Has anyone gotten bored?

[CrimeanRoyalKnight]

You both have a point: the freedom Awakening lets you have with your units, with the grinding, with the post endgame, basically lets you see all the game has to offer in one (or four if you want to try each difficulty and see how they change) playthrough(s). Its replayability relies in something that comes too late (children characters), and even that, some children can get screwed so badly by their parents it's hard to try the most interesting or different couples.

Unless you use hard or absurd (but understandable, seeing the nature of the game) challanges such as absolutely no grind (which, on anything that isn't normal, IS hard) or no use of second seals, the game is just so easy to manipulate, to abuse, to trivialize so that every PT feels so lame and same-y after a while (even if you marry different people lol). Even if you try to play it like a regular FE (like I did in my first PT), it just feels boring after a while (I remember I didn't want to play the last chapter so I just PASS'd them all).

The maps and the AI doesn't help: squares with kamikaze on them are repetitive as heck!

That's why the DLC maps are 10000000000000 times more fun and I sort of hate IS for that (but after all, I willingly paid for those maps and I have no regrets, so no big deal).

But, I still enjoy the game! Mostly for replaying maps like the PoR DLC ones which are really fun, and GENETICS ARE MY GUILTY PLEASURE.

I still plan on doing a PT in which I only do couples I like support wise, and that one better be enjoyable.

But sometimes I feel like if the game was linear and you had to choose which characters to marry off, then multiple playthroughs would've meant you could've seen different children every time, and that the characters would've had different outcomes instead of all the same capped green numbers... I blame most of Awakening's bore problems on its non-linearity.

I've seen people blame the series for its linearity and praising Awakening for its freedom instead, but I don't really get their point; the linearity in old FE games made you try different units, different skills, gaiden chapters, different outcomes for the characters, different supports, etc., in every playthrough, you have to go through more than just one to actually try all it has to offer.

The only things that can change on a full Awakening PT (complete with endgame and the like) are marriages, children and their skills.

I don't think Fire Emblem works better this way, I prefer to have a linear story with the ability to have different choices and the opportunity to ACTUALLY CHANGE THINGS my dear Chrom...

If this is not derailing the topic too much, what do you guys think about non linear vs linear??

Did Awakening's non-linearity really affect the fun factor of the game??

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

well that's an odd issue i have with it.

how you play the game in general isn't linear, however the tactics used for each main story map is linear.

[S_Cero]

Yeah, the freedom of this game does make multiple PTs boring. Its the same thing I fault Skyrim with, the fact I can do everything in the game in one playthrough kills pretty much any motivation to play through the game again normally. The same applies to this game, the only motivation I saw for multiple PTs besides difficulty was playing as the other Avatar gender.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

actually it kinda reminds me of some hacks i've played regarding what i've said.

in alot of hacks i disapproved, every map was designed to be beaten in one way with little change in tactics, the same issue is here.

[Siuloir]

actually it kinda reminds me of some hacks i've played regarding what i've said.

in alot of hacks i disapproved, every map was designed to be beaten in one way with little change in tactics, the same issue is here.

You've pretty much nailed it.

Awakening has the absolute worst map design in the entire series.

[Czar_Yoshi]

If this is not derailing the topic too much, what do you guys think about non linear vs linear??

Did Awakening's non-linearity really affect the fun factor of the game??

The fun factor? No, I find teambuilding to be great fun, even if 90% of my teams exist on paper. I've probably put more time into this game on notepad than on my 3ds, and I'm still around 800 hours logged. It's a nice way to cut down on grinding time.

The story? Oh absolutely yes. Please don't get me started on Paralogue 4's magnificent placement again. When doing playthroughs purely for fun I just skip all the paralogues because none of them are relevant.

[XeKr]

actually it kinda reminds me of some hacks i've played regarding what i've said.

in alot of hacks i disapproved, every map was designed to be beaten in one way with little change in tactics, the same issue is here.

Yeah it’s really challenging to steamroll other games with prepromos. It totally requires tactical skills. >_>

(p.s. FE games are easy. The only game I would classify as requiring tactical skills in casual play is FE12 and half that game can be trivially turtled with an op MU as well. I suppose it's notable that L+ here requires a different kind of tactics, for the most part. Also I suppose earlygame in some relatively harder FEs requires some skill too, though I'll argue it's most prominent in FE13.

Or insofar as optimization is concerned, it's relevant to all games, if we consider efficient play. But FE13 is certainly quite hard to optimize wrt to sensitivity in positioning, reliability, and exp optimization.)

Edited May 13, 2014 by XeKr

[Gazdakka]

Finished it once, 200 hours logged. Onto my final Lunatic+ Classic playthrough.

Game isn't boring for me, but I took a break or two. I rushed through towards the end because I knew It wouldn't matter since I'd come back for L+. It's pretty much the main game I play a 3DS for. Intermittently play some Bravely Default, but the hook isn't quite the same. Basically the only 3DS game that will make me stop playing Awakening will be Smash Bros. ... Or maybe another Fire Emblem.

But my 3DS time is also a real low priority. I have waaaaay too many console games I need to play and finish. Awakening's just a periodic side activity.

Edited May 19, 2014 by Gazdakka

[Roc18]

I literally played through it once and got tired of it. I like the GBA games so much better for multiple playthroughs. The support grinding stuff doesn't appeal to me.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I'm honest, FE13 never inspired me really except for Mustafa's death. The story is lame and the missions are all the same (rout or defeat boss). I have played lunatic classic and it was not really fun. I started to play on lunatic +. I'm in chapter 4 and I don't have the motivation to contiue it, because restarting all the time is just annoying. I dislike lunatic + in general. The broken skills of the enemies make me mad.

So I'm playing FE10 on hard mode once more again...

[shadowofchaos]

I need an intervention more than any of you.

I come up with stupid setups with no-support MUs or Lunatic+ before DLC is available for use for things that no one cares about.

...and 1500+ hours.

Chrom and Sumia's STR needed to be some very specific values here. Not to mention the weapon ranks.

Edited May 20, 2014 by shadowofchaos

[The Geek]

Well, to be fair, you've had the game for at least 10 months longer than most of us and you also have a Youtube channel that you need to make content for.

[cryogeist]

Yeah I got pretty bored of it, so I started up PoR for the first time, it's pretty fun

[Czar_Yoshi]

I need an intervention more than any of you.

I come up with stupid setups with no-support MUs or Lunatic+ before DLC is available for use for things that no one cares about.

...and 1500+ hours.

Which is exactly how post-postgame should be played.

Then there's the fact that you've shelled out more money than most of SF combined on this game...

[BrightBow]

I think boredom must have set in somewhere during the Valm arc. I got the increasing feeling that I was playing the same map over and over and the story was moving towards a twist that could be seen from miles away. Because of the first arc, it wasn't even surprising on how horrible said plot twist was executed. I ended up having to force myself to keep playing to the end.

I did try several other runs over the year. But once I put the console down, I never feel the slightest bit of motivation to start the game again. So those runs end up being orphaned before I even finish the first arc.

I also tried playing the future past DLC. I only managed to end the map but I didn't manage to save the children. So I went from battle to battle, support grinding and recruiting children, EXP grinding, money grinding, constantly having to keep the inventory stocked with random encounters preventing me from accessing the shops I'd like to visit, buying tonics one by one and handing them out to everyone one by one, until I finally quit in frustration after deciding that it didn't matter how good the map was when it required so much what can only be described as repetitive and entirely brainless "work".

Edited May 21, 2014 by BrightBow

[CrimeanRoyalKnight]

↑Those are things that bored me a lot too; on my first playthrough, the Valm arc and the Grima arc kept my interest to a minimum for how bad and predictable they were (it jumped the shark with Basilio's resurrection), I remember it was such a painful bore to go through them!

The challanges in the game are either too frustrating or require a lot of boring grinding (which turns them too easy and thus unfun, anyway), and the worst part is how you can exploit some things such as nosfetanking to make the difficulty disappear.

Many things in the game can easily bore a player that doesn't love it to death, so it's understandable if people get bored after doing all they could try.