Sol Hiryu

Also, keep in mind that sales being good for a musou game is damning by faint praise. Nintendo likely set expectations to be on par with HW, so underperforming that threshold is not good. Because it released on both Switch and 3DS at the same time, it also likely needs more sales than HW's initial expectations too.

Okay-ish sales, but still underwhelming and likely disappointing for Nintendo. Judgment will have to be held until it releases in the rest of the world, but it's not off to a great start. Also, to clear up some misconceptions, Zelda still sells more in Japan than FE does, despite the common "Zelda is not popular in Japan" sentiment I see going around.

I'm baffled at how people can go "rosters shouldn't matter" when musou spin-offs of franchises are literally fanservice. Rosters absolutely do matter in these games and they can definitely make or break a game. One Piece Musou did well with fleshing out character movesets while including fan-favorites and surprise picks -- enough to have three games in the series. Gundam Musou included characters from way back in the series because it was a representation of the entire franchise in the very first game. Attack on Titan did well enough with its characters and mechanics that a sequel is in development. Also, remember when the inclusion of Ryu Hayabusa and Ayane were big selling points for Warriors Orochi 3? They brought a lot of hype alone, which contributed to sales of the game. Conversely, Berserk Musou was widely panned for an extremely thin roster that left out several characters that people wanted, and fans were upset. The inclusion of characters -- or their exclusion -- is definitely enough to sway someone's decision on if they want to buy a musou title or not. People who wanted to see Wind Waker or pre-N64 characters in Hyrule Warriors were likely upset that they were left out of the base game and likely didn't buy until the Legends expansion came out, for example. FE Warriors is definitely a polished and well done game mechanically, but the number one complaint with people reviewing the game on amazon and elsewhere is that the roster has big problems, namely that there aren't enough axes and that there are too many Fates characters. (Anecdotally, Awakening generally has a warm reception with fans, but Fates is a very controversial game both in the JP and US fandoms, so the inclusion of every single Royal has led to backlash. Not surprising, but it could have been avoided.)

I still won thanks to a crit, but I had a good chance of one-rounding the strategist anyway thanks to her low HP. Strictly speaking, I don't think Wary Fighter is a good idea for high-speed units you send in, like Swordmasters and Berserkers. There's no reason to gimp yourself if you reliably double in the first two rounds, and the third round is always a huge luckfest anyway. Of course you'll get a few units that will double you, but generally there's a trend in which units will do so. Or, at least, until the game throws these assholes at you: Seriously, a sorcerer doubling a 43 Speed unit? Talk about capbusting!

Certain Blow, which I find is effectively required for all arena units because you can't really pass up a free Hit+40. Sadly, it and Death Blow are the only useful ones, because the arena will just ramp up the enemy's stats to get around Duelist/Armored/Darting/Warding Blow. Since you can't expect to reliably dodge in there, it's simply a matter of hoping for a critkill before you take too much damage.

Just going to leave this here, lol In all seriousness, much of the arena boils down to hoping your skill setup is enough to beat out the RNG. Proc stacking is good, but you also have to think about which skills you want to proc and if you can make room for support skills. You almost assuredly want Certain Blow + Death Blow on your S class units because it will almost guarantee that they'll hit. Two or Sol/Luna/Aether is also good for survivability purposes. Wary Fighter is too much of a double edged sword for my taste, as it's inevitable that you'll run into an enemy that outdamages you and has a higher crit rate. It's unfortunate that you can't have a 100% win rate because it's just too random, but stacking as many things in your favor is always a good thing.

I'm not sure why some of you are thinking that Zelgius wouldn't have killed Greil when it was pretty obvious that it was his intention that night. Don't forget that while he was pursuing his original ambition (dueling Gawain), he was also to retrieve the medallion as per Ashnard's (and Lehran's) orders. The only regret we get to see him have in RD is that 'surpassing' his old teacher had been too easy, but he doesn't actually regret slaying Greil.

The sad part is that Zelgius has next to no characterization whatsoever. We're left guessing as to his true self, given that the Black Knight differs so much from Zelgius--although Ike does note that the two do share the same bearing, meaning there's at least something that connects the two. My personal interpretation is that he is just insanely loyal to Sephiran, which allows him to act as he needs to. Being able to fight his teacher is just icing on the cake.

Given that she didn't seem to realize that her own soldiers were being extremely prejudiced against Tormod's group until the end of part one, it would seem to indicate that holding things together for the greater good (Daein's independence) took priority over their own feelings, which is again emphasized in part three with her hesitance about the war. To be fair, exactly who would supervise Daein? Crimea certainly couldn't, not with the political state they were in. Begnion just signed a reparation treaty with them, and with them being their suzerain, some form of supervision is automatically assumed (although unwelcome). Under these conditions, Daein is effectively free to do as they wish. You can't exactly call Micaiah out on this one given the way Begnion was handling things. This whole issue ties back into my last post, specifically the part about trying to forcefully show Daein in a sympathetic light. Part three shows just how mired in the old ways Daein still is, and the game never actually addresses or tries to call attention to it. It's the epilogue that just makes me shake my head, because Micaiah manages to extract a promise from Sanaki to treat Daein like an equal and to forgive all transgressions, essentially.

Micaiah is a decent character, just not a very well written one. It's mostly the game's subpar writing and pacing that exacerbates her already precarious characterization, which culminates at the final part of the game where it just goes off the rails. To be honest, it was the game's attempt to make Daein sympathetic in light of the last game that rankles me, considering that it goes so far to handwave and/or retcon certain things just so it can further glorify Daein's cause. Micaiah herself was fairly okay in this part, but she did some extremely dumbass things that she wasn't called out on--or if she was, it was half-hearted and never brought up again (leaving camp to go in a dark forest by yourself? In hostile territory? And then letting the enemy commander leave?). I'm more surprised that she didn't realize that she was possibly making things worse for Pelleas considering the soldiers all rallied behind her, but I'll give her a pass on that one. I'll admit that I did enjoy part 3's deconstruction of her character, and it shows the lengths she would go to to keep her country safe. But the deconstruction doesn't go far enough--as we see in both this part and the next, she never actually has to pay for the consequences of her actions. Sothe's near-death was the wake up call, but it probably would have been better for her character if he actually had been killed off. This is probably the biggest issue people have with her, as she gets off completely scot-free for whatever she did thanks to her status as Yune's vessel and Queen of Daein. For all the things the game did well (The whole Crimean subplot and the war against Begnion), it completely bungled everything about Micaiah and the Dawn Brigade, and as a result, the fandom doesn't tend to think much of her.

It's just a shame that FE9 feels so rushed and incomplete now that we can look back on it. It got a lot of things right (lord promotion at an actual good time, good new classes), but a good amount of what they tried just wasn't implemented in a decent way. This is probably the only recent FE game where S rank weapons don't even matter, given how few of them there are, and weapon ranks have never been so hard to build. RD fixed up most of these issues at least, at the cost of butchering the story/characterization aspect of the game. Still, I would love to see a rebalanced version of PoR where paladins weren't godlike and bonus exp is severely toned down; it's no fun seeing all of it get pumped into Marcia and then watching her take off with her rocket-powered horse all the time.

I'm pretty sure nearly half of the game's problems could be summed up as "Chrom being a dumbass and not really ~getting it~". Awakening's world is really screwed up, especially if all the powers that be all decide to completely ignore a defeated and vengeful country for whatever reason.

lol @ giving Soren a speedwing. A dust he can take with relatively no trouble, but many other people want Vantage and the wing, and considering the opportunity cost of both of them, it's very unlikely he's going to be getting either since other characters put them to better use (Mordy, Marcia, Titania, etc...a lot of the people above him really want that wing). Also, how exactly is Soren saving a turn in that chapter? If he saves a turn there with the resources you have, it would be reasonable to assume that it might cost more turns later in the long run due to those resources not going to where they could have gone for optimal use. Soren's not a bad character, but I he's still a foot unit that's bothered by both terrain and defensive issues. Adept is nice, but ultimately unreliable in the first half of the game thanks to his his less than stellar speed. Additionally, neither he or Ilyana (or Tormod) are likely to see C rank staves anytime early unless you Seal them, which ultimately condemns them to staffbot use. Sieging is probably their best use, and that's in the later half of the game. I can agree Soren > Ilyana, if only barely, but Calill still has the upper hand due to coming in trained with great magic ranks with no investment needed at all.