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Sega's clone of Fire Emblem; ironic that I ended up liking it more than Nintendo's series.

This was one of the earliest Sega RPGs, and probably one of the first strategy RPGs on a console to boot. Like Fire Emblem, there are no "generic" characters on your team; each has their own sprites and their own distinct abilities. Some are close range fighters, some heal, some cast magic that can damage all enemies within a wide range (but woe if an enemy gets close enough to attack them), centaur characters have longer movement range than most, and so on. There are thirty characters to recruit in the game, and finding them all is a challenge in itself.

The fights are also surprisingly large-scale; the battlefield often stretches many time's the screen's size, and you can be pitted against forty or more enemies on the same field. Moreover, many battles will require a fair amount of restarting to get through; often you'll have to pick off a couple weaker groups in order to level up, and then escape from the fight, restock your items, and return again in order to gain enough strength to outlast all the enemies on the field. For this reason, you can often spend several hours trying to clear a single map. Luckily you don't have to endure it all in one sitting now thanks to the VC's quick-save feature.

In short, if you like strategy RPGs and you don't mind a lot of grinding, give this one a chance. It's a bargain at $8 when a loose cart can go for $40 on eBay.

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