How to improve Fire Emblem Awakening

[LightLelouch]

I enjoyed Fire Emblem Awakening overall. It had its flaws, but is my second-favorite FE game to date. Here are some things I would've done differently (and hopefully are considered in the next game).

#1. Eliminate Grinding: Fire Emblem has almost always boiled down to resource management. As a player, you only had a limited amount of chances to increase your units' levels since there were a limited amount of enemies. This meant that you, as a player, had to plan out which characters you were going to use and had to avoid letting your more-powerful units suck up all the experience gained in eliminting enemies. It is true that a player could potentially grind via "arena abuse", but at least that came at the cost of having one of your characters killed during a chapter, thus forcing most players to risk the possibility of resetting the game (granted, I'm against arenas as well).

Fire Emblem Awakening makes the mistake of not only allowing limitless opportunities to grind all of your characters, but with no real cost whatsoever. Not to mention that grinding is nigh-necessary for all but the most patient of players on the highest difficulties (Lunatic and Lunatic+) since the growth rates of enemies units are much less balanced. Even still, there is the need to cater to casual gamers as well as newcomers to the series. Thus, in the Improved version of FE:A, I would have only permitted units to gain experience from non-chapter maps on casual mode; in classic, units would not be able to gain any experience unless it was during an actual chapter.

That said, I feel Fire Emblem 9's base experience feature is a fine and balanced substitute for arenas since there isn't a limitless amount and since players will at least have the option of training a couple of units without having to baby them over the course of several chapters.

#2. Balanced Higher Difficulties.

Although I've beaten both Lunatic and Lunatic+, it was only after countless hours of resetting the game as well as a modest amount of grinding. Although I feel I could've beaten both difficulties without grinding, I simply didn't care to spend that much time bothering. I didn't find Lunatic+ to be that hard to be honest; I simply found it to be tedious. There is a fine line between tedious and difficult. If you rely on strategies that take dozens of turns to pull off, hit the reset button alot and use classes that aren't too hindered by enemies with the counter skill, you can beat Lunatic+ without an issue. The problem, however, is I don't think that's fun; I think that's a boring way to play the game.

Thus, rather than simply increase enemy growth rates in an unbalanced fashion and simply opt to give all enemies random and overpowering skills like counter and hawkeye, I'd instead bring back the fog of war feature on certain maps (or rather areas if my fourth suggestion is implemented), add additional objectives on certain maps (i.e. route the enemies while protecting a fort), etc. I feel different objectives calls for non-tedious strategies and is a far better alternative than having to reset the game at the very beginning of almost every map. Moreover, I'd give certain enemies the abilties to use the dual-class feature and also bring back the fatigue feature from Fire Emblem 5. Lastly, players would be barred from using second seals or rental units. Essentially, Lunatic/Lunatic+ would be difficult due to extra objectives/features/limitations as oppossed to simply giving enemies random overpowered skills and maxed stats.

#3. Fire Emblem 4 Style Timeskip.

Fire Emblem 4 remains my favorite Fire Emblem game. The feature I liked the most was the obligatory timeskip that took place after chapter 6. I felt the child-unit feature in Awakening would've been a lot better had they gone this route.Essentially, this would call for changes in the story.

First, I would do away with the time-travel bit. Instead, I'd have it to where players controlled Chrom and co. for the first half of the game. At the end of the first half, everybody besides the MU (and maybe a few other characters) would get killed off by Validar (which, I guess, we could later learn that it was actualy a possessed MU that killed everybody instead or something like, I dunno). The MU would escape and would spend the next 20 years building a new group of Shepards, many of whom are the children of the previous group. MU, probably being too overpowered as a unit at this point, wouldn't be useable until several chapters of the timeskip had passed. Lucina would pretty much serve Chrom's role throughout the timeskip. She'd also be a more interesting character. ;)

Second, marrying off your units in the first half of the game would be crucial. After all, you're going to be using their children, so picking good partners would be a must. The MU would still be able to marry almost any unit throughout both generations, but wouldn't have a child if he/she opted to marry a second generation unit.

#4. Fire Emblem 4 Style Maps

I'd also bring back Fire Emblem 4's massive maps. I felt they added a lot more strategy to the game. You could leave some units to guard your castle while you had a different go off and seize another one.

If anything (and I'm willing to give in on this one), I'd make the entire game be comrpised of just one massive map 30x the size of a Fire Emblem 4 map. Players would be able to fast-travel their pary-members across the map, but not during a mission. At the start of the game, most of the map would be covered by fog with the exception of your castle. However, as the game progressed, you'd be able to visit more areas. In terms of strategy though, you may find yourself fighting two or three different simaltaneous battles on two or three different sides of the map.

Thoughts? Additional ideas?

Edited February 28, 2014 by LightLelouch

[Dwarfishh]

LIGHT MAGIC! That is all.

[PM ME MARIANNE ART]

This sounds like FE4 with FE13's story

I approve greatly

[shadowofchaos]

The MU would still be able to marry almost any unit throughout both generations, but wouldn't have a child if he/she opted to marry a second generation unit.

Lucina: I love you, Old Man.

in classic, units would not be able to gain any experience unless it was during an actual chapter.

And the Challenge maps would be completely and utterly worthless considering your skillset combos would only be available to MU and their children due to veteran.

The option to grind shouldn't be something you need to complain about, since it is an option.

What *CAN* be improved upon is forcing you to play to the next chapter if story tension demands it. No paralogue screwing around right after Emelina/Emmeryn died... while the actual game UNLOCKS an extra chapter right after it.

Lunatic+ demands insane amounts of resetting... Lunatic does not unless you're still learning. The learning curve is high on the jump from Hard to Lunatic... which is okay... but it's still pretty well done.

Lunatic+ is exactly what it says on the tin if you have the Japanese version: "For those with unflilnching resolve".

"Your morale will die. You will suffer. This mode is unfair. Deal with it."

Putting your own restrictions on what is "fair" (no grind Lunatic+) when the entire mode is designed to be unfair for you is just... meh. If that's your cup of tea, sure... but the BS is designed to be BS.

Edited February 28, 2014 by shadowofchaos

[viyut]

I agree with everything that you said here, but i think simply removing MU would make awakening a much better game. He is the main reason awakening has the worst story out of all FE games.

[Blademaster!]

#1. Eliminate Grinding:
Grinding is optional. You do not have to grind, and given Awakening's design, it's better off having the grinding included since the game plays more like an RPG than any other game in the fanchise. Additionally, grinding does come with a cost since you aren't immune to dying or getting a game over while grinding unless you play in casual mode, which is optional to do.

Also, FE9's base exp feature is extremely easy to abuse, hence why they attempted to balance it more in FE10 and FE12.

#2. Balanced Higher Difficulties.

While Lunatic+ is indeed broken, Lunatic mode is perfectly fine in terms of difficulty, and if anything, the game needed more difficulties between hard and lunatic as far as balance goes.

If you really want to improve Awakening without turning it into something completely different, all you have to really do is nerf dual attack and guard, have the damage bonus from activation skills not count towards HP recovered from Nosferatu/Avera's night, and fix the exp formula. I know a lot of people also scream for "more mission goals" when it comes to Awakening, but considering the majority of games in the franchise only have one mission goal, I really don't see it as being a terrible flaw that needs fixing.

[LightLelouch]

Hello there shadowofchaos! Like your youtube videos. You make some great points there and here! Still, if I may respond here:

Lucina: I love you, Old Man.

Haha. To be fair . . . we've seen stranger FE supports (Ephraim x Erika!). Besides, isn't Nowi like a thousand years old even if she romances the MU? xD

And the Challenge maps would be completely and utterly worthless considering your skillset combos would only be available to MU and their children due to veteran.

The challenge maps (on classic) would simply exist for one purpose and that's the challenge in completing them (and perhaps rewards to be found). Granted, I'm not oppossed to DLC rewards like access to the Dread Fighter and Bride class

The option to grind shouldn't be something you need to complain about, since it is an option.

I've heard this argument quite often. I can see the merits of it, but have never been persuaded by it. It's the game designers job to make the game challenging, not mine. As the player, I don't feel I should have to impose some sort of artificial difficult of my own design. Whenever that happens, I count it as a failing on the developer's part (which the developors appear to agree with, hence them getting rid of boss abuse on the higher difficulties). Granted, as I did do that throughout my hard mode playthrough. On my Lunatic runs though, I grinded (to a modest extent) since I'd rather do that than resort to the tedious tacics needed to cope with Luna+ foes.

What *CAN* be improved upon is forcing you to play to the next chapter if story tension demands it. No paralogue screwing around right after Emelina/Emmeryn died... while the actual game UNLOCKS an extra chapter right after it.

Agreed. Speaking of Emmeryn, I feel the decision the player makes in her regard should have actually had an impact on the story. Perhaps you get different chapters/characters depending on the decision you make there.

Lunatic+ demands insane amounts of resetting... Lunatic does not unless you're still learning. The learning curve is high on the jump from Hard to Lunatic... which is okay... but it's still pretty well done.

I disagree. I've played and mastered plenty of truly difficult games. As I said previously, what you've described is a lot more tedious than difficult. Some people care to do insane amounts of resetting (many before you even start the map) and consume insane amounts of turns on a single map, but I don't. To me, that feels more like a job. I play these games to have fun and consuming vast quantities is anything but (same reason I don't play MMOs). Maybe that's just me.

A truly difficult game is Ninja Gaiden 2 (master ninja). Although the highest difficulty may seem next to impossible, you can develop to skills to clear out entire levels without suffering a single scratch. It's a different genre, but the point I'm making is that a truly difficult game is one that requires skill to consistently overcome. I don't believe that's the case with FE:A's lunatic+. To me, that difficulty is more about time/patience than skill.

Putting your own restrictions on what is "fair" (no grind Lunatic+) when the entire mode is designed to be unfair for you is just... meh. If that's your cup of tea, sure... but the BS is designed to be BS.

I've gotta disgree with this. If the goal was to simply make the difficulty unfair, they could've done a lot more than what they did (i.e. only allow you to use 6 units for all maps, give all enemies counter/lethality/hawkeye/pavise/aegis 100% of the time, keep the level cap at 30, etc). The purpose of the mode is to offer a challenge, but like all games, the ultimate concern is fun. In that regard, I feel they failed.

Also, FE9's base exp feature is extremely easy to abuse, hence why they attempted to balance it more in FE10 and FE12.

This is true, but for balancing purposes, a better alternative to arenas and a much better alternative to bonus map farming.

Edited February 28, 2014 by LightLelouch

[shadowofchaos]

I've gotta disgree with this. If the goal was to simply make the difficulty unfair, they could've done a lot more than what they did (i.e. only allow you to use 6 units for all maps, give all enemies counter/lethality/hawkeye/pavise/aegis 100% of the time, keep the level cap at 30, etc). The purpose of the mode is to offer a challenge, but like all games, the ultimate concern is fun. In that regard, I feel they failed.

If you've seen Interceptor's runthrough, each of the randomly generated skills are designed to kill an exploitable type of unit in vanilla lunatic.

It's just that Hawkeye and Luna+ together on three units in a row kind of sucks.

Lunatic+ is meant for masochists. If you don't like it, then nothing requires you to play it.

Being that level of unfair for me is fun. And I get satisfaction out of it, even if I do complain about the BS a bit.

Lunatic is the "legit" difficulty. It's just that people are so obsessed about beating "the hardest" difficulty when it's designed to kill your morale but *STILL* be beatable... with a bunch of luck on your side as well.

It is meant to discourage you... not to make it completely unbeatable.

I sure as hell can't do it no grind... even if I did try to. I probably never will. But I still have fun with the mode. It is fun for me in a screwed up way.

Edited February 28, 2014 by shadowofchaos

[FionordeQuester]

I wouldn't change the mode either! Except for perhaps, lightening up on the first 2 chapters, or allowing you the Preparations screen after the Prologue. And when you figure out the secrets to it, it's PERFECTLY beatable, especially if you don't put the limitation of ALWAYS keeping someone alive...which I always used, but still!

[LightLelouch]

I agree with everything that you said here, but i think simply removing MU would make awakening a much better game. He is the main reason awakening has the worst story out of all FE games.

I see what you're saying and agree to the extent that he's kind of a lousy character (gary-stuish). Even still, I do like the idea of having my own unit as an integral character in the story. I would've gone the Dragon Age / Mass Effect route (if the budget permitted) and made the game more interactive, thus offering the MU a solid chance for some good character development. If they could do what Bioware did for Revan in KOTOR, that'd be great!

If you've seen Interceptor's runthrough, each of the randomly generated skills are designed to kill an exploitable type of unit in vanilla lunatic.

It's just that Hawkeye and Luna+ together on three units in a row kind of sucks.

Lunatic+ is meant for masochists. If you don't like it, then nothing requires you to play it.

Don't get me wrong. I get that it's a completely optional part of the game. All I'm saying is that they could've done a better job with it. Of course, I suppose the real issue here is the limitations there are in implementing A.I. If the enemies were just a tad bit smarter, I guess there would be no need to give them random skills and max stats on the highest difficulty.

[PKL]

The problem with Lunatic+ is that it is literally, an RNG fest. Kudos if you enjoy how stupid the mode is though.

[Integrity]

I'm very confused about this NECESSARY GRINDING point. Grinding on Lunatic will roughly fuck you, unless you mean grinding optional (note: optional) DLC that you can beat the game without.

[Faye]

I like the unlimited grinding. :< Awakening was the first game where I even dared to try Hard and Lunatic modes for the first time (in previous games I had cheats lol). Plus it allows me to use any unit I like, instead of simply "da best" units. I enjoy a game more when I use characters I actually like.

[Agro]

the story probably could have worked a little better if the shepherds had gone into the future rather than their children coming to the past

[NinjaMonkey]

Second, marrying off your units in the first half of the game would be crucial. After all, you're going to be using their children, so picking good partners would be a must. The MU would still be able to marry almost any unit throughout both generations, but wouldn't have a child if he/she opted to marry a second generation unit.

This is one of the reasons why I never want to play FE4.

#4. Fire Emblem 4 Style Maps

I'd also bring back Fire Emblem 4's massive maps. I felt they added a lot more strategy to the game. You could leave some units to guard your castle while you had a different go off and seize another one.

Strategy? You mean the "kill everything with your cavaliers and pegasi before your infantry can get anywhere near them" strategy, right? Because that's what players will end up doing.

[Lord of Gabriel Knight]

Wow, I totally disagree with the FE4 map thing, those maps were humongous and a total pain to get across.

And that one big playable map idea? Also sounds like a pain in the ass.

In my opinion, FE4 is the one of the worst games in the series. The maps were a pain, the characters were flat, the money/weapon management system was a fucking nightmare, the story was pretty much bare bones. the music was mostly a travesty.

An FE game based off at that would be a step back, to be honest. The one thing I agree with is the time skip. The time travel was done very poorly in FE13.

[Refa]

Strategy? You mean the "kill everything with your cavaliers and pegasi before your infantry can get anywhere near them" strategy, right? Because that's what players will end up doing.

Are we still talking about FE4 here? I couldn't tell because what you're saying is applicable to pretty much every FE game.

WRT the OP, I wouldn't mind a mode that disallowed grinding (maybe combine that with the Ironman Mode I wish made it into FE), but I think that option is there to stay for the most part because it makes the game series more accessible. And as long as it's optional, I don't particularly mind either.

Edited February 28, 2014 by Refa

[NinjaMonkey]

Yes, but FE4 takes it to extreme levels.

Edited February 28, 2014 by NinjaMonkey

[Dandragon]

I'd just like a difficulty mode between normal and hard. At least, I think I do. Or maybe I don't...

(I personally would like it so that the Children's hair colors didn't change depending on the father parent because sometimes the hair color really drives me crazy.)

As for gameplay, I much rather prefer character specific skills rather than class skills, as it gives a sense of individuality.

Difficulty modes are optional. I'd do Easy mode all the time if I didn't feel like it was complete overkill, yet even with hard mode, I still feel kinda left out in hard mode. Of course, I've never really gotten too far into it because I'm just getting bored of the game.

As for supports, I never realised how god damn limited some of the supports are in terms of same-sex. And it really just pisses me off sometimes. Why is it that the Avatar can support with everyone, but not someone like, say, Chrom. You know, Chrom. The guy LEADING the ARMY. The ACTUAL MAIN CHARACTER. They didn't even think to have him support with Emmyren. Because THAT wouldn't make ANY sense!

Also, Light magic and Bishops returning would be nice. Some of the classes I find in this game I really just do not get or care for. Griffon Knight and Dark Knight in particular.

I'm sort of on the same level with ShadowOfChaos/Reysian/Rey/whatever the fuck he feels like he should be called. I prefer characters to be they're original classes. Although I still think Inigo should have been a Myrmid-wait no I don't.

All in all, this game was just made for fanservice, and despite how well they polished the looks, the story elements could be better thought out. However I wouldn't call it the worst FE story ever.

[PM ME MARIANNE ART]

This is one of the reasons why I never want to play FE4.

Strategy? You mean the "kill everything with your cavaliers and pegasi before your infantry can get anywhere near them" strategy, right? Because that's what players will end up doing.

That's technically not right. Some of your best combat units are Levin, Holyn, and Ayra.

[Interceptor]

I hate to pile on, but Awakening's grinding opportunities -- to the extent that they even exist -- take next to nothing to avoid in terms of effort. It's not like you have to slap away EXP while you're busy playing the game; you sort of have to go out of your way to power-level.

When I was a kid, I played with Legos. They came with directions, but I could totally use the pirate ship parts together with the space ship, and at no point did a Danish lawyer crash through the window and serve me with a Cease and Desist order. I did not dilute the value of the franchise by giving a cutlass to a man in a space suit.

In terms of Lunatic+, there are a couple of tweaks that I would personally make here and there (I'd introduce Pavise+ and Aegis+ earlier, for one) to smooth out the early stages, but on the whole the mode is well done. Lunatic+ is roughly what you'd get if you tried to unravel all of the most popular classic Fire Emblem strategies. Most of the maps in Awakening are puzzles in disguise (the designers were more clever with unit placement, enemies, terrain and such than people give them credit for), and Lunatic+ is one giant meta-puzzle that forces you to alter your tactics on the fly. They've never done something quite like this before, and I hope that it comes back in a future title.

Somewhat tangential to this, is that while Lunatic+ is pretty hard, part of that difficulty has nothing to do with the mode: it's a side-effect of some nonsense rule that someone made for themselves. For example, L+ gets a hell of a lot easier if you actually let characters die for real, as mentioned earlier in the thread.

[tuvarkz]

Give Galeforce to Bow Knights.

[Lofrof]

More Cowbell.

[kdports]

I enjoyed Fire Emblem Awakening overall. It had its flaws, but is my second-favorite FE game to date. Here are some things I would've done differently (and hopefully are considered in the next game).

#1. Eliminate Grinding: Fire Emblem has almost always boiled down to resource management. As a player, you only had a limited amount of chances to increase your units' levels since there were a limited amount of enemies. This meant that you, as a player, had to plan out which characters you were going to use and had to avoid letting your more-powerful units suck up all the experience gained in eliminting enemies. It is true that a player could potentially grind via "arena abuse", but at least that came at the cost of having one of your characters killed during a chapter, thus forcing most players to risk the possibility of resetting the game (granted, I'm against arenas as well).

Fire Emblem Awakening makes the mistake of not only allowing limitless opportunities to grind all of your characters, but with no real cost whatsoever. Not to mention that grinding is nigh-necessary for all but the most patient of players on the highest difficulties (Lunatic and Lunatic+) since the growth rates of enemies units are much less balanced. Even still, there is the need to cater to casual gamers as well as newcomers to the series. Thus, in the Improved version of FE:A, I would have only permitted units to gain experience from non-chapter maps on casual mode; in classic, units would not be able to gain any experience unless it was during an actual chapter.

That said, I feel Fire Emblem 9's base experience feature is a fine and balanced substitute for arenas since there isn't a limitless amount and since players will at least have the option of training a couple of units without having to baby them over the course of several chapters.

#2. Balanced Higher Difficulties.

Although I've beaten both Lunatic and Lunatic+, it was only after countless hours of resetting the game as well as a modest amount of grinding. Although I feel I could've beaten both difficulties without grinding, I simply didn't care to spend that much time bothering. I didn't find Lunatic+ to be that hard to be honest; I simply found it to be tedious. There is a fine line between tedious and difficult. If you rely on strategies that take dozens of turns to pull off, hit the reset button alot and use classes that aren't too hindered by enemies with the counter skill, you can beat Lunatic+ without an issue. The problem, however, is I don't think that's fun; I think that's a boring way to play the game.

Thus, rather than simply increase enemy growth rates in an unbalanced fashion and simply opt to give all enemies random and overpowering skills like counter and hawkeye, I'd instead bring back the fog of war feature on certain maps (or rather areas if my fourth suggestion is implemented), add additional objectives on certain maps (i.e. route the enemies while protecting a fort), etc. I feel different objectives calls for non-tedious strategies and is a far better alternative than having to reset the game at the very beginning of almost every map. Moreover, I'd give certain enemies the abilties to use the dual-class feature and also bring back the fatigue feature from Fire Emblem 5. Lastly, players would be barred from using second seals or rental units. Essentially, Lunatic/Lunatic+ would be difficult due to extra objectives/features/limitations as oppossed to simply giving enemies random overpowered skills and maxed stats.

There is so much wrong with what you have just said. First of all, like SoC said, you shouldn't need to complain about grinding, because its an option.

Lunatic and Lunatic+ are unbalanced because thats how its supposed to be. It is supposed to be unfair and insane. If you do not like it, don't play it. Simple as that.

You are also suggesting that we basically take FE4 and copy it. The reason Intelligent Systems changed so much is to try something new. CoD has been accused of simply taking a game and copying it. This is what IS wants to avoid. After all, some people who played FE4 would love copy/pasting the formula, but most people outside of Japan who have played FE4 would be annoyed.

[Icarusu]

i think a custom protagonist or silent ones always make the story harder and some times screws up.