Hello one and all! Thanks for taking your time to read up about Fire Emblem and I hope you enjoy this review!

Presentation:

Not alot of people know about Fire Emblem. In fact, I only knew about it from Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Nintendo Wii. But I always wanted to try a Fire Emblem game, and so I bought it. Now there has been a Hard Copy stock problem which bothered me when I went to get the game, so you might have to either wait for a Hard Copy or just get the game off the eShop. When you turn on Fire Emblem Awakening, you get this amazing CGI cutscene. I was literally shocked that the 3DS could pull off some stuff like that. The 3D effect was well balanced in the cutscene and I saw no types of graphical or color errors. It flowed well overall. Next, you come to the game creation screen along with the game modes (I'll get into game mode's later). After you pick your gamemode, you enter this awesome character creation screen, and any game with character creation is a A+ in my book. You're character looks awesome. The Art is astounding and well detailed. Plenty of colors and shades along with unique ways to make your character. Heck, you even get your very own character sprite. Past the character creation, we get right into the game, but now I'll get into more of the art and beauty that the game delivers. The game is seperated into 25 (Technically 26) chapters that each have their own unique stages and battle layouts. Each one is VERY vivid and detailed. You can see the ocean moving across the beach as you battle, the wind rolling across the hills, and even the birds flying in the sky. Heck, I can even remember zooming in on the map to see a small chicken pecking at the ground, dripping water off ceilings, and little fires burning on stakes. Now that is first class stuff right there. When you initiate battle's, you'll see a fully 3D area you battle in (Unless you turn off battle animations). The animations roll out amazingly. You can even pause during the battle sequence and look around to see the sparks fly. Badass. The World Map is simple and fits the Fire Emblem theme perfectly. There's tons of things to interact with, and tons of stuff to do. Moving on, we'll get into the story.

Story:

The game centers around a young man named Chrom, who is the Prince of the Halidom of Ylisse. He commands a group of fighters known as the 'Shepard's'. They're virtually some of the strongest soldiers in their kingdom. When the game begins, you awaken in a field with no memory of who you are, and where you come from. After a while, Chrom decides to reqruit you into the Shepard's, where you become the group's Tactician, sworn to protect the Halidom of Ylisse with your life. However, evil being's called 'Risen' begin to appear from portals, and a mysterious man by the name of Marth come's from nowhere. What seems to be going on with the world?
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The story is... Well done. It's kind of difficult to saw how awesome it is withought spoiling too much. However, the story is great letting aside a few loopholes with a certain feature I'll get into later. I guarantee that you will get hooked to the story if that's what you look for in a game.


Gameplay:

Probably the biggest part of the Review, so pay attention. Let's begin with the battle system. You start with a Grid where your 'Units', or pieces you control, are on the field as well as enemies. Each Unit has their own unique level and stats. Each unit also has their own class which changes what weapons they can use, how many spaces on the board they can move, and even greatly increase stats. Every Unit has weapon levels which determine what level weapons they can use. The more they battle, the higher they're weapon level will increase, meaning they'll have access to better and more advanced weapons. Battles take place where you strategically move your units around the environment to attack and defeat enemies. Before battle, there is a unique Setup system that allows you to do things like edit your Units inventories, switch their positions on the Grid, and even save if your going to be experimenting a new strategy. On the Grid, every tile could have different effects on a Unit and even if the Unit can move on that type of tile. For example, a Knight can't move across tiles that lead on a Mountain. However, a Pegasus Knight can fly up the Mountain. There are even forts that can heal your Units over time, and increase their defense and other stats. Moving away from battle, I'll explain the class system. There are two types of classes. Base classes and Advanced classes. Once a Base Class is level 10, you can use an item called a Second Seal to change that Unit into a different Base Class. For example, my favorite Fire Emblem Character Kellam can change his Base Class into a Thief or Priest when he reaches level 10 Knight. Advanced Classes are the promotion of a Base Class. Instead of using a Second Seal on Kellam, you could use a Master Seal to promote him into one of his Advanced Class choices. You can choose General, which greatly increases his defense, making him virtually invincible to Physical attacks. Or turn him into a Great Knight, which greatly increases his movement on the Grid and allows him to use Axes and Swords. Even though a unit can only level up to 20, you can still use a Second Seal to change back to another class whenever you want, or start leveling the same class again.

There's more on Gameplay, I can assure you. Next up are Supports. During battle, you can pair a Unit with another Unit to greatly increase their stats. This is a essential way to level up weaker units. Not only that, this can also lead to Support Conversations, which are cool conversations between units, which increases their support levels. There are 4 Support levels. C, B, A, and S. S rank is special. If a Unit reaches S rank with a Unit of opposite gender, the Units get married. Later on in the story, you can even recruit the Pairing's child or children. Remember though, not everyone is compatible for Support Conversations. This doesn't mean you can't pair them up in battle however.

Onward to Streetpass features. You can use StreetPass to send your team to other players. When you receive a team, you'll see the leader's sprite on the map. You can visit the team to buy items, view their stats, and even battle. When you battle, you're pitted against the team the player set up controlled by a CPU (Obviously). If you win, you can recruit the Team's leader, which could prove useful.

Using Spotpass, you can download official teams from the Bonus Box as well as Items. These teams have legendary members. Such as Eirika, Lyn, Ike, etc, so it will definitely give you a rush of memories if your a previous Fire Emblem fan. Or, you could go to the Outrealm Gate which you obtain after Chapter 6 (Correct me if I'm wrong). There you can purchase DLC to keep the fun going with special events and story lines. You can still play the game without buying DLC, but I highly recommend trying at least one map out.

To keep you coming back for more, the game add's difficulty levels. 2 Main levels and 4 other sub-levels. The two main levels are Classic and Casual. On Classic, when a Unit dies, they die for good. No take backs. On Casual, when a Unit dies, they come back after you finish the level. The four sub-levels are Normal, Hard, Lunatic, and Lunatic +. Just a note, the game can be difficult if your not careful, so you've gotta make every move count.
Music:

I wanted to dedicate an entire section to music because, well... The music is SO GOOD. It captures exactly what your doing, whether battling, shopping, setting up your Units inventory, raising a Class, etc. You could play a stage just to listen to the music, that's how good it is. After you finish the game once, you unlock a little tab in Extra's that allows you to listen to your favorite tracks while getting a close look at all the Units you've ever gotten. Sweet, I know.


Fire Emblem Awakening Summary:

Pros:

- Awesome class and leveling system!

- Brilliant music.

- Amazing attention to detail

- Funny and interesting characters.

- TONS of content. (Estimated over 20 hours if you take your time!)

- HIGH replay value!

- JRPG style strategy!

Cons:

- No Online Multiplayer. HUGE opportunity missed.

- Not too much variety in mission types.

Altair's overall score: 9/10

AND, I'm giving this game a Badass Seal of Approval! If you love Strategy games, or any JRPG, this is the 3DS game for you!

Great review! I couldn't have done it better myself. Don't agree with brutally hard though. I played through Normal/Classic and the only reason I ever lost a unit was stupidity.

Thanks! Well, I must be a horrible Tactnitian then... >.>

Good review, but I agree with Portal. I am pretty far on Hard/Classic and haven't died too much. If anything, it was my fault. I imagine Normal to be a lot easier.

Changed that. I did realize that Con was pretty biased and when I review, I try to keep biased thoughts out of the games. Thanks.

The story, honestly I think, is such a weak point in this game - Even going by video game standards. The characters by themselves aren't particularly interesting either I think. Everyone fits some sort of character archetype and pretty much remains as they were intended. I guess people just enjoy those support conversations between them. I'll admit I liked a bunch of the supports.

Lunatic+ should be reworked obviously. Grinding being a requirement is bad design.

More variety in the types of maps and battles you encounter would be nice. Huge open fields aren't particularly interesting after the first couple of times. Route the enemy also becomes pretty boring. And honestly, I enjoyed fog. I think some limited turn chapters would be interesting - Chapters where you have to prevent a number of villages from being pillaged or saving people from across a map before they get killed.

I'd like the next game to have less of an emphasis on grinding actually

I agree, having 'Assignments' would be cool. As for story, obviously the game can't appeal to everyone within every aspect, but the story was decently solid with a few loopholes dealing with relationships.

That game is all over the place where I live.

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Must be good then right?

Bump so that people that can see this awesome Review still.

Great review.

Checking out the full version real soon. Much looking forward to this game as it's my first ever Fire Emblem game as well.

Didn't even know it had an character creation feature, makes me even more excited.

Wow, I hadn't even realized they got rid of fog until now.

Thanks! I plan on reviewing other games too.



Agreed. Fog was so cool.