Nintendo has added another classic strategy RPG to Nintendo Switch Online in the form of Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, and it’s available to play as part of the service’s Expansion Pack addon right now.
The Sacred Stones is one of three Fire Emblem games developed for the Game Boy Advance, alongside 2003’s The Blazing Blade, which was released in the US as simply Fire Emblem (and which was added to Switch Online in 2023).
The other GBA Fire Emblem game, 2002’s The Binding Blade, has never been released outside of Japan. However, while The Blazing Blade is technically a sequel to The Binding Blade, The Sacred Stones has nothing to do with either game from a narrative perspective.
The Sacred Stones revolves around protagonists Ephraim and Eirika, a brother-and-sister duo who must defend their homeland from hostile invaders.
After a certain point in the game, you’ll be able to choose which of the two siblings’ stories you’d like to follow, with one route (Ephraim’s) being significantly more challenging than the other. Eventually, however, the two lords’ paths unite once again.
Otherwise, The Sacred Stones offers very similar turn-based strategy gameplay to its predecessors, and, indeed, to its successors as well. If you’ve played a Fire Emblem game before, you’ll probably feel right at home here.
If you haven’t, Fire Emblem games take place on a square grid, and you must maneuver your characters in order to defeat enemy troops, protect vulnerable units from attack, and achieve whatever the current map’s objective happens to be.
The action is spiced up by the fact that if you lose any of your units during combat, they’re gone forever. Later Fire Emblem games would allow you to turn this feature off, but The Sacred Stones certainly doesn’t, so be aware of that before you jump in.
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones is available right now as part of a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership. It’ll also be fully playable on Nintendo Switch 2 when the console launches on June 5th.
