My biggest complaint with Conquest was its story. As far as I’m concerned Conquest has the worst story in the entire series. Since that game lowered my expectations considerably there wasn’t much room for Birthright to fail. Thankfully I can agree with everyone that Birthright had the better story. Instead of being awful (and I mean the kind of awful that would make me want to throw a brick at something sweet and innocent) this game’s story is mediocre. There’s nothing in it that’s bad, but it’s also not good either.
For starters, the premise isn’t as interesting as it was in Conquest, but given how much fail was that story contained perhaps it was a smarter move on the part of the writers to stick to something more familiar. In Birthright Corrin and co. are trying to end the war by overthrowing Garon. The plot goes exactly as you’d expect it would. There isn’t as much to write about because you can sum up most of the story with “Corrin and co wreck everything in sight while facing opposition from Garon and the Nohrian siblings”. There really isn’t that much that stuck out to me about this game’s plot so this post will be relatively brief.
As I mentioned before in my Conquest post this game also has elements of “Nohr can do no right while Hoshido can do no wrong” and it hurts the story. Any shades of gray that this game could have is immediately thrown out the window. This game doesn’t even try to cast Nohr in a sympathetic light. The only time it does is when a Nohrian sides with Corrin (i.e. Elise, Camila and Leo). Whenever Hoshido is opposed by Nohr Hoshido is always right and Nohr is always wrong.
One of the biggest advantages that this story has over Conquest is the fact that Corrin actually has a spine in this route. This Corrin is tolerable since they’re fighting against Garon and Iago. Granted, I still think Corrin is easily the biggest Mary Sue in the entire franchise, but here they aren’t passively watching Garon slaughter everyone. However, I don’t like the fact that Birthright!Corrin doesn’t angst over fighting against Nohr the way that Conquest!Corrin angsted about fighting against Hoshido. In fact, there didn’t seem to be THAT MUCH of an inner conflict when it came to Corrin fighting against Nohr. For a person who was born and raised in Nohr they sure don’t have a lot of qualms about wiping out their former countrymen. The only possible angst this Corrin showed happened when the Nohrian siblings were involved.
For the most part the Nohrian siblings were portrayed well, with the exception of Leo at first. I really didn’t like how the first time you fight Leo he acts like a cartoon villain. It didn’t seem like he was the same Leo as the guy I saw in Conquest. I get the idea that Birthright is trying to show a different side to the character, but I honestly felt like I was fighting against a different character altogether and I didn’t like that. That being said, Camilla, Elise and Xander acted exactly like I thought they would in this route. Not going to lie, I nearly threw up when Camila said “I still love you” to Corrin after she had been defeated the first time you fight against her. I just rolled my eyes and screamed “YEAH RIGHT!” Moments like that make Corrin look like an even bigger Mary Sue than Robin or Chris.
There were some issues that I had with this game’s story however:
- I never felt like the good guys experienced any real hardship or opposition. I admit that I TOTALLY could have missed something important since I skipped through a good chunk of the dialogue (can you blame me? This game’s dialogue is BORING!) but I don’t remember the good guys ever really experiencing any kind of hardship and it makes the whole story miss out on some emotional beats. This is something that the Jugdral and Tellius games got right and even FE 7 did this well. Birthright on the other hand, didn’t challenge its protagonists enough.
- A major example of this was how every Nohrian royal except Xander eventually turned on Garon and fought on Hoshido’s side. It seemed like these characters were more willing to turn on their old man here than they were in Conquest. At the end of the story it felt like there were too many good guys and not enough bad ones.
I also didn’t like how quick Elise was to turn on her family. Her justification didn’t sit right with me either. “Oh I just want our family to be like it always was.” Yeah, that’s a logical line of reasoning there Elise: Turn on your entire family in order to make it the “way it was” again. Because forget about the fact that you’re betraying your three other siblings and your father. Corrin’s clearly the only sibling that matters. Apparently turning on your family is just like “the way it was”. What an interesting family life you’ve got there. Yet another moment that makes Corrin look like a Black Hole Mary Sue.
- None of the character’s deaths had any emotional impact whatsoever. When Elise jumped in front of Xander’s sword I got the idea behind the emotions, but this moment fell flat. (I guess it’s because I don’t find the cast of either game to be even remotely appealing) I did like the idea behind Xander killing his own sister though.
- Azura’s death is another example of this. The only memorable thing she did in this game was show Leo that Garon’s a bad dude. This is kind of important, but once again I didn’t feel anything for this character and her death at the end just felt really bleh. Also, I don’t buy Takumi’s reaction to it at the end. He’s basically a jerk to her and then he starts crying when she dies. Did I miss something? Please tell me that I missed something here.
- Both Sakura and Hinoka could have been cut out of the plot and nothing of value would have been lost. Why were these characters created again? What purpose did they serve again? Here’s an interesting line from the Fire Emblem Wikia:
“However, Hinoka did not exist in the original story draft that was written by Kibayashi.” (http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Hinoka) Hmmm…..that seems to explain a lot.
So yeah, overall this story is a little on the forgettable side for me. It’s a major improvement from Conquest’s story, but it’s not even remotely close to the quality of the of Jugdral and Tellius games and I still think that Fire Emblem 7 has a vastly superior story to this game.
Overall Score: C
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