DectorEy

Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest boasts to being a tribute to classic Fire Emblem games with no level grinding, more difficult and dynamic gameplay. To begin with, the story is horribly written and portrayed for Fire Emblem games. The villain of the game is already revealed to you before you make your decision on whether to defend Hoshido or Nohr, which makes choosing to be on Nohr's side in this case to be meaningless. The villain can be dumbed down to "rah rah evil!" and doesn't leave as much of an impact as the previous games, usually with a king from a different nation threatening dominance onto other nations. Not to mention that a lot of deus ex machina conflicts regarding the main protagonist ruins the overall immersion of the game. I can also conclude that it's one of the worst written games in the franchise, which is sad considering how much time and effort was spent into making the script for the game. However, the game presents really well in my opinion. It has a great soundtrack and its art-style is terrific. The character designs aren't half bad either, and I didn't have an issue with how the game looks overall. Although it may have sounded like I was praising the gameplay before, it's very wishy-washy. The gameplay isn't bad, but Fire Emblem veterans are going to have issues adjusting to this style of game. To begin with, pairing up is still a mechanic, but is more balanced, as the enemies can pair up as well. Pairing up was broken in Fire Emblem Awakening, so it makes me glad to say this. However, the game has decided to put more emphasis on character interactions than strategic gameplay, which I think was a horrible mistake. In previous Fire Emblem games, the support system was always a minor side gameplay element meant to elevate the characters, their personalities, and the story as a whole. I don't have a problem with this, as if you do your research and match certain characters correctly with others, you can have amazingly strong child units. Though, here's the kicker: Unlike Fire Emblem Awakening, children units hold no purpose to the overall plot of Fire Emblem Fates. It serves no purpose and is just a means to pair with units and to get overly stronger units with better skills. If that's what you want to do with your Fire Emblem game, then that's fine, but I think it's an overly forced mechanic without significance. Regarding weapons, I have both a good and a bad thing to say about it. The good thing is that weapons are color coded, making the weapon triangle more diverse and allowing for more strategy. However, none of the weapons in this game, with the exception of staves, can break. It makes a lot of the special unbreakable insignificant in comparison and breaks a lot of the immersion in general. One thing that I hear a lot is that this is the harder version of the Fates collection, and although it is difficult, with a bit of trial and error, you can definitely make it past on normal mode without too much difficulty. The map design is also quite varied, allowing for a lot of interesting chapters. Overall, Fire Emblem Conquest is a good game, but it doesn't quite reach the potential of what's considered to be a good Fire Emblem game. If you want to get into the Fire Emblem series, then you should probably get into Blazing Sword or Sacred Stones, as both games are cheaper to get on the 3DS eShop, and provide a much better first time experience. If you're a Fire Emblem veteran and (somehow) haven't played Fates to this point, then know that this isn't reaching the quality of the GBA and Tellius games.

This 3DS tactical-fighting-RPG has a lot of things going for it - its visual art style is nice, and the music is great. However, the presentation to a game does not save everything else. The game works and controls fine, but the gameplay overall is very repetitive. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that maps are tediously long. Expect to be having 2-4 hour marathons by the later portions. This creates additional problems as the way you need to play is by having you constantly hold your 3DS, which can create hand cramps and exhaustion. The story, to be blunt, is a train wreck. It's very unfocused and has a lot of lackluster writing to it. A lot of the time it would be teleportation to teleportation with the same villains, same fights, same everything. And really, that's how you can describe this game - repetition. Fight monsters using only 5 attacks and 1 special attack (which is pathetic if you ask me), read some poor dialogue, fight a boss, move on to the next chapter for another 60 more chapters in around an 80 hour long campaign. This game could be useful to get if you're too lazy to look up the bios of your favorite Capcom, Namco and Sega characters, since this game has a great data base with information on all of the characters, enemies, and bosses. Overall, if my tone indicated as such, this game had a lot of things going for it and had a good concept, but its repetitiveness is what ultimately killed it. This is a prime example **** that focused too much on its presentation rather than smoothing up the gameplay.