Fire Emblem: Back And Better Than Ever

Fire Emblem: Awakening

It’s the year 2013, and the maelstrom of mediocrity in gaming has gotten even bigger. If your vessel can endure the rapture and you follow your compass north you can reach the Isles of WEFUCKINDIDITRIGHT. Here you will find games that have made a name for themselves and will always be played no matter how old they get. When you finally dock on the Island of Tactical Strategy, you find a new resident waiting to be plugged into your 3DS. Say hello (and goodbye to 30+ hours of your life) to Fire Emblem: Awakening.

History Brief

For all of you who don’t know what Fire Emblem is, let me lay down some knowledge. Fire Emblem is a tactical RPG series created by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo. The gameplay is turn based  and you move units on a grid to defeat the enemy troops. Your units gain experience for killing enemy units, completing certain objectives, etc. Your troops are a combination of Warriors, Lords, Archers, Priests, Wizards, Dark Wizards, Pegasus Knights, Wyvern knights, and many more. Each of them has their own strengths and weaknesses towards other units. Combat uses a rock-scissor-paper triangle in which certain weapons have advantages over others. Lances > Swords, Swords > Axes, and Axes > Lances. Also, certain units have advantages over others. For example: archers get accuracy and damage bonuses when facing air units.

Fire Emblem has one very important distinction compared to other RPGs: when one of your units dies in combat they stay dead. There are no revival spells at all. So, with every move you make, you had better be sure your unit can survive potential counterattacks from enemy units, or it’s lights out for good.

Those are the basics of the Fire Emblem series, now let’s talk specifics about Fire Emblem: Awakening. Here are the reasons why I think this game is such a strong offering in the world of tactical turn-based strategy games.

• Create your own personal character: Usually in Fire Emblem games you don’t have a character, you are just a tactical sentience who moves troops around from above. This time around you are given your own playable character and you can customize how he or she looks. Your character is a main character helping Chrom, the main protagonist, and his crew, the Shepards. Your character class is Tactician, which gives you the opportunity use both magic and swordplay.

• Tag Team: In Awakening you can combine two units together in combat. When two units tag team they get stat bonuses and will also help each other out in combat. This is the perfect way to get a character out of a horrible situation if they are low on health you can switch them with the one you partnered them up with. Also, when two people are partnered up they can increase their likeness for each other which will help you get the support conversations to the max rank. The mechanic essentially replaces the old support system of previous Fire Emblem games.

• Second Seal: Okay, did you ever ask yourself the following question: “Hey I could really use another priest/mage?” Well now you can. For the most part, you can give any character the Second Seal and WHAM! Class changed! To clarify, you can really change any class in the game to what would support you the best in whatever situation you are in. I see this being more useful for when you are playing Casual Mode, lose a character, and do not feel like restarting the whole battle. But, not every character can become every class except for the main character and the main character’s future child.

• Future Children: Yeah I said FUTURE CHILDREN. When you get your tactician’s support conversations up to S level with another character, they will get married and, well… Then, you will get missions where you can recruit your child to fight along with you. There are many combinations out there for you to pair up with. So it’s time for you to play the Matchmaker and have a ball. And yes, your main character can be pimpin’.  One other thing I should mention there is no same sex couples at all. Sorry to disappoint those who wanted those, but the highest support rank a same sex pair can get, is an A rank.

• Not totally linear story line: You can take time to do side quest missions and go back to the main story line, which is good especially if you are having issues leveling a specific character or want to get the support conversations up with whomever you want.

• Casual Mode: I know this may make the hardcore gamer rage, but before you start the campaign, the game asks if you want to do “Classic” (once a character dies it’s the end of them) or “Casual Mode” (if a character dies they are just out of the battle and run away until the next battle). This is good for people who are new to the Fire Emblem series and want to get used to the gameplay before trying out “Classic” Fire Emblem.

• Dannel: This picture sums him up quite nicely and hits the mark. Note: Picture contains adult language.
  

I could go on and on. I feel that these points here are what made the game fun for me. Also, Dannel is way too badass and should be the next character everyone cosplays from Fire Emblem. I believe this Fire Emblem is designed to get a new crowd of people into the franchise and for veterans like myself a chance to have nostalgic moments.

The game does have some faults. The missions are mostly the same with little variation. There are choice options at some points but your choices do not affect the ending much at all. There is DLC, but you must pay for it. Some of the DLC’s give some additional equipment, and even a class change, but you will have to spend a couple of bucks getting them all. DLC is available on the 3DS Marketplace.

Overall: I had a blast playing though this game and make a recommendation for ya’ll to play it.

This is the Doc signing off.

Dr Dre X