Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright

Genre: Strategy-RPG

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Wireless), Online Content Sharing, StreetPass Support

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Review:

After the surprisingly large success of the first Fire Emblem Strategy-RPG title on the Nintendo 3DS, Fire Emblem Awakening, Nintendo followed that up three years later with Fire Emblem Fates in 2016 on the Nintendo 3DS, and this time around the game was released in a manner that may be a bit confusing, but I’ll try to explain it here.

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Choosing Your Fate

This game focuses on the story of Corrin, a noble born to the tribal and vaguely Japanese-style kingdom of Hoshido, but captured at a young age and raised to be a princess of the vaguely European-style kingdom of Nohr. Fire Emblem Fates’ story has the two kingdoms at war and Corrin feeling caught in the middle after discovering Corrin’s true parentage, as well as the suspiciously evil behavior of Nohr’s king. People on both sides of the war see Corrin as a sibling… and also people on both sides who don’t trust Corrin due to their odd upbringing.

No matter which version of this game you get, the game’s opening epilogue chapters are the same. However, after the opening few hours of the game, Corrin must decide which of the nations to side with, which will determine the story and missions you’ll see for the rest of the game. Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright has you siding with Hoshido, while Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest has you siding with Nohr. Players can spend an additional $20 to download the campaign for the game they didn’t get via the eShop, though of course this is only until the Nintendo 3DS eShop closes. As such, both games contain the same content, but have roughly half of that content locked behind a purchase.

That’s not to say that Fire Emblem Fates is low-effort or a cynical double-dip – each of the two campaigns is a full story in its own right, taking the same characters but bringing them in different directions based on which side Corrin takes. I should also note that players of both games can purchase a third, DLC-only campaign, Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation, where Corrin refuses to take a side and as a result must contend with hostilities from both opposing armies, but also resulting in them coming to realize the work of a secret enemy pulling the strings behind the scenes. In addition to the Revelation campaign, there is also an additional Hidden Truths post-game DLC, as well as multiple other smaller paid DLC missions and content.

Players wondering what order to play this content are generally recommended to play Birthright first because it is the easier of the two versions of the game, then Conquest, and then only after playing the other two moving on to Revelation and the additional DLC, as those contain spoilers for the story in the other two campaigns. There is also another reason I would recommend that players start with Birthright though…

The thing is, in terms of story, Nohr just seems absurdly cartoonishly evil. Not only is its king clearly bloodthirsty, not only did he require that Corrin be locked in a tower like Rapunzel for most of their life, but none of Corrin’s adoptive siblings in the Nohr army seem to see anything wrong with invading Hoshido unprovoked. And while Corrin’s main goal in Fire Emblem: Conquest seems to be investigating the Nohr king’s cruelty, choosing Nohr over Hoshido just feels too much like choosing to be on Team Evil.

Of course, the cartoonish level of evil of the Nohr kingdom also negatively affects Fire Emblem: Birthright to a lesser extent. Choosing this side definitely feels like you’re fighting to defend peaceful people against an evil megalomaniac, but it’s hard to take the story seriously when it’s so frequently over-the-top.

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A Different Fate?

As for the rest of the presentation in Fire Emblem Fates, this game shares a lot in common with Fire Emblem Awakening, and much like that game this combines anime-style cel-shaded cutscenes and 3D visuals, along with 2D characters when on the map. Fates fares better in some ways here, but worse in others. It lacks much of the added environmental effects that Awakening had, but it does feature the nice effect of actually zooming into the thick of battle every time characters battle, and you can even see the way the map layout affects the look of the battlefield when you’re in close, a really nice touch.

Many of my nitpicks about Awakening’s presentation are also true here. It still frustrates me that the pixel art for characters doesn’t change to reflect the weapon they currently have equipped – you have to hover your cursor over them to check that. I’m also still disappointed by the lack of free 3D camera control to the map screens.

Fire Emblem Fates also has an orchestral soundtrack, though I would say that this time around it seems a bit more uneven than in Awakening, including some really catchy melodies, but some odd, off-putting ones as well. In particular, Hoshido’s Feudal Japanese-sounding music sounded pretty terrible to me. And once again, this game makes use of scattered voice clips throughout the rest of the game, often speaking only brief parts of sentences the characters are saying. If they couldn’t keep the characters fully-voiced throughout the game, I kinda’ feel like I would have preferred them to stay mute during these exchanges – hearing only a few words of a sentence sounds odd.

While the presentation and story are really mixed bags here, the gameplay presents a solid progression from what was in Awakening. Gone is weapon durability for most weapons (though healing items and staves still need replenishing), which eliminates much of the need to worry about whether you’re “wasting” a weapon on an enemy at a given time. This game also grows the “relationship-building” elements of the prior game, though still nowhere near the level they are in Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

This game also builds on the unit-support features from the prior game, distinguishing joined units and adjacent units by making one formation offensive and one defensive, a nice touch that adds an extra element of strategy. There are also new unit types, new weapon types. However, probably the biggest addition here is My Castle, a home base of sorts that players will add to over the course of the campaign and revisit to gather resources and build character relationships. My Castle is also used for local wireless multiplayer battles, with the contents of your castle influencing your stats.

I should note that one of the main reasons Birthright is seen as an easier game than Conquest is that Birthright allows access to optional missions to grind for gold and experience, while Conquest is very limited in this regard (Revelation also allows this).

In the end, I think that the added features in Fire Emblem Fates make this a solid follow-up to Fire Emblem Awakening, but its flaws make it a more uneven experience. I definitely agree with the general consensus that Birthright is the better place to start than Conquest, though even in that game the cartoonishly evil enemies make it difficult to feel too invested in the story. However, the core Strategy-RPG gameplay here is still excellent and well worth playing. If you’re a fan of the genre with a Nintendo 3DS, you should absolutely get either version of this game (again, Birthright for preference) and be sure to get the two additional campaigns before the Nintendo 3DS eShop closes.

tl;dr – Fire Emblem Fates expands on the excellent Strategy-RPG gameplay we saw in Fire Emblem Awakening, adding new gameplay elements and a split story based on who the game’s protagonist sides with in a way. I think Birthright is the better place to start, and the better game between the two for multiple reasons, but if you’re a fan of the genre, you should absolutely get either game and download the other campaign via DLC while you can, along with the third DLC-only Revelations campaign. This game may not be the huge groundbreaking title that Awakening was, but it’s still a superb entry within the genre that genre fans absolutely should play.

Grade: A

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