Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright a strategy RPG for the Nintendo 3DS. Having adored it's predecessor, Fire Emblem Awakening, and hankering for the some Fire Emblem action, I bought this one as the next title to be crossed off my list.
This game is actually one of three in the Fates universe, and while this is often compared to the approach typically seen in Pokemon, I think it's much more ambitious than that. Rather than multiple games with the same quest and slightly different selections of characters, Fates actually has three separate stories to experience. The first few chapters of the game will be the same regardless of your version (Birthright, Conquest, and Revelation), but a big choice will be presented to you after the completion of an early chapter, determining your journey from that point on. Each version gives you access to over twenty additional missions, a divergent cast of characters, and a completely different storyline. What's more, if you have the physical version of one of the games, you can purchase the other two as DLC for the admittedly steep price of $19.99, each. But I think the base game was worth the 39.99 at launch, so to get another similarly sized two games for the same price as the base game is probably worth it, particularly if you love Fire Emblem like I do. With that being said, I won't be purchasing the other two campaigns now, and haven't played them, so I can't speak to their quality, but reviews of all of them have generally been good.
So what's new here, compared to Fire Emblem Awakening? The system is very similar, with an identical graphical style and typical Fire Emblem action, but there are actually some huge changes lying beneath the surface. In each Fire Emblem game, you play as the tactician (avatar) for the army, making the decisions for all of the units, but starting with Fire Emblem Awakening, the avatar was now an actually playable unit, and had a serious part to play in the story. That trend was taken to the extreme in Fates, as your avatar is now not just a character, but is actually the main character of the game, overthrowing a lot of Fire Emblem tradition. I frankly didn't care for this. Due to the customization of gender, voice, name, and appearance, your avatar can never really appear in pre-rendered cutscenes, which is no fun. I also really liked the traditional approach of watching and managing the story as a fly on the wall, but this may just be a personal preference.
They also significantly changed the system by which you can pair up units and support others. Now, if you want to have a more offensively focused pairing, you just sit your units next to each other while one attacks, but pairing up your units to share a space on the map will result in a more defensively oriented team-up. When paired up, your stats are significantly boosted, but your pair-up partner cannot attack, meaning that there are real pros and cons to pairing up. I actually liked this decision, and thought it added an additional level of strategy to the gameplay.
The weapon triangle is a significant part of Fire Emblem history, and even the simplest acolytes will know that swords beat axes, axes beat lances, and lances beat swords. The weapon triangle in this game has been significantly overhauled, with attack types that were traditionally outside of the triangle, like bows and magic, now being included. This was quite confusing to me, as there are now a ton of different types of weapons (swords, axes, lances, daggers/shurikens, magic, and bows), and remembering where on this bizarre six-sided triangle each weapon sat was confusing. They also did away with the magical hierarchy in which certain elements beat other elements, which was a good decision.
Perhaps most crushingly, the good folks at Intelligent Systems did away with my favorite item, the Second Seal. This item would allow you to reset at level 1 in another class, while keeping all of your stat growths from your previous leveling. This allowed you to explore numerous class chains to customize each character, which was tons of fun. In this game, your access to other classes is determined by your level of support with other units, which will allow you to alter a characters class to become the same class as their spouse or close friends. This is an intriguing system, but I really wish that I had still had access to the Second Seals, as it felt like you had a significantly increased amount of control over your characters, and more opportunities to level and gain stats. They did introduce a nice new item, the Eternal Seal, that allows you increase the maximum level of any character by 5, but these are very expensive and don't quite give the same bang for your buck that Fire Emblem Awakening did.
The music is fine, and the visuals are still disappointing. They could literally just add new characters and story to the old GBA architecture and I'd be beyond thrilled. Don't fix what ain't broke! But the CG cutscenes look better than ever, and I guess I'm more used to it now, so it doesn't bother me as much as it did in Fire Emblem Awakening.
It's just so perfect! Lyn for Smash!
The story and writing are just not in the same class as its predecessor, however. There were precious few characters that I really adored in this game, and the building of relationships between the characters was dull and lifeless. The story also felt bizarre, and with so many predictable tropes thrown in, I had little interest.
The music was very good throughout, and builds on a Chinese martial style that fits well with the group to which you're attached in this iteration of the game. There's also an absolute banger of a track that has a significant tie-in to the story that I find myself humming all the time, so the music was really a big highlight for me.
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright is a very good game. But it doesn't quite capture the joys of the character building system in Fire Emblem Awakening, nor the witty interactions between the characters in that game, and those two things were the best things to happen to Fire Emblem in a very long time. I'll definitely get Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest, but I'm not going to rush out to do so. It's definitely worth your time and attention, particularly if you enjoy strategy RPGs. I'll give it an 8.5/10.
I'm really not sure what's up next on handhelds, to be honest. I've got a few ideas, but nothing firmly set in stone, so check back in soon to find out. I may kick around a few old favorites, as my 4 completed games through mid-February puts me way ahead of my curve.
-TRO
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