[Review] Fire Emblem: Awakening

Step One: Survey the battlefield. Where are the bottlenecks? Where can you take a stand with a character of high defense so that enemies are only coming at you one at a time? Are there a lot of flying characters? If so, mages with Wind and archers will be helpful. How are your troops laid out? Do you need to make any last minute adjustments to formation? This can be very important because of not only does each troop have individual strengths and weaknesses, but who is going to be paired with whom? Not only can two troops "pair up" and occupy the same square on the map, lending each other strength or defending one another, but there are also bonuses to characters standing adjacent to one another on the battlefield. Not to mention that as characters are paired up and adjacent, their relationships grow, which could lead to marriage and children, who will be recruitable and whose strengths and weaknesses are dependent on who their parents are. Relationships grow better if a paired couple is hit often, since their relationship grows each time they support one another in battle.

Step Two: Constantly reassess the battlefield, the pairings, and volley healers back and forth across the battlefield; due to a limit on how many party members you can have in battle, you'll almost never be able to have two healers out at any given time. High defense is god, but you have to make sure experience is going to the people it needs to go to, not just a high level character, so if you want to use a character as a wall, make sure they have high defense but low attack (e.g. Kellam).

Step Three: Win the battle! Keep in mind that whoever wins the battle gets a large boost in EXP, but make sure you don't win the battle before you've stopped at every locked chest, sparkling spot where there could be extra EXP or an item, and that the right person wins the battle. You okay now? Breathe.

These are the basic steps of getting through a battle in Fire Emblem: Awakening, which is just as stellar (if not more so) than the original GBA Fire Emblem (also known as Rekka no Ken).

Getting through a battle is the easy part, though, if you're doing it right. You also have to keep in mind character builds, side quests, and forced random battles that you can essentially buy for 500 gold, for grinding purposes. These random encounters will generally drop at least one weapon and will always drop bullion (s), which is worth 1000g, thus providing a way to farm gold if you're dedicated. Any given character can be promoted, reclassed, promoted, or reclassed again. The level cap is 20, but you can reclass any number of times, provided you have access to enough Second Seals. Each class offers two skills, and you can customize every character with a total of five. If your characters have gotten married and spawned a time-travelling offspring, that offspring will have inherited some of their parents skills. The child inherits the last skill on each parents skill list. (You can view this as something similar to breeding Pokémon, but I advise against it, because that becomes creepy.)

Other factors: terrain, class weaknesses, enemy strengths and weaknesses, a village that might need to be saved in the map, a recruitable character you might need to get to before they end up dying trying to fight by themselves, Not to mention that for a while, you're going to be worried about which characters are standing near one another, lest they build too much of a relationship and decide to marry, against your specific machinations.

Whew. Still with me?

Fire Emblem: Awakening has an interesting and compelling storyline, endless resources to manage, and varying levels of difficulty that can allow you to cruise through Casual mode or break your throat screaming at Lunatic. With loads of DLC and Spotpass content, it will be a while before you run out of things to do. The game updates certain things based on what day of the month it is, and if you go to bed without buying everything from the merchant, Anna, you might be disappointed to realize it's gone before you wake up. On the bright side, she respawns over night as well.

Yup, that's definitely a pair of sisters.

Eighteen hours in (fourteen on one save-- I started over), I'm on Chapter 8 and have reclassed two characters, Donnel and Sumia. Both are difficult to level. When you first receive them, both can be killed in one turn if you aren't careful. Sumia is a very frail, very junior Pegasus Knight and Donnel is a Villager. I also find Donnel personally irritating, since he speaks in an overexaggerated hick accent. Sumia I managed to level by having her pick enemies off as need be, her quick speed enabling her to overcome the problems of her frailty to level quickly. At higher levels, she hits twice, dodges most hits, and is basically just stellar. She reached level 20 before anyone else, so I reclassed her to Knight, and am currently grinding the last few levels so that she can become a Dark Flier before Chapter 13 (I do not recommend this-- it was a mistake), when her relationship with Chrom will mean that she gives birth to two incredibly powerful children, Lucina and Cynthia. Dark Flier means that she will pass the skill Galeforce on to her children, provided that she gains that skill before that chapter begins.

Donnel was far, far worse than Sumia. On top of getting one-hit killed, his low attack meant that he wouldn't even gain any experience before getting knocked off. His rating with his weapon-of-choice, a lance is E when any other character starts with D at the very least. Finally, I discovered the key: pairing him up with Kellam, a Knight with incredibly high defense that put +6 on Donnel's stats. That meant that Donnel could withstand pretty much any hit successfully, and he's not as irritating when he's chatting about farming with Kellam, who was also raised as a farmer. Once he hit level 15, I immediately reclassed him to Mercenary, one of my favorite classes, and am looking forward to pairing Armsthrift with Leif's Blade and dear old Donny's extremely high Luck stat. He vowed to his mother to return to the village as a hero, and he's currently on the path to becoming-- literally-- a Hero, from one of the worst starting positions I've ever had to deal with. Donny + Kellam = bros for life!

The 3D graphics are beautiful, and the anime cutscenes paired with 3D effect just work. This is one of the few games that actually implement 3D properly. The music score is all right, but the voice acting can get irritating, since the characters will usually only say one word, so you get an endless stream of "huhs" and "reallys" and what have you, so I've found it best to turn off the volume and watch TV or listen to my iPod.

One of the best tactics-based strategy games I've ever played, hands down, and definitely another must-have for the 3DS.