Notable facts about Fire emblem fates

Conquest has no battles outside the story, like earlier Fire emblem titles. Thus, experience is more scarce. There's different victory conditions, like turn restrictions or defending a base.

Birthright has a traversable map, like in awakening, and a fund can be paid to fight enemies not related to the story. The victory conditions are mostly to rout the enemy and defeat the boss.

The opposing version is available as DLC. There's a third version, called invisible kingdom in Japan, in which you choose neither Nohr or Hoshido. Its difficulty falls between birthright and conquest, has a traversable maps and has a few tweaks to it.

There's classic mode (with permanent character deaths), casual (no permanent character deaths) and a new phoenix mode. It revives all characters the next turn. You can change the mode to a lower tier but not vice versa during the game. Meaning you can go from classic to casual but not from casual to classic.

All classes are unisex, including pegasus knight. A lot of classes are exclusive to the respective paths.

Most characters are exclusive to the paths, but a few are available in both.

Those of royal blood, such as the avatar, can manipulate parts of the map through a skill called dragon's vein.

There's now a A+ support, which allows two characters to change into the other's class.

Both avoidable and unavoidable death exists on both paths.

There's a customizable village called my castle. Players can buy and upgrade buildings (like armory that sell weapons or apothecary that sell healing items and staves), gamble resources in an arena, a lottery, invite your units into your room for special interactions, interact with units in the hot springs, convince captured units in the prison to join your army, visit other my castles through streetpass, interact with your units and give them temporary stat boosts etc, equip your units with accessories to change their look and boost some stats).

Amiibo support with Marth, Ike, Lucina and Robin. Roy's amiibo is in development.

In terms of chapters, this is the longest Fire emblem game(s) to date.

Weapon durability has been removed. Weapons no longer break. The only exception are staves.

Weapons have built-in stat modifiers.

The new weapon triangle: Swords and magic > Axes and bows > Lances and hidden weapons > Swords and magic

New weapon types are available, such as shurikens.

The avatar is more customizable.

Pair up is possible. Now there's attack stance and guard stance. When adjacent to a friendly unit, there will always be a follow-up attack (attack stance). When two units are combined into one via pair up, the main unit gets stat boosts and the supporting one can't attack but will block attacks from attack stanced enemies, plus will also block every fourth attack done to the main unit (guard stance).

Each unit has a fixed skill they will always know, no matter what. They can also equip up to ffive other skills which are learned as they level up.

Support, marriage and children mechanics from awakening make a return. The father determines the child, the mother their hair color (the only exception being Azura). Married units share their classes. Children inherit their parent's classes. Zero and Syalla can marry the avatar of both genders.

Love confession scenes use 3D character models instead of a still picture like in awakening.

There's 9 save slots.

A LOT of new skills.

This game's version of risen are called faceless.

DLC is in the works, such as summer scramble á la awakening.

Pegasus knight Minerva can be added as a unit through download code found in the Fire emblem cipher card game. There are no plans to localize said card game, so it's unclear how it will work outside Japan. Chances of cipher getting an english release is next to none.