Fire Emblem: Awakening Part #1 - Premonition: Invisible Ties

Part 1: Premonition: Invisible Ties

Opening before the Starting Menu Screen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgLoBsiPSkI

Premonition

When you start a new game, 3 difficulty choices (and Lunatic+ if you beat the game on Lunatic) present themselves.

Normal: Meant for people new to Strategy/tactic RPGs and the Fire Emblem series.
Hard: Enemies have higher stats, reinforcements can attack the same turn they appear. Generally for FE and SRPG vets.
Lunatic: Enemies can kill all but one of your characters instantly for the first few chapters, only do this if you want a super challenge.
Lunatic+: Same stats as Lunatic, except enemies now have special abilities that activate 100% of the time or give 100% accuracy. Do this mode if you really hate yourself.

This LP will be played on Hard to best show the balance of difficulty while still allowing the thread's character choices to be viable.

Next, you select which mode is applied for the game.

Casual: In the first 11 Fire Emblem games, units die and they are forever gone. Casual lets all units except Chrom and your Avatar (personal unit) retreat and be available for the next mission. This mode also comes with an in-mission battle save which is why the LP will be on Casual.

Classic: Units die forever. Missions are auto-saved whenever you turn off or reset the 3DS and continue, so the only way to save a character is to restart the entire mission.

The next screen lets you choose how to build your avatar (default name is Robin), but we'll get to that after this short intro mission. The thread will get to vote on the Avatar's body build, hair color, and name.

Let's begin the game with an awesome cutscene.

Watch this pretty rad fight!

Music: Chaos

You're one of us, Robin, and no "destiny" can change that.

Now let's kill this dastard and be done with it!

Premonition starts right off the bat with Chrom and Robin to defeat all enemies. In this case, only one named Validar.

But first things first....

Change your default from Simplified to Full. That changes your stats screen.

Simplified tells you nothing and will probably get you killed on anything above Normal. Full displays not just your Inventory, but your 7 basic stats that calculate how battles are won and lost. A quick overview:

Str: Strength is your physical damage
Mag: Magic is your magic damage
Skill: Skill determines your hit, critical, and ability activation rates.
Spd: Speed determines how many times a character attacks or is attacked per battle.
Lck: The second stat for calculating hitting and avoiding attacks.
Def: The amount of physical damage you reduce
Res: The amount of magical damage you reduce

The little boot on the right is how many tiles a character can move.

Alright, let's continue.

Chrom and Robin move ahead together.

Go ahead, Robin!

Ending our turn has Validar mocking us, then goes right back to our turn. For this mission, the boss won't move or attack us even if we're right next to him. It's really hard to lose.

Right, we finally get to fight our first bout.

Music: Malefactor

Validar isn't too tough, despite the heavy damage. Chrom can take two hits from Grima's Truth before he dies. Before initiating combat, you can switch between available weapons using the Y and X button. We'll switch to the Silver Sword as it's both more accurate and deals more damage.

Every weapon has its own model, while every tome has its own spell animation. I'll try to show off them whenever I can.

Chrom's fine and like I mentioned before, Validar won't attack on his turn so he's safe.

Robin attacks from distance with her Tome, Thoron. Certain weapons like Tomes and Bows can attack from 2 tiles away, which prevents counterattacks from 1-range weapons like Chrom's Silver Sword. Validar can hit back because he also has a Tome.

Time for the finishing blow.