What are your thoughts on the Expansion Pass as a whole?

[DefyingFates]

I've replayed the two remaining routes since my "first impressions" write-up on the Wave 4 thread and I stand by what I said before: Cindered Shadows is really good! Even if it’s non-canon, I love what it adds to the mythos, both by itself and via the additions to the main story. The Shadow Library for example is a great resource for lore enthusiasts and even proves or debunks fan theories from last year (such as

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confirmation that Rhea has been crippling Fodlan’s technological advancements and that the year starts on the fourth month

)! While Coco and Hapi are quite “out there” compared to the rest of the students and faculty, I’m happy to say I love all four Wolves too and I’m very impressed at the deeper backstories they elicit from their Support Partners and even just in their monthly dialogue. At first I was worried because they didn’t have any dialogue upon killing anyone in the Zanado chapter, but my worries evaporated when I realised they still had unique boss and eating/ group task dialogue instead. We didn’t need to hear any of that, and yet we did and I’m so happy! The VAs both new and old did incredible work, just as before, especially Constance's

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who had to record to sets of lines for everything based on her current emotional state (as will make sense once you learn more about her if you haven't played CS already)

. My personal favourites of the four so far are Yuri and Hapi.

I’ve already mentioned my disappointment at how men can only use 2 of the 4 new Classes, but I’m greatly enjoying them nonetheless. I’m not much for meta-gaming so don’t know how they stack up against Bow Knight and Wyvern Lord, but Dark Fliers are a lot of fun even if their Transmute ability is quite niche and the range Lysithea gets as a Valkyrie is insane. Trickster is a nice replacement to Mortal Savant as a class for swordies with magic proficiencies (or mages with sword proficiencies) such as Marianne and while I still think War Monk has a bizarre pair of requirements I can’t deny that it’s pretty fun too. It’s practically made for Byleth (and Catherine)! And hey, they all look really striking too, not to mention their animations! Trickster’s

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finger guns/ imaginary RPG

and War Cleric’s two victory poses are my favourite~

The rest of the Season Pass is more mixed though. I like the Academy outfit for the Byleths (and it just highlights how Byleth is given the “adult” treatment and doesn’t get a timeskip design. A more warlike attire would have been nice…) and it works well enough as a freebie to entice people to buy the Pass on Day One, but Waves 2 and 3 are pretty weak. I’ve already talked about Anna before, but it’s still bizarre how the F2P unit added alongside her, Jeritza, has a unique Class and more importantly Supports while she has nothing. Not even new dialogue in the Monastery each month – just for some of them! I like that her Paralogue grants a flying Stride Battalion and she has a useful batch of topics for Faculty Teaching, but that’s it. Her monthly quests, which add steal-able items to auxiliary battles that you can trade for stat boosters, aren’t that fun either, especially since the number of items she wants from you goes up over time.

The Sacred items and new auxiliary battles are nice enough, but as mentioned before the latter makes you quite overpowered for the normal maps, so you may not even want to play them. I imagine they’re useful for Maddening though, so it’s pretty convenient that they released alongside it…

I do like the Sauna though. It adds 2 more points when training yourself or tutoring your students (per training session and this is also susceptible to Great/ Perfect multipliers) and you can enter it as many times (with different students) as you want so it can be away to use up excess activity points in the late-game. You also get to overheat both yourself and your partner once each without failing if you’re at A(?) Support, so that’s nice too. Finally, it can be used to grind Support between Byleth and their sauna partner, which is especially useful if you want to get to those new conversations with Jeritza and the Wolves ASAP as I did 😛

Wave 3 also added more outfits and the maid/ butler Battalions. I used the damage dealing one but not the other two, though I’m sure the Atk boosting one will find great use with someone clever with how they position their team (again, they feel like Maddening-oriented Battalions to me). But by far the best additions of this update are Jeritza (who as mentioned above is far more developed than the paid Anna) and the jump in save slots from 5 to 25. In the words of Hilda, ohh thank you so so much!

As mentioned before, Cindered Shadows adds a great deal of variety and difficulty to the standard Three Houses fare, which extends to the Wolves’ Paralogues (which also reprise the CS battle theme along with their Supports using other tracks from Cindered Shadows). They add new lore tidbits too which are wonderful additions to boot! The new facilities are a mixed bag though. The scrap room gets better the more you invest into Abyss, but you’re still relying on luck to give you items you actually want to use, while the old teacher is pretty pointless unless you’re trying to optimise your entire team and the Wayseer’s uses depend entirely on your stance on Supports. If you’re trying to collect them all and have a long way to go, she’s great. Otherwise you won’t ever visit her (it also costs 10k renown to lock-in a paired ending, which is pretty steep). On the other hand, the Shadow Library as mentioned before is a pure delight and the Pagan Altar is a useful way to turn your excess materials into Renown or to get rare weapons for Renown, especially in the endgame, so there’s that too. As I said, it’s a mixed bag.

To wrap things up, Wave 4 also added a few freebies. Rhea’s tea party conversations were always in the data but it’s nice to be able to access them now as is the fact that she has lost items too (I guess even she is as clumsy as everyone else in the Monastery xD) The ability to change outfits from the “free day” menu is nice but I wish we could change them just as easily elsewhere too and, while the new Jeritza/ Bernadetta Support is nice I’m still surprised we got it instead of a Jeritza/ Manuela one (considering Manuela is no longer surprised about the Death Knight apologising to her in CF). And last but certainly not least, Dancer Ensembles for the Byleths! They have such a lovely colour scheme and I’m so happy they finally got their outfits given to them! Needless to say I’m very happy about this particular change 😛

So looking at the Season Pass all together, there are more misses than hits – with some of the biggest hits being absolutely free. Still, if you see the price tag as being primarily for Cindered Shadows and the rest of the paid content as just being add-ons, I think you could consider this value for money. Looking at everything as a whole though...a lower price may have been a better bet.

So...what do you think? There's still some left over data, including stuff that was updated with Wave 4 but not used, so hopefully we get another Wave or two as well. Fingers crossed!

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P.S. The Sothis Regalia is also really neat, for both Byleths! A great Christmas present, which is funny considering we got Xmas Sothis in FEH too (and she already looks like a Christmas tree from certain angles) 😛 I never realised Sothis’ shoulders were sunburnt until I saw the same for Byleth.

[Ashe02]

Could had been better. Hopefully this will be a learning experience for IS about how to handle DLC and such on a switch game.

[ciphertul]

Over all, kinda disappointed... Wolves dlc was the bad kind of hard, the dlc classes were okay but not as great as anticipated.

I did like some of the costumes but class locked was a dumb idea, the recolor of the standard outfits(evening wear and summer wear) were awful.

As disliked as this statement will be, I wish there would have been a grindable dlc maps like the past 3 had, you know EXPontial growth, BOO camp, things like that as reaching stat caps just seem almost out of reach.

Edited March 29, 2020 by ciphertul

[shanni20]

cindered shadows was pretty shitty, and the story was kind of ridiculous and out there...

 

...that being said, the new classes and characters were great (not a big hapi fan but she's better than several base 3h chars) and I don't regret buying it... yet

 

the only problem is that you actually have to play CS to recruit yuri 😞

[Yexin]

this pass for me is a big no

i MIGHT at the very least consider purchasing a hypothetical second pass focused on the nabateans, since THAT was the plot point that needed to be expanded

[DefyingFates]

38 minutes ago, Yexin said:

i MIGHT at the very least consider purchasing a hypothetical second pass focused on the nabateans, since THAT was the plot point that needed to be expanded

Ideally IS would pull a Fallout 4 and add said content to the existing pass to make up for the lack of value it already has. Looking at how they've handled Heroes in recent months though...yeah, I find myself doubting that possibility.

[lenticular]

I dislike the season pass model. Partly because I don't like being expected to pay upfront for things that don't exist yet, but partly because I think it makes for a worse product overall. If everything had been released all at once, then they'd have been better able to integrate everything together. Maybe we could have had supports for Anna if it had been released after all the voice actors were back in the studio recording their lines for Cindered Shadows, maybe the extra auxillary battles could have included locations from Abyss, maybe the acquisition of outfits orsat boosters could have been worked into the story some how. Things like that. As it is, everythin felt a little too disconnected and tacked on.

As for the content itself, I'd say that Cindered Shadows exceded my expectation, Anna came in way below my expectation, and the rest was about what I expected it to be. I wasn't expecting to be blown away by things like the outfits, the sauna, the auxillary battles, etc. and I wasn't. They're there, I use some of them sometimes, they aren't bad, but they weren't the things I bought the DLC for.

Anna was pretty awful. A character with no supports, hardly any dialogue, and close to zero integration into the story is hardly a character at all. Looking at her purely in terms of her stats and abilities as a unit, she also doesn't have anything particularly exciting. She's not a bad unit, per se, but there's really nothing that makes me ever want to use her.

Cindered Shadows was the pleasant surprise for me. Having a game mode without extensive unit customisation felt fresh to me. I am glad that Three Houses as a whole wasn't like that, but I enjoyed the change of pace. I generally liked the maps, although some of them dragged on a bit too long for my tastes. The only one I really didn't care for was the final boss, which felt as if it lasted forever without ever feeling at all challenging or as if any of my units were in danger.

I very much like the new classes, and specifically, I like how they're balanced against the old classes. All of the new classes are strong enough for me to want to use them, but none of them are completely busted to the point where they obviously outshine everything else. "Do I want to go Valkyrie for canto and +1 range or Gremory for doubled castings?" is a genuine question and one that will have different answers from unit to unit and playthrough to playthrough, and that's exactly what I wanted.

Mostly what I like about the Cindered Shadows wave is simply that it adds more game. There are more characters, more story, more lore, more faciliies, more monastery NPCs (shoutout to the Abysskeeper), more classes, more everything. The game just feels bigger afterwards than it did before.

Overall, I'd say I feel slightly positive about the pack as a whole, but only slightly. There was a a lot that I liked, but also a good chunk that I'd didn't care for that brought it down as a whole.

[Ertrick36]

The only part that was really worth the pass at all was Cindered Shadows/Ashen Wolves part.  The rest was cosmetics, "beat the game easier" stuff, and pointless fluff.  Anna would've been nice if not for the lackluster amount of characterization content she had.  Even Jeritza, who came as completely FREE DLC, had more in that regard.  I know people harp on that all the time, but come on.

For me, FE DLC has been a consistent, steady decline.  Awakening had rich DLC content, Fates had decent DLC content, Echoes had kinda eh DLC content, and FE:TH had only a single piece of decent/good DLC.  Guess we'll see if FE 17 will just have plain dog shit for DLC, then by that point the only direction the DLC would have to go is into scam territory.

41 minutes ago, DefyingFates said:

Ideally IS would pull a Fallout 4 and add said content to the existing pass to make up for the lack of value it already has. Looking at how they've handled Heroes in recent months though...yeah, I find myself doubting that possibility.

First time in a while I've heard anyone say anything positive about Fallout DLC from the past four years.

Being more like Bethesda is the last thing I want out of IS.  A Bethesda-esque FE would have entirely stripped out class mechanics and replaced it with a lame perk system, the weapon diversity would just change to melee/bows/magic (basically homogenizing swords, axes, and lances under a single weapon class), the storytelling would suck, DLC would be a scam, and the difficulty balance would be worse than Awakening Casual-Normal mode and more brain-dead than Fates Birthright Phoenix mode because Todd Howard's favorite type of game apparently is one that strokes a player's ego for doing basically nothing.  Oh yeah, and it'd be a buggy PoS.

Fallout 1, 2, and NV are better games than Fallout 4, fite me irl

Spoiler

Also, wow, the comments on the video I linked REALLY did not age well, lmao

 

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I would have considered buying Cindered shadows just to have four more characters and paralogues to play with in the main campaign, but by the time Cindered Shadows came out, I was wrapping up my fourth and final playthrough of the game. That's really the only value I saw in the package, and it wasn't enough to justify the price tag. The CS campaign does not look compelling or fun at all, and the story is hard to get invested in when it's treated as non canon in the main game. I had high expectations for story DLC after Rise of the Deliverance in Echoes. No alternate universe, it's 100% canon, yet the stories are small scale enough that it doesn't overshadow the events or characters of the main game. You also didn't have to buy the whole season pass to get it.

That having been said, I applaud IS for bucking the trend of making so much DLC that the price tag for all of it doesn't exceed the full price for a copy of the game at launch.

Edited March 29, 2020 by Glennstavos

[FoxyGrandpa]

Cindered Shadows had pretty good map design. Using characters in preset classes made it pretty fun to get out of tricky situations (i.e, positioning Edelgard to bait and soften multiple enemies by having Yuri use foul play). I like how its mostly made up of new maps, since the maps in the main game could get a bit repetitive. Favorite map was the escape chapter, which stressed me out if a pretty good way.

Story was alright. I actually wanted a filler arch in the main game where the main characters go on a mischievous adventure separated from the main plot and this is exactly what this sidestory gave us. The idea of a 4th secret house was ridiculous, but the DLC contextualized it well so it wasn't too big of an issue. I didn't like how the last few chapters played out, where Yuri was a double, double agent, and I felt they didn't really make Aelfric sympathetic (SIMPathetic?) enough. The ending was pretty good though. I wish the house leaders and their amigos also had a bigger role in the story. There were nice little touches, like Dimitri talking to Edelgard about her hair, but I would have liked them to have more lines & a bit more spotlight in the story.

New characters are great. I like Yuri and Balthus the most. Yuri for his sly & sarcastic personality, and Balthus for his connections with the Golden Deer & being a pretty irresponsible, but well-meaning adult. Gameplay-wise, most of them made the game more fun imo. Balthus is the most generic of the bunch, but he's still pretty good. His bases and growths are basically a straight upgrade from Raphael and he's got more learning talents so its easier to make him different classes like Bishop or Swordmaster. Only niche Raphael has over him is that doesn't have a weakness in Flying, it easier to make him a Wyvern Rider. Yuri is a pretty flexible unit (similar to Ingrid) but is much easier to use due to his better bases. He has a ton of learning weaknesses, but he can slot into most infantry classes just fine. Hapi is decent. Her access to Banshee Θ can alleviate some of the pressure fast & strong enemies like Assassins exert on some maps. Constance starts off the weakest, but once she gets Bolting, she's fantastic. 1-10 range spell with 4 uses  & her insane magic growth lets her evaporate 4-5 enemies on each map for free.

New classes are hit or miss. Trickster imo sucks due to the lack of a -Faire skill, 5 movement, and halved spell usage. If it had Swordfaire, it would have been a decent alternative to Assassin since it would trade movement for situational healing (which is pretty useful in this game) and if it didn't have halved spell usage, it would have been a fun alternative to Bishop. Unfortunately, it has neither so it ends up being lackluster for both types of units that would have used it well. I haven't used War Monk / Cleric, but on paper it doesn't seem too bad. It doesn't have Fierce Iron Fist, nor Grappler's immunity to terrain penalties, but its modifiers aren't drastically worse than Grappler (it actually has a higher strength modifier), its mastered abilities seem niche, but not bad, it still has fistfaire, and has heal as a base ability which somewhat makes up for halving halved spell list. Its only the only class option that gives females Fistfaire as a base ability, so I'll try slotting Catherine into it the next time I play the game. Valkyrie is a pretty good class, basically acting as a magical equivalent to sniper. It lacks a -Faire skill and has less movement than every other mounted class in the game,  but its a pretty solid class for Mages that want to become Dark Knight since it innately build their Horse Rank.. Dark Flier is great since fliers are OP in this game and most enemies have low Res. 

[Alistair]

Overall, while I was probably going to the pass anyways, I don't think it was worth the 25 dollars. At least, it isn't for someone who is either burnt out on Three Houses or doesn't like it to begin with, of which I am neither. Cindered Shadows/the Wolves are what people are here for, and they're mostly what you would expect them to be; the extra classes also have just enough niche utility that you could have fun messing around with them, except for Dark Flier which is very good for mages who can deal with the flying requirement. Everything else is sort of lackluster, especially Anna and how limited the costumes are for everyone not named Byleth.

 

The big thing that annoys me is that they had all of this in one package. If it had been packaged like the 3DS DLC, I feel like it would have been better received. Say you want just the Sothis regalia and the Wolves. You'd pay an amount for the costume and an amount for the Wolves without purchasing anything else.  

[Ari Chan]

I have to agree with most people here that the pass is pretty underwhelming, for me Cindered Shadows was fun for the first 2 chapters and then it got worse both story and gameplay wise and I only finished it to unlock the 4 DLC characters and some new features for the main story.

[Kiran_]

I personally loved Cindered Shadows where I think that along with the other minor things justified the DLC overall. I would have liked to be able to choose to just get Cindered Shadows, but I didn't mind the other (useless to me) stuff we got. Cindered Shadows was just enough content and just fun enough for me to not mind the price tag (and I'm pretty damn cheap when it comes to DLC).

Also the new classes are SUPER fun to play with on my new playthrough. My only complaint with them is the stupid gender locks and no flying mage class for guys.

CS successfully challenged me (it was super tough and actually made me strategically think which I loved), the story was cute and fun and I liked the backstory on Byleth. The four new characters were fun and it got me to replay Dimitri's route (with the new characters) and next is going to be Edelgard's route, which I'm excited about. The lore added was lovely (hi Abysskeeper, my new favorite), and it was nice to see what exactly Seteth was pulling from the libraries.

I finished the 4 main paths pretty early after it came out and then I dropped the game until CS so it was fun to pick it back up and get sucked into a good story/challenge. And it inspired me to do Maddening finally, so that's been a challenge all on its own. Making everyone Dark Fliers is so much fun. Especially after picking up Uncanny Blow for accuracy from Valkyrie.

Idk why, but it feels 'canon' to me, because it can easily fit within the main story barring a few dialogue changes, which I also enjoyed because it didn't feel totally out there and unrelated. 

Edited March 29, 2020 by Kiran_

[NSSKG151]

I'm glad I didn't spend twenty-five for the DLC because from the youtube videos I watched of it it looks as rushed as the main game which as a result caused it to be underwhelming and not worth the price (ps: not saying the main game was bad, just the DLC). Really, it looks like the DLC just has features that they didn't have time to implement in the main game.

[DefyingFates]

19 hours ago, Ertrick36 said:

Being more like Bethesda is the last thing I want out of IS.

Don't worry, the upgraded Season Pass is the only thing I want copied xD

20 hours ago, lenticular said:

As for the content itself, I'd say that Cindered Shadows exceded my expectation, Anna came in way below my expectation, and the rest was about what I expected it to be. I wasn't expecting to be blown away by things like the outfits, the sauna, the auxillary battles, etc. and I wasn't. They're there, I use some of them sometimes, they aren't bad, but they weren't the things I bought the DLC for.

This is exactly how I feel. Anna has some useful options for faculty training, but apart from that she's terrible. I even used her in my Silver Snow run and she...wasn't very good as a unit either. Maybe I just got stat-screwed, but she was severely lacking compared to the rest of my team.

20 hours ago, lenticular said:

I very much like the new classes, and specifically, I like how they're balanced against the old classes. All of the new classes are strong enough for me to want to use them, but none of them are completely busted to the point where they obviously outshine everything else. "Do I want to go Valkyrie for canto and +1 range or Gremory for doubled castings?" is a genuine question and one that will have different answers from unit to unit and playthrough to playthrough, and that's exactly what I wanted.

This too! Even the War Monk turned out pretty fun, though I'm still mad at the gender-locking. For paid content no less!!

15 hours ago, Kiran_ said:

hi Abysskeeper, my new favorite

Yeah. He starts off as a jerk, but boy does he grow on you fast. I especially love how his personal arc changes between routes; that was a sweet touch. I don't know how he stacks up against Gatekeeper yet though, but he's absolutely a new favourite of mine all the same :3 Do we know who voiced him yet?

[Fabulously Olivier]

My only disappointment is that the dlc classes are such an awful selection that it nearly comes across as intentionally malicious.

 

A flying mage... and they intentionally chose the female exclusive dark flier instead of the non-genderlocked Malig Knight.

 

A completely redundant mounted mage, but once again female exclusive. So now female mages massively outclass male mages by not only having exclusive access to flying and infantry endgame classes, but now also reach cavalry mage much faster and easier.

 

War Monk.... wastes one of its precious skill slots on Unarmed Combat, which is so far removed from being useful it isn't funny. Also, who is this even for? It is a fist-based class, so it doesn't give Annette fans what they want. There isn't a great crossover between fists and faith... so, basically just Byleth and Balthus.

 

Trickster is... actually a good, fun class addition, but it only having 5 mov is inexplicably dumb. Meaning that any character who would go for it may be better off going Dancer or Assassin, or Byleth's exclusive Enlightened One.

 

 

 

 

And still no lance infantry.

Edited March 30, 2020 by Etheus

[Dark Holy Elf]

-Extra outfits are fine I guess.
-Jeritza is a good addition, although I really wish he had a support with Edelgard which fleshed out the connection there.
-Anna is disappointing, like why even bother if you're going to make her a generic mediocre PC with no supports?
-The sauna is disappointing, missed opportunity for tasteful fanservice IMO.
-Cindered Shadows was a lot of fun gameplaywise, though its story was stupid (even if I like that Sitri was fleshed out).
-Jury's out on the new PCs until I see their supports, haven't gotten around to that yet.
-Two more same-sex male S supports is neat.
-New classes seem fun! Again, haven't had a chance to try them out in practice, but I approve of the increased diversity for mage classes instead of them all being stuck at 4 move until Level 30.

[UNLEASH IT]

I very much the despise the fact that they locked the interesting gameplay behind DLC yet again, like they did with Echoes. What exactly prevented them from putting stuff like this in the main game from the beginning?

Edited April 1, 2020 by UNLEASH IT

[Dark Holy Elf]

1 hour ago, UNLEASH IT said:

I very much the despise the fact that they locked the interesting gameplay behind DLC yet again, like they did with Echoes. What exactly prevented them from putting stuff like this in the main game from the beginning?

While I also generally enjoyed the map design of the DLC, I suspect it's not nearly as broadly appealing as the gameplay seen in the rest of the game (which provides the player with far more options). Realistically if the Cindered Shadows maps weren't DLC, they just wouldn't exist, period.

[UNLEASH IT]

20 minutes ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

While I also generally enjoyed the map design of the DLC, I suspect it's not nearly as broadly appealing as the gameplay seen in the rest of the game (which provides the player with far more options). Realistically if the Cindered Shadows maps weren't DLC, they just wouldn't exist, period.

So based on what you're saying here, we're probably not going to see something like Conquest ever again outside of DLC?

[FoxyGrandpa]

24 minutes ago, UNLEASH IT said:

So based on what you're saying here, we're probably not going to see something like Conquest ever again outside of DLC?

Honestly, yeah. The most interesting and unique maps are usually reserved for DLC. This is how its always been, even back in the Super Nintendo era. BS Fire Emblem (which was basically FE3 DLC) had more interesting scenarios than FE3 and Thracia 776  (which based on the development history, would have essentially been FE4 DLC) also put the player in more engaging scenarios and challenges than FE4.

I think what's stopping them from putting more interesting maps in the newer games is that it alienates most of the casual playerbase. Two of my friends who got into Fire Emblem after Awakening & aren't involved with the community both thought the map design was terrible in Conquest.

[Dandy Druid]

Wave 4 was the only good part of the pass (not counting Jeritza because everyone got him).

I liked the DLC classes they picked, but I do have some issues with them.

Trickster and Valkyrie - I don't understand why they were DLC to begin with? They should've been in the game already IMO. The last couple of installments (save Echoes) had these classes. Fates had the Adventurer, which is very similar to Trickster.

Dark Flier - We all knew this was going to be a DLC class and I'm not surprised it's gender locked, but really? Why not Malig Knight?

I have no qualms with War Monk. Reminds me of early JRPG monks this time around.

The other waves were simply meh. Awakening has had the best DLC model so far, and even then I'm not crazy about it.

I saw some people hoping for more season passes but I hope they don't! I'd rather them start working on the next game early so they have plenty of time with it and it doesn't feel "rushed".

 

[Holder of the Heel]

It was okay but what they needed to do was enhance the base game by improving segments that may be rushed, and putting in things that were cut due to deadlines. 3H is definite masterpiece material but it fails to reach that potential; adding in side content, even if done well, does not improve the base story which is what I actually care about.

The time since release plus all the DLC goodies made playing through my fourth and final route, Silver Snow, bearable, so I am thankful for it enough I guess.