Fire Emblem Fates (Birthright, Conquest, and Revelation)

Re: Fire Emblem Fates (Birthright, Conquest, and Revelation) It's here!!!

It's not my favourite in the series but I did like Fates, and I would recommend it.

Go Conquest if you want a challenge, since Conquest is one of the most difficult in the series on the higher difficulties, and even puts up a challenge on normal mode. The plot is definitely not a high point, though, so don't expect much storywise.

Birthright is a lot easier, in fact one of the easiest in the series, even on the highest difficulty, and is more geared towards beginners of the series, with more simple maps and characters who can stomp entire maps (I'm looking at you Ryoma and Takumi). The plot was better than Conquest in my opinion, but you're not exactly looking at quality writing in any of the paths.

Revelations is the final path, and is DLC and it's recommended you play it last, as it contains spoilers for the other two main routes. It features the characters from both routes. Personally, Revelations was my least favourite of the three, as it's a huge mess gameplay-wise and story-wise. It also answers questions Birthright and Conquest don't answer. (I don't really agree with the practice of holding back plot points as DLC but whatever) so if you want them answered you have to play Revelations. Or you can just look it up of course.

So overall, if you're newer to the series, I recommend Birthright first, and if you liked it, you can download Conquest as DLC for half price. If you consider yourself more of a veteran, I recommend Conquest first. Revelations is alright but you can tell it was lazily put together.
 
Re: Fire Emblem Fates (Birthright, Conquest, and Revelation) It's here!!!

Also not my favourite but I really did like Conquest, and on its own it's almost a consideration for my favourite Fire Emblem, though not quite.

It mainly excels in terms of gameplay (it's amazing), but the music (I imagine this is consistent across the whole package) is also excellent and I do quite enjoy most of the game's cast, despite it being relatively small playable-wise.

Having only beaten this version (on Hard Classic), I'm biased and would recommend Conquest, but I'll second what Glitchy is saying and would recommend against picking it over Birthright if you don't consider yourself very experienced with the series.
 
just beat awakening yesterday after 5 years (was my first 3DS game) through the power of donnel and the terminator children. was gona go to gamesto and buy the physical copy of conquest but I had $9 on my Nintendo store so I bought it digitally :( no spoilers but I hope its fun and has zero time travel tropes that every other 3ds game on the planet has (speaking of I still need to beat bravely second)
 
just gonna copy-paste my post from the wgdylp thread because i finally finished conquest after abandoning it for months

Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest

Welp I just finished the game. Spoilers for the final 5 chapters:

I think the best way to download my thoughts would be to go in chapter order.

Sakura's chapter was tough but surprisingly straightforward with the Dragon Veins essentially telling you where you needed to be at a certain turn of the map or be screwed over. I think I had two casualties from forgetting about the Onmyoji in the middle of the map because he wiped out Keaton and I think someone else when Sakura flung up the walls again and made things cramped. Again, Hard Casual, so death really isn't an issue. Hana was a pain in the ass to take down, I think I surrounded her with 6 units before she fuckin died. Subaki was dead in one go lol. Good map really. It made me kind of want Fire Emblem to introduce an option to let you know when/where reinforcements are coming from instead of just assuming they'll show up from the castles at a random turn but I guess that's part of the fun.

Back on the story, if there's one thing the game does well it's establishing King Garon, Iago and Hans as these huge assholes with no other purpose or character than just killing those damn Hoshidans and fuck I wish Iago would shut the hell up about making Corrin suffer because every chapter it's like "SURELY YOU GIVE INTO DESPAIR NOW CORRIN". I feel that the game does an OK job of establishing Nohr's cruelty and Garon actually feels like a menacing villain, but his aura is simply undermined by these idiots at every turn. Regardless this game makes you feel awful for killing Hoshidans and that guilt is doubled having played Birthright before this ;_;

Moving on to by far one of the most memorable maps in the game, Trump's Takumi's Great Wall of Rally Status and Counters. I really loved this map, and it was reminiscent of maps from the GBA titles, in that it had a ton of choke points, lots of unused unit space, and an unusual map progression.

I deliberately didn't cheese the map by using a flying unit to broach the cliff and just went for the gate (although I stole the Master of arms in front of the stairs with an entrap staff and murdered him because I felt he would be annoying with those rallies and sure enough there were more like him later). Holy shit what a battle. Constant support units and reinforcements whittled down some of my troops prematurely (Corrin!Ophelia with Witch's Mark and Mozu!Midori with Mechanic were part of this) but I decided not to reset. After wasting the last entrap on Hinata (it failed despite having 80% hit rate with Forrest), I charged the gate, took down 4/5 of his guards and proceeded to spam staves until we were out of there and below the stairs. Unless you've got like three generals I really don't see how you're supposed to tank so many hits when you get on the wall but I managed to get out with only Oboro murdering Corrin with a crit while Kaze picked the locks on those chests. I expected reinforcements from the right of the wall but thank god there wasn't any.

I'm not sure if I like how the difficulty in these later maps just comes from spamming units with counter and counter magic, but whatever. At this point I've realised Camilla!Velouria is just a delete button for units I don't like but there were some hitches with that plan thanks to counter. Takumi fell easily, regardless.

And by fell, I mean like literally jumped off a wall. jesus christ

I feel better for having played Birthright beforehand because you can start to see unanswered threads from the first route being expanded upon in this one. One of them is the dragon god that Garon worships which was hardly mentioned now getting prominent mentions in this route, Takumi's mysterious behaviour in that one chapter that was dropped for no reason suddenly turning him into the endgame villian but we'll get to that. At this point my mind was trying to process "ACTUALLY DEAD WHOLE TIME"

I should make a disclaimer that I caved and bought all the DLC when I jumped back in so I've been using Boo Camp to grind supports and skills and that made the game much easier (I didn't use the gold map though and that did limit my weapons/staves a lot) but the maps were still very difficult at this point so kudos to Intsys for making Conquest so damn unforgiving. If it wasn't for the existence of missable kid units I wouldn't have bothered but the game gives you so little to actually grind supports with I resorted to it. I think it made my Nohr experience unique, warp schenanigans were fun for one thing. I'm looking forward to the Awakening children back stories and the bonus deeprealm stuff, but anyway back to the main game.

Hinoka's map was a breath of fresh air in terms of aesthetic. The gimmick was fun but Hinoka only using the dragon vein once kind of made it a cakewalk for taking down the constant sky knights that I just decided to leave them behind when I'd had enough and charge for the gate. Hinoka was the toughest battle I'd done yet, it took two turns and 8 units to get her to surrender. Appreciated Corrin /finally/ deciding 'well ok enough is enough' and letting Hinoka, Setsuna, and best character Azama-kun (please notice me) leave.

Then, the lobster tank. Xander's map was a joke thanks to the door only being guarded by one knight and the rest of the map being optional, but for this map I was actually surprised by how necessary the rest of the units charging the sides of the map was because Corrin was underlevelled and probably wasn't going to survive the battle with Ryoma. I completely underestimated the game and was caught off guard by most of the unit groups, especially the Spy Yumi + Lunge automaton. But the most bullshit thing the game throws at you is the one tile wide hallway of death ninjas (who the fuck things poison + grizzly wound + spy shurikens is FAIR) on the right. In my defense, it /was/ 4am, but I played horribly and had awful luck with crits and as a result every unit on that side of the map died and I reset and shut the DS off then.

With a refreshed mind I switched out some of my units, and played with a more concentrated defense (putting a whole fuckton of units just outside enemy sights then bumrushing them because now I knew they wouldn't move unless provoked) and that worked. The ninjas were still complete bullshit but I managed to get through it barely. Kagero was underwhelming, but Saizo proved much tougher to take down than expected. The samurai death was sad but expected. Rip Lobster Man you were an inspiration to lobsters everywhere.

Chapter 26 was fun. Thank god they give you a silence staff in the map before. I decided to forget the revenants on the side of the map and just lead a HUGE concentrated charge of units to the right and that worked amazingly until I got to the bottom of the map and was met by 14 overpowered generals and beserkers. suffice to say three units were overwhelmed and died but I was able to defeat Hans and steal the S Rank axe from his hans hands. Since it was a seize map I lead a smaller charge of units back up through the left side of the map to grab the spy's shuriken because why not. Then Ophelia killed Iago with a single Astra + Ginnungagap while Niles fondled his chests and that was the end of the worst fire emblem characters ever.

Lastly, the Empty King. Jesus the game gets fuckin weird at this point. Slime monster Garon was unexpected since he's a dragon in his final form in the other one, I quickly switched to my other save file to replay the final chapter of that map and that was much more contained because Garon wasn't mutated at all (and it made me realise how fuckin easy birthright was LMAO). The map itself was ridiculously mean with the guaranteed entraps on turn one. Although, the units they pulled were actually able to handle their attackers (aside from Midori rip), the game just had to pull out the counter/countermagic units for that last push of difficulty before the end. melting ice cream was a fun unit to fight.

But then suddenly Takumi is possessed and we get a similar "wake up, corrin" sequence like in birthrights. Honestly at this point I wasn't really caring about the pacing of the story and just playing along and enjoyed the build up to Dark Takumi being a ridiculous final boss. Having to approach while fending off the most annoying enemies and while being cramped in a little 5-tile wide pathway to survive the waves of death Takumi shoots at you was bad enough, but being a support unit with both units being able to attack and build up defense is just mean. Thank god you only had to kill one Takumi and not face another one directly after that. There was a point where I just fled the hordes of faceless and charged Takumi. Thanks to Velouria (and a bunch of others small attacks beforehand) I was able to take him down.

the complexity of both the birthright and conquest maps makes me wish we just had another Sacred Stones type 'single giant fuckin dragon unit we all band together to kill' boss but eh

I can't say much for the story, but part of me feels it was on the same level as Birthright? I can't decide whether both are good or not, the pacing in both stories makes them both feel juvenile at best, not that Fire Emblem has good stories to begin with really, but the complexity they were trying to achieve in Conquest (greater good quest essentially) fails because you're jumping between maps with less than a few minutes of exposition and as a result the whole package falls very flat and there's little emotion. I will say I appreciate the quality of the cutscenes in this game and that when it boils down to it, I smiled when Xander was crowned king of Nohr. Like with Birthright there's that bittersweetness to the ending, but it's all undermined by the fact that this isn't even the true ending, and I say that as someone who likes games with multiple endings (*cough* 999 *cough*).

Maybe I've subconciously shut off the part of my brain that goes "slime king monster dying before the ghost of a dead salty archer boy tries to murder you is a ridiculous plot twist" but I actually didn't mind the turn it took at the end especially after playing Birthright.

Regardless I will probably consider Conquest the most difficult Fire Emblem game I've played at this point in time. Most maps are excellent, some are unfair and impossible, but the whole package rounds out to be a challenging and engrossing experience.

also oh shit I forgot to support for sophie LOL

Anyway, can someone tell me, without spoiling ANYTHING that happens in revelations, why Conquest is considered the worst in terms of story? I thought it was on par with Birthright aside from the ridiculous pacing at the very end. Overall they're both OK it's just they try to cover too much with such short expositions.

I've moved on to revelations already but I'll cover those thoughts in another post. Fog of war is back though, cool.
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i started playing conquest

even by the standards of fire emblem games this plot is painfully dull, granted i'm only at chapter 8 but so far i haven't seen a single interesting character interaction. corrin is just one of the most boring wooden protagonists i've ever seen in a video game (and good GOD that dragon design is horrendous). robin was kind of a blank slate but this is a whole new level of bleh

at least the gameplay seems to have been updated. greater weapon variety and more difficult levels is a refreshing change
 
Man I have to say that FE: Conquest is extremely HARD! I have it on the highest difficulty and also on classic, so if my team dies, they don't come back! Im currently on the chapter where you have to find the imposter on the boat and they gradually take your money every turn :(
 
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