Fire Emblem Fates Review - Characters, Revelation, and Conclusion

Welcome to the final of my 3 posts covering my thoughts on Fire Emblem Fates. In the last one I spoke of the story and themes of the narrative. However, that’s not all there is to a narrative. For many narratives, especially those of Fire Emblem, with its emphasis on support conversations, the most important part is the characters. So how are the characters of Fates?

Fire Emblem Fates has a lot of characters, I mean a lot. It’s not surprising given how big the game is, but all in all, the game has roughly double the amount of characters in Awakening. This seems like a good thing on paper, but in execution, I had a few big issues with the characters of Fates.

My first critique of the characters revolves around the royal families. Fates has a greater emphasis on royal families than in Awakening. Both of the two kingdoms the player can choose from, Hoshido and Nohr, have 4 members of each family, all of whom see you, the protagonist, as their rightful sibling. This set up is used for giving you the choice to go down 1 of 3 paths, with both the Hoshido and Nohr paths giving you 4 sibling characters to side with. It sounds nice, and does have its merits, but my main problem with them is their similarities. There seemed to be a desire from the developers to not make the 3 paths of Fates feel too different, given their similar narrative structure and gameplay. This means that a lot of characters across both Birthright and Conquest have similarities, and no where is this more apparent than in the royal families. Both families have the eldest brother, who is wise and strong and honorable, a noble leader of their respective kingdom. Both have a younger brother, who is stoic, brooding, keeps to themselves, and is less trusting of others. And both have a younger sister, who is a healer, sweet and innocent, and only wants to help everyone. The older sister is the only character in both families to be largely different. With Nohr, the sister is both a loving older sister and the sex appeal character, with Hoshido, the sister is a tomboyish free spirit who does what she wants with a smile. This is fine if you only play through one path of the game. However, if you play through multiple paths, the similarities become apparent, and these similarities make the characters feel less unique, and less interesting overall.

Perhaps the biggest problem with the royal families however, is how they effect other characters. See, not only does each story have 4 members of the royal family, but each member has 2 body guards who stay with and protect them. This means that in total, there are 8 characters on each path who are bodyguards for the royal family. Combining both together means 16. That’s 16 entire characters who, despite having unique quirks and personalities, all have virtually the same back story and motivations: they were good at fighting, found their way into the royal army, and now serve their master obediently and ruthlessly.

I can only assume this was done because you will fight each member of the royal family in the path in which you don’t choose their side. This means that the battles against them feel more interesting since there will be not 1 but 3 characters you must defeat with unique designs and traits. However, this also means that these 16 characters all feel very similar, which is not good for making your characters stick with the player.

This is also a side effect of Fates’ stories not having any time skips or significant changes for the characters like other Fire Emblems do. The game begins with war just breaking out, and ends with the war finishing. There are never times of peace, so the majority of characters are simply good fighters who want either Hoshido or Nohr to win the war, and that’s it. There views on the war rarely have nuance, and this often translates to their overall views and beliefs. Additionally, because the protagonist is such a special character (being able to transform into a dragon, having ties to both royal families) and you have 8 members of royal families, you see a majority of the characters being simply those who love and admire the royal family, serving them obediently. This is seen in the protagonist’s maid who they’ve known since birth who serves them, the butler who also has served them since they were young, a ninja you save who then serves you until death, your childhood best friend who wants to help you obediently from that relationship, you get the idea. Having soldier type characters isn’t anything new to Fire Emblem, there are a lot of them throughout the series. But in Fates, these types of characters feel far too prevalent. In Awakening, the protagonist wasn’t any special character until the last part of the game, and the royal family was kept to only 3 characters, 1 of which never even joins your party. This meant the characters had a lot more variety in their motivations and reasons for joining you. They had a lot more diverse views on wars as they came and went, and in general the characters felt more interesting. But in Fates, as a result of the simplicity of its stories and its emphasis on royal families, most of the characters are very similar in their motivations, goals, and skills. Overall, just like the story, the large amount of characters seems to have resulted in all these characters not feeling as interesting or standing out compared to those in Awakening.

Yet, I would be remiss to not mention that, my feelings on the characters changed during my playthrough of the final path of the game. See, during the Revelations path of Fates, you have all the characters from the Hoshido path and Nohr path join you. This might seem like a bad thing, after all, there are no new characters.

However, the Revelations path, while being of similar structure to the other paths from a story perspective, takes a different turn in the characters department. Instead of you picking a side and helping those characters to win the war, in the Revelations path, your objective is not only to defeat Anankos, but to help the royal families and characters from both sides get along and put their differences aside.

I like this a lot for a few reasons. One, it’s a change of pace, so you get to see characters you’ve already seen in a different light as they try to get along with their former enemies. More importantly, it gives the characters a lot of reason to be conflicted. I was happily surprised at how many support conversations you can get between characters of Hoshido and Nohr. There are a lot of great ones of the characters trying to start a new life with their former enemies, showing how hard it can be for some of them, and you can really learn a lot about the characters in these conversations. No longer do they need to be one dimensional loyal fighters to win the war, but under these new conditions you see them go out of their comfort zone a bit, question some old beliefs they used to hold, etc. I really liked this. I liked the whole theme Revelations had of putting our differences aside to save everyone, of coming together and finding an ending everyone can be happy with. It all made me want to get as many support conversations as I could between these characters. I thought I’d already gotten to know them, but as it turned out, there were whole other sides to them I might of missed had I not played Revelations.

But what surprised me even more about the Revelations path, is that not only are there a lot of support conversations for characters of both Hoshido and Nohr, but there are even a lot of support conversation for their children! I figured, what are the chances that during the Revelations path, the 1 path in which you will get both Hoshido and Nohr characters, what are the chances that that you happen to marry certain Hoshido and Nohr characters and have them both have children, and then have the possibility of having a support conversation between those children? I figured that given how rare it is for a player to be able to get these support conversations between children of Hoshido and Nohr characters, there must not be any of them. But there are! There are quite a few support conversations you can get between children of Hoshido characters and children of Nohr characters, and they’re a lot of fun. I’m really glad I got to see them. I was so surprised and happy by this that, unlike my Birthright and Conquest playthroughs, in which I got eh, maybe a little under half of the children you can get on those paths, I actually married every single character you can in the game, and got every child character on the Revelations path. And I’m so happy I did, behind each one was a great new character I would have missed, and they had a lot of great support conversations. Additionally, because this required me to marry everyone, I got to see all the characters grow close with someone, which was a lot of fun. I got to see how these characters got along and bonded, and how they would lay the seeds and begin to change themselves to create peace between the kingdoms of Hoshido and Nohr. It was all very enjoyable, and overall made me really come around on the characters of Fire Emblem Fates. I ended up really loving them, and the team I built at the end felt special, and like interesting and well thought out characters that I was actually sad to leave. The characters of Fire Emblem Fates were excellent, at least if you take the time to play through all 3 paths, and I enjoyed them so much that I would say that my favorite of the 3 paths would be the Revelations path.

So that’s Fire Emblem Fates, or at least all my thoughts on it. To conclude, I’d like to ask an important question I asked earlier, was the decision to make the game so huge and give the player the choice to take 3 separate paths a good choice? Given that I blamed the lack of interesting stories and less interesting characters on this decision, it sounds like a no.

However! It’s easy to gloss over the good that this choice brought to the game. I can sit here and complain all I want about the story, themes, and characters of Fire Emblem Fates. But the fact of the matter is, if I combine my play time of all 3 paths, I put a total of 185 hours into this game. That makes it my most played 3DS game. I can’t, knowing that, say Fates was anything but an enjoyable and special experience for me. Because while I did have my problems with it, there’s something to be said about a game that can hold my attention for that long.

Before I played Fire Emblem Fates, I played the game to come after it, Fire Emblem Echoes. This was a game that, unlike Fates, radically departed from the structures and format of Awakening’s narrative and gameplay. And while I did enjoy my time with it, I eventually found the gameplay changes destructive to my enjoyment of the game, and the narrative at one point frustrated me so much that I ended up dropping the game. I’ve played other 3DS games in between the 3 paths of Fire Emblem Fates, and also failed to complete them due to boredom (Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice for example). As I get older, I find that I play games less often. I have less free time as I grow up and pursue my own interests outside of gaming, it is no longer the centre of my life. As a result of this, I’ve noticed I have less tolerance for games I might not enjoy, and I drop games easier. It makes it all the more impressive that Fates was able to hold my interest for so long, and I will admit, despite all its flaws, I’m really going to miss it. Because I liked having it, I liked how huge the game was. I liked that after a long day of work or school I could look forward to playing a fun safe Fire Emblem game. I liked that because it was so big I could keep looking forward to it. When I was between paths and playing other games, I could think about Fates in the back of my mind, wondering in awe how the next path would play it and how it would go. I posted my initial reaction to the Birthright playthrough a year ago. That means for more then one entire year this game was a constant part of my life in one way or another. I don’t think I can say that about any other single player game I’ve played, and you know, I really like that the developers decided to make the game so big, even if the overall quality of the narrative suffered. Because I liked having it as a constant part of my life, and I’m definitely going to miss it.

When I set out to play Fire Emblem Fates, I expected it to be Fire Emblem Awakening, maybe not as good, but bigger and longer, and huger. That was what I wanted, I loved Fire Emblem Awakening so much. I probably have a bit of nostalgia for it, and it’s possible I remember it being better than it actually is. But I just wanted more of it, even if it wasn’t as great, I just wanted more, and that’s exactly what Fates was. It allowed me to relive the wonders of Awakening, and for so long that I think it helped me get through some tough times in life.

That being said, while I am very happy that Fates was so similar to Awakening, I also do feel that, given how long and huge the game is, I have had enough of the Awakening formula. I’ve enjoyed it, but I’m ready to move on, I’m ready to see something new from Fire Emblem. Which is why I couldn’t be happier and more excited to see that, instead of just making another game like Awakening, the next Fire Emblem game on the Switch will be brand new with a completely different way of doing Fire Emblem (with the school setting and such), and I could not be more excited to try it out. Thanks for the good times with Fates Intelligent Systems, I look forward to seeing what you put out next.

And that’s that. Thank you so much to anyone who actually read all this. You are amazing and I really don’t deserve you. But it was a lot of fun. I love reflecting on experiences I have in life, and I hope that you are able to take something away from these rambling thoughts of mine. If you want more, don’t worry, I have a much bigger write up coming on another game I’ve recently completed, and much much more.