Fire Emblem: Awakening (Demo) Impressions (RP)
*This is a reposting, the original can be found here for comments and feedback.
So I’ve had my time with the Demo version of Fire Emblem: Awakening. The feeling I walked away with is… good, but short.
Don’t get me wrong, it shows you how polished this title will be when it’s released on the 4th of February. A few of the things they hint at is actual customization options of which I’m not completely familiar with in other Fire Emblem titles. You actually get to create you own character. I’m not sure how varied the options are since in the demo, you only get to see that you can customize in the released version. You don’t get to play with any options. This was sad, but the reason for the demo is the game play.
Another interesting note is that you can actually turn off the perma-death feature that usually goes hand-in-hand with the other Fire Emblem games. This is aside from the fact that you can change the difficulty from Normal, Hard, or Lunatic. So there are a few different options on how hard you want to make this experience for yourself. Some say that even if you play on Hard, but turn off perma-death, you’re not truly experiencing a Fire Emblem game as it’s intended. However, I say it’s a good move for those who have been interested in this franchise but may have been scared off by the thought of losing a character forever. It’s daunting, but it does add something to the experience you don’t usually get in most games today.
I also am excited about how the game looks since it’s rather impressive. This is the second game that I think looks super awesome and better in 3D. This is a nice bonus to me since I don’t tend to play my 3DS games in 3D. Woohoo, that gets the count up to two including Resident Evil: Revelations! The cinematics are a mix of anime, flat drawing, and CG. It’s very snazzy. I was very impressed.
The gameplay of moving your characters around the map is smooth and simple. You have a different assortment of classes to use as seen in the video posted yesterday. It was rather simple in easy. So I tried a second time on hard and needless to say, I actually died. I was being rather cavalier with my troops so I’m not completely surprised, but there were more enemies and they did hit harder. I will probably be playing on this setting.
On the feild of battle you can position some people next to each other and other than building up relationships between units it also gives them buffs like extra HP, speed, and luck. It’s character dependent and kind of an interesting addition. Sometimes, and I stress sometimes, they will help each other in an attack. It only happened once and I couldn’t get it to happen a second time so I’m not quite sure how this works. You can also pair up units so they take up the same square. They then do attack together, but it does take up a turn to group and ungroup them so do this wisely… I did not and I paid for it.
Last point for now until the actual review is the fact that there are going to be bundles with this game. I was seriously hoping for this to be the excuse I’ve been waiting for to pick up a 3DSXL. Unfortunately, they decided on a regular 3DS. It’s very sleek looking and for those that don’t have a 3DS, this may push them over the edge to pick one up.
Over all, after playing the demo… I can’t wait to pick this up on the 4th. It’s looking to be another must have game on the 3DS. While the 3DS is doing well, you have to admit that Nintendo always need more to establish their dominance.
