So I know I am a little late to the party, but I recently acquired a copy of Fire Emblem: Awakening for the Nintendo 3DS, which came out in April. If I’m honest I mostly use my DS for Pokémon games, but having played Fire Emblem on the Game Boy Advance, and having loved it, as well as other tactical games such as Final Fantasy Tactics, I had a feeling it would be a game I enjoyed.
So the first thing I noticed about the game is despite being on the 3DS the game looks pretty good, some of the cut scenes in the game look like they could get away with being on the PS2, but for a handheld that’s pretty good going. The backgrounds and character sprites all look great, and the little attacking animations you get when you attack an enemy look fantastic, and even though in cut scenes the characters don’t appear to have feet, its charming in the way it looks and presents itself, and when you are playing the actual battles themselves, you aren’t really concerned with how it looks, but how to stop your troops from dying.
That’s the part of this game I love the most, you can turn on Permadeath for your characters, which is something the series is famed for. You can turn it off in this version, but it makes the game a lot more interesting if you leave it on. The game itself is pretty typical of a Tactical RPG, and it doesn’t deviate from that formula much. You have a selection of troops to choose from, and can use a certain number of them, all of whom have different classes, stats and personalities. When you have decided who to send into the fray you move them around a gridded area to attack enemies. As you level up your stats get better and your weapon proficiencies improve meaning more damage, but after a certain number of uses the weapons well break, so you have to be carefully with your inventory before you start each battle. When you get a certain item and are a high enough level you can then change your class to an advanced one, which reaps a huge number of stat benefits but resets you back to level 1, although there is rarely a disadvantage to doing this.
You can also team up characters and have them travel together, so they support each other in battle. Doing this, or standing next to another character has a lot of bonuses to it too, such as increasing your hit rate, your defence, allowing you to attack twice or having them attack after you. The more this happens, the closer the characters get, and after a certain point you can have a “support” conversation between the characters which reaps even more benefits for standing with that character. At a certain point as well, if your Avatar gets close enough to another character, they can choose to get married and have children, who will at some point join your struggle and can be usable fighters.
This is only one of many interesting ways you can add characters to your roster, another is by coming across them in battle, where they can join you straight away, or will show up as “allies” whom you can then parley with and ask to join you. You can also use the 3DS street pass feature to receive teams of characters from other people who play the game. This is one of the coolest things about the game, and something I only discovered recently, after deciding to turn my spot pass on, and leave my 3DS on and in my bag as I travelled to work on the train. I checked later that day and found I had received 30 different teams that I could summon characters from to fight and get to join me, pay to recruit them, or just buy the items they had on them. You also receive free items and maps from quests people have that you might need. You can return the favour by choosing your team of people to send to others.
There is also, as there is with most 3DS games an element of cooperative play, where you and a friend can team up to take on battles and fight together for bonus items, and for a game that I expected to be something I would play when I was shut in my room by myself, I was pleasantly surprised by this.
So finally I’ll come to the most important part of the game in my opinion, and that is its story. While it isn’t the most complex tale, it is a good one. The main characters in the game are Chrom, the prince of his nation and your Avatar, who if they die in battle means game over. The story tells of their journey to protect the world from a magical threat using the power of the Fire Emblem. As clichéd as it sounds for a fantasy game, the story itself is well delivered and the characters are very likable, if you can keep them alive long enough to meet them all, and get their friendship stats up high enough to hear all the interesting conversations you can have.
Overall I’d say if you like fantasy games, or even tactical ones, and have a 3DS you should buy this game. It’s a solid game, with interesting gameplay and if you have Permadeath turned on, it makes each decision you make that much more difficult, knowing you could lose an ally you have levelled up and grown fond of, so if you have a 3DS go buy it. If not, why not, Pokémon is coming out soon, go buy a 3DS…
Lance
