Fire Emblem: A Quick Retrospective - Part 2

foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] what even is a long-running Nintendo Series without the eventual remake as the oldest console maker still in the business series that have traditionally stuck to the company especially those that first debuted in 8-bit all eventually choose to resurrect the past in their then modern glory in times of uncertainty it's natural to want to go that way not only do you allow new fans to catch up but you also allow your old fans to reminisce for a bit as long as it's not overdone it's a harmless way to shore up enthusiasm especially when recent Fate has not been going your way Fire Emblem 11 shadow dragon is easy to call just another remake but I find that to be a bit dismissive Fire Emblem 1 wouldn't have led to this and neither would mystery of the emblem shadow dragon is what it is due to the decade plus of series development that came after all these titles despite taking place on the same Maps this is very much its own Fire Emblem I was often asked at the beginning of the series if I would even bother to play the quote-unquote remakes as if just playing one of these completely removes the history importance and context of the others like with the very recent as of my writing Resident Evil 2 and 3 remakes the experience of playing the original versus the remade versions can be leagues different just because this is less obvious in a strategy RPG doesn't make this any less true this is important to remember because shadow dragon can be too easily brushed aside to the Casual Observer it is tempting to just take one look at it and call it ugly or to call it simple but to just leave it at that would be an utter shame shadow dragon is a bit ugly and yet over time there's something about it that grows on you it is also a very simple game but in playing it you may begin to realize that its Simplicity with a purpose for many fans this was their first exposure to Marth in his own series context and and their first chance to experience his journey throughout arcanea on his quest to reclaim his homeland today on the Fire Emblem retrospective we will once again be examining this journey and discovering the ways that this entry in the series both stood on the shoulders of its predecessors yet also blazed its own path with my goal of completing each game in the series twice this game actually represents the 5th and sixth time I have made my way through this specific Journey even still I was surprised to find that there was a lot to unpack and examine let's go ahead and get that started foreign ly the release and poor sales performance of the two prior games Path of Radiance and radiant Dawn put the development of the next Fire Emblem into a whole new context despite trying and failing to land back on the Home console twice the next game in the series was originally planned to be released for the Wii this was not met with enthusiasm from the staff at Nintendo who suggested that they probably shouldn't release another fire emblem on a Home console due to how Niche they perceived the series to be at first this message was interpreted as meaning that the series needed to broaden its appeal in order to get a fresh take the massive fire emblem team of radiant Dawn was drastically reduced in size and with this done they then began to take the upcoming Fire Emblem Wii in a very different direction according to toru narihiro director of The Binding blade and a long time producer for the series many different ideas were thrown about at this time such as the player being able to to bring a massive army with you Pikmin style everywhere you go it's a bit hard to understand exactly what he meant nowadays but whatever the case ultimately this project fizzled out it was kohe mayada a writer and planner since the Blazing blade who got the ball rolling once more expressing his desire to become a director and to reintroduce marriage into the series so they could kick-start that Mass Appeal ultimately he was passed over for this entry but if you know the future of this series development then what he had just proposed should sound a little bit familiar long time project coordinator for Nintendo masaki tawara became the director taking the series back to a portable system yet again it was decided to remake the very first game which had already seen an altered revision seen in book one of the third game mystery of the emblem despite the Journey of Marth having already been retread one time the team really wished that players outside of Japan would be able to experience his story for themselves and going back to redo do this entry also meant that they could fix some of the issues with mystery of the emblem's version which had to cut five levels and some playable characters due to Super famicom Storage limitations Fire Emblem shadow dragon was viewed internally as more of a renewal rather than a remake this meant that multiple new mechanics were implemented for the first time and the team even went out of their way to add five new Gaiden chapters each with new recruitable characters even with these new chapters and units a concerted effort was made to not over complicate the story and though much more dialogue was added which fleshed out the cast tremendously compared to their previous outings the team was committed to keeping the atmosphere as close as possible to the original yet again they used a guest artist for the visual design with masamune Shiro of Ghost in the Shell Fame redesigning Marth Ceda and many of the other more prominent members of this cast after serving as a sound supervisor since the seventh game none other than Yuka tsujioko returned back to a more direct role serving as Shadow dragon's composer this of course was a natural fit since it was her who had composed the music for the original game nearly 18 years prior with the ball finally rolling development only took 10 months to complete with a game releasing on April 7th 2008 in Japan with Western releases in December of the same year and February of 2009. along with positive reviews from a number of Outlets sales for the game thankfully went up with this game easily outselling both of the previous entries however very strangely sales numbers for this game were higher in Japan than in the west which definitely wasn't a great sign given how much larger the Western Market is compared to Japan's this was very quickly noted as it showed that the series had maintained an invested audience in its home country but in the west much of the attention since the successful Game Boy Advance games seemed to have mostly worn off after the panic-inducing results of the last two entries sales performance this game succeeding was a slight Ray of Hope although it was one that would soon be interpreted in a disastrous way we'll be getting into that naturally in the next video for now we will be moving on to covering the plot technically I have told this story two previous times but I still find it important to do it here as well even the most complete fan translation of the original game continues to be extremely rough and of course that was on top of the lack of Storytelling capabilities that the famicom already had of course the second retelling Fire Emblem 3 which had a better fan translation still had to cut out large portions of the original in order to fit in the real meat of that game which was the book 2 sequel section Fire Emblem shadow dragon is the only official English translation for these events but on top of that the vastly improved storytelling and writing has gone on to make it the definitive version for all regions as always I will provide links for those who wish to jump right to the story in analysis section at the top of the screen or a link to the start of the gameplay sections at the bottom for people who want to avoid all story spoilers whatsoever alright everybody let's get going in three two one [Music] long ago in the land of arcanea the king of the dragons at medius ruled the continent with fear and despair in response to the tyranny of his wretched rule a hero hailing from the small nation of altia appeared wielding a shimmering blade this man Henri challenged the evil dragon and ultimately prevailed 100 Years of Peace followed him but eventually the dark dragon medius returned to the world he seized power in the land of the dragons doler and began Gathering allies for his second conquest of the continent Nation after Nation submitted or fell to the shadow dragon's power and it was now up to the current ruler of altea King Cornelius to wield Henry's Blade the falchin against the tides of Darkness yet again while the king sallied forth it was up to his Royal children princess Elise and Prince Marth to maintain in the castle with the queen and to host a Garrison of troops from altia's neighboring Ally grah although Prince marth's days of training both the pin and the sword passed without incident all of this would soon change one day the same as any other Marth was suddenly awoken by a castle Guardsman who had been seeking him on behalf of his sister and as Marth was going to the throne room to try to find her he was shocked to see soldiers of Graw within the castle working together to try to apprehend him after proving to them that the son of Cornelius was not to be underestimated Marth reunited with his sister who informed him that they had all been betrayed gra had chosen to side with dolar and had turned on their father slaying him in the field of battle now the entire Castle was under attack as their former allies soldiers were frantically searching for the both of them hoping to wipe out the bloodline of Anri on behalf of their new master Elise implored her brother to flee choosing to stay behind her self instead Marth quickly gathered his Guardsmen around him and together they fought to secure the young Prince's future even with their very lives if they had to as Marth escaped by sea he vowed to return one day and to write all the wrongs which had been so unjustly delivered onto him for the next three years Marth remained hidden as a guest in the tiny island nation of Telus he was even given a fort to man there with his own personal troops over time he grew quite close to his host nation's princess Sita and so when she arrived suddenly one day pleading for his help with a recent pirate threat the prince was all too happy to assist her after easily dealing with the Raiders the king of Talus himself acknowledged how strong The Prince and his followers had become and that it was finally time for them to begin their counter-attack after being granted some of the most powerful fighters of Talus Marth sailed West arriving in the Kingdom of arelis and as he battled through both Bandit and soul soldiers standing in his way he would gather more and more powerful allies drawn in either by the kindness of Princess Sita or the righteousness of the prince's cause at the gates of arela's Castle Marth was met by Duke Harden the younger brother of the local king and a fiercely powerful Cavalry commander joining their two forces together the princes were able to overcome the forces of dollar within and the first of many nations to come was finally liberated from Evil's control within the castle Marth was met by an unexpected guest princess Nina hailing from the massive nation of arcanea her kingdom for which the continent was also named was in many ways the mother country to all of the other kingdoms throughout the land including marth's own home of altea as the heir to arcanea it was Nina's role to protect all of the nations in a time of Crisis a task which he was woefully unable to do in her current situation what she could do at the very least was choose a champion and Adorn him with a symbol of her family trust Marth was presented with such a symbol the Fire Emblem a holy object which was only to be bestowed to a true hero one who was believed had the power to save the world with this act Martha's cause now had full legitimacy granted by the most powerful royal family in the land with this his group became known as the arcanaian league for those living under the tyranny of medius Martha's fight represented hope and soon many others such as the Warrior Princess Minerva of Macedon were seeking out his help after gaining ever more allies the league finally arrived in Nina's Homeland and after launching a long Siege on the castle finally wrestled control away from the forces of dolar with half of the continent free the next stop on the prince's Journey would be a personal one as he Now set his sights on gra the land that had betrayed his family so long ago at that time three years ago the prince had been nothing but a weak Boy fleeing for his life thanks to the sacrifice of others now with the might of many loyal soldiers from all over the continent at his command the tables had completely turned though the soldiers of GRA had personally seen to King cornelius's death on that fateful day many years back his Divine Blade the Falcon was not to be found within their Castle luckily through careful search marth's group was able to learn that it had been taken away by garniff a fearsomely powerful Dark Magician who was also one of the Shadow dragon's first and closest allies located currently and the northern Magic Kingdom of kadai in the Sands of this land the arkanan league were finally able to confront the magician but they soon found that no sword spear ax Arrow or magic could possibly break through the barrier of dark magic he commanded after garneth grew bored of this show and vanished to Parts Unknown Marth was suddenly telepathically contacted by the sage goto the very man who had taught garniff before his dark turn to defeat the Mage and retrieve his family's sword Marth would need to craft the magic of Starlight which could only be done by retrieving two powerful orbs from a temple nearby and personally delivering them to goto in the heavily guarded Kingdom of Macedon with this goal in mind the league continued with little stopping them from finally liberating marth's homeland of altea though he would have wished to stay here if he could their current need elsewhere in the continent was too great and so they continued on to the temple inside they found not only this star and light orbs needed but a fiercely powerful opponent a member of the nearly extinct tribe of divine dragons the young manakeet Tiki mind controlled by garniff Tiki challenged the group but rather than blades it was words that caused her to stand down as her caretaker Bantu who had been traveling with Marth for some time was able to help the dragon princess break the spell that had clouded Her Mind One Divine dragon's power was worth Legions of lesser dragons and in Tiki Marth had gained not only a new friend but a devastating new ally to help him resist the shadow dragon and his most powerful Dragon troops with the objects needed for Starlight in Hand marth's Group next marched through the land of groost and came Toe to Toe with the noble yet fiercely loyal General kamu kamu had been the man who had personally prevented princess Nina from being executed following her nation's fall but despite the love that the two shared for each other the general refused to betray his home country for their side and soon he too had to fall at the League's hands though this resulted in utter heartbreak for princess Nina at last very little remained of the dollar Alliance now even though macedon's King Nicholas the brother of Princess Minerva through everything he had at them it was not nearly enough to stop the league and eventually he too would see the end of his rules at the hand of Marth with the fighting and Macedon quelled Marth was able to meet with goto and deliver the requested orbs which were immediately used to create the magic needed to defeat garniff's power the only tasks that still remained were retrieving the Falcon from garneth and turning the holy blade on his master the shadow dragon mid-use thanks to goto's power the arkhanaian league was teleported right to garniff's location and after the power of Starlight broke the dark magician's barrier and saw to his end Marth retrieved not only his family's Divine blade but also his sister Elise who had been kept alive at the will of garneth due to her own magical ability with nothing left between him and The Mastermind of the continent's current woes Marth and Company were once again teleported by goto Landing straight in the land of dolar with medius unable to manifest his power outside of the castle just yet all the dragon could do was wait for the prince who by now had proved himself to be a truly worthy foe before long the blood of Anri and the fangs of the shadow dragon would once again face off in battle just as his ancestor had done a century before Marth struck down the dragon who was yet again disgusted to fall at the hand of a mere human promising to return as long as Darkness remained in the world medius finally disappeared with the dragon's defeat peace had once again been restored to arcanea as the many allies who had all gathered around the prince over this past year returned back to their homes and families the prince's final battle was one for his own happiness thanks to his dear friend Nina Marth was able to muster his courage and ask Sita to remain with him forever at his side the tale of the shadow dragon and the sword of light had finally drawn to a close for now [Music] story of shadow dragon is trickier than it seems like the original game shadow dragon is an extremely straightforward Adventure when looked at broadly unlike the original this wasn't done because of limitations in the hardware rather this was a very deliberate Choice even though this entry does update and flesh out some elements of the plot this is still easily the most simplistic a fire emblem game story has been since the very first game the trick to seeing the value of this game's storytelling is in realizing if that is a bad thing or not to you for anyone tracking the history of the series I imagine that they might see shadow dragon as a major step back technically it is true anyone can look at this radiant Dawn footage and compare it to what this game did and immediately see the degradation and I'm not just talking in terms of graphical power we are basically back to the Game Boy Advance Fire Emblem style of using still art with text to depict and important scenes even though this is far from what the DS was actually capable of here's the thing though if the game was able to achieve its storytelling goal which in this case was maintaining the atmosphere of the famicom original in order to craft a deliberately classic feeling experience then how much weight does decrying the game for its Simplicity really carry a game story is not inherently improved due to it being more complex nor is it inherently worsened due to it being simpler what matters to me is how well each of these types of stories embody the values that they each suggest an epic story needs an epic scope something that is difficult to depict with just overhead 2D Sprites that's not saying that it is impossible to do but this type of story is better served being in 3D which can allow for a more Dynamic depiction of the events if a game is reaching for a broadly epic tale then a lot of this great potential can be lost through using an overly simple script which I think is what led to a big problem in Radia Dawn something that I elaborated on in the last video shadow dragon isn't trying to do anything like this and it ends up being exactly what it needs to be it's a simple story told in a simple way and although there's nothing that will really wow the player or create as powerful of an emotional response as a game like thracia 776 or a genealogy of the Holy War I still found it really easy to enjoy I admit that part of my enjoyment of this script is due to my experience of playing both fire emblems 1 and 3 with their admittedly limited scripts and fan translations even though I have seen this story multiple times over in my native language no less shadow dragon still feels like the first time I'm really meeting this cast even without a structured support system which has now completely Fallen away after radiant Dawn's limited showing one thing that shadow dragon has in abundance is evocative and efficient writing even though intelligent systems seem to think that not much was actually added to the story stating precisely as much in an interview from the 25th anniversary book The Making of Fire Emblem they might be underestimating the generous amount of characterization that that was actually added here as a matter of fact the game script was so weighty that the translation had to be outsourced to a different company rather than being handled internally at Nintendo the company 8-4 were responsible for this translation rather than merely translating the words on the screen to their English equivalents and calling it a job which I think is a pitfall of many fan translations and even official translation Rush jobs eight four specializes in carefully crafting a game script to convey the same experience as the Japanese original in this respect they did an absolutely amazing job even without each individual character having a flood of dialogue the personalities of many of these characters definitely shine through which I think really illustrate individual aspects of them such as the X extreme crazy loyalty of ogma and the true kindness and possibly slight manipulativeness of Sita I also want to give a special mention to princess Elise who actually became a real character in this game as well as all of the other new additions to this cast who I think all slot in very well often times recreating an 8-bit era game with a more modern perspective gives developers too easy of an out when it comes to rescripting things incredibly that is not what happened here shadow dragon is actually very smartly written it's returned to this simple story sets a very different tone and refusing the impulse to completely replace what came before in favor of enhancing what already existed to me shows a remarkable level of restraint the light Breezy tone that it sticks to is a testament to the roots of this project the more direct goal-based story setup combined with very enjoyable character scenes had me flashing back to some of the characterization in genealogy of the Holy and the excellent project Naga translation it also took me back to memories from even earlier in my life playing games like a link to the past on the first console I ever owned this kind of enjoyable but not overly convoluted writing makes the game easy to pick up easy to put down and easy to return to there is plenty of value in that kind of experience and it goes to show how critical giving a game a worthwhile translation really is After experiencing shadow dragon twice I feel like I'm finally seeing the arcaneon characters with the same kind of fondness that Japanese players must have been doing since the early days of this series though the writing itself contributes a lot when it comes to painting this comforting emotional landscape it's fair to say that the gameplay is just as responsible for this as the story let's get into that next the last time that any Fire Emblem game shook up the formula so dramatically from one game to another the series Creator shows okaga had just left intelligent systems completely like The Binding blade before it Fire Emblem shadow dragon was ruthless in how many long-running systems it hacked off itself stopping just short of regressing back to the days of the early super famicom games about the only additional systems that remain that weren't in the original game are the weapon triangle system weapon proficiency system and weapon forging character skills are gone the C to a support system is gone bonus experience charging transformation forms tier 3 classes Kanto shove rescue Auto promotion they have all been cut almost every new addition since the binding blade is not here and though this seems obvious since we are returning to the Arcanine games remember that even in mystery of the emblem's version of this game the weapon triangle system didn't even exist yet of these implanted inclusions the deliberate incorporation of both the weapon triangle system and weapon forging are more than enough to completely change how this game is played these changes are so significant that when you seriously start to consider this game versus either previous version calling it simply a remake struggles to have any useful meaning to get what I mean by this an understanding of The Originals is required and I'm not sure that this is an understanding that many people have not many people play Fire Emblem 1 and probably at this point even less people play mystery of the emblem I really have no doubt that for many watching this video the exact specifics of that era in the franchise continue to be somewhat vague I'll try to clear things up briefly here in both fire emblems 1 and 3 the difference between sword ax and spear was only seen in their hit rate damage and weight no weapon had any innate advantage over the other there was no real drawback to assigning the baddies all one kind of weapon or one kind of class throughout a whole map this was also true for the bosses since every map in the game was a Siege map every chapter had to have its own boss with a large majority of them being either an armor knight Cavalier or either of their promotions in The Originals this made for an actual challenge since it was harder back then to overcome their accuracy damage and high defense without any extra systems helping you along this entire setup is kept in Shadow Dragon from very consistent enemy types to the repeated use of the same classes for bosses while this is quite obviously not suited for the weapon triangle due to how it makes certain units more or less useful for very long periods of time it's actually the weapon forging system which turns the original game's intentions into a complete joke here rather than forging completely new weapons as was done in the past in this entry you can now improve any weapon in your inventory and this is really important this also includes special effective weapons what this means is that you could now take something like a hammer the staple armor killer for X-Men and use forging to make up for its horrendous accuracy as well as giving it a lot more power or crit chance while radiant Dawn limited you to only plus five in any of these stats shadow dragon has raised that to 10. due to how effective damage in these games work if you're using these weapons against their effective damage targets every one of these points is actually worth three which means that if you've got the gold you can add up to 30 more damage to every one of your strikes against armored foes of course the most infamous example of this broken forging system is in ceda's wingspier an exclusive weapon for her that does effective damage on both armor knights and Cavalry though Sida initially struggles with her strength stat she will consistently have great speed and hit chance meaning that you really just need to improve the power of the spear in order to have access to one of the most broken characters ever seen in a fire emblem game with the constant ability to fly and gaining iot's Shield later in the game to negate her weakness to arrows sita's power in Shadow Dragon is rightly Infamous yet another example of turning the reused old into the newly broken comes in the form of the ballastition units Jake and Beck who function like low movement archers who can fire at enemies up to 10 spaces away in the original they weren't so great their utility which amounts to pretty much free damage against any enemy in their range was very much balanced around them having an extremely low hit rate in this version if you understand the power of forging at this point you can see how this isn't actually a problem at all and rather turns them into two of the best characters in the game with a little bit of gold that you can boost that accuracy right up as well as a healthy dose of power allowing you to One-Shot any enemies and range that you wish and even sometimes two shotting the bosses with the abundance of warp staffs in this game and this kind of power at your fingertips shadow dragon plays a lot faster than any game in this franchise before it which is ironic considering that it's the tedium of the original versions that keeps most players from experiencing them these days I imagine if I'd played these out of order it would be really hard to go back and that's not even mentioning the host of other quality of life features that were added here like the ability to skip through animations even when they're turned on which includes skipping entire enemy turns if you wish as well as being able to see every possible danger zone at the push of a button fe11 more so than any other injury before it seems like it was built for you to go back for more to keep pushing yourself to do better and better until the tricks you've learned can no longer break it as hard as they could on your initial runs this was done primarily by making this game one of the most modular and self-correcting games I have ever seen in my life which is precisely what we need to talk about next for as long as the Fire Emblem games have endured at this point the stigma of being a niche experience has been unavoidable even if you personally enjoy the following characteristics to the masses these games are perceived as being overly complex RNG heavy very unwelcoming games for beginners I hope that this entire retrospective series by now has proved that these are untrue statements after all few people can claim to have been as ignorant as I was when I was starting this whole thing and yet I've made it all the way to this point gladly still even with some of the later very popular games in the series I think it's fair to argue that this impression uninformed as it may be has never really gone away in the eyes of a novice no feature of these games is more intimidating than the permanent death system if this game is about building your army then nothing else is so blatantly intimidating than the thought that if you do to make a major mistake not only will you be punished for it you will also suffer permanent loss people want a challenge sure but nobody wants to suffer while they're just trying to learn of course this isn't the truth of the matter unit permadeath has always been a purposeful feature it's not one that's put in merely to punish the players these are games that are designed around this whole feature and this has always been true even since the very first game which actually put in hordes of replacement characters throughout the entire journey to ensure you'd never be undermanned there's a quote that I see over and over again concerning the issue of permanent death it usually goes something like this I hate having to start over whenever I lose a unit it's either start over or lose hours and hours of work I'm fairly confident that a lot of Fire Emblem fans have had this feeling at some point and I'll admit that includes myself this is why I think it's fair to stop and ask why do you have to restart when you lose a non-essential unit this need to constantly reset the need to do things perfectly I do think it comes from a good place but it's not a mindset that these games were meant to be played with from the beginning of the series chozokaga the father of Fire Emblem himself offered a word of advice to his players it's not a big problem if some of your characters die don't get caught up trying to get a perfect ending have fun I have to ask you what is the actual measurable consequence of losing a plot optional unit maybe it's that you miss out on a bit of lackluster text at the end of the game or maybe it's some kind of nebulous fear of missing out the issue here like the outsider's concept of what Fire Emblem is lies in our own misguided perceptions just like how a story without conflict isn't much of a story forcing a lack of hardship onto your gameplay experience is similarly self-defeating it removes the nuanced emotion that a journey through these games can bring both positive and negative I can understand not wanting to let this happen on your very first run since there is a valid desire to want to meet the whole cast if you can still I can tell you from my own experiences that by now I have learned that when I let this overly protective mindset go I always end up having a far better time playing these games I would honestly wager that many of these players who Force themselves to reset constantly would actually not be too terribly bothered to be reminded that they lost a character at some point in the game and even if they are I'd argue that the negative feeling associated with that is far better than the alternative strategy the alternative I'm talking about here is playing these games like some kind of nervous wreck you can't make mistakes you can't allow failure your units must survive and you will Arena abuse grind endlessly or save scum as much as necessary to make it so some players do simply like doing this and I'm not trying to shame them here but at the same time I believe that continually submitting yourself self to these kind of tactics can also lead to becoming stuck in your own self-limiting mindset one may start to believe that they can't beat these games without doing these things simply because they've never gone outside it just as I've seen with games like the infamous threatia 776 and the niche only stigma of this entire series the most alluring lies of all are the ones that we tell ourselves so why in the world am I bringing this up now of all times in the 11th video of this series the reason for this is simple Fire Emblem shadow dragon represents the beginning of a significant shift in this series away from design priorities which had lasted for over 18 years for the direction that this series wanted to go it was a necessary change but even though the next game will Mark the introduction of a true casual mode the steps that Fire Emblem 11 took to try to meet the same goals beforehand do need acknowledging I really get the feeling that the staff and intelligence systems wasn't fully ready to allow permadeath to no longer be a concern for their players resulting in what from the outside seemed like absolutely ridiculous design decisions that will actually make perfect sense in a new light why in the world many ask would this game a bother to put in multiple new side missions each with a completely new recruitable character but then limit access to those missions to players who have lost a large amount of units already well this is for the same reason that the prologue of this game forces everyone literally every single player to sacrifice at least one unit to the enemy it wants to teach its players the same thing that shozokaga said over a decade back death is a feature of this game don't get caught up trying to get a perfect ending here in this game you literally cannot these side missions are but one of the many many safety net features which it uses to guard all its players and to teach them to keep moving on players who refuse to allow loss or to allow any amount of chaos to seep into their perfect playthroughs are banned from seeing these missions or from meeting these characters here I have to say that even if you are willing to let your characters die meeting the under 15 requirement especially since this game reinforces you with faceless generic characters when you're too low at times is probably too low a number still I do think the attempt to nudge players in this direction rather than push them is definitely admirable if there were any game that made getting out of your comfort zone as painless as possible it would definitely be shadow dragon above all of its predecessors with its incredibly fast gameplay speed the same battles that would take me hours on my original runs could be 20 minute Affairs here not only does the game have your back if you lose a unit in the two ways I mentioned previously but we also have the new class change system which allows you to reclass nearly all of your units this not only gives you the freedom to make whatever kind of team you want to experience it with but it can also allow players who have had units die to fill in gaps in their team if for example they were to lose their only healer or magic user this game is by far the most easily replayable Fire Emblem which I think is why the developers even dared to include five levels of its hard mode both of my full runs were actually only about 15 hour Affairs and with animations always off or unnecessary enemy turns skipped which I couldn't really do because I needed to capture footage this play time could likely have dropped even closer to 10 or maybe even under it so you finished normal why not try hard one it's not that much of an investment of your time well you finished hard one why not try hard too you've already learned so much about this game this approach I think is significantly less intimidating than suddenly bumping a player up to one of its very hardest difficulty settings and all in all the changes here were an admirable attempt to try to begin to appeal to players of many different Stripes though the changes seen here were far from overwhelming all of these additions were signs of the inevitable Fire Emblem was going to change whether that was all for good or ill is something that we'll have to examine more in the future for now at last it's time that we wrap everything up for a game that many questioned if I would even want to cover I have found more to consider than I ever thought possible here in terms of gameplay it was by far one of my favorites even after finishing it twice I would happily return to it yet again trying new compositions or tactics maybe relying Less on the overpowered forges or convenience warping all the while possibly bumping up the difficulty another notch on top of the invigorating gameplay speed and possibility space the charms of the character writing and scenarios as simple as they are further add to the refreshingly classic and arcady fun that this entry has in Spades there's a pureness and vision here one that took a team willing to throw away what they thought they knew they wanted in order to open the series to more ambitious changes there is definitely a certain stagnation in this direction very little in this game can be said to be truly new other than a few design priorities still I think that the best word for my overall experience returning to arcanea yet again could only be refreshing it was great to come back here again to see this cast and these events in a new more competently crafted stage I loved seeing the playability of this series make a huge leap forward and it was also really interesting to see the beginnings of some changes that were happening changes that were implemented without the developers feeling the need to throw out absolutely everything in order to make it so still I'm not sure that I would consider this game one of my favorites but I would probably say that I had a lot more fun on a minute to minute basis than I did for many of my actual favorites thus far if I cared about nothing but gameplay I could very easily see myself getting lost in it over and over again I loved the experience of playing shadow dragon and of course I definitely recommend it but I'm not sure that I would call this one necessary it was fantastic to play but I wonder what the legacy of it will really be as I continue to make my my way through this wonderful series [Music] on our next stop on the Fire Emblem retrospective we will once again return to command Marth as he faces a new mysterious threat join me then as we take on enemies unforeseen in Fire Emblem 12 new mystery of the emblem [Music] in January of 1994 less than four years into this series lifespan intelligent systems released what would go on to become the highest selling game in the entire franchise for the next 16 years running Fire Emblem mystery of the emblem though it contained a shortened remake of the original story of Marth the real Focus was its brand new sequel Campaign which followed Marth again on an all-new quest to save the world the impact that its release had on this series cannot be overstated its high sales and glowing reception in Japan transformed Fire Emblem from a noteworthy but still developing young series into an attention-grabbing Mega hit though the original two famicom entries had their own fans it was this moment when the Fire Emblem series developed into a full-blown franchise one whose very long history of ups and downs have finally led us here Fire Emblem 12 new mystery of the emblem Heroes of Light and Shadow on top of being a mouthful of a title would eventually prove to be just as pivotal for the series development taking the story of book 2 of the super famicom original new mystery not only expanded upon the story with new plot lines characters and Maps but it also added a host of new features and systems that like its predecessor on the DS made it less of a remake and more a completely new entry that just happened to share its maps with an older game in many ways this entry can be said to have been the herald for the direction that Fire Emblem would begin going in throughout the coming years and it's this design Direction which the series has continued to this very day as I always do I worked my way through this entry twice and I think the simplest way that I can begin to unpack my feelings about it is to just say fire emblem 12 was certainly not what I was expecting it to be today on the Fire Emblem retrospective we are going to be trying to sort out the Fascinations and frustrations of this very perplexing entry we will be covering its development history in particular the path to one of the most critical design decisions ever in this franchise's history that finally became a reality here after that we'll be running down the plot and then analyzing both it and the gameplay's developments deviations and degenerations alright let's get started though the formation of new mystery of the emblem began as expected starting up during the production of the prior game by the end of its unexpectedly elongated development cycle both this game and the series as a whole would be irrevocably changed the difference between what this meant for the legacy of mystery of the emblem as compared to new mystery of the emblem would go on to be as contrasting as night and day the period of time between the releases of fire emblems 9 to 12 was without a doubt the darkest age of the franchise at this point intelligent systems had been trying to find their feet for almost five years straight consistently failing to find the same success of the Game Boy Advance era fire emblems after the last game shadow dragon failed to make significant sales in the west but still sold a decent amount of copies in Japan it was decided to bring the series back to to only releasing in its Home Country making this next game the first since the binding blade that would not be getting a western release originally new mystery was meant to debut much closer to Shadow dragon's 2008 release date but the staff soon found that the same design ideas used there were not going to fit this particular project as more and more ideas were pooled and implemented one of the most contentious issues for the team since the days of genealogy of the holy war reared its ugly head this issue was the possible inclusion of a new mode which would remove the long-running system of permadeath from the game experience when asked about what makes Fire Emblem as a series unique one of the most common answers that many ad intelligent systems give is the fact that their game contains permadeath it's often described as the key element of tension that makes the joy of success feel even more rewarding and is a major element of what they see as the fun of Fire Emblem removing permadeath or at the very least allowing some players to remove it if they wished was not going to be an easy option for the team to take however where this series was financially during the development of Fire Emblem 4 compared to where it was right now were totally different it was actually Nintendo who started to suggest that the team seriously consider allowing players to make this Choice discussions with Nintendo made them keenly aware that the permadeath system was not only seen as harsh from non-fans but it was actually Turning Away people who would have otherwise tried the games it was this statement that finally made the idea stick for the developers the distinction between players that will constantly reset so that they can go for a perfect run and those who just play on even if they lose a unit were very apparent however they had never before considered that new players simply wouldn't have these instincts or realize that they have the choice to reset or not from that perspective they would instead find the game to just be overly punishing without any acceptable recourse finally they began to wonder if some kind of accommodation could be found in August of 2008 very early into new Mysteries development period in an interview performed by satoru Iwata former CEO of Nintendo Japan the developers discussed at length the critical link between Fire Emblem and the concept of permadeath breaking down the reasons why after a decade and a half that this aspect would finally be made into an option for players to choose for themselves although the staff was wary of such a direction a prototype featuring these changes was made and play tested and the results of this experiment were very clear this new mode which allowed permadeath to Simply exit the entire experience was immediately lauded by testers which was the result that cemented its oncoming inclusion after years of the topic being shelved one of the most pivotal changes in the entire series had just been set into motion since this mode was not only Built For Beginners but just for anyone who wanted to play the games comfortably and without the tension of the older style of Play It Was Not named easy but instead a casual mode the traditional format was named Classic in order to reference how it was to be viewed as the continuation of the gameplay of old like shadow dragon new mystery of the emblem was not simply a remake but rather a whole new Fire Emblem adding in a brand new prologue side story missions new characters and bringing back a support system and info conversation system in the style of Path of Radiance as a bonus many new extras were also included such as the maps that had previously only been seen in Fire Emblem BS one of the few games that were only available on the limited access satella view add-on for the super famicom in Japan just note here I may look at fire emblem BS and its remade content from this game in the future as a bonus video for the series but for the rest of this video I'm just going to be focusing on new mystery of the emblem's main content speaking of that new content the biggest of all the additions can actually be seen right on the front of the game's box and that is Chris the generic name for new Mysteries customizable my unit character the only other time the series had done anything like this before was in the Blazing blades tactician but unlike them Chris would be a fighting unit with a substantial place in this plot after an unusually bumpy and contentious development period the 12th main entry of the series finally released only in Japan on July 15 2010. despite all this work to open up the gameplay to everybody the sales of this entry started out very disappointing selling 75 fewer copies during its debut a week than shadow dragon over time Fire Emblem 12 did manage to climb to almost the same Japanese sales numbers as shadow dragon but these results still meant that for the fourth time in a row this series had failed to achieve its desired sales numbers Nintendo now saw Fire Emblem as a franchise on the verge of collapse in the wake of yet another inadequate sales report the Fire Emblem team would soon be given an ultimatum if the next game could not sell more than 250 000 copies breaking the franchise out of the pattern which it had been given many chances to fix then that game would be the series last though the original mystery of the emblem had been the game that put fire emblem on the map ironically new mystery of the emblem was the one that put it on its death bed of course we know by the fact that the series is still around that this wasn't what happened but the tale of one of the most remarkable turnarounds in gaming is going to be a story for next time for now we must move on and start diving into the story of this entry as always if you already know the story of this version then I'm going to leave a Time code that will take you right to the beginning of my story analysis section if you want to avoid all spoilers and just get right to the gameplay analysis you should use the time code at the bottom okay everyone let's get going in three two one at last the conquest of evil had been stopped and the continent of arcanea was finally at peace after Prince Marth had led the Revolutionary Army and struck down the dragon medius with his family's Divine blade he had settled back down to rule his kingdom of altea with the beautiful princess Sita at his side though it was ravaged by the war the peaceful days he spent rebuilding his kingdom were a treasure that he had fought very hard for but this return to Tranquility was certainly not the case for many of the other devastated nations in the aftermath of the war a power vacuum existed in the great nation of arcanea the Kingdom to whom the six other nations were all suzer into Prince Harden of relis a mighty Cavalry commander in his own right and close friend of Marth was selected to Wed arcanea's princess Nina and soon after he was crowned the new king of arcanea after beginning his reign as a benevolent and beloved ruler quite suddenly only Harden seemed to change he declared himself the emperor of the land forming the new arcanaian Empire meanwhile back in altea a new generation of knights were in training among them was the young Warrior Chris who shortly into his training crashed into fellow trainee Katarina as well as the other young fighters who formed the seventh platoon with their training overseen by jagen and the other loyal Knights of altea these days were incredibly challenging but also very fruitful in time all of them stood before Marth ready to receive their Knighthood unfortunately their ceremony was crashed by a sudden incursion of Fighters assassins hired to take out Prince Marth with the girl Katarina being the one who let them in despite the bonds that she had made with her fellow trainees with reluctance Katarina ultimately went forward with her Mission but Chris and the new Knights of altea managed to beat back her attack causing the Assassins to flea it had been one year since the destruction of medius while Marth and his new Royal Guard Chris were focused on safeguarding their own Nation a messenger from Emperor Hardin arrived bringing with them an ominous request in the west the nation of groost had rebelled and Marth was called on to restore the emperor's control there both out of an allegiance to arcanea as well as a respect for his friend the prince ultimately set out on this Mission once arriving in groost he soon noticed that nothing seemed to be right the man keeping the emperor at Bay was none other than Lorenz the noble grustian General who had sided with Marth in the past the arkhanaian commander instructing Marth was General Lang a thoroughly despicable man who seemed intent on crushing and punching Roost for their betrayal vowing to not only kill Lorenz but also execute the grustian Royal children as punishment despite not knowing how to process this despicable order Marth managed to speak with Lorenz who unfortunately had taken a mortal wound shortly before the prince's arrival though Marth promised to safeguard the children in his absence Lang bruskly took them away ignoring marth's pleas to stop he then informed them of their next mission which was to travel to Macedon and free princess Minerva who had also had a revolution spring up in her Land one that had resulted in her capture and imprisonment after agreeing even more reluctantly this time the group departed along the way running into their Ally Lind who came bearing a gift from the emperor Samina the Fire Emblem this item was a symbol of arcanion support one that was only meant to be bestowed to a hero who was needed to save the world although he was unsure why she was giving him this since he could not see now how the world was once again in utter Peril he accepted it nonetheless after arriving at Minerva's location marth's group began to move in but soon were shocked when her brother Prince Nicholas who had been thought dead since the last war reappeared and rescued her himself leaving Marth to pacify the rest of the foes he flew off and once again when the deed was done General Lang appeared with a new Despicable Mission this time however Marth and his Knights could no longer bear to follow his orders not caring for the consequences Marth jagan and Chris all confronted him with the old Knight jagen even going so far as to challenge him to a duel to the death a threat which Lang responded to by immediately fleeing with an intent to confront Hardin about the recent atrocities inflicted on his people by the likes of Lang before setting out for their next destination in the skies above a single Pegasus Rider appeared none other than princess Sita who brought with her extremely dire news while Marth and his forces had been away the arcanian Empire launched a sudden invasion of their Homeland and had quickly seized complete control over it now without a doubt Emperor Hardin had set himself towards destroying Marth and his allies and once again the prince commanded nothing more than a small rebellious Force facing up against a continent-spanning Empire it was this Empire that was now actively hunting him this very moment after deciding that their best bet was to flee to karane marth's group first stopped at groost and finally settled the score with General Lang eventually finding the bishop Wendell along the way Wendell was the former ruler of the independent nation of kadane and was currently journeying on a quest that had been given to him by the Great Sage goto another one of their most critical allies from the last war after goto had made a powerful magic for Marth which was what had allowed him to defeat the Dark Magician garneth one of the relics used in the process the star sphere had shattered into multiple pieces Mars Earth had already come across some of these pieces on his travels and now he agreed to assist Wendell in finding the rest from there Marth turned North all the while pursued more and more by the arcanaian forces even Emperor Hardin himself appeared revealing that the man that Marth had known before had utterly changed into something else all the while exuding an evil energy that made him impervious to any attack thanks to a brave standoff by Chris and the rest of the prince's guard the group were able to escape by sea and arrive in kadain and during their travels to the city they surprisingly found princess Minerva safe and sound in a village nearby after learning that she had been left there by her brother intentionally so that she could join up with Marth with his new powerful Ally the group finally arrived in the capital where Wendell quickly settled a deadly dispute that had Arisen between two of his pupils although they were safe for now from Hardin they knew that it was only a matter of time before he would catch up with them and now they had nowhere left to run once again their only hope for salvation sought them out from afar as the Great Sage goto psychically contacted the group revealing that the current crisis was caused by the lingering Spirit of garniff who had remained in this world thanks to the power of the dark sphere the same object which had now made its way into hardin's hands corrupting him just as he was at his most vulnerable state though hardened deeply loved his new wife Nina sadly she was unable to return his feelings due to her unbreakable feelings for another the great general of groost Camus the same man whom Marth had been forced to slay towards the end of the last war the dark sphere given to harden quickly preyed on his negative emotions completely swallowing his soul while magnifying all of his worst traits to an extreme level such as his hidden jealousy of Marth the only way for the prince to triumph over the emperor and his new Powers was for Martha to seek out goto personally and receive the light sphere the only item which could nullify the dark energy surrounding Harden and allow someone to defeat him getting to goto's location however would not be easy to do so Marth would have to travel a path that only one other human had ever survived through that person being the ancestor of Marth who had defeated medius over a century before this Trail into the harsh Wilderness had been named for him Henry's way after suffering through a sweltering desert volcanic hellscape and a bitterly Frozen plane Marth finally stood before the Great Sage ready to receive his salvation in return for his bravery the sage not only presented him with the light sphere but also placed the Sleeping manakeet Princess Tiki whom goto had sealed away again for her own safety into marth's Care on top of this he also United the star shards into the full star sphere again and finally explain that these powerful orbs were all part of a set of five all of which were originally meant to go onto the Fire Emblem which Marth now held with all five orbs present the Fire Emblem would be complete giving it the power to bind and banish the dark powers of garniff and the evil dragons he Allied himself with understanding now the exact path before them to save the continent and his corrupted friend Marth was teleported back to his homeland and just as he had done over a year ago he fought fiercely to liberate altea luckily retrieving the geosphere another one of the five orbs along the way after finally throwing the Invaders out of his own land the group had little time to celebrate as yet again a group of Assassins attacked them led by Katarina after multiple encounters with her all this time with each one causing her to question her own motivations more and more Katarina finally succumbed to her true feelings and abandoned her Mission and her former group it was Chris who was the one who finally convinced her to leave her life behind and despite everything that she had done in the past Prince Marth and the others due to their intense trust in the Royal Guardsmen who had by now proved himself many times over welcomed the girl to their side with a crisis and altia finished it was finally time to seek out Hardin in his own land and to end this war with one Fell Swoop doing so meant fighting their way through the remaining Nations still under the Empire's control something which by now had been made easier due to the waves of resistances which kept popping up across the continent it was this then allowed Marth to easily pass through the neighboring nation of GRA and to now seek out the shortest possible path to the arcanan capital during this journey the king of arelis and Harden's older brother met with Marth saying that even he realized that his brother had to be stopped though the king could not bring himself to fully side with them he did pledge his nation's new neutrality and presented Marth with the fourth of the missing orbs the life sphere at last The Prince and his liberating Army arrived directly at the Empire's stronghold finding that it too had been weakened by a recent Rebellion as even the arcanian citizens desperately tried to free themselves from the corrupted Harden's cruel rule marth's group cornered the emperor and through the power of the light sphere countering the dark they were finally able to defeat him with one Fell Swoop for a short moment before his death Hardin reverted back to the noble and loyal friend that Marth had once known he admitted that in his Corrupted State he had given his Queen Nina over to garneth who had been recently seeking out pure maidens for use in a dark ritual after asking for both Marth and his beloved Nina to forgive him Hardin finally passed away leaving the dark sphere behind him at last all five orbs and the Fire Emblem had been gathered and with a sudden resonating flash they they bound themselves together forming the legendary binding Shield while Marth and his company mourned Hardin they were suddenly approached by the four missing maidens including Nina Minerva's sister Maria the gentle cleric Elena and marth's own sister princess Elise though they spoke as though they wished to congratulate their savior The Binding Shield suddenly reacted to their presence releasing a Magic wave that struck the four women revealing them to be nothing more than Illusions conjured by garneth after seeing through garneth's trickery the sage goto arrived to congratulate Marth on his victory who then suddenly put together why the Dark Magician had replaced the four girls the ritual he was preparing would be one that would revive medius again in a new more terrible form with no time to lose the heroes rushed to the only location this could be done the dragons alter the same place where the Great Dragon Naga Tiki's mother had sealed the dark dragon tribe away in Millennia ago just outside the altar the group found a mortally wounded Prince Nicholas who quickly gave them the Tome Starlight that he had managed to retrieve asking them to take their revenge against garniff on his behalf despite the twisted and wicked actions he had done in the past macedon's Prince's last actions were certainly Noble for he had just made it possible for Martha to stand a chance in this fight before long the prince had ascended the dragon's Altar and struck down the spirit of garneth although they were too late to stop the ritual medius had already been reborn as a true shadow dragon but with both The Binding shield and the Falcon in hand this was the perfect chance to stop him as the waves and waves of medius's dragon Army crashed against them the United Heroes of arcanea kept battling and soon one by one each of the corrupted maidens who were set to guarding mid-use were restored by their loved ones with the last scent of the dragon's corruption expunged Martha challenged menus once again besting him in combat with the dragon's downfall the crisis which had plagued the world was finally over though the cost of this war had been high at last the people of arcanea United under the righteous Banner of Marth the hero King could rest though the tales of his Royal Guard often called altea's finest night would eventually be forgotten the name of Marth would not even thousands of years past his time while the other Heroes of the land finally returned to their lives for the rest of marth's days spent alongside his beautiful queen and his many loyal friends the hero would lead the United Kingdom of arcanea into a safe and secure golden age I have to admit that I have a bit of a soft spot for the story of the original mystery of the emblem from the perspective that I took going through these games and that's of a person who was blind to the rest of the series and intentionally went through them in release order the steps that the third game took to modernize its presentation were actually very exciting for me I remember thinking at the time wow a map they used a map and I can actually tell what's going on and where I'm supposed to be that was the first time I felt that I was getting a readable glimpse into the world of argania but the story that followed was never one of the series best marth's follow-up tale wasn't planned out during the original game rather it was a new Direction after the team finished Fire Emblem longaiden this results in this story's major plot drivers having absolutely no setup in the previous game which misses out on a lot of the potential for sequels looking back back on my time with fire emblems 9 and 10. many of my favorite plot points in the latter came from things that were set up in the prior game and satisfyingly paid off had radiant Dawn been completely without these then I imagined that I would have been harder on the plot than I already was before embarking on the DS fire emblems I of course knew ahead of time that the two games had been created one after the other meaning that this time around the developers would have the chance to tie them in better with each other they could just add a line for goto about the star orb being shattered or maybe some kind of hint that garnaf Spirit had managed to linger on after his death something which could have also happened after the credits this unfortunately never materialized in Shadow drag and apart from one conversation with Hardin that maybe sets up how he will have a future jealousy of Marth a lot of this potential which had the capability of enriching this next story just a little bit more was lost shadow dragon was a game that was utter devoted to maintaining the same feeling as the original despite how much of a renewal it was meant to be in terms of its story it was so dedicated to this that it would actually pass up on such a golden opportunity like this one as I said in the last video that is a stance that I can at least respect and as I saw these chances being passed up I imagine to myself that new mystery style would also be carrying on this Legacy giving a faithful but tweaked re-adaptation of the original Super famicom Games sequel story well I was really wrong about that while shadow dragon was stubbornly dedicated to preserving the past new mystery of the emblem couldn't be more different this time the story of the original game has been bent twisted and sometimes broken all to make room for the developers new focus on a near obsessive level of reverence for the introduction of its new original content and by this new original content I mean almost entirely the character Chris going just from my synopsis where my goal is to make the story easily understandable while cutting out the chaff it's kind of hard to depict just how entirely this character takes over this plot this is because although most of their scenes are perfunctory and cuttable their presence in this game's story scenes dialogue battle preparation conversations and completely new chapters and missions is nothing less than overwhelming though I choose to shorten this game's title to new mystery of the emblem for brevity's sake in this video Fire Emblem 12 is definitely more dedicated to The Heroes of Light and Shadow part of its name rather than the mystery of the emblem part while Marth is the hero of the light who was remembered throughout time he actually shares half the Limelight with the hero from the Shadows the one that was supposedly forgotten about AKA retconned Chris I find whenever I write my story synopsis simply going through the process of writing down what happened tends to sort out what is a actually important and what is completely disposable just on its own when retelling the plot of new mystery of the emblem it was tempting to Simply leave out Chris entirely because everything to do with him the training of the seventh Squad and the events with Katarina and the League of Assassins is entirely filler this isn't a bad thing the questionable part of all this only comes in when the game overtly starts overshadowing the original plot to bump up this filler's importance in no uncertain terms Marth is no longer the main character of this game anymore though Marth does still have to stick the dragon in the end had this been another genre then Chris would have been the main character and Marth are AI controlled sidekick we start the game with the creation of Chris and then take them through the quite Hefty prologue section as they form their own circle of friends rapidly become the most important Knight in altea and then go on to form relationships with every single character in the entire game now I don't actually have an issue issue with this structure in theory it actually sounds pretty cool to imagine a fire emblem game where we are not playing from the perspective of the mainlord but just in the role of one of his Knights it's kind of like how he played as Ryden in Metal Gear Solid 2. for the purposes of making the long time series protagonist Solid Snake look like the super soldier legend that the games built him up to be this is more of an issue in the context of this game specifically because not only does Chris have a lot of exposure here but every bit of it that he was given in the main plot was done by writing all over someone else's development most of the time in Fire Emblem 12 this is done by making jagen an irrelevant character as every great scene of his and the original mystery that showed off how loyal and intimidating the old Knight could still be we now have Chris sticking his head in the middle of things to lap up an undeserved level of attention by the way I was not joking when I said that literally the entire cast forms relationships with Chris and this is easily seen with the return of the leveling support system at first glance new mystery seems to be returning back to the info and support conversation systems of Path of Radiance which is quite the worthy goal Fire Emblem 9 definitely had the best support system in any of these games so far the critical difference between fe9 and fe12 is that this system is less of an army support system and more of a Chris support system out of a cast of over 70 characters over half have conversations with nobody else but Chris now even though this imbalance annoys me I can't really say that I truly hate it because at the very least we do get to see every character's personality to a degree and I admit that it was fun to see how this game handled the previously extremely underwritten 16-bit era cast still this is obviously lopsided many people argue that this imbalance is just due to the developers trying to puff up the player's egos after all the Avatar is supposed to be you and you are meant to feel awesome if this is the Trope that they were trying to go with then it actually wasn't done very well here unlike the other overly beloved heroes from other games that are meant to fulfill this role for instance link from The Legend of Zelda games Chris by comparison is a fully written character with their own predetermined personality and responses he or she has a backstory albeit one that is marginally affected by the player's responses during character creation but with this aside Chris has their own reaction and place in the plot and completely predetermined aspirations and goals Chris isn't you or me they are just a unit that we can play dress up with all this attention on them is inappropriately placed even if I did get a kick out of many of the underwritten cast conversations with them as I discussed in my radiant Dawn video I have overtime gained higher and higher expectations for The Ensemble writing of this series now all putting this much focus on a single part of this overall cast even if it was done on the traditional main character Lord is still a mockery of the exciting and varied pairings that fleshed out the fire emblem casts of old at this point I've played many fire emblems with support systems and many without it and I've seen them both work within their chosen goals if you're going to cut this system then cut it shadow dragon did and it didn't actually bother me that much on the other hand if you're choosing to include a support system for the cast Then include a support system for the cast even with some of the greatest characters thus far in Fire Emblem if they were focused on as overtly as Chris was here I'd be raising a red flag all the same I feel as if the story writing for new mystery was giving me what I wanted but through gritted teeth the whole time it is half of what I love about the games and characters of old while the other half was devotedly determined to keep photobombing the moment it it's not bad it's just frustrating there's definitely a difference there might be no other better example of this than the Absurd Obsession that this game has with giving Chris new hats or hairstyles every couple of missions there is no moment too serious or too solemn to not bring this up it doesn't matter if people are dying and the world is at stake this game will keep giving you funny hats I don't even know what the hell I'm supposed to say about this it's just bafflingly in the game all over the place underneath decisions like this the enjoyable tale of the War of Heroes is still present even if its Integrity has been perverted to be honest playing this game after knowing the original is kind of like watching the special editions of the original Star Wars movies you can be totally into what's going on but you just can't get sucked in because every couple of scenes you have to put up with some new tact on if there's one thing I've learned through making this series it's that no matter how similar to Fire Emblem games look and the two DS fire emblems look almost identical in themes and practice they can still be Worlds Apart while that was definitely the case with the story here next up we're going to see if that also holds true with the gameplay Fire Emblem 12 is definitely a game that wears a lot of hats all at once it is dedicated to remaking and remixing the content of Fire Emblem 3 Book 2 implementing huge balance changes that followed on from its direct predecessor and also bringing new systems out on top of both of these at the same time trying to tackle these all at once would make it sound like a confusing contradictory mess so I'll try my best to sort these out let's start with updates to the original Super famicom game one of the new flashy features of the original mystery of the emblem was the newly added ability for mounted characters to Dismount a feature that was further enforced through mystery of the emblem's level design this function was only seen in one more game thracia 776 before disappearing from the series entirely and to be honest I can't say that I've really missed it with the idea of dismounting being dead and buried by the time of fire and 12 there were some necessary changes that had to happen to its level design most noticeable right away in chapter 1 where the previous Valley that was only passable on foot has now been clearly widened there are other examples of this throughout the game but in general I think they all work really well I definitely always thought that the starting maps of the War of Heroes had some tedious level design and this was a very strange place to start out besides this there have also been a variety of smaller changes to items and systems for example we have the star shards that you collect throughout the early and mid game which used to improve unit growth rates working much like ratio 776's Crusader Scrolls which I discussed in detail in that video in new mystery of the emblem these items simply buff certain stats for as long as they're held by that unit this is sort of an equivalent change although it does mean that they are less abusable for grinding out perfect stats that's not saying that the game doesn't have an issue with that in other ways but I'll be taught talking about that in the next part while there have been other small changes in general Fire Emblem 12 did do a good job at making some necessary quality of life enhancements to the original game's design I already talked about how smoothly and quickly shadow dragon played in the last video and of course the improvements to the speed of play is virtually unchanged here the DS emblems are fast paced and a lot of fun but that doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't built on some pretty funky balancing of course the issue in Shadow Dragon was you being able to forge unbelievably useful weapons which preyed upon the game's lack of enemy and boss variety fortunately new mystery doesn't really suffer from that same issue as much for one enemy and boss variety is far better which definitely addressed the Godlike usability of sita's wingspier and other effective weapons on top of this the ballastition units Jake and Beck who were also able to benefit from forging in this game have both just happened to misplace their ballistas between now and then as a result result there is really no outright broken mechanic that sticks out as hard in this game but there is something to be said about how class change can now lead players to an easy path to Victory the whole system of class change was a brand new feature introduced in the previous game and to be honest I thought I would have a lot to say about it but when I started writing the script I just couldn't think of anything interesting to add it sort of just does what it says on the tin almost all units are able to change classes with quantity limits set on each type of unit so you can't just roll up with a party of 12 wyvern Riders and in missions in three turns it's an interesting option that gives you the ability to choose the classes that you want or it can also serve as a Fail-Safe if you happen to lose a key Ally like a Healer or magic user while the six Flyers that the system limited you to on the last Games maps was reasonable mystery of the emblems maps by comparison tended to have a lot more quirky personality they often implemented tricks and traps that were designed about you being landlocked or early on and not having a sudden Fleet of units who could sail right over its intricately crafted level design take for instance the wyvern trap in chapter 3. in the middle of the map there are extremely powerful wyvern Riders who appear to be neutral to your actions they will only aggro you if you visit the Armory nearby the castle due to the owners of the shop being in League with the Macedon Rebels which is something that one of the people in the houses will warn you about if you visit them although you gain Paula on this map and she is very much a powerful unit at this point in time even she can still struggle with these units especially since they all die if you at once I definitely remember only barely squeaking by their encounter in the original game in new mystery of the emblem I was able to Simply reclass the promoted Aaron into a wyvern Rider as the jagen of this game or early on he is absolutely in his element and of course he totally destroyed these guys I admit it felt good that I was finally able to get my revenge after all this time but but as more and more of these instances of spoiling the point cropped up I couldn't help but feel just a little bit let down as you get more and more pre-promotes who you can immediately class change the Flyers this issue crops up more and more in the later Game maps as well though I may have been complaining a bit about how this thing let me down I have to say that I don't think that breaking the map design intentions is a holy bad thing after all I only realized how I could trivialize a lot of these Maps due to my time investment and knowledge of this series systems unless a player is already experienced with these games this path to power is not completely evident and I do think it is okay to include faster paths for those Savvy enough to find them a great example of this in another game happens in the first real boss of demon souls the boss Phalanx is weak to Fire and you find plenty of fire bombs in the level leading up to them a novice player who is struggling just with the challenge of the level getting up to him will see these firebombs as meant to help them with the regular enemies which could lead to a later event where they struggle heavily against the boss likewise an experienced or researched player would know to keep these fire bombs for the upcoming fight and once getting there they would be rewarded by being able to trivialize it in this situation the player's knowledge of the game was just as much a weapon as the actual item I really do love games that have this kind of depth where long after you've turned off your console and set down your controller they still stick in your head and you find yourself considering more and more possible ways of claiming Mastery over them this sort of feeling which I hope many other Gamers will recognize was actually the inspiration for this Channel's original name gamesbrained while class change is an example of a system which is rewarding to learn and implement the thrill of executing on your own proper plans would have been completely lost if the game simply offered to automatically change all your units into classes that best fit the scenarios at hand doing so would kind of ruin the process of learning the game and mindfully adapting your own strategies instead you'd simply be taking the helping hand that was given to you and missing out on a lot of the experience of course all players would have the option of refusing it and to keep refusing it every time it was given but if there was nothing to lose from taking this help in the game offered it in its own context as just another system then it's easy to see how many players would take it thinking that this was how the game was meant to be played and unfortunately as a result they would lose out on the enjoyable aspect of learning Mastery for themselves of course the scenario that I'm laying out here isn't what actually happened and I don't think that intelligent systems would ever take such an action all I was just trying to do by giving that hypothetical example was to start to paint a clearer picture in your minds why the drill grounds of this game are a terrible addition to the series foreign [Music] The Sacred Stones video I laid out my initial take on the free experience grinding system of that game and how I thought I couldn't see myself having an issue with it as long as grinding systems continued to be an optional feature as much as this retrospective series is meant to solidify my opinions on each game I make these videos between my experiences with each one and also before I have played through the entire Series in short they are retrospectives and also reviews but what you're basically watching is each step of my documented learning process what this means is from time to time simply through having more exposure to the series or just more time for certain ideas to ruminate in my mind sometimes my previous opinions are going to change this has already happened subtly one time before as over time I eventually realized the true power of Cavalry units even without Kanto the next one has already happened it's just that Fire Emblem 12 gives me a good time to explain how my opinion on optional grinding systems and especially Fire Emblem 12's drill grounds has changed quite a bit let's back up for a minute here though the drill grounds of Fire Emblem 12 is basically just another Arena and in combat it works similarly to how it has always been done going back as far as the very first game there's a pretty big difference here though in new mystery of the emblem you use the arena between maps and quite critically you are able to see the battle readouts ahead of time previous Arena systems were balanced out by being a big risk and not knowing exactly what you'd be going up against if you couldn't exit your fighter out quickly enough they would be gone for good in this version where you can see exactly what you're going up against as well as save in between every bout if you wish it's not really risky anymore this is just math the one Saving Grace of the drill grounds is the fact that using it does does not return your money back to you and each time you fight you will be using up your weapon durability this would be a decent limiter except that using it is comically cheap it is by far the safest and simplest method of grinding ever seen in the series before Sure Fire Emblem 8 actually pays you for grinding but the Tower of balmy can be a dangerous place for low-level units and grinding through it takes much more time the drill grounds can get any character from newbie to veteran in a matter of 10 minutes tops maybe all for a few thousand gold so what is the problem exactly I have the option to ignore this system if I want to that is true but that doesn't mean that we don't have a problem here the issue is and always has been how these simple grinding systems imbalance The Limited resource system that Fire Emblem is built around it's pretty universally agreed on that units like Seth Titania and Sita with her wingspier are way too strong and can end up invalidating a lot of other units free grinding is this same problem but from a resource system's perspective allow me to illustrate this from a completely different Viewpoint imagine that there was an action game that during the course of your first playthrough allowed you to purchase cheats that could let you turn on something like invincibility for your character or permanent invisibility or infinite ammo all of these with absolutely no drawbacks if this was done using the same currency as the rest of the game then every player would have a bizarre Dilemma to deal with it feels obvious to say that these kind of power boosting options are better reserved for New Game Plus modes simply because their mere presence as equally available options throws a heavy Shadow over any other potential purchases this is exactly the issue that free or painless grinding systems inflict upon this series why bother forging weapons after all when with far less money you can just train up the same unit that you might have given that weapon to if I suddenly jump my S to 20 levels as soon as I get her for half the price of any decent Forge weapon every iron Lance that I put in her hand is going to kill everything anyways a new weapon would only benefit her attack using the cheaper training grounds also gives her more Health defense speed and just about everything else to clarify I have no problem with grinding being in Fire Emblem games but it is entirely a matter of implementation I am aware that grinding systems are going to stay with this series from this point on and with that being the case I think it's good to establish a baseline going forward of what good and bad versions of that will be so far from what I've seen and what I think I will see in the future I feel pretty safe in saying that the drill grounds are probably the worst implementation of this in the whole series well exploring the depths of new mystery of the emblem has certainly been a more difficult Journey than I could have ever imagined having now covered everything that I wanted to cover with it it's time to finally take a step back and see how everything in this very unique entry adds up [Music] I remember feeling worried in the past that when I got to the DS fire emblems I wouldn't have much to say about them after all they're just remakes right having climbed this far into the series and now experienced this era's stories and gameplay Styles I can now say with total certainty that no these games are not just simple remakes they are actually two of the most fascinating entries in this entire series for very different reasons between the two however new mystery of the emblem is definitely the most outlandish bordering on bizarre while it continued the quality of life improvements that its predecessor brought as well as restoring some great ideas from previous installments that its predecessor also cut the sum of all its parts turned out to not be as great as they could and probably should have been for every design decision that I would love to shower with praise there is some kind of issue with it that I would want to criticize just as hard unlike shadow dragon which polished and honed its more limited scope new mystery seems to be a case of trying trying to expand too rapidly and at the end of the day it makes it really hard for me to recommend it I actually enjoyed the original version far more than this one and the original mystery of the emblem isn't even one of my favorites but at least experiencing that version allows me to cut out the bloated and ill-conceived additional functions here and it just gives me what I enjoyed most out of it a deeper more difficult and slightly excessive follow-up Journey for Marth and his allies perhaps it's this realization that I would honestly prefer playing the Now 26 year old original over this newer version from only a single decade ago that says the most about my overall feelings on this one it's hard to swallow the truth sometimes especially because I really found myself wanting to love this game I love pieces of it and that's about all I can say in the end [Music] thank you [Music] next up on the Fire Emblem retrospective we will at last be arriving at one of the most pivotal games in the entire series join me next time as we jump over to the 3DS in Fire Emblem Awakening [Music] thank you [Music] on April 20th 2010 the Fire Emblem series celebrated its 20th anniversary throughout the two decades it had existed Fire Emblem as a franchise told a tale of success and failure being a series that had attained a sudden burst of energy and enthusiasm even achieving reasonable success outside of its Home Country before A Series of Unfortunate business decisions LED it to almost complete Extinction despite its still positive reviews Fire Emblem Awakening nowadays is known as the game that saved the entire franchise there are multiple factors as to why this was of course but it is still undeniably true although the game that we're going to cover in detail today inspires a lot of feelings reactions and sometimes fiery rants throughout the Fire Emblem Community there is no doubt that all of these debates still continue to happen due to this game ensuring that there would still be a fire emblem series to constantly bicker about Awakening left an unforgettable Mark in this series through its gameplay through its storytelling and through its popularity and we definitely have a lot to talk about today it is finally time to start breaking down this extremely long-awaited entry as I always do I played through it fully twice and in order to best understand the bigger picture of its Unique Systems and changes I elected to do this once on normal casual mode and then followed this with another run on hard classic Mode I think I can say that both experiences really weren't what I was expecting as always in order to best explain the impact of the game and my experience with it in this video I'll be covering its development history then giving a synopsis of the story along with my analysis and finishing by going in to the gameplay alterations and tweaks that make this entry Stand Out far from any others that came before it I am sure that this is a video that many have been waiting for welcome to what is considered at this moment the beginning of the modern era of Fire Emblem it's time to awaken [Music] the 13th Fire Emblem game entered development the series as a whole was in its darkest hour after finding a strong audience from its days on the famicom super famicom and Game Boy Advance the series first ambitious attempt to jump to 3D with the ninth game unfortunately crashed and burned leading to the lowest sales in the franchise over the course of the next three games disappointing sales and waning interest in the western market led to the series eventually going back to being a Japan exclusive where on top of everything it then failed to meet these even lower expectations in response to what Nintendo saw as a series on the verge of collapse the developer intelligent systems was given a very clear ultimatum for their next game if it did not sell more than 250 000 copies then Fire Emblem would be coming to an end this demand through the development team into panic and plans were frantically made for what could possibly dig series out of the hole that it had been stuck in for years they at first thought that maybe a change of setting would ignite new interest so even out their ideas such as moving the series to modern times or Mars were considered although they were eventually dropped in favor of a more traditional Fire Emblem setting something significant still needed to happen though and as a compromise within the team it was decided that for this being possibly the final game they would do their best to make it a culmination of the entire series throughout Fire emblem's release history many new game systems had been tried Left Behind resurfaced tweaked or abandoned but to make this next game really stand out there was never any better moment to try and gather the most popular of them and attempt to make them work together somehow these included character marriage and child units which started in genealogy of the holy war the branching promotion system and open maps of the Sacred Stones and Gaiden along with the skills system seen in various forms throughout multiple entries whether or not to bring along more recent ideas such as the Casual mode which had just been introduced in the previous game was actually not a given even though they had decided to include it in new mystery this came after much debate and even at this time including it again was still opposed by many within the development team once again this topic raised a lot of debate but the producer hitoshi yamagami along with others on the team were ultimately able to defend including it again two key themes were decided for the game that was taking shape these being one a focus on the player's love for their characters and two the bonds that the game's characters would make over the course of the story these really set the tone for what this game would become as an unprecedented level of attention for its characters took Center Stage multiple writers were employed to give the cast of this game a lot more personality than had ever been attempted before with each and every one of these units getting an individual backstory and full character art both of these were used to imbue the writing behind the characters with a lot more life resulting in both the critical and non-critical character interactions getting a tremendous level of attention though the team toyed with the idea of using full voice acting including hiring several famous Japanese voice actors they were concerned about having too much content to fit onto the actual cart so this was changed to voicing only minor Snappy lines which were meant to evoke the feeling of the scenes without having to record everything to help flesh out this cast even more many more character Expressions were added with character art this time handled by toshiyuki kusakihara of intelligent systems along with yusuke kozaki a Japanese artist familiar with designing for manga anime and multiple video game properties such as No More Heroes outside of using this new artwork for dialogue characters were also physically represented in 3D during battle animations and story scenes but due to the 3DS not yet being released during the bulk of the development time the team didn't exactly know how detailed they could make the character models without having a very clear picture of the 3DS's CPU strength a deformed style was chosen but one that omitted certain bone structures from the models namely the feet and ankles this hoof looking design was just a temporary compromise but by the time the team realized that the 3DS would be perfectly capable of handling slightly more detailed figures it was already far too late into the development cycle and things were left as they were though this was an unfortunate casualty of its early 3DS development the cutscenes on the other hand turned out absolutely gorgeous handled by studio and a relatively new Japanese animation studio at the time to many these scenes are still cited as some of the best work in the entire franchise when it came to map design the same priority of pulling all of the series into one place was still kept with the team endeavoring to equally represent the two main types of Fire Emblem battles the first kind linear story focused Maps usually only had one solution or goal while the second kind open maps had multiple routes and typically no two players would have the same kind of experience on them since most games focus on the former of these with only Gaiden and a few specific maps from the other games representing the latter this mixture has gone on to be a bit disconcerting for some still the priority was on pulling the history of the franchise together and not exactly a blanket shift in map design all in all the kind of sweeping changes that ended up defining this game's scope storytelling cast game design and visual design were ambitious in a way that only a team fully believing that this was the end could go for internally this game was known as Fire Emblem Finn the children from the brink which reflected the team's acceptance of this series being one slip away from disaster but also hoping that this final project bring about a second generation for the series even though the later games might have been changed in the end amazingly this is exactly what was about to happen when Fire Emblem Awakening finally released on April 19 2012 in Japan the success it found was almost instantaneous after being given a total sales goal from Nintendo of over 250 000 in Japan alone thanks to the multiple changes in series appeal heavy promotion by Nintendo and exclusive 3DS bundle and extremely favorable critical reception Awakening was able to reach 242 000 copies just 8 000 short of their overall goal in only the first week alone in particular the 3DS bundle with the game was highly sought after with the pre-order website for it actually crashing due to the number of people trying to buy it all at once within eight months Awakening had sold over 450 000 copies just in Japan by that time the DLC for the game which included multiple side missions broken into individual DLC pieces had managed to move over 1.2 million units before even coming to the West Fire Emblem as a franchise had indeed been saved localization for the game took one year this time being a collaborative effort between Nintendo of America and 8-4 who had handled the excellent shadow dragon script four years prior finally releasing on February 4th 2013 in North America with other Region's releases coming in April that year the game received High sales and praise and soon became the fastest selling game for the Series in the west thus far moving over 180 000 copies in its first month incredibly intelligent systems had done it this was the game that could have been the death of the series but instead it was the one that became their biggest success story ever it could be said that this was just the result of enhanced marketing or that the series rode on the success of the 3DS alone however I think fire emblem's lack of success on the Wii proves that to a great degree each entry success does depend on its own decisions clearly a new door for the series had just been opened and although there was undoubtedly a great deal of rejoicing within the development team the very enviable question of where to go with the series next was back on the table and needed to be addressed we'll be getting into what came next next time for now we're going to focus on the story of Awakening as always you can use the time code above if you want to jump past my store story synopsis and just get right to my own analysis of it on the other hand if you'd rather avoid all story spoilers and just jump right to the gameplay sections instead you can use the time code at the bottom alright here we go in three two one following the era of Marth the hero King arcanea experienced many changes Nations warped and shifted new Heroes and new villains Rose and fell and over the course of two Millennia the land today scarcely resembled that of the past the nation of Elise sat to the southeast where the reigning exalt Imran now sought peace with her neighbors making up for her late father's warmongering nature to the north regnaferoffs where factions of honor-bound Warriors sometimes considered barbarians Rule Last to the Southwest was the land of plegia who still bitterly sought recompense for the pain ulyssa's former ruler had put them through in these days a frail piece held and within this time the heroic Prince krom younger brother of Imran patrolled the countryside with his loyal followers and younger sister Mr Lissa calling themselves the Shepherds the prince's band protected the small folk of Elise from Bandits and other threats this normal routine was broken one day when the Royal siblings discovered a mysterious person laying in a field who awoke with no memories beyond their own name Robin this mysterious figure soon proved themselves to be a genius tactician making them a more than welcome Ally despite the mystery behind their Origins while on the way back to the capital the Shepherds encountered yet another surprise seeing what could only be called a terror in reality in the open sky above them with waves of Undead soldiers pouring down near their location as they began to fend off this bizarre threat another Ally arrived a mysterious masked man calling himself Marth who after saving krom's sister suddenly disappeared after arriving at the Capitol and informing Imran of the situation dubbing these Undead soldiers as the the Risen krom learned of aggressive raids coming from plagia as their King gangril grew Bolder and more Brazen every day in order to face this threat krom LED his group to the northern regna ferrox seeking an alliance after proving his identity to the Border guards and meeting with Flavia the East Khan the group discovered that she was unable to help them currently due to the West Khan basilio currently being in charge however her support could be given if krom could win the next tournament as the eastcons champion Chrome's opponent in the tournament turned out to be none other than this mysterious Marth who also inexplicably wielded an identical version of Chrome's Legendary Blade the falchin although Marth was at first able to match krom move for move ultimately krom and the others were able to defeat him securing the support they needed despite wishing to question Marth on how he had acquired a falcon of his own unfortunately the Mysterio his hero disappeared yet again after returning back home prom and the others soon learned that in their absence one of their allies Maribel who was a personal friend of Lissa had been kidnapped by pledging soldiers and taken back across their border Amarin agreed to a meeting with gang Brill hoping that she would be able to find a peaceful resolution and see their friend safely returned at this meeting however gangril spun a false tale of how Maribel had instigated an act of aggression and demanded that Imran hand over the Fire Emblem immediately with the Mad King claiming that it was the only way to make reparations and avoid open War krom unable to accept these blatant falsehoods nor his ridiculous demands angrily struck down some of the plegian soldiers as soon as they moved to attack Imran which finally gave gangril the excuse to declare his War while the Shepherds were able to rescue Mirabelle in the ensuing battle gangril had definitely gotten what he wanted when return turning back to the capital krom encountered Marth yet again who brought with him a warning this night there would be an assassination attempt on imran's life claiming to have seen the future the mysterious hero proved it by stopping hidden assassins aimed at taking krom's life though in this ensuing conflict a near-miss shattered his mask revealing this Marth to actually be a woman soon after her predictions spoke for themselves as the group faced a sneak attack led by validar a plagian mage who seemed to recognize Robin shortly before his attack was stopped and validar was slain without the means to hold out against the main plagian Army the Shepherds and emerin reluctantly fled their capital and only a short time later they were informed of the terrible charge they just barely managed to avoid which had completely conquered their Homeland in order to try one last time to make peace with gengril Amarin decided to head back to speak with the King whilst entrust the Fire Emblem to krom's care while he continued to flee after learning that this last attempt at peace had only gotten Imran captured and scheduled to be executed the prince prom knew now that his only course was to charge straight for plagia and remove their vengeful King from Power after catching up to Gangrel at amaran's execution grounds they were very nearly able to rescue her only to have their plans suddenly Shattered by the Revelation that plesia was able to control the Risen Army and summon them to their side gang girl then gave krom one last ultimatum hand over the Fire Emblem now or watch Imran be killed seeking to spare chrom from making this terrible Choice Amberen surprised at both sides by once again reaffirming her desire for peace to every Soldier present after this last declaration the exalt sacrificed her own life falling to her death in a show of commitment and sincerity that shocked and touched everyone present or at least everyone present other than gangril who was gleeful at this dire turn of events though this seemed to be an event that would demoralize the elysians something entirely unexpected happened instead scores of plagian soldiers began deserting unwilling to disrespect the sacrifice of emrin whether she was an enemy or not only gangril and his few soldiers left wished to continue this fight however soon krom and his friends were able to catch up to him and finally slay them all at the border between their two countries and with this act the war was officially over in the wake of this newfound piece krom now finally married his true love with whom he had his first daughter Lucina plagius attempt to conquer its neighbor had ultimately ended in Failure but not without a heavy sacrifice soon though in order to keep the peace that they had just found krom would next have to make the first strike against a a new oncoming Danger [Music] since the war and while the life of the Shepherds had been peaceful across the water in the former land of Valencia now known as balm a conqueror named wellhart was setting his sights Eastward virion an Archer and krom service who had joined him shortly after encountering Robin brought dire news revealing himself as a Duke who had fled the valmi's Conqueror years ago and he now knew that Elise was walhart's next Target fighting back the Empire of a man who had already won a whole continent for himself would surely not be easy and so reluctantly krom and the others approached plagia for help the man in charge of the healing Nation turned out to be none other than validar who apparently survived his wounds after the assassination attempt that the Shepherds had thwarted though validar would not be able to pledge soldiers he did pledge a huge navy to the cause giving one thousand of his ships this was not the only surprise he had up his sleeve though as he next introduced his guests to the new hierophant of plagio someone who looked identical to Robin privately validar approached Robin through a mental projection revealing that the connection they shared was a familial one and Robin was in fact validar's child after the attempt to bring them over to plagia's side failed Robin left to accompany krom and the others while their head swam with the Revelation that they had just been dealt before being awoken by krom way back in that field so long ago Robin had had a vision which they still puzzled themselves over that of themselves having a victory over validar alongside their friend krom before they themselves betrayed him unto his death before departing a surprise attack of the Risen likely sent by validar ambushed the group and shortly after the attack a final assassin got close to KRON though he would have lost his life this time the mysterious Marth intervened yet again reflexively calling out father during the rescue finally confronting this mysterious figure about her identity the girl revealed the brand of the exalt in her eye a marking that only passed through krom's family lineage and one that exactly matched up with krom's young daughter though she was still an infant in this world this girl in actuality was Lucina all grown up who had come from a distant alternate future after witnessing her own land be conquered not by walhart but the Titanic and Unstoppable fell Dragon grima Lucina had made it her mission to stop the Return of the Dragon in an earlier timeline using the power of the god Dragon Naga to travel through time itself alongside her own allies from her time having pride and love for his daughter no matter what timeline krom embraced her promising her that together they could accomplish this goal no matter what it took after finally departing the continent for valm the group ran into the Vanguard of walhart's Navy and through a plan that forced them to sacrifice half of their 1000 ships krom and the others successfully managed to Halt this massive oncoming force in the wake of this Victory after making landfall in the new continent they soon found a woman named sarri making a final stand against the empire upon saving her they learned that she was attempting to form a resistance against the emperor but as of yet still having little success though she was unable to get the competing dynasts under walhart to work together against their Emperor the young revolutionary did share her plan to awaken the Divine Dragon Oracle Tiki who had been sleeping at the top of a massive tree known as the military located near the center of the continent after phase facing off with more Imperials who were led by a wonderfully Mustachio General Crum and the others were able to find the sleeping Oracle who soon recognized the greater threat that was currently befalling the world the fellow Dragon grima who had been sealed away one thousand years now was indeed swiftly gaining power yet again to stop the future which Lucina had already witnessed the group would need to locate Five powerful gemstones which were meant to Adorn the fire emblem with them gathered the true power of the falchen could be awakened and with its new power grima could once again be sealed away luckily krom was already in possession of one of these gemstones and Tiki was also holding another however the other three were still out there held by the various nations of the world with Tiki now guiding them the resistance movement carried on and as their group continued to win more and more territory the looming threat of the emperor himself said to be able to slay anyone with a single strike Drew closer and closer to them in equal measure soon after they learned that they were faced with three armies one led by walhart himself another by Yin FEI sari's brother and a final one stationed at Fort Steiger between the other two Robin seeking to divide and conquer elected to attack the fort initially the attack went very well however the group's promising progress suddenly came to a halt as nearly all of their forces turned traitor against them and attempted to Corner the Shepherds within worse yet they learned that both walhart and yinfei's army were also marching on their location and would soon reach them combining their already immense strength into a nigh Unstoppable Juggernaut in response to this sudden shift Robin suggested that they Retreat from The Fortress immediately while moving to take out one of the armies bearing down on them the plan was to send a small diversion engineering Force led by the Khan basilio to delay wallheart while the Shepherds and their remaining forces would attack yinfei and attempt to defeat him before he could combine his army with the Emperors however before leaving Lucina tried to warn basilio that if he attempted to fight walhart he would surely lose his life just as he did in her timeline in spite of this forewarning basilio chose to go anyway alongside his fellow conflavia through a plan that involved the luring yinfei into a volcanic cave the Shepherds were able to eliminate his advantage over them and slay him learning only later and too late that the only reason he had joined the empire was just to ensure his sister's safety while this battle was happening basilio and flavia's assault on walhart unfortunately went exactly as Lucina predicted with basilio losing swiftly to the Conqueror though he did impress him with his ability to survive more than a single strike after the surviving con Flavia was a able to deliver this sad news she passed on the third gemstone for the Fire Emblem which basilio had kept in his possession leaving only two more to find with the loss of yinfei who was the real figure that held the dinus of the empire together suddenly huge groups of Imperial defectors started joining their side and a turn of Fate that the emperor found utterly shocking he soon found himself retreating to his capital and before long krom and the resistance had successfully cornered him though he put up a mighty fight soon the mightiest conqueror who would never accept peace or compromise even when it was offered to him at the end lost everything he held including his life at last the valmi's threat had been ended with krom retrieving the fourth gemstone that walhart had kept in his possession at the same time now only the final one kept in plegia remained out of the reach it had been a costly but necessary Victory as the exhausted Delicia sailed back home at this time they had no idea that this entire struggle had played right into the hands of yet another threat one that now eagerly awaited their return [Music] upon finally returning to his home krom's group was surprisingly contacted by validar who explained that plegia was in fact willing to give away the final gemstone to them even though this claim certainly seemed suspicious krom knew that they had to get that final Stone no matter what and so keeping the fire emblem on him personally for protection he marched into plegia to see what awaited him once they were in their borders velodar's true intentions were revealed as he ambushed the Shepherds and attempted to slay them all then and there though this attack did not go as planned validar didn't seem to be able to exert some amount of control over his child Robin and gained control of their body long enough to force them to steal the Fire Emblem away from krom and manage to deliver it to their father after this when Robin was able to gain control of their body their clear weakness to validar's persuasion left the them racked with guilt and self-doubt as their group now had to make it a priority to stop validar before he could awaken grima at the Dragon's Table krom attempted to reassure his friend that they were strong enough to resist any future control attempts even though Robin themselves remained unsure later at Sunset Lucina approached the tactician though she admitted that she knew that krom and Robin's Bond was absolutely undeniable she accepted that there was now only one way to save her father's life and Drew her sword at them despite lucina's conviction the act of slaying Robin proved to be too hard with her hesitation giving krom just enough time to intervene and help talk her down the group decided that whatever their fate the father daughter and partner would do whatever it took to stop validar's plot and to end the threat of grima together after arriving at the Dragon's Table the dream that Robin had had before seeing aimed to repeat itself just as they had foreseen together with chrome Robin was able to defeat validar followed by the Mage attempting to control them which led to Robin fatally stabbing krom though the worst seemed to be coming true as validar re-emerged to gloat over his victory basilio thought dead since his battle in balm also reappeared revealing that thanks to lucina's warning he had simply played dead rather than foolishly continuing to fight with walhart and while he was presumed dead this had allowed him to move in secret against plagia for the Shepherds thanks to Robin's Dream foresight one of the fire emblem's orbs had been swapped with a fake and Robin and krom had worked together to Stage this false scene in fact Robin had managed to fight back against valedar's control and weakened the power of the spell that had been used to stab crom doing only minor damage in the end with validar's plans spun completely out of control the mad man made One Last Stand before he was finally slain for good though one threat had been ended the hierophant of plagia the one who carried the same face as Robin emerged as the true threat revealing that they had come to this world at the same time as Lucina and were in fact the Avatar of grima upon First Landing in this timeline the future grima had attempted to assert its control on the robin of this world but failed due to their body not yet being ready to act as a new host though Robin managed to survive the attempt this was the action that had destroyed their memories and left them laying in the field where they had fortunately been stumbled upon by krom and their future friends despite this timeline's Robin being unable to be used as a host grima did have one way to restore the powers of the fell dragon in this world this was to finish the restoration of this time's grima through the use of human sacrifices that had already been prepared by The Mad play game with the Shepherds being able to do nothing to stop this the dark power created by the mass sacrifices was immediately used to bring the fell dragon in its full form back into this world while the Titan began its Ascension the Shepherds scrambled out of plagia carrying both the Fire Emblem and the final gemstone with them following Tiki's instructions they made their way to mount prism where they were able to use the complete emblem to both restore the true power of the fountain and get in contact with the god Naga here they learned of two options which awaited them they could either use the awakened sword to seal away the Dragon for another 1000 Years or due to grima's Unique connection to Robin have them finish the dragon off instead whereupon the fell dragon's life could be ended for good unfortunately this second option would almost certainly come at the cost of Robin's death as well at the very least doing this did have one small fragment of Hope due to to the incredible bonds of friendship that Robin had made with prom and the others there was a small chance that they could hold on to life in some form with this heavy decision to make the Shepherds finally went on the offensive seeking out grima at the place where it was gathering power and preparing for its worldwide Conquest using naga's magic to teleport them onto the dragon's back here they found Robin's devil awaiting them in this massive final battle after finally cutting their way through the most powerful forces they had yet faced At Last Prom and Robin stood before the Avatar of evil if it was krom who slayed the Beast with the falchin grima returned to sleep and while this signaled its inevitable return at least the prince was able to keep his friend at his side however when Robin dealt the final Blow instead the tactician was successful in using their unique connection to the feldragon to destroy grima forever with no time to celebrate soon Robin began to fade away with Chrome at their side using their last words to thank everyone for the brief but wonderful life that they had managed to find amongst them though peace had been restored the Shepherds mourned deeply for their lost friend while still holding out hope that the strength of their bonds with Robin would hold true and that someday somewhere they could see their friend once more eventually one day long after the threat of grima had been erased from the world yet again a mysterious figure was spotted sleeping in a field krom and the others could only smile and once again reach out a hand and help them stand once more foreign [Music] unlike other story analysis sections this one is actually going to be broken into two distinct Parts because before I even get started talking about my own thoughts about the story I kind of feel the need to take a step back and comment on the obvious instead a lot of people have a lot of different feelings about this game every Fire Emblem game thus far has had their Defenders and detractors but something about this one and the ones that will follow it really feel different so before I get to my opinions I feel I simply have to acknowledge why when talking about this game especially there seems to be so very little middle ground in a way the situation we have here with analyzing Awakening is not too dissimilar from the situation with another very popular entry the Blazing Blade Fire Emblem 7 was the first game in the series that many fans started with and people build a lot of their attachment to a franchise from their first significant experience with it Fire Emblem Awakening like the Blazing blade was a lot of people's first Fire Emblem and simply from how widespread and popular it got because of this heavily plays into why there's so much disagreement about this game to this day though there are many many fans who played Awakening first and thus have a lot of positive feelings for it at the same time for veterans of the series Awakening is associated with very very different emotions due to the last game a new mystery of the emblem being a Japan exclusive Awakening was the game that seemed to Signal a new design Philosophy for the entire series one that and at least the gameplay storytelling and character writing seem to be geared first and foremost for Mass Appeal it kind of sounds weird to say that this is the game that many see as turning this series into anime but it's something that I've heard very often if you've been watching these videos and paying attention to this series style it probably doesn't really make sense but I do understand why people can see it that way from the very beginning the Fire Emblem Series has been heavily inspired by anime and the progression of its own visual style does a good job at reflecting that very clearly Fire Emblem Awakening of course does this as well however the reason why it gets this anime distinction is due to a combination of a number of different factors if you look at it just in Broad Strokes well it's got a Plucky cast of handsome young people with very indistinct ages all of whom are badasses to an incredible degree however this cast of badasses still have heavy vulnerabilities and little character quirks that Define them such as suffering from a lack of self-confidence or always impassionately analyzing everything in a scientific way we have the cool one the serious one the crazy one the silly one Etc on top of this if you really want to start reaching you can even go as far as to say that Robin has their own Harem since just about every male or female character depending on Robin's gender can fall in love with them I guess you could say that if you asked just about any member of the public who only had a passing knowledge of what anime was they might describe it a lot like this game to be fair this can also be a reason why a lot of people liked it whatever corner you find yourself in throughout the Fire Emblem fanbase there are going to be thousands of different opinions about this game it does only make sense this game sold nearly 10 times more copies than the average Fire Emblem so the sheer exposure alone is going to guarantee more diversity and opinion since making my series of videos I've witnessed this myself I found it hard to sustain a conversation with anyone about topics concerning fire emblems 1 2 or 3 for example most people will respond just that they haven't played it yet and therefore can't comment on the other hand just about everyone has an opinion about Awakening sometimes criticisms are fair and sometimes they aren't for many people this game isn't just a single Fire Emblem game it is the herald for what would be coming next if they didn't like what that was going to be then feelings of negativity are going to be magnified simply because this game was such a turning point for the series when you know what's coming next it's easy to let that background knowledge seep unconsciously into your Viewpoint which if this doesn't alter your opinions entirely can at least often have the effect of magnifying them both in a positive or negative manner this is exactly what bias is and although this word generally has negative connotations it really is just a neutral term that points out how our perceptions shift based on our own personal life experiences and knowledge while some information about the future of this series dripping down to me is unavoidable I do talk about fire emblem on the internet internet after all I view having concrete opinions already formed about the future games of this series when breaking down the value of this one to be a form of unfair bias unfair bias doesn't mean the same thing as a bad bias here just that having this kind of preconception demonizes Awakening for future developments which 100 did not exist yet when this game was made understand that even my having played all 12 prior games to this is a form of bias my bias is that I know how the series developed to get here which is why to me at least the developments that Awakening made to character and story writing are not unprecedented at all to me almost everything seen here is either a repeat of something that came before or a totally reasonable progression of previous design priorities I know that was quite a long build up just to get to my point here that Awakening didn't actually change that much but nowadays A lot of the audience's preconceptions about this game are so wrapped up in the general discourse about what modern Fire Emblem has become that I felt that all of the prior things needed saying before I could talk about it [Music] alright let's start analyzing this storytelling and of course I think the best place to start with is kind of the elephant in the room the Avatar Robin in the last video I went into detail about the issues with this series first avatar Chris and how their presence became frustrating due to them being awkwardly inserted into a game that was a remix story which originally wasn't created with Chris in mind while an Overexposed Avatar like Chris only builds resentment using an avatar too lightly such as with Mark the Fire Emblem 7 tactician just makes them very very forgettable both Chris and Robin are not self-inserts though players do tend to protect onto them they do need to have a personality and a fair place in this world in Fire Emblem especially they have to fit in as part of The Ensemble a good Avatar needs to be relevant enough in the story but not so dominant as to completely steal attention or gravity away from other Main characters after the last game I was really worried about how Robin would be handled here which is why it was such a pleasure to find out that they did actually manage to thread that needle though Robin is definitely important to this overall story they only really become a truly critical part in the last third of it though I'd say we definitely do play from the perspective of Robin with us beginning the game with their dream and then being literally picked up from their first person Viewpoint at no point did I feel that Robin was really overshadowing the rest of the cast and especially not overshadowing crom of course Awakening wasn't a remake so we don't have any issues to deal with like we did last time but there are a lot of other factors beyond just avoiding overexposure that keep Robin from dominating The Narrative and staying in their proper place for one The increased level of detail on the cast in general does a great deal of work in making Robin just one part of a greater whole the character writing for for a majority of the Awakening cast is often rightly praised for me it's simple to see how multiple characters from this game are instant favorites for many while each on the surface can just seem like a bundle of character quirks all of them at least did manage to leave a very strong impression on me this plays perfectly into the support system which is back to being where it was with a lot of varied pairings but on top of this having the ability to give more than just five total support interactions allows every player just in a single playthrough to get to know this cast a lot better since we're on the subject we might as well address how shipping characters takes on an entirely new importance in this game far more important than it ever has been since genealogy of the holy war this of course is due to the addition of s-rank supports and how your pairings will play into the child characters who become available for recruitment later on within the story whereas before your time is spent raising two units to their support level only paid off with the support boost in battle and a short story blurb in the character credits there's something a lot more satisfying about having your pairings result in completely new characters ones who have their own pre-existing backstories entertaining personalities and interesting pairing results in general while not every S rank support ends up in a very well written scene there are a lot of entertaining pairs to discover with some of the most fun to be had with the system coming from how you choose to pair up Robin since your avatar is able to pair with just about everyone there's a lot of interesting flexibility with how their child characters can end up a standout example of this is how male robin is able to end up as lucina's husband yet female Robin can just as likely become lucina's mother if you really think about that for a bit it'll probably feel a little bit awkward but at the same time I can't help but find this kind of wiggle room absolutely delightful especially because both of these unique relationships pay off fantastically in the confrontation scene that happens later on with Lucina player and story interplay like this is a place where Awakening is able to outshine all of its peers however I have to say that in just about every other regard the rest of the plot here is just about as standard as Fire Emblem games come in simple terms we have a Down to Earth lead many enjoyable friends and enemies a long diversion in the middle and a final confrontation with a world ending Dragon there are some interesting twists and turns but for a game that heavily involves time travel and Alternate Worlds the plot of this game is surprisingly straightforward even on my original playthrough I kind of had the feeling that I've been through this multiple times before honestly the most unique thing about awakening's plot is just how episodic it really is something which I don't really think is to this game's benefit to explain what I'm talking about here many tend to separate this game into three parts part one is the opening up until the death of Imran and the defeat of gangril part two is the entire vollm Arc and part three is the finale as the group outwits validar and then defeats grima though like genealogy of the holy war this game does have a time Jump between Parts one and two it really isn't used a very great effect it seems to have mostly just been used to show that baby Lucina had the crest of the exalt in her eye so that later on we would instantly understand who the fake Marth was of course comparing this to the time Jump used in genealogy which the entire game was really built around really doesn't do this game any favors out of all these parts one section in particular does get a lot of hate which is why I kind of feel it necessary to address part two even though having a big diversion in the middle of the game is pretty common practice in the series its use in Awakening due to its episodic nature I believe makes it seem overly detached from the rest of the game it's definitely the weakest of the three but I have to say that there are a lot of underappreciated aspects about it for one thing I really like how this game uses it to depict how truly frustrating lucina's nigh impossible task would actually be to try to do seen in how far she goes to try to prevent basilio's death and then it's seemingly having no effect at all on top of this there are other great moments of character development and I'm always going to be on the side of bringing Tiki back who was a fun character in Fire Emblem 1 and is very interesting to see all grown up here now very interesting indeed putting the obvious aside that there is yet another aspect that I think is probably the most overlooked thing about it and that is the extreme nostalgic appeal of being able to travel freely between the former lands of arcanea and Valencia which is something that is going to be lost on many Western Gamers due to this series Japanese exclusive or Origins if you think about getting to this game from a dedicated Japanese player's perspective or also for crazy people like me who chose to play them all in literal release order going back to arcanea yet again is somewhat old hat at this point Awakening is technically the fifth game to be set there even if it is thousands of years later going back to Valencia however was the first time we'd ever been able to go back to the land of Gaiden despite knowing it was there for many years all along for myself just from finding out that I was going to be able to go back to Valencia was a major thrill in a way this is not unlike the inclusion of the Kanto region into the end game of Pokemon Gold and Silver definitely one of the best surprise additions into any game ever sure it can be said that including this weak Arc just for the use a fan service wasn't the best of ideas but this disregards the mindset of the developers which weighs heavily upon this game remember they thought that this very well could have been their last Fire Emblem and surely there was a desire to honor the series they were sending off whatever your take on this part of the story is there is clearly a lot of love behind the decisions that led to its inclusion Awakening in a nutshell is a very enjoyable combination of a fantastic cast extremely fascinating systems to pair and customize your experiences with them a fun setting that paid tribute to the origins of the series while still making it very different and a very light-hearted cookie cutter plot these are words that I would have and have used to describe many different Fire Emblem games but while the storytelling aspects of Awakening are well within expectations the gameplay systems which we will be getting into next are where things start to fracture away from what this series even is before even getting into talking about the gameplay we kind of have to acknowledge that at this point this is video 13 in this gigantic series that I've started Fire Emblem Awakening was meant to be the culmination of this series as it brought multiple systems from across the franchise together most of these I have already covered in extreme detail across the breadth of my own videos throughout this video I already mentioned about the origins of many of them so if you'd like to know more about their debut and original functions you can watch the relevant video in this series later on today I am mostly just going to focus more on the sum of these parts not only because I personally find it more interesting but because this is what allowed Awakening to go from normal Fire Emblem to one of the most absurdly broken experiences I have ever encountered before we get to that however I do have to start start out with the biggest new system that Awakening actually did bring to the table which is Pera honestly at first pairing up seemed like nothing but rescue in Reverse rather than pulling a unit into your same space while taking a stat penalty you now put your own unit into the space as another giving that controlling unit a stat benefit on top of this pairing up also adds a chance for your partner to join into your attacks or to possibly block damage for you with that chance increasing based on the two's support level despite turning around the rescue system sounding kind of crazy overpowered I actually do feel that hair up in this game does come with a decent attempt at balancing out its extreme positives turning your two units into a single more powerful one does have a lot of uses and adding on to this the ability to actively swap who is in control without losing a turn grants you a lot of flexibility at the same time time however especially early on in this game reducing your total number of attacks per turn or the amount of ground that you're able to cover can just as easily backfire on you I experienced this a lot in my original playthrough even though yes that was the normal casual run one at the beginning I really underestimated just how much I would need to change to utilize this new mechanic effectively in previous fire emblems there were always reasons to reduce the total space that your units took up and the ability to move a unit out of the way that had already acted was simply so useful that the stat penalty made sense here since pairup only displaces the unit that you are currently controlling this kind of strategy is completely out of the window for example if you left a dancer in a dangerous spot you can no longer just have your armor knight go and hide them away after the fact now your armor knight would have to go and hide behind them and the dancer's survival would depend on entirely on the extra defense bonus gained from hairing up being enough to keep them alive this compared to rescuing is by far a more dangerous option and it might be part of why this game on hard mode and above especially has become very Infamous for frustrating reinforcements put simply the pair up system has a very high skill ceiling but it is also less forgiving of your mistakes switching from rescuing to pairing up would be enough of a mix-up for a typical Fire Emblem sequel to have however putting this system in concert with the following changes that I'll be getting into next are what shift Awakenings gameplay in such a dramatic fashion I have spoken in the past very frequently about how the Kanto system of past games was both an incredibly unbalanced feature but also one that was simply a lot of fun to play around with I studied how over time intelligent systems tried a lot of different ways to balance it out and its use in radiant Dawn especially made me believe that they had definitely learned their lesson and how to restrain powercrete [Music] uh yeah I was definitely wrong about that in the grand scheme of things pairing up is only an enabler for the other major changes in this game which while they too also could have just been fine on their own pool together to form a unique and chaotic atmosphere let's just start with character skills which I think were last seen in their best form in radiant Dawn rather than being linked to reusable Scrolls or consumable items Awakening skills are learned and locked to characters at specific levels in various classes and their benefits range from mediocre to utterly game breaking in the past I've spoken of a certain very overpowered skill combinations such as the infamous wrath and resolve of Path of Radiance but I don't think anything would have prepared me for the sheer dominance of the dark Flyers Gale horse which is a skill that gives any unit who slays their enemy on the player's turn an immediate extra full action this is basically a baked in dancer refresh for achieving a kill on your term and in a game with as high a power ceiling for your units as this one it actually turns out to be not that hard of a requirement to meet consistently gale force might not seem too bad at first but if you Intuit or learn the steps to get multiple gale force users at your disposal very quickly such as I did on my hard classic run even just six gale force users can completely change the game for you instead of having to think tactically the dominant strategy becomes to just lure a group of soldiers to be just within your range and then on the player's turn just roll over them easily rinse and repeat gale force is broken and yet gale force is also kind of awesome in order to get this skill you're going to be required to work around the branching promotion system which of course includes its own ridiculously broken caveat the one big change to how it functioned before is the inclusion of a new type of promotion item the second seal while a master seal progresses you along your typical class path second seals can allow you to jump tracks so to speak for example I could take Frederick who starts out as a great night and use a second seal on him when he's at level 10 to have him jump over to be a general because skills are now learned by leveling up in classes this is one of the ways that players can pick out desired skills for their units but really that's not what's broken here the big thing about second C deals is that they can be used endlessly while they do reset the character's level back down to one upon use you only lose class bonuses your unit will still keep any stat bonuses they gained while leveling up till that point essentially every character can feasibly be grinded up to Max stats in everything since Awakening takes the form of an open map Fire Emblem like Sacred Stones and Gaiden extra battles constantly appear on the mount these I think are actually done better than in Sacred Stones because at least you can walk right through these and they don't bar your way by forcing you to engage in a battle if you simply touch them still the opportunity is there for you to completely max out your character and get all the skills that you could possibly want however by even the second class change you will have probably created a completely unkillable unit this actually goes doubly for the Avatar Robin who is already very powerful without many levels and can also become every normal class due to this change in how you level up it's no longer quite as easy to get a quick grasp on both the power of your own units or the power of the enemy units quite as quickly and it would actually take a lot of work to not lose grips with how far some of your units have come it turns out it's incredibly easy to blunder your way right into destroying this game's already meager balance the attempt to bring back multiple systems from the series history and supercharge them was actually a really cool idea intelligent systems was not currently in a place to need to exercise any restraint and so they didn't use any for some players many players actually breaking Fire Emblem open like this is exactly what they want this includes I suspect both the new fans and the old it sort of is a betrayal for what Fire Emblem highlighted in the past but even with all of its issues a more RPG focused over strategy focused Fire Emblem game like this one is still not really much like anything else out there for the first time ever I was surprised to find out that despite enjoying my time on hard mode to be sure I actually don't think the game works that well on it no it wasn't the reinforcements instead the thing that I really didn't enjoy about hard mode was the quest for power I found myself needing to go on as a natural consequence of the beefier enemies because of things like one gale force user actually equaling two and how pair up can turn casually powerful units into Dodge tanking Gods with the right support levels ironically needing to take on the difficulty highlighted just how broken this game can become understanding this it seems kind of obvious why this game elicits so many varied reactions from many different people it both is and isn't Fire Emblem well here we are at last with everything considered concerning this very perplexing game I think it's finally time to come to the end and see how everything Stacks up [Music] as I wrote this script I felt the weight of expectations on me as it came time to solidify my opinions on this entry but the words that come to me now are really not as complicated as I thought they would end up being on the one hand Awakening really is Fire Emblem at its most Fire Emblem a strategic RPG where planning is just as important as execution and we're building trust among your Army's units is just as important as forming your approach to each new battle on the other hand this is Fire Emblem at its most Twisted where a desperate approach led to intelligent systems throwing out all prior restraint bringing popular systems back in but then unleashing them haphazardly until they concealed into a mad fabulous mess the risks that were taken with Awakening in its development are core to what makes this game so controversial today and yet they are also the reason why we still know Fire Emblem as a living franchise when trying to quantify it for this retrospective series Awakening really is an anomaly ultimately though I am glad to have spent so much time on it I can acknowledge just how much it deviated from acceptable balance and how excessive things really got but at the same time it's undeniable that I simply had a tremendous amount of fun here and I thoroughly enjoyed every chance I had to sit down and continue building my crew towards whatever absurd broken strategy I had chosen to employ Fire Emblem Awakening is a distinct Breakaway from the design philosophies of the past and personally I think there is room enough in the series to more than accommodate it I don't really care if it isn't traditional Fire Emblem as the bounds of what a genre or game series is should never be totally set in stone even if we were to be super pedantic and say that these changes make it too different to be included Awakening still evokes the feeling of Fire Emblem in me we are still building a personalized Army of named distinct units raising them and watching them build trust and support with each other and then taking them into a series of battles where my own planning and strategies can come together until we find success in the end this is a game that I definitely enjoyed some parts such as the excellent cast and the interplay between the story and gameplay through things like turning s-rank supports into child units were absolutely Unforgettable at the same time it's many many undeniable issues keep me from being able to view the game as favorably as I have done in the past to similarly flawed but great entries like genealogy of the holy war or Shadow Dragon Fire Emblem Awakening is a good game but one that I understand why a select group of people are going to love and a different select group are going to absolutely hate above all the shouting this is the game that ensured that the series stayed alive to the point that even brought me to talking about it here today for that above all other things I will forever be grateful to to it [Music] [Music] on our next stop on the Fire Emblem retrospective We join up with corn and decide our own path as we choose to follow our Birthright conquest or Revelations join me next time as I finally take on Fire Emblem 14 face [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] Fire Emblem Fates is not an easy game to introduce where can one even begin after all when Fates 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 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 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 that 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 [Music] 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 coalesce 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 protagonist 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 mayada 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 intelligence 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 nor 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 a 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 2 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 started 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 AS at the bottom of the screen alright everybody let's get going in three two one go 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 korin 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 korin and escort them to their father personally were the last two Royal siblings corin'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 comment 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 corn with a worthy weapon the sword ganglari for them to use and the upcoming battles in order to allow Corin to break in their weapon Garen brought forth some hoshidin prisoners to be executed when the time came to do this act however korin 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 hoshidins 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 hoshidins 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 hoshidins 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 Corin merely had to visit an abandoned Fortress sitting at the border of Noor and hoshido and discover if it remained serviceable though corin'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 Hans was to accompany them along with one of corin's retainers as well as corin's advisor and friend the seasoned Knight Gunter although Xander attempted to warn Corrin about Hans who was a questionably reformed former criminal the small team of four departed and upon on arriving at The Fortress which stood watch over the bottomless Canyon that separated the two sides of the continent they found that hoshidan soldiers were already present having technically finished their job coren 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 spilled conflict was now unavoidable and Corin was forced to seize the Fortress from the hoshidins simply to stop the battle after achieving this unwanted Victory powerful troops from hoshido arrived to continue the fight but before the exhausted corn 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 korin 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 Corin 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 coren's own sword then betrayed them acting on its own and flinging them off the bridge as well before Corin 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 Corin was finally able to rest and is decided to emerge the next day to try to find their way back home however after reappearing by the old fortress Corin was instantly spotted and then attacked by a nearby hoshiden who took the unconscious hero with them back into their Nation after Awakening Corin found that the ones who had captured them were none other than the hoshidan prisoners that corn had saved back in Noor despite expecting to be treated as a prisoner Corin was instead treated with extreme honor and so they agreed to be taken back without resistance to the hoshidean capital of shirasagi upon arriving Corin met with the commanding High Prince Ryoma the eldest brother in a hoshidan 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 corn was in fact her very own missing child and and although this seemed unbelievable amazingly it was actually true Corin 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 King garan 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 Corin 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 Corrin 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 coren was a hoshidin who had been stolen away to nor 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 Corin had simply not known about it as long as she had Azura was content to remain in hoshido however in corin's heart multiple possible paths still laid before them while corn 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 coren 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 Corin taking several fatal wounds to her back as she fell lifeless in their arms Corin 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 Corin went on a rampage against them but even as the threat was ended Corin seemed unable to calm down and return back to their original form Azura yet again singing her mystical song approached them and though some effects seemed to be happening Corin nonetheless struck her Azura however remained calm begging Corin to regain their true form she was successful and Corin 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 sumaragi despite the massive destruction caused by the blast and the tragic loss of Queen Makoto the guru 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 hoshidas 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 Corin found that the norians were led by Xander and the other norian Royals with only a river and a bridge separating their two families Corin was called on by both sides to join them and to begin the true War together Corinth 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 Corin knew what they had to do and chose [Music] after some time had passed Corin made their decision Corin 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 Corinne back by force after stopping the norian forces Corin 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 Corrin began their mission to bring down the evil King Garen and so they set out to stop them first arriving at Fort Xenia where they found the Sakura along with her retainers tending to the wounded there while at the Fort coren was met by a small norian force and after a brief Skirmish they met with Ryoma and mikoto's retainers who explained that that the princess Ryoma and Takami were suddenly missing last seen on their way to izimo the so-called land of the Gods and a neutral territory after hearing this strange story Corin 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 hoshidas 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 anorian imposter the Mage Zola after the hoshidins escaped Zola's trap and met up with takumi's retainers the Mage tried to make his Escape but was suddenly stopped by Prince Leo of Noor at corin'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 imposter 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 corin's group had to pass through the forest of the mokushu Ninja who unbeknownst to the hoshidins had decided to side with Noor and suddenly Ambush the group during this battle the Army was also attacked by Takami 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 corn 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 cirkinjia a city within the neutral Kingdom of nestra although This was meant to be a shortstop 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 hoshidas 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 Corrin 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 hoshidins Corin and the others only just managed to escape thanks to the intervention of Princess Elise who placed herself between the norians and and the hoshidins in order to stop the horrible fighting after successfully leaving Corin 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 Corin explained their reasons for siding with hoshido and surprisingly the truth behind Corn'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 hoshidas 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 hoshidan royal family finally reunited Corin 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 Corin 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 Corin yet again heard Azura singing her mysterious song approaching her near a Lakeside curious about the song's Powers Corin 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 Corin spared their former brother offering to even let him join their company if he wished finally Leo was convinced that corn 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 if before leaving Leo warned Corin that Xander had become much more powerful since their days at 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 Corin 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 coronziato activating a power in the sword that was linked to takami's fujinyumi transforming it into the noble yato with this new empowered sword and tow the group continued on their Journey steadily advancing deeper and deeper into Noor 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 nor 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 Corin and the others ran into Camilla One Last Time who despite her previous doubts had still resolved to stop them after defeating her again korin 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 Camille 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 hoshidin's 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 Corin 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 hoshidas as a new battle took place Corin finally managed to completely Purge the corrupting power within Takami for good now with nothing holding them back corn 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 Xander 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 coren was finally able to strike him down in Xander's own final moments he limited his burden of being born the Crown Prince which chained his loyalty to Noor 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 Corin continued on as they had finally arrived at the throne room where King Garen was waiting engaging the Mad King in battle Corin and the others were shocked to find the noble yato 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 the situation seemed hopeless suddenly corin's Noble yato transformed once more this time reacting with ryoma's raijinto to become the Blazing yato and with this new power Corrin was finally able to hurt Garen and free Azura with Azura's song and the power of corn sword finally the hoshidins landed heavy damage on the king however in response to this heightened challenge Garen utilized his own draconic blood much like horns 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 hoshide and princes in order to save them coren 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 counsel and cheered them on to finish the battle reminded again of what they had been fighting for this whole time Lauren 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 hoshidan'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 hoshidins 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 term 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 [Music] 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 Corin mistrusted King Garen they wished to hear his justification a statement which horrified The hoshidins Who soon tried to attack believing that Corrin was not thinking clearly or acting of their own free will but despite their hopes these feelings were dashed when Corin fought with anorians sending the hoshidins away after traveling back to Nora Corin 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 Corin 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 anuncles 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 Corin 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 sagas the home of the legendary rainbow Sage on the way to complete this next task Corin 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 backup with the norians putting up with her Homeland for the sake of helping Corin achieve peace before reaching the home of the sage Corin was ambushed and attacked by Prince Takami at the port and after stopping his assault coren learned that the hoshidins were already with the sage apparently holding him hostage once more fighting non-lethally Corin bested the hoshidins and met with the sage who chose to help Corin 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 Corin could even thank him however the tactician Iago appeared ordering corn 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 Corin had technical executed the king's will and so back in Noor their success was celebrated for their next task Corin was sent to shove where they were to put down yet another Rebellion this time with the assistance of Hans and a handful of the King's Men Corin 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 corin's horror following this tragedy Corin traveled to the neutral city of cirkinjia where Garen and the others were resting from the war by enjoying an opera though Corin wished to speak to the king directly about the bloody Affair and shev 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 saying 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 Corin 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 followed 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 brindhilder reacted allowing corn sword to take on a new form the powerful Grim yato later while considering Leo's advice and wondering where they could go from here Corin spied Azura who strangely seemed to disappear into a Lakeside follow following her into the water Horan 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 corin's defense after a quick battle Corin 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 functioned 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 corn were to speak about Vala outside of the nation itself they would suddenly vanish from the world completely finally Azura was able to reveal the secret behind King garen's cruelty in Truth The Man known as Garen had died long go and his corpse was merely being puppeted by some kind of monster a creature which was clearly a follower of the Dragon God anankos Corin 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 Corin believed that this long shot was the only path still available to them and so they began to work towards making it happen soon Corrin and their norian allies started the invasion of hoshido after multiple painful battles Corin assaulted the stronghold of Fort Xenia defeating the Garrison of troops there and coming face to face with Sakura and the hoshide and tactician yukimura despite defeating the hoshidins and promising them no harm if they agreed to lay down the weapons Corrin and the others were shocked when Garen and his forces caught up with him and immediately started slaughtering the helpless forces regardless of their protests Corin only just managed to secure the safety of his sister Sakura and yukimura but this incident only proved to Corin again how much they needed to reveal the king's true distorted nature as soon as possible Corin next assaulted the Great Wall of susano that was guarded by their brother takumi Corin 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 Corin and the others looked to the ground takumi'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 everyone of corin's Victories the norian Royals quickly continued their push into the castle in in another pitched battle Corin defeated hinoka but while their sister expected to find Death Corin 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 a fearsome Warrior Ryoma in a terrible duel Ryoma and coren clashed blades but after finally beating him Corin told him the truth that hinoka 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 Koran 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 corn inside knowing that they must have lied for a good reason after crushing Iago once and for all corn 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 corin's Grim yato began to resonate with Xander's Legendary Blade Siegfried transforming the yato once more creating a of the Shadow yato 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 an absolutely furious at Corin for taking everything away from him with one unnaturally powerful attack Takami shot them Landing a blow which shattered the yato entirely and nearly killed Corin outright lost between life and death Corin met with the spirits of those that had died along the way including both Ryoma and surprisingly Takami corin's Brothers explained that takumi like Garen also had their body possessed by evil and encouraged them to keep on fighting now that the piece that they had been fighting for was so close at hand with this encouragement Corin stood up again wielding a reforged yato that was now stronger than ever after a brutal struggle against takami's terrifying power combined with Azura's a mysterious song and the others were able to destroy the demon possessing takumi'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 hinoka the new Queen took the throne back in Noor 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] Corin 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 Vala how the once a wondrous kingdom was now a shell of its former self after the devastation of unenkos the Dragon God Azura's birth mother Queen arit the former ruler of the land had also been forced to flee bringing her daughter with her to the land of Noir 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 Koran 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 anuncos 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 Corin decided that they would have to somehow physically bring their scattered family members together and reveal Vala to them in person to this end Azura 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 fortinia Corin was able to speak with the hoshida and tactician yukimura and their younger sister Sakura although most of those present who heard corin's claims were skeptical Sakura out of love decided to trust them anyway and was the first sibling to join corin's side the other hoshidins at the very least agreed to relay Corn's request of where to meet up to their respective Lords corin's group Next arrived at the holy land of izumo after falling into a chili trap set up by the norian Mage Zola Corin was surprised to encounter Prince Leo who quickly eliminated the evil trickster for them despite coming to corin'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 korin takumi remained unconvinced at least this was until Archduke izana communed with the gods and informed Takami that he would need to join Corin to bring peace back to the world izana also gave corn 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 corin's convictions were genuine as their army strength continued to swell Corin 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 noreans led by Princess Camilla froze the water itself and gave Corin no other option but to fight however corin'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 corin's hands and coren unsurprisingly responded by giving it right back and then suggested that Camilla joined their side instead seeing that Corrin had been telling the truth Camilla did exactly this becoming the first norian Royal to join in corin's effort in the city of sirkinsia 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 hoshidan forces thanks to Azura corin'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 korin 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 Corin completely before he left Ryoma gave the next clue on corin'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 corian's group managed to meet up with Princess Elise who swiftly joined their peace seeking effort with her addition this meant that half of Korean siblings on both sides had joined them but the remaining four would be much harder to convince after arriving at the Pagoda of Notre sagas Corin 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 Corrin had been seeking and in fact this entire conflict that that the world found itself in today was just the after effects of a clash between dragons that had ended unresolved many years prior corin'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 nor 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 the 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 Corin was forced to defend themselves until to their surprise hidoka Ryoma Leo and Xander all arrived to join their cause at once and with the full might of both hoshido and Nora'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 corin'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 of Vala had arrived Corin asked everyone present now to jump into the bottomless Canyon a massive thing to do on faith alone even so everyone still all jumped despite an attack by a violin 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 of 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 anonkos was still ready for them as corin's Army proceeded they were met by many powerful foes including those using the cursed forms of previously past loved ones as well as deception from lowly citizens of Vala posing as Innocents after eventually making their way through these defenses Corin arrived at the castle of anuncos and fought their way into the throne room itself only to find it surprisingly empty it was here that Gunter someone that corn trusted as much as their own family stepped forth to take the seat revealing himself as being fully possessed by and close 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 anancos 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 anonkos 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 of Allah our hero in solidarity with their brothers King Xander of Noor and King Ryoma of hoshido finally made the piece they had all sought for together an unshakable wonderful reality foreign [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 chat vector 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 holy without value there are appealing aspects to this 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 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 Noor how they are treated by their norian siblings as well as coren'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 Noir and how Despicable Garen is it's honestly some of the most well handled stuff in the game but this nice Pace does not hold for long once Corin 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 Corin 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 Specter release summoned assassins receives a legendary sword of Prophecy and then rides up 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 hoshidins 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 in 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 game's 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 and 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 fates'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 Soren in the teles 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 corin's a 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 Corin as having had a broken past now a character in a fight 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 intelligence 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 asset 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 an orian character but just in general the stress caused by Corn'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 it in my opinion the norian characters especially the Royals make up the better part of Fire Emblem Fates 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 Fate's 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 ahead 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 Noor Xander didn't want to kill Corin 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 Camus 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 a due to mistaken honor like xanders 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 hoshidan 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 ass 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 birthrights 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 birthrights 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 an 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 azama and the Kitsune fighter Kaden 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 worst 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 new toshido 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 hoshidins agarin 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 korin 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 Coran did know that he already tried to assassinate them with Hans but whatever Corin wanted to give him another chance and needed to hear his side of the story porn 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 Corin 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 Radia Dawn so by way of a plot convenient caveat Corin 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 Corin 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 nor 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 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 gills and the Elder Scrolls games to generally say otherwise Garen is evil because at the end of the day he just really loves being evil and hurting people korin 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 right was experiencing the struggles of corin's norian family members from the perspective of an enemy and the equivalent of meeting corin'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 week 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 fournorian 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 takumi's whole deal is more just a setup for him being the surprise anti-climatic 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 Corin and take his own life in order to spite the king and help achieve coren'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 realmo 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 alike with some of my favorites being Niles Keaton Laszlo Selena and of course Odin dark the last three in particular are 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 ax 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 thracia was not just one single thing and how its challenge sat alongside some very prevalent power system 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 then 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 game 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 Vala or else you'll die because of some unexplained curse is lean 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 vola 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 rides simultaneously it's for the 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 hoshidins 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 Corrin is going to lead at the end and yet we only meet one living NPC from it caring 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 known 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-end 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 long time 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 it definitely is one of the best games for new players to start with it's 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 then 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 hard 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 thracia 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 maximum 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 in an instant I ended up coming away a bit more stressed than satisfied from many of its late game missions much like with ratio 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 anytime 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 build up 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 fate skin 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 Iden 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 vein 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 sure early 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 [Music] 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 best 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 in 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 upgradeable 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 fade extella 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 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 a 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 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 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 attack 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 Corn'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 minigame 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 minigame 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 building things 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 nor and hoshido both come with their own readily available versions of major weapon types for example the Western inspired country of Nora uses swords while the Eastern inspired country of oshido uses katanas which are functionally still swords but they have additional modifiers on them so 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 steal weapons on the other hand were heavy usually canceling 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 Fates steal weapons now have a flat reduction to your own units avoid 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 hit 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 weapons effect versus your own units gradually increasing stats while of course taking into account what region that weapon comes from then going even beyond all of this Fate 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 ax 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 [Music] as 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 stay 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 Fates 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 even planned 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 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 units 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 bow Knights 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 night 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 and 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 fates'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 paraguards 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 way 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 am 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 six 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 in Fates as well 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 Cannon units next up we have the hit rate system and for the first time since the switch to the 2 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 percent 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 later hit then they would have been on a full 2 RN 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 retro perspectives 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 the 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 foreign [Music] the 3DS era of Fire Emblem to me is an extremely fascinating time period of the series to explore we have the dramatic development story of Awakening which brought the series back from the brink of Oblivion and did so while breaking the franchise mechanics wide open creating huge questions about what Fire Emblem gameplay even was anymore the direct follow-up to it the trio of Fates games shook up the status quo even more so with successes and flaws so Monumental that the conversation over their gameplay and story hotly continues to this day the game at the end of the road for a 3DS Fire Emblem the 15th game Echoes Shadows of Valencia seems at first to only be a straightforward update and remake of the second game in the series which I have to admit is a bit of an anti-climax when it's put in the same era as Awakening and Fates whereas those two games have mixed up their gameplay tremendous honestly Echoes only strove to be as faithful a remake as possible and given that it was adapting Fire Emblem Gaiden it meant abandoning a lot of previously established series mechanics despite this apparent backpedaling it's still fair to say that Echoes is one of the most beloved entries in this entire Series history in fact this game is probably second only to the fourth game genealogy of the holy war and the sheer number of fans that have reached out to me to tell me that this was their favorite and they have been waiting long for this exact video all this time this has always seemed a bit odd to me because despite this game being very tied in with its source material I don't think that there's many people at least among Western fans that feel the same way about the original Gaiden in case you're just joining us here today in My Fire Emblem retrospective series I have chronologically gone through every game in this franchise starting from a position of total series blindness when I played the original Gaiden twice over I only had the very first game for the famicom in the back of my mind and despite guidance flaws I still really enjoy the experience now however I'm approaching Echoes with the 14 previous games under my belts and to better understand this entry I have played it three times over in order to break down my experience I will be separating this video into different parts covering its development history a story synopsis and then my analysis of it and then finishing with a breakdown of the new gameplay mechanics and my final thoughts story spoiler parts will be noted with spoil the warnings and time codes for you to skip ahead and of course you'll also find time codes to all the different chapters in the description below it has been quite the experience returning back to the land of Valencia after all this time and I can't wait to take you along for the ride with me let's get started foreign following the release of Fire Emblem Fates in 2015 the series had never been in such a strong place and development on the next game began shortly after Fate's completion originally it was considered that the next Fire Emblem game could be developed for the upcoming Nintendo switch but due to a lack of knowledge about that console's eventual specifications development began for a final 3DS game instead Desiring a shorter development time so that they could begin developing a different game for the Nintendo switch when it launched in 2017 intelligent systems eventually landed on the idea of remaking the second game in the series Fire Emblem Gaiden and for more than a couple reasons this idea took root very quickly intelligent systems at the time was very interested in using some of the features that they were unable to implement fully into Fates with one of the biggest of those being the ability to freely roam through 3D environments which were only minorly used in Fates for location accurate backgrounds given that the original Gaiden already used explorable locations a feature that other games in the series never went back to it was seen as a perfect fit on top of this especially from staff member kinta nakanishi there was a lot of love for Fire Emblem Gaiden which many felt had become unfairly buried and forgotten about nakanishi who formerly was a staff member at Nintendo was elevated to being a sub-director for this remake and although he was happy to help modernize Gaiden his passion for the original game and its odd gameplay systems and mechanics led to him spurring on the team to keep much of the original warts and all intact this was also pushed Along by his personal history with the game as Fire Emblem Gaiden was one of the last things he was given by his late father with a commitment to both improving and preserving the original game the development of Echoes Shadows of Valencia went smoothly and included a change in art Direction going from yusuke kozaki who had done the character designs for both Awakening and Fates to an animation artist known by the pseudonym hidari besides character design there was also a change in direction of the animated cutscenes which went from Studio anima to Studio Cara which is most known for the Rebuild of Evangelion anime series additionally for the first time ever almost every bit of dialogue was also fully voiced although it was originally projected for a release in September of 2016. the team decided that they could not finish within that time without lowering the quality of the final product and so the release was instead moved back to 2017. eventually pushing it beyond the recently announced Fire Emblem Heroes own February 2017 release finally this 15th entry was released on April 20th 2017 in Japan with Worldwide releases coming in the next month in May although the sales numbers of this entry were nowhere near the millions of copies moved as was the case with Awakening and Fates this more modest project definitely performed well enough to press quickly becoming number one in sales in Japan with a respectable seventh best in North America for the month of May this was accompanied by loads of high scores including various Awards nominations to go alongside the release a huge amount of downloadable content in five different packs was released within two months of the release eventually exceeding the price of the main game when put together on this note I have to say that I won't be covering the DLC in this video as Gathering footage for it is simply not a possibility for me right now but it could be something that I return to in the future in the next section we're going to break down the story of Shadows of Valencia and even though this is something that I have covered before with my story synopsis of Gaiden I am still going to run through it again here as this version is quite a bit more fleshed out and of course we also have the officially translated names to go off of as always if you want to jump past my story synopsis and get right to my own analysis of it you can jump to the time code that's at the top of the screen if you'd rather avoid all story spoilers and jump to the gameplay section instead you can use the time code listed at the bottom okay let's jump back into Valencia in three two one [Music] the continent of Valencia land of the Gods had long been divided into two Nations the land of Regal to the north founded by the god Duma and the land of zofia to the South founded by the goddess Milla though initially in Conflict tension between the two countries eventually settled into a long-standing peace agreement and under this fragile piece hundreds of years ticked away in the year 394 far to the southwest and Sofia a young girl named Celica was playing with her friend Alm though the world outside the village was full of strife life went on peacefully for the young pair this day however Destiny was about to catch up with these two arriving near the town with a Cadre of soldiers a man known as Slade spotted the two children along with their friends Celica unbeknownst to any in the village including her friends was actually princess aunties of Sophia Hidden Away by the night mycen for her own safety rep recognizing the unique brand on her hand Slade immediately attempted to capture the young girl but her friends quickly came to her defense although the real work was done by the night Mason who swiftly came up riding to help out managing to best Slade and his cronies for now myson realized that Celica would need to be relocated yet again much to the sadness of her and her friends despite how much Alm begged for her to stay or at least desired to know why she had to leave Celica and mice and both knew that they could not tell him and so these two friends were forced to be separated with only the single promise to somehow someday reunite in the future over the next seven years the youngster Alm grew into a fierce Warrior schooled in combat by mice and himself Celica meanwhile lived at a quiet Priory on the island of novus and she had likewise grown into an intelligent young woman skilled with both sword and Magic outside of ROM and Novus however the land continued to churn with conflict in the capital city of zofia at long last the general dece had managed to overthrow the former King and become the new ruler of the land though it was said that he did so at the behest of the northern regalians this event came only a short time after the goddess Milla who had long been the protector of the southern land completely vanished and along with her disappearance a widespread crop failure had begun once again at this time Destiny was catching up with the two young heroes in Ram a member of the resistance against assay called the Deliverance arrived with the hope of recruiting myson to help them in their fight and after seeing mycen's unwillingness to interfere in this current conflict Alm joined up in his stead while this was going on Celica who was tired of hearing about the widespread troubles throughout Sofia also set out on her own adventure to find out what had happened to the land and the goddess throughout Southern Sofia allum and his group cut through the unchecked banditry and Terrors that had taken root ultimately arriving at The deliverance's Hideout and meeting with sir Clive seeing how much trust that Alm had inspired and his followers despite his roots as a commoner Clive offered to him the same offer he wished to give Mason that he become the new leader of the deliverance and take them to Victory against to say while Lucas and many of the others working for Clive were more than willing to accept Alm as their leader one of Clive's friends and officers Fernand was disgusted by the proposition of taking orders from a commoner angrily storming out and leaving the group behind promising retribution for this perceived betrayal finally with Alm in the lead the Deliverance began their Siege on Sofia castle and after fighting their way through the heavy resistance they defeated Slade in battle and forced The Retreat of General to say shortly after his victory Celica was arriving herself on the mainland after battling her own way through a different set of Terrors and Seaborn Bandits when word came to Celica that a young man had taken command of the deliverance and ousted the Despicable General to say Celica deduced that this mysterious new hero could only be on while rushing to the castle to see if she was right Celica was immediately attacked by a mysterious group who wished to see her dead then and there although she was cornered it was thanks to the intervention of one of her closest Fighters and a different mysterious masked Knight that she was able to survive the Ambush finally in the castle Celica was shocked to see mice and waiting for her who told her that yes Alm was the one who had freed the capital and he was currently planning his next move above rushing to her friend Alm and Celica were Overjoyed to be reunited but when talk turned towards what to do about General to say and the regalians the two began to butt heads Alm had made up his mind that a counter-invasion of Regal was necessary at this point while Celica became frustrated by his unwilling this to seek a more peaceful solution unfortunately the pair separated again on a sour note with Alma leading his soldiers further north west while Celica continued Her Way Northeast to mela's Temple on Alm side he successfully cornered General desay in his stronghold before finally slaying him and then moving his army ever forward until he was at the border of zofia and Regal meanwhile Celica ousted the self-proclaimed pirate king grief that had taken up residence on the eastern coast there freeing a member of Miller's Temple that he had taken hostage at the temple itself Celica was despondent to find out that it had been the site of a battle between Emperor Rudolph of Regal and the goddess Milla and that their encounter had ended with the emperor sealing away the goddess using a sacred sword seeking further answers Celica and Alm unknowingly worked in tandem to lower the river that separated the two countries by opening two different sluice gates with the way open they continued along their individual Journeys with all heading straight for Emperor Rudolph and Celica heading for the Tower of Duma to confront the leader of the cult that was dedicated to the Mad God during celica's travels she had been continuing to encounter the masked knight from before and it was at this time during another encounter that he finally revealed his identity in truth he was Conrad celica's supposedly deceased half-brother Conrad had been saved by a man known as Sage Halcyon who was also now awaiting her at a hidden village known as the sage Hamlet deep in this forest of Eastern Regal Celica met with the man face to face who revealed to her that the sword that was used to seal away the goddess Milla was actually a relic known as the falcian Celica who at this point was regretting the way that she had handled things with Alma back in the castle asked if there was a way that the Great Sage could help her and he did so happily using his powers to not only unlock more of alm's strength but also to allow the princess to communicate with him over this very long distance using an astral projection Celica appeared in front of om and the two eagerly embraced apologizing for how they had left things finally reconciled Celica told Alm the truth about who she was that she was actually the missing princess of Sofia all this time just after renewing their promise to reunite once more finally the Sage's magic ran out and the two were again forced apart Celica then continued on her path towards the tower while Alm continued to ravage his way through the regalian military on their home turf finally arriving at Duma Tower Celica met with the high priest of the Doom of faithful Jeddah who revealed milla's ultimate fate she had been petrified permanently with the sword falchin still sticking out of her skull in order for Celica to free her God Jeddah demanded that she surrender and offer up her own soul to Duma surprising even her companions Celica agreed while the princess was accepting her fate in Dumas Tower Alm was finally ready to begin his march on the regalian capital on the walls of the castle alms group encountered the mighty Emperor himself and although he seemed posed to fight Rudolph flat out refused to defend himself against Alm at all even to the point of letting him attack and damage him with the advantage on their side the emperor Rudolph of Regal was struck down in his last moments Rudolph spoke to Alm admitting the reasons behind all that he had done early on Rudolph had recognized that the Divine Dragon Duma was starting to degenerate and fall into madness seeking to buy a new future for the whole of Valencia the emperor ordered mycen his closest friend to take away his son Albion Alm Rudolph away from Regal in order to raise him into the hero the land would need all of the events since that day had been leading up to this very moment where Alma Rudolph's son would return back to his forgotten home strike down the former Emperor and take the Throne of Regal for himself now strong enough to take on the corrupted Duma with the weight of his father's sacrifice heavy on his mind Alm ultimately accepted his Destiny taking only his most trusted followers the hero ventured beneath the palace into tunnels that would lead directly to Dumas Tower and it wasn't long underground before he encountered Celica who had been imprisoned by Jeddah and was currently awaiting her sacrifice although Celica wished that he would stop Alm refused promising that he would find a way to unseal the falcian which was still embedded in milliscal and use it to take down Duma as well leaving her there he then proceeded throughout the rest of the basement of the Tower and after fighting through intense resistance and taking down his cousin berkut who had gone mad after repeatedly failing to stop alms Advance the young hero at last made his way into the chamber where Mila and Celica were being kept unfortunately by the this time celica's Soul had already been sacrificed and after hearing milla's voice encouraging him to take and Trust in the Falcon Alm was forced to mortally wound a Celica with it in self-defense however this was not to be the end using the last bit of milla's power still contained in the falchin the goddess's essence went out and into Celica miraculously bringing her back to life happily reunited after so many twists and turns Alm and Celica joined together in one single purpose defeating Jeddah and then finally bringing the Mad God Duma to arrest in one final battle deep within the tower the two fought through the strongest forces that the God and his followers could muster but thanks to their teamwork and the assistance of both groups of their closest Fighters Jeddah was ultimately slain and the two then turned to take on Duma himself after an even more intense battle Alm just like his father plunged the Falcon deep into duma's head ending with one last stroke the age of the Mad Gods throughout Valencia with both Mila and Duma now gone Alm and Celica were left to lead the now United continent as husband and wife although they knew without the gods Gifts of abundance the road ahead for their people was going to be a hard one in this new age of humanity the people led on by their two heroic leaders were finally ready to start moving forward towards their own fate together [Music] foreign [Music] to explaining my thoughts on the storytelling strengths and weaknesses of Shadows of Valencia I feel that I need to restate that when I first encountered this world and these characters while making my retrospective video for Fire Emblem Gaiden I was absolutely Charmed from the start even when experienced through the filter of an extremely amateurish fan translation the tale of Alm and Celica and their crisscrossing Journeys throughout Valencia was immediately appealing of course the original version of this plot also represented a huge step forward in terms of Storytelling for this series so even though I fully played Through Fire Emblem 1 multiple times before I got to making that retrospective Gaiden was the first game in the series to actually be coherent in its story Alm and Celica to me were pretty much the first Fire Emblem Lords that I connected to which is part of what made me feel so nostalgic during the chapters of Fire Emblem Awakening where you return to the same land where this game is set even as I got further and further along in the Fire Emblem series Alm and celica's journey throughout Gaiden still stuck out as a personal favorite of mine its story is properly scaled for this kind of game with enough battles diversions and big moments from chapter to chapter that make you really feel like you're in the middle of a sprawling historic event but still one that you have to fight every inch for although there is probably overall too many battles between main events this story structure avoids the issues of major changes feeling very slight because you only see the biggest moments out of a huge sprawling War this was all the more remarkable considering the limitations of its era and by that same measure gaiden's main characters that namely Alm Celica Mison Rudolph and the two Gods Milla and Duma actually did have enough writing to them to leave some very Lasting Impressions in short even though I'm about to say that what Shadows of Valencia does with its Story characters and writing sets a new bar for this entire series as a whole still you gotta respect your roots and this remake in particular was already working with excellent and very underappreciated material Gaiden needed a refreshing not a complete restructuring and thankfully that is exactly what this remake does and does incredibly well at that so as if it were any surprise yes the storytelling in Shadows of Valencia is definitely one of the highlights of the entire game for me and the fact that it is so well told and written was especially important given that this was the game that followed the fates catastrophe and the whole mess that was the writing of those even though I was working my way through the early Fire Emblem games when Shadows of Valencia was the big new release for series veterans I have to imagine at the time that the obvious care in characterization and World building seen in this remake must have been extremely refreshing following the steps that fire emblems shadow dragon and new mystery of the emblem took this remake also buses itself with with fleshing out the original cast bringing in a three-tiered support system that helps to display their personalities tremendously although the barest amount of characterization for the normal cast would have surpassed the absolute zero that we got from early Fire Emblem games the writers of Shadows of Valencia really went above and beyond to flesh out these previous empty vessels the cast here has a collection of Down to Earth but still very entertaining characters and some of my personal favorites had to be valbar who I'd call the Captain America of armor knights silk the sweet and well-mannered cleric who is also a total gossip and saber who fits so well into the protector role for Celica that it throws the inclusion of some new characters such as celica's brother Conrad into question on that same note while the original cast of Gaiden has been very well built up I have to say that I'm not at all that impressed with the brand new characters such as the previously mentioned Conrad but I'll also include Fernand berkut and Renea under the same umbrella I hardly mention these characters or cut them entirely in my plot synopsis because quite honestly including them or not including them doesn't really change the overall story whatsoever I'll admit the only reason that I put them in there at all was to avoid the eventual comments that would apply that I forgot about them I didn't forget about them they are simply forgettable to me it Feels Like These additional characters were included to either bloat up the number of characters or diversity of the cast like with alm's new female friend Faye or to establish the world a little bit better which seemed to be the case with Fernand who shows the negative side of nobility in Sofia I do appreciate this because in the original Gaiden at least with the translation that I played there was very little to dislike about Sophia with all the villainy from Regal being so much more visible not to mention actively fought against in the story through Fernand we see the ugliness of Sofia's nobility so it isn't just the comically evil General to say who's causing all the bad things there here and Renea fare a bit better as they serve as ultimate and ultimately tragic reflections of almond Celica barcode being a noble and Renea being a commoner that he's fallen in love with and ultimately sacrifices for the sake of gaining more power to try to kill all I imagine that if I hadn't gone through this series in release order I would have a lot more to say about these new characters one small but very smart way that they are used is to give a little bit of extra context to battles that otherwise would just be filler moments such as when Fernand and berkut step in to fight with Alm replacing what were just nameless soldiers before in the many many field battles that Alm goes through in general even though I don't care too much about them I think the inclusion of these characters was a very smart move and not one that necessarily overshadows anyone else in the cast which was the big problem in Fire Emblem 12. honestly the balance struck in this game between revision and preservation is pretty close to perfect and that's just concerning the characters and plot events when it comes to this setting there is a far stronger revisionist's hand at work however one would have to be a fool to not see the incredible passion that was put into it in every city and almost every room Alm and Celica will have plenty to say as you examine even minor bits of detail in the environment revealing little bits and pieces of their own personalities while at the same time defining the flavor of this world sometimes the comments that they make are a little bit overly goofy but this kind of attention to environmental detail had not really been found yet in the series this world and these cities simply feel a lot more real more so I'd say than any other Fire Emblem game has managed to accomplish all in all through its improved writing plotting and setting not to mention the Beautiful music and cutscene work Echoes absolutely raises the bar for what the series could accomplish honestly seeing the sadly downtrod and guide and get revived in a beautiful and stylish remake that is so respectful of the source material while still keeping a mind towards modernization has been incredibly rewarding for me to experience next we're going to be taking a look at the gameplay and try to find out if the same goes there as well [Music] before even getting started with my gameplay analysis here I just have to tell you I am not going to be retreading old ground in this video if you're interested to hear my thoughts on the changes that were reintroduced here that stayed true to the original Gaiden like unbreakable weapons the unique item system boost shrines the health-based magic system all of my initial reactions and thoughts on them are still in my guide in retrospective today though I'm going to be focusing entirely on the changes and alterations that were introduced in this specific game and although this is one of the most faithful remakes I've ever seen if we're being honest sometimes to a detriment there is still a good amount of new stuff for me to bring up when it comes to what is both new and also significantly changes the gameplay there's nothing bigger that comes to mind than the combat art system these are special actions that your units can learn through equipping one of the many special items slash weapons in this game and then participating in battles until the special action becomes learned for as long as that unit continues to hold that item in this system players have access to not only new sources of damage but also other features of Fire Emblem gameplay that have snaked their way in and out of various releases throughout this franchise's history so while you can use this to regain the ability to switch position with allies or push others one space away in general the combat art system gives non-magic based units a way to do a lot more in each battle much like the magic users in this game they do so at the cost of their own health combat Arts with their high accuracy on their own fix a major problem from the original Gaiden that being the excessiveness of evasion numbers which could really make life hard for non-magic users and although While most combat Arts just get filed under useful for when you absolutely need to make sure that you hit much like the trouble with gale force and Awakening there is one of these in particular that stands Head and Shoulders Above the Rest to the point that you can and probably should build entire strategies around utilizing it and that of course is Hunter's volley Hunter's volley is a combat art available for Archers and it is learned and usable when you're equipped with a Killer Bow obtaining a killer bow in the first place involves engaging with this game's new silver and gold Mark coinage and blacksmithing systems which I'm not going to get too deep into other than that I think this is another good way to handle a smithing system one that I wouldn't mind see returning in the future so once you have managed to get yourself a Killer Bow which as a quick example of the blacksmithing means you can simply take an iron bow spin marks to turn it into a steel bow turn that steel bow into a silver bow and then that silver bow to a Killer Bow your Archer is now able at the cost of a little HP with a juice use Hunter's volley to fire off two immediate shots that both have increased hit chance damage and critical chance these shots both come out consecutively meaning even if a unit is capable of firing back from range which might not be true because Gaiden allows Bose to shoot a lot farther than just two spaces away they still have to wait until they've taken the full damage of the attacks before returning fire and that is of course they'll only get to return fire if they're not slain outright from the damage alone because of the increased crit chance you're pretty likely to get at least one crit hit out of these two shots although both being crits is not all that outrageous so when you start getting closer and closer to a 50 or plus critical chance on each shot so keeping in mind that when you crit you immediately deal three times damage all at once this one combat art technically has the potential to do two to six attacks worth of range damage before your enemies can even respond even in the very late game there's not too many enemies that can take that kind of damage and not be immediately taken off the board making archers with this ability a bit of an instant delete button in Your Arsenal broken situations like Hunter's volley are the exception in combat arts and not the rule but while your unit's capabilities have been expanded out like this they are still used within the context of guidance original maps and Skirmish battles Gaiden has long been criticized for the way that its maps are extremely Barren like with a lot of community-wide complaints the issue with the maps here is partly true in part exaggeration Gaiden and by extension Echoes do have plenty of very open maps but there are also plenty of dense and tightly packed maps that fill out the rest of the game in abundance while I think there are merits to the way that the wide open maps force you to change up your typical strategies and learn to make your own failings like coordinated defenses constant repetition of this kind of strategy gets old really fast and the original Gaiden in its Dungeons and especially in alms early chapters had no qualms about repeating and repeating many of these open maps this is kind of where Fire Emblem 15's absolute Devotion to preserving the original's design gets a little bit misguided Shadows of Valencia add added new crafting and skill systems expanded the world and the items to be found open the story up with new characters and character intentions and all of these things show a willingness to fix the places where Gaiden needed fixing for some reason when it came to the maps intelligent systems insisted on absolute Recreation when Fire Emblem has long since moved past such overly open design used so often truthfully I don't think it's the open design that gets under most players skin it's the repetition of needing to use the same type of strategy when the same situations keep on appearing before you as I mentioned this is a problem in alms early chapters but it also pops up in a different way in celica's early levels where she's fighting oncoming pirates with the same boarding plank type setup every time on a positive note and kind of the only place where I noticed this they actually did end up changing the placement of one of the game's major enemies I'll just say it's alms final battle on chapter 4 only on hard mode which was a very nice touch and prevents that up from being cheesed as hard as before I kind of wish this kind of touch had been used a whole lot more while the story and Dungeon battle maps remained extremely loyal to the original a lot of work has been done to update the explorable Dungeons and turn them into sprawling 3D spaces that have plenty of Secrets and Powerful items to be found while there are some details of these maps that come right from the original Gaiden in general these 3D spaces are pretty much wholly original taking their original layouts as very loose inspiration exploring these 3D dungeons were some of my favorite parts and each of my run-throughs of this game and I do want to give special Commendation to the work done in the lost forest area for Celica which I was happy to see didn't fall into the same kind of north south east west repeating Zone puzzle that the original went with in general I really enjoyed how Echoes updated the original guidance content in all but a single way and unfortunately it's kind of the area where fire Moon fans get the snobbyist about guidance maps are certainly not not for everyone and for even those who still manage to have a good time it's hard to deny that they don't repeat themselves way too much although I couldn't say this in the guide in retrospective because I'd only played one Fire Emblem game at the time being as far into the franchise as I am right now with this video I can say that without a doubt this Series has done better in map design for every game since with no exceptions although the new gameplay to be had here in this version of the game has its share of lovers and detractors no matter what they think there is still an even bigger overall change to the franchise lying in weight and let's turn over to that next [Music] milla's turn wheel refers to both an item in game that Alm and Celica use in the story as well as a new mechanic that represents one of the biggest changes in fire emblems gameplay yet one that some people have come to appreciate and some people have come to see as far too coddling the turn wheel in general amounts to a new mechanic that allows players to rewind time in the middle of battles winding back through all the actions and turns that have happened thus far allowing you to jump back wherever you want erasing deaths or reversing any poor decisions that happened although thankfully it does not reset enemy decision making or hit chance RNG ever since the introduction of casual mode in the 12th game new mystery of the emblem intelligent systems has been trying hard to open up the Fire Emblem series to a multitude of different kinds of players and they've done this by including new ways to play ways that are entirely outside the original franchise concept of strategic grid-based RPG combat with permadeath the turn wheel itself is a bit like an extension of classic mode but unlike the casual or classic Mode choice at the start of the game the turn wheel isn't just a passive Edition like casual mode it will only be used if players choose to use it however this isn't something that you can just turn on and forget about you know when and why when you're choosing to turn to the turn wheel in truth having the ability at all to reverse bad decisions or unit deaths does completely invalidate the point of playing on something like classic mode where every decision is supposed to matter but to stop there as an ultimate point is to have a failure of imagination unlike with grinding systems which if they are overused will invalidate the Strategic depth of fire emblem's gameplay by allowing you to mow down all threats in a way that you can't go back from milla's turn wheel at its heart is more of a teaching tool that actually helps to dissuade players from grinding players use grinding as a way to have a safety dance they don't want to get stuck in the future and they don't want their characters to die from some unfortunate accident the kind of people who are going to grind their characters to near invincibility actually have basically nothing to gain from Mila's turn wheel those units will probably never die anyway some players want to play on classic Mode feeling that casual mode is too coddling to them but they do want to have a safety net for when things go really wrong maybe a character they just recruited has died and they're willing to accept that their poor strategy led to that but if one of their main hard hitters and someone they want to bring into the late game dies their run is basically ruined and they're going to have to reset the map anyway having the ability to go back a couple turns and rethink how you want to do things at the end of the day is going to teach that player how they should have done it in the first place it's basically a faster reset button without the frustration of losing a lot of time and progress ideally a player that needs to use the turn wheel often will find their usage waning as they become more used to the game systems basically this this is a quality of life feature in the same way that adding in a button shortcut that resets the game back to the title screen instead of having to shut your console down and power it back on again is a quality of life feature the turn wheel simply does the same thing in a shorter amount of time which I applaud if I could change anything however I probably would have liked to see the ability to turn the whole system off in general as I know that there are going to be players that don't want to play with it and I do think that necessity is the mother of invention when you know it's not a single button press away you're going to play a lot more carefully also it doesn't really fit in this game all that much true to Gaiden Shadows of Valencia already has a number of ways to deal with permadeath through its various Resurrection shrines and this is of course on top of the fact that this is just one of the easiest Fire Emblem games in the franchise possibly the easiest one thus far and it isn't just because of the turn wheel the reduction of challenge to be had here stems partly from this game's focus on being very very faithful to the maps of Gaiden first of all in a lot of cases your new ability to use extremely powerful combat Arts against the old enemy setups allows you to entirely swerve a lot of these Maps intended choke points on top of this it also feels like the developers here wanted pretty much everyone to be able to get through the main game and so they pushed all of the actual difficult battles into the post game and DLC while the post-game Tower content adds only the barest amount to the story what it does do in gameplay terms is give players the ability to face some threats that actually can stand up to what this game gives players to use it was this content that actually inspired me to start a brand new third playthrough of the game in order to see what it would be like to play through Allman celica's Journey from the beginning with an eye towards building my post-game team instead of just using everyone like I've done on all my prior runs personally I think using post game content in this way is a kind of clever idea it ensures that most players will be able to experience the whole story while still giving the other players who are more serious minded something to grind their teeth into and plan on working towards throughout the main experience although this game's hard mode does have a couple of jumps and difficulty in general I breathed right through most of the battles and even with all my Fire Emblem experience at this point I wouldn't say that I'm a particularly great player even though it isn't really my thing I do have to say that Shadows of Valencia kind of deserved a lunatic style extra hard mode still making my way through Valencia again after all this time has certainly been a very interesting experience and thankfully not one as predictable as I thought it would be I think I've covered pretty much everything that I want to say here and it's time for us to finally wrap up and get ready for the very long road that is still ahead of us in this franchise as the game that is right between two of the largest and most significant releases in the Fire Emblem series I've been looking forward to Shadows of Valencia for quite a long time as a welcome break from the necessarily extremely complex and extensive analysis projects that the two games that surround this will entail this is a world that I knew well with characters that I was already very fond of and if we're being honest I knew there was no way that I was not going to also fall in love with this version although perhaps I have not brought it up as much as I wanted to by now I just had to State here that this is in so many ways a damn beautiful game this is evident in its art The Voice work the UI the music just so many ways that are constantly presented to the players with each individual moment that they spend here to say that Shadows of Valencia is a labor of love is perhaps too simple a statement this game is a tribute to the fact that Fire Emblem is is a series where you can take a game even one that is a forgotten 25 year old black sheep and with a bit of spit polish and a lot of love show a whole new generation of Gamers from all around the world the value of this series original design of course Gaiden and its adaptation might not be everyone's cup of tea however the tremendous amount of other players who have found so much to love in it regardless of their own history with Gaiden is a testament to the timelessness of that game in the series and it's a testament to the love that the developers so obviously poured into it and wanted other players to have for its world and characters along with them I am very happy to say that they definitely succeeded Fire Emblem Echoes Shadows of Valencia is a remake done right and as far as I'm concerned this is one of the best remakes in gaming period foreign [Music] retrospective we are leaving the 3DS behind as we move on to the Nintendo switch join me next time as we travel to the land of thodeland and take on the responsibilities of a professor in Fire Emblem 16 three houses foreign [Music] two years ago I began this retrospective series with a single goal to get to Fire Emblem 3 houses at the time the game was newly announced and due to a self-imposed rule that I have of always trying to play series in order I thought I'd finally be able to fill in the blind spot that I had for the Fire Emblem series that I'd carried throughout my whole life if I was going to be playing every game in order I thought why not make some videos along the way getting to this point today that I can finally talk about the game can only be called a journey I have now had the opportunity to play all prior 15 Fire Emblem games in release order and finding out what the big deal was about each entry all on my own I have watched The Big names of this franchise come and go new creatives take over before leading the series in New Directions I've seen the entire franchise nearly die before being unexpectedly resurrected and then providing a huge wave of success to even greater sales and popular Heights that's how we got here today the games have been fun yes but no other experience I have ever had as a content creator has been nearly as fulfilling as this series not including this video My Fire Emblem retrospective currently sits at over 13 hours and 30 minutes of content thank you for staying with me for so long everyone this is it we made it I am finally going to talk about Fire Emblem 3 houses thank you [Music] okay I don't really know where to start in a word Fire Emblem three houses is Monumental similar to Awakening and Fates three houses upon its release immediately exploded in both sales and popularity at least at the time of this video's release there has been no new Fire Emblem game yet announced so the Fire Emblem community over the last two years has been filled with constant discussion about this game in particular to the point that many people are really sick of hearing about it sorry but in those two years I wasn't there I was playing the other 15 games and making this series so yeah I think it's my turn at the end of the day I ultimately completed five full playthroughs of Fire Emblem three houses for this video Once on normal three times on hard and once on maddening the four Paths of three houses are called Azure Moon Crimson flower verdant wind and silver snow which respectively correspond with you siding with the blue Lions class black Eagles class golden deer class or the Church of Saros my order was this first I did silver snow on normal second silver snow on hard third Azure moon on hard fourth Crimson flower on hard and fifth verdant wind on maddening altogether I have put more than 250 hours into this single game and I feel fully ready to cover it in detail for you today in order to do so in this video I will be running through this game's development history tackling all different parts of its story before running through my own analysis of each plot to finish I'll be taking a deep dive into three houses gameplay to discuss the many new additions and how they are both linked and Divergent from the rest of this long-running series all before finishing by giving my overall thoughts about this Monumental game we have an enormous amount of topics to get into today I am so happy to say let's get started production on the next Fire Emblem game aimed directly at releasing on the upcoming Nintendo switch began immediately after the release of the previous game in April 2017. the concept of bringing Fire Emblem to the Nintendo switch had actually been around ever since the console's announcement but had been shelved in favor of the shorter development time that Echoes a remake of the second game in the series would take with that project out of the way the upcoming Fire Emblem switch became the top priority with the team aiming for an end of 2019 release date at the latest with this in mind brainstorming for what this next game should even be could begin but as the initial stages of development dragged On and On It began to look like hitting a 2019 release date was going to be impossible fortunately at the exact same time as this initial planning the studio at koe Tecmo was finishing development on Fire Emblem Warriors a spin-off game that was the second Nintendo IP collaboration for their popular Battlefield action series the head of koi tecmo's team ninja yosuke Hayashi was contacted asking for the team to jointly develop the next Fire Emblem with intelligent systems one of the original founders of koei the legendary designer and producer KO shibusawa brought along his team to help out and they were well known for making strategy RPGs such as nobunaga's ambition and the Romance of the Three Kingdom series as koi Tecmo rounded up their own employees who were massive fire emblem fans intelligent systems provided their own staff including several designers a composer and a programming advisor given koshigesawa's team's reputation in the srpg genre it was no surprise that they could develop this kind of game at a very rapid pace and in turn the content of the upcoming switch Fire Emblem began to grow and grow eventually exceeding about double what intelligent systems originally thought they could put into it seemingly any idea that anyone on the team had koi Tecmo could make happen early on the team joked about making a fire emblem Academy in game however soon that idea caught on and the developers themselves got more and more excited as the game's Concepts all seemed to fall into place with each other other features such as the ability to have tea with students and faculty of the games Academy were also added in such a way a random idea that was soon made very real by The Joint efforts of this mixed development team towards the end of development the game's subtitle in Japanese read as fuka setsugetsu a four kanji idiom remarking on the beauty of the four seasons was eventually chosen as the game follows four main characters who inevitably go separate ways this theme of different dynasties falling apart also reflected the heavy Three Kingdoms era themes which refers to the famous Three Kingdoms period from which much of Chinese actual history and mythology stems from to this day these themes naturally mainly bled into the project from the koi Tecmo developers however this too began to feel like a natural fit over time to the intelligent systems team while the influence of outside developers allowed this next game To Tread into territory that no Fire Emblem had gone into before simultaneously it also looked backwards at its own Series in particular at the fan favorite fourth game genealogy of the holy war this inspiration came in a multitude of forms perhaps most notably in the game's Crest system which calls back to Fire Emblem 4's Holy Blood the list of these references goes on and on and on while the storytelling and gameplay took massive shifts so did the work behind the artistic design for this upcoming games world and characters chinatsu kurahana known for work on some well-known Japanese visual novels such as uttano Prince Sama was chosen as the main character designer of the game while Kazama Koda who was known for their work on Bayonetta 2 and nier automata hand the concept art this time the cutscene work went to Suns again who specialize in CGI animation despite the massive project that this game became the joint team was able to develop it relatively quickly compared to previous fire emblems especially considering the massive amount of content that they managed to jam in there what would become the 16th Mainline Fire Emblem game was originally slated to be released in 2018 however during Nintendo's E3 2018 presentation they revealed that it would instead be pushed back into early 2019 which would later be pushed back again to July even with these two release setbacks the game was still far ahead of its original proposed late 2019 goal eventually on July 26 2019 Fire Emblem three houses released worldwide and it was immediately met with both High Praise from reviewers as well as very favorable sales it quickly became the highest selling game in Japan that week and surprisingly it also achieved immediate success in the Western Market as well easily eclipsing the previous Echoes Shadows of Valencia's more modest sales and reception as of March 2020 the game has now sold more than 2.87 million copies worldwide making it the best-selling game in the entire Fire Emblem franchise eclipsing even Awakening and Fates eventually an expansion pass was announced and released adding additional characters Monastery Features Costumes and new classes into the game over the course of the next six chapters of this video I'll be covering the story of this game in full starting with the white cloud section that applies to all players run-throughs of this game split into two parts and then going through the four different part two paths in this order if you want to jump past that and just get to my own analysis you can use the time code that can be found at the top of the screen if however you want to avoid all story spoilers whatsoever you can use the time code at the bottom of the screen to jump straight to my gameplay analysis sections alright I think that's all of my bases covered let's jump in in three two one [Music] on the outskirts of a battlefield somewhere in central fodlin a young mercenary named bileth was having a strange dream in the dream they saw a young girl waking up on a stone thrown who briefly examined them before eventually returning back to her Slumber this odd dream was suddenly cut short when bileth was awoken by Gerald their father and the leader of his own band of mercenaries among which bileth was also a renowned member before they got much time to discuss bilas odd dream an alert suddenly came to Gerald three young students Claude Dimitri and adelgard had arrived at their Camp stating that they had become separated from their own School group due to a recent Bandit attack and were requesting aid from The Mercenaries in fighting back against them Gerald quickly recognized their uniform as belonging to the nearby Garrick mock a centrally located Monastery known for housing the headquarters of the Church of Saros as well as a prestigious multi-nation officers Academy geralt and bileth wasted no time in lending their support and worked together with the three young students to take out the bandits and their leader costes although it seemed like the Bandit leader had been downed without warning he suddenly jumped to his feet again brandished his ax and ran right at an unprepared idle guard before edelgaard took the mortal blow bileth suddenly came to her defense throwing themselves in the way of the Fatal attack just before the blade sunk into their flesh time itself seemed to just stop once more in the same kind of dream they'd had before the young green-haired girl reappeared this time introducing herself as sothas after scolding bileth for a bit for being so reckless with their own life sothas then offered to turn back the hands of time and to give bileth another chance at this which of course they eagerly agreed to true to her word Tai time indeed rewound and this time bileth was able to step in front of edelgard more prepared striking down Costas with their own prepared attack with the danger now passed at this time a retinue of knights of sarosa suddenly arrived led by their Commander Alois this overly familiar night quickly recognized geralt explaining that he had looked up to him back in the days when geralt himself was the captain of the guard at Garrick mock before apparently he had abruptly left and been gone for the last 20 years running his mercenary company Alois insisted on inviting the group back to Garrick mock as did the three grateful students who all invited bileth into their service revealing themselves as being very much associated with the three major countries of fodlin Claude invited them to serve the Leicester Alliance a conglomeration of noble families that ruled the lands to the East and were responsible for the golden deer house at the monastery Dimitri offered them a place serving the Holy Kingdom of our Argus a rugged monarchical land to the north which was responsible for the blue Lion's house lastly edelgard offered them service with the adrestian Empire a vast Empire spanning the whole Southwest of fodlin which sponsored the black Eagles class unable to give an answer for now bileth and Gerald's mercenaries simply agreed to accompany them back to Garrick mock together they set off talking and bonding along the way eventually the massive Monastery came into sight and as the students settled back into their quarters Gerald and bilith ascended to the Head Chambers finding the Archbishop of the faith of seros Lady Raya who was joined by her advisor sethath after a tense meeting where geralt showed a lot of reluctance about coming back into the employee of the monastery he ultimately did accept the recently vacated position of captain of the guard as for bileth due to alois's recommendation lady Raya decided to give them a position as a professor at the officers Academy a somewhat shocking move given both their youth and unfamiliarity without having much of a choice bileth did accept the position and soon learned that they would need to select one of the three houses to lead the side that bileth chooses at this point determines what direction the second half of the story will go although the paths don't majorly diverge until quite a bit later I will let you know when it does after picking their house bilith settled into their new life as a professor learning the ins and outs of Garrick mock while also tutoring their students by the week as they went about this every month Violet was given a task to complete by the school and would carry out these missions with their students who gradually became stronger and stronger under by less expert tudorship an early mission had bileth and Company travel to the Red Canyon where the group finally finished off Costas the Bandit here in the canyon Violet had a bit of a confusing conversation with sothas who remarked how they both seemed to recognize this place but had never been there before the next month brought a new Mission whereby the list class this time helped put down a rebellion being led by a lord lenato a minor Lord from the kingdom of Vargas who had reportedly been against the Central Church of Saros for some time it was in this battle that they witnessed the power of Catherine another night of Saros wielding her sword thunderbrand which was one of the Legendary Weapons known as the hero's relics with her help the group managed to take down lord lenato discovering a note on his person that revealed a plan to assassinate lady Rhea after delivering this information back to Garrett mock Violet's class next got ready to defend her during the most likely time to strike the day of The Rite of rebirth sure enough on this day they found a group of Thieves and assassins below the monastery attempting to steal a certain item out of the tomb of Saint Cerros thanks to bilas intervention they ultimately managed to stop them even outmaneuvering a mysterious black clad death knight who wielded power far beyond their own at the end of this conflict bilith managed to stop the group's leader from recovering the item that they were seeking apparently another one of the hero's relics which was known as The Sword of the Creator this weapon it turned out was the holiest of all these relics said to be a gift of the Goddess herself that only one person in all of history had ever been able to properly wield incredibly when bileth took hold of the sword the weapon began to Glow revealing that for some reason bilith was capable of wielding it where none others currently living could after using this power to finish off the leader for good bileth returned back to Lady Raya to report their findings continuing to surprise time and time again Reya seemed happy to see that the sword was in the hands of bileth and entrusted it to them as its new caretaker her advisor sethath seemed utterly shocked at the idea given how dangerous this weapon in particular was they spoke then of a man known as nemesis from long in the past the previous wielder of the sword of the Creator although he had a originally used its power for good later on he used it to plunge the world into war until Saint Cerros founder of the church herself slew him in battle and took it back despite how dangerous it was Reya still confirmed that she had faith in bileth seeing them being able to wield it as a symbol of it being meant to be in their hands so with this new powerful weapon in hand Violet's life continued to go on as normal throughout the year they continued to take their class on monthly tasks secured back Hero's relics from unworthy wielders as well as put a stop to a rampaging Beast that was born from an unworthy wielder trying to use the Relic day by day bileth also came to understand the nature of crests in this world which were essentially special Bloodlines which could trace their Roots back to the titular Heroes of yore bilith learned primarily from their students just how much the different families and societies around fodlin put a tremendous amount of value in connection to a bloodline having these crests thanks to a researcher at the the school they also learned that their own Crest was the most rare of all the crest of flames on one of these months another wielder of an extremely rare Crest setteth's younger sister Flynn went missing this naturally sent the students of the school into a panic as bilas class a rushed to try to locate her eventually they did manage to track her kidnappers down finding both the same death knight from before and also his leader another mysterious masked figure calling themselves the flame Emperor although flaine and another student taken by them Monica were returned unharmed the flame Emperor's group managed to teleport away before bileth could learn anything more after taking some more time to study and train their group Next had a major mock battle with the other classes before going on to investigate a strange Occurrence at the Village of vermeyer in this small town baileth found many villagers going berserk and starting to attack each other while a new group sat from afar overseeing this outright Panic fighting this time side by side with their father bilith managed to cut through the perpetrators all before facing off with the leader of the group the Mage Solon who all this time had been masquerading as Thomas the librarian of garrig mock after sending him fleeing and ending the attack byleth and Gerald were visited by the flame Emperor yet again who expressed their own disgust with solon's attack despite them being in some way associated with them the flame Emperor then offered to let bileth join them saying that with the power of the sword of the Creator they wouldn't need to associate with people as disgusting as solon's group despite this strange proposition bileth ultimately refused shortly before the flame Emperor teleported away again after returning back to the monastery Reya thanked bileth for their help as always and assured them that she would have her own Knights investigate further into these events it was during her own well-wishing dubileth that she spoke a name that they had somehow managed to not hear out loud until right now she spoke the name of the Goddess that religion had been in service of this whole time that name was sothas naturally this confused both bileth and the sofas in their head the significance of this of somehow the goddess sofas returning through the world through bileth in some manner would be Central to the life of not only biliff but of every citizen of fodlin in the coming years for now though they could only try to keep moving forward much like their students they could only take each day one at a time and by now over half a year living in both tranquility and Intrigue at Garrick mock had already flown by the white clouds of Peace still lingered overhead however the events to come in the latter half of the year would soon see them darken [Music] without a lead to go on for now by left's life continued on as normal teaching classes training students and in the next month experiencing the lovely white Heron cup event towards the end of the month this Tranquility was shattered as there was suddenly a report of a demonic Beast attack at the school to which both bileth and their father rushed to in order to save as many as possible in the conclusion of the battle Gerald had just seen that Monica was safe when she suddenly turned on him using a special dagger to stab him mortally in the back despite bileth using the limited time powers granted to them by sothas to try to save him the intervention of Monica's Ally the leader of this mysterious group Tullis stepped in to make sure that her assassination was successful then teleporting them both out with Gerald dying in their arms bileth cried tears for the first time in their life bringing a smile to Gerald's face for the very last time over the next month bileth learned from their father's notes about the strange circumstances that surrounded their birth how their mother had died shortly after having given birth and how she had apparently given her life for bileth in some capacity after they were born following this event bileth even as a baby never laughed or cried at all and after examination by a doctor Gerald also discovered that bileth didn't even have a heartbeat terrified that lady Reya had done something to his child Gerald faked bileth's death using a fire and then shortly thereafter left the monastery with bileth secretly in tow eventually Reyes Knights were able to track down the group responsible for Gerald's death and byleth and their class eagerly volunteered to participate in the counter-attack against them despite everyone agreeing that this was most likely a trap to ensnare bileth still Reya understood that her own Knights will run thin at the moment and agreed to let them go within a place known as the sealed forest bileth and their forces did find the girl formerly known as Monica and those supporting her and cut through any opposition until they got to her soon finding out that her real name was kronya after finishing their fight victoriously against her Solon reappeared using the ailing cronya's life to assist him in casting an extremely powerful Spell creating a magical darkness that grasped onto bileth imprisoning them in a void of No Escape in one Fell Swoop Solon had managed to rid the world of them and the sword of the Creator within this Darkness bileth was left with only sothas's voice in their head as company without any way out of this situation bileth and sothas made an agreement one that would take a toll on the rebuilding goddess using her godly power sothas would be able to free them but without body of her own to use it she would have to relinquish all of this power to bileth intertwining their souls as one with no other choice the two agreed and by less body surged with the full power of a god reflected in their hair turning from blue to green using the sword of the Creator they bent reality itself cutting through the darkness and using this rip to return back to the physical world to the Rejoice of their friends and the utter Panic of Solon who now knew he had to do whatever he could to kill bileth Here and Now with one final push byleth faced off against Solon and his reinforced troops and yet again bested him sending him teleporting away once more as sothas and bileth were won the voice of the Goddess could no longer reach bileth however they kept this to themselves as they returned back to garrickmock to an Overjoyed Raya who seemed a blissfully happy to have confirmation that bileth had indeed truly been given Power by the goddess she stated that the next step was now to have bileth visit the holy tomb where apparently they would receive a divine revelation that would tell them all what to do next with the trip to the holy tomb scheduled for the end of the month it was at this time that bileth was invited by adelgard to witness an important event in the adrestian Empire she was going to be given the crown by her father becoming the new leader of the adrestian empire in secret before others in her land could oppose it eventually the rest of the month passed by and byleth their class and Reya visited the Throne of the Goddess the one sighted the entire garrickmock Monastery had been built to protect however to reya's dismay when bileth sat upon the holy Throne Nothing At All Happened from this exact moment events in the Holy tomb play out slightly differently if bileth chose the black Eagles class and also strictly sides with adelgard and to jump to that timeline you can use the time code that I'll put up in the top right of the screen for all other paths the group was then surprised to have this moment interrupted by the flame Emperor appearing with a group of adrestian soldiers ordering everyone to surrender while they obtained the many Crest stones that were held in this place refusing to obey this order bileth then fought back against the adrestians and took on the might of the powerful flame Emperor also managing to best them in time with a mighty hit they managed to knock the mask off of the flame Emperor's helmet revealing that they had been none other than edelgaard this entire time giving hardly any time for bylet's group to react adelgard quickly fled with Hubert of the black Eagle's class while the rest of the forces of Garrick mock reeled from the ramifications of this reveal back in adrestia in one of her first acts as the official leader of her Nation edelgaard declared war on the Church of Saros claiming that they had seized power by deluding the people of fodlin changing history where they needed to increase their own followers wealth and power knowing that it was only a matter of time before Edelman guard would be back for the next month bileth and their class did their best to prepare knowing that they soon would have to face off against the might of the Empire the largest military force on the continent sure enough when the attack came despite their best efforts the forces of garrickmock could do little to stop the overwhelming force from overrunning their Monastery at this time Reya met with baileth telling them that she had chosen now to leave the safety of the monastery in their hands afterwards she then abruptly transformed into a massive white dragon known as the immaculate one using this new power Raya jumped into The Fray unleashing considerable destructive power against the adrestians the adrestians were not unprepared for this and quickly sent a wave of demonic beasts at her temporarily holding her at Bay it was only thanks to the intervention of bileth that she was freed from this plight however by exposing their own position bileth was then able to be targeted by Tales who with a powerful match attack sent them tumbling off a massive crevasse where they fell helpless into the darkness it was there that bileth stayed for the next five years without their knowledge the Battle of garrickmock came and went nobody found their body and eventually many long years of war crept by with still no Victor in sight Gehrig mock Monastery became abandoned merely a shell of its former self in the wake of the massive battle on the day of the Millennium Festival the very day that a professor and their class had agreed to meet again no matter the circumstances unbeknownst to any above by leth awoke once more the path that they took from here and who would be waiting for them above had already been decided by the choices of their past to go to the Blue Lion path Azure Moon you can use the time code at the top of the screen to go to the golden Deer Path at verdant wind you can use the time code in the middle to go to the black Eagles path while siding with edelgard crimson flower you can use the second middle time code and last of all to jump to the black Eagles path when you side with Reya and not edelgard known as silver snow you can use the bottom time code I'll be moving on first to the blue Lions Azure moon path in three two one [Music] waiting above in the monastery was Prince Dimitri although from a single glance bileth could tell that the years had drastically changed him after losing his homeland to an imperial plot back in fargus the prince had wandered living only to slay as many soldiers of the Empire that he could constantly searching for a way to kill edelgard as broken as he was Dimitri nevertheless found his way back to his old teacher and the two soon teamed up again before long they were joined by Gilbert a loyal Knight of fargus who had decided to stay by the prince's side as well as the rest of the blue Lions class who like Dimitri kept their promise to reunite here settling into garrig mock as their new base this renewed Army of fargist next teamed up with sethath and the former Knights of garrickmock who wish to Aid in their efforts but also to rescue the lady Raya who had disappeared ever since the battle five years ago as their first order of business this they needed to seek out allies as they knew that they required all the help they could get to take back their former lands from the Empire's puppet ruler Cornelia to accomplish this they soon reunited with Lord rodrique who counseled the group on how to proceed from here he also tried to warn Dimitri away from letting his grief for those that he had lost dictate his actions in the future with Rodriguez wisdom at their side a plan was hatched to First retake the Great Bridge of Merton from the Imperial forces there which would certainly ease up the pressure on the Leicester Alliance and with the alliance better able to resist the Imperials they hope that this disruption of the Power Balance would give them an opening to invade which could possibly fulfill the bloodlust that Dimitri had for taking adelgard's life at the bridge they faced off against the young but great adrestian General lady Slava a major supporter of edelgaard and though they put up a good fight they ultimately managed to slay her and her forces securing their first main objective in setting up for their next attack which would be an assault on the Imperial stronghold of Fort mercius the group was stunned to learn that their Messenger to the alliance was brutally murdered naturally this was all a deception however this confusion led to them ending up against each other along with fighting edelgard's forces at the same time in a three-way battle at Grandeur field the same place where these three houses had once held a mock battle half a decade ago in what became known as the battle of the eagle and lion Dimitri and bileth's army emerged Victorious their Victory however was short-lived immediately following this a loyal Imperial soldier who was sister to the general Randolph that Dimitri had killed earlier tried to assassinate The Prince and his life was only saved by Lord rodrigue taking the blow in his stead as this Father Figure bled out in Dimitri's arms rodrigue wished for his Prince to find a reason to live that was not just for Revenge the sincerity of his request stunned this confused young man considering his future options with a much more sober perspective Dimitri decided that it was not right to purely seek revenge against edelgaard when there was an entire nation of Innocence waiting for their prince to come back to them and set them free rather than heading straight for the adrestian capital Dimitri instead set his sights on taking back fargus launching an attack on the capital city of ferdiad at where Cornelia was based although The Siege was very tough Cornelia could not stop the return of the righteous Prince and soon she was struck down from this new position Dimitri and bileth's group now had a much higher chance of taking on the Empire however before they sought this out they were contacted by Claude who requested their aid with his own Imperial attack after successfully defending him the former leader of the golden deer class and current leader of the Leicester Alliance chose to step down from his position leaving all of his responsibilities to the kingdom of fargus officially combining the two Nations at last the stage was set for the final confrontation with adelgaard and with an incredible wave of momentum Dimitri and bileth led their forces to Ford mercius the only thing left to do now was to confront edelgaard in inbar the adrestian capital after arriving they soon discovered that adelgard was willing to use any method to achieve her Victory and so utilized the power of both of her crests to transform into a hideous but powerful monstrosity giving the kingdom Army an uphill battle that after much suffering finally led to them facing off against her and defeating her at the very end Dimitri tried to give adelgard one last chance for peace but this offer was responded to with a dagger as she refused to compromise even one bit Dimitri finished off his former friend with the death of edelgaard Peace was restored to fodlin with bileth's group having managed to defeat knowingly or unknowingly every threat to their new domain lady Raya was soon found with an inbar but due to her having become severely weakened from her imprisonment she passed on the role of the Archbishop to bilath while Prince Dimitri stepped up to become the new king of the United fodlin together these two shaped through both sacrifice and suffering from their Journey led the people of this new United Nation with wisdom and with Grace [Music] waiting above in the monastery was clawed still sporting the same strong Smile as before now that the pair were reunited shortly afterwards true to their word the two were also joined by the old members of the golden deer class using the monastery as the Leicester alliance's new home base Claude now the leader of the alliance after his grandfather's death began the steps to begin raising up their army although he had successfully avoided all-out war with the Empire all these years now with bileth returned it was time to tip the scales after joining forces with the remaining staff of Garrick mock this new Army first struck out by repelling an initial Imperial assault following this by reinforcing their group with troops led by Judith who was known as the hero of daphnil and an extremely important figure in the alliance together the group's next Gambit was to attempt to take the Great Bridge of Merton allowing for a more unified Leicester Alliance thanks to their clever Maneuvers the attack was successful defeating the Imperial General ladislava in the process with a way into the Empire's territory successfully open Claude assigned Judith to hold the bridge while he and bileth seized this initiative to go back into alliance territory and convince its disparate Lords to support them as one group with both the proven command of Claude and bileth who was recognized as the successor to Lady Raya all of the alliance Lords threw their Lots in with them meaning that the only thing to do now was to strike back at the Empire as one unified Force when the day came for the invasion to begin their foes did not stay dormant with adelgard meeting them at Grandeur field meanwhile an unknown Army marching under the banner of the kingdom of fargus which had long since lost their war with the Empire also appeared revealing that despite reports Dimitri was still alive and also seek taking adelgard's head Dimitri was even willing to fight both Claude And bilith if they impeded his path in the slightest The Clash at grander field turned out to be extremely bloody with all three sides taking massive damage however at the end of the day it was the Leicester Alliance Army that sealed the victory sending edelgard into Retreat sadly Dimitri during this fight acted blindly due to his bloodlust and charged after edelgaard despite his many injuries and soon met his own end on the battlefield as several Imperial soldiers finished him off with a victory for the alliance at Grandeur behind them Claude and bilat's forces next marched on Fort mercius entering it with a clever ploy to disguise themselves as Imperial reinforcements after being let into the fort the group began their surprise attack which soon won by opening the Ford up for their own reinforcements to come in even though their tactics were effective their Victory turned out to be short-lived as a massive magic strike came from the sky obliterating the fort and any of those Friend or Foe who were still inside it even with this scorched Earth retribution the Leicester Alliance Army still needed to march on inbar as soon as possible as winning the battle there would mean ending the war entirely in a massive Invasion the alliance Army was able to force their way through the Imperials who were holding on to their capital and soon took their fight right up into the Imperial Palace clashing with edelgaard in her throne room when all was said and done as powerful as the empress was edelgaard was finally finished off by bilith shortly after their victory lady Rayo was also soon found although she had become extremely weakened from her five years of imprisonment with edelgaard's death the war was definitively over however they soon learned that for the safety of future fodlin their battles were not done yet in a letter that was passed onto them by Hubert shortly before his own death defending inbar he revealed the existence of another secretive group a threat that had slithered in the dark all this time it was this group who were responsible for the deception that led to Gerald's death many years ago and were in fact a hidden Force who would continue to plague fodlin with or without the Empire Still Standing as long as they were able to Scurry away to their hiding places and remain dormant it was only a matter of time until they would re-emerge and create more chaos for the land revealing their home base as an underground city known as Shambhala Hubert gave Claude and bileth everything they would need to root out this group seeking the mount deep underground the alliance Army seized on this opportunity and found Talus the leader of their group hiding out exactly where Hubert's information pointed them although those who slithered in the dark wielded Advanced magic golems and a small personal Army Claude and bileth still emerged Victorious before meeting his end Tullis made one last attempt to take his foes out and did so by opening up the ceiling and calling down multiple javelins of light to strike them the same magic that had obliterated the mighty Fort mercius Reya in an act of self-sacrifice transformed herself into her Dragon form and flew up to meet them taking out as many of these javelins as she could before eventually becoming overwhelmed and falling back to Earth heavily injured even though she had succeeded in defending her friends unbeknownst to the group for now the energies released by this caused a tomb far below Shambhala to stir where the only other holder of the crest of flames a now resurrected Nemesis slowly emerged Nemesis as revealed soon after by Reya had been a bandit King one who had been responsible for the attack on reya's Ancient home of zanado where her and the other children of the Goddess sothas had lived he had nearly gone to do much more evil in the world after this until Reya who was then known as Saint Cerros led her own Army to battle against his forces and slew the so-called king of Liberation since her victory over him Reya admitted that she had not always made the best choices however it was time for her to pass on the responsibility of leading fodlin to a new generation in other words it was now up to bileth and Claude to defend the entire continent and soon reports began to come in of a new Army emerging from the ruins of Shambhala led by the resurrected Nemesis accepting their responsibility as the Guardians of this land Claude bileth and all of their loyal allies made one last stand against the army of Nemesis the strength of this king of Liberation was truly unreal but once the Leicester Army were able to slay his powerful generals they were finally ready to approach the deadly King through effort and teamwork work to Nemesis his great surprise he was finally defeated for good after years and years of battle it was time for the fighting in this land to stop in the years that followed not only fodlin but the Lands Beyond which had assisted in the war United under the charismatic leadership of Claude and bileth these two Heroes led the land into a new age one that was defined by equality and peace [Music] with the flame Emperor exposed as edelgaard and seeing the viciousness and reya's response bilitha knew where their allegiance is lie stepping away from the Archbishop bileth took their place next to their students however in doing so they earned the ire of Reya who quickly passed judgment upon them she transformed into a massive dragon and was set to unleash her full wrath against them unable to face this kind of power just yet bileth's group retreated regrouping at one of the Imperial Army's provisional camps nearby even though Rhea and the Church of Saros would be a vicious opponent widely supported by much of fodlin edelgaard who is acting now as the Emperor of adrestia decided that it was time to declare war against the church in order to set the land free from their influence which had secretly controlled the land for its own benefit renaming their team now to the Black Eagle Strike Force their group quickly met up with many of edelgard's generals who then mobilized the adrestian Army into action their primary target of course was garrig mock Monastery leading to the same massive siege that closes out the first part of this game for every other path however this time from the other side while the strike force was able to fight their way up to Raya a similar fate to all other possibilities awaited by leth as a blast from her Dragon form sent them tumbling deep deep underground although the battle for garrickmock Was Won adelgard was unable to find bila's body and in the confusion afterwards Reya managed to retreat to the Holy Kingdom of Vargas where she took Refuge over the next five years war continued to rage across the continent until the day of the Millennium Festival five years prior bileth and their class promised to reunite here no matter what and now miraculously deep below the monastery bileth awakened quickly making their way up to meet their their old friends with bileth returned adelgard could now hope to break the stalemate that the war had entered Dimitri to the North had been successfully leading a defense of Reya and the church while clawed to the Northeast through skillful diplomatic maneuvering had made it impossible for the Empire to lean on the neutral Leicester Alliance seeing no way to move forward while the alliance continued to be a thorn in their side the renewed Black Eagle Strike Force decided to attack Claude first as taking him out of the fight would allow for the other noble families of the alliance to freely back them although the alliance Army led by Judith who was a famed fighter did give them some pause ultimately the strike force was able to fight their way into claude's home base finding a blockaded and thoroughly prepared Capital with nothing else to do but Engage The Black Eagles started their Siege and eventually claimed victory over the famed tactician with the surgical removal of Claude from the alliance has predicted that the Nobles throughout the rest of land quickly fell into line having avoided most of the fighting throughout these five years the alliance was a source of fresh new fighters to reinvigorate the Empire's war on the church where they could now Focus all of their aggression the final step however was briefly halted as the strike force had to return to Garrick mock to stop a major assault that was led by setteth and Flame who severely damaged the Imperial cause by defeating several of edelgaard's best generals however in bileth and edelgaard's counter-attack both setteth and flane also met their own ends with Garrick mock resecured the group could turn back on track and decided to First Take Out Cornelia who was a major player in the Empire and secretly a member of the same group that were responsible for the attack honor Meyer Village and the assassination of Gerald although edelgaard had allied with this secretive group under the guise of the flame Emperor she had always meant to break away and defeat them when given the chance and while it was still plausible that she was only at attacking Cornelia as a way to weaken the kingdom this attack turned out to be the perfect first step with Cornelia taken out the way to the Kingdom capital of ferdiad was now open and the black Eagles finally launched their assault meeting the kingdom Army and the Knights of Saros both at last in open Combat on a rainy Battlefield the strike force finally faced off against both Dimitri and Rhea taking on their loyal and Powerful followers as well as the leaders themselves after much Bloodshed including finally taking down the frighteningly powerful Dimitri Reya who now decided to go by her true name of Saros despite extreme reluctance was forced to retreat rallying her remaining troops within the walls of the capital with one last push byleth and edelgaard led their army into the City and took on the full power of the Archbishop in her Dragon form called the immaculate one it was only by working together that this group finally was able to slay this horrible Beast with the last of the children of the Goddess slain the power maintaining Violet's life which had been given to them Long Ago by Reya shortly after their own birth finally gave out leaving edelgaard to cry over their lifeless friend as the power of the Goddess finally dissipated inside them bileth's actual heart began to beat for the first time and soon their hair returned to its original color signaling both the return of bileth as well as the beginning of a new age without the influence of the goddess and the church with the war finally finished fodlin unified under edelgaard and bileth edelgard acting as the new leader of odlin at last implemented her dream of eliminating the class system allowing all citizens whether they had a Crest or not to finally be treated as equals as she did this she also began to wage war against the secretive group known as those who Slither in the dark hoping to finally wipe them out and prevent them from having in any influence in this new hard one age the battle against them with bileth at her side would come in time but for now these two leaders of the land could settle into the new unprecedented world that they had created [Music] waiting above in the monastery was edelgaard clearly grown colder but more powerful in the five years that had passed literally the two cross swords but at the moment neither could see this fight through to the end both being unwilling to fight to the death just yet adelgard sadly took her leave of her former professor and friend stating that the next time they Crossed Swords it would be the last without one of the three houses to back them bileth was left alone in the cathedral however they were soon found by setteth who was still holding on to the hope of finding lady Raya who had disappeared after the battle for Garrick mock five years ago joining them in this task was none other than the former black Eagles class minus edelgaard and Hubert of course who all chose the cause of their former professor over the questionable direction that their country and families were taking with the crest of flames representing them this new group immediately needed to fight off a preemptive attack by the Empire and upon achieving Victory they claimed garagmak as their new base even with this initial Victory sateth and baileth both knew that they were in no shape to take on the full Imperial Army and instead resolved to send Messengers to any reliable Lords in the Kingdom of fargus or the Lester Alliance as with either of their support their group might actually stand a chance their first goal they decided would be to contact Judith a lord of the alliance known as the hero of house dafnell following their secretive contact the group traveled into the fiery Plains of alel where a brief Ambush stalled them until they were able to successfully meet with Judith who promised them her support at the same time in this conversation Judith also confirmed what they had all feared Reya indeed had been dragged Away by the adrestian Army five years ago and was likely being held in the capital with Judith's group now backing them they they decided to refrain from contacting the kingdom and instead Advance against the empire directly as they still viewed the empire-controlled portions of the Kingdom as being too much of a threat to do so they first moved against the Imperials holding the Great Bridge of Merton a key point for them to take as holding it would open up the Imperial held lands to their own Invasion while also allowing them to move more freely in the north without the threat of being attacked from behind shortly after securing the bridge with a tough fight the group was approached by Gilbert a loyal Knight of the Kingdom who once fought alongside bileth during their year teaching at garigma Gilbert represented the part of the Empire that remained loyal to Dimitri and although the two groups were currently unable to band together sateth at least offered some support allowing the kingdom to use the bridge they had just claimed for Dimitri's forces to make their own strike against the empire while the armies of edelgard Dimitri and Claude would go on to meet at grander field the renewed Knights of Saros and instead made their next Target the Imperial Fort mercius where the death knight himself led the defense within this fort the group faced off with him again and after defeating him the fort appeared to have been claimed this sadly was not to be as the Death Knight on a whim warned the knights about an oncoming destruction that they had not detected soon from the sky above several javelins of light rained down on the fort obliterating it in its entirety while this had been happening they are allies in the Empire and Alliance had suffered their own setbacks as the battle of grander Field had been very costly for all three nations including with Dimitri who had lost his life even with this setback at Fort mercius and their allies being severely weakened thanks to the damage that had been caused to edelgaard's forces the way to inbar the imperial capital was still open for them at last the final attack could commence and although Hubert led a masterful defense it wasn't long until bileth and settet's forces cut their way through all his resistance and were finally facing off against adelgard in her throne room as expected she did put up a worthy defense but at the end of the day it was bileth who struck her down putting an end to the war soon Reya was indeed found alive in the capital and although she was extremely weakened she was at least alive and together the knights all returned back to Garrick mock to support her recovery while the battle between the three nations had come to an end a posthumous letter from Hubert revealed that there had been another party influencing all of this conflict a hidden enemy known as those who Slither in the dark Reya who had her own knowledge about this group revealed that they had always existed in fodlin since ancient times having likely been responsible for Nemesis a conquering Bandit who had slain many of the children of the goddess in the past and who had nearly claimed the sword of the creator for his own until Saint Cerros had stopped him and took took it back the Knights of Saros acted upon Hubert's information and hunted down at the mysterious group in their underground city of Shambhala after finishing off Tallis the leader of the group in a final Act of desperation he used his magic to both open up the ground above them and call down several more javelins of light hoping to wipe out the knights in one final move unwilling to let her allies or by left fall victim to this trap Reya swiftly transformed into her Dragon form and defended them and although she was successful she herself was caught up in many of the explosions causing strange energies to seep into her body even after all of this incredibly Reya was still alive although she knew now that she was on her last legs without her to lead fodlin into the future everyone knew that the only person who could take over her role would be the one who had been seemingly chosen by the goddess herself that being by leth despite reya's confidence in them bileth wished to have some time to consider this after a month had passed and Rhea was finally able to leave her bed chamber she asked for bileth to meet with her before hearing by left's response Rhea told them the full truth about their birth and how she was connected to bileth's family Reya in a sense had been involved in the creation of bileth quite heavily though not through reproduction but rather the production of their mother ever since the goddess had left the world in ages past Reya had sought to bring her back using her own powers to create artificial humans who might be able to play host to the crestone of the progenitor God geralt had fallen in love with one of her Creations the 12th one citri and the two soon gave birth to a child who of course would be bileth as citri was suffering from complications from the birth ones that would soon claim her life she pleaded with Reya to save her child who was not breathing and had no heartbeat Reya agreed and she ripped the Crest Stone out from Citrus body and placed it into bilath who miraculously began to breed this however was not where their only connections ended geralt in the past had also been terribly wounded and was given a donation of reya's blood in order to survive reya's blood coming from someone who was not exactly human altered Gerald's body giving him an unnaturally long life so in a way baileth through both their mother and father was directly connected to Reya which is why their body was able to successfully house the consciousness of sothas with all of her secrets finally laid Bearer Reya next asked if bileth would use the power they had been given to succeed her leading fodlin onto the right path which she knew that she had strayed from due to her obsessions before Reya could finish this thought the time that she was holding on to ultimately ran out and in a shocking fit of Madness she suddenly turned into her Dragon form the immaculate one however this time she was not in control at the same time as her Rampage began all throughout Garrett mock those who had received reya's Blood also began to transform into mindless beasts turning the monastery into a surprise Battlefield this left only bileth and the Knights of Saros to defend the innocent people trapped here and additionally losing hero would mean tragedy for the people of fodlin who at this point could not hope to contain such a monstrous rampaging threat for the last time the knights and the former black Eagles fought together working in tandem to bring Raya down to an end that she greeted with a smile knowing that her work through bileth had been successful if bileth could take down the immaculate one fodlin did indeed have a protector who could accomplish any task as Reya passed on bileth accepted their role in leading the land uniting fodlin as a new nation under the Church of Saros the fighting was over and it was now time for reconstruction under the watchful eye of the true inheritor of the goddess's will also if you s support Reya she just kind of lives afterwards for no reason it sort of defeats the purpose of silver Snow's narrative with bilas empath being inheriting both Reya and the goddesses will without themselves being overshadowed by edelgar Dimitri or Claude doesn't make a lot of sense but uh yeah I get it [Music] like with everything about three houses the first hurdle when it comes to discussing it is sorting out how one is meant to approach the sheer enormity of what all this game and this story has to offer for me I want to start with the biggest positive and that would have to be the many characters in this game that you get to talk to fight alongside and also have nice Cups of Tea with when I look back now at my journey through every Fire Emblem game more so than any story beat it's the interesting characters that excite me the most from game to game which is why I spent most of my time with three houses very happy I had an extremely charming cast to constantly learn more about part of my attachment might be due to the simple premise of this story since in part one you spend a year as an actual professor at Garrick mock which allows you to see each unit not only as one of your fighters in battle but also seeing them just hanging out at school which also reinforce versus just who they are exactly simply seeing that this one character tends to hang out in the library or this one in the cafeteria does a lot of leg work that before could only be implied in little bits and pieces and support conversations and that is of course if you even took an interest in those characters at all since you're going to be at Garrick mock anyway you kind of can't help finding out what everyone's all about there's also indirect discovery about the characters as three houses does sneak in a lot of little details around the environment such as certain items which happen to be in each of the characters rooms while for time's sake I do want to keep my overview of the characters pretty General right now I can't help but bring up a few of my favorites so in no particular order some of my favorites would have to include from the black Eagles Hubert bernadetta and Petra from the blue Lions de do Felix and Mercedes from the golden deers Raphael lysithia and Marianne and from the rest of the cast Manuela Alois and Shamir her of course it probably goes without saying but the three class leaders as well as Reya sateth and flain are also in my favorites list the nice thing about this game in particular is that even if I look past the ones that I really liked for various reasons I honestly can't pick a single other character that I actually dislike or even find especially uninteresting each and every one of them once I eventually got to know them better had some kind of appeal that made me happily dig further into their stories to now start moving beyond just the cast we can start to discuss something that I have really enjoyed watching evolve as I made my way through this retrospective series and that is in seeing how the storytelling methods of this franchise have continued to grow and how this particular story stands out or falls short first off I just have to say that due to three houses incredible sales numbers and therefore simple numerical popularity quite similar to Fire Emblem Fates this entry is also a hotbed of discussion in particular a lot lot of debate centers around edelgaard and whether her motivations make up for the way she went about things many participating in these discussions often assign themselves to a single side and I 100 percent am not here to join in that debate I don't have interest in picking aside nor am I here to reinforce who you think was correct or not as I said I enjoy all of these characters but more so than just picking who I feel was right or not I find it more interesting to try to focus on the bigger picture and put all of the different story paths into one discussion in my mind all of the characters do a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong and that's good they're characters they should make right and wrong decisions that's why they're interesting let's move on so the bigger question that I want to tackle is does three houses successfully deliver a satisfying narrative somewhere in all of its many paths in a nutshell I think the answer is on paper yes the twisting tale of 3 houses does offer an intriguing as often as it is predictable narrative all set in what is the most skillfully established world ever seen in a fire emblem game fodlin in particular is a big win it feels remarkably thought out and fun to learn more lore about it's not necessarily as detailed as other contemporary RPG settings but for what is essentially the backdrop of a strategy game they really went above and beyond part of this game's success in establishing its setting comes from its main location garrickmock serves as a meeting point where the player and bileth can learn about all of the people and all of the nations in this continent all at once as a setup to a game that's premised on the player picking aside and sticking to it this is a very good way to tee up that choice better so than the series has ever done before I do have one little issue though and that is personally I really wish that the game gave you more time to spend at Garrick mock understanding the culture and characters of each of the sides before asking you to make your choice on which group you're going to go with a better place for it actually would have been maybe about halfway through part one if not best being at the very end of it doing this I think would have also helped with making part one less of a slog on repeat playthroughs even though I do think that on the whole the introduction to the world via garrickmock is an extremely strong way to set up the later game needing to play through this section three to four times minimum in order to be able to see all of the part 2 paths is a huge misstep one that is tragically going to create some resentment for what I think is easily the game's strongest section honestly there is not nearly enough differences between each of the House's runs in the white cloud section to justify locking the player to their house so early on really about the only exclusive content there amounts to a few private conversations with the members of your house and on rare occasions a few more interesting scenes with some minor plot lines such as Dimitri's little plot line where he recognized is a weapon that he gave to edelgard which serves as an early hint to the flame Emperor's true identity so for as much as I really like part 1 despite the repetition that it unfortunately becomes in later playthroughs as it is right now the way that the game treats white clouds as a exclusive segment for each of the houses kind of feels like it was a lot of unnecessary work work and time that the developers may have been better served into putting into part two because honestly every single part 2 path has some form of major disappointment for me that biggest disappointment came right away when I quickly realized that the second half of the game was just going to repeat the setting and structure of the first half every single path has the player returned to Garrick mock regardless of how much or how little sense this makes even though in part one the setup with bileth only setting out on their Missions at the end of the month sometimes stretched believability particularly in the chapter where flame gets kidnapped using this again in part two is where it really started to get monotonous for me this wasn't something that I narrated in my story synopsis chapters but if you haven't played the game then just know that between every single major event I said you just have to imagine that Violet and the group returned back to Garrick Mock and just sort of hang out while other stuff happens in the world for the next four weeks don't get me wrong though I really do love the living as a fantasy military Professor life however I really do think some kind of shakeup just in setting alone would have really helped all the part two sections perhaps just by giving the player a similar map in the capital cities of each of the houses that they side with with only silver snow using Garrick mock a second time which would feel quite thematic for a player that is choosing to side with the church having not looked at any spoilers for any of the other runs this was something that I was kind of expecting to happen in one of them and I can't tell you how much my face lit up when I saw during my Crimson flower run Violet and company actually did go to a temporary military Camp to set up the final chapters of their part one finally I thought the game was doing something different but nope as soon as you hit part two it's back to the basically unchanged garag mock map the monotony of this setup really just seems like a symptom of what I feel is this game's biggest problem quite simply over ambition the exact same thing that ruined the story of Fates that over ambition comes across in just about every frame of this game that you see keeping the topic on Garrett mock we have the fact that this game goes to Great Lengths with some incredibly expressive artwork to establish the changing look of fodlin as the seasons pass and yet the look of gerick mock never ever changes with the seasons there's no snow or cherry blossoms or anything I know this may have required essentially four different garag mock Maps if not more but for how much work and and writing went into making this setting feel alive even with thematic names for each month and special holidays based on its own ancient history it's frustrating that we never get to feel it for ourselves even just aesthetically in the game's most frequently explored place my second major gripe when it comes to the over ambition and how that left a lot of things looking very cheap has to be the stretched background images in all of the game's dialogue scenes this is something that just looks distracting when you see two characters talking and the camera movement causes the background tables to distort unnaturally it kinda takes you out of the scene you're focusing Less on what the characters are saying and more on just how terrible the game looks it can look okay in the outdoor settings but any indoor scenes it's just a really bad choice I kind of get it for a bulk of the time and past Fire Emblem games many scenes could be made just using character portraits and background images this game has beautiful 3D models and they didn't want to use just artwork for conversations still I don't know what it would have taken to get enough space to allow the characters to have their own conversations in just a few 3D environments but anything would have been preferable I can't believe that these made it into a finished product clearly some standards had to be lowered in order to be able to fit everything in that they wanted to and as I mentioned before a lot of these happen to all come to a head in part two chapter previews are simply recycled month art and also usually having almost nothing new to say another thing happens to be that Azure Moon verdant wind and silver snow all have incredible full motion videos to show bileth running into the class leaders while Crimson flower gets nothing just still scenes and the terrible looking story conversations it feels like an afterthought as if the developers didn't understand that Crimson flower is probably the game's most important story path for a lot of players while we're on the critique train let's just throw in here how silver snow in verdant wind are pretty much just copies of each other which feels just weird because here we have settheth always happening to come to the same plans as the master strategist that Claude was supposed to be it also makes me wonder if any players happen to play these two paths first and then maybe were put off from the game thinking that the other two paths were just going to be clones as well verdant wind isn't really that bad of a path it just kind of feels bad that there's another path here that is exactly the same as it I feel like silver snow should be the afterthought and yet it got a beautiful full motion video to introduce us to it and has some really important reveals at the very end of it even with the various reveals that are locked in the later parts of whatever houses run that you choose three houses for the most part isn't a game of separate paths just for roughly two-thirds of it different perspectives on the same events it doesn't matter which class you choose you you are going to see Grandeur field the bridge of Merton Fort mercius inbar all of it I did like seeing them all for myself but it was really rough for me to keep my interest up sometimes and honestly I don't think I would recommend going down every path to almost anyone in case you were wondering when it came to my own story enjoyment silver snow would be the lowest by far followed by verdant wind in third it's not verdant wind's fault I don't think but that's how it shook out Crimson flower would then come in second and yes I did enjoy Azure Moon the most it's kind of a given though Azure Moon feels like the only path that was actually finished Crimson flower despite being equally fascinating to me was way shorter than the rest and literally cuts out before the story is even over when I think about everything I experienced all together I just feel sad and frustrated by how much potential was wasted as I said the game is really good on paper I wish that they'd finished it so here's my final take two playthroughs is a minimum just play through Azure Moon and Crimson flower in whatever order you like and you'll have pretty much seen the whole story and the best content of the game you can then Branch out to verdant wind if you're still hungry for more silver snow can then be a final run if you're feeling truly committed and want to see where everything takes you this might be a little bit rough after completing verdicted wind as the two paths are pretty much identical except for the final battle but still I do think that this is the best order for the most amount of players with the storytelling of three houses behind us let's move on and cover the many new gameplay systems and alterations that are Adventure to fodlin brought us [Music] as I've gone over in some previous videos over the course of making this series I have inevitably noticed a trend where whenever the Fire Emblem series it jumps to a different console to begin a new era of games the initial game on that console has tended to be a major Trailblazer making good use of its brand new player base to alter what exactly Fire Emblem is we saw this quite notably with Fire Emblem 6 The Binding blade which trimmed off the series fat to make a scaled down version of Fire Emblem and then of course with Fire Emblem Awakening which swung the doors wide open for just about every excess in the book when it comes to three houses it doesn't take more than a few glances to see that this trend also holds true and this version of Fire Emblem UPS the RPG part of the Strategic RPG genre it's set in by giving players not just an army and inventory to look over but also a home and a job that it behooves its players to take an interest in for improving the Strategic part of the gameplay of course there's no better place to begin picking apart the gameplay of three houses other than tackling right away what is easily its most significant change I'm talking of course about garrig mock Monastery where all players can easily spend about a third of their entire playtime in the most basic sense gerrickmock is just an evolution of the same Fort system that fire emblem has been struggling to implement ever since Path of Radiance on the Nintendo GameCube while the last game to really take a shot at this Fire Emblem Fates made its hub World a little barely explained pocket Dimension and a slightly ignorable feature Fire Emblem three houses goes all in on the idea you cannot ignore garrigmak even if you tried even if you were determined to just skip bit and have the game Auto choose your decisions for you the developers purposefully I suspect made trying such an option wildly inefficient throughout all my playthroughs I don't think it's overestimating to say that I've probably spent at least 40 hours of real time in garrickmock that might actually be lowballing it a little bit of course if you know anything about me or maybe have seen the fates video you can probably already predict my reaction to the monastery I don't know why but explorable Hub worlds and games just really appeal to me even after the stupid amount of time I've spent wandering around jurgmock I never really got tired of it there were some things that I definitely did start to feel would be better served by just being a menu item but on the whole I love wandering around that school part of this might be due to my own personal history one of the best years of my life was spent living abroad and exploring every corner of the quite remote campus where I lived and the barely populated region that surrounded me living by less day-to-day life as abstracted as it is has the same appeal to me as some of the best boarding school type stories yes I did love schmoozing my way around Garrick mock poking my nose into odd corners or rooms that I wouldn't have any reason to go to and also just checking to see where people wound up from month to month however that doesn't mean I'm blind to the problems that it definitely has even though I kinda like it I can only imagine the feelings of another sort of player one who finds the forced edition of a place like this into a strategic RPG very unwelcome especially how all the other systems even returning systems of Fire Emblem tie into it to work what I mean by this is demonstrated by talking about the new way that the game handles supports so first of all just like any other entry you can of course increase your unit's bonds by using them close to each other in battle three houses thankfully gives support Point bonuses to units who are within range of the same Target and not simply adjacent to each other this is a great way to build relationships with the units that you already have to use however a big part of three houses with students in other houses that you can recruit to your side means that the player also needs a way to increase bonds with characters outside of their starting house there is a system to borrow a single student from another class for a single month and although they don't get any experience due to the support bonuses in battle it's a great way to reach out across the aisle however this is not an efficient way to try to recruit everyone at the school and for many reasons it is highly beneficial for you to try to recruit all the characters that you possibly can in the first half of the game keep in mind that a new unit in your army is not only just a new unit additionally by having as many characters recruited as you can you gain access to all of their paralogs which of course have very valuable rewards for example basically every person who plays three houses should really recruit Lorenz as his paralog gives one of the best items in the game the staff at thorsis that thing gives you plus two to your magic Cask range pretty ridiculous on its own but made even better with other Boons to cast range you could live without it but using something like this is just a lot of fun and a huge appeal to the gameplay whether you like it or not if you want to have more fun in the battles then you'd better be ready to put some mental power towards having regular meals with your own class members and also other people you want to recruit possibly having some tea parties and wandering around the school to find lost items or gifts that you can then give it to the various students for players who just want to get to the battles already it's easy to see how gergmoc's Hub enforcement is exactly what they don't want in this game and I genuinely do feel bad for them yes I want to go fishing I want to feed all the cats and dogs I want to have awkward sauna mini games but it still sits in the back of my head that while I continue to soak in the pretend life of being a professor at this awesome Monastery not everyone wants to spend their time this way I guess if we're going to be at the monastery anyway then it's about time that we talk about class thank you foreign class and well literal class system from the outside seems pretty foreign to every game that's come before it in Fire Emblem I know when I was first seeing Snippets of three houses as I was making my way through the prior games I really couldn't imagine how in the world all of this came together and would still feel like Fire Emblem although the way that bileth can raise their skills as well as other character skills through lessons and seminars at garrickmock doesn't quite have the same feel as simply just honing all those same skills only in battle it's actually not as different as it might seem what we really have here is the same systems as before and then a thematic school menu system that works to give you some bonus experience that can be applied manually by the player in whatever manner they see fit I guess in a way it's not all that different from the bonus experience system in Path of Radiance however the bonuses in this game go towards a weapon or riding experience whereas in that game it just gave you levels in the three houses context the most apt comparison to how the teaching system works is just to put it side by side with my description of the support system in the previous chapter you can continue to just raise your unit's weapons and writing skills on the battlefield however in this game those increases only account for about half of what is total accrued the other half comes from activities at Garrick mock for both bileth and the units under their command every week in game you will start out by having class with your students which is concluded by a more direct menu that allows you to select your units and then train them in specific skills with the number of students you're able to train being specifically locked to your current Professor rank when you're directly tutoring your students like this you have a chance for a bad good great or perfect result reflecting randomly how well your student took in the lesson and how many skill points they gain in any given month you're typically able to have at least 2 two to four chances to teach your students and how motivated your target student is each week will allow you to teach them for shorter or longer you can also set certain training priorities per student as well as inducting students to special jobs which will increase their armor riding or flying from week to week these bonuses need to be selected but after that they're automatic getting the most out of this powerful training system means learning how to manage your entire classes motivation levels and understanding how to choose whether you want to go on optional side battles from week to week have interested students attend a seminar for specialized larger than normal experience have everyone just rest for a 50 motivation boost or go explore Garrick mock usually the best choice is the final one where with only a few gifts to your students or a couple action points spent in the cafeteria you can quickly get everyone fully motivated again and ready for maximum gains on the next class day this of course quickly can become a grind however anything less than this efficient play is really not going to cut it when trying to keep up with your enemies on the game's more challenging difficulty settings maybe this is why normal mode is so mind numbingly easy if they wanted to have a version of the game where you can just rest and take half gains during your classes depending on the player this might be a satisfying management task or just a chore like with the previous systems it is an enforcement on all players to participate in the monastery activities the ability to raise up student skills completely manually does have some interesting benefits on the upside you can very easily catch up some units that are not quite getting as many chances to fight or get them ready for other classes that they otherwise would not be able to get any experience for once I was eventually able to get my head around the way that the teaching system worked I figured that I was going to be in for a really good time this game sort of had the route planning of a fire emblem Fates mixed with the freedom of the DS fire emblems where you can choose very freely what class you want your units to be for the most part that is what we got at least up until the point from the basic classes to the advanced classes this system does work as intended you can take your units in whatever Direction you want and it is very freeing and fun as usual you will want to synergize your choices with a unit's own personal skill however in three houses you also need to contend with their personal proficiencies for example some units are naturally better with a sword and will get an experience boost during your lessons if you train them on that on a side note I really wish that players were able to better choose what bileth was proficient with in the way that previous games let you choose what your avatar would be good at but anyway even though this teaching and class system as a whole seems very ideal I do have two main issues with how this all works first of all it frustrates me that the game quite simply doesn't tell you what skills you can get for mastering a class it also does the same thing with hitting certain weapon ranks it's all a mystery until you actually achieve it however once you do get the skill or combat art the game doesn't Mark where it actually came from you might think it's obvious since the skills immediately unlock after the announcement of you mastering a class or hitting a certain rank however in this game you get tons of notifications all the time especially in teaching weeks and it can be really easy to forget if you're going to plan out a powerful skill build in three houses you are definitely going to want to have a second source of information to sort it all out for you because the game certainly doesn't this is my second main gripe with the system obscuring information as I said from the basic to the advanced classes the game system works as intended but until you're able to unlock them the prerequisites for the classes at the Master Level are completely hidden and they really do have some wacky requirements first of all we have things like the Falcon Knight meeting a CIA swords and wyvern Lords needing a sea and lances this is sort of a different point but flying characters have a really weird path in this game for example there is no male flying class until you get to the advanced classes and there is no Pegasus equivalent for females in the advanced classes either instead I guess Pegasus Knights are just supposed to Pivot to a wyvern and axes in the middle of their build which is part of why them suddenly needing a sword again although classically associated with Pegasus Knights can still be a bit of a surprise maybe master classes shouldn't be called master classes as they are all some kind of mixed class again a large amount of your total proficiency experience comes from bileth slowly tutoring each unit thanks to me screwing up my first playthrough with this in my later playthroughs I did know that my magic users would need a full a in writing from the start which is enormous by the way considering that there are no magic writing classes before this at least without the DLC I also knew they would need a c in Lance's which is a weapon that I would have never thought to equip them with it's pretty easy to get blindsided in the late game where you suddenly find out that you should have been training your units a different way all along call me old-fashioned I guess but I really don't like feeling like I need to always play Fire Emblem with a second tab open three houses is a really great portable game however sometimes the knowledge of my missing out on efficiency due to me not sitting down in front of a TV and a laptop meant that I felt kind of tied down every time I wanted to play that's why I eventually broke down and made this all of the information that the game made tedious to remember or flat out wouldn't show me in one place yes by the way I don't have a printer once I had this at my side it became remarkably more enjoyable for me to guide every one of my units to wherever I wanted them to get to without needing to Rack my brain every class week making successful builds is one of the most satisfying parts of the later Fire Emblem games and I just wish that we were at a point where the game itself would realize that at and help you facilitate it instead of keeping its most interesting rewards behind blinders even though I've now covered two humongous alterations to the Fire Emblem formula three houses is just jam-packed with a whole lot more than this let's attempt to cover all of the rest of it and finally near the end of this thing next [Music] section of the video is meant to house all of the smaller parts of the gameplay experience on offer that I didn't think were significant enough to devote entire chapters to a few of these do still represent very radical changes to the series they just need less words to explain for example the new Battalion and Gambit system they massively change how you approach many problems in a way that I haven't yet seen in this franchise also I freaking love them although I didn't realize how much I would like them at first let's take a step back early on in three houses you will gain access to an additional kind of well I guess it's easiest to consider it an item but it's basically an equippable little group of mini soldiers who are not represented in battle from the regular top-down angle although they can be seen if you go into the zoomed in warrior style angle that is pretty much impossible to actually play the game in anyways equipping battalion's two-year units gives passive Buffs to certain stats depending on the type of Battalion they are and also give you access to certain tactical actions which are called gambits gambits function a bit like weapon skills but are more limited having a said number of times they can be used per battle a unit hit by an offensive Gambit loses the ability to move and lowers their stats by 10 percent as well as having other effects like damage over time by being on fire or forcing the target to reposition depending on which Battalion you equipped and what Gambit came along with it there are defensive and support gambits as well which can be equally if not more powerful than the offensive ones group heals are nice and all but the really good stuff comes from support gambits like impregnable wall which turns all incoming damage to one a literal Lifesaver on hard mode and especially on maddening mode or there's also stride which gives all units in a very large area plus five movement for the turn which mixed with some high movement classes can let you storm around the battlefield with Incredible ability this kind of power is why uses of these gambits are limited by not one but two different systems in addition to Simply Having maximum uses per battle battalions also have their own kind of health bars that go down as your unit gets damaged stopping you from using them any longer if the battalion's health bar runs out on normal having battalions and gambits at all kind of confused me normal is already a cakewalk for anyone with even a modicum of Fire Emblem experience and when you don't know how to get the really powerful support battalions the offensive gambits especially just seemed like extra stuffing and an already packed game when you can pretty much always kill any enemy with one attack a somewhat more powerful move that enemies can't counter-attack to and also usually die instantly from seems pretty unnecessary it wasn't until I got to hard mode and beyond that I started to understand what they were there for when enemies are actually a threat the ability to stop their oncoming charge in its tracks is a huge Advantage one that you need to master in hard mode and move Beyond mastering in maddening mode in order to succeed Gambit powers are fueled by the new charm stat this was part of the reason why my maddening run was full of just as much tough combat as there were frequent tea parties a side activity that can increase your and your guests charm helping you out against normal foes isn't the only well implemented use for them this system is also built directly into countering the last major Edition that I somehow haven't mentioned yet the new demonic Beast enemies while demonic beasts at first seem to be nothing more than multi-square bodied enemies it is the way that offensive gambits with their often multi-square targeting attacks play into breaking down these beasts Shields that cover each square of their body work together brilliantly the main area that you hit immediately breaks while the other areas affected become half broken if you manage to break them all the Beast will be stunned allowing you to pound on them with impunity and trying to break through their multiple health bars learning about how to synergize my gambits not only tactically from their effects but also geographically from their effect areas became its own enjoyable Dynamic to me and even though demonic Beast encounters can tend to get a bit spammy especially in certain paralogs and late game missions the possibility of this anime type showing up does do a good job of forcing players to remember to pack enough offensive gambits to be ready for them you can't just bring all the overpowered support ones keeping things vague in order to avoid story spoilers in this gameplay section I will just say that the few battles against demonic beasts that were even larger meaning the ones that take up three by three squares were even more enjoyable for me to puzzle out on how to break their guards and deal with them they require a whole other level of Gambit coordination often straining your ability to even still break them when you your maximum uses get close to being used up these were probably my favorite boss fights in the whole series with the biggest features of three houses covered it's time to start winding down with a list of the few odds and ends that I feel I need to mention before we get to the Finish Line first of all I'm not really sure that I like having the weapon triangle system the only barely present the way it functions now is that no weapon has an inherent advantage against any other type when hitting certain weapon ranks exactly B for the triangle weapons your unit can learn an ability either ax breaker sword breaker or Lance Breaker by equipping this skill and one of your limited skill slots it allows you to have a 20 hit bonus and avoid bonus when fighting a unit holding the classic weapon type that they counter while it's nice that a form of the weapon triangle is still in there I don't really like this implementation the triangle system works well because it doesn't interfere with your build having to give up a whole skill slot just to still interact with it is pretty simply not worth it especially for units who use multiple weapon types I guess if you're building a character that stops at the advanced classes and never move on such as sword Masters for swords and Fighters with axes then the breaker skills are maybe worth having otherwise this is just kind of a lost system that I think I would have preferred more holistically included the most common way you interact with it now is being a victim of it as on harder difficulty modes they often give it to your enemies for free so even though you probably aren't benefiting from it it is still something that you need to be very aware of thankfully being aware of what skills your enemies have at all is something that is a lot easier to recognize thanks to the next little detail that I really like normally I find it very tedious to constantly check up on enemy stats and other Fire Emblem games but in the later games which start adding skills to the characters there's also the additional tedium of looking at and remembering what enemy units have what what skills that can totally wreck you for example if there's a thief type unit out there that can just walk right through your battle line and one hit kill your healer one probably underrated change that three houses has is just simply the fact that for the first time ever we are playing a fire emblem in HD with an HD resolution that comes a whole lot more pixels and hudspace for information now with a single glance at the screen you can very clearly see these skills something that was possible on the 3DS but I find a lot easier here on a better HUD and also being on the screen that I am actively focused on as I said it's a small thing but I found it really nice and I noticed it making my harder mode playthroughs more enjoyable than I thought they were going to be I almost forgot to mention the new threat range system a small but impactful little quality of life change being able to see lines of aggression suddenly link you and your foes is brilliant it prevents the player from making a lot of stupid moves due to them not taking the time time to measure out every single enemy's distance and then combine all of those in their head I spent so much time with three houses that I almost kind of forgot that these were a new thing but I think they're wonderful next up the new fist weapons are just really interesting they are fairly newcomer friendly unlike the addition of daggers and kunai Into Fire Emblem Fates and these fist weapons can be really powerful but once you start to realize the value of mounted and flying units especially in this entry eventually these fist weapons which can't be used when mounted get left and the dust even if they do get outpaced I think they're a successful weapon type Edition that I certainly wouldn't mind seeing return okay now let's talk crests and Crest weapons they're kind of neat I appreciate how they are revisiting of and also a reigning in of the Holy Blood system of Fire Emblem 4. Crest users are important to have in your army but they don't mean that those units completely overshadow other characters crests don't make your units inherently better they just have some better weapon choices however over using those weapon choices is also better managed here than in Fire Emblem 4. while you can still repair them they are a lot more expensive both monetarily and also material wise to keep on bringing back to full if you manage to recruit every single character and go on lots of paralogs you will probably still have enough Crest weapons to make it not such a big deal to lose one or two and not bother repairing it but even then in a lot of cases they weren't always my preferred weapons next up I gotta mention I kind of have a problem with how few Maps there are in this game I say I kind of have a problem because I know three houses was way too over ambitious from the start and maybe I've just accepted that however the thing about the reused Maps here that actually does get me is that not only are they the same layout but most of the time they're the exact same deployment even when the option for changing things up is wide open take for example the battle at Grandeur fields all three armies approached the battle from a different direction and yet every time you come back to play through this map on a different playthrough you will always start on the north side of the map all it would take to give this map even a slightly different feel would be to just have a consistent direction that each Army arrives from and then allow you to tackle the map from that direction speaking of repeated Maps I guess this is a perfect time to fit in one last dig here at the rightfully maligned chapter 13 reunion at dawn a terrible map with a massive difficulty jump that does not allow you to choose who comes in and where this can be a game Ender if you're playing on any of the higher difficulty moments especially on maddening mode my own maddening run through it was only possible due to me already knowing what was coming and of course I was running a bit of a meme all Flyers build that allowed me to just hide out of the way and either avoid or take on the dangers it had completely at my own speed by the way yes flying unit units are as broken as they've ever been in three houses Cavalry are nice but a whole Army of flying units all with reposition is some of the most silly fun I've ever had if you haven't try it out last up this is something that was kind of on my Cutting Room floor but I wanted to fit it in anyway yes I did buy the expansion pass for three houses and originally I planned to make a whole chapter about it the Side Story segment of seven additional chapters is a nice little mini campaign and it gives players a brief chance to meet the four new playable characters and try out their new classes also the story basically spoils a large amount of the big final conversation of silver snow making a playthrough of this game's worst path feel a lot less necessary nice after the Side Story was over I was then pretty disappointed to see that it was not at all Canon I do see why it can't be its story does require players to be stuck in it from start to finish and if put alongside the main game it could make them feel trapped if they wanted to go back to what they were doing before still the solution that they ended up on is just kind of weird we spend seven chapters learning about these new characters who I did like a lot but then when it's over and we go back to our main game file moments later although the characters are now recruitable they are then meeting baileth for the first time and our relationship has to start all over again moving on the classes that the DLC brought were all very interesting although like with the brawler the Infantry based ones like trickster and War monk do end up seeming kind of paltry in comparison to the dark flyer and Valkyrie where the true power lies the DLC is also where side activities like feeding the cats and dogs and garigma come in which is an odd little system where you feed the animals and may get an item reward this gives some good value to things like collecting meat in the side missions and also the Lesser fish that you get from the fishing minigame the other main garigma Edition from the DLC is the sauna which while its mini game is a bit random is really fun to succeed at as a successful trip means you're going to have an even more effective teaching day with that student later on last thing on the DLC the new Abyss area that is added is neat but also a bit pointless I really enjoyed using it as an alternative Hub in the Side Story content but when I was back in the main game I found that it only added some Niche features that were locked behind its really long load time features such as getting the occasional free but damaged weapon in the junk pile viewing your unit ratings if you're curious from the mysterious teacher and also using the Pagan altar which allows you to exchange your Renown which is a slowly building currency of sorts that you previously mostly spent at the Saint statues but here can use for items it can certainly be a bit broken to suddenly get things like multiple Brave weapons really easily if you're just sitting on Renown but since any player who would have that much is probably on new game plus anyway I really don't mind it overall I did really enjoy the DLC it does feel a bit thin for its price but in order to feel that difference I held off on adding it until I was already in my third run of the game and I can definitely say that a run with it and a run without it do feel very different and I enjoyed myself more when I had all of its features available and there we have it everything I want to say about Fire Emblem 3 houses is finally out it is time now to wrap up not only this game but this entire retrospective series with one final chapter [Music] back in the winter of 2018 yes 2018. my channel was in kind of a transition period I had just finished all my coverage of Hyrule Warriors and Fire Emblem Warriors the latter of which was my first experience touching anything related to Fire Emblem at that time I was more known for short guide videos however repeating the same formula over and over again especially for the humongous rosters of Warriors games had me feeling very creatively unsatisfied I wanted to do something different with my channel after a couple of months the time had finally come in March of 2019 I returned to YouTube simultaneously changing my channel name from gamesbrained to Shane brained and announcing the passion project that I had decided on the Fire Emblem retrospective me a person who had never played any Fire Emblem game going through the entire series 1 one by one never looking at what would be coming in the future so I always would have a fresh take on every entry Fire Emblem Warriors had wet my appetite for the series however it just so happened that a new entry in the main series would be coming out later that year of course you already know that game was Fire Emblem three houses now this is kind of ridiculous but at the time I actually thought that I might be able to finish all of the games in the series as well as the retrospective videos all within the same year sure it went a little bit long and 2020 and 2021 were a complete mess but if you ever think you take a long time to get anything done well maybe you can feel a little bit better now when I finished making the First videos in this new series they had very little success at all nothing compared to what I could get by simply covering anything Warriors for example the original Fire Emblem one retrospective got about 2 000 views in the whole first month whereas my Warriors videos could get about that in the first day a over the course of the next two months that same first retrospective video went up by another 800 views meaning that that one video over the course of one quarter of a year earned me about in YouTube revenue of three dollars for a project that I spent weeks on and wanted to somehow grow into a whole new direction for my life on YouTube with its original reception I really didn't know if I could continue this project I decided that fan funding would have to be the way to go and so I set a goal that was similar to about how much I would make on a bad month in YouTube a hundred dollars each month through patreon this wasn't going to be enough to really make a big difference but it was also for me to see if people even cared what I would have to say about the series at all what I discovered back in 2019 was that even though I would not see a significant growth in subscribers as I became wholly focused on this one series The Fire Emblem Community had passion you in some form or another found found your way to my channel and whether you took the next step to become a patron or simply kept coming back time and time again you are the ones who have stuck by me often with patience as the length of these videos grew far beyond my initial idea and I really can't thank you enough for that Fire Emblem three houses is the end of the road but when I think about it now I mostly just see the journey that I took to get here this series is kind of Beyond me now you are the ones who have been waiting long enough it's about time for me to finish this off now I think in my analysis I probably came off as feeling way more negative on three houses than it actually sits in my mind like with many other entries in this fantastic series it maintains the feeling of Fire Emblem while also grasping wildly at so many new ideas that it nails with Precision or frustratingly misses the mark on but in a way that you can totally see what they were going for and just wish that they had been able to better execute in totality some frustrations here and there do not outweigh the incredible amount of great experiences that I had in playing this game it's hard if not impossible to nail everything or even close to it when going this far into unexplored territory and honestly I really praise the Developers for trying to go so far out of the comfort zone while other modern series choose to stagnate Fire Emblem keeps trying to go beyond and I respect that it's silly to ask whether I recommend this game or not of course I recommend three houses it is a fantastic game one that I wouldn't say is necessarily right for everyone to love but one I would definitely say is right for everyone to try even with the absurd amount of time that I put into it I know for a fact that someday I will experience it all over again this is the game that I have anticipated for longer than any other game in my entire life and considering the journey I had along the way and just how special it was to me in ways just as personal as not I did not make the wrong choice at all thank you for helping me take the right direction and well um that's that's it everyone uh this is not the end of this channel nor even Fire Emblem things related on it thanks to the many people who pitched and support the series I have hit all my patreon support goals repeatedly far enough to secure videos covering the other Fire Emblem spin-off games that I promised such as Tokyo Mirage sessions hashtag Fe Fire Emblem Warriors and all of the show's okaga games from after he left intelligent systems those being a tearing Saga Berwick Saga and vistaria Saga those videos will have a full look at each game however I'm thinking about covering all of them in the course of two to three videos also I will be covering the new Nintendo Warriors game Fire Emblem Warriors 3 hopes although that will at first be on my Warriors only Channel Warriors dojo in addition to all this I'm also planning on turning all of the story synopsis chapters in my retrospective videos into separate releases on shanebrained story synopses are a whole genre of videos on YouTube and I just happen to have 16 very detailed synopses of the Fire Emblem series and I figure a lot of people would probably like to know what happens in these games some of these might require some tweaks such as new voice recording so that I can fix some of my early mispronunciations and possibly some new editing maybe not though some of those early editing jobs are kind of charming after all of that said and done well I guess I'll have to decide what I'm going to do next I do know that I want to have more patreon polls to help me decide what projects to go with if you want to have a part in the future of this channel then as always you can check out my patreon link in the description and on screen right now and that's it I've said it all before and I'll say it again one last time thank you so much everyone see you next time love you all Shane brained out big thank you to my top patrons dw7 still rules Henry Gutierrez John Morrison Ryan Poe and shin Liu as well as to all my other patrons if you'd also like your name to join this list of people supporting the Channel please check out the link in the description thank you all very much

Channel: ShaneBrained

Views: 25,769

Keywords: Fire Emblem, Retrospective, Fire Emblem Retrospective, ShaneBrained, FE Retrospective, Shane Retrospective

Id: WdKWpAi8i9M

Length: 440min 44sec (26444 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 18 2022