Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones

Nintendo has announced the full list of ten Game Boy Advance titles to be given away in the 3DS Ambassador programme.

They say that true love is blind. Who "they" are can be a sub-quest for later. For now, let's consider the second bit of that sentence - and let me bash myself round the head with it sufficiently that I can write about Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones without glossing over some of its weightier flaws. Because, love it as I do, I have to admit that it's more of an acquired taste than I first thought - back when I stumbled giddy and excited out of the back-end of the first Western instalment in the strategy-RPG series last summer.

See, it's a wonderful thing, Fire Emblem. But it's got issues. And given that most of them were issues last time around too, it's probably fair to frown and admit they're innate. That said, this is also a good opportunity to point out that people who liked the last one - confusingly named "Fire Emblem" here despite there having been more than a handful of previous instalments in Japan - will quickly fall in love with this one again, just as soon as they get over it being the same thing with a different story, a bolted-on multiplayer mode, and some arguably superficial changes to the structure of the campaign.

Why the love, then? Well, it's not a quick answer.

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