Once we actually entered Valla, the game felt a lot more grounded, which is ironic because of all the floating ground in said country. Now that we've ceased all the haphazard darting between two countries to find units, we're finally invading another country (technically a world of dead people but whatever). I feel that Revelation has matched the world progression of past fire emblem games far better than conquest or birthright did, as despite Valla being this big invisible void, clearing each map in succession actually feels like making progress in our invasion. I mean, we're not darting between the various elemental tribes of ice, fire, wind, uh...ninja anymore, and now we're in The Big Endgame Castle. As an aside, Fates as a whole has a pretty awfully designed overworld map UI, which doesn't help immersion with any of the routes, but anyway.
Arete was interesting. Had a gut feeling that the mysterious blue haired phantom lady we met back in Chapter 6 might've been Azura's mother and lo and behold, plot twists! Felt her death was a little more genuine than Liliths in the other routes tbqh lol, but all three of her maps were pretty damn good.
Honestly there were goosebumps when I was surveying one of the maps and saw Scarlet was part of the enemy units, but this girl has died so many times in this game I kinda just felt disappointed that you really can't save her at all in this route. sleep tight Scarlet.
Imagine if the game did the whole deadlords thing and brought back units that had died from your team (in classic mode) as enemies. That would've actually been fuckin hype and given me a reason to do classic, but moving on.
The one map I have really mixed feelings on would be the stealth map, chapter 24. Part of me thinks the presentation and lead up to the map with Mikoto's ghost was perfect, and the stealth concept is rather awesome, but just executed poorly.
Firstly, Fire Emblem usually does the lategame thing where you need the rouge/lockpicker unit for most chests anyway, but I think given the map's mechanics, if you haven't raised a ninja/outlaw unit with the limited amount of slots you're given then I feel you'd be boned here because the only door keys are held by the very units you're trying to avoid and there's no way to kill them and take the keys without setting off the 'oh shit moar enemies' button. Luckily I had ninja Corrin so unlocking things wasn't an issue.
Secondly, I love the idea of having to move your units without being in the sight of enemies because that's pretty natural fire emblem gameplay. Where the idea falls entirely flat is having to anticipate where the enemy will be at the end of their turn, and if you don't have the time to watch their ridiculous movement cycle a few times to anticipate where to go, then it becomes a guessing game at best. So really the whole gimmick becomes pointless minute 1, and its not that hard to just treat it as a rout map, if not for the fact that you get Boots for perfect stealth, like, WHY. I reset to see if I could do it that way, and learned that if you want to ace the stealth part you need like 1-2 units, but then you're completely fucked if you miss one step because then you just get overwhelmed by enemies and die. I just barely missed out on the boots this way, but still managed to kill Mikoto and get most of the chests with the good shit I wanted anyway.
Lastly, Mikoto guiding you through the map was pretty damn great, and if I actually took the game seriously at all and the dev was anyone other than Nintendo then Mikoto lying about the last door would've actually tripped me up, but since I unfortunately have a 5th grade education, the twist at the end was easily avoided and I killed not Mikoto after almost being crushed by the weight of a million enemy units. I can imagine the sheer panic falling for that lie induces though.
So yeah, good map on paper, bad map overall. I'd absolutely love to see a proper stealth map integrated into the games one day, maybe with an escape objective or something for full 'avoid enemies' stealth.
God though, the story at this point is laying on the morality a little thick:
"You can't trust everyone corrin, but you should trust everyone because that's why you're our leader, but Mikoto I don't trust you lol, but Gunter who is the traitor, wait is that our dad"
Ace Attorney has trained me to notice the simplest of fuckin contradictions but Corrin, bless his stupid dragon soul, didn't stop to think before charging the map of invisible ghost people "Gunter, how could you have seen the flower that Scarlet put on herself when we were the only two people on the bridge and the flower was destroyed mid-fall!?" Sumeragi was a surprise, however. I'd actually forgotten about the cloaked figure that killed Mikoto because that happens before the branch of fate lolololol. good boss battle, sick katanas m8
poor hoshidan kids though having to watch their mother and father die again
hopefully the nohrian kids have to do this with garon in chapter 27 again?
And then, GUNTER ACTUALLY EVIL WHOLE TIME WOW SHOCK
I'll admit I didn't actually expect Gunter to be a traitor (or anyone for that matter but the game suddenly decided that someone must be a traitor) until that dumb Lv. 1 Ace Attorney contradiction but I should've seen it coming with Gunter not being able to support at all in this route for some reason. Now I'm just doing his map and have almost opened all the chests.
