Fire Emblem Awakening

[Skyblade]

Anyone else playing the Game of the Year (well, so far)?

This is one of the best Fire Emblem games I've played. Story and new mechanics work well, and the gameplay is tighter than it's ever been.

Chapter 6 SpoilersYeah, since "Marth" had first shown up, I'd called him "Naoto", because the similarities are just too strong, especially after watching Persona 4 the Animation just a few days ago. Effeminate build and voice, secretive, short blue hair, etcetera. I definitely didn't discount the idea that "Marth" was a female character (and I got more sure that he was as things went on). Then Chapter 6 rolls around and we learn that the Naoto comparison is just spot on. I was laughing for about three minutes solid.

[Agent Proto]

I want this game.

[Skyblade]

No one wants to talk about this game? Seriously? Fine, then I'll just go ranting on about it.


This game takes balance in a new direction from previous games. The Pair-Up and Support options have been tuned to give much easier to understand and use bonuses. The Skill system and Reclassing make customization far more possible than in any previous game. And the new Inheritance system takes things even further.

Support and Pair Up technical talkTwo characters can "Pair-Up", essentially the Rescue system from previous games, but revamped so that the two units work together instead of one hindering the other. The main unit does all the fighting, but gets a stat bonus from the character he's carrying. It also confers Support and Proximity bonuses to the fighting character.

Proximity bonuses are a new thing. Basically, fighting in a group is very, very beneficial. If you have one unit beside you, you get +10 Hit. Two units adjacent to you +10 Hit and +10 Avoid. Three adds +10 Dodge, and four adds +10 Crit (woohoo). Of course, you might notice that being surrounded by four units is hard to do, because it means you have to be using a ranged weapon from the middle of a cluster of your own guys.

That's where the Pair-Up and Support systems come in. A Paired unit adds an extra unit to the total, and each rank of Support (C, B, A, or S) increases the bonus by an additional unit. So if you Pair-Up with a Unit that you have an A Support rank with, you get +10 to all four stats. And, if you get S Rank, or are in proximity to multiple supported units, the bonuses continue to increment, going back through the list in the same order and adding an additional +5 for each further rank and person.

These bonuses add up really fast, especially in light of the new change where Supports are unrestricted! You are no longer limited to 5 Support conversations, you can Support with anyone. Each person is limited to only one S Rank support (because the characters get married in those conversations), but you can otherwise pursue every discussion option, and accrue a ton of bonuses.


Skills and Reclassing Technical talkYeah, I absolutely adore the revamped Skill system, and Reclassing ties right in to it. Each class has two Skills that they learn naturally. For the base classes, they learn them at levels 1 and 10. For promoted classes, they learn them at 5 and 15.

Capacity count is gone, instead every character can equip a flat count of five skills. There are also no more skill scrolls (well, there are, but they're DLC only, from what I can tell, and those particular DLCs have not yet been released stateside), instead, each character can freely equip and remove any skills that they have learned.

But, wait, if you only get four skills from progressing through your basic and promoted class, how do you hit the max of five skills? Well, that's where the new reclassing system comes into play. Once you hit level 10 on a basic class, you can use a Master Seal to move to an Advanced class, or a new Second Seal. Using a Second Seal lets you switch to another basic class (each character has their own ranges of availible classes). You revert to level 1, and have your stats reduced by the base stats of your current class. However, every stat point you have gotten from levelling up is saved and applied to your new class.

This means that stat maxing is far easier than its been in any previous Fire Emblem, as you can revert to level one and start levelling up all over again, but with all of your previously gained stat boosts intact. This even saves if you reclass to something with a lower max stat (like, say, dropping from a Berserker to a Mage). The game will save your total Strength stat increase, even if it pushes you above the Mage's Strength cap, and when you change back to a class with higher strength, you'll get those points back.

The only unfortunate part is that it saves your cumulative level too, so don't think you'll start levelling as though you were a level 1 toon all over. The higher your cumulative level, the less Exp you get. Though you do get more in a basic class, and after 40 to 50 total levels, the Exp slowdown stops.

So, now that you know that each unit can have five Skills, what Skills should you take?

Here are my top recommendations:

- Galeforce - My gosh, this skill is awesome. Any female character who can become a Pegasus Knight can learn this (Dark Flyer promoted class skill, level 15). And it lets you take a second turn after you kill an enemy, once per turn. This is powerful. From just killing two enemies at once, to doing hit and run tactics, to using it to punch out of a group and escape, this ability is awesome. Learn it as soon as you can, never get rid of it.

- Despoil - An interesting ability, in that no one on your team will learn it by default, because no one has the base class of Barbarian. Yet it is one of the game's best abilities, so you'll want to pick it up at some point. Only male characters can reclass to Barbarians (and only some of them), but as soon as they do, they get this ability, which gives them a chance (a percentage equal to their Luck stat) to get a Small Bullion whenever they kill a target (no counter kills, it has to be your turn). Basically, it's a chance of a free 1000 gold any time you kill something. Given how rare money is, especially on the higher difficulties, this skill is awesome.

- Armsthrift - Yeah, this one is right up there, another incredible utility Skill. It activates as a percentage equal to twice your Luck (and Luck runs a cap of 40 to 45 on most advanced classes, which is 80 to 90%) of not using weapon durability. Those Silver Swords and Killing Edges? Yeah, use them on a character with this skill (obtained by level 1 Mercenaries) to get a lot more out of them. Heck, pair them on a unit with high luck, carrying another high luck person (to push total luck over 50), and you can use every weapon without it breaking!


Those are probably the best non-unique skills (though Gamble's -5 Hit, +10 Crit deserves mention, as Hit is fairly easy to max in this game) that are new to this game. Aether, Sol, and Luna all work as they did before, and should be familiar to players of the earlier games.

I'll be back to talk about inheritence and children units later. Ciao!

[Del Murder]

I am playing Shadow Dragon right now and this is my first FE game. I like it a lot. Since FE Awakening has been getting rave reviews I will probably pick it up at some point.

[Red Mage Coffman]

Well, if 13-3- I mean, Lightning Returns doesn't satisfy me for greatest RPG of the year, next to X and Y of course, then this sure as hell will.

I went through extreme lengths to get this smurfer. I actually bought a 3DS, searched all over town, when I didn't find it, which I raged so hard about, I bought a Nintendo E-Store card for 50 bucks and planned to download it at a friends house the next day. Except I wanted to play it sa badly that I actually stayed in the freezing cold, mooching of mhy neighbors Wi-Fi for TWO hours just to get it and play it.

It was totally worth the wait. This game, so far, is my game of the year. It delivers on the Fire Emblem experience flawlessly. It even has a casual mode for people who aren't as hardcore as they should be. Onto the things I like about this game though.

1. The character system. And by this I mean, well, how awesome the create an avatar feature is, how awesome the customization is, how awesome the relationship system works, how awesome the Class system is, how awesome the "recruit your future children" feature is. I won't get to in depth unless asked too, but its really something and I highly enjoy it.

2. All the renovations. New features have been added that make this game even more badass. You can pair up units together for stat/relationship boosts, there is a healthy variety of side missions and fights for training (Something Shadow Dragon for the DS was bad about), the already mentioned recruit future children and avatar creation system, the DLC that allows you to recruit series favorites, like Marth and Roy, the graphical updates, which is sheer beauty, and the four different difficulty levels, looking at you lunatic mode, all made for great revovations that really drew me in. How could I hate this?

3. The story and the characters. While the story can feel a little boring at times, as it really picks up mid game, its still a good one and the leading characters support it greatly. It isn't a Final Fantasy great, but its a Fire Emblem great, and thats okay. As mentioned before the main cast is one I've taken a liking too, and the characters you recruit through out the game all have cute little personalities and will make you crack a smile every once in a while with the character interactions. Point is, this game's story and cast captivated me.

4. Need I mention the replayability here?

My three biggest complaints so far, where that the Avatar creation system wasn't super diverse and felt really... meh at times. I wasn't expecting great customization though, so it can be easily forgiven. The game does one of those "Hey, you beat the game! Time to reload to your last save!" That is my biggest one right there. I despise games that do that SO much. My last complaint is that I haven't heard Together We Ride play once yet. Its a Fire Emblem title, it HAS to be in there somewhere or I will cry.

Point is this game is amazing and I reccommend it to anyone with a 3DS and the money to spend. In fact, till March 6th, Nintendo is giving out the Marth DLC for free. So... buy it if you want free Marth!

[Bolivar]

This game looks like an awesome reason to own a DS and it seems like the reviews are echoing what you've said here. I'm actually really starting to feel the 3DS' RPG lineup.

[Skyblade]

There's already a thread on this game, and no one but me was posting in it. Someone should merge it.

I agree, total game of the year material.


I don't have a problem with the reload the last save thing, because the game incentivizes replay so much. Your Renown carries over from game to game, but that's about it. Oh, and you can access special DLC characters and past Avatars for a price (for a good Avatar, a very, very expensive price), which means all your work doesn't entirely go to waste, and you can continue to accumulate the rewards.

I do agree with Together We Ride not being there. It feels...wrong. My guess is that we'll see it in the DLC though. Speaking of which, BUY THE DLC. It's awesome. The chapters are engaging, the rewards are excellent, and you get some huge benefits.

EXPonential Growth (currently only availible if you buy the Golden Pack, but will be released separately later) is a huge source of EXP (and, actually, Heroes of Yore 2 offers really good EXP to since a single character can wipe out 9 enemies in a single turn). Golden Gaffe offers huge money (and decent EXP), and knocks Despoiled right off the list of awesome skills. But both, being essentially joke chapters, feature some absolutely hilarious dialogue by your characters.

The DLC also features music from previous titles. Which is good, because music is oddly one of this game's real downsides. It has great music, don't get me wrong (Mastermind, for example, is a great piece), but it is way, way too subtle for a Fire Emblem game. The music is almost entirely subtle mood and background pieces. You almost never notice it, which is a stark contrast to the rest of the series, when everything awesome you do is highlighted by an incredible heart pounding theme. The first time I was running Golden Gaffe and I heard Strike! play as the battle theme, I just found myself wondering where the heck that kind of music was during the rest of the game.



My problems with the game. Well, problem one. EXP levels out too quickly. The game encourages reclassing. So much so that you can't even get five skills for a parent character without reclassing. Yet once you reclass, your EXP starts to drop like a stone. It means you really, really have to grind in order to learn all the skills for a character, and that gets kind of depressing, especially since the game also heavily incentivizes dropping everything and starting over, so you can get new support conversations, you can customize your Avatar better (once you understand what the plusses and negatives mean), and you can inherit different skills to the kids. For such a big feature, reclassing is really heavily punished by the EXP drop off. Level 30 Entombed shouldn't be giving 8 EXP a pop.

Actually, thinking about it, that's my only real problem with the game. I'm not fond of the sheer depth of the children character inheritence system, but most of that is a result of the EXP dropoff being too punishing to allow real experimentation with the system. You can't mix and match skills and class combos because it takes ages to learn them, so you're stuck either planning everything out and only hitting certain landmarks, or playing a thousand times to try differing combinations each playthrough.

[Skyblade]

*Sigh* Still not nearly enough love for this game.

And why are the DLCs coming out so slowly?! Two a week?! Graaah!!



Anyway, was backreading through Penny Arcade, when I stumbled across this quote.

Fire Emblem’s imminent release reminded me that I owned the platform in question, and once I managed to cast the right spell on my router, I was able to download a demo for the game. I have to take a minute and appreciate Intelligent Systems; a software package like this is generally thought of as a marketing exercise, a mathematically dowsed optimus of interactive surface area, something to amuse your bouche while you trundle entropically toward dissolution. But you can die in this thing - that is to say, it will kill you - in the very first fight, on normal difficulty. It doesn’t give a trout. It will pulverize you with warhammers and zap up on a mothersmurfer with a witch. Even amid the barb and flourish of the retail lure, it would rather teach players hard lessons than kindle consumer desire.

I gotta give props.

(CW)TB out.

And all I can think is, if he thinks Normal does that, he is never going to beat Chapter One on Lunatic mode. Like, ever. The difficulty curve is frelling insane on that mode, and you will die a lot, if you don't plan and execute really carefully.

But man, oh man, is it fun. I love this game. I want more of this game. I want more DLCs for this game. I want a sequel. More more more!


Slight additional problem: Children characters are overpowered. They usually start out with higher stats (Lucina, Cynthia, and Morgan actually had max stats for their base class when I got them, because of how much I'd trained their parents), and they get access to more job classes, and can inherit some of the best abilities in the game without training them themselves. Not very overpowered, since you have to put the work in to get the return, but having a half dozen characters with Galeforce and Luna or Astra right from the time you get them does kind of put the parents to shame.

Edit: Ooh, right, or Lifetaker, I keep forgetting to mention that one, but it's awesome. Every time you attack and kill something, you heal for half your max health. And it can be used at the same time as Galeforce, so you can go from one hit point to full health in one turn. Crazy stuff.