Write About Whatever You Want

Assigning me to write about whatever I want will always result in one topic, video games. For the first time this school year, I did not write my weekly video game article for The Daily Beacon. This was due only to a lack of new releases, not desire. It certainly doesn't mean I haven't been playing any this week, they are all just too old to cover. Most of my time has been spent with Nintendo's 2005 Tactical RPG, "Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones". First released on the Game Boy Advance, it was recently given away for free as part of Nintendo's 3DS Ambassador Program. The "Fire Emblem" series is one of Nintendo's lesser known franchises in the US. It debuted in 1990 in Japan, but didn't receive a Western release until 2003. Nintendo is known for games with cute characters and easy accessibility, but the "Fire Emblem" series is their clearest outlier. The games are brutally difficult, and have plots more akin to "Game of Thrones" than "Super Mario Brothers". "The Sacred Stones" is the first entry in the "Fire Emblem" series I have ever played, and I am having a good time with it so far. It provides a good sense of progression with characters becoming more powerful as they earn experience and new weapons. The game does cause occasional frustration when one of the main characters dies to a lucky critical strike from an enemy. Character death is permanent so losing one of the protagonists means you to start over from your last save, which sometimes results in over an hour of lost progress. I plan on playing the game to completion during this traditionally barren post-Christmas video game system since there is little else to play.