It's time for Sega to revive its Fire Emblem rival from the '90s
The Aug. 4 Nintendo Direct was all about Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, the tactical RPG coming to Nintendo Switch 2 next month. The showcase revealed a bunch of new info about Intelligent Systems' latest, including new details about how the game's four branching story paths will merge together. While Fire Emblem has been around since 1990, it truly popped off amongst worldwide gaming audiences with 2019's Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which helped bring the subgenre out of the niche and into the mainstream by combining turn-based battles with Persona-like social sim elements. In the years since, other studios have followed suit with excellent tactical RPGs like Ubisoft's Mario Rabbids: Sparks of Hope in 2022 and last year's stellar remake Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. But the latest Nintendo Direct reminded me there's one publisher I'd particularly love to see get in on this burgeoning trend, and that's Sega.
While the early Fire Emblem games were largely Japan-only releases, the Shining Force series was released for the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive in the early '90s in both North America and Europe. Thanks to a hand-me-down console, Shining Force (1992) and Shining Force 2 (1993)........
