Anomalocaris

The tutorial says harder difficulty offers better rewards. I'd have to check if that's, like, a gold/exp multiplier or something, but it's definitely something at least.

She's probably not footlocked, her trailer showed her wearing an outfit resembling the Dark Knight attire, just using the dismounted version of it. As for whether Dark Knight and Holy Knight use lances or tomes, I could see them functioning like Fighter does and having two separate movesets depending on whether you equip a lance or a tome.

I'm still hoping there's something along those lines, but I feel like they'd have mentioned it in the trailers by now. They were eager to show off History Mode in the last game's trailers. At the very least, the fact that the demo mentions "first-time clear" rewards on stages insinuates the existence of second-time clears, so maybe we'll at least be able to replay story stages freely.

I'm a little iffy on it myself-- part of what I like about the previous Warriors games is how once you finish the story you still have a whopping amount of content to play, using all the characters, stages, and mechanics the story introduced. Also, improving your units and maxxing out their stuff. If this game is designed around multiple playthroughs from scratch like Three Houses itself, that'll be mildly disappointing.

Music to my ears. I hated AoC's stage design.

I'm slightly disappointed that, going by the trailer, the Ashen Wolves seem to be basic classes (Assassin, Brawler, Gremory, Dark Knight) instead of their DLC classes, especially War Monk and Dark Flier, but I'm just happy to see them make it in at all.

I'd be shocked if we didn't. Every Nintendo-Warriors crossover game thus far has had DLC. Hyrule Warriors even got two batches thanks to its re-release. As long as it adds a lot of side-content I'll be happy. The best part about Hyrule Warriors and FE Warriors were the robust Adventure/History Mode, and the DLC really expanded those.

They're very cathartic. There's just something satisfying about sending literal hundreds of enemies flying away to their deaths by pressing a couple buttons. Very good way to blow off steam after a stressful day, and when you want to actually challenge yourself there's plenty of difficult missions too. They also tend to last a very long time before you run out of content to play, which is good if you don't have a massive backlog of games to get through or really need to get your money's worth in terms of time expenditure.

With today's (lack of an) update the odds of the faculty have gone down, I feel. I don't have high hopes for them, but 26 (27 if Byleth is playable) is already a very beefy roster for a Warriors game that's starting out fresh roster-wise. I do hope they're in, though, even if they're more limited than the students in terms of class options or something.

Anna was kept secret, but that's it. Everybody else, even Lyn and Celica, were shown off. That being said, the NPCs who would later become playable in DLC (Niles, Oboro, Owain, and Navarre) were not shown before release aside from one accidental glimpse of Navarre in a cutscene.

The original game just used recycled Fodlan mooks for the Almyran grunts, so I don't think they'll do much different here. They might darken their skintones to look more like Cyril and Claude's, at least, like they did with the Duscur.

Does it? I assumed by "elemental damage" it just refers to the side-effects elements have, like ice freezing enemies, wind launching enemies into the air, etc. I could imagine Demonic Beasts and the like potentially having elemental weaknesses, but it'd be kinda weird and arbitrary if generic enemy soldier classes had them, like archers being weak to ice or swordmasters being weak to fire.

Flayn of all people retreating underground and becoming a sewer rat is inordinately amusing to me.

Honestly, I am a challenge gamer, but I love Warriors games precisely as a way to blow off steam between other games. They have challenging missions sometimes, yes, but by and large it's just a very cathartic game when it lets you run around sweeping hundreds of enemies away with a single attack. In fact, that might be part of why I disliked Age of Calamity. While it's not a difficult game per se, the reduced emphasis on destroying tons of enemies at once in favor of chipping away at annoyingly durable Moblins made it much less satisfying to play, at least compared to the original Hyrule Warriors or FE Warriors. Thankfully, even what little gameplay footage we've seen of Three Hopes so far looks promising on that front.

I've only played the Nintendo crossover Musous so far. Hyrule Warriors, FE Warriors, and Age of Calamity. This will be my fourth; fifth if you count HW Definitive Edition separately.

Lys looks to be a Gremory to me. I don't think they'd put so much emphasis on a light-dark dichotomy if she wasn't the class specifically intended to use both. It's also her canon promotion. Glad to see I was right about Lorenz having Dark Knight, though a little disappointed Leonie's only been shown as a basic-ass Cavalier. Was hoping for Bow Knight as her default. As for designs themselves, I really like Raph and Iggy's new designs. I also like the former yanking a rock out of the ground to swing and throw.

Flayn's confirmed to appear, at least, so I wouldn't be surprised if she makes it in. Almost disappointing she doesn't get a redesign like everybody else, though, by virtue of being unchanging.

Ah, I haven't been following the JP tweets. I saw the Advanced Seals, but figured that could either be a way to unlock new movesets or just gain FEW1-esque promotion bonuses. I may still sorta be right, in that promoted classes are treated as unlockable alternatives rather than one-way upgrades, but we'll see. I just hope if there is a tiering system, it doesn't work in a way where some entire movesets get left behind as inferior to promoted versions. Trying out all the various movesets is the fun part of Warriors games to me, and having some become intentionally obsolete would suck.

I'm hoping they'll be playable (Hanneman, Flayn, and Shamir are some personal favorites of mine) but I'm not holding my breath. The 24 students plus Shez and Monica is already a really beefy roster. Having the... nine recruitable faculty members is stretching it, especially when they have to compete for slots with the Ashen Wolves, Byleth, Jeritza, Anna, and possibly new characters.

So with the class names revealed so far, I'm thinking promotions won't really be a thing in this game, and the class tree will be flattened to a single tier instead of having basic, intermediate, advanced, and master tiers. Hear me out. Each moveset is named after a class, and so far it's generally been whatever the lowest-tier class that represents that moveset is; Petra's labeled a Thief rather than an Assassin, Sylvain is labeled a Cavalier rather than a Paladin, etc. Felix and Ferdinand are given the promoted classes of Swordmaster and Holy Knight not because they're higher-ranked than the others, but because there isn't really any weaker version of those classes; Swordmaster's swift Eastern style is distinct enough from regular Mercenary to be treated as its own thing instead of just a promotion (Hero is a more direct promotion despite being gender-locked), and Holy Knight has no weaker analogue whatsoever, being the only cavalry+lance+white magic class in the game. "But we've seen Ferdinand has both Cavalry and Holy Knight! That means he promotes from the former to the latter!" you may say, but I say "Not necessarily a promotion." I think the two classes will be treated as a lateral movement rather than a vertical movement, with Cavalry being straightforward lance cav action while Holy Knight is a sibling class that trades some of the power and swiftness for fancy light shows. Now, promotions might still be a mechanic in the game, but I suspect it'll be more akin to how it was in FE Warriors; cool new design and unlocked skill tree nodes, but no direct change to how the character plays. This might also mean they have to invent new class names for the promoted forms of Swordmaster, Holy Knight, and possibly some other master classes such as Dark Knight, Great Knight, and Bow Knight. Of course I could be wrong about all this, but this is my theory and I'm sticking with it.

Well, even in the first FE Warriors they weren't exactly headlining. Yeah, they're the protagonists of the story mode, but the marketing focused almost exclusively on all the big names from past titles like Chrom, Marth, Ryoma, Xander, etc. So I don't think they need a surprise crossover appearance in Three Hopes to "redeem" themselves in advance of a true sequel, if they're not that important to begin with. As for my idea, the game would take place a few years later and focus on a new character or two plus all the crossover characters. Rowan and Lianna are older, more mature, and sport new designs. but are also demoted to NPCs for most of the story (leading Aytolis's knights and being a war strategist, respectively). Then near the end of the game once shit really hits the fan and it's all hands on deck, they become playable themselves, as a pair of Gotoh/Mycen archetypes, and maybe get some closure with Darios. Nothing too grandiose, just a better use for them than being the central protagonists a second time, in my opinion.

Not really, no. If Rowan and Lianna were to be "redeemed" I'd much rather it just be a game that's obligated to feature them anyway, which FEW2 would be (direct Warriors sequels pretty much always bring back the full roster). I've had a few ideas for how a "proper" FEW2 could use them, in fact. Even if they were well-written, including them or a whole bunch of other FE characters in a game that's supposed to be focused on Three Houses would be incredibly distracting. Overextending and diluting the scope of your game/story/movie/etc. is a rookie mistake.

I wouldn't mind if Rowan and Lianna returned with better writing and cooler designs in a direct sequel to the original FE Warriors, but I see zero merit in bringing them or a whole bunch of other crossover characters into Three Hopes. It'd just distract from the Fodlan setting. At most I could see, like, a single bonus character from another game (Marth? Tiki?) similar to Lyn and Celica's bonus appearances last time, but even that's pushing it when there's so many Three Houses characters to include and so little time to work on them all.

I assume the scar destroyed the hair follicles underneath it. It wouldn't be noticeable if his hair was any other style, but sticking it up like that makes it visible. The scar isn't "on" his hair like a poorly placed band-aid, it's just creating a small divot in his hairline where no hair is growing.

I agree with all of these (though admittedly as an Awakening baby, I'm not really bothered by the roster the way Elibe/Tellius fans are) but do wanna append one really important thing to "The good:" Gameplay-wise, the roster balance is really good for a Warriors game. Every moveset feels satisfying to play as. Even the "worst" moveset in the game, Corrin's, is still fun and easy to use, and leagues better than any of Hyrule Warriors or Age of Calamity's absolute stinkers (Agatha, Link w/ Great Fairy, Tingle, Riju, and Hestu, for example).