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You could remove the Church route and lose nothing of value *spoilers*


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I just recently finished all four routes in this game, and I have to say finishing the church route last really left a bad taste in my mouth. First off, I understand that every route has some same maps and that was a price to pay for having multiple routes and not having to pay for them separately, but copy-pasting an entire route of maps from Golden Deer and calling it different is something else.

Now this might be acceptable if the story was significantly different, but then they also decided to copy / paste the story from Golden Deer,  with basically only the final chapter being any different. And that final chapter just drops a bunch of info on you that you have already figured out if you've played the other routes, and then Rhea randomly goes crazy because apparently they drew the line at copying the final boss from GD.

And I'm not particularly sure why it's an offshoot of black Eagles, because all the black Eagles characters basically disappear from the narrative post timeskip. This of course is double noticeable as you go through the maps since you're fighting against the Empire, as you fight a grand total of 2 students (Ashe and Lorenz) post timeskip, removing any sense of conflict with the enemy. Speaking of which, two of the lords are simultaneously resolved offscreen, and then when you finally think this route is going to do something different it turns out Dimitri was just a force ghost.

Removing this route would have given time to work on literally anything else, like making crimson flower not 18 chapters. They could have easily just made Rhea's exposition take place in GD instead reusing "I'll totally tell you after this battle where I totally won't die".

I'm not sure how quality this post is but I needed to rant and this is the only Message Board where people read things over three sentences.

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What can I say? You've captured my thoughts exactly.
I am in the same situation as you: I did the Church Route last. Even worse: I did it directly after finishing Golden Deer. That was a bad call on my part, because the copy-pasted nature of the whole thing was even more blatant than if I had played GD earlier.
Literally the ONLY good things about the Church Route to me are: Seteth and to a lesser extent Flayn get more screentime, and the final map theme.

40 minutes ago, Boomhauer007 said:

And I'm not particularly sure why it's an offshoot of black Eagles, because all the black Eagles characters basically disappear from the narrative post timeskip. This of course is double noticeable as you go through the maps since you're fighting against the Empire, as you fight a grand total of 2 students (Ashe and Lorenz) post timeskip, removing any sense of conflict with the enemy. Speaking of which, two of the lords are simultaneously resolved offscreen, and then when you finally think this route is going to do something different it turns out Dimitri was just a force ghost.

Yeah, having the battle at Gronder be playable would have added a LOT more to this route.
And it being an offshoot of the Black Eagles really only makes sense if you're like me and think the whole thing was at least somewhat inspired by Romance of the Three Kingdoms and by extension Dynasty Warriors, where the fourth faction also splits off from the most powerful nation at the time.
But, I'll be honest here, I'd have been much happier if the fourth route split from anyone OTHER than the Black Eagles, because, while I like some of them (Petra in particular), the Black Eagles themselves are overall my least favorite house when it comes to the characters.

Then again, the fourth route wasn't even necessary, as you said. Nothing would have been lost if it didn't exist.

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I think it's fairly obvious Silver Snow was made first and Verdand Wind is repurposed version. Fact that later more impactfull (or even  straight down better is hardly it's fault. It's bit sad that SS pay price for IS being lazy with other route.

Edited by Tenzen12
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This worries me for playing the Church Route next. I'm currently on my Golden Deer playthrough, and I wanna save the Black Eagle path for last because that's gonna be my 'canon' playthrough. But I've heard the church route is just a badly repurposed Golden Deer route, so idk.

From people's opinions it sounds like I should just Hard/Casual it or something so I can breeze through and just rack up Renown for my final playthrough. I was silly with using renown on this first NG+ playthrough (used it on increasing some stats that I realized I didn't need later - so now mostly using it to upgrade statues). So next playthrough I wasn't gonna use it at all, basically just to stockpile it for my final playthrough.

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Honestly I appreciate the thought of giving us an "extra" and letting us side with the 4th faction out of the 3, it's something out of the rails and for IS it's quite a big thing, but if you're screwed in development time you can't worry about extra feautures.

I wish they just gave more time to Crimson Flower (cutscenes, TWSITD confrontation, Gronder battle, etc) instead of just adding this filler by copy pasting GD. At that point we could've had the 3 "base" differentiated and complete paths, instead of a complete one, a half-assed one and 2 copies.

Also the focus of the CoS route (discovering the truth about Byleth) should be a plot point for every damn route, it's the actual protagonist, you're basically talking about the player, it's such an important point that it should be addressed regardless of one's choices.

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Again, Verdant Wind is obvosly copy past of Silve Snow. I DON'T ARGUE VW ISN'T OBVIOUSLY BETTER, but you need just bit looking into story figure which one was most likely first and which one was copy paste with upgrade.

Edited by Tenzen12
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I actually think it's the other way around. That scene where Rhea facetanks the nukes has absolutely nothing to do with Claude yet it appears on GD. More importantly, the scene where you kill Edelgard has no emotional weight on GD because you were never her teacher and probably talked to her like 3 times tops.

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Well I totally agree that having three paths which are of equal quality would have been better than 4 paths.

I played Crimson Flower first and was quite underwhelmed because of lacking cutscenes and how rushed the story feld. Then I found out that there were a ton of cutscenes missing and the other paths were at least 4 chapters longer .....

 

I would pack the Rhea interaction (+the option to marry her) also in GD route because that is the path were TWSITD are defeated and that fits to her beeing their arch nemesis. Logically she would survive then there. The interactions with Seteth and Flayn I would add to the Blue Lions route. Maybe also the last battle against her as one extra chapter somewhere late in the path. Because currently there is no conclusion what happened to her in that route. From the story perspective it would mean that Edelgard also captured her their and TWSITD drove her mad with experiments etc.

The extra work i would completly put into Crimson Flower with extra chapters/Cutscenes/bigger maps etc. Storywise I would add more Interactions with TWSITD but nothing that actually put them to rest. That honor should stay in GD Path alone. Because that would make the route - in my opinion - to much Mary Sue Style where their are no set backs and you just defeat everything without any effort. Instead I would use the extra time to make her current enemies (Dimitri, Rhea, Claude ) more dangerous and not the push overs they currently are.

That you can nicely combine with the thematic of dealing with the devil. Like when sieging a city you have support of those demon beasts which are breaking down the gates. (I wonder why they never appered in CF. Edelgard seemed to not have trouble using them in part one.) That would represent the need to (temporally) ally with TWSITD to battle the Church, the kingdom and the alliance. On the other side there should also be more missions, where you backstab your "allies" and delay their plans like e.g. busting one of their research labs etc, representing the fact that Edelgard is not really cool with their methods. In this missions I would also show her more human side by for example letting her save prisoners (which can be students from other houses captured in the battle before) from these inhuman experiments (she herself had to suffer to). Showing that she also is a charismatic leader and not just a power hungry warmonger.

 

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Well, I'm still on my first playthrough (BL) and plan on doing the Church Route second. So I don't really care. I have heard that Silver Snow and Verdant Wind are mostly the same with a few differences, but I want to do all routes (no matter how long it takes me, I have college lol). And I want to marry each main character (Dimitri, Rhea, Claude, Edelgard). My only complaint so far about what I've heard with the Church Route is that Rhea is not playable. Give me a playable Rhea! The route is mostly about her; she's the leader of the freaking church so why isn't she the Lord character in game play and not just story? Ball has been dropped there IMO.

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Bro I hate to burst your bubble but

11 minutes ago, PrincessAlyson said:

The route is mostly about her;

Spoiler

She isn't even present until the second to last chapter, the route is about Seteth / Flayn and then at the very end the MC

 

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Church route was by far the worst route, echoing a previous comment, the best parts of the route were Seteth's and Flayn's screen time and the final map theme. 

The truth of Byleth's past while cool to finally figure out could've easily been mentioned in the GD path. While the path can only be chosen by picking the Black Eagles, the characters that stick with you lack presence in comparison to the other routes.

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1 hour ago, Tenzen12 said:

Again, Verdant Wind is obvosly copy past of Silve Snow. I DON'T ARGUE VW ISN'T OBVIOUSLY BETTER, but you need just bit looking into story figure which one was most likely first and which one was copy paste with upgrade.

Well it's not that relevant which came first, but with reduced times it wasn't a very wise choice to spread over 4 paths instead of 3. And since you gotta have a path for every lord it's quite clear that the church one needed to be dropped to make the other more unique and to complete Crimson Flower. The moment you realize you're coming up short and you're not getting a second delayed release you need to make choices as a studio.

It's yet another consequence of the one big problem 3H has (despite being a great game), which is overambition.

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Trying to do the Church Route now as it is my final route for Three Houses, but I'm currently in Part One. I'm planning on speedrunning this playthrough instead of trying to do everything.

The main thing I want to know is how relevant are the Black Eagle students? Do they still chime in on story events as a class or as individual characters, or are they just forgotten about completely and the Church members take over? I was looking forward to more BE interactions on the Church Route, but it looks like that may not be the case...

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9 minutes ago, Sire said:

The main thing I want to know is how relevant are the Black Eagle students? Do they still chime in on story events as a class or as individual characters, or are they just forgotten about completely and the Church members take over? I was looking forward to more BE interactions on the Church Route, but it looks like that may not be the case...

You see some outcomes which you wouldn't get on the other route due to its circumstances.

Spoiler

The most major difference here is Ferdinand. He and his retainers actually attempted a rebellion against Edelgard but (unsurprisingly) failed. He pledges his remaining soldiers to Byleth during their reunion. Otherwise it's not all too different.

Also your "Lord" are now Seteth and Flayn.

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I too think Silver Snow was made first, as "coin of other side" (or even default path as some argued) with Crimson Flower. And DEV mentioned Edelgard related content was made first.

As someone mentioned already, Wind path lacks of the impact fighting your own student Edelgard, and Rhea fighting TWISTD doesn't make sense since she's not the focus here.

 

Problem is that when they made Wind, they forgot also to add unique levels for Snow, reduced it's uniqueness. Hopefully they will add some levels, maybe paralogue later to remediate this weakness.

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The Black Eagle Path by large comes off as wonky .

Much of the narrative problems listed here can just be addressed by assuming that the path was thrown in last after the core narrative was worked out. Cannibalizing content from other routes (hence Golden Deer saying much of what should be in the Church Path).

Edited by Eryon
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I quickly looked up some random Silver Snow playthrough, and the Black Eagles characters other than two certain characters still appear in the cutscenes. That means I can still do my yandere-for-Ferdinand F!Byleth run yaaay!!

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23 minutes ago, Anya said:

I quickly looked up some random Silver Snow playthrough, and the Black Eagles characters other than two certain characters still appear in the cutscenes. That means I can still do my yandere-for-Ferdinand F!Byleth run yaaay!!

Do they have dialogues in the cutscenes?

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I’ll admit I was pretty unhyped for the church route and put it last for my playthroughs. This may have been good though, because my first play through was Golden Deer, so that was more fuzzy than if I’d just gone right from it to Church. Silver snow isn’t perfect but it did so some interesting things the other routes didn’t, which I really liked, for example, leading the characters without a lord and having a truly neutral group to build up as opposed to any of the established nations. I think my favorite thing was 

Spoiler

Finally seeing all of the characters react to finally having peace in the final chapter, as well as their thoughts on Byleth taking over. This wasn’t really explored in Verdant Wind. 

 

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29 minutes ago, Vince777 said:

It feels weird to complain about the 4th route in a game that would already be very long with a single route and that offers so much replayability already.

I feel spoiled.

I kind feel that Silver Snow and Crimson Flower were considered as one path but different endings by IniSys, that's why they keep saying there are only three paths.

Honestly, they should probably put one unique level in Silver Snow to make it different than GD, that you march toward Kingdom after Gronder Field to destroy Imperial garrison and Cornelia there, as to consolidated Kingdom into your army before going to Imperial capital (since Alliance already joined).

They can even reused Tailtean Plains map since it's underutilized compared three other kingdom maps (Fort, capital and regular city), all other maps used at least twice but Tailtean Plains only once in Crimson Flower. It also makes sense time wise since Seteth talked about how it would take a few months before Resistant Army was ready for major offensive after taking the bridge.

Edited by Timlugia
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13 hours ago, Tenzen12 said:

I think it's fairly obvious Silver Snow was made first and Verdand Wind is repurposed version. Fact that later more impactfull (or even  straight down better is hardly it's fault. It's bit sad that SS pay price for IS being lazy with other route.

I feel like it's the reverse? Chapter 15 has Judith giving you reinforcements, which makes perfect sense for Claude and none for the church route. Then Chapter 16, the Bridge of Myrddin, involves a Claude political play to draw Gloucester's attention, while that particular plot is mostly just glossed over on church. Then of course, Blood of the Eagle and Lion, which makes by far the most sense on Claude's route, and is just plain deleted from Silver Snow.

 

Anyway, regardless of that, I agree that the church route is by far the worst. It made me like Seteth less (never was a fan of Flayn) because he literally does the same thing he does on Dimitri/Claude routes and his extra dialog develops him not one bit (he really should have started explaining who he was). Not having one of the big three around really sucks. And the Black Eagles being present on this route is kinda nonsensical, they showed up at a class reunion that was Edelgard's idea because I guess they want to fight her for some reason I guess? And obviously it has all of one unique map, and to me at least, most of its maps make more sense on either Dimitri's route, Claude's route, or both.

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