Fire Emblem Awakening

Fire Emblem Awakening is a tactical role-playing game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS. It was released in April 2012 in Japan and 2013 internationally. It is the thirteenth installment in the Fire Emblem series and the first to be developed for the Nintendo 3DS family of systems. The gameplay, like previous Fire Emblem games, focuses on the tactical movement of characters across a grid-based battlefield and fighting enemy units. Other features include the ability to build and foster relationships between characters to improve their abilities, adjustable difficulty levels, a mode that disables the permanent death of characters, and multiple camera perspectives in battle.

The story is set 2000 years after the events of the original Fire Emblem game and Fire Emblem Gaiden and focuses on Chrom, the prince of Ylisse, and his personal army, the "Shepherds". They rescue Robin (an Avatar whose name, gender, and appearance are customizable by the player), who is suffering from amnesia and serves as their tactician. Over the course of the story, Chrom's army travels across Ylisse, defending it from undead invaders - the Risen - and attacks from the hostile nation of Plegia.

Development of Fire Emblem Awakening began in 2010, with multiple veterans of the Fire Emblem series filling key development roles. Development was handled by Intelligent Systems with supervision from Nintendo. As the series had seen declining sales with previous installments, Awakening was designed as the possible last entry in the series, with elements from all previous Fire Emblem games incorporated. Due to the 3DS still being fine-tuned by developers, the team's decisions for content and graphics were made based on what they thought was feasible for what they had available to them. However, some gameplay options and proposals were met with mixed feelings, such as the option to disable permanent character death, often colloquially known as "permadeath", a staple of the Fire Emblem franchise.

Upon release, the game received critical acclaim and achieved strong sales worldwide, with many critics praising the new additions to the traditional gameplay and accessibility to newcomers of the series. After release, the game was nominated for multiple awards from video game publications, often being cited as one of the best games on the 3DS platform, is credited with boosting sales for the 3DS and is considered one of the greatest video games of all time. Awakenings commercial success ensured the continuation of the series. The successor to Awakening, Fire Emblem Fates, was released in Japan in 2015 and in Western territories in 2016.