Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright

Ever since the first Fire Emblem game to be released in NA I’ve been a huge fan. I bought, played and finished every single game. I loved almost all of them, some had it’s shortcomings, of course, but still every issue was a solid strategy RPG with a shitty, but fun, story and great satisfying gameplay that kept me pinned to the screen till I finished the game once or even twice.

The first Fire Emblem, released in NA, was split into three campaigns, but unlike Fates it was packed into one cartridge, for the price of one GBA game. Now, Nintendo is selling each with its own price; Basically if you want the whole game you’ll have to pay around 80$.

At first I was excited, as I do with every release of a Fire Emblem game; I planned getting the whole thing for 80$, started looking for the special edition that comes packed with the whole game but it was sold out everywhere. So, I settled for buying Birthright digitally as a start and work my way to the second and third campaign.

Unfortunately I found Birthright to be a huge turnoff. From the get go, the game is much easier than previous installments, and not easy fun, more like easy boring. And to add to the boredom factor, the narrative side is one of the worst I have ever played. Every part of the story will take you FOREVER to get through because of the long, useless and monotonous dialogue. Thankfully you can skip it but still this bad, this really bad. I’ve always hated the FE dialogue for being too kindly and polite in the midst of war; it’s the exact opposite to Game of Thrones.

More is not always better 

Gameplay was always fun in all FE games, some changed the formula a bit, some made huge changes, but all made changes that progressed the engine in a smart and functional way. In Fates the changes felt mostly unstudied that really didn’t add to the formula. A new class, the ninja which is just a thief but with a shuriken instead of a dagger.

The weapons still go under the mechanic of rock-paper-scissors, which I love. They added additional weapons with different abilities, but most of them are just rehashed ideas, or just useless ideas.

Instead of having a camp or a base you have a fort that stands arbitrarily in another dimension, or the in the character's head or something. This wasn’t the case in previous games since it was just a caravan you had, but they made this  change to add shops, smith, rice garden, statues...and every other bullshit you can think of that I didn’t care for one bit. This is also coupled with an obscene economy system where you trade foods and gems for other gems to be able to buy and create weapons, rods and accessories or get a smith to make you weapons. It all felt like utter, time consuming CRAP!

In closing, Birthright is a huge turnoff, I don’t think i'll even get the other edition or DLC. It lacked most of what made Awakening a great game, new mechanics, decent story and great soundtrack. If you have your eyes set on FE, you better try your luck with Conquest.