Fire Emblem Awakening is a tactical strategy game, which means it plays on a grid and you move your characters around to attack and defend. Released exclusively on the 3DS, it uses the hardware to great effect. The game starts off with a beautiful animated cutscene setting up the meat of the plot and keeps the intrigue going until the very end. The game itself plays on a grid using 2D sprites but has 3D-rendered battle animations when you decide to attack enemies, which occurs in another screen.
The screen transition during battles take time and while it looks fantastic, it can drag out the battle, therefore you have the option to turn off all animations which makes battles flow much faster. Surprisingly, the 3D still works well on the 2D grid. Most of the 3D effects shine during the animated cutscenes or during dialogue with the background, character portraits and text all on different layers. One of the iconic elements of Fire Emblem is the sheer amount of playable characters. Each character can gain experience to level, annoyingly, experience is only earned if the character has attacked which discourages using weaker units.
Not only are there variety in the number of characters, but each character have a choice of using different character classes. Leveling up characters will increase their level in that class and will increase their stats (which are randomized) and increase their weapon proficiency (i.e. allows them to use better weapons later on). Weapons are expendable since they have a certain number of uses before they break and you have to purchase a new one. You will eventually be given the option to change classes for each character or improve them into second-tier classes which are noticeably much more powerful.
So during the battle, each map provides a different grid layout with different obstacles, such as lava, woods which slow you down and sand which reduces your movement. Each turn you get to move each character and position them, and then decide whether to attack or do something else. Your enemy gets to do the same with their turn. The aim of most maps is to either defeat all enemies or just defeat the main boss. Some twists here is that you can pair up any two units into one to boost their stats, or place them side by side to get stat benefits but allows you to attack with each unit.
The gameplay is highly strategic on higher difficulties and there are heaps of variety in terms of balancing the abilities and ranges of each character. The game is made such that you can pick any team of characters, stick with them and can finish the game. There is a simple relationship system where if two units pair up or support each other, they will increase their relationship points. What this does is unlock scenes which show some of their backstory or build up the characters' friendship. Eventually with most characters, you an marry and recruit their children into your team.
Fire Emblem Awakening can be quite unforgiving in terms of difficulty, even if you're playing on the easiest option available. The game is made harder since each map will cap the maximum amount of characters in play which forces you from early on, to decide which characters you want to stick with throughout the whole of the game and leave the others behind. If you lose a battle you have to reload your last save, this is not a problem since you can save after every map and can skip all cutscenes.
Awakening can get frustratingly unfair with its not so random numbers; you cannot soft reset the game and then hope the odds are in your favor since it is fixed from when you started the map (i.e. you cannot save during a turn and then keep soft resetting until you get a critical hit). Playing on higher difficulties with perma-death means a lot of soft resetting to restart the map from the very beginning which is quite tedious and annoying. Yes, the default option is such that if one of your characters died during battle, they are permanently dead and you miss out on any further story elements and all that time spent levelling them up to that point is wasted. If you don't want that, you can turn this feature off.
The game gets difficult in the second half where it will separate those players who played unevenly and those who have stuck with their set of characters and levelled them up properly. The story begins with the protagonist (default name is Robin but you can change it) waking up with no memory and is found by Chrom and Lissa, the Prince and Princess of the land, who lead the Shepherds. They are warriors who defend the kingdom and help the people. Awakening tells a tale of warring nations with only the fantasy elements showing in the later chapters.
The story has a strong start with great scenes but ends up becoming flat towards the middle before picking up again in the last few chapters. Awakening tells a great story in how Robin helps out Chrom and Lissa by becoming their tactician and save the kingdom from evils. It ends up being an epic and the characters are endearing. However, the ending was slightly disappointing after all the build-up. The game flow is that you play one stage and then some story elements are shown whether this be through dialogue or cutscenes. There are various sidequests and after each chapter, random enemies pop up giving you a chance to grind levels.
Between the main story and sidequests, Fire Emblem Awakening takes a fair while to complete. You get around 20 hours of game time easily. In total, there are 48 unique levels, 6 of which are downloadable for free, 25 story chapters and 17 side stories, there's heaps of value. If you're willing to spend some real money, you can purchase additional maps and also use the Streetpass feature of the 3DS to obtain more levels. Perhaps the best feature is since you have the freedom to develop whichever characters you want in terms of relationships, in each playthrough you can decide to marry characters with different ones compared to your first playthrough.
Pairing up different characters will unlock different dialogue and provides a decent amount of play value. Overall, Fire Emblem Awakening is a fantastic game. It manages to make the tactical gameplay easy to understand but very strategic in nature and no one way to beat each map. The cutscenes are strikingly beautiful and there are a few genuine surprises with the plot. All this adds up to a game that's worth every bit of money you use to purchase it, Fire Emblem Awakening is highly recommended.
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