So it's been a year since Awakening was first released...

[Soledge]

This is just to get an idea of people's opinions on the game.

I've yet to play it so I'm neutral in this.

What do u guys think of it?

[Dwarfishh]

It was a very good game, with some great new ideas, maybe somewhat lacking in their execution. Pair up is a cool feature, if a tad OP, and I think the support system in this is cool, gaining support points by actually helping people, as opposed to standing near them, or being in the same battle. A lot of the characters were quite memorable, in my opinion, even if the story was a pretty poor on the whole. The skill system was good, but needs some balancing, and generations are back, even if it is in a weird manner. If the next game brought back some balance to the formula (and fixed pair up), as well as having a better story, I reckon it could well be the best in the series.

[Hamicsat]

In a vacuum, it's a great game; IS made it, that's sort of a given. One of the main reasons that I bought a 3DS, all things considered. Compared to the rest of the series, I feel like it falls short of its predecessors.

To begin with, it has a TERRIBLE difficulty spectrum; Normal and hard can be cleared with ease, while Lunatic and Lunatic+ leave the player at the mercy of the RNG (unless you grind). I didn't like the pair-up system at all; instead of being a strategic option, it became a necessity. Even the strongest unpaired character is nothing compared to a pair of mediocre characters. The skill system was alright for the most part, except for the fact that class-specific "mastery skills" could be used by any class. Having Galeforce, Aggressor, and Lethality on all of your characters flat-out shatters all of the story chapters and most of the DLC, making the game boring as sin. Then you have to consider the fact that every chapter involves either killing the boss or routing the enemy, which gets stale real fast.

I don't like most of the cast. Some characters stand out to me (Maribelle's support get really good, as do Laurent's), but a lot of characters are utterly one-dimensional. The avatar gives his usual potato-tier performance with his constant obsession with strategy and training and complete lack of any memories beyond the game's event. Chrom has already been dissected in great detail; don't feel the need to talk too much about him. Lucina, supposedly a fan favorite, is just another over-serious character whose fears regarding the apocalypse fall flat given Awakening's upbeat tone. The rest of the cast seems to have a single gimmick done to death; Lon'qu hates women, Kellam is invisible, Severa is a tsundere, Cordelia's lonely, ETC.

Oh, and who could forget the Waifu Wars... allowing the player free reign to marry their characters off to whoever they please wasn't the brightest idea in the first place, but letting the self-insert marry actual characters is flat-out idiocy. Then, of course, we have that nasty problem of breeding super-warrior children who outpace their parents in all conceivable fields to break the game even harder than it already was.

But, even with all of this whining, I had fun. I suppose that's the most important part.

[arvilino]

It's a brilliant game, while it's not without it's flaws(certain imbalances, caused a bit by the stat caps and the last minute inclusion of DLC) it's certainly done a lot to existing mechanics(Supports, Attack Radius) to make them better and introduced new mechanics at the same time and also has the most content of any Fire Emblem game even when you exclude the DLC. A lot of the changes it carried across from New Mystery have been for the better especially in terms of accessibility to the game(casual mode), also no limit on support conversations per playthrough(One A rank per character per playthrough was never a good idea, nor was the GBA's method of achieving it).

The fact it was able to resurge the series falling popularity is pretty good too, but in general it's better than the predecessors and opens the way up for more interesting entries in the series with even more polished mechanics.

Edited February 25, 2014 by arvilino

[Anacybele]

Awakening is great, but it has a few notable flaws that keep it from surpassing RD and PoR as my favorite game. The story is rather lack-luster and the lords are boring as hell, imo. Especially Lucina, since Chrom actually manages to be entertaining on occasion. I do like most of the cast though, there are only a few characters I dislike out of them all. And pair-up is really fun even though it's a little OP. I love the marriage system and support system too. The Avatar is a really neat idea too, though it could be improved upon. And I love how you can recruit old FE characters via DLC and Spotpass!

Despite its flaws, it did come close to being my new favorite and it gave me another handsome knight in shining armor to fawn over whose name begins with an F. :3 (I'm into those sorts of male characters lol)

Edited February 25, 2014 by Anacybele

[Tables]

To begin with, it has a TERRIBLE difficulty spectrum; Normal and hard can be cleared with ease, while Lunatic and Lunatic+ leave the player at the mercy of the RNG (unless you grind).

I couldn't disagree more. Normal mode does exactly what it set out to do: Be a good mode for newcomers to the series. I regularly see people playing Normal and not finding it easy. It's at the right difficulty. Hard is for people with some experience, and is way too hard for most people new to SRPGs. It's a great starting difficulty for people experienced with the series. Lunatic is definitely NOT at the mercy of the RNG, it's got some RNG obviously, because this is Fire Emblem, but for the most part with good strategies you can comfortably clear chapters first try, with no grinding, renown, anything, at least beyond the earlygame. Experienced players will find Lunatic challenging, but masters can beat it fairly easily. Lunatic+ does just suck and is an RNG fest, I'll agree with you there. But the other three give a huge variety of difficulties, which is absolutely amazing and I wish more games had difficulties as diverse as Awakening does.

[shadowofchaos]

To begin with, it has a TERRIBLE difficulty spectrum; Normal and hard can be cleared with ease, while Lunatic and Lunatic+ leave the player at the mercy of the RNG (unless you grind).

I'll have to agree with Tables here.

That is one of the things, in my opinion, that Awakening excelled at.

And please, for the love of all that is good, kill the MU self-insert idea. FE will go downhill fast if it ends up being more of a waifu/husbando simulator than it already is.

The story is "good enough" on the surface, especially when I was playing it the first time through in Japanese. But under any scrutiny and it falls apart.

Same with support development. Think about it too much and you're going to ruin it.

Especially when most of the details of development are left in your head.

Edited February 25, 2014 by shadowofchaos

[arvilino]

I couldn't disagree more. Normal mode does exactly what it set out to do: Be a good mode for newcomers to the series. I regularly see people playing Normal and not finding it easy. It's at the right difficulty. Hard is for people with some experience, and is way too hard for most people new to SRPGs. It's a great starting difficulty for people experienced with the series. Lunatic is definitely NOT at the mercy of the RNG, it's got some RNG obviously, because this is Fire Emblem, but for the most part with good strategies you can comfortably clear chapters first try, with no grinding, renown, anything, at least beyond the earlygame. Experienced players will find Lunatic challenging, but masters can beat it fairly easily. Lunatic+ does just suck and is an RNG fest, I'll agree with you there. But the other three give a huge variety of difficulties, which is absolutely amazing and I wish more games had difficulties as diverse as Awakening does.

In fact there's that Iwata Asks interview where one of the game designers essentially said how they were intended. One of the difficulties(likely Normal/Casual) was made in mind that even non-gamers could play it.

Yokota

And we can't go without mentioning how Higuchi-san and Maeda-san applied themselves to adjusting the difficulty so their wives could play it. (laughs)

Higuchi

No, no…let's leave that out! (laughs) The three difficulty levels are Normal, Hard and Lunatic⁷, and they each play a certain role. Normal is recommended for people who regularly play RPGs, and we can recommend it to beginners. On the other hand, we want true masters of Fire Emblem to play in Lunatic!

Edited February 25, 2014 by arvilino

[Shuuda]

Brilliant game, no doubt about it, but not really my favourite in the series either. I think the pair up mechanic slightly trivalised the difficulty, the supports were pretty underwhelming, and I think Fire Emblem games are better with a linear campaign instead of the more open map thing Awakening and Sacred Stones do.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Shuuda

[Lord of Gabriel Knight]

Oh, and who could forget the Waifu Wars... allowing the player free reign to marry their characters off to whoever they please wasn't the brightest idea in the first place, but letting the self-insert marry actual characters is flat-out idiocy. Then, of course, we have that nasty problem of breeding super-warrior children who outpace their parents in all conceivable fields to break the game even harder than it already was.

I have to say this is the fault of the fans, not the game.

[shadowofchaos]

I have to say this is the fault of the fans, not the game.

The unscalable mountains of Chrom x Rufure/Robin doujinshi on the internet wouldn't be like that if your self-insert couldn't marry him in the first place.

[Thor Odinson]

Gameplaywise, it's fun. Maybe not the most balanced, sure, but I believe some balance can be sacrificed in the name of fun, and FE:A does that well.

On the other hand, I've said enough bad things about story and characterisation of this game so I won't go into more detail.

Still a good game and I do enjoy it, but hardly the best.

[BrightBow]

I have to say this is the fault of the fans, not the game.

Not quite. Remember, IS brought back dead characters just so that Robin can marry them.

Bringing back dead characters does not automatically demean the events that lead to their deaths. Like, Star Trek II becomes no less awesome because of Star Trek III.

But the fact that the Spotpass characters support only Robin shows that IS saw nothing in them but marriage fodder. Robin is an obscure support for everyone but Aversa.

Heck, IS even destroyed the Aversa and Emmeryn we knew and replaced them with different characters who just look like them. Hence it rendered any potential that their continued existence had entirely moot.

Edited February 25, 2014 by BrightBow

[metalsnowman3]

Well it's definitely a great game, and I wouldn't be in this forum if it wasn't for this game because after shadow dragon and its weirdness I wasn't sure I'd ever play fire emblem games again. I personally loved the marriage inheritance system cause, like in pokemon, I like optimizing. They did a good job of at least making the secondary characters memorable unlike in some of the other ones where you recruit em and they just fade away in your bench . I do wish they explored the grima avatar self more, like why he went evil etc, but I also don't think every game has to have a masterpiece story of literary merit. Also, the avatar is not really you, it's really just a customizable character. Also, I did really enjoy the DLC stuff like future past and the goofy ones (and the horror with the kids in infinite regalia).

[Soledge]

Everything everyone has said so far is overall quite positive.

I suppose I have to buy it now and a new 3ds..... sigh, my poor wallet :(

By the way, how customizeable is the Avatar character?

[Cowboy Karimov]

Why didn't you put this in the Awakening board?

[shadowofchaos]

By the way, how customizeable is the Avatar character?

Appearance/Voice/Personal Pronoun in Japanese: Okay

Click here to see

Here's a video:

Personality-wise: None

[Soledge]

Why didn't you put this in the Awakening board?

To be brutally honest, I didn't think of it.

Appearance/Voice/Personal Pronoun in Japanese: Okay[url=http://www.serenesforest.net/fe13/myunit.html]Personality-wise: None

Thanks Shadow, the avatar creation came off as kinda limited though.

[Faye]

I think FE:A is the best Fire Emblem so far, despite it's story-telling flaws. The gameplay is excellent, all the replay value in leveling your men in different ways and experimenting with the future children, as well as trying new ways to derp around in TSON. All the skills make everything more interesting, and Pair-Up makes Lunatic mode an enjoyable challenge instead of a bothersome frustration. It's hard for me to go back to older FE games after being so spoiled by this game.

[arvilino]

The unscalable mountains of Chrom x Rufure/Robin doujinshi on the internet wouldn't be like that if your self-insert couldn't marry him in the first place.

Can't say for sure though, there's a bunch who really want Chrom to be able to marry Cordelia. I could imagine the number and demand for comics or fan fiction would be much higher if Robin couldn't marry Chrom, simply due to wish fulfillment if it wasn't possible in-game.

Especially considering how free the marriage pool is generally outside Chrom, Anna, Tiki, Basillo, Flavia Say'ri and Spotpass story characters.

Edit: Oh also I remember another thing I liked about the game, the flow of game play and the UI. Just how quickly and smoothly the game play flows is very good and the information display. The games before FE11 kind of feel slow a bit tedious in ways now when you have to check enemies non-HP stats on a menu page instead of displaying upon scrolling over the unit, having to watch the whole enemy phase which can take a while even with animations off depending on the game(especially when you're watching an enemy phase play out where you literally have no chance of losing).

Edited February 25, 2014 by arvilino

[RJWalker]

The story is garbage. The gameplay is imbalanced but in a fun way, at least for me. Looks great and has a lot of polish to non-story related stuff.

[lazydoggamer]

One thing I found Awakening did really well is having a ton of replay value. I usually played through the previous games once but this one I found myself replaying again and again.

[Cowboy Karimov]

The story is garbage. The gameplay is imbalanced but in a fun way, at least for me. Looks great and has a lot of polish to non-story related stuff.

Mm-hmm.

[Junkhead]

It's a great game, in my opinion. I have alot of fun with it, and that has to do with how developed the game is...of course, balance and difficulty-wise, it's pretty bad there. But the game mixes things from other game and innovative things, making it great.

I dislike what the fandom seems to have become here on SF, though. The whole, "Dating Sim" thing got a bit out of hand. I don't think I've seen anywhere as much shipping going on in other FEs as it does here, and the thing I dislike the most, is the whole "waifu-ism" crap that hit like a wave. At least here on SF (the only FE forum I come to).

[PM ME MARIANNE ART]

I like Awakening, but it has a lot of stuff to improve on. The story and characters definitely needed refinement, and pair up could be less broken. Overall, I still have a lot of fun coming up with challenges and stuff for myself while playing it, but it's nowhere near the best.

Sure the fanbase can be a problem, but I just ignore it and it doesn't have too much to do with the game itself, so I don't factor that in.