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The Reason for the Problems With Awakening


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@Irysa: They didn't escape because Hardin was being incompetent. When I say that they escaped I mean that they managed to both reach their destination fast enough and cover their backs from Hardin's forces well enough to give them the slip. I mean, you did play through that battle at least once, right? Marth and his allies didn't waltz away, they simply managed to make it by the skin of their teeth.

Meanwhile, Hardin just stands in the top-right corner of the map, doing nothing. If Astram wasn't recruitable, a lot of drama would go to waste.

Demonstrate an example.

A lack of motivation for the antagonists, none of the recruitable characters besides Say'ri getting screentime, the Gaiden chapters having no goddamn rhyme or reason, a Bad Future whose only real role in the story is creating Martha, no real stakes.

Haven't played it, wouldn't know.

Just read the scripts on the resource pages.

Edited by Delphi Sage
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A lack of motivation for the antagonists, none of the recruitable characters besides Say'ri getting screentime, the Gaiden chapters having no goddamn rhyme or reason, a Bad Future whose only real role in the story is creating Martha, no real stakes.

I don't see what any of this has to do with being serious? I agree that the antagonists broadly lack motivation, Walhart has one but it's never properly addressed and Validar is pretty one dimensional. Gangrel has something though at least, and in part that's why the first half is more compelling. Recruitable characters in many FE games don't get any screentime, so I don't feel this is a legitimate complaint, the Paralogues are completely stupid I entirely agree. I'm not sure how the Bad Future's only role in the story is creating Lucina, because it directly ties into changing events and then having the whole inevitability of fate and all be a thematic element in the story. It's very prominent.

Also, no real stakes? I didn't realise the impending doom of the world didn't count as having no stakes, if you ask me stuff can't get raised much higher. Again, what does this have to do with the story being reasonably serious? If anything, what diminishes the seriousness is the cheesiness, not the things you've listed.

Just read the scripts on the resource pages.

Rather not, since I might buy some of it in the future.

I can't really do this any other way. This game emotionally hurt me. Everywhere I look in it, I just see shrewdly recycled concepts, neglect towards worldbuilding, and a script that cares more about boosting the reader's self-esteem than any desire to tell a story.

idk. I felt hurt and polarised by FE12 far FAR FAR more than I did with Awakening. FE13 is way less objectionable to me beacuse it is broadly it's own story with a dash of Archanean connections here and there, and doesn't try to outright demean it's own cast for the sake of a shitty self insert.

Edited by Irysa
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Tiki is not the metaphorical daughter of Naga. Tiki is the daughter of Naga.

Yes, it's not important to the plot but neither is TIki herself. Her role would have been better served by someone who actually knew Naga, like say, Xane or Gotoh. But we all know the only reason Tiki was chosen over those two is that she is more recognisable. There is no deeper meaning to it.

Still, leaving out the fact that Tiki is Naga's daughter is a strange omission.

Also, Lucina looks more like Seliph and shares more in common with him than Marth. In fact, the whole game would have been suited as a distant follow up to FE4 instead.

She's the daughter of a dragon that was known as Naga but she isn't necessarily Awakening's Naga daughter. She doesn't suddenly become her own mother at the end of The Future Past when she becomes that world's Naga.

Edited by arvilino
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a dash of Archanean connections here and there

Yet while Martha and Rei!Tiki are clear homages to FE3, everything else FE3 was has been stomped on.

They put a desert oasis in Pyrathi, a huge-ass divine mountain in Talys, a Water Temple in Thabes, a dueling ground in Flame Barrel, Ylisstol is obviously a rebuilt Milennial Palace, Lefcandith Valley was turned into a forest flatland, Plegia's castle seems to be a rebuilt Dolhr Keep, all of Altea, Gra, Macedon and Dolhr was turned into a freaking desert wasteland, while Law's End is just your average village, Carrion Isle was Olbern Keep's location, the Fane of Raman has disappeared...the only real similarity is that the Dragon's Altar is still around, and that the Border Wastes bear resemblence to FE1's version of Anri.

And the game is taking inspiration from just about all the games, not just 3. The Breeding system from FE4, the World Map and infinite class changing from FE2, the movement stats of GBA, the zombies and dual promotion branches of FE8, FE9's prep screen support convos, FE10's stat cap enhancement, FE11's lack of canto, magic trinity and rescue, and FE12's ditching of the weight mechanic.

Edited by Delphi Sage
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It's been 2000 years, it's not unreasonable for some of those changes to occur (especially given some nondescript calamity occured in the past 1000 years). Some are definitely questionable though, but I fail to see how that amounts to "stomping" on the lore of FE3.

Edited by Irysa
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It's been 2000 years, it's not unreasonable for some of those changes to occur (especially given some nondescript calamity occured in the past 1000 years). Some are definitely questionable though, but I fail to see how that amounts to "stomping" on the lore of FE3.

They still used Akaneia and Valencia as their world map, and did nothing with them. It's wasted potential.

It's like a game billing itself as a sequel to Chrono Trigger, and doing nothing to build on it, instead making to overconvolute what happened in the aftermath.

OH WAIT.

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I wonder what this game would have been like without children (besides Luci of course). I think it would have helped with some of the rigidity that L/L+ imposes on the player if they want reliable, no-grind clears.

Not true. It's perfectly viable (and actually preferable) to clear the game on those difficulties without using any children characters.

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They still used Akaneia and Valencia as their world map, and did nothing with them. It's wasted potential.

It's like a game billing itself as a sequel to Chrono Trigger, and doing nothing to build on it, instead making to overconvolute what happened in the aftermath.

OH WAIT.

I see what you did there.

But no, I don't think Awakening bills itself as a sequel. It bills itself as a game that shares the same world with some previous titles, and it does at least to a degree invoke that history here and there. That being said, I do largely agree with Brightbow about it maybe not being conceptually an Archanea game, because as I've said, the game doesn't really feel like an Archanea sequel in most respects anyway, it's only in some of the minor side stuff that it does. I can't see an instance of it actively degrading the history of the Archanea games, just periodically drawing on it as opposed to neccessarily retconning or messing about with established personalities. I'm inclined to think that the tie-in was partially done because of it's status as potentially the final Fire Emblem game or something.

Edited by Irysa
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its status as potentially the final Fire Emblem game or something

And that's yet another thing: What people call a "swan song" is really just a sellout.

Wait, I think I said that already...

Anyways, they could've set it in Tellius just as easily. Would help make Priam and people knowing about Ike seem like less of a plothole.

I meant that they never do anything special with Akaneia or Valencia's backstory. Akaneia had dragonkin, divine dragon sages, an entire country of desert-residing scholars. Instead, the only thing that's truly lasted is the Falchion, yet even that is questionable, since hey redesigned it for no reason other than an obsession for overdesign that the rest of the game suffers from.

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And that's yet another thing: What people call a "swan song" is really just a sellout.

I didn't say that they weren't trying to get increased appeal, I just gave the reasoning they tried to do so, as stated by the developers. I don't think they have a reason to lie about that, considering FE12 wasn't even released in the west.

Anyways, they could've set it in Tellius just as easily. Would help make Priam and people knowing about Ike seem like less of a plothole.

I'd rather Priam just didn't exist, and that connection is about as tenuous as the Archanean ones anyway.

I meant that they never do anything special with Akaneia or Valencia's backstory. Akaneia had dragonkin, divine dragon sages, an entire country of desert-residing scholars. Instead, the only thing that's truly lasted is the Falchion, yet even that is questionable, since hey redesigned it for no reason other than an obsession for overdesign that the rest of the game suffers from.

2000 years. I agree, more could have been done, and more SHOULD have been done. But I do not accept it as actually disrespecting the established history (minus some really weird positioning changes in Valencia...which are silly) so much as just using it to stand higher than it otherwise would have.

Oh, do you mean with Nosfertanking MU/Chrom duo with support units?

Forget nos tanking. Galeforce, Sol, Pass Sniper!Robin can solo the game. Fred up to chapter 6 and some occaisonal staffbots to rescue recruitable units and Morgan to help with 2 turning TIki's paralogue is essentially all the remainng help you need. I guess you have to deploy some filler fliers to hide those recruitables in as well.

Edited by Irysa
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Oh, do you mean with Nosfertanking MU/Chrom duo with support units?

You can do that, but it's entirely possible and fairly straightforward to do without ever touching Nos. I've done a run before where it was no grind, no DLC, no Nos and no life steal/regen. Basically, Robin/Chrom duo that primarily leaned on Veteran, Galeforce and a backpack full of Elixirs/Concoctions. It was surprisingly easy because Veteran is just that overpowered.

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Forget nos tanking. Galeforce, Sol, Pass Sniper!Robin can solo the game. Fred up to chapter 6 and some occaisonal staffbots to rescue recruitable units and Morgan to help with 2 turning TIki's paralogue is essentially all the remainng help you need. I guess you have to deploy some filler fliers to hide those recruitables in as well.

That's still essentially the same though, MU carry, with helpers. I'm under the impression that buyable Nosferatu tomes are poor game design, based on what I've read on the forums. I'm assuming that this is because they contribute to MU sweeping (as a Sorc). If this is the case, then wouldn't it follow that Veteran + massive reclass options for MU is also poor game design?

Edited by omega zero
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Oh, do you mean with Nosfertanking MU/Chrom duo with support units?

Man, I may rag on everyone boiling FE7-8 down to "Marcus/Seth does everything while Lowen/Franz mop up and Florina/Vanessa carries Hector/Ephraim to the throne", but at least their luck boils down to LTC crit procs, not 99% dodges and 1% crit Dual Strike procs.

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You don't need luck to solo the game with Robin though. It's actually pretty reliable. Foolproof on Lunatic, and just some brute force required for Lunatic+.

That's still essentially the same though, MU carry, with helpers. I'm under the impression that early Nosferatu tomes are poor game design, based on what I've read on the forums. I'm assuming that this is because they contribute to MU sweeping (as a Sorc). If this is the case, then wouldn't it follow that Veteran + massive reclass options for MU is also poor game design?

You don't need nos or healing as KTT has said. Rew did Lunatic+ recently actually with a VV critbuild.You need Fred early on because Robin isn't strong enough to solo everything, and you need staffbots to heal Robin or rescue random recruitables so they don't die, and you need fliers to keep those people safe. If you don't care about keeping anyone else alive then you litearlly only need Robin/Chrom and Fred until Robin is strong enough to solo.

Awakening's EXP curve is the problem, as is Veteran. Fix that and the game is far more balanced.

Edited by Irysa
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Whatever the problems with FE13 are, I have no idea. But I can still say that I literally cannot play Lunatic. It's too luck based, and it literally requires you to buy DLC to win. I can never get past Chapter 2. From what I've seen, you have to have MU up to at least level 7 with a bunch of stat gains take on every single enemy on the map alone. That is the worst precedent I have ever seen in the series.

Edited by Delphi Sage
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Awakening's EXP curve is the problem, as is Veteran. Fix that and the game is far more balanced.

This brings me back to my original point about children characters. Wouldn't this mean you have to rely on children characters mid/late game to reliably deal with threats, thanks to their bases/growths/skill inheritance? I guess this might be a hard question to answer, since it involves a hypothetical EXP curve.

Whatever the problems with FE13 are, I have no idea. But I can still say that I literally cannot play Lunatic. It's too luck based, and it literally requires you to buy DLC to win. I can never get past Chapter 2. From what I've seen, you have to have MU up to at least level 7 with a bunch of stat gains take on every single enemy on the map alone. That is the worst precedent I have ever seen in the series.

I can see why you'd say that, because I don't think Normal and Hard 'educate' enough or get players in the right mindset to handle L/L+. But once you do a bit of reading/discussing with more experienced players, I think you can gain enough wisdom to tackle L/L+. That's what I did, and I had a pretty good time in Lunatic no-grind after reading Interceptor's playlog. I did not follow the playlog move for move, of course, rather I figured out what the general strategies were and applied them on my own.

Edited by omega zero
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I can see why you'd say that, because I don't think Normal and Hard 'educate' enough or get players in the right mindset to handle L/L+. But once you do a bit of reading/discussing with more experienced players, I think you can gain enough wisdom to tackle L/L+. That's what I did, and I had a pretty good time in Lunatic no-grind after reading Interceptor's playlog.

The problem wasn't that I couldn't tolerate all the save scumming. The problem is that there's literally no way to train any of your units outside the ones that have to beat the level. That was what the fun of FE8 was for me: That every single unit I obtained could be trained into a functioning long-term unit.

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Whatever the problems with FE13 are, I have no idea. But I can still say that I literally cannot play Lunatic. It's too luck based, and it literally requires you to buy DLC to win. I can never get past Chapter 2. From what I've seen, you have to have MU up to at least level 7 with a bunch of stat gains take on every single enemy on the map alone. That is the worst precedent I have ever seen in the series.

You do not have to do any of that on regular Lunatic. I beat Chapter 2 on my Lunatic nogrind without doing any such thing as the water trick or whatever. It's Lunatic+ that gets ridiculous and requires benchmarks like that to make reliable. Lunatic also doesn't require DLC at all, you just have to either undeploy or be very efficient about exp allocation.

The problem wasn't that I couldn't tolerate all the save scumming. The problem is that there's literally no way to train any of your units outside the ones that have to beat the level. That was what the fun of FE8 was for me: That every single unit I obtained could be trained into a functioning long-term unit.

I dont play on casual and I don't savescum. I just think about strategies and try to execute them. You can train ANYONE in this game and get a usable unit, it's just more painful for some than others on Lunatic. I fulldeployed on my first Lunatic nogrind run, and used 6 first gen units, 4 kids and periodically had a 5th come in to help out and like another 4 support units in staffbots/olivia/rallies, etc.

This brings me back to my original point about children characters. Wouldn't this mean you have to rely on children characters mid/late game to reliably deal with threats, thanks to their bases/growths/skill inheritance? I guess this might be a hard question to answer, since it involves a hypothetical EXP curve.

No beacuse Robin gets ahead of the curve early on thanks to Veteran and that's enough. Children are irrelevant.

Edited by Irysa
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Whatever the problems with FE13 are, I have no idea. But I can still say that I literally cannot play Lunatic. It's too luck based, and it literally requires you to buy DLC to win. I can never get past Chapter 2. From what I've seen, you have to have MU up to at least level 7 with a bunch of stat gains take on every single enemy on the map alone. That is the worst precedent I have ever seen in the series.

To be fair you don't even have to use Robin that much. It's very possible to beat the game with a full team on Lunatic with Robin not actually even being one of your strongest units. Back a short while after 2012's Japanese release I already came up with a very reliable stategy to beat chapter 2 on Lunatic even with Robin at level 1, 2 or 3.

Power levelling Robin at the start of the game is just an unnecessary crutch, much like like Seth in FE8 or rigging Chris' level up gains Fire Emblem 12's Lunatic or Lunatic'.

Edited by arvilino
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I dont play on casual and I don't savescum. I just think about strategies and try to execute them. You can train ANYONE in this game and get a usable unit, it's just more painful for some than others on Lunatic. I fulldeployed on my first Lunatic nogrind run, and used 6 first gen units, 4 kids and periodically had a 5th come in to help out and like another 4 support units in staffbots/olivia/rallies, etc.

What does that mean?

Anyways, I just give up on this branch of the conversation. I play for fun, I have no credit card, and I lost my 3DS last year anyways.

Edited by Delphi Sage
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The laziest strategy is quite luck-based, but is also the most tempting because it's easy enough to just spend 10 seconds resetting and 2 minutes getting back to where the player was, instead of thinking things through, when it comes to the earlier maps. However, good use of positioning, Pair-up and Transfer take the majority of the luck factor out of those chapters. I've spent enough time tinkering with them to know.

DLC is not ever required to get through any difficulty in the game and there are multiple playlogs on this very forum that are proof of this statement.

As for training, you have to be choosy. Over the course of the game, depending on which units are used (some just work better together than others), 3-4 lead units and their pair-up partners can be comfortably trained. Trying to spread the EXP too thin at the start causes problems, same as any other Fire Emblem.

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What does that mean?

Anyways, I just give up on this branch of the conversation. I play for fun, I have no credit card, and I lost my 3DS last year anyways.

I'm saying that if you can't beat the maps you're strategically incompetant. You can train loads of units on Lunatic and basically anyone is usable, you just have to not suck at the game. You do not need to do anything abusive to beat Lunatic whatsoever. I play for fun as well but you are just completely wrong to say that the game requires you to buy DLC to grind or whatever or that only a few characters are usable.

Edited by Irysa
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The problem wasn't that I couldn't tolerate all the save scumming. The problem is that there's literally no way to train any of your units outside the ones that have to beat the level. That was what the fun of FE8 was for me: That every single unit I obtained could be trained into a functioning long-term unit.

Awakening was designed in this way. There are some chapters where it is indeed too difficult to train characters, because those chapters are meant to test the team you have built.

It becomes a matter of arguing if this is good game design or if the devs could have implemented the train-test model in a different way.

No beacuse Robin gets ahead of the curve early on thanks to Veteran and that's enough. Children are irrelevant.

I assumed this hypothetical fixed EXP curve wouldn't include Veteran either. But I get your point, and maybe with a fixed curve the children wouldn't outclass parents by such a margin.

Edited by omega zero
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