Poll: Fire Emblem Fates Impressions So Far (Tag Story Spoilers Please)

[Fappy]

I haven't see any discussion on the game around here since it launched last week. I'm roughly 30 hours in or so (spent most my weekend playing), and have been enjoying it quite a bit. Birthright does seem a bit easier than Awakening, though that could be due to experience. With some tweaks to the mechanics/player options it is very much the exact same gameplay.

Pros:
- Interesting character designs, especially in how the Nohr and Hoshido designs contrast.
- Pairing Up was tweaked in such a way that it requires more strategic placement of troops. Also opens up more options in combat.
- Progression/re-classing seems more restrictive. Many will say this is a con, but in games like this I like building characters within archetypes so they all feel unique. Half my army in my last Awakening playthrough had Galeforce because... why not?
- A+ pairings are a nice addition if you want to get your bromance/sisterhood of the travelling pants on.
- No more weapon degrading and more situational weapons = YES!
- New classes seem cool and the fact that some are faction specific is even cooler.

Cons:
- Paths being locked by which versions you own is awkward.
- Story is pretty mediocre (so far).
- Many of the Support stories are really lame/uninteresting. I felt like they were better in Awakening.
- The skin-shipping without the skin-shipping is super weird and I have no idea why it's even in the game. Had I not known about it being taken out I would have still found these scenes odd. Also, my characters husband kissed at me. Was really bizarre.
- The character models look marginally better than they did in Awakening. As far as I can tell they added two new features: feet and breast physics. The breast physics look hilariously weird and ridiculous on these crappy character models.
- The justification for grown, playable children is so hilariously stupid that I kind of wish you couldn't have children at all. It's the lamest explanation you could imagine.

 

[ThatOtherGirl]

I am not far in, about 8 missions I think? Playing birthright.

I haven't see any discussion on the game around here since it launched last week. I'm roughly 30 hours in or so (spent most my weekend playing), and have been enjoying it quite a bit. Birthright does seem a bit easier than Awakening, though that could be due to experience. With some tweaks to the mechanics/player options it is very much the exact same gameplay.

Pros:
- Interesting character designs, especially in how the Nohr and Hoshido designs contrast.
- Pairing Up was tweaked in such a way that it requires more strategic placement of troops. Also opens up more options in combat.
- Progression/re-classing seems more restrictive. Many will say this is a con, but in games like this I like building characters within archetypes so they all feel unique. Half my army in my last Awakening playthrough had Galeforce because... why not?

Agreed on all these points. The improvements to pairing up are very good, it now feels more like a tactical decision instead of a mandatory mechanic.

- A+ pairings are a nice addition if you want to get your bromance/sisterhood of the travelling pants on.

Yes! I love this.

- No more weapon degrading and more situational weapons = YES!

This is a big, big plus for me. I never liked the degrading weapons in the earlier fire emblem games.

- New classes seem cool and the fact that some are faction specific is even cooler.

Cons:
- Paths being locked by which versions you own is awkward.

Yeah, that was a bit awkwardly handled, it wont be so much when I get the other version.

- Story is pretty mediocre (so far). [/quote]

I'm not far in, but I would disagree based on the first sections of the game. At least compared to awakening and other FE games. This seemed to have a fairly strong start by FE standards.

Spoiler on only the very early part of the game:

Spoiler

The biggest flaw of the story so far seems to be the cartoonishly evil nature of the Nohr king. It probably gets grey later, but based on what you know at the point the decision is made there is no way the right decision could possibly be to side with Nohr. "How can you say father is evil?" Well, he did arrange for me to be an unwitting suicide bomber! That seems like a pretty shitty thing to do!

- Many of the Support stories are really lame/uninteresting. I felt like they were better in Awakening.

Not far enough through them yet to know for sure myself.

- The skin-shipping without the skin-shipping is super weird and I have no idea why it's even in the game. Had I not known about it being taken out I would have still found these scenes odd. Also, my characters husband kissed at me. Was really bizarre.

There is a mechanical benefit so they wanted to keep it in, but it is quite awkward how it has been implemented. Of course, the localization team had very few resources so it might have been the best they could do outside of fading to black, which would basically imply that every time you invite someone to your quarters you screw, so I can really see why they didn't do that.

- The character models look marginally better than they did in Awakening. As far as I can tell they added two new features: feet and breast physics. The breast physics look hilariously weird and ridiculous on these crappy character models.

I've only seen one character with significant breast physics, and it really does not fit with the out of cut scene character models, you are correct. Honestly, fan service in general doesn't fit with the kind of cutsy models they have going on.

- The justification for grown, playable children is so hilariously stupid that I kind of wish you couldn't have children at all. It's the lamest explanation you could imagine.

I have not gotten that far yet.

My pros/cons:

Pro:
- I really like the castle system so far.
- You mentioned this above, but I just want to reiterate it: The pair up system is vastly improved over the last game.
- There is actually an option for gay relationships! Yay!

Con
- There is only 1 option for gay relationships per game, so the choice is extremely limited. In fact, the type of gay relationship is limited based on your game version, no gay women on conquest and no gay men on birthright. This is fairly old news, but it bears repeating.
- The random stat growths continue to plague, characters I really like can go a few levels without any significant growth and be almost useless. It is a real problem that only adds to the reset grinding.

Other:
- I chose a female avatar, so I get a butler instead of a maid. Not sure if that is a big deal for people, but it is a thing. I would have preferred the maid, she is better than the butler bro.
- Rajaht's profile on the fire emblem wiki includes the line: "She has the best thighs in the army." I have no idea where this comes from, but it seems to be consistent across most sites. This is a significant value add for me.

 

[Fappy]

- I chose a female avatar, so I get a butler instead of a maid. Not sure if that is a big deal for people, but it is a thing. I would have preferred the maid, she is better than the butler bro.

Spoiler

You get the Maid eventually too. Around Chapter 10ish I think. Your gender only seems to affect which you get first, I believe.

 

[Paragon Fury]

I'll play Conquest while I wait for the real story. Revelations, to come out.

Also, I don't see how anyone could truthfully pick Hoshido over Nohr. So some randoms come up claiming to be your birth family, and even if they have some proof they had exactly zero hand in raising you and are basically strangers.

And you pick them over the people you've known all your life, some who raised you and who you know care about you?

Oh, and the Hoshido are about to be on the receiving end of an epic asswhooping?


AND Nohr has Camilla and Captain Justice himself. Hoshido isn't really making a strong case here.

 

[Fappy]

I'll play Conquest while I wait for the real story. Revelations, to come out.

Also, I don't see how anyone could truthfully pick Hoshido over Nohr. So some randoms come up claiming to be your birth family, and even if they have some proof they had exactly zero hand in raising you and are basically strangers.

And you pick them over the people you've known all your life, some who raised you and who you know care about you?

Oh, and the Hoshido are about to be on the receiving end of an epic asswhooping?


AND Nohr has Camilla and Captain Justice himself. Hoshido isn't really making a strong case here.

I mean, after what happens between Chapters 1 and 6 it's no surprise the main character would pick Hoshido. Don't want to get into spoiler territory, but after what your father did you'd have to be completely blinded by loyalty to go back.

 

[EyeReaper]

Chose conquest mostly out of the aesthetic, Just beat it about five minutes ago, gotta say, better than Sacred Stones, but I wouldn't put it over Awakening. Plan on getting the other two paths when I have some spending money to throw around.

Pros: Me, at this game
Castle customization and Accessories for customizing characters
Actually making the versions different, instead of the pokemon route
Has pretty good length to it

Cons:
The cutscene incompetence is through the roof. Your army gets a massive case of leadfoot whenever you can't control them
A little too incesty
Future kids shouldn't be anle to have S ranks with first gen adults, let alone make it a requirement to get every future kid. Gross.
also pretty much everything about the future kids
I can't be the only one who thinks human-hands-deer-antler-dragon form looks kinda dumb.
Xander and Leo are stupidly overpowered.

Not sure if this is good or bad, but I found the monster design in this game to be hilarious. Especially the coin faced rock golems and a certain someone's clayface inspired final form

 

[Erttheking]

No real arguments with the OP. I'm only on chapter 8 but I'm starting to get the feeling that Nohr wasn't the path the devs "Wanted" you to pick. Basically you're given a great big list of reasons why you should join Hoshido, and the only real reason given to join Nohr is your family. Don't get me wrong, I love the family in Nohr (save dear old dad) but I feel like the writers were favoring Hoshido. I mean Nohr is given a long list of reasons why you could possibly hate them. Hoshido? Two, and they're kinda stretches. The archer son is kind of a jerk to you (which barely amounts to anything as everyone always shouts him down) and Aqua/Azura was kidnapped by them, which again barely amounts to anything as she was treated well, and Nohr did the same thing and about a million other things.

A little disappointing because I was hoping for a Suikoden style plot where while Nohr is obviously brutal, we would see a more subtly bad aspect to Hoshido. As in, everyone thinks they're all great but they do things just as bad as Nohr, but they don't admit it or say "Oh well WE did it, so it's ok." Or maybe despite all of their righteous bluster, THEY were actually the ones who started the war with Nohr. Because not everyone brands "I'm obviously evil" on their foreheads the way Garon does. I was kind of hoping they would suffer from Black and White Insanity or some form of self righteous hypocrisy Granted I'm very early in so that could still happen but I got a bad feeling about it.

I still love the game so far, but this irks me. The icing on the cake is that the utterly peaceful and loving society is eastern inspired while the dark and evil society is western inspired. This also irks me. Especially since the eastern society in question was based off of feudal Japan. Which wasn't exactly very well known for how peaceful it was. So yeah. Obvious bit of cultural bias there.

 

[Fappy]

No real arguments with the OP. I'm only on chapter 8 but I'm starting to get the feeling that Nohr wasn't the path the devs "Wanted" you to pick. Basically you're given a great big list of reasons why you should join Hoshido, and the only real reason given to join Nohr is your family. Don't get me wrong, I love the family in Nohr (save dear old dad) but I feel like the writers were favoring Hoshido. I mean Nohr is given a long list of reasons why you could possibly hate them. Hoshido? Two, and they're kinda stretches. The archer son is kind of a jerk to you (which barely amounts to anything as everyone always shouts him down) and Aqua/Azura was kidnapped by them, which again barely amounts to anything as she was treated well, and Nohr did the same thing and about a million other things.

A little disappointing because I was hoping for a Suikoden style plot where while Nohr is obviously brutal, we would see a more subtly bad aspect to Hoshido. As in, everyone thinks they're all great but they do things just as bad as Nohr, but they don't admit it or say "Oh well WE did it, so it's ok." Or maybe despite all of their righteous bluster, THEY were actually the ones who started the war with Nohr. Because not everyone brands "I'm obviously evil" on their foreheads the way Garon does. I was kind of hoping they would suffer from Black and White Insanity or some form of self righteous hypocrisy Granted I'm very early in so that could still happen but I got a bad feeling about it.

I still love the game so far, but this irks me. The icing on the cake is that the utterly peaceful and loving society is eastern inspired while the dark and evil society is western inspired. This also irks me. Especially since the eastern society in question was based off of feudal Japan. Which wasn't exactly very well known for how peaceful it was. So yeah. Obvious bit of cultural bias there.

Yeah, a lot of people who have beaten Conquest would agree with you from what I have read. Still plan to play it though.

I wouldn't say Awakening had super great writing or anything, but as of Chapter 18 in Birthright it seems like Shakespeare lol. They tried to make some kind of conflicting, morally grey story about war and loyalty and utterly botched it. Seems like they should stick to the more traditional stories if this is all their writing team could muster. Maybe they shouldn't have allocated so much effort on appeasing the otaku crowd :/

Still enjoying it a lot, thankfully.

 

[Rahkshi500]

I just finished Conquest yesterday and had started up on Birthright.

I would agree you two on the morality play, Fappy and Erttheking. I was hoping that there would be some kind of grey morality going on between Hoshido and Nohr, but instead it became incredibly white and black from the get-go. I mean, I don't mind a traditional story of good vs evil, but wasn't Fire Emblem known for doing grey morality half of the time in its games? On top of that, I would say Conquest's story was rather disappointing; I mean, for it being marketed as trying to change Nohr from within, none of that actually happens. You're just doing what your old man tells you to do for most of the time, and by the time the protagonists come up with their own idea, it still ends up giving the villain what they wanted(until the last chapter). When playing through this, it felt a lot like what Suzaku was doing in season 2 in Code Geass-just doing whatever the government wanted him to do in hopes of getting some kind of change to come, only for it to never really pay off. That's not to say that I hated Conquest's story entirely: I love Nohr's cast, the difficulty spike was interesting and challenging(but admittedly also tedious and frustrating later down the line), and the final few levels were both intense and tragic at the same time, all emphasize by its glorious soundtrack.

That should be another pro for the games. The music is fantastic! Either on par with Awakening's soundtrack or better.

And a side note: there is a reason why Garon is being so cartoonishly evil, which would be revealed at the end of Conquest, but Revelations would shed more light on it and clear up some things.

The skin-shipping without the skin-shipping is super weird and I have no idea why it's even in the game. Had I not known about it being taken out I would have still found these scenes odd. Also, my characters husband kissed at me. Was really bizarre.

To each his own. I found some of the dialogue and the character reactions to be amusing and cute at times. The actual skin-shipping was awkward, and I could see why you would find it awkward. For me, though, I honestly would prefer having different kinds of options for character bonding to happen outside of only just pairing them up in battle like in Awakening.

 

[StormShaun]

Where's the "still waiting for it in the neglected Europe or Australia region" option?
In all seriousness, for us not to get a release date yet is complete bullshit, and by the time it comes out, it'll be the only thing I hate about the game, not the removed 'features' or edited "straight girl completely misunderstood" route. Although that can work in their favour.

Okay, so I don't derail the thread with that bullshit, I'll say what I'm probably going to think of it.

The story won't be anything special, and as said in here, will be too much "white vs black". But hey, I didn't expect too much from Awakening and I was surprised for a bit. So who knows what either route (of the two) or Revelations will do.

The graphics will look somewhat better, but from experiences here, feet are good, breasts are not. (Thank goodness I'm going with Hinoka.)
Which is probably going to make me hate Camilla... but then again, hey, I'm not going to like much of her anyway... because of her 'personality' and totally to not annoy Fury. (A joke, but I hear she has a motherly personality, so I won't mind.)

The characters... are tough, as I haven't got the game yet. I believe most will be good with me, but some will miss my mark well. I can only judge them by their looks so far, and I don't really don't want to do that. Connection more to the "white" faction, I'll probably like Hoshido more. (Plus I already said how I like Hinoka.)

Apart from that.
- No more weapon degrading. Yay.
- More classes and weapons. Yay.
- No more face touching. Meh.
- Your own fort/castle. Yay.
- Customization. Yay.
- No dual audio. Nay.
- Altered dialogue. *Sigh*

So much more I could add to that, but judging to reactions here, I'll probably like it.
...
...
When I get it.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

From what i have seen it doesnot looks very good. just looks like another JRPG.

 

[Fox12]

From what i have seen it doesnot looks very good. just looks like another JRPG.

It took a trip to Otaku town and never came back. What once was a thoughtful strategy game is now waifu simulator 2016. It's a bit of a pandering, fetishistic mess. The actual plot and gameplay are irrelevant now.

How long until you take and ruin X-com, Japan? How long until Total War is more about romancing Attilla-kun then it is about leading thousands of soldiers in combat? Enough is enough.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

It took a trip to Otaku town and never came back. What once was a thoughtful strategy game is now waifu simulator 2016. It's a bit of a pandering, fetishistic mess. The actual plot and gameplay are irrelevant now.

How long until you take and ruin X-com, Japan? How long until Total War is more about romancing Attilla-kun then it is about leading thousands of soldiers in combat? Enough is enough.

Except those elements have been in the series in some form for nearly twenty years, ever since Seisen no Keifu. Supports have been an integral part of the series to the point where Radiant Dawn and Shadow Dragon got backlash for downgrading or omitting them, rightfully so considering how they played a major part in what units you would use and And that also doesn't detract from how the strategy gameplay of the series is still intact and is more complex than ever. And how FE's draw was that instead of the plot anyway due to how basic the narratives tended to be.

Anyway, finally got my Special Edition copy yesterday and have been enjoying it so far. The Pair Up system being divided between Offensive and Defensive forms gives more of a strategic bent to it, not just being able to steamroll the competition especially since they can also Pair Up. I'm currently working on the Birthright path as I want to ramp up the challenge properly.

 

[CritialGaming]

I bought the collector's edition because I found one at my local Best Buy and I know how rare those things can be. So I have all three games on a single card, however this is my first Fire Emblem game and as such I started with Birthright. I love the setting and the story so far, even if it isn't particularly unique. I like the character interactions and the relationships that can develop as a result.

However I expected something a bit more interesting in terms of the combat. I don't like not having any say on what characters so in combat, and instead I have to rely on RNG to decide what character's attack and how. For a game that is supposed to be very hard, I would think that I would have to manage character positions in order to use abilities and teamwork to take down foes. Instead I stack units together and watch them do random stuff, hoping to achieve victory without taking too much damage.

Also item stats have no direct way to compare to what a given character is using. Especially in the item shops, so you end up having to either guess if something is worth buying or write down the stats and compare them in a different menu. Then you find out that (at least by Chapter 9) all the purchasable weapons are shit, or merely the same as the starting weapons. So what the fuck is the point?

The story is the only thing keeping playing through Birthright at the moment, because there really isn't much gameplay here. At least engaging gameplay. I've logged 9 hours into the game, and I have only seen the main character use his dragon attack once, on an enemy that was tissue paper. There is no challenge in RNG, only crossing your fingers not to get fucked.

I've reset the game when characters die, because they always die to some bullshit that never happens a second time repeating the map after a reset, which also makes me wonder why anyone bothers to play with permadeath on when you consider that the game will just kill characters for the sake of it. RNG isn't challenging when you have very little in ways to combat it.

Frankly I am disappointed, and will probably only finish Birthright for the story, but I doubt I'll bother with the even more Douchbaggy Conquest.

If you had a more direct effect on combat results, this game would be a blast. But 40+ hours of what basically becomes RNG chess is just not fun enough to warrant the time investment.

 

[Lightspeaker]

No release date for it yet. But honestly the more I hear about this the more I'm leaning towards not buying on launch.

From what I've seen so far about it here and there they've absolutely butchered the dialogue. Stripping and completely rewriting entire conversations in the name of 'localisation' and completely screwing up characterisation (not that that's necessarily anything new but to a far more extreme extent than is usual). Hell, one support I heard about has apparently been removed wholesale and replaced with absolutely nothing.

 

[Fappy]

From what I've seen so far about it here and there they've absolutely butchered the dialogue. Stripping and completely rewriting entire conversations in the name of 'localisation' and completely screwing up characterisation (not that that's necessarily anything new but to a far more extreme extent than is usual).

I haven't seen the original Japanese supports (I don't know Japanese), but I think the characterizations mostly shine through from what I've experienced so far. The main complaint I have regarding the supports is just that a lot of them just feel like retreads of the same cliches/themes that Awakening already used. That, and some of them are just plain boring/uneventful.

A few of them have been pretty good so far though.

Hell, one support I heard about has apparently been removed wholesale and replaced with absolutely nothing.

Wait, really? I didn't hear about that.

 

[Souplex]

I went with Conquest because I'm a grandpa/dinosaur/coot who got into the series on GBA and liked the finite resource management of the older Fire Emblems.
Mechanically it's a minute improvement over Awakening. The second seal reclassing is still there (Which because of the way skill works, mandates grinding, since you only get them by leveling up as various classes as opposed to using "Skill scroll" items like in Radiant) much to my chagrin. The pair-up system has actually developed a strategic layer as opposed to just being a thing you do all the time to have super-units on the board.

The writing is not terribly good so far. Children are still a thing, which not only doesn't fit with the story, but leads to a lot of weird gameplay quirks. The incesty stuff is really uncomfortable. It's also a little weird that a society based on Japan is portrayed as peace-loving, since the only time Japan could be considered peace-loving is post-WWII.

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

Honestly, I was worried that the game would be worse than it was.

I agree that the game was very poorly localized and/or poorly written. The dialog doesn't flow very well, and from what little of the story I've seen, it's just one animu cliche after another. Hell, you can even dress up your units and get bonuses for doing so.

But the core combat is still there, and has definitely improved over Awakening's take on it. Simply pairing your units up doesn't cut it anymore, especially since your enemies can do it as well, and your paired unit doesn't support you on offense anymore. So while the story has taken two steps backward, the combat has improved enough to make up for it.

 

[Fappy]

Honestly, I was worried that the game would be worse than it was.

I agree that the game was very poorly localized and/or poorly written. The dialog doesn't flow very well, and from what little of the story I've seen, it's just one animu cliche after another. Hell, you can even dress up your units and get bonuses for doing so.

But the core combat is still there, and has definitely improved over Awakening's take on it. Simply pairing your units up doesn't cut it anymore, especially since your enemies can do it as well, and your paired unit doesn't support you on offense anymore. So while the story has taken two steps backward, the combat has improved enough to make up for it.

For me, the actual gameplay of Awakening is what got me hooked on the franchise. Unless they seriously double-down on the otaku pandering in the next game, I think they're mostly headed in the right direction. That said, could you imagine the story being as good as the gameplay? A man can dream.

 

[Souplex]

That said, could you imagine the story being as good as the gameplay? A man can dream.

That exists, it's called Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn.
The gameplay is better, and the story is spectacular.