The best part of Fates

[Tenders]

Everyone craps on this game! But what is your favorite aspect of Fates?

 

I personally love the music! Alight is one of my favorite video game tracks of all time!

[Etrurian emperor]

The maps on Conquest are some of the best of the series. Especially the siege maps are very nicely done. Never before did you have to take down entire walls or climb on top of a huge one.

The character designs are mostly pretty excellent. Whatever their flaws might be I think most people agree that the designs of Garon and Xander are very strong. The Hoshidan cast also give some nice costume variety. 

[TheGoodHoms]

I personally think the gameplay has a lot more going for it than most people give it credit for. I'd even say it's got some of the best maps in the series that take advantage of the various battle mechanics rather than tacking them on. The pair up system in particular was done especially well, giving it to your enemies not only makes it more balanced, but also just as useful.

[Farina's Pegasus]

The main thing I don't like about Fates is that the story isn't great (particularly in Revelations) since there's so many plot holes and contrivances, and a lot of the cutscenes felt way too short and underdeveloped to me. Also, some of the characters are really forgettable, or flat-out copies of the Awakening cast. Sophie is literally just Cynthia. Kana is literally just Morgan. But I'll keep my complaints to a minimum, I just wanted to briefly go over my main gripes with Fates.

The music is fairly good, the endgame of Revelations is probably my favorite FE track in any game, and Lost in Thoughts All Alone has been sung many a time by me. But more than that, I think the overall combat system in Fates is the best in any FE game as well- it's very well-balanced, with a complete weapon triangle, and forging weapons and the Pair Up system is way less broken and OP than it was in Awakening. Plus, some of the Fates characters are really interesting. A few that come to mind immediately are Effie, Niles, Odin, Nyx, the Nohr family (except for Garon… and most of the villains in general) and the kid characters that aren't Awakening copies, like Shigure, Soleil and Dwyer. 

I also love the My Castle feature. It's a lot of fun to battle others and arrange my facilities as I see fit, and outfitting my units with props is another fun extra. I wish it was easier to farm resources without having to visit people who are obviously hacking, but that's a minor complaint.

I definitely don't think Fates is a bad game. … At least, Birthright and Conquest aren't. I've enjoyed hundreds of hours of gameplay so far and judging by how I haven't completed any of the games on Lunatic Mode yet, I've got hundreds more to come.

[deskita]

That it ends (This is completely sarcastic)

The reclassing system is considerably better both in balance and ease of use and while infinite leveling is possible, you'll likely only get a few eternal seals without grinding especially in conquests.

[BrightBow]

I was impressed how they almost managed to turn pair-up and dual attacks into something that actually adds to the game. Dual attacks come out 100% of the time, Dual Guard comes out after a set amount of attacks, it's great.

If only they hadn't given every enemy the ability to dual attack. That way it's hard to justify not using pair-up all the time, seeing how it completely shuts down dual attacks. It's like playing rock-paper-scissor with only rock and paper. One of the two always wins, so why ever choose the other one? Especially since you still can't separate units without ending both of their turns. Meanwhile you can still move after entering pair-up. So even in the limited situations where Dual Strike would come in handy, there is just no time to set it up.

[redlight]

They balanced a lot of things from Awakening

Map design in Conquest was memorable in a good way

I felt that Conquest was sort of a tutorial for strategy in FE

Reclassing adds fun to the game. Corrin-only playthroughs as well

Variety of weapons. As bad as penalties on weapons were in this game, the huge variety of weapons allows you to make units flexible

Personal skills added a certain uniqueness to units, for better or for worse

[Kurrin]

The gameplay and music seem to go without saying.

I like how the class system was implemented in Fates. Giving everyone a starting class and secondary class was a good baseline. The inclusion of Friend and Partner Seals allowed for enough customization without turning everyone into a master of all like Robin.

Skills and battle calculations felt a lot more technical this time around, between flat boosts and effective speed changes, which made things feel more intelligent and precise, as befits the role of a tactician.

I'm not going to laud Fates on its characterizations as a whole, but a few characters stand out to me, even though they may not show explicitly in the game:
- Peri. I'm not going to justify her actions, but her character is a good example of how Nohr works as a whole (which I briefly explained before, but can't quite remember on which post atm).
- Flora and Shura. They're two of the more notable side characters with interesting, unexplored backstories.
- Camilla, and by extension, Xander, Leo and Elise. I listed Camilla first as she most visibly shows the effects of the infighting that occurred, further expressing the issues within Nohr itself.
- Oboro, aka, Jill lite. Bigotry is still bigotry, but hers is portrayed with enough realism to make her one of the more fleshed out characters in Fates, with less digging required to understand too.
- Sakura. Perhaps it's because I sympathize with her shyness and such, but she felt like one of the most normal characters in the whole cast. Her stammering, her awkward body motions and her less boisterous expressions all contributed to a down-to-earth personality that felt realistic.

[Ertrick36]

Did somebody say...

"best part of Fates"?

 

Really though, the actually good characters are, like, %40 of what makes me come back to the game.  The other part comes from solid gameplay that was done better than Awakening and the music.

Fates isn't a bad game, it just has the worst story in the series, at least as far as I know.

[Arcphoenix]

Player Interaction and Replayability. There's just so many ways to play Fates that it makes them so replayable. Especially with reclassing, children, choices of what to or not to do, seals, avatar creation, and other things offering so many possible combinations. I also liked having an avatar, even if it was handled in the worst way the series has apparently done so far.

I love the Music too.

Edited November 3, 2018 by Arcphoenix

[Rose482]

I do feel like this  game gets a lot of hate around here I think, which is annoying becasue it's not a bad game, if anything it's a good one, but it has flaws of course, but those flaws aren't enough in my opinion to stop it from being a fun game.

 

First I like the characters, a lot, I feel like...some of them are a lot more complex then you would think when you first see them, I like the gameplay too, and I'm also someone that doesn't mind the whole marriage thing, although how they added it to this game was awful.

 

And also FE14 is just one of those games that I can replay again and again and I feel like I wouldn't get bored? Something I can't say about some games like FE9 or FE15 which I know get looked at as the better games here by a good amount of people.

[Hanes]

2 hours ago, Rose482 said:

Something I can't say about some games like FE9 or FE15 which I know get looked at as the better games here by a good amount of people.

Hey FE15 is super fun ..... whoa! Jeez dude you firing those arrows from South America again? (I shouldn't have given him those gaiden bows)

Some good aspect from FE14? Well birthright sucks, I don't like grindfests or having a team full of Rebecca's, well I would, only that this time they are physical units. Revelation is like Amelia in Mangs FE7 PME (TRASH) but Conquest? I like it the most but I can't beat that chapter with the vases and the cave map, I hate them so much, apparently hard means debuff your units till Bartre could double you at base.

Oh right good thing, well it's fast paced.


EDIT: 

Quote

 I'm also someone that doesn't mind the whole marriage thing

Well you've never had Charles II "El hechizado" as your great great great great great great great great great great great granduncle then. Actually that's probably for the best because he was a deformed family member of the habsburg family like most other family members why?




Because of Incest, the same incest that Corrin and Camilla do, perfectly normal everybody...

(seriously this is the best from Corrin because at least we see him be smart enough to know incest is wrong and yes I know That 

Spoiler

Corrin ain't related 100% to the Nohr family but still other parts are wrong like Ryoma marrying loli Elise)

 

Edited November 4, 2018 by Critical Sniper

[DarthR0xas]

1 hour ago, Critical Sniper said:

Corrin ain't related 100% to the Nohr family but still other parts are wrong like Ryoma marrying loli Elise

But she's technically 18

The music is amazing, I learned to play Road Taken on my Baritone, and it's awesome. Justice R.I.P. is also good. Lost in Thoughts is decent, although I prefer Conquest since it's in a minor key and those drums. 

There are some good characters in there. You can take a wild guess as to which one is my favorite, but it's kinda a coin flip on whether their gimmick lands with me. Peri's absolutely doesn't, but for a friend of mine she's his favorite character. I can never understand why, no matter how many times he explains, but regardless they do have a bit a depth.

The story might be bad, but think of it this way. If a player starts with Fates, and then moves back to say, FE7, then they'll probably be more blown away by it, since then they perceive Fates as the baseline. Plus it still has jiggle physics. 

I will always say Fates has the most enjoyable gameplay Until Three Houses comes out, hopefully. My castle was always a neat feature, although I can see why others aren't a fan. I think capturing was handled slightly better (The one time I used it), and pair-up was certainly more balanced. Sure, I like things being absolutely broken, to a point. After a while, it becomes kinda boring to just have one pair up destroy everything in Awakening, meanwhile in Fates you can't really do that. That being said, there are things that can become absolutely broken. Takumi, when given Point Blank (Which is sadly not the dumbest choice of DLC I have ever bought in my time of playing FE, fucking overclasses), becomes unstoppable, Xander can get pretty damn good, and the less said about Ryoma, the better. And there's a heavy Royal slant in the game. In Revelations, I pretty much only used the Royals, and Felicia. Even then, I could barely find room for Felicia in that Roster. I think I benched Leo for her. Birthright and Conquest have this slightly less since you only get 6 Royals, but said Royals are still the best units in the game. The maps were all grab bags. Everyone shits on the snow map in Rev, but I actually really liked that map. Maybe something is wrong with me, but I like shoveling snow in Fire Emblem. Birthrights maps were mostly "Here's the enemy, kill it, repeat." Revelations was "Here's a bad gimmick, now here's a decent one, and another bad one, repeat." Conquest's maps teetered on the thin line between hard to plan out, but fun, and absolute BS (And not the Fire Emblem game). They mostly were able to remain fun, but there are always outliers. I realize I just spent most of that complaining about Fates's gameplay, but I swear I love it.

[𝐅𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥]

On 3/11/2018 at 12:15 PM, Tenders said:

But what is your favorite aspect of Fates?

there's plenty, at least for me:

- solid gameplay;

- tons of character customizations build-wise;

- music;

- amiibos actually being useful, and adding new stuff.

 

i also liked the story of all 3 paths, even thou it had some flaws here and there.

same goes for character design, wich was overall quite good as well. except for a couple of units( i honestly can't really stand Elise and Forrest personality and appearence... ).

[Rapaille]

Not the best part, more like things that I like about Fates

-Something I have noticed while replaying conquest is that though there is a difference in quality from playable units that most units are perfectly usable unlike most other games that make the game a lot harder by using the bad units.

-While the map design isn't always good, it still has the best map design of all the 3ds games (although that doesn't mean that much on itself). My favourite map is the Shura map in the conquest route. It is one of the best examples of encouraging the player to play fast while still making the map fun.

-The soundtrack is my second favourite in the series (behind fe15). I like how they use music to tell something about your location. It's a good way of giving us the basics of these locations and establishing the atmosphere on a basic level.

-The gameplay is really good. They took the gameplay of the most broken Fire Emblem game and made it work. While I still don't like pair-up since it encourages min-maxing and can make some units way too powerful, I do think that it adds something to the game.

-The fact that my friend became interested in Fire Emblem thanks to this game (although I still can't convince him to play the older games).

So yeah. The fact that I can think about so many things that I like about this game even though it is one of my least favorite games in the series tells me two things: That this game is pretty awesome and that I'm weird (or that I just love Fire Emblem).

Edited November 8, 2018 by LJwalhout

[RisingSynth]

Fates was a pretty good game, and although it does get quite a lot of hate, there are plenty of things that made it an enjoyable and replayable experience.

-Fates has an amazing soundtrack. I personally think that it has the best soundtrack in the series.

-Gameplay was done really well, and they balanced the pair-up features so that one pair couldn't completely dominate the battlefield.

-Character customisation both cosmetic-wise and stats-wise made each replay of the game unique.

-The majority of the characters are actually somewhat interesting, despite having cliché personalities.

-Capturing castles was a great way of opening up Corrin-only runs (though I don't think that was their main intent).

It's a shame that the plot/story of Fates was so flawed, because I believe that's one of the main reasons that caused many people to view the game as 'bad', which isn't the case.

Edited November 8, 2018 by RisingSynth

[eclipse]

I think the base concept of "what-if" was good.  My personal favorite was

Spoiler

recruiting Shura in Chapter 16

and I would've loved to see more choices along those lines.

I also think that kids were handled a lot better - rather than being at a static level, they leveled up depending on the chapter, and had their own little promotion item to boot.

Speaking of promotions, skill acquisition was a lot better than Awakening.

And lastly. . .because the characters are so very one-note, I have the freedom to flesh them out as needed via fanfics.  Which is a pretty good form of stress relief. . .when I have the time!

[Ottservia]

4 hours ago, eclipse said:

And lastly. . .because the characters are so very one-note, I have the freedom to flesh them out as needed via fanfics.  Which is a pretty good form of stress relief. . .when I have the time!

Honestly same though. I feel fates’ characters get a bad rap because “ugh anime tropes” but honestly as someone whose dug through enough anime to have seen a majority of these tropes before and seen be done great or poorly. I gotta say fates handles these tropes rather well at least for the most part(corrin supports not withstanding). I also really love how “open ended” these characters are like they’re pasts and characteristics are sort of explained but not in great detail giving me plenty of fanfic fuel. Though honestly my favorite part about fates is kind of the child units. When I say that, I’m referring solely to Soleil, Ophelia, and Caeldori. The reason being is that they give immense character development to the awakening trio(if selena is Caeldori’s mother) cause now that they have kids of their own they finally understand why their parents went to such lengths to protect them and it’s honestly pretty heartwarming to think about.

[starburst]

Re-play-a-bil-i-ty. I have played Conquest over a dozen times and it is always engaging. And I am not talking about silly PMU parties, but varying a couple of units or classes is enough to get a different experience on every campaign.

Second would be how challenging (but fair) the game is. While Birthright and Awakening bored me, I think that Conquest Hard and Lunatic are really fun. Lately, I have been enjoying campaigns with ten units max per map, no pre-promotes and no backpacks in Conquest Hard; and I think that I found the balance among challenge, variety and fun.

Third: However flawed or 'trope' a character may be, I find some of them actually funny, like Odin, Ophelia, Mozu, Velouria, and even Nina. And having a laugh every now and then is a plus when the overall story is silly as fuck.

Hmm... Now that I think about it, the best part of Fates is actually Conquest. Ha!

[FoxyGrandpa]

The gameplay mechanics of fates is a pretty massive improvement from awakening and all around really fun and engaging. You're given so many options to approach most of the problems the game throws at you, making repeat playthroughs especially enjoyable. 

For a game where you are given the option to grind enemies, I'm glad Fates got rid of weapon durability. That always felt like a backward's design decision in both Awakening and Sacred Stones.

The support conversations in this game are all very enjoyable to read. It makes a majority of the characters in this game feel very multidimensional and varied compared to games like New Mystery of the Emblem and, to a lesser extent, Echoes, where the lower number of support conversations for each character made each character feel a bit more one-note. Not all support conversations are good, but the overall quality of the support conversations in this game is definitely pretty solid, though not quite on the level of awakening.

Map design is, all around,  pretty solid and a big improvement over awakening, with a few neat gimmicks that give the game some variety. There are definitely low points, like Ch17 of Conquest, but I'd say the game overall has nice map design.

Character designs all around look good. I think Kozaki definitely improved his artstyle from to Fire Emblem Awakening, with most of the characters in this game really popping out thanks to their nice contrasting colors. 

Soundtrack and visual effects are both top notch.

[Vaximillian]

On 04.11.2018 at 10:38 AM, DarthR0xas said:

But she's technically 18

She isn’t “technically 18”. She is “of age”, and her actual age depends on what Nohr considers to be the age of maturity. It can be 15, it can be 16, it can be 18, it can be whatever.

…Why did I even react to a strikethrough, anyway?

[WeAreNewcastle1053]

Obviously the gameplay (including a hit rate system that actually makes sense), character designs that were NOT fanservice, the fact you could choose different paths.

Also, about the whole child marriage thing, that is kinda historically accurate. Up until the Industrial Revolution I believe, teenagers (by our standards) did get married (or married off, depending on cultural attitudes). If this were in a modern setting, it would be a whole other thing. Also, second gen characters only get married in a sense, which means they just want to be together and support each other, more like an opposite gender A+ support than anything. Also, I think that some second gen characters can't unlock Kana's paralogue if they S-Support with the Avatar (because they're too young).

[Etrurian emperor]

10 hours ago, WeAreNewcastle1053 said:

Also, about the whole child marriage thing, that is kinda historically accurate. Up until the Industrial Revolution I believe, teenagers (by our standards) did get married (or married off, depending on cultural attitudes). If this were in a modern setting, it would be a whole other thing. 

It is somewhat historically accurate and I could respect IS if they took this route but they explicitly didn't do so in Fates. I don't see Leo's ''technically an adult'' line as him saying Elise would be suitable bride material in a medieval setting, I see it as the writers rather desperately trying to convince the audience that its okay to pair off the loli. And its not just Elise either. Hayato insist that he's an adult, Midori flip flops on the issue and even Percy who's clearly a little boy protests at being called a kid and says he just has small bones or something. I suspect that these little bits were all thrown in by the writers or more likely the localisers to make all those pairings less awkward. If IS really thinks the time period justifies the pairings then they shouldn't have Leo make that comment and just let the medieval period speak for itself.

And I think most people would be fine with the writers not being historically accurate when it comes to child marriages. Its far more touchy in these times and if it comes to more Fanservice orientated games like Fates there's always the implication that its not there because it would lead to an interesting situation but because the devs know some fans want to do skinship with the loli. 

Edited November 19, 2018 by Etrurian emperor

[Jingle Jangle]

1 hour ago, Etrurian emperor said:

It is somewhat historically accurate and I could respect IS if they took this route but they explicitly didn't do so in Fates. I don't see Leo's ''technically an adult'' line as him saying Elise would be suitable bride material in a medieval setting, I see it as the writers rather desperately trying to convince the audience that its okay to pair off the loli. And its not just Elise either. Hayato insist that he's an adult, Midori flip flops on the issue and even Percy who's clearly a little boy protests at being called a kid and says he just has small bones or something. I suspect that these little bits were all thrown in by the writers or more likely the localisers to make all those pairings less awkward. If IS really thinks the time period justifies the pairings then they shouldn't have Leo make that comment and just let the medieval period speak for itself.

And I think most people would be fine with the writers not being historically accurate when it comes to child marriages. Its far more touchy in these times and if it comes to more Fanservice orientated games like Fates there's always the implication that its not there because it would lead to an interesting situation but because the devs know some fans want to do skinship with the loli. 

The "technically an adult" was only added in the localization. The original line was “Sigh, a brat as usual, I see.” It was one of the many half attempts to say that Elise was mature by ThreeHouse.

What I liked about Fates is

• The detail given to the generic classes in the game.
• A good balance of player phase and enemy phases.
• The sound track.
• Camilla
• It tried doing an idea that was never done in the franchise.
• Replayability
• Map design

[Etrurian emperor]

41 minutes ago, Jingle Bells said:

The "technically an adult" was only added in the localization. The original line was “Sigh, a brat as usual, I see.” It was one of the many half attempts to say that Elise was mature by ThreeHouse.

Sometimes I wonder if Treehouse wasn't secretly really annoyed at the Fates dev team. The devs gave treehouse quite a few headaches like skinship, Soleil and the many pairings with kids that prompted such lines.