Fire Emblem Awakening Review and Thoughts.

[RoyLKing]

This review will contain spoilers, so avoid this if you don't want to see spoilers.

Ahh, Fire Emblem Awakening, the game that reawakened the series. Today I'll be releasing my angry ra- err, I'll be reviewing this game, and my review will be in sections: Story and Characters, Music and Design, and Gameplay. I'll start off with story since I wanna get that out of the way.

STORY: Now this section won't really affect the final score much since gameplay is the most important thing in a game and not a story, unless you're a visual novel like phoenix wright (though awakening isn't really far from being one).

I'll start off with the beginning and the Plegia arc: When you first start the game, you'll start off with Robin and Chrom fighting Valtar in a quick pre-chapter 1 mission, after defeating him, Robin starts getting fuzzy and kills off Chrom, Chrom then tells him that it's not his fault and that he needs to escape, an interesting way to start the game, but it added nothing gameplay wise. Robin gets found in a field and joins Chrom and the Shepards. The next chapters are a bit fillery and kind of painful to go through, then we get introduced to the first villain of the game, Gangrel. I actually find Gangrel to be a decent villain myself honestly, I'm a fan of his design and voice and he actually manages to be a hate-able villain, but in a good way, you hate him because he's a person who did horrible things, but not because he generally sucks, if you get what I'm trying to say here, he also doesn't do what he does for the sake of being evil, he has his motives too. Either way, after we get introduced and free Marribelle from the clutches of Gangrel, we learn that Emmerlyn is suppose to be killed tonight in an attempt of assassination, lead by Valtar, the loser Robin and Chrom defeated in the beginning of the game, he loses again of course, history changed according to "Totally not a girl" Marth, and we get a glimpse of Grima, I found that glimpse to be an interesting way to kind of introduce him to be honest. Emmerlyn gets kidnapped by Gangrel's army and Chrom goes to free her before she's executed in public. Chrom fights his way through to Emm, but ends up in an unwinnable situation, Gangrel then offers Chrom a choice, to give him the Fire Emblem so he can give Emm back to him, or to Sacrifice Emm instead. That puts Chrom in a difficulty choice where he's truly conflicted between saving his sister and keeping Ylisse under her rule, or giving up the Fire Emblem and not being able to use if a dangerous event happens, Chrom decides to save Emm to keep her with her people and Family, but then, Emm decides to throw a speech to Chrom and the people of Plegia and sacrifice herself for them. The others get forced to escape so they wouldn't die, but they get stopped by Mustafa. the scene shows the effect of Emm's death on the people of Plegia and how they had enough of this, the theme "Don't speak her name!" fits the mood really well too, after they retreat they come back to finish off the Mad King Gangrel. Overall, the Plegia arc is decent in my opinion for having good world-building of Plegia, having Gangrel, and how well done Emm's death was executed.

Next on, the Valm arc: I'm pretty sure most of us can agree this arc was unnecessary and filler, this arc was pretty rushed too, Say'ri was very bland and was just inserted in even though she wasn't needed, Tiki's appearance was unnecessary and too short and caused plot holes to the story of awakening if you're familiar with FE3, and Excellus was.... There (Though he provided me a couple of laughs), as for Walhart, he could've used better build-up to him, the build-up he got was ruined easily by the next chapter when you face against him, he doesn't appear much to be talked about too so he won't have many moments to be remembered by, heck his appearance should've been shorter since him retreating to the Castle made no sense. As for the pros of this arc, it gives Robin more role than being a self-insert, the scene of Basilio's death was actually pretty good (until later), and it gave him characterization too, Yen'fay as a pretty interesting character and had a great design to him, and Walhart's conversation with Chrom was pretty good. In the end, the valm arc is meh at best and bad at worst, the arc could've been better if it was shorter, removed Say'ri, and gave Walhart better build-up to match his small appearance.

As for the final arc: It's absolute shit, anyone who played the arc and has a working mind that can think properly will realize how rushed and shitty this arc is, it has characters being inconsistent, it ruins Basilio's death, it gives us rushed horrible explanations, it has plot holes, it doesn't explain some stuff, ect. The valm arc was rushed but it wasn't horrible, this is Fates' story level of horrible, it really could've used some expanding to explain stuff more properly and explain stuff that aren't explained, plus it could use a better ending too than beating Grima with the power of friend-ship.

Now that I'm done with the story, I'll move on to my thoughts on the characters of Awakening. Honestly, I'm really neutral on the characters of Awakening, there are character that I hate like Miriel, Maribelle, Sayri, Sumia, and Validar, I also don't like most of the children of awakening due to most of them being one-dimensional, but I like characters like Herny, Gregor, Gangrol, and Yan'fey a lot. The supports of awakening are less slice of life than Fates so that's good. As for how I feel about the main characters:

Chrom: Honestly, I like Chrom, his character is pretty good and is a bit different than other lords, he's willing to slice down an enemy without hesitating, he also isn't naive like other lords in the series, but he can be a bit too trusting, though not Corrin levels of trusting horrible. (I'm not counting his role in the final arc because the final arc had inconsistency to the characters).

Robin: Even though he has hardly-ever different voice options and dumb build options (Fuck build 3), I like him. Robin as an avatar does his job well, he isn't too self-inserty like Kris, neither does the plot revolve around him too much like Corrin, he can have good supports and is a pretty smart dude, I like his design a lot too.

Lucina: People say that she's really bland, but I kinda disagree (not counting the final arc), she can feel pretty human-like at times and is one of the better children in awakening due to her not being one-dimensional or chained down by a gimmick. As for the Marth thing, it could've been a bit better, like having a better actor conceal her voice and making her stay as Marth until the moment she revealed her identity to Chrom. There's also the the fact that Lucina was a bit irrelevant to the plot, heck she didn't even have a conversation with Grima.

Next on is:

MUSIC & DESIGN

I'll it now, the soundtrack of awakening is mediocre, there are really great themes in the game like "You may call me Marth", "Don't speak her name!", and Gangrel and Walhart's theme, but most of the rest is average and forgettable, heck even the recruitment theme is weak compared to other recruitment themes in the series. As for the design of units, they kinda suck, the generic units design is bland compared to the Fates' ones and some characters literally use the clothes of the class' clothes instead of having their own, like Gregor, Inigo, Miriel, etc. Something I don't like. I do still like some designs though like the Trickster class design. Animation wise, the CGI cut scenes look beautiful and the battle animations are pretty good.

And for the one you people have been waiting for.

GAMEPLAY

I'll be talking about the hard mode version of awakening since normal mode is probably piss easy and lunantic is too wack. The battle system sucks, there are no consequences to using any weapon at all, like cons or debuffers, which means units like pegasus knights will be able to use iron lances without losing any speed, this presents one of the issues on why awakening is really easy. The pair-up system is also straight broken, there is no reason not to pair up at all since they basically just give you free stats without any drawbacks, and your partner can still attack and defend you at the same time too, plus the fact Veteran literally makes Robin easily able to solo the game. What about the map design, that has to be good, right? NOPE. The map design is the worst in the series, even Gaiden has better map design than Awakening, nearly all maps will have enemies just swarming you without any real format, they just go and swarm you unit. This game has little-to none terrain advantage too, FE4's giant maps really took advantage of terrains and spread them around to have the players make good use of it, awakening has either awkward placing for them or there are no terrain at all, which really decreases the use of strategies. Let's talk about the difficulty of the game. The first part of the game can be a little tough on hard mode (though not sure if it's challenging tough than unfair tough since I'm pretty sure putting Ricken infront of a myrmidon when you recruit him for him to be doubled is unfair), the first part doesn't have child units, neither aether, neither Inigo, and Donnel isn't in his god form yet, but that still doesn't stop the game from having shit map designs to actually enjoy and strategize in the game. Then again, Veteran abuse for Robin makes the first part pretty easy too. Beyond the first part the game is really fucking easy now, you start to get children and the map design starts to get shittier and more units will go and swarm you instead of having a formula, Chrom, Donnel, Robin, and a lot of units are pretty broken by now too, also Dark Mages tanking with Noseferatu is pretty broken, literally lots of stuff to make the game super easy. As for the end game, I didn't use second seals on my Chrom and Robin so they started to fall back, but since I don't want to spend my fucking time grinding for a horribly done final map where lots and lots of units just won't stop coming to swarm you and heal Grima, why do I even bother with the game then. The only real chapters that I actually enjoyed were some of the spotpass chapters like Aversa's or Emmeryn's where they present some strategizing to you and uniqueness, but guess what, these spotpass chapters are only unlocked WHEN YOU REACH END GAME, WHY DO I HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL END GAME TO USE UNITS LIKE GANGREL, DO YOU EXPECT ME TO JUST ABUSE THE SKRIMISH POINTLESSLY?! Maybe if they actually were recruited earlier, maybe I would actually have some fun with these maps and using these spot pass characters, not only till the last chapter of the fucking game. Also, ambush reinforcements are a mistake.

Overall: I give Awakening a 3.67/10. This game is really horrible in terms of gameplay, has a really mediocre story, and the characters are pretty eh. Do not buy this game if you're looking for good gameplay, if you want to check out the story, just watch someone online play it, you could save that money for an actual good gameplay FE game like Conquest.

If you have any questions or comments just comment down below and I'll be happy to reply.

[Captain Karnage]

yeah, the gameplay sucked

it was to easy to break the game

ambush spawns are a shitty way to increase the diffictuly by cheaply killing off your units you wern't prepared for

and maps are the worst in the series

I did like how the skill system worked in this game though

[RoyLKing]

yeah, the gameplay sucked

it was to easy to break the game

ambush spawns are a shitty way to increase the diffictuly by cheaply killing off your units you wern't prepared for

and maps are the worst in the series

I did like how the skill system worked in this game though

it wasn't really gameplay-adding much, more of gameplay breaking

skills were managed better in Fates