Introduction

Fire Emblem is a fantasy strategy role-playing game (SRPG) video game franchise developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo. The series first started on the NES in 1990, and has been going strong for over 30 years with numerous installments for different platforms. Each game features its own unique story, with casts of colourful and varied characters with a rich variety of personalities, stats, and backstories.

Fire Emblem Fates is a game where you walk around in bare feet and can marry your cousin.

What is this?
This is a let's play of Fire Emblem Fates... specifically the Conquest route, one of three split paths the game offers you. Conquest is unique in that it features not only a higher level of difficulty than any other route, but also prevents you from grinding extra experience or gold in optional chapters, requiring a high level of resource optimisation and careful planning... In theory. It's not quite as scary as it sounds! This game gives you a large number of characters, some of which are broken, most of which are good, none of which are completely unuseable. If you were to make a tier list of every character in the entire franchise with tiers ranging from S rank to E, I wouldn't put a single character in this game below C. This game might be tricky but it's possible to make nearly anything work if you really want. That's why I like it so much!

I'll be playing on Lunatic difficulty on Classic mode. This isn't an ironman - if a unit dies I'll reset the chapter. I might even reset a chapter if nobody dies but I think I did a terrible job. Regardless, you'll only be seeing my successful attempts... Unless I fail in a way that's either interesting or embarrassing enough to be funny.

How do Fire Emblem games work?
That's a bit beyond the scope of this Let's Play. If you're reading this, I'm going to assume you're at least a little familiar with Fates, or at least the franchise in general. Lots of other people have LP'd games from this series before, and they'll do a much better job at explaining all the little details (check them out here!). However if you do have no FE experience and want to read along anyway, please feel free to take all comments I make about the game's difficulty at face value and conclude that I'm very smart and good at video games.

Are you going to cover the game's story?
Absolutely not! That's way too much effort, and it's also no secret that this game's plot is... not very good. I love the gameplay side of things but I'll be skipping every cutscene and focusing solely on the strategy parts. If you want to experience the whole package in all its questionable glory, please check out this LP (it never actually got finished but the first two routes are there, which includes Conquest). But as for me, I really don't want to waste time half-heartedly covering a plot I don't care about. There's only so many times you can make a joke out of "wow, Corrin sure is dumb" or "wow, Garon sure is evil!".

What are you covering then?
Gameplay! I'm going to talk through my strategy in each map, give analyses of every unit that joins, and try my best to be at least a little informative and entertaining. Every single unit will get their own analysis that I'll post as they come, all of which I'll make an archive of in the first post. I'm by no means an expert on the game, so if anybody has their own opinions on a character then I'll add them to the archive along with my own. Even if they contradict my own! Especially if they do, actually, it's fun to disagree sometimes. Okay nevermind it turns out it's way too much effort to go back and edit in everyone's comments so they're only a thing for the first few analyses I did. Still though, you should go and read through the comments people have left. It's worth it!

What about spoilers?
I don't really care if you post them. I or anyone else won't have much reason to bring up plot spoilers in the first place, but don't read this LP if you want to remain unspoiled.

What are the rules?
Conquest is all about challenging yourself, so I won't be using all the features the game has. DLC is out of the question! There will be:
- No DLC, free or otherwise.
- No clear bonuses. Those are the free items you get for clearing the game's other routes.
- No online features. So no castle visits to grind resources or buy items normally limited to the other two routes.
- No Einharjar (the weird little card things that let you buy OP units to use in your army).
- No "random" My Castle events that involve talking to units, such as temporary stat boosts or dropped items. The Lottery and Mess Hall however are fair game.

Unless I've forgotten something, everything else is fine!

Chapters:

Unit Analyses:
Generation 1 (Parents)

Generation 2 (Kids)

The Let's Play Archive

Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest

by midnight_lasagna

Introduction

Table of Contents