So I finally managed to beat Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright and after the success of Fire Emblem: Awakening, Fates had to really impress fans in order for it to continue being one of Nintendo’s go to franchises such as Mario, Zelda or Pokemon. So while I’m always an avid Fire Emblem fan it still raises the question, does Fates manage to impress enough to continue the new popularity to the series or was awakening a onetime thing.

Fire Emblem Fates branches off into three stories. Your character is caught in a war between your adopted family who you believed was your family all your life or your actual family who has longed for you to return for your entire life. If neither of these options sounds good you also have the option to choose neither. Birthright is when you side with your biological family and takes a more traditional Fire Emblem storyline where you are clearly doing the right thing and you have plenty of allies that see that.

The gameplay requires the same strategic movements as Conquest but I quickly noticed there was a significant drop in difficulty between the two games. Even though Birthright allows players to XP Grind during the game, it’s not really needed as no chapters in the game get any harder than the chapters in Conquest. It’s clearly catered to a wider audience with an easier difficulty setting for newer fans but not too easy to deter veteran fans of the series.

For the story, just like Conquest, I found myself really loving the story.  I was enjoying seeing what every chapter had to offer and it was also nice seeing some of the mysteries from Conquest get revealed while I was playing Birthright. I also enjoyed seeing how playing Conquest showed me insight to many things I would not have known if I played Birthright first. That being said I still had unanswered questions after playing both games which makes me very excited for Revelations. The story was amazing but actually darker than I expected. I was surprised at some chapters about how some things turned out and it was nice not expecting them to happen.

My final verdict is that this is a must have game for any strategy game fan just like Conquest. Birthright managed to create a game that was unique to Conquest so it truly felt like playing a completely different Fire Emblem game. Seeing the story unfold from a different perspective was nice and it was nice to not have the characters hate you at first ha ha.