Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem, officially titled in Japan as Gen’ei Ibunroku ♯FE,has an official developer blog. Chief Director Mitsuru Hirata made a couple of interesting posts today. The first post revealed Hirata’s personal experiences with the Fire Emblem series as he recalled his personal memories playing Fire Emblem on the Famicom 25 years ago.
Looking back 25 years ago, I have some memories of when I first encountered Fire Emblem. It had a package design with a soft touch that reminded me of a certain popular feature anime film. Its game characteristics managed to crush the young me, who thought at the time, “I’ve played so many tough-as-nails role-playing games on PC up until now, so this should be easy enough for me!”
According to Hirata, Fire Emblem was not the easiest game to pick up and play and even admits that he’s not the best at strategy games. The game was frustrating to him and left him with some personal moments with it. He states that the game forced him to care for his units and pay attention to them, which made things tough near the end of games.
Then, as I played, each time I lost an ally, I would mutter to myself: “T-this is the devil.” And in the end of my first run, I eventually found myself incapacitated, since I didn’t have enough units to continue fighting, and I wept and started the game over from scratch…
…These were some of the things I thought while continuously pressing the reset button in despair on a daily basis…
….After that, fate repeated itself once more, and my Super Famicom’s reset button actually broke, so I had to buy another one. Even on the Game Boy Advance, I was busy reading the enemy’s moves two or three steps ahead, and before I realized it, I had ended up staying on the train until the last stop…
While he is admittedly terrible at the genre, he loves the series and is excited to work on the game.
…Fire Emblem was a strategy game with a completely different approach. Paying attention to the units is important! If they die, they won’t come back! You can’t win with just numbers either! Rather than just claiming victory, there’s also the birth of the drama that arises from having your favorite unit win through battles (even if they’re weak)…
…It’s kind of like finally being able to meet the person I’ve longed for over many years….
I am looking forward to his future posts as the game is closer to its release date. Its great to see the director of the game know and passionately like the Fire Emblem series. hopefully, there will be more information regarding the game both at E3 and on the blog.
Are you excited to see a dedicated blog for Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem? Let us know below.
