Well I'm still working through my playthrough of Fire Emblem Awakening but I feel that now is probably a good time to run it down for you at home. Me and the FE series have a tentative relationship simply because they are a Nintendo product and me and Nintendo spend most of our time together eyeing one another suspiciously; I think their design studio died and they seem to think I'm five. This is countered when they release a Fire Emblem game. It should be noted here at the top that I own the special 3DS that they released when Awakening came out and if it hadn't been released I probably wouldn't own one.
Well let's get into the game shall we?
The game is a top down tactical game in which you are given a limited number of units on a given map and often your only goal is to eliminate everything that isn't you. The system as Geremy mentioned functions on a RNG, or random number generator, that is influenced by your unit's stats against the opposing unit as well as what kind of weapons the two of you are using. The classes are varied but almost all of them are capped at level 20 forcing you to either use a master seal and upgrade them to a master level class; these are typically more broad classes that enable additional weapons to be used. For example the thief can upgrade into the assassin or the trickster. Both keep his use of the sword but they focus on different stats and add another weapon to the character's arsenal. For assassin that is the bow while the trickster adds a healing staff. Each class change resets the character's weapon skills provided the new class can't use the same weapons forcing them to start out again with the worst weapons in the game. Those classes also grant different skills that can modify the character's abilities. For example the most powerful skill in the game is granted to the dark-flier class; known as Galeforce it enables a character who had already acted on your turn take a second move if they killed an enemy unit.
The game also prominently features weapon degradation with the most powerful weapons having the shortest lifespan of 15-20 uses. The exception to this rule are a few special weapons that have a lifespan of 5 or fewer often tied to weapons that give an unskilled character much more power than the standard equivalent level weapon. Of course with this system comes an interesting Rock/Paper/Scissors approach to how they behave in game. Axes get bonuses to attacking lance wielding foes while lances beat swords and swords best axes. In previous Fire Emblem games magic also had its own tree but in Awakening that is done away with in favor of a simpler system. The different spells are available but it doesn't tier out at all.
The biggest change to older games is the way that supports are handled. In other games characters that were supporting each other would need to be within a certain range. If characters were within this support zone they would bestow stat bonuses to each other. Awakening takes a different route and it heavily encourages the player to keep supporting units right next to each other. The reason for this is that in addition to granting certain stat bonuses those characters can also help out in combat from adding another attack to shielding the other character and with permadeath enabled it is a long sigh of relief to see that happen. The odds of it happening go up with the more support level that the characters have with each other, limited to three with one being an exception to reaching four, and instead of one unit "rescuing" the other and carrying them around they pair up as a team and while only the active character engages in combat the other one can help them out. This is a good tool for moving slow units quickly into a hot spot with a faster one.
In the game's story you play as an amnesiac who is a skilled tactician that uses both magic and swords to start things off. It quickly moves into a situation where you and your band of characters must stop a great disaster from occurring and sending the whole world into darkness; you know a pretty standard JRPG storyline. Each level is up to the player to select from a world map, another new deal from the last one I played, and from there you engage the mission. Contrary to other games in the series you can farm experience in Awakening and end up with units that are functionally around level 60 if you have the patience for it and want to see everything crushed beneath your feet. There are a ton of characters in the game and I lament that the format means that I can't use them all but in an interesting twist even though most of the character is only seen in support conversations every one has a distinct personality to them and are a joy to interact with, if for no other reason than to see how things go with them.
Quite honestly if you can track a copy down, they were sold out when I first got mine, you should give the game a try. I'll freely admit the storyline is fairly standard but the colorful characters, a thief bribed to aid you with candy, to a jolly russianish mercenary, really make up for the slight shortcomings in the storyline. I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys tactical combat games or just wants to finally get something that isn't Pokemon and good on their 3DS.
Zach out.
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