Fire Emblem: Awakening; Difficulties and Permadeath

I know that I already reviewed Awakening, but I failed to mention the permadeath system of the game, along with it's difficulty settings.

The difficulties are Normal, which is, well, normal; Hard, which is like Normal but with more and tougher enemies; Lunatic, which is for true tactical geniuses, extremely experienced players, and people who have no idea what they are getting into; and he unlockable Lunatic+, which is for masochists. Further explanation: in Hard, enemies also get more skills, including ones they shouldn't be able to have, also possibly having Forged weapons starting at Chapter 21; in Lunatic enemies are extremely tough (possibly one-hit killing the Avatar very early in the game) and have even earlier access to skills; in Lunatic+ the trend continues, but now enemies are randomly given skills that it is impossible to have, there is no class in the entire game that can unlock these skills (so your characters can't get them). The only other thing worth mentioning is that it can be hard to go to higher difficulties initially, as your tactics from the previous difficulty might not work thanks to the higher enemy numbers.

Now onto the topic of permadeath. I know that veteran fans of most strategy series might not like me for this, but I'll say it anyway: I don't think permadeath in this game is a good idea. I like permadeath, I think that it adds to the games it's in, makes your decisions more important and can make you care about your soldiers. This still applies to most Fire Emblem games, where it does basically the same thing, but Awakening is different in that it has post-story content. Even if you finish the story, you still have random Risen encounters and tons of DLC, both free and paid. This makes losing units not only worse in the long run, but more likely to happen as more battles=more chances for someone to die. There are only two options to prevent this: you can either only play the story mode and possibly paralouges, giving the game a definite ending; or you can never lose a unit, which, as you will quickly learn, is a bad idea. You will lose a unit at some point, even if you're only in story mode, which will cause you to restart the level and try something else to not lose the unit, after a few times this makes the game boring at best and intensely aggravating at worst. So, permadeath is a difficult thing to manage in this game unless you're not going to play the post-story.

Today's funny game quote is:

"Have you no respect for our ancient profession? We're supposed to be harbingers of pestilence and famine and doom!"

"Mm... I love doom." -Tharja and Henry (Fire Emblem: Awakening)