So, yesterday I finally beat Fire Emblem: Awakening (for those that are interested, I played it on Classic/Normal and according to the activity log it took me 70 hours and 23 mins) . While on the whole Awakening was very enjoyable, I walk away from the game with some mixed feelings.
First, the good.
Visually this is by far the best looking Fire Emblem that Intelligent Systems has ever made (you know, besides the whole lack of feet thing). When playing Sacred Stones and Radiant Dawn, the only Emblem games I had played before this one, I got bored of watching the animations after a few hours and turned them off. In Awakening, however, I always got a kick out of watching the battle animations (albiet with the fast forward button firmly held down) and therefore never felt the need to switch them off. Watching Gaius do his stylised 'lethality' attacks, or seeing Virion jump in to the air and let fly an arrow, the animations were just so cool that I didn't mind watching them play out, epecially when characters were paired up appropriately, leading to long strings of attacks.
On the gameplay front, Awakening is just as good as the previous entries that I have played. It's supremely satisfying to level up your characters, equip them with increasingly powerful equipment, and nuture them towards a specific class. This has always been the primary draw for me as far as Fire Emblem is concerned, but the addition of a more complex 'partner' system is where the game really stands out for me. Putting the aggresive tomboy Sully together with the effeminately posh Virion, or making a relationship blossom between farmhand Donnel and exotic dancer Olivia can be a bunch of fun, but it also adds another layer of strategy. Sure, it might be funny to throw two characters together, but will it work on the battlefield?
Also, I might be crazy, but I didn't think the story was altogether terrible. I mean, sure, the whole end of the world story is pretty rote at this point, but I do think that Awakening had some genuinely interesting twists. I enjoyed the Terminator inspired time travel twist, and I was always jazzed whenever another pairing I had forced together resulted in another maladjusted offspring being catapulted back in time. I also thought the Walhart storyline was interesting as it showed another leader and another army also trying to prevent the resurrection of Grima and the destruction of the world, but their methods are diametrically opposed to those of the player. As far as Fire Emblem storylines go, it wasn't half bad.
Now, however, we do move on to the bad. Well, not necessarilly the bad, but rather the dissappointing.
For as much improvement as Awakening brought to certain areas of the series, I feel it fell short in others. My biggest dissappointment is that every chapter amounted to essentially the same thing. Kill everyone. Even when the game explicitly raises the possibility of alternative options or hints at strategies that might be employed on the battlefield, the game fails to offer any options. There is only one option or strategy in Fire Emblem. Kill everyone.
As I mentioned in my previous post, there are specific chapters which seem to be setting up something interesting but then refuse to actually break from the mould. If you read my above post you'll get a better idea of what I mean, but utlimately it comes down to this; After a couple of hours of playing Awakening I had seen pretty much everything that it had to offer in terms of strategy. It certainly got more difficult as the compaign progressed, but I was never really tasked with coming up with a unique strategy or a cunning plan to take the advantage. It was always the same thing; use lances on swords, swords on axes, axes on lances, and keep Sumia the f*** away from archers. It never really felt...well, very strategic.
As I say, overall though I think Awakening is a really good game and it is probably the best Fire Emblem that I have played. I just wish Intelligent System had been more adventurous with the maps, the missions and strategies.
Topic: Fire Emblem Awakening (Read 14601 times)
