cpsy1991

@DefyingFatesHe was the only character other than Leif I could actually remember from FE5.

My picks: FE2: Alm FE4: Seliph FE5: Reinhardt FE6: Lilina FE8: Lyon FE10: Sothe

Odds are that it vanished because he was going (more) insane from the sudden should of seeing other people and took it entirely the wrong way.

I remain perpetually baffled as to what the point of the Emblem of Foundations was; Sombron could've worked just fine as a broken victim of his war obsessed with revenge for what he lost without introducing something that breaks every rule about how Emblems work and ultimately ends up being dropped with absolutely no clarification whatsoever. Hell, I'm half convinced it wasn't an Emblem so much as the equivalent of an imaginary friend- what, did you think the fact that in the end only Sombron could see him was just some special connection he had to it when all the evidence points to him simply being delusional? It's honestly the most sensible explanation. Even the "it's a parallel to Kaga" idea doesn't really have much evidence to justify it beyond the fact that it's an anniversary title.

A few tips of my own: In addition to its immediate use, Obstruct staff is also a good source of XP for staff users in general, especially when you can buy an unlimited supply of them near the end of the game. Olwen's S Ring is far stronger than it looks- the utility of a range 3 Brave weapon equivalent cannot be understated, and forging can easily compensate for its lower damage compared to Elthunder and Thoron. On Maddening, the AI grows a bit more clever about how it'll choose to attack you. It won't bother attempting to fight units that would give it a hit rate of 0%, so you'll want to intentionally reduce your Avoid stat just enough to keep the AI from wising up to you without compromising your survivability in the process. As touched on earlier by a few other people, chain attacks deal a flat amount of damage equal to 10% of the target's max HP. On its own this wouldn't be too bad, but that damage bypasses all forms of damage reduction and it will add up. Make sure your tank has someone nearby to pick off Backup units adjacent to them, or they'll suffer a death of a thousand cuts. (Of course, this works both ways. It's practically a necessity in Maddening, where even basic enemies will have up to 50 HP and armored units will be nearly unkillable without chain attacks, mages, or preferably both.)

Kris is already a Bond Ring, and even if they weren't they're far too attached to Marth to qualify as a loner.

I thought so too, but if this Emblem is breaking all the other rules I see no reason why it should follow that particular one. Especially since Emblems summoned by Fell Dragons aren't supposed to just leave on their own either.

Agreed. It also means that it could be literally anyone, which would make further theorycrafting nearly impossible. We should assume that it's at least from the FE franchise unless we get official confirmation saying otherwise (and good luck getting that, you'll need it). But to go off on a tangent myself (again), I will however say that roguelikes (especially in that early era) aren't quite RPGs, they merely use some of the same mechanics. Plus, if you want to extend things further still to the tabletop RPGs that those games were first derived from, I can say from personal experience that PCs who refuse to engage with other PCs or NPCs beyond simple fighting have always been regarded with disdain as "murderhobos" that any vaguely functioning society would recognize as sociopaths. Of course, you could argue that such behavior was a response to the tendency of GMs back in the day to view DMing as a sort of competition where any of the PCs's friends or loved ones could and would be turned against you (either by making them spontaneously evil or by holding them hostage) for cheap drama: by this logic, no connections means fewer ways for a DM to railroad you into whatever plot they want you to follow. That way of doing things is far less common than it once was, but it still happens. Incidentally, I checked through the script again and I saw that Sigurd mentioned that any Emblem summoned by the Fell Dragon is fundamentally a mindless slave. But obviously this one wasn't mindless or a slave, so that's yet another rule this Emblem has arbitrarily broken. I swear, the closer I look at this the more baffled and irritated I become. It's even worse because a bad ending has a way of retroactively poisoning a whole experience- all the talk about the journey being more important than the destination rings hollow when you realize the destination is garbage. (Nearly forgot to add: with Ashera, RD basically implied that she and Yune would return to sleep, and at least 2000 years later they've reunited into Ashunera- though this is only shown if you're on a second or later playthrough and you recruited Sephiran.)

I found the source for Veyle's mother being a mage dragon- it was the Ally Notebook. Typical that they'd put it somewhere nobody would bother to look for it. Anyway, I still don't quite buy that Sothis was truly a creator god- what kind of deity could be slain by its own creations? Or be slain at all, at that matter? I've seen the meta view of the Emblem being Kaga and Sombron's whole character being a jab at the old school players who can't accept that the old style of FE is gone, possibly for good; however, that seems to be a bit too highbrow for the average players and meta-references in general just end up being a crutch to cover for a work that can't stand on its own merits. I'm sure that Sombron's character there was also supposed to be sympathetic, but the execution has the exact opposite effect and just makes me feel contempt for his pigheaded stupidity. Regarding JRPGs, it's still prudent to remember that Final Fantasy, in many ways the granddaddy of all RPGs, still had a party of heroes instead of one guy slaughtering everything in his path.

He doesn't match the "lone warrior" description, and given the evidence in the code that he'll come with Chrom's Emblem like Ephraim did with Eirika we can safely rule him out. Plus, Grima was also a Dark Emblem.

I can't quite recall where she mentioned it. I thought it was in one of the supports but apparently I remembered it wrong- if it was just my imagination or something, that's my mistake. And yeah, I know about the issue with Alear and Veyle's ending- I think that the implication is that it's actually Veyle under a new identity or something along those lines, but since it's never made clear (not to mention that this child isn't mentioned outside this specific ending) people jump to conclusions. Granted, my own speculation is hardly bulletproof but it's not like we'll ever get clarification there either. Come to think of it, I don't think any of the games went into real detail about any of the tribes save the Divine Dragons and even those aren't exactly elaborated on (for a start, are they actually gods/godlike beings or just very powerful?). 3H sort of attempted to address that, but did so in a way that produced more questions than answers (e.g., "where did Sothis come from?").

I guess Three Hopes sort of tried to go into more detail about the Agarthans, but in a way that created problems of its own (dear god, it's like Claude was taken by the Pod People in Golden Wildfire) and didn't really tell us anything beyond "they sure do hate Sothis and the Nabateans" (as if that was a stunning new discovery). In retrospect, it did quite a bit to illustrate the critical flaw inherent in the branching storyline mechanism: splitting the story means splitting your focus, and the more directions you try to take it in the less you're able to make sure any of them are of good quality. Not to mention that the extra branches meant they ended up making all of them dependent on the same small number of maps, made even more glaring by how the first 1/3 of the game or so has the exact same maps for all of them (so by the end of the first playthrough you're already sick of even the good ones). I'd definitely prefer one or two relatively good branches over four decent to dubious ones. But getting off that tangent myself, Engage also makes me wonder what exactly it means to be a Fell Dragon at all- the only other one up to this point was Grima, who Echoes showed us could barely be called a dragon at all. The Fell Dragons native to Sombron's world can't be inherently evil (otherwise Alear and Veyle wouldn't ultimately end up being the heroes), but what exactly would distinguish them from any other Manakete beyond the color scheme then? I do agree we need an entry where we actually redeem the villain properly for a change (Binding Blade kinda did this, but on the other hand I'm not sure if Idunn counts given that she was basically brainwashed), but I'm not completely sure if the current writing team is quite cut-out for that. Plus, FE as a whole is a war story and taking the comparatively less violent approach of actually trying to get through to the bad guy doesn't really mesh with that (and to be fair, at the point Sombron was at he was a lost cause)- in which case, I have to ask why they'd try to make the main antagonist sympathetic at all. Grima's motiveless malice might actually be an improvement at this point because he at least functions as a very effective hate sink without distracting us with a contrived sob story.