From Conquest to Awakening

[starburst]

Purchasing my first 3DS console in 2017 gave me the advantage of having information about the whole console's library; and during the past year, I read countless critical comments about Fates. While I agree with most of them, that has not stopped me from enjoying Conquest and playing it many hours a week, almost every week. I started playing Echoes and the Fire Emblem GBA and DS games, but I always came back to Conquest. I love its gameplay.

I skipped Awakening on purpose. I read that it had poor map design, that it was unbalanced, easily exploitable, and either very easy or completely unfair. That and the lack of feet.
Well, given that numerous criticisms of Awakening revolve around its gameplay, and that Conquest is mostly praised because of its, I may actually not enjoy Awakening after playing Conquest for so long. Anyway, I decided to give it a go and got Awakening earlier this week.

So, what are your recommendations to make the most of Awakening's gameplay?

I do not want to make it more difficult for the sake of it, say by playing it on Lunatic or using only a couple low-level weak characters, but to have a more 'balanced' experience.

I was planning to play it on Hard, with no grinding and only one class promotion per character, to prevent infinite level-ups and engineered skill sets. In the same vein, I guess that I should be cautious about Galeforce and Nosferatu.
I would use an unmarried female Daraen, and Owain is the only child that I care about in this run; mostly because of what I have read about Linfan and the children being game breakers. Also, since 'low-manning' Awakening seems to be more abusable than challenging, does using a bigger party improve the balance? (In Conquest, for example, I use twelve-fourteen characters.)

Edited June 7, 2018 by starburst

[Roxas]

dude it totally sounds like you're hatefucking this game rn

you don't need to impose limits on yourself to enjoy something. And if you feel like something has been brought up through your copious amounts of research, just don't abuse what you feel like you shouldn't abuse.

Awakening is a fun game, with lots of callbacks to previous entries in the series as the intended swan song of fire emblem. enjoy it for what it is and not how your current experience with the series is going to skew your perception of the gameplay and story.

 

seriously, don't let critical reviews (aforementioned poor map design, imbalance, rando difficulty)  and your original skipping of awakening to hold yourself back from playing a videogame

[Light Strategist]

I'd say that this would be better served in the Awakening boards since not everyone who has played Fates has played Awakening thus will lead to you finding less people that are able to help.

Personally, I just try to take it as it is. Every character is good in some way or another but if you play in a way that restricts who you use in your first playthrough, you may find yourself not using someone you that really like.

[eclipse]

Yep.  Off to Awakening with you~!

And in the end, it's up to YOU whether or not you want to play the game.  If you're going in with a negative mindset, you're not going to enjoy it.

[Roxas]

3 hours ago, eclipse said:

If you're going in with a negative mindset, you're not going to enjoy it.

idk have you ever had hate sex before 

[Reality]

If low difficulty is a problem, I don't think your suggested idea of "holding back" will help enough for Awakening. I find that using skill combinations or children aren't really neccesary to make Hard Mode in Awakening easy - It's simple enough to take charathers in their starting classes and leave them in it and still have the problems with being allowed to indiscrimaiately move units forward and let enemies attack them from multiple slots and still win.

Awakening is quite fun if played as a time-killing kind of light RPG or as a puzzle game on lunatic +  I don't think that trying to play it as a Strategy RPG really works that well in either the normal-hard or the Lunatic modes though. It's a good game overall, as long as you don't try to make it into something that it is not. 

I would recommend you try the Lunatic + despite your reservations about it. It can be fun, even if the encounter design does push it slightly outside of the SRPG genre. 

[Cysx]

I'd advise a Classic-Hard playthrough with a veeeeery casual mindset. Just take the game for what it is, be wary of enemy phase reinforcements and you should be able to enjoy it, because it's no so much that it's an unbalanced experience from a surface level. It's when you dive into its mechanics that it falls apart, in my opinion.

Though if you're into theorycrafting for children characters, then there can be a lot of that in this one.

Edited June 7, 2018 by Cysx

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah, I'd recommend playing Hard Classic and avoiding low-manning (that is, raise a full party, and don't just make half of them pair-up bots). The rest will mostly take care of itself; most of the really OP aspects of the game only come into play if you let a few units become very overlevelled (e.g. invincible pairup combos, Galeforce). The reinforcements suck and the maps aren't the best but it's still a lot of fun and worth playing if you like other Fire Emblems.

[starburst]

Thank you all for your replies. I started playing it yesterday and I am a couple of chapters in. I am still trying to figure out the Dual Support system, but so far, so good.
There are a couple of characters which I am liking more than others, but I am still sharing Experience points among the whole party (except Frederick, who will be used once he stops getting zero damage and killing everything in one hit.)

 

On 7/6/2018 at 2:54 AM, Reality said:

If low difficulty is a problem, I don't think your suggested idea of "holding back" will help enough for Awakening. I find that using skill combinations or children aren't really neccesary to make Hard Mode in Awakening easy - It's simple enough to take charathers in their starting classes and leave them in it and still have the problems with being allowed to indiscrimaiately move units forward and let enemies attack them from multiple slots and still win.

Awakening is quite fun if played as a time-killing kind of light RPG or as a puzzle game on lunatic +  I don't think that trying to play it as a Strategy RPG really works that well in either the normal-hard or the Lunatic modes though. It's a good game overall, as long as you don't try to make it into something that it is not.

Yeah, this is exactly what I was afraid of; that the game would 'break itself' no matter what. Anyway, as you say, I should take it for what it is.
 

 

On 7/6/2018 at 7:15 AM, Cysx said:

I'd advise a Classic-Hard playthrough with a veeeeery casual mindset. Just take the game for what it is, be wary of enemy phase reinforcements and you should be able to enjoy it, because it's no so much that it's an unbalanced experience from a surface level. It's when you dive into its mechanics that it falls apart, in my opinion.

 

On 7/6/2018 at 9:04 AM, Dark Holy Elf said:

Yeah, I'd recommend playing Hard Classic and avoiding low-manning (that is, raise a full party, and don't just make half of them pair-up bots). The rest will mostly take care of itself; most of the really OP aspects of the game only come into play if you let a few units become very overlevelled (e.g. invincible pairup combos, Galeforce). The reinforcements suck and the maps aren't the best but it's still a lot of fun and worth playing if you like other Fire Emblems.

Thank you both for your input. If I got you right, and you believe that Awakening is easily abusable but one still needs to do it consciously, then I think that I will be able to 'restrain' myself for doing so and have a more balanced gameplay.

[Arthur97]

On 6/6/2018 at 8:46 PM, Roxas said:

dude it totally sounds like you're hatefucking this game rn

you don't need to impose limits on yourself to enjoy something. And if you feel like something has been brought up through your copious amounts of research, just don't abuse what you feel like you shouldn't abuse.

Awakening is a fun game, with lots of callbacks to previous entries in the series as the intended swan song of fire emblem. enjoy it for what it is and not how your current experience with the series is going to skew your perception of the gameplay and story.

 

seriously, don't let critical reviews (aforementioned poor map design, imbalance, rando difficulty)  and your original skipping of awakening to hold yourself back from playing a videogame

Wait, wasn't Awakening a critical success?

[redtutel]

8 hours ago, Arthur97 said:

Wait, wasn't Awakening a critical success?

It was, but not among the Serenes Forest crowd. The more casual game design was not well received among this group, but the game in general was VERY well received among 3DS and Nintendo fans in general. 

[Johnnie]

Regardless of how it was received here, it was a huge financial success and is the reason the series has been able to continue developing.

As for the difficulty, you can't really break the game accidentally. If you grind or low-man then breaking the game is easy to do, but in a no-grind run the difficulty on hard is about right especially with the asshole reinforcements.

[Landmaster]

I know I'm late but, I mean, meh, if you've played Conquest, Awakening won't be too hard for you~ The Pair-Up system is much more broken (and better IMO) but it's not like the game is particularly easy. Though starting with Hard Mode would probably be a good neutral ground for you but if you just sit there and never grind at all, it WILL be hard.