A guide to what changes were made or added to Fire Emblem Fates from Awakening.

Weapon Durability No Longer Exists

-Outside of magical staves, weapons do not wear down anymore after usage. In exchange, every single weapon has innate abilities, whether it's positive or negative.

Example:

Bronze Katana-4 attack, +10 critical evade, cannot trigger critical hits or activate special abilities.

The standard bronze weapon is now an actual bad weapon instead of a cheap stopgap. Great for high level characters to use on weaker enemies so your more needing EXP-starved characters get kills.

Silver Katana-12 Attack, reduce critical evade by 5, reduce all stats after battle

Silver weapons are no longer just straight upgrades. If you want to use a strong weapon to kill an enemy, you better make sure the downsides don't bite you on the enemy phase.

There is no world map

-There's some confusion on the message that Birthright is like Awakening. The only difference is that Birthright and Revelation have an extra menu option that is paying money for a random battle encounter. Missions and paralogues are otherwise selected on a menu selection.

Dual Pair-Up has been majorly changed

-In Awakening, pairing up was the most abused mechanic because a high support rank between characters effectively doubled the damage output, raised stats by 7-8 levels (that's a lot in Fire Emblem terms), and made the character invincible frequently.

The mechanic is now split into Attack Stance and Guard Stance (Enemies will also use these)

-Attack Stance is when a battle is initiated with another character adjacent (Cannot be paired up). The back-up character is guaranteed an attack, but does around half damage and only attacks once.

-Guard Stance is only available with a pair-up unit. The leading character gains a stat bonus (much lower than Awakening) and gains a meter that is filled for every attack or hit taken. Once it's full, it fully nullifies one attack.

-Guard Stance also nullifies Attack Stance, so strategically use Guard Stance if there are a bunch of enemies grouped together.

Class changing no longer resets levels

-No longer are there unlimited levels. Changing a class directly switches to that different class at the same level. If you are past the level that a skill is learned, the very next level will be when it is learned I.E. Level 15 Paladin changing to Great Knight will learn the two Paladin skills at level 16 and 17.

Class Change Items and Supports have changed

-Most characters now only have their base class and another class (Previously, it was 3 classes). There are some exceptions, and your Avatar can choose any class as its secondary.

-Heart Seals are the new Second Seals. No changes in usage.

-Partner Seals allows the character to change into their partner's base class (S rank support).

-A new mechanic is A+ Support, which is only achieved among same-gender characters within their support conversation list. Keep in mind that each character is allowed one A+, so Character Z can have an A+ with Character G, but G can still have an A+ with someone else.

-A+ supports allow the use of the Friendship Seal, which functions the same as a Partner Seal.

(There are exceptions, since unique classes like Dragon and Songtress cannot be copied, the Seals refer to their secondary classes).

Every single character has a Personal Skill

-In addition to a batch of new and returning skills to the game, every character now has a unique ability that no one else has. These can range from simple like "When user’s HP is not full, damage +4," to "At the start of the Turn, when two allies are directly above and below Mitama, Mitama recovers 7 HP, while the the two allies recover 5 HP."

Pay attention to Personal Skills! No longer are characters just better or worse versions of another character with the same class.

New Weapon triangle

-Sword and Magic > Axe and Bow > Lance and Hidden Weapons > Sword and Magic

Phoenix Mode

-A new feature in addition to Casual Mode, Phoenix Mode revives any character that was defeated, next turn. This can only be used on Normal and lower difficulty.

-Difficulty and Modes can be lowered, but not increased during a playthrough I.E. Hard can be lowered to Normal and Classic turned down to Casual but not vice versa.

Hidden Weapons

-These are new weapons that are mostly 1-2 range, have weak attack, but procure debuffs on the enemies when it hits.