Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest Review
“A
song of Conquest and Fate”
Fire
Emblem Fates: Conquest is truly an amazing game. I played it after finishing
Birthright and I loved how both versions compliment the details of the stories
of each other very nicely. Some parts of the story in both respective version
had details missing that I wanted to know but were never explained. Both
versions help explain it, or even hint how things could have been different if
the avatar you made ‘chose’ a different path. Now, when I was playing the games
I never saw it as a reference to Birthright or Conquest, but to Revelations,
which is the true story which combines elements of the two and have all the
characters that are a part of your team in respective versions together. I have
yet to get a hold of Revelations, but I know the gist of what it is supposed to
be, and I am excited to get a hold of it, hopefully in a few weeks and post my
review of it. I loved the differences in both stories, and I honestly found the
Conquest campaign way more satisfying and intriguing compared to Birthrights,
but that could be because I played Birthright and greatly enjoyed how they
played off each other and how some characters acted in this version compared to
the other.
The
gameplay is vastly different to Birthright, and I love it. Conquest has
different objectives, even one where you have to defend a stronghold for eleven
rounds while enemy forces are trying to invade with a never ending supply of
reinforcements. I loved that there were objectives like that, or defeat the
enemy in twenty-five rounds, and such. The variety and difference kept each
chapter fresh and fun and not a repetitive mechanic in each chapter, like
Birthright did. I enjoyed how the Nohr the faction you side with in Conquest,
has more traditional Fire Emblem weapons such as; swords, axes, lances, bows,
staves, and a new weapon called knives. The different encounters and decisions
kept me on my toes, and there was even a decision if I wanted a character I
fought in a chapter to be killed for attacking me, or spare the character and
see if there were repercussions made the decision even more intense to see if
the character would betray me or if an already existing unit would backlash for
deciding to kill that character.
Much
like Birthright, Conquest had a vast array of colorful and charming characters,
and personally had a character who became my favorite over the entirety of both
versions for his mannerisms and characteristics which I would giggle and enjoy
to my delight. The Nohr royal family was truly an interesting group of characters
to get know since they are not your true family, but they love you nonetheless and
you see why they do what they do. It was truly fascinating and made the
differences in both experiences so much fun for me to experience.
One new gameplay mechanic I really enjoyed was the Dragon
vein. They are sigils on the ground that are activated by the royal members
of the respective games, and they change the landscape of the maps battlefield
dramatically. There was a level inside a volcano-like area, and I would use the
Dragon vein as a way to create a bridge for my units to cross-by which was
really cool. This mechanic effected my strategy in the game, making me be specific on
which unit I would want to waste that round in order to use the Dragon vein.
The graphics appear to be in the same engine as to
Awakening, however, the cinematics were completely different in comparison. The
cinematics in Fates are absolutely gorgeous and very fun to watch, they have
more of an anime feel, while Awakening was more of just a cel-shaded cinematic
splice which isn’t bad thing since I love cel-shading graphics. I adored
the art style for Fates a lot, it was a very pretty game and absolutely
stunning to see it push the 3DS graphical hardware. I have no idea if there’s a
difference in comparison to the original 3DS/3DS XL models since I played it on
the ‘new’ 3DS XL and there are slight changes in comparison to some existing
3DS games, such as Smash Bros. loading times on the ‘new’ compared to the
original which I did experience, so bear that in mind for my opinion. I
did enjoy that the cinematics were tailored and completely different depending
on which version you are playing and it made the experience more fresh and fun
to know I’m not playing the same exact thing.
Fates, continues the child unit
thing from Awakening which was a mechanic I absolutely loved and was happy to
see again. However, I was disappointed on how few children you get from the
pairings in comparison to Awakening, but I will cut some slack on that because that
was a part of the story in Awakening. I was very happy to see this feature
return in the game since it was one of the things I really enjoyed in Awakening.
Overall Score: 9
Gameplay:
9 Graphics:
9
Story: 9
Sound and Music:
9
Replay-Value:
9
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