Review: Fire Emblem: Awakening

Fire Emblem: Awakening is a strategy RPG put out by Nintendo that was recently released on the 3DS. The whole Fire Emblem series has a few unique things that make it stand out among most other strategy RPG's - the most obvious being permadeath to any unit that falls, making it a fairly unforgiving series, although in a series first, you can select whether you want permadeath or not when you make a new file. It also has very similar sets of classes across games - the horse, wyvern, and pegasus riders, archers, mages, thieves, armored fighters, "main character" lord class, berserker, and many others that don't really change from game to game. Units are frequently not terribly customizable, at least not compared to certain other RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics or Disgaea. Lastly, Fire emblem really shies away from long-range attacks (which makes sense, given the fact that permadeath is a thing) - almost all units can only attack at a range of 1-2 tiles away. There exist a few 2-3 range bows, and some very rare 3-10 range spellbooks, but the vast majority of combat takes place in adjacent or near-adjacent tiles.

First of all, I'd like to say that I'm really enjoying this game. The combat is fun (I'm playing on "classic" mode - which is to say, permadeath enabled, and I've completed my hard file and have started a Lunatic file), and very strategic. The characters are pretty entertaining, and the support system, where you can have characters become closer - which gives some nice combat buffs - is better implemented than ever.

There are a few complaints out there that there are a  distinct game breakers, but aren't there always? They're quite small in number and pretty specific things, though, and it's fairly difficult to accidentally use them to destroy game balance (I'm looking at you, Skyrim). You can also use DLC to grind, which I do actually kind of have an issue with (especially on Lunatic or Lunatic+ difficulties, where it is quite difficult to grind without DLC), but it's not too bad. I'll also say that none of the maps really stood out in my mind after a playthough - they're passable, and fun, but not great.

The biggest complaint about the game I have is the difficulty curve. Especially on the harder difficulties (Lunatic and Lunatic+), the first few missions are just utterly ridiculous. When going through them on Lunatic, I felt like I was playing a puzzle game where I had to place everything just right in order to "solve" it (not to mention get the RNG on my side) rather than a strategy game. This eases up somewhat after the first 4 or so missions (especially if you aren't opposed to grinding on the DLC. but even if you are), but in some ways, that just makes it worse. I definitely feel that the hardest part of the game should not be the beginning of it; that should be the end, when you have mastered the system, rather than when you are just being introduced to it. I've heard that the game gets quite hard again on Lunatic as you approach the end, though, so we'll see about that.

Honestly, it's hard for me to find other big issues with the game. The difficulty curve is by far the biggest one, and I mentioned most of the others that I had issues with already. I wish Nintendo had done things a little differently with the downloadable (both free and paid) characters (namely, that they are allowed to switch to any class you want, while your story characters are restricted - and they also cannot get support bonuses), but I can kind of understand why they did it the way they did. I'd also change a few things about some of the maps, and maybe some of the classes, and maybe add a few supports (though this game already has far more support conversations than any previous Fire Emblem, making this a somewhat ridiculous complaint), as well as change a few things about how the DLC is handled. But overall it's a very well done game that other strategy RPGs could learn a lot from.

Things to remember about Fire Emblem: Awakening:
-Difficulty curves - make them go easy-hard, not hard-easy-maybe back to hard. If you're just introducing people to the mechanics, they shouldn't immediately be faced with the worst the game has to offer.
-Try to avoid making DLC open up completely new avenues of play (read: easy grinding) that make it feel like you're buying power.
-Good class variety and interesting characters bring a *lot* to a game. Character customization gives a game a fair bit of replay value in general and can definitely make up for other flaws in a system.