Birthright vs. Conquest/Revelations

[AmericanFox15]

Okay, cards on the table: I don’t like Birthright as much as I did Awakening. Unless you guys want to know, I won’t list all the issues I have with the game. The long and short of it is that while I am interested in the other storylines, I am not willing to spend another $40 to get the other DLC paths without knowing exactly what I’m getting into. I want your honest appraisal of the difficulty of Conquest and Revelations. I want to know how they stack up when compared to Birthright and Awakening. I’d appreciate a comparison to the Birthright paralogues, too. Those seem to be my main trouble-makers. I would also like it if you didn’t spoil the other storylines for me. Thanks for whatever help you can lend!

[Roflolxp54]

Okay, cards on the table: I don’t like Birthright as much as I did Awakening. Unless you guys want to know, I won’t list all the issues I have with the game. The long and short of it is that while I am interested in the other storylines, I am not willing to spend another $40 to get the other DLC paths without knowing exactly what I’m getting into. I want your honest appraisal of the difficulty of Conquest and Revelations. I want to know how they stack up when compared to Birthright and Awakening. I’d appreciate a comparison to the Birthright paralogues, too. Those seem to be my main trouble-makers. I would also like it if you didn’t spoil the other storylines for me. Thanks for whatever help you can lend!

If you only care about story, most people would tell you that Conquest and Revelations aren't worthwhile in that department.

Conquest's main redeeming feature is the gameplay, especially if you're into FE games that aren't Gaiden, Sacred Stones, or Awakening.

Revelation is mainly fanservice as you get the majority of the playable units from both Birthright and Conquest -- its story is arguably just as bad if not worse than Conquest. Several people also don't like it when it comes to gameplay either due to pushed necessity on Dragon Veins to the point that it's not funny and the game practically throwing rather poorly balanced units at you up until midgame.

[Emblem Lugh]

What exactly do you mean by Birthright's paralogues? The side chapters for the children characters? (All of them are available in Revelations.)

I never found Awakening to be difficult, so I'm not sure how to compare. It was about as difficult as Birthright, which you already played. I'd say Revelations is only slightly more difficult than Birthright. Slightly harder, more innovative, maps. Still easy if you level up between chapters.

Conquest is much harder than both. You have limited access to resources (gold is very hard to come by), you cannot gain levels outside of playing chapters and paralogues, and the maps are just plain harder (which may be mostly because of the previous two reasons). Basically, it's more like a traditional Fire Emblem, and you'll have a much better challenge.

As far as story goes (no spoilers), people say Conquest's story is terrible but I disagree. Conquest isn't the same black-and-white rehashed "let's go beat the big-bad and feel good about ourselves" and I found it much more enjoyable than Birthright and Revelations. The Nohr siblings are more interesting and the characterization isn't so one-sided. But even if you are someone who won't like Conquest's story, there is almost a consensus on Revelation's story being garbage. It was meant to be played after both Conquest and Birthright, so it completely scraps characterization with no real intent to explore the Nohr and Hoshido family's feelings towards one another, and character motivations are very unnatural. And the "revelations" fall relatively flat at the end. I can't imagine how disappointed I'd be if I hadn't already played Conquest.

Edited May 5, 2016 by Cammy

[General Banzai]

Conquest has a significantly better story than Birthright, it also has swell level design and pretty decent difficulty

[Book Bro]

What exactly did you dislike about Birthright?

Conquest is my favourite of the three versions because the gameplay is amazing, possibly the most fun in the series, even if the difficulty gets a bit cheap near the end. There's a lot of creativity in map design and objectives. The characters are a lot more interesting, especially once you start going through supports. The story is pretty bad, but I still think it's the "best" of the three because it's not boring and at least tries something new, even if the execution is poor. If you can look past that, get it. The gameplay is seriously worth it.

Birthright in comparison to me was still fun but way too easy, and the story was average at best. Revelation is completely boring in gameplay and story, only get it if you care about getting all the characters or seeing Nohr/Hoshido supports. Otherwise I'd say reading a story summary or watching a playthrough is better.

[Augestein]

Conquest has a significantly better story than Birthright, it also has swell level design and pretty decent difficulty

I'm feeling this too. Conquest is just plain better than Birthright in my opinion. Everything is better.

[HF Makalov Fanboy Kai]

Conquest has a significantly better story than Birthright, it also has swell level design and pretty decent difficulty

in my opinion its better because it trys something different, it might not totally succeed in that regard, but its a little bit more then "defeat evil empire and dragon"

[AmericanFox15]

I appreciate all the comments so far. Maybe I can help push this discussion towards my intended goal. What I meant by bringing up Birthright’s child recruitment levels is how they seem to be so much more difficult than the campaign levels. I have heard that they scale up depending on where you are in the story, which may be to blame. I simply bring it up because I can effectively steamroll through the campaign levels in Birthright, but consistently get my butt kicked in the paralogues. I wanted to try to get some frame of reference by having you compare the Conquest campaign levels to the Birthright paralogues, if that makes any sense.

In a nutshell, I joined the Fire Emblem Fanbase thanks to Awakening. I am quite new to the franchise. I’m not sure what I was expecting from Fates, but what I got was not what I was hoping for. What I disliked about Birthright was some of the changes made to the seal system and what almost struck me as lazy story-writing. I suppose I can’t be too harsh on the developers, though. They basically made three different storylines and hundreds of character interactions, after all. I can forgive a cheesy story. Birthright's story struck me as a tale of war which saw the writers wearing the kid gloves.

[Emblem Lugh]

Well, yes the difficulties of paralogues do scale. Although they are probably expected to be played later in the game, and expect you to have more room to strategize. (Ophelia's is a nightmare on hard mode.) I suppose Conquest may be closer in difficulty to the paralogues of Birthright, but paralogues are just more difficult levels in general. I'll just say that Conquest requires a lot more strategy than Birthright. Seal system was likely changed to prevent you from being over-powered too easily. Awakening gave way too much room to grow. (Seal system is same for all of Fates.)

If you thought Birthright's story was lazy, you will hate Revelation's story. It's a trainwreck. I don't think you'll find Conquest to be absolutely compelling either. Fire Emblem hasn't been very good for story since the SNES.

[General Banzai]

Fire Emblem hasn't been very good for story since the SNES.

wat

As if FESS and PoR weren't the best stories in the series

[eclipse]

I appreciate all the comments so far. Maybe I can help push this discussion towards my intended goal. What I meant by bringing up Birthright’s child recruitment levels is how they seem to be so much more difficult than the campaign levels. I have heard that they scale up depending on where you are in the story, which may be to blame. I simply bring it up because I can effectively steamroll through the campaign levels in Birthright, but consistently get my butt kicked in the paralogues. I wanted to try to get some frame of reference by having you compare the Conquest campaign levels to the Birthright paralogues, if that makes any sense.

In a nutshell, I joined the Fire Emblem Fanbase thanks to Awakening. I am quite new to the franchise. I’m not sure what I was expecting from Fates, but what I got was not what I was hoping for. What I disliked about Birthright was some of the changes made to the seal system and what almost struck me as lazy story-writing. I suppose I can’t be too harsh on the developers, though. They basically made three different storylines and hundreds of character interactions, after all. I can forgive a cheesy story. Birthright's story struck me as a tale of war which saw the writers wearing the kid gloves.

Story issues: You're on your own. Liberal use of the Start button helps.

Gameplay: Conquest is MUCH more difficult than Birthright. If you had issues with Birthright's paralogues (for comparison, the only Birthright paralogues that made me think were Shiro and Mitama), you're probably going to have some serious issues with Conquest's gameplay. I'd strongly suggest something like Normal Casual, if you're not too confident in your abilities (and don't feel bad about doing it). Revelations is more gimmicky than Birthright, and falls between Birthright's campaign and paralogues in terms of difficulty. The units are pretty badly balanced, so if you're dead-set on using the late-joiners, you'll either have to adapt your play style to something slower, or do some grinding. I didn't mind the Dragon's Veins too much, because I could either have Corrin activate them, or they weren't needed, with one exception (which I won't name due to spoilers).

tl;dr - Conquest > Birthright paralogues > Revelations > Birthright campaign

[Sunwoo]

People's opinions on the story of the three routes are highly split. I, for one, thought Birthright was standard FE material with less world building and explanations, Revelations is a self-insert Mary Sue fanfic, and Conquest is one of the worst video game story that I have ever seen and I ended up disliking the Nohrian siblings as a result. Other people think that Conquest is more interesting than Birthright. Honestly, it depends on what you're looking for in story because Conquest's story feels like it's either "love it or hate it".

[General Banzai]

People's opinions on the story of the three routes are highly split. I, for one, thought Birthright was standard FE material with less world building and explanations, Revelations is a self-insert Mary Sue fanfic, and Conquest is one of the worst video game story that I have ever seen and I ended up disliking the Nohrian siblings as a result. Other people think that Conquest is more interesting than Birthright. Honestly, it depends on what you're looking for in story because Conquest's story feels like it's either "love it or hate it".

How is Conquest even bad at all, maybe I went into it with unrealistically low expectations because of how everyone disparaged it, but I thought it was actually pretty clever and unique. I thought a lot of common criticisms, like "Corrin is an asshole" and "The game guilts you for not picking Hoshido," were totally unfounded. Garon becomes a far more effective villain (effective, not necessarily multidimensional) and the story has way more tension on a chapter-to-chapter basis, with actual internal conflict for the main character rather than simple steamrolling unrepentant villains.

[Sunwoo]

How is Conquest even bad at all, maybe I went into it with unrealistically low expectations because of how everyone disparaged it, but I thought it was actually pretty clever and unique. I thought a lot of common criticisms, like "Corrin is an asshole" and "The game guilts you for not picking Hoshido," were totally unfounded. Garon becomes a far more effective villain (effective, not necessarily multidimensional) and the story has way more tension on a chapter-to-chapter basis, with actual internal conflict for the main character rather than simple steamrolling unrepentant villains.

Do you want me to PM you the reasons why I hate Conquest, because it's pretty spoiler-heavy and I'm not willing to get into that here.

[General Banzai]

Do you want me to PM you the reasons why I hate Conquest, because it's pretty spoiler-heavy and I'm not willing to get into that here.

Yeah, let's do that then.

[AmericanFox15]

Thanks again everybody for all your comments. They've been quite helpful. Eclipse, thank you for your difficulty scale. I think that answers the question which prompted the original post.

On a side note, I wanted to ask what you guys felt was the best part out of each path. What did you like most besides the gameplay? Are all three paths worth the time and money? If you can share without spoiling, fantastic. If not, then please hint at it (so long as it doesn't give it away). As for the stories, what caused you to feel that they were subpar or outright bad?

Everyone has different tastes. That's life. Keep it civil and spoiler-free if you can. Thanks.

[eclipse]

I'll do my best~! The good parts only, sooo. . .

Birthright - LOTS of experimental classes and weapons! The characters come at a fairly steady pace, and it isn't too hard to get units up to speed. Maps are a lot more predictable.

Conquest - The classes should be pretty familiar if you've played Awakening, along with several of the skills (like the Rallies). The personal skills in this one are better than Birthright's IMO. If you already have Birthright, and get this, you'll have access to Dread Fighter, which is a huge help on this route.

Revelations - You have both armories, both staff stores, and almost the entire cast to work with. That means you can take the best parts of Birthright and Conquest's mechanics, and make the team of your dreams. Azura's more useful on this route than the other two, especially if you did a lot of grinding in Birthright. Hoshido guys can take certain Nohr classes, and vice versa. This is the route that's made for experimenting! Early game Revelations throws an insane amount of items at you, and because you have both staff stores, you have double the number of early Seals.

Edited May 5, 2016 by eclipse

[Res]

I agree with Sunwoo on their assessment of the stories. Actually, Revelations being such a self-insert fanfic was partly why I loved it, it was easier to make up the story in my head. There are also a few hilarious death scenes (it made me laugh quite a bit, which I doubt it was aiming for, but at least I found it entertaining).

What I did enjoy in Revelations were the supports. Some of the Nohr-Hoshidan supports are amongst the best in the game. If you're at all invested in support building, Revs might be worth it for that. Otherwise it's not really worth buying for the story or gameplay. I became really invested in the characters and I wouldn't have missed out on Revs as a result.

[saisymbolic]

I personally liked Conquest because it did indeed attempt something new. I stated in another thread that I loved the premise of casting away the birth family and going on to conquer their kingdom. While the execution was not at all how I thought it ended up, Conquest was the only route where I liked a majority the characters and could play through without constant snack breaks or starting over completely in hopes of gaining motivation to finish the story. The difficulty was perfect and each map completed without resetting or losing a character felt like an actual accomplishment. While the story is not the greatest, I enjoyed it for what it was.

Birthright, to me, was the easy way out; it didn't take any chances with its story. It was essentially insurance if Conquest didn't perform well. Going on to gameplay, it mimicked Awakening in difficulty and didn't challenge me unless playing on Lunatic, which was still a breeze because of the ability to grind. Unlike Conquest, where I liked the majority of the cast, the opposite is true for Birthright; I only genuinely liked a few characters.

Revelation... It is legit only good if you want Nohr x Hoshido supports and, even then, I don't think it's worth it.

I bought it because I wanted a complete set but I regret it. I still regret sacrificing the money I could have used to buy the Ace Attorney trilogy and ordering Hotel Dusk: Room 215.

All that being said, I did enjoy Fates for what it was even though I wish I hadn't bought all three paths.

[Thor Odinson]

I'm the opposite with regards to the cast. I won't talk much about plot because none of them really had stories that particularly stood out to me--I'll give CQ some props for trying something new but it doesn't mean I have to like it, and while many of the conquest characters are well-written I don't really connect with most of them on a personal level and I don't really have much attachments to them. On the other hand, bar a few exceptions, I'm genuinely attached to a very good number of the Birthright cast. FE has always really been more about the characters and gameplay to me, so not having stories that I particularly enjoyed wasn't a dealbreaker at all, as long as I care about at least some of the characters and have fun playing it.

Ultimately it's just up to taste. If you don't mind finding out about characters before you play the game, I recommend reading some supports on SF wiki to see what you like more. If the Conquest cast are more your taste? Go for it.

Revelations is a cast party. If you don't take it too seriously it's probably okay. I do like some parts of some scenes though. Mainly ones with Ryoma in it

I find the gameplay the weakest of the 3 (it tried new things, but again, new isn't necessarily good, and I personally found a lot of them more tedious than legitimately hard, while I'm looking for more of the latter)

Ryoumarx is my reason for revelation tbh but also Berserker Rinkah without having to use Corn

Edited May 5, 2016 by Thor Odinson

[Dark Sage]

I'd say Conquest is the only good one out of the three so go with that. It has the best maps and difficulty.

The story's dire on all three routes, but Revelation is the most offensive imo because it also ruins the other two routes. They're all really really boring, but Conquest has the most "wtf" moments and I'll take that over the snoozefests that are Birthright and Revelation.

[FluffyWarlock]

The place of Birthright's story is in a museum about Imperial Japanese propaganda, not in a Fire Emblem game, if you were to ask me.

[Dededork 649]

My opinion on the situation (only own Birthright/Revelation btw)

Birthright is a very beginner friendly game. Remember, Fire Emblem is now appealing to a more mainstream audience, and some of those will be beginners. The grinding lets you get an easy experience, and the story, while generic, does what it needs to do. Side with your birth family, fight an evil King, win the game. It's simple. I enjoyed the game, because I played it pretty casually. It eases you into the mechanics of Fates.

Conquest (from what I saw) seems to be a better game. It's more classic in its style, has a slightly better and slightly more realistic story. Plus the gameplay is glorious, and provides a lot of players with a sense of accomplishment after they beat tougher chapters like Chapter 10 without any casualties. If Birthright didn't do it for you, get Conquest. It (from what I've heard, and assume) is better.

Revelation. Oh, Revelation. The game I'm currently playing, the story makes nearly no sense. In terms of story it is the worst. But the chapter mechanics are interesting, past 16 and 17, and some work while some make you scratch your head. It's the version for optimizing Fates, and seeing interactions between the Hoshidans and Nohrians. The fact that there is less death than other versions is cool too.

Overall, I'd say Fates as a whole is a decent game. One of my gripes is that there are points in BR and CQ that just seem like they are setting up RV. If you have the cash, definitely get the other two. Conquest first tho.

[AmericanFox15]

Once again, thanks for all of the comments.

As I was reading what you guys posted, I realized something: I tend to like and keep games that cause me to feel as if my investment in them pays off. I have put $60 or so, hundreds of hours, and a fair amount of effort into Awakening. For me, the game was more than worth what I put into it. I feel the same about some of the other games that I have in my library. Unfortunately, this feeling does not extend to Birthright, whatever the reason may be.

Do you feel as if Fates was worth the investment? Knowing what you know now, would you purchase the games/storylines again? Did you think that the time, money, and effort you put into the game was worth the investment?

[Rezzy]

For gameplay, Conquests is the best for the main campaign. It's probably the only route I will play again for the campaign.

Revelations, I have this as my main file for my post-game Lunatic team. I actually kind of liked the premise of the story and the first half had flaws, but I was enjoying it. However, after the mid-point of the game, it just drags on, and becomes so boring. I doubt I'll play Rev through again.

Birthright, it was okay, since even the worst FE is okay in my eyes, but I liked it by far the least of the routes. The gameplay was easy and the story didn't do anything new. Really, if I want to play a story about a nation going to go defeat another bigger nation after getting invaded, I'll play FE6, or FE8, or FE9, or FE11, or FE12, or FE13. Birthrights had no world building, no recruiting neutral nations to your cause, nothing. Was Nohr even that big of a threat to Hoshido? In Birthright, they never really conquer Hoshido or even do much damage after they assassinate Emmeryn Mikoto. You go and wreak havoc on their nation is some revenge campaign that's never really explored that well.

Once again, thanks for all of the comments.

As I was reading what you guys posted, I realized something: I tend to like and keep games that cause me to feel as if my investment in them pays off. I have put $60 or so, hundreds of hours, and a fair amount of effort into Awakening. For me, the game was more than worth what I put into it. I feel the same about some of the other games that I have in my library. Unfortunately, this feeling does not extend to Birthright, whatever the reason may be.

Do you feel as if Fates was worth the investment? Knowing what you know now, would you purchase the games/storylines again? Did you think that the time, money, and effort you put into the game was worth the investment?

I posted my two cents right as you posted your question, but I think Birthright is the worst of the three routes for the reasons above.

Edited May 6, 2016 by Rezzy