On August 2nd, 2022 the Cosmia blog was created. It was the summer between my first and second year of grad school. I’m not going to get into my whole story on here, but that was a rough time for me. In retrospect it was also a turning point in my life. Starting this blog was part of that shift. I was getting my Master’s for Computer Science at the time. There wasn’t much writing involved with that program. I realized I missed doing it, and I knew my program wasn’t going to provide much in the way of creative outlet. As such, I took it upon myself to find that outlet elsewhere. So I bought this domain and it’s been a part of my life ever since. If you’re familiar with my older works you may recall that one of the first blogs I ever wrote was about Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade. The first ever published Game Trade Review.

To be clear, the Game Trade existed before the Cosmia blog did. A certain Spartan and I started it while we were in college because I wanted him to try Persona 5 and he only agreed to it if I tried out the Kingdom Hearts trilogy. I guess Kingdom Hearts isn’t going to be a trilogy much longer but that’s beside the point. Any ways, we originally gave our thoughts on our respective games via lengthy text exchanges. However, once I started this blog it seemed like a perfect platform to host the reviews. Every single Game Trade since then has been published on here. You can check them all out using this link if you like. The only real downside to this approach is that it takes a hell of a lot longer to draft these full fledged reviews than the text exchanges we used to do. But honestly, it’s a tradeoff I’m happy to make. I don’t know if you care about any of this backstory, but I hope you understand why I consider it significant. Almost 4 years after my first Cosmia blog Game Trade Review comes one that’s directly related to it. It’s time to talk about Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade.

One slightly confusing thing about this game is that it was released before Blazing Blade but the story actually takes place after it. In Binding Blade the protagonist is Roy, a guy I recognize quite well from all the damn Smash Bros Ultimate matches I’ve played against him. He’s also the son of Eliwood, the main lord of Blazing Blade. Many other characters in this game have family connections to the Blazing Blade cast as well. There are also certain characters you can use in both. From what I gather those characters conveniently get incapacitated rather than killed in Blazing Blade so as not to break the space-time continuum. Awfully thoughtful of them.

Naturally you’ll see me referencng Blazing Blade throughout this blog, though I’ll make sure I’m not just doing that. This is not a “Binding Blade vs Blazing Blade” review, it’s a Binding Blade review… coming from a guy who loved the fuck out of Blazing Blade. I also have to think about this game on its own merit, and the fact that this game came first. Blazing Blade had the benefit of being able to reuse assets and a whole lot of other building blocks that Binding Blade set up. At bare minimum I have to respect that regardless of what I think about this game. And that’s certainly not the only thing I respect about this game. Though I’m not going to spend this blog saying I loved every single thing about it either. Just got to get into it and parse it all.

Before I get into the meat of this game, do note this will not be a spoiler-free review. Though honestly I wonder how much that really matters in this case. Are you playing this game for the shocking plot twists? Also I’ve got to comment on the unusual circumstances of how I played this game. Usually I wouldn’t publicly talk about playing a game with questionable means, but let’s be real. It is impossible to play this game in English without using legally dubious means. Well, maybe it’s possible to hack a legally purchased Japanese GBA cartridge or emulate a fan TL’d version while also owning an original Japanese physical copy. Wherever the hell an American’s supposed to find one of those. Point is, Nintendo has made no attempts to make this game accessible to a Western audience. Thankfully they started porting this series out West after this one, most of the time, but Binding Blade never made it over. If I ever get into legitimate trouble for playing this game the way I did, just know it’d be complete bullshit. I don’t feel sorry and I don’t think I did anything wrong here. If someone’s got a problem with the alternative methods non-Japanese players use to access your game then release your game in something other than Japanese. Fan translations are a major boon for extending a piece of art’s reach. Except then its existence might depress your sales when you try to officially release it elsewhere. Except how would enough people speaking that language even know it’s real shit without the fan TL? The fan TL helped create an audience for you! To be fair to Nintendo, they’ve proven they can be really aggressive with their legal actions sometimes, but Binding Blade ROMs have not been a major target for them. Probably because Nintendo doesn’t see it as much of a threat. They’re not going to bother porting it so whatever the Western fans do is no problem to them. Or something. I don’t really know how they think about this kind of thing internally. From the outside it looks like apathy. Don’t want to put the resources into translating it, might as well just let them do whatever in their corner.

From a business perspective this makes sense. I’m sure you’d make more money getting people to spend 80 dollars on your brand new Fortune’s Weave game than whatever you’d get porting Binding Blade in 2026. Let’s be real, it probably wouldn’t sell anything too crazy. Probably enough to make a profit back from the translating and porting costs, but not dramatically more than that. So while I think it’s a shame this game never got an official English release, I can understand it. As long as Nintendo doesn’t get pissy about what fans do to access a decades old game you refuse to make accessible yourself. I’m thankful for the people who put in the time to keep this game alive with English speakers. They probably didn’t make any money off it unless they got some donations, just one of those things people do for the love of the game. It’s a wonderful thing in my eyes, even if businesses would prefer they stop. What’s good for art and good for business won’t always agree. Oftentimes it’s the opposite. Personally, I support keeping art history alive in all its forms. If we can keep paintings alive for centuries, why not Fire Emblem games? Though I’m being real with you, I’m not sure humanity will be in a space to preserve much of anything by next century. It sure doesn’t seem like we’re well prepared for what climate change is bringing us. Still, as long as it’s feasible to keep old video games alive I think we should. You can also check out what a certain Spartan said on the matter of game preservation, because I need to focus on the content of the game now.

The Story

From early on in Binding Blade you’re tossed into a whole ass war. Bern, the nation that I’m sure takes no inspiration from Germany whatsoever, has decided it wants to take over the continent. The reasons for this are not entirely clear at the moment. Not the first time wars start for confusing reasons, and certainly not the last. Regardless of whether or not they get why it’s happening, all the other nations have to either capitulate or fight back. Lycia being a vaguely freedom loving nation or some shit like that chose the latter. The only problem is they’re not exactly well prepared for the situation. My guy Eliwood, once a brave and generally competent warrior in Blazing Blade has become a sickly middle aged man unsuited for combat.

It’s not entirely clear what’s wrong with the dude. Going off a certain Spartan’s theory he caught some sort of strange dragon STD from Ninian. The same disease that killed her off screen presumably. Or maybe it’s jus t turbeculosis or scarlet fever or any one of those other old timey diseases that could incapacitate a medieval noble. It’s not like Ninian is going to be his wife 100% of the time either. Though I guess it’s technically possible for him to get syphilis from his other possible wifeys or some shit like that. Either way it’s unfortunate. I’m fond of Eliwood so it’s a bit of a shame seeing him get the plot device side character treatment, but it can’t be helped. All his character development happens in a game that didn’t exist yet. And having Eliwood fix everything himself as the seasoned veteran general is not exactly an exciting story. The dude that was already a badass did it again. Meh. I’m sure if Blazing Blade was released first we would’ve gotten a bit more from his dialogue at least. So it goes. With Eliwood down for the count we got our boy Roy stepping up to the plate!

I must say Roy gives off a whole different vibe in Smash Bros than you see at the start of this game. I think it’s fair to say his Smash Bros version is based off of the Roy you see towards the end of the game. All character developed and confident with his fire sword and all that shit. To the extent he has character development. I’ve fought many a Roy in my day and they can be pretty scary sometimes. He’s a rush down character that gets in your face and does more damage on the close end of his sword. As a Duck Hunt main he’s not the worst character to fight but a good Roy can be really overwhelming. Still he feels more honest than a lot of other characters you can fight in that game. So many characters got these crazy ass moves and mechanics and Roy’s just over here winning up close and personal with good frame data. But in Binding Blade early game Roy is nowhere near as overwhelming a force. He’s not meant to be.

Binding Blade is an underdog story, even more so than Blazing Blade. Roy’s not some fully confident leader that feels well prepared for the situation. He’s a teenager who was still in training. But there isn’t anyone else available to lead their homeland’s defense, so he takes the responsibility head on. Supported by a handful of soldiers that happened to be available at the time. If the leaders of Bern knew ball they’d target the Lycian army at this point and smother them in the crib while they’re small. But no, Bern made plays based off of who the bigger threat was on paper. They sent a strong force to dispatch with Hector and our boy Roy gets treated like an afterthought. The low expectations of the enemy give the Lycian army an opening.

There is always a distinct advantage that comes with having a smaller group of fighters: you’re more mobile. You see throughout this game Roy’s army travels to various parts of the continent addressing whatever issues come up at the time. They pick up more and more allies as they go along to these assorted locations. It’s hard for Bern’s army to predict what Lycia’s up to because they keep on bouncing around wherever. To be fair, they do have a good reason to be where they’re fighting a lot of the time. Like their quest to pick up all the Legendary Weapons to deal with all those damn dragons Bern somehow has access to. Or their quest to save Hector early on. But sometimes the only real reason they’re fighting is because they stumbled upon some ops and now they got to deal with them. This approach doesn’t exactly make for brilliant storytelling, but it does make for a good amount of fights in a healthy variety of settings. Essentially this is a case where the story is made to fit the gameplay, and that’s fine. The battles are the main appeal of these games after all.

So the overarching plot is the war with Bern and the hidden motivations underlying Bern’s actions. But on a chapter by chapter basis things get fairly episodic. I’m certainly not going to comment on every event, but I’ll hone in on a handful of events in the story I feel like talking about. Starting with the downfall of Lord Hector of Ostia.

Hector gave Bern some trouble but his army was ultimately overwhelmed. We don’t see how that came to pass, but we do see an injured Hector brought before Zephiel, Bern’s mastermind ruler. My guy Hector got clapped off screen. Man. Still he wasn’t executed on the spot so we ostensibly still have the chance to save him. Roy takes that chance, thinking we need a great leader like him to win the war. Which speaks to his initial lack of confidence in his own leadership. Regardless of the reasoning I agree Hector’s worth saving. So they storm the castle and successfully retrieve our guy, but it’s too late to save his ass. By the way, this is the chapter where I lost my first unit, Lot. Barely knew the guy, and to be honest he wasn’t that great of a fighter. But he didn’t deserve to go out like that.

I don’t remember exactly how Lot got killed, but I’m sure it was avoidable. Hector’s death on the other hand unfortunately wasn’t. He gets enough time alive to give some useful information but he kicks the bucket soon after. I don’t inherently mind the decision to kill off Hector. Keeping him around would fuck with the whole new generation carrying the torch thing this game has going on. Wouldn’t make much sense for Roy to lead the army at all if Hector was available either. However, just because I can accept the plot reasons for it doesn’t mean I have to like it. Poor Eliwood’s sickly, Hector’s dead as hell, and Lyn probably wasn’t even a planned character when Binding Blade was released so… I guess we just gotta assume she’s off in the plains somewhere or more likely dead. Not exactly the most glorious ending for our Blazing Blade trio. Man. Reminds me of this book I read when I was like 9 called Ragweed. Ragweed was the protagonist of the first book in the series and he was chill. I’m not sure if I can still endorse this book today but I liked it at the time. So of course I had to check out the sequel novel Poppy. Now Poppy is Ragweed’s new girlfriend, and they have a lovely date night out and then… a fucking owl grabs his ass and eats him. My guy Ragweed got done dirty. This was at the start of the damn book too! Alas, protagonist plot armor disappears the very second you stop being the protagonist. RIP Ragweed. RIP Hector, Lyn (probably), and my guy Canas too. Y’all got hoe’d. Any ways, at least Hector gave us a strong lead before he died. Now we have somewhere to go next.

Alright, if Hector wants me to take care of his daughter that’s what I’ll damn well do! I’ll get more into this later, but I did indeed keep her alive the entire game. Promise made, promise kept! Well, there were some points where I had to reset the chapter to keep her alive but shhhhhhhh. I’ll break the time space continuum to fulfill Hector’s dying wish no problem. Well, I couldn’t exactly help him with his last dying wish. Lilina was miles away at the time sadly. So it’s more like I’m heeding Hector’s second to last dying wish. I think he’d understand. Rest well my guy.

Any ways, after that some various stuff happens. We save Lilina from getting assassinated. Or in my case she saved herself by wandering around the opposite corner of the cell until the would be assassin got bored and ran off to the main fight. Dude got clapped over there too. Great job man. Any ways, we fight pirates for whatever reason, a pair of vaguely offensive gay bandits in a desert, and then we meet a real ass dragon in the desert. Except this real ass dragon is also a sheltered kid so they want her to stay there. But she’s an obstinate kid so she runs away from home vaguely in hopes of joining our army. In that process of stalking us she ends up getting captured by some random soldiers instead. So we gotta storm this random ass castle on this random ass mountain to save her and the guy running the castle is confused as hell as to why we’re there. Sorry bro, you just happened to take our dragon daughter so you get the death penalty! Whatever. So after a certain point you get a branching path that takes you 2 different ways for a few chapters. It doesn’t matter that much which one you pick because it’s going to end up in the same place afterwards, but the gameplay and loot’s going to be different. You get to go hang with the pegasus ladies in Ilia or you can hang with the totally-not-American-Indians in Sacae. For both practical and preferential reasons I gave Sacae a shot, and boy do I have some thoughts.

So first of all I explained why I picked Sacae. I knew very little of what their respective maps actually entailed, so I just went off of how I vibed with the general theming. To get Sacae you need Sue+Shin to be higher level than Shanna+Thea. As it happened Sue+Shin put in some work my whole ass run damn near. Meanwhile I managed to get Thea killed the same chapter she was introduced. Woops. Shanna has her good moments too but I don’t like her enough to lean into her side. Pegasus Knights ain’t my jam, except for Chloé she cute. Palla’s cool too I guess. Though I’d probably play better in these games if I used them more heavily. Any ways, the other reason I’m interested in Sacae is because the obvious American-Indian influences of the area intrigue me. Here we see a remixed version of a culture you don’t get to see too often in video games. I wanted to see how this game would handle such a matter and… ummm… hmmm…

First of all I must clarify that I do not have any American Indian heritage to speak of unless there’s some secret Great x6 Grandmother I’m unaware of in the mix. I grew up in the northeast where the vast majority of the indigenous folk got wiped out or otherwise displaced long ago. I’ve learned a thing or two over the years but I’m not intimately involved with the OG American culture. So I’m not going to make some strong definitive statements of how respectful or not this depiction is. I’m sure there’s some Mongolian nomad and Ainu influence in the mix here too and I know even less about that. Still to the best of my knowledge it seems like something’s off with how this plays out.

We’re a much stronger army at this point and we want to go ahead and invade Bern. Cool. Only problem is the road to Bern just so happens to go through hostile territory. We’re in Djute land now baby. The Djute decided to cozy up to Bern, presumably in the hopes of staying safe by being on the superpower’s good side. They even go so far as to fight their neighboring tribes for the sake of their own position. Hence why Sue got displaced and joined our crew. From what I gather this isn’t entirely unrealistic. Not every tribe was nice to one another at all times. For instance the Iroquois allied with the British Empire back in the day. They willingly fought other tribes as part of their alliance. The Iroquois Confederacy isn’t exactly a thing now, so I can’t say that alliance worked out super great for them ultimately. Point is not every tribe is going to have great solidarity with every other. The kind of tensions you see between the Djute and the rest of Sacae isn’t entirely without precedent. So I can’t say it’s inherently offensive to depict the Djute clan as an antagonistic force. But man do things get ugly during this arc.

So the general issue at hand is we want to get to Bern and we gotta get past the Djute to get there. Also there’s this other plot point where some Erturian turncoats ran off into hiding over in Sacae and we got to kick their shit in too. With both of these reasons it’s not really about Sacae, it’s more that going through here is the means to an end. I used to think the existence of the Ilia route shows that going through Sacae isn’t the only option. However, upon further research I now know that the Erturian revolutionaries we’re trying to snuff out simply hide out in Ilia instead in the Ilian route. Why does the level of Sue and Shin have any bearing on the turncoat’s decision making? Fuck if I know. But apparently that’s the case. I do wonder why we even have to bother dealing with these cowardly folk at all. I suppose they might cause some legitimate problems if we leave them alone. Maybe. I also suppose we need to steal that legendary weapon from Sacae because we can’t get the full ending otherwise. These are all plausible reasons to some degree, I guess. My thing is as this part of the game plays out I find myself wondering if what we’re doing in this land is really necessary.

The first chapter of the Sacae route doesn’t have anything too crazy happen. You attack a castle outpost at night, and kill one of the Erturian turncoats at its entrance. You gotta kill some Sacae warriors to get there, but oh well. If they’re fighting you, you can’t just lay down your weapons and let them kill you right? Right. The part that doesn’t sit right with me starts when we confront the Djute directly in Chapter 18B. Let’s break this down, starting with the full conversation the Djute have at the start of this chapter. Apologies that this will be a bit lengthy to scroll through. Usually I’d put this kind of thing in a slideshow but I recently realized that’s not accessibility friendly at all. So here’s the whole ass thing.

Gotta love how the character sprites don’t seem to change at all ever during these conversations. If it was just these monster of the week type characters that’d be one thing but I don’t think you ever see any major characters emote in the slightest either. Just look at Roy’s 😐 face during Hector’s death scene earlier in this blog. By the way I had a hell of a time finding a playthrough that didn’t skip/speed through this part. I imagine the lack of emoting is part of why a lot of youtubers skip through it. They’re introducing VN elements without the VN etiquette. Shoutout to luigifan64d for actually reading through this part, you’re a real one! I took some screenshots of this scene while I was playing, but I wouldn’t have been able to show you guys the whole thing without him. At least not easily. Maybe you guys wish I only showed you part of it, but there are multiple important points in this conversation I’d like to discuss.

It’s worth noting that this chapter involves a pretty significant trap, which is what that ‘all according to the plan’ stuff foreshadows. And then we learn that other clans are joining the Djute in the fight against our army. (Roy’s army became part of the Etrurian Army in name for political reasons). So not only do we have to fight off the Djute, but we have to fight off multiple people from uninvolved clans because they don’t like that we’re trespassing in their territory. Which is an entirely legitimate reason to fight us. Roy may be passing through Sacae as a means to get to Bern, but to their eyes we’re just an invading army. The clans unite to fight off invaders, such is the law of Sacae. Though you could argue that Djute siding with Bern when they invade Sacae breaks the law too. The law sure works well when it’s convenient for them. Maybe they found a loophole. Given the Djute’s steadfast allegiance to Bern and their hand in fucking up Sue’s clan they’re certainly antagonistic. But now we just kinda stepped on an ant hill and we’re fighting and killing innocent parties because we’re going somewhere unwelcome. It’s not a noble fight, it’s just unwitting happenstance. We are indeed going in without much in the way of respect or knowledge of where we’re going or what we’re doing there. And dragging along a few Sacae fighters to do it. Sue and Sin have strong reasons to beef with the Djute given the circumstances, but surely they don’t have much reason to want to kill the people from the non-Djute clans involved in this fight. They’re put in an uncomfortable position without much of any acknowledgment from the game that it is one. There is the thing where Sue goes silent if/when she confronts Monke, which is a funny ass name by the way. But otherwise not much.

Another notable part is their discussion of Silver Wolf, AKA Dayan. We see him in a chapter soon after where he runs off to fight on his own and probably gets killed if we don’t recruit him. He’s the type to take a stand and fight for what he thinks is right no matter what the odds are looking like. According to Monke that makes him a half-wit. Personally, I’ve got some respect for that level of bravery, even though he does seem a bit delusional. I don’t want to live in a world where bigger powers win by default because everyone acquiesces to them. But Monke is correct in the sense that submitting to power is the safer move in the short term. Of course, his belief that Bern is unbeatable proves to be incorrect as this game goes on. And he dies for that mistake.

While Monke’s underestimating Roy, we can see something similar’s happening on the other side. Directly after Monke’s conversation we see Roy talking with Guinivere, princess of Bern and Zephiel’s half-sister. The main thrust of their conversation is that they’re getting close to Bern and that means shit’s going to get real with her brother. I’m not going to break down every aspect of what they’re talking about, but do you know what they’re not talking about? The Djute. Roy’s not thinking about them at all in this scene, seemingly. He’s thinking about what they’ll do when they get past the Djute. Treating the people in front of him like a damn afterthought. Of course when you actually play it they’re far from a trivial foe. It wasn’t the absolute worst map to deal with on my run but I certainly took some Ls there before I made it through. They’re tough and their trap is hard to deal with even when you know what it is. Gotta put some respect on Monke. He makes you work for it.

So the upside of this depiction is that they definitely have Sacae make an impression. They have their strengths and they make for rather unique opponents. Frustrating opponents for many folk I’m sure. I hear they’re hellish to deal with on Hard Mode. The downside is we’re waltzing into this territory thanks to circumstantial happenstance on the way to Bern. What do we do? Wipe out an entire clan besides some women and children. How nice. I get why it happened this way plot reason wise. The Djute were a bit petty after that first L and threw the rest of what they had at us. So it’s cool that I wipe out all these dudes. They came after me! I mean, maybe it sort of makes sense in this specific situation but it’s still pretty fucked up. This game didn’t exactly make me feel heroic during this segment. Did it really need to be this way? We got a few Sacae people on our side so it’s totally chill whatever happens to the rest of them? Point is this part isn’t the worst thing ever but it’s certainly questionable.

Setting the Sacae segment aside, as Roy largely does, we eventually make our way to Bern. We’re getting buildups and lore drops for what Zephiel’s up to and what the deal is with them dragons. Honestly I’m less inclined to say too much about this stuff. The relations between humans and dragons are complicated and there’s some interesting things in there, but I don’t have too much to say about it. It’s moderately interesting to a degree, probably more so than what was going on around Blazing Blade‘s ending at least. Zephiel definitely makes for a more interesting villain too. Relatively. I remember saving his ass in Blazing Blade, which was one of the tougher battles in that game. So that means Hector helped save Zephiel and then that guy turned around and got Hector killed. No damn loyalty, because humanity’s really fucked up and all. Gotta replace them all with dragons, that’ll fix everything probably! Still more interesting than Nergal at least. Also cool that Zephiel made a plan that doesn’t need himself alive to operate. So the end part was solid, definitely above average by Nintendo game story standards.

You might wonder, that’s it? A whole ass thing on the Sacae diversion and one paragraph of “yeah the ending was kinda cool” for the actual main story stuff at the end? If you find this underwhelming that’s not too far off from how I felt during the end game segments. Beating Zephiel was cool, some of the dragon lore dumps were interesting to a degree but… eh… This story has its moments, that’s about the nicest way to say it.

The Characters

Binding Blade has quite the hefty cast of playable units and there’s some notable non-playable ones too. I have no interest in talking about all of them because it’s not practical and I didn’t use some of them at all. This is a game where you lose characters permanently if they fall in battle. The developers have enough awareness of their own difficulty to offer multiple replacement units of each class. Not all of them are bangers. In game performance wise or personality wise. But that’s alright ultimately. Part of this game’s experience is making it work with units that aren’t always crazy strong or flashy. Roy’s army is a scrappy underdog through and through. As I said I won’t talk about everyone, but I would like to highlight a handful of characters I find particularly noteworthy/feel like talking about.

Of course we got to start with our boy Roy, because he’s the protagonist and… well, idk if I’d have a whole lot to say about him if it wasn’t for the protagonist thing. For all the bright red in his hair, his personality doesn’t have much fire to it. Eliwood raised him pretty well in the sense that he’s a good upstanding guy who’s fairly levelheaded for a 16 year old or whatever his age is, but beyond that… he just feels like a worse version of Eliwood by and large. Besides the part where he gets to be in Smash, which Eliwood never will. To my eyes that particular advantage happened more due to happenstance of timing with Melee than anything intrinsically appealing about Roy. I did kind of like his interactions with Lillina, they were pretty cute. I’ll give him that. Also I just noticed while revising, this guy has an inverted color scheme from Lilina. He’s red hair, blue clothes with some yellow. She’s blue hair, red clothes with some yellow. That’s also cute.

As for Roy as a unit well… Smash sure gave him a glow up. I would’ve gotten this guy killed or benched early on if I was allowed to. His stat growths aren’t very good at all. He’s okay enough early game but by the time you reach those later stages he’s basically a liability. How many times did I have to reset because he got killed by basically anything that moves in the later chapters? I don’t recall the answer to that question, but it was certainly more times than I would’ve liked. Thankfully when you finally get to upgrade him deep in the game he becomes a significantly more competent unit. He actually becomes one of your best options when fighting dragons, which end game has plenty of. Mostly because you got a souped up weapon in the Binding Blade rather than him actually being impressive, but still. It’s something.

Now for the main heroine of Binding Blade, Lilina. Well, actually is she the main heroine really? It’s entirely possible to let her get killed early on and then she gets designated to irrelevance. You could say Princess Guinevere, who has a more significant story role is more of a main heroine in a sense. Though clearly Lilina’s intended to be the semi-canon love interest for Roy. Her support goes up with him a hell of a lot more quickly than with anyone else. Also given Hector’s wishes you’re probably supposed to keep her alive. She doesn’t exactly have a strong personality like her father did, but I like her well enough any way. She’s sweet, and I appreciate how she’s willing to go around recruiting big scary dudes that nobody else wants to give a chance. The funny/sad part about that is that when I got her to recruit those burly folk they ended up dying soon afterwards. She’s a bit like a Siren for wayward sailors. RIP Gonzales, at least you died for a good cause… maybe?

Any ways, as a unit she served me well personally. From what I gather a lot of people consider her to be a mediocre fighter. She starts low level so she takes a lot of investment to get going. She’s frail, her speed’s not anything great. OK, sure. Fair points. Also there’s nothing sadder than watching a unit level up and then having them get 0 stat boosts whatsoever. Like literally what’s the point? And that happened with Lillina for me multiple times. This only happened to me late game. I think her magic was already maxed out by then, but still. That being said those zero growth levels disappeared with my resets. To be clear, this wasn’t because I reset after seeing bad growths. I reset after losing units I refuse to let die or simply incur too many losses overall. Lilina was one of the ones I refused to let die, and uhh… I did need to do some timey wimey stuff to keep her alive sometimes. Glass cannon life basically. Her strong magic stat makes her a great boss killer and general nuke, but she’s not unbeatable evidently. She was one of my best units in the mid-game, but she fell off a bit late game. Perhaps it would be a different story entirely on Hard Mode. Perhaps I got a bit lucky with her growths. Perhaps some Hector related favoritism played a role. Perhaps maxing out her Roy support helped. Either way she ended up being one of the strongest units of my run, so I gotta give her respect for that. Thanks Lilina!

I suppose I must give some acknowledgement for Merlinus, considering how he’s one of the most prominent characters in the actual story of this game. There’s nothing particularly interesting about him to speak of, but he plays the role of a mature advisor because anyone else that could plausibly play the role could also get killed off early pretty easily. Such is part of the problem with these games with perma-death. Damn near all the characters can’t have a significant role outside of the chapter they’re introduced because there’s no guarantee they’ll be around at all. So now we’re stuck talking to this boring ass merchant most of the time instead. Welp. Moving on.

I also want to spend a little time acknowledging Gale. I consider him to be the most interesting antagonist in this game. Y’know, relatively speaking. He’s kinda cool. He’s got that sorta Sasuke vibe to him and he killed Raigh the first time I fought him. That’s no small feat. Of course I decided to reset after that happened, but still. He smoked one of my best dudes! (With a 5% crit). Any ways, apparently he’s from Erturia but he’s loyal to Bern. I guess the fact that Zephiel accepted him as an important part of the army in spite of his background fuels his loyalty. It’s all tragic and shit because you can tell he’s not a bad person or anything. He’s just committed and loyal to the side that’s not ours. A side which has genocidal intentions he may or may not be aware of. I’m a bit unclear on how much Bern’s army is supposed to know about Zephiel’s plans. Do they realize their king wants to wipe all of humanity out? Like, including themselves? Probably not right? Well, any ways. I thought his last conversation with Melady was moving. The tragic circumstances of war. Like how the American Civil War got brothers fighting against each other and shit like that. It just goes to show the unfortunate situations war can put people in. RIP to the edgelord. Also RIP to his girlfriend because I ended up getting her killed later on too. Whoops. They get to stay together in the digital afterlife I suppose.

I like how the main difference between Raigh and his twin brother I got killed’s portrait is their expression. Lugh’s got a c: face and Raigh’s got a c:< face. Brilliant. I’ll be honest I don’t have a ton to say about this guy personality wise because I didn’t manage to get too many support convos going with him. I got him to talk to Hugh a whole one time, and it was pretty funny when they did. Hugh’s a goofball and Raigh’s a clever fucker so they had a solid comedy routine going. But hey, now that I can watch some of his other support convos on the internet let’s see if I got more to say…

OK, so the rest of Raigh and Hugh’s support conversation is literally just them going back and forth about a Nosferatu tome and by the time they reach rank A they’re still at an impasse. Goofballs to the end I see. And then there’s his conversation with Niime, where he’s moderately more respectful but still not exactly respectful.

Y’know, I don’t think this guy has especially deep or interesting characterization, but he can be funny and that’s the next best thing. And then I watched Lugh and Raigh’s support and now I feel like a dick for letting Lugh die. Whoops. Also worth noting he’s Nino’s son, who I honestly didn’t use much in Blazing Blade, but hey, that’s cool I guess!

As for his use as a unit well… this guy was My Guy by and large. He doesn’t hit quite as hard as Lilina, but he’s not that far off. His survivability thanks to better defenses and access to Nosferatu is worth noting as well. He’s just one of those units I can throw at damn near anybody and expect he’ll probably come out alive and the other guy probably won’t. In a game full of characters with unimpressive growth rates and mediocrity Raigh being a good solid dark magic boi certainly helped me a lot. Almost fills a Canas shaped void, almost. Though it may just be a case of me picking a unit I like using, using them disproportionately, and getting good results from it. The internet tells me he’s not actually that good after all. I do like my dark mages. He’s not Canas, he’s not Tharja, he’s definitely not Lysithea. But he does get the job done. For this game, he was My Dude. Didn’t have to reset to save him super often either.

Oh hey another mage. I’ll be real I ended up using mages a disproportionate amount in my playthrough. Hugh, Raigh, Lilina, and Niime were all regular parts of my rotation as soon as I got them. I also used Lugh pretty heavily too until he hit level 20 and I didn’t have a guiding ring to spare for him. Then I bought one for him much later and he died soon after. 10,000 well spent… yeah… Perhaps this is a suboptimal way to play. Probably. I was supposed to buy those damn boots or I’m dumb or whatever. But my mage squad usually got results. Back to Hugh. Spartan made sure this guy was on my radar from early on. I had to make sure I had enough dough to even afford to use the guy, so the heads up was rather helpful. Knowing me I doubt I would’ve saved up enough to afford him at top price if I didn’t know he was upcoming. Considering how many mages I used already I probably didn’t need him. However, he is Canas’ son. And Canas is my guy. My guy who unfortunately died outside in a winter storm off screen but OH WELL.

Hugh for his part isn’t exactly at Canas’ level. He doesn’t do dark magic at all, and he’s not super chill like his father either. However, he does have one very important thing going for him: he’s funny. That makes up for a lot in my book. He’s just a goofball trying to get his money up. Gotta respect the hustle. Apparently if you don’t pay him the full 10,000 he’ll accept a lower pay, up until a point. However, if you pay him lower his stats will be lower. A man that puts in less effort for less pay, I respect it. My guy Hugh knows how to look out for himself. While I don’t consider him the best unit on my squad, he’s my favorite male character personality wise rather easily. Given who his father was, I expected nothing less.

As for his use as a unit… well, he’s not as much of a nuke like Lilina is, but he’s somewhat well rounded. Realistically I probably wouldn’t use him if I just wanted to play optimally. Unless I already lost my other mages at the point I recruited him. Which was not the case. Lugh and Lilina were both alive by the time Hugh showed up. He certainly makes for a decent backup in normal circumstances. However, he is Canas’ son, so I had to make space for him. And honestly? Not the worst choice ever. Not the best choice either. He’s serviceable.

Now it’s time to talk about the best girl of the game, and the best Binding Blade character in general from this title as far as I’m concerned. The lady who fucked off to the mountains, came down when she was needed, and fucked right off back to the mountains again afterwards. Mother of Canas, grandmother of Hugh, comes in ready to wreck shit immediately, it’s Niime of course! You know, usually the elderly characters of a game are little more than an afterthought, and it’s not like Niime’s the central character or anything. However, there’s something particularly appealing about this grandma. She’s got good shit talking skills, she’s intelligent, she’s funny, all of which are traits I appreciate. I also think her epilogue above is rather funny. So you’re telling me she possibly solved a bunch of world mysteries, died with them, and refused to elaborate? Amazing.

Also, I must say I think her support conversation with Hugh is my favorite in the game. To be fair, I haven’t seen them all, or anything close to it. Support conversations are weirdly difficult to get in this game, and then each character only gets 5 support convos total. Which is annoying if you want to actually see the supports. Though to be fair, they’d probably have to nerf the support bonuses if they let you obtain them more readily. Tradeoffs, tradeoffs. Also some of my characters that started getting some progress in supports fucking died so I didn’t see the end of them. Like how Alan and Lance’s comradery got cut short. Alas. Any ways I only saw part C of Hugh and Niime’s support in-game. But hey, the internet’s a thing. Time to talk about the actual conversations.

So Niime and Hugh have a complicated relationship let’s say. They’re family, but they aren’t exactly on perfect terms. Hugh isn’t the dark mage of her dreams, and Niime wasn’t exactly the loving grandma of his dreams. Unfortunately, his parents are dead and he’s an only child so they’re the only family they have left. Well, from what I hear Raigh and Lugh may be Hugh’s cousins in law or some shit but it doesn’t seem like any of them are aware of that. But yeah, Niime and Hugh’s interactions are tense at first, but over the course of their supports they come to a sort of understanding. This could be an inspirational heartwarming story of the complicated bonds of family with any sort of grandma-grandson pair. With Niime and Hugh it’s all of that, with its own bizarre amusing flair. To show you what I mean, I’m going to bring back something I employed a healthy amount in my Blazing Blade blog: a whole ass gallery of Niime and Hugh moments. By the way, thanks Vezzyli for providing the footage for their full support convos, you’re a real one! I assume. The Cosmia blog does not know enough about this Vezzyli person to fully endorse their character. However, they certainly provided a helpful service for me writing this section of the blog.

Man it was hard making cuts from an exchange with so many banger lines. So the gallery ended up pretty damn big unfortunately. I think you get the idea. Lots of banter, lots of funny lines, but at the end of the day the affection’s still there deep down. Their support’s a great blend of entertaining and genuinely touching, and that’s why I love it. A whole family tree full of charming personalities with their own unfortunate circumstances.

As for Niime’s performance as a unit, well, I certainly have no reason to complain. When she joins your party she’s almost at max level already, so there’s not much room for RNG to bless you or fuck you over with her. Fortunately, her stats are already pretty good out the box. Using her right along with Raigh I could poke holes through quite a few opponents. The only real downside of her compared to Raigh is that she has less bulk, which certainly put me in a couple difficult situations. Even so, she proved quite the reliable unit. It’s a bit ridiculous how many mages I ended up using regularly, but she certainly pulled her weight. I didn’t have to use a guiding ring for her either! For all the characters in this game that require plenty of investment for rather mixed results, it’s nice having someone who’s just good from the jump and stays good.

Also want to give some brief acknowledgment to Fir and Noah, two characters I generally like and employed regularly, but don’t have boatloads to say about. Just want to say it’s a bit messed up Noah confessed his love for her at the end of their A support and we don’t get any clear indication what happens afterwards at any point. The way their end cards make it sound they both spent their lives as rugged loners forevermore, but did their paths ever intertwine beyond that? Not exactly the most riveting deep romance ever. Not that it’s easy to get a good romance off of 3 support conversations any way, but still. The game sure leaves you hanging there! Guess the “write a different epilogue based off of who you get supports with” technology isn’t available until later in the series for people not named Roy.

That about covers it for characters I want to spend paragraphs worth of commentary on. There’s a lot of characters in this game, and I used quite a few of them. Many didn’t make it to the end unfortunately. The ones that did were generally the ones that got the favoritism treatment or they got the perma-bench treatment. Still, I want to give a brief shoutout to Dieck for helping to carry my ass through the early game. Up until he got killed in an arena battle and I decided not to reset to save him. If these were real people I’d feel like a dick for going out of my way to keep certain characters alive and letting others die with no objection. Even though they’re digital I still kinda feel like a dick for it. Or should I say Dieck for it. But I know if I went out of my way to save everybody it would make my already lengthy playthrough even more of a trek. As I recall I was too exasperated with that particular map to reset for Dieck, so away he went. I also have to give a shoutout to Sin for being another highly reliable unit throughout. There probably was a point somewhere I had to reset to save him, but I don’t remember doing so. He didn’t need saving very often. Certainly less often than Sue. Thanks Sin. I wish there was a bit more to you character wise, but you’re still a homie.

Overall the cast of Binding Blade has some gems in the writing department, but there are also some unimpressive showings. Unfortunately some of those less stellar characters got a large chunk of the main story dialogue. I prefer the casts from most of the other Fire Emblem games I’ve played honestly. Perhaps I’d be more attached if I didn’t get so many of them killed but whatever. Even if the characterization isn’t the strongest by Fire Emblem standards, Fire Emblem standards far outpace general video game standards on this metric. So I do think the cast is good overall, and I bet there’s some great support convos I missed. As for how this cast stacks up as a combat force well… there are some strong ones, and there are some remarkably weak ones. I think this is the most underpowered cast on average of any Fire Emblem game I’ve played. I don’t think that’s necessarily a flaw though. It fits the story in a way. We’re not some great well trained army. We’re a jumbled group of whoever happened to cross our path and decided to join in. The Lycian Army may not have overwhelming strength, but they’re scrappy and persistent. Sometimes that’s all you need.

Commenting on the Stuff That’s Not Story, Characters, or Gameplay

This game was made for the Game Boy Advance, and its age is not far off from my own. So any commentary I have on its presentation must consider that context. Obviously it’s not the most high fidelity gorgeous graphical thing ever. The music comes with significant limitations thanks to the system it’s on as well. That being said, I think they do a fairly good job with the presentation. The animations are entertaining. They range from good enough to downright cool in some instances. I especially like how bombastic some of those crit animations are. I notice that a lot of the character sprites and animations are pretty much exactly the same as they are in Blazing Blade, but that’s not a detriment. This one came out first after all. Though it’s possible some of these assets got reused from games even earlier than this one… oh well, they’re good.

Also got to give props to the art in general. The character design is solid, albeit a bit on the simple side. The backgrounds for the dialogue scenes look good, well composed, good variety of colors, all that. They’re not mind blowing exactly, but they look good consistently and I respect that. The maps themselves also look good generally. Considering how simplified they need to be to fit the grid-based gameplay, that’s not a trivial feat. There’s a healthy variety of locations you travel across the game and each felt distinctive. Some of that can be attributed to the layout designs, but I gotta give the artists their props too. I’m hard pressed to think of a single time the maps felt monotonous in this game, and that’s not something I can say about every Fire Emblem game I played. Cheers for that. Also I think a Spartan wants me to acknowledge that there’s a nice continuity between the map of this game’s Chapter 21 and a map featuring the same Shrine of Seals in Blazing Blade. It’s a clever way to connect these games in additional ways.

As for the music, well, I don’t plan on downloading this soundtrack, but I think it fit the game well enough. If you set the tone well that’s really all I ask for. Anything beyond that is just icing on the cake. The biggest brainworm on this soundtrack for me was “Prepare to Charge” for whatever reason. Weirdly catchy and certainly helps build up that anticipation for an army battle. Really puts you in the mindset for that forward march, hammering in that glory. Up until the game kicks my shit in any ways.

Aight, Gameplay Time

So now for the most crucial part of this game, the gameplay. Some would argue this is always the most crucial part of any video game, but at this point I don’t necessarily agree. There are plenty of games where the story is the most important part and the gameplay’s just there to make things a bit more engaging. This is not one of those games. Here the writing has some interesting things going for it, but by and large it’s there to raise the stakes and add some intrigue to the battles you’re doing. The story helps make the tough fights you undergo and units you use/lose in the process feel like they matter. But most of the time playing this game you’re engaging in tactical RPG gameplay with no dialogue to speak of. As such, much of the quality of this title hinges on how this part of the experience goes. So how is it? Well… I could give you a short answer, but I’d prefer a more thorough breakdown. Let’s get into it.

If you’re familiar with this blog you may be aware that our last round of the Game Trade involved Spartan playing Sekiro. He was not terribly enthused about that challenging game, before or after playing it. So he was hoping to give me a difficult task to match what he went through. His solution was making me play through Hades. Unfortunately for him that game did not give me as much trouble as he hoped. But as fate would have it, he didn’t need to wait long for another chance to jam me up. This time, I had a much tougher go at it. According to Wikipedia this game was explicitly designed to be an easier ride than their previous title, Thracia 776. If that’s the case I got to wonder what the hell that game’s like. For all their efforts to make this one easier, that’s certainly not the same thing as making it easy.

Full disclosure, I am basing my commentary on a Normal mode playthrough. I managed to gather all the legendary weapons to get the true ending. I went down the Sacae route and have only a vague idea what happens in Ilia. So while I played this game on the default difficulty, I did not do much to make my life easier. In fact I fucked up in a couple ways that made my run more difficult than it had to be. For instance when I got the silver card I didn’t realize what it was used for and pawned it off for coin rather than actually getting discounts from it. Yes I should’ve read the damn description, yes I’m dumb for that, but it still happened so oh well. I also missed a couple promotion item opportunities. As such, I sent myself broke buying promotion items rather than buying useful stuff like boots from the secret shop. I also made some suboptimal team building choices because I personally liked specific characters. Hence my big ass mage squad, using Fir more often than Rutger, etc. I also played this game semi-blind. I did have some advice from the Spartan, and did some research on certain maps, but I didn’t have full knowledge of what characters were considered good or not. If I based my play style off internet advice on the viability of certain characters and strategies my run would look different. I’d probably have an easier time that way, but would it be as fun for me?

So yes, some of the difficulty I experienced was self-imposed, accidentally or not. I must acknowledge this game isn’t that unforgiving on Normal Mode. I bet I’d hit a brick wall trying to play the same way on Hard Mode without some fixes. Almost certainly. But I don’t think the difficulties I encountered were exclusively just because I made some questionable decisions. It’s not like I was 100% on point nailing it with the other Fire Emblem games I’ve played, and they didn’t kick my ass as much. So I must conclude that this game offers a serious challenge. To be clear, I’m not going to spend this whole section just going off about how hard it is, but I think it’s interesting to look at this game’s design and what aspects threw me for a loop.

The basic building blocks of this game are rather like any other Fire Emblem game. It’s a tactical RPG with a grid based combat system. You get a certain amount of units to move around and do whatever on your turn, and then the enemy gets to move around and attack on their turn. There’s a lot of intricacies abound because there are multiple classes of units and they all have their good and bad matchups. For instance people generally like to use flying units for their high mobility and usually good stats, but you probably don’t want to get attacked by an archer while using one. If you’re an archer you probably don’t want to fight an armored knight because your arrows likely won’t do shit to them. However, if your unit’s got good stats and/or a strong weapon the usual class matchup might not matter so much. Or maybe you’re well advantaged on paper, but the enemy got a crit and you get rekt any way. Like how Gale killed Raigh the first time they fought. Or maybe your unit is strongly advantaged against who they’re fighting, but they caught so much damage from fighting multiple dudes one after another they don’t have much health to spare. Maybe your unit’s hiding in the trees and you’re suddenly able to avoid the enemy’s attacks better, turning the odds in your favor. There’s plenty of nuance and dynamism to these encounters, and no one size fit all solution to any of them. Especially in this game where OP soldiers are few and far between. Even the strongest meta picks like Rutger have specific situations where you’re better off using someone else for a fight. There’s an intricate dance to it all. Certainly more complexity than you’d expect from a Nintendo game. Yet the basic rules are simple enough that it’s not too hard to pick up, at least initially. I appreciate this nuanced gameplay in every Fire Emblem game I’ve played, and this game has it too.

As for something this game has the others I’ve played don’t have… how about that fucking bolting. Seriously. This is not the first time I’ve encountered the move, but it sure feels like the first. Because none of the other titles I’ve played have had it this common or this souped up. Basically bolting is a magic attack that lets you snipe opponents from far away with no real counter play. If you let a unit weak to magic get in bolting’s range they’re fucking cooked. Your only options are to either A. find some way to get close to the bolting user and kill them or B. get someone with good magic resistance and/or avoidance to tank the hits until they run out. Worth noting that B can be accomplished by using barrier on a unit that otherwise would’ve gotten clapped by it. Fortunately they only have 5 uses, so waiting them out isn’t that bad. It is annoying having your squishy characters’ movement restricted so much until the bolting gets used up though. That damn move caused me to reset more than anything else in this game. However, there is one upside to bolting. You get some limited access to it too if you’re willing to shell out. Was it wise to spend money on bolting rather than say, boots? Probably not, but I did it any way. It opens up option C, use bolting to snipe their ass back! Which is usually a bit of a waste because their high magic resistance means they’ll probably need 2 successful hits to take them out. Not to mention the chance you miss. Counterpoint: man is it satisfying to give those long distance snipers a taste of their own medicine!

So yeah, regular Fire Emblem gameplay plus bolting equals Cosmia crashing out, right? Right… But seriously, now that I think about it, it’s difficult to put my finger on what made this game particularly tough for me. It’s not like there’s one obvious thing that makes it hard. Besides fucking bolting. It’s more like an accumulation of factors that add up to a major challenge. There’s the factor I mentioned earlier that the characters you can use in this game aren’t especially strong for the most part. Not that they’re terribly weak… well, some of them kinda are. But unless you’re arena grinding like crazy (I didn’t) nobody’s going to feel super busted. It’s not like the opposing army are full of slouches either. Bern is considered an overwhelming force in the story, and you can see why. Not only are you consistently outnumbered, which is pretty much always the case in these games, but they’ve got some serious hitters on their side. I think of all those wyvern lords I had to take down. I knew damn well if I didn’t get them deleted during my turn they’d probably delete one of my guys soon after. Except enemy wyvern lords rarely fight alone, so there’s always that risk involved taking them on. Besides the legendary weapons there’s hardly anything you can use in this game that the enemy can’t screw you over right back with. Sure you can use berserk staff, but are you ever going to use it as often as they use it on you? Probably not.

Resource management was also tougher than usual here. Good weapons aren’t always so readily available. Got to be careful with how often you use your nice weapons. Also class promotion materials are limited, and some of them are pretty easy to miss. Like if you don’t go around pocket watching all your enemies you can lose out on some good items they’re carrying. And then you have to carry a thief on your team to steal them. And thieves are damn near useless for actual combat purposes, you really only want them for the utility. Can’t promote them to assassins like you can in Blazing Blade either smh. And if you don’t avoid murdering Klain’s crew when you meet him you won’t get a free Orion Bolt and then you’ll have to shell out 10,000 gold later to make up for it like I did or take the L. How was I supposed to know I needed to leave Klain’s crew alone while they’re trying to kill me? And if you make mistakes like that throughout the game you’ll find yourself too broke to buy silver weapons or those damn boots the internet tells me I’m supposed to get. Too broke for boots because I wanted the promotion items. Maybe I should’ve just left Lugh on the bench, then he would’ve survived and I could afford some damn boots for the price of his guiding ring! Man. But the fact that questionable decisions like this legitimately made my run tougher just shows how punishing the resource management game can be here. If you don’t know what you’re doing you can screw yourself over. Can’t think of another Fire Emblem game where I was this poor this often, but I acknowledge a lot of it was my own mistakes. However, these are mistakes I’m sure plenty of first time players made because they don’t exactly explain a lot of this stuff ahead of time. And if you lose a unit that has some good items on them, you can’t exactly loot their corpse for their shit so you just have to take the L on that one. I believe this is the case in every Fire Emblem game ever, but it was a notable issue for me in this one. After all, I got my guys killed depressingly often.

The last big factor I’d like to highlight is the way these maps are designed. As I’ve said earlier I got plenty of respect for how they’re constructed from a visual standpoint. As for how they’re constructed from a combat standpoint… well, I actually do have respect for them in that regard too. But hot damn do they got plenty of ways to mess you up. Like how the guys that use bolting on you are usually placed in difficult to reach locations. Or how often you get jumped. Or the maps that seemingly incentivize you to split up your squad. There’s no quicker way to figuring out what the weak links in your team are than trying to handle certain maps split up. If you don’t find the right delicate balance someone on your squad is going to get their shit kicked in. I also think of the Sacae version of Chapter 18. The way you get jumped by all the people in the uhhh… Sacae cultural housing is one thing. But what about that damn river at the start? It restricts your team’s movement, forcing most of your characters to cross two choke point bridges to actually attack anything. Meanwhile the nomad troopers of Sacae can apparently cross the rivers themselves just fine. That fact sure caught me off guard the first time it happened. Surprised me more than main trap of the chapter because I spoiled myself on that point ahead of time. This is far from an exhaustive list of the way this map design can get you jammed up. There are plenty.

Ultimately I ended up resetting at least once on the majority of chapters in my playthrough. I think the most I reset on any individual map was 8 times, though I wasn’t keeping precise count so I can’t say for sure. It’s somewhere around there. One of the maps I reset the most on was Chapter 14. This one puts you in the middle of a sandstorm trying to make your way to Arcadia. The sandstorm limits your movement with most of your units, and it also heavily restricts your visibility. This is not ideal considering how there are multiple tough enemies hiding in the desert. After a certain point playing this map enough you start to memorize where all the ops are and the best ways to handle them. Before that happens you’re liable to get jumped and get rekt. Which certainly happened to me. Doesn’t help that you get flanked from behind by the vaguely offensive buff gay guy squad. Also if you want the true ending you’ll have to beat this map within 25 turns. While making sure Sophia doesn’t die, which isn’t exactly an easy feat either. Sophia’s a remarkably underwhelming unit, so you basically have to play escort for her to stay alive. Somehow she managed to overcome my dark mage bias and my purple haired anime girl bias to find her way to the bench after this. Yeesh. I don’t hate this map, but man it kicked my ass. I probably wouldn’t have to reset quite as much if I didn’t care about getting the legendary weapons, but… y’know, I did.

Honestly even if it wasn’t for nice reasons, Arcadia’s the map that left the strongest impression on me. Part because of the multitude of setbacks I experienced and the frustration that came with it, sure. Still I do think there’s a level of concept and execution this map does well. It really makes you feel like you’re trudging through a sandstorm with possible danger at every turn. After a certain point of playing it enough the surprise factor of strong units jumping you disappears, but that doesn’t make them easy to deal with. It really makes you think hard about where you place your guys so that you can be efficient getting loot and dealing with all the shit the map throws at you. Who do you send where? This is a very important question because they might come face to face with a wyvern if they overextend in either direction. Of course after a certain point I knew exactly where those wyverns were and only set them off when I was ready for a fight. With all this in mind, a slow cautious play style would seem most prudent. As it happens, that’s the case in many of these chapters. But in this one you’ve got to balance the caution with the turn limit. Even if you ignore the legendary weapons you also run the risk of getting hit from behind by the bandit crew. One of those maps that forces you to be on your best behavior to win the day. Certainly not the only one that does that in this game. For me there’s some appeal buried within that frustration. When your unit placements really matter, when efficiency really matters, and when you’ve got to make use of any relevant resource at your disposal, that means you have to engage with the game at a deeper level than usual. If you just looked at my successful last run of Arcadia you’d almost think I was good at the game!

This brings me to acknowledging the hefty playtime of this game. If you’re getting through chapters super efficiently without resets, the playtime won’t look too crazy. I’m sure with proper warp usage you can just blaze through some of it near instantly. But for all practical purposes I bet most players will have a more lengthy campaign. Personally, I registered 37 hours and 16 minutes when all was said and done. If you consider all the unregistered time from the maps I reset repeatedly… man, I don’t even want to know. A lot of the damn time surely. And if you’re playing in such a way where you don’t reset you’ll often times need a very slow cautious play style to ensure safety against certain parts of the game. This will mean successful play without resets often incurs long playtimes as well. All of this together makes this medium length game end up longer than it seems at face value. Man is it nice to be on the other side of it now.

When you see me commenting on how tough this game is, that doesn’t necessarily mean I think it’s a bad thing. Though the challenge coming from mage sniping and long range status effects isn’t exactly the epitome of fair. However, there is one aspect I fully have smoke for. The weird ass requirements to get the true ending. I sincerely doubt I would’ve been able to reach that end if I didn’t have a certain Spartan warning me about the requirements beforehand. Now consider that this game came out in 2002, when people didn’t look up this kind of thing online so much. I guess you’re supposed to just figure it out by word of mouth, the official strategy guide, or a handful of vague hints the game offers to you. To be fair, most of the requirements aren’t that bad. A lot of them involve keeping specific characters alive and/or finishing certain maps within a specific number of turns. Easier said than done in some cases, but still not terrible. The one that really throws me for a loop is keeping fucking Douglas alive in Chapter 16. I mean seriously he’s an enemy general running at you the whole time and you’re supposed to know not to kill him? I had to employ some really fucky tactics to keep his ass alive in spite of his murderous intent. And if you make your way to the end without catching all these specific requirements well… better accept the not-so-great ending or hope you got an opportune save file to return to bucko!

With all that being said, I have an overall positive opinion of the gameplay. For one it’s a Fire Emblem game and I enjoy playing them in general. Binding Blade was no exception. It just kicked my ass more than usual. I’d be lying if I said I never got tilted playing through this, but in the end I don’t regret doing it. I don’t mind being humbled from time to time. It just shows my gamer skillz got room to grow. From what I gather the best Binding Blade players have a deep understanding of stats and the ins and outs of the game to come up with the most optimal strategy. I’ve never been that interested in getting deep into the weeds like that, but I can respect those who do. Even if you’re really on point with everything there’s a certain element of randomness that can affect how your game goes. After all a character that looks good on paper can take a massive RNG L with their level ups. Sometimes the enemy will just kinda randomly crit you and fuck up your day. I think that’s probably part of the fun for people who get really into the game and replay it repeatedly. No run is ever going to be exactly the same. You’ll always have to adapt to unexpected developments RNGesus provides.

Overall

So after all is said and done, it’s time for the final verdict. When I compare this game to Blazing Blade there are some aspects where it falls short. The story simply wasn’t as interesting in this title for me, and the character writing wasn’t quite as strong either. Does that mean the story was bad or the character writing was bad? No, not at all. I hold Blazing Blade in very high regard in those aspects. There’s not a whole lot of games in general that top it on that front. I also think Binding Blade actually surpassed Blazing Blade in regards to the late game story. However, there’s a bit of a meandering quality to some of the earlier events in Binding Blade. Sometimes I cared what was happening, sometimes it’s just like “ok yeah we just kinda happen to need to fight these guys because reasons, cool.”

As for the experience playing through the game, I enjoyed it by and large. It could be a slog at times making it through these lengthy chapters after multiple resets, but I can appreciate getting put to the test. It’s not like the challenges this game presented were entirely unfair. I mean, all that bolting stuff was kind of bullshit but otherwise there’s not much that stands out as actively unreasonable. It’s an underdog story and the game sure makes you feel like one. Would’ve been nice if they made Roy more useful so he’s not so damn difficult to keep alive. But WHATEVER. You don’t have to make him some super OP souped up unit. Just make him moderately more competent so he’s not an active liability on the team in the later levels. Like Eliwood. Would be nice.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever play this game again. One playthrough already took a lot out of me. But I don’t regret my time with this game. Didn’t have as much fun with it as I did Blazing Blade, but I still had a good deal of fun nevertheless. Y’know, most of the time. Slowly but surely. As such, I give this game high marks.

9/10.

Thus concludes this blog post. Man I took months to beat this game because I usually only played through one or two chapters a week. Considering how long some of these chapters took me to beat, I don’t think my pace was unreasonable. Not like I’ve got time to get rekt repeatedly every day. With the conclusion of this blog I can finally put this time of my life behind me, and that’s a good feeling. Y’know, mostly. There were some good times wrapped up in the months I had this game in rotation. Experiences I can only remember with fondness now, never getting them back. Time keeps marching forward whether I want it to or not. So it goes. Any ways, if you made it this far in the blog, thank you. Seriously. I know this was a lot to read through. Hope you got something valuable out of it.

I don’t know when I’ll be posting another blog. Probably won’t be for a while, but who knows? Maybe I’ll randomly decide on a quick one and you’ll see me sooner than expected. I know a certain Spartan’s got something cooking up for his half of the Game Trade, so y’all should definitely look forward to that. It’s about a game that doesn’t have much of anything to do with Binding Blade, but still. Regardless of whether you come by again or not, peace be with you.

Before I go, I would like to take a brief moment to acknowledge all the brave warriors lost thanks to a combination of great adversity and my own questionable decisions. I’m not going to list the whole list of corpses here because it’s embarrassing and I honestly forget exactly who made it and who didn’t. I can tell you the body count is in the double digits. You guys all helped me pull through this rough ass game, and I am deeply thankful for it. I hope you all rest well in your digital graves.