Quiyonce

Ha! I do remember that. Balthus isn't necessarily deep, but he's fun.

Yeah, those type of comparisons aren't always the best takes.

I think comparisons can sometimes be useful to differntiate themes and how the characters work within the context of their own games but it's important to always keep that context in mind.

71

Your father joins the dead dads club AYAW your mother being an FE lord but...

34, 283 (trying to pronounce all that French hurt my brain)

That's kinda hard to judge when their journeys aren't that comparable. Charlotte tries to scam to support her loving parents. Dorothea may have found some success earlier, but her problems stem from the culture of Crest society and a shitty father. There's a lot more to deal with than just financial insecurity.

100 chickens. The bull is faster and can ohko me. WYR have to clean your teeth with a toothbrush used by a stranger or wear used underwear worn by a stranger?

Is not Beryllium Nickel Cerium.

To be fair, Opera is not easy work and Dorothea did have to survive alone in the streets until she was discovered.

DA2 is a hill I will happily die on.

Balthus has a fun dialect and his VA delivers pretty well. I don't remember what he said about Sitri. Wad it Balthus being horny? Cause him wanting Claude's mom is becoming the new meme. He's apparently a major flirt.

This reminds me a lot of the The Last Airbender vs Legend of Korra debates. In the end, it largely became whether you preferred the consistency of ATLA or the high highs and low lows of LoK and I think that concept is applicable here as well. I think Fates had some really good standout concepts, Conquest gameplay is some of my favorite in the series. But the lows like marrying your siblings, throwing children in the baby realm, etc. were really, really low. On the other hand, Three Houses can be sluggish and the School Phase can be very tedious on repeat playthroughs ( you really should be able to skip more of it in NG+), compared to Fates, the characters and narrative flow seemed a lot more consistent, even if imperfect. This doesn't mean Three Houses has its own share of glaring flaws, but as others have said, Three Houses suffers from being unpolished and a possible rushed development cycle while Fates suffers from the themes of Fates directly clashing with how the game was presented, especially when it comes to the sexualization of some of its characters. So even though I don't largely disagree with the points made in the original post, I could even argue Corrin was a better/less polarizing main character than Byleth, I still can't personally call Fates the better game. Even though I enjoyed Fates quite a bit. Shhhh. DA2 is great. Honestly, the worst bit is the reused maps and if Bioware didn't go so hard with the DAI cast, DA2 would have my favorite cast in any Bioware game.

I'm not sure. Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of Byleth's blandness and importance to the story but there is at least some reasoning for their characteristics. Customization is fun, but I'm not sure I could wrap my head around a Byleth that didn't have sword proficiency and a faith budding talent. I'm not as attached to Byleth's authority and brawling strengths but they're new features so it makes sense that the main character has them and the authority strength at least relates Byleth to Jeralt. That being said, Byleth's spell list is garbage. I really like this and the accompanying spell lists as well. If they kept the physical side to Byleth as is and added this it would make Byleth's gameplay a lot more fun. I'm also a sucker for questionnaires that determine some of your battle capability so I think it could work in general, just maybe not completely with Byleth.

Has never mentioned Ryoma at all.