Game On/Game Over: To Soon for New Fire Emblem?

On the last Nintendo Direct a brand new Fire Emblem trailer hit the interwebs and fans of the series simultaneously squealed with joy! But another faction online started the line of thinking…didn’t we JUST get Fire Emblem Awakening? Is it too soon for another one?

So…it’s opinion time.

I thoroughly enjoyed Awakening on 3DS playing the entire game with 3D turned on. The design of being your own mysterious character, a story chock full of sacrifice, time travel, and some new game mechanics really made the game enticing…and engrossing. I simply could not put it down.

Contrast that with prior entries, Nintendo used to bill Fire Emblem as a man’s man hardcore game with an unforgiving death engine, loss of stats if you’re not careful and a serious strategy element that does appeal to me generally…until you lose your character in a battle you’ve invested 20 hours in. The obvious choice is to reset the system and start over so you don’t lose all your precious time and development. Painful.

Awakening really mixed it up by killing off (no pun intended) the permanent death mechanic and making it optional! So while some purists will call blasphemy (read as BS) I say…thank all that is holy! Maybe easier, but no longer do you have to strategize around possibly losing a character. In fact, more and more you can change your tactics by sacrificing certain characters to draw out the AI so you can complete the objective and know that they will be back at base camp when you end the campaign! I can’t say enough how amazing that made the experience for me and reignited my love for the franchise.

The game has DLC, add ons, and additional options available to elongate the game, but once you complete the main story…you’ve kind of done what you set out to do…at least that’s how I see it. So while I was satisfied with the game, I was obviously ready for more…but does that mean more of the same? When I beat a game it’s hard for me to jump back in…I never was much for replay-ability which is not a huge selling point for me. SO…I’ve been waiting to see what’s going to come next! Smash Bros. did a great job bringing in Awakening characters which was fun, and my Marth amiibo is Fire Emblem gold! Now it’s time for more!

Unlike the Assassin’s Creed series which Ubisoft seems content on driving into the ground, runs the risk of a Guitar Hero parity in life-cycle. Flooding the market with too much of a good thing never ends well and even your most rabid fans begin to abandon as quality gives way to quantity. Nintendo is no Ubisoft. In fact, the GamerFeed show has sung the Big N’s praises over and over again for NOT allowing a significant degradation in quality of their games. Even the 10,000th iteration of Mario Bros is a top quality gameplay experience regardless of what you think of Mario or the “story” mechanic. Nintendo continues to prove over and over again it can deliver in this regard. I’d also like to point out that others brutalize Hyrule Warriors as the Ubisoft comparison. I violently disagree. It sold over 1 million copies and counting, some of the best DLC in Nintendo’s catalogue, so I’m giving it a pass…for Nintendo. Still others are negative on the Nintendo journey to licensing IP…but I digress.

I think it’s high time for an additional entry into the series. Whether the future brings the series to 3DS or Wii U the game will be an amazing, high quality adventure fans of the series will be proud to add to their collections. If you’re not a fan…but you play 3DS you are missing out kids! Great strategy RPG that is more accessible than ever with even more in the story to explore than frankly a portable game should be allowed to have. The series is a tremendous franchise for Nintendo and for gaming, and with more options and approachability than ever before, bring it baby!