Alright, I just finished Revelation. Hard mode, no DLC (although I did use my path bonuses this time because fuck it why not). Didn't lose a single character this time.
My spoiler-free review is this: Fire Emblem Fates is a deeply flawed game, but all Fire Emblem games are deeply flawed and this was probably the most complete and satisfying game in the franchise to date. At least the modern franchise, I can't speak for the ones that we never got. It has a lot of pacing and difficulty problems and there are places I wish the story had gone that it didn't, but I liked the mechanics much more than Awakening despite not loving the new weapon system and not being fully convinced that this pair-up system completely works, although it is miles better than Awakening and it's become such a big part of the games that it can't be removed entirely.
Below are some general thoughts that could be considered spoiler-adjacent, but with no outright plot spoilers:
Spoiler:
I was pretty disappointed with parts of the relationship system. The gay relationships are a great addition, but I wish there had been more of them. One gay character per campaign is still below the statistical average, and those characters can still get straight married so I feel like it would be only fair if anyone could marry anyone. And it sucks that they can't have kids. An adoption option, or even some kind of bullshit magical explanation, would be really nice. I was also kind of turned off by the way all almost all relationship stuff is patrilineal. Only the men actually have set children and set relationships with them, with the women contributing only hair color and a barely-customized generic conversation with their kids.
Arguably even worse is the way their endgame epilogue cards work. If two characters are married only the man gets an epilogue with "and his wife was totally there too" tacked on to the end. Female characters actually lose story if they get married. That's terrible! I know a unique marriage epilogue for every single possible pair is next to impossible, but if that's the case just keep giving me their unmarried epilogues. "And all the women retired and became homemakers" is kind of a sour note to end the entire game on in my opinion.
Also, I didn't realize until we see a full-body shot of her in the final cut scene, but Sakura is waaaaay younger than I thought she was this entire time. I didn't realize she was supposed to be as young as Elise, since her combat model doesn't look that young to me. But yeah, apparently she's like ten years old. And it looks like people can still marry her. She doesn't have a kid, does she? I suspect she does unfortunately. Can we get the pedophilic marriages removed from future Fire Emblems please Nintendo? Or at least localization team?
Regarding Revelation as a game, I guess it's about what I wanted it to be. It's certainly not hard, I'd say it's as easy as Birthright if not even a little easier, but the lack of difficulty comes from a more interesting place this time. It's easier because you have so many resources that you can craft a really efficient, fully fleshed out, well-equipped army to steamroll the moderately difficult stages, which at least makes it feel like you're doing something. I feel like they could have notched the difficulty up a little more by at least giving the enemies some abilities and slightly smarter AI, but I'm willing to accept it the way it is. The one place where it really, really fell short for me difficulty-wise though was the castle battles. For optional fights that give you such a ludicrous advantage with your mountains of fortifications, and for how soul-crushingly difficult they were in Conquest, I really wanted to put my badass tricked out castle to a hell of a test. But instead we got pathetically weak, brick-stupid enemies blundering into traps and rolling in in extremely slow, sparse waves. I wanted a monstrously difficult Invasion 3 at least, but I was sorely disappointed by that.
And below here are some actual plot spoilers:
Spoiler:
I wasn't super impressed by the way the three stories tie together. in fact, they don't really. Gunter is the traitor in Revelation, and there's a brief hint of that in Conquest, but shouldn't we get a bad end in Conquest and Birthright because we don't actually stop Anankos or give Gunter a change of heart? I know Gunter's epilogue arguably refers to his betrayal or lack thereof, but that still doesn't explain why Anankos is never heard from again. The way the epilogues are formatted we know this isn't even a matter of staving off the end of the world for a few generations either, since they're written as ancient history. There are threads that tie the three stories together, but in other way they're completely unrelated, which is bizarre and kind of disappointing. What I really would have loved to see would have been the alternate Corrins having to team up to finish off Anankos, but I guess that wasn't meant to be. A more consistent through-line would have made the games feel a lot more connected and would have made playing them all more rewarding.
The whole Valla element seemed badly rushed to me. I'm not sure how it could have been much different, but seeing how the citizens live under the tyranny of Anankos would have fleshed it out some. And why are they still mostly invisible in their own dimension? I thought they were only like that because they were travelling outside of Valla, but no, no new models for them in their own country.
I was also disappointed that the awakening of the Fire Emblem was so abrupt in Revelation. In the other campaigns you slowly power it up over time, but never get to finish it. In Revelation you complete it but all four powerups come at the same time. A sense of progression where you power it up over the course of the whole Valla segment would have given a little more forward motion to that part of the game. It's not a major complaint, but I do feel like that progression was a tiny bit lacking.
If Nintendo can take the foundation of this game and tweak it even further in the next one I think we could get something really amazing. I hope they don't feel obligated to carry through all of the gimmicks of this game into the next one like they did with Awakening's generation gimmick though. I would be completely okay with offspring and the multiple paths staying in the games they're native to.
So the big question is, what about the $80 pricetag? I'm still not really sure how to answer that. I was extremely skeptical of it at first and I can't say I've been fully convinced it was fair. Don't get me wrong, there's a ton of game here and I feel pretty satisfied by how much Fire Emblem I got, but I still wouldn't really recommend most people play all three campaigns. My roommate is going to play my copy now that I'm done. He's not a huge Fire Emblem fan, and I kind of doubt he'll have the interest level to play this game three times. Maybe twice, but three is a bit much, especially with how comparatively weak of an experience I found Birthright to be.
So while I certainly wouldn't call it a total failure or anything I hope we don't see this distribution method again. Unfortunately (for me anyway) the community seems to have spoken with their dollars and easy mode Fire Emblem seems to be what the people want, so if it's a choice between overpaying for the game or only getting a Birthright-level difficulty I guess I'll grudgingly fork over for another abnormally expensive multigame.
