For a long time, I heard good things about this game. Seeing as we're unlikely to ever see this game remade ever or likely even released outside of Japan, I played with a fan translation and also decided to do RetroAchievements at the same time. Being an older Fire Emblem game, naturally, there are features that took getting used to. Doubling required the Pursuit skill, critical hits were locked behind the Critical skill, Canto let you move and even change weapons after attacking, and this game is known as Horse Emblem for good reason, but also for a bad reason. The big red flag in the room is the map sizes. There's a good reason this game only has 12 chapters, and it's because the maps are huge. A bit too huge, in my opinion. You need to get around quickly, and mounted units can do that. The problem is the size of these maps point you away from using foot units since they can't keep up with your horses and (very few) fliers. Even then, beyond Ayra in Generation 1, many of the foot units viability varies heavily on certain factors. Skills being one of them. The fact that basic mechanics like doubling or critical hits being locked behind skills did bother me a bit, especially early on. More often than not, skills are locked to classes, of which each unit only has a straight line towards promotion at Level 20. You have no control over what class they end up in, meaning some classes that get certain skills are better than others. Tie this in with units who have personal skills (yes, these existed before Fates, surprisingly enough) like Pursuit or Critical. This segways into talking about one single unit who has a reputation for being stupidly good, so good in fact they had to send him to Jugdral's worst BBQ at the end of Chapter 5, Sigurd. He's a prepremote with high stats, good movement because he's on a horse, you get a free Silver Sword in the Prologue that can carry you through the entirety of Generation 1, and on top of everything else, he has Pursuit, allowing him to double if his speed is enough...which it will be more often than not. Sigurd's insane potential passes onto his son, Seliph. This is where the romance system comes into play, where the units you get in Generation 2 depend on if you paired up your Generation 1 units. Not only does this have an effect on stats, but also skills, making some children better than others...if you got them at all. The game is luckily generous enough to give you backups for any kids you didn't get. but they're inferior stat wise...and the single Berserk staff in the game is locked behind NOT getting one of the biological children. Sure, it adds replay value, but.... One of the achievements I had to do was beat the game with all units surviving to the end of their story. At the end of my playthrough, I had 103 resets. One thing I will appreciate about this game is that, even if a scenario seems unwinnable, if you try different ways of breaking out of the seemingly unbreakable situation, you can prevail if RNG decides to cooperate. Several times I ended up pushed into a corner and came close to giving up and doing the whole map over, but once the stars aligned and I broke free, I felt very accomplished even though I knew it also had to do with RNG saving me. Now, story wise, I did very much enjoy the game. It's not every day you are put into a deathtrap where your entire army is obliterated as part of the enemy's plan and it sticks. Sigurd was so good they had to kill him in a cutscene where the player can't save him, even though he lacked understanding of the bigger picture. In a way, I liked how Manfroy's scheming was happening in the shadows and then jumps Sigurd and his army at the infamous Battle of Belhalla, throwing them to their doom and almost winning overall until Seliph happened. In a way, I now understand the hype behind this game. I'm still not really big on some of the jank in this game like no trading, lack of healing items, the massive maps, and the hordes of enemies clumped together in groups, but narratively, it's a good game for an SNES title, which was a time where story usually wasn't a huge thing in games. One day, however, I will end up playing Thracia 776, which is infinitely more jank than this game.

Played as a nuzlocke. Also, I was playing on an older version of the game. You know, it's not often that games like this or Unbound come out. I understand that it takes a lot of work to make a game like this one, but it's always fun when they do. This game is basically "what if the Mario universe had a whole Pokemon-like thing going on?" and it works really well. Taking a lot of the usual Mario enemies like Koopas and Goombas and turning them into usable captures was a nice touch, and they gave some representation to the Mario RPGs like Superstar Saga and Partners in Time. The only real glaring things to note are the unusual abundance of physical attackers and significant lack of Electric types. Some captures are also just big balls of defenses, like Lubba and King Boo. This was a game very much made by fans of both Mario and Pokemon. The little references and moments were nice when they came by, and the story wasn't too serious, to the point where you could laugh from the goofiness of Bowser's scheming. It was also funny that he was a sort of second rival...even though he didn't know how to play, to the point he literally clicked Selfdestruct during the double battle in the Jungle Kingdom and took out his own ally. Naturally, though, there is a reason why I'm only giving this game 4 stars instead of 5, and that's Bowser in the Molten Kingdom. Prior to fighting him, the highest level trainer has Level 50 captures. Bowser suddenly has his ace (himself) at Level 56 with no prompting whatsoever. Shortly after these events is Luigi on Rainbow Road where his ace is Level 58. Yes, I did use Content Creator Mode to get the Infinite Rare Candies and the Cap Candies, but I made specific rules about how I used them. My team was Level 53 when I reached Bowser and one of my team members got blasted by a Level 55 Kamek. I would argue that was the low point in terms of balance, in my opinion. Even so, I still very much enjoyed playing Super Mariomon. Maybe one day I'll go back for the RetroAchievements set. Not sure yet, though.