Greetings, salutations even! I know this is a tough time of year for many of us, and all I ask is that you all make this the best week you possibly can. If the holidays are a struggle, take time to care for yourself if you can. Hang out with friends, do the things you love, find that sweet gender euphoria, follow what makes you truly happy. Oh, and continue to be yourselves :). Alright everybody, get ready for the largest mega I’ve ever written (I think).
Welcome to the TMGC mega! I have been hyping this up, probably for months now, and it’s my time to deliver on what might be the one of the best Fire Emblem experiences of all time. Buckle up, because this is going to be a long one. Most of the post will have light to no spoilers, but some parts may have a moderate amount of spoilers. With that out of the way, let’s find out what this game has to offer.
What is Fire Emblem? (no spoilers)
Fire Emblem is a strategy role-playing game series where you move your units to fight enemy units on a grid. The simplest way to think about it is like chess, where you have a large team of units fighting another large team of units, while your units are more like characters in that they have personalities. In most entries, these units are also able to have conversations with each other, providing more detail to the characters or the story, while also making the supported characters stronger. The games take place in a medical fantasy setting, with swords, axes, lances, different magics, and staves, with creatures like horses, pegasi, and wyverns.
What is Fire Emblem: The Morrow’s Golden Country (TMGC)? (no spoilers)
TMGC is a romhack of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. It has it’s own story, characters, maps, mechanics, and for all intents and purposes, it’s a whole game built in the engine of Sacred Stones.
Story Outline and Characters (light spoilers)
TMGC features Blair as the protagonist. As a young lesbian lord from the Aercolyn territory within the Dalstinian Alliance, the game follows her around the continent and throughout the many nations. At first, the game features a pretty standard Fire Emblem plot, where one of the nations declares war on a couple of the others, which kicks the story into action. However, it evolves greatly beyond that point, with political drama, suspense, mystery, conspiracy, and so much more that make the story stand out. Of course, I also find the story to be very well written, especially when compared to many other Fire Emblem games.
Along for the ride with Blair is Arin, her closest friend and self-taught tactician/advisor. They will also meet and recruit many of their friends and allies, both ones that existed before and during when the story takes place.
spoiler A little more on the story (moderate spoilers)
What exactly makes the story of TMGC compelling? Well, it’s the depth. The story involved Blair doing a lot to earn the approval of others, which often has her doing some very ethically questionable things. The plight of the commoner is shown in this game, with entire places on the continent being uninhabitable, yet having poverty-stricken inhabitants. Banditry runs rampant, and yet nobody has attempted to reach out to the struggling masses. The society is still feudal, most of the nations are either ruled by kings or lords. The class divide, that between noble and commoner, is very noticeable, and while it is not explicitly addressed like in some other entries, TMGC makes heavy use of “show don’t tell” with these kind of things. The many aspects of war are also shown, among those who do fight for their country. Mevion, the one country that managed to overthrow it’s king in a revolution, has a lot of revolutionaries who now live mundane lives due to being alienated by a revolutionary movement that was corrupted by opportunists are we still playing Fire Emblem? These people, along with the soldiers/knights of other nations, serve their countries or the people of them, and face the reality that what they fight for is not what they first thought. There are multiple characters that serve their lords and their country, but there are just as many deserters, those dissatisfied with how their lives ended up. There’s also political manipulation. Something happens that should lead to certain people taking power, but through political manipulation puppets are put in place. Countries are occupied by invading forces, and the results of that are felt. The frustrations of working within a political system is felt, as characters try again and again only to realize that it’s never going to work. That the only option when a political entity is inherently corrupt is to fight it.
:::
Characters and Queer Representation (light spoilers, moderate character spoilers)
First of all, the characters in this game are all pretty great, there’s a lot of them, and their supports are written well. The game also lists pronouns for all of the characters in-game as well. Nice touch.
Apollo is a trans man. It’s not revealed that he is at first sight. He’s a man, lives as such, and doing none of his supports leave it at that. However, as his supports are triggered, he gets into more and more of his past. A support chain with the Archbishop reveals that he was rejected, and may have been kicked out by, his parents. A support chain with another trans enby character has them recognizing their similarities, even if they transitioned to different genders. It was good to see a trans character in the game, and while I have not seen all of the supports, I would hope that some of the others manage to go into this as well. To get the lore on this, as far as I know, make sure to do the support chain with Apollo and Vladimir.
There’s also many non-binary characters, including a protagonist character (Viridian) that gets their own arc of the story! Not to mention that sooooooo many of the characters are gay, bi, or pan it’s amazing. I could go over all of them, but I don’t actually know all of them! So, I need to go over a special example. TMGC’s poly characters. Heavy character spoilers, of course.
There’s also everyone’s favorite genderfluid (maybe) enby (maybe) possibly agender (maybe) assassin with a heart Olson. She goes by she/they/he pronouns. I have not seen much to this character, I’ve just gotten them, but his introduction already has her requesting a great title, and they’re a really good unit in combat (100% crit rates and a skill that insta-kills on crit). All hair the Ser Duke-Duchess o7
If Blair gets a B+ support, and crucially does not A support, five of the other women, they all get married at the end and start a polycule. I do not know exactly how the ending goes, I messed up the support chains, but I do know who the people are. Arin, Natasia, Avan, Yuyu, and Estelle. For the poly ending, Blair can only support these five people, which will make more sense once I go over game mechanics. This might be the most queer fire emblem of all time.
Mechanics (no spoilers)
On the topic of supports, each character can only have up to five supports. I’m guessing this is due to hardware limitations, and this is fine for many characters. However, for characters like Blair or Arin, supports have to be done more carefully, considering whether or not you like a character enough to go through a support chain, or even going through another playthrough to see all of the supports. These supports increase stats between the characters, just like in normal FE, but they can also allow for other things, such as class promotions or new weapon proficiency. These can be game changing, with some characters gaining classes that make them the best characters in the game, to once mediocre characters gaining a weapon proficiency that makes them stand out. This not only makes supports more rewarding, but allows for more replayability, with more builds available to the player.
TMGC also takes features from other Fire Emblem games in an attempt to create a definitive experience. While the GBA games are great aesthetically and aged really well, they were lacking in some aspects that later games would innovate on. For example, Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn make use of a Base Area that the player can use to go over supports and buy items and such. TMGC adds this, also changing supports to be story-based rather than combat-based a lot of the time. This means that characters don’t have to be fielded to go through their supports (most of the time). Considering how many characters are in this game, it’s a really helpful inclusion.
TMGC also adds the save points that were in the DS games. This means a mistake doesn’t necessarily equal a reset, and it’s great for quality of life, especially considering how big some of these maps can get. Of course, it’s a double-edged sword. Not saving can leave you losing a lot of progress, and saving in a bad spot means you either have to either reset the whole level, or continue on without certain characters. Yes, this game has permadeath and only permadeath, there is no casual mode. However, there are also SOOOOOO many characters. Losing a few characters won’t be the end of the world gameplay-wise (I’m still a perfectionist for supports and story, although R.I.P. Butch, there goes My Hero), and you won’t likely find yourself unable to complete the game.
TMGC adds personal skills as well, something that was featured in certain entries of the series, removed for the GBA games, and the added again for the following entries. These really make each individual character stand out. For example, you can have a normal mercenary, or you can have a mercenary with a hit chance skill, who can level up high stats except for skill. The game likes to do this a lot, and it allows for certain units to be strong while posing some sort of challenge. There are of course alternatives to these units, I don’t have to use Gaylord if I don’t want to (yes there’s a character named Gaylord, yes he’s really good, and yes, he’s straight). Something really interesting about certain skills is that they become combat arts. For a certain amount of weapon durability, skills like Luna (ignore defense/resistance) and Sol (heal HP in damage dealt) can be triggered manually on the player’s turn, rather than having a chance of activating during an attack. This can allow for many interesting strategies. There’s one boss that has really high resistance, defense, and legendary tome when most of the characters aren’t even promoted. However, Kenneth (a dark mage) has the Luna skill, which I can manually activate to come up with a plan to kill the unkillable. As a reward, I received a gem I could sell for 30,000 gold (that’s a lot). This also ends a defend map early, meaning it could be easier to keep certain weaker units safe.
Back to the Tellius games (Path of Radiance & Radiant Dawn), TMGC adds movement skills! Characters can shove, smite, reposition, swap, etc. with other characters. This allows for great strategies, and I’ve found myself utilizing shove in order to push a certain unit into position a lot. It’s quite fun, and going back to the vanilla games is always a shock when I find that I cannot, in fact, push my units around for extra movement.
There’s also a lot of new classes, spells, weapons, animations and so much more!
I’m realizing that I’m treading a lot of the same ground as I did in my last post, and I’m trying to think about what else to write. The thing is, I don’t know what else to say. I don’t want to spoil the game for you wonderful people! So, you’re going to have to play this for yourself, especially those of you familiar with Fire Emblem.
For those of you unfamiliar with Fire Emblem, this might be difficult to pick up. If you’re willing to figure things out, or DM me for help (seriously, I’m willing to, don’t be shy :)), go right ahead! It’s a great game. However, there are definitely better games to help you get into Fire Emblem as a series. I would recommend Fire Emblem: Three Houses for the Nintendo Switch, or Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia for the 3DS. These games both go over basic Fire Emblem mechanics, while having some of the things TMGC takes inspiration from. Both games make use of combat arts, for example. They are also both really good games, and I would consider Shadows of Valentia to be one of my favorite Fire Emblem games, especially in it’s presentation. And yes, if I do a Fire Emblem mega next time, it’s going to be a Shadows of Valentia mega. Those who saw the last time I hosted the megathread are sure to recognize the characters :)
If you want to play Fire Emblem: The Morrow’s Golden Country, you’ll need a GameBoy Advance emulator (I use MGBA) as well as a copy of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (shouldn't be hard to find). From there, download the patch (sorry for google link, the patch is regularly updated) and apply it to the Sacred Stones rom using RomPatcher. From there, you have a functioning TMGC rom and are ready to play.
I think that’s going to be all from me today. Again, I hope the holidays go well for all of you. I know this is a tough time of year, and I wish you all the best of luck. I also encourage you to keep up the posting in both the mega and tracha. I’ll likely spend some time in tracha myself, and who knows, maybe we can even talk about Fire Emblem. Don’t suffer in silence, feel free to vent frustrations. Love you all, let’s have a great week!
Join our public Matrix server! https://matrix.to/#/#tracha:chapo.chat
As a reminder, please do not discuss current struggle sessions in the mega. We want this to be a little oasis for all of us and the best way to do that is not to feed into existing conflict on the site.
Also, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It's for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.
Here is a screenshot of where to find the spoiler button.
