Mekkah's Thoughts on Fire Emblem Revelation 

Revelation in a nutshell: If Corrin jumped down a bridge, would you? Everyone: Yes.

"Where everyone lives happily after" Scarlet: Bruh

My issue was the lore --or lack thereof. The other routes endlessly hint at Valla and Azura hints that she knows more than what she is letting on, but then when you get to Valla, she's just like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Why does Valla look like an unused Super Mario Galaxy level? Where are the people? Did Corrin literally become ruler of an empty dimension? We'll never know. Even the DLC doesn't explain enough --and using supplementary material to fill in plot holes is a bad move, regardless.

The fact that Revelations exists as a "golden route" made at least one of my friends decidedly not play all the routes of 3 Houses, playing ONLY Crimson Flower and Silver Snow and then saying "I'll go back if they introduce a 'canon route' where you recruit everyone, like Revelations.'" Meaning that the damage is already done.

I will always say this about Fates: I will never defend it, it has many flaws and is far from an ideal FE game. But Fates is also very personal to me since I played it every single day for about 2 years in my life that were not really the best. I love Fates and no matter what anyone says about it I will always remember it fondly. And yeah the Final battle in Revelations is fucking epic and the entire soundtrack slaps.

I was expecting this video to be all of 3 seconds long with just the video of Michel from the office screaming “NO GOD PLEASE NO!”

In my opinion the two strongest points of Fates for me are: 1. The Music. This is without question the best soundtrack of any Fire Emblem game and it's even more impressive when you think that they had to make the soundtrack for two games essentially. Almost every track in this game slaps, and that's super impressive when the soundtrack takes up 10+ discs on the physical release. I know it's not a huge selling point for the game itself, but I highly encourage people to check out the OST for this game, especially the battle tracks like You of the Light/Dark and Condemnation. 2. The Units. Not the characters specifically. I do think that the characters are very fun and obviously not meant to be taken seriously with how super one dimensional most of them are but they have their moments. What I'm speaking of specifically is the classes that they put into this game. So many of the units are interesting and fun to use and they remind me of first playing games in the series. It was always exciting to see what I could reclass stuff into and they really went all out on making some more diverse types of units. Playing each of the games once just to experience that unique type of play through that you'll have is incredibly fun and interesting, and tells a lot about the person playing and what they like the most about the series.

Honestly, i agree with the one guy from the unpopular opinions video who said its a good sandbox game. I liked making units, and that made the game enjoyable despite the story and maps.

I’d just like to say that I’m one of the people who just play through FE casually and treat it like a silly anime adventure, which is why I love awakening so much because there’s just so much to do. Revelations, to me at least, was still a snoozefest.

things that Revelations does well.... me forgetting that this game even exist

I think the biggest problem I had was that the enemy AI is basically boring as shit. All throughout most of the early game, every enemy won't attack until you come near it. Birthright had tons of enemies aggressively charging you, and Conquest made sure the enemies that waited for you were the scariest fuckers in the game, packed with terrifying skills you needed a plan to approach. Here... it's just utterly mindless and slow, no challenge whatsoever. Feed every last enemy to one unit if you want, the game won't stop you.

The best thing about Revelations, it showed everyone how to not make a Fire Emblem game.

Revelations is the worst possible route because cute tomboy Scarlet dies and I just can’t live with that.

Revelation has many, MANY issues but I’d definitely say that one of the primary issues with it is that the story does very little to get you invested. Fates already had issue with its world and map being ill defined but at least Birthright and Conquest gave you a general sense of where you were on the map and how you were progressing towards your goal. In Revelation, the minute you step into Valla the map vanishes and the player has no idea where they are. And that’s fine, a little disorientation is no issue, but from there the game gives you little to no info other than “you’re approaching castle Valla.” So it’s hard to feel like you’re making any progress when half of the maps look the same visually. Then come the question of why we are fighting to save Valla. Sure there’s an overall threat of Anankos destroying the world, but why should we care? Who are we fighting for? We spend little-no time with the citizens of Hoshido or Nohr to be invested in them (gotta play the other 2 games for that) and we literally only meet 1 living Vallite citizen, Anthony, who is ultimately a traitor. Are there people in Valla? Presumably based on the applause in the final cutscene, but the game sure doesn’t tell us. So aside from “bad man is bad” we don’t have a reason to care about Valla or the rest of Fatesland. Our only investment is via our connections with the cast. YMMV on that, but considering that only the royals and Gunter get any significant screen time, AND that said screen time is mostly just them bickering with or praising Corrin, they don’t feel like people and aren’t easy to get invested in either. Does Revelation have despicable enemies we can love to hate? No, obviously not. One of the strengths of FE is when it is able to make your enemies feel like real people, so that you either feel satisfied by beating them or sympathetic and maybe even guilty about having to kill them. In Revelation, though, the enemies are literally puppets with no will of their own. So as a result the player feels nothing when mowing them down. Even the commanders illicit little in the players since we’ve never met Sumeragi or Arete, and Mikoto was only around for the start of a chapter. Sure, the in universe characters have a reason to care, but the player sure doesn’t. And of course the big bad Anankos is just evil because he’s mad people forgot him. Not the player or any of their allies, mind you, just random people from the past we don’t know. Why should we care? He’s supposed to be sympathetic but I’ve never seen Anankos in a not crazy state so I can’t see any redeeming qualities. The same is true of Garon but at least he’s so comically evil that it’s at least amusing. Anankos just has too little to offer to be a satisfying final villain. So obviously if the writing is bad and the player isn’t invested in the story, they’ll focus on the gameplay. If Revelation had an amazing story people would probably still not love the game but I’d imagine they would be more forgiving of its shortcomings. But when you have a bad story and bad gameplay there’s no hiding the facts, and that’s why most people agree it’s the worst overall FE game.

Funny enough, a lot of people, myself included wanted a Rev type route for 3 Houses, where all the lords team up. But now that I've thought about it, that route would undermine the entire point of the game, which is probably Revelations biggest mistake. It made your choice no longer matter.

Funnily enough, Fates was a much more Fire Emblem-y game than Awakening. It got too much of a poisoned well though. The story was crud but it fixed all of Awakening's balance problems and it was hella fun to optimize. You played Birthright if you wanted yet another Awakening to breeze through. You played Conquest if you wanted to have a "classic" experience with old school FE difficulty. You played Revelations if you wanted to figure out whether Lazlow made an A+ ninja or how absurd a Nohr-tank'd Hisame could get.

I didn't even notice the weapons icons were all the same until you pointed it out. However, I did always find it bland that the stat boosters and tonics don't look unique like in Awakening (a 3DS FE that came before it).

While I admire Fates' (specifically Conquest, and to an extent Rev's) willingness to experiment with funkier map objectives and ideas (map interactions being a main point), I agree that these gimmicks don't make for good gameplay. There is still a lot of room to make good Fire Emblem with just the basics if it is balanced appropriately and has both good anti-turtles and enemy composition/positioning. That's not to say the gimmicks can't work, they just need to be better integrated and balanced. Given how they can drastically impact the flow of a map, it makes it a lot harder to playtest and create a consistent experience IMO. Totally possible if you're willing to put in the effort into really making it work, but IS seems to slap these things into the map without a ton of consideration for their implications on the enemies and how the map plays out as a result of this.

What bothers me most about Revelation is not the story, it's the worldbuilding. Fates in general has a problem with that already, but Revelation brings it to the forefront so clearly. Valla is nothing. It's empty. It's bits of scenery floating around in the air, but we're supposed to treat it like a third kingdom. There are no towns, no villages, no culture, no people whatsoever except the silent ghostly soldiers, and two very minor antagonists in Anthony and Arete. By the end, Corrin supposedly becomes the King/Queen of Valla but, of what? We've seen nothing to rule over except empty chunks of rock. Were the people freed? Is there a city somewhere cheering our name? What exactly are we supposed to care about when we have seen nothing of what this place is? Or is Valla supposed to be heaven or the afterlife, since dead people keep showing up there? It's not explained and it's not explored.

I still maintain that FE Warriors was the best FE Fates game. (thank you for pointing out the lack of unique item icons btw, it was one of the many little things that soured the game's UI for me - always have good item sprites, kiddies!)

Things Rev does well -Music -Setting -"Lore" Things it does wrong Literally everything else Also the reason what you are fight Anankos in "space" is because he is meant to he the Astral Dragon, os something that's connected to the realms of fates

Im honestly exactly the kind of player this game appeals to...having a boatload of units and so many customization options basically sold me on this game on its own. You simply have a huge amount of things you can do here (keep in mind, theres the base chapters and all of the paralouge chapters from both other games, which means you have ample opportunity to use those units. Couple that with a ton of skills, lots of which are really fun to use, great music and presentation for the 3ds and the multiplayer features (as well as a bunch of friends with similar mindsets who would actually play the mess of this games multiplayer with me while building units and skill hunting) and Ill say its one of the most worthwhile 20 euros Ive spent...Im a fan of rpgs and like games like disgaea especially and this game ticks those boxes. HOWEVER if I were to go hard classic snd just play through this game with no grinding, basically approach it like I would games like FE7...it really doesnt hold up. The campaign and the story simply arent what a Fire Emblem game should be, I acknowledge that fully, but I cant help having a soft spot for this mess of a game.

Fates could have been sooooo much better if they just dropped the batshit insane Valla plotline. If it was just a simple story of being forced to choose between supporting your adoptive or blood family, that could have been a seriously awesome setup for a FE game. They would of course have to make Nohr not so comically evil/Hoshido not so squeaky clean of course and give you some time to actually bond with both sets of siblings, but it really wouldn't be too hard to make that happen. There doesn't need to be a 3rd side where everyone lives happily ever after, espically if that 3rd side makes no fucking sense.

I was surprised when you talked about the weapon icons, it never even occurred to me that it could be a problem.

I used to love Rev because you could use everybody but even when I loved it there were specific points where I would have to put it down because a specific map is coming up. When I see the first Vallite chapter all of my energy is just sapped and I have to put the game down for a while because I'm reminded of what's to come. Now I'm of the mindset of why play Rev because Conquest is just superior in every way. Even if you can't use every unit you can effectively make any unit any class through partner seals.

Revelations shows what happens when you rely too much on the third party pulling the strings. FE usually has that third party plot twist, but it usually is never a satisfying thing to learn since political tensions between two sides can usually be boiled down to a super evil magical entity being the source.

I wanna hear Mekkah review Heirs of Fate for some reason.

I can’t wait for the Fates remake whenever that happens because there’s just soooo much potential for this

I think the one thing that angers me the most about Fates is that CQ and BR only happen because Azura just chooses not to tell people about Valla. In all three routes we see she is capable of bypassing the curse by either showing people Valla with a magic plot orb or just taking them to it directly. Oh and all three routes are actually canon because Heirs if Fates exists so there is no waving them off.

I feel like the board meeting for three houses went "okay so fates didn't really work out, let's try again"

I’m pretty sure the main reason the cutscenes use the battle portraits is specifically because of Corrin and her customization, ditto with Robin in Awakening. I WISH they did those little still-art pieces in the old games and just cropped Corrin mostly out of it (Robin they have no excuse though, they could have just put his hood over him like Grima for most of the game) because the battle portraits just don’t look that good out of battle.

To me, it's still so bewildering that Conquest and Revelation are part of the same game. Almost every map of conquest is really well designed and then you have this seemingly rushed dumpster fire attached to it.

The thumbnail is clickbait. This isn’t Thracia

In my play through of Revelations I called my unit "I say" so that all the characters aound like Foghorn Leghorn.

“everyone you care about survives” me, a scarlet fan: :(

I feel like Revelation would be better as a kind of post game to the first two routes

the most entertaining part of the LP was probably the amount of OMGs we had along the way.

Currently playing through Revelation now. Honestly, I’ve been working on the game on-and-off for a few months now. What I like the best is having all Fates units at your disposal. The music is beautiful- obviously- and the aesthetics are wonderful. I haven’t paid a single mind to the story as there is no point after having sat through Conquest and Birthright forever ago. IS should have given this game a bit more polish and just stuck with a single cartridge with all the paths instead of three separate ones. Glad you gave Fates a shot Mekkah and happy to see you could pull SOME positives from it.

I mean....I liked it. I hardly think fates in general is the "worst" fire emblem game. If anything i liked the idea of choosing between your adoptive family or your actual family. Every time i play it i put myself in corrins shoes and try to think how hard the choice would be and its actually pretty hard to make. Honestly my only real complaint was that revelations was a dlc and not part of the main game. It was fun, i liked a majority of the characters in it and was sad when i heard 3 houses was coming and that these characters wouldn't be the focus anymore. It also had character creation which 3 houses should have expanded on but didn't (i for one loved the character customization and was hoping they'd make it so you could start as a kitsune, wolf, manakete, etc. Honestly till i went on discord and watched fire emblem videos, i never realized how many people dislike this game. But opinions are opinions and i respect them. But i still think this is one of my favorited in the series that imo is more revisitable than awakening

The only thing unique to revelation that i like is the cross supports. Some nohrian/hoshidan supports are interesting (oboro and beruka for example) but otherwise this game is painful. Edit: i forgot, making a mycastle team of my favorites from both is kinda fun too. It baffles me when people talk about wanting a “golden route” for three houses. Do you really want revelation 2?

Honestly over the years I've started to wonder if Fates wasn't intentionally trying to tell a morally gray story at it's core aside from the siding with which family. Cause Conquest to me is like "what if you sided with the main villain like Garnef, Julius or Ashnard". How would the characters act in a situation where their boss is obviously evil. If that was the core idea that Conquest was trying to do by having Garon intentionally evil then I wouldn't mind. Really the execution is what I'd say is the problem. For one the only thing that makes Garon threatening is "You disobey me, I kill you". Like there are other ways to make him more of someone to be feared besides just threatening to kill you. And then you have Corrin's method of getting rid of Garon. All because IS wanted both Birthright and Conquest to mirror each other by having each route storm the opposing castle. In Birthright it's fine but in Conquest it feels very contrived. With the whole we got to get Garon to sit on this throne so everyone can see he's not the real Garon. Like Corrin could have started a secret rebellion against Garon. But we had to prioritize fighting Hoshido. I personally don't mind Golden Routes somewhat unless there is a catch to have most of the characters live. And Revelations does at least permanently kill off some characters where as in other routes then live.

it's honestly kind of disgusting how badly they treated scarlet. she can only support with corrin, she gets tortured and beaten to death in conquest, she doesn't get much screentime in the one route where she's playable permanently since she and ryoma are the last characters in birthright whose recruitment is mandatory, she dies two chapters after she joins in revelation (and unlike kaze in birthright, she does not get the luxury of being saved by corrin's A support), corrin can marry her in revelation but shows no emotion over her death and neither corrin nor kana ever acknowledge their wife/mother, she doesn't have any supports with ryoma despite their good chemistry and the fact that ryoma is the only one who gives a shit when she dies in the bottomless canyon, and her country's history is barely touched upon despite the fact that it was where sumeragi (corrin's stepfather and supposed real dad) was murdered. like, damn, intelligent systems really couldn't give the cute wyvern-riding tomboy a break, could they?

Half the fun of revelations is making shitty units into usable members of the army. But yea there's very little point when you can just use the hard carries like the royals

Dang, hearing that "Companions" theme kick in gets me so pumped, even in this Revelations video.

Its very intesting to hear te heavy difference between " Oh no. Oh no. " and a well developped explation of why Revelations was a mistake. Love ur work.

The worst part of this route is that it's literally impossible to play without pirating the game now

Min maxing and getting ideal builds on characters was such a chore, but I did have fun working out an efficient way to get the skills I wanted on the characters I wanted to use. Fates was more limited on secondary classes for everyone, so figuring out how to get what they wanted was neat, and the final maps had enemies that were tough enough to challenge those characters.

Okay but why are the anime cut scenes smoother than 3H?

My main issue with rev is mostly the balancing of certain units like Nyx, peri and some other retainers, they arrive some time later than they usually do in the other routes and if I'm not mistaken they come with the same level/stats or are not sufficiently autoleveled to where they are useful in the stage that they are recruited in.

Since I now just watched this, what would you think about the Heirs of Fate DLC?

I love the design of the Anankos statue rock thing so much. It’s very Bayonetta

I'm from the vein of gamers that want to escape from the realities of real life's tough decisions. And getting a "true" happy ending helps me achieve that. The anxiety of having to kill what would essentially be family in both rights turned me away from even trying the original 2 routes.

Personally, I enjoyed revelations because I'm a fiend who enjoys farming levels (thanks, Rune Factory), so I spent a lot of time grinding levels, getting statues to raise caps, min-maxing the arena, and seeing the (un-butchered) supports. The plot is a trash fire, and the gimmick maps get tiring, but I like how the game feels to control units and navigate menus.

I don't know if it was because Fates was my first FE series and I'm feeling nostalgic or because I usually don't care about stories in my video games but I remember really liking Revelations, especially it's gameplay.

I started with Fates and at first I thought the gimmicks were cool, but here I am 4 years later just annoyed with that. I’ve got to be honest though I think I’ll always love Fates since it got me into the series and revelations will be my favourite since I like the concept of having everyone from Fates

You can tell I'm an old FE grognard because the expansive customization in the 3DS games is actually a downside for me; I much prefer the older games where characters are almost entirely fixed in what they are, and you can largely tell what a character does in combat by looking at their official art. With so much customization it feels like playing with soulless pawns and loses the RPG element.

I truly do wonder how bad Fates story is compared to the GBA games, arc to arc and trope to trope. Same with it compared to 3H. I understand that Fates has some of the worst story in the series but characters based on the same archetypes every game and basically the general, “evil empire attacks blue units, Emperor being controlled by evil magic, monsters of some sort begin to attack, and then Dragons/Ancient Demon/God is revived”. This mixed with the anime aesthetic that can now be attached to characters mostly because of the art style development, can FE every get out of the “predictable, generic” feel it’s had for the past decade?

Hey MEKKAH Have you tried or heard of the LANGRISSER series for the Switch? Looks super interesting & a mesh between Fire Emblem & Advance Wars (sorta).

What hurts about Fates in general is that when the games do something right, they REALLY do them right. The concept of the story alone is very creative and unique, and provided a lot of potential. The music is undeniably some of the best in the series. The in-game artwork, character designs (fan-service aside), areas, UI/Menus etc. are all breathtaking, especially for a 3DS game, and they delivered on giving all three branching paths with different stories and with different characters and a variety of creative unit classes and more. I genuinely think the good elements of Fates were so strong that, had it not been for the squandered writing and gameplay, two of the most important elements of an RPG, these games could've been some of the best things to come out of the series. Fates stings because they teased fans with what could've been the peak of the series before ripping it away on release. I hope someday we can get a game in the series that takes what Fates did best in while addressing its problems. I'm glad Three Houses seems to be going in that direction at least, with a more thought out story and better gameplay, but it's sad the "routes" in Three Houses aren't as diverse and different as they were in Fates, (possibly due to the fact Three Houses is one game instead of three), the artwork and presentation was a bit lackluster in comparison to even 3DS games, and the music, while good, didn't turn out nearly as well as Fates' did.

The fact that I see a lot of people calling it bad makes me feel really bad... this game got me really into fire emblem. I loved all the characters in this game!

There is something odd with revelation too, when I finished the game for the first time, I noticed there are no Paired Up enemy unit at all in Revelation. It's not that important but maybe it makes the game too easy in some parts.

I give you credit for being more positive about this route than I am, Mekkah. After a while, I just started considering this route to be a slogging stroll through a trash heap. I've beat the route one time and have attempted to play through it four times in total, the other attempts ended after a lack of motivation after I got to Valla. The thought of it being more for a person expecting a silly anime story seemed pretty amusing to me. There's one chapter improvement that I thought of while watching this. Why couldn't they have put Dragon Veins in the snow level that melt a 5x5 or 6x6 range of snow? Missed opportunity.

Fates has my favorite FE soundtrack. Really amazing stuff in there

I personally really like Revelation, more than Conquest even. It's the perfekt blend of toughness from cq and the freedom of Birthright. The Story is bad but that's not what I play fates for. The only thing I really hate about Rev is the unit Balance, especially because the best part for me is doing eugenics and unit building.

when you said that players that casual players and harcore players are equally valid it really meant a lot to me. thank you, and amazing video!

Conquest is easily my favourite fe game and it feels endlessly frustrating that it feels like the game is screaming “You chose the wrong path!” And then when I do play the other games the gameplay is so much worst. Rev and birthright could’ve been great... (I know that is true for other fe games, but still!)

I actually had a great time with Revelations. I used it to flow-chart my way into having every single character in my final chapter roster be a Wyvern unit. It made me proud and happy in a way that is genuinely hard to describe besides "worryingly giddy". I had to completely roll with the punches outside of the actual flying-unit-blitzkrieg combat to have any fun though. The setting was interesting enough, but the story and the fact that the route exist at all are an affront to what the two other Fate routes were "supposed" to stand for. The only way to actually enjoy Revelations is through making your own fun via gimmicks or memes, like what I did.

What about Tokyo Mirage Session does that count?

Well this is news to me; this was the first game my friend introduced me to Fire Emblem with this game, and it served me well on a plane ride on a transcontinental flight across the US.

The worst thing about this route is all the unfortunate souls calling it Revelations.

I remember I had such high hopes for revelations story wise. I thought the stories in Birthright and Conquest suffered from trying to mirror each other too much, basically having all the same events happen in reverse of each other. I thought for sure that revelation would have a more dynamic storyline where you actually have to convince two warring nations to make peace. Instead, the story just repeats the same Hoshidan story events I already played through twice, and then some new valla events that were somehow even more boring. Gameplay wise, Revelation feels like it was trying to be gimmicky, kind of like Conquest, but unlike Conquest, most of the gimmicks feel unrefined and just... not fun. Snow shoveling sucks, as everyone knows. Anthony’s disco could have been a fun idea, but I hate that it only effects enemy units. Instead of being a unique mechanic you have to think around, it just makes some enemies weaker than they normally would be, giving you an unnecessary advantage. There were some gimmicky Revelations maps I liked, though. The frozen sea was kind of fun. I like maps that make you split your units up. I liked the fire walls in the Hans map. It would have been better if there was an incentive to go through the fire instead of just around though. And of course the final boss fight with Anankos is great. One of the best final bosses in fire emblem.

This got me thinking. What was the better fates game? Birthright or Conquest?

Honestly, the whole talk about the "presentation" and the looks of the game was fine until you mentioned the part about the cutscenes. I don't think saying "Fates has a bad presentation because it uses the Battle Models to do stuff" was really nessesary and the whole arguing that a 2002 game using ultra compressed CGI images on a 250x350 screen using pixelwork is "better" added anything. Especially when other games in the franchise do this too. Is Fates wrong for doing something Path of Radiance, Radiant Dawn, Awakening and even Three Houses do with it's in game cutscenes? No, I don't think so. Can it be done better? Yes, I believe so. Is Fates losing anything by adding more detailed scenes when most of it is just dialog OR simple animations? No. For me, the whole talk about the cutscenes was unneeded. I think your review and thoughts are better consiced on the gameplay rather than the presentation. FE has always been a series prideful on it's stories and gameplay, I don't think Stone Age cutscenes using chess pieces is their priority and, if it is, then sure, it can be made better, but don't compare it to a clearly worse take, which is to use CG Stills, especially when it's very clear it was this or use Map Animations like in old games. With that said, the rest of the video was pretty solid and interesting. It was just that bit that struck me as kinda "Boomer"ish.

Whats your opinion on Corrin's feet tho?

conquest is probably the best fates branch, and that hurts to say because my baby takumi dies in that one and it broke my damn heart

Honestly it would be kick ass to give Corrin a third promotion choice in revelation (after certain story points) valite Nobel

One good thing about revelations is by far the roster size. If you enjoy building characters and experimenting with different classes. Revelations is great for that simply because the crazy amount of characters you get. Makes me sad there was no dlc map in the same vein as awakening's appotheosis map. A super difficult map to truly test your maxed out units.

4:04 I mean… the context for this clip was that Eliwood got overzealous and crit too many times, causing that cavalier to kill him

YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING! LET PEOPLE LIKE WHAT THEY WANT!

Im in the casual category of player you mentioned before and i really enjoyed revelation however i can still appreciate your opinion

This was my second fire emblem game ( first one was birthright ) and despise all, I really enjoyed the game with its story

As someone who skips the story in repeat playthroughs I can say it is 100% the maps that bother me. I'm fine with the snow map only because I get a whole bunch of stat items when I clear it out, from there up until fire map I have fun. Then it just becomes gimmick after gimmick after gimmick with no real incentives to play the maps. Late game I just give camilla move +1, all my boots, and a falcon knight sakura pair up just so I can rescue skip the few seize and kill boss maps.

I personally love Revelations although the story is “questionable” I overall had a blast playing

Top ten moments of Fire Emblem: Fates - Revelations Thanks for watching!

Oh no

How are you doing mekkah?

Revelation can be played on Lunatic Classic without grinding. All you have to do is build your units well enough. You never have to use random battles to progress. There are enough paralogues to help facilitate powerful end game units that aren't Xander, Ryoma, or Camilla. Ninja Soleil and Vengeance Ophelia are even in Rev two of the most powerful units in the game.

King Dragon sends his regards...

About the morally gray part it also did not help that the jp ver along wif Kr and cn vers of the games being called kingdom of light and kingdom of darkness

mekkah I think you should do a solo playthrough of conquest lunatic mode using only corrin some abilities I would suggest getting are replicate Astra and vantage. replicate can be caused by getting an s support with kaze and changing into mechanist then using the samurai personality to give you the abilities Astra and vantage though i have never done it on lunatic mode

my friend lent me his copy of fates, it was the preorder version with all 3. but he was only letting my borrow it for a week so i tried doing all three paths at the same time (i had borrowed awakening from him before and beat it in about 2 days and thought it would be doable) going between the 3 every chapter i beat, as the dead line grew closer ditched birth right and conquest cuz i though revelations would be the most "complete" version. i absolutely hated it. i was playing on casual as i had only played one fe game prior. i would let so many units die as i was so bored and didnt care toward the end, i rember on the eleavtor map the only units i had left where kana and ryoma thinking that was it i paired them up and sent them off to finish the fight. with ryoma at 5 hp and so many units left i thought it was over for sure but god damn so many crits along with vantage and dc only good moment i had in the game. that playthrugh really showed me the importance of permadeath and ever since then i always have it on tl:dr i rambeld on why hating fates taught me to love permadeath

Fates Prequal or sequel can fix some of the story issues but at the same time I would like playing with grown up Kana. I would honestly like seeing what has become of the world. I know the Altea games have done that but idk. It sounds like a good idea. Like Idunn at the very end. What happens next? What happened to the Awakening world? What new issues happened with Ephraim. Some Cipher cards give explanation but I would like an actual game ya know.

One good thing in revelations is that it is fun playground for fates mechanics. You can get all the children and get to use all of the skills. And paralogues are the playground, for they scale up with your characters, so they are never too easy.

I bought into fates in the first place out of love for FE, and some suffering later, I only stayed for the soundtrack (though it's hard to say that I regret it; that OST is perfection).

7:07 not trying to take down your entire argument about the game because of a nitpick with a menu's presentation but: Most weapons im the older games look the same in combat with some exceptions namely the legendaries of the game In fates weapons have distinct shapes in combat and yes, some are silly looking, probably to make them stand out from the "regular" weaponry. Also, the fates' icon had to give hints about the expanded weapon triangle and show it by color, this could've been handled better, it could have the icons you wanted and just color them correctly (unlike dual weapons that shows that beats the opposite weapons because they didn't wanted yo make a new sprite or something) but it works and for weapons with special effectiveness they use a special icon like awakening, giving the information quicker and easier.

Next thing I know in the far future, they decide to remake it as what they did for Gaiden, I sincerely hope they are able to improve everything on it, of course that is IF they wish to make such a thing happen... ...oh dangit I made a pun.

I enjoyed the game and thought the mechanics were solid. I also thought there were some interesting characters. However I do agree with the story, breakup of the three routes into separate games with the dlc "true" end, and a few other things were undesirable or bad.

People would love Revelation gameplay much more if it had divine pulse

I will say my first ever Fire Emblem game was Birthright, then I played Conquest, then Revelation. While I would rank Awakening, Echoes and Three Houses above Fates, I have a special bit of nostalgia for them, and I honestly liked the Revelation story from what I remember, and it was actually my favorite of the three paths. But, getting to play other and better Fire Emblem games since, I do agree that Fates has a TON of flaws, and to this day, Road Taken is my favorite Fire Emblem song - even over Heritors of Arcadia and The Edge of Dawn.

The Heirs of Fate DLC is worth a shot if you want more Fates. It sort of redeems the child characters, the one-shot story is pretty great, and it gives Anankos actual characterization.