Went for the ending where MC kills off Grima for good. Supposedly at the expense of her own life, but she survives just fine. The final boss was a bit of a joke, though she still managed to wipe out both Maribelle and Morgan when they got too close. This marks the first time I have ever finished a Fire Emblem with less than a full cohort, but it was too much trouble to restart the battle. Final thoughts on Fire Emblem Awakening follow.

The difficulty setting

I’m sad that I screwed myself out of enjoyment by picking the easiest difficulty to play on. Actually I should lay some of the blame at Nintendo’s feet for labeling the “Easy” setting “Normal.” There’s no way in hell that thing is Normal; it must be a joke. I like SRPGs for the “just killing stuff with my friends” feel, but when that “stuff” doesn’t even try to fight back, it stops being a game and becomes something cowardly and barbaric, like a foxhunt.

The ridiculous ease made nonsense of all the game mechanics. It doesn’t matter what weapons you use. I used steel swords and lances well into the late chapters just to keep enemies alive longer and prolong the fun. It doesn’t matter who you breed with whom, because the children will be overpowered anyway. And you don’t even need those children because the adults are more than enough to take everyone on. I completely, totally and utterly ignored skills. I never paired anyone up (as in joint attacks, not hookups) and never changed a class. The forgery system went to waste because I had more weapons and items than I could use. The list goes on and on. Playing on “Normal” takes all the fun out of the game.

The further I went, the more I wish I had restarted at a more appropriate difficulty level. Unfortunately I was playing a borrowed game and wanted to finish as soon as possible. But I really should have risked it anyway. I like to think it would have improved matters tremendously.

Joint attacks

Useful, but annoying. Useful because they allow for stronger, more efficient attacks. Annoying for precisely that reason. I rely a lot on predicted damage when selecting who to do what with. When an ally keeps interfering in my plans and killing people I wasn’t planning on killing, well, that bugs me just a little bit. What’s even more annoying is the animations. The allies keep ducking and bobbing throughout, whether they actually help me or not. Either defecate or vacate the commode, comrade. After a few levels of this, I took to skipping the entire enemy turn and all my animations to boot.

Problem Children are Coming from a Portal in the Sky, Aren’t They?

One child from the future = good. Twenty children from the future = stupid. Moderation in all things, as Aristotle said. Since all the other children except Lucina are optional characters, they aren’t even relevant to the story. While there’s all this serious death and murder stuff going on, they’re busy slicing fruit with holy knives and hitting on their moms. Lucina is so eager and desperate to save the world and the rest of them are just…there. What did they come back for anyway?

MC, I am your father. MC, I am your daughter. MC, I am your son. MC, I am your cousin. MC, I am your dog. MC, I am…

The story was cliched, but serviceable enough. They kinda gave everything away really early though. Once Lucina tells us how things played out in her future, we already know things won’t go that way in this timeline. On top of that, my MC had no reason for existing. I was allowed to create an avatar, but beyond that I have very little control over her, so they might as well have created their own. I don’t even get a genuine chance at fulfilling my evil destiny a la Breath of Fire 3.

Also I don’t know whether I want to touch the whole time paradox thing or not. If the result is an alternative timeline, then fine. Otherwise it’s not possible for Lucina to come back in time to stop Grima from being resurrected, because if she did stop Grima from being resurrected then she wouldn’t have sent herself back in time to stop him. Either that or she would have poofed out of existence the moment he was killed.

Her future is bleak either way, the poor girl. Even if she goes back to her own timeline now, she doesn’t have the Fire Emblem to use to borrow Naga’s power and defeat Grima. If she borrows the Emblem from this timeline, she still doesn’t have any party members to help her because they all decided to stay in this timeline. Not that I blame them. Ultimately Lucina is the real hero in this tale, because she helped her parents and not-future self survive and got nothing out of it.

Btw, I’m still not clear on what Cell alternative-MC wanted. In her timeline she had succeeded in reviving Grima and wiping out Ylisstol. Even if he wasn’t at full strength, there was no one left to challenge his power. As noted above, nothing Lucina does in this timeline will change the future, so why bother coming back to get yourself killed?

The Characters

Great characters and character interactions are what really make FE games stand out from the rest of the bunch. IMHO, of course. Maybe it’s because I blazed through the game, but no one stood out this time. All the dialogue and all the supports were excellently written/translated, but they weren’t particularly interesting. “I peeped in the women’s bath and a horse chased me.” Whoopee. “I peeped on a girl and the girl peeped on me. Now we must get married.” Oh, Japan. Also tangentially related, but I had a problem with all S supports automatically leading to marriage. Everyone should have the right to say no.

The bad guys were all kind of ehhh as well. Gangrel just wants to fight and punish Ylisse. I get it, but still, ehhh? Not bad for a first-third boss, I guess. The whole bit with Walhart was kind of pointless. He never really had a presence in the game. Sure we’re told his followers are loyal to him and he wants to take over the world, but still, ehh? Like, okay? (What happened to the bearded dude, btw?)

Then it’s back to Plegia and back to the real story, but the story would have been more compelling if we had never left. That whole Valmese conflict served no real purpose. So Aversa and Validar want to raise Grima, but why? What were they hoping to get out of it? I read their lines again and again, but I never got their motivations or convictions. Seriously, what did they want?

The characters I did like were those moderately useful in battle. The gold medal at the end went to Miriel, silver went to Lon’qu and bronze went to Chrom. I guess forcing your way into every story battle has its perks. As party members they were great, but as characters, meh. Fire Emblem: Awakening really is the second coming of Sacred Stones.

Overall

I enjoyed it as a Fire Emblem and as an SRPG, but on its own merits I don’t think it’s all that great.

I tried and tried, but I couldn’t bring myself to like the character designs with their weird-looking armor and odd faces and stumpy little legs. Or the characters themselves either.
The music was good enough. Voice acting should have been removed entirely, since they only ever say the same few stock phrases.
The battles were very fast-paced, which was great. But the challenge was so low it made the whole exercise pointless. “Fearsome” baddies like Walhart, Aversa and Validar went down like chumps.
The story was good, but it was somewhat cheapened by all the carefree future children popping out of the woodwork.
And just once in my life I’d like to play an RPG where I actually succeed in preventing the revival of the sleeping evil (Path of Radiance almost counted, but then they let her out in the sequel).

I’ll let a lot of time pass and then play it again on a harder level. It won’t change the story or the characters, but at least I’ll be able to enjoy the battles that make up 90% of the game. I’ll have to put more thought into breeding and supports and actually use my future children this time, and that might make all the difference. As it stands… nah. It wasn’t that good.

What next?

I promised someone I’d start EarthBound, a.k.a. “The best RPG ever! How can you call yourself an RPG fan when you haven’t played it?! I’m disappointed in you!” I also have to finish Tokyo Mono Hara Shi on the PSP and start Dark Cloud 2 on the PS2. But what I really want to play is Arc Rise Fantasia. I’ll pick something in the next couple of days and start.