FE13 review by WestbrickIII

Review by WestbrickIII
"Irrelevant dissent"
A Very Brief Introduction

Close to a year back, I imported Awakening, played it to death, and loved it. Now that the initial hype and sense of newness have died down, however, I've found that my views on the title deviate sharply from the game's (surprisingly positive) critical consensus. Awakening isn't a perfect game, a great game, or even a particularly good game; while loaded with content and customization, it's a subpar package, and its innovations are brought down by poor implementation and questionable design choices.

A Tale of Three Stories

Taken collectively, Fire Emblem games aren't all that noteworthy when it comes to storytelling. Some of the plots are good, a few are great, but most are serviceable vehicles for the gameplay and character development. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but Awakening's story is ambitious, so it deserves a more in-depth look. Talking about Awakening's story (singular) is a little misleading, as the narrative is divided into three separate and self-resolved arcs with only threadbare connections between them. While there is a dark threat looming in the background, this often seems like an afterthought until the final arc rears up -- so what we're left with is a war with questionable purpose, a war with no purpose, and a scary monster.

The first arc deals with tensions between Ylisse and Plegia. The new ruler of the Plegian people, Gangrel, has gone mad from seeing his people suffer under Ylissean might, and vows to enact revenge against the new Ylissean regime. Cue war. One wonders why Gangrel is so bent on stirring up trouble when Emmeryn, Ylisse's new head-of-state, is such a complete pacifist that negotiations and ceasefire would work wonders. But Gangrel's jaded, he loves war, and he's a little unstable; these motivations are clear enough, but don't make for a particularly compelling villain.

This is usually the point in a Fire Emblem tale where the seemingly generic antagonist opens up about his motivations, which turn out to be more complex and sympathetic than expected. But because Awakening is bent on weaving an epic story, it's off to a brand new continent and a brand new villain. His name? Walhart. His aim? To unify the continent and defeat that same dark, looming evil as Chrom and company are after. Why doesn't he simply join Chrom's cause for the greater good, a solution that seems all-too-obvious? This is left very unclear. Walhart could have been developed into a raging narcissist intent on seeing his name written on the pages of history, but this never happens. He's an empty vessel modeled after Alexander the Great, but without charisma or consistency. Sometimes he's a reasonable guy; sometimes he isn't. Sometimes he seems interested in the well-being of the world; sometimes he seems interested in himself. Regardless, he's dealt with and it's back to the main continent, rending this entire arc pointless filler.

The final arc is notable in that it has the highest stakes of the story while simultaneously being the least interesting. The principle antagonist here is Validar, who is criminally generic. He's a Disney, evil-quid-evil villain who wants to resurrect a dark god for reasons that escape me. This archetype has been done before in Fire Emblem, but there's always something that resembles concrete motivation: power, for instance, or world domination. None of these options are on the plate for Validar, and his stilted dialogue and lack of tangible purpose lead the final act of Awakening to play out like a Saturday morning cartoon rather than an engaging fantasy story. A few convoluted twists later, the dark god is resurrected, one of the heroes makes a "noble" sacrifice that predictably lacks consequence, the dark god dies, and the credits roll.

One wonders what the storyboarders were thinking. If the goal is to tell a story about political strife, then have Gangrel or Walhart be the sole antagonist: flesh him out, make the player care about his role in the story, build up the gravity of the war, and make his death satisfying and meaningful. If, instead, the aim is to weave a fantasy tale, then have Validar be the sole antagonist: add some tangible motivation, and give his cult a semi-sympathetic, two-dimensional philosophy rather than evil-please. And regardless of which path is taken, it's deeply misguided to waste a third of the story on meaningless filler that's at best tangentially related to the main event.

Awakening's story aims high. It tries to incorporate elements of realpolitik, fantasy, and SciFi. It spans several continents and several years. But because of the lack of focus and direction (not to mention the vacuum of compelling antagonists), it stumbles and falls short even of mediocrity.

A Portrait of the Warrior as a Young Waifu

Since its introduction to the West, Fire Emblem has earned a reputation for quality development. Though I wouldn't call Awakening a complete deviation from this standard, its cast is quite the mixed bag. If you're unfamiliar with the series, take a minute to browse through some official character artwork from previous games; you'll notice some familiar designs: the perky cleric, the strong and heroic lord, the shifty thief, the aloof mage, the stern veteran... Both in terms of design and surface personality, Fire Emblem casts are a collection of common archetypes. What has earned its casts such a sterling reputation is that beneath this familiarity lies a great deal of development and backstory.

The basic formula is common character archetypes plus added depth -- and Awakening often forgets to do the arithmetic. Most of the characters display a singular quirk, and little is done to break them free from the chains of archetype; supports that feature genuine development are few and far between, leaving the player with a party of over-the-top, stagnant, and rarely believable warriors. This problem is most brought out in character marriages. Unlike past Fire Emblem titles with supports, in which characters can reach up to an A level with one another, Awakening adds a higher level of S where characters of opposite gender will get hitched. While it sounds like a nice addition, there is such a glut of S-Rank options for each character that most come off as cheesy and forced; most characters start out as stereotypes and end up as stereotypes with engagement rings. While writing out hundreds of engaging support conversations is no small feat, and while some characters are genuinely well-developed and interesting, the end product comes off as sacrificing quality for quantity. Thankfully, the localization and writing are top shelf, but it's an unfortunate direction. A smaller number of total supports focused on development and believable relationships would've gone a long way to bringing the cast to life.

Birds of a Feather

A common criticism of Fire Emblem games, one not entirely undeserved, is that it's conservative when it comes to change. The original Famicom title laid the groundwork for the series, and the formula has remained nearly untouched since. Awakening is comparatively progressive, throwing a major new mechanic (and reintroducing a second) into the mix.

The new mechanic here is Pair Up, which displaces the Rescue command of past entries. Any two units are given the option to pair during battle, reducing the number of units available to the player in exchange for meaty stat buffs (which vary by class). This is an intriguing new feature that opens up a lot of strategic flexibility. Units low on speed can be paired with mercenaries and myrmidons to avoid being doubled; units with shaky defense can be paired with a wyvern lord or a general to survive a few more hits; units low on movement, or who need to get somewhere in a hurry, can be ferried off by a flier. But there are no free lunches, and having those extra units available for attacking / healing / dancing can be the difference between a successful map completion and a restart.

That's how things play out in theory. In practice, the new Pair Up mechanic cashes out as an absolute necessity on any difficulty higher than Normal. Enemy units don't have access to pairing, so to compensate, they receive higher stats and better weapons. If the designers were attempting to make pairing a need rather than an option, they certainly succeeded. Reduced Pair Up bonuses would have gone a long way to making the mechanic feel a little more balanced.

Related to pairing are the new additions of dual attack and dual guard. If a unit is paired with, or adjacent to, an ally, that ally will have a percentage chance of attacking in tandem with the main unit or blocking all damage from an enemy. Paired Up units who haven't built supports between one another have a small chance of dual attacking / guarding, but once the player starts developing A- and S-Rank supports, those numbers can shoot up well over 50%. Dual attacking partners who land a hit also get a small bit of experience, so paired partners falling behind in level is less of a concern than it would be otherwise. What's the problem with all of this? Dual attack / guard odds are too low to be reliable yet too high to be uncommon, which makes strategizing around them a practical impossibility. In past games, a player could calculate damage several turns in advance without variance (pending an unlucky critical) and move his units accordingly, perhaps wishing to divvy up experience more evenly or keep a delicate choke point secure. Now, more than ever is left up to the whims of the RNG. Simply choosing not to use paired units circles us around to the fact that the game is designed around Pair Up on higher difficulties. And while this focus isn't a problem in its own right, the inherent randomness means mapping out a strategy can come down to, or be ruined by, luck. Strategy and luck don't mix all that well.

On the plus side, the support system is brilliant. Rather than have units sit next to one another, or be fielded in the same map, to grow supports like in past games, Awakening's system builds supports based on how often characters interact in battle. This includes being paired up with a support partner, being adjacent to a support partner during battle, healing a partner, or dancing for a partner. It streamlines the redundancy of the GBA system while preserving the strategic side of support building absent in the Radiant system. Even nicer, support points significantly increase critical evade, meaning that, with proper planning, a player can mitigate some of those unexpected critical shots that haunt Fire Emblem players. There's nothing I would change here, and I very much hope this system becomes the staple of future titles in the series.

The reintroduced mechanic is a welcome return of the generation system from Fire Emblem 4. When first-generation units marry via an S-Rank support, their second-generation children from the future will travel back in time and become recruitable in special Paralogue maps. The children also inherit skills and statistical growths from their parents. Silly premise aside, this feature is ripe for replayability and customization, since children can only acquire certain skills and classes from specific parents, and inherited growth rates can dramatically change a child's performance in battle.

The trouble here is that the feature is implemented poorly. Because the children come equipped with stacked growths and skills, they can quickly become the absolute best units on a player's team, and to compensate, they're tucked away in those Paralogue maps mentioned earlier. Perhaps to discourage the player from stocking up on a team of superchildren as soon as they become available, these maps flaunt the established difficulty curve, often to such a degree- especially on the higher difficulties- that recruiting them becomes a near-impossibility without heavy grinding. It's odd that one of the game's core new features becomes entirely optional, as this adversely impacts roster size. Not accounting for children, Awakening has the smallest cast in the series; if the player chooses not to, or is simply unable to (due to the high difficulty of their recruitment maps), acquire most of the children units, the number of available PCs shrinks dramatically. Another consequence of how the children are implemented is that, excepting Lucina, they don't factor much into the story. Considering that the children are sent back in time with the explicit purpose of redeeming the future, this is a blown opportunity.

Mechanically, what we have in Awakening is a plethora of great new features that are implemented or balanced badly. Children characters are prohibitively difficult to acquire on non-Normal difficulties and aren't integrated well into the story; Pair Up's buffs are too big to consider any other course of action; and dual attacking is too RNG-dependent to be satisfying.

An Imbalanced Diet

Awakening is a colossal game. There is an overwhelming amount of content outside of the linear story missions: random battles, DLC maps, SpotPass sorties, and traveling merchants selling rare items. Every character has a wide array of class choices, each with a set of learn-able skills, and building up / playing around with these class sets seems encouraged. For every required story map, a player might finish two or three skirmishes observing how Chrom fares as a cavalier rather than a lord, or seeing if he can't get those few extra levels for his Cordelia to learn Galeforce. Greater variety means more to do, and more to do means greater replayability. How could this be anything other than a positive?

There's really no nice way to say it: Awakening is an affront to balance. All of that optional content and player freedom comes at the price of even a semblance of balance or challenge that isn't self-imposed. This isn't just about grinding one's units to max levels, either (although that's certainly a problem): specific characters and classes so thoroughly break the experience that even the hardest difficulties can be trivialized.

Two major balancing problems come immediately to mind. First, dark magic and (more importantly) the Nosferatu tome. I can almost see where Intelligent Systems was coming from here: dark magic usually isn't very good in Fire Emblem and was due for a buff, only one class line (dark mage -> sorcerer) can wield dark magic, and only two units start off as dark mages. What was overlooked is Nosferatu, a dark magic tome that restores half of its damage output to the wielder's health and can be cheaply and unlimitedly purchased outside of battle. Stories abound of players building up a dark mage, stocking up on Nosferatu tomes, and completing the highest difficulties in a matter of hours.

The second balance blunder is your Avatar unit. Again, I can almost sympathize with the decision Intelligent Systems made here: your Avatar is a central figure in the story and needs to be flexible enough statistically to play as either a physical unit or a magical unit (both options being available to the player). Avatar's growths are simply too good despite this consideration, and he'll quickly become your team's unanimous MVP even with evenly-spread experience distribution. Worse still, Avatar starts with a skill called "Veteran," which multiplies all experience acquired when Paired Up by 1.5. This means that for every two levels a usual unit will receive, your Avatar receives three. Combined with his incredible statistical growths, it doesn't matter if you make him a dark mage or a knight -- he can and will solo the game if you let him.

There are dozens of other notable imbalances, but these two stand out because of how easy they are to set up and how trivially they snap the game's strategic component in two. A natural response might be to limit oneself and balance the game through challenge runs, but later chapters assume the player has either grinded or has taken advantage of broken options. When the player hasn't taken advantage of things like Veteran, Nosferatu, and grinding, the enemies are too numerous, hit too hard, and carry too many overpowered skills for those maps to be completed without improbably favorable number rolls. It's an infuriating paradox: Lunatic borders on the impossible without exploitative tactics, and becomes child's play with them.

It's one thing to sacrifice polish for variety, but Awakening's trade-off is extreme. There is no unit balance; some units quickly ascend to godhood, while others barely pass for filler. There is no class balance. There are several game-breaking exploits. If you want to experience any optional content, it will trivialize the challenge even further. The higher difficulties demand abuse or grinding to reliably complete, and Lunatic+ is an exercise in patience rather than strategy. In short, no balance (and little flexibility for challenge runs) means that in spite of Awakening's overwhelming amount of content, there is shockingly little replay value for a strategy connoisseur.

Ink-Spattered Blueprints

Map design in strategy games is similar to sound mixing in music: the average consumer might not know or care that it's there, but it can radically change the experience for better or for worse. Quality map design encourages unique tactics and makes chapters feel memorable, while poor map design makes the affair bland and forgettable. So what are the the ingredients for some delicious design? Rather than talk about what is good, it might be easier to discuss what isn't good -- and Awakening's map layouts provide an ideal foil.

Limited primary objectives. If variety is the spice of life, repetition makes for a bland meal. Looking at a game like Blazing Sword, we find a number of unique map conditions that keep things from feeling samey: seize, multi-seize, rout, defend, and defeat boss. That's a nice amount of variety. Awakening, on the other hand, has exactly two primary mission objectives: rout, and kill boss. This means that for all twenty seven chapters of the main campaign, the player will be going through the same song and dance.

Lack of meaningful secondary objectives. Past Fire Emblem titles have always made sure that in addition to the map's main objective, there are always other things going on to keep the player's interest: saving villages, recruiting characters, nabbing chests, and meeting bonus map requirements, to name a few. Awakening drops the ball here. Villages are never in real danger; difficult recruit requirements are gone and Chrom -> Talk works for virtually every recruitable; chests don't contain exclusive or particularly useful items, and are in short supply; and bonus maps are automatically unlocked. Going back again to Blazing Sword, there are several tricky-to-recruit PCs, many villages are tough to save, chests are deviously placed and contain great items and weapons, and Gaiden requirements often require a completely new approach.

Bland stage layouts. This is the most glaring problem with Awakening's map design. Most previous Fire Emblems had a healthy bit of everything: winding castle corridors, cluttered forests, large clearings, narrow mountain paths, water-heavy areas that limited movement, etc., all coming in various shapes and sizes. Awakening's layouts are unbelievably bland. Chapter 2 is a medium-sized, rectangular open field. Chapter 4 is a medium-sized, rectangular open arena. Chapter 8 is a medium-sized, rectangular open desert. Chapter 10 is a medium-sized, rectangular open graveyard. Chapter 11 is also a medium-sized, rectangular open desert. All that repetition before the first arc of the game comes to a close. The maps that aren't totally devoid of content manage to be equally derivative, all having been done before (and better) in past entries; you'll find the requisite ship, lava, and forest maps as the game progresses. The final chapter manages to be the most disappointing of the lot, with no terrain to worry about whatsoever; it's yet another medium-sized, rectangular bunch of nothing.

That's really what Awakening's maps boil down to: empty, rectangular blueprints with some terrain tiles sprinkled here and there. A small handful of creative maps do exist, most buried in Paralogues, but the story chapters start off bland and remain so until the end of the campaign. To its credit, Awakening does one thing right when it comes to map design -- it nails the aesthetics. Meaning that every map looks great even if they don't play well. On balance, Awakening's map design is unfortunately very poor, and a frontrunner for worst in the series.

The Aesthetic Side of Things

All of my criticisms aside, this game is gorgeous and sounds incredible. The colorful character portraits, detailed models, and charming map sprites blend well together. The 3D is implemented surprisingly well, with plenty of nice pop-out effects. The score is perhaps the best I've come across in a game, with sweeping orchestral swells, heart-wrenching ballads, and just about everything in between. Whether the tone is playful, somber, exciting, or revelatory, the music always matches to the T. The English voice work is solid with some A-list talent, and if it isn't to one's liking, the full Japanese voice work can be switched on instead. What few blemishes exist (the pseudo-chibi model style, some questionable character designs, a little too much fanservice, a relatively small number of songs, grating character grunts during story scenes) matter very little when the visuals and music are taken as a whole.

Aesthetically, Awakening is the complete package.

Long After the Thrill of Playin' is Gone

Awakening is a game that wants to be loved. Lush visuals and superb presentation make it an attention-grabber, and the unbelievable amount of content and options promise a long lifespan. And that love has been requited -- by critics, the Fire Emblem fanbase, and gamers in general. Yet as I've tried my best to outline here, much of this praise is probably unwarranted. Awakening is a shallow and imbalanced gameplay experience coupled with a mixed-bag cast of characters and a paper-thin plot. Awakening will certainly appeal to a lot of people, such as those looking for an easier strategy experience or those who crave variety and content in their role-playing games. For those who want something polished, with solid story and characterization and a heavy dose of genuine strategy, Awakening is a tough one to recommend.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10 | Originally Posted: 03/01/13
Game Release: Fire Emblem: Awakening (US, 02/04/13)