That's right, it's half-review time again! So what's on the list of games I haven't finished yet?
Well, first, Fire Emblem, and then...Alan Wake for the Xbox, but that's for another post.
It's a shame that the Fire Emblem series hasn't gotten more attention, because it's up there with games like Final Fantasy (except in this case, FE's getting better). Think of it kind of like FF Tatics, except...a lot better. Good music, amazing characters, great storyline, deep gameplay, incredible graphics, I could just go on and on about this game.
And you know what? I will. Prepare yourselves.
So what's the story? Well...if you've played one FE game before, you know the beginning: Royalty, prophesies, a travelling group, multiple countries, yeah, yeah, it's easy to dismiss. But this game actually takes quite a bit more turns and twists than the other games. Yeah, it's kind of similar, but that's not really a bad thing. You never really know where the story's going to go. But really, the story's the least of the awesome things in this game. I feel sorry for those who got a Vita instead of a 3DS.
Now the crowning aspect of the Fire Emblem games is the permadeath. Once a character dies, that's it. Their storyline is done. You never see them again, and you can't use them in battle. The only exceptions are the characters that are important to the story. If either your avatar (I'll get to that in a bit), and Chrom, the royal blood character of the game, die, the game ends and you go back to your last savepoint, AKA, the beginning of the battle. Some other characters need to appear in cutscenes, so when they "die", they just can't appear in battle anymore, being wounded. This might not seem like much, but focus on the fact that battle is the main way to get support points (again, more on that later). The permadeath can actually be turned off in this game, noted by the "casual mode". I've found most people choose to go with the "classic mode", and so did I, as it does make the game feel much more intense, as you could lose a unit at any moment. The permadeath is made much more potent by the fact that each character has a sort of history and traits. They're not just nameless chess pieces, these are fleshed-out relatable people. I've found myself restarting the battle multiple times just to keep a unit from dying. As of now, I've lost one unit, and...yeah. I have about a dozen units, but it still hurts to lose that one unit. The only reason I didn't restart the battle is because I wasn't sure if I could win without having to sacrifice a unit. The fleshed out characters and the permadeath alone are worth it to buy this game. But what's the difference between this $40 game and a five-buck GBA Fire Emblem? That part lies in the gameplay.
I forgot to mention this, but Awakening is the best rated FE game in the series, and I believe that's because the game designers knew exactly what to keep, what new things to implement, and exactly what we all hated playing the older games. The game runs on strategy. One wrong move, one switch of the wrong weapon, and you've just lost your favorite character. I won't go too much into the general gameplay, because you either know how to play it, and if you don't the tutorial is very concise, and very informative. So what's changed from other FE games? Well, I'm not sure if this was in other games, but there's an "optimize" option for inventories. Basically, the computer puts the items it thinks will do the best with certain characters' into their inventories. I use it all the time, though some people might enjoy doing it manually. Another new feature is the ability to put two characters together. Basically, one character adds his or her stats to another character's, and the two can switch places (one adds his/her stats, while the other fights). This replaces the "rescue" feature of other FE games, and frankly, I team up characters every chance I get. At the beginning of the game, you get to make your own character. True to Japanese style, there's about a dozen choices for hair color and three whole choices for body. You get to name your character, choose his/her top strength and weakness, the birthdate, you can even choose the voice! That's right, there's voices in this game. They rarely match what the words on the screen (mostly the voices are exclamations, like Eek!, but they are a great touch during battle), but it's still pretty fun. The only thing is, at least for the male character, you get three voices...which all sound mostly the same. And it turns out my character looks just like Chrom (I should have chosen a different color of hair), so it's really hard for me to tell who's who. There's also side quests, in which if you reach a certain requirement, you can get a new character (with support conversations), a new weapon, etc.
Another key feature of any FE game is the support system. Now, most of the previous support systems were actually very difficult. You had to have two character together for a certain amount of turns, and then they had to "talk" during battle! Yeah. It was very annoying, and the difficulty of raising support between troops was raised by the fact that you could only do this five times for each character in the entire game. Guess what? This game gets it right: There's no limit to support sessions, you actually accumulate points by having character either team up, be in spaces next to each other, or talk in the barracks in the map menu (you can also find items in the barracks). Once two character get enough point, you actually can trigger the conversations on the map menu, instead of having to continually put two characters together during battle like rabbits. Speaking of which, the support conversations are great too! Whether they be romantic or bromantic, they're always entertaining. Some of them are so hilarious that I don't even want to spoil them for you. I've heard once two characters get a high enough support rating (and are compatible), they can even get married and have kids, who can eventually join the team. Don't ask me how that's possible, since the events of the game are one after another, but it sounds interesting enough to check out.
You may be asking yourself by this point, "Oh, great and mighty Kaito, may your money flow out of your gold-engraved pockets, is there anything negative you can say about this game?"
Um...uh...kind of? You see...there's DLC...
That might be a good idea or a bad idea, though I haven't seen much coming from it. There was a limited time when the first DLC was free, and...well, you're pitted against some...card-spirits-characters from other FE games...yeah, it's kind of weird. The battles are pretty fun, but I've heard that each pack of three battles only has one map where you fight. I don't know, I wasn't very interested. If you win the battle, one of the characters from the other games joins your team, but there's no support conversations for them, so I almost never use them. There is, however, a feature where you can get free special weapons simply by connecting to the Internet. Think of it as a free giveout. You can also summon past FE characters onto the map, where you can buy items from them, fight their team (if you win, the captain joins your team, so the paid DLC's pretty much useless...), or hire their captain. Overall, it's a very minor nitpick, as it doesn't get in the way of the main game at all.
What does, though, is the overuse of switching gender roles.
I'm fine with women being captains or warriors or whatever (YES, FINAL FANTASY XIII-2, WE GET IT! NOW LET ME PLAY AS NOEL!), but this one is...really overdone. I mean, I think by now switching gender roles is kind of cliched, isn't it? I mean, Disney's Mulan came out, what, fifteen years ago? And that was a movie adaption! Pretty much every other character in this game has a switched gender roll. Not that there aren't some "princess-y" characters, but still, sometimes it's for no apparent reason. I can think of four friggin' female characters who are either captains, swear (yeah, that's pretty much what earned the T rating. Great job, one character who swears, and it's the female character), or are near-barbaric rulers (again, great job.) There's even an actual Mulan character. I won't give her identity away, because, frankly, it's not really that well hidden. A central character pretends to be a boy because...I really have no idea. I'm hoping that the story will explain it. At least she's in some CGI cutscenes.
Speaking of which, the graphics are amazing. The art for the FE games has always been good, but this game takes full advantage of the 3DS graphic capability. The fights and some of the cutscenes have 3D models (you can even see the fight in first-person mode!), and the overall look of the game is spectacular. Every once in a while the player is treated to a awesome short CGI cutscene. Kind of like the cutscenes in Professor Layton, except...with more slicing and dicing (and no blood, evidently). Most of them are quite short, so it's a great small treat for all your hard tactical work.
So overall, how does this game hold up?
Buy it.
Now.
It's even better than Kingdom Hearts 3D.
True, I haven't finished the game, but...
Yeah, get it.
And for those of you who got a Vita?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
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