Fire Emblem Awakening Review (Nintendo 3DS)

Fire Emblem Awakening is the first Fire Emblem I have ever played. My cousin has been a big fan of the series and has always told me that I should play them. This year, he decided to buy me Fire Emblem Awakening as a christmas gift so I popped it in eager to see what he enjoyed so much about them.

Right from the very start, I enjoyed the anime intro and character art. It started like most JRPG's with a very traditional plot. A war is about to break out and you need to defeat the villain to save the world.

For those of you not familiar with the Fire Emblem series, it is a strategy RPG where you obtain a cast of characters throughout your adventures. You get to pick and choose which of these characters you wish to be in your party to fight your battles. By the end of the game, I had recruited 35+ characters that I could mix and match into my party.

You have an option to play the game one of two ways. The first option, when a character dies, they are gone for good. Any story or characters related to that character die along with them. This is the way I chose to play the game. It adds a level of intensity to the game that I really enjoyed. The second option, when a character dies, they are revived after battle. This is an option for people new to RPG's or players who lack strategic prowess. Either way, the battles are intense and exciting.

As you play through the game, each segment of story is contained with a chapter. Chapters can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour to complete. I thought the chapter system was very well paced. It allowed for me to complete a chapter before bed, or if I wanted, I could play multiple chapters in a row if things started getting intense.

Each chapter consists of an introduction to the next step in the plot, followed by a battle, and concluded with a lead-in to the next chapter in your adventure. During each of these battles, you often have a general or leader of the opposing enemy force that you must defeat. Occasionally, you will just fight a group of bandits or thieves to continue on with the story.

While I very much enjoyed the story behind Fire Emblem Awakening, the aspect that I really felt pulled the game together was the character development. As you fight your battles, you are able to pair two characters together. If you have a character who can only move 5 spaces per turn and another character who rides a horse, you can pair these characters together to improve mobility in battle. I paired mages with weaker defense behind a powerful knight to maximize each characters strengths.

The excellent feature and shining point of Fire Emblem Awakening is that as you pair characters together during battle, they begin to build a relationship with one another. The more they fight together, the stronger they became and the more they assist each other during combat. Not only that, but their personal relationship and dialogue improve as well. Characters start becoming friends, and eventually, can even marry one another.

Once two characters become married, a paralogue is unlocked. Paralogues are side missions involving the children of the two characters. I have never seen this feature in an RPG. I found it very addictive experimenting with character relationships to unlock new dialogue options, combat strategies, and skill trees. It added some very interesting decisions in your battle strategy, but more importantly, a unique level of character development.

If you're a fan of japanese RPG's, you should definitely buy Fire Emblem Awakening. It is one of the best RPG's I have played in a long time and really reminded me of the RPG's I loved most back in the Super Nintendo era. Totalling 20+ hours for a first playthrough and excellent replayability, I think you'll find it's worth the money.