In 2013, Fire Emblem Awakening saved the franchise — its developers have been vocal that, at the time, it was planned to be the last Fire Emblem game. But the success of Awakening was beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, reinvigorating the defining strategy franchise. The question after that, of course, becomes, how do you follow up such a seminal game? The answer Nintendo and Intelligent Systems landed on was to do something wildly experimental, and even take cues from Pokémon’s dual-release approach. What resulted was an uneven trio of games, but an experience that is utterly and wholly unique.
Fire Emblem Fates tells the story of a young hero named Corrin, drawn into a brutal conflict between their birth family in the Kingdom of Hoshido and their adopted family in the Kingdom of Nohr. Like Robin in Awakening, Corrin is a defined customizable avatar with their own voice and personality, giving the player some wiggle room in how they interpret the protagonist.
But the interesting split of Corrin’s allegiance directly played into how these games were developed — I say games because Fire Emblem Fates is actually three different games. At launch, there were two different versions of Fates you could buy: Birthright and Conquest. But unlike Pokémon, these games didn’t just have minor differences; for all intents, they were entirely separate experiences. In one Corrin sides with Hoshino, and in the other Nohr — meaning drastically different stories, maps, characters, etc. Then, after launch a third DLC campaign called Revelation was released, essentially acting as a “true route” that brought both games together.
It’s hard not to look at the whole thing a bit cynically, especially when fans had to pay triple the price to see the whole experience — but each Fates game is its own fully fleshed out game, with different intents, themes, and gameplay experiences. But for the purposes of this, we’ll be talking mostly about Birthright and Conquest, as those feel more like the “halves” of Fate. By contrast, Revelation feels much more like a post-launch DLC meant to satisfy all fans, and in doing so doesn’t strive to do anything nearly as interesting as the other two. It’s fine, but unexceptional.
Playing both Birthright and Conquest creates this fascinating tapestry of a story, and these games are most interesting when you can compare them to each other. While the initial three-game plan was shocking, the experiment actually panned out fairly successfully, although a lot of the credit there can be applied to how fantastic Conquest specifically is. And that’s because by splitting Fates in two, it allowed Intelligent Systems to really lean into unique aspects, and even audiences.
Birthright is specifically designed as an introduction to Fire Emblem, a more story-heavy experience with “easier” gameplay. This is meant to be an onboarding experience, and while it may not have the most complex tactical experience, Birthright smartly leaned into Awakening’s best elements by focusing on humor, characters, and relationships. There’s a much lighter tone to Birthright, and it let the game really flourish in terms of building character relationships, especially with a more complex relationship system resulting in marriage and child units.
In a roundabout way, Birthright feels like it leans more into the anime trope inspirations, but in this case, it actually works. There are still battles going on, but the lighthearted aesthetic and tone make the game much more welcoming.
Conquest, by comparison, is much darker, both in terms of visual aesthetic and the story that’s told. The script and storytelling in Conquest are, unfortunately, not the best that’s been seen in Fire Emblem, but you still get some fantastically complex characters and relationships. But the real key that makes Conquest the best part of Fates is its gameplay, specifically the map design. Conquest is drastically more difficult than Birthright, and through that, it leans more into complex tactical mechanics and situations that challenge the player to adapt.
There’s a greater variety of objectives — you have escape missions, defense missions, missions to defeat a key target, etc. But then mixed into those more varied objectives are unique gimmicks that integrally make missions feel unique. One map might have wind currents that can change the movement amount of flying units. Another has poison pots you can smash to poison entire groups of enemy units, but they can do the same to you.
Almost every map in Conquest has some kind of unique idea or gimmick, and you also don’t have the ability to train your units outside of main battles, like in Birthright. This creates a truly dynamic campaign that has you juggling which units you want to use and who gets experience. It feels like classic Fire Emblem in all the best ways, but with more modern improvements.
And in a lot of ways, it feels like it only happened because Fates got split into two halves, because the team could focus on two drastically different experiences. Fates isn’t nearly the best Fire Emblem, its story is an absolute incoherent mess at times, but it’s undeniable that it had the guts to try something different.
Looking at the rest of the series in retrospect now, that’s become the defining feature of Fire Emblem — each game tackling something new and ambitious. Both Three Houses and Engage do the same thing. And it might not be the way if Fates hadn’t set the precedent, striking out with something new, when it could have just aped Awakening.
