Revelations Why did Revelations get so much negative criticism?

[Ertrick36]

Not for me at ALL then, TBH. I gave out on my first Birthright run 2/3 of the way through because of the hiked difficulty forcing grinding to be a thing, and combined with the tedious maps, I was getting really bored with it ahaha. That doesn't bode well for how I'd receive Revelations.

The ability to grind is just too much power for me. I always get too ambitious with my goals, and then get bored halfway through grinding everyone to accomplish them (that's what happened on my last run of Awakening TBH, and I just don't feel the incentive to finish optimizing literally everyone ahaha...).

I always try to stick to no-grind runs whenever possible and just squeeze the most Exp out of every chapter.

Well, there aren't any difficulty spikes (not that I remember, anyway), and if you stick to using mostly the royals, you shouldn't have to grind. Though if you use a lot of the early comers as well (e.g. Team Sakura, Team Takumi, Mozu, Kaze, the first of either Felicia or Jakob), then you shouldn't have much trouble, either. As tedious as the maps can get, they practically drown you in experience. It's definitely possible (and probably easier than in Conquest) to do a no-grind run. It might be possible to grind the late comers (e.g. Team Leo, Team Hinoka, Nyx lol, who does that?) on certain maps, but you'd have to resort to tactics like boss grinding and heal/rally/pair-up-botting.

That being said, I know how you feel. BR did take me a while to beat, but I got around to it. But Revelation took me months to finally complete because all I'd do in it is grind, grind, GRIND. If you thought BR was tedious, then let Revelation laugh at your face for five hours straight as you try your utmost to get a low turn count of 50 on the first map. That's somewhat of an exaggeration. I'm sure you can LTC something like 20, but not if you intend to play without skirmishes or DLC.

I think, if anything, as far as non-grinders are concerned, Revelation is best for challenge runs since it's more difficult than BR without being terribly difficult and lets you change Hoshidans into Nohrian classes and vice-versa without marrying Corn bread, among other benefits. That's why you'll often see Revelation PMUs.

[Ebony]

Revelations is the one I sunk most of my time on, but it's probably the worst.

Probably a personal thing, but I hate the golden, happy ending. Not because I hate happy endings. It just feels like this one's trying to... baby us? Spoonfeed us a happy ending? It didn't really test us or anything. The other routes, even for their own problems, had this underlying feeling of you having to lose things in order to get your happy ending. What do you really lose in Revelations?

Izana... Scarlet... Yukimura...

That's about it.

At least in Conquest and Birthright, you lose people who had an impact on your life. You lose Elise, Ryoma, Xander, and Takumi and those were meant to hit hard and for the most part (imo) did.

In Revelations you really go through no hardships. Izana barely does anything, Scarlet had no time to shine, Yukimura... nobody remembers honestly.

You don't really lose anything. It feels like an undeserved happy ending, I guess is what I'm trying to say?

[Jedi]

While I find Birthright and Conquest both very solid entries into the FE franchise, Rev just does literally everything wrong on a gameplay standpoint aside from the additional support pool, there is absolutely no balance (I mean the series has bad balance to begin with, but this is a particularly egregious case).

The maps aren't fun, they are way too gimmicky, you never feel smart for doing anything because you're forced to go at a snails pace 24/7. There is no general gameplay direction, other than spam royals and support who you want. Even Birthright which is pretty simplistic has maps like 23, that make you think about it, and in terms of LTC routs are often hard to plan out properly especially in drafts, so those people can be happy with that, CQ has fantastic map design, so I have no idea what they were smoking when they decided "We need 20+ pointless gimmicks that aren't fun in the slightest)

To both BR & CQ's credit while the royals are super good units, the other units you got before them are very usable without grinding (even in the game that allows you to grind).

It says quite a bit, when I'd rather play FE1 & 2 over Revelations again. I have not run across an FE game I've loathed since I've gotten into this series, I like 1-14 all pretty well to varying degrees, but Rev is so poorly thought out and designed compared to literally every other game in the franchise, its really hard to enjoy even from just a gameplay perspective.

[NekoKnight]

Basically, the only thing that Revelation is good for is flexible team building (even though some characters will require grinding to make viable) and access to all weapon stores (something that should have been available in Conquest and Birthright via My Castle).

[SylvieLeo]

This thread has made me realize all of the things that have annoyed me in Revelations. I've already clocked 50 hours on my current save file, but I'm only on Ch. 21, and barely a third of my units are actually usable. This is still with a ton of DLC/MyCastle grinding for money, experience/skills, and supports.

While it's great to get "the best of both worlds," i.e. Hoshidan and Nohrian mixed babies, it seriously sucks to force these couples together when, as mentioned by others, many characters arrive underleveled. The characters I loved and made OP in either path are now really weak (Nyx, I'm looking at you! Actually, most of the CQ characters, since they join late), and I have less motivation to get experience for them when I can just spam with the royals. But even then, my BR!Hinoka, CQ!Elise, and CQ!Leo are way more powerful than their Revelations counterparts on my current file, so I mostly just stick with Camilla, Ryoma, his copy Swordmaster!Sakura, and Takumi. Again, as mentioned before, this is most likely because the number of playable units per map is laughable compared to how many units are in your convoy!

I think the only reason I'm still at Revelations is so that I can breed teams for online battles. Who knows if I'll ever get to that stage. In any case, it makes me have so much respect for the people who are legitmately dominating the PvP plays and who have forged anything beyond +5 normal weapons and beyond +2 for rare weapons. So much freaking time and patience!

Edit: ALSO, what bothers me about the royals is that they do not all support each other!! Like the older siblings totally ignore the same-gendered younger siblings of the opposite family. By this I mean no supports between Xander/Takumi, Ryoma/Leo, Camilla/Sakura, and Hinoka/Elise. Why?? If we are supposedly led to believe that they're a big ol' happy family now through mutual love for Corrin, why can't they all love/support each other? How is it fine when Xander hits on Sakura or Ryoma on Elise, but Camilla and Hinoka won't friend them, respectively? I could care less about the forced support dialogues, but if the game is making me play with the royals, why can't I at least get support bonuses between all of them on the battlefield?

Finally, on a similar note, which is NOT strictly limited to Revelations, why can't at least the royal children have supports with their uncles and aunts? I get that 2nd gens don't mix with the older 1st gen crowd. But then you have Forrest's paralogue, where Elise is clearly attached to her nephew, so why can't they be healing buddies and support each other?

Edited October 23, 2016 by SylvieLeo

[Dangerus]

Revelations I actually found pretty disgusting in the way they are cashing it as.

PROS:

- Happy ending where Azura and the royalty that you got to know and love don't die.

- Getting to ship Rhajat with Forrest.

- ...Umm... Ruling a country is nice???

- Elise gives you a cute CG cutscene hug!

- Two royal healers!

- Elise and Sakura support

- Saizou X Belka support

CONS:

- Not being able to recruit Yukimura OR Izana, or Hell, not even being able to recruit Zola. He would have been a good Revelations Unit IMO.

- Getting Fuga instead of Izana.

- Scarlet dies (Not cool)

- Ryoma and Camilla support

- Some maps are suffering, even on Phoenix Mode

- Takumi has no pressure?!

- Too much attention on Corrin

- No world building of Vallah, an extinct world?

- Why did Mikoto run away then?

- Azura X Corrin becomes incest now.

- Seems to copy different plot elements and borrow maps from other routes.

- No new units?!

- Can't support Hinata with Effie and Hana with Arthur, creating the OTP switcheroo I always wanted

- Saizo and Lazlow support a copy of the Gerome and Inigo support

- Gunther is a traitor. Why?!?!?!?!?

- Possible death of a kid

- Retainers come in with their royalty and it is weird.

If Revelations actually shows its uniqueness by actually killing characters that aren't Corrin-sexual like in Birthright if you don't actually get an A-Support with Kaze would have made this game much more promising in my opinion. So yeah. I don't really care for Revelations. I would pick Conquest or Birthright over Revelations as while it will make me upset watching the royals killed again, nothing is worse than being forced to watch a character you want to actually marry get killed. Besides, I like romancing Yukimura and Izana. And I like getting Niles pretty early on. Better than picking up Azura!Dwyer and marrying him.

[CazTGG]

Oh hey, I just so happen to have a review explaining my problems with what I consider to be the weakest path of the three:

Some additional points:

-The relationship between Azura and her mother was far too reliant on telling as opposed to showing us about their relationship, which hurts the emotional impact of this subplot's conclusion.

-There is no reason to include Master Seals at this point in the series beyond the ability to change classes early on. It made sense in Awakening to have them when swapping between 1st and 2nd classes was possible but Fates lacks this feature entirely. Go back to Path of Radiance's "Level Up 1 past 21" method and drop them from being a requirement in the future.

-The ice map doesn't work in the same way Fog of War does because of how they attempt to create anticipation in the player. In an FoW map, said anticipation comes from the enemy's movements being uncertain and constantly changing, meaning that while they are a threat. At least on the first try, finding an enemy or even walking right into one is a surprise that constantly changes up how one should approach the map (after all, who knows how may more enemies are waiting in the shadows?). Couple this with, say, a defense mission a la Rekka no Ken and you can make some incredible maps out of them. In Revelation, the anticipation stems from finding out which tile has an enemy hiding in it. Since enemie sare stationary until they're uncovered, this makes the map more of a guessing game that can be taken at a more leisurely pace. The problems it has are many: The characters are (likely to be) so overlevelled by this point in the game that any surprise they may have incited is removed when you realize where an enemy is located, it's relatively easy to pick them off one by one because they're not posing an active threat like they would be during a FoW encounter and the low deployment numbers make for one tedious map to tackle.

Edited October 23, 2016 by CazTGG

[Dualazi]

As someone who has not bought/played Rev yet, all this is really making me... NOT want to... haha...

IDK, does anyone want to try to convince me that dropping $20 on this might still be worthwhile? About all I'm getting is that the supports are nice.

Guess I'll be the dissenting voice and say I thought it was well worth the price. Some of the complaints here are valid I think (snow and elevator maps suck) but overall the map design is fine in Rev, straddling the gap between Hoshido and Nohr in terms of complexity. I also thought a lot of the supports were good, and team building of course is at maximum flexibility with all the cross nation skills and classes and whatnot.

Grinding doesn't really seem like it's that big of an issue. It means you might have to spend 30-60 minutes on bringing a character up to snuff that you really like, and since the path has built-in grinding options it's not even like you can say they were trying to force you to buy more DLC.

The plot isn't fantastic, but it's by no means unbearable, which is kind of the mantra of Fates really. It certainly wasn't as bad as I feel some make it out to be.

Basically, I found it to definitely be worth the 20$. If they were to come out with a 4th path of roughly the same quality, I'd buy that in a heartbeat.

[Thane]

Oh hey, I just so happen to have a review explaining my problems with what I consider to be the weakest path of the three:

I saw it and rather liked it, but I would've been far harsher. I would've also brought up how Revelation makes Birthright and Conquest obsolete in terms of story, how Garon gets swept under the rug, and so on, but I suppose it was a pretty long review as-is.

The plot isn't fantastic, but it's by no means unbearable, which is kind of the mantra of Fates really. It certainly wasn't as bad as I feel some make it out to be.

Feel free to address any of the arguments made against Revelation's story, rather than just saying we make it out to be worse than it actually is.

[eclipse]

Feel free to address any of the arguments made against Revelation's story, rather than just saying we make it out to be worse than it actually is.

Everyone has different tastes? This isn't something that needs to be proven/disproven.

[Thane]

Everyone has different tastes? This isn't something that needs to be proven/disproven.

I didn't mean to put him on the spot or anything like that, but if Banryu considers buying it, and Dualazi says we who argue that Revelation isn't worth the money are exaggerating, then that's a claim that should be more detailed, if only to help someone make an informed decision.

[Funky Tim]

I'll argue that Scarlet's death is actually one of the high points of Revelation. Here's why:

Revelation has the most positive ending, with both families united under Corrin and Azura staying alive. Having Scarlet die means there's a silver lining - even though the player was able to unite two warring kingdoms, they weren't able to save Scarlet, something that would have been possible had they chosen a different path. This underlines how sacrifices have to be made no matter what choice you make, which is a strong message in my eyes.

Edited October 23, 2016 by Funky Tim

[NekoKnight]

I'll argue that Scarlet's death is actually one of the high points of Revelation. Here's why:

Revelation has the most positive ending, with both families united under Corrin and Azura staying alive. Having Scarlet die means there's a silver lining - even though the player was able to unite two warring kingdoms, they weren't able to save Scarlet, something that would have been possible had they chosen a different path. This underlines how sacrifices have to be made no matter what choice you make, which is a strong message in my eyes.

It's just injected in there for shock value with no serious thought given to themes or messages. It's not a death that happens because of the player's choices or mistakes, rather, the game said "Well, SOMEONE needs to die... how about....*spins the wheel* Scarlet?"

[shadowofchaos]

Oh hey, I just so happen to have a review explaining my problems with what I consider to be the weakest path of the three:

Some additional points:

-The relationship between Azura and her mother was far too reliant on showing as opposed to telling us about their relationship, which hurts the emotional impact of this subplot's conclusion.

Uhh... isn't the point of storytelling "show, not tell"?

[OlliOlivine]

I don't hate rev maps because they're gimmicy.

I hate rev maps because they are so grindy and dull that finishing the game feels like a chore.

I thought I was alone in thinking it was boring.

I am on Chapter 13 and the map sucks SO MUCH that it caused me to put the game down and Ive tried picking it up 3 times and I still cant get into it. The map is not hard. But it's such a grind that it killed the game for me.

Its the one where the town is destroyed and you start out in a literal pen, and have to spend a turn having a unit pick up some debris to move it, but then the rest of the map is just a maze of one or two-tile wide chokepoints so moving around is slow, you have to wait for the guys to come to you, there's really not much room for strategy because of the way the map is. My dudes arent necessarily underleveled but I will still get bored and end up making a bad move and losing a unit so I put the game down again. The plot isnt really interesting or creating enough drama for me to really care, either.

It's up there with chapter 19 of Conquest (the invisibile fox-people map where, again, most of the map is just waiting) in terms of boring, stupid, dumb gimmicks and boring plot.

EDIT: To the guy above, I would say any of these "rules" of storytelling and design are open to interpretation and strict, unwavering adherence to any one of them leads to bad story/design/whatever. I think a lot of critics get it wrong and a lot of critics arent actually "critics", but people who have heard something like that and judge stuff based on how it adheres to those "rules" rather than on it's own merits. A good story will be dynamic and show something when it's better to show something, and tell you something when it feels necessariy that it would be easier to tell the audience what is going on. You show emotions but tell backstory, stuff like that.

Edited October 23, 2016 by OlliOlivine

[joshcja]

In all fairness.

Evil Gunther is sexy as fuck.

[shadowofchaos]

EDIT: To the guy above, I would say any of these "rules" of storytelling and design are open to interpretation and strict, unwavering adherence to any one of them leads to bad story/design/whatever. I think a lot of critics get it wrong and a lot of critics arent actually "critics", but people who have heard something like that and judge stuff based on how it adheres to those "rules" rather than on it's own merits. A good story will be dynamic and show something when it's better to show something, and tell you something when it feels necessariy that it would be easier to tell the audience what is going on. You show emotions but tell backstory, stuff like that.

Telling backstory in this case seems like it would leave me more uncaring. Characters talking about their parents? What does this do?

The way FE7 did it was to show things like Chapter 19xx, or Kishuna's chapters. Made me actually care about the villains somewhat.

Not the way Shenmei dies in front of Aqua with missed opportunities in multiple chapters.

Interactions, followed by words. The character's attitude vs what happened to them when faced with their loved one. Storytellers should have their characters say what happened. They should say things that paint a picture.

Great example in supports:

Shinonome's attitude towards his father, Ryouma.

Mikoto in Chapter 4 was much too short for most people, but that was more of a right direction than "telling".

Chapter 4 showed an awkward moment, but of a mother who has desperately missed her child. From her forward actions of hugging Kamui immediately, to attempting to show them the room they had as a kid.

Same with the throne.

It showed that she just wanted her child back.

Despite the execution, that's why some people actually do care about Emmeryn 2.0.

Edited October 23, 2016 by shadowofchaos

[CazTGG]

Uhh... isn't the point of storytelling "show, not tell"?

Sorry, I forgot to edit that out, Azura is constantly talking about her previous relationship with her mother with very few moments that showcase it during Revelation (this is why writing with fours of sleep is a bad idea). Edited to correct that mistake.

I would say any of these "rules" of storytelling and design are open to interpretation and strict, unwavering adherence to any one of them leads to bad story/design/whatever.

???

Revelation isn't some avant garde masterwork that breaks the mould of traditional video game storytelling nor is that why people dislike it. They dislike it because it exemplifies the very worst of Fates' many problems with its poorly written villains, its overreliance on killing off characters for the sake of raising a body count and a lopsided first act that takes a while to pick up given how repetitive the dialogue can be.

Edited October 24, 2016 by CazTGG

[Tolvir]

Revelation is a big mixed bag for me. I enjoy parts, hate other parts. Most of my playthroughs for Fates has been Revelation though.

From a gameplay standpoint, I like the maps, outside of a few. I think it was interesting to see some maps that were active and had "puzzle" like systems to them. I would like to see them expand on this and make it better instead of outright drop it. It could add some much needed depth to maps outside of objectives and a few structures. At the same time some were a little lacking or badly designed. The ice chapter was boring. The chapter that had the moving platforms between the floating isles was annoying and easily cheated. On the other hand I loved the map with the moving "elevators", the map with the stealth like game-play (forces you to go with a smaller group for a chapter, which I loved. Added some strategy with who I would bring and with what). I also liked the teleport pad chapter and the one with the bridges. All of those were interesting to me, and required me to come up with some new strategies.

I hated the balancing though. Way too many characters came underscaled, or over. Why you would use anyone other than Ryoma, Takumi, and Xander I dont know. On the other hand on the same chapter you get Xander and Leo, you also get a level 12 Odin, level 13 (I think, most of these will be rough guesses) Laslow, level 12 Peri, and level 14 Niles. Odin gets killed by the first enemy he comes across, Peri isnt much better. Laslow and Niles can hold a little bit of their weight, but they still are underscaled considering most of your units should be promoted by now. It requires extra time to catch them up, let alone any dlc (not needed but makes QoL so much better.) At least some like Nyx come in at a point where it isnt too difficult to catch up, same with Arthur and Effie. Elise on the other hand comes in way below Sakura just because the amount of time you have where Sakura is really your only true healer.

Story wise, I dont want to beat the dead horse, but it sucked, a lot. It had some potential, it could of been interesting. But that is the definition of Fates as a whole. Wasted Potential. The Gunter twist would of been interesting if it wasnt spoiled for me a month after release in Japan. One of my big complaints, and this is with Fates as a whole, the Royals took up way too much time as the main characters. I get it, they are the rising leaders of the area, blah blah blah, but we have some side characters that would be interesting to see a little further up. Where was Selena, Odin, and Laslow's parts considering they were hired by Anankos directly? Did we have to kill Scarlet so early? We had her for 1 chapter and then she is dead. The death didnt mean anything, and was needless as it didn't make it seem more dangerous. You want to kill someone off that would be interesting? Lets kill off Ryoma or Xander. Make the players have a choice towards the end of the game as to who dies and who doesn't. That would mean something.

The ending was lackluster. Nothing happens. The character endings sucked too, since so many of them made no sense at all.

Anyway, Revelations is a mixed bag. There are parts I like, and parts I dont. The reason for my playthroughs at this point is to put together an end game team for Multiplayer, My Castle battles in some of those crazy hacked ones, and hopefully an Apotheosis map or some other challenge type map.

Edited October 25, 2016 by Tolvir

[Emerson]

I think Revelations is absolute garbage.

I'll admit, I think it has the best Endgame from a fun perspective, some very good Chapters, and it's fun to use everyone. But most Chapters are just a PAIN to slog through.

It also has my absolute least favorite chapter in the whole series- Chapter 24. The reinforcements WILL kill all of your units in a no-grinding run, you can't low-man it since the door requires whoever opens it to be in immediate danger (Shelter does help though) AND there's no safe spaces to sit and watch the enemy patterns. Everywhere but the start is in range of the guards at some point in time.

The story being absolute garbage doesn't bother me since I'm not one for actually paying attention to the story in most cases. I mean, it bothers me, but when I'm playing I don't really care.

And I didn't even touch on the awful unit balancing.

Edited October 25, 2016 by Emerson

[Locke087]

For the record I did enjoy Revelation(by virtue of being slightly harder) more then Birthrigth but that's not a very high compliment.

The negative points for me are...

1. Pretty bad map design it's being creative for the sake of being creative, rather than being creative to create an interesting challenge as it fails to expand and challenge you on any of its ideas.

2. Laughable unit balance, especially for someone like me who doesn't grind on principle.

And other than that there's no strengths it could have to its bow for me if the gameplay is not that great, it's not that great, and having all the characters with me does not make it better for me in fact I prefer smaller rosters (and just turned the game into a royal parade). Though I guess it's kind of nice having access to all the weapon which is the thing I like most about the game, and I guess having a royal army was kind of fun the first time around.

Overall I'm fine with my purchase I enjoyed Revelation while it lasted, but when it comes to the day that developers look back on their games they should look at revelations as what not to do in most cases. I hope that the next Fire Emblem use his Conquest's map design as their blueprint, by not just having gimmicks but using their gimmicks to create interesting challenges through good map design. By not having their favoritism be so obvious, by allowing unit recruitment become of to become a viable reward rather then a dead weight. That's my piece anyways...

Note: The story is not really a factor in this for me because I just don't care about the story of any of the three routes. They're all bad, they all failed, what's the point in arguing which one failed the most.

Edited October 25, 2016 by Locke087

[shadowofchaos]

It also has my absolute least favorite chapter in the whole series- Chapter 24. The reinforcements WILL kill all of your units in a no-grinding run, you can't low-man it since the door requires whoever opens it to be in immediate danger (Shelter does help though) AND there's no safe spaces to sit and watch the enemy patterns. Everywhere but the start is in range of the guards at some point in time.

I'm not sure how the reinforcements work since I put the effort into going for the stealth.

[saisymbolic]

I'm not sure how the reinforcements work since I put the effort into going for the stealth.

The reinforcements spawn in when one of your units gets into range of the sentries' attack/movement field. Not all the reinforcements for the entire stage, but for each . . .segment . . . of the stage, if that makes any sense. I think about maybe 6 - 10 units in total come in each area (I could be wrong; I haven't played that stage in a while).

[Miatt]

I have no problems with revelation story because I've made so many face palm with conquest, you couldn't make a story worse.

The balance is a problem too, but you have a lot of units. The main problem is particularly Ryoma(and all of the Hoshidian Family) and Xander are too powerful.

Besides, the maps from Valla are really boring. You just have to wait, use your dragon Vein, move your units who can't use this gimmick. Wait the movement of the island.

Besides, the revelation of Gunther is so predictable. i mean, "surprise, the only character who can't support and appear every time who talk about a traitor is a vilain? I'm surprise".

I mean, I've played this game in Japanese. Even in Japanese, which I've played with a translator, it was obvious.

[shadowofchaos]

The reinforcements spawn in when one of your units gets into range of the sentries' attack/movement field. Not all the reinforcements for the entire stage, but for each . . .segment . . . of the stage, if that makes any sense. I think about maybe 6 - 10 units in total come in each area (I could be wrong; I haven't played that stage in a while).

IIRC, if they move and then you're in their movement range, nothing triggers. It only happens if they can attack you and you trigger a battle.

From my knowledge with ROM hacking, I figured it was an event ID linked to a battle quote. Like Path of Radiance stealth jail chapter.

If they "talk" to a unit during battle with their invisible text, the alarm is raised.

Still doesn't excuse it. Stealth missions and FE don't go together.

Not to mention you miss out on EXP except for killing Mikoto if you want the rewards.

Edited October 26, 2016 by shadowofchaos