LogFAQs > #969891001

Again, I hate to beat the same drum over and over but the gist of your criticisms boil down to issues with the writing and the balancing of the difficulty, which are fairly widespread complaints, but I don't think it's fair to portray them as holding the entire game back, especially when you use Three Houses as a counterpoint. You're underplaying how easy it can be to standardise the unit variety in that game without abusing academy mechanics, even on a first playthrough, if you really wanted to. IIRC the early meta was pretty stale with all the Wyvern Lord spam! But essentially I'm trying to play devil's advocate here because I feel like that's nitpicking at both games rather than something that ruins them. Like I mentioned previously, I do kind of wish they reigned in the reclassing somewhat though. I like being able to think of a character like "This is Cherche, she is a Wyvern Rider. Look, there's a wyvern in her art and everything", when actually she can also be a Cleric or a Troubadour if you wanted. They correct this somewhat in Fates where characters only have 1 reclass option by default, rather than 2 or 3, and then it's more or less on you if you want to go nuts with the support reclassing etc.

It sounds like a lack of challenge is spoiling your playthrough because the plot is telling you it's all 'backs against the walls' but there's no sense of adversity in the gameplay. Normal difficulty essentially treats you like a complete novice to the point where it almost doesn't matter what you do unit-wise, especially if you take advantage of the mechanics to accelerate your army growth like second seals and optional battles. There's no agency, so it's no wonder if you're pimping out an Olivia so much and yet don't care about the outcome because it could be any of a dozen units in her place achieving a similar result. Is this the game's fault? Probably, yes. But most of these problems disappear even with the game on Hard. It's functionally the same game but suddenly there's consequences to your actions. Lunatic and L+ take it perhaps too far the other way. The early game there is essentially a series of puzzles where you figure out how to position your units so they don't get oneshot whilst Frederick does all the heavy lifting. Personally, I have more of a problem with the lack of flexibility there compared to Normal's issues, but I don't think either ruins the game so long as I find a way of enjoying it within the available options.

The criticism of the writing is... fair enough. I wouldn't call the story boring myself but I also wouldn't rate it as anything higher than average. It's serviceable. The tone they take with the supports, which is mostly played for laughs, is not going to be for everyone. It's kind of like they took a slice-of-life approach over a shonen one. There are definitely some lazy and nonsensical ones in there too. If you were to cut through the chaff though there's some diamonds in there, about as many as there are in the earlier games, which have a lower quantity of supports but a higher percentage in quality.

Hopefully this doesn't come across too much as "you're playing it wrong", especially regarding the difficulty, but I think it can be easy to play through Awakening as a series veteran, wonder what the fuss is about and zone in on it's faults when a lot of them can be addressed. I realise you're just venting a bit in that post too and they aren't your complete impressions, but I thought it was worth responding to whilst you're still playing rather than in a post-mortem.