Ciaran

Just hit NG chapter 10 with Golden Deer. Sort of dreading chapter 13 though because I've totally neglected Ignatz and Lorenz in favor of distributing resources to my other units to a higher degree. Had the most success in the early game by just giving Byleth the DLC stat boosters and using him as a pseudo Jeigen (or Oswin) for the first few chapters, letting him grab side objectives and draw in enemies while holding a heavier weapon to allow Claude or Hilda or whoever to finish them. Also very important/useful: make use of your characters' abilities! Leonie and Hilda's abilities were lifesavers in the early game, and Byleth's makes sure you can maximize unit growth over time.

I think it's safe to say Three Houses made some risky and ambitious changes to the formula, and not all of them feel as integrated as others. Having said that I'd like the majority of them to stay, with some modifications to make them feel more seamless -- Battalions and Gambits: Awesome idea, makes the battles feel larger and more similar to how I've had to justify single units destroying armies in my head -- that they're representative of the forces they're leading, not just individuals. I think they could do them better going forward by allowing customization to them like how you can forge weapons, not restricting their ability to be assigned to Authority, but their effectiveness and usage amounts. If I'm S rank at Authority I should get more than 1 use of my Gambit, dangit. But please, IS, give me a Grandmaster-style class from Awakening who specializes in commanding gambits, make it a whole new thing -- it would be so FLAVORFUL. There's tons of potential and you can move it in a lot of different directions, they merely tipped their toe into it for this game. Significantly reduced weapon limitations on classes: Good. Never made a lick of sense how they restricted them previously! Aerial units would use bows, their advantage is distance from the ground, why would they use melee weapons? But nope can only use spears in most of the game. Keep this going forward 100%. Having said that, it's important to acknowledge that there's a trade-off of unit uniqueness from making classes/weapons more flexible. Characters feel much less like they have a specific role or part to play mechanically -- they've tried to bridge that gap with the unique abilities and crest systems, but I think if they move forward with this they should do a bit more to compensate for this downside. Weapon level determining promotion: I like the idea, I wouldn't mind it being changed, though. I think the big thing is the Authority/Armor/Riding/Flying ones work for me, but the others don't as much. Keep with some moderate modification and when it makes sense within the narrative context, otherwise no real need to keep it. Gauntlets as a weapon type: I think it's a cool way to make infantry more valuable compared to mounted units that didn't quite accomplish it's objective. It's absolutely a difficult task to do that, though. I'd like to see it more going forward, but I think it had an adverse effect in two ways -- it devalued other weapon types (barring magic) for infantry and the gender restiction on classes that specialized in it made availability meh. As a result my only female infantry were Gremories -- anyone else could go Pegasus -> Wyvern or Paladin -> Bow Knight so why bother with Swordmasters or Heroes? Durability as a the resource for combat arts: I liked this, but I think it could be made more interesting. Unique access to some of these and inherent abilities/crests are some of the only distinguishing features of characters that aren't numeric. We need more of those things, tbh. Would've liked to have seen more variety of them. Legendary weapons being usable by anyone but having additional affects when used with their prf users: I like this for two reasons -- One, it makes them more practical to use overall and two, you can potentially make use of the ten health hit for non-crest bearers for certain abilities (like bringing back Wrath/Resolve) at a risk. Paralogues being side character focused (kind of really surprising the series took so long to do this. Really wish they'd thought of it in Shadow Dragon): Yes please. Make me care about my armies, make me actively want to recruit them beyond guilt tripping me with their death animations. Giant enemies: I like them and how they're implemented for the most part... I think that you run into three problems with their implementation rather than their concept -- they're too common, especially after the timeskip, defeating them can be tedious because gambit usages are so restricted, especially on the higher tiered ones, and they're the only way to farm some of the rarer materials to repair/forge stronger weapons like Braves. Tomeless Magic regenerating each map: Maybe it's the DnD player in me, but honestly this magic system is SO much better than breakable tomes to me. Makes magic feel like an altogether different thing than weapons, make more sense of how magic users can somehow use magic in narrative ways without breaking tomes, makes more sense than a book just falling apart from over...reading it? It also makes you less hesitant to use things like Warp/Rescue even when you should. I like it a lot. I don't like how much they restricted it's usage in terms of classes, though -- why can't a Swordmaster use Reason if a Mortal Savant can. There's no physical property that makes that difference, it's handwaved in a silly way to me. you could argue why Flying units and Armored units can't, I suppose (Focusing on keeping balance during flight makes it difficult to concentrate on casting and the metal restricts access to the magic in the surrounding air are pretty basic, but acceptable excuses to restrict it for those classes), but for others it's a tad arbitrary and silly when they made such great choices regarding weapon availability. Just my thoughts.

I don't think Sothis was cruel, I think Seiros who we see being cruel was. I think Sothis was more than likely largely detached form the material world, but Seiros is clearly not that. But this is part of the moral grey of the game, it doesn't tell you "X happened", it tells you how "X" is said to have happened. Great writing for prompting discussions like this one, where it's about interpretation and not fact. Themes, not just lore.

Lots of people seemingly forming opinions based on one or two routes and/or synopsis of the others, which doesn't seem super fair to judge based off of? For what it's worth I've finished BE Empire and GD and have started BL route, so I'm not coming from a 100% complete picture either, but I've seen people attribute things to her "commands" that if you've played her route were clearly not ordered or advocated by her, but by TWSITD. Just sayin'. Edelgard is a very interesting character, her goals, ambitions and methods ask a lot of difficult questions that require full context to totally suss out -- anyone making her out to be 100% justified or 100% villain are themselves 100% ignoring all nuance. There are actual moral dilemmas present in her story that don't lend themselves to easy answers.

It does, though -- Gremory doubles all magic usage amounts. Class is nuts.

I have found fliers to be more valuable than cavalry in the Empire and GD routes just given the number of maps with difficult cavalry terrain (desert, stairs, waters, etc). Might be an attempt to help re-balance how powerful cavalry classes have been in previous games? Having said that -- I suspect there will end up being different tier lists for each route? Given character availability differences and all. I feel like given how the class/ability systems work in this game "potential" is going to be weighted far more heavily than in previous installments -- most of the characters start out with low bases and your influence in their growth becomes vital very early on, but strengths, spell lists, inherent skills and battle skills are going to have heavy influence over the "practicality" of the students, at least. For example -- Ashe's stat growths might matter less than him being able to be a flying lock picker. He might not be the strongest Wyvern Lord in terms of pure combat potential, but he's likely a highly valuable team member all the same. Similarly Dorothea gets such great spell lists she makes a great Gremory even if her stats aren't anything amazing -- Thoron, Meteor and Physic mean she can contribute meaningfully from a distance, especially if you give her one of the range extending staves.

I did Ashe -- he has the ability to open locks without needing to be a "Thief"-style class and he gets Physic from Faith -- add in Dance and you get the perfect support unit! 😄

I have a Forged Spear on him because dos ranged attacks, but yeah Falchion is his main go to weapon.

You should see 30% hit rates hit 30% of the time. It's more than enough to account for it hitting in your battle plan. Like if you rely on a 30% attack not hitting you to survive then you did something wrong.

I've never used Frederick in any of my hard mode runs beyond a pair-up partner in the first few chapters. He just becomes instantly outclassed by Stahl and Sully with like only a few level-ups and they have so much more potential if you disallow reclassing. there's a few units I don't understand being as low as they are and several I don't understand being as high as they are, but here's something you've forgotten for Anna - Levin Swords exist. Her bad strength shouldn't be relevant because of that fact. Just give all the ones you get to her, basically no one else uses them inherently well like she does. Libra's variant, the Bolt Axe is also something you've left aside but they're harder to come by, but you are guaranteed at least one of each and hammernes in multiples exist sooo...yeah. Not to mention even without grinding you can purchase Levin Swords and Bolt Axes via spotpass.

The main reason for the Valm story branch is twofold. One, you're assisting an ally, Virion, who comes to you in need. This is before you know what the catalyst for Grima's resurrection is, why it happens, anything like that, they only know that it does happen. They also know that they need the gems and that at least one is held by Chon'Shin, a nation within Valm like Rossanne. The whole point of Walhart was to be a counter-argument to Emmyren's peaceful ambitions. He has the same objective that she had, and you come to know that you have (stopping Grima), but his methods and actions put you at odds with him even without the stone he has taken.. Honestly it's a better plot point to me than "we were always fighting the bad guy" to have a "we defeated someone who was also working towards our same objective inadvertently" moment, even if the fact is that you can't let him conquer everything anyway. The Valm invasion thing is actually the entire crux of the problem with Grima as it provides the opportunity to gather the stones and by stopping the empire you protect Plegia, and the Grimleal, from destruction prior to their ability to awaken Grima. TL;DR: The point of Valm is that you help a friend and stop an invader while making progresson your major quest, not knowing that you actually allowed your main quest to become a necessity in the first place. It's meant to be a moment of humility, like maybe your characters aren't always correct in their actions and sometimes doing what's necessary can have after effects you can't predict. EDIT: Forgot to also mention that Tiki had one of the jewels as well. So two jewels were in Valm, and you want to help out an ally and not get, you know, conquered when a much bigger threat is coming eventually that you know of.

I'm not 100% certain if it stayed the same for this game, or even if it was this way for PoR/RD, but the GBA Fire Emblem games had a psuedo RNG, not an actual RNG. What I mean is, the way that hit and miss, specifically, were calculated was different than one would think a regular RNG would work. Here's what I mean: One would think that for a 70% chance to hit, you'd simply roll a hypothetical 100 sided die and if the result was equal to or less than 70, you hit. And this is how FE RNGs for the GBA games worked for most things, level ups, crits, etc. But not hitting and missing. For hitting and missing they'd roll two of these hypothetical dice, then average them and if that result was equal to or less than 70 in this scenario, you would hit. What this means is that numbers at the extremes are made less relevant -- to hit 1% you don't need a 1/100 chance, you need a 1/10,000 chance, since you have to hit exactly 1 twice at 1% likelihood each time. As it moves towards 50% the likelihood increases for a given number. What this also means is that missing at 99% hit chance is possible but so unlikely many people have never had it happen to them despite probably seeing that % chance more then enough times to have on average seen that result. Having said all that, though, I don't know if Awakening, Shadow Dragon that the comic is based off, or even PoR/RD still use this method of calculating odds.

The story is interesting enough for you to go from map to map to see how it develops and while a couple maps are pretty generic FE faire, there are a few gems in it as well, as with pretty much every game from this series. It's a great game and is absolutely up there with my favorite FE games and favorite general games list. A few characters are kind of forgettable, sadly, but many are interesting enough for you to care about the backstory revealed in the support conversations they have. As for Nosferatu...I can't remember a single FE game in which is appeared as a usable tome in which is wasn't pretty broken. Guaranteed healing for half the damage you deal is kind of powerful always, although I suppose vengeance makes it even "worse".