Fire Emblem Awakening

Fire Emblem has been a favourite series of mine since i played Fire Emblem, and went on to discover Sacred Stones and Path of Radiance. But i had yet to play a more modern fire emblem game, besides the terrible gacha game that is Fire Emblem Heroes, but i was a bit weary of how dominated by memes and anime tropes the series had become. And yea, while the popularity of Awakening is largely responsible for the shift in direction of the series to darker paths, its also an excellent game in its own right.

Visually it features pleasant and well animated 3d models, though they will never match the stylish presentation of the GBA sprites. Its the same issue i have with the more modern pokemon titles, as the 3d means going straight into the uncanny valley, not to mention that its much harder to animated impactful combat.

Storywise its par for the course for the series, which means a lot of political conspiracies between neighbouring countries, civilians that get caught in the cross fire, medieval magic and mustache twitching villains. No matter how obvious and cliched it is, it still deliveries a lot of charismatic characters, and in doing so gets the player invested in the high stakes stories. Personalities in this one feel a bit more reduced to a singular eccentric trait than on previous games, but that maybe a bias in my memory. The time travel parts of the story is never fully explained and a bit dumb, but its almost excusable given that the child units it offers are strong and the support conversations they can offer are wholesome for the most part.

Gameplay its also pretty standard for the series, but i will say that the maps are pretty open and well designed. You dont get a lot of claustrophobic interior maps, those are always annoying to deal with. I played it on hard casual, which seems a bit unbalanced due to the number of enemies they throw at you, and i keep wondering how its possible to beat it with classic mode in mind. But it was definitly the best choice to have lighthearted fun with this title, as it takes a while to grind up units to the point that they can be relied upon in battle. Like it has always been, its really satisfying to see a unit level up from abysmal to a force that can take down the entire enemy force single handedly, and i managed to distribute the XP enough so it never become boring as a one man army.

It offers a lenghty main campaign, that can be extended with a lot of paralogue missions and endless grinding should you choose to. During that time i had always been invested in the story and the satisfying gameplay together with the RPG mechanics drives you forward. I would still put it behind Path of Radiance, and just behind Fire Emblem, but its none the less a very solid entry.

It's not fair for older fans to say that Awakening "killed" Fire Emblem, because the series would literally be dead if it had failed. And even though there was nothing wrong with classic FE, you have to admit the series was kind of stuck in a rut on home consoles. Awakening really caught people's attention with its flashier designs, dynamic combat animations, and return to a handheld system. More importantly, it dismantled the less-forgiving elements of the classic series, turning it into more of a "tactics RPG" and even throwing in dating sim stuff. So it was huge. And while a lot of the aesthetic stuff is up to personal taste, it's undeniable that Awakening watered down the gameplay by making it so you can grind your way through any challenge. I don't look at this game super fondly anymore, but at least at the time, when we didn't know things were gonna get trashier later, it was a great surprise.

Fire Emblem at this point is a venerable series. Though its existence in the west has been acknowledge for not nearly so long as in Japan, it has garnered a massive cult following, pushing further into the mainstream with every release. Fire Emblem's pedigree as a tough-as-nails turn-based strategy game (albeit very easily exploited) is known to many, therefore making it a tough sell on more casual fans. Those who don't wish for an overtly punishing experience, or do not wish to put in the time required to learn how to turn the game against itself, are in for a rough time when picking up a Fire Emblem game. Fire Emblem: Awakening turns this around, allowing for a much more accessible and polished experience.

Before going too deeply into the games mechanics, I feel like some elaboration on what makes this game a good entry point into the series is necessary. This is the first western release to include a casual mode. Typically, in a Fire Emblem game, when a character dies, they're gone forever. You either reload your save and start the battle over, or go without them. Casual mode overrides this, bringing your characters back to you when the map is over. While this does remove some of the suspense of making careful moves, it does also relieve the stress and annoyance of playing a map over and over. The most important note is that this is entirely optional. You are not required to play in this mode, and exists purely if you're looking for just that: A more casual experience. The other addition that makes the experience easier is the ability to play non-essential battles as frequently as you want on normal difficulty, allowing you to grind out levels and create an overpowered team as quick as possible.

These inclusions do not make Awakening the easiest Fire Emblem game ever. Again, they're completely optional. Once you unlock the Lunatic difficulty setting, you'll get a truly agonizing experience that almost transcends strategy and goes straight into pure sadism. If this is your preferred method of playing, the option is there. This is one of the strongest points of Awakening; there's a little something for everyone. The features that make the game a little easier are further balanced in harder difficulty levels, and make trivial in lower difficulty levels. While it may be difficult to coax a person into choosing to play a translation of Fire Emblem: Thracia 776, Awakening should be an easy sell thanks to these inclusions.

Now, the game itself. If you've played Fire Emblem, you know very well what to expect. Turn based, strategical combat with unique characters as units. Weapons have limited uses, certain tiles modify combat stats, the whole gamut. Skills make a return from the Radiant games, allowing you to make some truly overpowered characters. Skills vary from passive effects, to combat triggers that essentially boil down to 'do enough damage to one-shot anyone'. They do have side effects, but almost no enemies in the game are beefy enough to survive the initial damage anyway. It's all stuff you've seen before, but it's done with a great amount of polish. The map design is generally well done, with few encounters that feel too long-winded or artificially drawn out.

The support system is at its best in Awakening. Previous games required that you engage support conversations in the middle of battle, or gave you limited support conversations per character, or just didn't include it at all. Here, as long as you build up support between two characters, you can unlock their conversations in between battles at your leisure. When two opposing gender characters reach S support, they will have a child, who will join your party through a time rift. These child characters are typically much more powerful than first generation units, and you'll likely wind up replacing the bulk of your party with your offspring. Marrying the perfect pairs of units will impact the skills and stat growths your children have, so they're important factors to take into consideration.

The characters themselves are generally enjoyable. Fire Emblem does have a tendency to follow general character patterns, with a fairly bland protagonist and one-note supporting characters. This game isn't a huge exception. Many of the characters have their one defining personality trait, and it's driven into the ground. Still, despite their lack of any real growth or complex characterization, most of them are sympathetic and lovable enough for you to care if one of them goes down. The support conversations are fun to read through as you see the relationships of the characters grow, and it's a welcome break from the standard combat that you'll spend most of the game partaking in.

The story itself is nothing special. Pretty typical fantasy fare. Loose political plots, betrayals, chosen ones, it's nothing that's going to win any awards. It does have a couple climaxes that do a good enough job of baiting you into playing just one more map, but the most enjoyable exposition is still told through the character supports. Some things aren't really explained at all, such as the time rifts that the second generation characters come through. This is never really questioned by any characters, and doesn't play too much a role in the story barring one character. So many of these intricacies were so ignored, that if you play your cards right, (or wrong depending on your context), you can even wind up with incestuous relationships. This is likely not intentional, and rather simply overlooked. There are other various loose ends like this throughout the game. If you're like me, though, story is secondary in a game of this type, and it's all about the gameplay.

Fire Emblem: Awakening was many things. It was the game that saved Fire Emblem in the west. It was the game that divided the fanbase. It was the best selling Fire Emblem game of all time, worldwide upon its release. Regardless of ones feelings on the inclusion of casual mode or grinding, there's no denying that Awakening was a vital entry in the long-running series. It offered the hardcore fans a ridiculous challenge, and the new fans a streamlined and accessible experience. The quality of life features make it a joy to play to this day, and the presentation is immaculate--From the music to the artwork and sprites. I heartily recommend Awakening to anybody looking for a tactical adventure.

Welp, here it is- the game elitists say killed Fire Emblem, while the more casual demographic said it revitalized the series. As for my opinion, and as someone who hasn't played a whole lot of Fire Emblem or sRPGs yet... this game's pretty decent.

What drives me to this is just how conflicting everything seems to be here. The story in the first half is good all around with a nice atmosphere, decent pacing, and a good sense of direction. Chrom, Lucina and Robin (or I guess the Avatar really, but I'm sticking with Robin) are the main characters here, and while I think Lucina is a bit on the "bland" side, both Chrom and Robin are great folks that are bursting with a good amount of personality both in-game and in support, and their friendship/romance is a really great aspect of the game that really drives me home. The second half though, gets a bit lost in its writing. What was presented as an interesting piece now became uninteresting and even more predictable, new characters didn't have the same flair as the ones presented in the first half, and dear lord, if you thought it was hitting the generic tropes just a bit much in the first half, be prepared to hate how riddled the second half is with these things. Even the main baddie of the game, Grima, didn't leave a whole lot of impact and me and felt like a secondary villain compared to the actual secondary villain from the first half, Gangrel, who struck the right balance of simplicity and memorability.

Dabbling a bit more into the characters here, you're gonna be spending most of your time gathering, strengthening, and even developing relationships for certain characters. I can only recall a handful of people I either can't stand at all or just aren't captivating via not enough reason to spend more time with them, a personality I can't stand, they also have more incredibly obvious tropes on them, or all of the above, but even then there are far more interesting characters to make up for it.

So the story's alright, and the cast are pretty good, but what about the gameplay? It's.... good? Some people say Casual Mode is a horrible inclusion, which I don't think I will ever get considering that it's completely optional and serves as an alright basis of what to expect, but even disregarding that, this game as a whole just feels boringly easy. I'd say its one of those cases where you might as well pick Hard mode even as your first time playing through the game (since Casual also works with higher difficulties), since Normal feels like a cakewalk instead of a fair balance of tough and easiness, and Lunatic's...... pretty much self-explanatory. Even then though, the game's not all that challenging. Sure there's annoying missions, but not only are they relegated to optional, they're few and far between in comparison to the main meat of the game... not to mention you actually will bend the game to your will once you reach that second half, and it's all thanks to the Pair Ups.

Pair Up is universally considered to be incredibly overpowered, and with good reason. In theory, pairing up is a good idea since it can increase the relationship between two people in-game. However, this is ultimately shot down since not only are most people already compatible with others and fights ending with ease from how strong one or both characters are, but the more closer people get, the more bonuses to attack and defensive forms you will obtain. This makes an easy chapter become even easier, and can make Hard go to Normal mode if you know what you're doing.

In addition to Pair Up, there are also Class and Master Seals. I believe these are staples within FE, but I have a strong feeling they are much, more balanced there than in this game. It works like this: Master Seals unlock the next tier of classes for a character, while Class Seals allows that same character to change into a different class. That alone also sounds just as broken as the last element, but thankfully there's a semblance of balancing here. Using a Master Seal on a character does make them god for a while, but eventually the game will catch up and make it so that solely relying on one guy isn't a good idea, and it doesn't make the already annoying chapters that much easier to do if they have certain requirements to meet. This, I'm fine with, since I can at least feel accomplished for upgrading one of my units, without thinking that I basically just bent the game in half while doing so.

Really, that's my biggest problem with Awakening. The idea it has in both gameplay and story sound alright on paper, but their executions sorely missed the mark by quite a lot, with the characters being the main thing making up for it. Still though, if I look at this as a game that serves as a starting point for a franchise that's been around for 27 years now, it does it's job pretty damn well.

Awakening has been the most hyped up Fire Emblem release in the United States to date. It's sold well and received warm reviews, most of its praise being deserved. This is the game that has the potential of making Fire Emblem mainstream outside of Japan, and whether or not it accomplished that remains to be seen. I always hate to be "that nerd," but I'll admit part of me is bothered when a long-standing series I enjoy starts catering to a new audience. It can feel like a betrayal, even if that's totally unwarranted. While Awakening isn't a big departure from previous Fire Emblem games, I can understand someone feeling it's been dumbed down some. That said, these are steps in the right direction as I see it: a series has to sell to continue existing, and Fire Emblem always had the potential to spark the curiosity of more gamers.

The most controversial change here is the new casual mode, which removes permanent unit loss and allows mid-battle saving on lower difficulty levels. Yes, it's a change and not an option (or at least a good one), contrary to what it seems like. While you can play the easiest difficulty level and have your usual Fire Emblem experience on classic mode, unless you're a Fire Emblem god there is no way you're beating the harder difficulties without the ability to send units on suicide missions. The stages are designed with super-strong enemies capable of instantly killing some of your stronger characters, and it's clear that the classic mode was left in as an afterthought. While this change might seem sacrilegious to fans, it's almost a necessary one in my eyes. Fire Emblem games are huge time-sinks without the resets when your characters die, and casual mode helps shave off some of the wasted hours. As an aging gamer who could die himself at any moment, I appreciate game developers giving me the option of an easy way out from time to time. I'll always respect the great challenge the old games offer, but it's all been done before anyway. They literally cannot twist the FE formula much more without drastically changing mechanics.

Speaking of other drastic changes, Awakening has a new "Pair Up" mechanic (which may or may not have been lifted out of Shining Force) that allows characters to merge in to one unit with a few stat boosts and perform team attacks and boosts. On Normal mode (the only one I have finished so far) this feature is so incredibly broken I don't know where to begin. Once your characters change classes, you can kiss all difficulty good-bye after having units pair up because they'll generally be untouchable and will kill most opponents without effort. I assume this feature is more balanced against the aforementioned stronger units seen on Hard and Lunatic, but I can't comment on this. Pair Up has its flaws, but I have to say the concept balances out to being a good one. First, it allows characters to gain experience together, which helps level up the standard weak units Fire Emblem throws at you that need to be trained in a hurry. More importantly, Pairing Up helps your characters get more friendly with each other, leading in to my absolute favorite aspect of this game.

I've always loved the Support conversations in Fire Emblem, and they have frankly never been done better or more thoroughly. It seems like nearly every character can support with anyone because there are so many options, and the game does not limit you to five per character like in The Blazing Sword. Furthermore, this game brought back marriage from Fire Emblem 4, and with so many possible combinations of characters to try, the replay value goes up a lot. Marriage leads to children that you recruit through spoilery methods, and these children are easily the best characters in the game. While I felt like the ones I found were a little overpowering, it's also nice to get a good reward from careful planning and dedication, and from what I understand about Lunatic mode, you may desperately need more powerful units anyway.

As per usual in Fire Emblem, the plot's just there. This one brings up a time travel twist that feels silly and poorly thought-out, but more effort's been put in the writing and characterization that usual, so I'll give them a pass. The bad guys are bad and the good guys are good. I wish I could expect more from these games story-wise, but I honestly wouldn't care too much if I skipped all story scenes in the first place. In short: don't believe anyone who tells you this game is a quantum leap in writing over the usual Fire Emblem. It's still cliche Japanese fantasy stuff.

If you like Fire Emblem, you'll like this one too. If you have not played Fire Emblem, this one's a pretty good gateway! Play it; you probably won't regret it.