The difficulty being very easy or rng based in higher difficulties
The characters
Lol made the series alive again
I know i was introduced to the FE series by obtaining a copy of conquest, and that would have not existed had Awakening not sold enough, but my context for conquest was divorced from the wider FE community at the time. Divorced from all nostalgia, hype and other things when Awakening released, im not sure why people enjoy it now… look, im not doing this in bad faith, nor to incite a reaction from the community at large. Many of you were introduced to FE by Awakening, i know. Why do people like FE games anyways? What drives us to enjoy these SRPGS?
Most people enjoy it for the same reasons you dislike it. For most players Awakening isn’t too easy but instead a fair challenge and they generally enjoy familiar tropey characters who would fit right into a slice of life show.
Awakening characters are quite trope heavy on a surface level but each character usually gets enough supports that shows them off in a serious light, they’re rarely truly two dimensional.
As for the difficulty, I just play the game without pair up on Hard and I manage to enjoy myself. It’s similar in difficulty to FE8 that way.
People have many reasons to like the game, be it Awakening or others FE
But to dig up a bit on Awakening, one of the big strenght of Awakening is it’s simplicity, be it in terms of writings or mechanics. It’s an easy game to go back and replay for fun, because everything goes smooth, and the story and characters tends to be classic/cliche but do the job very well for the experience the game wants to give (and even then some characters are still quite memorable, like lucina)
Also, something that you can no longer enjoy much anymore, there was some funny mechanics associated with streetspass, which was completely new. You took the 3ds outside and then, when you go back to the game, other players characters would spawn on the world map and you could interact with them (be it fighting them, recruiting their main characters or trading items)
I only used Pair Up to grind supports and I had decent fun (other than many maps being tedious but…) so like yeah Pair Up is just not great for engaging with maps
Awakening is cool because it lets me do stupid things like this.
(and believe me, I ain’t the target audience for high stat FE; this game’s just goofy!)
Did only one playthrough back when the game first released in the west, loved it a lot despite the game’s blemishes. Years on I’ve become a much more jaded and subdued FE fan after having my thoughts on the series be challenged on Fates and the -endless- discourse it sparked which is now common for the franchise. Felt like Awakening’s style of game had no place for me any more(extends to New Mystery as well since it started the trend).
Finally booted it up again two years ago (where those screens come from), had an absolute blast. Game is still great and I had a lot of fun with it as I did back then. Yeah Awakening has issues - all games do - but it also has great reverence for the series it owes its existence towards and helped revive; I think that’s really understated these days given how much nostalgia pandering the newer games do now and their divisive reception.
It’s just a fun, wholesome game about a blue-haired dude and his strategist buddy/mate/wife/whatever teaming up with his future daughter to stop a bad dragon. I get to summon my favorite FE character and mage girl, sword boy with cool jacket, and funny archer girl from beyond the ether to help them and you know, I’m fine with that.
Well, i`m happy that people brought serious discussion to the table, despite my post’s weird nature. Thanks for the stuff and i’ve enjoyed reading what you have to say about the subject matter of my post.
I like FE in general because it’s exciting to have a bird’s eye view of combat and being able to essentially plan my entire strategy from the word go. I can predict how enemy AI will act (within an acceptable error of margin) and manipulate the battle ahead of time.
Specifically, I like Awakening because it’s comfort food. You don’t have to be particularly good at strategizing to break the game in half. You also have free reign to set up the most broken combos you want with units, stats and skills if that’s your thing. There’s something for everyone. Plus it has adult Tiki, nuff said.
Awakening didn’t do anything particularly great in my opinion, but it was still fun to play last time I played it (which was probably about a decade ago). Thinking back, it had a bit of everything done -just- good enough to not really be great, but also not bad. I much preferred the Telius games, and my intro to the series was FE7. I liked Awakening enough to do a second playthrough on lunatic so… There’s that. I liked it.
Characters are decently balanced with trope-y-ness and likability which later FEs have done better and worse. Unit power can be busted wide open with enough grinding and second seals for power gamers. I recall Nosferatu Sorcerers(?) with armsthrift being something people did for one man armies.
And you shouldn’t discount nostalgia. It’s is one hell of a drug. If it was someone’s intro to the series, chances are it’ll be one of their more liked games in the series. Helps a lot of us look past the flaws to find the fun in stuff.
I mean nostalgia is still why Tales of Symphonia is still my favorite game ever. All the things it does well and all the flaws it very obviously has are why it’s charming for me. Are there better games out there? Absolutely! But it doesn’t change the fact that Symphonia came out at the right time on the right console for me to be sucked into an RPG and play through it countless times.
I think i got into fe via fe fates supports but I did play awakening a bit on my laptop. It’s pretty broken balance wise but the characters and cinematics are great. I think I actually prefer awakening and fates cutscenes more than 3houses actually
“I LOVE FIGHTING ON A F****** TREE” -that one person we all dislike
idk… if its fire emblem ima play it and prob enjoy it. unless its three houses… but i think that was more my fault. doing monastery to be super optimal first run literally killed my enjoyment. But awakening felt casually enjoyable. a nice time but also was not soo damn easy i couldnt actually engage with the game. then when i wanted to grind and customize stuff, i could and it didnt feel as rough as something like Three houses does/did to me. grinding felt like something i could do that was not entirely like this is a large part of the game. same with fates. running around and grabbing beanz or whatever takes very little time (when u add it all up ya it takes a bit in a full playthrough). but doing it after a chapter doesnt take long. Monastary i feel like its forced in my face and its something i should be doing but it takes sooo much time imo on a first playthrough especially when i am examining and learning what all i need to do X,Y and Z for the results i want. like awakening getting kids at first im not thinking o they get X skill with these parent etc. I was thinking. o let me see these 2 units support cause rinkahs cool and so is this dude. let me pair them up and see there support and see if its a fun/well written/ etc support more than i was like o i have to do this for X result. i was already just grinding the supports. not the skills at that time for the child unit.
plus i could bring back some of my old favorites like Marisa and such even if they had no dialogue etc. It was also my first real look at Sigurd (edit: i said sigurd but i meant leif) and other characters like that. (i played shadow dragon so i knew about gharnef and marth etc. and played fe4, fe6, fe7, fe8, and Path of radiance but at that time i never got to get very far in the game and i think thats all i had played. I THINK) I never had played Fe5 n such at that point.so i got to see some of the units and that was really cool. even if i didnt get to learn about them. i got to see if they looked cool or had a cool name etc.
its fire emblem. im not gunna also just hate it. i am gunna try to find things i like about it and hope it outweighs the negatives. FE TH was the only one the negatives outweighed the positives and i completely blame myself and the playstyle i choose to go with on the first run.
I try my hardest to act like I know very little about FE before diving into new games or even rom hacks. Helps keep that fresh feeling of enjoyment and exploration.
