Why I Hate Conquest Part 4 - These Lousy Characters

     

     

              Even though the plot is the worst aspect of Conquest I would also say that the characters aren’t a selling point for this game either. For those of you who think that Fates has good characterization I’d like to issue a drinking game challenge:

• Take a shot whenever a character talks about how much they love Corrin, or how much they don’t want to fight against Corrin, or how awesome they think Corrin is. Chances are, you would easily be plastered in a few chapters time and you would probably die before you even got a quarter of the way through the game. That’s one of my biggest problems with the characterization. The entire game is WAY too Corrin-centric. If you thought Robin and Kris were bad, then Corrin makes them look very tame by comparison. I feel like I’m getting ahead of myself so I’m going to tell you how I’m formatting this post. I will be examining the characters as they are portrayed in the game Conquest. If their portrayals seem similar here to their portrayals in Birthright then I will say so. So let’s begin with the star of this game:

• Corrin: Ladies and gentlemen I present to you my least favorite character of the entire Fire Emblem series. Let’s give it up for Nohrrin (the Corrin in the Nohr route). Corrin is a Black Hole Mary Sue. They make Robin and Kris look like well written characters. Corrin is spineless and naive and way too many characters worship him / her. In fact, I think that the Corrin worship is WAY too over-the-top, to the point that it would make a very dangerous drinking game. As Blazer put it Corrin “puts the idealistic Shirou Emiya from Fate / Stay Night to shame”. (http://www.feshrine.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8470)

                 

                           Corrin rarely, if ever, tries to actually disobey or rebel against Garon and that’s ultimately one of my biggest problems with the character. Corrin is a spineless idiot who just goes with whatever Garon says. I could not suspend my disbelief whenever a defeated enemy boss talked about how Corrin’s soldiers didn’t kill anyone and merely injured the opposing side. That kind of crap does not happen in real life and there’s no way that I’m going to believe that there’s a plausible reason why it would happen here. Thankfully it only happened a few times, but it was still really stupid. 

                         Corrin never says anything remotely interesting or shows any personality traits that would make him / her endearing to me and given the fact that Corrin turns into a yes person for Garon one could make the argument that Conquest Corrin is an evil person (Birthright Corrin is a completely story). Another idea for a drinking game would be to take a shot whenever Corrin says how much they don’t want to fight a particular character, or when they say something like “Big Brother” (as if that’s supposed to mean something). Even when Corrin goes along with Garon’s invasion and does evil things the narrative never calls Corrin out on it and still tries to paint Corrin in the most sympathetic light possible.

                       So I basically hate Corrin. Okay, well are there any characters that I liked? Well, the only characters that I came close to liking were Leo, Niles, Shura and maybe Xander. Leo’s one of the few characters in Fates whose voice I felt was not only fitting, but also good for the character. Plus the fact that Leo burned Takumi in virtually every encounter they ever had together was pretty awesome. Niles had his trolly moments, which was great. Shura had the best backstory that I’d seen of the Fates crew and Xander tries to be honorable and chivalric I guess. Outside of these characters though, I was pretty bored by the overall cast in Fates.

                            I think Blazer brought up a really amazing point in his review: “There are few interesting backstories, motivations for joining Corrine, etc.: I wasn't really interested in learning about them (the side characters) anyway, because I mean, what do you need to know about X's retainer/personal servant, it's obvious why they're joining you, it's because it's their job: it's less enigmatic and thus less curiosity-piquing than that one guy who happened to be in that village or that person in the enemy army who defected for some reason or that lone traveler that decided to join up with you and your cause even though you're strangers.”

                           (http://www.feshrine.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=8470)

                     Another major trend that I noticed about this game was how often it retreaded certain tropes and ideas that were found in Awakening:

• Pieri’s a lot like Henry. The only difference here is that Pieri is 100 times more psychotic and 100 times less funny. Henry pulled the “Comedic Sociopath” trope off well in my opinion and is an example of how to do a character like that correctly. Pieri I’ve been told also spoke a lot in the third person in the Japanese version which doesn’t sound very appealing to me.

• Jakob reminds me of Frederick. They’re both units that are subservient to the main character (Chrom and Corrin) and take great pride in doing so. The difference here is that Jakob is a jerk, whereas Frederick was funny. I get the impression that the intention behind Jakob’s character was to make him snarky, but there’s a difference between snarky and being a jerk. Take a look at his C support with his son Dwyer for example. Jakob acts like a petty child because Dwyer apparently made a better cup of coffee than he did. Really? Really? We’re supposed to like Jakob after this?  His support with Corrin isn’t all that great either.

• Elise kind of reminds me of Lissa. They’re both supposed to be the cute little sister that adores the main character and both express a desire in their supports to want to grow up / be taken more seriously / be more “lady like” etc. Elise isn’t a poorly written character, but she is a shining example of a “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” type of character and I wasn’t impressed.

• Effie reminds me of Sully. In the Japanese version she’s more of a “gentle giant with the Ilyana gimmick”. In the English version she’s a “super macho weightlifting brochick”  (https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/46jnl9/fire_emblem_fates_localization_at_its_finest/) It also doesn’t help that the voice DOES NOT fit the character at all and is one of the worst voices in the English dub in my opinion.

• Hisame is a lot like Gaius, only replace a candy fetish for a pickle fetish. Yes I know that Hisame is a child of a character from Birthright, but I thought I’d bring it up here because it reinforces my point. No I did not get the character, but I’ve read all I need to know about the character from reliable sources. I chose to include this because it reinforces my point that too many Fates characters come across as too similar to Awakening characters.
  
  
  
  
  

                          Also, let’s not forget that Mikoto is an Emmeryn clone. Another way that this game continues the trend that Awakening started is in their supports. Take Corrin x Jakob OR Felicia for example. Whoever the female character is in that support they’re absolute crap when it comes to doing stuff in the kitchen. Felicia drops a stack of dishes and somehow manages to cut her forehead while Fem!Corrin sucks at making tea. To take the Corrin x Jakob support one step further their C - A supports revolve around the fact that Corrin is terrible at tea making, but stubbornly decides to keep at it. Then the S rank comes around and Jakob decides to fall in love with Corrin for absolutely no reason at all. That’s basically what Awakening did, and yet somehow nobody calls this game out for doing the exact same thing.

                          Another major problem stems from the fact that a considerable percentage of the cast have personalities that revolve around Corrin. Camila is the creepy over-protective big sister / borderline mom (who kind of sounds like a grandma in the English dub), Elise is the moe character that thinks you’re the greatest person in the whole world, Xander is the protective big brother who at times can be a tool but also really caring and Leo is the pragmatic character who kind of likes you. Silas is your best friend despite the fact that Corrin remembers nothing about him. There are also characters who are referred to as “Corrinsexuals”. The Corrinsexuals in the Conquest route (or are characters that show up in both Conquest and Birthright) are:

• Izana
• Gunter
• Shura
• Anna

                     Keep in mind, there are characters in the Birthright version that also fall into this trap too, and when I do my Birthright review I’ll bring them up too. It was bad enough when Awakening did this too, but at least characters like Chrom or Lucina had motivations and personalities that extended beyond a certain character trait in relation to Robin. The fact that most of the royals on both sides have Corrin-centric personalities is a major problem.  

                

                     Another major problem with Fates is the lack of interesting supports. Most of the time I was bored out of my mind and I felt like I had to force myself to read these supports. This is the exact opposite reaction that I had to Path of Radiance, where I was easily hooked by these support conversations and I wanted to learn more about these characters. I’d also rather read the supports in Blazing Sword, Sacred Stones or even Awakening than read the ones here. There were a lot of supports in Awakening that I actually enjoyed (Chrom x Lucina’s supports, Fem!Morgan x Yarne, most of Owain’s supports, most of Inigo’s supports, Tharja and Gregor had some interesting supports. The list for me is pretty long) as opposed to the support conversations in Fates where I can only think of 2, maybe 3, supports that didn’t feel like a chore to read. That’s not a good thing for a game like this and I was very disappointed.

                   The villains in this game were crap-tier in terms of motivations, desires and backstory. It’s really sad when you know everything you need to know about a character just from looking at them. Garon, Iago and Hans were extremely boring villains. Another idea for a drinking game would be to take a shot whenever Garon or Iago accused Corrin of being a traitor and whenever they ordered Corrin to be executed. It got ridiculous. None of these characters said or did anything remotely interesting and they were all villains who were evil just for the sake of being evil. It seems like Sephiran was the last good villain to come from a Fire Emblem game. Sigh.

                  Before I end this post I’d like to bring up other instances of dialogue that I felt were pretty bad:

• The post Chapter 1 dialogue where all the royals are being too lovey-dovey with Corrin. It’s not well written and it’s saccharine.

• Chapter 11’s Camila - Hinoka pseudo incest catfight. It was ridiculous. I mean if you’re going to go down this route you might as well throw pudding on them and host a mud wrestling competition. At least that would be entertaining and it would be obvious that we’re not supposed to take that seriously.

• Any line of dialogue that came out of Takumi’s mouth. It was way too in your face and while it may be justified, it was hard to feel anything other than the desire to kill him just so I wouldn’t have to read his dialogue again. Also, take a shot whenever Takumi hates on Nohrians.

• The same thing applies to Hinoka, only she’s less severe. Another problem I had is that Hinoka and Sakura could be cut out of the game and nothing of value would have been lost. Also, take a shot whenever she says “Nohrian scum”.

• Rinkah’s dialogue.

• The fact that Takumi and Ryoma “forgive” Corrin after Corrin kills them and their retainers and wipes out their homeland. This is just way too unrealistic and it destroys my suspension of disbelief.

                                 The sad fact of the matter here is that if the Nohrian cast were to be crucified or massacred a-la Red Wedding style I would feel nothing. This cast did NOT impress me at all and there wasn’t enough substance for me to get behind. Heck, I honestly enjoyed the Awakening cast more than these schmucks. At least the Awakening characters were funny and had memorable gimmicks / character traits. These characters on the other hand were either forgettable, bland or they reminded me too much of the Awakening cast. Personally I feel like these characters are given WAY too much of a break by the fandom and aren’t getting the proper criticism that they deserve.

Character Score: D +