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What do you think of Fates 1 year later?


MorgueWolf
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Hi, Folks! I literally just made this account so I could ask this question. Fire emblem has always been my favorite video games series and I've played every western release. Slowly playing some of the older games on an emulator on my phone. I just want you to know where I'm coming from where I ask this question. What do you think of Fire Emblem Fates?

I've play pretty much fire emblem on hard difficulty cause I like a challenge and I've been doing so with fates. I was stoked when I learned the series was on its last legs but was revitalized with Awakening. I felt the devs would get the budget they deserve and I had huge expectations. I bought all versions of Fates, BUT I'm only the last chapter of brithright, which I haven't enjoyed all that much because it is considerably easy. And I haven't beaten it a year later because I got to chapter 26 and one shot Xander and beat the level and now I'm slightly underleveled for the final level and I didn't want to grind so I went over to conquest which I find much more engaging. The challenge there is great and I feel very invested in it because I like all the characters and the stakes seem real because of how limited the game is in helping you. It has taken me a LONG time to work through certain levels of conquest, and I'm trying to match everyone up.

That said the story has yet to land for me. I despise Corrin as a wimpy character, and the narrative hasn't paid off in either game. I assumed it would it revelations but recently I saw some fans in comments on a trailer saying you're better off not playing revelations because it is so bad. The game got critical success but I mostly just play fire emblem for myself so it has been weird to be so unsatisfied with the game. So now I'm at the one place on the internet where I know people who know what they're talking about are and I want to ask what does everyone think of this game?

Do you like it? Do you hate it? And why? In a strange way I feel like if someone could point out its flaws to me it would be easier for me to come to terms with it.

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After a year, I can still say that Conquest alone is worth investing into despite it being hard even on normal mode. It has the most creative map designs, well balanced units and between all the fates games, has a decent music.

The only downside to Conquest is its lack of memorable music and its disappointing ending. As far as gameplay goes, Conquest tops it all. I would like to replay conquest alone when the time comes if only because I enjoy every bit of it except some of its frustrating chapters(which are minor).

As for character wise..yeah, they are all good. I like how in this game personal skills are made so that it gives each character that extra depth. Favorite units in Conquest for me Camilla and Leo.

As for Birthright and Revelation, yeah...they both suffer on the story side of things particularly Birthright as well as the gameplay. While revelation has creative map designs, they aren't as polished and memorable as the ones Conquest had...Birthright on the other hand has really weak map designs honestly.

My least favorite FE game has to be birthright. Its not really that bad of a game but its just sooooo easy that it makes Awakening the better balanced game. As soon as you get Ryoma, there's no reason to train other units since he can solo the rest of BR easily even having the potential to beat the final boss.

And BR just has weaker music. Nothing stands out. As for how the classes and new weapons are, its still forgettable and its not something that I think I can remember that much.

If you ask me, I'd rather play Blazing Blade over BR if only because the map designs are memorable and more thought out than BR and that its well balanced enough unlike BR.

 

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Conquest in terms of gameplay is objectively the best the series has had to offer so far. I think it'll be highly regarded for a long time because of that. One of the most re-playable games since story isn't a factor in that. The most balanced cast the series has had while offering a lot of difficulty/challenge. The best balance of both since Thracia; but without the failed/flawed execution in some of its mechanics. 

My only real criticism with Fates' core gameplay is HP values being too low combined with attack stance. Since DEF/RES are forced to be very high for units to be 'tanky' you get an issue where the more fragile units are more prone to being one-shot while the tankier units often just don't take much damage at all. With attack stance this just becomes worse. And it also makes units with lower ATK/MAG all the more worse off, because the extremity in damage mitigation penalizes more than say, higher HP values but lower DEF/RES.

That and the weapon system needs more refining, and the personal weapons that invalidate anything else.

Birthright is forgettable but not bad at all. A bit above Awakening because of the improvements to the core game design. But it's just as unbalanced and pretty bland because of its difficulty.

Revelations mostly failed on its gimmicks and is horribly balanced. It's one of the worst games the series has had so far, if not the worst. I don't think it'll be remembered fondly as far as the community goes -- it's just DLC technically.

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Fates has a bit of a reputation on this forum as being "wasted potential", and it earns that reputation fully. Before release (the first release in Japan), a lot of people, myself included, were eagerly awaiting what had the potential to be a return to form for the series. More challenging gameplay, refined mechanics, and the possibility for a more political, nuanced and engaging story/world. Needless to say, some of us got a bit over-hyped.

I'm not really in a ranty mood, so I won't go overboard about why the story fails, why certain characters piss me off to no end, why the world-building sucks, e.c.t. Nor will I incessantly praise the gameplay, how it is actually engaging, the challenges in some routes, e.c.t. What I will say is that for me, I still hold Conquest as the current pinnacle of gameplay in the series and the reason why it is important to have a team of secondary writers there to make sure the story makes sense. Birthright will remain an adequate, if somewhat boring Fire Emblem. And to conclude  I will regret the money I spent on Revelation, as it combines the worst aspects of both Conquest (shit story) and Birthright (stupid gameplay gimmicks/repetitive nature).

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There was a topic similar to this a month ago, and I imagine most of those opinions are still valid. Then, if we go way back, there was the JPN release discussion which was revived when it was released in NA. I do not know if the European release started another surge of discussions as I was not active at that time. One of the most commonly agreed points was that Fates story sucked. Other elements (such as Conquest's gameplay) were praised, but Fate's "Wasted Potential" definitely left its mark on some of us who expected (and wanted) Fates to be so much more than it actually was.

As for me, I'll simply quote myself on what I said over there, but I'll also have a short version.

Long story short...
- Fates had a brilliant story concept, but it was wasted. This is the biggest complaint about Fates.
- Conquest has some of the best gameplay, rivaling Radiant Dawn. // Birthright is a weaker Awakening, and Revelations is too gimmicky.
- Fate's music is still fairly good overall.
- Characters were somewhat okay, but my favorites are far fewer in Fates compared to any other Fire Emblem game (coming from a guy that practically likes almost every Fire Emblem character).

On 2/23/2017 at 0:34 AM, Sire said:

I still haven't touched Fates since when I first started playing last year. I started with Conquest, did Birthright, and still have a incomplete Revelations file that I still need to get back to. Then there is still the DLC that looks interesting (specifically the children DLC, they seem to have it better than the main game).

My opinions remain the same. Conquest has some of the best gameplay since Radiant Dawn. Birthright appeals to those who played Awakening while Revelations is gimmick city. I also highly enjoyed the music and some of the characters, but wish the fanservice was not so high in Fates.

I have 109 hours clocked into Fates* using 6 save files (3 "Canon Runs" and 3 "True Runs"), with 80 of those hours being split into my two different Conquest files. I find Nohr's cast to be far more enjoyable than Hoshido's which makes running DLC missions or My Castle invasions more enjoyable, even though Birthright is technically supposed to be the "grindable game." Once upon a time I had grand plans for my ultimate file in Revelations, but playing each campaign one after the other and seeing the quality decrease burned me out. It didn't help I wanted to min-max My Castle on my "final file" to have certain materials and foods, and to create an "Avatar Army." As customizing My Castle relies on RNG or hacking while Avatar Armies in Fates are limited compared to Awakening, my enthusiasm perished. In essence, Fates was too much Fire Emblem, and in hindsight I would have prefered a single polished game (leaning towards Conquest gameplay) over three butchered ones.

In contrast, I put over 200 hours into Awakening**, and I am sure I put an additional 20 more hours in that are not documented on my files. Specifically, I had my original "endgame Hard file," but after investing 100 hours and wanting more, I decided I wanted a "Lunatic+ endgame file." If the first five levels of Lunatic made me a man, the first five levels of Lunatic+ made me a legend, especially since I was going for a deathless run. (Afterwards, I "cheated" my way through using the Avatar Log as I was only interested in endgame skirmishes on Lunatic+ for replayability purposes.) The inclusion of all the Spotpass teams and replaying the DLC helped out immensely with playtime. In hindsight, I find it funny I got far more value with Awakening and it's DLC than with Fates and all three of its games.

While the completionist self in me wants to go back, finish up Revelations, and properly finish my "True Runs," with other games on my radar (currently playing through God Eater 2 Rage Burst, and I have Transistor and The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky in the pipeline), having Fire Emblem: Heroes to satisfy FE cravings, and Echoes out in May, I don't see myself going back to Fates any time soon. Honestly, I see myself going back to replay one of the older titles again (specifically Blazing Sword) before going back to Fates, provided I ever get around to it. 

Heh, now that I think about it, I never did get around to unlocking all the child characters. Oh well, most of them are forgettable anyway...

* Fates Playtime by Activity Log = 160 Hours
** Awakening Playtime by Activity Log = 282 Hours

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Hmm...  Well, I'll try my best to offer my opinion in a way that helps you.

First, I'll talk about the good bits of all the games.  Conquest obviously has the best gameplay.  However, Birthright's gameplay is good as well; people here keep forgetting that it's meant to appeal to newbs of the series brought in by Awakening (or Fates) who might not be very good at strategy games yet.  I get it doesn't appeal to vets, but that doesn't make it bad.  I also think both Hoshido and Nohr have some great characters; Hoshido has Oboro, Takumi, Saizo, Kaze, Mozu, Shiro, and Mitama, while Nohr has Beruka, Leo, Arthur, Charlotte, Flora, Forrest, and Ophelia (if only her father weren't in this game).  And I'll say that every character - even the bad ones - has at least one good support.  Above all else, the gameplay is improved.

Now for the bad...

The story is awfully, awfully flawed.  When one story path is generally considered the best because it isn't as bad as the others, you know you've messed up.  Plot devices royally screw not only the quality of the plot, but also the quality of some characters.  The main dilemma centering around Garon is totally stupid; there's no reason you should care about him.  Revelation just unloads a bunch of BS (basically unveils the already thinly veiled plot devices) and at one point excuses Corrin's idiocy, subverting it into a boon to his/her cause.  On top of it all, there's no world-building.  There was more world-building in the original NES FE games than there is in any Fates path.  The most you get is in Revelation, but that does jack s**t to explain anything about the two major kingdoms that the majority of the game takes place in.

There are also some characters who are... ehhhhh, not great.  Not many really like Peri.  Various Hoshidan characters are kind of flat and gimmicky, like Setsuna; her thing is that she acts like she's high all the time and falls into traps a lot.  Sure, she seeks to improve her skills, but she does little to improve her character unlike units such as Oboro, who actually tries to get over her racism to work with Nohrian allies.  Camilla is, in my opinion, not much more than a fanservice character whose defining traits are based off of what made Tharja so popular.  Simply put, I don't like her.  I like her even less because people tend to use their made up head canon to explain why she's the best character ever.

Lastly, Revelation has, without a doubt, the worst gameplay.  It's drawn out as hell, it's gimmicky without bringing challenge, and it's mindless.  It just feels like it all was cobbled together at the last moment.  BR at least feels like it had a bit of thought put into it; every facet of Revelation feels like it's just there to prolong gameplay.  The sole reason I even choose to play it anymore is to get all the supports.  But that's only fun on occasion.

Other stuff to mention...

People call "wasted potential" a flaw...  What they generally mean is that pre-release news of Fates gave players the impression that it would be morally ambiguous and more politically involved.  Now, I don't consider that to be a flaw of the game as much as it is a problem with the game industry in general (people's expectations versus industry honesty and rhetoric).  However, there is wasted potential in other things in the game that actually could be considered "flawed".  The most notorious example is Scarlet.  She could've provided world-building and a interesting Nohrian perspective.  And for the limited amount of writing she gets, she's fairly good.  But because there's so little to her, she is wasted potential.  Same goes for the main villains and the various tribes.

Edited by Ertrick36
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I still can't face this game with little more than a near-total lack of respect and the feeling that playing it and 13 make me feel like I've actually overestimated the quality of the franchise. Nobody should have to feel like a piece of fiction has retroactively made things worse because of how bad the thing you're consuming is, and I think it might be a sign of me having emotional problems.

That said, I still hate how overbalanced the gameplay is, how the levels still feel like a result of taking all the worst aspects of 13's level design to different extremes, how the story is an unsalvageable farce of storytelling and narrative, and how the characters are so infuriating that they make me cringe just reading their names off a forum post.

 

I don't want to come off like I'm some completely unreasonable troll, but this is seriously the kind of feelings I have towards this game: I hate it so much that just reading a character name makes me cringe. What the hell is wrong with me...

Edited by Gruntagen
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Currently playing Birthright after a looong pause in my FE gaming (didnt play awakening yet), so maybe my opinion is biased ... but I'm having a hella good time. It feels great to play a new Fire Emblem. I really love the characters (sure, some of them are lame (-->looking at you, setsuna<--) ) , but I dig the feodal Japanese atmosphere: new classes, new weapons ... Also, marrying all the characters :D 
I mean I'm so attached to the characters that I cant picture myself playing Conquest for now.

I dont know, maybe I'm easy to please. But so far, so good and i'm trying to slow myself down so I don't finish it too quick... 

I'm curious about Revelation, apparently you can recruit from all sides ? I find that to be nice, because some Nohrians look pretty cool.

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1 hour ago, Tarisaskia said:

I'm curious about Revelation, apparently you can recruit from all sides ? I find that to be nice, because some Nohrians look pretty cool.

You can, but if you want to properly utilize them all, your better off playing Conquest. One of Revelation's shortcomings is character overload once you add both casts and their children, and it shows. Why would I use character x when character y joins sooner, fills a similar role, and joins at a higher level with better stats? Plus by endgame, you will only be using the royals, corrin, corrin's retainer, and maybe one or two other characters, even though you have a pool of 40+ to choose from.

Edited by warchiefwilliams
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1 hour ago, warchiefwilliams said:

You can, but if you want to properly utilize them all, your better off playing Conquest. One of Revelation's shortcomings is character overload once you add both casts and their children, and it shows. Why would I use character x when character y joins sooner, fills a similar role, and joins at a higher level with better stats? Plus by endgame, you will only be using the royals, corrin, corrin's retainer, and maybe one or two other characters, even though you have a pool of 40+ to choose from.

yeah I'm sure it'll be hard to handle. Although I'm the kind of person who can spend days doing these scouting/challenges fights just to level supports...

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I can't say that is my favorite, but I loved it. Yes maybe the story wasn't the best, I now, but I enjoyed playing it, it was... Different, and I think it was good that IntSys tried to show something different in the series with the "3 versions"

I liked Revelations cheesy ending, because I'm into that stuffs, and of course I can list a lot of stuffs I didn't liked, but, that doesn't make me hate the games, actually, I think I like Fates more than Awakening, but not at the level of how I love Sacred Stones and Radiant Dawn.

Yeah, it was a good game, not the best, but it was good for me, there were good maps, good characters, and some parts of the story weren't that bad. I enjoyed playing it, and I will keep playing until Echoes arrive.

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Mediocre game(s)

Fantastic music

Forgettable and overall pretty bad story and characters

Embarrassing dating sim junk

I appreciate the changes they tried to make (and some were pretty drastic), but overall, I rank Fates in the middle to bottom of Fire Emblem games.

I still want to go back and replay all 3 paths, but every time I try, I find that I'd rather play pretty much any other Fire Emblem game except for Fates.

Edited by Eselred
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Just a quick thing, I know you're new here, OP, but this topic already exists. And it's not old enough that posting in it again would be a necro...

But hey, if we're doing this again, I'm just going to copy over what I said from that thread:
 

On 2/27/2017 at 8:36 PM, Extrasolar said:

For me, Fates was a mixed bag. I did fundamentally enjoy the game, but it lacked the staying power that Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn had for me, where I still look back upon those games fondly for their great storyline, characters and gameplay (some shenanigans in RD's unit availability notwithstanding) even years after I completed them. Fates, on the other hand, offered on the surface an enjoyable experience, but lacked depth imo. It was a lot of disappointment and missed potential. I think it had one of the most interesting story concepts - you, the player, forced to choose between the people whom you've known as family, and the people who you were stolen from as a child. But they botched what was supposed to be an extremely meaningful choice.

But then the terrible writing of the Conquest path struck, and their failed attempts at invoking a gray morality, when Nohr and its characters are pretty clearly in the wrong here. Not to mention, you've got morally upstanding people doing heinous things for flimsy justifications, and the inexplicable out of character mangling of Xander in a lot of his supports - especially his one with Peri - and his hypocritical behavior all Conquest path long. When you're making the protagonists of the path look like worse people in comparison to the antagonist/enemy units, you've messed up. Majorly. Just...eugh.

Not to mention the path itself tried too hard to try to mimic "classic FE difficulty" with its at times gimmicky chapters that were more annoying or unfair than actually difficult. And Revelation is written better than Conquest, but has infinitely worse unit balance; in a mode that's supposed to be about a bunch of people from two opposing countries coming together, you have to immediately bench a good portion of them simply because they're just not viable with their starting stats and levels.

I agree that Birthright was the best-written path and is my favorite of the three paths, and it clearly feels like the morally "right" path (i.e., the non-selfish one) to choose, which in a game which is meant to invoke "there's no right choice, and there will be consequences and bad feelings no matter which side you choose" is the biggest mistake they could have made. I know villain protagonists are a thing, but it was done horribly with Corrin and the Nohrian siblings in the sense that they just aren't villains; we spend the entire game hearing about how morally decent and upstanding they are, only for them to kowtow to Garon and do his dirty work with only so much as a shrug and "well, he could go back to being the way he used to be." It's almost infuriating, really.

On the plus side, Fates finally gave me the manakete lord I'd wanted for so long...but that just wasn't enough to salvage the game, imo.

 

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My opinions from the last thread hold true: I recognize all its many flaws, but I still enjoy the game immensely, and it has some of my favourite characters in any video game ever.

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Like many others I already posted in the linked topic.

 

Short form:

-Conquest gameplay is just amazing, series-best probably. This is a series whose gameplay is its selling point which means Fates is automatically a top-tier FE. Birthright/Revelation aren't as good due to being not as good on balance/map design but they have the same excellent core mechanics.

-Beyond that, flawed story but good characters, good music.

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If you're going to bother to respond directly to someone's post like that you should actually make an argument and/or explain your own feelings. Which other games do you think have such vastly superior gameplay that you can't see someone disagreeing, and what reasons do you have for thinking this?

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1 minute ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

If you're going to bother to respond directly to someone's post like that you should actually make an argument and/or explain your own feelings. Which other games do you think have such vastly superior gameplay that you can't see someone disagreeing, and what reasons do you have for thinking this?

I...I don't have an argument. I just know that I can't see the "amazing gameplay" that everybody talks about from Conquest. All I see is characters that I hate.

Edited by Gruntagen
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2 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

If you're going to bother to respond directly to someone's post like that you should actually make an argument and/or explain your own feelings. Which other games do you think have such vastly superior gameplay that you can't see someone disagreeing, and what reasons do you have for thinking this?

Extrasolar already explained it...

3 hours ago, Extrasolar said:

Not to mention the path itself tried too hard to try to mimic "classic FE difficulty" with its at times gimmicky chapters that were more annoying or unfair than actually difficult.

Not much else to say, that pretty much nails it.  I would place Conquest squarely in the middle as far as FE gameplay goes.  Not terrible, but nothing special either.

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I can't really respond to what you find annoying, in no small part because no examples have been cited. "Annoyed" is a feeling that I sometimes have with FE games, but usually it's because of reinforcements who act the turn they appear (which are gone from Fates, a bullet point for Conquest's top-tier gameplay) or other such things which the player could not be reasonably expected to know. Occasionally it's because they instead waste your time, like how various early games have you crawl over empty maps (rant about FE12 chapter 3 goes here). Fates on the other hand is very fair; every nasty move the game pulls is one that it telegraphs in advance and/or gives you adequate time to respond (such as the draining of the water in Chapter 10 and the wind in Chapter 20) and every problem it poses has a variety of different possible solutions (e.g. the ninja hallway of death can be defeated by various staves, Shelter, some shenanigans with Dance, or a sudden blitz... the list goes on). Conquest also features a great variety of mission objectives in general.

Again without listing other games and what they do better (and/or what Conquest specifically does worse than the other games), your arguments lack substance.

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I'll just put my thoughts in bullet points lol.

  • Good replay value
  • Great gameplay and balancing in terms of Conquest
  • Boring and not very engaging story for Birthright
  • Repetitive and mundane gameplay/story all throughout Revelations
  • Random great spots of writing and wording, but only in those random spots
  • Unnecessary changes (e.g. bad localization)
  • Fantastic music (If you say otherwise, I'd say that even if you don't like the song, by no means is it written poorly. That music is very well done)
  • Memorable characters, alongside despised characters
  • Pretty good voice acting (Strong in some characters, decent everywhere else. Weak in others. *cough*Siegbert*cough*)
  • Okay support conversations
  • Bad weapon system (I honestly didn't like it. I didn't like being "punished" for using silver weapons and that of the such. Plus I like durability)
  • Okay DLC (Some were worth it, others... eh, not so much. Awakening did much better on the DLC front)
  • "Meh" use of colors (From the UI to character design, a lot of the colors were... very over-used. Obviously there's a theme and reason, but it still bothers me)
  • Fairly decent re-class system (Way less grindy to get skills when compared to Awakening)
  • Poor implementation of children
  • Some great cut-scenes (Others are way too short)

There are probably other things I'd like to say, but I'm tired and can't think of them right now. Anyways, still a good game. It has it's faults, but by no means is it bad.

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