First Impression | Fire Emblem: Awakening

This last Friday I had to stop by my university bookstore to pick up my textbooks for this quarter. It's impossible for me to go into a bookstore and not stay for at least half an hour to peruse, so I wandered upstairs to where the store also happens to have an electronics section. With a shelf that has "GAMING" in nice, prominent letters over it. I've been pretty starved for video games lately, so I went in just to see what they had.

What they had was a game I'd been wanting for a long time: Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon. And Fire Emblem: Awakening. I'd never played a Fire Emblem game before, but since Lucina and Robin are going to be playable characters in the upcoming Smash Bros., I'd been thinking of giving it a try. And so before I knew it, I left the store with both Luigi's Mansion and Awakening.

I played both of them when I got home that night, and a first impressions post on Dark Moon will be coming soon. First, I'll talk about my first impressions of Awakening.

So far, I like it. It's a very different type of game from others I've played in the past; I've never played a strategy RPG like this, nor have I played any other Fire Emblem games before. I was worried that it would be too complicated to learn, but the in game tutorials are easy to follow so far.

I have no idea how the stats or different weapons in this game work, but I'm hoping I'll learn as I progress. The way the characters move and battle reminds me of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, since you can only move a certain amount of spaces per turn, and attack in turns.

What's really drawing me into this game is the story. I absolutely love the animation used for intro cutscenes, and I wish all the cutscenes could look like that. The scenes using the chubby sprites just don't covey the scene that well, although using character art over the dialogue helps. The voice acting is also great, which is a relief, because fully-voice acted video games are not always stellar. (I'm looking at you, Xenoblade Chronicles and Super Mario Sunshine). The characters are also interesting, if a bit stereotyped right now, and wow, Chrom is really attractive. There's a lot of characters though, so I wonder how much development is going to happen.

First Impression: Chrom is really hot.

I've already been spoiled on one of the major plot twists of this game but it doesn't really matter since I know next to nothing about the rest of the plot, so hopefully I'll be able to enjoy the rest of the story as it unfolds.

So far I'm really enjoying this game and I can't wait to explore more into the world of Ylisse. Sorry I don't have much to say, I've only played an hour into the game so far and everything is so new to me that I don't have much of an opinion yet. Maybe I'll post an update when I'm a bit further in. Looking forward to it!