Nice things to say about Awakening

[Jotari]

Marth's a character from a NES game in 1990. It's amazing he even feels happy when he sees his sister again. Plot simply wasn't a thing people cared about in video games back then.

[RJWalker]

Pretty sure we are. Excuse me, he does suffer once, I suppose. He makes enemies out of Gra by running rampant over their nation. Otherwise Marth is a flat character.

I think you need to actually pay attention to the game.

Hell, PKl already pointed out Avatar, a character who actually fits your description far more than Marth.

Marth may not be the most developed character or lord but he's a lot better than the likes of Roy, Seliph, Lyn, Chrom, Marth in Drag, etc.

[Refa]

Don't get why people feel the need to bash Shadow Dragon to "compliment" Awakening.

The music. The artstyle. The cutscenes. The well drawn 2D graphics (which I'm a sucker for anyways). The battle graphics.

Buyable Rescue staves are great.

I really like Pair Up (and Dual Strike) even though the former is pretty broken. They made supports relevant.

The interface as a whole.

Someone mentioned it has a lot of great one liners, I agree with that.

Characters with unique classes. I always thought that was cool (like Walhart). Also Dread Fighter looks awesome. Actually, a lot of the DLC looks interesting, but /money.

I liked how generic enemies had portraits. Even if the game's story didn't do it, I felt this did a better job at making enemies more human.

Spotpass was really cool, it's very nice to be able to download your favorite FE heroes and use them even if the actual implementation was a bit sloppy (but not bad).

Also it doesn't have Perfect Prince Marth, who never suffers any consequences nor faces hardships for his decisions, so that's a plus.

Actually it does have Marth...

[Anacybele]

Imo, the only thing Awakening does better than Shadow Dragon, as far as I know, is art style. The DS games' art style is just HORRIBLE. I haven't played much of Shadow Dragon though, I was turned off because of being forced to sacrifice people. I should pick my file back up someday though, the story is probably far better than Awakening's excuse for a plot.

The only thing that would REALLY improve Awakening though, imo, IS a better story. One of Tellius quality. Tellius has the best FE story, imo.

[Jotari]

Tellius has the best FE story, imo.

Have you played either of the Jugdral games?

[Constable Reggie]

Imo, the only thing Awakening does better than Shadow Dragon, as far as I know, is art style. The DS games' art style is just HORRIBLE.

I disagree. I find SD's art style to be far, far more interesting and unique than Awakening's (barring the full body artworks, which don't even adhere to the game's art style). There's a sort of regal look to it that makes it stand out, whereas Awakening's is just typical anime style.

Edited June 6, 2014 by Constable Reggie

[Anacybele]

The DS games' in-game portraits look so lifeless and dull. Nobody seems to have emotion. Awakening's portraits are full of life and emotion, even if it is anime style. And personally, I'm fond of some anime styles.

[Integrity]

Plot simply wasn't a thing people cared about in video games back then.

...?

I mean, besides the fact that everybody faps to the "great rpgs" of the early '90s like Fallout and Planescape (that might have been a little later, i don't remember) and the SNES ones and Wasteland and the entire Ultima series?

[Jotari]

...?

I mean, besides the fact that everybody faps to the "great rpgs" of the early '90s like Fallout and Planescape (that might have been a little later, i don't remember) and the SNES ones and Wasteland and the entire Ultima series?

There are always exceptions but on the whole back then even RPGS tended to be very straight forward go to places A through D to get magic orbs that do stuff. Plot was genuinely relegated to information in instruction manuals and not the game itself. That's not a particularly bad thing it's just that at least until the SNES hit a story simply wasn't something that needed to be in every game.

(oh and while Fallout might look quite dated at this stage, it came out in 1997 when we were already getting games like Metal Gear Solid that were almost primarily about the story)

Edited June 6, 2014 by Jotari

[Integrity]

But I mean, games are kinda still that way. I guess there's more focus on plot now than there was in nineteen eighty whatever, but to say that people didn't care about plot in video games back then is kind of a silly generalization.

[RJWalker]

I think the more appropriate thing to say would be that most people didn't care of the game didn't have much of a story rather than not caring about stories in video games at all.

[Integrity]

That latches onto the wrong word. The word I'm hanging on is "most" since it implies that (as compared to today where we demand aaa+ plots in our calls of duty) we just didn't care about plot and only cared about gameplay back then. I don't think the customer paradigm has shifted all that much.

[Jotari]

But I mean, games are kinda still that way. I guess there's more focus on plot now than there was in nineteen eighty whatever, but to say that people didn't care about plot in video games back then is kind of a silly generalization.

Yeah I guess my phrasing was a little extreme. But there has been a noticeable shift in the level of focus when comparing games in the 80s to games in the 2000s. Point is Marth's era is different. It's like comparing Firion as a character to Zidane in Final Fantasy. Even in the updated remake the game is presented as less of a character study and more like a historical text. We hear in the narrative that Marth feels sad when he takes back Altea but the way the game is presented we don't get to see it so much. The dialogue in Shadow Dragon isn't all that different from the pre chapter narration. The only goal it's concerned about is passing the information that needs to be presented. The characters use really non standard magniloquent speech with the purpose to convey the context of where they're in. I'm glad that they took things this way in Shadow Dragon because they really didn't have a whole lot to work with in the first place.

Edited June 6, 2014 by Jotari

[Integrity]

I think there's only been a shift in the potential to allocate resources. Wasteland was hugely based on story, but the story had to be told in the form of a literal book (i own this book) that came with the game, and the game would say "read passage 4 point x" or whatever to get you up to speed on the exposition, since the floppies couldn't hold all that text. Now, hell, we can throw Mass Effect together and have what amounts to a 30 hour movie on a game disc. EDIT: Point is, the difference now is that developers can make the huge story game with any sort of gameplay, where they really didn't have the computing resources to do both in 198x.

These days the games that sell amazingly are still the games with light or ignorable plots. Skyrim! Who cares about the plot, it's all about the stealing and murdering and stuff. Call of Duty! Everybody agrees the singleplayer story is junk, but here we are. There are still exceptions, natch, but the mainstream consumer focus hasn't moved all that much.

Edited June 6, 2014 by Integrity

[Siuloir]

I think you need to actually pay attention to the game.

Hell, PKl already pointed out Avatar, a character who actually fits your description far more than Marth.

Marth may not be the most developed character or lord but he's a lot better than the likes of Roy, Seliph, Lyn, Chrom, Marth in Drag, etc.

Thank you for the non answer.

Being the best of a bad batch of characters (which he isn't even, really - You tossed Lucina in there and she's more of a character than Marth) doesn't make Marth anywhere near noteworthy (Even if yes, he isn't as bad as Lyn or the Avatar)

But yes, at least part of that is a relic from the era in which his game was created. . If they were going to resurrect his game, though, the least they could have done was not make him feel like a Lawful Good cardboard cutout.

Edited June 6, 2014 by Siuloir

[RJWalker]

Thank you for the non answer.

Being the best of a bad batch of characters (which he isn't even, really - You tossed Lucina in there and she's more of a character than Marth) doesn't make Marth anywhere near noteworthy (Even if yes, he isn't as bad as Lyn or the Avatar)

But yes, at least part of that is a relic from the era in which his game was created. . If they were going to resurrect his game, though, the least they could have done was not make him feel like a Lawful Good cardboard cutout.

He's much more intersting that Lucina. You thinking otherwise doesn't make it a fact.

For example, the scene at the end of Chapter 17 in SD is much more interesting to me than anything about Lucina. And that scene is completely new to SD.

[Anacybele]

I have to agree with RJW on that. I don't even like Marth a lot and he interests me more than Lucina ever did. :P

[Czar_Yoshi]

Whoa now, isn't this topic about Awakening? I thought Shadow Dragon was a different game.

Something else related to graphics that I was very impressed when I noticed: the map sprites aren't actually sprites. If you turn the 3d on, you can see that some of them (notably Berserkers) are actually holding their weapons perpendicular to themselves. It's pretty easy from a programming standpoint but still shows great attention to detail.

[Baldrick]

Despite all the balance issues it has, Lunatic+ is the single biggest step the developers have taken in the FE "arms race". It challenges the status quo of common strategies, and is the first time in the series you cannot play the (exact) same chapter over and over until you master it.

[RightfulGod]

Hm... Introduces new people to the series?

Nice art, good music, cut scenes are pretty cool, some lovable characters, no feet, and Sugita.

[Roivann]

Feet are the worst thing to happen to FE since Lyn mode. Thank you based Intelligent Systems.

[Sweq32]

There are two things I liked about this game above all else: the characters and the DLC. I personally like every character in this game, and ended up using them all at some point. As for the DLC, I like how it was done. The first set with the old FE characters was an interesting experience (mostly due to the older FE units' interactions with your units), and all of the maps in the second set were fun to play.

[Kokone Kirino]

I'm quite new to the FE series, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, as I've only played two other games in the franchise. Personally, I liked the anime style of the characters (people here mention anime style as if it was a bad thing, is it because FE lost its uniqueness?). Aside from that I was pleased with most characters, safe a select bunch, and while the support conversations certainly weren't groundbreaking, they did feature lots of funny, cute or awesome moments (Virion, that guy is a beast). Gameplay-wise I liked its diversity, due to the infinite possiblities of pairings, skills and such. Story was certainly not its best point, but I guess it worked in giving us an excuse to do this and that.
Also, the difficulty isn't that easy for someone who hasn't played FE games before, Lunatic always gave me a pretty hard time.

[The Geek]

I never got the complaint of the anime style in Awakening because FE games have ALWAYS had an anime style. Seriously, look back at the first 4 games, the art style is so 80's/90's anime it hurts.

[Trickster]

Well I would have preferred they'd stick with the FE10 art style but that's me.