Fav Char:Azura
Fire Emblem Fates was almost my first Fire Emblem, and I really did luck out. But for a long time, Fates has been one of those games where I’ve always intended to go back to it in order to give it a reexamination. I know without a shadow of a doubt my memories of the game from back then are blinded by nostalgia, so I want to sort of close the book on Fire Emblem Fates by giving it a full replay, from each beginning, to each end.
One mechanic that I actually do like about Fates is Dragon Veins. Dragon Veins are activatable tiles around each map that can change or affect the map in some way. They do feature a lot of unique ideas and helps give you a bit more control over the map. However I’m a bit conflicted on the general execution of it. Particularly, only the royalty characters are able to use Dragon Veins, and while it makes sense from a lore perspective, I do wish that it was more loose than that. I had multiple times where I had to direct a character all the way to the opposite side of the map to activate a Dragon Vein when one was necessary. While there is a DLC to allow characters to gain the ability to use Dragon Veins, I don’t think that changes my opinion very much.
A thing that always gets me about Fire Emblem Fates in particular is the wild rebalancing that was done, especially to every single weapon. Some weapons increase or decrease random stats, some make follow up attacks more or less likely, and accuracy has noticeably worsened. Something about the actual hit rates in Fire Emblem Fates is atrocious, sometimes it feels like a complete lie when the game claims a hit would occur 90% of the time. Other cases include cases where some characters will have abysmal hit rates through the entire game. Personally at least, how Awakening was balanced was completely fine, so I rather dislike how it was changed for Fates.
Fates is also interesting as it features a customizable location that can aid you throughout the game. You can build structures such as shops, an arena, or statues of your characters. While it’s definitely fun to do, and it does personalize things a little, only a small number of structures actually have purpose outside of multiplayer. Most of them function as helpful locations if someone invades your castle, but they do almost nothing for the main levels of the game.
Another controversial inclusion exclusive to Fire Emblem Fates is that of Phoenix Mode. Phoenix Mode is a difficulty option, much like Casual and Classic, however it makes the game impossible to lose. Whenever a unit dies, they respawn the next turn. Overall this is just a bad design choice, while sure it would a player to see the story without having to worry about challenge, the challenge is also the point the game. Casual is already a really good difficulty option for those who don’t want to lose their characters, Phoenix Mode overall feels like it’s overdoing things.
Fates also is weirdly shoehorning in Fire Emblem Awakening. 3 of the playable characters that are in Conquest and Revelations are characters that were introduced in Fire Emblem Awakening. Even though there is DLC to explain why they’re there, they still feel heavily out of place. On top of this, they also have characters who are basically alternate universe versions of 3 different playable characters from Fire Emblem Awakening. There’s no better way for me to put it other than the fact that it’s just rather odd. Now these two things combined would be one thing, but they also shoehorn in the Child Unit mechanic from Awakening as well. While I do think it was good in Awakening, and the child units in Fates are good characters, the explanation for why they exist is really bad. It’s not a time travel situation like Awakening, rather it’s basically just putting children into a time prison, and aging them rapidly. It’s honestly just rather dumb, especially with the logic they use being “the parents wanted to keep their children safe”.
Though of course these are not the most obvious aspects about Fire Emblem Fates. That would be the fact that Fire Emblem Fates is split up into three total games, Birthright, Conquest and Revelations. Now unlike the later Three Houses, you had to purchase all three of the campaigns which is definitely a choice that I’m not a fan of. That though is somewhat irrelevant here. Each of the major campaigns of Fates has its quirks, so I think it’d be good to split up this review in general to the story and experience tied to each campaign within Fates. In the order of how I played through the game, Conquest, Birthright, and the Revelations.
-Conquest-
Conquest is meant to be the hardest of the three routes, heavily limiting how much Experience and Gold you can get through the game. Alongside that, a lot of its maps were rather challenging, and gameplay wise, it was a really engaging experience. Even then, this route still suffers from the odd weapon and accuracy rebalancing that makes so many weapons from other Fire Emblem games feel a whole lot worse. Even then, while its gameplay was engaging, the story was absolutely terrible.
The problem with Conquest’s story is twofold. The problems with Conquest’s story is Garon, and how characters treat Garon. Garon is the main antagonist of both Birthright and Conquest, and he’s the active person perpetuating the war between Hoshido and Nohr in those routes. That being said, he’s characterized horribly. His whole character trait is that he’s evil, and he has no character outside of that. He’s cold, he’s a tyrant, and he’ll kill anything that upsets him. He’s comedically evil to a point where already at the start of the game, he’s already an irredeemable monster. To the point where he threatens to kill you in the first interaction you ever have with him. It weakens the choice to choose Conquest over Birthright because if you go with Conquest, you’ll be back in the hands of Garon, regardless of why you go back.
Alongside that, how every other character treats Garon since the start of the Conquest campaign is as bad as Garon himself. Primarily, almost every character who mentions Garon thinks they can redeem him somehow, or completely ignore how irredeemable he is. It’s so clear how bad of a person Garon is, that it makes these characters that you’re supposed to think are smart seem like absolute idiots. It’d be one thing if it was Corrin, but this goes for all of the other Nohr royals as well, and they only figure it out by the end of the game.
That also has to bring up the Hoshido royals as well, and how they’re handled in the Conquest Storyline. Primarily, they’re heavily downgraded, into very hateful versions of what they once were. They’re just more cases of characters being dumber than they should be, especially in the vein of Ryoma. It’s somewhat absurd how so much of the conflict in Conquest specifically could be resolved around a single conversation, and yet they’re so comedically stubborn to a point that no conversation could ever happen. It’s somewhat funny how the conflict of Conquest could easily break if one conversation was allowed.
Conquest’s story is terrible, but even then it still has a rather fun campaign from a gameplay perspective. The heavy limit on experience and gold is really fun, and makes it akin to older Fire Emblem titles. It’s unfortunate that Conquest’s gameplay has to exist in the same space as a story as flawed as this. I don’t think it’s the worst of the overall campaigns or stories, but it’s so severely flawed in both conflict and general character logic. I think if this game’s weapon and accuracy balancing was like Awakening or later Fire Emblems, I would like Conquest at least somewhat more. The challenge of Conquest’s campaign does make it really fun. If I had to rate Conquest alone, I would likely give it about a 6 or a 7.
-Birthright-
I wish I had more here to say about Birthright. Birthright is the least offensive of the three storylines, but also the most unremarkable. Unlike how the Hoshidan Royals are treated in Conquest, the Nohr Royals, while acting the same way, make more sense to why they act the way they do. As well, the characters act a lot smarter generally in Birthright in compared to Conquest, so it’s still fine. But Birthright still is rather unremarkable, its story is generally by the books, and doesn’t do much to make it stand out. There are some aspects that I wish was more explored upon, especially with the secret traitor angle, but it’s only mentioned offhand a couple of times.
A big thing about Birthright in contrast to Conquest is that Birthright is noticeably easier. Innately, both the maps and enemies in Birthright are easier, and you’re given more items in battle. Even then, while you can’t grind in Conquest you are able to grind in Birthright, through the scouting mechanic. This mechanic particularly allows you to spend gold in order to spawn enemies in maps from chapters you’ve already cleared. Now, I’m a fan of grinding and all, so I do like having this mechanic, but it does make so much of Birthright ridiculously easy. I so little had a challenge in any of the late game Birthright maps, only messing up whenever I wasn’t paying attention.
A thing of note that I’ve only now realized by playing through Birthright again is how nearly all of the units are given in the first half of the game. It feels somewhat unbalanced, especially in comparison to the other routes, which naturally spreads out most of the units to 16 and 17. While that’s only 3 or 4 more chapters, the generally spread is a lot more balanced there than in Birthright. It’s a very minor thing to make a point about, but it’s something that I keep thinking about.
Yet again, Birthright is odd. It’s the least bad of the three routes, but it’s by far the most average. Its story is fine, but with how easy it is, it wasn’t really as engaging as Conquest. It’s interesting then. On one hand, Conquest is the more engaging game with a worse story, while Birthright is the less engaging game with the better story (though that is a low bar). Birthright alone would be likely a 7, it’s inoffensive, and really basic.
Fates is already a complicated game as is, and with these two routes alone, my thoughts on the game are already messy. The whole is definitely lesser than the sum of its parts, but if it isn’t already obvious, there’s still one entire route left of Fates. And this one may just be the most contentious of them: Revelation.
-Revelation-
Innately, a path such as Revelation is already a problem. Revelation poses itself as “a third route where you don’t choose either Nohr or Hoshido, and fight the true evil”. That of course means that Revelation tries to be a definitive route for Fates, giving you almost every playable character in the game, and offering the happiest ending. The existence of a path like Revelation takes away the meaning of the choice and the paths of Birthright and Conquest. It makes the other two routes relatively pointless in the grand scheme of things, because Revelation allows you to have the best of both worlds. Having the best of both worlds and giving the game a more definitive ending and villain lessens the worth of the other two routes. While I do have complications with Three Houses, at least Three Houses doesn’t have one of its routes be a ‘definitive version’ and give you every single character.
Revelation as well tries to do a similar thing to the other campaigns, specifically with having some characters die. But it really fails do to so, as the two characters that are killed off had very little screentime overall, both in Revelation, and outside of it. Unlike in Conquest and Birthright, where there is at least more weight to the death of characters, there’s a lack of weight to character death here. I do think simply just giving the characters more screentime would solve that problem. One character dies in the exact same chapter they appear in, and another only has 2 chapters playable in before they die. Not only that but they feel like rather pointless deaths more than anything else.
One consequence I noticed with Revelation being a ‘definitive version’ and giving you nearly every character in the game is that your roster of units to use from is bloated. There’s so many playable characters in the game that it easily causes some characters to heavily fall behind. I know that’s likely par for the course with games that give you so many characters, but it also means that some characters will likely be forgotten about. With Birthright and Conquest, I felt like I was able to get a decently well gathered feeling for most of the characters in the game. While for Revelations, there’s a total of over 60 playable characters in Revelation, and even though I didn’t unlock them all, I found myself benching some of them immediately because I never had space to use them.
Revelations from a gameplay perspective is odd. Its few few chapters after choosing the Revelation path I found to be some of the harder ones in the game. That’s only because of how very few units you have at that point, once you get a few chapters further, and get a good handful of characters, it becomes noticeably easier. From that point onwards, the game is about as easy as Birthright, though some of its early maps range from interesting to kind of annoying. A lot of Revelation’s maps are gimmick-focused, and often revolve around activating dragon veins. Some of them were rather interesting, but others somewhat frustrating. Primarily there were multiple maps where you just had to waste turns before you were able to actually go somewhere, which was just kind of frustrating. Especially after having played all of Birthright and Conquest, having maps that felt like time-wasters was really frustrating for me.
Revelation still is rather flawed, its whole existence takes away aspects and the worth of the other routes. In isolation, its story is nothing to really mention, it falls somewhere in between the painfully average Birthright, and the rather bad Conquest. Though its map design is easily my least favorite of the three routes, regardless of my exhaustion from all of Fates combined. It’s hard to rate Revelation in isolation due to the fact that it’s meant to be played after both Birthright and Conquest, but if I’d really to give it an in-isolation-rating, it would likely be a 6.
-Conclusion-
My general rating for Fire Emblem Fates is as low as it is solely combining all three routes together. Playing through all of Fire Emblem Fates took me nearly 60 hours, and it was an incredibly draining experience. Even ignoring the story flaws of all three routes, this is also my least favorite gameplay in a Fire Emblem as well, I really dislike its balance changes, and while the challenge of Conquest is fun, Birthright is too easy, and Revelations map design is really frustrating. Having to basically play through Fates three times over with the gameplay it has is draining, as I mentioned prior, and I feel only relief that Im finally done with this game, and never have to touch this game anymore. While there was still a little sense of nostalgia for Fates while I played it, a lot of my opinions changed now that I have experienced more. I have no intention of ever revisiting Fates, this game while not terrible, is terribly flawed, and lessens any of the good aspects that the good would have otherwise.
One mechanic that I actually do like about Fates is Dragon Veins. Dragon Veins are activatable tiles around each map that can change or affect the map in some way. They do feature a lot of unique ideas and helps give you a bit more control over the map. However I’m a bit conflicted on the general execution of it. Particularly, only the royalty characters are able to use Dragon Veins, and while it makes sense from a lore perspective, I do wish that it was more loose than that. I had multiple times where I had to direct a character all the way to the opposite side of the map to activate a Dragon Vein when one was necessary. While there is a DLC to allow characters to gain the ability to use Dragon Veins, I don’t think that changes my opinion very much.
A thing that always gets me about Fire Emblem Fates in particular is the wild rebalancing that was done, especially to every single weapon. Some weapons increase or decrease random stats, some make follow up attacks more or less likely, and accuracy has noticeably worsened. Something about the actual hit rates in Fire Emblem Fates is atrocious, sometimes it feels like a complete lie when the game claims a hit would occur 90% of the time. Other cases include cases where some characters will have abysmal hit rates through the entire game. Personally at least, how Awakening was balanced was completely fine, so I rather dislike how it was changed for Fates.
Fates is also interesting as it features a customizable location that can aid you throughout the game. You can build structures such as shops, an arena, or statues of your characters. While it’s definitely fun to do, and it does personalize things a little, only a small number of structures actually have purpose outside of multiplayer. Most of them function as helpful locations if someone invades your castle, but they do almost nothing for the main levels of the game.
Another controversial inclusion exclusive to Fire Emblem Fates is that of Phoenix Mode. Phoenix Mode is a difficulty option, much like Casual and Classic, however it makes the game impossible to lose. Whenever a unit dies, they respawn the next turn. Overall this is just a bad design choice, while sure it would a player to see the story without having to worry about challenge, the challenge is also the point the game. Casual is already a really good difficulty option for those who don’t want to lose their characters, Phoenix Mode overall feels like it’s overdoing things.
Fates also is weirdly shoehorning in Fire Emblem Awakening. 3 of the playable characters that are in Conquest and Revelations are characters that were introduced in Fire Emblem Awakening. Even though there is DLC to explain why they’re there, they still feel heavily out of place. On top of this, they also have characters who are basically alternate universe versions of 3 different playable characters from Fire Emblem Awakening. There’s no better way for me to put it other than the fact that it’s just rather odd. Now these two things combined would be one thing, but they also shoehorn in the Child Unit mechanic from Awakening as well. While I do think it was good in Awakening, and the child units in Fates are good characters, the explanation for why they exist is really bad. It’s not a time travel situation like Awakening, rather it’s basically just putting children into a time prison, and aging them rapidly. It’s honestly just rather dumb, especially with the logic they use being “the parents wanted to keep their children safe”.
Though of course these are not the most obvious aspects about Fire Emblem Fates. That would be the fact that Fire Emblem Fates is split up into three total games, Birthright, Conquest and Revelations. Now unlike the later Three Houses, you had to purchase all three of the campaigns which is definitely a choice that I’m not a fan of. That though is somewhat irrelevant here. Each of the major campaigns of Fates has its quirks, so I think it’d be good to split up this review in general to the story and experience tied to each campaign within Fates. In the order of how I played through the game, Conquest, Birthright, and the Revelations.
-Conquest-
Conquest is meant to be the hardest of the three routes, heavily limiting how much Experience and Gold you can get through the game. Alongside that, a lot of its maps were rather challenging, and gameplay wise, it was a really engaging experience. Even then, this route still suffers from the odd weapon and accuracy rebalancing that makes so many weapons from other Fire Emblem games feel a whole lot worse. Even then, while its gameplay was engaging, the story was absolutely terrible.
The problem with Conquest’s story is twofold. The problems with Conquest’s story is Garon, and how characters treat Garon. Garon is the main antagonist of both Birthright and Conquest, and he’s the active person perpetuating the war between Hoshido and Nohr in those routes. That being said, he’s characterized horribly. His whole character trait is that he’s evil, and he has no character outside of that. He’s cold, he’s a tyrant, and he’ll kill anything that upsets him. He’s comedically evil to a point where already at the start of the game, he’s already an irredeemable monster. To the point where he threatens to kill you in the first interaction you ever have with him. It weakens the choice to choose Conquest over Birthright because if you go with Conquest, you’ll be back in the hands of Garon, regardless of why you go back.
Alongside that, how every other character treats Garon since the start of the Conquest campaign is as bad as Garon himself. Primarily, almost every character who mentions Garon thinks they can redeem him somehow, or completely ignore how irredeemable he is. It’s so clear how bad of a person Garon is, that it makes these characters that you’re supposed to think are smart seem like absolute idiots. It’d be one thing if it was Corrin, but this goes for all of the other Nohr royals as well, and they only figure it out by the end of the game.
That also has to bring up the Hoshido royals as well, and how they’re handled in the Conquest Storyline. Primarily, they’re heavily downgraded, into very hateful versions of what they once were. They’re just more cases of characters being dumber than they should be, especially in the vein of Ryoma. It’s somewhat absurd how so much of the conflict in Conquest specifically could be resolved around a single conversation, and yet they’re so comedically stubborn to a point that no conversation could ever happen. It’s somewhat funny how the conflict of Conquest could easily break if one conversation was allowed.
Conquest’s story is terrible, but even then it still has a rather fun campaign from a gameplay perspective. The heavy limit on experience and gold is really fun, and makes it akin to older Fire Emblem titles. It’s unfortunate that Conquest’s gameplay has to exist in the same space as a story as flawed as this. I don’t think it’s the worst of the overall campaigns or stories, but it’s so severely flawed in both conflict and general character logic. I think if this game’s weapon and accuracy balancing was like Awakening or later Fire Emblems, I would like Conquest at least somewhat more. The challenge of Conquest’s campaign does make it really fun. If I had to rate Conquest alone, I would likely give it about a 6 or a 7.
-Birthright-
I wish I had more here to say about Birthright. Birthright is the least offensive of the three storylines, but also the most unremarkable. Unlike how the Hoshidan Royals are treated in Conquest, the Nohr Royals, while acting the same way, make more sense to why they act the way they do. As well, the characters act a lot smarter generally in Birthright in compared to Conquest, so it’s still fine. But Birthright still is rather unremarkable, its story is generally by the books, and doesn’t do much to make it stand out. There are some aspects that I wish was more explored upon, especially with the secret traitor angle, but it’s only mentioned offhand a couple of times.
A big thing about Birthright in contrast to Conquest is that Birthright is noticeably easier. Innately, both the maps and enemies in Birthright are easier, and you’re given more items in battle. Even then, while you can’t grind in Conquest you are able to grind in Birthright, through the scouting mechanic. This mechanic particularly allows you to spend gold in order to spawn enemies in maps from chapters you’ve already cleared. Now, I’m a fan of grinding and all, so I do like having this mechanic, but it does make so much of Birthright ridiculously easy. I so little had a challenge in any of the late game Birthright maps, only messing up whenever I wasn’t paying attention.
A thing of note that I’ve only now realized by playing through Birthright again is how nearly all of the units are given in the first half of the game. It feels somewhat unbalanced, especially in comparison to the other routes, which naturally spreads out most of the units to 16 and 17. While that’s only 3 or 4 more chapters, the generally spread is a lot more balanced there than in Birthright. It’s a very minor thing to make a point about, but it’s something that I keep thinking about.
Yet again, Birthright is odd. It’s the least bad of the three routes, but it’s by far the most average. Its story is fine, but with how easy it is, it wasn’t really as engaging as Conquest. It’s interesting then. On one hand, Conquest is the more engaging game with a worse story, while Birthright is the less engaging game with the better story (though that is a low bar). Birthright alone would be likely a 7, it’s inoffensive, and really basic.
Fates is already a complicated game as is, and with these two routes alone, my thoughts on the game are already messy. The whole is definitely lesser than the sum of its parts, but if it isn’t already obvious, there’s still one entire route left of Fates. And this one may just be the most contentious of them: Revelation.
-Revelation-
Innately, a path such as Revelation is already a problem. Revelation poses itself as “a third route where you don’t choose either Nohr or Hoshido, and fight the true evil”. That of course means that Revelation tries to be a definitive route for Fates, giving you almost every playable character in the game, and offering the happiest ending. The existence of a path like Revelation takes away the meaning of the choice and the paths of Birthright and Conquest. It makes the other two routes relatively pointless in the grand scheme of things, because Revelation allows you to have the best of both worlds. Having the best of both worlds and giving the game a more definitive ending and villain lessens the worth of the other two routes. While I do have complications with Three Houses, at least Three Houses doesn’t have one of its routes be a ‘definitive version’ and give you every single character.
Revelation as well tries to do a similar thing to the other campaigns, specifically with having some characters die. But it really fails do to so, as the two characters that are killed off had very little screentime overall, both in Revelation, and outside of it. Unlike in Conquest and Birthright, where there is at least more weight to the death of characters, there’s a lack of weight to character death here. I do think simply just giving the characters more screentime would solve that problem. One character dies in the exact same chapter they appear in, and another only has 2 chapters playable in before they die. Not only that but they feel like rather pointless deaths more than anything else.
One consequence I noticed with Revelation being a ‘definitive version’ and giving you nearly every character in the game is that your roster of units to use from is bloated. There’s so many playable characters in the game that it easily causes some characters to heavily fall behind. I know that’s likely par for the course with games that give you so many characters, but it also means that some characters will likely be forgotten about. With Birthright and Conquest, I felt like I was able to get a decently well gathered feeling for most of the characters in the game. While for Revelations, there’s a total of over 60 playable characters in Revelation, and even though I didn’t unlock them all, I found myself benching some of them immediately because I never had space to use them.
Revelations from a gameplay perspective is odd. Its few few chapters after choosing the Revelation path I found to be some of the harder ones in the game. That’s only because of how very few units you have at that point, once you get a few chapters further, and get a good handful of characters, it becomes noticeably easier. From that point onwards, the game is about as easy as Birthright, though some of its early maps range from interesting to kind of annoying. A lot of Revelation’s maps are gimmick-focused, and often revolve around activating dragon veins. Some of them were rather interesting, but others somewhat frustrating. Primarily there were multiple maps where you just had to waste turns before you were able to actually go somewhere, which was just kind of frustrating. Especially after having played all of Birthright and Conquest, having maps that felt like time-wasters was really frustrating for me.
Revelation still is rather flawed, its whole existence takes away aspects and the worth of the other routes. In isolation, its story is nothing to really mention, it falls somewhere in between the painfully average Birthright, and the rather bad Conquest. Though its map design is easily my least favorite of the three routes, regardless of my exhaustion from all of Fates combined. It’s hard to rate Revelation in isolation due to the fact that it’s meant to be played after both Birthright and Conquest, but if I’d really to give it an in-isolation-rating, it would likely be a 6.
-Conclusion-
My general rating for Fire Emblem Fates is as low as it is solely combining all three routes together. Playing through all of Fire Emblem Fates took me nearly 60 hours, and it was an incredibly draining experience. Even ignoring the story flaws of all three routes, this is also my least favorite gameplay in a Fire Emblem as well, I really dislike its balance changes, and while the challenge of Conquest is fun, Birthright is too easy, and Revelations map design is really frustrating. Having to basically play through Fates three times over with the gameplay it has is draining, as I mentioned prior, and I feel only relief that Im finally done with this game, and never have to touch this game anymore. While there was still a little sense of nostalgia for Fates while I played it, a lot of my opinions changed now that I have experienced more. I have no intention of ever revisiting Fates, this game while not terrible, is terribly flawed, and lessens any of the good aspects that the good would have otherwise.