The newest Fire Emblem games are here! This trifecta of video game titles aims to tell the stories of two opposing potential realities in a war, with a third downloadable title being the bridge that brings them together!
Do they live up to their predecessors? We would like to introduce the first in a trilogy of reviews for the games, starting with Birthright, leading to Conquest, and finally reveling in Revelation. Unlike the different versions of Pokemon games, which have mild changes to the story and roster between versions, these games have completely different stories and rosters, even though the stories happen in the same world–this is the first review of its kind that I have done, so I hope you enjoy all of the juicy details I managed to squeeze out of the games!
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright
This review is based on an 86 hour playthrough of Birthright alone. I have completed many story missions, “earned” many children, and even have downloaded all available DLC to date. Please keep these details in mind as you read along.
The first thing that any fan of the Fire Emblem franchise would say is that they are driven by stories and relationships. The story for Birthright builds on the concepts of family and forgiveness, and it’s good, and just good as far as the average video game story goes. Also, some of the characters are too plain and uninteresting in my opinion. Before the characters are detailed, you are introduced to the kingdoms of Hoshido and Nohr, who have a disdain for each other due to experiences in the past, but a troubling incident happens to put the two nations at war. After this incident, the main character, Corrin, is forced to choose a side between the two nations, and the side that is chosen is dependent on the game that you own. For the purpose of Birthright, that side happens to be Hoshido, the land of the Sun, a promising land with a strong economy and prosperity.
As it happens, Corrin was a denizen of Nohr, having been orphaned at a young age. However, it is discovered that his real family is the Hoshido nobles—during his childhood, his father was the king, and after the king’s defeat, the royals of Nohr found him and raised them on his own. Throughout the game, Corrin gets to build a relationship with his true family, and even finds some golden nuggets about his childhood that he never knew. It is endearing to see many of the Hoshido family getting to know their brother for the first time, and Corrin continues to grow into a strong leader, and symbol of strength for the whole family, as well as the land of Hoshido.
Speaking directly to the characters’ personalities, I didn’t find most of them overly interesting. Perhaps that’s because at the start of the game, the Nohr characters have more… explosive personalities by contrast. The three ninjas are the exact stereotype of what ninjas should be (silent, simple, quick), and the siblings all either have a superiority or inferiority complex, which gets old pretty quick. There are a handful of characters whose support conversations kept me entertained, such as Setsuna, a clumsy girl who can’t cook and always gets caught in traps, and Azama, a playful monk that trolls the characters continually. However, it may still be a matter of personal preference. In either case, the voice acting is phenomenal in this game for all characters. There are usually ten pre-recorded (or so) lines per character, but these never get old. They are recycled in a fashion that continually makes them entertaining, such as Ryoma exclaiming “YOU HAVE BREATHED YOUR LAST!!!!” when slicing food in the kitchen.
When characters fight side by side in the game, their relationship builds. If you build the relationship between two characters of opposite genders, they can achieve S rank, which causes a child will be born—this is a mechanic that started in Fire Emblem Awakening and has returned. According to the storyline, these children are deported to a place called the deeprealms where they can grow and be as far away from the war as possible—in these deeprealms, time moves very slowly so the children mature quickly. Even being visited as little as a week or two later in fictional game time, they can mature by several years. Compared to Awakening’s explanation of children–who time travelled to the past, this seems very silly—but children are awesome, and I’ll take any bizarre reason to have the feature back again. Unlike Awakening, each child is born to the father, not the mother. These children can also forge relationships, but only with each other, their parents, and Corrin. Since these relationships are so selective, you may find yourself keeping them close to each other, which can affect the way you approach many of your battles. I’ll also note as an afterthought, it gets pretty fun keeping a mental list of waifus and husbandos that you would like to see together!
The gameplay will be familiar to current fans, but for those that are new, it is essentially a strategy RPG. The most notable games to compare it to are Advance Wars and Final Fantasy Tactics. Both the player and enemy takes turns advancing each of their units and attacking, until the other army is wiped out, or other deciding winning/losing factor is achieved. Most times you will complete the chapter by defeating the boss unit. When two units fight each other, there is a beautifully rendered cutscene that appears, and you can change the camera angles to see more of the action. There are some slight gameplay improvements to make the game more friendly to newbies, such as color coding the weapons based on the weapon wheel (blue, red, green). Also, weapons from previous Fire Emblem games, such as shurikens, make a return. The game keeps a simple interface to show you the predicted outcome of a match, but you can use the touchscreen to drill into the details if absolutely necessary.
Birthright is considered the easiest of the three games, however, there are three difficulty levels, and three challenge levels. The difficulty can be chosen as Normal, Hard, or Lunatic, and the challenges are Classic, Casual, and Phoenix. While the difficulty levels are self explanatory, the challenge levels are what truly define Fire Emblem as a franchise. The first level, Classic, enforced a perma-death rule to any character that falls in battle. This was originally the only available option for the series, and the mode that most die hard fans choose. I’ve been told by friends that even though perma-death is enforced, there are still key characters that cannot die and will continue on with you in the story, regardless. I have chosen not to pick this challenge because critical hits are part of the game–I can only imagine my frustration levels branching over 9000 if one of my characters die due to any critical chance under 5%. The challenge level I DID pick, however, is Casual mode. Only being available in recent games, Casual mode removes the perma-death rule. This has been enjoyable and provides the right amount of challenge; I do not feel compelled to reset the the game because of character deaths, as I’m sure I would in Classic mode. The newly introduced challenge mode is Phoenix, perma-death is turned off, and characters return to the field after defeat after a set number of turns after falling in battle.
Character progression is deep, allowing you to “evolve” your classes as well as re-class at any level after 10. I played the game in a very simple manner, only reclassing when I’ve hit maximum levels (20+) for current classes, but there are all kinds of material in the Internet detailing the best progressions and builds, as well as the best S rank partners for the children, who can inherit skills from their parents. There are also ways to pass along skills through multiplayer by allowing your castle to be captured easily, thus having your unlocked skills obtainable by other players. Also, characters change their garb according to their current class, in addition to any other accessories you purchase to improve the look of your character (or make them look sillier).
The music in the game varies from serious, silly, to plain outright BEWITCHING. I felt that every single song used in the game matched the circumstances perfectly–it is woven so artistically that you can’t help but feel sad, feel excited, and feel worried exactly when the game wants you to. I was a plain whirlwind of emotions when playing this game. The main theme of the game both haunts and guides you at every turn, culminating to the final battle variant that puts you on edge.
The story has its share of twists, turns, and mysteries. However, I would say that it could still be better. While there are certain game decisions that earn you new characters, and keeps characters alive, most of the story is straightforward, with even the occasional plot hole, although that may be on purpose. When I finish Conquest in a later review, I may return to the story section of the review to put the pieces together.
The multiplayer components can be useful, but are very involved. One component is a full-on battle with a local or online opponent. I’ve only had the opportunity to try this once, but got wiped out completely because my opponent was much further in the game than I was. I believe there are settings to even the playing field a bit, so it’s definitely worth a look. There is also the option to visit another player’s customized castle to earn various materials such as food and ore. When you first build your castle, you can only farm one kind of food and ore so this becomes a very valuable function. You can also invade other friends’ castles and fight AI representations of their team, and even capture their units. According to sources on the Internet, there are ways to abuse this function so you can get great skills easily for your own characters.
Amiibo are used in a very limited capacity in this game. While the first scan allows you the character to show up in your castle and give you a free accessory, a second scan allows you to fight them on a different map, and when you win, you can use them in battle! One disappointing thing is that it seems to be limited to the first few Fire Emblem figures, as when I tried to scan Roy, the game said it was incompatible.
There are several DLC maps available, but the most useful ones I found were “Ghostly Gold” and “Boo Camp”. Both of these maps allow you to earn lots of gold and EXP, respectively. For a while, I felt a sense of cheapening the game by using these maps, but quickly came back to them because the in-game impromptu battles gives nowhere as many rewards–it simply saves you a lot of time grinding for a difficult chapter. There is other DLC that runs you through side stories, but a couple of them gives you nothing but artwork, which is a terrible reward, in my opinion. As of the time of this review, the second wave of DLC has not been released, so I may cover that in my Conquest review.
All in all, Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright was an awesome experience, giving you lots of things to do and tons of content. The story can use some improvement, but the battles are so involved that it’s very easy to lose track of time! I would definitely recommend it to any fan of Strategy RPGs.
tl;dr
Pros
Accessible battle system
Great soundtrack
Depth in character builds/strategy
Sense of attachment to characters
Great voice acting
Cons
DLC necessary in order to save time
Some characters’ personalities can be too plain/expected
Mostly straightforward storyline
Final Score: 4/5
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest
I have completed Fire Emblem: Conquest (play time 77:16), and what a doozy of a ride that was! There were definitely more secret plot points revealed, as well as a more likable cast of characters (although that may just be personal preference). The mechanics aren’t majorly changed, but there are some subtle differences as well as a twist.
On the mechanics, scrolls and shurikens are replaced by tomes and daggers on similar characters. As far as I can tell, this is purely cosmetic–they might as well be the same. Also, you are not able to earn EXP in this game unless you’re playing a story mission, paralogue, or the “Boo Camp” DLC. This can be equal parts frustrating and interesting, at times. Put simply, I don’t understand why the ability to earn EXP couldn’t be an option just like perma-death and difficulty are. This makes the game artificially harder, although I’m the kind of person who prefers to grind if it means making the game easier (due to a limited schedule). I very often used Boo Camp to grind for levels, but even so, I found myself failing many story missions two or three times–I could only the imagine the horrors one would go through on a non-boo-camp/lunatic/perma-death run. For all of you masochists that enjoy legendary difficulty/consequence heavy gameplay, this game is for you!
The characters of the game are somewhat more cartoony than Birthright’s. For me, this makes the game more enjoyable, and the characters more memorable—although as mentioned above, it might be preference. Playing a male main, I would definitely say the women/waifus of this game are of a much higher caliber, and from what I’ve seen, most of the internet seems to agree with me. The women follow many of the tropes included in female anime characters, including, but not limited to, a yandere, a tsundere, a lolicon, etc.
The story of Conquest is a much complex one, as you play as a character looking to redeem their kingdom from previous and present atrocities. This can feel much more rewarding because it isn’t a simple good vs. bad story. It also tells major plot points about the looming conspiracy at large, and goes into more detail than Birthright. However, there are still some plot holes (which I won’t spoil), and I believe that was designed to encourage folks to purchase the “third version” DLC, Revelation. The ending feels a lot more emotional because of the result of the choices that the main characters are forced to take, and I won’t forget it any time soon.
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
The contrast between the games are stark, with the most obvious being light or dark. Even the main weapon’s name differs between games, but one other interesting difference is that Birthright kills off two female characters, while Conquest kills off two male characters. Also, the campaign is set in reverse. The ending point of Birthright is the starting point of Conquest, and vice verse. Also some of the character conversations differ based on the version of the game that you’re playing, such as with Azura. [/SPOILERS]
I am giving it a slightly higher score than Birthright because the story keeps you much more engaged. Other than that, it has inherited the major strengths of Birthright because they were based on the same system/engine.
Final Score: 4.5/5
Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation
My playthrough of Revelation, and thus my full experience of Fire Emblem Fates, is complete!
It doesn’t make much sense reviewing this DLC without spoilers, so read with EXTREME caution!
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
This DLC makes it obvious time and time again that it’s the fabric that bridges the two stories. The DLC puts a greater focus on a hidden third kingdom called “Valla”, and it’s role in the grand scheme of the two warring nations. A few mysteries are put to rest, such as the invisible soldiers, the origin of Azura, as well as the origins of her song. In terms of collateral damage, or deaths, the story kills off a few characters which are neutral, which is fine because they are characters that cannot develop children anyway. However, there are other dimensions of said characters that aren’t explored, which you would only know if you played the previous two games–for example, Elise’s true identity in Nohr isn’t detailed nor referenced.
The difficulty is set between Birthright and Conquest, but only because it maintains the overall difficulty of Conquest, but you can gain experience from all battles like with Birthright. Considering I had been using the “Boo Camp” map for both games, this was negligible to me, and at times I actually found Revelation more difficult than Conquest.
Save for the characters who die, you get access to the FULL ROSTER of both Hoshido and Nohr–this is great for forming new strategies, as well as unlocking other funny conversations. However, I also found myself mixing it up a lot, so I wound up with less children than when I played the previous two games. I simply enjoy using so many different characters that it took more effort to get the characters to form relationships. It’s also interesting to note that in previous games each character could always form relationships with every other character (save for two or three), but in Revelation, when forming relationships across the boundaries of Hoshido and Nohr, some characters are picky on who they form relationships with, although the ability to have relations with all the kinsfolk of their own nation is retained.
When building your base, you have access to all of the facilities from both games, although some can be redundant, such as the shops. However this can work in your favor because you have a higher chance of either shop having a sale on an item you want. It’s also easier to farm ore and food for accessories and upgrades.
The final boss is absolutely bananas, having more forms than any of the previous games. It simply is not for the faint at heart. I found myself grinding too much at the end of the game just to squeak by. However, the ending is absolutely worth it, and you will not regret it.
[/SPOILERS]
In comparison to the other games, there’s more grinding involved, and characters are less explored (except for the main ones), but on the flip side, you get to see them interact with the other nation and have access to all of them, leaving this DLC package with more content than either of the two games.
Final Score: 4.5/5
Fire Emblem Fates Special Edition
I managed to purchase the Fire Emblem Fates Special Edition and love it! For the first time, the most awesome thing about the special edition is not in its additional swag, but rather the game cartridge itself! This cartridge of Fire Emblem Fates includes ALL THREE GAMES! This saved me a lot of space on my 3DS memory, as even if you purchased the regular versions, you would be required to download the third game, Revelations, and their secondary game if you do desired (unless you actually wanted to own both game cartridges at a higher price). The art book, however, is wonderfully detailed with character and overworked artwork, and the 3DS pouch is nifty, but there’s no denying that having all three games on a single cartridge is the coolest part.