It’s that time again folks. A new Fire Emblem was confirmed at Nintendo’s Tokyo Game Show conference last September, officially titled: Fire Emblem: Awakening (literally translated from Faiā Emuburemu: Kakusei) for the Nintendo 3DS. This will be the thirteenth entry into the series and the first non-remake Fire Emblem since Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn on the Nintendo Wii back in 2007. After 5 years it’s obvious that Fire Emblem fans are ready to taste a new installment.
For those of you who don’t know, Fire Emblem is a Tactical RPG series, developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo. Games in the series tend to require quite a bit of paitence and planning in advance in order to win each battle. Fire Emblem: Awakening will feature creation and customization of your own character who will enter into the world of an ongoing story starring Krom, the prince of the Holy Kingdom of Iris and captain of the vigilante force, who ends up having to lead his group to find a solution to the shenanigans by the neighboring country of Perezia. All together this gives the player a properly told narrative alongside customization; the best of both worlds for RPG fans. The basic synopsis of the plot in Fire Emblem games has for the majority been a fantasy political/warfare theme.
The game plays like a traditional turn-based Tactical RPG, with a battlefield giving an indication on how many spaces you can advance across the grid, and attack ranges where if you do meet up with an opponent in close range, the field will change over to a battle screen with full 3D models. Whoever initiated the attack will strike first, with the opposing person getting a chance at a retaliation strike, with the possible exception of long ranged attacks on an opponent who cannot do the same back. That process will happen until either all of your team or your opponent’s team is completely eliminated, or until a main objective is completed such as capturing a specific territory. All allies who perish in battle are gone for the rest of the game, which may force you to restart the chapter and try again if you want to win the game without losing any of your characters. The good news is you can turn off the permanent death feature by playing at a lower difficulty level. Veterans of Fire Emblem or Tactical RPGs in general can still take the traditional challenge of permanent deaths.
As for details on the presentation, Fire Emblem has recently had animated still-frames of the characters with their mouths moving to talk accompanied by text boxes, although Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn had this and full blown FMV sequences. This will be the first handheld Fire Emblem to feature in-game engine 3D cut scenes provided with it’s own voice cast alongside the above mentioned animated still-frames. Alongside this, the game has a traversable world map that was last seen in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. From the map you can select places to go to battle or equip yourself with items, weapons and armor from shops. This title also supports StreetPass for co-operative and competitive play with or against a friend, to give a multiplayer function to this game.
This hardcore Tactical RPG will hit shelves in Japan, April 19th, 2012 on the Nintendo 3DS and we are still awaiting for more announcements regarding the release dates for the West. We’ll keep you updated with more news on Fire Emblem: Awakening in the future.
P.S. Marth makes a comeback!
Article Author: Louis Polite
