Fire Emblem Fates Abyssal Bloodline experience / review - part 1
Happy late anniversary to Fates
It feels like yesterday when I skipped my 12 hours shift to pick up Fates day one then for the next 2 months I played all routes back to back .. good times.
I am gonna get shot for this, but I consider Fates to be my favorite of all series when it comes to enjoyment as a game despite the undoubtedly awful story and several design choice fuck ups. The second closest of course are the GBA games for obvious reasons.
To celebrate this occasion I wanted to replay Birthright since I never touched it since 2016. However ,as you all aware, BR is piss easy even on Lunatic
“BUT MUH LATE GAME DIFFICULTY SPIKE”
Bullshit, by then you should have a strong army that breezes through it. Also self imposed difficulties such as “No royals” and shit like that are lame as fuck
So I decided to search in the modding community, has anyone made a difficulty hack for Fates especially BR? Well there are quite few but many of them are either incomplete, not well represented , not updated for years or “LOOK HOW GAY MY ROM HACK IS” shit.
The only project that stood out to me was “Abyssal Bloodline”. Not an original name in the slightest but this was my pick. The project kept up-to-date until recently, it was initially made to improve Birthright Lunatic mode then decided later to do the same for all routes. What I appreciate here is the game became significantly challenging from what I see so far but at the same time maintained the game as is instead of mutating it into something completely different.
Link if you’re interested, including Word files detailing every single change.
Now there’s another one called “Rebirth” by Mayor of Smashvill but honestly I don’t know what’s his deal.
The fucking thing is locked behind a discord expired link and from what I managed to gather the last public result was a reddit thread from 3 years ago where he stated he’s working on chapter 21. No public upload anywhere in sites such as gamebanana and I cannot find any new information posted anywhere .. for all I know there’s a chance this project is quietly abandoned.
Anyway I will share my playthrough by mentioning major highlights for each chapter then finally post my review whenever I manage to complete this thing. My rules are simple:
- Lunatic Classic of course
- Soft Ironman, meaning if I lost Corrin I will just restart the chapter. Otherwise I will take whatever casualty I get
- No DLC shit period
- No DLC classes, come to think of it most were garbage anyway
- After many considerations, the “free skirmish” battles in BR are fine. The primary reason here is to build up supports which are painful and motherfucking weapon ranks because God knows I will see many E ranks. Not to mention the EXP gain in these is extremely pitiful.
- Because I never ever used any of the children units, I will give more attention to them… assuming their fathers survived long enough
This is my Corrin
if you know you know
The reason I chose Resistance as his bane instead of Luck like everyone else did: his Resistance stat is shit anyway especially in the dragon form in addition I like Luck, reliability be damned.
Ch1 to 4: nothing major, some minor changes but nothing else. You know the hack is working if Kaze got Poison Strike in ch2.
Ch5: a bitch in vanilla, a bitch here. Rinkah was forced to gaurd support Kaze since she is at disadvantage against every single unit. While I am at it, I farmed leveling up Azura to 10 because why not.
Ch6: path chosen but since we’re technically in tutorial mode this gonna be easy …. NOT! The Nohrain royals now are equipped with nasty skills and you will quickly realize you’re outnumbered because the only promoted unit you got is Ryoma while they have Three. At first turn Ryoma MUST kill Leo immediately because that dorky nerd ass have Pass, then get him and Corrin/dragon to form a wall to block the bridge so hopefully you can deal with Xander. But there’s a Third flying problem that wants to suck you dick so bad. I honestly don’t know what you were supposed to do here considering she’s equipped with Bow breaker…. yet I snipped her pussy with a 35% hit Takumi. That was a desperate gambling move but hilariously paid off.
Ch7: nothing crazy here, sadly I lost Kaze because I didn’t realize Sailas got a 2 range nuke this early. BTW I played Mozu’s prologue and honestly nothing major there except I didn’t notice Mozu got a Heart Seal in her inventory AND a Paragon skill from the get go. Let’s go!
Ch8: I fucking hate desert maps. Again nothing insane happened except for me losing Sailas by a random wind sage I completely missed.
Ch9: This is where Birthright starts showing its MO: bad fucking starting position, completely surrounded by mixed attacksers and you cannot box up inside thank to the ranged units. Also reinforcements spam for several turns because eat shit. You need to abuse the assault pair up to breakthrough this initial mess and hopefully you can secure one side for your flyers. Oboros tagged with Rinkah helped here greatly. Sakura survived a lethal attack thanks to LCK rally. Sadly I lost Hinta and a Speedwing because that motherfucking outlaw had Pass.
Ch10: I love Ninja class unless if it is used against me, this is the chapter in a nutshell. Just be aware of mages here because they do hit hard.
Ch11: I bet you forget there was a boat map, right? This shit will make you remember it for a long while. There are 6 promoted mini bosses scattered around the map + the shadow who bombed Hoshido is here now as a boss. They are no joke and can do serious damage, my safest strategy was baiting them one by one with full gaurd gauge.
You better trigger at least 2 Dragon viens to slow them down or else by turn 11 everyone will gang rape you at once.
Starting from this chapter I noticed all lance users started to severely underperform because not only I am facing more axe users, some decided to add more salt by holding Pike-Ruin Clubs which can decimate units like Oboro like they’re nothing. This is where you have to seriously start considering reclassing to other options like Oni Savage which I did.
Oh yeah, I lost Kageo here which is huge shame.
Ch12: Garon of increasing discomfort!
This chapter was easy because all you needed to do is tag Corrin with a flyer then send him to the target immediately. Not fucking happening here!
The number of bow users & Wyrmslayers have increased drastically. Not only that, there are more enemies blocking the exit route that weren’t there before and equipped with more effective weapons.
So I thought: okay I will turtle this chapter until I defeat Xander who’s coming at any moment and it should go easy
THINK AGAIN. Look at this
Can I cheese Garon for more soy reaction? Forget it
At this point it’s clear what the strategy: fucking run, you simply can’t beat Xander not with that defense. Use flyers to carefully position your attackers at chock points, kill the outlaw, take the stat boost, activate the dragon vein then bait that Bow Knight motherfucker with range NOT melee because he got a Wyrmslayer too then escape. Thank God this is not FE5.
Ch13: fucking Cheve man. You will be overwhelmed by flying drones, calvaries and axe users with nasty might. The only way I found to survive the initial all-in assault was to hold choke points with Rinkah/kaden , Oni Savage Oboro/Takumi, Corrin/Renia and Sazio/Hinoka. But the latter Two must navigate eastwards to get the loots before Outlaws start stealing everything. Also you MUST watch out of Camila’s bullshit gimmick and that generic promoted Wyvrem Rider right in the middle. Once you are done the rest should be easy.. Oh welcome back General Ryoma, what an odd class choice
I gonna stop here for the moment, I thought I would be able to finish Birthright and type everything in one post but there was no luck unfortunately. I will complete this run eventually and will share my review and maybe pull a Mangs and review top 5 units that carried the run.
So far I liked this mod. I am so not looking forward some certain chapters in the late game.
