Delfino

Personally, F!Byleth's voice is the only one I don't care for at this time. The sound of it is okay, but the delivery doesn't do it for me. She sounds so dead inside, especially during her "Such power dwells within?" line. Though now that I'm thinking about it, Ingrid's voice in the Gamespot preview didn't sound that great either and seems a little deep for her. But what do I know, we haven't heard much so far. Everyone else sounds good, I think! Though I do have to agree that the graphics aren't too spectacular. I'd consider it lost potential, but it won't bother me much in the long run.

I was waiting for this moment, lol. Props to you for the quality comment. Gotta admit that I'm crossing my fingers for some well-thought out villains as well. I enjoyed Gangrel in Awakening, but everything after him was meh to downright bad, in my opinion. Except for Berkut. I did like Berkut. Though that may have partially been due to Ian Sinclair's phenomenal voice acting.

Bernadetta's behavior could have absolutely nothing to do with Sylvain, but I think it would just be super cute if she had a big crush on him, lol. Admittedly, we don't know much about him yet, but he looks to be a pretty charming and friendly fellow. A shy girl like her being smitten with someone like him just sounds adorable. So far, we haven't really gotten any hints of the houses interacting with each other much on a more personal level. I'm really hoping for some of that, it could make for some interesting situations should the territories come to blows with one another.

During the February direct video, she goes into combat for a brief moment. You can hear her say "Oh no..." pretty faintly and attack somebody. I'm not a fan of the high-pitched Japanese voice either, so I'm glad it was changed.

I'm honestly rooting for her to have a huge crush on Sylvain now. Just as long as it isn't a creepy obsession. I would severely dislike it if she were another Nina. She does seem to be awfully nervous in both the video and her picture about Byleth watching her. I wonder what she's doing, lol.

I definitely agree that Tharja was ruined by an over-sexualization of her character after the fact. She was reserved and even self-conscious in Awakening, but now she only seems to exist to flaunt her... assets. It's sad. I feel like Camilla was meant to be that character from the beginning, so not a lot to say there, but Dorothea doesn't strike me as someone who is. Her design is probably the closest to being "sexualized" out of the students, but it's still inoffensive if you ask me, which is something I've really appreciated about the designs so far. I really hope they don't go that route with her. Her design is so cute and she seems like a respectable, fun character from what we've seen.

Oh, very nice, thank you! I have to agree with Book Bro that more exposure would be a good idea. The game's presence has been pretty low-key in the west so far. A video would be nice, though I'll take famitsu no problem, even though it's Japan only...

I haven't really been paying attention. Is there any reason to actually expect anything next week? Or is that just wishful thinking on everybody's part? I'd love to see something, but I don't want to get my hopes up, lol. The little twitter bios and videos have been great, though I've been itching to hear more of the English voice cast. I wasn't crazy about Fates' localization, personally, but from what the wiki says, the voice acting for Three Houses is going to be recorded by the same people who did Awakening and SoV. That bodes well, in my opinion.

If you're on Hard, you may be screwed if Faye isn't a cleric and Tobin isn't a mage. You won't get another cleric until Act 4 or another mage until Act 3. Come the siege on Zofia Castle, you're going to get rushed. Since you lost Lukas, your main tank option to hold a chokepoint is gone, and you won't have a healer to keep anyone else alive. Out of the four new units you will get before the end of Act 1, two of them will be super weak until you can get them caught up while one of them will be decent but will fall behind very quickly. I'd probably restart, lol. But if you decide to give it a shot, good luck!

Well that's reassuring. I would not expect NoA to skip out on a dub using an excuse of "There's too much dialogue."

The game potentially lacking a dub is a legitimate concern. KT has been extremely iffy with their dubs as of late. For some examples: Samurai Warriors Chronicles and SW4 (including 4-II, Empires, and Spirit of the Sanada) all had no dub. SW1-3 and their expansions did, so it was a change, to say the least. The lack of dub could be excused by a waning interest in the series in the west, however, as well as the fact that the games are about Japanese history anyway. Dynasty Warriors 7: Empires and DW8:E were not dubbed despite every game in the series prior being dubbed (except the first I guess). The vanilla DW8 title almost lacked a dub, only barely getting one after fans showed a high interest in it, but in return, it was butchered. Boatloads of spoken dialogue ended up getting cut. Warriors Orochi 3 was not dubbed even though the first two were. I believe several recent games such as the Attack on Titan one, Toukiden 2, and Berserk and the Band of the Hawk were not dubbed. There are probably other examples I'm not thinking of as well. I believe KT initially began ditching dubs because the games were not popular enough to make back the money spent on voice work for such enormous casts of characters, but they seem to be making a habit of it as of late regardless of the game's cast size or popularity...

I guess if/when the English site pops up, we'll know if we're getting dubs or not. The protags look meh (mostly don't like the hair of the male one), but I guess I care more about other characters anyway.

As long as there's a place available to heal, the enemy will run for it. You can get them to abandon the thought by blocking the healing spot, otherwise you'll just have to pick them off before they run off. You have to be pretty aggressive. Enemies running away is really annoying toward the beginning of the game since you have fewer units, most with low movement, but I feel like it gets more manageable later on after you start getting units with higher range and movement and weapons like Brave Swords or Excalibur that have high crit chances. After getting Snipers and later Bow Knights, picking off enemies that try to run becomes much easier. You might hate the battle with Grieth in Act 3, though. He's an obnoxious unit type with scary stats and it's hard to catch him when he starts running since one, he runs onto tiles with evade bonuses, and two, you'll have a castor eternally respawning waves of Terrors at you to clog the halls so you can't catch his 7-move ass. Ugh, never before did I feel so triggered by an enemy running away, haha.

Ugh, Forsyth's for Python rips my heart out. Knowing what kind of person Forsyth is, I feel like Python dying would absolutely crush him, especially since he's the one who talked Python into joining the army in the first place. Deen popping up and killing the mood makes me laugh every time, though.

Currently, I'm having more fun with Alm's group, despite the fact that my Alm sucks hard. Although my Celica team is definitely more well-rounded when it comes to defenses (my Alm team is like 90% people with shit for resistance), there are too many duplicate classes. Saber, Kamui, and Jesse are all mercs while Celica, Mae, and Boey are all mages (though Celica can use swords which, surprise, the mercs are already fighting over). And then you get the choice between Deen or Sonya who are... whaddya know, a merc and a mage, respectively. Oh, and you also get the Whitewings. Three Pegasus Knights. Sigh... Celica's route has desert levels, and Terrors like to respawn right at crossroads, forcing you to deal with them repeatedly. Her route has begun feeling like a slog. I will say, though, that I love Kamui and Saber, Leon has been great, and Genny has been exponentially more useful than Silque for me (I didn't look up that Faye is best as a healer. Guide dang it). Alm's route contains more of a variety of character classes as long as you don't make your villagers all the same thing (which would be silly), but it's mostly the characters that I like best. Python, Forsyth, Lukas, and Gray have been some of my absolute favorites so far. However, I'd say one of the biggest things is that Alm's team feels more cohesive to me, probably because it's an actual established group with a big purpose. Most everyone with the exception of a few characters is part of the Deliverance, they're all part of the same group with the same goals. Celica's group, while I love it, feels more... segregated? Detached from one another? It feels more like an eclectic collection of random folks Celica picked up along the way who are just kinda coming along for the hell of it or for their own personal reasons and not for her own greater goal. They feel less involved with each other as a whole.