Fire Emblem: Fates

Playtime: 200 Hours

I really enjoyed my runs through each route of this game! I kind of wonder if I'm super burned out now (especially after Revelation), or if I'll have any interest in the future in doing more proper playthroughs, on Classic without DLC grinding or cheese. Who knows - but I'm done for the near future at least.

Birthright: 46.5 Hours

Played Birthright first, F!Corrin (Physical build) + Subaki to have Caeldori as the avatar's child.

Conquest: 38 Hours

Played Conquest second, M!Corrin (Magical build) + Felicia; had to spend some extra time getting early Corrin growths to not suck since growths are still Physical-leaning.

Revelation: 115 Hours

Last run was a completionist run of Revelation and the DLC that I didn't do in the previous playthroughs. All available units recruited and captured (there are some BR/CQ-specific units), all units paired where possible (excludes units with only Corrin support), finished all paralogues, finished all Xenologues with best outcomes, all buildings constructed & levels maxed (there's a limit of 50 deployed, so only a few unit statues), playthrough done on Hard/Casual. Played M!Corrin (Physical again) + Caeldori for the Not-Cordelia marriage and to get optimal pairing with all the other units, which is impossible otherwise with M!Corrin.

I really liked this game, enough to spend hundreds of hours across all of the routes, including an eventual completionist run. The structure of the game is absolutely incomprehensible though - it's somewhat amusing that they decided to scale up from the simplicity of Awakening to three separate routes. It doesn't really help that the way the versions are handled is really stupid. BR and CQ have physical copies, but REV is a digital-only release that requires one of the other two, and since it's on the eShop, it'll go down forever in early 2023, alongside the DLC - some of which is really fun and has some serious plotline relevance.

The plot of this game is plain bad, regardless of which route is played. There's some attempt at a more complex narrative structure with the option to select from 3 different routes (one per version of the game), but rather than showcasing the escalation of the conflict, the game basically paints the opposing side (after route selection) as a ruthless evil that must be crushed. But there's a very clear bias, where Hoshido is pretty much painted as an idyllic land in all routes, whereas Nohr is basically completely desolate and pretty much uninhabitable, rife with thievery and corruption. It's really strange how the Conquest route (siding with Nohr) simultaneously shows Hoshido as enemies, yet in every single chapter the main party constantly questions Garon's sanity and judgment. The fact that Garon, the Nohrian king (later revealed as Anankos, the evil-for-no-reason dragon of this game) is the extremely obvious bad guy in each route is just the cherry on top. Mercifully, the DLC focuses only a single storyline that works a little better, even if it's quite plain and simple.

The characters in this game are far better than the quality of the story might suggest. Most of them just boil down to one or two consistent character traits; like Awakening, most characters are mostly defined by their support conversations, but most of each characters's supports tend to bring up the same traits over and over again, just with slight variations based on the other character. There's a few supports that stand out and take a more interesting direction, but they tend to be relatively small in number. Unfortunately, the characters don't take any of the lessons from the supports during the main storyline, which makes an absolute mess of their personalities, usually hyper-focusing on one small aspect of their personality to differentiate characters in the scenes. For example, Xander always plays tough-but-fair, Leo is usually offstandish, Elise is the ever optimist and Camilla pretty much only thinks about Corrin. I'd be OK if that was the core of their personalities with more nuance during varying scenes, but everything that comes out of each character's mouth is completely consistent with their one trait. There's never a moment where Xander decides to be selfish, or where Elise starts to lose hope - these would add depth to these characters as they fight through it, but there's too large of a roster to provide a deep enough arc for each one. This is only counting the nobles, too - there are so many other characters needed to have a fully fleshed out roster on each side (nevermind the insane party size in REV) that the characters only exist to drop lines relating directly to their character tropes most of the time. With all of that being said, I don't really hate the characters (as it might seem), I thought they were fine but could just be a little bit better.

The gameplay of this game isn't too different in its core mechanics compared to Awakening, or other previous FE games - most formulas and strategies remain the same as always. There are a number of mechanic refinements in this, though. Pairing up in Awakening was beyond broken, so Fates fixes this by splitting the mechanic into 2 types, offensive and defensive. I generally preferred to use offensive pairs more frequently, since it was super helpful in maintaining unit control, didn't waste turns pairing and splitting, and allowed for very dynamic gameplay in general. Defensive pairs kind of sucked, to be honest - the stat boost is nice, but usually not as good as the damage boost from the offensive assist, and the guard meter was fundamentally nerfed by it receding over time. These pairs were only useful when fighting bosses or ferrying low-durability units, basically - otherwise they were pretty much useless to me. The other major change was a complete removal of weapon durability; instead of straight weapon upgrade trees, each weapon class now has alternate checks and balances instead. For example, steel is stronger than iron but makes you slower, and silver is extremely powerful but debuffs you after using it. This worked pretty well, but I ended up noticing that I usually used 1-2 range and killer/slayer weapons, with little incentive to use the others due to the drawbacks. Another change is the addition of throwing knives for a magic->knife->bow triangle, but the knives are far too powerful because of their stacking debuff potential. Lastly, the nobles are ridiculous in this game - not only do they have better growths in general, but they also have exclusive access to the Dragon Vein ability, allowing them to affect terrain in various ways in each map. The princes (Ryoma and Xander) are particularly broken, as their unique weapons and massively heightened stats make them juggernauts, almost to the point that the game isn't as much fun since you can just send them in to do everything.

The technical aspects of this game are fine - the game doesn't look too different from Awakening, but the 3DS is such a limited platform that differentiating the two significantly would be difficult to do anyway. I still notice that the Skip feature for battles still takes forever to load for some reason, which is weird. But otherwise the game runs well, and I don't have any significant issues. The art is very nice; it's a different style from Awakening but still not in the anime/moe style which works very well for me. The audio design is also just about what I would expect, sounds very nice, with solid casting and music that generally ranges from good to great. I don't mind saying that the main song of the game does get old though, since Azura sings it pretty much every chance she gets. I really wish games that had frequent dancing or singing would have more than one track for the occasions, since to me it just seems like she only knows a single song despite apparently being a dancer or songstress of some kind.