Azure Sen

I'm in a sort of reverse situation on that front myself; the fact that I went in spoiled was the only reason I gave the game a fair shake at all, and is exactly why I can identify what I liked and disliked about the game now instead of a year from now, because knowing myself I would have absolutely (and irrationally, I'll admit) hated the game for a long while once the plot twist hit. EDIT: I was in the middle of responding to the rest of your points when I accidentally posted this, so sorry about that! Those'll be edited in later.

I have many complex feelings on V3, but mostly it boils down to "everything but parts of Chapters 4 & 5 and all of Chapter 6 were fantastic, so I just ignore Chapter 6 and substitute my own ending." Some specific notes: Chapter 5 was both great and terrible. Great, because the writing and the planning for the trial were so great that even going into it with full spoilers I still managed to feel like I was wrong about the whole thing at some points. Terrible because Maki, who I had previously liked a lot, fully descended into Nagito levels of "trying to kill her fellow spotless for a terrible reason" and Kaito spends most of the chapter being a whiny baby over being proved wrong in Chapter 4's trial even though Shuichi saved all their lives by exposing Gonta and, much like Maki, Kaito endangered all the spotless for a terrible reason. It really doesn't help that neither of them, especially Maki (who would have had all her supposed friends killed and, as far as she knew, doomed the human race to extinction in the process just to kill one person had she gotten her way), are called out for their actions or show any regret for what they've done, something that happened to Aoi from the first game, who attempted a similar plan (for far more sympathetic reasons). The cast is mostly great; though I have to completely ignore her role in the story to do so I still like Maki, I find Shuichi to be a good protagonist in his own right and mostly just disagree with his implementation, and outside of Kaito, Shinguji, Angie and Tsumugi my feelings range from "like a lot" to "meh" for all the characters. Having Monokuma back as the primary antagonist was great, he was sorely missed. The Monokubs, however, were garbage even as the meta commentary they were probably supposed to be (since they felt to me like they were supposed to be parodies of characters added later in a series to keep things fresh). That was the complete opposite of what the final message was, though? Shuichi even says that just because they're fictional characters that doesn't mean their pain isn't real to them, and given that he's able to sway a good deal of Danganronpa's viewers away from the series with it once he's confronted them in an Armament Argument. In general the whole message was "lies/fiction always have some truth in them and in fact can become truth and change the world." Granted, I have problems with the message for different reasons, namely that trying to shame your audience for being obsessed with fiction to a life-destroying degree (which Kodaka and co. were definitely trying to do, given how the fictionalized audience is portrayed) while simultaneously elevating fiction to the status of "legitimate world-changer" kinda undercuts the whole point.

Favorite Heroes: Roy, Alm and Micaiah Favorite Villains: Gangrel, Idun, and Narcian Least Favorite Heroes: Peri, story!Xander and Ike Least Favorite Villains: Garon, Iago, Hans, Berkut and Fernand

Probably Persona 4 is the best example for me. It's not a bad game by any means, but writing-wise I consider it one of the weakest Persona games, and one whose flaws just keep piling up. The pacing is awful, the tone is inconsistent and there's a dramatic shift in tone towards the end that the game has not earned in the slightest, the plot runs on stupid contrivances to even get going, several "sympathetic" characters distinctly aren't (oh hai Yosuke, Chie, Namatame and late-game Dojima!), the humor is...just bad like 90% of the time, and overall it feels a lot like Atlus didn't know what direction to take the game in so they went in all the directions.

Favorites: Takumi, Lyn, Lucina/Chrom and Frederick. Takumi is a quick-shooting murder machine, Lyn is Sword Takumi in that regard, Lucina/Chrom are just super-fun to use, and Frederick's moveset is brutal and the power behind it is great. Least Favorites: The Pegasus Knights and Leo/Elise/Robin. The Peg Knights control like a car with no breaks and a brick tied to the accelerator, their hitboxes are wonky as heck, and they overshoot 90% of their attacks. Meanwhile, I have the exact opposite problem with Leo, Robin and Elise; their movesets are too slow and easy to interrupt. They basically need Armored Blow and Astra to even be all that competent, and whatever advantage they have in damage is undercut by their generally low defense and slowness.

I'd like to see Echoes and Blazing Blade DLC, if nothing else. Binding Blade and Tellius will presumably be saved for the sequel even if it never comes, and IntSys seems to be mostly ignoring Magvel and Jugdral these days, so those two are the safest bet. Honestly, I wouldn't mind Darios being playable via DLC. Preferably with prequel DLC that gives his dad an actual presence in the story and explores him as a character a bit more; Darios seems like he has the most potential to be good of all the OCs.

Depending on my mood I might get a little salty, but honestly it doesn't bother me 95% of the time. I'll admit I can get a little over-invested in fiction, so I feel you in that regard, but whatever frustration I feel tends to pass pretty quick anyway unless the person's being rude about it. Not associating your identity with what you like is good, if sometimes hard to follow, advice in this regard; basically, don't take it personally, they're generally not criticizing you.

The Steering Committee from Danganronpa. It says a lot about how reprehensibly awful they are that they're incredibly hated despite never making a real appearance outside of Danganronpa Zero. Speaking of DR, Nagito Komaeda from Super Danganronpa 2. I get what they were trying to do with him, I just find that they failed completely, and Nagito is consistently the character I hate the most in-series. Hiyoko Saionji and Teruteru Hanamura from the same game as well; the former for just being an incredibly nasty person, and the latter for being a horndog and especially for his final Free Time event. Also in terms of gameplay mechanics, Hangman's Gambit is always terrible in every game, but especially in V3 where their brilliant idea to improve it from 2 was to make the flippin' letters invisible. Nohman Ridley from Zone of the Enders. Both for being a monstrous lunatic, and for the Anubis fights being such a pain. The true final boss from Furi. A ridiculously boring shump boss only hard because the game completely changes controls when fighting it. Agreed with all of these. I love to hate Junko, I do, so I can't really say that I outright completely hate her. Still, she deserved everything she got and more. Adachi I don't think is supposed to be sympathetic, but I 100% agree on Akechi.

There's a distinct difference between "mediocre but acceptable sales" and "complete bomb." Devil Survivor is the former, TMS is the latter. The former two games sold 56,000 and 63,000 units first week respectively, and both hit the 100,000 lifetime sales mark in Japan within a year; TMS, by contrast, sold 23,000 units its first week, and didn't even manage 100,000 lifetime sales at current. And of course, none of this matters because Nintendo are the ones who have the final say in whether or not a sequel or a port happen, because it's their IP, and numbers like this are what makes Nintendo go "nope, not spending any more money on you."

Except it has? Ronde killed the Majin Tensei subseries because it sold about as bad as TMS did. And, as Jedi said, a sequel depends entirely on Nintendo, who has some strict sales expectations.

To wit: We don't even have confirmation of 2's existence yet, let alone who the roster would be. I think it's jumping the gun a little to talk about the potential roster for 3 with any certainty outside of dream rosters.

I'm not quite sure why people are talking about a potential FEW 3 when we don't have any confirmation of 2 beyond Koei Temco wanting to do it. Nor do I understand why people think KT would hold back Roy and Ike yet again when they've already said those two are first pick for FEW 2, unless KT doesn't want 2 to sell well enough to justify a sequel. If there is a sequel, it'll most likely get the DW Gundam Reborn treatment; that is, expect to see about 20-25 new characters instead of 5-10, and the original story will be chucked out in favor of mini-recreations of the various games' stories. Anyway, if there is a sequel, I'd say Tellius, Binding Blade and Switch are the most likely candidates. Jugdral and Magvel might get DLC, but that's about it.

Takumi's the top of the top at 60, with Rowan and Lucina decently far behind at 51.

Shield of Seals for actually being plot-relevant in both the games it's in and it actually is referred to as the Fire Emblem sometimes. Runners up are the Omega Yato and the Binding Blade Fire Emblem.

Another nice set of reveals. I'm not hyped about Chie all that much since I never used her in Arena or Ultimax and I don't like her as a character, but I don't have any problems with her being in or anything. Here's hoping for Vatista, Tsubaki and Yukiko or Mitsuru next week.

The only thing I want the Fire Emblem to be in this game is plot-relevant, honestly. Otherwise I don't care what it is, although it will probably be some kind of crest or medallion again just because that's what it most commonly is.

Some thoughts: -The game does manage to capture the FE 'feel' in some ways, though this is not always a good thing (see also: asshole reinforcement spam). -Heroes and generic non-mook units feel super-tanky a lot of the time. While the latter has been mitigated with levels and weapons, the former is still true to a ridiculous extent; I was fighting a lv. 20 hero with a lv. 50 promoted PC with a Silver weapon and I had to just spam musous because of how little damage I was doing. -Pegasus Knights are not fun to play as. They're too flighty and imprecise with their attacks, and their mobility is actually a huge downside as some of their attacks can overshoot very easily. Their bow weakness is also crippling and basically forces their non-deployment in a lot of maps, especially if you're on Classic. -I'm torn on the promotion system, because on the one hand it's a nice FE element to have, but on the other hand in History mode it can really screw you over if you don't promote the "right" units, and without its boosts a lot of units are basically useless in the later stages. For example, in one of the two maps needed to unlock the final map of Fates' History mode, there are maps where you have to play as either the Hoshidan siblings plus Rowan and Lianna or the Nohr siblings plus Rowan and Lianna; if you haven't promoted more than two of either of those categories, you're gonna have a bad time, made even worse by the fact that those stages have Master Seals as their S Rank rewards. Overall the game's enjoyable, but I'd have a hard time calling it one of my favorite Warriors games. Yes you can. You can do it from the orders menu when you hover over them, just as you do with switching out/swapping positions of your playable units.

If all that needed to be done was to finish their movesets and touch up their models, then why not just make them free post-launch DLC like the villains in HW? I don't want it to be true because KT is usually pretty good about this sort of thing, but there was no reason characters with that much stuff in the base game needed to be paid DLC. Not to mention that they managed to finish Lyn and Celica just fine despite those two being added fairly late in development, but these four gave them trouble? It just doesn't make sense to me.

A significant number of the people buying this game aren't buying it for the Warriors part, so of course characters are more important than History Mode maps. Niles had translated supports in the base files of the Japanese version of the game that weren't removed before launch. Likewise, the characters have audio files and scripts for quotes that they couldn't say unless they were playable. I'd say that's a pretty good indication that they were axed from the playable roster late in development to stick them in DLC, which is pretty scummy regardless of the semantics. At the end of the day FE Warriors is a commercial product that we are expected to pay money for, not an ugly sweater our kindly grandmother made for us as a gift. As consumers, we don't have to feel a lick of gratitude for IntSys and KT making a product, especially if it's one that a significant portion of the fanbase wasn't asking for in the first place.

Even as someone who will defend shounen anime and its protagonists from all the crap they get until his last breath, I can't stand Rowan. The supports of his I've read place him on the wrong side of hubris, as an arrogant, obnoxious idiot that they were trying to make endearingly dorky but failed miserably. Most shounen protagonists work because even if they're book dumb, they tend to be clever or creative enough to make up for it, and they generally have positive traits like a good work ethic, determination, kindness, etc. that balances out their more grating traits. Rowan doesn't even seem to get that.

Drat, I have been caught. Honestly, though, I feel like Persona has diverged enough in content, tone and to some extent audience to be considered a separate series, even just counting the post-2 titles. For the record, if I did count them as one large entry, then everything before Persona would move up a rank, and Metal Gear would take the #10 spot.

Top ten because I can't narrow it down. Series must have at least three games to qualify as a proper series for me, and generally speaking good titles carry more weight than bad titles do, so if the number of titles I liked in the series is 1:2 to the number of titles I disliked, I'll still count it. Similarly, as long as I've played at least three games I've liked in the series even if I haven't played them all, I'll still count it. #10: Danganronpa #9: Romance of the Three Kingdoms/Nobunaga's Ambition #8: Resident Evil #7: Devil May Cry #6: Fire Emblem #5: Persona #4: Pokémon #3: Silent Hill #2: Shin Megami Tensei #1: Fallout Honorable mentions: Zelda, Mario, Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons, Civilization, Ys, Legend of Heroes, Saints Row, Final Fantasy, Dead Rising, Metal Gear, The Elder Scrolls, Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, Soulsbourne Technically don't qualify but I'll still mention positively: Azure Striker Gunvolt, Dishonored, Half-Minute Hero, Portal, Hatoful Boyfriend

Pretty much. Awakening, Fates and Akaneia (specifically New Mystery) are probably the three most popular entries in the series in Japan. Aside from Frederick and Celica, every FE character in Warriors has scored in the top ten of various popularity polls or are incredibly popular/well-known regardless.

While this may be true of mainline DW/SW (it isn't, but we'll discuss that below), this is absolutely not true of the crossover games. The entire appeal of any crossover with another IP is playing a Warriors games as your favorite characters. Even if that's not the reason why you personally play them, it doesn't change the fact that a lot of people's purchase of FE Warriors was banking on their favorite characters being in. Also, you two forget that you and other Western fans aren't the primary audience for Warriors games. The main audience is Japanese/Chinese people who do know the history and want to play with their favorite historical figures. It's why Koei has been adding so many characters based on Japanese fan demand of late, and why the mainline games play into mythological/psuedo-historical portrayals that the audience would be familiar with for the most part.