This was my first Fire Emblem game, and it's already off to a mid start for me with this series.

Played this game after making a deal with a friend, and I don't necessarily regret playing this. It definitely did keep me entertained. While I can't really make a comparison on other games to really say how this game "saved the series", I can definitely see the appeal of this game.

I really did enjoy the concept of being able to practically infinitely change your class and reset back to level 1, allowing them to retain their old stats while also being able to grow more in their stats. This allows for a fresh spin on almost every character in the game. Second/Master seals were something that I actively tried seeking out for and using on every character whenever they reached their mid to late level 10s. The combat for this game, which I can tell Fire Emblem is very centric around, gets very addicting very fast. While the pair up system quite literally just breaks the entire game's balance, it's still nice to see synergies for each character.

Now come the flaws of this game. There were 2 main ones that I found, both of which were just so insanely jarring.

The first one being how piss easy this game is. Robin is so insanely broken, regardless of what class you put them in. I think he/she might just be able to solo the game. Same thing applies to Chrom. No, I'm not saying this because I played on Normal/Casual. I watched other playthroughs as well in harder difficulties, and these two characters just stand out like two sore thumbs among the rest of the cast in combat. This also led me to only really caring about these 2 characters only. I found myself having to force S or A rank supports for the other cast members, since I didn't in particular care for them either.

The second flaw I found with this game is that there isn't much drive with the story with this game. Point A just needs to happen for Point B to happen. The whole story just feels reactionary the entire way through. I was definitely entranced by the combat of the game, which, again, is a centric part of Fire Emblem, but when I finally got the extra time to play this game, I found myself in a constant struggle to find myself enthralled with the story. I really just needed to get this story over with so I can finally play some other games I care more about.

3/5. Could be a starter for the series, but I'm not so sure myself.

I never gave a proper review for this game because i knew it'd be a really long one but I think now at the hour of 1:18AM, i can totally put something down to better express what this game means to me.

Youve heard all the basic shit before about this game, was often toted around as a flag for people going "ah ah ah, this saved the series it cant be a bad game cmon now" (not everyone, dont... dont think im saying everyone please lmao)
But there is absolutely some criticisms that are fair here

Fire Emblem Awakening HINGES on breaking the game to have fun.. a LOT, and thats why its so Fucking addictive for me
The second seal system to reclass your units can be done in infinitum, you can always get reeking boxes to summon risen and pretty much grind to your hearts content, but its not even just "oh this is a grindy ass game for a strategy rpg" you dont need to grind at all BUT you have so much freedom in what you wanna slap on your characters, apart from the obvious character customization options with how you build Robin
via appearance and boon/bane
You can also make your class virtually almost anything that any character can be so long as it's not a boss exclusive one
And passing these things along to the descendants of the pairings you make is so good and feels like a reward in it of itself
It's KINDA H A R D to make a bad gen 2 unit in this game actually
even via characters like Kjelle or Laurent that id argue are "the worst" ones of the batch
Notice the obvious ass air quotes im putting on "the worst"
because even the worst units in this game can still shred ass and have Something salvagable about them
This is a conflicting thing for so many veterans and still kind of is in subsequent installments of this franchise, and I think anyone can understand this because making a fuckbad unit good is REALLY funny and satisfying
part of why I love this series so much is actually because of the stories in them but it's less in the way that youd think
I think fire emblem awakening's plot actually falls off in the second half due to crafting ways to string enough celebratory franchise beats into (what intelligentsystems felt) would be it's last hurrah with this franchise before being delegated to the paper mario and occasional one-off title mines

There is also pair-up that was introduced in this, and back then I loved it b ut w o W its the most chancey thing of all time
I think the key thing that fucks it over that people love more in something like Fire Emblem Fates would be how it's percentage based and unreliable most of the time
Married couples and maxed out supports in general are the best way to go about getting the most out the system

but the enemies dont even get to fucking use it LMAO
like Huh? sometimes you can totally steamroll dudes if you know what youre doing

Which brings me to another bit of the game, the difficulty options
This ties together what I was getting at with my run-on about the story and gameplay, I personally l o v e classic mode for fire emblem, I think it gives the game organic replay value and has your own story curated different from others
Yeah characters not affiliated with the story arent gonna get new dialogue,,,(even though some earlier games did..)

This may seem like an eyeball rolling review right now for how much Im asserting how much this game means to me while also making inherently simple observations about it all, but its simplicity and the things it does right are so addictive to me personally that I cant Not like this game still all this time

I like the supports a LOT, i still have some favorite characters in this game thatve held on throughout my experience of the whole fe franchise :) !! My first fire emblem game was the very first one, but this was The One for me. And apart from how ive replayed the game 51 times to see every bit of supports and combinations with supports i could, ragequit Apotheosis, sucked ass at Lunatic and sucked even harder at Luna+
its the merit that if you play this game as one of your first fire emblems, and you keep beating other games in the series and come back to this, it stacks
It stacks and youre like "what the fuck why is eirika's sword in plegia" "oh my god I can make Arden a sage with bootleg deteriorated forseti" "oh my god i can nosferatank the whole game with Tharja and Arvis" shit is so good
Even though this game does have serious issues, 98% route maps and a plot that trips on its own balls more often than not to tie as many checklist story beats as it can, but i will always thank fire emblem
ill always thank fire emblem awakening for being one of the Only consistent mental crutches for me in the year where my mom passed away and it felt like everything I was doing as a kid was pointless and awful.
final thoughts:
laura bailey is genuinely impossible to dislike in anything ever
miriel is such a bad bitch and is actually sometimes more fun to use than tharja bc you can second seal her to dark mage before you even get tharja and by that point miriel has bases that rock and access to the best tome in the game
fuck lunatic+
and uhh thank you