Fire Emblem: Awakening

Fuck Japan. As every gamer from my generation (grew up late 80’s early 90’s) may know, some Japanese-made games didn’t get a release in English, or just got a terribly late release. Fire Emblem is one of those games, it’s also one of the games that kick-started the strategy role-playing genre. The first game in the series was released back in 1990...and when did we get the game…Never. We got our first taste for the FE series on the Gameboy Advance in 2003, and god damn was it glories, but today I’m not reviewing that, I’m reviewing the latest entry in the series…to be released in English.

 Many had issues with getting into the series; mainly for its unforgiving difficulty; I mean after all it was one of the first games to popularize the term "Perma-death" which means permanent death of a character; zip, no more, bye-bye. What FE: Awakening did is what most games from the past generation failed to do; to be both accessible to newcomers and challenging to series veterans. From the get-go you can disable the perma-death mechanic (Which you shouldn't. Don’t be a pussy). You'll be prompted with a choice between "Casual" and "Classic". There is also a number of difficulties to choose from; Normal, Hard, Lunatic and the unlockable Lunatic plus. 

I learned Chess when I was 12 or 15 or maybe 20, I don’t know I have a shitty memory, but the thing is: Chess is fucking genius; there is no two ways about it, it's a fact that can't be disputed. Chess is all about positioning your pawns and FE builds on that by mixing it with classic JRPG elements, and now it’s known as the “Strategy Role-Playing” genre.

The game is all about positioning the right character, in the right place, at the right time. Awakening introduces a new mechanic to positioning; if two characters stand side by side they can attack together, defend each other, give buffs and with time they build a relationship.

The more you team up characters together the higher their relationship level will become. The game expands on that mechanic by tying it with the narrative; high level relationships can end with marriage and even children. The system goes even deeper by making the children’s attributes determined by who the parents are; so it depends on who you coupled together.

That game mechanics has a lot of ins and outs to them, and this is just one of the systems, but it’s defiantly great to see a series that keeps on learning and evolving from each installment.

Each class can use different set of weapons, and certain weapons have an overhand over others; swords beat axes, axes beat lances and lances beat swords. There are more factors that also give overhand such as: archers beat flaying units, Magic beats heavy armor…etc. Even positioning can affect the overhand; standing in forest area will give your opponent less accuracy, attacking from heights to enemies below you will boost your accuracy…etc.

The bottom line when it comes to battle mechanics, each mechanic has been rehashed, expanded or rebalanced. It may seem daunting to new-comers, but most of these mechanics don’t factor in heavily till you’re playing on higher difficulties than Normal.

Perma-death can be devastating, especially since you invest and level up characters. You can always replay mission to finish it without losing any character, but some missions take a long time, and sometimes after such long missions you just say, fuck it. You’ll have a lot of chances to recruit new characters, some are optional and others are main characters, so the game always tries to keep you with enough characters to get through the game.  

There is both Leveling up, and Promotion in FE. Leveling up is the usual increment in attributes, but after a number of levels you get to promote your character into another class. There are a great number of classes and paths you can promote them into, this will give you a sea of experiments, it gave me more reason for more than one play-through.

The story in all the FE never really resonated with me, it always has been a generic classic RPG story; war between two people, reason is love of power or racism or whatever, you beat the bad side or save the world from whatever doom…etc. But still some moments stand out here and there.

The character design, as always, from a design perspective looks full of character, but they’re mostly just the usual anime crap that had been done countless times; every good character is boringly cute, dumb or too god damn polite. The villains are the usual evil loving Mage that hate the good people for whatever reason. So I wouldn’t give the characters or the story much thought, but if I’m being honest; the dialogue is very well localized and written, for what it is.

The UI (user interface) is one of the aspects I’ve always appreciated in the Fire Emblem games. With every sequel they make it simpler, yet more intricate; all the information I need to execute my strategy is always provided, and without confusion.

I’ve always loved the soundtrack in FE games, and it’s still the case in Awakening; the tracks wonderfully produced with an orchestrated sound and great composition that shines with quality and personality. The soundtracks only hindering issue is the system being a handheld, so the format is still MIDI. It was definitely one of those soundtracks that you go back and listen to after finishing the game.

The game is a huge bundle. The main quest alone will take at least 25 to 30 hours; add the extras with another 20 hours. Moreover, there is more to keep you playing like the DLC’s and the PVP multiplayer.

In closing, if you’re looking for a heavy, epic, engaging, strategy role-playing game, look no further this is the genre at its best on a handheld device.