After 200+ hours, I’ve finally finished all three paths of Fire Emblem Fates, and boy was the story…forgettable.

I did a lot of the unit pairings and sidequests in Conquest, which was the first path I played, but I couldn’t be bothered to do the same in Birthright and Revelation. I essentially played those two paths for the story, and it honestly felt like a chore. Revelation did reveal the mysteries of the actual antagonists, but it felt like they could have done so with just a single game, not three. As a result, there was a lot of fluff in all paths. I suppose the developer’s intention was to make more cash by making players double and triple dip have interesting “What if” scenarios (the Japanese title is actually called Fire Emblem If), although the outcome really wasn’t all that engaging, especially when the characters were all very one dimensional. This rings especially true for the protagonist Corrin, who I chose to be a female and named Corrinko - witty, I know.

The gameplay itself is fine. Weapons now have unlimited usage which is great, although the change doesn’t apply to staffs and other healing items, not that it’s a big deal to me. For the most part it’s still the Fire Emblem formula you know and love. I also quite liked the story maps involving moving platforms in some of the Revelation chapters. And Xander, you the real MVP.

This video from Beyond Polygons does a great job at explaining some of the issues with the Fates games. I think if you only play one path, it’s a great experience, so it’s unfortunate that they want you to play all three to get the full story. Two is already redundant, while three is an overkill - like if you trigger a critical when the enemy only has 1HP left.