Fire Emblem is an amazing franchise and, personally, my very favorite game series out there. When the newest game was announced on January 14th, 2015, I was so excited for the release. I also knew that I would have to wait for more than a year to get the game, which was just a blind guess then, but I ended up being right (it came out February 19th, 2016). When the November Nintendo Direct came out that announced the release date for the game, as well as the special edition, I ran right over to preorder it and I was one of the fortunate few who was able to receive it. Obviously, I had very high expectations for all three entries to Fire Emblem Fates. The question is: did the games live up to them?
First is what I particularly didn’t care for in the games. The biggest problem was the story, and that’s a pretty big problem to have. The older Fire Emblem games had such a beautiful story with deep meaning and heartache. Unfortunately, the narrative began to slip in Fire Emblem: Awakening and while it wasn’t devastating to get through, it did leave the player a bit empty in some aspects.
Nintendo had hyped up the fact that a writer from many successful anime and manga had helped with the story in Fates, so there was hope that it was better. In the end, however, there were still so many unanswered questions and points that made the player go like “really?” that really hurt the game experience. They literally pulled a Sailor Moon trick in Conquest, where one character dresses a little different and suddenly they aren’t recognizable, even though she is the only character with extremely long blue hair. It just gets so frustrating. The pacing of the story was also poorly planned, with some scenes dragged out for far too long, but mainly big plot twists thrown too quickly and back to back where it just makes for no impact on the player.
Another con is the way they handled some of the character recruitments. In Awakening, some characters who had supposedly died throughout the story were available at the end through a menu option. The problem was that no explanation about how these characters are alive is provided. There’s even a brand new character that was never seen and just added without any explanation of his origin. While Fates doesn’t exactly bring in unknown characters, it does have the same problem of just adding characters at random increments without true explanation. Also the inclusion of the child units seem to be more of a ‘oh they were popular last time but we can’t do time traveling again… ah yes baby realms perfect’, making the child units seem pointless and they don’t hold as much meaning as in Awakening. While it’s not game-blowing, it is a little annoyance that is present.
The last problems that I personally have for the game was the amount of typos within it and some of the armor design choices. I understand that the translation does take time and that the game was rushed to keep American fans happy, but there was a year and a month between the announcement of the game and the release of it here. Europe had it even worse since it was release on May 20th, 2016. There are still so many typos to be found throughout, mainly in the support conversations. Also, the great majority of the armor designs are impractical and are seemingly only there to show off the characters body, primarily the female designs. While they aren’t the biggest deal in the world, both things can be an extreme nuisance to a player, especially since hours upon hours are spent viewing both elements.
In the neutral zone are the graphics. While the cut scenes are absolutely gorgeous and I could watch them all day like a movie, the combat models are another story. While not necessarily bad, the clipping of hair and clothing into the ground and bodies bother me just because it was a problem from Fire Emblem: Awakening that they just chose to ignore. They also took out the limited weapon uses, which is another neutral for the fact that I enjoyed having to worry about refilling said weapons, but only whenever I played the older games in the classic setting. Whenever played casually, the unlimited weapon uses is very handy.
Now it’s for the good sides of the game! Fire Emblem: Awakening was a very easy game to make the units very overpowered. Seeing that, Intelligent Systems did a fine job fine tuning just how breakable Fates can be. The support system, Pair Up, now has it so the player can choose if the supporting character is helping offensively or defensively, rather than just leaving it to luck like in Awakening. It also allows the enemies to use such tactics, so the strategy aspect of the game is allowed many more opportunities to be explored.
My favorite part of the game is probably one of the most important parts of the Fire Emblem franchise: the characters. The character supports are essential to getting to know each of the quirks each character has, since said quirks are a continuous part to each Fire Emblem game that has been released. It’s always fun to see just how different characters can be, but also how some small quirks they have in common can forge a friendship. I love seeing the different interactions characters have and what funny situations they can get each other into.
Fire Emblem: Fates wasn’t the worst game I’ve played. In fact, it’s far from it. However, the faults within the game are pretty glaring and while the true Fire Emblem experience is still achievable, it’s annoying to get through at times. What I hope for the next installment of the series is a much better story (because it really isn’t that hard to go back to the narrative roots Fire Emblem used to excel so well in), only one game to be release (even though I love playing Fire Emblem, three games released at once is a bit overwhelming but I know the likelihood of this is slim because Fates was very successful), and to address the graphics that are present in the game because it’s really annoying to see hair clipping through. I hope that they keep up with the excellent game play (especially keeping the Pair Up as is) and character interactions because the supports are some of my favorite aspects of the game.
7/10
Britt Stone//Graphics Dept
Click here to go to the official Fire Emblem: Fates website
