My Unit

                 

                    So Christian Alonzo started a great thread about Conquest Corrin and the My Unit mechanic in general. I really liked it and wanted to give it a proper wall of text but I was too busy at the time and made a bookmark comment promising a long wall of text. Weeks transpired, I got busy and I never delivered on my promise. Since I just barely finished my Top 10 Lords list and since I don’t want to start my Best Wyvern Riders list yet I thought I could follow through on my promise and share my thoughts on the My Unit concept in general.

                     The short answer to both questions are that I really do not like EITHER of them. The My Unit mechanic is one that may have garnered new fans and may be appealing to some people, but I think it is one of the worst things to happen to the Fire Emblem series. I know it’s a pretty heavy-handed accusation so allow me to explain why I feel that way. Conceptually speaking the My Unit concept is extremely lazy. I’ve never liked the idea of a blank slate character that I’m supposed to project myself into. It doesn’t work for me in the vast majority of instances. It feels like the writers are trying to justify not even bothering to create an actual character with motivations, feelings and a personality. The My Unit concept basically says that the player is supposed to do the writer’s work for them. The writer is supposed to create a character that pulls the player in because of how well written / likeable they are.

                    Speaking of likeability all of the My Units that the series has had thus far (Mark doesn’t count. He’s not playable) have had a really negative impact on the stories of their games. Awakening and Conquest have the worst stories in the series and FE 12’s story is only hurt by Kris’s inclusion. All three My Units take the term ‘Mary Sue’ to a whole new extreme. Their casts all worship them and in each new installment the player worship gets more and more extreme. There are characters in Awakening and Fates whose personalities solely revolve around or are heavily defined by their relationship to these characters leading some fans to refer to certain characters as Robin / Corrin-sexuals.  The narratives do everything in their power to portray the My Units as special snowflakes who can do no wrong and they rarely, if ever, have to face the consequences of their actions. 

                   In terms of plot integration two of the three My Units are at polar opposite extremes. Kris is literally the definition of a self-insert character that has such a minimal impact on the plot of FE 12 that you could just cut him / her out of the game and nothing of value would have been lost. Corrin, in my opinion, goes to the exact opposite route and is so crucial to the story that EVERYTHING revolves around him or her. Nobody else really gets that much time in the spotlight and if a plot point isn’t immediately relevant to Corrin it’s not relevant to the game. Robin seemed to be the best of the three in terms of plot integration but even Robin has issues and flaws of his / her own. Chrom is WAY too trusting of Robin from the get-go and the plot goes from a Chrom show to a Robin show with little in-between. While I consider both Chrom and Robin to be the protagonists of Awakening, I kind of wish the narrative would do a better job letting them both be equally as important to the game’s story.

                        What’s even worse is that the My Units fail spectacularly at representing me. I don’t feel like I’m immersed in these poorly developed worlds (let’s face it, the world-building in Fire Emblems 12 -14 is not very good at all). I can’t project myself into Robin, Kris or Corrin because they all have bland personalities of their own. They don’t do things the way I would do them nor would they react to certain situations the way I would. So for me personally the My Units all fail at doing at what they’re supposed to do.

                  So that’s my take on the My Unit concept. It’s terrible for the story, it’s a lazy concept and it’s the death of storytelling. I want characters like Ike or Leif back. 

                 P.S. Conquest!Corrin is my least favorite character of the entire series. I hate him / her so much that my issues with characters like Severa, Lyn or Micaiah seem relatively tame by comparison. Corrin is a freaking wuss and a terrible person and yet somehow Conquest's narrative tries to make him / her look like a good person. Corrin is a Black Hole Mary Sue that makes Robin and Kris look tame by comparison. I've already bashed Corrin in these posts here:

http://thecrusadergrant.blogspot.com/2016/02/why-i-hate-conquest-part-3-abominable.html

http://thecrusadergrant.blogspot.com/2016/03/why-i-hate-conquest-part-4-these-lousy.html

                          So read those if you want to know my full thoughts on Corrin. They are spoiler-ific though so don't read them if you haven't beaten Conquest.

The Final Part of My Fates Reviews

  Soundtrack: So Birthright’s soundtrack is pretty much the same as Conquest’s so it gets the same grade: B +

                          I could totally understand why someone else would love and enjoy this soundtrack. There are good things about it, but personally I still think Holy War and Radiant Dawn had better soundtracks. I’m also leaning towards saying that Awakening’s soundtrack was better as well.

                 The voice acting is fine in Birthright. The only voice I have an actual problem with is Hinoka’s. She sounds like Kallen from Code Geass if Kallen were a chain-smoker. Matt Mercer was better as Chrom than he is as Ryoma, but he does a decent job.

                     I would like to repeat a few points that I’ve made in previous posts but I feel are still worth repeating:

1. I feel like this game gets an extremely easy pass from most people simply because it had a few good gameplay ideas. I agree that the gameplay in Conquest is really good, but I don’t think that the game deserves a pass because of this. Conquest literally has the worst story in the entire series and Corrin has now become my least favorite Fire Emblem character. Those are some pretty massive flaws if you ask me.

2. Another line of thinking that people often use to describe Fates is that “it’s better than Awakening”. As I’ve mentioned before I don’t like it when people say this because Awakening isn’t the only other Fire Emblem game in the franchise. Being better than one game doesn’t tell us much about how good the game is, especially when most people don’t like Awakening. Also, I personally enjoyed Awakening more than this game for reasons that I’m about to explain:
   
   
   

                       I would never try to make the argument that Awakening has better gameplay than Fates. Fates absolutely curbstomps Awakening in this category. There’s no contest. However, I do think that Awakening is superior in just about every other category:

                   The cutscenes were a lot better and the voice acting is vastly superior. I honestly believe that Awakening had a better plot too. Birthright’s story seems like it’s better up until you learn about the spoilers in Revelations and then the story of Birthright gets screwed up, leaving a solid premise ultimately undone. Conquest literally has the worst plot in the entire series and after having to deal with Corrin I kind of forgot that I ever had problems with any other character in the series, including Robin or Severa.

                   I also prefer the cast in Awakening as well. Yeah there’s a huge number of characters that I don’t like or think are too gimmicky, but there are plenty of other characters that I enjoyed: Lucina, Owain, Inigo, Noire, Henry and Gregor. I also like Chrom and Cordelia too. By contrast, the only character in either version of Fates that I came close to liking is Leo and that’s about it. The supports in Fates were boring to read and none of them made an impact on me. A lot of Awakening’s supports made me laugh and there were a few that I thought were heart-warming (like Chrom and Lucina’s supports).

                    Awakening also had a better implementation of the second generation system. In Fates, the kids are shoehorned in as a fanservice mechanic. You could cut them out and nothing of value would be lost. Awakening’s system may not be perfect, but at least there’s a reason for them to exist. Plus I had a ton of fun trying to get the perfect skill combinations for the kids. A lot of people have spent a ton of hours trying to get skill combinations for the children too so apparently the game had to do something right, otherwise why would you bother spending so much time playing it? While I’m not entirely decided on this category, I am leaning towards saying that I prefer Awakening’s soundtrack over Fates. The soundtrack in Fates is good, but too many of these tracks sound the same to me, or at least way too similar. 

               Another point people bring up is the gameplay, but I don’t think that this game is perfect here either. There were a huge number of issues that I personally had with this game:

• The RNG: I hate the fact that a 70 - 90 % accuracy can miss easily in this game. One playthrough of Fates had me more RNG screwed than the vast majority of my playthroughs of previous games. That’s sad. A single digit percent chance of landing a critical hit is way too likely to land which I still don’t like. Also, dodging isn’t a thing. I like it when my units can dodge and even when the odds of an enemy miss were high I still got hit. There were so many times when enemies had less than a 30 % chance to hit and they still hit anyway. That’s not good for a strategy game. An RNG like this makes a game more RNG reliant than it needs to be.

• Lunge / Entrap: I hate the Lunge skill and the Entrap staff. Giving the enemy the power to screw over your positioning is a bad idea and in my opinion it doesn’t add to the strategy of the game. It basically turns into a game of “avoid their range or die”. I’m also not a fan of the fact that a bunch of enemy units were given the skill Pass which is also a middle finger to unit positioning since they can move past you and there’s little to nothing you can do about it.

• The Hexing Rod: Being able to cut HP in half is utter bullcrap! How is this fair again?

• Not all of the maps are well designed: Most of Conquest’s maps are well designed and deserve the praise that they get, but not all of them. Chapter 19 and 20 are STUPID and in my opinion are some of the WORST maps in the entire series. The last 2 chapters of Conquest are also poorly designed as well and basically encourage the player to get the skill Pass. Yeah, encouraging the player to get a skill that says no to unit positioning is a sign of bad design. Not being able to save on the last level is a stupid idea as well. The fact that I have to go back and beat the penultimate level before getting another shot at the final level is a little infuriating and it adds nothing to overall design of the game.

                        

    

                           Birthright’s maps sucked for the most part and are pretty much Awakening tier in terms of awful design. Yes, I know it was intentional but I don’t agree that the designers should be given a pass because of this. A map is terribly designed regardless of the designer’s intention and I don’t think that maps have to be poorly made in order to cater to a new audience. I already made a post covering the topic of helping out new players which you can see here: http://thecrusadergrant.blogspot.com/2016/01/ten-tips-to-improve-fire-emblem-series.html

                        I think it’s a little insulting to people’s intelligence to pull a stunt like Birthright did and expect to hide behind the “noob pandering” philosophy. Also, speaking of noob pandering, Phoenix mode exists. Sure none of us are going to play it but it still exists and it’s still one of the dumbest ideas in the series. If you’re planning to use the “it’s optional” argument then I would redirect you to the link I posted above this paragraph that debunks that stupid argument.

                    While I could keep going I think I’ve made my point sufficiently clear. The point is that I really despise Fates and I think that while it had some good ideas, it’s execution was terrible and the game has turned into the biggest waste of potential in the Fire Emblem series. The fact that the premise got butchered and the story got destroyed is extremely disappointing because I was ready to declare this game as my favorite Fire Emblem title in the franchise. It could have beaten Holy War’s plot but sadly it went in the opposite direction and turned into the worst story of the entire series.

                               This game does not deserve the love and praise that it currently gets. I refuse to buy Revelations and at this point I feel like I have to make my own Fire Emblem in order to get what I want because far too many people are encouraging Intelligent Systems to do things that are not good for the franchise.

My Birthright Review Part 3 - The Characters

                               There seems to be a consensus on the serenesforest.net forums that the characters in Conquest are better than the characters in Birthright. Having played both games I can safely say that I agree with this consensus. That being said, I think the difference between the two casts are marginal in terms of quality writing. For the most part, if either cast were to get massacred Red-Wedding style I wouldn’t give a flying crap.  Let’s take a look at the Hoshido royals shall we?

• Ryoma: Uhh…...What exactly are his defining characteristics? He’s got Bushido? Yeah, I’m not coming up with anything. The only reason why we remember Ryoma is because he can solo the Birthright route and his hair looks like it reached Super Saiyan 3 status. While everybody ran the “Lobster Lord” meme into the ground my only thought was that this guy looked like a Super Saiyan 3 fighter. That would explain his amazing combat prowess. Even after looking his character up I really didn’t learn that much more about him. He’s pretty boring if I do say so myself.

• Hinoka: So Hinoka decided to follow Lyn’s example of complete plot irrelevance because you could cut her out of both games stories without making a significant impact on either game. LAME! Personality-wise she’s a tomboy which isn’t anything special. She’s arguably the most Avatar-centric character in the game from a personality perspective. Why is she a Pegasus Knight? Because she feels guilty from not being able to save Corrin when they got abducted. 
  
  

     It reminds me of something the Nostalgia Critic said in his review of the 2003 Daredevil movie: “Uh, you do know that women pick up martial arts all the time right? A lot of women take it up because they like it. I’m just saying that a woman learning martial arts isn’t as rare as you think it is”. (See the review to get the full context) What does that have to do with Hinoka? Well, this is instantly what I thought of when read the support between Corrin and Hinoka. It felt like the writers were trying too hard to make Hinoka look like a strong female character with a soft side for Corrin. Instead of making Hinoka fleshed out they just made her look more Avatar-centric and ultimately less interesting.

 

(Here's the Nostalgia Critic's review of Daredevil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAsNhsXqYAQ)

• Sakura: Sakura is…timid. That’s about all there is to her. According to the Fire Emblem wiki, “her meekness comes from her overhearing a rumor from Hoshidan royal maids soon after Nohr's kidnapping of the Avatar that Sakura, not the avatar, was the Nohrian intended kidnapping target. As a result, she blames herself for the Avatar being lost until his return.” (http://fireemblem.wikia.com/wiki/Sakura)

                                Well that’s just sad. She’s another example of an Avatar-centric character. Also, the really sad part is that Elise is more relevant to Birthright’s plot than Sakura is. Why was her character created again? What purpose does she serve again? It’s seems to me like you could have cut her out of both games and nothing of value would have been lost.

• Takumi: So I have mixed feelings about this guy. On the one hand, he’s clearly an inferior Shinon clone. He’s the douche-bag archer that doesn’t like the main character (hence the Shinon comparison). On the other hand, it’s really nice and refreshing to have a character that doesn’t worship Corrin. The problem here is that his character is still ultimately defined by his relationship to Corrin. What makes him unique from his other siblings is the fact that he doesn’t like Corrin and that’s proof of how this game failed in a monumental way.
  
  

                                     The thing here is that in Conquest his reaction is perfectly justified. It makes sense why he wouldn’t like Corrin. He doesn’t really seem to like Corrin in Birthright either until the end, but when he did I wasn’t the biggest fan of that. I kind of wanted him to stay as a douche-bag. What made even less sense was his reaction to Azura. She dies and he says “I wish I’d known her longer, but I miss her. *Cries* “. Okay he says something like that, but you get the point. The problem here is that he’s known Azura for virtually his entire life since she got kidnapped around the same time that Corrin did. How much longer does he need to get to know her? Also, his reaction to Corrin may make sense, but the fact that he’s a douche to Azura doesn’t make as much sense. Yes I know why he does it, but in my mind it makes more sense for him to treat Azura as one of them.

                                  Perhaps that’s just a nitpick but all the same it doesn’t really jive well with me. In the end I guess I have mixed feelings about Takumi. I don’t like him, but I do appreciate the fact that he doesn’t bow down to Corrin like everyone else does.

                       Once again, I’m not a fan of how a huge portion of the cast is a retainer for Prince / Princess X. It robs them of an interesting backstory and while I didn’t read that many supports I wasn’t impressed by what I saw. Here were the few impressions I had:

• Azama’s a condescending prick
• Subaki is boring
• Kazahana is….I can’t remember much about her. I believe I benched this chick relatively early. I regret nothing :P
• Saizo actually seemed kind of cool
  

                          Yeah, the cast of this game bored me. Nohr at least has Leo and Xander. Granted, I don’t like Leo and Xander all that much, but I like those two WAY MORE than the entire cast in Hoshido. That being said, if both Nohr and Hoshido got wiped out and every character in both games got killed in a brutal I probably wouldn’t care at all. Nobody here left as much of an impact on me like the Path of Radiance cast, the Holy War cast or even the Awakening cast (yep, I went there)

Overall Score: D -

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 +

My Birthright Review Part 1 - The Story

                    

                             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

Why I Hate Conquest Part 5 - The Finale

Soundtrack: So the next part of the game that I’d like to talk about is the soundtrack. If I thought Awakening’s soundtrack was a tad overrated then this game’s soundtrack is even more so. My big issue is that a few too many tracks sounded either similar or the same to me. The song that Azura sings is pretty good though. That being said, this soundtrack is objectively better than the vast majority of the soundtracks in the series. It’s definitely better than the soundtracks of the GBA games, the Marth games (which includes FE 12 as well) and Thracia 776’s.

                       However, I do think that the soundtrack of Holy War, Radiant Dawn and Awakening have better soundtracks than this game, but that’s just me. I just wish that there would be some epic and memorable boss themes on par with the Black Knight’s theme or Julius’s theme. That being said, I can TOTALLY understand why someone would actually like this soundtrack because there are praiseworthy elements in it. As it stands, I’ll award the soundtrack a….B +

As for other aesthetics:

• I don’t think it’ll be much of a controversial statement that this game’s localization sucks. Personalities were changed for the worse, lines of dialogue got changed for the worse and I honestly am not a fan of the new names. In my opinion:

• Marx > Xander
• Suzukaze > Kaze
• Kazehana > Hana
• Nishiki > Kaden (How the heck did they come up with Kaden?)
• Kamui > Corrin
• Leon > Leo

                      You get the point. I’m not a fan of many of the new names. I’m well aware of the fact that every other Fire Emblem game has made changes to character’s personalities and names but in those other games it makes perfect sense when the explanation is given. Here, it seems a little arbitrary.

• Another major setback for me is the voice acting. This game’s voice acting is a HUGE step backwards from Awakening’s. Say what you will about Awakening’s map design and gimmicky characters, but you have to admit, that voice acting was AWESOME! I felt like each voice actor in the English version fit their character perfectly. Here on the other hand it felt like the voice acting was acceptable at best and awful at it’s worst. For example:
  
  
  
  

• I hated Felicia’s voice acting so much that I deleted my save files for Birthright and Conquest just so I could make a female avatar just so I could listen to Jakob instead. Felicia’s voice is far worse than any of the voices in the Tellius games, which is saying a lot.

• I’m not a fan of Effie’s voice either. It reinforces the “brochick” personality that she unfortunately was given.

• Marx / Xander’s voice is eh. I wish that his voice would have been a little deeper and a little more haughty and arrogant although that could just be me. It wasn’t bad.

• I can totally see why some people think that Camila sounds like a grandma. After seeing someone say that about Camila I always think that whenever I hear her voice. Camila + Death Star rack + Grandma voice = Please get away from me.

• I did not like any of Male Corrin’s voices. He sounds so whiny. Fem!Corrin is better though thankfully.

• Nyx sounds a little too weepy in my opinion. Beruka also sounds a little too high pitched for me.

                             So were there any voices that you liked? Sure.

• Leo / Leon’s voice fit the character really well. So did Elise’s.
• Garon’s voice is perfect for the character
• Azura’s English speaking voice was alright. Her singing voice pales in comparison to the Japanese version, but Azura’s speaking voice fit the character. Good job Rena Strober!  
• Arthur’s voice is totally cheesy, which works for his meme-worthy personality.
• The Awakening characters sounds like Awakening characters.
• Silas’s voice worked.

                         So yeah, the voice acting was definitely not a plus for me. I enjoyed the game more when I turned the volume off, which is not a good sign for the game. By contrast, I LOVED Awakening’s voice acting. I also thought that the cutscene quotes in Fates were a step backwards from the ones in Awakening.

               Speaking of Awakening there’s a frequently stated line that people use about Fates that I want to address. I frequently hear the phrase “well Fates is better than Awakening” being used to mean that Fates is a good game. There’s an issue that I have with this though:

                  Most people who are saying this don’t like Awakening so when they’re saying that Fates is better than Awakening what they’re really saying is “I think this game is better than a different game that I really did not like”. It’s an incredibly low hurdle to jump. It says nothing about how well Fates stands on its own. A lot of people act as if Fates and Awakening are the only games in the Fire Emblem series and they’re not. There are 12 other games that existed before these four games (I’m counting Birthright, Conquest and Revelations as their own separate games) came out. Saying that Fates is better than Awakening says absolutely nothing about how well Fates stands up to the rest of the series. 

                    Another issue that I take with this is that I disagree with it. I realize that I’m probably alone when it comes to this but I honestly enjoyed Awakening far more than I did both Conquest and Birthright and I honestly think Awakening is the better game. I would never argue in a million years that Awakening’s gameplay is better. This is the one category that Fates completely stomps Awakening in. My argument, however, is that Awakening beats Fates in pretty much every other category. Awakening has a better plot than Conquest, the characters are better in my opinion, the voice acting and localization is WAY better, Awakening has better cutscenes and I prefer the Awakening soundtrack over the one in Fates. Feel free to disagree with me here, as I know most of you probably will, but that is how I feel about it.

                   “Oh Grant you’re being way too hard on the game! You’ve done nothing but complain and nitpick this game. It’s not that bad bro.”

                       This is a reaction that I’ve gotten several times from different people, including DRP. However, I could make the argument that you’re being too soft on the game. This game gets an easy pass from a lot of different people because it had better gameplay than Awakening. Some people outright admit that the story sucks, but because Conquest had good gameplay people seem to be more lenient on it’s storytelling flaws whereas if these same people talk about Awakening, they’ll bash it into the ground without a second thought. People somehow got attached to the cast, even though the characters are bland, boring and even worse versions of Awakening characters in some cases. I’ll admit that I didn’t read all of the supports so there maybe some magic support out there that could potentially change mind, but I highly doubt it at this point. 

               This game is a monumental waste of potential. It could have beaten Holy War’s plot but it didn’t. Instead of having the best plot in the series it had the worst one. The characters aren’t even remotely interesting and the voice acting took a massive step backward from Awakening’s. Even though the gameplay came up with a lot of new and wonderful ideas there are a ton of things that I could nitpick this game over in terms of stuff that I outright hated (the stupid RNG, Lunge, the fact that weapon ranks take way too long to grow and several of the game’s chapters along with their Dragon’s Vein gimmicks that didn’t work). This game will probably receive a lot of love and praise and in my opinion most of it is completely undeserved.

                    It makes me wonder how well people would have received this game if it came after a much better game, like the Jugdral or the Tellius games. I’d be willing to bet that most reactions would be more negative, but because it came after a game most people didn’t like, all it had to do was simply be better than Awakening and most people would overhype this game. In terms of gameplay Fates represents two steps forward and in the other categories it represents four steps back. At the end of the day we’re still going backward not forward. Someone has to counterbalance all the undeserved hype and praise that this game gets and even if I’m the only one who feels this way, I will not give Fates my love or loyalty. Screw this game!