Sid Starkiller

I found recruiting everyone draining when I did it. There's just too many units to manage, especially when you can use at most 12, plus 3 adjutants. If you just want to recruit for a dancer, Dorothea or Marianne are your best options IMO. You are better off doing one run at a time for the boosts to build upon each other. They remain forever, so could have every character with S+ in every skill, and every class mastered. Also, both genders of Byleth are considered the same unit, so you could master all the female-exclusive classes and buy their mastery skills as the male, or vice versa. While some characters are certainly better than others, no one is flat-out unusable. Unless you're on Maddening, you're free to use your favorites (Caspar gets flak for being a glass cannon, but for me he usually ends up an effective dodgetank). I usually go Explore->Battle->Explore, and if there's a fourth Sunday, whatever I feel like I need at that moment. Rest and Seminar are never really worthwhile.

Someone mentioned Catherine and Cyril earlier, which reminded me that I forgot to address them. Just as it felt like they meant to strip all the BE from you and chickened out, it's really odd that they wouldn't let you recruit them normally and just have them leave with Flayn should you go CF. It severely handicaps them in SS because you have much less time to build up their skills, and Cyril in particular is forced to level as a Commoner, with his horrible growths. And what the fuck is up with Hilda? She's never shown to have strong opinions on the general state of Fodlan. Why can't she be recruited in CF when Ingrid, the character I'd say believes most strongly in her ideals and her country, can be? And since she can't be given gifts in SS until Chapter 12, you have exactly two weeks to build support with her to ease her recruitment requirements. Hope you stockpiled gifts in anticipation, or built up Byleth's axe skills, or you're screwed.

I like to believe that not getting a second delay was either due to scheduling (I don't remember what other 1st-party games were coming out in July, they may have wanted to avoid a drought) or budgeting (they may have needed more money to continue working that Nintendo was unwilling to give for some reason).

Well, yes. I just didn't want to bring prior games up. Minor addendums: 1: While I don't want to insult SS fans, there's two other vastly superior routes where you also oppose Edelgard. Why SS instead of those? 2: Rhea's death itself. I went on a journey across the continent to rescue her, I did, me, Byleth. And yet she still can't see me as anything more than her mother.

Yes, I know I'm late to the party. I'm giving my thoughts anyway. So I already knew that I wouldn't be enjoying the route in general. All throughout Part 1, I felt like I was the one betraying Edelgard, and Rhea herself creeps me the fuck out with her (more or less) Oedipus complex. But I didn't think it would be that bad. I was wrong. I'll break down the big problems separately. 1: No Lord I'd seen people say that Claude carries the very similar Verdant Wind by his charisma, and is generally considered better than SS for it. To elaborate on why I think that is: in the other 3 routes Byleth and the lord have a particular dynamic. The lord is the thematic focus: Edelgard's quest to create a new social order, Dimitri's quest for revenge, and Claude's quest to unite the people of the world. In each case Byleth acts as the straight man, the plain character by which the other character is made more interesting. Edelgard's retaining her humanity, Dimitri's coming back from the brink, and Claude's gaining the courage to go on the offensive all happen because of Byleth. Seteth has a similar role throughout Part 1, acting as the straight man to Rhea. Seteth's stern-but-caring behavior shows that Rhea is up to something by contrast. With no lord, Byleth as the straight man can only play off Seteth, also as the straight man. The game seems to try to make Byleth take the role of lord, but it fails because Byleth as the blank slate player avatar has no defined personality. But hey, there's the 6 remaining Black Eagles to play off of! But that just leads me to... 2: The Black Eagles Problem Firstly, if the Black Eagles have no problem following Edelgard on her crusade in every other route, why do they all of a sudden have a problem with her now? While I take issue with the inconsistent motives of all 6, Ferdinand stands out to me the most. Ferdinand protests that Edelgard stripped his father of power and placed him under house arrest, and opposes her for that, but here's the problem: Ferdinand knows his father is a bastard. In his ball Goddess Tower scene, he says that he dreads the day he becomes prime minister, because he will feel honor-bound to arrest his father for abuses of power. You know, exactly the same thing and for the same reason that Edelgard arrests him. So why is arresting him all of a sudden horrible? Secondly, the longer the route went on, the more it seemed like the Black Eagles' presence was an afterthought. They quickly began appearing in fewer and fewer cutscenes, and with less dialogue. In their stead, several Church units had lines. Even Hanneman and Manuela, who I don't remember having any lines in cutscenes in any other route. I got the impression that they wanted to pull a Genealogy and start you off with a brand-new roster at Part 2, consisting of just Church of Seiros units (and possibly BL and GD students if you poached any), and got cold feet. They absolutely couldn't BS their way out of removing Edelgard and Hubert, but they quickly cobbled together reasons why the others would leave the Empire. Quick detour on the subject of characters being forgotten: Dimitri and Claude are both basically thrown in the garbage. They do absolutely nothing with the characters, and they are unceremoniously killed off. Dimitri's brief appearance is all but outright stated to be a dream, and even then it seems like an afterthought, as if they were going, "See, here's Dimitri! We didn't completely forget he existed! He's not a repeat of Hinoka!" At least VW used his death to show the inevitable endpoint of his dark path. Finally, the reunion (maybe I should've lead with this): first there's the oft-mentioned question of why the students return for a reunion they promised to Edelgard rather than the professor, but the weirder part to me was that Edelgard showed up. She's apparently 100% confident that none of them will join her side, and yet she still wants to see them? And she shows up alone, without even Hubert? How did she not suspect an assassination attempt, especially with her trust issues? But all that pales in comparison to... 3: The Final Boss So I knew in advance that the final boss was the Immaculate One, which already felt contrived. And I knew that the injuries she sustained in Shambhala would be the trigger. So I was expecting something similar to the middle of the first Avengers movie: Rhea would give her monologue to Byleth about their origin, then the Agarthan missiles are sent out, Rhea gets hit, and the pain causes her to "hulk out" and go on a rampage. Instead, the missiles are immediately launched just like in VW, Rhea has a month to recover from the fight, then she gives her monologue, THEN, APROPOS OF NOTHING, Rhea goes insane. The worst ass-pull I've seen in at least the last year, if not longer, and the single worst-written plot point in a game that includes the criminally underwritten "those who slither in the dark." And that's still not the worst part... 4: Spread Too Thin Clearly the devs were on a time crunch with the game, seeing as CF has so few cutscenes compared to every other route, and VW and SS being almost identical in their general plot structure and maps. In other words, trying to cram in a fourth route actively made two of the other routes worse. When I started, I was just expecting Silver Snow to be a route that others might enjoy, but I wouldn't. Now I find myself genuinely wishing that the entire route had been cut, and the dev time given to CF and VW instead. I understand their worry that people might start BE and then come to not like Edelgard after the reveal, but I think they would have been better served ignoring that worry, because I feel that SS, both in its content and in giving the devs more work to do in not enough time and budget, actively holds Three Houses back.

About the gift you get from your house on your birthday: I always use my real birthday, which is in November. What happens if you use a birthday that appears twice in the plot, like something in May or June? Is there a second gift?

First, the Member Feedback section would probably be a better place to ask. Second, he basically acknowledged that there was no point in bringing the thread back in his post. He would've been better off making a brand new thread.

Screw you, Jeritza is in DESPERATE need of more supports, regardless of your opinion on CF.

She was the original voice for Rouge. Current voice? Karen Strassman. Yup, Rouge is now Anna. Honestly never cared about Rouge before, but she gets some cool points for that.

Yup. Well-known and super useful exploit. I'd have half the S-Ranks I do without it.

Rodrigue's death is an important part of Dimitri's arc, and should not be changed. Randolph's death scene is brief, but would be kinda hard to remove (Dorothea, Fleche, and some random NPCs all reference his death around the monastery). But Ladislava dies offscreen. Her death is quickly reported by Randolph as he dies, and is never referenced again by anyone. All they would have to do is removed that part of his line, record a couple of monastery lines for her for the last chapters, and a couple of supports. No more work than adding Jeritza was, or adding Fleche would be.

Edelgard, for what Dark Holy Elf said. Dorothea. She's not just hot, she's super sassy and fun to be around (her and Caspar's B support is my favorite individual support conversation in the game). Her struggle to deal with conflict and the death of loved ones throughout Part 2 is very well foreshadowed in Part 1. By the end of it all I just want to hug her and tell her it will all be okay 😭 Ferdinand. At first he just seemed like the stuck-up noble, then I got to see in his supports that he really does want to do right by people, despite his overinflated ego. Then in Part 2 he gets a reality check: Where once he thought himself superior to Edelgard, he finally learns that in truth he just doesn't measure up. But he understands that that's OK, and that what's important is that he does what's right, not that he gets credit for it.

I'm only passingly familiar with that myth, but Seiros being the leader of sorts, plus her Immaculate One form being white, much closer to yellow than azure, I would peg her as Yellow Dragon of the Center.

You can access the marketplace anytime from the menu where you're in your office, before selecting the mock battle. The screen with the certifications. But that's the only way to do so before Chapter 2.

The Sword of the Creator being made of bone. Literally my first thought upon seeing it: "That thing looks like a spine." And of course Jeralt's death, but Stevie Wonder could see that coming.

They had already delayed the game once. There's no way it would've been ready in time including that without delaying it again. Or are you saying they should've delayed it again?

*sigh* I'm gonna play Silver Snow. ONCE. Just to get it over with.

It's a known exploit. If you get enough support points with a character you can't marry as your current gender, it'll still allow you to purchase their S rank when you play the gender that can. Does not work on characters that can marry both genders. It's useful for unlocking S ranks in the support log much faster than normal. NG+ for Jeritza and Anna. You are able to buy back their skill levels, but not their class mastery skills. Tempted to send an email to Nintendo even though I'm sure it won't do any good. I grinded 10 or so class masteries for them the first time I could and it's all wasted.

There is a way to spare Seteth and Flayn, at least.

Slither's Crest experiments. We know the survivors (Edelgard and Lysithea) had their hair bleached white as a side-effect. We also know Edelgard's natural hair color is light brown. Have they revealed Lysithea's natural hair color? Hoping I haven't asked before and forgotten.

Pre-timeskip all 4 routes are the same maps.

Well, since no playable unit has Macuil's Crest short of NG+, it wouldn't make sense mechanically for the sword to use it. But Riegan specifically, yes, it's quite arbitrary.

OK, now it makes more sense with that extra info. Thanks. Still think the execution is sloppy, though. I'm almost wondering if it was unintentional, like maybe their shared backstory was supposed to happen earlier in their lives, where she could've forgotten naturally (in her and Hubert's B support, she says both that she barely remembers the day they met, and that she was 4 at the time. It makes sense that she would forget that far back). Then they moved it forward in the timeline, and this theory patches up a plot hole. But who knows.

Meh, I've heard one or two people say that, but I don't buy it. The only thing I can think of where they might be getting that is the Goddess Tower scene, where she says "I can't say the name." I think people are interpreting that as "I don't remember his name," where to me it sounded like her typical "not revealing too much about her past" stuff. As in, "I don't want to say his name." And unless there's some massive piece of evidence in SS, I don't know where the hell else people could be getting this from.

I think it's a case of his anger blinding his judgment. He has real reason to suspect Arundel, then learns that someone called the Flame Emperor is doing some bad stuff, then that the Flame Emperor and Arundel/Thales are allies. And he's in such a blind rage at the reveal of the Flame Emperor's identity that he can't see how little sense it makes. Also, even though Dimitri clearly still has feelings for her, she definitely seems to have moved on. In her ball Goddess Tower scene, she talks about their past without mentioning Dimitri's name, and in a very detached manner. She may (maybe) still consider him a friend, but whatever deeper feelings she may have had are gone.