Eh, plot-wise, Awakening was a borderline alright fantasy story with a clear beginning, an interminable middle, and an alright but typical end. Fates tries to do more, but it fails to be a coherent or interesting narrative anyways, so in the end, I don't really obligated to give that much more credit to Fates. Conquest doesn't even drink its' own kool-aid quite enough to the point where I could, like, ironically enjoy it.
At a character level, they're about even. I think overall I'd hand it to Fates, though.
Earghhhhhhhhh... I guess!
Awakening was a generic fantasy story that completely bungled its most compelling aspect (time travelling), but it would be incredible disingenuous for me to say that the story was outright
bad. I prefer the setting in Fates, and the individual moments were better/more memorable, but yeah overall, Fates is a complete mess.
Character wise, it isn't even a contest. Which characters in Awakening even
remotely comes close to the awesome trifecta of Royal Siblings/Retainers/sub characters? I'd even go as far as to say that the supports are way better here. They're more varied, better written and offer more sides to a given character. Like take Oboro for example (not sure if you're familiar with her yet, but she's great). Each of her supports dealt with a different aspect of her character in neat ways (her family, retainership/Takumi, FASHION, nohrian scum). I can't think of a character in Awakening that had a fantastic set of supports like her.
Awakening had the better kids, but Fates quickly closes the gap by bringing in 3 of the best kids and making them better, and taking 3
of the best characters and making 2 of them better.
TL;DR
Story: Awakening > Fates
Characters: Fates > Awakening
Gameplay: Fates >>> Awakening
Xander: Fates >>>>>Awakening