Fire Emblem: Awakening Review

LarrytheFairy I've been pretty inactive on this site lately. I vote on lists but I have barely made any content and the stuff I do make is low quality. So I decided to try and reboot my game reviews, and I'm going to start with the second best game I've played, Fire Emblem: Awakening.

Fire Emblem: Awakening is immensely popular tactical RPG on the 3ds. I haven't play any other Fire Emblem games besides part of the Birthright route of Fates (which quite honestly is mediocre), but Awakening is considered the best in the series.

The gameplay is very good and it's honestly the most addictive game I've ever played. This is the only game I've ever restarted right after beating it. If you don't know about tactical RPGs, it's basically a way more complicated version of chess. Chess is already pretty complicated.

There are many different classes your units can be. There are the base classes, like mages knights, paladins, mercenaries, and fighters, just to name a few. You can promote the base classes to master classes once they reach level 10 (better idea to wait until level 20 though). Examples of these are Warriors, Dark Fliers, Bow Knights, Sages, and Wyvern Lords. Each class has access to different skills if you level them up, and they can wield different combinations of weapons.

There are countless other aspects of the battle system, too many to go into detail on each. There is the weapon triangle, stats, tiles, pairing up, weaknesses, leveling up, and more. Each of those things are pretty broad and could be explained in much more detail. You get the idea. This game is pretty freaking complex, but it's honestly not too hard to grasp. When I first starting playing there were definetly things I didn't know about which resulted in not doing very well, but the overall battle mechanics aren't too hard you grasp unlike something like Monster Hunter (for me at least).

One of the new things added to Awakening was the pair up mechanic. If two units are paired up frequently in battle, you can access support conversations in between battles where they talk to each other. The more support levels they unlock the more likely they are to assist the other character in battle. If two characters are of the opposite gender, for the most part they will get married if their support reaches rank S. You can then recruit their child (who comes back from the future) in a side quest who will have inherited one skill from each parent as well as stats. This mechanic is really fun to experiment with to see if you can get the best combination, and the romantic support conversations are really cute. My personal favorite is Lon'qu and Cherche.

One thing I don't like about the pair up mechanic is the fact that it's so OP. That brings me to my biggest complaint that the game is too easy, at least on normal mode. Hard mode is too hard and I couldn't even get past chapter 1. The side quests are definetly a good difficulty on normal, but some of the main chapters you can really breeze through, including the final chapter, which is pretty disappointing. But like I said, the side quests are a good difficulty and overall are better than the main quests.

A now for my favorite part of the game, the characters! The characters in this game are all interesting and I like to use all of them in battle. My personal favorite is Severa. Most of the characters aren't too important the story but you still find out about them through support conversations. Speaking of the story, it's pretty good. I've heard people say it wasn't very good but I have to disagree. The cutscenes are really stunning, but they don't happen enough in my opinion.

The soundtrack is also solid. It's not Xenoblade level but it has some really great tracks. My personal favorite is Id (sorrow).

This game is very customizable. Three difficulty levels (technically four), playing on classic or casual (units fall for the rest of the game in classic, but come back for the next battle in casual), and you can customize the avatar Robin. You can also change small things like PoV for the battle scenes (which are very pleasing to watch), the tilt of the map, and a whole lot more. I'm glad Nintendo gave attention to this.

Anyway, this game is really good. Great battle mechanics, characters, and overall amazing experience. 10/10, must own for all 3ds owners.

Comments

10/10 review - Skullkid755 (10/7/2017)

What are you planning on doing next? - DCfnaf (11/17/2017)

Kirby Planet Robobot maybe - LarrytheFairy (11/17/2017)

Lil bit too late there. Warriors on Switch is mediocre, gameplay isn't fun but story is great. - TristGamer (11/17/2017)