PeaceRibbon

My result: Mercedes You are the unanimous ‘mum friend’ of the group, not because you’re overbearing or well-adjusted, but because you always seem to be there when people need you most. You often put others before yourself and serving others gives you gratification, too. You love to get together with friends, but not in large numbers — preferably in groups of ones or twos, where conversations are more quiet and intimate. Nobody ever says anything bad about you — it’s always about how sweet, or how adorable you are. You’re not particularly ambitious — you’d rather spend your days with your closest friends than on a nine to five job. Kinda funny that I got my S-Support as my result, but then I suppose one could say I look for partners of similar qualities. I can definitely relate to the gratification of giving others service, and meeting friends in small groups.

1. While I'd personally enjoy more orchestral music in my fire emblem games, the new style helped to mix things up from the recent entries having similar styles (except Birthright which is also enjoyable for what it does differently). It's a really good sound track on the whole. 2. Hnnnnnnnnnnggggg... Apex of the World is probably my very favorite but if that's cheating then Blue Skies and a Battle is probably the answer here. I also found that basically all of the melancholy music is super well executed, probably due to the constraint on the volume they showed compared to past Fire Emblem games. 3. I haven't listened heavily to the final boss tracks other than Apex of the World. I am also convinced by bias towards that track will keep it squarely on top (that opera ain't messing around though). 4. Shambhala takes the new direction maybe a bit too far...? Hides. 5. I'd say it's my new favorite, at least until they start overplaying all the music in the spin-offs (that kinda lessened my opinion of Awakening and Fates, which is a shame because on their own they have awesome OSTs).

While I'm not particularly attracted to tsunderes, I believe their major appeal is basically what you're saying. Perhaps there's also something comforting about the fantasy of getting to play the courting game with a girl while also being basically guaranteed to get her if one just keeps at it that some people gravitate towards. I'm not saying that the fantasy is one way or the other in terms of morality, just that's what I theorize is the core idea behind their design choices. Personally I engage in waifu culture mostly for giggles as opposed to actually falling for fictional characters, but when I do 9 time out of 10 I advocate for the girl who feels the most sensible pick for a lifelong partner. Which means I usually end up rooting for the childhood friend character. Which means I get the pleasure of being heartbroken alongside her as mysterious newcomer girl No. 789 gets the guy EVERY TIME. Ok I haven't actually watched a lot of anime structured around courting and this is just a joke structured around my limited experience and I may be totally wrong about this. But also seriously Japan let the childhood friends be happy.

At the end of the day, I think it's most important to pick the house that interests you first since that's the fun of the first-time-player experience and the only really absolute rule is to not play Silver Snow and Verdant Wind back to back. Also wow, I'm pleasantly surprised to see all the Azure Moon love in here! I had originally intuited that the Blue Lions route would be a sleeper hit but not overall super popular, due to having less surface-level appeal than the other two houses (unless you're me because I love knights and honor and justice), but I'm glad to be wrong here!

Sunset orange is a real favorite of mine. Calming, yet infectiously positive.

1. Faith and Brawling because unarmed striking is a subject I have experience in and I would straight up help run choir practice as a side responsibility. 2. Virtue is probably the thing I'd value most in my students so unsurprisingly my class would be pretty heavy on the existing Blue Lions. I'm thinking Dimitri, Dedue, Mercedes, Ashe, Annette, Ingrid, Ignatz, and Marianne.

This isn't really an error per se but I figured this would be the best place to put this: I just discovered that in regards to Three Houses recruitment, I'd recommend adding an annotation similar to the ones on characters such as Seteth and Catherine.

Tokyo Mirage Session Defense Squad, arise from your sleep, for our hidden gem is finally going to sit at the cool kids table that is the switch!!! In all seriousness though, while I don't see myself double-dipping on this one since I still find the base version fine (at least, until a sale happens), I'm super glad this game is getting another change to shine, if for no other reason than to get new people exposed to the weird and wonderful world the game presents. Though if it gets a highly unlikely dub, I will buy the game again at full price with no questions asked, especially if they dubbed the music.

That is the message that appears whenever you choose a topic a guest is interested in. It is a joke because XRay showed interest in discussing cats.

The conversation got lively!

"Thank you for coming! Please, have a seat." Offers you Mint Tea

Why did I hope for a serious response? *sigh* I guess I can't hope to change the mind of an incubi, for demons are incapable of true change, but know that the pure maidens of these lands are not so weak as you think. Their self-control in the face of the lower pleasures is a testament to their resolve, a recognition of their own sanctity, and a sign that when they do find a man to share their life with, they wish to forge a bond unburdened by the weight of having previous partners, and all this is true in regards to virgin men too. Make a mockery of the truth all you like, but you mock and twist the truth only because you cannot face it! Walks over to the barmaid, and offers her the miracle of Protection from Evil and Good.

Probably a human cleric due to my inclination towards healing abilities and my faith-based ethics, plus the fact the idea of not being human sounds kind of terrifying. I think more realistically speaking in a d&d setting, I'd just be some city dweller working in an inn or something. Has anyone ever expressed concerns about your fantasies before?

You forgot about the tier that actually goes at the top. It's called the "Blue Lions" tier.

Glad you enjoyed it! I definitely respect your hesitance on calling the game the best in the series due to mechanical departure, and you'll get no complaints from me. Breath of the Wild is certainly one of those games, though personally the weapon breaking mechanic really held me back from fully making it in the running for best in series because... I get it's effective game design but I just wanna keep swinging a big claymore ok!? Also regarding the last gesture, keep in mind the attacks are not actually shown on screen so therefore it's possible that A) Dimitri may have (and probably) landed his blow first, causing Edelgard to misfire from the pain, and B) Dimitri would have had to move his torso to at least some degree in order for his attack to land so it's not as though his heart was a stationary target. If you still think otherwise though that's alright, I'm not trying to be the end all interpreter over here.

Sorry if you were seeking something a bit more comprehensive.

So just having beat Three Houses: Azure Moon this morning I'd like to share my thoughts on the game and what I took away from it. I will obviously be talking spoilers in full in order discuss story since I have a lot of feelings on what I just experienced, so caution ahead for readers who haven't finished the game, but I will talk gameplay first and foremost as to bury the spoilers a paragraph or so down and give you something to read, but if you'd like fresh eyes on absolutely everything thank you for clicking on this post and please see yourself to some other lovely user's thread. In spoiler-free brief, Three Houses is a fun take on the long-running series mechanics with a narrative that, while coated in highly marketable tropes, explores interesting and surprising stories that build off the best of what older series tales have to offer. Starting with the gameplay and mechanics, the driving design philosophy behind this entry in my opinion seems to be "customize, customize, customize." Previous entries have slowly grown in their ability to make each run of the game to feel different. First starting with growth rates to change characters' area of expertise slightly, then adding branching promotions to create variety in mid to late game, followed by allowing characters to become basically any class you desired so long as you put the work into it. Three Houses clearly looked at the positive reception to reclassing and said "let's make this an accessible and central part of this one." The Certification system is an incredibly fun way to build armies with strategies of all kinds in mind, leaving no class and character combination off the table, barring gender specific and unique classes of course. The skill proficiency system is obviously in place to encourage a diverse army and keep beginners from getting choice paralysis, but the progression to off-beat builds is left wide open and it's a refreshing way to play differently each time. The most surprising aspect of the class system was just how impactful an intermediate or beginner class could be on party role. By the end of the game I had two characters in the Paladin class (I didn't bother getting to Master Classes because I didn't want the spend a ton of time grinding out Riding ranks when I could be advancing the story, and I wanted to mostly use the canon outfits), Sylvain and Ingrid. Sylvain was previously of the Caviler class and did typical blaze-a-path-through strategies often associated with the class. Ingrid on the other hand spent her intermediate rank in Pegasus Knight, and more or less retained that class' benefits, making her a mage killer and generally great rescue character with good defensive stats. Impact like that makes me excited to explore new options for characters on subsequent playthroughs, or just really pumped to play a true mono-class run (I'm thinking Holy Knights!). Beyond the classing system though, by the end of the game it was easy to feel like there was a little too much micromanaging going on with the abilities and combat arts. I recognize that having access to all of them a once would have broken the game in half but perhaps a "would you like to equip this now?" window each time a character obtains an ability or combat art would cut back on the tedium of having to go through each character individually to decide which of the 3 new skills they acquired since last you updated you want equipped, if at all or something. This would allow you to tweak your build mid-battle theoretically, but that price doesn't seem particularly high in a long-term balance sense. This also by extension made swapping weapons and battalions feel a little more tedious than it otherwise might have, especially when you can just repair and replenish them respectively and still preform pretty well. The battle system itself hasn't changed much fundamentally, but what it does change is many of the elements surrounding the system. Weapons no longer being class-locked plays into the customization elements well, and the weapon triangle's absence shifts the game away from simple rock-paper-scissors and more into playing around each character's innate strengths. The magic system is pretty well thought out too, especially in the early game where healing is a real strategic choice, but I'll fully admit that the critical rate on spells is maybe too darn high. Combat arts are an interesting system, but I only ever used them in do or die scenarios since I wasn't keen on breaking weapons (though when I switched out everyone's iron weapons to steel weapons later in the game, I did feel more comfortable throwing them out more due to the increased durability). Gambits are in a weird spot for me because I tended to either forget they were there or feel unenthusiastic about their lower damage, but it's and understatement to say that the Stride Gambit sealed the deal at the final boss. The other major addition was the large beast enemies, which are frustrating in the moment but in hindsight were a good challenge that spiced up some of the battles. My one big complaint with the combat design is that in the later chapters it feels like ballista-esque structures and spells get way too numerous by the end and it doesn't feel like there's and great way to defeat these enemies other than sending your dodge tank after them and hoping for the best. Finally for mechanics, I'll lightly touch on the monastery. The monastery exploration sections of the game serve as a great way to further flesh out the world and characters in the story and it was fun to see what everyone had to say each month. That said, activity points had a lot of untapped potential, in that increasing motivation in the dining hall is so good that it can be hard to want to do anything except eat (well, also choir practice because projecting my passion for liturgical music into a video game is the ultimate self-insert for me). This is remedied somewhat after the time-skip as advanced training becomes a great option to keep the main protagonist at pace with his students, but tea party remains pretty useless through out thanks to how easy it is to get support points between the protagonist and the rest of the army. Now I'm going to move into the game's narrative, mostly in order of important elements. I'll open by saying going in I was overall hopeful for the game's story, but was pretty skeptical with how many tired ideas it seemed to be pulling from, in particular its academy setting. Also keep in mind I've only played through the Azure Moon route so bear with me if I fail to properly discuss certain characters or plot elements in detail that you find important, but I'd rather discuss the story fresh as to preserve the purity of this first perspective. The first element I'd like to cover is the avatar character, who I'll simply call Byleth from here on. After the disastrous reception Corrin received in the Fates trio of games, Byleth had a lot of baggage attached to his existence going into Three Houses, and at the other side of it I can safely say that it's a pretty mixed bag. On one hand, the game impressively manages to keep him feeling like he's an important part of the group through the whole story without taking away from the leading lord Dimitri. In many ways, Byleth almost feels like a narrative device in that his position of authority allows his students to open up to him about their internal conflicts without feeling forced and I enjoyed that. On the other hand... when Byleth does become the center of attention, it's basically only to either play up his mystery or awaken some spectacular new talent or ability to the point when it's almost comical and pandering how powerful he becomes, and being an emotionally challenged silent protagonist the game can't really dive into how he feels about all of it. It's not a huge loss, but getting to explore the burden of those powers, while a little overplayed in this superhero dominated media landscape, could have been interesting. In regards to the antagonists side of things, I'm aware that a certain group of sneaky puppet masters are mostly missing from the Azure Moon route, but I found this to be in its favor as it allows the story to better focus on the main conflict between the Holy Kingdom and the Empire. The plot twist that Edelgard is the main villain of the story was incredibly daring on the part of Intelligent Systems, and contextualized the church of Serios and Rhea's harsh actions as not there to force morally gray aspects onto an otherwise good faction, but as a basis from which to see why Edelgard would want to change disrupt the current order of things. It was executed on really well, but I'll get into more of that later. The supporting cast of characters is one of my biggest highlights of the story, and all for one small reason: scale. While the ensemble casts from previous Fire Emblem are good in their own right, their massive size usually prevented all but a group of characters you could count on one hand to feel relevant to the story at any given time, and the games relied completely on support conversations to keep everyone else relevant after their introduction. Three Houses fixes this by keeping the party's size small through the whole game, and it's wonderful. Each character has something to say about the current state of affairs in the monastery exploration sections, and in cutscenes they all almost always get to make suggestions and observations about what's happening. This is especially so within the Blue Lions when you consider that the only character that hasn't known at least one other character since childhood is Ashe, and even he doesn't fall behind in making engaging remarks about his peers. I got to know each and every one of my students very well over the course of the game, and once Flayn joined the group in chapter 6, I realized that I could make the story even better by only recruiting characters forced upon me, and I loved it. In a series that encourages you to make as many friends as possible, I was motivated to intentionally avoid bugging other houses and knights, and in doing so endured the heartbreak of having to face them on the battlefield, making each clash that much more weighty and dramatic. My final party size was a whopping 12, and I at least "liked!" every one of those characters by the end of the game. I've no doubt this will apply nicely to the three other routes, though maybe not as quite strongly due to the aforementioned familiarity between the Blue Lions. Finally, I want to talk about Dimitri, because he is the single most fascinating thing about this game to me. I think its really easy to write him off as a melodramatic character, but this ignores how much thought was put into his characterization. Watching his composure and ability to handle his grief over over the Tragedy of Durscur slowly deteriorate was powerful because it felt so human, the idea that even the strongest of hearts can't truly emerge from tragedy without scars, and the pain of trying not to let it show. Watching this sweet young noble rise to the occasion, fall into despair, then rise again was truly moving, but that's not the main reason I hold Dimitri in such high regard. I loved Dimitri's story because it is a fascinating re-imagining of the series original protagonist, Marth. I get this is a REALLY sensational thing to say but hear me out. Both characters are similar in that they are both princes who suffer great tragedy at the hands of an enemy nation and are forced to flee their homeland, then ultimately return to take back their kingdom, afterwards finally laying to rest the belligerent force that put them in that situation. What Three Houses does to re-imagine this story is simply ask, "Where does the greatest obstacle in the way of each protagonist lie?" For Marth, the answer is the enemy before him, as he is a strong willed character who uses his tragedy to motivate himself and others to face down his usurper courageously, and help others along the way, his challenge being in demonstrating his military prowess to overcome battle after improbable battle. Dimitri on the other hand is only able to really accomplish his goals by conquering his own fears and grief. As far as I'm concerned, it would have been difficult for Dimitri and the gang to retake the Holy Kingdom, but with a little help from the eastern lords of Faerguhs and the Alliance he could have rallied his people to victory well before ol' teach woke back up. Instead, he wanders in darkness, blindly ignoring his people's plight in pursuit of absolution and revenge, only succeeding and fulfilling his duty when he is saved from himself by his friends. The final step in his journey once wide awake and ready to fight the Empire is seeing whether he can extend this salvation he's found to the last of his family, his stepsister Edelgard. In the final chapter of the story Dimitri meets with the empress of Adrestia on purely diplomatic terms in an attempt to understand what it is she's trying to do by having started this war. It becomes clear to the prince that his kin is too fixated on her idea of who the world should be, but just as his closest friends never gave up on him, he reminds her of the peace that is possible between the two in and act of faith in their humanity, offering a dagger like he did all those years ago. Later that week the Kingdom forces attack Enbarr and in their final confrontation Edelgard seemingly throws away her humanity in a last ditch effort to overpower Dimitri, but Dimitri prevails. In the final scene (minus the S-Rank cutscenes which feel surprisingly natural thanks to the fact they don't happen during a bloody war) Edelgard's humanity is restored, emblematic of what Dimitri was really fighting for, and the prince offers her his hand in mercy. But true to her ideals to the end, the young empress takes up the dagger Dimitri gave her and tries one final time to carve a path to her future, and Dimitri thrusts his lance into his stepsister to protect himself. The scene ends with the prince and the professor solemnly and silently leaving the war behind and stepping through the door to a peaceful world. This final scene is what Three Houses: Azure Moon is all about. People are broken, but they're also capable of overcoming that brokenness, and so long as that remains true we can't ever give up on one another's ability to change for the better, even if we fail to help them change in the end. As of now, I've updated my profile to indicate Three Houses as my favorite Fire Emblem. I'm sure there must be a bit of honeymoon bias at work and we'll see if I feel that way later down the line, but for now I can't really justify not giving the title to it. It was a truly great month playing this game, and I'm excited to spend months more completing every route and more adventures still. Thank you for reading this brain dump of mine, and please let me know your thoughts on Three Houses, these crackpot leylines I'm drawing between Archenaea and Fodlan, or which mono-class run you're going to undertake. Or tell me who best boy and best girl is, and why it's these two.

I think more than anything we'll see the routes formula continued because it is an affirmation of the series gameplay working well. More chapters means more stuff for us to do and the more we get out of the games' fun mechanics. And limiting units based on route is a pretty simple but effective way to increase that replayablility further, on top of being easy story drama.

I think I agree with Acacia that setting the RP during the events of Three Houses specifically could get really messy because we'd have to establish which house Byleth chose to teach and accommodate for how the plot plays out differently, which at worst might necessitate everyone taking the time to play-through (or spoil themselves) on the plot of our established "canon." Fodlan as a setting is so awesome though, and I would be interested. Someone should seriously write a setting book on it in the vein of a D&D setting book or something.

I think what officer @TheGoodHoms is saying is that the recent Fire Emblem avatars don't work because making them self insert characters means they either have to make decisions basically anyone would make in any situation, or make story-interesting and self-defining choices which break the immersion of the character being "you," thus negating their status as player inserts. I for one can suspend my disbelief enough to see these characters as both myself and a character in their own right, but I understand the frustration that comes with watching "your" character make decisions logically or ethically opposed to how you would actually approach the situation. I think my biggest problem with Byleth is the lack of a boon/bane system on them. It's fun to mess around with your strengths and weaknesses between runs, and really I just wanted to continue my hipster +Resistance/-Strength builds.

Context:

I didn't know what the monster slaying quest dialogue was going into your Bloodstained review and when I realized you were creating an original quest backstory I was genuinely heartbroken for a moment! Granted the use of religious imagery I related to (as made evident by my cheeky comment on page one) might have had something to do with it, but it was a really powerful tale for just a critical example. I really felt the villager's love for her neighbors and her grief over their fate. Just... wow put a big ol' "Emotional" warning next time! After looking at a few elements of the game I actually became a little more cautiously optimistic rather than hyped regarding Bloodstained and I see now there may be a little more to my concern than just my weird tastes. Although considering your mark of relative quality compared to the other Igavanias, (it is in the upper half of your list after all) I'd say it still looks pretty fun. Even though Three Houses is about to make me all kinds of broke anyways so who knows when I'll get around to it. 😛

... Kickstart it. Retro reimaginings have a 100% quality rate if you do that, so hype will skyrocket. The proper way to teach someone how to sing is...

Perhaps hook them on the conversation by relating it to something they like. For example, if a friend of yours is really into a character similar to a Fire Emblem unit, try starting a discussion about their similarities and differences. "Oh yeah, [insert character]! Their revenge arc reminds me a little bit of Lyn's similar arc from Fire Emblem." If it's really the anime artstyle that bothers them, that might be difficult to overcome, but you could make a point of highlighting characters who don't reflect waifu culture all that much (like *gasp* many of the male characters), and give them a gentle reminder that some pervy artist on the internet isn't a reflection of everyone who likes the series, nor necessarily reflects the series' own treatment of its characters.

Another Ottservia story analysis? It really IS Christmas in July! Really fascinating take on Birthright, I can't wait to see what's to come in parts 2 and 3!