Much like the first entry in this series, I didn’t have nearly as much time to play Awakening as I wanted. It’s really hard to find time to play old games when you’re trying to keep up on this year’s ridiculous number of great games and work a full-time job. But I got some time in and made some progress, so let’s talk about it. As always, let’s go over some numbers. I’ve put in about four hours of play, I’m on chapter 6, and Ivan Ooze is currently level 7.

When we last left off, our heroes had arrived at Regna Ferox, a kingdom to the North of their hometown in search of assistance against an ever growing army of bad guys. Because we bested the guards in battle, we’ve somehow proven we really are from Ylisse and are allowed to meet with the Khan, the ruler of Regna Ferox. When we arrive, however, we learn that the situation is a little more complicated than just asking for help.

It turns out that the Khan that the guards we fought work for is a woman named Flavia. She’s not THE Khan, rather just A Khan. Every year, the two Khans pick champions and have them fight each other in an arena. The winner rules Regna Ferox. Flavia is currently not the ruler, but conveniently, this year’s arena fight is about to start and she’s in need of a champion. She tells us that if we fight for her and win, she will be our ally. Neat, let’s do that.

The fight starts and we’re surprised to learn that our opponent’s champion is none other than Luci-um-Marth! He seemed to be on our side when last we saw him, so what’s he doing over there. Doesn’t matter right now, we just have to fight and win. The battle, like most so far, was pretty easy, although Marth put up a good fight. Just to reiterate, I am playing on casual, so a lot of the careful planning to ensure that your units don’t get themselves killed doesn’t really apply to my playthrough.

So, Marth is defeated and just kind of sneaks off like Batman. We’ve made ourselves a new ally. The other Khan was impressed with us and decides to give us a soldier to help us out too. His name is Lon’qu, and apparently he was set to be the champion before Marth convinced the Khan to let him take his place. That works for me, and it turns out that Lon’qu is super powerful, at least so far.

We return to Ylisse with news of our victory, but learn that Plegia, those pesky bad guys, have attacked a village and taken one of the Shepherds named Maribelle hostage. Looks like that’s our next mission. We leave with Emmeryn, the Exalt of Ylisse to try to negotiate Maribelle’s safe return.

Gangrel, the king of Plegia, will only surrender her if we give up the Fire Emblem. This is the first we’ve heard of the Emblem, apparently it’s a very powerful shield. With it, Gangrel believes he can conquer Ylisse. He also explains that in the past, Ylisse attacked Plegia, resulting in a lifelong hatred of the kingdom. While it’s nice to see some motivation beyond just “I’m the bad guy”, it’s not enough to sway us and we quickly defeat him and get Maribelle back.

So that’s all well and good, but I noticed that there were a couple side missions, called “paralogues” that had opened up at some point, so I decide to check those out instead of continuing the story. The first one deals with a village that’s been attacked and a boy named Donnel who wants to help. Donnel sucks, but if I can get him to level up during this fight, I can keep him on my team. So basically, I keep everyone back and try to lure one enemy at a time over to Donnel, while also keeping Lissa nearby to throw heals at him. Eventually, Donnel hits level 2, and then I just slaughter the rest of the baddies with my not terrible units.

The second paralogue dealt with Anna, the “Secret Seller”. Hey, I know her, she’s the convenience store clerk from Tokyo Mirage Sessions! Also apparently a recurring Fire Emblem character, but you know, that’s not as important. We need to try to get to a village to the North end of the map to war the people there of some incoming bad guys. Anna, is also fighting them off, but she controls herself on her own turns.

I thought I would be smart and send Sumia to warn the village. She can move a lot of spaces at a time and because she’s a flying unit, trees don’t slow her down. Makes sense, right? Well, turns out there’s a bunch of archers that I kind of ignored hanging out up there who quickly shoot her down. Whoops. So then I start sending Frederick to the village but he doesn’t make it in time. Also, Anna gets killed. Whoops. Good thing I’m playing on casual.

Other than that dumb mistake, this fight wasn’t particularly difficult. And because of casual mode, Anna still introduces herself to the party as if she hadn’t been murdered. She doesn’t join us, however, but it does sound like we’ll run into her again.

During the last fight, Lissa’s heal spell broke. I actually didn’t realize that was a thing that could happen, but it makes sense. I was trying to figure out what the cost of using spells actually was. So, this led to me trying to buy a new heal spell. This was a nightmare because even though I could see shops that had them, but I couldn’t access them without parlaying with other main characters of players I had Street Passed with. I’ve had this game for years and never deactivated the Street Pass function, so there were just so many characters to get through.

While figuring that all out, I also discovered support conversations. I’m not sure if the game ever mentioned that they existed and I just didn’t notice or if I’m supposed to just kind of stumble on to them. They’re pretty cool. You watch little conversations between characters that are often pretty funny, and then their support stat goes up. It’s pretty neat.

So, that’s where I’m at right now. Hopefully next week, I’ll have more time to play. No promises though.