I agree with the whole "cliche'd plot, but does the cliches well" thing. Honestly, people put too much emphesis on originality these days. I still belive there's nothing wrong with a formulaic plot as long as it's well-written, and Awakening fits that.
The only real flaws I find in the support system are a seriousl lack of options for characters like Say'ri, Tiki and the Spotpass bonus characters. There was so much potential there (Lucina and Priam, both are descendants of legendary heroes, they'd probably have a lot to talk about, to name a less-spoilery example) but they can only support with the Avatar.
Most Fire Emblem fans would disagree with the series being overshadowed by Advance Wars, but I agree that it did really need ways to get newcomers into the series, and I'm glad they started doing that with New Mystery and then this game. Unfortunately, some of the self-proclaimed "hardcores" of the fandom ended up hating this game for 'daring' to bring in a ton of newcomers to their precious exclusive club. The thing is, I really think this game strikes a balance: it has Casual mode and lower difficulty levels for newcomers, and Lunatic for the hardcores. Yet still, the hardcores despise this game. Personally, I don't think it's quite the best game in the series, but it's nowhere near as bad as the elitists make it out to be.
It's funny. I hated so many of the characters in this game that I actively killed them off, instead of resetting when they died.
Hahaha you think this is it's growing the beard? Go play half the other games this is just it getting a little longer.
Playing this game, I definitely felt a greater connection to the playable characters than I did with the other games. Not to say that the other games did their characters badly, but I did feel more connected to the cast of Awakening.
It still remains the most fun game in the franchise for me.
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FE Grows its Beard
Fire Emblem has always lived in the shadow of its younger sibling, the Advance Wars series. The pick-up-and-play style of Intelligent Systems other strategy series has always been more appealing to the masses than the hardcore character killing style of Fire Emblem.
That has changed with Fire Emblem Awakening.
The battle mechanics are mostly the same-in a couple of cases they have been needlessly dumbed down, but there are two ways in which Awakening has improved over its predecessors. Story and characters.
Though there is now an option to play with permadeath turned off for the casual player, the story and the characters justify the existence of the permadeath mechanic more than any game previous released in the west.
The story has been criticized for being clichéd, and to an extent it is. But it makes better use of many of those clichés, especially the usually tired 'power of friendship' cliché, than I have ever seen. There are three moments in the game that pack an astonishingly strong emotional punch, and they are well spaced.
But Awakening's greatest triumph is in its support system. Forgetting about the marriage mechanic, it allows the player to get to know the characters to an extent that even Bioware games do not match. So many characters can have 3-4 conversations with so many other characters, and each relationship reveals something different about the characters.
Getting to know the characters so well makes it all the more devastating when they fall in battle. I never reset when a character fell in the earlier Fire Emblem games, because there was always a unit that could take their role and I had not become attached to them. But in Awakening I finally did start resetting the game.
It is because of these characters and their relationships that the clichés of the main story work as well as they do. The fantastic music also helps to set the story apart. It is a fantastic soundtrack even by Nintendo standards.
Awakening is not perfect. As previously mentioned some of the mechanics, particularly with regards to magic, were needlessly dumbed down. And as great as the support system is, it has limits that can be improved upon.
But even with those relatively small gripes, Fire Emblem Awakening is the best handheld SRPG ever made. It not only steps out of Advance Wars' shadow, but surpasses it.