Board 8 > Should I get FE: Fates or FE: Echoes?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Storywise I'd definitely say Awakening > Conquest > Birthright > Revelations, but I quite liked the story in both of the first two. Awakening has my second favorite story of the FE games I've played, which is everything released in America from FE7 onwards excluding Shadow Dragon (Radiant Dawn is my favorite). I like the characters in every Fire Emblem game I've played. Fates has its fair share of bad characters, but it has a lot of great ones too.

I mean, Fates definitely has its fair share of flaws - most of which I'd attribute to the three game gimmick, personally - but I got a lot of enjoyment out of it, too. Particularly Conquest.
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Mac Arrowny posted...

(Radiant Dawn is my favorite)

Excellent taste. RD's about the only Fire Emblem where I feel the plot/setting actually adds to my opinion of the game. PoR's not bad for setting up some of that same good stuff but it really fumbles the last third of the game or so.

On the map mechanics discussion:

Rain/snow are terrible mechanics because you have no control over them and they just grind gameplay to a sluggish mess for a while. There's a reason they never came back despite the fact that FE8 otherwise copied over almost all of FE7's mechanics.

Hinoka's map is much more interesting because it puts the control in your hands. You can activate the dragon vein when it's most beneficial for you to do so. You can, also, if you wish, just ignore them entirely, and rely on a mix of your own fliers acting proactively and your ground units baiting enemies into losing fights. Yes it's a mechanic to learn, but it's much more interesting, and it puts choice squarely in player hands.

Narratively the structure of Hinoka's map is also very satisfying. You're fighting a dragon-blooded pegasus knight commander on her home turf who uses dragon veins to bolster the tactical options of her own soldiers, but are given a weapon to counter this so that it isn't just "by the way here are some OP fliers for you to fight". It makes you really feel like you're breaking into the enemy's stronghold.
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Lopen posted...

I'd imagine that's the case for most people. I feel like if you're seriously arguing Conquest has bad gameplay you're letting your distaste for other elements of the game bleed into your take on the gameplay, or you don't actually have a feel for what makes gameplay appealing in FE for most people and just attack the gameplay because it makes you come off as more intelligent or something.

Conquest's gameplay should be considered fairly solid for anyone that likes Fire Emblem, full stop. Like I'm not saying it has to be your favorite for gameplay but I feel like by anything resembling an objective measure it shouldn't really be considered bad in that department, either.

You can consider it whatever you want but I don't like it and I don't have to pretend to. I wouldn't recommend it to someone, which is what this topic is about. And I wouldn't tell someone upset with Birthright, "try Conquest, it's better!", because I don't agree with that.

Incidentally I don't like Fates' general mechanics at all either so I think we're probably starting the two games in different places to begin with.

NeoElfboy posted...

Narratively the structure of Hinoka's map is also very satisfying. You're fighting a dragon-blooded pegasus knight commander on her home turf who uses dragon veins to bolster the tactical options of her own soldiers, but are given a weapon to counter this so that it isn't just "by the way here are some OP fliers for you to fight". It makes you really feel like you're breaking into the enemy's stronghold.

it feels like the enemy's stronghold is a smash bros stage
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Well I wouldn't recommend Conquest terribly much either cause total package I don't like the game all that much.

But if we're taking gameplay in a vacuum it's good and you trying to pretend it's "just as bad as Birthright" just makes me think you're not really someone I'd consider credible talking about the merits of Fire Emblem gameplay to begin with. Birthright is way worse.
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Lopen posted...

But if we're taking gameplay in a vacuum it's good and you trying to pretend it's "just as bad as Birthright" just makes me think you're not really someone I'd consider credible talking about the merits of Fire Emblem gameplay to begin with. Birthright is way worse.

Gun to my head I'd rather replay Birthright than Conquest. *shrug*
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Well to be clear I'm not even saying that Conquest is necessarily "objectively better than Birthright" or anything like that.

There are reasons someone might prefer Birthright. You could slightly prefer the story or characters, or think that the style of gameplay works better with random encounter maps, or think the gameplay is ruined by the mechanics to the point that none of the maps in either game are able to be redeemed. I'd guess that you're some combination of these things, but I mean, if to someone who is not someone who hates things like skills or multiclassing or whatever it is that ruins it for you then your opinion doesn't really have much value because there are things Conquest does better that just don't register to you.

It's kinda like a wine taster asking me my opinion of two random chateau de feet est 1498 wines. I'm not going to be able to distinguish.
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Like to put it another way I'm sorta on that level with Awakening vs Birthright on gameplay

Birthright's gameplay should be considered better because the unit balance and skill balance are better and the multiclassing is better implemented and pair up isn't broken

But I think if you've got braindead killing field maps like in Awakening and Birthright I'd rather just have the ability to make super broken units like in Awakening.

But I wouldn't say "well they're both equally bad" I'd say "well I like Awakening's gameplay better BUT"
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To try to answer the original question, based on what you liked of Awakening, Fates is, at worst, more of the same on an aesthetic and superficiality level. I personally think it's a slight upgrade on Awakening with the addition of the between levels hub-world and other extended character interactivity. If pairing characters up is what you find most enjoyable, Birthright is a lot more lenient with the unlimited skirmishes it throws at you to build up support ranks. Conquest is a lot more traditional in that regard. I'd recommend just looking up the respective casts beforehand and seeing who you like the look of the most.
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Lopen posted...

It's kinda like a wine taster asking me my opinion of two random chateau de feet est 1498 wines. I'm not going to be able to distinguish.

Why not?

Seriously though. You'd at least be able to say which one you like the most. Which is probably why he's asking you in the first place, right?
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Well I could say which one I like better but not in a way that I could presume to recommend a wine to someone who actually appreciates fine wines

Also in this metaphor he didn't ask me he asked wine tasters and then I just happened to offer my opinion as a rando pleb who happened to drink both wines.

Course this whole metaphor is kinda ironic since generally the people who think there's value in the 3DS games are the ones looked down upon by the Fire Emblem elitists but what are ya gonna do
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The thing i've noticed with Fire Emblem is as soon as it started to get popular everyone started to gang up on it. You've got the hipster old skoolers that think the newer ones are crap and then the Smash fanbase that hates it for having too many reps.
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shane15 posted...

The thing i've noticed with Fire Emblem is as soon as it started to get popular everyone started to gang up on it.

It got popular when it made some pretty dramatic shifts in how its designed. It's not exactly surprising that fans of the older games might not all be on board with something that's pretty different from what they actually liked about the series
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Well this got a lot of posts overnight.
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Kenri posted...

None of this is, like, unique for a localization of an FE game though. I'd agree that some of them are bad decisions but they're also relatively minor. Hardly a reason to say it's a bad translation unless you think Fire Emblem has literally never had a good one.

Compared to any other translation in the series history, Fates was INCREDIBLY heavy handed. And those are negative.

They cut content, they radically altered characters [Effie as a huge example; Soleil's another- since they altered her character it opens up dumb questions as why she's not a lesbian option (Since, hint, she's straight in Japan)] and character interactions (Ahem the "...." support, which was an actual conversation in the Japanese).

Compare that against Awakening, which had, at its worst, a mild alteration of Henry.

Only truly comparable bad translation was PoR which is more for cut content [Maniac Mode, which'd contrary to "It's a bad difficulty" statement, be reused in the same exact fashion [stat slam] as Lunatic in Shadow Dragon, New Mystery, Awakening, and Fates.]

This isn't "oh hey we added memes" or resaid things in a way that makes sense. No, they did full rewrites. Which is shit.
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Every game has "full rewrites" (of a handful of conversations for a handful of characters, which still isn't a major thing like you're claiming). Characters that make sense in Japan don't in the US, so they get changed for localization. That's how localization works and FE has pretty clearly always taken that approach over transliteration.

Airship_Canon posted...

character interactions (Ahem the "...." support, which was an actual conversation in the Japanese).

like i'll admit this is a ??? decision but it's one optional conservation between two characters that IIRC is only available on the secret third route anyway. it's not a major thing nor is it even important to their characters either way.
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Kenri posted...

Every game has "full rewrites" (of a handful of conversations for a handful of characters, which still isn't a major thing like you're claiming). Characters that make sense in Japan don't in the US, so they get changed for localization. That's how localization works and FE has pretty clearly always taken that approach over transliteration.

No, that's not what happened.

There are games that will alter dialogue or names if it won't translate very well due to cultural differences. There are games that will change jokes and references so it will be funnier to the target audience. There are games that will censor stuff if it's thought it would be more inappropriate in different countries. That's all well and good (to varying degrees), but Fates just straight made shit up and changed things that had absolutely no reason to be changed. It takes an astounding amount of balls to take a character's entire personality and change it something completely different just because they felt like writing their own damn fan-fiction or whatever. Fates makes a ton of braindead localization choices for no purpose that can't even be compared to other games that make changes (for better or worse) that are intended to translate the intent of the original even if it isn't a word-for-word translation.
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Grand Kirby posted...

There are games that will change jokes and references so it will be funnier to the target audience. There are games that will censor stuff if it's thought it would be more inappropriate in different countries. That's all well and good (to varying degrees), but Fates just straight made shit up and changed things that had absolutely no reason to be changed. It takes an astounding amount of balls to take a character's entire personality and change it something completely different just because they felt like writing their own damn fan-fiction or whatever.

The latter is just the former, but now someone's upset about it.

Also other FE games straight up made stuff up in translation too so I'm still not seeing the difference.
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Translations change stuff and this isn't remotely new. Sometimes it's to the benefit of the game's local market; the most obvious example here is that the "petting" mini-game in Fates would have created bad press, so it's hard to argue it was a bad decision to remove it. The Soleil change probably falls under this too honestly; her Japanese version pushes "being gay is just a phase!" really hard IIRC. Some other changes like the Beruka/Saizo one I don't get and yeah deserve the criticism they receive.

The removal of Maniac Mode in PoR is a far greater sin, because it actually does change the game itself; in particular, as a Fire Emblem expert, Path of Radiance is the most toothless game in the series on its highest difficulty, and it's this way because Nintendo of America clearly gave no thought to players like me. (I still like the game and circumvent this issue by doing goofy challenges, but I shouldn't have to.)

Though in all cases I think there's been a recent overreaction to poor localization choices; at worst they rarely have a profound effect on the game and you should still easily be able to appreciate (or criticize!) the underlying game just fine. I think it's crazy how some people will boycott a game over a changed outfit.
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The original Soleil story in the Japanese version is the worst thing the series has ever written, so even if the updated version has some flaws it's still waaay better than what we could have gotten.

Funny thing about the PoR translation - it changed dialogue to make Ike/Soren seem less like a pairing and for Ike to seem more straight in general. They added in flirty-esque dialogue Ike has with other female characters and changed the final Soren support conversation from "you were the only one who helped" to "you and Greil were the only ones who helped". It also changed "you are the only one special to me" to "you are my only friend".
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Interesting. I knew that the localization had made Ike and Elincia's dialog seem more potentially romantic (resulting in some whiplash for their shippers in RD when the latter game made it clear that nope that wasn't a thing at all), but didn't know that about Ike/Soren.
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I like echoes a bit more. It's significantly tougher than Fates but very fun and rewarding unless you get screwed by rng since leveling in this game is a nerve wracking ordeal between getting significant boosts and fuck all. But story is better, characters are better overall and while it doesn't have as many waifus, it does have better maps and exploration. Less gimmicks per map outside of the final optional dungeon of doom.
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