FEDA: The Emblem of Justice – Review

One of your typical strategy games for the SNES console, FEDA : Emblem Of Justice is actually a pretty good game, but it isn't without some flaws. Originally available only to Japanese gamers, you can now be able to play and fully understand the game through the help of emulation and a translation patch.

The Good...
Story : 9 FEDA's story is quite good. It revolves around the exploits of two main protagonists, a human and a wolfling. They are imperial soldiers who realized that the empire they serve is unjust and oppressive, and so they decide to leave and soon they find themselves fighting for their lives against the people they used to serve. Along the way they meet new allies in their fight, and they eventually realize that the empire might be more dangerous than they thought, endangering the lives of all the people in their land, including their own...
Gameplay : 8 The gameplay is the same as your standard strategy game. You and the enemy take turns moving units on the map each round until all units have taken an action, and a new round begins. It is simple enough that gamers new to this type of game would easily be able to get a hang of it, and familiar enough for strategy game veterans. The game also rates your actions in terms of good or evil, or rather, law and chaos. By completing mission objectives, you are considered to have been ''lawful'' and each of your party members are given bonus experience points as reward, while ignoring the objectives and merely killing every enemy in sight brings you to the side of chaos, leaving you without the experience bonus but gives you a larger cash reward. This affects the characters that would join you in your quest, and it also affects the endings, which provides a great replay value.
Sound : 8 The music varies, but most of them are great and really complement whatever situation your party is in. Although most of the sound effects doesn't come out nicely, the game music more than makes up for it.
Graphics : 9 The best part of this game is the graphics. In battle, when units make an attack, the screen changes to an anime-like scene. Here you can see the characters in great detail performing their attacks. The character designs are great, and there are a variety of creatures like humans and centaurs and even humanoid dragons.
Play Time/Replayability : 7 The game packs over 20 hours of gameplay. With 2 playthroughs needed to acquire all possible characters and 4 possible endings, this game will keep you busy for a good couple of days.

The Bad...
The towns are pretty boring. The only thing to look forward to in towns are the weapons shops. Treasure items on the field or towns maps are almost nonexistent.
The enemy AI is almost always predictable. Given the choice of 10 possible targets, all with full health, the enemy will often go after the 2 main characters first. This makes the game a bit too easy.
Some playable characters don't have any special attacks.
There are only a few skills and spells in the game. Although they look nice for the most part, a little more variety wouldn't have hurt.
There are only a few weapons and equipment in the game, and the few pieces of armor are so outrageously priced, considering how hard it is to earn money in battle, especially when playing on the side of law.
There are no side quests, no secret characters, no hidden features. The only real reason for a second playthrough is to be able to play on the other side, either law/chaos, to get the characters available to it.

The Ugly...
There are quite a few signs that this game might have been rushed in its production. Several bugs are in the game, such as being hit by magic even while protected by a magic shield, and the resetting of the second character's hit points to 60 instead of reaching 70...
The weapon shops sometimes sell worthless stuff. Like the first shop selling short swords, when its already the default weapon of your characters. One shop near the beginning of the game even sells the best weapon for a character that you won't get to use til near the end, by the time you realize it you've lost your chance to buy it hours ago.Most shops sell antidotes too, and some mages even have the spell to cure poison, but the thing is, there seems to be no poison effect in the game...

The Final Verdict...
Story : 9
Gameplay : 8
Sound : 8
Graphics : 9
Playtime/Replayability : 7
Overall Rating : 8.2

If you're a fan of strategy RPG's, then you'll surely like FEDA. If you're new to this type of game genre, then this could easily help you familiarize yourself with it. Either way, this is a good addition to any gamer's collection.