3/5 ★ – notesurfer's review of Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest.

Playtime: 35 hours Trite, repetitive dialogue and weeabo character art hold this title back from being really great, but the gameplay is some of the smoothest and most satisfying of the series. The updated weapon triangle and unit variety add a lot of fun strategic decisions to the formula. The level design is pretty engaging, but there are a couple major duds as well. I've had a lot of trouble finding the ideal difficulty setting for Fates. I played Birthright on normal and got bored about 35 hours in as my characters had become unstoppable killing machines. So, when I decided to come back and try Conquest I bumped it up to hard and proceeded to restart 170 times over my 35 hour playthrough. Some of the maps do have that addicting puzzle-like quality to them, but others just feel punishing for no reason. In the end I stopped out of frustration, as it felt like there were very few "right moves" to choose from in a given scenario. Not all of the writing is atrocious - some characters have enjoyably over-the-top dialogue. It's too bad that the overarching story is crammed full of plot armor, moustache twirling villains, and weak motivations for idiotic behavior. Overall this is still a good entry in the series, but there are some major flaws that made my experience pretty inconsistent.