My Birthright Review Part 2 - The Gameplay

    

                      One of the biggest reasons why my expectations were considerably lower was because everybody who had played the game were saying the same three things over and over again:

1. Grinding is a thing and you get plenty of gold
2. The map design sucks
3. The game’s pretty easy

                  Number 1 is definitely true. There are tons of ways you can grind and you have to actively try to have limited funds because gold is everywhere in that game. Number 2 is also mostly true. I do think that there are a small handful of maps that are marginally better than Awakening’s, but the vast majority of them are Awakening tier in terms of bad design. Birthright is definitely in the Top 5 in terms of “Worst Map Design in the Series”. To be fair though, Birthright does have better enemy positioning than the vast majority of the series, so at least it’s got that going for it.

                        As far as difficulty goes, I think some people have been exaggerating here. I did a no-grind run of Hard Mode, and I found it more challenging than Sacred Stones or Path of Radiance. It may not be saying much, but there were a few times where I had to restart because of bad positioning or because I underestimated the enemies so yeah don’t completely write this game off, it is capable of surprising you when you least expect it.

                 To be fair Birthright is infinitely easier than even Normal mode on Conquest. One of the biggest reasons why is because in Birthright you can throw Ryoma into a horde of enemies and he’ll slaughter them while retaining at least half of his HP, if not more. Ryoma is the only swordmaster in the entire Fire Emblem series that is capable of soloing his entire route. I usually paired him up with Scarlett because she gave him extra strength and defense. In Conquest, your best units cannot solo the game so that tells you a lot about the game. 

               If I thought the Dragon Vein gimmicks were poorly executed in Conquest then they are even worse in Birthright. I’m trying to remember if there are any Dragon Vein gimmicks that I thought were necessary or added a lot of strategic value to each of the maps. Sadly, none come to mind. A few of them give you certain healing spots on the map similar to what Chapter 2 did. Unlike Chapter 2 though I never thought that the “healing spot” Dragon Veins were necessary. The first one in Birthright happens right after you make the big decision to join Hoshido. The healing spot is in a choke point on the map. This isn’t bad per se but the problem here is that the enemies are weak-sauce and you already have 2, possibly 3, healers (Sakura, Jakob/Felicia and a possibly promoted Corrin) so extra healing just seems unnecessary. It also happens on one of the reused maps except that healing spot is in a random out-of-the-way spot on the map which is inconvenient.

                    

                    My least favorite Dragon’s Vein gimmick in Birthright happens in Chapter 19 (at least I think it’s Chapter 19, although I could be wrong on that). Basically what happens is that you get a choice between two Dragon Veins:

1. Make a bridge that gives you easy access to enemies.
2. Create an outpouring of lava that slows everyone down and deals a lot of damage for a long period of time.

                     You may be wondering how this could be bad since in theory it sounds pretty cool. I mean, you’re getting options that are very different from each other. Well there are a couple of problems here. For starters the game gives you no clue as to which Dragon Vein does what. Instead of letting you pick and choose which option you want to do you have to figure out which Dragon Vein spot does what. Basically, you’re doing some lucky guesswork. Also, the enemies in this chapter aren’t very difficult to defeat so the lava option ends up hurting the player more than it does the enemy. As a result you can screw yourself over and lava is annoying to deal with. You won’t get the second option for a long time and without that bridge Dragon’s Vein it’s tedious trying to advance through that level. Instead of adding to the game’s strategy it detracts from it.

                  Also, speaking of reused maps every time Birthright shares a map with Conquest, Birthright’s version is way lamer. Case and point: The Cyrenska map (a.k.a the map that happens right after the cutscene of Azura dancing to try and do something to Garon while Garon looks like he’s whacking off to her). In Conquest it’s well designed map. Here in Birthright it’s an escape map where the escape spot is right next to you. You can just Pair-Up Corrin with Hinoka and fly to the spot in 2 turns. This is arguably the worst Escape chapter of the entire series.

                       Also, most of the map objectives consist of rout enemy. To be fair, most Fire Emblem games in the series have 2 objectives or less so I’m pretty used to it by now, but I could see why someone wouldn’t like that. I guess you could technically argue that these game has 3 objectives (rout enemy, kill boss and escape) but the escape chapter is only 1 chapter so for all intents and purposes you’re pretty much only going to be routing the enemy.

                      There’s not much else to say here. Birthright is pretty much Awakening 2.0 in my opinion. It’s not the worst game here, but it’s a major step down from what Conquest did so well. I am going to be a little softer on Birthright since it was intentionally designed to cater towards a non-hardcore audience (meaning that I’m not part of the intended audience here) and it succeeded at what it set out to do. That being said, this game confirms my suspicion that catering to a more casual audience requires the overall strategy and game design to decline in quality.

                    Overall Score: D +