Everything comes together during the critical attacks the battle freezes for a moment, a shot of the eyes flashes across the screen and one of many unforgettable lines precedes the blow. As the script flows, certain words or phrases are picked out by voice actors that capture their mannerisms and tics perfectly. The pixel miniatures in the top-down view morph into expressive 3D models, faces then detailed in gorgeous hand-drawn portraits whenever there's dialogue. There's a unique craft to Intelligent Systems' way of creating characters, with aspects of their personality caught across multiple forms. None of this interweaving of personality and mechanics would matter as much if the characters were dull, but Nintendo's translations from the Japanese are among the very best, and Awakening is a peach. One final point on this quite brilliant system: when certain characters get close enough they will, of their own volition, get married. By about halfway through the game, you're surprised when the support character doesn't help out with more than a boost. This in turn can combine with critical hits, blocks, and dodges. Improving units' relationships increases not only the boosts they give each other but also the likelihood of a dual attack (in which the second character gets a cheeky free shot). It's a new system that lays atop the old one but accentuates every aspect of it, as well as adding a persistent element to battle strategy. This mechanic is perfect for Fire Emblem because it depends on good unit positioning, which is what the game's about in the first place. After an attack or defence slightly improves the connection between two characters, a little pair of hearts bloops up for a second to let you know, and seeing these makes me sweat like a teenage girl at a Justin Bieber concert. Not to get all soppy about it, but I heart the hearts. This is very useful when facing flying troops. The blue and red squares indicate where a unit can move to and attack respectively, and you can also select enemy units to see their potential range. Relationships get deeper through characters fighting together, as well as the odd chat between engagements, and you can tell this because of the hearts. Whether on attack or defence, a unit with a nearby friendly will be boosted, and the deeper the relationship, the bigger the boost. The greatest of these is undoubtedly the relationships characters now form on the battlefield, a system built around placing units adjacent to each other or pairing them up on the same square. This matters because Fire Emblem is a strategy game where the units, rather than being disposable copies, are characters in a story, and Awakening introduces several new mechanics to make personalities more central to the strategy than they ever have been. It's an odd little mix of meta-mechanic and practicality a coin you keep flipping until every one's a winner. In other words, if you play this without resetting fairly regularly to reverse fate, you're either tactically brilliant or not playing it right. If the 3DS didn't already have a soft reset (L+R plus either start or select), then Awakening would have implemented one. Though your characters can die, you're not expected to accept it. I posed the above contradiction to a friend and his answer was simple: "srsly don't let characters die." I mention this not to take a cheap shot at developer Intelligent Systems but because it illuminates something that's at the core of Fire Emblem and always has been. (Which didn't stop her playing a central role in the ongoing storyline.) Chrom and the player character (here named Robin) are the main acts throughout Awakening - the red wisps around their avatars indicate that they're supporting each other on attack and defence. Yes they are, except you're dead my love. I lost a main character on the third mission, yet up she pops in the next cut-scene talking about how well things are going. If you're playing in Classic mode, where units die forever, their last words will often be about retreating. This leads to a wealth of contradictions. If you do, defeated units retreat from the battlefield but are right as rain afterwards. When your defining feature is permanent death, but when all that really means is a restart, should the game's structure change or turn a blind eye?įire Emblem: Awakening doesn't just turn a blind eye, it practically admits defeat by allowing you - for the first time - to turn the whole thing off. It is an inspired revision of a classic design, and one that is riven right through the middle with a problem the series can't solve. There's a theory that what makes something truly beautiful is a single, noticeable imperfection.
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