Fire Emblem: Awakening review: higher ground

The process of outfitting and leveling up characters is time-consuming but deeply satisfying. Most characters are recruited with extremely low stats (think level one or two) and require lots of experience to get through later-game campaigns. Leveling a character and upgrading their weapons requires hard choices, especially if you graduate to a new class, which resets their level to the beginning. Beefing up specific characters and weapons and learning what enemies and terrain they are strongest against provides a direct and satisfying reward of faster leveling and rare drops.

For as much as it's faithful to the Fire Emblem series, Awakening has some meaningful tweaks that freshen the experience — most notably the pair up mechanic. Pairing up temporarily combines two units' placement on the grid, allowing them to assist in and block attacks for one another. This takes a lot of the stress out of moving units across terrain, especially when a boss is waiting at the end of a range packed with difficult opponents. Pair up works like insurance, allowing you to move multiple soldiers across a map while only one is in danger of dying. The additional strategies that this new mechanic affords add to both the depth and approachability of Fire Emblem.

Sidequests pop up on certain map points to help you level up the new troops you spend the game collecting. The challenge of these optional missions is typically on par with the most recently-completed main campaign mission, which prevents the frustration of sudden difficulty spikes from content your characters aren't prepared to handle. A limited number of sidequests are available at any time — finishing a storyline mission will usually unlock between two and four optional challenges — and they can each only be completed once. Players will have to budget these areas and the extra experience points available in them. Treating sidequests as essentially another resource adds a thoughtful twist to Awakening's management challenges.