I Completed a Mostly-Blind Lunatic Birthright PMU, AMA (General Fates Spoilers!!)

Good afternoon everyone! It’s finals week, so instead of being productive I decided to finish up the Birthright Lunatic PMU I’d spent the last couple months chewing through. I wanted to write this post to talk about Birthright as a whole, the story, gameplay, and my experiences. As me anything!

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The PMU:

The rules of my PMU were pretty straightforward. 14 units + Corrin and Dancer Azura, no royals, picking classes and pairings. My picks were done by a friend of mine who hadn’t played Birthright since its release—this led to picking units essentially on who looked cool, with arbitrary pairings and ...unfortunate classes. Some highlights include Swordmaster Reina and Sniper Kaden. Below is a link to a gallery of my picks, as well as some random things I decided to take pictures of during my playthrough. I apologize for the terrible quality!

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https://imgur.com/a/0xINvwK

Not pictured: Kaze, for… reasons.

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For a quick list, these were my picks. I go into more detail about them later in the post.

Corrin(Falcon Knight) (Choose class: samurai) + Reina(Swordmaster)

Azama(Onmyoji) + Felicia(Hero)

Azura + Hayato(Blacksmith)

Jakob(Master Ninja) + Kagero(Mechanist)

Kaze(Master of Arms)

Setsuna(Sniper) + Kaden(Sniper)

Oboro(Falcon Knight) + Subaki(Spear Master)

Mitama(Priestess)

Rhajat(Oni Chieftain)

Selkie(Nine-tails)

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The run:

I completed the game in 368 turns. I had heard Birthright was much easier than Conquest, but that could’ve meant a lot of different things. Since I’d completed Conquest Lunatic before, BR felt like it would be the right choice—and I’m glad I picked it!

Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the difficulty. It definitely would have been too easy using royals and my own picks (or any good picks, at that). It probably also would have been easier if I’d put any effort into min-maxing or, y’know, bothering with meals or tonics. Admittedly, I’d forgotten they’d existed for the first half of the game, and I was too stubborn to use them until after Camilla (ouch!). On that note, let’s talk chapters- or at least, the memortable ones.

Chapter 10, Ninja Village

This is the first chapter that I have any real memory of—honestly, whoever designed the ninja class should feel bad about themselves. They turned an otherwise standard map into a huge mess and at this point in the game I didn’t really have an effective way to deal with them. ...Except one; enter Setsuna, the best worst unit in the game. She’d melt them, dealing just enough damage to one-round them and having enough HP left over to take down a second after a dance. I’ll swear up and down that she was the only reason I flew through that level without losing my hair.

Chapter 18, Leo

I’m only mentioning this one because of how confused I was during battle preps: “Wait, really?” said I. ‘Yes, really’, said Subaki as Oboro flew him over to one-round the boss. Thus began the beginning of a legend.

Chapter 23, Camilla

What if instead of we did, we didn’t? We don’t have to fight, Camilla. You don’t have to throw fireballs at me, Camilla. You don’t have to destroy my chokepoints, Camilla. You don’t have to have 10 million mounted units, Camilla. YOU DON’T HAVE TO SPAWN BOW KNIGHT REINFORCEMENTS BEHIND ME CAMILLA.

I only beat this map when I realized she always fireballed the tunnel with the most people—therefore Subaki soloed while everyone else was having a barbecue.

Chapter 24, Tears of a Dragon

I thought I would hate this map. I didn’t, really. Once I devised a strategy, it was tough enough that I was punished for making mistakes, while also short enough that any mistakes weren’t too punishing. Subaki soloed the right side, of course. I’m not sure there’s much to say, other than not bad. This was also the point that I realized that Rhajat is kinda OP.

Chapter 27, King Garon

Rhajat soloed the entire right side of Garon’s throne room. Honestly, though, Garon’s chapter was kind of a letdown. My units were in no shape to tank the kind of damage these enemies could deal, so it mostly became a bait-and-switch deal. Garon himself was kind of a joke. Endgame, however…

Endgame

Why can’t we save before endgame, exactly? It’s more of a jerk move than anything—it just means I’d rather cheese and let my units die than deal with killing Garon again. ...So cheese I did. Hexing rod, go!

Even after the rod, my units couldn’t kill (unsurprisingly) that doofy-looking dragon in one turn. The moment I realized it is when I said ‘screw it’, knocked him down to 20 HP with Subaki, and hit end turn. The moments that followed… I’m not proud of. Azura, Azama, Mitama, Rhajat, and Felicia all got wiped out by enemies due to my bad placement. The saddest was Azura—I was more afraid that her dying would cause a game over than actually losing her. It didn’t, and Kaden came in on the next turn to deal the fatal blow; bringing an end to an… interesting experience.

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Other Mechanics:

I wanted to just mention a couple other mechanics I’d thought about while playing through Birthright.

Static level-ups: I like how Fates lunatic rolls all of a character’s level-ups when you recruit them. Sure, sometimes who get a unit who’s screwed and there’s nothing you can do about it, but it also means that you don’t lose a good level-up from a chapter restart. I’m aware that a single level-up doesn’t make that much of a difference, but it feels bad, y’know?

The weapon system: I like Fates’ weapon system (mostly). Weapon durability just isn’t fun to me, and having more weapons with unique powers makes it feel a lot more like an RPG in some ways than just trying to max your stat. The new weapons have personality. Of course, I’m in no minority for thinking it was a weird move to add magic and bows to the weapon triangle, as well as knives. It’s not that it’s bad in its own right, but I can’t for the life of me remember which of those three new weapons is good against what.

Also, the guard naginata is completely busted.

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The Story:

Honestly, I kind of tuned out Birthright’s story by the end. It’s not the funny kind of bad like a lot of Conquest; it’s just… there’s so much. So many characters talking about this and that and it never really goes anywhere. I like that the game tried to raise the stakes by killing a lot of characters, but it just kind of fell flat for me. Admittedly, I skipped the ending dialogue and cutscenes; for me, the game ended when dragaron died—everything after that felt like fluff. I There were a couple standout moments to me, though.

Kaze’s Death

Uh, what? It kind of felt like I blinked and suddenly Corrin was dangling over a precipice. Kaze, of course, took that as the perfect opportunity to dump some exposition before Hinoka saved… only Corrin. Not Kaze. They left him there to die.

At first I was like, oh, okay—it’s like Gunter in Conquest. He’ll come back eventually. This is a way to up the stakes while also making the bizarre mirror world relevant. ...The chapters went on and I still didn’t hear anything. Finally, I looked it up. He’s actually dead. Gone. Falling forever to the bottom of an infinite abyss.

...Oh well, Master at Arms Kaze was pretty terrible anyway.

The whole Leo and Rainbow Sage thing

I don’t have a lot to say about this, other than that it was incredibly convenient for Leo to have a mass teleport tome with two uses in it. This was really the point where I kind of tuned out.

Lilith

Why did you have to die, Lilith?

Like seriously, why? To be fair, Hans is more dangerous than a random faceless (as in Conquest). I bet he could have even one-rounded my janky Corrin. ...But still!

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Conclusion:

I’ve pointed out a ton of faults, but I really had a ton of fun with this run. Picking so many janky units and weird classes made it feel like I was leading along a band of scrappy underdogs. Felicia remains to be one of my favorite characters, but Subaki’s flying in at a close second after his performance throughout this adventure. Watching him grow from zero to hero may become one of my most memorable experiences in all of FE.

Sometime soon I’m planning to do a similar PMU for Conquest hard—I look forward to taking your picks!

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Tl;dr: I played Birthright with completely arbitrary PMU picks. Check the image gallery for the juicy stuff. AMA!