Fire Emblem Birthright v Conquest. (Conquest wins)

tippy2k2

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I greatly enjoy the Fire Emblem series. I thought that Awakening was the weakest of the games but overall, I still enjoy it.

So the family vacation is starting and you know what that means; I need to stock up on booze! a new 3DS game!

So I am wondering from those of you who have actually played the two; do you recommend playing both of them or should I go with just Conquest (which I've heard is more like the FE of ye olden times)? If you recommend both, do I start with the easier Birthright or the harder Conquest?

EDIT: I have decided to gamble on Conquest and I will pick up Revelation if I love it. Thank you everyone for the opinions
 

balladbird

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playing all 3 is the best way to get the whole story, certainly. If you don't have the 80 bucks to spare on the trilogy, and can only get one, Conquest is slightly better, I reckon. it's worth it just for the awesome harbor mission. though the difficulty in some other missions was more cheap than satisfying.
 

Scarim Coral

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I still haven't bought it yet. I outright refuse to buy it now due to their stupid moves on making the limited edition (all three games in one card) so limited it was sold out on preorder!!!
 

EyeReaper

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I'd recommend Conquest first, then move on to Birthright if your FE itch hasn't been fully scratched. That's what I did. (although I haven't played much more of it because I really don't feel like starting from the bottom again)

Then again, Considering I'm a normal difficulty casual mode scrub who honestly believes Awakening is the best in the series... I'm not sure I'd be considered a "true fan" by the FEfans. So take my opinions with a grain of permadeathy supersalt.

Will agree that the story isn't as good as some of the older ones. Be prepared to shout "Just fucking stab that prick already" at your screen a lot.
 

Souplex

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The writing of Conquest was so terrible that I have lost faith in the entire Fire Emblem franchise.
Maybe Birthright and Revelation are better, but I can't bare to bring myself to spend $20 a pop to find out.
 

Vahir

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Souplex said:
The writing of Conquest was so terrible that I have lost faith in the entire Fire Emblem franchise.
To be fair it's been shit since Awakening.

I would say play Conquest, since it's closer to previous games, and only buy the others if you like what you see. That way you'll be able to enjoy the gameplay, some of the best in the series so far, while avoiding shelling out the extra cash until you decide whether you actually want to know more of the story.

Revelations is... Well, it's utter fanfiction garbage. I still can't believe I forced myself to play through it.
 

Vahir

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My heart aches for the old Tellius days. Why can't Nintendo give us nice things...

Kibeth41 said:
The story of the games is alright. It's the same as almost every other Fire Emblem game (so no clue why these people are saying it's worse?). War hungry faction, your character is ultimate do-gooder, there's a dragon involved, the end.
Previous Fire Emblem games, while cheesy, had things like genocide, moral ambiguity, and actual character depth. Haven't seen any of those in a while.
 

Windcaler

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There's actually 3 different games in Fire emblem Fates. Birthright, Conquest, and Revelation. The idea of the game was you were a Hoshidan noble who was kidnapped at a young age and raised in Nohr. At chapter 6 i think you have to make a choice on who you're going to side with. Birthright is the Hoshidan side where you fight with your Birth siblings. Conquest is where you fight on the side of Nohr with the siblings that you've known all your life and have a connection with. Revelation is not choosing a side and I cant say anything more then that without spoiling it.

One of my main complaints about Birthright is the missions are very rarely anything but rout the enemy. Conquest has a much larger variety in mission types like trying to find a band of thieves leader while they slowly drain your war chest of money or stop an enemy force from boarding some ships and beating you to an objective. Revelation has less variety then Conquest but more then Birthright

I feel like Revelation was supposed to be the canon choice of the three while Birthright/conquest were afterthoughts but still worthwhile games in their own right. Revelation is my favorite but all 3 games are worth a playthrough

Some side notes. Fates brings some interesting characters to the table and rehashes or redoes some of the character types from awakening. If you are going to play all 3 (and I do recommend you play all 3 versions) I recommend you do it in the order of Birthright, then conquest, then Revelation. If you do it in that order it'll make the most sense.

Weapons also got reworked in the sense that theres no longer durability except for healing spells. If you buy say a brass spear youll have it till you sell it. That said many weapon types have some sort of bonus to their type (i.e. Brass is highly accurate, Iron is middle of the road, silver is hard hitting but decreases dodge chance, etc).

I only have 1 amiibo character and thats Lucina. I loved Lucina from awakening and I was really let down by the fact that if you have her amiibo you can recruit her but she doesnt really have anything worthwhile going on with her joining the team. I thought it could be amazing having such an interesting character join my army but she has no supports which kills what could have been awesome. The whole thing turned Lucina from an interesting an iconic character to just another body in the army. She may as well just be a captured boss because it amounts to about the same thing.

Finally theres the DLC. I dont own all of them but out of the ones Ive played the only one that I think is really worth it is the one where you can recruit Anna. I have always loved her character and she makes a fun romantic character for a male character. However she has no supports with anyone else making her usefullness questionable.
 

NPC009

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Conquest is great if you only look at the gameplay: challenging and varied map designs and missions, great stuff.

However, the story is utterly stupid. The whole changing the country from the inside thing that was advertised? Yeah, that's not happening. It's more like: if we let this tyrant invade an innocent country, everything will be okay! Conquest is mostly you running around as your fathers braindead puppet while him and his merry band of assholes commit warcrimes. Sure, the text says you're trying to rebel, but you rarely actually accomplish anything. Possibly because you and most other characters do not have a shred of common sense. That doesn't stop any of the avatar worship, though. No matter how many lives you ruin (ten thousands, just by siding with Nohr, actually), most characters think you're a pretty cool guy/gal. The final straw is possibly that Nohr actually has a decent reason to invade other countries, but it's never mentioned in Conquest.
 

KenAri

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Recently completed Birthright. It was weak in every meaning of the word, sadly. I've heard that the story writing and delivery in Conquest is awful from a lot of fans, including a friend whose opinion I trust enough to give the game a skip.
If you did not like Awakening, you won't like Birthright. It's the same game but with more emphasis on its flaws, imo.

You'll probably get bombarded with opinions in this thread, but I would honestly avoid this installation completely. I regret buying it, which is sad because I was very much looking forward to this. Great premise; flopped delivery.

On the bright side, I found a nice rom for Sacred Stones.
 

Fhqwhgod

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I may be the only person on this planet that likes Birthright ;). Yes it's very much like Awakening but as far as the story goes it's the only logical choice when you have to decide which side to join.

I haven't given Conquest or Revelation a try yet though. If you have access to WiFi on the vacation the digital version may be the way to go. You will download the path you chose after the decision for free. But you need internet access for that.
 

Fractral

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I must be a freak because I actually liked Conquest. The characters being more interesting than the bland do-gooders of Birthright along with better gameplay made it far better for me.

I really can't say which one is better; Birthright has worse gameplay and characters but a better story as well as not being totally linear like Conquest is. Conquest on the other hand has some really interesting missions (the harbor mission is my favorite by a long shot) and is more challenging, but the story doesn't make much sense. So I'd say if you have the time and money to spare pick up all three versions. I haven't finished Revelations yet (only came out a few weeks ago in the UK) but it combines the more challenging missions of conquest with the open-endedness of Birthright and sheds new light on the story of both routes. It's the definitive version, really.
 

Souplex

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Vahir said:
Souplex said:
The writing of Conquest was so terrible that I have lost faith in the entire Fire Emblem franchise.
To be fair it's been shit since Awakening.
I assumed Awakening was just a random flop and the series would go back to being good afterwards. Fates cemented that Fire Emblem will never have good writing until there are some major changes.
At least the gameplay was slightly better in Fates than Awakening. Still not as good as the GBA or Radiant games though.
And can we please stop with the children? Let us ship if we feel like shipping, but don't tie characters to it. (They even introduced gayness (Outside of Ike) to the franchise only to discourage it by locking away units and missions full of precious XP if you gay it up) At least in Awakening it made sense in the context of the sub-par story.
Edit: And please stop with the incest stuff. Please. For me Intelligent? You're better than that. Please?
 

tippy2k2

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Windcaler said:
There's actually 3 different games in Fire emblem Fates. Birthright, Conquest, and Revelation.
I knew of Revelation as well but to my knowledge, don't you buy it at a discounted price when you buy Birthright or Conquest (I don't even recall ever seeing Revelation in the stores)? I didn't include it in my list because that's how I thought it worked so I'd end up getting either Birthright or Conquest (or both) before I would even consider Revelation. If I liked the other two, then I would be able to just decide on my own if it's worth the money.
 
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5/7 Tier:
Thracia 776, Radiant Dawn, Fates: Conquest

High Tier:
Genealogy of the Holy War, Blazing Sword, Path of Radiance

Decent Tier:
Binding Blade, Heros of Light and Shadow, Fates: Birthright

Meh Tier:
Sacred Stones, Shadow Dragon, Awakening

I'm a gameplay first type of player; this is why I tend to prefer FE 10 and 14C even if their narratives are poorly presented and thought out. While I'm on the topic of story/plot/narrative/dialouge/etc... , I should say that FE 4, 7 and 9 are the best in the story department.

As you mentioned that your prefer the more traditional style of Fire Emblem games (permadeath and limited resources), then you should buy Conquest without a second thought (even if the narrative and plot leave much to be desired). While this (and my ramblings above) are slightly off-topic, I would like to mention that Genealogy of the Holy War has recently got a new, greatly enhanced fan localization by Bookofholsety, and is worth investigating if you haven't already.
 

Vahir

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Kibeth41 said:
Genocide and moral ambiguity were both featured in Conquest. I can only assume you never played the game if you're assuming they were missing.

As for character depth, it's featured in the game, but washed out due to generic mother/parent conversations, and how they sacrificed support quality for support quantity.
I played all three iterations of Fates, and I can say for certainty that none of those were present in any form. Seriously, what kind of large-scale killing is there in Fates? Certainly nothing on the scale of the Serenes plotline in FE:9.

Moral ambiguity? Don't make me laugh. The most insulting thing is that they pretended this game would have some in the marketing and setup, but when you actually play the damn game you realize that it's completely black and white, good guys vs bad guys, saints vs sinners. The villains have no redeeming qualities, or the heroes damning ones.
 

Vahir

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KenAri said:
If you did not like Awakening, you won't like Birthright. It's the same game but with more emphasis on its flaws, imo.

You'll probably get bombarded with opinions in this thread, but I would honestly avoid this installation completely. I regret buying it, which is sad because I was very much looking forward to this. Great premise; flopped delivery.
This guy's nailed it.