Who Cares About My Wall-O-Text Opinion? - Fire Emblem: Awakening Review

[F0X]

Long story short, I've been wanted to post a review for months now, but I've been too lazy, so I must overcompensate in whatever fashion is the most entertaining to me, and hopefully by extension is the most entertaining to read.

 

"Here we are now with the falling stars and the rain,
We're awakening
Here we are now with our desperate youth and the pain,
We're awakening"

One of the most fundamental problems about myself is that nearly everything in existence reminds me of a Switchfoot song or two (Man of Steel must secretly be a movie adaption of "Dare You to Move"). I could spend much of this review explaining why, going into great detail about my childhood and only lightly touching on the subject of Fire Emblem, but instead I'm going to use this as a metaphor. For what, exactly? Single-minded obsession! 

Awakening is the thirteenth game in the Fire Emblem series, which can be described as a turn-based RPG franchise often associated with frustrating permadeath and abnormally strong and compelling female characters (if not male). Now, Awakening is a bit of a departure from the norm, because permadeath is optional this time, and depending on who who ask (especially if you ask me), the Badass Adorable trope has been turned Up to Eleven.

But the previous paragraph does nothing more than refer to an iceberg as a massive ice formation, so let me get into the details of why Fire Emblem is a compelling strategy series and how I managed to sink more hours into Awakening than all of the previous entries combined. When I'm done, I hope you may have a very clear understading of who would enjoy this game the most, and what it means to take the perspective of a novice despite having several previous entries under your belt.

"Easy living, not much like your name
Easy dying, you look just about the same
Won't you please take me off your list
Easy living, please come on and let me down"

Balancing multiple difficulties in a strategy game is no small task, but most previous Fire Emblem games have the benefit of linearity, so fine-tuning a reasonable difficutly curve isn't utterly impossible. Point being, in an attempt to create both an accesible and definitive Fire Emblem game, Intelligent Systems included four difficulty modes each with the option to play with or without permadeath ("Classic" versus "Casual"), but also opened up possibilities for the player to tackle each mission (referred to as "Chapters") in varying orders. Many of these chapters are completely optional (known as "Paralogues"), and their inclusion already throws a proverbial wrench into the works. Across multiple difficulties, try to balance a game in which you don't know if the player has or has not completed a certain side mission and therefore may or may not be overleveled. This doesn't happen so much in other Fire Emblem games (save for Sacred Stones, and some potential abuse or exploit in certain titles), and to an extent, since Fire Emblem in its most basic form is a game of numbers and probabilities, the better the balance, the better the game.

However, don't let me tell you that Awakening isn't as good as other Fire Emblem games because of this reason. An excellent interface puts all the information I care about (and some things I don't) on the readily-available bottom screen, and I can attack targets in a way that doesn't involve menu selection for once. As one friend of mine put it, "it flows a lot better than Radiant Dawn", and I can't help but agree. Also, based on my friends' and my own experiences, everyone's first Fire Emblem playthrough can be a bit of a bull ride. Awakening's inclusion of Casual mode and some other newbie-friendly elements smooths over some of the bumps, providing a less rage-inducing challenge (but can still be a bull ride, as two newbie friends illustrated quite well). Regardless, any player can reach the end on sheer persistence alone, which obstensibly makes Awakening more of a traditonal JRPG than the average Fire Emblem game. In fact, I think players who typically love JRPGs with dozens of recruitable characters, like Suikoden (or even Pokemon), would find more than enough to like here.

For the veteran, Hard/Classic mode is roughly as well-balanced and fair as the game can get. Grinding is still very possible, and the game still feels more like Sacred Stones than anything else, but enemies are unlikely to use cheaterly forged weapons or abilities, and Reeking Boxes (which spawn enemies to battle) are a much less viable training option. It's challenging within reason, which I've personally come to love and respect about the series as a whole. Even so, the more I attempt to make the game rigid and difficult, the more my experience clashes with the game's design. Let me illustrate...
 

"If it doesn't break your heart
It isn't love
If it doesn't break your heart
It's not enough"

Another radical change to tradtional Fire Emblem gameplay is the "Pair Up" option, and coming into the game, I had absolutely no idea how massive of an effect it would have on my strategy. In theory, since pairing up is a more or less a matter of temporarily fusing two units together, it's automatically balanced because seperated units clearly have more moves afforded to them. In reality, the game strikes me as heavily favoring the strategy of "pair up as many units as possible", for a good many reasons. Enemies in the game can be fairly aggressive (sometimes stupidly), and unless my team utterly outranks my opponets, it's often wise to play defensively, and therefore giving me very solid reasons to use Pair Up as much as possible. And if one dares even attempt Lunatic difficulty (or even Hard, for that metter), not pairing up is tantamount to suicide. It irked me, really, because I don't like the feeling of being forced into a specific strategy.

Yet, pairing up is exceedingly rewarding. After a while, did I want to go back to the older style of gameplay? No, not really. I'm rewarded through Support conversations (entertaining vignettes between characters, which lead to larger stat gains), better training options for currently weak units, and, shockingly, children from the future. That last bit is where the game finally, utterly hooked me. All of my concerns about difficulty, linearity, and purism (I claim to be only a Metroid purist, but there are exceptions to the rule) became irrelevant, because once I dug into the details a bit, my play style completely changed.
 

"There's a new way to be human
It's nothing we've ever been
There's a new way to be human
It's spreading under my skin"

"Think of the children, F0X! Think of the children!" the game (and VGC's Official Fire Emblem Thread) subliminally messaged me. Eventually, I did. My second playthrough was (in)famously begun solely because I wanted my player character (more on that later) to marry a certain second-generation female (Badass Adorable incarnate). Sometime during that second playthough, the concept of inheritance finally penetrated my thick, Path of Radiance-loving skull, and once it did... well, I've put nearly two hundred hours into the game now. In some sense, I think the Pokemon mentality has gotten into me, as if I needed the best possible team, or would at least settle for a very nice one that feels good to use. Though, limiting the multiplayer to mere StreetPassery puts a slight damper on the business.

"Hey, did you know that some second-generation male characters can inherit Galeforce?" I tell my buddies, who have their own inheritance-related tips to share. "Pairing Lissa and Henry could potentially mean Owain has Galeforce and Lifetaker? Thank you, DJ, I think I'd rather like that. And you say thier support conversations had suggestive undertones? I gotta see it to believe it. Hmm... come to think of it, would this also mean that Dread Fighter is a good fit for Owain? Good thing I have that DLC then!" And good thing I bought Exponential Growth, because that can save a good bit of time spent grinding. Here I thought Nintendo was simply being cheap, but no! Now I need all of the DLC! All of it! Mwehehehehe!

And I suppose that's the trap the game lays. Pairing up is more rewarding, and for those who know enough about the game to the point where they may as well be considered "hardcore", there's even more to it. It's fundamentally different from what drove me to complete Path of Radience, or even Sacred Stones. It's a different sense of what seperates the casuals from the dedicated. It's very, very, different, and for a time, that bothered me deeply. But no more. To me, it's like when Switchfoot released The Beautiful Letdown, which was quite different from their past albums that I enjoyed so much (lo-fi indie rock versus electronica-influenced alt-rock), but diverse, deep, and accesible (three Top 40 hits) to the point where I ended up preferring it after all.
 

"We want more than this world's got to offer
We want more than the wars of our fathers
And eveything inside screams for second life"

This may be shocking, but I haven't said anything about the graphics, sound design, or story yet. I'm sure there are plenty of reviews that focus more on those elements, and indeed they are important, but I believe I can sum up my opinion of those things far more shortly than I can sum up my opinion of the gameplay. For that matter, there are still a large amount of aspects I could discuss about the gameplay, but since this is already a long review, I'll be content with touching on the points that interested me the most.

As mentioned before, Awakening does have a player character of sorts. Limited customization allows you to create a male or female of varying body type, hair color, ectera to play the role of tactician for Chrom's elite fighting force. I don't have anything particularly bad to say about the player character, besides being the Launcher of A Thousand Ships and as such generating unbearable amounts of fanfiction and incredibly dumb waifu-related arguments on the internet. The tactician's gender hasn't even been canonized to any degree, yet fans will still obsess over aspects of the game that I don't see a glimmer of a point in obsessing over.

The plot itself moves along briskly to begin with, featuring well-animated video cutscenes in addition to the most fully-baked in-game cutscenes the series has ever had. It drags around the halfway point, which incidentally is also when I think the gameplay becomes significantly more interesting, and regains steam in time for a rather nice finale. Some portions of the plot did an excellent job of elevating the gameplay into an even more emotional experience, which was helped further by an excellent score composed by Hiroki Morishita (in his first time as lead composer, I think) and Rei Kondoh (Okami, Bayonetta).
 

"And I feel stuck
Watching history repeating
Yeah, who am I?
Just a kid who knows he's needy."
 

FINAL SCORE
+ Very replayable even when ignoring deeper strategy.
+ Accesible and ambitious in its own interesting ways.
+ Exceedingly deep and rewarding gameplay (for those willing to jump down the rabbit hole).
+ Acceptable presenation and great localization.
+ Rei Kondoh.
+ Lucina.
+ Successfully made me stop playing Animal Crossing in favor of a fourth playthough.
- Enjoyment may vary depending on play style, attitude towards certain design choices, and general disposition concerning one's own life.
- Inherent problems of non-linear strategy RPGs that initially grated on me.
- Underwhelming multiplayer options.

9.3/10 - Superb. While not gaming nirvana, Fire Emblem: Awakening comes highly reccomended for fans of turn-based strategy, Japanese games, RPGs in general, and anyone who enjoyes Chess, teen fantasy novels, and anime. Oh, and anyone who owns a 3DS.

 

Crap. I wasted my time writing this out instead of playing Fire Emblem: Awakening. :(