Fire Emblem Fates (Birthright)

Pretty much all spoilers here...but I feel like I need to share my experience of Fire Emblem Fates so far. So before I get into it, I like the game quite a bit so far, but I am so damn confused it's hilarious. This is exactly the kind of ridiculousness I was hoping for. It's confusing and random in a good way...I think? I'm not angry, I just find it all funny.

Here's basically a recap of my thought process of how my first few chapters went:

**SPOILER ALERT**



Okay...I'm on a battlefield and two royal families are all here despite the rather large distances that separate them and they are both claiming to be my family. Clearly, like Awakening, this is a future event and there will be a flashback cause...tutorial.

OH NO WAIT IT WAS ALL A DREAM. I'm actually waking up in my bed surrounded by about 7 people all just...watching me sleep. No big deal. Not creepy at all. So I've got these maids and this butler and then all my siblings come in and the maids have some weird magic ice powers and now I'm fighting my brother on the roof. We are literally on the roof and he is on a horse. Why is there a horse on the roof? How did we get it up here? I HAVE QUESTIONS.

So I defeat my brother which means I can leave this fortress for the first time since I lost my memory (convenient?). Also this is the second Fire Emblem game in a row (actually, if you think about it...almost ALL of them have some sort of amnesia plot point) that the main character has some sort of memory loss. Apparently I'm locked in a tower for my own protection because memory loss. But it's okay! I'm strong enough to leave the fortress with all our brothers and sisters who visit all the time (but all don't question why I can't leave despite it just being uh...memory loss) and we're off to see our beloved father, WHO DOESN'T EVEN LOOK REMOTELY EVIL.

That was sarcasm for the kids at home.

So I see our father for the first time in what I can assume is YEARS, and he decides to throw a test our direction. He gives us this sword (which is also totally not evil) and tells us to fight the prisoners from the other country we're at war with. I fight them, dudes die except for the named characters (cause screw the other guys amirite?) who I refuse to execute.

Since I didn't follow orders and our brothers and sisters had to make excuses for us, I had to go and apologize to my father, who is giggling to himself alone in his throne room, and he gives me a special mission that only I can complete all by myself. Because that's not suspicious. All right daddy dearest, I'll take my butler and my knight and this "rehabilitated" criminal who looks like a mutated potato to the border fortress for "assessment."

Also, yes, I have a butler. His class, is "Butler". I have a level 5 butler. This is the greatest thing Fire Emblem has given me. I REALLY want to know what his tier 2 is.

I arrive with my little posse at the fortress and surprise, surprise, it's inhabited by soldiers from the other country! Gasp. We decide to turn back and report, but Mr. Potato Head runs in and attacks, so we need to stay and fight and defend ourselves...despite having a clear escape path. At any rate, we take the fortress, some of the royal family shows up from the other country, we need to make a hasty retreat, but Tayto man decides that he wants to stop us.

My butler just...disappears while Tater guy kills my knight WHO SLIPS THROUGH THE BRIDGE'S FLOORBOARDS. I'm not joking. I don't know if I saw it wrong, or it just looked weird, but it looked like both he, and the horse, turned into jello and slipped through the boards. Then my character got mad, grew stag horns, attacked the man and...fell...off? I'm not sure what happened here either. I actually thought my character jumped off to pull a Gandalf and catch up to the knight to save him...somehow.

Instead...and again, I'm not joking, my maid is suddenly falling after me. SHE is pulling the Gandalf instead. She grabs me and turns into a little dragon and we fly away to the astral plain with rainbows and happy tree houses where I rest for the night. After a good night's sleep I ask to go back to the battlefield where the little dragon maid warns me that there's a fight still on, but I don't care.

I arrive back at the fortress and within seconds I get knocked out and taken back to the other country by the woman I spared from execution. They take me to my REAL family in that country, because it turns out my real father was killed and I was taken hostage by the other king. My family welcomes me back with wide arms despite being fully invested in my family from the other country they're at war with. I meet my mother and then within a day (or so it seems), my REAL sisters are under attack. So my brother king takes me with him to save him so he can show us what evil things the other country is doing.

So there are BDSM Hulk Gorillas everywhere (okay they're called Faceless...) and they are attacking our sisters, so I need to rush to their aid by melting mountains with my fire powers. The king refuses to attack the four monsters on the middle hill. I saved these till last the first time and got my ass handed to me, so I figure I'd pre-emptively melt that mountain and make the king fight for me. Nope. He won't touch them. So I huddled up next to him and used him as a meat shield so that when they tried to attack me they'd HAVE to go through them. The jerk got slapped in the face and ended up killing one of them for me so I consider it mission success.

Shortly afterwards we learn about a woman who was taken from the other country as a child as a revenge kidnapping, but apparently the other side doesn't really care and she's happy singing at a pond every day of her life. I learn that my mother is maintaining this special magic barrier that stops actual soldiers from getting into the country if they're from Nohr, which is why they are attacking with evil magic BDSM monsters (because that makes sense).

Also there's some throne that can give me back my memories, but I decide not to use it because feelings.

Instead we go to a festival in the town where my family is going to announce my return and this assassin shows up and takes my sword, and then makes it explode (why did they let me keep the evil sword?). My mother jumps in front of me to save me and she dies. I get mad and then suddenly I'm a stag dragon. I transform into a Stagon...or a Deeragon if you prefer.

So now I'm a dragon and I run around one-shotting everyone. This level caused me some issues because at first I wasn't sure if you were supposed to be able to save the NPC from losing/dying (he doesn't die, just goes away until next level) so I kept restarting to see if there was a pattern. I looked it up to make sure and people said you can't save him. There were also a lot of people getting butt hurt about how hard the level was and I'm like...pish guys, this is easy what's your problem?

Yeah I ate my words. I figured out the way to bait the two dragonslayer sword guys is to throw one of my characters to the right to aggro the mages (because he had a high enough resistance) and bait the swordmen with my character to the left. It split them up nicely. My problem was I was trying to bait them all one direction and sneak around to hit the swordsmen twice, but then my other characters were exposed to the mages.

After that, Miss Songlady comes and calms us down and I turn back into a human. Then glasses dude shows up and tells me that the mother knew she was going to die, but not how or when.

...

So...like everyone then. That literally applies to everyone (unless there are immortal beings). "Ah yes, I will die...but I have no idea how it's going to happen or when"

YOU DON'T SAY.

Whatever. So he shows up and says that she told us about the statue in town that was destroyed, but happens to have a sword in it. Sure enough, on cue, when we mention it, the sword flies out of the rock and shlups to my hand. I guess I'm a special sword dragon now.

After this, the game makes you choose between Birthright and Conquest. I chose Birthright cause...I don't have Conquest yet. I'll download that later. Oh and my butler finds me again, so I'm happy.

Also the way support, inventory etc. is handled between levels now is in the special astral plain that no one asks questions about at all. I think this is where the "petting" aspect came into it, but that doesn't exist in this version anyway. It's...weird though because you run around getting things like peaches and beans and you feed it to the dragon maid and she levels up and you can go to your bedroom and invite people in and you get this closer than comfortable interaction with the one person you decide to invite in as they stare into your eyes on the screen...

Anyway, I just want to take the time, to appreciate the the plan of King Nohr. Let's recap. So, the King kills the King of Hoshido, kidnaps his child, locks the child away for...15+ years in a fortress, allows his children to train that child the entire time to fight, decides that it's time for the child to be let out, gives them the assassination sword, assumes that the character will refuse to execute the prisoners so he can send them on a quest with his hired man to start trouble at the border. After he just assumes that the character won't die (which ALMOST didn't happen because we fell off a bridge and had to be rescued by our dragon maid), will be captured by the other side and taken to the capital where the character would be recognized as the long lost child. THEN he had to assume she'd be allowed to keep the evil sword and that the mother would be there in the square with the character and the evil sword. Then they had to assume that the mother would sacrifice herself to save her child. Like...there are so many things that could have gone wrong with this 15+ year plan.

Overall, game is good. I am confused, but I really like the new things they've added. The enemy support aspect REALLY adds another dimension to strategy. I'm glad I played Birthright first because this may take some getting used to. I'll continue to play and give you updates on any further thoughts I have. For now this...just needed to be shared.


EDIT: This song has been playing over and over in my head randomly since I got the game.