Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade - Nintendo's most important JRPG

Retro reflections by Matt S. 

With Fire Emblem: Three Houses releasing this month, and marking the first "proper" Fire Emblem to land on Nintendo Switch, I've been going back over my time with the series, and replaying the first Fire Emblem to be formally localised and released into English. Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (just "Fire Emblem" in English) was originally developed for Game Boy Advance, and while it is actually the seventh entry in the overall series, I couldn't think of a better title for Nintendo and Intelligent Systems to use to introduce the series to the west. Indeed, I wonder if the series would have enjoyed the same trajectory if the first English effort was a weaker entry.

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