This is the first Fire Emblem game I have managed to beat, and im really pleased to have finished it, as overall I really enjoyed the game.

First, a brief discussion of the game iteself. FE Awakening offers two game modes, Casual and Classic, in Classic your characters that die in battle are permanently dead. This is how I have tried to play the game in the past, thinking the extra challenge and tension would make the game more enjoyable.

However, I found myself continually restarting battles after losing soldiers to crits, or unseen pathways of attack. This got tedious and made it extremely tough to level up weaker characters, as they were SO vulnerable to death.

This time, I decided to just play on Casual, hoping that taking away to anxiety over losing characters would make the game better. It 100% did! I could lose a character here and there, but keep beating the missions and progressing thru the game. It did mean I only once failed a mission, when Chrom was knocked out unexpectedly.

However, while this made the game less challenging, it meant I could actually enjoy the story and the characters.

Character 5/5- This is one of the areas the game really shines. Each character has unique personalities, with me finding some more interesting then others. The game really opens up as you have characters fight alongside each other, creating dialogue and new insight into their backstories.

Gameplay 5/5- Another strength of this game. The gameplay itself is a LOT of fun, almost like a strategy board game, with unit placement, use, and weapon type dictating success or failure. I think this is the real selling point of this franchise, and it was 100% the thing that kept me playing. Character development is really interesting, but confusing at first. Your character level reflects their progress on a specific path, but not necessarily their overall strength, as you can swap into different classes gaining new skills and maximizing stats.

I found it really helpful to read a few skill and class guides so that I could develop my characters in useful ways.

The final boss was a let down, I jumped forward and crit them in one hit; however, I guess I built my characters well!

I think now that I have beaten the game, if I wanted to revisit it, I would do so on Classic or a harder difficulty (I played on normal) to see how I could do.

Music 3/5: The music used isn't bad, but there is next to no variation in it. With me feeling frequently to be playing to the same 2-3 tracks. Those tracks are excellent, but get old fast!

Story 3/5- This is the major failing of this game. The story is mediocre at best, with the central conflict disappearing from the game for about 10 hours out of a 30 hour game. This meant that the final bad guy while really cool, is someone who you almost forgot was in the game!

The middle of the game particularly just drags really bad.

The characters and their backstories help make up for this some, but it still meant I had little investment or excitement over the story itself.

Overall I really enjoyed this game. the gameplay was addicting and tight, the characters interesting. While the story let me down some, it didn't hold me back from really loving my time with Fire Emblem Awakening! Well worth a try for any fans of strategy games, JRPGs, or turn based tactics.

Fire Emblem is still pretty much the same since the good ol' days of the game being on GBA. You have a nice story with a protagonist who is overpowered comparatively to other units, and he/she is a tactician here to help win the war against the big scary dragon that always seems to be on the verge of becoming resurrected. This time around there are a few changes that made it a lot more bearable though.

First and foremost, classic mode vs casual mode. I played the game on casual mode and I'd have to say it's a lot more enjoyable that way. Yeah I agree it would have been more of a challenge on classic, and maybe thats the way the game was meant to be played, but after playing the first Fire Emblem on GBA and stressing about losing units over and over again, I realized that style of play just wasn't for me. Classic mode has you losing units forever when you die (meaning they will never be able to be used again) and casual has them reviving after the battle so they can be used in the next battle. Each battle usually consists of about 5 or so complete turns. It was just easier this way, and honestly I don't find a lot of fun in restarting my game because one of my favorite units died. It feels like "artificial difficulty". So this new game mode was a big positive in my book.

The next thing I'd like to say is the characters are pretty cool. Each of them has pretty unique dialogue and the personalities really shine through. Some of these personalities may be a bit one-dimensional but I think that is some of what made them so like-able. My favorites have got to me Henry. He's morbid and cheery, which is a very interesting combination.

The mechanics of the game are a little clunky still. I think the game is best played with a guide or at least access to the internet to understand the tech trees, as it stands you don't really get an explanation of what classes are available to whom, they just show up whenever you use a seal to switch classes. I think a well designed tech tree and upgrade system should be in place by now, considering this is like the 12th game. Something like FFT's tech tree (at least they gave you pre-reqs) or an actual gui for the tech trees (like muramasa's sword forging screen) would work well here.

Anyways, each base class has 2 upgrade classes, and each character usually has access to at least 2 or 3 base classes. Some skills are MUCH better to have than others, which is why its so upsetting not to have all of the information laid out for you rather than hunt for it on the internet. Dark Flier's are units that can only be upgraded to from female pegasus knights, which earn the skill "Galeforce" which allow you to attack after you kill a unit which is a huge advantage. Renewal gives you a 30% heal at the start of every turn and War Monks only learn this skill at lvl 15. Lifetaker gives you 50% heal after you kill a unit and Dark Knights can only learn this. The rest of the skills only give units an incremental advantage with a few exceptions. (Counter, Dual Strike+, a few others)

Your characters can also have children with eachother, and due to the time rifts, these little guys will come back from the future to help you fight the big bad dragon. You get them from missions that are a side-quest of the main story, called "Paralogues", and you usually end up running into characters who are from the future who are children of any of the S compatible characters you have in your roster. The child units start off with 4 skills taken from their mother and father instead of 2. If I'd have known this, I would have been more strategic about my pairings.

It's worth a playthrough, and there is a lot of DLC content which lets you recruit characters from older games. This feature kinda coincides with the theme of the game, where characters in the future create rifts in time to change the current timeline. Definitely worth it especially if you get it used for cheap (less than 25$?). The DLC also makes grinding easier. I must have finished it off around 40 hours but there was still plenty to do.