SPOILER WARNING. THE FOLLOWING THOUGHTS CONTAIN INFO ON WHAT HAPPENS IN FIRE EMBLEM FATES: BIRTHRIGHT, SO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. They are chapter by chapter thoughts (for the most part, anyway) so yeah. Read and respond/discuss if you're interested.
Chapter 1:
- Corrin wakes up in full armor and such?
- No breakfast or anything, straight to battle? Seriously?
- Oh, HE gets to heal but Xander doesn't? *rolls eyes*
- This dialog is so cringey. The relationships are so fake and unbelievable, for the most part. Freaking doting Camilla and Elise are just >___>
- This dialog is just... so cheesy, even for a fantasy game/FE... >_<
Chapter 4:
- Freaking sounds like Hinoka is coughing or throwing up or something when she's "crying". ugh.
Chapter 5:
- Remember when Corrin transforming was a big deal? Yeah, not for long lol. Short-lived plot crap. :\
- Also she used some like, water spell thing to knock Ryoma anyway but THAT doesn't appear again, lol
- Their mother has just been killed but they're not even grieving or anything, instead explaining to Corrin about dragon blood. Ughhh. Come on. Such awful writing. Even Emmeryn's death in Awakening had more meaning...
- If their mother foresaw her death why did she not try to do anything about it, or even mention it? Doesn't she care that she's leaving behind her children? Ugh, these just feel like a bunch of independent people and not an actual family, asduausdoioasdua
- How do you explain a magic flying sword? What if he hadn't caught it? Like what the heck? At least TRY to explain it even if it's through some b.s. >_>'
Chapter 6:
- Ughh, once again. The decision. I always felt like it was a bit forced. They're so quick to call Corrin a traitor and become enemies. Both routes feel like the characters are just pushing the agenda of the plot. The plot says you need to pick a side and fight the other side, so that's what you'll do! If you don't like it, buy the DLC where people are a little more reasonable, but only slightly, and everyone eventually joins you! *rolls eyes*
Support with Rinka: Oh man. Rinka told him. Probably one of my favorite supports just because someone basically told Corrin to shut up and leave him alone, lol. Rinka's like yeah, I'll follow orders but nothing more than that. And I'm totally with her. I just hope it's for a good reason... *sigh*. In the end they CAN support so... of course this can't last.
Other: So I set my birthday to today and uh... the lines people say are kinda hilarious, LOL. Saizo: "I'm uh... glad you were born." Oh my gosh, so weird, so creepy.
Paralogue 1:
- Oh man the paralogue is so bad. It's like, supposed to make me feel bad about Mozu or something but the execution is just so completely dry I can't really feel much of anything. It sucks she lost everyone, sure, but it's way too isolated and short of a story for me to care. If you want to do an isolated story and still get me to care a bit and still have the character join in the end, try something akin to how you recruit characters in Valkyrie Profile. Now THAT'S done fairly well IMO.
Chapter 8:
- The Faceless thing doesn't add up. After all, if a Faceless attacks, what is "reality"? Their first? Or the actual weapon? And what about their voices? And how did they appear? And why did Iago feel the need to show himself? Ughhh I just don't like this scene.
Chapter 9:
- Thinking/talking about how bad the story is/thinking about how they just went for cheap parallels between the two routes instead of actually making them unique is just giving me a headache so I think I'm going to stop. It's so cringe-worthy I just can't. Kirby games have more enjoyable stories than this game where they think they're clever by making the Archduke a total joke. >___>'
- Oh gosh I have to mention the scene with Azura at the end here that just doesn't even make sense. And the terrible-sounding "THANK YOU" Azura does. Blaaaargh.
Chapter 10:
freaking missed a 98% chance hit. so salty
Chapter 11:
The way Reina talks about killing crap is creepy and she's not the first one, lol. It's just weird how they joke about it. Also, they're ok with killing some enemies but at the beginning they were all "nooo, we can't". Inconsistencies, lol.
Chapter 12:
Well, that cutscene was pretty cool, I guess. Zola betraying was expected but at least he was slightly more than just a traitor before he died. Garon ishere too... can we kill him? I kinda want to. Also poor Elise.
Oh man, Xander and co showed up too. So like, if I kill them... what happens? ._.
Not going to risk dying since I don't have those special save files that are like savestates (I'm playing on Classic) and I couldn't find an answer with some quick googling so if anyone can find out if I can kill these people or not and what happens, let me know. One of the few interesting bits in the game, actually, I miss stuff like this. Though actually, I'm not strong enough to kill Garon anyway, and Xander would be pretty tough given how good his sword is, so this is more something for like, a casual or phoenix mode run or at least some run with OP characters this early.
Chapter 13:
Welp, that just happened. >___>'. Talk about unnecessary fan service. It's also a shame they couldn't develop the decisions the siblings made and such so that they were a little more believable. Part of that would be developing their relationships beforehand a bit more, but meh. >_>' Honestly, both routes are b.s., as in, they're basically bad decisions/"bad ends" compared to the 3rd route, so they both upset me and for the wrong reasons. :\
...
Ok, I could have mentioned this at any point, but I'm doing it now: Rinkah and Hinata are so bad for me. Like, super bad. I don't know if it's just me or the growths or what. It's probably mostly me, but bleh.
Also, Setsuna's not doing so hot either. This'd be easier if I just used prepromotes like Ryoma, probably, who I just got... (his stats are so good and I'm pretty sure his growths aren't bad either)
Chapter 14:
Just thinking to myself... the sense of scale/troops and such here could be better... it's probably never been amazing, to be honest, but now more than ever I feel like how we only ever really see our own leaders and maybe one or two NPCs really makes it hard to brin across that there's really a war going on. Backgrounds like this one I'm seeing now certainly help, but they're far apart and would be better in the right context/if executed a bit differnetly, IMO... :\
Anyway, it's whatever... So "Crimson" or "Crimzon" or whatever became "Scarlet", lolNOA.
I thought Ryoma was the leader. Blehhh. Also, find it a little odd in jarring, even if the Hoshidan royals ARE supposed to be blood family, that they're as caring/supportive/etc. as they are... it honestly makes a lot more sense for Nohr, who (supposedly) actually built bonds over many years, even if Corrin was locked up in a dungeon (a plot point that was relatively short lived in the sense that it doesn't seem to have affected Corrin's personality like, at all...). >__>
... End scene... hmm... don't remember what happens to Azura in the Nohr route but it seems like she'll suffer a bad fate after all in this one, if the foreshadowing is anything to go by. So again, only the 3rd route has things end well, lol.
Also, just want to say in general the story is slightly more enjoyable in Birthright compared to Nohr, and a part of that is probably the localization, but... it's still pretty meh overall, with plenty of "ughhh" moments. Not to mention the dialog/supports and such are kind of jokish like in Awakening, which is not what I personally prefer, but it's not terrible either. I mean, I did enjoy Awakening's supports to some extent. I just kind of miss the old supports/which these ones had a little more substance or depth, at least some of the time...
Chapter 15:
For whatever reason, I seem to have REALLY bad luck on these chapters against shape-shifters. I had to restart like, several times when playing the Nohr route on the Japanese version, and I've had to restart 3 times on this one too due to dumb unlucky stuff happening, lol. That's FE for you, though.
Gotta love how Setsuna hasn't gotten like, a single point of defense since I've started using her. At 5 defense now, pretty sure that's what she started at. Man she is so bad, along with like... half of my units in general, lol. In fact, the only good units are Kagero and the royalty. >___>
...
Kaze scene was so dumb. Why? Because it's an isolated death of a playable character. In other words, that death didn't have much to do with the course of the events of the game in general, it just kind of happened to create some kind of loss for Corrin that he deals with relatively quickly and in a really bland manner with the whole "Kaze watching from above" and "rest in peace" deal. ughhh. >_>' I'm sorry Kaze, it's not you, it's the execution of this game's plot/the writing, which I've been trying to hold back on but sometimes I just can't.
...Also, note to self: I accidentally got spoiled that there's apparently a way to keep Kaze with you, which sounds cool. Reminder to either do that or at least look up what happens.
Chapter 16:
If I had anything to say, I forgot. Whoops.
Chapter 17:
Welp. Another character died. Unnecessarily. Execution/post-death dialog was meh again. Feels like this game just tries to kill characters just to try to get us emotional, but... thing is, it doesn't actually work. I wasn't attached to Flora, she really could have easily survived (just like how Kaze'sthing didn't make much sense to me), etc., bleh. Whatever.
Chapter 18:
Ugh, please. Can't take the dialog seriously. And in the first place when did Felicia become such a notable character? And Jakob or whatever also like, randomly appears or doesn't appear. Along with other characters. Bleh, just wish there was some sort of consistency/logic to all this. Not a fan of Awakening's/Fates' event scene execution in general, I guess. It's hard to get a grasp of the situation with such limited views of things and limited characters on screen.
... Leo is all evil now and won't listen, eh. Oh well. Figured as much. And given the Nohr route, I can probably expect two characters on this route to die tragic deaths too. Probably Xander and then one of the other three, no telling who at this point, really, considering how little is shown of the Nohr family and what they're up to.
GAP PERIOD: I was out and about while playing these and couldn't type comments on my computer, so I jotted stuff on my phone instead. This is a c/p of that. Some chapters I just didn't have much to say though.
"Rainbow Sage", lol. So obvious it was him, only curious note is the knight they mentioned, really.
Stinks the other countries and such aren't developed much. I don't even know where they are map-wise due to the awful execution of the map in this game (in more ways than one).
Lol at these reinforcements on chapter 22 that somehow get to run into the middle of the map, which makes like, no sense/breaks the rules of the game. >___>
WOW enemy got a super lucky 4% critical that would have wrecked me but I had a dual guard at the ready, thank goodness. That was careless of me.
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Chapter 23:
Weak foreshadowing that Elise will die? lol. She's not playable, Camilla and Leo didn't die yet, hmm. Would have been cool if this game were *actually* about making decisions and like, if we killed her retainers instead of talking to them (I accidentally killed Arthur or whatever), we would make Elise our enemy, resulting in even more bad things... lol. That kind of dynamic where basically the game is just one game and you choose your route as you play based on your dialog decisions and battle actions and such (who you kill, who you side with in a 3 or 4 way battle, what you specifically say—like maybe if you lie in the short term it results in an ally but you can eventually get caught, having it turn out bad, but maybe telling the truth isn't as believable so that has its own weaknesses, etc.) would have been pretty cool, but alas. I thought maybe they'd have been inspired by ATLUS due to the collaboration (like maybe they went to play SMT games or something) but I guess not, haha.
Chapter 24:
That fight cutscene at the beginning... what the heck? The transition from the end of that cutscene to the actual battle doesn't make much sense, where the heck did Lilith come from, etc., it just felt so poorly done tbh, sorry to be a critic but I just react to what I see. >>'
...Unrelated, but I read the A support between Corrin and Sakura, and ugh... so many of these supports are super shallow like this. There were a few solid ones but for the most part they aren't even funny or touching, they're just kind of... there, like they had to cram in supports for all these characters so they just did regardless of quality. Blehhh. I mean, it's not like all the supports have always been great, nah there have been silly writing issues and poor supports amongst other things for a while, but the statement "less is more" could not apply more to this game if they tried, IMO...
BREAK FROM CHAPTER 24: Went back and checked out the two Paralogues I have. That's right, on my 3rd playthrough I finally got an S-Support for Corrin, and by coincidence I kept pairing Silas and Rinkah up enough that they eventually could get one too so I said "why not" and did it.
Aaaand the paralogues are like Awakening's again, and lame and completely devoid of motivation for me to play them since it just means getting new characters that have practically no plot relevance and that I don't want to train up... and more importantly the enemies are just super tough, like wow those stats. I'm only on normal mode but there are just a ton of enemies and they're about as strong if not stronger than my own guys, this is the same problem I had with Awakening: it's not fun fighting them when it's having super tough enemies being thrown at me with little space or terrain to maneuver with etc., I basically feel like I'm supposed to grind or either just turtle and I just don't enjoy either of those, so eh.
But anyway, I'll just not play them for now (if ever...), more importantly than that I just hate how shoehorned in children are. Freaking time-travel to a space called "deeprealms" and everyone acts like it's so natural. Aaidosuidsuoaiduasdio. Criiiinge. The writing here is also consistent and in general it's just more cringey-stuff. Especially the Live2D scene or whatever when you get an S support and the lamest excuse ever for how the children grow up and whatnot. It's not even suspension of disblief it's just that I can't take it seriously at all and I'm not enjoying it as a result. I'm ok with jokes and light-hearted conversations here and there but it feels like the game is degrading itself almost and the localizers knew it and that's why they did what they did (basically made it even more of ajoke). Assuming FE continues to be this way, that means there's 1 less series I can expect to have a respectable story/plot/set of characters (Zelda, Metroid, Mario & Luigi, they've all gone from being respectable series to being jokes too... :\)
BACK TO CHAPTER 24:
"You... you killed me! How dare you!" - oh come on, you're still talking. clearly didn't stab you enough despite the critical hit.
... Lilith dies in this route too huh. Well I think she's still in My Castle, not to mention her development over the course of the game was... minimal and sparse, so... :\ I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd prefer all the good characters didn't die if they don't have to, but just hearing the jarring sobs and stuff admist the text isn't doing anything for me.
"What are we even fighting for" >___>' don't try and be all dramatic asking that now, you know full well what it is
also realistically at least give him a LITTLE time to mourn gosh he doesn't have to break down in 5 seconds and make a recovery in 5 seconds uasduoiasidosadi bleghhh I don't think I ever want to read this story ever again it's just causing me pain
Chapter 25:
oh okay looks like Lilith really is dead but will appear in My Castle invasions, ok forgot the deetz
... these chapter titles have been lame for a while but "Traitor Revealed"? lolol
"SAKUURA" LOL the way Corrin said it, ahahaha. this scene is eh as a whole but whatever
ok, it's over, fight time. not really feeling the stakes in the least but y'know, whatever. enough complaining. let's get this over with.
almost done, just want to say I'm so tired of seeing symmetrical maps. I don't care if it's realistic or not I want some more grand maps >:[
I'm also so tired of OBVIOUSLY-EVIL-GUYS, the only other bad guys being people who are being possessed in some way or are under the pretense of some kind of "misunderstanding" (where they aren't actually "bad") lol. it's fine to have evil-looking antagonists but these guys feel like they're literally the cliches of evil antagonists in RPGs, the strategist mage Iago (formerlyMacbethlol) and the brute-force barbarian Hans, you've got both sides and then the king that rules them all, lulz
sigh my complaints just come so easily in this game I really just see so much lost potential and wish it could tap into it this could be one of the greatest games ever I mean the plot premise isn't bad the execution is just like only 20% there IMO
aww, the collar moment was actually a little cute/touching. need more of those. and at least Leo is reasonable, though I feel like it would have been nice to get insight into his journey or whatever that led to his conclusion. since I sincerely doubt that in the next two chapters Xander will come to a similar conclusion. (things didn't go down that nicely on the Nohr route, that's for sure...)
... also, just want to add it'd have been cooler if Elise and Leo actually joined us, but I can tell that the direction these games want to go is that outside of a few shared characters towards the beginning, they really don't want like mismatching with the characters (especially the royals). I think that dynamic is *exactly what this game needs* instead of delegating each route to a specific formula/plan, but bleh.
wth some supports are so short it's like they don't exist *shot*
Chapter 26:
welp that was... lame
more apologies, more apologies, more apologies
I SAW THAT. HIS SWORD WASN'T THERE BEFORE. HE PICKED IT UP OUT OF NOWHERE.
...
seriously, a 1-turn map? lol. well then.
another quickish recovery/monologue and suddenly a smile or whatever, the whole "what they would have wanted" speech, blehhh. you can do a little better than that.
however, I'll say that Xander's bit on his fate and how as the Crown Prince, he couldn't "make a choice" or "pick a side" was solid/felt like it made his choices a little more reasonable.
but man this story SERIOUSLY could have been SO good. the cutscenes and the camera work and fight bits need a lot of work along with the script but even if they kept the general course the same and just updated those, it'd be decent: rewrite the script completely and I could imagine actually having my heart torn apart by these choices, being forced to kill someone I actually got to know and seeing flashbacks of them being all happy as a kid and such (something you can't do well when you have an avatar that is being seen from a 1st-person view in the CG cutscenes... >_>'), in general there was just a ton of potential and the saddest thing about this game is probably me wanting to cry from how good it could have been. instead it's like a 6-7/10, maybe an 8 if you ignore story completely XP.
Chapter 27:
From his face complexion to his evil beard to his attire to his expression to his evil laughter, they could not have made this guy more hideously evil if they wanted, could they. Talking about Garon, of course...
NOBLE YATO EVOLVED INTO BLAZING YATO. lol. How does he even know the (silly-sounding) name. Unless he just made it up right there. Sigh. What a joke.
...
End-battle. Man already talking about a "peace treaty" after you invaded a kingdom, (almost) killed the king, and killed two of the royal family members? Oh please. >___>'
And then the lame cutscene followed by the cliche "in the darkness" scene and then another magic scene/set of scenes that has/have no real explanation with Corrin and (most) of the dead not-evil characters, lololol. Couldn't have much more lame of a story if it wanted. The worst part is that it's TRYING to be good but failing. Not trying and not failing would have arguably been better, lol.
Corrin did you just laugh while you're hallucinating meeting all these people that already died in the places they died? ugh you're screwed in the head aren't you
WAIT HE EVEN GETS HIS SWORD BACK
"IT'S HARD TO EXPLAIN" HE SAYS MORE LIKE IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE THIS IS COMPLETE B.S. AND SO DUMB I CAN'T EVEN BE SLIGHTLY TOUCHED BY IT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH <- lost it
"more determined than ever to win this war" oh please
and do you really have time to be chatting
"it's always about you isn't it" Takumi says. Takumi, one of the few characters with a couple respectable moments. I feel like he broke the 4th wall there even though I know better.
"right all of your wrongs" how naive
what the heck is with this ending. I mean sure it was kinda sad and also expected and the scene looked pretty cool (even if Azura looked like she was floating and the CG quality dipped at some points because lol3DS) but stop talking about promises this ain't even TLP and what's with Azura's weird desire to see Corrin smile oh please *sighs*
another extra scene that doesn't make sense, great... (the one with Azura)
last scenes were cheesy but at least I got to see more Hinoka I guess. I like her character design, too bad she's in Fates. Ryoma's also got a rad character design even if I sometimes think the hair is a bit much, lol. I also don't like the samurai animations to be honest, they're just not that cool to me. Though then again I think a lot of the animations in the game look weird with their stances and stuff, always kinda... bending forward and stuff in this weird way... >__>'
So with that I've seen all 3 routes. Now that I have more perspective on things... I'm still not impressed, really. Hoshido was in many ways more enjoyable than Conquest but Conquest had better gameplay, while Revelations had the "best" story but was also kinda frustrating because of that lol.
At least the Fire Emblem main theme is playing now, this is the most this has felt like a Fire Emblem game all game! *shot* ok not really, but it seriously is nice to hear the Fire Emblem main theme. And it's not a bad rendition either.
Seeing my turn counts and such reminds me how bland and uninspired the titles were though... lol.
Ending times... the song is cool. Gotta listen to all the different versions some day. I actually kinda like the singer, even if a lot of people don't. I mean, it's in English and I think it's very well done.
Too much text to read, can't record the names of people I should be blaming for all the good and bad things about Fates. XD
This game has decent music, but sadly only the main theme (and all its variations), skirmish theme, and a few other select themes were really good for me. I'd have probably gotten more into it if the late-game themes were better. But oh well.
The fact that Kaze has an entry here practically confirms that I could have kept him
Stinks that Sakura only went 51-37 because she deserved better but she was my only dedicated healer for most of the game so :\
Ryoma with that 60-52, he came late/high-leveled so I didn't use him a ton but he was great (as expected).
Kagero was also great. High victory-rate. Takumi was solid, didn't double as often as I'd like or he'd have been amazing. Somehow Setsuna got more kills, but eh, she did join earlier, so I guess that's fair. Takumi was better though.
Orochi was pretty cool... went 123-80. Her death quote felt a little dark/full of that despair and loneliness I had come to like from older Fire Emblem games, haha.
One of my few pairings: Rinkah and Silas, just because it so happened that I unlocked the S support after pairing them enough, lol. Didn't recruit the child though after peeking at the paralogue and thinking it was lame. Maybe one day.
"Executive Producer: Satoru Iwata"
Feel bad he passed away and everyone was giving him such a hard time and then Fates has to be one of the last games released with him as the Executive Producer, lol. Such a shame indeed.
And with that, I've reached the end of the Hoshido route. Fun times, but outside of my Birthright-Normal-Phoenix mode auto-battle only run (with some other rules; I learned the AI can't move through stairs for instance, so there will be some cases I'll HAVE to manually move units...) I'm not interested in replaying it, now that I know how the story is.