Ok. Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright is finally a wrap. Thought I'd come in and throw in some final thoughts before moving onto Conquest.
-My 3DS record says my playtime was 92 hours, and I kind of don't believe that. At least half my time was spent messing around and grinding supports in Castle battles. I would say the actual game took me ~60 hours to beat on hard, which I'm kind of embarrassed by, but it did take me way too long to get my FE feet back under me.
-The download battles are super fun and that's why I spent so much time in them. It was great having a place to grind supports that didn't make my team OP EXP wise and just the battles themselves were fun ways to mess around and try new strategy.
-Story was OK. Not great, but not awful. It feels complete enough that if this were it, I'd be satisfied. I would say Azura's story and the Nohr people were undeveloped, but those aren't huge complaints to me as a singular tale.
-Supports were great overall and a ton of fun. Had way more fun here than in the normal story. Kids were all especially fun, and often more interesting than their parents. Shame they get the shaft in the main narrative.
-I liked how the epilogues fleshed out the kids' stories, but the wives seemed to get a bit shafted. Sucks because the women were by far my favorite characters. Men in Birthright were all kind of lame outside of Kage, Ryoma and maybe Silas.
-Class wise, Swordmaster played exactly how I liked and showed why it was still my favorite FE class. Sniper felt actually playable for once, but a lot of that was Takumi's special weapon. Kinshi knight felt woefully underpowered outside of the chapter it was introduced. Axe users shafted in general. Base Class wise, Buttler/Maid and High Ninja were the only two that felt inherently OP. Buttler was so powerful that it just negated any use of other staff users, especially since pure magic in this game is pretty lame.
-Character wise, Ryoma, Takumi, Hana, Kaza and Sophie were my MVPs. Kids in general seem like they could be super duper OP with a little planning, but Sophie is the only one that stood out in my playthrough. Ryoma felt like the only truly inherently OP unit, but I could see an argument for Kaze as well. Corrin didn't feel near as overpowered as Robin. She was very good, but not amazing. I didn't see why I would use her dragon attack at all when Yato just felt stronger with fewer weaknesses.
-Game was very much a victim to the reverse difficulty curve. Once I started promoting in the mid teen chapters, I just walked over everybody. Did the Paralagoues after Chapter 18 and those were semi tricky at times. Everything after that was a breeze besides maybe Chapter 25 and 27. 25 was only tricky until I figured out it was meant to be an offensive chapter where I went to the enemy and hunted them down instead of playing defense and having them come to me like most of the rest of the game.
-Most of the map design was pretty cool and fun. Not amazing, but acceptable. Dragon Vein added some cool ideas.
I think that covers my basic thoughts. I absolutely loved it and it left me even more excited to play Conquest. Felt like a great upgrade from the step back that was Awakening, even if I did enjoy that game as well despite its problems. I'd post all my marriage pairings, but I've already wrote way, way too much so I'll end here.
