Current Events > Fire Emblem Fates...good game(s) or nah?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Birthright, Conquest and Revelation

Hell no

Calling Fates absolute dogshit is an insult to dogshit.

Birthright has a decent story and mediocre gameplay, Conquest has amazing gameplay but an absolutely god-awful story, and Revelations attempted to balance between the two main routes but did a bad job and makes the worst parts of each one stand out more. I'd say maybe play Conquest if you really like Fire Emblem's core gameplay and are willing to tolerate or skip the story for it. Aside from that, don't bother with the Fates trio at all.

If you were interested in Fates for the "waifu and eugenics simulator" aspect, FE Awakening did that several times better, so go play that instead.

I actually regret buying the special edition of this

the gameplay is alright, but the story was decent at best and idiotic at worse, which is sad because there was legitimate potential in the story premise

Also, pointlessly shoving in a child generation felt like massive pandering since there was no reason for them aside from "children were popular in awakening" With the most BS excuse of them with the Hyperbolic time outworld's to justify them

In terms of gameplay, Fates is far and away my favorite FE. The story is bad, but not bad to the point where it's actively entertaining like, say, Engage, but if you're playing Fire Emblem for the story, I simply do not understand you.

I always go back to Fates thinking "Man, I wanna replay this" and then I get like a dozen hours in and go "man, why am I doing this to myself"

I own the Fates cart with all 3 games so that may be part of it.

Raiden2909 posted...

Also, pointlessly shoving in a child generation felt like massive pandering since there was no reason for them aside from "children were popular in awakening" With the most BS excuse of them with the Hyperbolic time outworld's to justify them

Exactly. With Awakening, the next generation characters and the eugenics simulator aspect actually made perfect sense with the story's time travel plot. But with Fates, it's obvious that they just shoehorned it in because "people liked it last time so it'll help sell more" and then half-assed an explanation late in development.

some say Fire Emblem stopped being good Fire Emblem games once the dating mechanics got introduced. You can still enjoy them, but they do not feel like Fire Emblem games at all.

Beveren_Rabbit posted...

some say Fire Emblem stopped being good Fire Emblem games once the dating mechanics got introduced. You can still enjoy them, but they do not feel like Fire Emblem games at all.

The dating mechanics are fine, it's been a thing since FE4, it's just the writing is so bad now.

Good because its FE, but low tier FE. Conquest is the most overrated game of the last 10 years

I actually ended up replaying all 3 very recently.

Birthright is pretty mediocre. It's a slow enemy-phase game with most maps being rout, and higher difficulties just sending waves of low quality enemies at you. The story is very bare basic, but the least offensive of the trilogy. It's also very diluted, intentionally introducing plot points that it ignores so that it can be covered in another game. From a purely gameplay perspective, I think it's better than Awakening at least.

Conquest is pretty good. Varied map design, rewards player-phase aggression, and difficulty comes in the form of giving enemies some threatening skills, which is the most interesting way to handle the difficulty compared to the other two. I think conquest strikes a great balance between being somewhat limited like old Fire Emblem games, while still having a lot of flexibility with it's class system. Story is very stupid with the plot constantly bending over backwards to make Corrin not the bad guy. Overall the best game of the bunch.

Revelation is rough. Maps are extremely gimmicky (some hits, some miss), unit balance is absolutely awful, and it provides a very unsatisfying conclusion to the joke of a story. Difficulty design is stat based, so rather than fight a bunch of low quality enemies like Birthright, you instead fight a few very strong enemies (which are about on par with your own units). I think this is a little more interesting than Birthright, but it ultimately encourages just funneling all your kills and resources into a select few units (primarily Corrin) and low manning the game.

Mechanically the games are very well designed, especially compared to the dogshit pair-up mechanics in Awakening. The problem is it lacks charm. Awakening wishes it had the map and mechanical design of Fates, and Fates wishes it had the story, world, and characters to lure you in like Awakening.

Conquest is good providing you turn your brain off for the story

Some excellent music as well