Silver-Haired Maiden

Even a line talking about how she knew Edelgard would march to her doom would be acceptable. Anyway, I think it's a cool scene but that it wasn't executed very well. For Rhea to slip so far that even Catherine doubted and hesitated could have been a seriously awesome moment.

Eh, I mean you can read that into it if you want but I don't agree. I think you're rationalizing bad writing. Even insane people have some form of logic to their actions, based on their own perceptions of reality, and there's no logic to be had in what Rhea did. Causing hurt to Edelgard and Byleth? Yeah if they marched into the city but they very well could have not. Maybe she was just okay with taking that risk but she's always been shown to be an intelligent leader and a very competent war strategist. These are things you don't just lose, in fact things like that are typically what people retain even in the case of mental illness. So yeah, I still think it's more the result of bad writing to set up a cool scene without much actual thought put into it.

Personally I think the whole setting Fhirdiad on fire was bad writing, done explicitly to show how far Rhea had fallen and to give a cool map, without any actual thought to how dumb that would be for her to do. Like genuinely that move made no sense, from an emotional or logical perspective. Emotionally, doing it to scorn the people who hurt you? Makes no sense. They could just not enter the city and then you've accomplished nothing. Logically you're destroying your defenses and turning the soldiers against you at worst, causing them to abandon to save the people at best. So yeah, I don't think that whole scenario was very well thought out.

Here's what actually matters and what everyone should agree on. Please, if you live in the US, especially in the city, please be careful and stay safe. Riots are even happening where I live and I live in a really rural area. Please, everyone stay safe.

Yeah that was always super annoying. Why does it have to be Ike? Why can't Micaiah or any of the laguz royals do it? Or Sanaki? I can see not letting some random unit you dragged along from your party deal the final blow but it should be more than just Ike that can.

Perhaps it isn't? But around here it seems to be. Many people hold up PoR as the pinnacle of FE and that's fair. It's still a good game.... I just think RD is better lol.

What you're saying would have merit if it weren't for the same people taking every conversation and turning it into CF/Edelgard every time. I point you to basically every discussion not explicitly about gameplay that's on the 3H forum. Go read them and see if the same people talking about the same points don't keep popping up. That's the part that's annoying. CF has just as much merit as any other route... not more. To be fair, I was mostly referring to Darkmoon, not you. You're just one of the hardest on the "Defend Edelgard" stance so you came to mind, but that's why I didn't tag you. Also you very much do refer to Edelgard being in the right in most threads though I will give credit where it's due, you've calmed down on that a lot. My apologies for the misinterpretation. If that's not how you want to come across, then maybe don't go out of your way to write 12 paragraphs in response to every criticism that people give Edelgard. I don't think Edelgard is evil, I never have. I dislike her choices, I dislike her actions, and frankly I dislike her attitude, but I don't think she's evil. Let alone a bad character. She's actually one of the best written characters in the game and I appreciate her character a good deal. But that doesn't mean I'd support her and I think it does her a massive disservice to see you go around and try to reason away some of her more morally gray acts with "But she has good intentions!" So do a lot of video game antagonists, that doesn't make them any less of a villain just like it doesn't make Edelgard a worse character. Sometimes though you have to accept that people won't agree with her and that it's okay. You obviously don't agree with Dimitri. I highly disagree with a lot of your assertions about him but I don't sit there and call you out with a 10 paragraph response every time you say something bad about him. Comparing Edelgard to WW2 is something I also never did. However there are those that do find the allies culpable in what Soviet Russia did and there were those even in those days that wanted us to take out the Soviets afterward. I don't think allying with evil is ever really a good thing, including in real life. Also I think it's you that didn't fully read my post. Here's what I said. So yes I acknowledged that you started talking about the other routes... once I brought it up. Before that you'd mostly been using CF as the character justifications and I still think that's a wrong tactic. Frankly I don't care who anyone would think would switch sides, I just don't think anyone should use any one route as justification for it. Especially the Black Eagles as they technically have two routes that they could go in. As far as my own personal opinion, I don't think Ferdinand would switch sides out of pure loyalty to his country and wanting what's best for Adrestia, but I can see the argument either way. Same for Lorenz who canonically is concerned for his people if they oppose Edelgard because he knows war could be very bad for them and that's on all the routes. So we do agree on that point. Lysithea I'm a touch more iffy on...

That would be fine, if CF wasn't treated this way in every single thread that so much as mentions Edelgard. In fact this thread is the first one in which I've seen people take White Clouds as any sort of neutral stance to CF and it's because people keep acting like the way characters act in CF eclipses the way they act everywhere else. "Well they act this way in AM and VW" is almost always greeted with "But they act this way in CF and those other two routes are biased against Edelgard!" which is why White Clouds is being brought up. You have to look at every route and pre and post timeskip but staunch Edelgard fans seem to only want to look at Crimson Flower. It does every character in the game a disservice, including Edelgard, and considering that this has happened in so many threads now, it's getting quite irritating.

They only do this because you and Omegaxis are so fucking staunch on your "Edelgard did nothing wrong and no one in the BE could ever betray them!" stance. Sometimes you just have to accept that she did some scummy shit. The crest beasts are not something you can justify, even Edelgard allying with the Agarthans makes her culpable in the crest beast creation because she did nothing to stop it in the other routes even though in CF it's pretty obvious that she could have, you know since none were used there. The game makes it very clear that the crest beasts are a bad thing, that they're in pain, that they're turned against their will in every case that we see them except two and even then it's portrayed as horrific. Your head canons don't dismiss those facts, turning into a crest beast is meant to be a very very bad thing. On top of that, other people aren't the problem here. The problem is that you refuse to see any viewpoint that doesn't agree with yours as valid and you will argue until you're blue in the face about it because other people couldn't possibly have other, equally valid opinions. Even if that isn't your intention that is how you're coming across. Now if you want to use other routes to justify what you think then please, by all means do so. But sitting there and claiming that the other routes and the character's behaviors in them don't matter because they're not CF, or acting like CF has the only legitimate character interactions is not only dishonest, it's infuriating and biased as hell. I don't agree that Felix would betray Dimitri and Faerghus but you don't see me sitting there and arguing with everyone about it because I can see where they're coming from in having different interpretations of what his character would do. You can afford other people the same courtesy with the BE students. As for your last point, that would be a more nonbiased way of looking at it. Of course that way also means that only 3 characters in the entire game can be recruited over in any form of defecting. Lorenz, Ashe, and Lysithea. They are the only post-time skip recruits that are possible and I think Ashe can only be recruited over if you recruited him before the time skip? But I could be wrong about that. Also Lysithea is less of a betrayal and more of a "Claude told me to join with you if something happened to him".

That's on ONE route and not the other 3. Stop treating CF as though it's the only option when 3 other, equally viable options exist. I've said it before, I will say it again: In a game like 3H you HAVE TO look at the characters through the lens of all of the routes, not just your preferred one. This isn't a if you want to because anything else is a disservice to the majority of other paths and acts as though they don't exist in favor of your baby route.

There isn't really an objective way to quantify good storytelling. You can objectively measure things like good CGI or camera work but the qualities of the story themselves are pretty much entirely subjective. That's why most papers on stories that you read that deal with symbolism are entirely subjective and opinion based. People will interpret different parts of a story differently based on their own experiences and that will determine what they find "good" or "bad". For me it's mostly character work, followed by story/world building. Good characters can save a bad story but a good story can't always carry bad characters.

Here's one I'm fairly sure will be unpopular. PoR is inferior to RD in just about everything except learning about the characters. RD has better animation, better game play, better map design, better conflict, and I just plainly enjoy RD more than it's predecessor. Of course this isn't me saying PoR is a bad game, PoR is great... RD is just better.

I haven't personally experienced much drift in mine more than them just not responding at points for a couple of seconds. But that's nothing to my Xbox 360 controllers that liked to randomly disconnect from the system entirely.... >.>

No it's not, he's referring to character personality and agency in the story, which can be present despite the other characters or because of them. Either way is bad, you typically want a balance. He's saying that Ike and Chrom are only interesting because of the people around them, not because of them themselves and to him that's bad. Sometimes you need to not just think you're the end all be all of writing.

Time for another unpopular opinion! SoV is the worst FE game I've played. Yes, Fates was better in that it at least didn't bore me and I finished it. Basically everything about Alm and his particular path was so incredibly boring that I couldn't stand to finish the game.

@Ottservia https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nuance By definition it's pretty subjective. Not everyone interprets the meaning behind nuance the same way. So yeah. Nuance is subjective, not objective, different people can interpret the same subtle glance differently and some will think it means something while others think it doesn't. It isn't objective.

This is pretty disingenuous. In order to fully understand a character in a game like 3H you have to look at them on all the routes, not just your favorite/preferred route. Seeing how they react under varying circumstances is the only way to determine what someone might do in a neutral case, so it's entirely fine to use dialogue from different routes. It's still part of Constance's character, it being somewhere other than CF doesn't disqualify it as genuine or canon.

Considering that SS is the easier route to get into, and as such is the default route for the BE, there are arguments to be made against them joining Edelgard by default. As for your statement about joining Edelgard before the mission, I completely disagree. Playing through BE first as I did the impact of it being after the fact was far more intense for me... though in the opposite way it was for you because it absolutely solidified that I could never support her. In fact CF and SS ended up being the last routes I completed purely because of Edelgard. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate her character more now that I've completely played through the game but that doesn't change that she turned me off of her so intensely at first impressions that I completely dropped her route. However I do agree that people should play all 4 paths of the game to fully appreciate the characters and their stances. That being said, my own opinions on who might turn traitor. BE: Ferdinand - technically I could see him going either way but he seems the type to go against Edelgard if he felt he couldn't get her to listen to reason. Petra - She's technically a political hostage, I can see her fighting the empire more than Edelgard specifically though if only to help free her country. Linhardt - Probably just wouldn't participate. Dorothea - Hates fighting. Likely wouldn't fight. Bernie - More likely to hide in her room than actually fight. BL: Felix - I can see a case being made for him because of his hatred of Faerghus knighthood ideals but I don't really agree with it. Especially because he seems so miserable in CF. Mercedes - Family is quite important to her so a decision between Emile and the church that she supports so strongly could go either way. The others seem too loyal to their families and home to defect and they're almost all warriors so I can't see them staying out of the conflict either. GD: Lorenz - It's politically advantageous for his family to align with the Empire and with Edelgard. Lysithea - She hates the Agarthans and will take most chances to take them down. The others would be too loyal (Hilda), neutral (Raphael, Ignatz, Marianne), or mercenary like (Leonie's goal is to be a merc) for me to really say they'd defect.

My top 3 are basically interchangeable. I adore all 3, I have played each one at least 10 times through, they are all wonderful games. Before you ask, you are correct, I have no life. 1-3: Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Okami, Tales of Berseria See a theme there? Yeah. Radiant Dawn was my introduction to Fire Emblem and man what an introduction it was. I fell head over heels for the difficulty, the magic, the world building, and the sheer scale of the war. It felt like I was genuinely fighting a war. Okami is just a gorgeous game and a super chill and fun experience. I go back to it if I ever want to just have fun in a mystical and pretty world and beat up monsters while I'm at it. Tales of Berseria is the first RPG I fell in love with in a while, I loved the environments, I thought the battle system was intuitive and fun, and the story and world building aren't that bad either. Where Berseria shines though is definitely in it's characters. I adore all of them and the game does a great job with it's main cast. You fall hard for Velvet's story right from the start. 4: Tomb Raider (2013) - The first of the new TR games and, in my opinion, the best of them. I love the shipwrecked survival story, I love the combat, this game does bows the best of any game I've played to memory, and it's just a good game. It's the one I reach for if I want to get some aggression out and kill stuff while experiencing a fun story on top of it. 5: The Last of Us - Does this really need an explanation? I don't think it does. Shame the next installment has had so many issues though.

Bridal Micaiah came home in about 20 orbs, alongside a Dream M Corrin. +Attack to boot. The universe is trying to make up for my absolutely shitty day.

Favorite character-wise: Micaiah beats out Dimitri by a very slim margin and I do mean slim. Dimitri is far and away my favorite of the male lords though. Gameplay wise: Dimitri. I enjoy powerhouse units and it's really fun getting that almost guaranteed vantage crit for over 150 damage regularly.

I think the basic point is that they're just video game characters. Not anything worth wasting your time, effort, and breath trying to convince someone otherwise on when their minds won't be changed. Serenes is great in that it fosters pretty healthy discussion, but sometimes you have to stop and think if your defense of a character has gone too far. You don't have to try and explain away or justify every decision a character makes, you don't have to defend them from every person who doesn't like them as much as you do or even just straight up dislikes them. That sort of fanatical defense is actually more likely to cause people to start to dislike a character they otherwise would have liked or been neutral on. Edelgard is a well written character, but not everyone's views will align with your own and that's something you're just going to have to learn to accept and move on with. It doesn't make either of you wrong, it just means you view things differently.

Hoooold up, that is not how that works. Look at any case where someone hires someone to kidnap or kill someone else: both parties are equally culpable. Jeritza is never shown to be an "obedient minion" in the first place, he will directly defy orders if he well feels like it (Holy Tomb) and even attacks Edelgard knowing who she is (any BE chapter where you face him).

...... oh I am in trouble..... I have almost no orbs and I must have that Micaiah duo unit. Also Nailah and Rafiel too?? Someone save me 😢

The best advice I can tell you is to play on a casual mode so that you can experiment with strategies without worrying about unit deaths. It'll help you figure out different things that work and also figure out the different mechanics of the battalions and such with a safety net of sorts. For more specific recommendations, I'd say to plan out the paths your units are going down from the beginning so that you can plan what skills and builds to go with. Like if you know you want Felix to end as an assassin, I'd say definitely get him Hit+20 and while he can do alright without death blow thanks to his crest, I'd still recommend mastering the class to get it too. Or do like I did and jump into Radiant Dawn at 12 years old as your first FE game and let it beat you over the head with a stick until you figure out how to keep all those assholes alive lol.