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It’s all familiar, easy-to-understand stuff that lets you get into the game quickly and enjoy it right from the get go, and if you can’t grasp it immediately there’s always a tutorial to ease you into things but anyone who’s played even a single Fire Emblem game before– especially the first domestic Fire Emblem game on the Game Boy Advance– will recognize the system on the spot.

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Each mission as a whole is done in a series of turns first players get to move all of their units, then the enemy has their turn, moving their units in sequence. If a unit attacks an enemy, the enemy generally gets a hit back, and vice versa some characters can be speedy enough to get two attacks or slow enough that they incur two. For new players, this is essentially a rock-paper-scissors hierarchy that determines which weapons or types of magic gainīonuses over which other types- swords beat axes, polearms beat swords, axes beat polearms– requiring players to examine their enemies and determine which units to send where. The tried-and-true triangle system is back in force to provide the foundation for laying any plan of attack in the game. In fact, veteran players will recognize a whole lot about the game.

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Additions to the game this time around include a brand spanking new world map, some trainee recruits that start off extremely weak, new classes, greater shop options and more, along with the full complement of misfits and support conversations that veteran players of the series will have come to expect. Hang on, I hear you say, ‘world map’? Why yes. Later the plot will branch for a while, allowing you to either continue to control the Princess or switch to her brother, Prince Ephraim, both of whom pursue different objectives towards the same goal before the whole group come together to take on the final stages of the game.

Along the way they’ll meet up with some familiar-seeming faces and bad guy archetypes, a youngster or three, and more guys in color-coded uniforms than you can shake a pointy stick at. Escaping from the near-ruins of the castle, Eirika and her noble protector (and tutorial-giver) Seth flee into the countryside and traipse around the world map for a while, gathering companions and looking to take back their family home before a series of revelations throws them and their unwitting army into even deeper trouble – er, plot. In FESS you initially take the part of Princess Eirika, a noble of Lunes, one of the five kingdoms of the continent and naturally the one that is under siege the moment the game begins. But is the gameplay as exciting and new as the story, or does it quickly join the ranks of the unliving? A somewhat curious decision on Nintendo’s part, FESS is not a direct sequel to the previous Fire Emblem game but instead a new, completely distinct story that takes place on the continent of Magi Val, populated by five royal families and a whole host of enemy soldiers and strange undead things out to suck your blood. Over half a year after its Japanese debut, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (FESS) arrives on domestic shores, ready to try and ply us with more of the good old Fire Emblem charm in a lovably handheld format.

The unliving switch