When it comes to tactical role-playing games, few series can claim to have made a longer lasting impact to the genre than Fire Emblem.
Starting merely as a fan game helmed by Shouzou Kaga at Intelligent Systems in 1987, the project caught the attention of Nintendo who opted to assist with co-developing and publishing it, with the finished product eventually releasing as Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light in 1990. While initially receiving a lackluster reception, this title managed to garner a cult following and served as a solid foundation for both the Fire Emblem series, and the tactical role-playing genre as a whole, to build upon.
Shouzou Kaga would go on to direct the next several entries in the Fire Emblem series, most notably 1996’s highly influential Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, before leaving Intelligent Systems to form his own independent studio, Tirnanog, in 1999. This studio’s first project was 2001’s Tear Ring Saga, a tactical-role playing game that bore significant resemblance to Fire Emblem in both presentation and gameplay; so much in fact, that Nintendo ended up suing Tirnanog over the game shortly after it’s release. Tirnanog managed to maintain its rights to continue to sell the game but had to pay Nintendo a significant fee to do so. This lawsuit set a historic precedent, setting the idea into motion that it is acceptable for creators to make very similar spiritual sequels without the consent or involvement from their original parent companies. Although never confirmed, it is theorized that this legal battle with Nintendo caused Kaga to drastically reevaluate Tirnanog’s future works. Whether this is true or not, there is no denying that the studio’s following game, 2005’s Berwick Saga, marked a significant departure from its Fire Emblem heritage. While still within the tactical role-playing genre, Berwick Saga distinguished itself through its enhanced focus on realism, both in and out of combat.
Revered, or avoided, due to its notorious difficulty, Berwick Saga expands from the standard square-grid to a hexagonal-grid system, drastically expanding the depth of strategy when it comes to positioning units and formulating assaults. In addition, the phase-based system Fire Emblem used, wherein the player moves all of their units and takes all of their related actions before passing the turn over to the enemy, has been replaced with a system where turns are frequently alternated between sides, giving each conflict a sense of tension and momentum with the state of the battle constantly changing. Furthermore, a high amount of variance has been added to the game in terms of weapon durability, hit/evasion rates, and status conditions; we are talking weapons that can potentially break in one hit, leaving a unit with no means of attack, average hit rates being around 50-60%, if not lower, for a majority of the game, and status conditions that can allow your units to be captured by the enemy forces making that character unavailable for potentially several missions until they can be recovered at a significant cost.
The combat of Berwick Saga is frequently unrelenting, and often hostile toward the player, but it is also fair. Enemies follow all of the same rules and restrictions as the player, they deal with the same low hit rates, the fragile weapon durability, and their AI is programmed to not be able to see through fog of war. Combat encounters in Berwick Saga are frequently hard fought and grueling for both sides, the threat of character permadeath and the cost of replacing equipment and resources always looming over the player. This management of resources is where the imbalance between the player and the enemy resides most prominently in Berwick Saga. Between encounters requiring the player to utilize nearly every item at their disposal to come out victorious, the relatively small cast of recruitable characters tied to a permadeath system, and a continuously depleting supply of funds, the player is constantly at war both in and out of combat.
This commitment to realism is present within the game’s narrative as well. Whereas many genre contemporaries may chronicle the exploits of a hero conquering an evil empire alongside a large group of friends, Berwick Saga opts to keep things a bit more morally ambiguous and smaller in scale. The plot follows a small group of soldiers, known as the Knights of Sinon, who are noble in intention but are clearly at the beck and call of a corrupt king who on numerous occasions intentionally involves them in some less than savory conflicts in an attempt to be rid of them. Most of the war at large occurs off-screen while the Knights of Sinon, alongside mercenary companions, do their best to survive and serve their country, even when they often disagree with the choices made by their monarch. As the narrative continues to escalate and unravel, any losses experienced by the player only further emphasize the dark undertone and reality of the war at hand. It isn’t until the final acts of the game where hope finally becomes visible and some light is shone upon the Knights of Sinon, or what’s left of them at least.
Having attempted to get into the tactical role-playing genre a number of times, whether that be through the frequently mentioned Fire Emblem series, Final Fantasy Tactics, or even Tactics Ogre, I always found the games to be lacking the sense of grittiness and tension that I felt a proper medieval warfare based tactical RPG should provide. This isn’t to say that there is anything wrong with those games but it wasn’t until diving into Berwick Saga that I truly found myself enthralled and properly immersed within the genre. Every decision within Berwick Saga, both in and out of battle, holds significant weight and the battles are frequently long, grueling, and leave plenty of room for strategic expression from the player. As alluded to many times within this piece, the game is unforgiving and difficult (I would recommend keeping numerous save files and also take advantage of save states if at all possible) but that just makes every small victory that much more rewarding. Anyone looking for a challenging yet consistently thoughtful experience, or anyone who has found themselves disappointed by a lack of depth in tactical RPGs previously, owes it to themselves to dive into Berwick Saga headfirst; you might just end up finding yourself at the end of one of the most rewarding video game experiences of your life, I know I did.
Berwick Saga has only ever been released for the PlayStation 2 in Japan; however, an excellent fan translation was completed in 2019 by Aethin, which is available here.
What’s the best tactical role-playing game you’ve ever played? Will you be giving Berwick Saga a chance? Please share your thoughts with us on our Boss Rush Facebook Group or our Boss Rush Discord.
Featured Image: Enterbrain (via r/fireemblem)
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