[I'm going to call this my initial draft for this review. If I have the time and opportunity to replay the game and take a closer, more critical look at the story, mechanics and everything to go into more detail, I will append it as such. For now, these are my thoughts on the game from what I've seen after beating it once on Normal mode.]
So Fire Emblem Awakening is the latest and supposedly greatest in this little-known gem of a series, developed by the talented minds of Intelligent Systems, who are also known for the Paper Mario series, another great RPG.
This game was among the most well-advertised and hyped up games in the Fire Emblem series, and it's a safe bet to say that it's the first mainstream Fire Emblem title to reach western shores, as many Fire Emblem players nowadays are calling this game their first. As the culmination of all the Fire Emblem worlds and gameplay mechanics to date,
does it live up to its series' hefty legacy? Let's take a look.
~ Today, Banryu Reviews Fire Emblem: Awakening! ~
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So Fire Emblem Awakening is the latest and supposedly greatest in this little-known gem of a series, developed by the talented minds of Intelligent Systems, who are also known for the Paper Mario series, another great RPG.
This game was among the most well-advertised and hyped up games in the Fire Emblem series, and it's a safe bet to say that it's the first mainstream Fire Emblem title to reach western shores, as many Fire Emblem players nowadays are calling this game their first. As the culmination of all the Fire Emblem worlds and gameplay mechanics to date,
does it live up to its series' hefty legacy? Let's take a look.
~ Today, Banryu Reviews Fire Emblem: Awakening! ~
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NUMBER #1NE. TEH STORYYYY
FEA takes place on the continent of Ylisse, in a kingdom of the same name which was known as Akanaeia in years long past. The player takes control of an enigmatic amnesiac with a penchat for tactical thinking and teams up with Chrom, the descendant of Akanaeian royalty. You, Chrom, and the Ylissean army then set out on a series of events and wars that span multiple continents, ultimately leading up to a climactic showdown to prevent the end of the world!
As far as storylines in the Fire Emblem series go, this one is a bit lackluster in comparison. The early chapters up until around the time of the Valm arc do a decent job taking their time to build up the dramatic events that are unfolding, but after the game's first antagonist is toppled, it then proceeds to a TWO-YEAR timeskip, after which the plot starts hurrying and rushing itself to reach its conclusion, and during which we know nothing that happened save Chrom's daughter being born (I'm sure THAT won't become a crucial plot point).
That's another problem that this game has-- it's too predictable. Half the plot twists in the story are hardly twists at all because of how heavily they're hinted at early on. It's almost like the writers WANT you to know what's coming, like they're trying to be too polite and not shock you too bad or something. (They even have blatant proof of the Marth-imposter's identity on the game's website! I mean, come on, are they even trying?!) Trust me, if you come into this game knowing nothing about its plot and you pay close enough attention, I can pretty much guarantee that you'll be able to guess most 'surprise' plot points, save one near the end that's more or less a deus ex. On top of that, some things in the game just feel downright unexplained. When all the plot twists start coming into the light and becoming known, there's still a lot about the events leading up to and preceding the climax and conclusion that feels weakly explained, if explained at all. I think the game needed to take its time more after the... really awkward two-year time skip... and give itself like 10 more chapters to flesh out the events unfolding and make them feel like a more cohesive narrative.
For as weak as the main story is, however, Awakening has some of the best character interaction features of all the Fire Emblems to date. You can tell that the writers probably put most of their time and effort into the support conversations, because there are a metric crapton of them; each character can converse with and potentially marry almost every character of the opposite gender, including your personalized character, making for hundreds of unique dialogue opportunities that dive more and more into each of the characters, even if they're a bit more (maybe make that a lot more) tropy than the characters in previous FE games. The support conversations and the marriage system, which allows canon and shipping a rare opportunity to walk side-by-side in the game's story, are definite highlights of the game
...However... I might argue that this is actually a problem for the game's story as a whole.
Though many characters' conversations touch on and effectively explore the hardship of war and how the characters are growing from it, many others seem to entirely ignore the fact that you and your friends are at war here-- half the conversations sound like something you'd hear between highschoolers in the hall or the locker room between classes. This, coupled with the fact that many of the support conversations are more interesting than the events taking place in the story, ultimately ends up distracting the player, distancing them from the events they SHOULD be caring about. The characters should be driven by the events of the story, and the story by the development of the characters-- in balance with one another, instead of estranged from one another as they are in this game.
Ultimately, nothing about the story or characters is really insulting; the story, while not terrific, isn't bad either, and practically all the characters are extremely likable; even those who gave you a rotten first impression actually turn out to be quite endearing and interesting if you give them a chance. For good characters but a mediocre plot, I'll give this category:
* * * * * 3 / 5 stars
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NUMBAH #2WO. GAEMPLEAY
Before I dive into Fire Emblem's always-great battle mechanics, I have to touch on one other thing about this game's basic gameplay which heavily links to its story: I don't like the world map in this game. Is it bad? Not at all, it's well-implemented and the features they gave it are very cool for what it is. But the issue I have with the free-roaming map, the same issue I have with Sacred Stones, is that it allows the player to be too easily distracted. A player can choose to proceed with the plot without running around to all the other places and grinding, sure, but more likely, it takes away from the urgency of the plot. Picture this, if you would: You and your army, now one of the most infamous military groups on the continent, set out for the enemy shore on the far side of the ocean, laying waste to their superior navy with brilliant (forthwith unexplained bcuz spoilers) tactics-- Then, after a brief victory celebration at sea, you sail back home and knock around a few zombies for training before setting back out for the enemy shore unopposed. NO! That doesn't happen! That's why, for all the improvements Sacred Stones made from Blazing Sword, the latter ultimately had a better, more engaging story. Maybe if the world map was unlocked AFTER beating the game, or was available at some points in the plot as they relate to it in a sensible manner, the story might have felt stronger and more cohesive.
Moving on to battle mechanics.
For those not familiar with the series, Fire Emblem is a grid-based tactical RPG, with traditional fantasy RPG units like knights, archers, and mages who level up and gain new skills, but are commanded in a chesslike, almost RTS-reminiscent style like an army. Weapons clash with each other in a rock-paper-scissors style, and special units such as fliers or armored units have additional weaknesses (respectively to arrows or armor-crushing weapons) to balance out their advantages. Like most RPGs, there's a lot to learn mechanically, but the end result is a smart, well-balanced battle system.
In the case of Awakening, several classes are rehashed to function differently in the game and several new ones are added, which when combined make for a pretty well-balanced network of strategic relationships. Rather than in previous games, in which units' attack power is measured in either Strength or Magic depending on the type of unit, all units now have both stats, and many new or improved units are balanced between melee damage and either magical attacking or healing, giving players a lot more options to choose from and a lot of tactical versatility. This is improved even further by the addition of Skills, two of which are learned by each class at set levels to amplify your units' tactical usage, and the Reclassing system, a mechanic returning from several of the Japan-only FE titles that allows your units to start over in a different combat class to learn new skills.
All in all, every battle mechanic added or modified to Awakening makes the game one of the best yet in terms of gameplay-- SAVE ONE.
Enter the Magic system.
Now, in previous Fire Emblem titles, Magic functioned much the same way as weapons did, with a rock-paper-scissors format determining which form of magic was superior. In the GBA games, this took the form of Light magic, Dark magic, and nature (or Anima) magic, and in the Gamecube title Path of Radiance, it was replaced with an anima-only triangle that introduced new, element-exclusive magics and units that functioned similarly to their GBA predecessors. PoR's sequel, Radiant Dawn, even saw fit to have both triangles in the game-- The anima triangle, which would affect users of each type of elemental magic, and the greater magic triangle, which applied to all types of Anima.
...The reason I'm explaining this is because, even though all the types of Anima magic are present in Awakening... It gives us NO MAGIC TRIANGLES AT ALL! I'm as infuriated as Ganon must be at the end of every Zelda title where this is the outcome! There are three words that aptly describe FEA's magic system: lazy, lazy, lazy. On top of the lack of magic-related weapon triangles (which only makes the game's huge variety of spells boring and pointless), the spells and magic-using classes themselves are poorly balanced; Wind Magic reigns supreme as the only one with any special properties (dealing double damage to flying units), and the Sorcerer is hands-down the most effective magical damage dealer, thanks to the overpowering might of Dark magic spells.
When it gets down to it, though, the magic system isn't terrible or anything, really. However, with everything done so well between all the other classes, I find it hard not to be disappointed that the magic system wasn't thought out better. Aside from that and the aforementioned map mechanics, the game and the battle system are pretty solid, adding a lot of other features for the sake of convenience and to make the game's new multiplayer battle function more accessible. All in all, I'll give it:
* * * * * 4 / 5 stars
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NUMMBR #3REE. ESSTHATTICS
Within the umbrella of graphics, sound, and music, Awakening performs fairly admirably. The graphics are crisp and smooth, especially in 3D, and the quality of the sound and tunes of the title are pretty well up to par with the rest of the series, with its music bringing a nice sense of atmosphere, urgency, calmness, and dread at all the right times. The voice acting for the game is top-notch, with a great cast of voices who bring a lot of life to the characters. It does a good job overall showcasing and utilizing the 3DS' hardware, but there are again a few points of flaw that have to be pointed out.
So first, let's talk about graphics.
I will maintain to the death and fight over my claim that the GBA games have the best graphics of every Fire Emblem to date. I don't care that the GCN/Wii games and Awakening have their fancy 3D character models and individually-shown weapons (although that IS a nice touch in each of these games), the GBA games' sprites had a unique sense of dynamic movement that charmed anyone who played it, and sparked many spriters to modify or use them for anything and everything that spriters WOULD use them for, from comics to animations, etc. Heck, I even see spriters spriting the more modern Fire Emblem titles into GBA format. And while Awakening is a big improvement over the often-stiff, strangely-animated models of the Tellius series, it's still definitely not as good as the GBA sprites. Again, I think this is a pity, as it didn't HAVE to be the case. It's not as though 3D models are an inferior form of animation and visuals, but they're not used to their full potential here. Many people complain about the strange models with their weird faces and tiny feet, too-- I don't care about that. It never bothered me. What DID was the overall lack of swift, powerful-looking, stylistic fighting animations that made the GBA Fire Emblems so cool. There's so much more that they COULD do with 3D character models, too, experimenting with different camera angles and more cinematic poses and actions to give the visuals more of a punch, like Lethality did in the game (probably the only special move that seems fittingly as cinematic as I could ask for). So yeah, the graphics weren't what they could have been either.
I don't have any issues with the quality of the sound or music, it's all wonderfully crisp and of great quality. The one nitpick I have left, however, is with the voice acting. When I first heard the characters' voices while reading their dialogue boxes, I was annoyed. Why are they making them TALK in Fire Emblem? I can read what they're saying, what's the point? Well, as I said, the voice acting in this game is great, so I've clearly changed my stance on it since then... At least partially. While I'm glad that there are such fantastic voice actors in this game, I now find myself wishing that they had recorded dialogue for all the conversations, instead of a few set lines that rather annoyingly get repeated over and over throughout the course of the dialogue and the game, many of which are just gasps or grunts of exasperation or irritation. It does get old, and it makes me sad that Intelligent Systems (as well as Nintendo of America's localization team) didn't have enough dedication to flesh this aspect of the game out. So for the sadness-inducingly mehh graphics primarily, I'll give the game's aesthetic aspects:
* * * * * 4 / 5 stars
IN CONCLUSIONATIONING
There is one thing I want to establish about this review, and it's that I talked about this game's flaws in as great detail as I have the ability to go into right now, without touching TOO much on what makes it good. Please don't mistake this to mean that I think Awakening is a bad game, quite the contrary. If anything, I'd like to let my incessant pandering over its flaws stand as testament to how involved I got in this game, and how much I enjoyed it overall despite the few things that could have made it even better. If Fire Emblem Awakening isn't the BEST of Fire Emblem titles (...and it certainly isn't), what it has over the other Fire Emblem titles would have to be its accessibility. As I mentioned at the start, more people than ever are picking up the game and getting acquainted with the gameplay and the universe of this wonderful series; if Fire Emblem isn't the best of the best overall, it would have to be the best introduction to Fire Emblem yet. It's very much more of a product than an endeavor of love in many (though not all) ways, but if this gets people playing the more-deserving Fire Emblem games, then that's quite all right with me.
Highlights:
+ Relatable, very likeable characters and wonderful interaction capabilities between them
+ Solid, mostly well-constructed gameplay mechanics
+ Reasonably challenging for newcomers, with higher difficulty levels for more experienced FE players
+ Great DLC and online capabilities
+ Introduction to one of the better series of RPGs Nintendo has to offer
Flaws:
- Mediocre story overshadowed by fun, if distracting, support dialogues
- Half-assed magic system slightly impedes mechanical balance, and may disappoint series veterans
- Not enough effort into the battle animations and the quantity of voice acting (though not the quality!)
OVERALL SCORE: 7.5 / 10
