Belum Pernah Ada Waktu yang Lebih Baik Untuk Bermain Fire Emblem: Awakening

The world is a complicated place, but, regardless of political leanings, I think we can all agree that in 2016 I was much younger than I am in 2026. The younger me was a much more patient person, especially when it came to playing video games. I relished the opportunity to go on whatever ride designers and developers had spent years meticulously crafting. These days, however, I find myself frantically looking for the shortest and quickest path to satisfaction. Time is a commodity and I am not rich in it.

Maybe it's my patience wearing thin, or maybe it's the children who are wrong, but I find that games these days are working overtime to put as much distance between the player and the thing that makes playing it satisfying and worthwhile. Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave is undoubtedly the best recent example of this happening. I love tactics games. I'm not great at them, but nevertheless, I relish the opportunity to slowly move units around squares, compare stats, and then watch them bonk each other. To me, they are the video game equivalent of waking up on a Saturday morning and sitting down to do a sudoku puzzle or fill out a crossword. Like I said, OLD.

Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, however, has been the equivalent of being old and waking up on a Saturday morning to find I've got bills to pay, family members to call, meals to prep, mandatory exercise sessions to do, six different gods to appease, and a neighbor that accosts me in the hallway to tell me about their mundanity-riddled week.

Each time I turn on Fortune's Weave, I find that the thing I want to do most is buried underneath a laundry list of chores that, while beneficial to my ongoing existence, are also incredibly tedious to the extent that by the time I get to the bit where I can make my little people bonk each with different damage values, I don't even have the mental energy to enjoy making my little people bonk each other.

Fortune's Weave has excellent tactical gameplay. It's very engaging and more intricate than any other entries in the past, but the mountain I have to climb in between these moments of tactical joy are so steep that, recently, I decided to take a different route entirely and fired up Fire Emblem: Awakening for the Nintendo 3DS and was reminded of how damn good that game is. Not just because the tactics gameplay is incredibly approachable and developing the bonds to strengthen characters and deepen their capabilities is so rewarding, but because it's all there pretty much immediately.

Awakening–along with Fates and Echoes, the other two 3DS Fire Emblem entries–were made before the series pivoted to being a Persona-like and gated the core tactics gameplay behind a layer of role-playing mechanics focused on doing daily activities and micro-tasks. So, to my mind, and as someone who comes to the series first and foremost for tactical gameplay, it is modern Fire Emblem at its best. And it holds up so well.

Everything in Awakening drives toward the many tactical skirmishes that make up the bulk of the experience. Although there are conversations and other narrative beats that guide the story along, they are trimmings around the gameplay that largely serve to contextualize battles and invite some investment in characters. The lack of mandatory social activities with everyone on your squad, I think, doesn't diminish how much I cared about each unit because my attachment to units is largely fueled by how well they charm me through character design and the precious few lines they have to say now and then. Of course, how well they perform in battle also contributes, but that is also impacted by the writing.

Take Donnel for example. He is a wide-eyed kid that clearly shouldn't be on the battlefield. He's very ordinary, has grown up as a farmhand, and has no aspirations of being a hero or saving the world. He just happens to be in a position to fight for his village and does what he can to preserve his quaint little life with his family. And so, there he is, a little boy with a spear in his hand and a cooking pot on his head, going toe-to-toe with horse-mounted cavalry.

It took just a few minutes with Donnel for him to become the center of my Fire Emblem universe; I would do anything and everything to make sure he stays alive and continues to become stronger. I didn't need to spend a bunch of time doing quests for him, feeding him, and showering him with gifts in the way that Fortune's Weave demands. All I needed was to see the pot on his head and get a whiff of his earnest ordinariness.

I think Fire Emblem Fortune's Weave is a great game. But, like I said, I am old and the world is pummelling me with endless horrors such that sometimes I just need the video games' endorphins as quickly as possible. I need immediate escapism, and Fortune's Weave just doesn't give me that. That might be the same for you, and if so, I wholeheartedly recommend going back and checking out Fire Emblem: Awakening, especially if you are a relatively new fan that found the franchise through the Persona-ified entries.

Admittedly, you'll have to find a copy of the game and a 3DS first, which can be expensive. But, while the world is undoubtedly a complicated place, it's much easier to find and play old games than it has ever been. It's 2026, I'm sure someone can show you the shortest and quickest path to satisfaction online somewhere.