Permadeath’d

Below are the stats for my first playthrough of various Fire Emblem games:

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones  (GBA)
-time: 30:03:05
-HARD difficulty
-Erika: Great Lord
Level: 13
HP: 49
B: 200
W: 110
L: 6
Ephraim: Great Lord
Level: 15
HP: 54
B: 133
W: 85
L: 8

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance  (GC)
Started 11/27/05; ended: 12/26/05
-time: 42:30:34
-Win leaders:
1. Ike
2. Soren
3. Oscar
4. Nephenee
5. Boyd
-Ike (Lord) – level 20
HP: 57
Strength: 26
Magic: 14
Skill: 25
Speed: 28
Luck: 20
Defense: 18
Resistance: 21
Weapon Level: S

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn  (WII)
started 12/27/07; ended: 02/01/08
-NORMAL difficulty
-time 70:22:38

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon  (NDS)
Started: 02/17/09; ended: 03/08/09
-time: 23:42:42
-H1 difficulty

Fire Emblem: Awakening  (3DS)
started: 2/22/13; ended: 8/02/13
-time: 53:20.34  (last save)

Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright (3DS)
started: 2/28/16; ended: 7/8/16
-time: 50:10 (last save at Chapter 27)

Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Switch)
Started: 7/26/19; ended: 9/18/19
-time: 85:31
-Difficulty: HARD/Classic
-Golden Deer (Claude - Verdant Wind)

I do not have my first playthrough data for Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword unfortunately; it may have been before I began keeping track. I’ll use my 2nd playthrough data for this title:

Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword  (GBA)
2nd Playthrough
Started: 12/26/05; ended: 3/25/06
Lynn > Eliwood
-HARD difficulty
-time: 34:03:16

Look at all these playtimes:

23:42:42
30:03:05
34:03:16
42:30:34
50:10
53:20.34
70:22:38
85:31

Each of these times is a TOTAL LIE! Anyone who plays old school Fire Emblem or new school Fire Emblem on Hard/Classic - meaning there IS permadeath; your playtime is most likely a lie too.

For Fire Emblem permadeathers, anyone like me at least, you leave no man behind. I remember very distinctly one of the later maps in The Sacred Stones. It was a grueling battle, and I was running low on weapon usages and vulneraries - I had to really work with what I had up to that point of the game (I was playing on Hard mode and resources were scarce). After two hours of making my way through this map, I would have a unit die each time I made close to the boss’ vicinity no matter how carefully I tried to navigate that part of the map. And when a character died, that was two hours of work circling down the drain - I’d reset the game, and try again. I probably spent a total of 10 full hours on that map, but the play clock only captured two of those hours!

In today’s Fire Emblem, we get the option to play with Permadeath toggled on or off and we also received an additional crutch, the Divine Pulse (in Three Houses) and Draconic Time Crystal (in Engage.) I’m fine with the rewind feature being in the game if only because I’m an adult now and cannot spend all those extra hours getting back through maps repeatedly when units die! It’s a good quality of life feature to save time although it does eliminate a lot of the risk on maps. A fair trade off.

That said, no other game series comes to mind that so severely under counts the player’s actual real play time like the Fire Emblem series does.