I sorely wanted to like Vestaria Saga, kept an eye on it pre-launch and picked it up when I saw an opportunity. I'm an old veteran of the Fire Emblem series, having played the untranslated SNES iterations in my youth after seeing Marth/Roy in SSB Melee, so I thought Vestaria Saga would be right up my alley, a return to the series roots and away from the Waifu Emblem of recent entries. Unfortunately, it was a letdown. Vestaria Saga is less a Fire Emblem and more a Puzzle Emblem; most of the challenge of conquering a map is figuring out how to deal with troublesome, well-positioned enemies wielding powerful weapons. Think FE4, but with every map having at least one holy weapon wielder that you have to defeat. This is challenging and rewarding when you succeed, but it doesn't take very long for it to become grueling and frustrating, brought down even more by the limited save feature (a lot can happen in 5 turns) and the unforgiving nature of the game and its RNG. Vestaria Saga will challenge you, and you will fail. You could end up reloading the same save many times, replaying the same 1-5 turns leading up to the point where you fail (occasionally having to replay THOSE due to less favourable RNG outcomes), trying to change the result until you are victorious. Eventually, it stops being about your units, their quirks and strengths and weaknesses, instead turning into save-scumming, math, and statistics (This enemy unit hits four times for 20 damage at 80% accuracy and my closest guy has 10 defense so he would take a max of 40 etc etc.). This can be satisfying to overcome... but it constantly limits your options and lacks the freedom of the games it is supposed to harken to. The SRPG Studio engine also does not do this game justice. They did their best with it, but it's clunky and a little ugly and brings the game's presentation and QoL down a bit. I'm sad the game fell so flat for me, but it has enough positive qualities that others may enjoy it where I didn't.
