Fates was the next game on my list and it has been an amazing ride. The cassette I got was for the path called Conquest where you play as an ally to the kingdom of Nohr, bent on ending the war by conquering the nearby kingdom of Hoshido. But when the time came to choose paths I decided to side with Hoshido against Nohr and thus began the path called Birthright.
This is the only path where I played the beginning of the story, otherwise I'd just skip ahead to where the paths branched. The darkness and general coldness and strictness of Nohr didn't appeal to me at all, except for Elise who was an almost literal ray of sunshine. I was sad when Gunter was killed by Hans, but so excited when I got to visit Hoshido with my siblings only to be shocked when Mikoto was killed. What followed was a long winding road of Hoshido fighting to suppress the Nohrian forces and finally reaching the Nohrian fortress for the final showdown. Azura was a mystery figure and I soon figured out that she was meant to die. As Birthright was the first path I followed it was also the path where I figured stuff out and Azura was way underlevelled by the time I figured out I could make her useful with a Heart Seal.
Kaze quickly became my favourite character and I was devastated when he died, to the point where I stopped playing for a while just to calm my mind. I kept hoping til the end of the path that he would have miraculously survived, but nothing.
My Avatar married Silas and Kana became my second favourite and I let him come along for everything.
When I finally reached the fortress and was reunited with Elise I was so happy, but that quickly became a tough heartache when Elise stepped in front of my Avatar when Xander took a swing at her and promptly died in his arms. For a second I hoped that Elise's death would be the turning point that would unite the Nohrian and Hoshidan sides in their final assault against King Garon, but no such luck.
The end of Birthright only created more questions. Who's Anankos? What really happened to Takumi? What's up with Azura's song? Who really is Azura? What really happened to King Garon? Is the Bottomless Canyon really bottomless? Where is the Fire Emblem in this story?
After Birthright I decided to play through Conquest too and see if this side offered any answers. But no. This side offered no answers to the previous questions and actually created more, like what was King Garon's motive for kidnapping the Avatar in the first place? What really happened with Azura's mother? I was also really annoyed that neither Birthright nor Conquest offered any sort of explanation to who/what the purple-glowing enemies were, and nobody even mentioned or seemed bothered by the fact that they were glowing purple.
However, the royal siblings of Nohr really grew on me. Where I had previosuly only liked Elise somewhat I now found that Camilla, Leo and Xander all grew on me. Especially Xander.
This was probably the least eventful path as it was pretty much same-same as Birthright just from a different perspective. Only thing different was how happy I was when I was finally able to kill Hans and Iago, especially Iago. That bitch can burn in a fire.
I married Jakob this time and he grew to become one of my favourites. He's such a sweetie ♥
I read a lot about the different characters after I finished the game and I'm a little sad I didn't get to know Laslow, Odin and Selena better - because they are second gen characters from Awakening under false names! Laslow = Inigo, Olivia's son, Odin = Owain, Lissa's son, Selena = Severa, Cordelia's daughter.
Then it was finally time to get answers for all my questions. This last path was frickin epic and apart from having the same characters, it was very different from the first two paths.
First off I get to find out who Azura really is and what happened to her mother and to top it off I get to find out where the purple-glowing people are coming from and why they are glowing. I get to find out who/what Anankos is and what he did and what happened to Garon. And also what's at the bottom of the Bottomless Canyon. That's all basically straight off the bat. Then comes the struggle to convince everyone else that it's true, but amazingly the Avatar manages to bring both the royal families together and they fight to defeat Anankos and restore peace to all three kingdoms without anyone having to die.
This path made me really want to pair off Ryoma with Scarlet because all their interactions together made me think they liked each other, but I had already planned pairings for the royal siblings (Ryoma+Elise, Hinoka+Leo, Takumi+Camilla, Sakura and Xander got pairings outside the family).
My Avatar married Kaze for the last path, because he was still my favourite and I can't have a path without Kana.
The last four or five chapters of Revelation were just epicness upon epicness. First I got to fight Queen Arete (Azura's mother), then Queen Mikoto (the Avatar's mother and at the same time find out about the Avatar's background!), then King Sumeragi (the Hoshidan siblings' father), and then finally Anankos. The fight against Anankos was split into three parts. First the part where you fight his presence in Gunter. Then when you fight his presence in the statue-esque worm-thing. After that the game for a second makes you think you've won, before Anankos is truly awakened and you get an amazingly epic fight against a real dragon (much more epic than the fight on the back of Grima in Awakening).
The end game was extremely satisfying and I was so happy with how everything turned out. Everyone lived! Amazeballs! :D:D:D:D:D And somehow Azura became a favourite this time around ♥
There was just one little thing that bothered me and it's that you never find out what happened to Takumi in the first two paths. I guess Anankos influenced him somehow, or Iago, but how did they get him and why him?
I spent 122 hours on this game and I enjoyed every second (except for the dying). All in all I think I enjoyed Fates far more than Awakening.
Favourite characters:
