Fire Emblem: Awakening Review

Fire Emblem : Awakening

For my first review, let's do the latest addition to the Fire Emblem franchise: Awakening. I'm pretty sure there is already a general consensus that this game is amazing. Most people who bought it are either already fans of Fire Emblem and so will like it regardless, or those interested in the tactical genre. I'm not sure of who would have bought it and disliked it other than maybe those who don't like the new mechanics (which is crazy). I will also use this review to talk about Fire Emblem in general because let's face it, most of the games are very similar and there are general truths behind all of them.

Gameplay

Ah the meat of any game. The Fire Emblem series sort of fills a unique niche, and holds its own genre, of, well I'm not quite sure what it's called, maybe tactics or strategy. Some other franchises have had spin-offs with the same type of gameplay such as The Lord of the Rings: Tactics and other games with tactics as a subtitle. The other big name in the genre is Advanced Wars. I don't know of many others, either because  like I said, this is a niche genre, or Fire Emblem is lording its position and creating a monopoly. 

Overview of gameplay, skip if you already know what the game is and just want to know my thoughts on it.

ANYWAY, the game is played on a top down grid overlaying a battlefield. You are given a set of units and have to defeat an enemy set of units, usually by either killing all of them, killing their leader, or getting to a spot on the map (that the leader is typically sitting on). Units have a certain number of moves and can move to adjacent squares a number of times as their moves permit. There are sometimes terrain tiles that hinder movement and/or provide defensive bonuses. Combat takes place on adjacent squares for melee weapons and one square away for ranged weapons (some weapons are both). An attack is met by a counterattack unless your unit wins the fight on the first attack, but healing staves cannot counterattack, and ranged weapons cannot counterattack an adjacent attack. A lot more goes into the game, such as certain weapons having advantages over others, ranged weapons doing damage on flying units, magic elements being used for various situations, etc. Every unit has a list of stats that determine their efficiency in battle and in combat two units stats are compared to calculate chance to hit, damage, chance to crit, and chance to double attack. You play as the tactician for your army, and must move the units strategically to combat enemy units and win the battle.

End overview. My thoughts on the gameplay:

The thing about the grid style gameplay is you either like it or you don't, it's not for everyone, and that's okay, not everyone likes strategy games. I however, am extremely happy that Fire Emblem exists. I love the genre it seems to facilitate all by itself. The game is all about thought and planning, and positioning and equipping your units to defeat the enemy without being killed. And the without being killed part opens up the thing that separates this from similar games like Advance Wars. Every unit under your control is a unique character with a name, personality, and back story (more on that later), as opposed to Advance Wars, where you control generic tanks and infantry. This is a huge leg up on other tactics games because your characters level up and carry through from chapter to chapter, and you don't want any of them to die, changing combat from a scenario where you want to win, to a scenario where you want to win without losing any units. This is partially because many units are indispensable, and partially because you grow attached to the units you use. I simply cannot play Advance Wars because it seems so inferior when I can play a game that carries through from battle to battle this way. 

Difficulty

A subset of the gameplay is the difficulty of the game. I feel like difficulty in such a game is hard to implement, since it is not a game based on reaction skill or any active skill, it's all in the brain. Also, a decent amount of the game is luck based, mostly including how good your units' level ups are, but also a very large part of combat is counting on a 30 percent chance from an opponent to miss, your own 70 to hit, or a 10 percent chance to crit not to crit. But sometimes things don't go how you want them to, and it's up to luck. However the designers did a very good job of getting around this, and it is largely possible to engage your units in situations where they cannot lose even if they miss something you expected to get hit. The luck aspect isn't present nearly enough to be frustrating, so by and large it doesn't take away from the game. There is sort of an issue in difficulty scaling though. The game offers three difficulty modes: normal, hard, and lunatic. Normal is really the easy mode, and in my mind far too easy to represent an enjoyable challenge. Hard is the difficulty the game should be played at, with the most reasonable challenge. The problem I have, is the game starts off very balanced, with appropriate difficulty for pretty much the first half of the game. However this is where scaling comes in. This game provides you with many opportunities to grind for bonus experience and get free overpowered weapons, and several units start to stand out as overpowered. For many of the chapters mid game and onward I could simply throw one of these overpowered units into the range of five enemy units, disregarding the weapon triangle, and kill all of them with not so much as a scratch. While it is often enjoyable having bad ass characters, these units can appear as broken, and later on the game turns into abusing these characters. There is still difficulty though, because you don't have enough broken characters to be everywhere at once, and you still have to make tactical arrangements of your team, and most of all, be prepared for surprise reinforcements to butt rape your mages. The difficulty for the most part is good, but sometimes seemed too easy due to my uber units. This leads us to lunatic. I started up a lunatic run because hard left me a little wanting. Before I get into it, let me describe the idea of a pre-promote. A pre-promote is a unit that is already promoted to one of the second tier classes. They usually are stronger than your un-promoted units, but get really low exp, have pretty bad stats compared to naturally promoted units of the same level, and have bad growth rates when leveling up. These units are usually provided to help out for a little while on harder difficulties until your other units catch up. I am NOT a fan of this method of balancing. Being forced to use a unit that I know doesn't measure up to my other units to get through a chapter is not my idea of fun. In Awakening, you have to abuse the pre-promote the game starts you with A LOT, often kiting around the entire enemy team while your weaker units sit in a corner and play with themselves. This is normally not a problem to me, because usually Lunatic is for try-hards and hard is enough challenge for me, but as I've already described Hard mode can be quite easy at times. These balance issues wont detract too much from my final score, but I believe it could be made better.

In summary, the gameplay is great. It doesn't have a fair comparison to any other game I've ever played, the gap between unit usage in this series and Advance Wars is too large.

New Mechanics

This section largely has to do with gameplay, but that was already long and bloated, so I decided to add a section for mechanics new to this game not present in other Fire Emblem games.

My Unit

Now, my unit is present in one other game to my knowledge: Heroes of Light and Shadow, the NDS sequel to Shadow Dragon. But that game was fan translated so who knows how many people played it. Anyway, My Unit is one of the best additions to Fire Emblem, providing you with a personal unit that you create at the beginning of the game with several hair, face, and age options. This unit can be Male or Female and can be any class in the game (with the exception of making your male a Female-only class or vice-versa). Having a way of making the game customizable and personal is a huge upgrade, and I hope My Unit sticks around in future games. Also, My Unit has a significant role in the story, as opposed to Heroes of Light and Shadow, where My Unit is mostly just the leader of the army. The main thing My Unit is missing is dialogue choices and personality selection. All the dialogue is written for you, but it is written well and general enough that everyone will like My Unit's character. I don't expect this addition in future games, but having a lot more dialogue and personality choices could make the game truly engrossing.

Unit Pairing

This game introduces the ability for two units to share the same space by pairing them. In the past, one unit could "rescue" another unit, usually according to some stat about heaviness. In this game, a unit can "pair" with an adjacent unit, moving behind the unit in the same tile, giving the front unit stat bonuses based on the back unit's stats, class, and support level. Paired units also gain more support in combat than adjacent units. Now here's where it gets crazy. A paired unit gets a chance to attack in addition to the main unit, as well as negate damage form an incoming attack, based on their support level and sometimes class skills. (Note: If a unit is not paired, the game checks to see what adjacent unit has the highest support, and uses that unit for dual attacks/guards/stat bonuses, but I believe the effect is not as strong as pairing) That's right, now you can combine your units into a one mega-zord that can quadruple attack opponents, add in brave weapons and suddenly you're attacking 8 times a turn (add in Astra, and just... Jesus Christ.) Also you can use pairing as a mode of transportation, moving unit A, pairing him with B, moving B, and dropping A one square ahead. Or you can pair A with B, move B into enemy attack range, and switch A to be the front unit for counterattacking. Pairing offers up so many strategic options it's just ridiculous. Remember when I said My Unit is one of the best additions to the series, well unit pairing is probably THE best. It increases the scope of the game so much, and doesn't greatly upset balance (in fact a lot of the time pairing is practically the only way to beat a chapter or win a fight, not to make it easy). Also, support in past games has been sort of a mystery to me, working in secret, where in this game it's finally obvious how support works. When a unit fights an enemy unit, after the fight that unit and all adjacent supportable units get a big heart showing their support has grown, and the unit pairing clearly shows the benefits of support, where in past games I couldn't really tell without googling it.

Marriage and Children

Again, this mechanic was present in one the older games: Genealogy of the Holy War, but again, who knows how many people played that game, and this game improves upon the system. In every fire emblem game there has been support between units, and higher support level meant better bonuses in combat if the units are adjacent. In this game, there is a support level of S, which marks that two characters are Married, and give each other very high bonuses when paired or adjacent. (Note: not every unit can support every other unit.) On top of that, most female characters can have children with their husbands that become available as units later on in the game. The Children have base stats and growth rates combined from their parents (not added, I'm not sure exactly how it works, but in theory children should be more powerful than either parent) as well as inheriting all class options from the parents AND the last skill equipped in the parents' skill slots. This makes most of the Children the best units in the game. Children are another great addition to the game, either for creepy match-making type people that want to build perfect relationships to base their fan-fics on, or for calculating power players who build the perfect inheritances from stat calculation and distribution, as well as class and ability inheritance. At the very least it adds new, interesting characters to the game to beef up your team with.

Class Abilities

One more mechanic that isn't new at all, but is refined from previous versions. As your units level up, they get abilities according to the class (two per class) at certain levels. A unit can have five abilities active, and keep their abilities after re-classing. Abilities actually play a large part of this game, some abilities having huge advantages. The most notorious is Galeforce, an ability that lets your unit have another full move if they kill an enemy (once per turn of course). The only drawback is to get it you have to get to level 15 of the promotion class Dark Flier, which has some of the worst growth rates in the game. Overall, abilities are really neat, add more to your units to allow for more personalization, and the fact that they carry over between classes is really neat.

New Classes

There are a few new classes in this game, and they are all pretty cool (in concept if not in practice). Several of them are magic/physical hybrids that allow your units to mix weapons and magic/physical attacks. This includes the My Unit exclusive Tactician and Grandmaster. The hybrid classes are cool, but the growth rates on the War Cleric and Dark Flier are very lackluster, somewhat proving that a jack-of-all trades does not measure up to a specialized unit. In my mind, new classes are always good, even if the hybrids could use some polishing.

Graphics/Animation

Fire Emblem has always used anime-style images for their character portraits and dialogue exchanges. I've always been fine with that, and the current art style reflects the current anime trend, which is very soft faces and noses. It all looks very nice to me, very well drawn and all that, the concept art is pretty neat as well. It may not be everyone's cup of tea but whatever. The 3D avatars that move around in battle look pretty good, with nice little animations to keep the screen busy. The graphics behind the world map and battle maps all look good, pretty modern, there isn't much else to say. CG cut-scenes look great, but for some reason the eyes in them always seemed a bit derpy, and the fight sequences in the cut scenes are often over blown and kind of ridiculous. Combat animation looks fluid and stylish, one of my gripes is that you can hold a button to increase the speed of the animation, but you cannot lock animation at that speed. The normal animation is far too slow for me, so I'm stuck holding the fast forward button all day. Kind of seems like an oversight to me. Overall, everything looks good to my eyes. 

WARNING: MODERN GAMER RANT

On a note with older games: I sort of have a new age superiority complex. I'm not a big retro gamer, so I'm spoiled by modern levels of graphics. I started Fire Emblem with Radiant Dawn, so sometimes when playing the older games, I catch myself thinking, 'why don't I just play the new games that have better graphics, animation, mechanics, and basically everything about them,' and that logic usually wins for me. I have trouble playing older games that I know are inferior to more modern installations. Don't get me wrong, many of the old games are good, it's just, why would I play them when new games just seem so much better? "Well because Kyle it's a new experience, new story, new characters, etc.!" Well it's not really a new experience considering it's mostly the same game just with fewer/inferior mechanics, and usually the story and characters are far less interesting because writing and storytelling quality has largely gotten better over time. I would probably play every Fire Emblem game if it was the only series I was interested in, but I'm not, I've got other things to do. Sorry old people, you're not wrong if you like the old games, I just don't see the merit in playing them.

END RANT

Story

Ah yes story. I may get flame for this, but this is my opinion (as the blog FAQ states). I have never been terribly impressed with Fire Emblem story. It's never poorly written it just always seems so bland. The evil guys are evil and want to blow up the world because evil. THAT'S IT. The main antagonist is pretty much always some blatantly evil guy with dark clothing who wants to DESTROY THE WORLD at no benefit to himself, usually doing it because they serve some dark master who is telling them to do it. What's worse,  often the enemies you are fighting are so obnoxiously and obviously scumbags it's just silly. Like, the enemy bosses are always some combination of old, ugly, fat, and darkly clothed, as if advertising they are evil. And I'm almost insulted that pretty much all ugly people are evil and all beautiful people are good, it just seems wrong to me. And the enemies go on talking about how they are having fun killing innocents and murder is great and yadayadayada. Having SOME antagonists behave like this is okay. Having it be the standard for your ENTIRE GODDAMN FRANCHISE is ludicrous. Now, do these problems plague Awakening? Unfortunately, to some degree they do. It's not as bad as some of the older games, because modern writing and customer expectations have risen, but it is still present. That being said the story is the best of any Fire Emblem game I've played, with a few more enemies you can feel sympathetic for, and some interesting plot points. I still think Fire Emblem needs to move away from it's typical approach to storytelling, but Awakening  is a little better than previous installations. And in the end the story is well written and not a bunch of nonsense(I'm looking at you Final Fantasy), giving you a goal to work for, but it could be more intricate than just fighting overly evil baddies. Oh and the good guy main hero is always a prince. What is this, Disney World?

Characters

This section could arguably by a subsection of story, but meh. As I said earlier one of the best features of Fire Emblem is each unit is a unique character. Other than the effects this has on battle, this makes the game a joy to play for other reasons. You get quite a few units to add to your army, and they all have interesting and unique personalities. It's great that your pool is so large, because you can pick and choose the characters whose personality you like the most. Now, some units are just plain better than others, but this game allows for so much side battles and leveling opportunities that you can pretty much use whomever you want and have a functioning team. Unfortunately, in my mind, there are a lot more likable females than males, which is fine except for the dating simulator part of the game where you pair up your units to get married. I basically sent off females I didn't use to males I thought were kinda lame just to have kids. However there should always be enough characters that you like to fill a whole party. The characters seem to have the best support conversations and background stories of any Fire Emblem game, each character standing out in some way. In many of the older games the royalty and main characters were the only ones given a personality and sufficient back story. While Chrom does receive the most focus in this game, all your units have something unique about them and you have something more to go on for picking units other than looks.

Sound

Simply marvelous. The soundtrack to this game is great. Very mood-fitting music at all points,  no irritating or repetitive tracks. Definitely a soundtrack to invest in for a good listen. Here is probably my favorite track in the game: Don't Speak Her Name! [Youtube]

Aside from music, the game has voice overs for the cut scenes, which is fine and dandy but the cut scenes are few and short. The characters also have voice snippets that they shout in battle or say in conversation. It may irritate some people because the snippets reoccur a lot, but the voice overs themselves aren't bad, some lines are quite good, and personally I feel it adds to the game and enhances character interaction beyond you just reading text.

Final Verdict

I'd give this game a 9.3 out of 10. Nearly perfect. Definitely the best Fire Emblem game to date, and the best game available for the 3DS. Aside from some of my gripes about how Fire Emblem writes its plot, I had very little problem with the game. I likely exaggerated the balance issues I mentioned. As the only noteworthy game in its genre, Fire Emblem is a great series to get invested in, and Awakening has refined the game so much that it is a must play for any owner of a 3DS looking for something strategic. A curious thing I've pondered is that when the next Fire Emblem games comes out (hopefully for the Wii U) it will likely be marginally better than Awakening, deserving around a 9.3. But it will be better, so how do I adjust the scores, Do I inflate the new game to 9.6? Do I lower Awakening's score? Something that is a 9.5 now might be a 9 comparatively to the next generation, that's just how the gaming industry evolves. For example, I would've given Radiant Dawn somewhere around a 9 when I played it, but when I compare it to Awakening, I'd probably bump it down to an 8.6 or some such. Just some food for thought I guess, and something I like to hold as a personal mandate, that just because something was the best thing around 5 years ago, doesn't make it a great game to play today when there are better options in comparison. (Hence my modern gamer attitude and negative inclination towards retro games.)