Fire Emblem Awakening

Partly out of anticipation for the new Super Smash Bros. game, I've spent the last month or so on Fire Emblem Awakening. It's the first game in the series I've tackled, and based on the outrageous prices of used copies of all the earlier games in the series and (so far) the lack of any compilations or digital download options, it might be my last!

The game was a turn-based tactical RPG that I immediately compared to Final Fantasy Tactics. I understand the genre and common gameplay elements are far older than either series, but Tactics has been one of my favorite video games of all time for fifteen years now, so please understand why I'm judging Fire Emblem almost exclusively based on how it compares.

Honestly? I liked it, but something felt like it was missing. Perhaps this is because I played on the easiest setting and turned "perma-death" off - more on this later - but my party was just absolutely juggernauting everything in its path by the final third of the game or so. It's weird - I spent a lot of time early on playing every possible side quest and doing every possible battle, and once they became a total breeze, I just kind of steamrolled through the rest of the main story.

I understand that by turning "perma-death" off - the default mode in Fire Emblem is for all party member deaths to be permanent, forcing you to play a much, much more conservative game - I robbed myself of a much more hardcore and emotionally charged experience. Compare this post, after all, to the one I wrote up for Valkyria Chronicles - a game with "perma-death" that can't be turned off - just earlier this year:

No, the loss that stung the most was Alex, the aforementioned shocktrooper, who died somewhere in front of the enemy's castle toward the end of the game. Alex was a brash and carefree seventeen-year-old kid who dreamt of flying through the skies after the war. His dying words, alone in the cold night, were, "The sky looks... so close... I can... almost touch it..." Fuckin' A, Alex. You were missed.

Maybe if my Fire Emblem Awakening troops had suffered some actual losses, this game would have resonated more with me. I did come to greatly appreciate the likes of Ricken, Lon'qu, Cordelia, Tharja, and - of course - Donnel, and they each came with fleshed out personalities and everything, but I never gave two shits when one of them fell in battle because I knew it didn't really mean anything. My own fault, I guess!

There are a few other gripes I had with the combat system and general gameplay, but I did appreciate the generally larger scope of the battles in this game compared to Final Fantasy Tactics; it's pretty awesome to send 15 units out onto a 30 by 30 grid to take on 20 or more enemies with constant reinforcements.

In the end, this was a game I liked, but wanted to love. Now bring on Super Smash Bros. for 3DS already.