When it all comes together, Fates can feel like a definitive upgrade over Awakening. The rebalanced Pair-Up system is superior to its predecessor's in almost every way, and many of the new skills and classes are fantastic additions.
All three versions are full of great maps, and the new balances to weapons helps even basic equipment stay relevant for most of the campaigns. Fates tries to be both at once, and the specter of compromise predictably haunts every one of its design decisions.įates' greatest victim, however, might be its gameplay. Alternatively, if the developers had wanted to tell a more adult story about politics and sexuality, they should have focused more on the writing and less on trivial distractions. If Fates had taken itself less-seriously and was less objectifying towards women (or at least gave the male cast the same treatment), it might have been celebrated as light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek steamy fun. However, whereas titles like Genealogy of the Holy War are dark because they explore difficult themes, Fates indulged misery for its own sake, forcing players to permit war crimes or commit genocide just to move the plot along.įrustratingly, none of this had to be the case. With some exceptions, like the adorable Elise, Fates' protagonists are cynical, and its irredeemable villains make for one of the series' darkest games yet. While Fire Emblem has never shied away from depicting the brutality of war, it typically has enough moments of levity that the darkness doesn't become all-encompassing. Further problems, like questionable supports, a bizarre face-touching minigame and needing to marry off young characters to unlock all the characters didn't help, either.Īll of this is made worse by Fates' needlessly grim tone.
Between the ridiculous outfits for female characters (such as armored thongs on Nohr's knights), to the way cutscenes frequently sexualize Camilla - the player character's sister - many fans found the games uncomfortable. Outside of its story, Fates has other issues, mainly how objectifying it was. While Awakening certainly had some fan-service, Fates took it to an extreme. Revelation isn't much better, throwing all pretense of logic out the window to introduce an army of invisible zombies that were secretly behind everything. This motivation could have allowed for plenty of interesting moral dilemmas, but such opportunities are frequently squandered. Instead of exploring the ethics of necessary evils, Nohr's story is a one-dimensional invasion where the player must stand back and let cartoonish super-villains decimate innocents for arbitrary reasons. Nohr's motive for invading is paradoxically only explained in Hoshido's campaign, in which it's explained that she conquers other nations only for the resources to feed her starving people. However, their goals are poorly-explained and contradictory. The story revolves around a conflict between the kingdoms of Nohr and Hoshido, respectively modeled after European and Japanese culture.
Fire Emblem is known for its interesting worlds and well-developed conflicts, so it's strange that Fates' world-building is lacking.