I wasn’t expecting to finish playing through Fire Emblem Awakening before writing this episode, but I had gotten really into the game after last week’s and kind of just kept playing it. Quite a bit happened this time, a couple children from the future showed up, the true villain revealed himself, and we saw the end credits. But, before we get to all that, let’s go over some numbers one last time. My final play time is 21 hours, 46 minutes, and 15 seconds, and Ivan Ooze ended the game as a level 5 Grandmaster.

When we last left off, we were headed to Plagia castle because we had received word from Validar that he had the last of the gemstones. Since Validar is an obvious bad guy and at one point tried to assassinate Chrom and Lissa’s sister, it was pretty clear that this would end up being a trap. But, we go anyway because we really need that stone.

When we arrive in Plagia, we encounter a large dragon’s skull, which causes Lucina to have a flashback to her time. She remembers Grima claiming to have killed her parents and now he was going to kill her. He attacks, and the flashback ends. Ivan notices some armed guards are keeping an eye on them, so yeah, this isn’t looking very good.

Pretty much immediately, Validar reveals his true intentions. He says that Yllise getting all of the gemstones would be a very bad thing, because it stopped Grima last time, and then demands the Fire Emblem. Obviously, we don’t do that. So, now we have to fight our way out of Plagia. The way out is guarded by a random-boss-guy named Algol. After we easily kill him, Validar warps in and tells Ivan to give him the Fire Emblem. Ivan fights Validar’s control, but ends up giving it to him anyway.

So that sucks, but we end up getting away. Chrom is pretty forgiving, but that night, Lucina confronts Ivan. She came back in time to kill her father’s murderer, and after what just happened, she’s convinced it’s Ivan. Here you’re given a choice to either accept her judgement or try to stop her. I accepted, but Lucina couldn’t bring herself to kill her husband. Then Chrom shows up and he’s like, “thanks for not killing my best friend/your husband.”

The next day, we receive word from scouts that Validar is at this place called The Dragon’s Table where he will use the Emblem to bring back Grima. So, obviously, we show up and mess them all up. We fight Validar’s minion Aversa, but she manages to get away.

Next up, we’re in the location of the very beginning of the game! Ivan and Chrom are separated from the rest of the group and are hanging out by Validar. Once again, we strike down Validar, but Ivan starts to see red and kills Chrom. Lucina is bummed that she wasn’t able to change the past, but just then Basilio busts in and is like, “surpise! I’m alive!” He explains that he would have died in the battle with Walhart, but due to Lucina’s warning, he was able to recognize that he was outmatched and faked his death.

Speaking of faking death, Chrom gets back up. Ivan was able to hold back some of his power, so his attack wasn’t fatal. Once again, we fight Validar and all his bad guys, and this time we actually kill him. Unfortunately, that weird Ivan twin from weeks ago shows up. He explains that he’s Ivan from the future, the one that killed Chrom and became the Fell Dragon Grima. He followed Lucina back in time to prevent her from preventing his return from happening, but since Ivan has chosen to side with his friends instead of becoming the dragon, he’s going to do it instead. Uh oh. Future-Evil-Ivan transforms into Grima and it’s basically over for us.

Chrom mentions that if we had the Fire Emblem, we’d be able to ask Naga for the power to defeat Grima. Ivan pulls the Emblem out of his ass and is like, “check this out!” I have no idea when he managed to jack the Emblem, but we have it and that’s all that matters.  So, it’s time to go do that!

Except we don’t! Instead, it’s time to get some more future kids! First up, is Cynthia. She’s Chrom and Sumia’s daughter, making her Lucina’s little sister. She’s hanging out with a guy who claims to be Chrom, but is really some evil thief guy. Sumia talks to her, getting her to realize she’s been tricked, and then we kill the fake Chrom.

Next up, I haven’t mentioned it in any of these posts, but I kind of accidentally started going down the support path for Nowi and Lon’qu. Nowi convinces Lon’qu to play house with him, and by the end up it, he decides he wants to play house for real and proposes to her. This is honestly even weirder than Ivan’s sudden proposal from last week. But whatever, another married couple, and that means that their daughter, Nah, shows up. She’s being held prisoner, so we bust her out and she joins our team.

Okay, back to the actual story. The group heads to Mount Prism, where they can perform the Awakening rite and get the strength to defeat Grima. Of course, Grima sends a bunch of Risen there to stop us, but they don’t because we’re the best. After killing them, Naga grants Chrom power, but warns that if he tries to kill Grima, he will only put him to sleep again, like Marth did back in the original game. The only way to permanently kill Grima would be to have him take his own life.

So we head to where Grima is. Ivan mentions that technically, he and Grima are the same person. That means that if Ivan were to deliver the final blow, that would be Grima killing himself. Naga confirms that this would work, but would likely result in Ivan’s death. Apparently, there is a chance that Ivan could survive through the power of friendship, but that’s not a guarentee.

Chrom forbids Ivan from dealing out the final blow, but Ivan won’t promise. Anyway, it’s time to fight. Aversa is back. We take out all her minions and finally kill her for good. So far, everything’s been real easy. Having three married couples means having three combined units that are basically unstoppable. But, all that changes in the final mission.

This last section is just a big boss fight against Grima. We’re on the back of the dragon himself, and Evil-Ivan is hanging out by the head. I got murdered so many times trying to do this mission. My main strategy was to have Sumia and Chrom fight Grima, while everyone else just tries to stay alive. This didn’t work out. My actual winning strategy was to just not worry about anything but Grima. Everyone got in some shots, a lot of my units died (but on casual mode, so whatever), and Grima was defeated.

Now, I was given the option to have either Chrom or Ivan kill the dragon. I went with Ivan, because that’s clearly the good ending. Grima is destroyed for good and Ivan vanishes. Everyone’s sad, but they also all believe that they’ll run into him again, because Ivan is the best and the power of friendship and all that. Next, we get the end credits and the game tells us what happened to every character. It was a fun reminder of the existence of many characters that I just kind of abandoned.

The game ends with Ivan awakening in a field and being found by Chrom and Lissa. It’s exactly like when they first met, except this time, Chrom says “welcome back”. So hey, I beat Fire Emblem Awakening! This game has been a fantastic experience for me and transformed me from someone who was casually interested in the games into an actual fan of them. Now I can’t wait to see where the series goes.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my time with Fire Emblem Awakening. Stay tuned to this blog to see what game get’s the Check-in treatment next!