Is Fire Emblem Fates a "Good" game?

[FatesIsaGudGame]

43 minutes ago, MoonRose said:

As someone that values story much more than gameplay, I don't think the Fates saga deserves such brutally poor reviews when it comes to the writing. Sure, there are quite a few cracks in the storytelling and characters (Corrin being the biggest crack), but for me, Birthright and Conquest have been incredibly emotional, nail biting experiences. I've lost quite a bit of sleep being anxious over getting to the next chapter, especially while playing Birthright. I'm deathly afraid of chapter 26 in Birthright.

Of course there are superior Fire Emblems. You may think Fire Emblem 1 has far better characters/storylines/battle mechanics. Fire Emblem 4 may have a much better villain or a support system. And there are quite a few problems with Fates, Corrin being the biggest one (Conquest Corrin is the WORST protagonist of all time). Some of the support conversations in Birthright are stellar, while others are just silly (Corrin and Tsubaki, anyone?). Birthright Corrin is, by far, superior to Conquest Corrin, as BR Corrin is about a billion times wiser.

But minus Corrin, Fates does offer incredible adventures and many unforgettable characters.

I agree. I got to say, you make a pretty good point. Also, I felt Oboro x Silas was pretty good, just to throw that out there. (Ex of Conquest Corrin logic: Nohr general slaughters innocent people, eh, I'll cry about it and leave angrily. 

[Seafarer]

1 hour ago, Von Ithipathachai said:

I've never heard of idea of the Eight Aesthetics...  But they sound interesting.

Did you come up with it?  If not, where can I read more about it?

The original paper where they were proposed is here, though it doesn't go into much detail on the aesthetics. The Angry GM does a good job explaining them here.

[FatesIsaGudGame]

18 hours ago, JimmyBeans said:

GTStory wise the idea behind it is that Nohr is poor, which it is. The land that they live in is the opposite of the bountiful and prosperous Hoshido, and is one of the "reasons" Nohr invades Hoshido.

As for the the difficulty it was made with the longtime fans in mind and for most it's the saving grace of fates, and many of them replay the game a lot because of all the freedom it allows. (even know the story is questionable.... to put nicely).

As for me, I think of all the hard fire emblem games, it is the most fair. A few exmaples can be found when comparing it to Awakening's lunatic mode, where everything 1-2 shots you through the early game, and requires a lot of rng being on your side to survive it, even with frederick doing everything, where as in lunatic Conquest, a dragonstone corrin next to an elise, can take like only 2-4 damage from a fighter with a steel axe, letting you make more plays with correct strategies. Pretty much 90% of the time I died in conquest my reaction was "Oh, I shouldn't of put my guy there, I forgot about that" where as in awakening it was more like "Wow! That was BS!". Does that make sense?

Pretty much I like conquest so much because it is a puzzle of positioning and feels very strategic, and I have played it many times even though I generally play more of the older titles.

While the kingdom of Nohr is supposed to be poor, the king and royal family shouldn't be. they literally own the country, and if it is based on medieval European countries, then it would have the royal family and especially knight, who basically had their own little countries with any rules they wanted, then the Nohr campaign would have much more money than it does. Also, in Birhtright's defense (How Ironic as how I was just trashing it) it actually is historically accurate. If you watched game theory's video on who would win, a Viking, knight, or samurai, MatPat found that the Samurai would win based solely on how much money medieval Japanese Samurai's were making, and how much more skillful their warriors were. No matter how well you fought (or how drunk you were) if the enemy had way better equipment, and had the ability to shoot someone as accurately on a horse as you were on the ground, like the Japanese, then you've basically lost the fight, explaining as well why Hoshido is way easier than Nohr (or maybe Nintendo wanted to give some props to Japan?). So, in short, Conquest is historically inaccurate in gameplay, and Birthright is surprisingly accurate compared to it. I won't even mention Revelation (Oops I did it anyway) as there is no such thing as magic floating cities and invisible warriors unless you've been smoking some bad dragon herbs, so, you can't make an accuracy estimate based on it. The link to said mentioned GT video earlier is Here.

[MoonRose]

1 hour ago, FatesIsaGudGame said:

I agree. I got to say, you make a pretty good point. Also, I felt Oboro x Silas was pretty good, just to throw that out there. (Ex of Conquest Corrin logic: Nohr general slaughters innocent people, eh, I'll cry about it and leave angrily. 

Birthright Corrin in Chapter 6: "King Garon is evil! He must be stopped! Join me and we'll end this war together!"

Conquest Corrin, Chapter 16: (cue Patrick Star voice) "Father's kinda, uh, doing mean things and we should, like, probably stop him or something. I dunno. Azura, what do you think?"

Birthright Corrin impressed me right from the get-go, and continues to delight me as he (I play Male Corrin for yaoi fangirl reasons) feels relatable, noble and very kind in several supports. I love him letter writing with Hayato. BR Corrin's emotional struggle feels real. Conquest Corrin uses cookie cutter Azura as a crutch, whines incessantly and is just inexcusably, insanely STUPID. Like, stupid beyond words. He's getting a little smarter now that I'm hitting around Chapter 20, but WTF why did it take almost TWENTY chapters for him to recognize Garon (whom he still calls Father) as evil?

BR Corrin comes with his own faults, but compared to Conquest Corrin's faults, they're infinitesimal. 

I'll have to check out Oboro and Silas' convo. Thanks! There are plenty of gems when it cones to support conversations between a few characters. I'm finding a lot in Birthright. A lot of conversations in both games are mind-numbingly terrible, the F!Corrin x Odin being one of the WORST (why would Odin still marry her after that?), but there are a lot of hits against the misses too.

But honestly, I think Conquest Corrin's the only real bad part of the saga. Haven't played Revelations yet, but C Corrin is just no. I wish more time and emotional depth had been invested into Takumi's illness and the Rainbow Sage event in Conquest, and Flora's Birthright event could have used more emotional depth (I was more worried about Takumi than Flora). I feel Azura's just the pre-requisite 'beautiful, mysterious girl with a very tragic past'. But seriously, Conquest Corrin is a Gary Stu in all the worst ways, making him the worst part of the Fates experience.

[FatesIsaGudGame]

15 minutes ago, MoonRose said:

But honestly, I think Conquest Corrin's the only real bad part of the saga. Haven't played Revelations yet, but C Corrin is just no. I wish more time and emotional depth had been invested into Takumi's illness and the Rainbow Sage event in Conquest, and Flora's Birthright event could have used more emotional depth (I was more worried about Takumi than Flora). I feel Azura's just the pre-requisite 'beautiful, mysterious girl with a very tragic past'. But seriously, Conquest Corrin is a Gary Stu in all the worst ways, making him the worst part of the Fates experience

You probably should play revelation. It is interesting, but I feel it's only real purpose is to serve as A: the story that ties all the loose ends, and B: the story that allows characters like Ryoma and Xander to get to know each other, or for Takumi and Leo's love hate relationship (I ship it).

[JimmyBeans]

19 hours ago, Ertrick36 said:

 

I've been playing Awakening on Lunatic Classic...  And damn if it doesn't make me appreciate Fates so much more.  It's like... as soon as you get to chapter 12 in Awakening, enemies seem to always just have 40+ HP from that point on, and pretty much every child rescue paralogue dumps a bunch of promoted level 5's on you regardless of where you're at.  I just want to take the time to appreciate how Fates made it so that the paralogues adjust to your progress in the story.

I tried to make awakening harder by doing lunatic, no kids, and a no grind run all at the same time aaaaannnd lets just say it didn't go well for my sanity. Someday ill be motivated to beat it, but that is not anytime soon. XD

3 hours ago, FatesIsaGudGame said:

While the kingdom of Nohr is supposed to be poor, the king and royal family shouldn't be. they literally own the country, and if it is based on medieval European countries, then it would have the royal family and especially knight, who basically had their own little countries with any rules they wanted, then the Nohr campaign would have much more money than it does. Also, in Birhtright's defense (How Ironic as how I was just trashing it) it actually is historically accurate. If you watched game theory's video on who would win, a Viking, knight, or samurai, MatPat found that the Samurai would win based solely on how much money medieval Japanese Samurai's were making, and how much more skillful their warriors were. No matter how well you fought (or how drunk you were) if the enemy had way better equipment, and had the ability to shoot someone as accurately on a horse as you were on the ground, like the Japanese, then you've basically lost the fight, explaining as well why Hoshido is way easier than Nohr (or maybe Nintendo wanted to give some props to Japan?). So, in short, Conquest is historically inaccurate in gameplay, and Birthright is surprisingly accurate compared to it. I won't even mention Revelation (Oops I did it anyway) as there is no such thing as magic floating cities and invisible warriors unless you've been smoking some bad dragon herbs, so, you can't make an accuracy estimate based on it. The link to said mentioned GT video earlier is Here.

iirc, you do get a large sum of gold just as a gift at least a couple times during the war, and for why you don't get it all the time, I guess you it would make sense given that Garon and Iago are intentionally trying to make things difficult for you, infact Iago is ordered to make your life miserable while you are running around doing errands for king Garon, so I could see why you would be short on money early. (Not to mention you get the war chest raided by ninjas when you are sailing to Hoshido). As for the samurai thing I completely agree given that Nohr's army is about 50% Mercenaries because of the state of the country, and Hoshido is smaller and has a more disciplined military with soldiers hailing from multi-generation warrior clans, trained from birth. So while Nohr has a bunch of cutthroats, they are significantly  weaker than the Hoshidan forces, thus making the gameplay being harder making sense.

[Corrin_Kamui]

3 hours ago, MoonRose said:

Birthright Corrin in Chapter 6: "King Garon is evil! He must be stopped! Join me and we'll end this war together!"

Conquest Corrin, Chapter 16: (cue Patrick Star voice) "Father's kinda, uh, doing mean things and we should, like, probably stop him or something. I dunno. Azura, what do you think?"

Birthright Corrin impressed me right from the get-go, and continues to delight me as he (I play Male Corrin for yaoi fangirl reasons) feels relatable, noble and very kind in several supports. I love him letter writing with Hayato. BR Corrin's emotional struggle feels real. Conquest Corrin uses cookie cutter Azura as a crutch, whines incessantly and is just inexcusably, insanely STUPID. Like, stupid beyond words. He's getting a little smarter now that I'm hitting around Chapter 20, but WTF why did it take almost TWENTY chapters for him to recognize Garon (whom he still calls Father) as evil?

BR Corrin comes with his own faults, but compared to Conquest Corrin's faults, they're infinitesimal. 

I'll have to check out Oboro and Silas' convo. Thanks! There are plenty of gems when it cones to support conversations between a few characters. I'm finding a lot in Birthright. A lot of conversations in both games are mind-numbingly terrible, the F!Corrin x Odin being one of the WORST (why would Odin still marry her after that?), but there are a lot of hits against the misses too.

But honestly, I think Conquest Corrin's the only real bad part of the saga. Haven't played Revelations yet, but C Corrin is just no. I wish more time and emotional depth had been invested into Takumi's illness and the Rainbow Sage event in Conquest, and Flora's Birthright event could have used more emotional depth (I was more worried about Takumi than Flora). I feel Azura's just the pre-requisite 'beautiful, mysterious girl with a very tragic past'. But seriously, Conquest Corrin is a Gary Stu in all the worst ways, making him the worst part of the Fates experience.

Conquest Corrin is a selfish stupid twat that the game desperately tries to paint as a tragic hero.

 

Which is why I had to force myself through it.

 

I honestly feel plotwise Birthright's the strongest of the 3.

[MoonRose]

1 hour ago, Corrin_Kamui said:

Conquest Corrin is a selfish stupid twat that the game desperately tries to paint as a tragic hero.

I honestly thought you were going to give me paragraphs on why Corrin's actually a good character, considering your username, and I would have been 500% fine with that. I'm okay with opposing opinions as long as they written by trolls. 

But you gave me what will most likely be the greatest response I get on this thread. :)

[Corrin_Kamui]

9 minutes ago, MoonRose said:

I honestly thought you were going to give me paragraphs on why Corrin's actually a good character, considering your username, and I would have been 500% fine with that. I'm okay with opposing opinions as long as they written by trolls. 

But you gave me what will most likely be the greatest response I get on this thread. :)

No, I hate Conquest Corrin for the exact same reasons as you.

Which is why I tried so hard to find a Hoshidan Fem!Corrin image for my avatar.

 

I really wish Cipher would make more Hoshidan aligned Fem!Corrin cards.

[UNLEASH IT]

Despite its numerous flaws, I did enjoy Fates more than Echoes, even though people seem to agree on Echoes being the better game.

[joshcja]

12 hours ago, JimmyBeans said:

I tried to make awakening harder by doing lunatic, no kids, and a no grind run all at the same time aaaaannnd lets just say it didn't go well for my sanity. Someday ill be motivated to beat it, but that is not anytime soon. XD

iirc, you do get a large sum of gold just as a gift at least a couple times during the war, and for why you don't get it all the time, I guess you it would make sense given that Garon and Iago are intentionally trying to make things difficult for you, infact Iago is ordered to make your life miserable while you are running around doing errands for king Garon, so I could see why you would be short on money early. (Not to mention you get the war chest raided by ninjas when you are sailing to Hoshido). As for the samurai thing I completely agree given that Nohr's army is about 50% Mercenaries because of the state of the country, and Hoshido is smaller and has a more disciplined military with soldiers hailing from multi-generation warrior clans, trained from birth. So while Nohr has a bunch of cutthroats, they are significantly  weaker than the Hoshidan forces, thus making the gameplay being harder making sense.

CQ gives more money than any other route. On average (Off the top of my head, not selling useless items) you would need 10 skirmishes in BR or 30 in rev to equal CQ funds.

CQ's plot is far more tolerable if you just headcannon Elise as the protag.

Edited February 18, 2018 by joshcja

[DragonFlames]

I've walked through all five stages of grief with this game and I've come all the way back around to liking two thirds of it while never touching that last third ever again and pretend like it doesn't even exist. To be specific: I like Birthright for it's superior story (and gameplay, if I'm honest), I like Revelation for PvP and Skill / Stat build purposes (the latter of which I have always been a fan of if something of that kind was available in a game) and that you can get every major character from each route, so you can have some crazy pairings that may or may not turn out weird. And I'll be damned if I don't love me some weirdness. Also, Revelation's plot, while admittedly boring, doesn't want me to tear my hair out, so that's something, I suppose.

To make it clear, to me, story and gameplay hold equal importance, especially when it comes to RPGs. If the story is atrocious, not even the best gameplay in existence is enough for me to salvage it. This of course is also true the other way around. The game could have an excellent story and I wouldn't care if the gameplay sucked balls.
This is how I would rank all three paths:
Story: Birthright >>> Revelation >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Conquest
Gameplay: Birthright > Conquest >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Revelation
Characters: Revelation > Conquest > Birthright
Music: Birthright > Revelation > Conquest

[Etrurian emperor]

It is. The story isn't very good but the gameplay more then compensates for that. And while the story remains bad the likable characters do lift it up a bit.

Conquest might actually be a highlight of the series when it comes to Gameplay. Its consistently difficult and keeps giving interesting map designs without being plagued by bad gimmicks because of it. The siege mission especially are unlike anything Fire emblem ever had before. Bringing down the walls of Sakura's castle or fighting your way to Takumi's giant wall and climbing it was just amazing. 
Even if the cast is hindered by the story they are still a great bunch. I feel the cast manages to strike a balance between the trope heavy characters of Awakening and the more nuanced characters from the older games. You still got your complete jokes like Arthur or Setsuna but there are also some actual people in there like Takumi, Siegbert or Saizo.

I hold Birthright in very low regard but I can't say its bad. Its just unremarkable in all aspects but the gameplay is solid enough. 

Fates does hold the unfortunate places of being the only Fire emblem game that I like despite so many things rather than because of them which is a really big shame. A lot of mistakes were made that held the game back and they just shouldn't have been made. A lot of these problems may be there because IS for some reason didn't believe Fates was a good game and felt the need to compensate with awkward sibling romance and even more awkward Child mechanics.  

 

[Ertrick36]

@DragonFlames I'm surprised that anyone has ranked Birthright's gameplay above Conquest's.  All I hear anymore is that Conquest is the only path worth going through, which I personally disagree with.

I think I've said this before, but I like the more drawn back elements of the Hoshidan characters more than the exaggerated ones of Conquest's characters.  A little bit, anyway.  I obviously really like Oboro and Takumi, but I also think Shiro is good enough that he should've been one of the main royals instead of the kid of one and that the ninja trio are better than the cavalier trio from the 1st Gen (Xander is possibly the better of the trio, but has major flaws in the story that hold him back for me).  That isn't to say I dislike Conquest's cast by any means, and I do like some of the more eccentric characters like Arthur a lot, but... Hoshido has the 'Boro edge for me.

16 minutes ago, Etrurian emperor said:

Fates does hold the unfortunate places of being the only Fire emblem game that I like despite so many things rather than because of them which is a really big shame. A lot of mistakes were made that held the game back and they just shouldn't have been made. A lot of these problems may be there because IS for some reason didn't believe Fates was a good game and felt the need to compensate with awkward sibling romance and even more awkward Child mechanics.

I feel the same way about Fates in that it just feels like I'm appreciating a mistake.

Though I think that the problem is just that they tried to do too much with Fates.  I mean, each path is basically a whole game's worth of content.  And roughly three years (assuming they started work on Fates as soon as they finished Awakening) is not a good time frame to make that much of a game, especially if it's an RPG of some kind.

[DragonFlames]

On 18.2.2018 at 11:39 PM, Ertrick36 said:

@DragonFlames I'm surprised that anyone has ranked Birthright's gameplay above Conquest's.  All I hear anymore is that Conquest is the only path worth going through, which I personally disagree with.

I think I've said this before, but I like the more drawn back elements of the Hoshidan characters more than the exaggerated ones of Conquest's characters.  A little bit, anyway.  I obviously really like Oboro and Takumi, but I also think Shiro is good enough that he should've been one of the main royals instead of the kid of one and that the ninja trio are better than the cavalier trio from the 1st Gen (Xander is possibly the better of the trio, but has major flaws in the story that hold him back for me).  That isn't to say I dislike Conquest's cast by any means, and I do like some of the more eccentric characters like Arthur a lot, but... Hoshido has the 'Boro edge for me.

I don't know what it is about Birthright, but I just enjoy it's gameplay the most out of all three paths. Sure, it may be the easiest and it's basically one rout map after another, but at least almost none of the chapters just exist to screw you over and / or as an exercise in frustration, which is sadly present in a lot of Conquest chapters (to elaborate: Chapters 12; 17; 19; 20; 23; 24; 25) and I really don't like being screwed over by my games, which is why I pretty much quit playing Pokémon's in-game competitive stuff. Battle Frontier and anything similar can go die in a fire for all I care.

While I personally prefer Conquest over Birthright in terms of characters by a very slight margin (Birthright has one or two more characters I don't like as much than Conquest), I definitely agree with you in this case. And what's 'Boro for you is Hana for me, so... yeah. Birthright has already won on that account alone.

[Dark Holy Elf]

On 2/18/2018 at 5:24 AM, UNLEASH IT said:

Despite its numerous flaws, I did enjoy Fates more than Echoes, even though people seem to agree on Echoes being the better game.

I don't really think the latter is the case? Echoes already kinda seems to be falling by the wayside: even here on Serenes, which pays more attention to things like a Gaiden remake than the general Fire Emblem-playing public, its board is seeing far less activity than Fates' is despite being a newer game. Both Echoes and Fates have some stories which can generously be terms contraversial, but even if you give the nod to Echoes as being less bad there, Fates gets a lot more (positive) attention for its gameplay, and even its characters.

I like Echoes well enough, to be clear, but Gaiden has not aged well and it's extremely hard to call its relatively faithful remake "great". It has an interesting mishmash of gameplay ideas, some of which work well and some of which don't, plus the usual Charming Fire Emblem Characters and the usual Bad Fire Emblem Story. Conquest's gameplay is by far the standout trait of the 2 (or 4) post-Awakening games so it's hard for me to think of it not being the best game being discussed.