Fire Emblem: Awakening

I've been playing Awakening a fair bit as of late, currently on Chapter 15 as a total newbie to the Fire Emblem series. I've seen quite a bit of dislike for this and Fates, here and in other areas of the internet.

My question is, what are the reasons that Awakening (and Fates, though I haven't played that) get shit on so much?

My experience with the game is that the plot is profoundly 'meh', the characters are all tolerable, the gameplay is great, the UI is beautifully smooth, the difficulty on Hard/Classic (keeping everyone alive) is enjoyable without being frustrating, the graphics are quite good for 3DS, and the music is great (but not outstanding).

Are there major balance issues I haven't noticed? Were the previous Fire Emblem games just much better? If so, in what ways?

Those are my complaints with it, at least. Most of the other complaints I've heard were either nonspecific "it's casual" or "waifubait".

My condolences.

They are getting shit on in Holla Forums for being popular, that's it
They don't even like the series, they just happened to play the horrible gba fes when they were 14.

It's different, that's why.

Awakening was my entry point to the series too, it is pretty good if only for some issues with the maps, pair ups and stale plot.
Fates Conquest changed exactly these problems and they still shit on it for muh censorship which can be easily fixed by the fan patch.
They are just contrarian Holla Forums and we all know about this culture.
I would suggest playing Conquest next (with the fan translation if you want), then try Genealogy of the holy war for a different take on the series.
Path of radiance and radiant dawn are a little soulless for me.
Fire emblem blazing sword has some points but is hindered by dragging on and boring/stale gameplay.
Sacred stones is pretty irrelevant other than some waifubait characters.

Don't forget how 8-4 was too lazy to localize Mute Robin, and just completely removed the option. Honestly though, the most enjoyment I got out of Awakening was in the Supports. The combat was simply a means to an end and the plot was utterly bland. For what could've been FE's final breath, it was pretty damn flaccid.

And yet it was a pretty good game and it delivered in making FE more popular. The gameplay was still fine as were the characters and the story telling.

Anyone have played FE6 Binding blade, is it any good? How does it compare to the other GBA FEs?

Okay.
I can agree.
Absolutely not.

FE6 is fun and a decent game that can be played multiple times. Roy is without a doubt, a pretty shitty lord. Late promotion, low growth rates, and sword-lock leaves much to be desired. Story's pretty generic, but it departs from the original FE1 story and takes different approaches.

Story telling as in how the plot progresses through the dialog and the writing.
Surely the good vs bad kingdom is a stale story, but at least it tells this story well.

Completely valid complaint. Does Fates improve on this at all?
I noticed this while playing through the guides of Radiant Dawn (I've only done Chapter 1, last night). Still, I generally aim to kill everyone in TRPGs, assuming it results in the most items/experience.
It is pretty overpowered. Fun, though. I hear Fates lets the enemies pair up, does this fix the balance issues?
I noticed some of this while playing the Radiant Dawn guides too. No fog of war, for one thing.


If I play Fates, which I probably will one day, it'll definitely be with the fan translation. The shitty censored localisation really rubs me the wrong way, as does the "one game for the price of three" way they're selling the game. Playing emulated TRPGs with a controller is always good fun.

Lucina is an idiot. Chrom is an idiot. Robin is an idiot. Emmeryn was one of the few intelligent people because she knew her stupid brother would hand the Fire Emblem to Gangrel and that he'd still try to kill everyone. Frederick is the only sane person in the intro because he's the only one who suspects this strange person with the mark of fucking GRIMA on their hand. Then there's Robin's sacrifice ending, where they claim they can come back if their bonds are strong and they have enough, but really it happens no matter what. I could go on, but then I'd have to really go back and look at Awakening's plot, which I really don't want to.

Maps are as small as in every other FE that was never the issue. The problem was they were either flat or lacking any ways to strategically exploit them and Conquest fixed this. In most chapters the difficulty comes from the map design, the enemy placement, their ai and their skills. I can assure you, you are in for a treat in some chapters, especially on Hard and Lunatic.
Actually you probably shouldn't play it on Lunatic on your first run.
Most of them have varried objectives too.
There is no doubt Conquest perfected map design.
Yes it did. There are two ways to pair up, attack stance and guard stance and using these properly is the key to being successful. The enemies will also abuse this and on the higher difficulty levels they will do so relentlessly.
I don't know what exactly you mean, but I appreciate a strategy game were the difficulty comes not from the complexity of the mechanics but by how the player is challenged to perfect their use.
I like Conquest's difficulty a lot more, in contrast to Thracia's difficulty stemming from convulated and cryptic mechanics.
Honestly I didn't like the fog of war much because because you couldn't properly plan ahead which is what strategy games are about in fact. All the difficulty was gone if you replayed the map anyway. It has maps with other gimmicks though.

Keep in mind all of these are for Conquest only though, Birthright was more like Awakening 2 and Revelations was a joke which you are better off pretending it doesn't exist.

Yes, look for the Content restoration, undub and fan translation patches on Serena's Forest forums.

Welp. Tell me what's wrong with Revelations.

everything, I can't bother to remind me of that shit, just don't play it

Come on, at least try to explain it. Who doesn't enjoy ranting?

The game game didn't even sell 2 million and that's with a far bigger market than Mystery of the Emblem (the top-seller in Japan before Awakening).

Part 1 was the only sorta maybe passable plot in Awakening. Part 2 was just a "HEY GIIZ REMEMBER GAIDEN" filler. Part 3 was where Robin finally hijacks the plot.

Chrom is the only Lord who has something like a character arc and that's just in Part 1. Robin is a shoddy self-insert and Lucina is a marketing gimmick. Validar is a less successful version of Manfroy from Genealogy of the Holy War with Grima as a Loptyr wannabe who has some Cthulu thrown in. Ganges has an interesting concept that isn't handled good while Walhart has a neat premise but suffers from both being a filler character and failing to be imposing.

There are faggots on Holla Forums who believe censorship of a game is not a good enough reason to hate a game
It's almost like they are new and have no idea why anons left 4cucks.

I enjoy shitting on Conquest.

There is nothing redeemable about Revelations. It's stupid. It was a mistake. It was THE mistake about charging you three times for the same game. The first half of the route is just recruiting shitty characters on shitty maps and the second half is endless and vague story exposition that might as well not have been included. Bottom line: lol a dragon did it

Isn't that 50% of fantasy stories, with the other half being wizards?
Damn thats fucking lazy of them.

I think Awakening is a good starting point, actually. It's a pretty well-rounded game, and you're in for a treat if you enjoy the tactics aspect of the game.

I've been a fan of the series since Gaiden, and I think the series has nowhere else to go but up. I can't wait.

I even liked the GBA games.

Good, most acclaimed in the series by the oldfag fans.
Good, but oldfag fans hated it because of the massive influx of newfag fans, mostly "gamer girls"/fujoshi that poured in the community. The games are a little easier than their SNES counterparts, but by no means bad.
Very nice, appex of the series, but they failed hard on revenue so Nintendo thought that fans didn't liked it (the truth is that the FE fanbase in the West was just small and people knew shit about "what the fuck was FE?")
No good Fire Emblem has been made since Radiant Dawn. There were remakes that, although technically well done, somehow dulled the games and made them boring (uninspiring might be the word, as if you can feel that the developers didn't gave a shit while making the games) and then there Awakening and Fates, universally disliked, with either watered down or overpowered mechanics and a HUGE WAIFU BAIT SIMULATOR built inside.
Sure, it is true that you could pair characters in FE by Support, but what they did was beyond retarded.

Now, there's Shadow of Valentia (Gaiden) coming and there may be hope for it - they also changed the Main Illustrator of the series to Hidari (made some Atelier games) which is a very nice one, contrary to the fucker who did Awakening/Fates artstyle, with all characters being a bunch of edgy samefaces.
There's plan for Fire Emblem Switch too, let's delude ourselves and hope for the best as well.

Finally, play the SNES ane GBA ones with an emulator. There are fan translations out there so there shouldn't be no problems.

My problems with Awakening(bear in mind that I chose not to play with Pair Up):

Map design sucks. Terrain is pointless, and enemy placement makes it a poor option to use.

You pretty much have to bait and switch in numerous cases to get through alive. Reinforcements out of left field are not fun to deal with, either.

Every chapter objective is the same, and the map design makes this shit worse. I remember the Gangrel chapter being a complete pain in the ass due to getting swarmed by enemies, since they were all bunched up around him.

Pair Up is poorly balanced, and playing without it is a guaranteed way to have a frustrating time.

Supporting with everyone is awful, and this game started that. Killed decent supports, tbh.

DLC chapters suck, and older characters don't even get their own models. They're just recolors with a portrait(that you had to pay for).

Just fuck the kids.

Plot is worse than usual, magic sucks, no weapon weight or CON, no rescue/canto, reclass is broken, characters are too exaggerated.

Fates has similar problems, but at the very least Pair Up is more balanced. Maps are generally better, too.

Wasn't the only way to access some extra chapters in one of the DS games to actually lose units?

They really should've just kept it to the warring countries and food crisis. Make choosing a side really mean something ideologically to the players, be it family or because you believe one country is justified or both. They had the chance to do something really cool here, and they fucked it up by making there be an overarching evil Dragon bad guy.

Imagine if Kamui had given a single fuck about his own citizens, understood they were starving, and went on to conquer Hoshido not because of a magical throne but for their land TO SAVE HIS PEOPLE. Imagine no fucking pointless slime Garon, just your run of the mill asshole and yeah big deal you have to commit patricide to usurp him. Imagine subduing Marx because he's a fucking idiot with battered wife syndrome, literally the worst Camus archetype in the series.