Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Highly addictive"

Fire Emblem Awakening is the first Fire Emblem I've ever played and as it stands, it's easily my favorite 3DS game so far. While it's not perfect, what it does correctly is just so amazing that even though I've beaten the game (75 hours), I'm already ready to dive back in and do it all over again (with different choices and a harder difficulty).

Story: 9/10

Before you start the game, you have to make your own custom character. While the choices are limited, you soon discover why that's so and while your character is very much indeed an integral part of the story, the game mostly focuses around Chrom (a descendant of Marth). Chrom and Lissa (his sister) find you passed out on a field and you have no memories of what has happened, so Chrom decides to take you along. Soon, undead warriors called "Risen" are summoned to the area and through that portal, an unknown warrior comes with them, helping you slay the monsters. With Chrom and Lissa, you return to the capital to find out what's going on.

From what I'm aware of, the story line is not as strong as previous entries and after experiencing the whole story, it is rather predictable in some parts. However, it's still a very well crafted story with some very emotional parts to it. Also the dialogue between the characters, especially during the "Support" sessions, is excellently written, many of which will put a smile on your face.

Visuals: 9/10

While it's not the best looking game on the 3DS, Fire Emblem is still very nice looking considering how huge of a game it is. Every character has a unique look and their models look pretty good in 3D. I know many people had a gripe about the lack of feet, but that hardly bothered me after getting into the game. Battle scenes look awesome, the field itself is nicely done, although the 2D sprites of the characters do look a bit out of place in the 3D environment, it's something you'll get used to quickly. The cutscenes of the game are easily the best looking cutscenes shown on the 3DS (which I hope is a teaser of what Fire Emblem on the Wii U will look like).

Sound: 10/10

The music of Fire Emblem is simply breathtaking and highly memorable. It has a very epic and adventure feel to it. Every track is wonderfully orchestrated and the voice acting is spot on, although it's only the cutscenes that are fully voiced. In game dialogue only gives you either grunts or quotes from the character that kind of matches what they're currently saying. For most, it's fine, but for a select few it can get annoying, whether it be their voice or what they say.

Gameplay: 10/10

Fire Emblem Awakening is still classic Fire Emblem, from the grid like turn based battles, to the "rock paper scissor" type weapons, different classes, and RPG elements. For the first time, Fire Emblem does not enforce perma death. In the beginning of the game, you can choose whether or not your units die in battle or simply retreat. For series's veterans, Classic mode is obvious but for newcomers such as myself, the Casual mode is very much a welcome addition and even though I don't consider myself terrible at strategy games (since I do love Advance Wars, Intelligent Systems's other successful strategy game), the idea of losing one of my characters permanently sucks (to me). Also one simple option that was excluded that I found incredibly annoying was the lack of a "Quit" option. In games like Fire Emblem you can easily make a huge mistake that could cost you the battle and since you can't take back any of your moves, a "Quit" or even "Reset" option would've been extremely helpful, especially since Advance Wars has it, but no, if you screw up, you have to either restart the game or get yourself killed to start over.

I also found it odd that the game barely made use of the touch screen but didn't find it to be a big deal since the controls worked perfectly, it was just weird going from Advance Wars to Fire Emblem. The overall gameplay itself is highly addictive, mainly thanks to the RPG elements (something Advance Wars lacks, giving you less incentive to replaying battles). Every time a character uses a move (attack or support), they gain experience. Every characters starts off as a specific class but it's up to you to experiment with different classes to allow your characters to obtain the best possible skills as well as stats. There are also relationships and for the first time in Fire Emblem, if any of your characters marry, they will have children (Hint: Pair up people who match in terms of stats and abilities).

StreetPass and SpotPass are excellently implemented. StreetPass sending your party to other people's 3DS's while you receive theirs for a challenge. If your party wins or if you beat the challenger, you get "Renown" points (which can be used to unlock special items and serves as a score board). Using SpotPass, you can also summon characters from previous Fire Emblem games and challenge them, also earning Renown points upon defeating them.

The game also has a Barracks mode which is supposed to be a place where your characters hang out and while the conversations that take place are not that great, the good thing about the Barracks is that it gives you free items as well as helping build relationships between characters and sometimes giving them stat boosts.

Fire Emblem Awakening has incredible depth and if you make the wrong decision in almost anything, it could very well haunt you for the rest of the game, but don't worry as no bad decision can be damaging enough to ruin the experience.

Value: 10/10

Fire Emblem Awakening's main story will take you about 10-15 hours to beat, depending on the difficulty. There are 26 chapters but if you just stick to these battles, they will be difficult as your units will not be that strong. There are also 18 "Paralogue" stages, all of which are easily more challenging than the main stages. Aside from that, you can summon "Risen" to the field for training, and like I said earlier, summon previous Fire Emblem characters to battle. The game does support DLC, although I was disappointed with how previous Fire Emblem characters were implemented like Marth and Roy. Even though Marth was free, I paid for Roy, only to find out that the game really doesn't give you any incentive to use these characters, mainly because they can't build relationships with anyone and with around 35 characters, it'd be much more beneficial to focus on them and their relationships.

The game is huge and on my first playthrough, I spent over 70 hours on it, and I have every intention of going back and replaying through it again, making it the best value of any 3DS game out there right now.

Overall: 10/10

Yes the game is not perfect and I do have a couple of gripes with it, but what it does well, it exceeds my expectations and provided me with a insanely addictive, in depth, challenge and super fun game that I really haven't put down since I got it.