Game Review: Fire Emblem Fates

This was certainly a long one to go through you guys. Coming off the widely successful Fire Emblem Awakening, Fates was focused on shaking up the Fire Emblem formula in a variety of ways. For one, the game shipped in two versions, with a 3rd recently released as Downloadable Content. The whole meaning of choosing sides and family comes to a forefront. Do you stay with the family who stole you as a child and siblings you grew up with? Or do you return to your birth family after them being so torn in having lost you so long ago? The choice you make at an early point in the game will ripple throughout the rest of your time playing. The premise of Fire Emblem Fates is derived around two neighboring kingdoms, Hoshido and Nohr. Hoshido is led by the honorable Prince Ryoma and his siblings along with recruitable characters take on the form of classes based around Japanese mythology. Whereas Nohr is more dark and is led by the corrupted King Garon along with his children. Most notably, you have Prince Xander and the other sibilngs from that side. The classes there are more in the vein of traditional Fire Emblem games.

So with there being 3 separate versions, is there an actual difference? A few actually! Aside from the classes, there's also the difficulty level and map objectives. Birhright has you side with Hoshido and is more attuned to newcomers to Fire Emblem. The objectives in each Chapter are pretty much around either "Rout the Enemy" or "Kill the Boss". Conquest however has you stay with Nohr and amps up the difficulty to a high point. The mission objectives have weird gimmicks such as slowed movement in the ice, wind turbines that can blow you and the enemy several spaces away from where you move to, or survive a certain amount of turns. Plus you're not given many challenges outside the main story chapters to level up your team of characters. Literally every move is crucial if you want to succeed. Revelations is pretty much a mixture of the 2 but seeing as it goes into spoiler territory, I won't go into it much. All it is, is that instead you side with neither kingdom and go off on your own.

Battles are rendered in full 3D

Much like previous Fire Emblem games, you have your units positioned out on a grid like map and can move them to any place that they can travel too. Certain units have a larger terrain to move on such as fliers like the Malig Knight compared to Cavaliers who ride on horseback. You have the weapons triangle which is sorted into 3 colors that all are either strong or weak against one another. This is because of the differing weapons between the kingdoms. Nohr deals with Swords and Tomes while Hoshido wields Naginatas and Clubs. Plus, your weapons have no durability rating, only healing staves and items do like before.

You can position your units in such a way that they can be next one another which allows you to get support boosts with allies. This allows you to form relationships with them and further improve your stat boosts. This can also be done by pairing each other up which can lead to units protecting each other. This is done further with the new My Castle feature. After every battle you are allowed to unwind at your castle which you can design with a set amount of templates/styles. Buildings can be placed which allow you to buy more weapons, items, or partake in luck style mini games. The Lottery allows you to win a prize based around three tiers of whatever marble pops up. The Arena allows you to spectate matches with your units who sometimes have partners in assistance. You can also collect resources to feed your pet dragon.

My Castle allows you to play around with buildings and your characters' emotions!

One important building is your Private Quarters. Here you get to unwind and build relationships with your party members and Corrin (your Avatar). This also leads to marriage and producing a child which is recruited in a subsequent side story mission. After marriage, you're given the option to bond further with your spouse. This is where the controversial petting feature was disabled for the Western release. Course some of that is intact with certain events like waking up your partner from falling asleep. Some of the characters have some interesting personalities, hell some of which are on the sexy side of things. Your older Nohrian sister Camilla is over bearing and adores you (I myself married her, twice. SHE'S BEST WAIFU), whereas your younger Hoshidan sister Sakura is shy and timid.  Even with the game stories completed, I find myself going back to the My Castle in developing my relationships with everyone.

Preview the outcomes of every match and adjust accordingly!

Difficulty wise you can select between Classic Mode which is Permadeath or Casual where everyone comes back after every battle. If you're really having a hard time (geared for the Conquest story), Phoenix mode brings back fallen units after every turn. The set up I had was all 3 campaigns on one cartridge thanks to my brother getting lucky in snagging the Collector's Edition. All campaigns were done on Normal mode with Permadeath off (yea yea I'm a wuss so what? XD). Each campaign was completed in a varying amount of times though if I had to guess, I've spent 40-60 hours of in game time on them. As you'd expect, Conquest took the longest.

The music is exhilarating, the story is one of overthrowing a corrupt kingdom either as the opposing force or from within depending on your Campaign. Your Avatar also has the ability to transform into a Dragon. That's pretty nifty, though I didn't find myself using it as much. Every map also has what's called a Dragon Vein which can be used by your Avatar, the child you have with him/her, and any member of the Royal Family you side with. This does a variety of effects depending on the map such as transform a section to a healing tile, burn the forest for a faster path to cut through, or cause an earthquake to damage your foes.

Glimpse at the grid like format of play

I didn't get the opportunity to use Streetpass but I've heard it involves invading other players Castles. This is also why some of your additions include Golems, Puppets and a Ballista among other things to help defend your castle upon invasion. The only thing I regret is having my Avatar have its bane be tied to his Defense. Which means the hits taken did way much more damage than they should have. Nintendo has been doing a good job with releasing DLC Map packs for additional fun stories as well as opportunities to level up your team. I really enjoyed playing these games, even if I took the easy way out. I'll always have an appreciation for Fire Emblem and it's interesting story and character dynamics!

Camilla is best Waifu, I'll say it as many times as I need to.

Should you Play this Game?

Yes! Any fan of Fire Emblem would have a blast playing through these stories. No doubt favorite characters will be chosen as you progress. The voice acting is solid as is the story. For beginners, I recommend Birthright whereas the hardcore crew can check out Conquest. Revelations is for those who cleared through either one or both of the other campaigns for a full story effect!