Fire Emblem 4 - Genealogy of the Holy War Part 6 - The Second Generation

                         So now to the good things about Holy War’s gameplay:

1. The Second Generation System: Holy War has the best second generation system in the entire series from both a story perspective and a gameplay perspective. That’s right, I said “ and a gameplay perspective”. Some Holy War critics like to point out that the love system mechanic is terrible because you can accidentally create a pairing that you never intended to create in the first place. Having beaten Holy War over 10 times, and having had this happen to me far more times than I care to count, I can agree that this is really annoying. While this may be a valid criticism I don’t think it’s fair to say that it’s representative of all of Holy War’s second generation mechanics. There’s more to Holy War’s second generation mechanic than the lover points and I think that a fair analysis would include ALL of Holy War’s mechanics, not just the one thing that someone doesn’t like.

                             In my opinion Holy War blows Awakening and Fates out of the water when it comes to its inheritance mechanics. Why? Well there’s far more strategic depth in Holy War’s system than the other two systems. In Holy War there are more variables to take into consideration when pairing up certain units:

1. The growth rates of the child
2. What weapons and items they’ll use
3. Weapon ranks
4. The skills of the child 
   
   

   

                                There’s also the fact that each pairing affects 2 children as opposed to 1 (while exceptions exist in Awakening and Fates they are just that, exceptions. Most pairings only involve one child). This means that you have to think about what’s best for both children, or sometimes you want to help out one child more than another which gives more food for thought.

                                    Another major advantage is that your choices matter more in Holy War than they do in Awakening and Fates. There’s more variation in the child’s growth rates (thanks to the Holy Blood system) and the non-existent trading system encourages the player to get the proper inheritance for the children characters and makes life tedious should the player fail. You don’t even have to think about that in Awakening and Fates, and since weapon ranks can change you can just grind the kid up until they get the highest weapon ranks in their games. That isn’t a factor that distinguishes different pairings like it can in Holy War.   

                                   There’s also the fact the child’s primary source of skills comes from the parents in Holy War so there’s a bigger emphasis on making sure that each child gets the right combination of skills. In Awakening and Fates it doesn’t really matter for the most part. There are circumstances where you do want the parent to pass down a certain skill to their child but generally speaking its not as important since you can just reclass and grind until the kid gets that desired combination of skills anyway. 

                      There’s also the fact that failing to pair up in Holy War means that you get crappy substitute characters. (Unfortunately this is mitigated by the fact that the constant characters that you get like Seliph, Leif, Shannan, Ares and Julia are all you need to beat the game but hey the substitute characters idea is still a good one) What happens if you don’t pair up in Awakening and Fates? Nothing. You still have a first generation to rely on and they’re capable of beating the game by themselves. This reduces pairing up to being a nice option if you’re into shipping certain characters, but it doesn’t make it as important as it is in Holy War.

                      There’s another major problem with Awakening and Fates’ second generation systems that Holy War cleverly avoids: The two generations fighting together. Having a first and second generation fighting together causes potential balancing issues. If you make the second generation too strong then you run the risk of trivializing the first generation. If you don’t make the second generation sufficiently powerful enough then it’s not going to be worth the effort of using them and you’re just going to beat the game without them because it’s more convenient that way. Holy War doesn’t have this issue since the first and second generations don’t mingle together. If the units in the second generation are 1 billion times better than their parents than that’s all the more power to the player.

                          There are also two more major advantages to Holy War’s system:

1. No cringe-worthy S rank supports: Am I the only one who’s sick of the stupid rushed romances? “I baked you a pie Chrom”, “Cool! Now give me some of your pie Sumia.”

                                Or take Fates for example:

             Jakob: “You know Corrin, the way you fail to make tea and break the dishes kind of gets me going”,

              Fem!Corrin: “You know Jakob, the way you act like a snarky butthole kind of gets me going. LET’S HAVE DRAGON SEX!”

                              Face petting doesn’t exist in Holy War either.

2. No self-inserts: One of the biggest problems with Awakening’s pairing system is that Robin is the best parent for every child. This eliminates the strategy element altogether. In both Awakening and Fates you could make the argument that the cast is fetish fuel that worships the main player and that everyone just wants to get inside Robin and Corrin. This is a problem that Holy War doesn’t have to deal with. 

                       Overall Summation: Holy War’s second generation system is vastly superior to Awakening and Fate's second generation systems even when you take its flaws into consideration. There’s way more strategic depth in its system, your choices have a significantly bigger impact on the game and you don’t have to deal with some of the more cringe-worthy elements present in the Fates and Awakening systems.