NeonZ

I wonder how the bond quotes work with these characters that have multiple in one ring/bracelet though...

I'd say it's a combination of both in the final part.

They announced the first Awakening DLC pack before Awakening was out too (which included Marth, Roy and Micaiah). Of course, the difference is that Awakening's DLC was clearly less fully fleshed out than this, using just customized avatars for the "new" characters. As far as sectioning part of the game though, note that the DLC Emblems aren't even rings, but bracelets. They're clearly something separate from the 12 rings of the main plot, and Three Houses already has Byleth as one of the rings. Still, it's obvious they made the 3 Lords DLC because they knew people would pay for them due to their popularity, yes.

The issue is that in FE usually there are reasons to keep using weaker weapons, like being cheaper and having more uses. That's what they were trying to do by giving stronger weapons weakness, so you can't just "upgrade" to better weapons and throw away everything else. Like I said though, forging really breaks that since it allows creating stronger weapons without any weakness.

I think the issue there was forging. They really didn't seem to take in account forging while balancing those weaknesses, which is what led many stronger weapons in Fates to uselessness, since forged versions of weaker weapons could make them completely redundant.

It's said that Sharena and the fairy looked the same and could replace each other by swapping outfits and hair styles. if they go through with Sharena and the fairy really switching places, and the fairy that switched places with her being Peony (like suggested by the reflection in the trailer), I guess they'll explain that the current Peony's eye color changed when she drank the nectar that turns humans into fairies after she was stuck in the dream world, while Sharena probably will get an alt of some kind with an actual fairy appearance.

http://ryokutya2089.com/archives/26033 Info from the upcoming Famitsu - New songs and MV, including a Kiriya/Tsubasa one. Avex is producing the songs. New costumes and you can turn Tsubasa's glasses on and off. Maiko joins in battle, but only through sessions. New story for Tiki, adventure for the protagonists and dungeon. It's mentioned that although the original game favored an Atlus-like worldview, the new content this time is pushing FE in a stronger way. I kind of enjoyed this game, but the overall concept was a big misfire and I don't think they're doing anything to fix that here.

We don't actually know they'll have different class colors though. It seems like the class colors might just be tied to the kingdom, which still would leave them mostly uniform. Fire Emblem always had vibrant hair colors. Kozaki specifically didn't like it though, which is why specially Awakening really pared down on them and Fates although having some extra variety still was pretty limited.

I'd guess they just look very different because they likely started building their designs from Greil and Ike in PoR who didn't really look similar either. Byleth ends up with a more formal look due to his eventual teacher role since they didn't want to give him a mercenary outfit just for a prologue.

They should at least have generic colors that each unit can take doesn't matter if they have an actual unique mode for the class or not. It's weird that it took until Echoes before they implemented a basic idea like that (and even so it they were still missing some obvious colors). Although it feels like the colors here might be based on the unit's kingdom, considering how we've seen Edelgard red colored in several promotions, alongside Dorothea.

I could see it only happening around March or so of the next year. The combat animations looked really rough in that teaser, and it felt like they just did a reveal to show something considering how they were delaying the game, but after looking at the state of the game during that showing I could see it ending up as a late 2019 game.

"Waifu" wasn't really a common term before that point. The term explodes exactly around 2012/2013 for the internet in general, not just FE fandom. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=waifu

Well, technically Awakening Tiki does have different bangs from her previous designs (in addition to being an adult and having a smaller tiara - this new girl's tiara seems even closer to Tiki's original one than Awakening's), so, that could be a redesigned Tiki. Although, yes, declaring that it's almost certainly her seems like a mistake. Looking back, I guess the one point in favor of it is that the Goddess doesn't seem to be a Manakete or have green hair, so that dragon girl basically doesn't seem to be mentioned in the narration in spite of the splash image. That could point to her being a guest character of sorts rather than tied to the mythology of that continent.

Keep in mind that when Robin joins, they aren't really an "army" at all.

They also removed various romantic S ranking from Kana and Soleil, turned the two homosexual supports into generic ones while they were unique in Japan, and there was the disaster that was their voice choice for Effie. 8-4 also handled things like changing Lucina's/Owain's supports to be more platonic in a much smoother way than Tree House's work with Fates. They removed the swimsuits and didn't replace them with anything, leaving some elements (like max bond) with no prize at all. There were also various smaller issues, like how they didn't write Inigo's dialogue with the possibility of him being Chrom's son in mind, making several sentences that should have remained more ambiguous sound out of place. They also changed female Corrin's married Conquest/Birthright ending to be the same as the male one, not realizing that female and male endings were written in different ways in order to match up with each other. Some of the additions to the dialogue also are quite odd in context. It's clear they disliked the direction of Fates' story, but they never attempted to change the story itself, just flavorful dialogue... which often just made scene dumber, like when they added a bit of dialogue for Xander with him talking about how if good people stand doing nothing, then evil wins... in the middle of a scene that's about Xander and Corrin just watching while Garon kills people who dare to protest against him invading Hoshido (and right after a line from the original about who they must stand there and can't act at that point).