OH BOY. OH GEEZ. FIRE EMBLEM FATES............. IS A SET OF GAMES... THAT'S A COMPLETE MESS THAT I REALLY LIKE.... I spent 303 hours on this sucker over the three paths. Jesus Christ.

Okay, so, Birthright. Birthright was said to be similar to Awakening in terms of play structure, so as I was a series neophyte who really started with Awakening, this is the physical cart I got. Honestly, I feel like it was a good way to ease myself into the new mechanics, and I thought it was pretty fun despite everything. The maps in this one weren't super special, and the story of Birthright specifically was kind of boring and generic Fire Emblem, but I didn't hate it. I do hate Ryoma, but Takumi's a great character and Hinoka and Sakura are pretty alright.

The problems are, well... I don't think the cast of this game is bad, per se. Actually, I really like a lot of the characters, but they're dragged down by a lot. There's kind of a quantity over quality problem with supports, and the supports you're most likely to see first are with Corrin, who's kind of bland and spends a lot of time reacting to their gimmick. If you keep going through supports, you're probably gonna find some interesting ones, but it can be hard to figure out which ones those are. I think the non-royal characters I generally thought were solid are Mozu, Oboro, and Kaden. Orochi was also pretty alright! It also sucks that there are a bunch of characters who only support with Corrin, even if I do understand the cast got out of hand. In any case, I still think the matchmaking was fun... and then you get the babyrealms.

Goooood what a mess the justification for bringing kids back was. Some of the kids are pretty alright characters but overall that was a bad decision. Including the reincarnations/preincarnations of Awakening characters, what the heck. As was the weird fanservice face touching game that got removed from the EN version because even the Japanese fandom thought it was creepy and weird. The localization isn't guilt free, though, given they did things like making Rhajat's support with F!Corrin that was apparently pretty cute and just making it the stalker jokes of M!Corrin's support!

...I'd complain about the incest but that's just Fire Emblem. There are better husbands than Takumi and especially Ryoma, anyway. And if you want to get all the characters you're marrying Scarlet, Reina, or one of the kids as M!Corrin, because there are exactly enough eligible bachelorettes to marry the rest of the cast off to if you want to get all the kids. If you marry Orochi or whatever you're screwed!

...but yeah despite all the complaints I still like this game it's fun and dumb. I think I would complain less about it if I didn't like it.

I honestly couldnt really bring myself to finish this even though I played through over half of it, I think? The gameplay is fun but it's incredibly easy. The characters are cute and all and I did enjoy some interactions, but I'd like to scoop them up and put them in a game with better writing.

The version favoritism was very obvious here, which is a shame when you're splitting your game into 3 pieces and trying to profit off them. It's an incomplete game because you make your choice at the register, and the things its supposed to contrast with aren't available unless you buy all the parts.

The good parts of this game are wasted on it. Even if it were a complete game, it still wouldn't be very well written. The weird loophole they give you for justifying incest with your player character is story breaking imo and is the icing on this rancid cake. If you were held at gunpoint and forced to pick one of the fates games to play, pick Conquest at least.

A while back I decided to revisit all of Fates, and take it in what many would consider to be the recommended order (BR->CQ->RV) for the full experience. As someone who remembered Birthright being my least favorite at the time, I enjoyed this replay far more than I expected myself to.
Fates, as a whole, is a game that I think has far more merits than it is often given credit for. It has many flaws, most of which are extremely apparent and off putting at first glance (Corrin doesn’t really work as an avatar character and also really shouldn’t have had the option of marrying their siblings, each route’s story makes a few questionable decisions, it’s weirdly horny at times for some reason, My Castle is a bit of a convoluted mess, the baby dimension is stupid, etc.), but beneath all of that is an incredibly fun game with a likable cast and engaging mechanics that offer more strategic options than most games in the Fire Emblem series.
I see the gameplay as an evolution of Awakening's combat. For one, the way pair-up is handled in this game means having to make decisions on whether you want to play offensively or defensively. Even the children, while logically at odds with the story, make for an incredibly fun mechanical addition, and the way their paralogues are designed and the way that the level you recruit them scales with which chapter you're on greatly reduced the tedium of giving them the right skills and being battle ready for the main story. Weapon durability was also removed entirely, in favor of balancing certain weapons with natural drawbacks so that there would rarely be just one weapon a unit would use in every situation. The Weapon Triangle also received an advancement, now to include Tomes, Daggers, and Bows, which each contain the advantage and disadvantage of Swords, Lances, and Axes respectively. This places even more importance on your choice of weapon and makes it so that nearly every player unit has matchups that they wish to avoid.
Birthright in particular also feels unique in this series for its primarily eastern aesthetic that features many unique weapons and classes, which while accessible in other routes take center stage here. As far as other route-specific points go, this one was pretty straightforward with mainly "Route the Enemy" and "Defeat Boss" maps without trying anything to gimmicky aside from some Dragon Veins here and there. This is part of the reason I think Birthright is a good starting place for someone looking to fully experience Fates. I also found myself more engaged with the story this time, with certain moments at the end being genuinely impactful.
I think the main takeaway from my experience here is that there's no getting around the fact that certain aspects of the game will leave you shaking your head, but most of these are incredibly minor issues that don't really hinder the experience all that much from the perspective of someone fully aware of these flaws. As long as you're willing to accept some of these annoyances and suspend your disbelief a little, there's a worthwhile experience to be found here.

I will preface this by saying I played this originally back on release however I was a dumb child so I won't bother wondering what opinions I had back then. Also used a handful of unorthodox things, the Unofficial Gay mod, paralouges unlock, and a retranslation patch.

Not that any of that fuckin' matters.

One of the most mind numbing experiences I've had. With maps near the end being downright evil with constant enemy spawning. Tries to do the "wait there's a whole misunderstanding" except it does it every time to where its just an excuse to have conflicts for Hoshido, which is the more peaceful of the countries. I made (Kaza)hana a lesbian, she became a glass canon. That was awesome. What the fuck Nintendo.

I will insult the entire concept of Fates/if where it is half baked in all THREE paths with nonsense divisions and justifications all while trying to be super pandery about its cast. series probably shouldve perished right fuckin' here.

I feel like a doomer for saying this, but Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright was a game meant to solely capitalize on the popularity of Awakening and the mechanics that made it popular. While I don't think repeating trends that made you popular is bad, it is when you don't understand them. Having to marry off each initial character just to get their children that have no significance in the story just feels tone deaf and weakens the story when on chapter 18 you can have next to no one in the story as your team, and yet the story plays out like you did. The fact the royals all have retainers and you slowly get them in clumps rather than every now and again also sets back how special units are, and really drives home that it doesn't feel like the Fire Emblem that we've known before. Further alienating the established fan base is the new found casual mode, which not inherently bad for making the game more accessible, made the devs skip on map testing and caused a lot of problems for classic mode fans. Most of the maps are balanced only if played on casual mode, and with the fact that the last two chapters of this game have to be run through all at once, makes for a super unbalanced mess. It doesn't help that the story falls apart in a number of different areas that you'd think would be filled by playing the other games, but it's simply not. A lot of half baked ideas and plot holes are rampant throughout, but what is probably the biggest problem with this game is the morality between Hoshido and Nohr. Hoshido is blatantly the good guy in this, and Nohr is only framed as bad, and when Nohr needed more supplies, at the end of birthright, Hoshido simply solves it with a simple "we will help you now". The fact that so much of this game is trying to send a mixed message while also giving you clearly defined black and whites is maddening, and a big reason why hating Corrin is justified. These games clearly needed to be tested and written out better, but they simply wanted to capitalize on new found popularity, and that's sad when the games had so much potential too.