Fire Emblem: Awakening.

After customising your character, the story then starts you off with the classic JRPG trope: the main character wakes up with amnesia and is introduced to a ragtag bunch of soon to be world savers. Leading among these potential heroes would be Chrom, the prince of Yilisse, accompanied by his personal militia the Shepherds. After assisting Chrom in defending a nearby town, he realises your potential as a tactician and asks you to join him as he defends his kingdom. From that point, and throughout the course of the game you’ll be tangled up in assassination plots, time travel, and much more. The story is one of the game’s strong suits, and it’s pretty incredible.

The character design is near perfect, and the development between them is amazing. Even though most of the dialogue in the game was between 2D versions of the characters, the conversations were all so well written. The 2D portraits change based on the emotion behind what the characters were saying, while simple, this still works pretty well to convey what’s happening.

Speaking of character interactions, another strong point featured in Awakening would be the relationship system. Based on how much characters spend time paired up during battle, they will gain the opportunity to strengthen their relationships. By doing so these character will receive bonuses when they fight alongside each other, and can even get married and have children, who themselves become usable allies.

The real meat of Awakening would have to be the battles. Awakening avoids real time fighting, and instead follow a turn based format, in which you move all of your units and attack the opposing side, and vice versa. With a wide variety of weapons available, and enemies that have individual strengths and weaknesses, it makes for a truly strategic and at times very intense battle system. One important distinction to Fire Emblem’s battles would be that when a character dies, he or she is gone forever.