Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright—Done and dusted

King Garon is no more, and thus I'm back for my final post about the Hoshido side of Fates.

The final showdown was not as excruciatingly hard as I had feared, but that's not saying much given the forgiving difficulty parameters I chose at the beginning of my playthrough. I tremble at the though of tackling an old-school entry of FE and having to deal with permadeath and its harsh consequences—and I'm thinking first and foremost about fake longevity there. I wouldn't have minded tackling a given battle ten times in a row in order to let all my units escape unscathed when I was a teenager starved with games, but I certainly would mind now that I have a backlog the size of the Everest to polish off. Oh, well; no need to worry about future FE playthroughs now, I guess. I'll see how it works out when I play these intimidating older entries; and in the meantime, let's move back to the subject at hand, namely the end of my run.
 
I'll be honest: although I'm quite delighted with my Birthright playthrough and proud of the feats I managed to accomplish as a complete beginner, I'm harbouring sour feelings towards Fates right now. The reason is pretty simple: as I witnessed the purposefully vague and unconclusive ending that unfolded at the end of my 16-hours run, I realised that Fates was not the game I had imagined. Before purchasing it, I assumed Fates was a trilogy of standalone games à la Pokemon, only with a wider range of narrative variations; however, Birthright forced me to confront the awful truth—Pokemon this is not, indeed. Far from being the triumvirate of SRPG masterpieces I pictured in my eager mind, Fates is one big pie of a single game that was arbitrarily divided into three portions—each portion being then sold for the price of the full pie. Birthright is not solid and meaty enough to stand as a game in its own right, and it takes but a playthrough to realise it. Not only were there still heaps of unanswered questions when the credits rolled, from the true nature and purpose of Azura to the reason why Garon changed so much lately, but I was also left unsated and craving for more. This was not due to the shortness of my run per se—I've played plenty of 15-hours playthroughs that left me deeply satiated—but rather to the fact that Birthright is a truncated game that cannot offer a fully satisfying gaming experience.

Now, to cut a standalone game in three and sell it as three distinct games—with the matching price tags, obviously—is definitely a rip-off and a swindle in my book. I have a hard time believing that Nintendo pulled off such a dirty sham, and yet the facts are there: I forked out $120 to get the full Fire Emblem Fates experience, courtesy of Ninty and their money-mongering schemes. After the region-locking, the shortage of games and the gimmickry, this was definitely the last straw for me, and I thus officially declare that I will stop supporting Nintendo at the end of the 3DS' tenure. Granted, they are the company that single-handedly got me into gaming twice, and that should count for something; but although I'm obviously forever grateful for the major part they played in my gaming career, I never let the past cloud my assessment of the present—and my assessment of Nintendo's current policies is scathing. I don't like their decisions and haven't done so for quite some time, and that shameless Fates scam is the last indignity I will suffer at their hands. There will thus be no more Nintendo handhelds for me, even if this implies renouncing future Pokemon entries. I don't think I'll be missing that much anyway, given that they seem to have become unable to develop their own IPs on their own machines in what can be considered a decent amount of time.

Rants and pledges asides, I won't pick up Conquest or Revelations right away. I spent 33 hours toiling through Birthright, only to be left feeling unsated and cheated when the credits rolled; I thus need some time away from Fates to nurse my wounds and rekindle my desire to play that game. But fear not, dear fellow gamers: I'm definitely planning to polish off the whole package, all the more so as the gameplay itself was quite satisfactory. Let's thus meet later to savour the rest of the Fates pie, shall we? Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!