Alastor plays and ranks the whole series! Mission Complete! ...For now.

[Shadow Mir]

7 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Alright, so, we destroyed Anankos's head, and now there's just his “core”, that weird freaky eyeball in his mouth.

...Which is much weaker than the original offensively, which is a serious letdown. Also, thankfully, killing the head on enemy phase doesn't give the core a free turn when it spawns. That would've been shitty. Of course, kill it on player-phase, and the game will surprise you by having the core just take its place, so if you were banking on killing it in one turn and did anything reckless... too bad for you.

On the other hand, the core does use a magic breath, meaning it likely is gonna do more damage to most units.

9 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Xander: 159B 102W. Useful, but not nearly as useful as I remember him being in Conquest. Ryoma managed to rack up a bigger body count than him despite not seeing as many chapters of use. I'll have to see how it goes during Conquest. ...Oh yeah. So. Here's their ending. I'm going to quote it verbatim, because otherwise you won't believe this shit.

“As King of Nohr, Xander laid the foundation for a new era of peace and prosperity for the kingdom. After marrying, he and his wife, Selena, disappeared from records. They likely lived happily ever after.”

...That's right.

You read that correctly.

Thanks to the generic mix-and-match nature of these paired endings... when you pair Xander with Selena...

...Selena goes back to Ylisse... and Xander, the king of a goddamned country, fucking follows her.

DO I NEED TO FUCKING SAY ANYTHING ABOUT WHY THIS IS HORRIBLE!?

NO!

I DO NOT!

MOVING ON!

I personally find the fact that Corrin's paired ending in Revelation fails to take into account the fact that whoever they married is supposed to rule over Valla with them to be even more egregious.

11 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Leo: 26B 18W. If I had been given more space for him, I would've brought him, but deployment options on Revelation are frankly ridiculous. I think you actually have fewer slots by endgame in Revelation than in Conquest or Birthright!

You get 16 in both Conquest and Birthright's endgames.

13 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

CHRIST I HAVE TO LISTEN TO THE ENTIRETY OF LOST IN THOUGHTS!?

You'll probably be listening to it more in World of Light in SSBU because Azura is a brutally difficult spirit battle. At least, that was the case with me, because Sudden Final Smash AND Double Final Smash is bollocks. And the former kicks in almost as soon as the battle begins. Oh, and she's Legend - the highest tier of spirit in the game, just so you know it's gonna suck for you.

18 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

...So yeah, Azura never once said anything about singing. She's just doing it. Or rather they didn't change the final boss music to accommodate for the fact that she isn't singing in-story. Makes no sense why her song wouldn't be necessary now. I guess they're just hoping we'll forget about it so that Azura can have a happy ending and not die horribly due to the toll this song is supposed to take on her body?

I think the full power of the song wasn't necessary this time for whatever reason?

[Samz707]

16 hours ago, Axie said:

yes exactly! everyone knows conquest's storyline is bonkers dumb and revelation was written in five minutes on a napkin, but birthright is somehow just as bad when it has no right to be.

oh.

I was gonna go Birthright first since the whole "Woe is me" stuff with Conquest Corrin was going to annoy me but I guess I dunno what route I'm going to do first then. (other than not Revelations at least.)

Edited February 11, 2021 by Samz707

[Shadow Mir]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Alright, well...

...with that...

...Revelation is finally over.

Tune in tomorrow when I do the ranking, and then tune in on Monday when I start Birthright.

What plans do you have for Birthright? Unit-wise.

[Eltosian Kadath]

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Okay, so, just like last battle, this chapter is gonna be a clusterfuck of high-def enemies. I could easily use the pillars and rubble to create a defensive wall five units wide, but that would require me to throw in Velouria, who can't counter at range. That might be an issue. But first, better tonic up and see what the statistics of this battle look like then.

Oh, you aren't one turning it then. It sounds like that makes it a little more interesting.

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...So yeah, Azura never once said anything about singing. She's just doing it. Or rather they didn't change the final boss music to accommodate for the fact that she isn't singing in-story. Makes no sense why her song wouldn't be necessary now. I guess they're just hoping we'll forget about it so that Azura can have a happy ending and not die horribly due to the toll this song is supposed to take on her body?

Do they establish that her songs are draining in Revelation? I feel like that is a plot point they ignore entirely on this route...

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Alright, I took down the hands on turn 3. The game instantly makes Anankos's head able to attack and be attacked without a turn of delay, so... it's a tripwire. Not one you're likely to be near, but there's a second one after this that's... pretty fucking nasty.

It doesn't attack on the enemy phase it spawns, so its not as bad as it seems.

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

...Which is much weaker than the original offensively, which is a serious letdown. Also, thankfully, killing the head on enemy phase doesn't give the core a free turn when it spawns. That would've been shitty. Of course, kill it on player-phase, and the game will surprise you by having the core just take its place, so if you were banking on killing it in one turn and did anything reckless... too bad for you.

Yeah I forgot the core was part of this chapter when I did my PMU, which led to some uncomfortable moments in the end of the maps, as I was expecting it to end after killing the head, thus I had been neglecting the reinforcements to grab the kill...thankfully the core doesn't attack on its first enemy phase (and best mage Ophelia grabbed some timely crits to wipe out the reinforcements regardless). Also the switch from physical damage to magical damage could catch people off guard (I am imagining someone over-relying on Xander suddenly crippled by the core's magic attacks).

 

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

 

Alright, so, this one inexplicably has three fewer deployment slots, so I can't bring Keaton or Velouria. So instead I'll bring Shura as a staff bot, because I could use some more healers.

2 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Leo: 26B 18W. If I had been given more space for him, I would've brought him, but deployment options on Revelation are frankly ridiculous. I think you actually have fewer slots by endgame in Revelation than in Conquest or Birthright!

The decision to make the golden route with all of the units have the strictest deployment slots is one of the bigger pitfalls in Revelation, as it feels like they are entirely missing the point, and appeal of the route with that design decision. I must admit, my PMU really softened my dislike of Revelations (and in an odd way Shadow Dragon, as I feel it could easily have this same appeal), as there are a lot of ways you can have fun just messing around with the class system and massive cast, but it also made the noticeably more restrictive deployment slots throughout the game into an even more glaring flaw...

[Alastor15243]

4 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Do they establish that her songs are draining in Revelation? I feel like that is a plot point they ignore entirely on this route...

I remember her going over it briefly in Chapter 13, the Cyrkensia one, though they never show the crazy shit that happens to her in Birthright. Other than that I don't think it comes up once. Actually I don't remember it coming up in Conquest at all until the final battle.

 

5 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

Oh, you aren't one turning it then. It sounds like that makes it a little more interesting.

It didn't seem very realistic given how far away everyone was.

7 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

It doesn't attack on the enemy phase it spawns, so its not as bad as it seems.

So if you kill the hands on player phase and accidentally left someone in range of the head without realizing killing the hands would spawn it, the head won't attack that enemy phase? Or are you saying that the head won't attack if the claws die on enemy phase, like with the head and core? I could've sworn otherwise, but I guess Fates design triumphed over Revelation design then.

10 minutes ago, Eltosian Kadath said:

The decision to make the golden route with all of the units have the strictest deployment slots is one of the bigger pitfalls in Revelation, as it feels like they are entirely missing the point, and appeal of the route with that design decision. I must admit, my PMU really softened my dislike of Revelations (and in an odd way Shadow Dragon, as I feel it could easily have this same appeal), as there are a lot of ways you can have fun just messing around with the class system and massive cast, but it also made the noticeably more restrictive deployment slots throughout the game into an even more glaring flaw...

Big time, huge wasted opportunity. I should've gotten like, 20 deployment slots by the end of the game in Rev.

[Eltosian Kadath]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

So if you kill the hands on player phase and accidentally left someone in range of the head without realizing killing the hands would spawn it, the head won't attack that enemy phase?

I killed the hands, and the head on player phase, and neither the head, nor the core attacked units that were directly in front of them on their first enemy phase. As I put it in my LP, they had summoning sickness...

 

[Axie]

2 hours ago, Samz707 said:

I was gonna go Birthright first since the whole "Woe is me" stuff with Conquest Corrin was going to annoy me but I guess I dunno what route I'm going to do first then. (other than not Revelations at least.)

do birthright first always if it's your first time playing fates. conquest first will unnecessarily taint your view on the gameplay of birthright because the latter is more basic in comparison (and only in comparison), and revelation first will just make you so tired of fates right off the bat with all of its gimmick maps lol. birthright is solid, easier than conquest (its lack of difficulty is immensely overstated in this board though, it's not fe7-9 level at all) and makes for the best introduction to fates gameplay.

as for what to play after birthright, it's a toss-up. the instinct is to do revelation last for storyline reasons (as bad as the storyline is, all of the time), but if it's tough for birthright to follow conquest, it's even worse for revelation. your call.

 

@Alastor15243
so glad for you that you finally finished revelation and never need to touch it again! at this moment i think i would rank it last in my ranking of fire emblems 4 to 15 if i count the fates triplets separately (the first three FEs are out of their league nowadays, and were remade anyway). it's a testament to how much i love fire emblem because i still think it's a nice game, but why play it when birthright and conquest are literally right there? looking forward to find out where it lands in your own ranking.

impressed that you weren't burned out by revelation enough to 1-turn chapter 27 like i always do. i literally never not cheesed that chapter, i am just too tired of the game by then lol. someone kills the center general, corrin advances, azura dances corrin, corrin attacks anankos, someone finishes anankos off. endgame please. the endgame IS pretty epic, if not that hard. the reinforcements are pretty easy to deal with and rescue staves fixed any positioning mishaps i have ever done after kiling anankos's hands or head. better than birthright's endgame tbh.

Edited February 11, 2021 by Axie

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Axie said:

so glad for you that you finally finished revelation and never need to touch it again! at this moment i think i would rank it last in my ranking of fire emblems 4 to 15 if i count the fates triplets separately (the first three FEs are out of their league nowadays, and were remade anyway). it's a testament to how much i love fire emblem because i still think it's a nice game, but why play it when birthright and conquest are literally right there? looking forward to find out where it lands in your own ranking.

I have doubts it'll go that low. It's got some terrible aspects to it, but it's undoubtedly gonna win so many points on the stuff universal to Fates that I have my doubts it'll even wind up with a negative score. But we'll see!

[Punished Dayni]

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...Christ, doing all of these tonics in rapid succession just reminds me of how painful the interface is for Three Houses when it comes to just using simple stat boosters. The idea of using tonics in Three Houses would be a literal fucking nightmare with their “you can't use items straight from the convoy” system.

Nope, not arguing this one.

Why even is this? It actually did bother me for stat boosters.

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

And then we get this cutscene where Anankos reveals his true, freaky purple dragon form, and shoots a black hole into the sky that starts swallowing all of Valla in a void for some reason... fuck it, I won't argue at this point, it makes a cool setting for the final battle, and the story already gave up ages ago.

Honestly, I thought Anankos was warping them to space. (AKA the one place not corrupted by humans)

Like a Space Flea from Nowhere, only we already had the flea, just the space part's out of nowhere.

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...So yeah, Azura never once said anything about singing. She's just doing it. Or rather they didn't change the final boss music to accommodate for the fact that she isn't singing in-story. Makes no sense why her song wouldn't be necessary now. I guess they're just hoping we'll forget about it so that Azura can have a happy ending and not die horribly due to the toll this song is supposed to take on her body?

Hell, they could have said the space being bent gives her more freedom to do so.

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Alright, so, we destroyed Anankos's head, and now there's just his “core”, that weird freaky eyeball in his mouth.

...Which is much weaker than the original offensively, which is a serious letdown.

....Unless your character's got low res. It surprised me the first time.

Xander kinda bit it.

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

...And apparently we stuck around in Valla long enough to crown Dakota king of it, with no explanation why Dakota is decided to be the successor rather than Azura, the direct descendant of the dead king and queen.

...and he thanks King Ryoma and King Xander for their “generous gifts of land”. What? So is this much later, then? Are they out of Valla now? Did they just decide that Dakota should be made king of his own country even though Valla is destroyed, and they gave him parts of Nohr and Hoshido that are somehow simultaneously habitable and possible to give to a new sovereign country without complaint!?

Yes, they're supposed to be outside Valla.

I have no idea where these tracts of land came from, I want to imagine the cold wastes to the north.

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Are you telling me that citizens of Nohr and Hoshido were one moment being told about the traitor prince who betrayed both countries and was committing acts of terrorism against each, then the next moment both kings vanish, and then suddenly a few days later the new kings of the countries both show up again hailing Dakota as a hero and donating land and presumably citizens to this guy who was mere days ago branded a traitor, and the people of these countries were fucking okay with letting this random 18 year old alleged terrorist be their king!?

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

Ah yes, and apparently this was just them skipping out for a sec while the coronation party's about to start, so I have to assume that since I'm 90% sure this is the same lake model, the new Vallite castle is just right next to fucking Castle Shirasagi.

What even is this lake, that somehow you can end up there across routes and across space. This one lake is everywhere apparently.

.....Wait, was the final map in the depths of the lake after all, but in a bubble so they could breathe?

5 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

“As King of Nohr, Xander laid the foundation for a new era of peace and prosperity for the kingdom. After marrying, he and his wife, Selena, disappeared from records. They likely lived happily ever after.”

...That's right.

You read that correctly.

Thanks to the generic mix-and-match nature of these paired endings... when you pair Xander with Selena...

...Selena goes back to Ylisse... and Xander, the king of a goddamned country, fucking follows her.

Xander, after trying to put Laslow in horny jail, deserves to be there so much more with this action.

Beautiful, just, so beautiful an example of Story Xander!

Edited February 12, 2021 by Dayni

[Jotari]

7 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Well thats one-third of Fates done! I hope Birthright is a little more exciting for you. It might be, at least part of it.

Couldn't comment much, what with the gameplay being so unremarkable.

Although as a semi-random aside, I just discovered a third Shin Megami Tensei game that mentions Dragon Veins, the second of which names them just that. All three of these predate Fates by years, the oldest being Persona 2: Eternal Punishment released back in 2000. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know whether this is traditional East Asian geomancy being referenced, or some adaption of ley lines, a European pseudo-scientific/New Age idea formulated in the 1800s and early 1900s.

I can't say I'm entirely read up on it, but I think the idea of power spots in the world is an older Asia concept that might even have inspired ley lines. For another example, if I recall correctly, there's one scene in Full Metal Alchemist where characters are trying to explain ley lines and dragon veins to each other and neither side can grasp exactly what the other means even though they're virtually the same thing.

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

I can't say I'm entirely read up on it, but I think the idea of power spots in the world is an older Asia concept that might even have inspired ley lines. For another example, if I recall correctly, there's one scene in Full Metal Alchemist where characters are trying to explain ley lines and dragon veins to each other and neither side can grasp exactly what the other means even though they're virtually the same thing.

Interesting! Thank you.

The third SMT instance of Dragon Veins made it a little confusing, because at one point they actually include an attack invoking the Dragon Veins called "Ley Line". Is that just the English translation, or is it actually in the Japanese and a conflation of the two concepts as you think the case in FMA? I don't have the answer to that.

 

2 hours ago, Dayni said:

Yes, they're supposed to be outside Valla.

I have no idea where these tracts of land came from, I want to imagine the cold wastes to the north.

Except, what royal child would want Siberia as their inheritance? Unless there is a really good fur trade, or unless Nohr and Hoshido are on the verge of discovering the uses of petroleum, uranium, and other rare resources found underground and the north is rich in them.

Although I did stumble on this image on Wikipedia:

Spoiler

Behold the Palatinate, land worthy of an Elector! Notice the Bottomless Canyon-sized gap between its two major territorial centers and the small cracks between them.

It looks like it was an exception amongst the Electorates, no other appears to have remotely had such absurd exclave issues, although the other Electorates did have an exclave here and there.

Handing out territories to make a new country, forgetting people live on them, is odd. Might not work out in the long term.

Would be better to have Xander make Corrin Duke/Duchess of Nachtland, and Ryoma Corrin Daimyo of Takamagahara, uniting the two disparate lands in a personal union. Since managing them as separate inheritances rather than as one polity would possibly be more functional, provided neither fief minded their lord/lady being absent a lot of the time in a distant land.

A thought of Dal Riata, the union of Denmark and Norway, and Roman Empire's many possessions across the Mediterranean,  makes me think it might be feasible to hold together two non-island territories that lay on opposite sides of a body of water. So maybe Corrin could get the best lands nearest the Bottomless Canyon, and to the south along the coasts of the Hoshido-Nohr Sea. Water travel was usually faster than land back then, unless weather conditions were working against you. Surprisingly, looking at all the battlefields of all three Fates campaigns, there is a huge absence of conflicts in southeastern-most Nohr.

[Sunwoo]

You know, I heard a theory a while back (can't remember where though) that Azura dies after singing her song in Birthright and Conquest because her song concerns Valla and by singing her song outside of Valla it's slowly killing her. But being in Valla bypasses the curse so that it's not doing anything to her.

[Alastor15243]

20 minutes ago, Sunwoo said:

You know, I heard a theory a while back (can't remember where though) that Azura dies after singing her song in Birthright and Conquest because her song concerns Valla and by singing her song outside of Valla it's slowly killing her. But being in Valla bypasses the curse so that it's not doing anything to her.

That's interesting, but opens up a whoooooole new can of worms about what kind of language qualifies as "triggering the curse a little".

[Jotari]

3 hours ago, Alastor15243 said:

That's interesting, but opens up a whoooooole new can of worms about what kind of language qualifies as "triggering the curse a little".

Well we do know Azura's mother managed to explain the entirety of the plot to Azura before the curse sent her the way of the dodo. So it might be less of triggering the curse a little and more that it just doesn't work instantaneously to begin with. Given Corrin knows about Valla in Conquest though, this good have easily been actually explained to the player, rather than leaving it up to use to invent headcannons so the story makes sense.

[Jotari]

Hey @Alastor15243, you're pretty knowledgble about Fates. If you class change someone to a DLC class to avoid using a master seal, and then level them up beyond level 20, and heart seal them back, do you lose the promotion bonuses they would have otherwise received promoting?

[Alastor15243]

52 minutes ago, Jotari said:

Hey @Alastor15243, you're pretty knowledgble about Fates. If you class change someone to a DLC class to avoid using a master seal, and then level them up beyond level 20, and heart seal them back, do you lose the promotion bonuses they would have otherwise received promoting?

Level them up to level 21 and they'll be promoted level 1 when you reclass them back.

[Jotari]

26 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

Level them up to level 21 and they'll be promoted level 1 when you reclass them back.

Yes, but the question is would they have identical stats to a level 1 promoted units, or would they miss out on the promotion bonuses gained by promoting them with a master seal? If they do miss out on promotion bonuses then it's far better to cash out for a master seal, but if promotion bonuses are merely the difference in the classes bases, and hence they don't miss them, then it's slightly better to level in a DLC class as you get an extra level up going from level 20->21 that someone using a master seal doesn't have access to.

[Alastor15243]

Just now, Jotari said:

Yes, but the question is would they have identical stats to a level 1 promoted units, or would they miss out on the promotion bonuses gained by promoting them with a master seal? If they do miss out on promotion bonuses then it's far better to cash out for a master seal, but if promotion bonuses are merely the difference in the classes bases, and hence they don't miss them, then it's slightly better to level in a DLC class as you get an extra level up going from level 20->21 that someone using a master seal doesn't have access to.

There technically is no such thing as promotion bonuses. Those numbers going up are your unpromoted class bonuses turning into your promoted class bonuses. When you reclass, the changing numbers are you trading the previous class's bonuses for the new one.

[Jotari]

1 minute ago, Alastor15243 said:

There technically is no such thing as promotion bonuses. Those numbers going up are your unpromoted class bonuses turning into your promoted class bonuses. When you reclass, the changing numbers are you trading the previous class's bonuses for the new one.

That's what I suspected. In which case changing to a DLC class is preferable as you get an extra level up then.

[Alastor15243]

3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

That's what I suspected. In which case changing to a DLC class is preferable as you get an extra level up then.

Yep, bit of a weird thing there, that extra level up.

[Alastor15243]

My Ranking

Alright, time for the main event of the day. Hopefully it won't take me all day with the new system.

 

Difficulty: Ugh, I'm teetering between 0 and -4. For obvious reasons I can't conceivably justify placing this shit in the same tier as Binding Blade or Shadow Dragon. But it's also far from the worst this series has had to offer. I saw the shit it did when I initially played it in 2016 and it felt like the worst thing ever, but that was because I hadn't seen, in ages or at all, the shit the older games pulled. That thing I complained about with the completely passive AI? Mystery did it first, and Mystery did it worse.

...Still though, the more I think about it, the more I'm leaning towards -4. It's certainly a mixed bag, like the description of 0 indicates, but it's not a mixed bag of good and bad, it's a mixed bag of mediocre and bad. It had moments that resembled fun difficulty, but that's all it did, resemble it. And that was basically exclusively in the second half of the game. The first half... hoooly shit. Booooooooo-ring! Yeah, really, just how unbelievably shitty the first half of this game is really needs to be taken into account. A game would have to get really good to justify starting out that dumb and boring, and Revelation merely gets mediocre.

Another thing is the complete lack of consistency in enemy design philosophy. At various stages of the game, enemies are always either a joke, disproportionately strong, or disproportionately bulky. And the disproportionate strength basically only existed in the chapters where the enemy AI barely had any aggression at all, so the end result is that taking out difficult opponents is never a challenge, just a chore.

...Yeah, I'd say this belongs in the same tier as Sacred Stones.

 

-4: Mostly dull with excessive enemy-phase combat, and/or what difficulty it has is kinda BS.

Genealogy of the Holy War, Gaiden, Revelation, Sacred Stones, Path of Radiance.

Current score: -4.

 

Ironmannability: Yep, you know what's coming. Fates, as a whole, is probably the most ironman-friendly game in the entire series. It is a criminally rare breed of Fire Emblem game that doesn't have ambush spawns, fog of war, or inescapable crits. Besides Fates, I think there's literally one other game (Echoes) that meets all of those qualifications. Two if you wanna stretch things and include Genealogy (it has ambush spawns, it's just nearly impossible for them to matter and they happen at ludicrously predictable moments).

Of course, not all three Fates routes are equal in this regard. Conquest is the only one that's perfect (or so close to it that any exception I encountered wasn't even worth registering in my brain). Birthright has a single ambush spawn that you'll never be in range of so it doesn't really matter, but more importantly, it also has an instance of tripwire reinforcements in one map that was pretty annoying. Revelation on the other hand has the tripwire reinforcements in that fake fog of war cave, and the odd bit of weird shit with its gimmicks (but not nearly as much as I remembered, as I found myself constantly finding Fates' design philosophy winning out when I cynically worried it wouldn't).

Are these enough to kick it an entire tier below where Conquest rightfully belongs?

No. No, they are not. Certainly not with Revelation. I'll have to check to see if I forgot anything extra in Birthright. So by virtue of being the first Fates game, it's our new winner for the moment. Congrats on the stupendous achievement of being part of Fates, Revelation.

 

+9: Near perfection. You can ironman blind, confident that the game won't fuck you. No ambush spawns, no fog of war, and plentiful means to recover from your mistakes.

Revelation.

Current score: 5.

 

Usability: Do I even need to justify this?

It's not perfect. The weapon rank and weapon triangle thing is a pretty annoying issue, and there's always room to improve something of course. But Fates as a whole is the best we've got. It's an objective improvement over the already-sublime interface of Awakening, with things like bulk-buying and the ability to pair up units on the prep screen and generally see your start-of-map allies' locations before battle starts. One downside I noted is that you can no longer merge or restock staves, but given this is a game where many staves are no longer infinitely buyable, I totally get why they got rid of that feature. It was a conscious choice to make sure two one-use rescue rods didn't automatically get converted into a single two-use one when put in the convoy like they would've been in Awakening. Again, great job on that whole being related to Conquest thing, Revelation.

 

+9: Near perfection. No clunkiness, and no tedious busywork between you and your strategies.

Revelation, Awakening.

Current score: 14.

 

Depth: I wish I could gush about Fates' systems here more, but I'm not really feeling the excitement yet. I never really felt the need or desire to mess around too much with reclassing in this run. The crippling nature of the game's cast balance and deployment options seemed to grind my desire to make fun builds into dust. However, yet again, it's an objective fact that all of the stuff I love about Birthright and Conquest is still here, just... undermined by the context of other categories. I'll save the in-depth gushing for Birthright, and then the full throttle Niagara Falls gushing for Conquest. Suffice to say, Fates took Awakening's systems, enhanced what was good, and profoundly fixed what was broken. Only Conquest truly does enough to get an entire tier up on Awakening, Genealogy and Thracia, but Revelation certainly does enough to be the new winner when it doesn't have to compete with its superior siblings yet.

 

+4: Lots of interesting mechanics, plenty of ways beyond stats to set allies apart.

Revelation, Awakening, Genealogy of the Holy War, Thracia 776.

Current score: 18.

 

Balance: Finally a category where I get to talk some serious shit about this game. Now, Fates in general has a couple of balance issues to be sure, mostly revolving around My Castle and the freaky weapon balancing system. Systems I will be more than happy to examine in a route that has normal balancing concerns.

Revelation is not one of those games.

HOLY SHIT is it not one of those games.

Most poor balance issues in video games come down to the developers not thinking things through, or simply lacking the superhuman foresight necessary to recognize during development what an army of diehards in Korea are going to eventually discover two years after launch.

The issues in Revelation don't feel like that. Revelation has all the hallmarks of a game that wasn't incompetently balanced so much as deliberately sabotaged. Revelation had examples of how to make a well-balanced game, or at least balanced enough to pass the smell test of the moderately balance-nose-blind Fire Emblem fanbase. It had two of them. And the devs made the conscious decision to deviate from those examples in ways that boggle the mind.

Nerfing starting levels to degrees almost unheard of in the series, or even nerfing base stats on units who already joined at too low a level for the former to work, and then reducing your deployment slots, thereby hiking up the investment required to bring along weak units to train them? In a game with basically the combined roster of two whole games? I can't pretend to know the mindset of the parties responsible. I don't know them, and I don't know about any potential extenuating circumstances. But what I do know is that the product that resulted forces me to get very, very imaginative and unkind when coming up with a mental image of the devs that's consistent with the product in front of me.

It's not as bad as Awakening, but holy shit is it as bad as Genealogy and Dark Dragon.

 

-6: You start wondering what drugs the developers were on when they designed this shit.

Genealogy of the Holy War, Dark Dragon, Revelation.

Current score: 12.

 

Pacing: Oh it's bad, make no mistake, but I can't justify putting it in the same tier as Dark Dragon and Genealogy. The sheer nonsense this game pulls with its map gimmicks is absolutely disgusting, but it will never compare to the shit I went through in Genealogy Chapter 2, or the living hell that was using the secret shop in Dark Dragon. Most crucially because this is still a modern Fire Emblem game with all the bells and whistles in terms of time-saving features, not to mention the generally faster pace that every game since the DS era has enjoyed. Still though... those fucking gimmicks. Christ.

 

-4: Baffling map design that often wastes your time with pointless tasks.

Revelation, Mystery of the Emblem Book 1, Mystery of the Emblem Book 2, Gaiden.

Current score: 8.

 

Writing: I came into this game expecting to want to be nice to the writing. Wanting to find an excuse to give it a positive score for being so bad that it's good. For Revelation, I no longer feel this way. I didn't laugh nearly as much as I expected to at the sheer stupidity of this game. It's just... dumb. Its stupidity didn't piss me off as much as Awakening because it didn't force other stories to bear the load of its ignorance and arrogance forever... but it's still beyond dumb and impossible to be emotionally invested in. Also, it doesn't even have the superb support quality that Awakening has, so really, I think it's pretty obvious where this shit goes.

 

-4: Technically a story, but distractingly impossible to take seriously due to copious writing flaws.

Awakening, Revelation, Mystery of the Emblem Book 2, Mystery of the Emblem Book 1.

Current score: 4.

 

Music: ...It is an extremely difficult call deciding whether the soundtrack of Fates or Awakening has my favorite mainline soundtrack. If we wanna throw in spinoffs, Heroes is a huge competitor too. But between Fates and Awakening, I think I ultimately have to give the title to Fates. It's just got so many awesome songs, and the DLC music in particular just takes it over the fucking moon. Dusk Falls, Far Away, Glory/Ruin, A Dark Fall, You of the Light, You of the Dark, Thorn in You, Destiny, Help Us!, Contest of Pride, Perplexing Dream, Lost in the Waves, Desire Below... if you haven't heard any of these songs, people, look them the fuck up. You will not regret it.

 

+6: Consistently gorgeous music that flows throughout.

Revelation, Awakening.

Current score: 10.

 

Presentation: I still can't think of good words for these tiers. I'll have to eventually, but coming up with words to describe what each one accomplishes just seems like a herculean and almost meaningless task. But at any rate, yeah, Revelation is the new best, because Fates is the new best. The new zoom-in feature, the addition of feet, the extra cutscenes, and even the addition of the comically ridiculous map model action scenes are all steps forward in enhancing the experience of playing this game. Not much more I can say about it, really.

 

+4: 3DS Tier.

Revelation, Awakening.

Current score: oh sweet Jesus Christ please no.

 

FINAL SCORE

1/2: Shadow Dragon/Revelation (14)

3: Path of Radiance (11)

4/5: Genealogy of the Holy War / New Mystery (3)

6: Blazing Blade (1)

7: Binding Blade (0)

8/9: Sacred Stones / Radiant Dawn (-3)

10: Awakening (-4)

11: Thracia 776 (-11)

12: Mystery of the Emblem Book 2 (-24)

13: Gaiden (-32)

14: Mystery of the Emblem Book 1 (-33)

15: Dark Dragon (-59)

 

...I was okay with it having a positive score.

...I had accepted the fact that in the grand scheme of things, taking the entire franchise into account, and due to its sheer relation to Fates, there are many, many FE games where I'd rather replay this than replay them.

...But this still just feels wrong. At least it didn't beat Shadow Dragon, but can this list last more than one fucking game before the ranking list causes dissonance again!?

The bright side is that there is practically no conceivable way that Conquest isn't going to be the best game on this list at this rate, but holy fucking shit. I just do not remotely believe that I will be equally inclined to replay this as I would Shadow Dragon come a year from now when playing Fire Emblem in my free time becomes tempting again. I'm reasonably confident that Birthright is going to deserve to beat Shadow Dragon, as it almost unquestionably will at this point... but something's wrong here. And yet... I don't know what I can do. What can I possibly do to my scoring system to get this game down to a place that feels more right?

...What place even would feel more right?

...I can't actually pinpoint a set of games on this list I concretely feel this game deserves to be sandwiched between.

...And thinking about it some more... I think I get why. I'm looking at this list wrong. I'm looking at this list and asking myself which of these games I'd be most inclined to pick up and play again some time in the future. But if I look at this list and ask myself which game I'd rather bring with me while stranded for months in an underground bunker with no other games to play... I mean its placement starts to make a bit more sense, though I still don't think it deserves to be in the same spot as Shadow Dragon.

The reason this position feels so wrong to me isn't because the game is terrible. The reason it feels so wrong to me is because Revelation is just... completely fucking pointless. That's the real takeaway I have. Ironically, the thing that's responsible for giving it such a high score, its relation to Birthright and Conquest... also strips it of any value or merit whatsoever. What conceivable reason could I have to play this game again, when merely possessing it means I already have one, probably even two games that are its equal in every way in which it was good, and its uncontested betters in nearly every way in which it sucked? It has nothing to offer. It has no value, no worth to the Fire Emblem franchise. There's no reason to go back to it! Nothing unique! Nothing special! There isn't a single positive experience I can get from this game that I couldn't duplicate with interest if I played Birthright or Conquest, except for the sheer technicality of what you can do with access to the full cast.

No other game has this problem. Aside from arguably the remakes, no other game in the series has other games offering basically everything it does, but objectively better. It's the poor man's Birthright or Conquest... but it's not actually for the poor man! You have to buy another first to get it!

Irony of ironies... my big stupid push to do this first accomplished literally nothing. Even when I haven't playlogged the other two games yet, this game still can't escape comparisons to them, because I can't forget how much fun I had with them. Really, this was a complete waste of time. I should've done it in the same order as before: Birthright, Conquest, Revelation. It would've made my commentary a lot less clumsy and awkward and “do I talk about this now?”-y. I would've been way more excited to gush about this game's mechanics if I didn't have to be reminded they exist due to how little this game makes a lot of them matter. But alas, that's hindsight for you.

And with that... we're done. We can wash our hands of this game.

Time to get to the real fun of Fire Emblem Fates.

Starting with the more casual side, my favorite go-to ironmanning junk food...

Birthright.

Stay safe, everyone.

See you on Monday.

[Shanty Pete's 1st Mate]

14 minutes ago, Alastor15243 said:

1/2: Shadow Dragon/Revelation (14)

LET'S GOHHHHHHHH, REV GANG! CHECKS FROM MISTER FUGA ARE IN THE MAIL, YEAH!

This is wild, Revelation isn't even my favorite in the series, I just like it more than most. Will be super-curious to see where Conquest and Birthright end up.

[Venger_06]

My guess was correct.

On 1/7/2021 at 9:06 PM, Maof06 said:

I wonder if we'll get a ranking where Revelation of all games is the greatest of all time just because it shares it's highs with Awakening while not being as broken.

On 1/7/2021 at 9:18 PM, Maof06 said:

Remember, there is no god.

 

10 minutes ago, Shanty Pete's 1st Mate said:

LET'S GOHHHHHHHH, REV GANG! CHECKS FROM MISTER FUGA ARE IN THE MAIL, YEAH!

This is wild, Revelation isn't even my favorite in the series, I just like it more than most. Will be super-curious to see where Conquest and Birthright end up.

Well deserved. Birthright is probably going to be the best and dethrone Shadow Dragon, as it has better balance than Rev.

[Imuabicus der Fertige]

1 hour ago, Alastor15243 said:

Usability: Do I even need to justify this?

It's not perfect. The weapon rank and weapon triangle thing is a pretty annoying issue, and there's always room to improve something of course. But Fates as a whole is the best we've got. It's an objective improvement over the already-sublime interface of Awakening, with things like bulk-buying and the ability to pair up units on the prep screen and generally see your start-of-map allies' locations before battle starts. One downside I noted is that you can no longer merge or restock staves, but given this is a game where many staves are no longer infinitely buyable, I totally get why they got rid of that feature. It was a conscious choice to make sure two one-use rescue rods didn't automatically get converted into a single two-use one when put in the convoy like they would've been in Awakening. Again, great job on that whole being related to Conquest thing, Revelation.

 

+9: Near perfection. No clunkiness, and no tedious busywork between you and your strategies.

Revelation, Awakening.

I think the only thing Fates interface lacks (if anything), is the ability to buy stuff in the map prep menu - espcially when considering utilities such as tonics. I´ve made a lot of trips between CQ chapter 10 prep and the castle - though that may just be me.

[Samz707]

Honestly I do hope that original massive script of Fates comes out, 'cause I wanna see how much of the absurd stuff (like the MyCastle Pocket dimension that gets introduced in one of the most whiplash inducing ways possible or the baby dimension) were actually part of the script or forced in by IS.

Was Revelations even a thing in that script? Did everyone still endlessly praise and want to fuck Corrin? Does Azula's singing still make no sense? Did the random Awakening Cameos exist?
 

I'm curious if the initial big script was a trainwreck too or if IS took a hacksaw taped to a chainsaw taped to a Circular Saw to the script.

Edited February 12, 2021 by Samz707