Quote Originally Posted by Vyk View Post
I think my love of Shining Force turned me off to this series as well. Which for a lot of people I know it's the opposite. The similarities made them love it more. But the aesthetic and battle mechanics were about all they had in common. The perma-death. Excessively hard difficulty. Bland and pointless characters. In Shining Force the stories seemed to matter more. But above all else, the characters mattered more. Everyone had personality. And this series seemed to have so much potential in that regard. But the few I played failed so utterly
The games are not easy. Honestly, if you're having that much trouble, I'd recommend grabbing a GameShark. Personally, I have absolutely no problem cheating in single-player games, especially when you're doing so to bypass parts of a game you hate to get to parts you enjoy. I cheated past all of the combat in Knights of the Old Republic just so I could enjoy the story. I really like the gameplay in Fire Emblem, but if it isn't your cup of tea, don't feel bound to it.

Though, with that being said; Awakening, is freaking fantastic. The ONLY Shining Force gameplay mechanic I missed in that game, was an overworld and towns that could be traversed. The difficulty was adjustable, perma-death was optional, and all of the characters you get had their own individual personalities. They all mattered. And they even went beyond that, you could interact with everyone, make friends and bonds, and even watch as they made friends and bonds with each other. It was a phenomenal experience, and highly suggested to any Shining Force fan
I agree on missing the overworld and towns that you could explore. That was the biggest feature that Shining Force had going for it over the other Tactical RPGs.

I disagree that this game is alone in being the ones that focused on characters. The Support system has been in every Fire Emblem that has been released in the West, and a lot of other characters in the series are a little further over the top. Your opinion is one I've heard before, and part of the reason for it seems to be the new structure to the Support systems.

See, in previous games, your Supports were limited. You got (usually) five, and those were all you could get all game. So you could only get the max rank of A Support (and get pairings/endings where applicable) with one character due to the hard limit. So a lot of people only saw a handful of the Supports. While in Awakening, you can get all Supports with every character, but only one S Rank Support and marriage (a change I absolutely adore). Because of this, more people see more of the Supports, and therefore the character quirks stand out more. But believe me, the characters in the previous games were just as strong as they are in Awakening, and a lot of them have even stronger foibles. Apart from Kellam and Tharja, I don't think there's anyone who matches the absolutely over the top absurdity of some of the cast of the older games. You don't see as much of them, so they don't seem as strong. But they are. Especially when you get to see the entire legion of subplots that only play out through Supports.

You also might simply not have gotten far enough to really experience that due to the difficulty and permadeath, though.

But sadly, that does seem to be the one exception in the series. I can't say that I've tried them all, though. But I did try one or two on GBA, and then Shadow Dragon. And I tried patched roms from an unreleased SNES one, and an unreleased DS one. Though, the SNES was just too old for me, and I have to say Shadow Dragon probably fails for the same reason, since it's a remake (supposedly?) of the very first Fire Emblem. The unreleased DS one was pretty good, and had some similar mechanics to Awakening. But I never played the GameCube or Wii ones which seemed to be pretty well received over-all

But after Awakening, I have pretty high hopes for this series in the future
My rating for the games that have actually been released in English goes Awakening, Fire Emblem (FE6, Rekka no Ken in Japan, the first US one), Path of Radiance for the GameCube, Sacred Stones, Radiant Dawn, Shadow Dragon.

As I said, Lyndis is one of my all time favorite characters, and her story, Supports, and character interactions were so much fun to go through. There's an entire part of her main plot that isn't even directly mentioned in the game, so a lot of people miss it, but it has a ton of heavy hints explaining it. I am so happy she came back for Awakening, I just wish it was as more than an Einherjar (though I do love that the other Einherjar from Elibe treats her like the absolute beast of a fighter that she is). I can't wait to see her again in Shin Megami Tensei X Fire Emblem.