Well, I finished another Fire Emblem game, and you know what that means: it’s time for another extremely long retrospective.
As with last time, I’m just going to be rambling about the characters I used, how that went, and any specific highlights from my journey. The focus of this particular article will be on the Lunatic run that I just wrapped in Awakening. If you’re curious about how that went, at a high level, then I’d recommend reading this post here.
That also means that this is going to be another incredibly self indulgent post (like my Conquest retrospective from last year was), so no worries if you decide to skip this one. I completely understand as I don’t imagine most of this will make a lick of sense without prior knowledge of Awakening.
With all of that out of the way, it’s high time we get into the highlights, and lowlights of my first run of Lunatic in Awakening.
Navigation
The Tier List
If I remember correctly, last time I started by sharing a tier list that generally captured my feelings on how each unit performed during the playthrough that I was writing about. For consistency sake, I’ll do that again for anyone who is curious:
Obviously, some of those ratings are very misaligned from the community’s general sentiment about specific characters. As already stated, this is just based on the experience I had in my playthrough of Lunatic, so it’s only really representative of the decisions that I made therein. That is to say, don’t take any of those ratings as serious viability ratings for any of the characters. I’m sure there’s a simple path to make the overwhelming majority of the characters viable given how flexible Awakening’s class changing mechanics are.
Also, I’d like for the record to show that I cut a 400 word section of this article where I did nothing, but shit on Donnel. I know people love trainee units in the 3DS Fire Emblem games, but I do not for a variety of reasons. Those same reasons are magnified in Lunatic, which made Donnel an even worse prospect.
Anyway, that’s enough about the country bumpkin. Let’s get into the real units.
Successful Project Units
In a bit of a shake-up from last time, I wanted to focus on the projects that actually succeeded first. Largely because I think they’re a lot more exciting to talk about then the units that mostly floundered throughout my run. Though, there is still some value in actually examining what went wrong there, and why.
Robin
I feel like it’s more special when you don’t have a good Robin then when you do. She’s so unreasonably flexible since she can reclass into almost anything. This means that Robin can fill basically any role that you want her to slot into. This makes her a fantastic candidate for one of your early Second Seals, which all but guarantees that she’ll be a strong unit.
I decided to keep things really vanilla on my first run of Lunatic, and made Robin one of my primary walls. I already had intentions of slotting Vaike in as a Hero/Berserker, so Robin got to be my magical wall. Obviously Nos-tanking isn’t the most original idea, but it works and didn’t require a lot of forethought to enable, nor pilot. I appreciated that simplicity as there was already enough going on during my first Lunatic run to keep me busy.
Plus, Dark Mages are easily the most inextricably broken class in Awakening. Anathema is quite literally one of the best skills in the game, and Dark Mages get it at level 10. That’s actually insane. It’s not surprising at all to me that Anathema was flat out removed in Fates because of how strong it was. I don’t think there was ever a world where Intelligent Systems was going to balance that shit out to be inline with the general power level of other skills.
Also, Flux is surprisingly good. I don’t know that I’ve ever really used it because I usually end up grinding a bit in my Awakening playthroughs so money is never a concern. With that being the case, I usually just run Nosferatu on my Dark Mages.
However, Flux is great when you’re working on a budget since it has 45 uses. It’s also an E rank tome with 5 might, which is unusually high for an E rank weapon. For context, that’s anywhere between 25% to 60% stronger than most other E rank weapons. This makes Flux a fantastic option for keeping your Dark Mages going when you’re trying to keep your budget in check, and Robin tore through tons of baddies using Flux as a result.
I think for a future playthrough, it might be fun to make Robin a staffer. You get tons of staffers naturally throughout your playthrough, but this would force me to use non-Robin units as my primary carries. Besides, staffers are their own kind of broken in Awakening, which we’ll get into in a bit when we talk about Lissa.
Vaike
I might as well move onto Vaike next since I mentioned that he was my other wall in Robin’s section.
The basic premise for my strategy was to have 2 strong enemy phase units – one that could handle melee attacks, and one for magical attacks. Vaike was my answer for melee weapons. He has a fantastic HP stat, and his speed is naturally quite good so he’s not going to be at risk of being doubled very often. Coupled with high Strength, high Skill, and Axes, Vaike was an absolute monster once I got him going.
It’s also worth noting that Vaike has the ability to Master Seal into Hero, which gives him easy access to enemy turn healing. Without the ability to top-off his health, I’m not certain Vaike would have excelled as well as he did while taking out 7 to 10 enemies a turn while on defense.
That said, he did have a bit of a rocky start. He’s a little too weak after he joins in the infamous Chapter 2 to tank hits. If you give him a couple of Chapters worth of experience though, Vaike really comes into his own, and can easily replace Frederick as your primary frontline unit. In fact, I think he also scooped up the most MVP awards across my playthrough alongside his backpack (and wife) Tharja, which was pretty cool.
Now I know what some of you are thinking: why did you pair Vaike with Tharja?
Great question. The short answer is Anathema.
Anathema and Hex still work even while a Dark Mage is Paired Up, so Tharja was providing a boatload of support to Vaike throughout my entire playthrough. Axes don’t always have the best hit rate, but both of these skills helped to ensure that Vaike was always hitting his mark. Given Vaike was reliant on landing hits to heal, this was kind of a big deal. Sorcerers also provide bonus Defense, and Resistance which was helpful for rounding out Vaike’s defensive profile.
Final note: Berserker was a great final class for Vaike as it let him pickup Axefaire. Normally, I’d say this was comically overtuned, but Awakening’s final several chapters feature multiple enemies with capped Health. As such, the extra power was useful for ensuring that Vaike could continue cleaning up entire maps of enemy soldiers.
Very cool unit. I’d absolutely run Vaike again in a future playthrough.
Cordelia
Everyone’s favourite waifu. While I’m not above saying that’s part of the reason why I like Cordelia, I also enjoy fielding her for practical reasons.
In my opinion, Cordelia is the better of the 2 Pegasus Knights that you get access to in Awakening. Obviously, if you take the time to baby Sumia then she’ll be the better of the 2, but Cordelia only joins 4 chapters after Sumia. Unless you’re really feeding Sumia, Cordelia is probably going to be the better of the 2 when she joins. And unlike Sumia, Cordelia has no cost associated with being better. That’s typically why I favor Cordelia in the majority of my Awakening playthroughs.
Now, I know you can make that exact same argument for a lot of other units. For example, Gregor fills the exact same role as Vaike, but costs nothing. I don’t actually have an argument against that: you’re right. I personally find that Sumia is almost always more trouble than she’s worth (MORE ON THAT LATER!), so Cordelia is my preferred Peg Knight.
Anyway, Cordelia was easily the most flexible unit in my entire army. I made her into a Falcon Knight, which gave her both Staff access, and Rally Speed. This meant that she had a ton of utility for repositioning my units, and she could also provide a Speed buff whenever it was required for some of my units to hit doubling thresholds.
It wasn’t just utility though – Cordelia’s stats were great across the board, so she was also an effective carry. I primarily used her as a cleaner during player phase, but there were a few times where she was able to hold her own during enemy phase. I don’t think flying units make especially good walls, but Cordelia was always ready, and able to fill any gaps that appeared in my strategy.
Also, you did read that correctly – I took Falcon Knight over Dark Flyer. I’m aware that meant that she didn’t pick up Galeforce, which would have made her a lot more useful as a player phase cleaner. My only counter to that is that Rescue Staff utility is very useful, and Cordelia having access to Staves was the linchpin for my solution for several chapters. As it would turn out, having Rescue on a unit that can move 8 spaces every turn helps your less mobile units (Hero/Berserker/Sorcerer) move a lot farther than they’d otherwise manage to.
Though, I think the single biggest win with Cordelia was how she paired with Frederick. Obviously Fred was my early game carry because you don’t have a lot of choice in that regard. However, you don’t have to keep using Fred in the mid-game, and can transition him into a more supportive role as a result.
Cordelia benefits a lot from having Frederick as a backpack because he provides her with exactly the sort of offensive stats she needs to really excel. What’s crazy is that the reverse is also true with Cordelia patching up Fred’s mediocre speed, so you can easily build a B, A, or even an S tier support with the 2 of them before you hit the mid-game.
All in all, Cordelia has proven, once again, that she’s an insanely easy to pilot unit that is highly rewarding to use. It’s really no wonder that she’s so popular when that’s the case.
Lon’qu
Lon’qu was not on my original shortlist for project units. However, I needed someone to help take heat off Fred during several of the early chapters, and Chrom had abysmal early game level ups (which is pretty normal in my experience). This provided the perfect opportunity for another early-game, sword-locked unit to shine. I ended up choosing Lon’qu over Gaius because Avoid +10 was more immediately appealing to me than Locktouch.
Hilariously, by the mid-game I didn’t actually need Lon’qu to continue dodge tanking, so I actually turned him into a thief. This gave him the ability to loot chests throughout several of the maps, and he later gained Staff access as a Trickster. As such, Lon’qu always had something to do on every map. He wasn’t the star, but his support was integral to my success all the same.
Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that Awakening is so lopsided with its enemy distribution, I’m not entirely sure Lon’qu would have been as good as he was. Seriously, what were the folks at Intelligent Systems thinking? Chapters 1 through 10 are almost nothing but dudes with Axes. That makes units like Lon’qu feel way stronger than they ought to be since they’re going to have Weapon Triangle Advantage in the overwhelming majority of combat encounters.
Cherche
Cherche is my favourite character in Awakening. Despite this, I completely forgot to assign her a role in my initial plan. I only realized this when I hit Chapter 12, and recruited her into my army.
I had 2 choices at this point – either I leave Cherche on the bench, or I find a spot for her. I chose the latter because hell will freeze over before I leave my favourite character behind.
Unfortunately, I didn’t need another damage dealing unit (or so I thought), which is typically how I use Cherche. Her default class of Wyvern Rider is very strong, and has access to several great skills. Plus, Axes are always nice for Chapters 12 through 20. As such, I decided to use Cherche’s alternative classes as a means to slot her into my army.
Now, I don’t know if you know this reader, but Cherche’s alternative classes do not compliment anything about her. As already stated, Cherche joins as a Wyvern Rider, which is a class with a ton of offensive potential, and her base stats reflect this. However, her alternative classes are Troubadour, and Cleric – magical, supportive units. Keep in mind, this is for a character with a base Strength growth of 40%, and a base Magic growth of 20%. Turning Cherche into a magical unit makes 0 sense, and doesn’t compliment her whatsoever.
But fuck all that shit cause I did it anyway.
Hilariously, Valkyrie Cherche actually kind of worked? I didn’t have a stable backpack for Robin, so I used Cherche for this role, and Valkyrie provided the perfect set of bonuses with 3 Magic, 2 Speed, and 3 Resistance. Never mind that Cherche’s Speed ended up being fairly high, so that Speed bonus was 5, or 6 for most late-game chapters.
Heck, Cherche became an even more insane backpack once she got Dual Support+. This effectively gave Robin the benefit of an S rank support with Cherche even though that’s not normally possible between Cherche and Fem-Robin.
Plus, Demoiselle works while Paired Up, so Cherche was passively boosting the Avoid stat of Vaike, Lon’qu, Chrom, and Frederick anytime they were nearby.
By all rights, this should not have worked whatsoever. However, Cherche defied the odds, and proved why she’s the best. She’s simply cut from finer cloth than everyone else, and can pull off a utility/support hybrid role even though she has neither the stats, nor the growth rates to ever make such a thing seem viable on paper.
One final thought that I had about Cherche: it’s a real shame that Butler/Maid doesn’t exist in Awakening because I’m fairly certain Cherche would have access to this class. This would allow her to make better use of her Strength, while still filling a supportive role like Jakob does in Fates.
Unsuccessful Project Units
I don’t think I’m ever going to play a Fire Emblem game where everything just works out. Something always has to go to the birds, which sucks. Though, things going poorly does give me ideas for future playthroughs, and that puts a lot of wind in my sails.
Either way, here are the units that didn’t quite work out.
Sumia
This is probably one of the larger upsets here.
Sumia is widely regarded as one of the best project units in the entirety of Awakening. She has great base Speed (11), Skill (11), and Luck (8), which means that she’ll be one of the few units who can actually double without any Speed support. She also joins early (Chapter 3), and has easy access to the skill Galeforce which is completely busted. This puts Sumia in the unique position of having every possible tool to be an outstanding player phase cleaner throughout your Awakening campaign.
Well – that’s only half true. To compensate for her overwhelming offensive Speed, Sumia was given the lowest Strength growth rate of any non-magical unit. Hell, Cherche has a higher Strength growth as a Cleric than Sumia has as a Pegasus Knight. That’s how bad Sumia’s Strength growth rate is.
Now, this lower attack power shouldn’t matter that much because Sumia can double basically everything in the game. That effectively doubles her damage output, which makes up for her lower Strength stat. Well, it would if Lunatic enemies weren’t juiced up defensively, which usually meant that Sumia wasn’t doing any damage unless I was fielding her with expensive weapons, which she’d chew through at a very fast rate.
Had I been thinking, I would have paired Sumia up with someone who could’ve patch up her decrypt damage output. I also would have S ranked Chrom with someone instead of using him alongside Frederick for the majority of the first 12 Chapters. But I didn’t think that far ahead because I am a dum-dum, so Sumia was forced to marry Chrom at the end of Chapter 11.
This marriage was just about the worst thing that could have happened to Sumia. She was already lagging behind Cordelia, and was now locked out of getting an S rank support with anyone else. Sadly, Chrom is just about the worst partner for Sumia despite the 2 of them being a canon pairing. They’re both fast, and need support for their lackluster damage output, and defenses. This means that they don’t really offer one another anything that they don’t already have while fighting solo, which kind of defeats the point of Pair Ups.
As such, I tried to remedy the problem by turning Chrom into an Archer. This changed his Pair Up bonuses to be focused on Strength, Skill, and Defense instead of Speed, which kind of fixed the problem in the short term.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that Bow Knights had completely different Pair Up bonuses, from Archer/Sniper. I assumed it was like Cavs where all 3 class branches provide Strength, and Defence in various quantities. That was not the case, which I found out after I’d already locked Chrom into Bow Knight. Unfortunately, this doomed Sumia to mediocrity for the rest of my run.
As it stands, Sumia is the unit I spent the most time babying throughout my Lunatic run, and she never paid out a cent of that investment. I realize that Sumia’s awful performance is entirely my fault through a comedy of errors, but it’s not like she did anything to help. What I mean is that Sumia was roughly 40% behind in Strength throughout my entire playthrough because her first several level ups were complete dogshit. This made the whole doing no damage thing significantly worse.
What’s crazy is that I knew this was going to happen too. It always does. I have literally never had Sumia work out unless I spend time grinding additional levels on her. It’s just been so long since my last Awakening playthrough that I’d completely forgotten how my cartridge is cursed to always make Sumia irredeemably terrible.
Fuck this character, man.
Chrom
I’mma be real with you – I don’t like Chrom. I think he’s very underwhelming for a forced deployment, but I gather that’s fairly normal when speaking about Lord characters across the entirety of Fire Emblem’s history. I know that’s not really true in modern Fire Emblem games because most Lords are busted now. However, Chrom is easily the worst of the modern Lords.
Regardless, I feel like you already know most of the reason(s) why he was so poopy in my run if you read my whole rant about Sumia. He got stuck in a marriage where neither party actually benefited from being paired up on the battlefield, and turning him into a Bow Knight was an unmitigated disaster. Add in some terrible early levels up for good measure, and you’ve got a Lord who got dunked on for the overwhelming majority of my playthrough.
Maybe if I’d looked up Pair-Up bonuses, and correctly chose the Sniper path for this class advancement then things could’ve gone differently. It might have also made more sense to turn him into Cav. I really don’t know. That’s a problem for future me to figure out since you have to use Chrom at all times despite Robin, and Lucina having a better claim as the main character.
Though having said all of that, Chrom was a great backpack in the first several chapters before more Speed Pair Ups became available. That is the 1 thing he’s always capable of doing correctly since there’s no way for rotten RNG to interfere.
Vanilla Units
It should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: these are units where I didn’t invest any additional resources into them. No Second Sealing, no stat boosters, no crazy business. We just let them ride in their default class lines, and made use of what each brought to the table within that context.
Lissa
The absolute queen of my Lunatic run. It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that Lissa was as important to my success as Robin, Vaike, or Cordelia. She almost never attacked, but she didn’t need to since she brought so much value through Staves across every single chapter in Awakening.
Throughout the early-game, Lissa is your only Staff user, which immediately gives her a solid niche. She is essential for keeping Frederick topped off, and healing your project units since most of them can only take a single hit during the first several chapters of Lunatic.
She’s also the single best user of the Rescue Staff. Lissa’s growths are all fairly underwhelming except for Magic. This gives her an absolutely absurd range on Rescue. The benefit here is that it lets you send units like Cordelia on suicide missions to kill problematic targets before you pull them back to safety with Rescue. This makes it far easier for Vaike, Robin, and Fred to reliably do their job of soaking several consecutive attacks during the enemy’s turn since you’re able to clear out anything that’d potentially ruin them ahead of time (ex: enemy units with Counter).
Rescue also lets Lissa reposition friendly NPCs, which has a handful of benefits in various Paralogue chapters. For example, in Paralogue 4, you can save, and recruit Anna immediately by using a Rescue Staff. You can also save the suicidal NPCs in Paralogue 3 so that you always receive the Sereph Robe as a reward for completing this incredibly annoying map.
Being a Staff bot also means that Lissa has access to a lot of uncontested experience. That, and easy access to Rescue are the primary reasons why I think Staff users are so good in this game. Plus, Lissa has a whole 5 chapters where she’s your only staffer, so she benefits even more from these qualities than other Staff users.
I quite literally couldn’t have made it through Lunatic without Lissa, and no other available characters can truly replace her. She’s genuinely one of the best units you get, and requires next to no investment to achieve her full potential. She’s an easy top tier.
Frederick
There’s not a whole lot to say about Frederick that isn’t already well documented.
He’s a fantastic early-game carry, and has just the right stats to help setup kills for your chosen project units. Obviously, he’s not indestructible, but he does a really good job of holding down the fort until your other units start to come online.
Also a really big fan of how Frederick’s stats, and access to Dual Guard+ mean that he’s able to transition very smoothly into a backpack once he can’t keep up. It’s a shame that Awakening’s leveling system ensures that Frederick will likely fall behind the rest of your army, but he will always be capable of serving a useful role throughout your playthrough.
Olivia
If Awakening had better designed maps then I feel like Olivia would be a lot more useful. As it stands, she’s still really good since she allows you to use any piece on the board twice in a single turn, instead of just once. This also means that Olivia isn’t fighting for experience with your other units, not that she needs it since Dancer shouldn’t ever participate in combat.
The real thing holding Olivia back is that she’s stuck with 5 movement in a game where most of the maps have Route as an objective, so there’s a very real chance that she’ll fall behind your attackers if you’re playing aggressively.
Either way, Olivia is great, and so is the Dancer utility that she brings to the table. Bonus points since she’s the only character in Awakening who can actually use this class.
Anna
Talk about being completely wrong in your original assessment of a unit.
The first time that I played through Awakening, I completely ignored Anna. The Trickster class seemed incredibly redundant to me since I didn’t understand why you’d want access to Staves over Bows. Furthermore, Anna’s stats paled in comparison to units that were regularly participating on Risen maps.
Well, it turns out that playing on Lunatic can change a lot of your previously held opinions.
We’ve already covered why Staves are so damn good in Awakening throughout Lissa’s section above. The short version is that Rescue allows for a lot of strategic repositioning that isn’t otherwise possible, Lunatic’s higher damage output means that you need to heal units more often, and waving a Staff is free experience. All of these factors make any Staff wielder a huge asset.
The thing that makes Anna even better though, is that she also comes with great base stats. Now, if you’re actively grinding then her stats are still going to seem underwhelming. However, I was actively avoiding Risen maps in my Lunatic playthrough, so Anna had a higher stat total than every other unit when she joined except for Robin. Getting a unit that is that strong for free is insane.
She also has Locktouch, so Anna offers some great role compression too. In fact, Anna’s access to Staves, and lock-picking make her the best Thief in Awakening. Not that there’s much competition for that title.
It’s a shame that Levin Swords aren’t easier to come by in Awakening. If they were, I think Anna would be even better than she already is. As it stands, she’s a great utility unit, and is very easy to field in every single chapter after you complete Paralogue 4.
Libra
Similar to Anna, you get Libra with everything that he needs to succeed right out of the box: Staff access, and half decent base stats with no investment cost. However, I did find the process of recruiting him (and Tharja) to be a massive pain in the ass since there is a chance that he can die before you reach him, and the map is covered in sand.
Regardless, Libra still makes a great staff bot, and acts like a (weaker) secondary Lissa. Lissa is already among the upper echelon of units that you recruit in Awakening, so being a secondary Lissa is not a bad thing whatsoever.
Tharja
Tharja is a bit of a weird one because she seems really good at first brush, but has some pretty obvious shortcomings when you actually try to use her. A lot of the same characteristics that make Henry so appealing are true for Tharja: she joins with Hex and Anathema, and she could work as a Nos-tank. This means that, depending on your party’s needs, you can very easily slot Tharja in to fill whatever role you currently need with little, or no investment.
At least, that’s true in theory.
In reality, Tharja’s Skill, and Luck are so low that she can’t hit the broad side of a barn. Keep in mind, that’s true with Anathema, and Hex lowering the Avoid stat of everything she’s attacking. It’d be even worse if she was left to her own devices.
As such, I found Tharja very frustrating to use in Lunatic, even though she was mostly just a backpack for Vaike. Anytime a Dual Strike occurred, she’d usually miss, or do negligible damage which kind of defeated the point of it in the first place. This also meant that she rapidly fell behind the rest of the team in terms of stats, which caused her to snowball in the wrong direction in a game that heavily rewards snowballing.
Were it not for the fact that Tharja can get an S Support rank with Vaike, I think I’d have swapped her out for Henry. Luckily, being a woman gave her a niche that Henry couldn’t fill, so I was forced to drag her along for the ride.
Still – Anathema and Hex support really helped Vaike come into his own, which was worth Tharja’s deployment slot through the majority of my campaign.
Panne
I exclusively used Panne as a stat backpack, so her overall role in my campaign was fairly minimal. Despite this, she helped to boost Lon’qu’s power for a few chapters, so I had to mention her here. Without that extra Strength and Speed, I’m fairly certain that Lon’qu would have completely fallen apart, so Panne gets a nod for her (minor) contributions.
Maribelle
Oh Maribelle, what happened?
Maribelle is one of the biggest upsets of my run because Lissa turned out to be one of, if not the most important unit in my entire army. Maribelle shares the same class set as Lissa, but starts off in the (arguably) more useful Troubadour class. She also has a slightly higher growth rate in Magic, which can make a minor difference across several level ups.
However, Maribelle joins your army during Chapter 5, which gives Lissa the somewhat noteworthy advantage of being your only Staff user for 5 whole maps. Ergo, Lissa has an uncontested source of experience, which will likely see her peel ahead of the rest of your army during the early chapters of Awakening. At least, that’s what happens during most of my playthroughs, and it also happened during my Lunatic playthrough since I needed to use Lissa a lot more often than I do in Hard.
This meant that Lissa completely outclassed Maribelle in almost every meaningful metric by the time Maribelle joined. Lissa’s Magic stat dwarfed Maribelle’s paltry 5 Magic, which meant she (Lissa) could use Rescue Staves a lot better than Maribelle. Lissa could also heal more HP using cheaper Staves thanks to her higher Magic, and access to Healtouch. This put Maribelle even further behind as I often needed to use Lissa’s superior healing to get units back in the fray faster, which meant that Lissa was also hogging all of the Staff exp.
I’m sure if I’d been more thoughtful, I could have done a better job of bringing Maribelle up to speed. There’s certainly room for multiple Staff users since Rescue gives just about everyone with Staff access a ton of additional utility. However, my neglect cost Maribelle her viability, and she was unceremoniously axed from the team when I recruited both Libra, and Anna.
Children
I wasn’t actually planning to use any of the child soldiers in this run of Awakening. I don’t find them as useful as the kids in Fates because they always join at level 10, instead of having their stats and levels scaled based on when you recruit them. This also means that some of their join chapters are extraordinarily difficult to complete in a timely fashion.
Either way, I had a couple of spare slots on my team, so I filled them with a couple of the kids.
Noire
Noire was my answer to Sumia completely flopping. Vaike being her father meant that she’d start with monstrous base stats, so she could quickly come online to start scoring kills since Sumia was struggling to kill anything from around Chapter 19 onward.
To her credit, Noire mostly worked as a player phase cleaner. Obviously Archers are incredibly limited in their utility, especially in Awakening, but beggars can’t be choosers.
One interesting thing that I do need to call out though: giving Noire Sol from Vaike was a stupid idea. I don’t know why I thought this would be better than Wrath, or Zeal. I believe I was still stuck thinking about how good passive healing would be on an Archer in Fates, and decided that was true in Awakening despite the map design heavily favouring enemy phasing in a way that isn’t conducive to a unit that is locked to 2 range.
I dunno. You guys can laugh about me in the comments for this one. At least I gave Noire Anathema from Tharja, which gave me more Avoid debuffs to spread around the battlefield.
Severa
The only reason I used Severa was because Cordelia passed Rally Speed to her. This meant that I had a much more reliable way to cast Rally Speed every single turn, which gave Severa an immediate niche.
I also gave Severa a handful of kills so she’d reach level 5 as a Bow Knight, so she was able to do a duo-rally for Skill and Speed by the later chapters of my run. This proved to be very effective for taking out those pesky high avoid Swordmasters that populate several of the later chapters of the campaign. Plus, it also helped with securing a few boss kills, which was a nice bonus.
The Rest
I don’t have a lot to say about the rest of the units that I recruited throughout my playthrough. Most of them only got fielded a handful of times, and weren’t major players while being used.
That said, I think that a future run of Awakening could make use of several of them. Sully, Miriel, Henry, Stahl, Nowi, Gregor, Gaius, and Lucina all have traits that are immediately compelling. I don’t think I could use all of them in a second run of Lunatic, but certainly across several playthroughs I could find a viable use for each of them. Heck, some of them are great as vanilla units with little to no investment by the time they join your army.
Okay – I think that’s enough for now. That more, or less captured the highlights, and lowlights of my first proper Lunatic run of Awakening. Obviously, it wasn’t all smooth sailing, but I enjoyed it. Hopefully next time things work out a little bit better since I’ll have my experience with this run to build off of.
And a big Thank you if you actually read all of that. Hopefully I didn’t ruffle your jimmies too badly with my suboptimal use of each character.
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Frostilyte Writes 
Backpacking units makes for a very amusing image 🙂
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You just throw the other character over your shoulders and absorb all their powers. It’s just like real life.
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