this is a review for the fates games as a whole.
overall, the story's intriguing but doesn't reach its full potential in the slightest. character designs feel like a step down from awakening but still good. localization and english voice acting were also a step down. the explanation for the kid units existing is the most contrived shit i've seen in any game. the map design and gameplay make up for these shortcomings, particularly conquest having some of the best in the series in that regard. i played each route repeatedly and had a lot of fun figuring out the maps and building my units.

The gameplay in this game is phenomenal. Taking what Awakening had gameplay-wise and retuning it to be a much more fun experience with dymanic gameplay.

However, it's story is definitely a step down from Awakenings. I have so many issues with the story in all three paths, having played them all. Theres so much lost potential within its story and its characters.

Also, I have major issues with incestual content...its really weird and we could've done without it.

But overall, a fun game to return to for its gameplay, but not its story. Currently doing a challenge run with all units Heart Sealed.

this game is a dumpster fire but its MY dumpster fire AND believe it or not it was my first fire emblem. yes. this dumb ass game made me fall in love with the series. yes, 15 year old me took the plot vey seriously. yes, i mustve spent like 100 dollars on this god damn game. yes, you can laugh.
the plot is trash but gameplay wise it still holds up really well (especially the conquest and revelation paths)
the Marketable Nintendo Song is lovely, as is the whole ost ngl
if you want to have fun revisiting this game please pick up mods and play through the dlc if you havent already. im currently replaying it with a randomized file + the gay fates hack and its amazing

I can't be bothered logging three separate entries so I'll summarise here.

Birthright, dogshit and easy, Ryoma is so fucking broken
Conquest, good challenge, still dogshit but I want Camilla's boobs in my gob, malig knight is great class
Revelations, super dogshit

I fucking despise avatar characters in FE

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.

Ahh, Fire Emblem Fates. The worst game the series has ever seen yet, and will likely remain the worst in the years to come, considering Fire Emblem Engage is feeling more like SoV and Three Houses than whatever style of writing Maeda championed for FE13 and 14, proving that Fire Emblem has essentially adopted FE15’s writing style as the core style for this now corrupted series. While FE13 was the game that corrupted the series to begin with, it was Fire Emblem Fates that basically cemented the death of the franchise as we knew it. The reason I say this is because once we examine the Ace Attorney series, we can see an interesting trend. GK2 was the lowest point of the Ace Attorney series, and Dual Destinies essentially put things back together again, saving the series from a destroyed identity. Fates on the other hand, only maliciously doubles down on making Awakening even more awful, as it is essentially the same game but with different/refined design concepts, new characters who are actually even worse than Awakening’s and SoV’s butchered versions of Gaiden characters, and the “best part...” Having improved Awakening’s gameplay.

A lot of people like Awakening because it’s just a dumb, fun time. Others seem to prefer Fire Emblem Fates for being objectively better designed, especially in Conquest, and they don’t really mind the awful writing. The reason for that, I assume, is because most people don’t really expect Fire Emblem to have a bombastic story besides Genealogy of the Holy War, which clearly shows most fans don’t care about having good writing and characters, only plot. Fire Emblem to them, is mostly about the gameplay, which is the only thing Fates does right, especially in Conquest. They fixed gamebreaking bugs found in Awakening that can result in your units being overstat, in addition to refining Pair-Up, allowing enemies to use it as well, resulting in infinitely better difficulty balancing, where enemies now have similar health pools to you in harder difficulties, as they should, instead of being insanely tanky meatshields that NEED pair up to be killed. People have made entire playthroughs of Awakening where they literally refused to use Pair-Up, because it was that broken in Awakening. Not in Fates, though. When I turn my brain off upon playing Fates, I can actually enjoy the gameplay and map design sometimes, because the designers actually learned how to develop good maps somehow. Really not sure why they removed weapon durability beside paving the way for the worst remake the series has ever seen. So yeah, the gameplay is, while inconsistent, pretty good sometimes. Only sometimes.

Besides that however, there is literally nothing good about this game. Nothing.

I can’t believe they made a game worse than freaking AWAKENING. Awakening was made bad on purpose because the developers had no hope of it ever succeeding, but apparently, the same people who saw it rake in the dollars immediately began developing Fates, believing that in order to sell, they have to reduce the quality of their writing to such a degree, that they hired a literal manga writer in order to wreck the script, and what we got was cringe of the highest order. In addition, remember how FE12 had 6 writers, 3 of which were veterans, and the 3 newcomers had to follow their vision? Well, in Awakening, these newcomers were given full reign, and the script they made was half baked, and far inferior to FE12’s. But FE14. Oh boy, FE14. That game deemed even these 3 noobs inadequate, so yeah, remove them and hire anime veterans and mangakas. They’re surely gonna carry this game. Not to mention the predatory marketing strategy that was the enTIRE premise. That’s right, FE14’s entire story is a marketing gimmick, just like Jar Jar Abrams Mystery Box. For as awful as it is, FE13 is still a normal modern game, and the asinine part is how it was one of the first Nintendo games to include paid DLC, proving that Nintendo was hoping to use Fire Emblem’s destroyed identity to milk money out of it. Well guess what? Fire Emblem Fates raked in even more dollars. The premise of Fates is as follows: You, as the insufferable Corrin, will have to choose which side to side with. Hoshido, the clearly established Japanese good guys? Or Nohr, the obviously evil European scumbags? Good premise on paper, but the way it was executed was horrendous. Instead of having all of them accessible in just one package, they were sold as three separate games under one banner: Fire Emblem Fates. In order to get the full experience, you must purchase ALL three games separately for 30 - 40 dollars each, or purchase the overpriced Special Edition, which contains all three paths which is the complete package this game should’ve been released in. Thank GOD for emulation, considering this game is far too overpriced for every paid option, and it’s so horrendous I didn’t even want to complete it past Conquest initially. Why would I want to play 3 cheaply made, terribly written pieces of trash for over 100 dollars, when I could just read through all I need for free to get a good understanding of this game’s godawful writing? And since godawful writing is the best trait used to describe this travesty...

Remember when I criticized Your Turn To Die for having next to no worldbuilding? Well guess what, Fire Emblem Fates does the exact same thing, except HERE I cannot forgive it one bit. The reason is very simple. YTTD is an entirely separate franchise that never set any worldbuilding standards, but Fire Emblem is a series that is extremely dependent on it, so removing it indefinitely is one of the worst things you can do in a Fire Emblem game. Believe it or not, FE14 is the only game in the series to not have a defined map, for the simple fact the writers didn’t care. A lot of bad animes including Akame ga Kill have limited or nonexistent worldbuilding, and this game being an anime follows suit. Even Awakening had a semblance of worldbuilding compared to this trash, and SoV and 3H too brought it back, so what excuse does FE14 have to remove something so critical to the series? Did it WANT to be bad?

The characters in Fates are horrendous. Somehow not as bad as GK2 characters, which shows just how terrible of a game GK2 is, but neither game surpasses the other. GK2 has an amazing OST, while FE14 has a terrible OST. FE14 has trash art, while GK2 has fantastic art with good direction. GK2 has fantastic graphics, while FE14’s graphics look awful, even for the 3DS, just like in Awakening. Though I guess they probably added in feet because that complaint was more important than addressing the terrible writing, which they doubled down making even worse, ironically. Yeah, great job, devs. So regarding Fates’ characters being better than GK2 characters, the reason why they are is very simple. GK2 had ½ dimensional, mechanical bad-niks that cannot exist as characters or NPCs. That’s right, even NPCs show much more personality than GK2 characters, who are unlikable plot slaving empty husks, who exist entirely to exposit and do naught else. Fire Emblem 14 on the other hand, has awful, one-dimensional characters sure, but at the very least, they still sound different from each other, have support conversations, and are given personal space to breathe as characters. They exist to be bad characters, but even bad characters are better than non-dimensional robots wearing human skin as a coat of paint. Yeah I’m serious, it’s because the FE14 characters aren’t just limited to some superficial catchphrase to set them apart. I mean it. Peri is a cavalier, the most powerful class in Fire Emblem, so it still makes sense that all she cares about is murdering other people, and she thinks it’s fun because she’s an anime, not Fire Emblem character. She’s at least infinitely more expressive than the brick wall that is Justine Courtney, and is therefore a much better written character somehow. Arthur is a justice dude who only cares about that and nothing else. I guess he’s charismatic and feels more like an Awakening character than a Fates one, hence why he’s the best. Ryoma and Xander have pretty much the same personality, which is to be the serious tactician prince of their respective nation. Azura is the Mia Fey who acts all high and mighty, being oh so mysterious and ominous, supposedly fantastic because she has a sad backstory, yet fails to act the sort. What great character writing you got there. And no, beating only GK2 is not really an accomplishment, since anything can beat that game’s character writing. Camilla is trash who shows affection for Corrin... by making terrible jokes about her design. In a support conversation with Corrin, she literally puts a note she wrote for them inside her core features. Wow, so this is what Fire Emblem was slated to become? Thank you, Kouhei Maeda. Your awful directing skills have come to fruition considering how inconsequential you were to Fire Emblem 12.

Before we get to Garon and Corrin, I gotta ask: where the heck are we? Even GK2 bothered to include worldbuilding (the best part about The Bland Turnabout is the map showing the Grand Tower), which is what I meant when I said both GK2 and FE14 are inconsistently horrendous. GK2 has better worldbuilding and especially plot, but far, FAR worse characters. GK2 pretended to be morally grey even though it isn’t, which at least shows the writers tried somewhat? In FE14, it’s just Hoshido VS Nohr, which is super black and white, and the fact the heroic Hoshido is the Japanese nation proves that the writers were racist, considering Nohr is supposed to be west European. Yeah so, East Asians are good and West Europeans, gotta include the West part because it’s important, are bad. Great. Job.

Alright, Garon. Easily the worst antagonist in the series. Remember how bad of a villain Gangrel was? Well, he was a mustache twirler sure, but he at least had charisma and whimsy, not something to be shared with Walhart and Garon. The difference between Walhart and Garon however is, despite them both having the same, GK2ish personality, is that Walhart is a minor villain, while Garon is the main antagonist. Garon sucks because he’s a GK2 character, he’s evil because he’s evil and he has no personality. Wow. The same people who call Dane Gustavia a well written character say Garon is terrible, even though they’re essentially the same person. Why? Because Dane had a THEME attached while Garon doesn’t. How compelling. Even though both clearly are not. At least FE14 gets the criticism it deserves while GK2 somehow doesn’t, and instead revels in some retarded narrative where it is “the perfect game that can do no wrong” where nobody wants to acknowledge even minor nitpicks just to keep that narrative afloat.

And so now we get into one of the most controversial characters in the series: FE14’s avatar protagonist, Corrin. I believe it’s important we talk about every single avatar before we zero in on Corrin, considering Corrin is easily the worst one. As I implied in my 3H review, even the emotionless Byleth is an improvement.

The avatar protagonist was a trend that started in FE12, New Mystery of the Emblem, but the difference there is that it worked with the way it was executed. Because FE12’s Kris was not the main character, they simply felt more like a nice addition than an overpowered Mary Sue/Gary Stu hard carrying everything all the time. Following Kris, our friend Kouhei Maeda was not impressed, so he again directed FE13, this time giving Robin far more agency in the story. Sounds like a good thing at first, until you realize the problem: Fire Emblem always followed some central protagonist who was not a self insert, and their stories always made sense because they have a unique personality. Leif for example, is the best protagonist in the series because he’s constantly getting into arguments with Augustus over what he can do to emerge victorious, and because Leif’s personality is clearly defined, these moments and more can only work for Leif, and not a self insert avatar, whose dialogue is meant to be as generic as humanly possible to avoid pivoting to an extreme trait that would not be desirable in most people, which is the limitation of self insert avatar protagonists. This worked for Kris because they were the everyman/everywoman who would feel Katarina’s betrayal very naturally, and even then, their reaction to it wasn’t the strongest, even though they are the MOST expressive avatar protagonists, cementing them as the only good one in the series. Again, FE12 is a masterpiece that understood that limit, so reducing Kris’s agency to being Marth’s shadow was a brilliantly executed take on that idea. Everyone praises FE15 over FE12 for not adding an avatar, when I would rather have a badly written avatar added to the unharmed cast over just harming said cast, not that Kris was ever badly written to begin with anyway.

Now what about Robin? Robin is the perfect person, as they’re very friendly, and the only interesting thing about them is that they’re simultaneously the main villain as well as the main character. It’s why Chrom feels so shafted a lot of the time, even though he’s supposed to be the main main character of FE13. Then again, that game was trash, but to be fair, Robin had a very desirable personality for a lot of people, because their dialogue was very heroic and encouraging, so if I were to call out the 2nd best self insert character, it would have to be Robin, even though they’re nowhere near as human as Kris. Harvester of Eyes humorously renamed his Robin to Batman, and cited him as being so overpowered that he even singlehandedly defeated Grima, FE13’s final boss. Before we move onto Corrin, I’d like to touch upon Byleth and explain why they’re a minor improvement over Corrin. Now, because FE16 is a weeb game that so closely resembles Persona V, it’s only natural to have the super stoic robot contrast with everyone else. Byleth having no personality is their ultimate detriment, but it is slightly better than what the writers decided to go for when writing Corrin. Because with Byleth, they technically wander outside of the player’s mind because of how dry and emotionless they are, that you forget they even exist half the time once the infinitely more expressive anime students preach and worship their unlikable, mechanical instructor. Meanwhile, Corrin is the worst take on a self insert protagonist in every way possible. I’m not sure if this is a sick joke on behalf of the writers, but Corrin acts like a super spoiled brat and is constantly coddled by everyone, which is not going to make the player feel good about themselves in any way, shape or form unless they’re a spoiled child who can relate to them somehow. Where Byleth is forgettably unlikable, Corrin is thoroughly and blatantly unlikable, which cements them as the worst, and I have no idea why some people still cosplay as Corrin. That’s basically it, really. Corrin is a coddled stupidface who is also a manakete super Saiyan who never uses their God given superpower until the last minute against Garon, who is also a manakete super Saiyan, in the most black and white story every conceived in the history of Fire Emblem. As for Engage, Alear is basically yet another manakete super Saiyan hero, seemingly bridging the gap between Robin (who’s also not even fully human) and Corrin. Being so desensitized to new Fire Emblem made me realize that even Alear is better than Corrin, because even revisiting Corrin’s scenes make me cringe 5000 times harder than the cringe I’ve gotten used to by now. Also, Alear is somehow an improvement over Byleth, because they at least have a little bit of personality. They're just a generic Mary Sue/Gary Stu with a dark side that's only there to trick you into thinking that they're morally grey somehow. Case in point, every FE avatar protagonist sucks beside Kris, unpopular opinion I'm sure.

Alright, I’ve raved on long enough. Considering this game is split into three parts, or “games” if you are Nintendo gleefully counting the money made from this game’s awful marketing gimmick, I have decided to dissect the routes in their own separate slots. This game is super horrendous, with the worst characters the series has ever seen, worst FE OST, most black and white story in a series known for moral ambiguity, most shameless marketing strategy birthed out of greed following the success of Awakening, worst self insert avatar compared even to Byleth and Alear, and without a doubt, the worst writing the series has ever seen. Evidently, after Kouhei Maeda stopped directing games considering that this was the last mainline game he directed, the writing seemed to improve... By only a very slight margin. The damage has already been done, as the series is permanently destroyed thanks to Fates, considering the series had a chance to recover following Awakening. A tragic tale of how corporate greed destroyed a once-respected franchise’s identity to milk money off it as a shadow of its former self.