FIRE EMBLEM 14: Fates Retrospective - ShaneBrained

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] fire emblem fates is not an easy game to introduce where can one even begin after all when fate in and of itself consists of three games which while being fiercely independent also cannot be properly analyzed apart from one another for better or worse the three games birthright conquest and the dlc campaign revelation are all inextricably linked sharing a core that is undeniably the successor to the last game while featuring three exceedingly unique takes on those common systems as well just to be clear this is not a pokemon red pokemon blue pokemon yellow situation these three games are fire emblem 14. however each path shares only the first five missions essentially the tutorial before going in radically different directions in terms of story characters classes items and map design some assets are shared but situations are almost never the same between each game fire emblem games are not minor time investments especially not for those like myself who try to balance their work family and friends along with gaming the thought that when the time came i would need to play three entire games enough content to nearly fill an entire season's worth of retrospectives in order to properly cover them well it has always been an intimidating thought initially for the sake of my own time and well-being i thought that i could compromise on my normal process of beating each game twice instead just giving a single run to each path and then get started on this video that was my thought process until the time actually came and the games were in my hands after my first playthrough was finished i immediately knew two things one this was going to be a very very long video and two a single playthrough of each of these games was not going to be enough there was too much to learn too much to take in and too much to say for me to suddenly change my pace now i did not start this retrospective series with the absurd goal of making a massive video on each and every game in a 16 game long franchise spending two years on this project in the process just so i could take the easy path when times got hard for this video i completed every fates game twice and just like i did for awakening this meant completing them once on normal and once on hard as well as getting some extra experience with their lunatic modes and the additional dlc the fire emblem fates games are by far the most controversial entries in the fire emblem franchise and i've done my utmost to make sure that i am more than well informed enough on all of them in order to comprehensively cover them today i approached them having not only played them all in their own context but also with knowledge of the legacy and developments of the series games that came before them if you only came here to see if my opinion matches your own opinions then honestly you might just want to leave right now like it or not the fates games had a massive impact in this series and they deserve to be looked at they deserve to have their successes praised and they also deserve to have their failures criticized we definitely have a long road ahead of us so let's not waste any more time and just get started examining fire emblem fates the fire emblem series had just been saved from oblivion everything hinged on the success of the previous game awakening and incredibly it did manage to buck the trend of low sales that had haunted the series for nearly a decade straight although awakening is typically seen with a lot more nuance nowadays at the time it was extremely beloved both by critics and the many new fans it brought in and so its design decisions set the course for what would come immediately afterwards as ideas coalesced together to start forming what would become the next game fire emblem fates when examining the feedback received about awakening it was quickly determined that its story was the most contentious point for players as the team at intelligent systems set themselves to refining the parts of the game that worked previously those being the gameplay and graphics a whole new methodology was applied to writing the plot of the next game based on the producer hitoshi yamagami's memories of being forced to choose separate paths in the original fire emblem the team wished to build upon that concept now envisioning a game where the protagonists would have a totally different adventure depending on who they chose to side with initially this was visualized as two routes but yamagami felt that many players would want a third neutral route as well and so a third path was also planned to be added despite their good intentions the team had essentially just given themselves three times the normal amount of work and i imagine after the excitement of planning these routes wore off the reality of the sheer amount of work they had just signed themselves up for began to dawn on them ultimately it was decided that this was going to be too much for the team to handle in-house and so they began to look for outside riders to pitch in shin kibayashi a writer experienced in manga and television was suggested by kohei maeda who was the director of the two previous entries in the series and in december of 2012 the team met with kibayashi to pitch the project although he originally intended to reject their offer due to his already tight schedule after both he and his daughter played through a copy of fire emblem awakening that was provided during their meeting kibayashi later ultimately agreed he initially only intended to offer a simple 10-page draft however while writing kibayashi became very attached to the characters and world due to a sudden swelling of passion for this project as well as pressure from his daughter who wished for him to make the next game story even more unique and memorable his script for birthright alone grew to nearly 500 pages he wrote an equal amount of work for the conquest and revelation paths as well in the end writing enough to fill two entire books whereas intelligent systems had been struggling to figure out how they could possibly write enough material before they now had far far more written material than they could have possibly ever hoped for while the story writers at intelligent systems adapted many of the story ideas from kibayashi and then took it from there the rest of the game was also beginning to take shape once again studio anima were hired to create some beautiful cutscenes for the game following up their excellent work in awakening these would help to flesh out the two major lands of this new setting noor and hoshido which each had their own unique designs to go along with their clashing cultures the eastern hoshido was very obviously based upon japan while nora carried the more western medieval european vibe european designs have been a staple in fire emblem since the very beginning but the norians were set apart from this by being designed to be even darker having a nearly gothic themed vampiric design in the end on top of this the reimagined gameplay also began to take shape i'll be going in depth with a lot of the various gameplay tweaks that were introduced here later on in this video but suffice it to say for now the gameplay of fates represents one of the most divergent takes on the traditions of fire emblem yet on the surface fates kept the image of a newer more casual friendly style fire emblem but underneath it all was by far the most complex gameplay systems the series had ever implemented finally on june 25th 2015 the two boxed versions of fire emblem if which was the chosen title of fates in japan released exactly two weeks later on july 9th the third path revelation was released as dlc this was a tremendous amount of new fire emblem content in a very short amount of time but to the team's great delight fates like awakening was met with a huge wave of sales unbelievably receiving even more demand than the last game the special edition which this time wasn't a 3ds bundle but a version of the game that already had all three paths on it sold out within a day leading to nintendo having to release a second run of it due to a huge wave of fan complaints of the two boxed versions birthright sold slightly higher but owners of either game could purchase the alternate campaign as dlc at a reduced price by the end of 2015 fire emblem fates was one of the highest selling games in japan for the year and only a few months later in february of 2016 the games finally started releasing to the west garnering further sales success currently fire emblem fates sits as the second highest selling game in the entire franchise with the very newest game three houses having finally passed its 3 million units sold during the making of this video in november of 2020. yet again intelligent systems had managed to deliver another financial success and reviews at the time from almost every outlet were extremely positive though it has only been two years looking back on some of these reviews and comparing them with the popular perception of this game nowadays gives some extreme cultural whiplash before i start breaking down the gameplay and analyzing the story to give my own take on this we first need to understand what these games are even about due to the unique structure of fate's plot i'm going to be splitting this upcoming story synopsis into four parts the first part of the synopsis will cover the opening up until the point where the story splits and then the three following sections will cover the events of birthright conquest and revelation respectively try to remember that neither of these are the one canon story they all exist as separate possibilities if you would like to skip to any of these story segments the time codes are listed in the description but if you just want to jump right to the start of my analysis then you can go to the time code at the top of the screen on the other hand if you want to avoid all story spoilers and just get right on to the gameplay sections you can use the time code at the bottom of the screen alright everybody let's get going in three two one go [Music] deep in a nearly forgotten realm on a nameless continent split into by an abyssal canyon tensions ran high between two mighty nations within the western land of noir sequestered within a lonely fortress corrin awakened late for a training session with their eldest brother xander while the younger brother leo watched corin scored a small victory over the crown prince guaranteeing a promised reward from their father the ability to finally leave the fortress where they had been kept for years and see the outside world there to congratulate corin and escort them to their father personally were the last two royal siblings corrin's kind but overbearing big sister camilla and the extremely affectionate elise the youngest together the royals met up with lilith the stable girl who readied their mounts for the trip to the capital of noor windmire at the capitol within the mighty castle krakenberg king garen met with his children giving out a rare compliment on how mighty a warrior corn had become for their nation after confirming that noor was indeed at war with the eastern land of oshido garen saw fit to award coron with a worthy weapon the sword ganglari for them to use in the upcoming battles in order to allow korin to break in their weapon garen brought forth some hoshidin prisoners to be executed when the time came to do this act however corrin outright refused this severely disappointed the king who then decided to take matters into his own hands corin however dedicated to peace took the blow of the king themselves shielding the hoshidens and shocking everyone present when even xander was ordered to stop corin they still continued to protect the enemy with their own body in order to stop this situation from going any further prince leo used his magic to blast the hoshidens from behind ending it with this being enough to satisfy garen the king left angrily after which leo was able to reveal that on behalf of his sisters he had weakened his spell actually leaving the prisoners alive after the royal children secretly released the hoshidens in the dead of night the next day brought new commands of corin as the king requested that they perform a task for him in order to redeem their earlier disobedience the mission was simple coryn merely had to visit an abandoned fortress sitting at the border of noor and hoshido and discover if it remained serviceable though korin's siblings wished to accompany them garen's tactician iago dashed their hopes stating that this was to be a test for corin and one in which their companions had already been chosen the veteran warrior huns was to accompany them along with one of corin's retainers as well as corinne's advisor and friend the seasoned knight gunter although xander attempted to warn corin about hans who was a questionably reformed former criminal the small team of four departed and upon arriving at the fortress which stood watch over the bottomless canyon that separated the two sides of the continent they found that hoshide and soldiers were already present having technically finished their job corin intended to leave immediately heeding the warnings of the defending hoshidins however this was when hans rushed forward immediately slaying one of the opposing soldiers with blood having been spilt conflict was now unavoidable and corin was forced to seize the fortress from the hoshidens simply to stop the battle after achieving this unwanted victory powerful troops from hoshido arrived to continue the fight but before the exhausted quran could be overwhelmed all four of the norian royals appeared saving their life with even more hoshidas on the way the norians attempted a retreat with corin and gunter leaving together however while attempting this hans reappeared inexplicably attacking the old knight on the bridge causing him to plummet into the endless depths below revealing that he was merely following king garen's orders hans next moved to attack coron however before he could do so the young fighter raised their hand up instinctively changing it into a new form giving corn a burst of power that allowed them to quickly ward away the murderous warrior despite having won this fight corrin's own sword then betrayed them acting on its own and flinging them off the bridge as well before corrin could fall to their death they were surprisingly rescued by lilith the stable girl as lilith fell she prayed for strength suddenly changing into her true form that of an astral dragon using her regained power of flight she swiftly caught corin and brought them back to land as the environment within the canyon was still hostile lilith brought corin to a safe place a plane of existence known as the astral realm to serve as a personal hideaway for them in this lonely place coryn was finally able to rest and decided to emerge the next day to try to find their way back home however after reappearing by the old fortress corrin was instantly spotted and then attacked by a nearby hoshiden who took the unconscious hero with them back into their nation after awakening corrin found that the ones who had captured them were none other than the hoshidin prisoners that corrin had saved back in nor despite expecting to be treated as a prisoner corrin was instead treated with extreme honor and so they agreed to be taken back without resistance to the hoshidin capital of shirasagi upon arriving corin met with the commanding high prince ryoma the eldest brother in a hoshiden set of four royal siblings despite expecting an execution ryoma instead waited for them quietly as a second figure approached them from behind this turning out to be queen mikoto mikoto immediately recognized corin claiming that corrin was in fact her very own missing child and although this seemed unbelievable amazingly it was actually true corrin at a very young age had been kidnapped by noor and due to the trauma of this event they had lost all of their memories of not only hoshido but also of their mother and their entire childhood while the only family memories corin had now were of xander camilla leo elise and kangaroon in hoshido a second family consisting of ryoma takami and their sisters hinoka and sakura as well as queen makoto had been waiting for them all along unsure of what to do with this information coryn chose to spend some time at hoshido trying to sort out their complicated feelings between their false family that they had nonetheless come to love and their birth family who loved them but corin had completely forgotten one day while out walking coron stumbled upon a beautiful blue-haired girl singing a strange song softly by the water this girl introduced herself as azura who was actually in a similar situation to corin while corrin was a hoshiden who had been stolen away to noor azura was a norian princess who had been taken away to hoshido like corin she was treated with love by her captors but ultimately the two were originally unwilling hostages corrin had simply not known about it as long as she had azura was content to remain at hoshido however in corin's heart multiple possible paths still laid before them while korin continued to puzzle over their feelings the queen wished to put the minds of her people at ease by announcing the return of corin to the public within the plaza of shirasagi castle town while corrin and the other royals were in attendance ganglari corin's mysterious sword yet again acted on its own flying off and landing in the hands of a strange shadowy figure who used its power to cause a massive explosion to save her child mikoto rushed in front of corinne taking several fatal wounds to her back as she fell lifeless in their arms corrin mad with grief and confusion underwent a violent transformation with their full body changing into the form of a long-legged silver dragon as additional shadow invaders appeared corrin went on a rampage against them but even as the threat was ended coron seemed unable to calm down and return back to their original form azura yet again singing her mystical song approached them and though some effect seemed to be happening corin nonetheless struck her azura however remained calm begging corin to regain their true form she was successful and corrin soon transformed back this experience had unlocked corin's missing memories that of their kidnapping by king garen after he had successfully managed to trap and slay the former king of hoshido sumaraki despite the massive destruction caused by the blast and the tragic loss of queen makoto the group had little time for mourning as yet another strange occurrence immediately followed within the broken statue in the middle of the plaza the explosion had uncovered a relic the divine sword yato which was said to choose its own master and to be the key to finding peace in the world it suddenly began to move unsheathing itself from the stone and flying abruptly into the hands of corin signifying that though the events here were tragic perhaps they had all happened for a reason before the hoshidens could really process this however ryoma was informed of a massive invasion force of norians gathering at the border leading the prince to believe that they had no other choice now but all out war rushing with their siblings to the border corrin found that the norians were led by xander and the other norian royals with only a river and a bridge separating their two families corrin was called on by both sides to join them and to begin the true war together coryn considered the paths before them searching for the right way to peace they could attempt to claim their birthright with their family in hoshido or to find a way to peace through conquest with their family in nor or perhaps between both of these extremes a revelation for peace could somewhere be found after taking a long breath coryn knew what they had to do and chose [Music] after some time had passed corrin made their decision corrin could never trust garen again and so they chose to side with hoshido despite trying to bring xander to their side their brother immediately denounced them as a traitor declaring that they had been brainwashed by the hoshidins and so he began his attack attempting to bring korin back by force after stopping the norian forces corrin headed back to hoshido with azura and the rest of their new family lamenting the now unsalvageable situation with noor with this first battle behind them corin began their mission to bring down the evil king garen and so they set out to stop them first arriving at fort gina where they found sakura along with her retainers tending to the wounded there while at the fort coryn was met by a small norian force and after a brief skirmish they met with ryoma and mikoto's retainers who explained that the princes ryoma and takami were suddenly missing last seen on their way to izumo the so-called land of the gods and a neutral territory after hearing this strange story corrin immediately set out to find them and it wasn't long until they were also joined by their sister hinoka who brought along her own retainers to help them in this quest after arriving in izumo korin met with its archduke izana however izana's lacks demeanor immediately set the hoshidens on edge who now expected a trap and sure enough that was exactly what they had walked into as izana had actually been replaced by a norian imposter the mage zola after the hoshidens escaped zola's trap and met up with takami's retainers the mage tried to make his escape but was suddenly stopped by prince leo of noor at coryn's request leo begrudgingly spared zola's life before taking his leave despite the misgivings he still held for his former sibling the real izana who turned out to be just as laid back as his impostor portrayed him as confirmed that ryoma and takami did pass through the area likely headed to the bottomless canyon in order to reach the canyon corrin's group had to pass through the forest of the mokusu ninja who unbeknownst to the hoshidens had decided to side with noor and suddenly ambushed the group during this battle the army was also attacked by takomi who appeared to be under some kind of mind control to stop this azura sang her mysterious song which amazingly brought takami back to his senses who then joined with the group to finish off the rest of the attacking ninja after their victory corrin was able to reunite with ryoma's other retainer who informed them that the high prince was likely in the city of chev to reach him the group traveled by boat and after a perilous journey on the waters they arrived in serkinzia a city within the neutral kingdom of nestra although this was meant to be a short stop they found that the norians including king garen were also currently in the city using illusion magic provided by zola who had proved himself surprisingly loyal on multiple occasions since fighting him in izumo azura was successfully disguised for a performance that the evil king was planning to attend where she tried to use her magical song to pacify him although their trick seemed to work shortly after the performance the hoshidens found themselves in yet another trap as zola who had secretly been working for noor the whole time had told garen of their plans despite this betrayal zola did not actually believe that coryn was entirely in the wrong and after trying to talk some reason into king garen cruelly he was swiftly killed by the king despite his proven loyalty as the jaws of the norian trap tightened in on the hoshidens korin and the others only just managed to escape thanks to the intervention of princess elise who placed herself between the norians and the hoshidens in order to stop the horrible fighting after successfully leaving coryn noticed that azura seemed to be extremely weak seemingly having been weakened by just performing her song after much time had passed the group finally arrived in chev but were surprised to find that rather than ryoma an extremely unstable camilla was waiting for them who after being unable to convince corin to return back to the norian side instead attempted to kill them after managing to ward off her strikes korin explained their reasons for siding with hoshido and surprisingly the truth behind korin's words actually did manage to reach camilla and she saw that her beloved sibling had in fact not gone anywhere and that there were many more sides to this whole conflict than she had been led to believe before getting more time to think this through however prince leo then appeared to try and stop corin but before he could attack the hoshidens he was suddenly struck and forced to retreat by an extremely powerful general traveling along with a group of chev resistance fighters with the norians warded off the general revealed his face turning out to be none other than prince ryoma himself with the hoshiden royal family finally reunited coryn and the others were led into the chev underground hideout despite this place supposedly being safe yet again norian forces launched a surprise attack on them something which led corrin to begin suspecting that there may be a traitor amongst them after defeating the enemy the army was finally able to rest in a forest nearby that night corrin yet again heard azura singing her mysterious song approaching her near a lakeside curious about the song's powers coryn questioned her about it but before azura could respond she collapsed seeming to writhe in pain for a time after finally recovering she explained that the song she used in combination with her pendant and her royal blood granted her the power to do something similar to exercising demons and dispelling evil the cost of this power however was that her body would deteriorate with every usage due to this she only used the song when it was absolutely necessary and she already knew that by now it would very likely be needed on the day that they were going to confront garen for the last time with this disturbing detail in mind the group carried on and after many trials including saving takumi from sickness and losing a friend pointlessly at the home of the ice tribe the group arrived at the woods of the forlorn where prince leo appeared yet again spearheading an ambush upon defeating this force corrin spared their former brother offering to even let him join their company if he wished finally leo was convinced that corrin was still the same person he'd always known still leo knew he would not be able to betray his family or his country and so he refused to join them before leaving leo warned korin that xander had become much more powerful since their days sparring in the fortress and advised the group to next seek out a man known as the rainbow sage who had blessed xander with his current overwhelming power using a spell book that was given to them by the prince corrin and the others found themselves transported to the sage's home and after learning how to find him from an old man in the village they made their way up until they finally reached their goal to everyone's surprise the rainbow sage turned out to be the very same old man they had met down in the village and having proved themselves the sage blessed coran's yatto activating a power in the sword that was linked to takami's fujinyumi transforming it into the noble yato with this new empowered sword in tow the group continued on their journey steadily advancing deeper and deeper into nor fighting more and more forces summoned by the treacherous yago including another trap that forced azura to use her song an action that destroyed her body even further as they traveled the need to eliminate the king grew and grew as the tide of the war back in hoshido was getting worse by the hour by utilizing a secret passage that the rainbow sage guided them to corin's group successfully managed to sneak into the capital of noor within this seemingly abandoned city the hoshidin forces entered the underground marketplace where shockingly they found a disguised elise spending her time thanks to the friendly norian princess the group navigated their way into the catacombs beneath garen's castle while in these tunnels coryn and the others ran into camilla one last time who despite her previous doubts had still resolved to stop them after defeating her again corrin reassured camilla that they truly did intend to end the war taking whatever measures were necessary so that they could live like a family again camilla who at this point was exhausted by battle let them pass and now out of the catacombs the group stumbled upon even more norian soldiers led by hans despite their efforts to remain hidden corin and the others were quickly spotted by the enormous force and hans nearly managed to land an actual killing blow on corn one that was taken instead by lilith even though the hoshidens swiftly retaliated and eliminated hans the blow proved to be fatal for lilith who slowly passed away surrounded by her many friends as well as the hero she had just managed to repay in order to prevent any further bloodshed corrin with the help of their hoshide and siblings summoned up the courage and determination needed for the final showdown looming before them in one of the final rooms before the king's chambers the group was confronted by yago who finally revealed that the traitor in their midst was none other than takami who despite seeming to be cured after azura's song was still being used as a sleeper agent against the hoshides as a new battle took place corrin finally managed to completely purge the corrupting power within takami for good now with nothing holding them back corrin and their forces subdued the nefarious tactician whereupon leo reappeared one last time and knowing that corrin would be unable to do so ended iago's life personally proceeding further in horan found the last challenge between them and the end of this war standing in front of them their beloved brother xander challenging corin to a final duel the two clashed blades yet again this time going all out as the fighting grew fiercer and fiercer princess elise courageously took a killing blow from xander in order to protect corin asking him with her dying breath to lay his arms down for the good of noor and their family however despite his sister's tragic end zander believed that as the crown prince of noor he absolutely could not betray his country or his king no matter the cost however in his heart he had already lost the will to fight and so coryn was finally able to strike him down in xander's own final moments he lamented his burden of being born the crown prince which chained his loyalty to nor leaving him unable to choose how he wanted to act in the same way that his siblings had done despite being heartbroken at the loss of both elise and xander corrin continued on as they had finally arrived at the throne room where king garin was waiting engaging the mad king in battle corin and the others were shocked to find the noble yatto completely unable to damage the king's armor just as azura attempted to sing her magical song garen captured the princess using her as a hostage unable to make a move prince ryoma then attempted to negotiate with the mad king but also found himself powerless before garen's might though the situation seemed hopeless suddenly korin's noble yatto transformed once more this time reacting with ryoma's raijinto to become the blazing yatto and with this new power corin was finally able to hurt garen and free azura with azura's song and the power of corin sword finally the hoshidens landed heavy damage on the king however in response to this heightened challenge garen utilized his own draconic blood much like corons to transform into a massive and terrible beast with a single attack this new blight dragon destroyed the blazing yatto before turning his attention to the two hoshidin princes in order to save them corrin rushed forward to take their killing blow leaving them on the brink of death as their mind drifted they began to see their deceased friends who gave corin council and cheered them on to finish the battle reminded again of what they had been fighting for this whole time corrin asked the yato to lend them its power so that this terrible war could finally be ended reacting to this the legendary sword reformed once more and corrin rose again to finish off the king together the heroes of hoshido engaged the dragon all the while azura sang her song as powerfully as she could and after a fierce battle at last the evil of king garen was finally expunged from the world despite the hoshiden's claiming victory azura's song had taken its toll and she quickly collapsed as she lay dying at last she thanked everyone explaining that she was satisfied that she was able to help them after all before she faded away into nothing with the war finally over the hoshidens returned home where ryoma was soon crowned the new king of hoshido in attendance were the surviving norian royals leo and camilla the former of whom was to become the new king of norm one ready to enter a new era of peace with its eastern neighbor although many lives had been spent to get here finally the peace they had all been hoping for seemed to have been achieved corin knew what they had to do hoshido had been kind to them and they had found a lost family there but ultimately they could not abandon their norian siblings and moved over to their side even though korin mistrusted king garen they wished to hear his justification a statement which horrified the hoshidens who soon tried to attack believing that corin was not thinking clearly or acting of their own free will but despite their hopes these feelings were dashed when corrin fought with the norians sending the hoshidens away after traveling back to noor corrin met with garen who brushed aside their questions stating that the sword he gave them was only a sword the king then turned his questions back onto corn due to him and his tactician iago doubting their current loyalty but they ultimately backed down when xander and elise swore on their lives on corin's good faith king garen decided to leave it up to his god and looked to an image of the being known as anankos communicating with this god told garen to accept corin back into the family but only if they passed a test putting down a rebellion in the ice tribe by themselves despite their mission to do this alone corrin was joined by elise and a few allies and once in the ice tribe village miraculously corrin was able to put down the rebellion without harming any of the villagers an act that secured the loyalty of the tribe despite corin needing help from others garen did acknowledge their success before sending them off on their next task this time to capture an area known as notre sages the home of the legendary rainbow sage on the way to complete this next task coron ran into azura who had been angrily banished from hoshido due to her norian origins despite hating the land where she came from azura joined back up with the norians putting up with her homeland for the sake of helping corin achieve peace before reaching the home of the sage corrin was ambushed and attacked by prince takami at the port and after stopping his assault corrin learned that the hoshidens were already with the sage apparently holding him hostage once more fighting non-lethally corrin bested the hoshidens and met with the sage who chose to help corrin on their dark path to peace using his power to awaken the hidden strength of their legendary sword allowing it to achieve a new level of power when in resonance with another legendary weapon before corrin could even thank him however the tactician yago appeared ordering corin to kill the sage in order to appease the king thankfully corin was spared from doing this due to the sage accepting the end of their own life and so at his own will he passed away peacefully then and there once again corrin had technically executed the king's will and so back in nor their success was celebrated for their next task corrin was sent to chev where they were to put down yet another rebellion this time with the assistance of hans and a handful of the king's men corrin attempted to put down this rebellion non-lethally as before however hans and the other norians took it upon themselves to slaughter the defenseless rebels in accordance with the king's orders much to korin's horror following this tragedy corrin traveled to the neutral city of zerkinsia where garen and the others were resting from the war by enjoying an opera though corrin wished to speak to the king directly about the bloody affair in chev they put aside the issue to watch the show and to try to take their mind off it all during the show a mysterious singer in a dark dress who nobody seemed to recognize amazingly sang a strange song that had a curious effect on the king cursing him or injuring him in some way though the singer swiftly disappeared in response to this attack garen ordered local singers rounded up and killed an act that prince leo performed but unbeknownst to the king only reported that it was done without actually spilling the unnecessary blood leo warned korin that the king absolutely would not hesitate to kill anyone who defied his orders including his own children like he was doing the prince recommended that corrin follow the king's orders or at the very least present the appearance of following his orders while still doing the right thing in the end with his true nature as a hero on display the yato and leo's legendary tome bryn hilder reacted allowing corn sword to take on a new form the powerful grim yatto later while considering leo's advice and wondering where they could go from here corrin spied azura who strangely seemed to disappear into a lakeside following her into the water porin landed in a hidden new world and was suddenly assaulted by a group of shadow-like warriors similar to the creatures that had led the surprise attack that killed corin's mother in shirasagi it was then that gunter thought dead since han's assault suddenly appeared coming to korin's defense after a quick battle corrin azura and gunter had some time to talk it turned out that this place was the hidden land of vala a kingdom where time and space function differently than in the normal world this was actually the land where azura was born but she had been unable to mention it until now due to a curse that was placed upon anyone who knew of this location if she or now corrin were to speak about vala outside of the nation itself they would suddenly vanish from the world completely finally azero was able to reveal the secret behind king garen's cruelty in truth the man known as garen had died long ago and his corpse was merely being puppeted by some kind of monster a creature which was clearly a follower of the dragon god anankos korin now knew that they had to find some way to reveal this to their norian siblings and the only way they could think of was to trick the king to sit on the blessed throne of hoshido which was said to hold an enchantment that could reveal the true form of whoever sat upon it even though this meant conquering the entirety of hoshido just to make this one moment happen korin believed that this long shot was the only path still available to them and so they began to work towards making it happen soon corin and their norian allies started the invasion of hoshido after multiple painful battles korin assaulted the stronghold of fort jinya defeating the garrison of troops there and coming face to face with sakura and the hoshidin tactician yukimura despite defeating the hoshidens and promising them no harm if they agreed to lay down their weapons corin and the others were shocked when garen and his forces caught up with them and immediately started slaughtering the helpless forces regardless of their protests corrin only just managed to secure the safety of his sister sakura and yukimura but this incident only proved to korin again how much they needed to reveal the king's true distorted nature as soon as possible korin next assaulted the great wall of susano that was guarded by their brother takomi korin ultimately emerged from the siege victorious but takami refused to be taken prisoner in the same way as his sister instead throwing himself off the wall to his own apparent death strangely when coryn and the others looked to the ground takomi's body was nowhere to be found and so they continued on in order to prevent king garen from catching up and starting a new slaughter with every one of corinne's victories the norian royals quickly continued their push into the castle in another pitched battle corrin defeated hinuka but while their sister expected to find death corrin instead took her bloody lance as proof of her death and then asked her to hide knowing that if she could just stay hidden for a short time this war could be ended and garen's treachery finally revealed although confused by this hinoka agreed which left only one man standing between corin and the throne the crown prince and fearsome warrior ryoma in a terrible duel ryoma and corin clashed blades but after finally beating him corinne told him the truth that hinuka was not dead and that sakura was actually safe in their protection soon after revealing this to the crown prince king garen arrived ordering corin to kill their brother immediately the crown prince however having accepted that their sibling was telling the truth placed all of his trust in them and took his own life himself finally with nothing left standing in his way king garen entered the throne room alone ready to take his seat as the new monarch of the conquered land of hoshido while koren readied themselves to reveal garen's secret to their norian family iago suddenly attacked them calling them a traitor after discovering that hinuka's death was a deception this attack led to a split within the norian forces as the royals swiftly took corin's side knowing that they must have lied for a good reason after crushing iago once and for all korn led everyone to the throne room preparing to show them the horrible truth that they knew lay within inside the magical throne had done exactly what it was rumored to be capable of doing and king garen's true hideous form was revealed to all realizing that their father had been long gone the norians and corin took on this monster suddenly korin's grim yatto began to resonate with xander's legendary blade seacreed transforming the yato once more creating the shadow yatto with the battle now going the norian's way at last the evil beast was slain despite this seeming like the end takami reappeared covered in a horrible aura and absolutely furious at corin for taking everything away from him with one unnaturally powerful attack takami shot them landing a blow which shattered the yatto entirely and nearly killed corinne outright lost between life and death corrin met with the spirits of those that had died along the way including both ryoma and surprisingly takami korin's brothers explained that takami like garen also had their body possessed by evil and encouraged them to keep on fighting now that the peace that they had been fighting for was so close at hand with this encouragement corrin stood up again wielding a reforged yatto that was now stronger than ever after a brutal struggle against takami's terrifying power combined with azura's mysterious song corin and the others were able to destroy the demon possessing takomi's body and finally brought an end to the chaos following in the wake of this terrible victory the norians abdicated the rule of hoshido returning it back to its own people as hinuka the new queen took the throne back in nor xander was likewise crowned as the new king and together the two monarchs agreed to usher in a time of peace and to never again repeat the cycle of senseless bloodshed that had almost consumed them all [Music] corrin unwilling to betray either family decided that they simply could not pick a side despite pleading for everyone to calm down xander and ryoma both refused to lay down their weapons with no further options corin was forced to take azura and retreat from the battle while working out a place to hide and try to figure out a way to end the war azura suggested that they go to the bottomless canyon which allowed the two access to the hidden land of vala a mysterious country between dimensions that had been long forgotten following azura's advice the two arrived safely in the hidden kingdom and it was here that azura told corin the tale of valla how the once wondrous kingdom was now a shell of its former self after the devastation of anankos the dragon god azura's birth mother queen ariet the former ruler of the land had also been forced to flee bringing her daughter with her to the land of noor where she became garen's second wife azura was then able to reveal the secret behind king garen's sudden aggression and how anankos had secretly manipulated him in order to create the current crisis although horrified by this revelation corrin knew that they had to unite both of their beloved families against this true threat but doing so was not going to be a matter of simply meeting with them and talking due to a curse created by anankos any who traveled to the land of vala were restricted from telling anyone outside of the land about it even so far as speaking its name or else they would suddenly vanish in order to get around this restriction corrin decided that they would have to somehow physically bring their scattered family members together and reveal vala to them in person to this end azuro suggested that they use an upcoming event that would open a path between worlds for everyone at the bottomless canyon an event marked by a mysterious reversing of the skies above noor and hoshido despite this plan's low chance of success corin's group set out anyways starting out by traveling to hoshido after a quick skirmish at fort jinya korin was able to speak with the hoshiden tactician yukimura and their younger sister sakura although most of those present who heard korin's claims were skeptical sakura out of love decided to trust them anyway and was the first sibling to join korin's side the other hoshidens at the very least agreed to relay corrin's request of where to meet up to their respective lords corrin's group next arrived at the holy land of izumo after falling into a chilly trap set up by the norian mage zola corrin was surprised to encounter prince leo who quickly eliminated the evil trickster for them despite coming to corinth's aid leo outright dismissed their tale as insanity and soon departed exploring deeper into izumo's palace the group was able to find the archduke and shockingly prince takami although sakura vouched for corin takomi remained unconvinced at least this was until archduke izana communed with the gods and informed takomi that he would need to join corin to bring peace back to the world izana also gave corrin a mysterious clue to seek the dragon before the archduke passed away due to the cost of the ritual he'd just performed as corin continued on through hoshido their group continued to gain more and more allies as many of its best soldiers saw that corrin's convictions were genuine as their army strength continued to swell corrin soon learned that ryoma had gone to chev and might have information on how to find this mysterious dragon from izana's prophecy while traveling there by boat a group of norians led by princess camilla froze the water itself and gave corrin no other option but to fight however corrin's group managed to swiftly outmaneuver and best them due to her failure a crime for which she could face execution camilla put her life into corinth's hands and corin unsurprisingly responded by giving it right back and then suggested that camilla joined their side instead seeing that corin had been telling the truth camilla did exactly this becoming the first norian royal to join in corin's effort in the city of circenzia within the neutral land of nestra corin disembarked finding out that at that very moment the city was caught in the middle of a battle between both norian and hoshiden forces thanks to azura korin's group was able to notice the hidden third set of forces secretly interfering and causing the conflict in the first place a group of shadowy agents of vala with swift intervention corin and their group were able to destroy the group of phallites and stop the battle using the power of azura's song to calm the two sides down long enough to hear and consider corn's plea to meet up at the bottomless canyon while both agreed to leave the city the leaders of both armies still found it hard to trust corrin completely before he left ryoma gave the next clue on coryn's quest suggesting that the dragon they were seeking might be found with the assistance of the rainbow sage who was located within his pagoda while on the road this time through norian territory corrin's group managed to meet up with princess elise who swiftly joined their peace-seeking effort with her addition this meant that half of korin's siblings on both sides had joined them but the remaining four would be much harder to convince after arriving at the pagoda of notre sages corrin was quickly able to pass the sage's tests and meet with the man himself who revealed that in fact the sage was the dragon that corin had been seeking and in fact this entire conflict that the world found itself in today was just the after effects of a clash between dragons that had ended unresolved many years prior koren's yato along with the other legendary weapons held by the royal children of noor and hoshido were weapons created during an era of chaos when 12 of the world's powerful dragons battled amongst themselves including the dawn dragon hoshido the dusk dragon of noor the sage himself and the evil anankos the unification of the divine weapons wielded by heroes fighting under the same banner would be an event capable of creating the fire emblem a power that would allow corin to end the reign of the dragons once and for all in order to atone for his sins long ago the sage used the last of his lifespan to pass the rest of his power onto corin giving them the strength to wield the fire emblem in preparation for the impending final showdown with this new ability in hand corrin left for the bottomless canyon as the prophesized astral event grew ever nearer despairingly they found no one but a battalion led by hans and iago waiting for them and were soon dragged into a terrible battle corrin was forced to defend themselves until to their surprise hinoka ryoma leo and xander all arrived to join their cause at once and with the full might of both hoshido and noor's royalty as well as all of their closest friends and retainers their group swiftly turned the tide of battle with both sides now agreeing to come together under korran's leadership both xander and ryoma shook hands agreeing to halt their conflict and help the beloved sibling they both shared in their effort to bring down the larger unseen enemy finally the moment to reveal the existence avala had arrived corrin asked everyone present now to jump into the bottomless canyon a massive thing to do on faith alone even so everyone still jumped despite an attack by a fallen assassin during their transmission leading to the unfortunate death of one of ryoma's allies the group arrived safely in the land of vala and at last corin was able to outright speak the truth to them further dispelling all lingering doubts from their minds even though this group comprised of some of the strongest heroes from all through the land ononkos was still ready for them as korin's army proceeded they were met by many powerful foes including those using the cursed forms of previously passed loved ones as well as deception from lowly citizens of valla posing as innocents after eventually making their way through these defenses corrin arrived at the castle of anakos and fought their way into the throne room itself only to find it surprisingly empty it was here that gunter someone that corin trusted as much as their own family stepped forth to take the seat revealing himself as being fully possessed by anankos for some time now after fighting through the surprise assault that was suddenly launched upon them as well as freeing gunter from his possession the silent dragon anankos appeared in front of them personally in the showdown that followed to everyone's horror no weapon legendary or not could appear to so much as scratch the monster but it was in this dire moment that finally with all five legendary weapons wielded by diverse yet united heroes the yato transformed into the fire emblem taking the shape of the almighty omega yato with the balance of this battle now shifted towards humanity ononkos summoned back all of its strength and set his whole might against them breaking free of his own castle ready to unleash destruction upon those before him then vala and then every land beyond in one massive conflict corin and the others weathered through the gods sundering power destroying his form time and time again until at last every drop of life it held onto was spent and the evil of anankos was wiped from the world for good [Music] soon after with corin being crowned the new monarch avala our hero in solidarity with their brothers king xander of noor and king ryoma of hoshido finally made the peace they had all sought for together an unshakeable wonderful reality [Music] in order to even start analyzing the sheer sum of all of fate's storytelling i am going to do something a little bit unprecedented and split up my analysis into four main sections devoting the later three into my thoughts specifically about birthright conquest and revelation before getting to those in this first chapter i kind of feel like just getting the expected part over with and addressing the elephant in the room right now more so than almost any other detail about it fire emblem fates is incredibly famous for absolutely horrible writing if you've been waiting to see if this is an assessment that i agree with well wait no longer because i'm gonna break the suspense right now unquestionably yes out of all the fire emblem games i've gone through at this point fates has the worst storytelling and writing in the franchise period i'll be getting to why that is in this chapter and the subsequent story analysis chapters but with that being out of the way i do have to say that though just about everything here is of pretty low quality to be honest it isn't that bad in terms of terrible storytelling this is no the room or for a gaming example i guess sonic 06 rather than rising to the level of acceptable to good generic fantasy which most previous fire emblem games more than reached fates ranks and more at the level of a simplistic saturday morning cartoon i'm not going to exaggerate my opinions here for the sake of delivering some kind of hot take or spicy takedown fates had a lot of potential in its storytelling but at the end of the day the sum total of what it offered was ultimately a letdown from just about any angle it is not written well at all but i'd be lying if i tried to say that this made it wholly without value there are appealing aspects to these characters even if on further examination many of them are one note or just simplistically written there are appealing aspects to this plot even if some moments are under-explained and the narrative can be really really poorly paced from time to time in a nutshell the issues that lead to all of the story and writing problems in this game simply stem from incompetent planning the moment the team bit off more than they could chew and then plowed forward with it instead of adapting to it the plot and pacing of fates was destined to fail as i talked about in my development chapter the team was trying to adapt a huge amount of material into three games all in the time frame of one game's development period it's not really any wonder why the final result came out sloppy to give an example of this game's uneven storytelling prowess one need to look no further than the opening hours of every game before even getting to the path split after finishing the rather hand-holdy tutorial a few nice scenes play out with a decent pace to introduce us to corin's secluded life within the kingdom of nor how they are treated by their norian siblings as well as korin's desire to prove themselves to king garen in order to get more freedom these opening chapters do a good job at introducing us to who corn is the conflicts that exist between the royal family of norm and how despicable garen is it's honestly some of the most well-handled stuff at the game but this nice pace does not hold for long once corrin returns to hoshido and despite it seeming like those scenes should be given the same amount of care so that it's going to be hard to choose between sides later on in hoshido the storytelling starts instantly accelerating beyond reason in a super short span of time corinne starts to learn about the land of hoshido meets the hoshide and royal family learns that the queen is their real mother sees the queen assassinated transforms into a dragon for the first time fights off some spectrally summoned assassins receives a legendary sword of prophecy and then rides off to try and prevent a war between two entire nations the game goes so quickly through these story beats that even details like the queen's death are swiftly forgotten about with little remorse um just one second though can we talk about the queen's death because when i saw this i really thought that this event would lead to a lot of later scenes where our hero and the other hoshidens dealt with their grief something which would teach us about them and show the strength of their bonds and fondness for corin at least something that could make for a moment of equal intimacy to what we saw with corin's norian family and the opening these little moments are not minor they endear us to the characters focusing alone on the bigger picture and losing out on golden opportunities to connect the player to the cast or the overall narrative are indicative of one of the many issues that fates has not just in this opening but in all three story paths as well in almost every scenario the plot of the game is put on a vastly higher pedestal than the characters of the game despite how rushed to get to its big plot events the games seem on top of all of this more so than any other games in this series thus far the three fates games are also packed with filler when problems like these are isolated they are easy to brush off however all too often here they are defining to what this experience has to offer shoddy structure like this unifies the fates games and there's no path that i think stands head and shoulders above the rest another big letdown and something that i simply have to just fit in here is the big way that birthright and conquest and by extension revelation as well completely blundered the new inclusion of same-sex relationships on the positive side there are achievable gay relationships in fates that is true a female corin can achieve an s-rank support with the character rajat and a male corin can achieve an s-rank support with the character niles i do like that these are in the game and this kind of representation is long overdue the fire emblem series has had a huge focus on creating bonds between your units since genealogy of the holy war in 1996 which is almost two decades before fate's release it's ridiculous to have only been including heterosexual relationships when all of these games have such varied gender diverse casts in the past same-sex relationships have only been partially implied such as with ike and sorin in the tellius games or outright implied but not able to be acted upon such as with heather in radiant dawn i am glad that fates included these there is a lot of good intention here but almost all of it is going to be undercut when you realize that for those who don't own the dlc campaign revelation both of these same-sex relationships are path exclusive and on top of that when you actually see what these relationships contain the context can be very disappointing rajat korin's possible female love interest is the daughter of hayato a birthright exclusive character similar to tharja in awakening her personality quirk is that of an obsessive stalker an awakening where the whole cast was sometimes aggressively quirky this was less of a problem tharja was on the extreme side of that game's oddball character scale and given her popularity it's natural to want to make a reference character in the next game however when that character who has such an aggressive quirk is the token gay character it paints the whole inclusion in a really bad light unfortunately the same is also true with niles the possible male love interest for corn exclusive to conquest putting aside nile's whole oil wrestling suggestion he's a character that describes himself to corrin as having had a broken past now a character in a fire emblem game having had a hard life is absolutely nothing new and of course it's no surprise that any gay or straight character in one of these games would have some kind of baggage that's kind of the idea behind breaking up the support conversations into multiple levels characters become more open about themselves as trust with another character builds however the implication of gay people having come from broken paths or homes in our real world is a very real issue and when it's a token gay character fulfilling tropes like these it again creates a very bad look for the developers as if intelligent systems simply didn't know any better and were specifically choosing to play into negative stereotypes which i really hope was not the case i haven't even gone into other examples of fates's bad writing in this context such as the well-known issue of soleil coming off more as a sexual predator than a flirt but i think it suffices to say that there is a lot to improve upon in this regard and as much as i appreciate what small steps intelligent systems took i really do hope to see better than this in the upcoming games well with that being said it's time to move on to the following sections where i'll be taking a closer look at each game individually and seeing what they offer [Music] let's start out on a positive note when all is said and done birthright just barely manages to be the most well written out of the three fates paths that might be damning with faint praise but for multiple reasons it is the truth there were more moments in this path that were legitimately well handled than any others birthright was the path that i tackled first and after hearing so much about this game's story and characters when looking back at my overall journey i was surprised at what a positive feeling i still had about it all especially concerning a few infamous characters the first of which i want to talk about is camilla given her reputation i was expecting her to be nothing else than a fan service delivery mechanism while it is true that the cinematics of these games as beautiful as they are definitely lean way too into her assets i was actually pretty shocked to find out that in birthright she is pardon the pun a very well-rounded character it made sense that given her attachment to corin that them suddenly defecting into hoshido would lead her into a mental shutdown and this seemed the easy way to write her into a suicidal battle that could lead to her exit from the game via death instead however she does calm down and like a reasonable person truly listens to what corin has to say which leads to her more interesting conflict later on where she's torn between helping corin or staying loyal to her family it might seem weird to start out the birthright reaction chapter by breaking down my opinion on a norian character but just in general the stress caused by korn's defection gives the norians all the more chance to have nuanced and difficult reactions to the situation which made for some of the best writing out of my entire time with fates of course they do have kind of a benefit in my opinion the norian characters especially the royals make up the better part of fire emblem fate's cast but even still princess elise has a more simplistic but still enjoyable role in the plot but the very best scenes all belong to prince leo the best character out of the entire fates cast truly the encounter with him in chapter 18 in the forlorn woods is fantastic and entirely subverted my expectations with a remarkably sober and enjoyable dialogue exchange that stood head and shoulders above any other moment in this game at the very least i can say that on the whole it's not a distasteful game to play through this being said there are some really rough spots that i can't ignore the utterly pointless death of flora stands out as the absolute worst moment in the game where the writing becomes the most contrived to get to the big dramatic plot beats while disregarding actual character motivation and reasoning on top of this i haven't really brought up the big problem that left many other fans upset and of course that's the conclusion of the story of the last remaining norian royal xander when it comes to xander rather than him choosing to side with corin or to get out of their way a decision that all of his siblings got to make he justifies his actions by saying he's bound to them due to being the crown prince of nor xander didn't want to kill corrin but he refused to dishonor his country and so dedicated his life to defeating them all the same this essentially makes him the camus of this game aka the likable enemy general trope that has to die for the sake of the drama honestly the reasoning behind xander making this decision actually does make a lot of sense to me and in fact is a lot more sensible than the average kamu archetype i was on board with this up until the death of elise of all the siblings on either side elise was the one that i thought for sure would not die being the youngest and the most innocent it seemed like the game would be breaking its tone to do something so cruel of course this is exactly what happened and in a sense i do respect that birthright had the guts to do it and in fact one thing that i really like about this multi-game setup is that the story writers don't have to be afraid of pulling off surprising and cruel character deaths something that every single one of these games except for one hasn't done elise's death was shocking to me and the point seemed to be to show how sometimes due to mistaken honor like xander's the innocents are the one who suffer if there was anything that could break a camus out of their pointless fatalism this would be it i thought something that would make for an interesting twist on the trope i thought if we're being honest the only reason i think that xander had to die here even after literally cutting his innocent little sister to shreds was because this is a fire emblem game he was the kamu archetype and both the norian and hoshiden paths need to end with two royals dead in order to reach an unsatisfactory artificially tragic conclusion in my heart i worry that the reason why birthright and also conquest 2 have such unsatisfactory endings is because they wanted to push people towards the revelation middle ground path it seems to be suggesting that players who want an actual happy ending are going to have to reach for their wallets of course a mostly inoffensive plot with generally unsatisfactory conclusions is about as good as it gets when it comes to this game however fire emblem games storytelling can't be analyzed by focusing on the plot alone part of appreciating each new game is in meeting the cast of characters and with the previous game awakening placing such a huge emphasis on its cast i fully expected birthright and the other fates games to do so as well after experiencing each one it turns out that my assessment was correct however as you might expect fates does this to much more mixed results than almost any previous game that used a support conversation system i'm going to add in a brief aside about my thoughts on the cast of each one of these games in these more specific analysis chapters and birthright's cast offers a great chance to point out some of the issues not only with its own cast of characters but also the way that support conversations were handled in this game in general first of all birthright's cast is fine through my multiple playthroughs of this game i tried to use all of them at least for a bit and i naturally tried to develop some support relationships that i thought would be interesting on top of this i also sought out advice on pairings from my community as well as going online and reading several support conversations there too all in all i like birthright's cast but it would be a stretch to say that any of them other than the royals end up being especially deep some of my favorites in the birthright cast were the priest azamah and the kitsune fighter kaiden but regardless of who i did and didn't like i couldn't help but notice some strange changes to how the various support conversations were held in this game and this was a trend that followed through on the other two fates games i suppose the best way to put it is like this rather than these conversations being written like three separate encounters it feels like the developers wrote a single long conversation for each pair and then cut it up into thirds this is why over and over again second and third conversations will always use something to the effect of anyways let's pick up where we left off before jumping right back into an older topic and continuing where they left off once you notice this trend you'll never stop seeing it and to me it just comes off as a way to cut corners something that doesn't pair well with the very simplistic personalities and generally worse written dialogue for this game when compared to awakening something which is a really big letdown given the extremely well designed cast for all of these games overall experiencing the story and characters of birthright set an extremely low bar that incredibly the later two games would turn out unable to clear but yet again each of these three games does have something worthwhile to offer let's go over to see what that is in conquest next [Music] to be honest at first glance conquest was the storyline that i thought i was going to enjoy the most from the opening chapters garen was displayed as being such a deplorable character that the thought of willingly choosing to go back to his side after he had basically nuked hoshido and tried to murder corin was so outrageous of a concept that i was super curious as to how the game could possibly justify it it turns out that they don't do that in order to make the story of conquest work absolutely every character from corin the norians hoshidens agueron everyone has to completely lose all sense and start acting wildly out of character in order to be strung along by one of the weakest progression goals i've ever heard of in any work of media okay here's the story corrin through whatever mental gymnastics you want to come up with decides that they need to give garen a chance even if you try to say that maybe the sword explosion wasn't garen's plan corrin did know that he already tried to assassinate them with hans but whatever corinne wanted to give him another chance and needed to hear his side of the story corrin goes back to him and asks him why and has their question quickly brushed off after this corin just kind of gives in easily and the story is left with little direction so in order to give it some kind of forward progress corrin learns about vala by randomly following a zero one day if you're still wondering how i can possibly prefer birthright over either conquest or revelation keep in mind that in birthright at least vala never comes up which is definitely a positive because just about everything to do with vala especially the you can't talk about vala curse is arbitrary and cheap this is just as dumb if not worse actually as the blood-packed plot device that was used in radio dawn so by way of a plot convenient caveat corrin can't just tell their siblings about the demon pretending to be garen and so the only way that they can think to possibly expose him is to conquer an entire other country which will lead to the countless deaths of so many on both sides in order to take down garen coren has to fulfill his plans and make him more and more powerful hoping that the throne of hoshido that they heard and never witnessed had some kind of magical power could possibly reveal the king's true form and then hope that they could possibly beat him in the reviews of fates at the time of its release given the night and day aesthetic that was used to contrast birthright and conquest it's not surprising that many outlets called noir the villain path of the game i wish i could say that that analysis is wrong but honestly the assessment is correct corin's goal in this game is so ridiculously irresponsible that i wound up disliking them more than the actual main villain corin and the others obviously still see themselves as the heroes even after their plans lead to slaughter after slaughter if you're going to make an evil path then just make it actually be evil i don't think most players mind playing as a distasteful or morally bad character i think people have had too much fun being in fallout or doing the assassination guilds and the eldest roles games to generally say otherwise garen is evil because at the end of the day he just really loves being evil and hurting people corrin on the other hand does evil only because they're too foolish in the game to do otherwise say what you will about playing as the bad guy but i'd prefer to play as a smart bad guy than someone who just causes horrible things because they're too stupid or written too stupidly to do otherwise a huge saving grace of birthright was experiencing the struggles of corin's norian family members from the perspective of an enemy and the equivalent of meeting corrin's hoshidin family in battle from this side of the story does make them more interesting but is on the whole less effective this is another fallout of the weak hoshide inside interactions during the rushed half of the opening chapters but there is evidence that something still could have been salvaged here i say this because in a rather ironic twist while birthright handled three out of its four norian royals extremely well with the only fumbled one unfortunately being the most important one of all conquest has the exact opposite problem by this i mean that only one luckily the most important of all is handled well while the others have more issues interactions with sakura and hinoka are generally extremely forgettable and takomi's whole deal is more just a setup for him being the surprise anticlimactic final boss but i have to say that ryoma's duel and the conversation with him afterwards were actually successful his decision to fully trust corrine and take his own life in order to spite the king and help achieve corn's goal as dumb as that was was actually really well handled and suitably tragic again it does feel like this whole situation was thought of first before the designers decided how they'd get to it but at least i can kind of follow the thought process of the character here in other words i believe that ryamo actually would make this choice not just the writers although the overall thrust of the narrative is disappointing the cast of conquest is its major saving grace of course the norian royals in my opinion are just the best characters in these games but when it came to the rest of the cast there is still a lot to like with some of my favorites being niles keaton laszlo selena and of course odin dark the last three in particular are what linked this game to awakenings world with them actually being inigo severa and a wayne aka the children of olivia cordelia and lissa the way that these three interact with each other in their supports wound up being some of the most interesting supports i found in any of my runs in a big way the more interesting cast did a lot to counterbalance the big flaws of conquest narrative just like with birthright it is a mixed bag and maybe it's just me but without even the semblance of logic to ascribe to the main character's actions i simply could not appreciate the story on offer here over either of the other two even when those games have their own very obvious issues especially the next one i'm going to talk about revelation well it's time to finally start talking about revelation in isolation and before i even begin boy oh boy do i have an axe to grind not with the game necessarily but with how the fire emblem community manages expectations about this game naturally as i have made my way through this series i've received many messages from people trying to warn me about various aspects of these games when i finished genealogy of the holy war i had people telling me to watch out for thracia how it would make me break my controller or give up on making this retrospective series it turns out thracia 776 is just a video game for every difficult part it had its own counterbalance and a big part of my own video on that game was explaining to people how thrashia was not just one single thing and how its challenge sat alongside some very prevalent power systems that allowed you to tackle it fairly although this is in a slightly different context the exact same story played out as i got closer and closer to fates people recommended that i just skip revelation that playing through it was just too much of a horrible painful experience and once i reported on social media that i had finished playing all the fates games i got more messages praising me like i was some kind of martyr for having the bravery to play through a video game having played through revelation twice i don't see what the big deal is other than the fact that yes it is heavily flawed in both its story and gameplay something that is true for all three of these games by the way i am sorry but i've spent over 150 hours in the world of fates and i'm just going to say it like it is revelation is just another fates game this isn't a case of the good the bland and the bad this is a case of all three games containing both really good and really bad ideas i have not and i will not ascribe myself to this insane notion that you can only love a thing or hate a thing you can only praise or you can only criticize i'm sorry if a nuanced take isn't an easily boxed statement but people pigeonholing opinions because they are unwilling or too lazy to accept a more complex assessment is absolutely antithetical to what i'm trying to do here i've seen it happen with my videos and i hate it now that that's out of the way i guess i can actually talk about what this game is and not what it is simply perceived to be in a nutshell revelation is the game where both sides of corin's family stop being written to be willfully ignorant and start acting in a more reasonable manner rather than having to wait the whole game for the most important characters to start acting like adults like we did in birthright and conquest revelation really gets this going after chapter 17 when both sides have come together it could have been really great unlike the others revelation actually did have the potential to not only be better than what it is but to be by far the best of the three stories and the most definitive of the fates games instead yet again lazy writing and poor story structure pretty much kill this ideal in order to get all of its characters and story points into place revelation far more than the other two games uses every cheap trick in the book to force the narrative into a certain direction the incredibly stupid plot point of you can't talk about vala outside of bala or else you'll die because of some unexplained curse is leaned on incredibly heavily even more heavily than the conquest path for the first half of this entire game after playing through both birthright and conquest i was very curious how the writers were going to justify xander and ryoma not immediately siding with corin and when i learned that this entire third story hinged on the vala curse plot i was ready to call this one my least favorite but things do get better although the reason why both sides are initially hostile to corin and can't believe them before they eventually see eye to eye are incredibly contrived once the two sides do get together revelation actually does deliver at least somewhat on the concept of having a middle ground story actually pay off by letting you explore the game with both sides simultaneously it's for this same reason that the support conversations in revelation quickly became my favorite i always found myself wondering about various different combinations and having the freedom to pair hoshidens and norians as well as the royals together was a lot of fun by the time i played through revelation having learned about each cast from my playthroughs of birthright and conquest simply satisfying my curiosity and occasionally finding the few really good conversations actually did justice to my anticipation and curiosity while getting to play with the full cast was really fun and revelation storytelling definitely did improve once they got together unfortunately the game is unable to maintain this momentum for long in yet another case of an incredibly obvious missed opportunity something very common in fates when we finally do get to explore the land of vala our only real chance to dig in and do so in any of these three games the story is in such a rush to get to the end that almost no time is spent to teach us about its culture or history this is the country that corin is going to lead at the end and yet we only need one living npc from it carrying about as much weight as the abrupt and pointless zola subplot of birthright due to the near constant flood of issues with how the fates games were planned out and written as i continued to experience situations like this over time i eventually learned to accept that there would just be a limit to the amount of enjoyment i was going to get out of the stories and characters that were on offer here while i disagree when people lump awakening in with this sentiment the fates games actually are as shallow as they are accused of being by the fandom at large i'm not going to exaggerate and say that any one of them is far better or far worse than any of the others yes birthright was the one that i enjoyed the most but this was by inches not by miles fate's story isn't trash but it is certainly no treasure in the moment-to-moment experience going through the story of fates is fine in most cases the biggest sloppiest or laziest mistakes find themselves quickly counterbalanced by some other enjoyable or charming aspect it's a strange balance but it's not one that made it wholly unpalatable for me i hope after all this time i've said just about all i have to say about the stories of fates because we still have a lot of ground to cover in front of us as we finally move on to the gameplay [Music] as a function of making this series and researching the development of each fire emblem game i watched as the natural distinctions between different types of fire emblem players moved from being something completely in the background seemingly unknown to the developers to being a front and center concern for each upcoming game unlike other series it is impossible to appease both casual and hardcore fans a fire emblem without creating some kind of detriment for one of the sides just imagine if during a fire emblem new mystery of the emblem or fire emblem awakenings development in an effort to appeal to more casual players the development team had chosen to completely remove the permadeath system as their new series direction instead of just making it a casual mode option and how long time fans would have reacted to such an irreversible change typically the fire emblem series has looked for reasonable compromises when trying to expand their appeal and to me the direction it took with its gameplay has consistently been fair compared to many other series which have nearly abandoned their original gameplay styles such as castlevania resident evil and the legend of zelda the fact that 14 games and 25 years in fire emblem fates still feels like fire emblem shows how remarkably faithful the series actually has been while awakening took the series a bit too far away from what it previously had been something that may have begun to isolate veteran fans from this series the three fates games offer one of the cleverest ways of appealing to both the new and longtime fans alike the simple answer they found was to use the fact that they were making three games to their advantage and unlike most other paired experiences in gaming each fates game turned out to be tremendously different in gameplay goals and design it's going to be nearly impossible for me to recommend any one of these games over the other because we're not just comparing apples to apples when looking at them next to each other as i said there are lots of ways to enjoy fire emblem and each of these games do have significant differences it's ultimately going to come down to what appeals to you most birthright is by far the easiest of the three and was specifically made to appeal to newcomers to the series on top of this the map design was also made to be straightforward and featured far more open multi-approach maps it's no surprise that birthright became the highest selling of the two box versions of fates in just about every way it was made to be welcoming and simple to understand while i would say that yes birthright definitely is one of the best games for new players to start with its overt focus on making it so welcoming maybe went a step too far thankfully this isn't too big of a deal because conquest and revelation both exist but birthright does have the problem of sometimes being too easy for its own good even on higher difficulties birthright can be annoyingly unchallenging for a fire emblem veteran there really isn't that much else to dig into this might be the reason why birthright is often seen as if not outright boring than just simply forgettable a second reason for this might be simply due to the fact that birthright released on the same day as conquest and fittingly the two games do have a stark contrast with each other unlike birthright conquest absolutely was designed to appeal to fire emblem veterans going so far as to completely remove the ability to grind levels with extra battles of course unless you bought the dlc and instead focus on far more linear goal-based maps on normal conquest is quite the challenge in places even for a seasoned player and on heart and above the game is quite possibly one of the most brutal experiences to be found in the franchise compared to its closest difficulty analog thratia 776 fire emblem conquest requires its players to seriously consider every choice they make but while thracia offered multiple routes to gradually build up units who were capable of taking on the immense late-game threats conquest goes a step further than this pushing the enemy's potential higher and higher in order to keep on pressuring players up until the final turns of its last map i've read enough comments to know that this is exactly what a lot of fire emblem players are looking for and while i think i've made it clear that i can definitely appreciate a challenge in some ways it does go a little bit too far for me personally i find it far less satisfying to beat a cheating enemy than a fair one and so as i fought through rooms of ridiculously souped-up forces capable of one turn killing my carefully planned out max level units as well as mages that could throw out infinite debuffs from an unreachable location on top of level hazards that could turn a careful approach into a series of casualties at an instant i ended up coming away a bit more stressed than satisfied from many of its late game missions much like with ratia i was extremely proud to have beaten the game especially on hard but i also had the same exhausted feeling of not really wanting to touch this game any time again soon this brings us to the third path revelation and given the whole premise of its story in terms of gameplay it was also built to be a middle path although this is true in certain ways ultimately revelation is not the dead center path it depicts itself as in practice it leans way more in the birthright direction with its open map grinding optional chapter structure however its own large variety of map designs and somewhat strange new level mechanics also give it an identity all its own you almost can't say anything about revelations overall map design on the internet without hearing time and time again about one or two of the game's most infamous levels again like i had to do with the story i feel the need to go ahead and head this off revelation has a lot of problems however just like birthright and conquest it is still built off the same fundamentals which as i'll get into later are excellent like the other two games it contains both great and terrible decisions yes there is a pretty tedious map where you have to break up heavy blocks of snow to proceed through the level and get to the boss however if you were to ask me if this is a totally worthless idea i would certainly say no i actually think the idea of a procedural dungeon type map where you have to uncover the waiting threats while carefully choosing where you'll be for the later attacks that can possibly come when you reveal the map is actually an interesting concept to me the worst thing about this map is that it comes around so early before you have many characters available to you if you imagine doing the same map with a group of say 12 allies it suddenly becomes a lot more flexible where you can spend your actions to break the snow without putting yourself totally at the whim of the newly revealed enemies it may have just been the shock of discovering that after all of the negative buildup revelation was just another fates game and not some kind of slap in the face but both of my runs of revelation were actually extremely pleasant i have played plenty of other fire emblem games with a few extremely tedious parts or chapters but i still managed to get through them and was able to separate the good parts from the bad all the same revelation in particular is a game of extreme contrast and there are praises and criticisms i would make for it that really stunned me to remember that they come from the same place for example how is it that this game both contains the most tedious levels in all of fates but also has the best final boss map of the three as well as possibly one of the best boss maps in the entire series how is it that this is the game that brings back the poorly done stealth mechanic from path of radiance and fixes it all in a way that shows that the team clearly learned from their mistakes in fire emblem 9 but when you play the same map on hard mode and above they completely break the mechanics that they fixed in normal making it seem as if they truly learned nothing at all this kind of dichotomy is baffling to me even today however provided you are going into the game with a reasonably open mind i think that revelation does have a lot to offer a lot of which gets overshadowed by the overblown toxic way that people talk about it of course one of the biggest new features of fates and all of these three games are the dragon veins which when used by characters with royal blood are able to change features of the map and evolve them in certain ways there is a lot to say about this system however the way in which they are used tends to reflect the overall design goals of each fates game for example the dragon veins in birthright often bring in simple convenience effects such as creating passive or direct healing areas permanently clearing out stage hazards or turning difficult or impassable terrain into traversable spaces with that last one in particular turning the traditional slog of a desert map into one of my favorites thus far in the series if we jump over to the more hostile design goals of conquest the dragon veins are used to take their level concepts to insane new heights some of these include exploding medicine and poison pots that inflict chapter permanent stat changes on you and your foes as well as activating map wide wind gusts that force movement of units standing in the way freezing all enemies for one turn on a map with overwhelming numbers or my absolute favorite of these creating doppelgangers of your party on a separate part of the map which utilize identical actively updating stats and inventories of your alternate units it sounds somewhat simple but in practice this last one feels like playing two games of fire emblem at once while the shared stats made it a lot easier to digest while in many ways revelation is based on an extension of birthright's design goals the ways in which it uses its dragon vane gimmicks is definitely the place where it is in the dead center between both it and conquest and in some ways handles them even better instead of completely removing stage hazards the dragon veins of revelation might turn off map hazards but only for a single turn or changing the capabilities of your enemies depending on what color room they're in at the time something which can both make the game easier or harder depending on how you use it because revelation came out slightly after the two boxed versions and was meant to be the middle path the game does use a lot of the same maps as the other games but usually mixes them up while this has surely also contributed to its pretty reviled reputation in some ways this isn't entirely a bad thing for one thing getting to return to the doppelganger mechanic but with a full party this time unlike the mission and conquest where you had to use a minimal crew was exactly what i wanted to do in that map all along when looked at together birthright conquest and revelation all have far more in common than not again i would hesitate to make any set in stone value judgment of them because they all have very different goals but if i were asked which one i thought was the best which one i thought was the most memorable and which one was my personal favorite i would probably have three different answers for you for sure while there have been huge leaps forward spread throughout the fire emblem series development few games thus far have represented such a massive influx of new ideas and reworking of mechanics like fire emblem fates this seems obvious after all this is basically three whole games but the truth is though each individual game has a very distinct personality and design focus even if fates were only a single game the amount of new topics to cover here would already be far beyond the norm some of these are extremely new takes on various systems from the series past and some of them are completely original to these games before even getting to any major gameplay changes i feel the need to tackle one of fate's more understated but undeniably sweeping changes and that is the complete revamping of the my castle system having a place for your party to rest shop and socialize between chapters has been a staple throughout fire emblem but this idea has been evolving throughout various games taking the shape of a simple menu for inventory management and mystery of the emblem to a much more fully structured version in genealogy of the holy war before going back to a simple preparation menu in the games afterwards until it became a lot more literal again in path of radiance all of these are the predecessors to the fully customizable upgradable and actually navigable version that fates brings with just about the thinnest justification possible the dimension hopping capabilities of some characters and fates allows for what these castle system developments showed evidence of all along that being some kind of plot justifiable way to have a castle that somehow travels with the player and finally they actually just went and did it it makes almost no sense but they did it while the justification for why corn has this space to customize requires looking past a lot of sloppy writing something which is equally true for the deep realms pocket dimension explanation for why you can have child characters in this game even still the payoff for accepting this bad writing regardless and having this castle to customize i think is actually really really worth it although everything here could have been done with a simple menu instead you have a very open space to build your actual shops later upgrade them move them around as well as redecorate the entire castle with a selection of styles on top of being able to change up your soundtrack although you run around the castle from a top-down perspective with just the push of a button you can get a ground view of your buildings and units using the battle animations 3d models and backgrounds i just have to be honest here and i don't know the reason why but i really really love fully explorable or customizable hub worlds i've loved it in more recent games like fate extello link and nintendo land and i loved it in super mario 64 which was probably the first time i ever encountered it i don't know why but it just really really appeals to me maybe i'm crazy so make a comment if you also feel the same in my case being able to build my own shops place them wherever i wanted make little nooks and crannies for corn to go shopping at as well as being able to see how their models became more complex as i upgraded them always held some kind of strange thrill for me i know this is probably irrelevant for a lot of people but as far as i'm concerned this is one of the strangely best changes ever with my biggest disappointment being that i can't just run around it in 3d from the ground perspective the whole time moving away from my own admittedly strange bias the places that you build and when you choose to build them here do add a lot of depth to the game as they can really affect the timing when you get access to various items or other systems of the game in a big way and through these meta decisions we actually have one of the biggest changes to fire emblem's army management system yet on top of affecting when you do get familiar services like the forge and arena again there are a lot of changes to cover here as well starting out with the forge rather than simply buying a newly forged weapon you now need to use new crafting materials and critically you also need to provide extra copies of weapons that basically merge together to create one stronger weapon due to some shops having only a limited number of stronger weapons which itself is determined by the level of your shop using the forge is a much more occasional service that is unless you're playing online and can pretty much get all the materials you need personally i managed to finish all of these games both on normal and hard without using the online service extensively but i admit that as much as i think that the merging weapons as a second component is a really good idea randomizing what materials you can naturally get without going online is a really big disappointment it's just going to spoil a system of this game when the servers eventually go down in a way that the previous games that didn't have to rely on online modes would never have to worry about next up we have changes to the arena which now rather than giving you experience at the risk of losing gold or your own units lives the arena instead gives you a once per between battle chance to get some free materials or food rewards which become multiplied by you choosing to continue on fighting more battles without stopping to heal between them this in effect just makes it a somewhat random betting mechanism something that actually makes it closer to this game's included lottery system next up we have the mess hall which actually works similarly to the temporary boost items from the ds fire emblem by cooking various foods here you are able to gain a temporary stat boost to whole groups of allies and although this is a lot more randomized than i would like it to be it certainly is a lot more efficient as well as a lot more common of a task on higher difficulty modes it can sometimes be a godsend if anything using it is a little bit too much of a no-brainer now since food really has very little other use in this game next up let's talk about corin's house where you can now meet up with your allies or your chosen partner and start to raise their affection level toward you it's pretty well known that in the japanese version this was very different and instead led to a touching and blowing mini-game seriously that was completely removed from the western versions of this game now i'm sure that there are people who will cry foul at this quote-unquote censorship but having played both versions of these games for some amount of time i can honestly say that the japanese version of this mini-game while bizarrely entertaining in a way takes way too much time and i honestly don't think that much was lost other than the chance to be able to see your units from extremely up close probably a little bit too close there are quite a lot more buildings that you have access to here that i haven't yet commented on like the accessory shop and the jail but i think it suffices to say that the way you spend your time between battles in fates is vastly different from what came before but while in previous games such as path of radiance i found it a little bit draining to have nothing but looking at a menu for long periods of time the vastly more expanded variety here never made it an issue for me in the slightest you are going to need a lot more time for planning after all with all of the other changes in this game to come [Music] for the first time since fire emblem gaiden 12 entire games ago weapons are no longer breakable now with each battle there are so many more concerns that just weren't there before that to be honest i almost forgot that weapon durability being gone was even a thing that i should probably mention in this video in my own defense in place of durability we have a much more complex system of weapon specific modifiers ones that are also paired with new region specific weapon variants what i mean by this is that noir and hoshido both come with their own readily available versions of major weapon types for example the western inspired country of noor uses swords while the eastern inspired country of hoshido uses katanas which are functionally still swords but they have additional modifiers on them such as granting the unit holding it plus one speed while also giving them -1 to defense and resistance something that pushes katana users into being slightly more of a glass cannon for every weapon type there is a hoshidin equivalent that has some kind of modifier or change to it something which even extends to their healing rods which now have a range of two at the expense of greater healing potential details like this add little wrinkles to the combat but the biggest new change to weapons is the now complete adoption of weapon effects for different qualities of weapons on top of it a system that the previous game only dabbled with in the slightest in fates from the lowliest bronze weapons to the top tier silver and more powerful stuff the weapon that you hold is going to have some kind of modifier on the holder which usually specialize the weapons for different kinds of use in practice these weapon effects take the place of both the weapon weight and weapon degradation systems that previously balanced how you would choose what weapons you wanted your unit to attack with iron weapons were cheap and light and they were good choices if you knew your unit was going to be on the defensive for a while steel weapons on the other hand were heavy usually cancelling out your unit's speed bonus or even possibly putting you in doubling range by the enemy however in exchange for this they were good for dealing a high amount of damage in one blow silver weapons were the perfect balance between these two being both strong and lightweight however them being so ideal was then balanced out by their fragility as well as their cost the way that fates handles this is similar but also very different for example fates's bronze weapons and their equivalents now increase your ability to evade critical hits but in exchange you also cannot deal critical hits with them as well as activate certain attack skills functionally just as before the weakest weapon around is still the one you want to use on the defense but you now don't have any math to sort through in your head when determining if that's the case or not fate's steel weapons now have a flat reduction to your own units of void stat and they also have a reduction to their ability to double attack essentially giving them the same drawback as the older versions but without having to run any numbers in your head fates silver weapons are very strong but instead of having a high cost and a low number of possible uses instead their counterbalance is literally debuffing your own units after use and not just by a little bit but with a stacking strength and skill debuff that goes up every time that unit hits someone with a silver weapon just as before this still means that they can come in handy in a pinch but over relying on them is highly discouraged you're going to want to look for other options when you can this is only the briefest look at the huge amount of weapon changes in these games but i neither have the time nor the desire to go through every such comparison when any of the widely available weapon charts on the internet can do the exact same thing what i basically want to set up here is that using weapons in this game is both a lot simpler and yet sometimes a lot more complicated rather than simply remembering as i did static numbers for power weight and durability in these games you now have to think about the weapon's effect versus your own unit's gradually increasing stats while of course taking into account what region that weapon comes from then going even beyond all of this fates has now brought all of the ranged weapons consisting of bows magic and throne weapons in their various forms for the first time into the same weapon triangle as the traditional sword axe and spear to be honest i am a bit mixed on all of these changes to the weapon systems versus the old simpler system i do like how the huge variety adds a lot more complexity to the combat but honestly the sheer number of them is a bit overwhelming even to someone who's put a lot of hours into this game for those watching this might already seem like a lot of new changes but no we're just getting started a person going through this series in release order i have always appreciated the hitherto unnamed fire emblem cycle by this i mean that this series tends to go through a two or three game process continually where an initial game strikes out in a bold new direction something that is usually done in exchange for including some massive flaws for its interesting slightly untested newer systems unlike other developers the sonic team comes to mind intelligent systems actually is usually really good about not completely reinventing their games two games in a row because almost always after one of these trailblazers hits the scene the games that follow up on them choose to not rock the boat and iterate on them in extremely clever ways fire emblem awakening was a game with a huge number of new ideas and if you know the development history of it then it does make sense why it would do so still with it saving the franchise it then came to fates to take what awakening did before and build upon it and in my opinion how they did so led to something that is nothing short of the most brilliantly executed combat system that this series and possibly any strategy rpg series has ever seen i know that i just got done talking about how fate's gameplay might have become overly complex but really this would only lead to a problem in its learning curve which is something that i think fate actually excels in it does so by being simply the most adaptable and shockingly self-expressive collection of well-balanced systems that i've ever seen in a single strategy rpg it is kind of cheating because fates is actually three games instead of one meaning that you have a lot of content at various difficulty levels to learn the systems against but once you do understand them the sheer number of ways that you can build your party pair them up together equip them customize them and even plan them out from the very beginning is seemingly limitless rather than this all turning out to be a huge jumbled mess fates is extremely approachable in how it guides players into utilizing all of its systems simply put you might think that my playing through fates six times in short succession would have been a very tiresome process but in truth it wasn't absolutely zero of my different runs unit choices and build plans resembled each other at all instead every new run just gave me a brand new toy box for me to open and play with let's get just a bit more specific one of the biggest issues that intelligent systems needed to improve upon was the leveling issue i know that open map fire emblem games get a lot of flack for essentially being rpgs rather than true fire emblem experiences but with the unlimited leveling system of awakening being so omnipresent it really is the only game that this criticism actually fits one of the core features that makes a fire emblem game a fire emblem game is limitation something that i detailed in my fire emblem 8 video to me this doesn't always mean strict limitation on absolutely everything which is why having the ability to grind experience doesn't really bother me too much as long as it has a reasonable trade-off such as being risky like the older style arenas or being very expensive another limiter on this is hitting a maximum level and even though max level characters in fire emblem can be overpowered in most entries by late game standards a max level character usually can't just do everything on their own awakening was the game that changed this even on hard mode and above by having the ability to grind a character well past what would have been the maximum level in any other game you could instead have any of your units become nigh unkillable and unfortunately the barrier between underpowered and overpowered was very easy to trip over although it made sense at that time to give players this ability since the team did think the entire series was going to end when coming back to a now stable franchise leaving in the ability to very freely endlessly level was going to be a huge problem however there was a new problem given how popular awakening was there's no doubt that many players out there actually liked the feature to endlessly level face's solution is simple however it perfectly addresses both sides of this issue the infamous second seal of awakening has now been replaced with seals that allow you to change your class based on various conditions but when you do your unit's level is not reset something that instantly solves a lot of awakenings power creep issues with a single change to appease those people who then still liked seeking out the ridiculous heights of power in the last game instead now you can obtain special expensive seals in the very late game which do allow you to push your units past the maximum but only by five levels at a time although this might sound just as bad as the second seals in practice for a normal playthrough of any of these games it really is not usually by the time these items become reasonably available maybe being able to buy one or two if you really saved your money you are going to already be at the end of the game meaning that the people who love grinding to absurd power will pretty much have to have already proved themselves these are luxury items that non-grinding players don't have to worry about spoiling the experience which is exactly what they needed to be with practical limitations in leveling returned how you spend your levels and in what class suddenly has huge ramifications again there's a lot to think about here and that's exactly what we'll be getting into next the amount of character planning that can go into building a good fates party can truly be astounding and before we get to more pure combat systems later on i'll be going through just how complicated it can be by using silas the norian knight as my example since he is one of the few characters that joins you no matter what in all three fates paths silas always starts as a cavalier and so naturally he can later be promoted into the paladin class or the great night class that's pretty standard so far so good similar to awakening silas has a hidden second class but in fates he only has one in his case he can also become a mercenary mercenaries of course can be promoted into heroes or bonites pretty easy so far as was the case in awakening spending time in silas's classes will allow him to learn special class skills so with absolutely no other information you can plan how you want to raise silas and at what level you might want to switch him over to his second class if you want any of those skills however because fates does not reset your levels if you are higher than the level required to get the skills from the other classes you now just learn them for every one level you spend in the other class however if you switched silas over too close to his maximum level the only way that you're going to get those skills is by using eternal seals which are expensive and inefficient for a regular run through this is not where the story ends though new to fates are the friendship and partner seals which can allow silas to change his class to the secondary class of a different character in the game done through maxing his support level with a male character to a plus of which he can only do once per run through or by achieving an s level support with a female character which of course he can only have one of as well not counting the base classes or all the other classes he can attain through dlc items this gives him access to over 20 more possible classes that he could take however when it comes to marrying or befriending corin because you're able to choose your avatar's second class when creating your character if you work out what you want to do with silas specifically before even starting your run this can give you some very complex and rewarding meta strategies that are not always available on every other pathway for an example due to hoshido units and classes generally not having great defense choosing corin's second class as a knight before starting out birthright with the intention to marry silas allows you to turn him into a general as soon as you've got the relationship high enough something that allows you to skirt around this issue and gain an extremely useful tank that really comes in handy on birthright's harder difficulties this is just a single example amongst an entire cast and of course it's no surprise that sharing and debating fate's strategies is a conversation that still hasn't ended in the community and will probably not end in the foreseeable future while the leveling and class system is a major component to the strategic depth to be found in these games i simply cannot go any further without bringing up the other big one this being the new systems for pair up attack and defense i already went deep into what this was in the previous video so in this one i'm just going to focus on the changes and the first and most prominent of these is the distinction between pair up and tag team while awakening had no significant distinction here whether you're actually paired up with a friend in the same space or simply standing next to them as an individual unit does have a huge effect in fate's battles first off when paired up with an ally on the same tile while you still can receive defense from your ally this is no longer just determined by chance when paired up taking actions and taking damage both contribute to a new shield gauge when your gauge is full your partner will always 100 of the time block the next incoming damage which now allows you to both plan on using it to avoid what would be certain death or plan on using it to lure out your enemies pair guards since they can now pair up against you as well while you're paired up in this way unlike before you can never receive an allies additional attack on your assault this is instead done by while unpaired standing on the tile next to an ally and then attacking this activates a tag team attack in which said ally will always with no chance involved launch a follow-up attack with you however their attack will now always deal half damage this new tag team attack system also plays into the pair up defense system because you cannot use this tactic at all against an enemy who's paired up and of course the enemy can't use it against any of your units who are paired up the various ways in which these two pairing systems played out took me quite a while to fully comprehend something which is similar to the difficulty that i had when first wrapping my head around the pair up system in the first place learning both how i could properly utilize them or how the enemy could possibly use them against me led to a lot of early deaths until i eventually learned how to use it to my benefit one of the things that i learned early on was that i really needed to start thinking about the enemy's possible attacking formations in advance because you now can't just put out a tough ally and expect them to weather just two or three attacks because that's what you left open how your enemies move in can lead to a lot more damage than you'd initially think on the surface there is so much more to consider here that once i finally did get a better grasp of all of these systems about halfway into my journey i can't say that i've ever had a better time with the actual gameplay of a fire emblem game it is certainly a lot to learn but i'm certain that if i were to start a new seventh playthrough of any of these fates games right now i would still find some new way to use each and every one of these systems before moving on i'd like to drop in a few extra miscellaneous details that i wanted to say i really appreciated first off units in this game now have personal skills which is basically an extra sixth skill that doesn't take up one of your customizable five skill slots i really like how these give each unit even the ones with the same classes distinguishing characteristics which was something that i really liked about the skill system back in fire emblem 4. also after having to make such a big deal about it in the last video i am happy to say that the gale force skill which was so dominant in awakening returns in a way that isn't horribly broken it now only gives a unit an extra action if it manages to make a kill completely unassisted with the stricter limitation on leveling and fates as well as how reliable the pair-up system can be achieving the requirement of this gale force is not nearly as easy as it may sound especially in the late game this instead changes gale force from an auto-include to a skill that only really suits a certain few glass canon units next up we have the hit rate system and for the first time since the switch to the two rn system in the binding blade the hit rate system has finally seen a major adjustment in a nutshell i'll just say that rather than using the full 2rn for everything in fates there are now special adjustment zones i'm going to simplify things here a little bit but basically for any hit rate lower than 50 the game goes back to running numbers on a one rn system above 50 percent pretty much still stays the same what this basically means is that higher hit rates will continue to actually be easier to hit than what they say but lower hit rate chances will now be more likely to hit than they would have been on a full 2rn system this means that you can no longer count on low hit rate numbers to be total trash or in other words dodge tanking is way less reliable in general i really do like this change and i wish that this kind of compromise system was thought of a whole lot sooner having a unit become untouchable due to its dodginess can often kill a lot of the tension of a fire emblem game and of course no other game proved this as much as awakening speaking of which in the last video i had to mention its use of ambush enemy reinforcements on its higher difficulty modes something that fates has now completely done away with even though i personally have become used to ambush spawns from my experience playing the older fire emblem games and i do think there are smart and not so smart ways for the developers to use them i of course vastly prefer not having them in at all and not having ambushes to deal with in fates made my hard mode runs much more enjoyable than they would have been otherwise on a completely different note i really do have to mention that i love the new role of daggers and shuriken weapons in these games as the resident debuffers there are a lot of different ways to weaken your enemies and fates including certain build routes that allow you to turn some characters into world-class debuffers through both skills and their weapons and this extra variety adds a lot to every battle last up i just have to finish by saying that i really do appreciate that fates allows you to lower your difficulty setting in the middle of your game including toggling between classic mode casual mode as well as the new phoenix mode that brings back your fallen units immediately during the same battle these aren't features that i would use but i am all for sharing this series that i've come to love with as many people as possible regardless of their skill level at gaming and quality of life features like this are great for relaxing the tension that many new players have about the fire emblem series i've been making these retrospectives for almost two years now and i think it's easy to forget the feeling of intimidation i had about fire emblem before i really got in there and started studying it it was a factor that kept me away for years and i imagine many other potential players felt the same unobtrusive quality of life fixes like this are a definite improvement and i'm glad that intelligent systems who were slow to bring in the casual mode to begin with were still looking for ways to be inclusive but measured in their approach and with that we've finally arrived at the end with everything said and done it's time to move on to what lies beyond this monumental stop on our journey through fire emblem there are so many conflicting opinions about fire emblem fates that the first struggle i felt myself having to overcome was closing my ears to them and just seeing what they actually were in my heart i do know how i personally reacted to each and every one of these games on the whole i did love my experience of playing fire emblem fates but i know that at a certain point i did have to turn my critical brain off concerning the story and characters and considering how important those two things are for me in any gaming experience the degree to which i still enjoyed myself is a testament to how the best parts of fates can ultimately manage to blur out the worst parts of it yes the storytelling and character writing for this game is really subpar and i am not willing to say that the good parts of the story that i mentioned wipe that away whatsoever it is definitely the gameplay that saves this experience the way that i look at fates in the end is that these are three games that contain the most diverse offerings of gameplay in this entire series history built with just about every kind of player in mind in a single game this concept would have been entirely spread too thin but the sheer amount of content on offer here completely managed to sidestep that issue for players that only like a single type of fire emblem they are probably going to find one of these that they really enjoy and at least one of these that they really don't enjoy for players like myself who generally like games at both end of the spectrum every single one of the fates games is going to offer something to enjoy and possibly even something to love it doesn't really matter what mood i'm in fates has something to fit it i am not afraid to say it playing through the three fates games was a wonderful experience and one of the best things i've gotten to do since embarking on this retrospective series normally i do need great characters or a great story in order to feel fully invested in a game and other games in the fire emblem series have suffered in my opinion due to that issue if fates had actually executed on its story potential it probably would have been known as one of the best and most complete games in history instead it can at best be viewed as one of the best toy boxes ever of course i wish that it could have been so much more than this but any game that leaves me this much still hungry for more can't be said to be a failure [Music] on our next stop on the fire emblem retrospective we return to the land of valencia to see how the infamous black sheep of the series holds up under a modern eye be sure to join me next time as we return to the stories of alm and celica in fire emblem 15 echoes shadows of valencia if you enjoyed this video please consider taking things to the next level and becoming a shame-brained patreon supporter on top of helping me keep this series going you can also see my videos early far in advance of their upload for all on youtube if you'd like to gain access to this see your name in my credits or just like my channel and want to give something back please consider starting your support today one quick note before we go as you may or may not know originally i was going to release the awakening video and fates videos alongside the already finished retrospectives for shadows of valencia and three houses but once i saw how massive this fates video was going to have to be i decided it would be best for everyone if i just broke this season into two parts so it will be a little bit of a wait until we get to the last two currently released fire emblem games and i hope i can see you early for those on patreon or maybe later on youtube but either way i just want to thank everybody so so much for watching i hope you had as safe and pleasant a year as possible please take care [Music] you

Channel: ShaneBrained

Views: 158,678

Keywords: Fire Emblem, Fire Emblem Fates, Fates, Birthright, FE14, Conquest, Revelation, Fire Emblem Birthright, Fire Emblem Conquest, Fire Emblem Revelation, Fates review, Fire Emblem Fates review, Fire Emblem Fates retrospective, Fire Emblem Retrospective, Corrin, Fire Emblem Awakening, Robin, Super Smash Bros, Nintendo, Nintendo 3DS, JRPG, SRPG, SRPG Studio, Azura, Fire Emblem Warriors, FEW, Camilla, Camilla tits, Elise, Takumi, Xander, Ryoma, Hinoka, Sakura, Hoshido, Valla, Nohr

Id: 0mjPezTUILE

Length: 135min 54sec (8154 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020