Fire Emblem: Awakening is the latest in a long running series of turn based tactical level games. Awakening is a far more RPG-like game than most in the series, sharing many similarities with Fire Emblem: Sacred Stones. You can grind in free battles or buy from shops on the world map, there's no scoring system, and difficulty tends to be on the low side. There are more wi-fi features than ever including Spotpass and paid DLC.
Awakening has a responsive and fairly well designed UI, which is to be expected from Intelligent Systems. Combat pacing is very fast, and you have the option of skipping the entire enemy turn's animations if you feel like it. This puts other tactics games with molasses-like combat speed and poor UI design like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre to shame. Awakening is a pretty good looking game and it has a very nice soundtrack as well.
Casual mode returns from Fire Emblem: Heroes of Light and Shadow, along with several difficulty modes. I think Casual mode is a good addition that makes Fire Emblem more accessible. I appreciate multiple difficulty modes aimed at beginner to veteran players, but only if the modes aimed at veterans are balanced and well designed. In Awakening this is simply not the case.
Awakening's level design is fairly bland and generic, lacking objectives and unique strategic situations or events. Maps are almost always a wide open area with an assortment of generic enemies and almost no other objectives. This is a far cry from the series' high notes of level design and strategy, or of tactics games in general. Secondary objectives, interesting terrain, and unique strategic situations would have helped quite a bit. Even on the harder difficulty modes you're mainly playing the game for the set pieces, cutscenes, plot, and characters.
Awakening's combat is a balance mess. This isn't a big deal on the easier difficulty modes, as those modes are already very easy, and it's expected that beginner and intermediate players don't care much for balance issues or strategy. Your average gamer playing on Normal difficulty will likely not notice or care much. For people who enjoy tactics games for their strategy, though, it's a significant issue. There are many ways to completely trivialize any difficulty mode, mainly by using any wi-fi feature, DLC grinding, or life drain tomes. It is easily the most imbalanced Fire Emblem in series history, and I'm hard pressed to think of less balanced tactics games in general. There is no scoring system to rate or encourage skilled play like in previous Fire Emblems.
Trying to do player restricted runs on Lunatic is hardly worth it, such as no wi-fi, no Nosferatu tomes, and no grinding. It's so imbalanced that if you make a laundry list of restrictions to prevent the game from being "broken", you still end up with an uneven mess where some maps are highly luck based or even impossible to complete. When the game starts throwing capped stat enemies at you on a challenge run, even with optimal strategies you'll have a fairly low % chance of success. Of course you can always trivialize the game by breaking out the wi-fi, grinding, life drain tomes, Frederick/MU pairing, etc.
Lunatic+ is even more of a mess. On Lunatic+ chapters 1-4 before you can start grinding, you have about a 15-20% chance of clearing the scenario even assuming an optimal strategy. Enemies are randomly granted skills at the start of a Lunatic+ scenario, and you'll end up having to restart chapters multiple times until you get enemy skill combinations that aren't impossible to get past. I'd be interested in seeing if it's even possible to clear Lunatic+ without paying extra money for DLC maps to grind on. Overall Awakening could have been a much better game had they put more effort into the level design and combat balance.
In comparison, Fire Emblem: Heroes of Light and Shadow's Lunatic/Lunatic' is far more balanced, less reliant on RNG, more challenging, has a varied and strategic campaign, and has a scoring system to promote skilled play. It also has casual mode and a forgiving normal mode. Awakening does have more party customization in terms of pairing up, kid making, skills, etc. but they are mainly there for sandbox play, not strategy.
Awakening has a lot of DLC. In Japan if you bought all the DLC you'd be paying about twice as much as the original game. I'm not opposed to DLC, but it seems like a shameless cash-in when they throw in dozens of characters from past FEs for sale. It seems like a bit of a one trick pony to me. DLC maps are mainly there to let the player grind. I haven't played through some of the supposedly challenging DLC maps which are not yet released in North America, but I don't doubt they can be trivialized in some way.
A large portion of Awakening's plot revolves around pairing your army up and mating them to produce offspring to fight for you, assisted by the uber-creepy old man Hubba. You can't avoid pairing at least some of your party members up, either. This isn't any sort of measured adult romance, but the stunted and immature "waifu" fanservice that plagues Japanese games and anime. You can also purchase DLC that includes beach and spa scene fanserevice, a depressingly familiar staple of Japanese RPGs these days. The whole mechanic is distasteful, embarrassing, and creepy.
Nintendo even went the extra mile and added pedophile fanservice in the form of a childlike 10 year old girl in whore's clothing that can be married off and bred. Oh and you save her from a life of apparent "slavery" (I'll let you guess which sort), and she has lines like "People often forget I've been around the block a few thousand times." I wish I was making this up. But it's ok, because she's really a '1,000 year old dragon' or something. I found this character far more offensive than any combat related issue.
Awakening's story is generic and disjointed, and seems cobbled together as an excuse to let you fight alongside your army's paired up offspring. Your army is mainly made up of generic, lifeless anime stereotypes. The main antagonist is as generic a villain as they come. If you're playing Awakening for the plot and characters, you'd better love waifus and anime/JRPG stereotypes.
Overall Awakening disappointed me gameplay wise as a veteran tactics gamer and also managed to creep me out with its overload of fanservice and wife breeding. I recognize that my balance and combat concerns are not important to the average gamer who will likely enjoy the game on Normal Casual or Hard Casual difficulty, assuming they can stand the plot and characters. The Intelligent Systems development team is capable of better than this and I hope their next tactics game effort delivers.
+ Casual mode increases Fire Emblem's accessibility to beginners
+ UI is responsive and mostly well designed
+ Your average gamer will not mind the balance or combat issues
+ Graphics and music are both high quality
- Extremely imbalanced combat, not much worth salvaging with player restrictions
- Cash-in DLC that costs quite a lot more total than the game itself
- Mostly bland, boring level design
- Awfully stereotypical plot and characters w/ creepy "waifu" breeding
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
No Score system arrrrrr Give me R-Type Tactics scoring!
Nope, no scoring. Shame the series has fallen, but it was only a matter of time.
Matt, I'm playing on Lunatic, not casual of course. What do you mean by Lunatic+? Is that something you unlock?
Lunatic+ is unlocked after clearing Lunatic. It's like Lunatic except enemies are granted random skills at the start of each scenario, some of which are ridiculous combinations.
I was going to invest in a 3DS, mainly for this game, but this review is the final nail in that idea-coffin.
Good thing XCOM: EU is the gift that keeps on giving! (part 1 of an *ALL NEW* Impossible Ironman attempt currently uploading at www.youtube.com/valchronification btw!)
I like how you discuss whether the game is worth saving via player 'house rules'. I'm trying to find a good blend of 2nd Wave options in XCOM to make the I/I early game fairer and the late game challenging, but I'm not sure if they will be enough (ghost armor is truly b0rked).
It is interesting to read that you do not think that it is even possible to save FE from broken-game hell. If the game goes from abusable to literally impossible without, say, level grinding then that is not a game I want to play.
I doubt I would ever play a Japanese game as utterly ridden with bugs as XCOM, but I think I'll take tactical content ahead of solid execution and 10-year-old 'waifus' (ew).
It will be worth picking up a 3DS eventually.
I would not consider the XCom EU second wave options to be player defined at all. They're options coded directly into the game, most of which the player cannot emulate by restricting themselves.
Yeah this is one of the most imbalanced tactics games I've ever played.
XCom is still buggy on PC? I thought they patched most of it. Or are you still using the console version.
I really dislike waifus so this game would be distasteful to me even if the combat and level design was better.
You can determine which 2nd wave options combination you use though. After some experimenting, it seems the early impossible campaign can be made fairer, but the challenge fades the further you get no matter what 2nd Wave you use.
All versions received the patches simultaneously, and all versions are still bugged (in some ways even worse now). The pc version actually has many unique bugs thanks to the mouse interface and I would argue the console versions are just as good if not better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Decadence
Open beta available. Found your blog (again) while searching for it. Keep up the good work.
I'm stuck trying to get WH40K: Chaos Gate working. It works, but spastically, and the patches won't install. Windows 8, in 7 comp mode.
Forgot to let you know there's a new Space Hulk game on the horizon. Can't wait.
Matt, I didn't really agree with you since I feel your review really nitpicks to an extreme. I also feel it contrasts completely with almost every other review out there right now. Where you grasping for straws to come up with more complaints?
I mean.. You do touch on the games flaws, actually, you blow them out of proportion. You seem to ignore all of the good points, like how much content and freedom is in the game, then you go and complain about little things, like DLC(an entire paragraph about it, really?), "waifus", and little girls in a Japanese game.. Because they "really" care and totally aren't making, and localizing a 3rd Neptunia game and plenty more Disgaea games/spinoffs. I get that it's weird, and feminine dudes offend me a little too, but I don't hate on FE and call it flawed cause they're there to please the ladies.
I do appreciate the objective look at some of the games shortcomings.. but while reading through I was stunned how one-sided it is, and at the level of nitpicking brought up. Like..wait, you're complaining about luck and RNG in a SRPG too? Wow.
Judging from your other overly opinionated reviews, you tend to dislike, or not care about a lot of things that the majority of people love about SRPGs.
I judge strategy games by their balance, variety, challenge, and level design. Awakening lacks those things, thus I didn't much like it. Content and "freedom" does not equal quality or balance. If that's "nitpicking" to you, there are plenty of other places you can go.
You don't seem to understand why the higher difficulty modes have balance issues. I suggest you try it yourself or visit some FE forums if you want to learn more. Have you played FE12 Lunatic or FE13 Lunatic at all?
The review is not one sided or "overly opinionated". I pointed out several times what the average gamer's perspective would be while playing on normal and casual mode. I made sure to look at the game from the "majority of people's" perspective. I pointed out how casual mode is good for new players, which I'm obviously not. Did you not notice any of this?
The vast majority of people who enjoy games like games with balanced, skill based rule sets that set people in competition with one another, whether single or multiplayer. People who enjoy 300+ hour grinding sandbox RPGs that have little point other than plot and character development are vanishingly small in comparison. I'm afraid to tell you that I'm in the majority as far as gamers in general go.
Swede those are board games, right? I don't really cover those, unfortunately. They look cool though.
@Jordan Vanderschaaf
I think Matt was clear, for average players its a good game. But Matt is a advance player and was reviewing more to the advance player perspective. He clearly stated that. For positive reviews that hide the wrong parts, theres plenty of them on the net. I don't read only one review, each review I take them in and watch for key parts I enjoy. In the end, its your our opinion that counts, its not any review online. Each reviewer writes there opinions. One game I might love, you may hate.
Also, I look at RPG's on the combat side, turn based tactical games, which Matt seems to find more important. Players that love the story part will have another experience, maybe they love the waifus direction Fire Emblem has taken. We combat fans, don't really need the story, its just a extra.
Another important bit is that there are two main groups of people that love turn based tactical games: the ones that want random combat and does that want deterministic (which makes the game more puzzlelike). I want deterministic game or less randomness games. if Fire Emblem had to pump up the hardness, just by going the too randomness route, maybe it wasn't the best choice, or it was just a shortcut because making a better AI is very hard.
Also I try always never to grind, I feel its a way to cheat the game. If a game is to random and needs to be grinded to earn experience to get better units, than theres something wrong with it.
We can't be afraid to point out the faults, no game is perfect. Any developer wants to here the truth, that is how they can make better games.
Bad features in games, even bugs, don't make them less fun, look at XCOM, the bugs it has and won more than 20 awards all over the net.
Be open and enjoy the best genre out there LOL, and that is turn based tactical games :)
Post a Comment