It took me awhile to find an image this “clean”.

But in all honesty, it’s been so long since I’ve played a Dead or Alive game – my last one was 2, for the Dreamcast – that I haven’t really gotten what the big deal is. Even that’s not an accurate statement; the last time I really did anything with Dead or Alive, it was on a shipmate’s XBox, and it was with Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball. For those that don’t know what that is, it was Barbies for perverts, with a little bit of simple volleyball thrown in. This came after DoA3. A few years later, Dead or Alive 4 launched with the XBox 360, and was followed by Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, a game so flimsy it didn’t even pretend to advertise volleyball. Things were quiet until the release in 2010 of Dead or Alive Paradise, which was even flimsier than Xtreme 2 and suffered the indignity of getting a 1.0 from Destructoid. It was only with the release of the 3DS that Tecmo remembered that this was actually a fighting series, and here we are, finally, with the fifth installment.

I should note that I did not buy this, I rented it. What’s sad is that it took me a long time to get to the point of renting it, largely because my girlfriend won’t let it into her house. Literally, she refuses to have a Dead or Alive game in her house. At that point, it became a matter of curiosity to see if the actual fighting game was as bad as the spinoffs.

After playing a few days, it’s not bad, but it’s certainly not good.

For those who have never played a DoA game, or are like me and have forgotten how they play, Dead or Alive is basically Tekken for Horny Dummies. The four face buttons are for punching, kicking, blocking (which holding back also accomplishes), and throwing, with combos being strung off of those. Combos are the main way of doing damage, as they can be whipped together very quickly. Therefore, most Dead or Alive fights devolve into simple button-mashing affairs, with both players playing the role of drunken circus seals as they haphazardly slap the controller for fish and to see who gets the most five hit combos. Really, that’s all there is to the fighting. There isn’t any kind of deep combo or counter system like in BlazBlue or Persona 4 Arena. There’s no tight control or depth like in Tekken, and there isn’t even any strategic gameplay like in Soul Calibur. Slap, slap, slap.

I will say the base gameplay goes well with the story, which hits “so bad it’s good” territory, easily. I’m not far, but the general gist is that Ayane still wants to kill Kasumi, and something about another tournament, and Zack’s still a doofus, and honestly no one really cares because the men in this game seem to be little more than roster filler. Dead or Alive has always been about the ladies, and it’s to ridiculous lengths now. They feature more prominently, they get more marketing attention, they get the vast majority of the DLC costumes, for all we care, the men are just there as cannon fodder and story flags. Not that the story needs it; the general gist of the story goes like this: two characters have a random conversation, then they have a fight, then sometimes, they talk like nothing happened. Some of the things you see in the story make absolutely no sense, or have nothing to do with anything other than just being a way to justify having a fight. After Persona 4 Arena, this dreck just doesn’t cut it.

Of course, saying “I play Dead or Alive for the story and the fighting engine” is much like saying you read Playboy for the articles; maybe you do, but you can do better elsewhere, and you’re probably full of shit. This game is gorgeous, and the women have a lot to do with that, being rendered beautifully. Of course, in standard Dead or Alive fashion, their breasts seem to be sentient, going off in their own directions, and doing their own thing, completely independent of what the body they’re attached to is doing. I thought this was something they did only for Xtreme 2 and Paradise, games that exist solely for people to ogle said breasts, but they brought it over to a fighting game to boot. Combine the ridiculous breast physics – I can’t believe I just typed the phrase “breast physics” and meant it seriously – with the fact that some of the female characters are fighting in high heels, and things start to approach absurd levels. Of course, the really “good” costumes – see: bikinis – are locked away as paid DLC. I’ll bet it made Tecmo a boatload of money, too.

I’ve been rough on the game, but I have to stress that Dead or Alive 5 isn’t a *bad* game. It’s basically the popcorn flick of the video game fighting genre, though. It’s simple, flashy, there’s lots of explosions, and a lot of beautiful, half-naked women. I wouldn’t pay more than $20 for it, and that’s without considering the fact that my girlfriend would throw it at my head at 90MPH. If someone out there has a need for his masturbation fodder to beat each other up, then this is a good purchase, but otherwise, there are better options out there.

However, Electronic Arts won, and not only that, they won handily, beating Bank of America with almost 80% of the final vote.

Let’s look at the list of things each company is guilty of.

Bank of America
* Guilty of foreclosing the mortgages of military veterans who were actually paid up.
* Guilty of poisoning the waters regarding a government review of mortgage foreclosures
* Dead last in the American Customer Satisfaction Index survey.
* Participated in the bad debt swaps that helped crash the fucking economy in 2008.

Electronic Arts
* Cocked up a video game launch.
* Refused to give refunds regarding said launch.
* Threatened people with Origin account closures who went to the forums and complained.
* Charges microtransactions, along with virtually every other publisher in the world.

In no way are EA’s offences – which are legion in the video game industry, obviously – comparable to Bank of America’s. Hell, in no way are they comparable to third place Comcast’s, who hold selective monopolies on internet connectivity in many areas and routinely violate network neutrality principles to parlay their advantage in having an ownership stake in NBC. I’d wager, if put head to head, half the companies on the list – including every Internet Service Provider, who are willingly collecting personal information and transferring it over to lobbying groups such as the MPAA and RIAA, and every single oil company on the planet for reasons too numerous to list here – are worse than Electronic Arts, which says a lot because EA is in no way a good company to consumers.

With a silly little online poll, gamers proved only one thing, and no, they did not prove that EA is a terrible company. All they really did is show that no matter how bad of a company you are, you’ll escape scrutiny so long as you don’t piss off a bunch of basement dwellers with Asperger’s Syndrome who have the software means to stuff an online ballot. If anything, it justifies an outsider’s position on video gamers: it adds weight to the thought that we’re all losers with a complete lack of priorities and common sense, and that maybe we should do things like regulate violent games to the porno bins. After all, we can’t handle it, right?

Obviously, the typical warnings about these polls – they’re unscientific, EA’s an easy target, something something 4chan – apply. But it’s news – mainstream news – that a video game company beat arguably the worst example of corporate malfeasance outside of the Russian oligarchy. Video game comment boards are lighting up in celebration, but everyone else is looking at us and wondering why we’re so stupid.

Gamers really need to grow the hell up. This is much more pathetic than SimCity’s launch.

^{1 – No Zynga in the voting? My, how the mighty have fallen.}

^{2 – Actually, EA was doing this for awhile with Origin, too.}

EDIT @ 5:33PM EST – CEB: OK, so here’s the deal.

I do not take Asperger’s Syndrome seriously. However, the problem is that it is because 98% of the people I meet are what I’d call self-diagnosed. They use it as a crutch for simply being socially awkward, or worse. Asperger’s was removed from the list of diagnoses and put under the Autism umbrella.

THAT is what I would change. THAT is what I should have clarified. That’s an editing error on me. For THAT, I apologise to the people who have been to a doctor, been diagnosed, been medicated or given therapy, and are attempting to find help to play well in society.

However, my original opinion of Asperger’s – that it is not extremely serious, often self-diagnosed, and even when it’s not, is used as a crutch to euphemize “I don’t like people” – stands.

The other side is the “bros”. The “bros” – which feature a lot more industry people than I’m comfortable admitting – wonder what the big deal is. There’s women all over the industry! Like that one, and that other one, whats her name, and oh, that one with the tits that works with that company in Montreal! What was the big deal about the party? The women were there as art, and by art, we mean “art to masturbate to at the hotel later”! Besides, we have this one friend, who works as an entry level QA at Bioware, and she says it’s nonsense, so that speaks for the entirety of women in gaming!

The bros insist there’s no problem, but these people are either willfully ignorant, not paying attention, or intentionally glossing over facts to keep the all boys club in place.

Guys, there’s a lot of smoke. Eventually, you’re going to have to admit that something’s on fire. And when almost every woman in the industry on Twitter says that they have either been objectified, stared down, or outright discriminated against, that’s a really big fucking fire

Of course, the argument most of the bros come up with is that it’s a slippery slope. That meaning, it’s a slippery slope between not treating women like they interviewed for their job on a casting couch and eliminating all fun and sexuality from video games, and making the experience sterile. Essentially, these people looked at two or three extreme Tumblr blogs and panicked. This is a pedant’s argument, one step ahead of the guy who says that women belong in the kitchen like they were in the 50s. The women who are in the industry – from developers like Jade Raymond, Anna Marsh and Brenda Romero to press figures like Leigh Alexander, Kim Wallace and even my own former writers in Aileen Coe, Mel Ngai and Lilian Harle – all add a wholly different, unique perspective on issues such as this, but there is a subsection of men who belittle their accomplishments – accomplishments that measure up on any standard, not just in the proverbial “girls’ league” – just because of their gender. These are the same men who often state that women don’t play games as often as guys (wrong), and if they do, all of them are playing simple cell phone games (blatantly wrong), so facts aren’t on their side, just strength in numbers. For now.

Really, there hasn’t been an excuse for the kind of thinking that goes into the IGDA party, and the even more abominable Gameloft party, for years. In 2013, there’s even less than that. The perpetrators of this mindset – both the visible and the hidden, the latter of which infests too many board rooms – are holding back an industry that even Warren Spector recently called “immature”. Until we shun those that are dismissive of the concerns of others, the vast majority of which are entirely justified, we will continue to be regarded as an immature medium – a child to film and music – and will be treated accordingly.

^{1 – Before anyone calls Brenda Romero a bleeding heart, remember that she worked on Playboy: The Mansion, and wrote a book about the experience.}

It’s a decent game. As far as freemium stuff goes, it’s definitely one of the least offensive games out on the market, as I’ve been able to play with no problems despite my ardent “no money” policy at this point². In all honesty, I’ve been trying to get past my almost visceral hatred of the free-to-play school of video game design, even if my referring to Puzzle and Dragons as one of the “good ones” simulates the way a racist neighbor refers to the one black guy he can tolerate. But while the game is decent, two things stop me from diving in fully: waiting for the hammer, and a superior game.

I’ll expound on just how Puzzle and Dragons works before I go into my problems. If Pokemon got drunk and had sex with Bejewled, nine months later Puzzle and Dragons would be what popped out. Players are given a starter – water, plant or water, no surprise – but unlike Pokemon, there’s only a few elements – just lightning and darkness on top of the big three – and most of the monsters are just effectively palette swaps, with slight tweaks for element. On the other half are what the player does in the dungeons. PAD is a match 3, but there are no real rules as to where you can move pieces. Any piece can be moved anywhere, which counts as a move; monsters have numbers over their heads corresponding to how many turns there are before they attack. There are guides showing how moves can be strung together into massive combos, but ultimately, it’s match 3 with all of the difficulty removed. In fact, unless the player can string together some serious combos that multiply damage to ridiculous levels, winning stages is simply a matter of power; if the player has stronger monsters than the dungeon, the player will win, and if not, the player will lose.

This is where my fear of the hammer comes in. See, PAD has all sorts of artificial limits put in. When entering a dungeon, you lose a set amount of energy. Beginning dungeons cost three stamina, but bigger dungeons can take anywhere up to 30. That’s important to note because it takes 10 minutes to regain one point of stamina, so by going in that later, 30 stamina dungeon, you have to wait around for five hours to get that stamina back. How do you regain that stamina immediately? There’s an app purchase for that! One nice option is the ability to take “helper” monsters into battle with your team, which are monsters that other people own. Those people can later be befriended. Of course, there’s a set limit on how many people you can friend; one guess how to increase that. Also, there are a lot of monsters that can either be found in dungeons, bought with Pal Points (a really nice option; pal points are gathered by either using helpers, having your monster be used as a helper, or logging in on consecutive days), evolved, or bought with Magic Stones (more on these in a bit). However, there’s a limit; the only way I know of to increase that limit is to spend magic stones, which are the game’s effective currency (there’s also coins, but in fairness, these come easy enough and can’t be purchased). Magic stones are somewhat rare to come across most of the time, but like any freemium game, they can be purchased in packs of various sizes. So far, I haven’t had to spend a dime, but I know the difficulty’s going to spike once I’m fully invested in the game, at which point I’ll be more or less forced into either spending money, or letting all of the time I will have invested into this game go for naught. For a game with no ending, no real goal other than catching lots of monsters and lots of loot, that seems onerous. Therefore, despite the game being tolerable to this point, I can’t really say I’m excited by it. It’s a generic version of two other games, and one that I know is going to get expensive if I want to do anything of note.

So after all that, is there a reason to continue to play Puzzle and Dragons? Honestly, that’s a good question, because in addition to all of the points mentioned above, it’s not even the best match 3 released in the past year. It’s not the best game, in its own genre, that I’ve downloaded to my phone in the past month.

On the other side of the divide is 10000000. Created by two people, it is, itself, a combination of multiple genres: match 3, endless runners (Canabalt, Jetpack Joyride) and role playing games. Instead of moving everything around wherever you want, the option is to move an entire row vertically or horizontally to match up pieces, while attacking monsters, unlocking chests and doors, and acquiring materials to upgrade the areas in what can best be described as your jail cell. Eventually, the player will grow strong enough to score 10,000,000 points, which grants the avatar his freedom.

What’s great about this game is the tension to it. Not only does time always pass when you’re at an obstacle, but enemies can hit you, knocking you back farther. Despite that, the avatar doesn’t die so much as get knocked back into his cell, with the caveat that he keeps the gold (purchase weapon/armour upgrades), stone and wood (open up and upgrade “shops”) he collected. Therefore, “losing” isn’t a punishment. This is unlike PAD, where death is highly costly; if you die in a dungeon, you’re given the option of continuing at the cost of – wait for it – a Magic Stone. If you don’t have one, no problem, you can IAP it right away! Of course, if you don’t want to do that, you lose everything you gained, and also lose the stamina you spent, so if you went into a higher level dungeon – especially one where the healing tiles are useless – and lost, and didn’t want to spend money, you’re effectively done playing PAD for the rest of the day. Even in a “good” game – and let’s face it, PAD is one of the better freemium games on the market, which is why it’s making money hand over fist – the carrot and stick are the name of the game; give the carrot for awhile, then beat those that don’t assimilate with a stick.

Therefore, whereas in PAD, I never feel like I’m really accomplishing anything, every single run through the dungeon in 10000000 – even those that don’t go particularly well – means I’ve accomplished something. It’s almost impossible to get out of the dungeon without at least some gold, or some building material, and at the stage I’m at, I really don’t need anymore building material, so thankfully, there are potions that allow me to turn that into gold and experience, both of which I need in abundance. It’s a more fulfilling experience. Granted, I’ve paid more for 10000000 than I will for PAD – two separate versions cost me about $4 thanks to a Steam sale – but that’s fine. I don’t *want* the freemium experience, where I will be assaulted with constant reminders that I can be better if I just dip into my wallet. If I want constant attempts to reach into my bank account, I don’t need a video game – my escape, and my favorite hobby – to do that, I just have to walk down a busy street in a city. I rather like the model where someone makes a game, and we pay money for that game. It’s only worked for me for the twenty or so years that I’ve actually been purchasing video games.

It’s too bad that GungHo – a company that has, under its’ umbrella, everything from Ragnarok Online (an early MMO pioneer) to Game Arts (Grandia) – had to compromise their game design for this model. Considering how inoffensive PAD is, imagine how great it would have been had in-game revenue distribution not been the main driving point of the game’s design. That was the case with 10000000, and that’s why Eighty Eight Games will continue to get my money, and GungHo won’t see a dime.

^{1 – Personally, I think it’s adorable that 27 year old Aileen still calls her brothers – a 31 year old animator and a 35 year old doctor – “Dude” and “Fluff”.}

^{2 – That’s not a hard-and-fast rule; I’ve spent money on Jetpack Joyride with no qualms, and don’t regret it. But even that’s only $4.}

I couldn’t help but think of that as I heard the news that Wada had “stepped down” (read: Humpty Dumpty was pushed) as the CEO of SquareEnix. For the thirteen years that Wada has been a senior executive at the company – twelve of those as its CEO – Squeenix has been in a spiral downwards in virtually every metric, both hard and subjective. Square Enix’s financials have been a mess, with no fact showing that as clearly as the fact that Tomb Raider, which has so far sold 3.4m copies and is the best selling game of 2013 as of this writing, underperformed expectations¹; when a game sells three and a half million copies in a month and it still isn’t good enough, you have a serious management problem on your hands.

However, Square Enix has also had a problem managing their reputation with gamers. Very few gamers are as dedicated in our business as those who support Japanese role playing games. Typically the milieu of the dedicated to begin with, Square’s past games raised a generation of gamers, one in which I was a part of, and therefore raised the bar for everything bearing the company’s name, sometimes to absurd levels. As the PlayStation 2 hit, the company could do very little wrong; even their failed experiments, like The Bouncer, did well for themselves. However, a combination of substandard games, questionable localization decisions, and in more recent years, outright contempt for their fans² have led to the brand being damaged, especially in areas they’re trying to expand in like the MMO market. As time has passed, the relationship between the consumer and the company became badly damaged, and while that would normally not be entirely permanent – Electronic Arts is still in a very strong position despite executives from the company pretty much telling longtime fans to shut up and stop being a vocal minority – it’s different with the kind of fans that Square’s games have. I’ve mentioned that they’re overly dedicated, but that also means they’re overly attached, and when you mistreat someone who’s a little too invested in the relationship, they lash out. The problem with vocal minorities is that eventually, they become loud enough to become a very vocal majority, and that’s what has largely happened in the current generation of consoles. When I purchase anything from Square Enix, I expect a large amount of frustration that has nothing to do with the game to come along with it – be it an over inflated price, or extra hoops such as the ridiculous PC port of Final Fantasy VII that I discussed on Twitter recently – and after awhile, I just get sick of dealing with the bullshit. If I am sick of them, how many millions more are in my boat with me?

Unfortunately for Square Enix, being such a large company, “nimble” is the last word to come to mind. They’re getting assaulted on all fronts, and yet their major game in Japan is Dragon Quest X, a subscription based MMO on the Wii. That game has zero chance of success in America. But in other areas, they are suffering as well. Arguably the best thing the company has done is their work relating to Eidos, who was a breath away from liquidation when Square Enix bought them out. Since then, that arm of the group has produced some outstanding games such as Deus Ex, Hitman and Tomb Raider. However, all three of their games have underperformed their expectations in the upcoming quarterly report, which indicts poor management and runaway development costs. On the mobile front, they’re getting swallowed alive in Japan by DeNA and GREE, and their combination of premium (in the literal sense of the word) priced ports of 25 year old games and atrocious, borderline scandalous “freemium” experiments that happen to cost money are not exactly setting the world on fire. In terms of their bread and butter – Japanese role playing games brought over to the Western world – they’re a mess. Final Fantasy XIV was an abomination that never should have been released in the state it was. Final Fantasy XIII Versus and Type-0 have just about hit vaporware status, a word previously synonymous with the likes of Duke Nukem Forever. And while the localization of Bravely Default is a step in the right direction, that’s still a niche game for a company that needs to start making serious mainstream profits, immediately.

As one of millions of people across the world who grew up in love with Square Soft, it’s almost tragic to see what has happened during Yoichi Wada’s term as Chief Executive Officer. It’s easy to blame him for the company’s failures, but the rot goes so deep – arguably to the root of Japanese culture in and of itself, a culture that, especially in the corporate world, abhors change and resists evolution – that it’s impossible to really know where to begin to clean up the mess. Like Electronic Arts, they’ve let their CEO go, but unlike EA, they don’t have any solid ground to stand on for the future. They are in the position that no large, publicly traded company wants to be in: their main business drying up or being relegated to irrelevance, and unable to make a foothold in emerging markets that have been staked out by smaller, more nimble companies. Such words are usually the beginning of a company’s obituary, and if Squeenix’s incoming CEO doesn’t have the temerity to change the company’s root culture with near immediacy, we could be reading that obituary sooner than any of us wants to admit.

^{1 – Leaked numbers indicate that the expectation floor – the break even, minimum number – was five million copies; they were expecting closer to six. This, for a series that had been a critical failure in the West for years, and for whom 3.4m copies was the largest launch in its history. Who is doing Squeenix’s projections, Don Quixote?}

^{2 – When asked if a sequel to Chrono Trigger was coming, Shinji Hashimoto stated , in an exasperated tone, that there wouldn’t be anything in the near future for Chrono Trigger because fans weren’t buying the remake, stating bluntly “If people want a sequel, they should buy more!”. It should be noted that at the time it was released, the Chrono Trigger remake – more of a port than a remake, only really featuring a better translation and a couple of extra side quests – was priced at $40, literally the most expensive DS game on the market. Even Pokemon games released at the time, save for HeartGold and SoulSilver (which came with pedometers), cost $35.}

Despite being such an exalted franchise, I haven’t written too much in my professional life about the series. I reviewed the import copy of Shadow Dragon back when it was new, and it got the equivalent of a 6.5; good, but not great. Every other Fire Emblem game would have gotten about the same score, with Sacred Stones and Radiant Dawn scoring lower. These are decent scores, but nothing otherworldly; as a reviewer, I have to consider how the game plays to a mainstream audience, and Fire Emblem has never been much for accessibility, something which is a benefit in the fandom. At the very least, it’s helped me avoid the accusations that I’m a mindless fanboy.

And then, Fire Emblem: Awakening hit, which is going to open me up to a lot of questions.

Fire Emblem: Awakening
System: Nintendo 3DS
Developer: Intelligent Systems
Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: February 4th, 2013
MSRP: $39.99

The first thing players are made to do when they load up a new game is to create their avatar, who is then found lying in the grass of Ylisse by Chrom, his sister Lissa, and their subordinate Frederick. These three make up the bulk of the Shepherds, a group of fighters who protect the citizens from bandits. Eventually, Risen – undead fighters – invade, but the Shepherds are given help by an enigmatic figure calling himself Marth, named after the hero from Shadow Dragon and New Monshou no Nazo who is, in game time, from thousands of years prior. The story from there evolves into the Fire Emblem standard of eventually saving the world, but like with most good Fire Emblems, the real fun to be had is with the twists it takes to get there, as well as the characters that make up the plot. Fire Emblem has usually had good characterization, but Awakening is on such a high level it’s almost unfair. Virtually every character, even those cut from the cloth of standard anime tropes such as the hard-ass butch female Sully and classic “b-baka!” tsundere Severa, have their own little personality traits that make them special, and fun to have around the party for more than just stats and killing enemies… and that doesn’t even get to the truly “special” cases like Henry (who sometimes says “Yeah! Blood!” when making a kill) and Noire, who is completely schizophrenic. The overall story is outstanding; while the story itself is nothing that hasn’t been seen before, it has enough twists and turns that it keeps the player invested the whole time. The characters and the amazing localization are what bring the story from “good” to “great”, adding such flare that they nothing ever feels generic. Fire Emblem games have always been made or broken on their characters, and FE:A has the best characterization the series has seen thus far.

The story is largely driven by multiple parties, but of optimal importance is the player’s avatar. Brought over from New Monshou, the game allows players to create an avatar with the tactician class. Despite the physical settings that one can apply, including the character’s gender, there is no change to the story or the dialogue with the exception of certain support conversations. This is unfortunate; Intelligent Systems missed a chance to apply different personality types, even if they’re as stereotypical as “mild-mannered” or “gruff”. Ultimately, it’s my unit, but it never really felt like “my” unit; it was just a character that had my name attached to it. This didn’t hurt the game, but it does feel like Nintendo could have stretched a double into a triple.

When I think of what Fire Emblem: Awakening really is, it comes to me: this is every good idea the Fire Emblem series has had, all mashed together in one. The biggest difference for those who didn’t import New Monshou is the addition of casual mode for those that want that option. In every Fire Emblem game prior, death was permanent, giving gamers who made a mistake the option of either restarting the stage to keep everyone, or going forth with less people, and a finite source of units to recruit. Now, gamers have the option of having that be the case, or getting their units back after the stage, something more akin to Shining Force. This is a game-changing addition, and for anyone who isn’t an elitist prick about this kind of thing, it’s a 100% positive change. Fire Emblem has always had a problem bringing in fans who weren’t hardcore strategy buffs; forget the casual gamer. This helps tremendously in that regard, especially when it’s considered that the game is really written around the idea that the player is going to have a full roster.

Another addition includes extra battles with Risen on the world map, courtesy of Fire Emblem Gaiden and Sacred Stones, as well as some other map battles I’ll go into more in a bit. Whereas previous Fire Emblems had a finite number of stages with a finite number of enemies and finite amounts of experience to gain, Awakening doesn’t; I’ve had almost as many battles after beating the main game as I had beforehand. Considering this, it’s to the player’s benefit to have *some* room for error, because playing in classic mode makes every little mistake, in every tiny little stage, a restart waiting to happen. Experienced players should probably look to play on Hard/Casual.

In addition to the Risen battles, there is also the chance to meet up with potential allies via the world map as well. Key people from past games can be downloaded via SpotPass and made to appear on the map, at which point they can have items purchased from them, be recruited outright for a level of gold dependent on their level, or the player can choose to fight them and their team, with the unit being recruitable. The game explains that the units are basically ghosts; they represent nothing more than a card image of what they once were. Therefore, they don’t speak, or interact in any way, they can’t do supports, and they’re just blank units; the equivalent of replacement units from Shadow Dragon. This is unfortunate for those that had favourites and would like to see how they would interact in this new world with these new characters, but from a story standpoint, it makes sense, and forces the player to focus on the current (and superior) units.

Children come into play for the first time since Seisen no Keifu (FE4), and Intelligent Systems learned some lessons from that 19 year old game. Characters support up to “A” generally – unlike past games, characters can support up to “A” for all of their supports, there are no limits – but for certain male/female pairings, a person can pair up and get to “S” support, an option new to the series. This indicates that the couple is married, and first generation characters can have children. The children are set to their mother – for example, Cynthia will always be Sumia’s daughter, no matter what – and have different traits depending on who their father is, such as different hair colour, different available classes, the last skill from both parents, and different growths. Those traits band together to ensure that the children effectively break the latter half of the game; the first generation characters, with few exceptions, just can’t keep up with their kids, and in some cases, pairing up particularly strong or advanced characters can lead to hilarious results, like my Donnel and Sully offspring that immediately started dual-shotting archers, as a knight. Those children can also marry each other, and while they don’t have offspring of their own, they can still enjoy the support bonuses from marriage.

All of this comes together on the maps themselves, where battles are waged. The standard Fire Emblem weapon triangle, a rock-paper-scissors setup with lances, axes and swords, comes back, and the advantages seem more pronounced than in games past, with the right weapon both adding and decreasing damage. Good stats will still overcome the weapon type, but it’s not something that can be outright ignored anymore. Magic was also tweaked, though I’m not entirely sure it was for the better. There’s still three types of magic, but there’s no triangle to them like there was in FE7 or Sacred Stones. However, some magics do have their own advantages; thunder magic tends to have a higher critical rate, fire magic tends to be more powerful, and wind magic has an advantage against flying units. Unless you’re using a really low magic unit, there’s just not much point in using fire; the chance for higher critical hits or being able to attack a flying unit are simply to good to ignore, and when using magic, there’s really no strategy to it; it’s just a matter of attacking the enemy, and making sure a flying unit doesn’t get in the way of a wind tome. One major addition is the ability to pair up units. It’s similar to the rescue mechanic of past games, but whereas rescuing units carried movement and stat penalties for the carrying unit, in FE:A, there is no “carrying” unit; both units travel together, with the movement stats of the front unit, and they can be switched post-move so that the back unit can attack. Therefore, a General can combine with a Falcon Knight, the Falcon Knight can fly with both of them, and the general can attack on the same turn. Adding to this is the support system, which has any one unit next to an attacking unit having the ability, based on percentage, to do a follow-up attack or defend the primary unit from damage; if units are paired, it will definitely be that unit. Furthermore, when units attack adjacent to units that they’re compatible with – meaning, they can have support conversations with them – their is a larger stat boost, and as support level increases, the chances of attacking and defending in co-op attacks increases. This is yet another game changer that opens up a lot of possibilities for strategy, and also helps with getting unit support conversations unlocked.

All in all, this is the deepest Fire Emblem game in the series’ history. The options given to the player, as well as map layouts, difficulty options, and other assorted sundries, make this a game that fans will be able to play for years. The game’s post-release support thus far shows that’s going to be the case, with a combination of free SpotPass updates that give players free items, characters from past games and other assorted goodies, and paid DLC maps. The DLC maps can get expensive – a three pack map usually costs $6.50 – but they play deep, with lots of units and experience for the player’s units that carries over to the main game. Winning DLC stages often get players new items and a new, improved character from past games (I.E.: the Marth you win in the DLC stages is different than the one you can recruit on SpotPass). However, the DLC maps won’t mean as much to players coming into Fire Emblem fresh as it will for those who have played past games in the series. Not only do they contain the names and pictures of characters from the past games, but they utilize touches like the map and battle music from them, too. Fans that came into the series with Eliwood’s game will have their mark-out moment when the map theme hits; personally, my biggest one came when I heard the battle music from Seisen no Keifu. What are minor, insignificant touches to the average fan will mean the world to those who have been around the block. Nintendo is still releasing content for the game, so expect replayability well into the future.

Fire Emblem: Awakening isn’t just the best game on the 3DS right now. It isn’t even just the best Fire Emblem game of all time. It goes beyond that. After playing this game since its release, and making sure I wasn’t just overdosing on hyperbole, I have to put this on the strategy RPG’s equivalent of a Mount Rushmore, alongside Final Fantasy Tactics, Shining Force II and Tactics Ogre. This is, without a doubt in my mind, in the conversation as one of the best SRPGs of all time. It simply must be experienced by anyone, whether they’re veterans of the genre or coming in. The minor quibbles I had with the game are utterly irrelevant. I cannot recommend Fire Emblem: Awakening strongly enough.

PROS

* Outstanding characterization and localization.
* Endless battles and customization options lead to limitless replayability.
* Outstanding post-release support.
* Different difficulty options cater to everyone from the hardcore to newbies.
* SpotPass options are outstanding.

CONS

* Occasional balance issues and difficulty spikes.
* Game is easy to “break”. Some characters and skills markedly better than others.
* DLC is pricey.

FINAL SCORE: A

Disclosure: Fire Emblem: Awakening was purchased by the reviewer. As of the writing of this review, the reviewer had beaten the main game on Normal/Classic and all available DLC/SpotPass maps, with 80 hours on his main save file. The reviewer was formerly the root administrator of the Fire Emblem: Sanctuary of Strategy