range. this means, in theory had Falchion can attack on range, this effect won't activate

If your opponent can't attack on 2 range, they'd ignore Marth outright. The way this works is the enemy aknowledge "oh i can't do damage to Marth" so they do the ussual and ignores him. This is the same as when you have too much defense and they didn't bother(you can test this easilly with the 999 defense Bantu trick)

Otherwise it works "normally"

 

 

So in essence its a fuck you button towards direct combat that didn;t involve manakete. And.... is also worse than it sounds because the big enemy if you cheese the final chapter is the 2 Manakete bodyguard. If you play normally? the only one that can do anything to Marth is the Woodshooter and some mages

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