The Epilogue - My Final Thoughts about the 3 Fates Games

                                      Not going to lie, Revelation sucks. It deserves the criticisms that it gets and frankly I don’t plan on playing this game ever again. There’s nothing in it for me that would make me want to come back to it. I gave it an F in every category and I don’t think I’m being too harsh either.

                                    Instead of bashing this game some more I’d prefer to get a few things off my chest about these games:

• I find it rather odd (to put it as nicely as I can) that the people who say that Conquest has the best map design in the series are often people who have never played Thracia 776 or Fire Emblem 12, a.k.a the 2 games in the series that have superior map design to that game. I’m also currently debating whether or not Binding Blade’s map design is better than Conquest’s. The point here is that Conquest’s map design gets overpraised and someone needs to counteract this undeserved hype. It’s even more depressing when a person HAS played Thracia and 12 and still thinks that Conquest has “mindblowing” game design. For shame people. For shame.

• The music is also overpraised as well. I find Holy War and the Tellius games to have superior soundtracks and musical scores to this game (and frankly FE 12 has an underrated soundtrack that deserves more love than it gets). Azura’s song gets overplayed way too freaking much and it’s gotten to the point where I’m annoyed whenever I hear it in the game (which is why I usually turn the volume off). While Fates has an above average soundtrack it certainly is not worthy of the hype it gets here either. I remember one fan of the soundtrack saying “Well you can’t deny that this game has a rocking soundtrack”.  Actually I can and I just did. Trust me, there are plenty of other games Fire Emblem or not that have superior scores to this one.

• This game has one of the worst RNG’s in Fire Emblem history. When a character frequently misses at 80 % or higher or when critical hits start flying at single digit percentages on a regular basis I think it raises some major red flags that something terribly wrong happened here. RNG’s like this make games less strategic, not more. The less of a presence an RNG has on a game the more strategic it becomes (FE 12 says hi).

• These games have the worst world building in the history of the series. They also fail on a storytelling level. In fact, Conquest and Revelation are some of the worst told stories in the series, with Birthright being only “meh” instead of actually good. These games had 3 chances to excel and they’re some of the worst examples of storytelling this series has to produce? That’s not looking too good here folks. How do you fail harder than Awakening in this category? That’s almost a feat in and of itself.

• The weapon debuffs effect is more strategic than the previous weapon system but it’s got its fair share of flaws. A forged Iron Sword is vastly superior to a Steel and Silver Sword, which begs the question of why forging even exists in a game where durability does not. Hidden Weapons need to be nerfed. Consistent 1 - 2 range in a game where that’s normally punished seems contradictory to me. It also doesn’t help that the debuffs at times appear to be too much and the fact that they recover by 1 per turn just makes them all the more powerful. I love the idea behind them and I hope that they return in future games, but they need to be tweaked. Magic also comes across as really underwhelming in this game too. Higher level weapons are pretty much not worth it either. The Regalia in this game are trash especially in comparison to the Regalia of the past and Brave Weapons got a massive nerf.

• I’m also not a fan of how certain classes have nerfed weapon ranks. It makes Brave Weapons and Regalia not worth attaining considering the huge drawbacks that come from both weapons in addition to the fact that only a tiny percent of the cast will actually be able to use them. Rather than make the player think about which class they want to get it just turns Regalia weapons into a whole lot of extra money. Don’t forget that the best characters of both countries generally tend to have powerful prf rank weapons that tend to eliminate the need for other weapons and it makes one wonder why the designers even bothered to create the Regalia in the first place.

• The Entrap staff and Lunge are really stupid ideas. The Seal skills and the Enfeeble staff need some serious nerfing as well.

• I think this game’s version of Dual Guard and Dual Strike is still too OP. Is there ever a reason why you’d use neither of them? They both give such great bonuses that I can’t think of a reason why. Dual Strikes make killing things way easier and Dual Guards encourage stat stacking. Plus in my opinion enemies tend to Dual Strike so often that it feels like the player has to Dual Guard just to survive. Most characters can’t survive 2 Dual Strikes which is a mistake in my opinion.

• Dragon Vein as whole is a totally botched concept, much like the premise of Fates. It sounds really awesome at first until you see how it’s put into action and then all of a sudden it seems extremely gimmicky with very few of them actually having a legitimate impact on whatever level you’re playing. Dragon Vein needs to go. I.S. instead needs to focus on good map design, a variety of map objectives and good enemy unit placement. Conquest is proof that they are capable of producing these.

                           As I’ve stated before, we need to quit comparing this game to Awakening. Just because Fates does a few things better than Awakening doesn’t mean that it’s a good game on it’s own merits. Fates really is Awakening 2.0 for better or for worse. Personally I find these games to be towards the bottom of my favorites list because their flaws are numerous and their positives are lacking. This game exacerbated some of Awakening’s flaws and while there are some cool gameplay ideas to be found in these games I do think that Fates is proof that the future of the series is bleak from an analytical standpoint. At this point if I want a game that I will like, I cannot expect Intelligent Systems to create it. Instead, I’m going to have to create my own game which is exactly what I’m trying to do.

                    I’m working on a game title Fire Emblem: The Dark Crusade. It’s about a young war hero named Valayan who along with a group of his buddies are fighting against human trafficking. I’ve been working on the script now for over a year and I’ve already decided to bring back the following:

• Fatigue
• Capture
• Branched Promotion
• Third tiers
• Radiant Dawn’s terrain elevation system
• The Magic Trinity
• Promotion without a promotion item
• Actual quality supports

                ^ Keep in mind that’s only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more to my game then that but at least that should give you an idea of what it’s gameplay would be like. I’d hope to make it either for the PC or whatever current generation home console Nintendo created. If you’re interested in more details feel free to personal message me. DRP’s been acting as my editor and he’s been enjoying my story and characters so far and that’s given me a lot of hope. The story is in its first draft stages so there are plenty of flaws to be sure, but I believe that I can create a quality Fire Emblem on par with Holy War and the Tellius games.