Post by Imperial Khador on Jul 19, 2016 9:10:20 GMT
Edit: I'm finally finished playing through the Revelations campaign, so the review will be down at the bottom.
So I’ve just finished the Birthright campaign for Fire Emblem Fates, and I thought I’d put down some thoughts. Beware that minor spoilers are present, but nothing I felt warranted putting in a spoiler field.
I was curious about splitting the game into two retail versions, along with an additional DLC campaign, but it seems to be working pretty well thus far, at least as a one-time venture. The Birthright campaign feels like a full story, with some suggestions that time could have taken a different path. I definitely want to check out the Conquest and Revelations campaigns, but I can see someone purchasing just Birthright, and having a satisfying time.
For reference, I played Birthright on Hard/Casual mode, so no permanent character deaths. As I’ve stated elsewhere, I like seeing all the characters’ stories, and I find that starting every chapter over each time to be cumbersome. When the 3 campaigns comprise over 80 chapters and paralogues, I don’t see any reason to artificially extend my game that way. I also like that it allows me to play in a more aggressive manner
Of the two retail campaigns, Birthright could be considered the ‘Easy’ mode, in that it has more in common with Awakening than with earlier Fire Emblem entries. Challenge levels can be attempted between main chapters for building levels and resources, and additional challenge levels can be scouted at the cost of gold. For my part, I did a fair number of challenge levels up until about chapter 10, then mostly kept to the main story and the paralogues.
Mechanically, we have several tweaks since Awakening. Although characters can still switch between classes with various items, they can no longer be set back to level 1 multiple times in order to max out starts. In general, you have 40 levels to work with, though there is a late-game expensive item that can add an addition 5 levels of room for experience growth.
Item degradation has been mostly removed, with the exception of rods for healing and various other effects. In previous games for example, an Iron Sword might be usable 30 times before breaking, the stronger Steel Sword 20 times, and the Silver Sword 15 times. Lacking limited uses, more powerful weapons generally have penalties associated with them.
For example, a Silver Sword inflicts a -2 Str/Skl penalty every time used, with the stats recovering at a rate of 1 per round. At one point during my play through, I had a powerful character cornered. She was holding her own for a while with a silver sword, but the penalties became so sever from counterattacking 5+ times per round that even though she was dodging most attacks, after a while she couldn’t do any damage. So, even though weapon degradation is mostly out, there are still reasons to carry multiple weapons per character.
The presence of child-characters returns from Awakening. I felt it was implemented better in Awakening, as Lucina is integral to the plot, arguably sharing main character status with Chrom and the Avatar. Since Chrom’s daughter came back from the future to prevent that timeline from occurring, it made sense for this to happen with other characters’ children as marriages occurred.
I wouldn’t want a repeat of the time travel, but I feel that Fates implementation is clumsy. Early in the game you get an extra-dimensional castle, which is used as a base and for a lot of the online functionality (street pass, etc). The castle is used a bit inconsistently, and seems to exist somewhat independently of the story. For example, at one point the characters are trudging through the snow complaining about provisions and the cold…as if they did not have an extradimensional fortress where they can retreat to, and where they are actively harvesting food.
The first time that two characters marry, you get a little cut scene that explains when one gets pregnant, they send their child to an extra-dimensional ‘Deeprealm” (a friend kept amusingly referring to these as ‘the baby dimension’), to be raised away from the war, and because time passes more quickly there, the children are immediately available as adult characters to recruit. In addition, even the few children that can have siblings are raised in different Deeprealms from each other, so first meet their siblings when they are adults. It doesn’t ruin the game by any means, and is ultimately optional, but it really feels like something that was added because child-characters were a popular feature in Awakening, rather than something that could be naturally worked into the story of Fates, or contributed to the story in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, while I liked this feature in Awakening and it seemed to fit that story, it didn’t work that well here, I can see this element being shoe-horned into Fire Emblem going forward.
Similarly, the main characters seem a bit shallow. In Heroes of Light and Shadow, the Avatar character shared top billing with Marth and served in-story as his bodyguard. Similarly, the Avatar in Awakening was integral to the story, but served as Chrom’s strategist, and really shared main character status with Chrom and Lucina. Having the Avatar of Fates be the primary main character (with Azura as a secondary protagonist) somehow seems to lessen the story. The other Royals of Hoshido and Nohr seemed more incidental to the story, though we’ll see if the other two campaigns change my mind there.
So, with some positives and negatives, I’d ultimately recommend Fates to either long-term fans, or newcomers to the series, but I suspect I won’t want these multi-campaign stories to be the norm going forward.
Next up, I’ll try a more traditional, resource-rare Fire Emblem experience with Conquest.
So I’ve just finished the Birthright campaign for Fire Emblem Fates, and I thought I’d put down some thoughts. Beware that minor spoilers are present, but nothing I felt warranted putting in a spoiler field.
I was curious about splitting the game into two retail versions, along with an additional DLC campaign, but it seems to be working pretty well thus far, at least as a one-time venture. The Birthright campaign feels like a full story, with some suggestions that time could have taken a different path. I definitely want to check out the Conquest and Revelations campaigns, but I can see someone purchasing just Birthright, and having a satisfying time.
For reference, I played Birthright on Hard/Casual mode, so no permanent character deaths. As I’ve stated elsewhere, I like seeing all the characters’ stories, and I find that starting every chapter over each time to be cumbersome. When the 3 campaigns comprise over 80 chapters and paralogues, I don’t see any reason to artificially extend my game that way. I also like that it allows me to play in a more aggressive manner
Of the two retail campaigns, Birthright could be considered the ‘Easy’ mode, in that it has more in common with Awakening than with earlier Fire Emblem entries. Challenge levels can be attempted between main chapters for building levels and resources, and additional challenge levels can be scouted at the cost of gold. For my part, I did a fair number of challenge levels up until about chapter 10, then mostly kept to the main story and the paralogues.
Mechanically, we have several tweaks since Awakening. Although characters can still switch between classes with various items, they can no longer be set back to level 1 multiple times in order to max out starts. In general, you have 40 levels to work with, though there is a late-game expensive item that can add an addition 5 levels of room for experience growth.
Item degradation has been mostly removed, with the exception of rods for healing and various other effects. In previous games for example, an Iron Sword might be usable 30 times before breaking, the stronger Steel Sword 20 times, and the Silver Sword 15 times. Lacking limited uses, more powerful weapons generally have penalties associated with them.
For example, a Silver Sword inflicts a -2 Str/Skl penalty every time used, with the stats recovering at a rate of 1 per round. At one point during my play through, I had a powerful character cornered. She was holding her own for a while with a silver sword, but the penalties became so sever from counterattacking 5+ times per round that even though she was dodging most attacks, after a while she couldn’t do any damage. So, even though weapon degradation is mostly out, there are still reasons to carry multiple weapons per character.
The presence of child-characters returns from Awakening. I felt it was implemented better in Awakening, as Lucina is integral to the plot, arguably sharing main character status with Chrom and the Avatar. Since Chrom’s daughter came back from the future to prevent that timeline from occurring, it made sense for this to happen with other characters’ children as marriages occurred.
I wouldn’t want a repeat of the time travel, but I feel that Fates implementation is clumsy. Early in the game you get an extra-dimensional castle, which is used as a base and for a lot of the online functionality (street pass, etc). The castle is used a bit inconsistently, and seems to exist somewhat independently of the story. For example, at one point the characters are trudging through the snow complaining about provisions and the cold…as if they did not have an extradimensional fortress where they can retreat to, and where they are actively harvesting food.
The first time that two characters marry, you get a little cut scene that explains when one gets pregnant, they send their child to an extra-dimensional ‘Deeprealm” (a friend kept amusingly referring to these as ‘the baby dimension’), to be raised away from the war, and because time passes more quickly there, the children are immediately available as adult characters to recruit. In addition, even the few children that can have siblings are raised in different Deeprealms from each other, so first meet their siblings when they are adults. It doesn’t ruin the game by any means, and is ultimately optional, but it really feels like something that was added because child-characters were a popular feature in Awakening, rather than something that could be naturally worked into the story of Fates, or contributed to the story in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, while I liked this feature in Awakening and it seemed to fit that story, it didn’t work that well here, I can see this element being shoe-horned into Fire Emblem going forward.
Similarly, the main characters seem a bit shallow. In Heroes of Light and Shadow, the Avatar character shared top billing with Marth and served in-story as his bodyguard. Similarly, the Avatar in Awakening was integral to the story, but served as Chrom’s strategist, and really shared main character status with Chrom and Lucina. Having the Avatar of Fates be the primary main character (with Azura as a secondary protagonist) somehow seems to lessen the story. The other Royals of Hoshido and Nohr seemed more incidental to the story, though we’ll see if the other two campaigns change my mind there.
So, with some positives and negatives, I’d ultimately recommend Fates to either long-term fans, or newcomers to the series, but I suspect I won’t want these multi-campaign stories to be the norm going forward.
Next up, I’ll try a more traditional, resource-rare Fire Emblem experience with Conquest.
