Hey y’all, it’s Roopanand Rick here again. After 50 hours or so in my first playthrough, I’ve managed to fully enjoy the story and the system of Fire Emblem: Awakening, which is actually my first Fire Emblem game. For those who haven’t tried it out yet, Fire Emblem is known for its fun, tactical RPG elements and its punishing feature – deaths in the game are permanent. In other games, characters can get KO’d and you’d still have time to revive them. Not so in Fire Emblem – once HP hits zero, you’ll have to say goodbye to that character forever.
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| Image Source: gametrailers.com |
Which is why for the longest time, I’ve mostly avoided the Fire Emblem games. I like investing in my characters, especially in RPGs, and it would break my heart to see all my hard work go to waste with one error. Awakening offered me a respite from that nasty feature with its casual mode, allowing me to enjoy the story and its system without the perma-death feature.
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| Image Source: forbes.com |
Upon finishing the story for the first time, I was confident that maybe I could handle the game for all its glory now (albeit still in a lower difficulty setting.) Surprisingly, I did manage to play one or two chapters without much problem. I knew the strengths of my starting characters, I knew which was best at taking damage early on, and I knew I had to protect my primary cleric until she gained a few levels. Still, my knowledge on the game based on my previous playthrough still was not enough to save me from the heartache and the endless trials that were offered by the classic mode.
As of writing, I have had over a hundred game resets because of miscalculations of enemy movement and some errors. My Fire Emblem Awakening avatar, named Paray, still needs to learn a lot in being a tactician in a punishing RPG world where death is permanent.
If you’re still interested in how this attempt at classic hardcore gaming turns out for me, then please do follow me on Twitter.
