Matroska

So can you get multiple S-ranks but then finalise one at the end? I just S-ranked Catherine without realising what it was, I thought it was her A-rank, yet the other eligible characters have the S by their names still. Normally it'd remove the S or grey it out IIRC.

Is there a spoiler-free list of A ranks that are romantic?

Do you raise supports with adjudant units? Like pair-up in Awakening does.

These terrible companies knowingly take more preorders than they can fulfil on the basis that some people will cancel. Airlines do the same with seats. Normally it works out but it's still not rare for this kind of thing to happen. There's probably some bullshit smallprint hidden away on their site saying they don't actually guarantee to meet all orders so they don't get sued.

I've been playing it for a few days now - don't worry, I'm not going to mention any spoilers - and I would say that with this one they really went back to the drawing board. I'd say it definitely paid off. Now I know some people like Mekkah couldn't give a crap about the story and characters, that's the impression he gives anyway, but for people like me it'd be such a soulless experience if all there was to it was doing maths and placing little soldiers on the right tile. The series has always tried to characterise the units and contextualise the battles within a greater narrative. Traditionally, I think it's fair to say it was only mildly successful in that regard; the plots were clichéd and basic and so were the characters (9 and 10 might be exceptions, I haven't played them despite really wanting to but they do look very good in those regards). Sure you might like those clichés, I certainly do with many of the characters, but it never felt like it really succeeded fully at that stuff. From what I've played so far, Three Houses really goes all out on this regard. It's not that the characters aren't still based on archetypes (e.g. Bernadetta is a typical NEET, you have your "ara ara" women, your tomboys, your smug and condescending nobles etc). But you spend a lot more time with each character, see them in a far wide variety of situations. Rather than knowing everything about them from about 3 brief support conversations, you see them change as people over a long period of time, usually on at least a weekly basis. The story itself grows more organically and isn't just "battle 1, set scene for battle 2, battle 2, set scene for battle 3, battle 3" and so on. In terms of gameplay, I didn't like how Fates and Awakening had this kind of "swarm" gameplay, where it seems that IS were mindful that slow units are typically wastes of space (see FE4 for a particularly egregious example) so they made many units really fast. This resulted in it being harder to have battle lines and proper formations, you just paired up and weathered the storm of a swarm of enemies that could move around your formation and attack rear units in one turn. Three Houses - so far at least - has slowed it down. You actually get defensive blocks of units that you can position and face off against the enemy like a real battle rather than this mad skirmish where everyone is moving 8 tiles. You have gambits that can knock enemies back a tile, like the shove thing in 9. It leads to a feeling of actually being the general of an army rather than a man in the middle of a drunken fight after a football game. The school stuff changes combat in the sense that you don't end up doing things you wouldn't do in a battle just to grind weapone exp or support ranks. You don't have to be torn between doing the strategically sound thing, and getting this guy to C-rank axes, or getting these to guys to B-rank support. You can still augment their progress but you don't get this odd meta game emerging. It shifts the focus to make the game feel more strategical rather than a kind of pseudo-battle where you're really babysitting units and trying to teach that guy over there to use a lance properly. Sorry for the wall of text, but even this is me holding back. There's a lot to be said about this game. 🙂

First of all soon after the introductory stuff at the school, you can click on any student not in your house and it'll tell you what two things they want you to be good at. Could be something like Str and Riding, or a certain weapon. Exactly how good you need to be in that is lowered by your support rank with them, so it is still a good idea to raise supports with them even though you could be raising supports with people you're actually fighting alongside currently.

Amiibo functionality seems to be that you level up the Amiibo Gazebo which periodically spawns better items based on its level. Scanning a FE character unlocks special things as well; I just used the Lucina one and got new music to use in battle.

I just checked and the only one that was broken was the Mediafire one but I've fixed it now. Were you trying to use the links in Owain's post? Use the ones in my original post about it. Edit: Should all work now, there was something weird with the MEGA links dropping the ":" from "https://" when trying to resolve the link. No idea why that was.

Sorry, try again. It posted it as Rich Text which screwed it all up.

Loads of datamined info and pics here. Links and Info: https://pastebin.com/VY8em7hq Datamined Info: https://pastebin.com/Hbk8RAk3 Dumped support files: https://www.mediafire.com/file/u1qow6m7vjdlria/3h_supports.zip/file S support pics: https://mega.nz/#!JAt2TSJI!aT6rwbTyyutnWjHT1Jvby4grI7XZvO86G0Oh5PodDo4 Portraits: https://mega.nz/#!RVUUBCjC!gn_4FjoeNSKA64eXmchDN4F3NyXC67YCYcBXlDxMAWM Imgur album: https://m.imgur.com/a/XAMme9T Endings: https://pastebin.com/M2TqUPQ2 Supports: https://pastebin.com/iGGYsmdd

Anyone know if training weapons have faster weapon rank gains? Just trying to figure out why you'd use one over an iron weapon as they both require the same rank.

Ah cool, like the Grade Shop in the Tales series. That's good to know.

I like how you can control Byleth on the loading screen. I always like that in games.

At the start when you pick gender. It's a pretty small loop but I can't stop listening to it, it's very atmospheric. By the way, does anyone know what date of birth does?

The game has great music so far. I love what I assume is Sothis' theme.

https://serenesforest.net/general/true-hit/ Shouldn't the last line read "To hit, the average value of the 2 RNs must be lower than 1"?

Well for what it's worth, I was born in 1983 and I didn't know anyone called Tina growing up - either as a person "in real life" or as a character of a similar age to mine on TV or in movies. It has always been (within my lifespan) a name for an older woman, and furthermore a pretty working class/blue collar kind of name, so the opposite to exotic, as unfair as that might sound. Again, it's kind of like having God King Barry or something like that. Tina Turner was born in 1939. She was 55 when FFVI came out. Also, and this is a road I really don't want to go down because it unfortunately feels somehow controversial since it's dealing with stereotypes, but African American, as well as black British people, regularly have names from previous generations. Winston is a stereotypical name of a black guy in the UK, yet that name was most commonly given in about 1900 or even before. Another stereotypical black name in the UK or US is Leroy, and that peaks in around the 30s. Putting that kind of thing aside, there are just certain names that have this really "common" feel to them, like Dave, Colin, Steve and so on, and it sounds really damn weird to have a hero in a fantasy setting (or most other settings) called that unless it's meant to be a Python-esque joke.

Ha, though to be fair that's a change that makes SOME kind of sense, at least. Tina sounds like a 60-year-old woman that works in a laundrette. It really doesn't go with this supposedly exotic, otherworldly, non-human character. It's like having a character called Grand Emperor of Earth, Dave. I put that near the category of Mark becoming Morgan.

Well... it's a start, I guess. To be fair, I don't think the former criminal thing should be read into in a negative way. If a woman in a heterosexual romance option was a former criminal, it'd just make her seem like a sexy, lively character, not like it's making any kind of judgement. I mean, look at very popular characters like Han Solo. I'm sure lots of guys as well as girls find him attractive, so it does seem like an obvious type to go for. It's a shame with the child mechanic not being supported. It is kind of tricky because while obviously IRL they could adopt or use a surrogate parent, in the context of the game it's a mechanic to pass on stats and skills so it wouldn't make sense if it happened then. I guess they could just have a base version of the character you can recruit, but I think it'd still annoy people that they can't inherit stuff. It'll be interesting to see how TH does it. At least it doesn't have to worry about child inheritance (as far as I know).

Is that how it is in Fates? I've only played the early part of Birthright so I didn't know that. I know in Awakening there's nothing like that, though there is that mod someone here made. That's the most recent FE I've played properly apart from Echoes which is of course a remake of a much older game. Gotta say, it's about time for FE to update like that. It's weird going from playing games like Dragon Age or even as far back as Baldur's Gate 2, and then going over to the FE romance options.

Ah nice, well fingers crossed, then. 🤞

Is it true that some of the characters are gay or bi? I've heard people saying that, but I don't know if it's just rumours or wishful thinking on their part. The main two for me are Bernadetta and Leonie, though this game has more characters than ever that I'd be interested in S-ranking (purely going off appearances, of course, as we don't have much else to go off yet. I'd rather play as a female Byleth but not if I'd be stuck marrying a guy.

Ah really? Sounds cool, I'll check it out. Thanks for the help.

Yeah, although somewhat confusingly it can also just mean they made a typo. It just means that you're quoting directly without altering anything at all, even to correct an obvious mistake.

To be fair to you, typo refers to accidentally pressing the wrong key on your keyboard, creating a spelling mistake, like writing "Saturday" as "Satrday" or something like that. It's short for "typographical error". You don't use it to refer to something that's totally incorrect, like saying "Paris is the capital of Japan" isn't a typo, it's a total factual error. I had a similar misunderstanding to you, I thought OP was saying that he spelt Edelgard wrong not that it was totally the wrong name. Anyway, this sounds really good. Very RPGish to have your stats matter in things outside of battle. Is this the first time the series has done that?