Fire Emblem on NGC and Wii

[Mr Khan]

famousringo said:

MohammadBadir said:
pretty good i guess, not good as Awakening or the original GBA one, but still good.

I disagree. Awakening is better in a lot of respects — better combat flow, better characterization, better customization — but the Radiant games win in one particular aspect that trumps everything for me:

No grinding.

It keeps the challenge nice and steady and keeps decisions relevant. Also, area control feels more important in the Radiant games and damage is less bursty, both traits are more rewarding to careful planning.

The Radiant games have their problems too, of course, but the lack of grinding feels so right, that I was sad to see Awakening backpedal on it. Awakening was successful enough that I expect future FEs will all be grindy. It's a shame.

Grinding is unessential in Awakening, however. If you're willing to work to spread character usage, I imagine you could dodge grinding and still get all the marriageable women paired off (as there are fewer eligible mothers than eligible fathers). The higher difficulties actively discourage grinding due to the high costs of Reeking Boxes, and the paralogues are purely optional (it did wreck the difficulty curve for me, doing no non-relationship grinding outside of the paralogues, but without it the flow would have been just so).

Plus PoR and RD had BEXP, which was grinding without the grinding. Not that I disagree with you otherwise, as i favor 9 and 10 over 13, 11, or 8 (the only other ones i've played)