Revelation has garnered a reputation for being gimmicky since I last played it and that is true. Nearly every map has some sort of gimmick to it, whether it's breaking snow to move forward or activating dragon veins to reach bosses but does that really make it a bad game? I personally had a lot of fun going through each map and seeing what kind of twist awaited me. Some were awful and some were super interesting but none of them made me think the game was bad in any capacity. My two least favourite maps here were also used in Birthright (the bamboo trap forest) and Conquest (the wind temple blowing units across the map) but other than that most of them were fine at worst.
I can appreciate that if you're aiming for an LTC then yeah, these maps are annoying to play but for a regular playthrough? I think these are fun and interesting with a few having some really good potential if they were implemented better.
The maps here help make this more interesting than Birthright but not as brutally challenging as Conquest for me. Revelation sits nicely in the middle in what it offers for me difficulty wise. Replaying the 3 games in quick succession made one thing about Revelation stand out to me: the enemies never use pair up on Normal difficulty. It's weird that a mechanic so strongly tied to Fates isn't used but as someone who has never fully gotten on board with pair up, it makes Revelation's difficulty curve the smoothest for me. Conquest felt like it would randomly spike and dip throughout while Birthright has a decent jump towards the end with Revelation gave me the smoothest experience which makes a huge difference.
Part of that is definitely down to having all 8 royals in your ranks but it's also part of the fun.
Revelation is designed to be played after Birthright and Conquest and the focus is put in its maps. It's very experimental and I can understand why it puts some people off but I legit love the approach. Constantly seeing new ideas from the devs is fun for me.
Storywise it's mostly just to give some answers to mysteries left over from Birthright/Conquest. The start is a little messy with how Corrin has to convince people to join them without saying why they should because of the curse but once everyone gets together and heads to Valla, I think it's perfectly fine. You don't get much from the Royals in the main story (thankfully we have support interactions) unfortunately but we do get a nice focus on Corrin as a character and their strengths and flaws. Playing Fates this time round, I deliberately detached myself from the role of the avatar character. My first run through these games had Corrin leave a poor impression on me. I couldn't connect with them and found some of the decisions they made to be frustrating, however pulling myself out the shoes of Corrin allowed me to view and understand Corrin as their own unique character and I've come to love Corrin a lot. They wear their heart on their sleeve, placing their trust in people no matter how naive or foolish it may come across and for me it's really endearing. In a world filled with so much strife and conflict, Corrin never wavers from their core beliefs and I love that.
Fates is messy, there is no doubt about that. The story written for the games was so overly ambitious that condensing it into a videogame format was always going to be an impossible challenge but while the story is messy overall, if you can clear your way through that mess and look hard enough, there is a lot of great stuff to love about Fates. These characters have so much more depth under their often tropey surface.
Having revisited all 3 Fates games again I can safely say Revelation is my favourite. It strikes the best balance of what I like in FE.
I don't think any of the 3 games deserve the amount of vitriol that has been thrown towards them throughout the years, they're not bad games. At worst they failed to meet expectations after the hype garnered from Awakening's success and the marketing but at their core, these are perfectly fine FE titles, with their own unique mechanics and if you go into them with an open mind, you will probably find something to love
I can appreciate that if you're aiming for an LTC then yeah, these maps are annoying to play but for a regular playthrough? I think these are fun and interesting with a few having some really good potential if they were implemented better.
The maps here help make this more interesting than Birthright but not as brutally challenging as Conquest for me. Revelation sits nicely in the middle in what it offers for me difficulty wise. Replaying the 3 games in quick succession made one thing about Revelation stand out to me: the enemies never use pair up on Normal difficulty. It's weird that a mechanic so strongly tied to Fates isn't used but as someone who has never fully gotten on board with pair up, it makes Revelation's difficulty curve the smoothest for me. Conquest felt like it would randomly spike and dip throughout while Birthright has a decent jump towards the end with Revelation gave me the smoothest experience which makes a huge difference.
Part of that is definitely down to having all 8 royals in your ranks but it's also part of the fun.
Revelation is designed to be played after Birthright and Conquest and the focus is put in its maps. It's very experimental and I can understand why it puts some people off but I legit love the approach. Constantly seeing new ideas from the devs is fun for me.
Storywise it's mostly just to give some answers to mysteries left over from Birthright/Conquest. The start is a little messy with how Corrin has to convince people to join them without saying why they should because of the curse but once everyone gets together and heads to Valla, I think it's perfectly fine. You don't get much from the Royals in the main story (thankfully we have support interactions) unfortunately but we do get a nice focus on Corrin as a character and their strengths and flaws. Playing Fates this time round, I deliberately detached myself from the role of the avatar character. My first run through these games had Corrin leave a poor impression on me. I couldn't connect with them and found some of the decisions they made to be frustrating, however pulling myself out the shoes of Corrin allowed me to view and understand Corrin as their own unique character and I've come to love Corrin a lot. They wear their heart on their sleeve, placing their trust in people no matter how naive or foolish it may come across and for me it's really endearing. In a world filled with so much strife and conflict, Corrin never wavers from their core beliefs and I love that.
Fates is messy, there is no doubt about that. The story written for the games was so overly ambitious that condensing it into a videogame format was always going to be an impossible challenge but while the story is messy overall, if you can clear your way through that mess and look hard enough, there is a lot of great stuff to love about Fates. These characters have so much more depth under their often tropey surface.
Having revisited all 3 Fates games again I can safely say Revelation is my favourite. It strikes the best balance of what I like in FE.
I don't think any of the 3 games deserve the amount of vitriol that has been thrown towards them throughout the years, they're not bad games. At worst they failed to meet expectations after the hype garnered from Awakening's success and the marketing but at their core, these are perfectly fine FE titles, with their own unique mechanics and if you go into them with an open mind, you will probably find something to love