CyberNinja

Probably because she's an ethnocentric autocrat engaged in a war of aggression using child soldiers and victims of human experimentation. It's ok though because she wants to lock herself in a room and eat sweets all day, it's gap moe!

If you enter the Portal room during that chapter, a bunch of Flame Emperor soldiers spawn saying they "knew you would come." Note that as admitted in the Dev interview much of the original story was written with SS as the perspective, hence its likely these guys are Hubert's since he's the one that tells you to enter the portal room. If you attack Metodey, he explicitly says that soon he'll be able to reveal he's really working for the empire before he stops himself. This implies the mercenary background is his cover and he's actually one of Hubert's sociopathic Vestra goons. Hubert explicitly states in Ferdinand's and Edelgard's supports that he does go behind her, hence the evidence that Metodey is his lackey rather than Edelgard's.

I'd always pegged Metodey as one of Hubert's Vestra thugs. It's pretty clear that the Flame emperor army is made up of Empire royalists and the personal House troops of Hubert and Edelgard, with a few Mercenary patsies in-between. Thus the fact that both the Death Knight and Metodey are acting outside of Edelgard's supervision isn't much of a surprise for me because we already know Hubert goes behind her back. It's like how I chock up the ambush in the Flayn rescue mission to Hubert attempting to get the Professor killed in the Black Eagles White Clouds section.

Ok, more of a joke one

Dedue (and Marriane) both have extremely good supports with Dimitri and paired endings that show how close the characters are. Felix also has a good paired ending with Dimitri and Dimitri does have a wife in said ending, but Felix has a very good paired ending with Annette and in all non BL routes you want to pair Felix with Annette or Flayn to give him a good end. Given you already have some options prepicked I'd suggest paring Annette and Felix, Dedue and Ashe, and Dimitri with Marriane. If you don't get Marriane, Flayn is (imo) a good choice for Dimitri too, but some people don't like Flayn so your taste may differ.

I wouldn't recruit Hanneman or Manuela for Blue Lions. You can, and they add to the story, but if you aren't going to use them, don't. Felix x Annette Dimitri x Flayn Dedue x Dimitri Flayn x Felix Dedue x Ashe are all good combos

In most games with a customizable protagonist my playthroughs will even out as far as gender is concerned since I want to experience all the game. Regarding this game Byleth (f) seems anachronistic and just doesn't tend to fit aesthetically with the rest of the cast so I tend to like the character far less. DLC outfits made her playable though, so yay.

Don't recruit anyone from Black Eagles barring perhaps Caspar (needed for Mercedes Paralogue), You should avoid recruiting most Golden Deer barring Marianne and maybe Hilda. This allows you to maintain the stakes in the timeskip and should keep the game a bit less boring fighting Generic replacements. So for your two, Marianne (nice supports w/ Dimitri) and Caspar (required to complete Mercedes' story). Likewise for Golden Deer Ferdinand should be an auto recruit to finish his and Lysithea's story but an other one is strictly optional there.

Modifications are in bold. Regarding personals I tend to use other characters as precedent, Balthus has effectively two defiant skills as his personal that activate at 50% hp which being a gauntlet character, is pretty strong. Secondly is the importance of keeping a theme, and I'm glad you agree it fits, and I do agree it was too strong. I removed the aura aspect of it as it was largely redundant with the aggro aspect. Neither of these skills see much use because they're a holdout of % base activation, given the way they calculate the activation, this means a less than 3% activation on most characters anyway and it'd rarely if ever activate on Naofumi with his non-existent dex base or growth. In effect it would have only benefited weak characters with high dex and Naofumi would have been already naturally tanky with his high base def and res + growths which would have been furthered by going into the War Monk class. The new version only effects him and maintains the aggro aura so he can be the 1st unit in all of fire emblem to successfully fill the role of the armored knight line. It'd probably be best to define a flat activation rate for his passive (and I don't feel all that concerned with the aegis/pavise mix since 4 units get that as an item and at least 2 get it before the timeskip) but I hadn't decided on that. I also clarified that the Pavise/Aegis effect is only active when being attacked as Naofumi is not intended to be effective on the offensive. I have now included an alternate Defining ability with Wary Fighter (straight rip, and yes, it overrides QR). Since you got me in the mood, I'll talk a bit more on the creative process. The reason list was chosen as both a mix of fire being the generic spell list and because these spells represent the Shield of rage's flames quite well. Fitting since it allows Naofumi to be a bit more offensive with his budding talent (Heartseeker) allowing him to make up for his poor hit if he stays at range 1 (melee). It works because range remained a limit for Naofumi in that shield mode. That said, it's not the most impressive damage due to his bases and growths, but it is an option. Also thanks for pointing out the mistake I made, the second recover was meant to be restore, the spells were chosen to maintain a degree of utility/effectiveness even if he didn't have the highest magic. He needs to be close to allies to use them, but he's meant to be on the frontline anyways. Armor, riding, and flying were all set to neutral because while they are all related to capabilities he has shown to have, they don't necessarily correlate with his greatest strength.

Naofumi Iwatani

Can I just say that I ****ing called it? Money's on time crunch forcing them to spread resources around to finish the other routes and a bit of experience as they went along. Pretty sure Hilda's brother and Caspar's father were originally meant as bosses at some point.

Seliph got his sister kidnapped by the big bad cultist guy, Roy existed. Thought we were talking about El;iwood at first.

I actually quite like this Robin. Nicely balanced too, good one on using Solidarity as the personal. Think I prefer the battalion renewal/vantage combo as well.

Lysithea and Merceds so you can have the paralogues of Ferdinand and Caspar which require them (F and C) to be traitors to Edelgard to function.

It was though, you see clearly Byleth and Edelgard fighting in the trailers. I originally thought the silver snow reunion scene would be near the end game, right before the "death of the flame emperor" cutscene or that they'd be one cutscene/alts of on another. My impression from most of the trailers was that you'd have to work to join her side given the dialogue and theme song playing over the trailers. That said I also thought she'd end up an unwilling church stooge and that the church was evil from the trailers, but that's because I merged the Western church, the Central church, and those who slither as one organization in my head.