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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |