The floor.

I should have kept my word and not played this. 

When I started this task, I had hoped to find some true hidden gems. Hell, maybe I’d find a new favorite game or something that could rival Chrono Trigger in its excellence. I knew I’d discover some wacky and different ways to play RPGs. I also expected to play some absolute duds that never should have been made. But I couldn’t expect something like this. 

Not only have I just dropped the worst game I hope to play on the SNES, but I just dropped the worst score I’ve given. A 0 out of 50. 

How does a game achieve this fabled score? You’d think it would be a lot of bugs, but I didn’t find a single one. From my short research, no one’s talking about bugs, so I assume there aren’t any. So the problems are intended! Let’s begin with the charm, if you want to call it that. 

The game is on rails, with no exploration. Maybe some additional dialogue if you bring two people together, and want to waste a turn, but that’s it. And none of that is cute. There isn’t anything neat to look at either. And even if something bad happens, like the girl who was the key component of the inciting incident, the story won’t change. It’s a fifty hour game, with every chapter taking three to four hours (or at least the first two), so to hell with replayability and length. The world is wholly connected, and I assume that at least a few side characters among the eight million NPCs are important. So that’s 2 points. 

The game in question was released in 1996. So why does it look like an NES+ game? There is no variety in units. Your allies are slightly different, but I still accidentally had my archer take to the frontlines too often because she looked like my cavalry units. And they did all look the same. And every enemy, generic or named, is an exact copy of each other. Oh, but the weapon changes! Whoopty do! Spells are rare, so the only animation is swinging your weapon. But at least the landscape looks good… 1 point. 

The music… fine. I kinda enjoyed two songs, both of which front end the OST as chapters two and three. For some reason, though, they’re not fitting with the story. These are relaxing songs in the middle of a war. Most of the game is just jingles when your characters attack or heal, so most of that doesn’t matter. I’ll be nice and give this portion 5 points. 

We’ll save the gameplay for last, which means we’re talking about the story. So this game has a lot of characters. You get twenty four of them in the first half. None of them are particularly fleshed out or feel relevant outside of the twenty minutes after they join. And the enemies are much of the same. Just orange/brown swabs. The second half appears to nearly double that. I can’t possibly care about that many. And I doubt the game does too. It’s just bodies for the sake of breeding. 

The plot itself is filled with melodrama, almost to the point of comedy. You’re dragged into war, with several other nations as well. You have a reason, but other countries are just opportunistic nonsense. During all this killing, you’re betrayed and branded a criminal, even in your own country, apparently. In exile, you fall in love with a fairy, but she’s eventually kidnapped and forced to marry your rival. She’s brainwashed and given amnesia. Your rival then kills you and all your friends and has two children with your wife. Fortunately, all of your friends had kids at the same time, so your son eventually raises an army with all those other kids to reclaim what’s yours and kills your rival’s son. Good thing one person survived to tell you all of this. There’s some nonsense about a cult and crazy incest along the way, too. Turns out the big bad bad, your half brother, is also an incest baby. Some of those twists seem silly to me, but I didn’t get very far in the game, so maybe the story is better than I believe. Still isn’t doing much to help the characters... Ultimately, it has disguised depth with convolution, which is a serious sin to me. Once again, I’ll be generous and say the overall plot gets a respectable 6 points. How did your son survive the massacre?

But let’s talk about the main interactivity of the game: the battle system. It’s an SRPG with far too large battlefields. 32x32 fields. They take forever to traverse, and the bland combat doesn’t help. That in and of itself is boring! The prologue chapter took me three hours to get through, and chapter one looked like it would be something similar. I have to imagine later battles will be even longer because of epicosity. The areas themselves look different, but there’s no variety otherwise. So the basics are troubling, but then they try to get fancy with it. 

Transferring inventory items costs money. 

Weapons degrade with every use; one for every swing, with a max of fifty. 

And there is perma death. Every action can result in a stupider story, a weaker party, and less fun. And there isn’t much fun to be had here anyway. 

There is very limited healing in battle as well. At most, you can heal two units a turn. One way uses a staff’s durability, and the other involves paying a church because god needs money. 

It’s all an exercise in tedium. In total, the game has 17 points of negativity. 

For those not doing math, I lied. This game doesn’t get 0 out of 50. It actually has -1. A negative score! I know I gave Magic: The Gathering Arena a negative score, but that is a digital game meant to recreate a tabletop card game. It’s different than this one. This negative one feels truly damning. But I’m apparently the only person who thinks this, as the game in question has decent review scores. 

But enough tattling around. What game gets a negative score? Fire Emblem IV: Genealogy of Holy War. I told myself I wasn’t going to play this, but I did. And I’m filled with regrets. But FEIV has everything I hate about the subgenre. The battles are too large, there are too many characters, perma death, and inventory nonsense twice over. The melodramatic story about using long lost half siblings is creepy, and everyone existing simply to mate is silly. What happens if everyone dies and there’s no bloodline to make? The idea that a game could unfun itself is awful. I know I only played five hours of FEIV, but I’m already so bored. I probably could take a few more points off, but I’d rather just move on and forget I ever played this garbage. 

Enjoy your -1/50.