Fire Emblem: Awakening Review: The Series Gains a Fan
It was at the Longfort—Chapter 3—that I lost Sully. I became overconfident and let her health slip too low, opening her up to a decisive blow from a Feroxi guard—despite her being paired up with another Shepherd from my group. “Huff, huff… Damn my eyes,” she whispered with her last breath beside her downed horse. “I was foolish… and careless…”
Outside of battle, Sully had recently been fending off Virion’s flirtatious advances, and I was hoping to see a relationship develop between them; but on that day, I held a moment of silence to mourn our lost comrade-in-arms and the relationship that would never be.
Such is the way of Classic Mode in Fire Emblem: Awakening on the 3DS, which employs a permadeath system for your non-plot-related characters (plot-centric characters merely “retreat,” never to return to the battlefield). A casual mode is also available, which has your units revive after battle, but Classic Mode brings the danger of the battlefield to the palms of your hands, keeps true to the series’ difficulty for Fire Emblem veterans, and provides a challenge for experienced tactical RPG players.
The story is divided into chapters, with each chapter consisting of one battle and some dialogue. But this doesn’t mean the game is short; one battle can span more than an hour depending on the map, number of enemies, and your skill level. You can save your progress on the world map (between battles, you move from dot to dot and activate events based on location) or you can save mid-battle via the “bookmark” option. While putting the 2DS or 3DS to sleep will pause a battle, if you choose to save mid-fight, loading that save will take you back to the battle but erase the bookmark (as many games in the DS family now do), making sure you don’t try to create a safety net of multiple saves during a particularly tough battle. You are free, though, to use up to three save slots on the world map, in-between battles.
And while the story is well done, it’s the gameplay and player-driven relationships that truly shine. Battles play out on various-sized maps and multiple types of terrain. Different terrain affects how far a character can move in one turn and, in typical tactical RPG fashion, sometimes the difference between 4 steps and 6 steps means certain death. Permadeath really makes you play more carefully: as your characters move through the plot, they will chat in the barracks menu or during interludes, forging stronger relationships and triggering side-dialogs. But if you lose a unit, you lose any future dialogs they will have (unless they are one of the few plot-centric characters). What makes things even more tense is the relationship rating two units can have. Placing two units next to each other on the battlefield makes them pair up and fight together when attacking or being attacked. This pairing system has the lead character—the one attacking/being attacked—supported by the secondary character they were paired with, resulting in a percentage chance of the secondary character blocking the attack or doing damage themselves during an encounter. It also boosts the stats of the lead character for that fight. Pairing units gives them points toward their relationship, which starts at D and goes up to A, and farther to S if the units can marry. The percentage that they will assist each other goes up greatly when they reach an A or S rating, and their dialogs become more and more friendly. Units that marry can also produce a child who, through the magic of theAwakening’s time travel science, can join battles.
And then there’s the phenomenal animation quality. Scattered throughout the plot are anime-style cutscenes that are smooth, vivid, and exciting. These high-definition animations rival the quality of some top animes, and look good even with the 3D slider on.
Speaking of 3D, in battle the terrain gains texture with the system’s 3D turned on, making each arena feel more like a real place in the game’s world. The battles start out easy and become very tough later on if you don’t set out to grind your characters’ levels. I lost many, many characters throughout the 35-hour journey that was Fire Emblem: Awakening, and every single character death stung. I admittedly restarted a few battles, but for the most part I let my playthrough progress naturally based on my whether I battled carefully or recklessly each day. This was my first Fire Emblem game, and because of the care taken to ensure a quality experience, the series has gained another fan.