Fire Emblem: Awakening - A Second Coming

[UPDATE: I've added in an analysis of Awakening's Chapter 8 map. Check it out if you're curious about how the game handles "open" map design]

Recently (as in three months ago), I finished a blind-ish playthrough of Fire Emblem: Awakening on Lunatic Classic difficulty without grinding. I had already grown to dislike the game upon completing Apotheosis for the first time many months ago, but this last playthrough spawned such an incalculable amount of vitriolic fury that my light disdain gave way to seething hatred. More recently (as in three days ago), I replayed Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (A.K.A. FE10, my favorite Fire Emblem game) both because I needed to feel happy about something again, and so that I could understand precisely what made FE:A so appallingly bad relative to previous entries in the series. The short answer: everything in Awakening is shallow, and said shallowness damages every aspect of the game. The long answer: Intelligent Systems followed three core design philosophies.

Simplicity at all Costs: How to Screw Up Characters and Classes

Characters in the Fire Emblem series never have or ever will be particularly deep. This isn’t exactly a controversial statement so much as it is an unfortunate, but understandable, consequence of possessing a large cast and limited time for characterization.  Since the release of Fire Emblem 6 however, the series has made strides to rectify this by including optional Support Conversations between characters that flesh out their back stories and detail their hopes and motivations for remaining in the protagonists’ army. Awakening however, bastardizes this concept in favor of earning some cheap laughs.

In FE:A every side character (as well as a few main ones) are defined by one or two character “quirks” (often common anime tropes): Lon’qu is stoic, but afraid of women; Cordelia is “perfect” but has a crippling crush on Chrom; Henry is a debatably insane mad scientist(?) with a heart of gold, Sumia is a stereotypical “woman” that’s clumsier than Camelot’s storytelling, and so on. Yet, rather than utilizing the support system to flesh out these 1-dimensional traits masking as characters, Awakening instead contains amusing vignettes all portraying variations of “what happens when X quirk meets Y quirk? Hilarity ensues.” For instance, compare Titania from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (FE9) & FE10 with Frederick from FE:A. Both characters are Jeigans who perform a similar role in both the gameplay and narrative, so it’s about as fair as comparisons come.

If one were to read all of the normal support conversations between Frederick and the other characters, the only new information (as in info not provided by the narrative) about his life one would gain is that he trains every day and…well, he likes beef and pork. Titania’s supports on the other hand, reveal that: she was a Crimean Knight prior to joining the player’s army. She recruited one of your other core party members. Several of the other characters view her as a mother figure. She was in love with the protagonist’s deceased father. She initially doubted the protagonists’ decision-making ability, but eventually learned to trust his judgment. And, she continues to work with the protagonist out of an acquired love for his entire family. In short, Titania has depth while Frederick does not. Both characters are still flat (and similar), but one of them is noticeably more characterized, despite possessing fewer lines of dialogue both within and outside of the main story. It’s also worth noting that Frederick is one of Awakening’s most well-realized characters whereas Titania has about the standard amount of characterization in FE9 (compare Jill, Muarim, Zihark, Rolf, and Sothe). It’d be one thing if the game had a small core of well-established heroes and villains with numerous side characters (like the 2000—2005 games), but Awakening doesn’t even have one round character, let alone a “strong core” to carry its narrative.

Make no mistake, many of Awakening’s support conversations are in fact amusing (Kjelle unironically quoting “Animal Farm” still makes me laugh every time I read it), but they simply aren’t substantive. They may on occasion offer explanations for why characters have their strange quirks, but even then, the explanations almost never logically lead to the displayed characteristics. Case in point, Lon'qu is afraid of women, so much so that he gets sick to his gut when he's in close proximity to them. But, the in-game reason given for his condition is that he lost one of his close comrades in battle - who happened to be a woman - and doesn't want to get close to anyone again for fear of losing them too. It's a cliche, but acceptable backstory...except that it has NOTHING to do with being queasy around women in particular. Even if he and his partner were romantically involved (which the support conversation doesn't even hint at), the death would only lead to his characteristic stoicism, not outright fear. This half-hearted approach to characterization just makes it seem like IS enumerated popular character tropes first, then came up with a cheesy backstories to justify them later, as opposed to using them as starting blocks or, preferably, allowing the traits to emerge naturally from the characters' histories.

What's more, IS has already demonstrated that they aren’t afraid to utilize other means of establishing characters, yet for some reason elected not to try any of them in Awakening. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (FE9) and its sequel FE10 have optional base conversations that both round out the large cast of characters, and provide additional context for the game’s world through NPC commentary on the state of the war. FE:A, which came out a good seven years after FE9 (with more dialogue at that), wholly relies on its supports and still makes almost no effort to characterize anyone. As such, it is very difficult to even pretend to care about anyone who isn’t pulling their weight in combat scenarios.

Speaking of, FE:A’s gameplay evokes a similar degree of shallowness with respect to its classes. Continuing the trend from FE10, classes in Awakening have much higher stat caps than the games preceding it. Where FE10 saw its human characters cap their strongest stats at 40 in a tier-3 class, in Awakening 40 is the average stat cap for all stats not named LCK, MOV, or HP, while 50 is the highest stat cap for the strongest tier-2 classes. Additionally, unlike previous Fire Emblem games, each player character in Awakening has their own unique set of stat cap modifiers. These would provide the beneficial effect of making each character distinct from each other, while simultaneously reducing the importance of class stats. But, for static characters this is largely untrue as the stat modifiers are so small (relative to the ridiculously high 40 stat average), that they don't make a noticeable impact on the game. Dynamic characters (read: the characters everyone should be using) on the other hand, generally have modifiers so dominating that the unit’s class becomes a mere afterthought.

And yet, while this shift in emphasis isn’t inherently problematic (some might even call it “progress”), the increased significance of skills coupled with the freedom with which they can be allocated, collectively reduces the importance of classes to their usable weapons, Mov, and Spd cap (more on this in section APB9 of my other FE:A write-up), thus negating one of the (supposedly) central components of the game.

To contrast this with FE9/10 (since I love talking about them), classes held much more modest stat caps (24-30) for most of the game, increasing the significance of small numerical differences and making strategic decisions more immediately discernable according to unit classes rather than the specific units themselves; closer to a strategy game like chess. What’s more, in addition to possessing a hard limit to the number of skills per unit, each skill cost a certain amount of points to allocate and each class had its own capacity that increased as the unit promoted. Powerful skills were understandably, more costly than weaker ones, making it difficult or impossible to group multiple powerful skills together on a single unit. In establishing these limitations, units could be distinct from one another without ever being too overpowering, unless the plot dictated it. This firmly differs from Awakening’s “go nuts” approach that still limits the number of skills one can allocate, but removes the accompanying point system that balanced the skills out. Consequently, players are able to make walking gods that are nearly untouchable by enemy units, and (more importantly) face walking bombs that require excessively-careful diffusal by the player.

The fusion of these hollowed out character dynamics leads to units feeling like an array of numbers rather than characters integral to the core experience. Somewhat hilariously, the developers themselves seemed to have felt this as well, and capitalized on it by allowing players to purchase/download characters (or more accurately, pictures of characters) from past Fire Emblem games as well as player-created Avatars who scarcely feel any less important than the game’s own “characters.” While none of these aspects are particularly harmful to players who enjoy grinding for higher numbers, min/maxing for optimal units, or just want to understand the basic mechanics of a Fire Emblem game, they collectively simplify the game to its most soulless mechanical components and minimize its potential for eliciting any emotional fulfillment.

Monotony at all Costs: How to Screw Up Maps

Of course, no attempt at atomizing the series’ defining attributes could be complete without gutting the only inherently strategic aspects of the game as well. Because this is (supposed to be) a strategy game, its maps and their accompanying objectives play an integral role in creating strategic depth. Previous Fire Emblem games would therefore contain a strong variety of maps and objectives that forced the player to concoct various strategies (there’s that word again) to achieve success with minimal casualties. To be fair, there are a lot of maps in Awakening (50 not counting DLC to be exact), they just all play out almost identically. This is partially due to the aforementioned issue of units becoming homogenous due to their statistical similarity. But, the more direct causes are that there are only two mission objectives and the maps are all designed to promote two strategies (or one strategy with a variation, if you want to be pedantic). Let’s start with the mission objectives, since they’re pretty straightforward.

1. Defeat Boss – There’s not much to say here. The bosses don’t have any fancy teleportation maneuvers and scarcely ever move, so generally this objective equates to “rush to point X with strongest units.”

2. Rout Enemy – For those unfamiliar with military jargon, this means “defeat all enemy units.” Again, there’s not much to say here. It’s a pretty basic objective.

Neither of the above two objectives are new to this franchise, however, each map will often have its own array of sub-objectives that aren’t explicitly stated by the game. Generally (especially in Awakening) this entails recruiting one of the enemy units by speaking to them with one of your own, or looting chests on the map with thieves. But, Awakening also distills these particular sub-objectives down to “talk to enemy unit with Chrom” and “kill enemy guarding chest for keys” while scarcely offering any new ones in turn. What’s more, despite the player’s ability to replay maps in Awakening (albeit with a different arrangement of enemy units), the replayable map objective is always “rout the enemy” and every pre-existing sub-objective is eliminated save for the rare, “protect the shopkeeper” mission (which also boils down to routing the enemy). All in all, FE:A isn’t winning any awards for its astonishing map diversity.

To make this point as obvious as possible, I’d like to once again compare the mission variety of Awakening to that of Radiant Dawn. Where FE:A (which again, was released a full seven years after FE10) has a whopping two mission objectives, Radiant Dawn has ten (and that’s excluding the minor variations).

1. Defeat Boss
2. Rout Enemies (within X # of turns)
3. Defeat X # of Enemies
4. Defend for X # of Turns
5. Survive for X # of Turns
6. Hold the Line for X # of turns
7. Seize
8. Arrive
9. X (+ Y) Unit Arrives
10. Burn the Supplies within X # of turns

While having more mission objectives doesn’t necessarily make for a better game, the types of missions present in Radiant Dawn made it more strategically diverse. Note the variety of them ending in “for X # of turns.” That little prepositional phrase automatically instills an additional layer of strategic depth explicitly absent from every single map in Awakening: urgency. In Radiant Dawn, finishing maps in a timely manner was an important strategic component of nearly every map, inspiring players to think carefully and with their objective firmly in their mind. Most simplistically, the turn timer forced players to think strategically because each of their units’ turn mattered in some way. In Awakening, you can realistically let your units sit on their arses and make suggestive comments towards the enemies, wait for the mooks (and their reinforcements) to advance on your position and die, then casually stroll over to the boss or whatever and clear the map, narrative urgency be damned. In a game where the plot is largely a collection of jokes (i.e. every Disgaea game) this wouldn’t be an issue. But, because this is a Fire Emblem game whose plot attempts to take itself seriously (though it honestly has no right to), the lack of urgency in the gameplay creates dissonance with the supposed urgency of the narrative, thus diminishing its importance.

And let’s not forget that the maps themselves are all designed to support such simplistic tactics as well. For the last time, let’s compare some maps from Fire Emblem: Awakening to those of Radiant Dawn.

*NOTE: The reason I keep using Radiant Dawn as an example is not because it is my favorite Fire Emblem game, but rather that it is the last new Fire Emblem game released before Awakening. FE11 and FE12 were both remakes of much older Fire Emblem games and didn’t require Intelligent Systems to design wholly new maps, characters, objectives, and narratives like Radiant Dawn.

These are the Chapter 2 maps of FE:A (left) and FE10 (right):

Fire Emblem: Awakening - Ch. 2

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - Pt. 1: Ch. 2

Both of these maps share the objective "Defeat Boss." Despite the open appearance of the Awakening map, due to the objective and enemy placement, the player has no tactical reason for doing anything other than funneling down a narrow path to the north. The map doesn't demand any strategic knowledge or encourage any alternative strategies save for briefly holding position at the specific points where the arrows break. Because this is an early map such simplicity might seem par for the course. However, in clear contrast, the comparable Radiant Dawn map appears very linear, but actually allows the player to take several equally viable options depending on his or her creativity and cleverness.

The green arrows delineate the basic trajectory of the map. New players are expected to follow this route as the enemies are spaced such that the player will only have to face a single one each turn. It also makes a very clear linear path that becomes even safer due to the powerful reinforcing unit that appears at the green X on turn three. The blue arrows, on the other hand, show riskier pathways that either speed up the player's progress or lead to treasure (marked by the blue circle), providing viable alternative routes for more advanced players with a firmer understanding of the game's mechanics (in this case, ledges). Additionally, the FE10 map introduces a new component of maps (ledges) in a relatively pressure free environment, enabling the player to come to terms with it, without demanding immediate mastery of them or breaking the flow of the game with an explicit tutorial. Essentially, this Radiant Dawn map demonstrates how a map can still be ultimately simple, without drastically compromising its strategic depth. Unfortunately, for Awakening, this level of extraordinary simplicity is never abated at any point during the game.

Below are the games' requisite desert chapters. Because these maps are (or at least appear to be) a little more nuanced than the above two, let's look at them one at a time.

Fire Emblem Awakening - Ch. 9

This is Awakening's eleventh mandatory map. The objective is to defeat the boss, whose position is marked by the green "X." Unlike most maps, the boss of this map actually leaves after several turns (for story reasons) and is replaced by a much easier boss. So, in order to prevent the player from engaging the original boss too early, the castle walls are arbitrarily impassable by flying units (and thus delineated with a red line). As is the case in every Fire Emblem game, the desert tiles reduce the movement range of ground-units, especially cavalry. Fliers, such as the various wyvern riders littered across the map, and mages, like the two blue circled units, are unaffected by desert sands. As such, because the player starts with half of their units in the desert and enemy flying units are immediately south, their first move should always be to move towards the cobblestone pathway along the castle walls. Even though there are enemies there, at this point in time, the player does not (normally) have access to any powerful flying units and as such must engage the enemy head on. Upon reaching the wall, the only available option to the player is to move along its exterior (fighting everything along the way) until they reach the green circled fortresses, from which they can immediately attack the boss and end the map.

On turn five, enemy wyvern rider reinforcements will appear from the area marked with a blue 5. This would inspire a sense of urgency, but because the player lacks explicit knowledge of when the enemy reinforcements will come and no choice but to move along the green arrows outlined above anyway, no adjustments can, nor should, be made to the player's actions save for leaving a few strong units at the rear of their army (which was naturally going to happen anyway due to cavalry suffering the largest movement penalty from desert sands).

There are also two sub-objectives in the form of recruitable units. The aforementioned mages can both join the player's army if Chrom talks to them. However, the unit in the bottom right is an enemy unit who can attack from two spaces away (which Chrom cannot) and advances on the player's position, so because she is a mage and doesn't have a movement penalty, she will likely have the "right of way" and attack Chrom first and with impunity. This means that, as with the reinforcements, the player doesn't have to make a single adjustment to their strategy in order to recruit her. As for the bottom left mage, he is not an enemy unit, so the enemies will attack him. In most Fire Emblem games, this would create a sense of urgency, as the unit would likely become overwhelmed by the vastness of the enemy forces. However, here, the unit is far more powerful than the surrounding foes (and even has a natural advantage against them), possesses a skill that restores his health each turn, and advances on the player's position, collectively eliminating any possible strategic depth the map might have had.

What results is a map that is functionally identical to the Chapter two map previously described, despite the map's appearance much later in the game and the player's supposedly honed experience with the gameplay systems. The vast expanse to the left of the green arrows might as well not exist as there is literally no reason for the player to move through it outside of satisfying a megalomaniacal bloodlust. There is exactly one means of completing this map, and virtually no room for variation on subsequent playthroughs. This is bad map design.

Now let's look at the only legitimate desert chapter in Radiant Dawn.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - Pt. 4: Ch.4

This is the thirty-seventh map of FE10, so as in Awakening the player is expected to understand the game's basic concepts by now. However, the objective of this map is "rout" rather than merely "defeat the boss." What's more, the enemies on this map are specialized to kill specific units in the player's army, so progressing through it casualty free requires actual care and planning (and this is before taking into account the additional rewards for finishing within a reasonable amount of time). Because the enemies are so damn scary and the majority of them are concentrated in the center, the player is encouraged to utilize the various indirect routes to flank the enemy's central army and maximize their damage. With that said, the game does offer one incentive to taking the southeast route in the form of a devastatingly powerful reinforcing unit who only appears based on other units' proximity to him. So, even the simplest option is viable (albeit slow and extremely inefficient) for a player whose army might be a bit weak. And lastly, for those interested in collecting secrets, the numbered tiles each contain a hidden treasure buried in the sand that can only be picked up by lucky units and thieves by waiting on the specific tile.

Bear in mind, this is a desert map and the only foes capable of flight are clustered in the top right hand corner. So, due to the player's army containing at least one (fairly powerful) flying unit and two powerful, but vulnerable, magical units, this gives the player's army a significant mobility advantage over the enemies, and therefore the means of actually utilizing the alternative routes outlined by the blue arrows. However, in order to prevent these indirect routes from being too advantageous, the game also has several units (marked by the green star) capable of launching long (as in 10+) range status ailments that can leave a unit extremely vulnerable to their surrounding foes. To exemplify just how much strategy this map allows for, here is a vague outline of my favorite means of getting through this map: a three-pronged pincer attack (you can also just skip the following paragraph and take my word that the map has room for a thorough strategy):

Bring a healer and leave him or her with the majority of your forces. Send two strong, high-mobility units along the southward blue arrows to clear out the left-most outlier enemies. Send another flying unit, the two aforementioned powerful magic units, and a thief along the eastern blue arrows, picking up the first treasure and clearing out the enemy flying units along the way. Send the rest of the army along the first green arrow and hold position at its tip (keeping it protected from a right-side flank by the cliff beneath treasure #1, and dig for treasure #2 while they sit and wait). Support the two flanking squads with the healer tucked safely behind your main army. Leave the central army where it is as the enemies slowly advance towards it. Meanwhile, after clearing out the southwest-portion of the map, begin returning the small southern squad to the main army to begin the pincer attack (while picking up treasure #4 along the way). At the same time, continue to move the south-eastern squad towards the red square to recruit another powerful unit. By now the enemies should be extremely close to the main army, if not already engaged with it. Use the south-east squad's flier to ferry the thief (to pick up treasure #3) or one of the mages over to trigger the reinforcing god's unit's arrival and further bolster the pincer-attack. Now, with your combined forces, eliminate the enemy's central army and march on their remaining forces.

Despite possessing my own preferred means of getting through the map, and outlining several alternative means of completing it, there are still many, many other options available to a player (some of which are outlined by the yellow arrows) each with their own pros and cons. As is hopefully apparent by now, this is a brilliant map, marred only by the lack of in-game information about the reinforcing unit on the red-square. It is challenging and nuanced enough to encourage players to birth strategies wholly unique to this map, while remaining open to alternative strategies that can accomodate a player's variant army composition on subsequent playthroughs. This is good map-design.

UPDATE: 
Now that I've got a hold of Fire Emblem Awakening's Chapter 8 Desert map, we have a more similar point of comparison. 

Just like the Radiant Dawn map, the map objective here is rout. It looks challenging because, it's a desert map, there are enemies strewn about everywhere, and you have just received two new units - marked by the blue rectangle - who are both stranded behind enemy lines. But, unlike the above map, routing the enemies here without taking any casualties is extraordinarily easy, because everything about this map is heavily skewed in your favor.

The first thing to note is that the desert tiles are positioned in a way that only helps you and hinders the enemies. The paths denoted by the green arrows all have standard tiles that provide free movement, allowing you to swiftly reach Nowi and Gregor on foot, as well as advance on the southernmost enemies with minimal effort. And because these are the only tiles on the map that aren't desert, they will almost certainly be the first thing new players gravitate towards. Additionally, nearly all of the enemies on this map start off in the desert, so that it takes them a handful of turns to advance on your position. Note the red circles marked "safety," in particular: If those areas were NOT desert tiles, this map's difficulty would spike dramatically as any unit, even on the first turn, could be up against a small platoon.

Normally, slowing down the enemies would still create a dangerous situation in which all of the enemies could gradually cage you in and collapse on your position at once, unless you spread your forces thin. But, thanks to the various mounds of stone and bone shielding your path, you can advance in any direction with near impunity, and only strike whichever (likely individual) foe happens to be closest. In other words, you are incentivized to mindlessly rush southward.

This map also has bonus objectives in the form of the three villages marked with blue ovals, but there's no danger that any of them will be burned down and the boss doesn't move, so they're really just free items. In literally every other Fire Emblem game, the red circled enemies would attempt to sack the villages, and put pressure on you, to reach them quickly. But here, the bandits are only interested in killing you or standing still, so you can move as fast or slowly as you feel like. This lack of pressure actually robs the map of two strategic possibilities, in that you also don't have any incentive to be aggressive with your two stranded units.

Which reminds me, Nowi and Gregor aren't actually stranded. The village in the top right corner of the map has a Rescue staff inside of it, which will allow any staff wielder (circled with the blue oval) to instantly pull an ally within range adjacent to their position. At this point in time you have at least 2 fliers in your army, one of which is marked in the picture above with a blue circle, so you can easily reach the village by the second turn, provided that your flier is strong or you send one of your cavaliers southward (which, again, you are already encouraged to do, just by virtue of cavalry suffering the harshest movement penalty in the desert and the only non-desert path placing you adjacent to the only moderately hazardous enemy to your flier). Even if for some reason, you did not take a flier or a staff wielder, Nowi and Gregor should have an easy time rallying with your army, as at most they will only have to fight 3 enemies and can simply pair up.

Collectively, this map exemplifies an instance where both of Awakening's two (technically one) strategies are viable. The desert and map objective allow you to haphazardly spread your forces out (and rush), while the cobblestone path in the center lets you keep your units huddled together (and rush). However, while this grants you multiple ways to play the map, there's no real advantage to utilizing either of these strategies, as every aspect of the map is designed to minimize strategic risk. Collectively, in Awakening there are few maps that allow for any tactical freedom/creativity, and the handful that do squander any reason to exercise it.

----------------

There are countless other issues with Awakening's maps ("flatness," poor enemy placement, poorly chosen enemy classes, the recurrent illusion of expansiveness, frequent gameplay story segregation, unfair enemy reinforcements, etc.), but by now, those still defending this game might be thinking something along the lines of, "well on higher difficulties, wouldn't the more challenging enemies encourage players to come up with new strategies?" In principle, yes. In practice, the increased difficulty miraculously manages to only exacerbate the game's monotony and simplicity, by emphasizing the single worst aspect of the Fire Emblem series: randomness.

Randomness at all Costs: How to Screw up Enemies and SRPGs

Two years ago I wrote that “probability is the enemy of strategy.…[However,] this is not to say that there should not be any probability-based conditions in the game, but that their effects should be tertiary to prudent planning and decision making.” I have always held that the Fire Emblem series has suffered from rooting the majority of its gameplay systems in random chance. However, FE:A and its two highest difficulty settings (Lunatic and Lunatic+), go so far above and beyond the sins of previous entries that the randomness almost single-handedly destroys the game’s difficulty curve and overarching longevity.

Previous Fire Emblem titles would relegate (strategically significant) random chance to stat growths, a unit’s accuracy/evasion, critical hit rates, and in rare cases skill activation rates. While some of these (namely accuracy and stat growths) are bit too centralizing for my tastes, prior Fire Emblem games were at least playable due to the player’s ability to influence these chances in accordance with the immediate situations (i.e. equipping a more accurate or powerful weapon). Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn even had ways of mitigating the (relatively random) stat progression with the Fixed-growth system and Bonus Experience respectively.

But, Awakening scrapped both of these perfectly functional systems in favor of the multi-class system, which has the indirect effect of screwing up the game balance skewing characters' stat growths towards those of their class. A savvy player could thus (attempt to) abuse this system to make units grow in specific stats. But, unfortunately for anyone seeking a meta-game to play rather than the one they bought, this only makes it slightly easier to grow in a targeted stat as opposed to guaranteeing it like the two systems from the other games. And if that wasn’t insulting enough, switching classes costs an in-game item to perform and can only be done once the unit reaches level 10 in a pre-promoted class. So, those interested in maxing out a unit's stats, had best be prepared to spend many hours randomly hitting things on the map, and or buying DLC. And yet, this isn’t Awakening’s main problem with randomness.

On Lunatic and Lunatic+ difficulty, the enemies in Awakening all develop absurdly high stats. To put this in perspective, compare the stats of the Prologue boss’s stats on Hard mode (one difficulty below Lunatic) to that of a random enemy on Lunatic. I have highlighted the superior statistics in green to aid an at-a-glance comparisons:

Name: Garrick                  Random Mook (hereby referred to as Skittles)

Class: Barbarian                Barbarian

HP          25                           30

STR         10                           11

MAG       0                              0

SKL         6                              5

SPD         9                              9

LCK         3                              5

DEF         3                              1             

RES         0                              0

WepLVL C                            A

As you can see, Skittles not only has more survivability than the hard mode boss, but due to his superior weapon level, he effectively has more STR, SKL, and LCK to boot. When coupled with the fact that Skittles must be dealt with prior to the player earning a single level-up, it’s easy to see how the difficulty earned its name. However, an unreasonable spike in enemy strength across difficulties only indicates that an extra difficulty level should have been added (Maniac mode for players of past Fire Emblem games). So again, this is not the main problem with the Lunatics (hooray for double entendres!).

In addition to bloated stats, the enemies are also privy to randomly allocated skills. Because the player has access to their own skills, this would theoretically only establish parity between the players and enemies. But, while the randomly chosen skills on Lunatic are generally those unique to the class and are consequently also available to the player, those on Lunatic+ are absurdly powerful and exclusive to the enemies. These overpowered skills can range from always reducing damage taken by 50% to never missing an attack. Additionally, the random skill allocation not only affects which skills enemies have, but how many of them. A random mook on the field can have skills that enable him to: always attack first, never miss an attack, reduce the enemy defense by 50%, reduce the damage received by 50%, and inflict whatever melee-range damage it takes back on the attacker AT THE SAME TIME! Or…he could have none of these abilities and just be a "normal" unit. While the random element certainly makes for more “difficult” maps, the difficulty isn’t fair as it can’t be modulated outside of rolling some dice resetting the map. But even still, this artificial means of evoking “strategy” isn’t the main problem with Awakening’s difficulty. That shit-encrusted crown goes to the Pair Up and accompanying Dual system.

The Pair Up system is essentially a re-working of the old “Rescue” mechanic which enabled one unit to pick up (rescue) another unit provided that they were physically larger than them. The rescuer, however, would suffer a speed and accuracy penalty as a result of carrying another person. It was a clunky, but balanced system. Pair Up evokes the same principle of having two units share a space, but rather than carrying the allied unit, both units act together. This bestows the “lead” unit (the unit on the map) with a stat bonus based on their partner’s stats as well as the units’ relationship. On paper, this is a cool way to encourage new players and veterans to think about the gameplay in more creative ways. But, as with seemingly every idea in this game, it fails spectacularly (partially due to the poor maps and whatnot quashing any attempt at strategic creativity, but primarily) because the stat bonuses conferred by the pair-up system are too damn high.

An astute veteran of the series will likely notice that Support ranks between characters no longer confer stat bonuses based on proximity in Awakening (as they did in past games). Rather, the stat bonuses are now linked with the pair up system. Again, this makes perfect sense since the rescue system was abolished and all units are now encouraged to spend time touching each other’s butts. However, because IS needed to compensate for certain units not being able to support each other, while retaining the universal capability of pairing up, they decided to simply stack more stat bonuses based on the units’ support rank in addition to those conferred by the units’ class and stats. The result was units having stat boosts so much stronger (Avg. +8 in three stats and +3 in all others) than those possible in any previous Fire Emblem game (Avg. +2 in two stats) that stat caps (and half a dozen other systems) needed to be completely reworked to make a functioning game.

Prior to Awakening, the support bonuses were the only explicit advantage the player units had over enemies. But, in Awakening, the pair-up bonuses are so unreasonably high that the only way the game can pose any sort of challenge is if the enemies also have unreasonably high parameters to match. And yet, the difficulty still erratically jumps between extremes because of two imbalanced mechanics which together make up 2/3 of the Dual system.

I’m getting tired of coming up with new ways to explain the game’s core mechanics, so here is a description of the Dual system from Serenes Forest:

“When a character--the Lead unit--enters battle with a friendly unit next to them, that character will receive three forms of benefits: a boost to their combat stats (Dual Support), a chance of a "Support unit" performing a follow-up attack (Dual Strike), as well as a separate chance of shielding them from enemy attacks (Dual Guard). If the Lead unit is paired up, the Support unit will be their standby partner; otherwise it will be the adjacent ally whom they share the highest support level with.”

The Dual Strike system in particular is the main offender here. Dual Guarding is extremely powerful (it completely nullifies all damage), but the activation rate is so low that a player can’t reasonably strategize around it activating consistently. Dual Strikes on the other hand can achieve a literally perfect activation rate with a minimal amount of consideration, and a very high one with even less. This enables a player to regularly output an exceedingly high amount of damage with any set of units regardless of class, thus trivializing unit stats as well as any supposed class balance present in the game (for numerical evidence of just how significantly Dual Strikes trivialize the gameplay mechanics as well the ease with which they can be fixed to consistently activate, refer to section APB9 here).

Now, the second and more immediately apparent reason for Awakening’s schizophrenic difficulty is the player’s ability to grind for stats outside of the story missions. Since player’s could theoretically grind through whatever challenge lay before them by strengthening their units outside of the story missions until the mandatory challenge ceased to exist, the developers could in turn make the game as hard as they pleased and trust that it’s “fair” because the player can “somehow” complete it. This isn’t a new observation. People complain about this in every Fire Emblem game with an external world map (FE2, FE8, and now FE:A). However, IS showed a degree of cleverness with Awakening and actively discourage this option on Lunatic and Lunatic+ (ironically, the only place where this is actually helpful) by making the external encounters exceedingly difficult at all points in the game (i.e. they scale in difficulty based on what chapter the player is on).

Unfortunately, because unit stat progression is still tied to chance while enemy units’ stats rise consistently, the enemies on the two Lunatic settings will eventually outstrip the player units, without leaving much room to catch up. As a result, the only way to get through the difficulty, outside of buying DLC, is to resort to abusing imbalanced gameplay mechanics (read: the Nosferatu tome) and advancing through levels more slowly. So, even though the game’s enemies do force a player to actually pay attention to them, the game’s limited set of available strategies never actually change. The only difference between Lunatic, Lunatic+, and the lower difficulties is the speed at which the game’s two strategies can be applied.

Concluding Thoughts:

To briefly recap everything, FE:A has 1-dimensional characters, a lousy plot, extremely limiting map design, few mission objectives, fewer useful strategies, and an erratic difficulty curve that collectively make for a game that is at once, simple and monotonous. All in all, Fire Emblem: Awakening is a dumb game. Its story, characters, maps, enemies, classes, gameplay progression and difficulty are all designed to appeal to people who both don’t understand strategy games and have no interest in doing so. It is one of the worst games in this franchise on a number of different levels and is scarcely identifiable as a Fire Emblem game by any of its mechanical systems.

So, why am I talking about this? Why would I devote so much time and energy crudely drawing arrows, and ranting for 5600 words about a game I don’t like? Because this is the game that saved this franchise. This piece of shit is the game that won the hearts of critics & consumers and is consequently the face of Fire Emblem. That. Is. Terrifying.

Make no mistake, not once have I claimed that this game is not fun. Fire Emblem: Awakening is very entertaining. The dialogue is amusing. The gameplay is addictive. The game isn’t too mentally demanding, and its short maps make it easy to play for brief spurts of time. It fulfilled my personal dream of creating a character in a Fire Emblem game (who actually has something of a personality and isn't just a husk. See: FE12), and even brought back the beloved inheritance system from FE4. And yet, the game itself, really isn’t a Fire Emblem game anymore. Mechanically and narratively, the game is actually more similar to the Disgaea series; a collection of wacky, “Strategy” RPGs, with deep character customization, whose gameplay is built to encourage and reward countless hours of grinding. The most recent entry, Disgaea 4, actually does everything in Awakening (outside of support conversations), but better. Hell, it’ll even be available portably on the Vita in a month. But, while I legitimately love the Disgaea games, their particular brand of mind-numbing min/maxing is not why I come to the Fire Emblem series.

There will very likely be another Fire Emblem game, but if it is built with any or all of the same philosophies as this one, then like the Final Fantasy series before it, I will be ready to kiss this franchise goodbye.

Originally Written: July 15, 2014
Initially Posted: July 15, 2014
Last Edited: February 26, 2016