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Why did Revelations get so much negative criticism?


MisterIceTeaPeach
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I've read in several comment sections that many people really dislike... even hate Revelations.

I still haven't understood exactly, why. Sure it has some flaws like:

  • very limited number of units in the beginning
  • questionable map design (like the one where you have to choose the right door)
  • story is very rushed at the end (tbf none of the three parts had a good story)

I believe the map design splits the people into camps.

Most people hate the map gimmicks in Revelations. Personally I like most of them. There were some interesting ideas like the moving elevator, or the ice you have break to see the enemies (similar to FoW). And the final chapter (including final boss) was creatively designed unlike the ones in CQ and BR.

(I guess if these gimmicks were added in FE13, probably nobody would complain about them)

All in all I found Revelations enjoyable mainly because of the facts that everyone of the cast was usable and that I liked most of the map gimmicks.

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I think it really comes down to personal taste at this point. There's so many reasons it can be liked, or disliked. It really depends.

Other than that, you basically have your answer in the op already lol.

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When playing Revelation, I just get a sense that it was rushed. It's very unbalanced, with units being downright unusable in no-grind runs because their join level is so low. Item drops are really random too. You get heal staffs by killing cavaliers, which have no reason to carry them. It's this lack of attention to detail that puts me off the most, because the other two games did this pretty well.

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Sure it has some flaws like:

  • very limited number of units in the beginning
  • questionable map design (like the one where you have to choose the right door)
  • story is very rushed at the end (tbf none of the three parts had a good story)

Sounds like you answered your own question, OP.

To add on to this, the unit balance is terrible, there are a lot of tedious maps, WAY TOO MUCH Avatar-focus and an incredibly boring story. All the Fates stories are bad, but Revelation is arguably worse than even Conquest because it makes me not even want to play.

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To be honest, I think it's mainly personal taste. You already named the main points why it's so disliked.
I think another reason is that many maps take quite some time because of the gimmicks, which many people seem to dislike. For example, waiting for elevators or plowing some snow takes up unneccesary amounts of time.
The few maps copied from Conquest and Birthright in the beginning may also be a reason perhaps?

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Revelation is my least favourite of the three paths and one of the worst FEs in the series. Reasons:

- The story pacing is way off. There's too much shoved into the first third: trip into Valla, sibling drama, Garon's Evil Dudes, recruiting literally everyone. Then the middle chunk, banding together to go into Valla, which should be full of lore and interesting Nohr-Hoshido character development, is a long boring mess that advances the story in no way and pulls a very cheap and ineffective attempt at creating emotionally charged drama. The last few chapters are then rushed again to off the big bad dragon who gets no context or backstory unless you pay for 6 DLCs (iirc). Oh and to top it off the ending makes no sense and only serves as more unnecessary Kamui worship.

- The setting. Valla has no history, no inhabitants, no culture, nothing which makes it interesting. And we spend at least 2/3s of the game there.

- The maps. Sure they're inventive, but not in a fun way like Conquest. Mostly, it's tedious to play this route. Most of the map gimmicks are randomly thrown in, too, with either a lame explanation (see: the town covered in ice) or none (why is Valla a bunch of floating islands and moving platforms?).

- Characters are pushed to the side, but nothing really takes the place of the character development that should be happening. Since everyone is recruited in quick succession, no one gets more than a few lines to remind us who they are. I will say that some of the route supports are good, but it's ridiculous that not even the main characters get to interact meaningfully with each other during the story.

- Kamui worshipping is out of control. First everyone starts a war because Kamui hurt their feelings. Then everyone comes together because Kamui is gonna jump off a bridge. Then they all get betrayed because of Kamui's naïveté, but it's OK because you're awesome don't ever change. Finally they all face off with the zombie squad who for some reason are more interested in Kamui than the other royals, before fighting the dragon boss who btw may or may not be related to Kamui. In the end, Kamui vanquishes evil and he becomes King of a kingdom no one needed or asked for.

In a way, Revelation is a summary of Fates as a whole: sounds great on paper but ends up being mostly wasted potential.

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Something else that I found very questionable was the fact that for the game that gives you the most units, the actual deployment counts on most of the maps is hilariously low. Seems like a huge missed opportunity to me.

And as far as the gimmicks go, gimmicks aren't inherently a bad thing to have as long as they change up how I play the game in a meaningful way. Conquest is a pretty good example of gimmicks done correctly in my eyes, with only a few that I dislike. Revelation gimmicks are almost all some variation of "wasting your time" gimmicks that don't change how I approach the chapter at all.

For example, in Conquest [spoiler=CQ spoilers]Let's just take the Eternal Stairway chapter as an example. Right from the beginning I'm thinking about what kinds of units will allow me to plow through the faceless and reach the top as soon as possible, so that I can finish up before I have exhausted my supply of dragon veins. You see, that's a gimmick that is good because assuming I'm not blitzing every chapter already, there are some serious and tangible consequences to how I choose to go about this chapter, and it's pretty clear that by going slow and steady I'll be at a huge disadvantage. Hinoka's chapter is another good example of a gimmick done correctly because again, I have to think about how I'm going to complete the chapter before it really even begins.

where as in Revelation, 95% of the gimmicks just waste my time. It doesn't change anything about how I'm going to go about the chapter, it just takes forever. Waiting for the elevators (with the sole exception of [spoiler=Rev spoilers]Sumeragi's chapter, because it puts you on the wrong side of a chokepoint and therefore actually changes the way you play

) isn't, and never will be challenging. It's just boring. I'm still going to make the exact same moves I would if the moving platform wasn't there, it just takes a whole lot longer. It's not like you're being aggressively hunted down by flyers or anything like that, something that would put you at a disadvantage and make you think twice about who is going to go where. Instead, you're just travelling from floating platform to floating platform, and because there's no real threat or obstacle to overcome while you're actually on the platform, it just becomes an arbitrary roadblock that didn't need to be there at all. And 95% of Revelation plays out in this exact way, with the only real exceptions in my mind being the level that I listed above and the one that is similar to CQ 15, but with an entire army. That one gets a pass too.

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When playing Revelation, I just get a sense that it was rushed. It's very unbalanced, with units being downright unusable in no-grind runs because their join level is so low. Item drops are really random too. You get heal staffs by killing cavaliers, which have no reason to carry them. It's this lack of attention to detail that puts me off the most, because the other two games did this pretty well.

I will agree with the unit balance being absolutely horrid. But if you used the ice map in Izumo to use only your horrid units, Rinka, Tsubaki, Kazahana, and Tsukuyomi catch up fine in no-grind Lunatic.

Edited by shadowofchaos
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I personally enjoyed Revelations the most out of the three paths, and is the one I've put the most time into.

However, the story has it's problems (Valla's curse comes to mind) and when you shove two games' cast into one a lot of people get the short end of the stick. Effie, one of my favorite Nohr characters gets so screwed over due to Revelations' balancing that I simply can't use her, and when Niles, Peri, Odin and Laslow popped out of nowhere I groaned a little.

I feel like, as maybe to rectify so many units getting screwed over due to their join time, was that you could choose which country to try to convince to join Corrin's party first. I don't think it would have made much sense story-wise and it would just end up having Hoshido units being under-leveled instead but at least if you liked the Nohrian cast more you could get them early.

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I know that Revelations has "FE10 syndrom" in term of units' joining time, but Imo it doesn't require much effort to let catch up the lower leveled units.

Also it's true that some gimmicks take much time, but personally it never really bothered me... just a personal thing.

I know that FE14 is absolute LTC-unfriendly due to these map gimmicks.

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I think that pretty much answers why a lot of people didn't like Revelations. Story wasn't great, units joined underlevel or bad stats that you had to grind for them to be able to do something. I mean sure you get almost everyone but if they didn't joined with bad stats... Otherwise I enjoyed Revelations for what it is. At least they gave you a lot of items in the beginning which was nice if you were trying to save on Gold. If you wait long enough on some map, enemy reinforcement will appear which will give you more EXP and training. I think the other thing with Revelation, they tell you to just use Royals and you'll win as they join with pretty decent stats. Maybe not Leo, but Leo has enough stats to hold on his own. But the C Rank in Tomes doesn't help... Oh well just my thoughts on it.

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*Cracks knuckles*

Revelation fails on every single level for me, and while there's no objective bad or good here, I have the hardest time understanding the arguments in favor of the route with so much stacked against it.

Let's start with the obvious shady business practice here: Revelation cannot be purchased on its own, yet it's the golden path that offers an explanation to everything that's going on in the plot that's purposefully being kept in the dark in Birthright and Conquest. The two original paths are sacrificed for the sake of Revelation, the quality of the story reduced because they need to offer an incentive to buy all the paths - Intelligent Systems knew that people who played Revelation first wouldn't see the need in buying all the other routes since it's the de facto definitive experience content-wise that offers a "satisfying" conclusion to the story, with both the royal families sharing a moment in the sun, thanking Corrin for being the best thing since sliced bread.

Greedy milking aside, we've also got the gameplay aspect that's far more subjective, but a lot of people have already brought up the main problems: first and foremost, the unit balance is completely out of whack, with unpromoted level nine Nyx joining on the same map as promoted level 10 Ashura. Secondly, the maps are gimmicky open fields that offer no challenge in the slightest after a certain point since you can steamroll the weak, skill-less redshirt units with your royal siblings without them having a chance to do anything - it's worth pointing out that you get almost every single character in the game here, yet you can only use so few at a time.

So, with boring gameplay and a questionable business practice that sacrificed two thirds of the game to make this stick out, surely the story must be good, right?

Hohoho, yeah no. Where do you even begin with Revelation's story? With so much being so bad, how can you even begin to sort it all out? I'm sure I'll forget to bring up a few things simply because it's so hard to remember everything the game does wrong.

Let's start from chapter six. Corrin not choosing a side makes sense given what we've seen from their character so far, so I don't think that's a problem at all (there it's Conquest which is the big problem), but it's what happen immediately afterwards that shapes the entire story and reveals just how bad the writing of this game really is: Azura, the woman who's been with you on both paths (if you take the game's advice and play them first), apparently knows everything worth knowing about the plot and dumps that information on you in the sixth chapter despite not having said or tried saying anything in Birthright or Conquest. Instead of being a character which discovers the truth of it all alongside the player, Azura has effectively been removed from any sort of potential character development and is doomed to serve as an exposition bot and plot device.

So what do you do after this? No, really, what happens after this revelation? Well, you walk around and collect your siblings like Pokémon, shoving way too many characters into the background and only allowing them to speak when more exposition needs to be said, when Corrin needs to be praised or when the writers realized that they're contributing nothing to what's going on in the slightest. Can anyone recall a single line Camilla or Hinoka have here? I don't include Sakura and Elise, since their introduction videos pretty much show everything that's worth knowing about them in this route: they're there to be cute and work as cheerleaders. Xander once again draws the shortest straw and is hit hard with the idiot bat, needing an evil monologue to understand what's going on and even then he refuses to accept it (you know, until he does off screen a few chapters later).

So when all of the siblings have been gathered, you dive into the Bottomless Canyon - something that should've been done in the other paths - and Scarlet is killed and they've got a traitor in the midst. Hmm...I wonder if it's the guy who suddenly gets a lot more screen time and can't be supported. After that, nothing happens until you face Anankos. No, really, you steamroll an army faceless, unfeeling redshirts on your way to save the day. There's no worldbuilding, no character development, no nothing, and the game has the gall to try and bring back dead characters in an attempt at cashing in on "feels", yet they're forgotten about in the very next chapter. This route is just a big, fat void.

So you reach Anankos who's revealed to be a big crybaby on steroids who complains about no one loving him. Alright, so you just need to punch him in the face a few times and he starts crying. Wonderful, can we go home now? NOPE, Garon suddenly gets teleported there.

Remember Garon? The villain who invaded Hoshido? The one who killed Sumeragi and kidnapped his kid? The one who manipulated the entire royal family for who knows how long? The guy we know next to nothing about even though he's bloody important to the entire bloody game? Yeah, he gets eaten and gives Anankos even more steroids, effectively making sure our ragtag bunch of misfits have nothing to worry about when they get back to their world. How very convenient.

So you punch Anankos in the face again and...it's all over. Without any motives, worldbuilding, character development, personal struggles to overcome, cultural clashes between Hoshido and Nohr, discussion about Garon, reflection over everything that's happened, the game just ends...but not before making Corrin the monarch of a new Valla - the country whose inhabitants are all dead - made from land donated by Hoshido and Nohr...for some reason. Why does this happen? Who would they rule? Why do Xander and Ryouma suddenly give them land? Why does Corrin suddenly want to become a leader? None of this gets answered, just like the rest of my questions.

So those are a few of the major issues with the plot in Revelation, and this is without even talking about how all of Fates rely on contrivances to move the story forward, like the plot curse, the plot song, the plot throne and the plot crystals, to name a few. In short: Revelation is a big, fat pile of nothing. Nothing happens, nothing of value gets expanded upon, no character develops throughout the story, and this is the route that makes Birthright and Conquest completely obsolete in terms of story, all to cash in on a few extra bucks and give people a happy ending.

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My problems with Revelation:

-Scarlet is not a permanent party member.

-Gunter cannot support at all even after finishing Ch. 26. (Likely to give players an excuse to play Conquest)

-Yukimura doesn't join at all. (Likely to give players an excuse to play Birthright)

-Izana doesn't join at all. (Likely to give players an excuse to play the other routes)

-Maps in which use of Dragon Veins is mandatory, which only reinforces use of mainly royal units as well as make maps longer. With the exception of Ch. 1 and Siegbert's paralogue, maps in the other routes made it so that Dragon Veins are largely optional.

Edited by Roflolxp54
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The reason I personally did not like Revelation was because I felt it undermined one of the main themes of Fates, which was making a choice and dealing with the consequences of that choice. It introduced a "golden route" that gave a "happy ending" where no one died and everyone was happy, lovey-dovey, kumbaya and made playing through the other two routes pointless. Revelation feels tacked on in order to rake in as much money as possible by having a route where consumers are not forced to make a choice between Conquest or Birthright and possibly be "wrong." It also makes the stories of the other two routes look even worse than they already are, again in my opinion.

That said, I did enjoy some of the Nohr x Hoshido supports.

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

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

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

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

Think of it as a map pack.

Like, sandbox mode with all the characters together.

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Think of it as a map pack.

Like, sandbox mode with all the characters together.

Yeah, but.... If the maps are crappy....? .3.

TBH the main thing that appeals to me is being able to forge the unbuyable weapons of both factions lol... as bizarre and trivial as that is

There IS the cross-faction supports as well, I suppose... and it WOULD be the best route to do the all-Rhajat run I was planning lol. Can still do that on Birthright or hell even Conquest tho.

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

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

I bought it mostly to have a complete set and to support the company, to be honest. Because, while I have a more or less lukewarm feeling towards Fates, I still have high hopes IS will learn from the mistakes and missed opportunities made in this game and apply what they have learned to the next FE game.

That said, it really depends on how you feel about it. Don't let our negativity deter you. I would suggest maybe watching a portion of a walk through before deciding if you want to get it or not. I don't know how you feel about spoilers, though.

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I bought it mostly to have a complete set and to support the company, to be honest. Because, while I have a more or less lukewarm feeling towards Fates, I still have high hopes IS will learn from the mistakes and missed opportunities made in this game and apply what they have learned to the next FE game.

That said, it really depends on how you feel about it. Don't let our negativity deter you. I would suggest maybe watching a portion of a walk through before deciding if you want to get it or not. I don't know how you feel about spoilers, though.

If it's not gonna be worthwhile to play through, I may just do that, watch all the cutscenes on youtube or something.

Unfortunately, buying things just for the sake of having a complete set is a luxury I don't really have with a kid and no job at the moment lol.

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If it's not gonna be worthwhile to play through, I may just do that, watch all the cutscenes on youtube or something.

Unfortunately, buying things just for the sake of having a complete set is a luxury I don't really have with a kid and no job at the moment lol.

Real life comes first. If you do get the funds, though, it's worth it if you want to truly experiment with mono-class runs (think Peri the Samurai).

The story in Revelations is weird. The first half is decent, and then it goes right down the gutter. There's glimmers of brilliance, but they get cut down by Corrin in the second half. It felt like the developers wanted to cram in a bunch of map ideas, and tried to build the story around that. . .which usually falls flat on its face (Stella Glow I am looking at you). I can deal with things like unbalanced units, thanks to skirmishes.

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If it's not gonna be worthwhile to play through, I may just do that, watch all the cutscenes on youtube or something.

Unfortunately, buying things just for the sake of having a complete set is a luxury I don't really have with a kid and no job at the moment lol.

Yeah, you'll want to be mindful of what you'll want in this.

If you want to grind and go through long, sometimes tedious maps, then Revelation is for you. You could spend tons of hours just grinding all your favorite units to perfection and forging +7 weapons from either side. There are some supports that aren't too good, but there are others that are good. Depends on which characters you like. Keep in mind, though, that the Hoshidans and Nohrians can't support everyone in the opposite army. But every character gets new supports except a few (such as all the characters who appear in both routes, obviously).

Because of grinding, you can ensure that your units can match the strength of the levels your tackling. However, once you get the last batch (aside from hidden characters that appear in your castle), they show up woefully underpowered (minus a few), so it takes a bit to bring 'em up to speed. The maps themselves can be hit or miss. Some have some actually interesting and fun gimmicks, while others are just tedious and boring.

As for story... yeah, don't play for story. Unless you absolutely want to know what the deal with Garon is and the real reason Nohr and Hoshido are locked in conflict, and don't want to look it up on YouTube. It's interesting at first, but once you actually get to the "truth" bits, it's absolute garbage. Not to mention pretty much everyone not named Corrin is pushed to the back of the narrative. Even the royals. If the male royals didn't have special weapons, they'd be inconsequential.

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Real life comes first. If you do get the funds, though, it's worth it if you want to truly experiment with mono-class runs (think Peri the Samurai).

The story in Revelations is weird. The first half is decent, and then it goes right down the gutter. There's glimmers of brilliance, but they get cut down by Corrin in the second half. It felt like the developers wanted to cram in a bunch of map ideas, and tried to build the story around that. . .which usually falls flat on its face (Stella Glow I am looking at you). I can deal with things like unbalanced units, thanks to skirmishes.

OMG yeah, I actually did plan to do something like that lol. Wanted to use units I didn't wind up using in other runs (one of them, incidentally, was Peri) and attempt to make all the S-rank classes the foundation of my squad, actually.

If you want to grind and go through long, sometimes tedious maps, then Revelation is for you.

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

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

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

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