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[Coffee Dog]

Fates whoops the absolute shit out of awakening if you play Fire emblem for the gameplay. Birthright is like awakening with actual map design (pair ups require thinking! Maps aren't solely big empty fields!), and Conquest is straight up one of the best games in the series.

If you play Fire Emblem for the story (god help you) I can see how you'd prefer awakening, but I wouldn't call Awakening's story good by any means. All are trash and awakening's is simply the least bad.

Edit: put simply, I'm glad that awakening kept the series alive and I'm glad that it introduced a lot of mechanics, but Fates takes those ideas and refines them to the point of Awakening becoming obsolete. I had fun with awakening when it released because it was new, but I don't think I'll ever go back to it.

 

[hampig]

Loved Awakening. Beat it which is rare for a game of that length. Conquest I'm about half way through and I doubt I'll finish.

 

[ChrisSTARR]

As someone whom has never watched a single Fire Emblem story sequence all the way through, Fates is clearly the better game.

 

[shoryukens]

Awakening is a little easier and it's a stand alone experience so I'd recommend that.

 

[Tyraniboah]

Awakening has a better narrative and better characters, though it's not by much. Fates has better gameplay and the better soundtrack by a lot. If you haven't been on board since Sacred Stones, get Awakening. Matter of fact, just play Awakening. If you enjoy it then get Conquest since you have experience with the series prior to Awakening....ignore the story too. Making something up in your head is almost assuredly better than what you'd get out of the story

 

[nickgia]

Go with Awakening. Fates has the worst characters out of the whole FE series.

 

[Complistic]

I honestly think Awakening is a better intro to the series.

 

[sector4]

Awakening, easily, you chose well OP, enjoy!

 

[Forkball]

I beat Awakening and Birthright, and I'm currently on Chapter 20 of Conquest. I haven't touched Revelations yet.

I would say Awakening is definitely better in terms of characters and story. It's not a brilliant story, but there are a lot of twists and turns that will keep you interested. The marriage/child mechanic really hooked in me in Awakening while in Fates I mostly ignored it due to how it's implemented. The gameplay is great and there's a lot of content. It is an excellent introduction or reintroduction to the series.

Birthright is a more expanded version of Awakening. The maps are a bit more clever, and character skills are more interesting. There is also no weapon degradation. I didn't mind it in Awakening, but some people probably wouldn't like it. There is technically even more content than Awakening in terms of sheer number of maps and fiddling around in My Castle.

Conquest is very unpredictable, in a good way. Each map basically has its own gimmick that is unique and causes you to plan out your battles very differently from map to map. It is not by the numbers at all and introduces some much needed variety after Awakening and Birthright. I will say that Birthright had more interesting units, both in personality and ability.

I'm not sure if Awakening is technically a better game, but at the time it felt completely fresh and exciting. Fates isn't redundant by any stretch, but the new features implemented are not huge advances in the series. I would recommend all of them to be honest, go Awakening -> Birthright -> Conquest (then Revelations I guess?).

 

[Anura]

If conquest had a better story it would be THE best game in the series. But alas, it's story is easily one of the worst I've ever played through. In Awakening there were so really nice twists to keep the story fun and interesting. Don't get me wrong it wasn't a good story but it was certainly an enjoyable romp. The stories in fates (especially conquest) are not only bad but also insanely boring! There's no twists that I can remember and the ones I do remember aren't even surprising enough to be called a twist.

 

[Babyshams]

Do you want your characters to have feet? If so Fates, if not Awakening.

 

[Azuran]

Why do people keep mentioning Awakening is a better intro to the series? OP stated that he has played FE games before so that point makes no sense here.

 

[E-flux]

wh

at

?????

My budding and i bought the different versions and as we started playing them and started talking about it we found out that characters like Silas, Mozu and many others were the same regardless of the storyline, it was super disappointing to talk about the differences because outside of the maps and family characters most of the characters we ran into were the same.

 

[Moonlight]

My budding and i bought the different versions and as we started playing them and started talking about it we found out that characters like Silas, Mozu and many others were the same regardless of the storyline, it was super disappointing to talk about the differences because outside of the maps and family characters most of the characters we ran into were the same.

There are like, six characters you get around the beginning who are shared between both routes. All of those characters you mention have their own selection of supports with a decent amount of the close to twenty unique characters per primary route.

Birthright and Conquest share the same first six missions. Everything else diverges.

 

[Goldboy]

The story in both Awakening and Fates is pretty bad, but Awakening's story is slightly better. Fates is far superior in terms of gameplay though.

 

[Shahadan]

Birthright is fucking trash I'm struggling to gather the will to continue.

Awakening might have been easy but it wasn't half as boring as this and some character were actually enjoyable

 

[Ninferno]

Fates is the better of the two, especially Conquest. However they are still hugely similar and you can't go wrong with either of them. Story-wise they are both mediocre to bad, with Awakening being a tiny bit more tolerable, but gameplay-wise Fates is a lot more polished having based off the Awakening formula.

That said, if you can find a copy of Awakening of much lower price than Fates then by all means go for it. If not, then Fates is still the better game after all. I'm actually quite sorry for its sales potentials to be severely hurt by the initial community backlash it received when the 3-path configuration was announced (albeit a terrible decision, and it doesn't help to poorly communicate it).

 

[Robottiimu2000]

Awakening felt a lot more polished all around... fates seems just so hastily put together..

 

[E-flux]

There are like, six characters you get around the beginning who are shared between both routes. All of those characters you mention have their own selection of supports with a decent amount of the close to twenty unique characters per primary route.

Birthright and Conquest share the same first six missions. Everything else diverges.

I'm pretty sure that other than Silas those other characters came from the early side missions but never the less, i disliked pretty much everything from the business model to the characters in them. I would rather suggest Shadow dragon to people than fates.

 

[Jyester]

It depends on your stance on pandering, genre tropes, and story. I expressed in a different thread that all the "onii-chan~" stuff was a massive turn-off for me. As others have mentioned, the characters in Fates are, as a whole, not that interesting and the story's premise is ridiculous. Gameplay is very similar in both games, but Awakening has a far better story.

I loved playing Awakening. I quit Fates halfway through.

 

[GenG3000]

hey Azura someone attacked our father, it was a mysterious dancer dressed just like you but in black, have you seen anyone fitting that description?

No? Darn, we will keep looking out.

 

[Makoto-Yuki]

Awakening.

 

[nluckett]

Do what I did and hook up your old Wii, track down a Wavebird and a memory card and get yourself a copy of Path of Radiance. Good times.

 

[Dark_castle]

Neither. Track down a copy of Path of Radiance, and after that, play Radiant Dawn.

 

[Seik]

I started playing Awakening two days ago and I'm fucking hooked now.

I got it at launch and stopped playing at like Chapter 2 because one of my character died (playing permadeath-style) and probably stopped playing because I had other games to play. I don't even know how I lost someone because now that I'm more invested into it, the game's quite easy if you're used to the weapon triangle and don't play like you don't care at all. I realized I was missing out on a very, very good game. But hey, better late than never.

Only thing that tickles me with FE:A is that I checked all the DLCs yesterday and there's like 2 games worth ($$$) of DLC content, holy shit...does the base game feels like a complete experience or shall I feel like something's missing if I don't buy any of the DLC?

 

[BuckRobotron]

Awakening for story and characters, relatively speaking. And, as has been stated often, Fates Conquest for gameplay focus. Conquest normal/classic without DLC abuse is a "just right" Fire Emblem experience for most.

Even with the "waifu" business I like Awakening a bit more, what with being able to be a more mature looking character and with (again, relatively) stable and/or mature options like Cherche and Say'ri.

 

[ryseing]

I started playing Awakening two days ago and I'm fucking hooked now.

I got it at launch and stopped playing at like Chapter 2 because one of my character died (playing permadeath-style) and probably stopped playing because I had other games to play. I don't even know how I lost someone because now that I'm more invested into it, the game's quite easy if you're used to the weapon triangle and don't play like you don't care at all. I realized I was missing out on a very, very good game. But hey, better late than never.

Only thing that tickles me with FE:A is that I checked all the DLCs yesterday and there's like 2 games worth ($$$) of DLC content, holy shit...does the base game feels like a complete experience or shall I feel like something's missing if I don't buy any of the DLC?

There's a good amount of free DLC via Spotpass. Only get the paid stuff if you're into min/maxing.

 

[EDarkness]

I totally enjoyed Awakening much more than Fates. The characters were better and the story was better as well. Robin is pretty badass in that game. Corrin? Ugh. Though, I will admit that like others have said, Fates has more interesting gameplay, but more gimmick maps that suck (looking at you stupid wind map). I'd say go with Awakening.

 

[KO Traveling Hobo]

I never played Fates because Awakening was an absolute disappointment in every department, so, reading this, I can't believe Fates has an even worse story and characters.

how

I don't mean to insult the people who enjoy Fates and this is just my opinion, but Birthright is one of the most aggressively poorly written games I have played in a very long time. And this is coming from someone who despised the stepdown in quality that Awakening took.

I can't think of any other game where I have straight up skipped cutscenes on the first playthrough.

 

[EDarkness]

I don't mean to insult the people who enjoy Fates and this is just my opinion, but Birthright is one of the most aggressively poorly written games I have played in a very long time. And this is coming from someone who despised the stepdown in quality that Awakening took.

I can't think of any other game where I have straight up skipped cutscenes on the first playthrough.

I say the same thing about Conquest. I was about ready to give up the game completely. The silly missions and the shitty ass story was driving me to give that game up. I slogged through until the end (took me some weeks) and moved on the Birthright which I felt was better, but too damn easy. Story was still bad, but I could deal with it better than stupid ass Corrin in Conquest. Everyone in Conquest was flat out dumb as hell.

 

[KO Traveling Hobo]

I say the same thing about Conquest. I was about ready to give up the game completely. The silly missions and the shitty ass story was driving me to give that game up. I slogged through until the end (took me some weeks) and moved on the Birthright which I felt was better, but too damn easy. Story was still bad, but I could deal with it better than stupid ass Corrin in Conquest. Everyone in Conquest was flat out dumb as hell.

I haven't played Conquest yet, but yeah, I've been told it gets even worse.

 

[chaosblade]

I started playing Awakening two days ago and I'm fucking hooked now.

I got it at launch and stopped playing at like Chapter 2 because one of my character died (playing permadeath-style) and probably stopped playing because I had other games to play. I don't even know how I lost someone because now that I'm more invested into it, the game's quite easy if you're used to the weapon triangle and don't play like you don't care at all. I realized I was missing out on a very, very good game. But hey, better late than never.

Only thing that tickles me with FE:A is that I checked all the DLCs yesterday and there's like 2 games worth ($$$) of DLC content, holy shit...does the base game feels like a complete experience or shall I feel like something's missing if I don't buy any of the DLC?

The DLC is overpriced and not worth your money. Awakening is a complete package and then some without spending a dime on DLC. It has the most built-in chapters of any single FE game (obviously Fates has more combined, but it is also sold as 2-3 games). There is some story DLC, but the story isn't all that good anyway and the DLC isn't necessary to understand anything. Including the free spotpass content, there are 50 chapters+paralogues.



And anyone expecting anything from the story in Fates is going to come away disappointed. It can't be said enough - it's really bad. Disregard the story, play Conquest for the gameplay, enjoy one of the best Fire Emblem games.

 

[mhayes86]

I much preferred Awakening over Fates. I found the characters, world, and story to be more memorable.