After finishing all routes in Three Houses, I was in the mood for a more focused Fire Emblem experience, so I decided to replay Thracia 776. For those who don't know, Thracia 776 was the fifth Fire Emblem and the last produced by series creator Shouzou Kaga. It has never been officially released outside of Japan. The first complete, high-quality fan translation into English actually came out earlier this year (thanks to all the folks who worked on Project Exile).
Thracia 776 is something of a cult favorite due to its diverse map designs and surplus of interesting mechanics (some of which have become series fixtures; others remain unique to Thracia). What I'd like to do in this thread is talk about some of what makes Thracia cool.
I. The Story
Thracia takes place during the events of Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. Fans sometimes refer to FE4 and 5 as the "Jugdral" games (after the setting they share) and call Thracia a "midquel" to Genealogy. Keeping this spoiler-free, Genealogy has your classic FE continent-wide struggle for power (although it's more than that, and if you haven't already played it, you should). It plays out on a grand scale, reflected in the game's maps that are substantially larger than ordinary FE maps. Thracia zooms in and expands on one corner of that struggle.
Here's Genealogy's map covering the "North Thracia" region:
And here's a Thracia map:
(You can actually see this village on the east side of the Genealogy map)
Thracia's opening cutscene illustrates one infamous part of Genealogy's story. The later chapters overlap with and retell battles you actually play in Genealogy. Seeing those events at ground-level adds texture and detail to Genealogy's world and enriches what would otherwise be a pretty conventional liberation-war narrative.
II. The Mechanics
Okay, here's where Thracia really shines. It's almost Super Mario Bros. 3-like in the number of new ideas it introduces.
Rescue: This is the first appearance of the mechanic many of you know from FE6-10 . A unit with higher constitution can use its turn to pick up a smaller unit. The rescued unit is safe from damage at the cost of a turn. The rescuing unit suffers reduced stats. I love this feature. It encourages somewhat more aggressive play (as you don't have to turtle crawl to ensure you have a full block around fragile characters), rewards smart positioning, and allows new map types where you might need to "ferry" non-flying units across impassable terrain.
Capture: Unique to Thracia, this is the offensive version of rescuing. By selecting the "capture" command, the player unit attacks (at lower stats), and if it reduces the enemy's HP to zero, the unit picks up the enemy. The player can then transfer items from the enemy to the capturing unit. When the enemy is "released" it instantly leaves the field as though it had been killed. Capturing is essential in Thracia because you start out with basically no money and no other way to obtain replacement or surplus weapons. It's also the best way to get some extremely powerful items. What I like about it is that it (a) introduces a neat risk/reward calculation and (b) dramatizes a story element (you start out as a tiny militia with no resources or stable supplies) in the gameplay mechanics.
Dismount: Introduced in FE3 but refined in Thracia, cavalry and flying units can dismount. The difference between Thracia's version of dismounting and Three Houses's recent cost-free version is that in Thracia, mounted units (a) must dismount in indoor maps and (b) suffer stat/weapon selection penalties while dismounted. So Thracia is one of the few games in the series to do much of anything to push back on mounted unit dominance. (Don't worry: they're still great in Thracia).
Fog of War: Introduced in Thracia and familiar from basically every FE since. I don't have a lot to say about fog of war.
(Screenshot of Chapter 24x deploy screen)
Fatigue: This one's controversial. In Thracia, as your units take actions, they build up a stat called "fatigue." When a unit's fatigue exceeds its HP, that unit is "fatigued" and cannot be deployed in the next battle. Sitting out one battle resets fatigue to zero. You can also deploy a fatigued unit (and reset its fatigue) by using an item called a stamina drink. I think I'm in the minority here, but I kind of like fatigue. It adds something to the strategy layer. It encourages the player to rotate units (which is not especially punishing, because Thracia has low stat caps, so no one's missing much by sitting out a fight now and then). And it can be overridden in emergencies. The main weakness, from my point of view, is that it doesn't sit well with the need to use particular units for recruiting. A first-time player has no way of knowing what's coming in the next battle, so he or she can't make a fully-informed decision about when to push a unit into fatigue. That's perfectly fine -- good, even -- if the consequences are that you may not have your best flier for a mountainous map, because that's the sort of risk a new player can evaluate beforehand. But sitting at a deploy screen for Map A, it would be silly for a first-time player to bench Karin the pegasus knight on the off chance she's needed for a recruitment in Map B. In theory there are stamina drinks for that, but they're limited, and most players will reserve them for "oh shit this fight is too scary without Y" situations. Still, I'd like to see this mechanic brought back at some point.
Movement stars: Unique to Thracia, some units have "movement stars" that give them a % chance, after finishing a turn, to move and act again. I don't really see the virtue of this mechanic. It mostly works in the player's favor, in that the player will have many units with movement stars, but there are relatively few enemies that have them or will proc them before being killed. But the wrong enemy getting a whole extra turn and blowing up the player's careful plans is a lot of variance for a game with permadeath.
III. Story and Gameplay Integration
I mentioned this in connection with the "capture" mechanic, but one of the neat things about Thracia is the way it works to integrate story and gameplay. Playing as a village militia on the run means you don't Thave money or supplies or any kind of "base camp" menu (initially), and you need to capture enemies to keep yourself armed. When the story tells you a particular enemy is a genius tactician, it weaves that into the gameplay by having his appearance buff every enemy on the map. And when it says that units left behind on "escape" maps are going to be captured well, Thracia takes care to pay off that story idea in gameplay terms too.
IV. What I'd Like to See In a Thracia Remake
There's a lot of speculation that Genealogy of the Holy War is due for a remake and that this could, down the road, set up a Thracia remake. It if ever happens, here's what I would like to see:
- Quality-of-life enhancements: The most straightforward improvement would be to import modern FE QoL features like locking in different enemies' attack ranges and allowing the player to re-arrange units' starting positions.
- Fatigue options: As I said, I like the fatigue mechanic. I think in a future FE it could be adapted into a kind of "injury" system where a unit that takes sufficient non-fatal damage would have to sit out a chapter. But for a Thracia remake, I wonder if IS could address the recruitment problem I described above by allowing the player to force-deploy a fatigued unit, without a stamina drink, at a severe stat penalty (e.g., all stats halved, including movement, and no XP gain during mission). The unit's fatigue would not reset, so it would still need to sit out a mission in order to recover its stats.
- Battle saves: Thracia can be an evil game. Some of the bosses are very, very scary and will kill your best units despite your best preparation. I don't know if I'd want the full turnwheel from SoV/TH, but a remake could definitely use some, limited means of saving in-mission progress.
- Warning on item usage: Items are super important in Thracia. Utility items like staves are the player's best tool for reducing difficulty, and Thracia gives several units very powerful weapons early in the game. I suspect it would come as a surprise to some players that Thracia does not have a blacksmith for repairs. The only way to extend the life of these items is a "Hammerne" staff limited to five uses over the course of the game. This works out okay, I think. Most players are cautious with limited-use items and will use a unit's weaker weapon if it means preserving the heavy-hitter for later. But I feel for the person who burns through Finn's Brave lance in the first ten chapters. I think a remake could probably put a line of dialogue early on warning the player that there's not going to be a general repair shop.
- Fix Xavier recruitment: It's a pain. It can still be a pain in a remake. But please, not this kind of pain.
VI. Conclusion/tldr
Thracia 776 is awesome. Please discuss.
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